Archive for February, 2009

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Britain: Foreign Office colludes with US to cover-up torture of Binyam Mohamed

February 8, 2009
By Robert Stevens | WSWS, 7 February 2009

A High Court ruling by two British judges regarding the torture of a Guantánamo detainee has unleashed a major political crisis.

The judges have stated that they have been pressured by the United States into concealing evidence that should be made available in any country governed by the rule of law. This took the form of threats to withdraw security cooperation, instigated under the Bush administration and continued under Barak Obama’s presidency.

Binyam Mohamed, 30, is currently in Guantánamo Bay but is reportedly being prepared for a return to the UK. He states that he was tortured by US agents in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004, and that Britain’s security agencies were complicit.

The High Court judgment on February 4 refused to order the disclosure of the CIA dossier said to contain evidence of his abuse. The document is a report by the US government to the British security services. The ruling followed a submission by the UK Foreign Office.

While calling for the document to be made public, the judges stated that it was not presently in the public interest to publish it, as the US government could “inflict on the citizens of the United Kingdom a very considerable increase in the dangers they face at a time when a serious terrorist threat still pertains”.

The joint judgment by Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones registered its concern that the document remained secret. “In the light of the long history of the common law and democracy which we share with the United States it was in our view difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported, as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters”.

The judgment continued, “Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials…relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be”.

Continued  >>

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How Bush Threatened Britain

February 8, 2009

Andrew Sullivan | The Atlantic, February 6, 2009

In order to prevent any details of its torture record being publicly disseminated, the Bush administration threatened the British government with withdrawal of intelligence sharing if they allowed a court to publish the redacted evidence. Foreign secretary David Miliband denied this on Wednesday, but the letters from the US have been released by Channel 4 News. And their message is unmistakable. The first letter:

“I write with respect to proceedings … regarding Mr Binyam Mohamed,” the letter said. “We note the classified documents identified in your letters of June 16 and August 1, 2008, to the acting general counsel of the Department of Defence … the public disclosure of these documents or of the information contained therein is likely to result in serious damage to US national security and could harm … intelligence information sharing arrangements between our two governments.”

The second:

“Ordering the disclosure of the US intelligence information now would have only the marginal effects of serious and lasting damage to the US-UK intelligence sharing relationship, and thus the national security of the UK …”

That is a threat to hurt the security of a very close ally unless the British government intervenes into a court process to suppress evidence of US torture. In a critical test of the Obama administration, the demand that such evidence be suppressed was reiterated. (I don’t know by whom. Panetta isn’t in place yet. Brennan? Clinton?) And that’s how illegal torture spreads throughout a legal and military system to undermine alliances as well as the rule of law. The poison of Cheney is still in the system. And it will be for a long time. That was the point: the crimes and blunders they committed were such that their successors find themselves, willy nilly, implicated in them.

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American Christian Support for Killing Iraqis

February 8, 2009

by Jacob G. Hornberger| The Future of Freedom Foundation, Feb 6, 2009

Among the things about the Iraq War that I have never been able to understand is how American Christians have been able, in good conscience, to support this war. After all, no one can deny that neither Iraq nor the Iraqi people ever attacked the United States. That makes the United States the aggressor — the attacker — in this particular conflict. How could American Christians support the killing of Iraqis in such a war of aggression? How could they reconcile this with God’s sacred commandment, Thou shalt not murder.

One possibility is that Americans initially viewed the Iraq War as one of self-defense. Placing their trust in their president and vice-president, they came to the conclusion that Iraq was about to unleash WMDs on American cities. Therefore, they concluded, America had the right to defend itself from this imminent attack, much as an individual has the moral right to use deadly force to defend his life from someone who is trying to murder him.

But once the WMDs failed to materialize, American Christians did not seem to engage in any remorse or regret over all the Iraqis who had been killed in the invasion. It was all marked up as simply an honest mistake. At the same time, hardly anyone called for a formal investigation into whether the president and the vice president had intentionally misled Americans into supporting the war based on bogus exaggerations of the WMD threat.

After the WMDs failed to materialize, American Christians had an option: They could have called for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops. Instead, they did the exact opposite. They supported the continued occupation of Iraq, with full knowledge that U.S. troops would have to continue killing Iraqis in order to solidify the occupation.

That’s when Christians began supporting a new rationale for killing Iraqis: that any Iraqi who resisted the U.S. invasion or occupation was a terrorist and, therefore, okay to kill. Since terrorists were bad people, the argument went, it was okay to support the killing of Iraqis who were resisting the invasion and occupation of their country.

Yet, rarely would any Christian ask himself the important, soul-searching questions: Why didn’t Iraqis have the moral right to resist the invasion and occupation of their country, especially if that invasion and occupation had been based on a bogus principle (i.e., the WMD threat)? Why did their resistance convert them into terrorists? Why did U.S. troops have the moral and religious right to kill people who were defending their country from invasion and occupation?

Instead, people in Christian churches all across the land simply just kept “supporting the troops.” I suspect part of the reasoning has to do with the mindset that is inculcated in public schools all across the land — that in war, it’s “our team” vs. “their team,” and that Americans have a moral duty to support “our team,” regardless of the facts.

Among the most fascinating rationales for supporting the killing of Iraqis that American Christians have relied upon has been the mathematical argument. It goes like this: Saddam Hussein would have killed a larger number of Iraqis than the U.S. government has killed in the invasion and occupation. Therefore, the argument goes, it’s okay to support the invasion and occupation, which have killed countless Iraqis.

But under Christian doctrine, does God really provide for a mathematical exception to his commandment against killing? Let’s see how such reasoning would be applied here at home.

Let’s assume that the D.C. area is besieged by two snipers, who are killing people indiscriminately. Let’s assume that they’re killing people at the rate of 5 per month. That would mean that at the end of the year, they would have killed 60 people.

One day, the cops learn that the two snipers are parked in a highway rest area. There are also 25 other people there, all Americans, men, women, and children, and all innocent.

The Pentagon offers to drop a bomb on the parking lot, which would definitely snuff out the lives of the snipers. The problem is that it would also snuff out the lives of the other 25 people.

