Pakistan cracks down on eve of “long march”

March 11, 2009

Reuters, Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:58am EDT

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Authorities in two Pakistani provinces banned protests and police began rounding up activists on Wednesday, officials said, a day before a rally by lawyers that could challenge the year-old government.

Anti-government lawyers and opposition parties plan to launch a cross-country protest motor convoy, known as a long march, on Thursday.

“It has been done to maintain law and order, so from now there’s a ban on all sorts of processions, protests and congregations for one month,” Farhan Aziz Khawaja, a senior interior department official in Punjab province, told Reuters.

Sindh province banned protests for 15 days, a top official there said.

Despite the bans, protesters vowed to press ahead with their plans peacefully. They are pushing for the reappointment of a former Supreme Court chief justice who then army chief and president Pervez Musharraf dismissed in 2007.

The lawyers, in league with opposition parties which can mobilize their supporters, pose a significant challenge to President Asif Ali Zardari, who has refused to reappoint the former chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry.

The protesters’ convoy of cars and buses is due to set off on Thursday in the southern provinces of Sindh and Baluchistan and reach Punjab on Friday. They aim to begin a sit-in outside parliament in the capital, Islamabad, on Monday.

The protest is one more problem for a civilian government led by Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) that took power a year ago and is struggling with economic and security crises.

It comes as the nuclear-armed U.S. ally’s two main parties are at loggerheads over a Supreme Court ruling last month that effectively barred former prime minister and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, from contesting elections.

Nawaz Sharif says Zardari was behind the ruling and he has thrown his support behind the protest.

Political worry has weighed on financial markets in recent days, although stocks were flat on Wednesday.

DEFIANT

Tariq Mehmud, a senior lawyer and protest organizer, said the ban on protests would not affect their plans.

“It seems the government is determined to stop the long march … Our plan is in tact. Let’s see what happens,” he said.

Mehmud said police had turned up at his home in Islamabad before dawn aiming to detain him but he managed to slip away. Another protest organizer, Aitzaz Ahsan, said police had come to his home but he was in hiding.

Raja Zafar-ul-Haq, chairman of Sharif’s party, said police had been put under house arrest at his Islamabad home.

“I’m told I have been detained under the maintenance of public order law,” he told Reuters by telephone.

Siddiq-ul-Farooq, a spokesman for Sharif’s party, said scores of their workers had been detained across Punjab.

“We will remain peaceful and will peacefully defy the ban on the long march,” Farooq said.

Sharif was in North West Frontier Province, where he was due to address a rally, while Shahbaz Sharif was due to address a rally in Punjab, party officials said.

Authorities routinely detain opposition leaders and activists in an effort to disrupt protests. Detainees are freed after tension eases.

The government has threatened to prosecute him for sedition if violence erupts during the protest. It has also said the rally will not be allowed into central Islamabad but organizers can use open ground on the city’s outskirts.

Police were seen preparing shipping containers, which are used to block roads, in the city of Rawalpindi, adjacent to Islamabad, witnesses said.

(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider; Writing by Robert Birsel)

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See also:  Can the Ides of March eliminate Zardocracy: What’s in store for the PPP in Pakistan?

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UN Condemns Britain’s Role in Torture Cases

March 11, 2009

Calls for investigation over Government’s involvement in US rendition programme

by Robert Verkaik | The Independent, UK, March 10, 2009

Britain was condemned last night for its complicity in the American programme of rendition and alleged torture of hundreds of terror suspects, in a highly critical United Nations report.

[Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, returned to the UK after being held captive in the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for four years (PA)]Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, returned to the UK after being held captive in the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for four years (PA)

The UN Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin said the US was only able to create its system for moving terror suspects around foreign jails because of the co-operation of allies, naming the UK alongside Pakistan, Indonesia, Kenya, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Canada and Georgia.The report led to a clamour of calls for a full and independent investigation into the Government’s involvement in the detention and movement of suspects since the start of the “war on terror” eight years ago.

Mr Scheinin’s findings follow accusations made by British resident Binyam Mohamed, who claims to have evidence of MI5 telegrams sent to the CIA, which he says were used to direct his alleged torture during his 18-month detention in Morocco, before he was sent to the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Some individuals faced “prolonged and secret detention” and practices which breached bans on torture and other forms of ill treatment, the report says.

“Evidence proves that Australian, British and US intelligence personnel have themselves interviewed detainees who were held incommunicado by the Pakistani secret intelligence service … where they were being tortured,” the report concludes. “UK intelligence personnel, for instance, conducted or witnessed just over 2,000 interviews in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.”

Mr Scheinin says countries are “responsible” if they help other states carry out human rights violations.

“Grave human rights violations by states such as torture, enforced disappearances or arbitrary detention should place serious constraints on policies of co-operation by states, including by their intelligence agencies, with states that are known to violate human rights,” he said. “The prohibition against torture is an absolute and peremptory norm of international law. States must not aid or assist in the commission of acts of torture … including by relying on intelligence information obtained through torture,”

The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Ed Davey, called on the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, to make a decision now on whether to ask the police to investigate Mr Mohamed’s allegations. He added: “It is shameful that we now seem to be reliant on outside organisations to uphold the rule of law in our own country.”

