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Argos Media

Divisions Arose on Rough Tactics for Qaeda Figure - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...18zubaydah.html

CIA US Torture Abu Zubaydah Al-Qaeda

shared by Argos Media on 18 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against a prisoner from Al Qaeda was ordered by senior Central Intelligence Agency officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew, according to former intelligence officials and a footnote in a newly released legal memorandum.
  • The escalation to especially brutal interrogation tactics against the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, including confining him in boxes and slamming him against the wall, was ordered by officials at C.I.A. headquarters based on a highly inflated assessment of his importance, interviews and a review of newly released documents show.
  • Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.
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  • Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, “seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect.”
  • A footnote to another of the memos described a rift between line officers questioning Abu Zubaydah at a secret C.I.A. prison in Thailand and their bosses at headquarters, and asserted that the brutal treatment may have been “unnecessary.”
  • In March 2002, when Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan after a gunfight with Pakistani security officers backed by F.B.I. and C.I.A. officers, Bush administration officials portrayed him as a Qaeda leader. That judgment was reflected in the Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion signed by Jay S. Bybee, then head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.The memo summarizes the C.I.A.’s judgment that Abu Zubaydah, then 31, had risen rapidly to “third or fourth man in Al Qaeda” and had served as “senior lieutenant” to Osama bin Laden. It said he had “managed a network of training camps” and had been “involved in every major terrorist operation carried out by Al Qaeda.”
  • The memo reported the C.I.A.’s portrayal of “a highly self-directed individual who prizes his independence,” a deceptive narcissist, healthy and tough, who agency officers believed was the most senior terrorist caught since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
  • His interrogation, according to multiple accounts, began in Pakistan and continued at the secret C.I.A. site in Thailand, with a traditional, rapport-building approach led by two F.B.I. agents, who even helped care for him as his gunshot wounds healed.
  • A C.I.A. interrogation team that arrived a week or two later, which included former military psychologists, did not change the approach to questioning, but began to keep him awake night and day with blasting rock music, have his clothes removed and keep his cell cold.
  • The legal basis for this treatment is uncertain, but lawyers at C.I.A. headquarters were in constant touch with interrogators, as well as with Mr. Bybee’s subordinate in the Office of Legal Counsel, John C. Yoo, who was drafting memos on the legal limits of interrogation.
  • Through the summer of 2002, Abu Zubaydah continued to provide valuable information. Interrogators began to surmise that he was not a leader, but rather a helpful training camp personnel clerk who would arrange false documents and travel for jihadists, including Qaeda members.
  • He knew enough to give interrogators “a road map of Al Qaeda operatives,” an agency officer said. He also repeated talk he had heard about possible plots or targets in the United States, though when F.B.I. agents followed up, most of it turned out to be idle discussion or preliminary brainstorming.At the time, former C.I.A. officials say, his tips were extremely useful, helping to track several other important terrorists, including Mr. Mohammed.
  • But senior agency officials, still persuaded, as they had told President George W. Bush and his staff, that he was an important Qaeda leader, insisted that he must know more.“You get a ton of information, but headquarters says, ‘There must be more,’ ” recalled one intelligence officer who was involved in the case. As described in the footnote to the memo, the use of repeated waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah was ordered “at the direction of C.I.A. headquarters,” and officials were dispatched from headquarters “to watch the last waterboard session.”
  • The memo, written in 2005 and signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, concluded that the waterboarding was justified even if the prisoner turned out not to know as much as officials had thought.
  • And he did not, according to the former intelligence officer involved in the Abu Zubaydah case. “He pleaded for his life,” the official said. “But he gave up no new information. He had no more information to give.”
  • Since 2002, the C.I.A. has downgraded its assessment of Abu Zubaydah’s significance, while continuing to call his revelations important. In an interview, an intelligence officer said that the current view was that Abu Zubaydah was “an important terrorist facilitator” who disclosed “essential raw material for successful counterterrorist action.”
Argos Media

Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A. - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17detain.html

US Torture CIA ACLU Dennis Blair Leon Panetta Jay Bybee Office of Legal Counsel Abu Zubaydah John Yoo

shared by Argos Media on 17 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The Justice Department on Thursday made public detailed memos describing brutal interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama sought to reassure the agency that the C.I.A. operatives involved would not be prosecuted.
  • In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail — like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears.
  • The interrogation methods were authorized beginning in 2002, and some were used as late as 2005 in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons.
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  • Some senior Obama administration officials, including Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., have labeled one of the 14 approved techniques, waterboarding, illegal torture.
  • The United States prosecuted some Japanese interrogators at war crimes trials after World War II for waterboarding and other methods detailed in the memos.
  • Together, the four memos give an extraordinarily detailed account of the C.I.A.’s methods and the Justice Department’s long struggle, in the face of graphic descriptions of brutal tactics, to square them with international and domestic law. Passages describing forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls, prolonged sleep deprivation and the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees alternate with elaborate legal arguments concerning the international Convention Against Torture.
  • The documents were released with minimal redactions, indicating that President Obama sided against current and former C.I.A. officials who for weeks had pressed the White House to withhold details about specific interrogation techniques.
  • Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, had argued that revealing such information set a dangerous precedent for future disclosures of intelligence sources and methods.
  • A more pressing concern for the C.I.A. is that the revelations may give new momentum to proposals for a full-blown investigation into Bush administration counterterrorism programs and possible torture prosecutions.
  • Mr. Obama said that C.I.A. officers who were acting on the Justice Department’s legal advice would not be prosecuted, but he left open the possibility that anyone who acted without legal authorization could still face criminal penalties. He did not address whether lawyers who authorized the use of the interrogation techniques should face some kind of penalty.
  • Mr. Obama condemned what he called a “dark and painful chapter in our history” and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again. But he also repeated his opposition to a lengthy inquiry into the program, saying that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”
  • The four legal opinions, released in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U., were written in 2002 and 2005 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the highest authority in interpreting the law in the executive branch.
  • The first of the memos, from August 2002, was signed by Jay S. Bybee, who oversaw the Office of Legal Counsel, and gave the C.I.A. its first detailed legal approval for waterboarding and other harsh treatment.
  • Three others, signed by Steven G. Bradbury, sought to reassure the agency in May 2005 that its methods were still legal, even when multiple methods were used in combination, and despite the prohibition in international law against “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment.
  • All legal opinions on interrogation were revoked by Mr. Obama on his second day in office, when he also outlawed harsh interrogations and ordered the C.I.A.’s secret prisons closed.
  • They recounted the C.I.A.’s assertions of the effectiveness of the techniques but noted that interrogators could not always tell a prisoner who was withholding information from one who had no more information to offer.
  • The memos include what in effect are lengthy excerpts from the agency’s interrogation manual, laying out with precision how each method was to be used. Waterboarding, for example, involved strapping a prisoner to a gurney inclined at an angle of “10 to 15 degrees” and pouring water over a cloth covering his nose and mouth “from a height of approximately 6 to 18 inches” for no more than 40 seconds at a time.
  • But a footnote to a 2005 memo made it clear that the rules were not always followed. Waterboarding was used “with far greater frequency than initially indicated” and with “large volumes of water” rather than the small quantities in the rules, one memo says, citing a 2004 report by the C.I.A.’s inspector general.
  • Most of the methods have been previously described in news accounts and in a 2006 report of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which interviewed 14 detainees. But one previously unknown tactic the C.I.A. proposed — but never used — against Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist operative, involved exploiting what was thought to be his fear of insects.
  • “As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar,” one memo says.
  • Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, cautioned that the memos were written at a time when C.I.A. officers were frantically working to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing,” said Mr. Blair in a written statement. “But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.”
Argos Media

