| By Kamran Rehmat in Islamabad | ||||
News of clashes in Pakistan’s tribal areas and the fate of thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting have been overshadowed by the country’s focus on Islamabad’s growing power struggle.The concerted campaign by the coalition government to remove Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, from power has shifted focus from a developing humanitarian crisis in the north. According to government estimates, some 219,000 have been displaced as the military and tribal fighters battle for territorial control following a string of failed peace agreements in the once-scenic Swat Valley and Bajaur Agency, a district of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Rehman Malik, the advisor to the prime minister on interior affairs, told the media that 462 “militants” and 22 security personnel have lost their lives in the ongoing military operations. However, these figures do not quite reveal the catastrophic situation that is rapidly gnawing at the integrity of this South Asian nation. Ostensibly, the Taliban is fighting to enforce Sharia (Islamic law) in the region but have shown no remorse in using the local population as a collective human shield against Pakistani military operations. Mass exodus The residents have been advised by the security forces to leave their homes and seek sanctuary. “It is not easy to leave your home. We expected the army to supervise the evacuation, which is the least they could have done to provide some sort of security but it has not happened,” Sher Afzal, a resident who escaped the fighting in Bajaur Agency, said. Further compounding the mass exodus is the steady stream of refugees fleeing from the adjoining Mohmand Agency. They have sought shelter in Peshawar, the capital of the Frontier province, and in nearby Dir and Malakand. The Frontier government has asked for immediate financial assistance of Rs1.5 billion ($19.7 million) to cope with such massive displacement. “There are hundreds of thousands of people waiting for help and we don’t have the wherewithal to cope with the situation,” an official of the provincial government said. This has created a bind for the security forces who were caught between using force to flush out “militants” or doing nothing and thereby saving the innocent population caught in the crossfire. They chose the first option even at the risk of collateral damage; this resulted in a high number of civilian casualties. But not taking on the Taliban, experts have agreed, was not a viable option given the proclivity of their fighters to assimilate into local populations and use the breathing space to re-launch attacks. “We have two options: either to keep mum and hand over the country to [the] Taliban or take action,” the interior advisor said. Tearing the script
In Swat, the situation is as tense as ever. The provincial government has come under pressure for trying to return to a now defunct peace agreement with the tribal fighters.”The peace agreement signed in May is intact and the government is ready to hold negotiations to end unrest,” Bashir Bilour, the senior minister and head of the government’s peace committee, said. But he also conceded the fighters had breached the pact. The provincial government re-launched the military operation on July 29 after the Taliban-allied fighters threatened, but failed, to force the government to resign. They violated the peace accord by attacking security forces and torching girl schools. More aid needed But some tribesmen are now taking security affairs into their own hands, taking the fight to the Taliban-allied fighters and earning support from Islamabad. The federal government announced an award of Rs500,000 (US$6,560) and a Kalashnikov rifle each for a few tribesman who had shot dead six fighters in Buner three days ago. But Pakistanis are urging the government to apply the same anti-Taliban intiatives to improve facilities for the refugees. The provincial government has set up eight camps for the displaced, which the central government later upped statistically, by five more. However, even these 13 camps are woefully short of providing shelter to the homeless. A provincial government official, who did not want to be named, told Al Jazeera: “We are facing this situation because of the military action in the tribal region. It is therefore, the responsibility of the federal government to provide financial assistance.” Kamran Rehmat is a news editor with Dawn News, a Pakistani TV channel. |
Archive for August, 2008
Refugee crisis brews in Pakistan
August 17, 2008
Geopolitical Chess: Background to a Mini-war in the Caucasus
August 16, 2008Immanuel Wallerstein, Commentary No. 239, Aug. 15, 2009
The world has been witness this month to a mini-war in the Caucasus, and the rhetoric has been passionate, if largely irrelevant. Geopolitics is a gigantic series of two-player chess games, in which the players seek positional advantage. In these games, it is crucial to know the current rules that govern the moves. Knights are not allowed to move diagonally.
From 1945 to 1989, the principal chess game was that between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was called the Cold War, and the basic rules were called metaphorically “Yalta.” The most important rule concerned a line that divided Europe into two zones of influence. It was called by Winston Churchill the “Iron Curtain” and ran from Stettin to Trieste. The rule was that, no matter how much turmoil was instigated in Europe by the pawns, there was to be no actual warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union. And at the end of each instance of turmoil, the pieces were to be returned to where they were at the outset. This rule was observed meticulously right up to the collapse of the Communisms in 1989, which was most notably marked by the destruction of the Berlin wall.
It is perfectly true, as everyone observed at the time, that the Yalta rules were abrogated in 1989 and that the game between the United States and (as of 1991) Russia had changed radically. The major problem since then is that the United States misunderstood the new rules of the game. It proclaimed itself, and was proclaimed by many others, the lone superpower. In terms of chess rules, this was interpreted to mean that the United States was free to move about the chessboard as it saw fit, and in particular to transfer former Soviet pawns to its sphere of influence. Under Clinton, and even more spectacularly under George W. Bush, the United States proceeded to play the game this way.
