Just Foreign Policy News
August 23, 2010
Spread the News About the US Death Toll in Afghanistan
The number of US deaths in the war since Obama took office has exceeded the death toll under Bush. Spread the news to build pressure for ending the war.
Send a letter to your local newspaper:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/obamavsbushlte
Post our new web counter:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/obamavsbush
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
(The book may also be available in your local bookstore or public library.)
September 24th: JFP "Virtual Brown Bag" with Andrew Bacevich
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/bacevichtalk
Oliver Stone’s "South of the Border," scheduled screenings:
http://southoftheborderdoc.com/in-theatres/
Help Support Our Work
Your donation helps us educate Americans and create opportunities to advocate for a just foreign policy.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Three $100 million air base expansions in Afghanistan illustrate Pentagon plans to continue building multimillion-dollar facilities in that country to support increased U.S. military operations well into the future, Walter Pincus reports in the Washington Post. None of the three projects is expected to be completed until the latter half of 2011. All of them are for use by U.S. forces rather than by their Afghan counterparts. Requests for $1.3 billion in additional fiscal 2011 funds for multiyear construction of military facilities in Afghanistan are pending before Congress. The House has approved the money, as has the Senate Appropriations Committee. The full Senate has yet to vote on the measure.
2) Pakistani officials now say they set out to capture Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s operational commander, and used the C.I.A. to help them do it, because they wanted to shut down secret peace talks that Baradar had been conducting with the Afghan government that excluded Pakistan, Dexter Filkins reports in New York Times. Some US officials disputed this Pakistani account of the arrest, but other US officials said the Pakistani account was more plausible than the CIA account.
3) The Wikileaks documents illustrate the marginal role of Al Qaeda in the war in Afghanistan, Craig Whitlock reports in the Washington Post. The 76,000 classified U.S. military reports, which cover the escalation of the insurgency between 2004 and the end of 2009, mention al-Qaeda only a few dozen times and even then just in passing. One indicator of the presence of foreign fighters can be found at the U.S. military’s new Parwan prison at Bagram. Vice Admiral Harward, commander of U.S. detention operations, said fewer than 50 of the 950 prisoners come from outside the country. Of those, about three-quarters are Pakistanis. He said fighters from outside Central Asia are rare: "This is a very local fight."
4) Unpopularity with the war in Afghanistan reached an all-time high in CNN polling with 62 percent saying they oppose it, CNN reports.
5) The US and family members offered disputing accounts of the deaths of three brothers in a Special Forces night raid in Wardak that sparked a vitriolic anti-American protest and generated a backlash against the dramatic spike in special forces raids, McClatchy reports. NATO officials said special forces are taking part in 1,000 operations in Afghanistan each month, a threefold increase over last year.
6) The California legislature passed a resolution expressing regret for the mistreatment of Italians and Italian-Americans during World War II, the Los Angeles Times reports. Sen. Joe Simitian, sponsor of the resolution, said he saw "contemporary importance" in the effort: "We’re at war on the other side of the world, and I think it’s important to remember that there are millions of Americans who are ethnic Arabs or Muslim by faith, and that they’re good Americans."
Afghanistan
7) A spokesman for President Karzai challenged the US to clean up fraud and corruption within the hundreds of millions of dollars of aid contracts it distributes to Afghan companies each year, saying that abuse is far worse than any irregularities in the Karzai administration, the Washington Post reports. Of every $100 million of aid coming into the country, he said, 80 percent is controlled by the U.S. government and NATO. Therefore, he said, it is up to international officials to enact safeguards and root out illegal practices within their own contracts.
Lebanon
8) Some Members of Congress have echoed Israeli officials’ claims that Hezbollah’s power in Lebanon seemed to be extending to control over the army, Robert Worth reports in the New York Times. But there is little evidence of that, he writes. The army is still largely commanded by Christian generals who were trained in the US. US politicians often fail to understand that even pro-Western Lebanese tend to regard Israel – which has repeatedly invaded and bombed its northern neighbor – as a hostile force. Another point often overlooked in the West is that the army’s mere presence in southern Lebanon is a novelty. Troops were deployed there – with Hezbollah’s permission – under the terms of the cease-fire brokered by the UN in 2006. For many Lebanese, having their own military back on the border was a point of great national pride.
