Is this the best we can do?

After two years on the job, Karen Hughes, a Bush crony from Texas, is resigning as under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. She has been tasked with promoting a better understanding of America around the globe-- bolstering Uncle Sam's negative ratings in public opinion, especially in the Muslim world. She replaced an Alabaman, Margaret Tutweiler, who had quit after less than a year in the job. And Tutwiler had replaced yet another Texan, Charlotte Beers, who came on board right after 9/11 to improve America's image in the Muslim world and left after only a year and a half. Hughes's departure comes just after the resignation of her own deputy, Dina Powell, another Texan.

An American diplomat got it right after Beers arrived in the Middle East on a trip, in early 2002, I believe. She castigated a certain embassy for not doing a better job of convincing the local media of America's policies. To which the dip retorted to the former Madison Avenue advertising hotshot, something to the effect, Give us a better product to sell.

Still, the mission of public diplomacy is a noble one. There's more to America than its Middle East policies. And not all of its Middle East policies are automatically opposed by Arabs and Muslims. I'm not sure you really need an undersecretary for public diplomacy; presumably, that's the job that diplomats are supposed to do every day. Certainly, the best among them--and I could make a long list here-- are out meeting people, arguing America's case, listening to local views and trying to bridge understanding.

But if you are going to make a big deal out of appointing high fliers like Karen Hughes in order to underscore the importance you assign to the task, then find somebody who knows what they are doing, and who's willing to see the mission out.

As far as I can see from here, Hughes bombed. I tagged along for part of her first big Middle East tour--to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey-- and she was ridiculed at every stop along the way. Hughes faced her most hostile reception in Istanbul, where a gathering intended to promote women's rights deteriorated into angry denunciations of U.S. policies. In Cairo, a woman snapped, "You used to be!" when Hughes told an audience of former Egyptian exchange students that America was a “welcoming country." In Jidda, some women at a university meeting challenged Hughes's implication that Saudi women were oppressed, with one declaring, "We're all pretty happy." Some of the Saudi women even criticized Hughes for denouncing the Saudi ban on women driving. I'm sure those women would like the right to drive, but they weren't going to let Hughes use that as a cultural stick to beat their country with.

Hughes had some dubious ideas of how America could improve its message. She started a Digital Outreach Team so the U.S. government has a "presence in Arabic cyberspace" that "ensures that U.S. policies and values are included in the conversation about issues central to the ideological debate." Is that really worth the effort? She set up a Rapid Response Unit to monitor foreign media and provide embassies and U.S. military commands with talking points. Isn't that what embassies and military commands are supposed to do?

She made sure that Arabic-speaking diplomats appeared on Arabic television more often. That didn't always work very well. After State Department official Alberto Fernandez told an Al Jazeera talk show that "undoubtedly there was arrogance and stupidity from the United States in Iraq," he disappeared from the airwaves. Hughes also set up a Counterterrorism Communications Center, to "develop and deliver effective messages to undermine ideological support for terror and to counter terrorist propaganda."

The follow-on of all this was a surge in terrorist recruits in Iraq and a further steady decline of America's standing in the Arab world. Spin, I guess, doesn't work as well in the Middle East as it does in Washington.

--By Scott MacLeod/Doha

On the first full day of our road trip along the border of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, we visited the Ibrahim Khalil border complex, the main crossing point between Turkey and Iraq. Almost all of the trade between the two countries passes through this point -- some 5 billion dollars worth, not including the petroleum products that are piped or trucked through by the federal government in Baghdad.

Such is the importance of Ibrahim Khalil that it has a small contingent of American soldiers to monitor the shipment of supplies and fuel to US troops. They and some 200 others stationed in the nearby city of Zahko are among the only American soldiers in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

But Ibrahim Khalil could be a casualty of the growing teniosn between Turkey and Iraq's Kurds. In the event of a large-scale invasion by Turkish soldiers to attack bases operated by the PKK -- a Turkish rebel group at war with the Turkish state -- at least some of the Turkish army would have to pass through Ibrahim Khalil. Even if the Turks don't resort to such drastic action, they could still close their side of the border as punishment. The Turks accuse Iraq's Kurds of harboring the PKK, and have already stopped all flights into Iraqi Kurdistan, and placed sanctions on firms doing business with Massound Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

So far that tension hasn't reached the border crossing, where it's still business as
usual. About 900 trucks pass each day, 200 or so for the US Army. Border officials aren't concerned about Turkish threats. "If you believed the Turdish media, tanks would be rolling through here as we speak," said a security officer.