There was only one problem with this: The United States was not the lone superpower; it was no longer even a superpower at all. The end of the Cold War meant that the United States had been demoted from being one of two superpowers to being one strong state in a truly multilateral distribution of real power in the interstate system. Many large countries were now able to play their own chess games without clearing their moves with one of the two erstwhile superpowers. And they began to do so.
Two major geopolitical decisions were made in the Clinton years. First, the United States pushed hard, and more or less successfully, for the incorporation of erstwhile Soviet satellites into NATO membership. These countries were themselves anxious to join, even though the key western European countries – Germany and France – were somewhat reluctant to go down this path. They saw the U.S. maneuver as one aimed in part at them, seeking to limit their newly-acquired freedom of geopolitical action.
The second key U.S. decision was to become an active player in the boundary realignments within the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This culminated in a decision to sanction, and enforce with their troops, the de facto secession of Kosovo from Serbia.
Russia, even under Yeltsin, was quite unhappy about both these U.S. actions. However, the political and economic disarray of Russia during the Yeltsin years was such that the most it could do was complain, somewhat feebly it should be added.
The coming to power of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin was more or less simultaneous. Bush decided to push the lone superpower tactics (the United States can move its pieces as it alone decides) much further than had Clinton. First, Bush in 2001 withdrew from the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Then he announced that the United States would not move to ratify two new treaties signed in the Clinton years: the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the agreed changes in the SALT II nuclear disarmament treaty. Then Bush announced that the United States would move forward with its National Missile Defense system.
And of course, Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. As part of this engagement, the United States sought and obtained rights to military bases and overflight rights in the Central Asian republics that formerly were part of the Soviet Union. In addition, the United States promoted the construction of pipelines for Central Asian and Caucasian oil and natural gas that would bypass Russia. And finally, the United States entered into an agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic to establish missile defense sites, ostensibly to guard against Iranian missiles. Russia, however, regarded them as aimed at her.
Putin decided to push back much more effectually than Yeltsin. As a prudent player, however, he moved first to strengthen his home base – restoring effective central authority and reinvigorating the Russian military. At this point, the tides in the world-economy changed, and Russia suddenly became a wealthy and powerful controller not only of oil production but of the natural gas so needed by western European countries.
Putin thereupon began to act. He entered into treaty relationships with China. He maintained close relations with Iran. He began to push the United States out of its Central Asian bases. And he took a very firm stand on the further extension of NATO to two key zones – Ukraine and Georgia.
The breakup of the Soviet Union had led to ethnic secessionist movements in many former republics, including Georgia. When Georgia in 1990 sought to end the autonomous status of its non-Georgian ethnic zones, they promptly proclaimed themselves independent states. They were recognized by no one but Russia guaranteed their de facto autonomy.
The immediate spurs to the current mini-war were twofold. In February, Kosovo formally transformed its de facto autonomy to de jure independence. Its move was supported by and recognized by the United States and many western European countries. Russia warned at the time that the logic of this move applied equally to the de facto secessions in the former Soviet republics. In Georgia, Russia moved immediately, for the first time, to recognize South Ossetian de jure independence in direct response to that of Kosovo.
And in April this year, the United States proposed at the NATO meeting that Georgia and Ukraine be welcomed into a so-called Membership Action Plan. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all opposed this action, saying it would provoke Russia.
Georgia’s neoliberal and strongly pro-American president, Mikhail Saakashvili, was now desperate. He saw the reassertion of Georgian authority in South Ossetia (and Abkhazia) receding forever. So, he chose a moment of Russian inattention (Putin at the Olympics, Medvedev on vacation) to invade South Ossetia. Of course, the puny South Ossetian military collapsed completely. Saakashvili expected that he would be forcing the hand of the United States (and indeed of Germany and France as well).
Instead, he got an immediate Russian military response, overwhelming the small Georgian army. What he got from George W. Bush was rhetoric. What, after all, could Bush do? The United States was not a superpower. Its armed forces were tied down in two losing wars in the Middle East. And, most important of all, the United States needed Russia far more than Russia needed the United States. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, pointedly noted in an op-ed in the Financial Times that Russia was a “partner with the west on…the Middle East, Iran and North Korea.”
As for western Europe, Russia essentially controls its gas supplies. It is no accident that it was President Sarkozy of France, not Condoleezza Rice, who negotiated the truce between Georgia and Russia. The truce contained two essential concessions by Georgia. Georgia committed itself to no further use of force in South Ossetia, and the agreement contained no reference to Georgian territorial integrity.
So, Russia emerged far stronger than before. Saakashvili had bet everything he has and was now geopolitically bankrupt. And, as an ironic footnote, Georgia, one of the last U.S. allies in the coalition in Iraq, withdrew all its 2000 troops from Iraq. These troops had been playing a crucial role in Shi’a areas, and would now have to be replaced by U.S. troops, which will have to be withdrawn from other areas.
If one plays geopolitical chess, it is best to know the rules, or one gets out-maneuvered.
