Obama sends marines to suppress population of southern Afghanistan

by James Cogan
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Global Research, July 4, 2009
World Socialist Web Site
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The Obama administration has ordered the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (2 MEB) into a potentially bloody offensive in the southern province of Helmand. The objective is the suppression of the ethnic Pashtun population, which is overwhelmingly hostile to the seven-and-a-half year US and NATO occupation of the country and rejects the legitimacy of the Afghan puppet government headed by President Hamid Karzai. Early Thursday morning, 2 MEB began what has been described as the biggest airlift of marines since the Vietnam War. Code-named “Khanjar”—Pashtun for “strike of the sword”—the operation is the largest undertaken by the Marine Corp since it led the assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004. In all, some 4,000 marines and a 600-strong battalion of the Afghan Army are involved, supported by an array of jet fighters, unmanned drones and helicopter gunships. An article in Friday’s New York Times by veteran war correspondent Carlotta Gall, who has worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001, made clear why Helmand has been targeted for the first major operation in Obama’s Afghan “surge”. She wrote that the “mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan”. People have “taken up arms against the foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger at losing relatives in airstrikes”. Gall noted: “The southern provinces have suffered the worst civilian casualties since NATO’s deployment into the region in 2006. Thousands of people have been displaced by fighting and taken refuge in the towns. ‘Now there are more people siding with the Taliban than with the government’, said Abdul Qadir Noorzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission…” One man interviewed by Gall in June declared: “Who are the Taliban? They are the local people.” Another, whose house was bombed by US jets two months ago, said: “We Muslims don’t like them [the foreign troops]. They are the source of danger.” Gall’s outline of the real state of affairs refutes the barrage of propaganda depicting the offensive as aimed at saving the people from Taliban tyranny, allowing them to vote in upcoming elections and creating conditions for economic development. Helmand is, in reality, the epicentre of popular resistance to the occupation. Thousands of troops have been poured in to force the population to submit. In the first days of the operation, marine infantry soldiers have been deployed deep into the lower Helmand River Valley, to the south of the new American base near the city of Lashkar Gah. They have occupied the towns of Nawa and Garmser, as well as Khan Neshin, just 130 kilometres from the Pakistani border, which has not been visited by occupation or Afghan government forces for more than five years. The marine assault was preceded by a British operation two weeks ago to seize 13 river crossings to the north of Lashkar Gah, in order to prevent Taliban reinforcements entering Helmand from insurgent-held areas of the neighbouring province of Kandahar. Yesterday, British units began a new offensive to secure the road between Lashkar Gah and the town of Gereshk in the north of the province. US officers told the Washington Post that “Khanjar” was the product of months of planning. It has been conceived for Obama by the same figures who directed the Bush administration’s surge of tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq in 2007. These include, most notably, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, Centcom commander General David Petraeus and the recently appointed US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McCrhystal. The offensive has been timed to coincide with the initial stages of an assault by the Pakistani military into the tribal agency of South Waziristan. The ethnic Pashtun tribal agencies are largely controlled by Islamist movements with close links to the Taliban, who provide Afghan guerillas with safe haven and contribute their own fighters to the anti-occupation insurgency. The combined operations were described by a Pakistani officer as a “hammer and anvil” strategy. The intention is to force the Taliban to fight on two fronts, against both the US/NATO and Pakistani forces. Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani officer, told the Washington Post last month that his sources indicated that Taliban leaders had already “called back their fighters from Afghanistan and are bringing them to Pakistan” to meet an expected attack by the army. The Pakistani military has also deployed additional troops to the border between Helmand and the Pakistani province of Balochistan, to prevent any Afghan Taliban escaping the marines. The marines in Helmand will duplicate the methods used by the US military in Iraq and they are well qualified to do so. Most of the 2 MEB units, and many of the officers and enlisted men, served one or multiple tours in Iraq’s western province of Anbar. The surge tactics were first tested in Anbar, a centre of Sunni Arab resistance to the US invasion. Over two years, the marines honed their counter-insurgency methods at the cost of thousands of Iraqi lives and the repression of the entire population. Everyone in the newly occupied areas of Helmand—men, women and children—will be treated as potential insurgents. Bases will be established in towns and villages, from which US troops will use intimidation to identify resistance fighters. Afghans will face constant road-blocks, identity checks and searches. Men of fighting age will have to endure the most humiliating treatment. Local tribal leaders will be offered cash bribes to order their clans to collaborate with the occupation. If they refuse, they will be marked as Taliban sympathisers. While rarely mentioned in the media’s sanitised descriptions, US counter-insurgency tactics rely heavily on targeted assassinations and arbitrary detention. General McCryhstal has been placed in command in Afghanistan primarily due to his expertise in directing such operations. From 2003 to 2008, he headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), whose death squads killed or seized hundreds of alleged leaders and supporters of the Iraqi resistance. The same methods are already being used across Afghanistan by American, British and Australian special forces, and will now be extended into southern Helmand. In the first days of the Helmand offensive, resistance has been minimal. One marine company fought what an officer described as a “hell of a fight” with Afghan fighters south of Garsmer on Thursday. After hours of gunfire, a jet fighter was called in to destroy the insurgent position with a 500-pound bomb. Further minor clashes took place yesterday. In the areas around Nawa and Khan Neshin, there have been no reports of clashes. To date, just one marine has been killed and some 11 wounded. Dozens of others have needed treatment for heat exhaustion in the blistering temperatures of the Afghan summer. The British and Danish troops operating in the northern districts of Helmand have also taken casualties. On Wednesday, two British soldiers were killed and six others wounded by a roadside bomb outside Lashkar Gah. Among the dead was Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the highest ranking British officer to be killed in combat since the 1982 Falklands War. The same day, a Danish soldier was seriously wounded by a suspected mine. Despite the absence of heavy fighting, concerns have been expressed that the operation may fail due to a lack of troops. According to the Washington Post, the 2 MEB commander, Brigadier General Lawrence Nicholson, had apparently expected that thousands of Afghan government troops would be allocated to “Khanjar”. Instead, only 600 or so are taking part. Nicholson described the paucity of Afghan forces as a “critical vulnerability”. His marines will be stretched trying to hold what is still only a relatively small area of Taliban-controlled territory, under conditions in which the insurgents are unlikely to confront them in open combat. After more than seven years, the Taliban has learnt to avoid one-sided engagements with the far better armed occupation troops. The resistance will either blend into the sympathetic civilian population or move to safe sites in other areas of Afghanistan. The marines, by contrast, will suffer a steady flow of casualties from roadside bombs, mines and other guerilla attacks. There are already signs that top Pentagon commanders are pressuring the Obama White House to send even more troops to Afghanistan. To date, Obama has insisted he will not deploy more than the additional 21,000 he ordered to the country upon taking office. General David McKiernan, the former US commander in Afghanistan, was summarily sacked in May largely due to his insistence that more were needed. Disquiet in the military has clearly not been silenced. McClatchy Newspapers reported on Wednesday that National Security Advisor James Jones, who had just returned from Central Asia, had “started to hear rumblings that new commanders and officials being sent to Afghanistan would quickly urge another shift in strategy and more troops”. An unnamed senior officer allegedly told journalist Bob Woodward that at least 100,000 were needed. When all the reinforcements arrive, there will be 68,000 American troops in the country and some 30,000 from various NATO countries, many of which are operating under caveats that prevent them moving into combat zones. Late Wednesday, Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen told journalists that his instructions to General McCryhstal were to come back to him and “ask for what you need” in the way of additional troops. There is no reason to doubt that Obama will accept whatever the military demands. From his election campaign on, he has identified his presidency with not only “winning” the war in Afghanistan but extending it into Pakistan. Behind the façade of rooting out Islamic extremism and terrorism, the agenda is, and always has been, the establishment of US strategic dominance throughout Central Asia.
James Cogan is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by James Cogan

Putting out the fire in Waziristan

By Rahimullah Yusufzai

The News International (Pakistan) January 19, 2007 OPINION

First it was South Waziristan and then the violence shifted to neighbouring North Waziristan. Military operations during 2004-2006 were invariably followed by jirgas and peace agreements which somehow stabilised the two troubled tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. But the latest round of airstrikes in both North Waziristan and South Waziristan could lead to the collapse of the peace accords and plunge the tribal borderlands into another round of death and destruction.

The airstrikes, which the Pakistan Army is claiming to have unleashed against hideouts of suspected militants, have predictably triggered controversy. The government’s credibility in view of its track record is so low that most people don’t believe its claim that Pakistan Army’s gunship helicopters were responsible for the airstrikes in Gurwek in North Waziristan and then on January 16 in Salamat village in Shak Toi area of South Waziristan. The common belief is that the US military using its pilotless, CIA-operated Predator planes fired the missiles that hit targets inside Pakistani territory. That impression was first created on January 13 when two Hellfire missiles fired by a US drone targeted Damadola village in Bajaur tribal agency and killed 13 civilians, including women and children, in their sleep in three mud-brick houses. This image is now etched in the memory of a large number of Pakistanis after being reinforced by another US missile strike at a madressah in Chingai village in Bajaur on October 30 last year. This attack was the most devastating since the launch of the misguided, imperialism-driven US ‘war on terror’ in our part of the world as it killed 80 young and innocent students and some of their teachers.

As was the case in the past, we are once again hearing conflicting versions of the incident in the remote Shak Toi mountainous area in South Waziristan. There is such a wide discrepancy in the stories being put out by different stakeholders that it is almost impossible to find the truth. The absence of independent sources of information makes the task even more difficult to piece together a believable sequence of events. The difficulties facing the media to gain access to the targeted place due to its remoteness and on account of unannounced official curbs remain a hurdle in getting to know the real situation on the ground. Military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan was as usual sure that up to 30 ‘miscreants’ including foreign militants had been killed by taking out three of their five compounds. The next day he came up with the statement that security forces were hunting a handful of ‘Al Qaeda fighters’ who were wounded in the airstrikes and were reportedly shifted by their companions to some secret place. As happened in similar attacks in the past, the government was unable to put troops on the ground to secure the area after the bombings and obtain evidence to establish that it indeed had hit the right target. Rather, one may well ask as to why the military cannot drop troops as it has been doing in past military operations in Waziristan and lay siege to suspected hideouts of militants to nab them instead of carrying out airstrikes that are often inaccurate and kill innocent people.

Reports from Salamat village told a different story. Villagers said only eight people were killed and all were civilians. Among them were three Pakistani tribesmen, including a 10-year-old boy, and five Afghans, all powindahs or nomads who are a familiar sight in the NWFP and in Afghanistan as they walk with their caravans of camels to spend winters in the plains and summers in mountainous areas. The names of the dead men, their fathers and sub-tribe were provided to make the information authentic. It was explained that all the victims, including the 10 who were injured in the attack, were working in the nearby forest logging wood and making charcoal for sale in the markets down country. It was difficult not to believe them because they belong to the area and apparently were not involved in any kind of politics.

Protests invariably followed, starting with Tank which serves as the gateway to South Waziristan. It is home to a large number of Mahsud and Wazir tribal families who have migrated to Tank to do business or spend the winter in relatively warmer weather compared to their snow-bound villages in South Waziristan. Protests have broken out elsewhere also and statements condemning the government’s action have been put forth by leaders of both the clergy-led MMA and others belonging to secular and nationalist parties. Political parties in such instances react along party lines and, therefore, it becomes impossible to get a more objective understanding and analysis of the situation.

Sections of the western media, including Sky News, have reported that the latest airstrikes in South Waziristan were launched by the US military with the help of its Predator plane. One report claimed that the US government allowed Pakistan to take credit for the airstrikes. If true, it is a continuation of last year’s missile strikes in Bajaur that too were fired from US drones. There is no guarantee that such attacks will not be repeated in future even though President General Pervez Musharraf said last year that the US authorities had assured him after the Damadola airstrikes that it won’t happen again. He was justifiably angry that he wasn’t taken into confidence about the Damadola attack despite risking his life by taking on Al Qaeda and the Taliban and doing so much to make the US and its allied countries safer. The US has given itself the right to launch pre-emptive strikes anywhere in the world to protect its interests and it seems objections by Pakistan or other weaker nations to this policy don’t count much in President Bush’s scheme of things. It is another matter that such airstrikes cause so much ‘collateral damage’ that America makes more enemies than it can kill after each such attack.

As far as Pakistan is concerned, it is time the Musharraf government defined the limits and parameters of its cooperation with the US in the so-called ‘war on terror.’ Its policy of open-ended support to the US has polarised our society and alienated large sections of the population, particularly in the NWFP, Balochistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The strategy of making peace accords with the tribes and the militants was the right thing to do even if it is criticised by western governments, the media and think-tanks as a policy of appeasement. Such accords were signed as a necessity to reduce losses to the military and our people by employing traditional peacemaking methods such as jirgas. Pakistan has to look after its own interest first instead of bombing villages on the basis of incomplete and faulty intelligence supplied by the US and NATO.

However, the peace agreements need to be implemented in letter and spirit and regularly monitored and reviewed. The country cannot afford its territory to be used for launching attacks across the Durand Line border in Afghanistan. The peace accords specifically mentioned this point but there are credible reports that cross-border infiltration hasn’t stopped. In fact, pro-Taliban commanders such as Baitullah Mahsud and Haji Omar, who concluded peace deals with the government in South Waziristan in 2005, have publicly stated that they will continue to wage their ‘jihad’ against the US-led coalition in Afghanistan. This cannot be allowed at any cost because involvement of Pakistani fighters in the fighting between the Afghan government and Taliban is drawing Islamabad into the conflict and jeopardising the country’s security. Any sanctuaries for Taliban on Pakistan’s soil too must be removed. At the same time, the Afghan government and all those countries with soldiers in Afghanistan must also realise that military tactics alone will not end the insurgency. They will have to seek reconciliation with the Taliban and their allies and provide them incentives to stop fighting and join the political mainstream.

The writer is an executive editor of The News International based in Peshawar.

Seeking credibility

Jan. 18, 2007

Daily Times (Pakistan)
Just as the Washington bureaucracy was joining its voice with the NATO commanders in Afghanistan to protest Pakistan’s ‘double-faced’ approach to the problem of cross-border Taliban raids from Pakistani territory, the Pakistan army has attacked and killed some more ‘terrorists’ based in South Waziristan. The army spokesman says they were ‘militants’ training in some local compounds, which means they were Al Qaeda and Taliban elements along with their local Waziristani facilitators. Predictably, however, the tribal member of parliament from the region, Maulana Mirajuddin, says they were simply ‘locals’ working in the compounds with the help of Afghan ‘powindas’, or migratory labourers. Unfortunately, such is politics in Pakistan that everyone who is anyone in the opposition will say that the government is lying while those who support the government will feel unsure because the government mysteriously fights shy of supplying sufficient proof whenever the army goes on the offensive and ‘takes out’ foreign militants. It has happened twice in Bajaur, and one can safely declare that more people disbelieve the official story than believe it. In fact the opposition made such a big show of its anger that it made its MPA resign from Bajaur in protest. Thus, despite the fact that there is no earthly reason why the government should lie and deliberately kill its own people needlessly, most people will be inclined to believe that the eight ‘foreigners’ (read the Taliban) were all ‘innocent’ local people.

Why is Pakistan able to show the NATO commanders evidence that it has ‘taken out’ foreign miscreants and terrorists holed out in Pakistani territory but is unable to provide the same evidence to the people of Pakistan? When Ahmad Shah Massoud used to catch Pakistani-intelligence officers in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban, he used to put them on TV and then show close-ups of their documents. India, too, has been ready to show Pakistani ID cards carried by the ‘freedom-fighters’ it killed in Kashmir. But Pakistan, which is said to have killed a lot of foreign terrorists in Waziristan, has not been able to consistently give credible proof that they were indeed ‘foreigners’.

According to ‘intelligence reports’ put out by the army spokesman, there were “25-30 foreign terrorists and local facilitators occupying a complex of five compounds in the area and three out of the five compounds have been destroyed, killing most of the terrorists present in those compounds”. But the fact that Pakistani helicopters raided the distant thickly forested village on the border of North and South Waziristan when US Defence Secretary Robert Gates had arrived in Kabul for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai is not lost on anyone. Although non-partisan sources in the area say the camps belonged to the local mercenary pro-Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and only eight people were killed, no one in Pakistan is going to swallow the story.

With good timing, President General Pervez Musharraf told a gathering of corps commanders in Rawalpindi that Pakistan would “destroy any hideout used by militants that it finds on its territory” and that “we shall not allow any illegal cross border activity or any terrorist to take refuge in our area, and if it happens it shall be dealt with by direct military action”. While he said this, however, thousands of people gathered in Tank in Waziristan and protested the killing of ‘innocent people’ by the Pakistan army.

The fact, however, is that there are many telltale signs pointing to the presence of Al Qaeda and its supporters in Waziristan. The entire world knows that after the 2001 invasion the Taliban fled across the Durand Line and took refuge in this tribal area. The locals denied it because they were either on the take or simply scared. Steadily all the elders opposed to giving shelter to Al Qaeda were shot dead by these dangerous elements. The most convincing proof came after Bajaur One and Bajaur Two. Since the first Bajaur raid was carried out by American drones, Al Qaeda took its revenge inside Afghanistan near Spin Boldak by killing many troops of the Afghan army. And since Bajaur Two was claimed by the Pakistan army, the revenge was taken in Dargai in Pakistan through a suicide-bomber. How is Pakistan’s credibility to be upheld at home and abroad? Why is the government not willing to make a public show of the evidence it has of foreigners killed in the raid?

The fact of the matter is that the US-Pakistan disagreement over what really goes on this side of the Durand Line has reached a dangerous level. The Americans are now increasingly inclined to accuse Pakistan of complicity in the trouble that Afghanistan is having with the Taliban. Indeed, from the latest statements in Islamabad one can infer that a ‘hot pursuit’ type of pre-emptive strike from NATO forces could actually take place. That would create more problems for Pakistan than it would solve for America.

On the American side, there is a need to be careful while relying on Afghan reports of foul play by Pakistan. There is a lot of easy twisting of facts going on in the region. This should be apparent to the NATO command. When it claims that 50 Taliban have been killed in a showdown, the Taliban retort that not a single man from their hordes has been killed. It all depends on how many people believe you.

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British Zionist Press Claims Saudi Complicity in Plan to Bomb Iran

Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran

Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Sarah Baxter

The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.

Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad’s director since 2002, held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility.

The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.

“The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” a diplomatic source said last week.

Although the countries have no formal diplomatic relations, an Israeli defence source confirmed that Mossad maintained “working relations” with the Saudis.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations who recently visited the Gulf, said it was “entirely logical” for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace.

Bolton, who has talked to several Arab leaders, added: “None of them would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn’t trumpet it as a big success.”

Arab states would condemn a raid when they spoke at the UN but would be privately relieved to see the threat of an Iranian bomb removed, he said.

Referring to the Israeli attack on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, Bolton added: “To this day, the Israelis haven’t admitted the specifics but there’s one less nuclear facility in Syria . . .”

Recent developments have underscored concerns among moderate Sunni Arab states about the stability of the repressive Shi’ite regime in Tehran and have increased fears that it may emerge as a belligerent nuclear power.

“The Saudis are very concerned about an Iranian nuclear bomb, even more than the Israelis,” said a former head of research in Israeli intelligence.

The Israeli air force has been training for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear site at Natanz in the centre of the country and other locations for four years.

Morocco changes tack in anti-terrorism policy

Three suspects arrive at the court room in Sale near Rabat March 2, 2007. Morocco has shifted from mass arrests to tight surveillance in its fight against Islamic militants and hopes a new campaign to reinforce the authority of state-appointed imams will cut off support for jihadism.

REUTERS/Rafael Marchante

By Tom Pfeiffer

RABAT (Reuters) – Morocco has shifted from mass arrests to tight surveillance in its fight against Islamic militants and hopes a new campaign to reinforce the authority of state-appointed imams will cut off support for jihadism.

As militants reach a growing audience through DVDs and the Internet, the government has tried to seize back the initiative, revising laws governing mosques

and adding new theological councils to tighten control of religious life in the regions.

Now it is preparing to send 1,500 supervisors into the north African country’s towns and villages to make sure that imams are preaching the moderate local version of Islam and respect for King Mohammed in his role as leader of Morocco’s Muslims.

Suicide bombings in May 2003 killed 45 people and tarnished a reputation for stability that helped staunch U.S. ally Morocco draw growing numbers of tourists and record foreign investment.

An anxious security sweep saw the closure of unregulated mosques and the arrest of more than 3,000 people on terrorism-related charges.

“The security services may have been badly prepared, which explains why we arrested thousands of people,” said Moroccan political analyst Mohamed Darif. “They have now begun to master the situation and no longer arrest just anyone.”

