Impunity over East Timor

Amnesty International issued a report saying that little progress had been made on prosecuting human rights violators in East Timor. Since 1975 when Indonesia invaded East Timor, many killings and other abuses have been committed by the Indonesian military (backed by the US), most recently in 1999.

Military spending in the Middle East

Defense spending in the Middle East (including Israel) will exceed $100 billion by 2014 (this will be 11% of world military spending). Nevermind the economic crisis, military spending is always healthy.

Last year, the U.A.E. poured some $4 billion into its military, with Israel paying around $13 billion.

Now Saudi Arabia looks set to pay out at least $36 billion annually over the next five years.

US military in Colombia

The US military under Obama is expanding into Colombia under the pretext of a "War on Drugs".

Fahim and drugs

Marshall Fahim who could become Karzai's vice-president but is involved in the drug trade according to many reports. The NYT has a good article on this worth quoting at length:

The United States could take harsher steps, like going after the marshal’s finances, but this would be a remarkable move, given the deep American involvement in Afghanistan and the importance of its relationship with the Karzai government, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.

In 2001, when United States forces swept into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, Marshal Fahim, then a general, was a crucial ally as the military commander of the Northern Alliance.

He worked closely with the Central Intelligence Agency and was rewarded with millions of dollars in cash, according to current and former United States officials. After Mr. Karzai became head of Afghanistan’s transitional government, General Fahim was named defense minister.

In early 2002, at a Rose Garden ceremony with Mr. Karzai, then a darling of the White House, President George W. Bush announced that the United States would help create and train a new Afghan Army. That meant sending millions of dollars in aid to General Fahim and his ministry.

But by 2002, C.I.A. intelligence reports flowing into the Bush administration included evidence that Marshal Fahim was involved in Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade, according to officials discussing the reports and the internal debate for the first time.

He had a history of narcotics trafficking before the invasion, the C.I.A. reports showed. But what was most alarming in the reports were allegations that he was still involved after regaining power and becoming defense minister. He now had a Soviet-made cargo plane at his disposal that was making flights north to transport heroin through Russia, returning laden with cash, the reports said, according to American officials who read them. Aides in the Defense Ministry were also said to be involved.

The reports stunned some United States officials, and ignited a high-level, secret scramble.

And eventually, the Bush administration hit on what officials thought was a solution: American military trainers would be directed to deal only with subordinates to Marshal Fahim, and not Marshal Fahim himself.

That would at least give the Bush administration the appearance of complying with the law.

But as it turns out, both Afghan and American officials now say that Marshal Fahim continued to meet routinely with top American officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, then the American officer in charge of the military assistance to the
new Afghan Army.

By late 2003, officials said, the Bush administration began to realize its mistake, and initiated what officials called its “warlord strategy” to try to ease key warlords out of power. Marshal Fahim remained defense minister until 2004 and was briefly Mr. Karzai’s running mate as vice president in elections that year, but Mr. Karzai then dropped him.

CIA torture report

Glen Greenwald has a good post on the recently released report on CIA torture here.

Israeli settlements

The Guardian pursues its series on Israel's actions in the West Bank, in particular the building of infrastructure that make it harder to have a viable Palestinian state.

They also have a very good interactive map of Israel's expansion in the West Bank, in the form of settlements, nature reserves, military bases, etc.

25 million mines in Iraq

There are 25 million mines in Iraq, in addition to radioactive waste from depleted uranium used in explosives.
Iraq doesn't have enough funds to remove those dangerous materials.

Israel invasion of Gaza

Frida Berrigan has a good article summarizing Israel's use of weapons, some of which could be new, during the Gaza attack some months ago.

Israeli settlements construction don't stop in West Bank

Settlement construction in the West Bank has not stopped, despite official declarations to the contrary, Peace Now report.

Uri Davis in Fatah

Uri Davis was recently the first person of Jewish origin to be elected to the Revolutionary Council of the Palestinian Fatah movement. There is a good article in the Guardian about his life and ideas.

