Peace and Justice Post

By Zeeshan Haider | Reuters, Feb 10, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani voters are expected to succeed where President Pervez Musharraf has failed, pushing back the Islamist tide and throwing out of power political clerics governing Pakistan’s violent northwest.

“God forbid, I will never vote for mullahs,” said Saif-ur-Rehman, a bearded stall owner in Qissa Khawani, a famous bazaar in Peshawar, before rushing for prayers at a mosque in the provincial capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Parliamentary and provincial assembly polls set for February 18 will take place against the backcloth of a Taliban and al Qaeda campaign to destabilize President Pervez Musharraf.

For all the revulsion over almost-weekly suicide attacks, conservative religious folk of the area have more immediate concerns, like lack of jobs, rising food prices, power outages and gas shortages that left them without heat over the winter.

The mullahs who have held power in NWFP as well as politicians aligned with the unpopular Musharraf have become discredited.

Continued . . .

The case for a single state solution for Palestine is irrefutable

By Hassan Nafaa

10/02/08 “Al-Ahram” — – -Is there truly hope for the establishment of a viable, sovereign Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace? Sadly, I doubt it very much, at least in the foreseeable future, in view of current local, regional and international conditions.

The creation of a Palestinian state should not be regarded as an end in itself, but rather as a means for resolving a long and complex historical conflict. Accordingly, our judgement on a formula for a proposed state should rest not so much on whether it complies with necessary formal and legal conditions as whether it meets that overriding criterion: will it serve to draw to a close, once and for all, that protracted conflict?

After all, the concrete existence of a Palestinian state with certain specifications could, in itself, become an instrument in the conflict as opposed to a step towards its solution. The conflict between the Palestinians and the Zionist movement is not over disputed borders or material interests and, therefore, resolvable by merely coming to an agreement over permanent borders and a give-and-take over material interests. Rather, it is a conflict between two identities, each of which claims sole propriety right over a given territory. Such a conflict cannot be solved by the same means that are brought to bear on conventional international conflicts.

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From day-one of the crisis that has gripped Kenya this year, much of the mainstream media has been quick to label the violence “tribal warfare,” while the top US envoy to Africa called the Kenyan clashes “ethnic cleansing.” The problem with those terms is that they don’t actually explain anything. Yet many people hear the words “tribal warfare” or “ethnic cleansing” and assume that people’s identity is the root of the violence in Kenya.We live in a time when the notion of a “clash of civilizations” passes for political science and an us-versus-them mentality (”you’re either with us or with the terrorists”) is the basis of super-power foreign policy. The crudeness of those ideas makes it hard to remember that, while identity can be mobilized in the service of hatred, a person’s “tribe,” ethnicity, or religion does not cause or motivate violence.

So what does? In the case of Kenya, tribal categories are a short-hand for describing people’s unequal access to political power and economic resources.

Continued . . .

Khaleej Times, Feb 10, 2008

Editorial

THE United States does its war-on-terror profile no favours by constantly repeating charges that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omer continue to operate from within Pakistani territory, especially since the long years since the ouster of the Taleban have not seen Washington forward any credible evidence to back the claim.

It is interesting to note that occupation forces’ fortunes in Afghanistan have been at a lower level than before each time this accusation has surfaced, the latest incident being no different.

It is no secret that both the Afghan and Iraq chapters of the terror-war have been effectively lost. So much as holding the status quo at present means constant hemorrhaging of life and material, which does not speak very highly of the world’s mightiest military machine’s credentials when faced with rag-tag urban guerilla insurgencies. As things stand in Afghanistan, America is near abandoned by its own Nato allies, who refuse to commit more troops to take further flack from Washington’s failed war strategy.

Criticising Pakistan’s efforts at this juncture, that too without proof, is ill-advised. Washington should note that Islamabad has clearly done more than any other ally since 9/11, committing its own troops in operations inside its own borders, which has come with serious domestic political, social and economic spillovers. President Musharraf has his share of problems on the domestic political landscape. But those, too, owe in no small manner to his “unstinted support” to Washington’s post 9/11 policy.

It is difficult to question critics’ assertion that a good reason for both Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omer slipping away was Washington’s over confidence as it quickly turned to Baghdad once Kabul fell. In doing so, its material constraints meant both endeavours were approached with half-hearted sincerity. And once the Afghanistan situation started worsening, America did not exercise prudence by bolstering its military presence there, instead resorting to the endless blame game that serves only to betray frustration on its part.

Pakistan has already risked serious threat to its federation by indulging wholeheartedly in America’s game in the region. And as Afghan militias are in the process of bleeding yet another superpower that waged war on them, America should seek to strengthen Pakistan’s position instead of creating fissures and rifts. If they have proof of Al Qaeda and Taleban leadership operating in Pakistan, they should make haste in sharing ‘actionable intelligence’ with Pakistani authorities. Short of that, they should stop making accusations that serve only to splinter the already shaking coalition.

