Hollow promises of Barack Obama

By Brig Asif Haroon Raja

In September 2001, the whole world comity was behind USA. The UN had authorized US call to invade Afghanistan and combat terrorism so as to make the world peaceful. The world response to invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was different. Millions came out in the western world to dissuade George W. Bush and Tony Blair from undertaking the venture. Today very few support US imperial pursuits and majority wish termination of war on terror at the earliest. Desire for peaceful resolution of the conflict through political settlement among all stake holders has overshadowed the voices of those wishing continuation of war. This change in perceptions has occurred on account of the belated realization that neither Taliban can be defeated nor terrorism curbed. The world instead of becoming peaceful has become more insecure.

George W Bush the crusading son of cautious father of Bush senior and his team of neo-conservatives like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Kagan, Lewis Scooter Libby, John R Bolton, Eliot Abrams, James Woolsey, Douglas J Feith, Richard Perle are responsible for waging crusade against the Muslims under phony charges and giving false hopes that the world will be made free of the curse of terrorism. Tony Blair, the poodle of Bush was most vocal among the crusading bunch.

When the neo-cons managed to enter the corridors of power in January 2001, they actuated their long drawn plans. Although war against terrorism was named as global war on terror so as to entice greater number of allies, counter terrorism was Muslim specific. Bush had described the war as ‘the struggle against Islamic radicalism…the great ideological conflict of the early 21st century’. To weaken the citadel of Islam, Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq were targeted. Attacks on sovereign states were justified under the pretexts of teaching virtues of democracy, freedom and human rights to the uncivilized and uncouth.

Massive military force was applied to capture Afghanistan, one of the most impoverished states of the world where it was alleged that the mastermind of 9/11 Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda were located and where women were being tyrannized by monstrous Taliban. Iraq was also invaded and occupied under fake charges of WMDs. Pakistan also became victim of terrorism because of fallout effect of Afghanistan and covert war launched by CIA and its allied intelligence agencies. Bigoted key figures of Republican Party led by Bush stand accountable for initiating clash of civilizations and are fit cases for trial on charges of war crimes for committing immense crimes against humanity. .

Mindful of the deep rooted revulsion evoked against USA in the Muslim world in particular and the world in general, a black half Muslim Barack Obama was pushed into White House for the first time. His selection was a strategic deception to mislead the Muslims and make them hate al-Qaeda instead of USA. Obama made many alluring promises during the presidential campaign in 2008 in his bid to washout the ill-effects of reviled Bush era and to win the confidence of Muslims. He promised to put an end to US interventionist policy, wrap up war in Iraq that was being condemned by all and sundry, find a democratic solution to Afghanistan, help in energizing Middle East peace process towards settlement of chronic Palestinian dispute, and in finding amicable solution to Kashmir issue.

He also made a commitment to close down dreadful prison in Guantanamo Bay and stressed that the US would abide by international law. In his bid to reach out to the Muslims and remove their sense of alienation, he stated in Cairo in June 2009 that the US did not have any enmity with the Muslim world. Efforts were made to de-link al-Qaeda from the folds of Islam terming it both terrorist and criminal. Hearing him, it was wishfully assumed that Obama would put a stop or at least scale down atrocious policies of his predecessor against Muslim countries.

It is over two years since he took over reins of power; so far all his tall promises have proved hollow. His words have not matched his actions. Though he has deceptively changed the title of ‘global war on terror with war against al-Qaeda, and terms like Islamic radicalism are avoided, in practical terms nothing has changed on ground. Since the Muslims continue to remain the main targets, the old phrase of ‘war on terror’ remains in common use by affected countries including Pakistan. Instead of curbing he has accelerated practice of death and destruction. He considers use of drones legal and morally just.

Although he has scaled down US troop level in Iraq to 50,000 only, the occupied country remains messy. Prospect of withdrawal of left over troops by end 2011 is uncertain due to fragile political situation under government of Maliki installed by Washington. Afghanistan is being continuously brutalized with a vengeance where the situation has become more volatile. He intensified covert operations and sprinkled more oil on the raging war on terror to make it ominous. Afghanistan provides an excellent base to CIA-Mosad-RAW-MI6 nexus to unleash clandestine operations all over Middle East, Horn of Africa and Central Asia as well as Philippines, Colombia, Pakistan and Iran. Latter was constantly threatened to be invaded. Guantanamo Bay is still functional and so are several CIA run detention centres infamous for torture.

