Just Foreign Policy News
February 12, 2010
U.S. Begins Marjah Assault
The United States and NATO have launched a major assault in the Marjah district in southern Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians are in imminent peril. Urge President Obama and Congress act to protect civilians in Marjah, in compliance with the obligations of the United States under the laws of war.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/marjah
Jewish Voice for Peace: "The Only Democracy?"
Jewish Voice for Peace launches a new blog on the struggle for civil and human rights in Israel and Palestine.
http://theonlydemocracy.org/
Telegraph/Reuters: Palestinians dressed as Na’vi from Avatar protest Israel’s wall
If "a picture is worth a thousand words," this one is worth 2000.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/7222508/Palestinians-dressed-as-the-Navi-from-the-film-Avatar-stage-a-protest-against-Israels-separation-barrier.html
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Jewish and Israeli groups have signed on to a letter urging President Obama to press Israel to lift its siege of Gaza, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports. Americans for Peace Now, B’Tselem, J Street and Rabbis for Human Rights-North America signed the letter. The letter follows a similar letter sent recently by 54 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. One of the Democrats, Yvette Clarke of New York, subsequently removed her signature.
2) Guam’s governor told a Japanese delegation Guam can’t accommodate thousands more U.S. troops from an air base in Okinawa [i.e., more than they have already agreed to receive – JFP], but the CNMI governor said he’ll gladly welcome them, the Pacific Daily News reports. "Guam is not a replacement for Okinawa," Guam governor Camacho said. Northern Marianas Gov. Fitial said he told the visiting officials that his island would more than welcome the Futenma Marines.
3) Evidence from recently declassified U.S. documents shows the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the US, Gareth Porter reports for Inter Press Service. The evidence contradicts the claims by top officials of the Obama administration that Mullah Omar was complicit in Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the al Qaeda plot to carry out the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It also bolsters the credibility of Taliban statements in recent months asserting that it has no interest in al Qaeda’s global jihadist aims.
4) Obama ran on an inspiring promise to shut down Bush’s network of kidnappings and secret prisons, writes Johann Hari for The Independent. But a string of recent exposes has shown that Obama is in fact maintaining a battery of secret prisons where people are held without charge indefinitely – and is even expanding them. Obama is supposed to have forbidden torture, but it’s hard to tell. We do know Obama has permitted the use of solitary confinement lasting for years – a process that often drives people insane. The Obama administration is appealing against US court rulings insisting that detainees have the right to make a legal case against their arbitrary imprisonment. And the White House is insisting they can forcibly snatch anyone they suspect from anywhere in the world – with no legal process – and take them there. Yes: Obama is fighting for the principles behind Guantanamo Bay.
5) The Robinhood Tax campaign reported that one of two computers used to spam its Internet poll on the introduction of 0.05 percent tax on banking transactions with "no" votes belonged to Goldman Sachs, AFP reports. A Goldman spokesman said the bank was "investigating fully."
Haiti
6) The UN says some components of Haiti earthquake relief are still underfunded, the BBC reports, including emergency shelter, sanitation projects and agriculture. The WHO says 18,000 pit latrines are needed for 900,000 people, one per 50 people. But at present there is only about one per 1,000 people.
Yemen
7) Yemen’s government agreed to a cease-fire with the Houthi rebels, the New York Times reports. Rebel leader Abdel Malik al-Houthi also released a statement accepting the truce. Western governments have indicated that development aid money will not flow as long as Yemen remains bogged down in conflicts that make much of the country inaccessible. In addition to the Houthi insurgency, the government faces a secessionist movement in the south. The success of the truce may depend on the government’s willingness to respect the Houthis’ grievances, the Times says.
Afghanistan
8) Taliban fighters who lay down their weapons will be given immunity from prosecution according to a law that came into force without announcement before last month’s London conference on Afghanistan, the Guardian reports. A spokesman for President Karzai, said there was "no link" with government reconciliation efforts, but said: "For us the first priority is to end the suffering of people and we are pursuing the peace plan for that specific objective."
Israel/Palestine
9) Some of Jerusalem’s most prominent Palestinian families petitioned the UN to stop the Simon Wiesenthal Center from building a "Museum of Tolerance" on the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery, McClatchy reports. Dr. Raphael Greenberg, an Israeli archeologist at Tel Aviv University who’s directed previous investigations at the cemetery, said that at least 800 graves are left in the area, and has recommended that construction be halted until a thorough excavation can be done.
