Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Women only make up eight percent of managerial posts in Europe.

A recent high-powered summit in Berlin to improve women’s economic opportunities amid intense global competition underlined the dearth of female representatives in boardrooms across Europe.

Women in European countries to date still constitute only eight percent of managerial positions, according to the European Women’s Network.

Speaking at the 17th Global Summit of Women that took place in Berlin last week, Mirrella Visser, a president of the European Women’s Network said she is the first women to be on a company board in The Netherlands.

However, other male members of the board sometimes intimidate her, she said. “Maybe these men do this to me because they do not believe in women making decisions.”

According to research revealed at the summit, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom are the two countries that have the highest percentage of women in decision-making positions.

Visser said it remains hard for women to climb the career ladder since unlike other countries, “The Netherlands does not have a legislator that could back women up and to get to the top, you have to be on your own.”

“Davos for Women”

The challenges facing women in the business world was one of the core themes of the summit which is also known as the “Davos for Women.”

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga took part in the summit
An annual occurrence, the three-day meeting this time drew over 1,000 female government and business leaders — most of them top corporate executives — from 95 countries. Participants included Latvian President, Vaira Vike-Freiberga and vice president of Microsoft USA, Gerri Elliot.

Irene Natividad, president of the summit said the meet allows women across borders, disciplines and cultures to learn from each other in their ongoing work towards economic equity.

“Sustainability and growth in our global economy would be unthinkable without women” Natividad said.

She admitted that there weren’t enough women in top managerial positions and emphasized the need to change the mind-set of both men and women.

“Many corporate leaders still view the inclusion of women board directors as a matter of political correctness or as a form of affirmative action to address past inequities.” She said both views are misguided approaches that merely entrench opposition to diversifying corporate boardrooms.

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By Denise Grady
(Source: New York Times)

Lying side by side on a narrow bed, talking and giggling and poking each other with skinny elbows, they looked like any pair of teenage girls trading jokes and secrets.

But the bed was in a crowded hospital ward, and between the moments of laughter, Sarah Jonas, 18, and Mwanaidi Swalehe, 17, had an inescapable air of sadness. Pregnant at 16, both had given birth in 2007 after labor that lasted for days. Their babies had died, and the prolonged labor had inflicted a dreadful injury on the mothers: an internal wound called a fistula, which left them incontinent and soaked in urine.

Last month at the regional hospital in Dodoma, they awaited expert surgeons who would try to repair the damage. For each, two previous, painful operations by other doctors had failed.
“It will be great if the doctors succeed,” Ms. Jonas said softly in Swahili, through an interpreter.

Along with about 20 other girls and women ranging in age from teens to 50s, Ms. Jonas and Ms. Swalehe had taken long bus rides from their villages to this hot, dusty city for operations paid for by a charitable group, Amref, the African Medical and Research Foundation.

The foundation had brought in two surgeons who would operate and teach doctors and nurses from different parts of Tanzania how to repair fistulas and care for patients afterward.
“This is a vulnerable population,” said one of the experts, Dr. Gileard Masenga, from the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi, Tanzania. “These women are suffering.”

The mission — to do 20 operations in four days — illustrates the challenges of providing medical care in one of the world’s poorest countries, with a shortage of doctors and nurses, sweltering heat, limited equipment, unreliable electricity, a scant blood supply and two patients at a time in one operating room — patients with an array of injuries, from easily fixable to dauntingly complex.

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(Source: United Nations Population Fund or UNFPA)

What is obstetric fistula?

Obstetric fistula is an injury of childbearing that has been relatively neglected, despite the devastating impact it has on the lives of girls and women. It is usually caused by several days of obstructed labour, without timely medical intervention — typically a Caesarean section to relieve the pressure. The consequences of fistula are life shattering: The baby usually dies, and the woman is left with chronic incontinence. Because of her inability to control her flow of urine or faeces, she is often abandoned or neglected by her husband and family and ostracized by her community. Without treatment, her prospects for work and family life are greatly diminished, and she is often left to rely on charity.

How does fistula occur?

Unattended obstructed labour can last for up to six or seven days, although the foetus usually dies after two or three days. During the prolonged labour, the soft tissues of the pelvis are compressed between the descending baby’s head and the mother’s pelvic bone. The lack of blood flow causes tissue to die, creating a hole between the mother’s vagina and bladder (known as a vesicovaginal fistula), or between the vagina and rectum (causing a rectovaginal fistula) or both. The result is a leaking of urine or faeces or both.
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Life for women in Kenya can be hard.

For women living in one of the largest slums in the world, life can be devastating.

With remarkable access to the inner areas of the Kibera slum in Nairobi, this film introduces just a few of the thousands of women, whose daily lives are blighted by poverty and serious human rights violations.

By Niren Tolsi

Last week’s back-flip by Durban’s city fathers on the proposed creation of a red-light district in time for the Fifa World Cup in 2010 would have done a double-jointed Thai sexhibitionist proud.

