Did members of the Indonesian military storm a prison, murder inmates?

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 04.02.13

On March 23, a group of 17 focused, heavily-armed men broke into an Indonesian prison in the Central Javanese city of Yogykarta and with minimal interference from the guards there, identified and executed four of the inmates.

Since the killings, speculation in the press and from Indonesian human rights activists have focused on the Indonesian military's Special Forces Command, or Kopassus, an elite unit that for more than 20 years has been the focus of persistent allegations of human rights abuses (here's a 2000 story of mine looking into the group's history and reputation). 

In the dark old days of the Soeharto-era, Kopassus acted as something between shock-troops and regime protectors, accused of aggressive hunter-killer tactics against separatist supporters in places like Aceh in North Sumatra and of being a law unto themselves almost anywhere they went.

That Kopassus is still a prime suspect when abuse is suspected is a sign that for as much as has changed here, and often for the better, much also remains the same.

The four men murdered in prison had been detained on suspicion of killing a Kopassus member, and since the assault, few witnesses from among the guards or inmates at the prison have been willing to come forward. While guns are obtainable in Indonesia, they're also tightly controlled, and a 17-man assault by people not connected to the military is almost unheard of.

Military abuse?

The military hasn't been exactly forthcoming, either. Last week, an attempt by the semi-official National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) to visit the Kopassus Group 2 headquarters in the nearby city of Suryakarta was rebuked. To be sure, this case may prove a turning point: After a few days of stonewalling from senior officers, who insisted no soldiers were involved, the military has appeared willing to acknowledge some of its own may have been behind the attack.

On Friday, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Pramono Edhie Wibowo told reporters here that "preliminary findings show that some soldiers who were on duty in Central Java were involved in this incident." On Monday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono insisted on a full and transparent investigation "to bring justice to anyone involved."

But investigation into Indonesian military abuses in the past have had a history of petering out inconclusively as memories and outrage fades.

"We don’t know about the mechanism for the investigation of Kopassus, yet, because this is the first time Komnas HAM has worked on a case involving the TNI [Indonesia's armed forces]. We will meet Kopassus’ request for us to get permission from Army headquarters before we proceed,” National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) Chair Siti Noor Laila told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

Not the first time 

While on the one hand it's good news that civilian oversight is getting involved, finally, in stripping away the special status of misbehaving soldiers, her comments are mostly troubling. For one thing, she's got her facts wrong. In 1999, Komnas HAM set up in an investigating team to look into human rights abuses in East Timor at the time of its vote for independence from Indonesia. It found substantial evidence of the Indonesian military's human rights abuse as a form of punishment for the territory's vote for independence. 

The human rights commission has also investigated allegations of military abuses in Papua, an Indonesian territory on the western half of New Guinea where independence sentiment is strong. In 2009, the body investigated the possible involvement of Gen. (Ret.) Muchdi Puwohadipranjono in ordering the murder of Munir, a crusading human rights activist who was poisoned on a flight between Jakarta and Singapore in 2004.

Munir had alleged that Gen. Muchdi has been involved in the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Indonesian democracy activists in 1997 and early 1998, shortly before an economic collapse sparked an uprising that ended the reign of President Soeharto, the US-backed autocrat who had led Indonesia for 32 years. During his time in power, the Indonesian military received extensive US military training and equipment. 

Since Soeharto's fall, Indonesia has moved in a much more democratic direction. But grappling with the habits of the past – particularly military impunity for human rights abuses – has meant the country has made only halting progress. 

Indonesia's military continues to exert major influence in Indonesian politics, particularly at the local level. Regional military commands are seeded throughout provincial capitals in Indonesia, and senior officers retain extensive business interests. Enlisted men frequently moonlight as bouncers in nightclubs or hired-muscle and it's a safe bet that the initial killing that sparked the prison raid was connected to some kind of extracurricular business involving the soldier.

Munir was a rail-thin, deeply intense man who ignored years of threats against his safety to carry out the work of Kontras, a human rights group for disappeared activists he funded.

In 2000, four years before his murder, he told me the following about Kopassus:

"Their method was terror, and it was being employed in the service of Suharto," says Munir, a lawyer who runs the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence. "But efforts to find justice are running up against the tradition of military impunity."

After Soeharto was forced from power in 1998, 11 Kopassus members were found guilty of kidnapping and torturing nine democracy activists. An end to impunity? The soldiers received 22 months in jail. The unit's commanding officer at the time, Prabowo Subianto, then a son-in-law of Soeharto's (he has since divorced) was given an honorable discharge.

