Belgium is set to become the first ever country in Europe to ban the burqa from being worn in public places. Skip related content
The vote in Parliament for a nationwide ban on Islamic clothes or veils that do not allow the wearer to be fully identified was almost unanimous.
The full-face niqab and burqa worn by some muslim women are not a mandatory requirement for the religion of Islam, but one of personal choice.
People found flouting the new law could be given a fine of 15-25 euros (£13-21) or even be faced with a week in jail.
Vice-president of the Muslim Executive of Belgium, Isabelle Praile, warned that the new law could be the start of a slippery slope.
"Today it's the full-face veil, tomorrow the veil, the day after it will be Sikh turbans and then perhaps it will be mini-skirts."
"The wearing of a full-face veil is part of the individual freedoms" protected by Belgian, European and international rights laws, she said.
Amnesty International also condemned the move saying: "A complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion of those women who wear the burqa or the niqab."
In France President Nicholas Sarcozy has recently introduced a similar bill to ban the burqa - despite being advised that such a move could be unconstitutional.
The French move, which seems likely to go ahead, will be decided on May 19.
The Belgium bill now goes to the senate for a 15-day period of review where any final objections can be heard, before being passed iinto law.
AFP, Yahoo News...
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Freedom of speech prize for Dutch Islam critic
Former Dutch MP and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been awarded the Freedom of Expression prize by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The jury said that Somali/Kenyan-born Ms Hirsi Ali deserved the prize because of "her unrelenting conviction that one's views are worth fighting for".
Ms Hirsi Ali now lives in the United States where she works for the rightwing American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. She is known for her fierce criticism of conservative Islam and of the oppression of women by conservative Muslims. Together with Dutch director Theo van Gogh she made a short movie entitled Submission, which criticised the position of women in Islam. Mr Van Gogh was later killed by a radical Muslim.
Cartoons
Jyllands-Posten is the paper which in 2005 published a gallery of Mohammed cartoons by several artists which caused outrage in Muslim countries because the face of the prophet was visible and because the drawings associated Islam with terrorism. The newspaper instituted the prize after the protests in the Islamic world.
The creator of one of the cartoons, Kurt Westergaard, escaped unhurt earlier this year after an attempt on his life by a knife-wielding attacker.
© Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Ms Hirsi Ali now lives in the United States where she works for the rightwing American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. She is known for her fierce criticism of conservative Islam and of the oppression of women by conservative Muslims. Together with Dutch director Theo van Gogh she made a short movie entitled Submission, which criticised the position of women in Islam. Mr Van Gogh was later killed by a radical Muslim.
Cartoons
Jyllands-Posten is the paper which in 2005 published a gallery of Mohammed cartoons by several artists which caused outrage in Muslim countries because the face of the prophet was visible and because the drawings associated Islam with terrorism. The newspaper instituted the prize after the protests in the Islamic world.
The creator of one of the cartoons, Kurt Westergaard, escaped unhurt earlier this year after an attempt on his life by a knife-wielding attacker.
© Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Monday, April 26, 2010
UK 'involved' in regional tension
A senior Iranian lawmaker has condemned the provocative remarks made by Emirati officials, adding the US and Britain have always played a role in regional tensions.
"The voice of Britain is heard from the mouth of Emirate's foreign minister," Head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran's Parliament (Majlis) Alaeddin Boroujerdi told the Mehr News Agency on Monday.
In a futile attempt, the Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan had tried to link the ownership of the three Persian Gulf islands of the Greater Tunb, the Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.
Apart from a brief period of British rule in the 1800s, the three Persian Gulf islands are historically owned by Iran.
The islands were returned to Iran on November 30th, 1971 through a legal process long before the state of the United Arab Emirates was ever created.
"The United States and Britain exert pressure on Arab states which will occasionally lead to such remarks," Boroujerdi said.
He added that Iran's policy is based on promoting amicable relations with regional countries, particularly the Persian Gulf littoral states.
"Countries like the US and Britain have always attempted to portray a negative image of the Islamic Republic... since the victory of the Islamic Revolution (in 1979) to take advantage of good relations between Iran and Arab countries," the parliamentarian said.
He noted that Washington and London often plant security fears in the minds of weak-willed Arab statesmen in order to sell their most sophisticated weapons to these countries.
"The voice of Britain is heard from the mouth of Emirate's foreign minister," Head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran's Parliament (Majlis) Alaeddin Boroujerdi told the Mehr News Agency on Monday.
In a futile attempt, the Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan had tried to link the ownership of the three Persian Gulf islands of the Greater Tunb, the Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.
Apart from a brief period of British rule in the 1800s, the three Persian Gulf islands are historically owned by Iran.
The islands were returned to Iran on November 30th, 1971 through a legal process long before the state of the United Arab Emirates was ever created.
"The United States and Britain exert pressure on Arab states which will occasionally lead to such remarks," Boroujerdi said.
He added that Iran's policy is based on promoting amicable relations with regional countries, particularly the Persian Gulf littoral states.
"Countries like the US and Britain have always attempted to portray a negative image of the Islamic Republic... since the victory of the Islamic Revolution (in 1979) to take advantage of good relations between Iran and Arab countries," the parliamentarian said.
He noted that Washington and London often plant security fears in the minds of weak-willed Arab statesmen in order to sell their most sophisticated weapons to these countries.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Kuwaitis disrupt Lankan event
A massive Sri Lankan celebration in Kuwait was interrupted after angry Kuwaitis claimed it violated Islamic rules. More than 5,000 Sri Lankans, including K.S.C. Dissanayake, Sri Lankan ambassador to Kuwait, had to leave the Jahra stadium after Kuwaiti Islamists invaded the field and pressed organisers to suspend the celebration and threatened to escalate the tense situation.
Negotiations between the event organisers, the police and the angry Kuwaitis failed to reach a compromise. The protesters said that the presence of men and women at the stadium and the playing of music on a Friday afternoon made the celebration “unacceptable” for not respecting Islamic values.
The ambassador, seeking to end the deadlock peacefully, urged his compatriots to cancel the celebrations two hours before schedule and to vacate the premises.
The police said that the Sri Lankans had all the necessary permits and did not break the law. Sri Lanka is organising on Monday a “Sri Lanka Culture Week” in Kuwait to help promote the country as a tourist and cultural destination. The event is hosted by Kuwait’s National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters and co-sponsored by the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau and the Sri Lankan Airlines.
A28-member cultural troupe will perform 'Sri Lak Rangana', a fusion of historical and contemporary dance forms.
The week will also feature a handicraft exhibition of products, bronze items, masks, gems, jewellery and other ornaments while a food festival will introduce Sri Lankan cuisine to Kuwait residents.
Negotiations between the event organisers, the police and the angry Kuwaitis failed to reach a compromise. The protesters said that the presence of men and women at the stadium and the playing of music on a Friday afternoon made the celebration “unacceptable” for not respecting Islamic values.
The ambassador, seeking to end the deadlock peacefully, urged his compatriots to cancel the celebrations two hours before schedule and to vacate the premises.
The police said that the Sri Lankans had all the necessary permits and did not break the law. Sri Lanka is organising on Monday a “Sri Lanka Culture Week” in Kuwait to help promote the country as a tourist and cultural destination. The event is hosted by Kuwait’s National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters and co-sponsored by the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau and the Sri Lankan Airlines.
A28-member cultural troupe will perform 'Sri Lak Rangana', a fusion of historical and contemporary dance forms.
The week will also feature a handicraft exhibition of products, bronze items, masks, gems, jewellery and other ornaments while a food festival will introduce Sri Lankan cuisine to Kuwait residents.
(Gulf News)
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Sarkozy defies legal advice and seeks ban on burkas in street
A BAN on full-face veils being worn in the street and other public places has been ordered by French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
In a surprise move, he defied the advice of experts brought in by the government who warned such a broad ban risked contravening France's constitution.
Government spokesman Luc Chatel said after yesterday's weekly cabinet meeting that the president had decided the
Government spokesman Luc Chatel said after yesterday's weekly cabinet meeting that the president had decided the
government should submit a bill to parliament next month on an overall ban on burka-like veils.
"The ban on veils covering the whole face should be general, in every public space, because the dignity of women cannot be put in doubt," Mr Chatel said.
It puts France on the same track as Belgium, which is also moving toward a complete ban in a similar reaction as Islamic culture has come into conflict with native European values. Mr Sarkozy has repeatedly said that such clothing oppresses women and is "not welcome" in France.
But Abdellatif Lemsibak, a member of the National Federation of Muslims of France, said he was shocked. "It's a transgression, an aggression even, on the level of personal liberty," he said. "The Muslims have the right to an orthodox expression of their religion."
The decision to seek a full ban, rather than a limited one, came as a surprise. After a cabinet meeting a week ago, a government spokesman said proposed legislation would take into account conclusions on the matter by the Council of State, France's highest administrative office.
The government had sought the council's opinion to ensure a law would pass constitutional muster, and it advised a full ban would be "legally very fragile."
A six-month parliamentary inquiry also concluded that a complete ban would raise constitutional issues, as well as enforcement problems.
France, a firmly secular country, has western Europe's largest Muslim population, estimated at five million.
People there worry about clashes in values as well as a spread of radical Islam. The authorities widely see the veil in light of gender equality and security issues.
In neighbouring Belgium, a similar initiative for a ban on full veils in public places, including in the streets, is expected to become law in July.
Muslim leaders in France say the face-covering veil is not a religious requirement of Islam but have cautioned against a ban.
The government spokesman said Mr Sarkozy considered burka-style veils that hide the face, such as niqabs, "do not pose a problem in a religious sense but threaten the dignity of women".
France outlawed Muslim headscarves and other "ostentatious" religious symbols from classrooms in 2004 after a marathon parliamentary debate.
Numerous girls wore headscarves in class, but only a tiny minority of women wear the all-covering veil. Nevertheless, debate on the question of whether a law is needed and how far it should reach has continued for nearly a year. Muslim leaders say the debate itself has stigmatised Muslims, as has a national debate on the French identity.
Mr Chatel said Mr Sarkozy had insisted that "everything should be done so that no-one feels stigmatised".
French Muslims torn over potential veil ban
PARIS — Muslims in the Arab world are incensed and Muslims in France are walking a delicate line after President Nicolas Sarkozy pushed for an all-out ban on full Islamic veils.
"Ridiculous" and "misplaced," said a Muslim vendor Thursday at an outdoor market in a working class, ethnically mixed Paris suburb. "Racist," said a Sunni Muslim cleric in Lebanon.
The rector of the Muslim Institute of the Paris Mosque, however, held off on harsh criticism, saying only that any ban should be properly explained, and noting that the Quran does not require women to cover their bodies and faces.
Sarkozy upped the stakes Wednesday in France's drive to abolish the all-encompassing veil, ordering a draft law banning them in all public places — defying France's highest administrative body, which says such a ban risks being declared unconstitutional.
Such a measure would put France on the same track as Belgium, which is also moving toward a complete ban amid fears of radicalism and growing Islamic populations in Europe. Sarkozy says such clothing oppresses women and is "not welcome" in France. French officials have also cited a concealed face as a security risk.
France's top government official for family issues, Nadine Morano, said the conservative government wants to "break this dynamic of invasion of burqas in our country."
While France has western Europe's largest Muslim population, only a tiny minority of Muslim women in France wear the burqa, which has only a mesh screen for the eyes, or niqab, which leaves a slit for the eyes.
"France is addressing a very strong message. It is a message on an international level to women. How can we explain that while women are fighting in Afghanistan for their freedom, for their dignity, in France we accept what they are fighting against?" Morano said on France-Info radio Thursday.
Abdel Halim Laeib, a market vendor in Livry-Gargan northeast of Paris, is worried that outlawing the veils would inflame tensions in a nation struggling to define its modern identity.
"I find it totally ridiculous," he said. "Every person has the right to practice their religion, in whatever way they want to. Personally, it doesn't bother me if someone wears the full veil, like a woman who can wear a miniskirt, or a low-cut top where we can see her breasts."
"I find it very misplaced," he said. "I am a Muslim and I think that unfortunately we have a very negative image."
Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Paris Mosque, had a cautious response Thursday. "Muslims in France ... are respectful of national law," he said, but added that any law should allow "a reasonable period for education" about what it is for.
Key questions are how the bill will be phrased — whether it will contain exceptions for face-concealing costumes at a Carnival parade, for example — and how a ban would be enforced. The Justice Ministry said Thursday it will write the draft law in the coming weeks.
Muslim countries, too, have struggled to deal with the niqab. Egypt's top cleric recently decreed that Muslim women should not wear the niqab inside offices but he said they can wear it in public.
In Lebanon, Sheik Maher Hammoud, a Sunni Muslim cleric in the southern city of Sidon, called the French actions racist.
"Whenever Islamic thought and culture clashes with Western democracy, racism rears its head and under various names," he said. "Muslims do not need lessons from Sarkozy or anyone else to teach them about human rights or the rights of women."
In Damascus, Mohammed Habash, Syrian lawmaker and head of the Center for Islamic Studies, said "such decisions only serve to encourage Islamophobia." Given the small numbers of women in France who wear the niqab, he said, "I don't think this constitutes a security or cultural threat."
"This does not bode well for the relationship between Islamic countries and Western governments," he said.
France drew similar criticism when it outlawed Muslim headscarves and other "ostentatious" religious symbols from classrooms in 2004.
Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Zeina Karam in Beirut and Salah Nasrawi in Cairo contributed to this report.
Kyrgyz Islamists eye chaos with eager eyes
Lazily fingering a string of prayer beads outside a mosque in southern Kyrgyzstan, Ayubkhan smiles when asked about the violence, which wracked his country earlier this month.
A member of Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, he said he had no doubt of what the violent images flashing across his television screen meant for him and for his group's vision of a pan-Central Asian Islamic caliphate.
"I thought to myself: so, it has begun," he said.
Amid the power vacuum, which has followed the violence Hizb ut-Tahrir, effectively banned in Kyrgyzstan and most Central Asian countries, is waiting to reap the long-term benefits the turbulence will bring to its cause.
Ayubkhan agreed to speak with AFP on condition the interview be conducted in a car to avoid police surveillance. He said he was confident that the interim government that took over from ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev would continue to alienate the Kyrgyz people and deliver him more converts.
"What is good for us is that (interim leader Roza Otunbayeva) and the interim government are going to repeat the mistakes of Bakiyev and break the hopes of the people and make them desperate," he said. "This will make them more receptive to our ideas."