Still, even on a normal day, Ibrahim Khalil is a most unusual border crossing. Though it's an entryway into Iraq, there are no Iraqi flags, no Iraqi soldiers, and seemingly no Iraqi federal officials. The border is controlled the Kurdistan Regional Government, which enforces its own immigration and customs policies. The checkpoints are manned by Kurdish peshmerga soldiers, and the buildings are decorated with the red, white, green and gold flags of Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Turks worry that these signs of Kurdish autonomy are a prelude to an independent state, to which Turkey is implacably hostile. Kurdish security officials at the border told us that Turkish soldiers often harass Kurds who cross. They confiscate books or documents that use the word "Kurdistan" and deny passage to women named "Kurdistan" -- apparently it's a common female name -- or Kurds of foreign nationality who have "Kurdistan" listed in their passports as their place of birth. One official told a story about a German cyclist of Lebanese origin who had unwisely packed a Kurdistan flag in his bag and tried to cross into Turkey recently. The man was beaten so badly he couldn't walk, he said.

The Khbour river divides Turkey and Iraq at the Irahim Khalil border crossing, before it flows down into Iraq to join the the Euphrates River. A Kurdish pershmerga officer checks the passport of a taxi driver crossing the bridge to Turkey.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Ibrahim Khalil

My friend Thomas Erdbrink -- a correspondent for the Dutch newspaper NRC -- and I have gotten tired of hanging out in Erbil waiting for for the Turkish invasion of northern Iraq and have decided to take matters into our own hands with a road trip. We've just driven three hours up to Zahko, the city next to the main border crossing with Turkey. Starting tomorrow we're going to drive as far as we can east along the rugged country on the Iraqi side of the border.

Our hope is that we'll be able to get some sense of the Turkish army's operations in these areas. They've reportedly been shelling targets associated with the PKK, a Kurdish rebel group that's been killing Turkish soldiers inside Turkey. But while the Turkish army accuses the PKK of staging cross-border raids, the PKK's main bases are far from the Turkish border; they are farther east in the Qandil valley which is closer to the border with Iran. Thomas and I would like to see how difficult it is to travel from the Turkish border to Qandil, and to keep our eyes out for PKK along the way.

Already we've encountered some difficulties. Such is the sorry state of cartography in Northern Iraq that the only navigational aid we could get on short notice was a decorative scroll wall map of Kurdistan, with the place names in Kurdish. We do however have binoculars, and a satellite modem if we get lost.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Zahko

As a rule, world statesmen keep it a secret when they fall ill. Maybe they're afraid that any sign of weakness, and their rivals will draw knives. Or that sickness might be seen to impair their already dicey judgment. Not so Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel.

When a routine medical exam revealed that Olmert, 62, had prostate cancer, he took the unusual step of going public. At a press conference on Monday, Olmert, looked dapper in a blue suit and vivid pink tie (tell me, please, that his spin doctors didn't dressed him that way to convey that he was in the "pink" of good health). Before turning over the mike to his doctors, he declared, "I will be able to fulfill duties fully before my treatment and hours afterward. My doctors told me that I have full chances of recovery."

That will be good news to the White House. Condi has Olmert doing gymnastics so that he might bend a little towards the Palestinians for the upcoming Mideast peace summit.

So why did Olmert go public with his cancer? It was a skillful move. He gains sympathy, which he badly needs. His popularity in the polls has flat-lined in the low teens because of last summer's ill-planned war in Lebanon. A series of corruption and sleaze scandals also rocked his cabinet. It also puts a stop to rumors that Olmert's health may be worse than it actually is. In this small country, it's impossible to have a premier's motorcade zooming in and out of a hospital without anyone noticing. And, of course, Israeli interest in their leader's wellbeing has sharpened since January 2006, when former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had a stroke and fell into a coma. Sharon has yet to recover and probably never will.

By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem

On my last post about how the PKK -- the Kurdish rebel group fighting Turkey -- is missing a public relations opportunity by not showing off their fearsome and seductive female guerillas, a reader commented that I have a "jejune" attitude towards women. I'm sorry if I gave that impression. Let me assure you that I have a jejune attitude towards both sexes.

To prove it, here's a beefcake shot of two strapping young male PKK fighters drying themselves on hot, black sand after swimming in the bone-chilling waters of a mountain stream in northern Iraq. Can you say PKK underwear campaign?

