The Antiwar Movement That Isn’t a Movement

[This war will not end until there is a unified group of serious-minded individuals who will not allow the war continue.]

Afghanistan, The Anti-War Movement That Isn’t There, and Vietnam

Philip Gold

In the last post, I suggested that the real analogy between Vietnam and Afghanistan is that, in the end, neither really matters to us.

Vietnam was never a place of intrinsic significance to America. It mattered only as part of something else: the Cold War, perceived credibility around the world, domestic politics, Beltway politics, inter-service rivalries, etc. Because it had no objective reality to us, we could define it any way we wanted, use it in any way we chose, and when it no longer mattered, cast it away. Because we never really sought victory in Vietnam, endless other agendas dominated the conduct of the war and the manner of our departure.

Afghanistan is today no different. It matters only as part of something else, as we define such.

And now it is time to apply the same notion of equivalence to the anti-Vietnam movement back then and to the anti-Iraq/Afghanistan “peace movement” that has yet to materialize in any significant way. And this comparison is even uglier.

Vietnam, it is said, had a massive protest movement because there was a draft on. True. From which it follows, supposedly: Since there is no draft today, there is no motivation to protest the war. But let’s look a little closer at the Vietnam protest movement before addressing that.

American military strategy in Vietnam never envisioned or sought victory. In like measure, the “Movement” never really sought to end the war. One statistic tells the whole story. 26,800,000 men turned draft age during Vietnam. Of these, less than 3,500 went to prison for all draft-related offenses, including conscientious refusal to accept induction.

But what would have happened if tens of thousand of young men, especially the “Best and Brightest,” had said the following:

“This war is wrong. We’re going to end it. Here’s how. We’re not going to let you buy us off with student draft deferments, National Guard slots and the endless other dodges you’ve provided us in order to defuse middle-class opposition to the war. Instead, we’re going to turn in our II-S student deferments, demand accelerated induction and then refuse to take that one step forward at the induction ceremony.

“For every one of our brothers who comes home in a body bag, one or five or ten or twenty of us is going to prison.”

How long might the war have gone on with privileged young men, and others, going to prison by the thousands, or at least seriously challenging the government to take them away? Massive disobedience on such a scale can work in democracies.

Of course, it didn’t happen that way. What we got was a carnival superimposed upon a tragedy – a carnival of self-righteous excess that actually prolonged the war by making popular support for the war a way of opposing the peaceniks and hippies.

And, like the war itself, the Movement evanesced when it became . . . boring.

So why is there no serious anti-war movement today as President Obama, according to reports, plans to commit another 30,000 troops and lock in another trillion dollars or so. Lack of a draft is one reason, albeit a craven one: If I or my family is not involved, who cares? So is the fact that much of the political Left does not want to go too openly against President Obama, at least not before the next (and the one after that) election. Nor does much of the political Right, they who, despite their bellicosity, would love nothing better than to see Obama go the way of LBJ.

But a greater reason is that, a few sincere pacifists and others aside, the anti-war movement has never gotten over its carnival aspects. Code Pink provides a perfect example. Come express your creativity; engage in silly gestures; offend your fellow Americans. Feel good about yourself. Bask in the unearned self-esteem.

To borrow from World War I Poet Rupert Brooke: “Come protest with us. It’ll be great fun.”

Karl Rove’s worst nightmare was never Code Pink. It was ten million sober, dignified, modestly-attired, serious Americans all proclaiming, “This war is wrong and we want it ended. This is a people’s Army and we want it back.”

But this is no longer a serious country, inhabited by serious citizens. We are, instead, a people akin to the rich, self-obsessed Buchanans in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. “They were sloppy,” wrote Fitzgerald. “They left messes for others to clean up.”

So does America. But – Lord in Heaven – wouldn’t it be wonderful if enough of us, after all these decades of spin and stupefaction, woke up and got serious again? Serious about ourselves as citizens. And serious about each other.

So how to get serious? Perhaps by accepting that “My end of the boat ain’t sinking” is no longer a viable strategy for survival. And then go from there.

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An unholy trinity

MATT WADE

People walk through rubble after a car bomb attack in Peshawar last week. Photo: Reuters

THE insurgency that threatens Pakistan is often portrayed as a problem that spilled over from Afghanistan via the lawless tribal belt on the country’s north-western flank. But in the spate of attacks over the past fortnight, many of the attackers have come from the heartland province of Punjab. Often they have worked in tandem with their militant cousins from the north-west.

There are growing links between the Pakistan Taliban – with its stronghold on the country’s north-western frontier – and extremists from Punjab, Pakistan’s wealthiest and most populous province. Experts warn the growing level of co-operation between extremist groups poses a threat that goes well beyond Pakistan’s borders.

”We have seen the coming together of the major Sunni radical groups in ways that are far more dangerous and far more threatening than they were two or three years ago,” warns Samina Ahmed, the International Crisis Group’s South Asia project director. ”This nexus that has developed could reach as far as Australia.”

The Pakistan Taliban has become the focus for the Government’s counter-insurgency. In May the military conducted a major offensive to rid the Swat Valley of Taliban fighters and on Saturday it launched an even more ambitious campaign against the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, bordering Afghanistan.

The Taliban are reported to be offering stiff resistance despite the army’s formidable firepower. About 30,000 troops have been committed to the campaign, backed by tanks, artillery, planes and helicopter gunships. The operation has the enthusiastic support of Pakistan’s Western backers, including Australia. But the roots of the militant challenge spread way beyond South Waziristan.

The lethal power of the insurgency has been on show during the past fortnight with a frightening series of attacks. Punjabi militants have played a major role in the wave of violence that has left more than 150 people dead.

Amid the carnage, senior Pakistani political and military officials have acknowledged the deepening integration of the insurgency.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik says that a ”syndicate” of militant groups wants to see ”Pakistan as a failed state”.

”The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan [TTP], Jaish-e-Muhammad, al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi are operating jointly in Pakistan,” he says.

Pakistan’s military spokesman, Major-General Athar Abbas, also says Punjabi militants are linked to the TTP and al-Qaeda in the wake of last week’s commando-style assault on army headquarters. Five of the attackers came from Punjab while another five were from the TTP’s stronghold in South Waziristan.

Muhammad Amir Rana, an expert on extremist groups with the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, says religious radicalisation is on the rise in Punjab province, especially among the poor.

”This trend towards radicalisation is increasing and, at any time, that can be converted into extremism,” he warns. ”This is disturbing and will create a problem for Pakistan’s security in future.”

Rana says there are three broad strands of militant extremism in Pakistan with overlapping domestic, regional and global goals.

The first and most powerful strand is the TTP, a fractious coalition based in the country’s Federally-Administered Tribal Areas and North-West Frontier Province.

The TTP, which has links to al-Qaeda, has campaigned for the implementation of its own harsh interpretation of Islamic law in the tribal areas and has set up courts and prisons in areas under its control.

The TTP was dealt a serious blow in early August when a missile attack launched from a US drone killed the group’s ruthless leader, Baitullah Mehsud.

But his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, has announced his arrival with a spate of terrorist attacks that began on October 5.

”The Taliban and their allies are the most powerful militants in Pakistan,” says Rana.

A second strand of Pakistani militancy comes from groups fighting Indian occupation of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. These groups, which include Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad, were strictly focused on Kashmir. They have also received significant backing from Pakistani intelligence, although Pakistan claims this support has been wound back since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US.

Members of these groups are increasingly supporting Taliban groups from Pakistan’s tribal regions to conduct complex attacks in cities such as Islamabad and Lahore.

”These organisations have morphed into much more dangerous entities than when they were first created to focus on Kashmir,” says Ahmed.

Rana says a third strand of Pakistani extremism is the cluster of ultra-conservative sectarian groups which provide a breeding ground for militants. ”They have a sectarian agenda but they often provide recruitment and logistics to the other layers,” he says.

There have long been links between these strands of Pakistani extremism, but experts say the ties are strengthening.

