Confusing Syria with Libya? Fact checking Amnesty International’s “ hospitals investigation”

Franklin Lamb

Exculsive Al-Manar

Graghics by Alex – updated

En route to Niger

This observer counts himself among Amnesty International’s more than 3 million supporters and members in more than 150 countries and territories who also strongly endorse AI’s campaigns to end grave abuses of human rights. I share AI’s vision for every person to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.

In Beirut, I attend their events and was honored to play a small part in assisting with last spring’s AI research on the subject of disappeared Palestinians and Lebanese which resulted in AI’s excellent April, 2011 publication: Never Forgotten: Lebanon’s Missing People. This report documents one of the bitter legacies of the 1975-1990 civil war which is the thousands of people whose fates remain unknown.

I have crossed paths with AI researchers in the Middle East and recently during three months in Libya I followed their work which included the human rights problems of black Libyans, particularly from the Tawagha region but also in eastern and western Libya where blacks were often taken from hospitals never to be seen again. AI rightly condemned the number of massacres and extra-judicial killings perpetrated by both pro-Gadhafi and NTC partisans, many of which, like the 53 recently executed Gadhafi supporters found at the Mahari Hotel in Sirte involved the kidnapping and murder of patients in hospitals. These grisly scenes have shocked the world’s conscience and all people of goodwill condemn them. They weaken substantially the moral authority of the group currently claiming power in Libya.

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Despite its generally exemplary work, Amnesty International, like the rest of us, in not infallible. This is evident in its 10/25/11 released 39 page report: Health Crisis: Syrian Government Targets the Wounded and Health Workers.

AI’s conclusion from its “research” in Syria, which consisted significantly of collecting Al Jazeera and Al Arabia type media accounts including the dubious reports on the same subject by CNN’s Arwa Damon and sundry anonymous U-tube clips is, interestingly, virtually identical to what it concluded from its investigation in Libya on the same subject.

However, there is a great distinction between Syria and Libya, their medical professions and their current challenges.

AI claims this week, without convincing material, probative or relevant evidence that Syrian authorities, including Hospital administrators and staff, have since March 2011 turned Syrian hospital into instruments of repression in order to crush protests and demonstrations. AI’s j report claims that Syrians wounded in protests or incidents related to the current unrest “have been physically assaulted in state-run hospitals by medical staff, and in some cases denied medical care, while others taken to hospital have been detained or have simply disappeared.” AI offers as its proof of these claims the weakest and seemingly most competition-driven support of any Amnesty International report I have read. It reeks of yet another orientalist double standard and ignores similar claims from citizens in western countries of similar actions by their governments.

This observer recently had the opportunity to visit with administrators and medical staff at some of Syria’s largest state-run Ministry of Health hospitals (Syria also has Higher Education Hospitals for university students and Ministry of Defense Hospitals, the latter being roughly equivalent to American Veterans Hospitals for the military,) which is Damascus General Hospital, established in 1952. Damascus Hospital sees approximately 800 patients daily and is one of 90 hospitals belonging to the Ministry of Hearth that together serve all of Syria with 14, 571 beds. Medical care in Syria is virtually free. .

Damascus Public Hosptial founded in 1953

Among those I had the opportunity to meet with at Damascus Public Hospital and to discuss issues raised by Amnesty International were Dr. Mahmoud Naji (damahosp@mail.s) who is the Director of the Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit at Damascus Hospital and Dr. Adib Mahmoud, (damahosp@mail.sy), Damascus Hospital administrator.

Both the Syria Medical Emergency Association, of which Dr.Naji is a representative and the Syrian Medical Association, have large memberships with the reputation of being fiercely independent of and resistant to outside influences. At the same time they have achieved individual treatment and medical ethics standards that help make Syria’s medical services the highest rated in the Middle East.

Amnesty qualifies its findings with complaints that it did not have access to Syrian hospital staff, and that it wanted to protect its “witnesses” by withholding some specifics such as time, place, and circumstances of alleged wrongdoing by members the Syrian medical community, as well as the unwillingness of alleged victims of abuse to come forward. For their part, Syrian medical staff complained to this observer that AI’s Report is deeply flawed and that in fact Syrian hospitals welcome foreign visitors for tours and dialogue with all questions honestly addressed. Syria’s medical profession has justifiably taken umbrage at what it considers, as one Physician described, “Amnesty International’s “gratuitous defamation of Syria’s medical community.”

According to Amnesty’s report, but without providing convincing collaborative evidence, wounded patients in at least four government-run hospitals had been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, both by medical workers and security personnel.

AI’s charges that Syrian medical staff humiliate or refuse to treat patients brought laughter from some care givers at Damascus Hospital, as they explained the strict procedure they abide by from the moment a patient arrives at the emergency entrance. “We treat each patient to the best of our ability and we are strictly forbidden from questioning them about the circumstances of their injury,” Dr. Mahmoud Naji explained.

This observer was invited to literally follow arriving emergency room patients as they were admitted and treated and until they were assigned a bed in the appropriate ward.

A nurse, who was filling out a patient’s medical forms noted, “In certain cases if there was an auto accident, for example, and an injured person arrives while the accident is being investigated then we could contact authorities. ”However, our patient privacy rules are very strict in Syria and we can only ask medical and certainly not political questions, “according to one ER intern as she took the blood pressure of an arriving young woman who complained of stomach cramps.

A Physician who had trained at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston explained, “ I am sure there must be some abuse and especially in the middle of an area where there is fighting, but I have personally never heard of any physician or medical personnel doing what some Western media have alleged without submitting proof. Do police officers sometimes come to the hospital? Yes but it’s like what you would see, for example, in America on a week-end night at the emergency room in maybe the 200 largest cities., isn’t it? When I was training in Boston and with all that goes on in the early hours of the morning in big cities, one sees more police cars outside emergency rooms than ambulances. While it’s not like that here, the police presumably sometimes have reason to suspect that a crime may have been committed and the arriving injured person might be the victim or the perpetrator and an officer has the duty to complete a police report. I believe it’s similar anywhere.”

Another Dr. commented, “And yes, our medical profession has been criticized along with our government because it is claimed by some that some injured people may not want to come to our hospital thinking we might report them to the police. We will not. Does that not also happen in every society? Someone is injured while doing something wrong or criminal and they are afraid of being arrested so they seek alternative treatment from friends or private clinics. Yes, that sometimes happens in our country. Every citizen can choose where they seek treatment.”

Syria medical staffs firmly reject what they consider AI’s shallow “investigation” that did not, but could have, included AI visiting any of Syria’s 90 public hospitals. The staff pictured above emphasized that it’s not too late for AI to do its research inside Syria and via U-tube or Al Jazeera type “evidence.”

This observer also toured Syria’s Al Mouwasat government hospital and met at length with a variety of staff just as AI could have and still can. Al Mouwasat, with approximately 850 beds was founded in 1946, the year the French occupiers left. It is Syria’s oldest and largest and has received dozens of patients over the past six months who had been injured during anti-government demonstrations. I participated in briefings from several physicians and staff including the Hospital administrator, physicians and nurses. We discussed at length any subject I raised including AI accusations.

Syria’s Al Mouwasat public hospital founded in 1946 and free to all. 1946 was the same year US President Harry Truman promised to “take on that mean trust-the American Medical Association” and enact free health care for all Americans. 64 years later the gap between Syria and the US in terms of civilized and affordable medical care for its citizens is vast.

Among those who discussed rumors that some Syrian medical staff refused treatment or reported to authorities or intimidated patients were surgeon Dr. Osama Yousef Shahin, Dr. Ayham Obied vascular surgeon, Dr. Imad Alasha, Director of the ER Department, and ER surgeon Dr. D. Shadia as well as Mouwasat hospital’s Administrator and various staff. All can be contacted directly via the hospital email address which is info@almouwasat and arrangements can be made for visitors to come and see for themselves. One doctor who appeared a bit offended by AI type accusations even offered to request from among scores of current or former patients their permission to provide AI with their phone numbers so they could discuss privately sweeping and unsupported allegations against the Syrian Medical community that they work in cooperation with militias or security services.  Dr. Alusha explained:   “A few are still hospitalized and others even come from “field hospitals” set up by opponents of the government. We do not ask them anything about where they received earlier treatment or their political views. We have not seen any of the claimed patient betrayal events described in some western media reports”

Al Mouwasat has 4 ER operating theatres and routinely does about 50 operations per day. As with other hospitals visited, May 2011 was the most active month recently for Syria’s ER departments which are always open 24/7 with no cost to any patient, domestic or foreign. Al Mouwasat hospital, like Damascus General Hospital and others, has received patients from Deraa, Homs, Hama, Idlib, and other communities. Dr. Shahin explained that “any human being will be treated here without charge and without politics or the police being summoned and for as long as necessary until the patient regains good health. Jewish patients are also welcomed and just yesterday we received Lebanese from the Bekaa Valley with gunshot wounds. They come here because our care is of high quality and it’s free and without political complications. We specialize also in Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) which attracts patients from across Syria and abroad. I think I speak for almost every Syrian medical person what I insist that we are doctors and care givers with a variety of political views which we leave at home. We comply with our Hippocratic Oath which we take seriously.”

Syria’s hospital staff, some shown above at Al Mouwasat public hospital said they would welcome anyone who wants to discuss what they claim are fabrications in the AI “investigation” Report and to visit with patients and medical staff in order to make their own judgments.

According to Syria’s Ministry of Health, it has not received any complaint to date, either from the patients nor from their relatives about any maltreatment or encroachment,

In it’s just released report:

“Health Crisis: The Syrian Government Targets the Wounded and Health Workers,” Amnesty International falls far below an objective standard and fails to shoulder its burden of proof for the charges it levels at Syria’s medical community.

To condemn any country’s health service without cause, and mindful of the uncivilized state and expense of our care for profit American health system, one cannot visit hospitals in Syria and Libya and be affected by how much better both systems serve their people than our does.

AI got lazy in its work and its continued hyping of its deeply flawed “investigation” is egregious.

AI also fails to meet the standard of investigative work that we who support and endorse its existence and work expect.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Libya. He is reachable c\o fplamb@gmail.comHe is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon.
He contribute to Uprooted Palestinians Blog

US Sending Sesame St. To Pakistan To Battle Fundamentalist Intolerance

[Perhaps this might reach a few little Pakistani minds, after all.   Just consider how many minds were damaged by our "gift" of the CIA/State Dept.'s Jihadi textbooks.]

U.S. Bankrolls Pakistani Sesame Street Hoping It Will ‘Increase Tolerance’

Associated Press

• 

  October 13, 2011: A Pakistani artist gives final touches to characters of Pakistani Sesame Street in Lahore, Pakistan.

LAHORE, Pakistan –  Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch are nowhere in sight. But there’s Elmo. And new creatures too, like Baily, a kindly donkey who loves to sing, and Haseen O Jameel, a vain crocodile who lives at the bottom of a well.

Sesame Street is coming to Pakistan but not as generations of Americans know it.

The TV show has a new cast of local characters led by a vivacious 6-year-old girl named Rani who loves cricket and traditional Pakistani music. Her sidekick, Munna, is a 5-year-old boy obsessed with numbers and banging away on Pakistani bongo drums, or tabla.

The U.S. is bankrolling the initiative with $20 million, hoping it will improve education in a country where one-third of primary school-age children are not in class. Washington also hopes the program will increase tolerance at a time when the influence of radical views is growing.

“One of the key goals of the show in Pakistan is to increase tolerance toward groups like women and ethnic minorities,” said Larry Dolan, who was the head education officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Pakistan until very recently.

The show, which started filming last week and will air at the end of November, was jointly developed by Sesame Workshop, the creator of the American series, and Rafi Peer Theater Workshop, a group in the Pakistani city of Lahore that has been staging puppet shows for more than three decades.

The American version of Sesame Street first aired in 1969, and the U.S. government has worked with the company since then to produce shows in about 20 foreign countries, including Muslim nations like Bangladesh and Indonesia.

Perhaps nowhere else are the stakes as high as in Pakistan. The U.S. is worried that growing radicalization could one day destabilize the nuclear-armed country. Washington has committed to spend $7.5 billion in civilian aid in Pakistan over five years, despite accusations that the country is aiding insurgents in neighboring Afghanistan.

Rani, the new program’s star, sports pigtails and a blue and white school uniform. Her innate curiosity is exemplified by the magnifying glass she often carries and her endless stream of questions. She is captain of the school cricket team and plays the harmonium, an instrument used to perform Qawwali music.

The creators chose Rani as the lead character to emphasize the importance of sending girls to school, something that doesn’t often happen in Pakistan’s conservative, male-dominated society, said Faizaan Peerzada, the chief operating officer of Rafi Peer and one of several family members who run the organization.

“It makes the girl stand equally with the boy, which is very clear,” said Peerzada.

Rani and Munna are joined by Baily the donkey, Haseen O Jameel the crocodile, and Baaji, a spirited woman who serves as a mother figure for the others.

Elmo, the lovable, red, child monster, is the only traditional Sesame Street character on the show, which is called Sim Sim Hamara, or Our Sim Sim.

The action centers around a mock-up of a Pakistani town, complete with houses, a school and Baaji’s dhaba, a small shop and restaurant found in many places in the country. The town also includes a large Banyan tree, known as the wisdom tree in South Asia, in the shade of which the children often play.

Given the intense ethnic and regional divisions within Pakistan, the creators tried to build a set that was recognizable to Pakistani children but did not stand out as being from one part of the country. For similar reasons, the skin colors of the puppets range from very light brown to orange.

A total of 78 episodes will be aired in Pakistan’s national language, Urdu, over the next three years, as well as 13 in each of the four main regional languages, Baluchi, Pashtu, Punjabi and Sindhi. The shows will appear on Pakistan state television, and the producers hope they will reach 3 million children, 1 million of whom are out of school.

They also plan radio programs and 600 live puppet performances they hope will reach millions more kids and parents.

Each episode will be based around a word and a number, like the U.S. version, and will tackle general themes like friendship, respect and valuing diversity. This last theme is particularly important in Pakistan, where Islamist extremists often target minority religious sects and others who disagree with their views.

“There are many situations where we coexist peacefully, and that’s what we want to focus on,” said Imraan Peerzada, the show’s head writer.

The program will feature holidays celebrated by Muslims, Christians and Hindus in an attempt to get children to respect the traditions of different religious groups in Pakistan, said Peerzada.

American officials stressed they were not involved in creating content for the show. The U.S. is extremely unpopular in Pakistan, and suspicions run high about American manipulation in the country.

The creators realize that there is some risk of militant backlash. Events held by Rafi Peer have been attacked several times in the past, including a world arts festival in 2008 that was hit by three small bomb blasts that wounded at least half a dozen people.

“We can’t just stop because of this fear,” said Faizaan Peerzada.

Chief US Ally Kenya Air Force Accused of Refugee Camp Bombing In Somalia

5 killed, dozens hurt in Somalia after airstrike

FILE – In this Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011 file photo, Kenyan military board a truck headed to Somalia, near Liboi at the border with Somalia in Kenya. Kenyan troops will stay in southern Somalia until Kenyans feel safe again, the chief of Kenya’s armed forces said Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011 raising questions about whether Kenya risks becoming bogged down in an open-ended occupation of its war-ravaged neighbor. (AP Photo, File)

By KATHARINE HOURELD

The Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya — An air strike hit a refugee camp in southern Somalia, killing at least five people and wounding 45, most of them children, an international aid agency said Monday. Kenya’s military acknowledged carrying out an air raid but said it targeted only Islamist militants.