Military contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq

There are more military contractors than troops in Afghanistan, although about 2/3 of contractors are local Afghans (so in terms of nationality there are still more American troops than American contractors in Afghanistan).
In Iraq, as of June 30 there were 119,706 military contractors, down 10% from three months earlier and smaller than the number of U.S. troops, which stood at approximately 132,000. But as the Pentagon has been drawing down contractors in Iraq, their ranks have been growing in Afghanistan -- rising by 9% over that same three-month period to 73,968. More than two-thirds of those are local, which reflects the desire to employ Afghans as part of the counterinsurgency there.

Electoral fraud in Afghanistan

Gareth Porter reports on the electoral frauds in Afghanistan.

Taliban and opium

Gretchen Peters wrote a report arguing that opium finances the Taliban, just like in her recent book.
It's not untrue, but the problem is that she just focuses on "the insurgency" whereas the fact that the US empowered many druglords who profit much from the drug trade doesn't seem to be very important for her.

From Guantanamo to Bagram

Andy Worthington has an article arguing that Bagram prison in Afghanistan is the new Guantanamo.
He writes:
According to the best available estimates, at least 600 prisoners are held at Bagram, but unlike Guantánamo, no lawyer has ever set foot in the U.S. military’s flagship Afghan prison, even though some of the prisoners held there were seized in other countries and "rendered" to Bagram, where they have been held for up to seven years. The prison was particularly notorious in its early days – especially in 2002, when at least two prisoners died at the hands of U.S. forces – but according to a survey conducted by the BBC in June this year, former prisoners, held between 2002 and 2008, stated that they were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with dogs, and they provided no indication that conditions had improved from the beginning to the end of the six-year period.

There are two kinds of prisoners at Bagram: about 30 are foreigners from around the world (non Afghans) who have been brought there by the US, and the others are Afghans.

At the moment one important issue is: Will those foreign detainees at Bagram have the right to challenge their detention (habeas corpus)? A US judge ruled that they could, but it remains to be seen if this will be implemented.

Concerning the Afghan prisoners at Bagram, Worthington concludes:
"From what I have been able to gather about the workings of Bagram, I have no reason to conclude that the prison is now being run according to the Geneva Conventions".

Gaza siege

Juan Cole has a good post today on the effects of the siege on Gaza, particularly on health. He reports that 2/3 of Palestinians in Gaza suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (the same as US soldiers who return from Iraq and Afghanistan); 10% of children in Gaza are stunted; and the blockade of course prevents access to medical materials.

It is those dire conditions that drive some Palestinians to extreme measures, such as radical Islam. Cole writes:
Palestinians are among the most secular people in the Middle East over all, and the vast majority was uninterested in radical Islam until very recently. It is being put in what is essentially a prison camp by the Israelis that is driving some Gazans to extreme ideas and measures.

Afghanistan passes law against women

Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.

"It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the US charity Human Rights Watch said.

On factor explaining why Karzai passed the law is that he wants to get votes from some of the Shia community's leaders who favor such law just before the elections.

Karzai's brother linked drug trade again

British troops in Afghanistan discovered several tons of opium on a farm owned by President Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is head of the provincial council of Kandahar.

This demonstrates once again that the Karzai government is closely linked to drug traffickers.

Israeli soldiers fired on Palestinians holding white flags

Israeli soldiers battling Hamas militants last winter in Gaza opened fire on at least seven groups of Palestinian civilians who were carrying white flags, killing 11 people, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Thursday.
During the three-week conflict, the U.S.-based human rights group says, Israeli soldiers in separate parts of Gaza killed five women, four children and two men as they used white flags to try to escape the battle zone.
Human Rights Watch said it uncovered no evidence in the seven documented cases that the civilians holding white flags were being used by Hamas or other groups as human shields.

US military bases in Colombia

The US could soon reach a deal with Colombia over US military bases in that country, supposedly used for counter narcotics and counter insurgency operations.
The agreement involves the use of Colombian military bases by U.S. aircraft and troops engaged in counter-narcotics and counter-guerrilla surveillance programs. They would make up for last month's closure of a similar U.S. operation out of the Ecuadorean port of Manta, from where U.S. planes swept the Pacific for vessels smuggling cocaine north to Central America and Mexico, where it would be taken by land to the U.S. border.

