The Dominion - South Asia

Afghanistan's Troubled Election

Ariel Nasr — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:37:27 +0000

The Afghan Election Complaints Commission (ECC), with Canadian UN appointee Grant Kippen at it's helm, has published the first results of it's investigation into fraud in the presidential election, held on August 20th. On Thursday the commission announced it would throw out the ballots from 83 Afghan polling stations, where there is definite evidence of fraud. 51 of the problem stations were in Kandahar, 27 in Ghazni, and five in Paktika, according to ECC press releases. Of the 2300 complaints the ECC has received, the largest group concern irregularities at the polls, including ballot box stuffing. Other common complaints include allegations of intimidation, and lack of access to the polls, particularly for women. The ECC investigation is ongoing and could result in a fresh election.

Currently, as vote tallying continues, the three front runners in the presidential election are the incumbent Hamed Karzai with 54.1%, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah with 28 %, and Ramazan Bashardost with 9.2 %. 91.6% of polling stations have been tallied, so the counting is almost done, but further investigations into fraud could change things significantly. According to electoral law, if Karzai doesn't receive at least 50% of the valid votes, there will have to be a run-off election this fall. If enough ballots are invalidated as a result of the ECC investigation, Karzai could lose his current winning position, and fall below the necessary 50%.

The Simple Art of Terror

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:22:39 +0000

by Anamitra Deb

The Simple Art of Terror

On November 26th, 2008, Bombay was the target of a terrorist attack allegedly carried out by men from the jihadi organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), meaning 'Army of the Pure.' Armed with AK-47s, hand grenades, and RDX (an explosive chemical used in military applications), the terrorists targeted civilians, killing over 200 men, women and children.

Ten men came to my city by the sea and docked their rubber dinghy in a forgotten fisher-people’s slum. Ten men, armed with guns and grenades, headed nonchalantly in the direction of the city’s main attractions. Dressed in jeans and t-shirts, and carrying backpacks, ten men split into four groups, maybe five, and started the shooting later that evening.

In an attritional siege that lasted more than 60 hours, severe damage was done to the inhabitants of a city that is no stranger to terror.

Over half of the casualties took place within the first few hours, all at frequented landmarks – at the touristy Leopold Café, and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Train Station, used by millions of local commuters daily. At the already-overflowing Cama Hospital and outside of Bombay's oldest cinema, the Metro. Inside of the city’s best-known five-star hotels, the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi Trident, men fired guns in lobbies and staircases, bars and restaurants, chambers and kitchens.

"Tell Your Investers to Get Out of Here!"

dawn — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:16:42 +0000

Thai opposition to potash mine becomes community-wide fight

UDON THANI, THAILAND–Entering the North-Eastern Thai village of Ban Nonsomboon, one could be fooled by the appearance of rural tranquility: Children, parents and elders chat amongst themselves, relaxing in hammocks and sharing baskets of freshly cooked sticky rice.

It doesn't take long, however, to notice the banners, stickers and posters throughout the community declaring, “No to Potash Mining!” Green flags signifying a commitment to a toxic-chemical-free zone wave in the breeze.

In the midst of this fertile farmland a struggle is brewing. The community is fighting for the preservation of the land they depend on to live, and the fight has a strong Canadian connection.

Blindfolded Communities

Over 20 years ago, men who claimed they were looking for oil were seen wandering amid the rice paddies of Ban Nonsomboon, surveying the land and drilling boreholes. At the time, no one realized that these surveyors had been hired to locate potash for a Canadian company, the Asia Pacific Potash Corporation (APPC).

Without informing local residents, the APPC completed a study of potash deposits in the area with the help of Montreal based SNC-Lavalin, and by December 2000, had an environmental impact assessment quietly approved by the Thai government. The APPC’s plan consisted of a 25-km-squared underground mine to extract 300 million tonnes of potash reserves over the course of 22 years. A brine pond for wastewater, production mill and a tailings pile of salt waste would also be needed. In addition, plans included four-lane highways, a railroad extension and new electrical power grids.

The area that could be affected by this proposal includes over 45 densely populated villages, rice paddies and unique freshwater ecosystems.

From Planting Questions to Growing Resistance

As APPC began to drill exploratory mine boreholes, mineral samples were shipped to various Canadian labs, including Chemex Laboratories, Lakefield Research, Pioneer Laboratories Inc. and the Saskatchewan Research Council. Meanwhile, villagers realized that cattle grazing in the area were dying. Attracted to the salt deposits left by the drilling operations, the cattle were ingesting toxic quantities of minerals. Devastated by the loss of their livestock, community members began to ask questions, calling on the government to disclose information about the mining project and contacting local environmental NGOs for support.

Armed with a minimal amount of publicly disclosed information, community researchers from the Bangkok-based environmental organization Project for Ecological Recovery began to help raise awareness about APPC’s proposal amongst villagers in the demarcated mine concession zone. When local people realized that a Canadian company had proposed to conduct mining beneath their homes, and that the Thai government had already secretly approved the project, a popular opposition campaign quickly took shape.

In 2001, concerned residents who would be affected by APPC’s proposed mine formed the Udon Environmental Conservation Organization (UECO). In response to a complaint filed by UECO in 2002, the Thai National Human Rights Commission released a statement last year calling upon the company responsible for the mine to not only renew processes for public consultations and environmental impact assessments, but also to ensure all landholders provide informed consent for demarcation before the operation begins.

Locals are particularly concerned the mine will cause land subsidence, and contaminate the soil, air and water. Although exact consequences are impossible to predict, academic researchers have joined villagers to investigate how resulting land depressions could severely damage homes, and the potential negative effects of mine tailings on local water sources used for drinking, cooking and cleaning.

The salt tailings will result in “problems with salinity in our rice fields, especially during the rainy season," says Somyut Nikhau, a current leader of UECO. "If there is a drought, then the salt dust will still go into the water, the field and probably the communal fishing areas. This is sure to destroy our lives.”

High-school student Nattapong Ponsoongnean is also concerned about the negative consequences of the mine. “It will be my generation and future generations that will be most affected.” Canadian mining investors should “get out of this community," he says. "Don’t come here to violate our rights.”

Engendering Mobilization Strategies

Despite company offers of mining jobs, modernized amenities and discounted fertilizer, the majority of local people remain opposed to the mine. According to UECO member, Teaing Taammain, “The truth is that the company and the government are on the same side. But we villagers don’t accept the mine, so — at some point in the future, we will have to be prepared to fight for our lives against the mining operators... [We] villagers are proud of our lifestyles as farmers, we don’t want to be miners.”

Over the past six years, residents have made their concerns known by organizing marches, sending delegations to the Canadian embassy, as well as carrying out protest actions during corporate and government meetings.

Realizing that their activities were most effective when led by women, members of UECO formed an “Iron Women” Committee. According to one member, Boonmee Khunanan, “We made the decision to stand in the front row of protests... Now, after attending civil-disobedience trainings, we can assert our identity, our dignity and stand up together.”

“Authorities are afraid of confronting us older women," adds 69-year-old Lom Pongsa with a grin, "Because in Thai culture, you should always bow down and respect elder women!”

Shifting Corporate Profiles

In 2006, as UECO’s campaign against the mine was gaining momentum, Thai company Italian-Thai Development Plc. acquired APPC as a subsidiary. Corporate public-relations strategies were shifted to appeal to Thai nationalist sentiments. However, despite the complex web of corporate ownership and investment, local researchers have documented significant Canadian financial backing. Until 2006, Vancouver-based Crew Group and an east coast company (based in Fredericton), 623827 NB Ltd., were directly involved in financing this venture. After a number of corporate amalgamations took place two years ago, Canadian capital has taken a less prominent role in the project. Yet, Canadian banks, insurance companies and pension funds — including the Canadian Pension Plan — continue to invest in corporations implicated in the proposed Udon Thani Potash project.

