THE CABLES

AMERICAS

Members of Haiti's elite complained to the U.S. Embassy in 2005 about eroding security in the country.

ASIA

A Taliban representative told U.S. officials in 1996 that the Taliban had shut down "Arab" training camps in Afghanistan, and had no idea where Osama bin Laden was. A U.S. embassy official met with a Taliban representative the following year to discuss the Afghan drug trade and the group's sheltering of bin Laden.

A 1999 State Department meeting with future Afghan President Hamid Karzai, identified here as the "son of an important Afghan tribal leader."

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad sizing up the Taliban's Mullah Omar, circa 1997.

Beijing was unhappy about North Korean nuclear tests in 2006, but powerless to stop them.

The Japanese island of Okinawa, host to a longstanding U.S. military presence, is tilting toward China and away from the United States.

MIDDLE EAST

Bahrain's recent crackdown on its Shiite minority came out of Saudi Arabia's playbook.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange is reportedly backing off of plans to publish his memoirs.

WikiLeaks briefly manages to accept donations via Visa and MasterCard before the companies shut them down again. (WikiLeaks is threatening to sue them in response.)

A medic in Britain's Royal Navy has been sentenced to seven months' detention for refusing to train on account of WikiLeaks-inspired moral objections.

An excellent telling of the sad saga of Pfc. Bradley Manning from New York. (The online friend whose chats with Manning provide much of the new information in the piece has also made their correspondence available for download.)

THE CABLES

AMERICAS

The United States' quasi-embassy in Havana was in the dark about the U.S. Agency for International Development's activities in Cuba.

MIDDLE EAST

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice tried to block a U.N. investigation into possible Israeli war crimes during the 2008-2009 Gaza invasion.

The United States secretly backed Syrian opposition groups.

THE NEWS

Bradley Manning is moved from the Marine Corps' Quantico jail to a cell at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. He hasn't been convicted of anything yet, but Barack Obama has already declared him guilty.

Singing pro-Manning protesters interrupt Obama at a fundraiser in San Francisco.

Julian Assange, meanwhile, is one of the 2011 Time 100 and one of Le Figaro Madame's 20 best-dressed men in the world.

WikiLeaks may have scared diplomats, but it hasn't stopped them from talking smack about each other.

THE BIG PICTURE

The backstory of P.J. Crowley's dissent over Manning, well-told by Politico.

Has the Obama administration actually started listening to its critics on Manning's treatment?

WikiLeaks-based reporting didn't take home any Pulitzers this week, but newspapers didn't even bother to submit it.

THE CABLES

AFRICA

Has Hugo Chávez been selling missiles to Muammar al-Qaddafi?

The Kenyan government wanted to arrest a prominent opposition leader in 2007.

AMERICAS

The Colombian military maintains a 100-man counter-guerrilla force inside Venezuela.

Colombia has been using U.S. drones to fight the FARC for five years.

ASIA

A staffer in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress Party shows U.S. embassy aides chests full of cash being used to buy votes.

India faces a "growing Naxalite menace."

MIDDLE EAST

U.S. diplomats viewed Mohamed ElBaradei as "part of the problem" in the Middle East in 2009.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a "hunger for absolute power and for the material benefits of power".

The Yemeni general now siding with protesters is viewed as "cynical and self-interested" in his country, and is involved in lucrative smuggling rackets.

THE NEWS

U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual steps down over WikiLeaks-fueled flap with Mexican President Felipe Calderón.

Damning corruption allegations in the WikiLeaks cables have India's Manmohan Singh on the ropes.

Protesters demonstrating over Pfc. Bradley Manning's treatment are arrested at Quantico.

An art group in Russia's Ural region is building a monument to Julian Assange.

Is Michael Bay basing the villains in the next Transformers movie on Julian Assange?

THE BIG PICTURE

FP tallies the biggest losers so far in the Cablegate saga.

More on the role of WikiLeaks in the Arab revolutions.

Bradley Manning's long road to WikiLeaks.

Julian Assange, houseguest: a reenactment.

THE CABLES

AFRICA

Muammar al-Qaddafi's kids are a real piece of work.

Qaddafi worried about a U.S. military presence in Africa.

Bernie Madoff once discussed investment opportunities with Qaddafi.

AMERICAS

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe OK'd "clandestine operations" against FARC rebels across the border in Venezuela.

U.S. Ambassador to Colombia (and later Afghanistan) William Wood was not aware of the top Colombian military leader's dodgy résumé.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce tried to take down Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega.

