One step forward, two back
October 13, 2006
The Dawn (Pakistan)
By Pervez Hoodbhoy
SOME had feared — while others had hoped — that General Pervez Musharraf’s coup of October 12, 1999, would bring the revolution of Kemal Ataturk to a Pakistan in the iron grip of mullahs. But years later, a definitive truth has emerged. Like the other insecure governments before it, both military and civilian, the present regime also has a single-point agenda — to stay in power at all costs. It, therefore, does whatever it must and Pakistan moves further away from any prospect of acquiring modern values, and of building and strengthening democratic institutions.
The requirements for survival of the present regime are clear. On the one hand, the army leadership knows that its critical dependence upon the West requires that it be perceived abroad as a liberal regime pitted against radical Islamists. On the other hand, and in actual fact, to safeguard and extend its grip on power, it must preserve the status quo.
The staged conflicts between General Musharraf and the mullahs are, therefore, a regular part of Pakistani politics. This September, nearly seven years later, the religious parties needed no demonstration of muscle power for winning two major victories in less than a fortnight; just a few noisy threats sufficed. From experience they knew that the Pakistan army and its sagacious leader — of “enlightened moderation” fame — would stick to their predictable pattern of dealing with the Islamists. In a nutshell: provoke a fight, get the excitement going, let diplomatic missions in Islamabad make their notes and CNN and BBC get their clips — and then beat a retreat. At the end of it all, the mullahs would get what they want, but so would the general.
Examples abound. On April 21, 2000, General Musharraf announced a new administrative procedure for registration of cases under the blasphemy law. This law, under which the minimum penalty is death, has frequently been used to harass personal and political opponents. To reduce such occurrences, Musharraf’s modified procedure would have required the local district magistrate’s approval for the registration of a blasphemy case. It would have been an improvement, albeit a modest one. But 25 days later, on May 16, 2000, under the watchful glare of the mullahs, Musharraf hastily climbed down: “As it was the unanimous demand of the ulema, mashaikh and the people...I have decided to do away with the procedural change in the registration of FIR under the blasphemy law.”
Another example. In October 2004, as a new system for issuing machine readable passports was being installed, Musharraf’s government declared that henceforth it would not be necessary for passport holders to specify their religion. As expected, this was denounced by the Islamic parties as a grand conspiracy aimed at secularising Pakistan and destroying its Islamic character. But even before the mullahs actually took to the streets, the government lost nerve and announced its volte-face on March 24, 2005. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said the decision to revive the religion column was made else, “Qadianis and apostates would be able to pose as Muslims and perform pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.”
But even these climbdowns, significant as they are, are less dramatic than the astonishing recent retreat over reforming the Hudood Ordinance, a grotesque imposition of General Ziaul Haq’s government, unparalleled both for its cruelty and irrationality.
Enacted into the law in 1979, it was conceived as part of a more comprehensive process for converting Pakistan into a theocracy governed by Shariah laws. These laws prescribe death by stoning for married Muslims who are found guilty of extra-marital sex (for unmarried couples or non-Muslims, the penalty is 100 lashes). The law is exact in stating how the death penalty is to be administered: “Such of the witnesses who deposed against the convict as may be available shall start stoning him and, while stoning is being carried on, he may be shot dead, whereupon stoning and shooting shall be stopped.”
Rape is still more problematic. A woman who fails to prove that she has been raped is automatically charged with fornication and adultery. Under the Hudood law, she is considered guilty unless she can prove her innocence. Proof of innocence requires that the rape victim must produce “at least four Muslim adult male witnesses, about whom the court is satisfied” who saw the actual act of penetration. Inability to do so may result in her being jailed, or perhaps even sentenced to death for adultery.
General Musharraf, and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, proposed amending the Hudood Ordinance. They sent a draft for parliamentary discussion in early September, 2006. As expected, it outraged the fundamentalists of the MMA, the main Islamic parliamentary opposition, whose members tore up copies of the proposed amendments on the floor of the National Assembly and threatened to resign en masse. The government cowered abjectly and withdrew.
Musharraf’s government proved no more enlightened, or more moderate or more resolute, and behaved no differently from the more than half a dozen previous civilian administrations, including two under Benazir Bhutto and several ‘technocrat’ regimes. No one made a serious effort to confront or reform these laws. But the pattern is broader than deference to the mullahs. General Musharraf has been willing to use the iron fist in other circumstances. Two examples stand out: Waziristan and Balochistan. Each offers instruction.
In 2002, presumably on Washington’s instructions, the Pakistan army established military bases in South Waziristan which had become a refuge for Taliban and Al Qaeda fleeing Afghanistan. It unleashed artillery and US-supplied Cobra gunships. By 2005, heavy fighting had spread to North Waziristan and the army was bogged down.
The generals, safely removed from combat areas, and busy in building their personal empires, ascribed the resistance to “a few hundred foreign militants and terrorists”. But the army was taking losses (how serious is suggested by the fact that casualty figures were not revealed) and soldiers rarely ventured from their forts. Reportedly, local clerics refused to conduct funeral prayers for soldiers killed in action.
In 2004, the army made peace with the militants of South Waziristan. It conceded the territory to them, which made the militants immensely stronger. A similar “peace treaty” was signed on September 5, 2006, in the town of Miramshah in North Waziristan, now firmly in the grip of the Pakistani Taliban.
The Miramshah treaty met all the demands made by the militants: the release of all jailed militants; dismantling of army checkpoints; return of seized weapons and vehicles; the right of the Taliban to display weapons (except heavy weapons); and residence rights for fellow fighters from other Islamic countries. As for “foreign militants” — who Musharraf had blamed exclusively for the resistance, the militants were nonchalant: we will let you know if we find any! The financial compensation demanded by the Taliban for loss of property and life has not been revealed, but some officials have remarked that it is “astronomical”. In turn they promised to cease their attacks on civil and military installations, and to give the army a safe passage out.
While the army has extricated itself, the locals have been left to pay the price. The militants have closed girls’ schools and are enforcing harsh Shariah laws in both North and South Waziristan. Barbers have been told “shave and die”. Taliban vigilante groups patrol the streets of Miramshah. They check such things as the length of beards, whether the “shalwars” are worn at an appropriate height above the ankles and the attendance of individuals in the mosques.
And then there is Balochistan. In 1999, when the army seized power, there was no visible separatist movement in Balochistan, which makes up nearly 44 per cent of Pakistan’s land mass and is the repository of its gas and oil resources. Now there is a full-blown insurgency built upon Baloch grievances, most of which arise from a perception of being ruled from Islamabad and of being denied a fair share of the benefits of the natural resources extracted from their land.
The army has spurned negotiations. Force is the only answer: “They won’t know what hit them,” boasted Musharraf, after threatening to crush the insurgency. The army has used everything it can, including its American-supplied F-16 jet fighters. The crisis worsened when the charismatic 79-year old Baloch chieftain and former governor of Balochistan, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, was killed by army bombs. Musharraf outraged the Baloch by calling it “a great victory”. Reconciliation in Balochistan now seems a distant dream.
Musharraf and his generals are determined to stay in power. They will protect the source of their power — the army. They will accommodate those they must — the Americans. They will pander to the mullahs. They will crush those who threaten their power and privilege, and ignore the rest. No price is too high for them. They are the reason why Pakistan fails.
The writer is a professor at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Europe's growing Problem
Europe and the Islamic World’s relations are becoming increasingly strained as incident after incident exposes the inherent contradictions between an inflexible religious fundamentalism and liberal democracy.
The European view is summarized in an October 11 article from the New York Times and the Islamic view presented in the report in a Pakistani newspaper.
_________________________________________
Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center
New York Times
October 11, 2006
By DAN BILEFSKY and IAN FISHER
BRUSSELS, Oct. 10 — Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.
“You saw what happened with the pope,” said Patrick Gonman, 43, the owner of Raga, a funky wine bar in downtown Antwerp, 25 miles from here. “He said Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere and make his point.
“Rationality is gone.”
Mr. Gonman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby.
His worry is shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.
For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.
Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain, a prominent Labor politician, seemed to sum up the moment when he wrote last week that he felt uncomfortable addressing women whose faces were covered with a veil. The veil, he wrote, is a “visible statement of separation and difference.”
When Pope Benedict XVI made the speech last month that included a quotation calling aspects of Islam “evil and inhuman,” it seemed to unleash such feelings. Muslims berated him for stigmatizing their culture, while non-Muslims applauded him for bravely speaking a hard truth.
The line between open criticism of another group or religion and bigotry can be a thin one, and many Muslims worry that it is being crossed more and more.
Whatever the motivations, “the reality is that views on both sides are becoming more extreme,” said Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert to Islam. “It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable.” Mr. Pedersen fears that onetime moderates are baiting Muslims, the very people they say should integrate into Europe.
The worries about extremism are real. The Belgian far-right party, Vlaams Belang, took 20.5 percent of the vote in city elections last Sunday, five percentage points higher than in 2000. In Antwerp, its base, though, its performance improved barely, suggesting to some experts that its power might be peaking.
In Austria this month, right-wing parties also polled well, on a campaign promise that had rarely been made openly: that Austria should start to deport its immigrants. Vlaams Belang, too, has suggested “repatriation” for immigrants who do not made greater efforts to integrate.
The idea is unthinkable to mainstream leaders, but many Muslims still fear that the day — or at least a debate on the topic — may be a terror attack away.
“I think the time will come,” said Amir Shafe, 34, a Pakistani who earns a good living selling clothes at a market in Antwerp. He deplores terrorism and said he himself did not sense hostility in Belgium. But he said, “We are now thinking of going back to our country, before that time comes.”
Many experts note that there is a deep and troubled history between Islam and Europe, with the Crusaders and the Ottoman Empire jostling each other for centuries and bloodily defining the boundaries of Christianity and Islam. A sense of guilt over Europe’s colonial past and then World War II, when intolerance exploded into mass murder, allowed a large migration to occur without any uncomfortable debates over the real differences between migrant and host.
Then the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, jolted Europe into new awareness and worry.
The subsequent bombings in Madrid and London, and the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-born Moroccan stand as examples of the extreme. But many Europeans — even those who generally support immigration — have begun talking more bluntly about cultural differences, specifically about Muslims’ deep religious beliefs and social values, which are far more conservative than those of most Europeans on issues like women’s rights and homosexuality.
“A lot of people, progressive ones — we are not talking about nationalists or the extreme right — are saying, ‘Now we have this religion, it plays a role and it challenges our assumptions about what we learned in the 60’s and 70’s,’ ” said Joost Lagendik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for the Green Left Party, who is active on Muslim issues.
“So there is this fear,” he said, “that we are being transported back in a time machine where we have to explain to our immigrants that there is equality between men and women, and gays should be treated properly. Now there is the idea we have to do it again.”
Now Europeans are discussing the limits of tolerance, the right with increasing stridency and the left with trepidation.
Austrians in their recent election complained about public schools in Vienna being nearly full with Muslim students and blamed the successive governments that allowed it to happen.
Some Dutch Muslims have expressed support for insurgents in Iraq over Dutch peacekeepers there, on the theory that their prime loyalty is to a Muslim country under invasion.
So strong is the fear that Dutch values of tolerance are under siege that the government last winter introduced a primer on those values for prospective newcomers to Dutch life: a DVD briefly showing topless women and two men kissing. The film does not explicitly mention Muslims, but its target audience is as clear as its message: embrace our culture or leave.
Perhaps most wrenching has been the issue of free speech and expression, and the growing fear that any criticism of Islam could provoke violence.
In France last month, a high school teacher went into hiding after receiving death threats for writing an article calling the Prophet Muhammad “a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass murderer of Jews and a polygamist.” In Germany a Mozart opera with a scene of Muhammad’s severed head was canceled because of security fears.
With each incident, mainstream leaders are speaking more plainly. “Self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in criticizing the opera’s cancellation. “It makes no sense to retreat.”
The backlash is revealing itself in other ways. Last month the British home secretary, John Reid, called on Muslim parents to keep a close watch on their children. “There’s no nice way of saying this,” he told a Muslim group in East London. “These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombing, grooming them to kill themselves to murder others.”
Many Muslims say this new mood is suddenly imposing expectations that never existed before that Muslims be exactly like their European hosts.
Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born activist here in Belgium, said that for years Europeans had emphasized “citizenship and human rights,” the notion that Muslim immigrants had the responsibility to obey the law but could otherwise live with their traditions.
“Then someone comes and says it’s different than that,” said Mr. Jahjah, who opposes assimilation. “You have to dump your culture and religion. It’s a different deal now.”
Lianne Duinberke, 34, who works at a market in the racially mixed northern section of Antwerp, said: “Before I was very eager to tell people I was married to a Muslim. Now I hesitate.” She has been with her husband, a Tunisian, for 12 years, and they have three children.
Many Europeans, she said, have not been accepting of Muslims, especially since 9/11. On the other hand, she said, Muslims truly are different culturally: No amount of explanation about free speech could convince her husband that the publication of cartoons lampooning Muhammad in a Danish newspaper was in any way justified.
When asked if she was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Muslim immigration in Europe , she found it hard to answer. She finally gave a defeated smile. “I am trying to be optimistic,” she said. “But if you see the global problems before the people, then you really can’t be.”
Dan Bilefsky reported from Brussels, and Ian Fisher from Rome. Contributing were Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell from London, Mark Landler from Frankfurt, Peter Kiefer from Rome, Renwick McLean from Madrid and Maia de la Baume from Paris.
___________________________________________________________
Islam, Muslims and Europe
The News (Pakistan)
October 6, 2006
By Dr Muzaffar Iqbal
As we entered the mosque of Córdoba I realised its isolation from its historical environ that once housed almost eighty thousand shops and workshops of artisans; there was nothing left of the marvellous public baths and inns which once surrounded the mosque. The multitudes of citizens, merchants, and mules passing over the bridge over the Great River (Guadalquiver) into the centre of the city were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there were throngs of tourists. In spite of this, the mosque still opens doorways to the numerous connections it once had with Islamic spirituality and sciences and practical arts.
Now, however, one has to use one's imagination to understand these intricate connections, because even the interior of this monumental mosque is not what it used to be; the presence of a "dark church structure that was built between the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and arbitrarily placed at the centre of the light forest of pillars like a giant black spider", as Titus Burchardt once remarked, makes it extremely difficult to clearly distinguish the features of the mosque which once looked like a broad grove of palm trees.
The mosque also stands today without the fabulous royal city, Madinat al-Zahrah, which once provided the backdrop to the city of Cordoba. The famous library of al-Hakam II, with its 400,000 volumes -- many of them containing annotations about their authors in his own hand -- is also gone. The mosque now lacks the traditional courtyard with fountains where the faithful once performed ablution before prayers. But some things still remain, and among them are the prayer niche and the marvellous array of columns and arches with their hypnotic symmetry.
