Doctors to reopen Yasser Arafat death investigation

April 3, 2009

Arab doctors to review information about ‘strange death’ of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat


Arab doctors are to investigate the death of the former Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, re-opening a four-year-old case which is still the subject of suspicion, conspiracy theories and political accusations.

Doctors from Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian territories have been given the task of reviewing information about the former president’s demise.

Arafat’s death in November 2004 in a military hospital near Paris triggered immediate rumours that he had been poisoned. French doctors said the 75-year-old died from a “massive brain haemorrhage” but could not explain what had prompted it. At the time, Arafat’s widow refused to allow an autopsy.

“The investigations carried out so far didn’t reach the point at which they could say conclusively what happened,” said Mansour Tahboub at the Yasser Arafat foundation, set up last year to preserve the former president’s legacy, and which commissioned the Amman investigation. “All we know is that there is something strange about his death.”

The panel had been expected to meet as early as today in the Jordanian capital, Amman, but the exact timing of the meeting remains unclear, with the head of the committee, Jordanian heart surgeon Abdullah al-Bashir saying it had been postponed.

Tahboub said the decision to re-examine the evidence was not political. “We want to give Palestinians new facts,” he said.

Accusations have been routinely directed at the Israeli government which saw Arafat as an obstacle to peace, putting him under house arrest in Ramallah and allegedly talking of eliminating him. Israel has strongly denied any involvement in his death.

Other rumours suggest the Palestinian president had Aids or that his death was caused by a fatal infection.

Arafat became ill in October 2004 and was flown from his Ramallah headquarters to France. He died a few weeks later, having dedicated 40 years to the Palestinian liberation movement.

The former president is seen as a national hero and was the first to give the Palestinian cause a legitimate voice on the world stage. His photograph still adorns homes, offices and public buildings in the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank.

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“Af-Pak: Obama’s War”

April 3, 2009

by Immanuel Wallerstein ,  commentary No. 254, April 1, 2009

Af-Pak is the new acronym the U.S. government has invented for Afghanistan-Pakistan. Its meaning is that there is a geopolitical concern of the United States in which the strategy that the United States wishes to pursue involves both countries simultaneously and they cannot be considered separately. The United States has emphasized this policy by appointing a single Special Representative to the two countries, Richard Holbrooke.

It was George W. Bush who sent U.S. troops into Afghanistan. And it was George W. Bush who initiated the policy of using U.S. drones to bomb sites in Pakistan. But, now that Barack Obama, after a “careful policy review,” has embraced both policies, it has become Barack Obama’s war. This comes as no enormous surprise since, during the presidential campaign, Obama indicated that he would do these things. Still, now he has done it.

This decision is likely to be seen in retrospect as Obama’s single biggest decision concerning U.S. foreign policy, one that will be noticed by future historians as imprinting its stamp on his reputation. And it is likely to be seen as well as his single biggest mistake. For, as Vice-President Biden apparently warned in the inner policy debate on the issue, it is likely to be a quagmire from which it will be as easy to disengage as the Vietnam war.

There are therefore two questions. Why did he do it? And what are likely to be the consequences during his term of office?

Let us begin with his own explanation of why he did it. He said that “the situation is increasingly perilous,” that “the future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan,” and that “for the American people, [Pakistan’s] border region [with Afghanistan] has become the most dangerous place in the world.”

And why is it so dangerous? Quite simply, it is because it is a safe haven for al-Qaeda to “train terrorists” and to “plot attacks” – not only against Afghanistan and the United States but everywhere in the world. The fight against al-Qaeda is no longer called the “war on terrorism” but is hard to see the difference. Obama claims that the Bush administration had lost its “focus” and that he has now installed a “comprehensive, new strategy.” In short, Obama is going to do this better than Bush.

What then are the new elements? The United States will send more troops to Afghanistan – 17,000 combat troops and 4000 trainers of the Afghan forces. It will send more money. It proposes to give Pakistan $1.5 billion a year for five years to “build schools and roads and hospitals.” It proposes to send “agricultural specialists and educators, engineers and lawyers” to Afghanistan to “develop an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs.” In short, Obama says that he believes that “a campaign against extremism will not succeed with bullets or bombs alone.”

However, implicitly unlike Bush, this will not be a “blank check” to the two governments. “Pakistan must demonstrate its commitment to rooting out al Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders.” As for Afghanistan, the United States “will seek a new compact with the Afghan government that cracks down on corrupt behavior.” The Afghan and Pakistani governments are pleased to be getting the new resources. They haven’t said that they will meet Obama’s conditions. And Obama hasn’t said what he will do if the two governments don’t meet his conditions.

As for the way forward, Obama asserts that “there will be no peace without reconciliation with former enemies.” Reconciliation? Well, not with the “uncompromising core of the Taliban,” or with al-Qaeda, but with those Taliban “who’ve taken up arms because of coercion, or simply for a price.” To do this, Obama wants assistance. He proposes to create a new Contact Group that will include not only “our NATO allies” but also “the Central Asian states, the Gulf nations and Iran, Russia, India and China.”

The most striking aspect of this major commitment is how little enthusiasm it has evoked around the world. In the United States, it has been applauded by the remnants of the neo-cons and McCain. So far, other politicians and the press have been reserved. Iran, Russia, India, and China have not exactly jumped on the bandwagon. They are particularly cool about the idea of reconciliation with so-called moderate Taliban. And both the Guardian and McClatchy report that the Taliban themselves have reacted by creating unity within their hitherto divided ranks – presumably the opposite of what Obama is trying to achieve.

So, where will we probably be six months from now? There will be more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and the U.S. commanders will probably say that the 21,000 Obama is sending are not enough. There will be further withdrawals of NATO troops from there – a repeat of the Iraq scenario. There will be further, perhaps more extensive, bombings in Pakistan, and consequently even more intensive anti-American sentiments throughout the country. The Pakistani government will not be moving against the Taliban for at least three reasons. The still very influential ISI component of the Pakistani army actually supports the Taliban. The rest of the army is conflicted and in any case probably too weak to do the job. The government will not really press them to do more because it will only thereby strengthen its main rival party which opposes such action and the result may be another army coup.

