Gaza: Pursuit of the Laws of War

May 10, 2009

If the UN fails to further investigate crimes committed during the conflict it will ensure stalemate, and more suffering for civilians

by Tom Porteous | The Guardian, UK, May 8, 2009

The Israeli government and its supporters have lashed out at the report of the UN board of inquiry into Israeli attacks on UN installations during Israel’s latest offensive in Gaza. The report, they say, is biased, tendentious and inaccurate. According to Robbie Sabel, writing in Comment is Free, the “unbalanced report” does “little to bring understanding or justice to the conflict in Gaza”.

The full report has not been published, but there’s little in the summary that UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon sent to the security council on Tuesday to support such claims. On the contrary, it provides careful but compelling evidence that Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) violated the laws of war during their military operations around UN installations in Gaza.

According to the summary, the board of inquiry concluded that “IDF actions involved varying degrees of negligence and recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries and extensive physical damage and loss of property”. The board also holds “Hamas or another Palestinian actor” responsible for one attack on a UN installation – a World Food Progamme warehouse hit by a Qassam rocket.

The terms of reference of the UN inquiry were extremely narrow. Its job was to look at attacks on eight UN installations and one UN convoy during the period of Israel’s military offensive. As far as one can tell from the summary, the board has been meticulous in sticking to these terms of reference.

However, the conclusions of the inquiry, as represented in the summary (which, it should be noted, was not written by those who wrote the full report), raise broader questions about the use of force by the IDF during the conflict. It appears the authors of the UN report felt these questions should not be ducked. The summary notes that the board of inquiry was “deeply conscious” that the attacks on UN installations investigated in its report “are among many incidents ­during Operation Cast Lead involving civilian victims”.

The board therefore recommended that “these incidents should be investigated as part of an impartial inquiry, mandated and adequately resourced, to investigate violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and southern Israel by the IDF and by Hamas and other Palestinian militants”.

But in his letter to the security council presenting his summary, secretary general Ban Ki-moon says bluntly: “I do not plan any further inquiry.” Whether under pressure from external sources – as reported in the Israeli media – or not, the secretary general has thus rejected his own board of inquiry’s most important recommendation even before the security council has had time to discuss it.

Indeed Ban could not even bring himself to put his weight behind an inquiry that has already been mandated by the UN human rights council to investigate broader laws of war violations in the Gaza fighting. Although the human rights council has often been criticised for an anti-Israel bias, this inquiry is headed by Richard Goldstone, who gained international respect for his critical role in dismantling apartheid in his native South Africa and served with distinction as the chief prosecutor at the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Goldstone has said that he will look at violations committed by both sides in the conflict.

So what happens now? The media and human rights organisations like Human Rights Watch have already documented serious violations of the laws of war by both sides in the conflict in Gaza, several of which have now been corroborated by this latest UN report. There is a strong prima facie case for a broad international and impartial inquiry, as recommended by the UN board.

Justice Goldstone’s inquiry (which has been accepted by Hamas but rejected by Israel) should be fully backed by the secretary general, the security council and all those states who profess to care about the vital importance of upholding the rule of law in international affairs.

There is a wide perception, backed up by strong evidence, that serious laws of war violations were committed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. Failure by the UN to investigate and make recommendations for the prosecution of individuals responsible for war crimes will perpetuate the climate of impunity that characterises this conflict, like so many others, and ensure that in the next round of fighting once again it will be civilians who suffer most. That will only further polarise and radicalise both sides and dim even further the prospects of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

Tom Porteous is the London director of Human Rights Watch

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Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, crime, Gaza, Palestine, Peace Movement, Uncategorized, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

CIA terror suspects ‘kept awake for 11 days’

May 10, 2009

Times Online, UK, May 10, 2009

Anne Barrowclough

More than 25 of the CIA’s war-on-terror prisoners were subjected to sleep deprivation for as long as 11 days at a time during the administration of former president George Bush, according to The Los Angeles Times.

At one stage during the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to keep prisoners awake for as long as 11 days, the Times reported, citing memoranda made public by the Justice department last month.

The limit was later reduced to just over a week, the report stated.

Sleep deprivation was one of the most important elements in the CIA’s interrogation programme, seen as more effective than more violent techniques used to help break the will of suspects.

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Within the CIA it was seen as having the advantage of eroding a prisoner’s will without leaving lasting damage.