Under Christian principles, would it be okay to drop the bomb? I would hope that most Christians would say, No! As Christians, we cannot kill innocent people even if by doing so, we rid the world of those snipers. If we cannot catch the snipers except by dropping the bomb, then we simply have to let them get away. God does not provide a mathematical justification for killing innocent people.

Yet, isn’t that precisely the mathematical analysis that has been used by Christians to justify their support for the killing of Iraqis. What’s the difference?

In their blind support for “our team” and for “supporting the troops” in Iraq, American Christians seem to have forgotten an important point about government and God: When the laws or actions of one’s government’s contradict the laws of God, the Christian has but one proper course of action — to leave behind the laws of man and to follow the laws of God.

Hornberger’s Blog Archives


Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

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Now or Never!! Pakistan must change its position on the “war on terror”.

February 7, 2009
By Talha Mujaddidi in Pakistan. Exclusive to Axis of Logic
Feb 7, 2009, 13:57		 Email this article Printer friendly page

A change in Pakistan’s relationship with the U.S. war on terror is required immediately.

Pakistan is amidst the worst political turmoil of its history. Things were not this bad at the turn of the millennium but after 9/11, its political future took a sharp, bleak downturn. When the U.S. started its “war on terror” in Afghanistan, it might have enjoyed support of many countries and their leaders but it did not enjoy support of the majority of the people of Pakistan. In addition, Pakistan’s Pukhtoon population and vast majority of Afghan population considered and still considers Afghanistan an occupied country. They had the same view when Soviet Russia was occupying Afghanistan, a land considered to be a graveyard for super powers.

The Valley of Swat and the TTP

A map of Pakistan and the surrounding region highlighting Swat District

Pakistan’s current “catch 22” is in Swat, a valley in Northern part of Pakistan’s NWFP (North West Frontier Province). Swat was once Pakistan’ stop tourist destination, before its current and continuing chaos. The founder of the nation, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, called it “the Switzerland of Pakistan”. Winston Churchill was also fond of the valley in his early days in British India. In 2003 a new militant group emerged in Pakistan. This was Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP). It was headed by Abdullah Mehsud, a former prisoner of the Guantanamo Bay Prison. Surprisingly he was cleared by U.S. authorities and sent back to Pakistan. He organized and started TTP which should not be confused with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This is a big common misconception in Pakistan and the rest of the world. It’s a pity that Pakistani and western journalists are confusing the Taliban with the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) in their reporting and news articles.

The Taliban in Afghanistan have nothing against Pakistan and have never killed or threatened Pakistani people or Pakistani state. On the other hand, the TTP has done both. The TTP is a group based on Takfiri ideology (a Muslim who believes that all other Muslims even orthodox are not true Muslims and they are just collaborators of infidels and deserve to be attacked and killed). All Muslim scholars are unanimous in declaring Takfiris ‘heretics of Islam’.

The Hashshashin Sect

History provides us an example that sheds light on the Takfiris. When the Crusaders began to attack the Muslim world in the 11th century, a group of heretic Muslims emerged that started creating havoc amongst the Muslims by declaring war on their fellow Muslims. The group was the Hashshashin sect (the word assassin came from Hashshashin). Hashshashins were Muslims who had become heretics believing that other Muslims are Kafir (infidels) and had to be killed by any means necessary. Their doctrine was known as Fedayeen (a person ready to sacrifice his life for a mission). They should not be confused with today’s Mujaideen (Muslims committed to an armed struggle). While the Muslim armies were fighting the Crusaders, these Hashshashins also declared war on Muslims! Such internecine fighting is not unusual in other ethnic groups and religions. Similar fundamentalist sects who fought against their own can also be found in the histories of Christianity and Judiasm. Because of the Hashashin sect, Muslims had to fight with two brutal armies simultaneously during the time of the Crusades.

Often the Hashshashins fought alongside the Christian Crusaders against the Muslim armies. They assassinated Muslim scholars, political leaders, and civilians ruthlessly. This is the ideology that TTP is following in Pakistan. In 2004, under pressure from U.S.., former President Musharraf started a military operation in Pakistan’s tribal areas to remove TTP from those areas. At that time things were more stable in Swat. But they were about to get worse.

Need for a strong, central government in Pakistan

Swat, like the rest of Pakistan has always suffered from lack of a strong central government and a rule of law. According to Amnesty International Pakistan’s civil, district and Supreme courts suffer from massive corruption. According to Asian Journal of Political Science August 2007, report,

“Pakistan is generally included in most discussions of ‘failing states’ that pose the maximum danger to global security, with the rise of Islamic militancy being the most commonly cited reason for the ‘failure’. However, Islamic militancy is a result of impending state failure, not a cause of it.

“The state’s inability, caused by decades of systemic corruption, to provide any appreciable level of public goods or services, broadly defined, is responsible for the de-legitimization of the state and its inability to maintain law and order in the cities or suppress Islamist insurgents in the rest of the country.”

There has been a succession of corrupt Pakistani governments in the past. With nothing to offer to the Pakistani population these corrupt governments looked up to U.S., Britain, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in order to consolidate their position in power. They plundered the national wealth and placed Pakistan in debt by taking new loans from World Bank, IMF and other imperial financial institutions. Corrupt governments and weak parliaments were responsible for breakdown of institutions in Pakistan resulting in corruption, nepotism and rising lawlessness.

Emergence of Sufi Mohammad

The failure of civil law and order and the failure of enforcement have been the direct cause of the rise of local militants who controlled and operated their parallel Islamic courts in Swat. Sufi Mohammad was one such militant who started a movement to impose Islamic laws in Swat and other areas. His movement is not new. It first became known in 1989. In 1995 he started mass protests against the government. The government of Benazir Bhutto at that time negotiated with him and the matter was swept under the carpet.

Sufi Mohammad emerged again when U.S. attacked Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. He and his followers went to Afghanistan to fight U.S. invasion, most of his followers were killed there. Sufi Mohammad was captured and then sent back to Pakistan where he was imprisoned. He remained in Pakistani prison until April 2008, when he agreed to denounce “terrorist acts”, militancy, give up arms and come into agreement with Pakistan government.

