JFP 10/6: WaPo reports on Taliban talks

Just Foreign Policy News
October 6, 2010

Why Can’t Haitians Get a Fair Election?
On November 28, Haitians are expected to participate in an election from which Haiti’s largest political party has been arbitrarily excluded, an election paid for by U.S. tax dollars. Shouldn’t it be a no-brainer that the U.S. shouldn’t pay for an election in Haiti that is profoundly anti-democratic? Representative Maxine Waters is circulating a letter to Secretary of State Clinton urging that the U.S. not pay for an election in Haiti from which Haiti’s largest political party has been excluded. If you agree, ask your Representative to sign the Waters letter for fair elections in Haiti. [At last report, the letter had 40 signers.] http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/05-7

Robert Greenwald: The Afghanistan War’s Tenth Year Must Be Its Last
Filmmaker Robert Greenwald marks the beginning of year 10.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/the-afghanistan-wars-tent_b_752782.html

Correction
Yesterday’s JFP News had an editing error. An item about a poll of Palestinian public opinion should have read: "A poll conducted Thursday through Saturday by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed two-thirds of the Palestinian public favored ending talks with Israel because of the resumption of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, the New York Times reports." Thanks to the readers who called this to our attention.

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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Taliban representatives and the government of President Karzai have begun high-level talks over a negotiated end to the war, the Washington Post reports. Sources said the Quetta Shura has begun to talk about a comprehensive agreement that would include participation of some Taliban figures in the government and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops on an agreed timeline. Afghan, Arab and European sources said they see a distinct change of heart by the Obama administration toward full backing of negotiations, the Post says.

Sources said the administration only recently appeared open to talks rather than resisting them. Europeans said the US shift began in the summer, as combat intensified with smaller-than-expected NATO gains despite the arrival of the full complement of new U.S. troops, amid rising U.S. public opposition to the war. "What it really boils down to is the Americans both supporting and in some cases maybe even participating in talking with the enemy," a European official said. "If you strip everything away, that’s the deal here." Whatever domestic political difficulties the administration may fear would result from a negotiated deal with the Taliban, the official said, would be resolved by ending the war earlier rather than later. "A successful policy solves the political problem," he said.

The administration is under pressure to show progress in resolving the war before the deadline Obama has set of beginning a troop withdrawal next summer, the Post says. If the hypothetical endpoint is "that by July next year something will have to be clear," said Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. representative in Afghanistan, the various players had to start thinking about how they were going to get there. "There is no military solution," de Mistura said. "We all know it. And by the way, the Taliban knows it too. . . . And there is only one format for the next months. . . . It is political dialogue, reconciliation, deal." De Mistura and the US’ European partners have urged the administration to reach out more forcefully to other countries in the region – including Russia, India and Iran – to become part of a negotiated solution in Afghanistan.

2) White House Press Secretary Gibbs said the Obama administration is "supportive" of "the nature of" reconciliation talks between Karzai’s government and the Taliban, McClatchy reports. But he said the U.S. isn’t directly participating in such talks. Gibbs said for the U.S. to formally support any agreement down the road "largely requires a reununciation of al Qaeda, following Afghan law and renouncing violence."

3) US officials for the first time offered an explicit apology to Pakistan over a US shooting of Pakistani soldiers that led to the closing of a border crossing, the New York Times reports. Dozens of tanker trucks carrying fuel to Afghanistan for NATO troops were torched near Quetta in western Pakistan on Wednesday.

4) Some Central Asian jihadists are leaving Pakistan for home, in part under pressure of US drone attacks, Newsweek reports. But the dislodged jihadists aren’t quitting the battlefield. On the contrary, they’re setting up camp in Tajikistan to attack NATO supply lines, Newsweek says.

5) The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria failed to reach even its lowest "austerity level" fund-raising target which it had said it needed just to keep putting patients on treatment at current rates, the New York Times reports. AIDS activists vented frustration both with the overall result and the US contribution, which they said took pressure off other donors. A US official said getting the US to agree to a 3-year commitment was a major accomplishment.

