Peace and Justice Post

Editorial

The Frontier Post, Pakistan, Sep 29, 2010

“It’s high time that the Pakistani government wake up to the potential costs of its trickery with its own people. … Even on Sunday, as ISAF officials and their Afghan puppets were crowing that their gunships had killed ‘militants’ in two sorties in North Waziristan, local politicians were in complete denial that any incursion had occurred.”

These attacks are, plain and simple, a naked aggression against Pakistan by the Afghanistan-based and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is to say, America. What else could they be? On Sunday, two of their helicopter gunships intruded into Pakistan and killed over thirty people, claiming they were militants. A Foreign Office spokesman said that Pakistan had protested to NATO/ISAF over the incursion, yet the very next day their gunships trespassed into Pakistani territory again and slaughtered another six people.

ISAF insists that it has a mandate for hot pursuit into Pakistani territory and targeted “militants” who attacked coalition forces in Afghanistan from Pakistan and had been fleeing after the assault. Our foreign spokesman denied such a mandate for ISAF, but his assertion must be taken with a pinch of salt. Islamabad has long clamored about how the incessant U.S. drone attacks are stark violations of our territorial sovereignty, yet it’s clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that these incursions carry the tacit support of the Pakistani State, if not its explicit acquiescence.

There is a foul air about the acts of Pakistani officialdom: it keeps too many things secret from its own people while playing the obedient and loyal slave to Western capitals, particularly Washington. After every drone incursion, it goes so far as to instantly endorse American claims of killing militants, while the locals often wail that innocent civilians, commonly composed of women and children, have been murdered. Even on Sunday, as ISAF officials and their Afghan puppets were crowing that their gunships had killed “militants” in two sorties in North Waziristan, local politicians were in complete denial that any incursion had occurred. Ultimately, the officials grudgingly bleated that only one assault had taken place, and that it occurred in Kurram Agency and not North Waziristan, where Monday’s attacks took place.

By: Amb. Ileka Atoki  Democratic Republic of Congo Representative to the United Nations

United Nations — Today [October 1] the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published a new report cataloging the atrocities committed in my country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, between 1993 and 2003. The report is detailed and credible, and we welcome its publication. It is also heartbreaking. The Congolese Government, and I personally, are appalled at the horrific nature and scope of crimes documented in this report that the people of the Congo have suffered.

Sadly, this information is not new to us. Millions of Congolese men, women and children have borne the brunt of the Congo’s conflicts over the past 15 years. Far too many have died. Like nearly all Congolese, I too lost loved ones in the war.

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Russia has reopened criminal probes into the killings of five journalists following an appeal by a media rights group that ranks Russia as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists, officials said on Thursday.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said it had decided to reopen criminal investigations into five journalist killings between 2001 and 2005 after receiving new information from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

In the most known murder case on 2006 killing of Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, Moscow has came under fire by rights groups who say little progress has been made in finding the people who ordered the crimes.

19 journalists murdered in the country since 2000 in Russia.

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Asian Human Rights Commission, Sept 29, 2010

The argument between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan concerning Kashmir during the UN General Assembly debate exposes the lack of respect both these governments entertain for their people, particularly to those living in Kashmir and for international human rights norms. Pakistan, as a member state of the UN has every right to publically point fingers at its neighbour, India, concerning human rights abuses committed by India in Kashmir. So has India a right to highlight the accuser’s appalling human rights standards in reply.

Accusation and counter accusation will not help to ameliorate the current situation of Kashmiris living on both sides of the border. To say the least, the debate only resulted in the folly of the pot calling the kettle black. Unfortunately it is at the expense of the taxpayers’ money. It is anybody’s guess what these ministers could achieve by holding a bilateral discussion in New York, though it is certain that the meeting will do nothing to end the ongoing violence in Kashmir, irrespective of which side of the international border it is committed.

India on its part is engaged in violence with impunity in Kashmir not a bit less than its neighbour, Pakistan, in the Kashmir Pakistan occupies. Both countries are engaged in sabotage and counter sabotage, infiltrating each other’s borders. For India, these sabotages have largely remained within the limited realm of a military and political requirement for a ‘tit for tat’ reply and to stir up trouble to keep the perceived enemy busy.

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Seeking Forgiveness

By Radha Surya, ZNet,  September 30, 2010
Radha Surya’s ZSpace Page

Defenseless or armed only with the ammunition of the powerless, the stone-pelting Kashmiri youngsters took on the lethal weapons of India’s paramilitary forces. They surged forward breaking curfew and defying death. Many were mowed down over the summer by the remorseless gunfire of paramilitary forces. One hundred and eight young people—pre-teen as well as teenaged boys–perished between June and September. And as cries of azadi (freedom) rent the air, an initially indifferent New Delhi found itself confronting yet again the demand of self-determination for Kashmir. Summer 2008 had been the last time Kashmir had seen violent suppression on a comparable scale. Later that year, assembly elections that were held in November witnessed higher than expected turnout rates in Jammu and Kashmir. Consequently they were hailed by New Delhi and much of India as a grand success. It was fondly believed that the specter of secession had been laid to rest. The summer’s death toll and the turmoil in which the valley has been plunged since June have put paid to these sanguine expectations. Even as late as mid-September paramilitary bullets continued to claim the lives of Kashmir’s children in full view of the local, the national and international press. And—in the words of an academic expert–Kashmir’s summer of discontent gave way to an autumn of woe.

