A Chilling account of the brutal clampdown in Bahrain

Published in The Guardian.

Since the Gulf soldiers came to Bahrain, life in the Shia villages and suburbs of the capital, Manama, has been non-stop intimidation, violence and threats. Even trying to move around in normal ways has become life-threatening. They are trying to beat down the opposition with a long campaign against us.

I live in one of the villages near Manama. One night about 7.30pm, I parked in front of my father-in-law’s house and walked towards the door, when at least 50 armed and masked thugs – they were not in security forces uniform – appeared from one of the village lanes and told me to stop, pointing their shotguns at me. I ran away and they followed, but I managed to hide in one of the houses and they did not see me. I heard them talking to each other, saying: “Don’t worry, we will find him.” I was taking a look from the window and they stayed at the car park opposite the house I was hiding in, and they were smashing the windows of parked cars and wrecking and stealing from them. Some had Saudi accents; they are very different from Bahraini and easy to tell.

At 8pm most nights people go up on their roofs and chant Allahu Akbar [“God is greatest”] and the thugs start shooting randomly in the air and at the top of the roofs. That night the area was covered with tear-gas grenades and rubber bullets, while the roads around the house were deserted except for thugs. Later that night (I was unable to leave the house I was in), we heard a group of people, 100 or more, chanting: “Bahrain is free, Gulf Shield out.” I was watching from the rooftop when the riot police ran in from a main road and started shooting rubber bullets and tear-gas cartridges.

I hid inside the house while the demonstrators ran away from the shooting and in 30 minutes I saw riot police, with armed civilians among them, roaming around the lanes and roads by the house I was hiding in. They managed to catch two people, aged no more than 30, and were beating them up badly, swearing at them all the time and cursing the Shia clerics, saying: “Where is al-Khomeini now? Where is al-Sistani, you Shia dogs?” They took them away. I managed to take a photograph of the blood on the floor after the beating and there was so much. I am sure the man must have died.

They [the security forces] can tell the Shias from Sunnis because of the birth town shown on the ID cards, and also sometimes by the name. I get stopped and searched at many checkpoints and always asked the same questions: “Are you Shia? Were you at Lulu Square [the demonstrators’ name for the protest camp at Pearl roundabout that has since been demolished]?” And all kinds of other sectarian questions.

At the checkpoint by Bahrain Mall, which is the entrance to the village of Daih, the man in charge had a Saudi accent, but he was masked, in civilian clothes with an automatic rifle. My card was taken away with another officer to check my name against a list. They have pictures and names of all the people at Lulu and on the demonstrations and have posted them on Facebook with notices saying: “Bring these people to justice, they are guilty people.”

For two weeks after the attack on Lulu we kept seeing a military aircraft (a US-built F-16 type) every day at about 7.30pm, flying low over the villages, backing up the police helicopters which we see over our heads all day long in the villages. We hear shooting every day at 8pm and 10pm when the chanting starts on the rooftops. 

 The army and riot police have begun to destroy the Shia matams [mosques] in some villages, even those where there was no protest that day. They say they are looking for arms, but the only ones they’ve shown were obviously put there by them – they are government-issue weapons. The demolitions took place in broad daylight in the morning, with bulldozers.

In Karanh village at 4pm one day last week, demonstrators marched towards the entrance of the village on the main road, and they were faced with heavy firing from the riot police and masked armed civilians. They managed to get hold of three people whom they handcuffed, covered their faces with a canvas bag (like in Guantánamo) and started beating them up in a very brutal way. In the village of Daih we demonstrated at the front of the village, and as we reached the main road the riot police attacked us with tear gas and rubber bullets and shotguns…

In Sanabis, there was no sign of any protest, and as I was walking I was shocked to see riot police cars followed by unmarked cars entering the village fast and shooting randomly. They stopped near a school and about 100 armed riot police and masked armed civilians came out, roaming around the village shooting at anything that moved. They ran after a group of people who were walking by and they entered one of the houses after seeing someone running inside, and they arrested him and beat him.

Over the past week, three of my cousins have been arrested and they are all teachers, two women and one man, who is the headteacher of a school, along with 50 other full-time teachers. They have all been arrested in their classrooms for joining the strike and signing a petition to remove the education minister. Tanks were surrounding the school and riot police entered and arrested them.

My young brother, 15, was coming back from school last Sunday, and the bus had been stopped at a checkpoint and the riot police entered. The officer had a Saudi accent and he asked the whole bus: “Which of you went to Lulu Square? You are Shia dogs, why is there no photo of King Hamad in the bus?”  He asked the other officers to check the books of random students to see if the photo of King Hamad was there (all school books have his photo) and they found a number of students who ripped or damaged the photo. They started to beat them up inside the bus and then arrested them and threatened the other students. “The bus will be searched every day and we had better see the king’s photo inside the bus tomorrow, otherwise you will not go home.”