The technique is now prohibited by President Barack Obama’s ban on harsh interrogation methods issued in January, although a task force is reviewing its use along with other interrogation methods, The Times said.

But details in the Justice Department memos released by Mr Obama suggest that the method, which involved suspects standing for days on end, dressed only in a nappy and shackled to the floor, was more controversial than previously known.

According to the memos, medical personnel were present to make sure prisoners weren’t injured. But a 2007 Red Cross report on the CIA program said detainees’ wrists and ankles bore scars from their shackles, the newspaper reported..

When detainees could no longer stand, they could be laid on the prison floor with their limbs “anchored to a far point on the floor in such a manner that the arms cannot be bent or used for balance or comfort,” a memo dated May 10, 2005, said.

“The position is sufficiently uncomfortable to detainees to deprive them of unbroken sleep, while allowing their lower limbs to recover from the effects of standing,” it said.

In the Red Cross report, prisoners said they were also subjected to loud music and repetitive noise.

“I was kept sitting on a chair, shackled by hands and feet for two to three weeks,” said suspected Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner captured by the CIA, according to the Red Cross report. “If I started to fall asleep, a guard would come and spray water in my face.”

In the Justice Department memos, sleep deprivation was described as part of a “baseline” phase of interrogation, categorized as less severe than other “corrective” or “coercive” methods.

“Waterboarding was obviously the most controversial,” said a former senior U.S. government official who was briefed extensively on CIA interrogation operations. But “sleep deprivation is probably the most effective thing they had going.”

The Justice Department memos also cited research that suggested sleep deprivation was not harmful.

“Experience with sleep deprivation shows that ‘surprisingly, little seemed to go wrong with the subjects physically,’ ” said the May 10 memo.

But a British scientist whose name was one of those put on the studies said he had never been consulted by US officials about the study.

James Horne, director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, said he didn’t know how his work was being used until the memos were released.

“My response was shocked concern,” Professor Horne told the LA Times. Just because the pain of sleep deprivation “can’t be measured in terms of physical injury or appearance . . . does not mean that the mental anguish is not as bad,” he said.

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Sri Lanka army kills 257 civilians in latest strike against Tamil Tigers

May 10, 2009

• Doctor says latest assault is bloodiest he has seen

• Sri Lanka military denies shells are being used in territory controlled by Tamil Tigers

French surgeons in Sri Lanka
French surgeons performing surgery in the operation room of the French emergency rescue operation hospital near the northern Sri Lankan town of Cheddikulam. Photograph: Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images

A massive artillery barrage by the Sri Lankan army last night killed at least 257 civilians and left another 814 wounded in the small strip of territory that remains under the control of Tamil Tiger rebels.

A doctor working in the warzone described the assault as the bloodiest he had seen in the government’s offensive against the Tamil Tigers.

Dr V Shanmugarajah said he feared many more may have been killed since some bodies were being buried on the spot without being brought to the makeshift hospital he runs.

Shanmugarajah described seeing shells fly through the air, with some falling close to the hospital, forcing many to flee to bunkers for shelter.

The rebel-linked TamilNet website said about 2,000 people were feared dead. It accused Sri Lankan forces of launching the attack, a charge the military denied.

Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said it was only using small arms in its effort to wipe out the Tamil Tiger rebel group and there “is no shelling taking place”.

The government had sent medical supplies into the warzone in recent days but a shortage of doctors, nurses and helpers has made treatment difficult, Shanmugarajah said.

“We are doing the first aid and some surgeries as quickly as we can. We are doing what is possible. The situation is overwhelming; nothing is within our control,” he said. Shanmugarajah said he had sought the help of volunteers to dig graves.

The government vowed two weeks ago to cease firing heavy weapons into the tiny coastal strip that remained under rebel control in an effort to avoid civilian casualties. But medical officials in the area have reported that air strikes and artillery attacks have continued unabated, despite the presence of an estimated 50,000 civilians in the tiny conflict zone.

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Karzai Demands End to US Air Strikes

May 9, 2009

Record Toll of Farah Attack Renews Outrage Over Bombing Villages

by Jason Ditz | Antiwar.com, May 08, 2009

Ending his visit to the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has demanded that the United States end its air strikes in his country, saying that the rising death toll was infuriating the public. “We believe strongly that airstrikes are not an effective way of fighting terrorism, that airstrikes rather cause civilian casualties,” Karzai declared.

