When peace means war

May 8, 2009

Lee Sustar looks at the U.S. war drive taking shape in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Socialist Worker, May 8, 2009

President Barack Obama with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai (Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai (Pete Souza)

WHILE BARACK Obama stage-managed a Washington meeting with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan to discuss regional peace, the U.S. was escalating the war in both countries–and civilian deaths and a mass refugee crisis were the result.

As Obama met with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai May 7, mourners in Afghanistan had barely buried an estimated 120 people killed the day before–the latest in a series of killings by civilians in that country by U.S. and NATO occupation forces.

And by the time Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari arrived in Washington, an estimated 200,000 people had fled the Swat Valley after the U.S. pressured the Pakistani military into breaking a ceasefire with elements of the Taliban. Government officials in Pakistan fear the total number of refugees from Swat could reach 500,000–in addition to an estimated 500,000 Pakistanis who have already fled other war-torn areas near the border with Afghanistan.

The suffering of the Swat refugees is directly due to U.S. policy, which pressured Pakistan to overturn a three-month truce with the Taliban. The government blames the breakdown of the truce on the Taliban for its attempt to seize the town of Buner, but the Pakistani military was already on the offensive (and the U.S. had been carrying out periodic air strikes on Pakistani territory using Predator drones).

Bad as the situation has been, it’s likely to get worse. U.S officials have rebranded the occupation of Afghanistan, which dates from the “war on terror” begun in 2001, as the “Af-Pak” war–a regional campaign to crush the Taliban, whose resistance is an obstacle to U.S. domination.

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OVERSEEING THE policy is special envoy Richard Holbrooke, the egomaniac veteran diplomat who used U.S.- and NATO-backed ethnic cleansing in Bosnia to broker the 1995 Balkans peace deal. He’s out to do the same thing in Afghanistan and Pakistan, pushing a divide-and-conquer strategy that involves trying to buy off “good” Taliban elements, while waging an all-out war to crush the rest.

Holbrooke’s intervention has led directly to heightened conflict on both sides of the border.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. is casting doubts on whether Karzai should run again for president, crippling his already minimal ability to act as a broker among Afghanistan’s warlords. To prop himself up, Karzai chose as his running mate Mohammad Fahim, a warlord notorious for human rights abuses and reputedly a big player in the opium trade. Karzai’s weakness, in turn, has encouraged the Taliban to resist the planned escalation of 25,000 U.S. troops.

In Pakistan, Holbrooke has decided to bypass Zardari, a weak and corrupt politician, by publicly opening a channel of communication with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has close connections with Islamist political parties in areas where the Taliban and its allies are strong. Here, too, the aim is to deepen the turmoil in Pakistani politics, where a mass democracy movement recently forced Zardari to reinstate Supreme Court justices ousted by the previous military ruler, Pervez Musharraf.

To justify the increasingly aggressive U.S. intervention in Pakistani politics, the Obama administration raises the specter of a Taliban takeover of the Pakistani state and nuclear-armed jihad. But this is extremely unlikely, given that the Taliban is primarily based among the Pashtun people who live on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The real difficulty for the U.S. is that the Pakistani state is ambivalent about fighting the Taliban, because of deep connections between Islamist militants and the Pakistani armed forces and security services that date from the 1980s.

Back then, U.S.- and Pakistani-backed Afghani resistance groups, along with money and volunteers like Osama bin Laden, fought a successful war against the former USSR’s occupation that ended in 1989. In a bid to end the turmoil and civil war that followed, Pakistan backed the Taliban’s seizure of power.

In 2001, the U.S. turned the September 11 attacks into an opportunity to seize control of Afghanistan, a strategic crossroads between Central and South Asia and a pressure point for both Russia and China.

Since then, Afghanistan has been dominated by corrupt and brutal warlords, which allowed the once unpopular Taliban to make a military and political comeback. Ironically, the Taliban, which all but eradicated the cultivation of opium poppies in the 1990s, can now tap the opium trade for income. But U.S.-backed warlords are even more involved in the drug trade.

