An Afghan girl injured during an air strike in Garni village in western Farah province, recovers in hospital, on May 9, 2009. The United Nations said Monday that whoever was behind "significant" civilian deaths in heavy fighting and US air strikes in Afghanistan last week must be held accountable. (AFP/Reza Shirmohammadi)
KABUL – Afghan lawmakers on Monday demanded legal restrictions on foreign forces fighting in their country, to prevent further civilian deaths, then closed for half a day to protest the latest casualties from U.S. air strikes.
The attacks on homes packed with civilians, during a protracted battle last week, have damaged ties with Washington and stoked popular anger about the presence of western troops, over rising non-combatant deaths.Debate about innocent casualties dominated the morning’s session and the delegates said they had given the government one week to come up with a way of regulating foreign fighters.
“To prevent the bombardment and killing of our people, the Wolesi Jirga (lower house) has decided the government must come up with a plan, within one week, to regulate the foreign forces,” said Wolesi Jirga secretary Abdul Sattar Khawaasi.
The framing of Iran as an “existential threat” to Israel is shown up for the sham that it is in this critique by Israeli journalist Uri Avnery.
First of all, I want to apologize to all the good women who are engaged in the world’s oldest profession.
I recently described Shimon Peres as a political prostitute. One of my female readers has protested vigorously. Prostitutes, she pointed out, earn their money honestly. They deliver what they promise. Continue reading “Trivializing the Holocaust”
Tony Karon–The Rootless Cosmopolitan–nails it in this excellent analysis of the myopic US policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.
There was something almost painful about watching President Barack Obama last week reprising a track from his predecessor’s Greatest Hits when he hosted the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Just like Bush, Obama invited us to suspend well-grounded disbelief and imagine that Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari have the intent, much less the capability, to wage a successful war against the Taliban. Then again, there had been something painful even earlier about watching Obama proclaim Afghanistan as “the right war” and expanding the U.S. footprint there, reprising the Soviet experience of maintaining an islet of modernity in the capital while the countryside burns.
It requires a spectacular leap of faith in a kind of superheroic American exceptionalism to imagine that the invasion of Afghanistan that occurred in November 2001 will end any differently from any previous invasion of that country. And it takes an elaborate exercise in self-delusion to avoid recognizing that the Taliban crisis in Pakistan is aneffectof the war in Afghanistan, rather than a cause — and thatPakistan’s turmoil is unlikely to end before the U.S. winds down its campaign next door.
Families flee from an army offensive against Taliban militants in the Shamuzai area of Pakistan's Swat Valley yesterday. More than half a million refugees have been registered (AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
The old woman fell to her knees in the dust, her arms covering her head to show how she had tried to hide as the shells fell around them. “There was so much noise and chaos,” said the woman, Shirina, who said she was 80. “We walked over the hills on foot. Then we hired a car.” Asked if the bombardment had caused any casualties, she and her family responded as one: “The world was killed. Lots of people were killed. Too many.”
Two days earlier, the family from Pakistan’s Buner district had arrived in this makeshift refugee camp after fleeing the military’s increasingly forceful battle with Taliban militants. There are hundreds of thousands like them, driven from the war zone, and they tell similar tales of fear, anguish and loss. They talk too, of an unknown number of civilians being killed in what is in effect a hidden war.
While I agree with much of what Tariq is saying, he presents a less nuanced analysis of the origins of the Afghanistan war than he does in his book. He repeats the Leftist conventional wisdom on the subject. It was neither Carter’s nor Brzezinski’s war. Yes, we all know Brzezisnki bragged to a French newspaper that he was responsible for trapping and defeating the Soviets. In actual fact, US support for the Mujahideen was token under Carter. It was only under Reagan and Bill Casey that it finally took off. (thanks Elisa)
Host Harry Kreisler welcomes writer and journalist Tariq Ali for a discussion of Pakistan and it relations with the United States. He places the present crisis in its historical context exploring the origins of the Pakistani state, the failure to forge a national identity, the inability and unwillingness of Pakistani leaders to address the country’s poverty and inequality, and the role of the military in the country’s spiral toward violence and disunity. In this context, Tariq Ali highlights the significance of the U.S. relationship throughout Pakistan’s history and he analyzes current US policy and it implications for stability in the region.