Foreign Policy: The Idiot's Guide to Pakistan - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...cms.php

Pakistan Federal Administered Tribal Areas Swat Valley Therik-e-Taliban Pakistan Baitullah Mehsud South Waziristan Maulvi Nazir TNSM Sufi Mohammed Maulana Fazlullah Therik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi

shared by Argos Media on 31 Mar 09 - Cached
  • In December 2007, the smattering of bearded, black-turbaned, AK-47-toting gangs in FATA and NWFP announced that they would now answer to a single name, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban Movement. For decades, Pakistani jihadists have used such fancy names to declare splinter groups (many of which go unnoticed), but some analysts latched onto the TTP as gospel and postulated that, overnight, the Talibs had become disciplined and united. In the process, such analysts have overlooked important distinctions and divisions within the pro-Taliban groups operating in Pakistan.
  • n 1996, Mullah Mohammed Omar and his band of “Taliban” -- defined in Urdu, Pashto, and Arabic as “students” or “seekers” -- conquered Afghanistan.
  • Pashtuns ignore the border separating Afghanistan and Pakistan, named the Durand Line after the Englishman who drew it in 1893; the Pashtun “nation” encompasses wherever Pashtuns may live. Fighting the Americans, therefore, was seen as self-defense, even for the residents of FATA.
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  • Baitullah Mehsud, the man accused by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence of masterminding the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Although Mehsud is the nominal chief of the TTP, he has plenty of rivals, even in his native South Waziristan. Two major tribes populate South Waziristan: the Mehsuds and the Wazirs. The Wazirs dominate Wana, the main city in South Waziristan. But the ranking Taliban leader from the Wazirs, Maulvi Nazir, is a darling of Pakistan’s military establishment.
  • You’re probably scratching your head right now, a bit confused. You see, Nazir is only interested in fighting U.S., Afghan, and NATO forces across the border. He is not part of the TTP and has not been involved in the wave of violence sweeping Pakistan of late. Therefore, in the minds of Pakistani generals, he is a “good” Taliban versus Baitullah Mehsud, who is, in their mind, unequivocally “bad.” That’s just one example of Talibs living in Pakistan who do not necessarily come under the title “Pakistani Taliban” or the “Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan” moniker.
  • In Swat Valley, where Islamabad recently signed a peace treaty with the Taliban, the fissures among the militants are more generational. Swat, unlike South Waziristan, is part of NWFP and shares no border with Afghanistan. In the late 1980s, a group calling itself the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, TNSM or the Movement for the Establishment of the Law of Mohammed, launched a drive to impose Islamic law in Swat and its environs.
  • After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the leader of TNSM, Sufi Mohammed, organized a group of madrasa students and led them across the border to combat the Americans. But only Sufi Mohammed returned. The legions who had followed him were “martyred,” or so he told their parents. Sufi Mohammed was thrown in jail by then president and Army chief Pervez Musharraf, and so he named his son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, to run TNSM in his stead. But Fazlullah had wider ambitions and assembled a several-hundred-man army vowing to fight the Pakistani government. The senior leadership of TNSM soon disowned Fazlullah, who happily embarked on his own and is now Mehsud’s deputy in the TTP. For the past year and a half, Fazlullah’s devotees have bombed, kidnapped, and assassinated anyone who’s dared to challenge their writ in Swat.
  • By 2008, Sufi Mohammed looked like a moderate in comparison to his son-in-law. So the Pakistani government asked him to mediate. Perhaps he could cool Fazlullah down. The recent treaty you’ve heard about in Swat is between the Pakistani government and Sufi Mohammed, who has pledged to bring Fazlullah on board. So far, the treaty has held, unless you count the soldiers who were killed by Fazlullah’s Talibs for not “informing the Taliban of their movements.”
Muslim Academy

Aung San Suu Kyi Myanmar - 0 views

muslim-academy.com/d-muslims-and-aung-san-suu-kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi Myanmar aung san suu kyi of myanmar

shared by Muslim Academy on 03 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 03 Dec 12
     
    ROHINGYA MUSLIMS Rohingya Muslims are not intruders. They have been living in Myanmar, their residence, since birth. They are not terrorists. They are peaceful people. But they are experiencing the cruelest brutality. The innocent children of Rohingya Muslims are kidnapped and killed. There are thousands of Muslims who are poor and helpless. What is their crime? Their crime is that they are Muslims. They accept the truth of the world. They are submissive to almighty Allah who is our creator. Their crime is that they believe men must lead honest lives. For these crimes, they are supposed to be butchered. They are destined to be helpless. They have no right to live as others do. AUNG SAN SUU KYI Noble Peace prize is given to peaceful sages. Aung San Suu Kyi is the "daughter of peace". So, she decided to keep her side safe. She already said that Rohingyas are intruders. She had visited India recently. The world had been eagerly waiting to know her stand for a long time. She visited Europe and America after emancipation. Journalists wanted to hear something about her stand on the Rohingya issue. But, she didn't clarify the fact. She didn't want to tarnish her innocent image in the world. So, she decided to keep silent. But during her visit to India she clarified her stand. She blatantly stood against the right of Muslims of Myanmar who has been experiencing the cruel test of exodus.
Argos Media

The Monarch Who Declared His Own Revolution | Print Article | Newsweek.com - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/...print

Saudi Arabia King Abdullah

shared by Argos Media on 23 Mar 09 - Cached
  • In the past few weeks, however, things have suddenly accelerated as the king has moved to show the ultraconservative Saudi religious establishment quite literally who's boss. He sacked the head of the feared religious police and the minister of justice, appointed Nora al-Fayez as deputy education minister, making her the highest-ranking female official in the country's history, and moved to equalize the education of women and men under the direction of a favored son-in-law who has been preparing for years to modernize the nation's school system
  • Born into the crumbling palaces of desert tribes in 1923 (the precise date was not recorded), he now rules one of the richest countries on earth. When Abdullah was a child, his father had not yet finished his conquests on the Arabian Peninsula or founded the nation-state that bears the family name.The boy was 6 when his mother died, and as her only son he felt he had to take care of his younger sisters even then. "He had a tough childhood," says Abdullah's daughter Princess Adelah. "He took on a lot of responsibility from the time he was very young." The children grew up amid rebellion and insurrection, with their father's rule threatened by the intolerant Wahhabi Brotherhood that had helped bring him to power.As a grown man, Abdullah witnessed the oil boom and the corrosive effects of spectacular greed—and more fanaticism, more insurrection, including the bloody siege of the Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979. There were dangerous intrigues within the family, too. When Abdel Aziz died in 1953, the succession passed to his son Saud, who was deposed in 1964 by his half-brother Faisal, who was murdered years later by a nephew. When Fahd took the crown in 1982, Abdullah became crown prince, and after Fahd suffered a stroke in 1995, he became acting king.
  • He brought a powerful sense of desert tradition to the job. His mother was from the powerful Shammar tribe that extends from Saudi territory deep into Iraq, Syria and Jordan, and before being named crown prince he had been head of the Saudi National Guard, a force made up of tribal levies from all over the country. He was immersed in Bedouin culture—the same traditional Saudi values that frame the world as Abdullah sees it. "You do not see him being more lenient with his family than with the National Guard," Princess Adelah told NEWSWEEK. "He is very straightforward, very honest, and hates injustice." Ambassador Fraker sees him as "someone who in many ways is a throwback to that desert-warrior ethos where men stand by their word, they look each other straight in the eye and they apply a code of honor."
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  • The king has made history by meeting with the pope (after demanding and getting the acquiescence of Saudi Arabia's religious authorities), but Christian churches are still forbidden on Arabia's sacred soil.Women are still forbidden to drive. They're required to keep their bodies covered (though they may expose their face if they like), and their choices in every aspect of life, personal and professional, are more limited than those of men. Saudi law treats women, at best, as second-class citizens
  • Whatever you do, don't make King Abdullah angry. In 2001 and 2002 he threatened to rethink the U.S.-Saudi strategic partnership if Washington did not do something to stop the suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. In short order, George W. Bush became the first American president to openly advocate the creation of a viable Palestinian state. When Bush started to backpedal on diplomatic efforts to realize that goal, Abdullah visited the Crawford ranch and reportedly delivered an angry ultimatum; Bush's then secretary of state, Colin Powell, was later quoted as calling it a "near-death experience."
  • Nevertheless, the king prefers honorable conciliation over confrontation. In 2002 he tried to end the Arab-Israeli conflict by imposing a deal on the Arab League that would offer peace between Israel and all of the Arab world if Israel would pull back to its 1967 borders, allow East Jerusalem to become the Palestinian capital and make some accommodation with Arab refugees from the wars of 1948 and 1967. The plan won't stay on the table forever, he warned during the recent Israeli bombing of Gaza.
  • The king is likewise distressed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's popularity on the Arab street. The Iranian president keeps gleefully stirring up trouble in the region, apparently oblivious to the harm he does with his encouragement of extremists, with his venomous posturing toward Israel and with the nuclear program he's revealing bit by bit, like a bomb hidden behind seven veils. "Don't play with fire," Abdullah warned Ahmadinejad when they met face to face in early 2007. The Saudis have quietly worked to undermine Iranian influence in Lebanon and even in Syria, Tehran's old ally. "The Iranians cannot match us financially, so why not give it a try?" said a Saudi analyst who asked not to be cited by name because of the sensitivities involved.
Argos Media