At the same time, Punjabi militants from groups linked with the Taliban, such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, have played a key role in several high-profile attacks this month, including a commando-style raid on Pakistan’s military headquarters.

The growing Punjabi role was underscored by the terrorist siege on India’s financial hub, Mumbai, last November.

Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving gunman from the attack that killed more than 160 people, was from Punjab, as were some of the other attackers.

”Those guys were not Taliban from Waziristan, they were from Pakistan’s heartland,” says Ahmed.

Many of Pakistan’s militant groups have been influenced by the teachings of the Deobandi Sunni sub-sect. Deobandi religious schools, which account for about 65 per cent of all such schools in Pakistan, are a crucial source of recruits for extremist groups.

”Violent Deobandi networks in Punjab lie at the root of Pakistan’s militancy problem,” says the International Crisis Group.

Samina Ahmed says these recruits are moving through different extremist groups acquiring skills and experience.

”These groups have their separate identities and goals which could be local, regional and trans-regional, but there is a close alliance relationship and there is a flow of everything from funding to training to recruitment and methodology,” she says.

Ahmed’s International Crisis Group has called on the Pakistani Government to make a far more concerted effort against Punjab-based extremist groups.

But Rana says efforts to shut down extremist organisations, such as LeT, have not worked. The resources and infrastructure of extremist groups in Pakistan, some of it acquired with the patronage of Pakistani intelligence, sets them apart from other countries where Islamic extremism is common.

”Pakistan has become a magnet for radicals and that is why the whole world is concerned about it,” he says. ”It’s like a monster, you can’t just put them in a cage.”

ROLL-CALL OF EXTREMISTS

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan: A loose alliance of extremist groups based in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the border with Afghanistan. With an estimated 10,000 loyal fighters, the TTP is Pakistan’s most potent militant force. It has strong links with al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi: A Punjab-based group that has been implicated in attacks across Pakistan, and has also bred many smaller terrorist factions. Thought to have been a linchpin for the alignment of al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and Punjab sectarian groups.

Jaish-e-Muhammad: Founded by Pakistan cleric Maulana Masood Azhar to fight for the incorporation of Kashmir into Pakistan. Originally focused exclusively on the Kashmir issue but has subsequently been implicated in terrorist activity across Pakistan, and internationally. JM has openly declared war on the US. JM is believed to have several hundred armed supporters as well as tens of thousands of followers.

Lashkar-e-Taiba: One of the largest and most proficient of Pakistan’s Kashmir-oriented terrorist groups, it has claimed responsibility for some high-profile attacks within India. Reincarnated as Jamaat-ud-Dawa (LeT’s charity wing) after it was banned. JD was also banned for its alleged role in the November attack on Mumbai, but the organisation is still functioning.

Punjabi Taliban: A loose conglomeration of members of banned militant groups of Punjabi origins as well as those focused on the conflict in Kashmir that have developed strong connections with the TTP.

Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan: A banned Sunni militant organisation that pioneered sectarian militancy against Shiites in Pakistan. Linked to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

The Hunt for Pakistan’s Most Wanted Terrorists

Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 34

November 13, 2009 12:43 PM Age: 19 hrs

Category: Terrorism Monitor, Global Terrorism Analysis, Home Page, Terrorism, South Asia, Featured

By: Mukhtar A. Khan

Above: Hakimullah Mahsud, new chief of the Taliban and Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist. Below (from top to bottom): Maulana Waliur Rahman (R, with Hakimullah), Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, Maulana Fazlullah. Not pictured: Qari Hussain Mahsud.

Despite the fact that the Pakistani military has pushed Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters out of 90 percent of their stronghold in the South Waziristan tribal agency bordering Afghanistan, there are no indications as yet of weakness on the part of the Taliban. The Taliban have instead stepped up their suicide attacks on major cities like Peshawar, Islamabad and Lahore, hitting military targets and security checkpoints as well as civilian positions. All of these activities are carried out in a very coordinated and disciplined way which reveals a determined and well-knitted network across the country. It is a fact that Pakistan’s military operations and the fear of increasing drone attacks have collapsed their communication system in the tribal areas, but this deficiency has been covered by the Taliban and their “sleeper cells” in southern Punjab (Dawn [Karachi], October 24). So far, the military operation has been successful in reclaiming territory from the Taliban but has failed to put an end to the increasing wave of suicide blasts that have crippled the socio-economic, educational and political spheres in Pakistan.
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The Pakistani government has come to the realization that unless the senior leadership of the Taliban is nabbed, there can be no end to terrorist activities in the country. For this purpose, it has announced rewards for the capture or killing of top Taliban leaders (Dawn, November 2). The following is a brief description of the top Taliban leaders who are sought by Pakistani authorities for their involvement in terrorist activities.

Hakimullah Mahsud

The Taliban’s 28-year old commander, Hakimullah Mahsud, is a tough and ruthless militant who became the new Taliban chief after his predecessor Baitullah Mahsud was killed in a U.S. drone attack in South Waziristan. Hakimullah was a close confidant of Baitullah, serving as his driver, spokesman and then commander of strategically important tribal areas like Khyber, Kurram and Orakzai agencies. It was in these tribal agencies that his strong military skills and ambitions came to the fore. In 2007, Hakimullah established his military strength when he took some 250 Pakistani soldiers hostage for more than two months in South Waziristan. However, it was in Khyber, Kurram and Orakzai that he took an independent role and used the power of the media to get himself recognized as the new top leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). It was Hakimullah who disrupted the NATO fuel supply lines in Khyber and Peshawar and took responsibility for destroying more than 600 NATO vehicles and containers (The News [Islamabad], September 1).

Hakimullah Mahsud is believed to be behind all the major suicide attacks in Pakistan. He has accepted responsibility for the majority of attacks against the military and other security forces. Hakimullah is also blamed for killing Shi’a Muslims in Orakzai and Kurram agencies. He has close links with the banned anti-Shi’a sectarian group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and its militant wing Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ).

The Government of Pakistan considers Hakimullah Mahsud its enemy No. 1, and has put a bounty of 50 million rupees ($600,000) on his head for his death or capture (Daily Mashriq [Peshawar], November 2).

Qari Hussain Mahsud

Known in Pakistan as Ustad-e-Fidayeen (Trainer of Suicide Bombers), Qari Hussain Mahsud is regarded as the most dangerous and ruthless Taliban militant in South Waziristan. He is notorious for his innovations in training child suicide bombers. Qari Hussain is the cousin of TTP Chief Hakimullah Mahsud and was an LeJ operative before joining the TTP. He is considered to be the right hand of Hakimullah, who supported him in reaching the top echelons of the TTP.

Qari Hussain carries a bounty of 50 million rupees ($600,000) from the Government of Pakistan (Daily Jang, November 2). He is one of the most sought-after militants, having taken responsibility for suicide attacks on sensitive government offices, including two attacks on the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in Lahore and another on the Manawan Police Training Center in the same city. Early this year, the government claimed that Qari Hussain had been killed by security forces but he appeared alive before the media to refute these reports. In the aftermath of Baitullah Mahsud’s death in a drone attack in August, Qari Hussain has been wreaking havoc with a series of suicide attacks on the four main cities of Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Islamabad (Geo TV, November 3).

Maulana Waliur Rahman

The 35-year-old Maulana Waliur Rahman is considered to be the only politically mature person in the TTP ranks in Waziristan. He used to be the most trusted advisor of Baitullah Mahsud, supervising the financial affairs of the widening Taliban movement (The News, September 1). Maulana Waliur is believed to be a good manager and ideologue but not a skilled fighter. He never fought in Afghanistan against the USSR nor against U.S.-led coalition troops. He joined the ranks of the Pakistani Taliban only five years ago when Baitullah emerged as Taliban leader after the death of former leader Nek Mohammad Wazir in a U.S. drone attack.

