The US: The bully who cried wolf

A habitual liar cannot be believed even when telling the truth.

There is a famous fable by ancient Greek storyteller Aesop about a shepherd boy who habitually lied for fun. While looking after a flock of sheep near a village, every now and then he would cry "Wolf! Wolf!" to bring the villagers rushing, just to laugh at them and their naivety. One day the wolf did actually attack his flock, and the shepherd boy cried "Wolf!! Wolf!"- this time for real.

But by then, the villagers had wisened up and ignored his cries. With no one coming to help, the boy could do nothing to stop the wolf feasting on his flock. Aesop concludes: "There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth."

Thinking of this fable today, one cannot help but wonder: Did Iran attack the Japanese tanker Kokuka Courageous with limpet mines - as the United States claims it did on June 13? Does the video the US army produced indeed prove the accusation?

The US, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom say it does, Iran says it does not, and others have expressed doubts. So, who is telling the truth? Iran or the US and its allies? And why does it matter?

The urgency of these questions is now a matter of war and peace, of life or death. After that accusation, the potential military confrontation between the US and Iran has increased exponentially. On June 20, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that it had shot down a US RQ-4A Global Hawk surveillance drone that it said had violated its airspace. US Central Command confirmed the drone was shot down by Iranian surface-to-air missiles but denied that it had violated Iranian airspace.

President Donald Trump called the downing of the drone a "big mistake", and then ordered a military attack on Iran only to reportedly change his mind and cancel it. There would have been approximately 150 Iranian casualties, Trump said, and that would have been "disproportionate".

As the US and Iran inch ever closer to a military confrontation, the question the world faces at large is who to trust, what to believe, where to place our critical judgement?

An average of 12 lies a day

As of June 10, by Washington Post's estimates, "President Trump has made 10,796 false or misleading claims over 869 days." That is probably a dictionary definition of a congenital liar. The newspaper further states: "The president crossed the 10,000 thresholds on April 26, and he has been averaging about 16 fishy claims a day since then. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged about 12 such claims a day."

In this context, it would be a mistake to judge the particulars of politics with the proverbial "Sunday School" sense of morality that is farthest removed from the abiding concerns of those who habitually lie. States, particularly the most powerful states, lie and these lies are for the best interests of the ruling elites in charge of those states.

From Vietnam to Iraq, the US has systematically and consistently lied to advance its own warmongering objectives. But the US is not the only state that lies habitually.

Right now, the interests of the US, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel all coalesce around targeting Iran and dismantling its share of regional power. Each one of these forces has its own internal reasons to wish Iran harm.

They, therefore, manufacture lies, exaggerate facts, take a smidgeon of truth and weave a long tale around it, all to turn Iran into a demon, the way they did with Iraq and Afghanistan in the past.

The US media is complicit in this charade. The Washington Post and the New York Times have stopped counting the lies Trump tells when it comes to the war with Iran.

The first casualty of war they say is the truth. That means all wars begin with a lie. Is the explosion of this Japanese tanker in the Gulf of Oman the lie that will result in yet another calamitous war in the region?

Today the fragile being of more than 80 million people is at the mercy of that piece of news for which John Bolton and Mike Pompeo have been gunning most of their political careers.

THE REGIME OF DECEPTION

The regime of deception now code-named "post-truth" or "alternative facts" is predicated on what the French philosopher Guy Debord called "the society of the spectacle", where an image has assumed a reality of its own and it no longer matters what it actually means.

We see a ship burning and we read the story that the US imperial narrative ascribes to it and its media regurgitates. What actually caused that fire and what proof there is for the claim are all entirely irrelevant questions.

Three sources tell us Iran did it: the US, Saudi Arabia, and the UK. They all might be what we think them to be - habitual liars - but they might still be telling the truth that Iran did actually blow a hole in that ship. The problem is, as wise Aesop points out, "there is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth."

Let us take them one at a time. The US launched a massive military attack against Iraq and wreaked havoc in the region, all based on a blatant lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction - a lie that the Bush administration staged and the New York Times consistently collaborated. Under the current administration that habitual tendency of states to lie has been exacerbated by a man who has a very casual relationship with the truth.

What about the UK? They also say the Iranians did it. They may very well be telling the truth. But we know for a fact that the British have a long colonial proclivity to tell lies to suit their interests. One such sustained course of lies was directed against democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh during the CIA-MI6 military coup of 1953 staged against him. The BBC was integral in spreading fake news at the time.

Well, that is the past, you might say, today the UK is certainly the paragon of truth and justice. Indeed it might be, except that it recently chose to turn its back on the truth: "The UK refuses to back UN inquiry into Saudi 'war crimes' amid fears it will damage trade Britain's Middle East and North Africa minister Alistair Burt argued that the Saudi-led coalition itself should investigate any atrocities it committed in its conflict against rebel forces in Yemen."

Can we really trust a treacherous regime that has an equally causal relationship with truth and can turn a blind eye to facts when it suits its purposes?

What about Saudi Arabia, which too has claimed Iranians did it. Certainly, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) could be a trustworthy source - except, he and his backers have repeatedly lied to the public in the face of facts about the tragic fate of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The same Saudi prince - a favourite of New York Times columnists and President Trump's Zionist son-in-law - is chiefly responsible for a genocide in Yemen in which "85,000 children have died from starvation".

None of this is to exempt Iran from being part and parcel of the selfsame scene and engaging in its own game of lies. Despite the death toll in Syria surpassing half a million, it has continued to fabricate a story about supporting a "legitimate government", while Bashar al-Assad has continued in a sustained course of murderous mayhem. Indeed, the Iranian authorities may very well have planted that mine in the Japanese tanker.

The issue we face is not the guilt or innocence of any party involved, but, instead, the complete collapse of any moral authority standing on the side of truth.

Nietzsche famously said: "Truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigour."

In the Gulf of Oman, the truth has dived into the lowest depths of the sea in search of new, more convincing, metaphors.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Hamid Dabashi

Romney and Afghanistan

The Washington Post notes that “Mitt Romney became the first Republican since 1952 to accept his party’s nomination without mentioning war.” According to the Post, “neither Romney nor his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, had anything to say about terrorism or war while on their party’s biggest stage.”

It’s true that Romney didn’t specifically mention Afghanistan (or Iraq) in his speech at the Republican National Convention, but he did discuss several national security issues. Romney said that Obama’s “trillion dollar cuts to our military will eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, and also put our security at greater risk.”

And he strongly criticized Obama for dealing poorly with the Iranian nuclear threat, which he said makes “every American less secure today.” Most memorable, Romney said of Obama: “In his first TV interview as President, he said we should talk to Iran. We’re still talking, and Iran’s centrifuges are still spinning.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Washington Post article and similar press coverage folds neatly into an attack from the Obama campaign, which used a web video to say that “at a time when 84,000 American men and women are fighting for their country in Afghanistan,” Romney’s acceptance speech included “not a single mention of how, or when, to bring them home safely.”

Whatever the significance of Afghanistan going unmentioned in Romney and Ryan’s acceptance speeches, it is not a topic Romney has avoided on the campaign trail. As Romney spokesman Ryan Williams pointed out: “The day before his convention speech, Governor Romney traveled to the American Legion national convention – an invitation the President declined – because Gov. Romney views any opportunity to stand with those who have served as a privilege. In contrast, President Obama has failed in his duty as Commander in Chief to win the home front. Unlike any wartime president in memory, he has failed to consistently and forthrightly speak about the war in Afghanistan to the American people. The Obama campaign’s attack on Governor Romney today is another attempt to politicize the war in Afghanistan, a war in which President Obama has dangerously based his decisions on political calculations, endangering our mission.”

The American Legion gave Romney a very warm reception at its convention in Indianapolis, and some members grumbled openly about President Obama expecting them to settle for a videotaped message while Romney attended in person. “I have to take into consideration that at least [Romney] bothered to come and talk to 10,000 veterans when Obama didn’t have the time,” the Indianapolis Star quotes one Legion member saying.

