Peace and Justice Post

Middle East Online, Sep 13, 2010

As the US war and occupation drags on without serious debate about withdrawal on the Washington agenda, questions need to be asked about the fate of Afghan civilians. Chief among them: How many more years of ‘progress’ can they endure, and if the US stays, how much more ‘success’ can they stand? Asks Nick Turse.

How Much “Success” Can Afghans Stand?

With the arrival of General David Petraeus as Afghan War commander, there has been ever more talk about the meaning of “success” in Afghanistan. At the end of July, USA Today ran an article titled, “In Afghanistan, Success Measured a Step at a Time.” Days later, Stephen Biddle, a Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, held a conference call with the media to speak about “Defining Success in Afghanistan.” A mid-August editorial in the Washington Post was titled: “Making the Case for Success in Afghanistan.” And earlier this month, an Associated Press article appeared under the headline, “Petraeus Talks Up Success in Afghan War.”

Unlike victory, success turns out to be a slippery term. As the United States approaches the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, pundits have been chewing over just what “success” in Afghanistan might mean for Washington. What success might mean for ordinary Afghans hasn’t, however, been a major topic of conversation, even though US officials have regularly promised them far better lives and trumpeted American efforts to reconstruct that war-torn land.

Continues >>

Last week, President Obama ceremoniously announced that U.S. combat operations had ended in Iraq. As Democrats face an uphill battle in the upcoming midterm elections, Obama felt he had to make good on his campaign promise to move the fighting from Iraq to Afghanistan. But while he has escalated the killing in Afghanistan, it’s business as usual in Iraq.

The United States, with its huge embassy in Baghdad and five large bases throughout Iraq, will continue to pull the strings there. Last week, Vice President Biden delivered a power-sharing plan to the Iraqis, who have been unable to form a government in the six months since the March election resulted in a stalemate. “We think that’s better for the future of Iraq,” Biden declared. The New York Times speculated about whether “the Americans can close the deal.” But the United States will continue to do a lot more than simply make suggestions about how Iraqis should share political power.

The timing of Obama’s announcement that combat troops are leaving Iraq is based on the status of forces agreement (SOFA) the Bush administration negotiated with the Iraqis in 2008. It calls for U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq by August 31, 2010. The SOFA also requires the Pentagon to withdraw all of its forces by the end of 2011, but this date may be extended.

Obama’s speech about withdrawing combat troops from Iraq is an effort to demonstrate compliance with the SOFA as the midterm elections draw near. But events on the ground reveal that he is playing a political version of the old shell game. As Obama proclaimed the redeployment of a Stryker battalion out of Iraq, 3,000 combat troops from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment redeployed back into Iraq from Fort Hood, Texas. And that cavalry regiment will have plenty of company. The State Department is more than doubling its “security contractors” to 7,000 to make sure U.S. interests are protected. And with them will come 24 Blackhawk helicopters, 50 Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles and other military equipment.

Continues >>

Tens of thousands of detainees held without trial in Iraq, many of whom were recently transferred from US custody, remain at risk of torture and other forms of ill-treatment, Amnesty International said in a new report launched on Monday.

New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful detentions and torture in Iraq details thousands of arbitrary detentions, sometimes for several years without charge or trial, severe beatings of detainees, often in secret prisons, to obtain forced confessions, and enforced disappearances.

“Iraq’s security forces have been responsible for systematically violating detainees’ rights and they have been permitted to do so with impunity,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“Yet, the US authorities, whose own record on detainees’ rights has been so poor, have now handed over thousands of people detained by US forces to face this catalogue of illegality, violence and abuse, abdicating any responsibility for their human rights.”

Amnesty International said it estimates that 30,000 detainees are held without trial in Iraq although the Iraqi authorities have failed to provide precise figures. Ten thousand of those were recently transferred from US custody as their combat troops ended some operations in Iraq.

Several detainees are known to have died in custody, apparently as a result of torture or other ill-treatment by Iraqi interrogators and prison guards, who regularly refuse to confirm their detention or whereabouts to relatives.

