Democracy in Central Asia

By Ben Tanosborn

Colors and Flowers… and Soviet Spoils

Two weeks ago, shortly after the political upheaval erupted in Kyrgyzstan, I received an email from my journalist friend in Azerbaijan, Anar Orujov, who is deputy director of ICFJ (International Center for Journalists) in Baku, wanting to engage in a discussion about the problems of democracy in post Soviet countries, including Azerbaijan.

After stating those nations’ continuing struggle for media freedom and democracy, he posed the questions: “What is wrong here [those republics] that there is no democracy?  And, what is [the] beginning point for democracy?”  From the pulpit of my column, in a roundabout way, I hope to touch, if lightly, on my take to the news from Central Asia.

Once upon a recent past, as opportunity came about for some nations to emerge from totalitarianism, they did so in a very gentle, pacific and velvety way… and we all smiled, applauding the outcome.  Freedom came to Czechs and Slovaks with the smoothness one would expect from a carefully cast and well-rehearsed play.  More than a decade earlier, the Iberian Peninsula had experienced its own evolutionary political awakening, after the deaths of Franco and Salazar.  Spaniards, Portuguese, Czechs and Slovaks, all brought about r/evolutionary change on their own terms.

One could say that, democratically at least, all four r/evolutions were truly successful.

But many soft and not-so-soft revolutions that were to come thereafter, flashily named from the botanical and color spectrums, were more often than not a temporary change in command induced some times, provoked in other cases, by ulterior motives of either inducers or provokers of such change.  Revolutions at times of the fake-variety, which more aptly should be referred to as pseudo-democratic coup-d’états!

And that happened as the Warsaw Pact nations unyoked themselves from the USSR; and the USSR transformed itself into the Russian Federation, shrinking from one-sixth of the earth’s land area to one-ninth after many of its republics attained independence.

And, little surprise, there was the United States ready to claim the spoils of dissolution after the 46 years of Cold War following the defeat of the Axis, the end of World War II.

Well meaning, idealistic students were all too often led astray, as were other segments of the population, by propaganda financed via the tentacles of the only empire left: the United States of America.  Overtly at times, and covertly most often through a number of US organizations/agencies, the CIA and infiltrated NGO’s, it seemed obvious to some political observers how and why three former Soviet republics (Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan), two of them bordering Mother Russia, so easily detached their umbilical cords from Moscow in order to break bread with the West; also, why American efforts fell short in Belarus and Uzbekistan.

Along the Caucasus and Central Asia, two colors and a flower emerged in 2004-5.  The Rose Revolution in Georgia – supported by the Kmara civic resistance movement – replaced Gorbachev’s principal reformer and Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, with Mikheil Saakashvili, a friend of the United States.  Similarly in Ukraine, here with the support of Pora, the sprouting of the Orange Revolution brought to power Viktor Yushchenko, another good friend of the West.  In Central Asia, the color pink, perhaps best known as the “Tulip Revolution,” gave Kyrgyzstan, with the support of KelKel – a youth movement, its place in the garden… or the political color spectrum.

A poor, landlocked country without its neighbors’ oil, Kyrgyzstan’s major economic resource became one of geo-political nature: the sphere of influence that it could provide Russia and the United States, Manas Air Base representing the focal point as both a transit center for US military operations in Afghanistan and a strategic listening post to the Turkic-speaking Uighur province in Xingjian (China).  Although the rent paid by the US for the base has increased several-fold, now representing 5 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP, the now exiled president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, apparently emptied the nation’s coffers in the pockets of his relatives… leaving Russia and the United States to tend to the ensuing economic crisis, while he sets up domicile in Belarus courtesy of its strongman-leader, Alexander Lukashenko.

The bottom line to all this, my dear friend Anar, is that democracy is not something that you borrow or inherit, but something that people need to build from scratch… without the help, or accommodation, of outside “do-gooders.”  Democracy is not as exportable as we in the United States claim it to be.  For over a century, America’s efforts in Latin America were less about democracy and more about economic interests (exploitation, some will say)… and the democracy which now exists in some of those nations can be only attributed to their own efforts, and not any American help.  The same will occur anywhere else, including Central Asia, when people demand social justice and respect for human rights… in bona fide political r/evolutions, and not make-believe colors or flowers that usually play to the design of empires.

Spain, Portugal, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and a few Latin American nations may serve as initial models in the arduous and very difficult path that leads towards a semblance of democracy.  Then again, perhaps Central Asia needs to create its very own model(s).

© 2010 Ben Tanosborn

12 oil tankers burnt, four policemen killed



12 oil tankers burnt, four policemen killed

CHAKWAL/ISLAMABAD: Four policemen were killed by unidentified men, who also set 12 NATO oil tankers on fire, at the Talagang-Mianwali Road on Saturday, police said.

Talagang Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Ghaffar told APP that the incident took place around two kilometres from Talagang, Chakwal district. The DSP said Sub-Inspector Iqbal, driver Fareed and two unidentified police personnel died in the incident, as some armed men started firing at a police mobile van before setting the NATO oil tankers on fire. The DSP said the fire also engulfed the nearby Ehsan Filling Station.

Fire Brigade vehicles reached the spot and started efforts to control the fire while police cordoned off the area to arrest the perpetrators.