The Star reports Romney received a standing ovation from the assembled veterans. They were particularly pleased that Romney spoke about increasing employment opportunities for returning veterans, blocking budget cuts to the military, reforming the VA, and opposing Obama’s plans to increase premiums for the Tricare program for veterans’ health care. Obama’s good friends at the AFL-CIO sent a squad of activists to protest outside the American Legion event.

And the Romney people are correct to note that Obama isn’t exactly rushing to the microphones to talk about Afghanistan these days, either. He’s had very little to say about the rising tide of “green on blue” attacks, in which Afghan troops suddenly turn their guns on the American soldiers who had been training them. When Obama does address the subject, he offers nothing but the kind of vague platitudes his campaign is needling Romney over.

For example, he told an August 21 press conference he was “deeply concerned about this, from top to bottom” and, after noting that the transition of security responsibilities to Afghan forces means “our troops are in much closer contact with Afghan troops on an ongoing basis,” Obama helpfully explained that “part of what we’ve got to do is make sure that this model works, but it doesn’t make our guys more vulnerable.”

That sounds great, but green-on-blue attacks have risen 10 percent in the past two years. Three more NATO soldiers were just gunned down last week. The model does not appear to be working. Does that sound like something President Obama should be boasting about at his convention? How about the ongoing investigation of dangerous national security leaks, which appear to have emanated from the White House for political purposes?

Mitt Romney has consistently made two strong criticisms of Obama’s Afghanistan policy: he thinks it was a mistake to set an arbitrary timetable for withdrawal far in advance, and let the enemy know about it; and he thinks Obama’s haste to get a withdrawal under way has left our troops, and the unsteady government they fought to secure, exposed to unacceptable risks. Obama and his media allies expose their own deep insecurity about the President’s record in the War on Terror, and Obama’s nearly hysterical insistence that the death of Osama bin Laden insulates him from all foreign policy criticism, by piling on Romney because he didn’t throw a few lines about Afghanistan into his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. This is a topic more properly addressed in debate between the two candidates, and there is every reason to believe it will be.

Source: Human Events

More civilian deaths as US launches offensive in southern Afghanistan

In what is likely to be the first of many such atrocities, two US military rockets slammed into a house near Marjah, the target of the current offensive, killing 12 people. US military authorities admitted that the victims were innocent civilians sheltering in their own home, as they had been advised to do by US and NATO officials.

The incident took place as fighting intensified during the second day of the US-led offensive into the town of Marjah and the surrounding district of Nad Ali, in central Helmand province. Some 15,000 troops began the attack early Saturday morning, spearheaded by 5,000 US Marines and including British, Canadian, Danish and Estonian troops, as well as troops of the Afghan puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai.

A Marine unit ordered the rockets fired after coming under effective and well-aimed fire by Taliban guerrilla fighters from two directions. A truck-mounted weapon known as a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) was used, but the two rockets hit a home some 1,000 feet away from the target, US military officials told the press.

There was no explanation for why the rockets were so wide of the mark, but there clearly was an element of recklessness, perhaps even panic, in the action. One military official told the media that the rockets were employed because the heavy ground fire made it impossible for helicopters to evacuate wounded US soldiers. “This is a heavy thing to use under these circumstances but they used something that is usually very precise,” the NATO official told McClatchy News Service. “They probably felt this was better than calling in an air attack.”

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, issued an apology to the Afghan government for the death toll, and use of the HIMARS rockets was temporarily suspended pending a review of the incident.

Despite suggestions from US officials that air strikes on the densely populated farming area would be relatively rare, reporters accompanied the troops who entered Marjah reported frequent detonations from bombs dropped by US jets. In at least one case, US Army troops called in a Cobra attack helicopter that launched a Hellfire missile to destroy a building from which guerrillas were firing and pinning down a US patrol.

A British news agency quoted an American Marine officer comparing the intensity of the firefights to those during the US onslaught on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004. “In Fallujah, it was just as intense. But there, we started from the north and worked down to the south,” Captain Ryan Sparks told Reuters. “In Marjah, we’re coming in from different locations and working toward the center, so we’re taking fire from all angles.”

Senior US commanders were at pains to downplay comparisons to Fallujah, where the Marines effectively destroyed the city in a week-long battle, inflicting a huge loss of life, because the American propaganda line under Gen. McChrystal has been about capturing the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan people. “We don’t want Fallujah,” McChrystal said in an interview last week. “Fallujah is not the model.”

Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marines in southern Afghanistan, also disputed the comparison, saying, “The population is not the enemy. The population is the prize—they are why we are going in.” This comment is perhaps unintentionally revealing, conceding that, certainly in Fallujah, as in other operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the local population was considered the enemy and subjected to collective punishment.

Prior to admitting to the killing of the 12 civilians in their home, the US military command had acknowledged 27 Afghan dead in the Marjah operations, and characterized all of them as Taliban insurgents. This recalls the practice of the American military in Vietnam, where it became notorious that every Vietnamese victim of US bombs, strafing, artillery and napalm was classified as “Viet Cong.”

Nicholson predicted that intense fighting in the Marjah area could continue, albeit sporadically, for another 30 days. Given the overwhelming control established by the US military in the first two days, this forecast promises weeks of house-to-house raids in which doors will be broken down as US troops and their Afghan collaborators search for alleged insurgents.

The major innovation in the current operation comes in the political goal of establishing a functioning Afghan governmental machine in the area. McChrystal boasted that he would import a “government-in-a-box” to take charge of civil affairs and policing in the Marjah area, including some 2,000 Afghan National Police officers.

The claim that a full-fledged and permanent “Afghan” administration will be established is ludicrous, given the character of the Karzai government in Kabul, an unstable stooge regime entirely dependent on US funds and force of arms.

The claim is further undermined by the name given to the military onslaught, “Operation Moshtarak,” which means “Operation Together” in the Dari language, the derivative of Persian spoken by the large Tajik minority in Afghanistan. The use of a Dari name suggests that most of the Afghan troops participating in the operation are Tajik, former soldiers of the Tajik-based Northern Alliance, which backed the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan.

The population of Helmand province and the Marjah area, however, is Pashto-speaking, like most of the Taliban. Giving a Dari name to the military operation sends a message to the local Pashtun population that they are being conquered by the rival ethnic group, not being integrated into a new “national” Afghan state.

From a military standpoint, the heavily armed US and British troops have overwhelming superiority in both firepower and mobility, demonstrated on Saturday morning when more than a thousand US troops were airlifted into Marjah by helicopters, bypassing the elaborate network of booby traps and IEDs reportedly set up by the insurgents in recent months. The airdropped troops set up 11 secure outposts and effectively took control of the town long before troops moving overland joined them. Only one British and one American soldier were killed in the first day of the operation.

While as many as 15,000 troops are taking part in the US-led assault, US military estimates of the opposing force ranged from 1,000 to as few as 150. According to a “senior defense official” who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, more than 75 percent of the guerrilla fighters in Marjah are local residents, making it easy for them to blend in and return to the fight under more favorable circumstances. The figure also demonstrates that the label “Taliban” is being applied indiscriminately to any Afghan who takes up arms against the foreign occupation force.

The Marjah offensive was immediately trumpeted by Obama administration spokesmen as a major military success. Retired general James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, told the CNN Sunday interview program, “State of the Union,” that it marked a major change in US strategy.

“Instead of clearing the area and leaving as we frequently did in the past,” he said, “our plans call for clearing the area, holding the area, and then providing some building for the people there, better security, better economic opportunity, better governance, more of an Afghan face. It’s an important moment in time because this is the first time we put together all of the elements of the president’s new strategy.”

