When Obama took his eyes off the Palestine ball

By Daoud Kuttab

For a few minutes on Sunday I wondered what would have happened if I was reading rather than listening to US President Barack Obama's statement from Hawaii. The US president took time off his Christmas vacation to speak about the incident that occurred on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Had I not heard his voice and seen his picture, I would have thought that the speaker was none other than former US president George W. Bush. What has happened to Obama in less than one year?




Unlike any of his previous speeches, Obama spoke totally out of script by using the word "terrorism" three times in a statement that lasted only a few minutes. Until this incident, Obama had preferred to use the word "radical" or "extremist" rather than much more politically loaded terrorists and terrorism.




What made the statement sound more like a Bush speech rather than an Obama one was the reference to the aim of the anti-American attackers. Obama had the following to say: "Those plotting against us seek not only to undermine our security, but also the open society and the values that we cherish as Americans."




Obama clearly capitulated to forces on the right who have repeatedly described any attack against the US because of its foreign policy as attacks against America's "open society" and American "values".




What has happened to President Obama?




Is it simply that he was shocked that people around the world would dare attack America and American soil despite his own pro-world point of view? Is it that he is so angry that he is unable to realise that his own decision to ratchet up US presence in Afghanistan would inevitably produce anti-American violence?




During Obama's visit to Cairo and his speech to the Muslim world, the attitude and tone of the son of an African-Muslim leader was widely welcomed. In fact worldwide reaction to Obama's first months in office was extremely positive about the direction he plans to take on major foreign policy issues.




Obama's appointment of Senator George Mitchell as his personal envoy to the Middle East and his call to close Guantanamo during his first year in office were seen as positive signs of a change. Obama's public position as well as that of his secretary of state, in total opposition to any sort of Israeli settlement activities was seen as a breath of fresh air in Washington. But those signals would quickly crumble and US foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis Palestine, would retract back to its tilt in the direction of Israel. This was clear with the way Obama and Hilary Clinton retracted the call for a total settlement freeze. It was also obvious when the US exerted political pressure on the Palestinian president in an attempt to quash the Goldstone report. One would have expected jurist and internationalist Obama to support rather than oppose actions of an impeccable South African war crimes lawyer such as Richard Goldstone.




A search of what happened to Obama since his early hopeful days can be found in the president's own rhetoric.




One issue that Obama and his personal envoy clearly articulated during those crucial first months was the need for the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state. The language used in support of such a political resolution was unprecedented because of its repeated emphasis that the creation of a Palestinian state is in the "national interest" of the United States of America.




During the presidential election campaign, candidate Barack Obama attacked. Bush for what he considered the mistaken launch of the wrong war against Iraq. Obama repeatedly stated that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush took his eyes off the ball by attacking Iraq rather than Afghanistan.




Surely Obama, who has been seen worldwide as having started on the right foot regarding the Middle East, was drawn away by the healthcare debates and the internal discussions on troop deployment. Others believe that Obama has allowed some pro-Israeli staff and advisers such Rahm Emanuel and Denis Ross to manage the Palestine-Israeli dossier. Adding more troops to an unwinnable war also doesn't help to stem the motivations for continued attacks against Americans.




Observers of the Middle East conflict insist that the continuation of the plight of the Palestinians and the injustice they are suffering at the hands of the Israeli occupiers is a source of anger and frustration for millions around the world. Candidate Obama, as well as President Obama in his first 100 days, would not have taken his eyes off the ball. Preventing further attacks against American targets will not take place with hard power. Soft power and support of justice and neutrality in the Middle East will provide much better protection than body scanners and efficient intelligence work.




If 2009 is to be evaluated fairly in respect to the issue of Palestine, it would be safe to say that Obama took his eyes off an issue that is of national interest to the US.

US embassy issues Bali New Year attack warning

AFP

JAKARTA: The US embassy in Indonesia on Thursday said it had received warning of a New Year terrorist attack from the governor of the resort island of Bali, the scene of multiple bombings targeting Westerners.

In a statement carried on its website, the embassy said the Bali Tourism Board had widely distributed a message from Bali Governor Mangku Pastika warning of an attack.

"The Governor of Bali Mr Mangku Pastika wishes to share a message with all of us: 'There is an indication of an attack to Bali tonight,' it quoted the message as saying.

Maoists sabotage tracks

Gidhni (West Midnapore), Dec. 30: Two railwaymen on night patrol saved hundreds of passengers from disaster today when they alerted authorities after spotting dozens hammering away at tracks in a Maoist zone 10 minutes before an express was to pass that way.

Their 1.15am warning prompted the authorities to stop the New Delhi-Bhubaneswar Purushottam Express at West Midnapore's Gidhni station, about 10km from the damaged tracks.

In the evening, Maoists blocked tracks at an unmanned level-crossing at Bhalukkhinia between Midnapore and Godapiasal stations, leaving two trains stranded at two other stations, and derailed the engine of a goods train.

One of the stranded trains - the Howrah-bound Rupashi Bangla Express - is also carrying holidaymakers from Calcutta. Security forces headed to the forested area but were advancing with caution for fear of booby traps.

Referring to the pre-dawn sabotage, officials said about 400 metres of tracks had been twisted out of alignment with shovels and crowbars, the thud of sledgehammers drawing the attention of Panchu Patra and Kanai Mahato patrolling the 14km wooded stretch between Jhargram and Gidhni.

"If the sabotage had not been detected, hundreds of passengers would have been killed. Never before in Bengal has such a big stretch of railway tracks been dislodged," said Kharagpur senior divisional commercial manager Manoj Kumar. The area falls in the Kharagpur division of South Eastern Railway.

Kumar said the railways had "declared a Rs 5,000 reward each" for the two men, part of a group assigned the job of keeping vigil every night on tracks that run through the Maoist-infested forest areas of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura.

"It is the handiwork of Maoists. Railway police have found some electrical wires at the place which indicates there was also a plan to detonate explosives," West Midnapore police chief Manoj Verma said.

Asit Mahato, the leader of the rebel-backed People's Committee Against Police Atrocities, said this evening that his group's militia was responsible for both the incidents and another one in which three trucks were set on fire.

Railway minister Mamata Banerjee didn't directly blame any group for the failed bid. "Don't try to give the railways a bad name just because I am the minister. It is not my paternal property. I might not be the railway minister tomorrow," she said at Howrah station.

The sabotage came three weeks after the arrest of two villagers from Maoist hotbed Lalgarh, 60km from the damaged tracks, following which the insurgents had vowed to set the "jungles on fire".

A railway official said Patra and Mahato were checking the tracks when they heard shouts and thuds ahead. It was a little after 1 at night. After walking a few minutes, they saw around 150 people pounding away at the rails with sledgehammers and crowbars near Jharageria village.

The two patrolmen saw the group trying to yank off the "Pandrol clips" - which hold the tracks and the sleepers together - along a 200-metre stretch on both the up and down lines. "If the rails come off the Pandrol clips, they tilt. The distance between the rails becomes uneven which could lead to derailment of trains," a railway official said.

The patrolmen alerted the station authorities at Gidhni and Jhargram over their walkie-talkies, following which all trains that were to pass that way were stopped. A special train that ferried officials to the spot got derailed, though no one was injured.

Gopal Soren, a labourer from Jharageria, said some 60 Maoists armed with guns had visited the place and neighbouring villages last night and forced nearly 300 villagers to attend a meeting.

Another villager said: "We had no choice as most of them were armed with guns. We hammered out about 700 to 800 of those clips."

Blast in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre & WMD

by Zaheerul Hassan

The week ending December, 2009 has again opened many possibilities for the global nuke experts and IAEA to investigate the real troubles of Indian nuke plants.




Year 2009 is also leaving number of unresolved questions which regarding Indian nuke safety and security and might not be resolved in 2010 also. On second last day of 2009, a high intensity explosion at a chemical laboratory inside Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) took placed which resulted into the death of two junior scientists, Umang Singh and Partha Bagh. Though Indian authorities claimed that no reactor, radioactivity or radiation was involved in the incident but severely charred bodies of the scientists and totally burnt equipment revealed that something very serious happened inside the plant. It is important to highlight here that BARC was started in 1954, as the Atomic Energy Establishment and apparently conducts the research in Biotechnology and Gama Rays.




The initial investigations regarding incident of BARC is giving three leads to solve the mysterious occurrence. Firstly, Indian scientists might be carrying out some experiment on biological and chemical agents. The experiment failed and chemical reaction caused damaged to the lives of the scientists and the laboratory. According to a world news agency staff working on the plants also heard the blast inside the project. The blast and condition of the death bodies do confirm that India is preparing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The preparation of WMD is the desired of Indian top military and political leadership. The intensity on this venture has been multiplied since self predicted Chinese threat on the border is being considered by the Indian leadership.




Second opinion could be that Indian scientists were yet to achieve expertise and hall mark in the nuke field. Their weak knowledge and causal attitude might become the reason of their death. But poor expertise of Indian nuke Programme has also put the lives of Indian and regional masses at stake. In this connection again we can noticed the lapses of security. There are reports that junior Indian scientists were busy in carrying out experiments on preparing some chemical and biological weapons but failed to tackle the situation because of their less experience.