Karzai has long been at odds, first with the Bush Administration and now with the Obama Administraiton, about the policy of air strikes launched in Afghanistan. The issue really came to a head this week, however, after an air strike against two villages in Farah Provinces killed 147 civilians, nearly doubling the previous record for most civilians killed in a single attack.

President Obama has promised, as the previous administration so often did, to “be more careful” about not slaughtering hundreds of civilians with US air power. Yet less than nine months after officials were promising much the same policy changes when the Herat strike had killed 90 civilians, the most striking thing is how little has actually changed.

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Pakistan fighting sparks exodus

May 9, 2009
Al Jazeera, May 9, 2009

Appeal for funds to shelter the displaced
have been issued by aid agencies [Reuters]

Pakistan is preparing for a humanitarian crisis as hundreds of thousands of people flee fighting between the Taliban and government troops in the country’s northwest.

Helicopter gunships blasted Taliban positions in the Swat valley on Saturday, as frequent curfews prevented residents from joining those who have already fled.

Sohail Rahman, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reporting from Islamabad, said local residents faced heavy odds in fleeing the fighting,

“Its very difficult because as soon as sporadic fighting occurs between the military and the Taliban then the curfew – unannounced – gets reimposed in that area.”

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and Pakistani officials say that about half a million people have been displaced in the last few days since the Pakistani government launched a major offensive against the Taliban.

Another 500,000 people had reportedly been displaced by sustained violence in the region over the last few months, bringing the total number of displaced people to a million.

Aid appeal

Antonia Paradela, a spokeswoman for Unicef, the UN children’s rights organisation, said aid agencies would need more funding to cope with the influx of refugees.

In video

Swat fighting threatens Pakistan army unity
 Behind Buner’s frontlines

“We need urgently more funds – for example Unicef needs at least $10m to continue helping the previous group of displaced families, which is more than half a million people. We’re talking now more than 200,000 – and more [are] on the move,” she told Al Jazeera.

The fighting has prompted the abandonment of a peace deal, agreed in February, between the government and the Taliban.

The pact, brokered by a local religious leader, allowed for the enforcement of the Taliban’s strict interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law, across Malakand division – which includes Swat valley – in return for peace.

In depth

Video: Obama says Pakistan is toughest US challenge
 Video: Turning to the Taliban
Video: Thousands flee Pakistan Taliban clashes
Q&A: The struggle for Swat
Talking to the Taliban
Pakistan’s war

The deal had been criticised both at home and abroad and  its critics, especially in the US, have welcomed the government’s offensive.During a visit to Washington, Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, pledged an all-out war against the Taliban fighters.

“This is an offensive – this is war. If they kill our soldiers, then we do the same,” Zardari told America’s PBS public television.

Zardari was in Washington for talks with Barack Obama, the US president, and Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

For his part, Obama pledged a “lasting commitment” to both Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the US is itself fighting Taliban forces.

‘On the run’

Up to 15,000 members of the security forces have been deployed in Swat, located in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

The military says it has killed scores of fighters and claims to be beating back the Taliban.

“They are on the run,” the army said in a statement on Saturday, without making clear exactly how much progress it had made in driving fighters from their positions.

People fleeing the area have also accused the military of killing civilians in its bombardment of the area.

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Nine killed is US missile strike in Pakistan

May 9, 2009

The Independent, UK, May 9, 2009

By Associated Press 

Nine people were killed in a suspected US missile strike on a militant stronghold near the Afghan border today, Pakistani officials said.

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And doctors rushed to treat an influx of wounded civilians as thousands of troops backed by bomb-dropping warplanes sought to purge Taliban militants from a north-western valley.

It was not immediately clear who the victims of the suspected US strike were.

Pakistan’s leaders, encouraged by the US, launched a full-scale offensive in the Swat Valley this week to halt the spread of Taliban control in districts within 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad.

But the fighting has caused hundreds of thousands of terrified residents to flee, adding a humanitarian emergency to the nuclear-armed nation’s security, economic and political problems.

Witness accounts indicated that scores of civilians have already been killed or injured in the escalating clashes in Swat and the neighbouring Buner and Lower Dir districts.