As a sequel to his Af-Pak policy, the US military and its allies got heavily involved in Afghanistan and Pakistan, turning Pak-Afghan border region into single war zone. Purpose was to accelerate ground operations in Pashtun inhabited regions in Afghanistan and to step up invisible covert war in Pakistan. Clandestine operations were padded up with aerial violations, hot pursuits and intensified drone attacks against suspected targets in FATA. Brutalization of Afghanistan and Pakistan together with ruthless persecution of Kashmiris by Indian security forces in Indian occupied Kashmir has given rise to extremism and has made the whole region unstable and explosive. Things have gone from bad to worse for occupation forces in the last two years. In their desperate bid to arrest the resurgence of power of Taliban and regain initiative, ISAF has stepped up air blitz which in turn has increased casualty rate of civilians.

Middle East process instead of making progress has retrogressed due to Israeli intransigence and Obama’s visible inclination towards Tel Aviv. Like his predecessors he remains subservient to Israel and beholden to American Jews who were instrumental in his victory in elections. Obama feel no compunction in openly supporting Israel’s aggressive and unjust policies in the region. He not only looked the other way to Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008-January 2009 but justified it. He refused to condemn Israeli raid on Peace Flotilla off Gazan Coast and its illegal settlements in occupied territories.

Obamahas distanced himself from Kashmir under Indian pressure and his conspicuoustilt towards India is no secret. Gross human rights abuses by Indian security forces against hapless unarmed Kashmiris in disputed occupied Kashmir are being ignored by Washington but it is quick to point fingers at a Muslim country at the sound of a single bullet fired. The US dubs counter actions by security forces against separatist elements in Balochistan or against terrorists in Swat as violation of human rights, but anti-separatist operations of Indian security forces in several parts of India for over fifty years and application of inhuman laws and using rape as a weapon to suppress freedom movement evoke no response.

Concerted efforts were made by Christian powers to separate oil-rich southern Sudan from the mainland. For all practical purposes, Sudan stands divided but its woes are not over. In oil producing Darfur region of Sudan, rebellious forces are being supported by foreign powers. Besides the oil factor, application of Sharia laws by President Bashir and his softness towards Islamists are the main reasons of concern for the western world. While Sudanese President is demonised through media war and International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared him a war criminal, the ICJ, the UN and the civilized western world are tight lipped about the war crimes of George Bush and his squad of neo-cons. No voice is raised on use of drones by CIA against US ally Pakistan killing maximum innocent civilians and very few militants.

Somalia’s pirates were purposely instigated to make Somali coast and Gulf of Aden prone to sea piracy so as to provide an excuse for international naval force to fish in troubled waters. Drone war was extended to Yemen to fight rebellious forces in south and in the north of the country as well as Al-Qaeda so as to save its ally President Saleh. AFRICOM was created with mala fide intentions against African continent rich in mineral resources. Congo is a victim of US intrigues where insurrectional war is raging in the mineral heavy eastern region.

It is suspected that ongoing turbulence within the Arab world was engineered by CIA to get rid of aging puppets and replace them with younger ones more subservient to Washington so that oil could be monopolised. The US-UK-French forces have now physically intervened in Libya thus activating third battlefront. The latest intervention is in line with his predecessor’s plan to reconfigure the map of Middle East. Ignoring the killing spree of US-NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama hypocritically justifies air strikes in Libya on the false pretext of saving Libyans from the wrath of Qaddafi’s forces trying to quell foreign inspired rebellion.

USA and western powers have their eyes transfixed on Libyan oil and are least concerned with the safety of Muslims in Libya. Aerial attacks and cruise missiles have caused more deaths and destruction in Libya than what forces loyal to Qaddafi have incurred. If we take into account the massacres in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, the figure of deaths come to well over two millions. Paul Craig Roberts rightly says that the sole super power prefers to murder Muslims in order to enhance profits of its defence industrial complex.

In line with US policy of subjugating Southern America, a coup was engineered in Honduras in 2009 to overthrow popularly elected ruler and to replace him with vicious dictator. Korean Peninsula was made turbulent and made into a flashpoint. Iran was subjected to heavy sanctions and repeatedly threatened to desist from pursuing nuclear program. CIA poured in million of dollars and indulged in subversive activities to affect a regime change. It patronised Jundullah terrorist group to destabilize Siestan Balochistan.

Obama is in his third year of rule but his popularity at home has sunk down substantially since his achievements on the domestic front are far from satisfactory. His external policies are widely criticized since he has neither been able to culminate the unpopular war on terror nor defeated al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan. He has so far not been able to spell out a clear cut strategy as to how he intends to play the endgame which enables safe and honorable return of foreign troops from Afghanistan. He has taken no steps to win the shattered confidence of the aggrieved Muslims and to bring down the rising graph of anti-Americanism and restore the lost image and credibility of USA. The US economy is in the melting pot while its chief rival China’s economy is surging. He has been unable to curtail debts and fiscal deficit due to ever rising expenditure on defence, security and covert war. With these minuses, his chances of re-election are getting slim, but who so ever returns to power in January 2013, he will also pursue old policies favoring the west, Israel and India and disfavoring the Muslims world.

