Obama and the Counterinsurgency Era

February 21, 2009

By Anthony Fenton | Asia Times Online, February  21, 2009

Early signals indicate that United States President Barack Obama will continue driving the “counter-insurgency era” that began under his predecessor George W Bush.

Less than one month into his administration, the most significant indicators that Obama will continue implementing a foreign policy transformation that began under the Bush administration may be found in and around his National Security appointments. Strikingly, the very rhetoric that is being used to signify change is representative of this continuity.

The first key signal came on December 1, when Obama confirmed that he would continue with Robert M Gates as secretary of defense. That day, Obama also announced that (retired) marine general James L Jones would become his national security advisor, and that Hillary Clinton would be secretary of state.

Subsequent appointments, including (retired) navy admiral Dennis Blair to director of national intelligence, and Michele Flournoy as under secretary of defense for policy, along with keeping Michael Vickers on at under secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, are all linked to Obama’s assurances that “irregular warfare” will remain at the forefront of US policy, strategy and operations for the foreseeable future.

To help solidify matters, on December 1, Gates quietly signed Department of Defense

Directive (DoDD) 3000.07, establishing the policy that “irregular warfare is as strategically important as traditional warfare”. [1]

According to the directive, irregular warfare (IW) encompasses “Counter-terrorism operations, foreign internal defense, unconventional warfare, counter-insurgency, and stability operations”.

Under 3000.07, Vickers, a former special forces and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative who is considered one of the key architects behind the CIA’s covert war with the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, becomes Gates’ “principal advisor” on irregular warfare and the person who will provide “overall policy oversight” to ensure the US military establishment is transformed to be “as effective in IW as it is in traditional warfare”.

Directive 3000.07 builds on a post-9/11 foreign policy establishment transformation that began with the Bush Administration’s National Security Strategy of 2002. According to counter-insurgency theorist (retired) colonel Thomas Baltazar and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Elisabeth Kvitashvili, the NSS of 2002 “emphasized a ‘whole-of-government’ approach to the war on terrorism”. [2]

“Whole of government” is a key term that has stuck, and is increasingly being used by the Pentagon and the counter-insurgency community.

The Quadrennial Roles and Missions Review Report, released by the Department of Defense in January 2009, calls for “a better balance between our Nation’s hard and soft power”, a shift which “requires exploring whole-of-government approaches for meeting complex security challenges”. [3]

Directive 3000.07 also built on former president George W Bush’s National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 44 and secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld’s DoDD 3000.05, both issued in late 2005. These directives had already placed Stability Operations on par with traditional operations. Likewise, the Quadrennial Defense Review of 2006, and the publication and mass promotion of the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24) also demonstrated an increasing emphasis on IW. [4] [5]

Counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen (at the time, a key State Department advisor) said in a speech at the US Government Counter-insurgency Conference in September 2006, “True enough, the words ‘insurgency’, ‘insurgent’ or ‘counterinsurgency’ do not appear in NSPD 44, but it clearly envisages the need to deploy integrated whole-of-government capabilities in hostile environments.”

Other key, IW-related developments during the Bush administration included former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s “transformational diplomacy” initiative. Announced in January 2006, it called for “a more cooperative working relationship between American diplomats and the US military”. [6] An equally seminal moment took place in November of 2007, when Gates delivered the Landon Lecture, during which he made the “case for strengthening our capacity to use ‘soft’ power and for better integrating it with ‘hard’ power.” [7]

The integration of “soft” and “hard” power is known as “smart power”, a concept that is generally credited to Joseph Nye, a member of the US foreign policy elite, and former official under presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. But it is the 2006 CSIS Commission on Smart Power report, which Nye co-chaired, that is more likely the source for the shift in rhetoric that would be introduced by Gates and then used by the Obama administration. [8]

The fundamental argument of the report was that “the most important mandate” for the next administration would be to re-brand the US image in order that the dwindling Empire might “move from eliciting fear and anger to inspiring optimism and hope”.

Optimism and hope, under the overarching if nebulous theme of “change” were key messages of Obama’s presidential campaign. Among the major goals laid out by the report is “to prolong and preserve American pre-eminence as an agent for good”.

The report asserts that the US “cannot abandon” its military, but that it needs to strengthen the tools of soft power, which include diplomacy and development aid. The report acknowledges that the shift to “smart power” had already begun under Bush, writing: “Some elements of this approach are already occurring in the conduct of ongoing counter-insurgency, nation building, and counter-terrorism operations – tasks that depend critically but only partially on hard power.”

As with many soul-searching debates into the strategic countenance of the US over the years, this one hinges on questions of legitimacy and “credibility”. For the authors, it is not the formulation of the war on terror itself that is problematic in so much as “strik[ing] a balance between the use of force against irreconcilable extremists … and other means of countering terrorism.”

While the “war on terror” is seen as “likely to be with us for decades”, the next administration needed to find “a new central premise for US foreign policy to replace the war on terror”.

The new “central premise” appears to have already emerged. On February 6, the Pakistani press reported that Senator John Kerry, the new chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, bristled at the “the use of the term ‘war on terror'”. Rather, according to Kerry, “What we are doing is conducting global counter-insurgency.” [9]

One of the key “guiding principles” that the CSIS commission suggested to the incoming administration was to “elevate and integrate … development, diplomacy and public diplomacy into unified whole”.

The shift to an emphasis on “whole of government” capabilities (sometimes referred to as “inter-agency”, or “three-D” capabilities) is highlighted in other emerging policies and key reports.

In July 2008, the USAID released its “Civilian-Military Cooperation Policy”. Therein, USAID describes itself as being “designed to facilitate a whole-of-government approach in which US government agencies work … to provide a coordinated, consistent response in pursuit of shared policy goals.” USAID also notes in the policy how its efforts are “a key element of any successful … counter-insurgency effort”. [10]

Likewise, the touchstone US Government Counter-insurgency Guide had its signing ceremony on January 13. The three signatories were USAID administrator Henrietta Fore, Secretary of Defense Gates, and outgoing secretary of state

Rice. In the Guide’s preface, State Department Counselor, and Project for a New American Century signatory Eliot A Cohen asserts that “insurgency will be a large and growing element of the security challenges faced by the Unites States in the 21st century”. The COIN Guide is to prepare key government agencies for the “near certainty” that the US will be engaged in COIN [counter-insurgency] operations “during the decades to come”. [11]

Other key responsibilities under DoDD 3000.07 were given to the undersecretary for defense policy (USD-P), a position that is now held by Michele A Flournoy, the former president of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think-tank. When it was announced that Flournoy would become USD-P, the Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman referred to her appointment as “a victory for the coterie of counter-insurgency thinkers that the think-tank employs and champions”. [12]

In addition to heading CNAS, Flournoy was, together with Jones, Blair, and Nye, a member of the “Guiding Coalition” of another key think-tank close to the Obama administration, the Project for National Security Reform (PNSR).

At the December 1 event announcing his appointment, Jones stressed how “National Security in the 21st century comprises a portfolio which includes all elements of national power and influence working in coordination and harmony towards the desired goal of keeping our nation safe.”

This statement echoed recommendations that would be made only two days later by the PNSR in its bi-partisan report, “Forging a New Shield”. The report’s main recommendation is that “a new national security system in which agencies work together on joint assignments and policy implementation in responding to crises and managing day-to-day national security affairs”.

Modeled on and led by one of key architects of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, which restructured the US military bringing all of the forces under one umbrella for the first time, the PNSR seeks to similarly alter the national security apparatus of the US in order that the “whole of government” can more cohesively wage global counter-insurgency.