Indeed, there is a strong sense amongst community activists that the project initiated by a Canadian company is still connected to the "country with destructive mining companies." This understanding is reinforced by the knowledge that both Toronto-based Mining Industry Consultants International and Montreal’s SNC-Lavalin have received contracts from APPC to complete studies of the area, while Vancouver-based SandWell Corporation continues to work with APPC to develop overland transport plans for the potash. In addition, APPC Vice-President and Director of Exploration and Development, Keith S. Crosby, is Canadian, with strong connections to the mining industry in Saskatchewan. Indeed, company public-relations documents and feasibility studies rely heavily on data from mine sites located in the prairies. “Given the completely different climatic and geophysical conditions of the potash mines in Saskatchewan compared to the planned project in Udon Thani,” said Catherine Coumans of MiningWatch Canada, “this is simply the latest in a long history of attempts by the company to pull the wool over the eyes of the local people.”
Community members readily admit that divisive tactics employed by company employees have been difficult to confront — in particular, the company’s involvement in the school system. APPC Children’s Days, clothes-donation projects, school sports tournaments, scholarships, extra-curricular celebrations, “distinguished father” awards, poetry competitions on the theme of “community mining,” and mobile medical clinics, as well as family house visits by company representatives are all meant to support a corporate image of compassion and harmlessness.

Despite the APPC’s attempt to maintain a positive image in the community, many villagers remain vocally opposed to the mine and have been named on company ‘blacklists.’ Others, including 29-year-old community activist Nowarat Doarueang, have received death threats and been targeted by a corporate defamation lawsuit. Many residents, including Khunanan, note, “The mining issue has broken the heart of this community. Even the children at school are divided.”

Although 12-year-old Kyiattisak Theangreong says there is no conflict amongst his peers, he expresses a sense of anxiety and distress. “I feel unsure about my future because maybe by then, everything will have already changed.” He continues emphatically, “If a company wants to open a mine here, I think they must first consider our lives, our rights, our future and our community before they come and destroy everything.”

Grounding the Future, From the Fields to the Streets

According to Suwit Gulabwong, coordinator of the local community organization Ecological and Cultural Study Group on Salinity and Mining Resource Management, “We need to keep our eyes on the fact that our fight is with the company and capital... [Therefore,] it is important to build a strong and sustainable movement from the ground up.”

Community members assert they are gradually building alternatives respectful of human as well as ecological relationships. With a collective rice paddy, they are extending a sense of cross-generational solidarity between families, while creating a source of income for their campaign. On an ongoing basis, organic farming techniques are shared amongst villagers. Rice farmer Nuentang Taamain exclaims, “As long as we are all organic farmers, we don’t need the company’s fertilizer anyway!”

UECO launched a community radio station to promote open communication about their campaign and mining-related news, as well as a public platform for local debate. For local electoral candidate Angkana Khamringe, the radio is a source of “critical information, about what is real and what is not. From this, we have learned more about our own rights, especially the rights to life, land, participation, health, and natural resources.”

Radio coordinator Panya Kotrphet emphasizes that villagers are not merely trying to preserve their past, “We need to find alternative models of development — Is the meaning of development bigger roads, bigger houses? No. The question is whether the quality of all of our lives is improved.”

While local youth have a tree-planting project, school children attend workshops to learn about banner making, poster and leaflet production, as well as local and global environmental issues. Community health researcher Tipawan Kiangkai hopes the younger generation will understand “there are other ways for our village to have 'development’ without potash mining and the use of potash-based chemical fertilizers.”

To promote reliance on local resources, women coordinate clothing, soap, shampoo and soymilk production co-operatives. According to Khunanan, these initiatives allow families to “build the potential to maintain our activities as a community and keep fighting together.”

The multifaceted approach and villagers’ continued tenacity may in the end defeat Ital-Thai and APPC. However, villagers continually reiterate that such a shift is impossible if their cause is not internationalized.

Nuentang Taamain declares, “People in Canada need to know — the company is only concerned about profit and is taking advantage of our land, imposing on our lives and violating our rights... Canadians, please tell your investors to get out of here!”

Many local residents raise questions not only about Canadian economic interests, but also about proposed, current and closed mines on Canadian soil. Upon learning about First Nations struggles against mining, they immediately recognize a common struggle across continental divides. Without hesitation, they respond, "Please let them know: they must keep fighting, and never give up! They are not alone. Together, we will win!”

Tanya Roberts-Davis is an activist organizing with communities affected by mining and oil & gas operations. She is currently based in Thailand.

Nuentang Taamain

Iron Women

Indian Farmers Beat Back Tata

Geordie — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:38:39 +0000

Farmers in West Bengal, India have pushed Tata Motors off agricultural land.

"The West Bengal government acquired 1,000 acres of land for the Nano project in 2006.

"At least 10,000 farmers accepted compensation for their land, but approximately 2,000 of them rejected it as inadequate and demanded 400 acres of land be returned.

"'You cannot run a plant with police protection, you cannot run a plant when bombs are being thrown, you cannot run a plant when workers are being intimidated,' Tata said."

“People’s War” Turns to People’s Vote

hillarybain — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:18:41 +0000

Maoist return to the democratic process

Communism in Nepal is not a new concept. Nepal’s first communist party was created in 1949 and communism has shaped the history of the country ever since. In 1994, a coalition government came together to form one of the few elected national communist-party governments in history. The breakdown of this coalition led to the death of 13,000 Nepalese in a brutal decade-long civil war.

Often portrayed as brainwashed savages holding onto an anachronistic ideology, the Nepalese Maoist movement receives virtually no Western media attention unless blood is shed in the name of the cause. Nepal’s recent election has given Western media another reason to focus on the Nepalese Maoist movement.

On April 10, the Communist Party Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) won a majority of seats in Nepal’s election. The victory has been seen as a cause for alarm for the Bush administration, which sent both military and financial aid to the former Nepalese government in order to fight the Maoist insurgency.

Before the election, in November of 2007, I was brought to a rural Maoist village where I had the opportunity to talk with Maoist leaders and locals. I was able to see the human side of the civil war in Nepal as well as the grassroots organization of Nepal's Maoist party.

The rise of the CPN-M is a success story for grassroots movements. On February 13, 1996, Maoists began what is known at the “People’s War” by taking control of the Small Farmers Development Bank in Gorkha. Bank workers were overpowered late one night, leading to a takeover of the building, the burning of loan papers and a speech that described the bank as instrument of exploitation used by the state. After a brief parting speech, the Maoists left. Thus marked the beginning of the “People’s War.”

Most peasants who witnessed the takeover had no idea who these rebels were, but understood their message and shared their anger. Many villagers were subjugated to cast, ethnic, linguistic and gender injustices and became sympathetic to the Maoist cause.

The CPN-M held political gatherings throughout the “People’s War.” The message espoused by Maoists not only spoke to the outrage felt by the villagers throughout the countryside, but did so in the local dialect. The Maoists respected the local languages, customs and beliefs of various tribes and promised to bring about a secular, democratic state with safeguards for minority rights including language protection. Women also played a vital role in the movement.

It was in the mountainous villages of Lamjung on the border of Gorkha where I was introduced to the Maoists' way of life and the hardships they face. I was first taken to my friend Nanda’s village. The village is ethnically Mongolian and residents hold both Buddhist and Hindu religious beliefs.

The murder of journalist Birendra Shah at the hand of Maoist card holders occurred only one month before my visit. The Federation of Nepalese Journalists had released a statement in the Kathmandu Post warning journalist not to meet with Maoists due to safety concerns. I departed from tourist friendly Pokorah on a seven-hour bus trip and was dropped off on the side of a windy, mountainous road. Two jeep rides and a two-hour hike landed us in Nanda’s village.

It is hard to describe the stunning natural beauty and sense of community one feels when entering such a village. Nanda had recently been paid and we spent the better part of our first day visiting villagers and distributing gifts and money. In the days that followed I travelled to surrounding villages and was taken aback by the communal way of living and property sharing embedded in the culture. Hiking from village to village the sense of collectivism was ubiquitous.

Although the people I met shared what they had, communities were lacking in essential services like medicine. While traveling to a neighbouring village, I met an elderly woman who asked if I had any medicine for her stomach pains. I gave her what medicine I had and through Nanda explained how it was to be taken. Further up the mountain I saw a man being carried on another man's back, clearly in pain. He was being transported to a hospital 10 hours away.