Manta was one of the three U.S. "Forward Operating Locations" (FOLs) — others are in El Salvador and Aruba-Curaçao — that feed data to the counter-drug Joint Interagency Task Force based in Key West.

Israel's leverage over Gaza's utilities

A new report by an Israeli rights group documents how Israel used its leverage over Gaza's utilities (water, power) before, during and after the latest attack in December-January. For example, Israel cut water to Gaza's population.

The report said: “At the height of the [fighting], more than half a million residents were cut off from running water, sewage flowed in the streets, and hospitals were left to operate on generators running 24 hours a day. All this took place while the strip was being bombarded from the air, sea and land, and its borders remained sealed, leaving residents with nowhere to run.”

Taliban make small profits from drugs

The US now estimates that the Taliban make about $70 million from the drug trade in Afghanistan, a lower figure than they previously thought (some reports had put the figure as high as $400 million).

The gross income generated in Afghanistan from the drug trade is estimated to be about $3.4 billion (this is the total income that is generated by the export of opium from Afghanistan).

Out of this $3.4 billion, Afghan farmers take about $0.7 billion (or 21% of the total revenue); and traffickers take $2.7 billion (79%). A substantial portion of this $2.7 billion ends up in the pockets of warlords, insurgents, etc. who tax the industry and ask for protection money. (those numbers are from UNODC's latest opium survey of Afghanistan).

So that means that the Taliban capture only about 2% of the total income from drugs. But, the mainstream media line that we hear is that "drugs fund the Taliban"--yes it does, but it funds to a much greater extent warlords and government officials, many of whom are supported by the US.

The Senate report which made the above claims contains other interesting points:

-The conflict between the DEA vs. the CIA/military: historically, the DEA has sought to eliminate drugs, but the CIA has often given protection to drug traffickers to use them as local allies in fulfilling US foreign policy goals. The same situation is happening in Afghanistan, as the report states:
"congressional committees received reports that U.S. forces were refusing to disrupt drug sales
and shipments and rebuffing requests from the Drug Enforcement Administration for reinforcements to go after major drug kingpins."

-Al Qaeda does not get money from drugs:
"Surprisingly, there is no evidence that any significant amount of
the drug proceeds go to Al Qaeda. Contrary to conventional wisdom,
numerous money laundering and counter-narcotics experts
with the United States Government in Afghanistan and Washington
said flatly that they have seen no indication of the Taliban
or traffickers paying off Al Qaeda forces left inside the country. ‘‘A
lot of people have been looking for an Al Qaeda role in drug trafficking
and it’s not really there,’’ said a senior State Department
official involved in the region."

-Big fish are not arrested:
"In the year
that ended in March, the court convicted 259 people on drug
charges, which carry a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.
But those convicted were low-level to medium-level figures; no
major traffickers have even been arrested in Afghanistan since
2006."

-The US is targeting drug traffickers who have links with the Taliban. (Those with links with the government only are not targeted, which shows that what the US cares about is not drug elimination, but the elimination of those who oppose its policies).

I would say that the shift under Obama to commit the US military to fighting drugs in Afghanistan, to the extent that it is real, has to do with the need for the US to build a client state that is functioning. Drugs undermines the working of the state if it is controlled by warlords and druglords who pursue their own interests. So it might be a reason why Obama cares somewhat about dealing with the drug problem, if he actually does.

Who profits from Israeli Occupation of West Bank?

A good video from the Real News Network talking about Israeli goods produced in the West Bank, some of which have been the target of international boycott campaigns, for example, Ahava beauty products.

Obama same as Bush on Latin America

Mark Weisbrot on Obama's policies toward Latin America, which he argue are basically the same as Bush--meaning bad.

