Just Foreign Policy News
August 13, 2010
Obama: Prioritize Pakistan Flood Relief Over Afghan War
The government of Pakistan has urgently asked the U.S. and other supplies to rescue victims of the catastrophic floods in Pakistan. U.S. military officials say there is a trade-off: we have helicopters, but they are busy fighting the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. is providing some supplies, but Pakistan is facing catastrophe. Urge President Obama to prioritize Pakistan flood relief over escalating the war in Afghanistan.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/pakistanfloods
Background: Helicopters for War, But Not Flood Relief?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/obamas-pakistan-katrina-h_b_678755.html
Oxfam America: Flood Relief and Recovery Efforts in Pakistan
Oxfam USA is taking donations for Pakistan flood relief.
http://bit.ly/99t99n
Bacevich: Washington Rules
Andrew Bacevich’s new book, "Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War," is a call for Americans to reject the Washington consensus for permanent war, and to demand instead that America "come home."
Get the book
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/buywashingtonrules
September 24th: JFP "Virtual Brown Bag" with Andrew Bacevich
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/bacevichtalk
Mark Weisbrot: Rohter Strikes Out Yet Again on South of the Border
Just Foreign Policy President Mark Weisbrot reviews New York Times’ reporter Larry Rohter’s latest attempt to defend his previous mistakes in writing about "South of the Border."
http://hnn.us/articles/129708.html
Oliver Stone’s "South of the Border," scheduled screenings:
http://southoftheborderdoc.com/in-theatres/
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The UN has launched an appeal for $459 million to help victims of Pakistan’s flood disaster, the BBC reports. UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said the money would be for immediate relief over the next three months. About 1,600 people have been killed by the monsoon floods. Holmes said that unless the provision of aid such as food and clean water to millions of displaced people was rapidly increased, many more lives would be at risk. Holmes pointed out that almost one in 10 of Pakistan’s population had been affected by the floods and at least 6 million were in need of immediate humanitarian aid. The UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Pakistan said high levels of gastroenteritis and water-borne diseases such as scabies were already being noticed. "There are literally millions of people tonight in Pakistan who are sleeping out in the open on high ground… not having adequate shelter, not even a tent or a piece of plastic sheeting," he added. "We need to expand this response radically and very, very fast."
2) Leading charities have attacked the international response to the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history, saying delays in funding the relief effort had affected aid operations, The Independent reports. "It’s perplexing why the international community has been so slow on this," said an Oxfam spokesman.
3) Congressional calls for the US to stop funding the Lebanese military place President Obama in a bind, the Washington Post reports. Experts said there was no possibility the Lebanese Army would confront Hizbollah, whether the US funds it or not. But many expressed concern that severing U.S. aid could feed instability in Lebanon and weaken pro-US forces. U.S. lawmakers want "to make military aid conditional on not protecting [Lebanon’s] land, people and borders against Israeli aggression," Defense Minister Elias Murr said. "Let them keep their money or give it to Israel. We will confront [Israel] with the capabilities we have." Iran immediately said it would make up whatever shortfalls the Lebanese army incurs by a U.S. aid cut.
4) The U.S. military has given up lobbying Pakistan to attack the Haqqani network, the Wall Street Journal reports. Officials say they have concluded that making more demands on Pakistan to start a military offensive against the Haqqani network will only strain U.S.-Pakistani relations.
5) Indian forces in Kashmir face an intifada-like popular revolt against the Indian military presence that includes not just stone-throwing young men but their sisters, mothers, uncles and grandparents, the New York Times reports. Kashmir’s demand for self-determination is sharper today than it has been, in part because diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute remain frozen. This summer there have been nearly 900 clashes between protesters and security forces, which have left more than 50 civilians dead, most of them from gunshot wounds.
6) Two successive Salvadoran governments have denied permits for gold mining on environmental and human health grounds, writes Manuel Pérez-Rocha for Foreign Policy in Focus. But two transnational mining companies have used rules in the CAFTA-DR trade agreement with the US to sue the government of El Salvador, demanding hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the denial of mining permits. El Salvador questioned Pacific Rim’s standing to bring claims under CAFTA-DR, since it’s not even a U.S. company. Based in Canada, the company created a U.S. subsidiary in order to take advantage of the investor rights under the U.S. trade agreement. Governments are supposed to have the authority to deny the benefits of such agreements to a foreign investor that does not have "substantial business activities" in a country that is a party to the agreement.
