US drone attacks in Pakistan

May 24, 2009

By Ian Sinclair | ZNet, May 23, 2009
Source: Morning Star

Two weeks after Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States, former Clinton administration official David Rothkopf made the shrewd observation that the new leader’s cabinet choices adhered closely to “the violin model: you hold power with the left hand and you play the music with the right.”

This musical analogy is also useful in analysing Obama’s foreign policies – presented to the public as progressive and benign, but in reality often adhering closely to the disastrous approach of his hugely unpopular and much derided predecessor. So while the first Black occupant of the White House asked the Muslim world to “unclench” its fist in his widely praised inauguration speech, in early April the New York Times quoted senior US administration officials as saying Obama “intended to step up its use of drones to strike militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas and might extend them to a different sanctuary deeper inside the country.”

For those who thought drones were something only seen in sc-fi movies, think again. Since October 2001 the US military has been using drones – unmanned, remotely-controlled aircraft –  to gather intelligence and bomb targets in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. With the first operations undertaken by the smaller Predator drones, today the US is increasingly using the huge Reaper drones – “hunter-killers” with a 25-metre wingspan and up to 3000lbs of bombs that can be kept in the air for more than 40 hours by pilots working shifts at Creech airbase in Nevada. “The Reaper is a bomber in all but name”, says Paul Rodgers, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University.

According to the US Government the drones are an extremely effective tool in targeting Al-Qaeda leaders and its supporters in the semi-autonomous tribal area of north-west Pakistan. To back up this claim US officials recently leaked to the press information showing the drone strikes had killed 9 of the 20 top Al Qaeda leaders.

However, in response to the US Government’s figures the Pakistani Government leaked data of its own to The News International, the second-largest English language newspaper in the country. These records revealed that out of the 60 US drone strikes that had been carried out in Pakistan since January 2006 only 10 hit their actual targets, killing 14 Al-Qaeda leaders.  Meanwhile these attacks have killed 687 Pakistani civilians (about 160 of which have been killed since Obama took office according to the Los Angeles Times).

This shocking number of civilian fatalities and disgraceful targeting history has produced some unsurprising results, with the Times newspaper reporting last month that the drone attacks are “causing a massive humanitarian emergency” with “as many as 1m people” fleeing their homes “to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army.”

David Kilcullen, the top counter-insurgency advisor to General Petraeus, told the House Armed Service Committee in the US that the drones attacks are “highly unpopular” in Pakistan and have “given rise to feeling of anger that coalesces the population around the extremists and leads to spikes of extremism”. One such “spike” was the March terrorist attack on the police academy in Lahore, which the Pakistani Taliban said was in revenge for the remotely-controlled air strikes. Returning from a fact-finding trip to the region, the UK’s social cohesion minister Saddiq Khan backed up Kilcullen’s testimony, noting “the anger at the drone attacks was huge.  The view they [the students he met] had was the UK was somehow responsible for this… They lumped us together with the US, which to me is a poison.”

The UK is not – yet – conducting air strikes in Pakistan, but the students confusion is understandable. Not only is the UK the US’s main ally in Afghanistan and Iraq, but John Hutton, the British Defence Secretary, recently told Channel Four‘s Despatches “we’ve got to fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. In fact, the Ministry of Defence’s own website notes that British drones used in Afghanistan “operate from Nevada in the USA as part of the USAF 432nd Wing” – the same airbase the US uses to fly their own drones. A very cosy relationship then, and hardly one that suggests opposition to the US attacks in Pakistan.

Putting mainstream journalists to shame, the activist-run Peace News newspaper accurately described the – presumably illegal – US drone attacks against Pakistan as “state terrorism”.  However, with minimal coverage in the British media, public awareness about this important issue is unfortunately, but not surprisingly, very low. But what about the poor response from the anti-war movement?  What is their excuse? Where are the voices raised in protest against these murderous and counterproductive air strikes which kill large numbers of civilians, produce thousands of refugees, destablise the entire region and increase the terrorist threat to the UK?