Waliur Rahman is not as aggressive as Hakimullah. He has a religio-political background associated with the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI)’s Fazlur Rahman group. Unlike the majority of TTP leaders, he completed his religious education, doing so in a well-known seminary in Faisalabad known as Jamia Islamia before teaching in a madrassa for several years in South Waziristan. Waliur Rahman follows the Deobandi school of thought unlike Hakimullah Mahsud and Qari Hussain Mahsud, who follow the Salafist interpretation of Islam. This is believed to be one of the main reasons that al-Qaeda’s leadership did not prefer him as the new TTP Chief despite the fact that the emissaries of Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Muhammad Omar had opted to declare him the chief of the TTP after Baitullah’s death. Al-Qaeda wanted an aggressive leader like Hakimullah who could advance their ideology in the region and capitalize on his strong links with LeJ in the mainland of Pakistan (AKI, September 10). Waliur Rahman’s head also carries a bounty of 50 million rupees ($600,000). Currently, he is the TTP chief for South Waziristan.

Maulvi Faqir Mohammad

Maulvi Faqir Mohammad is the strongest TTP commander based outside Waziristan. He is regarded as a skilled guerilla fighter who has been active in the region since the late 1980s. The 39-year old Maulvi Faqir belongs to the Mohmand tribe and was born and raised in the Mamond region of Bajaur – a strategically important tribal agency bordering Afghanistan’s Kunar province in the west, and Pakistan’s Malakand and Swat region in the east.

Known locally as “Commander Faqir,” he is suspected to have close ties with al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. He is believed to have hosted a dinner for al-Zawahiri in January 2006 in Damadola (Bajaur). The home was blown up by a U.S. drone strike but al-Zawahiri had left just minutes before (Daily Mashriq, January 23).

Maulvi Faqir belongs to a religious family that fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and later alongside the Taliban. He went to Afghanistan along with his two sons to wage jihad in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. At that time he was an active leader in the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM). TNSM chief Maulana Sufi Mohammad is considered to be his mentor in jihad. Before joining the TNSM, Maulvi Faqir was a local leader of Jama’at-e-Islami – a religio-political party.

Maulvi Faqir is wanted by the government of Pakistan for his alleged ties with al-Qaeda and sabotage activities under the umbrella of the TTP. The reward for his head is 15 million rupees ($180,000) (Dawn, June 29). Maulvi Faqir was a strong contender for the top post in the TTP after the death of Baitullah, but the Taliban Shura (council) was determined to keep the top leadership post in Waziristan.

Maulana Fazlullah

Once the most dreaded person in the scenic valley of Swat, Maulana Fazlullah has been in hiding since April when the Pakistani military launched a heavy offensive against his banned militant outfit, TNSM. The 34-year-old Fazlullah has led TNSM since 2002 when his father-in-law and TNSM founder Maulana Sufi Mohammad was jailed upon return from Afghanistan, which he had crossed into illegally with several thousands of armed volunteers (including Fazlullah) to wage jihad against U.S.-led Coalition troops. Fazlullah re-organized the TNSM and made the movement more radical by launching a pirate FM radio station from his madrassa in Imam Dheri, Swat. He soon became popular and earned nicknames like “FM Mullah” and “Radio Mullah” (see Terrorism Monitor, May 26).

Fazlullah mobilized the people in Malakand through his FM radio and recruited an army of volunteers numbering around 12,000. He preached against women’s education and torched some 300 girls’ schools in the area. His men put a ban on polio vaccinations, NGOs, and playing music. He challenged the writ of the government and declared his own brand of Shari’a in Malakand before expanding from Swat into Buner district. At this point Fazlullah went too far, sparking a serious reaction from the government, which dismantled the TNSM movement in Malakand. Several TNSM leaders were killed or arrested while others went into hiding, including Fazlullah, who is believed to have been injured in the military offensive (Daily Times [Lahore], July 9).

Fazlullah received his religious education from Sufi Mohammad’s madrassa, Jamia Mazahir-ul-Uloom, in the Maidan village of Lower Dir. It was here where he came under the influence of the Wahhabi school of thought. He is now wanted with a bounty of 5 million rupees ($60,000) on his head.

While government forces continue their offensive in South Waziristan, it has become apparent that the death or apprehension of the region’s leading militant commanders will be the key to eliminating the terrorist threat looming over Pakistan.

Another Day, Another Check Point Bombing In Peshawar

[Suicide bomber strikes second police check point in two days in Peshawar; yesterday's alleged attack upon ISI HQ was reported to actually be against a nearby police check point, contrary to
Western hype about ISI.  What better way for the militants who were chased-out of S. Waziristan to begin a false-flag bombing campaign than to begin with an attack that seems to be upon their ISI patrons?]

Suicide bomber kills 10 in Pakistan’s Peshawar

By Shams Mohmand

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suicide attacker set off a car bomb at a police checkpoint in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Saturday, killing 10 people, officials said.

The city, near the Afghan border, has been bombed several times since the army began an offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan last month. Militants have hit back by stepping up attacks of towns and cities, killing several hundred people.

“The car bomber approached a barrier near the police check post and then it exploded,” city official Sahibzada Anis told Reuters. Ten people were killed and more than 20 wounded, he said. Police said two of their men were among the dead.

Pieces of the bomber’s car littered the road. Several other vehicles were badly damaged, with one flipped onto its roof. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

The army offensive in South Waziristan is aimed at rooting out Pakistani Taliban militants who stepped up their war on the security forces in 2007.

The United States, weighing options as it struggles to stabilize Afghanistan, says Pakistani action against militants in border enclaves is vital for its Afghan effort.

TALIBAN CLAIM

On Friday, a suicide car bomb exploded at an office of Pakistan’s main intelligence agency in Peshawar, killing 17 people.

The Taliban said it carried out that attack, as well as a suicide bombing at a police station in the northwestern town of Bannu on Friday, in which seven people were killed.

“We will carry out similar attacks in other parts of the country,” Qari Hussain Mehsud, a senior Pakistani Taliban member and a cousin of Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, told Reuters by telephone. Hussain is known as “the mentor of suicide bombers”.

The military says it has killed more than 520 militants in the offensive in South Waziristan, including seven on Saturday.

Soldiers have advanced into the militant heartland from three directions and captured several Taliban base areas in the region of barren mountains, ravines and patchy forest.

There has been no independent verification of casualties. Reporters and other independent observers are not allowed into the conflict zone except on occasional trips with the military.

The violence in recent weeks has rattled investors and the main stock index has lost about 5 percent since the offensive began.

However, it ended 1.60 percent higher at 9,067.17 on Friday after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the previous day the economy showed signs of recovery but risks remained.

Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin told Reuters the IMF had expressed concern about how insecurity could affect the economy. (Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony, Alamgir Bitani; Writing by Robert Birsel; editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Does “Little Zbig” (Brzezinski) Know Something We Should Know?

The China List

“In potential crisis situations, this channel could be even more valuable if official communications were blocked.”

By MARK BRZEZINSKI and MARK FUNG

Published: October 30, 2009

As the White House prepares for President Obama’s inaugural visit to China in November, it’s faced with two possible approaches in planning for what the trip can achieve.

The first is to follow the safe “laundry list” technique, which identifies a long, sometimes unwieldy set of policy objectives, but which China may or may not view as being in its own national interest.

This list would include important topics such as environmental, energy and monetary issues. Raising these at the presidential level could well result in incremental progress, but they and other themes can also be advanced through the ongoing Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) at a ministerial level.

President Obama is in a unique position to break the mold of presidential summitry. Three overarching “deliverables” could be identified that if implemented would significantly reshape the U.S.-China relationship and address serious challenges the two countries face together.

One, establish a formal mechanism among the leaders of the United States, China and Pakistan. China is Pakistan’s most important supporter both because of their geographic proximity and China’s perception of Pakistan as a counterweight to India.

Coordinating policy and economic support for Pakistan would yield a higher return for all three nations. The interests for the United States and China are consonant in Pakistan: removing extremist fundamentalist activity, stabilizing the leadership and encouraging economic growth.