According to press reports citing Pentagon and White House sources, the attack on Marjah is a major step in a larger offensive to secure the entire populated region along the Helmand River, extending through the province of that name all the way to Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city. Some 85 percent of the people of the two provinces live along that corridor, which is the main target of the 30,000 additional US troops ordered into Afghanistan by Obama.

However, as one Afghan official pointed out to the British daily newspaper The Guardian, the Nad Ali district, of which Marjah is the center, is only one of the more than 700 districts in the country effectively controlled by the Taliban or under their influence.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

Suicide Attacker in Pakistan Kills 18 Near Khyber Pass

Officials in northwest Pakistan say a suicide bomber blew himself up near a tribal police patrol Wednesday, killing at least 18 people, including 11 officers, and wounding more than 15 others. The officials say the attacker struck on the main highway leading to the Khyber pass, one of the busiest transport routes into neighboring Afghanistan. The wounded were taken to nearby Peshawar for medical treatment.

No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but Taliban militants frequently attack local Pakistani security forces as well as NATO trucks carrying supplies for troops in Afghanistan.

Separately, Pakistan's military said one of its attack helicopters crashed in a remote area of the Khyber region following a battle with militants. The fate of the crew is unclear.

Meanwhile, a senior Pakistani government official has confirmed there is "credible information" that Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud died last month of injuries he sustained in a missile strike in South Waziristan. Mehsud's death had been widely reported, but Wednesday's announcement by Interior Minister Rehman Malik was the most definite statement to date from the central government. Malik declined to give any further details about Mehsud's death. After an unmanned aircraft attacked the target in South Waziristan in mid-January, intelligence officials said they believed Mehsud was seriously wounded and later died.

Taliban spokesmen denied the reports and at one point released an audio recording intended to prove that Mehsud was still alive. But media reports have continued to quote anonymous Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials who said they believe he is dead. Hakimullah Mehsud's predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a U.S. missile strike in South Waziristan last August.

Source: Voice of America

U.S. to Join Talks on Helping Yemen

A month after the failed airplane bomb plot that put this country’s problem with Al Qaeda in the international spotlight, the United States and 20 other countries are gathering for a conference on Wednesday in London to discuss ways to address Yemen’s growing instability. But in their efforts to move beyond a narrowly military approach to fighting Al Qaeda here, the conference participants are likely to run up against a morass of social, political and logistical obstacles that have frustrated similar efforts in the past. And some diplomats and analysts say they fear that the sudden rush of aid and attention, if it is not handled properly, could reinforce patterns of patronage that have contributed indirectly to Yemen’s culture of extremism. Western donors have already begun increasing their aid commitments, and the London conference — though not aimed at securing more money — is focused on the need to address the many crises that help breed radicalism in Yemen.

The facts are appalling: half the population is living on less than $2 a day; the official rate of illiteracy is 45 percent; fewer than half of Yemenis from ages 15 to 24 are employed. Outside the major cities, access to public water supplies, electricity and health services is vanishingly rare. Those desperately poor hinterlands have become a haven for Qaeda militants, who have regrouped here in the past two years and claimed credit for training Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian militant accused of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound jet on Dec. 25.

Addressing Yemen’s needs, though, is no simple matter. As in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years, security concerns have put some of this country’s poorest and most dangerous areas beyond the reach of development assistance. An intermittent war rages in the country’s remote north, and a secessionist movement has grown worse in the south. A vast, corrupt and spectacularly inefficient government bureaucracy has been a stubborn obstacle to aid as well. For those reasons, only a tiny fraction of the $4.7 billion pledged to Yemen during a London donor conference in 2006 has been spent. More money, in other words, is not necessarily the answer. Yemen’s main development agency, the Social Fund for Development, has $12 million in unspent aid money for the Jawf Province, a huge, impoverished area where Qaeda militants have found refuge, said the agency’s director, Abdulkarim Ismail al-Arhabi. The province is too dangerous, and there are no effective intermediaries who could help spend it, Mr. Arhabi said. Western donors say they understand the challenges and are calling for political and economic reform to pave the way for more effective aid. Fixing Yemen’s system of diesel fuel subsidies — which consume almost a third of the budget and are widely said to be an avenue for smuggling and kickbacks — is an important priority, diplomats say.

The conference will also seek a more unified international approach to Yemen, including support from its immediate neighbors. Pressing Persian Gulf countries to open their labor markets to Yemenis could provide tremendous relief for the ailing economy, Western and Yemeni officials say. Another focus will be Saudi Arabia, which gives far more to Yemen than any other country, though mostly through unofficial channels. Western diplomats say they hope to persuade Saudi Arabia to start making its support conditional on political and economic reforms in Yemen. But previous reform efforts have repeatedly stalled. And diplomats say that the publicity created by the Dec. 25 bombing attempt could generate more foreign military and development aid, which in turn could — without the necessary reforms — strengthen the patronage networks that have helped weaken Yemen’s state institutions in the past.

Part of the problem, critics say, is that Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has concentrated too much power in his own hands, skillfully balancing the country’s various political and tribal groups over his 32 years in office, but failing to build a modern state. “At the heart of the economic problem is corruption, and at the heart of the corruption problem is unchecked presidential power,” said Abdel Ghani al-Iryani, a political consultant. Government officials counter that patronage is part of the price of stability in a country that is fragmented along lines of sect, tribe, region and social class. They say that corruption, though widespread, has been exaggerated, and that reforms are under way. Last year Mr. Saleh endorsed a 10-point plan that would bring new blood to the civil service and cut back on the government’s use of diesel fuel. “The corruption is a symptom of the lack of money, the lack of capacity for monitoring this kind of thing,” said Jalal Yacoub, a deputy finance minister and one of the authors of the plan.

The Yemeni state’s administrative weakness, Mr. Yacoub added, derives in part from two major crises of recent years. North Yemen and South Yemen united in 1990, and the north had to absorb hundreds of thousands of public employees from the formerly socialist south. A year later, Saudi Arabia expelled a million Yemeni laborers, following Mr. Saleh’s decision to side with Saddam Hussein in the first Persian Gulf war. Afterward, the Yemeni civil service became a social safety net, as Yemen struggled to find jobs for the returning workers. Mr. Yacoub and other Yemeni officials say they put their hopes in well-financed pilot projects that can quickly improve people’s lives, especially in remote areas where distrust of the government is high. That is also the goal of the United States Agency for International Development, which channels its aid mostly through Yemeni nongovernmental groups. The agency signed a $121 million three-year development assistance program in September, a major increase. But that effort will be hampered by Washington’s inability to send Americans to Yemen’s most dangerous areas, which are also some of its poorest. And they are not the first efforts of their kind. Starting in 2003, a former United States envoy, Edmund J. Hull, traveled to Marib, Jawf, Shabwa and Abyan Provinces to foster aid projects, including the building of new hospitals. “The formula was ‘no security without development, no development without security,’ ” Mr. Hull recalled. “I proposed a virtuous circle to replace the vicious circle.”

Today, the provinces Mr. Hull focused on constitute the main havens of Al Qaeda in Yemen.

Source: New York Times

Bin Laden warns US of more attacks

Osama bin Laden has warned Barack Obama, the US president, that there will be further attacks on the United States unless he takes steps to resolve the Palestinian situation.



In an audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera on Sunday, the al-Qaeda chief, praised the Nigerian accused of a failed attempt to blow up an airliner heading for Detroit on Christmas Day. "The message I want to convey to you through the plane of the hero Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, reaffirms a previous message that the heroes of 9/11 conveyed to you," Bin Laden said. "America will never dream of living in peace unless we live it in Palestine. It is unfair that you enjoy a safe life while our brothers in Gaza suffer greatly. "Therefore, with God's will, our attacks on you will continue as long as you continue to support Israel," bin Laden said. "If it was possible to carry our messages to you by words we wouldn't have carried them to you by planes."

