Beyond Wallacia

Where Obama's ideas came from

2010-10-28T23:16:00.001+08:00

ALMOST HALF-WAY through his US presidency, Barack Obama will visit Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, on Nov 9 and 10, 2010. A feature of his stop-over will be a tour of Istiqlal, the largest mosque in South East Asia and reputed to be the third largest in the world.

He is also scheduled to visit three other Asian democracies: India, South Korea (G20 Summit) and Japan (APEC Summit).

In the United States, two new books attempt to identify his source of inspiration and belief.

Dinesh D'Souza, president of King's College in New York City, is the author of The Roots of Obama's Rage (Regnery Publishing). In his recent Forbes magazine feature, ‘How Obama Thinks’ (Sep 27, 2010), D'Souza describes Obama as the world’s ‘last anticolonial’ leader.

However, Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg’s new book, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition (Princeton University Press), reportedly places Obama firmly in the American tradition of “philosophical pragmatism and civic republicanism”.

According to the New York Times (Oct 28, 2010) Loppenberg told a recent seminar in New York: “Adams and Jefferson were the only anti-colonialists whom Obama has been affected by.”

Both books comment on the influence of Obama’s father, the late Barack Hussein Obama, Sr, who was a senior Kenyan government economist.

One significant document authored by Obama Sr has been located to date - “Problems facing our socialism” - a critique of Kenyan government policy on development and alignment published in the East Africa Journal in 1965, two year’s after Kenyan President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta declared the country’s independence from British rule.

Flakey comment about snow but great photo

2010-01-08T16:04:00.002+08:00

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall in Britain would become ...

“… a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he told The Independent in March 2000..

Flash forward 10 years:

This striking image taken by Nasa's Terra satellite on 7 January shows the UK deep in the clutches of the current “cold snap”.

Dr David Viner is now head of the British Council's climate change program where he encourages young people (Dec 2009) to get involved in negotiations designed to save the world.

How was your New Year’s Eve?

2009-01-01T03:13:00.002+08:00

In Indonesia, the ‘Gregorian’ calendar is used officially and January 1 is a public holiday. The Muslim new year, which was celebrated quietly in the mosques on December 29, is also a national holiday … and is actually a double celebration for the 150 million people living on the island of Java. Their traditional calendar used to be Hindu (and still starts in the western year 78 AD) but was made to line up with the Islamic Arabian calendar’s lunar months by the Muslim Mataram Empire in 1633 AD.

However, most people around Java celebrate the ‘international’ New Year’s Eve very loudly (even those who don’t drink alcohol) and it's a tradition for young people to parade down streets in their cars or on motorbikes (or on tops of buses), blowing horns and yahooing.

In Jakarta, we met up with some friends and had a late meal at the local food court in Kemang, an inner suburb with a busy main street of restaurants and boutiques. About 11 pm, we wandered over to a new complex with a roof-top bar for a few drinks. The fireworks started at 11.40pm … totally disorganised … every building and street for itself. We could see three suburbs, home to about 1million people, and it looked like rockets were being fired at each other as much as the sky. Even the bar didn’t bother with a count-down so no one really noticed when the new year began.

This is a big city of more than 15 million people and the biggest crowd turned up at the National Monument park in Central Jakarta despite the capital city government's cancellation of the popular annual fireworks display and restrictions on the number of revellers who could enter.

The Jakarta Post saw several "rowdy-looking" men break some of the steel fences surrounding the park, while others used wooden ladders to allow people to climb over the fences. Inside hundreds of thousands made their own fun and enjoyed food and drinks on offer from scores of street vendors while kites and fireworks set off by nearby residents lit up the night sky.

On Bali island, New Year's Eve celebrations in the tourist precincts were matched by boisterous Hindu village festivals and a city square carnival provided by the Denpasar city administration.

But in strict Moslem Aceh province, Banda Aceh city administration banned all New Year's Eve celebrations including private parties. "Blowing trumpets is not Islamic, it is not the custom of Muslims ... It is better to start a year by having a prayer," said deputy mayor Illiza Saaduddin Djamal.

In West Sumatra province, homeland of the matriarchal Minang people, the city of Bukittinggi covered its big clock tower in cloth to prevent young people from congregating around. "Usually, around 300,000 people gather at the clock every New Year's Eve to witness the clock strike 12, marking the change of year. Youngsters express their happiness by hugging their mates, and even kissing. People from religious circles have criticized these acts because they are against religious and local traditions," a municipal spokesman said.

Following a case involving senior high school students making a pornographic video in the city during the year, Bukittinggi mayor Djufri has also banned the next celebration of Valentine's Day.

The enlightenment driven away ... ?

2007-03-05T08:25:00.000+08:00

British-American writer Christopher Hitchins uses words of the poet W.H. Auden to illustrate the "pathetic oversimplification, which describes skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism as equally 'fundamentalist'" as a religious faith which is "simultaneously the ideology of insurgent violence and of certain inflexible dictatorships."

One of Auden's most beloved poem, September 1, 1939, laments Europe's toppling into a chasm of darkness and reflects on how this catastrophe for civilization had come about:

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analyzed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

"The enlightenment driven away … This very strong and bitter line came back to me when I saw the hostile, sneaky reviews that have been dogging the success of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's best seller Infidel, which describes the escape of a young Somali woman from sexual chattelhood to a new life in Holland and then (after the slaying of her friend Theo van Gogh) to a fresh exile in the United States," Hitchens wrote in Slate.

His examples of what he calls "linguistic slippage" are provocative. So too his observation of similar trends in American civil liberties circles amongst those who refer to themselves as First Amendment absolutists.

"By this we mean, ironically enough, that we prefer to interpret the words of the Founders, if you insist, literally. The literal meaning in this case seems (to us) to be that Congress cannot inhibit any speech or establish any state religion. This means that we defend all expressions of opinion including those that revolt us, and that we say that nobody can be forced to practice, or forced to foreswear, any faith.

"I suppose I would say that this is an inflexible principle, or even a dogma, with me. But who dares to say that's the same as the belief that criticism of religion should be censored or the belief that faith should be imposed? To flirt with this equivalence is to give in to the demagogues and to hear, underneath their yells of triumph, the dismal moan of the trahison des clercs and 'the enlightenment driven away.'

"Perhaps, though, if I said that my principles were a matter of unalterable divine revelation and that I was prepared to use random violence in order to get 'respect' for them, I could hope for a more sympathetic audience from some of our intellectuals."

My Country

2006-10-16T10:26:00.000+08:00

1904

The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze ?

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

by Dorothea Mackeller (1885-1968)

Indonesian editor on trial for Prophet cartoons

2006-09-01T00:24:00.001+08:00

While Tommy Thomdeanm, cartoonist for Indonesia's leading daily newspaper, Kompas, is being feted by the Islamic Republic of Iran for his entry in a $12,000 first-prize competition to insult millions of murdered Jews (see Indonesian may win world's 'best' Holocaust cartoon), one of his colleagues is on trial in Jakarta for publishing cartoons of a different sort.

Teguh Santosa, editor of the online version of daily Rakyat Merdeka, is accused of religious defamation under the Indonesian penal code and risks five years in jail. The International Federation of Journalists has described the trial as an affront to press freedom.

He was arrested in July, despite a public apology by his publication for having showed caricatures of Islam's Prophet Mohammed, which many Muslims feel were insulting, and then released pending trial whch commenced yeasterday.

"To face five years imprisonment, is not only excessive, it is also an attack on the very foundations of freedom of expression" IFJ president Christopher Warren said, in a statement. "It is time for the Indonesian Government to recognise that jailing journalists for defamation is an ineffective and inappropriate penalty. Defamation should be dealt with through the civil Law of the Press 40/1999 in Indonesia."

The Alliance of Independent Journalists Indonesia (Aliansi Jurnalis Independen) agrees. In a statement it set out the cause of the action and the demand for press freedom as guaranteed by Indonesia's Constitution:

It all began when in its 2 February 2006 edition, RM Online republished three of 12 controversial cartoons taken from the October 2005 edition of Denmark-based Jylland Posten daily. RM Online had intended to show its readers that those were the pictures that had sparked protests from Islamic believers in various countries, including Indonesia. A group of people who saw the cartoons, however, accused RM Online of defaming Prophet Mohamad and Islam.

Conceding that "the press must be ready to be controlled by the people", RM Online withdrew the cartoons from its online edition and issued an apology to Muslims who felt insulted that their religion had been degraded by the republication of the cartoons. Editor-in-chief Teguh also stressed that there had been no intention to insult any party, but merely to carry out journalistic duties in seeking, digging and sharing information.

The goodwill, however, was not enough. A group of Muslims filed a report against RM Online to the police and the Jakarta High Court followed up by prosecuting Teguh, accusing him of insulting Prophet Mohamad.

The Alliance of Independent Journalists Indonesia wishes to state that:

* The use of Articles 156 and 156(a) of the Criminal Code on defamation/degradation of religion against Teguh Santosa (RM Online) is an effort to criminalize journalists/press, which is not in line with the spirit of press freedom as stipulated by Article 28F of the 1945 Constitution.

* Since the very beginning, AJI has always called for the use of the Law on Press Number 40/1999 and rejected the use of the Criminal Code in efforts to resolve any disputes regarding press reports, because the latter option could cause censorship of critical journalists and threaten press freedom.

* What Teguh Santosa and RM Online had done was fully an effort to meet the public's right to know as regards the cartoon controversy, which has been regarded by some Islamic followers as insulting Prophet Mohamad, and it was part of the duties of the press to seek and dig for information to share with the public.

* AJI is aware that there is no absolute freedom, including press freedom. However, AJI calls on the people and government apparatus who may question a news report or the publication of pictures in the media, to NOT take steps that can jail journalists or control press freedom. Regulations on the right to counter, the right to make correction and reports to the Press Council are the best consensus in settling press-related disputes.

Publishers, editors, journalists and readers are urged to protest this case. Messages of support to Teguh Santosa and the Alliance of Independent Journalists may be emailed to sekretariatnya_aji@yahoo.com.

Foreign aircrew who died for Indonesian freedom

2006-08-23T16:31:00.001+08:00

Rahardjo Mustadjab, a former Indonesian Air Force pilot, contributed an interesting article to today's Jakarta Post on the origins of the Indonesian Air Force and its choice of 29 July as "Air Force Dedication Day". Following the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japanese forces throughout Asia in 1945, nationalists declared the establishment of the Republic of Indonesia over the territory of the Dutch East Indies on 17 August. Unfortunately, the Netherlands, itself just liberated from Nazi Germany occupation, fought a 'police action' to throttle the new republic until 1950.

The newly formed RI air force, Angkatan Udara Republik Indonesia (AURI), had commandeered Japanese aircraft and air bases and was reckoned a threat to the Dutch re-colonisation. On 21 July 1947, the Dutch military launched "Operation Pelikaan" and its coordinated attacks on AURI airfields destroyed much of Indonesia's air power.

However, in the early hours of 29 July, three AURI pilots, Muljono (flying a Mitsubishi KI-51 fighter), Sutarjo Sigit and Suharnoko Harbani (both flying Yokosuka K5Y1 training planes), launched an audacious counter-attack from Maguwo near Yogyakarta, bombing Dutch army positions in Semarang, Ambarawa and Salatiga, respectively.

The three young men were Air Force cadets, and they had learned to fly the Japanese aircraft they had at their disposal simply by reading the manuals written in Japanese. In the absence of bomb bays, the pilots lobbed the small bombs from the cockpits of their fighter planes by hand. Because of this, the Dutch did not suffer any reported loss of life or great damage, though it probably did give them a scare.

Of course, the ragtag Japanese aircraft the occupiers had left behind in Indonesia were no match for the Dutch, whose American P-40 Kitty Hawk fighter planes then roamed the skies above Java with a vengeance. To avoid being intercepted, the Indonesian pilots flew just above the treetops. After accomplishing their jobs, they returned to base safely and the ground crew hid the planes under the trees.

According to Rahardjo Mustadjab, "the Dutch punishment came swiftly and severely":

That same morning only a couple of hours later, two Kitty Hawks strafed Yogyakarta. Later that afternoon a Kitty Hawk gunned down an Indian transport plane, a Dakota C-47, carrying medicines donated by the Malaya Red Cross, which was about to land at Maguwo. The hapless plane went down in flames in a nearby village, killing all three Indonesian Air Force crew members: Agustinus Adisutjipto, Abdulrachman Saleh and Adisumarno ... Also killed were pilot Alexander Noel Constantine (an Australian), co-pilot Roy Hazelhurst (a Briton), flight engineer Bidha Ram (Indian), Zainal Arifin (the Indonesian consul in Malaya) and Mrs Noel Constantine. The only survivor was one passenger, Abdulgani Handokotjokro.

Jos Heyman's Indonesian aviation 1945 -1950 described the Indian-registered aircraft, VT-CLA, as being previously owned by the government of the Indian state of Orissa but subsequently purchased in support of the Indonesian republic by Bijayananda Patnaik "who hailed from a family of freedom fighters, ideologues and patriots in Orissa ... [and who] had earlier been involved in the Indian freedom struggle and eventually became a leading figure in the government of Orissa." However at the time it was shot down by Dutch P-40s, the plane was "on charter to the Indonesia government on a flight from Singapore to Maguwo."

Heyman noted both Indonesian references to the aircraft carrying Red Cross medicines and a Dutch report which claimed Dutch authorities had not been informed of the flight and that the aircraft carried no Red Cross markings:

The report continues to state that: 'Of course the MLKNIL has instructions to hinder republican air activities. Each aircraft that is over republican territory without clear markings and of which the pilot maneuvers in a manner that indicates he wants to avoid being spotted, in serious danger'. But nevertheless the orders were not to shoot an aircraft down but instead force it to land on the nearest airfield in Dutch control. The report further states that a warning shot was fired at the aircraft upon which the aircraft hit a tree and crashed. The passing of time make it impossible to conclude what actually happened.

Interestingly the aircraft's owner, Paitnak, demanded 10 million rupees from the Dutch government as compensation and eventually received a KLM DC-3.

29 July is Indonesian Airforce Dedication Day and three Indonesian victims of VT-CLA, Agustinus Adisutjipto, Abdulrachman Saleh and Adisumarno, have had airports named after them in Yogyakarta, Malang and Surakarta.

But who were the foreigners, Noel Constantine and his un-named wife, Roy Hazelhurst and Bidha Ram? I am also wondering where they are buried and how Indonesians commemorate their contribution to their independence struggle?

Photograph from TNI Angkatan Udara

Nervous Gaddafi slowed nuclear bomb spread

2006-08-19T18:43:00.001+08:00

It appears that Iran and North Korea may soon be armed with nuclear weapons. One privateer gave them a head-start. James Button writes in today's The Age (Melbourne):

Just days before the bombs fell on Iraq in March, 2003, Britain's secret service got an unexpected phone call. It led two MI6 officers to private rooms in a Mayfair hotel. There, a nervous young man told them that "the leader" was ready to reconsider his weapons of mass destruction program. The agents were astonished. The leader was the young man's father, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi.

From that meeting with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a tense and top-secret diplomatic operation began. Libya wanted to shed its pariah status - the United States had designated it a "state sponsor of terrorism" in 1979 - but it feared betrayal by the US and Britain. Over nine months in 2003 it tortuously revealed details of its program to acquire nuclear weapons.

After a tip-off in September, agents working on behalf of the CIA and MI6 boarded the BBC China, a container vessel berthed in Taranto, Italy. In five containers bound for Libya they found thousands of components for a centrifuge, a device that can enrich uranium for a bomb.

