Archive for August, 2008

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GEORGIA: Israeli Arms Sales Raise New Concerns

August 14, 2008

By Peter Hirschberg | Inter Press Service

JERUSALEM, Aug 12 – With the eruption of fighting between Russia and Georgia, Israel has found itself in an awkward position as a result of its arms sales to Georgia, caught between its friendly relations with Georgia and its fear that the continued sale of weaponry will spark Russian retribution in the form of increased arms sales to Iran and Syria.

After fighting broke out late last week between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Israel’s foreign ministry over the weekend recommended suspending the sale of all weapons and defence-related equipment to Georgia, the daily Haaretz newspaper reported.

The paper quoted an unnamed senior official saying that Israel needed “to be very careful and sensitive these days. The Russians are selling many arms to Iran and Syria and there is no need to offer them an excuse to sell even more advanced weapons.”

Israel’s immediate concern is that Russia will proceed with the sale of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, which would help it defend its nuclear installations from aerial attack. Israel, like the U.S., believes that Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at developing a bomb, and Israeli leaders have refused to rule out the possibility of a pre-emptive strike aimed at derailing Iran’s nuclear aspirations.

Israel recently conducted a major aerial exercise over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece that was widely viewed as a rehearsal for a possible strike against Iran’s nuclear installations. But with the U.S. and Europe resorting to diplomatic pressure in the form of sanctions to deter Iran, Israel is loathe to anger Russia, which until now has opposed harsher sanctions on Tehran.

Israel’s relations with Georgia have been close, partly because there is a large Georgian Jewish community in Israel. In recent years, ties have also taken on a military dimension, with military industries in Israel supplying Georgia with some 200 million dollars worth of equipment since 2000. This has included remotely piloted planes, rockets, night-vision equipment, other electronic systems and training by former senior Israeli officers.

“Israel should be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers,” Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili, who is Jewish, told Israel’s Army Radio in Hebrew shortly after the fighting erupted.

Israel is not a major supplier of arms to Georgia, with the U.S. and France supplying Tbilisi with most of its weaponry. But the arms transfers have attracted media attention partly because of the role played by some high-profile Israeli figures, including former Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo, who conducted business in Georgia on behalf of Israel Military Industries.

According to media reports, Brig. Gen Gal Hirsch, a senior commander in the 2006 Lebanon war who resigned after the release of a highly critical report on the way the war was conducted, served as an adviser to Georgian security forces.

Further attention was drawn to the Israel-Georgia arms trade earlier this year when a Russian jet shot down an Israeli-made drone being operated by the Georgians.

Even though weapons transfers were modest in scope, Russian diplomats began increasingly relaying to Israel their annoyance over its military aid to Georgia, including the special forces training provided by security experts. Israel decided about a year ago to limit military exports to defensive equipment and training.

New contracts weren’t approved as the arms sales were scaled back. Georgia’s request for 200 advanced Israeli-made Merkava tanks, for example, was turned down.

There were reports in Israel that the sale of the tanks didn’t go through because of a disagreement over the commission that was to be paid as part of the deal. But Amos Yaron, the former director-general of the defence ministry, insisted it had to do with “security-diplomatic considerations” — a clear reference to the sensitivity of the arms sales to Georgia. Israel, Yaron added, didn’t want “to harm Russian interests too much.”

Asked about the motivation to initially engage in the sale of weaponry to Georgia despite concerns it might anger Russia, Yaron replied: “We did see that there was potential for a conflagration in the region but Georgia is a friendly state, it’s supported by the U.S., and so it was difficult to refuse.”

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Pakistan celebrates amid tensions

August 14, 2008
Al Jazeera, August 14, 2008

A suicide attack on Wednesday in Lahore left at least seven people dead [AFP]

Pakistan is observing its 61st independence day amid tight security following a sucide blast overnight that killed at least seven people.

The celebration started at dawn with a 31-gun salute in Islamabad, the capital, on Thursday, and will continue throughout the day.

Yousuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister, played a major role by raising the country’s flag and reading his independence message.

But behind the jubilation, pressure is mounting on Pervez Musharraf, the president, to resign.

In an apparent appeal to his political opponents who are preparing to impeach him, Musharraf called for political reconciliation in Pakistan.

Musharraf told a function on the eve of independence day that there was a “conspiracy” to weaken the country.

“It’s my appeal that we should adopt a reconciliatory approach so that stability should return,” he said.

