Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban

By Aryn Baker Thursday, Jul. 29, 2010

The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Aisha's brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose.

This didn't happen 10 years ago, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. It happened last year. Now hidden in a secret women's shelter in Kabul, Aisha listens obsessively to the news. Talk that the Afghan government is considering some kind of political accommodation with the Taliban frightens her. "They are the people that did this to me," she says, touching her damaged face. "How can we reconcile with them?"

In June, Afghan President Hamid Karzai established a peace council tasked with exploring negotiations with the Taliban. A month later, Tom Malinowski from Human Rights Watch met Karzai. During their conversation, Karzai mused on the cost of the conflict in human lives and wondered aloud if he had any right to talk about human rights when so many were dying. "He essentially asked me," says Malinowski, "What is more important, protecting the right of a girl to go to school or saving her life?" How Karzai and his international allies answer that question will have far-reaching consequences, not only for Afghanistan's women, but the country as a whole.

As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. Such an outcome, it is assumed, would involve reconciliation with the Taliban. But Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined. "Women's rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved," says parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi.

Yet that may be where negotiations are heading. The Taliban will be advocating a version of an Afghan state in line with their own conservative views, particularly on the issue of women's rights. Already there is a growing acceptance that some concessions to the Taliban are inevitable if there is to be genuine reconciliation. "You have to be realistic," says a diplomat in Kabul. "We are not going to be sending troops and spending money forever. There will have to be a compromise, and sacrifices will have to be made."

For Afghanistan's women, an early withdrawal of international forces could be disastrous. An Afghan refugee who grew up in Canada, Mozhdah Jamalzadah recently returned home to launch an Oprah-style talk show in which she has been able to subtly introduce questions of women's rights without provoking the ire of religious conservatives. On a recent episode, a male guest told a joke about a foreign human-rights team in Afghanistan. In the cities, the team noticed that women walked six paces behind their husbands. But in rural Helmand, where the Taliban is strongest, they saw a woman six steps ahead. The foreigners rushed to congratulate the husband on his enlightenment — only to be told that he stuck his wife in front because they were walking through a minefield. As the audience roared with laughter, Jamalzadah reflected that it may take about 10 to 15 years before Afghan women can truly walk alongside men. But once they do, she believes, all Afghans will benefit. "When we talk about women's rights," Jamalzadah says, "we are talking about things that are important to men as well — men who want to see Afghanistan move forward. If you sacrifice women to make peace, you are also sacrificing the men who support them and abandoning the country to the fundamentalists that caused all the problems in the first place."

Source : www.time.com

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Kyrgyzstan: Not Washington's Crisis

By Doug Bandow on 6.17.10 @ 6:09AM
The scenes are sadly predictable. Ethnic conflict. Murdered innocents. Distressed refugees.

We have seen them all many times before around the world. But despite heart-felt pleas for Washington to do something, the Obama administration should keep the troops at home. The U.S. cannot afford another lengthy deployment in another distant and unstable client state.

Kyrgyzstan is one of the Central Asian Soviet republics that won independence when the Soviet Union dissolved. Kyrgyzstan's president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was overthrown in a popular uprising in early April. Some 84 people died in the violence and Bakiyev first fled south, where he retained political support, before going into exile in Belarus.

Bakiyev was an opposition leader when he led a similar uprising against his authoritarian predecessor Askar Akayev, tagged the "tulip revolution." Unfortunately, the tulips soon wilted. A month before he was forced from office the State Department reported:

[R]estrictions on citizens' right to change their government; arbitrary killing, torture, and abuse by law enforcement officials; impunity; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of judicial independence; pressure on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and opposition leaders, including government harassment; pressure on independent media; government detention of assembly organizers; authorities' failure to protect refugees adequately; pervasive corruption.

Few in the West mourned Bakiyev's ouster, though both the Bush and Obama administrations had generally overlooked his flaws in return for access to Manas airbase. Some American defenders of the Afghanistan war spoke darkly of Russian involvement in his overthrow, but the Kyrgyz people had ample reason to dump him.