The Conservative national security spokeswoman, Baroness Neville-Jones of Hutton Roof, said: “Constant allegations which are not answered are damaging the good name of this country and undermining the credibility of the Government’s position that it neither practises nor condones torture.”

Along with Romania, Poland, Germany and Italy, Britain is accused of using laws designed to protect national security to “conceal illegal acts from oversight bodies or judicial authorities, or to protect itself from criticism, embarrassment and – most importantly – liability”.

The Foreign Office said: “We unreservedly condemn any practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ to torture. We have always condemned torture. The UK Government, including its intelligence and security agencies, never uses torture for any purpose, including obtaining information. Nor would we instigate action by others to do so.”

Copyright 2008 Independent News and Media Limited

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Can Congress Save Obama from Afghan Quagmire?

March 11, 2009

by Robert Naiman | CommonDreams.org, March 10, 2009

A progressive Presidency is a terrible thing to waste. It only comes around once every so often. Wouldn’t it be a shame if Americans’ hopes for the Obama Administration were squandered in Afghanistan?

Members of Congress who want the Obama Administration to succeed won’t do it any favors by keeping silent about the proposed military escalation in Afghanistan. The actions of the Obama Administration so far clearly indicate that they can move in response to pressure: both good pressure and bad pressure. If there is only bad pressure, it’s more than likely that policy will move in a bad direction. In announcing an increase in U.S. troops before his Afghanistan review was complete, Obama partially acceded to pressure from the military. If we don’t want the military to have carte blanche, there needs to be counterpressure.

Some Members of Congress are starting to speak up. Rep. Murtha recently said he’s uncomfortable with Obama’s decision to increase the number of troops in the country by 17,000 before a goal was clearly defined, AP reports. Sen. Nelson is calling for clear benchmarks to measure progress in Afghanistan, and said he may try to add benchmarks to the upcoming war supplemental bill this spring, CQ Today reports.

But these individual expressions of discomfort will likely not be enough to stop the slide towards greater and greater military escalation.

Eight Members of Congress (Walter Jones, Neil Abercrombie, Roscoe Bartlett, Steve Kagen, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Ed Whitfield, and Lynn Woolsey) have initiated a letter to President Obama urging him to reconsider his support for military escalation. The letter argues that military escalation may well be counterproductive towards the goal of creating a stable government that can control Afghanistan, noting that a recent Carnegie Endowment study concluded that “the only meaningful way to halt the insurgency’s momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban.” [You can find the letter – and ask your Representative to sign it – here.]

There is political space for challenging the logic of escalation.

Forty-two percent of Americans think troops in Afghanistan should be increased, up from 34 percent in January, CBS News reports, no doubt reflecting the largely uncritical press treatment that the proposal for military escalation has received. But the same CBS News/New York Times poll still found that more people thought that U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan should be decreased (24%) or kept the same (23%) – i.e. 47% thought troop levels should be decreased or stay the same, rather than increased.

If we want the US government to seriously pursue diplomacy, there must be serious counterpressure against sending more troops without end. If you want recycling, you have to discourage the establishment of new landfills. If you want economic development and human rights to be at the center of trade policy, you have to jam up corporate trade deals. If you want diplomacy, there has to be a significant political pushback to military escalation.

Robert Naiman is Senior Policy Analyst at Just Foreign Policy.

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America wants Nato boost in Afghanistan

March 11, 2009
Al Jazeera, March 10, 2009

Western powers are increasingly concerned
by the Taliban’s growing influence[EPA]

Joe Biden, the US vice- president, has appealed to Nato to help Washington tackle worsening security in Afghanistan, saying the alliance was struggling to deal with a threat to the West as a whole.

Addressing representatives of the military alliance in Brussels on Tuesday, Biden said: “The deteriorating situation in the region poses a security threat not just to the United States but to every single nation round this table.

“We are not now winning the war, but the war is far from lost.”

Biden also said talking with Taliban moderates in Afghanistan was a tactic “worth exploring”.

Taliban advances

Western powers are increasingly concerned not only by the Taliban’s advances in Afghanistan but also by its growing influence in Pakistan, where Muslim fighters have disrupted Nato’s supply convoys to Afghanistan and are securing concessions from the government in Islamabad.

Biden said Barack Obama, the US president, wanted to consult with allies on a strategy review for the region and that Washington would “expect everyone to keep whatever commitments were made in arriving at that joint strategy”.

The vice-president said the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US and the bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005 were planned “from the very same mountains” along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

He said: “This is not a US-centric view. A terrorist attack in Europe is viewed as an attack on us.”

Regarding discussions with Taliban moderates, Biden said: “It’s worth exploring. The idea of what concessions would be made is well beyond the scope of my being able to answer.

“I do think it’s worth engaging and determining whether or not there are those who are willing to participate in a secure and stable Afghan state.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Biden held talks with Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary- general.