Iraq
10) Iraqi officials confirmed that the two most prominent Sunni politicians of sympathy with the Baath Party have been barred from participating in the March 7 parliamentary election, the Washington Post reports. The de-Baathification of candidates has become the dominant theme of the campaign season, eclipsing issues such as security and the government’s inability to deliver basic services, the Post says.
Peru
11) A recently declassified CIA video undermines CIA claims that "no CIA officer acted inappropriately" in the shooting down of a U.S. civilian plane by a Peruvian pilot who was directed to the plane by the CIA, Inter Press Service reports. The transcript appears to indicate that: it was the CIA officers who originally detected the plane; that the CIA officers did not follow required protocol, and deliberately chose not to do so; that the CIA officers had doubts about the identity of the plane which they did not communicate to the Peruvian pilot; and that the CIA officers believed that they had the ability to tell Peruvian pilot not to fire. Two Americans were killed in the incident.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Jewish groups sign letter on lifting Gaza closure
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 10, 2010
http://jta.org/news/article/2010/02/10/1010555/jewish-groups-sign-onto-open-gaza-urge
Washington – Jewish and Israeli groups have signed on to a letter urging President Obama to press Israel to lift its closure of the Gaza Strip.
"Due to Israel’s policy of severely limiting passage of essential goods and materiel through its crossings, the suffering in Gaza continues," said the letter sent to the White House last week and signed by Americans for Peace Now, B’Tselem, J Street and Rabbis for Human Rights-North America. "We believe this policy is strategically unsound, harms Israel’s security, and exacts an unacceptable toll on innocent Palestinians. It offends American humanitarian values, and is collective punishment that violates international law."
Israel says the closure helps preserve security, pointing to the drop in rocket attacks since the end of last winter’s Gaza war. U.S. officials have said that some of Israel’s strictures lack security justifications; a notable example last year was Israel’s allowance of rice, but not pasta, into Gaza.
The other signatories are the Arab American Institute, Churches for Middle East Peace and the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
The letter follows a similar letter sent recently by 54 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. One of the Democrats, Yvette Clarke of New York, subsequently removed her signature following visits from Jewish groups in her Brooklyn district. That effort was led by Agudath Israel of America.
2) Guam ‘not a replacement for Okinawa’
Dionesis Tamondong, Pacific Daily News, February 12, 2010
http://www.guampdn.com/article/20100212/NEWS01/2120311
Guam’s governor told a Japanese delegation that the island can’t accommodate thousands more troops from an air base in Okinawa, but the CNMI governor said he’ll gladly welcome them.
Gov. Felix Camacho, Northern Marianas Gov. Benigno Fitial, a visiting delegation of Japanese officials and the heads of U.S. military commands on Guam met behind closed doors yesterday afternoon at the governor’s complex in Adelup. Earlier, they toured military installations to show the Japanese delegation how the $6 billion their government is providing for the military buildup here will be spent.
The 23-member delegation was led by Yorihisa Matsuno, deputy chief cabinet secretary in the Japan Diet. Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama ordered the trip to Guam so the delegation can decide whether Guam is a viable option for relocating U.S. troops from Futenma.
[…] "Guam is not a replacement for Okinawa," Camacho told reporters after the meeting. "I know they understand that, based on the talks we had with them this morning. With a proposed 8,000 Marines and 6,000 Army personnel for a missile defense system, that is more than sufficient for us to handle."
Fitial, standing next to Camacho, said he told the visiting officials that his island would more than welcome the Futenma Marines.
The relocation of the base to northern Okinawa is part of a 2006 agreement between Japan and the United States to realign American troops in Japan. But many Okinawan officials are opposed to that, especially since about 75 percent of the 49,000 U.S. troops in Japan already occupy Okinawa.
The agreement also calls for moving about 8,000 Marines and their 9,000 dependents to Guam, and for Japan to help pay $6 billion of the estimated $10.27 billion cost to relocate Marines to Guam.
[…]
3) Taliban Regime Pressed bin Laden on anti-U.S. Terror
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service, 11 Feb
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=2852
Washington – Evidence now available from various sources, including recently declassified U.S. State Department documents, shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States.
The evidence contradicts the claims by top officials of the Barack Obama administration that Mullah Omar was complicit in Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the al Qaeda plot to carry out the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sep. 11, 2001. It also bolsters the credibility of Taliban statements in recent months asserting that it has no interest in al Qaeda’s global jihadist aims.
A primary source on the relationship between bin Laden and Mullah Omar before 9/11 is a detailed personal account provided by Egyptian jihadist Abu’l Walid al-Masri published on Arabic-language jihadist websites in 1997.
