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11 June, 2011

The Palestine Telgraph

Gaza, (Pal Telegraph) – The Israeli siege continues to disturb different facets of the living conditions for the entire population of 1.7 million living in the Gaza Strip. With news that Egypt opened the Rafah border permanently, pressure on Gazans increased. The crossing didn’t open properly and Israel still control all commercial crossings. In addition, there are severe security measures that still hinder the process of travelling for thousands of Palestinians. Limited access of food, commodities and medications are still in effect. Further confounding the problems is the fact that Palestinian national unity has not achieved the factual results expected by the besieged people. Official Israeli sources, spokespersons and media outlets are seizing on all what they can to say that there is no siege in Gaza. Whilst, only the population of Gaza suffer the repercussions of the external and internal political problems.

Health sector paralyzed

According to Gaza’s health bodies and utilities, severe shortages are hitting the sector due to the continued closure. The shortages have led to a reduction in services, including surgeries. A number of patients are on the waiting list for urgent medical operations. According to Gaza’s health ministry, the medical storage will soon be depleted, which further endangers the lives of the innocent population.

Around 187 sort of medications are missed, as well as 190 types of medical requirement. In total, 50% of Gaza’s health and medical storage have evaporated. This shortage is endangering many patients especially those of cancer, Kidney diseases, heart, eyes, nerves and psychological diseases.

This problem has been taking place for years now, since the start of the Siege some 4 years ago. Medical convoys and shipments of medications brought by International NGOs have temporarily solved the problem in the past. .

International Investigation

According to the Lancet Magazine, the Norwegian Government sent two doctors on a health mission to Gaza in April 2011 to examine Gaza’s chronic shortage of medicines. The same magazine reported of a similar mission sent in 2009, after the war, and concluded similar results to the recent one.

The report says, ” The Gaza Strip still has a persistent drug shortage, despite some recent Israeli and Egyptian talks about easing the strict blockade that has left this crowded enclave isolated since July, 2007. A political rift between the Hamas-run Government of Gaza and Fatah officials in the West Bank hinders communication and coordination between the Palestinian health ministries—adding to the hardships already faced by patients in Gaza.”

It also added that Norwegian physicians Tone Hegna and Åse Vikanes followed the delivery of 200 pallets of medical supplies from Ramallah to Gaza in early February 2011. They confirmed that many drugs and basic disposables remain in short supply, and that a bad situation is made worse by inadequate storage, transport and incineration facilities.

People close to death

The health crisis in the Strip has increased the suffering of people, with some nearing death.

Anwar Nahid, 18, suffers from early diabetes. Her illness is rare at her age. The prescribed medications are missed such as insulin injections. The absence of the medications is affecting her severely, and blurred her vision.

“I’m sick with this disease for 5 years now. My father is jobless and I have 8 siblings. In many occasions, I find it hard to find the medicines I need. If I do, it is expensive and hard to obtain. My doctors are asking me to go for a specific food for diet purposes. But, I can’t afford to bring fruits and some vegetables as the prices are really high. I hope my father works again and I get my medications.” Said young Anwar.

Her mother added that Anwar has fainted many times and the doctors said she has entered a dangerous level. Anwar was injured in a car accident and her illness make her treatment harder, as diabetes slow the healing process. Doctors warn her of a potential stroke because of the effect of the diabetes on her blood.

Sameh A. Habeeb is editor of The Palestine Telgraph

Copyright © 2011 PT News

 

 

New York Times May 05 2011,

There is only one good thing about the fact that Osama bin Laden survived for nearly 10 years after the mass murder at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon that he organised.

Follow up:

And that is that he lived long enough to see so many young Arabs repudiate his ideology. He lived long enough to see Arabs from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen to Syria rise up peacefully to gain the dignity, justice and self-rule that bin Laden claimed could be obtained only by murderous violence and a return to puritanical Islam.

We did our part. We killed bin Laden with a bullet. Now the Arab and Muslim people have a chance to do their part — kill bin Ladenism with a ballot — that is, with real elections, with real constitutions, real political parties and real progressive politics.

Yes, the bad guys have been dealt a blow across the Arab world in the last few months — not only al-Qaeda, but the whole rogues’ gallery of dictators, whose soft bigotry of low expectations for their people had kept the Arab world behind. The question now, though, is: Can the forces of decency get organised, elected and start building a different Arab future? That is the most important question. Everything else is noise.

To understand that challenge, we need to recall, again, where bin Ladenism came from. It emerged from a devil’s bargain between oil-consuming countries and Arab dictators. We all — Europe, America, India, China — treated the Arab world as a collection of big gas stations, and all of us sent the same basic message to the petro-dictators: Keep the oil flowing, the prices low and don’t bother Israel too much and you can treat your people however you like, out back, where we won’t look. Bin Laden and his followers were a product of all the pathologies that were allowed to grow in the dark out back — crippling deficits of freedom, women’s empowerment and education across the Arab world.

These deficits nurtured a profound sense of humiliation among Arabs at how far behind they had fallen, a profound hunger to control their own futures and a pervasive sense of injustice in their daily lives. That is what is most striking about the Arab uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia in particular. They were almost apolitical. They were not about any ideology. They were propelled by the most basic human longings for dignity, justice and to control one’s own life. Remember, one of the first things Egyptians did was attack their own police stations — the instruments of regime injustice. And since millions of Arabs share these longings for dignity, justice and freedom, these revolutions are not going to go away.

For decades, though, the Arab leaders were very adept at taking all that anger brewing out back and redirecting it onto the United States and Israel. Yes, Israel’s own behaviour at times fed the Arab sense of humiliation and powerlessness, but it was not the primary cause. No matter. While the Chinese autocrats said to their people, “We’ll take away your freedom and, in return, we’ll give you a steadily rising education and standard of living,” the Arab autocrats said, “We’ll take away your freedom and give you the Arab-Israel conflict.”

This was the toxic “out back” from which bin Laden emerged. A twisted psychopath and false messiah, he preached that only through violence — only by destroying these Arab regimes and their American backers — could the Arab people end their humiliation, restore justice and build some mythical uncorrupted caliphate.