Mr. Prabowo, who spent some years abroad working on oil-for-food deals with Iraq (then under UN sanctions) and living in Jordan at the invitation of his friend King Abdullah, is now back and a major political player in Indonesia again. He leads the Great Indonesia Movement party, and is running to replace President Yudhoyono when the current leader is term-limited out next year. Some early polling has placed him among the front-runners.

Will the prison attack be the start of finally achieving Munir's dream, almost a decade since his death?

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Women fill up a form during the 'Spectacular Job Fair' in Jakarta, Indonesia. Thousands of job seekers visit the job fair where around 100 companies in Indonesia look to employ college graduates. (Beawiharta/Reuters)

In Indonesia, and Southeast Asia, the return of optimism – and the bankers.

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 04.02.13

I changed flights coming to Indonesia in Seoul a few days ago, at the airline picked up the regional edition of the International Herald Tribune on my stop. I went through it on the last leg of my flight, reading the business pages with particular interest. It was déjà vu, all over again.

Regional stock markets were booming, investors were excited, and the future was looking bright indeed, the series of articles I read advertised. The first article to catch my attention was a front-page piece on the Philippines about that country receiving its first ever investment grade credit rating, in this case from Fitch. The article began (subscription required):

The Philippines was once the sick man of Asia: badly managed, corrupt and poor.

Years of effort by the government of President Benigno S. Aquino III paid off Wednesday, when the country received, for the first time, an investment-grade credit rating from one of the world’s major ratings agencies.

That's indeed good news. But it was the boosterish tone of the article that brought back so many memories. It sounded just like the articles one could read in that and other regional publications about Southeast Asia's "dragon" economies in the mid-1990s. Credit was easy, glass and steel monuments to ambition were rising into the skies of Manila, Jakarta, and Bangkok seemingly overnight, and abundant natural resources and cheap labor were transforming the lives and expectations of tens of millions of people across the region. 

Then came the big collapse. Too much credit seeking too much yield had flooded the region, corruption controls in the booming property markets of the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia were lax at best, and it turned out that one billion-dollar venture after another had been built on sand. There were IMF bailouts, currency collapses, and billions of dollars in loses for international firms. Most important were the job losses and an erosion of living standards that affected millions of working people across the region.

Much of the advances of the great early to mid-1990s boom were lost, and it turned out that regional countries, particularly Indonesia and The Philippines, hadn't taken advantage of the good times to make the kinds of infrastructure and education investments that were required to set their national economic growth prospects on the path for steady, if unspectacular, gains.

Which takes me back to that IHT story. In third graph, the claim is made that Fitch's decision "represented an important vote of confidence" for the Philippines. Perhaps, but the lesson of the 1997-1998 collapse about ratings agencies is that they're trailing indicators: They upgrade when the market already knows the country is doing better, and down-grade when blood is already in the water. That's been recent history in other countries as well.

In the sixth paragraph the reader learns that the upgrade "reflected a persistent current account surplus, underpinned by remittance inflows, while a 'strong policy-making framework' — notably effective inflation management by the central bank — has supported the overall economy in recent years."

Unalloyed good news? Central Bank management was consistently lauded by groups like the World Bank in the region in the 1990s, particularly in Indonesia. And while remittances are helpful, they also reflect the fact that millions of hardworking, capable Filipinos are still seeking their fortunes abroad due to lack of opportunity at home. That is not the stuff of long-term growth.

The 12th paragraph, which few readers of newspaper articles ever make it to, began the caveats, key ones to my mind. 

"Should the government implement policy to educate and provide jobs for the burgeoning population, the Philippines could capitalize on its demographic advantages to raise economic output,’’ the IHT quoted an HSBC research report as saying. A few paragraphs later comes a passage that could have been written in 1996:

"At the same time, the country faces considerable challenges. Infrastructure in much of the country remains poor and corruption widespread, despite progress under Mr. Aquino’s administration. Growth has generated pockets of urban prosperity surrounded by vast areas of grinding poverty and few jobs."

Those have long been the challenges in the poorer parts of the region.

I've spent my few days back in Indonesia in the tourist bubble of southern Bali. Catching up with old friends, I learned that a number of investment bankers I knew in the 1990s, who lost their jobs in the great collapse and migrated to other parts of the world, have recently returned. Along the honky-tonk tourist strip in Bali, I've repeatedly found myself lost in an area I knew intimately a decade ago: an inexorable expansion of luxury hotels and businesses, an expanding airport, yet still clearly inadequate sewage systems for local people or attention to the perils of unrestrained, unregulated growth.

