Archive for September, 2008

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Gates Pessimistic on Pakistani Support, Insists Strikes Will Continue

September 25, 2008

Antiwar.com,  September 24, 2008

When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke to the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, he claimed that “it is essential for Pakistan to be a willing partner in any strategy” in the troubled border region.  However when asked about the prospects for Pakistan backing unilateral US strikes in their country he conceded “I don’t think they can do that.”

Indeed, the Pakistani government and military have gone far beyond simply failing to publicly back America’s recent unilateral strikes. Pakistan’s civilian government has pressured the US to halt such attacks, while its military has declared that it will no longer allow foreign forces to operate in the country. The continued US strikes have led to two reports of Pakistani troops firing on US helicopters attempting to cross the border in as many weeks, and yesterday’s claims of a US Predator Drone being downed in South Waziristan by either tribesmen, troops, or a combination thereof.

But Gates insists the attacks will continue, with or without official imprimatur from Pakistan. He also declared that the greatest threat to the homeland lies in “western Pakistan.” He said he is also hopeful for increasing cooperation in the wake of last weekend’s Islamabad suicide bombing, “particularly if it is shown that al-Qaeda is behind” the attack. An unknown group called Fedayeen Islam claimed credit for the blast.

Rather, there is increasing speculation that the US raids are the cause of the suicide blast and not the solution to it. Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the preliminary investigation suggests a strong connection with South Waziristan Agency. The agency had been an area of relative calm for Pakistan, which has focused its attentions further east in and around the Swat Valley. However after the US strikes, a large tribe threatened to abandon its long-standing peace deal with the Pakistani government if they didn’t bring them to a halt.

A major concern as ties with Pakistan worsen is the transportation of goods to US forces stationed in Afghanistan. Pakistan, according to Senator Levin, is the route for about 80 percent of cargo and 40 percent of fuel to troops in the landlocked country. Pakistan briefly severed the primary supply route earlier this month after a US attack in South Waziristan killed 20 civilians. General James Cartwright, who also spoke to the committee, said the Pentagon has begun testing alternative supply routes to Afghanistan in the event that Pakistan is no longer available to them.

compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

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Retired Soldier Now In Fight Against War in Iraq

September 25, 2008

Published on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 by The Virginia Pilot

by Bill Sizemore

NORFOLK – For Ann Wright, it’s a badge of honor that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly once cut off her microphone midinterview.

[Retired Col. Ann Wright was one of three U.S. diplomats to resign in protest over the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.]Retired Col. Ann Wright was one of three U.S. diplomats to resign in protest over the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“He was questioning my patriotism,” Wright said in an interview this week. “All I had said was that the United States needed to follow the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of prisoners. I said, ‘Bill, I was in the military 29 years and I was a diplomat for 16 years. What have you done for the country?’ “Presumably Wright, 61, won’t have to worry about being cut off when she speaks tonight at the Naro Expanded Cinema about her unlikely odyssey from soldier to diplomat to full-time anti-war activist.

By her own description, hers was a “squeaky clean” life story. She grew up in Bentonville, Ark., where she was a Girl Scout and her father was a banker who gave Sam Walton a loan that helped launch the Wal-Mart empire.

After retiring from the Army as a colonel, she joined the State Department and served in a variety of overseas posts, including reopening the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Over the decades, she said, she had often disagreed privately with U.S. policy but kept her mouth shut, believing she could serve best within the system.

“But it all changed when President Bush decided that he would invade and occupy an oil-rich Arab Muslim country that had not attacked the United States,” she said. “It was such a dangerous move for the United States that I felt I could not be a part of it.”

Wright was one of three U.S. diplomats to resign in protest over the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Since then she has been arrested 15 times for raising her voice in a public and indelicate manner. Once, after lecturing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from the gallery, she was sentenced to three days in jail.

Wright has co-written a book, “Dissent: Voices of Conscience,” a collection of profiles of men and women in government who have publicly criticized the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

Appearing with Wright tonight will be Jonathan Hutto, a sailor and co-founder of Appeal for Redress, an organization that encourages active-duty personnel who are against the war in Iraq to speak out.