The game was up. Soon after, Libya allowed US and British agents to inspect its weapons production sites for the first time. On December 19, its foreign minister announced on television that his country was giving up its nuclear weapons ambitions in return for the lifting of sanctions. As arranged, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush immediately endorsed the deal. The war on terror, it seemed, had finally borne fruit. A grateful Gaddafi even sent Blair boxes of oranges and dates.

But when Libya came in from the cold, something even bigger and less cheering came in with it. The seizure of the centrifuge parts in Taranto was the last step in exposing a sophisticated global network that traded the materials and know-how to make nuclear arms.

The network was vital to Iran's march down the nuclear path. It seems to have helped North Korea in its attempt to build a bomb. It tried to sell to Iraq. It was constructing an entire nuclear weapons capability for Libya. It was dominated by shadowy European businessmen but at its head was a high-profile Pakistani scientist who had helped forge his country's atomic weapons program ...

Read on at Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity and the Rise and Fall of the A. Q. Khan Network

Indonesian may win world's 'best' Holocaust cartoon

2006-08-15T02:35:00.000+08:00

Indonesian cartoonist Tommy Thomdean is in the running for the prize for the world's "best" anti-Jewish-Holocaust cartoon being presented by Iran Cartoon and Iran's largest selling newspaper Hamshahri. Interest is mounting as an exhibition of the competition's 204 finalists from the more than 1,100 cartoons submitted by participants from 60 countries was opened in Tehran's Palestine contemporary art museum yesterday. The top three cartoons will be announced on 2 September with the winners being awarded prizes of 12,000, 8,000 and 5,000 dollars respectively.

Thomdean may have a good chance of finishing in the top three and proudly raising anti-Semitism in Indonesia to a new level of prominence as he previously won an Excellence Prize at the 2004 LM International Cartoon Competition held in Nanjing, China. and was also a prize winner at this year's Syrian International Cartoon Contest.

According to the Syria Cartoon website, Thomdean began his career as freelance cartoonist and illustrator in 1997 while working as an architect "for many local social projects and low income housing in Indonesia" and now works as a cartoonist and illustrator for Kompas morning daily, Indonesia's largest circulating and most prestigious newspaper.

Aljazeera newsagency reported that Thomdean's cartoon "shows the statue of liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in its left hand and giving a Nazi-style salute with the other". This accords with the objective of the competition to parody the documented murder of some six million European Jews by the German Nazi terror regime between 1933 and 1945, known as the Holocaust.

Thomdean's cartoon appears to be displayed on the gallery wall to the right in the photo above. Blogger View From a Height, who has reproduced many more scenes from the exhibition's oepning ceremony, makes the point that half the cartoons are in English, "which tells you a little something about the target audience." He also observed that while the exhibition wanted to deny the Holocaust happened, numerous cartoons portrayed Iraelis Jews as "latter-day" Nazis. "The genius of good propaganda is doublethink," he mused.

The contest was announced in February after caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad were first printed in Denmark in September 2005 and then, surprisingly six months later, were attacked by Muslims worldwide. The cartoons were then republished by other publications, mostly in democratic countries. Many Muslims considered the cartoons offensive and a violation of traditions prohibiting images of their prophets. In some Islamic countries Muslim demonstrators were killed in riots that got out of control.

Masoud Shojai, the competition organiser, said "we staged this fair to explore the limits of freedom Westerners believe in ... they can freely write anything they like about our prophet, but," he claimed, "if one raises doubts about the Holocaust he is either fined or sent to prison."

According to Aljazeera, "Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionists, who maintain that the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews and other groups during World War II was either invented or exaggerated. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, has also prompted international anger by dismissing the Holocaust as a 'myth' used to justify the creation of Israel."

Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders are increasingly calling for Muslims to join together to ensure the destruction of Israel (see Ahmadinejad very clear on Israel's "elimination").

Indonesian connections

In February, about 200 Muslims demonstrated outside the Danish Embassy in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, to protest the publishing of the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper six months before. Danish Ambassador Neils Erik Andersen told CNN that about a dozen of the demonstrators, members of Defenders of Islam (FPI), broke through security and, once on the embassy grounds, demanded to meet with him. During the meeting, Andersen reiterated an apology made earlier by Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper.

Indonesia's foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, said at the time that radical groups around the world were exploiting public Islamic anger over the cartoons and protests were now "out of proportion."

Last month, however, an Indonesian journalist was arrested over his decision to publish the controversial cartoons in Rakyat Merdeka newspaper back in February. Teguh Santosa, online editor of the newspaper, was charged with inciting hatred towards a religious group. (namely the country's 80% Muslim majority).

He said he published the images to give readers the full story on the cartoons issue. "We just wanted to let people know about the cartoons, which were being strongly protested at that time," he told the Associated Press. Santosa faces up to five years imprisonment if found guilty.

Blogger Indonesia Matters reported that the Committee to Protect Journalists had denounced the arrest and charges, as an attack on the freedom of the press. The Alliance of Independent Journalists (Aliansi Jurnalis Independen) also voiced its concern, claiming that Santosa had not breached the journalists? code of ethics.

The AJI insisted that 30-year-old Santosa had no desire to provoke Muslims when he posted the cartoons and that his sole aim was to provide his readers with background to the controversy they had caused and noted that he was the second Indonesian journalist to suffer consequences for reproducing the cartoons. David Da Silva, the editor of the Christian magazine Gloria, was fired by his employers in February.

Emails may possibly be received by Tommy Thomdean at tom_thomdeanjunior@yahoo.com and via his editor at Kompas. Emails may possibly be received by Teguh Santosa via the Alliance of Independent Journalists.

UPDATE

Exhibition curator Masoud Shojai has since told an Iranian News Channel (IRINN) reporter that "Zionist circles" had "severely attacked" the exhibition website and he'd received "thousands of threatening e-mails" and "offers to money" to prevent the exhibition. Who would have thought Zionist violence or sinister cash transactions were possible in the centre of Islamic revolutionary Tehran?

In another suprise, there have no news reports yet of angry Jewish protests or riots against the exhibition anywhere in the world. No burning of embassies or public calls for the beheading of Iranian or Muslim leaders either.

Arab media comments: Rejecting 'agents' of Iran

2006-08-11T23:40:00.000+08:00

Despite heart-rending visual imagery of war in Lebanon and the Palestinian districts, public attacks on Lebanon's Party of God (Hizb'Allah) and its militia, as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran's strategic goals, have become commonplace in the Sunni Arab world since the start of Israel's powerful (yet underwhelming) counter-attack against Hizb'Allah provocation from southern Lebanon.

Amir Taheri, for instance, the Iranian-born senior columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat, the thirty-year-old pan-Arab daily newspaper printed in 12 cities, wrote today that Hizb'Alah was fighting "not for prisoners, the Shabaa farms or even 'Arab causes', whatever they may be at any given time, but for Iran in its broader struggle."

In his article, When Elephants Fight, Taheri recalled that one week ago Iran's Foreign Minister Manuchehr Motakki shocked an audience in Beirut and drew flak from Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Sinioraby by identifying the current border war as about reshaping the Middle East.

"However, the most frank analyses of the situation on the Iranian side of the conflict have come from two close aides of [Iran's Supreme Guide Ali Khamenehi] Khamenehi," he wrote.

The first was by Ali Akbar Velayati, Iran's Foreign Minister for 16 years. In a speech in Tehran last week, Velayati said that, by destroying the Pakistan- and Saudi Arabian-backed Sunni Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and the Arab Baathist dictatorship in Iraq, the United States had freed Shia-Persian Iran from devoting "much of its energies protecting its borders" and had "created an historic opportunity" for taking leadership of the region.

The second analysis came from Hussein Shariatmadari, also a top aide to Khamenehi and director of Iran's main daily newspaper Kayhan (Universe). According to Taheri, Shariatmadari believes that with the fall of communism, the task of challenging the US-lead, "Infidel" West has devolved to the Islamic Republic and its Khomeinist ideology:

"In an editorial bearing the title of This Is Our War, Shariatmadari made it clear that Hezbollah was fighting not for prisoners, the Shabaa farms or even 'Arab causes', whatever they may be at any given time, but for Iran in its broader struggle to prevent the US from creating 'an American Middle East.'

"The consensus in Tehran is that American power is peaking out and that the West as a whole is entering a period of historic decline. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is convinced that it is the turn of rising new powers, brimming with energy and ambition, sustained by strong demographic trends, and ready for endless sacrifice and suffering, to provide humanity with leadership."

"Seen in that context, Taheri commented, the ultimate control of the current war may not be in the hands of either Israel or Hezbollah."

Earlier, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, Editor-in-Chief of Kuwait's Arab Times newspaper, opined in his editorial, No to Syria, Iran agents, that "people of Arab countries, especially the Lebanese and Palestinians, have been held hostage for a long time in the name of 'resisting Israel.'"

"Arab governments have been caught between political obligations and public opinion leading to more corruption in politics and economics. Forgetting the interests of their own countries the Hamas Movement and Hezbollah have gone to the extent of representing the interests of Iran and Syrian in their countries. These organizations have become the representatives of Syria and Iran without worrying about the consequences of their action."

Al-Jarallah pointed out that, without mentioning Hizb'Allah by name, Saudi Arabia blamed certain "elements" inside Lebanon for the violence with Israel and said "it is necessary to make a distinction between legitimate resistance and uncalculated adventures adopted by certain elements within Lebanon without the knowledge of legal Lebanese authorities."

The strict Sunni-Muslim Arab kingdom said it was against irresponsible adventures undertaken by certain elements in the region without consulting the legal authorities putting all Arab nations at risk, adding that "these elements must take responsibility for their irresponsible actions and they alone should end the crisis created by them."

He said the "battle between supporters and opponents of these adventurers has begun, starting from Palestine to Tehran passing through Syria and Lebanon" and that war was inevitable as the "Lebanese government couldn't bring Hezbollah within its authority" and make it work for the interests of Lebanon.

"Unfortunately, he concluded, "we must admit that in such a war the only way to get rid of 'these irregular phenomena' is what Israel is doing. The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community."

Hizb'Allah hits UN post: Kofi Annan not yet outraged

2006-08-06T18:11:00.000+08:00

A Hizb'Allah rocket attack on an UNIFIL monitoring base in southern Lebanon today, injured three Chinese members of the interim peace keeping force, just hours after China called on the United Nations to ensure the security of UNIFIL forces, China's official Xinhua News Agency announced.

"The rocket landed near our post at 11:55 a.m. (0855 GMT) as an Israeli military unit passed by a village close to the post," Luo Fuqiang, a Chinese officer who heads a sapper battalion, was quoted as saying.

Earlier Sunday, China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a telephone conversation that the UN should take tangible measures to ensure the security of UN peacekeepers, Xinhua said.

The silence from the United Nations secretariat and world media about this attack contrasts dramatically to the reaction to an Israeli attack on a UNIFIL observer post in July which killed four UN monitors.

At that time, Kofi Annan claimed the action was "apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a United Nations observer post".

Kofi's widely publicised allegation was immediately challenged by the release of an email sent earlier by one of the fallen UN observers, Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, of Canada, in which he claimed that the UNIFIL post "was taking fire within, in one case, three meters of his position for tactical necessity, not being targeted."

The email reciprient, retired Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie, said Kruedener "was telling us was Hezbollah soldiers were all over his position and the IDF were targeting them. And that's a favorite trick by people who don't have representation in the UN. They use the UN as shields knowing that they can't be punished for it."

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper also stated that the Israeli attack was a "terrible tragedy" but not likely deliberate. At the same time, he questioned why the UN had manned the outpost in Lebanon near the Israeli border as bombs exploded all around.

"We want to find out why this United Nations post was attacked and also why it remained manned during what is now, more or less, a war during obvious danger to these individuals," he told media. Asked about UN head Kofi Annan's statement suggesting Israel had targeted the outpost, Harper said: "I certainly doubt that to be the case."

Since its withdrawal from its military buffer zone in southern Lebanon in 2000, Israel consistetly lobbied "for UNIFIL to either take a more active role vis-a-vis Hezbollah (for example, preventing Hezbollah from setting up military posts adjacent to UNIFIL's in the hope this will deter Israel from attacking them), or to step out of the region (thereby voiding the Lebanese government's excuse for not deploying its army along the border)."

Prior to Hizb'Allah's 12 July attack on Israel, visitors to UNIFIL posts in southern Lebanon noted that they were still often within a few hundred metres of Hizb'Allah posts (the latter flying their yellow party flag not the Lebanese national flag) and UNIFIL troops took no action against their cross-border provocations.

Indonesian Islamists threaten "new wave" of terror

2006-08-04T02:20:00.000+08:00

The Indonesian-based Asian Muslim Youth Movement claims it has sent hundreds of South East Asian suicide bombers around the world with a mission to attack Jewish interests in countries that support Israel such as Britain, the US and possibly Australia. Its leader, Islamist author Suaib Bidu, warned The Australian that thousands more jihadis were preparing to join the resistance against Israel and die as"martyrs". Bidu said a "passing-out" ceremony for more than 3000 jihadis will be held tomorrow in the Indonesian city of Pontianak, West Kalimantan. But only about 200 would be sent immediately to targets aboard, with the remainder being active supporters.

"We have a lot of support, including in Australia, from people who don't believe Israel's attack (on Hizb'Allah) is just," he said. The group claims to have already sent 217 suicide bombers, including 72 Indonesians as well as citizens of six other Southeast Asian nations, to Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. They include seasoned mujaheddin fighters, some of whom had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and then the Northern Alliance in the same country.

According to The Australian, about 40 percent of the AMYM recruits have military experience in countries including Afghanistan, Thailand, The Philippines, Palestine and Iraq. Those with field experience have learned how to make suicide bombs. However Bidu said the fighters from his movement will not travel to Lebanon "because we don't want to face Israel from the front; we prefer to do it from behind".

Indonesia's Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) has announced it has 200,000 members ready to join the battlefield in southern Lebanon. "When we apply for passports we say we are going to Singapore or to Mecca, so that we can fulfil our true aims'" FPI spokesman Habib Hasan al-Jufrie said. He said the FPI held military training courses "at secret locations" every two weeks.

Last night, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi said there were fears a "new wave" of terrorists could be generated by the Israeli offensive in Lebanon. "Muslims are angry even in moderate Muslim countries," said Mr Abdullah, who hosted and chaired an emergency meeting of the 57 nations of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur.

Ahmadinejad very clear on Israel's "elimination"

2006-08-03T02:38:00.000+08:00

Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dropped all opacity regarding the fate of Israel (see Subtle Ahmadinejad. What does he really mean?) and finally got to the point. He told delegates to the emergency summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference being held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that Muslims should support an immediate ceasefire in southern Lebanon as a stage in the destruction of Israel.

"Though elimination of the Zionist regime is the main solution to the current crisis, at this stage a cease-fire should be immediately established," he said, as quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Israel is fighting to clear Iran-backed Party of God (Hizb'Allah) fighters from southern Lebanon after they crossed the international border, abducted and killed Israeli soldiers and fired weapons into civilian areas of northern Israel.

The objectives of Hizb'Allah, a member of the Lebanese Government, includes "the destruction of Israel ... It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve ... Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated."

Wikiquote has published a number of statements by the reclusive Hizb'Allah leader, Hassan Nasrallah. They include:

"Peace settlements will not change reality, which is that Israel is the enemy and that it will never be a neighbor or a nation ... And on this last day of the century, I promise Israel that it will see more suicide attacks, for we will write our history with blood" (Hezbollah rally in Beirut. December 31, 1999); and

"If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli" (Quoted in Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal 2001, Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion, Pluto Press, ISBN 0745317928).

