Daily Archives: January 31, 2009
Raids into Pakistan: What U.S. authority?
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The strangest thing just happened, while I was attempting to access this article by googling it, every reference to it was blocked with “may harm computer” warning. After I managed to access the article through the “Hidden Access” site, the block and the warning were removed by someone. Google? Military? CIA?
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Raids into Pakistan: What U.S.
authority?
Bush’s orders to send special forces after Taliban militants have roots in previous presidencies.
By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the September 15, 2008 edition
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WASHINGTON – Orders President Bush signed in July authorizing raids by special operations forces in the areas of Pakistan controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda and undertaking those raids without official Pakistani consent, have roots stretching back to the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
In an address to a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush said, “From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
But even before that declaration, two key steps had been taken: One, Congress had authorized the use of US military force against terrorist organizations and the countries that harbor or support them. Two, Bush administration officials had warned Pakistan’s leaders of the dire consequences their country would face if they did not unequivocally enlist in the fight against radical Islamist terrorism.
What Mr. Bush’s July orders signify is that, after seven years of encouraging Pakistan to take on extremists harbored in remote areas along its border with Afghanistan and subsidizing the Pakistani military handsomely to do it, the US has become convinced that Pakistan is neither able nor willing to fight the entrenched Taliban and Al Qaeda elements. Indeed, recent events appear to have convinced at least some in the administration that parts of Pakistan’s military and powerful intelligence service are actually aiding the extremists.
“We’ve moved beyond the message stage here. I think the US has had it with messages that don’t get any action, and that is why the president authorized this,” says Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis for Stratfor, an intelligence consulting firm in Washington. “This says loud and clear, ‘We’re fed up.’ ”
Even before the July order, the US had undertaken covert operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Moreover, the CIA over the past year has stepped up missile attacks by the unmanned Predator drones it operates to hit targets in the region. That increase has coincided with a deterioration of the war in Afghanistan, where the Afghan Army and NATO forces have come under increasing attack from militants crossing over the rugged and lawless border from Pakistan.
But Bush’s orders, first reported in The New York Times Thursday, mean that operations against insurgent sanctuaries will become overt and probably more frequent. A Sept. 3 ground assault involving US commandos dropped from helicopters targeted a suspected terrorist compound. Missile attacks by the CIA’s unmanned drones, including one Friday reported by Pakistani officials to have killed at last 12 people, are also on the rise.
Precedence for the orders authorizing the attacks on terrorist havens can be found in President Bill Clinton’s authorization of retaliatory attacks in 1993 (against Iraqi intelligence facilities) and in 1998 (against terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Sudan), and in President Ronald Reagan’s bombing of Libya, legal scholars say.
The administration has debated the use of commando raids in Pakistan for years, but the tipping point came in July, as relations with Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders deteriorated, intelligence sources say. The “kicker,” according to one source who requested anonymity over the sensitivity of the issue, was two July events: the bombing of India’s embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, an act that US intelligence officials concluded was aided by Pakistani intelligence operatives; and a July 13 attack on a US military outpost in eastern Afghanistan that killed nine US soldiers. The outpost attack was carried out by Taliban militants who had crossed over the nearby border from Pakistan.
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The evolution of operations in Pakistan from covert to overt actions is reminiscent of a trajectory followed in some aspects by the Vietnam War, some analysts note.
Patrick Lang, a former Middle East analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, says the evolution in Pakistan is similar to what occurred in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, when US operations against Vietcong sanctuaries there were initially covered up.
“We initially crossed into Cambodia as covert forces, but that changed,” says Mr. Lang, who was part of special forces that carried out the Cambodia operations. By 1970, cross-border operations against enemy sanctuaries were being carried out in the open. Looking at the evolution in operations in Pakistan, the national security analyst says, “We are letting [Pakistanis] know this could evolve into bigger things.”
Adds the intelligence source who requested anonymity, “The message is to the new civilian leadership and the military, ‘We have bought all these toys for you – if you don’t use them and do things in these areas that are causing us problems, we’ll do them for you.’ ”
The new orders reflect flagging confidence in Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership to address the problem of the Taliban and terrorist havens, which are thought to harbor Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. For seven years the Bush administration focused its Pakistan policy on President Pervez Musharraf and his assurances that he was battling the militant sanctuaries. But Mr. Musharraf was forced to resign last month after suffering a crushing electoral defeat earlier in the year, and the US appears to have little confidence in the new civilian and military leaders.
“Musharraf was a one-stop shopping center for US relations with Pakistan, but that no longer exists,” says Stratfor’s Mr. Bokhari. Senior State Department officials have met with Pakistan’s new civilian leaders, he notes, while top Pentagon officials have met with the military leadership including Army chief of staff Gen. Ashraf Parvez Kayani, the top military commander.
“The sense I get is they were given the runaround, and they came away from all these meetings convinced the leadership structure has become much more complex at a time when the Taliban are becoming stronger and the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating,” Bokhari says. “The feeling was the US couldn’t sit by and see how the leadership sorts itself out.”
