IRAN REPORTS

• Roya Johnson writes that the run-up to the annual crackdown on anti-regime protesters inside Iran is in full swing. No doubt all of the usual Arab thugs have been imported to take part.

• Former Iranian president and shadowy puppetmaster Hashemi Rafsanjani is lashing out at the US over the situation in Iraq. He also believes the US created al-Qaeda in order to counter Khomeinism.

• An Iranian national has been detained in connection with the discovery of a large arsenal in Marseille, France. It is entirely possible that he is a member of the formerly Iraqi-backed Mujahideen-e-Khalq, which was pretty well dismantled by French authorities last year.

THE WIDER WAR

• Afghan police have arrested 2 of Mullah Omar's bodyguards near Kandahar.

• Spanish Algerians recruiting European Muslims to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq have been tied to Zarqawi as well as to the Hamburg cell that served as the staging ground for launching the 9/11 attacks.

• The Pakistani lashkar hunt is over in Azam Warsak, which had been one of the main centers of resistance during the Waziristan Operation.

• A member of the Harakat ul-Mujahideen al-Aalmi has been arrested in Karachi. This comes as Kamran, another HuMA leader is arrested. A German Muslim is also among the detained. This would tend to support the position that Karachi is the new terror central inside of Pakistan these days.

• Abu Sayyaf leader Usman Lijal has been captured in the Philippines. Lijal, who may also be a MILF leader, had a chemical weapons guide on him at the time of his arrest.

• The Turkish press is reporting that the CIA tipped off Turkish authorities to the al-Qaeda threat to the upcoming NATO summit.

• Gunmen have killed 4 in the latest round of violence in southern Thailand. They also want to negotiate with the US government.

• King Mohammed of Morocco is taking swift action against Islamism, declaring its adherents, "Unbalanced villains ... with no homeland or religion."

• Morocco isn't alone either - Tunisia is also stepping up its anti-terrorism efforts.

• 4 terrorists and 1 police officer are dead in the latest gunbattle in Saudi Arabia.

• Kenyan police preparing to deport 3, including an Australian national, over an alleged plot against the Israeli embassy in Nairobi.

• The Los Angeles Times has some more on Lionel Dumont's friendly visit to Japan.

• A clash between Islamists and government forces in Yemen have left 2 injured.

• A major attack in Kashmir by the Hizb ul-Mujahideen has left 26 Indian soldiers dead.

• We try to end on a lighter note if possible. It is with great pleasure that I announce the creation of the first kicking and dancing robot.

REPORTS FROM THE FIELD

• The U.S. is pushing into the city of Kufa possibly seeking to capture or kill Motaqda al-Sadr after pushing his forces out of Kut, Diwaniya and Karbala. U.S. and Iraqi forces also stormed a mosque in Najaf, keeping pressure on Sadr's Mehdi Army.

• Wretchard analyzes the reports of a Coalition attack on a wedding party in western Iraq. Meanwhile, the AP has a video of the wedding Iraqis claim was attacked, although it has no actual footage of the attack, and the U.S. says it has recoved weapons from the site.

IRAQI POLITICS

• Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite factions are vying for top positions in the interim Iraqi government. While the risks of factionalism remain high, the fact people actually want to join the government implies that perhaps there is greater faith in Iraqi sovereignty than has been recognized in the western press. (Or perhaps they're simply devotees of Pascal's Wager.)

• Iraqi official Abdul-Jabbar Youssef Sheikhli survived a car bombing attack that killed four civilians on Saturday. Better luck than in last week's attack, but the terrorists will certain continue to try and kill those Iraqis perceived to be collaborating with the Coalition.

THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

• Unsurprisingly, Ahmed Chalabi has denied the accusations of passing intelligence to Iran. Iran's confirmation of his denial may not help his case, but the Coalition raid on his home last week may help him on the domestic front. The U.S. government was continuing to search for who might have given the secrets to Chalabi, most of whom work at the Pentagon. Our own Dan Darling has his own assessment.