In short, the “clear and focused goal” that Obama proposes – “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future” – will probably be further than ever from accomplishment. The question is what can Obama do then? He can “stay the course” (shades of Rumsfeld in Iraq), constantly escalate the troop commitment, while changing the local political leadership (shades of Kennedy/Johnson and Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam), or he can turn tail and pull out (as the United States finally did in Vietnam). He is not going to be cheered for any of these choices.

I have the impression that Obama thinks that his speech left him some wiggle room. I think he will find out rather how few choices he will have that are palatable. I think therefore he made a big, probably irreparable, mistake.

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U.S. Weighs Putting 70,000 Troops in Afghanistan

April 2, 2009

By Yochi J. Dreazen | The Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is weighing whether to deploy 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan but lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are questioning an increased commitment and seeking specific measures of progress against the deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When President Obama took office, the U.S. had about 38,000 troops in Afghanistan. The White House has announced plans to send 21,000 reinforcements in coming months, increasing the tally to almost 60,000.

Mr. Obama will decide this fall whether to order 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year, senior Pentagon officials told a Senate panel Wednesday, bringing the total to almost 70,000.

[A U.S. Marine patrols with his squad past destoyed houses in Now Zad in Helmand province Afghanistan on Wednesday.] Getty Images

A U.S. Marine patrols with his squad past destoyed houses in Now Zad in Helmand province Afghanistan on Wednesday.

Lawmakers sought benchmarks on U.S. efforts in the area. “How will we know if we’re winning?” asked Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine).

The hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee came days after the Obama administration rolled out its new strategy for Afghanistan. The strategy is designed to counter the Taliban’s resurgence as an effective fighting force capable of exerting day-to-day control over many rural parts of the country.

The White House plan calls for deploying 4,000 troops and hundreds of civilian officials, expanding U.S. counternarcotics efforts in southern Afghanistan, and giving billions of dollars in development aid to Pakistan.

Lawmakers from both parties expressed skepticism about Pakistan’s willingness — or ability — to take effective measures against its militants.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the panel’s ranking Republican, faulted Pakistan for striking a peace treaty with Taliban militants in the Swat Valley that allows for the implementation of strict Islamic law there.

Sen. McCain also said the Pakistani government and military need to exert greater control over the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence arm, which has long been suspected of providing covert assistance to the Taliban and other Islamist extremists.

Gen. David Petraeus, who runs the military’s Central Command, and Michele Flournoy, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy, said Pakistan hadn’t yet fully committed to the counterterrorism fight.

“Many Pakistani leaders remain focused on India as Pakistan’s principal threat, and some may even continue to regard Islamist extremist groups as a potential strategic asset,” Gen. Petraeus said.

The Pentagon officials said they think their new strategy is the best way to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Gen. Petraeus said the Afghan Taliban are “growing in strength” and expanding their influence over portions of the country. Militants in Pakistan pose a serious risk to that country’s survival, he added.

“The Pakistani state faces a rising — indeed, an existential — threat,” he said. “In Afghanistan, the situation is deteriorating.”

In a reminder of the Taliban’s resurgence, militants from the group assaulted a government office in the southern city of Kandahar, killing at least 13 people.

The attack began when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at the gates to a provincial council building, clearing the way for a trio of heavily armed militants in Afghan army uniforms to storm the compound. The four militants also died in the assault.

A senior Pentagon official said in an interview that commanders in Afghanistan want to deploy the 10,000 additional forces to southern Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold that is also one of the largest drug-producing regions in the world. The extra forces would provide an additional brigade of combat troops as well as a new American division headquarters in southern Afghanistan, the official said.

—Peter Spiegel contributed to this article.

Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com

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Tribute to Peter DeMott, an antiwar activist

April 2, 2009

Socialist Worker, March 31, 2009

Peter DeMottPeter DeMott

ON TUESDAY, March 17, antiwar and social justice activists in Ithaca, N.Y., gathered to watch the documentary film The Trial of the St. Patrick’s Four.

The film was screened to mark the sixth anniversary of an action of civil disobedience by four Ithaca Catholic Workers at an army recruiting center days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The gathering also served as a mournful tribute to one of the four activists who participated in the action, Peter DeMott, who died February 19 in a tragic accident.

To a room packed with 200 people, the documentary illustrated the nonviolent yet courageous ways that Peter DeMott confronted the U.S. war machine for over two decades. Peter’s commitment to opposing U.S. imperialism since his days in the Vietnam war has served as a source of inspiration to current Iraq Veterans Against the War members, as well as to community activists.

What you can do

To send condolences or donations to the DeMott-Grady family please contact: Ithaca Catholic Worker, 133 Sheffield Rd., Ithaca, NY 14850.

Peter’s relentless commitment and personal sacrifice left the audience committed to building the antiwar movement. Through the documentary, one gets a glimpse of the inspiring and conscientious person that he was, and how his political firmness led him to oppose not only one war in Iraq, but the whole for-profit system that is behind it.

Peter DeMott will be remembered as a gentle husband, father, brother, uncle, friend and a firm civil objector. His brave example will live on to inspire present and future antiwar activists.
Héctor Tarrido-Picart and Nevin Sabet, Ithaca, N.Y.

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Beware Those Treacherous Afpakis

April 2, 2009

By Eric Margolis | Lew Rockwell, April 1, 2009

President Barack Obama has now taken full ownership of the Afghanistan War. Gone are Washington’s pretenses that a western “coalition” was waging this conflict. Gone, too, is the comic book term, “war on terrorism,” replaced by the Orwellian sobriquet, “overseas contingency operations.”

Obama’s announcement last week of deeper US involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan – now officially known in Washington as “Afpak” – was accompanied by a preliminary media bombardment of Pakistan for failing to be sufficiently responsive in advancing US strategic plans.