I took the photo in the summer of 2004, when I visited a camp of a Kurdish feminist group associated with the PPK which ran a re-education course called "Killing the Man" which tries to teach men how not to be sexist.

Now you might think that gender-sensitivity training in the tribal regions of northern Iraq might deal with some practical subjects, such as ending honor killings and child marriages. But "Killing the Man" actually resembles freshman orientation at a politically-correct American university: about 20 men sit in a circle and -- guided buy a female discussion leader -- talk about French philosophy and quantum physics and identify ways in which their thinking is dominated by patriarchal attitudes and a barely conscious belief that their gender is a source of power. The role of the course in PKK ideological training is to show how resisting the authoritarian nature of the Turkish state is only possible if individual Kurds destroy their own inner authoritarian. Only then can they create a society based on harmony and equality across boundaries of race, religion, and gender.

The PKK's progressive attitude accounts for the fact that about half of the PKK's fighters are women. As if they were Quakers, they refer to each other not as soldiers, but as "friends": men are "boyfriends" and women are "girlfriends." However, there are in fact no real boyfriends and girlfriends -- sexual and romantic relations are forbidden.

Playing volleyball and eating watermelon with the boyfriends and girlfriends of the PKK in the mountains where Asia Minor meets the Persian plateau is about as Edenic an experience as you can imagine. But like all descendants of Adam and Eve, they are still marked by an original sin: in this case the attempt to solve the Kurdish question through violence. Though they now say they have renounced violence except in self defense, and have many times called ceasefires, the war they started in the 1980's is now out of control. They can talk about eco-femminist anti-authoritarianism all they want. The Turks aren't listening.

So yes, dear reader, a sexy PKK PR campaign might not mean a damn thing. But at least where there's lust, there's life. When I now look at my photos of these beautiful young killers, I wonder who's alive and whose dead.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Erbil

Qatar is a small country with big ambition. It's oil and gas revenues give it one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Twelve years ago, when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani became emir, Qatar exported zero quantities of LNG--liquified natural gas. Today, it sells 31 million tons of the fuel, which is mainly used in heating and manufacturing. Earlier today, I met Minister of Energy and Industry Abdulla bin Hamad al-Attiya, who told me this figure will grow to 77 million tons by 2010. (Starting Monday, he's hosting the 6th Doha Conference on Natural Gas.) This evening, visiting a traditional Qatari majlis, and drinking endless cups of cardaman-flavored Arabic coffee, I ran into Hassan Ali Bin Ali, who has served as chairman of Qatar's Center for Children with Special Needs. Now, he's spearheading Qatar's bid to host the Summer Olympics in 2016, in an effort to bring the Games to the Middle East for the first time. If you doubt that Qatar has a chance, don't forget that Doha hosted the Asian Games less than a year ago.

It's hard to distract Qataris from the rapid development taking place here, but the upsurge in rhetoric out of Washington and Tehran is starting to concern people. At the majlis, I heard an analysis from a Qatari scholar that I wish I had included in my recent blog item discussing Bush's top ten reasons for bombing Iran. His view is that Iraq has become a lost cause for the U.S., so Bush will bomb Iran's nuclear installations as a way of limiting Iran's ability to exert greater regional hegemony in the wake of the American defeat and retreat.

The Gulf countries are literally on the front line, if a military confrontation ensues. That explains the foreboding of Gulf leaders as well as the risks of a U.S. attack. Qatar hosts U.S. military forces at the Al Udaid base outside Doha, so it could be on the receiving end of Iran's ballistic missiles in the event of a retaliatory attack. To say the least, that would strain Qatar's ties with Iran, which may be the best that any Arab country has with Tehran, not least because it shares its LNG field with Iran. Existential concerns are harbored in other Gulf countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, whose large Shiite Muslim populations have previously rebelled against their Sunni rulers. Further instability in the Gulf could lead to a huge drop in the value of companies and real estate in boom towns like Dubai and Doha, affecting the pocketbooks of millions of Arab and international investors. In theory, as al-Attiya told me today, the consolation prize would be another upward spike in oil prices and revenues. But Arab producers may miss out on that, if shipping is affected by another shoot-'em-up in the Gulf.

--By Scott MacLeod/Doha

I've been checking in with contacts in the Arab Gulf countries this week. Places like Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar are booming, thanks to vast development projects fueled by the region's astronomical oil and gas windfalls. But there's a lot of apprehension over the growing crisis with Iran. There's wariness about the Islamic regime, of course, but most of the concern I hear focuses on the Bush administration's aggressive approach.