Separately, a man was killed when a NATO oil tanker overturned near Saranan, Pishin district on Saturday. According to police, the deceased was identified as Sadiq Shah. His body was handed over to his family after an autopsy.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani condemned the attack on the NATO oil tankers, in which four policemen also lost their lives. The prime minister said the terrorists wanted to spoil the image of the country. staff report/app

Putin Confident Enough To Reverse Position On Nabucco

[SEE:  Russia vows not to impede NABUCCO project. January 09, 2009 ]

European Nabucco gas pipeline “useless and dangerous” – Putin

24.04.2010 20:24

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday dismissed as “useless and dangerous” Europe’s Nabucco pipeline project, which aims to alleviate dependence on Russian gas.

Putin made his comment in Vienna, shortly before Austrian Economics MinisterReinhold Mitterlehner signed on to Russia’s rival South Stream project. Austria is also part of the Nabucco consortium, dpa reported.

Nabucco is to supply Central Asian gas to Europe, while South Stream is to send Russian gas from the the Black Sea to south-eastern and Central Europe.

“We don’t see a conflict of interest,” Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said about his country’s double strategy.

His Russian counterpart said he did not understand why countries want to become independent from Russian gas, as Russia is able to satisfy the needs of its customers for years.

Taking a jab at Nabucco, Putin said: “It is useless and dangerous to build a pipeline without having supply contracts.”

The six countries involved have yet to conclude such agreements with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan or Iraq.

The Nabucco consortium also includes energy companies in Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

South Stream is a joint project between Russian gas giant Gazprom and Italian energy group ENI.

Afghan schoolgirls fall ill in suspected gas attack

25.04.2010 17:15

Dozens of Afghan schoolgirls fell ill after a suspected poison gas attack on their school, local authorities said on Sunday, blaming the incident on the Taliban who oppose education for girls, Reutersreported.

Provincial police chief Abdul Razzaq Yaqubi said about 48 girls and several teachers became ill suddenly and many collapsed after smelling poison gas at the school in the northern city of Kunduz, where there has been an upsurge in insurgent violence.

Yaqubi blamed the Taliban for the attack.

“I was in class when a smell like a flower reached my nose,” said Sumaila, 12, one of the girls hospitalized after the attack. “I saw my classmates and my teacher collapse and when I opened my eyes I was in hospital,” she said.

Azizullah Safar, head of the Kunduz hospital, said many of the girls were still suffering from pain, dizziness and vomiting.

The Taliban banned all education for girls when they ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001 and it remains a disputed issue in much of Afghanistan.

Similar attacks have been carried out in other parts of Afghanistan over the past few years, including areas where there is little Taliban presence. Yaqubi said 20 girls had fallen ill in a suspected poison attack on another Kunduz school last week.

In the south and east, where the Taliban control towns and villages, girls’ schools remain shut, teachers have been threatened and some girls have been attacked with acid.

Despite the attacks, Sumaila said she hoped to return to school, if her father allows her.

“I am very scared. My parents were very worried. My father told me that I have learnt a lot. I don’t know whether they will still let me go to school after this,” she said.