7) Approximately 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are barred by law from any but the most menial professions and are denied many basic rights, AP reports. Parliament is debating a law that would allow Palestinians to work in any profession and own property, as well as give them social security benefits. Parliament has split largely on sectarian lines over the bill, with Christians opposed and Muslims supporting. The result may be a compromise that grants broader work rights but keeps other restrictions like the ban on owning property.
Afghanistan
8) A military operation Afghan officials had expected to be a sign of their growing military capacity instead turned into an embarrassment, with Taliban fighters battering an Afghan battalion until NATO sent in French and US rescue teams, the New York Times reports.
Iran
9) Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in "The Atlantic" was evidently aimed at showing why the Obama administration should worry it risks an attack by Israel on Iran in the coming months unless it takes a much more menacing line toward Iran’s nuclear program, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service. But the article provides new evidence that senior figures in the Israeli intelligence and military leadership oppose such a strike against Iran and believe apocalyptic rhetoric about an Iranian nuclear threat as an "existential threat" is unnecessary and self-defeating.
Iraq
10) Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki said Iraqi security forces will be ready to take over from US troops when they withdraw, despite the country’s army chief of staff saying the pullout was premature, Reuters reports. Iraq’s army chief had said Iraq’s forces will not be ready to fully replace US units until 2020.
Venezuela
11) Venezuela remains opposed to Washington’s nominee for ambassador to Caracas, a top lawmaker said, adding that if the U.S. refuses to pick an alternative candidate, it won’t have any representation at all, Dow Jones reports. U.S. ambassador-designate Larry Palmer was nominated by the White House in June, but Venezuelan President Chavez rejected him Sunday due to remarks Palmer made attacking Venezuela.
Colombia/Venezuela
12) Venezuelan President Chavez met with Colombian President Santos and agreed to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries, Venezuelanalysis reports. "We’re not going to use any situation that came up in the past to build or destroy our relations in the future," Santos said. Chavez said, "The government over which I preside won’t allow the presence of guerrillas in our territory." Questioned about U.S. use of military bases in Colombia, Chavez responded, "Colombia, like Venezuela, is a sovereign country that can establish economic, social, or military agreements with any other country in the world. The only thing is … that none [of those agreements] affect the sovereignty of a neighbor nor become a threat for a …neighbor."
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) UN launches $459m Pakistan flood appeal
BBC, 11 August 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10943606
The UN has launched an appeal for $459m (£290m) to help victims of Pakistan’s flood disaster, which has affected at least 14 million people. UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said the money would be for immediate relief over the next three months. The disaster was "one of the most challenging that any country has faced in recent years", he said in New York.
So far, about 1,600 people have been killed by the monsoon floods. Mr Holmes said that unless the provision of aid such as food and clean water to millions of displaced people was rapidly increased, many more lives would be at risk.
[…] It has been described as one of the biggest appeals in the UN’s history in terms of the number of people who are in need, the BBC’s Lyse Doucet reports from the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
With the monsoon season set to go on until the end of August and the Indus river, swollen with floodwaters, moving steadily south, we still do not know how many Pakistanis will be affected in the end, our correspondent says.
Mr Holmes pointed out that almost one in 10 of Pakistan’s population had been affected by the floods and at least 6 million were in need of immediate humanitarian aid. "The floodwaters have devastated towns and village, downed power and communications lines, washed away bridges and roads and inflicted major damage to buildings and houses," he said.
[…] Speaking separately, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Pakistan, Martin Mogwanja, called for action to stop the spread of disease.
High levels of gastroenteritis and water-borne diseases such as scabies were already being noticed, he said. "There are literally millions of people tonight in Pakistan who are sleeping out in the open on high ground… not having adequate shelter, not even a tent or a piece of plastic sheeting," he added. "We need to expand this response radically and very, very fast."
