DRC: The Cost of War
Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Stephanie Kale
KIGALI, Nov 8 (IPS) – War is expensive. The costs include not only the millions of dollars spent on military equipment and maintaining an army, but the financial and psychological toll it takes on the everyday lives of people caught in the crossfire.
When fighting takes place where civilians live, as it is in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, farming, housing, health care, businesses and education are all interrupted in armed conflict, and the long-term effects in the North Kivu region have been devastating.
Ten year-old Immacule arrived at Kibati refugee camp 12 kilometres north of Goma on Oct. 27 after her family fled their village fearing attacks by Tutsi-led rebels.
She said she misses going to school. ”I want the government to find peace for us so that I can return home and go back to school.”
Since fighting resumed in August between the rebel National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) and the Congolese army, 250,000 people have been displaced in the North Kivu Region.
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NEPAL: Militarising or Demilitarising?
Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.
Rita Manchanda
KATHMANDU, Nov 5 (IPS) – Fighting a decade long ‘People’s War’ for the revolutionary transformation of a feudal monarchy meant that the Maoists had to militarise Nepali society, including women and youth.
However, even after the Communist Party of Nepal -Maoist (CPN-M) was popularly elected to power, following the April elections to the constituent assembly, it seems reluctant to disband the paramilitary Youth Communist League (YCL).
Indeed Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who has been under pressure to dismantle the YCL, has instead applauded its contributions. In his first statement elaborating his government’s policies, he said: ‘’Had there been no organisation like the YCL, the peace process and the new political process would have been impossible.”
The CPN-M’s communist partner in the coalition government, the Nepal Communist Party-UML (United Marxist Leninist ) or NCP-UML, needed little prodding to launch its own clone, the Youth Force (YF).
Not to be left behind, all the leading political parties, that till recently had been berating the YCL for ”taking the law into their own hands”, are now scrambling to form their own groups.
The leaders of the centrist Nepali Congress, which has long dominated Nepal’s democratic politics, may decry the YCL, but have been encouraging the formation of the Tarun Dasta out of its youth wing in the districts.
The result has been violent clashes among the various youth forces, but most especially between the YCL and the YF. In September traffic was disrupted on the major Dharan- Danuta highway for nearly a week and a curfew had to be imposed on Dankuta Bazzar to contain violence between the two forces over road tax collection.
Even the current agitation around efforts to regulate Nepal’s famous Casinos, has a turf war angle, with leaders of the YF saying they are competing for space with the dominant TCL cadres.
With tensions growing, on Nov 2, the two communist ruling partners constituted a high level coordination committee to iron out differences. A major item on the agenda is to look into the reasons for the clashes between the YCL and YF and how to prevent them.
But it is unlikely that there will be any roll back to establishing the youth orgnaisations, going by the sporadic and contradictory statements made by political authorities about disbanding these forces that seem to be above the law.
”You’d expect that post conflict peace building would see demilitarisation,” said Prof. Sridhar Khatri of South Asia Policy Studies, a respected think tank. ”Instead, what we’re seeing is a new militarisation. We should focus on strengthening the rule of law, not undermining it.”
YCL emerged as an ubiquitous force during the political uncertainty of the 2006-8 transition that brought the Maoists into the democratic mainstream and made Nepal a republic. It was created in November 2006 after the signing of the historic Comprehensive Peace Agreement which entailed confinement in cantonments of the Maoists’ Peoples Liberation Army (PLA).
But several PLA commanders and commissars were transferred to the YCL, including its head Ganesh Man Pun. According to Pun, the YCL has a strength of 500,000 members and 6,000 ‘whole timers’.
YCL has been spearheading social service activities. These cover traffic management, garbage clearance, tree planting, delivering social justice, carrying out anti-corruption drives, collecting taxes and ‘donations’, apprehending criminal offenders and seizing ‘royal’ properties.
While Maoist minister Hsila Yami, praised the YCL cadres for assisting her in implementing change against a status quo bureaucracy, the Kathmandu-centric media was full of YCL’s abuses such as kidnapping, intimidation and physical assault of opponents. The U.N. Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights (OCHR) in Nepal has lent its voice against YCL excesses.
