There are no signs of torture and murder abating in Syria...

Zainab Al Husni, 19, was on her way to the grocery store when plain-clothed Syrian secret police agents abducted her on July 27.
Her brother Mohammad Al Husni was a prominent pro-democracy activist and organizer of protest marches against the Assad regime in Homs, a center of the unrest, located in central Syria.
Mr. Al Husni had gone underground to evade the security forces.
The regime’s intentions in abducting Zainab were clear.
The secret police kidnapped Zainab so they could threaten her brother and pressure him to turn himself in to the authorities. The government often uses this tactic to get to activists, a spokesman for the Homs Quarters Union, a pro-democracy organization, told CNN.
She would be freed, her family was told, only if her brother surrendered to the authorities.
Mr. Al Husni was subsequently arrested (in what circumstances, it is not clear), and on September 13, his mother was instructed to go the morgue in order to identify her son’s mutilated, bruised and burned body.
While there she came upon Zainab’s remains, which had been stored in a freezer at the Homs military hospital for quite a while…
According to Amnesty International, Zainab had been decapitated, her arms cut off and skin removed.
The human rights organization also disclosed that the family had been compelled by the security forces to sign a document stipulating that Zainab and Mohammad had been kidnapped and killed by an armed gang.
The regime continues to claim, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that those opposing it are not peaceful protesters demanding change, but criminal gangs manipulated bye foreign radicals.
At her funeral, mourners held signs in honor of Zainab (They killed the rose Zainab).
They also chanted Syria wants freedom and the people want the president’s ouster.
Since August 31, Amnesty International has documented at least fifteen other cases of detainees dying in custody. The bodies have borne signs of beating, shooting and stabbing, according to the organization.
The regime’s tactics are getting harsher, for the uprising, although having lost some momentum since the Ramadan, continues.
Hence, all those actively involved in the protest movement, which has been overwhelmingly peaceful, are targeted in order to crush it once and for all.
Known in Darayya, a Damascus suburb, for his determination to shun violence, Ghiyath Matar, a tailor almost twenty-five, and about to become a father, was nicknamed Little Gandhi.
During demonstrations, he would distribute roses to soldiers and offer them cold bottles of water, while chanting peaceful, peaceful.
The security forces arrested Matar and his fellow activist Yahya Sherbaji after the latter’s brother, already in detention was compelled to call Yahya and ask for help, claiming that he had been wounded.
Aware that they were perhaps about to fall into a trap, they responded to the call anyway…
Four days later, on September 13, Matar‘s body was released to his family.
There were bruises around his throat and burn marks across his body, as well as two bullet holes in his abdomen.
The fate of Mr. Sherbaji remains unknown.
Why would the Assad regime torture and kill someone as harmless as Ghiyath Matar?
Ghiyath’s peaceful nature, his refusal to resort to violence when confronted by violence blatantly contradicted the regime’s depiction of the protest movement as a violent uprising of armed groups.
His sole presence in a street demonstration made a mockery of the regime’s justification for utilizing brutal repressive tactics against demonstrators.
As a result, his example was perceived as a dire threat by the authorities.
Ghiyath was embarrassing the regime with his high morals and principles. The regime likes the radicals to justify the military crackdown, but with Ghiyath, the regime knew it would lose, Abu Omar, a Matar relative, told Nada Bakri of the NYT.
Aware that his activities would likely lead to a premature death at the hands of Assad’s security apparatus, Ghiyath Matar had prepared a statement to be read after his death.
Don’t think they triumphed over me with the bullet they shot me with. No, I won and my case won every time I went to the streets, he wrote.
Remember me when you celebrate the fall of the regime and remember that I gave my soul and my blood for that moment. May God guide you on the road of peaceful struggle and grant you victory, he added…
Ghiyath Matar’s wake was attended by a number of foreign ambassadors posted in Damascus, including US envoy Robert Ford, France’s Eric Chevallier and those of Britain and Japan.
Once they had departed, Assad’s security forces raided the event, firing live rounds and tear gas.
If the relatives of peaceful activists, as well as those peaceful activists themselves are being deliberately tortured and killed by the regime, does peaceful resistance have a viable future in Assad’s Syria?
The life of a Syrian activist is becoming more and more dangerous. They face the prospect of death, torture, humiliation every time they venture on the streets, Iyad Sherbaji, a friend, though no relation, of Yahya Sherbaji, told the NYT.
Can peaceful resistance hope to overthrow the regime?
We know how peaceful this guy (Matar) was, and he was tortured to death, and it shows that if we continue like this, we’ll be treated like anyone who had a gun and was a terrorist. Everyone’s really , really angry, a Damascus activist known by his nom-de-guerre Alexander Page, told the WP.
For Assad, anyone demanding that his basic rights be respected is a terrorist.
Matar’s supporters however, are determined to follow his example come what may.
There are many views, and one of them is to take up arms. But for me, and for his friends, and for his family, peaceful resistance is the only option, a friend told the WP.
As we have seen, the regime has fine-tuned its strategy and now specifically targets the leaders of the uprising.