In Indonesia, too, corruption remains high, long-range infrastructure planning remains poor, and a property boom - fed by capital flowing into the country thanks to China's insatiable demand for commodities like coal, pulp and paper, and palm oil -- is marking the landscape from Sabang to Merauke (a popular Indonesian phrase referring to the distance of its northwesternmost city in Sumatra to its southeasternmost city on New Guinea, roughly the distance from London to Baghdad).

For now, all is going very well. And a Twitter friend of mine once described my general approach to news as a "ray of cloud on a cloudy day." But another early impression I'll be pursuing is whether Indonesia, once again, is neglecting the fleeting opportunity generated by a great economic boom.

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Indonesian officials examine the crater of Tangkuban Perahu volcano in Subang, West Java, Indonesia, last month. (Kusumadireza/AP)

A man with one name is playing with shadow puppets on an Indonesian volcano

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 04.01.13

I've returned to Indonesia after a decade away. The country was where I became a reporter, and in many ways was where I was cursed (and blessed) with a certain estrangement from the country that spawned me.

I arrived in 1993 with a vague idea that I'd like to be a reporter, with no idea of what that really meant. I had come to visit a friend for a few weeks after finishing college and tramped around, ignorant but enchanted, until the little bit of money I had saved up ran out.

Even now, memories of my first few days here are among the freshest I own. The ubiquitous odor of cloves, added to the national cigarette that remains a major health scourge. The roving food-peddlers of the Jakarta night and the special sounds advertising their wares; the rasping tick-tick-tick of a chopstick on an upturned wok advertising fried rice; a man cooing "tahu, tahu" selling fried tofu; the higher pitched and more rapid "satay, satay, satay" for grilled and heavily sauced meat on a stick; and the roaring whoosh of a gas stove when their kitchens on wheels had earned a customer, usually one of the night watchmen or weary day-laborers on their way home. 

Most of all I remember the kindness of people I met, everywhere. Rich ones. But especially the poor. A family came across me tramping between rice fields on Lombok, the island just east of Bali, and they insisted I come for dinner. I stayed for three days, not understanding as I do now what a drain an extra mouth to feed was on their limited finances. They never let on. As I made my way back by ferry and minibus and train to Jakarta, families lined up to share their food and jokes with me, steering me in the right direction and safely home to my friend in Jakarta.

On my next to last day in Jakarta (I had a flight home of course) I met a woman who I've never seen again. I mentioned this vague idea of being a reporter. She immediately perked up, said she knew someone at The Jakarta Post, and that they were always looking for native English speakers to work as copy editors for the capital city's main English language newspaper. She wrote down a number for me, I called, and within a few days I was hired on for a little shy of $200 a month.

It was a night job for the daily newspaper, starting at about 5 and running til midnight. My days were free to explore the Post's library stacks and study the language. In the early evening, when work was slow, various editors and senior reporters there tolerantly schooled me in modern Indonesian politics, for no other reason than I was there and asking.

Time went on, I went to work for Bloomberg, and then the Far Eastern Economic Review, and eventually The Christian Science Monitor, before I left. For a brief time Indonesia, this sprawling, dizzyingly diverse country was actually interesting to US readers. There was the fall of the long-standing dictator Soeharto, with shades of what was to come in Egypt over a decade later (more on the connection, or lack of it, between Egypt and Indonesia in the coming days); a punishing economic collapse; years of turmoil and sectarian violence that had people doubting the stability of the country; and a wave of Al Qaeda style terrorism at the end of the 1990s through the early 2000s that had people wondering (bizarrely, especially in hindsight) if Indonesia was a "front" in the United States' newly-minted War on Terrorism.

Then, well, things started to get better. The economy righted itself, democracy of a sort started to take hold, and the handful of locals inspired by Al Qaeda were killed, captured, or gave it up to get on with their lives. For the US press, by and large, Indonesia wasn't a "story" anymore. I leaped at the chance to go to Iraq when asked in 2003.

The paper has given me a chance to come back after a decade and poke around for a few weeks, to see what's gone right, what's gone wrong, and what dangers lie ahead. I am very, very grateful for the chance. My first trip is to Ambon, at the heart of what were once known as the Spice Islands, tomorrow.