The New York Times in a front-page story last week that was clearly orchestrated by the Obama administration charged that Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), has been secretly aiding Taliban and its allies in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In 2003, the NY Times severely damaged its once stellar reputation by serving as a primary conduit for fake war propaganda put out by the Bush administration over Iraq. The Times has been beating the war drums for more US military operations against Pakistan.

Even so, these latest angry charges being hurled by Washington at Pakistan’s spy agency ring true. Having covered ISI for almost 25 years, and been briefed by many of its director generals, I would be very surprised if ISI was not quietly working with Taliban and other Afghan resistance movements.

Protecting Pakistan’s interests, not those of the United States, is ISI’s main job.

According to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Washington threatened war against Pakistan after 9/11 if it did not fully cooperate in the US invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s bases and ports were and remain essential for the US occupation of Afghanistan.

Pakistan was forced at gunpoint to accept US demands though most of its people supported Taliban as nationalist, anti-Communist freedom fighters and opposed the US invasion. Taliban, mostly composed of Pashtun tribesmen, had been nurtured and armed by Pakistan.

Many of Pakistan’s generals and senior ISI officers are Pashtun, who make up 15–18% of that nation’s population and form its second largest ethnic group after Punjabis. ISI routinely used Taliban and militant Kashmiri groups Lashkar-i-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Pakistan was enraged to see its traditional Afghan foes, the Communist-dominated Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks, put into power by the Americans. The Northern Alliance was strongly backed by India, Iran, Russia, and the Central Asian post-Communist states.

Pakistan has always considered Afghanistan it “strategic hinterland” and natural sphere of influence. The 30-million strong Pashtun people straddle the artificial Pak-Afghan border, known as the Durand Line, drawn by Imperial Britain as part of its divide and rule strategy.

Pakistan supports the Afghan Pashtun, who have been excluded from power in US-occupied Afghanistan. But Pakistan also fears secessionist tendencies among its own Pashtun. The specter of an independent Pashtun state – “Pashtunistan” – uniting the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan has long been one of Islamabad’s worst nightmares.

Pakistanis are outraged by US bombing attacks against their own rebellious Pashtun tribes in the frontier agencies. Most also strongly oppose Washington’s “renting” 130,000 Pakistani troops and aircraft to attack pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen. A majority believe the increasingly unpopular and isolated government of President Asif Zardari serves the interests of the US rather than Pakistan.

Pakistan is bankrupt and now lives on American handouts.

Its last two governments have been forced to do Washington’s bidding though most Pakistanis are opposed to such policies.

The US has ignored intensifying efforts by India, Iran, and Russia to expand their influence in Afghanistan. India, in particular, is arming and supplying Afghan foes of Pakistan.

Washington sees Pakistan only as a way of advancing its own interests in Afghanistan, not as a loyal old ally. Obedience, not cooperation, is being demanded of Islamabad.

President Barack Obama announced that more US troops and civilian officials will go to Afghanistan, and more billions will be spent sustaining a war against the largely Pashtun national resistance in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

None of this will benefit Pakistan. In fact America’s deepening involvement in “Afpak” brings the threat of growing instability and violence, even the de facto breakup of Pakistan as the US tried to splinter fragile Pakistan just as it did Iraq.

It is ISI’s job to deal with these dangers, to keep in close touch with Pashtun on both sides of the border, and to counteract the machinations of other foreign powers in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal belt.

Many Pakistanis also know that one day the US and its allies will quit Afghanistan, leaving a bloody mess behind them. Pakistan’s ISI will have to pick up the pieces and deal with the ensuing chaos. Pakistan’s strategic and political interests are quite different from those of Washington. But few in Washington seem to care in the least.

ISI is not playing a double game, as Washington charges, but simply assuring Pakistan’s strategic and political interests in the region. The Obama administration is making an historic mistake by treating Pakistan with imperial arrogance and ignoring the concerns and desires of its people. We seem to have learned nothing from the Iranian revolution.

Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada. He is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.

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No to War, No to NATO

April 2, 2009

by Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Nation, March 31, 2009

With President Obama announcing his new strategy for US/NATO escalation in Afghanistan, the April 3-4 NATO Summit in Baden-Baden and Kehl, Germany, and in Strasbourg, France, takes on added urgency — as will the demonstrations by thousands of protestors from over 20 European countries and the US.

Member states will attempt to use the summit as an occasion to celebrate the alliance’s 60th anniversary, France’s return to NATO, and perhaps offer a new “Strategic Concept” as an interventionist force around the world. Activists will articulate an alternative vision focused on securing global peace and confronting domestic challenges at home, including a call for the dissolution of NATO.

Beginning April 1, a diverse coalition of activists will participate in training camps, demonstrations, conferences, workshops, and non-violent blockades. At a moment when international cooperation on economic and human security interests is needed more than ever, the protestors view a US-led, expansionist NATO as destabilizing and dangerous. What was originally designed as a defense alliance against the Warsaw Pact has taken on a very different post-Cold War, global interventionist role.

Activists see a NATO with bases on every continent; a military force that organizers say accounts for more than 75 percent of global military expenditures and drains resources that might otherwise address needs like education, job creation, and poverty; “out of area” operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan, the Mediterranean Sea, and a training mission in Iraq; a destabilizing presence pushing a “missile defense” system, ignoring international law, expanding to Russia’s doorstep, and maintaining a first-strike option — all fueling a renewed arms race. (Recently, popular opposition to the proposed Czech-based radar system for US missile defense was a key factor in bringing down the ruling government there. Peace activist Jan Tamas led a hunger strike that galvanized opposition and he will be speaking at the “counter summit” in Strasbourg.)