Maulvi Fazalullah (also known as Radio Maulvi) is the current leader in charge of militants in Swat. He is son-in-law of Sufi Mohammad. Maulvi Fazalullah, unlike Sufi Mohammad, has not at all renounced violence or the armed struggle. Also note that followers of Fazalullah and TTP (Takfiri) are two separate groups. With the failure of law and order in Swat, many who lived outside the laws of Central Government, took refuge in Swat since civil law and enforcement has been virtually absent from the area.

When the Pakistan army started military operations against TTP in Tribal areas of Pakistan, Fazalullah and his militants began to attack police stations and to challenge the central government. Many civilians were killed. Members of the local population are often threatened, schools (especially girls’ schools) are closed down, teachers are killed, local politicians are attacked along with NGO workers and other acts of violence are taking place.

The judicial system in Swat

Swat was a princely state during British Rule in India. After the creation of Pakistan people of Swat used to follow the Islamic Shariah Laws to manage their day to day affairs. This means that all cases from criminal to civil to child custody were all managed by laws under Islamic Shariah Laws. After 1970 the Government of Pakistan took Swat under the District administration system just like the other parts of Pakistan. This meant that from that point on all Shariah courts would be replaced by civil courts, district courts. Pakistan is still following British laws that were incorporated under British India Act of 1935. The Pakistan government is still following a lot of obsolete rules and regulations of Act of 1935. The people of Swat agreed to accept the change but the problem with civil courts is that they take a longtime to come to any conclusion. They are susceptible to bribery and corruption because of the presence of unnecessary red tape and the handling of cases takes longtime. Plus the fact that there is a shortage of lawyers who are unwilling to work for lowly paid government jobs instead of more lucrative work in private practice.

Swat rejects Fazalullah

This system continued until Sufi Mohammad started his movement of re-introduction of Shariah courts. The local public wanted Shariah courts. As long as Sufi Mohammad was leading the movement it was non-violent. The people of Swat supported Sufi Mohammad. However, Fazalullah is now acting like a local war-lord. The people of Swat do not support violence at all and they are not supporting Fazalullah. The problem is that he has around 4000 men who are well trained and well armed and they have terrorized the local population. The local police, already understaffed and under budgeted, have been faced with massive desertions. The police does not have sophisticated weapons and gear comparable to that of Maulvi Fazalullah’s militants. The local police are no match for Fazalullah’s professional combatants.

Swat is different from Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Tribal areas are purely Pukhtoon and their daily lives are managed under tribal codes and laws. Mainstream schooling is very limited, whereas in Swat mainstream schooling was widespread. Swat, the most popular tourist destination in Pakistan once thrived with economic activity, local shops, small hotels and vintage shops. This resulted in better economic level compared to Tribal areas. Another thing to remember is that Tribal Areas have their traditional customs where all men consider carrying weapons a part of traditional manhood. In Swat this was not the case.

In the past, Swat progressed just like any other city in Pakistan and weapons were not to be found in every household. If Maulvi Fazalullah had appeared in Tribal Areas he would not have been able to terrorize the local population because there, the people are armed. Even though there is a great deal of anger throughout Pakistan over U.S. drone attacks, that anger will not cause the people of Swat to support Fazalullah. They see him as someone who is taking advantage of the U.S.. invasion and as one who is responsible for ruthless killings and the destruction of their local economy.

The government tried to bring Fazallullah under control through dialogue but to no avail. Fazalullah started his FM radio transmission that earned him the name of Radio Mullah. Notice the similarities between actions of Fazalullah and Hashshashins. There is no doubt that the restoration of law and order in Swat is a must through military intervention by the central government of Pakistan. There is no point with having a dialogue with Fazalullah, who has repeatedly backtracked from “peace talks” initiated by the central government. But this is an internal matter and is not the responsibility of foreign governments like the United States.

Who is providing arms to Fazalullah?

The situation in Swat has worsened in the last two years. With rising tensions between Pakistan and India, Pakistan moved some of its troops from Swat and tribal areas to eastern border with India; this provided a window of opportunity for Fazalullah to foment more anarchy in Swat. One important question is, “Who is the source of the weapons and supplies that are used by Fazalluah and TTP? In my view, the weapons are coming from Afghanistan where India operates 19 consulates. These are nothing more or less than operation centers of RAW (Research and Analysis Wing). RAW is India’s equivalent of CIA.

NDS is Afghanistan’s intelligence agency created by U.S. military after they setup Karzai government. The head of NDS is Amrullah Saleh, the thirty-six-year-old director of Karzai’s spy agency. Saleh became the world’s youngest intelligence chief in 2004, at age 32. Since 2005, NDS has emerged as a major source of strategic instability in the region. Saleh, explaining his action in Pakistan, says that “Insurgency is like grass, you cut the upper part but after sometime it will grow back, you poison the soil [Pakistan] where that grass is and it will die forever.”

Another problem for Pakistan is that the current government of Afghanistan is composed of Northern Alliance Warlords (NAW) who are supported by the U.S.. government. The NAW are extremely hostile towards Pakistan and very close to India. Historically, they have been mostly based in minority ethnic groups of Afghanistan like Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara (Shia by faith), and other groups. Pakistan has always supported majority ethnic group Pukhtoon, since Pakistan has huge Pukhtoon population. Taliban of Afghanistan was also Pukhtoon. During Taliban’s rule, India, Iran or Russia had no access into Afghanistan.

The India Factor

India’s intelligence bureau (IB) has always been responsible for internal intelligence gathering. The IB formed the “Research and Analysis Wing” known as RAW in 1968 for conducting external intelligence, comparable to the CIA. Recently, under RAW, India, in cooperation with the CIA, has begun to move some ground troops into Afghanistan.