Shershah scrap market carnage: As no one comes forward to testify, 9 men walk free

By Zeeshan Mujahid

KARACHI: Nine suspects, who had allegedly confessed to being involved in the Shershah market carnage, were acquitted on Wednesday because of a lack of evidence and witness testimony.

File photo of rangers around the market after the attack on Shershah market.

Justice Sajjad Ali Shah of the Sindh High Court, in his capacity as the administrative judge for the Anti-Terrorism Courts of the Karachi division, ordered their release after even the case’s complainant failed to identify any of them.

He had named Muhammad Tufail, Abid Ali, Asghar Ali, Tahseen, Abdul Rasheed, Johar, M Aijaz, M Iqbal and Muhammad Akbar in the case.

Thirteen workers and owners of shops in the Shershah scrap market were killed on October 19, 2010, when unidentified men on motorcycles opened indiscriminate fire in the market. Six shopkeepers, Kashif, Arsalaan, Rashid, Zeeshan, Arif and Imran, were injured.

On Wednesday, the accused men were produced before the judge by the investigation officer, who wanted more time to question them, arguing that they were not cooperating and had not confessed any connection to the crime.

The man who registered the case, Muhammad Nafees, was in court because of orders passed on January 19.

At the last hearing, the court had ordered for a joint interrogation team to submit a report. It was presented to the judge on Wednesday. When the judge asked Muhammad Nafees to identify the accused men present in custody, he said he had never seen them before and they were complete strangers.

Rao M Sharif, counsel for the complainant assisting the Special Public Prosecutor, said the complainant was not identifying the men because he was scared. If their remand were extended, we may discover something more, he added.

The bench declined the request, however, and ordered the release of all the men accused in the case.

Neither was any material connecting the accused to commission of the said crime placed on the record nor was an identification parade carried out and since all the accused were named with parentage, therefore the attendance of the complainant was directed.

The IO stated that despite all efforts by him none of the witnesses was ready to identify any of the accused.

The halfhearted request for the extension of remand by the IO was without any purpose, the AJ said in his detailed order.

He then directed the police to release the accused men under section 497 (2) of the CrPC after they furnish personal bonds before the IO.

Case history

An FIR was registered on October 20, on the basis of a written statement by complainant, Muhammad Nafees.

The Gulbahar police first arrested Lal Muhammad Magsi and later nominated Aslam Pervez, Shafi Muhammad and Nawaz.

The nine accused men acquitted on Wednesday had voluntarily surrendered before the Special Investigation Unit earlier this month while three others, Hameed alias Mulla Raju, Noor Muhammad alias Baba Ladla and Rashid, are still absconding.

Talking to the media on Wednesday, one of the acquitted men said that they are all poor workers in the graveyard adjacent to the place of the attack (Mewashah graveyard). We are not part of the alleged Lyari gang, he added.

Special Public Prosecutor Arshad Cheema said that the accused have been exonerated for want of evidence but they can face a trial if any investigator manages to find evidence against them. He said that the state should have been the complainant in this case rather than an individual person.

To another question on whether an order was passed against the complainant for lodging a false FIR, Cheema said that if at any stage it was proved that the FIR was false, prosecution under Section 173 of the CrPC would be initiated against the complainant.

Nabil Gabol’s resignation part of govt, allies deal: Imran

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan Thursday charged the resignation of PPP’s State Minister Nabil Gabol and a raid on his residence was a part of give-and-take between the government and its coalition partners in Sindh.

Expressing concern over the manner in which Gabol was being harassed by the authorities in Karachi after his resignation as minister, Imran said in a statement that the ex-minister maintained he was unable to fulfil his political duties to his constituents and to his ministry, where he worked under MQM Minister Babar Ghauri.

“Raid on his house immediately after his resignation reflects clear political victimisation as part of the give and take going on between the government and its coalition partners in Sindh, under the cover of an anti-terror operation,” the PTI chief contended.

The fact of the matter, he said, was that the target killings, which had terrorised Karachi, were a direct result of the upping of the political ante amongst the power holders of the province, he said.

“If Gabol is suddenly guilty of breaking the law immediately on submitting his resignation then he should be charged in a court of law and his alleged crime be made public,” he suggested.

Gaza’s fallen women: doing time for ‘moral’ crime

World.Down.com

GAZA CITY: Najwa Abu Amra cries inside a Gaza jail as she explains how she got here. Struggling to care for two sons and a drug-addicted husband, she agreed to sleep with a man for about 50 dollars.

