Just Foreign Policy News
September 13, 2010
Al Jazeera video: What Turks Approved in the Constitutional Referendum
Immunity removed for officers involved in the 1980 coup; rights of workers to organize expanded; military officers can be tried in civilian courts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcYG7vg6tvE
Why Peaceniks Should Care About the Afghanistan Study Group Report
Experts who crafted the Afghanistan Study Group report have a strategy to move Washington towards ending the war. If their recommendations are followed, fewer Americans and Afghans will be killed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert – naiman/why – peaceniks – should – care_b_712333.html
Bacevich: Washington Rules
Andrew Bacevich’s book, "Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War," is a call for Americans to reject the Washington consensus for permanent war.
September 24th: JFP "Virtual Brown Bag" with Andrew Bacevich
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/bacevichtalk
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) A number of former US officials who once supported the war in Afghanistan are questioning whether the benefit of stabilizing Afghanistan is worth the cost, writes Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times. Doubters include Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "The current strategy isn’t working, and it’s costing roughly $100 billion a year," Haass says. "It’s time for a major recalibration: not an immediate withdrawal but a significant scaling down of our ambitions." Last week, a group of 46 foreign policy experts issued a report arguing that the goal of building a unified, stable Afghanistan is beyond the ability of the US, and unnecessary to boot. The report proposes ending U.S. military operations in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is strongest, and seeking a power-sharing deal with the Islamist militants. The panel, the Afghanistan Study Group, included longtime critics of the war and some who supported U.S. policy until recently. "A U.S. military victory over the Taliban is simply not necessary to protect U.S. interests," said Paul Pillar, former CIA counter-terrorism official. In the general public, support for the war in Afghanistan has been declining for at least four years. In a CNN poll this month, 57% of respondents said they opposed the war; only 41% said they favored it.
2) International organizations and humanitarian groups say Afghanistan is more dangerous than it has ever been during this war, with security deteriorating in recent months, Rod Nordland reports in the New York Times. "We do not support the perspective that this constitutes ‘things getting worse before they get better,’ " said Nic Lee, director of the Afghan N.G.O. Safety Office, "but rather see it as being consistent with the five-year trend of things just getting worse."
3) Opponents of a plan to relocate US military air operations in Okinawa to Camp Schwab from Marine Corps Air Station Futenma strengthened their position in the Nago city assembly elections Sunday, Stars and Stripe reports. U.S. base opponents in the northern Okinawa city that hosts Camp Schwab won a 60 percent majority. Of 27 seats, anti-base candidates won 16 seats. The election could also affect the Okinawa governor’s race, scheduled for Nov. 28. Okinawa’s governor can hinder the progress of the relocation plan by refusing to allow dumping tons of landfill into Oura Bay.
4) Amnesty International says up to 30,000 prisoners, including many veterans of the US detention system, are being held without rights in Iraq and are frequently tortured or abused, the Guardian reports.
5) It appears that US goals in Afghanistan are becoming narrower still, Mark Mazzetti reports in the New York Times. At the center of debate in Washington is a simple question: at this point, what can the US really hope to achieve? "We’ve sort of backed ourselves into a corner by putting effective governance at the forefront," said Andrew Exum, who was a civilian adviser to Gen. McChrystal. "Unless you are prepared to stay in Afghanistan with high troop levels for at least a decade, then an overt campaign to tackle corruption is a big mistake."
Afghanistan
6) Obama administration officials have concluded they need to step back from promoting US-style law enforcement as the main means of fighting corruption in Afghanistan, Rajiv Chandrasekaran reports in the Washington Post. Chandrasekaran notes that the Afghan constitution effectively allows the president to select province and district governors, as well as local police chiefs. That has created what some U.S. government analysts call a "pyramid of corruption" in which some local officials have to pay semiannual bribes to more senior officials, ranging from $50,000 to $150,000, to maintain their positions. To raise those funds, the local officials shake down the population, which helps drive some of them to the Taliban.
7) UN envoy de Mistura says some Taliban leaders are discreetly making overtures to parliamentary candidates, which he sees as a positive development, Ernesto Londono reports in the Washington Post. De Mistura said insurgent leaders in Afghanistan could be trying to bolster their political standing in anticipation of a reconciliation process President Karzai is hoping to jump-start this fall. Karzai is attempting to reach a negotiated truce with the Taliban, an effort the government hopes will gain traction after the election. De Mistura said he had a "hunch" the peace talks would start in earnest between November and December.
