Thursday, December 31, 2009

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Afghanistan and Pakistan

An article about Baluchistan and one about the fate of Afghan refugees who are slow to come back to Afghanistan.

Afghan civilian deaths up 10% in 2009

Article here.

Figures released to AFP by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) put civilian deaths in the Afghan war at 2,038 for the first 10 months of 2009, up from 1,838 for the same period of 2008 -- an increase of 10.8 percent.

The UN calculations show the vast majority, or 1,404 civilians, were killed by insurgents fighting for the overthrow of Karzai's government and to eject Western troops.

UNAMA said 468 deaths were caused by pro-government forces, including NATO and US-led forces, and 166 by "other actors".

Yemen

The failed Detroit attack was claimed by AQAP to be a reaction to US-backed attacks in Yemen immediately before Christmas.

Yemen background

At antiwar.com here.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

US arms Arab dictatorships

Article here.

US trucking scandal in Afghanistan

Article here on the trucking contracts.
US taxpayers money ends up in Taliban's hands.

IRan forgeries

US intelligence says the alleged incriminating documents discussed in mid-December by the London Times are fake.

Yemen militancy and resources

An article saying that the rise of militancy in Yemen can in good part be explained by conflicts over resources, such as the fact that Yemen is running out of water.

Also, the Guardian reports that Al Qaeda says that the attempted strike by the Nigerian over Detroit were a retaliation against recent US involvement in strikes on Al Qaeda in Yemen. Also, the US had increased its involvement over the last few years: The US has increased its military aid package to Yemen from less than $11m in 2006 to more than $70m this year, as well as providing up to $121m for development over the next three years. The Wall Street Journal suggests a similar point.

Patrick Cockburn also mentions that Yemen's troubles were amplified when Saudi Arabia sent back 1 million Yemenis to Yemen because it refused to back the first Gulf War. Also, the 2003 invasion of Iraq radicalized the militants in Yemen.

Monday, December 28, 2009

US covert attacks on Iran

Selig Harrison reminds us that ethnic separatism and discontent in Iran are a potential source of great instability for the mullahs' regime. He also writes that the US under Bush, and seemingly under Obama, has supported those ethnic groups through the CIA, Israel's Mossad and Paksitan's ISI:


During the Bush administration, a debate raged between White House advocates of “regime change” in Tehran, who favored large-scale covert action to break up the country, and State Department moderates who argued that all-out support of the minorities would complicate negotiations on a nuclear deal with the dominant Persians.

The result was a compromise: limited covert action carried out by proxy, in the case of the Baluch, through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate or, I.S.I., and in the case of the Kurds by the C.I.A. in cooperation with Israel’s Mossad. My knowledge of the I.S.I.’s role is based on first-hand Pakistani sources, including Baluch leaders. Evidence of the C.I.A. role in providing weapons aid and training to Pejak, the principal Kurdish rebel group in Iran, has been spelled out by three U.S. journalists, Jon Lee Anderson and Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker and Borzou Daragahi of the Los Angeles Times, who have interviewed a variety of Pejak leaders.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Yemen

A very good interview about Al Qaeda in Yemen here.

Friday, December 25, 2009

US must disarm first

Ahmadinejad said that "the Iranian nation and all the world's nations will continue resisting until the complete (nuclear) disarmament of America and all arrogant powers."

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Drugs in Lebanon

Israel is using the "Hezbollah are growing drugs" argument...

Afghanistan drugs

A US Government report that says that the counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan are not very well planned and ad hoc. Table 2 show the funding breakdown of US drug efforts in Afghanistan, with "eradication" taking the bulk of resources. Also around p.17 there is a discussion of the evolving US and military strategy on drugs.

Bin Laden book

A review of bin Laden's son and wife's book.

Bomb Iran

Alan Kuperman says we should bomb Iran, perhaps even more than once. The article is so ridiculous that it's worth reading.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Non-violent resistance in Palestine

Neve Gordon documents the non-violent resistance movement in Palestine, and the consequences they suffer.

Iran

Article summarizing the situation with Iran.

Al Qaeda

Very good summary article on AQ's operations.

China energy resources

A good synthesis article of China's quest for energy resources around the world.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Afghanistan war just?

Michael Walzer argues the case that invading Afghanistan was just because AlQaeda and the Taliban regime were allies, and that we should stay there for a while because we owe it to the Afghan people, who can become more democratic while protected by the US military.

Those arguments are easily refuted: the first implies that many countries should invade the US because the US military is surely allied with the US government and has committed many more atrocities than AQ ever has and ever will. The second argument assumes that the US military's intent is to protect civilians and democracy; but those are not at all the driving motives of the US military and government; if they were, the very democratic groups Walzer is talking about would be supported by the US, not ignored. Of course it is possible that there are unintended consequences to a US military operations that somehow leads to some resurgence of democracy, but this would not indicate motive. Whatever indirect good the US military is bringing to Afghanistan, the point is that the US could bring about a million times more good by changing its policies toward Afghanistan, eg by sending a big surge of reparation money, civilian aid, etc.

There is an article here that argues against Walzer's case.

US infiltrated Pakistan in raids

A very good article here saying that the US did infiltrate with boots Pakistan in a few raids in the last few years. Another related very good article is here.
Excerpts:

American special forces have conducted multiple clandestine raids into Pakistan's tribal areas as part of a secret war in the border region where Washington is pressing to expand its drone assassination programme.

A former Nato officer said the incursions, only one of which has been previously reported, occurred between 2003 and 2008, involved helicopter-borne elite soldiers stealing across the border at night, and were never declared to the Pakistani government.