Very few Arabs actively supported bin Laden, but he initially drew significant passive support for his fist in the face of America, the Arab regimes and Israel. But as al-Qaeda was put on the run, and spent most of its energies killing other Muslims who didn’t toe its line, even its passive support melted away (except for the demented leadership of Hamas).

In that void, with no hope of anyone else riding to their rescue, it seems — in the totally unpredictable way these things happen — that the Arab publics in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere shucked off their fears and decided that they themselves would change what was going on out back by taking over what was going on out front.

And, most impressively, they decided to do it under the banner of one word that you hear most often today among Syrian rebels: “Silmiyyah.” It means peaceful. “We will do this peacefully.” It is just the opposite of bin Ladenism. It is Arabs saying in their own way: We don’t want to be martyrs for bin Laden or pawns for Mubarak, Assad, Gaddafi, Ben Ali and all the rest. We want to be “citizens.” Not all do, of course. Some prefer more religious identities and sectarian ones. This is where the struggle will be.

We cannot predict the outcome. All we can hope for is that this time there really will be a struggle of ideas — that in a region where extremists go all the way and moderates tend to just go away, this time will be different. The moderates will be as passionate and committed as the extremists. If that happens, both bin Laden and bin Ladenism will be resting at the bottom of the ocean

 

Published: June 14 2011 17:16 | Last updated: June 14 2011 17:16

‘I always like to be the underdog’: Abhisit Vejjajiva, Thai prime minister, faces a tight race next month, according to polls

Thailand’s beleaguered prime minister is facing potential defeat in next month’s elections at the hands of a man who has not set foot in the country for more than three years.

The July 3 ballot has become a referendum on the legacy of Thaksin Shinawatra, the controversial former prime minister who lost office in a 2006 military coup and now lives in Dubai to avoid a two-year sentence for corruption.

Despite his exile, Mr Thaksin, a telecommunications billionaire, has maintained an iron grip on the opposition Puea Thai, which is leading in opinion polls. Last month he engineered the appointment of his younger sister, Yingluck, as the party’s prime ministerial candidate.

But in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday, Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Eton and Oxford-educated prime minister, came out swinging, warning that a vote for the opposition Puea Thai party could extend the country’s already long record of political instability and accusing the party of misleading the electorate.

“There is a risk of instability. And you just have to ask why, as political parties, as representatives of the people, do you want to risk the country’s future just to whitewash one man?” he told the FT.

Mr Abhisit’s repeated warnings that Puea Thai’s push to clear the way for Mr Thaksin’s return could lead to further problems has become a regular mantra for the prime minister, which some interpret as a warning and others as a threat.

Rise to power

Abhisit Vejjajiva, 46, is the scion of a long line of doctors with connections to Thailand’s royal family. He was born in Newcastle, England, where his father was practising medicine, and went on to attend Eton and Oxford.

He became leader of the Democrat party in 2005, when it was in opposition.

He won the premiership in December 2008 in a parliamentary vote called after the pro-Thaksin government was dissolved by court order.

He is married to Pimpen Sakuntabhai, a lecturer. They have two children.

But Mr Abhisit is right that Mr Thaksin is at the heart of Thailand’s deep political divisions. Loved by his supporters for policies such as cheap healthcare and village loans, he is loathed by the country’s powerful establishment, who accuse him of corruption and hijacking the country’s democracy.

Those divisions were behind the 2006 coup that unseated Mr Thaksin. But they have refused to go away, and in April and May of last year they exploded into violence when the army moved in against thousands of Thaksin supporters who had taken over swaths of central Bangkok. At least 91 people died and almost 2,000 were injured in eight weeks of demonstrations.

Mr Thaksin has not hidden his agenda. He has described Mrs Yingluck, a political neophyte who until three weeks ago ran a property development company, as his “clone”. Some of her less charitable critics have dubbed her “Thaksin in a frock”, although she is substantially more photogenic than her brother.

Most of Thailand’s notoriously unreliable polls have the Democrats trailing Puea Thai – which translates as For Thais – and Mr Abhisit admitted that his party are 3-4 percentage points behind.

But he insisted that could serve as an advantage on the campaign trail. “They look OK to me,” he said of the polls. “It’s a tight race and I always like to be the underdog: it makes your people work harder.”

Mr Abhisit accused Puea Thai of camouflaging an agenda to rehabilitate Mr Thaksin behind populist promises such as a 40 per cent rise in the minimum wage and a tablet computer for every high school student.

“What is becoming more and more of a concern is that Puea Thai is still very much centred around the idea of amnesty and whitewashing Thaksin. It is not the country’s nor the people’s priority,” Mr Abhisit said.

“They want their economic problems, particularly in terms of high prices, addressed; they want to see issues like drugs being one of the top concerns. The last thing they want to see is more conflict and controversy surrounding proposals like that.”

 

 

 

 

 

Russia is different. The Americans, the Brits and the French by and large approve of their forces’ Libya bombing spree (yes, some doubt that it’s a good bang for the buck). The Russians are flatly against it, with no ifs, ands or buts. The Russian Ambassador in Tripoli, Vladimir Chamov, came back to a hero’s welcome in Moscow. President Dmitri Medvedev had dismissed him publicly after the Ambassador sent him a cable. In the five-points cable leaked to media, the Ambassador called Medvedev’s response to Libya crisis a “betrayal of Russian national interests”. (Meanwhile, the sides climbed down a bit: the Foreign Office said Chamov was not “fired”, just “called back” from Tripoli, and retained his ambassadorial rank and salary, while Chamov denied he had used the word “betrayal”.)

The Russians do not like the Western intervention in Libya. The rebels do not appear genuine, note the Russian bloggers; they are a peculiar mixed bag of Kaddafi’s ex-ministers fired for corruption, al-Qaeda mujahedeen, well-clod riff-raff beefed up by SAS soldiers and supported by these best friends of every Arab, American cruise missiles. The Russian media discovered that the first reports of massive civil casualties inflicted by the ruthless Kaddafi apparently were invented by editors in London and Paris. More civilians were killed by the Western intervention than by the government fighting the rebels. The mass-readership Komsomolskaya Pravda published reports from the Russian expats in Libya that flatly disproved claims of Kaddafi’s planes bombing residential quarters: this was done by the French and British bombers.