Thousands of protestors took to the streets of this strategically vital ex-Soviet state earlier this month in bloody clashes that forced out Bakiyev, leaving at least 84 dead and nearly 2,000 injured.
No clear indication
While the interim government formed by former Foreign Minister Otunbayeva has restored order to the Russian-leaning north, it has so far struggled to assert its authority in the religiously conservative south.
"So far, there is no clear indication that (Hizb-ut-Tahrir) benefited from this revolution," said Alisher Khamidov, a Washington-based analyst and expert on the group. "However, it is clear that the disarray in the government structures, in particular in the security services, means that harsh treatment of religious dissent has slowed down and this can potentially provide (them) a breathing space," he added.
In the race to capture the hearts and minds of Muslims in Central Asia, which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly two decades ago, perhaps no Islamist group has made further inroads than Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
Founded in the Middle East in 1953 by judge Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, the group's message of Muslim unity found strong resonance in the region's Fergana Valley, the scene of bloody ethnic clashes in the last days of the Soviet empire.
Although legal in the United States, Britain and other European countries, Hizb-ut-Tahrir is proscribed in Central Asia and Russia. Bakiyev took a hard line against the group, which does not advocate violence, portraying it as a violent terrorist organization.
"(Bakiyev) beat us. He imprisoned us. But Hizb ut-Tahrir didn't suffer at all. Now Roza Otunbayeva's people are following the steps of Bakiyev. They will make the same mistakes," Ayubkhan said.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Secret prison revealed in Baghdad
La times
Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say. The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in the north. The provincial governor alleged at the time that ordinary citizens had been detained as well, often without a warrant.
Worried that courts would order the detainees' release, security forces obtained a court order and transferred them to Baghdad, where they were held in isolation. Human rights officials learned of the facility in March from family members searching for missing relatives.
Revelation of the secret prison could worsen tensions at a highly sensitive moment in Iraq. As U.S. troops are withdrawing, Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, and other political officials are negotiating the formation of a new government. Including minority Sunni Arabs is considered by many to be key to preventing a return of widespread sectarian violence. Already there has been an increase in attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni extremist group.
The alleged brutal treatment of prisoners at the facility raised concerns that the country could drift back to its authoritarian past.
Commanders initially resisted efforts to inspect the prison but relented and allowed visits by two teams of inspectors, including Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim. Inspectors said they found that the 431 prisoners had been subjected to appalling conditions and quoted prisoners as saying that one of them, a former colonel in President Saddam Hussein's army, had died in January as a result of torture.
"More than 100 were tortured. There were a lot of marks on their bodies," said an Iraqi official familiar with the inspections. "They beat people, they used electricity. They suffocated them with plastic bags, and different methods."
An internal U.S. Embassy report quotes Salim as saying that prisoners had told her they were handcuffed for three to four hours at a time in stress positions or sodomized.
"One prisoner told her that he had been raped on a daily basis, another showed her his undergarments, which were entirely bloodstained," the memo reads.
Some described guards extorting as much as $1,000 from prisoners who wanted to phone their families, the memo said.
Maliki vowed to shut down the prison and ordered the arrest of the officers working there after Salim presented him with a report this month. Since then, 75 detainees have been freed and an additional 275 transferred to regular jails, Iraqi officials said. Maliki said in an interview that he had been unaware of the abuses. He said the prisoners had been sent to Baghdad because of concerns about corruption in Mosul.
"The prime minister cannot be responsible for all the behavior of his soldiers and staff," said Salim, praising Maliki's willingness to root out abuses. Salim, a Chaldean Christian, ran for parliament in last month's elections on Maliki's Shiite-dominated list.
Maliki defended his use of special prisons and an elite military force that answers only to him; his supporters say he has had no choice because of Iraq's precarious security situation. Maliki told The Times that he was committed to stamping out torture -- which he blamed on his enemies.
"Our reforms continue, and we have the Human Rights Ministry to monitor this," he said. "We will hold accountable anybody who was proven involved in such acts."
But Maliki's critics say the network of special military units with their own investigative judges and interrogators are a threat to Iraq's fragile democracy. They question how Maliki could not have known what was going on at the facility, and say that regardless, he is responsible for what happened there.
"The prison is Maliki's becauseit's not under the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Justice or Ministry of Interior officially," said one Iraqi security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
The revelations echoed those at the beginning of Iraq's sectarian war. In late 2005, the U.S. military found a secret prison in an Interior Ministry bunker where Sunnis rounded up in police sweeps were held.
The latest episode, the U.S. Embassy report warns, could exacerbate tensions between Iraq's Shiite majority and Sunnis even with the facility closed.
U.S. troops already have pulled out of Iraq's cities, and Iraqi officials say U.S. influence is diminishing as the Americans focus on ending their military presence. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq is scheduled to drop by about half, to 50,000, by the end of August.
The embassy report cautions that "disclosure of a secret prison in which Sunni Arabs were systematically tortured would not only become an international embarrassment, but would also likely compromise the prime minister's ability to put together a viable government coalition with him at the helm."
Maliki's main political rival, Iyad Allawi, narrowly defeated him in parliamentary elections last month. Allawi, a secular Shiite, drew on dissatisfaction in Sunni regions around central Iraq. In the interview, Maliki invited Allawi to join him in forming a new government. But news of a secret prison that falls under the jurisdiction of the prime minister's military office could make it difficult for him to gain any Sunni partners.
The controversy over the secret prison, located at the Old Muthanna airport in west Baghdad, has also pushed Maliki to begin relinquishing control of two other detention facilities at Camp Honor, a base in Baghdad's Green Zone. The base belongs to the Baghdad Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Force, elite units that report to the prime minister and are responsible for holding high-level suspects.
Families and lawyers say they find it nearly impossible to visit the Camp Honor facilities. The Justice Ministry is now assuming supervision of the Green Zone jails, although Maliki's offices will continue to command directly the military units.
The 431 detainees brought down from Nineveh were initially held at Camp Honor. Interrogations began after they were transferred to the prison at the Old Muthanna airport.
According to the U.S. Embassy report and interviews with Iraqi officials, two separate investigative committees questioned the detainees and abused them. During the day, there were interrogators from the Iraqi judiciary. In the late afternoon they came from the Baghdad Brigade.
The embassy report says that at least four of the investigators from the Baghdad Brigade are believed to have been indicted for torture in 2006. The charges against them at the time included selling Sunni Arab detainees held at a national police facility to Shiite militias to be killed.
In December, the Human Rights Ministry asked the judiciary to investigate Baghdad Brigade interrogators over allegations of torture at Camp Honor, but hasn't received an answer, Iraqi officials said.
With the secret facility at the old airport being shut down, and both Maliki and Salim, the human rights minister, hailing what they regard as progress, some Iraqis with knowledge of the security apparatus say they are worried that nothing will really change.
One former lawmaker with great knowledge of the prime minister's security offices called for radical change in the next government. "This is the beginning. We have to hold people accountable," the former lawmaker said. "It's a coverup of torture."
Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say. The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in the north. The provincial governor alleged at the time that ordinary citizens had been detained as well, often without a warrant.
Worried that courts would order the detainees' release, security forces obtained a court order and transferred them to Baghdad, where they were held in isolation. Human rights officials learned of the facility in March from family members searching for missing relatives.
Revelation of the secret prison could worsen tensions at a highly sensitive moment in Iraq. As U.S. troops are withdrawing, Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, and other political officials are negotiating the formation of a new government. Including minority Sunni Arabs is considered by many to be key to preventing a return of widespread sectarian violence. Already there has been an increase in attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni extremist group.
The alleged brutal treatment of prisoners at the facility raised concerns that the country could drift back to its authoritarian past.
Commanders initially resisted efforts to inspect the prison but relented and allowed visits by two teams of inspectors, including Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim. Inspectors said they found that the 431 prisoners had been subjected to appalling conditions and quoted prisoners as saying that one of them, a former colonel in President Saddam Hussein's army, had died in January as a result of torture.
"More than 100 were tortured. There were a lot of marks on their bodies," said an Iraqi official familiar with the inspections. "They beat people, they used electricity. They suffocated them with plastic bags, and different methods."
An internal U.S. Embassy report quotes Salim as saying that prisoners had told her they were handcuffed for three to four hours at a time in stress positions or sodomized.
"One prisoner told her that he had been raped on a daily basis, another showed her his undergarments, which were entirely bloodstained," the memo reads.
Some described guards extorting as much as $1,000 from prisoners who wanted to phone their families, the memo said.
Maliki vowed to shut down the prison and ordered the arrest of the officers working there after Salim presented him with a report this month. Since then, 75 detainees have been freed and an additional 275 transferred to regular jails, Iraqi officials said. Maliki said in an interview that he had been unaware of the abuses. He said the prisoners had been sent to Baghdad because of concerns about corruption in Mosul.
"The prime minister cannot be responsible for all the behavior of his soldiers and staff," said Salim, praising Maliki's willingness to root out abuses. Salim, a Chaldean Christian, ran for parliament in last month's elections on Maliki's Shiite-dominated list.
Maliki defended his use of special prisons and an elite military force that answers only to him; his supporters say he has had no choice because of Iraq's precarious security situation. Maliki told The Times that he was committed to stamping out torture -- which he blamed on his enemies.
"Our reforms continue, and we have the Human Rights Ministry to monitor this," he said. "We will hold accountable anybody who was proven involved in such acts."
But Maliki's critics say the network of special military units with their own investigative judges and interrogators are a threat to Iraq's fragile democracy. They question how Maliki could not have known what was going on at the facility, and say that regardless, he is responsible for what happened there.
"The prison is Maliki's becauseit's not under the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Justice or Ministry of Interior officially," said one Iraqi security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
The revelations echoed those at the beginning of Iraq's sectarian war. In late 2005, the U.S. military found a secret prison in an Interior Ministry bunker where Sunnis rounded up in police sweeps were held.
The latest episode, the U.S. Embassy report warns, could exacerbate tensions between Iraq's Shiite majority and Sunnis even with the facility closed.
U.S. troops already have pulled out of Iraq's cities, and Iraqi officials say U.S. influence is diminishing as the Americans focus on ending their military presence. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq is scheduled to drop by about half, to 50,000, by the end of August.
The embassy report cautions that "disclosure of a secret prison in which Sunni Arabs were systematically tortured would not only become an international embarrassment, but would also likely compromise the prime minister's ability to put together a viable government coalition with him at the helm."
Maliki's main political rival, Iyad Allawi, narrowly defeated him in parliamentary elections last month. Allawi, a secular Shiite, drew on dissatisfaction in Sunni regions around central Iraq. In the interview, Maliki invited Allawi to join him in forming a new government. But news of a secret prison that falls under the jurisdiction of the prime minister's military office could make it difficult for him to gain any Sunni partners.
The controversy over the secret prison, located at the Old Muthanna airport in west Baghdad, has also pushed Maliki to begin relinquishing control of two other detention facilities at Camp Honor, a base in Baghdad's Green Zone. The base belongs to the Baghdad Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Force, elite units that report to the prime minister and are responsible for holding high-level suspects.
Families and lawyers say they find it nearly impossible to visit the Camp Honor facilities. The Justice Ministry is now assuming supervision of the Green Zone jails, although Maliki's offices will continue to command directly the military units.
The 431 detainees brought down from Nineveh were initially held at Camp Honor. Interrogations began after they were transferred to the prison at the Old Muthanna airport.
According to the U.S. Embassy report and interviews with Iraqi officials, two separate investigative committees questioned the detainees and abused them. During the day, there were interrogators from the Iraqi judiciary. In the late afternoon they came from the Baghdad Brigade.
The embassy report says that at least four of the investigators from the Baghdad Brigade are believed to have been indicted for torture in 2006. The charges against them at the time included selling Sunni Arab detainees held at a national police facility to Shiite militias to be killed.
In December, the Human Rights Ministry asked the judiciary to investigate Baghdad Brigade interrogators over allegations of torture at Camp Honor, but hasn't received an answer, Iraqi officials said.
With the secret facility at the old airport being shut down, and both Maliki and Salim, the human rights minister, hailing what they regard as progress, some Iraqis with knowledge of the security apparatus say they are worried that nothing will really change.
One former lawmaker with great knowledge of the prime minister's security offices called for radical change in the next government. "This is the beginning. We have to hold people accountable," the former lawmaker said. "It's a coverup of torture."
Spanish school expels girl for wearing hijab
BILKYASR
MADRID: Europe continues to be embroiled with the veil controversy. This time it was Spain that sparked outrage from Muslim and independent human rights activists after a 16-year-old girl was expelled from her school for violating the school’s dress code by wearing the hijab, which covers one’s hair. She was later readmitted to the school in the Pozuelo suburb of Madrid, after the country’s education ministry intervened and said article 16 of the Spanish Constitution requires government institutions to respect a person’s religious beliefs.
The girl, of Moroccan descent, has left many Muslims living in Spain worried over what they called the growing conservatism engulfing the country.
“We are definitely scared of what might happen in this country,” began Mahmoud al-Attar, an Egyptian-Spanish duel national who has lived in the European country for over a decade.
“I believe that Europeans are fighting back against the Islamic world through the hijab, which is unfortunate because it is these women and girls that represent the moderate views and the idea of cross-culture that Europe should be embracing,” the 37-year-old Madrid University assistant professor said.
The expulsion and then reinstatement comes less than two weeks after a Belgian Parliamentary committee approved a law that would ban the niqab – the full face covering – to become the first European nation to formally forbid the dress.
For others, including Spanish civil rights activist Maria Horno, the move was a “shock” to the rights community.
“We had thought Spain was moving toward more moderation and acceptance of differences, but this shows there is a tide of anger and hatred fomenting inside the country that must be understood and tackled before we alienate our Muslim brothers and sisters,” she said.
Horno added that Spain is a country that is “struggling with economic problems and maybe people are seeing the Muslims as a threat for some reason. I hope we get our act together and realize we are all in this together.”
For now, Spain has entered the stage of cracking down on Muslim women’s attire, following Belgium and France in their efforts to curtail what a woman is allowed to wear.
MADRID: Europe continues to be embroiled with the veil controversy. This time it was Spain that sparked outrage from Muslim and independent human rights activists after a 16-year-old girl was expelled from her school for violating the school’s dress code by wearing the hijab, which covers one’s hair. She was later readmitted to the school in the Pozuelo suburb of Madrid, after the country’s education ministry intervened and said article 16 of the Spanish Constitution requires government institutions to respect a person’s religious beliefs.