The PNSR grew out of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, the same agency that coordinated the Iraq Study Group and the lower-profile Afghanistan Study Group. The latter was headed by Jones. One of its key recommendations, that the US increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, began to be adopted by the Bush administration and was a key foreign policy plank of Obama’s electoral campaign. Upon taking office, Obama quickly implemented another ASG recommendation by naming Richard Holbrooke as his special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan. [13]

On January 13, 2009, PNSR announced that they had received $4 million from Congress via the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Department of Defense. Both ODNI, led by former PNSR co-chair Dennis Blair, and the DoD “will oversee execution of the agreement”. [14]

The close proximity of the PNSR to the new administration is instructive for another important reason.

In 2006, army General David Petraeus and Marine Lieutenant General James Mattis established the Counter-insurgency (COIN) Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, “to facilitate the development of a culture that enables us to more effectively adapt as a whole government when called upon to deal with future COIN or COIN-like threats”. [15]

According to the COIN Center’s official pamphlet, its purpose is “to better educate and train all US ground forces on the principles and practices of counter-insurgency, and to better integrate COIN efforts among the services”.

Among members of the COIN Center’s “community of interest” listed on its website, is the PNSR. Additionally, in its pamphlet, the COIN Center lists both a current program and a “near term initiative” that it is collaborating on with the PNSR. It remains to be seen what role exactly the PNSR will play with the COIN Center. One clue is found in the COIN Center pamphlet which states:

The analytical construct the COIN Center uses for continued analysis of distributed responsibility for issues in a COIN environment is the acronym “DDD” or the “3Ds”: Diplomacy (State); Development (USAID); and Defense (DoD).” [16] That PNSR has a shared emphasis on the interagency, or 3D, process, which may be an indication of collaborative efforts to watch for.

One reason to be wary of the commitment to “irregular warfare” is that it reflects a warning issued recently by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, that US foreign policy is “too militarized”. Although the lip service paid to “smart power” might be seen to indicate a balancing effect toward civilian influence over foreign policy, the appointment of retired military

and intelligence figures to key civilian posts calls this into question. [17]

Since the Obama administration campaigned on the continuity of counter-insurgency and irregular war as key elements of US power projection under his administration, it is likely that these policies will attain a level of popular support not experienced by the Bush administration, and will see little critical scrutiny by the media. The challenge will be to shed light on and critically examine these policies as they manifest in any number of settings around the world in the days to come.

Notes

1. Department of Defense directive number 3000.07, December 1, 2008.

2 . Baltazar, Colonel Thomas and Elisabeth Kvitashvili, “The Role of USAID and Development Assistance in Combatting Terrorism,” Military Review, March-April 2007, pp. 38-40.

3. Pentagon Recommends ‘Whole-of-Government’ National Security Plans by Walter Pincus, The Washington Post, Monday, February 2, 2009.

4. National Security Presidential directive NSPD-44 December 7, 2005.

5. DoD directive 3000.05 November 28, 2005.

6. Better Jointness Needed Between Military and Diplomats , Rice Says By Steven Donald Smith. American Forces Press Service, January 18, 2006.

7. Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M Gates, Manhattan , Kansas, Monday, November 26, 2007.

8. CSIS Commission on Smart Power.

9. Kerry says Pakistan aid bill to be passed shortly, APP Feb 6.

10. Civilian-military cooperation policy July 2008.

11. US government counterinsurgency guide

12.Obama’s Pentagon Subcabinet Officials: Lynn, Flournoy by Spencer Ackerman, The Washington Independent, 1/8/09.

13. Afghanistan Study Group report

14.PNSR Hails Appointment of Guiding Coalition Members to Obama Administration

15.COIN Center Community Of Interest

16.US Army/US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center.

17. Foreign Policy Beyond the Pentagon by Walter Pincus The Washington Post, February 9, 2009.

Anthony Fenton is an independent researcher and journalist based near Vancouver, Canada. He is currently co-writing a book on Canadian-US post-9/11 foreign policy integration and transformation, and can be reached at fenton@shaw.ca.

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US commander warns American troops will be in Afghanistan for years

February 21, 2009
By Peter Symonds |WSWS, 21 February 2009

The top US commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, warned on Wednesday that the huge boost to US troop numbers announced this week would have to continue for years. His comments underscore the fact that the Obama administration is preparing for a dramatic escalation of the war in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan that will inevitably heighten tensions throughout the region, especially in Central Asia.

In a bid to shore up the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, President Obama announced on Tuesday that an additional 17,000 US soldiers would be sent there. McKiernan told the media that the troop buildup was “not a temporary force uplift” and would “need to be sustained for some period of time,” adding that he was looking at “the next three to four to five years”. The US already has 36,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan, along with about 30,000 other foreign soldiers operating under NATO command.

The latest troop increase will not be the last. McKiernan repeated a previous request for an extra 10,000 in Afghanistan on top of those already announced. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates did not rule out additional US forces, but noted that no additional troops would be sent to Afghanistan until the Obama administration had completed its current strategic review.

At a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Poland, Gates pressed NATO allies for further support for Afghanistan. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned that NATO could not “afford the price of failure in Afghanistan” and urged “all members of the team… to pull closer together and pull harder in 2009”. But the commitments made were cosmetic, underlining the continuing deep tensions inside NATO between the US and European powers such as Germany and France.

UK Defence Secretary John Hutton complained that Britain was already doing its share, saying that “the European members of NATO need to do more”. Italy promised 500 soldiers. Germany indicated that it may send an additional 600 troops, but to the largely peaceful north of Afghanistan to assist with elections due in August. France committed no extra soldiers. While expressing his disappointment at the lack of extra forces, Gates urged NATO members to contribute economic aid and to the training of Afghan security forces.

The NATO summit highlighted the intersection of the war in Afghanistan with growing rivalry in Central Asia. One day before the meeting, the Kyrgyzstan parliament voted to shut down a key US air base needed to supply US and NATO forces in land-locked Afghanistan. As supply lines through neighbouring Pakistan have come under fierce attack from anti-US insurgents, the Pentagon has been seeking alternative routes through Central Asia.

Russia, however, has made clear that any shipment of US supplies through the region will depend on its support and will involve US concessions, particularly over the positioning of US anti-ballistic missiles in NATO-allied countries in Eastern Europe. Before the decision to shut down the Manus Air Base, Moscow announced a substantial aid package to Kyrgyzstan. At the same time, Russia has permitted some non-military US supplies to pass through Latvia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan—the first trainload left on Thursday.

The issue is creating divisions within NATO. The US-based think tank Stratfor commented: “The lack of enthusiasm for the Afghanistan surge was matched by growing questions among the Europeans over the military plan itself—both the overarching strategy and the lines of supply. Moreover, the Europeans are anxious to know how and to what extent the US plan involves the Russians.” While France and Germany support a rapprochement with Russia, Eastern European countries are opposed to any deal that would weaken US protection against Moscow.

The US confronts a deteriorating military situation in Afghanistan. Commenting on the boost to US troop numbers, General McKiernan said: “What this allows us to do is change the dynamics of the security situation, predominantly in southern Afghanistan, where we are, at best, stalemated.” He added: “I have to tell you that 2009 is going to be a tough year.”

Other US analysts are less cautious in their warnings. John Nagl, from the Centre for a New American Security, told the British Observer that the number of US soldiers in Afghanistan could eventually rise to 100,000. “The immediate problem is to stop the bleeding. The 30,000 troops is a tourniquet… [but] that is all we have. If Obama is a two-term president then by the end of his time in office there may only be marine embassy guards in Iraq. But there will still be tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan.”