"The Pakistanis were kept entirely in the dark about it. It was one of those things we wouldn't confirm officially with them," said the source, who had detailed knowledge of the operations.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Korea vs. Iran nuclear

An article showing the double standards in dealing with South Korea, which enriched uranium to 77% without any consequences, and Iran, which didn't do that, put got sanctions.


The double standard of treatment of the South Korean and Iranian cases implied that the United States had hard intelligence that Iran had exhibited an interest in nuclear weapons, whereas South Korea had not.

However, the closest thing to such evidence in U.S. possession was a set of documents of uncertain provenance and authenticity.

On the other hand, nuclear physicists working in the Korean nuclear program, who had been recruited by the CIA, had reported in the mid-1970s that South Korea was carrying out a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Obama gives $30 billion to Israel

Obama approved $30 bn in military aid to Israel over the next 10 years.
The Palestinians will get $500 million, but by "Palestinians" is meant Fatah.

Cannabis in Afghanistan

Afghanistan may be the world's largest producer of cannabi

Here are a few articles on this subject:

NYT (2007) says farmers may have eradicated poppies but they often switch to cannabis.

2 million troops deployed since 9-11

This article gives the breakdown.

Afghanistan drugs

Children used as couriers for drugs in Herat province.

And in the north, warlords are reemerging and trying to compete with one another for political power.

Karzai's cabinet

Karzai's cabinet will be composed of warlords and their allies as well as figures that please the West.

An important new addition to the cabinet, as minister of public works, will be Gul Agha Sherzai, the powerful governor of eastern Nangarhar province and a former militia commander in Kandahar, according to the list. Though he has been accused of fostering corruption, U.S.-led coalition commanders appreciate him for keeping insurgents at bay in his province, which straddles the key military supply route from Pakistan.

Obama attacks Yemen

The US has sent cruise missiles on Yemen as parts of attacks that killed 120 people, including many civilians.

Friday, December 18, 2009

190,000 US personel in Afghanistan

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

$1 billion shady expenses on contractors in Afghanistan

The Defense Contract Audit Agency has examined $5.9 billion in Afghanistan troop support contracts and determined that $950 million of the expenses were unreasonable or lacked adequate documentation to support them, according to a memo prepared by McCaskill's staff and distributed to subcommittee members.

"That's nearly one of every six dollars," she said.

The growing number of contractors in Afghanistan is outpacing the ability to oversee them, raising concerns that the waste and fraud that marred the U.S. mission in Iraq will be repeated, lawmakers said Thursday.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said there are already more than 100,000 Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan and that figure could grow to 160,000 to support the surge of U.S. troops ordered by President Barack Obama earlier this month.

CIA and torture in the West Bank

Article here.

Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly torturing supporters of the Islamist organisation Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the Guardian has learned.

Less than a year after Barack Obama signed an executive order that prohibited torture and provided for the lawful interrogation of detainees in US custody, evidence is emerging the CIA is co-operating with security agents whose continuing use of torture has been widely documented by human rights groups.

The relationship between the CIA and the two Palestinian agencies involved – Preventive Security Organisation (PSO) and General Intelligence Service (GI) – is said by some western diplomats and other officials in the region to be so close that the American agency appears to be supervising the Palestinians' work.

One senior western official said: "The [Central Intelligence] Agency consider them as their property, those two Palestinian services." A diplomatic source added that US influence over the agencies was so great they could be considered "an advanced arm of the war on terror".

While the CIA and the Palestinian Authority (PA) deny the US agency controls its Palestinian counterparts, neither denies that they interact closely in the West Bank.

Afghan surge costs

An article here on what we could buy with $30 billion.

Pakistan's dilemma

Pakistan's military is divided over doing the US's bidding in attacking varous terrorist groups in Pakistan and preserving some alliance with them.
In particular there is a dilemma as to whether or not Pakistan should target the Haqqani network.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan

A new CRS report gives the breakdowns and comprehensive information.

US spends $150 million on fake missile

Designed to simulate an Iranian attack.

Up to 56,000 new contractors in Afghanistan

The surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of up to 56,000 contractors, vastly expanding the presence of personnel from the U.S. private sector in a war zone, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

CRS, which provides background information to members of Congress on a bipartisan basis, said it expects an additional 26,000 to 56,000 contractors to be sent to Afghanistan. That would bring the number of contractors in the country to anywhere from 130,000 to 160,000.

The tally "could increase further if the new [administration] strategy includes a more robust construction and nation building effort," according to the report, which was released Monday and first disclosed on the Web site Talking Points Memo.

The CRS study says contractors made up 69 percent of the Pentagon's personnel in Afghanistan last December, a proportion that "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by the Defense Department in any conflict in the history of the United States." As of September, contractor representation had dropped to 62 percent, as U.S. troop strength increased modestly.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

US imposes sanctions on foreign banks dealing with Iran

Article here. It shows how much power the US has to impose sanctions on foreign banks to put them in line with its foreign policy.

Terrorism on the rise worldwide but AQ on decline

A new report says that terrorism is on the rise worldwide, although AQ is on a decline.
This is what is expected, as US operations have dismantled the AlQaeda organization, but upset so many people worldwide that terrorism is increasing. Another good reason to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The actual report is here.

Canada supported human rights abuser in Afghanistan

Article here.

100,000 Afghan children saved!

