By Jerome Socolovsky

One of America’s oldest Protestant denominations is holding its biennial assembly this week, and high on the agenda is a proposal to divest from companies that do business with Israel.

If approved, the Presbyterian Church USA would be the largest religious organization in the country to impose sanctions on Israel.

During Sunday worship at the Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, interim pastor Beverly Dempsey offered a prayer for her Protestant denomination’s leaders gathering this week in Detroit.

“As the general assembly moves into full swing, there are many issues that threaten to tear the PCUSA apart,” she said from the pulpit.

“In the end, we may or may not wholeheartedly agree with the position that the denomination is taking on marriage equality, or divestment, or immigration reform, or the mandatory registration of guns, or any of the key issues of our day.”

Like many other mainline Protestant churches in America, this once influential denomination has been hemorrhaging members. It now has around 1.75 million. And, while the debates have divided those still in the pews, several proposals to sanction Israel for the lack of progress in the Middle East peace process may prove to be the most controversial.

One calls for Israel to be branded an “apartheid” state. Another calls for the church to withdraw investments from three U.S. companies whose products are used by the Israeli military in the occupied territories. A similar measure came within a few votes of passing at the last assembly in 2012.

A vote on the divestment proposal is scheduled for later this week. If it goes through, it would be a major victory for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement. The movement wants to isolate Israel with sanctions like those applied to apartheid-era South Africa.

Reverend Susan Wilder of the Presbyterian Israel/Palestine Mission Network, which has backed the divestment motion, says the aim is not to delegitimize Israel.

“But we do need to shine a spotlight on Israel’s-on bad policies,” she says. “This isn’t about good guys and bad guys, or being against Israel, or wanting to isolate Israel or even punish Israel, this is about wanting to shine a spotlight on actions that are harming everyone.”

She says she doesn’t want to “profit from someone else’s pain.”

“For us,” she adds, “this is a matter of living out our faith and it’s a matter of our stewardship of our financial sources. It’s a matter of getting our investments in line with our values.”

Earlier this year, the Israel/Palestine Mission Network published a congregational study guide called Zionism Unsettled. Critics say it demonizes Israel by calling Zionism a “false theology” and blames it for the entire Middle East conflict.

Rev. John Wimberly, retired pastor of Western Presbyterian Church, says Christians should think twice before imposing sanctions on Israel.

“There is a 2,000-year history of economic sanctions being used by Christians aimed at Jews and it’s a bloody, nasty history and that is kind of my bottom line opposition right there,” says Wimberly, who is now on the steering committee for Presbyterians for Middle East Peace.

He says he doesn’t agree with Israel’s settlement policies. But he argues that the BDS movement ignores Palestinian attacks on Israel, while the divestment proposal has been pushed by lobbyists from outside the denomination.

“This divestment thing has come up ever since 2004 and at every general assembly, and every general assembly the Presbyterian Church, which is kind of a progressive body, has defeated it,” he says. “So Israel has lots of friends in the mainline churches.”

But Israel’s supporters fear a “yes” vote could prompt other churches to follow suit. That could leave it with fewer friends among left-leaning Protestant Christians and more dependent on support from largely evangelical Christian conservatives.

The post US Presbyterian Church Considers Sanctions Against Israel appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Sam Bahour

The two million-member Presbyterian Church (USA) is about to make history in the Middle East, yet again. In the coming days, local delegates from the Church will travel to Detroit to attend the 221st Presbyterian General Assembly to consider a set of eight overtures that ask church leaders to review support of two states for Palestine and Israel in light of unfolding facts on the ground. Other issues to be considered are backing of equal rights and unblocked economic development for all inhabitants of Israel, and divesting from the likes of Caterpillar, Hewlett-¬Packard, and Motorola Solutions. The Church is clearly stepping up to the plate and realigning its policies with its values.

Political America and Corporate America should be taking note.

Reminiscent of the struggle against Apartheid South Africa, the Church is poised to step in where successive US administrations have failed to hold Israel accountable to international and humanitarian law, not to mention sheer common sense.

The US has paid never-ending lip service to the need to end Israel’s 47-year military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. During the past two decades, the US has coupled lip service with the monopolizing of a peace process that has led the international community to a dead end; not to mention leaving Muslim and Christian Palestinians on the ground, in the occupied territory as well as in Israel, standing naked in front of a state bent on militarily controlling another people and discriminating against over 20 percent of their own non-Jewish population. Presbyterians have had enough and are taking the lead to change the equation and stop the damage being perpetrated by Israel.

Political America should not take lightly the new reality that mainstream churches and civil society have reached a point where they can no longer blindly repeat calls for a resolution based on “two states” when Israeli actions on the ground, by way of continued illegal settlement building and much more, have created a single state reality between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. Secretary of State Kerry alluded to exactly this at the outset of the last failed round of US-led negotiations when he testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in April 2013 and noted, “I believe the window for a two-state solution is shutting, I think we have some period of time – a year to year-and-a-half to two years, or it’s over.” The Presbyterian Church is crying out from the highest mountain it can that for a two-state solution not to be “over” immediate action must be taken. They are calling for the Church to review this core issue over the next two years.

Corporate America should also be closely following the Presbyterian General Assembly’s proceedings.

In the 2012 Assembly, delegates addressed the issue of divesting from firms that benefit from or contribute to Israel’s military occupation by attempting to pass a resolution calling for divestment from Israel. When the so-called pro-Israel lobby got word of this, they mobilized to introduce and pass a counter overture that promotes “positive investment” instead of divestment. In a perfected Orwellian move, these lobbyists publicly promote investment in Palestine, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the systematic Israeli polices strangling the Palestinian economy.

Investment in Palestine — without divestment from the Israeli occupation — only continues to underwrite the status quo of military occupation. For investment to be successful occupation must be dismantled and sovereign control of Palestine’s economic resources passed to the Palestinians.

In this month’s Assembly, the divestment resolution will be brought to the floor once again for a vote. Now it comes at the heels of Secretary’s Kerry’s failed blitz to resolve the conflict and a momentous trip by the Pope to Bethlehem where he prayed at the illegal Separation Wall. The US-based organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, recently noted that the Israel lobby’s efforts have included offering Presbyterian leaders all-expenses-paid trips to Israel. Presbyterians can use this opportunity to straighten the White House’s spine based on what the administration already knows: Israel is intentionally blocking progress in the peace talks while jeopardizing US strategic interests in the region, not to mention the fate of Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Palestinian civil society and Palestinians — Christians and Muslims — have urged everyone interested in seeing peace with justice to divest from the occupation and to invest only where the occupation does not benefit. We struggle to remain hopeful while a cement wall as high as 24 feet tall snakes through our homeland. After all, we do not seek a beautified prison. We want the prison walls dividing Palestinians from Palestinians to come tumbling down, and that will not happen unless economic pressure is placed on Israel to end the occupation. Thus, the upcoming Assembly’s overture that calls for divestment from firms benefiting from the occupation, while affirming “Occupation¬-Free Investment in Palestine,” is spot on.

Palestinians did not invent the non-violent tool of divestment. After unsuccessfully trying to secure their rights using a multitude of other means, Palestinians have focused their efforts on non-violent methods of resisting military occupation that have been used throughout history by others: boycott, divestment, sanction, international law, civil disobedience, diplomatic efforts, economic resistance, and the like. Supporting these tools is supporting non-violence; the alternative is to push Palestinians into using violent means of resistance. If nonviolence is deemed unacceptable then violence becomes that much more likely.

The upcoming Presbyterian votes provides an important opportunity to say yes to nonviolence as the means to overcoming Israeli occupation and discrimination.

- Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant in Ramallah, the West Bank, and blogs at epalestine.com. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

The post Presbyterian Church’s Tough Love Of Israel – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

After careful consideration and analysis, the Hubble Space Telescope Time Allocation Committee has recommended using Hubble to search for an object the Pluto-bound NASA New Horizons mission could visit after its flyby of Pluto in July 2015.

The planned search will involve targeting a small area of sky in search of a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) for the outbound spacecraft to visit. The Kuiper Belt is a vast debris field of icy bodies left over from the solar system’s formation 4.6 billion years ago. A KBO has never been seen up close because the belt is so far from the sun, stretching out to a distance of 5 billion miles into a never-before-visited frontier of the solar system.

“I am pleased that our science peer-review process arrived at a consensus as to how to effectively use Hubble’s unique capabilities to support the science goals of the New Horizons mission,” said Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland.

Fully carrying out the KBO search is contingent on the results from a pilot observation using Hubble data.

The space telescope will scan an area of sky in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius to try and identify any objects orbiting within the Kuiper Belt. To discriminate between a foreground KBO and the clutter of background stars in Sagittarius, the telescope will turn at the predicted rate that KBOs are moving against the background stars. In the resulting images, the stars will be streaked, but any KBOs should appear as pinpoint objects.

If the test observation identifies at least two KBOs of a specified brightness it will demonstrate statistically that Hubble has a chance of finding an appropriate KBO for New Horizons to visit. At that point, an additional allotment of observing time will continue the search across a field of view roughly the angular size of the full moon.

Astronomers around the world apply for observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope. Competition for time on the telescope is extremely intense and the requested observing time significantly exceeds the observing time available in a given year. Proposals must address significant astronomical questions that can only be addressed with Hubble’s unique capabilities, and are beyond the capabilities of ground-based telescopes. The proposals are peer reviewed annually by an expert committee, which looks for the best possible science that can be conducted by Hubble and recommends to the Space Telescope Science Institute director a balanced program of small, medium, and large investigations.

Though Hubble is powerful enough to see galaxies near the horizon of the universe, finding a KBO is a challenging needle-in-haystack search. A typical KBO along the New Horizons trajectory may be no larger than Manhattan Island and as black as charcoal.

Even before the launch of New Horizons in 2006, Hubble has provided consistent support for this edge-of-the-solar system mission. Hubble was used to discover four small moons orbiting Pluto and its binary companion object Charon, providing new targets to enhance the mission’s scientific return. And Hubble has provided the most sensitive search yet for potentially hazardous dust rings around the Pluto. Hubble also has made a detailed map of the dwarf planet’s surface, which astronomers are using to plan New Horizon’s close-up reconnaissance photos.