In a detailed statement to a US Congressional committee last week, Anthony Cordesman from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies bluntly warned that “we are losing the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and we have at most two years in which to decisively reverse the situation”. He cited military statistics for 2008 pointing to a 33 percent rise in military clashes with insurgents, an increase in roadside bombs of 27 percent and in surface-to-air fire of 67 percent.

Cordesman stressed, however, that such details were secondary to the growing influence of the Taliban and other anti-occupation militias in Afghanistan. He cited in some detail the results of an ABC poll, released this month, which demonstrated falling support in Afghanistan for the occupation, and for its puppet President Hamid Karzai. Just 18 percent supported any increase in US and NATO troops and 44 percent wanted a reduction.

Support for the Taliban was strongest in the south and east of the country, where Pashtun tribes have been subjected to more than seven years of searches, arbitrary detention, military attacks and bombing. Overall, 25 percent of Afghans felt that violent attacks on occupation forces were justified; in the top five high-conflict provinces, the figure rose to 38 percent.

The survey also provided evidence of deteriorating living standards. The proportion of Afghans who characterised their economic opportunities as “very bad” doubled from 17 percent in 2006 to 33 percent. More than half reported an income of less than $US100 a month and 93 percent less than $300. Many registered complaints about fuel prices, lack of electricity, medical care, roads and other infrastructure. Nearly three quarters of respondents were worried about the impact of the global economic crisis.

Far from addressing any of these issues, the surge in US troops in Afghanistan will compound the anger and resentment that is providing a steady stream of recruits to the anti-occupation insurgency. Most of the fresh troops will be assigned to south of the country, where control by US forces and the Karzai government is tenuous, and to the border with Pakistan in an effort to halt the infiltration of Taliban fighters from bases in Pakistan.

The US war in Afghanistan has already spread across the Pakistani border, destabilising the government in Islamabad. The Obama administration has continued US missile strikes from unmanned drones on targets inside Pakistan’s tribal areas along the border, killing scores of civilians and inflaming local anger. Proof that at least some of the US drones are operating from a base inside Pakistan will compound the political difficulties facing the government, which has previously disclaimed any knowledge or involvement. The London-based Times and the Pakistani News have both published Google Earth images of three drones parked at the Shamsi air field in southwestern Pakistan.

Under pressure from Washington, the Pakistani army has been fighting a war to suppress anti-US militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Some 120,000 troops have been involved, and more than 1,500 have been killed in the fighting. The army, which has received around $10 billion in US aid, has laid waste to towns and villages, causing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee. The insurgency has also spread beyond the FATA to areas of the North West Frontier Province, including the Swat Valley, and is even touching on the Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous state.

Pakistan announced this week that it had struck a shaky deal with insurgents in the Swat Valley to introduce Islamic Sharia law to the area as part of a ceasefire. Richard Holbrooke, US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the media that the Obama administration was concerned that “the truce does not turn into a surrender”. He said he had spoken to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari who had assured him that was “not the case” and described the deal as “an interim arrangement”.

US Defence Secretary Gates took a slightly different tack, saying on Friday that the agreement was acceptable if it led to reconciliation and the disarming of the insurgents. He made clear that the US was looking to similar arrangements with sections of the anti-occupation forces in Afghanistan, seeking to replicate the tactic used in Iraq to buy off local tribal leaders and use them against hard-line insurgents. “We have said all along that ultimately some sort of political reconciliation has to be part of the long-term solution in Afghanistan,” Gates said.

Washington’s neo-colonial occupation of Afghanistan, however, is confronting widespread hostility and a burgeoning armed resistance. Asked about the ability of the US to succeed where the British army in the nineteenth century and the Soviet military in the 1980s had failed, General McKiernan simply said that it was “a very unhealthy comparison”. The comparison is perfectly apt. Like the British Raj and the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy, Washington is pursuing a criminal war for the subjugation of Afghanistan and the pursuit of US economic and strategic ambitions in Central Asia. Now, thousands more US soldiers are being sent into a quagmire that shows no signs of ending.

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Gazans: IDF used us as ‘human shields’ during offensive

February 21, 2009

By Amira Hass | Haaretz, Israel, Feb 20, 2009
GAZA – The question “Who is it?” was answered with: “The Israel Defense Forces.” Majdi Abed Rabbo, 39, who is a Palestinian Authority (Ramallah) employee and a member of its intelligence apparatus, went down to open the door. Standing there was the son of his neighbors, Mahmoud Daher, and behind him a soldier whose rifle was jammed into Daher’s back. The soldier pushed Daher aside and aimed the rifle at Abed Rabbo.

“He ordered me to pull down my pants. I pulled them down. He demanded that I raise my shirt. I raised it. That I turn around. I turned around,” Abed Rabbo related. And then the room filled up with soldiers. “Twelve, or something like that.”

This was in the morning of Monday, January 5, 2009, about 40 hours after the start of the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza.

The soldiers had already taken over Daher’s house on Sunday evening, located in I’zbet Abed Rabbo, an eastern neighborhood of Jabaliya city. First they gathered the family on the ground floor. Gunfire rang out around the house. Then they moved the family up to the first floor. The family wondered why the soldiers had taken them upstairs, to the cold, uncomfortable room – parents, children, two infants and an elderly mother. But they could not refuse, and they did not yet know that the move upstairs brought them closer to the range of fire. Only later did they learn about the three fighters from Iz al-Din al-Qassam, Hamas’ military wing, positioned in the empty house to the northeast of them. The regular occupants of the house, owned by their neighbor Abu Hatem, had long since gone abroad. Abed Rabbo’s tall house stood next to Abu Hatem’s narrow, empty one.

At about 7 A.M. on Monday, the soldiers took Shafiq Daher – a 53-year-old financial manager who gets his salary from the PA in Ramallah – as well as Mahmoud and two other sons from their home, and then separated them from each other.

The soldiers took the elder Daher to the house of his neighbor to the east, Jaber Zeydan. The door had already been broken, and the neighbors were huddled in one room. The search here, as in the four other homes Daher was forced to enter that day, was conducted in the same way: He entered first, with the soldiers behind him. One soldier placed his rifle on Daher’s right shoulder, and pressed down on his left shoulder. The members of the Zeydan family were taken into the adjacent house, owned by Tawfiq Katari. The hands of all the men, including boys of 14 and 16, were tied, some behind the back, some in front.

Protecting soldiers

The soldiers also took over Katari’s house on Sunday night, January 4. The Kataris, too, were rounded up and taken to the ground floor. There was shooting all around. The soldiers took up positions on one of the upper floors and turned the northeast window, close to the Abu Hatem home, into a firing position. “There was one nice soldier who told us that where we were sitting was dangerous and moved us next to an inner wall,” one of the women related.

At about 9 A.M. on Monday, the soldiers took Katari’s son Jamal from the house. During the next four days Jamal accompanied the soldiers and performed several tasks. He was made to enter what he estimates were 10 houses, going in first and calling on the occupants to come downstairs. He preceded the huge army bulldozer that forced its way through the neighborhood, ripping up the streets. “I am afraid the soldiers will shoot me,” he told a soldier, who replied: “Don’t be afraid.”

In the meantime, that same Monday morning, Shafiq Daher, too, was continuing his mission of protecting Israel Defense Forces soldiers. The second house he was made to check was also empty. It belonged to the Al-Ajarmi family. Daher did not know that his two oldest sons were accompanying other groups of soldiers, and were being forced to smash holes in the walls of houses using sledgehammers. Nor did he know that at that very moment, a soldier was jamming his rifle into the back of his third son, standing at the door of Abed Rabbo’s home.