[…]
2) Poor response to Pakistan aid appeals frustrates charities
Paul Peachey, The Independent, Friday, 13 August 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/poor-response-to-pakistan-aid-appeals-frustrates-charities-2051332.html
Leading charities have attacked the international response to the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history, saying delays in funding the relief effort had affected aid operations.
With 1,600 people dead after two weeks of flooding and nearly 14 million people affected, 6 million of them children at risk of malnutrition, pneumonia and diarrhoea, the UN warned that many more could die unless nations step up their relief contributions. The floods, triggered by monsoon downpours, have swamped Pakistan’s Indus river basin, forcing two million from their homes and directly disrupting the livelihoods of 8 per cent of the population.
Analysis of previous emergency aid appeals has showed that contributions from governments and international donors are well down compared to other major disasters. International donors committed $45m (£29m) – amounting to $3.20 per person affected – to tackling the crisis in the first 10 days, compared to $742m ($495 per person) after the Haiti earthquake, according to an examination of UN figures by Oxfam.
"It’s perplexing why the international community has been so slow on this," said the Oxfam spokesman Ian Bray. "I think they took their eye off the ball and didn’t realise how big it was and didn’t act quickly enough."
The response picked up yesterday with $90m raised in a day since the UN said it was appealing for $460m. That appeal followed earlier pledges of $150m, led by the US and Britain. Britain has earmarked £31m for the UN appeal. The UN said "more was needed because of the unprecedented scale of the emergency".
[…] "I would have expected it to be higher," said John Baguley, chief executive of the International Fundraising Consultancy, which advises charities. "It’s more to do with disasters happening with increasing frequency. People gave very generously to the Pakistan earthquake, then for the tsunami and relief in Haiti. There is an element of donor fatigue that may be playing a part."
[…] Nearly a quarter of the land area of Pakistan has been affected. More rain fell yesterday, with monsoons forecast to last several more weeks. Dams in Sindh province remain at risk of bursting. John Holmes, who co-ordinates emergency relief for the UN, said: "The death toll has so far been relatively low compared to other major natural disasters, but the numbers affected are extraordinarily high. If we don’t act fast enough, many more people could die of diseases and food shortages".
3) Calls to stop funding Lebanese army put Obama in tight spot
Janine Zacharia, Washington Post, Friday, August 13, 2010; A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/12/AR2010081205768.html
Beirut – After Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006, President George W. Bush bolstered assistance to the Lebanese army to create a counterweight to the Shiite militia. Now, after a deadly clash last week between Israeli and Lebanese troops, some on Capitol Hill want to stop funding Lebanese forces entirely.
The State Department has said that continuing to provide aid to the Lebanese army is in the interests of the United States.
But amid growing protests in Congress, President Obama could soon face a dilemma: whether to abandon the institution-building effort Bush began because the army won’t confront Hezbollah or continue to fund the army to maintain stability and fight other militant groups it is willing to act against.
A day before the Aug. 3 border fight between Israel and Lebanon, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, put a hold on $100 million in assistance to the Lebanese military because of his concern that Hezbollah’s influence over the army had grown.
Lawmakers in both parties have also expressed frustration at the Lebanese military’s lax patrolling of the border with Syria and the continued flow of Iranian-made weapons to Hezbollah. Israel estimates the group has amassed an arsenal of 40,000 rockets, four times what it had during the 2006 war. The Lebanese military says there is no evidence of weapons smuggling across the border.
[…] State Department officials say they do not plan to reevaluate their position on the aid. "We have an extensive military cooperation program with Lebanon, because it’s in our interest to have that program," department spokesman P.J. Crowley said after the border clash. "It allows the government of Lebanon to expand its sovereignty. We think that is in the interest of both of our countries and regional stability as a whole."
In interviews with former Lebanese military officials, current politicians and an array of observers in Lebanon, not a single person said he thought the army would take steps to disarm or distance itself from Hezbollah in the near term, with or without U.S. assistance.
But many expressed concern that severing U.S. aid could feed instability in Lebanon and weaken democratic forces that have lost ground since the Cedar Revolution in 2005 swept a pro-Western government to power. Iran immediately said it would make up whatever shortfalls the Lebanese army incurs by a U.S. aid cut.
