Did Italy unwittingly trigger the crisis in South Ossetia and then play a central role in stopping it? It may not be the view in most of the world but you could come to that conclusion from reading some Italian papers.

First, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was quoted in a report by French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy on Wednesday, which was reproduced in full on the front page and pages 2 and 3 of Corriere della Sera, as saying that he was first alerted to the situation in South Ossetia by reports in the Italian press that he saw while on a dieting holiday in Italy.

“I am in Italy, for a slimming cure, and I am about to leave for Beijing. Then, in the Italian papers, I read: ‘Preparations for war in Georgia.’ You understand? There I am, relaxing, in Italy, and I read that my country is preparing for war! Realising something is wrong, I quickly return to Tbilisi,” Saakashvili told his French interviewer.

Besides the intriguing idea of anyone trying to lose weight in Italy, the piece suggests the Italian press had a central role in the Georgian president’s decision to try to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

According to another Italian media outlook, the weekly magazine Tempi (on their website only, since the print version has been suspended for summer holidays), Italy also played a central role in stopping the five-day conflict that it may have contributed to starting.

Tempi quoted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as saying that it was he who persuaded Vladimir Putin not to let his tanks go all the way to Tbilisi, thus avoiding what Berlusconi said would have been a “useless bloodbath”.

When Reuters took the precaution of checking the quotes with Berlusconi’s press office, we were first told: “If that’s what they write, go ahead and pick it up.” We also passed on the quotes to Moscow to get a response from Putin’s office, to clarify whether Berlusconi really has such influence on the Russian premier and former president.

Very soon, Berlusconi’s office told us it was putting out a statement to deny the juiciest quotes in the Tempi interview, where Berlusconi was quoted as saying: “Thank God my friend Putin listened to me. Otherwise there is no bloody way the Russian tanks would have stopped 15 km from Tbilisi. We have avoided a useless bloodbath.”

The quote seemed to echo Berlusconi’s election jingle “Meno male che Silvio c’e” (”thank goodness for Silvio”). But it was too good to be true, according to his press office at Palazzo Chigi. They said these quotes were not legitimate, were not the kind of language Berlusconi would have used anyway, and were the fruit of a misunderstanding at best, at worst pure invention.

The Italian prime minister, now in his third term in power, does have the ear of the Russian leader, who was the first foreign leader to visit him after the Italian conservative leader’s election victory in April, at his villa in Sardinia (see picture). The newspaper owned by Berlusconi’s brother, Il Giornale, reported on Aug. 12 — the day Russia ordered a halt to the fighting — that the Italian leader was mediating and “exercising moral-suasion” on Putin. The same paper later quoted Berlusconi as saying: “Putin told me ‘Talk to Bush’. And Bush told me ‘Talk to Putin’. In the end we achieved a major result.”

It is hard not to view Poland’s decision to accept the U.S. missile shield in the context of tensions over Georgia - a point Russia, which loathes the project, was quick to make.

And although Warsaw and Washington dismiss the idea and diplomats say a compromise on the long-negotiated deal was hammered out before Russia’s intervention in the Caucasus, there is no smoke without fire.

The fact is that most Poles and other central Europeans reacted with alarm to the Russian invasion of Georgia because it revived often bitter memories of the iron-fisted Soviet rule of the region after World War Two.

Since the events in Georgia, polls clearly show a turnaround in public opinion in Poland from apprehension to enthusiasm for the shield.

But contrary to Moscow’s rhetoric that the 10 interceptors are seen here as a weapon against Russia, the swing in opinion reflects a shattering of a sense of security Poles enjoyed since joining the European Union and NATO in the past decade.

Suddenly close ties with the world’s largest superpower have gained in value and agreeing to host U.S. missile installations on Polish soil has become like buying an extra insurance policy in uncertain times.

Whether the rockets can indeed fly and intercept future Iranian missiles, as many experts doubt, seems to be of secondary importance to the Poles.

“I think Poland needs the shield - common sense dictates Poland needs to be closely linked with the United States,” said Jerzy Peszek, 61, an IT worker in Warsaw.

“The shield is a good decision in the context of the current global political situation, where Russia attacks Georgia,” echoed Emilia Pichta, 22, a student. “It can happen to us, too.”

For the Polish government such a mood is a godsend, admittedly with “made in Russia” printed all over it.

The government had bargained hard with the Americans and raised expectations that Poland would receive billions in return for hosting the shield.

The events in Georgia allowed Prime Minister Tusk to quietly abandon this approach and go back to the big-picture strategic view that finds favour with a majority of his countrymen.

For years Algerian authorities have said the country’s Islamist armed groups are on their last legs. Attacks are sometimes described as the last kicks of a dying horse.