Throngs of tourists take pictures and drift slowly toward the front part of the mosque, through hundreds of pillars, linked by horseshoe-shaped arches. The upper arches are heavier than the lower ones and the abutments of both increases in size with the height of the pillars. The pillars are reminiscent of palm branches, which the Arab rulers of al-Andalus missed in their new land. As we move toward the famed prayer niche the darkness of the interior of the building increases. Once, the area near the prayer niche was the brightest in the mosque.
As we arrive at the seven-sided prayer niche, its many intricate features become obvious. So many aspects of traditional Islamic sciences, arts, and architectural motifs are built into that small area that one can still see a whole civilisation reflected in the prayer niche of the mosque. There is a unique space inside the niche, where the word of God was once recited, a space that evokes awe and reminds one of the mysterious niche of light passage in the celebrated 'Light Verse' of the Holy Quran (24:35).
The fluted shell-like vault, designed to create extraordinary acoustics for the transmission of the recitation of the Holy Quran to the far corners of the mosque, and the horseshoe shaped arch that seems to breathe "as if expanding with a surfeit of inner beatitude, while the rectangular frame enclosing it acts as a counterbalance. The radiating energy and the perfect stillness from an unsurpassable equilibrium."
Today, the mosque of Cordoba stands as a symbol of something far greater than Islamic architecture. This extraordinary mosque, which has remained an enduring source of inspiration and reflection for countless poets and writers (including Iqbal whose poem on the mosque is a masterpiece), today stands as a symbol of Europe's dilemma which it has unwittingly created for itself: what to do with Islam and Muslims. As if to present an immediate example of European intolerance, a Spanish guard rushes toward my fourteen-year-old son as he stands in a corner to offer two rakah prayers.
The Spanish guard incessantly argues that this is not a mosque. I point toward the prayer niche, the beautiful columns, and the entire layout of the marvellous structure where once hundreds of men, women and children prayed, but he sees nothing but the artificially placed dark spider-like building of the Church in the middle of the mosque. "It is a church," he insists.
Our arguments become heated; many other guards rush toward us. I insist on our inalienable right to pray in a building that was constructed for that purpose; they insist that it is not allowed. "Who does not allow it?" I ask. "The authorities." "Can I talk to the authorities?" "No, they are not available".
Finally, they physically stop the prayer and surround us wherever we go inside the mosque. They cannot throw us out of the building, but that is exactly what is on their minds. One more move on our part, and they will have the excuse needed to take that ultimate step.
This episode is a reflection in miniature of the situation of Muslims in Europe today. Some twenty millions of men, women, and children living in this self-proclaimed centre of the civilised world are facing a slow and steady build-up of intolerance, mass hysteria, and state laws which may cut-short their precarious lives built on dreams, hopes, and sheer hard labour over three generations.
Islam and Muslims in Europe have become a dilemma for Europe, which it does not quite know how to deal. After the reconquest of Spain, summary executions, forced conversions, and mass deportations were chosen as the solution to eliminate Muslim presence from this part of Europe. Today, the sheer number of Muslims makes this an impossibility. Yet, state after state, Europe is passing laws that are making it harder for Muslims to practice their religion. The extent of intolerance is such that even a little piece of cloth on the head is considered a threat. Where would this situation lead to?
When the German-born Pope Benedict XVI, known as Joseph Alois Ratzinger prior to his assumption of the highest office of the Catholic Church, insisted that Turkey must not aspire to become a member of the European Union, his reasoning was that Turkey belongs to the Islamic world, whereas Europe belongs to Christianity. This reasoning was based on a historical situation that, in the Pope's mind, is inviolable. Absurd as it may seem, the Pope seems to believe that the earth is divided into religious zones which cannot change. One is reminded of Musailmah the Liar, who once wrote to the Prophet of Islam that "God has divided the world into two; one half belongs to you, the other to me". The Prophet's response was to remind him that the earth belongs to God alone, He gives dominion over it to whomsoever He chooses, and woe unto the liars.
Historical as well as contemporary realities are somewhat different from the pope's version of Europe. Muslim presence in Europe is not new. It is true that the wave of conquest that brought Islam to much of the old world stopped just inside the doorsteps of Europe, but Muslims have remained inside that threshold for centuries. Albania is a European country, with a population of 3.1 million out of which 2.2 million are Muslim. Muslim presence in Spain was violently cut short in the fifteenth century, but it has left permanent reminders of Islam and Muslims in that beautiful land. This may be history the pope does not want to recall, but what can be done about some twenty million Muslims now living in Europe? This situation is increasingly gaining centre-stage in Europe as state after state confronts its Muslim population with repressive laws.
For Muslims, the current situation is unprecedented in their long history; they have always gone to new lands as conquerors and rulers. For the first time in history, some twenty million Muslims are now living in non-Muslim societies as minorities, struggling to have basic rights. They arrived as immigrants from colonized lands, they worked hard to establish themselves, and their second and third generations have known no home other than Europe. They speak local languages, been educated in state institutions and despite everything, most have kept their faith, and that is the real issue.
Most western European countries insist on "integration". This insistence is in direct conflict with their own claims of being civilised and enlightened societies, for what they are actually asking is for some of their citizens to become invisible members of a society in which every other group is visible; even those who belong to the fringes of society have rights to be visible, but not Muslims. Hence the little piece of cloth on a woman's head becomes a great issue.
France and Germany are two frontline states struggling to "integrate" their Muslim citizens into mainstream society. Both countries are insisting on total integration. This could be considered another name for religious cleansing, for "integration" in this context means loss of identity as members of the Muslim community. By insisting on "integration" these states are actually demanding that millions of their citizens give up a large part of their religious beliefs and practices. This is a sophisticated form of inquisition.
Under the disguise of fighting extremism and terrorism, these European states have invented their own form of terrorism. An elaborate system of espionage, infiltration into the community, and visible and invisible control of mosques and mosque-committees has been devised to ensure that Muslim communities remain under state surveillance. In France, where every tenth person is a Muslim, the state has actually succeeded in controlling the appointment of imams and, through them, the Friday khutbas, Sunday school curriculum, and many other aspects of community life.
For European Muslims, the present situation demands that they learn to survive in a hostile environment. Their communities are composed of diverse racial and cultural elements, with a great deal of internal disharmony, and certain voices from within are actually calling for a "European Islam"--just the kind of thing the state wants to see. These sinister elements are attempting to mould Islam to fit Europe
No Muslim country has paid much attention to the plight of European Muslims. Beyond the violent, irrational, and short-term street demonstrations against cartoons or the pope's recent speech, there is little understanding of the real issues involved. One does not expect any government in the Muslim world to take a stand on this issue, but at least non-governmental institutions, so-called Islamic political parties, and the media should take up this issue at national and international levels. It is an issue concerned with human rights; an issue which warrants greater attention than what it has received so far.
It can be argued that the plight of European Muslims is an internal matter of those states and thus cannot be taken up at any international forum. This argument is false for two reasons. Europe (and the United States) has never respected the boundaries set by this international code, as countless interventions--even regime changes--testify. Second, and more importantly, Muslims cannot remain aloof from the situation of their brethren and sisters in faith because to do so itself compromises their religious duties; both the Holy Quran and Sunnah require them to actively participate in each other's lives.
Muslim communities in Europe need support against the tyranny of their own states; their plight is not the internal issue of these states but a human rights issue. They face a situation which has far-reaching consequences for the entire Muslim world.
The European view is summarized in an October 11 article from the New York Times and the Islamic view presented in the report in a Pakistani newspaper.
_________________________________________
Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center
New York Times
October 11, 2006
By DAN BILEFSKY and IAN FISHER
BRUSSELS, Oct. 10 — Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.
“You saw what happened with the pope,” said Patrick Gonman, 43, the owner of Raga, a funky wine bar in downtown Antwerp, 25 miles from here. “He said Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere and make his point.
“Rationality is gone.”
Mr. Gonman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby.
His worry is shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.
For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.
Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain, a prominent Labor politician, seemed to sum up the moment when he wrote last week that he felt uncomfortable addressing women whose faces were covered with a veil. The veil, he wrote, is a “visible statement of separation and difference.”
When Pope Benedict XVI made the speech last month that included a quotation calling aspects of Islam “evil and inhuman,” it seemed to unleash such feelings. Muslims berated him for stigmatizing their culture, while non-Muslims applauded him for bravely speaking a hard truth.
The line between open criticism of another group or religion and bigotry can be a thin one, and many Muslims worry that it is being crossed more and more.
Whatever the motivations, “the reality is that views on both sides are becoming more extreme,” said Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert to Islam. “It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable.” Mr. Pedersen fears that onetime moderates are baiting Muslims, the very people they say should integrate into Europe.
The worries about extremism are real. The Belgian far-right party, Vlaams Belang, took 20.5 percent of the vote in city elections last Sunday, five percentage points higher than in 2000. In Antwerp, its base, though, its performance improved barely, suggesting to some experts that its power might be peaking.
In Austria this month, right-wing parties also polled well, on a campaign promise that had rarely been made openly: that Austria should start to deport its immigrants. Vlaams Belang, too, has suggested “repatriation” for immigrants who do not made greater efforts to integrate.
The idea is unthinkable to mainstream leaders, but many Muslims still fear that the day — or at least a debate on the topic — may be a terror attack away.
“I think the time will come,” said Amir Shafe, 34, a Pakistani who earns a good living selling clothes at a market in Antwerp. He deplores terrorism and said he himself did not sense hostility in Belgium. But he said, “We are now thinking of going back to our country, before that time comes.”
Many experts note that there is a deep and troubled history between Islam and Europe, with the Crusaders and the Ottoman Empire jostling each other for centuries and bloodily defining the boundaries of Christianity and Islam. A sense of guilt over Europe’s colonial past and then World War II, when intolerance exploded into mass murder, allowed a large migration to occur without any uncomfortable debates over the real differences between migrant and host.
Then the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, jolted Europe into new awareness and worry.
The subsequent bombings in Madrid and London, and the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-born Moroccan stand as examples of the extreme. But many Europeans — even those who generally support immigration — have begun talking more bluntly about cultural differences, specifically about Muslims’ deep religious beliefs and social values, which are far more conservative than those of most Europeans on issues like women’s rights and homosexuality.
“A lot of people, progressive ones — we are not talking about nationalists or the extreme right — are saying, ‘Now we have this religion, it plays a role and it challenges our assumptions about what we learned in the 60’s and 70’s,’ ” said Joost Lagendik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for the Green Left Party, who is active on Muslim issues.
“So there is this fear,” he said, “that we are being transported back in a time machine where we have to explain to our immigrants that there is equality between men and women, and gays should be treated properly. Now there is the idea we have to do it again.”
Now Europeans are discussing the limits of tolerance, the right with increasing stridency and the left with trepidation.
Austrians in their recent election complained about public schools in Vienna being nearly full with Muslim students and blamed the successive governments that allowed it to happen.
Some Dutch Muslims have expressed support for insurgents in Iraq over Dutch peacekeepers there, on the theory that their prime loyalty is to a Muslim country under invasion.
So strong is the fear that Dutch values of tolerance are under siege that the government last winter introduced a primer on those values for prospective newcomers to Dutch life: a DVD briefly showing topless women and two men kissing. The film does not explicitly mention Muslims, but its target audience is as clear as its message: embrace our culture or leave.
Perhaps most wrenching has been the issue of free speech and expression, and the growing fear that any criticism of Islam could provoke violence.
In France last month, a high school teacher went into hiding after receiving death threats for writing an article calling the Prophet Muhammad “a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass murderer of Jews and a polygamist.” In Germany a Mozart opera with a scene of Muhammad’s severed head was canceled because of security fears.
With each incident, mainstream leaders are speaking more plainly. “Self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in criticizing the opera’s cancellation. “It makes no sense to retreat.”
The backlash is revealing itself in other ways. Last month the British home secretary, John Reid, called on Muslim parents to keep a close watch on their children. “There’s no nice way of saying this,” he told a Muslim group in East London. “These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombing, grooming them to kill themselves to murder others.”
Many Muslims say this new mood is suddenly imposing expectations that never existed before that Muslims be exactly like their European hosts.
Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born activist here in Belgium, said that for years Europeans had emphasized “citizenship and human rights,” the notion that Muslim immigrants had the responsibility to obey the law but could otherwise live with their traditions.
“Then someone comes and says it’s different than that,” said Mr. Jahjah, who opposes assimilation. “You have to dump your culture and religion. It’s a different deal now.”
Lianne Duinberke, 34, who works at a market in the racially mixed northern section of Antwerp, said: “Before I was very eager to tell people I was married to a Muslim. Now I hesitate.” She has been with her husband, a Tunisian, for 12 years, and they have three children.
Many Europeans, she said, have not been accepting of Muslims, especially since 9/11. On the other hand, she said, Muslims truly are different culturally: No amount of explanation about free speech could convince her husband that the publication of cartoons lampooning Muhammad in a Danish newspaper was in any way justified.
When asked if she was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Muslim immigration in Europe , she found it hard to answer. She finally gave a defeated smile. “I am trying to be optimistic,” she said. “But if you see the global problems before the people, then you really can’t be.”
Dan Bilefsky reported from Brussels, and Ian Fisher from Rome. Contributing were Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell from London, Mark Landler from Frankfurt, Peter Kiefer from Rome, Renwick McLean from Madrid and Maia de la Baume from Paris.
___________________________________________________________
Islam, Muslims and Europe
The News (Pakistan)
October 6, 2006
By Dr Muzaffar Iqbal
As we entered the mosque of Córdoba I realised its isolation from its historical environ that once housed almost eighty thousand shops and workshops of artisans; there was nothing left of the marvellous public baths and inns which once surrounded the mosque. The multitudes of citizens, merchants, and mules passing over the bridge over the Great River (Guadalquiver) into the centre of the city were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there were throngs of tourists. In spite of this, the mosque still opens doorways to the numerous connections it once had with Islamic spirituality and sciences and practical arts.
Now, however, one has to use one's imagination to understand these intricate connections, because even the interior of this monumental mosque is not what it used to be; the presence of a "dark church structure that was built between the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and arbitrarily placed at the centre of the light forest of pillars like a giant black spider", as Titus Burchardt once remarked, makes it extremely difficult to clearly distinguish the features of the mosque which once looked like a broad grove of palm trees.
The mosque also stands today without the fabulous royal city, Madinat al-Zahrah, which once provided the backdrop to the city of Cordoba. The famous library of al-Hakam II, with its 400,000 volumes -- many of them containing annotations about their authors in his own hand -- is also gone. The mosque now lacks the traditional courtyard with fountains where the faithful once performed ablution before prayers. But some things still remain, and among them are the prayer niche and the marvellous array of columns and arches with their hypnotic symmetry.
