Mideast Roundup

November 28, 2003

US in Iraq

1. Bush Names Blackwill His Personal Watchdog in Iraq

When Paul Bremer, the US administrator for Iraq, flew back to Baghdad earlier this month from an emergency consultation at the White House, he carried some extra baggage in a secret compartment.

Meet Ambassador Robert D. Blackwill, deputy national security adviser to the president of the United States and George Bush's newest personal Iraq watchdog, who has been quietly installed at US-led coalition administration headquarters, known as the Green Zone, in central Baghdad.

It is a well-kept secret in Washington and Baghdad that the silver-haired, bespectacled Blackwill (whose name is often misspelled Blackwell), actually outranks Bremer. His mission is to provide President Bush with a direct assessment feed on the situation in the Red Zones — or Iraqi areas — as well as on the performance level of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and of Bremer himself. Most of all, Bush asked for Blackwill's impressions on how well US troops are coping with the increasingly tough guerrilla war waged against them by a coalition of pro-Saddam Iraqi insurgents and foreign combatants, including al Qaeda and Hizballah terrorists who enter the country from Syria and Saudi Arabia.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington report that if it is the intention of the Bush team to chart a new Iraq game plan, veteran diplomat and Harvard professor Blackwill is arguably the most experienced and best qualified strategic thinker available to prepare the ground with an on-the-spot evaluation of the elements on the table and recommendations of how best to deploy them.

He steps onto a well-trodden path. The White House has employed one expert after another in its quest for a quick, effective cure for the guerrilla hazard to American lives and objectives in the country. Former Central Command head General Tommy Franks led the way, followed by Bremer's predecessor, Jay Gardner, General John Abizaid, who succeeded Franks and Bremer himself. Vice President Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, have all tried their hand at eradicating the blight - without success.

Now it is Blackwill's turn.

The President's new emissary particularly asked for his mission to be kept low profile. He prefers a backroom role while leaving Bremer to continue to act as Washington's front man in Baghdad and leading representative in crucial contacts with the interim government and ethnic leaders. In private, Blackwill will sign off on policy issues after checking back with the Oval Office.

The US military command structure in Iraq will undergo a similar reshuffle of authority. Lt.-Gen Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground troops, who formally defers to Central Command chief Gen. John Abizaid and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers and his deputy, Gen. Peter Pace, will now take his orders on key operational matters from Blackwill, personal emissary of the commander-in-chief, President Bush.

Biographic Note

Robert D. Blackwill combines the skills of a diplomat with the brainpower of a university professor. His last diplomatic post was US ambassador to India. At Harvard, he taught foreign and defense policy and qualitative public policy analysis for fourteen years, culminating in his appointment as Belfer Lecturer in International Security at the university's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Prior to his academic career, he spent 22 years in the US Foreign Service, serving under secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig and George Shultz. His Cold War experience included the posts of U.S. ambassador and chief negotiator at the Conventional Forces Negotiations with the Warsaw Pact in Vienna and special assistant to President George H. W. Bush for European and Soviet affairs in 1989-1990.

Blackwill has published numerous books and articles on arms control, East-West security, Middle East policy, transatlantic relations and Asia alliances.

His experience in the conduct of foreign and security affairs was put to use by the Republican Party who placed him at the head of its national security team for the George W. Bush election campaign. It was at his initiative that Arabs and Israelis met secretly at the informal Republican center for discreet strategic brainstorming at Airlie House in Warrenton, Virginia. Their private exchange of views was later woven into the Bush Middle East platform.

When the Bush circle talked about Condolleezza Rice as secretary of state in the next government, Blackwill was tapped as national security adviser. After the election, the former professor headed the security and intelligence transition team from the Clinton to the Bush White House. At the embassy in New Delhi, where he served from mid-June 2001 to the end of July 2003, Blackwill was responsible for promoting a striking growth in military, security and intelligence cooperation between the United States and India. Stressing the strategic partnership between the two countries, he encouraged increased defense cooperation between Delhi and Washington, including the supply of "defensive" nuclear, chemical and biological equipment.