In Daraya, near Damascus, the Assad security apparatus succeeded in arresting all the known leaders of the protest movement.
This did not deter the citizens of Daraya from demonstrating in the city’s streets at the first opportunity…
Daraya security is flabbergasted. More than two dozen field activists and protest organizers were in detention, and the town protested as usual.
It was as if nothing had happened, Mohja Kahf, an activist wrote on Twitter, according to the NYT.
The Syrian people are creative enough to find ways to overcome the repression and keep protesting, an activist told the NYT.
Indeed, they are…
This is a clear manifestation of the protest movement’s stamina and determination, and a vibrant testimony to the inordinate bravery of the Syrian people.…
Yet relentless repression and the inability of the democracy movement to overthrow the regime after six months of protests have engendered a great deal of frustration and dismay.
A lot of people have gone into hiding, and a lot of people are not taking part in protests, Page told the WP.
That said, the uprising is by no means vanquished, and, as far as many activists are concerned, it can only continue.
Were they to concede defeat, the regime would avenge itself mercilessly…
Protesters are telling authorities that they have the patience of Job.
They have faith and believe that, if the protests stop, there will be revenge and killings that no one will survive from. That is why people are insisting to continue until the end, Iyad Sherbaji told Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
A stalemate of sorts has been established that some believe can only be overcome by force of arms, given the brutality of the Assad regime.
From the beginning, I knew that the revolution would take a long time for us.
But we are unarmed and I don’t think the regime will fall when faced only with peaceful protests, a doctor told Reuters.
In addition, the growing number of army defectors (mostly disaffected Sunnis who dominate the enlisted ranks) joining the anti-Assad movement has accelerated the militarization of the uprising.
Some 10,000 have already done so, forming the Free Syrian Army, and the apparently rival Free Officers Movement.
It is the beginning of armed rebellion. You cannot remove this regime except by force and bloodshed. But our losses will not be worse than we have right now, with the killings, the torture and the dumping of bodies, General Riad Asaad, who defected in July, told Liz Sly of the WP.
His objective is to replicate the Libyan scenario: conquer a swath of Syrian territory; obtain international protection akin to the NATO-imposed no-fly zone in Libya, then march on Damascus…
The armed rebellion may be only in its infancy, but Assad is taking no chances.
Rastan, a city in eastern Syria, has become a center of the armed resistance to Assad, and hosts hundreds of defectors.
On Tuesday morning, the Syrian army, equipped with tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters, attacked the city.
Tanks closed in on Rastan overnight and the sound of machine guns and explosions has been non-stop. They finally entered this morning, one resident told Reuters.
In spite of clashes of this nature, the uprising has been overwhelmingly a peaceful one, no matter what the regime’s propaganda claims.
I don’t think the numbers (of defectors) are big enough to have an impact one way or another on the government or on the contest between the protesters and the government. The vast majority of protests are still unarmed, and the vast majority of protesters are unarmed, Ambassador Ford told Liz Sly of the WP.
Yet by transforming the act of peacefully protesting into a potentially lethal endeavor, the regime has left its opponents with but two choices: relent and go home, thereby giving the regime a new lease on life, or take up arms against it, thus justifying the official propaganda claiming that it is compelled to use force against armed groups bent on destabilizing the country and seizing power.
Will the opposition be tempted to resort to violence if the peaceful protests fail to topple the regime, thereby falling into what Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group called a trap?
Would such a transformation of the uprising however, be morally reprehensible?
A people under attack, one that is being fired upon by its own army, and threatened with abduction and torture, has the right to defend itself.
Assad has taken the fateful decision to wage war on his own people.
They have the right to resist because their demands are legitimate, in order to ensure their safety and wellbeing.
As in all nations, they have the right to demand freedom, justice and democracy.
If Assad persists in standing in their way, preventing them from obtaining these universal and inalienable rights, then he should be removed, by force if need be.
Should the Syrians, however, choose the violent option?
Those on the opposing side are Syrians too who shall still be there when the struggle is over.
The regime still has the support of Christian (about 10% of the Syrian population), Alawite and other minorities who fear being the victims of the chaos that would ensue the fall of the repressive Assad regime.
We are all scared of what will come next, Abu Elias, a Christian, told the NYT.
Specifically, the Christians fear that a future Sunni government could persecute them for being Christians, and former supporters of the Assad regime.
The Iraqi precedent is not encouraging…
In addition, it is by no means clear Assad’s opponents could defeat the regime’s security apparatus, dominated by the Alawites, who have too much to lose should Assad (himself an Alawite) fall.
It is for the Syrians to choose however and not for us to advise them from the comfort of our studies thousands of miles away…
Yet, only by choosing the path of peaceful resistance can the opposition hope to convince these anxious minorities that the new post-Assad Syria that should soon emerge is also theirs...

