Haley Sweetland Edwards has an excellent article on Ali Abdullah Saleh, America’s latest erstwhile ally in the fight against al-Qaeda. Money quote:

The best reason Saleh has not to push hard against al Qaeda may be a paradoxical one: if he were to eliminate America’s enemies in Yemen, he wouldn’t be able to fight them anymore. If the group remains a threat, Saleh’s cash-strapped government receives huge sums of money and pledges of political support from the international community, so why would Saleh slaughter his cash cow? "So long as there is al Qaeda, no one will let him fail. It’s simple," said Naif al-Gunas, the speaker of the opposition coalition, the Joint Meetings Party. A war against a dissolute enemy like al Qaeda also allows Saleh to use counterterrorism funds and military resources to battle his internal enemies—the Shiite rebel group in the north, and the separatists in the south—simply by accusing them both of being allied with al Qaeda, which he has done repeatedly. (The alliances are mostly unproven, but, as one parliament member put it, "Shared enemies make unlikely bedfellows.")

At the end of the day, Saleh’s ability to sell his own temporary allegiance to the highest bidder is his main political asset, and for the time being the U.S. seems to have secured the dubious prize.

Read the whole article here. One of the nice things about the rise in interest in Yemen is that its given a voice to lots of great young journalists and academics. Waq-al-Waq is unfortunately over, but half of that team (Brian O’Neill) still blogs at Always Judged Guilty.

Thomas Ricks, a respected Washington war reporter, argues that the U.S. needs to renegotiate the Status of Forces Agreement and keep 30,000-50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely. The current agreement, signed by both the Bush administration and the Iraqi leadership in 2008, stipulates that all US forces are to be out of Iraq by the end of the next year. Andrew Sullivan, sensing the coming pushback against withdrawal, is livid:

If Obama does not have the courage to withdraw [from Iraq] regardless of the consequences, he will end up entrenching Bush's insane gamble, not ending it, as he was elected to do. If Obama increases troop levels in Afghanistan and extends Bush's timetable for leaving Iraq, why on earth did we support him? Those were McCain's policies. Why have elections if they are essentially meaningiless?

Occupations are the foreign [policy] equivalent [sic] of entitlement programs. They never end. Why should Americans be denied basic access to health insurance because the money is going to sustain 50,000 troops in Germany, for Pete's sake, or to tamp down sectarian conflicts that have existed for centuries in a country we had no troops in for all of US history until 2003? 

When will this madness end? Do we really have to go completely bankrupt and be forced to withdraw from these anachronistic pretensions? Are seven years not enough?

For those who have never been acquainted with Stratfor previously, we blogged about the "private intelligence" group here. They do mostly analytical, geopolitcally-focused reporting. Translation: They make semi-educated guesses based on limited information.

This Jundallah report is a perfect example. Using a couple of facts and a healthy does of exaggeration Statfor created a seemingly logical explanation for how and why Rigi was arrested. Funny, they could have just waited a couple hours for the New York Times, The Guardian or any number of other sources to report what actually happened.

Just imagine the money Iran could make in tourism... More pictures here.

Oh to have an Irish passport.

Nir Rosen, recently back from Iraq, rebuts the idea that Sunnis are going to stage a repeat of the 2005, when they boycotted elections and turned instead to militias for power. This is part of the general worry amongst American policymakers that for all the successes of the surge, there is still no political reconciliation and no agreed method for distributing government revenues. Money quote:

...what can Sunnis do? Nothing, they're screwed and they have to accept it, and they have. The alternative is far worse for them. Sunnis in the region will not go to war alongside the Sunnis of Iraq. That moment came and went in 2006. Iraqi Sunnis don't even have a single leader who is charismatic and has real appeal, they're divided among themselves and these days your average Iraqi just isn't that into politics. I've heard it hundreds of times by now, they blame the religious parties, they say they got fooled and now they understand. Now that's not completely true, but the militias were able to mobilize people because of a security vacuum. These days it doesn't matter how remote and shitty the village I visit is, there are Iraqi Security Forces, and people have good things to say about them. Compared to the first three years of the occupation, Sunnis seem downright docile, maybe bitter or wistful, maybe angry, but their leadership is emasculated, in jail, abroad, just trying to survive, or just trying to make money.

Tablet Magazine's David Goldman recently interviewed George Friedman (no relation), the founder of Stratfor, a "private intelligence" agency based in Austin, Texas. 