Brown said 100,000 Afghan children had been saved as a result of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

Assuming it is true that the mortality rate for children went down since the invasion, it doesn't justify anything foreign troops are doing there. Brown's comment is as stupid as saying that any colonial invasion was good if it led to some improvement somewhere in the conquered population. The point is that 1000 times more improvements could have happened if the international community had dealt with Afghanistan through aid etc.

Iraq oil contracts

Pepe Escobar says the oil contracts signed so far in Iraq show that Russia and China have outcompeted the US, so the invasion of Iraq's goal of getting control of Iraq's resources was not that successful. He also says that what the early 2010s will definitely see is the rise of a relatively wealthy, Shi'ite-controlled Iraq friendly with Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah. Essentially, Shi'ite Islam on the rise.

Speaking before the Congressional Natural Gas Caucus in October, oil magnate T. Boone Pickens said the cost in lives and money entitled U.S. companies to some of the Iraqi crude. “They’re opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world. We’re entitled to it,” he said. “Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars. We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil.”

China-Turkmenistan gas deal

An important gas deal between China and Turkmenistan has been implemented, as natural gas started flowing to China, which took a good step towards displacing Russia as an important partner in Central Asia's energy sector.

Also, whatever ambitions the US had to get Turkmenistan's gas through Afghanistan (through the planned TAPI pipeline), those ambitions have now suffered a blow.

Russian energy giant Gazprom is contracted to purchase between 50 to 65 bcm annually from Turkmenistan, accounting for about 90% of the Central Asian country's gas exports.

But since an explosion along the pipeline connecting Turkmenistan to Russia in April, no gas has been flowing, stoking tensions between the two countries and leading Turkmenistan to speed up efforts to find alternative export avenues.

The two sides are close to agreement on renewing supplies, but when the flow of gas does resume Gazprom's share of Turkmen gas will have fallen to just over 50% as a result of the new China route and others expected to go on line soon.

A new pipeline to Iran, due to be launched later this month, will eventually send another 8 bcm to Iran, with plans to add 4 bcm more, bringing the total slated for the Turkmenistan's southern neighbor to 20 bcm.

The Turkmenistan-China pipeline is also due to take some gas from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to China.

Financial regulations

Good article here summarizing the few good things about the House bill to regulate finance and its many failings.

Obama's domestic drug policy

Article here.

And another one here, also arguing that we might see changes in US drugs policy under Obama.

Obama supports impunity for torture

NYT editorial:
In case after case, the Obama administration has echoed — and in some instances exceeded — Bush-era claims designed to cover up despicable acts committed in the name of fighting terrorism and avoiding accountability for the responsible officials. Last month, for example, the Justice Department filed a brief in the Supreme Court opposing review of another lawsuit by torture victims. The brief argued that there was no basis for claims by former detainees at Guantánamo Bay, since at the time of their detention, between 2002 and 2004, it was not firmly established that their treatment was illegal.

That would be an outrageous argument coming from any administration. But it is even more disappointing coming from one that has said torture is clearly illegal. “The Bush administration constructed a legal framework for torture,” observes Jameel Jaffer, who leads the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, “but the Obama administration is constructing a legal framework for impunity.”

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Drone wars

An article reviewing drone attacks in Pakistan.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Friday, December 11, 2009

Blackwater and CIA operations

A very good summary article on this here.

Obama's surges

Article at Tomdispatch outlining the many ways in which Obama has been surging in Afghanistan.

Private contractor surge: “The Defense Department's latest census shows that the number of contractors increased about 40% between the end of June and the end of September, for a total of 104,101. That compares with 113,731 in Iraq, down 5% in the same period... Most of the contractors in Afghanistan are locals, accounting for 78,430 of the total...” In other words, there are already more private contractors on the payroll in Afghanistan than there will be U.S. troops when the latest surge is complete.

And many more surges...

Obama's missile shield in Poland

Antony Adolph says it right: Obama pretended to dismantle Bush's missile shield plans in Poland, but all he did was to establish a new missile shield system.

Antony Adolph writes in a guest op-ed for IC:

A Missile Shield by Any Other Name:

Is Obama's Global Military Strategy Taking Shape in Eastern Europe?


No one wants to sit on a sofa that's uncomfortable for too long, so why would Eastern Europeans, let alone the world? The 'SOFA' in question (a Status of Forces Agreement, regulating military bases and personnel abroad) with the U.S. is as far from the Ikea-seating kind as possible, except metaphorically. Nevertheless, Poland was left standing in its regards until December 10, 2009 after the latest round of their military negotiations, the end of which was announced December 4. What will transpire is likely to be highly indicative of President Obama's Eastern European and global military strategies to come.

An agreement was announced by both Polish and U.S. high officials about the types, quantities and locations of advanced missile launchers and projectiles to be stationed in Poland. But they left two lecherously lingering questions about President Obama's global military goals as compared to his predecessor, particularly as to how different or similar they actually are and are likely to be. Campaign rhetoric and first Presidential steps are seemingly turning into a bait and switch. Having inked a SOFA deal with Poland, the Czech republic will be next, according to official sources, with the environmental summit in Copenhagen acting as an inconvenient cover. Romania’s contested elections make for fertile grounds for intervention, if they are not already the result.

The first question is to what extent the missile deployments to Poland contravene Obama's celebrated decision to shut down President George W. Bush's European missile shield earlier this year. The decision to shelve the widely contentious program was welcomed by Russia's premier, the primary opponent to Bush's plan because of its stationing in former Soviet satellites. If saving Russia face is the goal, doing it at the expense of local hosts is too high a cost because of potential “blowback,” the official CIA term for missions that come back to haunt, like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The response of the intended host countries was mixed at best and grudging at worst: there's more than just a bit of money and might involved in hosting U.S. Military bases, setting aside for a moment the equally tremendous costs.