However, the militants have proved themselves to be resilient. Bombings and ambushes over the past week have caused at least 65 deaths, making it the bloodiest in years, and the toll so far for August stands at more than 80. That is the worst month in a long time.

It is true that the security forces have been effective in containing the armed groups in much of the countryside, apart from the Kabylie region.

And the intense rural-based violence of the 1990s is highly unlikely to reoccur - an understanding struck in 1997 between the army and the original leaders of the Islamist rebellion laid the foundations for the end of the worst of Algeria’s political violence.

But a shift in tactics in 2007 to Iraq-style suicide bombings - delivered by car, motorbike and in person - has been a relative success for the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. There is apparently no shortage of young men willing to offer themselves for duty as kamikaze attackers.

Twinned with use of the al Qaeda brand, they have helped the insurgent leaders cast a pall over Algeria’s efforts to emerge from its troubled past.

Quite why that should be is a puzzle. The state is much stronger, and wealthier, and better equipped than it was in the 1990s.  It is no longer an international pariah. So why are its security forces making such heavy weather of the fight? Is it because the militants are strong? Or is it because the security forces are weakened? Is the overall policy of offering amnesty to the rebels sensible? Anecdotal evidence suggests that the reconciliation policy of the government is a major factor in demotivating the army and police. What do you think?

International prosecutors’ pursuit of Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for alleged genocide has not curtailed his travel schedule. He is in Turkey this week, defiant and saying the move by the International Criminal Court has backfired — his hold on power is stronger than ever.

Bashir gave an exclusive interview to Reuters, his first since ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he was seeking a warrant for his arrest.

Here are excerpts from the conversation with Reuters:

“The decision of the ICC prosecutor is already soldifying our internal front, the internal front of our Sudanese people, and that is the source of our power and we will fight their
actions.”

“…we don’t give a damn about the precedents set by those going to court.”

“We are not concerned about travelling, ourselves, we have good relations with a number of countries that do not have relations with the ICC.”

Does Bashir’s trip to Turkey (which isn’t a signatory to the ICC) show him to be above the law? How can the ICC respond, with no police force of its own to enforce its rulings even if it does issue a warrant for Bashir’s arrest?

African and Arab states want the court moves put on hold, fearing they would only make it harder to bring peace to Darfur. Oil producing Sudan’s close ally China has also voiced concern at the attempt to put Bashir on trial.

Can the ICC prosecutor prevail?

  

Last week the Canadians were soul-searching about their presence in Afghanistan after three female aid workers, two of them Canadian, were killed in an ambush. "(The) Canadian deaths in Afghanistan underscore the most troubling aspect of the West's strategy there," said the Toronto Star. "Put simply, it isn't working."

Now it is the turn of the French to ask the same questions after the deaths of 10 French soldiers in a battle with Taliban fighters: What is happening in Afghanistan? Or, for some, what are we doing there?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France was "determined to continue the struggle against terrorism for democracy and freedom" after the biggest loss of French soldiers in combat since the Algerian war that ended in 1962.  But French Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande demanded answers to the many questions he said were raised by the deaths. "What are the aims of this war?" he asked. "How many soldiers are needed to achieve the objectives?

Comments on the website of French daily Le Monde were tempered by mourning for the dead. Some blamed the United States for "this crazy war which the Americans have dragged us into"; others anguished about whether they were fighting a "just" war in line with French beliefs in human rights.

"We are talking about the defence of the free world," wrote one person, "and these soldiers died for democracy fighting the Taliban, who want to send us back to the Middle Ages. The soldiers' bodies are not yet cold and already the Taliban collaborators are reacting..."

But that in case, asked another, "when are we going to decide to go and defend Georgia against Russian aggression?"

"The invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 2001 was supported by a very broad international consensus," was the reply. "W. Bush leaves in a few months. So what do we do? Pack our bags and leave the Afghans to go back to civil war?"

It is clear that the war in Afghanistan has climbed back up to the top of the agenda in countries which sent troops to fight a war which, unlike Iraq, had been supported by domestic opinion after 9/11.  But now seven years on, will the voting public change its mind? Or are people simply waking up to the reality of the Afghan campaign, which by many accounts is getting uglier by the day?

Spare a thought for the people inside Afghanistan. "Taliban are really close to capital nowadays," wrote the blogger Afghan Lord last week. "Horror is spreading fast among the people; the residents of Kabul are really worry what will happen in the next coming weeks."
     

There was an awkward moment on Sunday, when Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili stood next to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Tbilisi and thanked her for having “initiated” plans to bring his country into NATO.

Anyone who followed NATO’s last summit in Bucharest back in April knows that it was Merkel who broke with Washington and spearheaded opposition to such a move.