In addition to Pluto exploration, recent Hubble solar system observations have discovered a new satellite around Neptune, probed the magnetospheres of the gas-giant planets, found circumstantial evidence for oceans on Europa, and uncovered several bizarre cases of asteroids disintegrating before our eyes. Hubble has supported numerous NASA Mars missions by monitoring the Red Planet’s seasonal atmospheric changes. Hubble has made complementary observations in support of the Dawn asteroid mission, and comet flybys. In July 1994, Hubble documented the never-before-seen string of comet collisions with Jupiter that resulted from the tidal breakup of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.

“The planned search for a suitable target for New Horizons further demonstrates how Hubble is effectively being used to support humankind’s initial reconnaissance of the solar system,” said Mountain. “Likewise, it is also a preview of how the powerful capabilities of the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will further bolster planetary science. We are excited by the potential of both observatories for ongoing solar system exploration and discovery.”

The post NASA Hubble To Begin Search Beyond Pluto For New Horizons Mission Target appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Formula One ex-champion Michael Schumacher, who sustained severe head injuries in a ski accident in late 2013, is no longer in a coma and has left the French hospital where he has been treated since the accident, Reuters reports the racer’s spokeswoman saying on Monday.

“Michael has left the CHU Grenoble (hospital) to continue his long phase of rehabilitation. He is not in a coma anymore,” said a statement by spokeswoman, Sabina Kehm. She diod not, however, mention where he was being transferred to.

Michael Schumacher was admitted on Monday to the University Hospital of Lausanne, in western Switzerland, after leaving a French hospital where he had been in a coma since a skiing accident last December, a spokesman said.

“He is here, he arrived this morning,” Darcy Christen, spokesman for the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV), told Reuters.

Christen declined to say what unit Schumacher, who lives with his family in a town between Lausanne and Geneva, was being treated in, citing medical secrecy and family privacy.

Schumacher showing ‘small signs of progress’- spokeswoman

Michael Schumacher is improving his spokeswoman said Sunday, with the Formula One legend slowly recovering from devastating brain injuries suffered in a ski accident.

“There are short moments of consciousness and he is showing small signs of progress,” Schumacher’s manager Sabine Kehm told German broadcaster ARD.Schumacher has been in a medically induced coma in Grenoble, France, since being badly injured in a ski accident on December 29 in the French resort of Meribel.

The post Schumacher Out Of Coma, Leaves Hospital appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel today ordered the amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde into the Arabian Gulf, Pentagon Press Secretary Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

The ship has completed its transit through the Strait of Hormuz, the admiral said in a statement.

“Its presence in the Gulf adds to that of other U.S. naval ships already there — including the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush — and provides the commander in chief additional options to protect American citizens and interests in Iraq, should he choose to use them,” Kirby said.

USS Mesa Verde is capable of conducting a variety of quick-reaction and crisis response operations, the press secretary said, and it carries a complement of MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

The ship is part of the USS Bataan Amphibious Ready Group, which departed Norfolk, Virginia, in February and is operating in the region on a routine deployment to support maritime security operations.

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A new study from the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) shows that the Kenyan government has not effectively addressed the harms suffered by victims of sexual crimes committed during the violence that followed Kenya’s disputed 2007 elections or ensured the accountability of perpetrators.

During the crisis, thousands of women, children, and men were sexually assaulted, including in some cases by police officers and military personnel. In Kenya’s largest city, the Gender Violence Recovery Centre at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital treated 443 survivors of sexual violence, of which 80% were cases of rape or defilement.

The study from ICTJ, “The Accountability Gap on Sexual Violence in Kenya: Reforms and Initiatives Since the Post-election Crisis,” analyzes the extent to which responses by the state to the violence, like criminal prosecutions, police reform, and the Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence, have provided any measure of justice for these victims.

“The two main commissions found that the government failed to give due consideration to sexual violence both before and during the crisis,” said Christopher Gitari Ndungú, Head of ICTJ’s Kenya office. “Specific recommendations for remedies, which came directly from the commissions’ investigations, have not translated into any real benefit for survivors or their families.”

In a disturbing trend, only a small fraction of victims of sexual violence reported the crime to the police or another agency. While rape and other sexual crimes are underreported in most societies, the reasons for low reporting in Kenya stem in part from the public’s lack of confidence that the police are willing and able to investigate sexual crimes.

In interviews with ICTJ, many victims of rape doubted whether the police would act on their reports – or worse, some feared retaliation from police officers who might side with perpetrators because of their ethnicity.

The study’s findings are affirmed by a case now before the High Court in Nairobi (Petition Number 122 of 2013), in which eight victims of sexual and gender-based violence committed during the crisis charge that the government failed to protect civilians and did not properly investigate reports of sexual crimes.

“It’s very troubling that, six years on, not one person has been convicted of a sexual violence crime and the government has yet to redress the harms suffered by these victims,” said Amrita Kapur, Senior Associate for ICTJ’s Gender Justice program. “The government must continue to find credible and effective ways to create accountability and ensure that women and men are never targeted in this way again.”

The study makes recommendations to the government that would help to guarantee victims’ rights to a remedy, like ensuring that police vetting includes a focus on gender sensitivity and that police training identifies sexual violence as a violation of a person’s right to bodily integrity, rather than an offence against honor.

The study concludes that new measures like the 2010 Constitution, the National Police Service Act 2011, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, and the National Police Commission, if fully implemented, may help achieve justice for victims.

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Indonesia’s foreign policy under President Yudhoyono has led to a higher profile and more favourable global image for the country. What trajectory will Indonesia’s foreign policy take after the 9 July presidential election?

By Emirza Adi Syailendra

INDONESIA’S FOREIGN policy-making is now highly personalised. Indonesia’s greater global diplomatic involvement has been associated with the growth of the economy and President Yudhoyono’s vision. As his term comes to an end, uncertainty is emerging over whether the global-mindedness of Indonesia foreign policy under him can be sustained.

For the upcoming presidential election, both Joko Widodo (“Jokowi’) and his rival Prabowo Subianto have been taking inspiration from the nationalist outlook of Sukarno. Jokowi has placed his own imprint on Sukarno’s Trisakti principle centred on national pride that places importance on three basic propositions: freedom to proactively assert the right of self-determination in the international scene; economic self-sufficiency; and building a strong national identity. Coupled with Prabowo’s posture as a strong leader in the image of Sukarno, the question arises as to the overall impact of a Sukarnoist influence on the future trajectory of Indonesia’s foreign policy.

Foreign policy under Yudhoyono

A successful career in the military and government has shaped Yudhoyono’s global-minded worldview and taught him the art of building personal ties with many leaders. Indonesia’s foreign policy under him can be described in terms of three concentric circles: advancing Indonesia global image, promoting an outward-looking ASEAN, and expanding Indonesia’s middle power and great power relations.

In the hands of Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, Indonesia has been promoting ASEAN centrality and a more outward-looking Indonesian foreign policy as envisioned by Yudhoyono and his inner circle.

During his tenure, however, Yudhoyono’s personal vision often veered away from the direction set by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (KEMLU). For instance, The KEMLU policy agenda attempting to connect APEC to ASEAN’s interest was sidestepped by Yudhoyono. During APEC in 2013 the issues preferred by the President were those with domestic as well as global elements in relation to issues of connectivity and sustainable development.

Differences in opinion over policies between Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and Yudhoyono have also been frequent, such as the haze issue where the president has been more accommodating than KEMLU; the stationing of US Marines in Darwin; and addressing asylum seekers. This trend in which the president’s personal views will influence priorities, the patterns of association, and global mindedness in foreign policy is likely to continue during a Jokowi or Prabowo term.

Jokowi’s stance: High profile foreign policy?

Jokowi and Prabowo have been drawing inspiration from Sukarno’s nationalistic stance as well as the first president’s policy of self-reliance and greater government control.

Despite his limited experience in foreign relations, Jokowi’s vision and mission recently published by the Indonesia National Election Commission (KPU) has much to say about foreign policy. The strong nationalist stance will not prevent Jokowi from projecting Indonesian activism in the Asia Pacific region.

Several priorities have been set: resolving border disputes in the region; expanding middle power diplomacy; building up the Indo-Pacific regional architecture; enhancing the diplomatic infrastructure of KEMLU such as its research capacity; and enhancing public diplomacy especially to widen public participation in foreign affairs. Jokowi has emphasised the importance of the maritime sector. His vision coincides with Indonesia’s 2015 chairmanship of the Indian Ocean Rim of Association (IORA).

On the defence front, the policy is broadly to increase the defence budget by 1.5 percent from 2014-2019; to develop the local defence industry; and to diversify defence cooperation. Another distinctive element is his commitment to resolve human rights abuses in the past, which also will be promoted through regional mechanisms like ASEAN.

Prabowo’s stance: Looking inward?

Prabowo’s vision and mission, also published by KPU, continues Indonesia’s long-standing principle of a free and active foreign policy while being short on specifics. His focus is mainly on transforming the domestic landscape as highlighted in Gerindra’s manifesto “The Six National Transformation Action Programmes”. Prabowo’s emphasis is more on greater government control and restructuring the management of natural resources.

The domestic focus of his vision can be seen from the issues that he has primarily targeted: labour, various sectors like agriculture, fisheries, and small and medium enterprises. Nevertheless, Prabowo’s administration is unlikely to be totally protectionistic. He stresses the importance of foreign investment and supports his running mate Hatta Rajasa’s masterplan for accelerated economic development (MP3EI) that will depend significantly on collaboration with the private sector to develop the country’s infrastructure.

Coming from a big coalition of six parties, Prabowo’s cabinet will be vulnerable to the interest of the coalition members. Backed by many Islamist parties, he will be more conscious of global Islamic issues.
Post-election foreign policy

There are two possible scenarios post-election: either Jokowi or Prabowo will continue to personalise their foreign policy agenda; and/or the foreign ministry will be at the forefront running the show.
Both leaders will have their own reading of issues, or will be influenced by their inner circle and their respective coalition’s many stakeholders, such as parties and public. The strong infusion of Sukarno’s nationalistic vision may also influence choices of the playing field and the level of assertiveness to be projected by Indonesia.