Details emerged, meanwhile, about an American-Somali man who al-Shabab said carried out a suicide attack against an African Union base in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Saturday. Abdisalan Hussein Ali was 19 at the time he disappeared from Minnesota, which has a large Somali-American community, in November 2008.

In July 2010, he was among several men indicted in a long-running investigation in Minnesota. Charges against him included conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiracy to kill, maim, kidnap and injure. The U.S. hasn’t yet confirmed the identity of the bomber. FBI spokesman Kyle Loven in Minneapolis said the agency is using DNA to try to make a positive identification.

A Somali Islamist militant group used the casualties from the Kenyan air strike as a recruitment tool to try to win even more recruits. Kenyan military spokesman Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, though, blamed an al-Shabab fighter for the civilian deaths, saying an al-Shabab fighter drove a burning truck of ammunition into the refugee camp in the town of Jilib where it exploded.

Chirchir said the Kenyan air force hit the truck on Sunday as it drove away from an al-Shabab training camp and accused the driver of attempting to use the refugees as a human shield. He said 10 al-Shabab members were killed and 47 wounded in the attack, citing informers on the ground.

But Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medicines Sans Frontieres or MSF, said the aerial bombardment hit the camp for displaced people. MSF said it treated 52 wounded people. As of Monday morning, MSF confirmed five deaths and said it was still treating 45 wounded, 31 of them children. Seven other patients had been discharged after receiving treatment. The head of the MSF mission in Somalia, Gautam Chatterjee, said most of the wounded had shrapnel injuries.

Jilib town elder Ahmed Sheik Don said the planes hit a bus stop and near the camp before finally hitting a base of al-Shabab, an insurgent group linked to al-Qaida.

It was impossible to immediately reconcile the different versions. Either way, civilian casualties would be a public relations issue for Kenya and could turn ordinary Somalis against Kenya’s military intervention in the lawless nation.

Residents said hundreds ran for cover Sunday as bombs exploded. The town’s population has ballooned this year as about 1,500 families fled to the area amid a famine that has wracked the south. Residents reported that al-Shabab fighters were among the casualties.

Sheik Abukar Ali Aden, an al-Shabab official in southern Somalia, said the militants donated food to those affected by the airstrikes. Bearded men and masked fighters used megaphones to ask Somalis to join their militant group.

“I am urging all Muslims in the Jubba regions to raise their heads and defend themselves against the enemy massacring them,” Aden said at a news conference in the southern port town of Kismayo. “Go! go to the front lines and make jihad with the Christian enemy.”

Kenya sent troops across the border into Somalia in mid-October following cross-border kidnappings blamed on gunmen from southern Somalia.

Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said his government is looking into the airstrike and reports of civilian deaths.

“If it has taken place then it is an unfortunate incident and we are sorry about that,” Ali said during a press conference in Nairobi alongside Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

Odinga added: “Our troops have not targeted civilians. It would be most unfortunate.”

The U.N. representative for Somalia, Augustine P. Mahiga, said civilians must be protected during any party’s military operations. He said the U.N. hopes that Kenya’s push into southern Somalia will help gain access to famine victims.

“We think this in the end will contribute to the sum total of gaining more territory, greater security and therefore more access to the victims of famine anddrought, especially in south-central Somalia,” Mahiga said.

The Danish Refugee Council, meanwhile, said it has made its first contact with an American aid worker and her Danish colleague who were kidnapped last week in northern Somalia.

“It has been some very long days as we have been waiting for signs of life. It is truly a relief that we now have received the message that they are as well as possible their circumstances taken into consideration,” said Ann Mary Olsen, the head of the Danish Refugee Council’s International Department.

Olsen said the aid agency is appealing to traditional leaders and clan elders to help release the hostages.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991. African Union troops have been engaged in fierce fighting in Mogadishu to push al-Shabab fro its last base in the city. On Saturday, the Islamists launched an attack with two suicide bombers, killing at least 10 people.

___

Associated Press reporters Jason Straziuso and Tom Odula in Nairobi, Abdi Guled in Mogadishu, Somalia, and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

___

The “Holbrooke Model” of Talk/Bombing Will Not Work With the Taliban

["In 1995, diplomat Richard Holbrooke urged NATO to drop "bombs for peace" in Bosnia - and thereby pressure the Bosnian Serbs, and their protector Slobodan Milosevic, to come to the bargaining table."  Attempting this in Afghanistan is unlikely to have the same effect, since the Pashtun culture which drives the Taliban movement is permeated with a sense of pride in its manly capacity to absorb the enemy's blows and to persevere, as well as the jihadi's desire for martyrdom in the "cause of God."  Punishing the Taliban to drive them to the bargaining table will only harden their resolve and motivate them to seek even greater revenge.  Pushing this tactic upon Pakistan will only drive a wedge between the Army and the militants, the true objective behind the contradictory strategy.  It is merely Obama the devil being devious and spiteful, as usual.]

Pakistan agents part of U.S. push for peace talks

U.S. shifts to rely on agency which has been accused of supporting terror.

By Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, New York Times
WASHINGTON — Just a month after accusing Pakistan’s spy agency of secretly supporting the Haqqani terrorist network, which has mounted attacks on Americans, the Obama administration is now relying on the same intelligence service to help organize and kick-start reconciliation talks aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan.

The revamped approach, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called “Fight, Talk, Build” during a high-level U.S. delegation’s visit to Kabul and Islamabad this month, combines continued U.S. air and ground strikes against the Haqqani network and the Taliban with an insistence that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency get them to the negotiating table.

But some elements of the ISI see little advantage in forcing those negotiations, because they see the insurgents as perhaps their best bet for maintaining influence in Afghanistan as the United States reduces its presence there.

The strategy is emerging amid an increase in the pace of attacks against Americans in Kabul, including a suicide attack Saturday that killed as many as 10 Americans and in which the Haqqanis are suspected. It is the latest effort at brokering a deal with militants before the last of 33,000 U.S. “surge” troops prepare to pull out of Afghanistan by September, and comes as early hopes in the White House about having the outlines of a deal in time for a multinational conference Dec. 5 in Bonn, Germany, have been all but abandoned.

But even inside the Obama administration, the new initiative has been met with deep skepticism, in part because the Pakistani government has developed its own strategy, one at odds with Clinton’s on several key points. One senior U.S. official summarized the Pakistani position as “Cease-fire, Talk, Wait for the Americans to Leave.”

In short, the United States is in the position of having to rely heavily on the ISI to help broker a deal with the same group of militants that leaders in Washington say the spy agency is financing and supporting.

“The Pakistanis see the contradictions in the American approach,” said Shamila N. Chaudhary, a former top Obama White House aide on Pakistan and Afghanistan. “The big question for the administration is, ‘What can the Pakistanis actually deliver?’ Pakistan is holding its cards very closely.”

On Sunday, U.S. intelligence officials deepened an investigation into what role, if any, the Haqqani network played in the bombing in Kabul on Saturday.

Several current and former U.S. officials say the United States has tried this bomb-them-to-the-bargaining-table approach before. In the 1990s, it helped drive Serbian leaders to peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, but it has resulted in little so far with the Afghan Taliban.

“I don’t think anyone expects Secretary Clinton’s visit to produce reconciliation,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former CIA officer and the author of “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad.” Riedel, who advocates a policy of containment in Pakistan, added, “The deterioration of U.S.-Pakistan relations is likely to continue.”

Senior Pakistani officials say they are confused by a lack of clarity in the administration’s long-term goals in Afghanistan, and are working with U.S. officials to hammer out specific plans after Clinton’s visit. As an incentive, the United States has offered Pakistan a prominent role in reconciliation talks. But U.S. officials have warned that they will take unilateral action if negotiations fail.

Several administration officials said they considered Clinton’s trip to Kabul and Islamabad, from Oct. 19 to 21, a success largely because it had happened at all. In the months after the killing of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil, talks were frozen, U.S. intelligence officers were denied visas, and the administration accused the ISI of turning a blind eye to attacks on Americans launched from the country’s tribal areas.

Wahhabi Religious Police Brutally Beat and Arrest Canadian Shia Imam

[The monster of Wahhabi false Islam raises its ugly head once again, in yet another demonstration of intolerance.  Will American led double-standards, concerning the Saudi pseudo-"Islamists," get in the way of this Canadian citizen's liberation?  Wahhabism is a disease that has infected millions of Muslim minds.  Liberating these minds is the path to eliminating "militant Islam."]

Edmonton imam beaten, ‘manhandled’ by police in Saudi Arabia, witnesses say

Stuart Davis/Postmedia News

Usama Al-Atar speaks to young muslims at a youth session at the Az-Zahra Islamic Center in Richmond.

Tristin Hopper 

An Edmonton-based Imam is in a Saudi Arabian jail after being beaten and “manhandled” by religious police, according to witness reports. On Sunday morning, Usama Al-Atar, 33, was leading a group of 10 pilgrims in prayer outside the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina when “[Saudi] religious police began to hassle him, and intimidate him into stopping,” according to a release by the U.K.-based Islamic Human Rights Association (IHRA).

 

Mr. Al-Atar attempted to leave, but he was set upon by guards, labelled a thief, violently restrained and brought into custody.

“It’s very clear that without having committed any crime, [Mr. Al-Atar] has been arrested by the Saudi authorities,” said Mahmood Mavani, president of the Islamic Shia Association of Edmonton, where Mr. Al-Atar is a resident lecturer. On Sunday, Edmonton’s Shia Muslims gathered at the Association’s main congregation hall to pray for Mr. Al-Atar’s release.

Mr. Al-Atar is a Shiite, a sect of Islam that is often subject to persecution in Saudi Arabia. “Mr. Al-Atar is a Canadian citizen and at this juncture we need Foreign Affairs to find out the facts and make sure he is safe,” said Mr. Mavani.

The Department of Foreign Affairs would only say they were “aware of the arrest a Canadian citizen in Medina.” “The Canadian Embassy in Riyadh has been notified and stands ready to provide consular assistance as required,” read a Sunday afternoon email by Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Aliya Mawani.

Mr. Al-Atar left Canada on Monday to travel to Saudi Arabia for the hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca performed annually by more than two million Muslims each year. Mr. Al-Atar was reportedly approached by Saudi religious police while offering prayers at a graveyard — a Shia practice that is frowned upon by Saudi Arabia’s ruling class, who practice a puritanical form of Sunni Islam.

Mr. Al-Atar’s group closed their prayer books and tried to leave the area, but the imam was set upon by guards after the police called out that Mr. Al-Atar was a thief, reported Ahlulbayt TV, a U.K.-based Shia Islamic channel.

The religious police then “manhandled him badly,” eyewitness Mohammed Hayward told IHRA. “They forced him to sit under an air conditioning unit, and squashed him until he was blue in the face.” Mr. Al-Atar’s arrest was witnessed by more than 200 Canadian, American and British pilgrims, the U.K. channel reported.

On Sunday, 60 pilgrims held silent vigil outside the Central Medina jail where Mr. Al-Atar was being held, reported the IHRA. Mr. Al-Atar is scheduled for a court appearance on Monday morning, where he will face accusations that he broke the arm of one of the police — although witnesses say that the Edmonton imam stayed passive throughout the scuffle.

Throughout Sunday, social networks in Canada and the U.K. abounded with appeals to free the imprisoned Canadian. Ahlulbayt TV held an emergency live show on Sunday evening to protest Mr. Al-Atar’s arrest.

The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations on Sunday condemned Mr. Al-Atar’s arrest. “Irrespective of any allegations against Imam Al-Attar it is unconscionable that he should be physically assaulted — whether during the Hajj pilgrimage or at any other time,” wrote council executive director Ihsaan Gardee in a prepared release. “If there is no basis for holding Mr. Al-Atar, then he should be immediately released,” he added.

A cancer and diabetes researcher, Mr. Al-Atar is currently a post-doctoral fellow in the chemistry department at the University of Alberta. He has been a prominent voice for inter-faith relations and for stamping out violent extremism within the Islamic community. “Although [terroristic] acts may be carried out by Muslims, these are not the teachings of Islam,” he told Postmedia in 2005.

As recently as March, Mr. Al-Atar publicly denounced the Saudi Arabian leadership. “The atrocities committed today against innocents in several countries such as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia among others, are crimes one cannot stand silent about,” said Mr. Al-Atar in a March speech delivered in Edmonton following violence crackdowns against Arab Spring protesters in the Middle East.

Campaigners for his release fear the severity of the charges against him.

“With Saudis, you never know how extreme they can go,” Montreal-based campaigner Musarrat Pyarali wrote in a letter to the Post.

National Post

thopper@nationalpost.com

Protests of Kyrgyz Electoral Fraud Begin, Bishkek-Osh Road Blocked By Protestors

If the elections’ results will not be canceled, disorders are inevitable in Kyrgyzstan – Kamchibek Tashiyev

31/10-2011 12:39, Bishkek – 24.kg news agency , by Julia KOSTENKO

“If the elections’ results will not be canceled, disorders are inevitable in Kyrgyzstan,” presidential candidate Kamchibek Tashiyev stated at today’s press conference.

According to him, about 1, 200 million people could not take part in voting. “Kyrgyzstan had an opportunity to hold honest elections refusing Akayev’s and Bakiyev’s technology for the first time. However, the present authorities followed exactly the last way having improved it a bit. I do not recognize these elections. The people will not tolerate cheating. So people who came to power would feel distrust of the population. If they begin governance with deception, they can not be worthy power representatives. People will decide by themselves what power they need. First reactions are starting from today,” explained Kamchybek Tashiyev.

He added that people will take their own decision. “My voters expect me to proceed. We can not accept rigged election results. The commissions’ members replaced all electoral lists. They were the people of the current government. This is unacceptable,” said Kamchybek Tashiyev.

URL: http://eng.24.kg/politic/2011/10/31/21300.html

Adherents of Kamchibek Tashiev blocks Bishkek-Osh road in Kyrgyzstan

31/10-2011 13:31, Bishkek – 24.kg news agency , by Makhinur NIYAZOVA

In Kyrgyzstan, adherents of Kamchibek Tashiev blocked Bishkek-Osh road as the head of Suzak district public administration Zhanybek Zholborsov reported to 24.kg news agency.

According to him, around 200 people blocked the road near Barpy aiyl okmotu. They are demanding to recognize returns as invalid.

The head of the district, the chief of local department of the State National Security Committee and the head of aiyl okmotu headed to the scene.

Recall, the rally in support of the presidential candidate Kamchibek Tashiev is going in Jalal-Abad. Around 300 people gathered. They are demanding to recognize returns invalid.

URL: http://eng.24.kg/politic/2011/10/31/21303.html

Former Kyrgyz Prime Minister Atambayev Receives Overwhelming Majority of Votes Counted

CEC processed 96.42 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s voting protocols: the presidential election still leads Atambaev 31/10/11 7:34, Bishkek -  News Agency “24.kg” , Aizada KUTUEVA         CEC processed 96.42 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s voting protocols: the presidential election still leads Atambaev. This was reported on the CEC website. At 09.30 received information on two 35 thousand polling stations out of 2 thousand 318. The distribution of votes (in percentages): Atambaev – 62.97; Kamchybek Tashiev – 14.36; Adahan Madumarov – 14.86; Temirbek Asanbekov – 0.94; Tursunbai Bakir uulu – 0.8; Kubatbek Baibolov – 0.83; Omurbek Suvanaliev – 0.87; Anarbek Kalmatov – 0.72; Arstanbek Abdyldaev – 0.53; Marat Imankulov – 0.45; Kubanychbek Isabekov – 0.18; Torobaev Kolubaev – 0.1; Kurmanbek Osmonov – 0.13; Akbaraly Aitikeyev – 0.11; Sooronbai Dyykanov – 0,007; Almazbek Karimov – 0,007; Against all – 0.49.