During his tenure, that partnership was extended to the development of a strong security channel between India and Israel, and regional strategic understanding between the two countries that complements the US-India relationship. Israel now supplies India with some $1.2bn worth of hardware per year in such fields as military and electronic intelligence and missiles.

2. Protest in Pentagon, Outcry in Baghdad

The quiet appointment of Robert D. Blackwell as senior presidential overseer in Iraq has sent tremors shooting through the Washington chain of command all the way to the Pentagon and central Baghdad.

There has been no argument about the new man's impressive qualifications. However, a chorus of dissent over the appointment came from defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Chairman of the Joint chiefs of staff Gen. Richard Myers. They argued it would give rise to misunderstandings with US commanders in Iraq and act as a major disincentive to US military activity in the field. The general staff would find itself in the confusing situation of still having to work with Bremer while fully aware that the out-of-sight Blackwell was calling the shots behind the administrator's office. "It's a bad and unhealthy scene," a senior source told DEBKA-Net-Weekly.

Bush quashed their objections, dealing a painful blow to the standing of two of his key team members, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

Within days of his arrival in Baghdad, Blackwill made two earth-shaking recommendations to the President and Bremer.

The first, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Baghdad, was that the US administrator's handpicked 25-member Iraqi Governing Council served no useful purpose and should be dissolved forthwith, ahead even of the transfer of sovereignty next June to a provisional government chosen by community leaders. Full elections would not be held until 2005. Second, that Governing Council members would not automatically stay in office through the democratization process; they must run for election on equal terms with the other candidates.

Blackwell's recommendations set up a great outcry in the Council, some of whose members had begun campaigning to ward off the evil hour of the council's dissolution and were seeking ways of staying in power.

"You are now dumping us!"

Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Shiite council member whose voice is heeded in Washington, is spearheading the lobby against dissolution. In language calculated to appeal to the American public, he was quoted by US news media as saying, "We need the Governing Council as a safety valve for the country. One idea is for the Council to become a council of state, &Mac183;the final judge of sovereignty." He is promoting a plan to transform the Governing Council into a senate, while the new interim government created in June 2003 for the transition to sovereignty would be like a lower house of representatives. Chalabi also argues that an elected government would overturn any defense agreement the Governing Council signed with the United States to maintain US troops in Iraq. This problem would be solved by leaving the Governing Council intact in the form of a senate serving as watchdog over the new government.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington say that in private conversations with sympathetic US senators, congressmen and senior Pentagon officials, Chalabi is far more blunt.

"You are getting ready to dump us, the Iraqi opposition leaders who served you so well for so many years," he said bitterly to one friendly American. "We have lost credibility because we kept faith with you. Elections will finish us. Before any of our candidates can begin counting ballots, he will be assassinated. What do you expect me to do? I have a militia of 3,000 men. Should I sack them? Who knows where they'll go or who will take them on when they are jobless?"

This was a not-too subtle hint from Chalabi, whom many Iraqis regard as an American pawn, at the possibility of his private army going over to Saddam Hussein's guerrilla force if he is dropped from government. Other Shiite Council members have voiced similar fears with regard to their power bases and militias.

Some Shiite clerics in Najef and Karbala feel that June 2003 is too soon to transfer sovereign power. Iraqis will not be ready by then to establish a stable government and bring the country into equilibrium. They are asking for a lengthier transition period to allow for fundamental nation-building under the umbrella of US troops. Other Shiite leaders want elections now to capitalize on their majority in the population.

Least worried about this deadline and the coming demise of the Governing Council are the two top Kurdish leaders in Iraq, Jalal Talabani, president of the Governing Council and head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Their following of millions of Kurdish tribesmen is solid; their ancestral territorial bases safe. Each commands a militia of 25,000 fighting men, making the "Kurdish army" second in size only to the US armed forces in Iraq.

Talabani has been trying to soften the blow for Chalabi and his camp by interceding with Bremer for a formula that will keep them in office. But he has run into a brick wall. Blackwill will not hear of any such intermediate cushions and, moreover, refuses to receive the Kurdish leader to discuss the point. Resistance to his views is in fact hardening the Bush watchdog's position against retaining the Governing Council in any form. He strongly recommends that the US administration sever its give-and-take relationship with the Governing Council. Keeping it alive, he insists, invites the emergence of three or even five separate leadership levels in Iraq, with the US owing a debt to each. This would lead to a dangerous type of factionalism with each leadership level vying for control.