Following recent comments by municipal manager Michael Sutcliffe on national television, deputy-mayor Logie Naidoo was quoted two weeks ago saying the proposal of a red-light district in Durban would be banged around by the council before the end of the year.

Both, however, admitted to the Daily News last week that they had perhaps been a tad premature with their ejaculation to the media and that a directive from national government would be needed before any discussions could take place.

But talk of a red-light district was given a vigorous knocking by IFP Youth Brigade chair, Pat Lebenya-Ntanzi: “The municipality’s reasoning behind this move is that they are legalising prostitution because it exists and that it is a reality we are facing. We find this comment laughable,” she scoffed.

“Does it mean that we will now have to legalise designated smoking areas for dagga users because it is a reality we are facing? And will we now have special lanes for drivers who use their cellphones while driving because it is a reality we are facing? And will we say to taxi drivers that it is okay to jump red lights, because it is a reality we are facing? I find this kind of logic myopic to say the least,” thundered Lebenya-Ntanzi.

Sutcliffe will have to contain his mounting heat over council regulation of massage parlours, escort agencies and street-walking-pay-for-play providers until a sly wink from national government arrives.

But he did confide that he was a “firm believer” in “some sort of control” when it comes to illicit action, arousing tantalising visions of the belligerent and occasionally puce-faced city manager disciplined by an Amazonian dominatrix.

Sutcliffe said:” We are probably ultimately heading in that direction [of designated sex-industry areas] but I don’t know if it will be done by 2010.

“We have an election in 2009 and I have yet to see a White Paper or national discussion on this. So the earliest we could probably see anything changing will be towards the end of 2009 or early 2010,” Sutcliffe said.

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March 4th, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Being serious about torture. Or not.

In Cambodia they’re once again endeavoring to hold trials to bring some former senior Khmer Rouge officials to justice for their 1975-79 war crimes and crimes against humanity. The current defendant in a United Nations-organized trial, Kaing Guek Eav, who was the head of a Khmer Rouge torture center, has confessed to atrocities, but insists he was acting under orders.1 As we all know, this is the defense that the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected for the Nazi defendants. Everyone knows that, right? No one places any weight on such a defense any longer, right? We make jokes about Nazis declaring: “I was only following orders!” (“Ich habe nur den Befehlen gehorcht!”) Except that both the Bush and Obama administrations have spoken in favor of it. Here’s the new head of the CIA, Leon Panetta: “What I have expressed as a concern, as has the president, is that those who operated under the rules that were provided by the Attorney General in the interpretation of the law [concerning torture] and followed those rules ought not to be penalized. And … I would not support, obviously, an investigation or a prosecution of those individuals. I think they did their job.”2 Operating under the rules … doing their job … are of course the same as following orders.
The UN Convention Against Torture (first adopted in 1984), which has been ratified by the United States, says quite clearly, “An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.” The Torture Convention enacts a prohibition against torture that is a cornerstone of international law and a principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery and genocide.
Of course, those giving the orders are no less guilty. On the very day of Obama’s inauguration, the United Nation’s special torture rapporteur invoked the Convention in calling on the United States to pursue former president George W. Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.3
On several occasions, President Obama has indicated his reluctance to pursue war crimes charges against Bush officials, by expressing a view such as: “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” This is the same excuse Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has given for not punishing Khmer Rouge leaders. In December 1998 he asserted: “We should dig a hole and bury the past and look ahead to the 21st century with a clean slate.”4 Hun Sen has been in power all the years since then, and no Khmer Rouge leader has been convicted for their role in the historic mass murder.
And by not investigating Bush officials, Obama is indeed saying that they’re above the law. Like the Khmer Rouge officials have been. Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy. “The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don’t see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable.”5
One reason for the non-prosecution may be that serious trials of the many Bush officials who contributed to the torture policies might reveal the various forms of Democratic Party non-opposition and collaboration.
It should also be noted that the United States supported Pol Pot (who died in April 1998) and the Khmer Rouge for several years after they were ousted from power by the Vietnamese in 1979. This support began under Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and continued under Ronald Reagan.6 A lingering bitterness by American cold warriors toward Vietnam, the small nation which monumental US power had not been able to defeat, and its perceived closeness to the Soviet Union, appears to be the only explanation for this policy. Humiliation runs deep when you’re a superpower.
Neither should it be forgotten in this complex cautionary tale that the Khmer Rouge in all likelihood would never have come to power, nor even made a serious attempt to do so, if not for the massive American “carpet bombing” of Cambodia in 1969-70 and the US-supported overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970 and his replacement by a man closely tied to the United States.7 Thank you Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Well done, lads.
By the way, if you’re not already turned off by many of Obama’s appointments, listen to how James Jones opened his talk at the Munich Conference on Security Policy on February 8:
“Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger.”8
Lastly, Spain’s High Court recently announced it would launch a war crimes investigation into an Israeli ex-defense minister and six other top security officials for their role in a 2002 attack that killed a Hamas commander and 14 civilians in Gaza.9 Spain has for some time been the world’s leading practitioner of “universal jurisdiction” for human-rights violations, such as their indictment of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet a decade ago. The Israeli case involved the dropping of a bomb on the home of the Hamas leader; most of those killed were children. The United States does this very same thing every other day in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Given the refusal of American presidents to invoke even their “national jurisdiction” over American officials-cum-war criminals, we can only hope that someone reminds the Spanish authorities of a few names, names like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Feith, Perle, Yoo, and a few others with a piece missing, a piece that’s shaped like a conscience. There isn’t even a need to rely on international law alone, for there’s an American law against war crimes, passed by a Republican-dominated Congress in 1996.10
The noted Israeli columnist, Uri Avnery, writing about the Israeli case, tried to capture the spirit of Israeli society that produces such war criminals and war crimes. He observed: “This system indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history nothing but an endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen People, indifferent to others, a religion without compassion for anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed genocide described in the Biblical book of Joshua.”11
It would take very little substitution to apply this statement to the United States — like “American” for “Jewish” and “American exceptionalism” for “a Chosen People”.

