Month: January 2010

by KANTI BAJPAI

Now that the climate talks in Copenhagen are behind us, it is time to turn once again to India’s policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan. A region-led policy, rather than a US-led policy towards Afghanistan, and the resumption of talks with Pakistan, rather than the stalling of negotiations, should be Indian policy.

New Delhi should start with five assumptions. The first is that the United States will quit Afghanistan by 2012 at the latest. When US troops leave, they will leave Afghanistan neither stable nor democratic. Second, the Taliban will remain a military and political force, supported by Pakistan or by elements within the Pakistani government. Third, India-Pakistan tensions over Afghanistan and Kashmir will continue, with both sides claiming legitimate interests in both places. Fourth, Pakistan will be a violent and turbulent place. US presence in Afghanistan will on balance exacerbate, not reduce, extremism in Pakistan which in turn will hinder India-Pakistan relations further. Fifth, terrorists will strike Indian targets again, even as New Delhi improves its counterterrorism, tempting India to hit back at Pakistan – with unpredictable consequences.

Indian policy must therefore change. New Delhi’s insistence that the US should stay in Afghanistan, that it must discipline Pakistan, that there is no such thing as good and bad Taliban, and that the resumption of talks with Pakistan must await stern action against the perpetrators of 26/11 and the dismantling of the terror apparatus is not wise policy. The US and its allies do not seem to have the will to stay in Afghanistan much beyond 2012. Washington’s ability to discipline Pakistan historically has been intermittent at best and ineffective at worst, principally because Islamabad is important to the US for a number of geopolitical reasons including, at present, military operations in Afghanistan.

New Delhi’s contention that there is no difference between elements of the Taliban is unconvincing. All our experience within India shows that there is always a more extreme and a less extreme faction of insurgents. If there was no relatively good Taliban, the hijacking of IC-814 in 1999 would have ended very differently – in tragedy for the passengers. In any case, to say there are no moderates is to suggest that there is no possibility of negotiating an end to Afghanistan’s troubles. Logically, then, the only option is to exterminate the Taliban. Postponing talks with Pakistan until terror has been more or less dismantled and full action taken on 26/11 is like waiting for Godot, in Beckett’s famous play by that name.

What is the alternative? Indian policy on Afghanistan must move towards a regional understanding that includes in the first instance Pakistan and perhaps Iran. The fundamental compact between India and Pakistan must be of a simple, robust nature: that both countries have legitimate interests in Afghanistan. India has an interest in overall stability and the protection of northern, non-Pashtun Afghans as well as various other minorities including Sikhs and Hindus. Pakistan also has an interest in the country’s stability and in the Pashtuns finding their rightful place in any future government of Afghanistan. India and Pakistan could agree therefore that India will continue to provide developmental aid and that Pakistan will have influence on political developments, the goal of both countries being to help evolve a lasting, just and inclusive political system. Iran, Russia, China and the nearby Central Asian states should be part of a conclave on Afghanistan as they are all affected by events in that troubled country and wield influence in it. A beginning towards a conclave would be for Afghanistan, India and Pakistan to meet on the future of Afghanistan.

Times of India for more

by MELVIN A. GOODMAN

Under the stewardship of neoconservative Fred Hiatt, the editorial and op-ed pages of The Washington Post have steadily moved to the right; the paper’s key writers — Charles Krauthammer, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Kathleen Parker, and others — have marched along in lockstep. They have supported the use of military force in Iraq and Afghanistan; offered apologies for the CIA crimes of torture and abuse, extraordinary renditions, and secret prisons; and criticized efforts by the Obama Administration to reverse these policies and to rely on multilateral diplomacy and arms control and disarmament to resolve outstanding problems. The key writer in Hiatt’s stable has been David Ignatius, who is this year’s winner of the WashPost/Compost Award for the most incomprehensible and fanciful op-ed of 2009.