3. Military Accused of Flawed Anti-Guerrilla Tactics

President George W. Bush's new personal envoy in Baghdad, the veteran diplomat and political scientist Robert D. Blackwill, saved his most scathing criticism for the tactics employed by the US military command in Iraq against the pro-Saddam insurgency and its imported allies.

This is revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington and military sources.

Reporting back to the president, Blackwill disapproved of the way US armed forces' combat activity is held down and troops kept in heavily-guarded compounds — all in the name of keeping US casualties down for fear of turning American opinion against the Iraq campaign.

While minimizing casualties is laudable, that is no way to win a war, said Blackwill.

He went on to put his finger on what he regards as the real problem: Not just American losses, but the increasing number of Iraqis killed and maimed every day, both at the hands of Saddam's guerrillas and marauding criminal gangs. Blackwill finds that the steeply rising Iraqi civilian casualty toll is instilling in the country the sense that the United States is incapable of bringing security to Iraq. An increasingly number of Iraqis is consequently volunteering to join up with Saddam Hussein's forces.

It is up to the US army therefore to face up squarely to its make-or-break task in Iraq. For this mission, American troops must leave the shelter of their compounds, plunge into the meanest urban alleys and remotest villages and enforce law and order. As long as they sit behind concrete blast walls, the American administration cannot expect to be respected or obeyed, he concludes.

The time has come, says Blackwill, to start counting how many Iraqis are dying for lack of order and security — not just Americans.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, Bremer sat down with Sanchez over last weekend to try and persuade him to turn over a new tactical leaf in line with Blackwill's recommendations to the President. The furious general refused point blank.

Senior officers who saw the general later said they had seldom seen him so angry. They quoted him as brushing Bremer aside and telling him to address his complaints to his bosses at the Pentagon. If new orders come down to him through the correct channels of command, Sanchez would obey them — not otherwise. In the meantime, he did not propose sending the troops out on street duty because a) he believed this policy would only raise US and Iraqi casualties, and b), because it was misguided.

The US Army counter-attacks

This week, the infighting in the US administration burst into public view, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources - in Baghdad and Washington.

On Tuesday, November 25, senior US officers informed reporters in Iraq that attacks on US forces had intensified and become more dangerous. The inference was that American troops were in enough peril already without being ordered out on the streets. In the Green Zone, Bremer hurriedly called the media to convey the opposite message: Assaults on the US military were declining while Iraqi civilians were targeted increasingly.

Only a few hours later, Rumsfeld, looking uncharacteristically tense and tired, faced the press with Myers in the Pentagon newsroom. But instead of commenting on the subject at issue, he let Gen. Myers do it. Taking a middle-of-the-road line, the general said attacks were increasing on US troops and Iraqi civilians alike and both threats had to be addressed.

Sanchez's direct commanding officer, Gen. John Abizaid, has stayed out of the controversy, but DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources learn that Sanchez has put the word out at headquarters that he expects the Central Command chief to support him.

The Blackwill-Bremer-Sanchez war is so far unresolved. It awaits a decision from the commander-in-chief in the White House.


Undercover War on al Qaeda

1. US-Backed Offensive Sweeps through Saudi, Yemeni Cities and Borders

A bitter war is raging in Saudi Arabia and Yemen as we write this. It consists of ruthless pursuits and do-or-die clashes between armed al Qaeda members and their pursuers, local units backed by American special forces and special CIA and FBI operatives.
Photo: Only scene published that shows royal palaces on the skyline behind the bombed the Muhaya compound.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror sources report that on Tuesday, November 25, one of those mixed American teams together with Saudi special forces intercepted two al Qaeda bombers on their way to blow up a car in the center of Riyadh. The two were driving a dark brown pick-truck painted with Saudi military insignia and packed with one tonne of explosives. When apprehended, Musaid Mohammed al-Subaie opened fire from the boot of the truck on the Saudi-US force which shot him dead. His partner, Abdul Mohsein Abdulaziz al Shebanat, blew himself up with a hand grenade.