URL: http://www.24kg.org/election2011/113026-cik-kyrgyzstana-obrabotal-9642-procenta.html

Billion-Dollar Drug Gang Busted

[Ouch!]

“The cartel is believed to handle 65 percent of all drugs illegally transported to the United States, drug experts say.”

70 members of ‘billion-dollar’ drug gang arrested, official says

‘Jaw-dropping’ amount of narcotics seized; alleged drug smugglers thought to have close ties to violent Mexican cartel

Law enforcement officials in Arizona seized thousands of pounds of narcotics and arrested at least 70 suspected drug smugglers with apparent ties to a violent drug cartel in Mexico, an official involved with the investigation in the U.S. Southwest told Reuters.

The operation, which included three raids conducted jointly by local, state, and federal officials over 17 months, led to the arrests of Mexican and American nationals working with a notorious drug cartel based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Further details of the operation will be released at a press conference at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration field office in Phoenix on Monday.

Authorities confiscated drugs, money, weapons, ammunition, and bullet-proof vests, cracking a “sophisticated network” of international drug smuggling in one of the largest such operations conducted in the Southwestern United States, the official said on Sunday.

Drugs were smuggled from Mexico into Arizona by car, plane, on foot, and through tunnels.

“This is one of the more substantial drug-smuggling operations going on right now. This is a billion-dollar drug trade organization linked to the cartel,” the official said.

The cartel is headquartered in the northwestern state of Sinaloa on Mexico’s Pacific coast, an area home to big marijuana and opium poppy plantations and considered the cradle of Mexican narcotics trafficking since the 1960s.

The cartel is believed to handle 65 percent of all drugs illegally transported to the United States, drug experts say.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in drug-related violence since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched his military campaign against the cartels after he took office in late 2006.

‘Jaw-dropping’
The raids were overseen by the DEA, Arizona state officials, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The official said the operation will shed light on elaborate drug smuggling into the United States and said the contraband confiscated in the raids was “jaw-dropping.”

Officials captured some of the key players in the smuggling operation, the source said, adding that the suspects will be prosecuted at the state level.

The official said law enforcement officials are still looking for dozens of people in connection with the operation.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters

The Glaring Contradictions of Gaza and the Orgy of Violence

[A truce is declared and the IDF bombing runs resume.  Some patterns never change.]

Palestinian-Israeli truce agreed

Relatives of a Palestinian killed in an Israeli air strike on Oct 30 cry at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City (AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED ABED)

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Egypt helped broker a fresh ceasefire by militants in Gaza Sunday, after violence left nine Palestinians and one Israeli dead, sources close to the groups said.

The truce with Israel was due to come into effect at 6:00 am (0400 GMT, 12pm Singapore time), said sources close to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main Islamist groups in the Gaza Strip.

The agreement between all the Palestinian factions in Gaza came after the intervention of Egypt, the sources said.

“The efforts and intensive contacts led by senior Egyptian intelligence service officials led to a national consensus to restore calm” with Israel, a leader of one Palestinian group, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP.

Israeli warplanes raided the Gaza Strip Saturday and early Sunday, killing nine Islamic Jihad militants, while retaliatory rocket fire from Gaza killed one Israeli.

The exchanges were the bloodiest since a tacit ceasefire was agreed between Gaza Palestinian militants and Israel in late August.

Israel Aircraft Hit Gaza, 2 Found Dead

By IBRAHIM BARZAK Associated Press

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip, October 31, 2011

“Israeli defense officials have confirmed that contingency plans have been drawn up for a broad invasion of Gaza to topple Hamas, which would require Israel to reoccupy the territory. But they said this is a worst-case scenario among many options, would take several months and be extremely complicated, and the preference is to restore the calm that has largely prevailed since 2009.

Israel captured Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, but withdrew all troops and settlers from the area in 2005.

‘I don’t rule out that at some point we might find ourselves required to embark upon a full-fledged operation (in Gaza),” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Army Radio. “(But) I am not one of those people who miss returning to Gaza.’”

The Wahhabi Threat To Real Islam and To Everyone Else

“India’s Partition was a British plot to divide and rule the subcontinent that succeeded in Pakistan because of the nexus between the military dictators and the jihadists.”

A threat to multilayered secular cultures

MADANJEET SINGH

Thousands of young people attended Salman Ahmad’s Sufi Junoon concert in 2008, ignoring the threat of the chairman of the United Jihad Council (UJC), Syed Salahuddin to kill Salman Ahmad if he came to Srinagar and performed during the inauguration of the Institute of Kashmir Studies, established by the South Asia Foundation.

Wahabism, with enormous Saudi petrodollars at its disposal, has wrought havoc worldwide. The writer travels back to Kashmir, Kerala, Lahore, and Indonesia of some decades ago to get a measure of the tragic and vicious effects — and hopes resilient, multilayered secular cultures will be able to fight back.

I am happy that finally someone has had the courage to frankly articulate the suppressed hopes and fears of mainstream Muslims in India. Addressing a public meeting of the Sufi Maha Panchayat at Muradabad, Maulana Syed Mohammad Ashraf Kachochavi declared: “Hamey Wahabiyon ki na Immanat kabool hai, na kayadat Kabul (We reject both the belief and politics of the Wahabis”). The gathering attended by thousands of Shia and Sunni Muslims applauded as he said: “lf anyone knocks on your door with the message of extremism, hand him over to the nearest police station.”

Politics is the bane of all religions. But unlike other faiths, the Wahabis have enormous petrodollars at their disposal, funded by the so-called Saudi charities that have wrought havoc worldwide. Personally for me, who have known diverse cultures from the north to the southern tip of India, it is not hearsay but a veritable reality. My ancestors hailed from Kashmir; I lived in the state of Travancore and went to school in Trivandrum; then I joined the Hindu University in Benares; and finally graduated from the Government College in Lahore. Excerpts from the story (to be published by Penguin India titled,Cultures & Vultures) are presented here to give a glimpse of the politics and violence with which the Wahabi vultures are tearing apart Kashmir’s syncretic Sufi-Bhakti-Rishi culture, Kerala’s unique matrilineal society, Pakistan’s Sufi Islam, and Indonesia’s indigenous kebatinan culture.

In Kashmir

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s comment, “In the darkness engulfing the subcontinent the only ray of light came from Kashmir,” I put up a Peace Campaign exhibition of my photographs in Delhi that was inaugurated on November 10, 1948 by Sheikh Abdullah. It prompted him to invite me to Srinagar to participate in the National Cultural Front (NCF) he had established to ward off the tribal Kabaili invaders from Pakistan.

On arrival at Srinagar, I met Khawaja Ahmad Abbas, the veteran journalist, at the airport and he drove me to the riverside guesthouse where the NCF group was staying. The group comprised a number of well-known writers. They had joined hands with visual artists including Raza, a Muslim from Bombay, and Anand, a Hindu, and Amar Singh, a Sikh, both from Amritsar. Then there was Sheila Bhatia, an active member of the Indian People’s Theatre Association from Lahore, who inspired Kashmiri women from all the communities with her folk songs and plays.

But no group or individual was as effective in promoting secular culture at the grassroots as the ‘coolie poet,’ Aasi. I was amazed to see him standing in the middle of Srinagar’s Lal Chowk surrounded by crowds listening to the oral poetry of this illiterate labourer. He was a devotee of the Kashmir’s patron Sufi saint, Hazrat Nuruddin Nurani, known as Nund Rishi like the legendary Hindu sages. Aasi was a true interpolator of Kashmir’s Sufi-Bhakti-Rishi culture that Pakistan’s ISI has been destroying since the 1965 Operation Gibraltar by infiltrating Wahabi terrorists to inflict “a thousand cuts” and incite a rebellion in Kashmir.

Among the ferocious vultures was the chairman of the United Jihad Council, Syed Salahuddin, who in 2008 threatened to kill Salman Ahmad if his Sufi concert Junoon came to perform during the inauguration of the Institute of Kashmir Studies, established by the South Asia Foundation. Salman ignored the threat and called on the jihadis to “join Junoon in a musical jihad” instead of fear mongering and threatening to boycott the concert. The Sufi culture triumphed as thousands of young people flocked to hear Junoon, a memorable event widely covered by the Indian as well as international media. But the Pakistani jihadi gangsters have not given up their Wahabi agenda invoking over a 100suras (verses) in the Quran that call on Muslims to kill or maim infidels. Funded by the ISI, they continue to impose the 7th century Shariah law of the Arabian Desert on the 21st century culture of the civilised people living in the beautiful fertile valley of Kashmir.

Kerala

Shortly after my father Dodger Singh, a professor at the Hindu University in Benares, took up a job offered to him by the Maharaja of Travancore, my mother Sumitra Kaur was on the lookout for a maidservant. One day, standing in the porch of our villa, she spotted two Malayali women walking barefoot. They were simply dressed, wearing traditional mundus and blouses. Attracted by my mother’s Punjabi salwar-kamiz and dupatta-covered head, they approached her curiously as my sister interpreted; women in Punjab were discouraged from learning English. They had recently returned from the United States, having graduated from Harvard University. Indeed they were looking for a job but not the kind my mother had in mind. She felt so small and ashamed. Later she told her husband that the Punjabi adage, ‘one can identify a person’s status and level of education by looking at the shoes,’ was totally invalid in Travancore. Even the Maharaja came barefoot to open the ceramic factory that my father built.

The two women, a Hindu and her Muslim friend, told Ranjeeta that even though they were not Christians, the Anglican missionaries had offered them the scholarships. They gave my sister the address of the missionary school in case she wanted to apply for a scholarship to study abroad.

Today a Wahabi outfit euphemistically named Popular Front of India (PFI) is teaching Shariah law in the madrassas where boys and girls are segregated. Muslim girls are obliged to wear ‘Islamic clothes,’ including the hijab. In Kasargod, a PFI stronghold, Rayana Khasi, a journalist was threatened for wearing jeans. Uniformed Muslim youngsters are marching in ‘Freedom Parades,’ like the danda-wielding fascists of the Hindu Right.

The undertow of Wahabi intolerance and violence was highlighted on July 4, 2010, when Muslim fanatics brutally attacked T.J. Joseph, a Newman College lecturer in the town of Thodupuzha. They chopped off the palm of his hand for the ‘crime’ of framing a question for an examination of his students based on a text written by the filmmaker Kunhi Mohammed. The college authorities, threatened by the rioting fanatics, cowered and dismissed Mr. Joseph. They agreed to reconsider their action only if “the Muslim community made an appeal to reinstate him, or the court issued an order to that effect.”

Pakistan

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, my senior at Lahore’s Government College, visited Paris in 1983, a few months before he died. I had invited a number of my Indian and Pakistani Urdu-speaking friends to a reception in his honour. He was sitting next to me and noticed tears rolling down my cheeks as he recited his poignant compositions. As he was leaving, the great poet put his hand on my knee and said: “India’s Partition was a British plot to divide and rule the subcontinent that succeeded in Pakistan because of the nexus between the military dictators and the jihadists.”

Faiz was obviously alluding to General Zia-ul-Haq after he grabbed power in a 1977 coup and then set out to break the Sufi link that united Pakistan with India’s traditional secular and pluralist culture by enforcing Wahabi Islam funded by Saudi Arabia. The Sufi shrines were destroyed or closed and all forms of cultural activity categorised as blasphemous, including figurative painting, singing, dancing, and music.

It was only when I visited Lahore in search of my roots in 1996 that I realised the havoc caused by Wahabi politics. There was no trace of my grandfather’s sprawling joint family house in which I was born. And when I went to see the New Hostel of the Government College, I was stunned to see black graffiti scribbled on the walls in Urdu: “Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Ahmadiyas are enemies of Islam.” The warden reluctantly led me to the cubicle in which I had lived for about four years. I found that the door had been smashed open and inside there was only a dirty carpet spread on the floor. Equally shocking was to find later that there were no students in the common dining room on the first floor. Instead a number of militants with Kalashnikov rifles hung on their shoulders were joking and laughing as they swallowed the food cooked for the college alumni. It was a far cry from the glamorous boarding house in which I had once lived in the ‘Paris of the Orient.’

Indonesia

I married Dhyanawati, called Kiki, daughter of the Indonesian ambassador in Sweden in 1963 while I was posted as a first secretary at the Indian Embassy in Stockholm. I was greatly impressed by the unique multi-layered syncretic culture of Indonesia with the largest Muslim population in the world. It was amazing to see during a previous visit to Bali common people performing the Mahabharata and Ramayana by the roadside and the marvellous wayang kulitpuppet shows depicting the Indian epics.

Shortly after our marriage, Kiki and I arrived in New Delhi and I joined the UN division in the Ministry of External Affairs. We attended many diplomatic receptions and I was glad that as an ambassador’s daughter, Kiki enabled me to get acquainted with several senior foreign diplomats. But I was disconcerted to find that the Saudi Ambassador invariably made a beeline to my wife, took her aside, and brainwashed her about Wahabi Islam. He insisted that she must pray five times a day. Later I learned that his attempt to pressurise my wife was not an isolated case. He was working under instructions from his government.

Since then, in a matter of four decades, the Saudis have spent millions of petrodollars to build hundreds of Wahabi mosques and thousands of madrassasand largely succeeded in effacing Indonesia’s syncretic culture.

I also learned to my dismay that, inspired by the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha idols by Taliban vandals in Afghanistan, Wahabi extremists in Java made several attempts to damage the 8th-9th century Buddhist temple of Borobodur, a world heritage site. The terrorists who carried out the 2002 bombings in Bali were also Wahabi fanatics who killed more than 200 tourists in a suicide bomb explosion in a bar.

Hopefully, the resilient multi-layered syncretic culture of Indonesia will be able to prevent the Wahabis from turning this picturesque secular country into another Pakistan where rose petals are being showered on the killer of the liberal Punjab governor Salman Taseer, and the judge who sentenced the assassin to death has since fled the country in fear for his life.

(Madanjeet Singh is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and founder of the South Asia Foundation.)