The Obama administration said intelligence analysts had not confirmed that the al-Qaeda leader's voice was on the tape. But it quickly dismissed its significance. David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, told CNN's State of the Union programme that "assuming that it is him, his message contains the same hollow justifications for the mass slaughters of innocents that we've heard before". "And the irony is that he's killed more Muslims than people from any other religion - he's a murderer," Axelrod added.

Phil Rees, the author of Dining with Terrorists, told Al Jazeera: "Bin Laden has a great sense of timing; it's a complete poke in the eye to President Obama at a time when Obama is domestically suffering. "The reference to Palestine is possibly the most interesting part of this because he almost now becomes the al-Qaeda leader that speaks about Palestine."What you've now got in Gaza is bin Laden looking at the situation where there's a peace process which is going nowhere, and in an ironic way, Hamas is at the frontline of the battle with al-Qaeda there."

Azzam Tamimi, a political analyst and the author of Hamas the Unwritten Chapters, said that bin Laden was simply using the Palestinian issue in an attempt to mobilise Muslims against the US. "I would say that al-Qaeda has not been able to set foot in many places in the Muslim world despite its rhetoric," he told Al Jazeera. "In Palestine they failed miserably and that is why I understand this message as a return to the older strategy of waging war against America and the world order in the skies. "It is very difficult to compete with an organisation like Hamas in Palestine."

Osama Hamdan, a spokesman for the Hamas movement, told Al Jazeera that the Palestinians were focused on ending the Israeli occupation. "All Arabs and Muslims support our cause. [But] the Palestinian position is clear, the resistance is against the occupation, the Israeli army who is occupying and killing our people," he said. "Everyone knows that the policies of the US have created huge problems in the region. At this moment, we know who our enemy is - the Israeli occupation."Imtiaz Gul, the chairman of the Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, questioned whether the tape was genuine."I think the validity of this tape should be subjected to scrutiny because we haven't heard from Mr Bin Laden for quite some time."

In the attempted attack on Christmas Day, Abdulmutallab, who is now in US police custody, allegedly tried to ignite explosives sewn into his underwear as Northwest Airlines Flight 253 made its final descent to Detroit. He had boarded the flight in Amsterdam, but purchased his tickets in Ghana on December 16. Passengers on the flight were able to overpower the would-be bomber as he attempted to ignite the explosive's fuse. After being taken into custody, Abdulmutallab told police he had been directed by al-Qaeda and had obtained his explosive device in Yemen. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the organisation's affiliate in Yemen, has said it armed Abdulmutallab, describing the attempted attack as revenge for the US role in a Yemeni military offensive against al-Qaeda. Obama has criticised his own intelligence agencies for failing to piece together information about the suspect which should have stopped him boarding the flight.

Source: Al Jazeera

Releasing Jawad: A Boy’s Life at Guantanamo

Mohamed Jawad was a teenager living in a Pakistani refugee camp when he was recruited by Afghan militia, drugged and forced into combat in Afghanistan. Eventually, he was captured. Afghan authorities beat him and made him confess to throwing a grenade at a US military vehicle, which he did by putting his thumbprint on a document written in a language he could not read or speak. Jawad was handed to the Americans and transferred to Guantanamo, where he was isolated from other Pashto speakers and put through a rigorous program of sleep deprivation. His mental health deteriorated so badly that interrogators soon saw him talking to the posters on his wall. On Christmas Day 2003, he tried to commit suicide.

In 2007, Jawad was tried before a military commission at Guantanamo. Prosecutors thought this was just the kind of case the public would rally behind once they found out that two US servicemen had been wounded in the grenade attack Jawad allegedly committed. Yet the government's case faltered as soon as Jawad showed up. "We're sitting there in the courtroom and in walks this kid," says Human Rights Watch's Stacy Sullivan, who traveled to Guantanamo to observe the proceedings. "He was clearly very young and, by that point, he had already been at Guantanamo for five years." In the courtroom, Jawad appeared uneasy-burying his face in his hands and losing his train of thought mid-sentence. Over and over, he said he did not understand why he was at Guantanamo.

Jawad doesn't know his birth date but thinks he was 16 when he was arrested. The US military claims he was 17. By any account, he was under 18 and should not have been detained with adults. Under US and international law, juveniles must be held in separate facilities, given educational opportunities, and allowed to contact their families. Sullivan wrote an article, "The Forgotten Kid at Guantanamo," for Salon.com, which first brought attention to the case. At that point, Omar Khadr, a 15-year-old Canadian, was the only known teenager in custody. "Until Jawad appeared in court, nobody knew there was another kid at Guantanamo," she said. The US military had failed to list Jawad as a minor.

At the military commission, Jawad's lawyer, US Air Force Maj. David Frakt, mounted a vigorous defense, exposing how Jawad was abused in Afghan and US custody. The military judge ruled that Jawad's confession was inadmissible because he had been tortured, and said that throwing a grenade at US troops was not a war crime anyway. With no crime and no confession, the government's case was unraveling. Disturbed by the revelation of torture, the chief prosecutor, Col. Darrel Vandeveld, recommended the government negotiate a plea and send Jawad home. But Vandeveld's superiors insisted on pressing forward. Eventually, Vandeveld chose to resign rather than prosecute Jawad.

Sullivan penned a piece about Vandeveld's struggle and later suggested he write about the experience himself. Vandeveld's own opinion piece, "I Was Slow to Recognize the Stain of Guantanamo," appeared in the Washington Post in January, just as President Obama took office and was deciding whether to allow military commission trials to proceed. Obama suspended the commissions, and Sullivan helped arrange for Vandeveld to testify before Congress as it began to debate whether or not the suspension would be made permanent. In the meantime, Jawad's lawyer, Maj. Frakt, teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to challenge Jawad's detention. In July, Jawad was released and returned to Afghanistan.

While we cheered Jawad's release, we feared what would become of him once he reached Afghanistan. Jawad's military defense team had requested and been denied permission from the US government to travel to Afghanistan to make sure the Afghan authorities did not imprison Jawad upon his arrival. The defense team then decided to travel on its own, not in an official capacity. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the ACLU appealed to our donors and managed to raise enough money to finance the defense team's trip. When Jawad's lawyers landed in Kabul, their fears were confirmed. Jawad was on his way to prison. Because the lawyers were on the scene, they were able to act. They persuaded the Afghan attorney general to send Jawad back to his family in Kabul. Now in his early 20s, Jawad is finally free and starting to rebuild his life.

In a thank-you note to Human Rights Watch, Maj. Frakt wrote, "Were it not for the presence of ... the Jawad defense team, things might have gone very differently."

Source: Human Rights Watch

Guantanamo inmate to be released

The Obama administration says it will release Mohamed Jawad, who has been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp since 2002. Earlier this month officials admitted that there was no military case for Mr Jawad's continued detention. But government lawyers had said they wished to keep him in detention pending a possible criminal prosecution. The decision could set a precedent leading to the release of other Guantanamo inmates.

His lawyers say they are confident that Mr Jawad will be released and allowed to return to Afghanistan, but the US government still has three weeks to complete a separate criminal investigation before deciding his future. Mr Jawad was arrested in Afghanistan in December 2002, after being accused of throwing a grenade at a jeep and injuring two US soldiers and their interpreter.

His lawyers say he was 12 years old at the time of his arrest, although Pentagon officials say a bone scan indicates that he was actually 17. Shortly after his arrest, he was transported to the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, where he is still being held. His lawyers campaigned for his release, arguing that his confession had been obtained by Afghan officials using torture. In October 2008, a military judge ruled the confession inadmissible and on 16 July, Judge Huvelle described the US government's case against Mr Jawad as "an outrage" that was "riddled with holes".