I've been a little taken aback by the extent to which people here have lost faith in the U.S. A good number of people were quite happy four years ago when the U.S. overthrew Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi dictator had threatened them once upon a time--remember Iraq's overnight takeover of Kuwait in 1990. Qatar hosted U.S. forces at the Al Udaid military base outside Doha for Gulf War II. Now, people can't believe how badly the U.S. botched the war and its aftermath.

Specifics later, but meanwhile take a look at my analysis of this week's U.S.-Iran maneuverings on time.com.

--By Scott MacLeod/Doha

I'm back in northern Iraq, once again waiting for the green light from the PKK to go visit them in mountains, where the Kurdish group -- which has been fighting a vicious civil war with Turkey for more than twenty years -- maintains the camps that are the source of tension between Iraq and Turkey. A few years ago, I spent a week in these PKK training camps, and it was one of the more memorable experiences of my career: the thin air in high summer, a rocky rural idyll complete with wildflowers, fruit trees and shepherd boys playing pipes; Kurdish fighters in the pantaloons and fatigues, half of them women, many of them attractive, all of them armed to the teeth; ancient mountains, endless conflict.

But last June, when tensions between Turkey and the Kurds in northern Iraq first started escalating, the PKK turned down my request to return to the camps. They told me that Turkish spies had infiltrated the area, some of them posing as journalists, and were trying to poison their food. Now I'm having trouble even getting an interview, although this time for a different reason: they are concerned about my safety. Apparently the Turkish media has been complaining about the PKK giving interviews to the western press, and so based on this, the PKK leadership has decided we are targets for assassination and they have stopped giving interviews for now.

So once again the PKK is letting the Turks to dominate the flow of news, when there are at least 30 international journalists running around Erbil looking for something to do. If the PKK was really smart they would get one big bus, fill it with all the major outlets, coordinate with the Iraqi government and the Americans so the Turks don't dare bomb it, and drive it up to the mountains so that we call all take pictures of hot PKK guerilla girls baking bread and practicing small arms tactics amid the highland splendor. That would make the evening news.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Erbil

Most of the mainstream press missed it, and her own website doesn't mention it either, but Condi Rice dropped something of a bomb-shell during her testimony on the Middle East to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. (video)

The main substance of her prepared remarks on the upcoming Annapolis peace conference reflected significant support for the Palestinian side. In language that seemed a little blunter than usual, she stated categorically, "Israel must stop settlement expansion and remove unauthorized outposts." Palestinian leader Abbas and Arab diplomats have been complaining that Israel's settlement policy essentially is a sign of bad faith going into the peace conference.

The bombshell came in the Q&A afterwards, when she warned that time was running out to negotiate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Our concern is growing that without a serious political prospect for the Palestinians that gives to moderate leaders a horizon that they can show to their people that indeed there is a two-state solution that is possible, we will lose the window for a two-state solution.

The comment coming from the top American diplomat is important. It seemed to be both a sober American appraisal of the dire state of the peace process and a warning to Israel that it will have a profound problem on its hands down the road if it doesn't seize the opportunity to make a deal with Abbas now.

Rice is basically warning that trends may be moving in favor of Hamas, the prime advocate of a one-state solution to the problem. Israel will not accept signing its own death warrant to accomodate Hamas's demand for one Arab Muslim state, of course. But another implication that can be read into Rice's comment is that when the window for a two-state solution is closed, Israel will be faced with a demographic time tomb that threatens a Muslim majority within the land it controls. At that point, Israel would face a fateful conundrum: allow a democratic majority to rule, which would threaten Israel's existence through the ballot box, or establish an unviable apartheid system thay would bring international isolation and probably collapse.

--By Scott MacLeod/Dubai

One of the major concerns about the American war in Iraq has long been that it could ignite other conflicts in the region, among them a confrontation between Turkey and Iraq's Kurdish minority. Now it looks like that confrontation is at hand, and sooner than expected. The Turkish army is threatening to invade northern Iraq and attack basses operated by the PKK (or Kurdish Workers Party) a rebel group composed mostly of Turkish Kurds who also operate in the mountains of Iraq. The PKK has killed about 30 Turkish soldiers and captured 8 in the last few weeks. Another incident and there might be a second war in Iraq.