Bush’s orders authorizing cross-border incursions into Pakistan mean in a sense that the rules governing US special operations have shifted from yellow to green. The military will no longer need a presidential “finding” for each operation – and that, military analysts say, means the handling of forays into Pakistan will fall increasingly into military rather than CIA hands.
That has some intelligence officials worried that the consequences of stepped-up US operations in Pakistan – in terms of Pakistani public opinion and the stability of the government – will get short shrift. According to intelligence sources, officials from the National Intelligence Council recently briefed the Bush administration’s national security team on the potentially dire consequences of US actions that could destabilize the government of a country with nuclear weapons.
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July 12, 2008, The Day America Turned Against Its Most Faithful Ally
US told not to back terrorism against Pakistan 
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
By Kamran Khan
KARACHI: Pakistan has complained to the United States military leadership and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that Washington’s policy towards terrorism in Pakistan was inconsistent with America’s declared commitment to the war against terror.
Impeccable official sources have said that strong evidence and circumstantial evidence of American acquiescence to terrorism inside Pakistan was outlined by President Pervez Musharraf, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and Director General Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj in their separate meetings with US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen and CIA Deputy Director Stephen R Kappes on July 12 in Rawalpindi.
The visit by the senior US military official along with the CIA deputy director — carrying what were seen as India-influenced intelligence inputs — hardened the resolve of Pakistanís security establishment to keep supreme Pakistan’s national security interest even if it meant straining ties with the US and Nato.
A senior official with direct knowledge of these meetings said that Pakistan’s military leadership and the president asked the American visitors “not to distinguish between a terrorist for the United States and Afghanistan and a terrorist for Pakistan”.
For reasons best known to Langley, the CIA headquarters, as well as the Pentagon, Pakistani officials say the Americans were not interested in disrupting the Kabul-based fountainhead of terrorism in Balochistan nor do they want to allocate the marvellous predator resource to neutralise the kingpin of suicide bombings against the Pakistani military establishment now hiding near the Pak-Afghan border.
In the strongest evidence-based confrontation with the American security establishment since the two countries established their post-9/11 strategic alliance, Pakistani officials proved Brahamdagh Bugti’s presence in Afghan intelligence safe houses in Kabul, his photographed visits to New Delhi and his orders for terrorism in Balochistan.
The top US military commander and the CIA official were also asked why the CIA-run predator and the US military did not swing into action when they were provided the exact location of Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan’s enemy number one and the mastermind of almost every suicide operation against the Pakistan Army and the ISI since June 2006.
One such precise piece of information was made available to the CIA on May 24 when Baitullah Mehsud drove to a remote South Waziristan mountain post in his Toyota Land Cruiser to address the press and returned back to his safe abode. The United States military has the capacity to direct a missile to a precise location at very short notice as it has done close to 20 times in the last few years to hit al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan.
Pakistani official have long been intrigued by the presence of highly encrypted communications gear with Baitullah Mehsud. This communication gear enables him to collect real-time information on Pakistani troop movement from an unidentified foreign source without being intercepted by Pakistani intelligence.
Admiral Mullen and the CIA official were in Pakistan on an unannounced visit on July 12 to show what the US media claimed was evidence of the ISI’s ties to†Taliban commander Maulana Sirajuddin Haqqani and the alleged involvement of Pakistani agents in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.
Pakistani military leaders rubbished the American information and evidence on the Kabul bombing but provided some rationale for keeping a window open with Haqqani, just as the British government had decided to open talks with some Taliban leaders in southern Afghanistan last year.
Before opening new channels of communication with the Taliban in Helmand province in March this year, the British and Nato forces were talking to leading Taliban leaders through†Michael Semple, the acting head of the European Union mission to Afghanistan, and Mervyn Patterson, a senior UN official, before their unprecedented expulsion from Afghanistan by the Karzai government†in January this year.
The American visitors were also told that the government of Pakistan had to seek the help of Taliban commanders such as Sirajuddin Haqqani for the release of its kidnapped ambassador Tariquddin Aziz, after the US-backed Karzai administration failed to secure Aziz’s release from his captors in Afghanistan.
Admiral Mullen and Kappes were both provided information about the activities of the Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad and were asked how the CIA does not know that both Indian consulates are manned by Indian Intelligence who plot against Pakistan round the clock.
“ We wanted to know when our American friends would get interested in tracking down the terrorists responsible for hundreds of suicide bombings in Pakistan and those playing havoc with our natural resources in Balochistan while sitting in Kabul and Delhi,”, an official described the Pakistani mood during the July 12 meetings.
Throughout their meetings, the Americans were told that Pakistan would like to continue as an active partner in the war against terror and at no cost would it allow its land to be used by our people to plot terror against Afghanistan or India . However, Pakistan would naturally want the United States, India and Afghanistan to refrain from supporting Pakistani terrorists.
Pakistani officials have said that the current “trust deficit” between the Pakistani and US security establishment is not serious enough to lead to a collapse , but the element of suspicion is very high, more so because of† the CIA’s decision to publicise the confidential exchange of information with Pakistan and to use its leverage with the new government to try to arm-twist the Army and the ISI.