While Yudhoyono has been ambitious in broadening his playing field by aiming for Indonesia to have a place among great and regional powers, the Jokowi conception of middle power relations emphasises South-South cooperation as well as collaboration between developing and developed countries.

Other scenarios may emerge should KEMLU be empowered with greater room to pursue a more ASEAN- centric path. Among the favourites to become the next foreign minister are two prominent foreign ministry bureaucrats Dian Triansyah Djani and Arif Havas Oegroseno. This reflects a preference for someone who will carry the ministry’s long-standing position on championing ASEAN.
The ministry will continue to focus on bridging the trust deficits and managing disputes in the region, amidst the shaky cohesiveness of ASEAN. Other equally important issues will be the push to create the ASEAN community 2015, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and exploring the idea of ASEAN Development Goals. As Indonesia’s economic profile rises and its status as a G-20 state grows in tandem, emphasis on globalism will inevitably shape its foreign policy trajectory.

Emirza Adi Syailendra is a Research Analyst at the Indonesia Programme of the S. Rajaratnam of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

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The Army has appointed a general officer with Afghanistan combat experience to lead its investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding the disappearance and capture of Sgt. Bowe R. Bergdahl from Combat Outpost Mest-Lalak in Afghanistan’s Paktika province on or about June 30, 2009.

In a statement released, Army officials said Maj. Gen. Kenneth R. Dahl will lead the investigation.

The primary function of this investigation, as in any other investigation, officials said, is to ascertain facts and report them to the appointing authority, officials said in the statement.

“These types of investigations are not uncommon and serve to establish the facts on the ground following an incident. The investigating officer will have access to previously gathered documentary evidence, including the 2009 investigation,” officials added.

The statement emphasized that the Army’s top priority remains Bergdahl’s health and reintegration. “We ask that everyone respect the time and privacy necessary to accomplish the objectives of the last phase of reintegration,” the statement said.

No timeline has been established for the investigation, officials said, noting that he investigating officer will not interview Bergdahl until the reintegration team clears such interaction.

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By Terri Moon Cronk

In military commission proceedings for five suspects in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the lead attorney of the special review team said today the commission should end its inquiry to determine whether FBI investigations into defense teams created a conflict of interest.

The proceedings are taking place at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and are being made available to reporters at the video teleconference center here.

This week’s hearing centers on the commission gathering facts on contact that FBI agents reportedly made with several members of the defense teams so presiding judge Army Col. James Pohl can determine if the interviews pose a conflict of interest in the case.

U.S. Attorney Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez, lead attorney for the special review team, told Pohl the commission has enough facts now to make the ruling. He added that the defense counsels also should agree conflicts do not exist.

“They’re inviting error,” he said of lead counsels of each of the five defense teams, who called on Pohl for an investigation into the FBI interviews. “I urge the commission that this inquiry should end, … because there is no conflict of interest.”

In the commission’s case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and four other defendants, all are charged for their alleged roles in the attacks with eight offenses: conspiracy, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, murder in violation of the law of war, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, hijacking or hazarding a vessel or aircraft, and terrorism, according to the Military Commissions website.

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A month ago, a federal court judge, Gladys Kessler, delivered a historic ruling on Guantánamo, ordering the government to stop force-feeding a hunger striking prisoner, Abu Wa’el Dhiab, and to release to his lawyers videos of his force-feeding and “forcible cell extractions,” whose existence had only recently been discovered by one of his lawyers. She also ordered the government to release his medical records, and to “file a list of all current Standard Operating Procedures/Protocols directly addressing enteral feeding and/or the use of a restraint chair at Guantánamo Bay.”

Judge Kessler lifted her stay on Dhiab’s force-feeding just a few days later, fearing that otherwise he would die, but, with a precedent established regarding the release of videos, another prisoner, Mohammad Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani, a Pakistani father of three, who was held in CIA “black sites” before his transfer to Guantánamo in 2004, asked Judge Kessler’s court, the District Court for the District of Columbia, in Washington D.C., for a second ruling ordering the government to release videotapes of his force-feeding and “forcible cell extractions.”

As his lawyers at the legal action charity Reprieve described it, “The requested tapes are thought to document a period of particularly ‘gratuitous brutality,’ in which Mr. Rabbani contracted a chest infection as a result of botched force-feeding procedures, leading him to repeatedly vomit blood and lose consciousness.”

Elaborating, Reprieve noted that, in a declaration submitted to the court, Mr. Rabbani “described how an improperly-inserted feeding tube caused him to develop chest pain, as a result of which he asked for a day’s rest from force-feeding.” However, his request was ignored, and the next day “he ‘vomited blood on himself three or four times’ before losing consciousness — yet was still taken to the feeding chair by the FCE team.”

He also “described how an improperly-inserted feeding tube led to his airways being blocked with liquid, and considerable pain from the repeated insertion and withdrawal of the tube, often multiple times in each feeding session.”

Cori Crider, Rabbani’s lawyer at Reprieve, said, “Mr. Rabbani has repeatedly reported disturbing abuse at the hands of the Guantánamo authorities, as have so many of his fellow hunger-strikers. Yet the prison denies it, and has flatly refused even the smallest requests to make the force-feeding process more humane. These videos can only help us get to the truth. The court must be allowed to see exactly what is going on daily at Guantánamo Bay.”

Abu Wa’el Dhiab’s renewed complaints

The day after, Abu Wa’el Dhiab complained that he was “once again being subjected to harsh treatment amounting to torture,” as the Guardian described it.

In a supplemental declaration, another of his lawyers, Jon B. Eisenberg, explained what his client had told him in a phone call on June 1:

“After the court ruling they are using a new method on me.” This new method is that some of his FCEs appear to be done by a team that is brought from another camp. He says “this is the rough team,” which he describes as “really evil.” This team “takes you very roughly, with torture.” This team did his FCEs on the evening of May 29, the morning of May 30, and the evening of May 30, and each time he was harshly choked. He says: “I thought they would choke me to death because they were handling me so roughly.” He asked the members of the new team for their numbers so that he could complain, but they refused to give them to him.

Eisenberg also wrote:

Petitioner reiterates that he does not object to being force-fed in order to keep him alive, as long as the force-feeding is “civilized.” He states: “I am willing to be force-fed in a humane manner.” His recent force-feedings, however, have not been humane. He asks: “Is it necessary for them to torture me? Is it necessary for them to choke me every day with the tube? Is it necessary for them to make my throat so swollen every day? Do I have to suffer every day? Is it necessary for them to put me on the torture chair in order to feed me?”

As the Guardian noted, although the Defense Department “insists that it only force feeds Guantánamo prisoners to keep them alive when they are at risk of death,” Judge Kessler was not convinced, and reminded the government that, “according to the Pentagon’s own standard operating protocols, enteral feeding should only be practiced on Dhiab when he is facing an ‘imminent risk of death or great bodily injury.’”

Abu Wa’el Dhiab’s lawyers begin to review the videotapes

When Mohammad Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani sought an order requiring the government to release videotapes of his force-feeding and “forcible cell extractions,” his lawyers had hoped that an order would oblige the government to hand over the tapes at the same time as the Abu Wa’el Dhiab’s 34 tapes, for which the handover date set by Judge Kessler was June 13.

As the Associated Press reported yesterday, Dhiab’s lawyers have begun to examine the videotapes, at the secure facility in Washington D.C., where lawyers for the prisoners must travel to view all classified material relating to their clients.

Dhiab’s lawyers, who, as the AP explained, “have never been allowed to witness the procedure in person,” were expecting to view around ten hours of videotapes over the weekend, as the first batch of released tapes, and are seeking evidence of brutality and abuse in their client’s force-feeding, and in his “forcible cell extractions.” Jon Eisenberg explained, “It’s really kind of a modest thing to ask a court to order our military not to torture these men.”

The AP also explained that, as well as seeking the release of videos on Mohammad Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani’s behalf, the lawyers also plan to ask for the release of videos in some other cases.

Asked what she expected to see, Cori Crider said, “Of course, I expect it to be upsetting.” She added that the DoD “say it’s humane, but that’s totally not the way Dhiab and dozens of other people have reported it to me.”

Unfeasibly, the prison’s commander, Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, told the AP, “We don’t force feed anyone.”

The prisoners and their lawyers disagree. Crider told the AP, that, of the 149 men still held, Dhiab’s legal team “believes about 34 are still on hunger strike and about 18 meet the guidelines for the feedings.”

On Monday morning, there will be a status conference in Dhiab’s case, set by Judge Kessler three weeks ago,“to address any outstanding discovery issues and set a date for a Motion Hearing,” as Reprieve explained in a press release, adding that the Motion Hearing will determine “[t]he wider issue of whether force-feeding at Guantánamo is illegal … once the tapes and other key evidence have been reviewed.”

I look forward to more news that keeps this important story in the public eye — and that keeps pressure on the government to release prisoners. Abu Wa’el Dhiab, lest we forget, is only on a hunger strike because he despairs of ever being released, despite being one of 75 men still held who had their release approved by President Obama’s high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force over four years ago, in January 2010. Last month President Mujica of Uruguay offered a new home to him, and to five other men long cleared for release but who cannot be safely repatriated, and what would make sense now — both in terms of justice, and, more cynically, in terms of digging the Obama administration out of the hole dug by Judge Kessler — would be for Dhiab and these five other men to be sent to Montevideo as soon as is possible.

The post The Latest News On Guantánamo Force-Feeding Videotapes, And Prisoners’ Ongoing Legal Challenges – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

I recently saw an article in the UK Guardian about how the global anti-Iraq War movement was correct about predicting that the US led invasion and bloody occupation would lead to “chaos and instability.”