It was further reported that they even never have been guided by their senior colleagues. August 27, 2009 interview of senior nuke scientist K Santhanam, with "Times of India" confirms that nuke test at Pokhran II further endorse the weakness of Indian nuke programme. He admitted that the only thermonuclear device tested was a "fizzle". The incidents of Kaiga, Pockran and now BARC do reflects that Indian nuke plants are real danger to humanity since her scientists are lacking requisite experience in this field.




Third version could be that some member out of nuke staff intentionally carried out some sabotage activities inside the plant with the purpose of killing these two junior members of the team. These two comrades might be having some knowledge of on going Indian nuke proliferation and killed by the Uranium smugglers present on Indian nuke plants. Earlier, too on June 13, 2009 dead body of Indian famous nuke scientist Lokanathan Mahalingam has been found from Kali River. The scientist was working on Kaiga Atomic Power Station since last eight years. Reportedly, he was in possession of highly sensitive information and might be doubted for Indian nuke proliferation. Mahalingam was involved in training apprentices on a replica of the actual reactor.




However the exact cause of the fire has not yet been ascertained and need deliberate efforts to dig out the actual causes of repeated nuke incidents in India. IAEA should send some teams of expertise to inspect the Indian nuke plants since continue occurrences may prove fatal to human life. Indian government should also carry out detail investigations through global experts since some members of the police and the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) of the centre could be involved in the series of nuke accidents in India. Indian Prime Minister should not declare BARC incident as mischief and should seriously remove the weaknesses of the safety and security of Indian Nuke programme.

In fact, the incident of BARC need to be thrashed out seriously since India is already heading towards making WMD.




So called think tank Bharat Verma, Editor Indian Defence Review has started propagating that China and Pakistan would be attacking India in 2012. Indian scholars on their government directions are creating hype in the masses by design, since they are trying to divert their public attention from poor nuke safety arrangements, the strong ongoing separatist Maoist movement and regional issues like Khalistan, Kashmir, territorial disputes and water conflicts with the regional issue.




Thus, we can deduce from the BARC incident that India is preparing for global war and her propaganda campaign against China and Pakistan would be taken as her preemptive action against two allies. Chinese and Pakistan governments are already taking notice of new development in the region. Both the governments have the concern over increasing USA influence in Asia and Indo-USA Nuke Deal. USA Nuke exerts do have serious reservations about the said deal since Indian nuke safety arrangements are very poor. India is already facing the charges of smuggling and theft of enriched uranium.




The world community should force India to open her Nuke Programme for inspection because repeated accidents are serious threat to China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka because of the location of Nuke Plants. IAEA should direct India to remove the prevailing tension in the nuke staffs since the involvement of RAW has created panic in them. In short the detail investigations are required to be carried out at Indian nuke programme, covering the type of weapons being made, arrangement of safety, cause of murder and killing of nuke scientists and staff, reasons of accidents and smuggling and theft of enriched Uranium.

Al Qaeda’s Yemen Connection, America and the Global Islamic Jihad

The attempt to destroy Northwest Airlines flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day underscores the growing ambition of al Qaeda's Yemen franchise, which has grown from a largely Yemeni agenda to become a player in the global Islamic jihad in the last year. Since merging with the al Qaeda franchise in Saudi Arabia last January and renaming itself Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), it has stepped up operations in Yemen itself, struck into Saudi Arabia, and now operates on the global stage. The weak Yemeni government of President Ali Abdallah Salih, which has never fully controlled the country and now faces a host of growing problems, will need significant American support to defeat AQAP.

Al Qaeda has long been active in Yemen, the original homeland of Osama bin Laden's family, and one of its first major terror attacks was conducted in Aden in 2000, when an al Qaeda cell nearly sank the USS Cole. A year ago, the al Qaeda franchises in Saudi Arabia and Yemen merged after the Saudi branch had been effectively repressed by the Saudi authorities under the leadership of Deputy Interior Minister Prince Muhammad bin Nayif. The new AQAP showed its claws last August, when it almost assassinated the prince with a suicide bomber who had passed through at least two airports on the way to his attempt on Nayif.

The same bombmakers who produced that device probably also manufactured the bomb that Omar al Farooq Abdulmutallab used on Flight 253. In claiming credit for the Detroit attack, AQAP highlighted how they had built a bomb that "all the advanced, new machines and technologies and the security boundaries of the world's airports" had failed to detect. They praised their "mujahedin brothers in the manufacturing sector" for building such a "highly advanced device," and promised that more such attacks will follow.

Yemen has sought to repress al Qaeda off and on for the last decade, with little success. The Saleh government has other more immediate problems on its plate, in particular a rebellion among Shia Zaydi tribes known as Houthis in the north that has escalated in the last two months with attacks by the rebels into Saudi territory. The southern part of the country, which only merged with the north in 1990 and fought a bitter civil war in 1994 when it tried to break away, is hostile to the Saleh government and is looking for a chance to split off again. The economy is weak and heavily dependent on dwindling oil reserves, and the majority of the 23 million Yemenis are illiterate and poor.

The Obama administration has offered Saleh additional military assistance, and has encouraged the government to strike hard at al Qaeda hideouts in the last few weeks. The attacks have killed some AQAP leaders, but it is unclear exactly how serious a blow these attacks have inflicted on the group as a whole. AQAP has vowed revenge for the strikes, which it blames on an alliance between America, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Saleh government.

AQAP has also provided refuge for the Yemeni-American cleric Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki was in contact with U.S. Army Major Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas on November 5, 2009. In an interview with Al Jazeera released on December 23, Awlaki said he had encouraged Nidal to kill his fellow soldiers because they were preparing to go to Afghanistan and were part of the Zionist-Crusader alliance that al Qaeda says it is fighting. The next day, December 24, Awlaki was reported to be among those killed in a Yemeni-American strike on the AQAP leadership, but that is still unconfirmed. In claiming credit for the Christmas Day airline attack, AQAP also lauded the Fort Hood massacre and urged other American Muslims to emulate Nidal Hassan.

Al Qaeda has always found weak and failing states like Yemen to be its best staging bases and sanctuaries. Along with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia, Yemen offers an ideal location to operate with little outside interference. The president has been right to focus additional resources on combating AQAP, but the battle has just begun. If the Yemeni state becomes further destabilized, bin Laden's cadre in the Arabian Peninsula will have more room to operate.

The attack on the Amsterdam-Detroit flight also shows that al Qaeda remains obsessed with striking the American airline industry, a target it has gone after repeatedly since 1999. If AQAP has now been told by the al Qaeda core leadership to take on the job, we can probably assume that other al Qaeda franchises in North Africa, Iraq, Southeast Asia and elsewhere have also been pressed to attack.

Source: Brookings

Kashmiris disappointed with Obama's approach on IHK: WP

WASHINGTON - People in the Indian-occupied Kashmir are disappointed in President Barack Obama because the US leader has not engaged on Kashmir other that to say recently that the region's fate is in the hands of India and Pakistan alone, according to a dispatch in The Washington Post.

"Many Kashmiris celebrated when President Obama took office nearly a year ago, because he seemed to favour a more robust approach to bring stability to Kashmir, where human rights groups estimate that as many as 100,000 people have died in violence and dozens of Pakistan-backed militant groups have sprung up," The Post correspondent, Emily Wax, wrote from Srinagar.

At one point, the report noted the Obama administration contemplated appointing former president Bill Clinton as a special envoy to the region.

"When Obama came, there was so much hope to reclaim those happy times in Kashmir. But when it comes to human rights, we feel really let down. It's been nothing more than election rhetoric," Pervez Imroz, a Kashmiri lawyer and head of a coalition of civil society groups, was quoted as saying.

But, citing analysts, The Post report said Obama is working behind the scenes, treading a careful diplomatic path.

"The Obama administration is supporting the Indian government's talks, or what it calls 'quiet diplomacy,' with Kashmiri separatists groups to discuss options such as greater autonomy and demilitarization of the region," The Post said.

"The talks are seen in India's capital and in Kashmir as a key development, with dialogue about the future of the region continuing even though attacks in Mumbai last year have derailed talks between India and Pakistan".

"Washington fears that any overt American interference in Kashmir could backfire and set back warming relations between India and the U.S.," Howard Schaffer, a retired Foreign Service official who is an expert on South Asia, was quoted as saying. Any mention of appointing a special envoy for Kashmir, he said, is "viewed as toxic waste in India."

"The Obama administration's apparent low-key approach to Kashmir belies the region's importance to the U.S. campaign against terrorism," correspondent Wax wrote. "Even more important for U.S. interests, though, is calming the ongoing tension between India and Pakistan over the region so that the Pakistani military can turn more of its attention to helping root out al-Qaeda members and other militants who have used isolated regions of Pakistan as a base for operations against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

"Easing tensions would also allow Pakistan to move more forcefully against Lashkar-i-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group implicated in the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai, India's financial capital, which killed 165 people. India says the group is also smuggling fighters into Kashmir".

But some Kashmiris want more from Washington, The Post said.

"The Obama administration and India can't hide behind Mumbai. The U.S. has to engage with both India and Pakistan," Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the All Parties Hurriyet Conference, was quote4d as saying. "If this opportunity is missed, all the ingredients are there for the cycle of violence to start again."