De Hoop Scheffer, calling on Nato to boost efforts before Afghan elections due in August, said: “It is important that this alliance delivers in the short-term.”

Obama announcement

Last month, Obama approved the deployment of 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan as Washington and other Nato nations try to stabilise the country.

There are currently about 70,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, of which the US supplies 38,000.

Obama has said he will make announcements about US policy on Afghanistan before a Nato summit in France in April.

The policy review is expected to stress the need for better co-ordination of the international effort and enhanced efforts in areas like police training, governance and development as well as a regional approach involving Afghanistan’s neighbours.

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Solidarity convoy gets to Gaza Strip

March 10, 2009

Morning Star Online,

Monday 09 March 2009

DETERMINED: Respect MP George Galloway waiting at the Rafah crossing in Egypt for permission to enter Gaza.

THE Viva Palestina solidarity convoy finally crossed into Gaza on Monday.

After a tense day in which the planned crossing into Gaza was called off by organisers due to wrangling with Egyptian officials, the convoy began entering the besieged territory via the Rafah crossing at 9am local time.

The Viva Palestina volunteer crews brought the vehicles – which include a British fire engine, 12 ambulances and scores of lorries loaded with medical supplies, food, toys and clothes -from London to the occupied territory via a 9,000-mile route that passed through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

But, with just 30 miles standing between the solidarity activists and the Rafah crossing, the convoy was attacked on Sunday night in the Egyptian town of El Arish by unidentified youths hurling stones, bricks and bottles.

Three voluteers were injured, with two of them treated in hospital for their injuries, and several vehicles were daubed with anti-Hamas graffiti.

Respect MP George Galloway was adamant that the thuggery would not detract from the convoy’s message “of hope and friendship.”

Mr Galloway, who headed the convoy, said: “Our convoy, which set out from London on St Valentine’s Day with 100 vehicles, has grown to almost 250 and the mile-long caravan stretched for more than three miles as more vehicles joined us.

“We’ll leave behind more than £1 million in Gaza, but, more than that, the legacy will be a symbolic one of hope and friendship.”

Mr Galloway emphasised that the “message of the convoy is that the majority of British people abhor the Israeli attacks on the densest packed piece of earth on the planet and the blocking of essential supplies to the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, an Israeli human rights group charged in a court petition on Monday that Tel Aviv is violating international law by exploiting the West Bank’s mineral resources for its own benefit.

In the petition filed to Israel’s Supreme Court, the Yesh Din group charges that 75 per cent of the rock and gravel removed from 11 West Bank rock quarries is transferred to Israel.

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If Dennis Ross is Appointed as a US Envoy to Iran, He Will Work for Israel, Not the US, Will Work for War, Not Peace

March 10, 2009

DAILY.PK, March 1, 2009

Dennis Ross was the main figure behind dragging the US to war against Iraq in 1991, instead of allowing Iraqis to withdraw from Kuwait without a war. He did that to guarantee the destruction of Iraq, as a strong Arab state, in order to safeguard the hegemonic Israeli position in the oil-rich Middle East region (See The Gulf War: Overreaction & Excessiveness).

Thus doing, he paved the way for the Zionist Israel-firsters Wolfowitz, Pearle, and Feith to plan and execute the disastrous 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, for Israel, which resulted in the destruction of the Iraqi state and the collapse of the US financial system. More than $ 5 trillion have been added to the US national debt, as military spending, in order to achieve the Israeli paramount goal of controlling the Middle East, using the US money and blood. For these Zionist Israel-firsters, it does not matter if the US collapses as a result, and retreats from the world stage defeated and poor.

Today, there’s a lot of talk about an imminent announcement by President Barack Obama appointing the Zionist Israel-firster, AIPAC operative, and agent of Israeli interests, as his envoy to Iran.

If this happens, God forbid, it means that Obama is no different from the two Bushes and Clinton, a figure head. The show is still run completely by the Zionist Israel-firsters, who work only for the Israeli occupation government, in its bid to be the coming world super power, after subjugating the Middle East with US resources and blood.

Zionists want Iran to dismantle its nuclear program, in order to guarantee that only Israeli aggressors have nuclear weapons, which are used as a threat to all nations of the Middle East. Zionists, including Dennis Ross, want to make sure that no Arab or Muslim state in the Middle East attempts to have any deterrence to the Israeli nuclear threat. If they truly want a peaceful solution, then they should put the Israeli nuclear weapons on the table for negotiations.

If the Israeli racist-Zionist state is disarmed of its nuclear weapons, then there is no reason for Iran or any other Middle Eastern state to seek for a deterrent.

Make no mistake about it, Dennis Ross will represent Israel, not the United States, when he goes to Tehran. Ultimately, he will make sure that the United States is going to attack Iran, or at least allows the Israeli occupation government air forces to attack the Iranian nuclear sites and military installations with protection from the US forces stationed in the Middle East. This is a recipe for killing millions of Iranians and other Muslims in the Middle East.