Is the United States Losing Azerbaijan?: Part Two

APRIL 24, 2010

Vladimir Socor Washington’s current policies seem about to turn the US-Azerbaijan strategic partnership, from an operational concept into an empty phrase, when it is ever uttered on the US side. On April 19 the US-Azeri military exercise Regional Response 2010, scheduled to be held in May in Azerbaijan, was cancelled, with no reasons given and no substitute dates offered. The cancellation was announced two days after the US Undersecretary of Defense, Michelle Flournoy’s, meetings with Azerbaijan’s leadership in Baku. Publicly describing Azerbaijan as a “vital partner” of the United States, Flournoy praised its contribution to the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, as well as the Azeri security services’ successful prevention of terrorism, including planned terror attacks against US interests (www.day.az, APA, Trend, April 19, 20). Whether Baku cancelled the exercise to signal displeasure with the overall US policy or for economic reasons (as it did in Georgia recently) or in deference to Moscow, are matters of speculation. Whichever the case, it reflects the ongoing erosion of US influence in the region. Baku, however, is left questioning the meaning of such a strategic partnership while Washington tilts toward Armenia on the Karabakh conflict, which is the main issue in Azeri national interests. Baku is also deeply concerned by a US policy bent on splitting Turkey from Azerbaijan, in which case an isolated Baku would be forced to seek rapprochement with Moscow. Pro-Western officials in Azerbaijan’s presidential entourage and government are aghast at the post-2009 turn in Washington’s policy, a shift clearly driven by US domestic electoral politics. As Novruz Mammadov, the head of the presidential administration’s foreign relations department, points out, US policy is consumed with debating the Armenian events of a century ago (1915), even as Armenian forces today occupy seven districts inside Azerbaijan, from which 800,000 Azeris have been “ethnically cleansed.” Current US policy also seems ready to sacrifice the Turkish-Azeri connection, although the two countries are “strategic allies with deep historic ties. Turkey is important to Azerbaijan’s partnership with the West on key security and energy projects” (Mammadov’s interview with Radio Free Europe, cited by http://www.day.az, April 22). Azerbaijan has spearheaded the opening of Caspian energy resources to the West; holds the only non-Russian key to Central Asia; contributed troops and other resources to NATO and US-led operations in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan; provides transit passage for US forces and their supplies en route to Afghanistan and Central Asia; has mastered terrorism challenges in cooperation with the US; promoted US-backed security and political projects in the region (NATO partnerships, GUAM, arms control); and it provides (in line with post-2001 US policy objectives) an example of successful secular development and Western alignment in the Muslim world. In pursuing these policies, Azerbaijan has incurred serious, if calculated, risks vis-à-vis Russia and Iran. Baku, however, feels taken for granted by the United States since the 2009 turn in Washington’s policy. The bilateral relationship had flourished during the Clinton administration; coasted on those achievements during the Bush era, by the end of which it had entered a phase of benign US neglect; and it is now perceived as malign neglect, as US domestic politics and relations with Moscow seem to outrank strategic considerations in Washington’s South Caucasus policy. Whether inadvertently or deliberately, Washington is not nominating an ambassador to Azerbaijan. From Baku’s vantage point, this omission looks like disrespect, or the dysfunctional condition of the US political system, or both; with corresponding conclusions in Baku about the US capacity for leadership in the region. Due to the long ambassadorial vacancy, feedback about Azerbaijan’s mounting alienation hardly percolates to the top US policy making levels. US working-level officials display awareness and concern in off-the-record conversations, as do Azerbaijan’s Turkish and Georgian partners. With the strategic partnership painfully hurt, Washington nevertheless continues to expect certain deliverables from Azerbaijan. Visiting US officials from time to time are asking Azerbaijan to support various measures against neighboring Iran, or increase contributions to the Afghanistan operations, or to stop asking Turkey to maintain the linkage between Armenian border re-opening and Armenian troop withdrawal from the inner-Azerbaijani districts. Azerbaijan was willing for many years to bear certain burdens and risks in partnership with the US. At present, however, Baku feels that its national interests are no longer taken into account or are even jeopardized by US policies. As the officially connected, staunchly pro-Western pundit Rasim Musabayov observes: “With such a one-sided approach, Washington must be prepared for receiving not support, but ‘advice’ in response to its own treatment [of Baku]. It is unrealistic to think that one can ignore the interests of Azerbaijan, or act against those interests, while extracting dividends from its partnership with this country” (www.day.az, April 22). Source: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/

Is the United States Losing Azerbaijan?: Part One

Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 78

By: Vladimir Socor

Azeri presidential administration’s political department chief Ali Hasanov

Azerbaijan’s long-standing alignment with the United States is rapidly unraveling in the wake of Washington’s recent policy initiatives. As perceived from Baku, those US initiatives fly in the face of Azerbaijan’s staunch support over the years to US strategic interests and policies in the South Caucasus-Caspian region.

Current US policies, however, are seen to favor Armenia in the Karabakh conflict resolution negotiations, curry favor with Armenian advocacy groups in domestic US politics, split Turkey and Azerbaijan from one another over the Karabakh issue, isolate Azerbaijan in the region, and pressure Baku into silent acquiescence with these policies.

Key actors in the region tend to share Azerbaijan’s perceptions in this regard. During last week’s nuclear safety summit in Washington, Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili, and Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spoke frankly in this regard. They told US interlocutors at every step that the refusal to invite Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, to the summit was a mistake, counterproductive to US interests in the region, and confirming perceptions that Washington was attempting to isolate Baku.

US President, Barack Obama’s, meeting with his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargsyan during the Washington summit (while failing to invite the Azerbaijani president) confirmed perceptions that Armenian issues in US domestic politics distort Washington’s policy on the Karabakh conflict and toward Azerbaijan.

Ankara had cautioned Washington against such moves ever since Erdogan’s December 2009 visit to the US. At least from that point onward, Turkey has closed ranks with Azerbaijan, instead of distancing from it and opening the Turkish-Armenian border promptly and unconditionally at the Obama administration’s urging. The administration insists on de-linking the border opening from the continuing Armenian military occupation of seven districts beyond Karabakh, deep inside Azerbaijan. The administration had, instead, hoped to link the border opening with the April 24 US anniversary of the 1915-1918 Armenian events in Ottoman Turkey.

Washington’s summit miscalculation is the latest in a year-long series of blows to US-Azeri relations. This trend continues amid an apparent US strategic disengagement from the wider region (rationalized as a “strategic pause” to assuage pro-US governments there). In Azerbaijan’s case, Washington seems unable even to fill the long-vacant post of US ambassador in Baku. The vacancy deprives the United States of steady high-level access to Azerbaijan’s leaders (which had never been a problem previously), while making it more difficult for Washington to grasp the crisis in US-Azerbaijan relations and its region-wide implications.

