The United Nations has confirmed a tentative agreement on the creation of an international commission to investigate last December’s assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan. The announcement follows a meeting on Thursday between Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general, and Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the foreign minister of Pakistan. A statement from the UN said a broad understanding had been reached on the nature and composition of the proposed panel, funding modalities and unhindered access to all sources of relevant information, although details have yet to be worked out. It also said there had been agreement on elements to safeguard “the objectivity, impartiality and independence” of the commission. Qureshi said he had found general support among members of the UN security council to set up a commission as quickly as possible. “The broad understanding is going to be that it should be done in the shortest possible time, so that we do not want it sort of a lingering thing, going on for years,” he said. Qureshi told reporters Pakistan was ready to provide as much help as possible. “We have said that we will give unhindered access to sources of relevant information,” he said. Bhutto was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack on December 27 following an election rally in Rawalpindi, a city near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Her former party, the Pakistan People’s Party, now heads the country’s governing coalition. Last month Pakistan’s new government officially asked the UN to set up a panel “for the purpose of identifying the culprits, perpetrators, organisers and financiers” behind the Bhutto assassination. The government has accused tribal warlord Baitullah Mehsud of plotting the attack, although he denies the charge. |
UN and Pakistan agree Bhutto probe
July 11, 2008
‘This is like apartheid’: ANC veterans visit West Bank
July 11, 2008By Donald Macintyre in Hebron | The Independent, Friday, 11 July 2008
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Email Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle said last night that the segregation endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories was in some respects worse than that imposed on the black majority under white rule in South Africa.
Members of a 23-strong human-rights team of prominent South Africans cited the impact of the Israeli military’s separation barrier, checkpoints, the permit system for Palestinian travel, and the extent to which Palestinians are barred from using roads in the West Bank.
After a five-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, some delegates expressed shock and dismay at conditions in the Israeli-controlled heart of Hebron. Uniquely among West Bank cities, 800 settlers now live there and segregation has seen the closure of nearly 3,000 Palestinian businesses and housing units. Palestinian cars (and in some sections pedestrians) are prohibited from using the once busy streets.
“Even with the system of permits, even with the limits of movement to South Africa, we never had as much restriction on movement as I see for the people here,” said an ANC parliamentarian, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge of the West Bank. “There are areas in which people would live their whole lifetime without visiting because it’s impossible.”
Saying ‘Islamic threat’ over and over doesn’t make it real
July 11, 2008Years of peddled fear and demonisation have left vulnerable minorities more isolated and the world fixated by a myth
Pick up any newspaper today in Britain or elsewhere in Europe, switch on the TV or tune in to any radio station, and you’re very likely to get the impression that “our societies” – if not western civilisation in its entirety – face an imminent Islamic threat, on a par with the old dangers of fascism. Since the terrorist bombings of New York, Madrid and London, the “fundamentalist peril” has become part of the air we breathe. It has become a rhetorical crutch for everyone from rightwing bigots to opportunistic politicians and repenting “former extremists”, each with their own agenda.
Today we live amid an explosion of discourse and imagery around Islam and Muslims. Sparked by al-Qaida’s lunatic atrocities, it has since fed on the politics of fear and suspicion. The victims have included objectivity, balance, and the ability to judge issues calmly and rationally. Flawed material is endlessly reproduced and recycled, so it is little wonder that the public’s understanding of Islam and the complex political problems of the Muslim world are limited at best.
Years of peddled fear and demonisation have had severe consequences: a widening of ignorance and bigotry, deepening mistrust between individuals and communities, and the resurrection of the pernicious language of racism and fanaticism – as journalist Peter Oborne illustrated in his Channel 4 Dispatches documentary earlier this week.
It is probably no exaggeration to say that Islam is now the religion closest to Europe and remotest from it. Islam is no longer an alien, distant religion. It is now woven into the very fabric of European society. Muslims are the largest of the continent’s minorities. Yet their physical proximity does not appear to have made them more familiar or better understood. If anything, to most European eyes they seem stranger, more distant, more ambiguous than ever.