Influence of Israel Lobby Debated as Intelligence Pick Casts Blame for Pullout - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009031104308_pf.html

Israel US Israel Lobby Charles Freeman AIPAC Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs Steve Rosen Zionist Organisation of America

shared by Argos Media on 12 Mar 09 - Cached
  • When Charles W. Freeman Jr. stepped away Tuesday from an appointment to chair the National Intelligence Council -- which oversees the production of reports that represent the view of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies -- he decried in an e-mail "the barrage of libelous distortions of my record [that] would not cease upon my entry into office," and he was blunt about whom he considers responsible. "The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East," Freeman wrote. Referring to what he called "the Israel Lobby," he added: "The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views." One result of this, he said, is "the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics."
  • Only a few Jewish organizations came out publicly against Freeman's appointment, but a handful of pro-Israeli bloggers and employees of other organizations worked behind the scenes to raise concerns with members of Congress, their staffs and the media. For example, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), often described as the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, "took no position on this matter and did not lobby the Hill on it," spokesman Josh Block said. But Block responded to reporters' questions and provided critical material about Freeman, albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him, according to three journalists who spoke to him. Asked about this yesterday, Block replied: "As is the case with many, many issues every day, when there is general media interest in a subject, I often provide publicly available information to journalists on background."
  • Yesterday, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which tried to derail Freeman's appointment, applauded his withdrawal. But it added: "We think Israel and any presumed 'lobby' had far less effect on the outcome than the common-sensical belief that the person who is the gatekeeper of intelligence information for the President of the United States should be unencumbered by payments from foreign governments."
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  • And Stephen Walt, one of two writers who in 2006 famously described the influence of the Israel lobby as dangerous, chimed in on ForeignPolicy.com: "For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel lobby,' or who admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much influence . . . think again." (Foreign Policy is owned by a subsidiary of The Washington Post Co.)
  • The earliest cry of alarm about Freeman's appointment -- a week before it was announced -- came from a former AIPAC lobbyist. Steve Rosen wrote Feb. 19 on his blog that Freeman was a "strident critic of Israel" and described the potential appointment as "a textbook case of the old-line Arabism" whose "views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry." Rosen said yesterday that he had been "quite positive" about President Obama's previous appointments for Middle East positions but that he was "surprised" about Freeman. The appointee's "most extreme point of view," he said, was not what he had expected for the head of the NIC. Rosen has a unique position in Washington. A former chief foreign policy lobbyist for AIPAC, he and a colleague were indicted by the Bush administration in 2005 on suspicion of violating the Espionage Act, the first nongovernment employees ever so charged. AIPAC cut him loose, and a trial date has been set for May.
  • Also on March 2, the Zionist Organization of America called for support of a letter by Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) that called on the DNI inspector general to investigate Freeman for possible conflicts of interest because of his financial relations with Saudi Arabia. That letter, signed by Kirk and seven other congressmen, including House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), was sent to Inspector General Edward Maguire on March 3.
Pedro Gonçalves

Former Iran President at Center of Fight Between Classes of the Political Elite - NYTim... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...22rafsanjani.html

Iran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Ali Khamenei

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Jun 09 - Cached
  • “I see the country’s political elite more divided than anytime in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a political analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Rafsanjani, one of the republic’s founding fathers, the man who made Khameini Supreme Leader, is now in the opposition.”
  • “At a political level what’s taking place now, among many other things, is the 20-year rivalry between Khamenei and Rafsanjani coming to a head,” Mr. Sadjadpour said. “It’s an Iranian version of the Corleones and the Tattaglias; there are no good guys and bad guys, only bad and worse.”
  • It seems clear that the 75-year-old is at the center of a fight for the future of the Islamic Republic. Mr. Rafsanjani’s vision of the state, and his position in his nation’s history, is being challenged by a new political elite led by Mr. Ahmadinejad and younger radicals who fought Iraq during the eight-year war.
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  • Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies have tried to demonize Mr. Rafsanjani as corrupt and weak, attacks that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not strongly discouraged. On the other side, opposition leaders, especially Mr. Moussavi, have received support from Mr. Rajsanjani, political analysts said.
  • It is a quirk of history that Mr. Rafsanjani, the ultimate insider, finds himself aligned with a reform movement that once vilified him as deeply corrupt. Mr. Rafsanjani was doctrinaire anti-American hard-liner in the early days of the revolution who remains under indictment for ordering the bombing in of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994 when he was president. But he has evolved over time to a more pragmatic view, analysts say.
  • He supports greater opening to the West, privatizing parts of the economy, and granting more power to civil elected institutions. His view is opposite of those in power now who support a stronger religious establishment and have done little to modernize the stagnant economy.
  • “I see the country’s political elite more divided than anytime in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a political analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Rafsanjani, one of the republic’s founding fathers, the man who made Khameini Supreme Leader, is now in the opposition.”
  • It is not clear what leverage Mr. Rajsanjani can bring to this contest. If he speaks out, the relative said, he will lose his ability to broker a compromise. Mr. Rafsanjani leads two powerful councils, one that technically has oversight of the supreme leader, but it is not clear that he could exercise that authority to challenge Ayatollah Khamenei directly.
  • Mr. Rafsanjani has been in opposition before. In the days of the shah, he was a religious student of Ayatollah Khomeini at the center of Shiite learning, in the city of Qum. He was imprisoned under the shah, and became so closely associated with the revolutionary leader he was known as “melijak Khomeini,” or “sidekick of Khomeini.”’ After 1979, he went on to become the speaker of Parliament.
  • Mr. Rafsanjani later served two terms as president and was instrumental in elevating Ayatollah Khamenei to replace Ayatollah Khomenei in 1989.
  • People who worked in the government at the time said that Mr. Rafsanjani, as president, ran the nation — while Ayatollah Khameini followed his lead. But over time the two grew apart, as Ayatollah Khameini found his own political constituency in the military and Mr. Rafsanjani found his own reputation sullied. He is often accused of corruption because of the great wealth he and his family amassed.
  • He was so damaged politically that after he left the presidency, he failed to win enough votes to enter Parliament. In 2002, he was appointed to the head of the Expediency Council, which is supposed to arbitrate disputes between the elected Parliament and the unelected Guardian Council.
  • And in 2005, he ran for president again but lost in a runoff to Mr. Ahmadinejad. He was then elected to lead the Assembly of Experts. The body has the power to oversee the supreme leader and replace him when he dies, but its members rarely exercise power day to day.
Argos Media

