(Submitted by Zakir Gowani)

By Steve Lancaster

You won’t find many references to it in the media in the West, but over the past 23 years, the government of Uganda and a rebel group called the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony and based in the north of the country, have been engaged in a civil war in which the LRA has abducted children as young as nine years old and then forced them to fight as front-line troops. These children – perhaps as many as 30,000 in number – have been kidnapped and then trained to be soldiers involved in actions which include torching villages, killing villagers and abducting other children. The stories of LRA atrocities are hard to stomach. The knock-on effects are enormous. Every day, literally thousands of children in Uganda leave their homes and walk (often many kilometres) to the nearest town to find sanctuary in the hope that they will avoid the fate of their LRA contemporaries. They sleep in the corridors of hospitals or schools, hidden away to avoid being kidnapped. They are the invisible children.
This weekend (25-26 April), The Invisible Children campaign organized a protest action in over 100 cities throughout the world. The idea was simple. For just one day, people involved in the protest would pretend to be ‘abducted’. Then they would be ‘rescued’ by a mogul and, having spent a single night in discomfort would go back to their homes, hopefully having achieved a degree of media exposure and sufficient motivation to spread the word that the kidnapping of children with the aim of training them to be soldiers is a moral outrage which the authorities should place at the top of their political agendas.

Yes, we may have problems in our own back yard. But surely not on this scale. In Uganda (and other neighbouring countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo), thousands, if not millions of young lives are being blighted. This protest was an attempt to cast light on this.

New Internationalist for more

By Alex Bivol

Reuters
1

Entropa, the art installation that prompted an outcry in Sofia when it was unveiled inside an European Union building in January, was being dismantled on May 11, the Czech presidency of the EU said in a statement.

David ?erný, the Czech author of the installation, requested that his artwork was taken down after the centre-right government of former prime minister Mirek Topolanek lost a parliamentary confidence vote, AFP reported.

The government had been “wiped out by the old bolsheviks and socialists and president (Vaclav) Klaus,” AFP quoted ?erný as saying.

“The Czech presidency preferred the option to let the installation remain in Brussels as originally planned. However, the presidency fully respects artistic freedom and therefore also the wish of the creator of the installation to remove the work already on the chosen day,” the presidency’s statement said.

Entropa attracted large crowds of onlookers in front of the Justus Lipsius building, routinely used for EU summits. But it also sparked controversy as soon as it went up, since it played on widely-spread and unflattering stereotypes of EU member states, portraying Romania as a Dracula theme-park, France as a country on strike, while Britain was not represented at all.

Yet nowhere else did the outrage reach the same proportions as in Bulgaria, depicted as a squat toilet, which in Bulgaria is known as a “Turkish toilet”.

Sofia Echo for more

By Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner

JERUSALEM — Israel is quietly carrying out a $100 million, multiyear development plan in some of the most significant religious and national heritage sites just outside the walled Old City here as part of an effort to strengthen the status of Jerusalem as its capital.

The plan, parts of which have been outsourced to a private group that is simultaneously buying up Palestinian property for Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, has drawn almost no public or international scrutiny. However, certain elements related to it — the threatened destruction of unauthorized Palestinian housing in the redevelopment areas, for example — have brought widespread condemnation.

But as Pope Benedict XVI prepares to visit Christian sites here this week and as the Obama administration promotes a Palestinian state with parts of Jerusalem as its capital, Israeli activity in the area, known as the holy basin — land both inside and just outside the Old City — will be cause for growing concern and friction.
“Everything Israel does now will be highly contentious,” said Robert H. Serry, the United Nations special Middle East coordinator, on a recent tour of East Jerusalem. He warned the Israeli authorities “not to take actions that could pour oil on the fire.”

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says, however, that it will push ahead. Interior Minister Eli Yishai said last week of the activity in one core area: “I intend to act on this issue with full strength. This is the land of our sovereignty. Jewish settlement there is our right.”

New York Times for more

(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)

By Feryal Gauhar, author of the book “The scent of wet earth in August”, based on the screenplay of Tibbi Gali.