The lack of general social services (including electricity) along with the lack of employment opportunities forces many young villagers into urban areas in search of wage-labour work. In cities one experiences a different Nepal: a Nepal with electricity and paved roads. Once living in cities, the low wages and lack of transportation infrastructure into rural areas makes returning home a onerous task. Nanda’s sister has a one-year-old child. Her husband works over ten hours away and comes home whenever he can. He literally has to climb the Himalayas to see his wife and child. It is within this context of neglect that the Maoists released their 40 demands in 1996.

Of the 40 demands, perhaps six could be seen as communist in nature. The rest focus on basic rights, including: the abolition of the caste system, rights for women, the creation of a constitution, the end of the monarchy and the creation of a democratic secular state with intellectual freedom for all. When these demands were not met, Maoists began their “People’s War.”

The war on terror gave Colin Powell the perfect pretext to visit Nepal in January 2002. He pledged support for the government’s “war on terror,” known to locals as the People’s War. To date, the U.S has donated an estimated $29 million in military aid to Nepal. According to critics, this aid led to the widening of the war and an increase in atrocities on both sides. While surely not Powell’s intent, this military aid also helped the Maoists gain new sympathizers, members and soldiers.

When she was 11 years old, Nepalese police killed Sita Kumari’s brother while he was harvesting potatoes. Quoted in the book When There Were No Men: Women in the Maoist Insurgency, Kumari’s story exemplifies how these attacks helped the party recruit members. “Yes my brother was killed. But we have 1000 brothers of the same kind. We will all come together and take revenge. We will not spare those responsible for our grief.” Before her brother's murder Sita Kumari was not a Maoist, nor were any of her family, however, after he was killed she became an ardent Maoist supporter and her two older brothers became Maoist insurgents.

Maoist military strategy dictates that the rural areas must come under party control before any action is taken in urban areas. After cities are surrounded by Maoist-supported communities, major military offensives on urban areas can take place. While limited-scale attacks took place in Kathmandu and other urban areas during the civil war, no full-scale military assault occurred. Instead, the party chose a different tactic: the CNP-M formed the All Nepalese Trade Union Federation (Revolutionary), and spoke to the needs of the urban working class.

As the party grew in both membership and legitimacy in cities and throughout the country, the CPN-M decided to re-enter the political sphere in January of 2008. It agreed to rejoin the government allowing Nepalese Maoist to be sworn in as cabinet ministers.

I had the opportunity to meet with a Maoist district leader (who wishes to remain nameless) and his second and third in command. All three have been members since the beginning of the civil war. All are in contact with Prachanda, the leader of the CPN-M and leader of People's Liberation Army (PLA), the military wing of CPN-M. All have served in the PLA in varying forms.

The first thing I was told during our meeting was that if I had any problems I should come to these men; that they were the security in the district. Nanda then told me of the soldiers who patrolled the mountains, going from village to village to ensure domestic peace and to record any grievances. These patrols are organized by the district leader and report directly to him. An hour before we arrived in one village, two soldiers passed through. These routine patrols have caught many unsuspecting trekking tourists by surprise, when the soldiers request a “donation.” The donations cost an average of three American dollars. For the three trekkers I met, the donation experience was not frightening. Of the three, two were issued receipts and one lied and said she had already paid. Maoists feel it is well within their rights to ask tourists for a modest amount for crossing their lands, since the Nepalese federal government charges 1,270 Rupees (20 American dollars) for trekking permits yet provide no services to the areas in return.

As we spoke, some villagers came to listen to our conversation. All showed the utmost respect for the PLA leaders. It was difficult to ascertain whether the respect came from fear or admiration.

“We are confident that we will win many seats,” the leader said. “Our country knows what is at stake and the sacrifices we have given in the name of justice.” While the leader sounded very confident, most prognosticators at the time did not believe the Maoists had a chance at becoming the ruling party in Nepal. “We are on a path of peace, and we feel that this election will serve to prove to the people of Nepal our party is serious about its commitment to peace and democracy.” On that note the three men stood up, gave the Maoist salute and walked off into the valley.

The next day while trekking, I met the CPN-M’s third ranking member, Dubar. He remembered me from the day before and affably invited me to his village for tea. I agreed and we hiked to his village where he put on tea and introduced me to his family. This took longer than one might expect due to the fact that the entire village was in some way related to him. After the introductions, he turned to me and said, “This is the face of Maoism in Nepal.” He took great pride in his village and their accomplishments. He was eager to show me that a few of the younger villagers could speak some English.

I attempted to ask Dubar more about the upcoming elections and the future of his party, but he preferred to discuss politics in my country. He was very excited to hear how communism was progressing in Canada. I explained to him how the New Democratic Party was most popular socialist party in Canada, amassing 17.4 per cent of the popular vote, and that both Communist Parties do not receive one per cent. He was shocked but still in high spirits. His face brimmed with hope and enthusiasm when he asked, “What does average Canadian think of us Maoists? What we have accomplished?” I did not have the heart to tell him that the average Canadian knows virtually nothing about Nepalese Maoists, or that the only way that the average Canadian hears about the Nepalese Maoist movement is when government troops die or when police stations are raided. Instead I told him simply that the movement receives little attention in Canada.

Villager in Nepal

Rural Nepal

Honk Kong pirate radio station gets OK from High Court

Michael Lithgow — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:57:44 +0000

pirate2.jpg

The Hong Kong government's attempt to shut down pirate radio broadcaster Citizen's Radio was scuttled in a recent decision of the Hong Kong High Court. In the decision, the Court stated that it did not see how the station's broadcasting could jeopardize public safety.

In a complicated ongoing legal battle, the Hong Kong government had sought to extend an injunction preventing the station from going to air. Citizen's Radio argued that denial of their application for a license violated their freedom of expression.

The unlicensed broadcasts were started in 2005 by a group of pro-democracy activists after their application for a license was denied by the Broadcasting Authority. The station airs phone-ins and discussions about current events and politics, including discussions about Hong Kong's transition to full democracy. In 2006, the station was raided by state agents, members were arrested and equipment confiscated.

After resuming broadcasts, the station got under official skin once again in May 2007 after legendary democracy activist, Szeto Wah, was interviewed about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. After the interview, Wah was charged with "knowingly becoming involved in the use of unlicensed communications equipment in order to transmit radio signals."

Citizen's Radio broadcasts on 102.8 FM from a tiny 150 square foot studio in a warehouse district in Mongok. They also distribute programming from their website.

Demonstrators Disrupt Bernier's First Speech in Quebec as Foreign Minister

dru — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:12:12 +0000

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One by one, protesters stood up to interrupt recently appointed foreign minister Maxime Bernier during a speech urging support for the occupation of Afghanistan.

Press accounts in both French and English called it a "baptism of fire" for Bernier.

Radio-Canada has video.

Toronto Star correspondent Allan Woods couldn't make the drive from Ottawa, and ended up publishing quotes from the transcript that was sent to him. He probably got home early enough to watch it on TV.

Mark Mackinnon's New Cold War

dru — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:48:21 +0000

Canada, the US and democracy promotion in the former Soviet republics

Mark Mackinnon's new book opens with a tale of two large buildings blown up by terrorists. The president, until then an unremarkable leader with deep ties to the country's secretive intelligence agency, seizes on the tragedy by launching a war against the terrorists. Suddenly popular for his decisive strikes, the president sends troops to a small Muslim country that had been occupied, then abandoned by previous administrations. He uses the urgency of war as a pretext for consolidating power, naming his lackeys to key positions. The "oligarchs" of the country, Mackinnon writes, proceeded to set up a system of "managed democracy," where the illusion of choice and a popular longing for stability cover up the fact that fundamental decisions are made in an undemocratic fashion and power remains concentrated in the hands of the few.

Mackinnon, who is currently the Middle East bureau chief for the Globe and Mail, is of course talking about Russia, and its president, ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin--though if Mackinnon notices parallels with another country, he doesn't say so. The Muslim country is Chechnya and the terrorist attacks were against two apartment buildings in the town of Ryazan, 200km southeast of Moscow. Questions were raised about KGB involvement.

Mackinnon's book is The New Cold War: Revolutions, Rigged Elections and Pipeline Politics in the Former Soviet Union.