The Russians tend to a conspiratorial view of politics. They presume that the Arab risings were organised by their enemy: some “orange” Western forces, NED, CIA, Mossad, you name it, in order to create chaos, Iraq-style. They quote Israeli and American doctrines for the promotion of “constructive chaos”. And then they support Kaddafi, or even feel sympathy for Mubarak. This is especially true for patriotic Russians who remember that Kaddafi stood by Russia in 2008 during the Georgia conflict, and for a business community who were involved in many projects in Libya from gas to railways.

President Dmitri Medvedev has good reason to regret the haste with which he joined in the Western media onslaught, for he will be blamed for what already looks to Russians as Kosovo II. Probably he was misled by his media advisers who suggested he should jump on the internationally-acceptable media bandwagon of “stop the massacre in Libya”, and on he jumped. The first reports of the alleged massacre were still reverberating when President Medvedev warned Kaddafi of “crimes against humanity”, and later on he added that Kaddafi is persona non grata in Russia. Medvedev supported the decision to pass Libya’s case to ICC; though by that time he could have learned from the Russians present in Libya that nothing all that extraordinary took place in the country; that it was nothing beyond a small-scale rising on the way to being put down. It could be compared to Los Angeles riots of 1965 (threescore dead and thousands wounded) or of 1992 (fifty dead and thousands wounded), except that the LA blacks had no Tomahawks for aerial support.

Medvedev is also perceived as the man who ordered his Ambassador in the Security Council to abstain. Russia and China usually vote in agreement if they intend to go against the will of the world sheriff – ever since the fateful Zimbabwe vote in 2008 when Russia activated its veto for the first time since God-knows-when and stopped the West-proposed sanctions against the African nation. Then, the BBC reported, the UK foreign secretary David Miliband said Russia used its veto despite a promise by President Dmitry Medvedev to support the resolution. This time, apparently, Medvedev prevailed and acquiesced in what looks now as another Suez campaign (if you can still remember 1956, when the Brits and the French had tried to liberate Egypt from its Hitler-on-the-Nile, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and keep the Canal for themselves).

A few days later, the strongman of Russia, Vladimir Putin, roundly criticised this step of Medvedev; he called the Western intervention, “a new crusade”, and proposed the Western leaders should “pray for their souls and ask the Lord’s forgiveness” for the blood shed. People loved it. Medvedev tried to rebuff with a meaningless “don’t you speak of crusades”, but even he could not find anything positive about the NATO campaign in Libya.

Now as always, the Russians’ gut reaction is against any Western intervention. They were against American interventions in Vietnam and Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, against British and French colonial wars – just like you were, my wonderful readers, the enlightened spiritual minority in the West. The Russians do not believe that the reasons for the Western intervention have anything to do with love of democracy, human rights or value of human life. For them, a rose is a rose is a rose, a Western intervention is a Western intervention, one of many they were on the receiving end of.

However, Medvedev did not let the Western intervention march on for purely sentimental reasons of “supporting Europe”. The idea is, better let NATO be occupied in the South than in the East. Libya is much less important for Russians than Georgia, Ukraine or even Afghanistan. If this beast has to eat somebody, let it better be somebody in the Maghreb, where the Russians never had strong positions anyway. A WPR writer called this turn a “Tilsit moment” for NATO: acknowledging the immutability of the West’s Eastern borders in exchange for a free hand in the South flank. That is why Poland was unhappy with the Odyssey Dawn operation: instead of being on the frontline of the most important confrontation, this southern switch left the Poles in a geopolitical cul-de-sac.

Indeed we should not be captivated by East-West thinking. As the US slowly declines, the European powers begin to reassess their role. The Libya war is a French project. The Libya war was started by Sarkozy as an attempt to rebuild the French Empire in North Africa fifty years after the Evian treaty ostensibly sealed its fate. This was his old idea, and he called for the establishment of a Mediterranean Union during his election campaign. The MU project was supported by Israelis – and now Bernard Henry Levy is the foremost proponent on the intervention. Turkey strongly opposed the MU and now the Turks oppose the intervention in their subtle way, as Eric Walberg has correctly described. Italy supported the MU and expectedly supported the intervention. Germany was against the MU and is against the intervention. From this point of view, the intervention in Libya is the beginning of a new wave of European colonization of the Maghreb.

A Russian observer noticed an uncanny resemblance of this operation to one that occurred one hundred years ago in Libya during the previous colonisation wave. Then, recently united aggressive Italy in search for its empire decided to seize Libya, an Ottoman province. Then, as now, the newspapers wrote of freedom-loving Libyans suffering under the Ottoman heel and of the Italians’ moral duty to liberate them. The Turks were in a bad shape and they tried to find a face-saving way to surrender. They proposed to hand Libya over to Italians for management and colonization provided the suzerainty should remain with the Sublime Porte. The Italians refused, and their Dawn Odyssey began. The Turks fought valiantly, and among them a young officer proved his valour: that was Mustafa Kemal, later nicknamed Ataturk. A lone voice against intervention was that of young Italian socialist Benito Mussolini. The Italians’ Libya campaign was the first ever air bombing, exactly one hundred years ago in 1911, and history has preserved the name of the first bomber, Flt Lt Giulio Gavotti, who was the first man ever to perform a bombing run.

Modern Russia is not the USSR; it has few world-wide ambitions. It is worried about its own part of the world, and is not keen to get involved elsewhere. For the Russians, Europe’s drive south is not a threat, rather a resumption of France’s regional role. That is why the Russians abstained at UNSC. So it will be the task of the enlightened forces of the West to stop the aggression – instead of relying on the Russian veto.

President Kaddafi succeeded in annoying a lot of people in a lot of places. He annoyed both the French and the Russians by striking deals and then not sticking to them. Wikileaks cables refer to that many times, notably in 10PARIS151 saying: “the French are growing increasingly frustrated with the Libyans’ failure to deliver on promises regarding visas, professional exchanges, French language education, and commercial deals. “”We (and the Libyans) speak a lot, but we’ve begun to see that actions do not follow words in Libya.” He annoyed the Saudis and worse, he annoyed his own people.