ASIA

China used U.S. debt obligations to pressure the United States on arms sales to Taiwan.

For the first time since World War II, Japan is building a full-blown foreign intelligence agency.

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

U.S. diplomats pushed Norway to buy American-made fighter jets.

Britain blocked an arms sale to Swaziland over fears the weapons could end up in Iran.

MIDDLE EAST

Bahrain's crown prince is not a big fan of the whole democracy thing.

THE NEWS

A British judge rules in favor of Julian Assange's extradition to Sweden.

George W. Bush doesn't like the idea of sharing a stage with Assange.

Gaddafi's "voluptuous nurse" has had enough of Libya.

WikiLeaks cable revelations are factoring in Peru's 2011 elections.

PayPal freezes the account of a group raising defense funds for Pfc. Bradley Manning.

More on HBGary, the cybersecurity firm that tried to take down WikiLeaks' supporters.

WikiLeaks now has a gift shop.

Anonymous makes "The Colbert Report" (slightly NSFW)

THE BIG PICTURE

FP looks at WikiLeaks in our new March/April issue, including contributions from Fouad Ajami, Peter W. Galbraith, Margaret MacMillan, Maya Jasanoff, and Marjorie Garber.

The near-total destruction of Baghdad's city zoo over the course of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was, in retrospect, a grim portent of the poor planning and disastrous mismanagement that would characterize the early years of the Iraq war. The zoo had been the largest in the Middle East before the invasion, with more than 650 animals; eight days after coalition troops arrived in the city, however, all but 35 were dead. "All the Americans would've had to do is drop off 50 men, with a few vets and a truckload of food, and they wouldn't have lost any of the animals," Lawrence Anthony, a South Africa conservationist who salvaged what was left of the zoo after the invasion, told me last year.

So it's heartening to read a February 2008 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, signed by embassy staffer Greg D'Elia and released by WikiLeaks over the weekend, detailing the Baghdad zoo's resurgence as "reportedly … the most popular destination for family outings in Baghdad." As of late 2007, security in the city was still dicey enough that most of the zoo's visitors came from the immediately surrounding neighborhoods. But as the worst of the brutal sectarian violence of the preceding years ebbed, some 8,000 Baghdadis were visiting each weekend, and the zookeepers could boast of some one-of-a-kind acquisitions:

[T]he Baghdad Zoo staff took particular pleasure in reclaiming for the Iraqi public the exotic animals formerly possessed by Saddam Hussein and his family. Uday's pampered cheetah is now tame enough for visitors to pet. Two of Saddam's three lions gave birth last year to three cubs each; now the Zoo has nine lions on display. The Zoo also has in its possession Saddam Hussein's former stallion, Al Abor -- "the most famous horse in Iraq," according to Mousa. Saddam Hussein rode Al Abor in countless parades and public ceremonies.

The best part of the cable is its account of the zoo's "highlights and lowlights":

The Baghdad Zoo also featured some primitive practices, including the daily slaughter of two donkeys to feed the lions, and some modern flourishes, such as exotic fish with an image of the Iraqi flag lasered permanently into their scales. (NOTE: These fish sport the old Iraqi flag. Zoo staff could not predict whether they will employ laser surgery to amend these now-outlawed, swimming flags. END NOTE.)

Then there are the alcoholic bears:

To ease the trauma of the brown bears' move from Saddam Hussein's possession into the Zoo, staff reportedly plied them with copious amounts of Arak; visitors repeated rumors that the disheveled bears continue to imbibe this powerful drink.

Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in his fit of frantic cabinet shuffling, has elevated his long-standing intelligence chief Omar Suleiman to a new post as his first-ever vice president. Suleiman is a looming figure in Middle East spook circles with long-standing connections to U.S. intelligence operatives -- see Jeff Stein and Pat Lang for more on this -- and appears several times in the WikiLeaks U.S. State Department cables, mostly in the context of briefings with top U.S. military officials preoccupied with Iran's influence in the region.