Almost without exception, Canadian reporters find it a lot easier to cut through PR spin and official lies when they're covering foreign governments--especially when those governments are seen as rivals of Canada or its close partner, the US. But when the subject is closer to home, their critical acumen suddenly wilts.

Mackinnon suffers from this common affliction less than most reporters. One gets the sense that it's a conscious choice, but still a tentative one.

Over the last seven years, the US State Department, the Soros Foundation and several partner organizations have orchestrated a series of "democratic revolutions" in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. And, during those years, each "revolution," whether attempted or successful, has been portrayed by journalists as a spontaneous uprising of freedom-loving citizens receiving inspiration and moral support from their brothers and sisters in the West.

Evidence that this support also involved hundreds of millions of dollars, meddling with choices of candidates and changes to foreign and domestic policies has been widely available. And yet, for the last seven years, this information has been almost entirely suppressed.

Perhaps the most glaring evidence of suppression came when the Associated Press (AP) ran a story on December 11, 2004--at the height of the "Orange Revolution"--noting that the Bush Administration had given $65 million to political groups in Ukraine, though none of it went "directly" to political parties. It was "funneled," the report said, through other groups. Many media outlets in Canada--notably the Globe and Mail and the CBC--rely on the AP, but none ran the story. On the same day, CBC.ca published four other stories from the AP about Ukraine's political upheaval, but did not see fit to include the one that tepidly investigated US funding.

Similarly, books by William Robinson, Eva Golinger and others have exposed US funding of political parties abroad, but have not been discussed by the corporate press.

Canada's role went unreported until two and a half years later, when--coinciding with the release of The New Cold War--the Globe and Mail finally saw fit to publish an account, written by Mackinnon. The Canadian embassy, Mackinnon reported, "spent a half-million dollars promoting 'fair elections' in a country that shares no border with Canada and is a negligible trading partner." Canadian funding of election observers had been reported before, but the fact that the money had been only a part of an orchestrated attempt to influence elections had not.

For reasons that remain obscure, the editors of the Globe decided, after seven years of silence, to allow Mackinnon to tell the public about what Western money has been up to in the former Soviet Union. Perhaps they were influenced by Mackinnon's choice to write a book about the topic; perhaps it was decided that it was time to let the cat out of the bag.

It's a fascinating account. Mackinnon starts in Serbia in 2000, where the West, after funding opposition groups and "independent media" that provided a constant stream of coverage critical of the government--as well as dropping 20,000 tonnes of bombs on the country--finally succeeded in toppling the last stubborn holdout against neoliberalism in Europe.

Mackinnon describes in detail how Western funding--an effort spearheaded by billionaire George Soros--flowed to four principle areas: Otpor (Serbian for 'resistance'), a student-heavy youth movement that used grafitti, street theatre and non-violent demonstrations to channel negative political sentiments against the Milosevic government; CeSID, a group of election monitors that existed to "catch Milosevic in the act if he ever again tried to manipulate the results of an election"; B92, a radio station that provided a steady supply of anti-regime news and the edgy rock stylings of Nirvana and the Clash; and assorted NGOs were given funding to raise "issues"--which Mackinnon calls "the problems with the power-that-is, as defined by the groups' Western sponsors." The Canadian embassy in Belgrade, he notes, was a venue for many donor meetings.

Finally, disparate opposition parties had to be united. This was facilitated by then-US Secretary of State Madeline Albright and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who told opposition leaders not to run, but to join a "democratic coalition" with the relatively unknown lawyer Vojislav Kostunica as the sole opposition candidate for the presidency. The Western-funded opposition leaders, who didn't have a lot of say in the matter, agreed.

It worked. Kostunica won the vote, the election monitors quickly announced their version of the results, which were broadcast via B92 and other Western-sponsored media outlets, and tens of thousands poured into the streets to protest Milosevic's attempted vote-rigging in a demonstration led by the pseudo-anarchist group Otpor. Milosevic, having lost his "pillars of support" in the courts, police and bureaucracy, resigned soon after. "Seven months later," Mackinnon writes, "Slobodan Milosevic would be in The Hague."

The Serbian "revolution" became the model: fund "independent media," NGOs and election observers; force the opposition to unite around one selected candidate; and fund and train a spray-paint-wielding, freedom-loving group of angry students united by no program other than opposition to the regime. The model was used successfully in Georgia ("the Rose Revolution"), Ukraine ("the Orange Revolution") and unsuccessfully in Belarus, where denim was the preferred symbol. The New Cold War has chapters for each of these, and Mackinnon delves deep into the details of the funding arrangements and political coalitions built with Western support.

Mackinnon seems to harbour few illusions about the US exercise of power. His overall thesis is that, in the former Soviet Union, the US has used "democratic revolutions" to further its geopolitical interests; control of oil supply and pipelines, and the isolation of Russia, its main competitor in the region. He notes that in many cases--Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, for example--repressive regimes receive the hearty support of the US, while only Russian-allied governments are singled out for the democracy promotion treatment.

And while Mackinnon may be too polite to mention it, his account significantly contradicts the reporting regularly vetted by his editors and written by his colleagues. Milosevic, for example, is not the "Butcher of the Balkans" of Western media lore. Serbia was "not the outright dictatorship it was often portrayed in the Western media to be," Mackinnon writes. "In fact, it was more like an early version of the 'managed democracy' [of Putin's Russia]." He is frank about the effects of the bombing and sanctions on Serbia, which were devastating.

But in other ways, Mackinnon swallows the propaganda whole. He repeats the official NATO line on Kosovo, for example, neglecting to note that the US and others were funding drug-dealing autocratic militias like the Kosovo Liberation Army, the subject of many misleading, laudatory reports by Mackinnon's colleagues circa 2000.

More fundamentally, Mackinnon ignores the West's central role in the destabilization of Yugoslavia after its government balked at further implementation of IMF reforms that were already causing misery. Mackinnon experiences and discusses the phenomenon of destabilization-by-privatization in most of the countries he covers, but seems unable to trace it back to its common source, or see it as principle of US and European foreign policy.

Former Russian Politburo operative Alexander Yakovlev tells Mackinnon that Russia's politicians had "pushed the economic reforms too far, too fast" creating "a criminalized economy and state where residents came to equate terms like 'liberal' and 'democracy' with corruption, poverty and helplessness."

In one of the more dramatic moments in the book, the 82-year-old Yakovlev takes responsibility, saying: "We must confess that what is now going on is not the fault of those who are doing it... It's us who are guilty. We made some very serious errors."

In Mackinnon's world, the rapid dismantling and privatization of the state-run economy--which left millions in poverty and despair--is an explanation for the Russian and Belarussian peoples' love affair with strongman presidents who curb liberties, marginalize opposition, control the media and maintain stabilnost, stability. But somehow, the ideology behind the IMF-driven devastation doesn't make it into Mackinnon's analysis of the motivations behind "New Cold War."

Mackinnon notices the most literal US interests: oil and the Americans' fight for regional influence with Russia. But what escapes his account is the broader intolerance for governments that assert their independence and maintain the ability to direct their own economic development.

Energy and pipeline politics are a plausible explanation for the US's interest in the southern former Soviet republics. He might have added that the US used Georgia as a staging ground during the Iraq war. When it comes to Serbia, Mackinnon is forced to rely on an implausible account of NATO carrying out a moral mission to prevent genocide. The claim no longer makes any sense, given available evidence, but remains prevalent in the Western press.

Mackinnon mentions Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela in passing. In all of these places, attempts have been made to overthrow the governments. In Venezuela, a US-backed military coup was quickly overturned. In Haiti, a Canadian- and US-led coup resulted in a human rights catastrophe that is ongoing and recent elections confirmed that the party that was deposed remained more popular than the alternative presented by the economic elite. In Cuba, attempts to overthrow the government have been thwarted for half a century.

To explain these additional, more violent attempts at "regime change," it is not enough to cite the literal interests. Venezuela has considerable oil, but Cuba's natural resources do not make it a major strategic asset, and, by this standard, Haiti even less so. To explain why the US government provided millions of dollars to political parties, NGOs and opposition groups in these countries requires an understanding of neoliberal ideology and its origins in the Cold War and beyond.