Since then hope built that the interim administration of Roza Otunbayeva would adopt liberal reforms. A new constitution was to be voted on later in June and a parliamentary election was supposed to take place under that constitution in October.

Now all bets are off. After the uprising there were a series of violent incidents across the country, many Kyrgyz versus Uzbek. Last week in Osh, Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city, the "violence escalated into more extensive fighting, burning, killing, and expulsions," according to journalist Vicken Cheterian.

Officially nearly 200 are dead and 1,600 injured, though unofficial estimates run higher. Uzbeks have been the principal victims, though Tartars and ethnic Russians also have been targeted. Some 80,000 or so people fled across the border into neighboring Uzbekistan before that government closed the border. Thousands more have been prevented from crossing.

The police have been unable to contain the violence; in fact, in some towns Uzbeks accused the security forces of joining in the killing. So the government has mobilized the army. Unfortunately, that force has received no training in dealing with civil strife and there is no guarantee that, if deployed, it would escape ethnic division as well. Mobilization, warned Paul Quinn-Judge of the International Crisis Group, "seems to be another indication that the interim government is running short on options."

The government in Bishkek appealed to the U.S. for military aid, including rubber bullets and by some accounts, denied by the American embassy in Bishkek, troops. Then the Kyrgyz authorities asked Russia for peacekeeping troops. Interim president Otunbayeva said: "we need the arrival of outside forces to calm the situation down." Ousted President Bakiyev seemed to agree, telling a press conference that international peacekeepers were necessary to "bring the situation back to normal."

Both Washington and Moscow said no. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called the atmosphere in Kyrgyzstan "intolerable" but referred the issue to members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, made up of seven former Soviet states. The initial CSTO answer was to offer "comprehensive assistance," including military equipment, but not troops. However, Russian Nikolai Patrushev said that the meeting "did not rule out the use of any means that the CSTO has at its potential, depending on how the situation evolves."

The drumbeat immediately started for intervention. For example, Human Rights Watch proposed a UN-sponsored force, which almost certainly would include U.S. troops.

James Collins and Matthew Rojansky of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace want a joint NATO, CSTO, and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) force: "NATO and the U.S. must immediately engage with regional partners to help restore security." Moreover, "By holding out a hand not only to the Kyrgyz authorities, but to national regional partners, including the CSTO, and the OSCE, the United States and NATO can demonstrate the sincerity of their interest in regional security."

So far the Obama administration has said little. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley endorsed humanitarian assistance and said that "we seek a coordinated international response to the ongoing violence there."

However, the administration hasn't closed the door to military intervention. An unnamed administration official was quoted as saying: "if we get to the moment that unavoidably there has to be troops, we will be doing it in a cooperative way, not a zero-sum way. We'd like the international community to be fully invested and supportive if military intervention happens."

The question, of course, is why anyone in Washington would want to make such an investment.

The violence has at least temporarily ebbed, and Bishkek has withdrawn its request for foreign troops. But no one knows if this is the end of or merely a pause in the violence. Osh is now divided ethnically, as well-armed groups have fortified their respective enclaves. All the causes of the violent spasm remain.

Observers fear that the violence could spread to both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Cheterian calls the stakes "very high, for the country and the region alike." Carnegie's Collins and Rojansky go so far as to claim that the recent events in Kyrgyzstan "pose a defining challenge for mutual security in the Eurasian region as a whole."

Yet the strife, though ugly, is little different from that which routinely breaks out in unstable, divided countries around the world. And there are many potential sparks for violence in the region: drug trafficking, gang disputes, the activity of Islamic militants, squabbles over land or water rights, resistance to other authoritarian regimes, and arbitrary boundaries dividing ethnic groups.