Today, medics at the hospital in Swat’s main town, Mingora, were at full stretch to deal with dozens of residents caught up in the fighting.

Riaz Khan, a 36-year-old schoolteacher, his wife and two daughters occupied four of the beds, the shrapnel wounds on their arms and legs covered by bandages.

Mr Khan said his other two daughters were killed three days earlier when a mortar shell hit their home near Mingora.

“We buried our daughters on Thursday when the army relaxed the curfew,” he told an Associated Press reporter. “We reached the hospital only with great difficulty.”

Nisar Khan, one of only three doctors left at the hospital, said there were about 25 war-wounded among the 100 patients.

The unidentified bodies of three women and a man apparently killed in the fighting were also being kept there, even though the hospital had no morgue, he said.

Pakistan’s army is fighting to wrest Swat and neighbouring districts from militants who dominate the adjoining tribal belt along the Afghan frontier, where US officials believe al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is holed up.

Taliban militants seized much of the area under a peace deal, even after the government agreed to their main demand to impose Islamic law in the region.

US officials likened the deal to a surrender. Pakistani leaders said the agreement’s collapse had opened the eyes of ordinary citizens to the extremist threat.

The army formally launched its offensive on Thursday, when Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the government would wipe out groups trying to “take Pakistan hostage at gunpoint”.

The military said yesterday that more than 140 militants and two soldiers had been killed in Swat in the last 24 hours – roughly doubling the number of casualties reported so far.

Today, an AP reporter saw jet fighters flying over Mingora and later heard explosions from further up the valley. Details of the fighting were not available.

The army said it was reinforcing the 12,000 to 15,000 troops in Swat as they take on 4,000 to 5,000 militants, including small numbers of foreigners and hardened fighters from the South Waziristan border region.

South Waziristan has been the scene of numerous suspected American missile attacks in recent months, including today’s strike in the Tabai area.

Two intelligence officials said several missiles struck a disused hospital building known to be frequented by foreign militants and a tunnel in a nearby mountain, killing a total of nine militants.

The officials said field agents were still trying to determine the nationalities and names of the victims.

Pakistani leaders oppose the strikes, apparently carried out by unmanned CIA aircraft, complaining that they feed anti-American sentiment and help militants to recruit new fighters. Washington says the attacks have killed a string of al Qaida and Taliban leaders without causing mass civilian casualties.

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Torture Images From Set Of Standard Operating Procedure Retell Story Of Abu Ghraib

May 8, 2009

Huffington Post Contributors |  Nubar Alexanian and Katharine Thomas   | The  Huffington Post, May 7, 2009

Photographs by Nubar Alexanian

Text by Katharine Thomas

One of President Obama’s first executive decisions in office was to prohibit the use of interrogation techniques previously sanctioned by the Justice Department under the Bush administration.

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Memos released on April 16, 2009 describe in detail “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on terrorism suspects. While many American’s have heard the controversy surrounding the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, few have clear depictions of what these techniques look like.

These photographs were created on the set of Standard Operating Procedure, a film by Errol Morris that tells the story of what happened at Abu Ghraib.

These images are accurate reenactments of events that took place in the prison. They are intended to make visible the idea of torture and to provoke the observer to imagine what it is like to be tortured.

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In a memo to John Rizzo, Assistant Attorney General, Jay S. Bybee, wrote “…The waterboard, which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever, does not, in our view inflict “severe pain or suffering…The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering.”

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Some individuals who did not believe that waterboarding constituted torture changed their opinions after experiencing the procedure for themselves. Writer and political observer Christopher Hitchens was challenged to undergo waterboarding. After the experience Hitchen’s is quoted as saying, “if waterboarding does not constitute torture, there is no such thing as torture.”

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Waterboarding typically refers to a procedure in which a cloth is placed over an individual’s nose and mouth and water is poured over the face for a period less than a minute. The technique simulates the experience of drowning. The gurney that the individual is strapped to may be put at an incline with the head below the lungs to prevent the water from going into the lungs and actually drowning the individual.

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In addition to coercive techniques such as waterboarding, the Office of Legal Council prescribed the use of conditioning techniques. These were a set of ongoing conditions intended to show detainees that they had “no control over basic human needs.” This included forced nudity, dietary manipulation, and sleep deprivation.

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Un-muzzled dogs were used to intimidate detainees. In one case, a detainee suffered from multiple bite wounds.

