Just Foreign Policy News
October 5, 2010
Virtual Brown Bag with Andrew Bacevich
The video recording of our Virtual Brown Bag with Andrew Bacevich is now online. We’ve also made available an audio-only version and a full transcript.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/bacevichtalk
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 appears to think so. She 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.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/05-7
Al Jazeera Video: Settlers blamed for mosque blaze
Prayer rugs and Quran copies burnt in a West Bank mosque, in the village of Beit Fajjar near the Gush Etzion settlement, in fire said to have been started by Israeli settlers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocrCzco0Z5g&
60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll
"Only 2 in 10 Americans would go to war with Iran if they either tested a bomb or attacked Israel."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/30/60minutes/main6915819.shtml
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Militants carried out two attacks on NATO convoys in Pakistan Monday as government closure of a vital entry point into Afghanistan continued, the Washington Post reports. Pakistani officials conditioned a reopening of the Torkham crossing on improved security for convoys.
2) President Obama has told congressional leaders he has no plans for any major changes in his Afghanistan war strategy for now, Reuters reports. Obama asserted his intention to stick with his policy for the war, which is increasingly unpopular among lawmakers and the public, as part of a regular assessment for Congress required for war funding.
3) An article in the New York Times tells the story of the US soldiers who allegedly killed Afghan civilians for sport from the perspective of the families of the victims. The family of Mullah Allah Dad has received no apology and no compensation for his death, his father-in-law said. Local elders estimate that in the past eight months at least 42 civilians have been killed in Maiwand during American operations.
4) It is in our vital national interest that we set and execute a definite timeline for orderly departure of our troops from Afghanistan, argues Matthew Hoh in USA Today. Continuation of a substantial military campaign in Afghanistan works against our interests. It fosters local resentment, aids Taliban recruitment, and most of all provides a strong disincentive for the kleptocratic government of President Karzai to negotiate in earnest for a political settlement of what is essentially an Afghan civil war.
5) Critics of President Obama have seized on Woodward’s book as proof that Obama is a weakling who doesn’t have the fortitude to wage war, writes Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post. But they are wrong. The war in Afghanistan cannot be waged without a sense of tradeoffs or limits. Whenever we decide to scale back, Afghanistan is going to look messy. Iraq remains extremely violent. It is now to be ruled by a coalition that includes the most anti-American, pro-Iranian forces in Iraq. And that is seen by the president’s critics as a great success.
6) The Pentagon routinely employs contractors in the U.S. who exploit workers in sweatshop conditions and fire workers who try to organize into unions, David Moberg reports in the American Prospect. One woman who alleges she was fired for supporting the UFCW was an Iraq veteran who was nine months pregnant; the organizing drive quickly collapsed after the firing.
7) The number of U.S. soldiers who have suffered amputations in Afghanistan has increased sharply over last year as more troops move into Taliban territory, USA Today reports. Amputations rose from 47 in 2009 to 77 through Sept. 23 of this year, or an increase of more than 60%.
Afghanistan
8) Residents of Kandahar aren’t buying NATO assertions that the NATO offensive will make them safer, Laura King reports in the Los Angeles Times. To illustrate her case, she relates that a U.S. military officer recently exhorted villagers to let Afghan police or US soldiers know if the Taliban came to town, apparently unaware that 3 Taliban representatives were in the group.
Israel/Palestine
9) 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.
Ecuador
10) A bill that spurred last week’s violent uprising by disgruntled police and military personnel became law Monday after the leaders of the Ecuadorian legislature refused to revise the overhaul of public employee pay, EFE reports. "Police have to submit to the law," International Relations Committee chairman Fernando Bustamante said. "If we’re going to exempt someone from complying with the law because of their discontent, obviously there won’t be rule of law." While the law eliminates various annual bonuses paid to police, soldiers and other civil servants once they achieve specified levels of seniority, the government points out that cops have seen their base pay doubled since Correa took office in 2007.