The girl, of Moroccan descent, has left many Muslims living in Spain worried over what they called the growing conservatism engulfing the country.
“We are definitely scared of what might happen in this country,” began Mahmoud al-Attar, an Egyptian-Spanish duel national who has lived in the European country for over a decade.
“I believe that Europeans are fighting back against the Islamic world through the hijab, which is unfortunate because it is these women and girls that represent the moderate views and the idea of cross-culture that Europe should be embracing,” the 37-year-old Madrid University assistant professor said.
The expulsion and then reinstatement comes less than two weeks after a Belgian Parliamentary committee approved a law that would ban the niqab – the full face covering – to become the first European nation to formally forbid the dress.
For others, including Spanish civil rights activist Maria Horno, the move was a “shock” to the rights community.
“We had thought Spain was moving toward more moderation and acceptance of differences, but this shows there is a tide of anger and hatred fomenting inside the country that must be understood and tackled before we alienate our Muslim brothers and sisters,” she said.
Horno added that Spain is a country that is “struggling with economic problems and maybe people are seeing the Muslims as a threat for some reason. I hope we get our act together and realize we are all in this together.”
For now, Spain has entered the stage of cracking down on Muslim women’s attire, following Belgium and France in their efforts to curtail what a woman is allowed to wear.
Military Orders The Demolishing Of Four Homes In Southern West Bank
IMEMC
The Israeli army handed out on Monday demolition orders to four Palestinian home-owners at the town of Halhul, southern West Bank. The army says the homes are located in an area close to the settlers' road number 60 which connects Israeli settlement in southern West Bank with Jerusalem.
Road 60 was original built on land used to be owned by Palestinians. There are half a million setters living in West Bank settlements. All those settlements are illegal according to international law.
Last week the Israeli military demolished three houses in the West Bank. Those homes were located in Al-Khader and Beit Sahour southern West Bank and the village of Hares northern West Bank.
The army says the homes lack needed permission from the army. Residents say the army never gives Palestinians permission to build.
The Israeli army handed out on Monday demolition orders to four Palestinian home-owners at the town of Halhul, southern West Bank. The army says the homes are located in an area close to the settlers' road number 60 which connects Israeli settlement in southern West Bank with Jerusalem.
Road 60 was original built on land used to be owned by Palestinians. There are half a million setters living in West Bank settlements. All those settlements are illegal according to international law.
Last week the Israeli military demolished three houses in the West Bank. Those homes were located in Al-Khader and Beit Sahour southern West Bank and the village of Hares northern West Bank.
The army says the homes lack needed permission from the army. Residents say the army never gives Palestinians permission to build.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Elite US troops ready to combat Pakistani nuclear hijacks
The US army is training a crack unit to seal off and snatch back Pakistani nuclear weapons in the event that militants, possibly from inside the country’s security apparatus, get their hands on a nuclear device or materials that could make one.
The specialised unit would be charged with recovering the nuclear materials and securing them.
The move follows growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan’s military, a series of attacks on sensitive installations over the past two years, several of which housed nuclear facilities, and rising tension that has seen a series of official complaints by US authorities to Islamabad in the past fortnight.
“What you have in Pakistan is nuclear weapons mixed with the highest density of extremists in the world, so we have a right to be concerned,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer who used to run the US energy department’s intelligence unit. “There have been attacks on army bases which stored nuclear weapons and there have been breaches and infiltrations by terrorists into military facilities.”
Professor Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan security research unit at Bradford University, has tracked a number of attempted security breaches since 2007. “The terrorists are at the gates,” he warned.
In a counterterrorism journal, published by America’s West Point military academy, he documented three incidents. The first was an attack in November 2007 at Sargodha in Punjab, where nuclearcapable F-16 jet aircraft are thought to be stationed. The following month a suicide bomber struck at Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra in Attock district. In August 2008 a group of suicide bombers blew up the gates to a weapons complex at the Wah cantonment in Punjab, believed to be one of Pakistan’s nuclear warhead assembly plants. The attack left 63 people dead.
A further attack followed at Kamra last October. Pakistan denies that the base still has a nuclear role, but Gregory believes it does. A six-man suicide team was arrested in Sargodha last August.
Fears that militants could penetrate a nuclear facility intensified after a brazen attack on army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October when 10 gunmen wearing army uniforms got inside and laid siege for 22 hours. Last month there was an attack on the naval command centre in Islamabad.
Pakistani police said five Americans from Washington who were arrested in Pakistan last month after trying to join the Taliban were carrying a map of Chashma Barrage, a complex in Punjab that includes a nuclear power facility.
The Al-Qaeda leadership has made no secret of its desire to get its hands on weapons for a “nuclear 9/11”.
“I have no doubt they are hell-bent on acquiring this,” said Mowatt-Larssen. “These guys are thinking of nuclear at the highest level and are approaching it in increasingly professional ways.”
Nuclear experts and US officials say the biggest fear is of an inside job amid growing anti-American feeling in Pakistan. Last year 3,021 Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks, more than in Afghanistan, yet polls suggest Pakistanis consider the United States to be a greater threat than the Taliban.
“You have 8,000-12,000 [people] in Pakistan with some type of role in nuclear missiles — whether as part of an assembly team or security,” said Gregory. “It’s a very large number and there is a real possibility that among those people are sympathisers of terrorist or jihadist groups who may facilitate some kind of attack.”
Pakistan is thought to possess about 80 nuclear warheads. Although the weapons are well guarded, the fear is that materials or processes to enrich uranium could fall into the wrong hands.
“All it needs is someone in Pakistan within the nuclear establishment and in a position of key access to become radicalised,” said MowattLarssen. “This is not just theoretical. It did happen — Pakistan has had inside problems before.”
Bashir Mahmood, the former head of Pakistan’s plutonium reactor, formed the Islamic charity Ummah Tameer-e-Nau in March 2000 after resigning from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He was arrested in Islamabad on October 23, 2001, with his associate Abdul Majeed for alleged links to Osama Bin Laden.
Pakistan’s military leadership, which controls the nuclear programme, has always bristled at the suggestion that its nuclear facilities are at risk. The generals insist that storing components in different sites keeps them secure.
US officials refused to speak on the record about American safety plans, well aware of how this would be seen in Islamabad. However, one official admitted that the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s storage sites are located. “Don’t assume the US knows everything,” he said.
Although Washington has provided $100m worth of technical assistance to Islamabad under its nuclear protection programme, US personnel have been denied access to most Pakistani nuclear sites.
In the past fortnight the US has made unprecedented formal protests to Pakistan’s national security apparatus, warning it about fanning virulent anti-American sentiment in the media.
Concerns about hostility towards America within elements of the Pakistani armed forces first surfaced in 2007. At a meeting of military commanders staged at Kurram, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a Pakistani major drew his pistol and shot an American. The incident was hushed up as a gunfight
Kyrgyzstan Has Undergone a Grassroots Revolution' Kester Kenn Klomegah interviews APAS KUBANYCHBEK, Kyrgyz opposition leader
IPC
MOSCOW, Apr 12, 2010 (IPS) - Apas Kubanychbek, who hails from the high mountainous area of Ysyk-Ata in the Chuyskaya province of Kyrgyzstan, was involved in the political movements and democratic struggles of the former Soviet republic in the early 1990s.
A fierce critic of media suppression, nepotism, corruption and human rights violations in Kyrgyzstan, Kubanychbek spoke with IPS correspondent Kester Kenn Klomegah, at an undisclosed location, shortly after the mass protests that ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his government in Bishkek last week.
Q: How would you explain or interpret the latest political developments leading to the unexpected change of government in Kyrgyzstan?
A: The mass anti-government protest was really an indication of more than a decade of disillusionment and dissatisfaction that accumulated in the political, economic and social spheres from the period of the first post-Soviet president Askar Akayev to his successor Kurmanbek Bakiyev who came to power in 2005 during the Tulip revolution. People supported the revolution simply because they wanted a change, but that popular revolutionary interest was short-lived.
It's worth recalling that during the Soviet times, Kyrgyzstan was one of 15 socialist republics and it was governed by Moscow. However, after the collapse of the Soviet era, what we have witnessed cannot be described as democracy but mismanagement of state power. Authorities have consistently used state power to suppress opposition voices, limit media freedom and basic rights. There was also hidden and deep-seated corruption.
El-Jurt (People), the political party I founded about eight years ago, alongside other opposition groups has been fighting against injustice and for the welfare of the impoverished in the 5.3 million population in Kyrgyzstan. We really need a better and more democratic society. Governments were not competent to carry out necessary democratic reforms for the building of a flourishing economy. Both the Akayev and Bakiyev governments consisted mainly of close friends, relatives and former communists who strongly and conservatively opposed radical changes and democracy. Thus, what happened a few days ago in my country should be expected and can be described as a grassroots revolution against official authority.
Q: Could you say more about accusations of corruption and infringement of human rights in the country?
A: Akayev and his wife Mayram were not held back from the temptation of corruption. He created a corrupt political system where state ministers were appointed on bribes. Fish rots from the head and, seeing Akayev’s style, government officials also took bribes from subordinates.
My party, El-Jyurt, was suppressed because I began to publicly to criticise the embezzlement of Kyrgyz gold (four tonnes) together with the international adventurer, B. Bershtain, the head of the western firm ‘Seabeko Corporation’, and began to put journalists into prisons. I was also arrested for public criticism of government corruption and thrown into prison. In 1994, they prevented my candidacy for the parliamentary election, considering me the most dangerous political opponent.
Today, in Kyrgyzstan executive power is totally struck by corruption, beginning from the president and ending with the heads of regions, law courts, and law enforcement agencies. Corruption over the years has contributed to Kyrgyzstan’s political and economic crisis and rising unemployment. Many specialists, even the unskilled, have emigrated. The level of poverty according to international experts exceeded 80 percent during the years of Bakiyev's administration. Unemployment led to the emigration of more than two million Kirghiz citizens into the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and further abroad.
One interesting fact is that the Kremlin has paid heavily to Bakiyev to remove U.S. military bases in Kyrgyzstan and this issue has links to what is currently taking place, although Russian authorities have described the recent anti-government protests as purely internal.
Q: How do the opposition groups, such as yours, feel about the ousted government’s tight control over the media? Do you think the human rights situation got worse during the Bakiyev administration?
A: It was really beyond description, worse than any of the ex-Soviet republics. I was supported by people very strongly for the 2005 presidential elections in contrast to Bakiyev. I appeared on the Kyrgyz national television as the future presidential candidate and people supported me as a hero of the emerging revolution. Unfortunately, Bakiyev did everything through the Central Election Commission (CEC) of the country, illegally excluding my name from the list as presidential candidate and using the entire administrative resources to win the elections. This was just one classical example how democracy was stifled with members of opposition languishing in deplorable conditions in prison while others fled abroad.
Q: What measures do you suggest should be put in place in pursuit of democracy in your country? And what lessons are there to draw from the Kyrgyzstan case?
A: The new provisional government has to rebuild or restructure the state and civil institutions by flushing out the remaining conservatives, bringing in more active, young and progressive-minded specialists. As chairman of one of the largest opposition parties, I can testify that Bakiyev suffocated media freedom in Kyrgyzstan using authoritarian methods, just as his predecessor did. For example, the West, for some reasons, banked on the former officials from the executive branch who erroneously assumed that they have experience in state administration. Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine and Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia are examples of leaders who have disappointed their people and their countries.
The new authorities have to learn from the negative tendencies of the two previous regimes. They should do away with authoritarianism, follow democratic principles and change the atmosphere of intimidation for Kyrgyz people. I will strongly appeal to democracy loving countries in Europe and the West to help opposition groups including El-Jyurt.
In summary, authorities in Kyrgyzstan must establish international standards and norms of democracy, observe fundamental human rights, establish checks and balances, ensure the independence of the judicial authority, the freedom of the press, fight corruption and work towards democratic elections within the shortest possible period
MOSCOW, Apr 12, 2010 (IPS) - Apas Kubanychbek, who hails from the high mountainous area of Ysyk-Ata in the Chuyskaya province of Kyrgyzstan, was involved in the political movements and democratic struggles of the former Soviet republic in the early 1990s.
A fierce critic of media suppression, nepotism, corruption and human rights violations in Kyrgyzstan, Kubanychbek spoke with IPS correspondent Kester Kenn Klomegah, at an undisclosed location, shortly after the mass protests that ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his government in Bishkek last week.
Q: How would you explain or interpret the latest political developments leading to the unexpected change of government in Kyrgyzstan?
A: The mass anti-government protest was really an indication of more than a decade of disillusionment and dissatisfaction that accumulated in the political, economic and social spheres from the period of the first post-Soviet president Askar Akayev to his successor Kurmanbek Bakiyev who came to power in 2005 during the Tulip revolution. People supported the revolution simply because they wanted a change, but that popular revolutionary interest was short-lived.
It's worth recalling that during the Soviet times, Kyrgyzstan was one of 15 socialist republics and it was governed by Moscow. However, after the collapse of the Soviet era, what we have witnessed cannot be described as democracy but mismanagement of state power. Authorities have consistently used state power to suppress opposition voices, limit media freedom and basic rights. There was also hidden and deep-seated corruption.
El-Jurt (People), the political party I founded about eight years ago, alongside other opposition groups has been fighting against injustice and for the welfare of the impoverished in the 5.3 million population in Kyrgyzstan. We really need a better and more democratic society. Governments were not competent to carry out necessary democratic reforms for the building of a flourishing economy. Both the Akayev and Bakiyev governments consisted mainly of close friends, relatives and former communists who strongly and conservatively opposed radical changes and democracy. Thus, what happened a few days ago in my country should be expected and can be described as a grassroots revolution against official authority.
Q: Could you say more about accusations of corruption and infringement of human rights in the country?
A: Akayev and his wife Mayram were not held back from the temptation of corruption. He created a corrupt political system where state ministers were appointed on bribes. Fish rots from the head and, seeing Akayev’s style, government officials also took bribes from subordinates.
My party, El-Jyurt, was suppressed because I began to publicly to criticise the embezzlement of Kyrgyz gold (four tonnes) together with the international adventurer, B. Bershtain, the head of the western firm ‘Seabeko Corporation’, and began to put journalists into prisons. I was also arrested for public criticism of government corruption and thrown into prison. In 1994, they prevented my candidacy for the parliamentary election, considering me the most dangerous political opponent.