The same day I drove by the same checkpoint just after my brother arrived home and saw four teenagers with their heads covered by bags lying on their stomachs at 2pm under the hot sun, with their shirts removed and getting random kicks by the officers. I went towards a backstreet and tried to take a video, but a police car spotted me and started shooting birdshot. I ran away inside the village and they came after me. I hid in one of the private compounds and saw riot police running, looking for me.

Later that day I managed to get home and it was confirmed that the arrested students returned home after they got beaten up. They refused to be photographed, as they were threatened by the police. Now they do not use the school bus, as they are afraid they will be stopped.

I went with my mother to the military hospital by Hamad Town for her regular check-up – she has cardiac problems. That hospital is the only one in Bahrain with specialist heart doctors. When I approached the main entrance, I and my mother were asked by Bahraini security for our IDs and medical cards. When they saw them, another masked officer approached the car with a Saudi accent and asked the officer: “Who is this? What’s going on?” The Bahraini whispered something to him and the Saudi officer shouted at me:“Are you Shia?” And he kicked the car and said: “Get out of here, dog.” I did not reply and turned the car around and went back home. My mother did not do her monthly check-up and we will have to go outside Bahrain for that.

In Salmaniya medical complex [which has been under military occupation for three weeks], a cousin of mine worked at the appointments centre. After his shift he left the hospital and police stopped him at the exit, checked his ID card and noticed his Shia name. They accused him of racism for not giving appointments to Sunnis and beat him up.

He asked his family to collect him because he was bleeding from his eyes and feeling dizzy. He did not get any medical treatment as it was impossible to reach any hospital without being questioned, especially when he is injured. He is still at home and does not go to work and it seems he lost an eye. Many doctors have been arrested for treating injured people. The opposition says that 720 people have been arrested since 15 March. Many have been beaten, four have died in detention and 210 are still missing. But who knows really how many?

They say that we are spies for Iran, but nobody here wants to be ruled from Iran. We are Shia, but we are also Arabs, not Persians. We do not want help from Iran. We want democracy in our own country.

American Academic Experts’ Open Letter to Obama

To President Obama:
As political scientists, historians, and researchers in related fields who have studied the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy, we the undersigned believe you have a chance to move beyond rhetoric to support the democratic movement sweeping over Egypt. As citizens, we expect our president to uphold those values.

For thirty years, our government has spent billions of dollars to help build and sustain the system the Egyptian people are now trying to dismantle. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Egypt and around the world have spoken. We believe their message is bold and clear: Mubarak should resign from office and allow Egyptians to establish a new government free of his and his family’s influence. It is also clear to us that if you seek, as you said Friday “political, social, and economic reforms that meet the aspirations of the Egyptian people,” your administration should publicly acknowledge those reforms will not be advanced by Mubarak or any of his adjutants.

There is another lesson from this crisis, a lesson not for the Egyptian government but for our own. In order for the United States to stand with the Egyptian people it must approach Egypt through a framework of shared values and hopes, not the prism of geostrategy. On Friday you rightly said that “suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.” For that reason we urge your administration to seize this chance, turn away from the policies that brought us here, and embark on a new course toward peace, democracy and prosperity for the people of the Middle East. And we call on you to undertake a comprehensive review of US foreign policy on the major grievances voiced by the democratic opposition in Egypt and all other societies of the region.

Current signatories,


Jason Brownlee, University of Texas at Austin

Joshua Stacher, Kent State University

Tamir Moustafa, Simon Fraser University

Arang Keshavarzian, New York University

Clement Henry, University of Texas at Austin

Robert Springborg, Naval Postgraduate School

Jillian Schwedler, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Chris Toensing, Middle East Research and Information Project
Joel Beinin, Stanford University

Ellen Lust, Yale University

Tarek Massoud, Harvard University
Amaney Jamal, Princeton University
Helga Tawil-Souri, New York University


List of Experts continue: http://www.petitiononline.com/egyltr/petition.html

Zlavoj Zizek- Why Fear The Arab Revolutionary Spirit?

Published in The Guardian.

What cannot but strike the eye in the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt is the conspicuous absence of Muslim fundamentalism. In the best secular democratic tradition, people simply revolted against an oppressive regime, its corruption and poverty, and demanded freedom and economic hope. The cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal elites while the vast majority can only be mobilised through religious fundamentalism or nationalism, has been proven wrong. The big question is what will happen next? Who will emerge as the political winner?

When a new provisional government was nominated in Tunis, it excluded Islamists and the more radical left. The reaction of smug liberals was: good, they are the basically same; two totalitarian extremes – but are things as simple as that? Is the true long-term antagonism not precisely between Islamists and the left? Even if they are momentarily united against the regime, once they approach victory, their unity splits, they engage in a deadly fight, often more cruel than against the shared enemy.