Hell hath no fury like an imperialist scorned

Hugo Chávez’s greatest sin is that he has shown disrespect for the American Empire. Or as they would say in America’s inner cities — He’s dissed the Man. Such behavior of course cannot go unpunished lest it give other national leaders the wrong idea. Over the years, the United States has gotten along just fine with brutal dictators, mass murderers, torturers, and leaders who did nothing to relieve the poverty of their population — Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, the Greek Junta, Ferdinand Marcos, Suharto, Duvalier, Mobutu, the Brazil Junta, Somoza, Saddam Hussein, South African apartheid leaders, Portuguese fascists, etc., etc., terrible guys all, all seriously supported by Washington at one time or another; for none made it a regular habit, if ever, to diss the Man.
The latest evidence, we are told, that Hugo Chávez is a dictator and a threat to life as we know it is that he pushed for and got a constitutional amendment to remove term limits from the presidency. The American media and the opposition in Venezuela often make it sound as if Chávez is going to be guaranteed office for life, whereas he of course will have to be elected each time. Neither are we reminded that it’s not unusual for a nation to not have a term limit for its highest office. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, if not all of Europe and much of the rest of the world, do not have such a limit. The United States did not have a term limit on the office of the president during the nation’s first 162 years, until the ratification of the 22nd Amendment in 1951. Were all American presidents prior to that time dictators?
In 2005, when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe succeeded in getting term limits lifted, the US mainstream media took scant notice. President Bush subsequently honored Uribe with the American Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in the period leading up to the February 15 referendum in Venezuela, the American media were competing with each other over who could paint Chávez and the Venezuelan constitutional process in the most critical and ominous terms. Typical was an op-ed in the Washington Post the day before the vote, which was headlined: “Closing in on Hugo Chávez”. Its opening sentence read: “The beginning of the end is setting in for Hugo Chávez.”12
For several years now, the campaign to malign Chávez has at times included issues of Israel and anti-Semitism. An isolated vandalism of a Caracas synagogue on January 30th of this year fed into this campaign. Synagogues are of course vandalized occasionally in the United States and many European countries, but no one ascribes this to a government policy driven by anti-semitism. With Chávez they do. In the American media, the lead up to the Venezuelan vote was never far removed from the alleged “Jewish” issue.
“Despite the government’s efforts to put the [synagogue] controversy to rest,” the New York Times wrote a few days before the referendum vote, “a sense of dread still lingers among Venezuela’s 12,000 to 14,000 Jews.”13
A day earlier, a Washington Post editorial was entitled: “Mr. Chávez vs. the Jews – With George W. Bush gone, Venezuela’s strongman has found new enemies.”14 Shortly before, a Post headline had informed us: “Jews in S. America Increasingly Uneasy – Government and Media Seen Fostering Anti-Semitism in Venezuela, Elsewhere”15
So commonplace has the Chávez-Jewish association become that a leading US progressive organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) in Washington, DC, recently distributed an article that reads more like the handiwork of a conservative group than a progressive one. I was prompted to write to them as follows:

