FEB 20 2007

MJ AKbar

Jessee LePorin

From: m.j. akbar [mjakbar@hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2007 2:49 AM
To: jleporin@kmaglobal.com
Subject: RE: Byline, Part 1

Dear Jesse

This column is in two parts in my storage for some reason I cannot fathom...! Will organise my tickets and confirm the date for meeting with Henry next week if that is all right with you

cheers

mj

Byline

The alter ego of a boom, I suppose, is doom. Failure does not have too much to worry about, but success has a great deal to lose. You can't lose, can you, if you have nothing to lose.

There have been few success contemporary success stories quite as dramatic as Dubai. Five decades ago it was not even on the urban map of the world< not much more than an antinquin port with a blind eye, the only address on a beachhead that survived because of international indifference. It did not even have a pot of oil. It still does not.

Today, its skyscrapers shimmer like an Arabian Nights miracle. If traffic jams are a modern metaphor for urban growth, then Dubai can put in a bid for a place in Guinness. From seven in the morning till past ten at night, a curve of tail to tail or head to head snake of blinking cars snakes along the hidden tarmac. In a remarkabel display of imagination the rulers of this small principality have converted a strip of sand along an uncertain ocean into a business-cum-shopping-cum holiday haven.

Suddenly an unspoken uneasiness hovers over this dream. What happens if America and Israel, alone or in tandem, launch a military assault on Iran's nuclear facilities this summer?

The reactor at Busheyr is literally just across the gulf. The fallout, once again literally, would be immediate as well as long term for the whole region. No one expects Iran to successfully defend itself against an American aerial missile and bomber invasion. Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of American preparations for just such an attack many months ago in New Yorker, reported that among the weaponry on the war games table was a controlled-impact nuclear bomb. No one has any real idea of what the radioactive fallout would be for Iran and its surrounding region. Central Asian nations do not have a clue of the collateral damage their children might suffer, and for how long. Gulf states have further concerns. The Americans do not have the infantry for a follow up regime change even if the assault was perfectly successful. So the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad would remain in power, at the heart of a polity created by the late Imam Ruhollah Khomeini. It does not need much imagination to foresee that Iran would target western business interests in retailiation, which are strewn within reach from Dubai to Doha.

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Jessee LePorin

Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2007 2:50 AM

To: jleporin@kmaglobal.com

Subject: RE: Byline part 2

It has taken a remarkable generation to create Dubai. More than glass and concrete, Dubai is a rare symbol of confidence in what was once dismissed as the third world. What happens to the interests of Bush's friends in oil and industry if Dubai's durability and stability is corroded? What happens to oil and energy in the region if it is affected by radioactivity? Planners in Pentagon, the White House and Tel Aviv might believe that they have done their studies and the consequences are under control, or that the damage will be within acceptable limits, whatever that means. These are largely the same people who wrote fantasy scripts about flower-strewn streets in Baghdad lined by cheering crowds as George Bush was honoured by a ticker tape parade along the Tigris. The track record, to put it mildly, is not encouraging. Nuclear poker requires nerves of uranium and no one is certain about the strength of any player's cards. Everyone knows that Iran does not have nuclear weapons yet, but that is not the question. Has the facility at Naatanz already crossed the point where its destruction would trigger damage in excess of Chernobyl at the very least? If not, will that point be crossed by October? Ergo, if there is to be a military solution then it must be before the end of this summer.

There is some comfort in the fact that Iran has moved away from unambiguous belligerence towards more nuanced diplomacy. At Davos in January former President Muhammad Khatami discussed a scheme with American and European delegates to this economic lovefest in which Iran would suspend enrichment of uranium for six months. This period would be used by a group consisting of members of the Security Council plus Germany and India to inspect and assess Iran's nuclear programme and report back to the United Nations. In a related gesture, Iran did not vote against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning denial of the holocaust that Hitler perpetrated during the second world war. In Iran, senior clerics have condemned, publicly, uninhibited adveturism in policy, ereferring clearly to Ahmadinijad.

Is this good-cop-bad-cop strategy? Is Iran merely buying time, and if so how much time? Another Security Council resoluton is due in March. America will obviously seek to phrase this resolution in terms that make it a virtual authorisation for war if Wshington chooses to go to war. Does Iran want to thwart it or dilute it without giving much in return? Is Iran waiting for winter, when the American presidential campaign season will make Bush hostage to domestic politics?