Ignatius’ winning op-ed was written last month. He sought to justify U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan that, he says, will lead to a “sovereign Pakistan that controls all its territory”; a “future common market between Pakistan and Afghanistan that can power economic development in both countries”; and a “stable structure for Central and South Asia in the 21st century.” Ignatius believes that, just as the Mexican-American War “helped make the United States a continental nation” and the European wars of the 19th century “helped unify Germany and Italy,” the Af-Pak wars will stabilize a lawless tribal region that has been in turmoil for 150 years. There is no Afghan or Pakistani leader who genuinely believes that the current strife can lead to stabilization. Indeed, there are few Afghan and Pakistani leaders who understand all the roles being played by Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda, various tribal leaders, and the Pakistani intelligence services, which have played key clandestine roles in multiple crises that have affected Kabul, Delhi, and Islamabad. If the local actors can’t comprehend all the major factions, U.S. leaders (and commentators) are not likely to do better.

Ignatius brings an unusual ignorance to the subject of Pakistan, which he treats as a normal nation-state. In reality, Pakistan is an artificial political entity that has long been both dysfunctional and unstable. In their partition of South Asia in 1947, the British hoped to create one region (Pakistan) that would provide military facilities to Britain. To accomplish this, the British merged five key ethnic groups that had never co-existed in the same body politic historically, according to Selig Harrison, a senior fellow with the Center for International Policy. The Bengalis were the largest ethnic group, outnumbering the other four: the Punjabis, the Pashtuns, the Baluch, and the Sindhis. The Bengalis seceded in 1971, forming the independent state of Bangladesh. The Punjabis now outnumber the Pashtuns, Baluch, and Sindhis, but the three smaller groups have ancestral claims to more than 70% of Pakistani territory, ensuring continued ethnic and tribal strife.

The essential instability of the Pakistani state and the continued military conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan will make it impossible to create the network of institutions that Ignatius believes can “create a stable structure for Central and South Asia in the 21st century.” He wants unidentified American and Pakistani “statesmen” to “show the same vision and maturity” that post-World War II American and European statesmen used to create the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. These international institutions were born during WWII, however, in an effort to restore international order and prosperity at a time when the U.S. economy was booming and could finance postwar recovery and ensure currency stability. American leaders had a good understanding of the political and economic problems of Western and Central Europe; in contrast, U.S. leaders are basically ignorant about the frontier along the Afghan-Pakistani border and the tribal wastelands of Southwest Asia. The World Bank and the IMF have had their successes, but they have never been able to create positive economic development among the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world; both Afghanistan and Pakistan are key members of this unfortunate group.

Finally, Ignatius believes the U.S. buildup of troops in Afghanistan is the key to securing Pakistan’s control over its lawless tribal region. In fact, Pakistan understands that additional U.S. forces in Afghanistan will lead to increased warfare on the Afghan-Pakistan border and will ultimately drive more militants into Pakistani territory in Waziristan and the Northwest Frontier Provinces. The suicide bombing of a CIA base along the border and the wave of bombings that have swept Pakistan over the past several months, including the eastern city of Lahore, are a reaction to the increased U.S. use of unmanned drone aircraft in Pakistani territory against al Qaeda and the Taliban. U.S. efforts to bolster border security in Afghanistan may well complicate the overall security situation in Pakistan. Moreover, the Obama Administration’s announcement of a troop buildup in Afghanistan, along with a timeline for withdrawal, presumably have emboldened both al Qaeda and the Taliban.

BuzzFlash for more

by ANNE MARIE BAYLOUNY

The image of Islamist media is one of grim old men dictating extremist and male-centered religious precepts; Hizbullah’s al-Manar television, not just Islamist but also owned by a political party with a militia, has been equated with broadcasting terrorism and waging psychological operations against its enemies.[1] Yet much of al-Manar today is nothing like the picture painted of the station. Classified as terrorist by the U.S., most topics broadcast have little to do with Hizbullah, its resistance, Shi’a religious teaching, or the fight against Israel.