Human rights groups accuse India's government of killing civilians in its crackdown on militants, it noted.

"We want Washington to speak out against these tragedies," Imroz, the lawyer, said. "There has only been silence."

"In recent years, violence between militants and the Indian army has largely decreased," the report said, adding: "A new generation of Kashmiris has said it is committed to a nonviolent freedom movement.

But Kashmiris still grow angry at perceived wrongs.

"Protesters filled the streets this month after India's top investigating agency ruled that two young village women thought to have been raped and killed in the summer had drowned in a mountain stream".

"Many here (in Kashmir) view the findings as a cover-up to protect the Kashmiri officers working for Indian security forces. Others say the initial investigation was fabricated to frame security forces.

"Such incidents highlight the fragility of Kashmir's peace...", the dispatch added.

Meanwhile, Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, the Executive Director of Kashmir Centre Washington, has emphasised that a fair and permanent solution of the Kashmir dispute can be brought about by granting the people of Jammu and Kashmir their inalienable right of self-determination. Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai stated this while addressing a function at a hotel in Granada, Spain.

He rejected the proposals of autonomy and self-rule by pro-India parties. "The concept of autonomy or self-rule for Kashmir is an absolute fallacy. Here one has to rely on a provision of the Indian Constitution," he said. Dr Fai maintained that no settlement of the dispute would be permanent unless it was explicitly based on the principles of self-determination.

The Executive Director pointed out that in a poll jointly conducted on August 12, 2007, by major news outlets, CNN-IBN and Hindustan Times in India and Dawn and News in Pakistan, majority of those polled in the Kashmir Valley preferred (Azadi) freedom from Indian occupation. He clarified that Azadi meant both the rejection of concept of autonomy and self-rule and rejection of the Line of Control as an international border.

The Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Movement (JKPM), a constituent of the All Parties Hurriyet Conference (APHC) has said that the people of Kashmir will not accept any thing short of liberation from Indian bondage. The spokesman of the JKPM, in a statement issued in Jammu, said that Kashmiris had been making unmatchable sacrifices to take the liberation movement to its logical conclusion.

Rejecting the recommendations, recently submitted by the working group regarding the autonomy of the occupied territory, he said that the slogans like autonomy and self-rule did not have any relevance and resemblance with the ongoing freedom movement.

The Spokesman pointed out that these slogans were generated just to create the confusion among the freedom loving people of the territory. He maintained that India had constituted the group to divert the attention of the international community from Kashmiris' freedom struggle.

He said that Kashmiris had always rejected the so-called commissions and committees constituted by India during the last six decades. "These commissions did not address the wishes and aspirations of the people who had been demanding complete independence from the Indian rule," he added.

Time to Work with Warlords? What?

By Thomas Ruttig

I did not believe my eyes when I reviewed what the international media have printed about Afghanistan over Christmas: A fellow of a famous US university's Human Rights Policy(!) institute proposes that it is 'time to work with Afghan warlords' (maybe not his own headline) and that 'if President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers handle them right, they can be part of the solution' (Boston Globe, 24 December).

What an utter ignorance, even if it is not for the first time that such opinion is expressed. This ignores not only latest Afghan history but also, most shockingly, the plentiful human rights records available. (The author, until recently, served in a leading position under the outgoing UN special envoy for Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and must be aware of this - see his article here.) These records show that the people mentioned in them - and almost no big name is missing - belong to The Hague rather than into the reception rooms of our embassies or in our capitals.

In contrast to what is suggested in the mentioned op-ed, the US-led international community - and at its tail UNAMA - HAS been working with the warlords over the past eight years in Afghanistan. This is the main reason why it is failing (in) this hapless country.

Is it really necessary to repeat everything that has been said and written by countless people? That CIA money brought the warlords and commanders - who had been kicked out by the Taleban from Afghanistan, one thing most Afghans appreciated - back into the arena, by making them military allies in the anti-Taleban ground fight. That this money and the weapons (new weapons!) bought from it thwarted UN-led militia disbandment programs like DDR and DIAG. That this money and these weapons allowed the warlords to intimidate their opponents and to elbow themselves into the new Afghan institutions where they today dictate the tone and the agenda. (The author should have been able to read UNAMA's daily notes from parliament.) And that this money is used to run drug, kidnapping and other organized crime cartels, sometimes from within the parliament. UNAMA knows the names and the connections. It is the acquiescence vis-à-vis this reality by the West that undermined Afghan people's trust in the post-2001 Afghan government and the morale of this very government itself.

Remember how Karzai asked for help when he wanted to replace Ismail Khan - who still styled himself as an autonomous 'Amir of Western Afghanistan' under the new government and showed up with a three hour delay at Karzai's 2001 inauguration in a show of blatant defiance - as Herat governor and was told that ISAF would not mingle in 'green-on-green' (that is inner-Afghan) conflicts? Where was, in this situation, the often-cited mandate to 'support the central government'? No wonder that Karzai learned his lesson and ended in an alliance with the warlords and that, at last, his entourage gave up and joined the corruption bandwagon. This is an often forgotten but central part of the story why the 'Afghan technocrats' failed, as the author correctly notes.

The reasoning in his op-ed seems to be based on pragmatism and realpolitics. '[T]echnocrats remain a minority in the government. Instead, Afghanistan is increasingly run by warlords'. Yes, but this a result of the policy described above and not a god-given fact. '[W]arlords are the former leaders of armed groups that formed the backbone of resistance to the Soviets and the Taliban.' What does that mean? That they are legitimized because they stood on the right side? That's long over, after their misrule of the country post-1992. Ask the Afghans, they remember. And what concerns the 'heroic fight' against the Taleban: It was almost lost if it hadn't been for al-Qaida's 9/11 attacks that saved the life of the Northern Alliance mujahedin. Finally, if you read Bob Woodward you would know that Fahim had to be carried to do some fighting at all.

'These groups are also collectively accused of committing widespread and shocking human rights abuses' - so, for a UN man, these are still accusations. Haven't you read the reports of Human Rights Watch and the Afghanistan Justice Project? What about the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission's report 'A Call for Justice'? Or, at least, the UN's own findings? The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' 'mapping exercise' documents? Yes, true, they were never published (under US pressure), but they are available, in the UN for sure. Oh, here it comes --- '[…] though they [the warlords] were exempted from punishment in Afghanistan by an amnesty law in 2007'. Funnily enough, they exempted themselves because they sit in parliament and dominate it. I am repeating myself. 'Their leaders routinely have Karzai's ear'. So, who is handling whom? Not Karzai is handling the warlords, they handle him.

'Their influence reflects an underlying reality' and Karzai even had to turn to 'his ally Fahim for the security of his own compound'. Yes, Fahim can provide security - because he avoided having his own militias demobilized when he served as Minister of Defense. In this capacity, he had post-2001 Russian arms deliveries for the Afghan army deposited for his faction's use in the Panjshir valley. His people even shot at UN staff that came to inspect, without anything about this ever made public by the US or the UN. The fact that the US PRT in the Panjshir is the only one in the country which does not carry (too many) arms is possibly not a sign of how peaceful it is up there. It is another symptom of the usual 'don't rock the boat of our allies' policy which is often enough utterly unprincipled.

Instead of showing ways how to remedy those mistakes (or even only mentioning them), the author proposes to change course: '[R]ather than attempting to make good leaders strong, we can succeed better in making strong leaders good.' And he has examples that it works: 'Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of Nangarhar, gets more plaudits for his energy and effectiveness than he does accusations of murder and drug-smuggling.' Note the 'more'. This is the outcome when we 'downsize' our political aims in Afghanistan and 'de-emphasize state-building' (Defense Secretary Robert Gates).

That fits perfectly with a recently quote in the New York Times ('Defense chief's Afghan plan: Empower local centers', 26 December 2009, see here): 'If we can re-empower the traditional local centers of authority, the tribal shuras and elders and things like that and put an overlay of human rights on that, isn't that a step in the right direction?'

'Things like that' refers to proposals to 'work directly' with 'provincial strongmen' - i.e. warlords and commanders - when the Kabul government or certain ministers prove to be corrupt etc. This is already happening, with PRTs channeling funds directly to provincial governors - resulting in Kabul government's complaints that it is circumvented and has no clue what is happening in many areas. (If it would have the capacity to work better itself it really had a point here.) This, however, will not avoid corruption - in the current situation of 'strong-men' impunity, it will only transplant it to another place. By the way, we already had 'local centers of authority' in the 1990s when the Fahims, Dostums, Sayyafs, Ismail Khans, Khalilis and Mohaqqeqs - all of them represented in the incoming cabinet again, directly or indirectly - were ruling over their own fiefdoms. That almost broke up Afghanistan and contributed to the Taleban emerging.

No, Mr Russell: It is time to STOP working with the warlords.

This can be done by limiting (and not condoning) their ability to pocket aid money through the monopolization of contracts (often through pseudo-NGOs run by relatives), by implementing existing Afghan law and finally ending their exclusive status of being 'above the law'. That's what the UN and its member states should look into - instead of capitulating before circumstances they helped to create. Anyone thinking about that, with just a month to go to this new international conference on Afghanistan in London?