The appointment of Dennis Ross means that there’s no change in the US policy towards the Arab and Muslim worlds, as President Obama wanted to assures Muslims in his interview with Al-Arabiya TV. It will confirm to Arabs and Muslims worldwide that the US is following a policy of systematic invasions and wars against them, on behalf of Israel.

This is not in the national interest of the United States. Period.

Neither Dennis Ross nor any Zionist Israel-firster should be allowed to make decisions on behalf of the United States.

It’s time for American patriots in the US Department of Justice to make their move and stop the systematic destruction of the United States by these Zionist  Israel-firsters.

Dennis Ross should not be allowed to occupy any position in the US government. He is an agent of a foreign government.

Appointment of Dennis Ross as Presidential Envoy to Iran

President Obama told Al-Arabiya that the US would in the next few months lay out a general framework of policy towards Tehran. “It is very important for us to make sure that we are using all the tools of US power, including diplomacy, in our relationship with Iran…. As I said in my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.  ”

Obama had been expected to appoint former ambassador Dennis Ross, president Bill Clinton’s special Middle East envoy, to a third post that would handle US relations with Iran. But Ross’s aggressive campaign for the post, as well as his close association with key groups that make up the Israel Lobby, appears to have incited a backlash among key Obama advisers, reportedly including Clinton herself, that may have delayed his appointment, according to Jim Lob.

Dennis Ross, an Iran baiter, has supported the war on Iraq which Obama has opposed. Ross has also served with the pro-Israel think tank, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) as well as with the Jerusalem-based “Jewish People Policy Planning Institute” (JPPPI).

Dennis Ross has co-authored the report “Meeting the Challenge: US Policy towards Iranian Nuclear Development”. This report alludes to an Iranian nuclear program that has been debunked by the CIA National Intelligence Report (Nov 2007) that said that the Iran nuclear program was on hold. The report calls for the military encirclement of Iran, pressure on Iran to abrogate its nuclear programme and thus leading to its logical extension where “war becomes inevitable”.

To borrow Prof. Gary Leupp, “by appointing Dennis Ross, Obama is sending the Iranian leaders a clear message. He is associating himself with the most extreme alarmist positions currently articulated, including those of Norman Podhoretz.”

Ross co-authored an op-ed with Richard Holbrooke, R. James Woolsey, and Mark D. Wallace entitled, “Everybody Needs to Worry About Iran.”  The op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Sept. 22, 2008, stated: “Iran is now edging closer to being armed with nuclear weapons, and it continues to develop a ballistic-missile capability.” As Prof Gary Leupp stated:

“This contradicts the conclusion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies (Central Intelligence Agency, Army Military Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Security Agency, etc.) as of November 2007. Those authors reported: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” In other words, in the world of empirical methods, critical thinking and analysis–the world of hundreds of trained professionals who’ve actually researched Iran’s nuclear program, with access to spy satellite data, reports from agents in the field, electronic surveillance–Iran has no nuclear program. Mohamed El-Barade’i and IAEA staffers on the ground have consistently said that Iran has been thoroughly cooperative and that there are no signs of any diversion for a military program But in the world of this Chicken Little group Iran is edging ever nearer to nukes.”

The editorial describes the nuclear program as “destabilizing” (while noting that Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel all have nuclear weapons) and repeats the old Cheneyism that since Iran has so much oil it can’t have any possible real need for a civilian program. (The Iranian nuclear program was encouraged by the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations when the Shah was in power and supported by General Electric and other U.S. firms.) It repeats the old charge that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has threatened to wipe Israel off the map (adding that he’s said it could be done with one nuke) and generally assembles all the Bush-era anti-Iran talking-points: Iran sponsors Hizbollah and Hama terrorism, the regime’s repressive towards women and homosexuals, Iran could shut off the Strait of Hormuz, etc.

In conclusion the authors announce their establishment “along with other policy advocates from across the political spectrum” of the nonpartisan group United Against Nuclear Iran.

Prof. Gary Leupp says Ross is known to favor the recommendations of a September 2008 report by something called the Bipartisan Policy Center. These include forcing Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and meet other demands by imposing blockades on Iranian gas imports and oil exports (acts of war) as well as striking “not only Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but also its conventional military infrastructure in order to suppress an Iranian response.” So it looks like the official Obama line towards Iran, at least for the beginning, will be the Cheney-neocon line. And that is worrisome.

Hassan El-Najjar

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See  also Veteran Mideast Envoy Ross Named as Clinton’s Adviser on Iran

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Amnesty International calls for transparency on Bagram detentions

March 10, 2009

Amnesty International USA, March 9, 2009

A US federal judge considering whether detainees held by the USA in Bagram airbase in Afghanistan may challenge their detention before courts in the USA has ordered the administration of President Barack Obama to provide him with updated information on the Bagram detainees, by 11 March.

Amnesty International has written to the US administration urging it to inject some much needed transparency into the Bagram detention regime, including by making fully available to the public the information requested by District Court Judge John Bates.