At the time of the announcement, I optimistically heralded Obama's bold move as ushering in a new period of global détente. There certainly could have been if he wasn't proving so keen on taking back door measures to achieve front line military objectives, as with Poland and the Czech republic. Toying with the type, quantity and locations of missile launchers so that they do not constitute a 'shield' is smokescreening of the first order and needs immediate unmasking as such. Whether Patriot missiles, SM-3, here or there: a weapon by any other name is still as deadly, and its supporting staff still as damaging, in this case a missile shield and the U.S. soldiers stationed to man and if need be launch them.

The second major question in regards to Polish military cooperation are the terms of the SOFA itself. Such agreements have generally been the bane of countries that host U.S. military operations because of their blatant and seemingly incontrovertible double standards for U.S. military personnel and locals, even when they come with considerably bounty. All but a few of the 800 or so U.S. Bases worldwide have SOFAs in place, usually considered a prerequisite for the military and its civilian contractor entourage to move in. The latter often have even less accountability than the former, and a large part are employees of Halliburton subsidiaries.

American bases in Okinawa, for example, are among the most longstanding and most visible stain along these lines, as rapes, destruction of private property and environmental and noise pollution (among other crimes) by U.S. personnel have gone unpunished because they are unpunishable according to the SOFA in place. These are, to be polite, blemishes upon the brave and diligent record of American soldiers abroad who work and play by the rules. Thousands of violations like these are reported at U.S. bases yearly, from drunken brawls to prisoner abuse and torture, the last of which Obama also pledged to end as one of his first Presidential acts. If the missiles are a first Presidential take-back, will torture under the SOFA be a second?

Arguably the most astutely critical scholar of SOFAs globally, Chalmers Johnson, may contend that because SOFAs and the bases or installations they cover are inextricably tied to each other as to stipulations of jurisdiction, both should rejected outright. I think that being able to intercept missiles launched by rogue states and terrorists (nuclear or otherwise) is a reasonable and pragmatic proposition, need not be linked to a shield-in-disguise, and can be operated by locals with sufficient training and cooperation. If the U.S. believes it can do something similar on the level of a country (namely, 'train' Iraqi and Afghan police forces and government officials), surely it can in a militarily-secured area of a few square miles.

A foreign U.S. Base operated entirely by locals would bypass the need for a traditional SOFA, preserve Obama's "good guy" image to Bush's "bad" domestically and internationally, and limit the downsides for Eastern Europeans while maximizing the upsides. For better or worse, the world does not yet have a global police system other than the either barbarously zealous or immorally reluctant U.S., depending on who is in charge. I have argued elsewhere that NATO should be put under a reformed U.N. command. But doing so is unlikely to transform SOFAs into comfortable couches armed forces and locals alike can sit on together until the raison d’être of military bases abroad are addressed to the point of disappearance.



Antony Adolf, author of Peace: A World History (Polity Press, Wiley Distributor) is publisher and host of One World, Many Peace: Current Events Creating the Future, Blog and Podcast.

Canadian government knew of detainee abuse

In a major embarrassment for the government, Canada's top soldier unexpectedly revealed on Wednesday that some Canadian troops had known detainees handed over to Afghan authorities could be abused.

The announcement by General Walt Natynczyk effectively swept away the long-held official line that there was no credible evidence prisoners might be harmed.

Legal experts say handing over detainees in the knowledge they could be abused is a war crime.

The opposition Liberal Party demanded a formal inquiry and said Defense Minister Peter MacKay should resign.

The ruling Conservatives, although still ahead of the Liberals, have slipped in recent polls amid intense media coverage of the abuse allegations.

MacKay has repeatedly told the House of Commons there is no evidence that soldiers knew prisoners might be abused. Last month, MacKay and senior officials publicly denigrated a Canadian diplomat based in Afghanistan who said he had repeatedly warned of the risk of torture in 2006 and 2007.

Iraq oil contracts

Shell and Petronas (Malaysia) won contracts to a third of Iraq's oil reserves.
A group of oil companies led by China's CNPC struck a deal to develop the Halfaya field.

West Bank boycott

An article on the new British guidelines for labeling food:

Britain has acted to increase pressure on Israel over its West Bank settlements by advising UK supermarkets on how to distinguish between foods from the settlements and Palestinian-manufactured goods.

The government's move falls short of a legal requirement but is bound to increase the prospects of a consumer boycott of products from those territories. Israeli officials and settler leaders were tonight highly critical of the decision.

Until now, food has been simply labelled "Produce of the West Bank", but the new, voluntary guidance issued by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), says labels could give more precise information, like "Israeli settlement produce" or "Palestinian produce".

Nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which were conquered in the 1967 war. The British government and the EU have repeatedly said Israel's settlement project is an "obstacle to peace" in the Middle East.

EU law already requires a distinction to be made between goods originating in Israel and those from the occupied territories, though pro-Palestinian campaigners say this is not always observed.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

US sanctions on Iran

An article on the US congress moves to enact tougher sanctions on Iran next week. Those sanctions are separate from and come on top of the multilateral sanctions enacted by the UN Security Council.

Iran nuclear

Gareth Porter on the Iranian nuclear swap deal.

Egypt's wall

Egypt has begun constructing a huge metal wall along its border with the Gaza Strip as it attempts to cut smuggling tunnels, the BBC has learned.