This weekend was mostly social, catching up with old friends. Which brings me back to the title of this post. They reminded me of an ongoing, national pet peeve (for those who read the foreign press). In what I hope will be a very prolific series of stories and posts about Indonesia you can count on three things. You will never read that a person quoted "like many Indonesians, only goes by one name" (which is frequently untrue anyways). There will be no descriptions of Indonesian politics, business, or society being "like a smoldering volcano" (Indonesia famously is on the Pacific ring of fire). And there will be no comparisons of Indonesian politics to wayang, the shadow puppet plays that loom so large, even today, in Javanese folklore and society.

I'm probably going to get plenty wrong. But I'm getting that out of the way up front.

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US-ally Bahrain blocks medical ethics conference

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 03.25.13

Bahrain, where the monarchy has more or less successfully crushed democracy protests that broke out in the wake of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, is apparently not taking any chances by loosening the reigns on open discussion and debate.

Yesterday, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontiéres, MSF) said Bahrain's regime forced it to cancel a conference, two years in the planning, on medical ethics and conflict.

MSF Director of Operations Bart Janssens says the group had hoped to hold the regional conference in Bahrain because of the country's own recent experience with the politicization of medicine.

"We’ve seen throughout the region, how to call it, a complete loss of neutrality around medicine or medical care," says Dr. Janssens. "It's a fact that in many countries, as in Bahrain, hospitals have become forefront places for political struggles, and people who are injured can not find in any way a sort of neutral space where only clinical medicine is practiced and not find political discussions – or worse. For example in Syria, hospitals are basically traps for people to get arrested."

Janssens says the cancellation was entirely due to the decision of the Kingdom of Bahrain, and that his group's interests are nonpolitical.

"What we really wanted was to have a debate around how can we improve the difficulties of medical practitioners in the wider Middle East region, while countries are going through political and social difficulties," he says.

The notion of neutrally available medical care is a long-cherished ideal that routinely runs into trouble during conflict. In Bahrain, the Sunni monarchy rules over a Shiite majority population that has begun to chafe at the lack of political and basic human rights there, and hospitals have not been immune to national polarization. 

In October last year, nine doctors, nurses, and paramedics were jailed for supporting democracy protests ("participating in illegal gatherings," "calling for the overthrow of the government," etc.)  and tending to the wounds of injured demonstrators. Human Rights Watch said the evidence used to convict them was at least partially obtained through torture. (In 2012, The Christian Science Monitor reported on an underground network of medics that helped Bahrainis who felt unsafe seeking treatment in government-run hospitals.)

In 2011, the government replaced the entire board of the Bahrain Medical Society, saying the members had become politicized. The new board has been aggressive in calling for investigation and prosecution of doctors that have supported the opposition.

In Bahrain's periodic protests, injured demonstrators have learned to avoid official hospitals. Informal networks have been set up for the treatment of the wounded in private clinics.

Bahrain, a close US ally and home to the US Fifth Fleet, has successfully rejected calls for change for going on two years now, but is still wary of outside influence and scrutiny.

The country's current position, and relationship with the US, is a reminder that the so-called Arab Spring has had a variety of outcomes. While the US and Saudi Arabia may be pushing for the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the replacement of his Iran-friendly government with one run by Syria's majority Sunni Arab population, it would be horrified at the overthrow of Bahrain's Sunni Arab king by his mostly Shiite subjects.  

Janssens says that MSF is still hoping to hold a medical ethics conference in the region – but they won't be trying to hold it in Bahrain anymore.

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Secretary of State John Kerry speaks to the media aboard an Air Force C-130 on his way back from Baghdad, Iraq on Sunday. Kerry is calling for Iraq to stop sending arms to Syria. (Jason Reed/AP)

Kerry wants Iraq to stop arms shipments to Syria. Why would Iraq agree?

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 03.24.13

US Secretary of State John Kerry made a previously unannounced stop in Baghdad today, and in the process unintentionally highlighted the difficult job he's been assigned in advancing the US diplomatic agenda as regards to the Syrian civil war.

The US would like to see the government of Syria's Bashar al-Assad fall, and has been expanding "non-lethal" support towards that objective even as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have been arming the rebels.

But Iraq is on the other side of the equation. After the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime, a Shiite-Islamist government came to power in the country, with better current relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran than with the US. With Iran backing Mr. Assad, and the likelihood of Sunni Islamists coming to power if Assad falls, Iraq's interests and America's are sharply divergent.

To Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the people fighting Assad look very similar to the Sunni forces, many jihadi, that vehemently oppose his government and continue to carry out mass casualty suicide bombings in Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq has already been working with some of the salafi rebel groups in Syria like the Jabhat al-Nusra (ironically on the US State Department's list of terrorist organizations) and their dream would be to have a new friend across the border when the dust settles in Syria, arming and supporting them in their unlikely quest to restore Sunni Arab hegemony in Iraq.  

What's more, Iraq has oil. Lots of it. While it also has enormous social problems Iraq already has a fairly well-armed and capable military (Note: May have this wrong; knowledgeable folks on Twitter heavily dispute this and will do more research). There is very little Mr. Maliki needs from the US anymore (one of the reasons he, essentially, kicked US troops out of the country at the end of 2011).

So that's the context in which Mr. Kerry arrived in Baghdad today to jawbone Maliki over tacit support for Assad. Kerry told reporters after he met Maliki that the US would like to see that support end, particularly allowing Iran to fly through Iraqi airspace to help arm and supply the Syrian military. The US also alleges that arms-shipments are being trucked through Iraq from Iran to aid Assad.

"We had a very spirited discussion on the subject of the overflights," Kerry said. "And I made it very clear that for those of us who are engaged in an effort to see President Assad step down and to see a democratic process take hold..., for those of us engaged in that effort, anything that supports President Assad is problematic. And I made it very clear to the Prime Minister that the overflights from Iran are, in fact, helping to sustain President Assad and his regime."

Well, yes. Those flights are not in US interests. Maliki appears to view those flights as in Iraq's interests.

Kerry has a tough job. But it's striking how aggrieved the tone was from him today, and longer-term from other US officials both under the Obama administration and the Bush administration before him, as if the basic divergence of interests aren't understood.

"I also made it clear to [Maliki] that there are members of Congress and people in America who increasingly are watching what Iraq is doing and wondering how it is that a partner in the efforts for democracy and a partner for whom Americans feel they have tried so hard to be helpful – how that country can be, in fact, doing something that makes it more difficult to achieve our common goals, the goal expressed by the Prime Minister with respect to Syria and President Assad."

The US has some potential leverage with Iraq. It's training largely Shiite troops who answer to Maliki how to better target Sunni groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq to prevent them from arming and aiding jihadis in the Syrian uprising (while the US wants Assad to fall, it obviously doesn't want to see salafi jihadis who view America and Israel as enemies coming to power). And Iraq continues to seek arms purchases from the US.

But Maliki, as the saying goes, lives in a tough neighborhood, and the fallout of Assad's demise could be seriously destabilizing for Iraq, particularly in the predominantly Sunni areas that border Syria. Maliki has generally been noncommittal in his public statements about Iraq's stance on Assad.

In the early days of the US occupation of Iraq, both America and Iraq's nascent leaders were united in their fury at Assad, who at minimum tolerated a flow of jihadis through his territory to feed the insurgency (since senior US officials had mooted the possibility of invading Syria after Iraq, tying US forces down next door made sense to Assad).

Ten years later, the situation has changed. Iraq's government may not have any particular love for Assad, but fears what might come next, far more than the US does.

President Obama and Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stand together after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, December 2011. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/File)

Politics over principle? Democrats seem more likely to support Obama's Iraq war than Bush's

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 03.22.13

The Pew Research Center released its latest poll on American views of the Iraq war a few days ago and the headline number was that only 44 percent of Americans at present think the invasion was a bad idea ( 41 percent think it was a wise decision).

That's of course a huge shift from US opinions on the eve of the invasion, when a nation frightened by the 9/11 attacks carried out by Al Qaeda had 72 percent public support against only 22 percent opposition. Hardly surprising, given that some scholars estimate the war will have eventually cost the US more than $2 trillion (and more when the effects on the national debt are considered), the at least 100,000 Iraqi lives lost, and the thousands of US soldiers killed and wounded.

The war also strengthened the hand of Iran in the region, bringing to power a Shiite government far friendlier to Tehran than Saddam Hussein's regime.

But while the ongoing high level of support for the war is somewhat surprising (at least to me), what's troubling is the partisan nature of people's views on a war that began 10 years ago and is now well and truly over, and most interesting is how views have shifted between Republicans and Democrats since President Obama took office in 2009.

Today, 58 percent of Republicans say the invasion was the right choice (down from 90 percent a decade ago), 33 percent of Democrats (down from 50 percent) and 42 percent of independents (down from 66 percent). "So what," you might say. Republicans tend to be more hawkish and supported their team. But what's really eye-catching about support for the war is how Republican support has plunged since Obama took office and how Democrat support has... surged.