* An edited version of this article recently appeared in the Morning Star newspaper.  ian_js@hotmail.com

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Concern mounts over US Predator covert killings

May 24, 2009

The Times, UK, May 23, 2009

Tom Baldwin in Washington

The CIA is said to have carried out at least 16 Predator strikes in Pakistan during the first four months of this year Tom Baldwin Washington America has stepped up the covert targeted killing policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan despite the concern of security experts about its effectiveness and complaints by human rights groups about civilian casualties.

The CIA is said to have carried out at least 16 Predator strikes in Pakistan during the first four months of this year, compared with 36 strikes in the whole of 2008. These have killed about 161 people since President Obama’s inauguration, according to news reports in Pakistan.

David Kilcullen, who was the chief counter-terrorism adviser to Condoleezza Rice, the former Secretary of State, has said that the programme should be scrapped. “Since 2006 we’ve killed 14 senior al-Qaeda leaders using drone strikes; in the same time period we’ve killed 700 Pakistani civilians in the same area. The drone strikes are highly unpopular.” he said. “The current path that we are on is leading us to the loss of Pakistani Government control over its own population.”

Leon Panetta, the CIA director, said: “Serious pressures have been brought to bear on al-Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas. There is ample evidence that our strategy is in fact working. We do not expect to let up on that strategy.” Asked about Mr Kilcullen’s comments, he suggested that sometimes civilian deaths from other operations including less precise F-16 jet strikes are blamed on the drones.

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Blackwater Operating in Afghanistan on Subcontract with Raytheon

May 23, 2009

After deadly shooting in Kabul, a new Blackwater subsidiary is revealed. The company is also accused of using AK47s seized from Afghan insurgents.

By Jeremy Scahill | RebelReports, May 19, 2009

For those of you who have been following the intricacies of the various ongoing Blackwater/Xe scandals (hard to keep up with indeed), the situation unfolding in Kabul is certainly on your radar. In short, four Blackwater/Xe operatives working for Paravant LLC, a subsidiary of Blackwater/Xe are alleged to have fired on a civilian car they say they saw as a threat, killing at least one Afghan civilian. According to The Wall Street Journal’s August Cole, “At least some of the men, who were former military personnel, had been allegedly drinking alcohol that evening, according to a person familiar with the incident. Off-duty contractors aren’t supposed to carry weapons or drink alcohol.”

The US military said the incident took place in Kabul on May 5. “While stopped for the vehicle accident, the contractors were approached by a vehicle in a manner the contractors felt threatening,” according to the military. At last one Afghan was killed and three others were wounded.

Now, there are many layers to this story, not the least of which is yet another allegation of Blackwater-affiliated personnel drinking and killing in a foreign war zone. (A drunken Blackwater operative was alleged to have killed a bodyguard to an Iraqi vice president on Christmas Eve 2006 inside Baghdad’s Green Zone).

What’s more, this represents the first public mention of the Blackwater/Xe subsidiary Paravant, but also the fact that its work was apparently buried in a subcontract with Raytheon, which in turn has a large US Army training contract in Afghanistan. “Raytheon’s use of Paravant is for a program called Warfighter Focus, a sweeping U.S. Army training effort valued at more than $11 billion over a 10-year period,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

“Warfighter Focus” is carried out by a Raytheon program the company describes in its contract handbook as such [PDF]:

The Raytheon-led Warrior Training Alliance (WTA) team is comprised of over 65 subcontractors with one common mission: to deliver unmatched training support services that cost-effectively meet the U.S. Army’s requirement for total warfighter readiness. The WTA’s ability to provide a comprehensive range of integrated training services will assist the Army in transitioning to a more collaborative, consolidated and streamlined training environment.

Now, the “Warfighter Focus” contract in and of itself is very intriguing and worthy of further investigation. But it is also particularly interesting given that Blackwater is under multiple investigations (DoJ, Congress, IRS, ATF, etc.) and continues to operate in Afghanistan (in part) on a subcontract through a subsidiary working for a massive defense Goliath. This is how the whole contracting scam works, particularly for companies in trouble. They hide under layers of subcontracts and subsidiaries. Blackwater/Xe of course still holds overt contracts in Afghanistan as well.