Israel/Palestine
8) Palestinian officials were guarded Monday in response to signals from Israeli prime minister Netanyahu he was ready to limit construction in West Bank settlements after a partial building moratorium expires this month, Isabel Kershner reports in the New York Times. "Unless there is a real freeze on settlement construction, we cannot continue with negotiations," said senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath. Shaath said Palestinians have experienced compromise formulas on settlement construction in the past, and that they ended up being "cover-ups for an unlimited amount of expansion that is very difficult to assess and track." Another Palestinian official said any resumption of construction "will fill the news, embarrass the Palestinian negotiators and weaken them further." The 10-month moratorium, which allowed for the construction of public buildings and the completion of thousands of housing units already under construction, and which excluded East Jerusalem, was already a compromise, he said. Peace Now said in a new report that more than 2,000 housing units were awaiting immediate construction after the moratorium, due to expire Sept. 26, and plans for at least another 11,000 housing units had already received full government approval.
Iraq
9) US military units fired on insurgents northeast of the capital on Sunday, the New York Times reports. It was the second such episode since the US declared an end to its combat operations in Iraq less than two weeks ago.
Jamaica
10) Trade union leaders in Jamaica are demanding that the government re-open its agreement with the IMF to allow workers to receive wage increases, including those promised in legally binding contracts, the Jamaica Observer reports.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) High-level doubts on Afghanistan
Former officials who once supported the war are now questioning it’s worth the cost.
Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, September 12, 2010
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/12/opinion/la-oe-mcmanus-afghanistan-20100912
Our 9-year-old war in Afghanistan has long had its critics. But now, a number of former officials who once supported the war – or were at least willing to give the U.S. military time to see if it could be won – are questioning whether the benefit of stabilizing Afghanistan is worth the daunting cost.
The doubters include Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the closest thing the United States has to an official "foreign policy establishment"; Leslie H. Gelb, his predecessor; and Robert D. Blackwill, a former aide to President George W. Bush.
"The current strategy isn’t working, and it’s costing roughly $100 billion a year," Haass, a former aide to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, told me last week. "It’s time for a major recalibration: not an immediate withdrawal but a significant scaling down of our ambitions."
And last week, a group of 46 foreign policy experts issued a joint report arguing that the goal of building a unified, stable Afghanistan is beyond the ability of the United States, and unnecessary to boot. The panel, the Afghanistan Study Group, included both longtime critics of the war and some who supported U.S. policy until recently.
"A U.S. military victory over the Taliban is simply not necessary to protect U.S. interests," said one of its members, Paul R. Pillar, a former CIA counter-terrorism official.
In the general public, of course, support for the war in Afghanistan has been declining for at least four years. In a CNN poll this month, 57% of respondents said they opposed the war; only 41% said they favored it. But that was to be expected as the war dragged on and casualties rose.
"Elite" opinion is harder to measure. Who counts as a member of the foreign policy elite anyway? But looking only at people who have held, or might soon hold, foreign policy jobs in Republican or Democratic administrations, you find increasing skepticism about whether the war is winnable.
Haass, for example, worked for two Republican presidents, Gelb for two Democrats. "I do think opinion is shifting that way," agreed Haass, who favored a robust military intervention in Afghanistan in his Bush administration days. (In 2001, he argued for sending more troops to Kabul to do nation-building; Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sent them to Iraq instead.).
They cite three main reasons for their escalating pessimism. The first: setbacks (including a major offensive in Kandahar that was scheduled to be in full swing by now but is only getting underway). Next: Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s failure to support a U.S.-sponsored anti-corruption campaign. And finally, there’s that $100-billion annual price tag.
Why do the views of these mandarins matter? Not because they are "opinion leaders," as they are sometimes called; their opinions are lagging behind most of the public, which has already gone sour on the war.
Where the foreign policy intellectuals make a difference is when they offer not mere opinions but full-blown policy proposals – in this case, to explain how a different, less ambitious strategy in Afghanistan might work. That gives proponents of change something to work with.
Advance copies of the 12-page report of the Afghanistan Study Group, for example, went to the White House earlier last week, where they were being read by at least some of the officials who will be running President Obama’s official review of his Afghan strategy in December.