© 2008 The Virginia Pilot

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PAKISTAN: ‘Militants Are Not Taliban, We Are’

September 25, 2008

By Ashfaq Yusufzai | Inter-Press Service


PESHAWAR, Sep 25 (IPS) – The world knows the Taliban as armed fighters who have unleashed a wave of violence in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan including devastating suicide bomb attacks, the most recent on the luxurious Marriot Hotel in high-security Islamabad last week.

But not all Taliban wield guns. In seminaries scattered over the restive, northern parts of Pakistan, students or Taliban — a word in Pashto, the language of Pakistan’s Pakhtoons and Afghanistan’s Pashtuns — study the Quran and swear by peace.

“Yes. I’m proud to be a Talib. Because being Taliban I am able to study Quran and teach it to others,” says 21-year-old Rahimdad from the Darul Uloom Islamia seminary in Khairabad village of Mardan district, 120 kms north of this border city, when asked if he was a Talib (student).

He says he came here from Herat province in Afghanistan a year ago and intends to return when he graduates. “I don’t believe that Taliban are terrorists,” he asserts. “We want to spread the message of love and fraternity among the people of the world.”

His religious teacher, maulvi Zakirullah, also from Afghanistan’s Kunar province, too denies these students are terrorists. “We are against killing of anyone. We don’t favour killing the Americans. Our aim is to spread the message of love among people of all religions,” he tells IPS.

According to Peshawar-based political analyst Khalid Khan, Pakistan’s secretive military intelligence, ISI or Inter Services Intelligence, cobbled together an army by the name of Taliban in 1994, which went on to replace the bitterly-divided and corrupt mujahideen government in Kabul.

Most leaders of the Taliban government were graduates of seminaries in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP). They brought most of Afghanistan under their control. But were toppled by U.S.-led forces in end-2001 in the wake of the World Trade Center bombings on Sep. 11 that precipitated the so-called ‘war on terror’ launched by U.S. President George W. Bush against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Seven years after, Osama bin Laden is still at large, and a resurgent Taliban has defied both the Pakistan and Afghan government, the latter propped up by 70,000 mainly western troops including U.S. soldiers.

The Taliban in Pakistan’s religious schools say the “terrorist” label is unfortunate. “We don’t understand why the government calls the militants Taliban. Militants are not Taliban, we are,” says Shumaila Bibi, 19, who is veiled from head to toe. A student of Ummi Hafsa Darul Uloom, in Nowshera district, NWFP, she says they are taught to love humanity regardless of religion, caste and social status.

Says 17-year-old Nawaz, an Afghan who studies at Kosar seminary near Peshawar: “We condemn the blast in Marriot Hotel. Islam is against killing people. Those who do it will be held accountable on judgement day.”

Senator Maulana Samiul Haq is chancellor of Darul Uloom Haqqania, the biggest religious seminary in Pakistan. He says there are 3,500 students in the seminary and “they are peaceful and apolitical. It is incidental that some of the former graduates of my school have held top posts in the Taliban government in Kabul.”

Even the NWFP Information Minister, Iftikhar Hussain, backs the students. “The present crisis is not the handiwork of Taliban, but of secret agencies, that present the militants and criminals as Taliban,” he tells IPS. “Taliban don’t know guns, they are preoccupied with their studies, and examinations. They are so simple.”

Local communities support these students. Meals and clothes are given in charity. They are invited to people’s homes for religious festivities. Wali Shah, a college student in Dir, says: “Taliban play football, cricket and other local games in the evenings. Lots of people turn up to watch!”

According to a 2007 report compiled by the School and Literacy Department, there were 287 religious schools in Dir district with 8,421 students, both from Pakistan and Afghanistan. “We have 700 Taliban, who are studying jurisprudence, Quran and Hadith. They attend classes in the morning and then go back to different mosques where they reside,” says Maulana Mohammad Shakoor.

The number of religious schools countrywide has risen from 245 in 1947 to 6,741 in 2007. The province of Punjab accounts for 3,153 seminaries; NWFP 1,281, Sindh 905, Balochistan 692, Azad Kashmir 151, Islamabad 94, Northern Areas 185 and FATA 300.