Bush officials defend physical abuse described in secret memos released by Barack Obama... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...sh-torture-memos-obama-mukasey

CIA Torture Michael Hayden Mike Mukasey Steven Bradbury John Rizzo International Commission of Jurists

shared by Argos Media on 18 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Senior members of the Bush administration today defended the physical abuse of prisoners by CIA operatives at Guantánamo and elsewhere round the world set out in graphic detail in secret memos released by president Barack Obama.
  • General Michael Hayden, head of the CIA under president George Bush, and Michael Mukasey, who was attorney-general, criticised Obama for releasing the memos. The two accused him of pandering to the media in creating "faux outrage", undermining the morale of the intelligence services and inviting the scorn of America's enemies.
  • the interrogation techniques outlined in the memos prompted a flood of calls from human rights groups and others for the prosecution of politicians, lawyers, doctors and CIA operatives involved.
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  • "The release of CIA memos on interrogation methods by the US department of justice appears to have offered a get-out-of-jail-free card to people involved in torture," Amnesty International said. "Torture is never acceptable and those who conduct it should not escape justice."
  • The Bush administration lawyers argued in the memos that the techniques did not amount to torture because no serious psychological or physical harm was done. About 10 techniques, with variations, were approved, ranging from waterboarding, which simulates drowning, to sleep deprivation and playing on a detainee's perceived fear of insects.
  • Hayden and Mukasey, in a jointly written piece in the Wall Street Journal today, declared there was no need to release the memos. "Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage and is perfectly packaged for media consumption. It will also incur the utter contempt of our enemies."Somehow, it seems unlikely that the people who beheaded Nicholas Berg [the US businessman who was killed in Iraq] and Daniel Pearl [the US journalist killed in Pakistan], and have tortured and slain other American captives, are likely to be shamed into giving up violence by the news that the US will no longer interrupt that sleep cycle of captured terrorists even to help elicit intelligence that could save the lives of its citizens."
  • One of the memos, dated 2005, said that the CIA had 94 detainees in its custody at the time and had used the approved techniques against 28 of them, and that these amounted to the hard core of prisonersThree of the memos were written by Steven Bradbury, of the US justice department, in response to questions from John Rizzo, a lawyer with the CIA, who wanted to know if the techniques complied with international laws.
  • Stacy Sullivan, of Human Rights Watch, echoed this: "President Obama said there was nothing to gain 'by laying blame for the past'. But prosecuting those responsible for torture is really about ensuring that such crimes don't happen in the future."
  • The Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists issued a statement calling on Obama to investigate and prosecute officials who authorised and engaged in torture."Without holding to account the authors of a policy of torture and those executing it, there cannot be a return to the rule of law," said Wilder Tayler, acting secretary-general of the ICJ.
  • Cramped confinement: Detainees put in uncomfortably small containers. But this was judged to be unsuccessful, as it offered detainees a temporary save haven.
Pedro Gonçalves

Analysis - The power behind the throne in North Korea | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...th-power-idUKTRE7BJ0HK20111220

North Korea Jang Song-thaek

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Real power in North Korea now probably belongs to a coterie of advisers following the death of Kim Jong-il, not his youngest son, an untested man in his 20s who has been anointed the "Great Successor."
  • These advisers will decide whether North Korea launches military action against South Korea to strengthen the succession around Kim Jong-un -- or seeks a peaceful transition.
  • The most powerful adviser is Jang Song-thaek, 65, brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il.
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  • "Jang has played a considerable role during Kim Jong-il's illness of managing the succession problem and even the North's relations with the United States and China," said Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies."Jang is in overall charge of the job of making it formal for Kim Jong-un to be the legal and systematic leader by pulling together the party and the military."
  • Jang had the full backing of his brother-in-law, who named him to the National Defence Commission in 2009, the supreme leadership council Kim Jong-il led as head of the military state.That appointment was part of a flurry of moves Kim Jong-il made following a stroke in 2008 which probably brought home the reality that, unlike his father at his death in 1994, he was unprepared for a trusted son to take over.
  • The commission has been the pinnacle of power in North Korea and which Kim had used to preach his own version of political teaching called Songun, or "military first."
  • The naming of Jang as a vice chairman of the commission effectively catapulted him to the second most powerful position in the country.It also put him in line to become caretaker leader of the dynastic state in the event Kim was unable to orchestrate a gradual transition of power and the grooming of Jong-un.
  • Jang, who also holds the humble title of a department chief in the ruling Workers' Party, disappeared from public for two years before returning in 2006, widely believed to have been purged then rehabilitated as part of a power struggle involving backers of Kim's second and third wives.He is considered a pragmatist who earned Kim Jong-il's trust because of his understanding of domestic politics and economic policy.
  • Few observers believe either Jang or his wife will try to push the junior Kim out and grab power for themselves."That would kindle a power struggle that will get out of control, and they will know better than to do that," said Yang of the University of North Korean Studies.
  • With the military already very powerful, there appears to be little risk of a coup or the kind of regime change seen in the Arab world this year.
  • Ri Yong-ho, the rising star of the North's military and its chief of staff, is ranked fourth on the list of funeral committee officials, an indication of the power he wields not only in the army but as Kim Jong-il's confidante in domestic politics.Ri, despite being on good terms with Jang, provides an ideal balance to the power of Kim's brother-in-law.
  • Parliament is headed by Kim Yong-nam, a loyal but passive figurehead who analysts say poses no threat to the transition
  • "The North Korean leadership is united," said Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul. "They understand that they should hang together in order not to be hanged separately."
  • Jang, his wife Kim and Vice Marshal Ri are expected to make sure Jong-un survives as the third generational leader and that North Korea holds together at least through the centenary of Kim Il-Sung's birth in 2012.
Argos Media

Obama stands firm on closing Guantánamo | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...barack-obama-guantanamo-close