Dear People,

I’m very sorry to say that I found your Venezuelan commentary by Larry Birns and David Rosenblum Felson to be remarkably lacking. The authors seem unable, or unwilling, to distinguish between being against Israeli policies from anti-semitism. It’s kind of late in the day for them to not have comprehended the difference. They are forced to fall back on a State Department statement to make their case. Is that not enough said?
They condemn Chávez likening Israel’s occupation of Gaza to the Holocaust. But what if it’s an apt comparison? They don’t delve into this question at all.
They also condemn the use of the word “Zionism”, saying that “in 9 times out of 10 involving the use of this word in fact smacks of anti-Semitism.” Really? Can they give a precise explanation of how one distinguishes between an anti-Semitic use of the word and a non-anti-semitic use of it? That would be interesting.
The authors write that Venezuela’s “anti-Israeli initiative … revealingly transcends the intensity of almost every Arabic nation or normal adversary of Israel.” Really. Since when are the totally gutless, dictator Arab nations the standard bearer for progressives? The ideal we should emulate. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are almost never seriously and harshly critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Therefore, Venezuela shouldn’t be?
The authors state: “In a Christmas Eve address to the nation, Chávez charged that, ‘Some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ … took all the world’s wealth for themselves’. Here, Chávez was not talking so much about Robin Hood, but rather unquestionably dipping into the lore of anti-Semitism.” Well, here’s the full quote: “The world has enough for all, but it turns out that some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ, descendants of the same ones who threw Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way at Santa Marta there in Colombia …” Hmm, were the Jews so active in South America?
The ellipsis after the word “Christ” indicates that the authors consciously and purposely omitted the words that would have given the lie to their premise. Truly astonishing.
After Chávez won the term-limits referendum with about 55% of the vote, a State Department spokesperson stated: “For the most part this was a process that was fully consistent with democratic process.” Various individuals and websites on the left have responded to this as an encouraging sign that the Obama administration is embarking on a new Venezuelan policy. At the risk of sounding like a knee-reflex cynic, I think this attitude is at best premature, at worst rather naive. It’s easy for a State Department a level-or-so above the Bushies, i.e., semi-civilized, to make such a statement. A little more difficult would be accepting as normal and unthreatening Venezuela having good relations with countries like Cuba, Iran and Russia and not blocking Venezuela from the UN Security Council. Even more significant would be the United States ending its funding of groups in Venezuela determined to subvert and/or overthrow Chávez.

You’ve got to be carefully taught

I’ve been playing around with a new book for awhile. I don’t know if I’ll find the time to actually complete it, but if I do it’ll be called something like “Myths of U.S. foreign policy: How Americans keep getting fooled into support”. The leading myth of all, the one which entraps more Americans than any other, is the belief that the United States, in its foreign policy, means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are honorable, if not divinely inspired. Of that most Americans are certain. And as long as a person clings to that belief, it’s rather unlikely that s/he will become seriously doubtful and critical of the official stories.
It takes a lot of repetition while an American is growing up to inculcate this message into their young consciousness, and lots more repetition later on. Think of some of the lines from the song about racism from the Broadway classic show, “South Pacific” — “You’ve got to be taught” …
You’ve got to be taught
from year to year.
It’s got to be drummed
in your dear little ear.
You’ve got to be taught
before it’s too late.
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8.
To hate all the people
your relatives hate.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
The education of an American true-believer is ongoing, continuous. All forms of media, all the time. Here is Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military officer in the United States, writing in the Washington Post recently:
“We in the U.S. military are likewise held to a high standard. Like the early Romans, we are expected to do the right thing, and when we don’t, to make it right again. We have learned, after seven years of war, that trust is the coin of the realm — that building it takes time, losing it takes mere seconds, and maintaining it may be our most important and most difficult objective. That’s why images of prisoner maltreatment at Abu Ghraib still serve as recruiting tools for al-Qaeda. And it’s why each civilian casualty for which we are even remotely responsible sets back our efforts to gain the confidence of the Afghan people months, if not years. It doesn’t matter how hard we try to avoid hurting the innocent, and we do try very hard. It doesn’t matter how proportional the force we deploy, how precisely we strike. It doesn’t even matter if the enemy hides behind civilians. What matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided it. In the end, all that matters is that, despite our best efforts, sometimes we take the very lives we are trying to protect. … Lose the people’s trust, and we lose the war. … I see this sort of trust being fostered by our troops all over the world. They are building schools, roads, wells, hospitals and power stations. They work every day to build the sort of infrastructure that enables local governments to stand on their own. But mostly, even when they are going after the enemy, they are building friendships. They are building trust. And they are doing it in superb fashion.”16
How many young servicemembers have heard such a talk from Mullen or other officers? How many of them have not been impressed, even choked up? How many Americans reading or hearing such stirring words have not had a lifetime of reinforcement reinforced once again? How many could even imagine that Admiral Mullen is spouting a bunch of crap? The great majority of Americans will swallow it. When Mullen declares: “What matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided it”, he’s implying that there was no way to avoid it. But of course it could have been easily avoided by not dropping bombs on the Afghan people.
You tell the true-believers that the truth is virtually the exact opposite of what Mullen has said and they look at you like you just got off the Number 36 bus from Mars. Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights in a row. His military and political policies destroyed one of the most progressive countries in Europe. And he called it “humanitarian intervention”. It’s still regarded by almost all Americans, including many, if not most, “progressives”, as just that.
Now why is that? Are all these people just ignorant? I think a better answer is that they have certain preconceptions; consciously or unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, most prominent amongst which is the belief that the US means well. And if you don’t deal with this basic belief you’ll be talking to a stone wall.