Did we not witness precisely such a fight after the last elections in Iran? What the hundreds of thousands of Mousavi supporters stood for was the popular dream that sustained the Khomeini revolution: freedom and justice. Even if this dream utopian, it did lead to a breathtaking explosion of political and social creativity, organisational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. This genuine opening that unleashed unheard-of forces for social transformation, a moment in which everything seemed possible, was then gradually stifled through the takeover of political control by the Islamist establishment.

Even in the case of clearly fundamentalist movements, one should be careful not to miss the social component. The Taliban is regularly presented as a fundamentalist Islamist group enforcing its rule with terror. However, when, in the spring of 2009, they took over the Swat valley in Pakistan, The New York Times reported that they engineered “a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants”. If, by “taking advantage” of the farmers’ plight, the Taliban are creating, in the words of the New York Times “alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal,” what prevented liberal democrats in Pakistan and the US similarly “taking advantage” of this plight and trying to help the landless farmers? Is it that the feudal forces in Pakistan are the natural ally of liberal democracy?

The inevitable conclusion to be drawn is that the rise of radical Islamism was always the other side of the disappearance of the secular left in Muslim countries. When Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost Islamic fundamentalist country, who still remembers that, 40 years ago, it was a country with a strong secular tradition, including a powerful communist party that took power there independently of the Soviet Union? Where did this secular tradition go?

And it is crucial to read the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt (and Yemen and … maybe, hopefully, even Saudi Arabia) against this background. If the situation is eventually stabilised so that the old regime survives but with some liberal cosmetic surgery, this will generate an insurmountable fundamentalist backlash. In order for the key liberal legacy to survive, liberals need the fraternal help of the radical left. Back to Egypt, the most shameful and dangerously opportunistic reaction was that of Tony Blair as reported on CNN: change is necessary, but it should be a stable change. Stable change in Egypt today can mean only a compromise with the Mubarak forces by way of slightly enlarging the ruling circle. This is why to talk about peaceful transition now is an obscenity: by squashing the opposition, Mubarak himself made this impossible. After Mubarak sent the army against the protesters, the choice became clear: either a cosmetic change in which something changes so that everything stays the same, or a true break.

Here, then, is the moment of truth: one cannot claim, as in the case of Algeria a decade ago, that allowing truly free elections equals delivering power to Muslim fundamentalists. Another liberal worry is that there is no organised political power to take over if Mubarak goes. Of course there is not; Mubarak took care of that by reducing all opposition to marginal ornaments, so that the result is like the title of the famous Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None. The argument for Mubarak – it’s either him or chaos – is an argument against him.

The hypocrisy of western liberals is breathtaking: they publicly supported democracy, and now, when the people revolt against the tyrants on behalf of secular freedom and justice, not on behalf of religion, they are all deeply concerned. Why concern, why not joy that freedom is given a chance? Today, more than ever, Mao Zedong’s old motto is pertinent: “There is great chaos under heaven – the situation is excellent.”

Where, then, should Mubarak go? Here, the answer is also clear: to the Hague. If there is a leader who deserves to sit there, it is him.

Egyptian Opposition Leader ElBaradei placed under house arrest

Published in The Guardian.

The Egyptian dissident Mohamed ElBaradei warned President Hosni Mubarak today that his regime is on its last legs, as tens of thousands of people prepared to take to the streets for a fourth day of anti-government protests.

The Nobel peace prize winner’s comments to the Guardian represented his strongest intervention against the country’s authoritarian government since he announced his intention to return to Egypt to join the protests. “I’m sending a message to the Guardian and to the world that Egypt is being isolated by a regime on its last legs,” he said.

His words marked an escalation of the language he used on arrival in Cairo last night, when he merely urged the Mubarak government to “listen to the people” and not to use violence.  ElBaradei has been criticised by some Egyptians for the late return to his homeland, two days after the protests began – hundreds of people have already been arrested and exposed to the brutal tactics of the security services. But ElBaradei was keen to stress his solidarity with the protesters.

“There is of course a risk to my safety today, but it’s a risk worth taking when you see your country in such a state you have to take risks,” he said. “I will be with the people today.” In an apparent bid to scupper the protests, the Egyptian authorities have cut off almost all access to the internet from inside and outside the country. ElBaradei said the move was proof the government was in “a state of panic”.

“Egypt today is in a pre-information age,” he said. “The Egyptians are in solitary confinement – that’s how unstable and uncomfortable the regime is. Being able to communicate is the first of our human rights and it’s being taken away from us. I haven’t seen this in any other country before.”

He said the lack of communications could hamper organisation of the demonstrations, planned to begin after Friday prayers. “I don’t know what my hopes are for today,” he said. “It would be hard with the communications cut off but I think a lot of people will be turning out.” Organisers of the marches – dubbed “the Friday of anger and freedom” – are defying a government ban on protests issued on Wednesday. They have been using social media to co-ordinate plans, and hope to rally even more than the tens of thousands who turned out on Tuesday in the biggest protests since 1977.