Everyone has the same list of questions. I suspect you might not find firm answers even in Tehran. It might be more relevant to apply a general principle while the players sit at the nuclear poker table, their cards clutched against their breast, their teeth clenched.

Nations might, in certain conditions, be martial or hegemonistic, but they are rarely suicidal. Grievous mistakes, exacting a colossal price, are made, but not out of intent. If Germany in 1914 had known the impossible cost of war, and the certainty of defeat, would she have commenced hostilities in the first world war? If Bush had known what he knows now about the consequences of invading Iraq, would he have dared laumnch his 'shock and awe' campaign? The answer in both cases is a clear no. The only thing certain about nuclear poker is that if there is a confrontation, there are no winners.

It was surely this thought that prompted Jacques Chirac to muse beofre reporters in Paris recently that it did not much matter whether Iran had a nuclear weapon or two for if it ever dared use them it would be obliterated.
(There was a meaningless retraction of this statement later.)

Pranab Mukherjee has just returned to Delhi from Tehran. He cannot be much

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wiser than before he left, because the answers to the difficult questions fluctuate with every changing shadow on any player's face. What Mr Mukherjee did, with the confidence of a veteran, was to underscore the maturity of India's presence at the table. India is a legitimate nuclear and economic power, and possibly a role model for Iran even if India may have no wish for such an honour. But India has a stake in the outcome of the game, and it is in its immediate interest that tensions be calibrated downwards. Apart from other consequences, a military confrontation would explode the world economy just when one section of India is rising from the economic atmosphere into the stratosphere.

After all, just one alphabet makes the difference between boom and doom.

Jesse LePorin

MJAKbar

FEB 28 2007

From: m.j. akbar [mjakbar@hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 8:22 AM
To: jleporin@kmaglobal.com
Subject: RE:

Dear Jesse

I would be grateful if you could pass this letter on to Dr Kissinger:

Dear Dr Kissinger

Thank you for your excellent analysis and advice re Iraq: and if the White
House does not listen to your sagacity and sanity, then I can only dread the
future...If there is a dialogue that includes Iran and Syria (you can't
change neighbours, the solution has to be Neighbourhood Watch), then it must
be initiated on the basis of some phrase other than Axis of Evil. I hope
that his at least is considered passe. May I recommend an idea that I have
suggested in one or two places, and which has been received not too
unkindly: It is not enough to replace 'Axis of Evil' with 'Axis of Good',
because 'good' is as sentimental and as inaccurate as 'evil'. May I suggest
that the new dialogue must rotate on an 'Axis of Equals'.

I am looking forward to lunch with you, and can only wish it were sooner. Do
you think there is anyway I could be of any help whatsoever, and if you
think I could, with your recommendation, be able to help in the construction
of new bridges? I know this is a trifle far-fetched, but I could not resist
mentioning this thought to you.

With warmest regards

MJ

DATE 4/26/07

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Akbar, MJ

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Jessee Theresa Rose

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Jessee LePorin

MJ Åkbar

Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 2:02 AM

To: jleporin@kmaglobal.com

Subject: RE:

APR 26 2007

Dear Jessee

I would be grateful if you could pass a print out of this to Dr Kissinger: he wanted to see this upon his return from Moscow, where I presume he is at the moment.

My very best wishes

MJ

Dear Dr Kissinger

It was, as ever, a privilege and a stimulating education to meet you - and I look forward to seeing you in India this October: do please let me know the day on which you will be free to meet a group over lunch or dinner. As promised I am sending a brief note on what we discussed: do let me know what you think of these ideas, and whether they would be any use at all in the larger discourse.

Warm regards

MJ

PS: Incidentally, Air India is getting its new planes from July and will start a direct New York Delhi flight from October

## IRAQ: THE MEANING OF VICTORY

The discourse on Iraq has been skewered by an obsession with the wrong question. 'When should American troops return home?' is a tautology, since all sides of the debate are agreed that American troops will leave, and that they are not in Iraq as an imperial force like the 19th and 20th century British armies in Afro-Asia. History does not afford more than a paragraph to a difference of two - 2010 instead of 2008, for instance - although the young whose lives might be wasted could have a less sanguine view. The real question should be: What is the meaning of victory? America wants to leave, but to do so as a victor. President Bush and Senator

McCain argue that the surge is required for victory. But how do you become a victor unless you have a definition of victory?