Shifting uncomfortably, Merkel couldn’t help but interject: “Give credit where credit is due,” she said curtly, taken aback by Saakashvili’s strange distortion of her stance.

The moment was instructive, underlining one of the main reasons why Berlin remains opposed to giving Georgia a seat in the military alliance anytime soon.

Merkel continues to view Saakashvili and his U.S.-backed bid to join NATO with a good dose of scepticism — a view reinforced by the Georgian president’s actions and rhetorical eruptions since his violent showdown with Moscow began earlier this month.

Last week, the Georgian president drew parallels between Europe’s reaction to the conflict and its appeasement of Hitler in the run-up to World War Two — not the best way to win friends.

Merkel did offer Saakashvili some of her most encouraging language to date on his NATO aspirations, saying Georgia was on a “clear path” to membership. But it would be wrong to read too much into that.

One senior German official told me that Merkel warned President George W. Bush repeatedly last year about relying too heavily on Saakashvili. 

“Don’t tell me you told me so,” Bush sheepishly told the German chancellor, this official recounted, after the Georgian leader declared a state of emergency in November and cracked down on opposition protesters.

That challenge to Saakashvili faded and he was reelected to a new term as president in January in a vote deemed broadly fair, but that did not allay German concerns about his fitness to lead. Some officials in Berlin and other capitals may be quietly hoping Georgians rise up against Saakashvili again in the wake of his brief but bloody war with Russia. 

Perhaps NATO can avoid another embarassing public spat over Georgia’s bid when it meets in Brussels at the end of the year. By then, tensions in Georgia’s breakway provinces may have eased somewhat, along with Moscow’s readiness for confrontation.

More likely, NATO will struggle again to paper over its divisions on Georgia, particularly if Republican John McCain — a friend of Saakashvili and ardent supporter of his government — wins the U.S. election one month before the summit.

He tried to build relationships with other world leaders but where did it get him?

In 2001 President George W. Bush famously declared that he had looked into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eyes and got a sense of his soul. He invited the Russian leader to his parents’ seaside estate
in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the former Texas oilman and ex-KGB spy went fishing and ate lobster. Bush then visited the Russian leader at his vacation villa in the Black Sea resort in Sochi, all to repair a friendship that had developed cracks.

In another land far, far away Bush was trying to build ties with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf who decided after the Sept. 11 attacks that he was going to be “with,” rather than “against,” the United States in helping fight terrorism. Bush traveled to Islamabad and stood side-by-side with the Pakistani leader, who had taken control of the government through a coup years ago, and pledged U.S. support for the ally who was helping fight al Qaeda.

As Bush prepares to leave office in January, those friendships have taken a turn. Musharraf just resigned rather than face impeachment. Russia, now with Putin as prime minister and his protege as president, has sent forces into Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally in the region.

Asked whether he trusted Putin any more, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates replied: “Any more is an interesting add. I have never believed that one should make national security policy on the basis of trust. I think you make national security policy based on interests and on realities.”

A poster at the entrance to the World War One exhibition at London’s Imperial War Museum depicts the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, minutes before they were shot dead as they toured the streets of Sarajevo in an open topped car. The two bullets triggered World War One. Alliances quickly came into play and an argument between Austria and Serbia drew in Russia, Germany, France, Belgium and Britain.

Europe was at war.

On August 8 this year Russia sent its forces into Georgia to repel Tbilisi’s attempt to wrest control of the pro-Russian, breakaway region South Ossetia. Georgia, like Ukraine, has been pressing to join NATO but has only been promised membership of the alliance at an unspecified future date. What would have happened if Georgia had already secured NATO membership, as it wished, at the alliance’s meeting in Bucharest back in April?

Would the conflict have dragged in fellow NATO members including the United States, Britain and Germany? By invoking NATO’s Article V mutual defence clause, the Georgians could have required other nations to come to their assistance.

Could this have led to another European war at a time when the West’s guard was down and the Cold War years seemed consigned to history?

In the days after the conflict began, a senior envoy from a European state opposed to Georgian NATO entry told Reuters: “Thank heavens we didn’t take them in… No one in NATO wants to be dragged into a war in the Caucasus because of (President Mikheil) Saakashvili’s miscalculations.”

What do you think? 

(Posted by: Khalid al-Ansary)

The Iraqi government says it is negotiating a “time horizon” with the United States for withdrawing its troops from Iraq.

That has Iraqis like me thinking back to how the Americans got here in the first place, and whether the U.S. promises of peace and democracy after the fall of Saddam Hussein five years ago have been fulfilled.

To sum it up in a phrase: Saddam, for me, was not a good leader but what we have witnessed in the following years has not been any better.