More germane to Suleiman's new gig is a 2007 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, signed by U.S. Amb. Francis J. Ricciardone, gaming out possible secession scenarios should Mubarak step down from the presidency -- including the role of Suleiman, described here as Mubarak's "consigliere:"

MANY OF OUR CONTACTS BELIEVE THAT SOLIMAN, BECAUSE OF HIS MILITARY BACKGROUND, WOULD AT THE LEAST HAVE TO FIGURE IN ANY SUCCESSION SCENARIO FOR GAMAL [Mubarak, Hosni's son and likely successor], POSSIBLY AS A TRANSITIONAL FIGURE. SOLIMAN HIMSELF ADAMANTLY DENIES ANY PERSONAL AMBITIONS, BUT HIS INTEREST AND DEDICATION TO NATIONAL SERVICE IS OBVIOUS. HIS LOYALTY TO MUBARAK SEEMS ROCK-SOLID. AT AGE 71, HE COULD BE ATTRACTIVE TO THE RULING APPARATUS AND THE PUBLIC AT LARGE AS A RELIABLE FIGURE UNLIKELY TO HARBOR AMBITIONS FOR ANOTHER MULTI-DECADE PRESIDENCY. A KEY UNANSWERED QUESTION IS HOW HE WOULD RESPOND TO A GAMAL PRESIDENCY ONCE MUBARAK IS DEAD. AN ALLEGED PERSONAL FRIEND OF SOLIMAN TELLS US THAT SOLIMAN "DETESTS" THE IDEA OF GAMAL AS PRESIDENT, AND THAT HE ALSO WAS "DEEPLY PERSONALLY HURT" BY MUBARAK, WHO PROMISED TO NAME HIM VICE-PRESIDENT SEVERAL YEARS AGO, BUT THEN RENEGED.

While the community of Middle East leak-watchers is focused on Al Jazeera's release of 1,600 documents from the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, WikiLeaks has released a number of U.S. diplomatic cables that call into question the long-term viability of Algerian strongman Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Particularly in the wake of Tunisia's revolt -- and the U.S. Embassy's success at identifying the seeds of unrest there -- these cables deserve a close read.

The most engaging report is a 2008 cable on disaffected Algerian youth known as "the harraga," or literally "one who burns." Unlike Mohamed Bouazizi, who lit himself on fire in Tunisia two years later, these men aren't burning themselves -- they're burning their identification papers before setting out on makeshift boats in an attempt to reach the shores of Spain or Italy. It's an unbelievably dangerous journey: The embassy estimates that over 90 percent of the harraga die at sea, are detained indefinitely by North African authorities, or are returned to their host country. According to one article cited in the cable, up to 50,000 Algerians and Libyans attempted to reach European shores in search of economic opportunities in 2007.

From the Algerian regime's perspective, perhaps the most troubling aspect of this story is that the harraga hail -- like Bouazizi -- from the society's educated classes. One boat, the embassy reported "includ[ed] five university graduates and two doctors." The grandson of a former Algerian president also departed the country in this way and "has not been heard from since."

A 2007 cable signed by U.S. Amb. Robert Ford -- now the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Damascus -- lays out the consequences of this disaffection more explicitly. The Algerian regime, he writes, is "plagued by a lack of vision, unprecedented levels of corruption and rumblings of division within the military rank and file."

The most explosive comments in the cable are relayed to the embassy by Said Sadi, an opposition leader. Sadi described a conversation that he had with Gen. Toufik Mediene, Algeria's head of military intelligence, who "acknowledged that all was not well with the health of Bouteflika and Algeria writ large." When the conversation turned to Algeria's endemic corruption, Sadi reports that the general "motion[ed] silently to the portrait of Bouteflika that hung over their heads" to indicate where the problem lay.

Ford hedged his bets in late 2007, writing that the embassy does not expect an imminent revolt in Algeria. But in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolt -- and with Algerian protests and self-immolations mounting -- the moment may just be now.

In case you missed it, Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi gave a bizarre speech this weekend lamenting the downfall of his eastern neighbor, Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The best part was when he started talking about WikiLeaks, which he calls "Kleenex":

Even you, my Tunisian brothers. You may be reading this Kleenex and empty talk on the Internet. This Internet, which any demented person, any drunk can get drunk and write in, do you believe it? The Internet is like a vacuum cleaner, it can suck anything. Any useless person; any liar; any drunkard; anyone under the influence; anyone high on drugs; can talk on the Internet, and you read what he writes and you believe it. This is talk which is for free. Shall we become the victims of “Facebook” and “Kleenex”* and “YouTube”! Shall we become victims to tools they created so that they can laugh at our moods? 

Thanks to Amira Al Husseini for the translation. You can watch part of the speech here, though unfortunately it's not the same section. Toward the end here, he cites a World Economic Forum ("Day-vos," he says) report ranking Tunisia's economy among the most competitive in Africa:

THE CABLES

AFRICA

The last days of a Guinean strongman and his allegedly drug-trafficking son -- and a curious cocaine bust bait-and-switch.