Al-Masri had a unique knowledge of the subject, because he worked closely with both bin Laden and the Taliban during the period. He was a member of bin Laden’s Arab entourage in Afghanistan, but became much more sympathetic to the Afghan cause than bin Laden and other al Qaeda officials from 1998 through 2001.
The first published English-language report on al-Masri’s account, however, was an article in the January issue of the CTC Sentinal, the journal of the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, by Vahid Brown, a fellow at the CTC.
Mullah Omar’s willingness to allow bin Laden to remain in Afghanistan was conditioned from the beginning, according to al-Masri’s account, on two prohibitions on his activities: bin Laden was forbidden to talk to the media without the consent of the Taliban regime or to make plans to attack U.S. targets.
Former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil told IPS in an interview that the regime "put bin Laden in Kandahar to control him better." Kandahar remained the Taliban political headquarters after the organisation’s seizure of power in 1996.
The August 1998 U.S. cruise missile strikes against training camps in Afghanistan run by bin Laden in retaliation for the bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa on Aug. 7, 1998 appears to have had a dramatic impact on Mullah Omar and the Taliban regime’s policy toward bin Laden.
Two days after the strike, Omar unexpectedly entered a phone conversation between a State Department official and one of his aides, and told the U.S. official he was unaware of any evidence that bin Laden "had engaged in or planned terrorist acts while on Afghan soil". The Taliban leader said he was "open to dialogue" with the United States and asked for evidence of bin Laden’s involvement, according to the State Department cable reporting the conversation.
Only three weeks after Omar asked for evidence against bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader sought to allay Taliban suspicions by appearing to accept the prohibition by Omar against planning any actions against the United States.
"There is an opinion among the Taliban that we should not move from within Afghanistan against any other state," bin Laden said in an interview with al Jazeera. "This was the decision of the Commander of the Faithful, as is known."
Mullah Omar had taken the title "Commander of the Faithful", the term used by some Muslim Caliphs in the past to claim to be "leader of the Muslims", in April 1996, five months before Kabul fell to the Taliban forces.
During September and October 1998, the Taliban regime apparently sought to position itself to turn bin Laden over to the Saudi government as part of a deal by getting a ruling by the Afghan Supreme Court that he was guilty of the Embassy bombings.
In a conversation with the U.S. chargé in Islamabad on Nov. 28, 1998, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Omar’s spokesman and chief adviser on foreign affairs, referred to a previous Taliban request to the United States for evidence of bin Laden’s guilt to be examined by the Afghan Supreme Court, according to the U.S. diplomat’s report to the State Department.
Muttawakil said the United States had provided "some papers and a videocassette," but complained that the videocassette had contained nothing new and had therefore not been submitted to the Supreme Court. He told the chargé that the court had ruled that no evidence that had been presented warranted the conviction of bin Laden.
Muttawakil said the court trial approach had "not worked" but suggested that the Taliban regime was now carrying out a strategy to "restrict [bin Laden’s] activities in such a way that he would decide to leave of his own volition."
On Feb. 10, 1999, the Taliban sent a group of 10 officers to replace bin Laden’s own bodyguards, touching off an exchange of gunfire, according to a New York Times story of Mar. 4, 1999. Three days later, bodyguards working for Taliban intelligence and the Foreign Affairs Ministry personnel took control of bin Laden’s compound near Kandahar and took away his satellite telephone, according to the U.S. and Taliban sources cited by the Times.
Taliban official Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, who was then in the Taliban Embassy in Pakistan, confirmed that the 10 Taliban bodyguards had been provided to bin Laden to "supervise him and observe that he will not contact any foreigner or use any communication system in Afghanistan," according to the Times story.
[…] In Late January, Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for Defence Secretary Robert Gates, suggested that the United States could not negotiate with Mullah Omar, because he has "the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands," implying that he had knowingly allowed bin Laden’s planning of the 9/11 attacks.
4) Obama’s secret prisons in Afghanistan endanger us all
He was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he’s dragging us further in
Johann Hari, The Independent, Friday, 12 February 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-obamas-secret-prisons-in-afghanistan-endanger-us-all-1896996.html
[…] The revelations this week about how the CIA and British authorities handed over a suspected jihadi to torturers in Pakistan may sound at first glance like a hangover from the Bush years. Barack Obama was elected, in part, to drag us out of this trap – but in practice he is dragging us further in. He is escalating the war in Afghanistan, and has taken the war to another Muslim country. The CIA and hired mercenaries are now operating on Obama’s orders inside Pakistan, where they are sending unarmed drones to drop bombs and sending secret agents to snatch suspects. The casualties are overwhelmingly civilians. We may not have noticed, but the Muslim world has: check out Al Jazeera any night.