Notes

1. Associated Press, August 1, 2007
2. Press conference, February 25, 2009, transcript by Federal News Service
3. Agence France Presse (AFP), January 20, 2009
4. New York Times, December 29, 1998
5. Associated Press, November 17, 2008
6. See William Blum, “Rogue State”, chapter 10 (“Supporting Pol Pot”)
7. See William Blum, “Killing Hope”, chapter 20 (“Cambodia, 1955-1973”)
8. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/jones_munich_conference.html
9. Reuters news agency, January 30, 2009
10. The War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441)
11. Haaretz, leading Israeli newspaper, January 30, 2009
12. Washington Post, February 14, 2009, column by Edward Schumacher-Matos
13. New York Times, February 13, 2009
14. Washington Post, February 12, 2009
15. Washington Post, February 8, 2009
16. Washington Post, February 15, 2009, p. B7
–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@aol.com with “add” in the subject line. I’d like your name and city in the message, but that’s optional. I ask for your city only in case I’ll be speaking in your area.
(Or put “remove” in the subject line to do the opposite.)
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I’d appreciate it if the website were mentioned.
www.killinghope.org

Myths vs facts about fundamentalism Part I

by Rubina Saigol

Religious fundamentalist movements of all shades and hues have gripped large parts of the world and have posed a threat to the prevalent political, economic and social systems. While “fundamentalism” is a term that is used in varying contexts to denote differing realities, its origins lie in 1920s America where it was used to refer to puritanical evangelist movements. The term is sometimes used to deny history by suggesting a return to some imagined early purity or “golden period” that supposedly existed in a bygone era. Fundamentalisms have manifested themselves in virtually all kinds of cultures and societies, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Jewish. Like anything that is not much explored or understood, fundamentalisms have given rise to certain myths that tend to seduce public imagination. The purpose of this article is to try and dismantle eight of the most common myths about Muslim fundamentalism and extremism in our part of the world by juxtaposing such myths against observable facts.

Myth: Fundamentalism is the result of mental and moral backwardness, attitudes, religion and beliefs.

Fact: Fundamentalism is about geopolitics, involving power, money, and control over territory, people and resources. If we examine the actions and pronouncements of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or the Swat Taliban – actions that include beheading, rape, murder, public display of dead bodies, public executions, suicide bombings killing scores of innocent people – it is not hard to discern that such actions have little to do with religion or a moral order. Through brutal means and barbaric methods, the Taliban have gained control over territory in Swat and Waziristan. They have forced the government to accept their power over people and resources through the Nizam-e-Adl agreement reached between the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammdi’s Maulana Sufi Muhammad and the provincial government of the ANP. Apart from drug trafficking, the money is raised from donations received from Saudi Arabia and other countries and goes to pay Rs15,000-20,000 per month to about ten thousand militant followers of Maulana Fazlullah.

Myth: Fundamentalism in Pakistan can be traced back to the era of General Zia.

Fact: Fundamentalism can be traced much further back to Imam Hanbal, Al-Ashari, Imam Ghazali (he influenced writers like Ashraf Thanvi who wrote Bahishti Zewar), Abdul Wahhab and the Darul Uloom, Deoband.

Contrary to the common perception that General Zia’s Islamisation laid the foundation of extremist and fundamentalist strands of religion, the seeds were sown much earlier. Reactionary Islamic thought goes back centuries, to the time when rationalism first appeared in Muslim lands. The Asharite revolt against the Mu’tazila rationalist thought located in Greek philosophy, Imam Ghazali’s total repudiation of Reason as a source of truth apart from Revelation, and his denunciation of the great scientists, medicine men, mathematicians and thinkers like Al-Kindi, Al-Razi, Ibn-e-Rushd and Ibn-e-Sina who introduced enlightenment within the Muslim world between the 8th and 11th centuries, are reflections of early fundamentalist reactions. In the heyday of Baghdad, the genius of these thinkers was much admired and they were highly respected during the time of Khalifa Al-Mamun. However, later Muslim rulers like Al-Mutawakkil punished them severely for injecting innovative thought in the Muslim world. It was political power that chose to ally itself with the traditionalist and conservative ulema who crushed innovative and scientific thinking in favour of obscurantism.

The 18th century Arabian thinker Abdul Wahhab, who was also protected by and aligned with the House of Saud and political power, rejected all later accretions in Islamic thought and insisted on returning to purported versions of pure Islam during its early years. The bland Wahhabi version of religion that he propounded was exported to the subcontinent through Saudi Arabian funding of religious movements in Pakistan. The much more syncretic, tolerant and non-violent versions of Sufi Islam were rejected by a highly intolerant version which came though Saudi imperialism. In the context of the subcontinent, fundamentalist thought was furthered by Maulana Maudoodi, who used his influence in the passage of the Objectives Resolution in 1949 which laid the foundation of a potentially “theocratic” state. General Zia made the Objectives Resolution a substantive part of the Constitution in 1985 through the insertion of Article 2-A. General Zia thus merely accelerated a process begun by his predecessors.

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Part II

By by Rubina Saigol

Myth: Fundamentalists want a genuine Shariah-based system of quick and affordable justice.

Fact: Fundamentalist and extremist outfits have little or no understanding of Shariah and have devised a highly convoluted version of Shariah that is rejected by a large number of serious religious scholars.