“Because if there is stability we can fight terrorism, if we have a strong economy we can fight terrorism, and we should all put aside our differences and work to make Pakistan strong.”

Gilani, in his independence day speech, also said that ” the country must defeat extremisim to survive”.

“Pakistan is passing through a difficult phase. We have to fight back the challenges of terrorism and extremism,” he said.

“The war against terrorism and extremism is the war of our own survival. With the people’s co-operation we will fight this war and ensure the government’s writ at all costs.”

Vote of confidence

Musharraf’s appeal came hours after legislators in southern Sindh province became the third of Pakistan’s four provincial assemblies to approve a motion calling on Musharraf to face a vote of confidence or else be impeached.

Coalition leaders Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, the slain former prime minister, and Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister, said last Thursday that they would seek the president’s impeachment.

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said that the key question is where the government is headed.

“While there are celebrations … song and dance is happening … violence continues in the tribal areas, and the government, despite the Musharraf issue, is under pressure to control and ultimately end the violence,” he said.

Syed Mohammed Tarik Pirzada, a political analyst, told Al Jazeera that the coalition has never been more united against Musharraf.

“The army which was his real power base cannot support him anymore because he has become a liability,” he said.

“Also among the masses he is unpopular and has no credibility left.”

Continued violence

Amid the uncertainty over Musharraf’s political future, there has been no let-up in the violence.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a police station in Lahore on Wednesday during preparations for the independence-day celebrations, killing at least seven people, police said.

The blast hit a crowd of policemen standing guard at the station on the outskirts of the eastern city, witnesses said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but security officials said they believed the blast was probably in revenge for an offensive against pro-Taliban fighters in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

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This is a tale of US expansion not Russian aggression

August 14, 2008

War in the Caucasus is as much the product of an American imperial drive as local conflicts. It’s likely to be a taste of things to come

Seumas Milne

The Guardian, Thursday August 14 2008

The outcome of six grim days of bloodshed in the Caucasus has triggered an outpouring of the most nauseating hypocrisy from western politicians and their captive media. As talking heads thundered against Russian imperialism and brutal disproportionality, US vice-president Dick Cheney, faithfully echoed by Gordon Brown and David Miliband, declared that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered”. George Bush denounced Russia for having “invaded a sovereign neighbouring state” and threatening “a democratic government”. Such an action, he insisted, “is unacceptable in the 21st century”.

Could these by any chance be the leaders of the same governments that in 2003 invaded and occupied – along with Georgia, as luck would have it – the sovereign state of Iraq on a false pretext at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives? Or even the two governments that blocked a ceasefire in the summer of 2006 as Israel pulverised Lebanon’s infrastructure and killed more than a thousand civilians in retaliation for the capture or killing of five soldiers?

You’d be hard put to recall after all the fury over Russian aggression that it was actually Georgia that began the war last Thursday with an all-out attack on South Ossetia to “restore constitutional order” – in other words, rule over an area it has never controlled since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nor, amid the outrage at Russian bombardments, have there been much more than the briefest references to the atrocities committed by Georgian forces against citizens it claims as its own in South Ossetia’s capital Tskhinvali. Several hundred civilians were killed there by Georgian troops last week, along with Russian soldiers operating under a 1990s peace agreement: “I saw a Georgian soldier throw a grenade into a basement full of women and children,” one Tskhinvali resident, Saramat Tskhovredov, told reporters on Tuesday.

Might it be because Georgia is what Jim Murphy, Britain’s minister for Europe, called a “small beautiful democracy”. Well it’s certainly small and beautiful, but both the current president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and his predecessor came to power in western-backed coups, the most recent prettified as a “Rose revolution”. Saakashvili was then initially rubber-stamped into office with 96% of the vote before establishing what the International Crisis Group recently described as an “increasingly authoritarian” government, violently cracking down on opposition dissent and independent media last November. “Democratic” simply seems to mean “pro-western” in these cases.

The long-running dispute over South Ossetia – as well as Abkhazia, the other contested region of Georgia – is the inevitable consequence of the breakup of the Soviet Union. As in the case of Yugoslavia, minorities who were happy enough to live on either side of an internal boundary that made little difference to their lives feel quite differently when they find themselves on the wrong side of an international state border.

Such problems would be hard enough to settle through negotiation in any circumstances. But add in the tireless US promotion of Georgia as a pro-western, anti-Russian forward base in the region, its efforts to bring Georgia into Nato, the routing of a key Caspian oil pipeline through its territory aimed at weakening Russia’s control of energy supplies, and the US-sponsored recognition of the independence of Kosovo – whose status Russia had explicitly linked to that of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – and conflict was only a matter of time.