ETCETERA

• JK: Make sure you check out the Carnival of the Liberated, a roundup of Iraqi blogs.

• JK: Mike McNeal has a historical timeline of sorts on Iraq post-WW2 - start here, and scroll down. From the collapse of the monarchy, to the rise of the Ba'ath, to Iraq's status as a Soviet client state. For good measure, Mike gets in a few hard kicks at attempts to blame the USA for Saddam.

• Calling up the reserves costs more than just the reservists. Phil Carter examines the drag massive call-ups place on the economy.

• Thanks to some generous Americans, seven Iraqi merchants who had hands amputated for their 'crimes' against Saddam Hussein now have 'bionic' hands to replace them.

• The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops: American, Australian, British, Canadian & Polish. Anyone out there with more information, contact us!

• Don't forget Chief Wiggles' Toys for Iraq drive!

Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

So What's the Surprise?

This Wednesday, at ~5:00 in the morning (aren't Memorial Day weekend rates fun?), I will be at Kansas City International Airport preparing to leave for Washington DC, where I will take up an internship position for pretty much the duration of the summer at the American Enterprise Institue, which is described by both Wikipedia and the Christian Science Monitor as being pretty much the headquarters of all things neocon.

When not advocating perpetual war and US world domination on behalf of the Israeli Likud Party, I will likely be found engrossing myself in the collected writings of Leo Strauss. I'm also looking forward to collecting clippings re: all the plots we're supposed to be involved in, which should be a real pick-me-up when the news gets too depressing.

All kidding aside, near as I can tell it probably would have been next to impossible for me to get ahold of this position if not for blogging. Let me tell you what I mean...

Brief Bio Description

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a college student blogging from Leavenworth, Kansas and an army brat to boot. My father works at the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate (CADD) at the Command General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth and churns out lengthy manuals worth of army doctrine on a fairly regular basis.

Anywho, I graduated from Wayne Simien Leavenworth High School in the class of 2002, though I'll be damned if I can remember actually learning anything from the curriculum while I was there. Far too much today's high schooling involves little more than memorization and then recitation in the form of testing rather than actually understanding any of the material that is being taught. One particular memory for LHS that sticks out in my mind is when one of my classes was watching the film Glory and at the end when the Union soldiers are all slaughtered one of my female classmates broke out into tears and continued crying until the teacher assured her that yes, indeed, the North did win the American Civil War.

You can't make this stuff up.

The Transformation of a News Junkie

It was during the beginning of my senior year at LHS that I actually ended up working for the Kansas City Star's TeenStar section, despite my utter lack of serious experience in journalism. I was in class the day that 9/11 happened and I can still remember every moment of horror from that terrible day.

For a lot of reasons, some of which I'd really prefer not to discuss, I became a news junkie immediately afterwards. I read every copy of Time Magazine, Newsweek, and US News & World Report that I could get my hands on, which I think is probably the first time that I ever actually learned who Andrew Sullivan was. My peripheral interest in politics expanded significantly, and I took as much time as I possibly could to learn about al-Qaeda and its leadership. Still, I was frustrated with the failures of the media, and a gap that I saw in the blogosphere as well.

My blog Regnum Crucis was born out of that frustration, in August 2002.

When I started up Regnum Crucis, I didn't have a clue who Instapundit was, let alone any of the other major bloggers. I hadn't even heard of NRO or the Weekly Standard or any of the other right-wing alternative media outlets, let alone their left-wing counterparts. In short, I was completely lost inside of blogosphere. If I had a blogfather, it would probably be John Reilly, whose writings probably did the most that one single person could do as far as shaping my worldview. In any case, Regnum Crucis was originally set up to be more or less a mixture between keeping track of the war and working out the kinks on my books. It didn't work out all that well for my books... and I'd do it all over again.