Further complicating matters for the U.S. is the Pakistani military. Assigned by Washington the role of guarantor of stability in Afghanistan, the Pakistani military has been unable or unwilling to deliver. And if Pakistan’s armed forces are reluctant to do Obama’s bidding, it’s not only because of its long-term interests in Afghanistan, but because Pakistan’s generals are wary of the growing economic and military ties between the U.S. and Pakistan’s historic rival, India.

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OBAMA’S SOLUTION to this crisis is the “Afghanistan surge,” a troop buildup modeled on the last phase of George W. Bush’s policy in Iraq, where the Pentagon quieted much of the insurgency by putting it on the U.S. payroll and granting it local political power.

In Iraq, that plan is fraying badly because of the unwillingness of the central government to come to terms with its former enemies. In Afghanistan, such an effort is even more problematic, given the Taliban’s ethnic and social roots. But Washington will pursue this aim anyway, as journalist Pepe Escboar writes:

What matters for the Pentagon is that the minute any sectarian outfit or bandit gang decides to collude with the Pentagon, it’s not “Taliban” anymore; it magically morphs into a “Concerned Local Citizens” outfit. By the same token, any form of resistance to foreign interference or Predator hell from above bombing is inevitably branded “Taliban.”

So far, Afghanistan’s image as the “good” war fought in response to 9/11 has given Obama sufficient political cover for a troop buildup. Obama claims that the escalation is about “making sure that al-Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland, and U.S. interests and our allies” or “project violence against” U.S. citizens.

Obama added more recently: “We want to respect [Pakistan’s] sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.”

But more than a few U.S. foreign policy experts dismiss the notion that today’s weak and scattered al-Qaeda can muster a serious threat against the U.S., and reject the idea that the Taliban has any agenda beyond taking power in its home region. That raises the question of just what the Afghanistan war is really about. John Mueller, a professor at Ohio State University and author of a book critical of what he calls the “terrorism industry,” wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs:

If Obama’s national security justification for his war in Afghanistan comes to seem as spurious as Bush’s national security justification for his war in Iraq, he, like Bush, will increasingly have only the humanitarian argument to fall back on. And that is likely to be a weak reed.

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500,000 fleeing Pakistan fighting, UN reports

May 8, 2009
  • Air strikes target militants in Taliban-controlled Swat
  • Exodus brings total to 1 million since August

Declan Walsh reports on the refugee crisis Link to this video

More than 500,000 people have fled fighting in north-western Pakistan in recent days, bringing the total displaced since August to 1 million, the UN refugee agency said today.

A spokesman for the UN high commissioner for refugees said the fighting had led to huge displacement in the area. Ron Redmond said up to 200,000 people had arrived in safe areas in the last few days and another 300,000 were on the move or about to flee.

This morning, Pakistani jets bombed suspected militant positions in a Taliban-controlled town as residents appealed for a pause in the fighting so they could escape to safety.

Pakistan’s government yesterday declared an end to peace initiatives with Taliban insurgents controlling Swat, signalling the start of a major military operation to drive them from the valley.

In a televised address, the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, said the army was being called in “to restore the honour and dignity of our homeland. We will destroy those elements who have destroyed the peace of our people and our nation,” he said.

The announcement, coming after a day of fierce air bombardment against militant positions, was expected to signal the start of a ground offensive similar to the one already under way in neighbouring Dir and Buner districts, where the army claims to have killed more than 200 militants in the last two weeks.

Gilani appealed for international aid to deal with the humanitarian crisis and to “help enhance the capacity of our law-enforcing institutions”. He called on Muslim clerics to support the government action “and tell the world that Islam does not sanction suicide bombing”.

It promises to be a bloody battle marked by urban warfare, which has rarely occurred in clashes with the Taliban. They have dug into positions across Mingora, the main town in the valley, where helicopter gunships pounded houses under militant control yesterday.

Several militants were killed when a rocket destroyed a lawyer’s house, while a mortar destroyed a house in nearby Matta village, killing five people, including two children. The death toll from the violence was thought to run into dozens.