So far the fighting is contained in Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan has given no indication that it is inclined to intervene to aid Kyrgyzstan's Uzbeks, which could lead to efforts to create a "greater Uzbekistan." Chaos in Kyrgyzstan could aid Islamic extremists, but all of the region's governments have trained all of their many tools of repression on this movement.

The fighting would have to be truly exceptional to threaten the stability of nearby states. And even if their stability was at risk, that would be of only modest geopolitical interest to major nations, most notably China (which Kyrgyzstan borders), Russia, and the far more distant U.S.

Collins and Rojansky suggest that neither Russia nor the U.S. "can afford to allow the violence there to destroy the vulnerable Kyrgyz state or plunge the region into a wider ethnic war." Yet America's only interest, other than humanitarian, in this obviously vulnerable state is the use of Manas airbase for supplying Afghanistan.

In fact, Manas sits in the north, well away from the fighting. Moreover, Washington knows that the facility, in operation in 2002, is vulnerable to local and regional politics. Last year the Bakiyev government announced that it planned to close the facility after the Russians increased their aid; Bishkek reversed itself after the U.S. agreed to treble its rental payments. Although the interim government said it planned no changes, there are no guarantees for the future. Intervening to save the base would be penny-wise and pound-foolish, especially since the unexpected and unpredictable consequences of acting also could threaten access to Manas.

History and geography give Moscow a much greater interest in Kyrgyzstan. It was part of the Soviet Union, is located close to Russia today, and contains some 750,000 ethnic Russians. Yet despite fears that Moscow is intent on reasserting its authority over the former constituent parts of the Soviet Union, there appears to be no enthusiasm in Moscow for intervening. "This is the last thing that Russia wants to do, get involved in a civil war in a failed state," said Sergei Karaganov, head of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow. A long-term force commitment there also would drain funds from a military modernization program already clipped by lower energy prices.

Washington should stay out of Kyrgyzstan, whether or not Kyrgyzstan's government renews its request for foreign troops. If all that was needed was a temporary garrison to separate potential combatants, then other nations could provide the personnel. The U.S. military is very busy elsewhere.

Unfortunately, a passive occupation probably wouldn't be enough. It would be necessary to resolve numerous deep-seated divisions to prevent a recurrence of violence. And that's not something Washington likely could do. As Russian President Medvedev noted, "all the problems of Kyrgyzstan have internal roots."

Strife between Uzbek and Kyrgyz killed hundreds in 1990 and was only put down with Soviet troops. But abstract ethnic differences were not the only spark for violence. Both Kyrgyz and Uzbeks are largely Muslim and speak a mutually understood Turkic language. Alexander A. Cooley of Columbia dismisses the "narrative of long-simmering ethnic tension."

Kyrgyz tend to be nomads, many of whom lack property while Uzbeks were farmers who have moved into a wider variety of commercial activities. Kyrgyz resentment against the more economically successful Uzbeks is high.

These divisions have spilled over into the political sphere. Many Uzbeks complain of discrimination and are pushing for broader political and cultural rights. Some members of the interim government blame local Uzbek extremists, including leader Kadyrzhan Batyrov, for their inflammatory rhetoric.

Many Uzbeks helped oust Bakiyev, who had used Kyrgyz nationalism to build support. But Bakiyev retained particularly strong support in the south among ethnic Kyrgyz. The interim government accuses him of stoking the violence, which he denies, but there is evidence of his son's involvement, and Bishkek is seeking the latter's extradition from Great Britain.

In short, if Washington intervened, it would have to assume complex nation-building as well as peacekeeping duties. And there is nothing to suggest that its occupation would be short. More than a decade later the U.S. still has troops in Kosovo, which remains a failed state-wannabe. Iraq's future is very much in doubt and American forces remain on station. No one would point to the Karzai government in Afghanistan as a model for anything.

And some people would have the Obama administration now try to fix Kyrgyzstan?

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Sea Blockade of Gaza Was 'Temporary' - 15 Years Ago

By Stuart Littlewood – London

I must have got it all wrong.