This much would be evident if Mackinnon added some much-needed historical context to his account of modern-day methods of regime change. In his book Killing Hope, William Blum documents over 50 US interventions in foreign governments since 1945. History has shown these to be overwhelmingly anti-democratic, if not outright catastrophic. Even mild social-democratic reforms of government in tiny countries were overwhelmed by military attacks.

If true democracy involves self-determination--and at least the theoretical ability to refuse the dictates of the "Washington Consensus" or the IMF--then any evaluation of democracy promotion as the tool of US foreign policy has to reckon with this history. Mackinnon's account does not and remains almost resolutely ahistorical.

The last chapter of The New Cold War, entitled "Afterglow," is dedicated to evaluating the ultimate effects of democracy promotion in the former Soviet republics. It is Mackinnon's weakest chapter. Mackinnon limits himself to asking whether things are better now than before. The frame of the question lowers expectations and severely stunts the democratic imagination.

If one sets aside these considerations, then it is still possible for curiosity to get the better of the reader. Is it possible that good things can come even from cynical motivations? Liberal writers like Michael Ignatieff and Christopher Hitchens made similar arguments in support of the Iraq war and Mackinnon flirts with the idea when he wonders whether young activists in Serbia and Ukraine were using the US, or whether the US was using them.

So, did things get better? The information Mackinnon presents in his answer is extremely vague.

In Serbia, he says, life is much better. The revolution hasn't brought too many benefits to the daily lives of Serbs, a cab driver tells Mackinnon. However, he writes, "The era of gasoline shortages and of young men being sent off to fight for a 'Greater Serbia' was long past and the late-night laughter and music that spilled out of Belgrade's packed restaurants spoke to an optimism unheard of under the old regime."

In this and many other cases, Mackinnon buys a well-diffused propaganda line without looking at the facts. Straying from the meticulous detail he brings to his reporting of the ins and outs of democracy promotion, Mackinnon seems to believe that it was a diabolical scheme by Milosevic--and not economic sanctions or bombing and subsequent destruction of the bulk of Serbia's state-owned industrial infrastructure--that led to gasoline shortages. Mackinnon admonishes Serbs to face up to their role in the war, while letting NATO's bombing campaign, which left tonnes of depleted uranium, flooded the Danube with hundreds of tonnes of toxic chemicals, and incinerated 80,000 tonnes of crude oil (thus the gasoline shortages), off the hook.

In Georgia, Mackinnon again relies on nightlife in the capital city as an indicator of the country's democratic well-being. "The city bubbled with a sense that things were starting to move in the right direction...swish Japanese restaurants, Irish pubs and French wine bars were popping up on seemingly every corner." The leisure activities of the economic elite are just that; there are many ways to judge the well-being of a country, but to rely on the sights and sounds of well-heeled city dwellers enjoying themselves to the exclusion of other criteria is peculiar.

Mackinnon remarks in passing that the Western-backed regime of Saakashvili has resulted in "declining freedom of the press," but has "boosted the economy."

In Ukraine, "newspapers and television stations could and did criticize or caricature whomever they wanted," but the Western-backed free market ideologue Yuschenko made a series of blunders and unpopular moves, resulting in major electoral setbacks for his party a few years after the "revolution" that brought them to power.

Strangely, Mackinnon's sources--other than the odd cab driver--seem to consist entirely of the people receiving funding from the West. Independent critics, apart from aging and deposed former politicians, are virtually nonexistent in his reporting.

Still, the question: did the West do good? In the final pages, Mackinnon is equivocal and even indecisive.

Some countries are "freer and thus better," but the Western funding has made it more likely for repressive regimes to crack down on would-be democratizing forces. In Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, he is critical of the lack of funds for democratic promotion, leaving local NGOs and opposition groups hanging. He attributes this inconsistency to arrangements where American needs are better served by repressive regimes. In other parts of the chapter, he finds democracy promotion as a whole to be problematic.

At one point, he comments that "the help that [US agencies] gave to political parties in countries like Ukraine would have been illegal had a Ukrainian NGO been giving such aid to the Democrats or Republicans." One also imagines that Canadians would not be impressed if Venezuela, for example, gave millions of dollars to the NDP. Indeed, the prospect seems as ridiculous as it is unlikely...and illegal.

Mackinnon's information suggests, though he does not say it outright, that associating the idea of "democracy" and its attendant freedoms with Western funding and US-led meddling in the governance of countries is likely to undermine legitimate grassroots efforts at democratization. For example, dissidents in Russia tell Mackinnon that when they gather to demonstrate, people often look at them spitefully and ask who is paying them to stand in the street. In one case, Mackinnon points out that a report from an authoritarian government claiming that dissidents are pawns of the West is dead-on.

Mackinnon's assessment does not follow this evidence to its conclusion; he doesn't stray from the view that alignment with either the US or Russia are the only options for countries in the region.

While alignment with one empire or another may seem to be inevitable, Mackinnon's implicit Russia-or-US manicheanism obviates other ways of promoting democracy. Mackinnon ignores, for example, a decades-long tradition of grassroots solidarity with democratic forces in countries--predominantly in Latin America--where dictators were often financially backed and armed by the US government. Such movements were usually limited to curbing excessive repression rather than sponsoring democratic revolutions, but this lack of power can be attributed, at least in part, to the lack of media coverage from mainstream journalists like Mackinnon.

If one is concerned with democratic decision-making, then surely one is also concerned with the ability of countries to make decisions independently of the meddling of foreign powers. Mackinnon also does not address how such independence might be brought about. One can speculate that it would involve preventing the aforementioned meddling.

The New Cold War is notable for its thorough account of the internal workings of democracy promotion and the point of view of those receiving the funding. Those looking for an analysis that bring such a thorough accounting to its actual aims and effects, however, will have to look elsewhere.

New Cold War

Orange Revolution

Les Talibans regagne la faveur des Afghans

hillarybain — Sun, 13 May 2007 11:30:13 +0000

À Kandahar, où l’insécurité règne, les américains perdent peu à peu le soutien de la population

Quiconque tient à la vie évite de sortir le soir à Kandahar. Dans cette ville, véritable coupe-gorge, les chances de survie diminuent au coucher du soleil.

Subissant quotidiennement cette situation d’insécurité, la population s’exaspère et désigne les coupables. Plus de cinq ans après les promesses de paix, de prospérité et de liberté, nombreux sont ceux qui souhaitent le retour des Talibans.

« Les États-unis se disent démocratiques, modernes et possesseur du savoir, mais ils nous mystifient de tant de manières. Comment pouvons-nous leur pardonner ? », s’indigne Faiz Mohammed Karigar, un résident de Kandahar.

« Si je m’assois à une table avec un Américain et il me dit qu’il nous a apporté la liberté, je vais lui répondre qu’il nous a trompé : “ Tu ne nous a pas apporté la liberté “. »

Alors que le monde commence à prendre la pleine mesure de l’horreur en Irak, l’Afghanistan sombre dans le même bourbier infernal. Chaque semaine, la liste des morts s’allonge dans une guerre que le Premier ministre du Canada, Stephen Harper, considère sur le point d’être remportée.

« Quand les Talibans étaient ici, je me suis enfui jusqu’à la frontière iranienne, mais je n’ai jamais été inquiet pour ma famille », assure M. Karigar. « Chaque minute durant les trois dernières années, j’ai été très inquiet. Peut-être les Américains vont venir chez moi ce soir, toucher ma femme, toucher mes enfants et m’arrêter. »

« J’ai déjà décidé de me tenir debout, de les affronter. Je vais me dresser contre eux même si je les vois dans la rue. Je vais me battre contre eux avec ma langue, avec mes mains, avec des fusils. Je vais me battre contre eux de toutes les manières possibles. »

C’est au sud, dans la province de Kandahar, que le mouvement Taliban est né, et c’est là qu’il est revenu à la vie, régénéré par la colère des Afghans envers les troupes étrangères.

Quand le Mollah Mohammed Omar était au pouvoir, les Afghans pouvaient marcher en sécurité dans la rue, tant qu’ils souscrivaient à l’interprétation stricte de la Loi islamique. Maintenant, une simple sortie au marché est risquée.