Time to work with Afghan warlords

By Gerard Russell

WARLORDS STILL dominate Afghanistan's government, but if President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers handle them right, they can be part of the solution. To achieve this, though, the international community must be more consistent and tougher in its approach.

Afghanistan's Western allies have often said that they want to see more technocrats in the Afghan government - people with policies and strategies, who can work well with donor agencies. But technocrats remain a minority in the government. Instead, Afghanistan is increasingly run by warlords, strong men from Afghanistan's past. Indeed, Karzai's two deputies - the avuncular Karim Khalili and the pugnacious, scowling Marshal Fahim - are both warlords.

Operating now mostly behind the scenes, warlords are the former leaders of armed groups that formed the backbone of resistance to the Soviets and the Taliban. These groups are also collectively accused of committing widespread and shocking human rights abuses, though they were exempted from punishment in Afghanistan by an amnesty law in 2007. Their leaders routinely have Karzai's ear; his Cabinet was delayed while he negotiated it with them.

Their influence reflects an underlying reality: in a contest for loyalties since 2001, these armed groups and the warlords that lead them have proven themselves stronger than the government. The Afghan leadership itself recognizes this. When Karzai wanted votes in the election, he turned to the warlords and reached an accommodation with them. He turned to his ally Fahim for the security of his own compound.

The truth is that the non-warlords in the Afghan government, including Karzai, have not lived up to expectations. In the cases where warlords have left the picture altogether, the Taliban has often filled the gap; the government has appeared unable to impress, recruit and pay the right people to run the government.

When it was rumored that Karzai would be choosing Fahim as his running mate, I tried to lobby against it. I knew many Afghans who were dismayed at the resurgence of these figures from a murkier past - some had suffered directly at their hands. But that fight has now been lost. The international community has failed so far to undercut the warlords, and its chances of doing so will steadily reduce as the Afghan government grows in self-confidence.

Our hope must instead be that, rather than attempting to make good leaders strong, we can succeed better in making strong leaders good. Unlike a weak leader who can always say that the problems are not his fault, a self-proclaimed strong man has to accept responsibility for what happens on his watch. The right kind of incentives and deterrents have drawn some of Afghanistan's traditional strongmen onto paths of gradually improving behavior. Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of Nangarhar, gets more plaudits for his energy and effectiveness than he does accusations of murder and drug-smuggling.

So we should not be surprised at the increasingly overt dominance of warlords. Western governments should engage them, but with a high degree of transparency, consistency, and conditionality. A first step is to determine which ones show potential for long-term reform, and which ones are incorrigible.

A second step could be modeled on the initiative already in place to reward reductions in opium cultivation, for which provincial governors are given substantial extra money to spend in their own provinces. Targets for improving human rights and security could be rewarded financially. Ministries that deliver results should be rewarded - no matter who is in charge of them.

For those who show no inclination to reform themselves, there should be consequences. Ideally Karzai himself would see to this, but if he does not, donors can withdraw funding from the provinces they govern or the ministries they run. Those who continue to be involved in major crimes should be denounced and the subjects of international arrest warrants. Afghanistan is a signatory to the International Criminal Court and no internal Afghan machinations can annul its verdicts.

Gerard Russell is a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

What to make of the failed terrorist attack

Homeland security, intelligence and legal experts share their reactions.

FRANCES FRAGOS TOWNSEND

Assistant to President George W. Bush for homeland security and counterterrorism; chair of the Homeland Security Council from May 2004 to January 2008; partner at law firm Baker Botts

The president has ordered two reviews since the attack attempted against Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. While such reviews are necessary to understand why a multibillion-dollar aviation security system failed to prevent Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding a U.S.-bound flight with explosives, the American people rightly expect more.

This plot appears to trace back to Yemen, a country that is not a new counterterrorism problem. Since the October 2000 attack against the USS Cole, in which 17 U.S. sailors were killed, two administrations have pushed Yemen to confront al-Qaeda without sufficient success. It was from Yemen that terrorists brought the guns used to attack our consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 2004; our embassy in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, has been attacked at least four times since 2000. Al-Qaeda recently launched from Yemen an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the head of Saudi Arabia's counterterror police.

The United States and Saudi Arabia have poured money and counterterrorism resources -- military, intelligence and law enforcement -- into Yemen. But after nearly a decade the American people are understandably fed up. The Obama administration needs to take a clear, tough line with Yemen: Take care of the terrorism problem within your borders so you are no longer a threat to the United States and our allies in the region, or allow the international community to come in and clean it up for you. The time for polite diplomacy is long past.

JEFFREY H. SMITH

Former general counsel of the CIA; partner at Arnold & Porter

More than eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks, we are still not able to connect the dots effectively. Stopping dedicated suicide bombers is a difficult task, and it is reassuring that the administration's surprisingly tepid initial reaction has been replaced with a strong call for action.

Here are a few questions that administration officials, Congress, the airlines and our allies, all of which must be involved in making the necessary fixes, needs to address:

-- When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's father told U.S. officials that his son had been radicalized and gone to Yemen, did we alert the Yemenis, the British and other relevant countries? Why didn't we revoke or suspend his visa?

-- Did anyone notice that Abdulmutallab paid cash for his plane ticket, in an out-of-the-way location, and was traveling without checked luggage? If not, why not? Did he request a seat that near the plane's fuel tank?

-- What value is the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) list with its 550,000 names? How is it used? Do we share all key information with like-minded governments? If Abdulmutallab were put on the TIDE list, should the facts that he paid cash for a ticket and didn't check luggage automatically move him to the no-fly list or at least a list requiring far more scrutiny (as Israel's El Al does)?

-- The Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, on which I serve, has been pressing for more and better information-sharing for years. Progress has been made, but the failure to identify Abdulmutallab as a threat before the flight means much more must be done. Technology can identify suspicious patterns. Policy changes are needed to support additional information-sharing. Airport security checkpoints also need better equipment to detect explosives. What can be done to make these a higher priority?

We also must adopt a more sophisticated passenger- screening process that focuses on people who are more likely to be terrorists (some may call this profiling, but given the risks it is necessary), and we must foster even closer coordination with like-minded governments. Finally, we must continue to attack the problem at the root, in Yemen and elsewhere, not only with force but also with political, economic and social programs.

CLARK KENT ERVIN

Inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2004; head of the Aspen Institute's Homeland Security Program

Given the 24-7 media focus since the attempted attack, security gaps regarding terror watch lists and passenger screening are likely to be closed. Less noticed, and less likely to be addressed, are vulnerabilities in our visa system.

The would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, held a Nigerian passport, which meant he was subjected to the post-Sept. 11 visa process. Had his passport been from Britain, France or another of the 35 countries whose passport holders can travel freely to the United States, Abdulmutallab would not have been interviewed by a U.S. consular officer; had his name checked against various terrorist or criminal databases; or been photographed and fingerprinted so that on his arrival U.S. customs officials could determine whether he is the person to whom the visa was issued.

While not foolproof, these security measures make it harder for terrorists to evade law enforcement, which is why terrorists prize passports from visa-waiver countries ("shoe bomber" Richard Reid held a British passport; Zacarias Moussaoui held a French passport), and why the Obama administration should put a halt to the Bush administration's penchant for expanding the program to countries as a reward for support of our foreign policy. Once granted, it's nearly impossible to revoke a country's visa-waiver status. Revoking waivers would cause a diplomatic uproar just as we are working overtime to win back international support, not to mention the cost and disruption of requiring millions of additional applicants to go through the already underfinanced and overworked visa system. At the least, though, we should stop extending the waiver to additional countries. And the Department of Homeland Security should greatly expand its use of visa-security officers to ensure that the paramount focus is on security, not diplomacy. After Sept. 11, the State Department fought hard to retain the power to issue visas, but Homeland Security visa officers were supposed to be dispatched to missions around the world as an additional security measure. They remain underutilized, primarily due to diplomats' turf consciousness and the agency's underappreciation of their potential strategic value.

The visa system should be amended to revoke automatically the visa of anyone later included on a terror watch list, a serious omission in this case, and Homeland Security should add an exit feature to the automated U.S. VISIT entry system so we know whether people are leaving this country when their visas expire. If we learn that someone who has entered this country has terrorist ties, it would be helpful to have some indication of whether he or she is still here.

America Needs Pakistan's Help - Again -- Part IV

The Israel/India Alliance

Jeff Gates

Below is the fourth installment in a 5-part series written for Opinion Maker by Jeff Gates, author of Guilt By Association.

In April 2009, Tel Aviv signed a $1.1 billion agreement to provide New Delhi an advanced tactical air defense system developed by Raytheon, a U.S. defense contractor. That agreement confirmed what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier announced: "Our ties with India don't have any limitation…."

In May 2009, Israel delivered to India the first of three Phalcon Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) shifting the balance of conventional weapons in the region by giving India air dominance over Pakistan.

Israel has overtaken Russia as India's chief arms supplier as New Delhi announced $50 billion in defense modernization outlays from 2007 to 2012. The fast emerging fact patterns suggest there is far more implied for Pakistan in this "special defense relationship" than meets the eye.

In August 2008, Ashkenazim General David Kezerashvili returned to his native Georgia from Tel Aviv to lead an assault on separatists in South Ossetia with the support of Tel Aviv-provided arms and military training provided by Israel Defense Forces. That crisis ignited Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Russia, key members of the Quartet (along with the EU and the UN) pledged to resolve the six-decade Israel-Palestine conflict.