Abed Rabbo himself, after being forced to smash a hole in the wall that separated his roof from his neighbors’ roof and to accompany the soldiers inside, was made to enter several houses near the mosque, break into a car and then go into the Zeydan house. He was then taken to the Katari family’s home, where he met Shafiq Daher and told him that his son was all right. At about 2 P.M., a soldier took him outside, pointed to the Abu Hatem house and said, according to Abed Rabbo’s testimony: “There were armed people in that house. We killed them. Take off their clothes and take their weapons.” At first he refused and said that was not his job. “Obey orders,” he was told.

Dead or alive?

Abbed Rabbo went to the Abu Hatem house, shouting in Arabic that he was the owner. In the house, he found three very much alive members of Iz al-Din al-Qassam. They told him to leave and threatened him not to come back, “because we will shoot you.” He returned to the soldiers, who made him undress and turn around, and then told them that the three were alive. The officer on hand asked to see his ID card and discovered that Abed Rabbo was a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ intelligence. He was handcuffed and moved aside. He heard shooting. Then he was again sent to check the Abu Hatem house, after being told the three militants were now dead; he found one wounded and the others “all right.” One of them said: “Tell the officer that if he is a man, he can come up here himself.”

The soldiers didn’t like what they heard. One of them cursed, said Abed Rabbo, who was handcuffed again and made to wait. It began to grow dark when he heard a helicopter approaching, followed by the sound of a missile exploding. One of the soldiers said: Now we have killed them, with a missile. Come over here. Abed Rabbo complied and saw, with horror, that the missile had struck his house.

He told the soldier that the missile had missed. “Are you majnoun [nuts]?” the soldier asked him. “No,” Abed Rabbo replied. “The missile hit my house.”

There was a huge mess: Water was bursting out of pipes, pieces of concrete were lying all over. And all around the shooting continued unabated, interspersed with the sounds of many explosions and helicopters flying overhead.

At about midnight, between Monday and Tuesday, Abed Rabbo was forced to go for a third time, to ascertain whether the three Hamas militants were dead. The soldiers lit the way for him. He found two of the gunmen, still alive, but buried under the rubble; the third was still holding his weapon. Abed Rabbo returned to the soldiers, stripped down again and repeated that the three were alive.

“Are you majnoun?” they demanded.

“No, I am not majnoun, I am telling you what I saw,” he replied. Hungry, thirsty and with a throbbing headache, Abbed Rabbo was taken back to the Katari house.

At 6:30 A.M. he was brought out, in front of what was once his house. Soldiers brought a megaphone, he recalled later, and started to shout: “Ya, armed people, you have 15 minutes to turn yourselves in. Come down, remove your clothes, the Red Cross is here, the journalists are here, we will treat the wounded men.”

The soldiers then sent a dog into the house. One of the Hamas fighters shot and killed it. The soldiers again started calling on them to come out. There was no reply. “And then a bulldozer arrived and started to demolish my house, right before my eyes.” Abed Rabbo was sent into the Katari house as the bulldozer started to wreck Abu Hatem’s house. He heard sporadic gunfire shots. When he emerged, two hours later, he found two of the armed men “sprawled on the demolished concrete, dead.” He did not see the third man.

“What kind of army is this, which can’t break into one house where there are armed men?” Abed Rabbo asked himself.

The IDF responds

Haaretz spoke with eight residents of I’zbet Abed Rabbo neighborhood, who testified that they were made to accompany IDF soldiers on missions involving breaking into and searching houses – not to mention the family members who remained in the houses the army took over, which were used as firing positions. The eight estimated that about 20 local people were made to carry out “escort and protection” missions of various kinds, as described here, between January 5 and January 12.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated in response: “The IDF is a moral army and its soldiers operate according to the spirit and values of the IDF, and we suggest a thorough examination of the allegations of Palestinian elements with vested interests. The IDF troops were instructed unequivocally not to make use of the civilian population within the combat framework for any purpose whatsoever, certainly not as ‘human shields.’

“Following an examination with the commanders of the forces that were in the area in question, no evidence was found of the cases mentioned. Anyone who tries to accuse the IDF of actions of this kind creates a mistaken and misleading impression of the IDF and its fighters, who operate according to moral criteria and international law.”

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Obama Escalates Drone Strikes Inside Pakistan

February 21, 2009

Strikes Increase in Number, Severity in Recent Weeks

Antiwar.com

Posted February 20, 2009

President Barack Obama made clear his desire to launch attacks onto Pakistani soil early in the campaign, and in his first month since taking office it has become evident that is escalating the number and severity of the attacks using drone aircraft well beyond what the Bush Administration’s attacks in its final several months in office.

Two major strikes have been launch in the past week, in the South Waziristan and Kurram Agencies of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The attacks killed 30 and 31, respectively, and both appeared to target militants affiliated with Baitullah Mehsud.

The escalation has come as the Pakistani government has struggled to battle claims that they are “privately” backing the attacks while offering public condemnations. This battle has been hampered by a growing number of officials on both sides admitting to the agreement and photographic evidence that they have indeed been hosting US Predator drones at one of their air bases.

The drone strikes have been wildly unpopular in the Pakistani tribal areas, sparking massive protests as they kill civilians with impunity. With Pakistan struggling to maintain control over the area against a growing insurgency, the escalation of the attacks is liable to exacerbate the credibility problems faced by the Pakistani government among the tribes.

Related Stories

compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

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Investigating Bush’s Crimes

February 21, 2009

by Scott Horton | The Nation,  Feb 21, 2009

When the Obama transition team opened a questions referendum on its popular change.gov website in December, one issue quickly soared to the top. “Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?” And when Obama stepped to the microphone at his first presidential press conference, the question came again, this time with reference to a Congressional call for a truth commission. Obama’s response: “My view is also that nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen; but that generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” The answer was a slight variation on the theme he has struck consistently since the final days of his campaign. But what does it mean with respect to the criminal accountability of Bush-era policy-makers? Many are inclined to hear confirmation of their hopes–Republicans eager to see the disastrous Bush years passed over without more fuss will stress the intention not to “look back,” while Obama supporters who embraced his strong criticism of Bush’s torture and surveillance policies will emphasize his observation that “nobody is above the law.” Others are displeased with the ambiguity and press for a conclusive decision on the question.

But these exchanges give us the essence of the “no drama Obama” style: he builds support with lofty rhetoric, giving some sense of his policy objectives, but he consciously avoids committing himself to any particular resolution. Obama is not being coy, I think. He means precisely what he says. Accountability is not a part of his affirmative agenda, least of all for his first hundred days, on which the long-term success or failure of his presidential term may hang. An economic stimulus package, healthcare initiatives and a series of foreign policy challenges occupy center stage. Even in the Justice Department, Obama’s first objectives involve restoring the institution’s self-confidence and resurrecting its historical role in civil rights and voting rights enforcement. It’s not that Obama and his senior advisers see the accountability issue as inherently unimportant–on the contrary, they readily admit that it may be the key to long-term resolution of a series of questions surrounding the abusive extension of presidential power. But it is clearly a back-burner issue for them, something better addressed near the end of his first term or, better still, during a second term.

Obama’s problem is that a growing number of Americans are concerned about what the Bush administration did and are eager to press the issue. The extent of public concern has been reflected in several recent public opinion polls, including one in February by USA Today showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans support investigations of the Bush administration’s use of torture and warrantless wiretapping; roughly 40 percent support criminal investigations.