The Raw Story, Feb 8, 2008
Muriel Kane

A new article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh offers a detailed examination of the claims that Israel bombed a nuclear facility under construction in Syria last September and finds that none of the evidence stands up to scrutiny.

According to Hersh, “A former senior U.S. intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, said, ‘We don’t have any proof of a reactor — no signals intelligence, no human intelligence, no satellite intelligence.'” However, Hersh found that the Israelis were continuing to stand adamantly by their claims:

“When I went to Israel in late December, the government was still maintaining secrecy about the raid, but some current and former officials and military officers were willing to speak without attribution. Most were adamant that Israel’s intelligence had been accurate. ‘Don’t you write that there was nothing there!’ a senior Israeli official, who is in a position to know the details of the raid on Syria, said, shaking a finger at me. ‘The thing in Syria was real.'”

Just one Israeli official expressed doubts, but also brushed them away:

“Retired Brigadier General Shlomo Brom, who served as deputy national-security adviser under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, told me that Israel wouldn’t have acted if it hadn’t been convinced that there was a threat. ‘It may have been a perception of a conviction, but there was something there,’ Brom said. ‘It was the beginning of a nuclear project.’ However, by the date of our talk, Brom told me, ‘The question of whether it was there or not is not that relevant anymore.'”

One Syrian official suggested to Hersh that the Israelis may have picked up the presence of North Korean laborers at the site and drawn their own conclusions. “‘The Israelis may have their own spies and watched the laborers being driven to the area,’ the senior officer said. ‘The Koreans were not there at night, but slept in their quarters and were driven to the site in the morning. The building was in an isolated area, and the Israelis may have concluded that even if there was a slight chance’ — of it being a nuclear facility — ‘we’ll take that risk.'”

RAW STORY‘s Larisa Alexandrovna reported last fall that current and former intelligence privately agreed the Syrian facility was not nuclear in nature. Hersh’s article is the first major mainstream confirmation of that reporting.

MOSCOW – Vladimir Putin has used one of the last major speeches of his presidency to deliver a defiant message to the West, accusing it of unleashing a new arms race that left Moscow no choice but to retaliate in kind. Less than a month before presidential elections that his hand-picked successor is almost certain to win, the speech removed any lingering doubts that Russian foreign policy might become less aggressive after Mr Putin steps down.

“It’s clear that a new arms race is unfolding in the world,” said Mr Putin, one that Russia did not start. And he vowed that Russia would respond to the threats by developing newer and more modern weapons that were as good as if not better than those possessed by Western countries. “We are being forced into retaliating … Russia has and always will have the answers to these challenges,” he said.

The speech in which he also condemned Nato expansion came as defence chiefs of the 26-nation alliance, increasingly alarmed by Russia’s flexing of its military muscles, met in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, and urged Moscow to tone down its rhetoric.

Russian bomber patrols have recently been made over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans and approached close to the borders of Nato airspace. Two Russian Tupolev-95 aircraft strayed south from their routine patrol pattern off the Norwegian coast and headed towards Scotland last September.

Continued . . .

REUTERS

Reuters North American News Service

Feb 09, 2008 10:57 EST

Feb 9 (Reuters) – Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, is facing calls to resign for suggesting that the introduction in Britain of some aspects of sharia — or Islamic law — was unavoidable.
WHAT IS SHARIA?

Sharia is the body of Islamic religious law based primarily on the Islamic holy book, the Koran, as well as the words and actions of the Prophet Mohammad.

It is a legal framework that regulates both public and private life. Sharia covers a broad range of issues including worship, commercial dealings, marriage, inheritance and penal laws.

Sharia has been demonised by some in the West, primarily for its criminal legal aspects, which can include punishments like amputation of a hand for theft or the stoning of adulterers.

Women’s dress is another much-debated aspect of sharia. Some believers interpret it as requiring a woman to wear a full-length robe that also covers her face, and others insist it simply refers to modest dress.

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Voters on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are rightly disappointed by the similarity of the foreign policy positions of the two remaining Democratic Party presidential candidates, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama. However, there are still some real discernable differences to be taken into account. Indeed, given the power the United States has in the world, even minimal differences in policies can have a major difference in the lives of millions of people.

As a result, the kind of people the next president appoints to top positions in national defense, intelligence, and foreign affairs is critical. Such officials usually emerge from among a presidential candidate’s team of foreign policy advisors. So, analyzing who these two finalists for the Democratic presidential nomination have brought in to advise them on international affairs can be an important barometer for determining what kind for foreign policies they would pursue as president. For instance, in the case of the Bush administration, officials like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle played a major role in the fateful decision to invade Iraq by convincing the president that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat and that American forces would be treated as liberators.

Continued . . .