Throngs of tourists take pictures and drift slowly toward the front part of the mosque, through hundreds of pillars, linked by horseshoe-shaped arches. The upper arches are heavier than the lower ones and the abutments of both increases in size with the height of the pillars. The pillars are reminiscent of palm branches, which the Arab rulers of al-Andalus missed in their new land. As we move toward the famed prayer niche the darkness of the interior of the building increases. Once, the area near the prayer niche was the brightest in the mosque.
As we arrive at the seven-sided prayer niche, its many intricate features become obvious. So many aspects of traditional Islamic sciences, arts, and architectural motifs are built into that small area that one can still see a whole civilisation reflected in the prayer niche of the mosque. There is a unique space inside the niche, where the word of God was once recited, a space that evokes awe and reminds one of the mysterious niche of light passage in the celebrated 'Light Verse' of the Holy Quran (24:35).
The fluted shell-like vault, designed to create extraordinary acoustics for the transmission of the recitation of the Holy Quran to the far corners of the mosque, and the horseshoe shaped arch that seems to breathe "as if expanding with a surfeit of inner beatitude, while the rectangular frame enclosing it acts as a counterbalance. The radiating energy and the perfect stillness from an unsurpassable equilibrium."
Today, the mosque of Cordoba stands as a symbol of something far greater than Islamic architecture. This extraordinary mosque, which has remained an enduring source of inspiration and reflection for countless poets and writers (including Iqbal whose poem on the mosque is a masterpiece), today stands as a symbol of Europe's dilemma which it has unwittingly created for itself: what to do with Islam and Muslims. As if to present an immediate example of European intolerance, a Spanish guard rushes toward my fourteen-year-old son as he stands in a corner to offer two rakah prayers.
The Spanish guard incessantly argues that this is not a mosque. I point toward the prayer niche, the beautiful columns, and the entire layout of the marvellous structure where once hundreds of men, women and children prayed, but he sees nothing but the artificially placed dark spider-like building of the Church in the middle of the mosque. "It is a church," he insists.
Our arguments become heated; many other guards rush toward us. I insist on our inalienable right to pray in a building that was constructed for that purpose; they insist that it is not allowed. "Who does not allow it?" I ask. "The authorities." "Can I talk to the authorities?" "No, they are not available".
Finally, they physically stop the prayer and surround us wherever we go inside the mosque. They cannot throw us out of the building, but that is exactly what is on their minds. One more move on our part, and they will have the excuse needed to take that ultimate step.
This episode is a reflection in miniature of the situation of Muslims in Europe today. Some twenty millions of men, women, and children living in this self-proclaimed centre of the civilised world are facing a slow and steady build-up of intolerance, mass hysteria, and state laws which may cut-short their precarious lives built on dreams, hopes, and sheer hard labour over three generations.
Islam and Muslims in Europe have become a dilemma for Europe, which it does not quite know how to deal. After the reconquest of Spain, summary executions, forced conversions, and mass deportations were chosen as the solution to eliminate Muslim presence from this part of Europe. Today, the sheer number of Muslims makes this an impossibility. Yet, state after state, Europe is passing laws that are making it harder for Muslims to practice their religion. The extent of intolerance is such that even a little piece of cloth on the head is considered a threat. Where would this situation lead to?
When the German-born Pope Benedict XVI, known as Joseph Alois Ratzinger prior to his assumption of the highest office of the Catholic Church, insisted that Turkey must not aspire to become a member of the European Union, his reasoning was that Turkey belongs to the Islamic world, whereas Europe belongs to Christianity. This reasoning was based on a historical situation that, in the Pope's mind, is inviolable. Absurd as it may seem, the Pope seems to believe that the earth is divided into religious zones which cannot change. One is reminded of Musailmah the Liar, who once wrote to the Prophet of Islam that "God has divided the world into two; one half belongs to you, the other to me". The Prophet's response was to remind him that the earth belongs to God alone, He gives dominion over it to whomsoever He chooses, and woe unto the liars.
Historical as well as contemporary realities are somewhat different from the pope's version of Europe. Muslim presence in Europe is not new. It is true that the wave of conquest that brought Islam to much of the old world stopped just inside the doorsteps of Europe, but Muslims have remained inside that threshold for centuries. Albania is a European country, with a population of 3.1 million out of which 2.2 million are Muslim. Muslim presence in Spain was violently cut short in the fifteenth century, but it has left permanent reminders of Islam and Muslims in that beautiful land. This may be history the pope does not want to recall, but what can be done about some twenty million Muslims now living in Europe? This situation is increasingly gaining centre-stage in Europe as state after state confronts its Muslim population with repressive laws.
For Muslims, the current situation is unprecedented in their long history; they have always gone to new lands as conquerors and rulers. For the first time in history, some twenty million Muslims are now living in non-Muslim societies as minorities, struggling to have basic rights. They arrived as immigrants from colonized lands, they worked hard to establish themselves, and their second and third generations have known no home other than Europe. They speak local languages, been educated in state institutions and despite everything, most have kept their faith, and that is the real issue.
Most western European countries insist on "integration". This insistence is in direct conflict with their own claims of being civilised and enlightened societies, for what they are actually asking is for some of their citizens to become invisible members of a society in which every other group is visible; even those who belong to the fringes of society have rights to be visible, but not Muslims. Hence the little piece of cloth on a woman's head becomes a great issue.
France and Germany are two frontline states struggling to "integrate" their Muslim citizens into mainstream society. Both countries are insisting on total integration. This could be considered another name for religious cleansing, for "integration" in this context means loss of identity as members of the Muslim community. By insisting on "integration" these states are actually demanding that millions of their citizens give up a large part of their religious beliefs and practices. This is a sophisticated form of inquisition.
Under the disguise of fighting extremism and terrorism, these European states have invented their own form of terrorism. An elaborate system of espionage, infiltration into the community, and visible and invisible control of mosques and mosque-committees has been devised to ensure that Muslim communities remain under state surveillance. In France, where every tenth person is a Muslim, the state has actually succeeded in controlling the appointment of imams and, through them, the Friday khutbas, Sunday school curriculum, and many other aspects of community life.
For European Muslims, the present situation demands that they learn to survive in a hostile environment. Their communities are composed of diverse racial and cultural elements, with a great deal of internal disharmony, and certain voices from within are actually calling for a "European Islam"--just the kind of thing the state wants to see. These sinister elements are attempting to mould Islam to fit Europe
No Muslim country has paid much attention to the plight of European Muslims. Beyond the violent, irrational, and short-term street demonstrations against cartoons or the pope's recent speech, there is little understanding of the real issues involved. One does not expect any government in the Muslim world to take a stand on this issue, but at least non-governmental institutions, so-called Islamic political parties, and the media should take up this issue at national and international levels. It is an issue concerned with human rights; an issue which warrants greater attention than what it has received so far.
It can be argued that the plight of European Muslims is an internal matter of those states and thus cannot be taken up at any international forum. This argument is false for two reasons. Europe (and the United States) has never respected the boundaries set by this international code, as countless interventions--even regime changes--testify. Second, and more importantly, Muslims cannot remain aloof from the situation of their brethren and sisters in faith because to do so itself compromises their religious duties; both the Holy Quran and Sunnah require them to actively participate in each other's lives.
Muslim communities in Europe need support against the tyranny of their own states; their plight is not the internal issue of these states but a human rights issue. They face a situation which has far-reaching consequences for the entire Muslim world.
Monday, October 09, 2006
The last Straw
Sir,
Presumably these young women who espouse the veil do not wish to take examinations where their identity needs to be ascertained. They will go through life without taking a driving test, driving a car, going through passport control or approaching a bank counter.
I have stayed in several Middle Eastern countries. I would have followed local customs through courtesy, but the local laws defined what I could wear, where I could eat, forbade me driving, and forbade any non-Islamic religious activity.
JO BOOTH DAVEY
Swindon
Presumably these young women who espouse the veil do not wish to take examinations where their identity needs to be ascertained. They will go through life without taking a driving test, driving a car, going through passport control or approaching a bank counter.
I have stayed in several Middle Eastern countries. I would have followed local customs through courtesy, but the local laws defined what I could wear, where I could eat, forbade me driving, and forbade any non-Islamic religious activity.
JO BOOTH DAVEY
Swindon
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Daniel Pearl
A new documentary titled "The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Death of Daniel Pearl," will air October 10 on HBO at 8:00 PM.
The documentary follows the lives of Daniel Pearl and the terrorist Sheikh Omar before they crossed paths in Karachi.
The documentary follows the lives of Daniel Pearl and the terrorist Sheikh Omar before they crossed paths in Karachi.
German journalists shot dead
Oct. 8, 2006. 01:00 AM
KABUL—Two German freelance journalists working for the country's national broadcaster and travelling on their own through northern Afghanistan were killed by gunmen yesterday, the first foreign journalists slain in the country since late 2001, officials said.
Journalist Karen Fischer, 30, and technician Christian Struwe, 38, were conducting private research for a documentary when they were shot in the province of Baghlan, according to a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, which handles police affairs.
Erik Bettermann, director general of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, said: "Karen Fischer and Christian Struwe did groundbreaking work to reconstruct a functioning media apparatus in Afghanistan. It is tragic (they) ... had to die in the country that they have personally supported over the past years."
The Taliban insurgent movement denied any involvement in the deaths.
Fischer and Struwe had set up a tent to spend the night and were killed by AK-47 gunfire in the early hours, said Mohammad Azim Hashami, the provincial police chief.
"The sound of the shooting was heard by some of the villagers, who ran toward that area," said Hashami. "They found a tent and they found the two journalists dead."
Associated Press.
KABUL—Two German freelance journalists working for the country's national broadcaster and travelling on their own through northern Afghanistan were killed by gunmen yesterday, the first foreign journalists slain in the country since late 2001, officials said.
Journalist Karen Fischer, 30, and technician Christian Struwe, 38, were conducting private research for a documentary when they were shot in the province of Baghlan, according to a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, which handles police affairs.
Erik Bettermann, director general of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, said: "Karen Fischer and Christian Struwe did groundbreaking work to reconstruct a functioning media apparatus in Afghanistan. It is tragic (they) ... had to die in the country that they have personally supported over the past years."
The Taliban insurgent movement denied any involvement in the deaths.
Fischer and Struwe had set up a tent to spend the night and were killed by AK-47 gunfire in the early hours, said Mohammad Azim Hashami, the provincial police chief.
"The sound of the shooting was heard by some of the villagers, who ran toward that area," said Hashami. "They found a tent and they found the two journalists dead."
Associated Press.
Frontiline special on Taliban
Can be viewed online
View of pakistan sanctuary and "peace deal."
Interesting footage of billboads with woment's faces wiped clean!
Lots of comments by Steve Coll - who has now become sort of an expert on the taliban - he used to be the Pamela Constable of the 90s - when all this was taking place - clueless and holed up in his hotel.
In addition to the unfortunate murder of Pakistani Journalist Hayatullah Khan Pakistan has a long history of media repression.
View of pakistan sanctuary and "peace deal."
Interesting footage of billboads with woment's faces wiped clean!
Lots of comments by Steve Coll - who has now become sort of an expert on the taliban - he used to be the Pamela Constable of the 90s - when all this was taking place - clueless and holed up in his hotel.
In addition to the unfortunate murder of Pakistani Journalist Hayatullah Khan Pakistan has a long history of media repression.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Foley a democrat?
Brad Blog reported this first as far as I can tell - Fox news labelled Foley as a Democract from Florida.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Sunday, October 01, 2006
How Empires Die
Toadies and Timid Men
Published on Friday, September 29, 2006
by Niranjan Ramakrishnan
"When Government undertakes a repressive policy, the innocent are not safe. Men like me would not be considered innocent. The innocent then is he who forswears politics, who takes no part in the public movements of the times, who retires into his house, mumbles his prayers, pays his taxes, and salaams all the government officials all round. The man who interferes in politics, the man who goes about collecting money for any public purpose, the man who addresses a public meeting, then becomes a suspect. I am always on the borderland and I, therefore, for personal reasons, if for nothing else, undertake to say that the possession, in the hands of the Executive, of powers of this drastic nature will not hurt only the wicked. It will hurt the good as well as the bad, and there will be such a lowering of public spirit, there will be such a lowering of the political tone in the country, that all your talk of responsible government will be mere mockery... "Much better that a few rascals should walk abroad than that the honest man should be obliged for fear of the law of the land to remain shut up in his house, to refrain from the activities which it is in his nature to indulge in, to abstain from all political and public work merely because there is a dreadful law in the land."
--Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri, speaking in the Imperial Legislative Council, at the introduction of the Rowlatt Bill, Feb 7, 1919
It was bad enough, when the bill doing away with habeas corpus and adherence to the Geneva Conventions was being discussed this week, that its supporters actually said that only those who had done wrong need worry. It is further testament to our standard of political discourse that the rebuttal was often equally pathetic -- we can't trust this president to exercise good judgement! Few statesman in today's debate can capture the issue as succinctly as did Rt. Hon. Sastri nearly a century ago.
All of this is moot, in another sense. This is just one more slide, albeit a huge one, in a long list of slippages our people and politicians have allowed over the last decade, always with the exhortation to 'put it behind us'.
We set out to make Iraq in America's image. We have succeeded splendidly in achieving a certain mutual resemblance. Today there is no difference between disappearing in Iraq and disappearing in America. In one place you might be held incognito by a militia, in the other by the government.
Until yesterday, the difference was that in America, the governent was obliged to produce you before a magistrate, to let you have a lawyer, to allow your family to know.
The mobs in the middle east may raise a million cries of, "Death to America", but it is George W. Bush and his pocket Congress that are carrying out their wishes.
'Na Vakeel, Na Daleel, Na Appeal', was the slogan raised by Indians against the imposition of the Rowlatt Act in 1919. Translation "No lawyer, No Trial, No Appeal".
"The Rowlatt Act was passed in 1919, indefinitely extending wartime "emergency meaures" in order to control public unrest and root out conspiracy. This act effectively authorised the government to imprison without trial, any person suspected of terrorism living in the Raj." (From Wikipedia)
There was anger in India -- and shock. Whatever one's dislike of British rule, it had the perceived merit of standing fast by notions such as open trials, prisoner's rights, appeals, due process, impressive in a country which had mainly known princely whim for justice in earlier times. The Rowlatt Act tore the veil of moral superiority from the public face of British rule.