We are certainly against the intervention; but the case of supporting Kaddafi is not all that clear-cut. Muammar Kaddafi was/is a dual figure: on one hand, an autochthonous leader who provided his countrymen with the highest standard of living in Africa, with generous subsidies, free medical care and education, who supported the vision of One State in Palestine/Israel and befriended Castro and Chavez. On the other hand, for the last five years Kaddafi and his clique have been busy dismantling the Libyan welfare state, privatising and cannibalising their health and education systems, hoarding wealth, dealing with transnational oil and gas companies to their personal advantage. The “New Kaddafi” took away a lot of social achievements and did not give his people elementary political freedoms. His support of One State in Palestine dried up in 2002, a long time ago.

My friends in Tripoli do not support Kaddafi. They are certainly against western intervention, but they dislike the old colonel for his dictatorial habits. They are grown-ups, they want to be involved in the decision-making, they do not like corruption, they also want bigger role for Islam. In their eyes, Kaddafi kept his anti-imperialist rhetoric for public use, but his praxis was Western and neo-liberal. It is fine that Kaddafi teased the Saudi royals and brandished his sword against the western leaders; but at the same time he gave away Libyan wealth to the foreigners. So while certainly standing against the intervention, we should not forget that not all anti-Kaddafi forces are Western stooges or al-Qaeda fighters.

Politics do not provide a bed of laurels to recline on. With all due respect to Muammar Kaddafi and his past achievements, he overstayed his prime time. There are reasons to hope he will survive the storm; we heartily wish him the defeat of the interventionist forces. But that should be a departure point for democracy in Libya, not necessarily democracy-European style, but a better way for Libyans to participate in forging their own lives.

(Follow-up: Russian politics in Libya Mirror)

 

Watch the summit of the SCO starting tomorrow Wed….in Astana, Kazakhstan!

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/13/us-afghanistan-secret-talks-on-security-partnership

Secret US and Afghanistan talks could see troops stay for decades

Russia, China and India concerned about ‘strategic partnership’ in which Americans would remain after 2014

 

US-Afghanistan security negotiations continue despite Hillary Clinton saying recently that Washington did not want any ‘permanent bases in Afghanistan’. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

American and Afghan officials are locked in increasingly acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement which is likely to see US troops, spies and air power based in the troubled country for decades.

Though not publicised, negotiations have been under way for more than a month to secure a strategic partnership agreement which would include an American presence beyond the end of 2014 – the agreed date for all 130,000 combat troops to leave — despite continuing public debate in Washington and among other members of the 49-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan about the speed of the withdrawal.

American officials admit that although Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, recently said Washington did not want any “permanent” bases in Afghanistan, her phrasing allows a variety of possible arrangements.

“There are US troops in various countries for some considerable lengths of time which are not there permanently,” a US official told the Guardian.

British troops, Nato officials say, will also remain in Afghanistan long past the end of 2014, largely in training or mentoring roles.

Although they will not be “combat troops” that does not mean they will not take part in combat. Mentors could regularly fight alongside Afghan troops, for example.

Senior Nato officials also predict that the insurgency in Afghanistan will continue after 2014.

There are at least five bases in Afghanistan which are likely candidates to house large contingents of American special forces, intelligence operatives, surveillance equipment and military hardware post-2014. In the heart of one of the most unstable regions in the world and close to the borders of Pakistan, Iran and China, as well as to central Asia and the Persian Gulf, the bases would be rare strategic assets.

News of the US-Afghan talks has sparked deep concern among powers in the region and beyond. Russia and India are understood to have made their concerns about a long-term US presence known to both Washington and Kabul. China, which has pursued a policy of strict non-intervention beyond economic affairs in Afghanistan, has also made its disquiet clear. During a recent visit, senior Pakistani officials were reported to have tried to convince their Afghan counterparts to look to China as a strategic partner, not the US.

American negotiators will arrive later this month in Kabul for a new round of talks. The Afghans rejected the Americans’ first draft of a strategic partnership agreement in its entirety, preferring to draft their own proposal. This was submitted to Washington two weeks ago. The US draft was “vaguely formulated”, one Afghan official told the Guardian.

Afghan negotiators are now preparing detailed annexes to their own proposal which lists specific demands.

The Afghans are playing a delicate game, however. President Hamid Karzai and senior officials see an enduring American presence and broader strategic relationship as essential, in part to protect Afghanistan from its neighbours.

“We are facing a common threat in international terrorist networks. They are not only a threat to Afghanistan but to the west. We want a partnership that brings regional countries together, not divides them,” said Rangin Spanta, the Afghan national security adviser and the lead Afghan negotiator on the partnership.

Dr Ashraf Ghani, a former presidential candidate and one of the negotiators, said that, although Nato and the US consider a stable Afghanistan to be essential to their main strategic aim of disrupting and defeating al-Qaida, a “prosperous Afghanistan” was a lesser priority. “It is our goal, not necessarily theirs,” he said.

Though Ghani stressed “consensus on core issues”, big disagreements remain.

One is whether the Americans will equip an Afghan air force. Karzai is understood to have asked for fully capable modern combat jet aircraft. This has been ruled out by the Americans on grounds of cost and fear of destabilising the region.

Another is the question of US troops launching operations outside Afghanistan from bases in the country. From Afghanistan, American military power could easily be deployed into Iran or Pakistan post-2014. Helicopters took off from Afghanistan for the recent raid which killed Osama bin Laden.

“We will never allow Afghan soil to be used [for operations] against a third party,” said Spanta, Afghanistan’s national security adviser.

A third contentious issue is the legal basis on which troops might remain. Afghan officials are keen that any foreign forces in their country are subject to their laws. The Afghans also want to have ultimate authority over foreign troops’ use and deployment.

“There should be no parallel decision-making structures … All has to be in accordance with our sovereignty and constitution,” Spanta said.