Iran
9) Iran has crossed a new nuclear threshold, but it’s one the Obama administration isn’t worried about, Jonathan Landay reports for McClatchy. Technicians began loading low-enriched uranium fuel supplied by Russia into Iran’s first civilian nuclear reactor. The Bushehr plant could start producing electricity under UN monitoring late this year or early next. IAEA inspectors and monitoring devices will keep the site under round-the-clock surveillance; under a 2007 accord negotiated by the Bush administration, the spent fuel rods will go back to Russia after they’ve cooled to prevent Iran from harvesting them for plutonium.
Pakistan/India
10) Prime Minister Gilani defended the Pakistan government’s decision to accept aid for flood victims from India, the Press Trust of India reports. Pakistan on Friday accepted India’s offer to provide $5 million for the millions of victims of devastating floods. Responding to critics, Gilani said: "Would it not be a contrast if we refused the aid? On the one hand, we are stressing on the resumption of dialogue with India and on the other, we refuse its aid. We should come out of this approach and give a strong image to Pakistan… I told my Foreign Minister to thank his Indian counterpart for the aid," Gilani said.
Iraq
11) A US soldier was killed in Iraq on Sunday, marking the first US fatality since the military declared last week that the last combat unit had pulled out of the country, the New York Times reports. The death underscores the semantic difficulties in describing precisely what the mission of the remaining US troops will represent and what roles they will be engaged in, the Times says.
Colombia
12) Colombian legislators say the testimony of a former paramilitary leader suggests that under the cover of a [US-backed] war on guerillas between 1994 and 2000 [ie during the Clinton Administration], paramilitary forces stole the land of tens of thousands of peasants that they killed and millions that they displaced, Constanza Vieira reports for Inter Press Service. Then the land was sold or transferred to businessmen and dummy corporations, putting the land beyond the reach of victim reparations funds.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Air base expansion plans reflect long-term investment in Afghanistan
Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Monday, August 23, 2010; A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/22/AR2010082201670.html
Three $100 million air base expansions in southern and northern Afghanistan illustrate Pentagon plans to continue building multimillion-dollar facilities in that country to support increased U.S. military operations well into the future.
Despite growing public unhappiness with the Afghan war – and President Obama’s pledge that he will begin withdrawing troops in July 2011 – many of the installations being built in Afghanistan have extended time horizons. None of the three projects in southern and northern Afghanistan is expected to be completed until the latter half of 2011. All of them are for use by U.S. forces rather than by their Afghan counterparts.
Overall, requests for $1.3 billion in additional fiscal 2011 funds for multiyear construction of military facilities in Afghanistan are pending before Congress. The House has approved the money, as has the Senate Appropriations Committee. The full Senate has yet to vote on the measure.
In addition, the United States has already allocated about $5.3 billion to construct facilities for the Afghan army and the national police, with most of the "enduring facilities . . . scheduled for construction over the next three to four years," according to a Pentagon news release this month.
For example, a $30 million contract was recently awarded to build a regional military training center in Mazar-e Sharif, according to Col. Mike Wehr, engineer director of the combined NATO training mission. That facility, too, will not be completed until late 2011, and then it will be used to train Afghans in various military specialties, including engineering.
"We’re only about 25 percent complete in our construction [for Afghan security forces], and there is quite a bit more to go over the next three years," Wehr told a defense bloggers roundtable last week. One goal of the NATO transition program is to have Afghans ready to maintain these facilities by 2013, Wehr added.
The three bases being expanded for U.S. use after 2011 reflect the expectation of continued combat operations, but they are just part of a broader expansion of U.S. facilities across the country.
[…]
2) Pakistanis Say Taliban Arrest Was Meant to Hurt Peace Bid
Pakistanis Tell of Motive in Taliban Leader’s Arrest
Dexter Filkins, New York Times, August 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/asia/23taliban.html
Islamabad, Pakistan – When American and Pakistani agents captured Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s operational commander, in the chaotic port city of Karachi last January, both countries hailed the arrest as a breakthrough in their often difficult partnership in fighting terrorism.