Around a third of those rounded up since 2003 remain in prison and Islamist advocacy groups say many are held on flimsy evidence after being forced to sign false confessions, something the government denies.

Security experts say the authorities have a better grip on the situation after building up a database of potentially dangerous Islamists and managing to infiltrate some networks to ward off attacks before they happen.

European governments are hungry for Morocco to share its knowledge, fearing Algeria-based Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb could use the kingdom as a springboard for attacks in Europe, according to European security experts.

Intelligence appears to have improved — arrests are announced less often and tend to involve smaller numbers of suspects.

Moroccans have been linked to several plots targeting European states in recent years.

Two were convicted in Spain for train bombs in the suburbs of Madrid that killed 191 people and wounded 1,857 in March 2004. A Moroccan court convicted a drug trafficker in December of links to the attacks.

Analysts say Spanish intelligence officials are increasingly worried about the establishment of al Qaeda training camps deep in the Sahara, as far away as Mali and Mauritania.

Last month, Moroccan police arrested five members of a suspected terrorist cell that was also active in Spain, according to a security source.

“There’s a suspicion that a lot of traffic goes through Morocco and lots of people who are important in facilitating that are sitting in Morocco,” said Peter Neumann, director at the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College London.

SOFT POWER

Last year Sheikh Mohammed Maghraoui, a Saudi-funded religious figure, told followers that girls as young as nine could marry.

His comment was interpreted as a fatwa, or religious edict, and was condemned by media and human rights groups. The government ordered the closure of dozens of Koranic schools linked to Maghraoui.

In Morocco, only the Senior Council of Ulemas, or religious experts, is authorised to issue religious decrees.

Government officials say counter-terrorism is not the main goal of the imam training programme.

They say the aim is to ensure that imams have the necessary skills to do their job and are in tune with modernising reforms carried out since King Mohammed came to the throne in 1999.

Knowing a few verses of the Koran will no longer be enough to confer authority.

They will be taught how to dispense advice, arbitrate in disputes, help with literacy programmes among the poor and made aware of new laws such as one giving married women more rights.

“This is more than just a response to 2003. It’s a demand from society today that the state does what is necessary,” said Hakim el Ghissassi, a cabinet member at Morocco’s Ministry for Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs.

“In this era of satellite TV, people no longer accept to see religious officials who are not trained.”

Morocco is also sending religious experts to Europe under agreements with countries including France and Spain that have large Moroccan expatriate populations.

A new European Council of Ulemas will help improve Islamic instruction in Europe and ensure imams are better trained and more socially involved, said Ghissassi.

“If today we deny religious instruction to the young, where will they look for it?” said Ghissassi. “On extremist Internet sites with self-proclaimed radical Imams.”

Some analysts are doubtful that improving the quality of Islamic instruction will stop young, second-generation Moroccans in Europe signing up for jihad.

“It’s not the control of religious organisations that will put an end to terrorism,” said Olivier Roy of France’s National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS). “The young who radicalise do so outside the context of the mosque.”

Along the Russian-Georgian border, war games or prelude to war?

Along the Russian-Georgian border, war games or prelude to war?

Although both countries claim the military exercises are simply for practice, some wonder if the old dispute is again flaring.

By Fred Weir

MOSCOW – Both Russia and Georgia claim to fear a fresh attack from the other. That’s why, each insists, they’re staging war games and building up military forces to levels unseen since last August’s brief but brutal war over the breakaway Georgian territory of South Ossetia.

Some experts suggest the Russians may be testing President Barack Obama, who arrives in Moscow on Monday, the very day Russia’s current military mobilization is scheduled to end. Together with its new allies South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Moscow is this week holding its biggest post-Soviet army maneuvers amid the tense, mountainous borderlands where last summer’s war raged. Georgia has denounced the Kavkaz-2009 games, which feature 8,500 troops and 200 tanks, as “pure provocation” and a possible prelude to renewed hostilities. Last month, Moscow slammed considerably smaller NATO-sponsored exercises in Georgia in nearly identical terms (read more Monitor coverage here).

“The Georgian government is very agitated around these Russian war games, and is at least suggesting that it is connected with the Obama visit to Moscow,” says George Khutsishvili, director of the independent International Center for Conflict and Negotiation in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. “The fear here is that if Obama reveals some weakness in his talks in Moscow, that it could lead to a renewal of the war…. I don’t take this seriously, but there is no doubt that these military exercises are a demonstration of force on the anniversary of the war. They show that Russia is ready.”

Among other things, Russia is testing several new weapons – such as the T-90 tank – and fresh tactics adopted following harsh assessments of its Army’s performance during the August war (read more here).

In Northern Ossetia, the Russian border region linked to South Ossetia, where the bulk of the war games are taking place, there is also deep unease over the dueling exercises.

“We are hearing about concentrations of Georgian troops near the border, and this is deeply alarming for us,” says Olga Vyshlova, editor of the daily Severnaya Ossetiya newspaper in Vladikavkaz, the capital city of North Ossetia. “The Caucasus is not a calm region. If the Russian troops are building up their skills to protect us, what’s wrong with that?”

A fierce dispute still rages over who started last summer’s war, which broke out barely a week after Russia had completed its then largest-ever regional war games, Kavkaz-2008. The consensus of experts, a year on, is that Russia may have been looking for reasons to attack Western-leaning Georgia, but Georgian President Mikhael Saakashvili gave Moscow an ideal pretext by launching a surprise military assault to retake the Russian-protected breakaway statelet of South Ossetia on the night of August 7 (read more Monitor coverage here).

The Kremlin’s point of view is that Mr. Saakashvili has still not relinquished his dream of recovering separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia by force, even though both have since been recognized as independent states by Moscow. Hence, this week’s massive Russian war games are presented as a defensive gambit.

“The purpose is to cool down any possible fantasies in Saakashvili’s circle, to show that Russia is ready to defend Abkhazia and Ossetia,” says Valentin Rudenko, director of the independent Interfax-Military news agency. “Russia has no intention of upsetting the present status quo. Its aims are defensive.”

But some experts maintain that Russia has unfinished business with Georgia, and that a new war may be in the cards as early as mid-July. Pavel Felgenhauer, a military expert with the Russian opposition weekly newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, argues that Moscow needs a fresh conflict to consolidate its hold on South Ossetia, control the oil and gas resources of the Caspian region, and rid itself of the all-too-resilient Saakashvili.

“These Russian military exercises have grown in scope each year, and last year, they were a direct preparation for war with Georgia,” Mr. Felgenhauer says. “It could be the same this year.”

He argues that South Ossetia, a tiny enclave that existed in a kind of no-man’s land between Russia and Georgia until last summer’s war joined it forcibly with Russia, has become economically unviable since Russian troops sealed its border with Georgia.

“The people in South Ossetia nearly starved last winter,” Felgenhauer says. “Basically, South Ossetia cannot survive unless it has an open border with Georgia,” as it did in the past.

Since Russia refuses to negotiate the status of South Ossetia with Saakashvili, “that suggests they are planning to deal with him through regime change,” Felgenhauer adds.

Russia and NATO last week put aside their differences over last summer’s Caucasus war and renewed their military cooperation, but serious tensions remain over US support for Georgia’s eventual membership in the Western military alliance.

Both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the powerful prime minister, Vladimir Putin, have argued that Saakashvili is an illegitimate leader and an unstable personality with whom Moscow can never do business.

But nearly three months of rolling demonstrations by Georgia’s opposition have failed to unseat Saakashvili and left the Kremlin with few options to manage the deteriorating relationship with its wayward neighbor.

“Saakashvili and the opposition are locked in a stalemate, at a very low level,” says Mr. Khutsishvili. “It’s all subsided, but nothing is solved. Most people don’t want either side to win, but want the country to move forward.”

As for the rumors of war, he says: “The mood here is very tense. But few people think an attack from Russia is imminent.”

NATO-ization of Georgia in full swing

more about “NATO-ization of Georgia in full swing…“, posted with vodpod

The first stage of controversial NATO-led military exercises has been completed in Georgia, with the second phase scheduled to start in three days.The maneuvers kicked off on May, 6, involving 14 countries. The second phase begins on May, 21 and will go on until June, 3.“Staff exercises were aimed at training the compatibility of multinational forces while carrying out peacekeeping missions,” Giovani Savareze, the representative of the alliance to the trainings said.“These exercises will bring Georgia even closer to NATO,” he added.Moscow strongly opposes the drills, calling them an open provocation given the armed conflict in nearby South Ossetia in August 2008. President Dmitry Medvedev said they would increase tension in the region.Read more“Naturally, we are concerned about NATO military exercises in Georgia. They can’t make us happy in any way. On the contrary, they create problems, tensions, and I don’t think they will help European security in any way, and they will heat up tension in Georgia itself,” Medvedev told journalists at a joint news conference with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday.The Foreign Affairs Ministry of South Ossetia has also expressed concerns over the military activity, claiming that Georgia today is the main cause of instability in the Caucasus.An official statement from the Ministry urged NATO to consider the consequences of its actions.“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Ossetia calls on NATO management and the alliance member states to soberly evaluate possible consequences of the military support for Georgia which is the main source of danger and regional destabilization. And also the purposefulness of the policy of dragging the aggressor state into the military block.”The exercises are being held against a backdrop of political turbulence in Georgia. An alleged coup plot was uncovered recently while opposition protests against the president are entering their second month.Nineteen countries were initially going to take part in the games but Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Serbia withdrew at a late stage due to various reasons.

EU to delay Georgia war report

ANDREW RETTMAN

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The result of an EU-sponsored enquiry into the origins of the 2008 Georgia war is set to be delayed by two months, amid rising fears of fresh hostilities in the region.

EU diplomats in Brussels on Friday (3 July) agreed to the postponement from 31 July to September following a request from the Swiss-led investigation, the so-called IIFFMCG. The decision must be rubber-stamped by EU ministers, with the next ministerial due on Tuesday.

Orthodox priest blesses Georgian soldiers (Photo: jimforest)

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Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, in charge of the probe, said she needs more time due to fresh material coming to light at a late stage, EU sources explained. The enquiry’s €1.6 million EU budget is to remain unchanged.

Ms Tagliavini’s findings could prove politically explosive.

If the report hangs blame on Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili, it could reinforce calls from Russia and the Georgian opposition for him to step down. If it burdens Russia, it could damage EU-Russia relations and impact Russia’s participation in international conflict resolution mechanisms.

IIFFMCG documents leaked to German magazine Der Spiegel in June look bad for the Georgian leader.

The papers said the probe has found no evidence that Russian tanks entered Georgia’s rebel-held South Ossetia region on 7 August, the day of Georgia’s attack on the rebel capital.

One of the enquiry’s experts, retired British colonel Christopher Langton, said the “country can only blame itself” for Russia’s reaction. Another

expert, German lawyer Otto Luchterhandt, said Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia were entitled to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN charter.

The Georgian president remained bullish in a TV address on Friday. “I want to assure that it [the probe] will say that we were right,” Mr Saakashvili said.

The postponement comes at a time of mounting tension in Georgia.

A team of 20 OSCE monitors responsible for South Ossetia left Georgia on Friday after Russia declined to extend its mandate. Russia has also shut down a mission of 130 UN observers in Georgia’s rebel-held Abkhazia territory.

The departures leave an EU monitoring mission – the EUMM, composed of 220 unarmed personnel – as the only international entity standing between the hostile forces.

The EUMM itself became a target on 21 June when a mine explosion killed the driver of an ambulance traveling in an EU convoy near the Abkhazian border. Georgia says 19 of its citizens have been killed in similar attacks since open warfare ended last August.

“We are not going in the right direction by withdrawing these two missions,” an EU diplomat told EUobserver. “Things will remain tense. We are going to have a hot summer.”

Russia flexes muscle

Russia’s decision to hold large-scale military exercises in the Caucasus this week has also raised concern. The “Kavkaz 2009″ wargames involved over 8,000 Russian troops, reportedly including Russian units in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and neighbouring Armenia.

Russian analysts Pavel Felgenhauer, who predicted the 2008 conflict, and Andrei Illarionov, a former Kremlin aide, have pointed to the risk of fresh hostilities after the visit to Moscow on 6 July of US president Barack Obama.

“The current situation resembles the situation of last year in the pre-war period,” Medea Turashvili, a Tbilisi-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, an NGO, told EUobserver.

A new conflict could serve the interests of Mr Saakashvili, who has faced opposition protests on the streets of Tbilisi since March, by rallying public support against an outside aggressor.

It could also help Russia to show who is boss in the post-Soviet sphere at a time when Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are building closer relations with the EU and, in some cases, Nato.

“Russia has made no secret of the fact it wants to see president Saakashvili removed,” Georgia’s EU ambassador, Salome Samadashvili, told this website. “It is important for Moscow to demonstrate that it can still orchestrate regime change in its neighbourhood.”

The end of radical Islam

by Joshua Muravchik, guest opinion

Saturday July 04, 2009, 11:33 AM

Iran’s turmoil heralds movement’s demise

Is history ending yet again?

Much as the hammers that leveled the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end of the Cold War, so might the protests rocking Iran signal the death of radical Islam and the challenges it poses to the West.

No, that doesn’t mean we’ll be removing the metal detectors from our airports anytime soon. Al-Qaida and its ilk, even diminished in strength, will retain the ability to stage terrorist strikes. But the danger brought home on Sept. 11, 2001, was always greater than the possibility of murderous attacks. It was the threat that a hostile ideology might come to dominate large swaths of the Muslim world.

Not all versions of this ideology — variously called Islamism or radical Islam — are violent. But at the core of even the peaceful ones, such as that espoused by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, is the idea that the Islamic world has been victimized by the West and must defend itself. Even before the United States invaded Iraq, stoking rage, polls in Muslim countries revealed support for Osama bin Laden and for al-Qaida’s aims, if not its methods. If such thinking were to triumph in major Muslim countries beyond Iran — say, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — violent extremists would command vast new quantities of personnel, explosives and funds.

This is precisely the nightmare scenario that is now receding. Even if the Iranian regime succeeds in suppressing the protests and imposes the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by force of bullets, mass arrests and hired thugs, it will have forfeited its legitimacy, which has always rested on an element of consent as well as coercion. Most Iranians revered Ayatollah Khomeini, but when his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, declared the election results settled, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets, deriding his anointed candidate with chants of “Death to the dictator!”

“Even if they manage to hang on for a month or a couple of years, they’ve shed the blood of their people,” says Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian publisher and columnist. “It’s over.”

The downfall or discrediting of the regime in Tehran would deal a body blow to global Islamism that, despite its deep intellectual roots, first achieved real influence politically with the Iranian revolution of 1979. And it also would represent just the most recent — and most dramatic — in a string of setbacks for radical Islam. Election outcomes over the past two years have completely undone the momentum that Islamists had achieved with their strong showing at the polls in 2005 in Egypt and in 2006 in Palestine.

This countertrend began in 2007 in Morocco. The Justice and Development Party (PJD), a moderate Islamist group that had registered big gains five years before, was expected to win parliamentary elections. But it carried only 14 percent of the vote, finishing second to a conservative party aligned with the royal palace. And in municipal elections earlier this month, the PJD’s vote sank to 7 percent.

Jordanians also went to the polls in 2007 and handed the Islamic Action Front “one of its worst election defeats since Jordan’s monarchy restored parliament in 1989,” as The Washington Post reported. The party won only six of the 22 seats it contested in the parliamentary vote — a precipitous drop from the 17 seats it had held in the outgoing legislature.

Forged from diverse ethnic groups linked only by Islam, Pakistan would seem fertile soil for radical Islamism. Nonetheless, Islamist parties had not done well until 2002, when — with military strongman Pervez Musharraf suppressing mainstream political forces — Islamists won 11 percent of the popular vote and 63 seats in parliament. But in a vote last year, on a more level field, the Islamists’ tally sank to 2 percent and six out of 270 elected seats. Moreover, they were turned out of power in the North West Frontier province, previously their stronghold.

In April, Indonesian Islamist parties that had emerged four years earlier to capture 39 percent of the vote lost ground in parliamentary elections that time around, falling to less than 30 percent. “You can’t pray away a bad economy, unemployment, poverty and crime,” one voter, a 45-year old shop assistant, told Agence France-Presse.

Then in May came parliamentary elections in Kuwait, where women had won the right to vote and hold office in 2005 but had never yet won office. Even though the Islamic Salafi Alliance issued a fatwa against voting for female candidates, four captured seats in parliament. Adding insult to injury for the Islamists, their representation fell from 21 seats to 11. “There is a new mind-set here in Kuwait,” the al-Jazeera network reported, “and it’s definitely going to reverberate across the gulf region.”

Finally, Lebanon held a tense election last month that many expected would result in the triumph of Hezbollah and its allies over the pro-Western March 14 coalition. Instead, the latter carried the popular vote and nailed down a commanding majority in parliament.

Of course, each election featured its own dynamics, reflecting local alignments and issues, but they all point in the same direction for radical Islam — a direction reinforced by recent opinion polls in the Muslim world. Last year, the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that from 2002 to 2008, the proportion of respondents saying that suicide bombing was sometimes or often justified dropped from 74 percent to 32 percent in Lebanon, from 33 percent to 5 percent in Pakistan, from 43 percent to 25 percent in Jordan and from 26 percent to 11 percent in Indonesia. As a food-stand operator in Jakarta put it: “People are less supportive of terrorist attacks because we know what terrorism does. We’re afraid of attacks.”

Military and social developments in Iraq and Pakistan also seem to be bending to the same wind. Whatever the contribution of the U.S. military “surge” of 2007, the tide of battle shifted in Iraq when broad swaths of the Sunni community that had supported or participated in the resistance to U.S. occupation turned their guns against al-Qaida in Iraq, the insurgent group. And this year, the moderate government in Pakistan finally seems to have turned decisively against the Taliban. Although many critics believed that the central government lacked the will and the ability to subdue the radicals, it has suppressed them in the Swat region and is now carrying the battle into their Waziristan heartland.

What explains this broad reversal for the forces of Islamic extremism?

Clearly, citizens in Pakistan and Iraq were repelled by the brutality of the radicals, as have been many in such other Muslim countries as Jordan, Egypt and Indonesia, which have suffered domestic terrorism attacks. Nor has the Islamists’ performance in power in Afghanistan, Sudan and Gaza won any admiration. The Internet and other communications technology is entangling the younger generation of Muslims more thoroughly with their Western counterparts than their elders, making appeals to turn away from the West ring hollow.

Others point to U.S. influence as well. As developments in Iran have unfolded over the past weeks, a minor Washington debate has emerged — along partisan lines — over whether President George W. Bush’s tough policies blunted the force of the radicals or whether President Obama’s open hand has assuaged anti-American anger and inspired anti-regime forces. Both might be true. Or neither.

Regardless of the underlying causes, a defeated or merely discredited Islamic Republic of Iran could mark the beginning of the end of radical Islam. Until now, Iran has offered the only relatively successful example of Islamist rule, but the bloody events there are strengthening the momentum against radicalism and theocracy in the Muslim world. If the regime hangs on, it will depend increasingly on the militia and other security forces and less on its religious stature.

Of course, the fading of radicalism would not necessarily mean the disappearance of Islamic politics. Saad Edin Ibrahim, the Egyptian intellectual, noted in The Wall Street Journal last week that Islamist parties are being “cut down to size,” and he hopes that they “evolve into Muslim democratic parties akin to the Christian Democrats in Europe.”

That would be a result the West could live with.