Pakistan
6) UNHCR’s Pakistan representative said Pakistan’s stability was at stake unless international aid accelerates to help about 20 million Pakistanis hit by devastating floods, The News reports from Pakistan. UNHCR said shelter and recovery for hundreds of thousands of people was still short. Donors have so far funded one-third of the $2 billion UN aid appeal, while the UNHCR’s shelter needs are only half-funded.

Israel/Palestine
7) Writing in Haaretz, Amira Hass reports on the case of a 47-year-old Palestinian woman from Al-Bireh who is being denied permission by Israeli military authorities to travel to Jordan for urgent medical tests.

8) An internet video of a male Israeli soldier belly dancing around a bound and blindfolded female prisoner provoked a furious response from the Palestinians, AFP reports. "This is a disgusting illustration of the sick mentality of the occupier. This is not an isolated incident," said a statement from Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad. "With the advent of easy-to-use media like YouTube, the truth is coming to light about a culture of humiliation of the Palestinians," the statement said.

Colombia
9) Colombia’s Inspector General confirmed that no emails, only Word documents, were found on the computers of slain FARC commander Raul Reyes, notes Colombia Reports. The statement contradicts numerous allegations of the government of former President Uribe and media reports that mentioned emails between the country’s largest rebel group and politicians like the recently dismissed Senator Piedad Cordoba.

10) The Body Shop is breaking commercial links with Daabon Organic, a major palm oil supplier, in the wake of disclosures that the company had pushed for the eviction of hundreds of peasants in Colombia to develop a new plantation, the Observer reports. The decision has been hailed as a victory by peasant farmers who are still trying to return to their land. Catherine Bouley of Christian Aid applauded the Body Shop’s decision, but added that the dispute still goes on. "We very much hope Daabon will heed the very strong signal sent by the Body Shop, that their behavior is unacceptable," she said.

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Taliban in high-level talks with Karzai government, sources say
Karen DeYoung, Peter Finn and Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, Wednesday, October 6, 2010; 10:36 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/05/AR2010100506249.html

Taliban representatives and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai have begun secret, high-level talks over a negotiated end to the war, according to Afghan and Arab sources.

The talks follow inconclusive meetings, hosted by Saudi Arabia, that ended more than a year ago. While emphasizing the preliminary nature of the current discussions, the sources said that for the first time they believe that Taliban representatives are fully authorized to speak for the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban organization based in Pakistan, and its leader, Mohammad Omar. "They are very, very serious about finding a way out," one source close to the talks said of the Taliban.

Although Omar’s representatives have long publicly insisted that negotiations were impossible until all foreign troops withdraw, a position seemingly buoyed by the Taliban’s resilience on the battlefield, sources said the Quetta Shura has begun to talk about a comprehensive agreement that would include participation of some Taliban figures in the government and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops on an agreed timeline.
[…] A half-dozen sources directly involved in or on the margins of the secret talks agreed to discuss them on the condition of anonymity. All emphasized their preliminary nature, even as they differed on how specific they have been. All expressed concern that any public description of the meetings would undercut them. "If you talk about it while you’re doing it, it’s not going to work," said one European official whose country has troops in Afghanistan.

Several sources said the discussions with the Quetta Shura do not include representatives of the Haqqani group, a separately led faction that U.S. intelligence considers particularly brutal and that has been the target of recently escalated U.S. drone attacks in northwestern Pakistan.

The Haqqani group is seen as more closely tied to the Pakistani intelligence service than the Quetta Shura, based in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan. But one Afghan source, reflecting tension between the two governments, said Pakistan’s insistence on a central role in any negotiations has made talks difficult even with the Quetta group. "They try to keep very tight control," this source said of the Pakistanis.

Reports of the talks come amid what Afghan, Arab and European sources said they see as a distinct change of heart by the Obama administration toward full backing of negotiations. Although President Obama and his national security team have long said the war would not be won by military means alone, sources said the administration only recently appeared open to talks rather than resisting them.

"We did not have consensus, and there were some who thought they could do it militarily," said a second European official. The Europeans said the American shift began in the summer, as combat intensified with smaller-than-expected NATO gains despite the arrival of the full complement of new U.S. troops, amid rising U.S. public opposition to the war.