Obama ran on an inspiring promise to shut down Bush’s network of kidnappings and secret prisons. He said bluntly: "I do not want to hear this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that… but as a parent I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence." He said it made the US "less safe" because any gain in safety by Gitmo-ing one suspected jihadi – along with dozens of innocents – is wiped out by the huge number of young men tipped over into the vile madness of jihadism by seeing their brothers disappear into a vast military machine where they may never be heard from again. Indeed, following the failed attack in Detroit, Obama pointed out the wannabe-murderer named Guantanamo as the reason he signed up for the jihad.
Yet a string of recent exposes has shown that Obama is in fact maintaining a battery of secret prisons where people are held without charge indefinitely – and he is even expanding them. The Kabul-based journalist Anand Gopal has written a remarkable expose for The Nation magazine. His story begins in the Afghan village of Zaiwalat at 3.15am on the night of November 19th 2009. A platoon of US soldiers blasted their way into a house in search of Habib ur-Rahman, a young computer programmer and government employee who they had been told by someone, somewhere was a secret Talibanist. His two cousins came out to see what the noise was – and they were shot to death. As the children of the house screamed, Habib was bundled into a helicopter and whisked away. He has never been seen since. His family do not know if he is alive or dead.
This is not an unusual event in Afghanistan today. In this small village of 300 people, some 16 men have been "disappeared" by the US and 10 killed in night raids in the past two years. The locals believe people are simply settling old clan feuds by telling the Americans their rivals are jihadists. Habib’s cousin Qarar, who works for the Afghan government, says: "I used to go on TV and argue that people should support the government and the foreigners. But I was wrong. Why should anyone do so?"
Where are all these men vanishing to? Obama ordered the closing of the CIA’s secret prisons, but not those run by Joint Special Operations. They maintain a Bermuda Triangle of jails with the notorious Bagram Air Base at its centre. One of the few outsiders has been into this ex-Soviet air-hangar is the military prosecutor Stuart Couch. He says: "In my view, having visited Guantanamo several times, the Bagram facility made Guantanamo look like a nice hotel. The men did not appear to be able to move around at will, they mostly sat in rows on the floor. It smelled like the monkey house at the zoo."
We know that at least two innocent young men were tortured to death in Bagram. Der Spiegel has documented how some "inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". The accounts of released prisoners suggest the very worst abuses stopped in the last few years of the Bush administration, and Obama is supposed to have forbidden torture, but it’s hard to tell. We do know Obama has permitted the use of solitary confinement lasting for years – a process that often drives people insane. The International Red Cross has been allowed to visit some of them, but in highly restricted circumstances, and their reports remain confidential. In this darkness, abuse becomes far more likely.
The Obama administration is appealing against US court rulings insisting the detainees have the right to make a legal case against their arbitrary imprisonment. And the White House is insisting they can forcibly snatch anyone they suspect from anywhere in the world – with no legal process – and take them there. Yes: Obama is fighting for the principles behind Guantanamo Bay. The frenzied debate about whether the actual camp in Cuba is closed is a distraction, since he is proposing to simply relocate it to less sunny climes.
Once you vanish into this system, you have no way to get yourself out. The New York lawyer Tina Foster represents three men who were kidnapped by US forces in Thailand, Pakistan and Dubai and bundled to Bagram, where they have been held without charge for seven years now. She tells me there have been "shockingly few improvements" under Obama. "The Bush administration rubbed our faces in it, while Obama’s much smoother. But the reality is still indefinite detention without charge for people who are judged guilty simply by association. It’s contrary to everything we stand for as a country… I know there are children [in there] from personal experience. I have interviewed dozens of children who were detained in Bagram, some as young as 10."
Today, Bagram is being given a $60m expansion, allowing it to hold five times as many prisoners as Guantanamo Bay currently does. Gopal reports that the abuse is leaking out to other, more secretive sites across Afghanistan. They are so underground they are known only by the names given to them by released inmates – the Salt Pit, the Prison of Darkness. Obama also asserts his right to hand over the prisoners to countries that commit torture, provided they give a written "assurance" they won’t be "abused" – assurances that have proved worthless in the past. The British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith estimates there are 18,000 people trapped in these "legal black holes" by the US.
[…]
5) Goldman Sachs accused of rigging ‘Robin Hood tax’ vote
AFP, Fri Feb 12, 7:32 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100212/wl_uk_afp/britainbanktax_20100212123713
London – Goldman Sachs came under attack from online campaigners on Friday over allegations that one of its computers was used to rig a vote on the imposition of a so-called "Robin Hood tax" on bankers. The Robinhood Tax campaign claimed that one of the two computers used to spam the Internet poll with "no" votes on Thursday, belonged to the investment bank.