The report proposes ending U.S. military operations in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is strongest, and seeking a power-sharing deal with the Islamist militants. Blackwill, the former Bush aide, has proposed a more radical variation of that scheme: dividing Afghanistan in two and allowing the Taliban to rule the south as long as it doesn’t allow Al Qaeda back into the country. Haass proposes a softer "decentralization," giving U.S. aid to local leaders who agree to fight Al Qaeda but abandoning the effort to build a strong central government. Gelb makes a similar proposal, including a two-year troop drawdown from the current 100,000 to about 15,000.
None of these new ideas is obviously right, of course, and none of them has won the debate yet. There are still plenty of supporters for Gen. David H. Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy, which calls for training thousands of Afghan troops and holding off the Taliban until they are ready to take over – although, in the face of setbacks, some counterinsurgency boosters have sounded distinctly tepid recently about the chances of success.
But as Obama approaches a December review of his strategy in Afghanistan, the debate is noticeably opening up, driven in part by the weight of that $100-billion cost.
[…]
2) Security in Afghanistan Is Deteriorating, Aid Groups Say
Rod Nordland, New York Times, September 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/world/asia/12afghan.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – Even as more American troops flow into the country, Afghanistan is more dangerous than it has ever been during this war, with security deteriorating in recent months, according to international organizations and humanitarian groups.
Large parts of the country that were once completely safe, like most of the northern provinces, now have a substantial Taliban presence – even in areas where there are few Pashtuns, who previously were the Taliban’s only supporters. As NATO forces poured in and shifted to the south to battle the Taliban in their stronghold, the Taliban responded with a surge of their own, greatly increasing their activities in the north and parts of the east.
The worsening security comes as the Obama administration is under increasing pressure to show results to maintain public support for the war, and raises serious concerns about whether the country can hold legitimate nationwide elections for Parliament next Saturday.
Unarmed government employees can no longer travel safely in 30 percent of the country’s 368 districts, according to published United Nations estimates, and there are districts deemed too dangerous to visit in all but one of the country’s 34 provinces.
The number of insurgent attacks has increased significantly; in August 2009, insurgents carried out 630 attacks. This August, they initiated at least 1,353, according to the Afghan N.G.O. Safety Office, an independent organization financed by Western governments and agencies to monitor safety for aid workers.
[…] American military officials say the increased level of violence is related to the rise in the number of its forces here. The last 2,000 of 30,000 new American troops are expected to arrive in the next week or two, military officials say. The result is more military operations, they say, and more opportunities for the insurgents to attack coalition forces.
That does not entirely explain the increased activity of the Taliban in areas where they were seldom seen before, and where the coalition presence is light, however.
[…] The Afghan N.G.O. Safety Office says that by almost every metric it has, Afghanistan is more dangerous now than at any time since 2001. The most recent troop buildup comes in response to steady advances by the Taliban. Four years ago, the insurgents were active in only four provinces. Now they are active in 33 of 34, the organizations say.
"We do not support the perspective that this constitutes ‘things getting worse before they get better,’ " said Nic Lee, director of the Afghan N.G.O. Safety Office, "but rather see it as being consistent with the five-year trend of things just getting worse."
[…] Because of the lack of security, CARE, like many humanitarian groups, no longer uses the country’s principal highway, the Grand Trunk Road connecting Kabul, the capital, to Peshawar in Pakistan. CARE has 10 offices around the country to manage its 1,000 employees, but its own international staff members can safely visit only four or five of them, according to a spokeswoman, Jennifer Rowell.
Likewise, there is no longer an Oxfam sign on display in the entire country, although the British-based aid group finances projects in scores of villages, mostly staffed by Afghans. "Most N.G.O.’s don’t send foreigners to most places any longer," said Ashley Jackson, head of policy and advocacy for Oxfam in Kabul, referring to nongovernmental organizations. Like many major aid groups, Oxfam now subcontracts much of its work in the provinces to partners, usually Afghan aid groups.
The threat to government workers is just as severe. Last month, Afghan police and army officials asked the Independent Election Commission to cancel 938 of its proposed 6,835 polling centers, almost 14 percent, because it could not guarantee security for those areas. Polling places in 25 provinces were affected.
On Tuesday the election commission said it would cancel 81 other polling sites, nearly a fifth of the polling places in eastern Nangarhar Province, which was relatively safe during last year’s presidential election. The commission has warned that it may have to close still more polling centers in other provinces if the authorities cannot provide adequate security for voters.