In addition to Raytheon/Paravant part of the Kabul story, there is yet another internal drama unfolding. According to the WSJ:

Paravant has terminated contracts with the four men “for failure to comply with the terms of their contract,” according to Xe spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell. “Contractual and or legal violations will not be tolerated,” she said.

The contractors were ordered not to leave Afghanistan without permission of the Defense Department, she said, and the company said it is cooperating with authorities.

A US military spokesperson confirmed this, saying, “The contracting company is cooperating with us. We have asked them to keep the individuals in-country until the investigation is complete.”

In light of all of this, I thought it appropriate to share a document that proves an interesting read. Late Friday night/early Saturday, I received an email from Callahan & Blaine— the law firm that represents the four families of the Blackwater men killed in Fallujah on March 31, 2004. That lawsuit, of course, was the first really big case against Blackwater.

Callahan & Blaine has now apparently decided to represent the four Blackwater/Xe/Paravant men involved with the May 5 Kabul shooting. The law firm claims that the men are being held against their will in Afghanistan by Blackwater/Paravant “in a safe house located in a mosque in Kabul in an 8’ x 8’ room.” The company’s alleged motivation for this according to Callahan & Blaine is as follows:

“[T]he Letter of Authorization issued by the Department of Defense to Blackwater specifically provided that the Blackwater personnel would not be armed in Afghanistan. This limitation presumably arose out of concern emanating from the September 16, 2007 shootings in Iraq which resulted in the deaths of 17 Iraqi citizens. Blackwater in knowing violation of the limited authorization issued AK47s to each of the four men. Blackwater acquired these AK47s from a cache of weapons taken from Afghan insurgents. The fact that these men had weapons probably saved their lives but also puts Blackwater’s future involvement in Afghanistan at risk.”

[…]

It is believed that Blackwater has already paid the families of the individuals that were injured or killed and is attempting to negotiate with Afghan authorities to allow Blackwater to remain in Afghanistan despite its breach of the Letter of Authorization in exchange for turning over these four Americans to the Afghanistan authorities, despite their being cleared for release.

I am providing the document below in-full for the public record and as a reference for journalists covering this case more closely than I am able to right now. I am not saying that this is what happened, but rather that it is a version that differs from that of Blackwater/Xe and publicly quoted US military spokespeople. It is from Callahan & Blaine:

FOUR AMERICANS HELD CAPTIVE IN KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

Blackwater USA, now known as Xe Company, is holding four Americans captive and against their will in Kabul, Afghanistan. The four men are being kept in a safe house located in a mosque in Kabul in an 8’ x 8’ room. These men, Mr. Chris Drotleff, Mr. Steve McClain, Mr. Justin Cannon and Mr. Armando Hamid, managed to access Blackwater’s Internet and make a Skype Internet telephone call to Dan Callahan of Callahan & Blaine, the attorney who represents the four Blackwater contractors murdered in Fallujah on March 31, 2004 and is actively involved in litigation against Blackwater.

The group has informed Mr. Callahan that the Letter of Authorization issued by the Department of Defense to Blackwater specifically provided that the Blackwater personnel would not be armed in Afghanistan. This limitation presumably arose out of concern emanating from the September 16, 2007 shootings in Iraq which resulted in the deaths of 17 Iraqi citizens. Blackwater in knowing violation of the limited authorization issued AK47s to each of the four men. Blackwater acquired these AK47s from a cache of weapons taken from Afghan insurgents. The fact that these men had weapons probably saved their lives but also puts Blackwater’s future involvement in Afghanistan at risk.

On May 5, 2009, Messrs. Drotleff, McClain, Cannon and Hamid were in the second vehicle of a two vehicle convoy going through Kabul when an insurgent vehicle passed the second of the two Blackwater vehicles and crashed into the first vehicle. The second vehicle, containing these four men, stopped, and two of the men exited their vehicle to attend to the injuries of the occupants of the first vehicle. The insurgent vehicle suddenly made a u-turn and attempted to run down these Blackwater contractors. At that point, all four Blackwater contractors opened fire on the insurgent vehicle. The driver of the insurgent vehicle was killed and a pedestrian located approximately 200 meters away was wounded and is last known to be in a coma. There were two other occupants in the insurgent vehicle. The men are not sure of those individuals’ medical status.