Nor do the two sides agree over the pace of negotiations. The US want to have agreement by early summer, before President Barack Obama’s expected announcement on troop withdrawals. This is “simply not possible,” the Afghan official said.

There are concerns too that concluding a strategic partnership agreement could also clash with efforts to find an inclusive political settlement to end the conflict with theTaliban. A “series of conversations” with senior insurgent figures are under way, one Afghan minister has told the Guardian.

A European diplomat in Kabul said: “It is difficult to imagine the Taliban being happy with US bases [in Afghanistan] for the foreseeable future.”

Senior Nato officials argue that a permanent international military presence will demonstrate to insurgents that the west is not going to abandon Afghanistan and encourage them to talk rather than fight.

The Afghan-American negotiations come amid a scramble among regional powers to be positioned for what senior US officers are now describing as the “out years”.

Mark Sedwill, the Nato senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, recently spoke of the threat of a “Great Game 3.0” in the region, referring to the bloody and destabilising conflict between Russia, Britain and others in south west Asia in the 19th century.

Afghanistan has a history of being exploited by — or playing off — major powers. This, Dr Ghani insisted, was not “a vision for the 21st century”. Instead, he said, Afghanistan could become the “economic roundabout” of Asia.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

 

Watch the summit of the SCO starting tomorrow Wed….in Astana, Kazakhstan!

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/13/us-afghanistan-secret-talks-on-security-partnership

Secret US and Afghanistan talks could see troops stay for decades

Russia, China and India concerned about ‘strategic partnership’ in which Americans would remain after 2014

 

US-Afghanistan security negotiations continue despite Hillary Clinton saying recently that Washington did not want any ‘permanent bases in Afghanistan’. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

American and Afghan officials are locked in increasingly acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement which is likely to see US troops, spies and air power based in the troubled country for decades.

Though not publicised, negotiations have been under way for more than a month to secure a strategic partnership agreement which would include an American presence beyond the end of 2014 – the agreed date for all 130,000 combat troops to leave — despite continuing public debate in Washington and among other members of the 49-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan about the speed of the withdrawal.

American officials admit that although Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, recently said Washington did not want any “permanent” bases in Afghanistan, her phrasing allows a variety of possible arrangements.

“There are US troops in various countries for some considerable lengths of time which are not there permanently,” a US official told the Guardian.

British troops, Nato officials say, will also remain in Afghanistan long past the end of 2014, largely in training or mentoring roles.

Although they will not be “combat troops” that does not mean they will not take part in combat. Mentors could regularly fight alongside Afghan troops, for example.

Senior Nato officials also predict that the insurgency in Afghanistan will continue after 2014.

There are at least five bases in Afghanistan which are likely candidates to house large contingents of American special forces, intelligence operatives, surveillance equipment and military hardware post-2014. In the heart of one of the most unstable regions in the world and close to the borders of Pakistan, Iran and China, as well as to central Asia and the Persian Gulf, the bases would be rare strategic assets.

News of the US-Afghan talks has sparked deep concern among powers in the region and beyond. Russia and India are understood to have made their concerns about a long-term US presence known to both Washington and Kabul. China, which has pursued a policy of strict non-intervention beyond economic affairs in Afghanistan, has also made its disquiet clear. During a recent visit, senior Pakistani officials were reported to have tried to convince their Afghan counterparts to look to China as a strategic partner, not the US.

American negotiators will arrive later this month in Kabul for a new round of talks. The Afghans rejected the Americans’ first draft of a strategic partnership agreement in its entirety, preferring to draft their own proposal. This was submitted to Washington two weeks ago. The US draft was “vaguely formulated”, one Afghan official told the Guardian.

Afghan negotiators are now preparing detailed annexes to their own proposal which lists specific demands.

The Afghans are playing a delicate game, however. President Hamid Karzai and senior officials see an enduring American presence and broader strategic relationship as essential, in part to protect Afghanistan from its neighbours.

“We are facing a common threat in international terrorist networks. They are not only a threat to Afghanistan but to the west. We want a partnership that brings regional countries together, not divides them,” said Rangin Spanta, the Afghan national security adviser and the lead Afghan negotiator on the partnership.

Dr Ashraf Ghani, a former presidential candidate and one of the negotiators, said that, although Nato and the US consider a stable Afghanistan to be essential to their main strategic aim of disrupting and defeating al-Qaida, a “prosperous Afghanistan” was a lesser priority. “It is our goal, not necessarily theirs,” he said.

Though Ghani stressed “consensus on core issues”, big disagreements remain.

One is whether the Americans will equip an Afghan air force. Karzai is understood to have asked for fully capable modern combat jet aircraft. This has been ruled out by the Americans on grounds of cost and fear of destabilising the region.

Another is the question of US troops launching operations outside Afghanistan from bases in the country. From Afghanistan, American military power could easily be deployed into Iran or Pakistan post-2014. Helicopters took off from Afghanistan for the recent raid which killed Osama bin Laden.

“We will never allow Afghan soil to be used [for operations] against a third party,” said Spanta, Afghanistan’s national security adviser.

A third contentious issue is the legal basis on which troops might remain. Afghan officials are keen that any foreign forces in their country are subject to their laws. The Afghans also want to have ultimate authority over foreign troops’ use and deployment.

“There should be no parallel decision-making structures … All has to be in accordance with our sovereignty and constitution,” Spanta said.

Nor do the two sides agree over the pace of negotiations. The US want to have agreement by early summer, before President Barack Obama’s expected announcement on troop withdrawals. This is “simply not possible,” the Afghan official said.

There are concerns too that concluding a strategic partnership agreement could also clash with efforts to find an inclusive political settlement to end the conflict with theTaliban. A “series of conversations” with senior insurgent figures are under way, one Afghan minister has told the Guardian.

A European diplomat in Kabul said: “It is difficult to imagine the Taliban being happy with US bases [in Afghanistan] for the foreseeable future.”

Senior Nato officials argue that a permanent international military presence will demonstrate to insurgents that the west is not going to abandon Afghanistan and encourage them to talk rather than fight.

The Afghan-American negotiations come amid a scramble among regional powers to be positioned for what senior US officers are now describing as the “out years”.