During the afternoon thousands of Mingora residents took advantage of a break in the curfew to flee; some residents estimated that up to 80% of the population had left. On one street Abdul Qayuum, 61, sat on a suitcase by the roadside as he waited for his son to find a vehicle that would transport them out of the area. “We want to leave as quickly as we can,” he said.

The Taliban took advantage of the curfew to lay mines around the city. Commanders wearing face masks roamed the streets, issuing orders through walkie-talkies. One commander scorned the Islamabad government as an American stooge. “We are Muslims and we want an Islamic system. Who the hell are they [America] to object?” said Marwan, 30.

The Taliban promised the army a bloody reception in Mingora and boasted of having planted hundreds of mines. “The security forces cannot even budge in this area,” he said. Sajjad Khan, 22, said he knew of 14 funerals for civilians in his district of the city. “Now there is fear everywhere and everyone is leaving.”

The violence coincided with a visit by the president, Asif Ali Zardari, to Washington, where the army’s newly aggressive stance against the Taliban has been loudly welcomed by previously critical Obama administration officials. The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said the Taliban push into Buner, 60 miles north of Islamabad, had served as an “alarm call” to the Zardari government.

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Greenpeace India: Save an endangered species of turtles, Video

May 7, 2009

Editor’s Note: I have received the following letter from an Indian Greenpeace activist.  I reproduce the letter that contains  the links to a video so that the message reaches  as many people as possible with a view to mobilise people’s support to protect an endangered species of turtles at the hands of the powerful  Indian  capitalist Ratan Tata:

“I just heard from Greenpeace today explaining why they have to stop and catch their breath in the campaign to save endangered Olive Ridley Turtles from the Tatas’ destructive port in Dhamra.

They’ve got a video that packs in all the blood, sweat and tears that 115,000 Tata customers like myself have put into this campaign for over a year.

I’m not telling you what I think of this video, I just want you to watch it for yourself.

Just click here to take a look.

PS: Oh, we’re also planning to make this the Most Viewed video on YouTube India today, before midnight, so Mr. Ratan Tata knows how many of his own customers have watched it! That will only happen if you view it too.”

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US interrogators may have killed dozens, human rights researcher and rights group say

May 7, 2009

By John Byrne | The Raw Story, May 6, 2009

United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.

In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher’s posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain.

The researcher, John Sifton, worked for five years for Human Rights Watch. In a posting Tuesday, he documents myriad cases of detainees who died at the hands of their US interrogators. Some of the instances he cites are graphic.

Most of those taken captive were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They include at least one Afghani soldier, Jamal Naseer, who was mistakenly arrested in 2004. “Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables,” Sifton writes. “Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow. Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage.”

Another Afghan killing occurred in 2002. Mohammad Sayari was killed by four U.S. servicemembers after being detained for allegedly “following their movements.” A Pentagon document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2005 said that the Defense Department found a captain and three sergeants had “murdered” Sayari, but the section dealing with the department’s probe was redacted.

Perhaps the most macabre case occurred in Iraq, which was documented in a Human Rights First report in 2006.

“Nagem Sadoon Hatab… a 52-year-old Iraqi, was killed while in U.S. custody at a holding camp close to Nasiriyah,” the group wrote. “Although a U.S. Army medical examiner found that Hatab had died of strangulation, the evidence that would have been required to secure accountability for his death – Hatab’s body – was rendered unusable in court. Hatab’s internal organs were left exposed on an airport tarmac for hours; in the blistering Baghdad heat, the organs were destroyed; the throat bone that would have supported the Army medical examiner’s findings of strangulation was never found.”

In another graphic instance, a former Iraqi general was beaten by US forces and suffocated to death. The military officer charged in the death was given just 60 days house arrest.

“Abed Hamed Mowhoush [was] a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death,” Human Rights First writes. “In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.”

Another Iraqi man was killed in a US detention facility on Mosul in 2003.