In the absence of clarity, this has become a war of shifting horizons: each time a purpose is achieved, another rises to keep America in a dreadfully debilitating war zone.

In fact, America has already achieved two substantive strategic objectives in this Iraq war. One, it has removed all doubts about weapons of mass destruction. [In the nuclear game, uncertainty can also be a weapon, and that uncertainty is over.]

Two, with the death of Saddam Hussain and the dissipation of the Baathist Party, it has eliminated a rogue regime as well as any hope of its resurrection.

A prudent administration could have declared victory at this point, and begun to set the stage for an exit route. Instead, American forces were handed a third objective, one which would have been considered virtually insane if it ever had been proposed as a rationale for intervention. The new mission is to become the Policeman of Baghdad.

Even tactically the concept cannot stand scrutiny. An Army is not trained to be the police. Policing depends heavily on community relationships and local knowledge, which is why no one is more local than the sheriff. Only an imperial Army, with permanent colonization as its mission, can become the supervisory authority under whose umbrella a local police force operates in

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the community zone.

General John Abizaid once called this a "long war", but even this phrase has been retired by Central Command recently because it gave the impression that the American presence would be indefinite. A temporary presence should only be given time-defined objectives.

American forces are now involved in two conflicts in Iraq without any separation of battlelines: the continuing and costly war against an increasingly confident insurgency; and as a referee of a horrific civil war who is unwelcome to both parties, Shias and Sunnis. As if one was insufficient, Washington now has to define two victories.

How?

First, we must eliminate the impossible.

Security: American troops can bring a lull at best, and provoke collateral anger at worst, but they cannot ensure peace between Shia and Sunni. This is a political task, with a domestic security responsibility, for which a solution has to be devised between Iraqi community and political leaders, perhaps with help from their mentors in the neighborhood. An American diplomat is far better suited to help in this process than an American soldier.

Democracy: President Bush wants to establish democracy in Iraq, an unexceptionable and even laudable objective. But can American troops ensure democracy at gunpoint? They have stayed long enough to help set up a Constitutional framework; the rest is up to Iraqis. Democracy, in any case, is far more than a set of elections; elections do not make Zimbabwe a democracy.

A more fundamental question needs to be considered: you can have sovereignty without democracy, but can you have democracy without sovereignty? As long as foreign troops are present, the independence of any regime in Baghdad will be compromised in the eyes of a skeptical or angry people. Those who are Ministers and Prime Ministers in Baghdad will never admit this, of course; they have a vested interest in keeping American troops in the country, because the price of their power is being paid by young American blood. In the meanwhile, each day more nationalist space is lost to the extreme - perhaps the most dangerous outcome, with consequences that will stretch far into time and regional space.

Base: Hillary Clinton has defined success as a situation in which American troops leave Iraq, but leave a base behind. This proposal would, in all likelihood, satisfy all shades of the American spectrum; just after Baghdad fell, the Weekly Standard carried a headline: 'There's No Place Like Iraq for US Military Bases'.

The concept is not new: Winston Churchill, as Colonial Secretary, thought it was the answer when he laid the groundwork for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq in 1921. Churchill succeeded, temporarily, for two reasons. The Royal Air Force was sufficiently powerful, then, to ensure security on the ground from the air. After Vietnam, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Iraq, this doctrine must be debated, if not questioned. Complete dominance in the air in each of these wars led to destruction but not defeat. If the proposed base is going to be infantry-oriented, then how large should it be? Capable of hosting 170,000 troops, perhaps? Moreover, Churchill could install a King Feisal in Iraq. There is no King Feisal possible in Iraq now. In an ironic paradox, the Bush commitment to democracy has made a pliable Feisal unsustainable.

Terrorism: Can 'victory' in Iraq defeat 'terrorism'?

It is always difficult to conduct a war against a common noun like 'terrorism'. (Was Vietnam lost because it was a war against Communism rather than Communists?) America has to wage war against terrorists, whether they exist in cells or larger groups, with intelligence as a key component of operations. But such specificity would have concentrated American minds and resources in Afghanistan, rather than bringing both to Iraq where, after four years, extremists have found a breeding ground in turmoil. The problem has been created, and one can see the merit in the argument that terrorist groups should not be able to reap the rewards of an American defeat. But American troops cannot fight this battle alone; and they cannot isolate and confront the real enemy in the present multi-task environment that has diverted their capability and decimated their effectiveness. The vital allies in the war against bin Laden have to be Muslims, from all over the world. Why would Muslims cooperate? Not because they love America,

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but because it is in their self-interest to defeat the philosophy of a bin Laden. The rise of fundamentalism will ruin Muslim nations and societies long before it affects anyone else: witness the impact of this rising tide in Pakistan.