This was Osama bin Laden's network's first attempt to attack downtown Riyadh - and not just a gated suburban compound.

Two more suspected bomb cars were chased that day but managed to get away.

The same day, American forces operating at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula supported a Yemeni special forces operation for the capture of Hamid al- Adhal, the al Qaeda mastermind of the October 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in which 17 US seamen died.

Our counter-terror sources have discovered that al-Adhal has more than one alias. He also calls himself Assam Al-Maki and uses the nom de guerre of Abu Assam al-Yamani, the selfsame signer of the latest al Qaeda warning published first by DEBKAfile on Monday, November 24. What he wrote in that message was that the countdown had begun for the biggest strike ever carried out in the United States. He also reported that an al Qaeda death warrant had been issued against Abdul Rahman al-Rasheed, editor of the Saudi London-based paper Sharq al-Awsat for the crime of interviewing and having his photo taken with President George W. Bush during his state visit to London last week.

US investigators are anxious to extract from their captive information on what is meant by the threatened "biggest strike ever in America," and who are the perpetrators assigned to carry out the attack.

The escalating warfare on the remote, craggy Yemen-Saudi front is claiming a rising death toll though drawing little outside attention. The day after the capture of Al-Adhal, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources discovered that three Americans were killed early Wednesday, November 26, by tribesmen known to be followers of the bin Laden clan. Because of the news blackout imposed by the American forces on this all-out offensive in Yemen, no further details are available on the identities of the victims or the circumstances of their murder.

At some undetermined post on the Yemen-Saudi frontier, our sources report a secret meeting in recent days between commanders of the two armies' special forces to synchronize their anti-terror operations. They also discussed the handover of a senior al Qaeda operative of Yemeni descent who was captured last month in Mecca. His extradition was arranged by US special forces commanders in line with a promise to Yemeni president Abdullah Salah.

To the astonishment of the American go-betweens who witnessed the frontier encounter, the Yemeni officers checked the documents the Saudis presented, asked to see the captive and then refused to take him into custody.

Later, they were told that the captive had snatched a weapon from one of his Saudi captors and killed himself.

Reaping death daily

Aside from such mysteries, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports that shoot-outs with al Qaeda gangs and supporters on both sides of the frontier have risen to between four and five a day, with the terrorists' losses standing at four to six and combined Saudi-Yemeni losses from three to five per day.

We have not obtained the US casualty toll. Losses, there certainly are, but they are not disclosed. The data reaching us on the scale of combat indicates that al Qaeda still has available a large number of terrorist cells for wreaking death and destructions in the main cities of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, especially Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Sanaa and Aden.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources have received information that bin Laden and his top tacticians decided after pulling off the November 7 attack in Muhaya in the vicinity of Saudi royal palaces, to redouble their efforts to reach senior Saudi royals and high Yemeni officials. Assassinations of leaders and their interests are to be attempted if the terrorist killers can get close enough.

In both countries, therefore, security has been tightened around political and military leaders who have taken to sheltering for the most part behind the blast-proof walls of enclosed compounds. In a normal year, Persian Gulf rulers would habitually go out and greet their subjects in the city centers on the Eid al-Fitr festival ending Ramadan. This year, most abandoned that ritual. Not a prince was to be seen in the streets of Riyadh. A senior Saudi personality was seen in only one public place: the fortified military city of Tabuk near the Jordanian frontier, where he greeted the troops. But his identity was not disclosed. DEBKA-Net-Weekly has discovered he was defense minister Prince Sultan.

President Salah, fearing an al Qaeda assassin, rules his country from heavily secured buildings and is no longer seen in public.

2. Yemen's Revolving Door

American counter-terror forces and operatives backing Saudi and Yemeni operations to root out al Qaeda terrorists from their lands often find their hosts operating on two levels. With one hand they fight the insidious enemy within, while with the other, they try and draw him into deals.

The Yemeni way, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror sources, is to detain suspects and then let them escape through a "revolving door." The Saudi way is appeasement, to try and negotiate or buy a ceasefire — a Saudi version of hudna.