US Guantanamo Torture Obama Dick Cheney

shared by Argos Media on 22 May 09 - Cached
  • Barack Obama today laid out a broad case for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and banning the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that have been condemned as torture – while accusing his opponents of wanting to scare Americans to win political battles.In a grand hall at the US national archives, standing directly in front of original copies of the US constitution and declaration of independence, Obama said the current legal and political battles in Washington over the fate of the 240 prisoners there stemmed not from his decision to close the facility, but from George Bush's move seven years ago to open it.
  • Obama stressed at several points that his administration would never free dangerous terrorists into the US, an effort to counter the Republican party's central argument against the closure. He said US prisons were tough and safe enough to handle the most vicious al-Qaida terrorist suspects now held at Guantánamo."I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people," Obama said. "Al-Qaida terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture – like other prisoners of war – must be prevented from attacking us again."
  • Shortly after Obama spoke, Dick Cheney gave a rebuttal at a conservative Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. The former vice-president defended many of the Bush administration policies Obama is now unraveling, and mentioned either "September 11" or "9/11" 25 times.Cheney said Saddam Hussein had "known ties" to terrorists, an apparent rehashing of the widely discredited Bush administration effort to link the Iraqi dictator to the September 11 2001 hijackers."After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalised," Cheney said."In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralising as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists."
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  • Obama today said that indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay and the prison's harsh interrogation methods had undermined the rule of law, alienated America from the rest of the world, served as a rallying cry and recruiting symbol for terrorists, risked the lives of American troops by making it less likely enemy combatants would surrender, and increased the likelihood American prisoners of war would be mistreated. The camp's existence discouraged US allies from cooperating in the fight against international terrorism, he said."There is also no question that Guantánamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world," he said. "Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al-Qaida that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law."
  • Meanwhile only three people had been tried by the Bush military commissions in seven years, but Bush had released 525 detainees from the prison.
  • He noted that an estimated 14% of suspects freed from Guantánamo returned to the battlefield, but blamed that on the Bush administration's slipshod process of selecting which to let loose.
  • Obama said his administration would try in US courts those who had violated US criminal laws; try in military commissions those who violated the laws of war; free those ordered released by US courts; and transfer at least 50 people to foreign countries for detention and rehabilitation.
  • He acknowledged that a number of Guantánamo prisoners could not be prosecuted yet posed a clear threat to the US: those who had trained at al-Qaida camps, commanded Taliban troops, pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden and sworn to kill Americans."These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States," he said.
  • Obama defended his decision to release justice department memos detailing the Bush administration's legal rationale for waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other harsh interrogation techniques. He said those techniques had already been publicised and he had already banned them."In short, I released these memos because there was no overriding reason to protect them," he said. "And the ensuing debate has helped the American people better understand how these interrogation methods came to be authorised and used."He defended his decision not to release photographs of US-held prisoners similar to those taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He said he feared they would inflame world opinion against the US and endanger US troops.
Pedro Gonçalves

News Analysis - Ahmadinejad Reaps Benefits of Stacking Key Iran Agencies With His Allie... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25tehran.html

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Ali Khamenei Mojtaba Khamenei

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 Jun 09 - Cached
  • But analysts said the crackdown now taking place across Iran suggested that Mr. Ahmadinejad had succeeded in creating a pervasive network of important officials in the military, security agencies, and major media outlets, a new elite made especially formidable by support from one important constituent, Iran’s supreme leader himself.
  • Mr. Ahmadinejad has filled crucial ministries and other top posts with close friends and allies who have spread ideological and operational support for him nationwide. These analysts estimate that he has replaced 10,000 government employees to cement his loyalists through the bureaucracies, so that his allies run the organizations responsible for both the contested election returns and the official organs that have endorsed them.
  • There is a pattern to the way Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has selected allies throughout his career, said Said A. Arjomand, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who has just finished a book analyzing the rule of the supreme leader. The ayatollah has repeatedly surrounded himself with men lacking an apparent social or political base of their own, men who would be dependent on him, Mr. Arjomand said.
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  • During the presidential campaign of 2005, the supreme leader endorsed Mr. Ahmadinejad because the humble son of a blacksmith appeared to be just such an obscure candidate. But he entered the presidency with a coterie of veterans and ideologues shaped by the Iran-Iraq war who were conservative, religious, largely populist and disdainful of the old guard from the 1979 revolution.
  • Today, these allies, many of them former midlevel Revolutionary Guard officers in their 50s, run the Interior, Intelligence and Justice Ministries. They also include the commander of the Basij popular militia, the head of the National Security Council and the head of state-run broadcasting. They are aligned with another member of their generation who has emerged as the most important figure in the Khamenei camp, the spiritual leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei.
  • Mr. Ahmadinejad has also changed all 30 of the country’s governors, all the city managers and even third- and fourth-level civil servants in important ministries like the Interior Ministry. It was Interior that announced that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won the June 12 election with just 5 percent of the votes counted, analysts pointed out, and it is the Intelligence Ministry that has been rounding up scores of supporters of the reform candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, and other dissidents.
  • At the same time, Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor, runs three powerful educational institutions in the holy city of Qum, all spun off from the Haqqani seminary, which teaches that Islam and democracy are incompatible. The ayatollah favors a system that would preserve the post of supreme leader and eliminate elections. The Ahmadinejad administration has provided generous government subsidies to the seminary, and its graduates hold significant government posts nationwide.
  • Perhaps the most important media organization to spread the government’s message is the hard-line Kayhan newspaper. Its general director, Hossein Shariatmaderi, in recent days has resurrected a standard accusation: that foreign governments were manipulating the demonstrations on Iran’s streets.
Pedro Gonçalves

The Eternal Candidate: Turkey Bets on Regional Influence as EU Hopes Fade - SPIEGEL ONL... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,628575,00.html

Turkey EU Recep Tayyip Erdogan Neo-Ottomanism Ahmet Davutoglu Middle East Syria Gaza Lebanon Georgia Russia Caucasus Armenia France Germany Foreign Policy Turkish Foreign Policy

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Jun 09 - Cached
  • The Turks, who always used to complain to their Western allies about their rough neighborhood, apparently no longer have any enemies in the east. Turkey's old rival Russia has since become its most important energy and trading partner. Syria and Iraq, two countries with which Ankara has in the past been on the brink of war, are now friends of Turkey, and relations are even improving with Armenia. The Arabs, who never truly took to the successors of the Ottomans, now look with admiration to what they call the "Turkish model," a dynamic, open country that has a better handle on its problems than they do.
  • When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan assumed office in 2003, he planned to lead Turkey into the European Union. But Europe was unmoved by this vision, and it has also lost much of its appeal within Turkey. According to Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a think tank linked to the center-left Social Democratic Party, as the Europeans have become weary of expansion, Turkey has lost interest in joining the EU. Indeed, what Erdogan meant when he spoke of Turkey's "alternative" to becoming an EU member is becoming increasingly clear.
  • Critics and supporters alike describe this new course as "neo-Ottomanism." Ankara remains formally committed to its European ambitions. However, frustrated by the open rejection with which it has long been met in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, and which it has been facing once again during the EU election campaign, Turkey is focusing increasingly on its role as a peacekeeping power in a region it either ruled or dominated for centuries.
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  • The Turkish press touts Davutoglu as "Turkey's Kissinger," and even Erdogan and Gül refer to him as "hoca" ("venerable teacher"). The country's foreign policy increasingly bears his signature. For example, at his suggestion, Turkish diplomats revived talks between Syria and Israel that had been discontinued in 2000, leading to secret peace talks that began in Istanbul in 2004. However, the talks were temporarily suspended in late 2008 because of parliamentary elections in Israel and the Gaza offensive.
  • Davutoglu is convinced that Ankara must be on good terms with all its neighbors, and it cannot fear contact with the countries and organizations branded as pariahs by the West, namely Syria, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. He believes that Turkey should have no qualms about acknowledging its Ottoman past -- in other words, it should become a respected regional power throughout the territory once ruled by the Ottoman Empire (see graphic).
  • Davutoglu, like President Gül, is from Central Anatolia and a member of a new elite influenced by Islamic thought. He completed his secondary-school education at a German overseas school, learned Arabic and taught at an Islamic university in Malaysia. He believes that a one-sided Western orientation is unhealthy for a country like Turkey.
  • The Turks say that they achieved more during the Gaza conflict than Middle East veterans like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, arguing that Hamas's willingness to accept Israel's ceasefire offer was attributable to Ankara's intervention. They also say that the fact that Erdogan angrily broke off a discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Summit in Davos cemented his reputation in the Islamic world as a friend of the Palestinians. When street fighting erupted in Lebanon between supporters of the pro-Western government and of Hezbollah in May 2008, Erdogan intervened as a mediator.
  • Ankara is also seeking to reduce tensions in the Caucasus region, where the Turks have often acted against Russia, prompting Moscow to accuse Turkey of being sympathetic to the Chechen cause. After the war in Georgia last summer, the Erdogan government brought together officials from Tbilisi and Moscow. Turkey and Armenia are now seeking to overcome long-standing hostility by establishing diplomatic relations and reopening their shared border.
  • Off the Horn of Africa, the US Fifth Fleet turned over the leadership of Combined Task Force 151, which is responsible for combating piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia, to the Turkish navy. At the same time, a man paid an official visit to Ankara who had not appeared in public since 2007: Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, the head of the notorious Mahdi Army militia. Davutoglu had sent a private jet to bring him to Turkey from his exile in Iran.
  • Critics like political scientist Soner Cagaptay describe Ankara's foreign policy as "pro-Arab Islamist." In a recent op-ed for the Turkish daily Hurriyet, Cagaptay argued that Turkish diplomats, who had once "looked to Europe, particularly France, for political inspiration" have now fallen for the Arab world, and generally for Islamists
  • Diplomats like Hakki Akil, the Turkish ambassador in Abu Dhabi, disagree. According to Akil, Turkey has acquired "soft power" by expanding its sphere of influence from the Balkans to Afghanistan, transporting Russian, Caspian Sea and Iranian oil and gas to the West, and building housing and airports in Kurdish northern Iraq. Europe, says Akil, ought to be pleased with Ankara's course. As Akil's boss Davutoglu said in Brussels, political stability, a secure energy corridor and a strong partner on its southeastern flank are all "in the fundamental interest of the EU."
  • According to a recent internal European Commission report, Turkey has made "only limited progress." Some EU countries have already abandoned the idea of accepting Turkey into their midst. In Bavaria, conservative Christian Social Union campaigners promote a message of "No to Turkey" as they make the rounds of beer tents. At a televised campaign appearance in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy made their opposition to EU membership for Turkey clear.
  • Ironically, Turkey's strategic importance for Europe "is even greater today than in the days of the Cold War," says Elmar Brok, a German member of the European Parliament for the conservative Christian Democratic Union who specializes in foreign policy issues. And then there is the paradox of the fact that the more intensively Turkey, out of frustration with Europe, engages with its eastern neighbors, the more valuable it becomes to the West. According to Brok, the West must "do everything possible to keep Ankara on board."
  • Brok and other members of the European Parliament envision making so-called "privileged partner" status palatable to Turkey. It would enable Turkey to have a similar relationship to the EU as Norway does today and to enjoy many of the benefits of EU membership, including access to the European single market, visa-free travel, police cooperation and joint research programs. But it would not, however, become a member.
Pedro Gonçalves