The same report says only 22 percent of the schools were registered with the government. The NWFP has 3,795 male and 885 female teachers in 1,281 religious schools, 30 percent of whom are Afghans.

“Taliban are entirely apolitical. They neither listen to news nor read newspapers,” says Amjad Iqbal of Village Development Foundation, a non-governmental organisation in Bannu district. He says the Taliban also give religious lessons to local children in the mosques for which they are paid a nominal amount.

Saira Bibi, a school teacher in Swabi district, which has 253 religious schools, tells IPS Taliban are highly respected by the local population. “We give free food, clothes, shoes and cash amounts to seek the blessings of Allah. Taliban are the messengers of Islam. They are the harbingers of peace,” she explains.

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Robert Fisk: Six years in Guantanamo

September 25, 2008

Sami al-Haj, an Al Jazeera cameraman, was beaten, abused and humiliated in the name of the war on terror. He tells our correspondent about his struggle to rebuild a shattered life

The Independent, Thursday, 25 September 2008

Detainee's hold onto a fence at the maximum security prison Camp Delta at Guantanamo Naval Base

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Detainee’s hold onto a fence at the maximum security prison Camp Delta at Guantanamo Naval Base

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Sami al-Haj walks with pain on his steel crutch; almost six years in the nightmare of Guantanamo have taken their toll on the Al Jazeera journalist and, now in the safety of a hotel in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer, he is a figure of both dignity and shame. The Americans told him they were sorry when they eventually freed him this year – after the beatings he says he suffered, and the force-feeding, the humiliations and interrogations by British, American and Canadian intelligence officers – and now he hopes one day he’ll be able to walk without his stick.

The TV cameraman, 38, was never charged with any crime, nor was he put on trial; his testimony makes it clear that he was held in three prisons for six-and-a-half years – repeatedly beaten and force-fed – not because he was a suspected “terrorist” but because he refused to become an American spy. From the moment Sami al-Haj arrived at Guantanamo, flown there from the brutal US prison camp at Kandahar, his captors demanded that he work for them. The cruelty visited upon him – constantly interrupted by American admissions of his innocence – seemed designed to turnal-Haj into a US intelligence “asset”.

“We know you are innocent, you are here by mistake,” he says he was told in more than 200 interrogations. “All they wanted was for me to be a spy for them. They said they would give me US citizenship, that my wife and child could live in America, that they would protect me. But I said: ‘I will not do this – first of all because I’m a journalist and this is not my job and because I fear for myself and my family. In war, I can be wounded and I can die or survive. But if I work with you, al-Qa’ida will eliminate me. And if I don’t work with you, you will kill me’.”

The grotesque saga began for al-Haj on 15 December, 2001, when he was on his way from the Pakistani capital Islamabad to Kandahar in Afghanistan with Sadah al-Haq, a fellow correspondent from the Arab satellite TV channel, to cover the new regional government. At least 70 other journalists were on their way through the Pakistani border post at Chaman, but an officer stopped al-Haj. “He told me there was a paper from the Pakistani intelligence service for my arrest. My name was misspelled, my passport number was incorrect, it said I was born in 1964 – the right date is 1969. I said I had renewed my visa in Islamabad and asked why, if I was wanted, they had not arrested me there?”

Sami al-Haj speaks slowly and with care, each detail of his suffering and of others’ suffering of equal importance to him. He still cannot believe that he is free, able to attend a conference in Norway, to return to his new job as news producer at Al Jazeera, to live once more with his Azeri wife Asma and their eight-year old son Mohamed; when Sami al-Haj disappeared down the black hole of America’s secret prisons the boy was only 14 months’ old.

Al-Haj’s story has a familiar ring to anyone who has investigated the rendition of prisoners from Pakistan to US bases in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. His aircraft flew for an hour and a half and then landed to collect more captives – this may have been in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital – before flying on to the big American base at Bagram.

“We arrived in the early hours of the morning and they took the shackles off our feet and pushed us out of the plane. They hit me and pushed me down on the asphalt. We heard screams and dogs barking. I collapsed with my right leg under me, and I felt the ligaments tearing. When I fell, the soldiers started treading on me. First, they walked on my back, then – when they saw me looking at my leg – they started kicking my leg. One soldier shouted at me: ‘Why did you come to fight Americans?’ I had a number – I was No 35 and this is how they addressed me, as a number – and the first American shouted at me: ‘You filmed Bin Laden.’ I said I did not film Bin Laden but that I was a journalist. I again gave my name, my age, my nationality.”