Malaysia's UMNO Youth to boycott Jewish products

2006-08-01T01:09:00.000+08:00

Malaysian blogger Husin Tapa is impressed with the chutzpa of investment banker Khairy Jamaluddin, the son-in-law of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and leader of the governing party's UMNO Youth League, who led the recent anti-Israeli and anti-US demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur during which he attempted to barge into the convention centre to rebuke US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"Khairy?s action reminds us of those days when Anwar Ibrahim or Ibrahim Ali and some others led demonstrations against the government, which eventually facilitated them into high political office," Tapa wrote in his Malaysia Kini blog.

"I am also impressed with Khairy who demanded that all Islamic countries quit the United Nations to show their anger at the world body for doing nothing to stop the Israeli atrocities in Lebanon. UMNO Youth, he said, would also make a list of Jewish companies whose products Malaysians should boycott ...

"But as a graduate of Oxford, Khairy may not have the heart to protest against the country that gave him political education and the best period of his formative years," he wrote, addding, "Will Khairy abandon Manchester United?

Impartial RTM continues reports on Israeli atrocities

2006-07-30T00:55:00.000+08:00

Malaysia's state broadcaster, Radio Televisyen Malaysia, will continue broadcasting reports of "Israeli atrocities" in Lebanon and Palestine, Deputy Information Minister Datuk Ahmad Zahid announced. A South East Asian multicultural and multiracial state but with a Malay Muslim majority, Malaysia does not recognise Israel.

"The government has no other motives in broadcasting the reports but to explain to the people the importance of unity to prevent outside elements from threatening the peace and sovereignty of our country," Zahid said. "If the Malaysian Defence Forces were to be involved in [UN] peacekeeping duties in Lebanon, RTM would embed its personnel so that Malaysians got a clear picture of the human suffering in Lebanon as a result of the Israeli action, he added.

Jihad curse spoils good news from Papua province

2006-07-29T01:29:00.000+08:00

The Jihad cause seems to erupt whenever there is good news about democracy in Muslim-majority countries.

For instance, in Indonesia's two New Guinea provinces, Papua and Irian Jaya Barat, the first direct elections for their provincial governors -- by law reserved for ethnic Papuans -- attracted the participation of more than 80 percent of entitled voters in both provinces as citizens appear willing to give Special Autonomy status an opportunity for implementation. The inauguration of both governors was followed by the military wing of the separatist Free West Papua movement (OPM) announcing that it is ending its 40 year "armed struggle" and will campaign for Papua's independence, through "non-violent action".

However, three non-Papuan Indonesians have been arrested for suspected terror activities after entering a secure site inside the US mining company Freeport-McMoRan's gold-copper mining complex in Papua province. The three were arrested Thursday after they entered a "protected area" inside the mine without having proper security clearance, said national deputy police spokesman Bambang Kuncoko.

A senior officer with Indonesia's anti-terror unit Detachment 88 said two of the three were Freeport employees, including one in charge of handling explosives. The third is an Islamic teacher, the officer said. The teacher had at least once entered the complex using a visitor's ID pass made by one of the other two, the officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

He said anti-terror detectives also seized several documents including bomb-making instructions, a map of Freeport mining area and videos of anti-Western propaganda.

Lebanon background: The Hizb'Allah missile myth

2006-07-28T16:15:00.000+08:00

From Lebanon resident, anti-Israel activist and middle-east affairs writer and commentator, Robert Fisk:

" ... it's Syria that is being lined up for attack next, not the Saddam Cabinet. And the signs were clear long ago.

"Take the article in The New York Times by Larry Collins - joint author with Dominique Lapierre of O Jerusalem! - which last month announced that the Syrian-supported Hizbollah resistance in Lebanon had 10,000 missiles that could fly to Tel Aviv and 'leave in their wake devastation more terrible than anything Israel has ever known'.

"The missiles are a myth - I travel the roads of southern Lebanon every two weeks and there are no such missiles, as the UN force there will confirm ..."

Published by The Independent (UK) on 15 April 2003.

Australian citizens in Lebanon: two opposing stories

2006-07-27T23:57:00.000+08:00

A dual Australian-Israel citizen was killed in action with the Israeli army in southern Lebanon yesterday. He was one of nine Israeli soldiers killed in a Hizb'Allah ambush near the guerilla stronghold of Bint Jbeil. Sergeant Asaf Namer was close to completing his two years of volunteer military service. Born in Israel, he emigrated to Sydney, Australia, as a child with his mother and older sister in 1991. He returned to his birth country to be with his father and was living with his grandmother in the town on Kiryat Yam, near Haifa.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said: "I just want to say how sad I am that an Australian has been killed and obviously we extend our condolences to the family ... He was in the last month of his national service so it's particularly sad circumstances surrounding his death." Australian Labor Party leader Kim Beazley said he was "deeply sorry" about Mr Namer's death. "He was obviously fighting for something he believed in."

Sixteen years ago an Australian citizen reportedly played a critical player in an act of terrorism in Lebanon.

It involved General Michael Aoun who had commanded the Lebanese Army from the mid 1980s. In 1988 he became prime minister of an interim government and cracked down on the various militia groups in the country and waged a 'War of Liberation' against the Syrian Army in Lebanon. In October 1990 he was removed from power by Syrian and pro-Syrian forces and exiled to France.

On 12 October 1990, just before he was forced to resign, Aoun went into the palace grounds to greet thousands of his followers. From the crowd, Francois Habib Halal opened fire with a hand gun and fired four shots at the prime minister. The asassinatioon attempt failed but one bystander was killed. Hillal was a member of the Syrian Ba'ath Party, a Shi'ite from southern Lebanon but with Australian citizenship.

He was arrested but General Aoun gave orders that he should be well treated and handed over to the proper authorities for investigation. Hallal was released from prison the very next day after the Syrian army's 13 October onslaught against Aoun. He then gave a press conference at Syrian Baath Party (Lebanese Branch) offices in Beirut. The Baath Secretary General, Abdallah Al-Amin introduced Hallal as a national hero of the Arab cause. He reportedly still lives in South Beirut.

From peace promoter to anger "just beyond belief"

2006-07-25T15:56:00.000+08:00

Nobel peace laureate Betty Williams, one of Northern Ireland's peace movement leaders in the 1970s, now questions the concept of 'non-violence'. Addressing young people at Mikhail Gorbachev's Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Australia, Mrs Williams now 64 and head of the World Centres of Compassion for Children International, said she had a "very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent."

"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush," she told the young people, adding "I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief."

Back in 1977 I published The Peace People of Northern Ireland - impressions of Mairead Corrigan, Betty Williams and the Peace Movement (Widescope). Author Dairy O'Donnell, convinced me that her insights were approved by Corrogan, Williams et al, and it was an interesting and economically slim read.

Corrigan was supposed to launch the book in Sydney during her Australian speaking tour but cancelled after noting that the book's back cover blurb described her as "Mairead, the virgin martyr, sacrificing her youth and her personal desires on the altar of a higher destiny."

Sexual repression, you see, was part of Dairy O'Donnell's explanation for the vigorous origins of the peace movement in violence-dominated, Roman Catholic districts of Northern Ireland: "Married adults living a celibate existence build up energies which might otherwise be expressed in conjugal intercourse," she wrote.

This extended to Betty Williams. As her husband was often at sea, she may have been "denied this normal outlet for her sexual or procreative drive for several months."

As Dairy wonderfully surmised: "Could it have been this sublimated procreative urge that provided the impetus for the tremendous out pouring of energy that went into the conception of the Peace Movement?"

Thirty years later, one wonders the sub-sexual catalyst for Mrs Williams' "fiesty" and publically declared, impulse to murder.

Socialists rally around world in support of Hizb'Allah

2006-07-23T23:08:00.000+08:00

According to its official program, Hizb'Allah-Al-thawra Al-Islamiya fi Lubnan (Party of God of Lebanon) is a unit of the world Muslim "vanguard" which was "made victorious by God in Iran" and which "obey the orders of one leader ... Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini." It lists as a main objective "the destruction of Israel ... the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve ... Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated ..."

Speaking at a graduation ceremony in Haret Hreik, Lebanin, on 22 October 2002, Hizb'Allah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said 'Christian Zionists' were gaining strength and had a powerful impact on US foreign policy. "Their aim is to redraw the world's political map" [so as to] return the Jews to Israel and rebuild their temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70AD, over the Al-Aqsa Mosque. However, Nasrallah warned, "if they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." (Photo: Hizb'Allah members give party salute in Lebanon rally across the border from an Israeli village - link /image from Harry's Place).

At rallies around the world this weekend, socialists have added their voice in support of Hizb'Allah's program and continuing attacks on Israel, particularly in countries where Hizb'Allah has been declared a terrorist organisation. In London, for instance, blogger Lenin's Tomb reported that "people [were] chanting 'Ooh aah Hizb'Allah, say ooh aah Hizb'Allah!' Or 'We are all Hizb'Allah!' Things like that. It was a real pleasure to hear thousands of people yelling that outside the American Embassy. Let the fuckers phone that one home."

George Galloway, the Member of Paliament for the Respect Party, prompted claps and cheers from demonstrators there when he declared: "Hizb'Allah has never been a terrorist organisation, Hizb'Allah is a resistance movement of Lebanon." Andrew Murray, national chair of the Stop the War Coalition and director of campaigns and communications for the Transport and General Workers? Union, later read out an address from Hizb'Allah.

A socialist reported from Holland: "We walked for an hour or so and ended at the 'Museum Plein' ... When the heavy rain fall started, there was a woman from Libanon crying and begging for a stop of the war. It was heartbreaking, really. The rain so hard, and the people just listening to here, feeling with here, and crying with here. After that there came lighting, right above our heads. 'Flash - Boom', direct hit a couple of meters from us. A young lady behind me said 'Now we kind of know how those people in Lebanon have to feel'. It was frighting those flash-booms, many of them. And the woman was right.

"More people arrived to shelter for the rain. People screamed 'Allah Akhbar!'. I am glad i have been there. To be one of the many individuals crying out loud for the stopping of the war! Allah Akhbar! And we are all Hizb'Allah!"

A socialist reported from Auckland, New Zealand: "A massively angry and energetic protest - a very good mix of lefties and liberals and the Lebanese/Muslim/Arabic communities. We socialists had a telling off from a Muslim woman for not chanting 'Victory to Hizb'Allah', so we took a vote and decided to adopt that slogan, and I'm proud of it ... Fuck, I've just about lost my voice today."

A socialist reported from Sydney: "Demo was massive (over 10,000 even by police estimates). I heard and saw nothing pro-Hizb'Allah (possibly partly because there are very few Shi'a in the Lebanese community here, and certainly because the Lebanese community associations discouraged any pro-Hizb'Allah stuff) - rather, everything said and waved was explicitly attacking Israel and America (although, sadly no one seemed willing to attack Australian government policy - possibly because there were rumblings about making that illegal last year)."

The Communist Party of Australia demanded Israel end its "aggression against the Palestinian people and the Lebanese nation." The party's newspaper, The Guardian, claimed the Hizb'Allah attack, "in solidarity with the Palestinians", was used by Israel "as the excuse to launch the present murderous attack on Lebanon which has practically no military forces to defend itself."

Australian Socialist Alliance said "Israel's incessant and indiscriminate bombardment of Lebanon ... is an outright act of terrorism" and demanded Israel "cease its wars on Lebanon and Palestine immediately."

According to Vanguard, the journal of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), "the peoples of the world will be with the Palestinians in their continuing resistance and stand against the attack on Lebanon. Israel has made a grave mistake."

A spokesman of the Last Super Power faction in Australia, praised Hizb'Allah for its "practical action to mobilize people and do things. In this case first to show genuine solidarity with the Palestinians by capturing an enemy prisoner themselves and then to respond to the Israeli disproportionate attacks on Lebanese civilian infrastructure (calculated to inculcate learned helplessness) with consequent significant civilian casualties by proportionate rocket attacks on Israeli and proportionate (lighter) incidental civilian casualties." Describing Israeli reaction to missile attacks against its civilians as "disgusting" he added that "the overwhelming majority of casualties are suffering from hysteria."

Just two months prior to the Hizb'Allah attack on northern Israel, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky met with the party's leaders during an eight-day visit to Lebanon. In an interview on Hizb'Allah's television station Al Manar on 13 May, he expressed support for the party's armed forces and rejection of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 on disarming all Lebanese militia:

Hizb'Allah's insistence on keeping its arms is justified... I think Nasrallah has a reasoned argument and [a] persuasive argument that they [the arms] should be in the hands of Hezbollah as a deterrent to potential aggression, and there is plenty of background reasons for that. So until ? I think his position [is] reporting it correctly and it seems to me [a] reasonable position, is that until there is a general political settlement in the region, [and] the threat of aggression and violence is reduced or eliminated, there has to be a deterrent, and the Lebanese army can't be a deterrent.

"Most Lebanese are against the Hizb'Allah arms ... the Hizb'Allah arms scare the Lebanese people more than the Israelis," retorted Ali Hussein in his article, "Chomsky needs to learn a lot more about Lebanon," published in Ya Libnan on 13 May 2006.

Security Council ponders new Lebanon intervention

2006-07-21T02:15:00.000+08:00

Kofi Annan's presentation on the Lebanon-Israel crisis to the UN Security Council last night had an air of grim realism. After declaring Hizb'Allah the aggressor and condemning Israel for excessive force, he put aside the blame game to discuss steps to de-escalation. While demanding a ceasefire for humanitarian purposes, he agreed that full cessation of hostilities were unlikely until Israel's abducted soldiers were returned and its minimum security issues - removal or disarming of Hizb'Allah and the return of the Lebanon national army to the border - had been met.

With hundreds reported killed and thousands of civilians already displaced, Annan listed his most "urgent steps" in the following order: "The deliberate targeting by Hezbollah of Israeli population centres with hundreds of indiscriminate weapons and Israel's disproportionate use of force and collective punishment of the Lebanese people must stop. The abducted soldiers must be released as soon as possible. The government of Israel must allow humanitarian agencies access to civilians. And the democratically elected government of Lebanon must be urgently supported in this hour of crisis."

The elements he proposed included: "The captured Israeli soldiers must be transferred to the legitimate Lebanese authorities under the auspices of the ICRC with a view to their repatriation to Israel and a cease-fire ... On the Lebanese side of the Blue Line, an expanded peacekeeping force would help stabilize the situation, working with the Lebanese government to help strengthen its army and deployed fully throughout the area [for strength of Lebanon's army see Lebanese President comments on security forces). Meanwhile, the Lebanese government ... would unequivocally respect the Blue Line in its entirety until agreement on Lebanon's final international boundaries is reached."

Annan also referred to the problem of the United Nation's 30-year-old, Interim Force In Lebanon whose mandate to observe border conflicts expires on 31 July (see What the UN's 2,000 soldiers are doing in Lebanon).

After the speech, US ambassador John Bolton said the suggestions would be acceptable to the United States if they lined-up with last week's G-8 Statement. Asked about an Israeli ceasefire with Hizb'Allah, he replied: "No one has explained how you conduct a ceasefire with a group of terrorists" (see official objectives of Hizb'Allah and Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran).