The United States’ European partners in Afghanistan, with different histories and under far stronger domestic pressure to withdraw their troops, have always been more amenable to a negotiated settlement. "What it really boils down to is the Americans both supporting and in some cases maybe even participating in talking with the enemy," the first European official said. "If you strip everything away, that’s the deal here. For so long, politically, it’s been a deal breaker in the United States, and with some people it still is."

Whatever domestic political difficulties the administration may fear would result from a negotiated deal with the Taliban, this official said, would be resolved by ending the war earlier rather than later. "A successful policy solves the political problem," he said.

U.S. officials depicted a somewhat different progression leading to the same conclusion, insisting that the time for real negotiations has only now arrived.
[…] The administration is under pressure to show progress in resolving the war before the deadline Obama has set of beginning a troop withdrawal next summer. "We all concur that this is a critical year in Afghanistan," Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. representative in Afghanistan, said in remarks last week at the International Peace Institute in New York.

If the hypothetical endpoint is "that by July next year something will have to be clear," he said, the various players had to start thinking about how they were going to get there. "There is no military solution," he said. "We all know it. And by the way, the Taliban knows it too. . . . And there is only one format for the next months. . . . It is political dialogue, reconciliation, deal."

He predicted "very rough months" ahead, "when the maximum pressure is being exercised . . . by both sides at the same time in order to have a better position in terms of the so-called dialogue." Among the potential roadblocks, he cited opposition from a resurgent Northern Alliance, the non-Pashtuns who overthrew the Taliban with U.S. assistance in 2001, and division of the Taliban into "several groups."

De Mistura and the United States’ European partners have urged the administration to reach out more forcefully to other countries in the region – including Russia, India and Iran – to become part of a negotiated solution in Afghanistan.

"In Iran, publicly they say the [foreign] troops have to go," said one European official who met recently with officials in Tehran. "But they know that if we leave without an arrangement, there will be trouble for them."
[…]

2) White House: U.S. supports but not participating in Afghan-Taliban talks
Margaret Talev, McClatchy, October 6, 2010, 11:40 AM
http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/washington/2010/10/white-house-us-supports-but-not-participating-in-afghan-taliban-talks.html

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the Obama administration is "supportive" of "the nature of" reconciliation talks between Hamid Karzai’s government and the Taliban to try to end the violence and instability there. But he said the U.S. isn’t directly participating in such talks.
[…] Gibbs said for the U.S. to formally support any agreement down the road "largely requires a reununciation of al Qaeda, following Afghan law and renouncing violence."

3) U.S. Apologizes as Attacks in Pakistan Continue
Jane Perlez and Waqar Gillani, New York Times, October 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/world/asia/07pstan.html

Islamabad, Pakistan – Dozens of tanker trucks carrying fuel to Afghanistan for NATO troops were torched near Quetta in western Pakistan on Wednesday, the third major attack on supplies since Pakistan closed a border crossing to Afghanistan a week ago and the first at the only checkpoint that remained open.

The latest sabotage came as American officials for the first time offered an explicit apology to Pakistan over a shooting that led to the closing of the other border crossing, possibly laying the ground work for its reopening.

At least one person was killed in the Quetta torchings after three carloads of gunmen fired at the tankers and then burned them, the police said.
[…] In a sign that the government was continuing to distance itself from the attacks, the police chief in Quetta, Malik Muhammad Iqbal said it was not the responsibility of the government to provide security for the convoys. In the past few days, senior police officers have said the safety of the trucks lay with the fleet owners who had signed contracts with NATO.

The standoff between the government and NATO continued on Wednesday with no definitive word from Pakistan about when the border at Torkham in the Khyber region would be reopened.

That crossing was closed last week in protest over NATO helicopter strikes against a mountainous border post at Khurram manned by Pakistani paramilitary soldiers.

But in a sign of possible movement, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said a joint assessment with Pakistan showed that NATO helicopter crews had shot at Pakistani border forces in the Sept. 30 strikes, thinking that they were responding to enemy fire.

The statement was notable in that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander, said, "We deeply regret this tragic loss of life and will continue to work with the Pakistan military and government to ensure this doesn’t happen again."

An even more explicit apology was offered by the United States ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson. "We extend our deepest apology to Pakistan and the families of the Frontier scouts who were killed and injured" Ms. Patterson said. "Pakistan’s brave security forces are our allies in a war that threatens both Pakistan and the U.S."