When the Bush administration was asked by Judge Bates in January 2009 to disclose the number of people being held in Bagram, how many of them were taken into custody outside of Afghanistan, and how many of them were Afghan nationals, it responded by classifying as secret the key details and redacted them from the unclassified version of the filing.

Judge Bates has now asked the Obama administration the same questions, noting that the details supplied to him by the government in January may be out of date. Amnesty International has urged the new administration not to repeat its predecessor’s use of secrecy to conceal from the public its response to the judge. Transparency, essential to accountability and detainee protection, must be central to US detention policy. As President Obama has himself instructed his administration, “transparency promotes accountability”.

Figures released in late February by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only organization with access to Bagram detainees, indicate that there were then about 550 detainees in the airbase. This was down from the figure of “about 615” provided by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Senate Armed Services Committee a month earlier.

New detentions by US and allied forces in Afghanistan continue. According to reports by the American Forces Press Service, at least 120 “militants” were taken into custody during January and February 2009. It is not known how many, if any, have been or will be transferred to Bagram. The US authorities should provide regular public information on the numbers and nationalities of those held in US custody in Bagram and elsewhere in Afghanistan, and where, when, and in what circumstances they were taken into detention.

The need for transparency was illustrated late last month when the UK government revealed that two individuals it handed over to the USA in Iraq in 2004 had subsequently been transferred to US custody in Afghanistan, where they remain five years later. Amnesty International has asked the US government to confirm whether the two are held in Bagram and to provide further information on their cases. The organization has raised the possibility that the USA’s transfer of these individuals to Afghanistan constituted a war crime.

Amnesty International continues to call for the Bagram detainees to be granted access to an independent court to challenge the lawfulness of their detentions, to effective remedies in relation to their treatment and conditions of detention, and to meaningful access to legal counsel for such purposes. At present, the detainees have no access to lawyers or courts.

On 7 March, President Obama said in an interview with the New York Times that “we ultimately provide anybody that we’re detaining an opportunity through habeas corpus to answer to charges”. However, presidential aides later said that he had not meant to suggest that everybody held in US custody would be able to challenge their detention in court.1

Two weeks earlier, on 20 February, responding to an invitation from Judge Bates to tell him whether it would take “a different approach” to its predecessor on the Bagram detainees, the Justice Department responded simply that “having considered the matter, the Government adheres to its previously articulated position”, that is, the position argued by the Bush administration. The latter had argued that the Bagram detainees could not challenge the lawfulness or conditions of their detention, that they had no rights under the US Constitution and no rights under international law enforceable in the US courts. Amnesty International regrets the new administration’s response to Judge Bates and hopes that it represents a very temporary stance taken as the government tackles the detention legacy it has inherited. The USA must swiftly bring all US detentions anywhere into compliance with international law.

The right to challenge the lawfulness of detention before a court is so fundamental that it cannot be diminished, even in situations of public emergency up to and including armed conflict. Judicial review is a basic safeguard against abuse of executive powers and a fundamental safeguard against arbitrary and secret detention, torture and other ill-treatment and unlawful transfers from one country or government to another. In the absence of judicial oversight, detainees in Bagram, as at Guantánamo, have been subjected to just such abuses.

Even children have not been spared. With this in mind, Amnesty International is calling on the US government to reveal, in addition to its responses to the questions posed by Judge Bates, how many of the detainees currently in Bagram were taken into custody when they were under 18 years old. A year ago, there were at least 10 children being held in the base.

In an executive order signed on 22 January 2009, President Barack Obama ordered the establishment of an interagency task force to review the “lawful options” available to the US government with respect to the “apprehension, detention, trial, transfer, release, or other disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts or counterterrorism operations”. In February, Amnesty International sent a briefing on the Bagram detentions to officials overseeing this review.2Last week it sent them an update to this report.3

1 Obama ponders outreach to elements of the Taliban, The New York Times, 8 March 2009.

2 See USA: Out of sight, out of mind, out of court? The right of Bagram detainees to judicial review, 18 February 2009, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/021/2009/en.

3 See USA: Urgent need for transparency on Bagram detentions, 6 March 2009, at http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/031/2009/en.

AI Index: AMR 51/033/2009 Amnesty International 09 March 2009

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Israeli Settlers Terrorise Palestinian Villagers

March 10, 2009

By Mel Frykberg | Inter Press Service

AT TUWANI, West Bank, Mar 9 (IPS) – “I couldn’t run. My pregnancy was too far advanced and there was nowhere to hide,” said Amna Salman Rabaye, 31, as she recalled the terrifying incident several months ago.

Rabaye from the Palestinian Bedouin village of At Tuwani in the southern West Bank was grazing her sheep when she was assaulted by a security guard from the adjacent illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’on.

“We saw a group of masked Israeli settlers armed with sticks and chains heading towards us. The younger shepherds ran and managed to escape, leaving me with the flock of sheep,” Rabaye told IPS.

“It was physically impossible for me to run and I also didn’t want the settlers to kill or steal my sheep. The security guard pushed me over but I was not injured,” recalled Rabaye who was then seven months pregnant.