Indian opposition to the Act, voiced by many well-meaning and eloquent legislators such as Sastri, was ignored. Public outrage was widespread, but unfocused. Gandhi was then a relatively fresh face in India, having returned from South Africa less than four years before. His exploits in South Africa and more recently in Bihar had won him fair renown, but he was by no means yet pre-eminent.
Though on unfamilar political terrain and younger than many other leaders in a country where age equated to deference, Gandhi had two attributes that set him apart from most other leaders --daring and faith. Only he could have had the nerve to call for a general strike throughout India, as he did. Only he could have grasped that a draconian law was an insult to the country, and that to not counter it in the fullest measure was to betray an article of faith. He was in Madras, at the home of his host Rajagopalachari (later to be the first Indian Governor General), when, as he writes in his autobiography, "The idea came last night in a dream that we should call upon the country to observe a general hartal (strike)". On April 6, without any formal organization, in an era without phones, photocopiers, or computers, word spread, and the entire country came to a standstill!
If Gandhi found a law permitting detention without trail by a foreign government abhorrent enough to launch a nationwide general strike, what is America doing when similar laws are being passed by its own government?
Answer: Not even a filibuster. Are there political leaders holding town hall meetings (electronic and otherwise) telling the people what this draconian legislation means? They are far too busy trying to dodge the accusation of being 'soft on terror'. As in 2002, this will not save them. Tony Snow warned today that their statements of doubt during the debate can and will be used against them in the campaign (proof that Miranda at least still lives, after a fashion). They are, in Sastri's words, "Toadies, Timid Men".
Following the hartal, in Punjab (where the Lt. Governor would shortly impose indignities such as a crawling lane where Indians could not walk, but only crawl), people assembled in a park in Amritsar on Baisakhi Day (the Punjabi New Year) on April 13, 1919, to protest the arrest of two activists. Known to history as Jallianwalla Bagh, the garden was enclosed all around by a wall. Gen. Reginald Dyer, head of the army in Punjab, said he wanted to provide Indians a "moral lesson", and had his troops fire into the enclosed space, resulting in the death of 379 people (by official count).
The rest (no pun intended) is history. After the Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh, the English lost any moral hold they had over the minds of Indians. The Great Hartal also signified the beginning of the Gandhi Era. Within thirty years, the Empire was finished. As a booklet on Jallianwalla Bagh says, "If at Plassey the foundations of the British Empire were laid, at Amritsar they were broken". In our times, having already disdained the law and being caught out by the Supreme Court, our Emperors are trying to rewrite the statute retroactively, assisted by a conscience-free Congress. That a reportedly sick man hiding in a cave in Waziristan has brought about the abolition of habeas corpus in America is the clearest verdict on who is winning the War on Terror.
In India, in 1976, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi passed a similar law, abolishing habeas corpus and setting herself unpunishable for any crimes committed before or during her office (it was repealed, lock stock and barrel, when a new government came to power). But before she could do so, the entire opposition had been arrested, the press had censorship clamped on it, and the jails filled with a hundred thousand dissenters picked up in midnight sweeps. India's parliament does not have a filibuster. The Democrats and Republicans who sold the country down the river have no similar defense, other than to say it has become a habit.
Where is the Martin Luther King today to call for civil disobedience? Where are the crowds outside the White House and Congress? The fight is no longer aganist the Bush administration or its minions in the other estates. Their Empire is headed for the abyss. The question, is, will it take the Republic along? Gandhi wrote in his Satyagraha in South Africa (whose 100th Anniverary fell on 9-11-2006!), that people came to him saying, "We are ready to follow you to the gallows". He replied, "Jail is enough for me." If the Republic is to be saved, those who love it must ask themselves what they are ready to give up in return. As for the rest, Samuel Adams (yes, the beer guy) had this answer:
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"
Published on Friday, September 29, 2006
by Niranjan Ramakrishnan
"When Government undertakes a repressive policy, the innocent are not safe. Men like me would not be considered innocent. The innocent then is he who forswears politics, who takes no part in the public movements of the times, who retires into his house, mumbles his prayers, pays his taxes, and salaams all the government officials all round. The man who interferes in politics, the man who goes about collecting money for any public purpose, the man who addresses a public meeting, then becomes a suspect. I am always on the borderland and I, therefore, for personal reasons, if for nothing else, undertake to say that the possession, in the hands of the Executive, of powers of this drastic nature will not hurt only the wicked. It will hurt the good as well as the bad, and there will be such a lowering of public spirit, there will be such a lowering of the political tone in the country, that all your talk of responsible government will be mere mockery... "Much better that a few rascals should walk abroad than that the honest man should be obliged for fear of the law of the land to remain shut up in his house, to refrain from the activities which it is in his nature to indulge in, to abstain from all political and public work merely because there is a dreadful law in the land."
--Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri, speaking in the Imperial Legislative Council, at the introduction of the Rowlatt Bill, Feb 7, 1919
It was bad enough, when the bill doing away with habeas corpus and adherence to the Geneva Conventions was being discussed this week, that its supporters actually said that only those who had done wrong need worry. It is further testament to our standard of political discourse that the rebuttal was often equally pathetic -- we can't trust this president to exercise good judgement! Few statesman in today's debate can capture the issue as succinctly as did Rt. Hon. Sastri nearly a century ago.
All of this is moot, in another sense. This is just one more slide, albeit a huge one, in a long list of slippages our people and politicians have allowed over the last decade, always with the exhortation to 'put it behind us'.
We set out to make Iraq in America's image. We have succeeded splendidly in achieving a certain mutual resemblance. Today there is no difference between disappearing in Iraq and disappearing in America. In one place you might be held incognito by a militia, in the other by the government.
Until yesterday, the difference was that in America, the governent was obliged to produce you before a magistrate, to let you have a lawyer, to allow your family to know.
The mobs in the middle east may raise a million cries of, "Death to America", but it is George W. Bush and his pocket Congress that are carrying out their wishes.
'Na Vakeel, Na Daleel, Na Appeal', was the slogan raised by Indians against the imposition of the Rowlatt Act in 1919. Translation "No lawyer, No Trial, No Appeal".
"The Rowlatt Act was passed in 1919, indefinitely extending wartime "emergency meaures" in order to control public unrest and root out conspiracy. This act effectively authorised the government to imprison without trial, any person suspected of terrorism living in the Raj." (From Wikipedia)
There was anger in India -- and shock. Whatever one's dislike of British rule, it had the perceived merit of standing fast by notions such as open trials, prisoner's rights, appeals, due process, impressive in a country which had mainly known princely whim for justice in earlier times. The Rowlatt Act tore the veil of moral superiority from the public face of British rule.
Indian opposition to the Act, voiced by many well-meaning and eloquent legislators such as Sastri, was ignored. Public outrage was widespread, but unfocused. Gandhi was then a relatively fresh face in India, having returned from South Africa less than four years before. His exploits in South Africa and more recently in Bihar had won him fair renown, but he was by no means yet pre-eminent.
Though on unfamilar political terrain and younger than many other leaders in a country where age equated to deference, Gandhi had two attributes that set him apart from most other leaders --daring and faith. Only he could have had the nerve to call for a general strike throughout India, as he did. Only he could have grasped that a draconian law was an insult to the country, and that to not counter it in the fullest measure was to betray an article of faith. He was in Madras, at the home of his host Rajagopalachari (later to be the first Indian Governor General), when, as he writes in his autobiography, "The idea came last night in a dream that we should call upon the country to observe a general hartal (strike)". On April 6, without any formal organization, in an era without phones, photocopiers, or computers, word spread, and the entire country came to a standstill!
If Gandhi found a law permitting detention without trail by a foreign government abhorrent enough to launch a nationwide general strike, what is America doing when similar laws are being passed by its own government?
Answer: Not even a filibuster. Are there political leaders holding town hall meetings (electronic and otherwise) telling the people what this draconian legislation means? They are far too busy trying to dodge the accusation of being 'soft on terror'. As in 2002, this will not save them. Tony Snow warned today that their statements of doubt during the debate can and will be used against them in the campaign (proof that Miranda at least still lives, after a fashion). They are, in Sastri's words, "Toadies, Timid Men".
Following the hartal, in Punjab (where the Lt. Governor would shortly impose indignities such as a crawling lane where Indians could not walk, but only crawl), people assembled in a park in Amritsar on Baisakhi Day (the Punjabi New Year) on April 13, 1919, to protest the arrest of two activists. Known to history as Jallianwalla Bagh, the garden was enclosed all around by a wall. Gen. Reginald Dyer, head of the army in Punjab, said he wanted to provide Indians a "moral lesson", and had his troops fire into the enclosed space, resulting in the death of 379 people (by official count).
The rest (no pun intended) is history. After the Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh, the English lost any moral hold they had over the minds of Indians. The Great Hartal also signified the beginning of the Gandhi Era. Within thirty years, the Empire was finished. As a booklet on Jallianwalla Bagh says, "If at Plassey the foundations of the British Empire were laid, at Amritsar they were broken". In our times, having already disdained the law and being caught out by the Supreme Court, our Emperors are trying to rewrite the statute retroactively, assisted by a conscience-free Congress. That a reportedly sick man hiding in a cave in Waziristan has brought about the abolition of habeas corpus in America is the clearest verdict on who is winning the War on Terror.
In India, in 1976, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi passed a similar law, abolishing habeas corpus and setting herself unpunishable for any crimes committed before or during her office (it was repealed, lock stock and barrel, when a new government came to power). But before she could do so, the entire opposition had been arrested, the press had censorship clamped on it, and the jails filled with a hundred thousand dissenters picked up in midnight sweeps. India's parliament does not have a filibuster. The Democrats and Republicans who sold the country down the river have no similar defense, other than to say it has become a habit.
Where is the Martin Luther King today to call for civil disobedience? Where are the crowds outside the White House and Congress? The fight is no longer aganist the Bush administration or its minions in the other estates. Their Empire is headed for the abyss. The question, is, will it take the Republic along? Gandhi wrote in his Satyagraha in South Africa (whose 100th Anniverary fell on 9-11-2006!), that people came to him saying, "We are ready to follow you to the gallows". He replied, "Jail is enough for me." If the Republic is to be saved, those who love it must ask themselves what they are ready to give up in return. As for the rest, Samuel Adams (yes, the beer guy) had this answer:
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"
Why we are still getting it so wrong in the 'war on terror'
The ill-conceived and badly executed campaign in Iraq is directly responsible for spawning a new generation of terrorists
Henry Porter
Sunday October 1, 2006
The Observer
When Alexander the Great swept through Asia Minor in 337BC, he came to the impregnable mountain fortress of Termessos, not far from the modern-day Turkish city of Antalya. Termessos possessed a network of huge underground reservoirs and storerooms and, realising he would not bring the city to submission in a short time, Alexander ordered that the olive groves which provided Termessos with much of its income be levelled. It was an unusually spiteful act that was remembered for centuries afterwards.
I was reminded of the story when reading Patrick Cockburn's The Occupation, a vivid account of war and resistance in Iraq which is published by Verso this week. Cockburn describes a visit to Dhuluaya, a fruit-growing region 50 miles north of Baghdad, where, early on in the occupation, the American military cut down ancient date palms and orange and lemon trees as part of a collective punishment for farmers who had failed to inform them about guerrilla attacks. This vandalism will be remembered for generations because it was senseless and to the Iraqi mind powerfully symbolises the malice of the occupiers.
'At times,' Cockburn says of the period just after the invasion, 'it seemed as if the American military was determined to provoke an uprising.' Well, now they've got it, a ferocious war that in the last three months alone has cost 10,000 lives, most of them Iraqi. There seems no end to it and as Cockburn writes in his conclusion, instead of asserting America's position as the sole superpower, the occupation has amply demonstrated the limits of US power.
The precise opposite of the desired effect was also achieved in the idiotically named 'War on Terror'. By the admission of intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic, Iraq has galvanised terrorism. Sections of a US National Intelligence estimate that were declassified last week say the war has become the 'cause celebre for jihadist' and that 'jihadists regard Europe as an important venue for attacking Western interests'. This is not the view of a few CIA desk officers, but the shared verdict of 16 branches of US intelligence.
At the end of bad week in publicity terms, the White House has to deal with Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial, which reveals that Bush ignored the mounting insurrection in Iraq and that the White House was riven with disputes over the war between the Cheney/Rumsfeld faction and the former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and Andrew Card, a former chief of staff. Rumsfeld is depicted as arrogant and contemptuous of other members of the administration as well as being totally disengaged from the details of occupying and reconstructing Iraq, which was then the Pentagon's responsibility.
There is an alarming sense of drift in the policy-making on both sides of the Atlantic, an unreality and, to use Woodward's word, denial. A leaked document, believed to have been written by a British MI6 officer attached to the Ministry of Defence, pulls no punches: 'The war on Iraq,' it says, 'has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists across the Muslim world... Iraq has served to radicalise an already disillusioned youth and al-Qaeda has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act.'
Any number of commentators and some politicians, for instance, Al Gore, Senator Robert Byrd in the US and Ken Clarke and Robin Cook in Britain, predicted precisely this outcome in the run-up to the war. Bush and Blair never heeded the advice.
Only a tenth of the US document was published, but it is enough to undermine the campaign by the administration over the last few weeks to portray Iraq as an essential part of the war on terror and of making Americans safe at home. It's a lie of monumental proportions which exceeds even Downing Street's manipulation of the September 2002 WMD dossier.
Iraq has done the opposite of making America safe and with five weeks to go to the mid-term congressional elections, the Democrats now have an opportunity to make that case. Bill Clinton has urged his party to go on the offensive about the war and on Bush's woeful negligence over the threat posed by bin Laden. He went on Fox TV last Sunday and made the case about bin Laden in a pugnacious interview with Chris Wallace, pointing out that it was his successor, not he, who had downgraded the al-Qaeda threat and demoted the counterterror expert who so feared bin Laden.
Confirmation of the Bush administration's lassitude comes in Woodward's book. In July of 2001, two months before the September attacks, he reveals that the head of the CIA, George Tenet, and his counterterrorism chief, J Cofer Black, met Condoleezza Rice, then National Security Adviser, to impress upon her the seriousness of the intelligence about an attack. Both men felt that she had not taken the warnings seriously.
Five years on, it is still terribly important to fight for the accurate record of what happened. For instance, last week Jack Straw appeared on Question Time and stated that Tony Blair did not know until 'late' of America's plans to attack Iraq. That is not true. It has been established that on 22 September 2001, 11 days after the al-Qaeda attacks, Blair attended a dinner with Bush, Colin Powell and Christopher Meyer during which the attack on Iraq was raised not just as matter of idle speculation. Is that late? No, Blair was on board from a very early stage.