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Dog handlers reportedly had a contest to see who could make the most prisoners urinate out of fear of the dogs.

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One of the infamous images documented by soldiers at Abu Ghraib shows a hooded man standing on a box. The detainee’s hands were attached to wires. He was told that he if he stepped off the box he would be electrocuted.

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Cement bags were often used as hoods to cover detainee’s faces, one of many techniques used to make them feel out of control.

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Detainees were routinely shackled in uncomfortable positions and left for hours. Stress positions and sleep deprivations were used to soften the detainees for interrogation.

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This image shows military personnel playing “grab ass” in the interrogation room with a hooded detainee. Sexual abuse and the licentious behavior of military personnel are documented in photographs taken by the soldiers themselves.

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This photograph was taken from a monitor attached to a film camera positioned underneath a fifty-gallon drum with a glass bottom. It shows the face of an individual whose head is being held under water.

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In describing water torture techniques used in the Philippine-American war, Lieutenant Grover Flint said, “his sufferings must be that of a man who is drowning, but cannot drown.”

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CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of ‘Enhanced Interrogations’

May 8, 2009

By Paul Kane | The Washington Post, May 7, 2008

Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered “EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah.” EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.

The issue of what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has become a matter of heated debate on Capitol Hill. Republicans have accused her of knowing for many years precisely the techniques CIA agents were using in interrogations, and only protesting the tactics when they became public and liberal antiwar activists protested.

In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi’s office said today that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal technique to use in interrogations.

“As this document shows, the Speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used,” said Brendan Daly, Pelosi’s spokesman.

Pelosi’s statement did not address whether she was informed that other harsh techniques were already in use during the Zubaydah interrogations.

In December 2007 the Washington Post reported that leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees had been briefed in the fall of 2002 about waterboarding — which simulates drowning — and other techniques, and that no congressional leaders protested its use. At the time Pelosi said she was not told that waterboarding was being used, a position she stood by repeatedly last month when the Bush-era Justice Department legal documents justifying the interrogation tactics were released by Attorney General Eric Holder.

The new memo shows that intelligence officials were willing to share the information about waterboarding with only a sharply closed group of people. Three years after the initial Pelosi-Goss briefing, Bush officials still limited interrogation technique briefings to just the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the so-called Gang of Four in the intelligence world.

In October 2005, CIA officials began briefing other congressional leaders with oversight of the intelligence community, including top appropriators who provided the agency its annual funding. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam and an opponent of torture techniques, was also read into the program at that time even though he did not hold a special committee position overseeing the intelligence community.

A bipartisan collection of lawmakers have criticized the practice of limiting information to just the “Gang of Four”, who were expressly forbidden from talking about the information from other colleagues, including fellow members of the intelligence committees. Pelosi and others are considering reforms that would assure a more open process for all committee members.

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In the Name of Mothers Around the World

May 8, 2009

By Jodie Evans | The Women’s Media Center, May 8, 2009

The author, co-founder of the grass-roots peace and justice movement CODEPINK and board member of the Women’s Media Center, calls on us to honor Mother’s Day as it was originally intended—by the abolitionist, feminist and pacifist Julia Ward Howe.

Women know that war is SO over. We know it in our hearts, in our guts, in our wombs. We know that the madness in Iraq and Afghanistan has to end, that we cannot keep sending our children to kill the children of mothers across the globe. Last month at an appearance in Turkey, President Obama himself said “…sometimes I think that if you just put the mothers in charge for a while, that things would get resolved.”

Mother’s Day pledge by Noo Dal Molin

It is nearly 140 years since Julia Ward Howe wrote her Mother’s Day Proclamation, a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco–Prussian War. It flowed from her feminist belief that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.  Every year since CODEPINK began in 2002, we have worked to remind the public and media that Mother’s Day isn’t really about Hallmark and Teleflora, but was a call for women to gather in “the great and general interests of peace.” Howe knew then what we know now.  It will take women’s leadership to undermine what have become the USA’s greatest exports: Violence, Weapons and War.