Technical staff for the Robinhoodtax.org.uk said that the website registered more than 4,600 negative votes over a 20-minute period starting at 3.41pm. The number of "no" votes jumped from 1,400 to 6000 before the site’s security was tightened. A Goldman spokesman said the bank had "just received this information and is investigating fully."
The online campaign – calling for the introduction of 0.05 percent tax on banking transactions – has garnered considerable celebrity backing, including Four Weddings and a Funeral writer Richard Curtis and Love Actually actor Bill Nighy. The venture also has the support of groups like children’s charity Barnado’s, the The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and Unite – Britain’s largest trade union.
[…]
Haiti
6) Haiti aid effort one month after earthquake
BBC, Friday, 12 February 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8509333.stm
An emergency appeal launched by the international aid community within days of the Haiti earthquake has reached more than 95% of its $577m target. But as the rainy season approaches, and then the hurricane season, the situation for hundreds of thousands of people is still precarious and their needs urgent.
[…] A month after the disaster, aid distribution points have been established, camps set up for the homeless and the port re-opened. The focus is still on saving lives but of a more long term nature. Here we examine the ongoing aid effort.
[…] Millions of dollars have been raised by governments, organisations and individuals. The combined total, including pledges to projects not listed in the Flash Appeal is more than $1.79bn, with over $902m in uncommitted pledges. But different sectors of the Flash Appeal have been better funded than others. Camp co-ordination, for example, has attracted much more than the requested amount.
Emergency shelter and sanitation projects have less than 50% of the required funding. Other priority sectors such as agriculture and early recovery projects, have received only 8% and 24%, respectively, of what is needed.
Nicholas Reader, deputy spokesman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the response to the initial $577m appeal had been tremendous. But he said each aid sector or "cluster" involved life-saving projects and more specific donations for underfunded areas were needed.
Aid agencies are set to launch a new emergency appeal next week to fund efforts for the rest of the year. "We expect the humanitarian need to be significant for the long term," Mr Reader said. "Haiti needed a lot of assistance before the earthquake. The earthquake has compounded those needs."
Providing shelter materials to between 900,000 and 1.1 million homeless people is still a priority. Most of those made homeless are living in hundreds of temporary camps set up around Port-au-Prince and other affected areas. About 77,000 people are in the 10 organised settlements managed by aid workers. Aid organisations say 272,000 people have been given some form of emergency shelter so far.
A shortage of decent tents has been an issue – 23,000 family tents have been distributed, with another 48,000 in stock or en route. Tarpaulins, which are easier to transport, are also being distributed in their hundreds, with about 400,000 available or on the way.
Mr Reader said the expectation was that the shelter needs of all the homeless could be met – equipment is on route from stockpiles in Europe and Asia. "It is a case of getting everything available into the country and that takes time," he said.
[…] With so many people living in makeshift camps, like the 25,000 on the Petionville golf course camp, sanitation is a major concern. The UN says malaria and dengue are widespread in Haiti during the rainy season and the current conditions in the camps will increase the risk of outbreaks. Cases of diarrhoeal diseases in children continue to be reported.
The World Health Organization says 18,000 pit latrines are needed for 900,000 people, one per 50 people. But at present there is only about one per 1,000 people. The lack of space to build the latrines is a constraint – as well as a lack of dumping sites for waste.
The Water Sanitation and Hygiene project is providing safe drinking water (five litres per person per day) to more than 911,200 people through water tank and water treatment plants at 300 sites across Port au Prince, Leogane, and Jacmel. The aim is to provide safe drinking water to a total of 1.1 million people per day.
The food situation in Haiti was serious before the earthquake on 12 January – with more than 2.4 million people considered "food-insecure". One third of newborn babies were born underweight and rates of anaemia were high in toddlers and pregnant women.
[…] At the peak of the emergency response, Port-au-Prince’s airport was receiving 160 flights per day. But that number has started to drop off to around 74 a day as air cargo is increasingly replaced by sea transport. The Port-au-Prince port is handling an average of 350 containers per day now that specialised cranes are in place. Two floating docks are being installed, which should increase capacity at the port to a possible 1,500 containers per day by next week.