There are no signs of torture and murder abating in Syria.
The mounting toll of reports of people dying behind bars provides yet more evidence of crimes against humanity and should spur the UN Security Council into referring the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court, wrote Philip Luther, of Amnesty International.
The UN Security Council has failed the Syrian people who deserve the support of all civilized nations.
How many Syrians will have to be arrested, tortured and killed ( over 2,700 to date, including some 100 children), how many more Zainabs and Ghiyaths sacrificed, before Syria’s patrons at the Council, Russia and China, finally decide to act?
(the photograph of Ghiyath Matar above was found here)

Will France be next...?

Yesterday, the French stock market fell by 5.45% amid rumors that France was about to lose it AAA rating, and that Société Générale, the nation’s second largest bank, was in severe financial difficulties.
As a result, shares in SG fell by 14% and the bank lost three billion Euros in market value…
Britain’s FTSE 100 index fell by 3% and the Dow Jones by 4.6%.
French banks in general suffered yesterday since they are particularly exposed in Greece, holding over 40 billion Euros worth of Greek debt. SG alone holds some 2.64 billion Euros worth.
Crédit Agricol shares fell by 11.8% and BNP Paribas 9.5%.
The rumors, however, proved to be baseless. Standard and Poor’s, as well as Fitch and Moody’s, the three major rating agencies, all denied on Wednesday that France was about to be downgraded….
In addition, the Daily Mail, source of the rumors concerning the parlous financial state of SG, issued the following statement:
In an article that appeared in the print edition and online version of the Mail on Sunday on August 7, 2011, it was suggested that according to Mail on Sunday sources Société Générale, one of Europe ‘s largest banks, was in a «perilous» state and possibly on the «brink of disaster».
We now accept that this was not true and we unreservedly apologize to Société Générale for any embarrassment caused.
It remains to be seen whether SG’s beleaguered and now considerably poorer shareholders will accept the apology…
Yet, yesterday’s events made the following abundantly clear: investors are not the least interested in facts, and much prefer rumors, for the corrections, denials and apologies had little effect, as stock markets plunged across the planet…
The rumors presumably seemed sufficiently credible, in the eye of the average investor,  to prod the latter into speculating against SG and other major French banks and firms.
As the NYT pithily put it, investors have played Who’s Next with the shrinking list of nations that still hold the top rating of AAA.
Though they may have been in the mood to play, no one else was.
Why is France being targeted?
Presumably, because it has the weakest economy among those nations retaining an AAA rating.
France’s budget deficit currently stands at 5.7% of GDP, the second highest in Europe after Britain.
The country’s debt, 85.3% of its GDP, is also the highest among all of the European countries holding the AAA rating.
We think from a fundamental perspective that France is due a downgrade. In essence, France is the country with an AAA rating that can least afford to pay into any future eurozone-wide bailout scheme, Lyn Graham-Taylor, a strategist at Rabobank, told the BBC.
Analysts at Citigroup concurred: we expect that France, with its high public debt and deficit, and popular resistance to cutbacks in its, even by euroarea standards, extremely large welfare state, is now likely to be the G7 country at the highest risk of losing its AAA rating, they indicated, according to The Guardian.
So, what can and should be done?
Stimulating economic growth is the obvious solution, yet difficult to achieve when you are simultaneously compelled by the markets to cut your budget deficit, and debt level.
France’s economy is only expected to grow by some 2% this year (while unemployment hovers around 9%), which is insufficient to significantly address the deficit and debt issue.
Though little interested in facts, the markets are looking for indications however, that political leaders in the US and EU are serious about tackling the deficit and debt issue.
It boils down to a crisis of confidence. We haven’t seen policy makers come out with a plan that is viewed as comprehensive, coordinated and credible, Philip Finch, global bank strategist at UBS, told the NYT.
The markets are therefore, looking for leadership, but will any be forthcoming?
On the European level, that is unlikely since there are no mechanisms in place to address  effectively this pressing issue.
The Eurozone’s structure for coping with its debt problems at the relevant monetary union level aren’t even in place, let alone operational, Jean-Louis Nakamura, chief investment officer at Lombard Odier Investment Managers, told The Guardian.
As such, leadership must come from within the nations of Europe, and particularly, from France's Nicolas Sarkozy, who must act decisively and expeditiously…
Yet, with presidential elections looming in 2012, will Sarkozy risk taking measures to curb the deficit that are bound to be unpopular?
He has vowed not to increase taxes so as to avoid stiffling economic growth, however anemic it may be.
Yet additional revenues need to be found if France is to limit its budget deficit ot 5.7% for 2011, as it had pledged to do so.
Tax shelters and loopholes are thus the likeliest targets of France’s deficit-cutting efforts.
There are some 500 provisions in the French tax code that allow taxpayers to lighten their tax burden. The government needs an extra 5 billion Euros in revenue to reach its objectives.
Ultimately, however, Sarkozy shall have to decide whether it is more important to adopt the necessary policies to reduce France’s deficits, no matter how onerous they may be, or resort to cosmetic measures to enhance his electoral prospects.
President Obama once said he preferred to be good one-term president than a poor two-term one…
If he is true to his commitment to rather be a good one-term president, then this is the character test. In some respects, this is the 3 a.m phone call, David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration Commerce Department official, told the NYT, referring to the US president’s current predicament, remarkably similar to Sarkozy’s.
Sarkozy should make the same pledge and act accordingly.
In any case, if he resorts to half-measures, the markets will react mercilessly.
Despite their haste and irrationality, this may be the markets’ redeeming feature: compelling leaders to take measures they could not or would not even previously consider politically palatable…
Yet there is one way, and only one way, to impose dire sacrifices on a nation, sacrifices necessary to solve the deficit and debt crisis and that entail a fall in the standard of living of the majority. People are ready to make sacrifices, but they are not willing to be cheated. You have to explain who is going to pay and how it will spread out over society. People aren’t willing to accept that part of the society pays while others have an easy life, Mario Baldassarri, head of the Italian Senate finance committee, and a member of the opposition, told the NYT.
In the US, a balanced and responsible anti-deficit policy would be based on increasing taxes on the wealthy and reducing the cost of defense and entitlement programs.
A similar recipe is necessary in France.
Indeed, why should the majority, which is just getting by at best, accept cuts in benefits and in its standard of living, if the wealthy are not also required to contribute to the common effort, in proportion to their earnings and holdings?
In the end, a successful policy will be based on justice and equity.
In addition however, our leaders must lead by example, it is a question of credibility, and remember who entrusted them with the powers they wield, and that their duty is to serve us and not themselves.
They must also share the burden if it is to be accepted by us all, and renounce their excessive perquisites and privileges, at least for the duration of the deficit and debt crisis.
Only then, will they have the necessary authority to demand sacrifices form the rest of us.
Such a political approach demands leadership, and thus could prove politically costly at the polls, yet it is the only viable one…
Sarkozy is to announce additional deficit reduction measures on August 24...
Will he have the courage to address the issue seriously?
(the photograph above is by AFP)