But the arrest of Mr. Baradar, the second-ranking Taliban leader after Mullah Muhammad Omar, came with a beguiling twist: both American and Pakistani officials claimed that Mr. Baradar’s capture had been a lucky break. It was only days later, the officials said, that they finally figured out who they had.
Now, seven months later, Pakistani officials are telling a very different story. They say they set out to capture Mr. Baradar, and used the C.I.A. to help them do it, because they wanted to shut down secret peace talks that Mr. Baradar had been conducting with the Afghan government that excluded Pakistan, the Taliban’s longtime backer.
In the weeks after Mr. Baradar’s capture, Pakistani security officials detained as many as 23 Taliban leaders, many of whom had been enjoying the protection of the Pakistani government for years. The talks came to an end.
The events surrounding Mr. Baradar’s arrest have been the subject of debate inside military and intelligence circles for months. Some details are still murky – and others vigorously denied by some American intelligence officials in Washington. But the account offered in Islamabad highlights Pakistan’s policy in Afghanistan: retaining decisive influence over the Taliban, thwarting archenemy India, and putting Pakistan in a position to shape Afghanistan’s postwar political order.
"We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us," said a Pakistani security official, who, like numerous people interviewed about the operation, spoke anonymously because of the delicacy of relations between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States. "We protect the Taliban. They are dependent on us. We are not going to allow them to make a deal with Karzai and the Indians."
Some American officials still insist that Pakistan-American cooperation is improving, and deny a central Pakistani role in Mr. Baradar’s arrest. They say the Pakistanis may now be trying to rewrite history to make themselves appear more influential. It was American intellgence that led to Mr. Baradar’s capture, an American official said.
[…] Other American officials suspect the C.I.A. may have been unwittingly used by the Pakistanis for the larger aims of slowing the pace of any peace talks.
[…] A senior NATO officer in Kabul said that in arresting Mr. Baradar and the other Taliban leaders, the Pakistanis may have been trying to buy time to see if President Obama’s strategy begins to prevail. If it does, the Pakistanis may eventually decide to let the Taliban make a deal. But if the Americans fail – and if they begin to pull out – then the Pakistanis may decide to retain the Taliban as their allies. "We have been played before," a senior NATO official said. "That the Pakistanis picked up Baradar to control the tempo of the negotiations is absolutely plausible."
[…] The discussions with Mr. Baradar and the other Taliban were in their early phases, but they seemed promising, the Afghan official said. Their aim was to establish conditions under which formal talks could begin. "It was the beginning of a negotiation, so both sides staked out extreme positions," the Afghan official said. "But we sensed a readiness for peace."
When Pakistani intelligence officials learned of the overtures, they became unnerved by what they saw as an attempt by the Afghans to strike a peace deal without them. In particular, the ISI suspected the Americans were orchestrating the talks.
In January, days before Mr. Baradar’s capture, a senior ISI official told The New York Times that his agency was hunting the Taliban leader because he was in contact with the Americans. The ISI official accused the Americans of disregarding Pakistan’s legitimate security interests. "We are after Mullah Baradar," the senior ISI official said. "We strongly believe the Americans are in touch with him."
A second ISI official confirmed that the Pakistanis had decided to go after Mr. Baradar to shut down what they feared were blossoming peace talks. "This is a national secret," he said. "The Americans and the British were going behind our backs, and we couldn’t allow that." American and British officials denied they were directly involved in talks with the Taliban. [Note the weasel word "directly" in this non-denial denial – an NYT report at the time of Baradar’s arrest cited a US official to the effect that the US was in indirect contact with Baradar – JFP.] […] Some American officials insist that while the C.I.A. may not have known whom the Pakistanis were capturing, the Pakistanis did not know either. They speculated that once the Pakistanis had Mr. Baradar, they may have decided to hold him to scuttle the peace talks. It was then, some American officials say, that the Pakistanis may have decided to detain the other Taliban leaders. "We are not convinced that that was why Baradar was picked up," an American official in the region said, referring to the Afghan talks. "But maybe that was why he was held."