Really: 

In 2008, 73 percent of Republicans were still for the war and continued their sharp decline (for a larger image, see Pew's graph here). But Democrats' support for the Iraq war more than doubled from 17 percent in 2008 to 37 percent in 2011 before settling back to 33 percent today, still far higher than it was before Obama took office.

I can't think of any explanation for this other than that rosy, optimistic feeling Democrats have in general about the world with their guy in office, and the cold, pessimistic feeling that Republicans have. It's possible that the growth in Democratic support also reflects the entrance of young voters, who were focused on homework and prom dates during the worst of the war, entering the sample. Or maybe it was just that the war was winding down and ending since Obama took office, taking the edge off people's negative feelings. But those possible reasons doesn't show up on the Republican side of the equation.

Hyper-partisanship has long been studied by political scientists. Present a proposal to an ideological partisan as coming from their team, and they're inclined to support it. Present precisely the same proposal as coming from the bad guys, and they're inclined to oppose it. But this is still striking.

And it doesn't stop there. Pew started asking voters "has the US succeeded in Iraq" in 2006. Then, 82 percent of Republicans said yes, 34 percent of Democrats said yes, and the independents were right in the middle, with 54 percent saying yes. After Obama's election, Democrats put on rose-tinted glasses, with "yes" answers surging to 56 percent by 2011, while Republican views sharply declined, to 68 percent. The independents at the start of 2011? Little changed (the graph for all that is here).

Pew didn't ask the question last year. And in the latest poll, all three groups declined (to 56 percent for Republicans, 45 percent for Democrats, and 41 percent for independents). Only the Democrats have a higher view of the outcome of the war today than they held in 2006.

Maybe there's an explanation for all this that I'm missing (Democrat joy that Obama preceded over an end of the war, thus achieving an objective?), but I can't think of one that convinces (me, at least).

The lesson seems clear: If you're looking for clear-thinking on the war, try to find an independent.

UN Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford (l.) talks with Syrian refugees as he visits Islahiye refugee camp in Gaziantep province in January. (Orhan Cicek/Reuters)

What the US is doing to help some Syrian rebels, undermine jihadis

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 03.21.13

US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who was withdrawn from Damascus over a year ago, laid out the Obama administration's assistance to some Syrian rebel groups, its efforts to undermine others, and overall plans for continued involvement in the Syrian civil war in testimony to Congress yesterday.

He also addressed the human need of over 1 million Syrian refugees and the economic strains they're putting on neighbors like Jordan, and pointed out that while dozens of countries have pledged humanitarian aid for refugees and the displaced within Syria, the money has not been forthcoming in the promised time-frame.

"In January at a conference in Kuwait, over 40 countries pledged $1.5 billion to help the Syrian refugees," Mr. Ford said. "We are pressuring the countries that have not yet paid to make good on their pledges – and I have personally asked our partners and Gulf and European countries to give the funds they promised." Big promises made at donor conferences that then fall by the wayside is a time-honored tradition in dealing with humanitarian crises.

Reading his full comments, the US has laid out a tough set of objectives for itself with limited, and imperfect means, that carry risks of their own, not least the desire to build up favored rebel groups by channeling humanitarian aid through them. Access to food and medicine can be withheld for strategic uses as much as they can be delivered, and some of the gatekeepers on the ground for this aid in Syria will not necessarily be squeamish about pursuing their interests.

The situation is clearly dire. Ford predicted the number of Syrian refugees could triple to 3 million by the end of the year if flight from the war "continues at its current rate" and warned that ethnic and sectarian violence could spread to neighbors. He pointed out that Jordan's Za'atari refugee camp near the Syria border is now the country's fourth largest city.

US humanitarian aid so far is almost $385 million. "This money is being spent on emergency medical care and supplies, blankets, and shelter. We are sending flour to 50 bakeries in Aleppo and sponsoring food and sanitation projects for the desperate families in Atmeh refugee camp," he said. 

But what's most interesting are US goals for a post-Assad Syria, and the country's greatest fears. "Preserving Syria’s national unity and laying the foundation for a free Syria that respects the rights of all its citizens is essential if we are to secure a Syria that helps, rather than threatens, stability in the heart of the Middle East," he said. Those are admirable goals, but one need only look to Iraq, where US troops spent nearly 8 years and over $1 trillion was spent, to see how hard it is to create countries that respect the rights of all their citizens.