Little was reported in mainstream media about the Israeli interest in a pipeline across Georgia meant to move Caspian oil through Turkey and on to Eurasia with Tel Aviv a profit-extracting intermediary undercutting Russia's oil industry. Nor did mainstream media report on the self-reinforcing nature of serial well-timed crises that emerged in a compressed time frame.

For example, on August 7, 2008, the ruling coalition led by Asif Ali Zarderi called for a no-confidence vote in Parliament on President Parvez Musharraf just as he was scheduled to depart for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. On August 8, heavy fighting erupted overnight in South Ossetia while the heads of state of both Russia and the U.S. were in Beijing.

What other crises were then unfolding? But for pro-Israeli influence inside the U.S. government, would our State Department have backed the corrupt Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, leading to record-level poppy production involving Karzai's brother? Is the heroin epidemic presently eroding Russian society traceable to Israel's fabled game theory war-planners who are infamous for disabling their targets from the inside out?

Three months after the crisis in Georgia, a terrorist attack in Mumbai renewed fears of nuclear tension between India and Pakistan. When the Mumbai attackers struck a hostel managed by Chabad Lubavitch, an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect from New York, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced from Tel Aviv: "Our world is under attack."

See: "Israel and 9-11"

By early December, Jewish journalists were arguing that Israel must "fortify the security of Jewish institutions worldwide." In the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security continued its policy of dispersing U.S. taxpayer funds to protect synagogues and Jewish community centers.

Pre-Staged Plausibility

Soon after "India's 9-11" was found to include personnel recruited from Pakistan's western tribal region, President Zardari announced an agreement with Taliban tribal chiefs to allow Sharia law to govern a swath of the North West Frontier Province where Al Qaeda members reportedly reside.

The perception of Pakistani cooperation with "Islamic extremists" created the impression of enhanced insecurity and vulnerability for the U.S. and its allies. That perceived threat was widely reported by mainstream media as proof of the imminent perils of "militant Islam."

With religious extremists portrayed as operating freely in a nuclear-armed Islamic state, Tel Aviv gained traction for its claim that a nuclear-Islamic Tehran posed an "existential threat" to the Jewish state. Meanwhile Israel's election of an ultra-nationalist governing coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu further delayed resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

More delay ensured more extremism and gained more media traction for those marketing a perpetual "global war on terrorism" and its thematic counterpart, The Clash of Civilizations. After the assault in Mumbai, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni argued: "Israel, India and the rest of the free world are positioned in the forefront of the battle against terrorists and extremism." By its exclusion, Pakistan was implicated as harboring terrorists.

Few Americans understand that Pakistan is dominantly Sunni and, unlike Iran's Shi'a, abhors theocratic rule and the religious extremism common to Al Qaeda as well as the assorted strains of fundamentalism found among the Taliban. Game theory war planning suggests that Pakistan, not India, was the target of India's 9-11. As with our 9-11, the strategic objective was not the event itself but the anticipated reaction-and the reactions to that reaction.

Advised by legions of Ashkenazim, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's October 2009 mission to Pakistan was a diplomatic disaster. Right on cue, a terrorist attack in Peshawar killed dozens just as she arrived in Islamabad. Abrasive, arrogant and aloof, our top diplomat reinforced Pakistani concerns that their nation is surrounded by hostile forces.

Clinton's behavior fueled fears that the government of Pakistan is being set up for portrayal as a "failed state" by ultra-nationalist Jewish advisers to a nation-the U.S.-it has long considered a friend. When Barack Obama hosted the prime minister of India for his first state dinner, the anxiety level in Pakistan was heightened-particularly among those familiar with the dominance of Ashkenazi advisers in the Obama White House.

Societal Conflict-By Consensus

Meanwhile, India's oligarchs continued to amass wealth and influence at a record pace as the caste system maintained its stranglehold on Hindu society. By 2007, India's 40 billionaires had amassed a combined wealth of $351 billion, up from a combined wealth of $170 billion just since 2006. Though New Delhi cites the success of its high-tech sector and its "Bollywood" film industry as signs of a burgeoning middle class, the reality is far from reassuring.

As in Russia where the wealth from privatization migrated to a small cadre of dominantly Ashkenazi oligarchs, a similar oligarch-ization is ongoing in India. While maintaining a vast underclass of "untouchables" mired in grinding poverty, India's policy making elite gravitated to an economic model that traces its U.S. roots to the University of Chicago where Barack Obama taught for 11 years while he was being groomed for political office.

The "Chicago Model" advances in plain sight behind an implied assumption that financial freedom is an appropriate proxy for personal freedom. Despite facts confirming that wealth and income are concentrating at record rates worldwide, this "consensus" model insists that nations vest their faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets.

As that finance-fixated mindset morphed into the "Washington" consensus, the U.S.-dominated international financial institutions imbedded this narrow worldview in law worldwide. As with ordinary Russians, ordinary Indians see their rising prosperity dominated by an caste oligarchy that steadily amasses outsized wealth along with disproportionate political influence.

As wealth concentrates, democracies become unworkable; as income concentrates, markets become unsustainable. Those profiled in Guilt By Association and the forthcoming Criminal State series are skilled in displacing facts with what targeted populations can be deceived to believe. Today's money-myopic "consensus" traces its roots to a subculture within a subculture within a subculture whose belief in the unbridled pursuit of money preempts all other values. http://criminalstate.com/guilt-by-association/

The India-Israel alliance has inflicted on the economy of India the same paradigm that is systematically disabling the U.S. economy-from the inside out-while creating record gaps in wealth and income. Pakistan has an opportunity to resist the embrace of this flawed model and, by so doing, inspire other nations-including the U.S.-to devise a sensible path forward.

Next in the series: When Will Israel Assassinate Barack Obama?

An author, educator, attorney, merchant banker and adviser to policy-makers worldwide, Jeff Gates served as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance (1980-87) prior to consulting 35 foreign governments. A Vietnam veteran, he is author of Guilt By Association, The Ownership Solution and Democracy at Risk. See www.criminalstate.com .

Yemen arrests 29 al Qaeda suspects after raids

SANAA (Reuters) - Yemen said on Monday it had arrested 29 suspected al Qaeda members and vowed to carry out more raids against the group, after an attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner turned the spotlight on the poor Arab country.

World

Al Qaeda's presence in Yemen has grown in the past year and Washington has said a Nigerian who tried to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day said he had help from al Qaeda militants in Yemen, where the government is battling instability.

The United States and Yemen's neighbor Saudi Arabia fear al Qaeda will use instability in the country to carry out attacks in the world's main oil exporting region and beyond.

Yemen's national security chief Ali Mohammad Al-Ansi said the arrests took place after Yemen launched strikes against the group, saying it planned to attack oil facilities, government buildings and the British embassy.

"Until now 29 persons have been arrested and authorities are still following up and pursuing the remaining terrorists," he said in remarks reported on the Defense Ministry website.

Ansi did not refer to the attempt by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to set off explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Abdulmutallab, who is charged with trying to blow up the aircraft, has been linked to Yemen. Under questioning in the United States, he said al Qaeda operatives in the country gave him an explosive device and trained him on how to detonate it, a U.S. official said.

MORE OPERATIONS

"There will be more operations awaiting terrorist elements and their nests," the website quoted an unidentified security official as saying.

Last week, Sanaa said it had killed more than 30 al Qaeda members in an air raid. The dead possibly included the top two leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and an American Muslim preacher linked to a man who shot dead 13 people at a U.S. army base.

Raids on December 17 killed about 30 militants, the government said. Opposition groups said about 50 civilians were killed, including women and children. AQAP said the raids was carried out by U.S. warplanes and vowed to retaliate.

The New York Times has said the United States gave military hardware, intelligence and other support to Yemeni forces for the raids.

Besides al Qaeda, Yemen is also grappling with a Shi'ite revolt in the north and a separatist movement in the south with both complaining of social and economic discrimination, which the government denies.

The conflict in northern Yemen drew in Saudi Arabia last month when the Shi'ite rebels briefly occupied some Saudi territory, prompting Riyadh to launch an offensive.

The rebels said on their website on Monday Saudi warplanes carried out 36 raids against border areas and northern Yemen late on Sunday.

(Writing by Ulf Laessing; editing by Andrew Dobbie)

From Hopenhagen to Nopenhagen

Malik Amin Aslam Khan




Delegates from 193 countries and an unprecedented 119 heads of state and government turned up at Copenhagen, as did renowned eco-campaigners such as Prince Charles, Richard Branson, Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai and Al Gore. The intention was to discuss measures against climate change and support an ambitious agreement on the problem. This historic political gathering for two tumultuous weeks also drew more than 3,000 journalists. Around 40,000 visitors had to withstand frigidly cold weather for hours just to get entry passes into the Bella Centre.




Delegates and participants were greeted with banners urging for Copenhagen to be turned into "Hopenhagen." Ultimately, though, it turned into what Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez aptly called "Nopenhagen."




The disappointing culmination of this historic gathering was an accord of convenience between the world's top carbon polluters who inked a document which was neither legally binding nor had any timetable or deadlines. It was, thus, no surprise that this farcical document was unable to get the endorsement of the UN system.