On Hizbullah’s al-Manar, non-veiled women dominate the airwaves on many programs. Only a small minority of programs on the television is religious. Christians regularly participate as experts and audience members, including priests and bishops, and scientific studies from the west are used as affirmative demonstrations of how Lebanese need to change. Problems are discussed in an open-ended, non-authoritative format, and a broad, multi-communal audience regularly participates. Programming promotes values often considered western, such as individual and human rights, and non-violence. Television shows tackle domestic violence by patriarchal figures and protest violence in video games. In a style echoing Oprah, civil society is urged to volunteer and help the disadvantaged, even though this affects the core of what many assert is Hizbullah’s base of legitimacy–its provision of social services.

Hizbullah has had ongoing political alliances with other sects since its entrance into the electoral field in post-civil war elections, yet in its media in recent years the organization has gone beyond politically pragmatic moves to affirm its inclusion of alternative communities and sects. The media presentation of other communities demonstrates to viewers an acceptance of diverse lifestyles and ideas, often highly Westernized, that is communicated in the sphere of popular media run by Hizbullah members.[2] This change has been taking place particularly since 2000, but was sped up in the following years. Such programming, diametrically opposed to popular and Western images of Hizbullah as a terrorist organization and its media as a propaganda outlet for violence and Shi’a exclusivism, is a result of Hizbullah’s increasing Lebanonization or nationalization. The organization is becoming more beholden to and embedded with domestic actors than was true of the organization’s founding some two decades ago, reinforcing its Lebanese character. Al-Manar is a window into these changes, for some more dramatic and perhaps convincing than the organization’s political statements and alliances. The television demonstrates Hizbullah’s desire to broaden its support and assure its future domestic legitimacy within the Lebanese multi-religious community. The extent of the television’s integration of other communities suggests that the embrace of the multi-confessional nature of the country is not fleeting. Indeed, al-Manar presents to its constituency the image that a multi-religious community is legitimate, even promoting unveiled Christians as experts in the intimate zone of family matters.

Media messages differ from political speeches and alliances, since media is not merely public but also popular, and potentially, lasting. It can reach wide segments of society communicating images of society and behavior that other forums cannot. In other words, the multiple voices and approval of differing perspectives communicated on al-Manar cannot be easily reversed.[3]

Arab Media & Society for more

by INDRA HARSAPUTRA

In a controversial move, clerics in East Java have issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims from dying and straightening their hair, and from holding pre-wedding photo sessions.

The edict was endorsed by 250 leaders of Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) in Java and Madura, who convened for a problem-solving forum in Kediri, East Java.

Cleric Darul Azka said Friday that hair straightening was regarded as haram for women because it could lead to immoral acts if the intention was to improve physical appearance.

“In Islam, especially in the study of the kitab kuning [traditional yellow book], women wearing accessories or changing their hairstyle, in hope of attracting members of the opposite sex, is the same as revealing parts of the body that must not be exposed under Islamic law, or aurat, and this is forbidden,” Darul told The Jakarta Post.

The fatwa was issued as the clerics ended the bahtsul masail forum on Thursday, which was held in conjunction with the Lirboyo Islamic boarding school’s (Kediri) centennial anniversary. A similar gathering had previously forbidden Facebook.

Jakarta Post for more

by JENNIFER MOORE

“On January 28th 1995, when the cry went out that Peruvian troops had attacked the Ecuadorian border, the whole country went into motion with one heart. Now, when the Amazonian peoples cry out that multinational corporations have invaded our territory, the rest of the country is indifferent, apathetic, having declared a cold war…” – Father Juan de la Cruz, following protests in late September, written October 2009

Father Juan de la Cruz is a Salesiano priest who has worked among the Shuar indigenous people in Ecuador’s southern Amazon for the last twenty three years. Born in the area, De la Cruz accompanied the Shuar when they fought for Ecuador against Peru in a border war in the 1990s. Today, he says he “cannot remain silent” as they fight against oil and mining multinationals that would threaten the health of their natural environment and which has strained relations between the Shuar and the government of President Rafael Correa.