The much hyped Islamic threat is one of the greatest lies of our time. The “Muslim world” – though no such bloc really exists – is politically fragmented and economically impoverished. It is reeling under the weight of crises and a long colonial legacy. Militarily, it is of scant significance. It is laughable that we should be discussing the Islamic threat when in the past seven years alone two Muslim countries have come under direct military occupation, ending hopes that the world had firmly closed this chapter of history decades ago.
I suspect many military experts must struggle to keep a straight face every time the subject of the “Islamic threat” is broached. They know that strategic threats are not founded on mere anxieties, imagination and illusions, but on concrete military and political facts. This is not to play down the seriousness of the dangers presented by al-Qaida and other violent groups. But these constitute a security problem to be dealt with through the intelligence and security services. Whatever its braggadocio, al-Qaida does not amount to a strategic military threat, let alone a menace to “western civilisation”.
The security risks posed by al-Qaida, moreover, face Muslims and non-Muslims alike. After all, al-Qaida has perpetrated more atrocities in Muslim countries than western capitals. Attacks in Casablanca, Bali, Riyadh, Algiers, Tunisia, Istanbul and Iraq have outnumbered those in New York, Madrid and London.
In the fog of the so-called war on terror, al-Qaida, terrorism, extremism and Islamism – the list of -isms goes on – have been employed as potent weapons in a range of battles. They have been deployed to demonise vulnerable minorities – their community groups and their leaders, mosques and faith schools. They have been adopted to eat away at civil liberties. And they have been exploited to target mainstream Islamist political parties. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party; the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest opposition in the Egyptian parliament; and Anwar Ibrahim’s People’s Justice party in Malaysia, are among the movements cast in one terrifying category labelled “Islamism”, alongside al-Qaida. The huge differences are wilfully ignored to justify this strategy of unrelenting confrontation. The consequences have been devastating for social stability and community coexistence, as well as for relations between the “Muslim world” and the “west” – something which, ironically, has been recognised by President Bush recently.
Political expediency and scaremongering has seen the propagation of the idea of a grave Islamist threat to the status of orthodoxy. But however easy it might be to surrender to this fiction, it remains just that: a myth fabricated by a few, exploited by a few, and consumed by many. No matter how widely circulated, or endlessly regurgitated, a myth remains a myth.
· Soumaya Ghannoushi will join John Esposito, Alastair Crooke, Martin Bright and Robert Leiken to debate “The Islamic threat: myth or reality?” at IslamExpo in London tomorrow. The expo runs from today until Monday at Olympia in Kensington
islamexpo.com
The FBI’s plan to “profile” Muslims
July 10, 2008It’s unconstitutional, un-American — and it might hurt, rather than help, the FBI’s effort to stop real acts of terror.
By Juan Cole | salon.com, July 10, 2008
The U.S. Justice Department is considering a change in the grounds on which the FBI can investigate citizens and legal residents of the United States. Till now, DOJ guidelines have required the FBI to have some evidence of wrongdoing before it opens an investigation. The impending new rules, which would be implemented later this summer, allow bureau agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask “open-ended questions” concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person’s travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation.
The rumored changes have provoked protests from Muslim American and Arab-American groups. The Council on American Islamic Relations, among the more effective lobbies for Muslim Americans’ civil liberties, immediately denounced the plan, as did James Zogby, the president of the Arab-American Institute. Said Zogby, “There are millions of Americans who, under the reported new parameters, could become subject to arbitrary and subjective ethnic and religious profiling.” Zogby, who noted that the Bush administration’s history with profiling is not reassuring, warned that all Americans would suffer from a weakening of civil liberties.