Warblogging is fairly commonplace these days, but I did a good enough job at it that Regnum Crucis got a fairly nice readership between its start-up in August 2002 and when I first started writing for WoC in the summer of 2003. I remember having read Winds of Change.NET since at least mid-spring, and Joe was looking for a new Winds of War writer. Having had some experience at what all of this entailed from my time over at Rantburg and figuring that I had nothing to lose, I decided to give it a shot. He put me on the team and, as most of you know, I've been doing Winds of War (WoW) ever since.

Getting In: Professorial Persecution, and a Bailout from the Blog

I first got the idea to apply for the AEI internship program during the middle of the uranium flap in the State of the Union around mid-September 2003 when I came to the conclusion that AEI was one of the few think tanks in the United States that was still as interested in actually winning the war in Iraq as others were in declaring it a quagmire or following the nefarious designs of the neocons. So, the naive young college student that I was, I went to my professors seeking to get their recommendations for AEI.

Boy, was I in for a surprise.

Now before I begin, allow me to say that this is not intended as a blanket indictment against college professors, liberals, or opponents of the war, all of whom are as diverse as any other subsection of people. It is, however, representative of the type of atmosphere at my particular college. These aren't just people who have mere policy differences with the administration, or believe that going into Iraq was the wrong thing to do. At least one of these professors from the social scientist department (a Caucasian male, interestingly enough) regards the United States in general and its Caucasian population in specific as being nothing more than an instrument of death and destruction that has brought nothing but oppression and pollution to the rest of the world "in the service of their Semitic war god." This man would later remark in class that "real patriots" would have long since "killed the power elite in Washington" and taken over the country.

I wish I could say that this kind of thing was unique. The other professors held to similar types of opinions, and I'll be quite honest. I think that many of them really do fit Instapundit's description of "they're not anti-war, they're just on the other side."

Indeed, some of the sentiments I encounter from the faculty are so patently stupid or knee-jerk anti-American (such as the claim that the US has killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did) that one's conspiratorial side might wonder if these anti-war professors are actually a brilliant creation of the neocon cabal.

In any case, my professors flatly refused to give me any recommendations for AEI. None whatsoever.

Didn't I know that AEI was the heart of the Cabal, the secret organization that ran the US for the interests of the Israeli Likud party? Indeed, most of my attempts to secure recommendations from them generally resulted in me being handed lengthy stacks of printed documents attacking the organization. Seymour Hersh's piece on "the Cabal" was probably the most moderate, but by the time they were done I had seen everything from Chomsky to Bob Fisk to CounterPunch brought out, all in a frenzied effort to dissuade me from even attempting to get an internship at AEI.

Much later, I spoke with Scott Talkington on this subject, who informed me that this type of behavior was not kosher at the university level. This opinion was shared by the dean of the department in question, who know doubt gave the professors a talking to when I brought the subject to his attention after my conversation with Scott.

But I still had no recommendations.

Soon after this, Joe e-mailed me to ask how things were going. I explained what was going on. Joe, in an act that can only be described as the act of an absolute saint, decided to pull out all the stops in obtaining other sources for letters of recommendation for me - even going as far as to contact occasional WoC commenter Michael Ledeen to explain the situation to him. With the help of Joe, Robin Burk of USMA West Point, Scott Talkington, one of the CGSC terrorism instructors, and the associate director of the Center for Tactical CounterTerrorism (you meet interesting folks blogging), I soon had my AEI resume complete with some very nice recommendations.

Finally, around mid-April, I received a very cordial phone call from Michael Ledeen.

In all honesty, my first reaction was that was this was some kind of a prank call by several of my peers, who knew about my desire to be an intern at AEI, as well as my high respect for Ledeen and his work. As the realization sunk in that it was Ledeen I was talking to on the phone, I imagine I was acting more than a little stupidly, but he was very kind and very patient to me as he calmly explained that I had indeed been accepted into AEI's internship program for the summer of 2004.