Memo From Tehran - Reverberations as Door Slams on Hope of Change - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...14memo.html

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mir Hossein Mousavi Israel

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Jun 09 - Cached
  • There were some important constituencies that took satisfaction from the outcome.Domestically, Mr. Ahmadinejad appealed to the fears of the more pious and poor who had found change unsettling. This included those alarmed by the days of political street carnival preceding the election and those (not just men) put off by Mr. Moussavi’s attention to the traditional, second-class role of women in this paternalistic quasi-theocracy. They were joined by the civil servants, police officers and pensioners who all enjoyed the incumbent’s oil-financed generosity to his base, by those who relished his name-naming attack on corruption and by those who took pride in his defiance of the West. Outside Iran, the result was comforting to hawks in Israel and some Western capitals who had feared that a more congenial Iranian president would cause the world to let down its guard against a country galloping toward nuclear weapons capability. (Mr. Moussavi, while promising a more conciliatory foreign policy, did not disavow the country’s nuclear-processing project, which Iran insists is for civilian ends alone.)
  • The text messaging that is the nervous system of the opposition was shut down, along with universities, Web sites and newspapers the government regarded as hostile. Mr. Moussavi was not allowed a platform on Saturday and barely managed to get out a communiqué calling the election “a magic show.”
Argos Media

U.S. Questions Pakistan's Will to Stop Taliban - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...24pstan.html

Pakistan Taliban Swat Valley Buner North West Frontier Province Shangla Swabi Mardan Maulana Fazlur Rahman

shared by Argos Media on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • As the Taliban tightened their hold over newly won territory, Pakistani politicians and American officials on Thursday sharply questioned the government’s willingness to deal with the insurgents and the Pakistani military’s decision to remain on the sidelines.
  • Some 400 to 500 insurgents consolidated control of their new prize, a strategic district called Buner, just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, setting up checkpoints and negotiating a truce similar to the one that allowed the Taliban to impose Islamic law in the neighboring Swat Valley.
  • As they did, Taliban contingents were seen Thursday in at least two other districts and areas still closer to the capital, according to Pakistani government officials and residents.
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  • Yet Pakistani authorities deployed just several hundred poorly paid and equipped constabulary forces to Buner, who were repelled in a clash with the insurgents, leaving one police officer dead
  • The limited response set off fresh scrutiny of Pakistan’s military, a force with 500,000 soldiers and a similar number of reservists. The army receives $1 billion in American military aid each year but has repeatedly declined to confront the Taliban-led insurgency, even as it has bled out of Pakistan’s self-governed tribal areas into Pakistan proper in recent months.
  • The military remains fixated on training and deploying its soldiers to fight the country’s archenemy, India. It remains ill equipped for counterinsurgency, analysts say, and top officers are deeply reluctant to be pressed into action against insurgents who enjoy family, ethnic and religious ties with many Pakistanis.
  • In the limited engagements in which regular army troops have fought the Taliban in the tribal areas and sections of the Swat Valley, they not only failed to dislodge the Taliban, but also convinced many Pakistanis that their own military was as much of a menace as the Islamic radicals it sought to repel, residents and analysts say.
  • In Washington, a Defense Department official who is monitoring Pakistan closely said that the poorly trained constabulary force was sent Thursday because Pakistani Army troops were not available, and Pakistani generals were reluctant to pull reinforcements off the border with India — something American officials have encouraged them to do.
  • Instead, the military, which is stretched thin in the areas along the Afghan border, has favored negotiations, and the civilian government has acquiesced. “The government is too worried about its own political survival to take on the militants,” the Defense Department official said.
  • Where it has engaged the insurgents, the Pakistani Army, untrained in counterinsurgency, has become reviled by the civilian population for its heavy-handed tactics, which have cost many lives while failing to stop the Taliban. At the same time, the police and paramilitary forces have proved too weak to stand up to the militants. In Buner, desperate residents had resorted to forming their own militias, as much to keep out the military as the Taliban. That effort, too, has now failed.
  • On Capitol Hill, legislators preparing to introduce a bill to provide Pakistan with $7.5 billion in nonmilitary aid over five years may face a steep challenge.
  • In a sign of the urgency of the crisis, the special envoy for the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, is sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton memos several times a day with his latest reading of the situation in Pakistan, an American official said. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefly visited Pakistan on Wednesday night and Thursday from Afghanistan, to meet with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani Army chief of staff. An American official briefed on discussions said the Pakistani leadership was “very concerned.”
  • Buner (pronounced boo-NAIR), home to about one million people, lies in the heart of North-West Frontier Province, bordering seven other districts. Its capture not only advances the Taliban closer to the capital, but also gives the Taliban a vital hub to extend their reach.
  • More than 30 armed militants entered the Shangla district, east of the main Swat Valley and north of Buner, and were seen patrolling an area around Loch Bazaar, the independent channel Geo TV reported Thursday, quoting witnesses.Government officials also confirmed that militants have been seen in Totali, far south in Buner and close to the boundary with the Swabi district, which lies close to the main highways into the capital.
  • Armed militants have also been seen visiting mosques and patrolling in Rustam, a town on the boundary between Buner and the adjoining district of Mardan, said Riaz Khan, a lawyer living in Mardan, the second largest town in North-West Frontier Province. “People are anxious and in a state of fear,” he said.
  • The Taliban were making a concerted push into areas that overlook the capital, lawmakers and government officials in North-West Frontier Province said.
  • A powerful religious party leader, Fazlur Rehman, who is allied with the government, warned that militants had reached into the Mansehra district, close to the Tarbela Dam, a vital source of electricity to the center of the country.
  • “If the Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the door of Islamabad,” he told Parliament on Wednesday, adding that Margalla Hills, north of the capital, seem to be the only hurdle to the Taliban advance.
  • The Pakistani Taliban, who number in the thousands across the tribal areas and the Swat region, have declared their aim of establishing Shariah rule throughout Pakistan. But for now, their expansion may be opportunistic and their strength sufficient only to establish local fiefdoms, or “micro-emirates of Shariah,” said Christine Fair, a senior research associate at the RAND Corporation.“I don’t know what the Taliban’s game plan is, but what seems apparent is the state has no game plan,” she said. “The Pakistani state is not able to stop them and they expand where they can.”
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Americas | Obama exempts CIA 'torture' staff - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8003537.stm