Elsa Rassbach, a US citizen and filmmaker who has lived much of the time in Berlin since the mid-1990s, is a member of the International Coordinating Committee that is planning many of the activities of this broad coalition. She said that the need to respond to the occasion of NATO’s 60th anniversary has brought “a lot of different strands” together to collaborate since last June. “For example,” she said, “in the German peace movement — not only the large peace organizations and some Members of the German Parliament, but also smaller groups concerned about military bases used to conduct US/NATO wars, people concerned about atomic weapons…the social movements — the fact that militarization is costing too much. German youth and people concerned with soldier resistance and conscientious objector issues…. We’re bringing disparate movements and organizations together — both large and small — for the NATO action.”

Participants will include national and international groups representing the peace, human rights and anti-globalization movements, as well as students and youth groups. Also represented are trade unions, parliamentary Left and Green parties, and Attac. In all, 600 organizations from 33 countries — including Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Georgia, Brazil, Guinea, the Philippines and Turkey — have endorsed the campaign’s “No to War, No to NATO” appeal.

US participants include United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), Code Pink, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Iraq Veterans against the War (IVAW), Peace Action, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and others.

Perhaps no issue will be more prominent at the Summit and the protests than the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan. EU and NATO troops and resources are key to President Obama’s new plan for escalation, and most Europeans are strongly opposed to the war (though many favor humanitarian aid, reconstruction projects, etc.) In Germany, for example, surveys suggest opposition as high as 70 percent.

Andreas Speck, member of the International Coordination Committee, and also the War Resisters’ International which is participating in non-violent, civil disobedience, said: “This Summit is really important to NATO for taking its next step in becoming a global intervention force — obviously, NATO’s operation in Afghanistan will be an important topic. We want to show that Afghanistan is no better than Iraq — it’s a war that is not justified and we are completely opposed to this military operation.”

Rassbach agreed. “We want Americans to understand that the reason this opposition to NATO is emerging is that NATO — originally supposed to be a defensive alliance — is being converted into a very aggressive force to intervene around the world, and Afghanistan is a prime example,” she said. “Afghanistan is a key test for the ‘out of area’ intervention concept.”

The current schedule calls for: a camp near Strasbourg April 1-5; a conference on NATO and Human Rights on April 1; a hearing on the War in Afghanistan in Karlsruhe, Germany on April 2; a congress/counter summit of leading intellectuals, activists, and representatives of European political parties in Strasbourg on April 3 and April 5; actions in Baden-Baden on April 3 in conjunction with German Chancellor Merkel’s dinner for the heads of state; and also on the morning of April 4 in Strasbourg when a photo-op is scheduled at the pedestrian bridge Passerelle des deux Rives, and the NATO Summit begins in the Palais De La Musique Et Des Congres; the climactic international demonstration in Strasbourg on the afternoon of April 4.

The organizing challenges are enormous.

Just for the civil disobedience coalition — “Block NATO“, which is smaller than the broader coalition — Speck said there will be thousands of people coming in from Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Britain “and a few other countries.”

“It’s a big challenge for us in terms of communication — during the actions, the trainings, and the conference” he said. “Because we will need translation for a lot of these things.”

The coalition has also reached out to the French police to let them know they will be protesting non-violently. They will meet with them on the morning of April 1.

“We fear that the police will not act non-violently against us, so we want them to know that there’s no threat from our side,” Speck said. “The problem is we never know what the police will do and also if they will use agent provocateurs to create the images that they want.”

Perhaps even more pressing is the proposed route for the larger demonstration. The French authorities have relegated it to the outskirts far from the cordoned off Strasbourg city center where the Summit will be held. (The security within the city is extreme and controversial. The French court is currently hearing complaints from residents who are already being asked by police to take down peace flags hanging from their balconies, and who will be forced to wear badges during the summit to move about the city.) Under French law, there are no opportunities to appeal the demonstration route but organizers continue to press their case.

“Nobody’s demanding that we demonstrate very close to the Summit, just something reasonably close,” Speck said. “My fear is that if it’s very far out then people will not accept this…. And maybe that’s what [the authorities] want — a confrontation. Because then you have people upset, trying to make their way to the center of the city, and that will give the police the opportunity to provoke some violent confrontation. I hope that’s not going to happen, we don’t want this to happen.”

(Speck said people in the US can help by writing the French Embassy and speaking out against this infringement on the human right to freedom of expression and assembly.)

Of course, there will be no such negotiations regarding time and place for acts of civil disobedience. “The aim is… to effectively blockade the NATO summit venue basically with our bodies… And to obstruct the functioning of the summit by cutting off the leaders from the infrastructure that they need. There will be no material-blockades or actions which, for example, attack the police.”

Joanne Landy, co-director of the Campaign for Peace and Democracyin the US, said these events and the fervor surrounding them are something the US should be paying attention to. “NATO is very much part and parcel to how the US tries to marshal other countries to do some of the heavy-lifting for an imperial policy,” she said. “This imperial policy is catastrophic for us…. it completely distorts our resources, and it’s just fundamentally the wrong relationship to have with the rest of the world. I would like to have a world in which we could actually be in solidarity with labor movements and women’s movements and so forth. But right now whatever the US does is suspect and for good reason. So you really need a very different foreign policy all together in which the military wouldn’t play the role that it does now, and where the US could really support the needs of ordinary people everywhere.”

“American activists can see this anti-NATO protest as how Europe is protesting the Afghanistan War,” Rassbach said. “But it’s also more than that. It’s against all the military costs and the military bases in Europe and NATO’s nuclear first-strike policy that includes the proposed missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Cold War is over, so why should NATO continue?”

There is another important achievement here that the American peace movement is working towards as well.

“For many people it’s new to work in such a broad coalition,” Speck said. “Sometimes there is quite a bit of tension in the international committee. But on the other hand, everyone wants to work together, with our differences, to counter what NATO is doing, what the EU is doing, and all the militarization that we see going on…. That’s what our work in diverse movements is about, to deal with the differences. We want to create a much more diverse and democratic society so we need to learn to live with these kinds of differences.”

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.