Yemen
7) Yemen’s Government Agrees to a Cease-Fire With Rebel Forces
Robert F. Worth, New York Times, February 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/middleeast/12yemen.html
Sana, Yemen – Yemen’s government agreed to a cease-fire with the Houthi rebels late Thursday, saying it hoped to put an end to a six-year war that has drawn in neighboring Saudi Arabia and diverted resources from the struggle against Al Qaeda’s growing presence here.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen announced that the cease-fire would take effect at midnight Thursday and that four committees would be formed to monitor compliance in the northern districts where the conflict has raged since 2004. The rebel leader, Abdel Malik al-Houthi, also released a statement on Thursday accepting the truce.
If it holds, the truce would remove a major source of instability for Yemen, a desperately poor country on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula where the government has long had limited authority outside the major cities.
Mr. Houthi had previously accepted the government’s main conditions for a cease-fire, including opening blocked roads, withdrawing from civilian districts and returning detainees. But Yemeni officials were suspicious of the rebels, who they said had violated cease-fires in the past. And the government wanted to ensure that the rebels would agree not to mount any more attacks on Saudi Arabia, which has supported Yemen’s military campaign and sits just across the border from the Houthis’ heartland in northwestern Yemen.
[…] Western governments have indicated that development aid money will not flow as long as Yemen remains bogged down in conflicts that make much of the country inaccessible. In addition to the Houthi insurgency, the government faces a secessionist movement in the south.
The war against the Houthis has eroded the government’s authority in the north, by creating resentment among people who say they have suffered in indiscriminate bombing campaigns. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes since the fighting resumed in August after a one-year lull. Many more have been affected by desperate shortages of food and water in the area, according to aid groups.
The terms of the cease-fire represent a victory for the Yemeni government. But the long-term success of the truce may also depend on the government’s willingness to respect the Houthis’ grievances. The Houthis are Zaydis, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and also belong to an elite group whose members long ruled much of Yemen.
Afghanistan
8) Afghanistan quietly brings into force Taliban amnesty law
Taliban reconciliation move criticised by international and domestic human rights organisations
Jon Boone, Guardian, Thursday 11 February 2010 18.46 GMT http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/11/taliban-amnesty-law-enacted
Kabul – Taliban fighters who have maimed and murdered but who lay down their weapons will be given immunity from prosecution according to a law that came into force without announcement in the weeks running up to last month’s London conference on Afghanistan.
[…] In Afghanistan laws do not come into effect until they have been "gazetted", which involves the publication of hard copies and their distribution to judges as well as an electronic version being put on the ministry of justice’s website.
But this did not happen after the law was passed for a second time by parliament in March 2007 after it aroused opposition among the public who thought it was an act of self-interest by warlord MPs.
Last year the Afghan government told the UN human rights council that Karzai had never signed the law. That effectively left it in limbo, although the constitution says legislation must become law 15 days after it is passed by parliament, regardless of the president’s actions. It is still not clear exactly when the law was published, but one researcher discovered an electronic copy in late December.
[…] With the security situation in Afghanistan continuing to deteriorate and weakening public support in Nato countries for the military mission there, attempts to persuade insurgents to lay down arms and enter peace negotiations are being enthusiastically pushed by the Afghan government and its international allies.
Shortly before the London conference the UN removed the names of five former members of the Taliban regime from its international "blacklist", in an attempt to boost the reconciliation agenda.
Waheed Omar, a spokesman for Karzai, said there was "no link" between the gazetting of the law and reconciliation. Although he said the law had been enacted "long before" the peace plan was formed, he did know when it had been enforced. "For us the first priority is to end the suffering of people and we are pursuing the peace plan for that specific objective," he said.
Israel/Palestine
9) Plan to Build ‘Tolerance’ Museum Near Muslim Cemetery Draws Fire
Sheera Frenkel, McClatchy Newspapers, Fri, Feb. 12, 2010
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/84363.html
Jerusalem – In a last-ditch protest, some of Jerusalem’s most prominent Palestinian families and the city’s chief Sunni Muslim cleric petitioned the United Nations this week to stop the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center from building a "Museum of Tolerance" on the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery.
Controversy has surrounded the site ever since the Israeli municipality built a parking lot on it in the 1960s. The Wiesenthal Center announced its plan for a large museum in 2004, prompting Palestinians to take the issue to the Israeli high court, which in October 2008 said the project could proceed. The families now say they’ve exhausted all legal options available to them.
Bulldozer tracks were still fresh in the mud around the tombstones of Dyala Husseini-Dajani’s ancestors when she toured what’s left of the Mamilla cemetery this week. "There is nothing ‘tolerant’ about this action," said the 68-year-old, whose lineage along with her husband’s includes two of the oldest Arab families in Jerusalem.
Husseini-Dajani bent down to touch one grave she recalled visiting as a child. The marker has been patched into place with a haphazard smear of concrete, and the tomb’s outer wall looked as though it recently was smashed.