Mark Sedwill, the Nato senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, recently spoke of the threat of a “Great Game 3.0” in the region, referring to the bloody and destabilising conflict between Russia, Britain and others in south west Asia in the 19th century.

Afghanistan has a history of being exploited by — or playing off — major powers. This, Dr Ghani insisted, was not “a vision for the 21st century”. Instead, he said, Afghanistan could become the “economic roundabout” of Asia.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

 

 

 

The moment of truth is approaching for Obama and his like who preach the high morality of non-violence to the powerless

 

The Guardian,    Monday 6 June 2011

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At a dark moment in postcolonial history, when many US-backed despots seemed indestructible, the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, whose centenary falls this year, wrote: “We shall witness [the day] when the enormous mountains of tyranny blow away like cotton”. That miraculous day promised by the poet finally came in Egypt and Tunisia this spring. We have since witnessed many of the world’s acknowledged legislators scrambling to get on the right side of history.

Addressing – yet again – the “Muslim world” last month, Barack Obama hailed “the moral force of non-violence”, through which “the people of the region have achieved more change in six months than terrorists have accomplished in decades”. But Obama failed to acknowledge to his highly politicised audience the fact that the United States enabled, and often required, the “relentless tyranny of governments that deny their citizens dignity”. And he gave no sign that he would respect the moral authority of non-violent mass movements ranged against America’s closest allies, India and Israel.

Let’s not forget: before the Arab spring of 2011, there was the Kashmiri summer of 2010. Provoked by the killing of a teenage boy in June last year, hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris took to the streets to protest against India’s brutal military occupation of the Muslim-majority valley. Summer is the usual “season for a face-off in Kashmir”, as the Indian filmmaker Sanjay Kak writes in Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir, a lively anthology of young Kashmiri writers, activists, rappers and graphic artists. There is little doubt that Kashmiris, emboldened by the Arab spring, will again stage massive demonstrations in their towns and villages.

The chances of a third intifada in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel are just as high, as Binyamin Netanyahu devises ever greater hurdles to self-determination for his Arab subjects. In the next few months we will see more clearly than before how India and Israel – billed respectively as the world’s largest, and the Middle East’s only, democracy – respond to unarmed mass movements.

 

Certainly, they have shown no sign of fresh thinking, even as the victims of their occupations grow more inventive. India’s security establishment fell back last summer on reflexes conditioned by two decades of fighting a militant insurgency during which more than 70,000 people, mostly civilians, have died; 8,000 have “disappeared”, often into mass graves; and innumerable others have been subjected to “systematic torture”, according to a rare public outburst by the Red Cross.

Last summer soldiers fired at demonstrators, killing 112 civilians, mostly teenagers (Kashmir has many of its own Hamza al-Khatibs). The government imposed round-the-clock curfews (one village was locked in for six weeks) and banned text messaging on mobile phones, while police spies infiltrated Facebook groups in an attempt to hunt down demo organisers.

Faced with non-violent Palestinian protesters, who correctly deduce that their methods have a better chance of influencing world opinion than Hamas’s suicide bombers, Israel hasn’t varied its repertoire of repression much. For years now the West Bank village of Bil’in has campaigned against the Israeli government’s appropriation of its lands. Israel responded by jailing its leader, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, often called the Palestinian Gandhi, for 15 months – “solely”, according to Amnesty International “for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression and assembly”.

Encouraged by Egyptians and Tunisians, masses of unarmed Palestinians marched last month to the borders of Israel to mark the dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians in Mandate Palestine. Israeli soldiers met them with live gunfire, killing more than a dozen and wounding scores of others.

Of course, occupations damage the occupier no less than the occupied. Revanchist nationalism has corroded democratic and secular institutions in both India and Israel, which, not surprisingly, have developed a strong military relationship in the recent decade. Hindu nationalists feel an elective affinity with Israel for its apparently uncompromising attitude to Muslim minorities. In 1993 the then Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, reportedly advised the Hindu nationalist leader LK Advani to alter the demographic composition of the mutinous Kashmir valley by settling Hindus there. Advani, later India’s deputy prime minister, fondly quoted from Netanyahu’s book on terrorism, given to him by the author. Israeli counter-insurgency experts now regularly visit Kashmir.

India and Israel, both products of botched imperial partitions, were the Bush government’s two most avid international boosters of the catastrophic “war on terror”, fluently deploying the ideological templates of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – democracy versus terrorism, liberalism versus fundamentalism – to justify their own occupations.

Aggressively jingoistic media helped hardliners in both countries to demonise their political adversaries as terrorists or terrorist sympathisers. Meanwhile, liberal opinion grew almost inaudible. Writing recently in the New York Review of Books, the Israeli scholar and activist David Shulman lamented: “Israeli academic intellectuals as a group have failed to mount a sustained and politically effective protest against the occupation.” This is also true of the Indian intelligentsia.

So the burden of non-violent protest in India and Israel has fallen almost entirely on the victims of the occupation. Indeed, many liberal commentators try to condone their passivity by deploring the absence of non-violent protests in Kashmir and Palestine (never mind the fact that the first intifadas in both places in the late 1980s turned violent only after being savagely suppressed).

The moment of truth is fast approaching for those powerful men who preach the high morality of non-violence to the powerless. Only an American veto seems likely to prevent the member states of the UN from declaring a new Palestinian state in September. But Palestinians may rise up against their colonial overlords well before this expected rejection. And, as the political philosopher Michael Walzer points out, Israel would then confront “something radically new. How can it resist masses of men and women, children too, just walking across the ceasefire lines?”

The tactics of young tech-savvy Kashmiris have already confused and bewildered the Indian government, whose recent actions – censoring the Economist, forcing spying rights out of BlackBerry and Google – evoke the last-minute desperation of the Arab world’s mukhabarat (secret police) states. The mass movement in Kashmir, which has emerged after two decades of a futile militant insurgency and has no compromising links to Pakistan, poses, as the Kashmiri journalist Parvaiz Bukhari writes in Until My Freedom Has Come, an unprecedented “moral challenge to New Delhi’s military domination over the region”.