At Tuwani was established over 300 years ago by nomadic tribes of Bedouin who first moved into the area seeking shelter in the nearby caves. However, Israeli settlers built the adjacent Ma’on settlement in 1982. The nearby illegal outpost of Havot Ma’on was built at a later date.

Outposts normally comprise small settlements ranging from a few caravans, which are sometimes connected to water and electricity, to slightly larger settlements. They are referred to as outposts by the media as they are generally not recognised by the Israeli government.

The settlements, however, which are legal under Israeli law can number from several hundred residents to small towns with thousands of inhabitants, and all the associated infrastructure.

There are nearly 300,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and nearly 200,000 in East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli information centre for human rights B’Tselem.

Under international law, including various UN Security Council resolutions, the settlements are built illegally on Palestinian land.

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit an occupying power from undertaking permanent changes in the occupied area unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.

Nevertheless Israeli settlement building on the West Bank has accelerated at an unprecedented rate in the last few years.

This has included the enlargement of already existing settlements and the establishment of new ones, contrary to every understanding and peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli human rights group Peace Now released a report several weeks ago stating that the Israeli government is currently building an additional 73,300 illegal housing units in the West Bank. The report added that this would increase the total number of Israeli settlers in the area by 100 percent.

International human rights organisations have argued that the motive behind the accelerated settlement building is to establish facts on the ground and to make the establishment of a viable, contiguous and independent Palestinian state near impossible.

Currently the West Bank is effectively divided into three cantons by military checkpoints and the settlements. Palestinian towns and villages are surrounded by Israeli settlements while swathes of their land has been confiscated to build settlers-only bypass roads.

While Israeli officials are furthering the facts-on-the-ground scenario through official government policies, an unofficial war between Israeli settlers and Palestinian villagers over the continued land expropriation continues unabated.

“The settlers are carrying out a deliberate policy to try and drive us off our land and intimidate us into leaving so that they can take our land,” said Hafez Hreini, 37, one of the villagers. Hreini’s mother, 79-year-old Fatima, was left bleeding after a settler threw a rock at her head in another encounter with the settlers.

“It is very hard not to physically retaliate when you see people attack your elderly mother but I know if I had done anything back, the Israelis would have used this as an excuse to arrest me and a lot worse,” Hreini told IPS. “So we are deliberately applying a policy of non-violence and we are determined to stay here and keep our land.”

In 2006 the villagers lost over 100 sheep after the settlers sprayed pesticides on their grazing land. Several donkeys belonging to the village were stabbed to death. The village’s water wells have also been poisoned on numerous occasions while crops have been set ablaze. The children of the village and the surrounding villages have been regularly attacked by the settlers as they try to make their way to school.

A group of outraged Israeli intellectuals wrote to incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert several years ago requesting action be taken against the settlers. This led former Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz to order the demolition of Havot Ma’on settlement but the demolition never took place.

The Israeli Knesset, or parliament, also ordered the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to escort children to and from school to protect them from the settlers. But according to international members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) who live in the village, the IDF patrols are irregular, unreliable and sometimes sources of hostility towards the children.

The CPT have created their own school escorts for the children, and have themselves been assaulted by the settlers. One member received head injuries severe enough to require hospitalisation.

The Israeli police seem disinterested. “It doesn’t help if we go to the police because they never do anything,” Sreini told IPS.

The Israeli rights group Yesh Din has stated repeatedly that only a very small number of settler attacks against Palestinians are investigated by the Israeli police. These result in even fewer arrests and practically no convictions.

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Here We Go Again With the Iranian Nuclear Scare

March 10, 2009

Eric Margolis | Khaleej Times, March 9, 2009

While the United States was fighting for its economic life, Obama administration officials and the media issued a blizzard of contradictory claims over Iran’s alleged nuclear threat, leaving one wondering who is really charge of US foreign policy?

Much of the uproar over Iran’s so-far non-existent nuclear weapons must be seen as part of efforts by the Israeli lobby to block President Barack Obama’s proposed opening to Teheran, and to keep pressing the US to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Israel’s supporters and most Israeli military experts insist Iran has secret weapons programmes. Israel knows about covert nuclear programs, having run one of the world’s largest and most productive.

The hawkish Hillary Clinton’s naming of veteran Israel supporter Dennis Ross as her special adviser on Iran and the Gulf suggest she is more interested in building future domestic political support than securing balanced advice.

Meanwhile, confusion over Iran grew sharply.  New CIA director, Leon Panetta, said ‘there is no question, they (Iran) are seeking that (nuclear weapons) capability.’

Pentagon chief Adm. Mike Mullen claimed Iran had ‘enough fissile material to build a bomb.’ Fox News claimed Iran already had 50 nuclear weapons.  While the American Rome burns, here we go again with renewed hysteria over MWMD’s –  Muslim Weapons of Mass Destruction. Wars drums are again beating over Iran.