Well, “duh.” And, I hate to say this, but, of course, in the place wherever these invasions and bloody occupations are planned, whichever war criminal was in attendance, knew it good and damn well, too. How can a nation’s natural resources be stolen and empire be spread if the population of a resource rich nation is not divided? Ever heard the phrase, “divide and conquer?”

After many years and multiple exposés disproving the “reasons” and “justifications” for going into Iraq, we know it wasn’t because of WMD or 9/11 or anything about defending Americans or spreading freedom, right?

Now, as members of the anti-Iraq War movement “predicted” and the Empire intended, the violence in Iraq is continuing and by all accounts, unfortunately escalating.

My son and thousands of other US troops were killed in the bloodiest part of the invasion and occupation starting in 2003, but millions of Iraqi have been slaughtered, injured, displaced, and made desperately ill by depleted uranium and other toxins and poisons delivered by the “freedom bringers” of the US military. I just want the US to get out of the war business so there can be peace abroad and peace and economic justice here at home.

No one should have to live under oppressive occupational forces, then to be “ruled” by a so-called elected government that is just a tool of US Imperialism.

No one should have to live in constant fear of being blown-up while doing things we here in the heart of the Empire take for granted, (or used to): going to school, shopping, walking down the street.

The USA’s allegiance to Empire and absolute devotion to war is hurting everyone, even the jingoists who proclaim, “support the troops,” loudly while vets are dying waiting to get health services from the V.A.

Bottom-line, we should stop stoking the flames of Empire with the fuel of our own flesh and blood.

Recently, I was traveling by air and my next layover was in Las Vegas. A couple of dozen youngsters, really, were dressed in desert camouflage waiting to get on my plane with me to head to Las Vegas. They could have been your average American young person, except they were sporting the uniform of carnage. There was probably one reason per soldier for enlisting, but I am sure many of them were economic of nature: our young people have little or no opportunity in the Land of Constant War for the Gross Profit of a Few.

After landing in Las Vegas while we were taxiing to the gate, it was announced that these “heroes” were coming to the Las Vegas area to train and then “go off to war.” The other passengers were asked to show our “appreciation” and the plane went wild with applause and cheers.

Was I the only one who wept?

No MORE WAR in Iraq!

US troops home from everywhere.

PS: In 2003, in a speech protesting the imminent US invasion of Iraq, then Illinois State Senator, Barack Obama called Iraq a “dumb war,” a “rash war.” My question is when will his Obama-trons finally admit that ALL WARS ARE DUMB, and Obama has been a complete success for the war machine and an able servant of Empire?

The post Cindy Sheehan: Intended Consequences, The Imperial Meat Wagon Rolls – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Obama administration is considering working with the Iranian government to deal with the full-blown horrors currently plaguing Iraq. As a non-interventionist, I’m committed to opposing such an approach. If I were a pragmatic realist or a utilitarian I’d be tempted to agree that such an alliance would be the lesser of evils, although as clear as that might seem today, I’d still have my reservations.

The terror in Iraq itself could be partly traced to a number of interventions where the U.S. government sought to ally with the lesser evil. The al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists got a boost as America intervened on their side in Libya and, less conspicuously, in Syria. The instability in Iraq generally was a totally predictable consequence of the U.S. ousting Saddam Hussein.

While ousting Saddam stood as the central goal in America’s most horrifically cataclysmic foreign policy endeavor since Vietnam, he was of course every bit as brutal as the neocons claimed. Indeed, for many years the U.S. favored his rule for the precise reason that he was a brutal secular strongman who effectively suppressed Islamist factions (and before that because he was seen as a Cold War ally against radically leftist forces).

Saddam’s most notorious acts of inhumanity took place in the 1980s, during his war with Iran. In that conflict, the United States intelligence community furnished Saddam with military intelligence, despite knowing about his penchant for using chemical weapons since 1983. The Reagan administration worked to defend Saddam against international criticism (even as the administration secretly and in direct defiance of Congress furnished weapons to Saddam’s mortal enemies in Tehran).

Thus did the United States back the Iraqi regime during its worst atrocities. In particular, Saddam’s use of poison gas became a major talking point in the run up to war with Iraq in 2003. That war’s early consequences included the empowering of Iranian-allied Shi-ites as well as al Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Qaeda, as most everyone knows, has its roots, along with the Taliban, in the insurgent fighters the United States began supporting in 1979 to provoke an invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and help lead to its overstretch and demise.

So it goes with U.S. foreign policy. To defeat the fascists, ally with communists. To defeat the communists, ally with Islamists. To stop the Islamists, back the worst of secular dictators. To rein them in, throw support back to the fundamentalist radicals. When they begin to conquer the nation the U.S. promised to liberate, it’s time to consider support from an authoritarian regime the U.S. has been constantly demonizing for many years.

Ideologues on both sides of the foreign policy debate have a tendency to downplay the evils of foreign regimes, or some cases to exaggerate them, based on whom the U.S. government is backing. In this way, a brutal dictator opposed to the United States can sometimes find support among the less thoughtful antiwar agitators while American hawks do all to demonize the same tyrant they themselves whitewashed back when he was a U.S. ally. But in truth, sometimes the U.S. sides with the slightly less evil side; sometimes it sides with the worse side. Sometimes it sides with both, perversely enough, or sides with one in one theater of war and the other in another context. Often the U.S. shifts its support over a matter of years or even months.

The most important point, however, is that when the U.S. offers support on any side, it does so at a great moral price, sacrificing core principles of right and wrong for the expediency of political calculation writ large. Thousands die, supposedly to save tens of thousands, but rarely does to calculus add up nearly the way it’s advertised, and even when it does interventions plant the seeds for greater disasters around the corner. Just as often, it is impossible to figure out which side is less bad, or the very act of intervening on behalf of one faction can make it worse simply by removing its underdog status and giving it more power in the region.

Those who are running over Iraq are almost surely worse than the people running Iran. But to stop them, the U.S. would likely have to enlist the help of other militants as well, and who knows what that will lead to.

What Bush did in 2003 will continue to reverberate and have horrific consequences in the region, maybe for decades. It was potentially the worst American foreign policy decision since World War I in terms of the long-term consequences. Tragically, that is no reason for the United States to try to fix the problem, because it probably can’t do so, at least not without setting in motion something even worse in the future.

If the United States ever does break its cycle of foreign violence, the short term consequences might not satisfy anyone. Terrorism might continue for decades, given the resentment built up. Regimes will become replaced with worse ones. These horrors might multiply and unfold for half a century. But the United States still needs to break the cycle, and the sooner the better, because the only alternative is to keep bombing, intervening, killing, and befriending brutal enemies of enemies, and for the last century all that has produced is more of the same.

The post Enemies Of Enemies – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Marianela Jarroud

In April 2004, Argentina began to steadily cut natural gas exports to neighbouring Chile, triggering a major energy crisis and revealing structural problems in this vital sector.

Ten years later, a regasification plant which converts liquefied natural gas (LNG) back to natural gas in the port of Mejillones, 1,400 km north of Santiago, apparently goes a long way towards solving the energy problems in the north of the country, where water is scarce and where the mining industry is concentrated.

President Michelle Bachelet has expressed confidence that, along with renewable energies, natural gas will contribute to the diversification of Chile’s energy mix, and emphasised that “what we do or fail to do now will have consequences in the future.”

On May 14, Bachelet inaugurated an onshore storage tank at the Mejillones Liquefied Natural Gas (GNLM) regasification terminal, the biggest in Latin America and one of the biggest in the world.

French-Belgian power company GDF Suez holds a 63 percent share in the terminal and the rest is owned by the state-owned Corporación del Cobre de Chile (Codelco).

It was Bachelet , during her first term (2006-2010), who laid the first stone for the plant. And in February 2010 she was present to welcome the arrival of the first methane tanker.

Bachelet now inaugurated the huge storage tank with a gross capacity of 187,000 m3. It is a full containment tank with a nickel steel inner tank inside a pre-stressed concrete outer tank.

The CEO of GDF Suez, Gerard Mestrallet, said it was built to the highest safety standards, to withstand seismic activity and tsunamis.

The tank’s 501 elastomeric isolators enable it to withstand the stresses caused by a major earthquake, as well as sophisticated seismic monitoring and protection systems.

The expansion of GNLM involved an additional 200 million dollars, on top of the initial investment of 550 million dollars.

For four years, in the first stage of the project, the BW GDF Suez Brussels was moored on one side of the jetty in the bay and used as a floating storage unit when gas shipments came in.

The land tank’s capacity is equivalent to approximately 110 million m3 of standard natural gas after the regasification process. This is transported to clients, mainly mining companies, through the Nor Andino and GasAtacama pipelines.

It is the company’s clients that pay for importing the gas. The corporations that have signed contracts so far are the Anglo-Australian multinational BHP Billiton, Codelco and Generadora E-CL, a Chilean power company controlled by GDF Suez.

On May 15, Bachelet – who took office in March – presented her government’s energy agenda, which focuses heavily on clean energy sources as well as the use of LNG to replace diesel fuel and for industrial and household use as well.

The agenda proposes short-term measures to maximise the use of the country’s current electric power generation infrastructure and LNG terminals.

It also includes medium to long-term initiatives aimed at boosting LNG capacity and installing new combined cycle plants fueled with natural gas, “as far as possible with new actors.”

Besides Mejillones, Chile has another LNG terminal, in Quintero bay 154 km north of Santiago, which is owned by London-based BG Group PLC and Chile’s state oil and gas company Empresa Nacional del Petroleo (ENAP).

But the head of the Latin American Observatory on Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), Lucia Cuenca, said the government’s proposal should be looked at with a critical eye.

The country is making the mistake, she told Tierramérica, of not thinking about the high quality natural gas that Bolivia or Argentina could provide, but only about unconventional sources of natural gas. She was referring, for example, to shale gas, which is extracted from underground rocks by hydraulic fracturing or fracking.

“ Chile is preparing to incorporate this kind of gas and that has to be evaluated in a much broader manner,” Cuenca said.

Chile currently imports gas mainly from Trinidad and Tobago and Qatar. But the government will reportedly negotiate supplies of shale gas from the United States.