In the worst case, Ford testified: "Collapse or fragmentation of the Syrian state or its takeover by extremists would threaten the region with hugely greater refugee flows, as well as the risks associated with the security of the regime’s big chemical weapons stocks, and confront us also with the likelihood of major terrorist bases. Those outcomes would directly threaten our interests."

So what is the US doing? In broad strokes, Ford said the US is giving the Syrian opposition non-lethal assistance to:

* Solidify the efforts of Syrian moderates who are competing for influence with extremist groups, knitting the national opposition leadership with local councils on the ground inside Syria. The national opposition leadership needs to provide local communities with an alternative source of support to prevent the influence of Al Qaida’s affiliates from expanding.

* Curtail the influence of extremists by helping national and local opposition leaders provide vital services such as food, water, and electricity. Syrian activists and rebels are working hard to unite the opposition, establish local governing structures, and provide assistance to the many Syrians in need. We need to work with these courageous Syrians – both armed and unarmed –so that they can respond quickly to critical needs.

* Prevent the disintegration of the Syrian state by supporting a unified, inclusive, and effective civilian leadership at both national and local levels – and by retaining the civil servants that can keep state institutions functioning as Syrians struggle to recover from this conflict.

Trying to build strong ties, which ultimately are about command and control, between people living through and fighting a war and exiled opposition figures is always a tough ask. Though the US this week welcomed the external civilian opposition's choice of Ghassan Hitto, an Islamist-leaning figure who's spent most of his adult life as an Information Technology professional in Texas, as their leader, it's hard to see Syrians in the thick of the fight against Assad ceding much authority to him.

While the US is trying to flow aid through the rebels it prefers, again and again reports from the ground in Syria indicate that rebel formations are willing to work with any group that they think can help them win. That includes groups like the US terrorist-designated Jabhat al-Nusra, which has ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The last bullet point reflects the US experience in Iraq, where Paul Bremer's first two orders as head of the occupation authority there were to initiate a purge of officials who belonged to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and to disband the Iraqi army.

But whether victorious rebels will share the same views on Syria's Baath Party if they win, or will be hungry for revenge after so much blood has been spilled, is at best an open question.

Towards the end of his testimony Ford goes in to a fair bit of detail on US efforts, from establishing local government structures that can channel aid in rebel-controlled areas, and repair schools and electricity delivery. Repairing schools and power plants were high on the list of US priorities during the Iraq war, though much of the money for those purposes were stolen or wasted, even with direct US supervision.

"We are looking to improve civilian security through training and some non-lethal equipment," Ford said. "This is critical to preventing a security vacuum in liberated areas that will be exploited by extremists if we do not help stand up civilian police." The security vacuum after Saddam Hussein was toppled in Iraq, in which the US tolerated looting of government infrastructure, helped set the stage of Iraq's descent into chaos that was soon to follow.

In the middle of a raging war, with any US supervision necessarily at arm's length, the success of such efforts are uncertain.

In this citizen journalism image black smoke rises from a building due to Syrian government forces shelling, in Aleppo, Syria, March 19. The Syrian government and rebel fighters each blame the other for introducing chemical weapons to a battlefield that has already claimed 70,000 Syrian lives, most civilians. (Aleppo Media Center/AP)

The real warning in Syrian chemical weapons claims

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 03.21.13

The Syrian government today asked the United Nations to investigate allegations, completely unproven and unsubstantiated to this point, that a chemical weapon of some sort was used near Aleppo earlier this week.

The government and rebel fighters both immediately jumped on those allegations, each blaming the other for introducing chemical weapons to a battlefield that has already claimed 70,000 Syrian lives, most civilians.

"Yesterday I received a formal request from the Syrian authorities requesting a specialized, impartial, and independent mission to investigate the alleged use of chemical weapons," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters this morning. Mr. Moon said he was working with the World Health Organization, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and other groups to create an investigating team.

There's no question that the Syrian government possesses chemical weapons, and speculation about whether President Bashar al-Assad might decide to use them has long loomed over the country's bloody civil war, as have worries that his government might lose control of its stockpiles to jihadis or criminals.

The US and others have been working for more than a year on contingency plans for dealing with Syria's chemical weapons if there should be regime collapse. The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted their use would mean that Assad had crossed a "red line," strongly implying that America might get directly involved in the war there if they were used.

"Once we establish the facts, I have made clear that the use of chemical weapons is a game changer," President Obama said yesterday in Israel.