Today, in Kyrgyzstan executive power is totally struck by corruption, beginning from the president and ending with the heads of regions, law courts, and law enforcement agencies. Corruption over the years has contributed to Kyrgyzstan’s political and economic crisis and rising unemployment. Many specialists, even the unskilled, have emigrated. The level of poverty according to international experts exceeded 80 percent during the years of Bakiyev's administration. Unemployment led to the emigration of more than two million Kirghiz citizens into the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and further abroad.
One interesting fact is that the Kremlin has paid heavily to Bakiyev to remove U.S. military bases in Kyrgyzstan and this issue has links to what is currently taking place, although Russian authorities have described the recent anti-government protests as purely internal.
Q: How do the opposition groups, such as yours, feel about the ousted government’s tight control over the media? Do you think the human rights situation got worse during the Bakiyev administration?
A: It was really beyond description, worse than any of the ex-Soviet republics. I was supported by people very strongly for the 2005 presidential elections in contrast to Bakiyev. I appeared on the Kyrgyz national television as the future presidential candidate and people supported me as a hero of the emerging revolution. Unfortunately, Bakiyev did everything through the Central Election Commission (CEC) of the country, illegally excluding my name from the list as presidential candidate and using the entire administrative resources to win the elections. This was just one classical example how democracy was stifled with members of opposition languishing in deplorable conditions in prison while others fled abroad.
Q: What measures do you suggest should be put in place in pursuit of democracy in your country? And what lessons are there to draw from the Kyrgyzstan case?
A: The new provisional government has to rebuild or restructure the state and civil institutions by flushing out the remaining conservatives, bringing in more active, young and progressive-minded specialists. As chairman of one of the largest opposition parties, I can testify that Bakiyev suffocated media freedom in Kyrgyzstan using authoritarian methods, just as his predecessor did. For example, the West, for some reasons, banked on the former officials from the executive branch who erroneously assumed that they have experience in state administration. Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine and Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia are examples of leaders who have disappointed their people and their countries.
The new authorities have to learn from the negative tendencies of the two previous regimes. They should do away with authoritarianism, follow democratic principles and change the atmosphere of intimidation for Kyrgyz people. I will strongly appeal to democracy loving countries in Europe and the West to help opposition groups including El-Jyurt.
In summary, authorities in Kyrgyzstan must establish international standards and norms of democracy, observe fundamental human rights, establish checks and balances, ensure the independence of the judicial authority, the freedom of the press, fight corruption and work towards democratic elections within the shortest possible period
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Obama doubts sanctions can change Iran course
Press Tv
In a new twist in Washington's drive for international pressure against Iran, US President Barack Obama says there is no guarantee that sanctions will change the course of Tehran's nuclear program.
"Do we have a guarantee as to the sanctions we are able to institute at this stage are automatically going to change Iranian behavior? Of course we don't," Obama said in a Friday interview with George Stephanopolous on ABC's Good Morning America.
The US president, however, expressed hope that "consistent and steady" international pressure would eventually persuade Iran to "start making a different set of cost-benefit analyses" about what he described as Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Washington is leading a push for a fourth round of sanctions against Iran at the United Nations Security Council in a bid to hinder the country's drive for its nuclear energy program.
Iran, as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, insists that it neither believes in atomic weapons, nor, as a matter of religious principles, does it intend to acquire nuclear or other weapons of mass-destruction.
It has repeatedly called for a Middle East free from nuclear weapons and global nuclear disarmament.
On Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted that sanctions will never "scare Tehran into giving up its right to attain peaceful nuclear technology".
"We do not welcome threats and sanctions and we will never plead with those who are threatening us with sanctions to not impose sanctions, but we will turn sanctions into opportunities," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
The Islamic Republic has been under US sanctions after the nation toppled a US-backed dictator Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
SBB/ZAP//DT
In a new twist in Washington's drive for international pressure against Iran, US President Barack Obama says there is no guarantee that sanctions will change the course of Tehran's nuclear program.
"Do we have a guarantee as to the sanctions we are able to institute at this stage are automatically going to change Iranian behavior? Of course we don't," Obama said in a Friday interview with George Stephanopolous on ABC's Good Morning America.
The US president, however, expressed hope that "consistent and steady" international pressure would eventually persuade Iran to "start making a different set of cost-benefit analyses" about what he described as Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Washington is leading a push for a fourth round of sanctions against Iran at the United Nations Security Council in a bid to hinder the country's drive for its nuclear energy program.
Iran, as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, insists that it neither believes in atomic weapons, nor, as a matter of religious principles, does it intend to acquire nuclear or other weapons of mass-destruction.
It has repeatedly called for a Middle East free from nuclear weapons and global nuclear disarmament.
On Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted that sanctions will never "scare Tehran into giving up its right to attain peaceful nuclear technology".
"We do not welcome threats and sanctions and we will never plead with those who are threatening us with sanctions to not impose sanctions, but we will turn sanctions into opportunities," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
The Islamic Republic has been under US sanctions after the nation toppled a US-backed dictator Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
SBB/ZAP//DT
US suspends Kyrgyzstan troop flights at Manas
Press Tv
The Transit Center at Manas serves as a crucial supply route for US-led forces in Afghanistan.
The US has stopped all troop flights to Afghanistan from its controversial air base in Kyrgyzstan, a day after the country's new leadership said it would close the key military base in the country.
No reason was given for the decision taken by the US commanders at the Transit Center at Manas (formerly Manas Air Base), a crucial hub for the US-led operations in Afghanistan.
The US military in Kyrgyzstan decided late Friday "to temporarily divert military passenger transport flights," Major John Redfield, a spokesman for US Central Command said.
Decisions on continuing other military flights "will be made on a case-by-case basis," he said.
Rickardo Bodden, another spokesman for the US military base, told Reuters that "while normal flight operations at Manas had resumed on Friday, a decision was taken Friday evening to temporarily divert military passenger transport flights."
Pentagon officials say Manas is central to the war in Afghanistan as about 50,000 US-led troops passed through the base last month alone.
The developments come amid political upheaval in the strategic Central Asian state. The opposition, led by ex-foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva, has taken power and dissolved the parliament. Otunbayeva has promised a new constitution and a presidential election at some point in the next six months. She says a care-taker government will serve as both presidency and parliament for now.
On Saturday, members of Kyrgyzstan's self-proclaimed new leadership have announced their plans to shorten the Pentagon's lease on the base at Manas International Airport near the capital Bishkek.
This comes as mourners in Bishkek are to say their last farewells to some 75 people killed in the uprising in recent days.
The unrest has also left more than 1,500 wounded.
MVZ/ZAP/DT
The Transit Center at Manas serves as a crucial supply route for US-led forces in Afghanistan.
The US has stopped all troop flights to Afghanistan from its controversial air base in Kyrgyzstan, a day after the country's new leadership said it would close the key military base in the country.
No reason was given for the decision taken by the US commanders at the Transit Center at Manas (formerly Manas Air Base), a crucial hub for the US-led operations in Afghanistan.
The US military in Kyrgyzstan decided late Friday "to temporarily divert military passenger transport flights," Major John Redfield, a spokesman for US Central Command said.
Decisions on continuing other military flights "will be made on a case-by-case basis," he said.
Rickardo Bodden, another spokesman for the US military base, told Reuters that "while normal flight operations at Manas had resumed on Friday, a decision was taken Friday evening to temporarily divert military passenger transport flights."
Pentagon officials say Manas is central to the war in Afghanistan as about 50,000 US-led troops passed through the base last month alone.
The developments come amid political upheaval in the strategic Central Asian state. The opposition, led by ex-foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva, has taken power and dissolved the parliament. Otunbayeva has promised a new constitution and a presidential election at some point in the next six months. She says a care-taker government will serve as both presidency and parliament for now.
On Saturday, members of Kyrgyzstan's self-proclaimed new leadership have announced their plans to shorten the Pentagon's lease on the base at Manas International Airport near the capital Bishkek.
This comes as mourners in Bishkek are to say their last farewells to some 75 people killed in the uprising in recent days.
The unrest has also left more than 1,500 wounded.
MVZ/ZAP/DT
US to retain 90 nukes on Iran border
Press Tv
A US B-2 bomber dropping a B61 thermonuclear bomb
As Washington and Moscow sign a new arms reduction treaty, skepticism arises in Turkey as to whether those cuts will include US atomic warheads stored in the country.
US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in Prague on Thursday, which requires both sides to reduce their nuclear arsenals to 1,550, or about one-third below current levels.
This is while the Obama administration has revised US policy on atomic weapons, as part of a new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that, among other things, is said to be aimed at reducing the US stockpile.
But silence over anticipated US plans to withdraw nuclear bombs deployed in the Incirlik Air Base in southern Anatolia, has left many speculating on whether Washington has any intentions to remove the weapons at all.
When asked about a possible US move to withdraw its nuclear weapons from five European countries, including Turkey, Turkey's Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul said that Ankara had no information about such plans.
“No information has been officially announced,” Gonul told reporters on Wednesday.
The US has positioned a total of 200 B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs in Turkey, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Germany since the Cold War. Turkey is believed to be hosting 90 bombs at Incirlik Air Base.
On April 2, The Times reported that the United States may remove tactical nuclear weapons deployed in five NATO member European countries, including Turkey.
However, the possibility of the White House seriously considering a decision to withdraw the B61 gravity bombs seems unlikely, as it has not consulted Ankara on the issue so far.
In the latest NPR, while the Obama Administration has reduced the threat of using nuclear weapons against signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has excluded NPT signatory Iran from threat reduction.
During the release of the current NPT today, the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, "the NPR has a very strong message for both Iran and North Korea, because whether it's in declaratory policy or in other elements of the NPR, we essentially carve out states like Iran and North Korea that are not in compliance with NPT."
"Basically, all options are on the table when it comes to countries in that category," he elaborated.
Washington, which accuses Iran of having the "intention" of developing nuclear weapons, is leading a push for a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran at the United Nations Security Council in a bid to hinder the nation's drive for a nuclear energy program.
Iran, as a signatory of NPT, insists that it neither believes in atomic weapons, nor, as a matter of religious principles, does it intend to acquire nuclear or other weapons of mass-destruction.
MJ/ZAP/DT
A US B-2 bomber dropping a B61 thermonuclear bomb
As Washington and Moscow sign a new arms reduction treaty, skepticism arises in Turkey as to whether those cuts will include US atomic warheads stored in the country.
US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in Prague on Thursday, which requires both sides to reduce their nuclear arsenals to 1,550, or about one-third below current levels.
This is while the Obama administration has revised US policy on atomic weapons, as part of a new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that, among other things, is said to be aimed at reducing the US stockpile.
But silence over anticipated US plans to withdraw nuclear bombs deployed in the Incirlik Air Base in southern Anatolia, has left many speculating on whether Washington has any intentions to remove the weapons at all.
When asked about a possible US move to withdraw its nuclear weapons from five European countries, including Turkey, Turkey's Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul said that Ankara had no information about such plans.
“No information has been officially announced,” Gonul told reporters on Wednesday.
The US has positioned a total of 200 B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs in Turkey, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Germany since the Cold War. Turkey is believed to be hosting 90 bombs at Incirlik Air Base.
On April 2, The Times reported that the United States may remove tactical nuclear weapons deployed in five NATO member European countries, including Turkey.
However, the possibility of the White House seriously considering a decision to withdraw the B61 gravity bombs seems unlikely, as it has not consulted Ankara on the issue so far.
In the latest NPR, while the Obama Administration has reduced the threat of using nuclear weapons against signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has excluded NPT signatory Iran from threat reduction.
During the release of the current NPT today, the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, "the NPR has a very strong message for both Iran and North Korea, because whether it's in declaratory policy or in other elements of the NPR, we essentially carve out states like Iran and North Korea that are not in compliance with NPT."
"Basically, all options are on the table when it comes to countries in that category," he elaborated.
Washington, which accuses Iran of having the "intention" of developing nuclear weapons, is leading a push for a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran at the United Nations Security Council in a bid to hinder the nation's drive for a nuclear energy program.
Iran, as a signatory of NPT, insists that it neither believes in atomic weapons, nor, as a matter of religious principles, does it intend to acquire nuclear or other weapons of mass-destruction.
MJ/ZAP/DT
George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'
Times online
Tim Reid, Washinton
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.
The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.
Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.
General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.
Colonel Wilkerson, a long-time critic of the Bush Administration’s approach to counter-terrorism and the war in Iraq, claimed that the majority of detainees — children as young as 12 and men as old as 93, he said — never saw a US soldier when they were captured. He said that many were turned over by Afghans and Pakistanis for up to $5,000. Little or no evidence was produced as to why they had been taken.
He also claimed that one reason Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld did not want the innocent detainees released was because “the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were”. This was “not acceptable to the Administration and would have been severely detrimental to the leadership at DoD [Mr Rumsfeld at the Defence Department]”.
Referring to Mr Cheney, Colonel Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the US Army, asserted: “He had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent ... If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.”
He alleged that for Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld “innocent people languishing in Guantánamo for years was justified by the broader War on Terror and the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks”.
He added: “I discussed the issue of the Guantánamo detainees with Secretary Powell. I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice-President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.”
Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld, Colonel Wilkerson said, deemed the incarceration of innocent men acceptable if some genuine militants were captured, leading to a better intelligence picture of Iraq at a time when the Bush Administration was desperate to find a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, “thus justifying the Administration’s plans for war with that country”.
He signed the declaration in support of Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese man who was held at Guantánamo Bay from March 2003 until December 2007. Mr Hamad claims that he was tortured by US agents while in custody and yesterday filed a damages action against a list of American officials.
Defenders of Guantánamo said that detainees began to be released as early as September 2002, nine months after the first prisoners were sent to the jail at the US naval base in Cuba. By the time Mr Bush left office more than 530 detainees had been freed.
A spokesman for Mr Bush said of Colonel Wilkerson’s allegations: “We are not going to have any comment on that.” A former associate to Mr Rumsfeld said that Mr Wilkerson's assertions were completely untrue.
The associate said the former Defence Secretary had worked harder than anyone to get detainees released and worked assiduously to keep the prison population as small as possible. Mr Cheney’s office did not respond.
There are currently about 180 detainees left in the facility.
Tim Reid, Washinton
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.
The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.
Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.
General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.