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Now NATO gunships

The Nation, Pakistan, September 29, 2010

AS so many had been predicting, if the Pakistani state did not delink itself from the misguided US ‘war on terror’, the US would eventually shift the centre of gravity of the war from Afghanistan to Pakistan and move militarily into Pakistani territory. This is exactly what is now happening. Already the US has been carrying out drone attacks against Pakistanis, killing thousands of innocent citizens in their wake and perhaps in the process a few militants also. Meanwhile, US covert operatives and Special Forces have spread themselves all over Pakistan and these revelations and warnings in the Pakistani media have been there for some time.

Now the US has begun the next phase of its agenda targeting Pakistan and that is the aerial gunship attacks from across the Afghan border into Pakistan. On Friday NATO admitted that two gunship helicopters had entered Pakistan and killed 30 people – euphemistically termed “suspected militants” – just as Dr Aafia has been penalised for being a “suspected terrorist”! Since the government of Pakistan has to its eternal shame, kept silent on this new military targeting of Pakistani citizens, NATO has undoubtedly become emboldened and on Monday two gunship helicopters again came into Pakistani territory and killed a few more citizens – so far the tally is five killed in Kurram Agency.

Accompanying this new upping of the military ante inside Pakistan, the US drone attacks continue – with their frequency rising rapidly especially after Obama’s coming to power in the US. Almost daily there are reports of 10 people or more killed by these unmanned drones – as if Pakistani lives were worth nothing. Perhaps the US is right about this as far as Pakistani rulers are concerned since President Zardari is said to have told the CIA Chief that collateral damage from the drones was not an issue that bothered him!

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy Lately one hasn’t heard much of the screaming against the observation that supporters of a certain Middle Eastern state exercise influence over U.S. policy that is well out of proportion to what a clear focus on U.S. interests would dictate. That’s because the observation doesn’t get voiced very much.  The screaming reached a crescendo three years ago when John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published their book on the subject.  Evidently the vituperation, often accompanied by reckless charges of anti-Semitism, that was heaped on those two scholars and anyone else daring to make similar observations about this dimension of the making of U.S. foreign policy has been sufficient to keep the subject out of most discussions among polite company.

But I can’t help noticing that in commentary about construction of Israeli settlements in occupied territory and the role this construction is playing in impeding Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, some of the same quarters that have been quickest to shout down the idea that the powerful lobby in question exists have been providing some of the clearest evidence that it does exist and continues to shape important aspects of U.S. policy.  When President Obama earlier this year attempted to insist on a cessation of settlement construction in the interest of facilitating peace talks, he was berated for taking a stand that supposedly was unreasonable and unwise and then, after he duly backed down in the face of Benjamin Netanyahu’s recalcitrance, was told that his mistake was not in backing down but instead in ever making an issue of settlement construction in the first place.  Now, amid discussions over the expiration of Netanyahu’s moratorium on settlement construction, the U.S. position is again one of pointing out the unhelpful effects of resuming construction activity but stopping short of doing anything that would be effective in ending the Israeli recalcitrance.  And again we hear from supporters of Israeli policies that the United States ought to bow not only to Israeli behavior but to the preferences on this issue of the hardest line elements in Netanyahu’s coalition government.  Those elements are represented most visibly by Foreign Minister (and West Bank settler) Avigdor Lieberman, who on Tuesday treated the United Nations General Assembly to the spectacle of a speech in which he renounced the final status negotiations to which his own government supposedly is committed.

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Marcus Baram, The Huffington Post, Sep 29, 2010

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In a shocking indication of a split between the White House and the Pentagon over the war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes that the U.S. military will never leave the war-torn country.

During a dinner hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Afghan President Hamid Karzai in May, Gates reminded the group that he still feels guilty for his role in the first President Bush’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, according to Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars.” And to express his commitment to not letting down the country again, he emphasized:

“We’re not leaving Afghanistan prematurely,” Gates finally said. “In fact, we’re not ever leaving at all.”

Woodward notes that the group was shocked by the blunt comment: “At least one stunned participant put down his fork. Another wrote it down, verbatim, in his notes.”

The definitive statement seems to clash with President Obama’s assertion that he does not want to leave the war to his successor. Though he has emphasized that the U.S. will stay in Afghanistan “until the job is done,” he wants almost all the US troops out before the end of his first term in January 2013, leaving in place a small contingency force.

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