Month: May 2009

Assault Leaves Debris in the Mind

Off the radar of the mainstream media, IPS’ David Cronin reports about the material and psychological traumas Palestinians are having to deal with in the aftermath of Israel’s brutal onslaught on Gaza.

GAZA CITY, May 11 (IPS) – Gazans have a colloquial term to describe the buzzing of Israeli warplanes that is an ever-present feature of their lives: zanana.

The gallows humour of likening instruments of death to honey bees might suggest that the people of this crowded sliver of land on the Mediterranean have found a way of coping with the occupation that has lasted more than four decades. Yet the planes also remind Palestinians of what they fear most: that they could come under fresh attack at any time.

The destruction to property caused by the 23-day bombardment which the Gaza Strip endured in December and January remains visible in many parts of its main city.

Continue reading “Assault Leaves Debris in the Mind”

Obama’s Policies Making Situation Worse in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Sober advice for Obama from Graham E. Fuller, former CIA station chief in Kabul and author of The Future of Political Islam.

For all the talk of “smart power,” President Obama is pressing down the same path of failure in Pakistan marked out by George Bush. The realities suggest need for drastic revision of U.S. strategic thinking.

— Military force will not win the day in either Afghanistan or Pakistan; crises have only grown worse under the U.S. military footprint.

— The Taliban represent zealous and largely ignorant mountain Islamists. They are also all ethnic Pashtuns. Most Pashtuns see the Taliban — like them or not — as the primary vehicle for restoration of Pashtun power in Afghanistan, lost in 2001. Pashtuns are also among the most fiercely nationalist, tribalized and xenophobic peoples of the world, united only against the foreign invader. In the end, the Taliban are probably more Pashtun than they are Islamist.

— It is a fantasy to think of ever sealing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The “Durand Line” is an arbitrary imperial line drawn through Pashtun tribes on both sides of the border. And there are twice as many Pashtuns in Pakistan as there are in Afghanistan. The struggle of 13 million Afghan Pashtuns has already inflamed Pakistan’s 28 million Pashtuns.

Continue reading “Obama’s Policies Making Situation Worse in Afghanistan and Pakistan”

Becoming What We Seek to Destroy

Gates and soldiers
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, left, takes part in a re-enlistment ceremony for eight U.S. troops during his visit to Forward Operating Base Airborne in Wardak Province, Afghanistan, last week.

Chris Hedges on the futility of the Afghan war.

The bodies of dozens, perhaps well over a hundred, women, children and men, their corpses blown into bits of human flesh by iron fragmentation bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes in a village in the western province of Farah, illustrates the futility of the Afghan war. We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development. We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter. And because we have employed the blunt and horrible instrument of war in a land we know little about and are incapable of reading, we embody the barbarism we claim to be seeking to defeat.

We are morally no different from the psychopaths within the Taliban, who Afghans remember we empowered, funded and armed during the 10-year war with the Soviet Union. Acid thrown a girl’s face or beheadings? Death delivered from the air or fields of shiny cluster bombs? This is the language of war. It is what we speak. It is what those we fight speak.

Continue reading “Becoming What We Seek to Destroy”

US: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Greatest Threat of All?

Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service give an insightful analysis of events in Washington over the past week. At the AIPAC conference Israel hawks espoused hyperbole towards the “existential threat” that Iran poses towards Israel in the fight to secure foreign policy agenda ahead of the more pressing ‘Af-Pak’ issue, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari conducted summit talks with President Obama.

WASHINGTON, May 10 (IPS) – A potentially major clash appears to be developing between powerful factions inside and outside the U.S. government, pitting those who see the Afghanistan/Pakistan (“AfPak”) theatre as the greatest potential threat to U.S. national security against those who believe that the danger posed by a nuclear Iran must be given priority.

The Iran hawks, concentrated within the Israeli government and its U.S. supporters in the so-called “Israel lobby” here, want to take aggressive action against Iran’s nuclear programme by moving quickly to a stepped-up sanctions regime. Continue reading “US: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Greatest Threat of All?”

Confusion over Taliban muddies the issues in Pakistan

Refugees Flee Fighting in North-West Frontier Province
A man sits at a camp in Mardan, Pakistan, for those who fled the military offensive in Swat Valley, where helicopters and jets are pounding militant positions. Militants reportedly fired rockets at an army base in Mingora. (Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images)

‘Are fighters religious zealots, thugs or revolutionaries? The perceptions of the public, leaders and U.S. are at odds’, writes Mark Magnier, ‘but the overriding sentiment in Pakistan is that “America created this problem”‘. (thanks Tina)

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan — Islamic militants who burn schools and threaten women in the name of religious purity. A righteous force battling corrupt and venal officials. Or gun-waving gangsters who conceal their crimes under a banner of spiritual renewal.

Weeks of turmoil have made it appear as though a unified Taliban is on the march out of the wild northwest, staking out strategic ground for an assault on Pakistan’s heartland.