Yet other American officials said the Pakistani version seemed more credible than the C.I.A.’s. "Baradar is too high-profile for them not to have known who it was," the senior NATO official said.
[…]
3) Al-Qaeda Presence Limited In War
Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, Monday, August 23, 2010; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/22/AR2010082203029.html
On Aug. 14, a U.S. airstrike in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz killed a Taliban commander known as Abu Baqir. In a country where insurgents are killed daily, this attack was notable for one unusual detail: Abu Baqir, the military said afterward, was also a member of al-Qaeda.
Although U.S. officials have often said that al-Qaeda is a marginal player on the Afghan battlefield, an analysis of 76,000 classified U.S. military reports posted by the Web site WikiLeaks underscores the extent to which Osama bin Laden and his network have become an afterthought in the war.
The reports, which cover the escalation of the insurgency between 2004 and the end of 2009, mention al-Qaeda only a few dozen times and even then just in passing. Most are vague references to people with unspecified al-Qaeda contacts or sympathies, or as shorthand for an amorphous ideological enemy.
Bin Laden, thought to be hiding across the border in Pakistan, is scarcely mentioned in the reports. One recounts how his picture was found on the walls of a couple of houses near Khost, in eastern Afghanistan, in 2004.
A year later, U.S. forces also saw his likeness on a jihadist propaganda poster near the Pakistan border. In 2007, a district subgovernor in Nangarhar province informed U.S. officials that a local newspaper would print "names of personnel working for bin Laden."
Other al-Qaeda leaders are similarly invisible figures. One report describes a botched June 2007 attempt to capture or kill Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda military commander. U.S. Special Forces missed their target, instead accidentally killing seven children in a religious school in Paktika province.
[…] In June, CIA Director Leon Panetta estimated that, "at most," only 50 to 100 al-Qaeda operatives were present in Afghanistan. His assessment echoed those given by other senior U.S. officials. In October, national security adviser James L. Jones said the U.S. government’s "maximum estimate" was that al-Qaeda had fewer than 100 members in Afghanistan, with no bases and "no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."
Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, al-Qaeda’s leadership and fighters have largely sought refuge across the border in Pakistan. There they have been targeted by U.S. drone attacks from the skies as they try to remain beyond the reach of U.S. forces.
[…] One indicator of the presence of foreign fighters can be found at the U.S. military’s new Parwan prison at Bagram air base. Vice Admiral Robert S. Harward, commander of U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan, said fewer than 50 of the 950 prisoners come from outside the country. Of those, about three-quarters are Pakistanis. He said fighters from outside Central Asia are rare: "This is a very local fight."
[…]
4) Poll: Opposition to Iraq, Afghanistan wars reach all time high
CNN, August 17, 2010
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/17/poll-opposition-to-iraq-afghanistan-wars-reach-all-time-high/
Two-thirds of Americans favor President Obama’s plan to remove combat troops from Iraq by the end of the month as opposition to the war in that country, as well as the one in Afghanistan, has climbed to new highs.
According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, Obama’s withdrawal plan wins support not because Americans think the U.S. has achieved its goals in Iraq – only three in 10 feel that way – but because a majority believe that the U.S. will never achieve its goals in that country no matter how long troops remain there.
[…] Unpopularity with the war in Afghanistan also reached an all-time high in CNN polling with 62 percent saying they oppose it. Moreover, confidence in the Afghan government is even lower than it is for the Iraqi government. Seven in 10 Americans are not confident that Hamid Karzai’s government can handle the situation there.
[…]
5) Family, U.S. offer differing versions of deadly Afghan raid
Dion Nissenbaum and Hashim Shukoor, McClatchy Newspapers, August 21, 2010
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/20/99452/family-us-offer-differing-versions.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – When Ismail Nemati set out from Kabul last week to join his family in nearby Wardak province for the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, friends said, his biggest fear was running into Taliban forces who might question his allegiances. Before sunrise the next day, Nemati lay bleeding in his family guest room, alongside two of his brothers, all shot dead by U.S. special forces who were on the hunt for a Taliban leader.
Their deaths sparked a vitriolic anti-American protest and generated a backlash against the dramatic spike in special forces raids, which have become a crucial element of President Barack Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan.