I thought the first duty of a government was to protect its citizens from assault while going about their lawful business.

"There is no greater priority, no more important responsibility than the safety of all our citizens..." Didn't our previous prime minister, Gordon Brown, say so?

To my way of thinking, that means protecting from armed thugs any British subjects sailing peacefully and lawfully on the high seas. The Israelis advertised their threats. The government had plenty of warning. So where was the Royal Navy?

Probably horsing around in the Gulf protecting foreigners who would rather be left alone. Or chasing pirates along the Somali coast. Or cruising the Caribbean showing the flag. Brown had also promised Royal Navy ships to thwart arms smuggling into Gaza, so if the flotilla was suspected of carrying arms you’d think jolly Jack Tar would have been on hand in a flash.

It seems our ships were just too busy on other chores like protecting Iraqis and Afghans to bother defending our own people from being murdered or abducted on their way through the Mediterranean on a noble humanitarian mission.

So new prime minister David Cameron fails his first test.

His foreign secretary William Hague told the House of Commons that he would stress to the Israeli Government the need for restraint “given that their actions appear to have gone beyond what was warranted or proportionate. We need to know whether more could have been done to minimise the risks, or to reduce the number of deaths and injuries."

Meaning that the assault would have been OK if less blood on the decks?

He also wanted the Israelis to observe UN Resolution 1860, which calls for “sustained delivery of humanitarian aid” and calls on states “to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation”. The fact that it has not happened, he said, was "a tragedy".

More than a tragedy – it’s a dereliction of duty on the part of Britain and the rest of the international community. Their cowardice and moral bankruptcy has allowed Israel to defy dozens of other UN Resolutions.

"We will therefore continue to press the Israeli Government to lift the closure of Gaza,” said Hague, “and plan early discussions with Israel as well as with our other international partners about what more can be done to ensure an unfettered flow of aid while also ensuring that aid reaches those who need it and is not abused."

Press away… There is only one way to “alleviate” the situation and that’s for the world’s navies to land supplies on Gaza’s beach.

Hague Ducks and Weaves

Sir Gerald Kaufman, the forthright Jewish MP, pointed out that any one of the 37 UK citizens might have been killed when the Israelis “committed a war crime of piracy in international waters, kidnapping and murder—and all in pursuit of upholding an illegal blockade on Gaza that amounts to collective punishment…” He asked Mr Hague for his assurance that further steps would be taken if the Israelis failed to comply with the modest request that had been made.

But Hague sidestepped, saying: "It is our strong advice to British nationals, as it has been in the past and will be in the future, not to travel to Gaza—let me make that absolutely clear—as they would be going into a dangerous situation, but it is absolutely wrong to maintain the blockade."

By advising us not to travel – now and in the future - and failing to take action to break the illegal blockade, he chickens out and hands the Israelis an amazing victory. They of course don't want witnesses crawling all over their major crime scene.

Jeremy Corbyn asked if it wasn’t time for sanctions such as revoking the EU-Israel trade agreement. Hague replied that he did not think imposing sanctions was the right policy. So no consequences.

Frank Dobson suggested that Britain and the other European members of NATO should give naval protection if another flotilla sets off for Gaza, with the Royal Navy reverting to its traditional role of protecting the freedom of the seas. Hague dismissed this too.

Does this mean that, after all that’s happened, we’re going to abandon the Rachel Corrie to her fate? She was too late to join the main flotilla and is steaming towards Gaza independently and due to reach Israel’s killing zone any day.

Mr Hague has been a Friend of Israel since his school days. Prime Minister David Cameron reminded MPs that he too counted himself a Friend of Israel. Why on earth do they and so many others in government champion a racist, rogue state? Why are they friends of Israel and not Palestine, not Lebanon, not Syria, not Iran? Why are they supportive of the Israeli government, who are proven terrorists, but hateful towards the democratically elected government of Gaza?