So far, facts have been thin. The Christian Science Monitor's Nicholas Blanford reported yesterday that, as best as experts can make out, no chemical weapons were used this week, at least not as they're commonly understood.

Video footage and eyewitness accounts suggest that if a chemical agent was used in a missile attack on Khan al-Aasal that reportedly killed 31 people and wounded more than 100, it was most likely a riot-control agent designed to cause irritation, which is not generally lethal.

“In the end, all I can say with confidence is that whatever the conventional or non-conventional munition was, it was not a CW [Chemical Weapons] agent as defined by the CWC [Chemical Weapons Convention],” says Charles Blair, senior fellow for state and non-state threats at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists.

But the response from some quarters of the US to the allegations are instructive: Almost exactly a decade after the US decision to invade Iraq to seize chemical and biological weapons stockpiles that turned out not to exist, arguments for war on flimsy or non-existent evidence are still stridently made, with little challenge from US-based reporters. 

On Tuesday night, Rep. Mike Rogers (R) of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, took to CNN to declare he was mostly convinced that chemical weapons had been used.

"I have a high probability to believe that chemical weapons were used," he said. "We need that final verification, but given everything we know over the last year and a half, I ... would come to the conclusion that they are either positioned for use, and ready to do that, or in fact have been used ... we need to step up in the world community to prevent a humanitarian disaster we haven't seen since Halabja 25 years ago in Iraq, where they killed 30,000 people with chemical weapons."

Those assertions were not backed up by an offered evidence, nor was the method by which he had determined a "high probability" explained. Wolf Blitzer, the host of the show that Representative Rogers appeared on, did not challenge his assertions or follow up by asking for evidence, moving quickly to ask Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, if she agreed with Rogers. She said she did.

"I agree with the comments that Chairman Rogers has made. We hear all this in a classified session, this is highly classified, we have been advised to be very careful with what we say. I'm told that the White House has been briefed the same thing that we have been briefed. What I said earlier is that the White House has to make some decisions in this. I think the days are becoming more desperate, the regime is more desperate, we know where the chemical weapons are. It's not a secret that they're there and I think the probablities are very high that we're going into some very dark times and the White House has to be prepared."

Mr. Blitzer likewise did not challenge Senator Feinstein's assertions, simply asking her if she thought the US was about to intervene militarily to destroy Syria's chemical weapons. She said she didn't know. Blitzer then asked Rogers if he would support US military action. He said yes, "if we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt" that Syria used chemical weapons.

"Trust us" was essentially the position of US politicians who insisted a decade ago that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was likely to use them. Then, the US press in general did a very poor job of challenging these claims. Feinstein voted in favor of the October 2002 resolution authorizing war against Iraq, saying at the time that "disarming Iraq under Saddam Hussein is necessary and vital to the safety and security of America, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East – let there be no doubt about this."

Rogers likewise voted to authorize the Iraq war.

Lost in all the discussion about what the US, and other global players, should do about Syria's chemical weapons is the toll of the war there with just conventional weapons in play. On top of the 70,000 dead and many more maimed and wounded, more than 1 million Syrians are refugees. In the past two months, about 5,000 Syrians a day have fled to neighboring countries such as Jordan and Turkey.

While a dramatic escalation in the death toll could lead to a strong moral argument for action, it hardly matters if people are dying at the hands of chemical weapons, or mortars, or cluster bombs. They're dying.

At any rate, the US press, the US public, and, yes, US politicians need to do a better job this time in questioning intelligence claims and dire warnings, as the country edges closer to involvement in another war.

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Penn & Teller in Cairo, 2003

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 03.21.13

Last night stumbled across this video bringing together two of the world's greatest magicians and one of the world's greatest, if seriously troubled, cities.

Penn & Teller went to Egypt in 2003 (the same year I moved there... coincidence?) and the video is filled with street life in Cairo around Tahrir Square and Talat Harb and some of the city's poorer neighborhoods.

They're ostensibly in search of the descendants of the "gali-gali men," Egyptian street magicians who have largely faded from view, and the roots of the "Cups and Balls," a magic routine practiced across the globe for centuries that may have been first developed in pharaonic Egypt (in a tomb in upper Egypt they examine hieroglyphs that suggest, but don't prove, the trick was well known 4,000 years ago).

I share it because the moments with the few proud, but dirt-poor, street performers they find capture the resilience and incredibly good humor of Egyptians.

Oh yeah - Teller talks (at about 19 minutes in he explains his delight at being fooled by one of the Egyptian magicians they meet).