The number of secretive raids that target anti-Western insurgents has skyrocketed. NATO officials said this week that special forces are taking part in 1,000 operations in Afghanistan each month, a threefold increase over last year.
In most cases, American military officials say, the raids end without a shot being fired. It’s the small number of questionable raids, such as the recent one in Wardak, that Afghans remember, however. "He was not Taliban," Omid Ali, 21, said in broken English about his school friend Nemati. "I want to say to President Obama: Afghanistan doesn’t have hostility towards foreign forces, but, these mistakes, that is how they will be defeated in Afghanistan."
American military officials said that Nemati’s shooting was no mistake. The 25-year-old student was shot as he was reaching for an AK-47 automatic rifle when the U.S. special forces team burst into the tiny guest room where he was sleeping with his brothers at the family compound, according to an account of the raid provided by the American military.
[…] A few days after the shootings, dozens of men gathered for a memorial at Kabul’s National Institute of Management and Administration, a U.S.-backed vocational school where Ismail Nemati studied.
Safiullah, an uncle of the three brothers, sat on a cushion below banners with photographs of the dead trio. Photos of the brothers as they awaited burial showed the two older ones with a few thin wisps of whiskers on their young faces. "I am not an enemy of the government, but I am ready to throw myself in front of a convoy, even if civilians are killed," Safiullah, who like many Afghans goes by only one name, said in an interview. "We can’t forgive them. The only way is to put the people who gave them bad information on trial."
After the service, friends of the brothers crowded into Ismail Aman’s sparse dormitory room, filled with metal double bunk beds and little else, and criticized the United States. Friends pulled out Ismail’s notebooks filled with English proverbs ("Adversity often leads to prosperity"), marketing lessons and leadership development notes. "Why are they killing innocent people?" one of the students asked. "We are the new generation of our nation."
6) State apologizes for mistreatment of Italian residents during WWII
Legislature passes resolution expressing ‘deepest regret’ for the wartime internment, curfews, confiscations and other indignities that thousands of Italian and Italian American families faced.
Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times, August 23, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-italians-20100823,0,2551162.story
Monterey – When Mike Maiorana was a boy during World War II, his family was like a lot of others in his Monterey neighborhood.
In 1942, his mother was declared an "enemy alien," along with 600,000 other Italians and half a million Germans and Japanese who weren’t U.S. citizens. More than once, men in suits searched the Maiorana house for guns, flashlights, cameras, shortwave radios – anything that could be used to signal the enemy.
Like 10,000 others up and down the California coast, the family was suddenly forced to uproot. At their new place in Salinas, they had to be home by 8 p.m. or face arrest. And when the government seized fishing boats for the war effort, Maiorana’s dad, a naturalized U.S. citizen, saw his livelihood go down the drain. "He was on the skids for the rest of his life," said Maiorana, 75, who owns a boatyard and marina on the harbor where his father’s boat – as well as those of his uncles and several dozen other Italian fishermen – were confiscated.
Families like the Maioranas last week received a formal acknowledgement from California. A measure that swiftly made its way through the Legislature expresses the state’s "deepest regrets" over the mistreatment of Italians and Italian Americans during World War II. Not nearly as severe or long-lasting as the internment of Japanese Americans, the wartime restrictions are still little-known throughout California, where they were the most heavily enforced.
The resolution was the brainchild of a 79-year-old San Jose man who entered a legislator’s annual "There Oughta Be a Law" contest. "The treatment Italians received in California was horrible," said Chet Campanella, who recalled his father hiding a radio in a backyard chicken coop. "There wasn’t one tiny bit of evidence that any Italian was responsible for spying, sabotage, or doing anything else to hinder the war effort."
Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) sponsored a bill based on Campanella’s idea. "I was wholly unaware of the circumstances he described," Simitian said. "Somehow this story had passed me by."
Simitian, an attorney and former Palo Alto mayor, said he saw "contemporary importance" in the effort: "We’re at war on the other side of the world, and I think it’s important to remember that there are millions of Americans who are ethnic Arabs or Muslim by faith, and that they’re good Americans."