After 16 days at Bagram, another aircraft took him to the US base at Kandahar where on arrival the prisoners were again made to lie on the ground. “We were cursed – they said ‘fuck your mother’ – and again the Americans walked on our backs. Why? Why did they do this? I was taken to a tent and stripped and they pulled hairs out of my beard. They photographed the pupils of my eyes. A doctor found blood on my back and asked me why it was there. I asked him how he thought it was there?”

The same dreary round of interrogations recommenced – he was now “Prisoner No 448” – and yet again, al-Haj says he was told he was being held by mistake. “Then another man – he was in civilian clothes and I think he was from Egyptian intelligence – wanted to know who was the “leader” of the detainees who was with me. The Americans asked: ‘Who is the most respected of the prisoners? Who killed [Ahmed Shah] Massoud ([the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance Afghan militia]?’ I said this was not my business and an American soldier said: ‘Co-operate with us, and you will be released.’ They meant I had to work for them. There was another man who spoke perfect English. I thought he was British. He was young, good-looking, about 35-years-old, no moustache, blond hair, very polite in a white shirt, no tie. He brought me chocolate – it was Kit Kat—and I was so hungry I could have eaten the wrapping.”

On 13 June, al-Haj was put on board a jet aircraft. He was given yet another prison number – No 345 – and once more his head was covered with a black bag. He was forced to take two tablets before he was gagged and his bag replaced by goggles with the eye-pieces painted black. The flight to Guantanamo took 12 to 14 hours.

“They took us on a boat from the Guantanamo runways to the prison, a journey that took an hour.” Al-Haj was escorted to a medical clinic and then at once to another interrogation. “They said they’d compared my answers with my original statement and one of them said: ‘You are here by mistake. You will be released. You will be the first to be released.’ They gave me a picture of my son, which had been taken from my wallet. They asked me if I needed anything. I asked for books. One said he had a copy of One Thousand and One Nights in Arabic. He copied it for me. During this interview, they asked me: ‘Why did you talk to the British intelligence man so much in Kandahar?’ I said I didn’t know if he was from British intelligence. They said he was.

Continued . . .

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Gordon Brown and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

September 24, 2008

George Barnsby, Sept 24, 2008

I’ve said it often enough, it is on the front of every one of my 580
BLOGS, the only way to revive the corpse of this New Labour monstrosity would be to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bring our troops home and stop the slaughter of Iraqi and Afghan civilians. Yet Brown and all of his squabbling cabinet have responsibility for these wars, have financed them and refuse to see that Bush, Blair and Brown are the terrorists and if the wars were ended terrorism would virtually cease overnight.

Now Brown has made his speech to the Labour Party Conference and said nothing about the war in Iraq. Millions of words, cascades of promises to listen and learn, but not a single word on Iraq. And Labour MPs and media barons such as Paxman and Jon Snow seem joined in a conspiracy to deceive, each of them interviewing Brown and neither raising the issue of Iraq.

The conspiracy to avoid even the broadest of issues of Foreign Policy in the run up to this Labour Party Conference began for me on Thursday when David Dimblebury’s ‘Any Questions’ returned to the BBC and neither he, nor the speakers, nor the audience uttered a word on Iraq. Then today old has been’s like Mandelsohn, Blunkett, Prescott and others have been interviewed yet not a word has been said about the war. This is a complete denial of civil rights for the majority of the population who are opposed to the war and makes Britain a dictatorship, as bad as that of Mugabe and other dictatorships we claim to deplore. This cannot continue and when Brown is inevitably brought before the Court of Human Rights at The Hague for Crimes against Humanity all those who have been a party to these crimes will find themselves like the Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials after World War II called to account.

STOP THE WAR COALITION.