The CIA has in fact been closely involved in Georgia since the Soviet collapse. But under the Bush administration, Georgia has become a fully fledged US satellite. Georgia’s forces are armed and trained by the US and Israel. It has the third-largest military contingent in Iraq – hence the US need to airlift 800 of them back to fight the Russians at the weekend. Saakashvili’s links with the neoconservatives in Washington are particularly close: the lobbying firm headed by US Republican candidate John McCain’s top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has been paid nearly $900,000 by the Georgian government since 2004.

But underlying the conflict of the past week has also been the Bush administration’s wider, explicit determination to enforce US global hegemony and prevent any regional challenge, particularly from a resurgent Russia. That aim was first spelled out when Cheney was defence secretary under Bush’s father, but its full impact has only been felt as Russia has begun to recover from the disintegration of the 1990s.

Over the past decade, Nato’s relentless eastward expansion has brought the western military alliance hard up against Russia’s borders and deep into former Soviet territory. American military bases have spread across eastern Europe and central Asia, as the US has helped install one anti-Russian client government after another through a series of colour-coded revolutions. Now the Bush administration is preparing to site a missile defence system in eastern Europe transparently targeted at Russia.

By any sensible reckoning, this is not a story of Russian aggression, but of US imperial expansion and ever tighter encirclement of Russia by a potentially hostile power. That a stronger Russia has now used the South Ossetian imbroglio to put a check on that expansion should hardly come as a surprise. What is harder to work out is why Saakashvili launched last week’s attack and whether he was given any encouragement by his friends in Washington.

If so, it has spectacularly backfired, at savage human cost. And despite Bush’s attempts to talk tough yesterday, the war has also exposed the limits of US power in the region. As long as Georgia proper’s independence is respected – best protected by opting for neutrality – that should be no bad thing. Unipolar domination of the world has squeezed the space for genuine self-determination and the return of some counterweight has to be welcome. But the process of adjustment also brings huge dangers. If Georgia had been a member of Nato, this week’s conflict would have risked a far sharper escalation. That would be even more obvious in the case of Ukraine – which yesterday gave a warning of the potential for future confrontation when its pro-western president threatened to restrict the movement of Russian ships in and out of their Crimean base in Sevastopol. As great power conflict returns, South Ossetia is likely to be only a taste of things to come.

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

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Jewish International Opposition Statement Against Attack on Iran

August 13, 2008

Information Clearing House, August 12, 2008

Efforts to beat the drums of war for an attack on Iran’s nuclear reactor facilities are promoted in both the USA and Israel scenes. The recent New York Times opinion piece of July 18th, written by the Israeli historian Benny Morris, serves to consolidate those political forces. The Jewish opposition here expresses our outrage in order to forestall this horrendous proposal.

That clamour for war with Iran has met not only popular opposition but also runs counter to the quiet diplomacy that has engaged Iran in ongoing relations with the UN nuclear agency, as well as economic trade talks with the USA itself. Israel is also committed to a cease-fire that has held now for a month’s time, to the relief of both the populations of Israel and Gaza. In light of the developing political atmosphere of reason and negotiations, the militarist mindset has pumped up its rationale for war attempting to create the preconditions for a further war. Morris seeks to fabricate such prior conditions arguing,

“They are likely to use any bomb they build, both because of ideology and because of fear of Israeli nuclear pre-emption. Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb is probable. The alternative is letting Tehran have its bomb. In either case, a Middle Eastern nuclear holocaust would be in the cards.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18morris.html

This promotion of inevitability plays on Jewish and Israeli memory of the Nazi Holocaust in order to garner any and every source of support for an Israel military strike against Iran, provoking a reaction and leading to a further war by drawing in the USA. This is particularly deplorable in view of the fact that 16 US intelligence agencies concluded that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program and has not had one for five years.

We extol the heroic courage of Israel’s nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, joining our voices to his in condemnation of Israel’s illegal stockpile of nuclear warheads and support the call for a nuclear-free Middle East.

The mindset calling for a war of mutual annihilation as a solution to security is astoundingly self-contradictory. Only the fabrication of a Nazi-like threat seeks to provide any credibility to such a call to war, much like the rationale for occupation that perceives a Palestinian plot to drive Jews into the sea. The reference to Iranian ideology (Islam) as the source of confrontation does not stand up to scrutiny, since the political challenge to Israel by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is not a call for extermination, despite any mistranslation.