This year we knew those who could attend our 24-hour weekend vigil outside the White House would be smaller than before, given the fiscal crunch we are all feeling.  We created a project so those who wanted could add to the activities.  In the past we have done an aerial image of thousands of bodies spelling Mother’s Say No To War photographed from the Washington Monument with the White House in the background.  But this year we put out a call for people to knit pink and green squares that we would sew together to read “We will not raise our children to kill another mother’s child” and place across the White House fence. Thousands of pink and green knitted squares have been filling the basement of the CODEPINK house in D.C.  They arrive with stories of how they were knitted with love, passion and conviction, with photos of the joys shared in knitting circles around the world.  The surprise has been that more women than ever want to participate, more women want to join together in community and engage in conversation.

They want answers. What they hear in the media makes no sense.  Why are we leaving more soldiers and private mercenaries in Iraq and not getting out on the date promised?  Why are we moving soldiers to Afghanistan when our military has told us there is no military solution?  How can we end the violence and protect the women? How can we turn our back on the women and children in Gaza?  Why is the military budget larger than under Bush (and that’s not counting another supplemental on Iraq and Afghanistan tacked on)? Why are we spending so much money on destruction, when Obama himself said in his inaugural address, “people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy”?

Women are fired up to gather together and expose the emptiness of the continued push for more weapons and more money for war.

We hope that our gathering on Mother’s Day will plant the seeds of new energy and new coalitions we will need to affect a world drunk on war.  It falls on us to bring peace to the table, to push our way to the table and not let up. Women know that instead of sending our young people overseas as soldiers, we need to send troops of doctors, teachers, business leaders, economists, farmers and peacekeepers who can build the economic structures for security to take root.

During our Mother’s Day weekend in DC, we will celebrate our sisterhood with song and poetry and fun, peace-building children’s activities, but we will also share our pain and grief by hearing the stories of women whose lives have been shattered by war—both women from war zones and mothers of American soldiers. When we bear witness to one another’s stories, we create a deeper, more compassionate foundation from which we can work together for peace.

Even if you can’t join us in D.C., you can send a rose to honor a mother whose life has been profoundly affected by war.  On Mother’s Day we will deliver the roses to the mothers and tie others to the fence outside the White House as a memorial to the dead and a moving call for peace.

However you spend your Mother’s Day, remember those women who have relentlessly stood for our rights in the past and know that we can bring peace. But first we MUST see it as possible and put our hoe in the ground.

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Civilians Pay Price of War from Above

May 8, 2009

by Robert Fisk | The Independent, UK, May 7, 2009

Of course there will be an inquiry. And in the meantime, we shall be told that all the dead Afghan civilians were being used as “human shields” by the Taliban and we shall say that we “deeply regret” innocent lives that were lost. But we shall say that it’s all the fault of the terrorists, not our heroic pilots and the US Marine special forces who were target spotting around Bala Baluk and Ganjabad.

When the Americans destroy Iraqi homes, there is an inquiry. And oh how the Israelis love inquiries (though they rarely reveal anything). It’s the history of the modern Middle East. We are always right and when we are not, we (sometimes) apologise and then we blame it all on the “terrorists”. Yes, we know the throat-cutters and beheaders and suicide bombers are quite prepared to slaughter the innocent.

But it was a sign of just how terrible the Afghan slaughter was that the powerless President Hamid Karzai sounded like a beacon of goodness yesterday appealing for “a higher platform of morality” in waging war, that we should conduct war as “better human beings”.

And of course, the reason is quite simple. We live, they die. We don’t risk our brave lads on the ground – not for civilians. Not for anything. Fire phosphorus shells into Fallujah. Fire tank shells into Najaf. We know we kill the innocent. Israel does exactly the same. It said the same after its allies massacred 1,700 at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in 1982 and in the deaths of more than a thousand civilians in Lebanon in 2006 and after the death of more than a thousand Palestinians in Gaza this year.

And if we kill some gunmen at the same time – “terrorists”, of course – then it is the same old “human shield” tactic and ultimately the “terrorists” are to blame. Our military tactics are now fully aligned with Israel.

The reality is that international law forbids armies from shooting wildly in crowded tenements and bombing wildly into villages – even when enemy forces are present – but that went by the board in our 1991 bombing of Iraq and in Bosnia and in Nato’s Serbia war and in our 2001 Afghan adventure and in 2003 in Iraq. Let’s have that inquiry. And “human shields”. And terror, terror, terror. Something else I notice. Innocent or “terrorists”, civilians or Taliban, always it is the Muslims who are to blame.

© 2009 The Independent

Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper.  He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

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