Lessons from - and for - the Blogosphere

To put it quite simply, none of this would have probably been possible without blogging. Joe did more than just mobilize referrals - he wrote a letter to AEI that highlighted my work, and included live links to a range of my articles here on Winds of Change.NET. I'm told that those articles had a real impact during the AEI selection process. Apparently, they weren't used to having work-quality examples from prospective interns, and my research into the al-Ghamdis in particular seemed to pull together a number of threads they had been wondering about.

A lot of the talk that has occurred about the impact of blogging to date has focused on blogs "replacing" the mainstream media as a regular source of information for many people. Not enough, however, has focused on the fact that blogs and the internet in general have become in many ways the ultimate democratizer of ideas. We've talked about the effect of blogs on the media, but maybe we're only seeing part of the picture. The marketplace of ideas goes beyond just the media, to include think-tanks, foundations, governments... and even academia.

Blogs have a role to play in every one of those places. A role they have not yet really tapped - but they will.

In my case, I was able to formulate ideas and thoughts regarding a wide variety of issues, then get them out to a far wider and certainly much more diverse range of people. Ideas that gained readers in significant places, and brought a Kansas army brat to a major Washington think-tank. Is blogging a replacement for our current channels of public discourse? No. Still, I do think that by we have been more than able to ensure that ideas, concepts, and positions can no longer be shouted down or excluded the way that they once were.

If you want a real free marketplace of ideas, the Internet is it.

Thank-Yous

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

For those who are curious, I will remain on the WoC team for Winds of War, abeit in a probably more limited capacity for obvious reasons. However, if any readers are interested in taking on the position of an additional Winds of Change team member for the Winds of War, feel free to drop me an e-mail. I'm "scorpius", over at shwiggie.com.

In addition, I would like very much to thank the following individuals, without whom I would have probably never made it to this point: Zulfiqar Khan (le Québec libre) and Rene Ferrer as (I believe) my longest-running readers, Scott Wiggins for hooking me up with a free e-mail account and helping me out with HTML, Joe Katzman and rest of the Winds of Change for recruiting me for Winds of War and all the other efforts they've made on my behalf, Fred Pruitt, the Army of Steve, and all the other Rantburgers, Kevin Ciavarra, Robert Stevens, David Kian, Todd Sweet, Vahae Engeian, Alastair MacKay, Aziz Poonawalla, Richard Fernandez, James Andrewartha, Nathan Hamm, Dan Haught, Pete Stanley, Mitch, Gerald Mattis, Dan Wismar, Don Hagen, Scott Draeker, Xavier Basora, Ahad Azizzada, Nick Peters, Allan Botica, Eric Kansa, Sherry Rylander, William Roggio, Brian Mulvaney, Dennis Culkin, Michele Catalano, David Schuler, Sarmad, Paul Moloney, Eric Cooper, Frank Vance, Jeff Miller, David Dorion, Michael Thayer, David Johnson, Matt Holmes, Leon Sparx, Tom Holsinger, Richard Heddleson, Jonathan Winkler... and any other Regnum Crucis readers or correspondents whom I may have missed.

In addition, allow me to thank Praktike, Andrew Lazarus, and Abu Frank for their service in forming my worldview. In order to grow, one's positions must be challenged, and all three of you are have done an outstanding job of forcing me to reevaluate my positions based on your arguments. In many cases, I still return to my original position, but I believe that the capacity for self-criticism is one of the things that separates us (meaning, broadly speaking, Western civilization) from the enemy and would certainly much rather debate the war with any of you than with any of my professors.

Finally, there is one other person that I would like to thank: a stunningly beautiful violinist music major from Topeka who is currently attending the University of Vanderbilt in Tennessee. Without her affection, her spirit, and above all her inspiration, none of this would ever have been possible. And I would like to thank her for that, if nothing else, from the very bottom of my heart.

With that being said, I regret to announce that, with the exception of the Winds of War on Monday, this will be my last Winds of Change blog from here in Leavenworth. I'm going now, I wish you all a very fond hasta la vista.