Farewell Mahmoud Darwish
August 16, 2008Farewell Mahmoud Darwish
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Sinan Antoon recalls the voice of a nation Very few poets become the voice of their nation and even fewer succeed in transcending that to become much more. Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was that rare bird who crossed many skies and horizons. His death last week, following complications from open-heart surgery in Houston, Texas, ended an epic life and interrupted a stunningly creative and prolific output, especially in his later years. It is difficult to underestimate Darwish’s symbolic capital and his cultural and political significance. With his departure Palestine loses one of its most precious cultural icons, a poetic voice of universal echoes. The larger Arab world and its diaspora bid farewell to one of its best modern poets and the most popular and successful one in the last three decades. His poems were set to music, discussed in the Israeli Knesset, and his recitals could fill sport stadiums. Darwish’s absence will further enhance his near-mythical status in the collective memory of Palestinians and Arabs. Darwish was born on 13 March 1941 in Al-Birweh in Palestine’s Galilee. At the age of seven he and his family were forced by Israeli forces to flee their village to Lebanon. Al-Birweh was destroyed by the Israelis and a settlement has taken its place. When Darwish’s family returned a year later they settled in Deir Al-Assad, near the traces of their destroyed village. The harrowing experience of losing his home and being an internal exile in his land at such a young age would haunt Darwish’s poetry and become a central theme with rich and complex variations running throughout his oeuvre. “I will never forget that wound,” he said. In one of his last books Darwish wrote of still hearing “the wailing of a village under a settlement”. He was extremely precocious and discovered the power of words and poetry at a young age. At 12 he recited a poem at school on the anniversary of the Nakba about a child who returns to find his home taken by others. He was summoned by the Israeli military officer and threatened. His early fierce poetry registered his resistance to existential and cultural erasure practised by an apartheid colonial state. This is exemplified in Identity Card, which became an iconic poem of that phase and of what came to be known as “resistance poetry” with its famous refrain “Record, I am an Arab!” Darwish joined the Israeli Communist Party in 1961 and worked as a journalist in Al-Ittihad. He was imprisoned five times between 1961 and 1967 and was put under house arrest for three years. He took the monumental decision not to return to Israel while on a scholarship to Moscow in 1971 and went to Cairo where his fame had already preceded him. Two years later he moved to Beirut and joined the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and remained there until 1982. In Beirut he was the editor of Shu’un Filastiniyya (Palestinian Affairs) and established Al-Karmil in 1981, one of the best cultural reviews to appear in the Arab world. In Beirut, Darwish honed his poetic project and distinguished himself by continuous experimentation and engagement with developments in modern Arabic poetry, and by resisting the temptations and pressures of being pigeonholed as a “resistance poet”. Palestine and its concerns were always a central axis, but it was to be enriched through explorations of mythology and embedded in a more complex poetic narrative. Darwish witnessed and monumentalised key moments in the Palestinian saga in poems such as Ahmed Al-Zaatar (1977) on the 1976 siege and massacre of Tal Al-Zaatar and Madih Al-Zill Al-Aali (Praise for the Lofty Shadow), and Qasidat Beirut (The Beirut Poem) both written in 1983. Darwish was also a prose writer of exceptional beauty. Memory of Forgetfulness, a beautiful and haunting memoir about war, represented the daily horrors of the Israeli invasion and siege of Beirut in 1982. The Palestinian exodus from Beirut took Darwish to Tunis where the PLO found refuge until its return after Oslo in 1993. Darwish settled in Paris where he would have a most productive phase and transform his poetry to new heights in works such as I See What I Want (1990) and Eleven Planets (1992). His work enacted a poetic conversation with world epics and the Palestinian saga was rearticulated within a larger historical and cultural prism of the colonial moment of 1492 and its ramifications. Darwish reread Andalus and the genocide of the native Americans in mesmerising and epic poems simultaneously addressing the Palestinian question and universal postcolonial concerns. His poems were prophetic as to the fate of Palestinians. Darwish was elected to the executive committee of the PLO but resigned in 1993 over his objections to the Oslo Accords and his disagreement with Arafat. He correctly foresaw that they amounted to political suicide. Why Have you Left the Horse Alone (1995) was a response of sorts to the challenges and threats of Oslo. It was an individual and collective poetic biography and an excavation of the memory of place. It also marked a shift in Darwish’s work towards the more personal and subjective. He continued to surprise and challenge his readers with A Bed for the Stranger (1999), a collection devoted to love. In 1998 Darwish had heart surgery for the second time and his heart stopped for two minutes. This encounter with death produced another epic poem, Mural (2000), about the triumph of art over death. Darwish decided to return and live in Ramallah as a citizen in 1996 and divided his time between the West Bank and Amman. A State of Siege (2002) was concerned with the horrors of Israeli occupation during the second Intifada, but also spoke of hope and resilience. Darwish was prolific and vibrant in his last years, stunning readers and critics with his ability to reinvent himself. In addition to three collections, ( Do not Apologise for What You Have Done (2004), Like Almond Blossoms or Beyond (2005), and The Butterfly Effect (2008), he left us one of the most powerful books of prose to be written in Arabic in modern times. In the Presence of Absence (2006) was a self-eulogy written in masterful poetic prose. In the latter phase of his work Darwish was free to roam all themes no matter how mundane or metaphysical. The anchored and fixed I of his early years was now scattered in pronouns as the self became a site severed by time and space and open to all its others, in the widest sense. Darwish and his work contained multitudes and vast horizons, at the heart of which was Palestine in and of itself, but also Palestine as a metaphor for love, exile, and the injustice and pain of our contemporary moment. Knowing surgery might not succeed, Darwish was keen on bidding farewell to his homeland and loved ones. He returned to Haifa for the first time since 1971 in July of last year for a historic poetry reading and a short visit. Permission had to be obtained from Israeli authorities. His family and friends had hoped he would be buried in the Galilee he loved but the Israelis refused and so he was buried in Ramallah. “What can a poet do when confronted by the bulldozers of history?” asked Darwish once. To stand before them and preserve the memory and celebrate life as he did. “Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance,” he wrote in his last collection. And he left a treasure trove scattered in his 23 collections of poetry and four prose books. He lived in permanent exile and died in a strange land, but his poems are at home in the indestructible archive of our collective memory. |
The Daily Show Live From The White House
August 16, 2008By Dr Paul Craig Roberts | Information Clearing House, August 15, 2008
The Bush Regime imbeciles don’t know when to stop. With the world still rolling in laughter from John McCain’s claim that “in the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations,” the moronic US secretary of state declared: “This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed.”
This from Condi Rice who is “proud” of the Bush Regime’s invasion of Iraq.
This is not 1968. It is 40 years later, and roles have reversed. In the 21st century it is the United States that invades countries, occupies capitals, overthrows governments, and gets away with it.
The criminal Bush Regime has sent out its flunkies to huff and puff because Russia put its foot down against American hegemony on its border. Take your aggression elsewhere, the Russians said. We did not free constituent parts of our empire in order for them to become constituent parts of an American empire.
For years the Bush Regime has been fodder for the Daily Show. Condi Rice’s inane statement will keep the laughter rolling.
Kashmir repression rewards Hindu far right
August 16, 2008reports from India on the latest wave of repression in the Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir.
Socialist Worker, August 14, 2008
Kashmir activists clash with Indian security forces. (Abid Bhat | flickr)
AT LEAST 18 people were killed August 12 and13 by police and military bullets in the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir. Among them was a senior political leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), a coalition of various pro-independence and separatist, but also pro-Pakistani, organizations based in Kashmir.
The brutal attacks by security forces on Kashmiri activists have been extensively reported on, even by the mainstream media. On August 11, police and paramilitary forces opened fire on a nonviolent march by Kashmiris protesting the economic blockade of Kashmir by rioting Hindu mobs in Jammu. Five people, including Abdul Aziz, were killed, and according to The Hindu newspaper, some 230 more were injured, mostly by bullet wounds. The march to Muzaffarabad in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir was stopped by the Indian forces at the Line of Control (LoC) that serves as the de facto border between Indian- and Pakistani-controlled regions.
In an effort to snuff out any protests against the killing of Sheikh Aziz, a military curfew has been imposed on all of Indian-occupied Kashmir. In protests against these repressive measures, at least 13–and perhaps as many as 24–were killed August 12.
Kashmir is on fire–and the far-right Hindutva forces are cheering on.
At the tip of the current crisis sits a controversial land transfer deal involving a Hindu pilgrimage site in the middle of Muslim-majority Kashmir. According to an article by Gautam Navlakha in the Economic and Political Weekly, the pilgrimage known as Amarnath yatra was, until recently, a little-known journey undertaken by small numbers of Shaivite (worshippers of Shiva) Hindus. As recently as 1989, only 12,000 pilgrims–in a country of nearly a billion Hindus–undertook the pilgrimage.
Earlier this year, in a move that could only be considered provocative and insensitive towards the Kashmiris, the state government decided to legitimize the demand for Hindu control of the Amarnath yatra by granting nearly 40 hectares (100 acres) of land around the Amarnath Cave to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB).
As Navlakha writes: “The origins of the conflagration in June in Kashmir on forest land allocation for construction of facilities for the Amarnath yatra lie in open state promotion of the pilgrimage. The yatra has caused considerable damage to the economy and ecology of the area. The high-handed actions of the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board only aggravated the situation.”
The land transfer agreement was merely the latest in a series of land grabs by Hindu organizations led by the SASB. As Navlakha pointed out, “The SASB runs a virtually parallel administration and acts as a ‘sovereign body’ promoting Hindu interests, increasing the number of pilgrims from 12,000 in 1989 to over 400,000 in 2007 and extending the period of the pilgrimage from 15 days to two and half months.”
Kashmiris rightly protested against this blatant act of state promotion of a specific religion in their state, as well as the damage to the ecology of the area. Soon after, the state’s government, a coalition involving the Congress Party and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), collapsed. The PDP, a business-dominated Kashmiri party, joined the protests and withdrew from the government.