It was not immediately unclear if the statements would appease Pakistan.
[…]

4) More ‘Jihadistans’?
Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, Newsweek, October 03, 2010
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/03/another-jihadistan-in-afghan-province-of-kunduz.html

Taliban sources in Afghanistan say jihadist allies from Central Asia have started heading home. Though the exodus is being encouraged by relentless American drone attacks against the fighters’ back bases in Pakistan’s tribal areas, it’s not necessarily good news for U.S. forces. The dislodged jihadists aren’t quitting the battlefield; on the contrary, they’re expanding their range across the unguarded northern Afghan border into Tajikistan to create new Taliban sanctuaries there, assist Islamist rebels in the region, and potentially imperil the Americans’ northern supply lines.

The Central Asians retreated to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the late 1990s after failing to topple their home governments. Now they seem ready to try again, using guerrilla tactics and know-how they’ve picked up from the Taliban about improvised explosive devices. Small groups of Tajik and Uzbek militants began moving into Tajikistan in late winter 2009, says a Taliban subcommander in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz. In Kunduz they joined up with fighters from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Qaeda-linked group active there and in Tajikistan.
[…] The loss of troop strength for the Taliban is more than offset by a rush of young Afghans joining up. An Afghan government official in Kunduz’s Emam Saheb district, requesting anonymity to talk about internal power dynamics, says insurgents now have near-total control of the province’s northern frontier.

At the same time, rebel violence has surged in Tajikistan. In late August, Tajik militants staged a jailbreak in the capital, Dushanbe, freeing more than two dozen IMU operatives and political dissidents. (The escapees fled to Taliban-held areas in Kunduz, the Afghan provincial governor, Muhammad Omar, tells Newsweek.) Soon after the prison break, a suicide bomber hit police headquarters in the city of Khujand, killing two officers and wounding about 30. And on Sept. 19, a force estimated at more than 100 fighters mounted Tajikistan’s largest rebel attack in more than a decade, ambushing a Tajik military convoy and killing at least 25 Tajik soldiers.

5) Global Fight Against AIDS Falters as Pledges Fail to Reach Goal of $13 Billion
Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times, October 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/world/africa/06aids.html

In another signal that the global battle against AIDS is falling apart for lack of money, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria failed on Tuesday to reach even its lowest "austerity level" fund-raising target of $13 billion – the amount it had said it needed just to keep putting patients on treatment at current rates.

Three-year pledges from 40 countries attending a two-day conference held in Manhattan amounted to $11.7 billion. The pledges were announced at the United Nations. The fund had hoped to raise $20 billion to catch up with the growing epidemic.

No one now on treatment will be cut off, said Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, the fund’s executive director, but the targets for the next few years must be lowered. He said that he "deeply appreciates" the amount raised, but that "we need to recognize that it’s not enough to meet expected demand and will lead to difficult decisions in the next three years." He could not, he said, estimate exactly how many deaths would result.
[…] The United States pledged $4 billion, which is a nearly 40 percent increase over its previous contribution. It is by far the most generous donor, and most countries raised their contributions by less.

France, Canada and Norway went up by 20 percent, Japan by 28 percent. Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands could not commit because of budget cycles, but were expected to be in that ballpark; Italy and Spain gave nothing. South Africa, which has the world’s worst AIDS epidemic, made a token contribution of $2 million. Russia and China gave $60 million and $14 million respectively, far less than fund officials had hoped. To reach the fund’s $20 billion goal, all countries would have had to roughly double their giving.

AIDS activists vented open frustration, both with the overall result and the American contribution. "This is a modest course correction, not what we were hoping for in terms of U.S. leadership," said Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, an advocacy group that had lobbied the administration for a $6 billion contribution. "This took the other donors off the hook. Everyone could aim low." By not reaching a decision earlier, he complained, the United States dithered away its leverage over other countries.

Under American law, the United States can contribute only one-third of the fund. If it had told other donors privately weeks ago that it intended a 40 percent increase, they would have been under pressure to match that, both to avoid sounding cheap, and because the United States cannot pay unless its donation is matched 2 to 1.