De la Cruz calls a recent decision by Ecuador’s Communications Commission to revoke a Shuar radio station’s frequency “a grave error” and an effort to undermine their struggle against oil and mining interests. He says the radio ‘Voice of Arutam’ is the only station in the area “where you can talk about the potential impacts of multinational companies and the plunder of our territories.”

On December 17th 2009, the National Communications Commission (CONATEL) emitted a resolution deciding to cancel the contract for the frequency belonging to the ‘Voice of Arutam’ station. Broadcasting from the town of Sucua in the southern Amazonian province of Morona Santiago where the Interprovincial Shuar Federation (FISCH) has their office, they first began broadcasting in 1972 with support from Salesiano priests and with a focus on bilingual education. The FISCH represents about 120,000 Shuar in the southern Amazon. Arutam is the name of their spiritual guide.

CONATEL based its decision on statements broadcast live during interviews with Shuar leaders in the context of mobilizations which took place late last September. According to CONATEL, remarks broadcast on Radio Arutam incited the Shuar people to violence and contravened an article in the Radio and Television Law which prohibits “the promotion of physical or psychological violence using children, women, youth or elderly people, or that provides incentive for, carries out or motivates racism, sale of sex, pornography, consumption of drugs, religious or political intolerance and other analogous acts that affect the dignity of human beings.”

Upside Down World for more

CMU Statement on the Presidential Election 2010

President Mahinda Rajapakse is seeking re-election for a second six-year term as Executive President. He has cut short his present term of office in order to do so, without having abolished the Executive Presidency, as he had pledged to do, before the end of his first term. What will be decided on January 26 next, therefore, is whether President Rajapakse is to continue to exercise the powers and enjoy the privileges of the Executive Presidency for another six years, or not. A majority of the millions of voters will exercise their voting rights either to vote for him, or for General Sarath Fonseka. Though the latter has made a pledge to abolish the Executive Presidency, President Rajapakse has evaded making any mention of his former pledge in that regard, in this election. It is not likely, in any case, that the issue of the abolition of the Executive Presidency will prove to be a crucial one for most of the voters. They will probably vote for President Rajapakse to continue in office, or for General Fonseka, in consideration of other matters that are of concern to them.

The Executive Committee of our Union, nevertheless, considers that the abolition of the Executive Presidency is of vital importance to the promotion of the basic social and economic interests, as well as the defence of the human and democratic rights and civil liberties of the masses of the people of this country. Unfortunately for them, they are caught in a trap under the present Constitution, under which their “Sovereignty” can be exercised only on January 26. The next day, they will be back to where they are now, whether President Rajapakse obtains more than fifty percent of their votes, and continues to be vested with the powers of the Executive Presidency for six more years, or General Fonseka is elected, and is vested with those powers, likewise.

President Rajapakse used his power to proclaim a State of Emergency, soon after he first took office in December 2005, and has extended it, with Parliamentary approval from month to month, up to now. The Emergency Regulations that he has made have served to suppress or repress fundamental democratic rights and civil liberties; and human rights have been violated to a greater extent under his regime than under any previous one..

He has gained and retained control of a stable majority in Parliament by appointing 109 of its Members, belonging to the Government Party, or who have crossed over to it from the Opposition, as Cabinet Ministers, non-Cabinet Ministers and Deputy Ministers, at huge public expense. They have provided him with the required Parliamentary approval for the Proclamation and monthly extension of the “State of Emergency”. They have also insured him against the possibility of his removal from office, even for flagrant violations of the Constitution, such as have been publicly pointed out by the recently retired Chief Justice, without contradiction.

Sunday Leader for more
(Submitted by reader)

by Mumia Abu Jamal

The recent near miss on Christmas Day in Detroit, has sparked a presidentially-mandated reappraisal of the failures of American intelligence which made this disaster so possible.

Essentially, more sharing across agencies, sharper analysis, and more attention to detail will fix the thing. Or will it?

Wasn’t this precisely the reason the behemoth of a mega agency, the Homeland Security Dept. was organized?  Wasn’t it supposed to coordinate the enormous work-product of the plethora of intelligence organizations, which have historically been antagonistic to one another?