No comparable measure has been passed by the state or federal government on behalf of more than 11,000 interned Germans, including some Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler.
[…]
Afghanistan
7) Afghan officials challenge U.S. on aid contract abuses
David Nakamura, Washington Post, Monday, August 23, 2010 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/23/AR2010082302365.html
Kabul – A spokesman for Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Monday challenged the United States to clean up fraud and corruption within the hundreds of millions of dollars of aid contracts it distributes to Afghan companies each year, saying that abuse is far worse than any irregularities in the Karzai administration.
Waheed Omer used his weekly news conference to take the offensive in the ongoing political battle between the Karzai government and U.S. officials over the extent of mismanagement of international money and who is responsible.
Of every $100 million of aid coming into the country, Omer said, 80 percent is controlled by the U.S. government and NATO, with the rest controlled by the Karzai government. Therefore, he said, it is up to international officials to enact safeguards and root out illegal practices within their own contracts.
"Corruption is widely affecting the multimillion-dollar contracts going to Afghans, who are becoming terribly rich out of those contracts and are concerned about nothing but their own interests and profits," Omer said. "We want the international community to work with the government of Afghanistan to eliminate these sources of corruption and target the roots and sources of corruption. A major part are these international contracts."
[…]
Lebanon
8) U.S. Weighs Tough Choice Over Aid For Lebanon
Robert F. Worth, New York Times, August 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/world/middleeast/22lebanon.html
Washington – Earlier this month, Israeli soldiers were pruning a tree on their country’s northern border when a firefight broke out with Lebanese soldiers across the fence, leaving one Israeli and four Lebanese dead.
The skirmish seems to have been accidental. But it quickly set off a war of words in Washington and Beirut, with American lawmakers warning of Hezbollah infiltration in the Lebanese Army, and threatening to cut off $100 million in military aid.
It is a situation that has played out many times before – in Yemen, Pakistan and other countries troubled by insurgencies or militant movements and receiving American military aid – and that is likely to be repeated. The Americans want to help their friends in the Middle East while insisting that they rigorously cut off militant groups like Hezbollah, the Shiite movement that is committed to Israel’s destruction. But the realities on the ground almost always demand difficult compromises that can seem, from Washington, like dangerous concessions to the enemy.
Lebanon, for instance, is an intricate patchwork of sects and political factions where the army plays the precarious role of a middleman. No one can avoid working to some degree with Hezbollah, the most powerful military and political force in the country. The alternative, Lebanon’s pro-Western factions say, is much worse.
"Should we undermine the army and give the whole country to Hezbollah?" said Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "It’s a classic ‘cut off your nose to spite your face.’ "
[…] When the border skirmish took place this month, some American lawmakers went further and echoed what Israeli officials were saying: that Hezbollah’s growing power in Lebanon seemed to be extending to control over the army.
There is little evidence of that. The army is still largely commanded by Christian generals who were trained in the United States. Like Lebanon itself, the army contains a mosaic of political affiliations. What American politicians often fail to understand is that even pro-Western Lebanese tend to regard Israel – which has repeatedly invaded and bombed its northern neighbor – as a hostile force. Soldiers in south Lebanon are authorized to open fire if they see violations of the United Nations cease-fire that ended the 2006 war.
Another point often overlooked in the West is that the army’s mere presence in southern Lebanon is a novelty. Troops were deployed there – with Hezbollah’s permission – under the terms of the cease-fire brokered by the United Nations in 2006. It was the first time that Lebanese soldiers had defended the southern border in decades, thanks to the disruptions of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war and the long Syrian military occupation.
For many Lebanese, having their own military back on the border was a point of great national pride.
[…]
Iran
9) Iran begins fueling nuclear reactor – and that’s good news
Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers, August 21, 2010
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/20/99482/iran-set-to-begin-fueling-first.html
Washington – Iran has crossed a new nuclear threshold, but it’s one the Obama administration isn’t worried about. On Saturday, technicians began loading low-enriched uranium fuel supplied by Russia into Iran’s first civilian nuclear reactor, and if all goes smoothly, the Bushehr plant could start producing electricity under United Nations monitoring late this year or early next.