Copyright: 2009, The Washington Post

Joshua Muravchik is a Foreign Policy Institute fellow in the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East.” Reach him at jmuravc1@jhu.edu

DALIT VOICE–July 1st – 15th, 2009

Afghan-Pakistani hostility impedes US troops: Washington Post

Lt. Gabe Lamois’s mission sounded simple: Hike down the hill to the Pakistani Frontier Corps’ border post, inform the commander there that U.S. and Afghan troops were going to be moving through the area at 3 a.m., and hike back up the hill. Before Lamois had even finished speaking, the Pakistani officer was shaking his head. “We have a lot of enemies here,” Lt. Ghulam Habib explained. His jittery troops might mistake the Americans for the Taliban and shoot them. “How about 4 a.m.?” Lamois asked. “Impossible; 7 a.m.,” Habib countered. The haggling turned to pleading before they settled on 5:30 a.m. Lamois walked off, and the Pakistani commander, eager to demonstrate that he was in charge of the area, trained his machine guns and mortar tubes on the U.S. campsite, about 500 yards away. “It’s a strange relationship, considering we’re supposed to be allies,” Lamois groused. Senior U.S. and Pakistani officials have stepped up efforts in recent months to tame the chaotic border area, used by the Taliban as a base from which to fire rockets at U.S. positions in Afghanistan and smuggle fighters and weapons. But high-level talks have not led to cooperation on the ground, where U.S. troops are struggling to overcome decades of enmity between Afghanistan and Pakistan. “I am not sure why the [Pakistanis] are even here, except to stick a thumb in the eye of the Afghans,” said Maj. Jason Dempsey, the No. 3 officer in the U.S. battalion on the border. When 800 troops from the Army’s 10th Mountain Division moved into the area in February, it marked the first large-scale U.S. presence on the border in Konar province since the invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. The Americans had been in place only a few weeks when the local Pakistani commander summoned them and the senior Afghan commander in the area for an emergency meeting to discuss his fears that Afghan forces, backed by U.S. air power, were planning to attack Pakistani posts. U.S. officials said the Pakistanis were angry that the Afghans were building a fort on the ridgeline between the two countries. Pakistan has long suspected that Afghanistan wants to grab Pashtun tribal lands on its side of the border. The meeting quickly became “very ugly and emotional,” said Lt. Col. Mark O’Donnell, the senior U.S. officer in the area. The Afghan commander said he needed the new border fort to hold off Taliban fighters who had fired on his troops from Pakistani army positions a few months earlier, killing four Afghan soldiers and wounding a U.S. adviser. The Pakistani colonel denied the firefight had happened, prompting the Afghan to pull out his cellphone, on which he said he had saved a video of the battle. Before he could play it, O’Donnell interceded. To break through the suspicion, the 10th Mountain troops planned to hold a series of meetings with their Pakistani counterparts. But they quickly realized that the rugged terrain, poor Afghan roads and a shortage of U.S. helicopters made frequent visits impossible. “On the map, the border looks like it’s only three or four kilometers away,” Dempsey said. “The reality is that it is a major operation for us just to get to there.” For the Taliban, it is much easier. Its fighters drive on paved Pakistani roads to the border, where they regularly launch rockets toward the U.S. bases from sites within just a few hundred yards of the Pakistani positions. The Americans respond with a barrage of artillery. In the middle of one recent U.S. counterattack, Dempsey’s Nokia cellphone chirped with a text message from his Pakistani counterpart: “Sir, rounds are falling 200-300 meters short of our post. Plz adjust your fire. Thanx.” When they arrived in the area, the Americans assumed that the Pakistani troops were cooperating with their former Taliban allies. But after visiting the border posts, they realized that the terrified Frontier Corps soldiers were essentially prisoners in their posts. At the Karir Pass, the site of most of the Taliban rocket launches, the Pakistani troops are flown via helicopter to their border forts, each a cluster of small buildings made out of rocks, with no running water. Their food is also airlifted in every few weeks. Although there is a paved road leading from their border post to a nearby Pakistani village, the Frontier Corps troops get their water from a natural spring in Afghanistan. “We asked them why they didn’t get their water from the Pakistani village,” recalled Command Sgt. Maj. James Carabello. “They told us that if they went into the village that the Taliban would cut their heads off.” Every few weeks, a team of U.S. and Afghan soldiers flies up to the border area to kick over the Taliban rocket-launch sites and blow up Taliban safe houses, used to store weapons and food. In April, U.S. and Afghan troops destroyed 10 Taliban launch sites during a three-day operation. The enemy salvos slowed, only to start up again in early June. Although the Taliban fire is often inaccurate, military officials said, one well-placed shot at the main U.S. base in the valley could cause major casualties. “We’ve got to figure out how to get some presence up there on the border,” O’Donnell, the U.S. commander in the area, told his officers in mid-June. “We’ve been really lucky so far.” A few days later, about 60 U.S. and Afghan soldiers climbed into two CH-47 Chinook helicopters that ferried them up to the mountains near the Karir Pass. After seven minutes in the air — a journey that would have taken a full day on foot — the troops scrambled out of the back of the helicopters, taking cover behind crumbling fighting positions from an earlier war. Snow covered the nearby peaks. Narrow donkey trails and the dry ravines known as wadis, used by the Taliban forces to hide from U.S. surveillance aircraft, snaked through the rocky soil. A team of U.S. and Afghan scouts marched off to search for Taliban bunkers and rocket-launch sites. Dempsey and Capt. Michael Harrison, who leads a 140-member infantry company in the area, headed off in the opposite direction to meet with Pakistani troops. In late April, Dempsey and Harrison had shared a pot of tea with the Pakistani soldiers in their dark stone fort. This time, Habib, who had replaced the previous commander three weeks earlier, intercepted them on the mountainside and told them they were not permitted inside his base. He sent one of his privates to fetch a thermos of sweet green tea and wedged himself between two boulders and a scraggly tree. “Do you know Captain Shahab at the Nawa Pass border fort?” Harrison asked brightly. “He’s a good friend of mine. He gave me his cricket bat.” Habib, who wore a simple, tan army tunic and carried a rusted British rifle, nodded. In his new posting, he commanded about 30 soldiers. The Americans, trying to make conversation, asked him about his military career, his troops and his family. He replied that he had been a soldier for 17 years and had six young children back in Karachi. “Now I know why you are at the border instead of back home,” Dempsey joked, pulling out a snapshot of his children playing in the snow. One of Habib’s privates studied the picture intently. “California?” he asked. “No. It’s New York,” Dempsey said. After a few minutes of awkward small talk, Habib asked the Americans why they had come to his border post, perched on a rocky cliff at a place that suggested the end of the world. “Someone has been shooting rockets at us from over on that ridge,” Dempsey said, pointing to a stone outcropping about 250 yards away. “We wondered if you had seen anything.” “The Taliban are the enemy of Pakistan and the U.S. Army,” Habib said. “Do you ever see people firing rockets?” “I don’t know anything about it,” Habib replied. Later, the Americans trudged back up to their campsite and spent the rest of the day searching the surrounding mountains for the donkey trails the Taliban was using to move across the border. They kicked over a crudely built stone wall with black scorch marks at its base, a telltale sign that it was used for rocket launches, and they took pictures of a four-room building being built on an isolated ridge about 50 yards from the border. They also stumbled across simple graves dating to Afghanistan’s war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. U.S. commanders have been able to slow the flow of Taliban fighters across the 90-mile stretch of border by winning over Afghans who live in the Konar River valley, which the insurgents must traverse as they move deeper into Afghanistan. But to stop the influx entirely, U.S. officials said, they must have the support of deeply suspicious Pakistani forces. One idea is to open a border coordination center on the Afghan side where commanders from all three countries could plan operations. “Our goal is to get everyone focused on the common enemy,” Dempsey said, referring to the Taliban insurgents. As night fell on the border, explosions from the Pakistani military’s ongoing fight with the Taliban in the tribal areas boomed in the distance. Taliban radio traffic, which the fighters know the Americans intercept, chattered with threats. “Shoot the infidels,” a voice said in Pashto. “Hold your position. I will be there soon,” another said. But the attack never came. Next morning, as the sun began to crest the Hindu Kush mountains, the U.S. and Afghan troops hiked down to Habib’s border fort, ignoring the Pakistani officer’s warning to wait until 5:30 a.m. to pass. Testily, Habib told them to detour around his outpost, prompting one of the Afghan soldiers to chamber a round in his rifle. A U.S. adviser to the Afghan army quickly interceded. “Cut that stupid [expletive] out and keep walking,” the Marine sergeant barked.

High Command Worries US Flushing Militants from Helmand Into Balochistan

Troika discusses operational strategy

President, PM, COAS meet second time in three days

By our correspondent

ISLAMABAD: The power troika comprising President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on Saturday met for the second time within three days to discuss issues relating to security in the wake of the ongoing military operation against militants and extremists.

Earlier, the troika had met on Wednesday and discussed the security situation in the country with special reference to the operation in the Malakand Division and Waziristan.

The one-line official announcement from Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar only stated that the prime minister and the chief of Army staff called on the president at the Presidency and discussed issues relating to the security situation in the country.

However, sources said the troika discussed post-military operation strategy with special reference to the safe return as well as rehabilitation of the internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The sources said it was decided that short-and long-term strategies would be followed for the safe return and rehabilitation of the IDPs and reconstruction of the areas.

The sources said the top civilian and military leadership reiterated its will to eliminate extremism with people’s support.

The sources said the Army chief briefed the president and the prime minister on the Army helicopterís crash in the Orakzai Agency in which 26 soldiers, including officers, were martyred. Gen Kayani informed Zardari and Gilani that investigations were being carried out.

The sources said the troika also discussed the US operation against the Taliban in Helmand province of Afghanistan and its likely impact on Balochistan. In this regard, the COAS also briefed the president and the prime minister on his meeting with the ISAF commander.

Pakistan has concerns that due to large-scale US operation in Helmand, the fleeing Taliban will cross into the Pakistani territory. Pakistan has increased the deployment of security forces at its border with Afghanistan to stop the entry of the Taliban into its areas.

Islamabad has already conveyed its reservations to the United States on Washington’s decision to bring more troops to Afghanistan, fearing it will destabilise Balochistan, while the US has assured Pakistan that it would not let extremists and terrorists cross into the Pakistani territory.

In last Friday’s meeting too with US Secretary for Homeland Security Ms Janet Napilitano, Prime Minister Gilani had sought the United States support for working out a permanent solution with the government of Afghanistan to check uncontrolled, illegal crossings, particularly of militants, terrorists, and drug traffickers from across the border into Pakistan.

Obama Urges Groups to Stop Attacks (Where’s the Love?)

Obama Urges Groups to Stop Attacks

Advocates Should Turn Attention to Promoting Legislation, President Says

By Ceci Connolly

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 4, 2009

President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.

In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to “true” health-care reform.

“We shouldn’t be focusing resources on each other,” Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. “We ought to be focused on winning this debate.”

Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for “advancing legislation” that fulfills his goal of

expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system.

In the call, leaders of both chambers expressed optimism that they will hold floor votes on legislation to overhaul the $2.2 trillion health system before Congress breaks in early August.

For his part, the president vowed to use his strong approval rating with voters to continue making the case for sweeping reform, according to one congressional staffer with knowledge of the conversation. Obama also hinted that efforts are under way to discourage allies from future attacks on Democrats, according to the source, who did not have permission to speak on the record about the discussion.

The White House had no comment on the president’s call.

In recent weeks, liberal bloggers and grass-roots groups such as MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, Service Employees International Union and Progressive Change Campaign Committee have targeted Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).

A fundraising video produced by Democracy for America suggests

Landrieu is a “sellout” because she has received $1.6 million in campaign contributions from the health-care industry and has yet to endorse the concept of a government-run health insurance plan to compete against the private companies. The public-option concept, which Obama supports, has become a litmus test for many pro-reform activists who accuse the insurance industry of failing to deliver affordable, accessible care.

“Tell Senator Landrieu to support the people of Louisiana, not insurance companies,” the spot concludes.

Founded by former Vermont governor Howard Dean, Democracy for America argues that inclusion of a Medicare-style public option in health-care legislation is “non-negotiable.”

MoveOn, a Web-based political action committee that works to elect “progressive” leaders, intended to run commercials over the Fourth of July holiday criticizing Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) for her silence on the public option. But after she endorsed legislation crafted by Democratic colleagues on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that includes that provision, the group dropped its plans.

“This measure is the heart of health-care reform and is supported by MoveOn’s 5 million members, as well as the majority of the American people,” said MoveOn’s executive director, Justin Ruben. “With the support of legislators like Senator Hagan, we can come closer to our goal of making quality health insurance accessible and affordable for everyone.”

Health Care for American Now, a labor-based coalition of 1,000 groups, has organized a petition pressuring Feinstein to support legislation that includes a public option.

“We need a senator who is championing, not nay saying, the need for reform,” the petition says. “We’re hoping Sen. Feinstein becomes a ‘champion’ for the people of California and stands up for President Obama’s health reform.”

Richard Kirsch, who runs the coalition, said most of the group’s ads are educational or focused generally on the need for broad-based change.

“We’ve been promoting reform and yes, asking members of the public to contact their senators,” he said yesterday. “It’s all in support of reform.”

Feinstein said in an interview last week that she does support health reform but has concerns about the cost of legislation and the impact on her home state. She discounted the attacks as unhelpful and counterproductive.

Obama was joined on the call with lawmakers by White House health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, though he led most of the conversation. DeParle and White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina have been in intense negotiations with hospital representatives in the hope of extracting guaranteed spending reductions from the industry.

Attorney General to Classify Pro-Life Pro-Gun Americans as Terrorists

Sunday, 05 July 2009 05:51 Jim Kouri

An amendment to a bill swiftly moving through the US Congress will allow the Obama Administration’s Attorney General to classify Americans as domestic terrorists if they are pro-life, pro-gun and anti-big government.

Impeached Florida judge — now a Democrat Party member of the House of Representatives — Rep. Alcee Hastings introduced what some claim is a disturbing piece of legislation. Hasting’s amendment calls for the Attorney General to have discretion over who is called a terrorist and what groups will be treated as terrorist groups.

“This is arguably one of the worst pieces of legislation to come down the pike in a long, long time. In essence Attorney General Eric Holder — a Bill Clinton retread — will have the discretion to label Americans terrorists. Hastings is a dangerous man and should be forced to resign from congress. He’s also proposed the creation of “emergency camps” that are nothing more than prisons,” warns political strategist Mike Baker.

“This amendment is part and parcel of the trend in this country to suppress dissent by patriots by calling them domestic terrorists,” he added.

In an unclassified report entitled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and her agency included the following description of “extremists:”

“Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Last Thursday, Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) made the following remarks on the House Floor regarding Congressman Alcee Hastings’ (D-FL) amendment to the National Defense Authorization bill:

“The Hastings Amendment to the National Defense Authorization bill (which now is being considered en bloc) prohibits the recruitment, enlistment, or retention of persons with known affiliations to “groups determined by the Attorney General to be of a violent, extremist nature.”

“Members on both sides of the aisle support the purpose of this amendment because we recognize that there are legitimate concerns about the enlistment of persons who may seek to use their military training to cause harm to innocents, but we should take pause to consider the breadth of this amendment carefully. I just want to express concern about the language of this amendment, and my concerns are shared by many in this House,” said Rep. Franks.

“While the amendment seeks to keep gang members and members of violent groups out of the military, the amendment by its language is much more broad. Specifically, it confers upon the Attorney General the ability to categorize groups as hate groups, and this sounds an alarm for many of us because of the recent shocking and offensive report released by the Department of Homeland Security which labeled, arguably, a majority of Americans as “extremists,” warned Franks.

“I take extreme offense that the federal government — through a report issued under the authority of a Cabinet-level official — would dare to categorize people who are “dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition or abortion or immigration” as “right-wing extremists” and it begs the question of whether the Attorney General, under Mr. Hastings’ Amendment, can look to the Napolitano report to decide who is an extremist, or can make the same categorization of the majority of Americans as extremists who may then be kept from joining the military, or who may be discharged,” said Rep. Franks.

“I want to state unequivocally that I believe that it is not the intent of this Congress to label pro-lifers, federalism proponents, and pro-immigration enforcement groups and their affiliates as extremists under the bill. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle should make a strong effort to assuage these concerns and make our intentions clear. If the intent of this amendment is to go after citizens because of their political views and moral convictions, then the amendment is unconstitutional. I hope that the sponsor of the Amendment will make clear tonight that this is not the intent,” he added.

Rep. Alcee Hastings also introduced what many say is another disturbing piece of legislation. That new bill calls for the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to build at least six facilities that can be designated as “emergency centers. Hastings rationale for such facilities is to gather and “house” civilians on what are basically detention centers guarded by armed soldiers or paramilitary troops.

The House bill (HR 645) — National Emergency Centers Establishment Act — is not even on the radar of members of the elite media. According to critics of the plan, if passed the government will create camps or centers that by their nature restrict the activities of US citizens herded into them.

In fact, one provision — Section 2 (b) (4) — states: “[To] meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

One critic, political strategist Mike Baker claims the idea of such detention center smacks of the type of concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany, Americans find repugnant.

“Why aren’t the news media covering this story? Could it be because they fear being the first occupants of these so-called emergency installations? Where is the outrage by our nation’s Fourth Estate?” asks Baker.

Hastings bill is suspected of attempting to help expand the President Obama’s military and law enforcement powers. While Hastings pushes this bill, even Republican congressmen are hesitant to remind one another and the nation that this Florida congressman was impeached while he sat on Florida’s federal court bench.

Appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, he became the first African-American federal judge in the state of Florida, and served in that position for ten years. He’s still called “Judge” by some of his colleagues, but one would think he’d rather forget his days on the federal bench.

In 1989, Judge Hastings was impeached by the US House of Representatives for bribery and perjury. The Democratic-controlled Senate convicted Hastings of accepting a $150,000 bribe in 1981 in exchange for a lenient sentence and of perjury in his testimony about the case. Hastings said the charges against him smacked of racism.

Even Rep. John Conyers, who is also black, said he “found no trace of racism during the investigation.” He urged his colleagues to remove Hastings from the bench. He said, “[Hastings] is unfit to serve.”

When the ultra-liberal Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi nominated Hastings for the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, even members of her own political party balked.

“The prospect of Rep. Alcee Hastings becoming the chairman of the House of Representative’s Intelligence Committee was proposed by Congressional Black Caucus, who had been pressuring the new House Speaker Pelosi to appoint blacks to key leadership positions and Hasting benefited from the pressure on the radical left Pelosi,” said former Detective Sidney Frances (NYPD-ret.), himself an African-American.

Source: NewsWithViews.com

In Israeli jail, McKinney expects more from Washington

Former US lawmaker Cynthia McKinney, who is in an Israeli jail for trying to take humanitarian aid to Gaza, says the White House has done nothing to secure her release.

Speaking to Press TV from inside the Israeli jail, she said US taxpayers paid for Israel’s 22-day war on the Gaza Strip.

“Operation Cast Lead was made possible by the US taxpayers’ gift to the Israeli war machine in the form of F16s, helicopters gunship, white phosphorous, depleted uranium, cluster bombs and anything that kills,” she told Press TV from inside the Israeli jail on Saturday.

McKinney has been in Israeli custody since Tuesday when she and 20 other humanitarian activists were arrested by the Israeli Navy while trying to take humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip.

She also criticized US President Barack Obama and his special envoy for their policies in the region, saying she was seeking to do what “neither President Obama nor his special envoy has done and that is to visit Gaza in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead.”

McKinney along with her group refused to sign a document admitting they violated Israel’s blockade soon after they were taken to custody.

Family, friends and supporters say Cynthia McKinney believed she was in international waters and was free to pass.

“The Israelis hijacked us because we wanted to give crayons to the children of Gaza,” McKinney said.

They are due to appear in an Israeli court on Sunday.

US national debt stands at $11.4 trillion

As the United States celebrates the Independence Day, the national debt continues to grow; the US government now owes $11.4 trillion, about $37,000 for each and every American.

The national debt was exactly $11,518,472,742,288 on Wednesday, said the Treasury Department that updates the number every few days.

Economists warned that the debt could become the next economic crisis without firm action from the Obama administration, the Associated Press reported.

The current situation is complicating efforts by President Barack Obama and Congress to cope with the worst recession in decades as stimulus and bailout spending combine with lower tax revenues to widen the gap.

The debt increased with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and economic stimulus spending under former President George W. Bush as well as President Obama.

To handle the crisis, Obama has vowed to cut the budget deficit roughly in half by the end of his first term. Deficit is the difference between government receipts and spending in a single budget year.

The budget deficit this year is estimated at about $1.85 trillion.

Although the US president remains personally popular, polls show there is public concern over his handling of the economy and the government’s growing spending.

Guard units train for militia attacks

By Silas Allen
Silas.w.allen@us.army.mil

Published: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 2:27 PM CDT

CAMP CROWDER, Mo. — It isn’t easy being an insurgent in Neosho, Mo.

The long hours. The blistering heat. And, of course, constantly having to come up with new ways of haassing the Missouri National Guardsmen training in the area.

Such was the case for several members of the headquarters detachment of the 229th Multifunctional Medical Battalion.

During the battalion’s annual training exercise, eight members of the Jefferson City-based unit, acting as a fictitious militant

group, attempted to disrupt the battalion’s operations through attacks and harassment. The battalion’s other two units, the Kansas City-based 205th Area Support Medical Company, and the Springfieldbased 206th Area Support Medical Company, fended off the attacks while performing their medical duties.

sGenerally, the “militants” came in groups of two to four, said Capt. Joseph Schmitz, a member of the insurgent group. Because the training exercise was geared more toward the units’ medical duties, the attacks were rarely intense, and the militants gave up easily.

“If they shot at us at all, we were pretty happy with that,” he said.

Simulating an insurgent group involves a fair amount of acting. During a late-night scenario, Schmitz played a local townsperson with a minor shoulder injury. While waiting to be treated, Schmitz addressed everyone who passed him as “GI,” and spoke in broken English — phrases such as “You want I help, GI?” and “I am not fighter.”

On the last evening of the exercise, the militants ramped up their attacks.