And the shift in public opinion is not the only thing transforming the environment in Washington on this issue. Susan Crawford, a Cheney protégée and the senior Bush administration official responsible for the military commissions in Guantánamo, told the Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward that she refused to approve the charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani because he had been tortured. Torture is, of course, a felony under US law, and if multiple figures are involved, it might well be “conspiracy to torture,” a separate crime. As ABC News reported and President Bush later confirmed, the full book of proposed techniques to which Qahtani was subjected had been approved by the National Security Council, headed by Bush. A senior Obama Justice figure remarked after reading the Crawford interview that it would be “impossible to sweep the matter under the carpet.” That’s a view that seems to be shared by US allies and United Nations officials, who, pointing to Crawford’s admissions, are asking why the United States has failed to introduce a criminal inquiry into how torture came to be practiced as a matter of US policy. Articles 4 and 5 of the Convention Against Torture require the United States to prohibit torture under domestic criminal law and to investigate and prosecute incidents in which it is practiced. The failure even to begin criminal investigations has placed the United States in breach of its obligations under the treaty, a point that even torture apologists like University of Chicago Law School professor Eric Posner freely concede.

President Bush was widely expected to issue blanket pardons to those involved in his interrogations and surveillance programs, but he did not do so. Moreover, the Bush administration’s tenuous claim to legality for its torture programs was ended immediately after Obama assumed office, when he directed a reassessment of interrogation policies and revoked all of the relevant Bush-era Justice Department opinions with the stroke of a pen.

Obama has been careful to avoid any suggestion that he or his senior officers are directing a criminal investigation or prosecution of the Bush-era torture enablers. He is right to do so. The criminal justice system of a democratic state should not operate like a well-oiled military machine taking its cue from the commander in chief. It requires professional prosecutors who operate with critical detachment from political officials when they pursue criminal investigations. Moreover, the painful circumstances of the torture and surveillance programs, particularly the fact that senior Justice Department officials were complicit in their implementation at almost every step, make it an ethically doubtful proposition for the Justice Department even to take up the matter.

Up to this point, political influence has been used to block accountability. Investigations are still under way at the Justice Department and other agencies that touch on important aspects of the Bush administration’s detainee policy. One probe is looking into the mysterious destruction of evidence of interrogations using highly coercive techniques that was sought in pending criminal cases. Another probe, nearly complete, is examining the circumstances behind the crafting of the notorious torture memos in the black hole of the Bush Justice Department, the Office of Legal Counsel. Under the Bush administration, these and other investigations were often bottled up, as senior officials refused to cooperate and the White House–which functioned as the nerve center for Justice Department political operations–refused to turn over documents. On occasion, they were shut down directly by order of President Bush. One criminal investigation launched by FBI agents at Guantánamo was ordered closed by the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Alice Fisher, who may herself emerge as a target of a criminal investigation. Under the transparency policies Obama announced during his first week, and under the detainee policies he is busily putting in place, the administration will unblock internal probes and mandate that federal employees, including White House employees, cooperate with them. Realization that this was in the works may have given rise to President Bush’s January 16 “gag letters” issued to Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten, instructing them to keep quiet in the face of a Congressional probe about their dealings with the Justice Department.

Leading Congressional Democrats are proposing a way forward. In January House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers announced a blue-ribbon panel to be appointed to conduct an investigation. He is also proposing that the statute of limitations be modified to take the time pressure off potential criminal investigators. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy put forth a proposal of his own a few weeks later in a presentation at Georgetown University. Leahy pressed the idea of a “truth commission,” similar to the approach used in South Africa after the fall of the apartheid regime. Bush administration officials who come forward and offer a full accounting of their deeds could get immunity for their testimony; those who keep silent or give false statements could face prosecution. The Leahy and Conyers approaches share a number of elements, including the notion that the commission would consist of eminent people who are “above the political fray,” would get subpoena power and would be fully staffed and resourced. Both Conyers and Leahy cite the 9/11 Commission as a model–a Congressionally authorized commission backed by presidential authority, a hybrid model that would eliminate some of the potential legal challenges that a purely Congressional commission might face. Conyers is, however, far more concerned about building a solid record that can form the basis of prosecutions, whereas Leahy offers immunity as a reward for candor.

There are unmistakable signs of momentum in support of a commission approach in Washington. Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic Congressional leaders who once sang in the “let’s forgive and forget” choir are now signaling their support for a commission. But what about the Obama White House? Following a meeting between Leahy and Greg Craig, Obama’s White House counsel, the White House was committed only to an ongoing discussion.

But the commission approach may, depending on some critical details, offer the best solution to the impasse. Moreover, it may well suit Obama’s needs for the commission to be the creation and initiative of Congress rather than of his administration. It would allow a comprehensive investigation without embroiling the White House in the process. A commission would be in a position to put to rest some persistent questions, particularly regarding how torture came to be embraced as a matter of policy and whether the administration ever got actionable intelligence from tortured suspects that could conceivably offset the immense damage that torture has done to the moral authority of the United States around the world. Most significant, if a commission recommended a criminal investigation to the Attorney General, and if it recommended appointment of a special prosecutor, that would deflect suggestions that the process was “political.”

On the other hand, investigative commissions do not actually do justice. They cannot bring charges, and in the process of granting immunity for testimony they can muddy the waters for a later prosecutor. Any commission would need the advice and guidance of professional prosecutors, who could help to assure that it would prudently exercise the right to grant immunity and would avoid damaging future prosecutions.

Criminal investigations and prosecutions might be avoided under the Leahy approach and might be delayed under the Conyers approach. But whatever approach is finally settled upon, it seems increasingly clear that there will be multiple investigations: a commission of some sort, Congressional hearings (which are promised in any event) and internal probes within the government, which will likely be pursued delicately and quietly.

Though the wheels of justice grind slowly, they grind exceeding small. One year from today, it is likely that a large number of the secret documents that form the backbone of Bush detention policy will be public and many of their authors will have been publicly interrogated about them. We will have a better sense of how torture crept into the American interrogations system and whose authority was invoked to ram it through in the face of legal hurdles once thought insurmountable. And one year from today, we will probably still be asking whether any of the authors of this national tragedy will or should be prosecuted. That outcome is not likely to satisfy either side of the debate. But it may well be consistent with the interests of justice, which demands a complete exploration of the facts before anyone is held to account. That outcome fully reflects the Obama style.

© 2009 The Nation

Scott Horton, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, lectures at Columbia Law School.

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War Criminals, Including Their Lawyers, Must Be Prosecuted

February 21, 2009

Marjorie Cohn, Feb 19, 2009

Since he took office, President Obama has instituted many changes that break with the policies of the Bush administration. The new president has ordered that no government agency will be allowed to torture, that the U.S. prison at Guantánamo will be shuttered, and that the CIA’s secret black sites will be closed down. But Obama is non-committal when asked whether he will seek investigation and prosecution of Bush officials who broke the law. “My view is also that nobody’s above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen,” Obama said. “But,” he added, “generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” Obama fears that holding Team Bush to account will risk alienating Republicans whom he still seeks to win over.

Obama may be off the hook, at least with respect to investigating the lawyers who advised the White House on how to torture and get away with it. The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has written a draft report that apparently excoriates former Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the infamous torture memos, according to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff. OPR can report these lawyers to their state bar associations for possible discipline, or even refer them for criminal investigation. Obama doesn’t have to initiate investigations; the OPR has already launched them, on Bush’s watch.