During the elections political parties had accused the YCL of using muscle power to disrupt meetings and intimidate voters. The Kathmandu elite was convinced that the Maoists’ landslide victory in the elections was a ‘stolen victory’.
This persisting belief may explain why political parties are creating their own youth squads. Defending the YF, UML’s Raghuji Pant said: ‘’It’s to make sure that they (YCL) won’t rig and win the next elections”.
Mahesh Basnet, the head of YF asserted: ‘’We are not like YCL. We will operate within the law. We will act as a deterrent to the terror and intimidation of the YCL”.
Nepal’s Human Rights Commission has appealed to the major political parties to ”immediately stop violating of human rights by taking the law into their own hands”.
However, far from curtailing their activities, Home Minister Bamdev Gautam has asked youth organisations to help nab criminals and restore law and order.
Dhirendra Raj Pandey, a key civil society player in the 2006 people’s democratic upsurge, finds this trend totally unacceptable. ”I didn’t expect this irrationality from the political parties. When they should be institutionalising democratic structures they are setting up these armed youth forces.”
OBAMA:DANGERS OF INDO-PAK RE-HYPHENATION
Global Geopolitics Net Sites
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org
B.RAMAN
The Presidential campaign is over. The transition drill has begun. Senator Barrack Obama will take over as the President only on January 20 next, but his immense work as the President-elect would have already begun from the moment he left the dais after making the victory speech to his followers and supporters.
2.The Americans call it the period of transition. It is during this period that the President-elect chooses his team of Cabinet members and senior officials, decides on his policy priorities and works out his goals during the first 100 days of his administration and thereafter. Those, who would constitute the hard core of his transition team, would start co-ordinating with the outgoing Bush administration.
3. Senior officials of the US Secret Service, which protects the President and the Vice-President, would have already called on him and set in place the arrangements for his security. Other officials of the Bush Administration would be calling on him and his close advisers to keep them briefed on the actions of the outgoing administration.
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RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Army Chief Steps Down
Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.
Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Nov 4 (IPS) – General Mario Montoya stepped down as Colombia’s army chief, putting an end to his career Tuesday. The general is under investigation by the attorney general’s office, although he has not yet been charged.
”I have been in the service of my country for 39 years and today I can say that the journey has come to an end,” Montoya said in a brief statement to reporters.
The annual announcement of armed forces officers who are retiring is due Wednesday, and local analysts believe Montoya wanted to quit before he was forced into retirement, to preserve his image.
Montoya was widely regarded as a hero for the successful Jul. 2 operation in which the army managed to rescue former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three U.S. military contractors and 11 members of the police and military who were held hostage for years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.
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RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: UN Warns of Civilian Killings by Military
Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Nov 3 (IPS) – The extrajudicial executions that are being committed by government forces in Colombia constitute crimes against humanity, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said at the end of her six-day fact-finding tour of this South American country.
“An offence becomes a crime against humanity if it is widespread and systematic against the civilian population. We are observing and keeping a record of the number of extrajudicial killings, and it does appear systematic and widespread in my view,” Pillay said in answer to a question from IPS in her only meeting with the press in Colombia, on Saturday Nov. 1.
According to the Observatory of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law of the Colombia-Europe-United States Coordination Group (CCEEU) — a coalition formed by some 200 humanitarian organisations — from January 2007 to June 2008 “one person died every day in extrajudicial executions” committed directly by government security forces.
The same source indicates that the number of summary executions has tripled since right-wing President Álvaro Uribe took office in August 2002. And the killings are occurring in every region of the country, as evidenced by statistics from the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a prominent human rights group that forms part of the CCEEU.
Pillay spoke of “continuing levels of extrajudicial executions,” which she described as “very alarming.”
But the implicated military officers may not have to appear before the International Criminal Court (ICC) — on which the South African-born U.N. official previously sat as a judge — given that the Colombian government has started to bring actions against the culprits, she noted.
“The goal is to have the national authorities investigate these crimes and prosecute the perpetrators,” Pillay explained. “It’s only when a country is unable and unwilling that the International Criminal Court, for instance, would have the power to intervene.”