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Israel: Transforming International Law by Violating It

April 2, 2009

by George Bisharat | The San Francisco Chronicle, April 1, 2009

The extent of Israel’s  brutality against Palestinian civilians in its 22-day pounding of the Gaza Strip is gradually surfacing. Israeli soldiers are testifying to lax rules of engagement tantamount to a license to kill. One soldier commented: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him.”

What is less appreciated is how Israel is also brutalizing international law, in ways that may long outlast the demolition of Gaza.

Since 2001, Israeli military lawyers have pushed to re-classify military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the law enforcement model mandated by the law of occupation to one of armed conflict. Under the former, soldiers of an occupying army must arrest, rather than kill, opponents, and generally must use the minimum force necessary to quell disturbances.

While in armed conflict, a military is still constrained by the laws of war – including the duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and the duty to avoid attacks causing disproportionate harm to civilian persons or objects – the standard permits far greater uses of force.

Israel pressed the shift to justify its assassinations of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, which clearly violated settled international law. Israel had practiced “targeted killings” since the 1970s – always denying that it did so – but had recently stepped up their frequency, by spectacular means (such as air strikes) that rendered denial futile.

President Bill Clinton charged the 2001 Mitchell Committee with investigating the causes of the second Palestinian uprising and recommending how to restore calm in the region. Israeli lawyers pleaded their case to the committee for armed conflict. The committee responded by criticizing the blanket application of the model to the uprising, but did not repudiate it altogether.

Today, most observers – including Amnesty International – tacitly accept Israel’s framing of the conflict in Gaza as an armed conflict, as their criticism of Israel’s actions in terms of the duties of distinction and the principle of proportionality betrays. This shift, if accepted, would encourage occupiers to follow Israel’s lead, externalizing military control while shedding all responsibilities to occupied populations.

Israel’s campaign to rewrite international law to its advantage is deliberate and knowing. As the former head of Israel’s 20-lawyer International Law Division in the Military Advocate General’s office, Daniel Reisner, recently stated: “If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries … International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy.”

In the Gaza fighting, Israel has again tried to transform international law through violations. For example, its military lawyers authorized the bombing of a police cadet graduation ceremony, killing at least 63 young Palestinian men. Under international law, such deliberate killings of civilian police are war crimes. Yet Israel treats all employees of the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip as terrorists, and thus combatants. Secretaries, court clerks, housing officials, judges – all were, in Israeli eyes, legitimate targets for liquidation.

Israeli jurists also instructed military commanders that any Palestinian who failed to evacuate a building or area after warnings of an impending bombardment was a “voluntary human shield” and thus a participant in combat, subject to lawful attack. One method of warning employed by Israeli gunners, dubbed “knocking on the roof,” was to fire first at a building’s corner, then, a few minutes later, to strike more structurally vulnerable points. To imagine that Gazan civilians – penned into the tiny Gaza Strip by Israeli troops, and surrounded by the chaos of battle – understood this signal is fanciful at best.

Israel has a lengthy history of unpunished abuses of international law – among the most flagrant its decades-long colonization of the West Bank. To its credit, much of the world has refused to ratify Israel’s violations. Unfortunately, our government is an exception, having frequently provided diplomatic cover for Israel’s abuses. Our diplomats have vetoed 42 U.N. Security Council resolutions to shelter Israel from the consequences of its often illegal behavior.

We must break that habit now, or see international law perverted in ways that can harm us all. Our government has already been seduced to follow, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Israel’s example of targeted killings. This policy alienates civilians, innocently killed and wounded in these crude strikes, and deepens the determination of enemies to harm us by any means possible.

We do not want civilian police in the United States to be bombed, nor to have anyone “knock on our roofs.” For our own sakes and for the world’s, Israel’s impunity must end.

© 2009 The San Francisco Chronicle
George Bisharat is a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, and writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.

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G20 protests: Riot police, or rioting police?

April 2, 2009
At the G20 protests in London only one group appears to be looking for violent confrontation – and it’s not the protesters

George Monbiot | Guardian, April 1, 2009

G20 protests turn violent at Bank in the City of London. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

Force majeure … are the police protesting too much? Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

The trouble-makers are out in force again. Dressed in black, their faces partly obscured, some of them appear to be interested only in violent confrontation. It’s almost as if they are deliberately raising the temperature, pushing and pushing until a fight kicks off. But this isn’t some disorganised rabble: these people were bussed in and are plainly acting in concert. There’s another dead giveaway. They are all wearing the same slogan: Police.

The police have been talking up violence at the G20 protests for weeks. They briefed journalists and companies in the City of London about the evil designs of the climate campaigners intending to demonstrate there, but refused to let the campaigners attend the briefings and put their own side of the story. They also rebuffed the campaigners when they sought to explain to the police what they wanted to do.

The way officers tooled themselves up in riot gear and waded into a peaceful crowd this afternoon makes it look almost as if they were trying to ensure that their predictions came true. Their bosses appear to have failed either to read or to heed the report by the parliamentary committee on human rights last week, about the misuse of police powers against protesters. “Whilst we recognise police officers should not be placed at risk of serious injury,” the report said, “the deployment of riot police can unnecessarily raise the temperature at protests.”

But there has always been a conflict of interest inherent in policing. The police are supposed to prevent crime and keep the streets safe. But if they are too successful, they do themselves out of a job. They have a powerful interest in exaggerating threats and, perhaps, an interest in ensuring that sometimes these threats materialise. This could explain what I’ve seen at one protest after another, where peaceful demonstrations turn into ugly rucks only when the police attack. The wildly disproportionate and unnecessary violence I’ve sometimes seen the police deploy could scarcely be better designed to provoke a reaction.

If this is so, they lose nothing. They might get the occasional rap over the knuckles from MPs or the police complaints commission. It doesn’t seem to bother them. By planting the idea in the public mind that the streets could erupt into catastrophic violence at any time, were it not for the thick blue line thrown around even the mildest protest, they establish the need for a heavy police presence. While the public lives in fear, no government dares to cut the policing budget.