On July 1, the governor, under pressure, revoked the order transferring land to the SASB. As if on cue, Hindu activists in Jammu, which is part of Kashmir state, began protesting. On July 7, the streets of Jammu exploded, ignited by the cadres of the Hindu right. As mobs rioted in the streets demanding the “restoration” of the land to the Hindus, some of the ideologues of the Hindu right took to the airwaves in the name of the “oppressed” and “neglected” Hindus of Jammu. Others proclaimed, in Orwellian fashion, that this was a “Hindu intifada.”
Behind it all, however, was the organizational power of the forces of the Hindu extreme right, including the RSS, the Shiv Sena, the VHP and others. The Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP), has launched a three-day “nationwide agitation” to support the demands of the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti (SASS), which is a front for the Hindu right.
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DURING THE weeks of riots that followed in Jammu, the police had showed remarkable restraint, which stands in sharp contrast to their current murderous and trigger-happy approach to Kashmiri Muslims. Cops stood by while Hindu mobs wielding crude weapons laid siege to Kashmir, blockading the Jammu-Srinagar national highway and choking off the movement of goods into and out of the valley.
A letter of protest addressed to the United Nations by prominent progressive scholars and academics from across the world rightly points out that about
95-97 percent of the population of the [Kashmir] Valley is Muslim, while Muslims are a minority in India. This has made Kashmir the target of increasingly aggressive campaigns by Hindu nationalist groups since 1947, despite guarantees of autonomy written into the Indian Constitution…To a population suffering the effects of 19 years of armed conflict, the economic crisis caused by the blockade comes as the last straw.
Kashmiri activists responded to this economic blockade with various forms of nonviolent civil disobedience. Activists like Yasin Malik, chairman of the independence-seeking, secular-democratic Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), began an indefinite hunger strike. Others, led by Kashmiri businesses, the APHC, and the PDP called for a mass march across the Line of Control and to Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The march took place on August 11, and it was then that security forces killed Sheikh Abdul Aziz and four others.
While Indian newspaper editorials on August 12 vilified the marchers as “extremists” and “separatists,” TV news outlets were showing live video of police firing indiscriminately into groups of unarmed protestors at Aziz’s funeral procession. Tens of thousands of men and women also protested across the Kashmir Valley against the imposition of a military curfew–the first Kashmir-wide curfew in 13 years. They too were fired upon.
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THE CRISIS is unfolding too rapidly for anyone to be able to predict its future direction. The Hindu right has begun to term this as a Jammu vs. Kashmir issue. The two regions, they claim, have disparate interests, and ought to be separated. At the same time, by demanding a Hindu takeover of the Amarnath yatra, the right wants to assert the (Hindu) Indian nation’s sovereignty over Kashmir. The demand for bifurcation of the state is a calculated effort to stir up communalism, while the agitation over Amarnath is a carefully planned nationalist and chauvinist tactic.
The Hindu right, in other words, has lit a new communalist fire that it hopes to fan into a nationalist conflagration ahead of next year’s general elections. The sheer numbers of protesters on the streets, both in Jammu and in Kashmir, indicate that the crisis will not be resolved any time soon. But the crisis does come at an opportune time for a newly resurgent Hindu fundamentalist right wing in India, as well as for the beleaguered Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who’s clinging to power amid an effort to impeach him. Musharraf may well try to use the political crisis to try to escape his predicament.
Meanwhile, the main left-wing parties in India offer little by way of an alternative. An editorial in the Communist Party of India-Marxist newspaper, People’s Democracy, draws a simplistic equation between the Hindutva forces in Jammu and “extremist elements” in Kashmir. The editorial goes on to warn that “such a conflagration…undermines the unity and integrity of India” and puts its “national security” at risk.
The editorial makes no mention, of course, of the Kashmiris’ right to determine their own future without any interference from the Indian state and military. The editorial calls for a “process of dialogue” with the SASS, the Hindu organization spearheading the Jammu protests, while the only mention of Kashmiri activists is the passing reference to “extremists.” Small wonder that the left finds little traction in the Kashmir Valley, while the right succeeds in agitating on the streets of Jammu.
While the electoral left hedges its bets, it’s critical that progressive activists in India extend and display their solidarity with the people of Kashmir–and stand up to the communalist ideologues who currently dominate the debate.
Protests continue in Kashmir
August 16, 2008
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ARIF SHAFI WANI | Greater Kashmir
Srinagar, Aug 15: It seemed all roads of the City Friday led to Lal Chowk where thousands of people hoisted green flags on the historic Clock Tower forcing the otherwise trigger-happy paramilitary CRPF troopers and policemen to flee from the spot.
It was a complete reversal of roles at the Clock Tower as in the morning senior CRPF officers had hoisted Tricolor there, recited National anthem and distributed sweets among troopers to mark the Independence Day.