The United States Army Criminal Investigation Command (“CID”) has investigated this shooting and has freed the men for return to the United States. Blackwater has discharged them and likewise has discharged their team leader, Carl Newman, and project manager, Johnnie Walker. Carl Newman and Johnnie Walker were allowed to leave Afghanistan and have returned to the United States.

Although the four men have been cleared to leave Afghanistan, Blackwater has detained them in a safe house in a mosque in Kabul against their will and contrary to their clearance to leave Afghanistan. It is believed that Blackwater has already paid the families of the individuals that were injured or killed and is attempting to negotiate with Afghan authorities to allow Blackwater to remain in Afghanistan despite its breach of the Letter of Authorization in exchange for turning over these four Americans to the Afghanistan authorities, despite their being cleared for release.

The individuals presently holding the men in an 8’ x 8’ room in a safe house contained within a mosque in Kabul are Tom Adams and Mike Bush, the head of Blackwater’s Afghanistan operation.

The four men told Dan Callahan that special agent Rodriguez of the CID had cleared them for release on May 12, 2009. The men were terminated on May 13, 2009 and told they could leave and since that time have been detained.

The men managed to access Blackwater’s Internet and make Skype Internet telephone calls to Dan Callahan in a request to gain their release.

The men are presently calling Dan Callahan on the hour and will continue to do so until Blackwater discovers that they have acquired this ability to place telephone calls, at which time it is expected that telephone access will be terminated.

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Obama’s AfPak war engulfs Pakistan’s Swat Valley

May 23, 2009
By James Cogan |wsws.org,  May23,  2009

A humanitarian catastrophe is taking place in areas of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP), as a result of the Obama administration’s expansion of the occupation of Afghanistan into the so-called “AfPak war”.

Over the past seven years, ethnic Pashtun Islamist movements in NWFP and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have lent assistance to the resistance being waged against the American-led forces in Afghanistan by the Pashtun-based Taliban, including by disrupting US and NATO supply routes through Pakistan.

On Washington’s insistence, the Pakistani government of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has ordered the military to embark on operations to crush the militants. In late April, Pakistani forces deployed into the Lower Dir and Buner districts of NWFP to drive out a small number who had moved into the area from their strongholds to the north, in the Swat Valley district.

Since May 8, the operation, which now involves up to 18,000 Pakistani troops, backed by air support and heavy artillery, has extended deep inside the Swat Valley. Over the past two weeks they have engaged in a series of battles against the vastly outnumbered and outgunned Islamist fighters.

There is virtually no independent reporting from the conflict zone. Most information coming out of Swat is sourced directly from the military, making its accuracy questionable.

What is clear, however, is that the assault into Buner, Lower Dir and the Swat Valley has rapidly degenerated into the savage collective punishment of entire Pashtun communities. Hundreds of thousands of terrified civilians have taken to the roads to get out of the conflict zone. By the beginning of this week, the United Nations had registered 1.45 million internally displaced persons.

The exodus from just these three districts is becoming the greatest displacement of civilians on the Indian subcontinent since the 1947 partition of the British Raj into India and Pakistan. Tens of thousands of people have found themselves in squalid refugee camps, without adequate food, water and sanitation. Peasant farmers have had to flee right at the time when they need to harvest their crops, setting the stage for severe food shortages and malnutrition later in the year.

A factor in the mass evacuation is the sheer brutality with which the Pakistani military waged an offensive in the nearby tribal agencies of Bajaur and Mohmand last year. Scores of towns and villages, including the major town of Loe Sam, were indiscriminately reduced to rubble in order to dislodge Taliban fighters. The government claims that over 1,500 militants were killed, while relief agencies estimate that over 500,000 people were forced from their homes. There is no estimate on the number of civilian deaths.

The depopulation of the Swat Valley is a conscious policy aimed at creating the best conditions for the military to slaughter the anti-government guerrillas there as well.