Monbiot.com

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Kashmir konflikt og kashmirernens politisk krav

March 31, 2009

Nasir Khan

Terrorangrepene i Mumbai i november 2008 ble fordømt av nærmest en hel verden. De minnet oss på, nok en gang, hvor viktig det er å bekjempe krefter som utfører politisk vold og etnisk/religiøst motivert terror på det indiske subkontinentet. Men de dype og underliggende årsake­ne til den elendigheten slike voldelige handlinger er et symptom på, blir ofte ignorert og underkjent. En av de viktigste årsakene er den uløste konflikten i Kashmir, som vekker sterke følelser av sinne hos millioner mennesker.

Problemene med vold og terror i denne delen av verden kan slett ikke løses slik Bush-administra­sjonen har forsøkt å gjøre det: Å gjenta mantraet om «krig mot terror» og samtidig planlegge og sette i gang massiv aggresjons­krig hjelper ikke det spor. Tvert imot har Bushs kortsiktige propa­gandatriks bidratt til å dekke over aggresjonskrigføringen og lagt grunnlaget for mer vold, fl ere massakrer. Hensikten er å fremme herredømme og imperia­listiske interesser: Den såkalte «krigen mot terror» er i virkelig- heten en forlengelse av USAs imperialistiske strategi for å nå egne mål i Midtøsten, men også langt utenfor regionen. Det er innlysende at ethvert seriøst forsøk på å bekjempe terror må ta terrorens årsaker i betraktning og ikke nøye seg med å angripe symptomene som ligger opp i dagen.

Den uløste konflikten i Kash­mir har siden 1947 brakt India og Pakistan stadig videre på en farlig konfrontasjonskurs. Dette året endte britene sitt styre i regionen, og som en siste gest mot sine undersåtter besluttet imperieherskerne å dele India langs etnisk/religiøse linjer.

Britene førte under hele proses­sen et dobbeltspill hvor de delte ut velsignelser og beskyttelse med den ene hånda og elendighet med den andre. Med sin grense­dragning mellom de to framvok­sende nasjonene i området åpnet britene en Pandoras eske for kommende generasjoner. De som hadde noe å takke for tjenesten, gjorde det til gagns: Britenes siste guvernør for India, Lord Mountbatten, ble utnevnt til det frie Indias første generalguver­nør. Den nøye utarbeidete og målrettede inndelingen skulle vise seg å tjene ett lands interesse på det andres bekostning.

På den tida India ble delt, var prinsedømmet Jammu/Kashmir styrt av Maharaja Hari Singh. Han var hindu, fra den etniske gruppa Dogra, og oldebarn av Gulab Singh, som hadde kjøpt hele Kashmirdalen fra britene som følge av den såkalte Amrit­sar-avtalen av 1846. Ettersom det store flertallet av innbyggerne i Kashmir var muslimer, var det ventet at Kashmir ville tilfalle det nye Pakistan etter delingen. Folk fra den delen av regionen som seinere ble kjent som Azad Kashmir («Fritt Kashmir») startet sammen med stammekrigere fra Nordvestlige grenseprovins (NWBP) i Pakistan en geriljaof­fensiv mot staten for å presse Hari Singh til å la Kashmir inngå i Pakistan. Herskeren ba da Lord Mountbatten om hjelp, og ble lovet det – på betingelse av at han sluttet seg til India. Dermed startet den første indisk-pakis­tanske krigen. Den endte i 1949 med en våpenhvile nedsatt av FN, som da nylig var stiftet, etter at India i 1948 hadde brakt Pakistan inn for Sikkerhetsrådet. Våpenhvilen innebar også etableringen av en delelinje, som har forblitt de facto grense mellom det indisk-kontrollerte Kashmir og Azad Jammu/ Kashmir (kalt pakistansk­okkupert Kashmir av inderne).

Sikkerhetsrådet vedtok tre resolusjoner i 1948/49 som også anerkjenner rettighetene til innbyggerne i Kashmir, hvis landområder de to nasjonene sloss om. Ifølge FN-resolusjo­nene skal India og Pakistan avholde folkeavstemning i Kashmir, slik at folk der kan få avgjøre sin egen framtid. Indias daværende statsminister Jawa­harlal Nehru lovet folket i Jammu/Kashmir uavhengighet så snart det ble fred i området. Dette løftet brøt han da kamp­handlingene tok slutt, og innhol­det i resolusjonene ble aldri fulgt opp. Derimot ga indiske myndig­heter Kashmir en særstatus som åpner for større grad av selvstyre i regionen.

Hensikten med dette var å pasifisere befolkningen når herskeren seinere lot regionen inngå i India. Løftet om folkeav­stemning er fortsatt ikke inn­fridd, og den ene indiske regje­ringen etter den andre har hardnakket hevdet at Kashmir er en del av India. Ethvert krav fra folk i regionen om folkeavstem­ning og enhver protest mot den indiske okkupasjonen har blitt ansett som et internt indisk anliggende. Ingen tredjepart er gitt anledning til å uttale seg på vegne av kashmirerne eller fremme de rettighetene som ifølge FN-charteret og resolusjo­nene fra 1948/49 er legitime. I stedet brøt det i 1965 ut ny krig mellom India og Pakistan om Kashmir.

I tiårene som fulgte har kashmirernes lidelse økt i omfang. De har utfordret legitimiteten til den indiske okkupasjonen, og i 1989 startet de væpnet kamp for å kaste okkupantene på dør.
Det indiske militæret slo hardt tilbake, med massearestasjoner, vold og forsvinninger som konsekvens. India har sendt flere enn 500 000 soldater for å undertrykke muslimene i Kashmir. I følge forsiktige anslag har indiske styrker tatt livet av rundt 70 000 mennesker og brutalisert en hel befolkning. Kilder i Kashmir mener tallet på drepte er så høyt som 100.000. I den væpnete kampen har hindumi­noriteten i området, panditene, blitt offer for opprørerne, og ifølge statlige myndigheter har flere enn 200.000 av dem fl yktet fra Kashmir. Noen har søkt tilflukt i Jammu, andre har dratt til India. Etter landfl yktigheten har panditene levd under sørgelige forhold. Men det er oppmuntrende å se at kashmir­ske muslimer og deres lederskap i sin helhet nå ber sine hindubrø­dre om å vende tilbake til hjem­landet.