US double standard: Gaddafi bad, Karimov good

The US shows its hypocrisy by accusing “tyrants” of human rights abuses while not owning up to supporting dictators. Ted Rall

The US has warned Uzbek President Karimov that human rights violations were ‘immoral and harmful ’ [EPA] “After four decades of brutal dictatorship and eight months of deadly conflict, the Libyan people can now celebrate their freedom and the beginning of a new era of promise,” President Obama said last week. The capture and death of Muammar Gaddafi prompted him and other US officials to congratulate the Libyan people on their liberation from a despot accused of terrible violations of human rights, including the 1996 massacre of more than 1200 prison inmates. The kudos was as much for the US itself as Libya’s victorious Transitional National Council. After all, the United States played a decisive role in Gaddafi’s death. First President Obama put together the NATO coalition that served as the Benghazi-based rebels’ loaned air force. When the bombing campaign was announced in February, Gaddafi’s suppression of the human rights of protesting rebels was front and centre: “The United States also strongly supports the universal rights of the Libyan people,” Obama said at that time. “That includes the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. They are not negotiable. They must be respected in every country. And they cannot be denied through violence or suppression.” (No word on how police firing rubber bullets at unarmed, peaceful protesters at the Occupy movement in Oakland, California, fits into that.) And in the end, it was reportedly a Hellfire missile fired by a Predator drone plane controlled by the CIA – in conjunction with an attack by a French fighter jet – that destroyed the convoy of cars Gaddafi and his entourage used to try to escape the siege of Sirte, driving him into the famous drainage pipe and into the hands of his tormentors and executioners. US officials and media reports were right about Gaddafi’s human rights record: It was atrocious. They cautioned the incoming TNC to make human rights a priority: “The Libyan authorities should also continue living up to their commitments to respect human rights, begin a national reconciliation process, secure weapons and dangerous materials, and bring together armed groups under a unified civilian leadership,” Obama said. (No word on how Gaddafi’s execution fits in to that.) Hypocrisy reigns Yet, in the very same week, the United States was cozying up to another long-time dictator – one whose style, brutal treatment of prisoners, and notorious massacre of political dissidents is highly reminiscent of the deposed Libyan tyrant. Like a business that maintains two sets of records, one for the tax inspector and the other containing the truth, the United States has two different foreign policies. Its constitution, laws and treaty obligations prohibit torture, assassinations, and holding prisoners without trial. In reality there are secret prisons such as Guantánamo. Similarly, there are two sets of ethical standards in America’s dealing with other countries. Enemies are held to the strictest standards. Allies get a pass. This double standard is the number-one cause of anti-Americanism in the world. In yet another display that exposes US foreign policy on human rights as hypocritical and self-serving, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Uzbekistan to establish closer ties with the Central Asian republic’s president-for-life, Islam Karimov. Even as her State Department was ballyhooing the bloody conclusion of Gaddafi’s 42-year reign as a victory for freedom and decency, the former First Lady was engaged in the cynical Cold War-style of one of the worst human rights abusers in the world. In the human rights brief on Karimov, one major highlight is Central Asia’s Tiananmen Square, the 2005 massacre of between 750 and 1250 peaceful demonstrators at Andijan, a southern town along the restive border with Kyrgyzstan, near the ancient Ferghana Valley. Karimov personally ordered Uzbek militia, Interior Ministry troops and regular army units to surround a square and gun down the protesters, then travelled to the site in order to witness the carnage. A few dozen people managed to escape, scrambling across a border crossing. Shocked Kyrgyz sentries, who had a view of the killing orgy, admitted the refugees. Uzbek troops chased the escapees into Kyrgyzstan, dragged them back and executed them on the Uzbek side of the bridge. Prior to Andijan, the Clinton and Bush Administrations had a cozy relationship with Karimov, overlooking such untidy matters as the Uzbek leader’s habit of boiling political dissidents to death (more on that later), in light of the perceived high strategic value of his country. Uzbekistan has huge energy reserves and a unique placement. (Uzbekistan is the only state in Central Asia that borders all the others. It also borders Afghanistan. In 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan via the Uzbek town of Termiz.) Tashkent is the region’s biggest city, complete with its own metro system, European-standard international airport and daily nonstop flights to New York-infrastructure that became invaluable after America’s 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. US and NATO paid Karimov for the right to build airbases. After Andijan, the US gave into pressure by international human rights organisations to pull back. Covert aid continued, however. The airbases, including one known as Karshi-Khanabad (K2) were technically “closed” (though the personnel and activities continued). In late 2005 the US imposed low-grade trade sanctions. That’s all in the past now. In September 2011 Secretary Clinton lifted the sanctions, saying that the Karimov regime was “showing signs of improving its human rights record and expanding political freedoms”. As a goodwill gesture in advance of Clinton’s trip last week, Uzbek authorities released Norboi Kholjigitov, a human rights advocate jailed since 2005 on charges widely believed to have been politically motivated. Kholjigitov is said to be near death after years of abuse in prison. One step forward, two steps back. One week before Clinton’s arrival an Uzbek court found BBC journalist Urunboy Usmonov guilty of conspiring with Hizb ut Tahrir, an Islamist group that serves as an all-purpose national bugaboo (along with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a Tajik-based organisation with alleged links to the Afghan Taliban). The specific charge: “Failing to report on Hizb’s activities.” Usmonov received a three-year suspended sentence. He claimed to have been beaten and tortured in prison. The same day, newspaper reporter Makhmadyusuf Ismoilov, in jail since late last year for “insult and defamation” of Karimov, was subjected to a large fine and banned from journalism. In Tashkent, a US State Department official described Karimov’s most outrageous excesses as “a thing of the past”. In this case, the past isn’t merely prologue – it’s ongoing. According to a 2010 report by Human Rights Watch: “New research by Human Rights Watch reveals that the Uzbek government continues to intimidate and harass the families of Andijan survivors who have sought refuge abroad. The police regularly summon them for questioning, subject them to constant surveillance, and threaten to bring criminal charges against them or confiscate their homes. School officials humiliate refugees’ children. Five years after the massacre, on May 13, 2005, people suspected of having participated in or witnessed the massacre are still being detained, beaten, and threatened. The sentencing on April 30 of Diloram Abdukodirova, an Andijan refugee who returned to Uzbekistan in January, to ten years and two months in prison, shows the lengths to which the government will go to persecute anyone it perceives as linked to the Andijan events.” These Soviet-style persections did not prevent President Obama from personally calling Karimov last month on the occasion of Uzbekistan’s 20th year of independence. Karimov is one of three Central Asian strongmen (along with Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan) who have retained absolute power since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. He presides over an autocracy whose level of corruption and dysfunction is staggering – even by dismal regional standards. All media is state-controlled. Opposition parties are banned. With substantial reserves from the Caspian Sea oil bonanza and by some measures the world’s largest reserves of natural gas, Uzbekistan has the means to provide a comfortable living for all of its citizens. However, a tiny coterie of businessmen connected to the regime diverts nearly all of the proceeds of the nation’s patrimony to numbered accounts overseas, leaving most of the population unemployed and in abject poverty. Local militia (military police) are unpaid. So they pay themselves. They terrorize citizens with random raids, murders and countless checkpoints where motorists are shaken down. While arriving to visit a friend in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent a couple of years ago, I observed a dead body on the curb of the road in front of his apartment building. The man had been struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver several days earlier. His body was in a state of advanced decomposition in the 120-degree heat, but no one had called the cops. No one dared. New strategy As noted above, there are many reasons for the US to coddle the Uzbek dictator. But President Obama is especially focused on one. “The object of Obama’s interest is the ‘Northern Distribution Network, the Central Asian roads over which diesel and other US military supplies now increasingly travel [into Afghanistan],” writes Russell Zanca inForeign Policy. “The administration is correct in thinking that NDN, as it is known for short, will run more smoothly through secular Uzbekistan than supplies have moved through Pakistan. But a question for practitioners of realpolitik is why the US  considers it necessary to validate the unpopular Uzbek leadership now that it is politically expedient to do so.” It also prompts another question. The US is scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014. If they’re really leaving, why do they care so much about the NCN? Is a soon-to-be abandoned supply route worth dealing with a man like Karimov? The dichotomous US approaches to Gaddafi and Karimov – kill one, pay millions to the other – were pointed out in an eerily-prescient Uznews.net piece published on February 22, 2011, at the commencement of the NATO air campaign in Libya. “The regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya is using the whole power of its armed forces, including artillery, air forces and foreign mercenaries, to crush the ongoing protests in the country; Uzbek President Islam Karimov used similar tactics in Andijan in 2005,” reported Uznews. “The developments in Libya are reminiscent of the government crushing of a rally in Andijan on 13 May 2005. Gaddafi, like Islam Karimov, is not allowing foreign journalists into the country, blocking the internet and telecommunications and calling protesters ‘terrorists’. He appeared on national television yesterday and called foreign news channels ‘dogs’. Like Karimov, he is not considering negotiations as an option and is not willing to fulfill even parts of demands of protesters; he is offering a bloodbath instead … Like in Libya now, according to Uzbek opposition leaders, Uzbek authorities also hired foreign mercenaries: one of them was Tajik Colonel Makhmud Khudoyberganov, who was living in Uzbekistan after a failed coup d’état in Tajikistan in 1998.” Surely Secretary Clinton read her own State Department’s recent report on Uzbekistan, which accuses the Karimov regime of “Instances of torture and mistreatment of detainees by security forces; incommunicado and prolonged detention; arbitrary arrest and detention; denial of due process and fair trial; restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association; governmental control of civil society activity; restrictions on religious freedom including harassment and imprisonment of religious minority group members; and government-compelled forced labour in cotton harvesting.” ““But we have also learned over the years that after a while, after you’ve made your strong objections, if you have no contact, you have no influence.” Hilary Clinton on countries with poor human rights records “Amnesty International and other groups have documented specific cases. In the summer of 2002, Amnesty International reported, Fatima Mukhadirova, a 62-year-old Tashkent shopkeeper, was sentenced to six years of hard labour after denouncing the government for the death of her son, Muzafar Avozov, in a Tashkent prison,” says a May 1, 2005 report inThe New York Times. “An independent examination of photographs of the body, conducted by the University of Glasgow, showed that Mr Avozov died after being immersed in boiling water, human rights groups reported. The examination said his head had been beaten and his fingernails removed.” According to Uzbeks, live boiling was a common practice. Roadblocks ahead “The relationship between the US and Uzbekistan is problematic,” the 2005 Times article quoted a Human Rights Watch official as saying. “It can be useful that the US is powerful enough to push for certain concessions. That being said, the US should not be saying that Karimov is a partner, is an ally, is a friend. The US should send the message that Uzbekistan won’t be considered to be a good ally of the United States unless it respects human rights at home.” During Clinton’s trip to Tashkent last week, she defended the US policy of engagement. “I can assure you that we have raised all of the human rights issues in Uzbekistan and elsewhere,” she said in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, another country with a poor human rights record. “But we have also learned over the years that after a while, after you’ve made your strong objections, if you have no contact, you have no influence.” Clinton didn’t say why contact and influence were good for Karimov’s Uzbekistan, but not Gaddafi’s Libya. Ted Rall is an American political cartoonist, columnist and author. His most recent book is The Anti-American Manifesto. His website is rall.com. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

Pakistan, India and Afghanistan–vs–American Games

Pakistan, India and Afghanistan

By Kuldip Nayar

The writer is a syndicated columnist and a former member of India’s Rajya Sabha

Cussedness in relations between India and Pakistan is lessening. So I infer from the return by Islamabad of an army helicopter which had strayed across the Line of Control. But I fail to understand why India and Pakistan have deferred even a home secretary-level meeting when they should be talking. After all, it was not a summit demanding all attention, nor a discussion beyond the much-hypedvisa rules for easy travel. Granted both sides have no urge or desire to normalise relations. But they could have at least discussed the fallout of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan. She has not toned down her threat or ultimatum.

It is apparent that Washington wants to seal safe havens in Waziristan to which the militants retreat after attacking the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton has even told Pakistan without naming it that it cannot “keep snakes in its backyard and expect that they will not bite the neighbours”. New Delhi, normally a victim of snake bites, has correctly cautioned America to be patient. Maybe this attitude impressed Pakistan to return the helicopter and officers. America, too, needs to introspect about its role because the sufferings of Pakistan are not entirely of its own making. The militancy is more than two decades old. Washington initiated it because it wanted to bleed the Soviet Union to death. It succeeded. America is again in touch with the largest militant outfit, the Haqqanis, against which it has asked Pakistan to act. But then, Pakistan is also talking to the Haqqanis. Pakistan has changed its policy from chastising the Taliban to talking to them because America is doing so.

Both do not trust each other. Pakistan is suspicious that America is not trying to outsmart it. Islamabad’s trust in Washington is zero after it eliminated Osama bin Laden without even a whiff of hint to Pakistan.

The dominant elements at Islamabad wrongly believe that the Haqqani network is at their command to needle Afghanistan or India. The Haqqanis have a different agenda and Pakistan should have known it from the unending blasts and attacks on its soil.

Hillary Clinton’s advice to Islamabad to eliminate them in days or weeks and not in months or years is a tall order. The British could not do so, nor could the Soviet Union. Pakistan is in comparison a small power. Also, Islamabad has to think of the nation’s reaction. The fundamentalists have acquired a solid support over the years and even the military has not remained immune from their influence. As for the public in Pakistan, it is sick of terrorism and what it has done to the society. This makes it all the more necessary for India and Pakistan to discuss America’s long-term policy in the region. There should be no two opinions on Afghanistan’s sovereignty and independence. Unfortunately, Islamabad is suspicious of New Delhi’s intentions and believes that it is trying to surround Pakistan through Afghanistan. The entire hypothesis is preposterous. Kabul is New Delhi’s strategic partner, not its strategic depth which Islamabad expects Afghanistan to be.

America is going to be more aggressive as the days go by and probably will not quit Afghanistan altogether. This is as dangerous for Islamabad and Kabul as for New Delhi. Washington’s presence in the region is ominous. Therefore, India and Pakistan should first meet to clear their apprehensions and then include Afghanistan in the talks to discuss how to oust foreign troops from the region.

As the first step, the three should join hands to defeat terrorism, which has taken roots in the region. Maybe Islamabad, not London, should convene the meeting and invite the countries concerned, including Iran, to discuss how to eliminate terrorism. New Delhi should help Islamabad in this endeavour.

There is no alternative to good relations between India and Pakistan. The earlier the two countries realise this, the better it would be for them and the region. America has made it clear by attacking countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, that it will use its might to serve ‘its purpose’, whatever that means. The countries, either in the Middle East or South Asia, have not reacted to Washington’s blandishments. The region does not look like it is waking up.

Published in The Express Tribune

US and Islamists: It takes two to tango

[SEE:  America’s “Islamists” Go Where Oilmen Fear to Tread ]

Brahma Chellaney

When Libya’s interim government announced the official “ liberation” of the country on October 23, it also declared that a system based on the Islamic sharia, including polygamy, will replace the dictatorship that Col Muammar Qaddafi ran for 42 years.

“We as a Muslim nation have taken Islamic sharia as the source of legislation, therefore any law that contradicts the principles of Islam is legally nullified,” declared interim leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil.

Swapping one evil for another may seem a cruel political comedown after seven months of relentless NATO air strikes in the name of promoting democracy in Libya - an air war that enabled the ragtag rebel militias to triumph but left a vast trail of death and destruction.

The Western powers that militarily effected the regime change in Libya, in fact, have not sought to stop its new rulers from establishing a theocratic system founded on Islamic jurisprudence. For these powers, such a political turn is an unavoidable price to pay to have their own men in power. The Islamist embrace indeed helps protect the credibility of men who otherwise may be seen as foreign puppets in their own society.

This is the same reason why the US, Britain and France have condoned the rulers of the oil sheikhdoms for their longstanding alliance with radical clerics. For example, the US-backed House of Saud not only practices the century-old political tradition of Wahhabi Islam but also exports this fringe form of Islam, with the result that the more liberal Islamic traditions elsewhere are being gradually snuffed out. The plain fact is that the US-led strategy is driven by narrowly defined geopolitical interests. The imperative to have pliant regimes in oil-rich countries trumps other considerations.

With the US support they enjoy, the most-tyrannical regimes – the monarchies – have been able to ride out the Arab Spring, emerging virtually unscathed. Libya has the world’s largest reserves of light sweet crude – the top-notch oil that American and European refineries prefer – and the NATO-scripted regime change there was clearly not about ushering in an era of liberal democracy. Having been born in blood, the new Libya faces uncertain times. The only certain element is that its new rulers will remain beholden to those that helped install them.