At around 7:30 p.m., the group drove two Humvees up to a checkpoint and opened fire, using paintball rifles. They also threw a smoke grenade, which was used to simulate an improvised explosive device. When the medical units’ security forces fired back, rather than retreating, the militants sped forward into the units’ compound. The security team responded with gunfire and simulated grenades.

Schmitz said the battalion decided to use paintball rifles for the exercise rather than a laser-based system because it does a better job of simulating certain aspects of real combat.

“It doesn’t simulate the injury,” he said, “but it simulates the randomness of it.”

Once the attack was over, the security team and the militant group came together for an after-action review. During the review, members of both sides discussed what had gone well and what needed improvement. Following the review, the militant group retired to its headquarters, a WWII-era bunker in a remote section of the camp. There, they reloaded rifles and smoke grenades and prepared for the next attack.

In a real combat situation, Schmitz said, medical units would most likely have other soldiers on hand, such as Military Police, to provide security for them. However, it’s important for the units to be working in scenarios that are as true to life as possible.

“We’re just here to make sure they have realistic training,” he said.

For more information about the Missouri National Guard, call 1-800-GoGuard or visit www.moguard.com.

Missouri National Guard Train to Kill “Militia Insurgents” in Exercise

Saturday, 04 July 2009 13:42 Kurt Nimmo

The Missouri National Guard is training to engage in combat with “militia” groups, according to the News Tribune.

“During the battalion’s annual training exercise, eight members of the Jefferson City-based unit, acting as a fictitious militant group, attempted to disrupt the battalion’s operations through attacks and harassment. The battalion’s other two units, the Kansas City-based 205th Area Support Medical Company, and the Springfieldbased 206th Area Support Medical Company, fended off the attacks while performing their medical duties,” the newspaper reported on June 30.

National Guard training in Missouri and South Dakota prepares soldiers to confront and kill “insurgent” Americans.

The article was written by Silas Allen, a journalist with the Pentagon. In 2006, the Pentagon officially announced it would declare psychological warfare on the American people by planting propaganda in the corporate media and the Allen article is a less than covert part of this process.

An earlier article written by Silas Allen, also posted on the News Tribune website, details a Missouri National Guard unit practicing basic convoy operations during a training exercise in the Black Hills of South Dakota on June 14. During the exercise, an “insurgent group” with “a reputation for harassing convoys with ambushes and improvised explosive devices,” attacks the Guard convoy. “The unit was also told to look out for civilians trying to approach the convoy on the battlefield. The civilians could be working with the insurgent group or could simply have a legitimate complaint,” Allen writes.

The two exercises serve as prime examples of an orchestrated attempt by the government to train soldiers to militarily confront domestic “militia” groups.

In April, a leaked DHS report on “rightwing extremism” said “right-wing militias” will recruit veterans returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. “DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat,” the report claims. “These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists — including lone wolves or small terrorist cells — to carry out violence.”

The corporate media hyped the supposed threat posed by “lone wolves” after white supremacist and probable government operative James von Brunn allegedly attacked the Holocaust museum in Washington. “The lone wolf is what concerns the Washington field office, what concerns the FBI the most,” John Perren, head of the counterterrorism branch at the FBI’s Washington field office, told the Associated Press.

After Von Brunn’s brutal attack, the corporate media shill and government disinfo operative Glenn Beck attempted to link 9/11 truth activists to the deranged accused killer. The corporate media has attempted to link truth activists and patriots to the Von Brunn incident and an earlier one in Pittsburgh.

A report produced by the Missouri State Police, entitled “The Modern Militia Movement,” specifically characterizes constitutionalists and Ron Paul supporters as domestic terrorists. “Red flags outlined in the document include political bumper stickers such as those for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, talk of conspiracy theories such as the plan for a mega-highway from Canada to Mexico and possession of subversive literature,” the Missouri Information Analysis Center report states.

In April, the Maryland National Guard was put on alert in anticipation of Tea Party protests, thus revealing that the government considers constitutional activists to be “insurgents” and “militants.”

In March, the United States Army Reserve Command published a Force Protection Advisory recommending “situational awareness” and “mitigation measures” in response to End the Fed protests. On November 22, 2008, Alex Jones led a rally at the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas Texas. The Dallas protest is specifically mentioned in the official Army document. Ron Paul’s brother was also in attendance. The event was monitored by the Pentagon.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended merging the National Guard into the “Total Force” of the U.S. military. “The recommendations that are so disturbing are those involving the assimilation the National Guard and Reserves into the regular US military, under control and management of the DoD,” writes Carolyn Harris.

The DoD currently trains its employees to regard protest as a form of domestic terrorism. “It has come to our attention that the Department of Defense’s Annual Level I Antiterrorism (AT) Training for 2009 misinforms Department of Defense (DoD) personnel that certain First Amendment-protected activity may amount to ‘low level terrorism,’” complained the ACLU last month.

The federalized National Guard has increasingly engaged in training exercises and drills designed to confront the American people. The exercises in Missouri and South Dakota reveal how the government is brainwashing troops to consider constitutionalists and patriots as “insurgents” who will attack military checkpoints and convoys.

In February, the National Guard conducted an “urban military” training mission in Arcadia, California. The Guard conducted a reconnaissance operation in the small town “to identify possible locations of the weapons dealer,” according to the Times Herald. The DHS, MIAC, the Virginia Fusion Center and others have characterized Second Amendment supporters and activists as potential terrorists.

National Guard troops in Ohio, New York, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Kentucky have deployed to conduct exercises against the American people, including taking over schools and jails and assuming police functions illegal under the Posse Comitatus Act. National Guard troops were used to control the public during the Boston Marathon, the Kentucky Derby, and during New Year celebrations in Times Square last year.

If you’d like to contact the Missouri National Guard about these training exercises aimed at patriots, constitutionalists, and supporters of the Second Amendment and the Constitution, call 1-800-GoGuard.

Source: Infowars

CAN ANY OF YOU GUYS READ GREEK?

This was sent to me and I cannot find a translator.

us terror attack in greece

Click to view at full size Save to disk

Obushma–The Unmasking, (This explains a lot)

WE TRIED TO WARN YOU!

Daily Mail: rumours swell that the government staged 7/7

Video made for the mock training exercise?

On 4 July 2009, the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper has this headline:

Conspiracy fever: As rumours swell that the government staged 7/7, victims’ relatives call for a proper inquiry

The Mail asks: which train did the four Muslims catch from Luton to London on the morning of the bomb blasts?

The three separate Tube explosions at Edgware Road, Aldgate and King’s Cross occurred together at exactly 8.50am.

The official reports said the bombers got on the 7.40am train from Luton.

However, the 7.40am train never ran that morning.

It was cancelled.

Survivors pointed out the error.

The Government then changed its mind and said the bombers caught the 7.25 am from Luton, for the 35-minute journey to King’s Cross.

It was due to arrive in the capital at 8am.

However, this train ran 23 minutes late.

It arrived in London at 8.23am, say station officials.

The three separate Tube explosions at Edgware Road, Aldgate and King’s Cross occurred together at exactly 8.50am.

It looks as if it would be impossible for the ‘bombers’ to get to their different destinations in time.

Reportedly, it takes seven minutes to walk from the Thameslink line station to the tube station at the main King’s Cross station.

Police say the four men were seen on the main King’s Cross concourse at 8.26am, although no CCTV footage has ever been made public.

How had the men got there in three short minutes after getting off the Luton train at 8.23am?

Controversially, no CCTV images have been released of the alleged bombers actually in London.

There is a picture claiming to show the ‘bombers’ in Luton. In this Luton image “the quality is poor and the faces of three of the bombers are unidentifiable.”

This photo is timed at four seconds before 7.22am.

The men would have had just three minutes to walk up the stairs at Luton, buy their £22 day return tickets and get to the platform, which was packed with commuters because of the earlier travel disruptions.

A video called Ripple Effect accuses Tony Blair, and elements of the Government, the police, and the British and Israeli Secret Services of carrying out the London Tube bombings.

It is alleged that the four British Muslims were tricked into taking part in what they were told would be a mock anti-terror training exercise.

The Ripple Effect video claims government agents set off pre-planted explosives under the three Tube trains and on the bus.

It suggests that the four Muslims were not on any of the Tube trains.

Dr Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham’s Central Mosque, says: ‘We do not accept the government version of July 7, 2005. The Ripple Effect video is more convincing than the official statements.’

Naseem has said that the identities of the bombers were discovered by the police suspiciously quickly.

‘When a body is blown up, it is destroyed. How is it that the identification papers found at the bomb scenes of these men were still intact? Were they planted?’

The Daily mail asks:

Why did the four bombers get return tickets to London if they were on a one-way suicide mission?

Why are there no CCTV images of the four together in London even though the city has thousands upon thousands of such cameras in public places?

Why did so many survivors of the Tube bombings say that the explosions came upwards through the floor of the trains, not down, as would be the case if a backpack blew up inside?

And why do no passengers on the London-bound Luton train clearly remember the four bombers with their huge rucksacks on that fateful morning?

There was a mock terrorist exercise going on in London that day.

Former Scotland Yard officer Peter Power said on BBC radio: ‘At half-past nine this morning we were running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.’

India operating 40 secret ‘Gitmos’: report

* Ex-IB joint director blames ‘harsh interrogation techniques’ in illegal detention centres for fanning militancy in Indian Punjab, IHK

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: The United States may have been forced to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre but India runs 40 such “illegal” secret chambers across the country, one of India’s leading magazine revealed in its forthcoming issue.

An early copy of The Week obtained by Daily Times reveals the horror of the torture chambers, where suspects were subjected to extreme interrogation techniques for years. “I could never again dream of doing the things I did when I was in charge,” said Maloy Krishna Dhar, former joint director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), while admitting to the existence of such centres. Top police officers also told the journal that these chambers were their “assets”. “They are our own little Guantanamos,” they said.

Quoting KS Subramanian, former director general of police, who has also served in the IB, it said these sites existed and were being used to detain and interrogate suspected terrorists and have been operating for a long time. Dhar admitted that these centres fanned militancy in Indian Punjab and IHK. The magazine’s investigating team has identified 15 such centres – three each in Mumbai, New Delhi, Gujarat and Indian-held Kashmir (IHK), two in Kolkata and one in Assam. But officials claim the number could be around 40.

Torture: An officer who had worked in one of the detention centres admitted extreme physical and mental torture, based loosely on the Guantanamo model, was used to extract information from detainees. It included an assault on the senses and sleep deprivation, keeping the prisoners naked, and forcibly administering drugs through the rectum. “In extreme cases we use pethidine injections. It makes a person crazy.” The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) questioned Saeed Khan (name changed), one of the accused in the Malegaon blasts of September 2006, held at the Aarey Colony facility in Goregaon, the biggest of the three detention centres in Mumbai. He was served food at irregular intervals (leading to temporary disorientation) and was denied sleep.

Parvez Ahmed Radoo, 30, of Baramulla district in IHK, a student at Pune University, was illegally detained in New Delhi for over a month for allegedly plotting mass murder in the capital on behalf of the Jaish-e-Muhammad. Radoo wrote an open letter from the Tihar jail, where he is currently held, saying he was arrested from the airport on September 12 and kept in custody for a month. Apparently, he was first taken to the Lodhi Colony police station and then to an apartment in the Dwarka locality in southwest New Delhi where electrodes were attached to his genitals. Dhar says such detention and torture centres were an inevitable part of the war on terrorism. Security agencies needed such facilities. Molvi Iqbal from Uttar Pradesh, a suspected member of the Harkatul Jihad-e-Islami, currently lodged in Tihar, was held at a secret detention centre for two months, according to his relatives. They alleged that a chip was implanted in his body to track his movements. “He fears that the chip is still inside his skin,” said one of his relatives. “That has shattered him.”

The most recent victim of torture was Manzoor Ahmed Baig, 40, who was picked up by the Special Operations Group from the Alucha Bagh area in Srinagar on May 18. His family alleged that he was chained, hung upside down and ruthlessly beaten up. He died that night. Following public outrage, the officer in charge of the camp was dismissed from service in June. Subramanian says agencies such as the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the IB, and not the Home Ministry, directly handled such operations. He, however, called for increased public awareness about such activities and believed it could help check such illegalities.

Hekmatyar terms Afghan elections ‘comedy drama’

PESHAWAR: Hezb-i-Islami chief Gulbaddin Hekmatyar has termed the upcoming Afghan elections a “comedy drama” staged by the invaders.

“Elections amid full-fledged war and presence of invaders are nothing but a comedy drama. No mature and sensitive person will believe in such elections and we ask the people and candidates not to waste time in this useless game,” the former Afghan prime minister told the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) in an interview.

The Hezb-i-Islami chief, however, said they would not disrupt the so-called elections. “We will not waste our time on none issues. The real thing is to oust the invaders from the country,” he said.

Ruling out talks with the Afghan government, Hekmatyar said: “The Kabul administration is powerless and there is no justification to talk to it. Innocent people are being killed in indiscriminate bombing by foreign forces and the Karzai government has failed to check the same.”

To a question, the Hezb-i-Islami chief said his party members were active across Afghanistan. “We are carrying out cultural and motivational activities in many areas. Attacks are being carried out only in areas where occupation forces are based,” he said.

Hekmatyar said his party would continue jihad until the last American soldier left Afghanistan. About deployment of Islamic forces in Afghanistan, he said: “If other groups consider the presence of these forces necessary, then we can agree to a limited number of forces of Islamic countries but they must not be from neighbouring countries. They must not support any group, should be deployed outside the cities and must be under the control of the government.”

About relations with al-Qaeda and Taliban, he said that they had no links or agreement with Taliban and al-Qaeda. The cooperation, coordination and joint struggle, however, existed between the mujahideen of both the groups on local level and in some areas, he added.

Hekmatyar said that he was confident that the resistance movement would succeed and the invading forces would be compelled to leave the country. About the suicide attacks, he said that they considered such attacks on the enemy as useful. Such attacks, however, must not be carried out on militia posts and national army. “Suicide bombers are a great asset to the resistance and they should not be wasted in useless operations.”

The former Afghan prime minister lambasted Iran and Pakistan for supporting the US invasion of Afghanistan. He said that President Obama had been repeating the failed experience of Bush. “US wants to repeat Iraq’s experience in Afghanistan.

“They strengthened a minority group there. They also want to unite Shiites and give them a big role in the government. The imperialists always impose minorities on the people they conquer,” he said.

Is Rehman Malik a Liar, or Just Ignorant?

[We hate your Predators.  May we have some please, kind sir?]

Progress made on UAV tech transfer to Pakistan: Malik

Saturday, July 04, 2009
ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik has claimed that important progress has been made on American provision of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology to Pakistan.

Talking to the media after his meeting with the US homeland security adviser here on Friday, the interior minister stated the issue of drone attacks inside the Pakistani territory was openly discussed. He also said Pakistan had sought American assistance to rehabilitate the IDPs in their native areas.

The interior minister also voiced his concern regarding the drone attacks inside the Pakistani territory to the visiting dignitary and urged the American leadership to cease the drone attacks immediately.

APP adds: Meanwhile, talking to the media here at a hospital after after visiting the injured of the suicide blast, Rehman Malik said the Waziristan operation was against TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud and his accomplices.

Malik said the operation was against the militants and it would continue till the complete elimination of terrorist elements. To a question, he said the government was neither involved in signing an agreement with any militant group in the past nor it had the intention to do so in the future. [Is Malik a liar, or just ignorant?] He said that both the Federation and the province would share information regarding terrorists.

[Remember this, Rehman Malik?]

Nek Mohammed in front of a microphone during the signing of the peace accord on April 24, 2004. [Source: Tariq Mahmood / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images]

[How about this?]

On September 5, 2006, the Waziristan Accord

[Or this?]

April 25, 2008

Pak-Afghan border needs a fence like US-Mexico: Gilani

[Pakistan has been trying to fence and mine the Durand Line Since early in the terror war, the US keeps stopping it.

SEE: Army to identify areas for fencing on Afghan border]

Pak-Afghan border needs a fence like US-Mexico: Gilani

Wants Cobra helicopters from US

By our correspondent

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani on Friday sought the support of the United States to work out a permanent solution for uncontrolled, illegal crossings, particularly of militants and terrorists, and drug trafficking across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Gilani was talking to US Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napilitano, who called on him here at the PM House on Friday. Referring to Janet’s initiative, as governor of Arizona, of erecting a wall between the US and Mexico border, the prime minister said a similar pattern of fencing between Pakistan and Afghanistan could be implemented to stop infiltration and drug trafficking.

He also called for immediate provision of military hardware, including Cobra helicopters, technology transfer as well as financial assistance to build the capacity of Pakistan’s law-enforcement agencies and their personnel to prepare them for controlling the affected areas after the military operation comes to a successful conclusion in the Malakand Division and Waziristan agencies.

The prime minister underlined the fact that international support to Pakistan for the displaced persons of the Malakand Division had so far been inadequate. He urged the US and international donors to deliver on their pledges made in the Friends of Democratic Pakistan meeting in Tokyo.

The prime minister asked the US secretary for homeland security to facilitate PIA’s direct flights operations to the US destinations. Ms Janet said the issue of PIA’s direct flights to the US would be resolved after due consideration in the near future. She also promised that the US would expedite disbursement of the pledged amount for the IDPs and the financial assistance committed in Tokyo to meet Pakistan’s immediate needs.

Bangladesh struggles to tame violent militants

[SEE: UK charity head held over Bangladesh “bomb factory”]

Bangladesh struggles to tame violent militants

By Anis Ahmed

DHAKA (Reuters) – Violent militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan get more attention, but militant groups also challenge South Asia’s other Muslim nation, Bangladesh, worrying neighbours and countries with Bangladeshi workers or immigrants.

Militants in the low-lying nation of some 150 million people threaten its young democratic government’s efforts to achieve stability, and raise fears the groups will connect with and strengthen extremist international networks.

The violent Islamists’ presence also discourages much needed aid and investment.

Nearby India has expressed its concern, and last weekend Britain’s security minister Lord West visited Dhaka to strengthen bilateral efforts on the issue.

“The governments must cooperate with each other against terrorism as the terrorists of different countries are gaining strength through mutual assistance,” he told reporters.

Harkatul Jihad Islami (HUJI) Bangladesh, one of more than a dozen outlawed Islamist groups seeking to turn Bangladesh into a sharia-based Islamic state, was blamed for attempting to kill then British High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury in May 2005.

Police also linked Huji to a 2004 attempt to kill Sheikh Hasina, then the opposition leader. She narrowly escaped but 23 others died when grenades exploded at a rally she was addressing.

Authorities say another group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), was behind deadly bombings in late 2005. Victims included judges, lawyers, police and others.

After what was criticised as initial neglect of the issue, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government arrested six JMB leaders in 2006. They were executed in March 2007 by an army-backed interim authority that had taken over power.

During interrogation the six said they were trained outside the country and fought alongside Islamic forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the Palestinian territories.

MILITANTS REGROUPING

Attacks declined after the executions but did not stop, and officials and analysts say the militants are regrouping.

“There is no denying that the militants are a big threat to Bangladesh,” said Abul Barakat, economics professor at Dhaka University and a political analyst, who has studied the movement.

He told Reuters that Islamists had expanded under patronage of the country’s biggest religion-based party, Jamaat-e-Islami (Jamaat), which has developed a banking and business network, and through funds received from Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia.

As happened in countries like Pakistan, some in Bangladesh’s establishment thought they could use militant groups to their advantage, only to have them later turn against the government.

For example, the 2001-2006 coalition government of the BNP and Jamaat was accused of using a JMB faction to confront the Sarbahara, a troublemaking group in the northwest.

Jamaat and the BNP deny aiding violent militants. BNP senior leader Nazrul islam Khan says such militancy “is not just a problem of Bangladesh, it exists worldwide”.

Suranjit Sengupta, a top lawyer and Awami League leader, says the Islamists are a growing threat to democracy and development.

“They thrived in Bangladesh during the BNP-Jamaat rule. Now the time has come to track them down and root them out forever,” he told Reuters.

A government led by Hasina and the Awami League took office in January and vowed to get tough with the militants. Security forces have since raided alleged militant hideouts, seizing arms and bombmaking material and arresting dozens.

“We are pledge-bound to the nation to make sure that none of them escape justice,” said state minister for law Oamrul Islam.

CHANGED TACTICS

Intelligence officials say the Islamists lately have changed tactics, as did a JMB operative who talked to a Reuters contact in the northwest on condition of anonymity.

“Now we are recruiting a large number of women and giving them training in use of weapons, carrying explosives, hitting targets and spreading our message that no rule or laws except those of Allah will exist or be tolerated,” the operative said.

He said male and female members were encouraged to marry one another “to integrate them more to our work and prevent information leaks”.

Militants are now better equipped, getting explosives and weapons regularly from outside the country, the operative said without detailing the nations involved.