“U.S. military personnel who examined Kenami when he first arrived at the facility determined that he had no preexisting medical conditions,” the rights group writes. “Once in custody, as a disciplinary measure for talking, Kenami was forced to perform extreme amounts of exercise—a technique used across Afghanistan and Iraq. Then his hands were bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs, he was hooded, and forced to lie in an overcrowded cell. Kenami was found dead the morning after his arrest, still bound and hooded. No autopsy was conducted; no official cause of death was determined. After the Abu Ghraib scandal, a review of Kenami’s death was launched, and Army reviewers criticized the initial criminal investigation for failing to conduct an autopsy; interview interrogators, medics, or detainees present at the scene of the death; and collect physical evidence. To date, however, the Army has taken no known action in the case.”

Death from interrogation is hard to separate from simple detainee death while in US custody. But one particular case stands out that seems to have fallen by the wayside — the murder of CIA “ghost” detainee named Manadel al-Jamadi, who was tortured to death by a CIA team at Abu Ghraib in 2003.

“Pictures of Abu Ghraib guards Charles Graner and Sabrina Harman posing with al-Jamadi’s dead body, the so-called Ice Man, were among the most notorious of the Abu Ghraib photographs published in April 2004,” Sifton notes. “A CIA officer named Mark Swanner and an interpreter led the team that interrogated al-Jamadi. Nine Navy personnel were also implicated. An autopsy conducted by the U.S. military five days after al-Jamadi’s death found that the cause: “blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration.”

“Reporting by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer and NPR’s John McChesney revealed that al-Jamadi was strung up from handcuffs behind his back, a torture tactic sometimes called a ‘Palestinian hanging,’” he adds. “After an investigation, the CIA referred the case to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution of the CIA personnel involved, but no charges were ever brought. Prosecutors accused 10 Navy personnel of the crime; nine were given nonjudicial punishments, such as rank reductions and letters of reprimand, and a 10th was acquitted.”

Additionally, Sifton notes the CIA may have had some close calls with detainees nearly dying during interrogations: the May 10, 2005, Bush Administration torture memo by Stephen Bradbury notes that doctors were nearby to perform a tracheotomy if during waterboarding the suspect is approaching death.

“Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue of psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness,” Bradbury wrote. “An unresponsive subject should be righted immediately, and the integrator should deliver a sub-xyphoid thrust to expel the water. If this fails to restore normal breathing, aggressive medical intervention is required….’”

The memo says CIA doctors were on hand with necessary equipment to perform a tracheotomy if necessary during waterboarding sessions: “[W]e are informed that the necessary emergency medical equipment is always present—although not visible to the detainee—during any application of the waterboard.”

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Ban Ki-moon’s moral failure

May 7, 2009

Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 6 May 2009

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a press conference in Gaza City outside the UN headquarters, still smoldering from the Israeli bombardment of the facility, 20 January 2009. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)


Late last week, according to the BBC Arabic news website, a report was submitted to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about the scale of destruction Israel inflicted on UN installations in Gaza. This was also mentioned on a BBC news bulletin on 1 May, but I could find little trace of this story anywhere else.

The brief news item stated that the UN report contained secret information supplied by Israel about an incident in which more than 40 Palestinian civilians were massacred when Israeli shells fell “outside” a UN school where many Palestinians were taking shelter. The secretary-general is reportedly considering how much of the information he can release without revealing the information supplied by Israel, the news item said, adding that the UN report concluded that Hamas fighters were not inside UN buildings but close to them.

Commenting on the report, the BBC said that it was informed by a diplomatic source, that the United States has informed Ban’s office that the report should not be published in full due to the damage that that could cause to the Middle East peace talks; in other words (mine, in fact) to Israel.

The point here is neither to pass any premature judgment on an unpublished report — despite obvious inconsistencies regarding shelling “outside” a UN installation that was somehow severely damaged — nor to predict how much of the report the secretary-general will finally decide to publish.

(As this article was being prepared for publication, details about the UN inquiry team report were published. The inquiry, led by Ian Martin, former director of Amnesty International, accused Israel of failing to protect UN facilities and civilians, dismissed as “untrue” Israeli claims that Hamas fighters had been firing from UN facilities, held Israel responsible for all deaths and injuries in six out of nine incidents, and called for further investigation into possible war crimes. Ban has rejected calls to pursue the probe, but called on Israel to pay $11 million in reparations for the damage it caused to the UN.)