Haiti
11) Oxfam International said a massive influx of free foreign food to Haiti after the earthquake has undercut Haitian agriculture and hurt farmers’ incomes, Reuters reports. "U.S. rice subsidies and in-kind food aid undercut Haitian farmers at the same time as the U.S. government is investing in Haitian agricultural development," said Oxfam’s director for Haiti. A ban on direct assistance to industries that compete with U.S. exports – the Bumpers Amendment – and extensive exports to Haiti of rice, sugar and poultry undermined the agricultural sector, the report said. The aid community has also not agreed to provide resources to support a $772 million agriculture plan put forth by the Haitian government; Oxfam’s report calls for full support of the agricultural redevelopment plan. "There are no schools, or poor schools, in rural areas, no jobs, very poor or no healthcare," the report’s author said. He said about 75,000 people leave rural areas and move to Port-au-Prince every year. "Unless you invest not only in agriculture but also in rural development, you won’t have people stay in rural areas," Marc Cohen said. The report also proposes making Haiti an exception to the Bumpers Amendment and extending duty- and quota-free access to U.S. markets to Haitian goods.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) NATO Convoys Besieged In Pakistan
Karin Brulliard and Haq Nawaz Khan, Washington Post, October 4, 2010; 9:28 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/04/AR2010100400752.html
Islamabad, Pakistan – Militants carried out two new attacks on NATO convoys in Pakistan on Monday as the government closure of a vital entry point into Afghanistan continued for a fifth day, underscoring the fragility of the coalition forces’ most important war supply route.
[…] U.S. and NATO officials have played down the significance of the ongoing closure of the busy Torkham crossing, saying it has had a minimal effect on their ability to equip troops. One senior NATO official said he expected the border crossing to reopen this week, after the completion of an investigation into the NATO airstrike that prompted Pakistan to seal Torkham.
But Pakistani officials conditioned a reopening on improved security for convoys, and security only deteriorated Monday. In a pre-dawn attack, a band of armed men shot and torched as many as 20 NATO fuel trucks parked at a depot near the capital, Islamabad, killing three people. Later, two trucks were ambushed in an attack that killed two people in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, where a second crossing into Afghanistan has remained open.
The Pakistani Taliban, an offshoot of the Afghan insurgency, asserted responsibility for the attacks and vowed to carry out more. Pakistani government officials expressed doubt about the Taliban assertion, but the threat raised the prospect that the Torkham blockade might last longer than expected.
Pakistan closed Torkham to war supply trucks Thursday after a series of NATO helicopter incursions and strikes on Pakistani territory, including one that Pakistan says killed three border troops and injured three others. NATO tankers were set ablaze in two separate attacks Friday.
[…] The Pakistani supply route was precarious even before the tensions over the airstrike. In 2008 and 2009, a spate of ambushes, some of which employed rocket-propelled grenades, caused Pakistan to temporarily close border passes, and many drivers refused to make the dangerous trips.
Authorities say thieves who loot the trucks’ cargo, sometimes with the complicity of drivers, carry out many such attacks.
[…]
2) Obama Says No Big Shift Now In Afghan War Strategy
Matt Spetalnick and Joanne Allen, Reuters, 05 Oct 2010 04:18:39 GMT
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04149769.htm
Washington – U.S. President Barack Obama has told congressional leaders he has no plans for any major changes in his Afghanistan war strategy for now, a letter released by the White House showed on Monday.
Obama asserted his intention to stick with his already-revamped policy for the war, which is increasingly unpopular among lawmakers and the American public, as part of a regular assessment for Congress required for war funding. "We are continuing to implement the policy as described in December and do not believe further adjustments are required at this time," Obama said in a letter dated Sept. 30 to leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives.
[…]
3) Relatives Tell of Civilians Killed by U.S. Soldiers
Taimoor Shah and Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, October 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html
Kandahar, Afghanistan – It was difficult enough for the people of western Kandahar Province. They are beleaguered both by the Taliban, who control the roads, demand taxes and execute anyone suspected of disloyalty, and by the American military, who often show little regard for people and whose demands that locals stand up to the insurgents seem unreasonable.
Still, there was no reason to anticipate something far worse: American soldiers suspected of being a sadistic rogue band led by Sgt. Calvin Gibbs.