More fundamentally, America’s troubling ties with Islamist rulers and groups was cemented in the 1980s when the Reagan administration openly employed Islam as an ideological tool to spur the spirit of jihad against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan . It was at a White Houseceremony attended by some “holy warriors” from the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt in the mid-1980 s that Reagan proclaimed the mujahideen as the “moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.” Two such moral equivalents, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, later became America’s nemesis.

Make no mistake: international terrorism and the modern-day Frankenstein’s monsters are the haunting byproducts of the war against atheism and communism that the US was supposed to have won. Yet the lessons from that war have already been forgotten, including the need to keep the focus on long-term goals and not be carried away by political expediency. The current attempt to strike a Faustian bargain with the Taliban, for example, ignores the very lesson from the creation of this evil force.

It has been argued by exponents of the US policy approach that because a war runs on expediency, with strange bedfellows involved as partners, unsavory allies are unavoidable. Paradoxically, the US practice of propping up malleable but Islamist rulers in the Middle East creates a street-level situation not only laden with strong anti-US sentiment but also support for more authentically Islamist and independent forces. So, if elections are held, it is such autonomous Islamists that often emerge as winners, as the diverse cases of Gaza and Tunisiaattest.

Let’s be clear: The global fight against terrorism can succeed only by ensuring that states do not harbour militants or contribute in any way to the rise of virulent Islamic fundamentalism extolling violence as a sanctified religious tool. Yet today, history is in danger of repeating itself.

The brutal killing of Gaddafi by his NATO-backed captors and the macabre public display of his body for several days were redolent of the manner former Afghan President Najibullah was dragged out of the UN compound in Kabul by the Taliban in 1996 and hung from a traffic barricade. What followed was unending bloodletting. So, it is fair to ask: Will Libya become another jihadist haven?

Brahma Chellaney is the author of ‘Asian Juggernaut’ and ‘Water: Asia’s New Battleground’

Istanbul–The Division Conference

[SEE:  The Istanbul Conference: Helping the Devil Get His Way In Central and South Asia]

Pakistan opposed to regional solution on Afghanistan

Indrani Bagchi, TNN

New Delhi: Pakistan is blocking the establishment of a regional monitoring group to oversee cooperation on Afghanistan’s economic and security future. As leaders from 12 nations head to Istanbul on November 2 to help Afghanistan become a stable and independent state, Pakistan is building up opposition to the key decisions at the conference.

Foreign minister S M Krishna will represent India at the conference, the first time India will be at the table. Last year, Pakistan had successfully weighed in with its close allies and host, Turkey, to keep India out. Turkish president Abdullah Gulbore the brunt of New Delhi’s unhappiness when he visited India soon after.

While negotiations for the event is yet to yield an “outcome document” (a negotiated, agreed text), there are two stated goals – to commit to non-interference/neutrality on Afghanistan and to set up a mechanism of senior officials to monitor it. Pakistan has cited “national security”, maintaining its old position that it needed to have a “friendly’ government in Kabul as a defence against India. Pakistan’s opposition is to having so many countries – primarily India- enjoying similar status in the contact group on Afghanistan.

The US, Pakistan’s principal backer, has decisively turned away from accepting Islamabad’s arguments. Turkey, Pakistan’s close friend and mentor, too is pushing the regional framework that includes all Afghanistan’s neighbours. Hillary Clinton, who will represent the US at the conference, will push the New Silk Road concept that is aimed to help Afghanistan to its feet, and one that includes all its neighbours. This too has seen opposition from the Pakistani army.

Pakistan, said sources, is trying to marshal support from an unlikely group of countries that may have implications for India. Iran, which is opposed to the idea of US military presence in Afghanistan, has been seen to be supporting the Pakistani position, even though Teheran detests the Taliban and the al Qaeda. A curious fellow opponent is Russia. Moscow is worried about a Talibanised Afghanistan, but it is equally sceptical of a continued US presence there.

Highly placed sources in government say there have been recent “exploratory” talks between Pakistan and Russia on Afghanistan. Russia, like Iran and India, used to be the triad that supported the Northern Alliance in the 1990s when Taliban ruled Kabul with Pakistan’s help. But in a changing geopolitical environment, Russia is finding itself much closer to China, which Russians have admitted to as being “need-based”. Russia’s economic ties with China have increased exponentially, and in regional groupings is now closer to China than ever before.

While China has little to object in the Istanbul plan, China is bound to support Pakistan. The Chinese objection has centred on a stated apprehension that the new contact group could replicate or undermine its creation, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Pakistan foreign office spokesperson repeated this line, “The existing regional organizations and arrangements may also be urged to prioritize support in their respective domains for achieving the aforesaid objectives…”

Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, the US and the UK will attend the Istanbul conference, which precedes the 90-nation Bonn conference in December.

Assad: Western Action Against Syria would Cause ‘Earthquake’

by Naharnet Newsdesk

Syrian President Bashar Assad has warned that any Western action against his country would cause an “earthquake” that would inflame the region, in an interview published in a British newspaper.

The Sunday Telegraph said Assad warned of “another Afghanistan” if foreign forces intervened in Syria as they did with the Libyan uprising that led to the killing of Moammar Gadhafi.

“Syria is the hub now in this region. It is the fault line, and if you play with the ground you will cause an earthquake — do you want to see another Afghanistan, or tens of Afghanistans?,” the paper quoted Assad as telling it.

“Any problem in Syria will burn the whole region. If the plan is to divide Syria, that is to divide the whole region,” he said in his first interview with a Western journalist since Syria’s seven-month uprising began in March.

His comments come after mass protests calling for the imposition of a Libya-style no-fly zone on Syria and renewed violence on Friday and Saturday in which dozens of security forces were reportedly killed.

Assad said “many mistakes” had been made by his forces in the early part of the uprising against his regime but insisted that his forces were now only targeting “terrorists.”

“If you sent in your army to the streets, the same thing would happen. Now, we are only fighting terrorists. That’s why the fighting is becoming much less,” he told the Sunday Telegraph.

He described the uprising as a “struggle between Islamism and pan-Arabism (secularism), adding: “We’ve been fighting the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1950s and we are still fighting with them.”

Assad also said that Syria had responded differently to Arab leaders in countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya where regimes have been overthrown this year, insisting that he had begun reforms.

“The pace of reform is not too slow. The vision needs to be mature. It would take only 15 seconds to sign a law, but if it doesn’t fit your society, you’ll have division … It’s a very complicated society,” he said.

Source Agence France Presse

Costa Rican Presidents Still Arguing Over Secret Contra Airstrip Near Murcielago

[SEE: Secret Contra Resupply Airstrip In Costa Rica–a.k.a., “Point West” ;  Is White House Behind Google Map Censorship In Secret Contra Airstrip Controversy?]

Ex-presidents clash over war past

 By John McPhaul

Rewriting history? Former Costa Rican presidents Oscar Arias and Luis Alberto Monge have their tiff play out in the media.

Tico Times

Former Costa Rican presidents Luis Alberto Monge, left, and Oscar Arias traded barbs this week in columns published by the daily La Nación over their administrations’ activities during the 1980s civil war in Nicaragua. Arias accused Monge of allowing the U.S. to support Contra rebels from a clandestine landing strip in northern Guanacaste province.

A public spat between two former Costa Rican presidents and leading elder statesmen of the ruling National Liberation Party, has reawakened ghosts of the 1980s when Costa Rica very nearly found itself dragged into the civil war of northern neighbor Nicaragua.

Two-time Costa Rican President Oscar Arias wrote for the daily La Nación that his predecessor, former Costa Rican President Luis Alberto Monge, had a secret agreement with then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan to assist Nicaraguan Contra rebels in Costa Rica seeking to overthrow the Sandinista government in violation of his own avowed neutrality policy.

In an angry response from Monge, also in La Nación, the 85-year-old former president hotly denied that any such agreement existed and accused Arias of making the story up in an exercise of self-aggrandizement.

Arias, 71, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 after leading negotiations that resulted in an agreement to disarm Nicaraguan Contra rebels as a prelude to free elections, in which the ruling Sandinista party was deposed by newspaper publisher Violeta Chamorro.

In the article published Oct. 11, which purported to provide a public explanation for the notorious political rift between himself and Monge, Arias said that after his election, but before his swearing-in, Monge invited him to a meeting in his Pozos de Santa Ana home, where Arias and his brother Rodrigo were met by Monge and then-U.S. Ambassador Lewis Tambs.

“With surprise and shock, my brother and I were informed of an agreement existing between the governments of don Luis Alberto and that of Ronald Reagan, through which the use of national territory was facilitated to permit the ‘Contra’ to operate from Costa Rica,” said Arias.

Under the agreement, said Arias, Costa Rica allowed the U.S. to operate a clandestine airstrip in Guanacaste province near the Nicaraguan border, to set up radar to peer into Nicaragua and allow the Contras to be resupplied with food, medicine and arms from Costa Rica “behind the back of Costa Ricans and the international community.”

Arias said he told Monge and Tambs that once he took office on May 8, 1986, “The use of not even one square inch of Costa Rica by the ‘Contra’ would be tolerated, and nor would the presence of U.S. military in the country be permitted.”

The political jousting by the two ex-presidents occurs in rough proximity to the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the National Liberation Party, the party that brought both Monge and Arias to power and whose list of candidates for the February 2014 elections includes Arias’ younger brother Rodrigo, 65, and Monge’s nephew, San José Mayor Johnny Araya.

In his Oct. 16 response, Monge, one of the party’s founders, accused Arias of reducing the party to “a project of family ambition” and of having taken the party away from its social-democratic, reformist roots to a “conservative, plutocratic and authoritarian thesis.”

Monge accused the Nobel Peace Prize laureate of rewriting history with the end of inflating his peacemaking record.

“Now [Arias] goes after me, writing a political novel that, before making public, he has been for many years slyly distributing to foreign journalists, universities and in private,” said Monge.

Monge, who was president from 1982 to 1986, said that Reagan never asked him to make such an agreement.

“The Reagan-Monge pact or any species of agreement between the president of the United States and the president of Costa Rica is absolutely false,” said Monge. “You have to have altered state of mind to invent a tall tale of such magnitude.”

Monge said that the U.S. military, in the person of the head of the U.S. Southern Command, did offer “every kind of military assistance” if Costa Rica were to be invaded by the Sandinista army.

Monge said he declined the offer and instead looked to then-Venezuelan President Luis Herrera Campins and then-Colombian President Belisario Betancur, who offered their assistance and warned Nicaragua against invading Costa Rica.

According to Monge, the communist bloc intended to spread warfare throughout Central America, including plans to invade Costa Rica, and for that purpose sent a top-ranking Cuban officer, Oswaldo Ochoa, to Nicaragua.

“The thesis of communism was that the only way to escalate a regional conflict was to provoke a border conflict with Costa Rica to justify the entrance of the Sandinista army into national territory,” Monge said.

He said that on two occasions the Sandinistas had amassed troops along the border with Costa Rica as a prelude to invasion.

On the danger of Costa Rica getting dragged into an armed conflict, the two former presidents seem to be in agreement. But for Arias, the presence of the Contras and other military maneuverings in Costa Rica only exacerbated the danger.

“Costa Ricans will never know how close Costa Rica was to being involved in the war,” Arias said.

Arias said before his inauguration on May 8, 1986, that he met with visiting U.S. Vice President George H.W. Bush and told him of his opposition to the Contra operations in Costa Rica. After the ceremony, Arias said he instructed his minister of public security, Hernán Garrón, to tell the Contras they were no longer welcome in Costa Rica and also to immediately close the airstrip on the Santa Elena Peninsula.

Records that came to light as a result of the investigation into the Reagan administration’s using proceeds of the sale of weapons to Iran to arm the Nicaragua Contra show that Arias personally told then-C.I.A. station chief in Costa Rica Joseph Fernández to close down the airstrip.

But the Iran-Contra record also shows that the U.S. ignored Arias’ decision to close the airstrip, forcing the Costa Rican president to order the airstrip occupied by Tico Civil Guards in late August 1986. The existence of the two-kilometer-long dirt airstrip in a secluded cove known as Potrero Grande was brought to light after a group of journalists, including Tico Times reporters, overflew the strip in September 1986 (TT, Sept. 26, 1986).

At the time, Arias administration officials insisted that the airstrip had never been used, but admitted privately that they had chosen to downplay its existence out of consideration for Monge (TT, Oct. 3, 1986).

In early 1987, Monge admitted to The Tico Times that he had approved the reconditioning of the airstrip after “officials with maps arrived from Washington,” and in a secret meeting with him, warned of the danger of a Sandinista invasion and the need for an additional airstrip in the area (TT, Jan. 16, 1987). The former president later told Iran-Contra investigators that he didn’t recall giving permission for the airstrip – part of a supposed “tourist project” located on property owned by a Panama-based company later linked to the CIA (TT, Oct. 10, 1986).

In his La Nación article, Monge said the airstrip was “strictly private,” and that it was never used while he was president. However, residents of the area at the time reported frequent takeoffs and landings of mysterious aircraft, including a camouflaged Hercules cargo plane (TT, Sept. 26, 1986).

The Iran-Contra record also shows that Monge’s minister of public security, Benjamín Piza, was, in the words of then-U.S. National Security Advisor Adm. John Poindexter, “highly instrumental in helping to organize the southern front of opposition to the Sandinistas.” In a memo to Reagan dated March 17, 1986, Poindexter recommended a brief Oval Office meeting between the U.S. president and Piza, and his wife, to thank Piza for his assistance to the Contra cause, writing, “He has intervened with President Monge on numerous occasions and has personally assisted in the development of the logistics support base for the United Nicaraguan Opposition forces deployed north of Costa Rica.”

Arias said that his refusal to allow any action by the Contras against the Nicaraguan government put an end to “painful” acts such as the death of Civil Guards near the Northern Zone hamlet of Las Crucitas, when the guards apparently got caught in crossfire in a Sandinista-Contra confrontation. Another “painful act” referred to by Arias was the May 30, 1984, bombing of a Nicaraguan rebel press conference at the rebel outpost of La Penca by a Sandinista spy posing as a Danish photojournalist, which killed three reporters and four rebels.

Monge took exception to Arias’ mention of the La Penca bombing, saying that the authorship of the bombing has been proven to be Sandinista. “That is the truth, and to involve my government is an infamy,” Monge said.

Monge also criticized Arias for seeking a second term in office after the country’s Supreme Court threw out the law prohibiting second terms for ex-presidents. “He can’t live without power,” said Monge. “Desperate, to the point that he overcame the spirit of the Constitutional Chamber to achieve a second de facto administration.”

Monge also accused Arias of trying to hog all the glory of the Nobel Peace Prize for himself by dismissing Monge’s Declaration of Perpetual Neutrality and ignoring the efforts of other Costa Ricans, including Arias’ own foreign minister, the late Rodrigo Madrigal.

“Don Oscar, with his well-known egocentrism, adjudicates to himself in an exclusive form this great honor,” Monge said.

FBI Training Tajik Govt./Financial Officers In Social Media and Ambush Interviewing Techniques

U.S. embassy builds bridge of understanding between independent media and government spokespeople

Asia-Plus

Views: 125

DUSHANBE, October 29, 2011, Asia-Plus — On October 24, 2011, Ambassador Ken Gross opened the U.S. Embassy sponsored Public and Media Relations Course for Public and Media Relations Specialists from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Committee on National Security, the Drug Control Agency, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Agency on State Financial Control and Anti-Corruption, the Customs Service, the National Bank of Tajikistan, National Guards and the Ministry of Defense, the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe reported.

