Belgravia Dispatch - U.S. To Train Palestinian Forces?
haaretz.com
More smarts moves on the Palestinian front. When you take the lead in training an army, well, you get to influence it a whole lot more. We did the same thing with the 'train and equip' effort of Bosnian Federation forces back in the '90s. Recall that Clinton had instructed then Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith to tell Croatian President Franjo Tudjman that he had 'no instructions' with regard to whether Croatia should respect the (amoral) Bosnian arms embargo. Tudjman took this as tacit permission to let arms get into Bosnia. Croatia took her cut and the rest of the arms, many Iranian supplied, got into points Sarajevo.
The Iranians, of course, were less interested in the plight of beleaguered Sarajevans than establishing a beach-head to export the Islamic revolution into Europe. Thus, post-Dayton, American moves to take control of the training and equipping effort were particularly apropos in terms of reining in radical tendencies in parts of Sarajevo, Zenica etc that were falling for the Iranians who had ostensibly stood by them during their darkest hours. Well, subsitute Hamas and Jihad Islami for Iran in the present equation and it's pretty much the same thing. If (and it's a big if) Palestinian security forces can come under one umbrella, if as Condeeleza Rice puts it there is "one authority, one gun"--well why not have the U.S. heavily involved in training them? And if such forces fall under the sway of radicals at a later date, well, the U.S. will better know what tricks they might have up their sleeves. That unlikely hypothetical aside, a major U.S. role in this training effort will prove a moderating influence and important component in creating a professional PA military apparatus that can effectively cooperate with their IDF counterparts in disengagement exercises, possible joint patrols, and other military-to-military cooperation. Note the Egyptians are also training PA forces these days. |