[…] U.S. lawmakers want "to make military aid conditional on not protecting [Lebanon’s] land, people and borders against Israeli aggression," Defense Minister Elias Murr said in a news conference Wednesday. "Let them keep their money or give it to Israel. We will confront [Israel] with the capabilities we have."
[…]
4) Pakistan Fight Stalls for U.S.
Julian E. Barnes, Siobhan Gorman, and Tom Wright, Wall Street Journal, August 13
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703723504575425641972800902.html
Washington – The U.S. military has stopped lobbying Pakistan to help root out one of the biggest militant threats to coalition forces in Afghanistan, U.S. officials say, acknowledging that the failure to win better help from Islamabad threatens to damage a linchpin of their Afghan strategy.
Until recently, the U.S. had been pressing Islamabad to launch major operations against the Haqqani network, a militant group connected to al Qaeda that controls a key border region where U.S. defense and intelligence officials believe Osama bin Laden has hidden.
The group has been implicated in the Dec. 30 bombing of a CIA base in Khost, a January assault on Afghan government ministries and a luxury hotel in Kabul, and in the killing of five United Nations staffers in last year’s raid on a U.N. guesthouse.
But military officials have decided that pressing Pakistan for help against the group-as much as it is needed-is counterproductive.
U.S. officials believe elements of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, are continuing to protect the Haqqani network to help it retain influence in Afghanistan once the U.S. military eventually leaves the country. U.S. officials say the support includes housing, intelligence and even strategic planning,
During a trip to Pakistan last month, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chose not to raise the issue of an offensive against the Haqqani network-a departure from the message U.S. defense officials delivered earlier this year.
[…] U.S. officials say they have concluded that making more demands, public or private, on Islamabad to start a military offensive against the Haqqani network will only strain U.S.-Pakistani relations.
[…] The U.S. shift partly is in recognition that the Pakistanis simply may not have the military capacity to expand operations enough to secure the North Waziristan area, one U.S. official acknowledged.
[…] U.S. defense officials now argue the only way to convince Pakistan to take action in North Waziristan is to weaken the Haqqani network so much that Pakistan sees little value in maintaining an alliance with the group-though they acknowledge that will be harder without Pakistani help.
[…]
5) Indian Forces Face Broader Revolt in Kashmir
Lydia Polgreen, New York Times, August 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/world/asia/13kashmir.html
Srinagar, Kashmir – Late Sunday night, after six days on life support with a bullet in his brain, Fida Nabi, a 19-year-old high school student, was unhooked from his ventilator at a hospital here.
Mr. Nabi was the 50th person to die in Kashmir’s bloody summer of rage. He had been shot in the head, his family and witnesses said, during a protest against India’s military presence in this disputed province.
For decades, India maintained hundreds of thousands of security forces in Kashmir to fight an insurgency sponsored by Pakistan, which claims this border region, too. The insurgency has been largely vanquished. But those Indian forces are still here, and today they face a threat potentially more dangerous to the world’s largest democracy: an intifada-like popular revolt against the Indian military presence that includes not just stone-throwing young men but their sisters, mothers, uncles and grandparents.
The protests, which have erupted for a third straight summer, have led India to one of its most serious internal crises in recent memory. Not just because of their ferocity and persistence, but because they signal the failure of decades of efforts to win the assent of Kashmiris using just about any tool available: money, elections and overwhelming force.
"We need a complete revisit of what our policies in Kashmir have been," said Amitabh Mattoo, a professor of strategic affairs at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a Kashmiri Hindu. "It is not about money – you have spent huge amounts of money. It is not about fair elections. It is about reaching out to a generation of Kashmiris who think India is a huge monster represented by bunkers and security forces."
Indeed, Kashmir’s demand for self-determination is sharper today than it has been at perhaps any other time in the region’s troubled history. It comes as – and in part because – diplomatic efforts remain frozen to resolve the dispute created more than 60 years ago with the partition of mostly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Today each nation controls part of Kashmir, whose population is mostly Muslim.