Israel Police on Tuesday detained Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass upon her exit from the Gaza Strip, where she had been living and reporting over the last few months.
Hass was arrested and taken in for questioning immediately after crossing the border, for violating a law which forbids residence in an enemy state. She was released on bail after promising not to enter the Gaza Strip over the next 30 days.
Hass is the first Israeli journalist to enter the Gaza Strip in more than two years, since the Israel Defense Forces issued an entry ban following the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in a 2006 cross-border raid by Palestinian militants.
Last December, Hass was arrested by soldiers at the Erez Checkpoint as she tried to cross into Israel after having entered the Gaza Strip aboard a ship run by peace activists from Europe.
Upon discovering that she had no permit to be in Gaza, the soldiers transferred her to the Sderot police.
When questioned, Hass pointed out that no one had stopped her from entering the Strip, which she did for work purposes.
Franklin Lamb writes from Wavel Palestinian Refugee Camp, Bekaa Valley, on what Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees, over a tenth of the country’s population, require from Lebanon’s June 7th Election, as well as how Hezbollah, major Lebanese Party Platforms and US foreign policy weigh in.
Since Israel’s closure of the Gaza Strip in 2007, only severely sick Palestinians have been allowed to seek medical attention elsewhere provided they receive authorisation and security clearances from the Israeli authorities.However, getting the special permit that allows patients to leave Gaza for medical treatment is a bureaucratic hassle and, many Gazans say, comes with strings attached. According to the Israeli organisation Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Palestinian patients are increasingly being asked to make an impossible choice: Either to become collaborators with the Israeli intelligence apparatus – or to remain in Gaza without medical treatment.
Al Jazeera spoke with Hadas Ziv, the director of PHR.
Al Jazeera: Your organisation has collected dozens of testimonies of patients who were pressured to collaborate with the Israeli General Security Services. How did you find out about this? A Palestinian will not easily admit he or she has been asked to become an informant.
Ziv: True; it is not a subject people talk about easily and it happened gradually. Our organisation tries to support Gazan patients who were prevented by the Israeli authorities from treatment in Israel, or from crossing Israel on their way to hospitals in the West Bank.
Instead of clear rejection or admittance, the Israelis started saying: “permit pending interrogation”. The permit became conditional – not so much on individual health conditions, but on the outcome of the interrogation at the Erez Crossing.
Its name is IDP. It was reborn ten days ago. Baptized by Barack Obama while Asif Ali Zardari held it, the American president showered the newborn with a $1.9 billion cheque. Fearing that Pakistan may throw the baby out with the bathwater, the US Congress vowed to honour the cheque once the sum reached the recipient. With Musharraf government swiping over 12 billion dollars, the whole world knows, including Pakistanis, that our effete elite pocket the money meant for the poor. Flush times are here again. Paisa dey do is the signature tune played by the information minister of NWFP. Daily he begs for money. It doesn’t look nice. What would look nice are footage of his chief minister, governor and a cabal of cabinet colleagues and party loudmouths spreading out in the field.
Let all the fat cats sweat it out in the sweltering sun to visit IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons). Show us first your humane handling of the crisis, even though it’s gargantuan. Take us each night with a candid camera to a camp. Randomly ask the IDPs how they fare. Demonstrate to us that you’ve resolved their complaints on the spot. You are then worthy of our worship and donations. But according to an Al Jazeera reporter, the grousing has already set in: “We went to an IDP camp today … there were no signs of officials from the provincial government. There has been a lot of talk, but they have not done anything. There is, understandably, reasonable justification for [the civilians’] anger at the government.”
The ANP leader Asfandyar Wali is missing from action. Is he in the cooler climes of London?
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