« C’est exact, [le président Hamid] Karzai en appelle toujours à la démocratie et assure que tout va bien, mais ce ne sont que des mots », proteste Maria Farah, une mère de cinq enfants. « Si vous rencontrez des femmes, leurs visages sont très tristes. Je ne dis pas seulement deux ou trois femmes. Tous nos visages sont très tristes. Si vous allez dans les maisons, vous verrez la même expression sur le visage des maris car ils n’arrivent pas à trouver d’emploi et s’inquiètent pour la sécurité et l’avenir des enfants. »

« Je ne peux seulement parler de la ville de Kandahar. Je crois que la vie sous les Talibans était très bonne. Si nous n’avions pas le ventre plein, nous pouvions au moins obtenir un peu de nourriture et puis aller dormir. Si nous sortions quelque part, il n’y avait aucun problème », ajoute-t-elle.

« Qu’en est-il maintenant ? Si nous sortons, nous ne savons pas si nous rentrerons à la maison sain et sauf. S’il y a une explosion et que les Américains passent par là, ils vont ouvrir le feu sur tout le monde. Les problèmes de sécurité sont considérables ici. Si une personne roule sur l’autoroute, elle sera arrêtée et décapitée. Si les femmes sortent de la maison la nuit tombée, les gens les regardent avec de la haine dans les yeux. »

La femme de 33 ans termine notre conversation par une simple requête : « Demandez à [George W.] Bush de venir ici une seule fois pour rencontrer des femmes qui veulent lui arracher la peau ».

Peu de temps après leur arrivée à Kandahar, au milieu des années 1990, les Talibans ont apporté la paix à une région jusque là dirigée par des seigneurs de guerre rivaux.

Aujourd’hui, c’est une des régions les plus dangereuses du pays ; les violences politique et criminelle y répandent la peur à travers la population. Dans cette province du sud, les quelques 2 500 soldats canadiens font face aux attaques-suicides, aux échanges de coups de feu et aux bombardements routiers de plus en plus fréquents. Les pertes en vies humaines augmentent dans les deux camps armés.

Mais quelle que soit la cause réelle des effusions de sang, les Afghans blâment presque toujours les soldats étrangers et les forces de sécurité locales. Un grand nombre d’entre eux considèrent la présence des États-Unis dans leur pays comme une occupation militaire, ne faisant souvent peu ou pas de distinction entre les différentes nations engagées dans la mission dirigée par l’OTAN.

« Peu importe si une route a été construite », commente Haji Abdul Rahman, un aîné tribal. « Si vous construisez une route et tuez en même temps, quel est le bénéfice ? »

« Tout le monde est voleur. Je te garantis que si tu t’assois dans ma voiture et que je t’emmène faire un tour, aucun Taliban ne va te prendre. Mais je ne peux rien te garantir de la police. Si on t’arrête, on va te voler ton argent et ta caméra. »

Son ami, Abdul Hamid, partage ses inquiétudes. Ses six fils sont sans emploi et il croit que le jihad est la seule possibilité d’avenir pour l’Afghanistan.

« La situation est bien pire que la période d’occupation russe », dit l’homme de 71 ans. « À cette époque, peut-être étions-nous inquiets qu’un missile s’écrase sur notre maison, mais nous n’avions pas peur qu’ils viennent eux-mêmes dans notre maison. »

« Un de mes fils voulait se joindre aux militaires. L’idée ne me plaisait pas. Je lui ai dit que notre pays est détraqué, que tout le monde est voleur et qu’il faut se tenir debout et se battre pour la vérité. »

Panjwayi est une place forte des Talibans dans l’ouest de la province de Kandahar. En mai dernier, les forces menées par les États-Unis ont attaqué par voie aérienne les présumés insurgés du district.

Les officiels américains ont annoncé la mort de 80 militants, mais les villageois présents sur les lieux affirment que nombre de victimes étaient des civils.

Mawlawi Abdul Hadid, un homme de 45 ans, affirme que dix-huit membres de sa famille ont péri lors du raid. Selon lui, une petite fille de deux ans figurait sur la liste de la trentaine de victimes innocentes.

« Au début, vous n’aviez qu’un ennemi. Puis vous vous en êtes fait deux, puis trois, et maintenant moi aussi je me lève contre vous », déclare-t-il. « Vous avez fait de moi votre ennemi et je vais me lever contre vous. »

« Les Talibans sont les fils de ce pays : mon fils est un Talib et ton fils est un Talib », ajoute M. Hadid en faisant des gestes vers un autre homme.

« Les Talibans se battent pour nos droits, l’humanité et la vérité. Jour après jour les Américains perdent des appuis et beaucoup de gens soutiennent désormais les Talibans. »

Quand on lui demande combien de temps va prendre la défaite les soldats étrangers, M. Hadid donne une réponse qu’on entend de plus en plus à travers l’Afghanistan.

« Dans l’Islam, nous ne savons pas ce qui va arriver demain », dit-il. « Mais nous savons une chose : Dieu les a amenés ici, et Dieu les fera partir. »

Traduit par Loca Noregreb

Afghanistan

The needs of Nepal overshadowed by the UN’s guise for peace and security.

dru — Thu, 10 May 2007 00:35:00 +0000

nepal.large.jpg

By Amy Miller [1] and Mahmood ALI [2]

The world hasn’t been paying attention to Nepal lately. Why would they? As the plan of action seems to go for the Goliath International Institution, the UN comfortably settled into the poor South Asian country last year ready to play its usual role of peace broker, supplier and judge and the global gaze moved on to newer, more exciting stories. The few stories that we can read are often published from New Delhi, and follow the UN line.

The US has Returned Fundamentalism to Afghanistan

dru — Mon, 07 May 2007 01:42:32 +0000

Afghan MP speaks about the US-backed warlords currently in power

The following is a transcript of the speech given by Malalai Joya, member of the Afghan Parliament, given at the University of Los Angeles on Tuesday April, 10th:

In the name of Democracy and Peace –

Dear friends, first of all I extend my deep regards and thanks to the friends in the University of California to provide the opportunity for me to be here and share my point of view with you and inform you about the ongoing tragedy in my crying Afghanistan.

While the pro-democracy and anti-fundamentalists groups and individuals of Afghanistan are being marginalized, suppressed and silenced, you give a helping hand to me as a small voice of my suffering people to speak about the crisis in Afghanistan and terrible conditions of its people. You in fact play your role in raising awareness on what is going on in my devastated country.

Respected friends, over five years passed since the US-led attack on Afghanistan. Probably many of you are not well aware of the current conditions of my country and expect me to list the positive outcomes of the past years since the US invasion. But I am sorry to tell you that Afghanistan is still chained in the fetters of the fundamentalist warlords and is like an unconscious body taking its last breath.

The US government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the “Northern Alliance”, which is made up of the sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, and are as dark-minded, evil, and cruel as the Taliban.

The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation of Afghanistan, but the US and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our wounded land.

Today the Northern alliance leaders are the key power holders and our people are hostage in the hands of these ruthless gangs of killers. Many of them are responsible for butchering tens of thousands of innocent people in the past 2 decades but are in power and hold key positions in the government.

Let me list few of the key power-holders of Afghanistan:

Karim Khalili, the vice-president, is leader of a pro-Iran party called Wahdat, responsible for killing thousands of innocent people, and named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal.
Ismael Khan, another killer warlord and lackey of the Iranian regime is the minister of water and power.
Izzatullah Wasifi, Afghanistan’s anti-corruption chief has been a convicted drug trafficker who has spent around 4 years in a Nevada state prison in the US.
General Mohammed Daoud, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister in charge of the anti-drug effort, is a former warlord and famous drug-trafficker.
Rashid Dostum, the chief of staff of the Afghan army, is a heartless killer and warlord, named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal.
Qasim Fahim, former defense minister and now a Senator and adviser to Mr. Karzai is the most powerful warlord of the Northern Alliance, and accused of war crimes.