Essentially, the agencies were ordered to behave differently than they have for generations.

Many administrations ago, Pres. Harry Truman wrote to a friend, complaining about the very nature of the CIA. “When I took over,” Truman wrote, “the President had no means of coordinating the intelligence from around the world.”

What arose first as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) under Roosevelt, later becoming the CIA, quickly became a force that no president could control, and few could trust.  Although Truman wanted a global information service, the agency had other ideas.

“It was not intended as a ‘cloak & dagger’ outfit,” Truman wrote.  “It was intended merely as a center for keeping the president informed on what was going on in the world.”

President Truman insisted that he never wanted CIA “to act as a spy organization.” *

But, ultimately, it didn’t matter what the president wanted.  Presidents don’t run the CIA, they are run by the CIA.

After the gross intelligence failures that led to 9/11, and the intelligence screw ups that led to the Iraq War, why should it surprise  us that almost a decade later, the nation is once again on the brink of a mini 9/11?

Any agency that controls a president’s information, also controls his options.

And like Roman emperors, the illusion of the office’s power is so seductive that the agency becomes a tool to try to control and change the world.

A leader you don’t like?  Order a hit.  A government you oppose? Buy off their opponents

This is the stuff the CIA is made of.

If you doubt this, read Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007). You’ll find an agency that played its presidents like yoyos.  They committed  crimes at home and abroad; they did everything but protect the community.

For a brief moment, after 9/11, it appeared the CIA might be abolished following it’s failures.  That moment came and went.

Now, as the number of intelligence agencies has grown exponentially, as well as the sheer weight of intelligence data, it has become too much to collate, to sift, to make sense of and to act upon.

Now, new rules….until next time.

—(c) ’10 maj

[Source: Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (N.Y.: Doubleday, 2007). ]

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Prison Radio

Gender Equality Efforts by Civil Society and Governments in 26 Countries to Be Supported

Media Inquiries:
Oisika Chakrabarti, Media Specialist, UNIFEM Headquarters, +1 212 906-6506,

New York — The new UNIFEM-managed Fund for Gender Equality announced its initial allocation of more than US$9 million to 27 initiatives in 26 countries today. The recently-established Fund, a US$68 million multilateral initiative, is designed to advance innovative programmes which focus on women’s economic and political empowerment at local and national levels. It is currently funded by the Governments of Spain and Norway.

The new grants fall into the Fund’s Catalytic Grant category — one of two types of high-impact grants aimed to accelerate efforts of dozens of initiatives on the ground. Grantees will work on efforts ranging from changing attitudes towards women’s political engagement in Sri Lanka, to boosting economic independence of HIV-positive women in Senegal, or amplifying the voices of Palestinian women refugees in Lebanon.

“This new Fund has tremendous potential to bring about concrete and sustainable changes in women’s lives. Very impressive efforts to advance women’s political and economic empowerment are underway in every corner of the world. Yet this work is critically under-funded. It is important that the Fund supports both governments and civil society organizations — and very significantly, partnerships between them as well,” said Inés Alberdi, UNIFEM Executive Director.

The grantees represent broad regional and thematic diversity. Their initiatives range from supporting women in the informal sector in Cameroon, Egypt and the Philippines to increasing greater political participation by women in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Dominican Republic, Uganda, Morocco and in the Pacific Islands. Initiatives also focus on indigenous women and those in high-risk groups, such as women affected by HIV and AIDS. The grants further cover efforts to assist women farmers facing food insecurity and climate change and those who are systematically denied inheritance and property rights such as women in Afghanistan.

“In Egypt, currently female domestic workers are explicitly excluded by law, from any protection and dropped-out of civil society agenda. The UNIFEM grant is a unique opportunity to bring this underlying women’s rights issue into the light. The project Al Shehab Foundation is implementing will not merely empower domestic workers on grass-roots level but will further advocate towards legislative protection for domestic workers on national level,” said Abdo Abu El Ella of the Al-Shehab Institution for Comprehensive Development, a grantee from Egypt.