But who exactly the Taliban is may rest in the eye of the beholder.

Many Pakistanis don’t see the Taliban as much of a threat and are not eager for a confrontation. On the other hand, oversimplification may lead policymakers toward a one-size-fits-all solution that is ineffective — or even counterproductive.

Continue reading “Confusion over Taliban muddies the issues in Pakistan”

The Left-Wing Media Fallacy

Excellent report by Media Lens on the myth of the institutional left-wing bias in the British media, citing Jeremy Bowen, the BBC, and ‘national treasures’ such as Channel 4’s Jon Snow.

It is a mistake to imagine that media corporations are impervious to all complaints and criticism. In fact, senior editors and managers are only too happy to accept that their journalists tend to be ‘anti-American,’ ‘anti-Israel,’ ‘anti-Western,’ indeed utterly rotten with left-wing bias.

In June 2007, an internal BBC report revealed that Auntie Beeb had long been perpetrating high media crimes, including: “institutional left-wing bias” and “being anti-American”. (‘Lambasting for the “trendy Left-wing bias” of BBC bosses,’ Daily Mail, June 18, 2007) Continue reading “The Left-Wing Media Fallacy”

Israel ‘using tourist sites to assert control over East Jerusalem’

The Judaisation of Jersusalem continues reports Rory McCarthy. Israel is using its well-known tactic of building tourist sites on falsified Jewish ‘historical spots’ to erase the past of the indiginous population. Unfortunately McCarthy’s own historical account of the Israel-Palestine conflict only starts with Israel’s annexation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, rather than extending back to 1948 with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which would provide readers with the context required to understand how that same policy has continued since.

Israel is quietly extending its control over East Jerusalem in alliance with rightwing Jewish settler groups, by developing parks and tourist sites that would bring a “drastic change of the status quo in the city”, according to two Israeli groups.

Ir Amin, a group working for a shared Jerusalem, said the purpose of the “confidential” plan was to link up several areas of East Jerusalem surrounding the Old City with the goal of asserting Israeli control and strengthening its claim to Jerusalem as its capital city. Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it, a move not recognised by the international community. Continue reading “Israel ‘using tourist sites to assert control over East Jerusalem’”

The Politics of Genocide

Mahmood Mamdani is a renowned African scholar (of Indian origin) who was last year ranked by Time as one of the world’s 100 leading intellectuals. He has previously authored the timely and influential book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim where he looks at the history of political Islam in the context of the so-called War on Terror. Here Mamdani appears on GRITtv with Laura Flanders to present the central thesis of his latest book Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror. (via Firedoglake)Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “The Politics of Genocide“, posted with vodpod

In his new book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror, Columbia University Professor Mahmood Mamdani contends that the use of the word genocide is as political as ever and strategic ignorance about the history and current day politics of post-colonial Africa is just as great. Mamdani discusses the crisis in Darfur, the nature of Save Darfur advocacy, and what he sees as a dangerous collusion of colonialism and Anti-Terror rhetoric.

‘I’m here to understand what you mean by Taliban’

Celebrated Indian author and social activist Arundhati Roy addresses a gathering at the Karachi Press Club on Friday.-Photo WhiteStar/Fahim Siddiqui

Salman Siddiqui on Arundhati Roy’s address at the Karachi Press Club. (It looks like a bad transcript.)

Is there a threat of Talibanisation engulfing the entire region?

I think it has already engulfed our region. I think there’s a need for a very clear thinking (on this issue of Talibanisation). In India, there are two kinds of terrorism: one is Islamic terrorism and the other Maoist terrorism. But this term terrorism, we must ask, what do they mean by it.

In Pakistan, I’m here to understand what they mean by this term. When we say we must fight the Taliban or must defeat them, what does it mean? I’m here to understand what you mean when you say Taliban. Do you mean a militant? Do you mean an ideology? Exactly what is it that is being fought? That needs to be clarified.

Continue reading “‘I’m here to understand what you mean by Taliban’”

The biggest human flood since 1947

Refugee camp near Mardan
Children line up to receive food in a refugee camp near Mardan. Photograph: Greg Baker/AP

The United States has doubled military aid to Pakistan. Kamal Hyder of Al Jazeera reports that a ‘big catastrophe is unfolding in the Northwest Frontier Province – I have never seen anything on this scale…This is a huge humanitarian crisis; the largest number of internally displaced people in the world, and in the smallest possible time…Anger is growing that the government did not give the citizens adequate warning to escape…Many people are saying their government has abandoned them … what is unfolding here is the tip of the iceberg, the worst is yet to come.’

According to Al Jazeera:

Bodies were reported to be lying in roads, homes reduced to ruins and people left cowering with no means of escape after the military imposed curfews across the region amid the fighting…Hyder reported that those who have fled the fighting are in refugee camps and receiving little government help.

Continue reading “The biggest human flood since 1947”