Cuenca added that, even though LNG emits fewer greenhouse gas emissions, “it’s still a fossil fuel, which means it does produce emissions.”

“LNG is considered a transitional fuel; in other words, it is a little better than coal, but it is not exactly the best option from the standpoint of clean energy,” he added.

In Chile, thermoelectric plants are run on three kinds of fuel: diesel, the most expensive and dirtiest; coal, which is also highly polluting, but abundant and cheap; and gas, which is the least polluting, but costs around 30 percent more than coal.

In 1991, a year after this country returned to democracy after the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, the governments of Argentina and Chile signed an economic agreement that established the foundations for gas interconnection between the two countries.

But the late Néstor Kirchner, when he took office as president of Argentina in 2003, prioritised domestic supplies in the face of internal shortages of natural gas, which at the time only covered national demand.

The cuts in exports had a tremendous economic impact on Chile, because power companies were forced to use oil instead, whose international market price had soared.

At the time Argentina cut its gas exports, nearly 90 percent of industries in Santiago were using natural gas from Argentina, which also supplied much of the country’s natural gas pipeline network that serves households.

“The decision reached by Kirchner (2003-2007) was in line with Argentina’s political approach, which will always favour national interests; regardless of who is governing, they are prepared to assume the costs from the standpoint of the international cooperation agenda,” political scientist Francisca Quiroga told Tierramérica.

She said that after Argentina reduced its gas exports to Chile, a debate broke out in which many argued that Chile should not trust Argentina because it was a country that did not live up to its promises. But the political dividends Kirchner reaped outweighed any criticism from abroad, she added.

Quiroga said the question of energy “is a very touchy ideological and strategic issue and is important in debates on domestic policy.”

And in the current regional context, she added, “is it one of the most important issues on the multilateral agenda to address in terms of the challenges of the 21st century.”

In the meantime, Chile is planning the construction of a third LNG terminal in the south-central part of the country, with the participation of the state energy company ENAP.

Cuenca said it is a strategy that serves the large mining corporations that need cheap, abundant energy, because the aim is to offer lower prices on the domestic market.

The post Natural Gas: Both Crisis And Solution In Chile appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Ecuador should revoke a presidential decree that includes provisions that violate basic rights of refugees under international law, Human Rights Watch said.

On May 30, 2012, President Rafael Correa adopted Presidential Decree 1182 to regulate asylum procedures in Ecuador, which has the largest number of registered refugees of any Latin Amercan country – approximately 55,000 as of September 2013. On June 16, 2014, Human Rights Watch submitted a joint amicus brief with the Human Rights and Genocide Clinic of Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law before the Constitutional Court of Ecuador, contending that the decree violates Ecuador’s international legal obligations to protect refugees and asylum-seekers.

“Ecuador should be giving refugees a reasonable chance to apply for asylum,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Ecuador has obligations toward refugees under its own laws and international law, and it needs to honor those obligations.”

The brief was submitted in a case brought before the Constitutional Court in 2012 by the nongovernmental organization Asylum Access Ecuador and the Public Interest Law Clinic of the San Francisco de Quito University. Both institutions challenged the constitutionality of several articles of the decree.

“Decree 1182 provisions violate an asylum seeker’s due process rights and jeopardize these and other fundamental rights – including the right to seek asylum… and the principle of non-refoulement,” the brief says, referring to the requirement of international law not to return anyone to a country where they would face persecution or torture.

The brief argues that the presidential decree imposes short, inflexible procedural time limits that make it difficult, if not impossible, for asylum seekers to apply for refugee status and, if necessary, appeal adverse status determinations. The decree also sets a high admissibility standard for applications to be considered for refugee status determination; allows officials broad power to exclude asylum seekers from the asylum procedure; and grants overly broad powers to authorities to revoke refugee status.

The decree’s procedures are incompatible with guidelines on basic safeguards adopted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Human Rights Watch said.

The implementation of these provisions could contravene Ecuador’s obligations under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, as well as principles Ecuador has accepted as binding in the 1981 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees.

The post Ecuador: Amicus Brief Challenges Refugee Decree appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Col R Hariharan

“Bodu Bala Sena General Secretary Galagodaaththe Gnanasara Thero addressing the rally in Aluthgama yesterday, referred to Muslims in derogatory terms and accused sections of the Government of being in collaboration with the Muslim Community. “They keep calling us racist and religious extremists. Yes, we are racists,” he charged as the crowd cheered him on. “This country still has a Sinhala police a Sinhala army. If a single Sinhalese is touched, that will be the end of all them,” he screamed.” – From Dharisha Bastiyan’s report in the Sri Lankan online portal Daily FT on June 16, 2014

The above media quote provides the simple answer to question “Why violent attacks continue against Muslims in Sri Lanka? The words quoted above are from the speech of Bodu Bala Sena (BBS)’s founder leader Gunasara Thero at a rally organized in Aluthagama on June 15.

Sri Lanka has allowed Buddhist chauvinism to get into “direct action” against Muslim minority that is inciting the violent attacks against them. Evidently, as earlier instances have shown there is reluctance the government had been reluctant to take action to curb such provocative events for fear of antagonizing the Sinhala right wing which is an important segment of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s “vote bank.”

The BBS had organized the rally in Aluthagama after three Muslim youth had allegedly assaulted a Buddhist monk and his driver on June 12. However, Muslim media sources said the BBS had twisted a simple altercation between a Muslim youth and the driver of a vehicle carrying a Bhikku as an attack on the monk to rouse Sinhala passions. Police arrested three Muslims suspected to be involved in the incident and they have been remanded to custody till June 25.

According to the well known expatriate analyst DBS Jeyaraj’s detailed report the BBS rally was attended by 7000 people included many brought from outside. Another Buddhist Followers of the Fascist organisation Ravana Balaya had also joined the rally.

At the end of the rally, 150-200 strong followers of BBS including young monks shouting anti-Muslim slogans headed towards the local mosque. It resulted in a skirmish when Muslim youth tried to head them off near the mosque. In the melee that followed Muslim houses and shops were stoned. Some Muslims are also reported to have pelted stones on vehicles in the BBS procession.

According to Jeyaraj, the police intervened to disperse the Muslim youth rather than prevent the BBS procession from going ahead. He added “the assailants were mainly outsiders and not from the neighbourhood. Bells started pealing in Buddhist temples. When people gathered at the temples they were exhorted to join the “holy war” and teach the Muslims a lesson.”

Around 6.45 pm police imposed curfew in the area. However, later the incidents continued and when the violence spread to adjacent Beruwala area and the curfew was extended there also. But apparently the action was belated as at least 20 Muslim owned businesses and several houses in the area were destroyed.

There were several incidents of arson and many buildings were set ablaze. According to Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) MP Mohammed Aslam at least 25 houses were gutted completely. A very large number of buildings have suffered extensive damage. Several vehicles owned by Muslims were damaged or burnt. The Fire Brigade was called in to quell the spreading fires.

At the end of it all, yesterday three people were dead and 80 injured; 50 houses and property ((including burning down of over 10 shops ) in the predominantly Muslim area of Dharga town were damaged. According to the Daily FT report “houses in the Kotapitiya, Meeri Penna and Adhikarigoda areas in Aluthgama were also set on fire, with Muslim residents fleeing their homes to take sanctuary in several mosques in Dharga town.”

This is not the first incident in which Muslims and their property have been attacked and destroyed. This had been going on ever since BBS was founded in 2012.

Even if we make allowance for some exaggeration in the reports on the Aluthagama violence one thing is clear: the BBS is responsible for it. It was the incendiary anti-Muslim rhetoric of the BBS leader Gunasara Thero that inflamed the mob that indulged in violent acts against Muslims.

Logically, action should be taken against the monk and the BBS for inciting violence. But if we go by past experience such a follow up action is unlikely. So we can expect the BBS to exploit any opportunity arising in the future also to carry out more such violent incidents.

One can discern a pattern followed by the administration in handling the growing Buddhist activism against Muslims.

a. Usually, police do not take preventive action to curb such gatherings that precipitate violence. In the Aluthagama incident also, the police permitted the BBS rally despite pleas from Muslim organizations and ministers not to do so. After the incident involving Muslim youth and the Buddhist cleric and his driver was reported, they feared BBS rally would incite violence against the community.

b. According to Jeyaraj there were over 900 policemen at the location. Apparently they were either unwilling or unable to prevent the attacks by hoodlums. This is also the usual response of the police. They generally do not act when violent incidents start; nor do they respond strongly to prevent the situation getting out of hand.

c. The Muslim ministers and community leaders usually approach the administration for help when they apprehend such violence or when violent acts are being perpetrated. But generally the administration is lukewarm in its response.

d. After such incidents, the President usually issues a statement appealing to all communities not to take law into their own hands. After the Aluthagama incident also the same pattern had been followed. President Rajapaksa, who is on a visit to Bolivia, issued a statement last night saying “the government will not allow anyone to take law into their hands.” (But the moot point is already some people had taken the law into their own hands.) According to the President’s media unit, the President urged the parties concerned to act with restraint. He ordered an investigation to bring to book those responsible for the incidents in Aluthagama.

In the follow up action, Prime Minister DM Jayaratna and senior cabinet ministers including Basil Rajapaksa, AHM Fowzie and Dallas Allaperumaha met with police officials and religious groups in Kalutara to assess the security situation. The curfew has been extended in Aluthagama and Dehiwala areas.

Justice Minister and Sri Lanka Muslim Congress leader Rauf Hakeem visited Dargha town area today. Having failed to protect his people, Hakeem said he was ashamed to continue as a minister and was considering whether to be part of the government or not.

And in Chennai, the Tamil Nadu Tawheed Jamaat has decided to organize a protest outside the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner’s office.

What next is the question? Is it going to be action replay? What happened to the religious police raised to look into these incidents?

One can only hope President Rajapaksa takes strong action curb such incidents. The country’s long term stake in maintaining communal harmony and cannot afford any action to jeopardise it. Otherwise, the future of Muslims in Sri Lanka does not look encouraging. And it could affect Sri Lanka in many ways.

