January 16, 2009

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May 20, 2008

U.N. investigator, NATO in feud over Afghanistan

    A special U.N. human rights investigator and NATO forces in Afghanistan are embroiled in a nasty feud that hasn't received a lot of attention in the United States, but that an Afghan official says is causing a major stir in Kabul.

     The dispute involves the investigator's charges that international military operations have claimed some 200 civilian lives this year and that NATO commanders have failed to take responsibility for raids by mysterious foreign units in which innocent civilians have been killed. There are other points of contention as well.

    The acrimony began earlier this month when Prof. Philip Alston, special United Nations rapporteur on human rights, issued a preliminary report on unlawful killings and summary and arbitrary executions in Afghanistan at the end of a 12-day visit.

    The Australian native, who teaches at New York University Law School, found that "those responsible" for the deaths of civilians "include the police, militia groups, the Taliban, other anti-government elements, and the international forces."

    While Alston said he found "no evidence" that international forces have committed "widespread intentional killings in violation of human rights or humanitarian law," he contended that international military operations, often including Afghan security forces, killed some 200 civilians in the first four months of the year.

    It's that bit that has commanders of NATO's International Security Assistance Force seething.

    "We find much of the substance and the overall tone of his (Alston's) statement inaccurate and unsubstantiated," asserted a statement issued on Sunday by ISAF spokesman Mark Laity. "We are . . . surprised, and reject the suggestion that international military forces have killed 200 civilians during 2008."

    Most of those killed were victims of air strikes or close air support missions that "in many cases . . . appear to have been lawful, though tragic," Alston said in his May 15 statement. But others died in surprise night time raids or when NATO-led troops fired on vehicles or passengers they wrongly suspected of being Islamic militants.

    Alston said he was particularly troubled by those night-time raids "for which no state or military command appears ready to acknowledge responsibility."

     "Based on my discussions, there is no reason to doubt that at least some of these units are led by personnel belonging to international intelligence services," Alston said. "It is absolutely unacceptable for heavily armed internationals accompanied by heavily armed Afghan forces to be wandering around conducting dangerous raids that too often result in killings without anyone taking responsibility for them."

    In his reposte, Laity took Alston to task for asserting that ISAF had shown a high level of complacency in responding to civilian deaths.

    The charge "shows no respect to the soldiers and airmen and women who day after day act within the Laws of Armed Conflict, often at risk of their own lives, in order to reduce  the risk to civilians to the minimum possible," said Laity, who contended that all "mistakes or accidents" are the subject of "intense investigations."

    "Such slipshod language is also evident in comments that there is no evidence of 'widespread' intentional killings of civilians by international forces, and that in 'many cases' air strikes appear to be lawful. This implies there are occasions when ISAF forces do act unlawfully, and this is not only rejected by ISAF, but we consider it irresponsible given the absence of evidence and the seriousness of the allegation," Laity continued.

    Laity criticized Alston for giving just "very brief attention" to the "overwhelming source of extra-judicial killings in Afghanistan - the insurgents," and for language in his report that implied that some Taliban suicide bombings are lawful.

    "This disgusting tactic is inherently indiscriminate and involves combatants disguising themselves as civilians in order to close on ISAF and other forces," Laity added.

    For all the heat, there do appear to be some areas of agreement between the sides.

    The ISAF statement was silent on Alston's scathing criticism of the internationally trained Afghan police, who in many cases he charged don't function "as enforcers of law and order, but as promoters of the interests of a specific tribe or commander," and who have killed large numbers of civilians.

    More interestingly, there was no response by ISAF to Alston's charge that the government of President Hamid Karzai and his international supporters "have consistently missed opportunities to remove corrupt and abusive individuals from the state's security forces and power structures."

January 14, 2008

This blog is on hold

Apologies, but this blog is on a temporary hiatus. Thank you for your interest.

January 07, 2008

Photos out of Pakistan

Here's a slideshow  link to some photographs out of Pakistan. They were taken on December 31 and January 2nd.

January 06, 2008

More grist for the conspiracy mill

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Suddenly, it seems, Pakistan is facing new volatility. And in the super-charged atmosphere prevailing after the assassination for former prime minster Benazir Bhutto, some folks smell a conspiracy in advance of parliamentary elections.

Just around the time that Pakistanis began recovering from the violence, looting and arson ignited by Bhutto’s slaying on Dec. 27, electricity cuts lasting up to 12 hours erupted across the country.

News media also began reporting nationwide shortages of natural gas, used for heating and cooking, and flour, used to bake chapattis, the flat bread that is a staple at almost every meal in this impoverished country of 165 million.