The group wants to refine its attacks, he added, making less use of grenades and bombs which kill indiscriminately and more of guns aimed at specific targets. “That would save lives of the people who are not our enemies,” he said.

Whether security force efforts will be enough to crush the militants remains to be seen.

Bangladesh has social issues that can make people receptive to anti-government messages and promises of an Islamic utopia. For example, nearly half the population is illiterate and a similar number live in poverty.

Bangladesh politics have meanwhile been characterised by weak civilian governments, with out-of-power parties all too ready to take to the streets, and the military stepping in to bring order at the price of clamping down on civil liberties.

“Both confrontational politics and socio-economic conditions are responsible for the rise and spread of militancy,” said Asif Nazrul, professor of law at Dhaka University.

In a chicken and egg relationship, the other issues distract authorities from effectively tackling militancy, while militant violence is one reason Bangladesh has trouble getting investment and aid to help mitigate poverty and dry up militant support.

(Additional reporting by Hasibur Rahman Bilu in northern Bangladesh and Azad Majumder in Dhaka)

Ingush president regains consciousness after attack

MOSCOW, July 3 (RIA Novosti) – Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who was badly injured in a roadside bomb on June 22, has regained consciousness, a spokesman for Ingushetia’s representative in Moscow said on Friday.

“The Ingush president is conscious. He is making progress, and doctors say his health could improve substantially within a month,” Adam Gazdiyev said.

Yevkurov received serious head and internal injuries when his motorcade was hit by a car packed with explosives driven by a suicide bomber. He was airlifted to Moscow after undergoing surgery in Ingushetia.

A bodyguard died in the attack near the city of Nazran, the main city in the tiny republic in Russia’s North Caucasus.

Yevkurov’s cousin Ramzan Yevkurov, who was driving the president’s vehicle and was injured in the explosion, died in a hospital in Ingushetia on Saturday night.

Ingush Prime Minister Rashid Gaisanov, who has been appointed the republic’s acting president by a Russian presidential decree, pledged to proceed with programs and projects launched by Yevkurov.

“All the programs and projects led by President Yevkurov and launched by him, will be continued,” Gaisanov said.

The acting president described the situation in the republic as “stable and under control.”

Nine Chechen police killed in Russian Caucasus

1 hour ago

MOSCOW (AFP) — Nine Chechen police were killed when militants fired on their car from a forest in the neighbouring Russian region of Ingushetia, one of the deadliest recent attacks in the volatile Caucasus.

Their vehicle came under grenade and gun fire from unknown individuals hidden in a forest as it travelled on a road in Ingushetia at around 0530 GMT and burst into flames, Russian news agencies said, quoting security officials.

“As a result of the attack, nine police from Chechnya were killed and nine more were badly wounded,” the head of Ingushetia’s security council Alexei Vorobyev told the Interfax news agency.

The Chechen police were in Ingushetia to conduct a joint special operation against militants with their Ingush colleagues, the reports said.

Concerns have grown in the last weeks about the stability of Ingushetia, one of Russia’s most violent regions, after its leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was gravely wounded in a car bombing on June 22.

The fact that Chechen police were the victims is especially significant as Chechnya’s controversial leader Ramzan Kadyrov has in recent weeks positioned himself as the strongman of the entire Caucasus region.

The attack is the deadliest single militant strike in the Caucasus since April when Russia abolished a decade-long anti-terror operation in Chechnya which was the scene of two separatist wars since the collapse of communism.

Russia justified that move by saying stability had returned to Chechnya under Kadyrov. But analysts warned at the time that other regions of the Caucasus were still mired in unrest.

Islamist militants are battling pro-Kremlin authorities and Russian security forces in a low-level insurgency in the overwhelmingly Muslim regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia.

Officials said Friday Yevkurov has regained consciousness after almost two weeks in a coma but the Kremlin has appointed the local prime minister Rashid Gaisanov to act as Ingush leader until he recovers.

Press TV New Footage of Basij Military Base Attack

Western Media showed the Basij firing into the crowd of rioters in Tehran. What they DIDN’T show you was the rioters first attacking the Basij with Molotov Cocktails!

Taliban Slip Away From Afghanistan Surge Battle

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN

WASHINGTON— The U.S. embarked on a large offensive in southern Afghanistan Thursday in which one Marine was killed, while in the east the military mobilized to recover a soldier apparently captured by the Taliban.

Getty Images

U.S. Marine Captain Eric Meador of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade gives his Marines a pep talk before loading up on helicopters during the start of Operation Khanjari Thursday.

The offensive was led by 4,000 Marines who were sent to Afghanistan as part of the new U.S. troop surge. The move is seen as an early test of the Obama administration’s efforts to restructure the foundering U.S.-led war effort.

The Marines faced little Taliban resistance as they began moving into villages in the Helmand River valley, a Taliban stronghold that is one of the world’s largest opium-producing regions.

Marine commanders said Taliban fighters seemed to have melted into the surrounding countryside rather than staying to fight the large U.S. force.

“There’s been sporadic fighting, but it’s been

light,” Capt. Bill Pelletier, a Marine spokesman, said in an interview from southern Afghanistan. “Our focus isn’t on going in and killing Taliban; it’s on driving those folks out of the area and keeping them from coming back.”

The dead Marine was killed in combat; about a dozen other troops suffered minor injuries. Marine commanders said they had no confirmed reports of Afghan civilian casualties. U.S. commanders have issued new directives to avoid civilian deaths in Afghanistan, a new priority in the war effort there.

In recent months, the administration has ousted the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, appointed a new team of generals with deep experience in counterinsurgency, and signed off on the deployments of at least 21,000 American reinforcements.

In the offensive in the south, known as Operation Khanjar, or “Strike of the Sword,” Marine commanders say their forces are working to push Taliban fighters out of individual villages, build new bases there, and then begin small-scale reconstruction projects designed to win local support. They said the effort will continue indefinitely.

The kidnapping in eastern Afghanistan, however, was dominating the attention of commanders in Afghanistan and officers at the Pentagon Thursday. For many military personnel, the abduction stirred memories of an incident in Iraq in 2006, when two young soldiers were captured by Islamic militants south of Baghdad and tortured to death. The militants released a videotape showing the mutilated corpses, which were found in a ditch, booby-trapped with explosives.

In an effort to avoid a reprise in Afghanistan, military commanders launched a major push to recover the missing soldier, whose identity hasn’t been released. A defense official said elite Special Operations forces are leading the search.

The incident, which occurred after the soldier left his base Tuesday, appeared to be the first such abduction in Afghanistan. Military officials began an internal investigation into whether the soldier had been forced off the base by Afghan security personnel assigned to the outpost and how he managed to leave without being spotted by soldiers assigned to guard the base’s entrances and exits, according to a defense official familiar with the matter.

A Taliban commander told the Reuters news agency the soldier had been taken as a patrol left its base in the eastern province of Paktika. U.S. officials said they couldn’t verify the Taliban account.

Military officials have released few details about the incident, arguing that doing so would compromise the efforts to recover the soldier. “There’s a significant effort to find him and bring him back safely, but that’s all I can say at this point,” said Col. Gregory Julian, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul.

Meanwhile, the British defense ministry reported Thursday that Lt. Col. Rupert Thorneloe, one of the most senior British Army officers in Afghanistan, was killed Wednesday in Helmand province when a bomb exploded under his armored vehicle. Another soldier, Trooper Joshua Hammond, was also killed.

Col. Thorneloe was the highest-ranking British soldier to be killed in Afghanistan since Britain joined the U.S.-led invasion in 2001; only about three British officers of his rank are typically deployed in Afghanistan at any one time, a defense ministry spokesman said, Reuters reported.

The British army has been engaged in a parallel offensive to U.S. Operation Khanjar in southern Afghanistan.

Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com

U.S. Faces Resentment in Afghan Region

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A Marine took up a combat position Thursday in southern Afghanistan during Operation Khanjar, an American-led offensive.

	Baris Atayman/Reuters A village elder greeted American troops on Thursday in Helmand Province, where the Taliban’s influence is pervasive.

By CARLOTTA GALL

Published: July 2, 2009

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — The mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting incoming American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban and winning over the population.

Villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes, several community representatives  interviewed said. Others have been moved to join the insurgents out of poverty or simply because the Taliban’s influence is so pervasive here.

On Thursday morning, 4,000 American Marines began a major offensive to try to take back the region from the strongest Taliban insurgency in the country. The Marines are part of a larger deployment of additional troops being ordered by the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to concentrate not just on killing Taliban fighters but on protecting the population.

Yet Taliban control of the countryside is so extensive in provinces like Kandahar and Helmand that winning districts back will involve tough fighting and may ignite further tensions, residents and local officials warn. The government has no presence in 5 of Helmand’s 13 districts, and in several others, like Nawa, it holds only the district town, where troops and officials live virtually under siege.

The Taliban’s influence is so strong in rural areas that much of the local population has accepted their rule and is  watching the United States troop buildup with trepidation. Villagers interviewed in late June said that they preferred to be left alone under Taliban rule and complained about artillery fire and airstrikes by foreign forces.“We Muslims don’t like them — they are the source of danger,” said a local villager, Hajji Taj Muhammad, of the foreign forces. His house in Marja, a town west of this provincial capital that has been a major opium trading post and Taliban base, was bombed two months ago, he said.

The southern provinces have suffered the worst civilian casualties since NATO’s deployment to the region in 2006. Thousands of people have already been displaced by fighting and taken refuge in the towns.

“Now there are more people siding with the Taliban than with the government,” said Abdul Qadir Noorzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in southern Afghanistan.

In many places, people have never seen or felt the presence of the Afghan government, or foreign forces, except through violence, but the Taliban are a known quantity, community leaders said.

“People are hostages of the Taliban, but they look at the coalition also as the enemy, because they have not seen anything good from them in seven or eight years,” said Hajji Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, a district council leader from Nadali in Helmand Province.

Foreign troops continue to make mistakes that enrage whole sections of this deeply tribal society, like the killing of a tribal elder’s son and his wife as they were driving to their home in Helmand two months ago. Only their baby daughter survived. The tribal elder, Reis-e-Baghran, a former member of the Taliban who reconciled with the government, is one of the most influential figures in Helmand.

The infusion of more American troops into southern Afghanistan is aimed at ending a stalemate between NATO and Taliban forces. The governor of Helmand, Gulab Mangal, said extra forces were needed since the Taliban were now so entrenched in the region that they had permanent bases.

Last year an American Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2,400 men secured a small but critical area in the district of Garmser in southern Helmand, choking off Taliban supply routes from the Pakistani border while reopening the town for commerce. The operation had a crippling effect on Taliban forces operating farther north in neighboring Oruzgan Province, according to Jelani Popal, who oversees local affairs for President Hamid Karzai’s government.

This year military officials hope to replicate that operation in more places, according to Lt. Gen. James Dutton, the British deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The extra forces will be critical to create confidence among the locals and persuade insurgents to give up the fight, said Mr. Mangal, the Helmand governor. Yet he and others warn that there will be more bloodshed and that the large influx of foreign forces could prompt a backlash.

In parts of Helmand and Kandahar, resentment and frustration are rampant. People who traveled to Lashkar Gah from the districts complained of continued civilian suffering and questioned American intentions. “They come here just to fight, not to bring peace,” said Allah Nazad, a farmer.

People from Marja said that foreign troops carrying out counternarcotics operations conducted nighttime raids on houses, sometimes killed people inside their homes, and used dogs that bit the occupants.

“The people are very scared of the night raids,” said Spin Gul, a local farmer. “When they have night raids, the people join the Taliban and fight.”

“Who are the Taliban? They are local people,” interjected another man, who did not give his name. One man, Hamza, said he would fight if foreigners raided his house. “I will not allow them,” he said. “I will fight them to the last drop of blood.”

Many do not side with the Taliban out of choice, however, and could be won over, community leaders said.

Fazel Muhammad, a member of the district council of Panjwai, an area west of Kandahar, said he knew people who were laying mines for the Taliban in order to feed their families. He estimated that 80 percent of insurgents were local people driven to fight out of poverty and despair. Offered another way out, only 2 percent would support the Taliban, he said.

Yet mistrust of the government remains so strong that even if the Taliban were defeated militarily, the government and the American-led coalition would find the population reluctant to cooperate, said Hajji Abdullah Jan, the leader of the provincial council of Helmand. “These people will still not trust the government,” he said. “Even if security is 100 percent, it will take time because the government did not keep its promises in the past.”

Should linking be illegal?

In a misguided attempt to aid newspapers, one of America’s most influential judges is suggesting a new copyright law

Dan Kennedy

Those who wish to keep the internet free and open had best dust off their legal arguments. One of America’s most influential conservative judges, Richard Posner, has proposed a ban on linking to online content without permission. The idea, he said in a blog post last week, is to prevent aggregators and bloggers from linking to newspaper websites without paying:

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

Posner’s notion set off an eruption from the likes of Jeff Jarvis, Matt Welch and Erick Schonfeld, among others. And they are right to be furious. Not only would Posner stop online media dead in their tracks, but he would also overturn long-established rules of fair use, which, among others things, allow for the reproduction of short excerpts of copyrighted material for the purposes of commentary, parody and the like – precisely what bloggers and aggregators do all the time.

And Posner, who sits on the seventh circuit court of appeals in Chicago, has a way of getting his way. A brilliant, provocative thinker and a frighteningly prolific writer, he was described in a 2001 New Yorker profile as “the most mercilessly seditious legal theorist of his generation”. And if, at 70, Posner and his generation are not quite so influential as they once were, he is still a formidable presence on the legal scene.

In something of an irony for journalists who might be inclined to cheer Posner’s latest, it was a 2003 opinion he wrote that helped cement journalists’ modern status as cultural and social pariahs. Posner’s decision in the case of McKevitt v Pallasch did more than any other to vanquish the idea that journalists called into court had some protection under the first amendment from having to reveal their confidential sources.

For a generation, journalists and their lawyers had relied upon the hazy wording of a 1972 supreme court case called Branzburg v Hayes, in which a bare majority ruled there was no reporter’s privilege. One of the majority, Lewis Powell, wrote what his fellow justice Potter Stewart called “an enigmatic concurring opinion” suggesting that maybe, in some cases, there was a privilege. As retired New York Times lawyer James Goodale explained in the Frontline documentary News Wars several years ago, media lawyers used Powell’s opinion to keep the reporter’s privilege on life support for more than 30 years until Posner, finally, pulled the plug.

As an appeals court judge, Posner could not, of course, overrule the supreme court. In McKevitt, though, he didn’t have to: he wrote that he had reread Branzburg and had come to the conclusion that, lo and behold, it meant what it said. No more reporter’s privilege, although the states were free to create their own through shield laws and state court precedents. (All except Wyoming have done so, many of them long before McKevitt. And Congress may create a federal shield law later this year.)

Posner’s opinion on copyright – expressed, thankfully, in a blog post rather than a ruling from the bench – has its roots in a celebrated essay he wrote for the New York Times Book Review in 2005 called Bad News. Although Posner was complimentary toward bloggers, and even asserted that their swarm-like verification system was superior in some ways to that of the traditional media, he nevertheless offered a few withering observations about where they get their material.

“The bloggers are parasitical on the conventional media,” Posner wrote. “They copy the news and opinion generated by the conventional media, often at considerable expense, without picking up any of the tab. The degree of parasitism is striking in the case of those blogs that provide their readers with links to newspaper articles. The links enable the audience to read the articles without buying the newspaper.”

Posner comes across as willfully blind to the ways in which bloggers and aggregators actually drive traffic to news sites, resulting in more readers seeing their content and, thus, their advertising. Yes, there are ways not to do it – the Boston Globe’s wholesale, automated aggregation of a competitor’s local content in a case settled out of court earlier this year comes to mind. But normal linking practices benefit everyone. The news business may be cratering, but it’s not the fault of those who link to newspaper content.

Fortunately, Posner this time can’t transform his desires into a judicial decree – his proposal would have to enacted in the form of an amendment to the copyright law. Unfortunately, such an idea is already making the rounds. Not to go all Kevin Bacon here, but Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz, who supports it, is married to Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, which led Jeff Jarvis to demand that Schultz register as a federal lobbyist.

The thing is, Congress has been known to act with great alacrity on copyright matters when they affect corporate interests. And newspaper owners have been remarkably successful in calling attention to their plight.

But though tax breaks, special non-profit status and other federal goodies will likely go nowhere, a law aimed squarely at the linking practices of sites such as Google News and the Huffington Post would probably prove popular, the facts be damned.

It’s ominous that those would push for such a law now have an ally as brilliant and influential as Posner. Keep a close eye on this one.

Court to Defendant: Stop Blasting That Man’s Mind!

• By David Hambling 

Late last year, James Walbert went to court, to stop his former business associate from blasting him with mind-altering electromagnetic radiation. Walbert told the Sedgwick County, Kansas panel that Jeremiah Redford threatened him with “jolts of radiation” after a disagreement over a business deal. Later, Walbert, said, he began feeling electric shock sensations, hearing electronically generated tones, and getting popping and ringing sounds in his ears. On December 30th, the court decided in Walbert’s favor, and issued a first-of-its-kind order of protection, banning Redford from using “electronic means” to further harass Walbert. No, seriously.

I recently took part in a BBC Radio 4 program, which took a light-hearted look into the “the real Manchurian Candidate” — and examined whether there is any truth in stories of mind control. It gave me a chance to talk about exotic non-lethal weapon concepts like the so-called telepathic raygun, the system which beams sound directly into your skull, and the “voice of god” talking fireball. Most of these projects are just lab experiments, or examples of Powerpoint engineering. But in some legal, policy, and business circles, electromagnetic brain assaults are being taken seriously.

Walbert’s cause is supported by Jim Guest, a Republican member of the Missouri House of Representatives. He’s working on proposed legislation to addresses electronic harassment, including a bill against the forced implantation of RFID chips.
The U.N. is also now taking the possibility of electromagnetic terrorism against people seriously. And for the first time this year’s European Symposium on Non-lethal Weapons included a session on the social implications of non-lethal weapons, with specific reference to “privacy-invasive remote interrogation and behavioral influence applications.” Those who believe they are being targeted are getting a bit of official recognition.

For some, this opens up a new business opportunity. There are already quite a few companies out there offering “Technical Surveillance Counter Measures,” or sweeps to determine if you are the victim of electronic harassment. As well detecting the usual bugging devices, they can check if you are being covertly bombarded by microwaves which may be the cause of “headache, eye irritation, dizziness, nausea, skin rash, facial swelling, weakness, fatigue, pain in joints and/or muscles, buzzing/ringing in ears.”

Much of this trade may come from people with symptoms caused by something less exotic than high-tech military hardware. But companies will no doubt be willing to sell them expensive protection measures, anyway. And as awareness of these developing technology projects increases, we are likely to be hearing a lot more about “electronic harassment,” “gang stalking” and the like over the next few years.

And there is also likely to be what folklorists call “Ostension,” or acting out. Now that there are so many websites explaining how easy it is to harass people by zapping them with a modified microwave oven, sooner or later someone is bound to try it.

[Photo: U.S. Army]

Court Recognizes Electronic Harassment:Protection Order for James Walbert

December 30, 2008

This could be the first official recognition of the need to protect citizens against electronic harassment. The following are comments from Julianne McKinney regarding the posted page scans:This is actually very impressive. Walbert persuaded the Court that the defendant was using electronic weapons against him and his family, in addition to resorting to obvious forms of stalking.He substantiated his claim with DoD documentation and had the support of a security specialist, who proved that electronic frequencies were involved, and, it would appear, the support of a couple of police officers. He also made use of letters from Missouri Representative, Jim Guest.

The outcome: The defendant failed to show up in court. The defendant has to pay all legal fees. The defendant may not employ 3rd-party means of re-establishing contact with Walbert (which would constitute multiple stalking), and may not employ any form of “electronic means” in harassing Walbert.

Walbert filed his complaint on November 25, 2008. The court decided the case on December 30, 2008.

Although this will probably not protect Walbert in the long term, he has obtained the first court-based acknowledgement of the existence of electronic weapons and of electronic harassment, that I know of.

Click each scanned image below for the court papers:

walbert1.jpg

walbert2.jpg

walbert3.jpg

walbert4.jpg

walbert5.jpg

walbert6.jpg

walbert7.jpg

walbert8.jpg

walbert9.jpg

walbert10.jpg

Way to go, James!

Court to Defendant: Stop Blasting That Man’s Mind!