There will be a number of fallouts of this failure in terms of the moral authority of the global political leadership and the multilateral system for confrontation of global challenges. Already there is finger-pointing and shifting of blames, ironically, by the very countries which were part of the impotent accord. The G77-China negotiating group is already beginning to show cracks. While the dynamics of these shifts will play out in the coming months, their having been part of the Copenhagen circus, it is pertinent to draw out and put on record some some useful observations regarding the event:




Firstly, the process of drawing together such a large gathering of negotiators primarily driven by national interests was by its nature chaotic and fractious. The process should have been planned with this possibility being factored in. Such largely attended meetings are designed to technically converge within an agreeable band before being put to the political leadership and are certainly never left open to be finally hijacked by a select few. A planned effort to turn any confusion towards some degree of clarity was absent at Copenhagen.




The high-level segment proved to be an endless series of long-drawn statements and political posturing which was carried out without any real negotiations and, subsequently, the process evaded the political deal which the world was waiting for.




Secondly, the spirit of collective ownership, instead of being carefully nurtured towards agreement, was strategically sabotaged from the onset with the leaking of parallel draft texts reflecting, at best, partial consent by some of the parties. The first was informally floated at the start of the negotiations, supposedly as a discussed text between 42 select countries prior to the meeting. The second was another text which was "lurking" for release at the start of the high-level segment.




Instead of generating any convergence of opinions, these "floating" documents were severely castigated and rejected by the majority of the participating countries. In the meanwhile, they created an air of mistrust, doubt and suspicion, while laying the foundations for an irretrievable political divide.




Thirdly, the Bali Plan of Action decided in 2007 specifically called for a two-track process which included discussions for an extension of the Kyoto Protocol by the developed countries, in tandem with work on long-term cooperative actions to be undertaken with the developing countries. Two years of intellectual input and intensive negotiations had gone into creating the basic technical documents for the Copenhagen Conference.




However, from the start of the negotiations there was incessant effort by the organisers to keep the focus of negotiations on the developing-countries track while bypassing the Kyoto track, which could only receive due attention after vociferous protests in the plenary. This underhand effort to sabotage or kill the Kyoto process and lump both the tracks together did not, and could not have, worked. It only deepened the mistrust and ensured that the negotiations remained politically deadlocked.




Fourthly, the EU which had carved out an enviable and painstaking global leadership on the climate issue failed to raise the level of their ambition above the already announced emissions cut of 30 per cent from 1990 levels. The block which had collectively rescued the Kyoto process after the unceremonious US withdrawal and which had sustained the global carbon market by taking up self-regulated emissions targets, could not inspire political action at Copenhagen.




Considering the fact that the meeting was being held in a country of the European Union, the public expectation was extremely high and the political atmosphere exceptionally conducive. However, all this could not be capitalised upon. One of the reasons for the materialising of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 was the selfless and unbiased leadership provided by the host country, Japan, which transcended regional politics or political groupings. At Copenhagen, such skill and statesmanship was found wanting on the part of the host country.




Finally, representing the world's largest carbon polluting country, President Barrack Obama made all the right noises but failed to make his mark on a world stage which seemed to be tailor-made for him to take charge. Climate change was, after all, one of his rallying cries during the election. It is an issue which he had strategically placed it second in priority to global terrorism. However, all the hype surrounding his return visit to Scandinavia, just days after receiving the controversial Nobel peace prize, could not deliver any substance.




He came empty handed to Copenhagen and delivered a speech which just repeated commitments made earlier, while adding some thinly-veiled attacks to China. All of this obstructed rather than aided the global agreement process.




Looking back, while some silver linings of the accord can certainly be counted in terms of an initial entry by the US into the climate negotiations process and the sneaking admittance of China and India towards measurable emission-controls, its pitfalls remain strikingly obvious, as stated above. Most alarmingly, the minimalist agreement at Copenhagen unilaterally shirks responsibility for climate adaptation as it drastically failed to provide any comfort or support to the unwilling victims of climate change.




Instead of urgently delivering adaptation funds to the countries bearing the brunt of climate change they have been left in the lurch to cope with its dangerous consequences. Countries like Pakistan, which are the worst victims of climate injustice, will thus have to pay the price of this global indecisiveness. Climate change losses have already cost its struggling economy a whopping $3.8 billion over the past decade and this figure will only inflate as we struggle to cope with the challenge of climate adaptation without a strong and accessible global climate framework.




With such a large divide between political delivery and people's expectations, the time may be ripe for a people's enquiry to be held on the Copenhagen catastrophe. In the charged "March for Climate Justice" in the streets of Copenhagen, there were two placards which caught my eye. One read: "Politicians Talk - Leaders Act" and the other demanded: "Change the Politics - Not the Climate." Copenhagen fell short on both counts.




This single-largest collection of politicians failed to generate global leadership while bickering politics evaded an agreement the world so desperately needed. For the time being, narrowly defined vested interests have certainly slammed shut the door to a viable political agreement. However, the committed social mobilisation evidenced at Copenhagen may just be opening the door for a global people's movement to take charge of this issue.




The writer is former minister of state for environment and a member of the Core Group on Climate Change. Email: amin@ comsats.net.pk

EVIDENCE MOUNTS FOR US COMPLICITY IN TERRORISM

COULD TERROR WAR BE RESPONSE BY GOP AND ISRAEL AGAINST THREATS TO THEIR GLOBAL PLANS?

Gordon Duff

When nothing adds up, its time we starting looking at what we know. Our recent terrorist, now dubbed "the crotch bomber" is another dupe. He could have been working for anyone, drugged, brainwashed or simply influenced, maybe by crazy Arabs, maybe by the Mossad, maybe by the CIA. We only know the game is falling apart.

We do know a couple of things. Dad, back in Nigeria, ran the national arms industry (DICON) in partnership with Israel, in particular, the Mossad. He was in daily contact with them. They run everything in Nigeria, from arms production to counter-terrorism. Though Islamic, Muttalab was a close associate of Israel. He has been misrepresented. His "banking" is a cover. Next, what do we know about the two Al Qaeda leaders Bush had released, the ones who planned this?

According to ABC news, the Al Qaeda leaders running the insurgency in Yemen were released from Guantanamo, although two of the highest ranking known terrorist there, without trial.

Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody.

Both of the former Guantanamo detainees are described as military commanders and appear on a January, 2009 video along with the man described as the top leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Abu Basir Naser al-Wahishi, formerly Osama bin Laden's personal secretary.

With all the hoopla about trials in New York, not a word is said when top level terrorists are released to Saudi friends of the Bush family who let them go. We are now fighting these two Bush friends in Yemen. They are running a major insurgency there. We have been using Cruise missiles and our jets to attack their bases in the last weeks.

It is claimed by groups claiming to be Al Qaeda in Yemen that the Detroit attack was in retaliation to US attacks on bases in Yemen run by Al Qaeda leaders released by Bush.

The government of Yemen, as reported in the BBC , says that the Al Qaeda terrorists, led by those released by Bush, are really Israeli agents though they have organized attacks against US targets:


Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said the security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence. Mr Saleh did not say what evidence had been found to show the group's links with Israel, a regional enemy of Yemen. The arrests were connected with an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa last month which killed at least 18 people, official sources were quoted saying.

"A terrorist cell was arrested and will be referred to the judicial authorities for its links with the Israeli intelligence services," Mr Saleh told a gathering at al-Mukalla University in Hadramawt province. "Details of the trial will be announced later. You will hear about what goes on in the proceedings," he added.

The 17 September attack was the second to target the US embassy since April. Militants detonated car bombs before firing rockets at the heavily fortified building.

Mr Saleh did not identify the suspects, but official sources were quoted saying it was same cell - led by a militant called Abu al-Ghaith al-Yamani - whose arrest was announced a week after the attack.

With continual reports from Pakistan that India and Israel have been involved in terrorst attacks against US supporters there and the recent reports that the Detroit bomber was assisted by an Indian while boarding in Amsterdam and partially confirmed reports that a second bomber, an Indian, was arrested and taken from the plane in Detroit. MILive broke this story in the US which originated with Reuters:

Reuters reports Dutch military police are investigating claims that an accomplice may have helped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab board Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam on Christmas day without a passport.

Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., took to the comments section of this Web site early Saturday to share his story: That he and his wife, Lori, saw a well-dressed man help Abdulmutallab board the flight without a passport under the guise he was a Sudanese refugee. The military police have already said Abdulmutallab did not go through passport control at Schiphol when he arrived from Lagos.

In another interview on Inside Edition, Haskell described what happened:

A passenger has come forward with disturbing new details about the plot to bring down a jet, including the astonishing claim that the accused terrorist was able to board the plane without a passport.

Kurt Haskell showed INSIDE EDITION his boarding pass for Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. The lawyer, who lives outside Detroit, was returning home from an African safari when he says he saw the terror suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabm, and another man, who he thought was Indian, approach the ticket agent.

"Only the Indian man spoke," says Haskell, "And what he said was, 'This man needs to board the plane but he doesn't have a passport.' "

"His clothes were like jeans and a t-shirt or something, he looked kind of thin, like a 16-year-old teenager, and the other man, looked like he was 50 years old, looked like he was a wealthy, Indian man. I just couldn't figure out why they were together," Haskell tells INSIDE EDITION.