The smoking gun that may incriminate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, et al., is the email traffic that passed between the lawyers and the White House. Isikoff revealed the existence of these emails on The Rachel Maddow Show. Some maintain that Bush officials are innocent because they relied in good faith on legal advice from their lawyers. But if the president and vice president told the lawyers to manipulate the law to allow them to commit torture, then that defense won’t fly.

A bipartisan report of the Senate Armed Services Committee found that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

Cheney recently admitted to authorizing waterboarding, which has long been considered torture under U.S. law. Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Colin Powell, and John Ashcroft met with Cheney in the White House basement and authorized harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, according to an ABC News report. When asked, Bush said he knew about it and approved.

John Yoo wrote in a Wall Street Journal oped that Bush “could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.”

A representative of the Justice Department promised that OPR’s report would be released sometime last November. But Bush’s attorney general Michael Mukasey objected to the draft. A final version will be presented to Attorney General Eric Holder. The administration will then have to decide whether to make it, and the emails, public and then how to proceed.

When the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture, we promised to extradite or prosecute those who commit, or are complicit in the commission, of torture. We have two federal criminal statutes for torture prosecutions – the Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act (torture is considered a war crime under U.S. law). The Torture Convention is unequivocal: nothing, including a state of war, can be invoked as a justification for torture.

Yoo redefined torture much more narrowly than U.S. law provides, and counseled the White House that it could evade prosecution under the War Crimes Act by claiming self-defense or necessity. Yoo knew or should have known of the Torture Convention’s absolute prohibition of torture.

There is precedent for holding lawyers criminally liable for giving legally erroneous advice that resulted in great physical or mental harm or death. In U.S. v. Altstoetter, Nazi lawyers were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for advising Hitler on how to “legally” disappear political suspects to special detention camps.

Almost two-thirds of respondents to a USA Today/Gallup Poll favor investigations of the Bush team for torture and warrantless wiretapping. Nearly four in 10 favor criminal investigations. Cong. John Conyers has introduced legislation to establish a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties. Sen. Patrick Leahy advocates for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission; but this is insufficient. TRC’s are used for nascent democracies in transition. By giving immunity to those who testify before them, it would ensure that those responsible for torture, abuse and illegal spying will never be brought to justice.

Attorney General Eric Holder should appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute high Bush officials including lawyers like John Yoo who gave them “legal” cover. Obama is correct when he said that no one is above the law. Accountability is critical to ensuring that our leaders never again torture and abuse people.

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), which will be published this winter by PoliPointPress.  Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com (The views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer; she is not acting on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild or Thomas Jefferson School of Law)

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Israel’s Dirty War in Gaza and Complicity of Her Allies

February 20, 2009

Marc Herbermann | uruknet.info, Feb 19, 2009

‘How did the current mess in the Gaza Strip begin?’

In recent years, life had become more and more unbearable in the area which once was called Palestine. Palestinians today, under a Jewish state that allows them no autonomy, suffer from miserable living conditions in a land that was theirs more than 60 years ago.

Jews, separated by huge concrete walls from the Palestine population, are scared of continuous rocket fire and the notion of being a victim of another devastating suicide attack. And now, Palestinians, expelled from their former homeland, crammed and trapped in a ghetto in the Gaza Strip, are the victims of a criminal military campaign.

Let’s get it right; we should respect people’s wish to live in peace, no matter in which country they live, whether they are Jews, Muslims or Buddhists. The brutal murder of civilians is a crime, the summary execution of people that are not involved in military operations and the deliberate shelling of U.N. buildings, convoys, hospitals, media installations and mosques are war crimes.

Over a period of 22 days, covered by the complicit apathy of the U.S., which is leading a disgraceful war in Iraq which it started illegally, the Israeli military operation in Gaza had claimed over 1300, at least half of them are civilians.

Thousands are wounded and traumatized. The attacks were meant to destroy the “infrastructure of terror,” yet they are ruining the social and cultural infrastructure of a community that has already been suffering under a harsh blockade Egypt and Israel imposed nearly 18 months ago.

Similarities between the current onslaught and the Lebanon War are evident. More than two years ago, Israel concocted a casus belli to attack Lebanon, half the size of Israel, with overwhelming air power, in utter contempt for civilian life and international institutions. Remember the deadly bombing of the apartment building in Qana and the destruction of the U.N. post that killed four U.N. observers.

And yet this small, relatively prosperous land, Lebanon, has nearly 30 times the landmass of the Gaza Strip, where desperate population is hiding and trembling between shattered walls, waiting for the next fatal blow, unable to sleep, drink clean water, eat or seek refuge in mosques or hospitals.

Even clearly marked international buildings are intentionally shelled. More than 40 people died after an Israeli attack on a U.N. school in the Jabalya refugee camp, where there were no fighters. In the Shifa and other hospitals, the situation is disastrous.

The recent mass executions by the Israel Defense Forces (IDFs) were not meant to destroy a well equipped enemy, as Israeli commanders suggest, but they knocked down an impoverished population administrated by Hamas, a political organization with a militant ideology, which was elected democratically in January 2006.

What are the underlying reasons for Israel’s assault on Gaza? Mark Regev, spokesman for the prime minister of Israel, repeatedly claims that the IDFs want to stop the firing of rockets, which fly out of the Gaza Strip everyday, flying deeper and deeper into the south of Israel.

If so, why is the best equipped army in the Middle East, which receives billions of dollars in military aid and uses the latest weapons from its American ally (including precision-guided munitions, phosphor bombs and depleted uranium shells) incapable of preventing these crude, homemade, and mainly inaccurate rockets from firing?

The IDFs, therefore, seem to pursue other aims: restoring their prestige, damaged by the Lebanon war, by demonstrating their strength regardless of civilian causalities.

More likely, the hidden agenda of this operation is aimed at removing Hamas from the Gaza Strip and finally, as the Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky puts it, terrorizing and expelling the Palestinians from their land.

How did the current mess in the Gaza Strip begin? The standard narration ¯ shared by mainstream media outlets and declared by the Israeli government, George W. Bush, his biased German colleague, Angela Merkel, and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy ¯ blames Hamas alone.

Yet the EU presidency conceded that “even the undisputable right of the state to defend itself does not allow actions which largely affect civilians.” United Nations Security Council Resolution 1860, intended to resolve the 2008-09 Israel-Gaza conflict, has yet to bear fruit.

But who really broke the last ceasefire? According to various sources in Western newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian, The Economist and the U.S. News and World Report, the truth is that Israeli commandos killed six Hamas fighters during a raid on a tunnel they suspected was being dug for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers at the beginning of November.

According to The Guardian, “Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into southern Israel.” Israeli newspaper Haaretz claims that operation “Cast Lead” had been prepared six month earlier and, coupled with a carefully staged disinformation campaign, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

– Marc Herbermann, full-time instructor at Dongduk Women’s University in Seoul, works occasionally as a journalist and lectured on methods of political science at the University of Trier. This article was contributed to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact the author at: herbermann@gmx.de .

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Afghanistan, the Next US Quagmire?

February 20, 2009
by Thalif Deen | Antiwar.com, Feb 20, 2009

The United States is planning to send an additional 17,000 troops to one of the world’s most battle-scarred nations – Afghanistan – long described as “a graveyard of empires.”

First, it was the British Empire, and then the Soviet Union. So, will the United States be far behind?

“With his new order on Afghanistan, President (Barack) Obama has given substantial ground to what Martin Luther King Jr., in 1967 called ‘the madness of militarism,'” Norman Solomon, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS.