On Friday US authorities said they no longer considered him to be a military prisoner. But they also said that they intended to construct a criminal case against Mr Jawad, and that he should remain in detention while they did so. "After seven years of injustice this was a victory for the rule of law," said Major Eric Montalvo, a lawyer for Mr Jawad. "Finally we've turned the corner on Guantanamo," he told the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Washington.

Observers say the decision could mean that other Guantanamo detainees will also be released. Shortly after entering the White House, US President Barack Obama pledged to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Since making the pledge, administration officials have been reviewing the case files of Guantanamo detainees in an attempt to determine which prisoners should face criminal trials, which should face military commissions, which should be released and which can neither be tried nor released. Mr Obama said he wanted the camp closed by January 2010.

Source: BBC

Alpha Blondy Moves Summerstage

A sea of energetic fans from all over the world welcomed Alpha Blondy, known as the “African Bob Marley” to New York City’s Central Park Summerstage on Sunday, July 19th.  The opening acts included performances by Lee “Scratch” Perry, identified as the “father” of reggae and Dubblestandart Sound System. The Ivorian reggae artist branded for his activism ignited this eclectic audience with his strong political lyrics that convey global peace and unity.

The origins of the crowd ranged from Brooklynites, to people from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Diaspora of Africa. The celebration and dancing to the rhythms of his dynamic 12-piece band, the Solar System was non-stop. Alpha’s poignant songs for the evening where Cocody Rock and Peace in Liberia. He unified and uplifted his fans by combining a mini speech with chants into the microphone “Peace in Iraq, Peace in Afghanistan, Peace in Israel and Palestine, Peace in Sudan, Peace in Eritrea…” In the early months of 2008, an American tour was scheduled and was canceled as a result of Alpha experiencing serious health problems. His latest CD was released in 2007 titled “Jah Victory.”

Blondy was named as United Nations Ambassador of Peace for Cote D’Ivoire in 2005 and continuously remains dedicated to his humanitarian efforts through his charitable foundation Alpha Blondy Jah Glory. His mission is to eradicate generational poverty by providing grass roots social programs that are beneficial to the lives of underprivileged children and women from villages within Africa and Haiti.

The foundation’s remarkable programs are Tafari Genesis Retreat Camp and the Micro Loan Program. The camp is considered a safe haven, and escape, for many children who are victims of civil war, and chronic life threatening illnesses like sickle-cell anemia, AIDS and malaria. Alpha Blondy believes, “It should not hurt to be a child.” The plague of HIV and AIDS is causing many children to become orphans who are left to be raised by elders or grandmothers.

The Micro Loan Program provides training and financing as little as $50.00 U.S. dollars to assist women who have become head of households to manage, operate, and start their own businesses. Overall, Alpha Blondy empowers communities to become self sufficient by learning and utilizing basic skills. This concept generates opportunities for many women to maintain their integrity, rebuild confidence as well as provide for their families.

Source: Jamati

United States: Judge rejects 'forced' confession

A military judge in Guantanamo Bay has thrown out the U.S. government's evidence against an Afghan detainee because it was obtained under coercion, a rights group said yesterday. The decision came late Wednesday in a preliminary hearing in the trial of Mohammed Jawad, arrested in Kabul in 2002 on charges of throwing a grenade that wounded two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter.

A representative for the American Civil Liberties Union revealed that Mr. Jawad's confession had been rejected as evidence in the case. "Col. Stephen Henley held that evidence collected while Jawad was in U.S. custody cannot be admitted in his trial" because the evidence was "gathered through coercive interrogations," the ACLU said in a press release.

Lawyers for Omar Khadr, 22, accused of five war crimes charges including the murder of a U.S. serviceman, say the prosecution's evidence against the Canadian-born youth also relies on statements Mr. Khadr says have been coerced. Under the commissions system, a judge can accept "coerced" statements if he thinks they were true anyway, but cannot accept statements obtained under "torture."

Source: Canada

The forgotten kid of Guantánamo

When Mohammed Jawad, a 23-year-old Afghan detainee, was summoned to appear before the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay for his arraignment in March, he told his military handlers that he would not go. After being held for more than five years here, he didn't believe he could get a fair hearing from the U.S. military.

But appearing at arraignments at Guantánamo is mandatory, so as has been done with others, military personnel forcefully extracted Jawad from his cell and brought him to court in shackles. Sitting before the judge in his orange jumpsuit, the color reserved for uncooperative detainees, Jawad buried his face into his hands and announced that he would boycott future proceedings -- a right the commissions allow.

So this month, when Jawad was scheduled to appear at the courthouse for another pre-trial hearing, nobody expected him to show up. But as a cluster of journalists, observers from nongovernmental organizations (including me, as a representative of Human Rights Watch) and military personnel gathered in the courtroom, Jawad, now dressed in khaki, a color reserved for more cooperative detainees, was escorted inside by two guards and quietly took a seat beside his defense counsel and an interpreter. Although he appeared uneasy and nervous, he was markedly calmer than at his arraignment.

Jawad put on the headset that would allow him to listen to a translation of court proceedings (something he refused to do during his March hearing) and politely asked the military judge, Col. Peter Brownback, if he could turn around to look at the audience in the courtroom. The judge agreed, and Jawad turned around to face us, revealing a wispy beard that only partly covers his post-adolescent acne.

The U.S. government claims that Mohammed Jawad is an unlawful enemy combatant who tried to murder two U.S. soldiers and their translator in Afghanistan by tossing a grenade into their vehicle in December 2002.

But Maj. David Frakt, his military-appointed attorney, argues that Jawad -- who was a teenager of 16 or 17 at the time of his alleged offense (Jawad doesn't know his birth date) -- is a victim. He says Jawad was a homeless teenager who was drugged and forced to fight with Afghan militia, then abused by the United States, which transported him halfway around the world and imprisoned him at Guantánamo for five years without charge and is now using him as a guinea pig to test a new system of military justice with no regard to his initial status as a juvenile.

When Frakt arrived at Guantánamo to meet Jawad, he said he found a profoundly disturbed young man who was reluctant to talk. "Jawad is in an extremely fragile mental state," Frakt said in an interview following the hearing. "He has been here for so long -- he has essentially grown up in Guantánamo. He has lost track of time, lost touch with reality, and suffers from severe depression. And he doesn't believe he can get justice from the military commissions."

Both U.S. and international law requires governments to provide children with special safeguards and care that take into account their vulnerability and culpability as children. They are supposed to be housed separately from adults, allowed to contact family members, provided with educational opportunities, and given prompt legal assistance. The United States has acknowledged holding eight teenagers at Guantánamo, but although some of them were given special housing and educational opportunities and were eventually released, the U.S. has ignored Jawad's status as a juvenile.

Jawad's decision to attend commission hearings this month appears to owe much to his newly appointed military defense counsel, Maj. Frakt, a law professor in the Air Force Reserves who was called up from Western State University in California to represent the young detainee (now 22 or 23) just a few days earlier. (Jawad's previous defense counsel left after his reserve duty ended in late March.) With the help of an Afghan interpreter -- an elderly man from the same tribe as Jawad who managed to establish a rapport with the detainee -- Frakt was able to persuade Jawad to appear before the court so that he can "challenge the legality and legitimacy of the military commissions" and possibly argue for an improvement in the conditions in which Jawad is being held.

Jawad is not the only detainee at Guantánamo to be charged before the military commissions for an offense allegedly committed as a juvenile. Omar Khadr, a Canadian charged with throwing a hand grenade that killed a U.S. soldier, was 15 at the time of his alleged crime. Khadr's story has made headlines in newspapers and magazines around the world. He is even the subject of a new book, "Guantanamo's Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr," by Michelle Shephard. Lawyers in Canada have sued the Canadian government for access to documents on his case, and child rights groups have embraced his cause.

But Jawad is an illiterate Afghan from a poor Pashtun family with no ties to the Afghan government. According to Frakt, Jawad's father died during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. His mother remarried, and the family fled to Pakistan. Jawad spent his childhood years in a refugee camp and was educated at a local madrassa where all the teaching is conducted orally. He never learned to read or write.