Laughter and applause are now subversive acts in Belarus...

A draft law published Friday prohibits the “joint mass presence of citizens in a public place that has been chosen beforehand, including an outdoor space, and at a scheduled time for the purpose of a form of action or inaction that has been planned beforehand and is a form of public expression of the public or political sentiments or protest”, wrote Ilya Mouzykantskii, of the NYT...
Hence in Belarus, Europe's last extant dictatorship, a pedestrian may be arrested by the authorities, for walking down the street, even if all he or she is doing is...walking down the street.
One's mere presence may be construed, at the authorities' discretion, as a form of public expression, which is illegal in Belarus...
Anyone rounded up is liable to be held up to fifteen days in administrative detention...
Since fundamental civil rights such as the right to protest are routinely denied in Belarus, and those brazen enough to insist on exercising such rights beaten, harassed and arrested, activists 
use Facebook and Twitter to invite opposition supporters to attend silent demonstrations.
Participants simply walk together, clap their hands in unison, or as Mouzykantskii indicated, have their cellphone alarms go off together...
President Alexander Lukashenko, reelected yet again after a rigged poll last December, considers these forms of expression to be subversive...(the protetsts that followed his last reelection were brutally repressed. Three opposition presidential candidates arrested in December are still in jail).
Last week, on the seventeenth anniversary of his rule, one such silent demonstration was organized...
After 17 years in power, Lukashenko has brought the country to a catastrophic situation, where people can't even clap their hands, one protester, Artur Stankevich told AP.
Some forty demonstrators were arrested, the security apparatus obviously keen to ensure that Minsk does not become another Cairo or Tunis...
Action and inaction, laughter and applause, coordinated cell phone ringings are now illegal in Belarus...
What will come next? 
Singing, walking one's dog, or maybe smoking a cigarette on a park bench...?
The sheer absurdity of such measures would be laughable, were those accused of such grievous offenses not routinely beaten and abused...
These brutal and inane forms of repression have no place in Europe in the twenty-first century...
The European Union should at the very least, tighten its sanctions against the Lukashenko regime, to ensure that we do not facilitate in any way the brutal repression taking place there... 
Hopefully, the brave Belarus people shall do the rest...
(the photograph of the arrest of a demonstrator in Belarus is by AFP)

Fragile and reversible..?