Should such people have their hands on the levers of power in Britain? In this new era of sleaze-free politics they owe us an explanation.

A Very Bad Smell

Which brings us to the issue that few people seem to have questioned - Israel’s sea blockade and its legality. I've heard Israel's apologists say the answer is to allow humanitarian supplies in by road through Israeli-controlled crossings while maintaining the blockade, and the US would probably agree to that.

Like everything else Israel does, and America supports, you have to look for the ulterior motive. Why did the belligerent party set up the blockade in the first place?

One reason is Gaza's marine gas field, which lies 25 to 30 km offshore. It is estimated to hold 1 trillion cubic feet of gas worth around $4 billion in revenue. It would last 15 years and Israel wants it, so nobody talks about it.

In 2005, at the time of Israel's “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians decided to drop plans to sell their gas to Israel and talked with Egypt instead. The position changed again when Tony Blair, Israel's faithful dogsbody and special envoy of the Quartet, personally intervened on Israel's behalf.

The plan cooked up was to pipe the gas from the sea-bed to an on-shore terminal at Ashkelon in Israel. A separate pipe would run from the terminal to Gaza, with Israel providing a raft of assurances about uninterrupted supply and an uninterrupted flow of profits to the Palestinians.

How laughable. This is the same Israel that's starving Gazans into submission, blitzing them in their prison-home and trashing their economy... The same Israel that continues to murder and imprison whomsoever it wishes and steal whatever it wants... The same Israel that has no regard for international law or human rights... The same Israel that has blocked the flow of Palestinian tax and customs revenues, humanitarian aid and hospital supplies... The same Israel that will not recognise Palestine or its right of democratic self-determination.

Nobody in the Middle East believes that an assurance or guarantee by Israel is worth the paper it's written on... especially in this case where it mounted a challenge to Palestine's right to own and control the gas field, and lost. Their plan, apparently, is get their hands on Palestine’s precious energy resource in much the same way as they stole Palestine's water. Israel would siphon off the gas in ever-increasing quantities while keeping the Palestinians in a state of bankruptcy and unable to use their share. Alternatively they'll provoke endless ‘security’ alerts, as is their style, and block the pipeline anytime they choose as a collective punishment.

If Gaza's gas is brought ashore in Israel, how can Palestinians benefit in terms of business contracts and job opportunities?

Would they ever get a whiff of their own gas?

Indeed, should the Palestinians be thinking of selling their gas to energy-greedy Israel in the first place? After 62 years of occupation and ruination isn't every cubic foot needed to fuel their own economic recovery? It will be a long haul taking far more than 15 years.

Gaza itself ought to reap the full benefits and supply the West Bank direct. And maybe pipe some to Israel if it behaves itself.

Unfortunately an Interim Agreement signed in 1995 allowed the Israelis to weave a tangled web of security zoning in Gaza's coastal waters leaving Israel in charge and dictating what happens off-shore and who comes and goes. It’s the sort of agreement no Palestinian would have signed unless under extreme duress.

It allowed fishing boats from Gaza to go 20 nautical miles from the coastline, but after Israel’s so-called ‘disengagement’ and the capture of Corporal Shalit, Israel unilaterally reduced the fishing area to three miles.

Being ‘interim’ these restrictions were not expected to last beyond 1999. But they are still in force. Why?

The nasty whiff is not just gas. So here’s an immediate and urgent task for the international community. It must untangle this sea blockade and restore to Palestine free unfettered use of its territorial waters.

As for the land blockade, if it is “wrong”, as Mr Hague says, and illegal as everyone else believes, it has been wrong and illegal for 4 years. It is not enough to say it must end. Action must be taken to bring it to an end.

Hague was no help in opposition. Now he’s in power, he is off to a poor start. The message to him and his fellow dining room loafers in the EU is clear: Cut the cackle and ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING… NOW!

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WOMAN IN BLUE

Source : artwork.barewalls.com

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