We seek security for all concerned by affirming the right of all to security. While we lend no credibility to the prospect of an inevitable conflict, we nonetheless object to the hysteria promoted by the Iran-bashers who are now desperate in their repeated false starts to create another unnecessary war. The attempt to oblige Iran to comply with Security Council resolutions loses its legal, diplomatic and political force as the United States and Israel consistently ignore UN diplomacy and World Court decisions, relevant to the question of Palestine. We call upon all opposed to a military confrontation with Iran to write their governmental representatives demanding that the State of Israel subject its nuclear facilities to international inspection and sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) as has Iran, rather than issue threats of war.

Continued . . .

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‘Where Are the Weapons of Mass Destruction?’

August 13, 2008

Truthdig, Aug 11, 2008

AP photo / Bullit Marquez

A U.S. soldier checks the radiation level of a canister that was looted during the invasion from the nuclear facility in Tuwaitha, Iraq. A Harris poll released July 21, 2006, found that 50 percent of U.S. respondents said they believed Iraq had nuclear arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003.

By Scott Ritter

In the past two decades I have had the opportunity to participate in certain experiences pertaining to my work that fall into the category of “no one will ever believe this.” I usually file these away, calling on them only when events transpire that breathe new life into these extraordinary memories. Ron Suskind, a noted and accomplished journalist, has written a new book, “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism,” in which he claims that the “White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush [Tahir Jalil Habbush, the director of the Mukhabarat], to Saddam [Hussein], backdated to July 1, 2001.” According to Suskind, the letter said that “9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq—thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq.”

This is an extraordinary charge, which both the White House and the CIA vehemently deny. Suskind outlines a scenario which dates to the summer and fall of 2003, troubled times for the Bush administration as its case for invading Iraq was unraveling. I cannot independently confirm Suskind’s findings, but I, too, heard a similar story, from a source I trust implicitly. In my former line of work, intelligence, it was understood that establishing patterns of behavior was important. Past patterns of behavior tend to repeat themselves, and are thus of interest when assessing a set of seemingly separate circumstances around the same source. Of course, given the nature of the story line, it is better if I introduce this information within its proper context.

In the summer of 2003 I was approached by Harper’s Magazine to do a story on the work of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), a CIA-sponsored operation investigating Saddam’s weapons-of-mass-destruction programs in the aftermath of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. David Kay, a former International Atomic Energy Agency inspector who served briefly in Iraq in 1991 and 1992, was at that time the head of the ISG. By October 2003 the group had prepared a so-called interim report, which claimed to have eyewitness evidence of Iraqi WMD-related activities prior to the invasion in March. The key to the ISG’s interim report was the testimony of “cooperative sources,” Iraqis of unstated pedigree purportedly providing the ISG with unverifiable information. With one exception—an Iraqi nuclear scientist who had been killed by coalition forces—David Kay failed to provide the name or WMD association of any of the sources he used for his report, making any effort to verify their assertions impossible. Many of the senior Iraqis who had openly contradicted Kay’s report were, and still are to this day, muzzled behind the walls of an American prison in Baghdad. But there was another group of Iraqis, the former scientists and technicians involved in Iraq’s WMD programs who were known to have been interviewed by the ISG, and who were released back into Iraqi society. These scientists held the key to deciphering the vague pronouncements of the ISG interim report, and could help to distinguish between fact and fiction.

Continued . . .

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Anti-Muslim racism leveled at Sami Al-Arian

August 13, 2008

Nicole Colson looks the government’s latest outrage against Dr. Sami Al-Arian, who has spent over five years in prison despite never having been convicted of a crime.

Socialist Worker, August 13, 2008

AN OVERZEALOUS federal prosecutor is proving that anti-Muslim racism is at the heart of the ongoing prosecution of Dr. Sami Al-Arian.

What you can do

On August 13, activists in Los Angeles are planning a “Free Dr. Sami Al-Arian” protest and vigil at 5 p.m. at the downtown Federal Building, 300 North Los Angeles St. Sponsors include Al-Awda, the American Friends Service Committee, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the International Socialist Organization and many others. Call 323-691-5283 for information.

Visit the Free Sami Al-Arian Web site to get regular updates about his case and learn more about what you can do to protest his continued imprisonment.