Another day, another cable about alleged central-African multi-million-dollar embezzlement -- this time in Gabon.

AMERICAS

The Obama administration dispatches a Florida senator to urge Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon not to pursue a torture case against Bush administration officials.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency quietly evolves into an international intelligence agency.

How a Brazilian who once kidnapped a U.S. ambassador managed to get into the United States.

McDonald's tries to muck up a free trade agreement in El Salvador.

The Jamaican government warned U.S. officials that extraditing a local drug lord would lead to trouble.

ASIA/PACIFIC

Britain trains a "government death squad" in Bangladesh.

Did Britain try to cheat Mauritius out of an island chain?

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

Inside Russia's awful prisons.

Shell thinks that Ireland could become a booming offshore gas supplier -- or not.

MIDDLE EAST

More U.S. complaints about Egypt's lackluster military.

Behind the scenes of an assassination in Dubai.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange claims (dubiously) to have the names of CIA moles in Arab governments.

Assange signs a memoir deal worth an estimated $1.7 million -- but his estranged former spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg (who spoke at a hacker conference this week) will be on bookshelves first.

The FBI pays back "Operation Payback" over PayPal attack.

The Cuban government is translating and publishing the Cuba-related WikiLeaked cables -- will it translate all of them?

77 percent of Americans disapprove of WikiLeaks' cable release.

Did WikiLeaks dash Zimbabwe's hopes for democracy?

Hackers claim to have brought down Zimbabwean government websites in retaliation for a WikiLeaks-related lawsuit against a Harare newspaper.

Assange falls out with his longtime confidants at the Guardian. Bianca Jagger is somehow involved.

THE BIG PICTURE

Daniel Ellsberg lawyer Floyd Abrams says Assange is no Daniel Ellsberg.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald goes to war with Wired over chat logs from Assange source Bradley Manning. (More here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and basically everywhere else on the Internet.)

HaikuLeaks adds to the proliferating genre of WikiLeaks-related verse. (English poetry buffs: this domain is still available.)

New Zealand has, less than shockingly, not been a major presence in the WikiLeaks saga so far. So congratulations are order for the U.S. embassy in Wellington, which made a strong showing in the Guardian yesterday with a tale of international espionage that somehow involves Mossad, Hamas, cerebral palsy, and mutton.

In 2004, New Zealand imposed diplomatic sanctions on Israel after two Mossad agents were found to have stolen the identity of a quadriplegic New Zealander in order to obtain a passport for a third Israeli spy.* "It is a sorry indictment of Israel that it has again taken such actions against a country with which it has friendly relations," New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said at the time. Visas were restricted, embassies were closed, and Israeli President Moshe Katsav, who was planning to visit the country, was disinvited. Then Hamas got involved. The organization put out a press release applauding New Zealand's actions, saying it "highly appreciated the daring position" Clark had taken against the "Zionist security apparatuses."

Clark's government made a show of rejecting Hamas's overtures, but American embassy officials in Wellington were apparently unconvinced. A July 19, 2004 cable about the incident, signed by political and economic counselor Timothy Zuniga-Brown, floats the theory that New Zealand may have had ulterior motives in making a big deal about the Mossad affair:

Its overly strong reaction to Israel over this issue suggests the [government of New Zealand] sees this flap as an opportunity to bolster its credibility with the Arab community, and by doing so, perhaps, help NZ lamb and other products gain greater access to a larger and more lucrative market.

Would the Kiwis really fan the flames of an international incident to ingratiate their way into Arab stomachs? It's certainly true that the economy of New Zealand -- which famously has 9 sheep for every human -- is unusually lamb-dependent: The country's lamb-heavy international meat sales accounted for $5.19 billion last year, or 13 percent of all exports. And while Europe and the United States are still the world's biggest lamb importers, the Middle East is the most promising growth market -- neighboring Australia's lamb exports to the region grew 25 percent from 1990 to 2008. In any case, the New Zealand media have been strangely silent on the allegations so far.

*What's with New Zealand and weird identity theft scandals?

THE CABLES

AFRICA

Zimbabwe's first lady is suing a local newspaper over its reporting on a WikiLeaks cable detailing her involvement in the black-market diamond trade. (And apparently doesn't read FP.)