The participants had an opportunity to meet with media representatives on the first day of the interactive training course to discuss the challenges they face while working with one another.  Three highly experienced Supervisory Special Agent FBI instructors assigned to the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs, National Press Office in Washington, D.C., taught the course.

At the opening ceremony, Ambassador Gross remarked, “The U.S. Embassy is committed to assisting you in your important role as government spokespersons, in your efforts to provide fair and balanced access to your media counterparts.”

The U.S. Embassy’s Office of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs organized and funded the one-week course.  The course helped public and media affairs experts in the Government of Tajikistan develop skills to better deliver news and information to mass media and the public. The training course involved practical scenarios and role play activities including news conferences, use of social media, on camera critiques, “ambush” interviews, and other “live” scenarios. Ambassador Gross also played the role of U.S. Ambassador in a role play scenario, where he delivered news to government spokespeople.

The United States Government is committed to continuing its support for Tajik law enforcement agencies. Since 1992, the U.S. Government has provided more than $900 million in assistance programs that support the law enforcement and security systems, economic growth, democratic institutions, health care and education of Tajikistan.

Kremlin Does Great PR Work For Pentagon

The Moscow Times

At a Moscow news conference on Tuesday, NATO’s deputy assistant secretary-general, James Appathurai, pushed the U.S. proposal to share its missile defense technical specifications with Russia. This is part of a new U.S. “transparency campaign” to try to repudiate the Kremlin’s claims that U.S. missile defense installations in Europe will undermine Russia’s nuclear deterrence.

But to convince Russia that missile defense poses no threat to its security, perhaps the best “technical specifications” the United States could share with Moscow is evidence from leading U.S. nuclear physicists that missile defense simply doesn’t work.

Theodore Postol, an MIT physicist and former Pentagon science adviser, has argued that the Pentagon fudged missile defense test results to convince the U.S. Congress and taxpayers that the system has an 84 percent success rate. In reality, Postol argues, it can hit only 10 percent or 15 percent of its targets.

And this is in the best of circumstances — when the Pentagon knows exactly when an incoming missile will be fired as well as its trajectory, and when the weather conditions are ideal. In real battle circumstances, of course, the U.S. missile defense system would not have these luxuries.

There is another important factor that further skews the Pentagon’s seemingly miraculous test results: It considered a test successful when an interceptor simply hit the body of the oncoming missile. But an interceptor must hit the warhead itself to protect against an attack, a fact that even the Pentagon confirms. The problem, however, is that hitting the actual warhead is like hitting “a bullet with a bullet.”

To make matters worse, it is easy for an enemy to trick interceptors by using decoys, such as cheap inflatable balloons. Yousaf Butt, a leading U.S. nuclear physicist, argues that it is impossible for a missile defense system to distinguish real warheads from decoys. Thus, Russia could easily overwhelm the missile defense shield by inundating it with decoys.

Russia knows these facts better than anyone, but it chooses to ignore them and insist that U.S. missile defense poses a threat to its nuclear deterrence. The Kremlin’s obsession with missile defense is part of a broad political and foreign policy strategy of demonizing NATO and the United States to create a mythical enemy at its gates.

The irony is that the Kremlin’s seemingly hawkish line against Washington has helped create a nice gold mine for large U.S. missile defense contractors, such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The United States spent $8.5 billion on missile defense in 2011 alone and a total of $141 billion since 1985.

Why should these defense giants hire expensive Washington lobbyists and PR agencies to blow hot air about the United States’ amazingly successful and powerful missile defense capabilities when the Kremlin will do it for free?

The Shadow Empire and the Subjugation of the Sub-Continent

Allow Chinese Military bases in Pakistan, not just Gwadar

by Ali.mostaque

The Chinese have been good consistent friends of Pakistan since 1963, and as a counter-weight to both India and the USA.The Chinese have carried out significant strategic projects in Pakistan since 1963, unlike the USA/UK.The Chinese helped Pakistan with its nuclear weapons program, without which Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program would have struggled at huge costs for many more indeterminate years.

The Chinese have helped Pakistan with its strategic missile program, without which Pakistan with its basket weaving economy could never have realized such a strategic goal.

The Chinese have helped Pakistan with its strategic conventional defense programs, without which Pakistan with its basket weaving economy could never have realized such a strategic goal.

Such illustrious and consistent help, provided with polite understanding and a smile for 48 years, deserves to be rewarded affirmatively and FINALLY with Chinese military bases in FATA……..maybe containing 5000 Chinese military personnel, with radar and heavy equipment, AND the repetition of the offer already on the table since many years by the Pakistan government of the naval base/port in Gwadar in Baluchistan.

These offers need to be articulated more clearly and forcefully by the Pakistan military, who control security in Pakistan, more directly to China.

China protects North Korea, without which North Korea, with no peace treaty with the South would be at war, and invasion by the USA.

China wishes to protect Pakistan, and government publications in China have stated as such. However this is not enough. The Pakistani military must overtly express and show to China that it wishes to be protected by China, by doing a set of things, one of which is giving military bases to China in FATA and Gwadar specifically.

China has strong strategic interests in Pakistan, in terms of greater access to the resources of the Middle East. Finally the avoidance of Western mischief too near its borders….re: “al-CIA-duh”.

Simultaneously to avoid confusion and contradiction which recently transpired shamefully with Pakistan China relations…….maybe that was the intention…….Pakistan must also do the following things, since Pakistan cannot serve both China and the USA. Its gymnastically impossible.

Close ALL USA military bases in Pakistan.

Eject ALL USA military personnel from Pakistan.

Cut ALL military training programs with Western countries especially the USA/UK.

Cut all military aid programs with the USA.

Close ALL USA consulates in Pakistan and reduce the USA embassy staff to about 10 people.

Close ALL foreign NGO’s in Pakistan since most are intelligence fronts.

Reduce Western tourism in Pakistan.

Close ALL Western missionary organizations in Pakistan since ALL are intelligence fronts.

These policies need NOT be announced by the Pakistan military, but they definitely need to be carried out step by step and quickly.

But we also understand that the whole region including India and Bangladesh suffers from Gora sahib worship and deference borne out of colonial servitude of many years, and therefore weaning the Harijan Coolie from the ever abusing gora sahib may be a challenging question which otherwise offers very CLEAR SIMPLE ABC ANSWERS just provided above.

A male pimp into drugs trafficking will ALWAYS abuse his prostitutes, there are no alternatives.

The drug peddling abusive pimp from the USA/UK with the rolls Royce, and gaudy gold jewelry.

A evil husband, with drink problems, who also batters and traffic’s his children for emotional recreation, will ALWAYS abuse the wife, there are no alternatives.

It is the duty of the abused prostitute and the battered wife to “escape” from such suffering with determination and resolution, and not perpetuate such an appalling relationship.

Bengal was occupied by the utterly evil British Empire 254 years ago.

It was the richest part of India, and the Mughals called it the “Pearl of India”, providing the bulk of the revenue for the Mughal administration in its last years of the 17th and 18th century.

In 1768 the evil British empire in its lust for business profits decreed that in the whole of Greater Bengal (Bangladesh, Bihar, Paschim Banga) ONLY opium, Indigo and Jute could be grown, a law that was heavily enforced through the use of the British military…….Opium to China, and Indigo and Jute to Europe. 10 million people perished, or 30% of the population as a result of this policy.

The evil British empire destroyed Bengal into utter poverty from 1760—1800. To this day 254 years later Greater Bengal (Bangladesh, Bihar, Paschim Banga) are still the poorest parts of South Asia.

In 1943 the evil British empire fearing Japanese invasion and liberation of India from their evil misrule, especially in Bengal surrounded the state with paramilitary forces, and passed a law saying no food from neighboring states of Bengal could be supplied to Bengal, and government agents bought up food within Bengal in addition. It was a bumper crop year, and yet 6 million people died from the Great Bengal Famine.

Since 1947 East Pakistan/Bangladesh has experienced continued British mischief in the country and region. 254 years is an inordinate time to learn ones lessons and study of historical FACTS.

And yet the British still run and train the security forces of Bangladesh, its police, paramilitary, military and intelligence with their quaint British names….Rapid Reaction Battalion…….a Death Squad Battalion trained by the British Police which has killed over 1000 mostly innocent people, DGFI, NSI, MI,………………..this is utter shame, and yet this is how it is.

Bangladesh along with India and Pakistan still belong to the British Commonwealth, a defacto celebration of the evil British empire!!!!!!!!!!

After 254 years of abuse Bangladesh has not yet run away from its drug peddling pimp master.

And yet Bengal has such enormous and phenomenal human potential.The Bengal State fails its people; Fails to identify the real needs of its people.

The same is true of the Ukraine, filled with enormous and phenomenal human potential, and yet a dejected, rather sad Third World country run by Jews since 1918.

PAKISTAN MUST ESCAPE from its drug peddling pimp master soon.

The abused Ukrainian prostitute working in the suburbs of Tel aviv. 500,000 such women have been shipped from Ukraine and Russia by the Jewish mafia to work as prostitutes since 1991, and yet the Jewish run governments of Ukraine and Russia are unable to do anything to liberate these women.

Putin says smash faces of Russian fraudsters

MOSCOW | Sat Oct 29, 2011 9:30am IST

(Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir, already in campaign mode for a third term as president, said fraudsters who siphon off state money should have their faces smashed.

Putin plans to run in the March 2012 election and needs to improve his anti-corruption credentials tarnished by international ratings and statistics showing corruption has worsened under his rule.

“The practitioners of kickbacks and graft should not only get a rap on the knuckles, they should have their faces smashed,” Putin told an audience of Russian financial policemen.

Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International rates Russia as the world’s most corrupt major economy, ranking it 154th out of 178 nations in its corruption perceptions index last year, on a par with Cambodia, Kenya and Laos.

President Dmitry Medvedev made fighting corruption the main theme of his four-year presidency term which nears its end but has often been criticised for showing few tangible results.

Analysts say that, if elected, Putin is unlikely to make much progress in fighting a bureaucracy that has been deeply corrupt since Soviet times.

Putin, who grew up in a working class neighbourhood in St Petersburg, is known for harsh remarks and jokes which raise eyebrows in the West but are popular with ordinary Russians.

(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Washington’s Idiotic Plot To Implicate Iran

Spat over a plot that was not

ATUL ANEJA

AP   Attorney General Eric Holder (second from left) speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington on October 11, 2011.

Washington is clearly unable to sell a credible story about Tehran’s intent to plot a major terror strike on U.S. soil.

As angry crowds protesting against corporate greed were piling up in New York’s Zuccotti Park and across several European capitals, U.S. Attorney-General Eric Holder Jr. decided to hold an extraordinary press conference.

In a hall packed with mediapersons, Mr. Holder on October 11 announced that the U.S. had uncovered a diabolical terror plot, which had Iran’s authorisation. He and several unnamed U.S. officials then unveiled details of the alleged plan to kill Adel Al Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s influential Ambassador to the United States. Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), through its Al Quds subsidiary, they said, had sanctioned the assassination. Implying that Iran had the intent of indulging in state terrorism, the officials asserted that the assassins wanted to kill the Saudi envoy, blowing up a fashionable Washington restaurant, usually crowded and frequented by the city’s political and diplomatic elite.

The story about a vengeful, amoral and, in the end, incompetent Iranian officialdom did not end there. The assassination was apparently part of a much larger scheme, which had in its cross hairs the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Washington as well as the Saudi and Israeli Embassies in Argentina.

Stretching across three continents, the plot had, apart from one villainous official of the Al Quds force, two characters in its star cast. One was Mansour J. Arbabsia, an absent-minded, second-hand car dealer in Corpus Christi, Texas, and a U.S. mole in the Mexican Los Zetas drug cartel. According to the U.S. officials, Mr. Arbabsia had in August travelled to Iran, from where he wired $100,000 from an Al Quds account as down payment for the assassination. The money, to be followed with another payment of $50,000, was deposited into the account of the informant of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who Mr. Arbabsia and his alleged backers in Tehran mistakenly thought was a Los Zetas member.

On September 29, Mr. Arbabsia was nabbed at the New York airport after he was denied entry into Mexico City, apparently following an American request, and was sent back on a commercial flight. The U.S. officials claim that Mr. Arbabsia was visiting Mexico with the intention of presenting himself to Los Zetas as “collateral” until the drug cartel received the remaining $50,000 after the assassination. On being shown, in custody, an array of photographs, he identified Gholam Shakuri, an Al Quds official, as his handler, the officials claimed.

These sensational allegations have flared tensions between Washington and Tehran. After making a bizarre case against Iran of fomenting terrorism so publicly, the U.S. has painted itself into a corner. It now needs to follow up on its assertions by taking visible action, however calibrated, or lose face doing nothing. The chances are that Washington will pursue a course that is likely to escalate tensions. Mr. Holder hinted at this when he said the U.S. “is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions.” Separately, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drove home the Attorney-General’s threat by advocating that a “strong message” be sent to Iran that would “further isolate it from the international community.”

President Barack Obama has further upped the ante, dragging the Iranian nuclear programme within the ambit of Washington’s risky standoff with Tehran. Mr. Obama is now pressing the United Nations nuclear inspectors to release recent classified data which could suggest that Iran is experimenting with nuclear weapon technology. If information is indeed available with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that can even remotely be interpreted as Iran’s attempt to work on atomic weapons, it would once again open up an intense debate — eclipsed by the Arab Spring — on measures, including military, which may be required to contain Iran.

To put the issue into the international spotlight, Saudi Arabia has reported the alleged conspiracy to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon so that it can be considered by the Security Council for further action.

In Washington and Riyadh, a heated debate is under way on a new set of stringent sanctions that can be imposed on Iran. The New York Times has quoted Obama administration officials as saying they are studying a ban on financial transactions with Iran’s Central Bank, notwithstanding opposition from China and other Asian countries. Washington is also considering widening the ban on the purchase of petroleum products produced by companies controlled by the powerful IRGC.

Despite the heavy exertions of its overworked spin-doctors, the U.S. may find it difficult to build fresh international pressure on Iran or foist the threat from Tehran on top of its domestic agenda. The problem with Washington’s exhortations lies in its inability to sell a credible story about Tehran’s intent to plot a major terror strike on U.S. soil. The tale spun by Mr. Holder and the U.S. Justice Department has too many loopholes to be taken seriously.

The former CIA analyst, Robert Baer, who has been following Iran for 30 years, points out that the alleged plot simply does not have the hallmark of an Iranian intelligence operation. In an interview on ABC television, Mr. Baer said he did not believe that the Iranian government was involved in the plot. “This doesn’t fit their modus operandi at all. It’s completely out of character, they’re much better than this.” He stressed that the “careful” Iranians “always use a proxy between them and the operation, and in this case they didn’t.”

The American assertion that Mr. Arbabsia, under instructions from the Al Quds, used normal banking channels to transfer $100,000 is hardly believable. Even the most uninitiated in the world of espionage are aware that the U.S. Treasury Department rigorously monitors any transaction above $10,000 as part of its policy to curb drug money laundering. Had Mr. Arbabsia indeed been an intelligence operative, he would have been told by his skilled handlers that he should deal only in cash, which is the only safe option for making clandestine payments abroad. Appearing before a federal judge on Monday in a Manhattan court, Mr. Arbabsia pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charges.