For Mullah Allah Dad, a poppy farmer and the mullah of a hamlet of just 15 homes in Kandahar Province, the end came quickly. He was sipping tea when he heard screams, and several of his children ran in. American soldiers in tanks were coming, they told him. Moments later, two young soldiers came in and grabbed him, his wife, Mora, said.
"In a minute I heard shooting," she said. "I saw my husband face down, and a black American stood next to him. Another soldier pushed me away. They pushed me back into the house and the interpreter made me go inside one of the rooms.
"Minutes after that I heard an explosion," she said. "I rushed out of that inner room and out the gate and the translator was telling me to stop, but I did not pay any attention, and then I saw my husband, my husband was burning."
According to court papers filed by the military, Mullah Allah Dad, 45, of the Kalagi hamlet, was the third victim of soldiers who killed Afghan civilians for no apparent reason.
Five of the platoon soldiers have been charged in at least three murders, one of them Mullah Allah Dad’s, and seven other soldiers have been charged with crimes including assault, the use of hashish and attempts to impede the investigation.
The New York Times sent an emissary to Maiwand, the western district of Kandahar where the killings took place, to find the families of the three who were killed. Mullah Allah Dad’s family was afraid to come to the provincial capital to meet with a Times reporter because they feared that coalition troops might again attack them or that the Taliban would stop them. They agreed to come only as far as a nearby village that had cellphone coverage, and they were interviewed by phone.
Mrs. Dad described how the soldiers searched the family’s house, apparently trying to justify the killing. "They tore and broke everything," she said. "But they did not find a single bullet in my home."
Later, Mrs. Dad’s father, Abdullah Jan, and two tribal elders listened in disbelief to an Afghan intelligence agent at the district governor’s office as he related his conversation with American soldiers when they handed over Mullah Allah Dad’s body.
"He told me that the Americans claimed that Allah Dad had a grenade and was going to attack them, and then the grenade went off and he was killed," said Mr. Jan. "I tried to explain his background, that he was a mullah in his village mosque, he had no link with the Taliban and he didn’t want one."They put the grenade under his body," he said.
[…] Local elders estimate that in the past eight months at least 42 civilians have been killed in Maiwand during American operations. The Taliban have also killed civilians in the district, but it is the 42 whose deaths are etched in local memory.
"I am from the area, and my family has been living here for centuries," said Haji Hayatullah, an elder from Maiwand District. "I know the people who are supporting the Taliban and the people who are not. But the Americans have killed many people who did not support the Taliban, which is painful for us and actually creates hatred toward Americans. And that is why there is little or no help to the Americans from the civilians here."
[…] The family of Mullah Allah Dad has received no apology and no compensation for his death, his father-in-law said.
[…]
4) Stick to the timetable
Matthew Hoh, USA Today, October 4, 2010
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-10-04-editorial04_ST1_N.htm
[Hoh is director of the Afghanistan Study Group. He served with the Marine Corps in Iraq and the State Department in Afghanistan.]
After nine years of war, we will spend $104 billion this year and $119 billion in 2011 pursuing fewer than 100 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. We will spend an additional $1 trillion caring for wounded and injured American soldiers.
It is in our vital national interest that we set and execute a definite timeline for orderly departure. President Obama should stick to his pledge to begin withdrawing U.S. forces in the summer of 2011 – and earlier if possible.
We should retain only the troops needed to help train Afghan security forces, prevent human rights atrocities, resist an expansion of Taliban control beyond the Pashtun south, and engage in counterterrorism operations. We should then see, in the fall of 2012, whether this residual force level is contributing to our broader strategic objectives. If not, it should be withdrawn in full over time.
We have two important interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan: preventing Afghanistan from being a "safe haven" from which al-Qaeda can organize attacks on the U.S., and ensuring that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal does not fall into hostile hands. Neither of these requires a U.S. victory over the Taliban.
On the contrary, the continuation of a substantial military campaign in Afghanistan works against our interests. It fosters local resentment, aids Taliban recruitment, and most of all provides a strong disincentive for the kleptocratic government of President Hamid Karzai to negotiate in earnest for a political settlement of what is essentially an Afghan civil war.