The stage is set, then, for a summer of protests, of unarmed masses rising up to express, in Obama’s words, “a longing for freedom that has built up for years”. They may well meet with live bullets rather than offers of negotiation and compromise. It will be fascinating to see if Obama makes good his claim last month that the United States “opposes violence and repression” and “welcomes change that advances self-determination”. Certainly, as the corpses of the Palestinian and Kashmiri Hamza al-Khatibs pile up, there will be the usual flurry of intellectual rationalisations – the bogey of Islamic terror will again be invoked. And we will witness how the “enormous mountains of tyranny” in the world’s greatest democracies do not blow away like cotton.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

 

Bethlehem, 18 June 2011

The Most Reverend Dr Rowan Williams

Archbishop of Canterbury

Lambeth Palace

Lambeth Palace Road

London

Your Grace,

Kairos Palestine is deeply troubled by your recent comments regarding the situation of Christians in the Middle East in general and more particularly those related to the Palestinian Christians, as it was aired on the June 14 broadcast of the BBC news programme “The World at One.”

Your inaccurate and erroneous remarks cite Muslim extremism as the greatest threat facing Christians in Palestine, and the primary reason for our emigration. Your statements about Bethlehem areparticularly faulty and offensive especially when you say that the movement of Muslims into the

Bethlehem area, where space is limited, is forcing Christians to leave.

Equally shocking is how Your Grace managed, diplomatically –instead of being prophetic, as one would expect you to be, not to mention the Israeli occupation, the separation wall, Israel confiscation of Palestinian land, its policies that violate freedom of movement and worship (Palestinians in

Bethlehem cannot, for instance, go to Jerusalem), or its brutal crackdowns on nonviolent protests as one of the major reasons that push not only Christians to emigrate, but also many other Palestinians.

We were hoping that Your Grace would have a different voice than the one in mass media and other right wing political parties, which exploit our sufferings to fuel some islamophobic tendencies and negative images about Islam. Indeed, this is what the Israeli occupation persistently tries to do. It demonizes Islam in a way that deflects blame from the repression levied by the state itself. We are concerned that your comments are serving the same purpose.

We were deeply saddened by your declarations because we know that Your Grace is well informed about the situation in the Holy Land, and you know very well that in the Bethlehem area alone there are 19 illegal Israeli settlements (such as nearby Har Homa built on Jabal Abu Ghneim) and the wall that have devoured Christian lands and put Bethlehem in a chokehold. You know well that only 13%of Bethlehem area is available for Palestinian use and the wall isolates 25% or the Bethlehem area’s agricultural land. Not to mention the situation of Christians in Jerusalem, which you know very well, since you should have received reports from the Anglican Bishop in the City whose residency permit was denied by the occupying power. We can go on and on, but it is no longer important…

We are no longer expecting support from Church leaders around the world. Our Hope, Faith and Love come from elsewhere. However, at the same time, we request you and every leader, especially church leaders, not to use us and our cause for your own purposes. We are so thankful to Your Grace for the “International Conference on Christians in the Holy Land” that you are holding in your Palace in July, but we feel it will be useless, not to say harmful to us, indigenous Christians in the land of the Holy One, if the outcome will be in the same spirit as your interview.

Since Your Grace did not meet or consult with any Palestinian Christians during your recent visit here, we are wondering why you would be suddenly interested to speak on our behalf. This troubles us. Palestinian Christians are fully capable of expressing their situation without needing anyone to interpret what they mean; we are happy to meet directly with church leaders and, in solidarity, discuss our reality and what can be done to transform it. Finally, we would like to remind Your Grace that Christian Palestinians need advocates for the truth. Itis the truth, and only the truth, that will lead to peace and justice in our home.

With all our due respect.

 

Kairos Palestine Coordinator

The full broadcast can be heard at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13769747.

See also the Archbishop’s web page:

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2071/christians-in-the-middle-east-archbishop-onworld-at-one

Sonja Karkar

Editor

http://australiansforpalestine.com

 

 

Phone: 0044 (0) 28 9066 3465 Fax:      0044 (0) 28 9066 3465 Email: info@peacepeople.com www.peacepeople.com

Fredheim 224 Lisburn Road Belfast BT9 6GE Northern Ireland

PEACE PEOPLE

 

 

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA, NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE

PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

FROM:  MAIREAD CORRIGAN MAGUIRE, NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE.

20^th JUNE, 20ll.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT,

 

As you know, on  1st May, 2011, the  NATO forces tried unsuccessfully to assassinate the Libyan Head of State, Moammer Gadaffi.  This attempt to assassinate the Libyan Head of State under US Army law, was a war crime and punishable as an International crime in its own right.   During the attack by NATO forces, one of President Gadaffi’s sons, and three of Gadaffi’s grandchildren were killed by NATO forces.

The following day,  2^nd, May 2011, the extra-judicial killing and assassination of Osama Bin Laden, and killings of a woman and two men who were with him,  by the US Special Seals, continued the State Terrorism of the US Government.   After the assassination you, Mr. President, addressed the media and attempted to make acceptable the idea that such violence is just and acceptable.  Do you and your Government and Allies who support you, really believe that the vast majority of men and women around the world have lost all sense of what is right and what is wrong?  Do you really believe that we have all abandoned all sense of decency and ethical values exchanging them in support of your endorsed illegal,  killing  of unarmed civilians?  Do you really believe we will all remain silent whilst under your warrior leadership the  US Government and its allies dismantle  basic human rights and international laws, so long fought for by brave, courageous men and women (including Americans)replacing these with extrajudicial killings, torture and assassinations?

Three months into the French, English, Italian led NATO/US campaign (never sanctioned by US Law) and shamefully agreed by U.N. (who identified the purpose of the operation to be for the protection of citizens!) people of conscience are horrified to hear that, yet again, on l9th June,  NATO has carried out more air attacks on Libya, killing 15 unarmed civilians, including women and children.