Midway through Pillay’s visit to Colombia, on Oct. 29, the Uribe administration dismissed 20 officers, including three generals, and seven non-commissioned officers, for alleged involvement in forced disappearances and summary executions of civilians.
The bodies of the victims are later dressed up and presented to the media as leftist rebels or right-wing paramilitary fighters killed in combat, with the aim of showing results in the counterinsurgency war.
That same day, the CCEEU and other human rights groups presented a total of four reports on extrajudicial executions in this country that has been torn for more than four decades by a war between leftist guerrilla groups, government forces and far-right paramilitaries.
The military officers were fired for negligence or lack of command over their troops, and the Colombian press was quick to stress that they are innocent until proven guilty.
The U.N. high commissioner, however, said that in her meetings with Defence Ministry officials she “noted that in accordance with international standards, a superior may be criminally responsible for crimes committed by subordinates, under his or her effective authority and control, and as a result of his or her failure to exercise control properly over such subordinates.”
“So this is the basis on which this government has acted,” she continued, “and I am encouraging that the process of investigation be followed consistently through the ranks,” until those who are directly responsible are found.
Pillay urged “the Ministry of Defence to continue working to ensure that central orders are enforced at an operational level.”
She said she recognises “that this is an historic development that has not been attempted before, where the government takes accountability” seriously with respect to the responsibility of the armed forces.
The dismissals — which the government promises will not be the last — are “a hopeful indication that such atrocities will not be tolerated and that the army is moving away from ‘counting bodies’ as a criteria of success in their operations,” the high commissioner declared.
She added that she “supports the commitment expressed by the highest civilian and military authorities of the country that progress in security should be achieved with full adherence to legality and respect for human rights.”
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has a major country office in Colombia, which has been pressuring the government since 2004, demanding that it stop emphasising “body counts” as a measure of military success, as soldiers are tempted by a policy of rewards — prizes, leave incentive, promotions and bonuses — which leads them to execute civilians to inflate the number of casualties achieved in actual combat.
In the last interview he gave before stepping down in 2006, the former head of the OHCHR Colombia field office, Swedish U.N. official Michael Frühling, had warned about extrajudicial killings, saying that “the government is aware of many of these cases because we have talked about it.”
“The government has taken certain steps because it is apparently concerned, even though it has not declared it publicly,” Frühling said back then to Un Pasquín, an anti-Uribe newspaper published by Colombian caricaturist and journalist Vladdo.
The Final Report of the International Observation Mission on Extrajudicial Executions and Impunity in Colombia, made up of 13 independent experts from Britain, France, Germany, Spain and the United States, identifies certain patterns in these extrajudicial killings.
Presented at the same time as the CCEEU report, it warns that these killings “are not isolated crimes but rather a systematic practice that is premeditated.”
“There is a system of incentives for soldiers,” said German expert Stefan Ofteringer, one of the 13 members of the observation mission who personally reviewed 135 of the 955 extrajudicial execution cases documented by the CCEUU since 2002.
“There are economic rewards,” he added, “and prizes for positive results, which we have been able to verify in many cases we’ve studied.”
But there are also “intimidations and aggressions against the relatives of victims, whenever they attempted to access the case files, court proceedings or bodies,” and the human rights defenders that help these families in their inquiries have also been threatened, he said.
The mission sees the efforts made in 2007 by the OHCHR, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Colombian human rights groups, as well as its own work, as instrumental in the Defence Ministry’s decision to refer the homicide investigations to civilian courts on Nov. 2 of last year.
But, at the same time, the cases brought before ordinary courts advance very slowly, there aren’t enough prosecutors assigned to them, and no efforts are being made to determine who is really behind the crimes, beyond the actual perpetrators.
“We asked that military aid be conditioned to (the elimination) of extrajudicial executions and, in general, to the human rights record of the security forces,” Ofteringer told IPS.
The expert said that the countries should assess whether Colombia is complying with the annual recommendations made by the high commissioner for human rights, in preparation for the Universal Periodic Review that Colombia will voluntarily submit to next Dec. 10 in Geneva. Ofteringer noted that because of the forthcoming review, “the outcome of our mission goes far beyond individual cases.”