Over the last few days, newspapers have been filled with stories about people desperately searching for flour, cities and towns shivering in chilly, rain-dampened winter dark, motorists unable to fill up because powerless gas stations can’t run their pumps and officials warning against hoarding and price-gouging.

Television news channels have been airing video footage of angry Pakistanis waiting in long lines to snap up scarce supplies of flour and bottled gas, or staging protests over the shortages and the price increases they have triggered.

A friend angrily recounted how during a visit to Lahore late last week, the motorized rickshaw in which he was riding ran out of petrol. He and the driver were forced to push the heavy, three-wheeled contraption from blacked-out petrol station to blacked-out petrol station until they found one that was able to sell them some fuel.

National, provincial and local officials have been offering various explanations for the shortages.

Dawn, an English-language newspaper, on Sunday quoted sources at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture as saying that farmers under-planted the winter wheat crop by a total of 200,000 hectares because of a water shortage and higher fertilizer and seed prices.

The News on Sunday quoted Finance Ministry sources as saying that winter weather had driven up demand for power, creating an unprecedented peak shortfall of 3,600 MW.

Power cuts have reportedly forced the closure of steel plants and flourmills, throwing thousands of workers out of jobs. The disruptions are expected to stunt economic growth that officials say has already been undercut by the bloody rampages that paralyzed the country after Bhutto’s assassination.

The Finance Ministry sources also warned the News on Sunday that Pakistanis should be ready to tolerate power shortages for years to come because the construction of five huge state-run hydroelectric projects is way behind schedule.

Some folks, however, wave off these explanations as nonsense. They see a sinister political plot.

Their reasoning goes something like this: Bhutto’s death has driven lingering popular dislike for Musharraf and the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q through the roof because of widespread suspicions of official complicity.

Knowing they cannot win Feb. 18 parliamentary elections except by fraud so massive that it could not be hidden, this reasoning continues, they are deliberately withholding basic commodities and cutting power. The goal: ignite social unrest to justify the re-imposition of a national emergency and the indefinite postponement of the polls.

There is no proof to back up these contentions. Conspiracy theorizing and political intriguing are akin to national past-times in Pakistan, especially these days.

For his part, Musharraf has vowed that there will be no further delay in the polls postponed from Jan. 8 by Bhutto’s death.

That remains to be seen.

January 04, 2008

Reality in Pakistan

By Jonathan Landay in Karachi, Pakistan

For the people of Chanesar Goth, Pakistan's Feb. 18 elections are about the devastated concrete shell that hulks in the center of their blighted neighborhood.

The squat, one-story structure was built to house a health clinic by the government of Sindh Province in the 1990s when the Pakistan Peoples Party of assassinated Prime minister Benazir Bhutto ran the province.

Karachi's municipal government was then supposed to operate the clinic. Its services are desperately needed by the 50,000 souls who inhabit Chanesar Goth, a noisy ghetto of narrow alleyways where children gambol between open sewers and fetid piles of rotting garbage.

But the clinic's staff and equipment never arrived. The way residents tell it, that's because Chanesar Goth is a PPP bastion while the rival Muttahida Qaumi Movement runs the city government.

Their contention is not hard to believe. Patronage is the grease of the rough-and- tumble politics of the slum worlds in which many of the poor of Pakistan and other developing countries live.

So the small concrete building sat, empty. Local drug addicts began using it as a refuge in which to smoke hand-rolled cigarettes laced with cheap brown heroin made from Afghan opium. Residents gradually stripped off the doors, windows and anything else of use that could be pried loose and carted away.

Concrete lumps, chunks of cinder block and mounds of trash now litter the ground around the concrete corpse. The holes once occupied by windows and doors sit dark and empty, like the eyes of the addicts who creep inside to inhale their poisonous smokes.

Residents hope that the elections will bring in a PPP-run provincial government that will revive the project as a reward for their neighborhood's loyalty.

That, however, is far from certain.

Several miles away from Chanesar Goth is Pakistan Chowk, whose allegiance to the MQM screams out from the sea of party flags and banners affixed to streetlights and rooftops and strung across the narrow streets.

I asked a shopkeeper about assertions by Chanesar Goth residents that the municipal government only channels funds into projects and services in the neighborhoods loyal to the MQM.

He scoffed, nodding at the mountain of garbage that has been building, awaiting collection by city sanitation workers, for two years.

January 03, 2008

White House: Bhutto murder will figure in Bush's Middle East trip

White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley on Thursday said that the murder of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto will likely be a topic of discussion during President Bush's nine-day trip to the Middle East beginning next week.

Bush has long cast his Global War on Terror as one big, global contest between moderation and extremism. In this view, Bhutto's December 27 assassination was a victory for the extremists, and thus related to tensions in the Middle East.