After 9/11 the whole world shared the grief of the American people, and many hoped that those who carried out such horrendous acts would be brought to justice through the Courts.   We were moved by many of the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 when they started ‘Families for a peaceful tomorrow’ and called for justice not revenge.   However, violence and revenge was the chosen path of the US Government and its Allies, who for ten years embarked on a path of violence and war.  In this time over 6,000 USA soldiers have needlessly died and countless thousands injured physically and mentally.  Wars in Iraq (over l million Iraqis killed) and Afghanistan (over 50,000 Afghans killed) were carried out by the USA in their pursuit of vengeance.  The US Led so-called ‘war on terrorism’ in Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan has ‘terrorised’ unarmed civilians by carrying out aerial bombardments, night raids, death squads, extra-judicial killings and drone attacks killing many unarmed civilians, including women and children, and tragically they continue to this day.

In a world struggling to birth a new consciousness, it is not incredulous that the best the US Government, NATO and its allies can offer as a model to world citizens, is the outdated example of violence, militarism,  and war, destroying humans and their environment.?

I believe real change and leadership is coming from the people’s movements and what is happening around the world amongst the masses of extra-ordinary men and women rising up, mostly peacefully and non-violently, in country after country for human dignity, equality, freedom and democracy and against violence, oppression, injustice and war, is the real force for change.   We all take great hope and inspiration from the ‘Arab Spring’ and join in solidarity with our courageous Arab brothers and sisters in working for change.

A new dawn, a new age of civilization is coming.   It will be an age of solidarity, of each person dedicated to ‘protective love’ of each other and our World.    It will be an age of nonviolent evolution which shows we can solve our problems as the human family by peaceful means not by violence, nuclear weapons and war.

The peoples of the world are sending a clear message to you Mr. President, to NATO, and all our Governments, and armed opposition groups, that there will be no military solutions to these ethnic/political/economic problems, but only through ending occupations (USA -Iraq/Afghanistan,   Israel/Palestine) declaring ceasefires (Libya, etc.,) and entering into dialogue and negotiations with all parties to the conflicts, can we begin to solve these problems, the roots of which are inequality and injustice.

Mr. President, you came into Office promising Change and gave the world hope. You lit the passion in the hearts of many men and women longing for change, for dialogue and negotiation, to move beyond destructive militarism, nuclear weapons and war.   That passion remains in the heart of humanity as can be seen in the mass nonviolent movements for social and political change taking place around the world.   Will you, Mr. President, take this great opportunity in human history and help lead ,the world to a new beginning, so we can in the words of the late President John F. Kennedy  ‘begin again the quest for peace?’

Yours in Peace,

(Nobel Peace Laureate)

 

 

 

 

Published: June 21, 2011 at 7:11 AM

UPI Outside View Commentator

COLLEGE PARK, Md., June 21 (UPI) — Greece doesn’t have a liquidity problem — it is insolvent. Without transfers of wealth from richer states like Germany and France to retire significant amounts of its sovereign debt, Athens must restructure its bonds — essentially default on significant portions of its obligations to bondholders.

Germany and France are at wits’ ends, because their banks hold a good deal of that debt and would take big losses and other poor EU governments would likely follow Greece’s lead. Paying off Greek creditors may be distasteful but covering the problems of all the EU governments in trouble is beyond the capacity of Germany and the other richer EU states.

To patch things over for another year, Berlin and other rich governments want Athens to impose more cuts in government benefits and wages in exchange for more loans and relatively small private creditor haircuts. And they want Athens to sell off valuable state-owned assets to help lubricate the deal.

The Greek people have already taken major cuts in benefits and salaries and they understand gradualism isn’t solving the problem. They shouldn’t want their economy bought up by the Germans and others and they are correct to expect their government to consider other, more reasonable solutions.

The amount of aid the Greek government will receive through current negotiations will likely result in another crisis next year or the year after and then more cuts in benefits and wages.

Importantly, these deals do nothing about private debt — the mortgages, auto loans and credit card balances Greek citizens are expected to pay as their salaries are cut and cut.

As European integration progressed — for example, with the 1992 Maastricht Treaty that harmonized taxes and product standards and the 1999 introduction of the euro — European voters in poorer states increasingly expected healthcare, job security and retirement benefits on a par with the richer states. Civil servants expected to be more adequately compensated — yes “adequately” because examination of Greek salaries doesn’t reveal payments that are very generous by German or French standards.

Sadly, these efforts at deeper market integration didn’t give Brussels the power to tax richer Germany to subsidize Greek social services in the way Washington taxes New York to subsidize healthcare and retirement benefits in Mississippi.

Over the decades, poorer countries have borrowed too much to keep up and now without continuous EU bailouts, they will default on their debts.

Prior to the euro, as poorer countries approached such crises they could let their individual currencies fall in value against the German mark to make their exports more competitive, grow more rapidly and boost debt payment capacity. It meant retirees and tourists from Germany and other rich countries could more easily afford to live in or visit poorer countries than the reverse — a small price to pay for keeping the ship of state from capsizing.

When countries are broke and locked into the same currency area with their major export customers — presently the condition of Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain and Belgium — their only option is deflation — cuts in government spending, wages and ultimately prices that make their exports more competitive and boost debt service capacity.

Essentially, this is what Germany is imposing on Greece but citizens have mortgages and other debts to pay just as the government have bonds to service. Deflation makes private debt nearly impossible to honor and many Greeks will lose their homes and just about everything else to foreign creditors before the madness ends.

The only real option is to drop the euro and resurrect the drachma, unilaterally remark public and private debt into drachma and let the drachma float to a value on currency markets that balances Greece’s export revenues against its imports and debt servicing obligations.

Abandoning the euro for the drachma would cause Greek gross domestic product and debt servicing capacity to grow more rapidly. Whatever losses imposed on private creditors, richer EU governments and Greek citizens, those would be smaller than the total losses imposed through an annual ritual of crises, aid packages and debt rollovers — conditioned on ever more draconian austerity — and the ultimate absolute default when the final charade ends.

(Peter Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland School, and former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.)

(United Press International’s “Outside View” commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/Outside-View/2011/06/21/Outside-View-Greece-should-quit-the-euro-and-remark-its-debt/UPI-68341308654660/print/#ixzz1Q4HbeiFR