When FP wrote about Africa's failed states this summer, we didn't know the half of it.

Pretty much everyone involved in last week's cable about bribery in the Ugandan oil business denies bribing anyone in the Ugandan oil business.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir allegedly has $9 billion in oil money stashed in Britain.

AMERICAS

American diplomats at the United Nations don't like to talk much about human rights anymore.

The Cuban government misjudges the WikiLeaks cables, which show the U.S. government misjudging the Cuban government.

Joking about Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, or even above Venezuela, is ill-advised.

How Brazil got pharmaceutical companies to hand over cheap HIV/AIDS drugs.

Diverticulitis may have nearly done in the Castro regime, but Cuba's political dissidents probably can't.

ANTARCTICA

WikiLeaks is banned there.

ASIA

The Red Cross reported extensive torture of Kashmiris at Indian detention centers in Kashmir to the U.S. embassy in New Delhi in 2005.

Singapore's government owes an apology to basically every major country in Asia.

The Dalai Lama says fighting climate change is more important for Tibet than political independence.

The heir to the Gandhi family political dynasty thinks Hindu extremists are a bigger threat to India than Muslim ones.

Turkmen strongman Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov doesn't like people who are smarter than him.

A former Thai prime minister says Thailand's queen had a hand in the country's 2006 coup. The country's leaders also have their doubts about the crown prince.

Eric Clapton's weirdly persistent influence on North Korean politics.

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

Sweden told the State Department in 2008 that the country didn't have to worry about terrorism. They're probably not saying that now.

Silvio Berlusconi for the win?

The German government is still not digging L. Ron Hubbard.

The Stockholm embassy discusses Sweden's WikiLeaks-enabling Pirate Party in a particularly meta cable.

The Azeri first lady's plastic surgery creates confusion among U.S. diplomats in Baku.

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko is "bizarre" and "disturbed."

MIDDLE EAST

Do Arab leaders actually care about the Palestinians?

Hosni Mubarak thinks his son is a perfectionist.

Is the Egyptian military in "intellectual and social decline"?

The Arab League doesn't like Steven Spielberg.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange is released on bail after a media-circus-attracting hearing, but not before Michael Moore manages to get involved. Now that he's out of jail, Assange is pretty chatty -- as is Vaughan Smith, the journalist and WikiLeaks supporter who's hosting him until his next court date.

Things are not going nearly so well for alleged Assange document source Bradley Manning.

Australian police determine WikiLeaks hasn't broken any laws in the country, but Assange's lawyer says a grand jury in the United States is considering indicting him.

WikiLeaks is already inspiring imitators around the world, and counterfeit cables are turning up in Russia -- because, you know, that worked so well in Pakistan.

FP's WikiLeaked is too hot for the U.S. Air Force.

Someone posts a manifesto on behalf of Anonymous, the ad-hoc group of hackers that has cyber-attacked an array of targets in solidarity with WikiLeaks over the past two weeks. The manifesto quotes KISS bassist Gene Simmons. A Greek web designer is arrested for it.

Governments may be scared of WikiLeaks, but the Pakistani feminine hygiene industry isn't.

THE BIG PICTURE

A lot of people think Assange should have been Time's 2010 person of the year. Richard Stengel, the magazine's managing editor, isn't one of them. 

Portrait of the hacker as a young man: Julian Assange during his couch-surfing and email-stalking days. 

Would Henry David Thoreau join Anonymous?

Congress considers WikiLeaks.

Mark Prendergast, ombudsman for the U.S. military's official Stars and Stripes newspaper, argues that military personnel should be allowed to read the cables.

If WikiLeaks doesn't get things rolling a little faster, we'll be writing this blog for another 7.6 years.

For Egypt watchers, thrilled as they no doubt were to read Hosni Mubarak's private ruminations on Iran or his advisors' insistence that Egyptian diplomacy is still a force for peace in the Middle East, we're just now getting to the good stuff.

WikiLeaks has released a fresh batch of cables from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and these make for much more interesting reading.

Many of them deal with the very sensitive question of whether Gamal Mubarak, the president's son, will succeed his father (one particularly frank cable calls this issue "the elephant in the room of Egyptian politics"), and there are some revealing nuggets on that score.