A Palestinian Hamas policewoman unlocks a door at a women’s prison run by Hamas in Gaza City on December 9, 2010. The prison consists of two rooms that house 19 women, some doing time for “moral” crime, and a handful of children.

She had resisted prostitution in the past, but she was getting desperate.

“My husband isn’t normal, he was telling me to sleep with men because they would give him money,” She said. “He did what he liked and he didn’t give me anything. I didn’t know what to do”.

Her husband showed no interest in caring for their two boys, one aged nine, the other just three. When she walked out, trying to prod him into better behaviour, he married a second wife.

“I had two sons, one of them is deaf, I didn’t have a choice,” she explains as the other women prisoners look on, some of them clutching their own children.

Out of desperation, she dialed the number of a man she had met months earlier, and agreed to sleep with him for 200 shekels (54 dollars or 41 euros).

Not long afterwards, Abu Amra was arrested on suspicion of immoral behaviour.

She was hauled before a judge and ordered to attend 30 days of pre-trial detention at the Training and Reform Centre for Women, Gaza’s only prison for women.

The facility is run by Hamas, which has been in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007. The group won legislative elections in 2006, and a year later seized control of the coastal enclave after deadly confrontations with rival Fatah.

Since coming to power, the Islamist group has sought to bolster Gaza’s conservative religious mores, although it has rescinded some controversial measures, including one banning women from publicly smoking the water pipe.

The prison, such as it is, consists of two rooms that house 19 women and a handful of children. The rest of the building, which is still under construction, houses a men’s prison and administration offices.

Inside one of the rooms, 11 women sit on foam cushions and thick rugs, their thin blankets piled in a corner. One nurses a child in the dimly-lit room, which has only one tiny window letting in very little light.

In the other, eight women sit chatting with their female prison guard, Umm Ahmed, who treats them with a mixture of sympathy and revulsion.

‘Moral’ crimes are rarely sentenced

Abu Amra’s two boys are still with her husband, but another woman, a tired and scared-looking prisoner who refuses to give her name, is rocking her newborn son in her arms.

He was born just three days earlier and doesn’t yet have a name. His mother was transferred to a hospital for the birth then returned to jail shortly after. His father is a man she slept with for money, Umm Ahmed says. But the new mother claims otherwise, describing the man as her husband.

She says her family arranged the marriage while she was in jail, hoping it would be enough to get her out and minimise some of the public disgrace they face. Umm Ahmed says the family has done no such thing.

It is a common solution, said Nasser Deeb Suliman, director of prison security, especially when the man in the question is someone the family knows.

“If it was with a neighbour or a friend, usually the family will decide to marry them, and then the woman can be released,” he said.

The woman’s sister, who also refused to give her name, is in a similar situation. She is heavily pregnant and due to give birth this month, after spending almost half of her pregnancy in prison.

Suliman said the women are divided between the two rooms according to the severity of their crimes, but 21-year-old Tahrir, who was convicted of murder, is in the same room as women accused of prostitution and pick pocketing.

In the next room sits Rihab, a quiet and pale 34-year-old whose arms are covered in scars from cutting herself. She talks openly but without pride about how she ended up in prison.

She didn’t need money; she had a job at a local hospital. Her crime was to choose to sleep with two men, both of whom ended up in prison as well.

“I did it, I’m not going to lie, I did it twice,” she said. Her family was furious at first, but her father has forgiven her.

“He told the neighbours I’m in Egypt, he’s going to get a lawyer for me,” she said. The two men have already been released, after hiring attorneys to argue their cases.

Those accused of “moral” crimes are rarely sentenced, Suliman says.

Instead, a judge extends their 30-day detention period several times, releasing them between four and eight months later – less if a woman gets married, and more if she is a repeat offender.

Some women are more reluctant than Rihab to admit why they are in jail.

Kholud, 18, and her mother, who declines to give her name, have been in prison for two months, and say they were jailed over a family dispute.

Umm Ahmed openly contradicts them, but they refuse to change their story.

Outside the cell, the guard takes a visitor aside, her face sad but her voice filled with disgust as she describes the women as part of a brothel.

“The whole family was rotten. They were all involved. The father was in charge. The guy who was with the daughter was also with the mother,” she says.

“Don’t believe everything they say.”

‘Policing isn’t easy in Quetta’

Shehzad Baloch

QUETTA: The police in Quetta are finding it hard to maintain order and peace in the city due to lack of human resources as there are merely 5,500 police recruits deployed for a population of around one million.

DIG operations says lack of manpower, technology makes it even harder.

Talking to journalists, DIG Operations Quetta Hamid Shakil said that it has become a very difficult task for the police to overcome crime with fewer policemen.

“As many as 2,200 out of 5,500 personnel, including officers, are deputed within CPO, CCPO and Operations. A single policeman is deputed for 450 civilians. Under such circumstances there is need of 15,000 more police personnel in the city,” he explained.