Frakt says that when Jawad was 13, his family kicked him out and told him he needed to find a job. He spent much of those years hanging around a mosque looking for work. Sometime in 2002, Jawad was told he could have a job helping eradicate land mines in Afghanistan, so he returned to his native country. Once he arrived, however, Frakt says he was recruited by the local militia, drugged and forced into combat. Soon after, he was arrested by the Afghan police and handed over to the Americans.

Unlike most of the detainees at Guantánamo, Jawad was never provided a "habeas counsel," that is, a civilian lawyer to file a petition of habeas corpus on his behalf. Until he was charged this year, he was virtually unknown to the world.

Frakt said that his meetings with Jawad have been difficult, in part because Jawad doesn't understand the legal process, and in part because Jawad doesn't trust anyone in a U.S. military uniform, which Frakt is obligated to wear when he visits his client. "It is difficult to establish a trusting relationship with a detainee who has suffered so much and been detained by the U.S. military for five years," Frakt said. "He has a natural distrust of me, and he is not sure that I am here to help him." For now, Jawad has agreed to allow Frakt to represent him in a limited capacity -- to challenge the legality and legitimacy of the commissions. Frakt hopes he will be able to persuade his client to allow him to give Jawad a more complete representation in a case that points to crucial questions about American justice in the war on terror.

From the government's point of view, Jawad's is a seemingly straightforward case. The prosecution has located eyewitnesses who claim to have seen the Afghan teenager throw the grenade. In addition, it says it has a signed confession from Jawad. But Frakt says the case isn't nearly as straightforward as the government alleges. He says that the prosecution chose to prosecute Jawad because it viewed his as a "sexy" case -- Jawad is a defendant with "blood on his hands," in the government's view, which is something the American public understands better than something more abstract, like charges of material support for terrorism. While Frakt acknowledges that the prosecution has witnesses who saw his client throw the grenade, he says the defense has also located witnesses who say the teenager appeared to be drugged at the time. As for the confession, Frakt says it is in Farsi -- a language Jawad does not speak. And the "signature" on it is in the form of a thumbprint, because Jawad does not read or write.

Frakt hopes to be able to make these arguments on Jawad's behalf if or when the case goes to trial. In the meantime, Frakt says has serious reservations about Jawad's ability to aid in his defense because of his fragile mental state -- something that was evident when Jawad himself addressed the court this month.

When the judge asked Jawad if he would like to make a statement, the young man spoke for about 20 minutes, saying that he didn't understand why he was at Guantánamo and why he was being punished. As he described his ordeal -- of being flown from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, locked in a steel cage, moved from cell to cell in the middle of the night, and sometimes being kept in a cell that had bright lights on 24 hours a day -- he said he had lost track of time and couldn't remember when or for how long he was held in each camp. Sometimes he stopped to rub his head and seemed to forget what he was saying in mid-sentence.

When Jawad finished his statement, Frakt requested that his client be taken out of the maximum security facility where he is currently housed -- where he is confined to a windowless cell at least 22 hours a day -- and moved to a "quiet, restful place where he can rehabilitate." He also requested that Jawad be examined by a mental health professional. The judge told Frakt to put the request in writing and said that he would consider it. But it remains unclear whether the judge at the military commissions has the authority to order military officials at the detention facility at Guantánamo to do anything.

The next hearings in Jawad's case are scheduled for June 24-25. Frakt is hoping Jawad will participate.

Source:

CIA admit 'waterboarding' al-Qaida suspects

Interrogators used "waterboarding" on three men shortly after the September 11 attacks, the CIA admitted today, naming for the first time the victims of a technique widely perceived as torture.

The men subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were al-Qaida suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the CIA director, Michael Hayden, told the US Congress. "We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

Hayden told the senate intelligence committee that Mohammed - the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks - and the other two men were subject to waterboarding in 2002 and 2003. "The circumstances are different than they were in late 2001, early 2002," Hayden said, adding that he opposed limiting the CIA to interrogation techniques permitted in the US Army field manual, which bans waterboarding. Hayden told the committee that fewer than 100 people had been held in the CIA's terrorism detention and interrogation programme, with less than one-third subjected to "coercive" techniques. The CIA said in December that it had destroyed videotapes depicting the interrogations of Zubaydah and Nashiri, prompting a justice department investigation. The tapes were destroyed as Congress moved to pass a ban on inhumane interrogations and a prosecutor is investigating whether US intelligence officials broke the law or violated court orders in destroying the tapes.

In waterboarding, the victim's mouth is covered and water poured over his face, making the victim feel as if they are drowning. "Waterboarding taken to its extreme, could be death - you could drown someone," McConnell acknowledged. He said waterboarding remains a technique in the CIA's arsenal, but it would require the consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.

At the same hearing, the US director of national intelligence said the Taliban, which was overthrown in Afghanistan in late 2001, has expanded its operations into once-peaceful areas of western Afghanistan and around the capital, Kabul, despite the death or capture of three top commanders in the last year. McConnell also said al-Qaida maintains a "safe haven" in Pakistan's tribal areas, where the group is able to stage attacks supporting the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. The Pakistani tribal areas provide al-Qaida "many of the advantages it once derived from its base across the border in Afghanistan, albeit on a smaller and less secure scale", allowing militants to train for strikes in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa and the US, McConnell said. "Al-Qaida remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad," McConnell said, even though the terror network had suffered setbacks in Iraq. He expressed concern that al-Qaida in Iraq is shifting its focus elsewhere in the region. "They may deploy resources to mount attacks outside the country," McConnell said, although fewer than 100 terrorists have moved to establish cells in other countries. McConnell also told the senate panel that US officials believe that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas. A report released in London said nearly 400 militant groups now operate around the world and the greatest proliferation has been in the border regions between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

The number of violent "non-state" groups has grown about 10% in the past year, according to the 2008 military balance report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Iraq and India, with more than 30 active guerrilla groups each, are the most volatile countries, the report said, with the Afghan-Pakistan border and the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan the worst-affected areas.

Source: Guardian

Print Leaflet Feedback Share » NATO forces carry out massacre of Afghan civilians

Official estimates of the civilian death toll from NATO air strikes in southern Afghanistan on October 24 are disputed, but some sources report up to 85 killed.

NATO planes carried out bombing raids in the Panjwayi district near Kandahar. Scores of people were killed in the village of Nangawat, some in their own homes while celebrating the Eid al-Fitr festival that marks the end of Ramadan. Many of the dead were women and children. The bombed district is in the region where NATO forces carried out Operation Medusa in September. This was a “significant success,” according to a senior NATO commander, in which upwards of 500 Taliban fighters were killed. NATO officials claimed to have completely flushed out or killed all Taliban militants in the area.

Reports also suggest at least 40 civilians died during the recent bombing raids when a nomad camp was hit in the district. NATO command has conceded only 12 civilians deaths in the recent air strikes, adding that 48 Taliban fighters were killed in the area. The Taliban has denied losing any men.

Local police and officials have rejected NATO accounts. Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Zmarai Bashir told the BBC that 40 civilians and 20 Taliban militants were killed, while another government official, who asked not to be named because “it would cause me problems,” said at least 60 had died. Kandahar provincial council member Bismallah Afghanmal told the Associated Press that up to 85 civilians had been killed. Other local officials put the death toll at between 60 and 85.

Residents in Panjwayi say the bombing continued into the night. Local people as well as district officials have described buildings destroyed by aerial bombings. One local man said, “The planes came and were bombing from 3 a.m. And in the morning they started hitting our village with mortars and rockets. They didn’t allow anybody to come to our help.”

Witnesses told Reuters that 25 homes were demolished during four to five hours of bombing. People told the BBC that the bodies of many locals had been pulled from the rubble of their homes and buried.