But nor can we forget the dark days just past when Israel was slaughtering the innocent people of Gaza and the world stood by, even blaming Hamas — which had scrupulously observed a negotiated ceasefire until Israel broke it — for bringing on the apocalypse.

As the dust from the Israeli bombing began to settle, Ban decided to visit Gaza. That raised hopes that the UN was finally determined to act with courage and responsibility. Gaza had been off limits to international figures because supposedly a politically contagious terrorist organization had taken control of the place and no one was supposed to risk contact with it, even if compelling humanitarian considerations required that.

Well, the secretary-general decided on 20 January to defy the norm and go to Gaza. But his courage only went so far. His highly-protected convoy took him straight to the still smoldering compound of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) whose warehouses of food and fuel were destroyed by Israeli attacks along with their contents. He must have noted that the massive destruction could not have resulted from “shelling outside” the installation. “I am just appalled,” he said, “Everyone is smelling this bombing still. It is still burning. It is an outrageous and totally unacceptable attack against the United Nations.” This flash of anger was limited however only to UN facilities. He spoke as if the rest of Gaza — where more than 7,000 people lay dead or injured, and thousands of homes, schools, mosques, universities, police stations and government buildings were destroyed — did not exist, or were not of UN concern.

Whisked around in his convoy, he did not bother to stop and talk to any of Israel’s victims — the families who had just dug the remains of their loved ones from the rubble or those with horrific injuries in Gaza’s overstretched hospitals. These are the very people, the Palestinian refugees, that the UN is in Gaza to help, but there was it seems no time for them.

Ban did say, however, that he had “condemned from the outbreak of this conflict the excessive use of force by the Israeli forces in Gaza,” and added “I view the rocket attacks into Israel as completely unacceptable.” He also said that he would dispatch a humanitarian needs assessment team led by the UN special coordinator.

What he was saying in effect is that he found Israel’s attack on Gaza perfectly acceptable, but he disagreed only with the tonnage of high explosives that should be dropped by Israeli planes. Indeed, he should specify exactly how many dead children, how many demolished houses, how many burn victims, how many destroyed mosques he would tolerate as not being “excessive.” Would half the number killed and half the damage inflicted be reasonably non-excessive, or perhaps one-third? It would be helpful for both sides to know so that the Israelis would limit their killing to the UN-specified quota, and the Gazans would know how many of their community to sacrifice for the sacred UN-sanctioned killing.

For Ban, then, Israeli bombing is good — although he would like perhaps to see a little bit less. But, in tune with his political masters, he considers Palestinians to have no right to any form of self-defense against the Israeli occupation, constant aggression and the Israeli, internationally-supported, deadly siege, with whatever means they have at their disposal.

In order to maintain the false sense of balance between aggressor and victim, Ban had to visit the Israeli settlement of Sderot. When he patiently inspected the scars left by Hamas rockets that killed a total of three Israelis, he stated, “the projectiles are indiscriminate weapons, and Hamas attacks are violations of basic humanitarian law.” This is the same Ban who did not once invoke the law with respect to Israel’s ongoing massive violations.

It’s also notable that the rockets fired by Palestinian resistance factions are not so much “indiscriminate” as unguided. There’s no reason to believe that if Palestinians had access to the American-supplied guidance systems Israel has that they would not target Israeli military bases (indeed they tried to do that although Israeli military censorship did not allow reporting of hits on its military installations). Israel’s bombing on the other hand, and as Ban did not note, is very discriminate — deliberately targeting civilian homes and facilities.

In Sderot, Ban also urged Israel to end its crippling blockade on Gaza, but not because the blockade is a flagrant violation of international law, the Geneva conventions, inhuman and wrong. He worried only that the blockade would strengthen Hamas; otherwise, like a measured dose of bombing, it would be perfectly fine.