Dr. Eric Goosby, the global AIDS coordinator, said the intra-administration debate about how much to pledge was "robust" and went on right up until Tuesday morning. "We’re proud of the pledge," Dr. Goosby said in a telephone interview. Getting the United States, which has a one-year budget cycle, to commit to a three-year pledge was "swimming upstream," especially in such a weak economy.
[…]

Pakistan
6) Pakistan stability in play with flood aid: UNHCR official
The News (Pakistan), 1915 PST, Tuesday, October 05, 2010
http://www.thenews.com.pk/latest-news/2403.htm

Geneva: A UN refugee official suggested on Tuesday that Pakistan’s geopolitical stability was at stake unless international aid accelerates to help about 20 million Pakistanis hit by devastating floods.

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that the situation remained "critically difficult" in some areas, while shelter and recovery for hundreds of thousands of people was still short nearly 10 weeks since flooding began.

"We need to draw the international community’s attention that the emergency in Pakistan is not over," said Mengesha Kebede, the UNHCR’s representative in the country. "Making sure 20 million people are rehabilitated I think is an international obligation: we are looking at a geopolitical situation where the stability of Pakistan we feel is in everybody’s interest," he told journalists in Geneva.

Donors have so far funded just one-third of the 2.0 billion dollar UN aid appeal, while the UNHCR’s shelter needs are only half funded, a situation Kebede dismissed as "unacceptable."
[…] UNHCR is also caring for the world’s largest refugee population in Pakistan, some 1.7 million Afghan refugees, many of whom were in flood hit areas. Another 1.2 million Pakistanis are still displaced by conflict in the northern Khyber Phatunkhwa province.
[…]

Israel/Palestine
7) Israel is now punishing Palestinians shamelessly
What is delaying treatment of a 47-year-old Palestinian woman, if not punishment of someone who opposes her foreign rulers?
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz, 00:57 06.10.10
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-is-now-punishing-palestinians-shamelessly-1.317415

Behind a modest desk with a view of Beit Jala sits a nameless Shin Bet security service officer who is very pleased with himself. He has just saved the Jewish people in Israel from yet another grave security risk by preventing a 47-year-old woman, for five weeks now, from going abroad for urgent medical tests.

Or perhaps this isn’t a story about just one officer, but rather about a committee of three. What matters is that Khalida Jarrar, a resident of Al-Bireh, has not gone to Amman for diagnostic brain tests that cannot be done in the West Bank due to lack of the necessary medical equipment.

I first wrote about Jarrar’s case a month ago. On July 19, a doctor in Ramallah informed her she could obtain the necessary tests in either Israel or Amman. The Palestinian Ministry of Health told her it would not pay for the tests to be done in Israel.

Jarrar, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was refused permission to leave in 2008, when she was supposed to participate in the intra-Palestinian reconciliation talks in Cairo. But until getting that note from her doctor, she had never fought for her right to freedom of movement.

This time, officials in the Palestinian Authority promised they would arrange her exit permit for medical tests with their acquaintances in Israel. They promised, and then they disappeared.

After about three weeks, some of her lawyer friends applied directly to the Civil Administration and tried to discover how her exit permit could be arranged. Two weeks later, the answer arrived in writing: Jarrar, it said, does not have a notation by her name barring her exit.

The Civil Administration officer had relied on computer input from the Shin Bet. So on August 30, Jarrar set out for the Allenby Bridge. But there, the Israeli border control computers had different data: She was not allowed to exit. What had been true a few hours earlier stopped being true when she arrived at the border.
[…]

8) Belly dancing Israeli soldier video provokes furious response
AFP, October 6, 2010
http://www.theage.com.au/world/belly-dancing-israeli-soldier-video-provokes-furious-response-20101005-166bk.html

Jerusalem – A grainy video of a male Israeli soldier belly dancing around a bound and blindfolded female prisoner which went viral overnight, yesterday provoked a furious response from the Palestinians.

The clip, which came to light after it was screened on Israel’s private Channel 10 television late on Monday, shows a soldier gyrating to rhythmic drumbeat of an Arabic track as the woman, who is wearing a headscarf, huddles against a wall, her hands bound in front of her and her eyes bound with a white cloth.
[…] The video was immediately slammed by the Palestinian Authority as "deeply offensive to the dignity of women."