Addressing an April 14 cabinet meeting in front of TV cameras, President Aliyev criticized the US policy of pushing Turkey to open the border with Armenia, despite the latter’s occupation of seven Azeri districts beyond Karabakh. This move pulls the rug from under Azerbaijan’s carefully constructed negotiating position for a stage-by-stage peaceful solution to the conflict. It also seems designed to separate Turkey from Azerbaijan. Accordingly, Aliyev complained about “certain countries that believe that they can meddle in everything…by exerting pressure and blackmailing. This is how we see it. This policy clearly runs against Azerbaijan’s interests, and the Azeri state is taking appropriate steps.” Aliyev strongly objected to the US de-coupling the Armenian border opening issue from that of troop withdrawal from the seven Azerbaijani districts. De-coupling the two issues would enable Yerevan to renounce negotiations on troop withdrawal altogether, he observed: “This is a completely wrong and incorrect position and contrary to Azerbaijan’s national interests.” Aliyev also urged the “certain country” carefully to “consider regional processes, history, historical relations. What do those who are unaware of regional processes want to achieve?” (Az TV, April 14; Khalk Gazeti, April 15).

Baku and Ankara have now reached the common view that the border opening and normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations is a bilateral matter between Ankara and Yerevan, rather than an issue for Washington to push from outside onto the regional agenda (Trend, Anatolia News Agency, April 16, 17).

Azerbaijan considers that Washington is moving from equidistance to partisanship as a co-chair of the “Minsk Group” of mediators in the Karabakh conflict resolution negotiations. Those negotiations are premised on a first-stage Armenian troop withdrawal from those districts. However, Washington’s push from outside the Minsk Group to open the Turkey-Armenia border unconditionally would remove Armenia’s incentive to withdraw those troops.

In a lengthy statement to the media on this issue, the Azeri presidential administration’s political department chief, Ali Hasanov, criticized Washington’s “loss of neutrality” on Karabakh conflict resolution as, “incompatible with the US role in the Minsk Group.” Evidently reflecting his president’s position, Hasanov hailed the Turkish leaders’ response to their US and Armenian counterparts during the Washington summit. There, Erdogan and Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, again declined to break ranks with Azerbaijan. “We maintain unique ties with Turkey on the principle of ‘one nation, two states’ and we are not going to spoil them under anyone’s dictation. This is what Turkey thinks too,” Hasanov noted.

On a cautionary note for Washington, Hasanov remarked that “relations between Azerbaijan and Russia have intensified significantly in the last few years…Russia views Azerbaijan as an equal partner, and Azerbaijan considers Russia a major factor in the region, a friend and partner and attaches special importance to relations with it” (ANS TV, Turan, APA, April 15). As a rule, public statements by Azerbaijani presidential team members reflect a prior consensus reached within it.

US Puppet-Masters Juggle Indian and Pakistani Navies In Arabian Sea

Navy Seals seal a bond

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

The Indian destroyer INS Mysore which will participate in sea drills with the US Navy New Delhi, April 24: A US navy flotilla reached Goa yesterday for the latest edition of the Malabar series of exercises with the Indian Navy in which the two forces will practise anti-submarine warfare and special operations. India does not conduct such large-scale naval exercises with any other country. The two navies believe they are “inter-operable”. This is the first time the US Navy has sent its special forces, the Seals, with its frontline units for the exercise. The 14th round of the Malabar exercise will continue till May 2. The ships from America’s Seventh Fleet include a guided missile cruiser, the USS Shiloh, destroyers USS Chaffee and USS Lassen, frigate USS Curts, a Los Angeles class nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Annapolis, two P3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft and a 28-member US Navy special forces team. From the Indian Navy’s Western Fleet, the guided missile destroyer, INS Mysore, and three guided missile frigates, the INS Godavari, INS Brahmaputra and INS Tabar, a submarine, the INS Shankush, Sea Harrier fighter aircraft, and helicopters are to participate in the bilateral exercise. “Naval co-operation between India and USA epitomises the long-term strategic relationship between both countries. Both navies have, over the years, undertaken diverse bilateral activities such as training exchanges, information exchanges, and technical co-operation. Our nations have significant convergence of interests, especially in the maintenance of maritime security,” a statement from the Indian Navy said. India and the US signed a Framework for Maritime Security Co-operation in 2006. During the current edition of the exercise, the two navies will practise, apart from anti-submarine warfare, surface firing, maritime interdiction operations and Visit Board Search and Seizure. “The interoperability achieved over the years as a result of such exercises has proved to be operationally beneficial, particularly during the ongoing Anti Piracy Operations in the Gulf of Aden as also during Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief operations such as the tsunami of 2004,” the navy statement said.

NATO, Pakistan hold joint naval exercise off Karachi

KARACHI

Sun Apr 26, 2009 7:45am EDT

(Reuters) – NATO will begin two days of joint naval exercises with Pakistan on Monday as part of an effort to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism and anti-piracy measures.

WORLD

Five NATO vessels, carrying about 800 crew in total, will take part along with four ships and air units from the Pakistan navy.

“It’s a diplomatic trip,” Lieutenant Commander Alexandre Santos Fernandes said in Karachi on Sunday. “NATO is willing to establish contact with countries that cooperate in the international effort to counter terrorism, piracy and other organized crime issues.”

NATO and the United States look to Pakistan for support in defeating al Qaeda and stabilizing neighboring Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Sahar Ahmed; Editing by Matthew Jones)

US special forces ‘tried to cover-up’ botched Khataba raid in Afghanistan

[These massacres are all too typical of the kinds of crimes the "best of the best of the best" are committing against the innocent people of Afghanistan.  By giving Afghanistan over to America's "warrior culture" it is showing that America's "finest" often turn-out to be just more barbarians.]