When it is finished the wall will be 10-11km (6-7 miles) long and will extend 18 metres below the surface.

The Egyptians are being helped by American army engineers, who the BBC understands have designed the wall.

And an article from the Guardian also talks about the new wall.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Iran energy

Iranian energy resources are targeted by China and Russia on one hand and by the West on the other hand. This competition is the subject of an interesting article here.

Honduras sham elections

An article pointing out that the recent elections in Honduras are a sham as the elected president, Zelaya, removed in a coup this summer, was not even a participant; turn out was below 50%. The US, which had initially denounced the coup, then backtracked and went along with recognizing the elections under the military coup. Now the State Department has launched a concerted campaign, along with the coup regime, to get foreign nations to recognize the Honduran elections.

The news is not that Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo of the National Party beat Elwin Santos of the Liberal Party. Since the military ousted the elected president Manuel Zelaya on June 28, the bipartisan system gave way to a far deeper duality — for and against the coup d'etat. Both Lobo and Santos favored the military takeover of the Honduran democracy and supported the illegal regime of Roberto Micheletti. Both sought to gain power by laundering the coup through these elections and to lock in a transition that guaranteed the continued power of the Honduran economic elite.

In fact, the November 29 national elections for president and congress shouldn't have taken place. The voting was organized and overseen by an illegal coup regime. This regime officially suspended basic civil liberties, such as freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. It closed down independent media, or repeatedly blocked transmissions.

In Honduras, normal electoral activities were redefined as criminal behavior, including holding rallies and proclaiming the right to abstain. Reports of coercion in factories and among public employees came in from individuals who suffered the threats firsthand. The army enforced the dictatorial decrees in the street.

Some 100 registered candidates, ranging from presidential candidates to local mayors, withdrew from the elections in protest of the continued coup and the internal exile of the elected president. The popular resistance called a boycott and a "popular curfew," urging people to stay at home on election day. This was in part to avoid confrontations with the over 30,000 security forces called out to "protect order," in a nation where these same forces are responsible for massive human rights violations and scores of murders of members of the resistance.

The Honduran elections should never have taken place because Honduras, under the coup regime, failed to meet the basic criteria of "free and fair elections" set out in documents like the one issued by the Inter-Parliamentary Council in 1994. The Honduran state didn't even come close to meeting the basic criteria of free elections by assuring freedom of movement, assembly, association, and expression. The security forces responsible for human rights violations before, during, and after voting have been granted complete immunity from justice. In San Pedro Sula, the police violently repressed a nonviolent march supporting the boycott, beating and arresting various people.

McChrystal's background

From an earlier article in May, Gareth Porter talks about McChrystal's background, who was basically in charge of Rumsfeld's assassination program. Their operations have caused much civilian resentment among Afghans, along with many deaths. For example, Porter reported that "the airstrike in western Farah province that killed nearly 150 civilians last week, provoking protests by hundreds of university students in Kabul, was also ordered by Special Operations Forces."
Also, McChrystal’s nomination to become director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon in May 2008 was held up for months while the Senate Armed Services Committee investigated a pattern of abuse of detainees by military personnel under his command. Sixty-four service personnel assigned or attached to Special Operations units were disciplined for detainee abuse between early 2004 and the end of 2007.


More:

As commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from April 2003 to August 2008, he was preoccupied with pursuing high value al Qaeda targets and local and national insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – mostly through targeted raids and airstrikes.

McChrystal spent an unusual five years as commander of JSOC, because he had become a close friend of then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld came to view JSOC as his counter to the covert operations capabilities of the CIA, which he hated and distrusted, and Rumsfeld used JSOC to capture or kill high value enemy leaders, including Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda’s top leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In 2005, JSOC’s parent command, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), was directed by Rumsfeld to "plan, synchronize and, as directed, conduct global operations against terrorist networks in coordination with other combatant commanders". That directive has generally been regarded as granting SOCOM the authority to carry out actions unilaterally anywhere on the globe.

Under that directive, McChyrstal and JSOC carried out targeted raids and other operations against suspected Taliban in Afghanistan which were not coordinated with the commander of other U.S. forces in the country. Gen. David Barno, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has said that he put a stop to targeted airstrikes in early 2004, but they resumed after he was replaced by McKiernan in 2005.

Human rights abuses in Mexico's war on drugs

AI report is here.

Military vs civilian spending in Afghanistan

There is an urgent need to balance the aid funds with the military budgets. A conservative assessment shows that aid money coming to the country is less than 10% of the military spending by the troops contributing nations.

An earlier assessment had noted that the amount spent by the US military alone in Afghanistan-$100 million every day- is ludicrous compared to the amount provided by international donors for reconstruction and development-a meager $7 million per day.

Taliban's shadow government

An article about the shadow government implemented by the Taliban in many areas in Afghanistan, in parallel with the formal Karzai government.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Honduras

An article on Honduras and the changing US position.

It outlines how the US initially opposed the coup by speaking against it just after it happened, and said that it wouldn't recognize the elections set for late November unless Zelaya, the deposed president, was first restored.
But then, this fall, the US shifted its position: it began to accept the elections even if Zelaya was not restored and did not participate in the elections.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Israel pressures sick Gazans to become informants in exchange for care

Israel is pressuring sick Gazans to become informants as a condition for passage out of Gaza and getting health care.

HRW: women in Afghanistan in very bad condition

A new HRW report says that the situation of women in Afghanistan is very bad.