Let's review what we know thus far:

• Our terrorist traveled to Yemen to meet with terrorist there


• The terrorists in Yemen had been in Guantanamo but had been ordered released by the Bush Administration though they were, perhaps the most dangerous detainees held


• The government of Yemen tells us that Islamic terrorists there have been arrested who have proven ties to Israeli intelligence


• Our terrorists father, though we are told is a retired "Nigerian banker" actually ran their defense industry in close cooperation with Israeli Intelligence (Mossad)


• Our terrorist's visa to the US was never with drawn, though he was on a "terrorist watchlist"


• Our terrorist, though flying from Nigeria, entered the Netherlands without passing thru customs, something impossible to do without assistance from an intelligence agency


• Our terrorist was being assisted by a man appearing to be Indian, who claimed our Nigerian terrorist was a Sudanese refugee with no passport (no passport was used entering the EU, something technically impossible)


• However, Dutch authorities, the same ones who confirmed he entered the country with no passport also confirmed he had a valid US visa, though on a terrorist watch list that is shared with Dutch authorities.
  
  

We keep going back to 2007. Why were these terrorists released to Saudi custody? Why did Saudi Arabia release them soon afterward? With the 2nd major terrorist front in the world being Yemen and the terrorist operation there under the control of released Bush detainees, there is reason for suspicion.

Why have all of these facts, though easily verifiable, we have a much stronger case against the Bush Administration or Israel than Al Qaeda, an organization whose leaders are released and allowed to continue terror operations with full Saudi and American help?

When Pakistan comes to us and says that Israel and India are involved in terrorism there and we ignore it, is it because it isn't credible or because the US government has been involved, as we seem to be involved in Yemen?

Why are we satisfied to take one person into custody, one person who ties to so many irregularities and ask nothing else?

As with 9/11 and so many other seeminly impossible times when so many things go wrong that only great power and the cooperation of many agencies in many countries could make it possible, why do we ask nothing.

We have a major investigation in Nigeria, not only of the father and his connections to Israel but our own embassy and why they left this visa alone when the individual was a known terrorist.

How could this terrorist travel to Yemen to meet with an organization run by former detainees released by Bush and his Saudi friends, former detainees that Yemen claims are working for israel? How could he do this and be allowed to return to Nigeria, a country whose intelligence services are tied to Israel and trained by Israel. They would have known in a second.

How did this terrorist enter the Netherlands without showing a passport? Try it. You will meet lots of Dutch people who will keep you in a small room for hours, days even. It is absolutely impossible.

People are picked up in the EU while in passport control for non-payment of child support. I am being told they can't find a terrorist?

We haven't begun to discover how he got past security equipment and screening. It isn't like he isn't the highest profile potential terrorist who has entered Nigeria in decades. He is Islamic, young and traveling alone. Ask any young Islamic traveler how many times they have been searched.

Is is on a terrorist watchlist. This is like the "no fly list" on steroids. You aren't just denied flight, you are put under immediate surveillance.

If he had shown his passport, it would have shown him entering Yemen, a known terrorist training ground. This would have stopped him also.

With the Bush administration releasing terrorist leaders and shepherding them back into their former profession, with our embassy, State Department, Homeland Security and every other organization we spent so many billions of dollars to "coordinate" all failing, is there, just perhaps, a minor sign of conspiracy?

Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on policial and social issues. Published under bilateral arrangements between Opinion Maker and Veterans Today.

'Democracy Is the Greatest Revenge'

Political ownership of the war on terrorism now rests with the people of Pakistan.

By ASIF ALI ZARDARI

Two years ago the world stopped for me and for my children. Pakistan was shaken to its core and all but came apart. Women everywhere lost one of their greatest symbols of equality. And Islam, our great religion, lost its modern face.

Bhutto supporters in Lahore, Pakistan mark the two-year anniversary of her assassination yesterday.

On Dec. 27, 2007, my wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated. She was the bravest person I have ever known, and the second anniversary of her death is an appropriate occasion to reflect upon what she achieved for our country, and how her legacy must be preserved against those who would return Pakistan to darkness.

Twice elected prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir had an immense impact. She stood up and defeated the forces of military dictatorship. She freed all political prisoners. She ended press censorship. She legalized trade and student unions, built 46,000 primary and secondary schools and appointed the first female judges in our history. And she showed the women of Pakistan and the world that they must accept no limits on their ability and opportunity to learn, to grow and to lead in modern society.

The target of two assassination attempts by Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, Benazir repeatedly warned a skeptical world of the impending danger from extremists and militants. In her last campaign-even on the very day of her death, by the hands of such extremists-she mobilized and rallied the people of Pakistan against the terrorist threat.

Benazir's murderers didn't kill her dreams. On the day we buried her, even as her supporters cried out for revenge, we reminded our party and country that, in her own words, "democracy is the greatest revenge." And then we led the Pakistan People's Party to victory in the elections.

Since then, fulfilling the electoral manifesto she wrote, the nation's economy, which had been left in shambles by the priorities of a decade of dictatorship, has been stabilized and revitalized. Food shortages have ended. Power shortages have diminished. We have adopted a national curriculum for the first time in history to challenge the spread of political madrassas. Constitutional reforms are being finalized which will rid Pakistan of the undemocratic provisions inserted by military dictators that expanded the power of the presidency at the expense of parliament.

Benazir Bhutto died confronting the forces of tyranny and terrorism, and Pakistan remains committed to the struggle that she led. We have reclaimed Swat and Malakand from the militants and rehabilitated the displaced persons back into their homes. We have taken the fight against militants to other areas, including South Waziristan in our Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and to our major cities, and we will win this war against them.

We will not let militants violently impose their political agenda on the people. Political ownership of the war against terrorism rests with the people of Pakistan for the first time. We are in the front trenches of this war while the community of nations stands with us.

Much has been accomplished, but it has not been easy for my nation, for my party or for my family. The forces in Pakistan that have resisted change, modernity and democracy for 30 years still attempt to derail progress.

Some of these forces who were allied with dictatorship in the past now hope that the judicial process can undo the will of a democratic electorate and destabilize the country. A litany of ancient charges of corruption-the modus operandi of past plots against every democratically elected government in Pakistan-now threatens to undermine the legitimacy of our government.

Those that will not stand with us against terrorism stand against us in the media. I have spent almost 12 years in prison on trumped up charges never proven, even by a court system manipulated by dictators and despots. But like Benazir, I refuse to be intimidated.

So let the legal process move forward. Those of us who have fought for democracy against dictatorship for decades do not fear justice; we embrace it.

My ministers, my party, leaders of other parties and thousands of civil servants across our nation will defend themselves in the courts if necessary. Democracy has come a long way in Pakistan, and the People's Party has always been at the vanguard of the fight. In 1979 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir's father and the elected prime minister of Pakistan was executed under a smokescreen that history now characterizes as a judicial murder. Two decades later Benazir was indicted on fabricated charges on the orders of her political enemies then in power. When tape recordings of these government officials ordering the courts to fabricate evidence and false witness against Benazir were made public, these trumped-up charges were dismissed.

Those of us who have been victims of dictatorship in the past believe in the rule of law and have faith in the judicial process. We believe, in the words of my wife, that "time, justice and the forces of history are on our side."

We have not come this far in our democratic struggle to fail. In this struggle, I am inspired by my father-in-law, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who said that he "would rather die at the hands of dictators than be killed by history."

Mr. Zardari is president of Pakistan.

CIA Determines Documents Were Fabricated

The Iranian Nuke Forgeries

By GARETH PORTER

U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.

Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told me that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however.

The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the source of the document. But it quoted "an Asian intelligence source" - a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials - as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007.

The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran and reminders of Israel's threats to attack Iranian nuclear programme targets if diplomacy fails.

U.S. news media reporting has left the impression that U.S. intelligence analysts have not made up their mind about the document's authenticity, although it has been widely reported that they have now had a full year to assess the issue.

Giraldi's intelligence sources did not reveal all the reasons that led analysts to conclude that the purported Iran document had been fabricated by a foreign intelligence agency. But their suspicions of fraud were prompted in part by the source of the story, according to Giraldi.

"The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government," Giraldi said.

The Times is part of a Murdoch publishing empire that includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant.

The document itself also had a number of red flags suggesting possible or likely fraud.

The subject of the two-page document which the Times published in English translation would be highly classified under any state's security system. Yet there is no confidentiality marking on the document, as can be seen from the photograph of the Farsi-language original published by the Times.

The absence of security markings has been cited by the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as evidence that the "alleged studies" documents, which were supposedly purloined from an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related programme early in this decade, are forgeries.

The document also lacks any information identifying either the issuing office or the intended recipients. The document refers cryptically to "the Centre", "the Institute", "the Committee", and the "neutron group".

The document's extreme vagueness about the institutions does not appear to match the concreteness of the plans, which call for hiring eight individuals for different tasks for very specific numbers of hours for a four-year time frame.

Including security markings and such identifying information in a document increases the likelihood of errors that would give the fraud away.

The absence of any date on the document also conflicts with the specificity of much of the information. The Times reported that unidentified "foreign intelligence agencies" had dated the document to early 2007, but gave no reason for that judgment.