Hours later thousands of youth from various parts of the city assembled near the Clock Tower, shouted anti-CRPF and pro-freedom slogans and hoisted green flags on it. The CRPF troopers on duty nervously looked on.
As more people kept pouring on the spot, the CRPF troopers fearing trouble took positions behind their armored vehicle. Sensing the aggressive mood of the protesters, the CRPF troopers later ran away from the spot.
In the meantime, the senior superintendent of police, Srinagar, Syed Afadul Mujtaba, reached the spot with large number of policemen. As the cops, laced with batons and tear smoke guns, led by the SSP gradually walked towards the protesters, they abruptly stopped after hundreds more joined the protests.
Emotions ran high when the angry protesters started to move towards the cops. However, some elders among the protesters formed a human chain to prevent clashes with the police. To prevent the situation from escalation, the SSP ordered his men to move away from the spot. Before dispersing, some cops and CRPF troopers took pictures of the procession.
When the procession gradually dispersed through Budshah Chowk, a group of youth formed a ring, huddled and shouted pro-freedom and anti-CRPF slogans.
“The Indian troops have been hoisting Indian flags on the clock tower on January 26 and August 15. Unfurling green flags on the tower is our symbolic way to register our protests against illegal occupation of Kashmir,” they said.
The CRPF troopers residing in a nearby building peeped through the windows as the procession dispersed. After an hour, the CRPF troopers appeared near the tower. As deafening sounds of tear smoke shells from the nearby Habba Kadal area rattled the air, the CRPF troopers watched the green flags being waved by the strong evening breeze.
Pakistan: Musharraf balks at plan for ‘graceful exit’ before impeachment
August 16, 2008Negotiations between the Pakistani government and President Pervez Musharraf, aimed at securing his exit from office before impeachment, are stalling with only days left before proceedings begin in parliament.
The coalition government had hoped to pressure the president to quit, before the messy and possibly dangerous impeachment process formally starts. US and British diplomats have also tried to mediate a compromise to allow Musharraf to “exit gracefully”.
Once a motion is moved in parliament, which is scheduled for early next week, it will be difficult for the administration to let him go. But he is refusing to go down without a fight. He insists that he be given indemnity from any future prosecution and that he will live in Pakistan – terms the government will not meet. While an exit deal is still the most likely outcome, negotiations are going down to the wire.
“We’re hitting a wall now and we’re so close [to impeachment proceedings],” said one senior member of the coalition. “It’s this commando thing of his. His living here would be like a red rag to a bull. He wants to be photographed playing golf and taking it easy.”
The coalition wants Musharraf to leave Pakistan, for at least a year or two, until emotions cool down. In particular, Nawaz Sharif, a coalition leader who was thrown out of office in the coup staged by Musharraf in 1999, would find it personally and politically difficult to have the president in the country, safe from prosecution. The president’s house, which is still under construction, is located just outside Islamabad, so he would be a constant presence.
“Basically, Musharraf is being stubborn; the two sides are playing brinkmanship,” said Najam Sethi, editor of Pakistan’s Daily Times newspaper. “Nawaz Sharif is sitting there, sharpening his knife.”
Musharraf has offered to leave Pakistan for some time, but only after three to six months. He is adamant that, unlike Sharif and the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, he will not be seen to be fleeing the country as soon as he is out of office.
Musharraf’s legal adviser, Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, went on a national television programme to suggest that the impeachment proceedings would drag on for months.
“The president has all the options, constitutional and political,” said Pirzada. “All institutions will be seriously damaged [by impeachment], perhaps beyond repair.”
The president’s aides boasted that he would defend himself in the proceedings, not resign. Sharif appears keen to humiliate the president but the prospect of a prolonged trial is what the senior member of the coalition, the Pakistan People’s party, wants to avoid.
The army, Pakistan’s most powerful institution, has said that it would now stay out of politics but it is likely to be appalled by the impeachment proceedings against a former army chief.
“He [Musharraf] may think it is better to go down as president and hope the army bails him out,” said Ikram Sehgal, a political analyst and friend of the president. “This situation is shot with a lot of danger.”
Hope for audacity: Unless something happens, John McCain will win.
August 15, 2008by Ted Rall | Smirking Chimp, August 15, 2008
NEW YORK–Unless something happens, John McCain will win.
Of course, “unless something happens” is the biggest qualifier in the world, more than adequate to CYA me should Obama prevail. It’s politics. There are almost three months. Odds are something will happen.
Still, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Obama’s electoral handicaps–his racial identification and short resume–should have easily been eclipsed by Bush’s–er, McCain’s well-stocked aviary of albatrosses. McCain was and remains short of money. His campaign organization is a mess. Republican bosses are unenthusiastic, both about his prospects and about the direction he would take his party should he win. He has aligned himself with the most unpopular aspect of the wildly unpopular outgoing administration, the Iraq War. At a time when economically insecure voters are staring down the barrel of a recession-cum-depression, McCain promises more of the same–no help is on the way. And he’s old. Sooo painfully I-don’t-use-the-Internet old.