Given the state of Iraq, the diaspora of terror cells, the scandals of torture and extra- judicial punishment in Guantanomo and Britain, it is remarkable that Blair is still Prime Minister, that no member of the war cabinet has apologised for this calamitous record and that the Labour party has not signalled its remorse in the slightest way. Last week's conference was devoted to a series of setpieces in which those responsible for the greatest foreign policy disaster since the Second World War were allowed to posture in front of a largely compliant audience.
I had the advantage of reading and not seeing Blair's speech, which meant that I wasn't exposed to his demonic charm and did not fall into the swoon that afflicted so many colleagues. I urge you to find the speech on the Labour party website and read exactly what he said and, while you're about it, look up John Reid's speech, too. Both their statements on liberty are enough to give you an idea of the profound threat they represent to British democracy, to the traditions of open and accountable government, to the previous requirement that politicians accept responsibility for failed policies.
Blair's speech dealt with terrorism in the following sentences. 'This terrorism isn't our fault. We didn't cause it. It's not the consequence of foreign policy. It's an attack on our way of life.' He might have said that on 12 September 2001 and he would have been right, but five years later, it is his and Bush's response to the threat - the invasion of Iraq - that has provided stimulus to the growth of terrorism and made the clash of civilisations a frightening possibility. Nowhere in his speech did he acknowledge this. How could he without interfering with the delicate business of moulding his legacy?
Apparently, he wasn't heckled and no one in the hall fell off their chair laughing when he said he would dedicate the rest of his time in office to advancing peace between Israel and Palestinians. That agenda was his reason for wiring British foreign policy into the White House. But he got nowhere with Israel at a time when Bush needed him, which leads one to suppose that he doesn't have a hope in hell now that he has served Bush's purpose.
The only satisfaction to take out of this terrible episode is that the true account of what happened before the invasion of Iraq and why is being assembled despite Bush and Blair's efforts to distort the record. What we do now is an altogether harder task. It will need a new generation of leaders to attempt to right the wrongs and set the West on a new course. But they will always have the memories of senseless destruction to contend with.
Henry Porter
Sunday October 1, 2006
The Observer
When Alexander the Great swept through Asia Minor in 337BC, he came to the impregnable mountain fortress of Termessos, not far from the modern-day Turkish city of Antalya. Termessos possessed a network of huge underground reservoirs and storerooms and, realising he would not bring the city to submission in a short time, Alexander ordered that the olive groves which provided Termessos with much of its income be levelled. It was an unusually spiteful act that was remembered for centuries afterwards.
I was reminded of the story when reading Patrick Cockburn's The Occupation, a vivid account of war and resistance in Iraq which is published by Verso this week. Cockburn describes a visit to Dhuluaya, a fruit-growing region 50 miles north of Baghdad, where, early on in the occupation, the American military cut down ancient date palms and orange and lemon trees as part of a collective punishment for farmers who had failed to inform them about guerrilla attacks. This vandalism will be remembered for generations because it was senseless and to the Iraqi mind powerfully symbolises the malice of the occupiers.
'At times,' Cockburn says of the period just after the invasion, 'it seemed as if the American military was determined to provoke an uprising.' Well, now they've got it, a ferocious war that in the last three months alone has cost 10,000 lives, most of them Iraqi. There seems no end to it and as Cockburn writes in his conclusion, instead of asserting America's position as the sole superpower, the occupation has amply demonstrated the limits of US power.
The precise opposite of the desired effect was also achieved in the idiotically named 'War on Terror'. By the admission of intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic, Iraq has galvanised terrorism. Sections of a US National Intelligence estimate that were declassified last week say the war has become the 'cause celebre for jihadist' and that 'jihadists regard Europe as an important venue for attacking Western interests'. This is not the view of a few CIA desk officers, but the shared verdict of 16 branches of US intelligence.
At the end of bad week in publicity terms, the White House has to deal with Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial, which reveals that Bush ignored the mounting insurrection in Iraq and that the White House was riven with disputes over the war between the Cheney/Rumsfeld faction and the former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and Andrew Card, a former chief of staff. Rumsfeld is depicted as arrogant and contemptuous of other members of the administration as well as being totally disengaged from the details of occupying and reconstructing Iraq, which was then the Pentagon's responsibility.
There is an alarming sense of drift in the policy-making on both sides of the Atlantic, an unreality and, to use Woodward's word, denial. A leaked document, believed to have been written by a British MI6 officer attached to the Ministry of Defence, pulls no punches: 'The war on Iraq,' it says, 'has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists across the Muslim world... Iraq has served to radicalise an already disillusioned youth and al-Qaeda has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act.'
Any number of commentators and some politicians, for instance, Al Gore, Senator Robert Byrd in the US and Ken Clarke and Robin Cook in Britain, predicted precisely this outcome in the run-up to the war. Bush and Blair never heeded the advice.
Only a tenth of the US document was published, but it is enough to undermine the campaign by the administration over the last few weeks to portray Iraq as an essential part of the war on terror and of making Americans safe at home. It's a lie of monumental proportions which exceeds even Downing Street's manipulation of the September 2002 WMD dossier.
Iraq has done the opposite of making America safe and with five weeks to go to the mid-term congressional elections, the Democrats now have an opportunity to make that case. Bill Clinton has urged his party to go on the offensive about the war and on Bush's woeful negligence over the threat posed by bin Laden. He went on Fox TV last Sunday and made the case about bin Laden in a pugnacious interview with Chris Wallace, pointing out that it was his successor, not he, who had downgraded the al-Qaeda threat and demoted the counterterror expert who so feared bin Laden.
Confirmation of the Bush administration's lassitude comes in Woodward's book. In July of 2001, two months before the September attacks, he reveals that the head of the CIA, George Tenet, and his counterterrorism chief, J Cofer Black, met Condoleezza Rice, then National Security Adviser, to impress upon her the seriousness of the intelligence about an attack. Both men felt that she had not taken the warnings seriously.
Five years on, it is still terribly important to fight for the accurate record of what happened. For instance, last week Jack Straw appeared on Question Time and stated that Tony Blair did not know until 'late' of America's plans to attack Iraq. That is not true. It has been established that on 22 September 2001, 11 days after the al-Qaeda attacks, Blair attended a dinner with Bush, Colin Powell and Christopher Meyer during which the attack on Iraq was raised not just as matter of idle speculation. Is that late? No, Blair was on board from a very early stage.
Given the state of Iraq, the diaspora of terror cells, the scandals of torture and extra- judicial punishment in Guantanomo and Britain, it is remarkable that Blair is still Prime Minister, that no member of the war cabinet has apologised for this calamitous record and that the Labour party has not signalled its remorse in the slightest way. Last week's conference was devoted to a series of setpieces in which those responsible for the greatest foreign policy disaster since the Second World War were allowed to posture in front of a largely compliant audience.
I had the advantage of reading and not seeing Blair's speech, which meant that I wasn't exposed to his demonic charm and did not fall into the swoon that afflicted so many colleagues. I urge you to find the speech on the Labour party website and read exactly what he said and, while you're about it, look up John Reid's speech, too. Both their statements on liberty are enough to give you an idea of the profound threat they represent to British democracy, to the traditions of open and accountable government, to the previous requirement that politicians accept responsibility for failed policies.
Blair's speech dealt with terrorism in the following sentences. 'This terrorism isn't our fault. We didn't cause it. It's not the consequence of foreign policy. It's an attack on our way of life.' He might have said that on 12 September 2001 and he would have been right, but five years later, it is his and Bush's response to the threat - the invasion of Iraq - that has provided stimulus to the growth of terrorism and made the clash of civilisations a frightening possibility. Nowhere in his speech did he acknowledge this. How could he without interfering with the delicate business of moulding his legacy?
Apparently, he wasn't heckled and no one in the hall fell off their chair laughing when he said he would dedicate the rest of his time in office to advancing peace between Israel and Palestinians. That agenda was his reason for wiring British foreign policy into the White House. But he got nowhere with Israel at a time when Bush needed him, which leads one to suppose that he doesn't have a hope in hell now that he has served Bush's purpose.
The only satisfaction to take out of this terrible episode is that the true account of what happened before the invasion of Iraq and why is being assembled despite Bush and Blair's efforts to distort the record. What we do now is an altogether harder task. It will need a new generation of leaders to attempt to right the wrongs and set the West on a new course. But they will always have the memories of senseless destruction to contend with.
SAVING AFGHANISTAN
Five Years Later
The Wild East
SPIEGEL Online
September 29, 2006
By Susanne Koelbl
Sheer desperation is driving many Afghans back into the arms of the fanatical Taliban movement. Once again, the holy warriors have taken control of entire regions and are seeking to ensnare the Western allies in a bloody guerilla war.
The two Western intelligence agents in Kabul can finally breathe a sigh of relief. This day, this bloody, violent day, is finally drawing to a close. It seems like the beginning of the end.
Bombs went off at hourly intervals in the Afghan capital. The first struck a military bus ferrying young Afghan soldiers downtown. Screaming, the blood-soaked officers scrambled through the shattered windows, flames licking at their uniforms. In all, 39 people were hurt. The next exploded beside a bus filled with employees from the Trade Ministry. Six civilians were seriously injured; one didn't make it to the hospital. A third blast in the eastern part of the city ripped apart another army transporter.
The two agents are sitting on the terrace fronting their office in the southwestern district of Karta-i-Se, sipping whisky. It's 8 p.m. The air is sultry as twilight slips its dark veil across the sky, creating the beguiling illusion of peace in the valley of Kabul 6,000 feet below. "I've got the solution," the younger of the two men says. He walks over to the map, takes a blue marker and colors in his deployment zone. It's an area he knows well, having reported on it every day for more than two years. "Kabul River," he scrawls across the shaded area. "Flood the place!" he says, taking another swig.
The other man nods. There are days when you feel like throwing in the towel.
The U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Ronald Neumann, knew that trouble was brewing. "It will be a bloody summer," he told SPIEGEL in May. And that's exactly how it turned out. There were four suicide attacks in 2004 and 17 in 2005. The Taliban's target for 2006: 500.
Neumann is a veteran among the diplomats in Kabul, the latest posting in his career. He has spent long periods in the Orient. Today he's sitting in his office in the newly-built U.S. Embassy on Great Massoud Road - in Kabul's government district. The compound resembles a fortress. A security detail in black shades and body armor, clutching semiautomatic weapons, keeps the ambassador from harm's way. U.S. diplomats only venture out as a last resort. Inside, surrounded by bullet-proof glass, is the United States: brown leather armchairs, the Stars and Stripes, photos of U.S. presidents on the wall.
Despite their sweeping conclusions and earth-shattering decisions, few Western politicians know much about Afghanistan. But Neumann knows it very well: as a young man, he traveled around the country. His father too was once ambassador here. Back then, at the end of the 1960s, this was a peaceful place, a backpacker's paradise. But it was also extremely poor and undeveloped. Outside the big cities, there were neither roads nor electricity. There are limits, Neumann knows, to how much progress this medieval society can make in such a short space of time. In those days, the Afghans had very few poppy fields. Today their country is a major drug producer.
Neumann had a brush with death in January. A suicide bomber blew himself up near a U.S. military base in the southern Pashtun province of Oruzgan - during one of Neumann's visits. There were 10 dead and 50 injured, but Neumann escaped unharmed. "These are difficult times," he says, chewing pensively on his pipe. But the diplomat still believes that this is "the path of progress."
Back at the end of 2001, toppling the Taliban was a cinch. The fundamentalists had no answer to the West's high-tech weaponry. Just a month after the Americans and British invaded, the religious fanatics slunk off to their hideouts in the mountains.
Now they are back.
Security experts refer to them as the neo-Taliban: a resurgent, motley crew consisting of Mullah Omar's former holy warriors, the mighty drug mafia, the troops of Islamist terror lord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Arabian and central Asian jihadists, and al Qaeda. All of them have gathered in the tribal areas bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan. And they have brought in new blood too: over the past few years, thousands of young fighters have been drafted from the refugee camps and impoverished villages, and drilled in boot camps in the Pashtun border region. The first major units are now ready for deployment.
The militias still receive infusions of cash from sponsors in Saudi Arabia and Egypt; both rich private donors and religious foundations generously fund their cause. But the poppy fields remain the Taliban's biggest money spinners. The spokesman for the one-eyed Mullah Omar announced the summer offensive to a British reporter via satellite telephone: "When the foreigners arrive, we will turn the country into a river of blood."
In the north of the country, Germany has assumed command of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). It is responsible for nine provinces stretching along five borders between Turkmenistan and Pakistan. With its 2,800 soldiers, the unit has been targeted by repeated attacks. On June 27, a German officer noted in his field diary: "Today's attack points to a perpetrator as soulless as a butcher's dog."
That afternoon, a man had blown himself up in the middle of a busy street, not far from the hospital in eastern Kunduz province. He was trying to kill the Germans, but only managed to damage their vehicle. Two locals died; eight were seriously injured, the majority of them children.
The longer the Germans are here, the better they bond with the Afghans, the more the drug mafia and other powersthat-be see their interests threatened. "This conflict has taken on a new quality!" the officer concludes in his diary entry for that day. "We haven't lost heart yet, but our sparkling new vehicle has acquired some dents."
The British, who have command of the south, moved their troops into the Helmand province in May. They now talk openly of "war." A 63-page study by the Senlis Council - a British security and policy group - confirms the reports of people on the ground since the beginning of the year: heavily armed militiamen sporting long beards are now standing guard over the poppy fields. They are equipped with state-of-the-art satellite phones, new semiautomatic weapons and the gleaming Toyota pickups familiar from the days when the Taliban ran the show. The fundamentalists once again control large parts of Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces. Their law now applies in Disho, Sangin and Baghran, all districts of Helmand. Music and Western clothing are forbidden, men are not permitted to shave, and praying five times a day is mandatory. Women are not allowed to work and may only leave home wearing veils and in the company of men.
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A vicious circle has driven the population back into the arms of the Islamists: the Taliban's withdrawal created a power vacuum in the country's main opium hub. The central government, international troops and aid organizations showed little interest in the residents - who live in miserable conditions, cut off from civilization and dependent for survival on feudal overlords. The only outsiders passing through the region were U.S. soldiers on missions and American warplanes that bombed villages suspected of harboring terrorists. This past spring, international teams arrived to destroy the poppy harvest, threatening the locals' livelihoods without offering viable alternatives.
Whenever foreigners came, they were hostile. The Taliban offered protection.
The dusty mountains on the border to Pakistan are the setting for a lopsided conflict. On one side are the Afghan guerrillas with their hit-and-run tactics: fast, mobile, with light equipment and a capability for self-sacrifice that beggars belief in the West. On the other is the ultra-modern army from the West, NATO and the United States. This force enjoys technological superiority. But there's a chink in its armor: its low tolerance of casualties. Military experts refer to this as asymmetrical warfare.