Recent interviews of a cross-section of religious scholars and thinkers in Punjab and the NWFP conducted by a team of researchers reveals the following: There is not a single serious scholar of Shariah and Islamic jurisprudence who believes that bombing and torching girls’ schools, digging out dead bodies and hanging them from trees, murdering with wild abandon and killing innocent people with suicide bombing are Islamic. Similarly, these scholars informed us that there is no known school of Islamic thought that forbids the education of women and disputes their right to work, or their freedom of movement to carry out their daily tasks. Rather, virtually every scholar or religious leader that we interviewed said education is the foremost duty of every Muslim, man or woman. There is no respected religious scholar who supports the beating of women for going out of their houses or starving children to death by disallowing women from earning a livelihood. Virtually, every scholar, belonging to various sects and schools of thought, strongly condemned the actions of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan of Baitullah Mehsood and Fazlullah’s actions in Swat as efforts to give religion a bad name.

Myth: Fundamentalism is the antithesis of imperialism and Jehadis/Taliban are fighting against imperial domination.

Fact: Fundamentalism and imperialism are deeply linked and invoke each other for their own aims; fundamentalism is itself a specific form of imperialism.

In his thoroughly researched book Jihad-e-Kashmir o Afghanistan, journalist Muhammad Amir Rana reveals the following: After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Jimmy Carter’s administration created a secret fund of $500 million to create terror outfits to fight the Soviets. Nicknamed “Operation Cyclone,” this fund was kept secret even from Congress and the American public. Subsequently, the Reagan administration and Saudi Arabia provided $3.5 billion to General Zia’s regime for the funding of madrassahs for the Afghan Jihad. Militants were trained in the Brooklyn School in New York and in Virginia by the CIA. In Pakistan they were trained by MI6 and the Inter-Services-Intelligence. Between 1979 and 1990 there was a mushroom growth of madrassahs – Jihad-related organisations grew by 100 percent and sectarian outfits multiplied at the rate of 90 percent. By 1986 the rate of increase of deeni madaris was 136 percent annually, whereas in previous times it had been a mere 3 percent. By 2002, 7,000 religious institutions were offering degrees in higher education. Currently, it is estimated that there are between 18,000 and 22,000 madrassahs operating in Pakistan, teaching over 1.5 million children. Pakistan is in fact located at the nexus of multiple and competing imperialisms representing the US (and the so-called West), Saudi Arabian Wahhabiism and Iranian forms.

Myth: Fundamentalism and related terrorism are problems of the Frontier regions/FATA/Swat.

Fact: The Largest recruitment for Afghan and Kashmir Jehad is from the Punjab followed by the NWFP, Sindh and Balochistan.

Amir Rana’s study reveals that Punjab contributes about 50 percent of the Jihadi workforce, followed by the NWFP, Sindh and Balochistan. Punjab has the largest number of deeni madaris (5459 according to a 2002 study). The NWFP, Sindh and Balochistan have 2,483, 1,935 and 769, respectively. Karachi alone accounts for about 2,000 madrassahs. Statistics collected by the ministry of education show that FATA has 135 while Islamabad alone has 77 deeni madaris. According to Rana, the great majority of militants from the Punjab were sent to fight in Kashmir by groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, while most of the Pakhtoon and Balochi youth from the NWFP and Balochistan were sent to and killed in Afghanistan. Most belonged to the JUI-F and the TNSM (which has now entered into an agreement with the ANP government of the NWFP). A large number of organisations, such as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jabbar wal Islami, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al Badr and Lashkar-e-Islam have participated in the Kashmir and Afghan Jihad getting their poor foot soldiers killed while the leaders enjoy luxurious lifestyles that include Pajeros, expensive mobile phones, large houses and frequent air travel.
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By FAWZI AFZAL-KHAN
Written on the eve of Women’s History Month.