Colonel Wilkerson, a long-time critic of the Bush Administration’s approach to counter-terrorism and the war in Iraq, claimed that the majority of detainees — children as young as 12 and men as old as 93, he said — never saw a US soldier when they were captured. He said that many were turned over by Afghans and Pakistanis for up to $5,000. Little or no evidence was produced as to why they had been taken.
He also claimed that one reason Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld did not want the innocent detainees released was because “the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were”. This was “not acceptable to the Administration and would have been severely detrimental to the leadership at DoD [Mr Rumsfeld at the Defence Department]”.
Referring to Mr Cheney, Colonel Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the US Army, asserted: “He had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent ... If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.”
He alleged that for Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld “innocent people languishing in Guantánamo for years was justified by the broader War on Terror and the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks”.
He added: “I discussed the issue of the Guantánamo detainees with Secretary Powell. I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice-President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.”
Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld, Colonel Wilkerson said, deemed the incarceration of innocent men acceptable if some genuine militants were captured, leading to a better intelligence picture of Iraq at a time when the Bush Administration was desperate to find a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, “thus justifying the Administration’s plans for war with that country”.
He signed the declaration in support of Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese man who was held at Guantánamo Bay from March 2003 until December 2007. Mr Hamad claims that he was tortured by US agents while in custody and yesterday filed a damages action against a list of American officials.
Defenders of Guantánamo said that detainees began to be released as early as September 2002, nine months after the first prisoners were sent to the jail at the US naval base in Cuba. By the time Mr Bush left office more than 530 detainees had been freed.
A spokesman for Mr Bush said of Colonel Wilkerson’s allegations: “We are not going to have any comment on that.” A former associate to Mr Rumsfeld said that Mr Wilkerson's assertions were completely untrue.
The associate said the former Defence Secretary had worked harder than anyone to get detainees released and worked assiduously to keep the prison population as small as possible. Mr Cheney’s office did not respond.
There are currently about 180 detainees left in the facility.
Britain’s top Catholic ‘protected’ paedophile
Times online
The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales presided over a child protection system that allowed a paedophile priest to continue abusing schoolboys despite repeated complaints from victims, an investigation by The Times has discovered.
The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, chaired the church’s child safety watchdog in 2001-08 while Father David Pearce was repeatedly investigated by church officials and police. Despite a High Court ruling in 2006 awarding damages to one of his victims, Pearce remained a priest at Ealing Abbey, West London, where he groomed and assaulted one final victim before his arrest in 2008.
Pearce, 68, a Benedictine monk and former headteacher at the prestigious St Benedict’s School, was jailed for eight years in October after admitting a catalogue of sex offences against teenage pupils during 35 years at the abbey.
Archbishop Nichols last night denied any knowledge of the Pearce case while he was chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (Copca).
Church officials said that Archbishop Nichols was not told the full details of Pearce’s child abuse offences until he replaced Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor at Westminster last year.
However, his predecessor knew of the allegations, a spokesman for Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor confirmed. The Cardinal has recently been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to sit on the Vatican body that appoints bishops.
The Pope was further embroiled in the worldwide clerical abuse scandal yesterday by the discovery of a letter which purports to show that he resisted the defrocking of an American priest because of the effect it might have “on the good of the universal church”.
The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales presided over a child protection system that allowed a paedophile priest to continue abusing schoolboys despite repeated complaints from victims, an investigation by The Times has discovered.
The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, chaired the church’s child safety watchdog in 2001-08 while Father David Pearce was repeatedly investigated by church officials and police. Despite a High Court ruling in 2006 awarding damages to one of his victims, Pearce remained a priest at Ealing Abbey, West London, where he groomed and assaulted one final victim before his arrest in 2008.
Pearce, 68, a Benedictine monk and former headteacher at the prestigious St Benedict’s School, was jailed for eight years in October after admitting a catalogue of sex offences against teenage pupils during 35 years at the abbey.
Archbishop Nichols last night denied any knowledge of the Pearce case while he was chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (Copca).
Church officials said that Archbishop Nichols was not told the full details of Pearce’s child abuse offences until he replaced Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor at Westminster last year.
However, his predecessor knew of the allegations, a spokesman for Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor confirmed. The Cardinal has recently been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to sit on the Vatican body that appoints bishops.
The Pope was further embroiled in the worldwide clerical abuse scandal yesterday by the discovery of a letter which purports to show that he resisted the defrocking of an American priest because of the effect it might have “on the good of the universal church”.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Bosnian colleges draw Turks avoiding headscarf ban
Reuters
SARAJEVO (Reuters) - About 1,000 Turkish students have left home to attend university in Bosnia, attracted by the low cost of living, good food and -- for women -- the right to wear an Islamic headscarf.
On Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan officially opened a new campus of the International University of Sarajevo (IUS) on the outskirts of the Bosnian capital.
"I hope that a cultural bridge will be created at this university that will connect the people and secure peace in the Balkans," he said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Erdogan heads an Islamist-rooted government and his wife wears a headscarf. However, Turkey remains a secular state and women are forbidden to wear headscarves at university there.
In Bosnia no such ban exists, and this is among the reasons that young Turks give for making the relatively short journey to study at one of Sarajevo's three international universities, two of which are Turkish-funded.
Food and finances, close to the hearts of students everywhere, are important to Sarajevo's Turkish students.
"There are a lot of mosques and the food is delicious," said Enes Cici from Istanbul, an engineering student at the IUS. "It's very similar to our own culture."
Economics student Mehmed Guner from Bursa said: "It is more affordable to study here than going to the United States, Canada or any European country, so this was what made me pick it."
Other reasons are peculiar to Turkey, founded in 1923 from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire which once ruled Bosnia. Turkey's military and judiciary now guard its secularism.
"I came here because of a scarf problem," said architecture student Cahide Nur Cunuk, explaining that she could not enroll at any state or private university in Turkey after graduating from an Islamic theological high school.
"We are happy to be here," added her colleague Vildan Mengi. "Bosnians are Muslims and they are similar to us."
RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS
A relatively large proportion of the Turkish students in Sarajevo are women, and most wear headscarves.
They say they cannot enroll at universities in Turkey as they have graduated from theological high schools, the only schools where they could attend classes wearing headscarves.
Many young Turks from religious families attend Islamic secondary schools where 40 percent of the syllabus is devoted to religious subjects, but the rest is for secular topics.
Erdogan was product of this system. A revised system of university credits introduced in the late 1990s has made it hard for pupils of such schools to study non-religious subjects at Turkish universities.
"If the situation in Turkey changed, we would not come to study here," said one woman in a group of headscarved students sitting in a university tea shop. "Bosnian people are more tolerant than Turkish people," she said.
Vildan Mengi said she had three sisters who would also come to Sarajevo if the scarf problem were not resolved. "My mother came to see me here. She saw I am safe," she said.
The IUS is the largest of the three universities that are building what might become the largest complex of private colleges in the region. The other Turkish-funded college is the International Burch University (IBU).
While the IUS was set up by a group of Turkish businessmen and public figures and their Bosnian counterparts, the IBU's founder is the Istanbul-based Foundation of Journalists and Writers, established among others by Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen.
Followers of Gulen, who has pursued a view that Muslims should not reject modernity but embrace business and the professions, have created a network of private schools and universities across Turkey, the central Asia and the Balkans.
Gulen now lives in self-imposed exile in the United States.
The third university, whose new building in emerging only a few hundred meters away, is the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, accredited by the British-based Buckingham University.
UNIQUE SITUATION
"This is unique situation to have two Turkish-funded universities in the same area," said IBU Secretary-General Orhan Hadzagic. "This was a pure coincidence," he added, explaining that universities were not linked in any other way.
Bosnia, which like most other Balkan countries had been part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries, has close ties with Turkey. Bosnian Muslims are known as moderate Muslims of Slavic origin, who have turned to the religion in greater numbers only since the 1992-95 war, during which they were the main victims.
Erdogan said at a public debate earlier on Monday: "It does not matter whether we have a shared border or not, I feel this country as the closest neighbor and we will never abandon Bosnia because of our historic responsibility."
The sight of bulldozers and the noise of construction and drilling machines at the foot of nearby Mountain Igman is in stark contrast to many building sites in the capital, where work has stopped since last year because of the recession.
The total investment, estimated roughly at more than 100 million euros ($135 million) once it is completed, would turn Sarajevo into a regional university center and create new revenues for the city, officials say.
"The city of Sarajevo will earn about 35 million euros annually only from the university, which is a large profit," said Alija Rizvanbegovic, one of the founders of the IUS. "We expect that about 600 jobs will be created in the next five years."
(Editing by David Stamp)
SARAJEVO (Reuters) - About 1,000 Turkish students have left home to attend university in Bosnia, attracted by the low cost of living, good food and -- for women -- the right to wear an Islamic headscarf.
On Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan officially opened a new campus of the International University of Sarajevo (IUS) on the outskirts of the Bosnian capital.
"I hope that a cultural bridge will be created at this university that will connect the people and secure peace in the Balkans," he said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Erdogan heads an Islamist-rooted government and his wife wears a headscarf. However, Turkey remains a secular state and women are forbidden to wear headscarves at university there.
In Bosnia no such ban exists, and this is among the reasons that young Turks give for making the relatively short journey to study at one of Sarajevo's three international universities, two of which are Turkish-funded.
Food and finances, close to the hearts of students everywhere, are important to Sarajevo's Turkish students.
"There are a lot of mosques and the food is delicious," said Enes Cici from Istanbul, an engineering student at the IUS. "It's very similar to our own culture."
Economics student Mehmed Guner from Bursa said: "It is more affordable to study here than going to the United States, Canada or any European country, so this was what made me pick it."
Other reasons are peculiar to Turkey, founded in 1923 from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire which once ruled Bosnia. Turkey's military and judiciary now guard its secularism.
"I came here because of a scarf problem," said architecture student Cahide Nur Cunuk, explaining that she could not enroll at any state or private university in Turkey after graduating from an Islamic theological high school.
"We are happy to be here," added her colleague Vildan Mengi. "Bosnians are Muslims and they are similar to us."
RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS
A relatively large proportion of the Turkish students in Sarajevo are women, and most wear headscarves.
They say they cannot enroll at universities in Turkey as they have graduated from theological high schools, the only schools where they could attend classes wearing headscarves.
Many young Turks from religious families attend Islamic secondary schools where 40 percent of the syllabus is devoted to religious subjects, but the rest is for secular topics.
Erdogan was product of this system. A revised system of university credits introduced in the late 1990s has made it hard for pupils of such schools to study non-religious subjects at Turkish universities.
"If the situation in Turkey changed, we would not come to study here," said one woman in a group of headscarved students sitting in a university tea shop. "Bosnian people are more tolerant than Turkish people," she said.
Vildan Mengi said she had three sisters who would also come to Sarajevo if the scarf problem were not resolved. "My mother came to see me here. She saw I am safe," she said.
The IUS is the largest of the three universities that are building what might become the largest complex of private colleges in the region. The other Turkish-funded college is the International Burch University (IBU).
While the IUS was set up by a group of Turkish businessmen and public figures and their Bosnian counterparts, the IBU's founder is the Istanbul-based Foundation of Journalists and Writers, established among others by Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen.
Followers of Gulen, who has pursued a view that Muslims should not reject modernity but embrace business and the professions, have created a network of private schools and universities across Turkey, the central Asia and the Balkans.
Gulen now lives in self-imposed exile in the United States.
The third university, whose new building in emerging only a few hundred meters away, is the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, accredited by the British-based Buckingham University.
UNIQUE SITUATION
"This is unique situation to have two Turkish-funded universities in the same area," said IBU Secretary-General Orhan Hadzagic. "This was a pure coincidence," he added, explaining that universities were not linked in any other way.
Bosnia, which like most other Balkan countries had been part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries, has close ties with Turkey. Bosnian Muslims are known as moderate Muslims of Slavic origin, who have turned to the religion in greater numbers only since the 1992-95 war, during which they were the main victims.
Erdogan said at a public debate earlier on Monday: "It does not matter whether we have a shared border or not, I feel this country as the closest neighbor and we will never abandon Bosnia because of our historic responsibility."
The sight of bulldozers and the noise of construction and drilling machines at the foot of nearby Mountain Igman is in stark contrast to many building sites in the capital, where work has stopped since last year because of the recession.
The total investment, estimated roughly at more than 100 million euros ($135 million) once it is completed, would turn Sarajevo into a regional university center and create new revenues for the city, officials say.
"The city of Sarajevo will earn about 35 million euros annually only from the university, which is a large profit," said Alija Rizvanbegovic, one of the founders of the IUS. "We expect that about 600 jobs will be created in the next five years."
(Editing by David Stamp)
Somali refugees recruited to fight Islamist militia
By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 6, 2010; A07
The Washington Post
DADAAB, KENYA - The U.S.-backed government of Somalia and its Kenyan allies have recruited hundreds of Somali refugees, including children, to fight in a war against al-Shabab, an Islamist militia linked to al-Qaeda, according to former recruits, their relatives and community leaders.
Many of the recruits were taken from the sprawling Dadaab refugee camps in northeastern Kenya, which borders Somalia. Somali government recruiters and Kenyan soldiers came to the camps late last year, promising refugees as much as $600 a month to join a force advertised as supported by the United Nations or the United States, the former recruits and their families said.
"They have stolen my son from me," said Noor Muhamed, 70, a paraplegic refugee whose son Abdi was recruited.
Across this region, children and young men are vanishing. All sides in Somalia's conflict are recruiting refugees to fight in a remote battleground in the global war on terrorism from which they fled, community leaders say.
It is unclear whether recruiting by the governments of Kenya and Somalia is ongoing. But their military officers continue to train refugees at a heavily guarded base near the northern Kenyan town of Isiolo as the Somali government prepares for a long-planned offensive against the Shabab.
A second camp is in Manyani, a training station for the Kenya Wildlife Service in southern Kenya, according to former recruits, relatives, community leaders and U.N. investigators.
"They told us we were going to Somalia soon," said Hassan Farah, 23, who escaped from the Isiolo camp last month.
Farah, who was injured in a 2008 bombing in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, first spent more than two months at Manyani. "I saw 12-year-old children at the camp," said Farah, who has a jagged scar on his left arm. He escaped by bribing a water truck driver to sneak him out.
The Kenyan government has acknowledged that it is helping train police officers for Somalia's weak interim government but said that the recruits were flown in from Mogadishu. "No one is recruited from the refugee camps," said Alfred Mutua, a Kenyan government spokesman.