Commenting over the installation of CCTV cameras in the city, Shakil said that surveillance cameras had been installed in few places, but the project has been abandoned due to a lack of funds.

“Until cameras are not set up in all the sensitive areas, the ratio of crime will not decrease,” said Shakil, adding that only Education Minister Tahir Mahmood has provided funds for the installation and it would be better if other ministers also contribute.

Two months earlier, former CCPO Ghulam Shabbir Shiekh also complained about the lack of funds for surveillance cameras.

“Policemen do not have the technology to trace calls of cell phones because in present circumstances it is impossible to give criminals a tough time without being equipped with modern technologies,” he added.

According to sources, the police in Quetta have been prevented from acquiring technology for tracing calls by secret agencies. The Sindh Police has also been stopped from purchasing similar technology.

However, the Home Department has said that they are going to purchase technologies to trace satellite calls as banned outfits usually claim the responsibility of suicide attacks, bomb blasts, target killings and attacks on government installations.

The City of Death

By: Ghalib Sultan

The politically motivated blood bath in Pakistan’s biggest city Karachi has turned this commercial hub into a city of death. Armed gangs on motorcycles and cars roam the streets targeting innocent people whose only fault is their ethnicity or membership of a particular community. More gruesome is the brutality with which people are tortured, tied up, executed and thrown in the streets. Much of this happens in dark alleys and quiet streets though drive-by shootings in crowded places are also common. Two areas of the city dominated by rival parties and notorious for gang warfare and criminal hang-outs have emerged as the bases from where the killers are launched to kill specific targets. Criminals with scores to settle have joined in the mayhem and are adding to the street body count. All this happens as political parties wrangle with each other and a government-judiciary struggle sets off pathetic debates about the political future with the past being dredged up to create scandals. The dead of Karachi are being ignored.

Violence is not new to Karachi. It has a twenty year old history of ethnic, sectarian and political violence. At one time when doctors of a particular sect were being targeted many of them left the country for good. Most corporate headquarters moved out of the city and relocated elsewhere. Like all big cities it has criminal gangs and mafias with connections to law enforcers, politicians and officialdom. These gangs control prostitution, gambling and drugs-they also provide guns for hire and arrange funds through extortion, bank robberies and kidnappings for ransom. Just before the present surge of violence there was a spate of bank holdups, kidnapping and armed robberies. This time the Taliban and their local extremist partners are an added presence with destabilization and economic destruction as their main thrust. At various times one or other ethnic community or political grouping has dominated the Karachi scene and whenever Karachi has been in the grip of violence the rest of the province of Sindh has been almost without governance and law enforcement—it is no different this time as total anarchy prevails in an environment where the flood hit people are most vulnerable to predators.

The present provincial government is representative of the coalition that rules the country. The general opinion is that this provincial government has failed. There is also a view that in-fighting among the political parties is responsible for the violence. The surprise is that neither the economic decline, nor the devastating floods nor the insurgency in the west nor the extremist threat within the country, nor the destruction by floods and nor the threat to Baluchistan has led to the sort of drastic measures that are needed to stem the tide that has all but engulfed Pakistan. The spectacle that the world sees is horrifying and there is astonishment at the trivialities in which the internal debate within Pakistan is engaged. If this were a film the director would call ‘CUT’ and get down to sorting out all the problems before moving further. The tragedy is that this is not a film-it is real life and real people are dying Statements that ‘take notice’ of killings help neither the dead nor the living and only add to the rage that is building and it is this rage that many are waiting to exploit through a bloody revolution-something that should never happen in a nuclear armed state. When people cower in fear, when children and women are not safe, when streets are killing zones, when terror stalks the land, when hunger and poverty are the lot of the majority—what should you expect? Do we need a rocket scientist to give us the answer?

Hit list draws fire in wake of leaked US documents

WASHINGTON – When it comes to war, killing the enemy is an accepted fact. Even amid the sensation of the WikiLeaks.org revelations, that stark reality lies at the core of new charges that some American military commando operations may have amounted to war crimes.

Among the thousands of pages of classified U.S. documents released Sunday by the whistle-blower website are nearly 200 incidents that involve Task Force 373, an elite military special operations unit tasked with hunting down and killing enemy combatants in Afghanistan.

Denouncing suggestions that U.S. troops are engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan, military officials and even war crimes experts said Monday that enemy hit lists, while ugly and uncomfortable, are an enduring and sometimes unavoidable staple of war.

Some, however, cautioned that without proper controls that mandate the protection of innocent civilians, such targeted hits could veer into criminal activities.

Buried in the documents are descriptions of Task Force 373′s missions, laying bare graphic violence as well as mistakes, questionable judgments and deadly consequences – sometimes under fire, other times not.