On Friday, May 15th 2009
Time: 6:00-8:30 pm
Moderator: Omair Rana
Venue: South Asian Media Centre, 177-A, Shadman2, Lahore

Ms Gauhar will be joining us for a discussion after the film.

Ms. Sarah Tareen
Coordinator
South Asian Documentary Festival
Lahore Film and Literary Club
177-A,Shadman-2,Lahore
South Asian Media Centre.
(92-42) 7555621-8

Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia

Ayesha Jalal, the author of the recently published book of the same title, will be speaking about the origins and meaning of the word ‘jihad’ in Islamic literature, its historical practice in South Asia and on the roots, ideology and aims of present day jihadis such as the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and the like.

She is one of the most prominent American academics writing on Pakistan. Her talk is bound to be informative and thought provoking and will be helpful in providing a better understanding of this term – gripping some with hope, many with horror – and of the groups and forces practicing it currently.

Dr. Jalal is professor of History at Tufts University in Boston and a member of the editorial boards of Contemporary South Asian Studies Series and Third World Quarterly. Her books include `The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan’; `The State of Martial Rule: the Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defence’ and `Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia,’ amongst others.

7 p.m., Friday, May 15
Room 2-214, 252 Bloor St West (OISE)
St. George Subway, (paid parking underground)
Admission: $10. Info: 416-536-6771, 416-284-4893

Ms. Jalal obtained her B.A. from Wellesley College majoring In History and Political Science and her Ph.D. in History from Cambridge University.

The niece of the famous Urdu writer Manto, she first came to the United States in 1970 when her father Hamid Jalal was posted to the United Nations.

Sponsors: Canadian Muslim Union, Committee of Progressive Pakistani-Canadians, Left Institute, South Asian People’s Forum.

(Submitted by Abdul Hamid Bashani Khan)

By Peter Symonds

Comments by China’s ambassador in Islamabad last Thursday highlight the reckless character of the Obama administration’s escalating intervention in Pakistan. By pressuring Islamabad to wage an all-out military offensive against Islamic insurgents in the Swat Valley and neighbouring districts, Washington is not only destabilising Pakistan but raising tensions in a highly volatile area.

Speaking to Pakistani business leaders, Chinese ambassador Luo Zhaohui pointedly voiced concern about the growth of “outside influence” in the region. He singled out the US in particular, saying that China was worried about US policies and the presence of a large number of foreign troops in neighbouring Afghanistan. While reiterating China’s support for “the fight against terror,” Luo declared that US strategies needed some “corrective measures”. He added, “These are issues of serious concern for China.”

Luo’s unusually blunt remarks came just one day after US President Obama spoke to his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao. While a number of issues were discussed, the escalating war in Pakistan was clearly high on the agenda. This first publicised phone call between the two men came as Obama met with the Afghan and Pakistani presidents over US strategy in the two countries. While Hu reportedly offered his cooperation, Luo’s comments express China’s underlying fears over growing US influence in South Asia.

Last week’s tripartite summit in Washington signalled a major upsurge in military violence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Under intense pressure from the US, the Pakistani army has launched a large-scale offensive against militants in the Swat Valley in which hundreds have already died and hundreds of thousands of civilians have been forced to flee. The summit, however, involved more than discussions on military cooperation, outlining comprehensive plans for the closer economic and strategic integration of the two countries into an American sphere of influence.

China, which has longstanding ties with Pakistan, is obviously disturbed by these developments. As Ambassador Luo told his business audience, more than 60 Chinese companies are involved in 122 projects in Pakistan. He noted the “close liaison” with Pakistan over the security of over 10,000 Chinese engineers and technical experts in the country. In fact, Beijing has previously insisted on reprisals over the abduction and killing of Chinese citizens by Pakistani militants as well as military action against Islamic Uighur separatists from western China taking refuge in Pakistan.

More fundamentally, Beijing regards Islamabad as a crucial partner in its own regional strategy. China devoted considerable resources to building up Pakistan as a counterweight to India after the 1962 Sino-Indian border war. Pakistan is the largest purchaser of Chinese arms and, according to the Pentagon, accounted for 36 percent of China’s military exports between 2003 and 2007. Chinese technical assistance was critical to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs.