Big drug trafficker sentenced in Afghanistan

The Guardian reports that a big drug trafficker, Haji Abdullah, has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for his involvement in the opium trade.
The article argues that this marks an important development as until now, big traffickers were not arrested and were let go free.
However, we need to wait to see what will happen with this "big fish": he might well be released soon, as others have been, under political pressure. Moreover, big traffickers are arrested now and then just so that the government can pretend they're doing something against drugs, but in fact it doesn't mean much if only a few arrests are made now and then.

Hamas less radical

An article in Foreign Affairs argues that the West should recognize Hamas' shift to a less radical and more pragmatic approach. Foreign Affairs is the most important mainstream foreign policy journal, so it's significant that some in the mainstream are starting to call for engaging Hamas.
Hamas is not the Taliban, although it's authoritarian. This shift to a less radical stance is supported by all factions of Hamas: the hard-liners in Damascus represented by Mashal, moderate detainees incarcerated in Israel, and Haniyeh's middle-of-the-road leadership in Gaza.

Iraq oil law

Iraq oil report has some information on the evolving Iraqi Oil Law, which is still in development.

Drugs in Afghanistan

Many Afghan police take illegal drugs; in some southern areas come believe that 60% of the police use illegal drugs. That show to what extent the police is associated with the drugs industry and corrupted.

Afghanistan's north also lawless

One often hears of the "lawless" south in Afghanistan, but in fact the north is also lawless as warlords and commanders behave in lawless ways.

Residents of northern districts like Taher Youwaldish say that the reason the Taliban has been able to make inroads in the area is because of the weak and corrupt justice system. "The main reason for Taliban success in northern Afghanistan," says Noorullah Shahryar, of Mazar, "is the lack of law enforcement and the intimidation of local people by powerful individuals."

One example of this is the Afghan prison system. Last year, reports surfaced of sexual assaults on women by guards in Pulcharki Prison. The victims claimed that they were raped by their guards and some were impregnated. Charges were never brought against the guards.

The same goes with the Afghan Police that NATO is trying to build up to ensure "order". In fact the police can be very lawless. For instance in Helmand villagers complained that the police there is "a bigger problem than the Taliban".

The problem is that police forces were constituted by the US and NATO after they invaded Afghanistan by using men who were then fighting the Taliban, like members of local militias controlled by strongmen and warlords. In Helmand province, the police came from the militia of the local warlord, former Mujihideen commander Sher Mohammed Akhunzadeh, a member of the Alizai tribe, who had dominated the province before the Taliban took control of the Pashtun south in 1994. Akhundzada became the governor of Helmand province in 2002. The restoration of Akhundzada to power gave the warlord and his militia the opportunity to use the police to take revenge on their Ishaqzai rivals (another tribe in Helmand). If you are the police under these circumstances "you take the people's land, their women, you steal from them – it's all part of one package."

So it's no surprise that the police force is lawless.

The predatory rule of Akhundzada and his militias was interrupted for a second time when the Taliban took control of large areas of the province in 2008.

It is interesting to see how Karzai has allied himself with warlords and drug lords to control vast areas of the country, as Gareth Porter reports:

Akhundzada maintains his power in Helmand in part because of a firm political alliance with President Hamid Karzai. Karzai was forced by British pressure to remove Akhundzada from office in January 2006, after a British-trained counter-narcotics team found nearly 10 tonnes of heroin in the warlord's basement.
But Karzai also ensured that Akhundzada retained his full power in Helmand, forcing Akhundzada's replacement as governor, Mohammad Daud, to accept the warlord's brother Amir Mohammed, as his deputy. That signaled that Akhundzada was effectively still in control.
Then Karzai began forming what would eventually be called "Afghanistan National Auxiliary Police", the new recruits for which came straight out of Akhundzada's 500-man private army and those of other warlords.
By the end of 2006, Karzai had removed Daud (a favourite of the British because he was free of links with the drug lords). Karzai replaced him with an aged and infirm official who was less likely to refuse to cooperate with Akhundzada.
As recently as September 2008, Karzai was hinting to Afghan MPs that he would have reinstated Akhundzada had it not been for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's threat to withdraw British troops from Helmand if he did.