The Pakistani security establishment, officials said, want a fresh round of strategic dialogue with their counterparts in the US, essentially to prioritise the objectives and terrorist targets in the war against terror, keeping in mind the serious national security interests of the allies.
Pakistan envoy suggests India faked Mumbai transcripts
Pakistan envoy suggests India faked Mumbai transcripts
“They categorically informed me that [the] UK was not involved. Pak [Pakistan] was not involved. Its territories were not used for planning this operation,” he said.
“We are not doing any whitewashing business. We believe in going about facts. Our findings will be acceptable to the world.”
His remarks are bound to anger India, which blames the attacks on Pakistani militants who it says must have had support from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
India this month presented Pakistan with a dossier of evidence, including details from the interrogation of the sole surviving gunman and information gleaned from satellite phones used by the attackers.
Asked about that evidence, Mr Hasan said: “Well, it could be fabricated. You took 45 days to give that sort of evidence although you started blaming Pakistan from day one.”
Pakistan has denied any state involvement in the attacks and promised on January 17 that the Pakistani commission investigating the attacks would publish their findings within 10 days.
That did not happen, however, and Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, said on Wednesday that Pakistan would release details of its investigation into the attack “very soon”.
There was no immediate response from the Indian foreign ministry.
Indian officials say that they are considering suspending all business, transport and tourists ties with Pakistan if it continues to drag its feet on the investigation and its pledge to crack down on Pakistani militant groups.
* Nine Pakistanis accused over a series of attacks that killed dozens of people and damaged the Danish embassy were remanded in custody by an anti-terror court. The suspects were arrested in the garrison city of Rawalpindi this week and confessed to involvement in bombings at the embassy in Islamabad, an Italian restaurant and against Pakistani security forces. (AFP)
Defense Department Establishes Civilian Expeditionary Workforce
Employees in deployable-designated positions will be trained, equipped and prepared to serve overseas in support of humanitarian, reconstruction and, if absolutely necessary, combat-support missions.
Defense Department Establishes Civilian Expeditionary Workforce
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jan. 27, 2009 – The Defense Department is forming a civilian expeditionary workforce that will be trained and equipped to deploy overseas in support of military missions worldwide, according to department officials.
The intent of the program “is to maximize the use of the civilian workforce to allow military personnel to be fully utilized for operational requirements,” according to a Defense Department statement.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England signed Defense Department Directive 1404.10, which outlines and provides guidance about the program, on Jan. 23.
Certain duty positions may be designated by the various Defense Department components to participate in the program. If a position is designated, the employee will be asked to sign an agreement that they will deploy if called upon to do so. If the employee does not wish to deploy, every effort will be made to reassign the employee to a nondeploying position.
The directive emphasizes, however, that volunteers be sought first for any expeditionary requirements, before requiring anyone to serve involuntarily or on short notice. Overseas duty tours shall not exceed two years.
Employees in deployable-designated positions will be trained, equipped and prepared to serve overseas in support of humanitarian, reconstruction and, if absolutely necessary, combat-support missions.
The program also is open to former and retired civilian employees who agree to return to federal service on a time-limited status to serve overseas or to fill in for people deployed overseas.
Program participants are eligible for military medical support while serving in their overseas duty station.
All participants will undergo pre- and post-deployment medical testing, including physical and psychological exams.
Defense civilians reassigned from their normal duty to serve overseas will be granted the right to return to the positions they held prior to their deployment or to a position of similar grade, level and responsibility within the same organization, regardless of the deployment length .
Families of deployed Defense Department civilian employees shall be supported and provided with information on benefits and entitlements and issues likely to be faced by the employee during and upon return from a deployment.
Defense civilian employees who participate in the expeditionary program shall be treated with high regard as an indication of the department’s respect for those who serve expeditionary requirements.
Expeditionary program participants’ service and experience shall be valued, respected and recognized as career-enhancing.
Participants who meet program requirements would be eligible to receive the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Global War on Terrorism.
Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets
Arcellor Mittal workers demonstrate during a protest march in Marseille. Photograph: Jean-paul Pelissier/Reuters
France paralysed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris-strewn battlefield. The Hungarian currency sinks to its lowest level ever against the euro, as the unemployment figure rises. Greek farmers block the road into Bulgaria in protest at low prices for their produce. New figures from the biggest bank in the Baltic show that the three post-Soviet states there face the biggest recessions in Europe.
It’s a snapshot of a single day – yesterday – in a Europe sinking into the bleakest of times. But while the outlook may be dark in the big wealthy democracies of western Europe, it is in the young, poor, vulnerable states of central and eastern Europe that the trauma of crash, slump and meltdown looks graver.
Exactly 20 years ago, in serial revolutionary rejoicing, they ditched communism to put their faith in a capitalism now in crisis and by which they feel betrayed. The result has been the biggest protests across the former communist bloc since the days of people power.
Europe’s time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are trembling. Revolt is in the air.
Athens
Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old middle-class boy going to a party in a rough neighbourhood on a December Saturday, was the first fatality of Europe’s season of strife. Shot dead by a policeman, the boy’s killing lit a bonfire of unrest in the city unmatched since the 1970s.