The czar of all 16 US intelligence agencies, Adm. Dennis Blair, stated Iran could have enough enriched uranium for one atomic weapon by 2010-2015. But he reaffirmed the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate that Iran does not have nuclear weapons and is not pursuing them.  Defence Secretary William Gates backed up Blair. So does the UN nuclear agency.  Some of the confusion over Iran comes from misunderstanding nuclear enrichment, and lurid scare stories.

Iran is producing low-grade uranium-235 (LEU), enriched to only 2.5 per cent, to generate electricity. Teheran has this absolute right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its centrifuge enrichment process at Natanz is under 24-hour international inspection.  Iran’s soon to open nuclear plant at Bushehr cannot produce nuclear weapons fuel.  Its spent fuel will be returned to Russia.

Today, some 15 nations produce LEU U-235, including Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, and Japan.  Israel, India and Pakistan, all covert nuclear weapons powers, refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty.  North Korea abrogated it. UN inspectors report Iran has produced 1,010 kg of 2-3 per cent enriched uranium for energy generation, insists Iran. Theoretically that is enough for one atomic bomb.

But to make a nuclear weapon, U-235 must be enriched to over 90 per cent in an elaborate, costly process. Iran is not doing so, say UN inspectors.

Highly enriched U-235 or plutonium must then be milled and shaped into a perfect ball or cylinder. Any surface imperfections will prevent achieving critical mass.  Next, high explosive lenses must surround the core, and detonate at precisely the same millisecond. In the gun system, two cores must collide at very high speed.  In some cases, a stream of neutrons are pumped into the device as it explodes.

This process is highly complex.  Nuclear weapons cannot be deemed reliable unless they are tested. North Korea recently detonated a device that fizzled.  Iran has never built or tested a nuclear weapon.  Israel and South Africa jointly tested a nuclear weapon in 1979.

Even if Iran had the capability to fashion a complex nuclear weapon, it would be useless without delivery. Iran’s sole medium-range delivery system is its unreliable, inaccurate 1,500 km ranged Shahab-3. Miniaturizing and hardening nuclear warheads capable of flying atop a Shahab missile is another complex technological challenge.

It is inconceivable that Iran or anyone else would launch a single nuclear weapon.  What if it didn’t go off? Imagine the embarrassment and the retaliation.  Iran would need at least ten warheads and a reliable delivery system to be a credible nuclear power.

Israel, the primary target for any Iranian nuclear strike, has an indestructible triad of air, missile and sea-launched nuclear weapons pointed at Iran.  An Israeli submarine with nuclear cruise missiles is on station off Iran’s coast. Iran would be wiped off the map by even a few of Israel’s 200 nuclear weapons.  Iran is no likelier to use a nuke against its Gulf neighbours. The explosion would blanket Iran with radioactive dust and sand.

Washington would do better to stop worrying about Iran and focus on its economic meltdown.

Eric S Margolis is a veteran US journalist who has reported from the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan for several years

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Massacre in slow motion

March 10, 2009

Socialist Worker, March 9, 2009

More than a month after Israel’s assault on Gaza ended, life for Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians continues to be a daily struggle. Israel maintains a suffocating siege that blocks the flow of basic staples, plunging the vast majority of residents into abject poverty.

But a ray of hope has emerged in the form of a growing international struggle–from Canada and the U.S., to Europe and South Africa–to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and Palestinian human rights. On March 21, justice for Palestine will be a main slogan at an antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C. organized to mark the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Haidar Eid, a professor of English, political commentator and longtime activist, is a resident of Gaza City and has provided an ongoing eyewitness account and analysis of Israel’s war for SocialistWorker.org. He spoke with Eric Ruder about Israel’s occupation and the Palestinian struggle for justice.

A young boy sits amid the rubble where buildings once stood in Jabalia, a town in the northern Gaza Strip (AFP)A young boy sits amid the rubble where buildings once stood in Jabalia, a town in the northern Gaza Strip (AFP)

THE SHOOTING part of Israel’s war is now over, according to the media. Yet Israel continues air strikes on targets in Gaza every few days. And in addition to the bombings, Israel’s siege remains firmly in place, stopping all manner of critical goods from getting into Gaza. Can you describe conditions now?

THE COURAGEOUS Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has talked about the hermetic siege of Gaza that has been in place for some three years now. Prior to the war, Pappe called this siege “slow-motion genocide,” and he was absolutely right.

Even before the war, more than 350 terminally ill people died because Israel refused to allow them to leave Gaza for essential medical treatment. Israel refused to issue them travel permits to be treated in Egyptian or Jordanian hospitals. I’m talking about people with kidney failure, heart problems, cancer.

The war transformed the slow-motion genocide into real genocide–I don’t know what else to call it. During the war, more 1,440 people were killed.

What else to read

Haidar Eid has written an article titled “Sharpeville 1960, Gaza 2009” that recounts his experiences during Israel’s war and adds his voice to call for an international movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, modeled on the anti-apartheid movement.

The One Democratic State Group has issued “A Call from Gaza” that asks activists and organizations to demand that their governments sever ties with Israel, and calls for Israel’s war criminals to be brought to justice.