In return, China received the green light to build a major naval/commercial port facility at Gwadar, a coastal town in Baluchistan. The port is the linchpin of Beijing’s “string of pearls” strategy to establish access for its expanding navy to a series of ports along key sea routes across the Indian Ocean—above all, to protect oil and gas supplies from the Middle East and Africa. For its part, the US, which regards China as a rising economic and strategic rival, is determined to maintain its military, including naval, predominance.

World Socialist Web Site for more

Religion is on the rise, religion makes you happy. It may seem bad manners for we atheists to say it, but so do pets

By David Aaronovitch

On a desk in my school, long ago, some past sixth-former had written four words: “God is dead – Nietzsche”, followed by four more: “Nietzsche is dead – God.” Even as a juvenile atheist I could see that the idea of the mad German getting his comeuppance from the unbelieved Almighty was funny.

And some readers today might similarly be enjoying the contents of a new book, God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World, written by the Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, John Micklethwait, and his colleague Adrian Wooldridge. “You thought God had gone,” they seem to chant in the direction of the national grandstand where sits the secular elite, “you were wrong, you were wrong.”

Not surprisingly the geist that gibbers in this straitened zeit is a pessimist. Articulated by a small army of declinists, the dominant sentiment is that it’s all gone to the dogs in the West: community, spirituality, morality – and left us in a state of alienation, of anomie, eating apart in front of American Idol, obesely exercising on our Wiis, leading unsatisfactory lives of consumption and envy.

At least a couple more new books this week have suggested that our etiolated and weakened sense of higher self is consequently no match for rampant, self-confident Islam. We are the new late Romans and the Muslims are the new equivalent of Gibbon’s destroying religious army. “Man is a theotropic beast,” argue the authors of God is Back: we will have Jehovah – or Allah – one way or another.

This is an enjoyable thesis, and well argued, even if a more accurate title would be “Oh Look, God Hasn’t Gone Away as Quickly as Some Folk Expected”. In this country, for example, the British Social Attitudes Survey showed that 74 per cent of Britons belonged to a religion and attended services in 1964, but only 31per cent did so in 2005.

Times for more

By Deepak Tripathi

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan is this week on his first visit to the United States since coming to office. It comes at a critical time for Pakistan and for America’s relations with that nuclear-armed, but failing, country in South Asia. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s failed neighbor, is also in Washington for trilateral meetings with President Obama and other leading figures in the administration.
Recent escalation of violence in Pakistan has brought grim warnings from senior American officials in Washington about the viability of the Pakistani state. A month ago, General David Petraeus, the top military commander in the region, testified in the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘militant extremists could literally take down the Pakistani state’ if left unchallenged. On the same day, a senior Pentagon official, Michele Flournoy, warned of higher US casualties in Afghanistan in the coming year. And Admiral Eric Olson, chief of America’s special operations commandos, described the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan as ‘increasingly dire’. According to one report, General Petraeus has privately told the White House that the administration has as little time as two weeks to determine its future course of action in Pakistan as the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari struggles against an insurgency that is growing alarmingly.

For eight years under the Bush-Cheney presidency, the United States and its European allies were consumed in the fortification of the Western world following September 11, 2001. A vital part of this overwhelmingly militaristic approach was to remake West Asia, resulting in war and occupation in the region during the rest of the decade.

Amid all the media coverage of the threat to the West, what has often been missed is the eastward proliferation of terrorism, throughout Pakistan and to India and beyond. The Council for Foreign Relations, a New York-based research institution, while acknowledging the existence of ‘local terrorist groups’ in the Indian part of the disputed region of Kashmir, goes on to say that ‘most of the recent terrorism has been conducted by Islamist outsiders who seek to claim Kashmir for Pakistan’.[1] According to the organization, many militants involved in attacks across the border in India received training in the same madrasahs where Taliban and al-Qa‘ida fighters have studied since the 1980s. Some received training in Afghanistan when the Taliban ruled the country. Many more represent an indigenous phenomenon in Pakistani society. How did things reach such a point?

Tripathi for more