Etter 18 års brutal militærok­kupasjon sto den indiske regje­ringen så overfor en ny situasjon: Jihad-rådet i Kashmir tok til orde for å avslutte den væpnete kampen og oppfordret alle militante til å bruke ikke­voldelige og fredelige metoder i kampen for frigjøring fra India. Ropet om frihet – azadi – har blitt høyere, og India kan ikke drukne det med sine maskingevær og plyndrende militærstyrker. Imidlertid har de indiske lederne vist liten vilje til å lytte til folket og har i stedet holdt Kashmirda­len under streng militær bevokt­ning.

Den pågående konflikten har ført til ufattelig stor nød og ødeleg­gelse i Kashmir. Samtidig er den en viktig årsak til spenningen India og Pakistan imellom. Rivaliseringen om regionen har ført de to landene inn i militær opptrapping og våpenkappløp – der anskaffelsen av atomvåpen er en del av bildet – som tapper begge for store ressurser. De to landenes myndigheter bruker et propagandaspråk mot hverandre som skaper fi endtlighet, mis­tenksomhet og hat og gjør at befolkningen på begge sider anser motparten for å være sin «dødsfi ende». Konfl ikten har forgiftet sinnene til både indere og pakistanere; den har pågått i mer enn seks tiår, og det er ingen løsning i sikte. I kjølvannet av situasjonen følger økt politisk polarisering og vedvarende spenning mellom de to folke­gruppene. Dette gjør det tilsva­rende vanskelig å løse uenighe­ten om Kashmir og andre konflikter og derigjennom normalisere forholdet mellom landene.

En annen urovekkende tendens er den økende politiske og religiøse ekstremismen i India og Pakistan. Denne utviklingen har i og for seg pågått i lengre tid; det nye er at ekstreme tendenser er allment akseptert som en del av det sosiale og politiske landskapet i begge land. Main­streampolitikken har blitt influert av gruppetenkningens og hatets predikanter og ypper­steprester.

Flere indiske partier står i nær forbindelse med Hindutva, den militante politiske hindunasjona­lismen, og organisasjonen Sangha Parivar fungerer som paraplyorganisasjon for partier som bekjenner seg til denne retningen. Hindutva-organisasjo­nene er influert av tanken om hinduistisk fl ertallsstyre, eller Rashtriya Swayamseval Sangh (RSS). Gjennom å identifi sere India med hinduisme og hindu­styre forsøker denne retningen å etablere en etnisk/religiøs dominans i landet. Det ledende indiske partiet Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) har stått i spissen for Hindutva-doktrinen og hinduise­ringen av landet som helhet. Jawaharlal Nehru advarte i sin tid om at dersom fascismen skulle gjøre seg gjeldende i India, ville det skje i form av majorite­tens (hindu-)nasjonalisme. I dag har hans ord og advarsler vist seg nærmest profetiske.

I Pakistan har fundamentalis­tiske religiøse partier forsøkt å ta monopol på islam. De har ikke på noe tidspunkt oppnådd særlig folkelig støtte og har gjort det tilsvarende dårlig i valg. Flere pakistanske religiøse ledere har imidlertid gjort seg notorisk bemerket med ukvemsord mot andre muslimer. Sunnipredikan­ter har rettet sin vrede mot de «vantro» sjiamuslimene, og sjia­predikantene har svart med samme mynt. Dette har forårsa­ket en negativ sirkel av vold og hatefulle beskyldninger i islams navn. Det er ingen tvil om at militante islamistiske grupper bidrar til denne negative utvik­lingen og utgjør en betydelig fare. Men Indias behandling av muslimene i Kashmir, samt landets uforsonlige holdning til konflikten, er noe alle pakista­nere ensidig fordømmer. Indias oppførsel provoserer også militante grupper som Lasher-e-Taiba; disse oppfordrer sine tilhengere til å hevne sine indiske religionsfellers lidelser, påført dem av militante hinduna­sjonalister – og til å slåss for Kashmirs frihet med alle midler, om nødvendig med vold. Angre­pene i Mumbai i november i fjor var et uttrykk nettopp for denne dynamikken.

De siste seksti årene har India opprettholdt sin okkupasjon av Kashmirdalen gjennom politisk manipulering og brutal militær­makt. Massakrene på kashmir­ske muslimer utført av indiske styrker vil under Folkeretten regnes som krigsforbrytelser. Men til sjuende og sist må lederne i New Delhi bære det endelige ansvaret for den folke­morderiske politikken. Indiske myndigheter kan ikke fortsette sin okkupasjon av Kashmir og tro at folk der – stilt overfor den militære og økonomiske stor­makten India, med imperialist-stater som USA og det sionistiske Israel som stadig nærere for­bundsfeller – skal gi opp sitt krav om frihet. Dersom okkupasjonen fortsetter, vil situasjonen garan­tert bare vil bli verre, og volden og terroren i området vil blom­stre.

De ti millioner muslimene i Kashmirdalen vil ha uavhengig­het fra indisk kolonistyre og undertrykking. Det mest fornuf­tige for India vil være å ta et oppgjør med fortidas politikk og erkjenne at folk i Kashmir har rett til sjølstyre. Dette vil ikke svekke India; tvert imot vil det demonstrere styrken i det indiske demokratiet og framheve den indiske kulturelle tradisjonens humane sider.