Malaysians demonstrate for Israel's destruction

2006-07-21T00:40:00.000+08:00

Hundreds of Muslims in Malaysia burnt Israeli flags and accused the Jewish state of terrorism in protests against the country's military actions in Lebanon. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's largest city, hundreds of protesters, many of them linked to government parties, rallied outside the US Embassy chanting, "Destroy Israel, down with Israel!"

According to reports, demonstrators set afire about one dozen Israeli flags and activists handed US embassy officials a memorandum demanding the UN Security Council take action to stop Israel's bombardment. Anti-riot police and a truck with a water cannon mounted on it guarded the embassy, but took no action.

"We demand the UN Security Council pass a resolution to stop Israeli atrocities. This is nothing short of murder and genocide," said Khairy Jamaluddin, the deputy leader of the the Malaysian ruling party's youth wing and an organizer of the protest. "Israel is a terrorist state and it must be brought to justice," said Khairy, who is also the son-in-law of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Subtle Ahmadinejad. What does he really mean?

2006-07-20T08:47:00.000+08:00

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said the volcano of the rage of nations is on the verge of eruption. "The Zionists themselves have realized that they have launched a risky move and are aware that the flame of the fury of the regional states will set them ablaze," he added. "The world is standing on the threshold of great development." - 20 July, Islamic Republic News Agency.

President Ahmadinejad warned "bullying powers" will burn in the fire of regional nations' wrath. The world is on the verge of great developments, he said, adding that world Muslims will soon be victorious. - 19 July, Islamic Republic News Agency.

President Ahmadinejad urged the West to remove the Jewish state from the region. "For certain, you cannot withstand the power of the nations of the region," he said. "If you do not contain this criminal regime and end your support for it and give a positive response to the people of the region you will face a dire fate." - 17 July, Iran Focus.

President Ahmadinejad warned Israelis to "disintegrate" their state and "apologize to the residents of the region" otherwise thay should expect a horrible destiny. - 16 July, Islamic Republic News Agency.

President Ahmadinejad warned the European Union not to increase pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear program. "Until now, we have moved in the framework of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreements, but they must know that if the Iranian nation reaches the conclusion that they are not sincere in their actions and proposals it will reconsider its policies. The Europeans will be the ones that suffer from any problem that arises. " - 13 July, Iran Focus.

President Ahmadinejad said Iran will not negotiate on its "undeniable right" to have a nuclear program, again rejecting international demands that the Islamic republic freeze sensitive atomic work. "We are for negotiations, we are for dialogue. But of course we will not negotiate our undeniable rights with anyone." - 12 July, Iran Mania.

What the UN's 2,000 soldiers are doing in Lebanon

2006-07-19T13:39:00.000+08:00

Urging the international community to "end the fighting and the killing," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan backed a UN "stabilisation force" to take control of areas in Southern Lebanon corrently controlled by the Hizb'Allah party and its armed forces. He said it should be "larger than the 2,000-man force we have there [and] have a different concept of operation and, hopefully, a different mandate from the Security Council that will allow them to operate." (AP)

"Indonesia is prepared to contribute around 450 troops for a possible UN-led peacekeeping mission in Lebanon ... Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made the offer after meeting Middle Eastern ambassadors to Indonesia, which is the world's most populous Muslim nation. He said a UN-led force should be dispatched to Lebanon to stop the fighting. 'Indonesia is ready to send about one battalion to help keep peace there,' Yudhoyono told reporters." (Jakarta Post, 18 July)

The United Nations created its Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) in March 1978 following a brief Israeli incursion into Lebanon seeking to remove Palestine Liberation Organization forces responsible for brutal attacks on civilians in northern Israel. The UNIFIL mission was to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces; restore international peace and security; and assist the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area.

Nearly 30 years later, the UN acknowledges there are no Israeli forces in Lebanon but Lebanon's national government has still not resumed responsibility for the border zone. Instead it has encouraged the Hizb'Allah party's independent army to control the region and allowed it to mount attacks across the international border into Israel.

And, with international peace and security yet to be restored, UNIFIL continues its deployment with a current strength of 1991 soldiers from China, France, Ghana, India, Ireland, Italy and Poland, some 50 United Nations Truce Supervision Organization observers and 390 civilians. Its annual budget is about US$100 million.

According to UNIFIL itself:

"near the Blue Line the authorities have, in effect, left control to Hizbollah ... The Government of Lebanon took the position that, so long as there was no comprehensive peace with Israel, the army would not act as a border guard for Israel and would not be deployed to the border.

UNIFIL monitored the area through ground and air patrols and a network of observation posts. It acted to correct violations by raising them with the side concerned, and used its best efforts, through continuous, close liaison with both sides, to prevent friction and limit incidents.

However, UNIFIL has not been able to persuade the Lebanese authorities to assume their full responsibilities along the Blue Line ... Hizbollah personnel restricted the freedom of movement of UNIFIL and interfered with its redeployment ..."

According to Wikipedia, UNIFIL forces fell out of favour in Israel following accusations that it was complicit in a fatal abduction of Israeli soldiers in October 2000 and Israel has previously lobbied "for UNIFIL to either take a more active role vis-a-vis Hezbollah (for example, preventing Hezbollah from setting up military posts adjacent to UNIFIL's in the hope this will deter Israel from attacking them), or to step out of the region (thereby voiding the Lebanese government's excuse for not deploying its army along the border)."

As recently as 31 January 2006, the UN Security Council extended the mandate of UNIFIL until 31 July 2006 and called again on the Government of Lebanon to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south. By that resolution, the Council condemned all acts of violence, including the serious incidents across the Blue Line initiated from the Lebanese side that had resulted in deaths and injuries on both sides.

However, UNIFILL posts in Southern Lebanon were still often within a few hundred metres of Hizb'Allah posts (the latter flying their yellow party flag not the Lebanese national flag) and UNIFIL troops took no action against their cross-border provocations. In fact, the 12 July incursion into Israel which started the current crisis was in visual distance of a UNIFIL post.

On that day, Hizb'Allah launched dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortar bombs at the Israeli town of Shlomi and at Israeli outposts in the Shebaa Farms area. Its fighters then crossed the border, attacked two Israeli armoured jeeps patrolling the border, killed three soldiers and abducted two. A pursuing Israeli tank was destroyed by a large explosive device detonated underneath, killing all four of the crew. An eighth soldier was killed when Israeli troops tried to retrieve the bodies of the tank crew. Israel declared the attack on its soil an "act of war".

Regarding President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's offer to send an Indonesian battalion to help "keep peace" between Israel and Lebanon: In recent years Indonesia has declined invitations to help "keep peace" between warring Muslim forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; despite serving a term as a member of the UN Security Council that extended the UNIFIL mission, it never previously vounteered to participate in the force; and, unlike the countries currently participating in UNIFIL, it does not recognise Israel. Indonesian orginality.

Lebanese President comments on security forces

2006-07-19T01:24:00.000+08:00

Lebanon's Syrian-backed president, Emile Lahoud, has accused neighbouring Israel of wanting to "destroy Lebanon" and "paralyze its security forces." His comments on Israeli plans were made during a visit to Lebanon national army military barracks east of Beirut where 11 soldiers were killed in an Israeli raid earlier Tuesday.

According to Jaffee Center's Middle East Military Balance, there are 64,000 members of Lebanon's armed forces, which has 36 helicopters, four shoulder-launched missiles, 27 naval patrol crafts, 350 tanks, 1,380 mechanized infantry vehicles, and 335 artillery pieces.

However the Lebanese government has refused to deploy the national forces to the border with Israel, allowing the separate army of the Beruit-headquartered Hizb'Allah party (a coalition member of the Lebanese government) to administer the region and mount attacks on Israel across the international border with impunity.

Background and objectives of Hizb'Allah and Hamas

2006-07-18T12:50:00.000+08:00

Hizb'Allah-Al-thawra Al-Islamiya fi Lubnan (Party of God), an Iranian-backed Lebanese Islamic Shiite group, was founded in 1982 and subsumed members of the 1980s coalition of groups known collectively as Islamic Jihad. Following Lebanon's 2005 national elections, Hizb'Allah holds 23 seats in the 128-member Lebanese Parliament and participates in the Lebanese government with two direct ministers. However it still maintains its own military force, independent of the Lebanese National Army.

The objectives of the Hizb'Allah are contained in its program first published 16 February 1985. It states its identity as:

"the sons of the umma [Muslim community] ... the vanguard of which was made victorious by God in Iran. There the vanguard succeeded to lay down the bases of a Muslim state which plays a central role in the world. We obey the orders of one leader, wise and just, that of our tutor and faqih [jurist] who fulfills all the necessary conditions: Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini."

Other important objectives in the program include:

Whatever touches or strikes the Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines and elsewhere reverberates throughout the whole Muslim umma of which we are an integral part.

Our military apparatus is not separate from our overall social fabric. Each of us is a fighting soldier.

We combat abomination and we shall tear out its very roots, its primary roots, which are the US.

The sons of Hizb'Allah know who are their major enemies in the Middle East - the Phalanges, Israel, France and the US - [and] are now in a state of growing confrontation with them and will remain so until the realization of the following three objectives:

(a) to expel the Americans. the French and their allies definitely from Lebanon, putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land;

(b) to submit the Phalanges to a just power and bring them all to justice for the crimes they have perpetrated against Muslims and Christians;

(c) to permit all the sons of our people to determine their future and to choose in all the liberty the form of government they desire. We call upon all of them to pick the option of Islamic government which, alone, is capable of guaranteeing justice and liberty for all.

The necessity for the destruction of Israel ... It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve ... Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.

We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies ...

The full text of the Hizb'Allah Program (with explanatory notes) is available at Institute for Counter Terrorism.

Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement) is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist militant organization founded in 1987 by Shaikh Ahmed Yassin of the Gaza wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is known chiefly for its suicide bombings and other attacks directed against Israeli civilians, as well as military and security forces targets. Hamas boycotted the January 2005 Palestine Authority presidential election, during which Mahmoud Abbas was elected to replace Yasser Arafat, but participated in the January 2006 legislative elections. It defeated Abbas's ruling Fatah party and, winning 74 of the 132 seats, was able to form the government in its own right. However it still maintains its own military force, independent of the Palestine Authority security forces.

The principles of Hams are contained in its charter adopted on 18 August 1988. Its official slogan is:

"Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes."

Other important declarations of the charter include:

The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.

Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep."

After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason, and cursed be he who does that.

The complete 36 Articles of the Hamas Charter are available at MidEastWeb Gateway

Iran's subtle negotiating position on going nuclear

2006-07-17T23:45:00.000+08:00

Mark Styne reminds us of one of his "all-time favorite Iranian negotiating positions" as reported in The New York Times exactly a year ago:

"Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview ..."

If we don't let Iran go nuclear, they'll go nuclear. Negotiate that ...

What the G-8 really said about extremist forces destablizing the Middle East to frustrate democracy

2006-07-16T22:15:00.000+08:00

The leaders of G-8, representing the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia, unanimously endorsed the following statement on the Middle East. Strangely, media reports have give the impression that the sentiments expressed are vague whereas the document itself is very clear on the immediate cause of recent conflict and unequivocal on the first steps towards de-escalation:

Today, we the G-8 Leaders express our deepening concern about the situation in the Middle East, in particular the rising civilian casualties on all sides and the damage to infrastructure. We are united in our determination to pursue efforts to restore peace. We offer our full support for the UN Secretary General's mission presently in the region.

The root cause of the problems in the region is the absence of a comprehensive Middle East peace.

The immediate crisis results from efforts by extremist forces to destabilize the region and to frustrate the aspirations of the Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese people for democracy and peace. In Gaza, elements of Hamas launched rocket attacks against Israeli territory and abducted an Israeli soldier. In Lebanon, Hizbollah, in violation of the Blue Line, attacked Israel from Lebanese territory and killed and captured Israeli soldiers, reversing the positive trends that began with the Syrian withdrawal in 2005, and undermining the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

These extremist elements and those that support them cannot be allowed to plunge the Middle East into chaos and provoke a wider conflict. The extremists must immediately halt their attacks.

It is also critical that Israel, while exercising the right to defend itself, be mindful of the strategic and humanitarian consequences of its actions. We call upon Israel to exercise utmost restraint, seeking to avoid casualties among innocent civilians and damage to civilian infrastructure and to refrain from acts that would destabilize the Lebanese government.

The most urgent priority is to create conditions for a cessation of violence that will be sustainable and lay the foundation for a more permanent solution. This, in our judgment, requires:

- The return of the Israeli soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon unharmed;
- An end to the shelling of Israeli territory;
- An end to Israeli military operations and the early withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza;
- The release of the arrested Palestinian ministers and parliamentarians.
The framework for resolving these disputes is already established by international consensus.

In Lebanon, UN Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1680 address the underlying conditions that gave rise to this crisis. We urge the UN Security Council to develop a plan for the full implementation of these resolutions.

We extend to the Government of Lebanon our full support in asserting its sovereign authority over all its territory in fulfillment of UNSCR 1559. This includes the deployment of Lebanese Armed Forces to all parts of the country, in particular the South, and the disarming of militias. We would welcome an examination by the UN Security Council of the possibility of an international security/monitoring presence.

We also support the initiation of a political dialogue between Lebanese and Israeli officials on all issues of concern to both parties. In addition, we will support the economic and humanitarian needs of the Lebanese people, including the convening at the right time of a donors conference.

In Gaza, the disengagement of Israel provided an opportunity to move a further step toward a two state solution under the Road Map. All Palestinian parties should accept the existence of Israel, reject violence, and accept all previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap. For its part, Israel needs to refrain from unilateral acts that could prejudice a final settlement and agree to negotiate in good faith.

Our goal is an immediate end to the current violence, a resumption of security cooperation and of a political engagement both among Palestinians and with Israel. This requires:

- An end to terrorist attacks against Israel;

- A resumption of the efforts of President Abbas to ensure that the Palestinian government complies with the Quartet principles;

- Immediate expansion of the temporary international mechanism for donors established under the direction of the Quartet;

- Israeli compliance with the Agreement on Movement and Access of November 2005 and action on other steps to ease the humanitarian plight of the people of Gaza and the West Bank;

- Resumption of security cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis;

- Action to ensure that the Palestinian security forces comply with Palestinian law and with the Roadmap, so that they are unified and effective in providing security for the Palestinian people;

- Resumption of dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli political officials.

These proposals are our contribution to the international effort underway to restore calm to the Middle East and provide a basis for progress towards a sustainable peace, in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions. The Quartet will continue to play a central role. The G-8 welcomes the positive efforts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan as well as other responsible regional actors to return the region to peace. We look forward to the report of the Secretary General's mission to the Security Council later this week which we believe could provide a framework for achieving our common objectives.

An Australian scientist's extraordinary knowledge of Indonesian foreign policy

2006-06-07T11:57:00.000+08:00

According to the ABC, Australia's state-owned broadcasting corporation, a high profile Australian critic of nuclear power claims any push by the Australian government to develop a nuclear power industry will threaten neighbours and increase the risk of terrorism.

"I think it has huge potential for damaging relations with countries like Indonesia, who would see it as a direct threat," scientist and Australian Conservation Foundation president Prof Ian Lowe said. "I think our neighbours would inevitably be suspicious about what our real motivations were and that would make us less secure in the region."

A good example of Intelligent Idiocy.

Indonesia is opening tenders for the construction of a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in 2007. Its minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, has announced the plant is expected to be on-line by 2015. Its capacity is designed to increase to 4,000-megawatt.

State-owned power companies from four countries - among them Japan, South Korea and France - have offered to provide technology to help construct the US$8 billion station on the Muria peninsula in central Java.