Riyadh Mohammad Saleh al-‘Uqaibi, 54 and married with children, died in custody on 12 or 13 February 2010, as a result of internal bleeding having been beaten so hard during interrogation that his ribs were broken and his liver damaged.

Continues >>

23 year old ISM activist Rachel Corrie

David Rovics (Singer and Songwriter), CCMEP.org

When she sat down in the dirt
In front of your machine
A lovely woman dressed in red
You in military green
If you had met her in Jerusalem
You might have asked her on a date
But here you were in Gaza
Rolling towards the gate

As your foot went to the floor
Did you recall her eyes
Did her gaze remind you
That you've become what you despise
As you rolled on towards this woman
And ignored all the shouts to stop
Did you feel a shred of doubt
As you watched her body drop

And as your Caterpillar tracks
Upon her body pressed
With twenty tons of deadly force
Crushed the bones within her chest
Could you feel the contours of her face
As you took her life away
Did you serve your country well
On that cool spring day

And when you went back across the Green Line
Back to the open shore
Did you think that this was just another day
In a dirty war
And when you looked out on the water
Did you feel an empty void
Or was it just one more life you've taken
One more home destroyed

Media Watchdog: 52 Journalists Killed In First 8 Months Of The Year

CBS NEWS.COM, Sep 12, 2010

VIENNA (AP) – Fifty-two journalists lost their lives in the first eight months of this year because of their jobs – four fewer than during the same period of 2009, a global media watchdog said Sunday.

Mexico led the so-called Death Watch with 10 fatalities through the end of August, followed by Honduras with nine and Pakistan with six, the International Press Institute said.

“Journalists continue to systematically lose their lives to conflict, militants, paid thugs, governments, drug dealers, corrupt politicians, unscrupulous security officers, and others,” the group’s interim director, Alison Bethel McKenzie, said at an IPI meeting in Vienna that has drawn more than 300 media staff from around the globe.

The Vienna-based institute’s list includes journalists killed on the job or targeted because of what they did for a living. During all of last year, 110 journalists perished due to their profession, IPI said.

Continues >>

Damning CNN report cites uncorroborated sexual abuse charges of Palestinian children detained by IDF; army says detention of minors undertaken in line with international law, cannot respond to abuse charges as no details provided

Ynetnews,  Sep 9, 2010

share

The ongoing presence of over 50,000 US troops, many thousands of civilian employees and tens of thousands of US-backed mercenaries raises serious questions over the significance of the partial withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. The August 31 deadline marking the “end of US combat operations in Iraq” is not as real or significant a milestone as President Obama implied in his speech. Indeed, hearing for the umpteenth time that the US has “turned a corner” in Iraq, it makes one think that the country must be some kind of dodecahedron.

Nevertheless, with all the attention on the supposed withdrawal of US combat forces, it is important to acknowledge the forces that got us into this tragic conflict in the first place.

It was not just George W. Bush.

Had a majority of either the Republican-controlled House or the Democratic-controlled Senate voted against the resolution authorizing the invasion or had they passed an alternative resolution conditioning such authority on the approval of the use of force from the United Nations Security Council, all the tragic events that have unfolded as a consequence of the March 2003 invasion would have never taken place.

Continues >>

India deployed thousands of security forces and imposed an indefinite curfew on Kashmir’s summer capital on Sunday as a survey shows about two thirds in the Muslim region want “complete independence”.

Muslims renewed its demands for independence in protests against New Delhi’s rule in last day of Eid Al Fitr on Saturday.

The biggest pro-freedom demonstrations in two years in Kashmir were triggered by the killing of a 17-year-old student by police in June.

Seventy protesters and bystanders – some children – have been killed, mostly by security forces who have fired on demonstrations.

Troops equipped with assault rifles patrolled deserted streets and blocked off lanes with razor wire and iron barricades in Srinagar, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in two decades of conflict.

The curfew extended to other big towns in the Kashmir valley.

After Eid prayers to mark the end of the Ramadan fasting month, tens of thousands marched through Srinagar on Saturday.

Killings of civilians have fuelled anger across Kashmir, where sentiment against New Delhi’s rule runs deep. Human rights groups say India’s Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives security forces wide powers to shoot, arrest and search in the region.

Continues >>