The report says that Afghan women continue to be "among the worst off in the world" and that "their situation is dismal in every area, including in health, education, employment, freedom from violence, equality before the law, and political participation."

The main reason is that the Afghan government has relied on conservative factions for political support and those factions are obviously opposed to women's rights.

The report says that in May 2008 President Karzai pardoned two gang rapists who had served only 2 years of an 11-year prison sentence. (another article on this case is here).

It also said that after the Afghan parliament passed the Shia Personal Status law, Afghan women’s rights activists were galvanized and mounted a successful campaign to
force the president to revise the law, aided by the outspokenness of countries like the US,
Canada, and various European nations. Unfortunately, the final outcome fell far short of
expectations, apparently because President Karzai was intent on maintaining the electoral
support of Shia fundamentalists. A month before the presidential election he issued by
decree an amended version of the law which still includes articles that impose drastic
restrictions upon Shia women, including the requirement that wives seek their husbands’
permission before leaving home except for unspecified “reasonable legal reasons.” The law
also gives child custody rights to fathers and grandfathers, not mothers or grandmothers,
and allows a husband to cease maintenance to his wife if she does not meet her marital
duties, including sexual duties.

Cockburn on Iraq and Afghanistan

Article here, repeats that the Iraq surge was not the main cause of the decrease in violence in Iraq:

There are real parallels between the US and British intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they are not the ones which the White House and Downing Street are publicising. In both countries foreign forces were intervening in a potential or actual ethnic and sectarian civil war. In Afghanistan this is between the Pashtun on one side and the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara on the other and has been going on for 30 years. In Iraq it is between the Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs. The Sunni were the predominant community under Saddam Hussein and were displaced by the Shia after a horrendous civil war which reached its peak in and around Baghdad in 2006-07. Sunni insurgents did surprisingly well against US troops, but lost the war against the Shia.

The guerrilla war against the US in Iraq ceased because the Sunni community was being slaughtered by Shia death squads. "Judging by the body counts at the time in the Baghdad morgues, three Sunnis died for every Shia," Dr Michael Izady, who conducted a survey of the sectarian make-up of Baghdad for Columbia University's School of International Affairs, is quoted as saying. "Baghdad, basically a Sunni city into the 1940s, by the end of 2008 had only a few hundred thousand Sunni residents left in a population of over five million." Defeated in this devastating sectarian civil war, the Sunni ended their attacks on US troops and instead sought their protection. The "surge" of 28,000 extra US troops who arrived in the summer of 2007 had a marginal impact on the outcome of the fighting.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Polls on Afghanistan

A Gallup poll taken just after Obama's escalation speech revealed that 51% of Americans approve the escalation with withdrawal, whereas 40% oppose the strategy.

In October 2009, an Associated Press-GfK poll showed that public support for the war was at 40%, down from 44% in July.


Earlier in September, a CNN poll had found that support for the war among Americans was at 39% vs. 58% who opposed it.

And in August, 45% favored decreasing US troop levels in Afghanistan, as opposed to 24% who wanted an increase.

In July, 55% of Americans supported the war, whereas 53% of Britons and 52% of Canadians opposed it. In the Netherlands, 74% wanted their all or most of their troops withdrawn. Italians and Australians were also uneasy about the war.

Taliban say won't attack west if troops withdraw

The Taliban have just announced that if foreign troops withdraw, they will give legal guarantees that attacks against Western countries won't originate from Afghanistan:

The Taliban said in a statement Saturday it would provide a "legal guarantee" that they would not intervene in foreign countries if international troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

The Taliban have "no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal guarantee if the foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan," the group said in a statement emailed to news organizations.

The statement did not specify what such a guarantee would look like. A Taliban spokesman was not available for comment.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Decision making behind Obama's surge in Afghanistan

A lengthy article in the NYT details how Obama came to make his decision on escalation in Afghanistan. It says:

-Mr. Obama also firmly closed the door on any withdrawal. “I just want to say right now, I want to take off the table that we’re leaving Afghanistan,” he told his advisers.

- Mr. Obama was leery. He had received a memo the day before from the Office of Management and Budget projecting that General McChrystal’s full 40,000-troop request on top of the existing deployment and reconstruction efforts would cost $1 trillion from 2010 to 2020

The case for a regional solutino in Afghanistan

An article argues for a regional solution in Afghanistan, most notably by involving the SCO which has been relegated to the sidelines by the West (it was not invited to the 2001 Bonn conference). It says that the media constantly plays up the false assumption that "if the US withdraws, the Taliban come back": this is wrong, as the US could withdraw and other regional powers could prevent the Taliban from coming back.

Neo-cons like Obama's escalation

A little review here.

Chilcot

The Chilcot enquiry tells us that Britain sent troops to Iraq in order to "raise standing" with the US.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Al Qaeda and non-Westerners/Muslims

Al Qaeda seems to be killing more non-Westerners than Westerners, a new report argues. There is also an article here about it.

The results show that non‐Westerners are much more likely to be killed in an al‐Qa’ida
attack. From 2004 to 2008, only 15% percent of the 3,010 victims were Western. During
the most recent period studied the numbers skew even further. From 2006 to 2008, only
2% (12 of 661 victims) are from the West, and the remaining 98% are inhabitants of
countries with Muslim majorities.

CIA drone war expanded

The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, officials said this week, to parallel the president’s decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. American officials are talking with Pakistan about the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time — a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas — because that is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide.
Forty-four countries have unmanned aircraft for surveillance. So far, only the United States and Israel have used the planes for strikes, but that number will grow.
A poll by Gallup Pakistan last summer found only 9 percent of Pakistanis in favor of the attacks and 67 percent against, with a majority ranking the United States as a greater threat to Pakistan than its archrival, India, or the Pakistani Taliban.