While Pakistan and Afghanistan remains a pivotal challenge to U.S. policy, “AfPak” policy should not be commingled in the context of China, as these two countries mean two entirely different things for Beijing and Washington.

For China, Pakistan holds geostrategic, political and economic importance. Afghanistan is for China primarily an economic opportunity with less, if any, strategic value.

The United States should make clear it does not want to displace Beijing’s influence in Islamabad, but a tripartite approach would advance shared interests and deliver more tangible results in Pakistan.

Two, accelerate the proposed mining schedule for development of the Aynak Copper Reserve in Afghanistan, where the state-owned China Metallurgical Group holds the concession and where Afghan authorities are protecting the copper fields.

Aynak is located about 20 miles southeast of Kabul and is the site of one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper deposits.

With a bid of approximately $3 billion, which includes infrastructure upgrades in Logar Province, where Aynak is situated — and that is known to Afghans as the “gates of jihad” — there is the opportunity for development in this critical region.

Breaking ground at Aynak with American and Chinese officials present would be of great symbolic value. Moreover, China possesses the actual wherewithal to develop the concession in these forbidding lands. Any progress toward increased stability by generating employment would have ripple effects throughout the community.

Three, support the “Sanya Initiative,” a little known but important program that brings together retired service chiefs from each of the armed forces of the U.S. and China. The first meeting was held last year in the resort town of Sanya in China, and this year, it was held in Hawaii, with follow-up trips to Washington and New York.

The initiative is important because it opens up new channels of communication. Furthermore, by its very existence, it is creating greater military transparency and could lead to a better understanding on both sides.

In potential crisis situations, this channel could be even more valuable if official communications were blocked.

The Sanya Initiative is currently funded entirely by private donations. For the program to really succeed, however, it must have support from leaders of both China and the United States. Hence strengthening military ties must be a deliverable, particularly since both sides agree that military-to-military relations are not where they should be.

The United States and China should also strive to build and use other informal contacts on security issues. These could allow discussion of topics that might be difficult or sensitive to raise in formal government channels.

Today one often hears the refrain that America is becoming an economic satellite of a rising China.

The Obama trip to Beijing provides an opportunity to elevate the relationship to include constructive engagement in concentric areas of shared interest — stabilizing Pakistan, advancing soft power interests in Afghanistan, and cooperating on security matters and shared challenges in East Asia.

Mark Brzezinski, a partner at a law firm in Washington, served on the National Security Council in the Clinton Administration. Mark Fung, associate in research at the Fairbank Center at Harvard University, was general counsel of the China-Africa Development Fund in Beijing.

National March on Washington

on Saturday, March 20
Fri., March 19 Day of Action & Outreach in D.C.

Please make a donation today to support the National March on Washington

People from all over the country are organizing to converge on Washington, D.C., to demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan and Iraq.

On Saturday, March 20, 2010, there will be a massive National March & Rally in D.C. A day of action and outreach in Washington, D.C., will take place on Friday, March 19, preceding the Saturday march.

There will be coinciding mass marches on March 20 in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The national actions are initiated by a large number of organizations and prominent individuals. To see a list of the initiators, click this link.

Click here to become an endorser.

Click here to make a donation.

We will march together to say “No Colonial-type Wars and Occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine!” We will march together to say “No War Against Iran!” We will march together to say “No War for Empire Anywhere!”

Instead of war, we will demand funds so that every person can have a job, free and universal health care, decent schools, and affordable housing.

March 20 is the seventh anniversary of the criminal war of aggression launched by Bush and Cheney against Iraq. One million or more Iraqis have died. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops have lost their lives or been maimed, and continue to suffer a whole host of enduring problems from this terrible war.

This is the time for united action. The slogans on banners may differ, but all those who carry them should be marching shoulder to shoulder. Click here to become an endorser.

Killing and dying to avoid the perception of defeat

Bush is gone, but the war and occupation in Iraq still go on. The Pentagon is demanding a widening of the war in Afghanistan. They project an endless war with shifting battlefields. And a “single-payer” war budget that only grows larger and larger each year. We must act.

Both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were predicated on the imperial fantasy that the U.S. could create stable, proxy colonial-type governments in both countries. They were to serve as an extension of “American” power in these strategic and resource-rich regions.

That fantasy has been destroyed. Now U.S. troops are being sent to kill or be killed so that the politicians in uniform (“the generals and admirals”) and those in three-piece suits (“our elected officials”) can avoid taking responsibility for a military setback in wars that should have never been started. Their military ambitions are now reduced to avoiding the appearance of defeat.

That is exactly what happened in Vietnam! Avoiding defeat, or the perception of defeat, was the goal Nixon and Kissinger set for themselves when they took office in 1969. For this noble cause, another 30,000 young GIs perished before the inevitable troop pullout from Vietnam in 1973. The number of Vietnamese killed between 1969 and 1973 was greater by many hundreds of thousands.

All of us can make the difference — progress and change comes from the streets and from the grassroots.

The people went to the polls in 2008, and the enthusiasm and desire for change after eight years of the Bush regime was the dominant cause that led to election of a big Democratic Party majority in both Houses of Congress and the election of Barack Obama to the White House.

But it should now be obvious to all that waiting for politicians to bring real change — on any front — is simply a prescription for passivity by progressives and an invitation to the array of corporate interests from military contractors to the banks, to big oil, to the health insurance giants that dominate the political life of the country. These corporate interests work around the clock to frustrate efforts for real change, and they are the guiding hand behind the recent street mobilizations of the ultra-right.

It is up to us to act. If people had waited for politicians to do the right thing, there would have never been a Civil Rights Act, or unions, women’s rights, an end to the Vietnam war or any of the profound social achievements and basic rights that people cherish.

It is time to be back in the streets. Organizing centers are being set up in cities and towns throughout the country.

We must raise $50,000 immediately just to get started. Please make your contribution today. We need to reserve buses, which are expensive ($1,800 from NYC, $5,000 from Chicago, etc.). We have to print 100,000 leaflets, posters and stickers. There will be other substantial expenses as March 20 draws closer.

Please become an endorser and active supporter of the March 20 National March on Washington by clicking this link.

Please make an urgently needed tax-deductible donation today by clicking this link. We can’t do this without your active support.

The initiators of the March 20 National March on Washington (preceded by the March 19 Day of Action and Outreach in D.C.) include: the ANSWER Coalition; Muslim American Society Freedom; National Council of Arab Americans; Cynthia McKinney; Malik Rahim, co-founder of Common Ground Collective; Ramsey Clark; Cindy Sheehan; Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK; Deborah Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait; Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace; Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition; Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild; Ron Kovic, author of “Born on the 4th of July”; Juan Jose Gutierrez, Director, Latino Movement USA; Col. Ann Wright (ret.); March Forward!; Partnership for Civil Justice; Palestinian American Women Association; Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines; Alliance for Global Justice; Claudia de la Cruz, Pastor, Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas-UCC; Phil Portluck, Social Justice Ministry, Covenant Baptist Church, D.C.; Blase & Theresa Bonpane, Office of the Americas; Coalition for Peace and Democracy in Honduras; Comite Pro-Democracia en Mexico; Frente Unido de los Pueblos Americanos; Comites de Base FMLN, Los Angeles; Free Palestine Alliance; GABRIELA Network; Justice for Filipino American Veterans; KmB Pro-People Youth; Students Fight Back; Jim Lafferty, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild – LA Chapter; LEF Foundation; National Coalition to Free the Angola 3; Community Futures Collective; Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival; Companeros del Barrio; Barrio Unido for Full and Unconditional Amnesty.