(Col R Hariharan, a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, served with the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka as Head of Intelligence. He is associated with the Chennai Centre for China Studies and the South Asia Analysis Group. E-Mail: colhari@yahoo.com Blog: www.colhariharan.org)

The post Why Violent Attacks Continue Against Muslims In Sri Lanka? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Two robots are cleaning up contamination inside Fukushima Daiichi 2. A new one is wiping down the walls while another continues to scrub the floor.

Although it suffered a core melt three years ago, unit 2 saw none of the hydrogen explosions that tore through other damaged reactors on the site. Its building is therefore relatively undamaged and well sealed, but this also means there is much contamination trapped inside that must be dealt with before workers can re-enter.

Since November last year a small robot dubbed the Raccoon has been systematically scrubbing and jet washing the floor of the plant’s first level. On 9 June it was joined by a much larger sibling, a modified Husqvarna DX-140 from Sweden weighing almost one tonne.

The robot has been modified by Toshiba to include 12 cameras and a radiation dose meter as well as two attachments for its single arm: a chemical mop and a suction nozzle. Under remote control it will maneuvre on tracks, stabilize itself with four extending legs, and use its arm to clean areas of the walls 1.8-5.0 metres above the ground. Over a period of about six weeks it will clean walls, including ducts and cable trays as well as control panels and the surfaces of equipment.

The robots are deployed unit 2′s first floor as this is the location of the containment vessel hatch that Tepco needs to inspect. This will require another remote-controlled operation, but access by workers is needed to open the hatch and set up equipment. Ultimately Tepco needs to find the status of the reactor core and develop a plan to remove its remains.

The post Fukushima: Next Stage For Robotic Decontamination appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Manoj Joshi

On June 11, hundreds of Sunni militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and the al-Sham (ISIS) captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home city. Iraqi forces simply abandoned their posts and ran away, shedding their uniforms and weapons. Subsequently, the ISIS captured Samarra. Fallujah and Ramadi had come under their control earlier. Half a million refugees have fled to the Kurdish areas adjacent to Mosul and to the Shia dominated South.

The ISIS has threatened to capture Baghdad and it appears that Iraq is disintegrating. Iraq is now divided into three mutually antagonistic regions-the Shia south-east leading to Basra and the Persian Gulf, the Sunni north-west bordering Syria and the Kurd-dominated north-east, bordering Iran and Turkey. The ISIS, itself has a chequered history.

It is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who was as associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who was killed in an American drone strike in 2006. He was affiliated to the al Qaeda, but was so violent that he was rebuked by Ayman al Zawahiri, the number two in al Qaeda. So it is not a surprise that earlier this year, the al Qaeda formally dissociated itself from the ISIS. The ISIS has been ruthless in targeting government forces in Syria and Iraq, but it has been equally brutal in dealing with fellow Islamist groups, torturing and beheading their personnel and assassinating their leaders like Dr Hussein al Suleiman, the leader of Ahrar al Sham. Al Baghdadi was held in a US prison camp in Iraq till 2009, when he was released.

But the real strength of the ISIL lies in their rear base in Syria which has honed them into a highly motivated and effective fighting force. Some estimates say that they number just a few thousands, much smaller than the poorly led and motivated Iraqi Army. Indeed, there is every chance that the conflict in Syria and Iraq can merge into a great regional war pitting the Sunnis, aided by Saudi Arabia and the rich Gulf emirates, and the Shias, aided by Iran.

In a more immediate sense, the violence today goes back to 2006-2007 when the Shia-dominated Iraqi government of Nouri Kamal al-Maliki took on the Sunni militias and marginalised the Sunnis. The US troop surge of 2007 halted this civil war, but only temporarily till the US withdrew in 2011.

This allowed al Maliki to continue his policy of marginalising the Sunnis, the country’s vice president, a Sunni, was sentenced to death in absentia for leading death squads, and there was a general crack-down in Sunni dominated areas. In 2013, as many as 9,300 people died in the violence, mainly through car bomb blasts. Last month nearly 800 people died, the highest so far.

Pressure is building up on Barack Obama to re-enter the Iraqi quagmire. A novel feature this time around, is Iran’s declaration that it would assist the United States if it chose to intervene. Policy makers in Washington are clueless about the ISIS’ true strength and capabilities and are, therefore, not sure how to respond. In late May, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with Arab counterparts in Jeddah, where there was agreement that ISIS and other Islamic fighters in Syria and Iraq posed a threat to the entire region. But no plan on how to counter those groups emerged from the meeting.

Faced with an assault on the capital city, the people of Baghdad have rallied to resist the invasion, bolstered by the call of Shiism’s biggest leader, Ayatallah Ali al-Sistani. The ISIS has now captured most of the Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq and so, their going will not be easy any more. Not surprisingly, their 320 km movement in three days, which brought them within 100 km of Baghdad, has now stalled.

Given the nature of the terrain, American air power can make a difference. But the question before the Obama Administration is whether they should get involved again. For the time being, the US has ordered an aircraft carrier to move from the north Arabian sea to the Persian Gulf.

But all this will not change the ethnic equations of the region. Given the vicious sectarian conflict that has been going on, the only option may be to divide Iraq into its three ethnic/sectarian components. But even this may not be possible as long as the Syria continues to fester.

There is no doubt that the roots of today’s problems lie in the 2003 American invasion of Iraq that took place under false pretences that it was somehow linked to 9/11, and shattered the sectarian and ethnic peace in the country which was held together by Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Even more delusional was the belief that the sectarian divisions could be overcome by democracy and capitalism fuelled by oil revenues. This was the kind of super power syndrome peddled by the Bush Administration and its allies.

But the blame for what is happening today must be shared equally between the Americans and the Iraqis themselves, primarily the Shia leadership of al Maliki. By his sectarian approach to governance, he has thrown away all the chances of restoring the multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian Iraqi state as a single unit.

(The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi)

The post Militants Onslaught: Iraq, US Equally Share Blame – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Hafizullah Gardesh and Mina Habib

Afghanistan’s presidential run-off election followed a similar pattern to the first round – reports of high turnout and relatively good security, but claims of electoral fraud, too.

In the June 14 vote, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah stood against ex-World Bank economist and finance minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, after the April 5 election failed to produce an outright winner.

Ahmad Yusuf Nuristani, chairman of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) told a press conference that over seven million voters took part, 38 per cent of them women. This early estimate would, if confirmed, be similar to the 60 per cent turnout recorded in the first round.

Nuristani said the fact that the election was run and policed by Afghans “increased the credibility of the process” at home and abroad.

Officials hailed the day as a historic success.

Casting his vote, outgoing president Hamed Karzai predicted that Afghans would “come out and rescue [their] land from its need for foreigners, and from destruction”.

Rahmatullah Nabil, who heads Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, described the day as a momentous accomplishment, and a defeat for the Taleban.

“Even if the enemy still has a physical presence, it must realise it has been eliminated morally,” he told reporters.

Nabil said his agency had carried out over 60 counter-terrorism operations in the past ten days, and foiled “73 enemy plots”.

The high turnout seen on April 5 was attributed in large part to the Afghan security forces’ success in preventing insurgent attacks, although that vote was marred by complaints about polling stations running out of ballot papers as well as allegations of electoral fraud.

Fahim Naimi, spokesman for the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), a leading poll monitoring group, said the failings of the first round was repeated in the second.

Live television broadcasts tracked progress across the country from the moment voting began at seven in the morning. By mid-morning, there were already reports that ballot-papers had run out at polling stations in a number of provinces and even in the capital Kabul

“As in the first round, most polling stations opened late,” Naimi said. “There was a shortage of ballot papers. Observers weren’t allowed to enter premises to watch. Fraud was committed in various ways. Reports by our observers also indicate that force was used in some cases.”

He said FEFA had not yet completed its investigations, but would issue a final report with its findings in due course.

After polls closed, both candidates asked the IEC to deliver a fair result when preliminary figures were announced on July 2.

Abdullah, who won 45 per cent in the April election, told a Kabul press conference that this would guarantee the success of Afghanistan’s future leadership.

“Ensuring election transparency is an obligation for the IEC and the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission,” he said. “Transparency and legality will increase public confidence in the democratic process, and in these commissions.”

Ashraf Ghani, who came second in April with 32 per cent of the vote, made similar comments.

“It is now the IEC’s duty to count the votes responsibly, and to reveal the results to the people responsibly,” he told reporters.

IEC head Nuristani thanked the Afghan security forces, media and civil society groups for the respective contributions to the election, but noted that allegations of interference had been made against some state and security officials.

“Reports of fraud and intimidation have been received from some areas,” Nuristani continued. “If the offenders are part of the state, we will refer them to the government. If they aren’t, we will identify them and refer them to legal and judicial institutions.”

According to local media reports, army personnel in the Barmal district of Paktika province and the Andar district of Ghazni province forced locals to cast their votes for Abdullah, while in the Hesarak and Dara-ye Nur districts of Nangarhar province, local commanders were said to have filled ballot boxes with fraudulent votes for the same candidate. Supporters of Ashraf Ghani were alleged to have engaged in electoral fraud, as well.

A spokesman for the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission, Nader Mohseni told a news conference the day after the vote that fewer grievances had been recorded than in the first round.

Mohseni said that 275 complaints had been registered from Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, most of them claims of bribery or intimidation. In 29 cases, the complaints involved IEC employees, he added.

One of the most high-profile incidents involved the arrest of IEC Secretary Zia ul-Haq Amarkhel on election day.

Kabul province’s police chief Zahir Zahir said his officers detained Amarkhel who was transporting “electoral materials” (ballot papers) from Kabul to the Sorobi district.

“He wanted to commit fraud and we stopped the vehicles,” Zahir said.

Abdullah called for the IEC official to be suspended, but Amarkhel denied any wrongdoing.

“I wanted to transport the materials to centres where there was a shortage,” Amarkhel said, accusing police of obstructing an essential task.