According to Asian Tribune report of September 2008, India has 14 consulates in Afghanistan from which RAW is operating. In Wakhan, Badakshan province, RAW is operating a madarssah, where clerics from India are brainwashing local Afghans, Uzbeks and Tajiks. Their students are then infiltrated into Pakistan where they readily carry out suicide missions and other operations. The report further states:

“Mullah Omar (leader of the real Taliban) had never shown interest in establishing any links with Pakistani Taliban (TTP) and had warned Nek Muhammad (a militant who agreed to make peace deal with Pakistan government before he was killed in a U.S. drone attack) not to operate under the brand name of Taliban. It is being questioned as to why Baitullah, Fazlullah and their spokesmen desperately wanted by Pakistan security forces have escaped the hawkeye of U.S., particularly after they have been seen giving detailed interviews to media and using their cell phones? ISI [Pakistan’s intelligence service] had once given six figure coordinates of Baitullah and yet no Hellfire missile was fired on his hideout by CIA.”

It is very surprising that the CIA has not been able to kill Baitullah Mehsud, head of TTP or Fazalullah, when they have no problem hitting civilians with its drone-fired hellfire missiles.

Cambodia-Vietnam Analogy

When U.S. was fighting against the Vietcong in Vietnam, the U.S. military falsely claimed that support for the Vietcong was coming from Cambodia and President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, started air strikes in Cambodia. At the time, the military government of Cambodia was just a U.S. puppet regime. That U.S. bombing killed one million people Cambodian people. What was the result? Cambodia was torn into civil war and brutal suffering took place under Pol Pot. The same thing could happen in Pakistan. They are triangulating the U.S.. war in Afghanistan with India and Pakistan. One of their convoluted methods is to use India’s RAW in Afghanistan which leads to the indirect attacks in Pakistan by RAW’s madarssah students in Afghanistan. The Pakistani government’s stance on the “War on terror” is as never before at a tangent with the public opinion.

The government of Pakistan must act now to avert catastrophe

The Pakistan government must take the following steps immediately if complete destabilization and catastrophe is to be averted. If the Pakistan government does not take these steps, it must be removed and an interim government must be set up to carry out these steps.

  • Pakistan must pass a bill in the parliament that authorizes the Pakistan Air Force to retaliate against deadly U.S. drone attacks. Pakistan has asked the U.S. government and military leadership repeatedly to stop drone attacks into Pakistan but to no avail.

  • Pakistan must ask the U.S. to pack up its military bases and get them out off Pakistani soil, since there was no open agreement for these air bases between Pakistan government and U.S.. in the first place.

  • After 9/11 military ruler Pervez Musharraf became dictator of Pakistan. All agreements were made between him and the U.S.. government. These agreements with the U.S. must be made public and cancelled. New agreements must be made with the U.S.. which ensures Pakistan’s territorial sovereignty.

  • Pakistan must ask NATO and the U.S. military to make sure that Afghanistan’s soil is not used by India to create proxy war against Pakistan. Pakistan must declare neutrality in War in Afghanistan, Pakistan can’t continue to be supporting Afghan Government that is working against the interests of Pakistan.

  • Pakistan must stop giving NATO and the U.S.. access to move arms and supplies through Pakistan. If the U.S. continues to send drones to kill civilians in Pakistan under the Obama regime, it will only fuel more militancy in Pakistan. Pakistan must stop the NATO/U.S. supply route.

Of course all this is easier said than done. The U.S.. knows it need not worry about any of this or similar course of action being taken by the current Pakistani government. The U.S.. is completely involved with Pakistani leadership, especially with the President and the Army Chief. What is not reported in the U.S.. media is that U.S.. Ambassador to Pakistan, Ann Patterson, meets with Pakistani leaders and even opposition leaders as often as she can. In one week in January 2009 she met with Pakistani President thrice. But will she say a word to stop the pointless, deadly U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan by the U.S.. military?

Obama’s “War on Terror”

On December 26, 2008, immediately after he was inaugurated, President Obama ordered his first drone missile attack in sovereign Pakistan, killing 16 civilians. Obama should realize that the escalating “War on Terror” inside Pakistan is totally counterproductive. U.S. must realize that there is no option but to bring the Taliban into the political process in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, NATO commanders, and British government have all expressed similar views. Pakistan, on the other hand, must distance itself from the U.S. “war on terror” as it is creating havoc inside Pakistan and has no basis in fact, worldwide. It is also important to note that the Pakistan army is also not in best of moods since they are not particularly in tune with the government and have no desire to fight their own countrymen.

If the government does not address the situation, mounting public pressure can result in wide spread social unrest, protests, strikes, and even violent agitation? The situation in Pakistan’s tribal areas and Swat is moving from bad to worse. Even if the situation in Swat or Tribal Areas were to improve, trouble is likely to start in some other part of NWFP or Baluchistan province of Pakistan. The point is that Pakistan is facing tough challenges from TTP, Maulvi Fazalullah and other militants, and current U.S. policy of carrots and sticks for Pakistan is only making it worse. The U.S. must deal with people of Pakistan in a civil manner and respect their territorial integrity and national sovereignty rather than making back-room deals with the corrupt President and Prime Minister. Their refusal to do so raises questions about whether they really want to see Pakistan united in peace or a destabilized Pakistan that serves their imperial agenda. The spokesman for the Pakistan Army spokesman has said that crushing militancy will take a longtime as it’s very difficult to distinguish militants from local residents. Moreover, the continuing illegal U.S.. attacks are fostering support by local populations for disparate militant groups who already live their lives within those populations.

Democracy does not work the same way in Pakistan as it is reported to be working in the U.S. or Europe. With 35% literacy rate, it cannot be the same kind of democracy as in EU or North America. The U.S. belligerent support to corrupt democratic leaders of Pakistan will only undermine what is already a weak democracy in Pakistan. Weak democratic institutions give rise to militancy, extremism, and parallel institutions. Continuous U.S. and British support to corrupt Pakistani rulers will only result in more hatred for Pakistani state, Pakistani rulers, and in turn, the United States.