• By David Hambling
• July 1, 2009  |
• 5:59 pm  |
• Categories: Bizarro, Lasers and Ray Guns, Less-lethal, Paper Pushers, Beltway Bandits, Politicians

Late last year, James Walbert went to court, to stop his former business associate from blasting him with mind-altering electromagnetic radiation. Walbert told the Sedgwick County, Kansas panel that Jeremiah Redford threatened him with “jolts of radiation” after a disagreement over a business deal. Later, Walbert, said, he began feeling electric shock sensations, hearing electronically generated tones, and getting popping and ringing sounds in his ears. On December 30th, the court decided in Walbert’s favor, and issued a first-of-its-kind order of protection, banning Redford from using “electronic means” to further harass Walbert. No, seriously.

I recently took part in a BBC Radio 4 program, which took a light-hearted look into the “the real Manchurian Candidate” — and examined whether there is any truth in stories of mind control. It gave me a chance to talk about exotic non-lethal weapon concepts like the so-called telepathic raygun, the system which beams sound directly into your skull, and the “voice of god” talking fireball. Most of these projects are just lab experiments, or examples of Powerpoint engineering. But in some legal, policy, and business circles, electromagnetic brain assaults are being taken seriously.

Walbert’s cause is supported by Jim Guest, a Republican member of the Missouri House of Representatives. He’s working on proposed legislation to addresses electronic harassment, including a bill against the forced implantation of RFID chips.
The U.N. is also now taking the possibility of electromagnetic terrorism against people seriously. And for the first time this year’s European Symposium on Non-lethal Weapons included a session on the social implications of non-lethal weapons, with specific reference to “privacy-invasive remote interrogation and behavioral influence applications.” Those who believe they are being targeted are getting a bit of official recognition.

For some, this opens up a new business opportunity. There are already quite a few companies out there offering “Technical Surveillance Counter Measures,” or sweeps to determine if you are the victim of electronic harassment. As well detecting the usual bugging devices, they can check if you are being covertly bombarded by microwaves which may be the cause of “headache, eye irritation, dizziness, nausea, skin rash, facial swelling, weakness, fatigue, pain in joints and/or muscles, buzzing/ringing in ears.”

Much of this trade may come from people with symptoms caused by something less exotic than high-tech military hardware. But companies will no doubt be willing to sell them expensive protection measures, anyway. And as awareness of these developing technology projects increases, we are likely to be hearing a lot more about “electronic harassment,” “gang stalking” and the like over the next few years.

And there is also likely to be what folklorists call “Ostension,” or acting out. Now that there are so many websites explaining how easy it is to harass people by zapping them with a modified microwave oven, sooner or later someone is bound to try it.

[Photo: U.S. Army]

Israel pisses on Britain (again) – and our craven leaders love it

---

By Stuart Littlewood

4 July 2009

Stuart Littlewood considers Israel’s latest act of piracy on the high seas – the seizure of an aid ship bound for Gaza and the kidnapping of its passengers and crew –  and highlights the complicity of the British government, which is forever fighting a rear-guard action on behalf of Israel.

“Nowadays you have to carefully pick your way through a veritable obstacle-course of pro-Zionists, Chosen Ones and Israeli stooges that inhabit every nook and cranny in the corridors of power and dominate Britain’s key defence bodies. These Israeli flag-wavers seem only too happy for the Israelis to piss on us – and on the rest of the world – while rewarding them with more and more trade and scientific co-operation.”

On Tuesday 30 June the Israeli navy, in a blatant act of piracy on the high seas, assaulted the vessel Spirit of Humanity and abducted six British nationals who were taking part in a voyage of mercy. The tiny unarmed ship was bringing a humanitarian cargo of medicines, children’s toys and reconstruction materials to the devastated people of Gaza.

Israel’s murderous 22-day offensive last December-January left more than 50,000 homes, 800 industrial properties, 200 schools, 39 mosques and two churches damaged or destroyed. The International Committee of the Red Cross says the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza are “trapped in despair”, unable to rebuild their lives because Israel, having wantonly wrecked their civil society and infrastructure, is blocking efforts to bring in the necessary repair materials. Those on board the Spirit of Humanity were acting in accord with donors’ pledges of 4.5 billion US dollars for reconstruction and rehabilitation and US President Obama’s request to Israel to let those supplies pass.

The mercy ship sailed from Larnaca, Cyprus, with a crew of 21 human rights activists, humanitarian workers and journalists from 11 different countries, including Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire and former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. In the early hours of Tuesday morning Israeli warships surrounded it and threatened to open fire if the crew didn’t turn back. When they refused to be intimidated, the Israelis jammed their instrumentation and blocked their GPS, radar and navigation systems, putting all lives at risk.

The ship had been searched and given security clearance by the port authorities in Cyprus before sailing, and posed no threat.

Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights, says the seizing of the Spirit of Humanity is unlawful and the continuing blockade of Gaza a crime against humanity. Yes, yes, Mr Falk. But the question as always is, what is your paralytic, useless organization doing about it? Or is hand-wringing all it’s good for?

Many here, including myself, immediately wrote to David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, about the outrage. Two days later I called the Palestine desk at the Foreign Office in London. The person I spoke to sounded uncomfortable having to trot out the same old gobbledegook about “working hard to resolve the problem” and “doing all we can”. He said the six Britons were in Israeli custody and nobody was sure where exactly the incident took place. However, the vessel was fitted with a SPOT GPS tracker, so the system should have a record of their position when attacked.

The real problem, as I suggested, is that Israel dares to kidnap Britons on the high seas and doesn’t fear the consequences – no doubt confident there won’t be any. I was reminded that Israel had issued warnings (and so had the Foreign Office) not to travel in that area. What area? Mustn’t one travel in international waters?

The spokesman assured me that progress was being made. There was “movement” on getting humanitarian supplies into Gaza, but I pointed out that nobody had seen any evidence of Israel conforming with international law and Geneva Conventions. He claimed there was also “movement” on halting settlements on occupied territory, although I observed that the Israelis had just endorsed more illegal building.

I also reminded him about the ramming of the MV Dignity on a similar mission by an Israeli gunboat on 30 December, 53 miles from shore, and how people here were still hopping mad that nothing had been done about it. The vessel, with 16 on board, was badly damaged and had to limp to a safe Lebanese port. As far as I know, there was never an offer of compensation and no demand from London. As usual, somebody else had to pick up the tab for Israel’s unbridled destruction.

The Dignity had a cargo of 3.5 tonnes of medical supplies, the majority donated by the Cyprus government, and a British skipper and a Greek mate. It carried 14 passengers, one of whom was Cynthia McKinney. There were also two surgeons and a Palestinian physician. A friend of mine was among them and wrote this chilling account of the attack…..

At 04.55 hrs EMT on 30 December, searchlights appeared astern. There were two Israeli gunboats. They came abreast, circled and stayed with us. These boats can do over 45 knots, carry ten tonnes of fuel and have sophisticated weapon systems including Hellfire missiles. Tracer bullets were fired skywards, forming ellipses, and flares put up. At 05.30 hrs approximately, one gunboat was playing its searchlight on the port side of Dignity. Suddenly there was a tremendous crash at the bow, and then another almost simultaneously, and another on the port beam… The bow dipped and it seemed the boat was breaking up. It was dark, the wind force was 4 to 5 and there was a 10ft sea. The master shouted “we have been rammed”. It was feared the boat would sink. He broadcast a Mayday distress signal; there was no response.

Cynthia McKinney and Caoimhe Butterly could not swim; the life jackets were rapidly deployed to all. The hull was taking water but bilge pumps were working. The first words from a commander of one of the gunboats came over the radio. First there was the accusation that the ship’s company was involved with terrorists and that it was subversive. Then there came the threat to shoot. The master was forbidden from making for Gaza or further south to El-Arish in Egypt. He was ordered to return to Larnaca – about 160 miles, even though the boat was badly damaged and the Israeli did not know whether there was sufficient fuel, which there was not. He set a northerly course and the boat stayed buoyant in a moderating sea. A crew member arranged with the Lebanese authorities for a safe harbour in Sour (Tyre) where jubilant crowds thronged the quays. A UNIFIL ship came out to escort us and the Israeli gunboats, which were following, fell back.

Was there lethal intent? A gunboat came out of the black of night with no lights showing whilst a searchlight from the other gunboat displayed our port hull as its target. It would have approached at about 30 degrees to the Dignity’s port and at speed. The intention to sink the Dignity and thus to drown its company was clear. If the hull had been GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic) it would have shattered and the boat would have sunk like a stone 53 nautical miles off Haifa. Fortunately, the hull was constructed of marine ply with timber ribs and survived… The ship’s company were repatriated except for a resolute Scot, Theresa McDermott. She was imprisoned in Ramleh gaol. When the British Consulate in Israel was contacted for assistance in finding Teresa, staff refused to help locate her saying they couldn’t provide assistance to a UK citizen unless she personally requested it. Teresa was released after six days, her “crime” probably being a member of the International Solidarity Campaign like Rachel Corrie before her.

My written question to Mr Miliband was simply this:

Why isn’t Her Majesty’s government providing the mercy ship Spirit of Humanity with an escort to protect against the unlawful, piratical interference and threat to life by the Israeli navy? There have been repeated incidents of harassment, damage, theft and armed aggression on the high seas or in Palestinian waters by the Israeli regime against unarmed vessels.

The British government has loudly pledged Royal Navy help to stop the “smuggling” of arms to the Gaza resistance but won’t protect Gaza’s fishermen from being fired on by Israeli marauders while trying to earn their living. And evidently the government can’t be bothered to protect our own people going about their lawful business.

But, sure enough, they kicked up an almighty fuss when Iran nabbed 15 British sailors two years ago for allegedly straying into Iranian waters.

For our sins we are saddled with a foreign secretary who calls for Israeli tank crewman Gilad Shalit’s release but not the release of 11,000 Palestinian civilians – some of them women and children – rotting in Israeli jails. He even allows the British ambassador to become a dogsbody of the Jewish community in this one-sided campaign. On 25 June Miliband said:

Today is the third anniversary of the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. Both British ministers and the British ambassador in Israel have had repeated contact with Gilad’s family and emphasized our support for Gilad’s immediate release. Last September, the ambassador helped to deliver over 2,000 Jewish New Year cards for Gilad to the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] as part of a campaign organized by the UK Jewish community. I repeat the UK’s call to Hamas for his immediate, unconditional, and safe release. We share the Shalit family’s dismay at Hamas’s refusal to allow the ICRC access to Gilad.

It’s shameful that his dismay doesn’t extend to the 11,000 Palestinian families.

British people are waking up to the truth about Israel’s lawlessness. In the absence of firm action from the British government they are taking reprisals of their own, in the form of boycotts, which has driven Mr Miliband to complain that “the Government is dismayed that motions calling for boycotts of Israel are being discussed at trade union congresses and conferences this summer”. He insists that boycotts “obstruct opportunities for co-operation and dialogue and serve only to polarize debate further. Boycotts would only make it harder to achieve the peace that both Palestinians and Israelis deserve and desire”.

Mr Miliband hasn’t learned the lesson of the last 61 years. And our prime minister-in-waiting, David Cameron (a Zionist and, like Brown and Blair, a patron of the Jewish National Fund), is no different. He says: “I think there’s something else we need to do, which is to say to our academics in this country that boycotts of Israel are completely unacceptable, and I think we also need to say that to the trade unions.”

Nowadays you have to carefully pick your way through a veritable obstacle-course of pro-Zionists, Chosen Ones and Israeli stooges that inhabit every nook and cranny in the corridors of power and dominate Britain’s key defence bodies. These Israeli flag-wavers seem only too happy for the Israelis to piss on us – and on the rest of the world – while rewarding them with more and more trade and scientific co-operation.

---

Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.

Russia Pulls Obama’s Chestnuts From the Fire, OKs Weapons Shipments

Russia OKs US arms shipments to Afghanistan

By NATALIYA VASILYEVA

MOSCOW (AP) – July 3, 2009 — Russia will allow the U.S. to ship weapons across its territory to Afghanistan, a top Kremlin aide said Friday in a gesture aimed at bolstering U.S. military operations and improving strained ties between Washington and Moscow.

The deal is expected to be signed during President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow next week, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko said.

Russia has been allowing the U.S. to ship non-lethal supplies across its territory for operations in Afghanistan and Kremlin officials had suggested further cooperation was likely.

Prikhodko told reporters that the expected deal would enable the U.S. to ship lethal cargo and would include shipments by air and land.

He said it was unclear if U.S. soldiers or other personnel would be permitted to travel through Russian territory or airspace.

“They haven’t asked us for it,” he said.

The normal supply route to landlocked Afghanistan via Pakistan has come under repeated Taliban attack and the U.S. and NATO have been eager to have an alternate overland supply route through Russia and the Central Asian countries.

Confirmation of such a deal appeared aimed at setting a constructive tone for the meetings between Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev on Monday and Tuesday. After years of increasing strain, both governments have expressed hope the summit will put ties between the former Cold War rivals back on track.

Serious rifts remain over other defense issues. The U.S. and Russia want to forge a nuclear arms reduction agreement to replace the 1991 START treaty, which expires in December.

But talks on a new treaty are complicated by Russia’s push for the U.S. to scrap the previous administration’s plans for missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe.

The U.S. says missile interceptors based in Poland and a related radar in the Czech Republic – if built – would be aimed to counter a potential Iranian threat and would not threaten Russia. Russia rejects those arguments and says the facilities would be aimed to weaken Russia’s nuclear deterrent.

Prikhodko said Medvedev and Obama are expected to sign a declaration of understanding that would set out guidelines for a new arms reduction treaty and would likely include specific target numbers.

He insisted that plans for further nuclear arms cuts and a possible U.S. missile shield in Europe are inextricably linked and that Russia wants the Obama administration to acknowledge that. U.S. officials have rejected Russia’s argument that cuts on offensive weapons must be linked with U.S. plans for missile defense.

“We would like the interconnection between START and missile defense to be described” in the declaration signed at the summit,” he said.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s spokesman also said that the two issues are interconnected and indicated Russia’s leaders would repeat their arguments in meetings with Obama, who is to hold talks with Putin as well as Medvedev.

Police State – The Militarization of the Police Force in USA

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Cynthia McKinney Calls From Israeli Prison Block

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The Honduran coup: another US destabilization operation

by Barry Grey and Rafael Azul
	.// <![CDATA[// // <![CDATA[//
Global Research, June 30, 2009
World Socialist Web Site

GOOD CHILD REARING ENDS WARS

The military likes kids who have been abused.

Was George W Bush deprived of sufficient loving hugs and kisses as a child?

Would Hitler have been a more peaceful citizen if he had been given lots of affection by his dad?

Reportedly, the Pentagon likes children to have an abusive childhood.

Children who have had a tough upbringing are more likely to make tough soldiers.

The military-industrial complex does not like soldiers who are civilised human beings.

In the 1940s, Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall claimed that only 15-20% of America’s World War II soldiers would use their weapons in battle.

Not enough soldiers were psychopaths. (On Killing, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, p. 4 – The Canadian National Newspaper: Twilight of the Psychopaths )

It has been suggested that the media has long been used by the Pentagon in connection with the brainwashing of the public.

The Dark Knight appears to be a piece of brainwashing, perhaps designed to toughen up our youth in preparation for future wars.

The CIA reportedly tries to manufacture violent kids. www.conspiracycards.com/mk_ultra.htm

Lloyd deMause in The Journal of Psychohistory, Winter 1998, refers to The History of Child Abuse.

The History of Child Abuse Lloyd deMause – The Journal of Psychohistory

6. “What kind of society might be envisioned by children brought up under the latest childrearing mode – what I have termed the helping mode – whereby a minority of parents are now trying to help their children reach their own goals at each stage of life, rather than socializing them into adult goals – is yet to be seen…

“That helping mode children grow up to be incapable of creating wars is also becoming evident from watching the anti-war activities of my children and those of their friends who have been brought up by other helping mode parents.

“For war is only understandable as a sacrificial ritual in which young men are sent by their parents to be hurt and killed as representatives of the independence-seeking parts of themselves.

“Psychohistorians have regularly found that images on the magazine covers and in political cartoons in the months prior to wars reveal fears of the nation becoming “too soft” and vulnerable, with images of dangerous women threatening to engulf and hurt people…

9. “That all social violence – whether by war, revolution or economic exploitation – is ultimately a consequence of child abuse should not surprise us.

“The propensity to reinflict childhood traumas upon others in socially-approved violence is actually far more able to explain and predict the actual outbreak of wars than the usual economic motivations, and we are likely to continue to undergo our periodic sacrificial rituals of war if the infliction of childhood trauma continues.

“Clear evidence has been published in The Journal of Psychohistory that the more traumatic one’s childhood, the more one is likely to be in favor of military solutions to social problems…”

10. “We cannot be content to only continue to do endless repair work on damaged adults, with more jails and police and therapists and political movements.

“Our task now must be to create an entirely new profession of “child helpers” who can reach out to every new child born on earth and help its parents give it love and independence…

” The success of parenting centers such as the one pioneered in Boulder, Colorado, for instance, has been astonishing.

“Through parenting classes and home visiting by paraprofessionals, they have measurably reduced child abuse, as shown by careful followup studies and by reduced police reports and hospital entrance rates.

“All this has been accomplished with very small monetary outlays, since these parent outreach centers operate mainly with volunteer labor, while it has the potential to save trillions of dollars annually in the costs of social violence, police enforcement, jails and other consequences of the widespread child abuse of today.

“Such a parent support movement would resemble the universal education movement of over a century ago…

“Do we really want to have massive armies and jails and emotionally crippled adults forever?

“Must each generation continue to torture and neglect its children so they repeat the violence and economic exploitation of previous generations?

“Why not achieve meaningful political and social revolution by first achieving a parenting revolution?

“If war, social violence, class domination and economic destruction of wealth are really revenge rituals for childhood trauma, how else can we remove the source of these rituals? How else end child abuse and neglect? How else increase the real wealth of nations, our next generation? How else achieve a world of love and laughter of which we are truly capable?”

In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful (Guest Editorial)

		[We all should treat the following as the first step toward invoking all the names of the One God (Peace Be Unto Him), inviting Him to heal the wounded hearts and sickened minds of all humankind. In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful Dear Brethren in the faith of the One Lord, our King the Almighty Allah (Eloah), the Incomparably Great, Most Holy, Most High I greet you with Peace. As’Salaamu Alaikum (Shalom) In the name of His Highest who is the sole Owner of all the Most Holy and Most Beautiful Names, Attributes/ Titles our Lord the Creator. I wish this letter, and open invitation receives you in the best of health. It is our common goal in faith to uphold all that is good and forbid all that is evil, this letter comes as a request for your cooperation in the common goals we share. As religious leaders, as dedicated believers and scholars of the Holy Scriptures from our Lord, as His agents on Earth it is our duty to protect, assist and guide mankind to that which is good. The world we live in today is filled with corruption, oppression and an evil that is flourishing amongst our people. It is our duty as religious leaders to uphold and encourage the common good of mankind. The problems we face in our world today is with substance abuse such as drugs, alcohol and a variety of un-Khosher (Haraam) things, unlawful sexual relations before marriage, sodomy and racial discrimination amongst our people. Our Creator has created only one race in mankind and that is the Human race, He divided us into many beautiful nations so we may know each other. Having said this I would like for us to work towards a common good and fight against all evils in unity as we await the coming of the Messiah, this, a token of our preparation for the End. For the Almighty Allah Says in the Holy Quran: Q2:62 “Those who believe (The Muslims) and those who are Jews and Christians, and Sabaeans whoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve.”, Q2:63 “And remember O Children of Israel, when We (Allah) have made a covenant with you and caused the Mount to tower above you, (saying): Hold fast that which We (Allah) have given you, and remember that which is therein, that ye may ward off evil.” The Almighty Allah says in the Holy Quran: Q5:44 “Lo! We did reveal the Torah, wherein there is guidance and a light, by which the Prophets who surrender to His will judge (rule) the Jews, and the rabbis and the priests (judged) by such of Allah’s Scripture as they were bidden to observe, and thereunto were they witness. So fear not mankind, but Fear Me. And batter not My revelations for a little gain. Whose judgeth not by that which Allah hath revealed: such are disbelievers. Q5:45 “Whoso judge not by that which Allah hath revealed: such as wrongdoers.” Q5:46 “We bestowed on him (Eesa / Jesus) the Gospel wherein is guidance and a light, confirming that which was revealed before it the Torah a guidance and an admonition unto those who ward off evil.” Q5:47 “Let the people of the Gospel judge by that which Allah hath revealed therein. Whoso judgeth not by that which Allah hath revealed; such are evil livers.” Q5:48 “And unto thee (Muslims) We (Allah) revealed the Scripture with the truth, confirming whatever Scripture was before it, and a watcher over it. So judge between them by that which Allah hath revealed, and follow not their desires away from the truth which hath come unto thee. For each We (Allah) have appointed a Shariah (divine law) and a traced out way. Had Allah willed He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which He hath given you. (He hath made you as ye are) So vie one with another in good works. Unto Allah ye will return, and He will then inform you of that wherein ye differ.” O People of the Scripture lend me an observant ear, we find in our midst today the evil doers promoting a law called democracy, for all they do and command by is said in the name of democracy and not in the Name of our Lord, in their evil system of law religion have no right to judge, in their system the religious head have been removed from the political scene. In this system called democracy the evils of corruption, sodomy, un-lawful sexual relations, theft and usury thrive as it feeds of the oppressed and innocent people. O people of the Scripture let us unite in the common good to ward of evil and stand united against all evils such as sodomism, oppression, corruption etc… and take back the Laws (Shariah) of Scripture, let us restore our family values and shift the world towards peace and a better understanding of all mankind in its beautiful diversity. O people of the Scripture the Shariah (Divine Laws) of the Almighty is complete and needs no adjustment, for it is made clear, it is free from any need for amendment. For our Lord says: “Whose judgeth not by that which Allah (Eloah) hath revealed: such are disbelievers.” As Muslims we believe in Allah and the Holy Quran revealed unto us, we believe in His Angels, His Prophets and all that revealed to them, some of which to mention are (the Zabur, Torah, Injeel “Gospels of the Bible”, and the completion of all that have gone before the Holy Quran), and we believe in the Last Day. We are Muslims (People who surrender to His will) We await, and look forward to your response. May the Almighty Allah guide us all. Fax: *********** Email:********** The United Muslim Nations International alfaarooq1 alfaarooq1@yahoo.com

Pakistani assault on Mehsud may not help US goals (But We’re Going to Make Them Do It Anyway)

Pakistani assault on Mehsud may not help US goals

* State Department says Mehsud’s elimination may bring forth leaders even more hostile to US

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Pakistan’s assault on Baitullah Mehsud’s South Waziristan stronghold may end in disappointment for the Obama administration, Daniel Markey, South Asia specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, has warned.