An obvious motive for suggesting the early 2007 date is that it would discredit the U.S. intelligence community's November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had discontinued unidentified work on nuclear weapons and had not resumed it as of the time of the estimate.

Discrediting the NIE has been a major objective of the Israeli government for the past two years, and the British and French governments have supported the Israeli effort.

The biggest reason for suspecting that the document is a fraud is its obvious effort to suggest past Iranian experiments related to a neutron initiator. After proposing experiments on detecting pulsed neutrons, the document refers to "locations where such experiments used to be conducted".

That reference plays to the widespread assumption, which has been embraced by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran had carried out experiments with Polonium-210 in the late 1980s, indicating an interest in neutron initiators. The IAEA referred in reports from 2004 through 2007 to its belief that the experiment with Polonium-210 had potential relevance to making "a neutron initiator in some designs of nuclear weapons".

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the terrorist organisation Mujahedeen-e Khalq, claimed in February 2005 that Iran's research with Polonium-210 was continuing and that it was now close to producing a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon.

Sanger and Broad were so convinced that the Polonium-210 experiments proved Iran's interest in a neutron initiator that they referred in their story on the leaked document to both the IAEA reports on the experiments in the late 1980s and the claim by NCRI of continuing Iranian work on such a nuclear trigger.

What Sanger and Broad failed to report, however, is that the IAEA has acknowledged that it was mistaken in its earlier assessment that the Polonium-210 experiments were related to a neutron initiator.

After seeing the complete documentation on the original project, including complete copies of the reactor logbook for the entire period, the IAEA concluded in its Feb. 22, 2008 report that Iran's explanations that the Polonium-210 project was fundamental research with the eventual aim of possible application to radio isotope batteries was "consistent with the Agency's findings and with other information available to it".

The IAEA report said the issue of Polonium-210 - and thus the earlier suspicion of an Iranian interest in using it as a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon - was now considered "no longer outstanding".

New York Times reporters David Sanger and William J. Broad reported U.S. intelligence officials as saying the intelligence analysts "have yet to authenticate the document". Sanger and Broad explained the failure to do so, however, as a result of excessive caution left over from the CIA's having failed to brand as a fabrication the document purporting to show an Iraqi effort to buy uranium in Niger.

The Washington Post's Joby Warrick dismissed the possibility that the document might be found to be fraudulent. "There is no way to establish the authenticity or original source of the document...," wrote Warrick.

But the line that the intelligence community had authenticated it evidently reflected the Barack Obama administration's desire to avoid undercutting a story that supports its efforts to get Russian and Chinese support for tougher sanctions against Iran.

This is not the first time that Giraldi has been tipped off by his intelligence sources on forged documents. Giraldi identified the individual or office responsible for creating the two most notorious forged documents in recent U.S. intelligence history.

In 2005, Giraldi identified Michael Ledeen, the extreme right-wing former consultant to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, as an author of the fabricated letter purporting to show Iraqi interest in purchasing uranium from Niger. That letter was used by the George W. Bush administration to bolster its false case that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons programme.

Giraldi also identified officials in the "Office of Special Plans" who worked under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith as having forged a letter purportedly written by Hussein's intelligence director, Tahir Jalail Habbush al-Tikriti, to Hussein himself referring to an Iraqi intelligence operation to arrange for an unidentified shipment from Niger.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

India 'sex scandal' governor resigns and goes to Delhi

The governor of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has returned to the capital Delhi after resigning following an alleged sex scandal.

Mr Tiwari has held prominent ministerial positions in the past

ND Tiwari, who is also a leading Congress party member, resigned after a regional channel aired footage of him allegedly in bed with three women.

Mr Tiwari's office has denied the allegation, saying that the video had been doctored.

The 86-year-old Mr Tiwari has been a federal minister in past governments.

He resigned on "health grounds" on Saturday evening, his office said.

Opposition parties and women's right groups protested in the Andhra Pradesh capital, Hyderabad, after the footage allegedly showing Mr Tiwari in bed with three women was broadcast.

Sting operation?

The channel reported that the women had been brought to Mr Tiwari by a woman who had allegedly been promised a mining lease by the former governor.

The channel said the woman had decided to "expose" Mr Tiwari as "he had not kept his promise".

"The news channel report is fabricated, false and malicious to tarnish the image of the governor," said a statement issued by an aide to the governor.

Mr Tiwari's resignation comes at a time when Andhra Pradesh has been rocked by protests over the federal government's decision to allow a new state in the Telangana region.

An estimated 35 million people will live in the new state.

Mr Tiwari is a top Congress party politician and has previously served as the chief minister of northern Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand states and as a federal minister.

The US: Favouring Freedom or Fuelling Feuds After 9/11?

NOW IT'S OBAMA'S WAR

Ghazala Awan

Americans - one way or the other - have always been influencing the world, may that be economically, politically, from human rights point of view or making peace or war.

The current American policies to bring peace back to the world are quite controversial. If on one hand they vow to root out terrorism then on contrary to that they are fuelling feuds by strengthening the states and armies of their choice.

The US has considerably increased the number of troops in Afghanistan and is planning to pump in some more by the end of 2010. Almost 113,000 NATO and US troops are battling in Afghanistan with Taliban-led insurgences.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmusse, who visited Afghanistan for the first time, ever since NATO allies guaranteed 6,800 extra troops to fight alongside an additional 30,000 US soldiers committed by US President Barack Obama to fight the Taliban. He said the deployment of almost 40,000 extra US and NATO troops over the coming year will create momentum for a new phase in development."I am confident that the troop surge will improve the security situation," he further said that the extra troops are expected to be deployed by late 2010.

So by the end of 2010, about 183000 troops will be fighting in Afghanistan, though they aren't sure for how long they would be fighting, and what for? On 11 October, a retired US General McCaffrey, while taking to NBC, told about war in this way, "Well, I think in 10 years, of $5 billion a month and with a significant front-end security component, we can leave an Afghan national army and police force and a viable government and roads and universities. But it's a time constraint that we can't change the things in 18 to 24 months. So I think we got to lower expectations."

A super power thinks about a country with 33,609,937 (July 2009 est.) population and economically and socially dead. Whereof America needs $ 60 billion a year for defense expenditures or in other words, in the next decade the basic Pentagon budget will grow by 25% or at least $133.1 billion. This is only for war and if we take into account and calculate the outlays of more than 700 military bases around the world, then the expenditure will see a phenomenal surge.

I wonder why America is depriving American by spending huge money for invasions and military adventures in other countries. Is that all about keeping peace around the world or fuelling the globe for deaths and disabilities? Today the entire war effort is being funded by borrowed money. Who will pay this back? As of now, the coming generations are all under debt for the fault of the trigger happy presidents.

America, buried Iraq in hell while searching for the WMD, which never were there in first place; this was under the false pretext of saving the Iraqis. It was not to save the Iraqis but to remove any resistance to Israel's expansionist designs in the region. In the same context under the war against terrorism in Af-Pak, the real target is nuclear Pakistan.

By doing so, America is trying to achieve multiple objectives, gear up arms sales to the world to fill the pockets of the war mafia like a vicious circle; more wars more sales. Now America itself is the largest arm seller in the world. As per pentagon report in 2009 the US has sold $ 36.4 billion's weapons to various governments and wants to remain the top seller that a peaceful world would not allow.

Prior to 9/11 terrorist attacks, 27 countries including Pakistan were banned from purchasing US made military equipment. However in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, bans on security assistance to many of these countries was lifted or suspended. The Bush administration lifted sanctions against Azerbaijan and Armenia. Tajikistan was removed from the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) list of states prohibited from receiving U.S. military goods and products.

These changes have shifted the allocation of military aid. Foreign Military Financing, the Pentagon's largest military aid program, increased by more than two-thirds (68.4%) from 2001 to 2003, jumping from $3.5 billion to nearly $6 billion over that time period, before levelling off in 2004 and 2005 and requests for 2006 to an average of $4.6 billion (which represents a more than 30% increase over pre-9/11 levels).

Many countries previously barred from receiving U.S. military aid, because of nuclear testing, human rights abuses, or their harbouring of terrorists, began to receive aid in 2001. Two dozen nations-- including Afghanistan, Algeria, Pakistan, India ,Uzbekistan and Uruguay-- either became first-time recipients of FMF during this period or were restored to the program after long absences. As a result, the number of countries receiving FMF assistance increased from 48 to 71 between 2001 and 2006, a 47.9% increase. During the same time period, ten countries saw their aid being increased more than three fold, and seven had their FMF assistance increased by five times or more. The biggest gainers in FMF assistance in dollar terms were Jordan (+$127 million), Pakistan (+$300 million) and Afghanistan (+$396 million).

So what is the policy for international peace? To increase weapons sales, establish new military bases and deprive the nations from their homeland and peace? In America itself people are unhappy with GWOT. In December, 2009, according to the Pew Research Centre's poll, almost half of the Americans believe that the U.S. should "mind its own business" internationally and instead of meddling in other's affairs let other countries get along the best they can. It's high time for the American public to force the American establishment to review it's policies before it's too late.

Ghazala Awan is a lawyer and an anti-war activist based in London. She writes for Opinion Maker.