"Are we on a slippery slope?" a German security adviser asks in Berlin. The man is paying a flying visit to the capital; his desk is located somewhere abroad - he declines to specify where. He has been more deeply involved in the Afghanistan operation than almost anyone else. He knows all the data, the facts and the key players. His counsel is in high demand among government officials. He restates his rhetorical question: "Are we already losing control?"
The security expert knows all the bad tidings from Afghanistan. But the mission has also been a success, he claims. The Afghanistan that was once a haven for international terrorism has disappeared from the map. The Taliban may hope to dominate the country and its drugs, he says, but they never had much time for Osama bin Laden's political ambitions. Although bin Laden remains at large, he is no longer running al Qaeda. He's a marked man, in hiding, the adviser says.
The German was sitting at the table at the Petersberg Conference outside Bonn nearly five years ago, as officials talked of nation building - bringing democracy and civil institutions to the badlands of Afghanistan. Out of thin air, they conjured up the transitional government headed by the universally respected Pashtun leader Hamid Karzai. After more than 23 years of war and chaos, the Loya Jirga - the country's traditional forum for tribal representatives - reconvened. King Zahir Shah returned from exile in Italy, a symbol of unity in a fragmented state that more than 20 ethnic factions call their home. Each faction dispatched representatives to greet the returning monarch at the airport. The first presidential elections in the country's history were largely free and fair. People traveled on foot for days to cast their votes in the nearest city.
The Afghans believed wholeheartedly in a new dawn. A parliament was elected, the new constitution adopted. A police force, army and department of justice are currently being established. The books show that the plan dreamed up at the Petersberg Conference has been implemented. "But it's all a sham. There's no substance," says the security expert,
slowly emptying a sachet of sugar into his coffee. He was in Somalia. He was in the Balkans. He has no illusions. It was a good plan. Countries gave generously. To date, $6 billion have been spent on the reconstruction effort, an additional $10.5 billion earmarked for the next five years.
Then the international relief workers descended on Kabul. Suddenly, hundreds of foreigners were racing around the city in new Toyota land cruisers and setting up home in Wazir Akbar Khan, the old villa district. Noisy generators run day and night in this skeleton of a city - producing electricity for its foreigners and water pumps. Monthly rents for houses have soared to an average of $5,000 - 20 times the annual income of most Afghans.
Now hordes of Westerners are chauffeured to the ministries of a morning, and picked up in air-conditioned vehicles of an afternoon. The foreigners have brought new customs to the capital as well; jeans are now on sale, although many women still walk the streets in burkas. Every Thursday, before the Afghan weekend starts, UNHAS - the UN air service that transports embassy and aid organization employees around the country - registers a miraculous spike in passengers to Kabul from the provinces: It's party time! And the revelry behind the façades of the capital's aging mansions is as riotous as anything to be found in Berlin or New York.
At a French shipping company's toga bash, men donned fake laurel wreathes, bared their torsos, wrapped themselves in sheets and pranced around like Roman emperors. At the garden party arranged by an international consulting firm, hundreds of foreigners whooped it up until the wee hours, dancing amid a decorative backdrop of camels. Strictly outlawed in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, alcohol flowed freely.
The Afghans have always been conservative but moderate Muslims. They are accepting toward different cultures and willing to share their last meal with guests: "He who does not share his bread will die alone," a proverb states. The outlanders are far less magnanimous: a Turkish road construction company with a contract from the Americans pays its Afghan employees $90 a month. The company's Turkish workers earn 10 times as much. "They don't appreciate us," an indignant Afghan engineer complains.
A major in the 203rd Afghan Corps in the eastern province of Paktia can find few charitable words for his U.S. comrades in arms. He bemoans their arrogance, the way they treat the locals. Afghans traveling in open trucks are used as human shields for convoys, while the GIs sit secure in their Humvees, he complains. And in the evening, the Americans tuck into turkey washed down with Coca-Cola, while the Afghans survive off dry nan bread and green tea: "The Soviet occupying forces treated my father better than our American friends treat us."
A leading consultant imported from the United States or Europe costs up to $500,000 a year. This includes security arrangements, living expenses, and his company's cut. Former deputy finance minister Seema Ghani Masomi fired no less than six consultants for "incompetence." In its report on Afghanistan, CorpWatch - a U.S.-based corporate watchdog - concluded that the companies were more interested in making money than helping the people. Thousands of foreign experts have been dispatched to Afghanistan.
The consulting firms in Kabul have been given multi-million-dollar budgets from their governments to establish a central bank and three ministries: Finance, Justice and Commerce. They have also been tasked with slowing poppy cultivation and finding alternative sources of income for the farmers. Their remit further extends to building schools, roads and hospitals.
Today Kabul boasts a few glitzy malls and a five-star hotel. International restaurants have sprung up. Store shelves are overflowing with products from Pakistan and Iran. And the construction business is booming. Children - including plenty of girls - have gone back to school. But the daily lot of most Afghans has scarcely improved. Water is only available by the hour in the capital. The cratered roads still look like moonscapes. And in many areas, electricity is an infrequent privilege. Outside the cities, the situation is even grimmer. Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries on earth. It has the world's highest child mortality rate; life expectancy is very low.
Any Afghan wanting to register a car or apply for a phone line needs to bribe half a dozen officials. Even today, court proceedings are often unfair: people have to buy their jailed relatives' freedom. The experiences of Abdul Rahman Jawid, who was threatened with the death penalty for converting to Christianity, sparked outrage worldwide. The case was an eyeopener for Afghanistan's Western patrons, underscoring the difficulties of creating credible institutions, and highlighting how far the country is from affording basic human rights - equality, religious freedom, and personal liberties.
American taxpayers would be stunned to hear where their tax dollars were actually going, the CorpWatch report says: beyond being wasted on failed projects, it helped pay for "contractors' prostitutes and imported cheeses." The CorpWatch investigators spent months monitoring the flow of international funds and concluded that business-savvy representatives of donor nations rather than Afghans were the real beneficiaries.
The U.S. government lavished $150 million on the private security firm DynCorp. Its mission: to close down Afghanistan's poppy fields. Ninety Americans and 550 Afghans set about the task. The result: thousands of extremely irate farmers who - despite having their crops destroyed - were denied realistic compensation.
The Rendon Group from Washington, D.C. was charged with winning public support for the United States and its military in Afghanistan. According to CorpWatch, the PR firm - which reportedly has close ties to the Bush administration - has received contracts worth more than $56 million since September 11, 2001. It has failed miserably in Afghanistan: never before have the Americans and their allies been as unpopular as they are today.
The euphoria that greeted Americans in Kabul on Nov. 13, 2001 has long been replaced by suspicion. Today many Afghans regard the erstwhile liberators as occupiers.
The disenchantment is mutual: Afghans are convinced that the world's only superpower views their country as a base for pursuing its geostrategic interests. The Americans, in turn, have lost patience with a corrupt, feudalistic society that is turning increasingly to crime and showing no intention of metamorphosing into a modern, Western-style democracy - least of all at the desired pace. Even Hamid Karzai's star appears to be fading rapidly. Once the country's beacon of hope, the Afghan president now seems weak and ineffectual. Karzai is trying to keep everyone happy - the Americans, the warlords and the drug czars - many of whom have been given powerful positions in the interests of political stability.
"Any man dealing with drugs cannot be honorable. He will be prosecuted, no matter what position he holds," Karzai pledged in a SPIEGEL interview two years ago. But no drug runner has been indicted or sentenced to this day, although the Afghan secret service knows their identities and reportedly has actionable evidence against 48 of the National Assembly's 351 members.
The newly restructured NATO has tied its fate to the success of the Afghan mission. That may not have been the wisest of moves. But what hope is there for NATO as a global police force if it cannot even bring peace to Afghanistan?
A total of 80,000 Pakistani troops patrol the 1,500 mile-long Afghan border, but the terrorists have no problems slipping through their lines. The mountainous terrain is regarded as a safe haven for the endless streams of jihadists and, more recently, for fighters from the Muslim part of Kashmir.
The Afghans claim that Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, encourages terrorism so that he can weaken, and thus easily influence, his neighbor. As a result, the two heads of state are now at loggerheads. Musharraf, however, cannot control many parts of his own country, most notably the self-governing tribal areas in the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan.
Almost all the adversaries of NATO and the Americans in Afghanistan today are old friends. In the 1980s, the United States supported and venerated Taliban leader Mullah Omar as a Mujahideen commander. In those days, the Pashtun terror overlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received the lion's share of the foreign military aid. And the Taliban's new field commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani, also earned his spurs as a so-called freedom fighter against the Soviets. In December 1979, the communists launched their invasion of Afghanistan. The nightmarish conflict lasted a decade and cost some 14,000 Soviet soldiers their lives - dealing a severe body blow to the world's second superpower and heralding its final collapse.
So what should we do? German officials have frequently asked the security adviser this question. His answer is always the same: We should set more modest goals and, having attained them, bring the German soldiers home. Perhaps that would be enough to prevent Afghanistan from sliding back into civil war and serving as a hub of international terrorism: "Why should we impose our democratic ideals on Afghanistan, a country with rich traditions of its own?" he asks.
Exhausted, he rubs his eyes. He knows how politics work. The politicians, of course, will ignore his advice, and we will carry on regardless, he says. "Because we never ask ourselves the right questions."
The Wild East
SPIEGEL Online
September 29, 2006
By Susanne Koelbl
Sheer desperation is driving many Afghans back into the arms of the fanatical Taliban movement. Once again, the holy warriors have taken control of entire regions and are seeking to ensnare the Western allies in a bloody guerilla war.
The two Western intelligence agents in Kabul can finally breathe a sigh of relief. This day, this bloody, violent day, is finally drawing to a close. It seems like the beginning of the end.
Bombs went off at hourly intervals in the Afghan capital. The first struck a military bus ferrying young Afghan soldiers downtown. Screaming, the blood-soaked officers scrambled through the shattered windows, flames licking at their uniforms. In all, 39 people were hurt. The next exploded beside a bus filled with employees from the Trade Ministry. Six civilians were seriously injured; one didn't make it to the hospital. A third blast in the eastern part of the city ripped apart another army transporter.
The two agents are sitting on the terrace fronting their office in the southwestern district of Karta-i-Se, sipping whisky. It's 8 p.m. The air is sultry as twilight slips its dark veil across the sky, creating the beguiling illusion of peace in the valley of Kabul 6,000 feet below. "I've got the solution," the younger of the two men says. He walks over to the map, takes a blue marker and colors in his deployment zone. It's an area he knows well, having reported on it every day for more than two years. "Kabul River," he scrawls across the shaded area. "Flood the place!" he says, taking another swig.
The other man nods. There are days when you feel like throwing in the towel.
The U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Ronald Neumann, knew that trouble was brewing. "It will be a bloody summer," he told SPIEGEL in May. And that's exactly how it turned out. There were four suicide attacks in 2004 and 17 in 2005. The Taliban's target for 2006: 500.
Neumann is a veteran among the diplomats in Kabul, the latest posting in his career. He has spent long periods in the Orient. Today he's sitting in his office in the newly-built U.S. Embassy on Great Massoud Road - in Kabul's government district. The compound resembles a fortress. A security detail in black shades and body armor, clutching semiautomatic weapons, keeps the ambassador from harm's way. U.S. diplomats only venture out as a last resort. Inside, surrounded by bullet-proof glass, is the United States: brown leather armchairs, the Stars and Stripes, photos of U.S. presidents on the wall.
Despite their sweeping conclusions and earth-shattering decisions, few Western politicians know much about Afghanistan. But Neumann knows it very well: as a young man, he traveled around the country. His father too was once ambassador here. Back then, at the end of the 1960s, this was a peaceful place, a backpacker's paradise. But it was also extremely poor and undeveloped. Outside the big cities, there were neither roads nor electricity. There are limits, Neumann knows, to how much progress this medieval society can make in such a short space of time. In those days, the Afghans had very few poppy fields. Today their country is a major drug producer.
Neumann had a brush with death in January. A suicide bomber blew himself up near a U.S. military base in the southern Pashtun province of Oruzgan - during one of Neumann's visits. There were 10 dead and 50 injured, but Neumann escaped unharmed. "These are difficult times," he says, chewing pensively on his pipe. But the diplomat still believes that this is "the path of progress."
Back at the end of 2001, toppling the Taliban was a cinch. The fundamentalists had no answer to the West's high-tech weaponry. Just a month after the Americans and British invaded, the religious fanatics slunk off to their hideouts in the mountains.
Now they are back.
Security experts refer to them as the neo-Taliban: a resurgent, motley crew consisting of Mullah Omar's former holy warriors, the mighty drug mafia, the troops of Islamist terror lord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Arabian and central Asian jihadists, and al Qaeda. All of them have gathered in the tribal areas bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan. And they have brought in new blood too: over the past few years, thousands of young fighters have been drafted from the refugee camps and impoverished villages, and drilled in boot camps in the Pashtun border region. The first major units are now ready for deployment.
The militias still receive infusions of cash from sponsors in Saudi Arabia and Egypt; both rich private donors and religious foundations generously fund their cause. But the poppy fields remain the Taliban's biggest money spinners. The spokesman for the one-eyed Mullah Omar announced the summer offensive to a British reporter via satellite telephone: "When the foreigners arrive, we will turn the country into a river of blood."
In the north of the country, Germany has assumed command of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). It is responsible for nine provinces stretching along five borders between Turkmenistan and Pakistan. With its 2,800 soldiers, the unit has been targeted by repeated attacks. On June 27, a German officer noted in his field diary: "Today's attack points to a perpetrator as soulless as a butcher's dog."
That afternoon, a man had blown himself up in the middle of a busy street, not far from the hospital in eastern Kunduz province. He was trying to kill the Germans, but only managed to damage their vehicle. Two locals died; eight were seriously injured, the majority of them children.
The longer the Germans are here, the better they bond with the Afghans, the more the drug mafia and other powersthat-be see their interests threatened. "This conflict has taken on a new quality!" the officer concludes in his diary entry for that day. "We haven't lost heart yet, but our sparkling new vehicle has acquired some dents."
The British, who have command of the south, moved their troops into the Helmand province in May. They now talk openly of "war." A 63-page study by the Senlis Council - a British security and policy group - confirms the reports of people on the ground since the beginning of the year: heavily armed militiamen sporting long beards are now standing guard over the poppy fields. They are equipped with state-of-the-art satellite phones, new semiautomatic weapons and the gleaming Toyota pickups familiar from the days when the Taliban ran the show. The fundamentalists once again control large parts of Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces. Their law now applies in Disho, Sangin and Baghran, all districts of Helmand. Music and Western clothing are forbidden, men are not permitted to shave, and praying five times a day is mandatory. Women are not allowed to work and may only leave home wearing veils and in the company of men.