The Illusion That We Are Fighting for “Self-Defense”

[The writer of the following piece makes some extremely valid points, the most notable of which, is that everything that seems like it might mean good news on the antiwar front is not as it seems.  One might think that revelations about stressed-out returning vets might mean that our leaders will reevaluate their war-making paradigm to eliminate faulty policies and goals that are destroying the volunteer force, but what it will do is lead to new treatment programs to return more men to a gung-ho state of mind.  News that Gen. Eikenberry, now in the State Dept., is urging Obama to not escalate the war under present conditions might also lend credence to the argument for more reasonable war aims, but all it is doing is increasing pressure for Karzai's ouster.

Nothing will change, until the seductive, glamorous images of a nation dedicated to a just war of “self-defense” is replaced with the truth, that the war of terror is America’s way to hold-on to undeserved international power and authority, and to seize control of energy resources.

The War Stampede

Norman Solomon

Disputes are raging within the Obama administration over how to continue the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. A new leak tells us that Washington’s ambassador in Kabul, former four-star general Karl Eikenberry, has cautioned against adding more troops while President Hamid Karzai keeps disappointing American policymakers. This is the extent of the current debate within the warfare state.

During a top-level meeting Wednesday afternoon in the White House, the Washington Post reports, President Obama “was given a series of options laid out by military planners with differing numbers of new U.S. deployments, ranging from 10,000 to 40,000 troops. None of the scenarios calls for scaling back the U.S. presence in Afghanistan or delaying the dispatch of additional troops.”

No doubt there are real tactical differences between Eikenberry and the U.S./NATO commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, the ultra-spun brainy spartan who wants to boost the current U.S. troop level of 68,000 to well over 100,000 in the war-afflicted country. But those policy disputes exist well within the context of a permanent war psychology.

What’s desperately needed is a clear breakaway from that psychology, which routinely offers “kinder, gentler” forms of endless and horrific war. But predictably, in the days and weeks ahead, some progressives — from the grassroots to Capitol Hill — will gravitate toward Eikenberry’s stance.

Fine-tuning the U.S. war in Afghanistan is no substitute for acknowledging — with words and with policy — that there will be no military solution. Adjusting the dose and mix of military intervention is a prescription to do more harm on a massive scale.

A recent spate of media stories has focused on soldiers, veterans and family members struggling with PTSD and other heartbreaking consequences of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the key messages is that the government must do a better job of caring for battle-scarred veterans.

To the great extent that such stories don’t question continuation of the warfare, they’re part of the stampede. As long as the only options put forward have to do with finding better ways to cope with ongoing war, the men and women in the military are framed as people who are most admirable as participants in their own suffering (and, implicitly, as people who are willing to inflict suffering on others).

The suffering of Afghan people, meanwhile, gets short shrift in the USA’s media and political discourse. While we hear — though not enough — about traumas that continue to plague Americans many months or years after being in war zones, we hear almost nothing about the traumas that the U.S. military visits upon people living in the occupied country.

After 30 years of war, Afghans do not need more ingenious war efforts by the latest batch of best and brightest in Washington.

Thundering along Pennsylvania Avenue, the stampede for war is hard to resist. It’s a stampede that few members of Congress have been willing to directly challenge. So, the “serious” policy arguments, from the White House to Capitol Hill, have remained bullish on war — and eager to find better ways to wage it.

The November 12 edition of the Post reported that Ambassador Eikenberry “has expressed frustration with the relative paucity of funds set aside for spending on development and reconstruction this year in Afghanistan, a country wrecked by three decades of war.” The newspaper added: “Earlier this summer, he asked for $2.5 billion in nonmilitary spending for 2010, a 60 percent increase over what Obama had requested from Congress, but the request has languished even as the administration has debated spending billions of dollars on new troops.”

The Obama administration is spending upwards of 90 percent of all U.S. funds in Afghanistan on military operations — and what Eikenberry is seeking would add up to mere drops in the bucket compared to what Afghanistan really needs for “development and reconstruction.” Nor is the U.S. government in any moral or logistical position to effectively supply such aid.

Right now, the paltry aid from Washington is largely disbursed in Afghanistan as an adjunct to the Pentagon’s military operations — and it is widely recognized as such. That’s why the resulting projects are so often blown up or burned down by insurgents.

In war-ravaged Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, effective aid is possible. While woefully underfunded, the National Solidarity Program and the Aga Khan Foundation are prime examples of successes — if the goals are genuine humanitarian aid and development rather than providing “hearts and minds” photo-ops and leverage for the occupiers’ military campaigns.

The current dispute over how to continue the war in Afghanistan should not be mistaken for an argument over basic assumptions. And what’s wrong with U.S. intervention in Afghanistan is fundamental.

Obama, the Karzai Brothers & the Ghost of Najibullah

Left Margin By Carl Bloice BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