You can send donations to help the Al-Arian family defray the costs of more than five years of legal defense to: Liberty Defense Fund, P.O. Box 1211, 24525 E. Welches Road, Welches, OR 97067.

The documentary film USA v. Al-Arian can be viewed on the Internet at the LinkTV Web site.

Al-Arian is a former University of South Florida professor who has been imprisoned for the past five and a half years–despite never being convicted of a single crime–after the government accused him of using an Islamic think tank and a Muslim school and charity as a cover for raising funds to finance “terrorism.”

Though the Bush administration claimed that prosecuting Al-Arian was an essential part of the “war on terror” here at home, after a six-month trial that the government spent more than $50 million on, a Florida jury in 2006 refused to find Al-Arian guilty of a single count.

Facing the prospect of a lengthy retrial and further separation from his family, however, Al-Arian agreed to plead guilty to a single count of the least-serious charge against him in exchange for what was supposed to be a minor additional sentence and voluntary deportation.

Instead, Gordon Kromberg, the assistant U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, had Al-Arian moved to that state to try to force his testimony in an investigation of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)–in defiance of an agreement with Florida prosecutors, recorded in court transcripts, that Al-Arian would be exempt from future testimony.

Sami Al-Arian continues to languish in prison after more than five years (usavsalarian.com)Sami Al-Arian continues to languish in prison after more than five years (usavsalarian.com)

Kromberg’s demand for Al-Arian’s testimony is a legal Catch 22. If he refuses to testify, say his lawyers and family, he faces continued contempt charges–but if he were to testify, it is likely that prosecutors would simply charge him with “perjury” and continue his imprisonment.

Al-Arian has so far continued to refuse to testify, leading Kromberg to file first civil, and now criminal, contempt charges against him—and extending his prison sentence well beyond his original release date. Criminal contempt is one of the few crimes that does not carry a set maximum sentence, meaning that if he is brought to trial and found guilty, and continues to refuse to testify, Al-Arian could conceivably be kept in prison indefinitely.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

KROMBERG’S BEHAVIOR during his involvement in the Al-Arian case has been reprehensible. At one point, he objected to defense attorney requests not to have Dr. Al-Arian moved during the Muslim religious holidays of Ramadan, reportedly saying that “If [Muslims] can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury, all they can’t do is eat before sunset. I believe Mr. Al-Arian’s request is part of the attempted Islamization of the American Justice System.”

On August 8, at the most recent pre-trial hearing in the criminal contempt case, Judge Leonie Brinkema postponed the upcoming trial until a separate appeal by Al-Arian’s lawyers could be ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court. In her ruling, Brinkema questioned whether prosecutors have been overzealous in filing additional charges against Al-Arian.

At the hearing Kromberg again showed off a vicious streak of anti-Muslim racism and sexism. As the Tampa Bay Coalition for Peace and Justice, which has mobilized support for Dr. Al-Arian, noted in a statement:

After Judge Brinkema ordered that Dr. Al-Arian be released on bail under the custodianship of his eldest daughter, Kromberg abruptly objected, claiming that, as an Muslim woman, Dr. Al-Arian’s daughter would be too weak and submissive to oppose any potential attempt by Dr. Al-Arian to flee, saying that “in this particular [Arab-Islamic] culture, she would not be able to stop him from leaving.”

Though Judge Brinkema struck down Kromberg’s objection, noting that it was “insulting,” Dr. Al-Arian still may not be released on bail–since the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has, in the past, taken custody of Al-Arian pursuant to a deportation order. Rather than actually deport Al-Arian, however, ICE seems willing to hold him in custody until federal prosecutors can drag him back into court.

Incredibly, Kromberg also attempted to play the victim during the latest hearing, complaining in court that Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) has called for activists to picket him in order to put pressure on him to free Dr. Al-Arian.

“Call him a racist in signs if you see him,” Gravel reportedly told a crowd in Washington, D.C., regarding Kromberg. “Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time.”

While Al-Arian’s lawyers and family have made it clear that they do not encourage people to target Kromberg or his family–and have publicly repudiated Gravel’s comments—it should be noted that that, due to being painted as a “terrorist,” Dr. Al-Arian and his family have faced continuous harassment by extremist Web sites, not to mention conservative media pundits like Bill O’Reilly. In addition, during his more than five years in prison, Dr. Al-Arian has been the victim of a campaign of abuse: from racist verbal and physical assaults, to punishing restrictions on visits with his family and phone calls, even to his attorneys.