“That madness should be opposed in 2009,” said Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

The proposed surge in U.S. troops will bring the total to 60,000, while the combined forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including troops from Germany, Canada, Britain and the Netherlands, amount to over 32,000.

When in full strength, U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan could reach close to 100,000 by the end of this year.

Still, in a TV interview Tuesday, Obama said he was “absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban (insurgency), the spread extremism in that region solely through military means.”

“If there is no military solution, why is the administration’s first set of decisions to continue drone attacks and increase ground troops?” Marilyn B. Young, a professor of history at New York University, told IPS.

She said the uncertainty around Afghan policy seems to be spreading even while the Obama administration announces an increase in troops.

“This is one of the ways events seem to echo U.S. escalation in the Vietnam War,” said Young, author of several publications, including “Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past.”

On Tuesday, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report revealing that in 2008, there were 2,118 civilian casualties in Afghanistan, an increase of almost 40 percent over 2007.

Of these casualties, 55 percent of the overall death toll was attributed to anti-government forces, including the Taliban, and 39 percent to Afghan security and international military forces.

“This is of great concern to the United Nations,” the report said, pointing out that “this disquieting pattern demands that the parties to the conflict take all necessary measures to avoid the killing of innocent civilians.”

During his presidential campaign last year, Obama said the war in Iraq was a misguided war.

The United States, he said, needs to pull out of Iraq, and at the same time, bolster its troops in Afghanistan, primarily to prevent the militant Islamic fundamentalist Taliban from regaining power and also to eliminate safe havens for terrorists.

But most political analysts point out that Afghanistan may turn out to be a bigger military quagmire for U.S. forces than Iraq.

Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy said Obama’s moves on Afghanistan have “the quality of a moth toward a flame.”

In the short run, Obama is likely to be unharmed in domestic political terms. But the policy trajectory appears to be unsustainable in the medium-run, he added.

“Before the end of his first term, Obama is very likely to find himself in a vise, caught between a war in Afghanistan that cannot be won and a political quandary at home that significantly erodes the enthusiasm of his electoral base while fueling Republican momentum,” Solomon argued.

Dr. Christine Fair, a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation and a former political officer with UNAMA in Kabul, told IPS she is doubtful that more troops will secure Afghanistan.

“Perhaps several years ago more troops would have been welcomed. My fear is that more troops means more civilian losses and further erosion of good will and support for the international presence,” Fair said.

“I would personally prefer a move from kinetics and towards using this increased capacity to help build Afghan capacity,” she noted.

“I also think greater support from the international community for reconciliation is needed. Afghans need to own this process,” said Fair, a former senior research associate with the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the U.N. Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington.

However, she said, the international community has legitimate interests in remaining in some capacity to ensure that Afghanistan does not again emerge as a safe haven for al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups.

Fair also co-authored (along with Seth Jones) a USIP report released early this week, titled “Securing Afghanistan,” which spelled out the reasons why international stabilization efforts have not been successful in Afghanistan over the last seven years.

“Security issues in Afghanistan are extraordinarily complex, with multiple actors influencing the threat environment – among them, insurgent groups, criminal groups, local tribes, warlords, government officials and security forces,” the report said.

Afghanistan also presents a multi-front conflict that includes distinct security challenges in the northern, central and southern parts of the country, the study declared.

In Afghanistan, Solomon argued, the U.S. president is proceeding down a path that can only be too steep and not steep enough.

The basic contradiction of his current position – asserting that the situation cannot be solved by military means yet taking action to try to solve the problem by military means – signifies that Obama is bargaining for short-term wiggle room at the expense of longer-term rationality, he added.

“In a very real sense, Obama is kicking a bloody can down the road, unable to think of any other way to confront circumstances that will grow worse with time in large measure because of his actions now,” he said.

Even while disputing some thematic aspects of the “war on terrorism” at times, Obama is reinvesting his political capital – and re-dedicating the Pentagon’s mission – on behalf of a U.S. war effort that is probably doomed to fail on its own terms, Solomon said.

“Reliance on violence is a chronic temptation for a commander-in-chief with the mighty U.S. military under its command. We’ve seen the results in Iraq – or, more precisely, the people of Iraq and many American soldiers have seen and suffered the results,” he added.

(Inter Press Service)

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The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

February 20, 2009

By Rannie Amiri | Counterpunch, Feb 18, 2009

“They are trying to silence the voices that criticize the [Egyptian] government’s performance and send a message by assaulting and kidnapping, to say that criticism will not be tolerated.”

– Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information on the recent spate of blogger arrests in Egypt.

Philip Rizk wasn’t “unlucky” or at “the wrong place at the wrong time.” Instead, he found himself quite the deliberate target of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

On Feb. 6, the 26-year-old German-Egyptian blogger and filmmaker took part in a march with fellow activists belonging to the group “To Gaza,” an organization under the umbrella of the Gaza Popular Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

Rizk and 14 others held the six-mile march in Qalyubiya governate, a rural area north of Cairo. Their purpose was to draw attention to, and raise awareness of, the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza under the Israeli embargo and subsequent attack. They also protested Mubarak’s order to keep the vital Rafah border crossing with Gaza closed and demanded an immediate end to the blockade of the territory.

A graduate student at the American University of Cairo, Rizk, a frequent contributor to CounterPunch, had previously spent two years living in Gaza and made a documentary film of life there. He also ran the Tabula Gaza blog, where he was critical of both Egyptian and Israeli policies toward Palestinians.

On their way back to Cairo from Qalyubiya, all 15 activists were stopped and detained by Egyptian State Security officers. They were arrested and then released. Except Philip Rizk. He was taken out the back door of the police station and whisked away in an unmarked van.

Like so many others in Egypt who dare to speak out, Rizk simply disappeared.

An intense campaign by family, friends, colleagues and human rights groups ensued. A website and Facebook group set up in his name rallied support in calling for his immediate release. Five days later, Rizk was unceremoniously dropped off at his apartment. No criminal charges were ever filed.

Rizk told reporters he had been held in solitary confinement, blindfolded and handcuffed. During interrogation, he was alternately accused of being an Israeli spy and a gun-runner for Hamas and was subjected to psychological abuse, but not physically harmed. While in custody, his apartment was broken into and his computer, hard drives, digital and video cameras, film, phones, and documents confiscated. His blog was also taken down.

Rizk spent little time talking about himself though. He preferred the media’s attention be focused on the fate of other Egyptian bloggers imprisoned or who had simply disappeared, mentioning Diaa Eddin Gad in particular.

Gad is a 23-year-old blogger who also had taken part in a peaceful demonstration in support of Palestinians in Gaza, and ran the Sout Gadeb or “An Angry Voice” blog (in it, he described Mubarak as a “Zionist agent”). The same day Rizk was arrested in Qalyubiya, four security men jumped Gad outside his family’s apartment and arrested him. He has not been heard from since and his whereabouts remain unknown.

In addition, Egyptian military tribunals this month sentenced Ahmed Douma and Ahmed Kamal to one year in prison for “illegally” crossing into Gaza during the Israeli invasion and blogging from there.

As one might surmise, Egypt still operates under Emergency Law, which it has been under since 1981. For 27 years, these laws have afforded Mubarak and his State Security officers the ability to arrest and detain any citizen without warrant or charge for an indefinite period of time. They restrict both freedom of speech and assembly. Amnesty International estimates that there are approximately 18,000 political prisoners being held in Egypt under the provisions of Emergency Law.