Relatives at the graves of five people killed, including three women, during the night raid

Jerome Starkey, Kabul

US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times.

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public.

The claims were made as Nato admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last night. It had initially claimed that the women had been dead for several hours when the assault force discovered their bodies.

“Despite earlier reports we have determined that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale, a Nato spokesman. The coalition continued to deny that there had been a cover-up and said that its legal investigation, which is ongoing, had found no evidence of inappropriate conduct.

The Kabul headquarters of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato forces, claimed originally that the women had been “tied up, gagged and killed”.

A senior Afghan official involved in a government investigation told The Times: “I think the special forces lied to McChrystal.”

“Why did the special forces collect their bullets from the area?” the official said. “They washed the area of the injuries with alcohol and brought out the bullets from the dead bodies. The bodies showed there were big holes.”

The official, who asked not to be named until the results of the investigation have been made public, said that the assault force sealed off the compound from 4am, when the raid started, to 11am, when Afghan officials from Gardez were finally allowed access to the house.

At least 11 bullets were fired during the raid, the investigator said, and the shooting was carried out by two American gunmen positioned on the roof of the compound. Only seven bullets were recovered from the scene.

“I asked McChrystal, ‘why did the Americans clean some of the bullets from the area?’ They don’t have the right to do that,” the official said.

Haji Sharabuddin, the head of the family who were attacked, toldThe Times last month that troops removed bullets from his relatives’ bodies, but his claims were impossible to verify. The hallway where four of the five victims were killed had been repainted and at least two bullet holes had been plastered over.

Video footage of the raid’s aftermath, collected by Afghan investigators, shows close-up shots of one man’s bloodstained and punctured torso and walls with blood on them. The Afghan official’s conclusion that the bullets were removed is based on the testimony of survivors, analysis of the photographs and the missing bullets.

Nato promised a joint forensic investigation in a statement issued after the raid, but Rear Admiral Greg Smith, the coalition’s director of communications in Afghanistan, said that this had proved impossible because the bodies were buried the same day in accordance with Islamic custom.

Instead Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior sent its top criminal investigator from Kabul, and a Canadian brigadier-general led a separate military inquiry.

The Afghan investigation differed in one respect from The Times’findings. Survivors told this newspaper that Saranwal Zahir, the police officer’s brother, was shot when he tried to shout that his family was innocent. The women, who were crouching behind him, were killed in the same volley of fire. Afghan investigators believe that Mr Zahir was carrying an AK47 and wanted to avenge his brother’s killers. The women were clustered around him, trying to pull him inside the house, when the second US gunman opened fire, killing all four of them.

Footage collected by the Afghan team also shows a man in United States Army uniform taking pictures of the bodies. The findings have not been made public. The Interior Ministry is expected to pass a report to the Attorney-General’s office, which will decide whether or not it can press criminal charges.

The family had more than 25 guests on the night of the attack, as well as three musicians, to celebrate the naming of a newborn child.

“In what culture in the world do you invite … people for a party and meanwhile kill three women?” asked the senior official. “The dead bodies were just eight metres from where they were preparing the food. The Americans, they told us the women were dead for 14 hours.”

In a statement yesterday, Brigadier-General Eric Tremblay, a Nato spokesman, said: “We deeply regret the outcome of this operation, accept responsibility for our actions that night, and know that this loss will be felt forever by the families.

“The force went to the compound based on reliable information in search of a Taleban insurgent, and believed that the two men posed a threat to their personal safety. We now understand that the men killed were only trying to protect their families.”

The Indian/Afghan “Strategic Partnership” That Troubles Pakistan

Afghan president to visit India to strengthen ties

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will travel to India early next week for talks aimed at strengthening ties between the two countries, India’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday.”President Karzai’s visit carries forward the sequence of high-level interaction between the two countries and would contribute to strengthening the strategic partnership between India and Afghanistan,” the statement said. Over the past decade, India has spent millions of dollars to help rebuild Afghanistan’s war-ravaged infrastructure by building roads, schools, hospitals and dams. India is also involved in training the country’s police forces and its diplomatic corps. However, New Delhi has been concerned about continuing assaults on Indian targets by Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents, including two major bomb attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul in which scores of people died. Talks between Karzai and India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are expected to focus on issues relating to the safety and security of Indians working on development projects in Afghanistan. This will be Karzai’s first visit to India since his re-election as president. The visit will be watched warily by neighboring Pakistan which views India’s development efforts with suspicion, further raising worries in Islamabad about India’s growing influence in Afghanistan. Associated Press

The Ethics of Mind-Reading By Chemical and Electromagnetic Means

The Conversation: Brain research brings wonders and worries

By Judith Horstman
Special to The Bee

What ethical concerns will arise from new technology and medicine that can reveal our thoughts and enhance our brains? To comment on this issue, please use our forum.

Back in the 1980s – in a place long ago and far away called the U.S. House of Representatives – I was a Washington correspondent covering health policy issues, and a young Congressman from Tennessee named Al Gore was chairman of a subcommittee on science and technology.