One of the surviving nomads, who are among the poorest of Afghanistan’s citizens, said 20 members of his family had been killed and 10 injured. He said their camp, with no connection to the Taliban, had been attacked: “There are no Taliban here. We live outside the village in an open area in tents. Anyone can come here to see our homes and area. There are no Taliban here. We all are nomads living in tents.

“Each time they say that it was a mistake. They have destroyed us all in such mistakes. For God’s sake, come and see our situation.”

This was echoed by Kandahar provincial councilor Afghanmal, who said, “These kinds of things have happened several times, and they only say, ‘Sorry.’ How can you compensate people who have lost their sons and daughters? The government and the coalition told families that there was no Taliban in the area anymore. If there are no Taliban, then why are they bombing the area?”

Major Luke Knitig, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said NATO troops had been engaged in heavy fighting against insurgents in three separate incidents in Panjwayi that day and the battle included air strikes.

Hundreds attended a mass funeral for the dead villagers two days after the NATO bombing raids. Many of the mourners condemned both NATO and the Karzai government for the deaths.

One mourner, Abdul Aye, who claimed 22 members of his family were killed in the NATO raids, said, “Everyone is very angry at the government and the coalition. There was no Taliban.”

Taj Mohammad, another villager, said there were no militants and innocent people were killed. Mohammad said 10 of his relatives had been killed in the latest incident.

A NATO officer later said the wild variance in the death toll estimates may stem from insurgents “being misidentified as innocent bystanders.” The unnamed officer stressed that NATO bombs did not go off course.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said it was “very concerned.”

The latest atrocity against Afghan civilians follows the killing of at least 26 people less than a week before in NATO operations in Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand province.

President Hamid Karzai announced an inquiry by a body to include NATO officers along with a few tribal and community elders. Karzai’s office said his investigators would make suggestions on how to prevent such “unfortunate” incidents in future and ensure “better coordination with foreign forces.” The inquiry is to report in a week’s time.

At a press conference he did not attempt to give a figure of those killed, speaking only of “numbers” of civilian deaths. But he did admit that foreign pilots did not always manage to distinguish between Taliban fighters and civilians.

To shore up the pretense of a sovereign government in Kabul, the press conference was closely followed by a statement from NATO spokesman Mark Laity, who said, “We’ve got tight rules of engagement but sometimes things go wrong.... President Karzai quite understandably and correctly wants us to show maximum care. That’s what we do.”

The prostration of Karzai before the United States is being exploited by Islamist militias. An alleged statement by the Taliban leadership dismissed Karzai’s offer for talks on October 27 and called his administration a “puppet government.”

“We say even today that there is no possibility of any talks when the country is under occupation,” the statement said. “Any talks with aggressors would amount to selling the country.”

Karzai had reiterated to reporters that he was ready to negotiate with the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar if he stopped receiving support from neighboring Pakistan. Karzai says Omar is hiding in the Pakistani city of Quetta, while Pakistan says Omar is in Afghanistan.

Over the past two years hundreds of Taliban supporters, including some senior officials, are believed to have reconciled with the government, but there have apparently been no high-level talks with the Islamist group’s leadership.

NATO forces have relied extensively on attack aircraft in Afghanistan in the past year. According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, in June the US Central Command confirmed 340 air strikes in Afghanistan, double the 160 strikes in Iraq in the same month.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

Two U.S. Soldiers, Interpreter Wounded in Kabul Grenade Attack

Attackers hurled a grenade into a jeep carrying two U.S. soldiers and an Afghan interpreter in the heart of Kabul on Tuesday, wounding all three, the U.S. military said. One of the soldiers was wounded in the head and "in the lower extremities," while the second soldier suffered wounds to the lower right leg, said Lt. Tina Kroske. She did not identify the soldiers or say how serious their injuries were. The interpreter's condition was not immediately known.

Kroske said three suspected assailants were arrested, but Kabul Police Chief Basir Salangi said only two men were in custody. He identified them as Amir Mohammed, of Khost in eastern Afghanistan, and Ghulam Saki of Jalalabad, the capital of Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province. Mohammed was arrested with at least two grenades in his pocket, Salangi told The Associated Press.

Four U.S. Humvees equipped with machine guns guarded the site of the attack, on a crowded corner in front of city's Blue Mosque. A policeman at the scene, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he saw a boy throw a grenade toward the vehicle and witnessed a second man, gearing up to throw another grenade, tackled by a fruit vendor.Attacks against U.S. service personnel in eastern Afghanistan, and in particular in Khost, are routine.

Tuesday's attack was the latest in a series of sporadic attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, following a Nov. 28 incident in which a sniper shot a U.S. Special Forces soldier in the leg in eastern Afghanistan. The shooter escaped. Fifteen U.S. servicemen have been killed in combat or hostile situations in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign began last year. The most recent fatality was on May 19.

Source: Fox News

Destruction of Giant Buddhas Confirmed

The international community acknowledged Monday that it has failed to stop the ruling Taliban militia in Afghanistan from destroying the ancient Buddha statues at Bamiyan, with UNESCO branding their demolition "a crime against culture." It was the first time that the destruction of the statues had been independently confirmed, despite a concerted effort by Arab, Islamic and international players to spare them. "I was distressed to learn from my special envoy, Pierre Lafrance, that the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas has been confirmed," the UN cultural body's chief Koichiro Matsura said in a statement. "It is abominable to witness the cold and calculated destruction of cultural properties which were the heritage of the Afghan people, and, indeed, of the whole of humanity," the statement said.

The Taliban had said the huge figures, carved into sandstone cliffs in Bamiyan city more than 1,500 years ago when Afghanistan was a seat of Buddhism, are "false idols" and must be destroyed in line with Islamic laws. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India, which has a large Buddhist population, on Monday branded the destruction "an act of barbarism" but stressed that his government had been helpless to intervene. "What is happening there has been condemned by the entire world. It is an act of barbarism, but there is a limit and the world cannot stop the destruction," said Vajpayee. Yet there were no shortage of efforts to try reversing the Taliban's edict, including from many Muslim countries and Pakistan, the closest ally of the Taliban and one of only three countries which recognizes its puritanical regime. After talks over the weekend between Pakistan Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider and Taliban officials failed, Haider played for time "suggesting that since this edict has repercussions for the entire Muslim world, it should be discussed with the ulema (Islamic religious leaders) from outside Afghanistan." But the high-level delegation of Islamic clerics that later visited Afghanistan returned empty-handed Monday.

The Taliban said the clerics had "failed to convince us that destroying the statues was un-Islamic." They were part of a delegation of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) led by Qatar's foreign minister and included Egypt's top religious leader and two leading Sunni clerics, the same faith as the Taliban. "From a religious point of view it is clear, these statues are part of humanity's heritage and do no affect Islam at all," said the Egyptian cleric, speaking on his return to Cairo. A similar diplomatic mission from Japan also failed to overturn Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammad Omar's decree, which he said was based on orders of God and the Koran, Islam's holy book, and was "irreversible."

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan tried his hand at convincing the Taliban not to carry out their "lamentable decision," meeting Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel while on a tour of South Asia. Annan stressed that many Islamic countries opposed the move, adding that destroying cultural masterpieces was not the way to mobilise the donor community to help Afghanistan overcome its humanitarian crisis. Jordan, another Muslim country, was quick to react to the news Monday that the statues were finished, saying it was disappointed at the "failure of Arab, Islamic and international efforts to stop the destruction." "Heritage that dates back to before Islam belongs to the entire world," the country's culture minister said.

With the Taliban set to move even further into isolation now, Matsuria concluded that "the loss is irreversible" but that "everything possible must be done to stop further destruction" of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic heritage. He also said he hoped that the destruction "will not provide fanatics elsewhere with an excuse for acts of destruction targeting Muslim cultural properties."