Challenged on whether al Qaida or related terrorist groups killed Bhutto, as the Pakistan government alleges, Hadley acknowledged, "We don't know." Many in Pakistan suspect involvement, or at least complicity, by elements of the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who Bush yesterday again called an "ally." There's no proof of Pakistani government involvement, but some U.S. officials don't necessarily buy Musharraf's explanation of the killing, either.

Bhutto's murder and the continued instability in Pakistan could have a quite different effect on Bush's trip to Israel, the Palestinian areas, the Persian Gulf and Egypt. Along with the 2008 presidential campaign, violence in Kenya and other world events, it could overshadow a trip by a president who is in his final year in office and is not expected to make dramatic news.

January 02, 2008

International Crisis Group calls on Musharraf to go

The well-respected International Crisis Group, in a report on Pakistan issued Wednesday, calls on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to leave office.

This is a somewhat unusual stance for a public policy group like the ICG to take in such a high-profile crisies. Here's the key language:

Stability in Pakistan and its contribution to wider anti-terror efforts now require rapid transition to legitimate civilian government. This must involve the departure of Musharraf, whose continued efforts to retain power at all costs are incompatible with national reconciliation.

And here are the first few paragraphs of the executive summary of the report, entitled After Bhutto's Murder: A Way Forward for Pakistan:

OVERVIEW

Gravely damaged by eight years of military rule, Pakistan’s fragile political system received a major blow on 27 December 2007, when former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Her murder, days before the parliamentary elections scheduled for 8 January 2008 and now postponed to 18 February, put an end to a U.S. effort to broker a power-sharing deal with President Pervez Musharraf which the centre-left Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader had already recognised was unrealistic. Her popularity and the belief Musharraf and his allies were responsible, directly or indirectly, have led to violent countrywide protests.

Stability in Pakistan and its contribution to wider anti-terror efforts now require rapid transition to legitimate civilian government. This must involve the departure of Musharraf, whose continued efforts to retain power at all costs are incompatible with national reconciliation; an interim consensus caretaker government and a neutral Election Commission; and brief postponement of the elections to allow conditions to be created – including the restoration of judicial independence – in which they can be conducted freely and fairly.

Bhutto’s death has drawn the battle lines even more clearly between Musharraf’s military-backed regime and Pakistan’s moderate majority, which is now unlikely to settle for anything less than genuine parliamentary democracy. Many in Pakistan fear that the federation’s very survival could depend on the outcome of this struggle.

Pakistani elections postponed until Feb. 18

Pakistan's election authority announced Wednesday that nationwide parliamentary elections due next week will be postponed until Feb. 18. It blamed the delay on the destruction of electoral materials during unrest triggered by the assassination last Thursday of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Karachi on a motorbike

Whipping through Pakistan's commercial capital of Karachi on the back of a motorbike is not for the faint of heart. But sometimes it's the only way to go.

The city is akin to a colossal bumper car pavilion. The broad roadways and narrow streets gush with trucks, cars, motorcycles and motorized rickshaws brawling to outrace each other. Tossing regulations and safety aside, drivers dodge into oncoming traffic, jet across crowded intersections and fly through red lights as if fleeing the clutches of pursuing beasts.

At some intersections, blue-capped, white-panted traffic police whirl their arms in furious attempts to bring the exhaust-spewing tide to heal. Elsewhere, officers stand on the teeming sidewalks, indolently watching the moving mess, knowing there is nothing they can do.

Drivers damn the police and lament the vehicular bedlam. But having vented their frustrations, they rev their engines and revert to the very same anarchic behavior they have just cursed.

Aijaz Shaikh, a reporter for an Urdu-language newspaper, has ably buzzed me around his hometown on his battered 50cc Honda since my arrival on Sunday to cover the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

I drove a motorcycle in similar chaos when I lived in New Delhi during the 1980s. But I had forgotten just how hairy it could be. I clung white-knuckled to the rear grip of Aijaz's clattering motorbike, unable to get a firm purchase on the bent left-side footrest as we joined the rush of traffic.

But as I relaxed, reassured by Aijax's deft piloting, I came to realize the advantages.

When the four-wheelers become snared by the massive traffic jams for which Karachi is known, their two-wheel cousins slide right on through, threading the maze-like gaps between the snarled vehicles or scooting into the opposing lanes.

Aijaz's clattering steed has been a godsend. We have raced between interviews and avoided troubled neighborhoods, detouring down serpentine alleys of the trash-choked ghettoes in which most of the city's 17 million people live in grinding poverty.

And when gasoline shortages and street clashes drove taxis off the roads after Bhutto's death, Aijaz was there with his motorcycle.