If the Gaza war accomplished anything, it was to bring many longstanding Middle East realities to full light. These include the savage extent to which the Israeli government will go to crush resistance to occupation and Palestinian aspirations to form a state independent of their dictates; the successful fracture and dissolution of the Palestinian leadership; Mahmoud Abbas’ utter lack of credibility and integrity; the marked political divisions between the Arab states opposed to, and those that tacitly approved of (or were complicit in) the Israeli invasion of Gaza; and the complete failure of the Arab League as an effective body.

Even more evident was the disconnect between rulers and the ruled. Specifically, the hypersensitivity of the Mubarak government to not just criticism of its policy keeping the Rafah border closed, but to any public expression of sympathy or support for Gaza.

While Israel has ended its war (for now), Mubarak’s is ongoing. As true of all dictators, it is one being constantly waged against the people.

Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator. He may be reached at: rbamiri at yahoo dot com.

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Sri Lanka’s war of terror

February 20, 2009

Nagesh Rao explains the historical background to the Sri Lankan government’s latest war crimes against the Tamil minority.

Socialist Worker, February 18, 2009

A group of made refugees in Sri Lanka's civil warA group of made refugees in Sri Lanka’s civil war

THE SRI LANKAN military is intensifying its war on the country’s Tamil minority–but the international media is focused far more on the violence of the Tamil resistance.

Just as the Israelis did during their most recent invasion of Gaza, Sri Lankan authorities have prevented journalists from entering war zones. Consequently, the media has largely followed official Sri Lankan pronouncements and viewed this decades-old conflict through the relatively new lens of the “war on terror.”

Meanwhile, human rights organizations, various NGOs, and Tamil organizations worldwide have produced evidence of a brutal military campaign by the Sri Lankan state directed against the Tamil population at large.

A January 28 Amnesty International press release about the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Sri Lanka stated:

“Recent fighting has placed more than a quarter of a million civilians at great risk. People displaced by the conflict are experiencing acute shortages of humanitarian aid, especially food, shelter and medical care. There has been no food convoy in the area since 16 January,” said Yolanda Foster, Amnesty International’s Sri Lanka researcher.

The Government of Sri Lanka is carrying out military operations in areas with a civilian population. The aerial and artillery bombardment has reportedly led to civilian deaths, injuries, the destruction of property and mass displacement on this island nation off India’s southeastern coast.

Sri Lankan government forces have pushed the Tamil Tigers out of all major urban areas they had held for nearly a decade and into a small pocket of land. More than 300,000 civilians who have fled the oncoming government troops are also trapped in this small area. They have been displaced multiple times and are increasingly vulnerable as fighting moves closer.

Hundreds of people have been killed or injured and such medical care as has been available is threatened due to danger to the few health workers and damage to hospitals.

The government had declared “safe zones” to allow civilians to seek shelter, but information made available to Amnesty International indicates that several civilians in the so-called safe zone have been killed or sustained injuries as a result of artillery bombardment.

A doctor working in a hospital in a “safe zone” says that about 1,000 shells fell around the hospital.

Yet even though Amnesty International demonstrated that the overwhelming responsibility for the violence lay with government authorities, it titled its press release, “Government and Tamil Tigers violating laws of war.” According to Amnesty, “in at least one instance,” the rebel Tamil Tigers blocked the movement of a Red Cross convoy of injured and at-risk people out of the war zone. The statement ends by quoting Yolanda Foster again:

The immediate priority is medical attention for the seriously wounded. The Tamil Tigers must let injured civilians go. Preventing civilians from accessing medical care constitutes a war crime.

The Amnesty International statement thus offers a lengthy list of crimes committed by the Sri Lankan military, only to end by suggesting that the obstacle to meeting the most “immediate priority” is the “war crime” being committed by the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) group. Nowhere in the statement are the words “war crime” associated with the government’s actions, which are instead referred to as “a military campaign.”

In response, many Tamil activists and organizations have urged the international community to recognize the Sri Lankan government’s latest military assault on the Tamils as constituting, at a minimum, “acts of genocide” as defined by the Geneva Convention.

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ON THE streets of the capital Colombo, roving gangs of political thugs have waged a campaign of terror designed to intimidate any and all opposition to the Sri Lankan state. On January 28, human rights lawyer and activist Amitha Ariyaratne received death threats from police officers at a police station just north of Colombo. Three days later, his office was burned down by an unknown arsonist.

This came on the heels of the sensational assassination on January 8 of a leading journalist and critic of the government and editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper. Lasantha Wickramatunga was assassinated by unidentified assailants during his morning commute in rush-hour traffic. His car window was smashed in, and he was shot in the head, the chest and the stomach. He died on the way to the hospital.

Wickramatunga’s last article, “And then they came for me,” was a moving and passionate letter to his readers predicting his own death at the hands of his government. Not surprisingly, Reporters Without Borders ranks Sri Lanka 165th (out of 173 countries) in its index of press freedom around the world.

The Sri Lankan government has turned a deaf ear to international human rights organizations and Tamil NGOs who have complained about innumerable human rights violations and the ongoing humanitarian disaster in the northeast. Using “war on terror” rhetoric, Sri Lankan state propaganda has instead deflected international media attention towards war crimes allegedly committed by the LTTE.

However, the Sri Lankan government has absolved itself of its own obligation to respect human rights. In 2006 the Supreme Court declared that “[T]he Human Rights Committee at Geneva…is not reposed with judicial power under our constitution,” (see the text of the ruling here) providing a legal fig-leaf for the government’s draconian crackdown on the Tamils. The Asian Human Rights Commission has declared, “The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka is a part of the human rights violation mechanism.”

About 74 percent of the Sri Lankan population consists of Sinhala-speaking Buddhists, while the rest are Tamil-speaking Hindus and Muslims. Since the 1980s, a brutal civil war between the government forces and the Tamil Tigers has claimed over 70,000 lives, with hundreds of thousands more injured and displaced, the majority of them Tamils.

Most media reports date the origins of the conflict between the Tamils and the Sinhalese to the founding of the LTTE in the 1980s, but the Tamils have faced discrimination and repression at the hands of Colombo’s Sinhala-dominated government ever since Sri Lanka achieved its independence from Britain in 1948.

One of the first acts of the newly independent state in 1949 was to disenfranchise, at the stroke of a pen, some 1 million Tamils who had arrived in Sri Lanka in the twentieth century. They were declared non-citizens and told to return to India. Many of these “Indian Tamils” had been brought in by the British from India to not only labor in the tea plantations but to serve in the colonial administrative bureaucracy. British divide-and-rule policies resulted in special privileges for middle-class Tamils who had been educated in English in India. This bred resentment among sections of the Sinhala majority, and right-wing Sinhalese chauvinism began to gain ground during the waning years of British rule.

By disenfranchising the “Indian Tamils,” the newly-independent Sri Lankan state had resorted to a despicably ethnic-chauvinist policy, and encouraged the growth of the far right. In 1956, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) rode this wave of Sinhalese-Buddhist chauvinism to come to power and unleashed the first anti-Tamil pogrom, leaving some 100 Tamils dead and thousands displaced from their homes. The pogroms were led, and egged on, by militant and fascistic Buddhist monks.

Another wave of anti-Tamil hysteria in the 1960s resulted in the declaration of Sinhala as the only official language of the state. More pogroms followed in the early 1970s, with the monks and their allies periodically terrorizing and intimidating the Tamil population, while their political patrons reaped the rewards of a ready-made majority at the polls. In 1981, in an act that often referred to as “cultural genocide,” rioting policemen burned down the Jaffna Library, which housed much of the cultural memory of the Tamil population.

Continued >>

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