In June 2007, the unit went in search of Taliban commander Qari Ur-Rahman. According to the files, U.S. forces, under the cover of night, engaged in a firefight with suspected insurgents and called in an AC-130 gunship to take out the enemy.

Only later did they realize that seven of those killed and four of those wounded were Afghan National Police. The incident was labeled a misunderstanding, due in part to problems with the Afghan forces conducting night operations.

In another mission, members of Task Force 373 conducted a secret raid, hoping to snag al-Qaida commander Abu Laith al-Libi, who was believed to be running terrorist training camps in Pakistan’s border region. Five rockets were launched into a group of buildings, and when forces moved into the destroyed area they found six dead insurgents and seven dead children. Al-Libi was not among the dead.

The summary of the incident says initial checks showed no indications that children would be there. And it quotes an Afghan governor later saying that while the residents there were in shock, they “understand it was caused ultimately by the presence of hoodlums – the people think it is good that bad men were killed.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who organized the release of the classified documents, said he believes these are among “thousands” of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan that could be investigated for evidence of war crimes, although he acknowledged such claims would have to be tested in court.

But even activists well versed in the realm of investigating war crimes would not go that far.

“I don’t think this incident rises to the level of a war crime, but it disturbs me greatly that seven children were killed,” said Tom Parker, policy director at Amnesty International USA.

The Afghanistan war, with its terrorist hit lists, counterinsurgency battles and high-tech battle gear, presents difficult questions. “It is really hard to know where assassination ends and war starts,” said Parker.

Targeted military strikes, he said, are on the fringe of accepted military practice during an armed conflict.

“This is a relatively new form of warfare that we’re seeing now,” he said. “The technology takes you to a different place and raises questions that just weren’t there 20 years ago. A lot of these questions don’t have answers – they have a test of acceptability.”

Parker voiced concerns that have hounded the military, the administration and members of Congress over the past two years as the war has escalated: How can the U.S. avoid civilian casualties that alienate the very population coalition forces are trying to win over in order to defeat the insurgency?

“This is a war. The enemy is shooting at us, and we’re shooting at them,” said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash. “Are we really suggesting that while the Taliban plant suicide bombs, we shouldn’t try to kill anybody?”

Smith said U.S. troops are “aggressively targeting” the Taliban and al-Qaida but any “condemnation of our troops is completely wrong and brutally unfair.” Congress and the military, he said, have already identified civilian casualties as a problem that must be corrected, and military leaders have adjusted their war tactics to try and minimize the killing of innocents.

Parker added that Americans may accept the idea of a military team going after an enemy general, but when it’s reduced to a hit list of individuals’ names, it becomes less palatable.

“Personalization makes people uncomfortable,” said Parker.

Still, trying to kill or capture enemy leaders “is precisely what countries do when they are at war,” argued Juan Zarate, former senior counterterrorism official in the Bush administration.

As the war in Afghanistan has dragged on, public support in the U.S. and abroad has begun to waver. And the counterinsurgency – which pits U.S. forces against bands of militants rather than another nation’s army – blurs the classic battle lines.

There also may be public confusion about the U.S. government’s secret hit lists targeting militants.

The military’s target list is different from a separate list run by the CIA. The two lists may contain some of the same names – Osama bin Laden, for instance – but they differ because the military and CIA operate under different rules.

While the military can only operate in a war zone, the CIA is allowed to carry out covert actions in countries where the U.S. is not at war.

The CIA’s target list came under scrutiny recently when it was revealed that it now includes radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen believed to be hiding in Yemen. Al-Awlaki, who has emerged as a prominent al-Qaida recruiter, was added to the list after U.S. officials determined that he had shifted from encouraging attacks on the U.S. to planning and participating in them.

Also, the CIA uses unmanned aircraft to hunt down and kill terrorists in Pakistan’s lawless border regions where the U.S. military does not operate.

The issue becomes murkier when elite military members participate in joint operations with CIA units. In those cases, the military members are assigned to the civilian paramilitary units and operate under the CIA rules, which allow them to take on missions outside of a war zone.

Last December, Gen. David Petraeus, now the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, made it clear the military was going to increase its efforts to kill or capture enemy combatants considered irreconcilable.

Petraeus, who was then the head of U.S. Central Command, said more “national mission force elements” would be sent to Afghanistan this spring. He appeared to be referring to such elite clandestine units as the Delta Force.

“There’s no question you’ve got to kill or capture those bad guys that are not reconcilable,” he told Congress.

Terror: Plan to attack pakistan parliament

The Daily Mail

ISLAMABAD-The intelligence agencies have informed the federal and provincial governments that extremists are planning for a massive attack , similar to the ones carried out in Jinnah Hospital Lahore and City Courts Karachi to secure release of their colleagues.