As daughter Laila Al-Arian said in an interview in April,

After spending more than five years in 10 different prisons across the United States, and despite a six-month trial with 80 witnesses, including 21 from Israel, 12 average Americans stood firm and refused to convict innocent people of any count of over 100 charges leveled at them by the most powerful government in history.

No wonder people have been asking, “Where is justice?” Justice can’t be served when people are targeted because of their beliefs and politics…Justice can’t be served when those who are supposed to administer it abuse it in order to exact revenge. Justice can’t be served when employing fear mongering and fear tactics by exploiting a national tragedy to silence the voices of a vulnerable and weak minority in our society.

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Muslims demand independent Kashmir as Indian police kill 13

August 13, 2008

Tension rises as thousands gather for funeral of separatist leader

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent
The Independent, Wednesday, 13 August 2008

An Indian policeman is hit by an object thrown by a protester in Srinagar yesterday

Reuters

An Indian policeman is hit by an object thrown by a protester in Srinagar yesterday

Indian Kashmir has been convulsed by the biggest pro-independence rallies for two decades, with tensions between Muslims and Hindus spilling over into violence that has so far claimed 13 lives and left more than 100 people injured.

The deaths were a result of Indian police and troops firing on Muslim protesters who were defying a curfew imposed by the authorities following the killing of a high-profile separatist leader. In some of the worst violence in the region in recent years, there were at least a dozen shooting incidents as large numbers of Muslims ignored the curfew and took to the streets.

In Srinagar last night up to 10,000 people defied the curfew to bury the separatist leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, whose body had been taken to the city’s main mosque.

Mr Aziz, a senior figure within the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a coalition of more than two dozen moderate religious and social groups campaigning for independence for Kashmir, was killed on Monday along with four other people when police fired into a crowd of Muslims protesting against what they said was a Hindu blockade of the road linking the Kashmir Valley to the rest of India. The protesters, up to 100,000 strong, were trying to march to the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir when the shootings took place.

The deaths are the latest violent twist in a summer of increasing tension in Kashmir that was initially sparked by a row over land being donated to a Hindu shrine. In June, faced by protests from Muslims, the state government reversed the decision it had taken to donate 99 acres of land to the Shri Amarnath shrine, a site of pilgrimage that draws thousands of Hindus a year from across India. In turn, the decision to reverse the donation angered Hindus in the state. Since then, tensions between the two communities have worsened, amid evidence that local politicians have sought to use the row to further their own interests.

As a result, not only have there been the largest demonstrations for independence in the past 20 years, but trade between the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley and the Hindu-dominated region around the city of Jammu, has been drastically curtailed. Muslims say the government is behind a blockade of a 185-mile link road that is leaving many communities low on food and medicine. They also complain that hundreds of truckloads of Kashmiri fruit are going to waste because they cannot be delivered and are rotting in the heat. The situation is so bad that producers are now demanding to be allowed to export their crops across the border to Pakistan.

“The first thing is that the whole event is very undesirable in terms of both the domestic situation in Jammu and Kashmir and its linkage with the larger bilateral peace process [between India and Pakistan],” C Uday Bhaskar, a strategic analyst, told Reuters. “I think this will have a bad impact and considering that Pakistan is going through bad turmoil now, the overall impact on the peace process will not be very positive.”

Indian-administered Kashmir has long been a flashpoint for religious violence and an estimated 68,000 people have been killed in the past two decades as a multitude of militant groups have fought either for independence or a merger with Pakistan. But in the past couple of years a fragile peace had descended upon the state, to the extent that Indian authorities had begun once again to promote Kashmir as a tourist destination

After Sheikh Aziz was killed in Chehel, about 30 miles from the border between the two portions of Kashmir, the Indian authorities imposed the curfew.

At the burial last night of Mr Aziz and the four other people killed with him, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of Hurriyat and the most powerful separatist leader in Kashmir, told a huge crowd of mourners: “Sheikh Aziz’s death is big loss to the Kashmir nation, we will take his mission to its logical end.” Another leader of the organisation, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, also attended the funeral, defying both the curfew and house arrest.

As the crowd chanted for independence, Mr Farooq added: “Our struggle for complete independence from India will continue. No power on earth can deter us from achieving this.”

Continued . . .