West Asia historian Juan Cole suggests in his blog that instead of being state-sponsored as the Americans officially allege, a feud between drug operatives with affiliations in Iran and Saudi Arabia may be behind the conception of this amateurish plot. He points out that an Iranian cartel funnelling narcotics from Afghanistan “might be angered that Saudi-backed Sunni militant gangs in Iraq and Syria have grabbed smuggling routes, cutting out the Iranians.”

The Iranians, on their part, are incensed at Washington’s allegations and have joined the Americans in a dangerous war of words. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has asserted that his country would deliver “an unforgettable response” in case Washington takes “improper actions” against Tehran. He warned American officials not to “entertain delusions” because Iran would take “decisive action” in response to any impropriety on their part.

Referring to the outpouring of protests against economic hardship across the globe, the Ayatollah said the U.S. was using the accusations against Tehran to divert attention from its own financial difficulties. He added, “The people of at least 80 nations have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement, and this is very bitter and difficult for American officials to accept.”

Despite the all-out U.S. effort to raise the alarm on Iran, probably as a diversionary tactic, it is unlikely that Washington’s herculean exertions will succeed. The outcry of ordinary working people making the one per cent super-rich in their countries accountable for their misdeeds is striking an emotional chord, and appears simply too powerful to be sidelined by what looks like a fabricated international crisis. Some analysts are of the view that Washington’s seeming attempts to channel its standoff with Iran towards a conflict are likely to revive the anti-war movement in the West, which could be fused with the escalating street protests in North America and Europe. “We are fully aware that the concocted terror plot is similar to the Gulf of Tonkin incident which preceded the Vietnam War,” says Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, who teaches at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and is an activist with Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), an anti-war group.

Over the next few weeks and months, grass-roots groups agitating for peace, democracy and economic justice would be faced with the challenge of forcing the U.S. and Iran to open channels of dialogue so that the movement for fundamental change, which started from Cairo’s Tahrir Square and is resonating powerfully throughout the world, is not sidetracked by the rich and powerful before it fulfils its lofty but achievable goals.

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The Istanbul Conference: Helping the Devil Get His Way In Central and South Asia

The Istanbul conference: Washington’s vision for the region

By Shahbaz Rana

ISLAMABAD: As key world and regional players gear up to meet in Istanbul to push forward a Washington-backed regional integration plan for an ‘economically stable Afghanistan’, Pakistan stands at a crossroads. The question Islamabad is grappling with is whether it’s time to become a partner, or whether it should maintain its historical position – keep India away from resource-rich Central Asia.

As part of a broader economic integration strategy, Washington is selling the “New Silk Roads” concept- a network of roads and rails to connect Far East Asia and South Asia with Central Asia and then the West.

Leaders from 12 nations are to meet in Istanbul on November 2 with the stated objective of persuading regional players to commit to a stable and independent Afghanistan and to discuss regional economic cooperation. Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, USA and United Kingdom are to attend.

Political pundits have termed the Istanbul Conference a prelude to the Bonn Conference, where delegations from 90 countries are expected to formulate a practical roadmap for 2014 – the year the US has said it will withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

Defence, economic and geostrategic experts say the broader objective of the strategy is to consolidate gains made in Afghanistan and strengthen the US grip on Central Asian resources to be used either by Americans or preferred partners like India. One of the objectives is to create hurdles in energy-hungry China’s bid to get unrestricted access to Central Asian resources, they add. Pakistan is now left with the choice of either aligning themselves more closely with China, or preferring to work with the New Silk Roads as the dichotomy grows stronger.

According to the United States Institute of Peace,  a Congress-funded think tank, there are hopes that the New Silk Roads concept of an integrated trade and transportation network through Afghanistan can bring regional players and interlocutors together and attract new sources of investment.

Long time coming

A senior government functionary said that the US has been working on the proposal for a longer time. He said that the reorganisation of the US State Department in 2004 when it merged its Central Asia and South Asia desks was an important step towards this direction.  Robin Raphael, former US ambassador to Pakistan on civilian assistance, has been assigned the New Silk Roads project.

Pakistan’s options

“Americans want to consolidate gains in Afghanistan whether Pakistan readily becomes partner to the new concept or not,” said Tanvir Ahmed Khan, former secretary of foreign affairs. On the other hand, Washington will be displeased if Pakistan refuses to give India access to Afghanistan, fearing the possibility of an alternative India-Iran nexus, envisaged by New Delhi as the “North silk route”.  Khan maintains that it would be in Pakistan’s interest to become partner in any regional arrangement, better sooner than later.

A senior official of the foreign office, however, took a cautious line on whether Islamabad would support the initiative. Without commenting on the New Silk Roads, the official said: “Regional connectivity is a centuries-old concept and Pakistan would appreciate any effort towards that objective”.

Another official said that Pakistan wanted a greater role in economic development of Afghanistan, and did not want caught in the uncomfortable position of being isolated while sandwiched between India and Afghanistan.

But for the US, he added, the New Silk Roads is an integral part of a three-pronged strategy designed to exit and integrate post-US Afghanistan with the rest of the region. Keeping this in mind, Pakistan will have to mend its ways and make up its mind in the next two years, he said.

Former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi also spoke on the matter hesitantly, saying “Pakistan will have to see both the advantages and disadvantages of becoming a partner in the New Silk Roads concept,” he added.

Pros and cons

The obvious advantage is that regional economic integration would bring economic benefits – but then, there’s the issue of Indian involvement and New Delhi’s subsequent access to Central Asia, he added. Qureshi said that the Afghanistan Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement was signed on the condition of excluding India from the treaty.  However, Tanvir Khan said Pakistan will ultimately have to give India access. He was of the view that eventually, even China will have to be taken on board.

Published in The Express Tribune

Bombings force Pakistani children into work

  [Brave little lad.] 

Agence France-Presse

PESHAWAR: At seven years old, it’s a struggle for Zabita Khan to work all afternoon, dodging vehicles, rickshaws and donkey carts to carry drinks for thirsty customers in a hot, crowded Pakistani market.

But two years ago his father was killed in a bomb attack and he has to work to put food on the table for his family.

So after school, he spends sizzling afternoons catering to shopkeepers and their guests for Rs300 ($3.50) a month in Peshawar city, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

“I don’t like working in the market. I like school, where I study and play hide and seek with friends,” said a downcast Zabita, working the same street where his father was killed on Oct.28, 2009.

“I don’t have friends over here. I come here because my mother sends me and tells me I have to work for my family, for my siblings,” said Khan, who has two younger brothers -Sajjad, 5, and Arif, 3.

His father Khairullah was killed in one of Pakistan’s deadliest attacks -125 people slaughtered when a car bomb tore through the packed Meena Bazaar while US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was holdings talks in Islamabad.

There was no claim of responsibility but officials blamed the Taliban.

Thousands more have been wounded or incapacitated, living with injuries slow to heal or that make an ordinary working life impossible.

But a hidden tragedy is the children -indirect victims of terror attacks -who are forced to join already swollen ranks of child labour to help keep their families alive after the loss of a parent.

“We closed the shop for two months after the death of Zabita’s father Khairullah. When we reopened, his mother sent him to the shop to work on behalf of his family,” Zabita’s uncle, Mohammed Umer told AFP.

“It is our tradition that the eldest son becomes the head and breadwinner of the family after the father’s death and Khan is playing that role because his mother wants him to work to avoid bad feeling in the family,” said Umer.

Zarina Jillani, research manager at the Pakistani branch of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, estimates there are 10 million children working in Pakistan, out of a child population of 80 million.

Huge swathes of Pakistan are beset by desperate poverty. According to the last government survey in 1996, 3.3 million children were working.

Government statistics estimate the literacy rate at 58 per cent and say 22 per cent of the population live in poverty, although independent economists say the figure is closer to 30 per cent.

“No organisation has calculated statistics about children getting involved in work after breadwinners die in bomb attacks but we believe these attacks have enhanced the number of child labourers in the country,” said Jillani.

In Tangi, a town some 125 kilometres from the capital Islamabad, in the heart of the northwestern region troubled by a Taliban insurgency, 11-year-old Wajiha is the only girl driving a motorcycle rickshaw.

Her father Inamuddin used to be a proud member of the paramilitary but in July 2006 he was badly injured in a Taliban attack on his paramilitary check post in the northwestern valley of Swat.

After two years in hospital, he was discharged from service with a withered leg and bought a rickshaw for Rs40,000 ($465) with his pension.

At first he worked alone, and sometimes Wajiha would sit up front with him for fun. But when she realised how painful he found his wounded leg, she took on solo shifts to earn more money.

Now she goes to school in the morning and helps her father in the afternoon, when he gets tired.

“I don’t like my daughter going out to work, but I am helpless,” said Inamuddin. Wajiha said she likes to help.

“I feel good to help my father, I also enjoy the drive, it is easy to drive motorcycle rickshaw and earn some money for the family,” she said.

“I make Rs150 ($1.70) from three trips a day,” she said as she parked the rickshaw and ran into her home.

No talks unless US changes dual-faced policy, says Taliban

By Naveed Hussain

A file photograph showing Afghan Taliban in the central province of Oruzgan as they prepare to patrol the area on 12 April 2004 in the capital Tarin Kowt. PHOTO: EPA

KARACHI
A day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially advocated in front of a congressional committee talks with the Quetta Shura and its leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, a Taliban spokesperson said unequivocally that peace dialogue cannot be held unless the US abandons its “dual-faced policies” on Afghanistan.

“On the one hand, it talks about pursuing peace dialogue but on the other it’s seeking to establish permanent military bases in Afghanistan,” Zabiullah Mujahid told The Express Tribune in a telephone interview from somewhere in Afghanistan on Friday.

“The US is seeking Pakistan’s help to negotiate with us, but, at the same time, it’s pressuring Islamabad to fight (the Haqqani network in North Waziristan),” Mujahid said. “Unless the US shows its commitment to peace talks, dialogue is not possible,” he said.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said, however, that the US does not seek any permanent military bases in Afghanistan or a presence that would be a threat to any of Afghanistan’s neighbours.

On Thursday, Secretary Clinton told the House Committee on Foreign Relations that any Afghan-led peace process would have to include the Quetta Shura and its leader Mullah Omar. During her recent trip to Pakistan, she had also requested Pakistan for help to negotiate with all Taliban factions, including the Haqqani network.

“There is no solution in the region without Pakistan and no stable future without a partnership,” Secretary Clinton told the panel. But the Taliban spokesperson cited contradictions in the US policy about Pakistan. “The irony is that while the United States acknowledges Pakistan’s contributions (in the fight against militancy) it also criticises it (for being hand in glove with the militants).”

Asked if the Taliban can show some flexibility for the greater good of their war-ravaged country, Mujahid said, “Ours is a just struggle. We didn’t invade America. It’s the United States which waged a war in Afghanistan. We demand freedom… We’re not calling for something illegal.”

Earlier this week, the Hizb-e-Islami, led by former warlord Gulbudin Hekmatyar, showed its willingness for peace talks with the United States. “We are willing to have a direct or indirect political dialogue with Washington,” Dr Ghairat Baheer, a Hizb-e-Islami leader, told The Express Tribune in an interview.

Asked about this, Zabiullah Mujahid said he cannot comment on this because Hizb-e-Islami is a separate organisation. The Haqqani network has already turned down an “individual” rapprochement offer from Washington, saying that it should instead engage the Taliban Shura in dialogue because the Haqqanis are a part of the Taliban movement led by Mullah Omar.

Kabul plans to convene a loya jirga (grand assembly) next month before it can approve a strategic partnership agreement between Afghanistan and the United States.

Asked about this, the Taliban referred to a statement on Wednesday. “The Kabul administration wants to abuse a much respected custom of our country … to prolong the 10-year catastrophe (that has) befallen our country, to deceive the nation and to further expose their own crimes,” said the statement emailed to The Express Tribune on Wednesday.

The statement urged its fighters “to target every security guard, person with intention, participant and every caller of this convention in all corners of the country, so as to not let the invaders perpetually occupy our beloved country.”

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, when asked, referred to Thursday’s testimony by Secretary Clinton and her own Sept. 8 statement where she said that the Strategic Partnership agreement is intended to provide a transparent political framework for long-term cooperation between the US and Afghanistan.  “The United States does not seek any permanent American military bases in Afghanistan,” she said. (With additional reporting by Huma Imtiaz in Washington)

Published in The Express Tribune

Kabul Car Bomb on NATO Convoy–10-29-11

A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives-laden vehicle as foreign troops passed by on Saturday morning in Kabul, killing three civilians and a policeman, local officials said.The incident took place at 11.30 am local time in the Dar-ul-Aman area in the west of the city, officials said.Afghan security forces have cordoned off the area.A witness said that he saw the body of a man with the wreckage of his motorbike. Two vehicles also caught fire, he added.The Nato-led military coalition said it was aware of the incident but refused to comment.Helicopters belonging to foreign forces also landed in the area. No group including the Taliban has as yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

Kabul Car Bomb on NATO Convoy–10-29-11, posted with vodpod

Lashkar e-Jhangvi–Pakistan’s Ku Klux Klan

[Monsters in human form.]

In Pakistan, a militant deal sours

AP

- AP Photo

ISLAM NAGAR: The deal saw one of Pakistan’s most feared militants walk from jail apparently in exchange for his commitment to nonviolence, help in reining in other fighters and possibly delivering the votes of his followers.

Supporters showered Malik Ishaq with rose petals when he left the prison in the eastern city of Lahore in July.

Days later, he was preaching murderous hatred toward minority Shias to a cheering crowd, energising a network whose members have joined al-Qaeda for terror strikes.

That was too much for Pakistani authorities, who arrested him again last month.

Pakistan has a well-documented history of trying to co-opt or strike deals with militants of various causes, and a close examination of the Ishaq case shows how that can play out.

It’s a cautionary tale, perhaps, for US officials who are urging Pakistan to bring to the negotiating table Afghan militants who allegedly enjoy safe havens in the country’s lawless border regions.

Fifteen years ago, Ishaq founded Laskhar-i-Jangvi, or LJ, which allies itself with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The LJ is blamed for scores of attacks on Shias and on Pakistani and US interests.

Ishaq was arrested in 1997 and accused in more than 200 criminal cases including the killings of 70 Shias.

But the state could never make the charges stick — in large part because witnesses, judges and prosecutors were too scared to convict.

Frightened judges treated him honourably in court and gave him tea and cookies, according to Anis Haider Naqvi, a prosecution witness in two cases against Ishaq.

One judge attempted to hide his face with his hands, but Ishaq made clear he knew his identity in a chilling way: He read out the names of his children, and the judge abandoned the trial, he said.

Despite the lack of convictions, Ishaq remained in prison for 14 years as prosecutors slowly moved from one case to the next.

Ishaq proved his usefulness in 2009, when he was flown from jail to negotiate with militants who had stormed part of the military headquarters in Rawalpindi and were holding hostages there, said Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi, who used to advise the Punjab provincial government on religious matters.

A behind-the-scenes effort by the government to co-opt the leaders of militant outfits and bring them into mainstream political life, or at least draw them away from attacking the state, helped Ishaq secure his July 15 release, according to Ashrafi.

”I met Ishaq several times in prison,” Ashrafi said, emphasising that Ishaq assured him that he wanted to contribute to peace. ”If someone wants to get back to normal life, yes, why not, we do help him,” said Ashrafi. ”These are our own men.” He said he was disappointed to see him back in jail.

Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah Khan denied there was any deal behind Ishaq’s release, but said extremist leaders were free to join politics if they eschewed violence.

”We are in touch with those who have become, or want to become, useful citizens,” he said.

The Punjab is the key battleground between the ruling party of President Asif Ali Zardari and the party of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, currently in power in that province.

Maulana Ahmad Ludhianvi, the head of Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, or SSP, LJ’s parent sectarian group, told a rally last year that Nawaz’s brother, Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, had promised that Ishaq’s release ”would be settled in meetings” with him.

”After that meeting, the time is not far when the prison door would break open and Malik Ishaq would be released,” he said.

LJ and other militant groups can muster significant support in Punjab and parts of Sindh province through their schools and mosques, making them an important political force.

Mainstream politicians have shown no hesitation in courting them despite their links to violence.

Local SSP leader Mohammad Tayyab said a recent SSP-backed candidate for a regional assembly seat in southern Punjab got 17,000 votes.

”That is what Zardari’s party and Sharif’s know very well,” he said.

Khaled Ahmad, an expert on Pakistani militant groups in Punjab, said there is ”no doubt” that the SSP and Sharif’s party would cut deals as they have done in the past.

”It is dangerous now because the group and its offshoots are in alliance with al-Qaeda.”

Government intelligence reports obtained by The Associated Press show Ishaq made threats in his public appearances after his release from prison.

He urged his supporters not to be afraid of Pakistani laws or prisons.

”We know how to kill and how to die,” he told a gathering near Rahim Yar Khan on September, 4 according to one report.

Ishaq’s aides denied he made such remarks.

The government suspected Ishaq of coordinating meetings in recent months of 50 or so alleged terrorists, said Khan, the law minister.

Some of the men Ishaq visited directly after his release had allegedly been involved in terrorism and were being watched by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, said the government reports.

LJ’s stronghold is south and central Punjab, a neglected, blisteringly hot part of the country that has long been the recruiting ground for militant groups.

Wealthy families, disproportionately Shia, own large swaths of land where tenant farmers grow cotton, sugarcane and wheat and work at mango orchids.

Visitors to Ishaq’s house in Islam Nagar in the southern Punjabi city of Rahim Yar Khan are greeted by an SSP member with an automatic rifle, against a backdrop of flags and banners glorifying the group.

“My father’s mission is a true one,” said his son, Malik Usman. “We will seek our reward from Allah.”

Alleged “Wahhabists” Fire-On U.S. embassy in Sarajevo–One was wearing suicide vest.

Shooting at the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo (Wahha…, posted with vodpod

[At 21 seconds the gunman is shot by a sniper.]

Wahhabis attacked in Sarajevo: One was a dangerous explosives

Dalje.com

Although it appeared the information that the man who was shot at 15:45 of the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo killed, it has not yet been officially confirmed.

How to transfer Bosnian media, a man dressed in camouflage uniform, the building was fired from Kalashnikov with a tram stop, and then fled, but in the end he shot in his right thigh by a sniper shot. According to some reports, it was only slightly injured and taken to a hospital.

This is a 23-year Mevlida Jašarević from Novi Pazar in Serbia a year ago was detained because of suspicious behavior during the arrival of foreign ambassadors in Sarajevo.

Police sources say the Jašarević a total of three attackers, and the other two are under control.

“Revenge of the Americans for crimes against Muslims in Afghanistan and Palestine”

In the shootout and two policemen were injured, while civil servants and diplomats remained unharmed. Both officers got out of life danger.

On the ground was sent to several police patrols, including special forces.Marindvor village, where the embassy is located, blocked, and the villagers started a panic.

The police investigation lasted for hours, but already from the behavior of the attacker to conclude the reason for the attack. In fact, before he was overwhelmed Jašarević to shout “Allah Akbar” (God is great), shouting that this was revenge Americans for crimes against Muslims in Afghanistan and Palestine.

The whole incident could have had much more serious consequences, because the embassy building in downtown Sarajevo, close to several colleges, schools and malls. At a time when Jašarević started shooting for the U.S. Embassy in the vicinity was at least twenty people.

One of the witnesses, Smail Zilic, at the time of the attack emerged from a nearby shopping center, which is only thirty feet from the attacker.

Kosice: This is an attack on the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina

- It’s like in American movies. Passers-by have fled. I was very close to him, I hid behind the car and begged God to not only turn to me and a girl who found her way here. It is within five minutes at least three shots fired towards the embassy. Then he ran the streets and fired another burst.Struck two officers from the insurance, and then settled down and shouted that does not want to kill fellow Muslims, but Americans. He stopped shooting and calmly šetkao the street, a few passers-by begged him to allow them to extract the wounded policemen, they finally allowed, reiterating that he does not want to shoot at fellow Muslims – visibly excited told us Zilic.

Police quickly cordoned off the wider area around the American Embassy, ​​and the attacker after being injured was taken to the hospital. According to unofficial information, the police in Sarajevo arrested several members of the movement, probably because of suspected ties to Jasarevic. The building of the U.S. Embassy was surrounded by high walls and realistically there was little possibility that the attacker hit anyone in the diplomatic complex.

Unofficial information says that Jašarević member of the radical Islamic movement vehabita, and that from Serbia often visited the place Maoca near Brcko, which is valid for the center of the Wahhabi community in BiH.

Bosnian officials have condemned the incident, and the BiH Presidency Chairman Zeljko Komsic said: “This is an attack on the state of BiH.”

 

Colombian president calls for legalisation of marijuana

Juan Manuel Santos, the Colombian president, has called for the global legalisation of marijuana to help combat the trafficking of harder drugs and related violence.

When asked if making marijuana legal could offer a way forward, President Juan Manuel Santos said it could and that he would support it  Photo: EPA/Felipe Ariza

By Robin Yapp, Sao Paulo

Mr Santos added his voice to a growing list of influential figures in Latin America demanding a rethink of the policies that have been used for decades to fight the drugs trade.

He said legalising softer drugs such as marijuana worldwide could help improve international efforts to deal with harder drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

“The world needs to discuss new approaches … we are basically still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the last 40 years,” he said.

Asked if making marijuana legal could offer a way forward, Mr Santos said it could and that he would support it “provided everyone does it at the same time”. But he emphasised that other countries needed to take the lead, saying the issue was “a matter of national security” for Colombia, whereas “in other countries this is mainly a health and crime issue”.

“Drug trafficking is what finances the violence and the irregular groups in our country. I would be crucified if I took the first step,” he said in an interview with Metro, the global free daily newspaper chain.

His comments are the latest sign that Latin American nations scarred by violence associated with the trafficking of drugs to the US and Europe want to pressure global leaders to tackle the issue afresh.

Last month Felipe Calderón, the Mexican president, used a speech in New York to warn the US that as the world’s “largest consumer of drugs” it may have to consider legalisation “to reduce the astronomical earnings of criminal organisations”.

In June a report by politicians and former world leaders said that the global war on drugs has fuelled organised crime and recommended an end to the criminalisation of drug users and the legalisation of some banned substances.

Ernesto Zedillo, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Cesar Gaviria, former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia respectively, were among the 19-member commission that drew up the report.

Hazardous Hydrofracking In America

By Stephen Lendman

Hydraulic fracking involves using pressurized fluids to fracture rock layers to release oil, gas, coal seam gas, or other substances.

 

Earthworks says the process provides easier access to deposits and lets oil or gas “travel more easily from the rock pores,” where it’s trapped, “to the production well.”

 

Fractures are created by pumping mixtures of water, proppants (sand or ceramic beads) and chemicals into rock or coal formations.

 

“Acidizing involves pumping acid (usually hydrochloric acid) into the formation.” It dissolves rock so pores open for easier flows. Fracking and acidizing are often done together. Studies show from 20 – 40% of fracking fluids remain underground.

 

Fracking fluids contain hazardous toxic chemicals, known to cause cancer and other diseases. They include diesel fuel, containing benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene and other chemicals.

 

They also include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, methanol, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol, glycol ethers, hydrochloric acid, and sodium hydroxide.

 

Small amounts of benzene alone can contaminate millions of gallons of groundwater used for human consumption. According to the EPA, 10 of 11 US coalbed methane (CBM) basins are located at least partially in areas of underground sources of drinking water (USDW).

 

EPA also determined that nine or more harmful to human health fracking chemicals are used in normal operations. “These chemicals may be injected (in) concentrations anywhere from 4 to almost 13,000 times” above acceptable amounts.

 

According to hydrodynamics expert John Bredehoeft:

 

“At greatest risk of contamination are the coalbed aquifers currently used as sources of drinking water.”

 

“(C)ontamination associated with hydrofracturing (can) threaten the usefulness of aquifers for future use.”

 

At issue also is obtaining information on specific fracking chemicals used. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), oil and gas companies won’t release what they call “proprietary information.”

 

Current regulations exempt oil and gas drilling from major environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, and Clean Water Act.

 

On March 3, 2011, New York Times writer Ian Urbina headlined, “Pressure Limits Effort to Police Drilling for Gas,”saying:

 

In 1987, congressional lawmakers weren’t told about hazardous wastes from oil and gas drilling in an EPA report. Author Carla Greathouse discussed them, but they were excluded.

 

“It was like science didn’t matter,” she said. “The industry was going to get what it wanted, and we were not supposed to stand in the way.”

 

Her experience wasn’t isolated. “More than a quarter-century of efforts by some lawmakers and regulators to force the federal government to police the industry better have been thwarted, as EPA studies have been repeatedly narrowed in scope and important findings have been removed.”

 

Pressure is applied to cut red tape to help energy companies reduce dependency on foreign imports. Natural gas drilling companies are exempted from at least parts of seven sweeping environmental laws, regulating clean air and water.

 

In 2004, EPA studied hydrofracking, discovering hazardous contamination of one or more acquifers. However, a sanitized report said the process “poses little or not threat to drinking water.”

 

Afterwards, “EPA whisleblower (Weston Wilson) said the agency had been strongly influenced by industry and political pressure.”

 

“It was shameful,” he said, explaining that “five of the seven members of the study’s peer review panel were current or former employees of the oil and gas industry.”

 

Yet the study became “the basis for this industry getting yet another exemption from federal law when it should have resulted in greater regulation….”

 

In 2010, the EPA began studying hydrofracking’s environmental impact. However, responding to industry pressure, its scope is limited and final results won’t be published until 2014.

 

Initial plans called for considering toxic fume dangers released during drilling, the impact of drilling waste on food and water, and risks of radioactive waste.

 

Yet final study plans removed them. Earlier ones also called for studying landfill runoff contamination risks where drilling waste is dumped. This was also excluded despite EPA officials acknowledging that sewage treatment plants can’t properly treat drilling waste before it’s discharged in waterways near or supplying drinking water.

 

Moreover, regional studies underway or planned will be cancelled, further narrowing the possibility of full and accurate reports of hydrofracking’s harm to human health.

 

EPA scientists said high-level administration pressure thwarted efforts to institute more rigorous enforcement even though some in Congress want it. Recipients of industry campaign contributions (bribes), of course, strongly oppose any regulations.

 

The Times quoted White House energy and climate director Carol Browner as 1997 Clinton administration EPA head telling 60 Minutes:

 

“Whatever comes out of the ground, you don’t have to test it. You don’t have to understand what’s in it. You can dump it anywhere.”

 

Discussing oil and gas industry toxic waste exemptions, she added that “Congress should revisit this loophole.” At the same time, her history shows strong industry support. For example, in 1995, she helped ensure hydrofracking was excluded from parts of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

 

Today, widespread natural gas drilling “is forcing the EPA to wrestle with questions of jurisdiction over individual states and how to police the industry despite extensive exemptions from federal law.”

 

Contamination is a serious problem. “The stakes are particularly high in Pennsylvania, where gas drilling is expanding quickly, and where EPA officials say drilling waste is being discharged with inadequate treatment into rivers” providing drinking water for 16 million people.

 

At issue, of course, is why is this allowed to go on when human health risks are so high. Moreover, federal laws are ignored. For example, ones affecting sewage treatment plants say operators have to know what’s in waste they’re receiving and must assure it’s safe before discharging it in waterways.

 

However, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, EPA lawyers say rules are broken. One unnamed official said:

 

“Treatment plants are not allowed under federal law to process mystery liquids, regardless of what the state tells them. Mystery liquids are exactly what this drilling waste is, since their ingredient toxins aren’t known.”

 

“The bottom line is that under the Clean Water Act, dilution is not the solution to pollution. Sewage treatment plants are legally obligated to treat, not dilute, the waste.”

 

Yet plants “are breaking the law. Everyone is looking the other way,” so people in Pennsylvania and elsewhere are ingesting hazardous toxins authorities aren’t preventing from ending up in drinking water.

 

Moreover, when federal regulations are lax, enforcement is left up to states that fall short by bowing to industry pressure.

 

According to Earthworks, it’s “unconscionable that EPA is allowing (hazardous) substances” to contaminate drinking water across America. It’s as bad that too few people understand the risk and aren’t raising hell to stop it.

 

Against them are powerful industry giants muscling through Congress and regulatory agencies like EPA whatever they wish. They’re doing it for planned Marcellus Shale development. It extends over eastern US states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia and others.

 

They want no hydrofracking restrictions impeding gas drilling, no matter the cost to human health. Extracting it from shale deposits holds potential to give America the world’s largest supply. It’s believed Marcellus Shale alone has enough gas to sustain US needs for 14 or more years, maybe longer depending on how much is found.

 

Moreover, Utica Shale Appalachian Basin deposits are believed to be larger. Obama’s “energy independence” goal and subservience to industry wishes drive Washington’s cooperation. With significant revenue potential, local officials do the same.

 

As a result, regulatory restraints are abandoned despite known fracking hazards, including reckless use of toxic chemicals and their disposal.

 

In a race to capitalize on industry potential, states are brazenly supporting energy company interests at the expense of their residents. Pennsylvania, in fact, became hydrofracking’s wild west. New wells under development doubled from 2009 to 2010 at the cost of contaminated drinking water increasing at an alarming rate.

 

Hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic waste fluids are dumped into rivers and streams annually. No regulations prohibit it. Wastewater treatment plants can’t flush out toxins let alone dangerous radioactive materials contaminating areas forever.

 

In addition, recycling methods don’t work because with each use, waste fluids become more contaminated, compounding the problem of ultimate disposal.

 

Moreover, the longer unsustainable practices continue, the harder it will be to find workable solutions. Planned Marcellus Shale development alone calls for at least 50,000 new wells in the next two decades, up from 6,400 permitted now.

 

At this pace, contaminated drinking water will cause epidemic illness levels affecting tens of millions of people across vast areas where hydrofracking occurs. Corrupted politicians in bed with oil and gas interests allow it, abandoning public safety.

 

For example, C. Alan Walker heads Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED), given regulatory-free authority to expedite job creation. His mandate says by any means, including by hazardous hydrofracking drilling.

 

Similar measures are freeing gas drillers throughout the region and elsewhere. Nationwide, business, not public needs, are served. In potentially rich energy areas, caution and environmental laws are trashed to give drillers free reign.

 

Energy giants only want profits. Bought off politicians cooperate. Public health and environmental concerns are abandoned. Vast parts of America now are contaminated.

 

Imagine how much worse they’ll be as hydrofracking drills thousands more wells.

 

Today’s nightmare may be expanded beyond remediation, at least in our lifetimes unless public rage stops it. Corrupt politicians won’t do it.

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

 

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

 

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.