Reports indicate that a three-pronged offensive is underway to trap as many militants as possible in the central Swat city of Mingora. Army columns have pushed through Buner and Lower Dir and entered Swat from the south. Another column is moving through Swat from the north, while special forces units were dropped deep in the mountains to force Islamists out of the western Peochar Valley. In one bloody two-week battle for control of a mountain ridge known as Biny Baba Ziarat, the military claims to have slaughtered 150 Taliban, including boys no older than 14.

While the details are sketchy, the military has also waged significant battles to take control of a number of Swat towns, as well as the strategic bridges and roads linking Mingora with the outside world. It is already claiming that it has killed over 1,100 militants, at the cost of some 60 soldiers. Over recent days, troops have been fighting street-to-street battles in the town of Kanju, on the outskirts of Mingora proper.

An Al Jazeerah video shot on May 16 near Mingora showed helicopter gunships attacking highways and other targets; children playing among partially demolished homes; and the potholes caused by the controlled explosion of mines placed by militants on the roads.

The description of the situation in Mingora is reminiscent of Fallujah in November 2004, prior to the murderous US assault that destroyed the Iraqi city and left thousands dead.

Mingora previously had a population of some 250,000. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been told that as few as 10,000 people remain. The Pakistani government has provided a similar estimate, but declared those remaining are all “Taliban sympathisers,” in order to justify a massacre in advance.

HRW reported that Mingora has not had electricity since the offensive began, and hospitals and health facilities are not operating. Now, the army is cutting off food supplies. The city is believed to be defended by several thousand fighters, who have few heavy weapons and are being repeatedly pounded by air strikes and artillery bombardments.

Spelling out the intentions of the military, Major General Sajad Ghani told the Associated Press: “The noose is tightening around them. Their routes of escape have been cut off. It’s just a question of time before they are eliminated.”

The militants in Swat are followers of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), or the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law. While TNSM has ideological affinities with both the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban led by Baitullah Mehsud, it is a local organisation. It gained support in the district as a backlash against both Islamabad’s support for the US invasion of Afghanistan and anger over the endemic poverty that faces the majority of people in what was once one of the country’s premier tourist locations and playgrounds for Pakistan’s rich.

TNSM’s leaders, cleric Sufi Mohammad and his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, used a network of FM radio stations to combine Islamist preaching with populist calls for wealth redistribution and denunciations of the Pakistani government’s neglect of the poor. After several years of fighting, the Pakistani government agreed to a ceasefire with TNSM in February which accepted that its version of Islamic law could be imposed in the Swat Valley.

Over the following weeks, the TNSM sought to expand its influence to the neighbouring district of Buner, which is located only 100 kilometres to the north of Islamabad. This led to exaggerated claims by the Obama administration and in Western newspapers that the Pakistani government had allowed the “Taliban” to grow so strong that they were threatening to take over the country’s capital. The purpose of the accusation was to pressure Zardari and Gilani into unleashing the military to crush the spread of Islamist influence.

The government has made clear that the offensive to destroy TNSM is only the first stage of a campaign of military violence on behalf of the Obama administration. The Pakistani ruling elite fears being denied the international financial assistance they need to stave off economic collapse. At present, the Pakistani state is being kept afloat by loans from the International Monetary Fund and aid from the US and Japan.

Zardari told the British Sunday Times on May 17: “We’re going to go into Waziristan, all these regions, with army operations. Swat is just the start. It’s a larger war to fight.” He went on to appeal for $1 billion in emergency assistance aid. Thus far, the US and other powers have agreed to provide just $224 million.

The Pakistani Taliban strongholds in North and South Waziristan are of the greatest strategic concern to US occupation forces fighting in Afghanistan. Afghan fighters are known to use these tribal agencies, which are virtually outside the control of the Pakistani government, as safe havens and supply points.

The US military has launched repeated missile attacks on targets inside Waziristan using unmanned Predator drones. Illegal under international law, the strikes have resulted in the deaths of over 700 civilians but have only killed a handful of alleged Taliban leaders and had little impact on the cross-border movements of anti-occupation fighters.