See also:

Guardian: 14 protesters shot dead in Kashmir

The London Times: Kashmir under curfew after 19 deaths

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Mikhail Gorbachev: We had no choice

August 13, 2008

Leaders in the Caucasus must stop flexing military muscle and develop the grounds for lasting peace

The past week’s events in South Ossetia are bound to shock and pain anyone. Already, thousands of people have died, tens of thousands have been turned into refugees, and towns and villages lie in ruins. Nothing can justify this loss of life and destruction. It is a warning to all.

The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia’s separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force – both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar – it only made the situation worse.

Nevertheless, it was still possible to find a political solution. Clearly, the only way to solve the South Ossetian problem on that basis is through peaceful means. The Georgian leadership flouted this key principle.

What happened on the night of August 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against “small, defenceless Georgia” is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity.

The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of US instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of Nato membership, emboldened Georgian leaders.

Now that the military assault has been routed, both the Georgian government and its supporters should rethink their position. When the problems of South Ossetia and Abkhazia first flared up, I proposed that they be settled through a federation that would grant broad autonomy to the two republics. This idea was dismissed, particularly by the Georgians. Attitudes gradually shifted, but after last week it will be much more difficult to strike a deal even on such a basis.

Small nations of the Caucasus do have a history of living together. It has been demonstrated that a lasting peace is possible, that tolerance and cooperation can create conditions for normal life and development. Nothing is more important. The region’s political leaders need to realise this. Instead of flexing military muscle, they should devote their efforts to building the groundwork for durable peace.

Over the past few days, some western nations have taken positions, particularly in the UN security council, that have been far from balanced. As a result, the security council was not able to act effectively from the very start of this conflict. By declaring the Caucasus, a region that is thousands of miles from the American continent, a sphere of its “national interest”, the US made a serious blunder. Of course, peace in the Caucasus is in everyone’s interest. But it is simply common sense to recognise that Russia is rooted there by common geography and centuries of history. Russia is not seeking territorial expansion, but it has legitimate interests in this region.

The international community’s long-term aim could be to create a sub-regional system of security and cooperation that would make any provocation, and the very possibility of crises such as this one, impossible. Building this type of system would be challenging and could only be accomplished with the cooperation of the region’s countries themselves. Nations outside the region could perhaps help, too – but only if they take a fair and objective stance. A lesson from recent events is that geopolitical games are dangerous anywhere, not just in the Caucasus.

· Mikhail Gorbachev was the last president of the Soviet Union; he was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1990

© Washington Post

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Israel: Don’t Destroy Homes

August 12, 2008

Collective Punishment Violates International Law

Human Rights Watch

Jerusalem, August 10, 2008 – The Israeli government should reject plans to resume the demolition or confiscation of the homes of alleged terrorists, Human Rights Watch said today. These measures would violate international legal prohibitions against collective punishment, as they affect the owners or inhabitants of the homes who have no involvement in terrorism.

" Punishing people for the crimes of others is no solution to terrorism. Israel should focus on bringing to justice those who actually plan or carry out attacks. "
Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch
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The call follows an order issued on August 6, 2008, by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to demolish the home of Alaa Abu Dhein, a 26-year-old Palestinian who killed eight people during a gun attack on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem in March. The house concerned does not belong to Abu Dhein but is occupied and owned by his relatives. Barak’s order marks the resumption of demolitions of homes after a three-year lull and comes in the wake of two separate attacks in which Palestinian men used bulldozers to attack people in July on the streets of Jerusalem.

“The assault on Mercaz Harav seminary and the more recent bulldozer attacks were appalling, but Israel shouldn’t respond by trampling on basic rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The house demolition measures would violate international law because they punish people who are not even accused, let alone convicted, of a crime.”

Israel had abandoned the policy of house demolitions in 2005, when a panel of its own military experts rejected it, after concluding the policy was ineffective for tackling terrorism and possibly counterproductive. But there have been mounting calls by senior government officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, to resume the practice after the bulldozer attacks, which killed three people and wounded scores more. There is no evidence that the men involved in either attack had ties to militant groups.

Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which governs military occupations, forbids the demolition of houses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories except where “absolutely necessary” for military operations. In addition, such demolitions punish family members and others living in the building solely for residing in the same home as an alleged terrorist. Under Israel’s policy, the fact that the owner of the building is neither the alleged terrorist nor related to him does not protect him from demolition of his property. Therefore such demolitions violate article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits punishing someone for an offense that he or she had not personally committed, and forbids collective penalties.

Continued . . .