Conclusion

Finally, the news coverage of the Swat region is very limited, and no one exactly knows how many people have been killed. According to a rough estimate by Center for Research and Security Studies, since 9/11 Pakistan has lost at least 12,000 people as a result of the U.S. war on terror. Some were blown up in suicide bombings, some were killed by U.S. drone attacks, some of the dead were Pakistani army soldiers, some police officers, and a lot of them were women and children. This is nothing compared to the death count of Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq but it is enough to push Pakistan on the brink of disaster. A policy shift by the Pakistan government toward foreign intervention is the need of the hour.

The current carnage in Swat has resulted in killing of many civilians, security personal and militants. The exact number of people killed is not known. The local economy has collapsed and people are making mass exodus from the valley. How long the military operation will continue is unknown. Pakistan must make drastic changes in its foreign policy in Afghanistan and its policy on the U.S. “war on terror”. Otherwise, we the people of Pakistan will suffer more.

Talha Mujaddidi is a writer/analyst and Axis of Logic correspondent, living in Pakistan. He can be contacted at: talhamujaddidi@gmail.com

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The Kashmir question

February 7, 2009

Kashmir Watch,

As is the case each year, a day of solidarity with the people of Kashmir has been marked. On television programmes, at rallies and at other functions, the atrocities committed in that Valley of Tears has been highlighted and commitments given to ensure a just resolution to the dispute. Much of this talk has been heard before. But this time round there does seem to be some real hope that a solution may just emerge. A few months ago, Barack Obama had spoken of his desire to resolve the Kashmir issue. Other US officials too have mentioned this as a priority. And the British foreign secretary, in an article written soon after he visited Mumbai, called on India to step up efforts to resolve the Kashmir issue, given that it was a factor that fuelled extremism.

The Indian response has been one of angry dismissal. Officials, including the foreign minister and the national security adviser, have insisted that such comments amount to an intervention in India’s internal affairs. They have discounted the warnings about the degree of hatred Kashmir stirs up against Muslims. This is obviously unwise. There can be no doubt the terrible rights abuses we have seen for decades in Kashmir are a factor in the growth of militancy in the area. The future of that territory also hampers closer ties between India and Pakistan, constantly cropping up whenever the process of dialogue gets underway. For Pakistan, the renewed interest of the world in Kashmir is a positive event. It is quite apparent, given the unhelpful Indian attitude, that it will be possible to solve the problem only with the assistance of key powers. Given its own internal constraints, India obviously has no interest in any change in the status of the territory. Like other, unfinished business that lingers on since Partition, the Kashmir question needs to be solved. Pakistan has in the past made brave efforts to find a solution to the problem and by doing so bringing peace to the lives of Kashmiris who have suffered for years and borne the worst consequences of a dispute over land that divides families and communities. It must now step up efforts to find an answer to the Kashmir question and with the support of other nations work towards turning it into reality.

[editorial note-The News-Feb 6, 2009]

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World needs credible body to pursue Israeli war criminals

February 7, 2009

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Khalid Amayreh | uruknet.info, 6 February, 2009

On 27th December, Israel carried out a genocidal blitzkrieg against the estimated 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, using state-of-the-art of the American technology of death.

This deadly weapons used against the imprisoned Gaza inhabitants include , inter alia, F-16 war planes, equipped with all sorts of lethal missiles including bunker buster bombs, apache helicopters, white Phosphorous shells, flechette dart shells, as well as the Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME), a deadly weapon recently developed by the United States army to create a powerful and lethal blast over a small area.

DIME is believed to still be in the experimental stage. However, it is widely believed that Israel had received a green light from the Pentagon to use Gaza as a testing ground.

In addition, Israel used all other conventional weapons, including tank and artillery shells against densely populated neighborhoods.

According to David Halpin, a retired British surgeon and trauma specialist, the Israeli army used Gaza as a “laboratory for testing what I call weapons from hell.”

“I fear the thinking in Israel is that it is in its interests to create as much mutilation as possible to terrorize the civilian population in the hope they will turn against Hamas.” (see, Is Gaza a Testing Ground For experimental Weapons, Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 13 January).

By the 23rd day of the criminal onslaught , when Israel halted its blitz, Gaza looked very much like a real concentration camp, with over 10,000 Palestinians dead and mutilated, including more than 300 kids mercilessly killed and five times as many kids seriously injured or maimed.

In addition, the civilian infrastructure all over the Gaza Strip was utterly destroyed. This includes apartment and public buildings, dozens of mosques, college and dorm buildings, businesses, schools, hospitals, power plants, water supply treatment facilities, UN Shelter schools, civilian police stations, farmland, and thousands of homes.

It was a no-holds-barred assault, and many older people who lived through the Second World War have likened Gaza on 18 January with the bombed-out German City of Dresden before the end of the Second World War.

The massive killing of civilians carried out by the Israeli army was done knowingly and deliberately, as Israeli soldiers were instructed not to show any mercy toward the civilian population. This explains the total annihilation of numerous entire families by bombing residential homes.

Israel claims that the offensive targeted Hamas, not the people of Gaza. However, Israeli political and military leaders as well as many intellectuals readily stretched their concept of “Hamas” to encompass virtually the entire Palestinian community in Gaza.

For example, Yaron London, a “left-leaning” Israeli intellectual and prominent media figure told reporters that “The time has come to shock the Gaza population with actions that until now have nauseated us-actions such as killing the political leadership, causing hunger and thirst in Gaza, blocking off energy sources, causing widespread destruction, and being less discriminating in the killing of civilians. There is no other choice.”

He added : “I am referring to both the population and their leadership; they are the same, because the population voted for Hamas. I can’t separate between one who voted for Hamas and a Hamas leader.”

There are actually numerous other quotations by Israeli leaders condoning and even gloating over the crimes the Israeli army has committed in Gaza.

Pornographic war crimes

Israeli officials and spokespersons don’t really deny that war crimes have been committed in Gaza. However, they try desperately to extenuate the severity and seriousness of these crimes by arguing that “things like that happen in war time,” and that “Hamas, too, committed war crimes.”

Non the less, comparing Hamas’s crimes with the holocaust-like blitz in Gaza flies in the face of the dignity of language. It is a verbal promiscuity, a sort of fornication with words.