It's a delicate situation, and one that requires a clear-eyed view of what's actually happening. But both American press coverage, and America's official response to the problem have been misleading. I've seen a series of errors in fact and judgment that if uncorrected, could drag the United States into yet another regional conflict.

1) The press keeps repeating that the PKK are a separatist group. The PKK was indeed a separatist group when it started in the 1970's and 1980's, a time when the Turkish state practiced widespread discrimination against its Kurdish citizens, including banning the use of the Kurdish language. But the PKK has given up its demands that an independent Kurdish state be carved out of Turkey, and moderates in the organization have called for a peaceful, democratic solution to the Kurdish question.

Why does this matter? Because the PKK's new platform is a basis upon which Turkey could start political negotiations. But instead of dealing with the demands, Turkey either tries to ignore the PKK or destroy them. Neither approach has worked.

2) I keep seeing things written about the PKK staging "cross-border raids" and I myself once made that mistake, writing back in June. But in fact, most of the fighting is taking place well inside Turkey. There are PKK guerillas scattered all over Turkey, perhaps twice as many as there are inside Iraq. And although the most recent attack on Sunday did occur in the border region near Iraq, that doesn't necessarily mean these fighters were coming from Iraq.

Why does this matter? Because it gives the impression that Turkish miltary operations in Iraq, or the "hot pursuit" of PKK fighters might stop clashes with the PKK and help the Turks dismantle the PKK. But they won't. The main PKK bases in Iraq are far away from the Turkish border. They are in fact near the border with Iran and would be extremely difficult to reach except by air-strikes, which are of little use aginst guerilla forces. They will do nothing to stop fighting with the PKK inside Turkey.

Likewise, in a few places I've also seen statements about how the PKK bases in northern Iraq are key to sustaining the PKK's armed struggle. Perhaps, but perhaps not. The PKK has significant fund-rasing and political activities in Europe, including satellite television stations. But Turkey isn't threatening Europe. Just Iraq and America.

3) When Turkish soldiers are killed by the PKK, the press calls them "PKK attacks." But is the PKK attacking the Turks or is the Turkish army attacking the PKK and sustaining casualties? The Turkish army is engaged in large-scale operations in PKK areas. A PKK spokesman told me today that these fights are taking place when Turkish search-and-destroy missions stumble upon PKK fighters or are ambushed. We don't really know the truth one way or another, because the Turkish army has sealed off the areas where it is operating.

Again, this matters because the Turkish army's version of events makes it sound like the PKK is hell-bent on provoking the Turkish army. And very possibly hard-liners within the PKK are determined to goad the Turkish military into invading northern Iraq, which would be a disaster for Turkey in the long-run. But it is also possible that hard-line elements in the Turkish military are trying to provoke clashes with the PKK and use that as an excuse to threaten the Kurds of northern Iraq, and gain leverage over its civilian adversaries in the Turkish government. It's no secret that there's no love lost between the former Islamists of the ruling AK party, and Turkey's secular generals. And Turks have been long implacably hostile to the whole idea of a Kurdish mini-state in northern Iraq, and refuse to recognize the Kurdistan Regional Government there.

4) I've seen a few things written about Iraqi Kurds allowing the PKK to use northern Iraq as a safe haven, and US Undersecretary of State David Satterfield today accused the Iraqi Kurds of not doing enough to control the PKK. But the Iraqi Kurds don't have many real options. Their pershmerga soldiers are busy in Baghdad and Mosul and along Kurdistan's borders with Arab Iraq, trying to keep the lid on Iraq's raging insurgency. How are they supposed to also defeat a hardened guerilla group in mountain terrain -- a job that the huge Turkish army hasn't been able to do in 30 years?

The reality is that the PKK's presence in Iraq is the result of an unresolved Turkish civil war spreading into the failing state next door. There needs to be a political solution: peace talks, amnesty for the PKK, reforms to how Turkey deals with its Kurdish population, PKK disarmament with international monitors, security coordination between Iraq and Turkey, and Turkish recognition of the Kurdistan region in Iraq.

But the American government and the American public is unlikely to push for this when the PKK is being portrayed as a separatist, terrorist organization that is provoking a war with Turkey from bases inside Iraq that could easily be destroyed if the Iraqi Kurds would stop giving them refuge. In fact, what could happen instead is that when the hamstrung Iraqi Kurds fail to do anything to stop PKK attacks, the overburdened US military in Iraq will forestall a Turkish invasion by trying to do the impossible itself, perhaps launching air-strikes against the PKK. Which will only buy time before the next crisis.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Erbil