I observed firsthand just how rich our tax money is making Karzai and his cronies while working with his government on behalf of the State Department in the spring and summer of 2009. Insisting, as our military leaders do, that the time for our departure from Afghanistan should be "conditions-based" means we will never know when the time has come.
We’ve heard for nine years that we’re making progress, yet conditions now are worse than ever. Setting a timeline forces Karzai to negotiate in the same way that setting a timeline in Iraq was indispensible to achieving the orderly exit of our combat troops now.
5) Every War Has Its Limits
Even ‘winning’ in Afghanistan would include some failures
Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post, Monday, October 4, 2010; A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/03/AR2010100303381.html
Call it the Casablanca routine. Every few years, Bob Woodward releases one of his books and all of Washington is shocked, shocked, by its revelations. This time, it turns out that President Obama is reluctant to commit to an open-ended expansion of the war in Afghanistan; that Vice President Biden argued for a smaller, counterterrorism option; and that military leaders boxed in the president by offering him as the only feasible option their preferred course – a buildup of troops. Is any of this surprising to someone who has been reading newspapers for the past two years?
Critics of the president have seized on the book as proof that he is a weakling who doesn’t have the fortitude to wage war. He should learn from Lincoln, FDR or Churchill, they say, and do what it takes to win. No. Those leaders were engaged in massive wars that threatened their nation’s existence. Obama is prosecuting a complex military intervention aimed at weakening a terrorist organization. It requires less Churchill and more Eisenhower, a tough willingness to make strategic choices and impose limits on the use of American blood and treasure. The United States has spent more than $2 trillion in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is understandable, in fact commendable, that the president does not want to write another set of blank checks for the Afghan war.
Al-Qaeda is a nebulous organization, inspiring more than directing other small terrorist groups. It has a base in Afghanistan but according to CIA estimates is down to a few hundred followers there. (It is more active now in Pakistan, another complicating factor.) Weakening the group’s base is important, but plots will continue to emanate from al-Qaeda, other groups and lone terrorists no matter how successful the U.S. operation in Afghanistan. Countering terrorist groups around the globe and defending the United States against them is an ongoing business. The war in Afghanistan, in other words, is one part of the broader global counterterrorism strategy, which is itself just one part of a broader national security strategy. It cannot be waged without a sense of tradeoffs or limits.
Whenever we decide to scale back, Afghanistan is going to look messy. It is highly unlikely that we could ever achieve "total victory" in Afghanistan. We are battling the Taliban, a local force representing part of the Pashtun community. Pashtuns are almost half of Afghanistan’s populace. The Taliban will always be a part of Afghanistan’s political mix. Post columnist Charles Krauthammer complains that Obama calls Afghanistan a vital national interest yet refuses to do the kind of patient nation-building that is the very essence of counterinsurgency. Afghanistan is one of the world’s poorest countries, has deeply entrenched ethnic rivalries and is reeling from civil war. Will institutions built by Washington in a year or two last? Have they lasted in Iraq? Our combat troops left Iraq in August after a successful surge, yet that country remains extremely violent. It is also a political mess, now to be ruled by a coalition that includes the most anti-American, pro-Iranian forces in Iraq. And that is seen by the president’s critics as a great success.
[…] In a smart new book, "How Wars End," Gideon Rose, the incoming editor of Foreign Affairs, points out that Americans are chronically disappointed by the way their wars end. Even as World War II came to a close, there was the deep sense of betrayal over Yalta. This is because while waging wars, Americans refuse to think through the political and military tradeoffs needed to get to a reasonable outcome. In Korea we continued to fight for one-and-a-half bloody years over an obscure prisoner-of-war exchange that few remember today. At this point, to get a decent outcome in Afghanistan, it’s less important that the president’s heart be in the fight than his head be in the strategy.
6) Sweatshop Army
Why does the Pentagon use low-road companies to feed and clothe our troops?
David Moberg, American Prospect, October 2010
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=sweatshop_army
During a 13-month tour in Iraq with her National Guard unit, Amber Hicks ate her share of the military rations known as "meals ready to eat," or MREs. Then, as chance would have it, she returned to her hometown of Cincinnati and found a job in the Wornick Company’s factory – making those familiar MREs.