Indonesia currently operates three nuclear research reactors in the cities of Serpong, Banten and Yogyakarta.

Some books and magazines I'd call "Border-line"

2006-05-09T01:18:00.000+08:00

Last week I visited Borders Bookshop in Kuala Lumpur's Times Square. I casually looked out for the April-May issue of Free Inquiry featuring 'Danish' cartoons which, I already knew, had been banned by the chain's US headquarters over fears of religious violence against staff. There were no copies but, overall the magazine section for current affairs was surprisingly sparse; perhaps a reflection of local censorship.

I noticed only three US imports: the respected Foreign Affairs and two, well, 'alternative' journals, Socialism and Liberation (published by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, "a Marxist-Leninist party") and Michael Albert's "politically progressive left-wing" Z magazine. How extraordinary, I thought, that two American fringe publications both have sympathetic connections within Borders' buying department and are among the few foreign political periodicals seemingly acceptable to Malaysia's domestic and foreign policy sensitivities.

From the local publications section, I was able to pick up a new edition of former prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad's 1970 classic, The Malay Dilemma, as well as a copy of the third printing of Malaysia's 2005 best seller, Future Fastforward: The Zionist Anglo-American Empire Meltdown, by Mattias Chang, one of Mahathir's former political secretaries.

I've wanted a copy of The Malay Dilemma for a long time after reading extracts of Mahathir's youthful views on the economic factors of racialism. His argument for positive discrimination for Malays is peppered with insights on dominant races in Malaysia (and elsewhere?) such as "Jewish stinginess and financial wizardry provoked anti-Semitism" and "Before the onslaught of the predatory Chinese the Malays retreated" and "Jews are not merely hook-nosed but understand money instinctively" and "the Chinese are materialistic, aggressive", etc.

From his 2003 retirement speech to the Organization of Islamic Conference it is clear he never moderated those views, on the Jews, at least: "About 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategise and then to counter-attack ... We are up against a people who think. They survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power ..."

Chang's Future Fastforward brings us up to date on the Zionist Anglo-American War Cabal. Surely he is risking his life - and the lives of the staff of Borders Bookstore - by publicly distributing "incontrovertible documentary evidence that testifies to the terrifying Zionist Anglo-American Agenda for World Dominance"?

His courage in exposing an enemy that "ruthlessly manufactures wars, armed conflicts, coup d'etats and the overthrow of democratically elected governments" is shared with his mentor, Mahathir, "who almost single-handedly defied the odds and defeated the Zionist international financiers during the 1997 financial crisis". Particularly as the Zionists are "having another go and testing whether the previous resistance was collective and systemic or merely the resilient and determined leadership of an individual".

It is important Chang warns, that Malaysians ask themselves "In the event of any US aggression in whatever form against Malaysia, can you count on Singapore to be on your side as an ally?" Indeed.

This is truly an illuminating book. His 2015-2020 vision for the Middle East is that the "Islamic Revolution" will "sweep away all the puppet regimes ... through democratic elections" and the USA will be "compelled to give refuge to those surviving Zionists fleeing ... from total annihilation in Palestine". You'll fund more detail in the flyer for the US edition of the book published by American Free Press.

Chang's current prognosis on Iran's uranium enrichment program is worth noting. He is disinterested in Iran's claim that it is for electricity generation. "Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons," he writes, "is not nuclear proliferation but rather the guarantee of a nuclear-free Middle East and genuine peace for the entire region" (refer back to 2020 vision).

There are some who doubt that Chang's original appointment as the prime minister's first Chinese political advisor was really all that focussed on "Chinese community" affairs.

He was not a member of the Malaysian Chinese Association; an "active freemason" he was known to have been sacked from one lodge for "conduct unbecoming"; a lawyer, he was a former legal partner of Justice Ariffin Jaka, who sentenced Mahathir's rival, the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, to nine years jail for sodomy; and a Catholic, he rejects the Church's pronouncements on anti-Semitism as "corrupted Christianity".

Somewhat to be expected, Mahathir and Chang remain closely associated. Chang, for instance, was the organiser of the Mahathir-chaired Perdana Peace Foundation's Global Peace Forum held in Kuala Lumpur in 2005. Mahathir was the key note speaker and most of Malaysia's state-owned companies were the official sponsors that heavily subsidised the 2,000 delegates to the event.

The Forum attracted international attention through the participation of "antiwar hero Daniel Ellsberg, antinuclear activist Helen Caldicott, outspoken British MP George Galloway, Iraq war veteran Jimmy Massey, Prince Alfred of Liechtenstein, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and former UN officials Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday" and antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo and Eric Garris.

The forum made a commitment to form a world peace secretariat that will be based in Kuala Lumpur. Chang and antiwar.com will be very involved in the secretariat.

Ahmadinejad woos Indonesia and upsets Germany

2006-05-08T22:47:00.000+08:00

Iran's firebrand president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will visit Jakarta tomorrow for bilateral talks with Indonesian leaders ahead of a summit of eight large Muslim countries in Bali. Iran has been dangling the promise of a US$600 million dollar investment in Indonesia's flagging oil and gas sector to get South East Asia's only OPEC member's support for its controversial nuclear development program.

Indonesia Energy Minister, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, has already confirmed that, during Ahmadinejad's visit, energy firm PT Elnusa will sign an agreement with an Iranian oil company to build a 300,000 barrel-per-day refinery on Java Island. Although Purnomo described the arrangement with Iran as a "business-to-business deal", Elnusa is a subsidiary of the state-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina, which runs all existing refineries in the country.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad is giving the German government a reminder of a different sort of gas problem.

As host of the FIFA World Cup next month, Germany is obliged to admit the head of state of a participating nation ... and the tournament's official motto is "A Time To Make Friends". But Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied the Holocaust (last century's mass murder of millions of European Jews by the Nazi terror regime) which is a crime in Germany ... and also continues to make threats against the existance of Israel, a fellow FIFA member state.

According to Roger Boyes in The Times, pressure is growing on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to bar Ahmadinejad if he tries to attend the tournament. Germany's politicians hope the issue can be dealt with quietly by European foreign ministers and one official told Boyes it would be "an elegant solution" if the EU banned the Iranian leadership. This was also reflected by the Rheinische Post which said there had been clear signals that the so-called EU3 of Britain, France and Germany, which have been involved in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, will ask the European Union to impose a travel ban on Iran's political elite.

The Asian Football Business Review, which has been following the sports implications of Iran's political issues, observed in Some women may attend football without beating that the world football body FIFA "may yet have to decide on accepting international sanctions against the country" once Iran faces the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear (uranium enrichment) program.

And precedents of UNSC bans successfully preventing national teams from participating in FIFA events are quite recent. "United Nations international sanctions banned the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from participating in international sporting events from 1992-1994. Although the country qualified for the 1992 European Championship it was replaced by Denmark in the play-offs. The country was also refused entry into the 1994 FIFA World Cup," it noted.

In November last year the Asian Football Business Review also reported that Iran had shocked the Asian football community by introducing political bans to an invitational football tournament in Tehran.

"Furious over the Republic of Korea's opposition to its nuclear program, the Iran government unilaterally ditched the South Korean sponsors of a friendly international football tournament. 'From today, no competition will have a [South] Korean sponsor, and that goes for all sports federations,' the student agency ISNA quoted national sports official Mehdi Ghadami. The event once known as the 'LG Cup', backed sinced 1997 by the South Korean electronics giant, was to go ahead with another title," it observed.

Iraqi journalist's horrific torture yet to be confirmed?

2006-05-08T17:16:00.000+08:00

After reading Hala Jaber's new account of the unbelievably violent death of 30-year-old Iraqi journalist Atwar Bahjat in his article Part of me died when I saw this cruel killing (The Sunday Times online), I hoped it would be quickly reprinted in our part of the world. The description of her torture and beheading, reportedly filmed on mobile phone camera, is horrific.

I was pleased to see The Age (Australia) headline, Tears over reporter's death, but my presumption was misplaced. Melbourne's broadsheet was but promptly covering the peaceful demise of Australian journalist Richard Carlton during a press conference in Tasmania.

More understandably, it was The Australian that picked up the article from its News Ltd-stable-mate and it appears in today's edition as Brutal beheading of journalist who lived for unity.

A Sunni Muslim with a Shia mother, Bahjat emerged from Al Jazeera television to become one of the most influential Iraq television journalists for Dubai-based (Saudi Arabian-owned) Al Arabiya following her country's liberation in 2003.

Well known for her advocacy for a united Iraq, she typically signed off her last report before her abduction and murder with "Whether you are a Sunni, a Shi'ite or a Kurd, there is no difference between Iraqis united in fear for this nation."

It is quite extraordinary, then, that information on Bahjat's 22 February torture (10 drill holes to the left arm, 9 to the right arm and on her legs and in her navel and right eye) and subsequent beheading were not reported when her body - and those of her cameraman and soundman - "were discovered the next morning laced with bullets, dumped in the dirt on the outskirts of Samarraher."

To add to the mystery, an unidentified person has appended the following uncited note to her entry on Wikipedia: that Jaber's account "is not-true at all, as pictures of her corpse still circulating in Getty Images show her body all in one piece (her head is not severed) and she was fully clotehd in her green coat that she was seen wearing immediatelly before her sad death, her head scarf however, was removed from her head which was stained with blood from her right hand side."

We do know that Bahjat's funeral procession on 25 February was attacked twice, first by gunmen who opened fire on mourners and later by a roadside bomb that targeted the funeral cortege as it returned from the cemetery. At least three security personnel were killed in the attacks on her funeral and four people were injured.

But who were Bahjat's murderers and who were the gunmen and bombers at her funeral?

Although Iraqi Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi announced on 18 March the arrest of six men suspected of involvement in the murder of Bahjat and her crew, there appears to be no further English-language reports of the fate of the arrested men or disclosure of their identities.

Are there journalists concerned about this?

Back again

2006-05-08T11:48:00.000+08:00

Blogging resumes at Beyond Wallacia today after a lengthy delay. Commitments that followed the Tsunami disaster made it difficult to write on a regular basis although I was fortunate to be invited to comment at other places during the year. I hope to add those posts in their correct time order below. Thanks very much for the letters of support.

Iraqi election: "It is a good feeling to experience democracy for the first time"

2005-01-31T19:51:00.000+08:00

Arthur Chrenkoff, the remarkable diarist of all things positive in Iraq, described Sunday's election perfectly: "... millions came out to vote, despite well-advertised threats of election day violence. Al Zarqawi promised that the streets would flow red with the blood of voters, and indeed at least 36 people around the country died in suicide, grenade and mortar attacks, but the color of the day was not blood red but the purple marking the forefingers of those who have cast their ballot."

His entire "Good news from Iraq, Part 20" is well worth reading but I particularly highlight three of his observations:

Those risking the most were the election officials who, despite great personal risks, were trying to make the election possible.

Not just foreign moral support, but also foreign assistance has for months been making a difference in preparations for the poll.

In addition to providing security throughout the country, the Coalition troops are also engaged in a number of other activities ... and slowly but surely, Iraqis themselves are playing greater role in protecting their own country.

Arthur also reports on the higher than expected turnout of Arab Sunnis voters and the efforts by parties representing the Shia community to keep ethnic and religious minorities engaged in the constitutional process. The first duty of the interim legislature just elected is to draft a final consititution to present to the people of Iraq for approval by referendum.

Norman Geras argues that the legitimacy of the elections, in any case, should be based on the participation of the 80 percent of the population, the Arab Shia and Kurdish Sunnis, that was oppressed and denied democratic rights by the old regime:

Do you think we would have heard any squawking if South African whites were underrepresented in the first election in which black Africans were permitted to vote? Further imagine that in South Africa, the whites who once held power but had lost it, were murdering blacks and threatening them if they dared show up at the polls to vote. Do you think there would be a debate about whether the elections would be legitimate if blacks were frightened and decided not to vote?

However inclusiveness is virtually locked in. According to the Transitional Administrative Law, endorsed by the UN, the new constitution can be blocked if 75% or more voters in at least three provinces oppose it. This article, in effect, The Economist states, "confers a veto on the Kurds, but it also means that Sunni Arabs can obstruct the constitution".

The universality of participation and efforts to unity make this election, therefore, like no other in Iraqi history.

The 1958 elections, the last under the monarchy as the King and his family were massacred shortly afterwards, was a limited franchise with indirect balloting for seats in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate appointed solely by the King.

The 2002 presidential referendum, the last 'election' of the Baathist regime, saw Saddam Hussein declared the winner unopposed with "100 percent of the votes".

But in 2005, the people have their say:

"It is a good feeling to experience democracy for the first time," said Isra Mohammed, a housewife in the black Islamic robe traditionally worn by women in southern Iraq."

80-year Madeya Saleh had this to say: "I had often been forced to vote under Saddam Hussein. Today I come out of my own will to choose freely the candidate of my choice for the first and last time in my life."

Aceh separatists silent on renewed autonomy offer

2005-01-30T18:37:00.000+08:00

The Indonesian government says the mediated dialogue with Acehnese separatists being conducted in Finland needs a clearer agenda to secure a formal ceasefire to safeguard aid for disaster survivors in the earthquake and tsunamis-stricken province.

After two days of discussion, mediators said they had lined up further discussions and are optimistic that an end to three decades of fighting is a possibility.

The leader of the Indonesian delegation, senior security minister Widodo Adi Sucipto said while Jakarta had "never closed the doors for dialogue", there will be no progress unless both sides agreed on a framework.

"Should there be more dialogue, the future talks have to provide a clear prospect for a solution," he told Indonesia's SCTV television station, speaking in Helsinki." Therefore there has to be an agenda and substance that must be jointly agreed before we move on to the factual talks," he added.

Indonesia entered these talks only offering the continued implementation of special autonomy for Aceh province, a proposal totally rejected by the separatists in mediated talks that collapsed two years ago.

At that time Indonesian negotiations were lead by the security and social welfare coordinating ministers, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Jusuf Kalla, now Indonesia's president and vice president, respectively.

Known as Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement), the separatists are fighting for the restoration of an independent, autocratic Islamic sultanate of "Acheh Sumatra" to be ruled by Dr Hasan Tiro, a Swedish citizen. GAM joined the current talks without public comment on the government's singular offer.

"I will be very disappointed if I do not succeed in this effort," said former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari who is hosting the talks. "I will be working with the parties to try to get an agreement [on this], it will take some time, but I don't expect it to take months.

"The aim must be in this process to find a comprehensive settlement on the basis on the special autonomy, there is no other offer at the table," he said, as quoted by AFP.

UPDATE

Teungku Adam, a separatist commander in Aceh who says he is in touch with GAM negotiators in Scandinavia, has acknowledged that GAM's acceptance of a provincial autonomy package is the Indonesian government's condition for agreeing to a formal cease-fire. He told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that when talks resume on 21 February the Indonesian delegation will present the details of the package.

"We have said we will sit and listen, but that does not mean we will accept. How can they force us to accept when they are losing the war? We will give them a face-saving deal - both sides will have to agree on a referendum within five or 10 years, and that will give the Indonesians an opportunity to win hearts and minds if they can do," he said.

In Jakarta, security minister Widodo Adi Sucipto who led the Indonesian delegation at the Helsinki talks, said the government remained committed to the peace process but would continue with military operations until a permanent solution is agreed on. "The differences between the two sides are related to the special autonomy which constitutes the main platform for the Indonesian government in settling the conflict," he told reporters.