Invited to speak at the Forum for New Diplomacy in Paris, last week, General David Petraeus, former Commander of US forces in Afghanistan, and now Director of the CIA, considered that NATO’s military campaign in Afghanistan was making progress.
The number of insurgent attacks had decreased in eight of the last twelve weeks, compared to last year, for instance.
Back in March, General Petraeus told the Senate Armed Forces Services Committee that the momentum achieved by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of important areas.
However, while the security progress achieved over the past year is significant, it is also fragile and reversible.
The general thought fit, nevertheless, to reiterate the latter assessment at the Forum in Paris.
Those gains remain fragile and reversible, he stated.
The events of the last few weeks clearly evince that the general was wise to be cautious.
On July 12, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan President’s half brother, leader of the Kandahar Provincial Council, was assassinated by a member of his staff inside his own home.
The assassin, Sardar Mohammed, was then killed by the victim’s bodyguards.
The Taliban took responsibility for the deed.
Sardar Mohammed is a friend of ours, and we gave him the task a long time ago to infiltrate and reach Ahmed Wali Karzai, a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, told The Christian Science Monitor.
Ahmed Wali Karzai was the most powerful figure in the Kandahar region.
He was the president of Kandahar. The governor, police chiefs and other officials all had to discuss things with him before they made a decision, a prominent provincial figure, Abdul Samat Zarih, told The Guardian.
A US official told the paper that his demise was first and foremost a setback for Afghanistan as a whole…
Karzai was active on many fronts.
He had long been suspected of thriving from Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade, but also of being on the CIA’s payroll.
In fact, he rented Mullah Omar’s former compound on the outskirts of Kandahar to the CIA and US Special Forces.
AWK (Ahmed Wali Karzai) operates, parallel to formal government structures, through a network of political clans that use state institutions to protect and enable licit and illicit enterprises, concluded one US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.
In addition, he seems to have been involved in covert reconciliation talks with the Taliban…
His elimination was a clear blow to the President, and his Western patrons, as well as to the former’s authority in the country.
Five days later, Jan Mohammed Khan, President Karzai’s adviser on tribal affairs, was shot and killed in his home in western Kabul.
A member of the Afghan Parliament, Mohammed Ashim, was also killed in the attack.
Khan had previously been governor of Oruzgan province, dominated by the Pashtun, from 2002 until 2006, when he was forced to resign due to his alleged links to drug traffickers.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, stated that he was murdered because he had been aiding US forces in planning and executing night raids against Taliban militants, raids that have been effective but also very unpopular and denounced by President Karzai himself.
Last Wednesday, the mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, was killed outside his office.
The assassin, concealing explosives in his turban, blew himself up next to the official.
US ambassador in Kabul, Ryan C. Crocker, declared that this series of assassinations did not demonstrate a resurgence of the Taliban’s capacity to strike at the heart of the Karzai regime, on the contrary.
Clearly these are horrific attacks, but they can be signs of weakness, he told the NYT.
Hamidi was among those slated to replace Ahmed Wali Karzai after his murder…
The mayor may have antagonized the Taliban by trying to regain possession of land in the north of the city that he claimed they had been occupying illegally…
On Thursday, or the next day, Taliban militants attacked the compound of Matiullah Khan, the nephew of Jan Mohammad Khan, and a powerful provincial leader in southern Afghanistan, located in Tirin Kot, capital of Oruzgan, north of Kandahar,
A car filled with explosives rammed through the gate of another compound, the Governor’s, and exploded, partially destroying the maternity ward of a hospital located next door. Ten infants and three women were killed.
The attack on Matiullah’s compound, home to the Highway Battalion, his militia, occurred simultaneously.
We have very good security here so they were not able to enter my battalion’s camp, so they attacked the television station instead, Khan, who escaped unscathed, told The Guardian.
Omaid Khapalwak, who worked for the BBC was killed in that attack against the Afghan Television building.
All in all, 21 people were killed, in addition to the perpetrators, and ISAF (allied forces) participation was necessary to restore order.
If the foreign troops hadn’t responded, the fighting would have lasted until morning, one resident told McClatchy, higly critical, apparently, of the local security forces' performance..