"The International Atomic Energy Agency regularly inspects the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran. Iran began moving fuel assemblies to the plant’s reactor compartment on 21 August 2010," Ayhan Evrensel, a press officer for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a statement Saturday. "The agency is taking the appropriate verification measures in line with its established safeguards procedures."
Bushehr embodies what the administration and many experts consider an ideal solution to the Iranian nuclear dispute: The Islamic republic benefits from the peaceful nuclear energy to which it’s entitled by international law, but the fuel comes from elsewhere, negating Iran’s need to make its own via enrichment, a process that also can produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs.
Moreover, under a 2007 accord negotiated by the Bush administration, the spent fuel rods will go back to Russia after they’ve cooled to prevent Iran from harvesting them for plutonium, the other essential component of nuclear weapons. "Because the Bush administration did such a good job of neutralizing the Bushehr reactor, we don’t view it as a proliferation threat," said a White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss the issue freely.
[…] Much of the concern over the Bushehr reactor centers on whether technicians could secretly divert spent fuel assemblies removed from the reactor during refueling and separate plutonium from them through a process known as reprocessing.
U.S. officials and other experts dismissed that possibility as highly unlikely, saying that such diversions would be extremely difficult as IAEA inspectors and monitoring devices will keep the site under round-the-clock surveillance. "There are 25 tons of fuel rods that would be discharged every year," the White House official said. "You can’t pick them up and put them in your pocket." Even so, he said, "I don’t know if I’d say (that IAEA monitoring is) fool-proof."
He and other experts said there’s no evidence that Iran has the knowledge, ability or the facility needed to extract plutonium from spent fuel rods, which would first have to sit in water for as many as four years before they’re cool enough to handle.
"It’s implausible to me that the Iranians would see that it was advantageous to go this route. It would expose them to attack for too long," said Frank von Hippel, a Princeton University nuclear physicist who served as a White House science adviser for former President Bill Clinton. Von Hippel also said the plutonium produced at the kind of reactor at Bushehr wouldn’t be "weapons grade" and that the Iranians "couldn’t be confident" that warhead made from such material would work.
[…]
Pakistan/India
10) Gilani defends accepting aid from India
Press Trust of India, August 22, 2010
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Gilani-defends-accepting-aid-from-India/Article1-590126.aspx
Lahore – Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Saturday defended the Pakistan government’s decision to accept aid for flood victims from India, saying those opposed to the move should give reasons for their stance. "I would like to ask the critics of Indian aid on what ground we should refuse it. It will be a narrow approach if we refuse aid from India," Gilani said while talking to reporters at his residence in Lahore.
Pakistan on Friday accepted India’s offer to provide $5 million for the millions of victims of the devastating floods that have swept the country. The move has been criticised by some politicians, who linked the matter to the ongoing protests in Jammu and Kashmir.
However, Gilani said: "Would it not be a contrast if we refused the aid? On the one hand, we are stressing on the resumption of dialogue with India and on the other, we refuse its aid. We should come out of this approach and give a strong image to Pakistan."
He said he was chairing a high-level meeting when he was informed about India’s offer to provide aid. "I told my Foreign Minister to thank his Indian counterpart for the aid," he said. Gilani noted that both Pakistanis and Indians had collected funds for the flood-affected people.
Iraq
11) Fatality In Iraq Is First After Deadline
New York Times, August 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/middleeast/23iraq.html
Baghdad – An American soldier was killed in Iraq’s southernmost province on Sunday, marking the first American fatality since the military declared last week that the last combat unit had pulled out of the country, the military said.
The military withdrawal under way is supposed to bring the number of American troops in Iraq to 50,000 by the end of August, under a deadline set by the Obama administration. While military officials have said that casualties are likely to occur after that date, Sunday’s death underscores the semantic difficulties in describing precisely what their mission will represent and what roles they will be engaged in.
The military said the soldier was killed by indirect fire, a phrase that usually means a rocket or mortar attack. It said that the soldier was killed in "a hostile attack" in the province around Basra, and that the attack was "under investigation."