Iraqis show courage in pursuit of democracy

2005-01-29T11:04:00.000+08:00

One can only but wish Iraqi voters a safe election day. From all accounts, most Iraqis want to participate in the elections but many will be prevented from doing so by acts of brutal terrorism. Democracy will be earned through blood shed on the streets outside election booths.

Those Iraqi people standing up to intimidation to pursue democracy are heroes; particularly the emerging new security forces being targeted by the remnants of the old regime and the thousands of unarmed electoral workers preparing the ballot sheets and manning the polling booths.

It must be extraordinarily difficult building a new open system of government while facing down violent thugs.

Fortunately there is a growing band of international professionals - some contracted by NGOs others employed by United Nations agencies such as UNDP - who are available to assist the building or rebuilding democratic institutions and civil society structures in countries emerging from tyranny.

I recall in 1999 when Indonesia was preparing its first unfettered national election for some forty years, foreign electoral assistance was requested to help establish independent monitoring procedures across 14,000 islands. Ironically, under democracy, Indonesia's 400,000-strong military, so feared under the Soeharto security regime, was suddenly seen to have had barely enough personnel to man each of the nation's 300,000 plus polling booths.

Late last year I wrote of Wallace Rogers, previously a county administrator in Wisconsin, USA, who was working in Tikrit and Erbil, in the Kurdistan zone managing project teams organizing Iraqi city councils, municipal budgets and public works programs.

Although he didn't support his country's military invention in Iraq, he was prepared to risk his life to get the outcome right. "I believe democracy and democratic tendencies grow from the ground up. It won't work in Iraq, or anywhere else, unless and until ordinary people," he emphasised, "feel they can access its decision-making and policy-making processes".

That opportunity knocks in Iraq tomorrow. InshaAllah.

Birmingham and Melbourne: A tale of two cities

2005-01-28T15:36:00.000+08:00

There seems to be something linking my home town of Melbourne, Australia, to England's 'Second City', Birmingham. (Please note, however, that there is no similar ranking of cities in Australia; Melburnians are brought up not to notice Sydney's larger population).

First came the story last year of the City of Birmingham's proposal to build a replica of Melbourne's dockland stadium, currently known as the Telstra Dome (although its retractable roof is flat and terribly un-dome-like). Telstra seats over 55,000 football patrons and its arena is large enough to accommodate international cricket and Australian-rules football. The arena can be narrowed for games of rugby and soccer.

The Birmingham version will be the first roofed stadium in the United Kingdom to cater for cricket and soccer. Foundation tenants are reported to be the Warwickshire County Cricket Club and the Birmingham City Football Club who would vacate their existing Edgbaston and St Andrews venues respectively.

Telstra Dome was not without its structural and operational problems but since being absorbed within the Seven Television Network and managed by the experienced sports and media administrator, Ian Collins, its popularity amongst Melbourne sports fans is rising to match that of its neighbour, the historic, 100,000-seat Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The second story of the Birmingham-Melbourne connection is Birmingham City Council's plan to "spend Â£500,000 on adapting the bus station near the Bullring shopping complex removing an obstacle to running trams through Birmingham city centre ... changes likely to result in an inquiry inspector recommending the tram line proposals for consideration to the secretary of state for transport."

Birmingham's original tramway was ripped up in 1953 and replaced by buses. Melbourne, alone of all the major cities in Australia, retained and expanded its system and now posses one of the largest in the world. Indeed, Sydney may have its Opera House, but Melbourne's icon is mobile, street-smart and on track.

I should also mention the rotten football seasons shared by my Australian Football League Hawthorn Hawks and English Premier League Birmingham City Blues. Both started off with high expectations and floundered with unexpected injuries and troublesome and over-rated players.

After finishing second last in the AFL's 2004 season (thank goodness for no relegation) the Hawks have replaced key players and their entire coaching staff and narrowly avoided a board spill. Hawthorn's 2005 pre-season cup campaign kicks off against St Kilda at Telstra Dome on 19 February. Can't wait!

The Blues' chairmen, David Gold and David Sullivan, appear to be holding firm, retaining great faith in manager Steve Bruce. Here's hoping confidence returns with the exit of Robbie Savage and new signings so there is at least a respectable mid-table finish.

UPDATE:

Just noticed that Birmingham City in Alabama, USA is also planning a domed stadium. Most of the civic center expansion money would come from Birmingham, Jefferson County and possibly the state government. Private investors would contribute millions more to build a hotel, entertainment district and infrastructure nearby.

(Un)smiling land

2005-01-24T23:57:00.000+08:00

An often ignored province of Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador, is causing a fuss about allocation of off-shore oil and gas revenues. I've read most about it in Damian J. Penny's daimnation! weblog. The province narrowly voted to join Canada in 1949 after decades of financial problems. Instead of prosperity, it found it didn't have the political muscle to stand up to neighbouring Quebec and the federal government and fell into a "welfare ghetto" pattern of national equalisation handouts.

Demanding the same rights to offshore petroleum assets as other provinces have with onshore fields, premier Danny Williams symbolically ordered the Canadian flag lowered throughout the province. This unleashed a stinging assault on the Newfies' alleged victimhood by Margaret Wente, a prominent writer for the national, Toronto-based Mail and Globe. The response in Newfoundland was predictable.

The Plattsburgh Press-Republican's Peter Black put it that "the dispute has reopened a debate that goes back at least 150 years to when Newfoundland first rejected federating with other British colonies to form Canada. Ever since the place finally joined the country, Newfoundlanders and mainlander Canadians have been arguing about who got rooked most by the deal."

I came across this divide when I visited Canada for the Montreal Book Fair in 1976. As the president of the Australian Independent Publishers Association I was invited to address an executive meeting of the Association of Canadian Publishers, a private sector organisation then (suprisingly, to us Industries Assistance Commission-blighted Australians) well subsidised by the Canadian government to resist USA 'cultural hegemony' in the book trade.

After my brief report on the problems faced by locally-owned Australian book publishers competing against British and US media corporations, questions were invited. The first addressed me in an accent I'd never heard before: "Geoffrey, I definitely understand your oppressive situation", the representative from Newfoundland said. "We have the same problem with Canada."

Decentralisation process recognises cultural identity

2005-01-23T23:12:00.000+08:00

I posted the following comment at a discussion on minority ethnic, national and racial rights on John Rosenthal's Transatlantic Intelligence website. With news that the Aceh separatists are ready to accept an invitation to resume talks with the Indonesian government, but this time based on regional autonomy and not independence, the following brief points on the importance of decentralisation to Indonesia's continuing democratisation process may be of interest:

As so much of the discussion on minority ethnic, national or racial rights is presented legalistically, it is helpful to read your comparisons of various international approaches and the problems they seek to address.

However, I do not share your concerns that all policies defining or codifying minority (national, ethnic or racial) rights weaken the unity of a modern, democratic state.

Indonesia's recently, and first directly, elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, spent time in Kosovo as a military observer and would have been aware of the view that "the stronger an ethnic-national 'minority' movement is and the more capable it is of obtaining concessions in the form of 'rights' or even local governmental competencies ('autonomy'), the more fragile and or dysfunctional become the central state institutions."

However, as security coordinating minister for his immediate predecessor, president Megawati Soekarnoputri, he persevered with peace talks with the ethnic separatist movement in Aceh province offering substantial increases in regional autonomy until their rejection of any offer other than an independent Islamic sultanate and their continuing military mobilisation made it possible for the Indonesian army to successfully press the case for resumption of containment and suppression by force.

Yudhoyono's immediate, post-Tsunamis relaxation of security regulations to allow foreign military and aid assistance to arrive directly into Aceh, his mobilisation of national sentiment to bring emergency assistance from all parts of Indonesia and his continued offer of special autonomy based on Aceh's cultural identity, may prove a watershed in the relationship between his country's already 'fragile' and 'dysfunctional' central state institutions, its far-flung regions and long-suffering citizenry.

Decentralisation appears to be an essential part of the continuing democratisation process throughout Indonesia. And while the regional autonomy laws define this limited devolution on a geographic basis (as perhaps does the Swiss Constitution) the continuing creation of new provinces and local governments and the adjustment of boundaries to accord with historic ethnicity is a simultaneous acknowledgment of the archipelago's cultural diversity.

There are other examples of the "cause of 'minority rights'", being not necessarily dangerous and not particularly European.

New Zealand has reserved dedicated seats in its national parliament for the minority Ma'ori people since 1868. A Ma'ori may chose to be registered as either a general elector or a Ma'ori elector and the seats allocated in parliament (currently seven of 120) are determined by the numbers exercising their option.

Neighbouring Australia is no-less-democratic and unified despite its 1901 federal constitution endowing the new national government with the discriminatory "power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government; with respect to the people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws".

And the United States, itself, both recognises minority rights - and even sovereignty - and discriminates between the rights and responsibilities of various of its citizens on the basis of nationality and ethnicity.

US law, for instance, recognises a limited form of sovereignty in its Indian nations in the form of the 'domestic dependent nations' doctrine and inherent powers: "It is undisputed that Indian tribes have power to enforce their criminal laws against tribe members. Although physically within the territory of the United States and subject to ultimate federal control, they nonetheless remain 'a separate people, with the power of regulating their internal and social relations' United States v. Kagama, supra, at 381-382; Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 5 Pet. 1, 16. " The powers of Indian tribes are, in general, "inherent powers of a limited sovereignty which has never been extinguished." F. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law 122 (1945) ; The sovereignty that the Indian tribes retain is of a unique and limited character. It exists only at the sufferance of Congress and is subject to complete defeasance. But until Congress acts, the tribes retain their existing sovereign powers. In sum, Indian tribes still possess those aspects of sovereignty not withdrawn by treaty or statute, or by implication as a necessary result of their dependent status. See Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, ante, p. 191;" [United States v Wheeler 435 US 313 (1978)].

Other legislated discrimination in favour of particular groups of USA citizens exists within the many territories of the USA. Most Puerto Ricans and US Virgin islanders appear to find US citizenship without federal income tax an irresistible combination.

The US citizens of the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas exercise special tax, immigration and residency privileges while the territory's constitution guarantees that the "acquisition of permanent and long-term interests in real property within the Commonwealth" is "restricted to persons of Northern Marianas descent" (a person who is a citizen or national of the United States and who is of at least one-quarter Northern Marianas Chamorro or Northern Marianas Carolinian blood or a combination thereof).

Similar to the electors of other US territories, the US nationals of American Samoa are represented in the US Congress by a non-voting member of the USA House of Representatives. Internally however, American Samoa's Legislative Assembly, or Fono, is a mixture of traditional and western political systems: the twenty members of the House of Representatives are elected for two years by popular vote but the senate's 18 members are restricted to traditional chiefs, or matai, chosen for four years by their respective tribal councils.

These American "exceptions to your rule" may have been originally based on territories acquired by conquest or treaty but many of the discriminatory rights I have listed appear to have been retained by request of the residents.

Was a CIA agent outed at Ba'asyir court house?

2005-01-16T23:42:00.000+08:00

Fellow ASEANer, An American Expat in Southeast Asia, has been tracking the Jakarta trial of Muslim cleric, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the alleged Jemaah Islamiyah mastermind behind the terrorist bombings in Bali in 2002 and Jakarta in 2003. He is particularly interested in the testimony of Fred Burks, a former US State Department translator, "who for unknown reasons seems to go out of his way in bending over backwards to help the defense team".

Last Thursday, the leader of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second largest Muslim organization, Ahmad Syafii Maarif claimed in court that the then US Ambassador Ralph L Boyce personally asked for a favor from Muhammadiyah in the run-up to the legislative election in 2004 to persuade former president Megawati Soekarnoputri to keep Ba'asyir in detention so that he would not disrupt the country's fledgling democracy.

"We began talking and during our conversation, he asked me, as a public figure, not to allow ustadz Ba'asyir to be released from detention until the April 5 2004 election," he said. Syafii said that he turned down Boyce's alleged request (Jakarta Post, 14 January) .

Later, Fred Burks told the court that he was at a meeting with US officials in 2002, where president Soekarnoputri refused to hand over the hardline cleric to the USA for interrogation and named the Americans present as Ambassador Boyce, the National Security Council expert on Indonesia, Karen Brooks, an unnamed "special assistant" to President Bush and himself.

According to Burks, the "US presidential envoy" was a CIA agent who had been ordered to brief Mrs Soekarnoputri on information sourced from an Al Qaeda suspect held by the Americans, Omar Al Faruk, which reportedly confirmed Ba'asyir's leadership of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group and his involvement in Christmas bombings around Indonesia in 2000 and two attempts on Mrs Soekarnoputri's life.

The US Embassy in Jakarta denies Washington attempted to influence the Indonesian government in the Ba'asyir case. "We have stated this before. If the question is 'Did we apply any pressure to Indonesia over Ba'asyir, the answer is no, absolutely no," spokesman Max Kwak was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying.

However Mr Martins is drawing attention to the possibility of a further security issue, the outing of CIA agent. Here he comments: "Can things get worse? They can if you tell someone the name of a female CIA agent outside the courtroom" followed again here by: "One has to wonder what would make a man ... confide the name of a CIA agent to our enemies." He promises "more details coming soon ..."

For his part, Fred Burks, self-confessed to being of the "more liberal persuasion", has recently become an aggressive activist on a range of issues.

Despite his work with the State Department, he vacationed with his girl friend in Cuba in 1999 and was subsequently fined nearly $8,000, 18 months later, for breaching the US trade embargo against that country. He has refused to settle with the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and the case is still in litigation.

In October last, a month prior to the US presidential election, he circulated a report claiming that President Bush is fed information electronically during meetings with other heads of state: "As a deep insider myself, I have independent confirmation of President Bush using an earpiece to assist him in communicating intelligently with others".

Within days of being criticised for his action by his State Department Language Services supervisors, he announced he was "voluntarily terminating" his contract, after 18 years as a language interpreter, "because of a requirement to sign a new agreement which requires excessive secrecy".

Remarkably, this translator to Presidents Clinton and Bush and Vice Presidents Gore and Cheney, insists he never carried a "secret security clearance" during his State Department career. He sometimes was advised to apply for secret clearance, he told the Oakland Tribune's Josh Richman, but the series of extensive background checks was never required of him. And although a "more stringent secrecy demand" was given to him during the Clinton administration's last days in October 2000, he never got around to singing it.

On 9 December 2004, the Washington Post reported that since Burks' "noisy exit from government service" [he] "has been treating anybody who will listen with insider stories about private meetings he attended. These included high-level negotiations with Indonesia over U.S. attempts to secure the handover of a radical Muslim cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, suspected by the Bush administration of connections to the terrorist group al Qaeda."

And another veteran translator, interpreter and "proud member of the American Translators Association" later publicly responded to Burks' criticisms of the State Department's new Basic Ordering Agreement, arguing in favour of the stricter client confidentiality clauses.

Burks maintains a number of websites that focus on X-file-style conspiracy theories. A recent post commented on "a small, but powerful group of influential intelligence agents in service of the greater good from around the world [who] long ago formed a group called the Library. Over many decades, members of the Library have collected and archived key information on all of the secret manipulations committed by the self-serving group and the resulting effects on global politics and economics. When the self-serving group occasionally gets out of control, Library members leak certain information to the appropriate sources to prevent some really ugly things from happening".

UPDATE

The Belmont Club adds further trial links and comment: "Despite President Bush's belief that his re-election in 2004 was a referendum which provided a mandate to pursue his strategy against terrorism, there are many who disagree -- and virulently. Abu Bakar Ba'asyir may well be acquitted, in part by testimony from an American witness."