There are many wellsprings of the serial protests rolling across Europe. In Athens, it was students and young people who suddenly mobilised to turn parts of the city into no-go areas. They were sick of the lack of jobs and prospects, the failings of the education system and seized with pessimism over their future.
This week it was the farmers’ turn, rolling their tractors out to block the motorways, main road and border crossings across the Balkans to try to obtain better procurement prices for their produce.
Riga
The old Baltic trading city had seen nothing like it since the happy days of kicking out the Russians and overthrowing communism two decades ago. More than 10,000 people converged on the 13th-century cathedral to show the Latvian government what they thought of its efforts at containing the economic crisis. The peaceful protest morphed into a late-night rampage as a minority headed for the parliament, battled with riot police and trashed parts of the old city. The following day there were similar scenes in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital next door.
After Iceland, Latvia looks like the most vulnerable country to be hammered by the financial and economic crisis. The EU and IMF have already mounted a €7.5bn (£6.6bn) rescue plan but the outlook is the worst in Europe.
The biggest bank in the Baltic, Swedbank of Sweden, yesterday predicted a slump this year in Latvia of a whopping 10%, more than double the previous projections. It added that the economy of Estonia would shrink by 7% and of Lithuania by 4.5%.
The Latvian central bank’s governor went on national television this week to pronounce the economy “clinically dead. We have only three or four minutes to resuscitate it”.
Paris
Burned-out cars, masked youths, smashed shop windows, and more than a million striking workers. The scenes from France are familiar, but not so familiar to President Nicolas Sarkozy, confronting the first big wave of industrial unrest of his time in the Elysée Palace.
Sarkozy has spent most of his time in office trying to fix the world’s problems, with less attention devoted to the home front. From Gaza to Georgia, Russia to Washington, Sarkozy has been a man in a hurry to mediate in trouble spots and grab the credit for peacemaking.
France, meanwhile, is moving into recession and unemployment is going up. The latest jobless figures were to have been released yesterday, but were held back, apparently for fear of inflaming the protests.
Budapest
A balance of payments crisis last autumn, heavy indebtedness and a disastrous budget made Hungary the first European candidate for an international rescue. The $26bn (£18bn) IMF-led bail-out shows scant sign of working. Industrial output is at its lowest for 16 years, the national currency – the forint – sank to a record low against the euro yesterday and the government also announced another round of spending cuts yesterday.
So far the streets have been relatively quiet. The Hungarian misery highlights a key difference between eastern and western Europe. While the UK, Germany, France and others plough hundreds of billions into public spending, tax cuts, bank bailouts and guarantees to industry, the east Europeans (plus Iceland and Ireland) are broke, ordering budget cuts, tax rises, and pleading for international help to shore up their economies.
The austerity and the soaring costs of repaying bank loans and mortgages taken out in hard foreign currencies (euro, yen and dollar) are fuelling the misery.
Kiev
The east European upheavals of 1989 hit Ukraine late, maturing into the Orange Revolution on the streets of Kiev only five years ago. The fresh start promised by President Viktor Yushchenko has, though, dissolved into messy, corrupt, and brutal political infighting, with the economy, growing strongly a few years ago, going into freefall.
Three weeks of gas wars with Russia this month ended in defeat and will cost Ukraine dearly. The national currency, at less than half the value of six months ago, is akin to the fate of Iceland’s wrecked krona. Ukrainians have been buying dollars by the billion. In November the IMF waded in with the first payments in a $16bn rescue package.
The vicious power struggles between Yushchenko and the prime minister, Yuliya Tymoshenko, are consuming the ruling elite’s energy, paralysing government and leaving the economy dysfunctional. Russia is doing its best to keep things that way.
Reykjavik
Proud of its status as one of the world’s most developed, most productive and most equal societies, Iceland is in the throes of what is, by its staid standards, a revolution.
Riot police in Reykjavik, the coolest of capitals. Building bonfires in front of the world’s oldest parliament. The yoghurt flying at the free market men who have run the country for decades and brought it to its knees.
An openly gay prime minister takes over today as head of a caretaker government. The neocon right has been ditched. The hard left Greens are, at least for the moment, the most popular party in the small Arctic state with a population the size of Bradford.
The IMF’s bailout teams have moved in with $11bn. The national currency, the krona, appears to be finished. Iceland is a test case of how one of the most successful societies on the globe suddenly failed.
Changing the CIA
Changing the CIA
I am still skeptical that our new president will — or can — fulfill all his sweeping promises, but he has made an essential start by bringing the CIA back into our rule of law by appointing Leon Panetta as director of the CIA. It is significant that next to The New York Times Jan. 5 front-page story on his appointment was an account of a six-year imprisonment, with torture, of a Pakistani first “rendered” (kidnapped) by the CIA and now released without ever having been charged with any crime.
Critics of President-elect Barack Obama’s choice charge that Panetta has had no direct experience with the CIA or other intelligence work. Actually, as Fred Kaplan reveals in Slate (Jan. 6), while Panetta was Bill Clinton’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, “he was one of a very few people who knew about all of the covert and special-access programs” — and he knows where to find the buried line-item budget items concerning the CIA.