Indeed, using Israeli crimes and Hamas’s “crimes” in the same breath would be as absurd and corrupt as equating the Nazi atrocities with the resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The crimes committed in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces are not questionable or controversial and don’t require much efforts to ascertain them.

The factuality of these crimes, which transcend reality, is not only established by the naked physical reality, but are also further ascertained by Israel’s confused efforts to cover up these crimes.

Indeed, Israel has embarked on quiet but massive efforts to cover up the Gaza war crimes by falsifying the names the alleged war criminals who are numbered in the thousands.

On 5 February, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that the Israeli army began removing the names and details of army officers involved in the Gaza blitz from legal documents.

“The censor’s office issued sweeping gag orders on the names of all officers who participated in the operation, fearing their identification would expose them to legal action abroad.”

http://www.xpis.ps/

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Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

February 7, 2009

By James Abourezk | Counterpunch, Feb 6 – 8, 2009

Abe Foxman, head of the “Anti-Defamation League”, claims that George Mitchell is too fair to be a broker between Israel and the Palestinians.  I guess that Foxman, in denouncing the choice of Mitchell for Middle East negotiator, shows that he is accustomed to such impartial mediators as Dennis Ross, who, when he left the Clinton Administration returned to the Israeli Lobby, whence he came.  Or he possibly could be making a comparison between George Mitchell and Alan Dershowitz, the notorious Israeli propagandist.  (I once called Dershowitz a “snake” on Al Manar TV, which prompted him to write a column in the Jerusalem Post calling me an anti-Semite.  My mistake was to forget to apologize to the snakes.)

I’m sorry to say that, as much as I admire George Mitchell for the public service he has provided over the years, being fair will not be enough to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the brutality that accompanies it.

The gyrations of various administrations over the years, all of whom have put on great shows of “settling” the conflict, has done nothing but waste a great deal of newspaper ink and television time reporting peace efforts, as though the media believed what snake oil salespeople, such as Condi Rice, were selling to the public.  What someone in our government should have realized by now is that Israel absolutely does not want to give up the West Bank for a Palestinian state, even though there are warnings that if a “two state solution” is not reached, the Palestinians will be forced into a state of apartheid for the rest of the century.  Certainly, the Israelis have no intention of allowing the Palestinians to outvote them in Israel, which leaves South African style apartheid as the only solution.

One can count all the reasons given by the Israelis for not achieving the “peace” that Israel claims it wants, reasons such as:

    1. We have no negotiating partner.
    2. The Palestinians have to recognize Israel’s right to exist first before we talk to them.
    3. They have to end terrorism first.
    4. We made the Palestinians the best offer they could ever have gotten, but they turned it down.

These are just some of the shopworn excuses trotted out to avoid cutting a deal.

It seems that very few people have caught on to this scam, even though it has been exposed for many years.  So, as the establishment continues to blather about achieving “peace,” Israel continues to swallow up Palestinian lands, beating up, imprisoning and massacring Palestinians on a daily basis.

It is very clear to me, as well as to anyone else who declines to see the conflict through an Israeli prism, that only when an American President flatly tells the Israelis that they must move the settlers out of the West Bank, there will be no peace, only more occupation, more brutality, more violations of international law, and more bloody slaughters of civilians such as the one we only recently witnessed in Gaza.  Anything short of that leaves the Israelis in complete control, and it will leave America with more and more enemies not only in the Middle East, but around the world.

President Obama mentioned recently that if he doesn’t get the economy turned around in his first term, he will most likely not have a second term. What he has not yet calculated is that the Israeli occupation results in angry terrorism against American interests all over the world.  He is faced with the choice of either angering the Likud Lobby by demanding that the Israeli settlers be kicked out of the West Bank, or of continuing the heavy spending required to maintain Israel’s occupation against the wishes of the people they are occupying.  What is your guess as to what he will do?

Surely we should have learned by now that America can no longer afford to listen to the Abe Foxmans and the Alan Dershowitzes of the world.  As a nation, we are out of money, bereft of ideas, and incapable of curbing the moral and financial corruption in Washington, D.C., which includes the corruption brought about by the Likud Lobby.

The result is that the rich get richer, the poor and the middle class become more and more desperate, searching for jobs that no longer exist, and for homes they can no longer afford.

The likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have brought the world down around our collective ears, and after having done so, they have ridden off into the sunset, happy in the knowledge that they’ve taken care of their rich friends, who have profited from the wars they have started.  The oil price surge, the conflicts in the Middle East, which have brought about the surge in military spending has created fortunes for their cronies, all paid for by the people of this country.  We are, unfortunately, not finished paying the price for Mr. Bush’s costly — in terms of human lives and of money — puerile adventures for the past eight years.  We will be reaping the hatred and the violence caused by their wars, in addition to suffering  the economic fallout resulting from their policies of greed and corruption.  And we have not yet counted the kinds of misery and poverty and corruption these two heroes have spawned as a result of the Iraq War.

The cowardice of our presidents and of our Congress keeps Israel in the driver’s seat so far as continuing the occupation.  Brutality is the natural product of an occupation that is necessary to keep the land they’ve stolen from the Palestinians.  We are in desperate need of “change,” and we hope and we pray that Mr. Obama will have the courage to put it in motion.

James G. Abourezk is a lawyer practicing in South Dakota. He is a former United States senator and the author of two books, Advise and Dissent, and a co-author of Through Different Eyes. This article also  runs in the current issue of Washington Report For Middle East Affairs.  Abourezk  can be reached at georgepatton45@gmail.com

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The Hypocrisy of The West

February 7, 2009

by Ben Cohen | Huffington Post, Feb 6, 2009

With the financial meltdown in full swing, western governments are swinging into action to revive their economies with massive stimulus bills and spending programs. Financial institutions too big to fail are receiving bucket loads of cash, while a multitude of industries wait for their piece of the pie. Obama is proposing huge investments in infrastructure and green jobs, while Gordon Brown and the EU promise much the same.