Source: Agence France-Presse

A NATION CHALLENGED: ISLAM -- Cairo; Thousands Hear Call Of Prayer and Politics At World's Mosques

In mosques yesterday, Muslims gathered for Friday Prayers, and in many instances the preaching was political and sharply anti-American. Here is a sampling from some of the largest mosques in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

An Orderly Rally, With Paper Hats

At Al Hussein mosque at Al Azhar University, Friday Prayers turned into a political rally organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has sought for decades to install a pure Islamic state in Egypt.

Sheik Sayed Muhammad Tantawi, the imam of Al Azhar, delivered the main sermon and used the story of the Prophet Muhammad's visit to Jerusalem as an opening to endorse the Palestinian uprising.

''Our brothers in Palestine have the right to defend themselves,'' he said. ''It is a duty for them to defend themselves. This is justice. This is Islam to stand by the oppressed until they win.''

He ended his speech by praying for Muslims in Afghanistan and echoing the line of the Egyptian government concerning the American attacks: ''Only terrorists should be targeted,'' he said, ''not the whole people of Afghanistan.''

Once he finished, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, Saif al-Islam, led the worshipers in a chant: ''America is the enemy of Arabs and Muslims. Let us all die in our war against America.''

''America is terrorism,'' Mr. Islam shouted, ''It backs terrorism in Israel. Who is next? Now they are hitting Afghanistan. Then the next target is one of the Arab countries.''

Waving copies of the Koran, others shouted, ''God the almighty said Islam is the solution.''

Children, carried on the shoulders of their fathers, sported paper hats on which ''Hamas,'' the radical Islamic group, and ''Palestine'' were written in red.

Despite its passion, however, the demonstration appeared to be well choreographed. Black-uniformed security police officers stood outside the mosque but did not intervene. After about an hour, when the rally appeared to be winding down and people inside were drooping from the heat, Sheik Tantawi, a small man in a gray robe and white turban, appealed to everyone to go home.

He left them with an indirect reminder that not all acts done in the name of Islam were correct.

''The prophet told us to always help our brothers when they are innocent and to correct their deviation when they are guilty,'' he said. ''This is how we help our brothers. We should stop them from doing the wrong deeds.''

Source: New York Times

Islamic Rebels Capture A Strategic Afghan City

Islamic rebels known as the Taliban captured the eastern city of Jalalabad today, gaining virtual control of nearly two-thirds of Afghanistan and sending Government troops retreating to Kabul, the capital.

At least 70 people were reported killed in the attack, but that figure could not be confirmed.

The capture of Jalalabad gives the Taliban control over a major ground route for supplies to Kabul from Pakistan and puts increased pressure on the ruling coalition of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who has accused Pakistan of aiding the rebels.

The Taliban are the most conservative of the Islamic factions that have fought for control here since the communists lost power in 1992, and they have imposed strict religious rule in areas they control.

Source: New York Times

AFGHAN LEADER IN MOSCOW

Prime Minister Babrak Karmal of Afghanistan with Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, before their meeting yesterday. A joint statement said that Soviet troops, in Afghanistan since 1979, would not be withdrawn until ''outside aggression'' and ''subversive actions from abroad'' were halted.

Source: New York Times

LEADERS OF 37 NATIONS AND P.L.O. TO OPEN TALKS TODAY

Leaders of 37 Moslem nations and the Palestine Liberation Organization converged on this resort city today for tomorrow's opening of the Islamic summit conference, which is expected to focus on collective action against Israel. The participants' hopes of negotiating an end to the Iran-Iraq war appear to have been dashed by Iran's refusal to attend the talks. A five-man delegation returned from Teheran today after having failed to persuade the Iranians to reconsider their boycott of the meeting.

Conference sources said the Islamic nations had hoped to mediate the four-month-old war between Iran and Iraq. But Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian leader, said yesterday that Iran would boycott the conference because President Saddam Hussein of Iraq would be present. Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf's largest oil exporter and the host for the conference, has expressed concern that the war might spread to neighboring countries.

A number of Moslem nations besides Iran will not be represented at the conference. Libya is boycotting the meeting to express its displeasure over the basing of United States radar surveillance planes in Saudi Arabia since the outbreak of the Persian Gulf war. Afghanistan was banned from the conference because its Sovietbacked Government is trying, with the help of Soviet troops, to put down Moslem rebels. Egypt was excluded because of its peace treaty with Israel.

The summit meeting will hold its opening session tomorrow in the open-air courtyard of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, birthplace of Islam. Security was extremely tight in the area, the site of fighting a year ago between Saudi security forces and Moslem extremists who occupied the mosque.

The agenda calls for talks on the Palestinian cause and ways of putting pressure on Israel to yield Arab territories occupied during the 1967 Mideast war. The Islamic nations are especially concerned about Israel's control of largely Arab East Jerusalem, which contains one of Islam's holiest shrines, the Al Aksa Mosque. The conference, including nations representing some 800 million Moslems, is calling itself the ''Palestine and Jerusalem summit'' and is expected to reach a rapid consensus on an anti-Israeli program, a Saudi delegate said. ''While the aim of the summit is to put Islamic 'swords into plowshares,' resolutions on economic and political sanctions against the enemies of the Islamic nations are perfectly relevant,'' he said.

No official indication was given of specific actions to put pressure on Israel. But political sources said the campaign would probably be directed against Israel's supporters in Western Europe and the United States.

Source: New York Times

KISSINGER URGES U.S. POST MIDEAST FORCE

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger urged today that the United States enhance its military presence in the Middle East to counter growing Soviet activity there. Speaking at a news conference midway through what he has repeatedly termed a private visit to the area, Mr. Kissinger said that no regional leader could have confidence in a Rapid Deployment Force, as envisioned by President Carter, that remained in the United States without concrete facilities on the spot.

He also urged that West European and American policies on the Middle East be coordinated; he rejected recent European stands favoring Palestinian self-determination, or statehood, dismissing ''the theory that if we are going to get a Palestinian state, it would quickly or relatively quickly cause the problems in the Middle East to disappear.'' ''The vital interest of the United States and Europe cannot be separated,'' he said. ''Therefore, I consider it impossible that there can be two different approaches that are both correct.''

Although the former secretary has no official standing in the President-elect Ronald Reagan's administration, he is expected to brief Mr. Reagan and his staff and therefore is being received as an important figure. Traveling on the private jet of William S. Paley, chairman of the board of CBS Inc., Mr. Kissinger saw President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt last week in Cairo, flew to Somalia for a talk with President Mohammed Siad Barre and during two days in Israel met with a range of Government and opposition leaders, including Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, leader of the oppostion Labor Party, and former Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan.

He toured East and West Jerusalem with Mayor Teddy Kollek and said the city should remain united but did not specify under whose sovereignty. He flew to the Etzion Airfield, the modern Israeli base in a slice of the Sinai that is to be returned to Egypt next year. That trip, with Israeli military officers, raised excited speculation in the Israeli press that he would recommend to Mr. Reagan that the United States use at least some of the base. But the former secretary appeared to dismiss the idea at his news conference by reporting his impression that Egypt would not allow it.

He did call for an American military role in the region, however. ''If you look at the map,'' he said, ''you see a large Soviet presence in Afghanistan, a large Soviet-supported presence in Ethiopia, Soviet-supported operations out of Libya, and I do not think that the leaders of this area who are concerned about this can visualize the concept of a Rapid Deployment Force that comes from the United States, 8,000 miles away, into what?'' He urged two steps: ''One is to put some visible American presence into this perimeter along the lines of the facilities that have already been negotiated by the Carter Administration, and they should now be given some concrete content. That would at least indicate that we are there, and that attacking key countries is not a matter in which the United States can be disinterested. Secondly, we require for our own country a strategic doctrine that enables us to be relevant to these crises, together with other interested countries.''

Source: New York Times