As for Panetta’s patriotic and moral qualifications for his new office, he wrote last year in Washington Monthly: “Those who support torture (the CIA’s involvement in torture has been extensively documented) may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. We either believe in…the rule of law…or we don’t. There is no middle ground.”
Panetta added: “The Constitution was drafted by those who looked around the world of the eighteenth century and saw persecution, torture, and other crimes against humanity and believed that America could be better than that.”
Bush and Cheney have deeply shaken the world’s — including our allies’ — belief that we are, indeed, different.
The president-elect made another equally vital appointment that introduces the CIA to our Constitution. Beginning in 2002, it was at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — which advises the president, the attorney general and others in the executive branch on constitutional matters — that torture became U.S. policy and other violations of international treaties, and our own laws against cruel and inhumane punishments were also legitimized.
In the Obama administration, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel will be Dawn Johnsen, University of Indiana constitutional law professor, who previously served there under Clinton. She is convinced, like Panetta, that we can and will overcome terrorists by refusing to resemble them in any way.
Before I continue in the next column to indicate the possible impact of these two appointments in markedly improving our intelligence services, here is a partial list of the specific war crimes in international law and our own statues that have been committed during the past eight years, and before, by highly EXPERIENCED CIA officials and their agents in the field.
Neither Panetta nor Johnsen has committed any war crimes.
In Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which the United States signed and has made part of our law, any person detained by our forces is guaranteed the right to freedom from “cruel treatment and torture; outrages on personal dignity (and) humiliating and degrading treatment.”
These rights must be in effect whether the detainee is a prisoner of war, unprivileged belligerent or noncombatant and — as I often tried to remind Dick Cheney in my columns — the guarantees apply “in all circumstances” and “at any time and in any place whatsoever.”
Moreover, the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a criminal offense for military personnel to commit the war crimes I have cited from the Geneva Conventions. That law was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress.
Also, and this should interest the new Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the indispensable 1,249-page thoroughly documented “The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib” (Cambridge University Press) adds that our State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices “have expressly characterized as ‘torture’ or ‘other abuse’ tying detainees in painful positions; incommunicado detention; depriving detainees of sleep … long periods of imprisonment in darkened rooms … and instilling detainees with the false belief that they are about to be killed.”
That’s waterboarding, Mr. Departing Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
These are also precisely the common practices of torture and other abuses during the Bush-Cheney administration in our own detention centers. We do not yet know the interrogation techniques that have been used in the CIA’s secret prisons. In view of Panetta’s and Johnsen’s statements about the fundamental need to re-establish our rule of law for the CIA, I expect that they will insist on finding out — and telling us — what has been taking place in those “black sites.”
US envoy warns against Russian base in Abkhazia
US envoy warns against Russian base in Abkhazia
BRUSSELS, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Russia must refrain from opening a naval base in Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia and should agree to extend the mandate of U.N. monitors in the region, said a senior U.S. envoy.
The NATO alliance has already expressed concern at a recent report Moscow plans a naval base in Abkhazia.
A separatist official told Reuters this week that Abkhazia expects to sign a deal over an airbase and naval base within a few months, but there has been no official confirmation from Moscow.
“The possible deployment of a naval base in Abkhazia, an airbase in Abkhazia and a military base in South Ossetia seems to be moving in the wrong direction,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza told Reuters in an interview.
Georgia’s pro-Western leaders accuse Russia of effectively annexing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, a second breakaway region that was the focus of Russia’s war with Georgia last August.
“Russia pledged to reduce its troops to the levels and locations of before the Russia-Georgia war,” said Bryza, an envoy to the region. “Russia is already in violation of those commitments… Deploying a naval base would be another violation.”
MONITORS
He said Russia should not prevent the extension of a mandate for United Nations observers in the region, which needs extending by Feb. 15.
“We’ve put compromises forward and Russia has rejected them so far,” he said. “We hope Russia won’t reject the compromise for the United Nations.”
Russia’s crushing of Georgian forces in the five-day war raised concerns in the West about a new Russian assertiveness in its traditional sphere of influence and stirred fears for the safety of energy supplies that run through Georgia.
This winter’s gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine, which cut off supplies to Europe, stoked those fears further and highlighted the need for renewed investment in Ukraine, said Bryza.
The United States is considering putting its weight behind an $800 million pipeline that would de-bottleneck gas flows from Ukraine into Slovakia.
“From a U.S. perspective it makes it all the more urgent,” he said.
“With this less than a billion dollar investment it is possible to increase the transit of gas by almost 15 billion cubic metres, so about half of the South Stream pipeline for a very small investment,” he added, referring to Russia’s preferred gas project for bypassing Ukraine.
But Ukraine will have to work hard to reassure private investors, who might view the project as too risky.
“It’s time for both sides to rebuild their respective reputations…maybe this proposal to expand gas transit through Ukraine is a way to bring it all back together.”
Groups review Gaza conflict for war crimes
Groups review Gaza conflict for war crimes
PATRICK MARTIN
Now that Israeli forces have left the Gaza Strip and fighting has largely ended, human-rights organizations are combing the detritus of war, surveying the extensive destruction, interviewing shell-shocked victims and building cases of war crimes against both combatant parties.
While Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and, therefore, is not subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, nearly all European courts have claimed authority to investigate and prosecute war crimes of other countries. It was a Spanish magistrate who prosecuted the case of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and, just Friday, another Spanish court announced it was investigating several Israeli officials for their alleged role in a 2002 military assault on Gaza.
The main danger to Israelis is expected to come from lawsuits brought by individuals and organizations, rather than governmental attempts to undertake official investigations. “We are preparing for a wave of international lawsuits,” Israeli Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz said.
Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s principal researcher in Israel and the Palestinian territories, warned: “Those [Israelis] giving the orders, and even those pulling the trigger, should not plan on taking any overseas holidays.”
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The allegations against Israeli forces operating in Gaza between Dec. 27 and Jan. 18 fall into five categories:
Unlawful killings
This is the broadest category, in which it is alleged that Israeli air, sea and ground forces carried out indiscriminate bombing and shelling of military targets without proper regard for the safety of innocent civilians in the area.
It is further alleged that the scale of Israeli attacks was often out of proportion to the value of some military targets, or to the threat the targets posed to Israel, leading to unwarranted collateral casualties.
The massive aerial bombing carried out without warning on the first day, the targeting of a police graduation ceremony, the shelling of an area near a UN school, the bombing of two other UN schools and shelling of the UN headquarters, all are cases being investigated.
“Those who embark on this course of action must be held responsible,” Ms. Rovera said. She said there were numerous cases of Israeli artillery being used against targets in built-up residential areas.
“It doesn’t matter if their indiscriminate attacks result in one unlawful death or a large number,” she said. “It’s the scale here [in Gaza] that’s new.”
The use of anti-personnel weapons such as flechettes when shelling a physical or a narrow target is another example of unlawful killing, Ms. Rovera argued. Thousands of these five-centimetre-long metal arrows can be packed into tank shells, and evidence of their use has been found in at least two areas of Gaza, she said.
“X-rays showed flechettes embedded in people’s brains,” Ms. Rovera said.
Use of such weapons is not banned, but their use in civilian-populated areas runs afoul of humanitarian law, experts say.
White phosphorous shells is another example of a legal munition that may have been used illegally in Gaza. Intended to illuminate an area or to provide a smoke screen, the phosphorous ignites when exposed to air and cannot be doused with water. It ignites most material with which it comes into contact and burns human flesh to the bone.
Its use in heavily populated areas is a violation of humanitarian law, most agree.
Israel acknowledges using white phosphorous, but insists it did so only in open areas and in complete compliance with international law.
Wanton destruction of property
The neighbourhood of east Jabalya in the northern part of the Gaza Strip was an expansive industrial area containing factories and warehouses. Cement making, stone cutting, agricultural processing and small manufacturing all were carried out here, but an inspection of the district this week showed almost every single factory, warehouse and barn destroyed. Cement trucks all were overturned; buildings that weren’t shelled were bulldozed; a complete field of cattle lay dead on the ground.
Such destruction, experts say, may constitute an international crime. “They have destroyed the livelihood of thousands of people,” said Martha Myers, country director for Care International.
Israel has justified the destruction as an effort to remove possible rocket-launching sites – the area is not far from the Israeli border – and to destroy stockpiles of rockets and rocket-making factories.
On a smaller scale, an inspection of several sites this week found examples of how Israeli troops, occupying houses during their ground invasion, left homes unnecessarily trashed, desecrated and with hateful graffiti on the walls.
And in what appears to be a disregard for religious symbols in favour of sport, Israeli tanks shot the top off a great number of minarets in areas that Israeli forces occupied.
“Israelis say they only destroyed things that had potential military use,” Ms. Rovera said, “but the destruction was indiscriminate.”
Hindering medical relief
Numerous examples are cited of Israeli military action preventing neutral medical personnel from reaching civilian victims. The most infamous case is that of the Samouni family, whose house in the Gaza suburb of Zeitoun was destroyed by Israeli shelling. Ambulances were reportedly unable to reach the site for three days. When they did, they apparently found three crying toddlers lying by their dead mothers.
Israel denies it blocked any relief efforts and says the logistics of battle may have made the way unsafe in some situations.
Use of human shields
“We’ve heard a lot about Hamas using human shields,” Amnesty’s Ms. Rovera said. “But Israel used them, too.”
Israeli troops would go into a house, she explained, put the family on the bottom floor and take over the upper floor to use for sniping at the enemy.
“This constitutes using the family as a human shield,” Ms. Rovera pointed out.
Mistreatment of prisoners
Seven Israeli human-rights groups complained to Israel’s judge advocate-general Wednesday that prisoners taken in the Gaza operation were held in conditions so poor that their lives were often endangered.
They presented testimony that many were held in hastily dug pits exposed to cold for days; that many were held “near tanks and in clear combat areas,” and that several were victims of “serious and degrading violence.”
Such “disregard of ethical and legal obligations” makes Israel guilty of violations of international law, the groups argue.
More Zionist Than Israel?