Nasrudin took him to the mosque, and rolled on the ground, calling upon Allah to restore the man's twenty silver coins.

Annoyed by his presence, the congregation made a collection and the sum was handed to the surprised loser.

"You may not understand the means which operate in this world," said the Mullah, "but I trust that you understand the end when it is handed to you in such a concrete form."

As always, this Sufi tale works on many levels. Superficially, it works as a joke: Nasrudin takes an unexpected and absurd path to perform a good deed, indulging in a bit of slapstick along the way. But there are instructional interpretations of the tale, as well...what lessons can we draw from the lesson Nasrudin delivers to the robbed man, and what do his actions -- and the response to them -- say about the congregation?

Root Causes - Careful What You Ask For

The harsh reaction against the "root causes" meme post 9/11 was motivated by the fact that many calls for such analysis were just thinly disguised invitations for America to engage in a Maoist orgy of self criticism and propitiate all those we had offended. But real root cause analysis remains deliciously contentious.

Here's one major thesis on the "root cause" with many proponents in the blogosphere: "It's the Islam, Stupid!" (If you know what RoPMA stands for, you know what I’m talking about). I don't accept this thesis, not out of any residual political correctness, but because I really think it is wrong and incomplete. Daniel Pipes' formulation - "Militant Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution" - also misses, as many devout and fundamentalist Muslims are not our enemies (see, e.g., Robert Kaplan's book Soldiers of God) - though sadly, many are now radicalized.

Islamo-fascism, the hyphenated hatred

My working hypothesis is that the "root cause" of the murderous hatred is a viral cocktail of classical leftist anti-American ideology, far right European anti-Semitism, and 20th century political Islamism. Hence the running together of the Jew hatred and the America hatred - it's a function of the sources which make up the ideology.

Cogent example: Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese warlord legislator, has had some great screeds lately, offering helpful perspective on Palestinian terrorism and blaming 9/11 on the CIA. Jumblatt leaps from Chomsky to jihad in the space of one question.

I’ll expand on Jumblatt next week. And as Winds of Change.NET has noted before, there's more where he came from.

Our Self Declared Enemies

Michael Totten recently wrote a TCS column on the topic of Naming the Enemy. While this is a useful exercise, often we can take a shortcut: our enemies are the ones who stand up and say "I hate you and I'm going to kill you". Sadr comes to mind here, as do the Al-Qaeda who just beheaded Nick Berg. Who hates us this month? Please form a line at the microphone, and please leave your name with the nice men in black at the back of the room.

HateWatch will also cover other hate-based movements and trends on occasion - as Rwanda proved, this topic is (sadly) all too relevant in today's world.

HateWatch: And So It Begins...

We're going to try some different formats for HateWatch, try to provide some depth and perspective to the issues we highlight, and add some honest, provocative questions for discussion - believe me, this is a topic on which I have more questions than answers. Since I entered the blogosphere as a habitual commenter, mostly over at The Command Post, I'd like to create posts that spark some lively discussion.

And on that note, if you have ideas, thoughts, tips, questions or recommendations for me - or want to suggest a new name for this feature – leave a comment below! Also you'll be able to email me via my handle "hatewatch" here @ windsofchange.net.

See you next Tuesday. Entil'zha veni!

TURKESTAN

• The US has been retraining Uzbek troops for some time now, focusing on creating a corps of confident, well-trained NCOs that will be able to implement orders and leave big-picture issues to senior officers. The result? A military force with much more NATO interoperability.

• It is important to remember the smaller stories, such as the one above, when thinking of the implications of increasing warmth in Russia-Uzbekistan relations. The depth of Uzbek ties to the United States and the inertia those ties create suggest that there will be no significant shifts in international relations in Central Asia.

• Russia's border guards will be leaving Tajikistan. Perhaps only coincidentally, a Russian soldier was arrested with 12kg of heroin smuggled across the Afghan border around the time of the announcement.