It’s said that you can buy photos of Najibullah on the streets of Kabul these days and even cassettes of speeches he made in the 1980s when he was president of Afghanistan. Najibullah’s name evokes controversy. Always cited are the condemnation by some Afghans for his ties to the Soviet Union and his previous role as chief of the country’s internal security apparatus. However, it is impossible not to acknowledge the country social gains made during his time in leadership. As soon as his government was overthrown the victors wiped out land reform programs, instituted Sharia or Islamic religious law, cut women off from education, athletics and the professions and banned things like movies, television, videos, dancing, kite flying, and beard trimming. Quiet as it’s kept, for many in the Afghan capital, the Najibullah years were a time of great promise. But also of great danger. Outside forces were plotting and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was spurring reactionary groups – trained and equipped by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others – to overthrow the Afghan government. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, in the words of former CIA analyst Ray McGoverrn, “thought it a good idea to mousetrap the Soviets into their own Vietnam debacle by baiting them into invading Afghanistan in 1979, the war which was the precursor to the great-power Afghan quagmire three decades later.” In 1979, Soviet troops entered the country to defend the Afghan government and remained there nine years. The effort was pre-doomed; the USSR leadership had ignored warnings, coming from even its own military strategists, that history had shown the fiercely independent and resourceful Afghan would never be subdued by the military might of foreign forces. On March 10, 1992, the New York Times reported that with the Soviet troops having left the country, “Afghanistan’s President made an impassioned appeal to the United States today to help his country become a bulwark against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia.” In an interview with correspondent Edward A. Gargan, Najibullah “also pleaded for immediate economic and humanitarian assistance from Washington,” which long backed the Afghan fundamentalist guerrillas fighting his Government. He also promised that he would release four Afghans who worked in the United States Embassy and were convicted of espionage in 1983. “The Afghan President’s praise for the United States and his attempt to enlist Washington in common cause against fundamentalism marked the sharpest departure yet from the open hostility that has characterized relations between Kabul and Washington since Afghanistan’s leftist coup of 1978,” wrote Gargan. “We have a common task, Afghanistan, the United States of America, and the civilized world, to launch a joint struggle against fundamentalism,” Najibullah told the Times, and “described what he thought would happen to his country if Islamic extremists took power in Kabul.” “If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many more years,” Najibullah said. “Afghanistan will turn into a center of world smuggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism.” Well, all that has come to pass. I was in Kabul February 15, 1989 when the final withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan took place; they had been in the country since December 1979. Most of the other reporters traveled to Jalalabad for the start of the final retreat, moving with the departing forces back to Kabul on their way out of the country. I remained in the capital and on that day a few of us were taken by our guides from the government to a shop that had been demolished by a bomb attack the previous day. It wasn’t a big terrorist attack but the message was clear: this is what is in store for Kabul now. That, too, came to pass. Gargan attributed Najibullah’s appeal to Washington to his having been “Abandoned by his former benefactors in Moscow and cast somewhat adrift in the new politics of the region.” That’s one way of putting it, but he really had no other choice. The USSR couldn’t restrain the Taliban and the various mujahedeen factions and besides it was in the midst of a political upheaval that would about two years hence bring down the ruling Communist Party. Najibullah had expressed support for a United Nations plan to summon – in Gargan’s words “a wide spectrum of Afghans – including the Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas – to a gathering that would lead to a political accord to end Afghanistan’s years of civil conflict.” There is no question that he persistently pursued a campaign for national reconciliation and reached out repeatedly to tribal and religious leaders across the country and the region. On the eve of the final stage of the Soviet withdrawal, Najibullah repeated his call for compromise and national unity before a large audience of notables and foreigners. But the Mujahedeen “freedom fighters” (as they were then called by the U.S. media and politicians at the time) and their benefactors in the region and Washington weren’t interested. The Times noted that the State Department refused to even comment on the Gargan interview. And so the attacks continued. Najibullah and his Watan (Homeland) Party remained in office until April 1992 when a major warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum decided to switch sides and the government – affected by severe economic difficulties (made worse by punitive sanctions undertaken by the Russian Government of Boris Yeltsin) – fell to the combined forces of mujahedeen and various tribal groups (“warlords”). But that hardly ended the country’s travails. The victorious groups soon began to fight each other over the spoils. The greatest damage to the country’s infrastructure and the city of Kabul came not from the Soviet invasion but from the internecine rocket attacks following the government’s ouster. In 1994, the recently organized Taliban made its appearance on the scene. Last week’s attack by the Taliban on targets in Kabul carried with them a grave symbolism. After Najibullah’s overthrow his family was able to flee the country but he refused to leave, choosing instead to take refuge in the United Nations compound where he remained for four years. In September 1996 the Taliban took control of Kabul from the Mujahedeen and began to bombard the UN facility. Najibullah was taken from the compound along with his brother, his secretary and his bodyguards. They were all hanged. The bloody body of the deposed president was hung from a lamp post, his severed private parts stuck in his mouth. One Afghan writer suggested Najibullah deserved his fate having been naïve enough to think the Taliban would recognize the UN center as out of bounds. Last week’s attack lay to rest that notion once again. And so it came to pass that from that time forward to the Al Qaeda attack on the United States September 11, 2001 and beyond, Afghanistan has been and continues to be “a center of world smuggling for narcotic drugs” and “a center for terrorism.” Over the years, the Left in that part of the world (and a lot of other places) has made a many mistakes that contributed to the advance of rightwing reactionary movements and forces. However, the biggest culprits have been the U.S. and its Western allies. In their zeal to crush communist, socialist and left movements and parties and a desire to control petroleum resources, they have anointed and fostered the fundamentalists over the secular and democratic, and taken advantage of religious, ethnic and sectarian divisions, stirring pots where they could find them from Central Europe to Iraq. Oh, and that narcotics thing. What short memories we sometime have. Yes, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency sometime cavorts with drug dealers. It did it in the war in South East Asia a few decades ago. Remember the Golden Triangle? “If it sounds a lot like Vietnam when Vietnam started to really come apart, it is — President Diem’s grotesquely corrupt brother was a CIA source and a noxious agent of influence,” writes Robert Baer, a former Middle East CIA field office, in Time magazine. “We came into Afghanistan in October 2001 with the same willful blindness. The CIA knew that its ally, the Tajik Northern Alliance, was a paid-up proxy of Iran, just as it was fully aware that another ally, Uzbek General Dostum, was one of Afghanistan’s great butchers (though Dostum has always denied the widespread allegations of his brutality). When it came to finding crucial partners on the ground, there were simply no alternatives.” According to Time, “From December 2001 through 2002, according to a former Drug Enforcement Administration official speaking on condition of anonymity, ‘the CIA and the military turned a blind eye to drug traffickers if they thought they could help them against Taliban and al-Qaeda.’” “We had no problem dealing with Afghan Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists, drug dealers and thugs when the Carter and Reagan White Houses waged a proxy war against the Soviet Union in the ‘80s,” writes Baer. “The CIA and the White House turned a blind eye to our proxies’ faults because the fundamentalists were the best fighters and happy to take down our Cold War enemy. “The claim that Ahmed Wali Karzai has been on the payroll of the CIA for the past eight years, as reported in today’s New York Times, won’t come as a surprise to most Afghans, who have long considered his brother, Afghan president Hamid Karzai, to be an American puppet,” wrote Aryn Baker in Time on October 28. “The revamped allegations that Karzai frère is deeply involved in Afghanistan’s annual $4-billion drug industry isn’t much of a shocker either – on the streets of Kabul and Kandahar the name ‘Wali’ has long been synonymous with someone who can get away with a crime because he has friends in the right places. Diplomats, counter-narcotics officials and commanders from the International Security Assistance Force, NATO’s military wing in Afghanistan, have all privately (and not so privately) expressed frustration with President Karzai for not reining in his brother. In fact, the people most likely to be shocked by the revelations are Americans back at home, who are already wondering why we should be sending more soldiers and money to a country whose leadership has rarely proved an adequate partner.” As it turns out there are more than two Karzai brothers. Citing recent study published by the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, investigative reporter Gareth Porter Writes: “The report suggests that the U.S. and NATO contingents are spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually on contracts with Afghan security providers, most of which are local power brokers guilty of human rights abuses.” “In addition to Ahmed Wali Karzai, it names Hashmat Karzai, another brother of President Karzai, and Hamid Wardak, the son of Defence Minister Rahim Wardak, as powerful figures who control private security firms that have gotten security contracts without registering with the government.” The allegation of drug dealing and CIA payoff to Ahmed Wali Karzai” throws into sharp relief the most crucial question the administration now faces in Afghanistan,” wrote Mark Sappenfield in the Christian Science Monitor last Wednesday. “Should America continue its policy of working with warlords and disreputable power-brokers in an attempt to use their influence to advance US interests? Or should it instead focus on protecting the Afghan people – in many cases from the very warlords the US has supported in the past?” I was sitting around the other day with a group of people whose views, one might say, ranged from center to left. On Afghanistan they appeared to be of the unanimous opinion that U.S. policy had to make a sharp departure from the past. The best option for the Obama Administration is neither “counterinsurgency” nor “counterterrorism.” Nor is total disengagement desired, they agreed. The answer lies in development. A “Marshall Plan” sized program to tackle poverty and illiteracy in the region could improve the situation. Military escalation will only make matters worse. Of course, launching such en effort would require an end to the fighting and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops.. A path to that would likely lay in a proposal widely broached in Europe and hardly mentioned in this country for an international conference involving; first and foremost, all Afghanistan’s neighboring states and each of the warring parties in the country with the aim of arriving at a security agreement. It might come through the United Nations like the plan that Najibullah was entertaining back in 1998 – long before September 11. Only this way can the conditions arise for the Afghan people to decide their own destiny free of dictates and intrigues from abroad. In any case, the proper path for the U.S. must not involve continuing to bed down with the feudal warlords and the likes of the Karzai brothers. That puts us on the wrong side of history and decency. BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

Democrat Congressman Gets 13 Years for Aiding Corporate Rape of Africa

US lawmaker gets 13 years for bribery

Posted: 14 November 2009 1503 hrs

	Photos 1 of 1 William Jefferson (L) walks with his wife Andrea Jefferson

 

 

WASHINGTON : A disgraced former US congressman who stashed 90,000 dollars in his freezer was sentenced to 13 years in prison for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.

William Jefferson, a Democratic lawmaker who represented a district in the southern state of Louisiana that included part of New Orleans, was convicted in August on 11 of 16 counts, including bribery, money laundering and racketeering involving businesses in Africa.

The 13-year prison sentence, far less than the 27 years recommended by prosecutors, is said to be the longest prison term ever for a US lawmaker convicted on charges of corruption.

The previous record came in 2006, when former Republican congressman Randall “Duke” Cunningham received a prison sentence of eight years and four months for accepting bribes from defence contractors.

Jefferson, 62, was also ordered to forfeit more than 470,000 dollars in assets.

“In a stunning betrayal of the public’s trust, former congressman Jefferson repeatedly used his public office for private gain,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman said in a statement.

“The lengthy prison sentence imposed on Mr Jefferson today is a stark reminder to all public officials that the consequences of accepting bribes can and will be severe.”

