WEST AFRICA, A REGION not usually uppermost in the minds of American foreign policymakers, is nonetheless responsible for two of our most intractable post-9/11 intelligence puzzles.

In these two very similar cases, Arab operatives in West African countries allegedly seek to exploit local smuggling operations to buy precious and tightly controlled natural commodities. The CIA investigates, but the veracity of the stories remains uncertain, and, consequently, the subject of protracted, acrimonious debate within the intelligence community.

Of these stories, one--Iraq's purported attempts to acquire uranium from Niger--is well known. The other--al Qaeda's purchase of conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone and Liberia--is not. Thus it makes a well-deserving subject for a new book, namely Blood From Stones by veteran investigative journalist and former Washington Post West Africa bureau chief Douglas Farah.

Farah first posited the connection between black market gems and radical Islam in the fall of 2001. Blood From Stones carefully lays out the evidence that senior al Qaeda operatives traveled to West Africa in the late 1990s and again in the summer of 2001 to buy diamonds from Sierra Leonean rebels, with the connivance of then-president Charles Taylor of Liberia. [. . . . ]

Afghanistan no longer serves as al-Qaeda's home base. Yet, it remains the source of another great evil -- the biggest heroin supply in the world. Since its liberation, Afghanistan's heroin production has gone from 640 tons to 5,000, an increase of almost 800%. Afghanistan now supplies 87% of the world's heroin market, and at least 90% of the heroin abused in Europe.

Unlike al-Qaeda, whose worst attacks killed more than 3,000 Americans, heroin kills millions of people all over the free world every year, and destroys the lives of many others. Yet, the world seems either unable or unwilling to put an end to this scourge. Why? After all, the poppy fields are visible to everybody and the locations of the heroin labs in Afghanistan and Pakistan are well known, as are the drug lords and the smuggling routes. [. . . . ]

The new intelligence reform bill signed into law by President Bush on December 17 may ultimately end up being remembered more for the provisions it didn't contain rather than those it did.

After much heated debate, House and Senate negotiators ultimately threw out proposed provisions to the bill that would have tightened immigration laws. Although House Speaker Dennis Hastert has promised to bring drivers' license standards, asylum procedures and other border security provisions back to the House floor by early 2005, in the meantime, the very real danger that Islamist terrorists will infiltrate America's porous southern border persists.

Roughly 60,000 illegal immigrants designated as 'other-than-Mexican,' or OTMs, were detained last year along the U.S.-Mexico border, including a sizable number from Arab and Muslim countries. And if recent reports are any indication, they may be getting some troubling new help in their efforts to enter the United States. [. . . . ]

OTTAWA (CP) - DART: the name conjures up images of a fast-response, highly mobile team that can fly into a disaster zone, turn on a dime and deal with whatever catastrophe looms.

But Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team has barely been used in the near-decade it has existed, even though the military touts it as a rapid-response unit capable of providing effective humanitarian aid. Critics say it's anything but dart-like. Formed in 1996 at the height of the Somalia scandal, the team's base is a 45-member headquarters in Kingston, Ont. Its full 200-member contingent of medics, engineering troops and a logistics platoon, is scattered across the country.

[. . . . ] The Canadian Forces says DART is "designed to deploy rapidly anywhere in the world to crises ranging from natural disasters to complex humanitarian emergencies."

But with an annual budget only half a million dollars, DART has less money attached to it than any other Canadian military unit, and is described by one military expert as "a paper tiger." [. . . . ]

The expressions "racial profiling" and "ethnic cleansing" didn't exist in the 1940s, but that's what the wartime treatment of many North Americans amounted to. Internment, coupled with de facto expropriation, deprived Japanese- (and also German- and Italian-) Americans and Canadians of their civil liberties. Such episodes are now commonly spoken of as the very embodiment of wartime hysteria and racism.

But were such measures as unjustified as many assume? The best-selling American journalist Michelle Malkin looks at this question in her new book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror. . . .

[. . . . ] Meanwhile, though, small bands of terrorists may be getting ready to do whatever harm they can by firing inexpensive, portable and commercially available laser beams at unmodified 747s filled with business people and holidaymakers. My guess is few Canadians or Americans would object to ethnic and religious profiling to stop them -- or disagree with Ms. Malkin's observation that "a nation paralyzed in wartime by political correctness is a nation in peril."

[. . . . ] The Chinese can barely contain their self-satisfaction these days, and Beijing's recently-released white paper, China's National Defense in 2004, is a 36-page-wide smirk. Consider this passage: "The trends toward world multipolarization and economic globalization are deepening amid twists and turns. New changes are occurring in the balance of power among the major international players, with the process of their realignment and the redistribution of their interests accelerated."

Granted, this is hardly a ripping read--but within the refined art of the defense brief, this is equivalent to a middle-finger salute. The argument is essentially that the United States is a slipping superpower, leading to a "multipolar" world in which Beijing's interests will be given great weight. The paper goes on to note that "the developing countries"--meaning most importantly China--"have become important players in promoting a multipolar world and"--I guess the Chinese have little ear for irony--"democratized international relations." [. . . . ]

WITH each passing week the news from Russia be comes increasingly glum. First, there was Moscow's meddling — and blustering — over the recent Ukrainian presidential elections.

Then, there was the sell-off and nationalization of Yukos, one of Russia's largest private oil companies. And now the latest bad news: Russia's growing military cooperation with Asia's rising superpower, China.

According to Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Ivanov, "For the first time in history, we have agreed to hold quite a large military exercise together with China on Chinese territory in the second half of the year." [. . . . ]

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- The chaotic and embarrassing departure from the scene of Department of Homeland Security Secretary-designate Bernard Kerik is just the latest, though hopefully last, crisis that the department faced in 2004, and the succession vacuum that resulted -- however brief -- serves to underline the deep and disturbing question marks that hang over the troubled agency.

Set up in March last year by the merger of the 22 agencies that shared responsibility for protecting the country from terrorism and other threats, the Department of Homeland Security is the federal government's newest department -- and, with 180,000 employees, one of its largest.

Proponents argued that the biggest re-organization of the federal government since the formation of the Department of Defense in 1947 was necessary to ensure the integration of U.S. counter-terrorist efforts, and avoid the communications breakdowns and information compartmentalization that helped the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers enter the country and put their deadly scheme into practice.

But at the conclusion of its first full year in existence, many of the department's key objectives -- like a single watch list of known or suspected terrorists, or a complete database of vulnerable critical infrastructure -- remain unfulfilled. Going forward, the department faces a host of enormous challenges, and its spotty track record offers no guarantee that it will be able to rise to meet them.

On the contrary, experts and insiders alike argue that, without major reforms and exceptional leadership, the department is likely to continue stumbling from crisis to crisis, and may eventually be condemned to bureaucratic irrelevance.

[. . . . ] "Every other department has a long established institutional civil service structures that keeps the place running. [. . . . ]