Ban ought to have inspected the destruction in Gaza, and visited and spent time with Israel’s Palestinian victims before setting foot in any UN installation. But it seems he actually avoided that on purpose to send a signal that he was not showing sympathy to “terrorists” or the people accused of harboring them, in order to inoculate himself from criticism by Israel and its chorus of apologists. He certainly saw the example of the UN special rapporteur for human rights, Princeton professor emeritus and international law expert Richard Falk, who was expelled and vilified by Israel and the US administration for faithfully and truthfully carrying out his mandate.

This is but one of the many sad stories of how the UN top leadership has betrayed and failed its mission. The UN does not exist only to protect its personnel and installations. The UN flag alone ought to provide that kind of real protection — immunity which no state dares to violate without fear of the consequences. But Israel has repeatedly attacked UN facilities, schools, peacekeeping forces and personnel in Palestine and Lebanon knowing full well that it, not the UN, enjoys immunity for its actions. The next time Israel attacks a UN facility, part of the responsibility will lie with those who failed to act correctly this time around.

Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations. This essay first appeared in The Jordan Times and is republished with the author’s permission.

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Oppose the Afghanistan-Pakistan war

May 7, 2009

Peter Symonds | WSWS, May 7, 2009

The US summit with Afghanistan and Pakistan currently underway in Washington marks the onset of a major escalation of military violence in both countries. The purpose of the meeting is for the Obama administration to bully into line its stooges—Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari—and map out a comprehensive war strategy to pacify large areas on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border currently controlled by Islamist rebels.

The significance of the tripartite summit is underscored by the presence of key figures of the US military, intelligence and foreign policy establishment, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CIA Director Leon Panetta, FBI head Robert Mueller and US Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus, and their counterparts from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Further tripartite meetings are planned to coordinate the joint war that will inevitably take a further terrible toll of lives in both countries.

Flanked by Karzai and Zardari, Obama told the media yesterday that America was on the side of the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Such remarks should be rejected with the contempt they deserve. US imperialism is stepping up its wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan not “to advance security, opportunity and justice” for the local peoples, but to pursue Washington’s strategic goal of dominating energy-rich Central Asia.

Under intense US pressure, the Pakistani military is currently waging an offensive in the Buner district involving 15,000 heavily armed troops backed by helicopter gunships and warplanes. The operation, which is being applauded in Washington, has already sent long lines of refugees fleeing for safety. According to local officials, 40,000 have already left the region and the exodus could reach half a million.

In neighboring Afghanistan, US air strikes that killed up to 150 people in the western Bala Baluk district early this week are just the latest atrocity in a war aimed at terrorizing the Afghan people and suppressing any opposition to the neo-colonial occupation. Obama barely referred to the incident, simply repeating pro-forma that the US would make “every effort” to avoid civilian casualties. Ominously, he warned that there would be more violence, but that US “commitment will not waiver.”

Both the Afghan and Pakistani presidents pledged their fealty to Washington and its “war against terrorism.” While Obama referred to them as “democratically elected leaders,” the US would have no compunction in removing them, by one means or another, if they failed to follow orders. In recent months, US officials have been highly critical of Karzai, who is facing an election in August, for his corrupt and ineffective administration as well as his criticisms of the US military for their killing of civilians.

Top US officials have also put Zardari on notice over this reluctance to launch an all-out war against Taliban guerrillas. The New York Times cited an unnamed senior administration official as saying that the war in Pakistan would hinge on the Pakistani military, “particularly given the country’s refusal, thus far, to allow American troops on the ground.” While the US military has been intensifying its missile strikes with impunity, Washington is clearly pressing for a far greater military role inside Pakistan.

The same newspaper has published a rash of sensational stories in recent days highlighting the danger of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of Islamist extremists—the same pretext that was used by the Bush administration to carry out “regime change” in Iraq. The Obama administration is obviously weighing a range of options to replace Zardari if he fails to live up to his pledges in Washington.