More Zionist Than Israel?
German Policy and Media on Gaza
by Ali Fathollah-Nejad
The Gaza massacre, at least for the moment, is over — ended just before Barack Obama’s inauguration, so as not to cast an unwelcome cloud over his first hours as U.S. President. The initial Palestinian death toll is 1,300 . . . and expected to rise. (Four times that number were injured, and more wounded may be discovered). The number of the Israeli dead — 13 Israelis, ten of whom were soldiers, lost their lives — was one hundredth of the Palestinian dead. Such are the revealing casualty statistics of this so-called war — onslaught or even slaughter would be a more accurate term to describe the world’s fifth largest army using the high-tech weaponry of the world’s No. 1 military power against the civilian population as well as a scant number of armed combatants.
Only two and a half years after the last Israeli onslaught in which a comparable number of people were killed — with the difference that the Lebanese, unlike the imprisoned Gazans, had a better chance of fleeing from the murderous bombs dropped on them — much of the world found themselves in a state of shock again as they witnessed the reemergence of barbarity at its worst. Israel did not allow any Western journalists to cover the bloodbath of its “Operation Cast Lead,” though the non-Western world, watching Al Jazeera, Press TV, or TeleSur, could witness the carnage inflicted upon Gaza.
Needless to say, the “pictures” shown by the West’s “enlightened” media were antipodal to those shown by the non-Western alternatives mentioned above, which the same Western media promptly denounced as “propaganda.” Let’s take Germany for example, Europe’s economically as well as demographically strongest country, whose Constitution (Basic Law), as a lesson of the terrible experiences of the Nazi period, commits the German people, “[c]onscious of their responsibility before God and man, . . . to promote world peace” (Preamble), emphasizing that “The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world” (Art. 1, para. 2).1 One might expect the German people’s political representatives to feel obliged to respect those principles. Nothing of the sort!
“Unlimited Solidarity” Reloaded
In a telephone conversation on the second day of Israel’s attacks, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “agreed that the responsibility for the development of the situation in the region clearly and exclusively lies with Hamas.” Berlin’s spokesperson further declared: “Hamas unilaterally broke the agreement for a ceasefire, there has been a continuous firing of . . . rockets at Israeli settlements and Israeli territory, and without question — and this was stressed by the chancellor — Israel has the legitimate right to defend its own people and territory.”2 Merkel’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier embarked on a “peace mission” — the German media’s description — where he observed from a safe distance in Rafah the “self-defending” Israeli bombs being dropped upon “self-responsible” Palestinians. Steinmeier, who as Schröder’s chief of staff played an inglorious role in keeping Germany-born innocents in the Guantánamo camp,3 is running as the Social-Democratic Party (SPD) candidate for the chancellery. Impressive seamlessness!
Like the United States during the immediate post-9/11 days, today Israel is the unmerited beneficiary of Germany’s “unlimited solidarity” aiding and abetting crimes.
Now, what about the German media, which in turn are bound by the German Press Code stating that “[t]he freedom of the Press enshrined in the Basic Law includes the independence and freedom of information, the right of expression and criticism” (Preamble) and that “[r]espect for the truth, preservation of human dignity and accurate informing of the public are the overriding principles of the Press” (Section 1)? Their story of “civilizational” war — comfortably embedded within the good-versus-evil scheme — was not surprising at all, though hardly compatible with the above principles.
The media overwhelmingly and across the political spectrum represented the interpretation given by the Israeli leadership, i.e. that the “Jewish State” was fighting a “defensive war” against rocket-throwing “Hamas terrorists,” pursuing the noble cause of defending “Western democracies,” such as Israel, in the “war on terror” against Islamism. Despite this narrative’s non-sense in moral, political, and legal terms, it was echoed in papers of every political couleur. The only newspaper consistently and extensively covering the “systematic nature of the destruction” (UN humanitarian chief Sir John Holmes)4 has been the left-wing junge Welt — which, alas, has only a small readership. This sole anti-imperialist German paper has been severely demonized by the ideologues of the mainstream but has received much praise from such respected personalities as Hans von Sponeck, a former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, who resigned in protest of the UN Security Council-mandated genocide of Iraqis in the 1990s.
Embedded Narratives
The country’s most prominent televised political discussion “Anne Will” announced that it would run a show on Gaza on 11 January, but in an unprecedented step canceled the topic only three days before the scheduled date, replacing it by a program on “suicide” — as if suicide were more important than mass killings. Seeing the freedom of press and democracy in peril, a protest initiative was launched, signed by over 700 worldwide.5
When not outright erased as in the case of the canceled “Anne Will” program, the Gaza coverage à l’Allemande was fundamentally composed of (1) prescribed discriminatory terminology, with “radical Islamist Hamas” used as a journalistic mantra to describe Israel’s opponent while such loaded terms as “radical Zionist” were never attributed to Israel; (2) the tale of “double hostage-taking” of both Israelis and Gazans by Hamas; and (3) the repetition of Israeli government positions even by journalists working for the most prestigious public broadcasters. German correspondents joining from Tel Aviv were practically embedded with Israel’s army.