US CIA Torture Abu Zubaydah

shared by Argos Media on 17 Apr 09 - Cached
  • US President Barack Obama says CIA agents who used harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects during the Bush era will not be prosecuted.
  • Mr Obama banned the use of methods such as sleep deprivation and simulated drowning in his first week in office. He has now released four memos detailing techniques the CIA was able to use under the Bush administration.
  • Amnesty International said the Department of Justice appeared to be offering a "get-out-of-jail-free card" to individuals who were involved in acts of torture.
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  • The Obama administration said the move reiterated its previously-stated commitment to end the use of torture by its officers, and would protect those who acted within the limits set out by a previous legal opinion.
  • Mr Obama gave an assurance that "those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice... will not be subject to prosecution".
  • One of the documents contained legal authorisation for a list of specific harsh interrogation techniques, including pushing detainees against a wall, facial slaps, cramped confinement, stress positions and sleep deprivation. The memo also authorises the use of "waterboarding", or simulated drowning, and the placing of a detainee into a confined space with an insect.
  • The release of the memos stems from a request by civil rights group the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
  • Mr Parker said the decision to allow the use of insects in interrogation was reminiscent of the Room 101 nightmare described by George Orwell in his seminal novel, 1984.
  • The approved tactic - to place al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah, who is afraid of insects, inside a box filled with caterpillars but to tell him they were stinging insects - was never used.
  • During his first week in office, President Obama issued an executive order officially outlawing the use of harsh interrogation techniques by the CIA, and forcing the agency to adhere to standards laid out in the US Army Field Manual.
  • "Bottom line here is you've had crimes committed," Amnesty International analyst Tom Parker told the BBC.
  • the former head of the CIA under former President George W Bush, Gen Michael Hayden, said the White House move would undermine intelligence work and dissuade foreign agencies from sharing information with the CIA. "If you want an intelligence service to work for you, they always work on the edge. That's just where they work," he told the Associated Press.
Muslim Academy

Why Did God Create Evil - 0 views

muslim-academy.com/kening-why-did-god-create-evil

why did god create evil did god create evil

shared by Muslim Academy on 30 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 30 Dec 12
     
    From human evil in wars, drone attacks, and brutal mass killings, to natural disasters as in earthquakes, floods and tornadoes, many innocent people get died and many survivors spend their lives mourning them. Amidst all this misery, we cannot help but ask, why? Is it fair that my lovely child who still have not tasted the goodies of life die while those malicious people who killed him run away? Is it fair that a flood comes to drown a group of people while others remain untouched? However, there is a beam of hope that still manages to arise only if we think deeper within ourselves. "Why did God create evil" is one of the most philosophical questions that thinkers and philosophers do not seem to be in agreement while providing a logical answer to it. Let me discuss with you one of the humblest, yet most logical answers provided by the great Islamic thinker "Mustafa Mahmud".
Pedro Gonçalves

Libya struggles to contain tribal conflicts | Reuters - 1 views

uk.reuters.com/...violence-idUKBRE83703320120408

Lybia Tibu

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 08 Apr 12 - No Cached
    • Pedro Gonçalves
      Pedro Gonçalves on 08 Apr 12
       
      What about the secessionist movement in Benghazi and the Cyrenaica region?
  • Long-standing rivalries, divided communities and plentiful weapons are convulsing Libya as the interim government struggles to impose its authority and secure peace among the country's ethnic groups.Violence in the Saharan south and in western Libya have shown how volatile the country remains six months after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, who had long played off one tribe or clan against the other to weaken their power.
  • Gaddafi was always quick to end any ethnic clashes in the desert region and in 2009 he put down a tribal rebellion with helicopter gunships. But Libya's new rulers are weak and often out-gunned by the militias they are trying to control.
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  • Oasis farmers by tradition, the Tibu supported the rebel side in last year's uprising against Gaddafi. Their opponents are ethnic Arabs who see the Tibu, a group that also lives across the border in Chad and Niger, as outsiders.
  • In the chaos since Gaddafi's fall, the south has become a smuggling route for weapons which are reaching al Qaeda militants deeper in the Sahara and Tuaregs who are staging a separatist rebellion in northern Mali.
  • It is also used for trafficking legal and contraband goods such as alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, and by African immigrants heading north in the hope of reaching Europe.
  • Without a genuine army, Libya's National Transitional Council has struggled to persuade the many militias who fought Gaddafi across the country to join the armed forces and police, limiting its ability to intervene quickly in troublespots.
  • Analysts say the fighting will not tear the country apart, but it underlines the insecurity. "There is very little the government is currently able to do to prevent further clashes from occurring, either in the same locales or in new ones," Geoff Porter of North Africa Consulting said.
  • "That said, the fighting does not pose an existential threat to the viability of the country. The fighting has not been motivated by explicit grievances with the state, it is not driven by secessionist tendencies, and it does not appear to be underpinned by political ideology.
Pedro Gonçalves

Libyan attack: it should have been clear deposing Gaddafi was the easy bit | Simon Tisd... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-attack-fire-cannot-extinguish

Lybia

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Any number of other Libyan armed groups might have had a hand in the killings. But in truth, responsibility may also be traced back, directly or indirectly, to those in London, Paris, Brussels and Washington who launched last year's Nato intervention in Libya with insouciant disregard for the consequences. It was clear then, or should have been, that toppling Muammar Gaddafi was the easy bit. Preventing an Iraq-style implosion, or some form of Afghan anarchy, would be much harder.
  • Once again, the western powers have started a fire they cannot extinguish. A year after David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy jointly travelled to Libya to lay claim to a liberator's bogus laurels, the Libyan revolution they fanned and fuelled is in danger of degenerating into a chaotic, violent free-for-all.
  • Do not be misled by the fig leaf of this summer's national assembly polls. Post-Gaddafi Libya lacks viable national political leadership, a constitution, functioning institutions, and most importantly, security. Nationwide parliamentary elections are still a year away. The east-west divide is as problematic as ever. Political factions fight over the bones of the former regime, symbolised by the forthcoming trials of Gaddafi's son, Saif, and his intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi.
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  • Effective central control, meanwhile, is largely absent. And into this vacuum have stepped armed groups – whether politically, religiously or financially inspired matters little – all claiming sectional suzerainty over the multitude of fractured fiefdoms that was, until Nato barged in, a unified state.
  • Research published in June by the Small Arms Survey suggested that the emergence and influence of armed groups challenging national government and army was accelerating rapidly. The survey identified four distinct types including experienced revolutionary brigades accounting for up to 85% of all weapons not controlled by the state and myriad militias – loosely defined as armed gangs, criminal networks and religious extremists bent on exploiting post-revolution weakness.
  • In Misrata, for example, in addition to about 30,000 small arms, revolutionary brigades "control more than 820 tanks, dozens of heavy artillery pieces, and more than 2,300 vehicles equipped with machine-guns and anti-aircraft weapons." Misrata, scene of some of the worst fighting last year, has become a state within a state.
  • the Salafists who besieged the Benghazi consulate have also been involved in a wave of attacks on historic Sufi mosques and libraries and attempts to intimidate female university students who eschew the hijab.
  • western politicians who, just as in Iraq, jumped feet first into a complex situation without sufficient care or thought for the future.
Pedro Gonçalves