Sources have informed Online that all provincial governments and other concerned agencies have been warned to ensure security because the terrorists were planning for a massive attack on important personalities and sites after the havoc at Lahore on Ahmadis. Their possible targets might be religious sites belonging to minorities as well as Parliament House and Lodges.

In this connection it is learnt that the attacks would be a coordinated group activity possibly in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Karachi and Multan. The report also recommends that hearings of arrested terrorists be held within the jail premises to ensure security. It may be noted that sixteen hundred belong to defunct religious outfits out of the total four and a half thousand arrested terrorists.

The police have arrested eight suspected people in raids carried out in different areas of the city after Saturday’s attack at City Court. The police after arrested eight persons shifted them to some undisclosed location. The police conducted raids in the areas of Roidad Nagar and Paposh Nagar and arrested three brothers of Murtaza, who escaped from police custody.

The three brothers of Murtaza have been identified as Faisal, Qaisar and Irfan. The police have also arrested five suspected persons from areas of Baldia, North Karachi and Essa Colony. The motorcycle, which was snatched by criminals, recovered within the limits of Risala police station. Four dangerous prisoners were managed to escape at the result of attack at City Court. One prisoner Murad Shah was killed in an attempt to escape.

Meanwhile, CCPO Karachi, Waseem Ahmed has said that the terrorists escaped from the City Court would be arrested. Talking to media men here, CCPO Karachi said that several arrests have been made from different areas of the city after the attack.

He said that there is need to up-grade security of the City Court and CCTV and Walkthrough Gates should be installed in the court.

He informed that the police have received an amount of Rs. 1 billion for CCTV and these cameras would be installed in the court soon.

He said that action would be taken against police official, if negligence of any official to be found. Meanwhile, armed men murdered three persons when barged into a house in Bismillah Colony, area of Quaid-a-Abad.

According to residents of the area, three armed men entered into house of Naik Muhammad on Sunday morning and killed his father-in-law, Nazeer (70), son Nasir (18) and wife Anwari Begum. The murderers were living in the same area and managed to escape after committing the crime.

Why Are Hindu Honor Killings Rising in India?

By Madhur Singh

For three weeks now, a morbid murder story has been playing out in the Indian media. Nirupama Pathak, 22, a New Delhi-based journalist, was allegedly murdered by her own mother. Her crime? She had wanted to marry a fellow journalist who belongs to a lower caste – and she was pregnant. On a trip home to make a final effort to convince her family, Nirupama texted her boyfriend that she was being held captive, locked up in a bathroom. On April 29, she was found dead. The family claimed Nirupama had killed herself, and lodged a case against her boyfriend for rape and abetting suicide. But when the postmortem results revealed Nirupama had been asphyxiated, the police arrested her mother, Sudha Pathak.

Police escort Sudha Pathak, left, the mother of Nirupama Pathak, inside a police station in Koderma, in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, on May 3, 2010

The case is now headed to court, which will disentangle the web of allegations and counterallegations. Meanwhile, it has thrust the issue of honor killings to the center of public debate. Though Western readers associate the term more with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan than with 21st century India, honor killings are shockingly frequent in villages in the northern and northwestern parts of the country, where those daring to cross the barriers of caste are made to pay with their lives. Mostly, these cases are confined to the inside pages of newspapers, but the Nirupama case – in urban, educated, middle-class India – has hit the front pages.

Activists say dozens of people, both women and men, are killed for “honor” every year, falling victim to the deeply entrenched caste system, which dictates an individual’s social standing based on the caste they are born into. The majority of these killings take place in the agrarian states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, where land ownership and caste go hand in hand and an honor culture thrives by maintaining caste and gender hierarchies. “The upper castes fiercely guard their hold over land and power in the community,” says Ranbir Singh, a Haryana-based sociologist currently a consultant with the Haryana Institute of Rural Development. “They are able to mobilize young, educated but unemployed, mostly unmarried men, who are all fired up to shore up their self-esteem.” (From TIME’s archives: India and the politics of prejudice.)

Perceived caste transgressions are severely punished. In a recent case in a Haryana village, an 18-year-old Dalit girl and her father were allegedly burned alive by upper-caste Jat men following an argument over a dog. Women, since they have property rights, are a threat if not kept under a vicelike grip. It is no surprise that Haryana, one of India’s wealthiest states with a largely farm-based economy, has the highest rate of selectively aborting female fetuses, a practice that has skewed the demographics so much that there are only 861 women for 1,000 men. Young men are forced to purchase brides from other states. The statistics on honor killings are also the worst there: groups called khaps run kangaroo courts that routinely issue fatwa-like orders for the execution of those who have offended caste boundaries.