Between the Lines: Readings on Israel, the Palestinians and the U.S. “War on Terror,” by Tikva Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad, documents the apartheid-like conditions that Palestinians live under today.

For background on Israel’s war and the Palestinian struggle for freedom, read The Struggle for Palestine, a collection of essays edited by Lance Selfa on the history of the occupation and Palestinian resistance.

We thought that the end of the war would also mean the end of the medieval siege imposed on Gaza. But unfortunately, that hasn’t happened since the end of the Gaza massacre–and I really don’t want to call it the end of the “war,” because the war has continued but in different forms.

Israel failed to achieve any of its three objectives that it declared at the beginning of the war–topping the government of Hamas, putting an end to the launching of rockets, and establishing a new security arrangement in Gaza.

Since they failed at this, they have been trying to achieve politically what they could not militarily–with the help of the U.S., even under the Obama administration, with the complicity of the European Union and with the help of some Arab regimes.

This is why all the proposals to reconstruct the Gaza Strip being discussed at the recent international donors conference at Sharm el Sheik all come with so many strings attached. In fact, these strings make reconstruction impossible.

So when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Tel Aviv and Ramallah, she talked about conditions for reconstruction. Condition number one is for the Hamas government and the resistance groups in general to recognize the state of Israel. Number two is to recognize previously signed agreements between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, which ultimately means recognizing the state of Israel also.

But there are some big questions that come along with this, which the U.S. and the mainstream media prefer to avoid. In particular, what Israel are the Palestinians supposed to recognize?

Israel is the only member of the UN that does not have recognized borders. Does the apartheid wall represent the border of the state of Israel? Or is it the 1967 border? Recognition of Israel under this situation allows for the ongoing expansion of Israel’s borders.

Number two, Israel is also the only country on the face of the earth that has no constitution. Israel instead has Basic Laws. The first basic law defines Israel as the state of Jews all over the world. You have a theocratic state instead of a state of all of its citizens. This raises the question of what happens to 1.2 million Palestinians who are considered citizens of the state of Israel, but they are not Jews.

Also, what happens to more than 6 million Palestinian refugees living in the diaspora? Not a single agreement by the PLO and Israel, with America as a moderator, mentions the right of return, although UN Resolution 194 calls for the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland, to their villages, to the cities and towns from which they were expelled. And Resolution 194 calls for compensation for the injustices they have suffered.

But these are things that Israel wants the Palestinians to concede before talks even begin. As Marx said, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Now, we have seen the donors’ conference, and a visit from Hillary Clinton, during which she uttered not one word of sympathy for the plight of Palestinians. This is tragedy and farce.

Palestinians are paying a heavy price. This is the continuation of the genocidal war launched by Israel against Gaza and supported by the international community. And the talks that are supposed to reconstruct are merely further means to carry out Israel’s agenda.

THE U.S. and Israel also call on Hamas to “renounce violence,” but they never recognize the incredible hypocrisy of this demand. Israel consistently uses overwhelming violence against the Palestinians, and the U.S. supplies the weapons that allow Israel to do so.

ABSOLUTELY. WHAT kind of weapons does the resistance movement in Gaza have? Crude homemade rockets, and some Grad rockets smuggled through the tunnels connecting Egypt and Gaza. But now the tunnels can’t be used. Israel has repeatedly bombed them.

Because Israel has enforced its siege of Gaza, these tunnels have also been used to bring essential goods into the Strip. For example, I haven’t been able to drive my car since the war ended, because we can’t receive any gas from Egypt, which had to be smuggled through the tunnels.

We are talking about the fourth-strongest military in the world, with 250 nuclear warheads, F-16s and helicopters, against a largely defenseless population. We are not talking about two equal parties.

According to international law, Israel is illegally occupying the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is illegally prohibiting more than 6 million Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and towns.

What we are calling for–myself as part of Palestinian civil society, as an academic, as an activist–is simply the implementation of UN and Security Council resolutions and international law. Under international law, we are guaranteed a state and the right of return for refugees.

By signing the Oslo Accords in 1993, the official Palestinian leadership made an agreement that violates our rights and international law [by bargaining away these essential national rights]. It has now become a habit for Israel and the U.S. to expect the weaker party, the Palestinians, to give more and more concessions.

One of the biggest mistakes that the Palestinian leadership made was to assume that the U.S. was acting as a fair broker. But in fact, the U.S. has been entirely biased–because of the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., and because I don’t think you can separate the interests of U.S. imperialism and Zionism in the Middle East.

The U.S. attacked and occupied Iraq and committed genocide against Iraq’s civilians. It killed more than 1.5 million Iraqis–because of oil, in pursuit of its interests in the region, and to protect the state of Israel.

The Americans have failed miserably in Iraq. Israel failed miserably in Lebanon in 2006. And then, they tried to target what they consider to be the weakest pocket of resistance in the Middle East, namely Gaza. Fortunately, that failed. Israel tried for 22 days to bring the resistance to its knees, but could not.

That is why they are trying to achieve politically what they failed to militarily.

Continued >>

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