“I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taleban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid of going to school because the Taleban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools.
Only 11 students attended the class out of 27. The number decreased because of Taleban’s edict. My three friends have shifted to Peshawar, Lahore and Rawalpindi with their families after this edict.
On my way from school to home I heard a man saying ‘I will kill you’. I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.”
These are the words expressing the thoughts going through the mind of a 7th grade schoolgirl in Swat, as reported by the BBC online news on January 3rd, 2009.
Bill Roggio, reporting in The Long War Journal on February 18, 2009, tell us that since winning the election last spring, the Zardari-Gilani government has entered a series of peace agreements with the Taliban throughout the tribal areas and the settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province, which includes Swat. “Between March and July of 2008, the government negotiated seven agreements with the Taliban in North Waziristan, Swat, Dir, Bajaur, Malakand, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, and Hangu. Negotiations were also underway in South Waziristan, Kohat, and Mardan before fighting in Swat and Bajaur broke out, effectively ending the talks.” Thus, this latest round, which cedes control of Swat, a part of Pakistan proper (NOT the remoter badlands of the Tribal Frontier) is not without precedent. Except, that it bodes far worse than previous “agreements”—because Swat was never a tribal hinterland, it was quite well-developed, a tourist haven, with schools for girls and over 3,500 women teachers employed to teach them—all now without jobs, as the girls are without schools—a projected 110,000 girls will in the coming years be deprived of a basic education. Indeed, as Roggio goes on to describe:
The current Malakand Accord has granted the Taliban control over a region that encompasses more than 1/3 of the Northwest Front Province, effectively cementing the Taliban’s control over most of the province and the tribal areas.
This means that
The Taliban’s recruiting base has almost doubled, as has its taxation base. The Malakand Division, which is made up of the districts of Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, and Chitral, has a population of more that 4.3 million, according to the 1998 census. The Taliban effectively control the tribal areas (population estimated at 6.5 million in 1998) and many of the bordering districts with millions more. The Taliban also have a strong presence or influence in nearly all of the other districts in the province.
The day I saw the NYT front page picture of the Malakand Accord being agreed to I cried. Senior cabinet members of the Pakistan government—all men—were seated side by side with bearded mullahs wearing the ubiquitous turbans-signifiers of extremists who burn girls schools, behead their opponents, and leave mutilated bodies of women they consider “un-Islamic” lying in town squares—like that of Shabana, a traditional dancing girl, reported killed on 12th January 2009, after defying the Taliban’s ban on dancing. Shabana’s bullet-ridden body was found slumped on the ground in the centre of Mingora’s Green Square, strewn with money, CD recordings of her performances and photographs from her albums, and local Taliban claimed responsibility stating over their illegal radio station (which broadcasts Maulana Fazlullah’s, the ruling cleric’s edicts regularly) that the same or worse fate would befall any other such woman daring to perform “un-Islamic” activities.
How, I asked myself, could the government of Pakistan, cede control of Pakistan’s “Switzerland”—that peaceful valley of fruit orchards and beautiful streams and lakes surrounded by majestic mountains, a favorite spot for local and western tourists alike—to men bent on turning heaven on earth into living hell? If these Pakistani Taliban—here led by the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, Sufi Mohammad, responsible for proudly leading hundreds of young men to their deaths in adjoining Afghanistan on jehadi missions–could claim a swath of territory as large as Delaware and as near to Islamabad as a mere 100 miles—what did that mean for the rest of Pakistan’s future? What especially would it mean for Pakistani women—most of whom—like women anywhere else in the world– like to dance, sing, talk, work in offices, in the fields, wear colorful clothes, smile, laugh, show off dozens of colorful glass bangles on their slender arms, nose-rings on their wheat-complexioned faces, sometimes hide behind the burqa, at others flaunt their beauty in public places or private, study, go to school, to college if they are lucky, have dreams of becoming somebody the world can respect, help deliver babies, tend to the sick and dying, fly in the sky, no shame for the sun…..become lovers, wives, mothers, teachers, artists, doctors, lawyers, activists, performers, politicians…the list goes on. What will become of them if….I shudder. The thought is too terrible to name.
But my reaction is perhaps precisely the ostrich-with-its-head-in-the-sand mentality that has gotten Pakistan and Pakistanis into the ditch they’re in now, without much hope of being able to clamber out of it…indeed, if Swat is any indication, the ditch is about to get bigger. Instead of facing the Taliban threat head-on, acknowledging it for what it is, too many of my Pakistani brethren, of the secular, progressive, liberal middle-class intelligentsia kind—have ducked the Talibanization of Pakistan question for decades. Theirs—and especially the even more-westernized upper classes’ response—has been that of the proverbial blind man: see no evil. “Pakistan is a moderate country, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are foreign imports—they command no base of real support amongst our sensible citizens. You, dear Fawzia, are a victim of American propaganda—what is this Taliban-are-coming-scare you keep ranting about?” Then, changing tracks, the same group of self-appointed intellectuals would proclaim: “If there is any problem here, its because of the d-d Americans—their drone bombs and their continuous interference in the affairs of our country is what has led to this situation…people are angry at them, that is why they—some of them—are turning to the Taliban. If the Americans would stop escalating their war in neighboring Afghanistan and dropping bombs on our people in the Northern areas—well, this craziness would stop.”
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This International Women’s Day, we can all make a difference.
By Helene Gayle