Secret negotiations in 2007, which came close to creating an autonomous region shared by the two countries, foundered as Pervez Musharraf, then Pakistan’s president, lost his grip on power. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, by Pakistani militants in 2008 derailed any hope for further talks.
Not least, India has consistently rebuffed any attempt at outside mediation or diplomatic entreaties, including efforts by the United States. The intransigence has left Kashmiris empty-handed and American officials with little to offer Pakistan on its central preoccupation – India and Kashmir – as they struggle to encourage Pakistan’s help in cracking down on the Taliban and other militants in the country.
With no apparent avenue to progress, many Kashmiris are despairing that their struggle is taking place in a vacuum, and they are taking matters into their own hands. "What we are seeing today is the complete rebound effect of 20 years of oppression," said Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, the chief cleric at Srinagar’s main mosque and a moderate separatist leader. Kashmiris, he said, are "angry, humiliated and willing to face death."
This summer there have been nearly 900 clashes between protesters and security forces, which have left more than 50 civilians dead, most of them from gunshot wounds. While more than 1,200 soldiers have been wounded by rock-throwing crowds, not one has been killed in the unrest, leading to questions about why Indian security forces are using deadly force against unarmed civilians – and why there is so little international outcry. "The world is silent when Kashmiris die in the streets," said Altaf Ahmed, a 31-year-old schoolteacher.
[…]
6) Mining for El Salvador’s Gold – In Washington
An international tribunal gives the green light to a lawsuit brought by two companies attempting to overcome strong public and government resistance to their destructive gold mining.
Manuel Pérez-Rocha, Foreign Policy in Focus, August 11, 2010
http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/mining_for_el_salvadors_gold_-_in_washington
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to travel to Cabañas, El Salvador, to meet with some of the bravest and most successful environmental activists in the world. Ordinary villagers in this remote area of the country have joined with religious groups, research centers, and others to take on the powerful international mining companies that are seeking to plunder their country’s gold. So far, the activists have been winning this David-vs.-Goliath fight. Two successive Salvadoran governments have denied permits for gold mining on environmental and human health grounds.
Last week, however, these activists suffered a setback – not from their own government, but from an obscure tribunal in Washington, DC. Two transnational mining companies have used rules in the "free trade" agreement between the United States and six countries in the region to sue the government of El Salvador. They are demanding hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the denial of mining permits. The first company to file suit, Pacific Rim, has just won the first stage of the proceedings by overcoming the Salvadoran government’s effort to get the case thrown out on jurisdictional grounds.
The tribunal’s decision to give the green light to this controversial case should send shudders down the spines of advocates for the environment, community rights, and democracy. The type of investment rules employed by Pacific Rim to mine for gold in international tribunals are contained in thousands of bilateral investment treaties around the world and more than a dozen existing and pending U.S. trade agreements. What’s happening to El Salvador could happen almost anywhere, despite the struggles of activists to defend their environmental rights.
The National Roundtable on Metallic Mining of El Salvador (La Mesa) is a broad group of community organizations, human rights NGOs, church groups, and research centers that have been working courageously – several of their members have been murdered, and many have received death threats – to prevent gold extraction in El Salvador. Among other environmental impacts, this gold mining would pollute the already-scarce water basins with cyanide. The European Parliament recently banned this activity.
Last year, La Mesa succeeded in persuading the Salvadoran government to halt gold extraction by denying permits to the Canadian-based Pacific Rim and the U.S.-based Commerce Group and Sebastian Gold Mines (Commerce Group). The activists bolstered their case with studies that demonstrate the lack of satisfactory environmental impact assessments, in the case of Pacific Rim, and the already poor environmental record of Commerce Group.
After being denied the permits, the companies took their quest for gold to Washington. Both are suing El Salvador at the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). They are demanding $100 million each in damages under the investment chapter in the Central America-Dominican Republic-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), a treaty that went into effect in 2005 with seven signatories, including El Salvador.