But a recent U.N. report on Somalia confirmed the recruitment of refugees, including underage youths, for military training. Kenya's training program, the report said, is a violation of a U.N. arms embargo, which requires nations to get permission from the U.N. Security Council before assisting Somalia's security efforts.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. special representative to Somalia, said he has not personally seen evidence to act on. "If this recruiting is happening, we have to condemn it," he said.
Recruiting refugees is a violation of international law, and enlisting children under 15 constitutes war crimes, human rights groups say.
"They told me I would become a soldier and fight the Shabab," said Ahmed Barre, a bone-thin 15-year-old whose family fled Somalia's anarchy in 1991, when the central government collapsed. He was born in Dadaab's camps and has never been to Somalia. "I didn't want to go. But I was jobless. I wanted to help my family."
A State Department spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said, "We strongly condemn recruitment in the refugee camps by any party." Senior U.S. officials, he added, "have stressed" to top Kenyan and Somali government officials "the need to prevent any recruitment in refugee camps."
Human Rights Watch has also raised concerns about the force, which numbers roughly 2,500.
Once the recruits signed up, their cellphones and identification cards were taken. They never saw the promised money. And they were denied access to their traumatized families, which, fearing deportation, seldom complained to the authorities, local officials and recruits said.
"These people ran away for their dear lives to seek refuge in Kenya," said Mohamed Gabow Kharbat, mayor of Garissa, the provincial capital. "To recruit them and send them back to the same situation they ran away from, this is terrible."
Kharbat said that "most of the youths have no parents, no family members to protest on their behalf. And even if they have parents, these are people who are scared of the government security organs. They can never have the confidence to complain."
The recruitment comes amid fears that Somalia's Islamist militants could extend their reach into Kenya, Uganda and other neighboring countries. The Shabab has voiced support for al-Qaeda and has attracted jihadists from around the world. The United States and European nations are supporting the pro-Western Somalia transitional government with arms, cash, training and intelligence.
Somali refugees have few opportunities in Kenya, which has imposed strict residency rules and limits on travel, making it difficult for them to find jobs. Many youths are uneducated.
"The Shabab and all other groups have representation here," said Abdul Khader, 35, a refugee youth leader. "They give a lot of false hopes to the refugees."
Hassan Mukhtar, 16, was recruited to fight for the Somali government with a promise of $300 a month and a $50 signing bonus.
When he and other recruits did not get their signing bonus, they jumped out of the truck on the way to Manyani.
A Shabab recruiter enticed Mukhtar Awliyahan, 16, by promising him $300 month. He was taken to Somalia and given the nom de guerre "Mukhtarullah" -- the One Chosen by God. In January, tired of fighting, he escaped. Today he keeps a low profile in the camp. "They are still recruiting," he said.
Hezbi Islam, a rival militia, recruited Bare Ali Jama, 19. "I had nothing to substitute for this offer," said Jama, who joined along with five other refugees. In February, Shabab fighters pushed them out of their stronghold; he fled back to Kenya. Still jobless, he wants to return to Somalia. "I will fight for anybody," he said
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 6, 2010; A07
The Washington Post
DADAAB, KENYA - The U.S.-backed government of Somalia and its Kenyan allies have recruited hundreds of Somali refugees, including children, to fight in a war against al-Shabab, an Islamist militia linked to al-Qaeda, according to former recruits, their relatives and community leaders.
Many of the recruits were taken from the sprawling Dadaab refugee camps in northeastern Kenya, which borders Somalia. Somali government recruiters and Kenyan soldiers came to the camps late last year, promising refugees as much as $600 a month to join a force advertised as supported by the United Nations or the United States, the former recruits and their families said.
"They have stolen my son from me," said Noor Muhamed, 70, a paraplegic refugee whose son Abdi was recruited.
Across this region, children and young men are vanishing. All sides in Somalia's conflict are recruiting refugees to fight in a remote battleground in the global war on terrorism from which they fled, community leaders say.
It is unclear whether recruiting by the governments of Kenya and Somalia is ongoing. But their military officers continue to train refugees at a heavily guarded base near the northern Kenyan town of Isiolo as the Somali government prepares for a long-planned offensive against the Shabab.
A second camp is in Manyani, a training station for the Kenya Wildlife Service in southern Kenya, according to former recruits, relatives, community leaders and U.N. investigators.
"They told us we were going to Somalia soon," said Hassan Farah, 23, who escaped from the Isiolo camp last month.
Farah, who was injured in a 2008 bombing in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, first spent more than two months at Manyani. "I saw 12-year-old children at the camp," said Farah, who has a jagged scar on his left arm. He escaped by bribing a water truck driver to sneak him out.
The Kenyan government has acknowledged that it is helping train police officers for Somalia's weak interim government but said that the recruits were flown in from Mogadishu. "No one is recruited from the refugee camps," said Alfred Mutua, a Kenyan government spokesman.
But a recent U.N. report on Somalia confirmed the recruitment of refugees, including underage youths, for military training. Kenya's training program, the report said, is a violation of a U.N. arms embargo, which requires nations to get permission from the U.N. Security Council before assisting Somalia's security efforts.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. special representative to Somalia, said he has not personally seen evidence to act on. "If this recruiting is happening, we have to condemn it," he said.
Recruiting refugees is a violation of international law, and enlisting children under 15 constitutes war crimes, human rights groups say.
"They told me I would become a soldier and fight the Shabab," said Ahmed Barre, a bone-thin 15-year-old whose family fled Somalia's anarchy in 1991, when the central government collapsed. He was born in Dadaab's camps and has never been to Somalia. "I didn't want to go. But I was jobless. I wanted to help my family."
A State Department spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said, "We strongly condemn recruitment in the refugee camps by any party." Senior U.S. officials, he added, "have stressed" to top Kenyan and Somali government officials "the need to prevent any recruitment in refugee camps."
Human Rights Watch has also raised concerns about the force, which numbers roughly 2,500.
Once the recruits signed up, their cellphones and identification cards were taken. They never saw the promised money. And they were denied access to their traumatized families, which, fearing deportation, seldom complained to the authorities, local officials and recruits said.
"These people ran away for their dear lives to seek refuge in Kenya," said Mohamed Gabow Kharbat, mayor of Garissa, the provincial capital. "To recruit them and send them back to the same situation they ran away from, this is terrible."
Kharbat said that "most of the youths have no parents, no family members to protest on their behalf. And even if they have parents, these are people who are scared of the government security organs. They can never have the confidence to complain."
The recruitment comes amid fears that Somalia's Islamist militants could extend their reach into Kenya, Uganda and other neighboring countries. The Shabab has voiced support for al-Qaeda and has attracted jihadists from around the world. The United States and European nations are supporting the pro-Western Somalia transitional government with arms, cash, training and intelligence.
Somali refugees have few opportunities in Kenya, which has imposed strict residency rules and limits on travel, making it difficult for them to find jobs. Many youths are uneducated.
"The Shabab and all other groups have representation here," said Abdul Khader, 35, a refugee youth leader. "They give a lot of false hopes to the refugees."
Hassan Mukhtar, 16, was recruited to fight for the Somali government with a promise of $300 a month and a $50 signing bonus.
When he and other recruits did not get their signing bonus, they jumped out of the truck on the way to Manyani.
A Shabab recruiter enticed Mukhtar Awliyahan, 16, by promising him $300 month. He was taken to Somalia and given the nom de guerre "Mukhtarullah" -- the One Chosen by God. In January, tired of fighting, he escaped. Today he keeps a low profile in the camp. "They are still recruiting," he said.
Hezbi Islam, a rival militia, recruited Bare Ali Jama, 19. "I had nothing to substitute for this offer," said Jama, who joined along with five other refugees. In February, Shabab fighters pushed them out of their stronghold; he fled back to Kenya. Still jobless, he wants to return to Somalia. "I will fight for anybody," he said
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Israeli journalist Anat Kam under secret house arrest since December
Guardian
Woman faces treason trial after allegedly leaking documents that suggest military breached court order on West Bank assassinations
An Israeli journalist has been under secret house arrest since December on charges that she leaked highly sensitive, classified military documents that suggest the Israeli military breached a court order on assassinations in the occupied West Bank.
Anat Kam, 23, goes on trial in two weeks on treason and espionage charges and could face up to 14 years in jail. A court-imposed gagging order, proposed by the state and more recently by the defence, is preventing media coverage of the arrest and charges in Israel.
Kam is reportedly accused of copying military documents while she was a soldier on national service and then passing them to an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. Kam denies the charges. Her lawyers declined to respond to repeated requests for comment.
A Haaretz journalist, Uri Blau, who has written several stories critical of the Israeli military and who has been linked in internet reports to the case, has left Israel and is now in London, apparently for fear he will be targeted for his reporting. Haaretz and Channel 10, an Israeli television station, will challenge the media gagging order at a hearing on 12 April, two days before Kam's trial is due to start at the Tel Aviv district court.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which reported the story from New York this week, said the investigation into Kam was jointly conducted by Israeli military intelligence, the police and the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service. The Israeli military declined to comment on the case.
During her military service, Kam reportedly worked in the office of a senior Israeli general and is accused of copying classified documents from the office. After her time in the army she became a journalist, working for the Israeli news website Walla, which was previously partly owned by Haaretz but entirely editorially independent. Reports suggest she is accused of leaking the documents to Haaretz.
Attention has focused on an investigation Haaretz published on the Israeli military's assassination policy in November 2008, written by Uri Blau and headlined "Licence to Kill". He reported that the military, the Israel Defence Force, had been carrying out assassinations of Palestinian militants in the West Bank in contravention of an Israeli high court ruling, which said efforts should be made first to arrest suspected militants rather than assassinating them.
The story described meetings in the spring of 2007 in which senior Israeli generals discussed a mission to assassinate Ziad Subahi Mahmad Malaisha, a senior leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The army chief, General Gabi Ashkenazi, allegedly approved the operation but said Malaisha's car was not to be attacked if there was "more than one unidentified passenger" in it.
Malaisha and another Islamic Jihad leader were killed by the military in June that year, and the military claimed at the time that the militants had first opened fire at the soldiers.
One of the generals involved in the meetings, Major-General Yair Naveh, was quoted in the story as defending the killings as legal. The AP reported that Kam served in Naveh's office during her military service.
The Haaretz piece was accompanied by copies of military documents but it was approved by the military censor before publication, the Guardian understands. The story was published more than a year before Kam was arrested and was followed by several other articles by Blau that were similarly critical of the military.
Dov Alfon, editor of Haaretz, said: "Uri Blau is in London. He will be there until his editors decide otherwise. We are ready to continue to keep him in London as long as needed. Uri Blau published a lot of articles in Haaretz. All of them are dynamite stuff and it is clear of course that the authorities are not satisfied with these kind of revelations in a major newspaper.
"We understand this but we also understand that Israel is still a democracy and therefore we intend to continue to publish whatever public interest demands and our reporters can reveal."
Woman faces treason trial after allegedly leaking documents that suggest military breached court order on West Bank assassinations
An Israeli journalist has been under secret house arrest since December on charges that she leaked highly sensitive, classified military documents that suggest the Israeli military breached a court order on assassinations in the occupied West Bank.
Anat Kam, 23, goes on trial in two weeks on treason and espionage charges and could face up to 14 years in jail. A court-imposed gagging order, proposed by the state and more recently by the defence, is preventing media coverage of the arrest and charges in Israel.
Kam is reportedly accused of copying military documents while she was a soldier on national service and then passing them to an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. Kam denies the charges. Her lawyers declined to respond to repeated requests for comment.
A Haaretz journalist, Uri Blau, who has written several stories critical of the Israeli military and who has been linked in internet reports to the case, has left Israel and is now in London, apparently for fear he will be targeted for his reporting. Haaretz and Channel 10, an Israeli television station, will challenge the media gagging order at a hearing on 12 April, two days before Kam's trial is due to start at the Tel Aviv district court.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which reported the story from New York this week, said the investigation into Kam was jointly conducted by Israeli military intelligence, the police and the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service. The Israeli military declined to comment on the case.
During her military service, Kam reportedly worked in the office of a senior Israeli general and is accused of copying classified documents from the office. After her time in the army she became a journalist, working for the Israeli news website Walla, which was previously partly owned by Haaretz but entirely editorially independent. Reports suggest she is accused of leaking the documents to Haaretz.
Attention has focused on an investigation Haaretz published on the Israeli military's assassination policy in November 2008, written by Uri Blau and headlined "Licence to Kill". He reported that the military, the Israel Defence Force, had been carrying out assassinations of Palestinian militants in the West Bank in contravention of an Israeli high court ruling, which said efforts should be made first to arrest suspected militants rather than assassinating them.
The story described meetings in the spring of 2007 in which senior Israeli generals discussed a mission to assassinate Ziad Subahi Mahmad Malaisha, a senior leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The army chief, General Gabi Ashkenazi, allegedly approved the operation but said Malaisha's car was not to be attacked if there was "more than one unidentified passenger" in it.
Malaisha and another Islamic Jihad leader were killed by the military in June that year, and the military claimed at the time that the militants had first opened fire at the soldiers.
One of the generals involved in the meetings, Major-General Yair Naveh, was quoted in the story as defending the killings as legal. The AP reported that Kam served in Naveh's office during her military service.
The Haaretz piece was accompanied by copies of military documents but it was approved by the military censor before publication, the Guardian understands. The story was published more than a year before Kam was arrested and was followed by several other articles by Blau that were similarly critical of the military.
Dov Alfon, editor of Haaretz, said: "Uri Blau is in London. He will be there until his editors decide otherwise. We are ready to continue to keep him in London as long as needed. Uri Blau published a lot of articles in Haaretz. All of them are dynamite stuff and it is clear of course that the authorities are not satisfied with these kind of revelations in a major newspaper.
"We understand this but we also understand that Israel is still a democracy and therefore we intend to continue to publish whatever public interest demands and our reporters can reveal."
The alienation of Hamid Karzai
Asia times
By M K Bhadrakumar
It must have been the first time in the history of the United States that an incumbent president had to undertake a 26-hour plane journey abroad with repeated mid-air refueling to meet a foreign leader - all for a 30-minute pow-wow.
The staggering message that came out of US President Barack Obama's hurried mission to the presidential palace in Kabul to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai last Sunday afternoon is that his own AfPak diplomats have let him down badly.