A ground assault into Waziristan will see the Pakistani military in battle against the large Pashtun tribal forces loyal to Baitullah Mehsud and the Afghan Haqqani network. Periodic fighting since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan has resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 troops and unknown numbers of militants.

The Pakistani Taliban has responded to the threatened offensive with an ultimatum to the government that it has until May 25 to withdraw its troops from South Waziristan, end the Predator attacks and allow traffic in and out unchecked. Reports suggest Islamist fighters are strengthening defensive positions in anticipation of a military attack.

Fear of an offensive has triggered the beginnings of another mass civilian exodus. Several thousand Pashtun tribal families have arrived over recent days to take refuge in NWFP towns such as Tank, to the south of Waziristan. Officials cited by the Dawn newspaper on May 20 reported that 5,000 tents have been sent to the area in preparation for the influx of over 200,000 civilians.

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Obama Orders Update to Iran Attack Plan

May 23, 2009
Gates Says “All Options Are On the Table”

by Jason Ditz | Antiwar.com,  May 22, 2009

On NBC’s Today Show this morning, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that President Obama has ordered him to update the plans for a US attack on Iran, plans which were last updating during the Bush Administration. Gates says the plans are “refreshed” and insists that “all options are on the table” with respect to the potential attack.

It was only a month ago that Secretary Gates was warning vigorously against the potential attack, saying that it would create a “disastrous backlash” against the United States to hit Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. The Obama Administration has insisted it is intending to pursue the matter diplomatically with Iran, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said the administration doesn’t expect diplomacy to work, and the effort seems to be primarily to rally international support for more measures against Iran.

The US has also been sending secret missions to Israel in recent days, reportedly to caution them against launching any surprise military attacks against Iran of their own. It was unclear how successful the warnings were: Prime Minister Netanyahu said he remained confident that the US would respect Israel’s right to attack Iran.

It is unclear whether Gates’ revelation portends a serious potential for an imminent US attack on Iran, or whether the move is more international posturing. Still, it seems unlikely the news will be greeted warmly in Iran, which is in the middle of an election campaign in which potential US talks are a major issue.

Related Stories

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Israel accused of ‘colonialism and apartheid’

May 23, 2009

Middle East Online, First Published 2009-05-22


When will these walls be brought down?

Study finds Israeli practices in occupied Palestinian territories resemble those of apartheid South Africa.

LONDON – The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released findings that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

The 307-page report, co-authored by Arab Media Watch adviser Victor Kattan, will be found online on the HSRC website (www.hsrc.ac.za).

Titled “Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law,” the study represents 15 months of research by a team of experts in international law from South Africa, the UK, Israel and the West Bank.

The team was commissioned by the HSRC to review Israel’s practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and apartheid provided by international law.

The executive summary was first presented by members of the research team at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on Monday.

Regarding colonialism

The team found that Israel’s policy is to fragment the West Bank and annex part of it permanently to Israel, which is the hallmark of colonialism.

Israel has appropriated land and natural resources in the OPT, merged the Palestinian economy with Israel’s, and dominated the Palestinian people to ensure their subjugation to these measures.

Israel has also denied the Palestinians their right to govern their own natural resources and economic affairs.

These practices violate the prohibition on colonialism which the international community developed in the 1960s during the great decolonisation struggles in Africa and Asia.

Regarding apartheid

The team found that Israel’s laws and policies in the OPT fit the definition of apartheid in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

In brief, Israeli law defines the Jewish people as a distinct group with special rights and privileges.

These laws are then channelled into the OPT to convey privileges to Jewish settlers and disadvantage Palestinians on the basis of their identities, which function as racial identities in the sense provided by international law.

A policy of apartheid is especially indicated by the demarcation of geographic ‘reserves’ in the West Bank to which Palestinian residence is confined and which they cannot leave without a permit.

The system is very similar to the policy of ‘Grand Apartheid’ in South Africa, in which blacks were confined to black Homelands (Bantustans).

From the executive summary

“A troika of key laws underpinned the South African apartheid regime…The first pillar was formally to demarcate the population of South Africa into racial groups…and to accord superior rights, privileges and services to the white racial group…The second pillar was to segregate the population into different geographic areas, which were allocated by law to different racial groups, and restrict passage by members of any group into the area allocated to other groups,” the report read.