But failed policies and us-versus-them rhetoric of the past four years have alienated Muslims from America. The consequence is that even close allies like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have become part players in the American script. They are now devising their own scenarios, and perhaps it is time for Washington to listen to the Muslim instead of constantly telling it what to do.

The dialectic must change. Some of the mistakes, like 'Islamofascism', are self-evident. Islam is 1400 years old; fascism about 120, so whatever else fascism might be it cannot be Islamic. On the other hand, some Muslim rulers are fascists, but why blame Islam for the sins of Muslims? No one blames the Vatican for Mussolini.

It is now largely accepted that the 'Axis of Evil' was a singularly inappropriate phrase. But this should not be replaced by the 'Axis of Good'. Good is as sentimental a concept in international relations as evil. The phrase I would urge is 'Axis of Equals'. All nations are not equals, and the United States will remain the most powerful nation in the world in our lifetimes and beyond; but all partners in this war must have an equal stake in its outcome.

Four years of conflict have narrowed, rather than increased, the options for success. Idealism, if there was any four years ago, or quasi-imperialism, if it existed then, has to give way to the consistency of realism. It is not for me to presume what the definitions of victory should be, but may I offer one definition.

America is a superpower and every decision will need its participation. America will have a dominant presence at every table, but it can no longer sit on the table.

Iraq's primary need is stability, and stability cannot come without a strong, inclusive, national government. ('Inclusive' means giving as many political interests as possible a stake in power; keeping them, in Lyndon Johnson's famous dictum, keeping them inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in.) A national government is ipso facto larger and more inclusive than a majority government.

Strength comes from internal security structures, of course, but we have to recognize that all neighbors of Iraq have a direct stake in its developments. God forbid that anyone should define victory as the creation of a Kurdistan. Turkey, Iran and Syria will see that as a base for the export of insurrection, and move in at the first opportunity. Hence, a possible objective: the creation of a national (perhaps all-party) government within a year, called perhaps a National Crisis Coalition, created through a round table of Iraqi parties, the America-led alliance, and regional powers, including up to India and Pakistan. This will enable America to disengage through a two-stage process: devolution to neighbourhood watch en route to full Iraqi control.

To achieve this process we need to shift the stress from democracy to stability. Iraq needs the second before it can get the first.

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Jessee LePorin

From: Jessee LePorin [jleporin@kmaglobal.com]

Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 4:02 PM

To: 'm.j. akbar'

Subject: RE:

Dear Mr. Akbar:

Many thanks for your e-mail. I enjoyed seeing you for lunch and appreciate you sending
your piece, from which I learned a lot.

------Original Message------

From: m.j. akbar [mailto:mjakbar@hotmail.com]

To: jleporin@kmaglobal.com

Subject: RE:

Dear Jessee

My very best wishes

MJ

Dear Dr Kissinger

Warm regards

MJ

IRAQ: THE MEANING OF VICTORY

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Draft

September 19, 2007

Dear Mr. Akbar:

The reason I have not communicated with you is that my trip to India remains unsettled. Now the time is set but the schedule is for the most part out of my hands. I will, in fact, arrive in New Delhi on Saturday, October 27, and will be available from that evening until the evening of Wednesday, October 31, after which my time will be committed to a board meeting for JPMorgan. It would seem that the evening of Saturday, October 27, or anytime on Sunday, October 28, would work best for my schedule and I will make every effort to arrange a meeting with you and some of your friends. I will be in touch as soon as I have more information about my availability, but would appreciate knowing if the Saturday-Sunday timeframe is convenient for you.

With regard to your visit to Princeton and New York, unfortunately I will miss seeing you because my travels will continue to Calcutta and Europe.

Mr. M.J. Akbar
Editor in Chief
Asian Age Holdings Limited
S - 7 & 8 Green Park Main Market
New Delhi 110016
India

Via fax: 011/2653-0007