US officials “worry Pakistan may be biting off too much” by attacking Mehsud before defeating Taliban in the Swat valley. A State Department official told Bloomberg the US wants to see Pakistan restore sufficient control in Waziristan to counter Islamic extremism. But the goal is unlikely to be met, analysts say. If Mehsud can be captured or killed, he would likely be replaced by Taliban leaders even more eager to fight US forces in Afghanistan, Markey said.

While offensives in Swat and Bajaur have pushed back the Taliban, Pakistan has not restored the security and public services that might persuade the displaced residents to return.

The military offensives have so deepened Pakistan’s budget deficit that the government may seek another $4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, following a $7.6 billion bailout in November. The army has earlier failed to defeat the Taliban in South Waziristan with offensives in 2004 and 2007, but now aims to defeat Mehsud first and then other Taliban leaders sheltering Al Qaeda.“Most of the Al Qaeda now are in Bahadur’s territory”, a former official said.

Bahadur and Nazir, both from the Wazir tribe, have avoided hostilities with Pakistani forces, targeting mostly US forces in Afghanistan.

The military wants jirgas to select non-Taliban leaders who will cooperate with the government. However, Marvin Weinbaum, a South Asia specialist at the Middle East Institute, doubts a non-Taliban leadership can be built soon. Markey also said even as the army targets Mehsud, there were no signs that it was ready to take on Haqqani whose fighters battle in Afghanistan.

Jon Stewart Blasts Glenn Beck & Antiwar.com’s Michael Scheuer

Jon Stewart Blasts Glenn Beck & Michael Scheuer For Promoting Slaughter Of Americans (VIDEO)

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[Learning the truth about "former" CIA agent (Who writes for Antiwar.com and AsiaTimes) Michael Scheuer, an oldie but still not moldie.]

CIA Agent Sees Dead People

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Written by Peter Chamberlin

Apparently, Osama bin Laden and former CIA agent Michael Scheuer have a mutual respect for each other’s intellect. In one of bin Laden’s latest videos, he said,

“If you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer in this regard.”

Here is Scheuer’s take on Osama:
“For nearly a decade now, bin Laden demonstrated patience, brilliant planning, managerial expertise, sound strategic and tactical sense, admirable character traits, eloquence, and focused, limited war aims. He has never, to my knowledge, behaved or spoken in a way that could be described as irrational in the extreme.”

Here we have a “former” CIA man, claiming to be an opponent of administration war policies, speaking as a foremost expert on bin Laden, because of his position on the “bin Laden unit.” He validates the latest bin Laden videos with his expertise, without ever acknowledging facts about al Qaida and their leader – the nature of the real threat vs. the created perception, the death of bin Laden, al Qaida the database, the builders and instructors of the Pakistani/Afghani insurgent training camps. In his book Imperial Hubris, written under the penname “Anonymous,” Scheuer paints a shocking portrait of camps that he claims were built by bin Laden, when, in truth, he knows that these are all CIA built facilities, including the notorious Tora Bora (where bin Laden is allegedly buried), the camps in the Swat Valley in Northwest Pakistan, the scene of ongoing confrontations and under the watchful eyes of a new American super base which is under construction near there.

Scheuer’s book had to be cleared by the company before he could publish it, meaning that there is nothing in his book that the CIA does not want to become public knowledge. His information on the insurgent training camps comes from an article from the New York Times, entitled “Turning Out Guerrillas and Terrorists to Wage a Holy War,” detailing the training that was provided by American instructors to Afghan insurgents (although both attributed the training to al Qaida).

“C.J. Chivers and David Rohde explained that ‘American tactics and training became integral parts of the [al Qaeda] schools,’ that instruction was standardized so ‘courses taught in different languages and hundreds of miles apart . . . were identical,’ They all have the same basic skills. . . and received funds from Gulf donors to cover costs” (never mentioning that the Gulf donors were matching US funds).

Like Scheuer, the Times ignored the fact that al Qaida did not exist before 1999, according to experts like director of Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, Yossef Bodansky. Scheuer quotes from the Times:

“The main function of the camps was and is to produce quality and uniform religious and paramilitary — or insurgent — training to young Muslims…Since the mid- 1980s, the camps have produced large numbers of skilled fighters — who then return home to fight and train others — not swarms of Terrorists. The terrorists trained in the camps are more accurately viewed as al Qaeda’s urban warfare arm, or special forces. The camps’ dual-production capability has been obvious for nearly thirty years, but this was little noticed in a West fixated on the small number of terrorists these camps produced. That the camps were producing far larger numbers of well-trained insurgents did not receive a serious think-through — and still has not — and, meanwhile, the trainees learned, according to documents captured in Afghanistan, how to use: AK-47s, Stinger missiles, GPS systems, advanced land navigation, RPGs, map reading, demolition techniques, celestial navigation, hand-to-hand combat techniques, trench digging, weapons deployments, escape and evasion techniques, first aid, scientific calculations to plot artillery fire, first aid, secure communications, et cetera, et cetera.”

The “et cetera,” part that Scheuer left out from the New York Times referred to the training that the mujahedeen had received from a United States Army Special Forces manual which showed ”methods for fabricating explosives, detonators, propellants, shaped charges [you know, the ones that only Iran is capable of constructing], small arms, mortars, incendiaries, delays, switches and similar items from indigenous materials.”

The training included detailed knowledge for advanced terrorism, like manufacturing explosives from common household items and the conversion of basic electronic items like watches, toy remote controllers, and other items into sophisticated triggering systems – the knowledge that has spread from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond, has served as the basis for traps that have killed American troops, even shaped charges. The camps trained paramilitary soldiers and hi-tech “super terrorists.”

The Times article notes the excellence of the military training for a “ragged band of fanatics, had achieved a level of competence that American military officials say was on par with the world’s best guerrilla forces…One senior military instructor noticed a familiar streak of professionalism ‘Wherever they got this, it was modeled after somebody’s program. It was not made by some guys on some goat farm outside of Kabul.”’

Scheuer promotes the vision of the camps that the CIA wants us to believe, that of Islamic camps producing assassins and suicide bombers, while the virtuous American government and CIA did nothing about it. The army of non- Afghan Muslims and hundreds of paramilitary trainers who came out of these camps is blamed on Islamists who were brought together by us, but the CIA, as usual, tries to maintain “plausible deniability” in relation to the Afghan/Soviet war and the “Islamic threat” we created, which grew out of it. The former head of the CIA’s “Bin Laden Unit” wants us to believe in the tortured claims of Shaykh al-Libi (that had been proven false by the time he wrote his book) “the camps housed WMD experts who were building weapons and training others to do so or to use them,” even after it had become common knowledge within the US intelligence community that the charge was false.

Newsweek confirmed that a copy of the DIA report “would have been sent” to the Bush administration’s National Security Council. The CIA also produced a document containing similar conclusions about al-Libi in January 2003, Hubris came out in 2004.

As the most widely recognized expert on bin Laden, Scheuer validates each new “bin Laden tape.” Do you think that the evil bastard appearing in the upper pictures is the same guy in the lower photos, taken from the latest “bin Laden” videos?

Here is Scheuer’s latest defense of his hero:

“Analysis of Osama bin Laden”

by Michael Scheuer

“The September 7 release of a new video statement by Osama bin Laden puts to rest, at least for now, widespread speculation that he is dead, retired, or has been pushed aside by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. With a newly trimmed and dyed beard, comfortable robes rather than a camouflage jacket, and a clear and patient speaking style, bin Laden achieved a major purpose of his speech before he said a word: he clearly showed Muslims and Americans that he was still alive, that he was healthy and not at death’s door, that he spoke from secure surroundings unthreatened by the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, and that he, al-Qaeda and their allies were ready to continue the war. As usual, this message was wrapped in an as-Sahab Productions video displaying high level production values.”

In the same article, Scheuer attempts to extend his power to validate terrorist videos that comes from his experience with bin Laden, to that of the Israeli/al Qaida spokesman, Adam Pearlman (a.k.a. Adam Gadahn, a.k.a. Azzam al-Amriki) and Ayman al-Zawahiri (alleged to be a CIA/MI6 asset). While Scheuer was attempting to vouch for both bin Laden and Pearlman, his former associates still at the bureau were denouncing the latest tape as a hoax:

“American spy chiefs were quick to name Adam Gadahn, the head of al-Qaeda’s English language media operations, as the author of large sections of bin Laden’s broadcast… A former senior US intelligence official said: “It has Adam Gadahn written all over it.” Mike Baker, a former CIA covert operations officer, said the tape left bin Laden with “the title of biggest gas bag in the terrorist world”.

Despite this, CIA officials claimed that voice analysis of the tape proved it was definitely bin Laden’s voice, even though they failed to point out evidence of why this could not be, or the gaps in the video and audio segments, as well as the obvious editing errors which were uncovered.

Jumping back to Imperial Hubris, we watch Scheuer dance around the issue of the problems created for us, by the camps that we did not build, and the insurgents that we did not train in advanced terror tactics:

“Completing the picture, we have learned since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan that camps also were dedicated to training Tajiks, Uzbeks, Chechens. and Uighurs. In Afghanistan, then, camps training Islamist insurgents numbered many more than those belonging to al Qaeda and the Taleban, and together they built a store of trouble for the United rotes and the West by preparing men to fight in current insurgencies and ones not yet begun. Many observers, however, still have trouble absorbing the fact that there is a huge cadre of camp-trained Islamist insurgents available around the world — a veteran force in being, if you will, ready to deploy whenever and wherever the opportunity arises.”

(The database of that huge cadre is called “al Qaida.” )

George Crile’s expose, was released at the same time as Hubris , it confirmed that the camps in question were CIA/ISI (Pakistani secret service). The deadly training that Scheuer described in his book was carried on from American programs, such as the infamous CIA jihadi textbooks, produced at the University of Nebraska, which remained the curriculum there, even after the Taliban were evicted. Textbooks for children that were a combination of indoctrination in radical Islam and weapons training are at the core of America’s problems with radical Islam in Pakistan.

In their article “From the USA, the ABCs of jihad,” in the Washington Post, Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway describe the Jihadi textbooks made in the American Bible/corn belt:

“Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID [Agency for International Development] grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994…Under this Jihadism project, the images and talk of resistance to occupation were craftily intermingled with regular education:

Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited US interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders…One page from the texts of that period shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier’s head is missing. Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin [sic], who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.

The United States’ Jihadism successfully transformed Afghan children into true freedom fighters…”

Then we have secretive American government figures, like Congressman Charlie Wilson and Zbigniew Brzezinski (the self-proclaimed father of the anti-Soviet jihad idea) traveling to the secret camps in Pakistan to cheer the Afghans on, telling them “God is on your side,” as seen in the following:

Another important piece of investigative journalism, Triple Cross, by Peter Lance, reveals some of the little-known CIA al Qaida connections, in particular, that of Ali Mohamed:

” In the years leading to the 9/11 attacks, no single agent of al Qaeda was more successful in compromising the U.S. intelligence community than a former Egyptian army captain turned CIA operative, Special Forces advisor, and FBI informant named Ali Mohamed [a.k.a. Ali Amiriki, or "Ali the American"]. Spying first for the Central Intelligence Agency and later the FBI, Mohamed even succeeded in penetrating the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg — while simultaneously training the cell that blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 [taught Ramsey Yousef, cousin of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged planner of 9/11]. He lived the quiet life of a Silicon Valley computer executive while slipping off to Afghanistan and the Sudan to train some of al Qaeda’s most lethal terrorists in bomb-making and assassination tradecraft — much of that time maintaining his status as an FBI informant who worked his Bureau control agent like a mole…A deep-penetration al Qaeda sleeper, he succeeded as a triple agent, gaining access to the most sensitive intelligence in the U.S. counter-terrorism arsenal.” – Peter Lance

There you have it, Ali, a CIA double-agent, was key to bringing the camps run by bin Laden up to American standards for paramilitary training. He also gave bin Laden’s agents access to top secret intelligence which he had access to in the Army, while in the employ of the FBI, he was also working for the CIA to improve the lethality of al Qaida. The hidden hand of the CIA is becoming visible in every step that America has taken over the years to create a believable new enemy for us, in the form of international Islamist extremism, to replace the Soviet bogeyman that the damned mujahedeen we trained so well took from us.

Thanks to the CIA’s hard efforts to create a potential enemy out of a peaceful religion, and especially to the efforts of loyal “retired” spooks, like Michael Scheuer, we are about to witness what the fascist neoconservatives like Michael Ledeen meant when they urged “total war” on us, as the path to victory in the war on terror. In this, Scheuer and the neocons are in complete agreement. Instead of acknowledging what has taken place in the past and trying to correct the mistakes, Scheuer joins those extremists calling for us to wage total war upon Islam, as a necessary evil, to preserve our gluttonous American way of life:

“America is in a war for survival. Not survival in terms of protecting territory, but in terms of keeping the ability to live as we want, not as we must.”

The hellish scenario described in the following passage should give sane people nightmares:

“We will have to use military force in the way Americans used it… from skies over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress will be measured by pace of killing and, yes, by body counts. Not the fatuous body counts of Vietnam, but precise counts that will run to extremely large ambers. The piles of dead will include as many or more civilians as combatants because our enemies wear no uniforms. Killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills — all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. Land mines, moreover will be massively reintroduced to seal borders and mountain passes too long, high, or numerous to close with U.S. soldiers. As noted, such actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows. Again, this sort of bloody-mindedness is neither admirable nor desirable, but it will remain America’s only option so long as she stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world.”

We are seeing the first steps in that desired war escalation in the recent announcement that large numbers of Special Forces were moving into Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, to train paramilitary forces and more Islamic militias to fight the other Islamists that we had previously trained. The CIA plot to create a credible enemy that would fight against US Army and Marine troops has started to bear fruit. Their plan is working, Americans are being killed by American-trained Islamists all over the place. If Congress allows it to go forward (both Democrats and Republicans will support the plan enthusiastically), this may prove to be the elusive path to world war III that Cheney and the neocons have been frantically searching for. At least that’s what New Delhi news analyst Aijaz Ahmad foresees as Pakistan’s fate, if it fails to “disengage from the US war on terrorism.”

Ahmad spells-out the obvious conclusion about reviving the original CIA program to train and radicalize Islamists and to wage war in Pakistan –

“There is no military solution in Pakistan, just as there was no military solution in Iraq, Afghanistan, or on the nuclear issue with Iran.”

Western Governments Funding Taliban & Al-Qaeda To Kill U.S. Troops, Destabilize Countries

Western Governments Funding Taliban & Al-Qaeda To Kill U.S.

Troops, Destabilize Countries

Friday, 03 July 2009 03:27 Paul Joseph Watson

Recent revelations concerning the U.S. importing Taliban members into Iraq to foster false flag terrorism is merely the tip of the iceberg when compared to the U.S. intelligence complex’s multi-decade history in sponsoring Sunni Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist groups around the world.

Wayne Madsen recently revealed how Taliban fighters were being imported from Afghanistan into Iraq to attack civilians and U.S. soldiers, as well as how Muqtada al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi Army was being allowed to import materials to make IEDs.

However, this is just one aspect of how the U.S. has used terrorist groups as pawns on the global chessboard, moving them around the globe in line with their geopolitical objectives.

As is voluminously documented, the U.S. first worked covertly with Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan from 1979-1989.

Following this, the Al-Qaeda pawns were moved on to Bosnia shortly after the outbreak of war in 1992 to fight against Bosnian Serbs who were subsequently the target of NATO air strikes.

Following the end of the war, “hundreds of Bosnian passports were provided to the mujahedeen by the Muslim-controlled government in Sarajevo,” according to Lenard Cohen, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University. This all happened with the approval of the United Nations and the United States, who had brokered the peace deal to end the war.

“They also set up secret terrorist training camps in Bosnia — activities financed by the sale of opium produced in Afghanistan and secretly shipped through Turkey and Kosovo into central Europe,” reports the National Post.

Shortly before the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Sunni terrorist groups moved into Kosovo, Serbia’s southern province, to aid the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Albanian terrorist faction that was being supported by the U.S. and NATO in its terror campaign against Serbs in the region.

“The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo,” reports the Post.

With the help of Bin Laden’s terror network, backed up by the U.S. and NATO, no less than 90% of Serbians were “ethnically cleansed” and forced to leave the region, while the international media played its role dutifully in portraying the Albanians as the “victims” of Serbian aggression.

As Professor Michel Chossudovsky writes, “The fact of the matter is that the Atlantic Alliance had been supporting a terrorist organization. The KLA was not supporting the rights of ethnic Albanians. Quite the opposite. The activities of this terrorist organization on the ground, in Kosovo, provided NATO and the US with the pretext to intervene on humanitarian grounds, claiming that the Serb authorities had committed human rights violations against ethnic Albanians, when in fact the NATO sponsored KLA was involved in terrorist acts on behalf of NATO, which triggered a response from the Serb police and military.”

Barely weeks before 9/11, former members of Al-Qaeda who had subsequently joined the Kosovo Liberation Army were airlifted out of Macedonia by U.S. paratroopers.

As German sources reported, “Samedin Xhezairi, also known as Commander Hoxha, joined the Kosovo Liberation Army when armed conflict in Kosovo began, fighting in three operation zones. He was a fighter in Chechnya, trained in Afghanistan and acted as the commander of the Mujahideen 112th Brigade operating in the summer of 2001 in the region of Tetovo [Macedonia]. In August of the same year 80 members of the 3/502 battalion of U.S. paratroopers evacuated him from Aracinovo [Macedonia], together with his Albanian extremists and 17 instructors of the U.S. private military company MPRI which was training the Albanian paramilitary formations.”

“In other words, the US military was collaborating with Al Qaeda, which according to the Bush administration was involved in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. Yet, the US military was working hand in glove with “enemy number one” barely a few weeks before 9/11, and we are led to believe that the Bush administration is committed to waging a battle against Al Qaeda,” wrote Chossudovsky.

Following the invasion of Afghanistan, MSNBC reported that in November 2001, hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters were rescued from Kunduz and flown out on Pakistani air force cargo planes. This could not have possibly happened without the approval of U.S. forces who had secured the region.

With the U.S. now attacking targets in Pakistan under the pretext of going after the Taliban, the lineage of how this situation developed, with the U.S. moving their pawns around the globe at the most opportune times, can be clearly traced.

All the more revealing therefore were the comments of Qari Zainuddin, a former Taliban leader who defected to the Pakistani government, alleging that the Taliban were senselessly attacking civilian targets and that they were working with U.S. and Israeli intelligence. A few days after he dropped this bombshell, Zainuddin was shot dead.

Meanwhile, in Iran, A senior member of the Jundullah terrorist group confessed in an Iranian court case to being trained and financed by the U.S. and Israel.

Jundullah is a Sunni Al-Qaeda offshoot organization that was formerly headed by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Under the 2007 program aimed at destabilizing Iran and fomenting regime change, the U.S. government is arming and bankrolling Jundullah to carry out terrorist attacks in Iran, such as the May bombing of a mosque in Sistan-Baluchestan which killed 25 people.