US District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III handed down Jefferson’s sentence at an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom just outside Washington.

“We expect to file an appeal at the appropriate time,” Jefferson’s attorney Amy Jackson told AFP. She declined to comment on the sentence.

Following a six-week trial, the jury found that from 2000 to 2005, Jefferson used his post as a US lawmaker to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from oil, communications, sugar and other companies in Nigeria, Ghana, Botswana, Equatorial Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In turn, he advanced the interests of the businesses and individuals who paid the bribes, namely through his seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee — the chamber’s top tax-writing panel — without disclosing his own financial dealings with the ventures.

“Mr Jefferson’s repeated attempts to sell his office caused significant damage to the public’s trust in our elected leaders,” said US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Neil MacBride.

Jefferson’s indictment in 2007, which followed a huge FBI corruption probe, listed a series of alleged schemes in Africa, including telecommunications deals, oil concessions, satellite transmission contracts and the development of industrial plants and other facilities.

The case came to light in August 2005, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Jefferson’s Washington home and found the cold cash, allegedly bribe money intended for the former Nigerian vice president, wrapped in aluminium foil and hidden in frozen food containers in his freezer.

In May 2006, FBI agents raided his congressional office — the first raid of its kind — in a move denounced by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

Despite the exhaustive investigation, Jefferson won re-election in 2006 but lost a bid to keep his seat last year.

Russia-India-China: The Bush curse

Eric Walberg

Moscow is trying to draw India and China closer to put out the flames now flaring across the continent, from the Caucasus and Central Asia, to Iran and Pakistan, notes Eric Walberg

United States President Barack Obama has shown a flicker of independence in shaping US Eurasian politics. To secure transit routes through Russia to Afghanistan, he loudly proclaimed the end to US missile base plans for Poland and the Czech Republic, and downplayed any further NATO expansion in Russia’s backyard. He resisted jumping on the Gates-Clinton-McChrystal escalation bandwagon, insisting that it would be counterproductive to blindly back the thoroughly discredited Karzai, and hinting that negotiations with the Taliban and Iran could mean an about-face on the Bush strategy of total war in the region.

Obama’s strategy is now described as focussed on securing the main cities in Afghanistan, while abandoning most of the country to the Taliban. This can only be a holding measure while attempts are made to lure moderate elements in the Taliban away from their comrades to join the Karzai clique. In talks with former Taliban foreign minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil brokered by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, US negotiators supposedly offered governorship of six provinces in the south and northeast, a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official told IslamOnline.net – if they accept the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan and eight US bases.

But the latest is he will bow to McChrystal’s demand for up to 40,000 more troops, US drone attacks continue apace in AfPak with his blessing, and the US is urging Pakistan on in its civil war against its frontier provinces of Baluchistan and Waziristan, pouring in massive military aid.

And missile and other plans in Eastern Europe are proceeding apace, with or without Obama’s blessing. US officials have gone out of their way to assuage the Poles and Czechs with assurances that the bases were not really cancelled. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Ellen Tauscher recently said the command centre for the new version of anti-missile defence could be stationed in the Czech Republic.

Now Poland is asking not only for missiles, but US troops, apparently “alarmed” by military exercises conducted by the Russian army in Belarus. “We would like to see US troops stationed in Poland to serve as a shield against Russian aggression,” Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski was quoted by Interfax. “If you can still afford it, we need some strategic reassurance,” he added sarcastically. When asked to comment, a Russian Foreign Ministry official told Kommersant, “It is better to ask the World Health Organisation for an assessment of Mr Sikorski’s words.” Estonia, which has sent a hefty 10 per cent of its armed forces to Afghanistan, is also asking for US troops.

NATO assurances to Georgia and Ukraine about joining up are still a dime a dozen. Georgia’s army is being armed by the US, Israeli and Ukraine, according to Alexander Shlyakhturov, head of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate, encouraging Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in his plans to reincorporate South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

All this can only mean that talk of real cooperation with Russia is an illusion, as is vague talk of accommodation with Iran. Obama may mean well, but the inertia of US empire is hard to stop.

Russian politicians are not blind. Nor are the Chinese. Both Russia and China refuse to accede to US fiat on Iran, and are cooperating on many fronts these days looking for ways to ease the world towards a “multipolar world”.

This is the backdrop to the 9th meeting of the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral meeting which took place in Bangalore in late October, attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Indian External Affairs Minister SM Krishna and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. Said Lavrov after the meeting, “RIC is a group of countries that are integrally needed to mobilise regional efforts. But they are not enough. All of Afghanistan ‘s neighbours are needed. The US, the main supplier of troops is needed. Iran is needed. The Central Asian countries are needed.” He politely refrained from saying that it is only because of the US invasion that the US has any role at all in the region.

As Lavrov rightly points out, it is the regional countries China, Russia, India and Iran that are the ones left to pick up the pieces in AfPak after the US finally packs its many bags. Russia has the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Russia and China have the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Even Iran has initiated its own trilateral format with Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, as MK Bhadrakumar writes in Asia Times, so far Lavrov’s efforts to fashion the three mini-superpowers into a united front on regional issues have been fruitless. Bad karma between the two most populous countries in the world lingers on; namely, the India-China frictions over borders and the Dalai Lama.

It is not only its Chinese neighbour that India can’t get along with. Deriving from its perennial distrust of anything to do with Pakistan, Delhi refuses to acknowledge the fact that the Taliban are an Afghan political reality and are part (let alone “all”) of any solution. Having drifted into the US orbit (curiously, along with its rival Pakistan), India risks being left behind, as the US-inspired war in Afghanistan continues to go nowhere, Pakistan descends into anarchy, China surges ahead, and the Russians and Chinese intensify their cooperation.

Of course, this and RIC’s inability to address Afghanistan suits the US just fine. Regional powers working together independently of the US to solve their problems would leave the US and its many SEATOs and NATOs out of the picture. Japan would like to fashion an East Asian community no longer subservient to Washington, but, according to President of the Japan Foundation Kazuo Ogoura, “It is intolerable [for Washington] to see Asians considering their relations among each other in a form that excludes the US.”

Obama is visiting Beijing and Tokyo this week. Oblivious to Asian disinterest in marching to US orders, Mark Brzezinski (son of Zbigniew) advised him in the New York Times to include in his “China List” establishing a formal mechanism among the leaders of the US, China and Pakistan – China is after all Pakistan’s oldest friend as counterweight to India. This pointedly leaves out Russia and India and ties China to US plans for the region. Good luck, Mr Obama.

Surprisingly, Moscow hasn’t given up entirely on Obama. Lavrov told Russian journalists in Bangalore, “Obama has announced a different philosophy – that of collective action, which calls for joint analysis, decision-making and implementation rather than for all others to follow Washington ‘s decisions. So far inertia lingers at the implementers’ level in the US, who still follow the well-trodden track. This is a process which will take time before the president’s will is translated into the language of practical actions by his subordinates.”

However distasteful US actions are, the Russian leadership cannot risk closing the door completely on US efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, considering it was on the losing end against the Afghan resistance 20 years ago and is less than enamoured by an avowedly Islamic state there. But it is unlikely that China will join India and Pakistan as a US client state, and if India buries the hatchet with China and reconsiders its position on the Taliban, the situation for the US – and Afghanistan – could yet change dramatically. There is small reason for any of the RICs to be haunted by Bush’s curse – the US-inspired wars and subversion in their backyard.