Our Yemen experts explain that President Abdullah Salah wants to appear even-handed. "To achieve this," they say, "he arranges for parity between the numbers of al Qaeda terrorists killed in battle and the number who somehow Œescape' after capture. Since Salah's decisions are totally unpredictable, US forces in action can never tell what al Qaeda cells will confront them. They may find themselves fighting the second time round terrorists whom they were assured were out of action and incarcerated in the central Aden prison."

Last July, US forces with helicopter backing went into action against a large group of some 1,500 al Qaeda fighters. Some of the men captured were discovered to have taken part in the triple attacks on Riyadh compounds on May 12 five weeks earlier. They were known to have fled to Yemen and been captured there. Yet here they were, turning up again on the battlefield.

Another ten captured accomplices from the 2000 USS Cole suicide attack were believed to be safe in jail in Aden. However a few days after the big battle, the birds had flown their prison cells.

Yemeni security officers informed their American counterparts, who asked how this vanishing act came about, that the fugitives had dug a tunnel from the prison shower rooms. It had connected a second tunnel dug by accomplices outside the prison walls.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, the tunnels shown to the American visitors looked pretty makeshift. The Americans were not convinced and decided that someone in authority had ordered the warders to unlock the gate and let the terrorists go free.

Yemeni doublespeak

The Americans therefore only half-believe Yemeni President Abdullah Salah is sincere in fighting terror. Their suspicions have been fueled by certain recent events, revealed here by our sources.

1.
Salah boasts repeatedly to the CIA and FBI agents he meets several times a week that since the attack on the French tanker the Limburg, al Qaeda has not managed to bring off a single strike in his country because of the efficiency of his forces. His listeners take this with a pinch of salt. They know from their intelligence sources that the Yemeni president has held off terrorist attacks by means of undercover deals with the Islamist terrorists, which stipulate than whenever the number of al Qaeda detainees in Yemeni prisoners reaches 100, he will let some go. These deals assure local al Qaeda leaders of a steady supply of freshly rested reinforcements.

2.
The Yemeni president also likes to brag about his success in destroying the better part of the Islamic Army of Aden, Al Qaeda's primary operational arm in Yemen. The Americans take his word for this, after participating in many of the clandestine operations against this terrorist force. However, Salah said that in order to stabilize the IAA's tribal region, he needed to release 60 members against their pledge not to revert to terrorism. Washington was consulted and approved the deal.

3.
After receiving US approval, Salah ordered the release at the beginning of Ramadan of not 60 but 92 detainees. Now US intelligence has discovered that the release of another 130 al Qaeda members is under preparation. The President claims Washington did understand him; he said he needed to free 160 not 60 prisoners! In the end he will free around 200 and that may not be all!

3. On the Road to a Saudi hudna

Sheikh Ali al-Khodeir is the spiritual mentor of al Qaeda firebrands in Saudi Arabia and of some of the15 Saudi nationals who took part in the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

He also provided "spiritual" guidance for the Saudis who detonated car bombs outside three compounds housing foreigners in Riyadh on May 12, attacks that killed 35 people.

A week after those explosions, Khodeir was captured in a fierce gun battle in Medina between Saudi security forces and al Qaeda fighters.

Yet the see-no-evil Saudi government released the sheikh earlier this month on condition that he make a number of public appearances admitting he had erred in his ways when he abetted attacks on the House of Saud and promise to assist the princes in their truce negotiations with al Qaeda (See "Saudi Rulers Seek ceasefire with al Qaeda, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 133, November 14).

Unconfirmed reports say the Saudi royals offered Khodeir a huge bribe for his services.

Following here is an interview Khodeir gave to Saudi television on Thursday, November 20.

Q. Is it permissible for our young people to wage jihad in Iraq?

A. We do not issue a fatwa (religious ruling) permitting travel to Iraq without the consent of the supreme authority (Ed. Khodeir probably meant Osama bin Laden).

Q. But fatwas have been issued calling on them to go to Iraq.

A. Those are old fatwas that need to be reviewed. Some may possibly have been issued. Jihad is allowed only in accordance with the rulings of religious scholars (Ed. Khodeir does not deny such fatwas exist or that they should be obeyed if issued by religious figures).