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A vicious circle has driven the population back into the arms of the Islamists: the Taliban's withdrawal created a power vacuum in the country's main opium hub. The central government, international troops and aid organizations showed little interest in the residents - who live in miserable conditions, cut off from civilization and dependent for survival on feudal overlords. The only outsiders passing through the region were U.S. soldiers on missions and American warplanes that bombed villages suspected of harboring terrorists. This past spring, international teams arrived to destroy the poppy harvest, threatening the locals' livelihoods without offering viable alternatives.
Whenever foreigners came, they were hostile. The Taliban offered protection.
The dusty mountains on the border to Pakistan are the setting for a lopsided conflict. On one side are the Afghan guerrillas with their hit-and-run tactics: fast, mobile, with light equipment and a capability for self-sacrifice that beggars belief in the West. On the other is the ultra-modern army from the West, NATO and the United States. This force enjoys technological superiority. But there's a chink in its armor: its low tolerance of casualties. Military experts refer to this as asymmetrical warfare.
"Are we on a slippery slope?" a German security adviser asks in Berlin. The man is paying a flying visit to the capital; his desk is located somewhere abroad - he declines to specify where. He has been more deeply involved in the Afghanistan operation than almost anyone else. He knows all the data, the facts and the key players. His counsel is in high demand among government officials. He restates his rhetorical question: "Are we already losing control?"
The security expert knows all the bad tidings from Afghanistan. But the mission has also been a success, he claims. The Afghanistan that was once a haven for international terrorism has disappeared from the map. The Taliban may hope to dominate the country and its drugs, he says, but they never had much time for Osama bin Laden's political ambitions. Although bin Laden remains at large, he is no longer running al Qaeda. He's a marked man, in hiding, the adviser says.
The German was sitting at the table at the Petersberg Conference outside Bonn nearly five years ago, as officials talked of nation building - bringing democracy and civil institutions to the badlands of Afghanistan. Out of thin air, they conjured up the transitional government headed by the universally respected Pashtun leader Hamid Karzai. After more than 23 years of war and chaos, the Loya Jirga - the country's traditional forum for tribal representatives - reconvened. King Zahir Shah returned from exile in Italy, a symbol of unity in a fragmented state that more than 20 ethnic factions call their home. Each faction dispatched representatives to greet the returning monarch at the airport. The first presidential elections in the country's history were largely free and fair. People traveled on foot for days to cast their votes in the nearest city.
The Afghans believed wholeheartedly in a new dawn. A parliament was elected, the new constitution adopted. A police force, army and department of justice are currently being established. The books show that the plan dreamed up at the Petersberg Conference has been implemented. "But it's all a sham. There's no substance," says the security expert,
slowly emptying a sachet of sugar into his coffee. He was in Somalia. He was in the Balkans. He has no illusions. It was a good plan. Countries gave generously. To date, $6 billion have been spent on the reconstruction effort, an additional $10.5 billion earmarked for the next five years.
Then the international relief workers descended on Kabul. Suddenly, hundreds of foreigners were racing around the city in new Toyota land cruisers and setting up home in Wazir Akbar Khan, the old villa district. Noisy generators run day and night in this skeleton of a city - producing electricity for its foreigners and water pumps. Monthly rents for houses have soared to an average of $5,000 - 20 times the annual income of most Afghans.
Now hordes of Westerners are chauffeured to the ministries of a morning, and picked up in air-conditioned vehicles of an afternoon. The foreigners have brought new customs to the capital as well; jeans are now on sale, although many women still walk the streets in burkas. Every Thursday, before the Afghan weekend starts, UNHAS - the UN air service that transports embassy and aid organization employees around the country - registers a miraculous spike in passengers to Kabul from the provinces: It's party time! And the revelry behind the façades of the capital's aging mansions is as riotous as anything to be found in Berlin or New York.
At a French shipping company's toga bash, men donned fake laurel wreathes, bared their torsos, wrapped themselves in sheets and pranced around like Roman emperors. At the garden party arranged by an international consulting firm, hundreds of foreigners whooped it up until the wee hours, dancing amid a decorative backdrop of camels. Strictly outlawed in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, alcohol flowed freely.
The Afghans have always been conservative but moderate Muslims. They are accepting toward different cultures and willing to share their last meal with guests: "He who does not share his bread will die alone," a proverb states. The outlanders are far less magnanimous: a Turkish road construction company with a contract from the Americans pays its Afghan employees $90 a month. The company's Turkish workers earn 10 times as much. "They don't appreciate us," an indignant Afghan engineer complains.
A major in the 203rd Afghan Corps in the eastern province of Paktia can find few charitable words for his U.S. comrades in arms. He bemoans their arrogance, the way they treat the locals. Afghans traveling in open trucks are used as human shields for convoys, while the GIs sit secure in their Humvees, he complains. And in the evening, the Americans tuck into turkey washed down with Coca-Cola, while the Afghans survive off dry nan bread and green tea: "The Soviet occupying forces treated my father better than our American friends treat us."
A leading consultant imported from the United States or Europe costs up to $500,000 a year. This includes security arrangements, living expenses, and his company's cut. Former deputy finance minister Seema Ghani Masomi fired no less than six consultants for "incompetence." In its report on Afghanistan, CorpWatch - a U.S.-based corporate watchdog - concluded that the companies were more interested in making money than helping the people. Thousands of foreign experts have been dispatched to Afghanistan.
The consulting firms in Kabul have been given multi-million-dollar budgets from their governments to establish a central bank and three ministries: Finance, Justice and Commerce. They have also been tasked with slowing poppy cultivation and finding alternative sources of income for the farmers. Their remit further extends to building schools, roads and hospitals.
Today Kabul boasts a few glitzy malls and a five-star hotel. International restaurants have sprung up. Store shelves are overflowing with products from Pakistan and Iran. And the construction business is booming. Children - including plenty of girls - have gone back to school. But the daily lot of most Afghans has scarcely improved. Water is only available by the hour in the capital. The cratered roads still look like moonscapes. And in many areas, electricity is an infrequent privilege. Outside the cities, the situation is even grimmer. Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries on earth. It has the world's highest child mortality rate; life expectancy is very low.
Any Afghan wanting to register a car or apply for a phone line needs to bribe half a dozen officials. Even today, court proceedings are often unfair: people have to buy their jailed relatives' freedom. The experiences of Abdul Rahman Jawid, who was threatened with the death penalty for converting to Christianity, sparked outrage worldwide. The case was an eyeopener for Afghanistan's Western patrons, underscoring the difficulties of creating credible institutions, and highlighting how far the country is from affording basic human rights - equality, religious freedom, and personal liberties.
American taxpayers would be stunned to hear where their tax dollars were actually going, the CorpWatch report says: beyond being wasted on failed projects, it helped pay for "contractors' prostitutes and imported cheeses." The CorpWatch investigators spent months monitoring the flow of international funds and concluded that business-savvy representatives of donor nations rather than Afghans were the real beneficiaries.
The U.S. government lavished $150 million on the private security firm DynCorp. Its mission: to close down Afghanistan's poppy fields. Ninety Americans and 550 Afghans set about the task. The result: thousands of extremely irate farmers who - despite having their crops destroyed - were denied realistic compensation.
The Rendon Group from Washington, D.C. was charged with winning public support for the United States and its military in Afghanistan. According to CorpWatch, the PR firm - which reportedly has close ties to the Bush administration - has received contracts worth more than $56 million since September 11, 2001. It has failed miserably in Afghanistan: never before have the Americans and their allies been as unpopular as they are today.
The euphoria that greeted Americans in Kabul on Nov. 13, 2001 has long been replaced by suspicion. Today many Afghans regard the erstwhile liberators as occupiers.
The disenchantment is mutual: Afghans are convinced that the world's only superpower views their country as a base for pursuing its geostrategic interests. The Americans, in turn, have lost patience with a corrupt, feudalistic society that is turning increasingly to crime and showing no intention of metamorphosing into a modern, Western-style democracy - least of all at the desired pace. Even Hamid Karzai's star appears to be fading rapidly. Once the country's beacon of hope, the Afghan president now seems weak and ineffectual. Karzai is trying to keep everyone happy - the Americans, the warlords and the drug czars - many of whom have been given powerful positions in the interests of political stability.
"Any man dealing with drugs cannot be honorable. He will be prosecuted, no matter what position he holds," Karzai pledged in a SPIEGEL interview two years ago. But no drug runner has been indicted or sentenced to this day, although the Afghan secret service knows their identities and reportedly has actionable evidence against 48 of the National Assembly's 351 members.
The newly restructured NATO has tied its fate to the success of the Afghan mission. That may not have been the wisest of moves. But what hope is there for NATO as a global police force if it cannot even bring peace to Afghanistan?
A total of 80,000 Pakistani troops patrol the 1,500 mile-long Afghan border, but the terrorists have no problems slipping through their lines. The mountainous terrain is regarded as a safe haven for the endless streams of jihadists and, more recently, for fighters from the Muslim part of Kashmir.
The Afghans claim that Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, encourages terrorism so that he can weaken, and thus easily influence, his neighbor. As a result, the two heads of state are now at loggerheads. Musharraf, however, cannot control many parts of his own country, most notably the self-governing tribal areas in the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan.
Almost all the adversaries of NATO and the Americans in Afghanistan today are old friends. In the 1980s, the United States supported and venerated Taliban leader Mullah Omar as a Mujahideen commander. In those days, the Pashtun terror overlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received the lion's share of the foreign military aid. And the Taliban's new field commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani, also earned his spurs as a so-called freedom fighter against the Soviets. In December 1979, the communists launched their invasion of Afghanistan. The nightmarish conflict lasted a decade and cost some 14,000 Soviet soldiers their lives - dealing a severe body blow to the world's second superpower and heralding its final collapse.
So what should we do? German officials have frequently asked the security adviser this question. His answer is always the same: We should set more modest goals and, having attained them, bring the German soldiers home. Perhaps that would be enough to prevent Afghanistan from sliding back into civil war and serving as a hub of international terrorism: "Why should we impose our democratic ideals on Afghanistan, a country with rich traditions of its own?" he asks.
Exhausted, he rubs his eyes. He knows how politics work. The politicians, of course, will ignore his advice, and we will carry on regardless, he says. "Because we never ask ourselves the right questions."
Satire by Evan Eisenberg
We'll Always Have Geneva
From The Nation Magazine
posted September 29, 2006 (web only)
Evan Eisenberg
"A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that Bush essentially got what he asked for in a different formulation that allows both sides [Bush and dissident Republican senators] to maintain their concerns were addressed. 'We kind of take the scenic route, but we get there,' the official said." --Washington Post
MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT OF 2006
SEC. 8 - IMPLEMENTATION OF TREATY OBLIGATIONS
(a) IN GENERAL. -- For the purposes of all proceedings in courts of law, whether domestic, foreign, or international, to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States, is a party, the term "Violations of the Geneva Conventions" shall be replaced by the term "Violations of the Geneva Conventions Even By American Standards."
(b) REVISION TO WAR CRIMES OFFENSE UNDER FEDERAL CRIMINAL CODE.--(1) Section 2441 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
ACTIONS WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT CONSTITUTE VIOLATIONS OF THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS EVEN BY AMERICAN STANDARDS.
(A) INDUCED HYPOTHERMIA--No prisoner shall be kept for a period exceeding forty-eight (48) hours at a temperature below that of the meat locker of a Safeway, Stop & Shop, or other major supermarket chain, and doused with cold water at a frequency greater than twice per hour, unless permitted to wear appropriate clothing.
(i) For the purposes of paragraph (A), "appropriate clothing" shall be defined as follows: (a) For male prisoners, thong panties and strapless brassieres, or, in the case of low-value suspects, teddies; (b) for female prisoners, cowboy boots.
(B) SIMULATED DROWNING--No prisoner shall be continuously subjected to simulated drowning ("waterboarding") for a period longer than sixty (60) minutes by an interrogator who has not, during the previous thirty (30) years, engaged on at least one occasion in (a) skateboarding, (b) surfboarding, (c) wakeboarding, (d) boogieboarding, or (e) sitting for a College Board examination.
(C) LONG-TIME STANDING--No prisoner shall be forced to stand erect for a period exceeding forty-eight (48) hours, unless permitted to shift his or her weight from foot to foot.
(D) EAR-SPLITTING MUSIC--No prisoner shall be subjected, for a period exceeding twenty-four (24) hours, to music at a volume exceeding that of the explosion of a two-ton cruise missile heard from a distance of fifteen (15) yards.
(i) For the purposes of paragraph (D), "music" shall be defined as recordings by (a) the Oak Ridge Boys, (b) the Knack, (c) John Fogerty, (d) Joni Mitchell, (e) George Jones, (f) John Hiatt, and (g) such other artists as the President may, from time to time, choose to download.
(ii) Recordings and live performances by other artists, such as Eminem or the Red Hot Chili Peppers, are not restricted under the terms of paragraph (D).
(E) ATTENTION SLAP--No prisoner shall be struck brutally in the face more than once in a ten-minute period unless (i) the interrogator determines that the prisoner's attention has wandered; (ii) the prisoner says, "Thanks, I needed that"; or (iii) the interrogator determines that the prisoner would have said "Thanks, I needed that," were said prisoner conversant with the conventions of John Wayne movies.
(F) ACTIONS THAT SHOCK THE CONSCIENCE--No prisoner shall be subjected to actions that shock the conscience.
(i) In order to meet the standard set out in paragraph (F), the shock sustained by the specified conscience must be the equivalent of that sustained by a person whose testicles have been wired to a 120-volt power source.
(ii) The conscience to be shocked shall be that of the less susceptible to shock of the following: (a) the person holding the office of Vice President of the United States as of September 20, 2006, or (b) Quentin Tarantino.
(G) EVIDENCE WITHHELD FROM THE ACCUSED -- The accused shall have the right to see all evidence presented against him or her, except for evidence classified as secret for reasons of national security, in which case the accused shall have the right to see a faithful translation of the evidence into (i) Akkadian, (ii) Sumerian, or (iii) Ugaritic.
(H) CONVICTION ON THE BASIS OF EVIDENCE OBTAINED BY PROHIBITED MEANS--No person shall be convicted on the basis of information obtained by means prohibited in subsection (d), paragraphs (A) through (G), unless such person (i) cannot be convicted on the basis of information obtained by other means, or (ii) is just obviously guilty.
(I) OUTSOURCING OF TORTURE--No prisoner shall be transferred into the custody of a foreign government unless a determination has been made, by the relevant agency, that such prisoner cannot be tortured perfectly well by an American.