Only 500 international observers are coming to monitor these elections, compared with more than a thousand last year, according to Jindad Spinghar of the Free and Fair Election Foundation. International observers will be able to go only to provincial capitals, not rural areas, where most of the population lives, he said. The election foundation, the leading Afghan monitoring group, has had to cut back its own observers, who will be watching only 60 percent of polling places.
"Because the control of the central government is decreasing," Mr. Spinghar said, "power brokers and warlords will be able to use their influence at the local level, where there are no observers." It was in just such areas in 2009 that widespread voting fraud took place, resulting in a disputed and internationally discredited presidential election.
[…]
3) Okinawa city elections reveal strengthening anti-U.S. base stance
David Allen and Chiyomi Sumida, Stars and Stripes, September 13, 2010
http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/japan/okinawa-city-elections-reveal-strengthening-anti-u-s-base-stance-1.118002
Ginowan, Okinawa – Opposition to a plan to relocate military air operations to Camp Schwab from Marine Corps Air Station Futenma is growing stronger and becoming more polarized, according to results of Nago city assembly elections Sunday.
U.S. base opponents in the northern Okinawa city that hosts Camp Schwab won a 60 percent majority in the elections. Of 27 seats, anti-base candidates won 16 seats and 11 went to pro-base candidates. Before the election, the city assembly consisted of 12 anti-base members and 12 who were considered pro-base, with three members neutral on the issue.
The Nago vote boosts the power of Mayor Susumu Inamine, who was elected on an anti-base platform last January.
[…] Although the mayor and city assembly have no powers to block the move, Sunday’s election shows it will be difficult for the national government to win local understanding, let alone acceptance, for the Futenma relocation project.
"It’s like scoring an insurance run [in a baseball game]," Masaaki Gabe, professor of International Relations and director of the International Okinawa Studies at the University of the Ryukyus, said Monday. "Securing the majority in the council makes it easier for Inamine to pursue his agenda."
The election could also affect the Okinawa governor’s race, where Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima, who reluctantly supported the relocation plan in 2006 but now says he’s opposed to it, faces Ginowan Mayor Yoichi Iha, a fervent opponent of the project. That election is scheduled for Nov. 28.
Okinawa’s governor can hinder the progress of the relocation plan by refusing to allow dumping tons of landfill into Oura Bay, known as the northernmost feeding ground of the endangered dugong, a saltwater manatee. If the governor refuses to approve the landfill project, the national government would have to pass special legislation to bypass his veto.
[…]
4) Torture and abuse rife in Iraq jails, Amnesty report says
Study finds prisoners, many detained by US forces, being held without rights by Iraqi security forces
Martin Chulov, Guardian, Monday 13 September 2010 12.05 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/13/torture-abuse-iraq-jails-amnesty
Up to 30,000 prisoners, including many veterans of the US detention system, are being held without rights in Iraq and are frequently tortured or abused according to a report by Amnesty International.
The study has found that the human rights situation remains dire in Iraq, with arbitrary arrests and secret detention common, as well as a lack of accountability throughout the security forces. The abuses are systemic, the report claims, with alleged victims having little redress or access to trial – in many cases for longer than two years.
The allegations are released today in a report titled New Order, Same Abuses; Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq. They come as the US military disengages from Iraq and as US diplomats paint a picture of a nascent state, gradually coming to terms with its human rights obligations.
Amnesty’s report instead describes a detention system that has not evolved since Saddam Hussein’s regime, in which human rights abuses were endemic.
"Iraq’s security forces have been responsible for systematically violating detainees’ rights and they have been permitted," said Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa director, Malcolm Smart. "US authorities, whose own record on detainees’ rights has been so poor, have now handed over thousands of people detained by US forces to face this catalogue of illegality, violence and abuse, abdicating any responsibility for their human rights."
[…]
5) As Time Passes, The Goals In Afghanistan Shrink
Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, September 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/weekinreview/12mazzetti.html
Washington – Nine years ago, after an American-led invasion of Afghanistan had dispatched the Taliban from Kabul within weeks, the idea of remaking a tangled mess like Afghanistan didn’t seem, to some, so far-fetched.
Nine months ago, when President Obama addressed a group of cadets at West Point, little of that early optimism about what was achievable in Afghanistan remained. And yet there was fresh hope that a new strategy and 30,000 additional troops might help wrest momentum away from the Taliban and bolster support for President Hamid Karzai’s fragile government.