The US president is left with not a single functionary in his star-studded AfPak team on whom he can rely to hold meaningful interaction with the Afghanistan president. Of course, AfPak special representative Richard Holbrooke is not about to lose his job so long as he enjoys the confidence of his mentor in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Holbrooke factor
Why have things come to this impasse? The plain truth is that Karzai distrusts Holbrooke. He shares the widespread opinion in the capitals of the region that Holbrooke is under a Pakistani spell. On the other hand, Holbrooke's version is that Karzai is corrupt and presides over a morally decrepit and decadent regime that hangs around America's neck like an albatross.
But then, no one is asking Holbrooke since when is it that corruption became a big issue in America's South Asia policies? Billions and billions of dollars American taxpayers' dollars were funneled into the black hole that was military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq's Pakistan during the Afghan jihad.
In today's Afghan war, history is repeating itself. There is no accountability about where the money is going and it is the talk of the bazaars that vested interests control disbursement of such vast sums of money. The US Congress should perhaps begin an investigation starting with the so-called "experts" who advise the Pentagon and Holbrooke's team.
If the local grapevine is to be believed, a gravy train runs through Rawalpindi and Lahore to Kabul for civilian and military "experts" and "advisors" who are having a whale of a time.
Obama has lived in Indonesia and can figure out how gravy trains run on and on. For argument's sake, how much of the money that the international community poured into Afghanistan has indeed passed through Karzai's hands?
If the report tabled by the United Nations secretary general that was tabled in the Security Council in New York in March is to be believed, even after eight years of engagement in Afghanistan, 80% of international community assistance still bypasses the Afghan government and is not closely aligned with Kabul's priorities. Therefore, the corruption in Afghanistan needs to be viewed in perspective.
Karzai makes a serious point when he says that those who talk about corruption are obfuscating the real issues that aggravate the crisis of confidence between him and Washington. Now that Obama has plunged into the cesspool of AfPak diplomacy, he should perhaps get to the bottom of it and make it a point to try to understand why Karzai feels so alienated.
Looking back, the turning point was the critical period leading to the Afghan presidential election. Holbrooke should never have tried to exert blatant strong-arm tactics aimed at expelling Karzai from the Afghan leadership. Afghans are a proud people and will never tolerate such nonsense from a foreigner.
ISI's fear of Karzai
Karzai believes that Holbrooke and his aides were heavily influenced by Pakistani advice. Unsurprisingly, Pakistan hates Karzai and knows that as long as a Popolzai chieftain remains in power in Kabul, it cannot have its way in Afghanistan.
Karzai represents exactly the sort of Pashtun nationalism that the Punjabi-dominated military establishment in Pakistan dreads. When the ISI murdered former Afghan president Mohammad Najibullah in 1996, its calculations were precisely the same; namely, that there should be no rival fountainhead outside of its orbit of control with the potential stature to claim leadership in the Pashtun constituency.
The ISI is well aware that Karzai, in crafting his national reconciliation policy, is almost entirely emulating Najibullah. Like Najibullah, Karzai is at ease with the political ethos of observant Muslims, though himself imbued with staunchly secular beliefs. So, he cannot be pitted as alien to Afghan culture or to Islam.
Like Najibullah, he is prepared to accommodate the Islamist elements in the power structure within the framework of a broad-based government. He is also well-educated and urbane, and yet he keeps closely in touch with the tribal ethos and culture.
Karzai has direct contacts with the opposition Islamist camp and has no need of ISI intermediaries to put him in touch with the Taliban. Most importantly, like Najibullah - who was a blue-blooded Ahmedzai - Karzai too is a Pashtun aristocrat who has a place and a name in Pashtun tribal society.
In Karzai, the ISI faces a formidable opponent. The Taliban leaders will always appear to the ordinary Afghan as obscurant and medieval in comparison.
A shrewd tactician and coalition-builder like Karzai can be expected to frustrate the best-laid plans of the ISI to project power into Afghanistan. The ISI desperately tried to woo non-Pashtun ethnic groups during recent years, but Karzai frustrated these attempts and they eventually opted to rally behind him.
In short, no other Pashtun today on the Afghan political landscape has Karzai's ability to assemble such a diverse coalition comprising powerful non-Pashtun leaders such as Mohammed Fahim, Rashid Dostum and Karim Khalili (who often don't enjoy good relations amongst themselves), former Mujahideen commanders and tribal leaders, and even erstwhile communists and technocrats.
Karzai's game plan
Now, the big question for Obama is whether US interests necessarily coincide with those of the ISI. If they do not, Obama needs to ask Holbrooke for a coherent explanation as to why he used all his skill and the power of US muscle to try to oust Karzai.
Having failed to unseat Karzai, a furious media campaign has been launched to settle scores by humiliating him on the one hand and to establish that he must somehow be removed from power. Karzai's family members have been dragged into the controversy. Does the US think the Pakistani generals it deals with are lily-white?
Karzai, of course, proved to be no cakewalk for Holbrooke. He brusquely showed Holbrooke the door after a famous showdown in the presidential palace. Since then Karzai is a changed man. He is constantly on guard against American schemes aimed at trapping him.
Therefore, Obama did the right thing by deciding to deal with Karzai, warts and all, personally. In fact, he should have undertaken this mission to Kabul at least six months ago.
Karzai is a deeply disillusioned man today. The responsibility for almost all that has gone wrong in the war is placed on his doorstep. The whole world knows that the Afghan governmental machinery simply lacks the "capacity" to govern. There just aren't enough Afghans with the requisite skill to be administrators at the central or local level. There is no such thing as a state structure on the ground in Afghanistan. The people are so desperately poor that they go to any extent to eke out day-to-day living. Indeed, Karzai has to make do with what he has got, which is pitiably little.
Then, there is the acute security situation, which all but precludes effective governance. Karzai is invariably held responsible by the Afghan people for the excessive use of force by the US military and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies during their operations that result in large-scale "collateral killings". Every time wanton killings take place, he cuts a sorry figure when it transpires that Americans coolly ignore his protestations.
To compound everything, Karzai is aghast that the ISI, which promotes the insurgency, is today far closer to the AfPak team than he could ever imagine himself to be. It is literally a situation where it's his word against the ISI's.
Thus, Karzai has turned to various groups to tap into the vast reservoir of resentment in the Afghan opinion about Pakistan's half-a-century-long interference in their country's internal affairs. In order to isolate Karzai, a campaign has been built up regarding these groups - "warlordism".
Gullible Western opinion gets carried away by the campaign over "warlordism", which militates against human rights and norms of civilized life. But no one ponders as to when is it in its entire history Afghanistan could do away with local strongmen, sodomy, tribalism or gun culture?
Besides, is "warlordism" typical of Afghanistan? Is it alien to Pakistan's feudal society? Famous books have been written about the "feudal lords" in the Punjab. According to authoritative estimates, not less than 8,000 Pakistanis have simply disappeared from the face of the earth after being nabbed by Pakistani security agencies since September 2001. Richard Falk, a renowned British journalist who is currently on a visit to Pakistan, has written harrowing accounts of what he has heard about these "disappeared".
Aren't the Taliban commanders "warlords"? The politics behind the highly selective invocation of "warlordism" in Afghanistan must be properly understood. It aims at discrediting Karzai's allies like Fahim, Dostum and Khalili, who would resist to the last minute another Taliban takeover of their country.
Taliban are fair game
The ISI's biggest worry is that some day Karzai might get through to Taliban leader Mullah Omar himself. Karzai has made no bones about it, either. As things stand, the ISI has to keep one eye over its shoulders all the time to see that outsiders do not poach in the Taliban camp. Keeping the Quetta Shura together as a single flock has always been a tough job that it is only going to get tougher.
The ISI dreads to think that all sorts of poachers are stalking the Taliban today - Iranians, Indians, Saudis, Russians, British, the Central Asians, and indeed the Americans themselves. The intelligence services of the world are no longer prepared to accept that the Taliban should remain the ISI's sole monopoly.
From the Taliban perspective, they too harbor hopes of some day breaking out of the ISI stranglehold. The ISI always had nightmarish fears that the Taliban might make overtures to Delhi for a covert relationship. Whenever it appeared that the Taliban were reaching out to the Indians (or vice versa ) and that some sort of communication channel might open between the erstwhile adversaries, the ISI precipitated gruesome incidents that hardened attitudes in Delhi and the door became shut against any form of rapprochement between the Taliban and the Indians.
Such ISI operations continue even today. It is a different matter, though, that there are probably enough "hawks" within the Indian strategic community and security establishment, too, who lack the political astuteness to respond to subtle overtures from the Taliban. In fact, the Indian consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar can provide a great window for establishing direct contact with the Taliban. The ISI may not even get to know about such contacts.
Clearly, Obama's agenda is different from the ISI's. What Obama needs to factor in is that if Karzai is allowed a free hand, he will establish dialogue with the Taliban, sooner or later bypassing the ISI.
Karzai has excellent networking with the tribal channels and with Peshawar-based Pashtun nationalists. A genuine national reconciliation becomes possible since Karzai can act as a bridge between the Taliban and the virulently anti-Taliban "warlords". On the other hand, the backing of the "warlords" ensures that Karzai does not get overwhelmed by the Taliban. This is important as the Taliban today are the single-best organized force in the country, whereas Karzai lacks muscle power on his own without the backing of the "warlords".
Quintessentially, Karzai has resorted to what can only be called the "united front" strategy, to use the Marxist-Leninist parlance. He is probably on the right course, and in any case he has no other choice because he cannot hold out indefinitely against the full weight of the Pakistani "deep state" bent on demolishing him.
When American commentators blame Karzai for his apparent hurry to have alleged trade-offs with the Taliban, including Mullah Omar, they are unfairly not taking into account his real compulsions.
Curiously, Karzai's allies, the notoriously anti-Taliban "warlords" from the non-Pashtun groups, who have everything to lose in the event of a Taliban takeover, also see that time is not on their side as war-weariness sets in and the US searches for an exit strategy.
They also apprehend that the Taliban will become irreconcilable if the US's surge in military presence fails to produce the intended results, and, therefore, they realize the urgent need for the reconciliation strategy that Karzai is probing.
In their estimation, the "Afghan-ness" of the Taliban will eventually come out once they come on board a coalition - and that will erode the ISI's stranglehold over their country.
Pashtun alienation
That is to say, Obama should realize that Karzai does not visualize the Americans as his enemy, as is often being projected naively by correspondents for the Western media . Nor is Karzai irrational in striving for reconciliation. He has no reason to torpedo Obama's policy or to "spite" the US, as interpreted recently by a Washington Post correspondent.
Karzai is an able politician with acute survival instincts, and he is not a woolly headed romantic who fancies that he can get away with strategic defiance of the US, which has staked its global prestige and that of the entire Western alliance in the war in the Hindu Kush.
Obama should distinguish that it is the ISI and the Pakistani military whom Karzai (and the "warlords") considers to be his adversaries. His frustration is that the Americans are either far too naive to comprehend what is going on or are dissimulating since they are pursuing some "hidden agenda" in relation to the geopolitics of the region.
Karzai's alienation is widely shared by the Afghan elites in both Kabul and Peshawar. A grand tribal jirga was recently held in Peshawar just ahead of the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue of March 24, and was widely attended by noted Pashtun intellectuals, tribal leaders, politicians, professionals, civil society members, women's groups and representatives of established political parties of the North-West Frontier Agency.
Obama can always ask the American consulate in Peshawar for a report on the jirga. It will prove an eye-opener. Essentially, the jirga raised the widespread grievance that the Pashtuns do not trust Pakistan's Punjabi-dominated military establishment, which was leading the strategic dialogue with the US. The jirga alleged that the Pakistani military establishment's sole agenda is to attain "strategic depth" in Afghanistan and this lies at the root of the sufferings of the Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line.
The jirga issued the Peshawar Declaration, a statement which cautioned Washington that the root causes of terrorism lie in the Pakistani military establishment's "strategic depth" mindset and the Arab expansionism embodied by the al-Qaeda under the garb of global Islam.
It made an impassioned plea not to leave the helpless Pashtuns of the tribal agencies and the North-West Frontier Province at the mercy of the Pakistani army and the intelligence agencies.
In the prevailing circumstances, Karzai has no option but to turn toward Tehran for understanding and support. The Iranians have a profound understanding of the Afghan chessboard and can grasp the raging storms in the mind of the Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line.
The Iranians empathize with the plight of the Pashtuns, whose traditional way of life and eclectic culture have been systematically vandalized during the recent decades of the jihad. The Iranians are inclined to help Karzai, as they do not want a takeover of Afghanistan by the Wahhabi-inclined Taliban. The Iranians also have good contacts with the "warlords" and can ensure that the latter work with Karzai.
These are all good enough reasons why Karzai is keen to shore up Iranian support. But Karzai has no reason to conspire with the Iranians against the US. His first option will always be that the US reposes confidence in him and allows him to negotiate a national reconciliation.
Nor is Tehran unaware that Karzai's first preference will always be to work with the Americans. If Tehran has still opted to work with Karzai, that is because he has been an exceptionally good neighbor and, even during the period when he might have been an American "puppet", he never acted in a hostile manner against Iranian interests, instead welcoming Iran's participation in the Afghan reconstruction.
The human factor
In sum, Obama has done the right thing by inviting Karzai to go over to Washington in May to discuss all issues with him directly. In a war theater with 100,000 troops deployed, this is the right approach for a commander-in-chief to take. Even in our information age, wars cannot be fought through remote-control or video-conferencing. The human factor still counts.
In all probability, Obama will have the opportunity to form his own opinions about Karzai rather than hear from second-hand sources. Obama has a rare streak in his political personality insofar as, ultimately, he works his way out himself. He seems to sense he needs to get a correct picture of what is going on in Kabul and that is best done by seeing for himself.
Indeed, the stakes are high for Obama politically. The fact that he kept his distance from the high-profile Pakistani delegation that visited Washington last week is in itself an extraordinary statement regarding the way that his mind's antennae are probing the AfPak landscape.
Meanwhile, Holbrooke doesn't become superfluous. He claims to have developed good personal chemistry with Pakistani army chief General Pervez Kiani, which is always useful. Holbrooke should perhaps visit Islamabad and Rawalpindi more frequently.
Ambassador Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
By M K Bhadrakumar
It must have been the first time in the history of the United States that an incumbent president had to undertake a 26-hour plane journey abroad with repeated mid-air refueling to meet a foreign leader - all for a 30-minute pow-wow.