Editorials yesterday in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal gave uncritical and fulsome support for Obama’s new war plans. Both newspapers urged Congress to rapidly pass Obama’s request for billions in supplemental funding to bolster the Afghan and Pakistani governments and militaries, with the Wall Street Journal demanding no political caveats from Congress that would “gum up the requests” and place restrictions on the US military’s conduct of the war.

This consensus demonstrates that the entire American political establishment—the liberal Democratic wing no less than its conservative Republican counterpart—is backing Obama’s two-front war. The escalating conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan underscore the fact that the previous criticisms made by Obama and sections of the media of the war in Iraq were of a purely tactical nature. Obama was selected and thrust to the fore in last year’s election by sections of the US ruling elite that regarded Iraq as a disastrous diversion from more crucial American aims and interests in Central Asia.

Having won the election by appealing to widespread anti-war sentiment, Obama is now carrying out the mission for which he was chosen. Overseen by key Bush personnel—Defence Secretary Robert Gates and General Petraeus—the US military has prepared the ground for a major summer offensive in Afghanistan with the doubling of US troop numbers to 68,000. At the same time, the Pentagon has secured alternate supply routes in the event that the planned escalation of warfare in neighboring Pakistan threatens existing supply routes that pass through that country’s border areas.

The Wall Street Journal concluded its editorial by urging the Obama administration to make clear that “the US is committed to the region’s security for the long run,” adding: “The greatest danger is that Pakistan’s weak institutions and uncertain leaders lose their will to defeat the Islamists. That is how the Shah of Iran fell in 1979. We don’t want a repeat in Islamabad.”

In fact, the ruthless US-backed dictatorship in Iran fell not because the Shah lost his will to imprison and murder opponents, but as a result of a popular uprising which fell under the sway of the Islamic clerics. Already there are signs in Afghanistan and Pakistan of broad social and political opposition to the US and its puppets. The Wall Street Journal’s advice to Obama is that the US must do whatever is necessary and for as long as necessary to violently suppress any challenge to US economic and strategic dominance in the region.

Obama’s escalating war can only have a profoundly destabilizing impact across the region, laying the seeds for even wider and bloodier military conflagrations. It cannot be opposed by appeals to the Democratic Party or to Congress, but only through the independent mobilization of workers in the United States together with the working class and oppressed masses of South and Central Asia and internationally. That struggle must be based on a socialist perspective to overturn the capitalist system which is the source of imperialist oppression and war.

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Record bombs dropped in Afghanistan in April

May 7, 2009
By Bruce Rolfsen – Staff writer | Navy Times, May 4, 2009

Air Force, Navy and other coalition warplanes dropped a record number of bombs in Afghanistan during April, Air Forces Central figures show.

In the past month, warplanes released 438 bombs, the most ever.

April also marked the fourth consecutive month that the number of bombs dropped rose, after a decline starting last July.

The munitions were released during 2,110 close-air support sorties.

The actual number of airstrikes was higher because the AFCent numbers don’t include attacks by helicopters and special operations gunships. The numbers also don’t include strafing runs or launches of small missiles.

Over Iraq, 26 bombs were released during 767 strike sorties.

Transport crews airdropped 1.8 million pounds of supplies, mostly in Afghanistan, and tankers off loaded 85 million pounds of fuel.

Reconnaissance aircraft flew 1,402 missions over Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Stanford Anti-War Alumni, Students Call for Condi War Crimes Probe

May 7, 2009

Marjorie Cohn | CommonDreams.org, May 6, 2009

During the Vietnam War, Stanford students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq War.

Veterans of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement had gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion during the weekend. The gathering featured panels on foreign policy, the economy, political and social movements, science and technology, media, energy and the environment, and strategies for aging activists.

On Sunday, surrounded by alumni and students, Lenny Siegel and I nailed a petition to the University President’s office door. The petition, circulated by Stanford Say No to War, reads:

“We the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (included ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities.”

I stated, “By nailing this petition to the door of the President’s office, we are telling Stanford that the university should not have war criminals on its faculty. There is prima facie evidence that Rice approved torture and misled the country into the Iraq War. Stanford has an obligation to investigate those charges.”