Back in 2003, despite the bellicose rhetoric on both sides of the conflict, never in my wildest dreams did I believe U.S. soldiers would be patrolling Baghdad’s streets. We had seen plenty of war under Saddam, the unforgiving leader who ruled Iraq for nearly a quarter of a century from 1979. But Iraq had never been overrun.

Between 1980 and 1988, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed in a war with Iran over pockets of southern territory. Two years later, Saddam ordered his Republican guard to advance on Kuwait, only to see his forces humiliated by a Western-led alliance. Afterwards, he showed little mercy as he crushed an uprising across Shi’ite-dominated provinces and from the northern Kurdistan region, killing tens of thousands.

Through the bloodshed, we Iraqis came to accept that Saddam and his family would rule Iraq until its dynasty died out.

In 2003, as the drumbeat of war grew louder in the West, Saddam assured us that our military would resist attack. At the time, I was confused about Saddam’s bravado. Did he
think we would get away with defying the United States? Did he think we could really win a war if one occurred?

Despite my skepticism an invasion would ever happen, we took precautions. The women in my family took refuge at my grandfather’s house in northern Baghdad and my brothers and I hunkered down to defend our home against any looters.

Even as ground forces drew closer, Iraq’s Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf assured residents in news conferences that Iraq was giving the Americans a thumping. We had heard rumours that Baghdad’s international airport had been taken by U.S. troops, but Sahhaf insisted that Iraq had regained control of the airport. In fact, it was a bloody battle but U.S. troops ultimately prevailed.

Afterwards, black market videos sold in a Baghdad market showed Iraqi soldiers during the airport battle slitting the throats of wounded U.S. soldiers.

The city fell to U.S. forces on April 9th. A friend who lives in western Baghdad told me about the ferocious battles there between U.S. soldiers and Saddam’s Fedayeen fighters.

By the time U.S. tanks reached my neighbourhood, people were rushing into the streets to cheer them. I needed to see it with my own eyes. I ran out of my house dressed in my pajamas. When I saw U.S. soldiers’ helmets peeking out of the top of the tanks passing by, I was overwhelmed with a mix of elation and despair.

What did this mean for my country? Would it bring the democracy and prosperity promised by the United States? Or would it be a new stage in Iraq’s long oppression?

(Khalid al-Ansary is an Iraqi reporter in the Reuters Baghdad bureau)

UPDATE - President Pervez Musharraf's resignation has been greeted with jubilation from supporters of the ruling PML-N and PPP parties (see picture right), and sparked a rally in the stock market. But reading through the comments on this and other blogs, I can't see any clear theme emerging, with some praising and others condemning Musharraf's legacy, some regretting and others welcoming his departure, and many fretting about the future.

I rather liked this comment on All Things Pakistan which seemed to sum up the many contradictions of people struggling to work out how to rally around a common cause:

"We celebrate on arrival and departure of the same person.
We praise those who left the scene.
Dead become heroes and living and serving are being accused."

India, meanwhile, has been muted in its response. But Indian analysts who once derided Musharraf as the architect of the 1999 Kargil war are now fretting that his departure could unleash fresh tensions from Kashmir to Kabul if it is allowed to create a vacuum which can be exploited by Islamist militants.

There is much speculation too about what Musharraf will do next, and where he will go.  Some have read his feisty resignation speech -- a long defence of his legacy -- as evidence that he might eventually try to re-enter politics; others see in his final "Goodbye Pakistan" remarks , a sign he is preparing to leave the country. The United States, Saudi Arabia, Britain and Turkey have all been touted as possible destinations. (You can see some of the stories on his likely next home here, here and here.)

In the end, Musharraf has turned out to be as unpredictable in his departure as he was throughout his career both in the army and in politics. Looking through his memoirs, "In the Line of Fire", for clues to his next move, I was struck by the following quote from another former general which Musharraf cites as a maxim in his own life:

"Napoleon said that two-thirds of decision making is based on study, analysis, calculations, facts, and figures, but the other third is always a leap in the dark, based on one's gut."

                                  ************** *********************************

President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation, ending months of speculation about the fate of the former army general after his political allies were trounced in an election in February.

But even before he said he would step down, analysts were already beginning to look to the challenges of a post-Musharraf era -- spiralling inflation, food and fuel shortages; al Qaeda and Taliban militants on its border with Afghanistan; political in-fighting among the civilian politicians who took power in February. (You can see my last post on this here.)

So will Musharraf's resignation help bring stability to Pakistan? Or are the problems faced by Pakistan -- sandwiched between a turbulent Afghanistan and a resurgent India, both of which blame it for failing to curb Islamist militancy -- too great?

How much will the three countries with the closest ties to Pakistan -- China, Saudi Arabia and the United States -- help or interfere? And what of the main domestic players in the unfolding drama: the judiciary, the civilian government and the Pakistan Army?