[…] Indeed, the Salvadoran government is continuing to fight the suit. On August 3, the government questioned Pacific Rim’s standing to bring claims under CAFTA-DR, since it’s not even a U.S. company. Based in Vancouver, Canada, the company created a U.S. subsidiary in order to take advantage of the investor rights under the U.S. trade agreement. Governments are supposed to have the authority to deny the benefits of such agreements to a foreign investor that does not have "substantial business activities" in a country that is a party to the agreement. The Salvadoran government also claims that Pacific Rim changed its nationality years after the legal dispute arose, so it can’t invoke the free trade agreement regarding a pre-existing dispute.
[…]
7) Lebanon debates giving Palestinians rights
Zeina Karam, Associated Press, Thursday, August 12, 2010; 5:42 AM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/12/AR2010081201212.html
Ein El-Hilweh Refugee Camp, Lebanon – Mohammed al-Amin spends his days doing little more than playing billiards and smoking cigarettes in this sprawling Palestinian refugee camp, where gunmen roam narrow alleyways dotted with tin-roofed, cement-block homes.
The 25-year-old studied dental lab technology but works at a small, grubby coffee shop in the camp, making $100 a month. He dreams of working with a respected doctor in Lebanese society and being welcomed like any other foreigner, without being looked down on.
"Sometimes I feel like a pressurized bottle that’s about to explode," said al-Amin, who was born in Ein el-Hilweh years after his family fled what is now Israel. "Why should three quarters of the Palestinian people here be selling coffee on the street?"
The approximately 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, many of them born here, are barred by law from any but the most menial professions and are denied many basic rights.
Now parliament is debating a new law that would allow Palestinians to work in any profession and own property, as well as give them social security benefits. The bill, due for a vote on Aug. 17, is the most serious effort yet by Lebanon to transform its policies toward the refugees.
[…] The Palestinians in Lebanon are isolated in their camps to a higher degree than in any other Arab country. Some 4.7 million Palestinian refugees – who fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 and 1967 Israeli-Arab wars – and their descendants are scattered across the Middle East, in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, according to U.N. figures.
Their fate is one of the most emotionally charged issues in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Palestinian negotiators have demanded at least partial repatriation, but Israel has refused, saying an influx of refugees would dilute its Jewish majority and threaten the existence of the state.
Unlike in neighboring Arab countries like Syria and Jordan where Palestinians enjoy more rights, the refugees in Lebanon live mostly on U.N. agencies’ handouts and payments from the rival Palestinian factions. Those who do work are either employed by UNRWA or as laborers at menial jobs such as construction.
[…] Parliament has split largely on sectarian lines over the bill, with Christians opposed and Muslims supporting. The result may be a compromise that grants broader work rights but keeps other restrictions like the ban on owning property.
Fathi Abu al-Ardat, a senior official with the main Fatah faction of the PLO in Lebanon, warns that disillusionment and frustration push young Palestinians toward radicalism. "Fanaticism and extremism thrive on misery and poverty," he said. "We should let them live a free, dignified life with the opportunity to work and move freely."
[…]
Afghanistan
8) Showcase Afghan Army Mission Turns Into Debacle
Rod Nordland, New York Times, August 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/world/asia/13afghan.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – An ambitious military operation that Afghan officials had expected to be a sign of their growing military capacity instead turned into an embarrassment, with Taliban fighters battering an Afghan battalion in a remote eastern area until NATO sent in French and American rescue teams.
The fighting has continued so intensely for the past week that the Red Cross has been unable to reach the battlefield to remove the dead and wounded.
The operation, east of Kabul, was extraordinary in that it was not coordinated in advance with NATO forces and did not at first include coalition forces or air support. The Afghans called for help after 10 of their soldiers were killed and perhaps twice as many captured at the opening of the operation nine days ago.
"There are a lot of lessons to be learned here," said a senior American military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the operation was continuing. "How they started that and why they started that." He said there had been no public statements on the battle because of the need for confidentiality during a rescue mission.
[…]
Iran
9) Israeli Generals and Intel Officials Oppose Attack on Iran
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service, Aug 13
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52482
Washington – Pro-Israeli journalist Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in "The Atlantic" magazine was evidently aimed at showing why the Barack Obama administration should worry that it risks an attack by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran in the coming months unless it takes a much more menacing line toward Iran’s nuclear programme.