Announcing an investigation, Afghan interior minister Mohammad Omar Daudzai told a news conference, “I believe a misunderstanding has taken place between these two individuals. I have appointed a commission to investigate. We will inform the public of the results later.”

Daudzai insisted that police remained impartial throughout the second-round vote.

“We succeeded in meeting the promises we made to the public. This success was achieved through people’s cooperation,” he said. “We received hundreds of calls from the public during these days, which helped us arrest our enemies and foil their conspiracies.”

The minister said fewer attacks took place than on April 5. However, there were cases where insurgents cut of voters’ inked fingers – a sign they had just been to the polls.

“In the past 24 hours, including polling day itself, 11 policemen, 15 national army soldiers, one IEC employee and 20 civilians were killed,” he said. “We have a number of injured people as well. Also, 60 insurgents have been killed and that number may increase, because we are still receiving reports.”

Confrontations between supporters of the rival candidates’ camps were reported at polling stations around the country.

Aziz Gul, from the Butkhak district in Kabul province, described one argument that he witnessed.

“An armed clash happened between men associated with Maulavi Tarakhel, a member of parliament who supports Ashraf Ghani, and followers of Allah Gul Mujahid, a parliamentarian who supports Abdullah,” he said. “As a result, one man from Tarakhel’s side was wounded and one from Mujahed’s side was killed and two others injured. Also, Maulavi Tarakhel’s men seized vehicles and heavy weapons from Allah Gul Mujahed’s men.”

Aziz Gul said the two groups dispersed when Afghan National Army forces arrived on the scene.

In Jalalabad, the main city of Nangarhar province, bodyguards of local lawmaker Ghafar were accused of shooting at people who were chanting slogans in support of Ashraf Ghani, killing two and injuring others.

Political analyst Abdul Ghafur Lewal said the second round had been a major success, but criticised some aspects of the performance of the security services.

“Although I thank the security forces for their bravery and courage, there was, unfortunately, more political interference by the security forces in this round. Not only did they interfere, but they also failed to prevent armed individuals who interfered in the process and injured and killed children,” he said, in a reference to the Jalalabad incident.

Lewal also criticised the arrest of Amarkhel, saying, “Interference by the police chief of Kabul province caused thousands of people in the country to be deprived of their votes, and is something that must be taken seriously.”

Despite some cases of electoral fraud, Lewal emphasised that this was not so severe as to undermine the legitimacy of the process.

“The surprising thing this time is that people in unsafe provinces came out and went to the polls. That was something that seemed inconceivable,” he said.

In this two-man race, many voters said it came down to the candidates’ backgrounds.

Kabul resident Safia said she voted for Ashraf Ghani because he was educated and had no history of corruption or bloodshed.

“My husband said that our votes were of no value and that whatever the strongmen people and America wanted would happen,” she said. “I still went [to vote] and said it was my responsibility to do so.”

Rahman, a student at Kabul university, said that Abdullah and his supporters had a troubling history of links to past violence.

“They do not have plans or programmes,” he continued. “For this reason, Abdullah got out of attending a debate. What should the nation expect from him, then? Ashraf Ghani is a man of work and action. His programmes are good for everyone.”

Supporters of Abdullah countered that his past association with the anti-Soviet mujahedin qualified him for the job.

“Abdullah is a jihadi,” said voter Abdul Matin. “The people are Muslims and their leader must be a Muslim and a jihadi.”

For other voters, ethnicity played a part in the final choice. Ashraf Ghani is Pashtun, and although Abdullah is half-Pashtun, he is widely identified with the mainly Tajik northeast parts of Afghanistan.

That was what swung it for Sharifa, a resident of Khair Khana in Kabul, who said, “I voted for Abdullah only because he’s Tajik and handsome.”

Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR’s Afghanistan editor. Mina Habib is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul. This article was published at IWPR’s ARR Issue 490.

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By David Danelo

On May 16, as official election results swept across India, broadcasts featured caricatures of the country’s senior political figures corresponding to their party. Instead of political icons (elephant; donkey) or color-coded result maps, viewers watched .gifs striking comic postures next to parliamentary tallies. Rahul Gandhi’s avatar bawled like a baby after the Indian National Congress was swept from power, and Arvind Kejriwal’s shrugged with exaggerated confusion, distraught that his anti-corruption Aam Adami Party could not attract more supporters. Meanwhile, Narendra Modi’s icon smiled from a Hulk Hogan pose, exulting in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) victory as headlines proclaimed “India Modi-fied” under new leadership.

Although geography, history, and culture impose constraints on every global power, Prime Minister Modi’s dramatic popular mandate—the BJP’s 282 seat victory ensure the party will dominate the Lok Sabha or Indian Parliament, for the next five years—gives India’s new government a rare opportunity. Most political leaders, whether corrupt or competent, are unable to translate ephemeral hope into practical change (Barack Obama’s presidency illustrates this at many levels.) And India’s geopolitical limitations may not be transcended, but Modi at least possesses the character and capacity to dramatically shift India’s course.

Why is this? How does Modi have the potential to transform the world’s largest democracy (and what will become in a decade, if projections are accurate, the world’s largest country)? Is it because Modi rose from poverty as a chaiwala in a small Gujarat town to the country’s highest office? Is it because of the game-changing power that social media and mobile technology provide to populist politicians? Is it Modi’s disciplined austerity and devout celibacy? Is it because he is a workaholic who sleeps three hours a night and has not vacationed in fourteen years? Is it morning yoga?

THE CHAIWALA ASCENDS

In some respects, it is all of these things that grant Modi his exceptional mandate. In other ways, it is none of them. Like many things, the simplest explanation is often the best: Modi’s extraordinary ascension happened because he is an extraordinary politician. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Modi worked as a pracharak (representative and advocate) for the Rahtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist cultural and quasi-political organization. True to his chaiwala roots, Modi regularly prepared tea, breakfast, and evening snacks for his seniors, also assuming responsibility for cleaning and sweeping the 10-room headquarters building in Ahmedabad. The core pillar of Modi’s political leadership philosophy—no task is too menial for anyone to accomplish—seems to have begun during these two decades.

Modi evolved from this base starting in 1987, when he formally joined the BJP and rose, in less than a year, to becoming general secretary of the Gujarat unit. Now a BJP pracharak, Modi traveled Gujarat in a two-wheeled motor scooter, building the party vote by vote. His disciplined, determined, practical grassroots approach resulted in achieving the goal: BJP candidates were elected throughout the state. Modi quickly become a professional community organizer, and a very good one at that.

Modi rose quietly through the BJP party ranks during the 1990s, first as the BJP’s national secretary, and then as the party’s General Secretary. Modi studied political science at Gujarat University, learned how to organize meetings and rallies from BJP veterans, designed strategy with party leadership, and catalogued detailed, encyclopedic knowledge about India’s political and campaign landscape.

Why is this important? In October 2001, when Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he took power as a BJP party functionary, not as an elected official. Gujarat’s previous chief minister, Keshubhai Patel, had resigned under an intense backlash following the January 2001 Gujarat earthquake. Patel’s administration faced statewide accusations of corruption and poor administration following the disaster, which killed 20,000; injured 167,000; and destroyed 400,000 homes. Modi was among Patel’s critics, and declined an offer from BJP leaders to serve as Patel’s deputy, saying he was “going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all.”

And so it was, in October 2001, that Modi first assumed political office. As the Americans surged into neighboring Afghanistan on the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the BJP party machinery assigned Modi as chief minister of a state (which bordered Pakistan) under a political, not popular, mandate. Indian media were surprised at his appointment, proclaiming sarcastically “A pracharak as Chief Minister.”[1] Modi was inexperienced, and BJP leaders thought it quite unlikely that the former chaiwala from the low caste would be difficult to control. “He was a puppy back then,” a longtime Indian political observer told me, discussing how colleagues once thought of Modi. “Nobody expected him to be anything more than an interim chief minister.”

AND THEN THE RIOTS

On February 27, 2002, just four and a half months after Modi took office, the Sabarmati Express train caught fire in Godhra, in eastern Gujarat. Fifty-eight Hindus returning from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya—an ancient Uttar Pradesh city believed to be Ram’s birthplace—burned to death in fires started by a Muslim mob angered by what was believed to have been a dispute about tea sales.[2] Suddenly, Gujarat became a ghastly killing field. Armed with clubs, kerosene, and electoral rolls, Hindu mobs seized, raped, beat, and burned Muslims (who fought back, doing far less damage.) The police did not intervene for three days.

It is the last sentence which polarizes opinions on Modi the most; the singular fact which led to multiple investigations and eventually a Supreme Court hearing. The police did not intervene for three days. Westerners who read Modi’s story—the business success in Gujarat; the fierce attention to detail—struggle to accept that the dynamic, charismatic Modi could not have been in control of Gujarat’s police forces during the riots.

Following the Gujarat riots, Harem Pandya, then a member of Modi’s cabinet (and a strong Keshubhai Patel supporter), said that Modi met with all the top state officials on the evening of February 27, instructing them to, in Pandya’s words, “not let the Hindu anger be curtailed.” According to Pandya, Modi theorized in the meeting that Pakistani forces had colluded with local Muslims in a deliberate “act of international terrorism” that needed to be avenged. Publicly, Modi announced that “every action has an opposite reaction,” which seemed to suggest Hindus must take revenge and the state should sit back. In March 2003, Harem Pandya was murdered, allegedly by a Muslim assassin. Pandya’s wife and late father, on the other hand, claim he was a political casualty.

In April 2012, after investigations that lasted a decade, a Supreme Court special investigation team absolved Modi of responsibility. A closer look at the timing and incidents involving Modi’s rise to power suggests logic in this ruling. “In Gujarat, and even New Delhi, BJP leadership were concerned about Modi’s independence,” said a man who claimed to have been privy to BJP conversations in 2002. “Modi was not playing by the old rules: the corruption and paybacks and black money. They wanted him gone and used the riots to target him.”