Most of her fellow workers were immigrants – African, Mexican, Vietnamese, and Cambodian – and most of them made less than $10 an hour, with very few able to pay for the company’s health insurance. The work was fast-paced and stressful, and conditions were worsened by frequent forced hours of overtime work, which caused day-care problems – even job loss – for workers with children. The pressures also likely contributed to the company’s above-average injury rates. And on top of those problems, Hicks says, "there was a lot of favoritism from the ‘good old boy’ gang that ran the plant. It wasn’t what you know but who you know, for getting promotions."
Every year the federal government spends half a trillion dollars on contracts for goods and services from private companies like Wornick. The total workforce of those companies – including workers not on federal contracts – accounts for 22 percent of American workers. And according to David Madland, director of the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress, the military spends 69 percent of those contract dollars.
The military, then, through its procurement process has a huge potential influence, directly and indirectly, on the conditions of work and the rights of workers in this country. Unfortunately, all too often the work on military contracts is ill-paid and abusive, just as it is at Wornick, and not an expression of government’s stated social policy, such as the 1935 Wagner Act’s commitment to encourage collective bargaining.
In 2008, for example, the Wornick plant was abuzz with talk of forming a union with the United Food and Commercial Workers. The company, which earns about half its revenue from government contracts, was also going through bankruptcy. A group of its creditors, including the publicly bailed-out insurance giant American International Group, took control shortly afterward and received more than $6.5 million in state and local financial assistance.
Wornick’s management responded to its employees’ organizing with a classic anti-union campaign: supervisors meeting individually with workers to discourage pro-union sentiments, calling forced group anti-union meetings, harassing union sympathizers, posting flyers about closed unionized automobile plants, providing pizza for anti-union workers (whose names supervisors collected on petitions), distributing "no union" T-shirts, and threatening to move the factory if the workers unionized.
Hicks and her uncle, Kevin Phillips, were among the union stalwarts. Then late last October, Wornick fired Hicks, who was pregnant at the time, citing errors in her paperwork on monitoring operations, accusations she contested. The National Labor Relations Board did not restore her job, but the rest of the workers interpreted her firing as retaliation for union support.
"She fought for her country in Iraq. She was well-liked, did her work well. Are you serious?" Phillips recounts angrily. Workers, he says, concluded: "’Damn, if they’ll fire this nine-month pregnant woman, they’ll fire me.’ They were scared. We were so close [to winning union recognition], but that turned everything around." Still unemployed nine months later, Hicks was caring for her son and planning to return to college, but the union drive is now on the back burner.
[…]
Military-apparel contractors must operate in the U.S. or its territories (though insiders say the rule is often violated). But there is no prevailing-wage standard for the 50,000 workers who make $4 billion a year worth of uniforms, protective vests, packs, and related apparel for the military. A UNITE HERE! union survey in 2006 found that the average military – contract sewing-machine operator earned $6.55 an hour – wages that were not only below poverty but also below the median sewing wage in the industry. Higher minimum wages have since helped, but overall "conditions have not gotten better," says Edgar Romney, secretary-treasurer for Workers United and a vice president of the -Service Employees International Union.
Until three years ago, Michael Bianco, Inc., operated a factory that made military backpacks and vests in New Bedford, Massachusetts, that a U.S. attorney called a sweatshop with "deplorable" conditions for its workforce of mainly undocumented immigrant workers. The company docked workers heavily for minor infractions ($20 for spending more than two minutes in the restroom, where the company limited toilet paper), cheated them of overtime pay, locked fire exits, and provided no health insurance. Workers relied on food stamps, charity care, and whatever public assistance they could get. A military inspector worked in the plant but only monitored product quality, not the rampant labor-law abuses around him.
[…]
7) Amputations increase with surge in Afghanistan
Gregg Zoroya, USA Today, October 4, 2010
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/afghanistan/2010-10-05-afghanistan-amputations_N.htm
The number of U.S. soldiers who have suffered amputations in Afghanistan has increased sharply over last year as more troops move into Taliban territory, according to Army data.