Stratfor is fairly well-read and apparently fairly lucrative, too. Some of its reports are a bit cooky, some are excellent. You can pay $349 for a yearly subscription, or get free samples every week (which both Evan and I receive). Most exciting is that you'll also receive a free copy of The Next 100 Years, which attempts to forecast the future of the world. Here is Friedman's rather entertaining forecast, as summarized by Goldman:

The Next 100 Years dismisses the stuff of scare scenarios—Islam taking over Europe, China confronting the United States, a failed Mexican state dumping its surplus millions over the American border—and offers an idiosyncratic vision that will leave most readers confused. Forget Russia and China, Friedman insists: they will collapse of their own weight during the next generation. The great powers of the future are Japan, Turkey, Mexico, and Poland. The great crisis of the mid-21st century, he believes, will be a war between the United States and a fearsome Turkish-Japanese alliance.

The interview isn't very flattering--the author basically argues that Stratfor is a source of superficial information built for a superficial world. Give it a look if you've ever encountered Stratfor before.

It is almost laughably easy to criticize the models of political science and economics. They are always reductionist, littered with obvious exceptions, and describe the past rather than the future. But since we can't get very far without making assumptions, we are willing to suspend disbelief and assume things, even concepts that are obviously incorrect. So the assumption that people are rational perseveres. After all, there are infinite ways to be a moron, but only one way to act rational (or so they say).

Because of this modeling fetish, many obvious observations that can't be modeled never enter into the economic/political science canon, while many dubious models persist simply due to elegance. 

That's why I love that Larry Summers (by all accounts an arrogant prick) once began a paper attacking efficient-market (i.e. super rationalist model) theories with this line:

"THERE ARE IDIOTS. Look around."

Joel Klein argues that Obama, rather than sending George Mitchell to try to go straight for an Arab-Israeli peace agreement, should have gone for the more attainable goal of solving the Gaza crisis. He makes a persuasive argument:

Israel has suggested three conditions for lifting the siege to Hamas, which controls Gaza: no more rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, no arms smuggling into Gaza and the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas in June 2006. The rocket attacks have pretty much stopped and the arms smuggling — I am told — is an issue that can be negotiated, but the fate of Shalit has been an insane sticking point.  

It might have been more profitable for Obama to have concentrated on trying to fix Gaza first [instead of trying to go stright for the grand peace agreement]. It was the immediate crisis when he took office, and it remains so. It is difficult to solve, but not impossible. Success would set a predicate: the Administration could be relied upon to work hard, and pragmatically, on vexing issues along the way to an ultimate deal. It could be trusted by all sides. 

That possibility still exists, although senior Administration officials seem unduly pessimistic about the chances of success. And there is a big obstacle here: the best way to resolve Gaza is for the U.S. to quietly convince Hamas that if it gives up Shalit — a huge issue for the Israelis — the U.S. would work to persuade Israel to lift the siege. The trouble is, the U.S. won't talk to Hamas. But if Obama's policy really is about engaging our enemies, he needs to engage Hamas — and Hamas needs to respond. Quickly.

Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former minister in Afghanistan's Taliban government and the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, published his memoirs this winter. He was released from Guantanamo Bay in 2005.

His writings contain lots of juicy tidbits about the relationship between Pakistan's notorious ISI intelligence services and the Taliban. Money quote from Steve Coll's commentary:

While in office, Zaeef found that he “couldn’t entirely avoid” the influence of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Its officers volunteered money and political support. Late in 2001, as the United States prepared to attack Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the I.S.I.’s then commanding general, Mahmud Ahmad, visited Zaeef’s home in Islamabad, wept in solidarity, and promised, “We want to assure you that you will not be alone in this jihad against America. We will be with you.” And yet Zaeef never trusted his I.S.I. patrons. He sought to protect the Taliban’s independence: “I tried to be not so sweet that I would be eaten whole, and not so bitter that I would be spat out.”

Read the Telegraph's review here.

Time for a wonky read on nuclear fingerprinting.

"Fingerprinting of Nuclear Material for Nuclear Forensics" by Alice Redermeier

From the abstract: Unknown nuclear material may originate from several sources. Nuclear forensics allows by using fingerprinting and comparison with reference data to determine the origin, the intended use, the last legal owner and the smuggling route. These information are essential in the cause of theft or diversion as measures of safeguards can be implemented to prevent future thefts. Certain measurable parameters can point to a specific material and provide therefore a ‘fingerprint’ of the unknown material. Comparing the measured parameters with reference material give clues to the origin and the last legal owner. Characteristic parameters and possible information they contain are presented.