Korean moot demands end to US drone attacks

* Afghan politician denounces violence spurred by Taliban and foreigners in her country




By Iftikhar Gilani




GWANGJU: Experts debating war on terror in this Korean city have called for an end to drone attacks in Pakistan, saying killing of innocent people was creating more terrorists.




Participating at a function to commemorate May 18, 1980 Korean uprising, Malalai Joya, expelled from the Afghan parliament for her radical views, charged both Taliban and Americans for killing her countrymen and curbing their freedom. She also described the Hamid Karzai government as a bunch of criminals and warlords.




She said Afghans had no expectations from the forthcoming parliamentary elections. "No one can expect a legitimate or fair vote. Even the international observers have been speaking about widespread fraud and intimidation and, among the people on the street, there is a common refrain: the real winner has already been picked by the White House," she said.




In May 2007, Joya was suspended from the parliament on the grounds that she had insulted fellow representatives in a television interview. She was later expelled. TIME magazine named Joya to the 2010 TIME 100, the magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.




Her radical views against veil system and a campaign to get women of Afghanistan unveiled have earned her many enemies.




Talking to reporters on the sidelines of the conference, she feared for her life back in her country. Joya said she was working underground or moving out only in an Afghan veil with armed bodyguards. She even did not spare Northern Alliance leader Abdullah Abdullah, saying he run his presidential campaign with Iranian money.




"Democracy will never come to Afghanistan through bombs or bullets," she said, adding the struggle will be long and difficult, but the values of real democracy, human rights and women's rights will only be won by the Afghan people themselves.




The British and other Western governments that claim to be bringing democracy to Afghanistan ignore public opinion in their own countries, where growing numbers are against the war," she added.




Drones counterproductive: A Chinese expert Chen Weihua, who had recently visited drone command centre in New York, said high casualties in drone attacks should be a grave concern for President Barack Obama, who authorised more drone strikes in his first year in the office.




He said at the Hancock Field base in Syracuse in upstate New York, drone control room looks like a computer game. The Hancock Field has been turned into a base for drones that fly over Pakistan and Afghanistan. He said American opinion has ignored the rising anger amongst Pakistanis about drone Hellfire missile attacks linking Shahzad Faisal's conversion to terrorism to drone attacks he saw in Waziristan. "Each Predator and Reaper costs American taxpayer $4 million to $12 million and each Hellfire missile some $70,000 and the drones are causing anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world," he said. He believed that Joya could be engaged in building schools and development projects to demonstrate America's soft power image in the region.