Now, it seems that American goals are becoming narrower still, with time dwindling before a military withdrawal is to begin next year, and frustration mounting at the war’s costs and at rampant corruption in the Karzai government.
At the center of debate in Washington is a simple question: At this point, what can the United States really hope to achieve in Afghanistan?
The question will shape every decision the administration makes about Afghanistan, from the pace of the military drawdown to whether anticorruption efforts are either embraced as essential or dismissed as "mission creep."
The testing ground informing these decisions right now is the critical city of Kandahar; there, American hopes rest on a long-delayed push into Afghanistan’s second city and the birthplace of the Taliban. Some liken that offensive to a "Hail Mary" pass, with the Taliban still entrenched throughout southern and eastern Afghanistan and a program to persuade Talib soldiers to lay down arms and be "reintegrated" into Afghan society having achieved little so far.
[…] "We’ve sort of backed ourselves into a corner by putting effective governance at the forefront," said Andrew Exum, a retired Army officer, now at the Center for a New American Security, who was a civilian adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former commander in Afghanistan. "Unless you are prepared to stay in Afghanistan with high troop levels for at least a decade, then an overt campaign to tackle corruption is a big mistake."
[…]
Afghanistan
6) Karzai rift prompts U.S. to reevaluate anti-corruption strategy in Afghanistan
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Monday, September 13, 2010; 3:18 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/12/AR2010091203883.html
Senior Obama administration officials have concluded they need to step back from promoting American-style law enforcement as the main means of fighting corruption in Afghanistan because of the rift it has caused with President Hamid Karzai.
President Obama’s top national security advisers, who will meet with him this week to discuss the problem, do not yet agree on the contours of a new approach, according to U.S. civilian and military officials involved in Afghanistan policy. But the officials said there is a growing consensus that key corruption cases against people in Karzai’s government should be resolved with face-saving compromises behind closed doors instead of public prosecutions.
"The current approach is not tenable," said an administration official who, like others interviewed, agreed to discuss internal deliberations only on the condition of anonymity. "What will we get out of it? We’ll arrest a few mid-level Afghans, but we’ll lose our ability to operate there and achieve our principal goals."
[…] The debate turns largely on how various administration officials view the connection between corruption and the insurgency.
Some officials, principally at the staff level, contend that government venality and incompetence is the principal reason Afghans are joining, supporting or tolerating the Taliban. Other administration and military officials, particularly those at senior levels, maintain that graft is just one of many factors – along with sanctuaries in Pakistan, historical tribal grievances and anger at the presence of foreign forces on Afghan soil – that fuel the conflict.
Compounding the challenge is that many Afghan officials who are regarded as corrupt also provide valuable assistance to U.S. forces, including sensitive intelligence. Some, including the palace aide, are on the CIA’s payroll – a fact not initially known to investigators working on the case. "There’s been the schizophrenia that we haven’t been able to resolve," the administration official said. "We want to fight corruption, but we also want to use these guys."
The National Security Council recently ordered all U.S. agencies involved in Afghanistan, including the CIA, to list whom they are paying, according to a senior administration official working on Afghanistan policy. The effort, which even extends to U.S. Agency for International Development funds going to governors so they can hire administrative staff, is designed to identify double-dipping but also to ensure "we’re not speaking out of both sides of our mouth," the senior official said.
For those who view corruption as a central issue, the challenge is what to do about it. The Afghan constitution effectively allows the president to select province and district governors, as well as local police chiefs. That has created what some U.S. government analysts call a "pyramid of corruption" in which some local officials have to pay semiannual bribes to more senior officials, ranging from $50,000 to $150,000, to maintain their positions. To raise those funds, the local officials shake down the population, which helps drive some of them to the Taliban. The analysts contend that much of that money eventually makes its way to Karzai’s cronies, who deposit it in offshore accounts they control.
But structural changes to limit incentives for graft are unlikely to occur before July, when Obama intends to begin reducing the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
[…] The administration official said the State Department and the Pentagon were "caught off-guard" by the decision to conduct a middle-of-the-night raid to arrest the Karzai aide in late July. "These kinds of raids are inherently political issues that need to be discussed at the highest levels of our government before they are carried out," the official said.