After the petition nailing, I cited the law and evidence of Condoleezza Rice’s responsibility for war crimes – including torture – and for selling the illegal Iraq War:

As National Security Advisor, Rice authorized waterboarding in July 2002, according to a newly released report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Less than two months later, she hyped the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Her ominous warning was part of the Bush administration’s campaign to sell the Iraq war, in spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s assurances that Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons.

A week before the nailing of the petition, Rice made some Nixonian admissions in response to questions from Stanford students during a campus dinner designed to burnish Rice’s image on campus.

In October 1968, Stanford anti-war activists had nailed a document to the door of the trustees’ office which demanded that Stanford “halt all military and economic projects concerned with Southeast Asia.”

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and President of the National Lawyers Guild.  She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd).  Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com

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‘120 die’ as US bombs village

May 7, 2009

Afghan outrage after strike targeting Taliban fighters hits women and children

By Patrick Cockburn in Kabul

The Independent, UK, May 7, 2009

Afghan villagers sift through the rubble of destroyed houses after the coalition air strikes in the Bala Baluk district of Farah province, Afghanistan

AP

Afghan villagers sift through the rubble of destroyed houses after the coalition air strikes in the Bala Baluk district of Farah province, Afghanistan

A misdirected US air strike has killed as many as 120 Afghans, including dozens of women and children. The attack is the deadliest such bombing involving civilian casualties so far in the eight years since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Families in two villages in Farah province in western Afghanistan were digging for bodies in the ruins of their mudbrick houses yesterday. “There were women and children who were killed,” said Jessica Barry, a Red Cross spokeswoman. “It seemed they were trying to shelter in houses when they were hit.” Survivors said the number of dead would almost certainly to rise as the search for bodies continued.

The killing of so many Afghan civilians by US aircraft is likely to infuriate Afghans and lead to an increase in support for the Taliban in the bombed area. President Hamid Karzai, who was meeting President Barack Obama in Washington yesterday, sent a joint US-Afghan delegation to investigate the incident. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, standing next to Mr Karzai, voiced her “deep regret”.

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UN: Gaza still awaiting aid pledged for reconstruction

May 6, 2009

Haaretz , Israel, Friday, May 1, 2009

By Reuters

None of a $4.5 billion package of reconstruction aid recently pledged for the Gaza Strip has got through because of border restrictions, a top United Nations official said on Thursday.

International donors pledged the aid money in March to help the Palestinian economy and rebuild Gaza after a three-week Israeli military offensive against the coastal strip’s Hamas rulers.

But John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, said Gaza had still not benefited from any of the aid because of restrictions on the flow of goods into the territory.

“There is no prospect of recovery or reconstruction until we can get access for construction materials,” Ging said.

“Billions of dollars were pledged for recovery and reconstruction and yet none of that can actually connect with those whose lives were destroyed,” he told a news briefing during a trip to European Union headquarters in Brussels.

Israel has said it had opened Gaza’s border to larger amounts of food and medicine since the December-January offensive against Hamas militants who control the Palestinian territory and were firing rockets into Israeli towns.

The war destroyed some 5,000 homes and, according to figures from a Palestinian rights group, killed over 1,400 people. Israel has challenged this figure, stating that a total of 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the operation, the majority of whom were Hamas militants.

Since Hamas ousted Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah from Gaza in a bloody 2007 coup, Israel has tightened its blockade of the 45-km strip in an effort to weaken Hamas’s hold on power.

Egypt has also restricted crossings at its border with Gaza.

Ging said the international community should find a solution to the border crossings issue and provide more access to goods and services for the inhabitants of Gaza.

“Today the money is out there in pledges and the people of Gaza continue to subsist in the rubble of their former lives and the attention of the world has sadly moved on, which compounds the despair that people feel,” he said.

Robert Serry, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said on a visit to Gaza on Thursday the situation was alarming and warned that issues such as Palestinian reconciliation and secure borders had to be addressed.

“In the absence of real progress on issues like Palestinian reconciliation, open crossings, secure borders and a prisoners- exchange, the potential for renewed violence is ever-present,” Serry said in a statement.

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