What was scrupulously omitted in the media’s narrative was the history of the conflict, particularly the fact that we had, on one side, an illegal occupying power flouting world opinion as enunciated by numerous UN resolutions and international legal opinions and, on the other, the brutally occupied who were being practically starved to death. At best, this was only considered a marginal detail diverting one’s attention from the “continuous rocket attacks” by Hamas which rendered normal Israeli life impossible. No mention of course was made about the worthiness of Palestinian life.
What Lessons from the Judeocide?
Still under the long shadow cast by the monumental — and in its industrial fervor unique — genocide of the European Jews, the country’s media did not provide space for any discussion worth its name about the great ordeal that Gazans suffered while the “international community” acted in complicit silence. And when debated, as was done in “Anne Will”‘s competitor political talk show “Hart Aber Fair” (“Hard But Fair”), it was carefully made sure that the talk was not “switched” to a “discussion of facts.” Instead, in a highly obvious manner, a frantic effort was made to connect anti-Semitism and criticisms of Israel. While anti-Semitism certainly exists among some Germans, the more prevalent form of racism in today’s Germany is Islamophobia, which went un-discussed, despite it being relevant as a factor that explains official ideology and public opinion. Hardly a fair practice.
What was even more scandalous was the fact that Jewish voices against Israel’s operation were widely ignored. To be heard in the mainstream mass media, Jewish critics of Israel were forced to take out an ad. In the SüddeutscheZeitung, under the header “German Jews say NO to the murder by the Israeli army,” European Jews for a Just Peace (EJPJ) Germany said: “We are appalled by this inhumanity. . . . Do German politicians really believe that it is a compensation for the murder of our Jewish families and relatives that Israel can now . . . do whatever crosses her mind? . . . Hamas is using terrorist methods, but this is also what the elected officials of Israel do, in fact a hundred times more effectively.”6
It is deeply disturbing, and particularly sad for someone who has grown up in Germany, to raise the question “What have Germans learned from the Holocaust?” and to hear either embarrassed silence or “We must not criticize Israel.” I thought the lesson to be learned from the Holocaust was the duty to resist any kind of racism, oppression, and wars of aggression and to refrain from demonization which effectively paves the way for tacit acceptance of violence and war. That is the lesson codified in the Basic Law, too, albeit held in contempt by the German media and politicians. Despite the narratives promoted by them, however, polls suggest that a significant number of Germans are increasingly becoming aware of the moral hollowness of such “unlimited solidarity” and beginning to recognize that barbarity must be called barbarity, no matter who the perpetrators are.
A Rogue State: “If the Cap Fits. . . .”
Jewish Oxford international relations professor Avi Shlaim concluded his article on Gaza: “. . . Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with ‘an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders’. A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism — the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it.”7 As the leading scholar on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Norman Finkelstein corroborates Shlaim: “The record is quite clear.” Well, it is.
This is why it makes sense to launch a campaign against Israel in the same way it was done against Apartheid South Africa, which was a Western colonial state with entrenched racism, backed by “Western democracies” and engaged in apartheid and oppression . . . much like Israel.
I agree with the historian Ilan Pappé: it is now high time to expose the links between the Zionist ideological factor and the crimes committed by the “self-righteous ideological state” of Israel.8 This might conceivably awaken those Germans who remain asleep in a highly disturbing state of moral apathy.
In the end, one awaited in vain a major German, or any other European, newspaper headlining an article — as Le Monde did after 9/11 with “Nous sommes tous Américains” (We are all Americans)9 — with “Nous sommes tous Palestiniens,” Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Instead, it’s as if the same headline blared, on the front pages of virtually all papers: “We are all Zionists.”
1 Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Promulgated by the Parliamentary Council on 23 May 1949, as amended up to June 2008, Berlin: German Bundestag, 2008.
2 Agence France-Presse (AFP), “Germany’s Merkel Blames Hamas for Gaza Violence,” 29 December 2008.
3 Cf. Navid Kermani, “Wir sind Murat Kurnaz” [We are Murat Kurnaz], die tageszeitung (taz), 23 March 2007.
4 “UN ‘Shocked’ by Gaza destruction,” BBC News, 23 January 2009.
5 See my report “German Media Censorship on Gaza?”, Global Research, Montreal: Centre for Research on Globalization, 22 January 2009.
6 “Deutsche Juden und Jüdinnen sagen NEIN zum Morden der israelischen Armee,” advert in Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 January 2009, p. 10.
7 Avi Shlaim, “How Israel Brought Gaza to the Brink of Humanitarian Catastrophe,” The Guardian, 7 January 2009.
8 Ilan Pappe, “Israel’s Righteous Fury and Its Victims in Gaza,” The Electronic Intifada, 2 January 2009; cf. also Ilan Pappe, “Dummy or Real,” London Review of Books (online), 14 January 2009.
9 Jean-Marie Colombani, “Nous sommes tous Américans,” editorial, Le Monde, 13 September 2001.
Ali Fathollah-Nejad is a German–Iranian political scientist focusing on the international relations of the Middle East. For the open letter protesting the cancelation of the TV debate on Gaza
ThereAreNoSunglasses 