OK. I’m going to take an I-told-you-so vic­tory lap on this one. The U.S. will lead a 20-nation coali­tion to com­bat piracy off the Horn of Africa.

Many of you will remem­ber I’ve been inter­ested in pirates off of Africa since 2005. I even embed­ded with the Ger­mans in 2007 on the _FGS Bremen_ as they took part in CTF-150, designed to pro­tect the sea lanes lead­ing up to the Red Sea. Other embeds I pur­sued included the _USS Stennis_ off the coast of Pak­istan and the task force in the Per­sian Gulf charged with pro­tect­ing Iraq’s two off-shore oil terminals.

It’s nice to see that some­thing I’ve been try­ing to draw atten­tion to is finally get­ting the press atten­tion it deserves, given the threat piracy poses to trade and the tie-ins between global ter­ror­ism and non-state crim­i­nal organizations.

Sto­ries:

• “Piracy 2.0: Deadly and Dangerous”:http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/11/pirates_and_smugglers_and_terr.html
• “Silent war against ter­ror waged in dan­ger­ous waters”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/24/MNGCROR6OK1.DTL&hw=bremen&sn=002&sc=877
• Patrolling the world’s dire straits.pdf (PDF)

[Many](http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/08/israel.rockets/) [news](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a0t.VKAhZJTo&refer=home) [outlets](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/world/middleeast/09mideast.html) are report­ing that sev­eral Katyusha rock­ets from south­ern Lebanon have landed in west­ern Galilee in Israel, injur­ing two. Israel has appar­ently flown sor­ties over the Lebanese bor­der and [responded with mor­tar fire](http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3652692,00.html).

Strat­for has some quickie insight that I find plausible:

“… a Strat­for source in Hezbol­lah also noted recently that the Ira­ni­ans, pre­fer­ring to keep Hezbol­lah out of the fight, were con­cerned that other Sunni mil­i­tants in Lebanon could decide to launch rock­ets against Israel and draw the group into war. The key thing to watch for now is whether this rocket attack is the first salvo, or if this is an iso­lated attack. **If the rocket attacks con­tinue, it is far more likely to be Hezbol­lah than some Sunni mil­i­tants act­ing inde­pen­dently**.” *(Empha­sis mine — CA)*

Regard­less of who fired those rock­ets, the risks of a new war on Israel’s north­ern front has just gone up dra­mat­i­cally — and I sus­pect that Israel won’t make the same mis­takes in 2006.

**UPDATE 0649 PST:** Well, maybe not, as it turns out. Both Lebanon and Israel seem to be down­play­ing the event, with Pales­tini­ans in Lebanon get­ting the blame and being accused of try­ing to widen the con­flict. Israel has opened the north­ern bomb shel­ters amid signs of de-escalation. Still, this bears watching.

Another day, another bout of bad news for the jour­nal­ism indus­try. *The New York Times* has a story today about [how news­pa­pers are cut­ting back on Wash­ing­ton coverage](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/business/media/18bureaus.html) at a time when a new admin­is­tra­tion is com­ing in, two wars are still going on and the econ­omy is tee­ter­ing on the brink of col­lapse.

“From an informed pub­lic stand­point, it’s alarm­ing,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kevin Brady, a Repub­li­can from the Hous­ton area, who has seen The Hous­ton Chronicle’s team in Wash­ing­ton drop to three peo­ple, from nine, in two years. “They’re let­ting go those with the most insti­tu­tional knowl­edge, which helps reporters hold elected offi­cials accountable.”

The papers are focus­ing on local news rather than on events “far away” in … Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Look, I can almost under­stand the desire to cut back on for­eign news. I don’t agree with it, but I can under­stand the think­ing. But Wash­ing­ton? On a recent trip to Louisiana, fam­ily mem­bers were dis­cussing Con­gres­sional leg­is­la­tion that might affect them and their mort­gages. That was direct pay­check stuff and they def­i­nitely wanted to know about it. So for news­pa­pers to cut back on Wash­ing­ton cov­er­age at such a time… Well, it just shows the des­per­ate straits the indus­try is in.

I’m here at Stan­ford giv­ing some thought to how the indus­try can be triaged and tran­si­tioned to the new media future, but for the moment, we need to save what we can. Do your part. I know you’re mad at “the media” but let­ting news­pa­pers go under won’t help. It will be much, much worse.
So here’s a rad­i­cal thought: if you want to hold the gov­ern­ment account­able, buy a news­pa­per — an actual, printed copy. Sub­scribe to a paper, read it. Take some time and actu­ally peruse the paper. Think of these small steps as a democ­racy bond pur­chase in a time of cri­sis. As Joseph Pulitzer once said, “Our Repub­lic and its press will rise or fall together.”