[…] Law enforcement advisers have maintained in internal discussions among U.S. officials that raids are necessary to prevent suspects from fleeing. They note that the country’s former minister of Islamic affairs was able to flee the country after being accused of extorting millions of dollars from companies seeking contracts to transport religious pilgrims. "Perhaps that’s good enough for Afghanistan," said a U.S. official working on corruption issues in Kabul. "Sure, he isn’t in jail, but he’s no longer in a position to steal. We should see that as a victory."
Several U.S. officials in Washington and Kabul have taken to citing as a possible model the approach Gen. David H. Petraeus took in dealing with cases of corrupt government conduct in Iraq while he was the top commander there. "It was never in public and it was always behind closed doors, and it was always aimed at [Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] taking ownership of whatever solution was devised," said retired Col. Peter Mansoor, Petraeus’s former executive officer in Baghdad. "We knew if it was forced on them, there would be push-back and it would be a matter of face and honor."
Petraeus already has taken steps to assert more control over how corruption investigations are coordinated and implemented. He has asked Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, a counterinsurgency expert, to lead an interagency task force on Afghan graft. There is a growing view at the U.S. and NATO headquarters in Kabul that "the law enforcement approach to corruption mucks up our strategic interests," said the U.S. official there.
That official and several others who have concluded the current strategy is not working said they do not want the FBI and DEA teams to go home or tone down their investigative work. At issue is what happens after they generate clear evidence of wrongdoing against government officials and others who are close to Karzai. "We need to go to Karzai privately and let him find a face-saving way to deal with it," a senior military official said. "Public confrontation gets him into a defensive crouch. Private confrontation may be more effective."
7) Taliban increasingly eyeing its role in politics
Ernesto Londono, Washington Post, Monday, September 13, 2010; 1:59 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091303595.html
Kabul – Although Taliban leaders have denounced Afghanistan’s parliamentary election and threatened violence at the polls on Saturday, some are discreetly making overtures to candidates, apparently in hopes of building political clout in Kabul, according to the top United Nations envoy here and some Afghan politicians. "Any indication that they’re moving from bullets to ballots, as imperfect as it might be, is a good indicator," said Staffan de Mistura, who previously served as the top U.N. representative in Iraq and took over here in March.
Speaking in an interview at his Kabul office, de Mistura said insurgent leaders in Afghanistan could be trying to bolster their political standing in anticipation of a reconciliation process Afghan President Hamid Karzai is hoping to jump-start this fall.
"That’s exactly the type of thing that happened in Iraq at a certain point," de Mistura said, referring to the period after the 2007 U.S. troop surge, when political factions with armed wings started putting more stock in deal-making than in fighting. "People started discussing, arguing, compromising, negotiating, making deals on a political level, using the political game plan rather than bombs and explosions. In that sense, these elections could be helpful."
[…] Daoud Sultanzoy, a member of parliament from the violence-ridden province of Ghazni said Taliban leaders have shown an unprecedented level of interest in the political process in the run-up to this election. "It’s not an emphatic endorsement of the process yet," he said. "But there are gestures suggesting they want to be on both sides. They’re keeping their military options open and gently feeling their way into the political system, opening their horizons and seeing what’s there."
International election experts and Afghan politicians say that reaching deals with insurgents is the only way some candidates are able to campaign in Taliban-controlled districts. Insecurity in the country, they say, is far worse than it was during the 2005 parliamentary election and last year’s presidential vote. "In order for campaigns and candidates to be effective, they need the good graces of local power-brokers or anti-government elements," said Jed Ober, the chief of staff in Kabul of Democracy International, an election monitoring organization.
Khalid Pashtoon, a lawmaker from the southern province of Kandahar, said security threats have prevented him from campaigning outside the provincial capital. "Zero," he said in a phone interview from his campaign headquarters in Kandahar city. "Not a single visit. I cannot." He said, however, that candidates who belong to "pro-Taliban tribes," appear to have worked out safe passage agreements. "No one is harming them," Pashtoon said. "That in itself is an indication that there is sympathy between them."
[…] Karzai is attempting to reach a negotiated truce with the Taliban, an effort the government hopes will gain traction after the election. De Mistura said he had a "hunch" the peace talks would start in earnest between November and December.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
8) Response Is Cautious to Israel’s Settlements Signal
Isabel Kershner, New York Times, September 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/world/middleeast/14mideast.html
Jerusalem – Palestinian officials were guarded on Monday in their response to signals a day earlier from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he was ready to limit construction in the West Bank settlements after a partial building moratorium expires later this month.