ElBaradei has already criticised the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, for describing the Egyptian government as stable and he stepped up his calls for the rest of the world to explicitly condemn Mubarak, who is a close ally of the US.

“The international community must understand we are being denied every human right day by day,” he said. “Egypt today is one big prison. If the international community does not speak out it will have a lot of implications. We are fighting for universal values here. If the west is not going to speak out now, then when?”

The Guardian: Chavez tackles homelessness by encouraging squatting

 Venezuelans left homeless after December’s torrential rains gather in the wealthy Caracas neighbourhood of La Castellana. Hugo Chávez has sent out troops to take over farms and urged the poor to occupy “unused” land in wealthy areas of Caracas, prompting a wave of squats that is rattling Venezuela‘s middle class.

The move by Venezuela’s president to step up the campaign to “recover” land and other property follows a housing crisis that has left millions of people in shabby conditions and affected his popularity in the run-up to next year’s election. Squatters wearing red T-shirts from Chávez’s socialist party seized 20 spaces in a co-ordinated strike in the well-off Caracas municipality of Chacao last weekend, a move which shocked even some government supporters. Additional groups have targeted other cities.

Chávez has also announced a series of laws and deals with China, Russia, Belarus, Iran and Turkey, among others, in a breakneck effort to build 350,000 housing units in Venezuela in the next two years. “The fundamental goal of socialism is to satisfy human needs … the needs of all, equally, without privilege,” Chávez said in a television broadcast yesterday.

Opponents claim the government has failed to build enough houses over the past decade and has been offering “empty promises”. Previous house-building deals with foreign allies reportedly produced just 10% of the promised number.  Emilio Grateron, mayor of Chacao, described Chávez’s exhortation to seize supposedly unoccupied land as demagogic, and a move that would kill what little private investment remained. “There is irresponsible rhetoric without heed of the consequences. This is a very dangerous game.”

The government has stepped up rural expropriations by deploying 1,600 troops at 47 farms in the western states of Merida and Zulia, claiming the farms were unproductive. The state has taken control of 2.5m hectares since Chávez gained power in 1999. The government is now looking at cities in response to the housing crisis and to its fading support in the slums, once Chávista heartlands, which have voted for opposition mayors and governors.

Floods last year ruined hillside slums and displaced thousands of families, highlighting the shortage of 2m or so housing units. Residents have had to erect shacks on top of shacks on precarious slopes. Under Chávez the government has built fewer than 40,000 units a year – some say only 24,000 – in contrast to previous governments, which averaged 70,000. The president admits to problems but rejects accusations of incompetence and corruption. He has said that the rich keep all the best land, especially in the capital, but often leave it idle. The government has closed six golf courses and recently had its eye on the Caracas Country Club, saying thousands of poor families could be settled on its greens.

Such a move would take several years, however, and the presidential election calendar requires speedier results. This month Chávez said the government would take over unoccupied spaces and any incomplete structures. Last weekend he urged the poor to join in, and hours later, at 4am, militant supporters laid claim to 20 areas of Chacao. Police expelled them but the “invasions” caused uproar, with even pro-government newspapers such as Ultimas Noticias voicing concern.

Chávez decided the squatters had gone too far, saying “the middle-class cannot be an enemy of this democratic revolution”. However, the government made clear the squatting would continue, saying the correct term was “occupation”. Even hotels have become skittish since being asked to host those displaced by the floods. They have obliged, but some proprietors now worry they will be the next industry to be nationalised.

Chacao’s five-star Marriott hotel is hosting about 60 displaced families on its third and fourth floors. It has replaced doors with curtains and removed TVs, lamps and other fittings, but Maria Patino, 52, and her sister Blanca, 55, had no complaints. “We’re supposed to use the service entrance and not go near the lobby, but we get treated well. Three meals a day, everything free,” said Maria. “It [was] like being in the desert, and then you get to an oasis.”

BBC: Ivory Coast Calls For General Strike

Political parties loyal to Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara have called a general strike across the country from Monday to force the incumbent president to cede power. Our correspondent John James says the strike is not being widely observed so far in Abidjan, the biggest city.

Laurent Gbagbo has refused to step aside following November’s disputed election which he insists was rigged. Mr Ouattara has been recognised internationally as the victor.  Regional West African grouping Ecowas has warned it may use “legitimate force” to remove Mr Gbagbo. He accused the US and France of leading a plot against him.

Although the situation has felt less tense since the lifting of an overnight curfew, there’s concern that things will worsen in the coming month. A delegation of heads of state from Ecowas – from Benin, Sierra Leone and Cape Verde – is planning to travel to the country on Tuesday to convince Mr Gbagbo to step aside.

Mr Gbagbo’s Interior Minister Emile Guirieoulou told a news conference that his government would: “welcome the three heads of states as brothers and friends, and listen to the message they have to convey”. Our correspondent says that after calls from the US and French presidents, this personal visit will represent the final notice for Mr Gbagbo, whose hold on power is diminishing by the day. He adds that any intervening force would almost certainly come from Nigeria.