Analysis: Israel's Iran strategy: Bombs? Bluff? Both? | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...r-israel-idUKTRE7B61MV20111207

Israel Iran

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Ever a big-picture thinker, the U.S.-educated premier gave a speech this week commending Israel's founding premier David Ben-Gurion for making fateful decisions at a "heavy price," despite protests heard at home and abroad.Commentators, on the alert these days for any clue about a possible strike on Iran, spotted a subtext - that Netanyahu, too, was ready to take lonely action in Israel's interest.He could hope for a repeat of the 1981 attack on Iraq's atomic reactor and a similar sortie against Syria in 2007, when the anger of Washington's initial reactions quickly faded.
  • "So there's a huge public relations issue here: Can you make a credible case over the head of the administration, and get the American public to buy into the pain that is going to follow -- Americans being killed in terrorism, oil shock, whatever it is."For now, Kurtzer estimated, Obama administration warnings against unilateral Israeli strikes on Iran would account for "5 percent" of Israeli deliberations, with the Netanyahu government's military calculations taking the lion's share.
  • Its priorities include fending off Iran's promised missile reprisals and containing potential knock-on border wars with the Lebanese and Palestinian guerrillas who are allied to Tehran.
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  • Public reluctance has been galvanized by the unusually vocal questioning by Dagan and some other retired security chiefs of Netanyahu and Barak's secret strategizing.
  • Former Mossad spymaster Meir Dagan has predicted that Syria, Iran's key Arab ally and now beset by a bloody domestic uprising, might also choose to join in the foreign conflict.
  • These critics have urged U.S.-led sanctions on Tehran be given more time. Israel and its Western partners are also widely believed to have been sabotaging Iran's uranium enrichment and ballistic arms projects, though Barak said any such covert campaign cannot be relied upon to finish the job.
  • By a ratio of two to one, respondents said they would agree to stripping Israel of its own atomic arsenal as part of a regional disarmament deal. Ninety percent predicted Iran, which says its nuclear project is peaceful, would obtain in time become a nuclear military power.
    • Pedro Gonçalves
      Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Dec 11
       
      The Israeli public shows a willingness to get rid of Israel's nuclear arsenal in "Middle East free of nuclear weapons" framework - a nukes for peace?
  • A December 1 poll by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the U.S. think-tank Brookings found that 43 percent of Israeli Jews backed attacking Iran, while 41 percent would be opposed.
    • Pedro Gonçalves
      Pedro Gonçalves on 12 Dec 11
       
      Israeli public evenly divided on an attack on Iran
  • Slowing its progress toward that point, however, may be enough of an objective for Israel, which Barak assessed last month stood to lose "maybe not even 500 dead" to Iranian retaliation.
  • Israel, he said, should "open lines of dialogue with those who have superior operational abilities than we do" -- effectively, shelving unilateralism in favor of cooperation with the United States and its NATO allies
  • Should it end up worse, "there are international mechanisms that would curtail the war between Iran and Israel," former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said last month.But Yadlin, who was among the eight F-16 pilots who carried out the 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak reactor, sounded circumspect about Israeli military capabilities against Iranian targets that are numerous, distant, fortified and on the alert for attacks - in contrast to Saddam Hussein's sole installation near Baghdad.
  • Dan Schueftan, head of the National Security Studies Centre at Haifa University, said Israel's recent hawkish talk could be meant for foreign ears: "Because they (Netanyahu and Barak) fear that if it is believed that there is no possibility of Israel attacking Iran, the United States won't consider taking action."Even Dagan publicly dangled the possibility that he has been playing into a propaganda ruse, telling Israeli television: "If Dagan is arguing against a conflict, then the Iranian conclusion is ... 'Listen, these Jews are crazy. They could attack Iran!'"
  • But posture can also be self-realizing. Before launching his surprise attack on Israel at Yom Kippur in 1973, Egypt's Anwar Sadat repeatedly issued mobilization orders to his forces while also saying he was willing to consider peace negotiations, lulling Israelis into believing Cairo was not a serious threat.
Argos Media

Gaza war crime claims gather pace as more troops speak out | World news | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...stinian-territories-war-crimes

Israel War Crimes Palestine Gaza Break the Silence

shared by Argos Media on 22 Mar 09 - Cached
  • An investigation by a group of former Israeli soldiers has uncovered new evidence of the military's conduct during the assault on Gaza two months ago. According to the group Breaking the Silence, the witness statements of the 15 soldiers who have come forward to describe their concerns over Operation Cast Lead appear to corroborate claims of random killings and vandalism carried out during the operation made by a separate group of anonymous servicemen during a seminar at a military college.
  • "This is not a military that we recognise," said Mikhael Manekin, one of the former soldiers involved with the group. "This is in a different category to things we have seen before. We have spoken to a lot of different people who served in different places in Gaza, including officers. We are not talking about some units being more aggressive than others, but underlying policy. So much so that we are talking to soldiers who said that they were having to restrain the orders given."
  • Manekin described how soldiers had reported their units being specifically warned by officers not to discuss what they had seen and done in Gaza.
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  • The outlines of the evidence gathered comes hard on the heels of the disclosure by the Oranim Academy's pre-military course last week of devastating witness accounts supplied by soldiers involved in the fighting, including the "unjustified" shooting of civilians.
  • With Israeli newspapers threatening new disclosures, the New York Times has weighed in with an interview with a reservist describing the rules of engagement for the Gaza operation. Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old military reservist, told the newspaper that he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed in training talks before his tank unit entered Gaza in January. "Shoot and don't worry about the consequences" was the message from commanders, said Marmor. Describing the behaviour of a lieutenant-colonel who briefed the troops, Marmor added: "His whole demeanour was extremely gung-ho. This is very, very different from my usual experience. I have been doing reserve duty for 12 years, and it was always an issue how to avoid causing civilian injuries. He said that in this operation, we are not taking any chances. Morality aside, we have to do our job. We will cry about it later."
  • Last Thursday, the special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council, Richard Falk, said that the assault on Gaza appeared to be a "war crime of the greatest magnitude" and called on the UN to establish an experts' group to investigate potential violations.
  • Attempts by the Israeli media to publish the rules of engagement for the Gaza campaign have been blocked by the military censor, but in the past couple of weeks the contents of those rules have begun to to emerge in anecdotal evidence - suggesting strongly that soldiers were told to avoid Israeli casualties at all costs by means of the massive use of firepower in a densely populated urban environment.
  • An investigation by reporter Uri Blau, published on Friday in Haaretz, disclosed how Israeli soldiers were ordering T-shirts to mark the end of operations, featuring grotesque images including dead babies, mothers weeping by their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques. Another T-shirt designed for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex" next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A shirt designed for the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion depicts a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills".
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