Palestinian leaders have threatened that a renewal of Israeli construction in the settlements would spell the end of the negotiations, and while Mr. Netanyahu seemed to be seeking a compromise, such as allowing construction of limited scope, perhaps only in certain areas, Palestinian officials made it clear that no understanding had yet been reached.
Peace Now, the advocacy group that opposes Jewish settlement in areas beyond the 1967 boundaries, said in a new report that more than 2,000 housing units were awaiting immediate construction after the moratorium, which is due to expire on Sept. 26, and that plans for at least another 11,000 housing units had already received full government approval.
Plans for some 25,000 additional housing units need further government approval to be realized, the report said.
Mr. Netanyahu said on Sunday that after the moratorium expires on Sept. 26, Israel would "not build all the tens of thousands of housing units that are waiting in the planning pipeline," but that there would not be "zero building," as the Palestinians want.
Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian negotiator, said that the plethora of statements coming from Mr. Netanyahu, Peace Now and others was "confusing," and that the Palestinians were waiting to see the Israeli prime minister in Sharm el-Sheik. "But from what we hear, we see no reason to change our position," Mr. Shaath said, speaking by telephone from that Egyptian resort. "Unless there is a real freeze on settlement construction, we cannot continue with negotiations."
Mr. Shaath added that the Palestinians have experienced compromise formulas on settlement construction in the past, and that they ended up being "cover-ups for an unlimited amount of expansion that is very difficult to assess and track."
Another Palestinian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue, said any resumption of construction "will fill the news, embarrass the Palestinian negotiators and weaken them further, which will not be good for anybody."
The 10-month moratorium, which allowed for the construction of public buildings and the completion of thousands of housing units already under construction, and which excluded East Jerusalem, was already a compromise, he said.
[…]
Iraq
9) More Post-Combat U.S. Gunfire In Iraq
Timothy Williams, New York Times, September 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html
Baghdad – American military units fired on insurgents while supporting Iraqi troops northeast of the capital on Sunday, Iraqi officials said. It was the second such episode since the United States declared an end to its combat operations in Iraq less than two weeks ago.
There were no American casualties in the fighting in Hudaidy, a village about 50 miles from Baghdad that has long harbored members of the Sunni insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
Iraqi security officials said three people were killed: an Iraqi soldier, an Iraqi police officer and an insurgent. Ten people were wounded.
[…]
Jamaica
10) Unions to Gov’t: Renegotiate IMF agreement
Alicia Dunkley, Jamaica Observer, Sunday, September 12, 2010
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Unions-to-Gov-t–Renegotiate-IMF-agreement_7954616
The 27-month Stand-by Arrangement that the Government inked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in January this year is now under question by the entire trade union movement.
"I believe we may have to renegotiate the 27-month IMF arrangement. We may have to look at that agreement and see how it can be tweaked over longer periods with conditions that are much more palatable, because we are not going to accept that the workers should stay without a wage adjustment for the entire life of that arrangement. It is unfair to us. It’s not only unfair but it is dangerous, it is not helping the economy," president of the National Workers Union Vincent Morrison told the Observer Press Club on Friday.
According to the NWU head, this was the general feeling among the entire trade union body. Morrison said the contention is that the administration, before signing the deal which has stringent requirements on government spending, should have left some ‘wiggle room’ for the increases due to public sector workers under previously agreed contractual arrangements. He also said the unions were not going to accept that the wage increases could not be given during the life of the IMF arrangement.
[…] "If you lock the economy and for the next five years nobody can get a wage adjustment the economy will collapse, because wage increases is the lubricant. The Government seems to not be able to understand that. In that perspective we believe the agreement should be looked at," Morrison argued further.
He said the news that Jamaica has so far been acing the quarterly tests administered by the IMF was small comfort as jobs are not being created.
"When you talk to companies in the private sector they tell you demand has been down some 30 to 40 per cent," said Morrison. "The layoffs and the redundancies continue in a number of firms; some we hear about, some we don’t. What I am saying is, you negotiated an agreement with the IMF, the IMF must understand that you have a seven per cent, legally, contractually binding agreement with the workers, so therefore the IMF must understand and accept that. I am at a loss why the Government did not insist."
[…]
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Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
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