What is it that has the politerati betting on a McCain Administration? Historical precedent. During most presidential election years, Republicans tend to surge in the last few months of the campaign. For a Democrat to win in November, he must have a comfortable lead in the polls at this stage in the game.
The classic example is 1976, Jimmy Carter led incumbent Gerald Ford by 33 percentage points. Ford was hobbled by Watergate, a recession, and his pardon of Nixon, as well as his dismal performance in the debates, where he claimed that the Soviet Union wasn’t dominating eastern Europe. Nevertheless, Ford closed the lead, losing to Carter by just two points. This follows the pattern, albeit by a wider margin than in most elections.
In recent years, the countervailing example is the 1992 contest between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, the incumbent. After the Democratic National Convention in August, Clinton was only ahead of Bush by a few points. Clinton won, but only because independent Ross Perot, a businessman with libertarian leanings, attracted so many votes from registered Republicans.
Perot ran again in 1996, but was less of a factor. So the old pattern reasserted itself. Clinton led Bob Dole by roughly 20 percent in mid-August, but won by eight. Republicans always close the gap.
It happened again in 2000. In mid-August, Al Gore had an eight-point lead ahead of George W. Bush. Gore won the popular vote by 0.6 percent.
If you’re a Democrat, being ahead isn’t enough. In 2004 John Kerry was ahead in mid-August–but by just two points. Bush was an incumbent with potentially grave weaknesses–he hadn’t found Osama or Iraq’s supposed WMDs, and he was already losing the war–yet the pattern reasserted itself. Bush gained four points, prevailing in the popular vote by 2.4 percent. (I won’t comment on the electoral vote, aside from mentioning that it was stolen in the key state of Ohio.)
If Barack Obama ends up beating John McCain, he will have done so with the smallest August lead for a Democrat in memory–three points, within the statistical margin of error for tracking polls. A columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times argues that’s good news: “Out of the gate,” writes Carol Marin, “the thoroughbred who leads too early and by too great a margin is more often than not the vulnerable one, the one in danger of losing it all to the horse who strategically holds back, waits, and then thunders in the final furlongs to finish first.” Nice metaphor, but presidential campaigns aren’t horse races. They’re boxing matches. The last man standing wins.
Unless Obama starts swinging soon, he’s done for. Insiders are tut-tutting over Ohio, an important swing state this year. Given the decade-long recession and voter anger there–not to mention a significant African-American population–Obama ought to be kicking McCain six ways to Sunday. But the two candidates are neck and neck in fundraising. “For McCain to even be competitive is surprising to me,” says Chris Duncan, chairman of the political science department at the University of Dayton. “I don’t think it’s that he’s doing better than expected. I think it’s that Obama is doing worse than he would expect.”
Vincent Hutchings of the University of Michigan wonders if the Obama campaign is counting too much on young voters. “Is he generating enough enthusiasm to excite people who lack a formal education and are disproportionately young, and not likely to vote?” he asks.
As I argued in my 2004 polemic “Wake Up! You’re Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right,” American voters feel besieged. At home, they see prices rising while their salaries get gnawed away by inflation. From a foreign affairs standpoint, they see a world full of terrorists and hostile rivals–Iran, North Korea, Russia, China–out to get them. As a psychologist would say, the fact that there isn’t much truth to this perception doesn’t make it less real.
Americans want their presidents to be a National Daddy–an ornery cuss willing to err on the side of kicking some innocent schlub’s ass to protect them.
Last time around, in 2004, John Kerry repeatedly turned the other jowl as Bush and his proxies pounded him with the now-notorious Swift Boat ads. Of course, whether Kerry’s Vietnam service rose to the level of heroism was debatable. What wasn’t was that Bush weaseled out of going at all. But Kerry never responded. If the guy won’t fight for himself, voters asked themselves, how will he fight for me?
Obama has already traveled too far down the Path of the Kerry, repeatedly voting for funding a war his entire candidacy is predicated upon opposing, not to mention government spying on U.S. citizens and, most recently, the embarrassingly cheesy spectacle of endorsing offshore oil drilling. I mean, really: Do any right-wing conservatives believe he really means any of this stuff?
If he is to make history by salvaging his campaign from its current neck-and-neck status with McCain, Obama will have to rally the Democrats’ liberal base by throwing them some red meat: immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, socialized medicine and a sweeping credit crisis bailout plan (all interest rates legally reset to prime) would be a start. He’ll also need to beat up McCain (fairly) for agreeing with Bush about just about everything–and pledge to hold the Bushies responsible for their crimes.
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Indian Security forces open fire in Srinagar, 21 injured
August 15, 2008The Indian Express, August 15, 2008
Srinagar, – At least 21 people, including a journalist, were injured when CRPF personnel opened fire on a group of protesters in Habba Kadal area in Srinagar, leading to a stampede like situation, official sources said.
CRPF personnel opened fire when thousands of protesters, demanding removal of the paramilitary force from the area and deployment of local police, refused to call off their stir.
Two persons with bullet injuries were shifted to the nearby SMHS hospital while a cameraman of a private television channel was among the others injured in teargas shelling and resultant stampede, the sources said.