And this list has hundreds of men on it, including Sayyaf, Ulomi, Golabzoi, Rabbani, Qanooni, Mohaqiq, Mullah Rocketi, etc. They should all be removed from power and put on trial for war crimes. In fact all the major institutions in Afghanistan are occupied by warlords and drug-lords. How can we talk about democracy when our legislative, judicial and executive bodies are infected with the viruses of fundamentalism and drug mafia?

Many freedom-loving individuals and groups in Afghanistan had long ago warned that bringing the criminal “Northern Alliance” back into power by the US government will pose a danger to Afghanistan. But today, most governments and world institutions accept that Afghanistan is a failed state which is heading toward disaster.

Afghans are deeply fed-up with the current situation and every day that passes they turn against the government, the foreign troops and the warlords. And the Taliban make use of it to increase their influence and acts of terror. Countries like Pakistan, Iran, Russia etc. are also meddling in Afghanistan for their own interests.

The U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in a recent report: “…Afghans are frustrated with their economic situation… They suffer from unsteady employment and economic insecurity, and are turning to illicit and illegal activity, such as corruption and opium production…the Taliban has become an alternative source of employment, recruiting the jobless as foot soldiers in the insurgency.”

In such a situation when a bunch of killers are in power, life cannot be easy for our unfortunate people. I would like to describe the tip of the iceberg on the reality of life in my bleeding Afghanistan:

Seven hundred children and 50-70 women die on a daily basis because of a lack of health services. Infant and maternal mortality rates are still very high — 1,600 to 1,900 women among each 100,000 die during childbirth. Life expectancy is less than 45 years.

The number of suicide cases by Afghan women was never as high as it is today: A month ago eighteen year old Samiya, hung herself by a rope because she was to be sold to a sixty year old man. Another woman called Bibi Gul locked herself up in the animals’ stable and burned herself to death. Later her family found nothing except her bones.

The study by the governmental agency Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission shows a marked increase in reported cases: Two years ago in Farah province, there were 15 cases of women burning themselves reported, but the number jumped to 36 in the first six months of 2006. Kandahar province had 74 cases two years ago and 77 cases in the first six months of the past year. But the real numbers are much higher.

According to a UNIFEM survey, 65% of the 50,000 widows in Kabul see suicide as the only option to get rid of their misery. UNIFEM estimates that at least one out of three Afghan women has been beaten, forced into sex or otherwise abused.

The gang-rape of young girls and women by warlords belonging to the “Northern Alliance” still continues especially in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. People have staged mass protests a number of times but no one cares about their sorrow and tears. Only a few of the rape cases find their way into the media. One shocking case was that of 11 year old Sanobar, the only daughter of an unfortunate widow who was abducted, raped and then exchanged for a dog by a warlord. In a land where human dignity has no price, the vicious rapist of a poor girl still acts as district chief.

The Taliban continue their fascism in the eastern parts of Afghanistan where the government has no control. They carry out public executions and kidnappings. When some days ago an Italian journalist and his Afghan translator and driver were kidnapped, the Afghan government made a deal with them and released five Taliban leaders from prison so the Italian journalist was freed. But no one cared for the fate of the two innocent Afghans and both of them were beheaded by the Taliban.

A report by Human Rights Watch about war criminals in Afghanistan and the hanging of Saddam Hussein scared many Afghan criminals and now they are trying to block any efforts for their prosecution. Last month the warlord MPs, under the name of “national reconciliation” passed a bill in the parliament based on which no one can file a case or prosecute anyone for committing war crimes in the past 25 years.

I and a few other MPs raised our voices against it but as the fundamentalist warlords hold over 80% of the seats, the bill was easily approved. This bill will now provide amnesty to all criminals.

But Afghan people who have suffered terribly in the past 3 decades consider this bill an abuse against them. According to a survey conducted by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission over 80% of Afghan people want to prosecute those responsible for past crimes and brutalities and see it as the only way to experience a bright future in Afghanistan.

Even Mr. Karzai signed this disgusting bill which is regarded as a joke and abuse to the millions of Afghans who have suffered and lost their loved ones and were waiting for the day of justice. Meanwhile the killers forgave their own crimes and live without fear. Such bills officially sanction further brutalities and human rights violations against our defenseless people.

The story of Afghanistan’s reconstruction is painful: After 5 years you cannot see any serious reconstruction projects. Billions of dollars of aid has been looted by the warlords, corrupt NGOs, the UN and government officials. Afghanistan still stands 175th out of 177 countries in the UN Human Development Index and the rate of unemployment is over 40%.

The so-called “freedom of speech” in Afghanistan is another joke with our people. Let me describe my own recent experience: In early February this year, during the passage of the infamous bill of amnesty for war criminals in the parliament, I had an interview with a local TV channel; they had interviewed some other people including Sayyaf, who is a wanted criminal and member of the parliament.

The TV station broadcast an advertisement for the program a number of times in which they showed some parts of my interview. After this Sayyaf himself called the TV station and threatened them that if Joya’s interview was broadcast the consequences would be dangerous for the director. So they resorted to censorship and excluded me from the program. And this is not the first time that I have been censored in the media. Many journalists are too afraid to report my comments.

Last year the UN announced that Afghanistan under US troops could become a narco-state but today no one has any doubt that it has been changed into a mafia-state when Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s supply of opium. High-ranking officials like ministers and deputy ministers etc. have links to the drugs mafia. And all of it happens under the very noses of the thousands of foreign troops.

A mafia system is in place in Afghanistan. The US backed president Karzai and his westernized intellectuals have joined hands with fundamentalists of all brands to impose this mafia system on our people. This is the main reason for today’s problems in the deadlocked Afghanistan. Those who speak for justice are threatened with death.

My voice is always being silenced even inside the parliament and once I was physically attacked by pro-warlord and drug-lord MPs in the parliament just for speaking the truth. One of them even shouted “prostitute, take her and rape her!” Despite hating guns, I need to live under the protection of armed bodyguards to survive.

President Hamid Karzai, instead of relying on people to bring the criminal warlords to trial, appoints these criminals to higher posts. Due to his criminal-fostering policies, the people of Afghanistan hate him as someone equally responsible for the current catastrophe. Even the CIA admitted in its report recently that he has lost the people’s support and has no control outside of Kabul.

The Afghan government is the most corrupt and unpopular in the world. In a March 2007 survey conducted by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, it was revealed that about 60 percent of Afghans think the current administration is more corrupt than any other in the past two decades.

It is due to this tragic situation that returning to Afghanistan is still an unattractive option for the 4 million Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan and many more still trying to flee the country.

Dear friends, in 2001 the US government announced that it has learned from its past mistakes of supporting the fundamentalists in Afghanistan and will not repeat them. But the agonizing truth is that the US is committing the same mistakes. It is generously supporting the fundamentalists more than ever.

Besides supporting the bands of the Northern Alliance, underground efforts are going on to include some elements of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the government. The US included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on its list of most wanted terrorists, yet his party was allowed to have 34 members in the Afghan parliament, which was elected in an un-democratic and fraudulent election. I have announced a number of times that the US administration has no problem working with pro-American terrorists, but oppose only anti-American terrorists. This is the reason that our people make a mockery of the “war on terror”.

I fully agree with Kathy Gannon, an expert in Afghanistan, that “the US is not interested in peace in Afghanistan. The people who killed thousands, who patronized the drug business are in charge of the country.”

Dear friends, the US is not concerned with the suffering and disastrous conditions of our people; it is in the US’s strategic and economic interests to put our people in danger as long as its own regional interests are met. That is why our people do not consider the US a “liberator” of our country. The US invaded Afghanistan under the name of human rights and democracy but today we are as far from these values as were 5 years ago. However, since 2001 the death toll of innocent civilians as a result of the so-called “war on terror” is five times the number killed in the 9/11 tragedy.

I hope you have realized from the small taste of the problems that I just shared, that my country is still in the chains of bloody and terrorist fundamentalists. The situation in Afghanistan and the conditions of its ill-fated women will never change positively, as long as the warlords are not disarmed and both the pro-US and anti-US terrorists are not removed from the political scene of Afghanistan.

It is a clear and proven fact that no nation can donate liberation to another nation. Liberation is not money to be donated; it should be achieved in a country by the people themselves. The ongoing developments in Afghanistan and Iraq prove this claim. People of other countries only can give us a helping hand and support.