The petition she signed with 60 others who say they have family members buried in the Mamilla cemetery asks the U.N. office in Geneva that deals with freedom of religion to investigate the site and press Israel to stop construction.
[…] Dr. Raphael Greenberg, an Israeli archeologist at Tel Aviv University who’s directed previous investigations at the cemetery, said that at least 800 graves are left in the area, and has recommended that construction be halted until a thorough excavation can be done. The [Israeli high] court ignored his report, and he withdrew from any further excavations.
Photographs of bones being packed into cardboard boxes and partially crushed by construction have infuriated Jerusalem’s Arab leaders, who said that the removal of bones from the site was a desecration of Islamic law.
[…] The families that signed the petition said they’d tried to revive the cemetery in past years, but were blocked by Jerusalem authorities. A series of protest in the 1960s was interrupted the frequent wars and tense division of Jerusalem until the 1967 Six-Day War.
[…] Controversy over the site has led to delays in the project and several of those involved, including architect Frank Gehry, have backed out. Rabbi Hier has estimated that the $100 million dollar project has now been downsized to $80 million. He’s said that the Wiesenthal Center is currently considering other designs, and is expected to announce its decision in coming weeks.
Palestinian opponents of the museum said it could be built in a different location, or with a raised platform that would allow family members to visit the graves.
Iraq
10) Two Sunni politicians barred from Iraqi election
Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post, Friday, February 12, 2010; A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021104493.html
Baghdad – The two most prominent Sunni politicians under scrutiny for alleged sympathy to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party have been barred from participating in the March 7 parliamentary election, Iraqi officials confirmed Thursday. Salah al-Mutlak and Dhafir al-Ani were among more than 500 candidates labeled as Baathists by a committee run by two Shiite politicians who are contesting in the election.
[…] The two officials who run the commission that vetted candidates for Baathist ties, Ahmed Chalabi and Ali Lami, are candidates in the largest Shiite bloc. The slate stands to gain from the disenfranchisement of popular Sunnis and secular candidates. Lami has said he and Chalabi did not personally vet candidates, and he has defended the commission’s work as fair and lawful. He said candidates’ names were compared against a database of documents from the former regime. The exact criteria used to disqualify people have not been clearly explained.
Candidates on the list may appeal their disbarment before an appeals court. The court announced last week that it would need weeks to review the appeals, a decision that could have allowed for candidates to win election, only to be later removed from office But the judges, under heavy political pressure, have agreed to complete all the reviews by the end of this week.
The de-Baathification of candidates has become the dominant theme of the campaign season, which officially begins Friday. It has eclipsed bread-and-butter issues such as security and the government’s inability to deliver basic services.
Peru
11) CIA, Military Trade Blame Over Missionary Plane Shootdown
Ángel Páez, Inter Press Service, Feb 9
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50270
Lima – Nine years after the 2001 shootdown of a small airplane carrying U.S. missionaries over the Peruvian jungle, the CIA and the armed forces of this South American country are pointing fingers at each other over who was responsible for the fatal mistake, which cost the lives of two people.
The Cessna seaplane, flown by a veteran missionary pilot and carrying a family of missionaries, was shot down on Apr. 21, 2001 in the northern Peruvian Amazon region of Loreto as part of the Peruvian air force’s counter-narcotics strategy, which operated with support from the CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency).
The case returned to the headlines this month in Peru and the U.S. after the ABC News television network aired a recently declassified CIA video that shows what happened that day – and which, according to the TV network, demonstrates the CIA’s shared responsibility for the tragedy.
Veronica Bowers and seven-month-old daughter Charity were killed in the incident, by a bullet that went through the mother’s back and into the baby’s skull. Veronica’s husband Jim Bowers and their six-year-old son Cory escaped serious injury. Although the pilot, Kevin Donaldson, was shot in both legs, he managed to crash-land the damaged seaplane on the Amazon river.
The missionaries belonged to the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, which is active in 65 countries.
[…] When the CIA surveillance plane spotted a suspicious aircraft, it would provide "intelligence information" to the Peruvian pilots, who would seek contact with the crew to verify their identity.
If the Peruvian air force pilots received no response, they were required to warn the suspicious aircraft to land, and to give it time to do so. But they had orders to shoot if the warnings were not heeded or the aircraft attempted to escape.
On Feb. 3, the CIA Office of Public Affairs responded to the ABC News report that day on the shootdown. In the statement, the Agency said a "thorough review" by an "accountability board…concluded that no CIA officer acted inappropriately" in the incident. The investigation was ordered in 2007 by then CIA director Michael Hayden.