The situation is aggravated by modernity, as more and more young people want to marry for love instead of family or caste considerations. Khaps violently oppose both marriages between upper-caste women and lower-caste men and those within sub-castes and villages deemed to share kinship ties. The khap itself, long a locus of power for the land-owning Jat community, is being rendered irrelevant by economic change, increasingly egalitarian democratic politics and population movement – hence, say observes, this brutal attempt to re-establish its prerogatives. “Due to their declining status, they are trying to assert their existence by taking the law in their own hands,” explains Prem Chowdhry, senior academic fellow at the New Delhi-based Indian Council of Historical Research.

A month before Nirupama’s death, a court in Haryana sentenced five people to death for killing a couple belonging to the same village and gotra, or caste-based clan (village elders had deemed them brother and sister). Manoj Banwala, 23, and Babli, 19, of Karoran village in Haryana, had married against the wishes of the bride’s family on April 7, 2007. Urged on by the khap, the village had turned against Banwala’s family, forcing the couple to flee to a nearby city, where they were killed two months later on order from the khap. A police investigation found that police assigned to protect the couple had actually passed on information to the assailants. When the court pronounced the punishment, the khaps launched protests and demanded that the government introduce changes in the Hindu marriage law to ban marriages within the same gotra.

Astonishingly, prominent politicians from both the ruling Congress party and the opposition have come out in support of the khaps’ demand. With city and village elections due shortly, political parties see this as an easy ploy to lure votes, caste being a handy instrument of statecraft. Even as the Nirupama case was burning, the government announced that caste data would be collected as part of the census – the first time since 1931 – to get exact caste statistics, ostensibly to implement meaningful affirmative-action plans for underprivileged castes. But the move has many opponents, who believe it will only perpetuate a political culture that takes advantage of caste divisions. “It is the cynicism of politicians that they’ve made caste a tool for political mobilization,” says New Delhi-based analyst Amulya Ganguli. “The khaps’ growing clout and the killings of hapless couples show how dangerous this renewed emphasis can be.”

‘NY synagogue bomb plot was feds’ idea’

WHITE PLAINS, New York: Four men accused of trying to bomb synagogues and shoot down planes in New York last spring did little more than go along with a fake plot proposed, directed and funded by the federal government, defence lawyers claim in asking the court to dismiss the case.

James Cromite (C), one of four suspects, is walked out of the FBI offices after being taken into custody in New York, May 21, 2009.

A federal informant chose the targets, offered payment, provided maps and bought the only real weapon involved, a handgun, the attorneys said in a dismissal motion filed this week in federal court.

They alleged the defendants were not inclined toward any crime until the informant began recruiting them.

”The government well knew that their case had been a government-inspired creation from day one and that the defendants had not been independently seeking weapons or targets,” the motion said.

Federal court spokesman Herb Hadad said the government would file its response next month.

The defence has suggested from the start that an entrapment claim was likely.

Defendants James Cromitie, 55, Onta Williams, 32, David Williams, 28, and Laguerre Payen, 27, all of Newburgh, are charged with placing what they thought were bombs outside two synagogues in the Bronx last May.

They also are accused of planning to use what they thought was a Stinger missile against planes at an Air National Guard base 50 miles north of New York City.

They have pleaded not guilty and face up to life in prison if convicted.

The FBI was in on the plot, and the bombs and missiles involved were dummies, prosecutors said.

The defence lawyers said they based their account of the case on evidence shared by the government, including recordings and agents’ affidavits. Those materials have not been made public.

In a separate motion, they demanded more information on inducements that the informant may have offered the defendants.

The dismissal motion identified the government’s agent as Shaheed Hussain, a ”professional informant” for the FBI. The defence claimed he was directed to visit suburban mosques, find members with anti-American leanings and recruit them to join a fake terror plot supposedly funded by a Pakistan-based group.

He suggested there could be as much as $250,000 available and the government provided him with a BMW, a Hummer and other cars to make him appear well-funded, the defence filings said.

The defence alleged that Hussain tried to incite the defendants by blaming Jews for the world’s evil and telling them that attacks against non-Muslims were endorsed by Islam.

Nevertheless, they said, he failed to motivate the defendants to any action on their own. Months went by between meetings, and the filings quote Cromitie as saying, ”I’m not gonna hurt anybody” and ”The plane thing … is out of the question.”

Hussain suggested the targets, paid for the defendants’ groceries, bought a gun, provided the fake bombs and missile, assembled the explosive devices and acted as chauffeur, the defence said.

”The alleged crimes were almost entirely the product of Hussain’s labours and the enterprise would have immediately collapsed if Hussain’s guiding hand had been removed,” the defence motion said.