(c) INTERPRETATION BY THE PRESIDENT.--The actions specified by nullifying conditions in Subsection (d) shall constitute Violations of the Geneva Conventions Even By American Standards until such time as the President shall determine that they shall not.
(d) HABEAS CORPUS MATTERS.--Section 2241 of Title 28, United States Code, is amended--
(1) by striking subsection (e) (as added by section 1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109-148 (119 Stat. 2742)) and by striking subsection (e) (as added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law 109-163 (119 Stat. 3477)); and
(2) On second thought, let's save everyone a lot of paperwork and just strike the whole Constitution.
(e) COVERING OUR ASS.--The amendments made by this section shall apply retroactively to any act committed, commanded, encouraged, condoned, winked at, or blithely ignored by any current or former officer, employee, agent, consultant, contractor, subcontractor, or Chief Executive of the United States after 12 o'clock noon (Eastern Time) on January 20, 2001.
From The Nation Magazine
posted September 29, 2006 (web only)
Evan Eisenberg
"A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that Bush essentially got what he asked for in a different formulation that allows both sides [Bush and dissident Republican senators] to maintain their concerns were addressed. 'We kind of take the scenic route, but we get there,' the official said." --Washington Post
MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT OF 2006
SEC. 8 - IMPLEMENTATION OF TREATY OBLIGATIONS
(a) IN GENERAL. -- For the purposes of all proceedings in courts of law, whether domestic, foreign, or international, to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States, is a party, the term "Violations of the Geneva Conventions" shall be replaced by the term "Violations of the Geneva Conventions Even By American Standards."
(b) REVISION TO WAR CRIMES OFFENSE UNDER FEDERAL CRIMINAL CODE.--(1) Section 2441 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
ACTIONS WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT CONSTITUTE VIOLATIONS OF THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS EVEN BY AMERICAN STANDARDS.
(A) INDUCED HYPOTHERMIA--No prisoner shall be kept for a period exceeding forty-eight (48) hours at a temperature below that of the meat locker of a Safeway, Stop & Shop, or other major supermarket chain, and doused with cold water at a frequency greater than twice per hour, unless permitted to wear appropriate clothing.
(i) For the purposes of paragraph (A), "appropriate clothing" shall be defined as follows: (a) For male prisoners, thong panties and strapless brassieres, or, in the case of low-value suspects, teddies; (b) for female prisoners, cowboy boots.
(B) SIMULATED DROWNING--No prisoner shall be continuously subjected to simulated drowning ("waterboarding") for a period longer than sixty (60) minutes by an interrogator who has not, during the previous thirty (30) years, engaged on at least one occasion in (a) skateboarding, (b) surfboarding, (c) wakeboarding, (d) boogieboarding, or (e) sitting for a College Board examination.
(C) LONG-TIME STANDING--No prisoner shall be forced to stand erect for a period exceeding forty-eight (48) hours, unless permitted to shift his or her weight from foot to foot.
(D) EAR-SPLITTING MUSIC--No prisoner shall be subjected, for a period exceeding twenty-four (24) hours, to music at a volume exceeding that of the explosion of a two-ton cruise missile heard from a distance of fifteen (15) yards.
(i) For the purposes of paragraph (D), "music" shall be defined as recordings by (a) the Oak Ridge Boys, (b) the Knack, (c) John Fogerty, (d) Joni Mitchell, (e) George Jones, (f) John Hiatt, and (g) such other artists as the President may, from time to time, choose to download.
(ii) Recordings and live performances by other artists, such as Eminem or the Red Hot Chili Peppers, are not restricted under the terms of paragraph (D).
(E) ATTENTION SLAP--No prisoner shall be struck brutally in the face more than once in a ten-minute period unless (i) the interrogator determines that the prisoner's attention has wandered; (ii) the prisoner says, "Thanks, I needed that"; or (iii) the interrogator determines that the prisoner would have said "Thanks, I needed that," were said prisoner conversant with the conventions of John Wayne movies.
(F) ACTIONS THAT SHOCK THE CONSCIENCE--No prisoner shall be subjected to actions that shock the conscience.
(i) In order to meet the standard set out in paragraph (F), the shock sustained by the specified conscience must be the equivalent of that sustained by a person whose testicles have been wired to a 120-volt power source.
(ii) The conscience to be shocked shall be that of the less susceptible to shock of the following: (a) the person holding the office of Vice President of the United States as of September 20, 2006, or (b) Quentin Tarantino.
(G) EVIDENCE WITHHELD FROM THE ACCUSED -- The accused shall have the right to see all evidence presented against him or her, except for evidence classified as secret for reasons of national security, in which case the accused shall have the right to see a faithful translation of the evidence into (i) Akkadian, (ii) Sumerian, or (iii) Ugaritic.
(H) CONVICTION ON THE BASIS OF EVIDENCE OBTAINED BY PROHIBITED MEANS--No person shall be convicted on the basis of information obtained by means prohibited in subsection (d), paragraphs (A) through (G), unless such person (i) cannot be convicted on the basis of information obtained by other means, or (ii) is just obviously guilty.
(I) OUTSOURCING OF TORTURE--No prisoner shall be transferred into the custody of a foreign government unless a determination has been made, by the relevant agency, that such prisoner cannot be tortured perfectly well by an American.
(c) INTERPRETATION BY THE PRESIDENT.--The actions specified by nullifying conditions in Subsection (d) shall constitute Violations of the Geneva Conventions Even By American Standards until such time as the President shall determine that they shall not.
(d) HABEAS CORPUS MATTERS.--Section 2241 of Title 28, United States Code, is amended--
(1) by striking subsection (e) (as added by section 1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109-148 (119 Stat. 2742)) and by striking subsection (e) (as added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law 109-163 (119 Stat. 3477)); and
(2) On second thought, let's save everyone a lot of paperwork and just strike the whole Constitution.
(e) COVERING OUR ASS.--The amendments made by this section shall apply retroactively to any act committed, commanded, encouraged, condoned, winked at, or blithely ignored by any current or former officer, employee, agent, consultant, contractor, subcontractor, or Chief Executive of the United States after 12 o'clock noon (Eastern Time) on January 20, 2001.
Profiles in Cowardice
On prisoner abuse and detention, President Bush finds enablers in both parties.
Washington Post
Editorial
Sunday, October 1, 2006
ONCE AGAIN, with a midterm election looming, President Bush stoked and won a major legislative confrontation over a complex national security question. Four years ago, it was the Iraq war resolution and reorganization of the government's homeland security functions. In both cases, hindsight suggests that haste and political pressure foreclosed the kind of nuanced debate that might have served the nation well. The same is likely to prove true of legislation passed last week on the treatment, detention and trial of enemy combatants.
But the artificial emergency Mr. Bush created has served his political purpose. His goal was to press opponents to cave to his will, against their better judgment, or to create an issue allowing his party to tar the opposition as soft on terrorism. In this case, thanks in part to the Democrats' weak-hearted abdication, he got both.
Congress had to act immediately, Mr. Bush insisted, or else terrorists could not face justice and the CIA could not interrogate the enemy. But the president says the CIA is not holding anyone, and the administration has dawdled for years without getting military trials off the ground. The only relevant deadline was Nov. 7.
Mr. Bush must bear responsibility for his cynical pursuit of the wrong answer, but he could not have prevailed without a lot of help. Republicans in both chambers, forgetting that Congress is supposed to be an independent branch, snapped to attention when the president told them what to do. At least some of them obviously knew better. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) courageously championed an amendment to restore the judicial oversight that Mr. Bush opposed. When his amendment failed on a 51 to 48 vote, the senator said he would vote against the bill, calling it "patently unconstitutional on its face." Then he voted for it. The bill, he explained, had good points, and the courts "will clean it up."
Democrats hoped that they could duck behind Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and two other Republicans who for a time fought a lonely fight for a better bill. When the three renegades settled for very little, the Democrats were left exposed, and it wasn't pretty. Nearly all of them voted for Mr. Specter's amendment, yet 12 -- including Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and three other senators facing reelection -- voted for the bill afterward. The rest contented themselves by voting no but did not lift a finger to slow it down or stop it.
"By allowing this administration to further stretch the definition of what is and is not torture," Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said, "we lower our moral standards to those whom we despise, undermine the values of our flag wherever it flies, put our troops in danger and jeopardize our moral strength in a conflict that cannot be won simply with military might." Stirring words -- but apparently not stirring enough to justify a filibuster.
Only a couple of weeks ago, the Senate was poised to move constructive legislation that would have given the administration the tools it needs but not the power to disappear people into secret prisons and interrogate them using techniques too shameful to name in public. Yet Mr. Bush's pressure tactics worked again. He has the lamentable legislation he wanted -- which will bring discredit onto this country in any number of ways -- and Republicans are busily blasting Democrats as terrorist-coddlers anyway.
Washington Post
Editorial
Sunday, October 1, 2006
ONCE AGAIN, with a midterm election looming, President Bush stoked and won a major legislative confrontation over a complex national security question. Four years ago, it was the Iraq war resolution and reorganization of the government's homeland security functions. In both cases, hindsight suggests that haste and political pressure foreclosed the kind of nuanced debate that might have served the nation well. The same is likely to prove true of legislation passed last week on the treatment, detention and trial of enemy combatants.
But the artificial emergency Mr. Bush created has served his political purpose. His goal was to press opponents to cave to his will, against their better judgment, or to create an issue allowing his party to tar the opposition as soft on terrorism. In this case, thanks in part to the Democrats' weak-hearted abdication, he got both.
Congress had to act immediately, Mr. Bush insisted, or else terrorists could not face justice and the CIA could not interrogate the enemy. But the president says the CIA is not holding anyone, and the administration has dawdled for years without getting military trials off the ground. The only relevant deadline was Nov. 7.
Mr. Bush must bear responsibility for his cynical pursuit of the wrong answer, but he could not have prevailed without a lot of help. Republicans in both chambers, forgetting that Congress is supposed to be an independent branch, snapped to attention when the president told them what to do. At least some of them obviously knew better. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) courageously championed an amendment to restore the judicial oversight that Mr. Bush opposed. When his amendment failed on a 51 to 48 vote, the senator said he would vote against the bill, calling it "patently unconstitutional on its face." Then he voted for it. The bill, he explained, had good points, and the courts "will clean it up."
Democrats hoped that they could duck behind Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and two other Republicans who for a time fought a lonely fight for a better bill. When the three renegades settled for very little, the Democrats were left exposed, and it wasn't pretty. Nearly all of them voted for Mr. Specter's amendment, yet 12 -- including Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and three other senators facing reelection -- voted for the bill afterward. The rest contented themselves by voting no but did not lift a finger to slow it down or stop it.
"By allowing this administration to further stretch the definition of what is and is not torture," Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said, "we lower our moral standards to those whom we despise, undermine the values of our flag wherever it flies, put our troops in danger and jeopardize our moral strength in a conflict that cannot be won simply with military might." Stirring words -- but apparently not stirring enough to justify a filibuster.
Only a couple of weeks ago, the Senate was poised to move constructive legislation that would have given the administration the tools it needs but not the power to disappear people into secret prisons and interrogate them using techniques too shameful to name in public. Yet Mr. Bush's pressure tactics worked again. He has the lamentable legislation he wanted -- which will bring discredit onto this country in any number of ways -- and Republicans are busily blasting Democrats as terrorist-coddlers anyway.
Amnesty Slams Pakistan for torture
Terror suspects tortured, claims Amnesty report
Declan Walsh in Kabul
Friday September 29, 2006
The Guardian
Amnesty International accused Pakistan of widespread human rights violations in support of America's "war on terror" as the Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, visited the UK today.
Hundreds of terrorism suspects have been arbitrarily detained since 2001, many of whom have been tortured or forcibly "disappeared", according to Amnesty. The allegations add to the controversy surrounding Gen Musharraf.
The Amnesty report focuses on Pakistan's capture of more than 600 al-Qaida suspects since 2001. Gen Musharraf has boasted of the arrests as proof of his commitment to the fight against al-Qaida. In his new memoirs, In the Line of Fire, he claims that the CIA has paid Pakistan hundreds of millions of dollars in bounty payments for the capture of 369 al-Qaida suspects since 2001.
Article continues
The US justice department has denied making the payments.
This year Gen Musharraf and his chief spokesman have variously claimed 500-1,000 arrests. But Amnesty says the arrests were outside the law and led into the world of secretive detention, where torture and extrajudicial killing are rife.
Typically detainees are held at safe houses in Pakistan run by the ISI intelligence agency before being moved to US-controlled facilities in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay or Middle Eastern countries.
American officials participated in some arrests and may have been involved in torture, according to Amnesty.
Pakistani officials deny wrongdoing and point to their successes, including the arrests of the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Abu Farj al-Libbi, described as al-Qaida's number three. But Pakistani officials have also picked up hundreds of small figures, some of whom have disappeared or been killed.
Declan Walsh in Kabul
Friday September 29, 2006
The Guardian
Amnesty International accused Pakistan of widespread human rights violations in support of America's "war on terror" as the Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, visited the UK today.
Hundreds of terrorism suspects have been arbitrarily detained since 2001, many of whom have been tortured or forcibly "disappeared", according to Amnesty. The allegations add to the controversy surrounding Gen Musharraf.
The Amnesty report focuses on Pakistan's capture of more than 600 al-Qaida suspects since 2001. Gen Musharraf has boasted of the arrests as proof of his commitment to the fight against al-Qaida. In his new memoirs, In the Line of Fire, he claims that the CIA has paid Pakistan hundreds of millions of dollars in bounty payments for the capture of 369 al-Qaida suspects since 2001.
Article continues
The US justice department has denied making the payments.
This year Gen Musharraf and his chief spokesman have variously claimed 500-1,000 arrests. But Amnesty says the arrests were outside the law and led into the world of secretive detention, where torture and extrajudicial killing are rife.
Typically detainees are held at safe houses in Pakistan run by the ISI intelligence agency before being moved to US-controlled facilities in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay or Middle Eastern countries.
American officials participated in some arrests and may have been involved in torture, according to Amnesty.
Pakistani officials deny wrongdoing and point to their successes, including the arrests of the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Abu Farj al-Libbi, described as al-Qaida's number three. But Pakistani officials have also picked up hundreds of small figures, some of whom have disappeared or been killed.
Racing to allow torture
Rushing Off a Cliff
New York Times
Editorial
September 28, 2006
Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.
It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.
Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.
These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:
Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.
The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.
Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.
Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.
Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.
Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.
Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.
There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.
We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.
They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
New York Times
Editorial
September 28, 2006
Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.
It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.
Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.
These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:
Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.
The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.
Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.
Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.
Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.
Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.
Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.
There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.
We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.
They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
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