Atlanta – Anasuyamma stood her ground. Even when her husband and in-laws poured kerosene on her. Even when they lit the match and held it near. Anasuyamma refused to go back to the days when a daughter couldn’t wed unless a bride price or “dowry” was paid to the groom’s family.
“A dowry degrades women,” Anasuyamma told me last year from inside her village home in India. Sitting on floor mats around her were the women who helped save her life that day four years ago. She broke free, and with the support of those friends, she prevailed. Her daughter married without payment.
Every day throughout the world, women fight for equality, asserting their rights. But they rarely succeed alone. As in Anasuyamma’s case, progress most often depends on collective action.
“A single woman can’t change all social issues we face, but a dozen women can make a difference. You can easily break a single matchstick, but not 12 together. Unity is our strength,” Anasuyamma said, referring to her village savings and loan group of women who support each other in this poor, dusty village called Dharmajipet. “Together, we are building businesses, educating our children, and improving healthcare here.”
Anasuyamma’s group pulled their money together and, over time, saved enough to start their own soapmaking business. These women – who recently taught themselves to write their names – make 3,200 bars every day. Then they sell them in markets. Using the profit, they send their children to school. One daughter is now the first from this village to attend college.
“We used to depend on our husbands for everything,” said Anasuyamma. “Now we support our households. Before we didn’t speak out, but now we have no fear.”
There’s power in numbers. As we approach International Women’s Day on March 8, we can apply Anasuyam-ma’s lesson of strength as we renew our commitment to women’s rights around the globe.
Worldwide, millions of women and girls face horrific realities. In Congo, more than 400 women a month are raped. Girls in Afghanistan have acid thrown in their faces because they go to school. One pregnant woman dies each minute, on average, from mostly preventable causes. At least 1 out of every 3 women and girls will be severely beaten in her lifetime. This is unacceptable.
Throughout my career in public service, traveling to villages not even on the map, I’ve seen how poverty has a woman’s face. I’ve seen it in the faces of her children, like a torn hand-me-down passed from generation to generation when the cycle isn’t stopped.
Like Anasuyamma, we can start by helping women organize in village groups where they not only learn to save and invest in businesses but also collectively empower one another. It means we must get off the sidelines, get in the game and help our sisters abroad conquer social inequities. Our mothers and grandmothers, the ones who laid the foundation for our success today, would expect nothing less.
It means not only helping girls and women receive formal education, but also helping them gain legal rights, quality healthcare, and economic opportunity. Studies show, for example, that every extra year of secondary school raises a girl’s lifetime wages by 15 to 25 percent. And those educated girls will go on to have healthier, better-educated families.
However, women and girls can’t break the cycle of poverty alone.
Men and boys must be part of the solution, supporting this change of a status quo that has treated women and girls as second-class citizens for far too long. Working together, everyone benefits.
Let’s make this International Women’s Day a day for action. Take time to join events in your community. Add your strength and generosity to the movement. Like Anasuyamma, let us not back down until women and girls everywhere enjoy full human rights.
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By M. SHAHID ALAM

“The Achilles’ heel of the Arab coalition is Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can easily be overthrown. A Christian State ought to be set up there, with its southern frontier on the river Litani. We should sign a treaty of alliance with this State. Then, when we have broken the strength of the Arab Legion and bombed Amman, we could wipe out Transjordan; after that Syria would fall. And if Egypt dared to make war on us, we would bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. We should thus end the war, and would have settled the account with Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea on behalf of our ancestors.”
David Ben-Gurion, 1948
In their first test of strength with the ‘natives’ in 1948, the Zionists had gained control of nearly four-fifths of Palestine, expelled most of the Palestinians from these territories, and repulsed the combined forces of five Arab proto-states.
Yet, the Zionists were not about to rest on their laurels: their interests did not lie in making peace with the Arabs. The events of 1948 had demonstrated what they could achieve; with minor losses of their own, they had obliterated Palestinian society and handily beaten back the Arabs.
This was a historic moment, a messianic moment, that would be seen by many as the fulfillment of ancient prophecies. This was no time to seek peace by making amends to a weak, defeated enemy.
Their stunning military victory would only encourage the Zionists to aim for their maximalist goals, which now appeared attainable. The Zionists would augment their numbers, expand their territory, and strive to become the dominant power in the Middle East.
* * *
In 1948, the Jewish colonization of Palestine had only just begun. At this point, Israel contained some 650,000 Jews, who made up only four percent of the world’s Jewish population.
If Israel aspired to house half the world’s Jewry, its population would have to expand more than ten-fold. Israel’s share of world Jewry would have to rise dramatically because this was an imperative of Zionist ideology, which promised that Israel would be a safe haven for the world’s Jews. It would be embarrassing for the Zionists if this Jewish ‘safe haven’ housed only a small fraction of the world’s Jews.
In addition, Israel would be driven towards demographic expansion by two other objectives: the Zionist goal of territorial expansionism and the need to maintain a crushing military advantage over its neighbors.
With only “seven hundred thousand Jews,” Ben-Gurion insisted, Israel “cannot be the climax of a vigil kept unbroken through the generations and down the patient centuries.” Even if Israel did not face any external threats to its security, “so empty a state would be little justified, for it would not change the destiny of Jewry, or fulfill our historic covenant.”
As a result, soon after 1948 – indeed even before 1948 – the Zionists were working to bring millions of Jews into Israel. In the calculation of Zionists, a demographic expansion of this magnitude was not only desirable: it was also necessary and attainable.
Zionist ambitions would carry Israel beyond the territories it had conquered in 1948. “Zionist mainstream thought,” writes Benny Morris “had always regarded a Jewish state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River as its ultimate goal.”
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