Posted on 09/30/2002 by Juan
There has been fighting south of Mazar-i Sharif in Samangan province between commanders loyal to Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostam and others loyal to Tajik warlord Ustad Atta Muhammad. 17 were killed late last week in the clashes.
On Friday a powerful bomb destroyed 4 video shops in Gardez, in Eastern Afghanistan, but no one was hurt because they were closed. (The video shops were targeted because Muslim fundamentalists believe that videos are a form of graven image, forbidden in Islam as it is in Orthodox Judaism. Islamic iconoclasm is rooted in Jewish iconoclasm, historically. That is, the bombings were signs of active Taliban or al-Qaeda cells still operating in Afghanistan).
A large bomb went off in Kabul on Saturday near the Department of Defense and the US embassy, but again, there were no casualties.
Old time Mujahid and Islamic radical Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (more or less created by Ronald Reagan) has joined with Taliban remnants to threaten U.S. troops with suicide bombings.
On Sunday, a bloody struggle broke out between warlords in Paktia province near the provincial capital of Gardez, leaving nine dead. One of those killed is a former commander of Padshah Khan Zadran, who has gone into opposition against the Karzai government.
On Sunday Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith [associated with the conservative pro-Israel think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy], visited Kabul to say that once the international aid came, everything would be all right. Perhaps he is right, but I doubt it. More resources would be more things for the warlords to fight over. The US continued dependence on warlords to run Afghanistan is increasingly worrisome, as is the obvious instability.
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Posted on 09/29/2002 by Juan
It is reported in Asharq al-Awsat that Copenhagen’s more prominent Jewish notables called for and organized a demonstration on Saturday September 28 against against the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. They were careful to say that this demonstration was not against the state of Israel, but against government policies of brutality against Palestinians, which also harmed Jews and Israelis in their view. It was planned for the 2-year anniversary of the beginning of the second Intifada or uprising against Israeli occupation. At the time Asharq al-Awsat went to press, the demonstration had not yet taken place, but hundreds if not thousands of protesters were expected (Denmark’s Jewish community is 6,000 strong).
In London, the same anniversary brought thousands of demonstrators out in the street for “freedom for Palestine” and against an Iraq war (estimates ranged from 100,000 to 300,000, but in these matters it is always wisest to favor the lower figures). Some 100,000 demonstrated in Rome against an Iraq war. UK PM Tony Blair and Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi have been the most hawkish European leaders on the issue of Iraq, galvanizing anti-war opponents.
Tens of thousands also marched in Beirut, in a demonstration called for by Hizbullah, the Shiite militia-party that the US has designated a terrorist organization.
These demonstrations are not significant in themselves, but I think they are a harbinger of a great deal of trouble in January or February when the Bush Administration goes to war against Iraq. Especially if there is no clear UN Security Council resolution authorizing the war and no broad coalition, the popular protests could be large and significant. Whether they could cause any governments to fall (in the parliamentary sense) is another question.
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Posted on 09/28/2002 by Juan
EAST GERMANY’S SPY FILES: COMPETING ISSUES OF PRIVACY AND OPENNESS
Thought for the day:
“Neighbours spied on the people living next door and there were instances of one spouse spying on the other, Dr Alexander Dix, Brandenburg’s Commissioner for Data Protection and the first in Germany with responsibility for access to information, told the International Symposium on Freedom of Information and Privacy held recently in Auckland.”
Click here for more on the techniques of surveillance, monitoring and intimidation of the East German secret police, which are now being promoted by the so-called Middle East Forum and by implication the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which has the MEF director as a research associate:
http://www.privacy.org.nz/privword/44stasi.html
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Posted on 09/27/2002 by Juan
Of the three persons arrested in Peshawar by Pakistani authorites off an FBI tip a couple days ago, one turns out to be a Tunisian who goes by various names–including Lutfi and Salim. He was a member of the Hamburg cell that plotted 9/11 and left Germany for Afghanistan shortly before that catastrophe. Once the US compaign began in Afghanistan, he escaped back over the border and has been in Peshawar for the past year. He only speaks Arabic, which should have made him stand out. The Pakistani authorities think he may be a gold mine of information about the planning of 9/11. They recently also captured Ramzi Bin al-Shibh (al-Shaybah), who I suspect was on the next level up in the cell structure. After a long drought there is an increasing prospect that we may find out details of how September 11 came about.
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Posted on 09/26/2002 by Juan
History News Network
http://hnn.us/articles/987.html
9-23-02: News Abroad
How Israel’s Occupation Affects Palestinian Children
By Juan Cole
Mr. Cole is professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan and author of Sacred Space and Holy War (I.B. Tauris, 2002). His website is: www.juancole.com.
Over one in five Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza (22.5 percent) now suffers from chronic or acute malnutrition. About one in five is anemic. This mass of hungry humanity amounts to a population the size of Minneapolis, about 380,000 kids.
Malnutrition in children makes them more likely to contract life-threatening diseases. It permanently reduces intelligence and vastly increases the rate of attention deficit disorder. Women who were malnourished in their youths have increased rates of premature birth and high blood pressure in pregnancy.
The occupying power in the territories, Israel, enjoys a per capita income of some $17,000 per year, higher than Spain. In contrast, half of Palestinian families must now borrow money just to buy food.
Palestinian terrorists certainly bear a great deal of the blame for this tragedy, insofar as their horrific actions against innocent Israeli civilians have understandably led Israel to close its borders to Palestinian laborers. Unemployment is a prime source of the problem.
Yet, while the scourge of terrorism in Israel has been unspeakable, none of it has been committed by toddlers or infants. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s current lockdown of the entire population of the West Bank is a massive form of collective punishment that has worsened the problem. As the occupying power, Israel cannot escape responsibility for seeing that its colonial subjects are at least fed.
The specter of a rich occupying country presiding over a famished subject population is not unusual in history. Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has pointed out that colonial and other undemocratic governments often allow hunger and famines, since they are insulated from popular protest.
Famously, even in the midst of the Great Hunger in Ireland of 1845 through 1850, eight ships a day left Ireland carrying exports of wheat, barley, oats, beef, pork, butter and eggs, sent abroad by British landlords while their peasants starved.
The French, who ruled Algeria 1830 to 1962, claimed to be on a “civilizing mission” to their subjects. Yet their policies of selling grain reserves on the world market led to a massive famine in the late 1860s when droughts produced starvation and pestilence.
Only the intervention of the French colonial authorities could have forestalled the deaths of thousands, but such officials have often maintained in history that they bear no responsibility for averting famine deaths. Some 300,000 Algerians died of hunger or of the consequent disease outbreaks.
In Sen’s classic case, the British civil service in India failed to stop the starvation of three million Bengalis in 1943. He argues that famine is not caused by lack of food, but by an increased inability of the poor to afford it. Only government intervention, he argues, can stop such a tragedy.
That Palestinian children are not going so far as actually to die from their hunger in great numbers has helped conceal the depth of the crisis. Israel has ruled the West Bank and Gaza since it conquered them in 1967, and cannot disclaim responsibility for a population still under its military rule. A Palestinian Authority constantly under attack and immobilized cannot be expected to do hunger relief.
A wealthy and militarily powerful Israel is responsible under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 to see that persons living under its occupation are not harmed. Letting 380,000 children go chronically or acutely hungry is a serious violation of international law.
Since the United States still gives Israel billions of dollars every year and has acquiesced in the current West Bank reoccupation and curfew, it also bears a responsibility for this tragedy. The Palestine issue has dropped out of news coverage, and even when it is noticed the focus is on strutting adult male politicians and military men. Will anyone speak for the children?
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