Hvorvidt befolkningen i Kashmir­dalen velger å slutte seg til India eller Pakistan – eller tar sikte på full sjølstendighet – bør være opp til dem å avgjøre. Uansett hvilken avgjørelse de fatter om sin egen framtid, bør den være deres alene, og dette er noe FN-resolu­sjonene gir dem rett til. Det er langt fra sikkert at folket i området velger å slutte seg til Pakistan, men i så fall har India ingenting å frykte. Da vil nemlig det hinduistiske Jammu-området og det buddhistiske Ladakh­området med all sannsynlighet bli en del av India. I stedet for å utsette dem for de militære styrkenes ydmykende og inhu­mane behandling, kan India gi folket i Kashmirdalen rett til å bestemme over sin egen skjebne. Med det kan de samtidig legge de politiske forholdene til rette for et godt naboskap mellom India og Pakistan. Dette vil imidlertid kreve både mot og klokskap fra indisk side.

Så fort det viktigste stridste­maet mellom de to landene legges dødt, kan de to tidligere rivalene og «fiendene» møtes som venner og konsentrere seg om å løse sine respektive sosiale og økonomiske problemer i en fredelig atmosfære. Nøkkelen til håp og godvilje i India og Pakis­tan ligger altså i opprettelsen av en uavhengig politisk enhet i Kashmirdalen. Ved å bilegge en konflikt som har skapt fi endskap og påført skader i uoverskuelig omfang, kan de to landene også bli i stand til å tøyle kraften i den religiøse fanatismen og etnisk/ religiøse gruppetenkningen som hjemsøker dem.

Nasir Khan, dr. philos, er historiker og fredsaktivist.

Oversatt av Cato Fossum og publisert i Klassekampen 17. Februar 2009

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Some pictures of  Kashmiris under Indian occupation

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Kenney can’t censor this interview: George Galloway speaks

March 31, 2009
By Am Johal | Rabble, March 31, 2009
One way or another, George Galloway will be heard in Canada — he is scheduled to speak in Toronto on Monday, Mar. 30 — despite the ban on him entering the country. On Sunday, a diverse range of groups supporting free speech will challenge his ban in a court hearing.

Even if this fails, Galloway’s speech will be broadcast live to audiences across the country; by his own estimation, the British Member of Parliament will be heard by “audiences probably a hundred times greater” than if Minister Jason Kenney had not upheld the decision to keep him out of Canada on “security grounds.” Am Johal caught up with Galloway, who is currently on a speaking tour in the United States.

Am Johal: The Harper government in Canada seems to have politicized the bureaucracy in making this highly irrational decision to ban you from Canada. It’s an unprecedented attack on free speech in Canada given you are an elected MP from Britain. What do you make of the Harper government’s motivation for doing this?

George Galloway: You know you can be more Catholic than the Pope, more discredited than George Bush but you can’t be more anti-terrorist than the U.S.A. Yet the Canadian government has managed it. I’m allowed into the United States to move freely and talk to massive audiences — swelled I’m sure by the Canadian ban — but I can’t get into your country. At least that’s the state of play now. Our court case challenging this ban is due to be heard on Sunday.

I’m a Scotsman and Canada and my country have such historical links that it’s a bit like being turned away from your own home. This is obviously a political move by an ultra-right wing government at the fag end of its term and I can only think that this is some attempt by Jason Kenney to stake out the far-right territory — so far-right they’re just a tiny angry blip in the distance for himself. What he has done is to boost the audiences for my speeches and I will be heard, either in person or by interactive video link. At the last count 20 cities wanted the feed.

The irony in this whole affair is that I have never been a supporter of Hamas. But they are the elected government of Palestine and no country can attempt to impose the kind of government they favour on another people in the way that my country, yours and the United States want to.

AJ: It is strange that you are allowed in to the U.S., but not in to Canada. This really undermines Canada’s reputation in the world as an enlightened nation. The Conservatives have proven that they are troglodytes. What message would you like to send to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney?

GG: There’s nothing I could say to either of them that wouldn’t be coruscating and deeply insulting. But I’d only do that face-to-face, so that must remain private. I rather suspect, though, that when I do meet up with them they will be much diminished politicians — is that possible? — and in opposition.

AJ: You have remarked in your recent speeches about the right-wing turn in Israeli politics, particularly the rise of Avigdor Lieberman who openly supports the ethnic transfer of Israel’s Palestinian citizens. What are the implications of this in the region and what role can the EU play in brokering a peace process, if any?

GG: I think that if Barack Obama cannot broker a deal between Palestine and Israel there’s no point in closing Guantanamo. Indeed he’ll have to open a hundred Guantanamos because the region will erupt.

The previous Israeli government launched the 22-day offensive on Gaza to win the election and still the Israeli people reject them for others who want even bloodier torment visited on the people. I’m deeply pessimistic. Only Obama can reign-in these blood-crazed politicians. The EU has not and never will have influence. America keeps Israel afloat financially and militarily. Winning the war for the mind of Obama is the principal task.

AJ: What do you make of Tony Blair in his role as a Mideast envoy for the Quartet?

GG: Not since Caligula made his horse pro-consul of Rome has there been such a ridiculous choice as Tony Blair, the war criminal, as Quartet envoy.

AJ: There are legal challenges moving forward and numerous campaigns to support your upcoming visit to Canada. If you are not allowed in, how do you intend to keep fighting the Harper government?

GG: I will be allowed in. If not now in the near future because I’ve visited Canada many times and I have faith in the eminent good sense of Canadian citizens. If not this time then I will broadcast by satellite link to audiences probably a hundred times greater than I would have down there. So I suppose I should be grateful to Kenney.

AJ: What do you think of Canada’s role in Afghanistan?

GG: The Canadian people with their magnificent shows of strength prevented Canada becoming embroiled in the Iraq catastrophe. I’m afraid that there is no winning in Afghanistan, not militarily certainly, many have tried and none succeeded. I’m afraid many wives, mothers and children will be grieving in the months to come. We have no right intervening in another country’s affairs and that will be my message in my speeches.

Am Johal is a Vancouver-based independent writer.

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