Amputations rose from 47 in 2009 to 77 through Sept. 23 of this year, or an increase of more than 60%, the Army reports.
The chief cause of the injuries are improvised explosive devices – or IEDs – that are planted in the ground or along roads, according to the International Security Assistance Force, which oversees military operations in Afghanistan.
Coalition forces have been hit by more IEDs in recent weeks as the surge in U.S. troops allows for expanded operations into traditional Taliban strongholds in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in southern Afghanistan.
[…] The vast majority of amputations involve the loss of either an arm or leg, but a dozen soldiers this year have had multiple amputations, twice the number of such cases in 2009.
At the NATO hospital, doctors amputated a major limb – a leg or arm – an average of once every other day in September, according to Navy Capt. Michael Mullins, a hospital spokesman. The operations included not only U.S. troops, but also NATO troops, Afghan soldiers and civilians, Mullins said.
A recent Pentagon report said IEDs are now the "the most serious threat" to coalition forces, killing 6,200 allied and Afghan troops in fiscal year 2009, compared with 3,800 in 2008.
[…]
Afghanistan
8) Afghan offensive fails to reassure residents
As NATO steps up its operation around Kandahar city, vowing that the Taliban will have nowhere to hide, residents remain fearful, saying militants simply bide their time and return.
Laura King, Los Angeles Times, October 5, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-kandahar-20101005,0,3453950.story
Kandahar, Afghanistan – On a recent bell-clear autumn afternoon a few miles outside Afghanistan’s second-largest city, villagers listened courteously as a U.S. military officer, speaking through an interpreter whose grasp of the local language seemed shaky, exhorted them to let Afghan police or American soldiers know if the Taliban came to town.
Nodding in agreement amid the group were three men in beards, turbans and sandals who looked, dressed and talked like the other villagers. They were Taliban.
"They were standing right there with us, and everyone was too scared to say anything," a farmer named Farid, who grows pomegranates in the Arghandab district, northwest of Kandahar, said as he described the encounter last month. Soon afterward, fearing both insurgents and the presence of foreign troops, he and his family fled.
Together with its outlying districts, Kandahar – a cacophonous, chaotic metropolis of more than 1 million people – is the focal point of NATO’s most ambitious military offensive of the 9-year-old war. Long delayed but now gathering in intensity, the campaign’s outcome is described as pivotal to the Western war effort.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials characterize the ongoing confrontation as the inexorable tightening of a noose around the Taliban, an enemy depicted as increasingly beleaguered and on the run. In interviews and daily news releases, the coalition tells of firefights in which insurgents are wiped out by airstrikes, carefully plotted night raids by elite Afghan and U.S. troops that pick off Taliban ringleaders one by one, and enhanced security for villagers and townspeople.
But for Kandaharis, both urban dwellers and villagers from the surrounding farmlands, the narrative is somewhat different. They speak of lingering fear and deep skepticism about the NATO operation, despite what they acknowledge to be a decline in overt violence such as suicide bombings and assassinations in the city itself.
Taliban militants, they say, retain near-total freedom of movement inside and outside Kandahar, as long as they stash weapons in a widely scattered network of caches rather than carrying them around. "Night letters," the insurgents’ dreaded warning missives often aimed at civil servants and prominent tribal elders, still arrive with clocklike regularity. Most disappointingly, local people say, the improved government services touted as equal in importance to the military drive have largely failed to materialize.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
9) Arsonists Damage a Mosque in the West Bank
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, October 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/world/middleeast/05mideast.html
Jerusalem – Arsonists suspected of being radical Israeli settlers damaged part of a Palestinian mosque early on Monday in a village near the West Bank city of Hebron, setting fire to rugs and copies of the Koran and scrawling the word "revenge" in Hebrew on a wall, police officials and witnesses said.
Palestinian residents of the village, Al Fajjar, said they saw what they described as an Israeli car speeding away before dawn.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, said that whoever set the fire was "a terrorist" and that no means would be spared to catch the culprits.
The attack came as American officials were trying to salvage Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that have run aground over Israel’s plans to begin building settlements in the West Bank after a 10-month construction freeze.