Fortunately not all MPs and journalists and activists are ninnies who gave Brown a standing ovation today. The Stop the War Newsletter No. 1058 of 23 September 2008 reports on the anti-War demonstration at the Labour Party Conference. Thousands of activists marched through Manchester and delivered a letter to Brown demanding the withdrawal of all British troops from the catastrophic and unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The parallel Convention that will meet while the phoney New Labour set up sits and supports the carnage which these war criminals create. Activities are being planned for the autumn which assumes that Brown is not stopped by a Citizen’s Arrest, which it now seems that George Galloway and Ken Purchase will sit idly by and twiddle their thumbs. It looks therefore as if other anti-war MPs such as Jon Cruddas, Dianne Abbott and other MPs of the Socialist Campaign group will have to act to bring the wars to an end NOW.

Another event supported by Stop the War will be an international
anti-Nato demonstration in Strasbourg next April (for which funds are needed and also recruits) as well as anti-war campaigns at army bases.

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Will International Law Reach Bush?

September 24, 2008

RINF.INFO, Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

By Peter Dyer

Q: What do Radovan Karadzic, former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, and George W. Bush have in common? A: Each lives under the slowly growing shadow of a body of international criminal law.

This law is evolving towards the ultimate goal of holding even the most powerful leaders personally accountable for crimes committed by the State.

It is manifested in international agreements and statutes such as the Geneva Conventions, case law, two ad hoc war crimes tribunals (Yugoslavia and Rwanda), and a permanent International Criminal Court.

Radovan Karadzic, former Bosnian Serb President, has been arrested and now awaits trial in The Hague before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (I.C.T.Y.) on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Dominique de Villepin is one of 33 French military and political leaders who have recently been accused in a report released by the Rwandan government of arming and advising Hutu leaders in the genocide and crimes against humanity of 1994.

(At the time Rwanda was a French client state and de Villepin was chief aide to French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. The 500-page report, based on a two-year investigation, accuses both men of crimes including enabling the genocide by violating a United Nations Security Council Arms Embargo against Rwanda.)

George W. Bush in March 2003 ordered “Operation Shock and Awe” (though officially dubbed “Operation: Iraqi Freedom”) – the unprovoked invasion and occupation of Iraq – presenting the world with a clear prima facie case of aggression.

Aggression, in the words of the judgment delivered at the first Nuremberg Trial, is “the supreme international crime” because it unleashes all the other devastation and inhumanity of war.

Personal accountability by state leaders for the crime of aggression – initiating an unprovoked war – is the most profound as well as the most difficult goal of the continuing evolution of international criminal law.

For this reason, and because President Bush is head of the world’s most powerful state, clearly the shadow of the law is at present less ominous to him than to Karadzic or perhaps to de Villepin.

But there is no statute of limitations for any of these crimes. Things change over time, often unpredictably. And the international community has been working steadily towards this difficult goal for decades.

No doubt the work will continue.

Continued . . .

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Myanmar opposition vows to continue fight for Aung San Suu Kyi

September 24, 2008

AFP,   Sep 24, 2008

YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar’s pro-democracy party on Wednesday vowed to continue pushing for their leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s release after several of her close confidants were freed from prison by the ruling junta.

Seven dissidents from the Nobel peace laureate’s party were among the 9,002 prisoners freed Tuesday in an amnesty that state media said was ordered so they could take part in elections promised by the ruling generals for 2010.

The most prominent was 79-year-old journalist and activist Win Tin, Myanmar’s longest-serving political prisoner, who spent nearly two decades behind the bars of Yangon’s feared Insein prison.

National League for Democracy (NLD) spokesman Nyan Win said that although they welcomed the amnesty, they would continue to fight for the freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the last 19 years under house arrest.

“We will send an appeal for her release from detention this week to the cabinet in Naypyidaw,” Nyan Win told AFP, referring to the nation’s capital.

“We are always hoping for her release. There are still many long-serving political prisoners … All should also be released,” he added.

The release of Win Tin and the six other NLD members was immediately hailed by the United Nations, the United States and rights groups around the world.

“We worked together to defend Win Tin’s innocence and we are immensely relieved that he has finally been freed,” press freedom organisations Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association said in a joint statement.

“We hope other journalists and prisoners of conscience will also be freed and that Win Tin will be able to resume his peaceful struggle for press freedom and democracy in Burma,” they added, using Myanmar’s former name.