• EurasiaNet spells out exaclty how Turkmenistan's education system is in absolute freefall. To make matters worse, the Turkmen government has decided not to recognize foreign degrees earned since 1993, leading to the firing of thousands of skilled workers.

• As Tajikistan's president seeks to consolidate his power in next year's elections, the ICG warns that corruptions, regionalism, and fringe Islamist groups threaten the country's hard-won peace.

• In other ICG-related news, the organization's Central Asia Project Director says that US policy towards Uzbekistan result from "erroneous assumptions" by American policy-makers.

• Forum 18 says that Uzbekistan uses Sufism as propaganda in the United States (they make a convincing argument if you connect the dots) while still subjecting Uzbekistan's Sufis to official suspicion and control.

• The head of Kyrgyzstan's anti-corruption unit was assassinated on May 6th, most likely by the types of criminals he had been investigating in recent months.

• Immediately following a strong rebuke in the State Department's new human rights report, Uzbekistan has started a crackdown on opposition leaders.

• Kazak opposition parties hope to capitalize from the ruling of the "Kazakhgate" scandal to be handed down in US federal courts on June 2. An American businessman, James Giffen, is said to have paid massive bribes to unnamed officials in the Kazak government to secure oil contracts for Western oil companies.

• China is making major investments in a new oil pipeline to bring Kazak oil to China's Western border. Eventually, the new pipelines will allow Kazakstan to export about 140 million barrels per year to China.

CAUCASUS

• Make no bones about it, the peaceful resolution of the Ajaria conflict is a stunning success for democracy in the former Soviet Union, and a demonstration of the power of Russo-American partnership.

• Mitch of Blogfonte graciously gives credit where it is due, to George Soros' OSI-Georgia and to the Bush Administration. The role of Russia and Igor The Angel of Death Ivanov also deserve recognition.

• With Abashidze's fall from power, Georgia moves one step closer to controlling all of its territory. Still not under Tbilisi's control are Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are independent but not recognized as sovereign states. Abkhazia appears to be the next target, and President Saakashvili will reveal Tbilisi's plans for Abkhazia on May 26.

• For summaries of the events in Ajaria, see EurasiaNet or my Caucasus Archive (lots of pictures...).

• Chechens who live in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge are worried about Russo-Georgian rapprochement. The ability of Chechen rebels to operate unmolested in Pankisi have been a sore point in relations between Russia and Georgia.

• After a lull, protests in Armenia against the President recently resumed.

• The US is offering additional aid to Armenia in exchange for political reforms.

AFGHANISTAN

• A faction of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e Islami has declared that it wants peace and a role in Hamid Karzai's government.

• Afghanistan's disarmament plan is not going well. Some footsoldiers are turning in weapons, but warlords see little benefit in participating. Ismail Khan, the "Emir of Herat," is a case in point.

• In fallout from the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, the US has ordered a probe of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan. Arash points out that there are few prisoners in Afghanistan and that, in his opinion, if torturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammad can save the life of one Afghan donkey, it's a fair trade.

• Bulgaria will add troops to its Afghanistan deployment amid NATO calls for more troops.

• In the continuing battles along the Afghan-Pakistan border, Pakistan has announced that it is seeking a female terrorist leader training Pakistani women as suicide bombers as revenge for her husband's death (he was an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan member) at the hands of the Pakistani military.

• By year's end, the Afghan Army will number between 16,000 and 23,000, making it the largest force in the country and increasing its chances of effectively standing up to militias.

• Sgt. Hook reports that rocks, and not the Taleban, are the danger he's facing around the base.

FINALLY

• From Dee, a Peace Corps Volunteer currently serving in Uzbekistan, we have: The Makings of a To'y (wedding), Parts One, Two, and Three.

• And, to end with an upbeat story, IWPR has the story of new opportunities for disabled athletes across Afghanistan.

The next installment of the Central Asia Summary will be in one month. In the meantime, regular updates on Central Asia and the Caucasus can be found at The Argus.