But the article provides new evidence that senior figures in the Israeli intelligence and military leadership oppose such a strike against Iran and believe that Netanyahu’s apocalyptic rhetoric about an Iranian nuclear threat as an "existential threat" is unnecessary and self-defeating.
Although not reported by Goldberg, Israeli military and intelligence figures began to express their opposition to such rhetoric on Iran in the early 1990s, and Netanyahu acted to end such talk when he became prime minister in 1996.
The Goldberg article also reveals extreme Israeli sensitivity to any move by Obama to publicly demand that Israel desist from such a strike, reflecting the reality that the Israeli government could not go ahead with any strike without being assured of U.S. direct involvement in the war with Iran.
[…] In his interview with Goldberg for this article, however, Netanyahu does not argue that Iran might use nuclear weapons against Israel. Instead he argues that Hezbollah and Hamas would be able to "fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella".
But Israel relies on conventional forces – not nuclear deterrence – against Hezbollah and Hamas, making that argument entirely specious.
Goldberg reports that other Israeli leaders, including defence minister Ehud Barack, acknowledge the real problem with the possibility of a nuclear Iran is that it would gradually erode Israel’s ability to retain its most talented people.
But that problem is mostly self-inflicted. Goldberg concedes that Israeli generals with whom he talked "worry that talk of an ‘existential threat’ is itself a kind of existential threat to the Zionist project, which was meant to preclude such threats against the Jewish people."
A number of sources told Goldberg, moreover, that Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli army chief of staff, doubts "the usefulness of an attack".
Top Israeli intelligence officials and others responsible for policy toward Iran have long argued, in fact, that the kind of apocalyptic rhetoric that Netanyahu has embraced in recent years is self-defeating.
Security correspondent Ronen Bergman reported in Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s most popular newspaper, in July 2009 that former chief of military intelligence Major General Aharon Zeevi Farkash said the Israeli public perception of the Iranian nuclear threat had been "distorted".
Farkash and other military intelligence and Mossad officials believe Iran’s main motive for seeking a nuclear weapons capability was not to threaten Israel but to "deter U.S. intervention and efforts at regime change", according to Bergman.
The use of blatantly distorted rhetoric about Iran as a threat to Israel – and Israeli intelligence officials’ disagreement with it – goes back to the early 1990s, when the Labour Party government in Israel began a campaign to portray Iran’s missile and nuclear programmes as an "existential threat" to Israel, as Trita Parsi revealed in his 2007 book "Treacherous Alliance".
An internal Israeli inter-ministerial committee formed in 1994 to make recommendations on dealing with Iran concluded that Israeli rhetoric had been "self-defeating", because it had actually made Iran more afraid of Israel, and more hostile toward it, Parsi writes.
Ironically, it was Netanyahu who decided to stop using such rhetoric after becoming prime minister the first time in mid-1996. Mossad director of intelligence Uzi Arad convinced him that Israel had a choice between making itself Iran’s enemy or allowing Iran to focus on threats from other states. Netanyahu even sought Kazakh and Russian mediation between Iran and Israel.
But he reversed that policy when he became convinced that Tehran was seeking a rapprochement with Washington, which Israeli leaders feared would result in reduced U.S. support for Israel, according to Parsi’s account. As a result, Netanyahu reverted to the extreme rhetoric of his predecessors.
That episode suggests that Netanyahu is perfectly capable of grasping the intelligence community’s more nuanced analysis of Iran, contrary to his public stance that the Iranian threat is the same as that from Hitler’s Germany.
Netanyahu administration officials used Goldberg to convey the message to the Americans that they didn’t believe Obama would launch an attack on Iran, and therefore Israel would have to do so.
But Israel clearly cannot afford to risk a war with Iran without the assurance that the United States being committed to participate in it. That is why the Israeli lobby in Washington and its allies argue that Obama should support an Israeli strike, which would mean that he would have to attack Iran with full force if it retaliates against such an Israeli strike.
The knowledge that Israel could not attack Iran without U.S. consent makes Israeli officials extremely sensitive about the possibility that Obama would explicitly reject an Israeli strike
Goldberg reports that "several Israeli officials" told him they were worried that U.S. intelligence might learn about Israeli plans to strike Iran "hours" before the scheduled launch.