That oversight and investigations subcommittee was wrestling with troublesome questions surrounding organ transplantation. A new anti-rejection drug, cyclosporine, had raised survival rates for recipients to 80 percent, a tremendous advance in life-saving medical technology that resulted in a massive demand for donor organs – already in short supply – and set off a flood of legal, moral and ethical issues.

Kidneys were being sold and bought from living donors, the wealthy were getting to the head of waiting lists after making huge donations to hospitals, and desperate parents were launching media campaigns for hearts, livers and lungs for their dying children. In the most notorious and bizarre case, a baboon heart was transplanted into a 7-month-old infant, Baby Fae, who did not survive.

Gore’s subcommittee waded into this morass and produced landmark legislation: The National Organ Transplant Act prohibited the sale of human organs and set up a policy and structure for allocation of donor organs. More legislation followed and so did more bioethical issues, such as those involving embryonic stem cells, gene therapy, and the ownership of your own body tissue and genes. Many of these issues generated articles I wrote for USA Today and Gannett’s other newspapers – and foreshadowed the increasingly complex ethical issues to come.

Amazing medical advances are continuing to create huge new concerns, especially in the rapidly accelerating field of neuroscience, where science fact is overtaking science fiction.

Right now, the deaf are hearing with bionic “ears,” the blind see with the aid of electrodes, an amputee is moving a prosthetic arm by thought and a man paralyzed with locked-in syndrome is “speaking” through a brain electrode connected to a computer.

Within the next few decades, we’ll see more: mini-microprocessors in the brain to download and store information, connect to your cell phone and allow you to operate machines by thought alone – and digitally save your memories. Smart pills to boost your brain power. Brain scans to “read” thoughts and emotions; nanomedicine that will eliminate most brain surgeries; and cures for Alzheimer’s, stroke and other mental ills.

One result has been the creation of whole new field called neuroethics. And just in time.

The issues generated by advances in neuroscience and neurotechnology are special and enormous. They offer tremendous potential benefits – and open issues and ethical questions that go to the core of human rights in ways never before imagined. They both overlap and outflank the ones raised by other biomedical fields because they are different in one telling and overriding respect. They are tinkering with the very essence of what it means to be human: your brain.

Changing the brain with drugs, magnetic fields, surgery or any other of the admittedly wonderful therapies could modulate the way we think – and feel – and may bend the very definition of who we are. Indeed, many of the issues reach into constitutional rights, such as privacy, fairness and civil rights, legal ethicists say.

Privacy bias and self-incrimination

The list of potential moral and social issues attached to neurotechnologies is long enough to position ethicists near the top on lists of hot jobs. Among the many examining neuroethics are experts in the $10 million MacArthur Foundation Project on Law and Neuroscience, and neuroimaging is a concern all on its own.

Brain scans that show in real time how a living brain functions also offer opportunities to predict and possibly control or change behavior, illness, cognitive performance, intelligence and even character, not to mention insurance coverage. These findings raise questions of criminal responsibility, prediction of criminal behavior, treatment options, issues of psychopathy and drug addiction, and how these affect our understandings of responsibility, punishment and the use of neuroscience in legal decision-making.

What kind of privacy safeguards would be needed if a machine could read your thoughts? Will your thoughts condemn you in court – or worse, as in the movie “Minority Report,” the dark science-fiction story starring Tom Cruise in which a police force can predict crime before it occurs and punish the “perpetrator” accordingly?

How can your brain be private when someone with a scanner could read its deepest secrets, including its state of health and your identity? Will others be able to access your brain chip remotely? Can you be subpoenaed to have your memory chip “read” into testimony in court and criminal cases? Would scanning your brain be illegal search and seizure, a violation of the Fourth Amendment, or self-incrimination, the Fifth Amendment?

Scans now can show signs of diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or schizophrenia, before symptoms appear and will no doubt be able to show more in the future. Will insurance companies demand scans before covering people and refuse those with preexisting brain conditions? Will law enforcement agencies ask for brain scans of people accused of crimes or of those standing trial – or ask to scan brains of airline passengers for signs of terrorism? Full body scans are already installed in some airports.

Will brain scans reveal truth? The ability to tell when someone is lying is of keen interest to most of us, and especially attorneys eager to bring brain scans into courtrooms, law enforcement agents looking for evidence of wrongdoing, and singles wanting to look into the hearts and heads of potential mates.

A future of busy lawyers

With new treatments and neurotechnologies, there will be new questions – and many of these will be resolved in court.

Few are convinced that today’s brain scans are accurate enough to tell the truth, or the whole truth. Brain scans have not yet (at this writing) been admissible in U.S. courts other than for the sentencing phase, when they may be used to show how brain damage could affect the ability to form intention.

And if you could successfully change somebody’s brain, should you be able to? Even if you are changing it for the better or relieving it of disease? If you could turn anti-social beings into upright citizens, could you require it? A vaccine against cocaine addiction is now under development, and we already force some to take mind- or emotion-altering drugs in exchange for freedom.

Who will determine who should get – or pay for – the wondrous technology and treatments? Price is a consideration even in the fictional future year 2154 of the blockbuster film “Avatar,” when crippling spinal injuries can be fixed – if you can pay: The hero, Jake Sully, a paraplegic Marine veteran, takes a dangerous job with a military/corporate entity partly because he is promised the spinal surgery that will give him his legs back.