There is, finally, another view: that Modi turned a blind eye to the riots as a deliberate election tactic, deploying Hindu nationalist rhetoric while also resigning from government. This theory suggests Modi knew his actions would trigger a political investigation, but such an event would enhance his standing and bolster his then-fragile position within the BJP. This was, of course, exactly what happened—and if Modi did, in fact, calculate his fortunes so deliberately, it would illustrate gutsy, brilliant and ruthless political instincts.

MA GANGA CALLS

Whatever conspiracy theory is closest to the truth, Modi has succeeded in rising above the event and even turning it into an asset. The prevailing views on the 2002 riots appear to be that Modi had become victimized by a political system he was trying to reform, and that despite the misfortune, he still led his state to greater economic prosperity.

But Modi is more than just a possible Indian version of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher. He is also a Hindu Pope of sorts, weaving powerful spiritual symbolism into his personal and political narrative. During the 2014 elections, Modi chose to run for his parliamentary seat from Varanasi—the holy, mystical city on the Ganges River—as a demonstration of his patriotism and religious devotion. Lord Shiva claimed Varanasi as his home in Hindu tradition, and Varanasi, which is also called Banaras and Kashi, has been continuously inhabited for 4,000 years. Imagine a U.S. presidential candidate centering their campaign in a city that was not their hometown, but rather a U.S. version of Jamestown, Virginia; Vatican City; and Sumeria combined. “Ma Ganga has called me,” said Modi.

To critics, Modi can celebrate this Hindu nationalism as authenticating an Indian identity, pointing not only to Hindu votes, but also to the increased Muslim vote for BJP in 2014, up 6% from the 2009 Lok Sabha elections according to exit polls. And to Muslims in both India and Pakistan, Modi may represent the devil they know; a leader whose economic success and reputation for leadership provides stability and confidence. In April 2014, senior Pakistani diplomats expressed preference for Modi for Prime Minister, saying he “could provide the strong leadership necessary for peace talks.” Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif backed up the statement, accepting Modi’s invitation to attend his inauguration ceremony alongside India’s other neighboring leaders. More importantly, the votes combined with Modi’s Indian nationalism suggest Muslims who supported the BJP see themselves as Indians first and Muslims second.

“HE IS OUR OBAMA”

The nationalist sentiment Modi tapped into stands in stark contrast to Mahatma Gandhi, whom Indians honor as the nation’s father and many Westerners see as India’s central figure. Although Gandhi’s 1948 assassination inspired national mourning, it was sponsored by the Hindu Mahasabha, a forerunner of sorts to both the RSS and the BJP. In the Hindu nationalist view, although Gandhi led a powerful nonviolent resistance, he also gave away Pakistan, put India on a dangerous economic course, and promoted the country’s cultural division into 22 official languages.

Although Gandhi had few good options for evicting the British and uniting India, Hindu nationalists believe his nonviolence and socialism were fine for spirituality but had no place in statecraft. Modi’s election marks a repudiation of Gandhi’s legacy and, ironically, makes Modi the Mahatma’s antithesis and populist successor. Like Gandhi, Modi’s charismatic patriotism, austere lifestyle and meticulous leadership have won India’s trust. But unlike Gandhi, Modi’s conservative policies affirm the vote as a clear mandate for change. “He is our Obama,” several Modi voters told me, paralleling the campaign arc, if perhaps not the policies or effectiveness.

And Modi’s foreign policy choices have been intriguing indeed. He appointed a famously successful Indian spy, Ajit Doval, as his national security advisor and tapped Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s current U.S. ambassador, as his foreign policy advisor. “A shallow brook babbles loudly,” says a Sanskrit parable, “but deep waters run silent.” Although Modi has not made a dramatic foreign policy speech since taking office, his choices suggest a desire to reconcile key relationships while also outwitting potential competitors.

These signals extend to other Asian powers as well. China Foreign Minister Wang Yi has reached out, seeking to settle the Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin border disputes; bilateral relations could benefit both countries should a geopolitical rapprochement endure. But Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has invested years in Modi’s personal friendship, and Modi will go to Tokyo in July on one of his first state visits. Even if India reached a détente with China on boundaries—and on economic issues, where China could benefit from India’s growing consumer market—the world’s two most populous countries will not likely become an alliance.

A détente is also what Modi seeks with Pakistan, and many on both sides of the strife-ridden partition line have taken hope from recent personal gestures. When the two prime ministers met at Modi’s inauguration, Modi gave Sharif a shawl as a present for his mother, which Sharif’s daughter personally delivered, following with a cordial tweet. The Pakistani leader soon reciprocated, sending a white sari as a gift for Modi’s mother, and drawing an equally genial dispatch from the Indian Prime Minister’s Twitter feed. Such affability may not seem uncommon between bordering nations, but for India and Pakistan, it approaches historic.

India is hopeful that Modi will turn powerful rhetoric into action, and he has already said his government should be prepared to work. “I will be the worker-in-chief,” he said during his victory address, and he has suggested the bureaucracy may shift to a six-day work week. He has reached out to former opponents and toned down inflammatory comments. If Modi’s reserves run as deep as Ma Ganga, and if this calling is as strong as he believes, it is possible—and, for India, hopeful—that his legacy could approach the sacred river’s endurance.

About the author:
David J. Danelo, the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s director of field research, traveled to Varanasi, Pune, and Mumbai, India, during the final two weeks of the 2014 elections.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI and may be accessed here.

Notes:
[1] V. Venkatesan, “A pracharak as Chief Minister,” Frontline: India’s National Magazine, Oct 13-26, 2001.

[2] Commission of Inquiry Report of Justice G.T. Nanavati & Justice Akshay H. Mehta, Government of Gujarat, September 18, 2008.

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By Adam Cohen

In Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict, John Judis demonstrates the power of looking back to the past to make a statement about the current political moment.

Judis is an activist journalist cum historian who writes frequently at The New Republic. Instead of moralizing about the cast of characters involved in this complicated history, as others have already done, Judis looks at the enduring themes from the “Genesis” that influence today’s Middle East.

Since the end of Ottoman rule at the conclusion of World War I, Judis details, Palestine’s fate has remained linked to Western influence. The British mandate in Palestine acted as a formal colony for London in its final imperial decades. In the mandate’s waning days, the mantle of Western leadership passed to its new leader, the United States, and its newest international institution, the United Nations. Both the United States and the UN failed to develop ideas to promote a sustainable solution to the Palestinian crisis before it broke into open warfare.

As the United States and the UN dithered, the situation on the ground evolved. The British mandate expired while President Harry Truman vacillated between the counsel of Zionist activists, political advisers, and State Department Cold Warriors over one unworkable plan after another—the critical, and sometimes exhausting, political and interpersonal dynamics that make up the lion’s share of Genesis. The Jews and Arabs of Palestine, along with the armies of Palestine’s Arab neighbors, then descended into a war that none could bring to a halt.

This story of Western ineptitude is incomplete without mentioning the second enduring theme from this period: the impact of lobbying in the West on Middle East policy. The most effective lobbyists were those who advocated for the Zionist cause, who believed, as Judis notes, that Palestine’s Jews “were still engaged in a war for survival” in a war-torn world that turned them away.

Pro-Israel activists learned to harness the power of the Jewish vote in states such as Ohio and New York to influence the actions of President Truman, who was at once a moralist and an unrivaled political animal. Transforming a Jewish community increasingly convinced of the need for a Jewish state into single-issue voters, leading American Zionists like Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver effectively pushed U.S. policy towards what they believed to be in the best interests of the Jewish people.

But each plan the Truman administration considered, as Judis acknowledges, was fatally flawed. There might have been missed opportunities to implement a workable governance structure for Palestine during British rule. But during the Truman administration, the impact of Zionist activists, both within the formal lobbying organizations and within the White House itself, often pushed President Truman to reject plans for federation and partition as unworkable.

Finally, the book makes clear that the ongoing Palestinian Arab exile and refugee crisis remain the most pressing problems. Throughout Judis’ account, ordinary Palestinians faced marginalization at nearly every turn throughout the 1948 war and beyond, turning the Palestinian Nakba into a reality. As Palestine’s Jews finally achieved their goal of creating a political home of their own, its Arabs saw their own hopes for the same dashed. For the Palestinian Arabs, the great tragedy of exile began along with the decades-long hardships of life in refugee camps. Thus began the vicious cycle of outside meddling, violence, and indifference, as well as inner political turmoil, that plague the Palestinian people to this day.

In each of these themes lie potent parallels and truths for the present. Western failures, such as the recently defeated Kerry Peace Initiative, make a greater statement about the compromised U.S. role in the region than anything else. The influence of American Jewish groups, many of which coalesce around the policies of the Israeli government, remains a strong, though neither absolute nor monolithic, force affecting U.S. congressional activity and Obama administration policy.

Though the UN and even the United States provide tangible support for the cause of Palestinian statehood, the Palestinian cause remains an aspiration. This is due in part to the enduring fact of internal political ruptures within the Palestinian camp that, despite current efforts at rapprochement, go to the religious and national core of Palestinian identity. It is also due, as Judis forcefully asserts, to the flawed U.S.-Israeli relationship that allows “Israelis to overlook what they did and are continuing to do to Palestine’s Arabs.” If peace is to come to the Middle East, surely all of these problems will need to be addressed.

But above all of this noise, the great tragedy of Palestinian exile remains unanswered. The Palestinians will be hard-pressed to accept a peace deal with Israel that does not satisfactorily remedy the plight of Palestine’s refugees. Although it’s likely not feasible for Palestinian exiles to return to communities that Israelis have lived in for generations now, it is easy to understand why this leaves so many Palestinians unsatisfied.

This nut, at the center of Genesis, is the hardest one for the Israelis and Palestinians to crack if they are to make peace. Judis writes:

[T]he main lesson of this narrative is that whatever wrongs were done to the Jews of Europe and later to those of the Arab Middle East and North Africa – and there were great wrongs inflicted – the Zionists who came to Palestine to establish a state trampled on the rights of the Arabs who already lived there. That wrong has never been adequately addressed, or redressed, and for there to be peace of any kind between the Israelis and Arabs, it must be.

Adam Cohen is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus

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