[…] A poll conducted Thursday through Saturday by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed two-thirds of the Palestinian public favored ending the talks because of the resumption of building.
Monday’s attack on Al Fajjar mosque, the third in the West Bank in the past 10 months, is suspected to be part of a campaign known as "price tag," in which militant settlers respond to attempts by the Israeli military to curb their building or actions with attacks on Palestinians.
On one wall of the mosque were the words, in Hebrew, "A mosque must be burned." There was no claim of responsibility.
Ecuador
10) Bill That Spurred Ecuador Police Rebellion Becomes Law.
Cesar Muñoz Acebes, EFE, October 4, 2010
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=369796&CategoryId=14089
Quito – A bill that spurred last week’s violent one-day uprising by disgruntled police and military personnel became law Monday after the leaders of the Ecuadorian legislature refused to revise the controversial overhaul of public employee pay.
The mutiny, described by officials as an attempted coup, ended only after government supporters and loyal soldiers routed the mutinous cops who were besieging President Rafael Correa inside a Quito hospital.
[…] The leadership of the National Assembly rejected the idea of reconsidering the pay-overhaul measure opposed by police.
"Under coercion and force, it is not possible to consider any dialogue about anything," International Relations Committee chairman Fernando Bustamante told Efe. "Police have to submit to the law," he said. "If we’re going to exempt someone from complying with the law because of their discontent, obviously there won’t be rule of law."
Legislative leaders declined a request by opposition lawmakers for a special weekend session to review the controversial bill, allowing the legislation to automatically become law at midnight Sunday.
While the law eliminates various annual bonuses paid to police, soldiers and other civil servants once they achieve specified levels of seniority, the government points out that cops have seen their base pay doubled since Correa took office in 2007.
The National Assembly, where the president’s Movimiento Pais party has a majority, voted to exempt police and the military from the new salary arrangements, but Correa vetoed that article of the legislation.
An attempt to override the veto fell six votes short last Wednesday.
The next morning, police and some military units began what appeared to be coordinated actions such as shutting down the airports in Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city.
[…]
Haiti
11) Haiti Food Aid Hurting Local Farmers – Report
Emily Stephenson and Simon Denyer, Reuters, October 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/10/04/world/international-uk-haiti-food-aid.html
Washington – A massive influx of free foreign food to Haiti after January’s earthquake helped feed many displaced people, but undercut Haitian agriculture and hurt farmers’ incomes, Oxfam International said Monday. The international community has put too much emphasis on donating food to the rebuilding nation instead of developing Haiti’s agriculture-based economy, it said in a report.
"Currently, U.S. rice subsidies and in-kind food aid undercut Haitian farmers at the same time as the U.S. government is investing in Haitian agricultural development," said Philippe Mathieu, Oxfam’s director for Haiti. "The international community must abandon these conflicting trade and aid policies in order to support the growth of Haiti’s fragile rural economy."
[…] The U.S. Agency for International Development has a five-year, $126 million (£79.6 million) program to support the rural population outside Port-au-Prince, and in August introduced two grants to help Haitian families buy local food.
But a ban on direct assistance to industries that compete with U.S. exports – known as the Bumpers Amendment – and extensive exports to Haiti of rice, sugar and poultry undermined an agricultural sector that was largely ignored by foreign donors and the Haitian government even before the quake, the report said.
The aid community has also not agreed to provide resources to support a $772 million agriculture plan put forth by the Haitian government after the temblor, according to the report.
[…] Oxfam’s report calls for full support of the agricultural redevelopment plan, including enhancements that focus on building up community organizations, improving schools and healthcare and providing other services in rural areas.
"There are no schools, or poor schools, in rural areas, no jobs, very poor or no healthcare," Marc Cohen, the report’s author, told Reuters. He said about 75,000 people leave rural areas and move to Port-au-Prince every year. "Unless you invest not only in agriculture but also in rural development, you won’t have people stay in rural areas," Cohen said.
The report also proposes making Haiti an exception to the Bumpers Amendment and extending duty- and quota-free access to U.S. markets to Haitian goods.
–
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
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