In addition, the fingerprints of another U.S. sponsored terror group, Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), which was formerly allied with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, have been found in the recent election unrest in Iran. In addition to supporting terror groups from Iraq, the Anglo-American establishment has also staged terror attacks, such as the February 2006 Samarra mosque bombing.

And if there aren’t enough terrorists in supply, why not just dress up and pretend to be them? That’s what two British SAS members did when they were caught dressed in Arab garb with fake beards, driving a car full of explosives while shooting at Iraqi police officers in Basra in September 2005.

After the SAS men were caught in the act and taken to jail, U.S. and British forces launched a rescue operation, blowing up half the prison and allowing 150 inmates to escape.

All over the Middle East and the Balkans, from Afghanistan, to Bosnia, to Serbia, to Pakistan, to Iraq and to Iran, the United States, through black budget programs, has funded and armed Sunni Al-Qaeda terrorist groups to destabilize and topple regimes targeted by the Anglo-American establishment.

This documented fact debunks the “war on terror” as a cruel hoax and exposes how current events in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran are being carefully orchestrated while the media sells the public on the belief that manufactured sock-puppet enemies, and not geopolitical domination and control of resources and the global drug trade, are why these wars are being fought, when in reality groups like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are firmly in the pocket of the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Source: Infowars

nineteen eighty-four 1984

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Your Daily Dose of Government B.S., Playing the Double-Game

Ahmadzai Wazirs to abide by peace deal

The tribe will abide by the deal signed with the govt in 2007 and will not attack security forces in its areas.—AP

Provinces

Peace deal ends

WANA: The Ahmadzai Wazir tribe of South Waziristan announced on Thursday that it would abide by the peace deal signed with the government in 2007 and would not attack security forces in its areas.

The tribe took the decision after its 120 elders and notables met Political Agent Syed Shahab Ali Shah and other senior officials in Wana.

Officials claimed that a group of elders had earlier met militant commander Maulvi Nazir and held ‘successful’ talks with him.

However, sources close to Maulvi Nazir, a staunch supporter of the Taliban movement, expressed ignorance about any such meeting.

Maulvi Nazir, who won government backing after he had launched an armed campaign against Uzbek militants in 2007, joined Baitullah Mehsud and Hafiz Gul Bahadur and formed a united front in February this year, pledging to fight their common ‘enemy’.

The sources said the Ahmadzai Wazir jirga was a part of government’s attempt to isolate Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.

The government came under pressure when Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who was in its good books, scrapped the peace agreement in North Waziristan and claimed responsibility for the June 28 attack on a military convoy in which 27 soldiers were killed.

Assistant Political Agent Abdul Ghafoor Shah described Thursday’s jirga as successful and said that Ahmadzai Wazir tribesmen would work for peace in their area.

The political administration released six tribesmen as a goodwill gesture at the request of the jirga.

The jirga decided that Ahmadzai Wazir tribesmen would fulfill their collective and territorial responsibilities and support government’s effort for peace in the area.

APP adds: The Ahmadzai Wazir tribe announced that it would cooperate with the government in its efforts to restore peace in South Waziristan. The jirga was held in the office of assistant political agent in Garmai Wana.

Jirga members Malik Ghazi Mohammad and Malik Sorat Khan told reporters that Maulvi Nazir had agreed to stand by the peace agreement in view of the situation in South Waziristan and to work for peace in Wana under the prevailing laws.

Political Agent Syed Shahab Ali Shah confirmed that the peace agreement would remain intact.

The tribesmen said the decision would be of great help in restoring peace in South Waziristan and eradicating the menace of terrorism.

Why Jerusalem? – Israel’s Hidden Agenda

Friday, 03 July 2009 09:20 Dan Lieberman

Three huge granite stones rest comfortably on the top of Midbar Sinai Street, in Givat Havatzim, Jerusalem’s northernmost district. Cut to specification, the imposing stones represent one of several preparations by the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement’s to erect a Third Temple on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. Since the Islamic Wafq owns and controls all the property on the Haram al-Sharif, by what means can these stones be transferred to the Temple Mount and how can a Temple be constructed there? Not by any legal means. The stones are a provocation, which the Israel government refuses to halt. Neglect and passivity lead to a belief that an eventual Muslim reaction to the increasing provocations will give Israel an excuse to seize total control of the Holy Basin – the ultimate of the properties that Israel intends to incorporate into a greater Jerusalem.

For decades, Israeli authorities have spoken of a united Jerusalem – suggesting a spiritual quality to its message – as if Israel wants the home for the three monotheistic faiths to be solid and stable. By being guided from one central authority, a united Jerusalem also offers a preservation of a common and ancient heritage. However, by stressing the word ‘unification,’ Israel disguises the lack of a sufficiently supporting and verifiable historical narrative that could bolster its thrust to incorporate all of an artificially created greater Jerusalem into its boundaries. Coupled with inconsistencies and contradictions, Israel’s eagerness to create a greater Jerusalem under its total control becomes suspect. The intensive concentration on a ‘united’ Jerusalem reveals a hidden agenda that debases Jerusalem’s religious ingathering and heightens division, hatred and strife.

Examine the Holy Basin. The Holy Basin contains well marked Christian and Muslim institutions and holy places that have had historical placement for millenniums. Although people of the Jewish faith had major presence in Jerusalem during the centuries of Biblical Jerusalem, which included rule by King Hezekiah and control by the Hasmonean dynasties, their control and presence were interrupted for two millennia. Extensive commentary has enabled the two thousand years of lack of control and presence to seem as if it never happened and that today is only a short time from the years of Hezekiah. Some remains of Jewish dwellings and ritual baths can be found, but few if any major Jewish monuments, buildings or institutions from the Biblical era exist in the “Old City” of today’s Jerusalem. The often cited Western Wall is the supporting wall for Herod’s platform and is not directly related to the Second Temple. No remains of the Jewish Temple have been located in Jerusalem – not even a rock.

According to Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem, Jews did not pray at the Western Wall until the Mamluks in the 15th century allowed them to move their congregations from a dangerous Mount of Olives and pray daily at the Wall. At that time she estimates that there may have been no more than 70 Jewish families in Jerusalem. After the Ottomans replaced the Mamluks, Suleiman the Magnificent issued a formal edict in the 16th century that permitted Jews to have a place of prayer at the Western Wall.

The only remaining major symbol of Jewish presence in Jerusalem’s Holy City is the Jewish quarter, which Israel cleared of Arabs and rebuilt after 1967. During its clearing operations, Israel demolished the Maghribi Quarter adjacent to the Western Wall, destroyed the al-Buraq Mosque and the Tomb of the Sheikh al-Afdhaliyyah, and displaced about 175 Arab families. Although the Jewish population in previous centuries comprised a large segment of the Old City (estimates have 7000 Jews during the mid-19th century), the Jews gradually left the Old City and migrated to new neighborhoods in West Jerusalem, leaving only about 2000 Jews in the Old City. Jordanian control after the 1948 war reduced the number to nil. By 2009, the population of the Jewish quarter in the Old City had grown to 3000, or nine percent of the Old City population. The Christian, Armenian and Muslim populations are the principal constituents and their quarters contain almost the entire Old City commerce.

In an attempt to attach ancient Israel to present day Jerusalem, Israeli authorities  continue the attachment of spurious labels to Holy Basin landmarks, while claiming the falsification is due to the Byzantines, who got it all wrong.

King David’s Tower’s earliest remains were constructed several hundred years after the Bible dates David’s reign. It is a now an obvious Islamic minaret.

King David’s Citadel earliest remains are from the Hasmonean period (200 B.C.). The Citadel was entirely rebuilt by the Ottomans between 1537 and 1541.

King David’s tomb, located in the Dormition Abbey, is a cloth-covered cenotaph (no remains) that honors King David. It’s only an unverified guess that the casket is related to David.

The Pools of Solomon, located in a village near Bethlehem, are considered to be part of a Roman construction during the reign of Herod the Great. The pools supplied water to an aqueduct that carried the water to Bethlehem and to Jerusalem.

The Stables of Solomon, under the Temple Mount, are assumed to be a construction of vaults that King Herod built in order to extend the Temple Mount platform.

Absalom’s Tomb is an obvious Greek sculptured edifice and therefore cannot be the tomb of David’s son.

The City of David contains artifacts that date before and during David’s time. However, some archaeologists maintain there is an insufficient number of artifacts to conclude any Israelite presence, including that of King David, before the late ninth century. In any case any Israelite presence must have been in a small and unfortified settlement.

The Jerusalem Archaeological Park within the Old City, together with the Davidson Exhibition and Virtual Reconstruction Center also tell the story. Promising to reveal much of a Hebrew civilization, the museums shed little light on its subject. The Davidson Center highlights a coin exhibition, Jerusalem bowls and stone vessels. The Archeological Park in the Old City contains among many artifacts, Herodian structures, ritual baths, a floor of an Umayyad palace, a Roman road, Ottoman gates, and the façade of what is termed Robinson’s arch, an assumed Herodian entryway to the Temple Mount. The exhibitions don’t reveal many, if any, ancient Hebrew structures or institutions of special significance.

Reliable archaeologists, after examining excavations that contain pottery shards and buildings, concluded that archaeological finds don’t substantiate the biblical history of Jerusalem and its importance during the eras of a united Jewish kingdom under David and Solomon.

Margaret Steiner in an article titled It’s Not There: Archaeology Proves a Negative in the Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August, 1998, states:

“…from the tenth century B.C.E. there is no archaeological evidence that many people actually lived in Jerusalem, only that it was some kind of public administrative center…We are left with nothing that indicates a city was here during their supposed reigns (of David and Solomon)…It seems unlikely, however, that this Jerusalem was the capital of a large state, the United monarchy, as described in Biblical texts.”

West Jerusalem is another matter. With banditry prolific and Old City gates being closed before nightfall, living outside the city gates did not appeal to the population. Wealthy philanthropist Moses Montefiore wanted to attract the Jewish population to new surroundings and he constructed the first Jewish community outside of the Old City – Yemin Moshe’s first houses were completed in 1860. From that time Jewish presence played a role in creating a West Jerusalem. Other institutions, Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Russian Orthodox and Muslim soon ventured forth and owned much property in the evolving West Jerusalem.

In 1948, After the Israeli army seized absolute control of West Jerusalem, the new Israeli government confiscated all West Jerusalem property owned by Muslim institutions. Reason – enemy property. Few Muslims and no mosques remain in today’s West Jerusalem.

One contradiction. By attacking and ethnically cleansing the Christian Arab communities of Deir Yassin and Ein Kerem, Israeli forces characterized Christian Palestinians as an enemy. Nevertheless, Israel did not confiscate Christian properties, many of which are apparent in West Jerusalem. The Greek Orthodox Church owns extensive properties in West Jerusalem, many marked by its “TΦ” (Tau + Phi) symbol, interpreted as the word ‘Sepulchre.’

Another contradiction. Israel has cared for the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives and expanded it as a heritage site. Part of the famous Muslim Mamilla cemetery in West Jerusalem has been classified as refugee property and is being prepared to be demolished for the new Museum of Tolerance.

East Jerusalem reveals more contradictions. The repeated warning by Israeli leaders that co-existence is not feasible and that it is necessary to separate the Jewish and Palestinian communities is contradicted by Israel’s desire to incorporate East Jerusalem into Israel. Incorporation means accepting somewhere between 160,000 and 225,000 Palestinians into a Jewish state. Or does it? Whereas the older historical Jewish neighborhoods in West Jerusalem have their character meticulously maintained or are rebuilt in their original style, the older Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem are entirely neglected (all of Arab East Jerusalem is neglected) or destroyed. How much deterioration and destruction can Palestinians absorb before they decide to leave?

Construction of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods proceeds and destruction of Arab homes, either declared illegally constructed or illegally purchased, continues. On 44 dunums of lands confiscated from Palestinian families, a private company has constructed the gated community of Nof Zion, and conveniently separated Palestinian Jabal Al Mukabir from other parts of East Jerusalem. No Arabs need apply. The million dollar condominiums are advertised for American investors.

The Israeli ministry of Interior has approved a plan to demolish a kindergarten and wholesale market in East Jerusalem’s Wadi Joz neighborhood in order to construct a new hotel close to the Old City and near the Rockefeller Museum. The result will be the destruction of an Arab neighborhood and its replacement by Jewish interests, which will one day join other Jewish interests.

These are only two examples of a master plan to replace the centuries old Arab presence in East Jerusalem with a modern Jewish presence. The ancient Arab presence in an ancient land is further subdivided by the Separation Wall, which runs through the East Jerusalem landscape and detaches East Jerusalem from the West Bank, making it unlikely for a Palestinian state to have its capital in East Jerusalem. The master plan extends the boundaries of Jerusalem to include the large Israeli settlement (city) of Maale Adumim. Between Maale Adumim and East Jerusalem, Israel proposes to construct the E1 corridor, which joins settlements in a ring and adds to the separation of East Jerusalem from the West Bank. The E1 corridor will divide the northern and southern West Bank and will impede direct transit between Palestine Bethlehem, which is south of E1 and Palestine Ramallah, which is north of E1. Construction of the E1 corridor, portions of which are owned by Palestinians, could prevent the formation of a viable Palestinian state.

So, if Israel is destroying Jerusalem’s heritage and subjugating its spiritual meaning, why does Israel want to unify Jerusalem?

Israel’s Hidden Agenda

Israel is a physically small and relatively new country with an eager population and big ambitions. It needs more prestige and wants to be viewed as a power broker on the world stage. To gain those perspectives Israel needs a capital city that commands respect, contains ancient traditions and is recognized as one of the world’s most important and leading cities. Almost all of the world’s principal nations, from Egypt to Germany to Great Britain, have capitals that are great cities of the world. To assure its objectives, Israel wants an oversized Jerusalem that contains the Holy City.

That’s not all.

Jerusalem has significant tourism that can be expanded. It can provide new commercial opportunities as an entry to all of the Mid-East. An indivisible Jerusalem under Israeli control is worth a lot of shekels.

Israel competes with the United States as the focus of the Jewish people. It needs a unique Jerusalem to gain recognition as the home of Judaism.

By controlling all of the holy sites, Israel commands attention from Moslem and Christian leaders. These leaders will be forced to talk with Israel and Israel will have a bargaining advantage in disputes.

Whatever Israel gains the Palestinians are denied. Even if Israel agrees to the establishment of a Palestinian state, it will direct its policies to limit the effectiveness of that state. Since East Jerusalem and its holy sites greatly benefit a Palestinian economy and increase Palestine legitimacy, Israel will do everything to prevent East Jerusalem being ceded to the new state of Palestine. An “indivisible” Jerusalem is part of that effort.

West Jerusalem only gives Israel a North/South capital. An indivisible Jerusalem gives Israel a forward look towards an East/West capital or a centralized capital of the land of previous biblical Jewish tribes.

The Zionist socialist ideals and the cooperative Kibbutzim received support and sympathy from idealistic world peoples for many years. Israel’s attachment to the Holocaust tragedy extended that sympathy and support to more of the world. With the end of the Zionist dream, the decline of kibbutz life and the over-popularizing of the Holocaust, Israel needs a new symbol of identity that captures world attention.

If Israel has legitimate claims to Jerusalem, then those claims should be heard and discussed in a proper forum. However, that is not the process forthcoming. The process has the Israeli government using illegal and illegitimate procedures, as well as deceitful and hypocritical methods to force its agenda. Israel is not presenting its case but is exerting its powers to trample all legal, moral and historical considerations.

In the Museum of the Citadel of David is an inscription: The land of Israel is in the center of the world and Jerusalem is the center of the land of Israel.

This self praise was echoed at a West Jerusalem coffee house in a conversation with several Israelis, A youthful Israeli abruptly sat at the table and entered the conversation with the words: “All the world looks to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the center of the world and Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Everyone needs Jerusalem and they will need to talk with Israel.’

And that is why Israel desperately wants its greater Jerusalem.

Source: Palestine Chronicle

Nazir Made Conditional Peace Offer Yesterday, Before Today’s Predator Rape

Mullah Nazir makes conditional peace offer

By: Shehzada Wazir

WANA – Taliban local commander Mullah Nazir has offered to remain peaceful if the government does not
extend military operation against militants up to Wana region.
The offer was made to the government through a traditional Jirga of Ahmadzai tribe on Thursday.
As per details, leading tribal elders from all sub-tribes of Ahmadzai tribe Thursday met Political Agent Syed
Shahab Ali Shah in his office to discuss situation erupting after military action against Baitullah Mehsud.
The tribal elders informed the Political Agent that Taliban local commander Mullah Nazir was willing to remain
peaceful if the security forces refrained from military action against Taliban in Wana region. The Jirga members
suggested to the Political Agent to convey the offer to the government. The Political Agent welcoming the
suggestion assured the Jirga to convey the offer to the high-ups both in Peshawar and Islamabad. The Political
Agent on this occasion also ordered the release of three arrested persons.
Earlier, the Jirga members had held a detailed meeting with Mullah Nazir in this regard. As per Jirga sources,
Mullah Nazir had assured the Jirga to remain peaceful for a period of three months.
It may be mentioned here that Mullah Nazir is one of three top militant commanders of the area and his decision
could be considered as a severe blow to Baitullah Mehsud.

Thrilled by Rape of the Predators, Oblivious to Repercussions

[Attacks Reveal Hypocrisy of Pak Army, Surrender to Imperial Commands.]

15 killed, 27 injured as US drones fired missiles in South

Waziristan: officials

US missiles struck a training facility allegedly operated by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and a militant hide-out Friday, killing 15 people and wounding 27 others, intelligence officials said. The two attacks took place in South Waziristan, a Mehsud stronghold close to the Afghan border, two officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. They were the latest in more than 40 such strikes by the United States against militant targets in the border area since last August. Washington does not directly acknowledge being responsible for the attacks, which kill civilians as well as militants. The strikes came as the Pakistani military prepares for its own offensive in South Waziristan to eliminate Mehsud, who has been blamed for a string of deadly suicide attacks across the country that have killed more than 100 people in the past month. One attack targeted an abandoned seminary in the village of Mantoi that was allegedly being used by militants from Mehsud’s group for training, said the officials. The other struck a hide-out in the nearby village of Kokat Khel, they said. In total, 15 people were killed and 27 others were wounded, they said.

Maulvi Nazir Promises to Honor Pact Made With Mehsud and Bahadur, When Battle Comes To Wana

[This is the true price of the Army's double-games and its whoring itself out to Imperial powers.  SEE: As-Sahab: English transcript of the interview with Mulla Nazeer Ahmad, the amir of the mujahideen in the South Waziristan]

Mulla Nazeer scraps peace deal with govt

By Mushtaq Yusufzai & Irfan Burki

PESHAWAR/WANA: After the Hafiz Gul Bahadur-led militants in North Waziristan, another pro-government militant commander, Mulla Nazeer, also scrapped his peace deal with the government in South Waziristan Agency on Thursday.

A senior associate of Mulla Nazeer, Saada Janan, called The News from Wana, headquarters of South Waziristan, and claimed their Shura or council unanimously decided to scrap the peace accord with the government to protest the frequent US drone attacks in their territory.

The political administration of South Waziristan, however, claimed that Mulla Nazeer has revived his peace accord with the government by sending 120-member jirga of Ahmadzai Wazir elders to negotiate with senior government officials in Wana.

Prominent Ahmadzai elders, including Malik Noor Ali, Malik Ghazi Mohammad and Malik Ajmal Khan led the jirga that called on South Waziristan Political Agent Syed Shahab Ali Shah and Assistant Political Agent Syed Abdul Ghafoor Shah in Wana.

The elders said Mulla Nazeer had given them authority to hold talks with the government for restoration of peace in the region. Also, the jirga members said Mulla Nazeer allowed them to revive the April 2007 peace agreement with the government and promised not to attack government installations and security forces.

After successful talks between the government and Ahmadzai Wazirs, the government later released six tribesmen who were held a few days back. A close associate of Mulla Nazeer, who introduced himself as Sadda Janan, however, called The News and said they have nothing to do with a meeting of tribal jirga and political authorities.

He said their Shura or council decided to scrap the peace agreement with the government as according to him the government was fully cooperating with US forces in targeting their leadership in Wana through drone attacks. He said they had already directed their fighters to attack government installations and fight against the security forces.

Asked about a similar stance already taken by Taliban commander in North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur over US drone attacks, where drone did not fire missile during the past two months, Saada Janan argued all the three Taliban commanders — Baitullah Mahsud, Mulla Nazeer and Hafiz Gul Bahadur — in February last formed Shura Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen or council of holly warriors, in which he claimed, all of them promised to fight alongside if anyone of them was attacked.

Mulla Nazeer and his Ahmadzai Wazir militants played decisive role in eviction of Uzbek nationals from Wana, Azam Warsak and Shakai areas when the government launched massive military operation against them in 2007.