The residents of the area have been on a sit-in near the Habbakadal bridge since yesterday after CRPF personnel beat two youth and injured them severely, they said.
The protesters took part in the Friday prayers on the road and vowed not to call off their dharna till the CRPF personnel were removed from the area.
So far, 22 people have been killed and over 700, including nearly 200 police and paramilitary personnel, injured in firing by security forces and clashes in the Valley since Monday. On Thursday, one person died in CRPF firing at Safakadal area.
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On the Brink of a New Cold War?
August 17, 2008The conflict between Russia and the pro-US regime of Georgia has been a decisive turning point in Russia’s relations with Washington and has taken us to the brink of a new Cold War.
For the first time in almost twenty years, the West faces a resurgent Russia that has put the trauma of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the resulting chaos behind. Today’s Russia is run by a younger leadership with autocratic efficiency, confident because of its vast energy resources and determined to resist American hegemony, by force if necessary. The crisis in Georgia goes beyond the Caucasus region. Its roots lie in America’s overwhelming ambition to expand and its tendency to make colossal miscalculations under the Bush presidency.
It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth. Behind the fog of disinformation coming from Washington, London, Tbilisi and, indeed, Moscow, the fact remains that the Russian invasion came after Georgia’s bombardment of the breakaway region of South Ossetia. The vast majority of residents in the enclave are Russian citizens and Moscow had deployed its peacekeepers there. Many experts in Europe are depressed over the events in Georgia and blame hardliners in the Bush administration for provoking the Georgian President, Mikheil Saakasvili, to adopt the aggressive posture that has brought this disaster.
What we see in Georgia is a classic proxy war between Russia and America, which has become heavily involved in the republic since a popular revolt in late 2003 ousted Eduard Shevardnadze from power, with Western help. Today, US troops occupy Georgian military bases of the Soviet era, on the southern fringe of Russia. America provides weapons, training and intelligence to the Georgian armed forces. America’s involvement, which began under the umbrella of the ‘war on terror’ after 9/11, has since become much more. If President Bush had his way, Georgia would be granted membership of NATO as part of the alliance’s expansion around Russia.
The impoverished former Soviet republic is, in effect, a pawn in the broader US design to encircle Russia. It is also located in a region which has some of the largest energy reserves in the world. For the Kremlin, the prospect of NATO coming so close to its southern borders is a step too far. Fortunately, some NATO members, most notably France and Germany, also do not see Georgia either as a full democracy or a stable country. And many in the alliance and the European Union have doubts about Saakasvili’s ability to take mature decisions.
In an era when America has assumed the right to launch pre-emptive strikes, it is difficult to see the Kremlin behaving differently. The prospect of Georgia joining NATO, which might deploy nuclear weapons on Georgian territory, is simply not acceptable to Russia. Remember the Cuban missile crisis of 1962? At the time, Russian nuclear missiles, deployed just 90 miles from the coast of Florida, brought America and the Soviet Union close to a disastrous war and the Soviets were forced to back down. Does the White House not know history? Or do the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration not care?
Saakasvili’s decision to order the bombardment of the Russian-majority South Ossetia gave the Kremlin a convenient cover to invade Georgia, just as the Bush administration had found it expedient to invade Iraq in March 2003 based on claims that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction, which were never found. Russia is playing for bigger stakes now just as America did in Iraq a few years ago.
About one-fifth of Georgia has fallen under Russian military occupation and the Kremlin leadership seems to be in no mood to entertain the idea of Georgia’s territorial integrity in any negotiations sponsored by the West. There are daily condemnations of Moscow in the Western capitals. However, the West is powerless to prevent the Russians doing anything they want in Georgia.
This US-Russia proxy war in the Caucasus region has created a serious humanitarian crisis. President Saakasvili, the pro-US leader of Georgia, has been humiliated. Its chances of joining NATO are negligible after the latest events. They have demonstrated that the West cannot and will not intervene militarily to protect Georgia from the Russian threat. The most important clause in the NATO constitution says that an attack on one member-state will be regarded as an attack on the whole alliance, which will use all possible means to protect the member-state under threat. NATO’s inability to defend Georgia now is a defeat for the West. It is difficult to see how the alliance will accept the republic as a member.
The description by President Bush of the Russian action as ‘disproportionate and unacceptable’ is laughable in the context of America’s own conduct in its foreign wars in recent years. Washington should be more worried about the damage the crisis has done to its authority in the world. Diplomacy was never a strong point of the Bush administration. The blunders in Washington and Tbilisi have made the conduct of relations with Russia much more difficult. They may also have created other problems for the next occupant of the White House, for an increasing number of countries around the world may begin look to Russia now that it has risen again.
-Deepak Tripathi, a former BBC foreign correspondent and editor, is now a researcher and an author. He is writing a book on the Bush presidency. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: http://deepaktripathi.wordpress.com.
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Tags:disinformation, NATO expansion, President Bush, President Saakashvile, Russia, South Ossetia, The Georgia conflict, US troops
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