There’s no doubt that the government, including the military, will get first crack at neurotechnology, and that poses other concerns. The government does not make some experiments or policies public and is free of many restraints. For example, your employer (today at least) can’t tell you that you must use amphetamines to improve your job performance, but the Air Force can – and does.

Ownership of your digital self stored on microchips is bound to become an issue. It’s possible your digital self could continue to exist after your physical death. Who is going to have access (and the password) to your digital brain after your physical self is gone? In fact, what is “self”? What about just wiping it all clean – or could that result in controversy similar to that of destroying frozen embryos?

New legal and ethical issues arise with each new change, just as they have in biology and medicine of the past. And, just as in the past, we will tend to see them resolved through lawsuits before we see them addressed by lawmakers.

As we forge ahead in this brave new world of neuroscience, one thing is mind-numbingly certain: The fallout from this amazing new technology will keep lots of lawyers, courts, philosophers and ethicists busy for a long time to come. We seem to be headed for some interesting times – a journey into the final frontier – our brain.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

US violates ‘hammer and anvil’ deal–-leaves border naked

Prime Minister Gilani talked to President Obama about the withdrawal of US forces from the Pakistani Afghan border.

• Pakistan fears the pullout confirms the U.S. is walking away from a key military agreement
• Under the “hammer and anvil” deal, the two sides agreed to coordinate efforts to prevent insurgents escaping an offensive
• 700 Taliban escape into Afghanistan
• Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani pressed the issue in Washington last month, as did Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani during the recent nuclear-security summit

This the second time that the US forces abandoned thier post on the Afghan side of the border and let the insurgents escape. The first time wa sin Bajaur right in the middle of the Pakistani military offensive. Now again the US forces left the border naked, and did not intercept the militants that the Pakistani Army has been chasing.

As the U.S. army retreated last week from its final outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley–the short way up to Kabul for insurgents coming over the remote Pakistani border–American officials tried to frame the move as part of the administration’s new strategy to shift focus away from the frontier and toward protecting large population centers and main roads. But Pakistan fears the pullout confirms the U.S. is walking away from a key military agreement.

• Footage of Taliban fighters swarming a former U.S. military mountain-top base in Afghanistan has been aired on a major satellite TV station.
• Just days after American forces withdrew from the Korengal Valley – which has seen some of the toughest fighting in the Afghan war – armed insurgents can be seen over-running the area.
• The video, which was shown yesterday on Al-Jazeera television, will be seen as a morale boost for Taliban fighters – even though the U.S. insists the area has no strategic value.

Under the “hammer and anvil” deal, the two sides agreed to coordinate efforts to prevent insurgents escaping an offensive on one side of the border from taking sanctuary on the other. The Pakistani military has spent two years exerting control over its side of the Korengal border, just to see an estimated 700 Taliban take refuge in Afghanistan, unchallenged by withdrawing U.S. forces.

The future of the hammer-and-anvil strategy has become the No. 1 topic for the Pakistani military. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani pressed the issue in Washington last month, as did Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani during the recent nuclear-security summit. Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani says Pakistani forces played the “anvil” role during recent U.S. operations in Helmand province, but requests for reciprocal backup for Pakistani operations in the Bajaur and Mohmand tribal areas have not been met. “Hammer-and-anvil has to work both ways,” he says.

more about “US military base under Taliban control“, posted with vodpod

Pakistani officials have pointed out that the Soviets adopted precisely the same “urban centers” strategy back in the mid-1980s, abandoning efforts to stop the flow of insurgents across the border. It was a huge tactical blunder. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. is in the process of making that same error. U.S. Bails On Key Military Strategy, Newsweek By John Barry

There is a movie and a book about the base.

Junger, author of “The Perfect Storm,” made five one-month trips to the Korengal Valley in 2007 and 2008 as an embedded reporter with U.S. troops. He and photojournalist Tim Hetherington have produced a film, “Restrepo,” which won the grand jury prize for best documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. A new book by Junger will be out next month, titled “War,” that chronicles the experiences of a platoon of soldiers who fought, and watched their friends die, in the Korengal.

Junger’s book offers no grandiose theory of how to combat terrorism. It is a gripping account of how modern warfare is experienced by those who do the fighting, and its focus is that of a laser, not a floodlight. He reaches just one grand conclusion about the nature of war: that in the final analysis, you kill the enemy not because of nationality or ideology, but because if you don’t, the enemy might kill you. Washington Post

The First Baloch Suicide Bomber–Expect Many More

[Meet the Baloch man who blew himself up to slaughter Shias in Quetta hospital.  Questions arise, but perhaps the most important being--Why would a Baloch (who are normally a very non-religious lot) do such a thing?  It might be properly explained as an attack upon people perceived to be Punjabi invaders.  It is more likely that this man was a member of the Sunni-Baloch terrorist group, Jundullah.  Any group that stands in the way of Baloch separatism is probably considered a legitimate target by them.  The Jundullah group was organized near Wana by members of Lashkar e-Jhangvi, who later became the TTP.  Beginning with the attempted assassination of Gen. Musharraf, Jundullah has actively participated in all attacks attributed to the  "Amjad Farooqi faction."]