Senate report on Tora Bora

The Senate (Kerry) report on bin Laden and Tora Bora says that he could have been captured there. But also interesting is that it reminds us of the US alliances with warlords, commanders and drug traffickers from the early days of the campaign. For instance:

Some of the local allies were allies of convenience, Taliban rivals who held power by force and
paid their men by collecting tolls and taxes on legitimate commerce and trafficking in heroin. By providing money and weapons, the U.S. forces helped the warlords destroy their rivals and expand their personal power. Many later entered the Afghan government
and remain influential figures. The strategy was a short cut to victory
that would have consequences for long-term stability in Afghanistan.
When it came to bin Laden, the special operations forces relied
on two relatively minor warlords from the Jalalabad area. Haji
Hazarat Ali had a fourth-grade education and a reputation as a
bully. He had fought the Soviets as a teenager in the 1980s and
later joined the Taliban for a time. The other, Haji Zaman
Ghamsharik, was a wealthy drug smuggler who had been persuaded
by the United States to return from France.

The report says:
our Afghan militia allies did not have the same incentives to stop bin Laden and his associates as
American troops. Nor did they have the technology and training to carry out such a difficult mission. The responsibility for allowing the most wanted man in the world to virtually disappear into thin air lies with the American commanders who refused to commit the necessary U.S. soldiers and Marines to finish the job.
The same shortage of U.S. troops allowed Mullah Mohammed
Omar and other Taliban leaders to escape. A semi-literate leader
who fled Kandahar on a motorbike, Mullah Omar has re-emerged
at the helm of the Taliban-led insurgency, which has grown more
sophisticated and lethal in recent years and now controls swaths
of Afghanistan.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Helmand and opium

An article about a program to substitute wheat for opium in Helmand and the corruption associated with it. The program is called "Food Zone" and is funded by the British-led Provincial Reconstruction Team, PRT, in Helmand, which provided close to US$13 million for the project last year. In November and December 2008, the Food Zone programme provided 32,000 farmers in Helmand with 3,200 tonnes of wheat seed, plus fertilizer and technical assistance. This is intended to boost wheat production ahead of what is expected to be tough winter of food shortages in Afghanistan. Governor Mangal has also used the scheme to tackle the province's narcotics industry, by securing the written agreement of every farmer who received the wheat seed not to grow opium poppy.

Afghan escalation commentary

Timothy Garton Ash has a piece here, where he argues that the war on Afghanistan was justified as a response to 9-11 and that we should support our American ally.

Apparently we should therefore not support the majority of Afghans who oppose more troops, and Iraq and other countries are justified to attack Britain and the US in response to their own invasions and acts of terrorism.

Gates says Iran's aid to Taliban small and insignificant

Article here.

Afghan war costs

An article by Phyllis Bennis on the costs of Obama's Afghan war, saying among other things that the war will cost about $100 billion this year, whereas:

And the day of the speech itself was World AIDS Day. The UNAIDS noted that all of its country goals — treatment for 6–7 million people, screening 70 million pregnant women, providing preventive services to 37 million people — could be accomplished with just $25 billion. That’s what the United States will spend fighting in Afghanistan in just three months. Timing matters.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Iran nuclear

Sahimi has another good article on Iran here, outlining the West's double standards:

The issue also has to do with the double standards of the U.S. and its allies. They have agreed to transfer their nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia (even if it has the world's largest oil reserves), Qatar, Bahrain (and here), and India; did nothing to prevent Pakistan from developing a nuclear arsenal; and supported Israel in its quest for nuclear weapons. They have also not opposed agreements between Egypt and Russia and Oman and Russia regarding the construction of nuclear reactors in Iran’s vicinity. But the same nations lament a nuclear race in the Middle East and the "threat" that Iran’s nuclear program supposedly poses to peace and stability in the region. [However, none of those agreements seems to involve enrichment--they are about building reactors etc. and getting enriched fuel from outside the country--whereas the sticking point with Iran is about enrichment.]

Since Iran has not ratified the Additional Protocol, it has no legal obligation to follow it. This puts Iran in the same category as 36 other nations, none of which have been referred to the UNSC. Moreover, according to the IAEA’s own reports, of the 61 states that have signed both the NPT safeguards and the Additional Protocol, the IAEA can certify the absence of undeclared nuclear facilities in only 21 nations. This puts Iran in the same category as 40 other nations, including Canada, the Czech Republic, and South Africa, none of which have been referred to the UNSC, another manifestation of the West’s double standards.

Cost of Afghan war

With the economic crisis, arguments that the war in Afghanistan is getting too costly are being voiced, just like in Vietnam. Thomas Friedman for example writes:

To now make Afghanistan part of the “war on terrorism” — i.e., another nation-building project — is not crazy. It is just too expensive, when balanced against our needs for nation-building in America, so that we will have the strength to play our broader global role. Hence, my desire to keep our presence in Afghanistan limited.

$1 trillion mark almost reached

Obama has just announced he will send about 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and he's hoping that NATO will send another 10,000 or so, which would make 40,000. That will cost about $1 million extra per year per extra soldier, so about $30 BILLION per year extra for the US alone.

This article summarizes concisely the costs:

How much will the troop escalation in Afghanistan cost you?