Win Tin was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment on July 4, 1989 for acting as an adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi and writing letters to the then-United Nations envoy to Myanmar.

Upon his release Tuesday, Win Tin, still dressed in a blue prison-issue outfit but looking strong and healthy, vowed to journalists that he would continue to fight the ruling generals.

Human rights groups estimate that about 2,000 political prisoners are locked away in Myanmar.

Aung Naing Oo, a Myanmar analyst based in Thailand, welcomed the release of Win Tin and other colleagues of Aung San Suu Kyi but said the move showed the junta believed its hold on power was secure.

“I think the military is more confident now than before by releasing some key prisoners, including the longest-serving prisoner,” Aung Naing Oo told AFP in Bangkok.

“Maybe they think he’s no longer relevant or can no longer muster support,” he added.

Myanmar’s military government has said it will hold multi-party elections in 2010 but critics say the polls are just a way for the generals to solidify and legitimise their power.

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Haneya: Hamas is committed to Mecca arrangement

September 24, 2008

Xinhua.net,

GAZA, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) — Deposed Prime Minister of Hamas Ismail Haneya has expressed in a letter he sent to Saudi Arabian King Abdullah Ben Abdel Aziz that his Hamas movement is committed to 2007 Mecca agreement, his spokesman said on Wednesday.

Taher al-Noono told reporters that Haneya sent a letter this week “to King Abdullah expressing commitment to Mecca agreement asa base for solving the ongoing (Palestinian) internal crisis.”

In February 2007, rival Hamas and Fatah movement reached an agreement to form a national Palestinian unity government. A government was formed, but it was deposed after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip by force in June.

Following Hamas’ Gaza takeover, the Gaza Strip became under the rule of Hamas, while the West Bank remained under the rule of President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah movement.

Fatah wants Hamas to be committed to the Yemeni reconciliation initiative, which calls for forming an independent Palestinian cabinet that prepares for holding early presidential and legislative elections.

Mecca agreement, which was signed in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, by both Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Mesh’al, only calls for forming a national unity government and doesn’t refer to holding early elections in the Palestinian territories.

Egypt has been holding during September separate bilateral talks with 13 Palestinian factions, including leaders of rival Fatah and Hamas. Egypt examines their views on launching a comprehensive dialogued.

Nabil Shaath, a senior Fatah movement leader, who held talks on Tuesday with senior Egyptian security officials said in a news conference in Cairo that the general dialogue will be held in Cairo on early November.

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A US-NATO War In Pakistan? – An Anatomy of the Current Crisis

September 24, 2008

Published on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

by Alan Nasser

On Saturday evening, the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, one of the city’s two most luxurious hotels, located near the presidential office, the parliament building, and a host of foreign embassies, was devastated by a bomb blast that left fifty three dead, including the Czech ambassador and two U.S. Defense Department officials.

The recent background to this latest in a series of increasingly sophisticated and bold insurgent strikes is revealing: since September 3, the U.S. has launched ground incursions and six missile attacks in Pakistan’s border regions. The U.S.-NATO aim is to cripple supporters along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border supportive of the anti-occupation resistance in Afghanistan.

The destruction of the Marriott was the latest response to Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari’s complicity with Washington in the military assaults on the perceived center of insurgent support in Pakistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), including the North-West Frontier Provinces (NWFP). Just hours before the Marriott blast Zardari told the country’s parliament that he is determined to free Pakistan from “the shackles of terrorism.”

This pledge confirmed Zardari’s determination to continue to order the Pakistani military, an institution harboring more than a few sympathers with the insurgents, to launch assaults on suspected insurgent -“terrorist”- strongholds. It is common knowledge that this policy is a response to pressure from Washington.

Pakistan’s ambassador to Germany, Shahid Kamal, expressed not only his own but the majority resentment against Zardari’s subservience to Washington’s demands on Pakistan when he told The New York Times “This [the Marriott bombing] is a reaction to what is going on in FATA. We have been implementing a reckless and careless policy…. What’s happening in FATA is that Pakistanis are killing Pakistanis.”