In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, Mr Gbagbo said that if military intervention occurred it would be a dangerous precedent. “All threats must be taken seriously. But, in Africa, it would be the first time African countries would be ready to go to war because an election went badly.”

He repeated his assertion that he was the victim of an international plot against him, led by former colonial power, France, along with the US.  “If there is an internal conflict, a civil war, there will be risks because we will not allow our rights, our constitution, to be trampled on. People have to remember that. We are not afraid. We are not the aggressors.”

Threat of conflict

Earlier, his spokesperson warned that foreign intervention could ignite a civil war, sparking conflict between the country’s many foreign migrant workers which could spill across Ivory Coast’s borders. “All these countries have citizens in Ivory Coast, and they know if they attack Ivory Coast from the exterior it would become an interior civil war,” Ahoua Don Mello said.

“Is Burkina Faso ready to welcome three million Burkinabe migrants back in their country of origin?” he asked. Millions of West African immigrants from poorer neighbouring states work in Ivory Coast’s relatively prosperous cocoa-led economy. Some 14,000 people have already fled to neighbouring Liberia following November’s disputed election results, and the UN says it is prepared for a total of 30,000 refugees in the region. The UN has said at least 173 people have died in violence already.

Most of those fleeing are supporters of Mr Ouattara, who, along with his cabinet, is based at a hotel in Abidjan under the protection of UN troops. Mr Gbagbo has demanded that UN and French troops leave the country and a close ally has even warned that they could be treated as rebels if they did not obey the instruction. The UN, which has 10,000 peacekeepers in the country, rejected the call.

The election was meant to unite the country after a civil war in 2002 split the world’s largest cocoa producer in two, with the predominantly Muslim North supporting Mr Ouattara and the mainly Christian south backing Mr Gbagbo.

Palestinian Ambassador Maen Rashi Arekat- Palestinians Must Be Free

Israeli Vice Premier Moshe Ya’alon recently penned an article for Foreign Policy that perniciously distorts the Palestinian commitment to a lasting peace, and misrepresents our sincere efforts to find a diplomatic solution to this conflict. Let me correct the record.

Ya’alon’s inflammatory rhetoric is designed to disguise the simple truth that the conflict between Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds is the result of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian and Arab territory, and the subsequent denial of equality and liberty to the people of our region.

The simple and overriding truth is this: Palestinians must be free. This overriding moral prerogative remains the driving force for every aspect of Palestinian political, social, cultural, and artistic expression. It is why the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was created, and it remains the raison d’etre for every one of our efforts.

There is nothing peculiar or unique about the Palestinian drive for liberty in our own land — the land of our fathers, grandfathers, and their grandfathers — living side by side with a secure Israel. The basic human impulse for freedom is shared by every man, woman, and child around the globe. This is why the Palestinian struggle for freedom has become so iconic throughout the world for those concerned with justice and civil rights. From Brazil to Turkey, from Indonesia to South Africa, from Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Kingdom, Palestinians stand as an icon for the responsibility of each of us to work for the freedom of any who remain oppressed.

This is true here in the United States as well — a nation founded on the ethos of freedom and liberty. In this respect alone, Palestinians and Americans share an often unspoken but unbreakable bond. The technocratic language of negotiations can make even a policy wonk yawn. But this jargon of the peace process does more than bore readers — it obfuscates the most salient facts about our drive for independence.

The Palestinian goal is to be free; free to live in our own country, free to build where we want, free to travel wherever and whenever we want, free to only pay taxes to a government chosen by us and that represents us and our interests, free to not worry every day and every minute about our security and the security of our children. This week’s report by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel documenting Israel’s detention of over 1,000 Palestinian children from East Jerusalem this year alone cannot but break the heart of any parent, and reinforces the urgency of our struggle.

Perhaps because our cause is so universal, those opposing our freedom have concentrated their efforts on misdirection — especially in the United States, whose role remains critical in ensuring a speedy and peaceful end to the occupation. Americans are told by Israeli officials and their apologists that Israel would be happy to provide Palestinians their freedom but that Palestinians themselves have rejected “generous” offers for their own liberty.

The truth is not quite so remarkable.

At Camp David in 2000, then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made an unwritten offer that would have kept Palestinian airspace, the electromagnetic sphere, international crossing points, and water resources under Israeli control. The “Barak Offer” called for a land swap that would have traded land on a 9 to 1 ratio in favor of Israel and failed to provide an acceptable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem and Jerusalem, two fundamental issues for Palestinians. It also would have allowed Israel to keep a military presence in the future Palestinian state. The only written proposal at Camp David was submitted by the Palestinians, regarding the refugee issue; the Israelis never responded.

At Camp David, Palestinians were offered a state with no sovereignty, no capital in Jerusalem, and no just solution to the refugee problem. This is the reason that talks failed — not because of Palestinian intransigence or rejectionism, as has become the standard narrative in mainstream American political and media discourse.