Because Khan’s militia controls the highway between Kandahar and Tirin Kot, convoys of supply trucks can reach US and ISAF forces unhindered.
According to The Guardian, Khan charges $1,700 per truck for his services.
Moreover, although his militiamen sometimes support US operations against the Taliban, Khan has been accused of bribing the latter to protect his lucrative activities, which allegedly includes drug trafficking with Ahmed Wali Karzai…
The Taliban are clearly targeting those powerful figures which are nominally allied with the president, and whom he needs to assert his authority in the south of the country, home of the Pashtun and center of the Taliban insurgency…
Eliminating them serves both to undermine Karzai politically but also to discredit him by emphasizing his feebleness: he and his warlords are powerless to prevent the Taliban from attacking whom they please when they please.
No one can protect them, and obviously not, alas, US and ISAF forces whose credibility also dwindles with each attack…
And yet, though purportedly allies and agents of both President Karzai and the West, they have their own agendas to pursue, and constituents and fiefdoms to protect…
As such, their interests do not necessarily coincide with their patrons’.
Promoting Karzai’s government and the West’s nation building and counterinsurgency agenda is not their sole preoccupation and certainly not the paramount one.
Their loyalties are multiple: tribal, economic, provincial, as are their allegiances.
Control of the drug trade also requires their attention.
As such, are they truly allies of Karzai and the West, or their own masters, which we have been compelled to try and co-opt, as we are unable to impose more compliant figures to take their place?
In any case, to base one’s counterinsurgency strategy on allies such as these is a risky proposition at best…
The Afghans will look after their own interests, and do not need us to do so, whatever agenda we may hope to pursue…
What, then, have we accomplished in Afghanistan these last ten years?
We are there to ensure that that country does not once again become a sanctuary to Al Qaeda or other terrorists, Petraeus said in Paris.
This objective has been attained, and the architect of the 9/11 attacks disposed of.
The only way to achieve that is to ensure that the Afghans secure themselves and govern themselves, he added.
That is something that we cannot do on their behalf.
In addition, of the 160 Afghan army battalions, only one is fully operational…
Ten years and billions of dollars to come to this…One battalion!
If, at the very least, we could protect the Afghan people, but we regularly kill innocent civilians, thereby objectively serving the interests and objectives of those we are there to defeat…
Last Wednesday, a French soldier killed three Afghan civilians and wounded three others at a checkpoint in Kapisa, a province in eastern Afghanistan.
A man, a pregnant women as well as a child riding in the car are now dead.
The French officially apologized to President Karzai for the tragic mishap, but the latter simply replied that no apology would be able to bring them back to life
The Taliban’s propaganda department shall undoubtedly make the most of this, and who can blame them for doing so?
Just this month, France lost seven soldiers, one to friendly fire, five in a suicide bomb attack, and one in a firefight.
So far this year, 18 have been killed, the most since France sent forces to Afghanistan ten years ago, and 70 since 2001..
During a formal ceremony at the Invalides in Paris, President Nicolas Sarkozy paid them tribute.
You did your duty to the very end, he said, addressing the seven young soldiers, whose coffins rested in the center of the spacious Invalides courtyard, embodying the military virtues of discipline, bravery and honor. You died defending the great cause of freedom.
Yet, are we anywhere nearer to achieving our goals then when we first set foot on Afghan soil ten years ago…?
One prominent French politician, former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal spoke of a useless sacrifice, when describing the death of those seven soldiers.
The prime Minister François Fillon retorted that no one has the right to say that a soldier died in vain if he did so to defend his country and in the pursuit of peace.
And yet, though Royal’s comment was callous, especially for the bereaved, can it be simply dismissed as an opportunistic attack on a political rival?
Alas, I fear not…
Do not the brazen attacks on powerful allies of the Afghan president make a mockery of our efforts and pursuits in Afghanistan?
Is the situation not only reversible, but in the process of being reversed?
What is clear is the following: we shall never be able to build an Afghanistan in our image, nor should we wish to…
We have implicitly admitted as such, since a partial withdrawal of Western forces has been announced.
The US will withdraw 33,000 in the next year or so.
The remaining 88,000 are to leave by late 2014...
The French are to follow suit…
Why wait before sending them all home now, where they belong?
(the photograph above is by AFP)


 

Justice and democracy is the only way...

The Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, says his country will "not be intimidated or threatened" by Friday's terror attacks, which left 76 people dead.
The country would "stand firm in defending our values" and the "open, tolerant and inclusive society", he said. "The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation.", The Guardian wrote... 
The Norwegians seem to understand that the only viable response to mass murder is not more violence, but more democracy...That is the antidote, and the only one, to violence.
Revenge, it must be said,  is the tool of the feeble and inarticulate...
In this post 9/11 world, only progress, justice and democracy can defeat the extremists, and certainly not military might...
If our values, which we endlessly proffer,  have any significance, then it is in times such as these that we must test them...and uphold them...
And yet, are we worthy of them? Hopefully so, or are the Anders Behring Breivik of this day and age correct to conclude that our present civilization is doomed and must be done away with?
It is in such crises that we must remain true to ourselves...
We can only prevail, for what do the nihilists have to offer?
Yet, shall we be brave enough, shall we have the necessary fortitude to remain who we are, no matter what the consequences?
We are in dire need of leadership...Perhaps, at last, shall we find some, not in Paris, Berlin, London or Washington, alas, but in  Oslo...
(the photograph above is by AFP)

Justice for Natalia Estemirova...

It has been two years already since she was abducted and murdered…
On July 15, 2009, Natalia Estemirova’s body was found in Ingushetia with bullet wounds to the head and chest.
She had been working diligently and tirelessly for Memorial, Russia’s most prominent human rights organization.
In Chechnya (a place Anna Politkovskaya called a small corner of hell), she specialized in cases of kidnapping, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings involving militants and others, cases that should have been investigated by the authorities, had the latter not been complicit…
In Chechnya, however, the security apparatus of Ramzan Kadyrov, the restive republic’s president, is widely suspected of being behind these egregious human rights abuses, part of the brutal campaign to crush the rebellion led by Islamic militants, and instigated by Kadirov’s patron, Vladimir Putin.  
One week before her murder, she had issued a report on an execution involving the Kurchaloi district police that took place in the Chechen village of Akhkinchu-Borzoi.
Was her murder the police’s reply?
Perhaps, for she did have many enemies in Chechnya, particularly among those bent on prosecuting their vicious war against the militants and their relatives on their own terms, contemptuous of both justice and the rule of law…
Two years later, no one has been arrested by the authorities for the man accused  by the latter of having committed the deed, Alkhazur Bashayev, an Islamic militant, was shot dead by Russian security forces in November 2009.
Hence, as far as the Russian authorities are concerned, the case is closed because it has been solved…The murderer having been identified (and killed, conveniently precluding the possibility of a trial), the Chechen authorities are thus absolved of any responsibility in the murder, and, consequently, in any other suspicious killing in the republic...  
Since Natalia Estemirova did not issue any reports involving Mr. Bashayev, Russian human rights activists never took the official version seriously.
As a result, human rights organizations launched their own investigation into the murder in the hope that a credible police inquiry will one day take place…
The report, entitled Two Years After the Murder of Natalia Estemirova: Investigation on the Wrong Track, sponsored by Memorial, the Russian investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta, (which published Politkovskaya’s reports on Chechnya) and the International Federation of Human Rights based in Paris, was presented last Thursday by Oleg Orlov, Memorial’s chairman.
According to the report, the examination of DNA samples found on Natalia Estemirova’s body did not match those of Mr. Bashayev or his brother, Anzor Bashayev, also charged in the case.
The latter, currently living in France, provided a DNA sample to Memorial.
The French authorities granted political asylum to Anzor Bashayev, and rebuffed Russian requests to extradite him.
There is no serious proof to really consider the version in which Alkhazur Bashayev is the main suspect in the killing of Natalia Estemirova, Orlov declared.
Human rights groups have accused the Russian authorities of fabricating a case in order to avoid exploring other possibilities, including the following embarrassing and explosive scenario: that officers in Chechnya’s security apparatus, at the behest of the republic’s president, eliminated a dangerous human rights activist that had been relentlessly exposing their criminal activities.
In this particular case it seems Special Forces tried to build a disguise version to take the investigation away from the real murderers, the report claims.
There were very strong circumstances around Estemirova’s murder that suggested that there could have been some official involvement. You know, the threats that had been made against Estemirova and others like her, the threats against Memorial, the timing of the threat, the kinds of crimes that Estemirova had been investigating-all of that pointed to a very strong official interest in seeing some kind of harm done to her, Rachel Denber, of Human Rights Watch, told RFE/RL.
Svetlana Gannushkina, a Memorial activist, presented a copy of the report to Russian President Dimitri Medvedev on July 5...He has yet to issue any comment…
The journalist Tom Parfitt once wrote that Natalia Estemirova was one of the bravest people in Russia. But, she was much more than that, for she knew whom she was confronting, yet plodded on nevertheless…
Significantly, other determined and brave human rights activists inspired by her example yet not deterred by her fate have been pursuing the same cause, justice and the rule of law.
In November 2009, four months after Natalia was killed, a group of Russian lawyers founded the Joint Mobile Group of the Russian Human Rights Organizations in Chechnya (Mobile Group).
The organization sends activists to Chechnya in order to investigate human rights abuses, record testimony and collect evidence.
Two months after its creation, the Mobile Group was asked to investigate the disappearance of Islam Umarpashaev, who was kidnapped from his home in Chechnya, on December 11, 2009, and held at the headquarters of the Chechen Special Task police Force (OMON). There, he claims he was abused and tortured by police officers.
The Mobile Group lodged an official complaint and seized the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. The latter then requested that the Russian government investigate the matter.
Three months after the Mobile Group’s intervention in the case, Umarpashaev was released because, according to one of his abductors, his father went all the way to the European Court and created problems.
The Mobile Group is now demanding that the Russian authorities launch an official and credible investigation into the matter and hold all those who may have broken the law accountable.
In the meantime, and for their own safety, the Umarpashaev family has had to flee Chechnya.
The Caucasian republic, therefore, remains a very dangerous place, particularly for those brazen enough to demand justice.
We have been working in Chechnya for many years. These days, people there are simply paralyzed by fear, not daring to lodge complaints against law enforcement and security officials under de facto control of the Chechnya leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. By persevering in his quest for justice, Islam Umarpashaev is displaying immense courage, Tanya Lokshina, Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch, declared.
Needless to say, Mobile Group activists have been threatened and harassed by the Chechen police.
For their efforts, the Mobile Group was awarded the 2011 Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.
The work of the Joint Mobile Group is an inspirational example of how committed individuals, despite all the pressures that are brought to bear on them, can hold the line in defense of justice, truth and the rule of law. It is the denial of access to justice that enables tyrants to prevail. This is why the work of human rights defenders like the Joint Mobile Group is so important, declared former Irish President Mary Robinson, now President of the Mary Robinson Foundation, upon presenting the award to Igor Kalyapin, founder and head of the organization, at Dublin City Hall.
Two years after Estemirova’s murder, there are more questions than answers about the circumstances surrounding her killing. The Russian authorities need to deliver justice in Estemirova’s case to demonstrate their sincerity about protecting human rights in Chechnya and throughout the Caucasus, Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said.
As the Estemirova case has shown (the same, alas can be said concerning the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, killed on October 7, 2006, Putin’s birthday…) the land of Putin, Medvedev and Kadyrov is incapable of delivering justice, and is not the least interested in doing so.
As such, we need not worry concerning their sincerity about protecting human rights.
They are much more interested in power than in justice…
Yet, as the bold and fearless Russian human rights community has demonstrated, the authorities can be compelled to release victims of human rights abuses if there is sufficient pressure exerted from both within and without Russia.
The Russians do seem loath to attract the attention of the European Court of Human Rights and suffer potentially ignominious legal defeats there, and, more generally, in the court of world opinion…
Therefore, it is vital that we all apply pressure on the Russian authorities and compel them to protect human rights activists in the Caucasus, and the Chechen people from violence and abuse…
Amnesty International has launched a campaign demanding justice for Natalia Estemirova.
Let us support this effort (you can sign the petition here).
Do we not owe at least this much to Natalia Estemirova?
(the photograph above is by Vladimir Rodionov RIA/Novosti)

Deference to power, in the land of Gavroche?