POLITICS-US – Racism Won’t Keep Arab Americans From Polls
Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.
Habib Battah
NEW YORK, Nov 3 (IPS) – Arab Americans are expected to vote in large numbers Tuesday, despite concerns over voter intimidation and weak outreach from the presidential candidates, representatives of major community organisations say.
The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has set up a voter protection unit staffed by lawyers to help dispel rumours that may have prevented some from going to the polls in the past.
“As always, there will be voter intimidation,” predicted Abed Ayoub, one of five attorneys attached to the unit. Enthusiasm for the election is higher than it was in 2004, he contended, pointing to a recent ADC-sponsored event in Michigan that saw at least 500 Arab Americans register in just two days.
At the same time, the ADC has received hundreds of calls over recent months from Arab Americans who mistakenly believed they may have been ineligible to vote.
“One rumour was that if you are in foreclosure, you can’t vote,” Ayoub said. Another is the misconception that those who couldn’t read or write in English — often a problem for elderly Arab Americans — would not be allowed to use translators.
But the greatest fear is of an incident like the one at the 1999 municipal election in Hamtramck, Michigan, where dozens of dark-skinned Arab Americans were asked to take a citizenship oath before voting. The move caused many to avoid the polls for fear of embarrassment.
Even in more recent elections, a number of complaints were made to ADC, though never made public, the lawyer said. “This year we want to attack the problem before it happens,” Ayoub said.
Votes of the estimated 3.5 million Arab Americans could be pivotal, especially in swing states. And though a September poll by the Arab American Institute showed that Sen. Barack Obama was far more popular — with a 54 percent to 33 percent lead over Sen. John McCain — it also found that 20 percent of Arab Americans are not enrolled in any political party. And Arab organisations say both presidential campaigns have largely failed to recognise Arab Americans as an important voting bloc.
“Neither party has done a lot of outreach to the community,” said Lelia Al-Qatami, ADC’s communications and cultural affairs director. “Ethnic outreach is very common, but we haven’t seen any with regards to the Arab community.”
The Obama campaign briefly had a liaison to the Arab American community, she acknowledged. But the liaison, Mazen Asbahi, resigned 10 days after his appointment in early August, after the Wall Street Journal ran a story alleging that he may have had ties to a fundamentalist imam. The Arab American Institute called the Journal’s claim “vague and specious.” But the incident was just one of many that upset Arab Americans.
Many Arab Americans also felt let down by the Obama campaign this summer when two Muslim women wearing headscarves were barred from appearing seated behind the senator in a television shot at Detroit rally. And there’s been disappointment over McCain’s recent response to supporters who called Obama “an Arab”. By defending Obama as “a decent family man”, McCain drew fire from Arab American Institute director James Zogby, who issued a statement noting that Arab Americans were “also decent men and women”.
“We would have liked to have better contact from both sides [of the presidential race],” said Christina Zola, AAI communications director. “The racism on behalf of staff or supporters should have been dealt with better.”
A feeling of alienation from the two campaigns was also voiced by the Arab American Political Action Committee, which decided not to endorse either presidential candidate. And neither campaign requested an endorsement, the AAPAC said.
“Those candidates who are not willing to make the effort to request our support and pursue it respectfully are not worthy of our vote, regardless of who they are,” the AAPAC said in its Oct. 11 statement.
Both Obama and McCain have also been criticised by Ralph Nader, an Arab American of Lebanese descent and the Green Party presidential candidate. Nader challenged both McCain and Obama to visit a Muslim place of worship before Election Day, “like they [visited] churches and synagogues,” according to a statement on Nader’s campaign website.
Still, hundreds of Arab Americans are campaigning for Obama or McCain, the ADC said, while the AAI has recruited several hundred volunteers to help register Arab voters, as part of the Yalla Vote Campaign. (Yalla means “come on/let’s go” in Arabic.)
“We need to be involved in this election,” said Mohammad Al Filali, outreach director for the Islamic Center of Passaic County, New Jersey, home to one of the greatest concentrations of Arab Americans. “We cannot allow our voices to be muzzled.”