I think that the people of the US can play a great role to put pressure on their policy-makers to stop its wrong policies in Afghanistan and value the wishes of our people. I should say that unlike its government, the people of the US are great, caring and peace-loving, so the democratic-minded elements of Afghanistan can count on your support and solidarity.

The people of the US must help poor Afghan people and its democratic-minded individuals and groups, who are currently defeated and under much pressure. This is the only correct policy that can help Afghan people and guarantee a bright future for us. Unlike the US administration, the true friends of Afghan people must care about the voices of our men and women for justice; they should realize that the existence of fundamentalist groups of any brand as political and military forces, is the main cause of all the problems in Afghanistan. They should know that bringing the Northern Alliance to power was the key to all the disasters that we are experiencing today.

I am well aware of the hardships, challenges, and prospects of death from anti-democratic forces. But I trust my people and enjoy their full support and encouragement. The enemies of my people have weapons, political power and the support of the US government to suppress me. But they can never silence my voice and hide the truth. I am proud to be a beacon of hope for my people and enjoy strong support from them in my mission for democracy and freedom.

Your show of solidarity and support gives me more power and determination to fight the enemies of democracy and humanity in my devastated Afghanistan. You can give me a helping hand by providing moral support and your generous donations so that I can continue and expand my work for the benefit of the desperate and sorrowful women of Afghanistan.

The fundamentalists are counting their days to kill me, but I believe in and follow the noble saying of the freedom-loving Iranian writer Samad Behrangi:

“Death could very easily come now, but I should not be the one to seek it. Of course if I should meet it and that is inevitable, it would not matter. What matters is whether my living or dying has had any effect on the lives of others…”

Thank you. ---

Malalai Joya is Afghanistan’s youngest and most out-spoken parliamentarian. She has openly criticized the US-backed warlords that dominate the Afghan parliament. In return, she has received a continuous stream of death threats. At the age of 28, Malalai has survived 4 assassination attempts. Recently a documentary profiling her, Enemies of Happiness, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Malalai Joya is on a brief US speaking tour. For more information about Malalai Joya, please visit www.malalaijoya.com.

Malalai Joya at McGill University

Malalai Joya at McGill University 2

Stanley goes to Kandahar

dru — Wed, 02 May 2007 18:19:02 +0000

cup-cp-2893471.jpg

The Stanley Cup is in Afghanistan, visiting the troops. And helping fight off the hordes of the east, specifically Persia, no doubt.

Kandahar Faces Daily Misery

dru — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:46:44 +0000

"You did not bring us freedom," say residents of Afghanistan's southern province

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN --Anyone who values their life tries to avoid going out after dark in Kandahar. This place is a death trap at the best of times and the odds of survival plummet with the sun.

Security is almost non-existent here. More than five years after they were promised peace, prosperity and liberty, many now want the Taliban to come back.

“The Americans say they are democratic, modern and know everything, but they fuck us in so many different ways,” Faiz Mohammed Karigar, a local resident said. “How can we forgive them? How can we forgive the Americans?

“If I sit at a table with an American and he says he has brought us freedom, I will tell him he has fucked us. 'You did not bring us freedom.'”

As the world starts to acknowledge the full horror of the present state of Iraq, Afghanistan slips towards the same state. With each passing week the list of the dead grows in a war Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists is being won.

“When the Taliban were here I escaped to the border of Iran, but I was never worried about my family,” Karigar told me. “Every single minute of the last three years I have been very worried. Maybe tonight the Americans will come to my house, touch my wife, touch my children and arrest me.

“I have already decided to stand against them. I will stand against them even when I see them on the road. I will fight them with my tongue, my hands, with guns – I will fight them in any way I can.”

The southern province of Kandahar is where the Taliban movement was born and it is here that it has come back to life, resuscitated by the widespread anger Afghans feel towards the foreign troops in their midst.

When Mullah Mohammed Omar was in power people could walk the streets safely as long as they complied with a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Now a simple outing to the market is a risk.

“That’s right, [President Hamid] Karzai is always shouting about democracy and saying everything is fine, but it’s just words,” Maria Farah, mother of five, said. “If you meet women their faces are very sad. I don’t just mean two or three women; all our faces are very sad. And if you go to houses you will see the same faces on husbands as well because they cannot get jobs, they worry about security and they worry about their children.

“I can only talk about Kandahar city. I think life under the Taliban was very good. If we did not have a full stomach we could at least get some food and go to sleep. If we went out somewhere there were no problems,” she continued.

“How about now? If we go out we don’t know if we will arrive home or not. If there is an explosion and the Americans are passing they will just open fire on everyone. The security problems are too much here. If someone is driving on the highway they will be stopped and beheaded. If women leave the house when it is getting dark people look at them with a hatred in their eyes.”

The 33-year-old finished our conversation with a simple request.

“Ask [George W.] Bush to come here once and meet with women who want to tear his skin off,” she said.

Soon after the Taliban first surfaced in Kandahar during the mid 1990s they brought peace to an area previously ruled by rival warlords.

Today this is one of the most dangerous places in the country, with political and criminal violence spreading fear among the population. There are approximately 2,500 Canadian troops based here and casualties on all sides are mounting, with suicide attacks, firefights and roadside bombings increasingly common in the southern province.

But whatever the real cause of the bloodshed, Afghans almost always blame the foreign soldiers and local security forces. Many of them simply regard this as a US occupation, often seeing little or no difference between the various countries that make up the NATO-led mission.

“Forget that a road has been built,” Haji Abdul Rahman, a tribal elder, said. “If a road has been built and you are killed, what good is it?

“Everyone is a robber. I guarantee if you sit in my car and we go for a drive no Taliban will take you away. But I cannot guarantee you [the same] about the police. If they stop you they will steal your money and your camera.”

His friend, Abdul Hamid, shared similar concerns. All of his six sons are unemployed and he believes jihad is he only way forward for Afghanistan.

“It’s much, much worse than when the Russians were here,” the 71-year-old said. “At that time maybe we were scared a rocket would land on our house, but we were not scared of them coming into our house.

“One of my sons wanted to join the military. I was not happy about that. I told him this country is fucked up, everyone is a robber and you have to make a stand and fight for the truth.”

Panjwayi is a Taliban stronghold in the west of Kandahar province. Last May US-led forces conducted an air strike on alleged insurgents in the district.

American officials claimed as many as 80 militants might have been killed, but villagers at the scene said a number of the casualties were civilians.

Mawlawi Abdul Hadid told me 18 members of his family died in the raid. He said 30 innocent people were killed in all, the youngest of them a two-year-old girl.

“In the beginning you had only one enemy. Then you made two, then three and now I also stand against you,” he declared. “You made me your enemy as well and I will stand against you.

“The Taliban are the sons of this country: my son is a Talib and your son is a Talib,” the 45-year-old added, gesturing towards another man in the room.

“The Taliban are fighting for our rights, they are fighting for humanity and they are fighting for the truth. Day by day the Americans are losing support, but lots of people support the Taliban.”

Asked how long it would take to defeat the foreign soldiers, Hadid gave the kind of response increasingly heard across Afghanistan.

“In Islam we don’t know what will happen tomorrow,” he said. “But one thing we do know is that God brought them here and God will take them away.”

Abdul Hamid and Haji Abdul Rahman

The Next Scandal

dru — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:58:22 +0000

So. It's been determined that Canada was sending Afghani POWs to be tortured. If true, it means that Canadian officers are guilty of war crimes.

But its also the case that Canadian soldiers are directly engaged in combat operations, undoubtedly resulting in civilian deaths. Which there is no doubt information about, but it's not available. The press seems content to repeat claims that "40 Taliban were killed" in fighting, and so on.

Ex Gratia?

dru — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 08:52:35 +0000

A Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU has resulted in a grim look at the killing done by US soldiers in Afghanistan, something which is rarely discussed.

Natually, Canadians are doing the same stuff, but that doesn't mean it will be discussed.

But someone could file an Access to Information Act request about Canada's "ex gratia" payments of no more than $2000 to the families of the people they kill.