The Fund received 1,240 applications submitted through an online database in Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish, out of which 543 were for the Catalytic Category. Ranging from US$100,000 to US$500,000, 27 catalytic grants were selected — 89 percent led by civil society organizations and 11 percent by government agencies — by a technical committee of regional experts. The second category of Implementation Grants will be announced in June 2010 and will focus on the implementation of already-ratified national laws or policies. They will range from US$2 million to US$5 million, disbursed over two to four years.

United Nations Development Fund for Women

by HILMAR SCHMUNDT

For the first time, scientists have been able to analyze the atmosphere of a distant planet. The success could prove a milestone on the road toward finding life beyond our solar system.

Its atmosphere is stiflingly hot, with temperatures generally hovering around 800 degrees Celsius (1,470 degrees Fahrenheit) — in the shade. The air is filled with billowing clouds of highly toxic gas.

Anyone setting foot on this faraway planet would die a speedy death. Nevertheless, the recently launched study of HR 8799 c is a breakthrough in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Astronomers unveiled a groundbreaking achievement in the field of metrology last week. By measuring the spectrum of light coming from HR 8799 c, they have managed to determine the chemical composition of its atmosphere. “For the first time, we have directly obtained the spectrum of a planet outside our solar system,” says study co-author Wolfgang Brandner of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg.

Nowadays, the discovery of planets outside our solar system has become practically routine. In recent years, scientists have discovered more than 400 of these so-called exoplanets. But in most cases, their existence could only be proven indirectly, for example, by virtue of the fact that they cause a slight weakening in the light emitted by a much brighter star.

Mechanical Ballet

Only with the help of the world’s most advanced observatory, and the European-run “Very Large Telescope” (VLT), did it become possible to directly capture the weak light coming from a planet and analyzing it using spectroscopy. The massive telescope is located on a 2,600-meter (8,528-foot) peak in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

Der Spiegel for more

File picture of Sanskriti Bachao Manch activists beating up Rishi Ajaydas, author of book ‘Vivah Ek Naitik Balatkar’ in Bhopal. Photo/A. M. Faruqui/Hindu

by MAHIM PRATAP SINGH

The overarching presence of the Hindu “cultural” right in Madhya Pradesh has come to the forefront again, this time seemingly at the behest of none other than Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan.

“Culture cops” belonging to the Sanskriti Bachao Manch–an affiliate of the Bajarang Dal and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which are the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideological collaborators–have gone on a rampage in the State capital threatening local shopkeepers against displaying innerwear outside their shops and tearing down hoardings and advertisements of condoms and women’s innerwear.

Civil society members and intellectuals have spoken against the current phase of moral policing going on in the State capital. Renowned documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan and film and theatre actor Piyush Mishra, among others, have criticized the ruling BJP government for patronizing such regressive elements.

“Sexual repression is the cornerstone of any fascist apparatus and not just of Hindutva,” said Patwardhan, in Indore for the annual cultural fest of the Indian Institute of Management. “Be it Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, all of them had strong elements of sexual censorship, mainly of female sexuality, in order to exercise state power on bodies,” he said.

Mr. Patwardhan, maker of several documentaries portraying the rise of Hindutva in national politics like ‘War and Peace,’ ‘Father, Son and the Holy War’ and ‘Ram kay Naam’ among others, emphasized on Hindutva’s collective ideological repression being a reason for such moral policing.

Earlier this week, Mr. Chauhan sparked off the moral police’s outrage when he asked the municipal corporation to remove the “obscene and vulgar” hoarding of a local spa in front of a girls’ college, portraying a bareback woman.

“We are happy that the Chief Minister himself has taken the lead in the fight against this moral pollution,” said Chandra Shekhar Tiwari of the Sanskriti Bachao Manch. “We have given an ultimatum of seven days to all shopkeepers to remove all the innerwear hanging outside their shops or we will set these on fire,” he said.

Hindu for more
((Submitted by Harsh Kapoor)