In one cable, Hosni regales Frank Ricciardone, then the U.S. ambassador, and a visiting congressman with some rare fatherly insights on Gamal -- whom he describes as a perfectionist:

"As a schoolboy, if I gave him a notebook with one line that was not straight, he would throw a fit and demand a new one," Mubarak laughed. Furthermore, Gamal is "idealistic" and "punctual." Mubarak added, "If he (Gamal) says, 'meet me for lunch at 2:00,' he means 2:00. Set your watch by it."

Presidential material! In the same cable, Hosni says he exercises each afternoon when he's in Cairo, but when he retreats to his beach house in Sharm el-Sheikh, on the Sinai coast, "I just relax -- no exercise." He also misremembers Gamal's age at one point. Here's the best bit, tagged as sensitive/no foreign:

Throughout the meeting, Mubarak was expansive and in fine humor. He rose easily from his seat several times to point out activity on the golf course and to be photographed with his visitors. He engaged the visitors extensively on the topic of food, stressing that his favorite fare is Egyptian popular breakfast dishes, such as tamiya (felafel) and foul (beans). He ordered up a huge tray of freshly made tamiya sandwiches for lunch, and lustily consumed several.

(I had always heard that Hosni was big on shrimp while he was in Sharm, but I guess he's got to keep it real.)

Other Cairo cables are more analytical, delving into various succession scenarios, comparing Mubarak to his predecessor Anwar Sadat, and evaluating the Egyptian military, which unnamed Egyptian interlocutors portray as "in intellectual and social decline," albeit still deeply enmeshed in the economy.

But the question of what happens when "pharaoh" dies hangs over all.

Read on

After 35 years on the job, it's a fair bet that Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal has some tricks up his sleeve. However, the WikiLeaked revelation that Prince Saud supported the establishment of an "Arab force" in Lebanon to combat Hezbollah has left many in Beirut and Washington wondering exactly what the world's longest-serving foreign minister had in mind. Here's the prince's recommendation, as relayed by Ambassador David Satterfield:

What was needed was an ‘Arab force' drawn from Arab ‘periphery' states to deploy to Beirut under the "cover of the UN" and with a significant presence drawn from UNIFIL in south Lebanon ‘which is sitting doing nothing.' The US and NATO would be asked to provide equipment for such a force as well as logistics, movement support, and ‘naval and air cover.'

The concept of an "Arab force" has been tried before, during one of the first episodes in Prince Saud's long tenure. The 1976 Arab League summit in Riyadh, meant to resolve the nascent Lebanese civil war, resulted in the establishment of something called the "Arab Deterrent Force." Saudi Arabia and other Arab states provided troops to the new peacekeeping effort, but the bulk of the soldiers were contributed by Syria. Troops from the other Arab countries soon lost interest and abandoned the peacekeeping force -- but Syria remained, using the endeavor to legitimize its occupation of Lebanon.

The outcome of the 1976 force hints at the problem with reviving the idea of an "Arab force" today. Syria was only able to establish its preeminence in Lebanon after another 14 years of fighting and thousands of casualties. Today, none of the Arab states that would contribute troops to limit Hezbollah's power -- Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan -- are conceivably in a position to make a similar sacrifice. Hezbollah fought the vastly superior Israel Defense Forces to a standstill for more than a month in 2006; the militant group would be an ever harder nut to crack for Washington's Arab allies.

The U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan sure knows how to write a headline. Here's a cable from the Baku mission released by WikiLeaks over the weekend, beginning with the subject line "IRAN: NINJA BLACK BELT MASTER DETAILS USE OF MARTIAL ARTS CLUBS FOR REPRESSION:"

xxxxxxxxxxxx a licensed martial arts coach and trainer xxxxxxxxxxxx, told Baku Iran watcher that private martial arts clubs and their managers are under intense pressure to cooperate with Iranian intelligence and Revolutionary Guard organizations, both in training members and in working as "enforcers" in repression of protests and politically motivated killings.

It goes on:

xxxxxxxxxxxx said he personally knew one such martial arts master whom he said was used by the Intelligence service to murder at least six different individuals over the course of several months in xxxxxxxxxxxx said that the victims included intellectuals and young "pro-democracy activists," adding that his assassin acquaintance was ultimately "suicided" by the authorities (i.e., killed in what was subsequently labeled a suicide).

I hesitate to pass judgment on this one way or the other, since I don't know anything beyond what's in the cable. (This video dug up from YouTube by Mother Jones's Daniel Schulman suggests there are at least some ninjas in Iran, though what their politics are is unclear.) It's probably worth noting, though, that ninjas have not been a particularly effective tool of statecraft since the 18th century. But hey, who knows?