A pretty penny. President Obama said Tuesday night it would cost $30 billion this fiscal year — or about $1 million per soldier — to send 30,000 additional troops there. That’s a low estimate, budget experts say, but let’s run with it for the moment. An extra $30 billion in Afghanistan means that in 2010 alone, US military spending in Afghanistan will equal nearly half of total spending on the war since 2001, according to Travis Sharp, military policy analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington. The troop increase will cost $2.5 billion per month, $82 million per day, $3.4 million per hour, $57,000 per minute, and $951 per second.

It’s a direct tax on Americans: about $195 for each taxpayer next year.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Even after wars wind down, charges continue to accrue.

“The total cost of [the escalation in] Afghanistan will be at least twice the cost and perhaps three times the cost of the estimate, says Linda Bilmes, a budget and public-finance expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. When she counts replacement of worn-out military equipment, disability payments to soldiers, Veterans Administration medical care, and the interest charges to finance the war, the tab doubles. When she adds indirect costs to the economy — say, the lost wages of a parent who quits his job to care for a son wounded in combat — it triples.


Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has welcomed Barack Obama's commitment to send 30,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan. Rasmussen said that he thought it was the right decision for both Afghanistan and Nato, and said he was confident allies would contribute another 5,000 forces.

This map shows where the troops are in Afghanistan.

The costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars total about $1 trillion so far.

Obama's proposal would place more than 200,000 troops altogether in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the troop level across both nations averages 75,000 through the next decade, the operations will cost an additional $867 billion -- more than the $848 billion health-care legislation the Senate is considering.

So that would make it to a cumulative total of about $2 trillion total by 2019.

See also this article on costs and Congressional factions.

The Washington Post thought Obama's decision was "both correct and courageous"; the NYT said "we are sure that continuing President Bush’s strategy of fighting on the cheap (in January 2008, the start of Mr. Bush’s last year in office and more than six years after the war began, there were only 27,000 American troops in Afghanistan) is a guarantee of defeat", therefore "Obama showed considerable political courage" in his speech.
The WSJ also backed the decision, although it was concerned with the clear beginning of withdrawal date (July 2011): "the focus on withdrawal so soon after escalation sends a message of doubt to the very Afghans the surge is supposed to reassure, while encouraging the Taliban to wait us out." The WSJ also has concerns over Obama's "war diffidence"--that's what we're supposed to think a 30,000 surge is about (how many more troops would the WSJ need for Obama not to be diffident?).
The LA Times said they were worried about money and success, not about the morality of occupation: they have "grave misgivings about the cost and likelihood of success".

But Obama's approval ratings on Afghanistan are falling. Gallup has a number of questions that illustrate this well. They summarize: "The decline in Obama's approval rating on Afghanistan is evident among all party groups, with double-digit decreases since September among Republicans (17 points), independents (16 points), and Democrats (10 points)."

A Pew survey to be released soon will show public sentiment against intervention abroad at its highest level since such sentiment began being tested in 1964.

But Obama doesn't care about popular opinion; in fact he said it himself yesterday: ""I am painfully clear that this is politically unpopular," Obama told a small group of columnists. "Not only is this not popular, but it's least popular in my own party. But that's not how I make decisions." "

There is a good chart here tracing the increase in US troops in Afghanistan over time.

Obama's plan was denounced by liberals as costing too much or not warranted and by Republicans because it included references to an exit strategy.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Shalit-Barghouti swap

AT online describes the situation as follows:

Unlike Abbas, who has always ridiculed militants and looked down upon them, Barghouti is very popular with young men on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. He has plenty of war medals on his uniform, reminding Palestinians of Yasser Arafat during his heyday, and if he decides to sign peace, nobody will accuse him of treason or question his nationalist credentials. Barghouti is a Saladin - the greatest warrior of Islam - when compared to Abbas or the aging and corrupted leaders of Fatah.

He undoubtedly is a unifying force for the Palestinians (much needed in the weeks ahead) yet many within the upper echelons of power in Ramallah would want to keep him in jail - at least for now - because if he is set free, he would certainly run for the next Palestinian presidential elections and win with ease, drowning the ambitions of presidential hopefuls from Fatah and Hamas.

Iran nuclear

In the current proposed swap deal with Iran, CASMII argues that:

The IAEA under the NPT is obliged to provide Iran with enriched uranium for the Tehran reactor required for medical purposes by 200 hospitals in the country. Iran has offered to exchange on its soil most of its low enriched uranium with 20 percent enriched uranium from overseas. Iran has also announced it would agree to an exchange if there is 100 percent guarantee that the west would honour the deal and hand over the 20 percent enriched uranium. The West however has rejected these offers without any explanation.

And in more detail here.

In my view it's misleading to say that the IAEA is "obliged" to provide Iran with EU for their reactor; it would be more accurate to say that the IAEA and other countries are obliged to facilitate Iran's civilian nuclear development. This involves not hampering Iran's attempts to get the EU for its reactor.

Tariq Ali on Afgh, Pak

Good interview here.

Iraq oil

A NYT article summarizing the developments in oil contracts in Iraq.

Obama's escalation

Obama wants to send more troops to Afghanistan, which is in contradiction to what the US public wishes. But government doesn't care about its own population:

Among the US public, 59% oppose sending more troops. That includes 28% who want all US troops out and 21% supporting a partial US withdrawal. And 52% believe the war in Afghanistan has already turned into a Viet Nam-style quagmire.

Same thing in the UK, where 71% back a withdrawal within a year.
But
Britain has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan and Brown has already agreed to send a further 500.

Malalai Joya also wants troops out.