The first Baloch suicide bomber

Haq Nawaz Baloch will go down in the history of Balochistan as the first Baloch suicide bomber. Based on the information provided by Ali Sher Haider, the official spokesman of the underground Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the suicide attack on Quetta’s Civil Hospital last Friday was carried out by the Baloch suicide bomber in order to continue the so-called battle against the sectarian Shia minority. The unprecedented suicide bomb blast inside the hospital killed at least eleven people, including two senior police officers and a television journalist.

After the passage of a week, the police in Quetta have even not succeeded to ascertain more details about the suicide bomber. No real culprit from the banned group has been arrested in the wake of this deadly strike. The blast was, however, taken as an excuse by the paramilitary forces to wage a grand search operation in the Baloch-dominated parts of Quetta which culminated in the killing of Baloch woman, Shahnaz Bibi, the mother of a political activist from the Balochistan National Party (BNP-Mengal).

LeJ has warned to mastermind more such attacks against the Shias living in Quetta and elsewhere in the province. It has threatened a few top police officials to avoid taking action against the banned outfit’s activists. The Lashkar is irked over the delay in the release of one of its activists Naseer Kharani despite court orders of his acquittal.

Haq Nawaz’s action coincides with another recent ugly incident of acidifying the faces of two teenage sisters in Dalbandin district by activists of an unknown organization i.e. Baloch Gharathmand Tanzeem. This organization had previously threatened the womenfolk of the area not to get out of their homes or will be targeted for defying the threat. Otherwise, acid would be thrown on their faces as a punishment, the group threatened. With the local community not taking the threat very seriously, the organization waged its first attack weeks after the issuance of warnings by badly burning the faces of the two sisters with acid.

These two developments alarmingly remind us about the growing religious radicalization being injected in the Baloch society. The response of the Balochs is not dissimilar to that of rest of the Pakistan towards the wave of terrorism. “Experts” on the country’s private news channels still strive to convince us that the suicide bombers cannot be Muslims or Pakistanis. We are still told that the country does not face a threat of religious extremism. On a number of occasions, these experts and analysts have said that Israel, India or the United States is behind the religious extremism and suicide bomb blasts.

Only a first-class-degree-holder-psychologist can enlighten us why societies behave so strangely when they end up as the victim of terror perpetrated by their own children. Similarly, most Balochs remain in a state of denial that their kids could become suicide bombers or throw acid on the faces of other girls. The intelligence agencies, they say, are doing all this to malign the Baloch national struggle.

Baloch society has been the target of radical Islam since the day Mir Ghose Baksh Bizenjo, a prominent Baloch nationalist leader, said in 1947, “If the mere fact that we are Muslims requires us to join Pakistan, then Afghanistan and Iran… should also amalgamate with Pakistan.” This assertion came as an almost-a-heart-attack for those who were starkly unfamiliar with Baloch, Sindhi and Pakhtun nationalism on the eve of the formation of Pakistan. It was then they realized that Baloch nationalism was too recalcitrant to reconcile with the religion-driven “two-nation theory”. Since then, the Balochs have been struggling to retain their distinctive national identity while Islamabad has been enticing the them to give up their centuries-old Baloch identity by embracing the Islamic identity. This has been the benchmark to become a patriotic Pakistani in the last six decades.

The situation in Balochistan took a dramatic turn after the Soviet invasion on Afghanistan. With the Jihad being sponsored by the west, religious schools mushroomed in the province very rapidly. Hefty amounts of money were dispatched informally from Gulf countries to promote the religious schools.

It is funny when Islamabad complains that Baloch tribal chiefs do not allow development in the province. Only the gamblers can certify how fertile this land of vastly illiterate people is for exploitation and manipulation.

The fact of the matter is not a penny was invested by foreign donors to establish secular educational institutions in the Baloch province. On the contrary, some Arab countries invested handsomely for the promotion of the religious schools in the Baloch areas. The secular Sardars even did not oppose the construction of these religious schools in their areas for the reason that the government had even failed to play its due responsibility to impart education to everyone.

Today, one can see (and cannot see if you do not want to see) the horrifying edifice of radicalization the Arab funds have established in the Baloch areas. This lava has just begun to brew in the secular Baloch society by churning out sectarian killers, suicide bombers and hitmen who burn girls’ faces for walking outside their homes.

Political parties and different groups living in Balochistan should read between the lines that something very unpleasant is about to happen in the province in the future if the threat of sectarianism and religious radicalism is not checked on the right time. With too little expected to be done by the government, we urge the political parties, civil society groups and international donors to convene more inter-sect dialogue, cultural programs and sports events which bring the members of various sects closer to each other.

Sane Sunni and Shia scholars should start meeting and talking to each other more frequently. They have to check such priests who teach odium against the members of the rival sect. The media and non-governmental organizations should also play their role to thwart the plans of radicalization in a province which can come under American drone strike at any time on the basis of speculations that the spiritual leader of Taliban movement, Mullah Mohammad Omar, is hiding in Quetta.

It is encouraging that the National Party has responded very intelligently in response to the acid-throwing assault on the little sisters. The society must unite to discourage religious fundamentalism at all costs.