Tehran’s tricks for squeezing saudis

Amir Taheri

For almost a decade, Arab regimes have worried about alleged Iranian plans to create a "Shiite crescent" from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, encompassing Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and a yet-to-be liberated Palestine. Now fresh fears have grown that the "crescent" may take another shape as well — from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden, and including chunks of Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Since January, for instance, Iran has intensified pressure on Bahrain, where a Shiite majority has grievances against the Arab Sunni ruling elite. An archipelago connected with the Saudi mainland by a bridge, Bahrain provides the natural link to the oil-rich kingdom’s Asharqiyah province, where Shiites form a majority.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/tehran_tricks_for_squeezing_saudis_v9G7u23rnHhijSE7m3kB7O#ixzz0WnCGePLE

But Yemen may be a better example. Inside Saudi Arabia, the Empty Quarter, a desert the size of Texas, separates the Asharqiyah Shiites from their co-religionists in the Najran, Jazan and Assir. Until 1932, those provinces were under the suzerainty of the Shiite Imam of Yemen. In that year the new Saudi Kingdom incorporated them — an act the Yemenis didn’t recognize until 2005.

On the Yemeni side of the border, Iran has been trying to create a branch of the pan-Shiite Hezbollah movement. The aim is to control a chunk of territory along the Saudi border and use it to destabilize the kingdom while exerting pressure on the Yemeni government.

This would echo Iran’s 1982 creation of the Lebanese Hezbollah, which controls an enclave on the Israeli border, using it as a base for periodical attacks on Israel and continued political pressure on the Lebanese government in Beirut.

The Iran-inspired rebellion in Yemen started in 2007 under a tribal leader named Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.

Al-Houthi, from a small tribe in Yemen’s northern highlands, spent eight years learning "Islamic jurisprudence" in the Iranian "holy" city of Qom. His critics claim that he really studied asymmetric warfare, not theology. He denies any ties with Iran but says that he admires the Iranian leadership’s "brave stance against Crusaders and Zionists."

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Over the last decade, scores of Yemenis have received military training in Iran or Hezbollah-controlled parts of Lebanon. The Houthis have also gotten weapons, either directly from Iran or via Lebanon. Last month, Yemen captured an Iranian ship near the port of Haja carrying weapons for the Houthis.

Although the Yemeni brand of Shi’ism differs from the Iranian one, al-Houthi argues that Muslims should regard the Islamic Republic as the leader of jihad against the US-led "infidel."

At first, Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh (a general who has ruled the country for 30 years), dismissed the rebellion as a "minor headache" and tried to bribe tribal leaders into crushing it. Two years later, he’s had to admit he faces a major threat to his regime, if not Yemen’s survival as a unified state.

The Houthis have seized control of the highlands, isolating Saada, the provincial capital. Key parts of Al-Hussmaah, Marib and Razeh have become no-go areas for government forces. Saleh’s armies have failed to dislodge the rebels.

Earlier this month, the Houthis sent a column to Saudi Arabia in an apparent bid to incite rebellion against Riyadh. According to Saudi sources, the rebels built bunkers and dug trenches in sensitive areas close to Jabal-Dakhkhkan and Al-Khuyah, on the Saudi side.

Last week, the Saudis reacted by sending an expeditionary force, backed by fighter-bombers and tanks, to push the rebels back into Yemen. Yet even big air raids failed to push the Houthis from their pockets of "jihad" in Saudi territory. The Saudis lost eight men, with more than 130 wounded and at least five missing.

To deprive the Houthis of their main propaganda outlet, the Saudis have persuaded the owners of facilities serving the Middle East to take Iran’s main Arabic-language TV station, Al-Alam (The World), off the air.

This week, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottakki warned that the Saudi move against Houthis won’t remain "without an adequate answer," a sign that Tehran doesn’t intend to abandon its allies.

Tehran may aim to get the Saudis involved in a long, asymmetric war, thus leaving them unable to respond to Khomeinist expansionism in Afghanistan, Iraq and Bahrain. Last time the Saudis were sucked into a Yemeni border war, it took them a decade to get extricated.

Iran’s new, more aggressive posture is based on the assumption that America, under President Obama, is about to embark on what Mottakki calls "a strategic retreat" from the Middle East.

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India Food Strike, Fatal Riots Hobble Push to Export Auto Parts

By Vipin V. Nair and Subramaniam Sharma

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — Prem Kumar’s demand for higher pay and better food at the cafeteria at the auto-parts factory where he works near New Delhi forced General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. to shut three plants on the other side of the world.

The strike Kumar led at Rico Auto Industries Ltd., coming after managers were beaten to death in labor disputes at two other partmakers, may derail an Indian government goal to boost components exports about sevenfold to $25 billion by 2015. One global automaker already is reviewing plans to source as much as $3 billion in parts from India and may instead buy half from China, said Vikas Sehgal, a Chicago-based partner at Booz & Co. He declined to name the company, which is his client.

“People are suddenly looking at India with an eye of suspicion and concern,” he said. “When a single company’s strike jeopardizes the global value chain, the country suffers in the long run.”

GM, Ford and other automakers have increased their parts procurement from India and other emerging markets to lower costs. India’s overseas sales of components grew 10-fold in the past decade to $3.6 billion in the year ended March 2008, according to the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India.

Labor costs in India are a tenth of what companies pay in the U.S., and raw material costs are lower by 11 percent, said Puneet Gupta, an analyst at CSM Worldwide Inc., an industry consultant. That’s prompted Hyundai Motor Co. and Suzuki Motor Corp. to open plants in India to export cars.

“India’s biggest advantage is cost, especially labor costs,” said Koji Endo, managing director of Advanced Research Japan, a Tokyo-based equity research company. “Good quality parts can be made cheaply.”

45-Day Strike

Labor unrest may undermine that advantage. The 45-day strike at Rico, which ended Nov. 6, caused GM to shutter a factory in Delta Township, Michigan. Ford closed plants in Chicago and in Oakville, Ontario, in Canada.

Each factory was idled for one week because the Rico strike disrupted supplies of transmission components to plants that build vehicles such as Ford Tauruses, Lincoln MKXs and Buick Enclaves.

“Such strikes put a question mark on India,” Gupta said. “If the government doesn’t act and the problems continue, in the long run, companies may shift their locations to elsewhere, like Thailand.”

Ford, GM

Ford continues to see India as a key part of the global supply chain, said Todd Nissen, a company spokesman in Dearborn, Michigan. GM also has no immediate plans to stop using Indian parts.

“As a global purchasing group, we need to manage through supply issues no matter where they occur to keep vehicle production as close to schedule as possible,” said Alan Adler, a GM spokesman in Detroit.

Rico Auto’s customers haven’t terminated contracts because of the strike, said Chief Executive Officer Arvind Kapur. The company is working on a plan to ensure that future incidents don’t affect operations, he said.

In September, a human resources official at Pricol Ltd., a supplier to Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., was killed by workers protesting against the management, said Chief Operating Officer K. Udhaya Kumar. He didn’t elaborate.

Last year, the managing director of Graziano Trasmissioni India Ltd. was beaten to death after a group of sacked employees turned violent, police said.

“The meltdown dynamics in a competitive environment not only create survival pressures on the managements but also induce an acute sense of insecurity and uncertainty in the minds of the wage-earning employed,” said Jerome Joseph, who teaches industrial relations at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Rising Strikes

More than 1.5 million workers were involved in 250 strikes at Indian factories in 2008, compared with about 1 million workers involved in 255 strikes in 2003, according to Rajesh Thakur, a director at the government’s Labour Bureau.

Also, overall wages rose 0.8 percent, compared with 4.4 percent growth in productivity between 1990 and 2006, according to a 2008 report by the International Labour Organization. China’s wage growth in the same period was 9.9 percent, beating a productivity gain of 9 percent, it said.

Between 2006 and 2007, food prices rose by 9 percent in India, hurting purchasing power, according to ILO.

Rico’s CEO Kapur said a new hire costs the company about 6,000 rupees ($130) a month. Kumar, the union leader, said the company favors hiring temporary workers, who can be easily fired and take home about 4,000 rupees a month. That compares with full-time employees, who can earn about 11,000 rupees, he added.

“How can they secure themselves, educate their children and feed their families on such meager wages?” Kumar said. “It’s the rule of the jungle.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Vipin V. Nair in Mumbai at Vnair12@bloomberg.net; Subramaniam Sharma in New Delhi at ssharma@bloomberg.net