The next round of serious talks, between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008, did not produce an “Olmert Offer”, although the two leaders discussed all permanent status issues extensively.

Toward the end of their meetings, Olmert showed President Abbas a map of proposed land swaps to compensate for land that Israel wanted to annex — about 6.8 percent of the West Bank — as part of an agreement. The Palestinians requested that Olmert put forth a written proposal, and also submitted 14 questions to the Israelis seeking clarifications on important issues on questions pertaining to the permanent status issues. Again, the Israelis never responded to either request. Contacts then broke down after Israel’s savage attack on the Gaza Strip in December 2008, and Olmert subsequently resigned after being implicated in a corruption scandal.

Over the past 10 months, Palestinians have, either directly or, through the United States, made offers and submitted ideas to the Israelis on every one of the permanent status issues. The Palestinians did not sit around and wait for the so-called moratorium to lapse, as some claim. Over the past four months of indirect talks and the one month of direct negotiations — all hosted by the Obama administration — Israel has refused to respond to Palestinian and U.S. urging to engage on the core issues, such as the future of Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security and water issues. This has been the sad reality since Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister 20 months ago.

The topic of settlement construction is also rife with misunderstanding and deliberate distortion. Israeli leaders have recently argued that settlements only occupy 1.7 percent of Palestinian territory, yet the military infrastructure for supporting these settlers, which includes walls, checkpoints, and “Israeli-only” roads, keeps over 82 percent of the West Bank out of Palestinian hands.

Even the question of recognition has become a red herring. The PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist within its 1967 borders in 1988, and has repeatedly restated its position on this matter ever since. The PLO even convened its parliament in exile in 1998 to reiterate this acceptance in the presence of former President Bill Clinton. To this day, our recognition of Israel remains unreciprocated by the Israeli Knesset or the ruling Likud party.

Palestinians, however, are not passive victims. Our rights are not subject to or conditional on Israeli recognition or acceptance of them. Our rights to be free and to live in equality in our own homeland and our own state are inalienable. We appreciate the United States’ continued efforts to end the occupation that began in 1967, but we are not sitting still waiting for freedom to be delivered to us.

To achieve our aims, we are entitled to resort to all peaceful, nonviolent, and legal means. This includes, but is not limited to, taking our case to the United Nations and other international forums, calling on other countries to recognize a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, and working with the international community to realize Palestinian national rights of self-determination and statehood.

The irony for Israel is that its best guarantee for security and survival is not the continued humiliation and subjugation of the Palestinian people, but rather our freedom and independence. Israel’s blinkered policies will never convince Palestinians to give up their legitimate right to liberty, and it is only true freedom that can ultimately make for the best neighbors.

NY Post: Aid Strategy in Question after Increase in Aid Worker Deaths

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 100 relief workers in Afghanistan have been killed so far this year, far more than in any previous year, prompting a debate within humanitarian organizations about whether American military strategy is putting them and the Afghans they serve at unnecessary risk. Most of the victims worked for aid contractors employed by NATO countries, with fewer victims among traditional nonprofit aid groups.

The difference in the body counts of the two groups is at the heart of a question troubling the aid community: Has American counterinsurgency strategy militarized the delivery of aid?

That doctrine calls for making civilian development aid a major adjunct to the military push. To do that there are Provincial Reconstruction Teams in 33 of 34 provinces, staffed by civilians from coalition countries to deliver aid projects. The effort is enormous, dominated by the Americans; the United States Agency for International Development alone is spending $4 billion this year, most of it through the teams.

The so-called P.R.T.’s work from heavily guarded military compounds and are generally escorted by troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Traditional aid workers worry that the P.R.T.’s and the development companies working for them are compromising their neutrality. Oxfam and 28 other charitable groups signed a report last month, “Nowhere to Turn,” that denounces the practice, saying it puts civilians at greater risk.

“In many instances, where P.R.T. projects have been implemented in insecure areas in an effort to win ‘hearts and minds,’ they put individuals and communities at risk,” the Oxfam report said. Michiel Hofman, the head of Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan, said, “This assistance forces the beneficiaries to choose sides, and many people in the disputed areas do not want to choose sides.”

The military and its NATO civilian partners disagree. Earl Gast, the mission director for U.S.A.I.D. in Afghanistan, said the United Nations and the International Security Assistance Force had agreed on a clear distinction and clear rules regarding humanitarian aid — “that it can’t be militarized and it can’t be politicized.” “Those are rules that we follow,” Mr. Gast said.

Part of the problem is the definition of humanitarian aid. Traditionally it means life-saving emergency assistance, but the distinction is often unclear. Providing medical care for disaster victims, for instance, is clearly humanitarian, but building a medical clinic for war victims could be considered either humanitarian or developmental aid, properly within the scope of the civil-military effort.