In reply to another question, Khodeir said: "He who blows himself up among believers is a suicide bomber not a martyr." His comments stopped short of a complete ban on the sort of suicide attacks carried out in Iraq, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, even though they killed Muslims.

Khodeir's underlying message: If you want to reach the pinnacle of martyrdom, go blow yourself to bits next to infidels like the Americans in Iraq or the Israelis.

Saudi double dealing

This broadcast over Saudi national TV turned Americans livid. A furious Washington sent a query to Riyadh in this vein: Pardon us, but are you telling these youngsters that they may not attack the royal family, but Americans are fair game? Is that how you fight terror — at our expense?

There was no Saudi response to this verbal rocket.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources have learned that, despite the Saudi Arabian commitment to speak only with guns and swords to Islamic extremists dedicated to overthrowing the royal house, its leaders are heavily engaged in truce negotiations with local elements of al Qaeda. This does not stop those same elements going forward with their own plans to bedevil the kingdom with still more terrorist attacks.

Riyadh may pretend to spurn the initiatives of three Muslim clerics, sheikh Abdullah Nasser al-Sobeihi, sheikh Mohsen al-Awaji and sheikh Suleiman Darwish, to promote dialogue with al Qaeda and other Muslim radicals — but it's all a show. The Saudi rulers desperately want a ceasefire and are secretly egging the clerical trio on to keep on talking.

They realize that their attempts to use television interviews to show Saudi youngsters how wrong it is to join extremist organizations and shelter terrorists are only a first tentative step towards re-educating their youth and pacifying the kingdom. After all, young Muslim zealots do not watch television. So the Saudis are trying to persuade the three sheikhs to lend their names to a book compiled by Saudi military intelligence entitled "The River of Memories". Its main theme is denunciation of the "error" of attacking the Saudi royal family when the real enemy of the realm is outside the country.


Palestinians

Mohammad Dahlan: Who Needs Ramallah? Gaza's the Place

The new Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia, aka Abu Ala, last week sought to entice Mohammed Dahlan, Gaza strongman and internal security minister in Abu Mazen's short-lived administration, to join his cabinet.

"If you join my government, you won't have to spend any time in Ramallah," Abu Ala said, indirectly addressing Dahlan's sour relations with Yasser Arafat.

"You will be the king of Gaza. I'll give you free rein, as long as you support me," Abu Ala added.

So far, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Palestinian sources report, Dahlan has not give the Qureia any reply. Indeed the prime minister may be better off remaining in the dark about Dahlan's schemes, in which neither he nor Yasser Arafat have any part - and which aims to reduce Ramallah to a backwater

A deal the Gazan boss has just cut with Abu Ali Shahid, one of the richest and most influential men in the Gaza Strip, sets him on the road toward his ambition of shaping the territory into a power base that will rival Ramallah.

Ali Shahid cut his leadership teeth among fellow Palestinian terrorists doing time in Israeli jails. After the Palestinian Authority was established by the Oslo Accords, Arafat appointed him minister of supplies. The relationship between him and Dahlan was not always smooth. As late as June 2003, Dahlan blocked his appointment to the Abu Mazen government. Now they have joined forces to topple the veteran Fatah leadership ruling the Gaza Strip and West Bank and drive them out of their traditional positions of power. This tactic will loosen Arafat's grip on Palestinian ruling institutions.

Their shared ambitions soar high indeed. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Palestinian sources they plan to set up a media empire in the Gaza Strip, with a television station to rival Palestinian State TV broadcasting from Ramallah, a newspaper and a weekly magazine. The financing is in place, raised by Dahlan from Palestinian and Egyptian investors in the West Bank and Cairo.

The boss of Gaza has quietly recruited more than 40 percent of the Tanzim-Fatah militia on the West Bank, wooing them throughout November with sumptuous Ramadan dinners and Eid al-Fitr feasting. Ever so quietly, Dahlan is going from strength to strength.