The staggering message that came out of US President Barack Obama's hurried mission to the presidential palace in Kabul to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai last Sunday afternoon is that his own AfPak diplomats have let him down badly.
The US president is left with not a single functionary in his star-studded AfPak team on whom he can rely to hold meaningful interaction with the Afghanistan president. Of course, AfPak special representative Richard Holbrooke is not about to lose his job so long as he enjoys the confidence of his mentor in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Holbrooke factor
Why have things come to this impasse? The plain truth is that Karzai distrusts Holbrooke. He shares the widespread opinion in the capitals of the region that Holbrooke is under a Pakistani spell. On the other hand, Holbrooke's version is that Karzai is corrupt and presides over a morally decrepit and decadent regime that hangs around America's neck like an albatross.
But then, no one is asking Holbrooke since when is it that corruption became a big issue in America's South Asia policies? Billions and billions of dollars American taxpayers' dollars were funneled into the black hole that was military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq's Pakistan during the Afghan jihad.
In today's Afghan war, history is repeating itself. There is no accountability about where the money is going and it is the talk of the bazaars that vested interests control disbursement of such vast sums of money. The US Congress should perhaps begin an investigation starting with the so-called "experts" who advise the Pentagon and Holbrooke's team.
If the local grapevine is to be believed, a gravy train runs through Rawalpindi and Lahore to Kabul for civilian and military "experts" and "advisors" who are having a whale of a time.
Obama has lived in Indonesia and can figure out how gravy trains run on and on. For argument's sake, how much of the money that the international community poured into Afghanistan has indeed passed through Karzai's hands?
If the report tabled by the United Nations secretary general that was tabled in the Security Council in New York in March is to be believed, even after eight years of engagement in Afghanistan, 80% of international community assistance still bypasses the Afghan government and is not closely aligned with Kabul's priorities. Therefore, the corruption in Afghanistan needs to be viewed in perspective.
Karzai makes a serious point when he says that those who talk about corruption are obfuscating the real issues that aggravate the crisis of confidence between him and Washington. Now that Obama has plunged into the cesspool of AfPak diplomacy, he should perhaps get to the bottom of it and make it a point to try to understand why Karzai feels so alienated.
Looking back, the turning point was the critical period leading to the Afghan presidential election. Holbrooke should never have tried to exert blatant strong-arm tactics aimed at expelling Karzai from the Afghan leadership. Afghans are a proud people and will never tolerate such nonsense from a foreigner.
ISI's fear of Karzai
Karzai believes that Holbrooke and his aides were heavily influenced by Pakistani advice. Unsurprisingly, Pakistan hates Karzai and knows that as long as a Popolzai chieftain remains in power in Kabul, it cannot have its way in Afghanistan.
Karzai represents exactly the sort of Pashtun nationalism that the Punjabi-dominated military establishment in Pakistan dreads. When the ISI murdered former Afghan president Mohammad Najibullah in 1996, its calculations were precisely the same; namely, that there should be no rival fountainhead outside of its orbit of control with the potential stature to claim leadership in the Pashtun constituency.
The ISI is well aware that Karzai, in crafting his national reconciliation policy, is almost entirely emulating Najibullah. Like Najibullah, Karzai is at ease with the political ethos of observant Muslims, though himself imbued with staunchly secular beliefs. So, he cannot be pitted as alien to Afghan culture or to Islam.
Like Najibullah, he is prepared to accommodate the Islamist elements in the power structure within the framework of a broad-based government. He is also well-educated and urbane, and yet he keeps closely in touch with the tribal ethos and culture.
Karzai has direct contacts with the opposition Islamist camp and has no need of ISI intermediaries to put him in touch with the Taliban. Most importantly, like Najibullah - who was a blue-blooded Ahmedzai - Karzai too is a Pashtun aristocrat who has a place and a name in Pashtun tribal society.
In Karzai, the ISI faces a formidable opponent. The Taliban leaders will always appear to the ordinary Afghan as obscurant and medieval in comparison.
A shrewd tactician and coalition-builder like Karzai can be expected to frustrate the best-laid plans of the ISI to project power into Afghanistan. The ISI desperately tried to woo non-Pashtun ethnic groups during recent years, but Karzai frustrated these attempts and they eventually opted to rally behind him.
In short, no other Pashtun today on the Afghan political landscape has Karzai's ability to assemble such a diverse coalition comprising powerful non-Pashtun leaders such as Mohammed Fahim, Rashid Dostum and Karim Khalili (who often don't enjoy good relations amongst themselves), former Mujahideen commanders and tribal leaders, and even erstwhile communists and technocrats.
Karzai's game plan
Now, the big question for Obama is whether US interests necessarily coincide with those of the ISI. If they do not, Obama needs to ask Holbrooke for a coherent explanation as to why he used all his skill and the power of US muscle to try to oust Karzai.
Having failed to unseat Karzai, a furious media campaign has been launched to settle scores by humiliating him on the one hand and to establish that he must somehow be removed from power. Karzai's family members have been dragged into the controversy. Does the US think the Pakistani generals it deals with are lily-white?
Karzai, of course, proved to be no cakewalk for Holbrooke. He brusquely showed Holbrooke the door after a famous showdown in the presidential palace. Since then Karzai is a changed man. He is constantly on guard against American schemes aimed at trapping him.
Therefore, Obama did the right thing by deciding to deal with Karzai, warts and all, personally. In fact, he should have undertaken this mission to Kabul at least six months ago.
Karzai is a deeply disillusioned man today. The responsibility for almost all that has gone wrong in the war is placed on his doorstep. The whole world knows that the Afghan governmental machinery simply lacks the "capacity" to govern. There just aren't enough Afghans with the requisite skill to be administrators at the central or local level. There is no such thing as a state structure on the ground in Afghanistan. The people are so desperately poor that they go to any extent to eke out day-to-day living. Indeed, Karzai has to make do with what he has got, which is pitiably little.
Then, there is the acute security situation, which all but precludes effective governance. Karzai is invariably held responsible by the Afghan people for the excessive use of force by the US military and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies during their operations that result in large-scale "collateral killings". Every time wanton killings take place, he cuts a sorry figure when it transpires that Americans coolly ignore his protestations.
To compound everything, Karzai is aghast that the ISI, which promotes the insurgency, is today far closer to the AfPak team than he could ever imagine himself to be. It is literally a situation where it's his word against the ISI's.
Thus, Karzai has turned to various groups to tap into the vast reservoir of resentment in the Afghan opinion about Pakistan's half-a-century-long interference in their country's internal affairs. In order to isolate Karzai, a campaign has been built up regarding these groups - "warlordism".
Gullible Western opinion gets carried away by the campaign over "warlordism", which militates against human rights and norms of civilized life. But no one ponders as to when is it in its entire history Afghanistan could do away with local strongmen, sodomy, tribalism or gun culture?
Besides, is "warlordism" typical of Afghanistan? Is it alien to Pakistan's feudal society? Famous books have been written about the "feudal lords" in the Punjab. According to authoritative estimates, not less than 8,000 Pakistanis have simply disappeared from the face of the earth after being nabbed by Pakistani security agencies since September 2001. Richard Falk, a renowned British journalist who is currently on a visit to Pakistan, has written harrowing accounts of what he has heard about these "disappeared".
Aren't the Taliban commanders "warlords"? The politics behind the highly selective invocation of "warlordism" in Afghanistan must be properly understood. It aims at discrediting Karzai's allies like Fahim, Dostum and Khalili, who would resist to the last minute another Taliban takeover of their country.
Taliban are fair game
The ISI's biggest worry is that some day Karzai might get through to Taliban leader Mullah Omar himself. Karzai has made no bones about it, either. As things stand, the ISI has to keep one eye over its shoulders all the time to see that outsiders do not poach in the Taliban camp. Keeping the Quetta Shura together as a single flock has always been a tough job that it is only going to get tougher.
The ISI dreads to think that all sorts of poachers are stalking the Taliban today - Iranians, Indians, Saudis, Russians, British, the Central Asians, and indeed the Americans themselves. The intelligence services of the world are no longer prepared to accept that the Taliban should remain the ISI's sole monopoly.
From the Taliban perspective, they too harbor hopes of some day breaking out of the ISI stranglehold. The ISI always had nightmarish fears that the Taliban might make overtures to Delhi for a covert relationship. Whenever it appeared that the Taliban were reaching out to the Indians (or vice versa ) and that some sort of communication channel might open between the erstwhile adversaries, the ISI precipitated gruesome incidents that hardened attitudes in Delhi and the door became shut against any form of rapprochement between the Taliban and the Indians.
Such ISI operations continue even today. It is a different matter, though, that there are probably enough "hawks" within the Indian strategic community and security establishment, too, who lack the political astuteness to respond to subtle overtures from the Taliban. In fact, the Indian consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar can provide a great window for establishing direct contact with the Taliban. The ISI may not even get to know about such contacts.
Clearly, Obama's agenda is different from the ISI's. What Obama needs to factor in is that if Karzai is allowed a free hand, he will establish dialogue with the Taliban, sooner or later bypassing the ISI.
Karzai has excellent networking with the tribal channels and with Peshawar-based Pashtun nationalists. A genuine national reconciliation becomes possible since Karzai can act as a bridge between the Taliban and the virulently anti-Taliban "warlords". On the other hand, the backing of the "warlords" ensures that Karzai does not get overwhelmed by the Taliban. This is important as the Taliban today are the single-best organized force in the country, whereas Karzai lacks muscle power on his own without the backing of the "warlords".
Quintessentially, Karzai has resorted to what can only be called the "united front" strategy, to use the Marxist-Leninist parlance. He is probably on the right course, and in any case he has no other choice because he cannot hold out indefinitely against the full weight of the Pakistani "deep state" bent on demolishing him.
When American commentators blame Karzai for his apparent hurry to have alleged trade-offs with the Taliban, including Mullah Omar, they are unfairly not taking into account his real compulsions.
Curiously, Karzai's allies, the notoriously anti-Taliban "warlords" from the non-Pashtun groups, who have everything to lose in the event of a Taliban takeover, also see that time is not on their side as war-weariness sets in and the US searches for an exit strategy.
They also apprehend that the Taliban will become irreconcilable if the US's surge in military presence fails to produce the intended results, and, therefore, they realize the urgent need for the reconciliation strategy that Karzai is probing.
In their estimation, the "Afghan-ness" of the Taliban will eventually come out once they come on board a coalition - and that will erode the ISI's stranglehold over their country.
Pashtun alienation
That is to say, Obama should realize that Karzai does not visualize the Americans as his enemy, as is often being projected naively by correspondents for the Western media . Nor is Karzai irrational in striving for reconciliation. He has no reason to torpedo Obama's policy or to "spite" the US, as interpreted recently by a Washington Post correspondent.
Karzai is an able politician with acute survival instincts, and he is not a woolly headed romantic who fancies that he can get away with strategic defiance of the US, which has staked its global prestige and that of the entire Western alliance in the war in the Hindu Kush.
Obama should distinguish that it is the ISI and the Pakistani military whom Karzai (and the "warlords") considers to be his adversaries. His frustration is that the Americans are either far too naive to comprehend what is going on or are dissimulating since they are pursuing some "hidden agenda" in relation to the geopolitics of the region.
Karzai's alienation is widely shared by the Afghan elites in both Kabul and Peshawar. A grand tribal jirga was recently held in Peshawar just ahead of the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue of March 24, and was widely attended by noted Pashtun intellectuals, tribal leaders, politicians, professionals, civil society members, women's groups and representatives of established political parties of the North-West Frontier Agency.
Obama can always ask the American consulate in Peshawar for a report on the jirga. It will prove an eye-opener. Essentially, the jirga raised the widespread grievance that the Pashtuns do not trust Pakistan's Punjabi-dominated military establishment, which was leading the strategic dialogue with the US. The jirga alleged that the Pakistani military establishment's sole agenda is to attain "strategic depth" in Afghanistan and this lies at the root of the sufferings of the Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line.
The jirga issued the Peshawar Declaration, a statement which cautioned Washington that the root causes of terrorism lie in the Pakistani military establishment's "strategic depth" mindset and the Arab expansionism embodied by the al-Qaeda under the garb of global Islam.
It made an impassioned plea not to leave the helpless Pashtuns of the tribal agencies and the North-West Frontier Province at the mercy of the Pakistani army and the intelligence agencies.
In the prevailing circumstances, Karzai has no option but to turn toward Tehran for understanding and support. The Iranians have a profound understanding of the Afghan chessboard and can grasp the raging storms in the mind of the Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line.
The Iranians empathize with the plight of the Pashtuns, whose traditional way of life and eclectic culture have been systematically vandalized during the recent decades of the jihad. The Iranians are inclined to help Karzai, as they do not want a takeover of Afghanistan by the Wahhabi-inclined Taliban. The Iranians also have good contacts with the "warlords" and can ensure that the latter work with Karzai.
These are all good enough reasons why Karzai is keen to shore up Iranian support. But Karzai has no reason to conspire with the Iranians against the US. His first option will always be that the US reposes confidence in him and allows him to negotiate a national reconciliation.
Nor is Tehran unaware that Karzai's first preference will always be to work with the Americans. If Tehran has still opted to work with Karzai, that is because he has been an exceptionally good neighbor and, even during the period when he might have been an American "puppet", he never acted in a hostile manner against Iranian interests, instead welcoming Iran's participation in the Afghan reconstruction.
The human factor
In sum, Obama has done the right thing by inviting Karzai to go over to Washington in May to discuss all issues with him directly. In a war theater with 100,000 troops deployed, this is the right approach for a commander-in-chief to take. Even in our information age, wars cannot be fought through remote-control or video-conferencing. The human factor still counts.
In all probability, Obama will have the opportunity to form his own opinions about Karzai rather than hear from second-hand sources. Obama has a rare streak in his political personality insofar as, ultimately, he works his way out himself. He seems to sense he needs to get a correct picture of what is going on in Kabul and that is best done by seeing for himself.
Indeed, the stakes are high for Obama politically. The fact that he kept his distance from the high-profile Pakistani delegation that visited Washington last week is in itself an extraordinary statement regarding the way that his mind's antennae are probing the AfPak landscape.
Meanwhile, Holbrooke doesn't become superfluous. He claims to have developed good personal chemistry with Pakistani army chief General Pervez Kiani, which is always useful. Holbrooke should perhaps visit Islamabad and Rawalpindi more frequently.
Ambassador Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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