The communiqué further stated that "the programme to deny drug traffickers an ‘air bridge’ ended in 2001 and was run by a foreign government. CIA personnel had no authority either to direct or prohibit actions by that government. CIA officers did not shoot down any airplane. In the case of the tragic downing of April 21st, 2001, CIA personnel protested the identification of the missionary plane as a suspect drug trafficker."
This week, the CIA announced that the investigation determined that 16 current and former officials of the Agency should be disciplined "for shortcomings in reporting and supervision" in connection with the shootdown.
But the declassified CIA transcript of the cockpit tape recording that picked up the conversation between the CIA operatives in the surveillance plane and the Peruvian pilots in the Tucano jet suggest that responsibility for the chain of errors that led to the tragic incident was shared.
The CIA surveillance plane had been shadowing the Cessna and alerted the Peruvian air force, which scrambled the fighter jet.
And although the CIA pilots asked their Peruvian colleagues to verify whether the Cessna was a drug-running plane, they did nothing to prevent the Tucano from opening fire on the small aircraft, which at no time attempted to flee.
Following is a partial transcript of the conversation:
CIA voice 1: We’re trying to remain covert at this point… but what we do know is: it’s a high-wing single engine float plane that we picked up, just along the border between Peru and Brazil. You know we can go up and attempt a tail number [as required by protocol], but the problem with that, if he is dirty and he detects us, he makes a right turn immediately and we can’t chase him.
CIA voice 2: See I don’t know if this is bandito or if it’s er, amigo, OK.
Peruvian Air Force liaison: OK.
CIA 2: So if poseeblay [possible, in Spanish], we get him to land in Iquitos and check.
Peruvian: OK.
CIA 2: OK, before rrrr [makes gun noise].
Peruvian: Yes yes.
Peruvian Air Force liaison: [In Spanish] Unidentified aircraft, you have been intercepted by Air Force jets for not having an authorised flight plan. Change course immediately to heading 270 and head for the Pucallpa airfield. If you do not obey, we will go ahead and shoot you down. (Donaldson did not receive the warning, because he was on another frequency.)
CIA 1: [In English] This guy doesn’t, this guy doesn’t fit the profile.
CIA 2: OK, I understand this is not our call, but this guy is at 4,500 feet. He is not taking any evasive action. I recommend we follow him. I do not recommend phase 3 [shootdown] at this time.
Peruvian voice: Is all is three phase… [inaudible] OK.
CIA 2: Are you sure it’s bandito, are you sure?
Peruvian voice: Yes. Totally sure, positive.
CIA 2: Ok ok, if you sure.
CIA 1: That is bull***t, I think we’re making a mistake.
CIA 2: I agree with you. There he is huh, OK the guy’s turning north now.
Peruvian voice: This is bandito, huh.
CIA 2: You sure?
Peruvian voice: Yeah.
Donaldson [to Iquitos control tower, in Spanish]: I’m at 4,000 feet. The military is here. I don’t know what they want.
[inaudible]
CIA 1 [to Peruvian air force pilot]: The plane is talking to Iquitos toy…
Donaldson [In Spanish]: They’re killing me! They’re killing us!
CIA 1 [Says to ground contact]: Tell them to terminate, tell them to terminate.
CIA 2: No, don’t shoot!
Peruvian ground contact: No mas, no mas [no more, no more].
CIA 1: God.
Peruvian pilot [In Spanish] Roger, we’re terminating, he’s on fire.
Donaldson [In Spanish]: 1408, Iquitos do you copy do you copy? Iquitos Iquitos do you copy do you copy?
[Spanish voices, inaudible]
CIA 1: Is he gonna land right here? OK I got him. He’s over the river, he’s smoking, he’s smoking.
[…] According to the Peruvian air force sources who spoke to IPS, the pilot made a mistake because he believed he had received an ok from the CIA operatives to open fire on the Cessna.
"There was a trial in Peru and the men who were allegedly responsible were exonerated. But in the United States, the CIA agents have faced no prosecution," said one of the sources. "This was a joint operation, which means there should be trials in both countries. But the ‘norteamericanos’ [Americans] say they didn’t make any mistake. That’s amazing," the source added.
"The Orion [CIA surveillance plane] guided the Tucano to the missionary plane, but the ‘norteamericanos’ didn’t speak Spanish well and the Peruvians didn’t speak English well, which caused the confusion," said the source. "The Tucano would not have attacked the seaplane without the participation of the CIA’s Orion. They can’t say they are not responsible."
–
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.