[…]
Colombia
12) The Violent "Agrarian Counter-Reform" Conspiracy
Constanza Vieira, Inter Press Service, Aug 21
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52563
Bogota – An unknown number of agribusiness owners and public employees at all levels, as well as far-right paramilitaries, have a common link with rural people who have been forced off their farms or killed in Colombia: the land stolen from the latter group in the armed conflict.
"It was a conspiracy. There were the ones doing the killing, others who would follow behind, buying up the land, and the third wave, who would legalise the new ownership of the land," said former paramilitary chief Jairo Castillo or "Pitirri", who has lived in exile for 10 years and is serving as a key protected witness in the trials of legislators and other political leaders implicated in the "parapolitics" scandal for their ties to the paramilitary groups.
Pitirri is one of those asking the justice system why it is only focusing on "the ones doing the killing"; why it is not inquiring into who seized 5.5 million hectares of land, according to figures from the Commission to Monitor Public Policies on Forced Displacement, set up on the initiative of civil society groups.
The testimony of Pitirri was presented Thursday in a congressional debate on political control over land, paramilitarism and forced displacement, by leftwing legislator Iván Cepeda.
Álvaro Uribe, who governed Colombia from 2002 to Aug. 7, 2010 – when he was succeeded by his former defence minister President Juan Manuel Santos – partially demobilised the armed wing of paramilitarism through talks with the group’s leaders. The Law on Justice and Peace was passed to govern the demobilisation process.
Under the law, a unit of the attorney general’s office was set up to obtain "complete" confessions from hundreds of former combatants who must confess to all of the human rights abuses and other crimes they committed and make reparations to the families of their victims in order to be eligible for reduced sentences and other benefits, as required by the Constitutional Court. "The Justice and Peace Unit has done a formidable job in the midst of budget and logistical limitations," Guillermo Rivera, a governing Liberal Party legislator, said in Thursday’s debate.
According to him, the attorney general’s office has discovered something unexpected. He noted that the demobilised paramilitaries, who were supposedly the owners of vast tracts of land with which their victims were to be compensated, reported that they actually owned small properties. As a result, they have handed over just 6,600 hectares so far.
Rivera provided the following summary of the "conspiracy," as Pitirri described it:
Under the pretext of fighting the leftwing guerrillas that have been active in this South American country since 1964, paramilitary groups expanded as never before between 1994 and 2000, killing tens of thousands of campesinos (peasants) and forcibly displacing millions of others, who fled to the overcrowded slums ringing Colombia’s large cities.
The campesinos lost their food security when they fled their land, which was taken over by paramilitary mafias that purchased it at ridiculously low prices or occupied it by force, Rivera said.
The Uribe administration’s demobilisation negotiations with the paramilitary chiefs took place on a farm in Santa Fe de Ralito, a town in the northeast, from 2002 to 2005. While the talks proceeded in Santa Fe de Ralito, most of the millions of hectares of land that had been seized were put in the name of dummy companies and front men or sold to businesspeople.
The aim was to keep the properties from being registered in the victim reparations funds to be created under the Law on Justice and Peace, to avoid handing them over in compensation, as part of the process of restoration of stolen property, Rivera said.
From 2005 to 2006, the Justice and Peace Unit of the attorney general’s office found evidence that a number of businesspeople had taken over land that originally belonged to displaced peasants, while other property was found in the names of dummy corporations and front men.
The phenomenon outlined by Rivera came full circle in a chilling way: a certain number of these front men became beneficiaries of the state, mainly through the Ministry of Agriculture, which offered them soft loans and farm subsidies under the Agro Ingreso Seguro ("stable farm income") programme – a corruption scandal that broke out in the last stretch of the Uribe administration.
Later – again, according to Rivera – these beneficiaries financed the election campaigns of close Uribe allies, such as former presidential hopeful Andrés Felipe Arias, the former president’s agriculture minister.
In the congressional debate, Rivera and Cepeda provided the names of individuals, companies and supposed civil society organisations that reportedly formed part of the "conspiracy."
During his term in office, Uribe himself instructed his allies in Congress, who formed a majority, to block passage of a bill that would have provided for, among other things, reparations and restoration of stolen property to victims of the paramilitaries.
[…]
–
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.