Our sources cite his decision to dispense with cooperation with either Arafat or Abu Ala. The latter's government he expects to be short-lived while Arafat is seen as a spent force. Dahlan has told his people he prefers to invest hard work and money in long-term options that will come to fruition when Arafat is gone.


HOT POINTS

22 November: When informed of the Istanbul synagogue bombings last Saturday, November 15, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an off-the-cuff reaction, hit the nail on the head. They are trying to destabilize Turkey, he said.

The Jewish and British sites devastated in two rounds of coordinate attacks this week, in which at least 55 people lost their lives and 750 were maimed, are standard targets for al Qaeda, which has declared war on the West and the Jews. However, what the Turkish prime minister was quick to grasp was that Osama bin Laden's network had joined with at least one Turkish partner-in-terror - The Islamic Greater Easter Raiders Front (IBDA-C) and possibly others - for bigger goals and is not yet done. Turkey has been selected as the favored target of the Islamic international terror network for three main reasons:

1. Erdogan's year-old government heads a pro-Western secular democratic Muslim society, a quadruple crime in al Qaeda's radical fundamentalist book. Turkey is therefore living proof that a secular Muslim democracy is possible, vindicating the US president George W. Bush's ideology and a model for emulation. In al Qaeda's eyes, therefore, Turkey is guilty on even more counts than Saudi Arabia's ruling house and has been placed accordingly at the center of Bin Laden's destabilization agenda.

2. Available to al Qaeda for joint suicide operations is one or more Turkish extremist group which has no compunctions about murdering fellow Turkish Muslims. Local Istanbul Muslims indeed accounted for by far the largest number of victims in both series of suicide car bombings — at the two Istanbul synagogues last Saturday and at the British consulate and London-based bank on Thursday.

3. While rejected as a member of the European Union, Turkey is a major gateway to Europe — where the Islamist suicide bombers may be heading next.

24 November: Al Qaeda marked Eid al Fitr, the festival closing the Muslim festival of Ramadan, with a dramatic warning: The countdown has begun for the biggest operation every carried out in the United States. "The big blow will fall very shortly. It will consist of a series of surprise attacks that will cut America off from communication with its armies in Muslim countries." The reference is clearly to US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The largest number, around 115,000 soldiers, is present in Iraq.

Muslims living in the United States are urged to "take advantage of the short time left" to escape the country and harm's way.

Some of the messages say that a new Osama bin Laden videotape will soon be out. It will also carry statements by al Qaeda members who executed the last suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia and adherents who died in clashes with Saudi security. They will be shown describing how they were prepared for action. Bin Laden will intersperse these cuts with comments explaining the selection of Saudi targets.

DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources report that some of the new messages are signed by Abu Assam al Yamani, who also threatens to murder Abdul Rahman Rashid, editor of the Saudi London-based paper Sharq al Awsat. Al Yamani says the al Qaeda passed sentence of death against the editor because he not only met President George W. Bush in the British capital last week but interviewed him and appeared with the president in a joint photo.

24 November: The fate of the Nahariya killer Lebanese Samir Kuntar hangs in the balance over the next round of Israeli-Hizballah negotiations on the exchange of prisoners. While agreeing to hand over several hundred Lebanese prisoners, Israel has adamantly refused to release Kuntar. The Hizballah have just as firmly labeled him the sine qua non for the deal. DEBKAfile's intelligence sources have discovered that the German go-between has been handed a fresh offer: Kuntar for the Israeli Azzam Azzam, who has been languishing in an Egyptian jail since 1997 when he was convicted of spying for Israel.

Last month, a call was put through from Washington to Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak with a request to let the Israelis have Azzam to break the blockage over Kuntar. If the deal falls through, said the Americans, Nasrallah's standing in the Hizballah will plummet, he will resort to major terrorist attacks against Israel, followed closely by the Hamas and the Jihad Islami who will reject a ceasefire.The situation will spiral out of control on two fronts, the Lebanese and the Palestinian. Nevertheless, Mubarak said: Sorry, but no.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has since offered to try and talk Mubarak round. The chancellor believes that success will help patch up his quarrel with the Bush administration and bring American investors to his doorstep. To dissuade Berlin, Egypt published scurrilous exposes of the alleged exploits that led to Azzam's arrest as an Israeli spy.