One out of five Iraqis is a refugee, U.N. says
July 10, 2008 Jawad Ghanim, Azzaman | uruknet.info, July 9, 2008
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The conference organized by the Ministry of Immigration and attended by U.N. Refugee Agency estimated that about five million Iraqis are now refugees out of a population of more than 25 million. Conference experts said more than 1 million Iraqis had fled the country in the four decades of the rule of former leader Saddam Hussein and his Baath party. But the exodus surged in the violent years that followed the U.S. invasion of 2003. Some experts described Iraq as “a nation on the move” with millions of Iraqis relocated by force. They spoke of armies of internally displaced Iraqis – refugees in their own country – and highlighted the plight of millions who opted to leave to neighboring states. The return of relative calm to violent areas like Baghdad for example was good news, the experts said. But they added the government was doing almost nothing to help those willing to return. When families escape a neighborhood, their property is not protected. Many of those returning find their houses occupied by other families or turned into offices or barracks by rival militias. A government decision calling on the security forces to compel individuals and political factions to evacuate property not belonging to them remains ink on paper. The conferees found that despite public claims to the contrary the government has failed to honor commitments to help Iraqi refugees inside and outside Iraq. The government had allocated nearly $2 billion for refugees but experts charged there was no sign that the money had reached the beneficiaries. |
250 Afghan civilians killed, injured in last 6 days
July 10, 2008Alarm over Afghan civilian deaths
Troops and militants are blamed for civilian deaths
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At least 250 Afghan civilians have been killed or wounded in insurgent attacks or military action in the past six days, the Red Cross says.
It has called on all parties to the conflict to avoid civilian casualties.
Nato said separately that more than 900 people including civilians had died in Afghanistan since the start of 2008.
On Monday a suicide bombing in Kabul killed more than 40 people, while officials say two coalition air strikes killed dozens at the weekend.
The issue of civilian casualties is hugely sensitive in Afghanistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly urged foreign forces to exercise more care.
‘Constant care’
The statement released by the International Committee of the Red Cross say that civilians “must never be the target of an attack, unless they take a direct part in the fighting”.
More and more civilians are being killed in Afghanistan
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The organisation’s chief representative in Kabul, Franz Rauchenstein, made his findings public following Monday’s suicide car bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul and reports that a US-led coalition air strike had killed members of a wedding party in the east of the country.
“We call on all parties to the conflict, in the conduct of their military operations, to distinguish at all times between civilians and fighters and to take constant care to spare civilians,” Mr Rauchenstein said.
His report said that parties to the conflict “must take all necessary precautions to verify that targets are indeed military objectives and that attacks will not cause excessive civilian casualties and damage”.
The statement also expressed concern “about the reportedly high number of civilian casualties resulting from the recent [coalition] air strikes in the east of the country”.
The Taleban has denied involvement in Monday’s bombing, which killed 41 people, while the US-led coalition has disputed claims that its recent airstrikes killed civilians.
Mr Karzai has ordered an investigation into one of the bombings, in eastern Nangarhar province. Locals there said at least 20 people had been killed on Sunday at a wedding party.
US forces rejected the claims, saying those killed were militants involved in previous mortar attacks on a Nato base.
The UN said recently that the number of civilians killed in fighting in Afghanistan had jumped by nearly two thirds compared to last year.
Iraq toughens stance on U.S. troop withdrawal
July 10, 2008BEIJING, July 9 (Xinhua) — Iraq’s stance in negotiations with the U.S. over the country’s security has been getting tougher, a trend obviously seen when a Iraqi security officer demanded a definite deadline of U.S. troops’ withdrawal.
Iraq will reject any security pact with the United States unless a specific date for withdrawal of U.S.-led troops is set, Iraqi national security advisor Muwafaq al-Rubaie said in Najaf on Tuesday.
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Iraq’s President Nuri al-Maliki speaks during a visit to Kerbala, 80 km southwest of Baghdad, June 20, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters File Photo) |
“Our stance in the negotiations with the Americans will be strong. We will not sign any memorandum of understanding without specifying a date for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq,” al-Rubaie told reporters in the Shi’ite holy city.
As security conditions in Iraq improve, the Iraqi government’s stance in negotiations with the U.S. have become tougher. al-Rubaie’s remarks were the toughest since the beginning of negotiations on a security pact between the two countries in March, analysts say.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki publicly announced Monday that his country was seeking a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
“The current trend is to reach either a memorandum of understanding for the departure of the troops, or a memorandum of understanding for setting a timetable for their withdrawal,” al-Maliki said during a meeting with a group of Arab ambassadors in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates,
Baghdad and Washington are currently holding talks aimed at reaching a deal on continued U.S. military presence in Iraq after a UN mandate expires in December.
It’s the Oil, stupid!