At least 100 Arab Americans registered to vote in the space of a few hours during an event to celebrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in early October, Al Filali said. He said the community was energised by the election, despite the perception that the word Arab has “all of a sudden become a curse” in campaign rhetoric.
Samir Issa, a software engineer who took part in the event, said he was still supporting Obama, the abrupt departure of the candidate’s Arab American liaison notwithstanding. “I lost some trust in him [Obama], but not all, because the other choice is even worse,” said Issa, 36. “He’s just trying to win, whatever the cost.”
Community involvement is another problem. The campaigns “pay closer attention to people with money,” Al Filali said. “We are new to the game of politics. We have to make ourselves known.”
AFGHANISTAN: ‘If Talks With Taliban Bring Peace, I’ll Support It’
Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, November 03, 2008
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.
Analysis by Anand Gopal
KABUL, Nov 3 (IPS) – Western officials are increasingly turning to new strategies in an effort to stabilise Afghanistan and defeat the insurgency here, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. The various initiatives — from negotiating with the Taliban to arming tribal militias — have differing degrees of support from Afghans.
Violence has reached record levels this year and Afghanistan is now considered a deadlier battlefield than Iraq. Insurgents are able to operate openly in areas close to the capital and the central government’s popularity is at the lowest point in its history. The situation is prompting a number of strategy reviews in Washington as the U.S. prepares for possible strategic shifts after the next president takes office.
Some officials are quietly considering a plan to arm tribal groups, in a move reminiscent to the American strategy in Iraq that is credited with decreasing violence there. ”We are seriously looking into using tribes and local communities to provide security,” says an American intelligence officer with the international forces.
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TIBET: ‘STATUS QUO PLUS’ AS AN OPTION?
Global Geopolitics Net Sites
Monday, November 03, 2008
Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org
B.RAMAN
There is a note of increasing dejection in the post-Olympics statements and comments of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his spokesmen regarding the future of Tibet. His hopes that in the wake of the protest demonstrations in Tibet in March,2008, the international community will step up pressure on Beijing to reach an accommodation with him have been belied. The restrained post-March 2008 reactions of the international community have shown that the economic links of the West with China have become so strong that the West is not prepared to risk this linkage by over-focussing on the Tibet issue to the annoyance of China. Apart from proforma expressions of reverence for His Holiness and of support for the improvement of human rights in Tibet, the West is disinclined to do anything more. It has come to the realisation that it won’t be desirable to exploit Tibet as a card against China.
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THE INDIAN JIHADI NET
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO. 465
Global News Blog – Global Geopolitics Net
Monday, November 03, 2008
Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org
B.RAMAN
The number of fatalities in the serial explosions in Assam on the forenoon of October 30,2008, has since gone up to 75, with the death of some of the injured in the hospitals. Another about 300 persons are undergoing treatment in the hospitals and some of them are stated to be in a serious condition.
2. According to the Police, there was a total of nine blasts timed to take place in four different cities or towns in the State between 11 and 11-30 AM.The most devastating in terms of casualties (35 killed), property damage and psychological effect on the people were the three in Guwahati, the Capital. In all these three cases, the improvised explosive device (IED) was kept in the boot of cars. The use of the boot of a car for keeping the explosives enabled the perpetrators to keep more explosive material than one could in a bicycle or in a tiffin box. In the Ahmedabad blasts of July,26,2008, the explosive device was kept in a car in the incident near a local hospital. Motor-vehicle- borne IEDs also cause more casualties due to the splinter effect and large fires, which have a traumatic effect on the local population. Many who rang me up after the Guwahati explosions remarked that the scene with cars burning reminded them of what they had been seeing on the TV about similar incidents in Baghdad. This kind of trauma one did not witness during the earlier serial explosions in three towns of Uttar Pradesh in November last year, in Jaipur in May,2008, in Bangalore and Ahmedabad in July, in New Delhi in September and in Agartala in October. The three cars had been kept parked with the IED near a vegetable and fruit market at Ganeshguri below a fly-over, in front of the office of the Kamrup Deputy Commissioner, and near a police station in the Fancy Bazaar. The Ganeshguri area is near the high security complex of the capital.
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