“The third pillar was ‘a matrix of draconian ‘security’ laws and policies that were employed to suppress any opposition to the regime and to reinforce the system of racial domination, by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination,” it added.

“Israel’s practices in the OPT can be defined by the same three ‘pillars’ of apartheid. The first pillar derives from Israeli laws and policies that establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews…The second pillar is reflected in Israel’s grand policy to fragment the OPT [and] ensure that Palestinians remain confined to the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews are prohibited from entering those reserves but enjoy freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Palestinian territory,” it continued.

“[The third pillar] is Israel’s invocation of ‘security’ to validate sweeping restrictions on Palestinian freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association and movement [to] mask a true underlying intent to suppress dissent to its system of domination and thereby maintain control over Palestinians as a group,” it said.

Research

This study was researched and written by scholars and international lawyers based at the SOAS in London, the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Durban, the Adalah/Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and the West Bank Affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists.

Consultation on the study’s theory and method was provided by eminent jurists from South Africa, Israel and Europe.

The Middle East Project of the HSRC is an independent two-year project to conduct analysis of Middle East politics relevant to South African foreign policy.

Its funding was provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of South Africa.

The analysis in this report is entirely independent of the views or foreign policy of the Government of South Africa, and does not represent an official position of the HSRC.

It is intended purely as a scholarly resource for the Department of Foreign Affairs and the concerned international community.

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It’s Time for the President To Get Real on Afghanistan

May 23, 2009

by Janet Weil | CommonDreams.org, May 21, 2009

There’s an old adage, “Show me what you spend your money on, and I will tell you your values.”

President Obama’s request for a “speedy” congressional vote on $92.4 billion more in supplemental war funds to pay for more troops, more drone bombing, and more carnage in Afghanistan, has inadvertently shown his values in practice: war over diplomacy, and wishful thinking over clear-eyed realism.

It’s time to get real on the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. Military engagement there since October 2001 has yielded neither the capture of Osama bin Laden, the political defeat of the Taliban, nor the improvement of life for Afghans, especially Afghan women.

This war has cost U.S. citizens, thus far, over $172.9 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service. The fiscal year 2009 budget deficit is now projected to be $1.75 trillion. Since it is borrowed money, the taxpayers — and our children — will have to pay it back. This will be a burden on the U.S. economy for decades. Meanwhile, military corporations such as DynCorp, Triple Canopy and Halliburton are raking in profits.

Moving from the cost in money to the cost in blood, this military misadventure has claimed the lives of nearly 700 U.S. servicemembers. Former NFL player Pat Tillman, used as a Pentagon poster boy until killed by “friendly” fire, is perhaps the only name of the dead of this war that Americans remember.

Nameless to us – but their deaths never to be forgotten or forgiven by their families – are thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. Under Obama’s policies, many more young Americans, and Afghan civilians, will die, for no gain.

Obama received a polite “no” from European leaders to his request that NATO forces take more of the combat load in Afghanistan. Large protests in France and Germany marked the 60th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was created to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union.

There is no Soviet Union any longer, Europe is economically powerful and peaceful, and Afghanistan is a long, long way from the North Atlantic.

There are alternatives, far more affordable and rational, than accelerating the military option in one of the poorest and most war-torn countries on earth. The U.S. could halt its military operations, especially the hated drone attacks in the Afghan-Pakistani border areas, and help organize a peace assembly led by widely respected Afghans, both men and women leaders. The U.S. also has the ability to launch a regional diplomatic effort, including Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan, and Central Asian states.

The American people are tired of war and sick of seeing their tax dollars go to bail out bankers and keep military contractors in the black. Afghanistan is not “the right war,” it’s a sinkhole for our lives and tax dollars and could be a disaster for the Obama presidency, which began with such optimism. Diplomacy, a drawdown of military involvement, and an exit strategy with a timeline — that’s the realistic path to freedom from endless war and debt. This course of action would show the values that most Americans support.