"This is a disgusting illustration of the sick mentality of the occupier. This is not an isolated incident," said a strongly-worded statement from the office of Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad.
[…] Exposure of the video came just seven weeks after an Israeli soldier sparked widespread outrage by posting pictures of herself smiling and larking around next to blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoners. The army denounced the pictures as "shameful," while the Palestinian Authority described them as humiliating, but the former soldier, Eden Abergil, could not understand why the images had caused such offence.

Rights groups said at the time that photographs were clear evidence of a culture within the military that treated Palestinians as objects rather than human beings – a sentiment which was echoed by Fayyad’s office on Tuesday. "With the advent of easy-to-use media like YouTube, the truth is coming to light about a culture of humiliation of the Palestinians," it said. "The soldiers are fed by a wider Israeli policy that behaves (as if it were) above the law and human rights values."

Israeli blogger Dimi Reider, who first exposed the Eden Abergil photographs in August, said the video flew in the face of Israel’s claims to have one of the most moral armies in the world. "This video finally debunks one of the most persistent Israeli myths – that ours is the only occupying army in history that does not sexually abuse the women of the occupied nation," he wrote in his blog, Dimi’s notes. "Second, it’s about as stark proof as it gets that the IDF cannot and should not monitor itself (if it could, the soldiers would be in prison, de-ranked and de-mobbed before the video even hit the web)," he said.

Colombia
9) No emails found on computers of ‘Raul Reyes’: IG.
Adriaan Alsema, Colombia Reports, Monday, 04 October 2010 07:29
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/12165-raul-reyes-computers.html

Colombia’s Inspector General on Sunday confirmed that no emails, only Word documents, were found on the computers of slain FARC commander "Raul Reyes."

In an interview with weekly Semana, Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez confirmed claims made by the investigating police inspector that despite earlier claims by the government, there are no e-mails on the computers.

The statement contradicts numerous allegations of the government of former President Alvaro Uribe and media reports that mentioned emails between the country’s largest rebel group and politicians like the recently dismissed Senator Piedad Cordoba. "I must say that in the records there are no email files, only Word documents," Ordoñez told the weekly.

With his statement, the Inspector General confirms testimony by police inspector Ronald Coy Cortiz, who in 2008 testified before court that his team of investigators "haven’t seen any e-mails, I haven’t found them so far. They found a large number of e-mail addresses, but Reyes kept these in a Word document and other Microsoft documents."

Colombia’s Supreme Court earlier absolved Piedad Cordoba and other suspects of "FARC-politics" after dismissing evidence coming from the Reyes computers, allegedly found after the bombing of Reyes’ Ecuadorean camp that killed the FARC’s "foreign minister" and more than 20 others.
[…]

10) Body Shop drops supplier after report of peasant evictions in Colombia
Christian Aid welcomes ‘very strong signal’ from Body Shop about unacceptable behaviour of its palm oil supplier
Rajeev Syal and Sibylla Brodzinsky, The Observer (UK), Sunday 3 October 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/oct/03/body-shop-palm-oil-supplier

Bogotá- The Body Shop is breaking commercial links with a major palm oil supplier in the wake of disclosures by the Observer that the company had pushed for the eviction of hundreds of peasants in Colombia to develop a new plantation.

This newspaper reported last September that Daabon Organic, which provided the cosmetics giant with 90% of all its palm oil, was part of a consortium that asked the courts to remove farmers from a ranch 200 miles (320km) north of the capital, Bogotá.

The Body Shop said that, after a nine-month inquiry, it had terminated its relationship with Daabon, which once supplied the British company with enough oil to produce eight million bars of soap a year. The decision has been hailed as a victory by peasant farmers who are still trying to return to the land. Misael Payares, leader of the Las Pavas community, said: "Daabon knows now that the world is watching."

Catherine Bouley, a manager for Christian Aid which has backed the farmers, applauded the Body Shop’s decision, but added that the dispute still goes on. "We very much hope Daabon will heed the very strong signal sent by the Body Shop, that their behaviour is unacceptable," she said.
[…]

–
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
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