Further complicating matters, many traditional relief groups have expanded their efforts into development work, although they take pains to ensure that their projects are not connected to the government or the military. But the military and its supporters say traditional aid groups have neither the capacity nor the willingness to bring large-scale aid programs to conflict areas. This has resulted in a reliance on private development companies, most of them profit-making, to deliver the aid programs paid for by NATO countries.

“Someone has to go into the areas where the war is being fought,” Mr. Gast said. “We recognize that some N.G.O.’s don’t have the capacity and some of them don’t want to, but there are other willing partners who can go,” he said, using the abbreviation for nongovernmental organizations.

A Dec. 1 report by Refugees International was highly critical. “U.S.A.I.D.’s use of development contractors and frequent embeds with the military have dangerously blurred humanitarian principles by associating such programs with a party to the conflict,” the group wrote.

Among the contracted aid groups working for coalition government programs, which nearly always employ armed guards and work in fortified compounds or from military bases, the body count has been particularly severe. Eighty aid contractors employed by the United States Agency for International Development were killed and 220 wounded from January through early November of this year. (In the same period, 410 American soldiers and Marines died.)

The aid contractors were attacked on average 55 times a month — a sevenfold increase over 2009, Mr. Gast said. By contrast, 20 people employed by charitable and humanitarian groups, which refuse to use armed guards or work with the military, were killed during the first nine months of this year.

Sixty-four charitable aid workers were kidnapped by insurgents this year. All were released unharmed, usually after negotiations involving local community leaders who vouched for them, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office. One U.S.A.I.D. contractor who was kidnapped, Linda Norgrove, was killed during a botched rescue attempt by American Special Forces troops.

Read on at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/world/asia/14afghan.html?sq=aid&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print

BBC: International Criminal Court Prosecuting Kenyan Officials for Election Violence

EDITORIAL NOTE: Waris Husain– To all my of African Sovereigns, I want to express a deep sadness in posting stories like this from the Continent. I in no way have an enmity to the plight of the African nations who live under the crippling shadow of colonialization while being bled out through globalization. The ICC and other international instruments have prosecuted African leaders and groups at a far higher rate than any of thier European counterparts- this includes the Yugoslavia proseuction which was large in scope but was a flash in the international pan. However, these individuals are guilty of the most horrendous acts imaginable, planning extrajudicial killings, rapes, and misery amongst thier own people for political ends. These indivudals are not Africans, just as the the corrupt politicans in Pakistan are not Pakistan-  they are too self-serving, crude, and hateful towards thier fellow man to be given such titles and so I post this story to shed light on them and represent Africa as her true self.

The prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has named six high-profile Kenyans he accuses of being behind the violence that followed the disputed 2007 elections. Deputy PM and Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta was one of those named.

Some 1,200 people died and more than 500,000 fled homes in the violence. In the peace deal that followed it was agreed that the perpetrators of the violence would face justice either in Kenya or at the ICC in The Hague. Kenyan MPs have so far blocked moves to set up a local tribunal.

On Monday, President Mwai Kibaki announced the government would launch its own investigation – a move his critics have denounced as an attempt to prevent suspects being sent to The Hague. The violence broke out three years ago after Mr Kibaki’s supporters were accused of trying to rig the presidential election. It ended when Mr Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga agreed to share power, with Mr Odinga becoming prime minister.

The ICC alleges a criminal plan was put in place in the Rift Valley for supporters of President Kibaki to be attacked after the election. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said that in retaliation, police were given the green light to use excessive force and a vigilante group was organised to attack civilians.

Mr Ocampo said: “These were not just crimes against innocent Kenyans. They were crimes against humanity.” He has summoned suspended education minister William Ruto, radio executive Joshua Arap Sang and Minister for Industrialisation Henry Kosgey on charges of murder, deportation, persecutions and torture.

Secretary to the cabinet Francis Kirimi Muthaura, former police chief Mohammed Hussein Ali and Mr Kenyatta face charges of murder, deportation, persecutions and rape. Mr Ocampo said he did not have evidence to pursue charges against Mr Kibaki or Mr Odinga. “We follow the evidence where it takes us. We are not taking into account political responsibilities… there are political debates, but it is not my responsibility,” Mr Ocampo said.

He said the six were the “most responsible” but there were “many others” that Kenya could decide to prosecute. Kenyan police have been put on alert in case the announcement sparks renewed clashes. Each of the six will be served with a court summons, but if they fail to turn up or if they attempt to hinder the investigation – for example by intimidating witnesses – Mr Ocampo says he will request arrest warrants.

BBC East Africa correspondent Will Ross says in recent days there has been a degree of panic among some members of the usually untouchable political elite. Most Kenyans feel these prosecutions are vital in order to undermine the deeply rooted culture of impunity, our correspondent says.

The key question now is whether those accused will hand themselves over or be shielded by politicians and evade justice, he says. As the ICC investigation has gathered pace in recent months, several witnesses have been threatened, and the ICC has moved some out of the country.