Janet Weil is a CODEPINK staff member and member of United for Peace and Justice. Her nephew is preparing to be deployed to Afghanistan in November.

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America’s Viceroy in Afghanistan

May 23, 2009

by Sonali Kolhatkar & James Ingalls | Z Net, May 21, 2009

In 2006 we wrote Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (Seven Stories) at a time when most Americans, even on the left, were paying little attention to Afghanistan. In light of the renewed attention on Afghanistan and the recent New York Times article, Ex-U.S. Envoy May Take Key Role in Afghan Government (May 19, 2009) about Zalmay Khalilzad and his proposed future role as “Afghanistan’s CEO,” we present an edited excerpt from our book focusing Khalilzad’s background and his role in post 9/11 Afghanistan. As we show, Khalilzad was instrumental in undermining Afghanistan’s chance for democracy and human rights, and helped instead to cement the political power of war criminals and fundamentalists.

ZALMAY KHALILZAD: AMERICA’S “VICEROY”

The Clinton administration should appoint a high-level envoy for Afghanistan who can coordinate overall U.S. policy. This envoy must have sufficient stature and access to ensure that he or she is taken seriously in foreign capitals and by local militias. Equally important, the special envoy must be able to shape Afghanistan policy within U.S. bureaucracies.

— Zalmay Khalilzad and Daniel Byman, “Afghanistan: The Consolidation of a Rogue Regime,” Washington Quarterly 23:1, 65-78, Winter 2000.

Zalmay Khalilzad is one of the few U.S. policy makers who publicly wrote his own job description and then got the job. No stranger to U.S. foreign policy circles, Khalilzad started off as an adviser to the Reagan administration on U.S. support to the Mujahideen in the 1980s, and ended up as a National Security Council staffer in the George W. Bush administration. After 9/11 he all but became the hypothetical envoy in the passage from his 2000 Washington Quarterly article with Daniel Byman, quoted above. In November 2003 he was promoted to U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan.

Continued >>

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‘Israeli assassination of Nasrallah would set region ablaze’

May 22, 2009

By Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondent | Haaretz/Israel, May 22, 2009

Israel is planning to assassinate the head of the southern Lebanon-based Shi’ite militia Hezbollah, a development which would “set the region ablaze,” one of the group’s deputies told an Arab language newspaper on Friday.

Nawaf al-Moussawi, who was Hezbollah’s top foreign policy official and who is now running in Lebanon’s upcoming parliamentary elections, accused Israel of plotting to assassinate the Shi’ite group’s leader, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.

Al-Moussawi, who is running for a seat representing the south Lebanese town of Tyre, said that Israel’s plan was hatched in concert with Arab governments.

In an interview with the pan-Arab London-based daily newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, al-Moussawi spoke in detail about the elections. He also told the newspaper that Israel’s planned large-scale military drill is really a simulation of the army’s plan to liquidate Nasrallah.

Al-Moussawi said an Israeli assassination of Nasrallah would “set the region ablaze” and that Hezbollah was preparing for such a scenario.

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Western Media Propagandize Iran’s Missile Test

May 22, 2009

by Jeremy R. Hammond | Dissident Voice,  May 21st, 2009

Iran announced on Wednesday that it had successfully tested its Sejil 2 surface-to-surface missile, and Western media sources took the opportunity to portray the Middle Eastern nation as a threat to world peace and, specifically, as a threat to Israel.

The Seijl 2 missile has a range of about 1,200 miles, and thus would be capable of hitting Israel, but Iran’s President Ahmadinejad announced in a speech following what he deemed a successful test that the missile’s purpose was to protect Iran from the threat of aggression.

Still, media accounts in the U.S. and other Western nations portrayed Iran’s test as a threatening provocation and linked it to an Iranian nuclear weapons program there is no evidence actually exists.

The London Times’ headline alarmingly read, “Ahmadinejad claims Iran’s new missile is capable of hitting Israel”.

But the paper failed to produce a quote of the Iranian president actually specifying Israel as being within range of the missile. Instead, the text of the article only states that Ahmadinejad merely announced that a missile with a range of 1,200 miles had been successfully tested.

Full article

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