It’s hard to say whether things are heat­ing up in Mosul between the Kurds and the Iraqi gov­ern­ment or whether it’s the lat­est out­break of a fes­ter­ing sore, but either way, it doesn’t look good:

The Shiite-led gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is squeez­ing out Kur­dish units of the Iraqi Army from Mosul, send­ing the national police and army from Bagh­dad and try­ing to forge alliances with Sunni Arab hard-liners in the province, who have deep-seated feuds with the Kur­dis­tan Regional Gov­ern­ment led by Mas­soud Barzani.

The Kurds are resist­ing, under­scor­ing yet again the depth of eth­nic and sec­tar­ian divi­sions here and the dif­fi­culty of cre­at­ing a united Iraq even when over­all vio­lence is down. Ten­sion has risen to the point that last week Amer­i­can com­man­ders held a series of emer­gency meet­ings with the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and Kur­dish offi­cials, seek­ing to head off vio­lence essen­tially between fac­tions of the Iraqi government.

“It’s the per­fect storm against the old fes­ter­ing back­ground,” warned Brig. Gen. Ray­mond A. Thomas III, who over­sees Nin­eveh and Kirkuk Provinces and the Kur­dish region.

Worry is so high that the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary has already set­tled on a pol­icy that may set a prece­dent, as the United States slowly with­draws to allow Iraqis to set­tle their own prob­lems. If the Kurds and Iraqi gov­ern­ment forces fight, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary will “step aside,” Gen­eral Thomas said, rather than “have United States ser­vice­men get killed try­ing to play peacemaker.”

Many observers have assumed the flash­point for an Arab-Kurdish war over Iraq’s north­ern regions would be sparked by unrest in Kirkurk. But per­haps Mosul is the real problem.

Actu­ally, it seems the entire bor­der zone of the Kur­dish region is a prob­lem, with intense per­sonal ani­mos­ity between Barzani and Maliki. There have been armed stand-offs between the Kur­dish pesh merga and Iraqi Army units in Diyala, and Barzani has referred to the Iraqi prime min­is­ter as a new Sad­dam Hus­sein. It doesn’t help that Maliki is ally­ing him­self with Arabs from Mosul who have deep ties to the for­mer regime, includ­ing the for­mer gen­eral who led the inva­sion of Kuwait. He’s also been try­ing to purge the Army up there of its Kur­dish lead­er­ship caus­ing some offi­cers to announce that their loy­alty is to Kur­dis­tan and not Iraq.

If ten­sions do erupt up north, things could get worse all over. First of all, it would renew ques­tions of why the Amer­i­cans are in Iraq if they’re not going to stop their two biggest allies from going at each other. Sec­ondly, it could cre­ate a secu­rity vac­uum that for­eign fight­ers could exploit to start enter­ing Iraq in larger num­bers again. The exo­dus of Chris­tians could worsen. And of course, the price of oil could start to creep up.

All in all, not a good sign and a reminder that Iraq ain’t over yet.

Huz­zah. After weeks of wran­gling, I was able to recre­ate the old style sheets that made B2I read­able. Which is a good thing, as I plan to pick up the key­board again.
To bring you guys up to date, I’m cur­rently at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity for the [John S. Knight Fel­low­ship for Pro­fes­sional Journalists](http://knight.stanford.edu/). Back to Iraq was, of course, a major sell­ing point for the selec­tion com­mit­tee, as the pro­gram is really reach­ing out to non-traditional media peo­ple. (You can see my essays, includ­ing the plan of study here.) My col­leagues in the pro­gram are excep­tion­ally tal­ented and smart and it’s an honor to get to spend a year palling around with [such folks](http://knight.stanford.edu/fellows/).

My project here is to look at a way to scale the Back to Iraq model up to an insti­tu­tional level. Per­haps it won’t work; per­haps what’s needed is a net­worked sys­tem of cor­re­spon­dents in con­flict zones around the world sup­ported by sub­scrip­tions, dona­tions, licens­ing fees and adver­tis­ing. What­ever. I’m here for a year to try to fig­ure it out. being close to Sil­i­con Val­ley and all those ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists prob­a­bly doesn’t hurt. Oh, and I’m going to learn how to play the guitar.

But that doesn’t mean I’m aban­don­ing com­men­tary and analy­sis of Iraq. I’m still deeply attached to the place and, yes, hope one day to go back. Even as [West­ern media orga­ni­za­tions are dial­ing back their coverage](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101002934.html?hpid=topnews). (Mind you, I think this is a trough in the staffing and cov­er­age, com­ing as it does in the clos­ing weeks of the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. While the econ­omy will con­tinue to dom­i­nate the news, by spring of next year I sus­pect Iraq will once again be on America’s radar as mil­i­tary pull­outs commence.)

So I will endeavor to share some of the inter­est­ing things here at Stan­ford — many of my course­work and research is directly tied to the Mid­dle East, ter­ror­ism, the usual areas of inter­est — and also look at devel­op­ments in the war. It’s not over yet, folks. And nei­ther is B2I.