Helmand province is the epicenter of the Afghan drug industry, which generates an annual income for those who manage it estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime at three billion dollars. Much of that income is siphoned off by the local warlords like Akhundzada who protect the drug lords' operations.

Here is an article illustrating how Karzai pardons drug traffickers who are related to some of his allies.

As the BBC reported, people's lives have mostly not changed since 2001, including in the north. Development has not been forthcoming, due to corruption and the fact that foreign troops are in Afghanistan primarily on a military mission in which long lasting development is absent. In the south, the Taliban make people's lives harder, and in the north, it is the militias affiliated with warlords, many of them in position of power in the government, that terrorize people.

Warlords in Afghanistan's election

Karzai has been making deals with warlords to get their support in the upcoming election. The NYT reports that warlords give Karzai support in exchange for various favors: "While the precise nature of such deals is not known, Western officials, Afghan politicians and nongovernmental organizations contend that they include promises of protection from prosecution, the awarding of cabinet ministries and governorships, the creation of provinces to benefit one ethnic group, and the freeing of major drug traffickers."

Opium in Afghanistan

An article on opium addiction in Afghanistan says that whole families, from parents to babies, are addicted to opium. Parents can give it to children to calm them down. This practice is not new historically, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
There are at least 200,000 opium and heroin addicts in Afghanistan – 50,000 more than in the much bigger, wealthier US.

US military bases in Afghanistan

The US is building military bases in Afghanistan that point to a long-term presence. The US is engaged in a $220 million building campaign in Afghanistan.

NYT MAgazine article on Karzai

An article by Elizabeth Rubin in the NYT Magazine explains how Karzai has dealt with and coopted warlords, druglords and other power brokers to remain in power since 2001.

Baghdad-Kurds confrontation

Sami Moubayed says that the central government in Baghdad was confronted by the Kurdish leadership and that the Kurds won't let the pressure go: Baghdad will have to get used to this confrontation or give them Kirkuk and its large oil reserves.

Pakistan's ISI

Pakistan's ISI, its military intelligence body, has been quite important since the 1980s when the US/CIA gave it much patronage to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.

Dangers of drug eradication in Afghanistan

This article from MSNBC illustrates the hardships suffered by poor Afghan farmers who see their poppy fields destroyed by the government in an effort to eliminate opium cultivation.
It is a good article which shows that eradicating poppy fields is not the best solution to Afghanistan's drug problem, because once the farmers have their fields destroyed they simply become even poorer and villages lack the important income brought by opium cultivation.
The better solution is to tackle the big traffickers who make substantial profits and transport the drugs across Afghanistan and export it to other countries. Those traffickers are wealthy and are big fish, so arresting them would deal much more effectively with the drugs problem without attacking farmers, at least not as drastically and quickly (the farmers would have time to shift to other crops and economic activities if they received funding for what's called "alternative livelihoods" programs).

Obama allies with worst human rights abusers

In his fight against the Taliban, Obama has allied with some of the worst human rights abusers, namely some of the Central Asian dictators.
In the last three months, Mr Obama has cut deals with Presidents Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan and Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan. Mr Karimov has been accused by a former British ambassador of ordering two opponents boiled alive. One of Mr Bakiyev's critics was recently stabbed 26 times in the buttocks by unknown assailants.

Civilian deaths in Afghanistan increase

A United Nations report today says that at least 1,013 civilians were killed in the first half of 2009, a 24% increase from the same period in 2008.

The report may be found here.

The Taliban kill more civilians than international forces:

The Taliban and its affiliates were responsible for about 60% of deaths, mainly through roadside bombs, and pro-government forces, mainly the US, for 30%, mainly through airstrikes. There has been a shift in those proportions from 2007, when the insurgents accounted for 46% and the US and its allies for 41% of civilian deaths. But the number of civilians killed by International Forces has nevertheless increased in absolute numbers (even if the proportion of total deaths attributed to them has decreased).