The officials told Goldberg that if Obama were to say, "We know what you’re doing. Stop immediately," Israel might have to back down.
Goldberg alludes only vaguely to the possibility that the threat of an attack on Iran is a strategy designed to manipulate both Iran and the United States. In a March 2009 article in The Atlantic online, however, he was more straightforward, conceding that the Netanyahu threat to strike Iran if the United States failed to stop the Iranian nuclear programme could be a "tremendous bluff".
Iraq
10) Iraq PM says forces ready for US exit
Reuters, Thu, Aug 12, 2010
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0812/breaking9.html
Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki today said Iraqi security forces will be ready to take over from US troops when they withdraw, despite the country’s army chief of staff saying the pullout was premature. "We have got an army with the weapons, supplies, training and ability to protect the security and sovereignty of Iraq," Mr al-Maliki said today in comments aired by al-Iraqiyah television.
The prime minister was speaking at a conference in Baghdad focusing on the end of the US combat mission this month and the full withdrawal of US troops in 2011. Yesterday at the meeting, Iraqi army chief of staff Lieut Gen Babakar Zebari said the country’s forces will not be ready to fully replace US units until 2020 and that he advised Iraqi politicians to find ways to fill the void.
"The politicians respect the opinion of the military, but the decision-making lies ultimately in the hands of the politicians," an Iraqi government spokesman said today. "The decision has been made for the US withdrawal."
[…]
Venezuela
11) Venezuela Lawmaker: US May Be Left Without An Ambassador.
Dan Molinski, Dow Jones Newswires, Wednesday, 11 August 2010
http://www.automatedtrader.net/real-time-dow-jones/11238/venezuela-lawmaker-us-may-be-left-without-an-ambassador
Caracas -Venezuela remains opposed to Washington’s nominee for ambassador to Caracas, a top lawmaker said Wednesday, adding that if the U.S. refuses to pick an alternative candidate, it won’t have any representation at all.
U.S. ambassador-designate Larry Palmer was nominated by the White House in June, but Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez rejected him Sunday due to remarks Palmer made that Chavez considered to be undiplomatic and critical of Venezuela.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said earlier this week the Obama administration was standing by Palmer despite strong opposition from the government of Chavez, a firebrand socialist and fierce critic of U.S. policies.
Cilia Flores, the president of Venezuela’s main legislative body the National Assembly and a member of Chavez’s socialist party, responded Wednesday by saying that "if the U.S. continues to insist [Palmer] come here, then I guess they won’t have an ambassador."
[…]
Colombia/Venezuela
12) Colombia and Venezuela Re-establish Relations.
Tamara Pearson, Venezuelanalysis.com, Aug 12th 2010
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5565
Merida – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez met with newly sworn-in Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos yesterday in the Colombian Caribbean city of Santa Marta, and agreed to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries.
[…] Following the three hour meeting, Santos told press, "We’ve had sincere and open dialogue and I think we’ve taken a big step in re-establishing trust."
"We’re not going to use any situation that came up in the past to build or destroy our relations in the future. We’re starting from zero, relaunching our relations in a frank and sincere environment, so that any doubt can be put on the table," he said.
Chavez thanked Santos for the invitation to meet him in Santa Marta but recalled that when Uribe took office relations with Venezuela were also "very positive" and Chavez regretted how they had ended. We have to take care of what we have established today, "and restore trust and respect", Chavez said.
He also said that both presidents had promised to erase the word "war" from their discourse and added that he felt like he was in his own country in Colombia, "with all respect, I feel Colombian."
Chavez promised not to tolerate Colombian guerrillas, "The government over which I preside won’t allow the presence of guerrillas in our territory."
When questioned about the issue of the U.S. use of military bases in Colombia, Chavez responded, "Colombia, like Venezuela, is a sovereign country that can establish economic, social, or military agreements with any other country in the world. The only thing is – and it applies to both of us and we have ratified it in the declaration of principles – is that none [of those agreements] affect the sovereignty of a neighbour nor become a threat for a …neighbour."
[…]
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Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.