UN agency too slow to act on tsunamis warnings

2005-01-09T14:30:00.000+08:00

The Guardian's wickedly titled article, "US Island Base Given Warning - Bulletins Sent to Diego Garcia 'Could Have Saved Lives'" seemed meant to imply that the United States selfishly supplied a timely tsunamis warning to its "British-owned American base" on Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean but did not share it with other nations to the great cost of thousands of victims. It proved nothing of the sort but did deliver two useful pointers to the current structure of the international tsunamis warning system:

First, the US Pacific Command and Diego Garcia received a specific warning about the tsunami some two and three quarter hours after the earthquake - too late to warn the countries most impacted. "This was shortly after the tsunami had struck Sri Lanka and well after it hit Indonesia and Thailand"; and secondly, the alert was issued by the Hawai`i centre of the USA's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Rather than supporting a claim of 'American bastardry', the information leads to yet another example of the United Nations and its agencies being hampered by slow-moving bureaucratic machinery even when a significant threat is known and decisions made for its address.

In Hawai'i the NOAA hosts and funds two facilities of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): the International Tsunami Information Center (ITIC) and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) which provides warnings on tsunamis to most countries in the Pacific Basin.

Other significant bodies of the Paris-based UNESCO/IOC include the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific (ICG/ITSU) and the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific group (TWSP). The latter presently has 26 member states: Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, France, Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Samoa, Singapore, Thailand, the Russian Federation and the USA.

The absence of most Indian Ocean countries was recognised by a meeting of the ICG/ITSU held in June 2004 which recommended that as both the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean have 'a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis' with some areas not covered by the PTWC, it agreed "to evaluate capabilities of countries in these regions for providing tsunami warning services and to ascertain requirements from countries in the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean for the tsunami warning services". The financial implications of the decision were noted as 'US$ 5,000 for 2004; US$5,000 for 2005'.

According to the last published summary of the working group's minutes, a subsequent meeting in July 2004 attended by Dr Phil Cummins, Australia; Gaye Downes, New Zealand; Dr Slava Gusiakov, Russia; Dr Laura Kong, ITIC; Dr Masturyono, Indonesia; Lasarusa Vuetibau, Fiji; Dr Stuart Weinstein, PTWC; and Dr Masahiro Yamamoto, Japan, agreed to split into two separate working groups, one to focus on the Indian Ocean and related seas between Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Australia and the other on the South Pacific Ocean.

The question The Guardian should have so obviously asked is why the UN agency and its member nations recognized "a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis" in the Indian Ocean but could not take quicker action to deal with it?

And one more thought: An international workshop 'In Memoriam of 120 years of Krakatau Eruption - Tsunami and Lessons Learned from Large Tsunami' was held in Jakarta and Anyer, Indonesia, on 26-29 August 2003. Organised by the Indonesian Meteorological and Geophysical Agency (BMG) and the Indonesian Department of Marine Affairs and Fishery (DKP) in cooperation with ICG/ITSU and IUGG Tsunami Commission, it was attended by more than 100 Indonesian participants as well as by international experts from Japan, Germany and Russia. What were the "lessons learned" and what were their conclusions?

History repeats

2005-01-08T23:47:00.000+08:00

A three hour road trip from Indonesia's crowded capital, Jakarta, brings you to a wonderful stretch of beach on the western tip of Java island. From Anyer to Carita there are scores of hotels, resorts and bungalows providing fresh sea-air and relaxation beneath luxurious palm trees. On a clear day you can see as far as Anak Krakatau island in the Sunda Straits.

When I first visited I was informed that virtually none of the local people were asli (original). In 1883, the eruption of the original Krakatau volcano caused huge tsunamis which lashed the shores wiping out dozens of towns and villages. The port of Anyer, it is recorded, "simply ceased to exist as great waves washed over it, carrying away the flimsy wooden buildings that made up the town". The waves were so powerful that coral blocks weighing as much as 600 tons were thrown ashore.

According to Indonesia's Meteorological and Geophysical Agency (BMG):

The 40 m high tsunamis generated ravaged the shores of the Sunda Straits and caused 36,000 deaths in 295 coastal fishing villages, whilst casualties were recorded as far away as 800 km. Much of Krakatau was very low altitude and therefore the huge tsunamis swept headlong further inland than in higher areas. Many areas are recorded to have flooded as much as 10 km inland, and a Man-of-war ship was carried a similar distance and stranded 10 m above sea level.

The true casualty figure will never be known but the estimated 36,000 of the archipelago's then 40 million population is, probably, equivalent to 200,000 today. Around Anyer the devastated, now empty coastline was gradually resettled by people from other districts.

That catastrophe was all too hard to imagine - until 26 December 2004. On Friday, Indonesia raised its confirmed death toll from the northern Sumatran earthquakes and tsunamis to 104,055. The Ministry of Social Affairs said over 10,000 people are still missing.

With over 153,000 tsunamis victims across 13 Indian Ocean nations reported killed, more than half a million people injured and up five million in immediate need of emergency assistance, renowned author and Sri Lankan resident, Sir Arthur C Clarke, adds a further historical connection:

"There is much to be done in both short and long terms for Sri Lanka to raise its head from this blow from the seas. Among other things, the country needs to improve its technical and communications facilities so that effective early warnings can help minimise losses in future disasters.

"Curiously enough, in my first book on Sri Lanka, I had written about another tidal wave reaching the Galle harbour (see Chapter 8 in The Reefs of Taprobane, 1957). That happened in August 1883, following the eruption of Krakatau in roughly the same part of the Indian Ocean." (via Michelle Malkin).

Considering the Jakarta Hilton International?

2005-01-07T14:01:00.000+08:00

A waiter returns a rejected credit card to a feisty damsel at a table. She responds by complaining to her boyfriend. Coolly he pulls out a revolver then "pops" the waiter in the head -- what a scene ... This is real life -- involving real people on New Year's Day at the Hilton hotel in Jakarta. Continue.

This is no ordinary suspect though. Adiguna is a member of one of the most powerful families from the New Order era. His father, the late Ibnu Sutowo, was the head of state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina, ruling imperiously over the company's finances and driving it to the brink of bankruptcy. Adiguna's brother, Ponco, is one of the country's most successful businessmen and owns a large share of the Hilton Hotel, where the crime took place. Continue.

Australia's bilateral aid boost for Indonesia

2005-01-06T11:57:00.000+08:00

Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, was applauded by the Jakarta Summit on tsunami-hit countries of the Indian Ocean for his country's US$ 764 million plan for a joint reconstruction and development commission with Indonesia, a contribution that put Australia at the top of the list of international donors.

The package, widely supported by the major Australian political parties and non-government organisations, includes grants and concessional loans over five years and disbursements will not be limited to the devastated areas of Aceh and North Sumatra provinces.

A$500 million is set aside for grants for small infrastructure reconstruction projects in affected areas. It includes a large scholarship program to provide support and training in engineering, healthcare, public administration and governance.

The concessional financing part of the package will be spent on rebuilding major infrastructure, providing A$500 million interest-free for up to 40 years with no repayment of principal for 10 years.

Neighbourly Support

"No natural disaster in my lifetime has moved and touched the people of my country as much as the disaster that has brought all of us together," Mr Howard said. "There's an old saying in the English language, isn't there, that charity begins at home. Our home is this region," he said. "And we are saying to the people of our nearest neighbour that we are here to help you in your hour of need."

"We are a country of 20 million people and we are a wealthy country by world standards. This is an enormously big contribution and I'm very proud that we're able to do it."

No United Nations

Unlike other donor countries, Australia's package for Indonesia will be jointly administered by the two countries without UN involvement. "The only way that we can deliver this aid effectively is (bilaterally) and we are not going to deliver it through an international agency," Mr Howard said.

Australian and Indonesian Officials

Australian federal officials will be seconded to a joint commission with Indonesia charged with spending the package "It is focused on economic reconstruction and development," Mr Howard said. "The program will be administered by a joint commission which will be overseen by President Yudhoyono and myself."

Mr Howard said the foreign and economic ministers of both nations would be responsible for ensuring the "program proceeds smoothly". "There will be a joint secretariat which will comprise people from both countries. It will in every respect be a partnership between Australia and Indonesia."

Sensitivities

"I think that it is very important in the wake of all the aid that is flowing into this country to remember that we are guests in Indonesia, that we are here to help the Government and the people of Indonesia," Mr Howard said. "The ultimate responsibility for co-ordinating the provision of that aid naturally rests with the Government of Indonesia."

Leaders Embrace

Usually unreliable press rumours in Jakarta that John Howard would embrace President Yudhoyono at the first photo opportunity actually came true, although both leaders appeared to consciously resist a public, full bear hug.

"'You were the first to phone. You were the first to have aircraft on the ground,' an emotional Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told John Howard at the start of their meeting at the presidential palace in Jakarta. 'That is a gesture I will never forget,'" it was reported.

"The warmth of the two leaders' rapport early yesterday could be seen in their lingering opening embrace as the Prime Minister told Indonesia's leader of Australia's sorrow at the catastrophe befalling Aceh," it was reported.

Edited extracts from PM's $1bn for Indonesia and Leaders embrace a friendship forged in tragedy (Patrick Walters, The Australian), Rescue package (Ian McPhedran, Herald Sun, Melbourne) and Aussies to help run $1bn aid plan (Patricia Karvelas, The Australian).

Successful Jakarta summit calls for urgent funds

2005-01-06T11:45:00.000+08:00

Remarkable Indonesia. Amidst a hot war against Islamist bombers in the capital itself, continuing outbreaks of sectarian violence in Sulawesi and Maluku and ongoing separatist conflicts in earthquake hit Papua and earthquake- and tsunami-devastated Aceh, Indonesia's freshly and first directly elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was still able to pull off and secure a summit of leaders from 26 nations and international organisations.

Mr Yudhoyono's guest of honor was the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, who called for $US 977 million to be made available immediately for emergency assistance for up five million people in 12 countries affected by the 26 December tsunami that devastated communities around the Indian Ocean.

The summit agreed to support a moratorium on debt repayments for the worst affected areas offered by some nations and pressed for an early tsunami warning system for Indian Ocean nations. The Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) will also create a multinational rapid reaction force of military personnel and aid experts to be deployed in the event of future disasters in the region.

According to The Age (Melbourne), Mr Annan said he expected that the foreign military presence in Aceh would be wound down quickly.

Given that lack of transportation is the biggest problem for the distribution of relief aid in Aceh, one wonders what alternatives the United Nations has available to quickly replace the nearly 100 US helicopters, Australian, New Zealand and US hercules transport planes, Singaporean helicoptor landing craft and other foreign military vessels and equipment currently operating on a round-the-clock basis.

In Aceh

2005-01-05T23:41:00.000+08:00

First posted at Normblog

It is remarkable the speed of developments here. It has been only 10 days since the disasters. President Susilo Bamabang Yudhoyono and Vice-President Jusuf Kalla have each made two trips to Aceh, as have most of the cabinet. Aceh has already been opened up to foreign aid agencies (50 of them so far!), foreign journalists and even the Australian air force and US marines are on the ground. The Aceh provincial government was virtually wiped out, so too the local administrations of Banda Aceh and the west coast regencies; the regional police lost half their men (and families) and security hard-liners in the central government and army are momentarily sidelined. Australia and the US are controlling air traffic at Banda Aceh airport, trucks are moving in from Medan and the east coast ports are chockers. Unfortunately the earthquake/tsunami double whack destroyed roads and bridges into the west side where all the suffering is. What this means is that there are mighty log jams which are preventing even more aid and personnel being shifted around quickly at this stage.

Despite the cruelty of the thought, transportation and engineering specialists are needed first. Once the logistics are sorted out over the next few days I am sure the medical people will be streaming in. I am more concerned with the long-term capacity problem of local, useful institutions like the Indonesian Red Cross (which is getting a pittance of the charity money raised world-wide) once the internationals move on to the next big show (or abuse their welcome) - and also with the, to date unaddressed, need to get thousands of Acehnese out of the province until infrastructure can be restored - as in Darwin in 1974.

"The maps have been washed away"

2005-01-04T19:07:00.000+08:00

After the maps are washed away

Never ask where Meulaboh is
Never ask where Banda Aceh is
Never ask where Bireuen is ...
Their maps have crumbled

That's the concern voiced by Fikar W. Eda, a poet from Aceh living in Jakarta.

These days, the dots on the atlas of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam have become blurred.

Nobody knows the remaining proportion of life in Banda Aceh, Meulaboh, Lhok Seumawe, Lhok Nga and also Simeulue Island.

"The maps have been washed away," said Fikar.

He chanted Aceh's hymn of lamentation in a heartrending tone ...

Tempo Magazine (subscription required), Jakarta, 4-10 January 2005

Leaders to meet in Jakarta for disaster relief

2005-01-04T13:27:00.000+08:00

On Thursday Indonesia will host an emergency summit of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders and other nations to help coordinate relief efforts for the survivors of the Indian Ocean earthquakes and tsunamis tragedies.

Presidential spokesman Dino Pati Djalal said attendees will include United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Assistance Louis Michel, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, Brunei Darussalam Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Kofi Annan is scheduled to make a consolidated appeal for the immediate relief of victims. He may be accompanied by the newly designated "United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-afected countries," Ms Margareeta Wahlstrom.

According to the remarkable blogger, The Diplomadic, foreign embassies in Jakarta received a missive from the local UN representative, Bo Asplund, inviting them to a briefing today to learn of a new United Nations Joint Assessment Team to "coordinate all the other assessment teams" as well as a new Civil-Military Coordination Office to coordinate other things.

"The letter, in typically modest UN style, goes on to explain that 'Ms. Wahlstrom's main task will be to provide leadership and support to the international relief effort. She will undertake high-level consultations with the concerned governments in order to facilitate the delivery of international assistance.' Oh, and she'll be visiting from January 4-5," The Diplomadic disclosed.

Kofi Anan may also detail the "United Nations Coordination Center" being established in the Republic of Singapore. According to that country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs the centre will "help to alleviate the situation and bring emergency relief." However The Jakarta Post carefully notes the statement "did not say when the center would begin distributing aid".

The ASEAN meeting preempts an Indonesian Economic Coordinating Ministry - KADIN (Chamber of Commerce) summit on urgent infrastructure investment planned for 17-18 January in Jakarta. Prior to the natural disasters, Indonesia's required infrastructure was estimated at US$74 billion over the next five-years focusing on power and energy, tollroads, transportation, water and sanitation, ports and airports, and telecommunications.

According to Coordinating Minister Aburizal Bakrie, the Government of Indonesia will only be able to contribute about 20% of the investment "so private participation holds the key to the success of the plans". He said foreign investors were expected to cover up to $45 billion with domestic banks and financial institutions contributing around $22 billion.

Australia's US$385 million Indonesian package

2005-01-04T07:37:00.000+08:00

Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard has announced an additional aid package for Indonesia worth more than A$500 million (US$385 million) to help rebuild hospitals and schools and restore water supplies in Sumatra. Mr Howard flies to Jakarta tomorrow to meet Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and expects to seal Australia's biggest aid package to Indonesia.

More on foreign military assistance in Aceh

2005-01-04T06:30:00.000+08:00

Highlights from Dean Yates (Reuters), Peter S Goodman (The Washington Post) and Alan Sipress and Noor Huda Ismail (The Washington Post).

Indonesia has welcomed the US military in Aceh, where until last month most foreigners were barred because of deep Indonesian fears about possible outside assistance to an Acehnese separatist group.