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Russia Georgia War – Washington Risks Nuclear War by Miscalculation

August 12, 2008

By F William Engdahl | The Market Oracle, August 11, 2008

The dramatic military attack by the military of the Republic of Georgia on South Ossetia in the last days has brought the world one major step closer to the ultimate horror of the Cold War era—a thermonuclear war between Russia and the United States—by miscalculation. What is playing out in the Caucasus is being reported in US media in an alarmingly misleading light, making Moscow appear the lone aggressor. The question is whether George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are encouraging the unstable Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili in order to force the next US President to back the NATO military agenda of the Bush Doctrine. This time Washington may have badly misjudged the possibilities, as it did in Iraq , but this time with possible nuclear consequences.

The underlying issue, as I stressed in my July 11 piece in this space, Georgien, Washington, Moskau: Atomarer geopolitischer Machtpoker , is the fact that since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 one after another former member as well as former states of the USSR have been coaxed and in many cases bribed with false promises by Washington into joining the counter organization, NATO.

Rather than initiate discussions after the 1991 dissolution of the Warsaw Pact about a systematic dissolution of NATO, Washington has systematically converted NATO into what can only be called the military vehicle of an American global imperial rule, linked by a network of military bases from Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and Afghanistan . In 1999, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary , Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria , Estonia , Latvia , Lithuania , Romania , and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004. Now Washington is putting immense pressure on the EU members of NATO, especially Germany and France , that they vote in December to admit Georgia and Ukraine .

The roots of the conflict

The specific conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia has its roots in the following. First, the Southern Ossetes , who until 1990 formed an autonomous region of the Georgian Soviet republic, seek to unite in one state with their co-ethnics in North Ossetia , an autonomous republic of the Russian Soviet republic and now the Russian Federation . There is an historically grounded Ossete fear of violent Georgian nationalism and the experience of Georgian hatred of ethnic minorities under then Georgian leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia, which the Ossetes see again under Georgian President, Mikhel Saakashvili. Saakashvili was brought to power with US financing and US covert regime change activities in December 2003 in what was called the Rose Revolution. Now the thorns of that rose are causing blood to spill.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia—the first a traditional Black Sea resort area, the second an impoverished, sparsely populated region that borders Russia to the north—each has its own language, culture, history. When the Soviet Union collapsed, both regions sought to separate themselves from Georgia in bloody conflicts – South Ossetia in 1990-1, Abkhazia in 1992-4.

In December 1990 Georgia under Gamsakhurdia sent troops into South Ossetia after the region declared its own sovereignty. This Georgian move was defeated by Soviet Interior Ministry troops. Then Georgia declared abolition of the South Ossete autonomous region and its incorporation into Georgia proper. Both wars ended with cease-fires that were negotiated by Russia and policed by peacekeeping forces under the aegis of the recently established Commonwealth of Independent States. The situation hardened into “frozen conflicts,” like that over Cyprus . By late 2005, Georgia signed an agreement that it would not use force, and the Abkhaz would allow the gradual return of 200,000-plus ethnic Georgians who had fled the violence. But the agreement collapsed in early 2006, when Saakashvili sent troops to retake the Kodori Valley in Abkhazia. Since then Saakashvili has been escalating preparations for military action.

Critical is Russia ‘s support for the Southern Ossetes . Russia is unwilling to see Georgia join NATO. In addition, the Ossetes are the oldest Russian allies in the Caucasus who have provided troops to the Russian army in many wars. Russia does not wish to abandon them and the Abkhaz, and fuel yet more ethnic unrest among their compatriots in the Russian North Caucasus . In a November 2006 referendum, 99 percent of South Ossetians voted for independence from Georgia , at a time when most of them had long held Russian passports. This enabled Russian President Medvedev to justify his military’s counter-attack of Georgia on Friday as an effort to “protect the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, wherever they may be.”

For Russia , Ossetia has been an important strategic base near the Turkish and Iranian frontiers since the days of the czars. Georgia is also an important transit country for oil being pumped from the Caspian Sea to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and a potential base for Washington efforts to encircle Tehran .

As far as the Georgians are concerned, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are simply part of their national territory, to be recovered at all costs. Promises by NATO leaders to bring Georgia into the alliance, and ostentatious declarations of support from Washington , have emboldened Saakashvili to launch his military offensive against the two provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Saakashvili and likely, Dick Cheney’s office in Washington appear to have miscalculated very badly. Russia has made it clear that it has no intention of ceding its support for South Ossetia or Abkhazia.

Continued . . .

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