Here we see reflected both the popular indignation at the new Pakistani president’s political apeing of his predecessor, the Washington puppet and military dictator Pervez Musharraf, and the deep divisions within Pakistan’s state apparatus regarding Pakistan’s alliance with the U.S.-NATO, which the majority of Pakistanis see as waging a Western-Christian attack on global Islam.

An overview of the backgound to Washington’s stepped-up aggression in Pakistan is in order.

The Bush Doctrine Is Extended to PakistanOn September 9 George W. Bush announced that Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan were “all theatres in the same overall struggle.” This declaration was intended to justify Bush’s July approval of ground assaults by U.S. Special Operations forces inside Pakistan, without Islamabad’s approval.

Thus, the Iraq-Afghanistan disasters are to be sustained and widened to include the sixth most populous country in the world, with 20 million Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom are known to be increasingly infuriated with the recent succession of air and ground attacks inside Pakistan, and whose government possesses a nuclear arsenal.

Continued . . .

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MIDEAST: Everyone Loses in the War of Silencing

September 24, 2008

By Mohammed Omer | Inter-Press Service


GAZA CITY, Sep 23, – So much is missing as you walk down the street along the shops of Gaza. Food and medicines kept out by the blockade enforced by Israel; but also newspapers once a part of the street landscape.

Al-Hayat-Al-Jadeeda and Al-Ayyam, two newspapers loyal to Fatah, are not around any more. And for once, you couldn’t blame the Israelis for censorship.

Of the two big Palestinian territories, Gaza is ruled by Hamas, and the West Bank by Fatah. Fighting between the two groups has led to a silencing of voices on both sides.

Hamas affiliated police forces banned three newspapers in Gaza Jul. 28 this year; of them Al-Quds has now been allowed in. Earlier in June the West Bank authorities banned Falsteen and Al-Risalah, two newspapers affiliated with Hamas.

“We have given them some guidelines to report more professionally, but they have refused to deal with us,” Hamas spokesman Taher Al-Nounno told IPS, speaking of the Fatah publications. “The newspapers have been publishing lies and instigating unrest.”

In the West Bank, Nimir Hamad, political advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said “Al-Rasalah and Falasteen are both propagandist papers calling for strife, they are publishing extremist and fundamentalist thinking.”

Journalists and camera crews working for a Hamas-owned television station in the West Bank were arrested. So were journalists working for Fatah-supporting media in Gaza. Both sides have closed radio stations, and both have confiscated media equipment.

The international watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF, Reporters Without Borders) has said that at least nine media outlets have ceased operating in Gaza since July 2007, when Hamas took control of Gaza after a landslide win in elections in January 2006. Of these outlets, three were state-owned, and six privately owned.

The Basic Law of the Palestine Authority (PA) declares that every person has the right to freedom of thought and expression. But in 1995 the PA passed a law against criticism of the Palestinian Authority or its president. That law is now being implemented in the attacks on newspaper offices and journalists.

The law does not apply to foreign media. But Human Rights Watch has noted that an increasing number of independent journalists are opting out of the region because the risks are too many.

And far too often now, nobody is around to report the many abuses that take place. “Over the past 12 months, Palestinians in both places (the West Bank and Gaza) have suffered serious abuses at the hands of their own security forces, in addition to persistent abuses by the occupying power, Israel,” HRW has stated.

The HRW report says that since taking control of Gaza last year, Hamas has tortured detainees, carried out arbitrary arrests of political opponents, and clamped down on freedom of expression and assembly. And that Fatah has done exactly the same.

Israel brought censorship to this Promised Land long back. In 1971 then Israeli prime minister Golda Meir wiped the name of Palestine off all maps produced in Israel. Israeli occupation forces declared all Palestinian symbols like flags and posters illegal.

During the first Intifadah (1987-1992), the name given to the Palestinian uprising, and again in the second (since September 2000), Israeli authorities have closely censored Palestinian publications, ordering removal of ‘security’ related information.

Israeli authorities have arrested media personnel, beaten them up and denied them press cards. RSF says Israeli soldiers have shot at least nine Palestinian journalists.

But beyond Israel and the Palestinian factions, the blame for censorship lies with those champions of freedom, the European Union and the United States, HRW says. That arises from the funding and the political protection they have given to security forces, it says. (END/2008)

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