In a column entitled DSK and Conspiracy Theory, The NYT columnist Roger Cohen discusses the cultural differences existing between France and the US that the DSK sexual assault case highlighted.
French deference to power, he writes, -with the accompanying conspiracy theories-has encountered the hard-knuckled application of US law applied equally to anyone accused of a serious crime.
Deference to power?
France is the land of the 1789 Revolution that overthrew the Ancien Régime, guillotined its king and queen, and founded the Ist Republic; a land where its newly restored king was sent packing upon Napoleon’s triumphant return from Elba during les Cent Jours in 1815; a nation that drove out its restored monarch                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                during the July 1830 Revolution (les Trois Glorieuses) and yet again in 1848, that revolution giving way to the IInd  Republic.
Incidentally, it was during the June Uprising of 1832, initiated by students rebelling against the new monarchical regime that had followed les Trois Glorieuses, that Gavroche, the archetype of the streetwise Parisian gamin, cheeky, brave and free, created by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables, died while stealing bullets off the dead bodies of Gardes Nationales…
After the humiliating defeat at the hands of Germany in 1870, Napoleon III’s empire fell, and France’s IIIrd Republic was born, while in Paris, la Commune de Paris (the result of a popular uprising prompted by the military debacle) was brutally crushed by the government.
The feckless IVth Republic erected after the end of WWII was brought down by De Gaulle during the Algerian War so ineptly handled by preceding governments.
He created the Vth Republic, based on a strong presidency.
This system has prevailed to this day, though it was severely rattled in 1968, when France’s students once again took to the barricades in the capital’s streets demanding more freedom…
Deference to power?
French farmers routinely dump manure and various agricultural products in front of the gates of Prefectures (which represent the state in each of France’s Départements) whenever they are unhappy with their lot, which is often.
Not long ago, striking Continental Tire workers thrashed a Prefecture in Compiègne because their plant was about to close, and the state was not doing enough to help them.
A few years ago, a commando of farmers ransacked the office of the Minister for Environmental Affairs in Paris, to protest a new tax that would target environmentally unfriendly farms...
Such outbursts of indignation occur on a daily basis.
No week goes by without one group or another protesting vocally in the streets of France’s main cities.
Just last week, a Sarkozy government plan to outlaw GPS devices that allowed speeding motorists to detect the location of all radars along France’s road and designed to enforce speeding limits provoked such an indignant outcry that the Interior Minister had to back down.
A majority of the French considered the measure a crass provocation, designed to increase the number of fines imposed by the state in order to replenish its empty coffers in a period of huge public budget deficits, and not a measure intended to encourage drivers to slow down and limit the number of accidents and thus fatalities…
Few even bothered to suggest that only those who failed to respect the law (and thus the legal speed limits) would be penalized.
Deference to power?
In France, no such thing exists, which explains why it is a country so difficult to reform.
No government is ever considered sufficiently legitimate to enact a robust reform program.
Every reform that significantly alters the status quo engenders immediate and active resistance.
Millions then fill the streets, for weeks on end if need be.
This was the case last fall when Sarkozy sought to extend the legal retirement age to 62, (it was then set at 60). Sarkozy did not back down, but the conflict lasted months, and may cost him dearly in next year’s Presidential election.
Incidentally, when was the last time Americans demonstrated in the streets of the nation’s cities to defend their rights, or demand change?
Hence, the powers that be inspire nothing but contempt and suspicion.
The state is only legitimate when it provides protection and financial assistance…
As a result, it is not deference to power and the resulting tendency to believe in conspiracy theories that initially led many in France to believe that DSK had been set up.
This points to another cultural difference: the Cartesian strain in the French psychological makeup.
DSK headed a major, prestigious international organization that became even more influential after the global financial meltdown of 2008.
He regularly worked with the leaders of the globe’s major powers and was on first name basis with many of them.
He was also the most likely candidate to defeat Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s French Presidential election.
Hence, the Cartesian mind could not help but wonder why anyone with such influence and prospects would run the risk of losing it all (and spending the rest of his life in a US jail) and sexually assault a maid in a hotel room…
Indeed, there are more traditional and discreet ways to cater to such needs…Why would he attack the maid?
It made no sense, and explains why many in France thought that DSK’s enemies, in Washington or Paris, had engineered his downfall.
This in no way however, justifies the arguments utilized by his friends (all part of the same enlightened, leftwing elite) to defend him.
The fact that no one died, that DSK merely loves women, perhaps too exuberantly or that it was merely a case of détroussage d’une domestique (taking sexual advantage of one’s social inferiors), such statements clearly revealed the fact that some of DSK’s advocates had retained an Ancien Régime mindset, where a  seigneur could do what he pleased because, well, he was a seigneur.
It is amusing to note that such contempt for women was voiced, albeit unwittingly, by those who consider themselves progressives and thus, defenders of women’s rights…
The conspiracy theory reaction was short-lived, however.
With perhaps one exception, no leader of the Socialist party (to which DSK belongs) ever suggested that he had been set up, even by the one most likely to benefit from his political demise, Nicolas Sarkozy.
In France, since his election in 2007, Sarkozy has been held responsible for anything and everything that goes wrong in the country (although, never for any positive developments), yet no prominent opposition figure has accused Sarkozy of having conspired against a dangerous political rival…
No doubt, this is due to the fact that they all knew their friend DSK was a serial, insistent womanizer.
One Socialist member of the National Assembly told the press last month she always made sure never to be alone in a room with DSK…
The French should have remembered their classics.
Are not Greek tragedies replete with heroes who provoke their own downfall due to some tragic flaw (Aristotle’s hamartia), that lead to disaster, but also serve to reveal their humanity?
Perhaps it was DSK’s tragic flaw that led him to assault a maid in a Sofitel hotel room, thereby recklessly destroying his reputation and dooming his political prospects…
Finally, one mere word about US law.
Many here in France were aghast to discover that it was the defendant’s responsibility to gather evidence that may benefit him or her during the trial.
In France, the Magistrate investigating a case gathers all the evidence that he or she can and finds relevant, no matter whose case it supports, the people’s or the accused.
DSK, with his millionaire wife, has had no difficulty hiring the best lawyers in Washington and New York, as well as private investigators instructed to unearth any element, in New York or Africa, that can be utilized against the maid, in order to discredit her and undermine the credibility of her accusations.
DSK will thus be well defended…
Would that have been the case had he been less well off?
Hardly…
Mr. Cohen writes of the hard-knuckled application of US law as applied to anyone accused of a serious crime.
I can hear, from my old house in the North of France, the guffaws of MM. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and company, the architects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and of the National Surveillance State erected after 9/11(Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, enemy combatants, enhanced interrogation techniques (torture), secret prisons, ghost detainees, warrantless wiretapping and so on are its sterling manifestations!)
at the suggestion that US laws also apply to them…
Alas, that is another, albeit sad, story...
(in Delacroix's painting of La Liberté guidant le Peuple, the child depicted on the right inspired Victor Hugo's creation of Gavroche)