Kenya has had a series of violent elections, but the disputed poll in 2007 saw the country taken to the brink of civil war. There were revenge attacks, with long-standing ethnic and economic rivalries ignited by political divisions.

Communities turned on each other with crude weapons as they were encouraged, and even paid, by power-hungry politicians, our correspondent says. The police used excessive force and carried out extra-judicial killings, he says. One of the worst incidents saw a church where about 100 people had sought sanctuary set on fire, killing dozens of people inside.

Weapons were put down only after former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan brokered a peace deal between the two presidential rivals.

LIST OF INDICTED OFFICIALS 

• Uhuru Kenyatta (above), deputy PM and finance minister
• Henry Kosgey, minister for industrialisation
• William Ruto, suspended education minister
• Joshua Arap Sang, radio executive
• Francis Kirimi Muthaura, secretary to the cabinet
• Mohammed Hussein Ali, former police chief

The Gaurdian: India’s Battle Against Hunger

There are times when chilli mixed with a little water is not enough to quell the hunger. Then the people of Gautam Nagar, one of 300 slum settlements in the city of Bhopal, India, gather round the only available screen to watch music videos. More than 60 families live in cramped quarters on wasteland that has a filthy stench, with only plastic sheets to protect them from the elements. Children with swollen bellies wander along the road, begging from passersby.

Malnutrition in India is on the rise, despite nutrition rehabilitation centres and ration shops. “Indicators of urban food insecurity … reveal an alarming picture,” says the Report on the State of Food Insecurity in Urban India, published by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation and the World Food Programme. The Congress party, which promised to lift the country out of poverty when it returned to power in 2009, is drafting a revolutionary Right to Food bill.

To achieve this goal, organisations will have to be reformed – starting with the ration shops, which are supposed to distribute rice, sugar, wheat and even kerosene at subsidised prices to anyone in need. But none of the inhabitants of Gautam Nagar are entitled to this bounty.

Munna Lal, for instance, had to give up his ration card two years ago. After a violent dispute with his cousin he was arrested by the police, who demanded $14 as bail for his release, and $50 as a bribe. “To pay, I gave my card as security to the owner of the ration shop so he would loan me the money,” Lal explains. Some ration cards are no longer used to obtain food but as collateral for debt and many shopkeepers have become money-lenders.

Others do not even have a ration card, for instance the seasonal migrants who have neither a fixed address nor an identity card.

Those who do have a ration card may not be able to use it. “They can only buy their monthly allowance of food at one time. Day workers often cannot save enough to buy 20kg of wheat or 3kg of rice in one go,” says Seema Deshmukh, of the Muskaan NGO, who works with Bhopal slum dwellers. According to a 2004 study by the Planning Commission, only 40% of the food allocated to the poorest people by the public distribution system reaches them. The rest ends up on the black market or rots in warehouses.

Food is expensive. “It’s not like the forest here; you always have to pay to eat,” says Lal. Every day at 4am he sets out to pick up waste. Economic growth has created work in the city but most jobs are casual: you only eat what you can earn. Lal must collect enough shoe-soles and plastic bottle-tops to feed his wife and seven children. He earns $3 to $4 a day. “At every meal we eat chapatis with salt, chili and sometimes, on good days, onions and vegetables,” his wife says.

Their children, in theory, qualify for access to one of the nutrition rehabilitation centres. The government has set up more than a million such centres nationwide for malnourished children and pregnant women. But here the nearest one is a kilometre away and the parents, at work all day, do not have the time to take their children there. “Above all, people from the slums feel excluded, often complaining that they are not treated with respect,” says Maheen Mirza, the author of several articles on malnutrition in Bhopal.

The nutrition centre nearest Gautam Nagar is in a stronghold of the nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, which governs Madhya Pradesh state. In a tiny room, Parvati Khatarkar, a primary school teacher, hands out food to the children every morning, and teaches them to read and write. She also records their weight and height, checking that they correspond to the average figures marked in her notebook. If not, she must tell their family and the health service.

Despite the nutrition centres, more than two-thirds of children under the age of five in the towns of Madhya Pradesh are anaemic. Some economists advocate nationwide deployment of the public distribution system to stamp out hunger, with subsidised food for everyone so that the poor are no longer excluded. But others argue that such a system would cost around $20bn. In October the National Advisory Council, chaired by Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party president, recommended extending the existing system to three-quarters of the population, with just two categories of beneficiary – priority and general.

To prevent fraud, the government may soon computerise the distribution system, and hand out electronic ration cards. The Right to Food campaign, an informal group of NGOs, expressed disappointment. “We are shocked that the expansion of food entitlements for all is not even being considered,” it said. “Arguments of lack of resources cannot be accepted where, on the other hand, the same government provides tax exemptions and rebates of over $115bn [in 2009-10] majorly [sic] to the corporate sector.” The Indian parliament will debate the Right to Food bill in spring.