The West responds to economic crises with swift government intervention, while it tells Third World Nations to do the opposite. ‘Structural Adjustment’ was the phrase coined by the IMF and World Bank — a technocratic word to describe the gutting of public institutions in the countries they were supposed to help. Third World countries were ordered to cut government spending, allow private companies to take over state functions (like providing water, electricity and education), and borrow at extremely high interest rates. The results were catastrophic, and countries like Brazil, Chile, and Nicaragua were plunged into economic hell. Hyperinflation, mass unemployment, poverty and food insecurity soared while deficits multiplied exponentially.

The West insisted this was the best road to economic prosperity, ignoring the inconvenient truth — that they had not taken their own advice.

Central planning, protectionism and corporate welfare created the societies we live in today — the power of capitalism to create wealth by itself was nothing more than a myth, a weapon the rich would use to lecture the poor. You live in the jungle of savage capitalism while we use the state to build our businesses and solidify our wealth.

The ideologues insisted that neo liberalism worked, ramming it down the throats of their own countries with the same religious fervor. Wealth was created, but only at the top, while the rest of the country crumbled. The financial tsunami that wrecked Latin America in the 1980’s had finally landed in the North, culminating in the spectacular meltdown of giant institutions deemed invincible 6 months before.

And our response? To use the same measures we always have in creating wealth and stability. We used the power of the government to regulate, protect and subsidize.

We may pull out of this awful mess in the coming months if our governments react to the will of the people. Wall Street must pay, jobs must be created, and the wealth must be spread around. We know this, and our governments know it too.

Yet the Third World is trapped in a spiral of debt, privatization and deep, persistent poverty. They exist in a precarious state of neo colonial dependency and cannot follow our path out of economic disaster because we insist they don’t. We may believe colonialism is dead, but our treatment of the Third World reveals otherwise. We may not govern their countries directly, but the results are tragically similar. It is only the methods that differ.

Perhaps the almighty shock we have received will sway power back towards the disenfranchised, and perhaps we will have more sympathy for their plight. We can mourn the death of capitalism, but know that it never really existed — not here at least.

Ben Cohen is the Editor of The Daily Banter.com

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Hamas Is Not Going Away

February 7, 2009

Analysis by Mel Frykberg | Inter Press Service

RAMALLAH, Feb 6 (IPS) – Despite intensive efforts by Israel, the international community and a number of Arab leaders to weaken and destroy Hamas through economic, punitive and military action, the Islamist organisation continues to be a force to reckon with.

Hamas won free and fair democratic elections in January 2006. The U.S. pushed for these elections, which were monitored by international observers including ex-U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and Israel permitted them to be held.

Hamas has since then been dominant, though it took effective control in June 2007, more than a year after its election victory. The Gaza Strip, which the resistance group controls, took a serious battering during Israel’s 22-day military assault, codenamed Operation Cast Lead.

The coastal territory has also been economically crippled by nearly two years of an Israeli embargo which has hermetically sealed Gaza off from the rest of the world, preventing the import of all but a tiny flow of humanitarian aid and goods.

Israel purportedly carried out the military operation to stop Palestinian rockets from hitting Israeli cities and towns bordering the Gaza Strip.

However, rocket fire on Israel had virtually ceased in the five months of ceasefire between Israel and Hamas which preceded an Israeli cross-border military operation into Gaza on Nov. 4. This operation provoked a barrage of retaliatory missiles on Israel.

Prior to Operation Cast Lead, a delegation of British parliamentarians met with Hamas leaders in Gaza. The parliamentarians were told that Hamas would be prepared to accept Israel’s existence, within the internationally recognised borders of 1967, provided the Jewish state legitimised the rights of Palestinians in return.

Despite the immense scale of death and destruction wrought by Operation Cast Lead, which left over 1,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians dead, rockets continue to be fired at Israel in spite of disproportionate responses from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

Following the recent ceasefire most of Hamas’s leadership emerged from underground bunkers unscathed. The digging of smuggling tunnels for everyday necessities as well as arms has resumed.

Furthermore, there are also growing signs that the Europeans, some Israelis and previous Arab opponents are resigned to factoring Hamas into any political equation to address a resolution of the conflict.

Last week after several days of intensive diplomatic pressure, the Israeli government managed to stymie a French initiative to weaken the Jewish state’s stance on Hamas.

Following a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, France tried to change a pre-written closing statement released by the ministers regarding the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

Paris wanted the statement to say that the EU would be prepared to hold talks with a future Palestinian unity government which included Hamas as long as it agreed to honour the principles of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Additionally, the French delegation to Brussels proposed opening Israeli border crossings into Gaza immediately without any conditions. A previous agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2005 stipulated that the PA had to control the crossings.

However, following intervention by Israel, the Czech Republic – the current holder of the EU presidency – Germany, Italy and the Netherlands pushed the French initiative off the agenda.

Israel viewed the French move as an attempt to get the Quartet for Middle East peace – the UN, the U.S., Russia and the EU – to soften its conditions for international recognition of Hamas.

A senior Israeli official said that since the end of the Gaza operation, his country was concerned about a possible break in European support for the boycott of the Hamas government in Gaza.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, met French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in Paris recently.

During the meeting the Gaza ceasefire was discussed and Kouchner stressed the need for inter-Palestinian dialogue and for the border crossings into Gaza to be reopened.

Kouchner again suggested France was open to the idea of a unity government if Hamas softened its stance.

Meanwhile, Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin told reporters in Damascus on Monday that some kind of engagement with Hamas may have to feature in future European Union policy.

Hamas’s erstwhile foe and bitter rival Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who controls the West Bank, also discussed the issue with French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Paris on Monday.

Abbas too called for a unity Palestinian government and said Hamas’s inclusion was imperative as long as it recognised his supreme authority.

On Monday Sarkozy also met Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheik Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani, whose Persian Gulf country has emerged as a regional mediator since helping to resolve a political crisis in Lebanon last year. Al-Thani insisted Hamas should not be sidelined from peace efforts.

“We must work for a government of national unity between the Palestinians. There should not be efforts to delete or distance one of the Palestinian parties present on the ground,” Al-Thani told reporters.

Israeli columnist and analyst Akiva Elder noted in the daily Haaretz that Israel’s continual denial of the reality of Hamas as a legitimate political entity was short-sighted.