July 10, 2008The deal just taking shape between Iraq’s Oil Ministry and four Western oil companies raises critical questions about the nature of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq — questions that should certainly be addressed by presidential candidates and seriously discussed in the United States, and of course in occupied Iraq, where it appears that the population has little if any role in determining the future of their country.
Negotiations are under way for Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners decades ago in the Iraq Petroleum Company, now joined by Chevron and other smaller oil companies — to renew the oil concession they lost to nationalisation during the years when the oil producers took over their own resources. The no-bid contracts, apparently written by the oil corporations with the help of U.S. officials, prevailed over offers from more than 40 other companies, including companies in China, India and Russia.
“There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract,” Andrew E. Kramer wrote in The New York Times.
Kramer’s reference to “suspicion” is an understatement. Furthermore, it is highly likely that the military occupation has taken the initiative in restoring the hated Iraq Petroleum Company, which, as Seamus Milne writes in the London Guardian, was imposed under British rule to “dine off Iraq’s wealth in a famously exploitative deal.”
Later reports speak of delays in the bidding. Much is happening in secrecy, and it would be no surprise if new scandals emerge.
The demand could hardly be more intense. Iraq contains perhaps the second largest oil reserves in the world, which are, furthermore, very cheap to extract: no permafrost or tar sands or deep sea drilling. For US planners, it is imperative that Iraq remain under U.S. control, to the extent possible, as an obedient client state that will also house major U.S. military bases, right at the heart of the world’s major energy reserves.
All should urge US, UK to dismantle their nuclear weapons
July 10, 2008RINF.COM, Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
Kuala Lumpur | President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that the governments and nations should urge the US and Britain to annihilate their nuclear weapons.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the D8 summit in Malaysia, he said “Iran never yields to any illegal and unjust word, no matter it comes from group 5+1, 10+10 or 2+2. We call for dialogue and never makes demand beyond our legitimate rights.”
The fact is that no nations let alone Iranian nation trust them, he said, adding that to prove this claim “I advise them to hold referendum in the world to find out the realities.”
People in the US and Britain do not trust their governments, he said adding that “We think it is time for some governments to win confidence of the Iranian nation.” “We hope they can make good on their misdeeds,” he said.
“As I have already said the era of domination, unilateralism, discrimination and bullying is now over.”
“Why should the US administration be allowed to produce nuclear bombs and use it against people but other nations should be deprived of benefiting from peaceful nuclear energy?” he asked.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has time and again declared that Iran’s nuclear activities are of peaceful nature, he said.
“The time is ripe for world nations to urge the US and UK to destroy their nuclear weapons and if this happens there will remain no concern about existence of nuclear weapons in the world,” he said.
Israeli troops kill Palestinians
July 10, 2008| Al Jazeera, July 10, 2008 |
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Israeli security forces have shot and killed a Hamas member who tried to escape arrest near the occupied West Bank town of Jenin, the Israeli army says. Another Palestinian was shot and killed along the border in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, officials said. “The operative, Talal Sa’ad Talal Abed, was initially critically wounded and received medical treatment at the scene, but died on the way to a hospital” after the shooting on Wednesday, the Israeli army statement said. “Abed, 32, a resident of Kafr Dan, was a member of Hamas’s terror infrastructure in the village, an infrastructure that attempted to dispatch a suicide bomber into Israel,” it said. “After the failed attempt, cell members were arrested by Palestinian security forces. Despite this, the group continued to be involved in terror, and had been planning an imminent terror attack.” ‘Guidance and directions’ The statement said the cell received “guidance and directions from terrorist leaders” in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. Speaking about the second shooting, an Israeli army spokesman told the AFP news agency: “At around 3 o’clock an army force identified a suspicious person crossing the fence from Gaza into Israel near Kissufim. “The force called on him to stop and fired warning shots but he did not stop and the soldiers fired at him and killed him. When they approached his body they saw he was unarmed.” The spokesman added that there had been several attempts by Palestinian militants to plant bombs in the border area. The head of Gaza emergency services, Muawiya Hassanin, confirmed that a Palestinian was shot and killed in the Kissufim area. The killings are the first fatalities since a truce went into effect three weeks ago, officials said. |