25 November: Al Qaeda is placing new stress on the kidnapping of Americans in Muslim countries as bargaining counters to obtain the release of its members in US, Saudi and Yemen custody. To this end, it has published a kidnappers manual, a copy of which has reached DEBKAfile's counter terror sources. They are told how to organize for a mission, trail their quarry and cover up their tracks cunningly enough to buy time and lose themselves before the abduction is discovered and the "enemy" sets out in pursuit.

Hiding places must be selected in sparsely-populated regions. The kidnappers or their commanders must know the locals well enough to be sure they can be trusted "not to go running to the authorities to sell the whereabouts of the secret prison for monetary gain."

A separate al Qaeda command will take charge of negotiations, but be kept in the dark about the locations of the captives' place of imprisonment. The two separate groups, kidnappers and negotiators, will receive encrypted instructions and messages issued as needed. This third "command" group is not identified but appears to be made up of al Qaeda operatives senior to the other two.

The last part of the al Qaeda Guide to Kidnappers deals with the conditions for releasing abductees — freedom for all 600 al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, as well as American nationals who fought with al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan and are in custody in the United States and all the fundamentalist network's adherents captured in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

These demands first turned up in the terror network's releases at the time of the November 9 suicide attack on the Riyadh district of Muhaya. They were repeated in notices appearing after the car-bomb blasts at Jewish synagogues in Istanbul on November 15 and again, five days later, when British locations were hit. Attacks will go on, al Qaeda promises, until all its followers are set free.

26 November: The unpublicized decision by Jordan's king Abdullah and his prime minister Faisal al-Fayez to grant passports to 150,000 Palestinians from Gaza living in the Hashemite Kingdom could reduce to irrelevance the celebrations surrounding a welter of private alternative "peace accords."

Amman's decision is reported exclusively by DEBKAfile's Palestinian and Washington sources. It is said to be the opening move in a novel Sharon initiative backed by the Bush administration to cut through to an acceptable peace formula on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

These Palestinians after being stateless for half a century will be provided with passports to gain them entry at the only frontier willing to accept them: the Israeli crossing point into Palestinian-controlled territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, whether as tourists or to join their families.

It is inconceivable that Washington and Jerusalem were unaware of the Jordanian intention to open a back door for 150,000 Palestinians residing in Jordan to consummate their return to Palestinian soil. Hitherto, every Israeli government has objected adamantly to any form of Palestinian refugee repatriation. Even at Oslo, the 1993 agreement between Israeli and Palestinians on Interim Self-Government deferred the refugee issue to final-status negotiations, a principle repeated in the 1995 Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement.

None of the peace treaties between Israel and Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinians, have ever granted the refugees a right of return. It was recognized that the problem of refugees is an unavoidable consequence of war.

If the process goes forward past the myriad obstacles expected to stand in its path it will offer the new Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia — Abu Ala — a strong incentive to cooperate with Sharon. Qureia has declared he will not disarm the terrorist organizations, Clause One of the Middle East road map. Israel has accordingly not felt obliged to halt settlement activity. Washington has tacitly accepted the impasse by docking close to $300m from the $9bn loan guarantees provided Israel — because of the settlements. The security fence has sailed past the Washington obstacle course.

The Palestinians, if they give way on this point, stand to gain an independent state with the blessing of the US and Israeli governments, and limited consent for the return of Palestinian refugees as full citizens of this state.

It is beginning to look as though the Sharon government hopes, by giving way partially on the Palestinian refugee question, to be rewarded with acceptance of the security fence as a barrier between Israel and the West Bank — and even at the end of the day as a permanent border between the Jewish and the Palestinian states - a broad, innovative people-for-land trade potentially in the making.

However, in two terrorist attacks in Jerusalem this month, Palestinian terrorists and their leader have demonstrated their determination to knock over any peace plan.

That is why the Geneva accords will only be displayed — not signed - next Monday. And as long as the terror organizations are not dismembered and disarmed, any consensual document liable to constrain Palestinian terrorists and their leader, including an inter-faction truce, will be trashed in the continuing violence.

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