For 20 years Israel has tried to destroy the movement using carrots and sticks alternately. The only difference between the ruling Kadima party’s leader and minister of foreign affairs, Tzipi Livni, and the more right-wing opposition Likud party leader Binyamin Netanyahu is the size of the clubs to be used, argued Eldar.

“Precisely because of the many children killed in Gaza, Cast Lead has been assured a place of honour in the ethos of the struggle of the Palestinian David, armed with primitive Qassams, and the Israeli Goliath, with his F-16s,” said Eldar.

“When they hear the proud declarations of Israel’s leaders, to the effect that deterrence has been restored, Hamas’s leaders certainly laugh themselves to death, and not just because of the rockets that continue to fall on the people of Ashkelon.

“The threat of a few more bombs on Gaza deters them like the death penalty deters a suicide bomber on the way to carry out an attack,” said Eldar.

Only a long-term ceasefire, it seems, accompanied by a real diplomatic context, can pull the rug of popular support out from under Hamas and restore it to its natural proportions.

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Corrupt Egyptian system: feeds the IDF, starves Gazans, oppresses journalists

February 6, 2009

Iqbal Tamimi | Palestine Think Tank, Feb 5, 2009

gaza-egypt-border-police.jpg


Once upon an alleged democracy, the Egyptian government decided a couple of days ago to try the journalist Majdi Hussein, the secretary-general of the Egyptian Labour party in a military court – even though he is a civilian – because he broke the law when he tried to “illegally enter the Gaza Strip”.


One wonders what is legal and what is not when it comes to Gaza.  It seems the law in Egypt is extremely elastic and can accommodate all manipulations and tailoring of the law to fit different sizes of growing plots. The good old Egyptian system is abiding by the law to the letter, and that’s why it wants to try a journalist in a military court for entering Gaza ‘illegally’ while the good old authority was providing the Israeli military ‘legally’ with tons of foods through the Gaza crossings while blocking any food sent to the starved to death children of Gaza who were burned to the bone by white phosphorus by that same Israeli army Egypt was feeding.


Last month the opposition Egyptian newspaper Alosbooa ‘The Week’ revealed in one of its reports a controversial story that was not refuted by the authorities about the Egyptian company ‘International Union of Food Industries’ which was providing the Israeli army with large quantities of homegrown Egyptian vegetables during the aggression on Gaza, since the very first day of the aggression.

The report revealed that the Egyptian trucks were loaded with tons of frozen local grown vegetables from the company stores in the city of Sadat to the Israeli company “Food Channel”, through Al Awja crossing between Egypt and Israel. One of the drivers said that he has made these deliveries many times to Israel but he was hiding this fact from his relatives and neighbours in Albadry neighbourhood at Assalam city, and that he used to tell them that he was delivering goods to other Arab countries, or the delivery is heading towards far ports like Savaja because he was embarrassed to tell them the truth. Other drivers said they no more feel embarrassed or ashamed of doing so because their government itself has normalized relations with Israel years ago. The workers in the company said that the food was repackaged with Hebrew writing, showing the expiry date and the contents, and that the food has been prepared according to Jewish religious rules.  Thus indicating that it complied with the traditional religious Jewish parameters, and that’s why the company imposed a cordon around the place, keeping stored bags, boxes, posters and empty cartons away from the sight of intruders, not allowing any of the workers or the staff to approach the packaging area, and searching every worker at the end of his shift before leaving.


Contrary to what was expected, trade exchange between Egypt and Israel because of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians has increased notably to 4 billion dollars in addition to exports of oil and gas.

Regarding the journalist Majdi Husse, this was not his first encounter with the Egyptian authorities. He was Chief Editor of an Egyptian Islamic bi-weekly when he was imprisoned for 4 months along with the journalist Muhammad Hilal in 1998 with charges of defaming former Minister of the Interior in Egypt, Lt. Gen. Hussein al-Alfi.

Hussein said he was prevented twice by the Egyptian authorities from entering the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing point, forcing him to take an alternative route to get into the Palestinian territ“Food Channel”ories.

The Egyptian prosecutor in Al-Arish city said the decision to put Hussein on military trial (even though he is a civilian) came after three days of investigations with him, and that he was arrested upon his arrival to the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza. The trial of Hussein is expected to be held on Thursday.

The Labour party in Egypt considered subjecting one of its top officials to a military trial as a grave violation of human rights, since he is a civilian, and commented that Majdi’s decision to get into Gaza Strip was driven by his “nationalist, Islamic, and popular considerations, and that Majdi’s determination to enter the Strip reflects the general feeling in the Egyptian street to lift the siege on Gaza and to open the Rafah crossing point before the Palestinian people.”

Majidi is not the only Arab journalist Egyptian authorities prevented from entering Gaza, the Al-Jazeera team was denied entry into Gaza too. The Egyptian authorities denied two of Al-Jazeera’s top journalists Ahmed Mansour and Ghassan Bin Jiddo entry into the Gaza Strip without explaining the reasons. Especially since Egypt had granted entry into the Gaza Strip to foreign and European journalists.

In a telephone call with his satellite channel, Mansour confirmed that the Egyptian authorities told them that they (he and bin Jiddo) were denied entry, at a time it granted many journalists of different nationalities the right to enter the Strip.

“We presented our identification documents to the Egyptian authorities and requested permission to enter the Gaza Strip as other journalists did, but we were denied entry,” added Mansour.

Mansour also said that the Egyptian officials stopped answering their telephone calls, but he stressed that the Al-Jazeera team will remain at the borders till a rational reason by the Egyptian authorities is given to justify such action.

Hence, according to the law-abiding Egyptian authorities, it is illegal to open the crossing to allow food and aid to the starved Gaza children, but it is legal to feed the Zionist army who were barbecuing Gaza children. It is legal to allow foreign journalists to cross to the Gaza haven, but it is against the law to allow Arab journalists to cross the borders to investigate or offer emotional support. It seems it is legal to stand on the borders and watch a full nation being killed and not only to stand idly doing nothing, but also to punish those who intend to help.

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