"Isn't it incredible?" asked Indonesia's Social Welfare Minister Alwi Shihab, a former foreign minister, watching a stream of US Navy Seahawks buzz into the sky, silhouetted against the lush Acehnese mountains bound for the province's decimated west coast with boxes of food and water. By sunset, the Navy expected to fly at least 36 missions to locations set by the Indonesians.

Besides the joint planning of these operations, Indonesian marines have been flying on some of the Seahawks, helping maintain order when refugees throng the helicopters seeking aid. Senior military officers on both sides acknowledged they could not have imagined such close cooperation, especially in such a politically sensitive province.

US helicopters began flying missions off the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on Saturday, transforming what had been a sleepy air base into a center of frenetic activity. US sailors in blue and tan flight suits sweating in the tropical heat worked with Indonesian soldiers clad in green camouflage to load the Seahawks. One US Marine huddled with an Indonesian army officer over a list of destinations. Another pulled three Indonesians over to look at a large, mounted map.

Along with military personnel from Australia and Singapore, who were also present in smaller numbers, the Americans and Indonesians hurriedly navigated mountains of boxed relief supplies in the hangar and traffic on the tarmac -- along with lapses in communication.

US Marines and sailors and Indonesian soldiers formed a bucket brigade, heaving boxes of biscuits, noodles and bottled water from one to the next, relaying the relief from piles in the hangar to the back of a waiting truck, which in turn would haul them to the helicopter.

When the truck was loaded, a Marine shouted, "Stop! Enough!" But an Indonesian hoisted another box and prepared to toss it, calling out in Javanese dialect, "Whatever you said, I don't understand your language." Other Indonesians burst out laughing.

US military helicopters on Monday ferried dozens of victims from isolated zones in Aceh to the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. Those rescued included children, elderly people and two pregnant women. "In my 17 years of service, I have never seen such devastation, and I hope that I'll never see such again in my life," Senior Chief Petty Officer Jesse Cash, who helped ferry the victims to safety, told the Associated Press.

A US Marine amphibious group with three vessels and 10 helicopters is off the coast of Medan, ready to load supplies from the city and take them over to parts hit hardest by the earthquake and tsunami. The helicopters are heavy- and medium-lift types and some can carry up to four times the load of the Seahawks currently involved in the US relief operation in Banda Aceh, said Major Dwight Neeley with the 3rd Marine Division. He said the helicopters would fly in to Medan, load up supplies and fly back to the ships, which would then sail to Meulaboh.

In Banda Aceh city yesterday, an Australian military water purification station was preparing to open for the day. A machine the size of a large truck stood near 11 big black plastic tubes full of water and guarded by Indonesian soldiers with assault rifles.

"This is probably the most important thing. If they can get clean water, it's going to have a major impact," another Australian air force corporal said. "People want to shake your hand. They say 'bless you mister'. They say 'Indonesia has problems, but you help us'."

Red Cross steps up aid efforts in Aceh

2005-01-04T06:15:00.000+08:00

Ian Woolverton reports from northern Sumatra:

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cresent Societies' response to the disaster on the Indonesian island of Sumatra is focusing for now around the town of Meulaboh, on the western coast of the province of Aceh. According to the Red Cross, there is extensive damage in Meulaboh, extending up to three kilometres inland. Close to the shoreline there is total destruction.

Access for humanitarian organisations to northern Sumatra's west coast has been limited due to the lack of suitable aircraft able to fly into the affected area, damaged airstrips and roads, as well as the long distances involved.

However volunteers from the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) have been working round the clock in Meulaboh since the tsunami struck and have mainly been involved in the evacuation of bodies and the provision of first aid. But the PMI team, which consists of some 50 volunteers, are exhausted as well as emotionally distressed by what they have witnessed.

The humanitarian needs in Meulaboh will be massive and in anticipating this, the Federation has begun to deploy specialised emergency response units including a basic health unit from the Japanese Red Cross to meet the needs of some 30,000 people, as well as a water and sanitation unit from the Spanish Red Cross, which can pump out clean water for more than 60,000 people a day.

A French Red Cross water and sanitation Emergency Response Unit (ERU) is also in northern Sumatra. Together the two specialised units have the capacity to provide clean potable drinking water to up to 100,000 people per day.

In addition, a German Red Cross emergency health care tea, supported by a German water and sanitation team, and a Danish Red Cross logistics unit are en route to Indonesia.

Meanwhile the Indonesian Red Cross is planning to send two five tonne trucks laden with relief items to the disaster stricken community. This is just the beginning of a huge relief operation being mounted by the Federation in the support of the Indonesian Red Cross to bring much needed humanitarian assistance to both the people of Meulaboh and the areas south of the town.

â€œWhile other agencies focus their considerable efforts on getting assistance to the people of Banda Aceh in the north, we have to assume that many thousands of vulnerable people are in desperate need of shelter, clean drinking water, food and medicines all over Aceh province,â€� said Juergen Weyand, head of the Federationâ€™s field assessment team.

â€œIt is essential that we get relief items to the west coast including Meulaboh where we know the needs are massive. We will use our foothold there to access other areas along the western seaboard and in doing so get humanitarian assistance to many thousands of vulnerable people,â€� he concluded.

Elsewhere, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Indonesian Red Cross are working together to concentrate their efforts on the humanitarian needs in the north of the island in and around Banda Aceh as well as the east coast.

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 3 January 2005

Indonesian toll approaches 100,000

2005-01-04T06:00:00.000+08:00

Indonesia's tsunami death toll has officially passed 94,000. The Health Ministry said the number had risen mainly because the death toll on Aceh's devastated capital of Banda Aceh on the northwest tip of Sumatra island had been revised from 18,000 to 30,000.

According to AFP, the total figure for Indonesia is expected to rise further as a full assessment of the province has not been done, with the ministry last week predicting the toll could hit 100,000.

Lat Thursday, Indonesiaâ€™s ambassador to neighbouring Malaysia, Drs H. Rusdihardjo, told reporters that the death toll in Acheh and North Sumatra provinces â€œmay exceed 400,000â€�.

He said the estimate was based on air surveillance by Indonesian authorities who found no signs of life in places like Meulaboh, Pulau Simeulue and Tapak Tuan while several islands off the west coast of Sumatera had "disappeared".

Calculations on material cost of catastrophe

2005-01-03T20:12:00.000+08:00

Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla estimates it will cost about US$1 billion to rebuild Aceh province and areas of North Sumatra. "I think we will need around 10 trillion rupiah for reconstruction,' Mr Kalla told reporters in Jakarta. It will take up to five years to repair the damage, with rebuilding slated to begin in six months, he said.

Insurance firms may have to cover Rp 16.8 trillion (US$1.9 billion) in claims Bisnis Indonesia reported. Claims in Aceh may amount to Rp 769 billion and Rp 16.1 trillion in North Sumatra. Among the largest policy holders in Aceh are state telecommunication firm PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom), fertilizer plants PT Asean Aceh Fertilizer and PT Iskandar Muda and several individuals who insured their stores.

UPDATE

Estimates of reconstruction costs in Aceh province have doubled to 20 trillion rupiah (US$2.155 billion) over the next five years, the Finance Ministry's Director General for State Treasury Mulia Nasution announced on 7 January.

Indonesia thanks neighbour for swift response

2005-01-03T19:13:00.000+08:00

Indonesia has thanked neighbouring Australia for its immediate assistance after last week's earthquake and tsunamis which devastated much of its Aceh province and parts of North Sumatra.

"I'm overwhelmed by the positive gestures shown by your government as well as the Australian people," Indonesia's ambassador to Australia, Imron Cotan, said when receiving news of A$75 million (US$58 million) had been pledged to aid agencies by Australian citizens.

The Australian government has pledged a minimum of A$60 million in financial aid to the tsunami affected nations around the Indian ocean, saying most of the money will go to Indonesia.

Australian newspapers are now reporting of thousands of doctors and nurses and others desperate to volunteer to help victims. The Federal Department of Health, coordinating the medical effort, has been inundated with offers from 3000 medical professionals.

So far almost 50 Australian doctors and nurses have arrived in the disaster areas, including teams in Aceh, the Maldives and Thailand with 1,000 on stand-by. More than 200 Australian Defence Force personnel are in Aceh, providing medical and surgical aid at a 55-bed field hospital and other primary care.

Another 300 military personnel will arrive in Aceh on board HMAS Kanimbla on 14 January. The ship is delivering 100 engineers, heavy equipment, two Sea King helicopters and two large landing craft. The ship also has a fully-equipped hospital, including an operating theatre.

Royal Australian Air Force C-130 cargo aircraft were among the first to arrive in Sumatra after the natural disasters. Royal Australian Air Force detachment commander, Flight Lieutenant Harvey Reynolds, expects to have a water purification facility which can pump out 20,000 litres of purified water an hour, to be operating by today.

The first American military cargo planes arrived on Thursday. Their C-130 Hercules are fitted with night landing gear, allowing them to arrive after dark, freeing up daylight time for standard aircraft who are queuing up to land in the city.

Delivery of relief aid to isolated communities was given a big push with the arrival of the fleet of US navy helicopters from the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group offshore. Flying through tropical rains, a dozen Sea Hawk helicopters quickly began ferrying food, water, medicines, tents and other supplies from warehouses at Banda Aceh airport to refugees in what remained of coastal towns and inland villages.

The aid deliveries were a mere drop in an ocean of need - but priceless nonetheless, said Indonesian military spokesman Ahmad Yani Basuki. "They've helped us reach places we have not had the time, or manpower, or equipment to go to," said Basuki, adding that Americans had helped clear helicopter landing spaces for the arrivals of future supplies. "It really speeds up the distribution of aid to (Sumatra's) west coast."

"In normal times, Indonesia's worst nightmare was having American marines arrive on the Banda Aceh tarmac," said Daniel Ziv, an American aid worker with several years of recent experience in the province. "Yet here we are in the middle of this operation, and we have marines here. It's a sign of progress. Normally they wouldn't stand for it."

Australians, Indonesians, Americans, Singaporeans, New Zealanders and others are transforming Bandah Acehâ€™s ill-equipped airport into a workable supply base. Itâ€™s great seeing the uniforms, chevrons flashing opposite directions, as the aid shipments are unloaded and reloaded.

Around 40 countries have, so far, pledged some US$2 billion to meet the needs of five million survivors in 11 countries, including the worst-affected, Indonesia. Leading the group is Japan with a pledge of US$500 million to tsunami-affected countries and the United States with US$350 million.

Malaysia, itself suffering 68 casualties, has deployed aircraft and helicopters to help Indonesia transport supplies to and victims from Aceh and has opened its airspace and two airports to US and UN relief operations.

India, another victim of the disaster, has sent hospital ship INS Nirupak and corvette INS Khukri, along with US$1 million worth emergency relief supplies to Aceh. The Nirupak will provide onboard in-patient and out-patient medical services for disaster victims.

ADB to reallocate funds for reconstruction

2005-01-03T17:52:00.000+08:00

The Asian Development Bank will make available at least US$325 million to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Maldives for reconstruction work after the devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. The bank said it is working with the three countries and other nations hit by the catastrophe as well as the World Bank and UN to identify critical rebuilding work.

"This is an unprecedented disaster, and we are moving quickly to assist these countries in their hour of need," ADB President Tadao Chino said in a statement.

About $175 million of the $325 million can be taken from existing ADB operations in the three countries and the rest could be drawn as highly concessional loans from the bank's Asian Development Fund, it said.

David Green, Country Director of the Asian Development Banks' Indonesia Resident Mission is back in the office to coordinate an assistance package. He confirmed to Beyond Wallacia that the bank is looking to refocus existing projects as well as providing new soft-loans if the Government wants.

Police watch on Aceh children

2005-01-03T16:49:00.000+08:00

National Chief of Police, General Da'i Bachtiar has instructed police throughout Indonesia, but particularly those located in Aceh and North Sumatera, to anticipate children kidnapping and trafficking, detikcom reported. He said the traders could be working through a foundation which takes care of or assists orphaned children to be adopted or feigning to be relatives or professing to be a capable person who could adopt the children. (via Aceh Media Center)

UPDATE

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has issued a decree not only banning the adoption of Acehnese children but also banning them from travel outside the province to other parts of Indonesia. There are an estimated 35,000 children in Aceh orphaned by the December 26 disasters.

Call for more support for Indonesian Red Cross

2005-01-03T09:41:00.000+08:00

The chairman of the Lembaga Mitra Pembangunan foundation, sponsor of the Indonesian office of the Centre for Regional Investment and Community Development, today called for more donations to the Indonesian Red Cross Society, Palang Merah Indonesia (PMI).

â€œPMI has lost members in Aceh province but is regrouping to provide assistance on the ground supported by their medical teams from other areas of Indonesia, Mrs Titik DA Ningsih said.

"It is important to rebuild and expand their local and national capacity both for the immediate job and for the long term community work in the disaster areas, so PMI needs to receive more assistance without delay," she said.

Mrs Ningsih particularly praised the example of locally listed oil and gas giant, PT Medco Energi Internasional for donating US$1.1 million to the Aceh disaster fund through the Indonesian Red Cross and the Canadian International Development Agency's grant of C$650,000.

â€œBut far more Indonesian and foreign donors and their donations are needed immediatelyâ€�, she said.

The World Health Organization has announced that 50 international aid groups had arrived separately in Aceh province to provide medical care for the survivors but coordination was proving difficult. "We are trying to sort it out, everyone has just come in,â€� The WHO's Indonesian representative, Georg Petersen, told AFP.

Meantime, The Jakarta Post today published this graphic story on the gallant efforts of the local institutionâ€™s volunteers:

Zarkasyi, a humanitarian worker for the Indonesian Red Cross, sits on a chair below a large tent, appearing weary and unkempt. The man, who was taking a break at a command post set up by Johan Pahlawan district administration in Meulaboh, has not had the chance to rest or bathe over the past two days.

The 36-year-old treasurer of the Red Cross' West Aceh branch was one of only nine left from the organization in the regency after the Dec. 26 devastating tsunami that killed thousands.

Twenty-six other members have been reported missing or found dead, including its branch chairman Syarif Hasan, who was also the speaker of West Aceh regental council, whose body was discovered on Friday. With Syarif gone, Zarkasyi took charge, working together with the remaining personnel to help the victims.

"We're used to collecting corpses, especially during military operations or flood disasters, but never on this great scale," said Zarkasyi, who joined the Red Cross in 1996.

Different situations require different approaches. In the past, the Red Cross was usually called by the military, rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) or the public for the removal of corpses -- usually victims of the conflicts between the Indonesian Military and GAM. But this time, the Red Cross had to be proactive in the evacuation.

"Corpses were scattered everywhere. We worked quickly and evacuated them to Bregang area here, some 12 kilometers from Meulaboh city, to be buried." He said that since last Monday, he and his friends had handled hundreds of corpses.

At first, the Red Cross did not have many volunteers, and even members of the organization were busy searching for their own loved ones. It was only two or three days after the tsunami that members of the public, coordinated by the military personnel, started to work together with the Red Cross to evacuate the corpses.

Zarkasyi felt more relieved after 10 additional Red Cross volunteers from nearby South Aceh regency, some 250 kilometers south of Meulaboh, came on Thursday evening and started working the next day. They collected 40 corpses on Friday.

"The tsunami only took eight human casualties in our regency. We heard that thousands of people had died in Meulaboh, so we came to Meulaboh to lend a hand," said Syahrial Basni, 29, a member of South Aceh's Red Cross branch, who is also a nurse at Yulidin Tawai hospital in South Aceh.

Another volunteer from South Aceh, Khairun, said he had never handled the removal of bodies on this scale. "Previously, we have handled several corpses or given first aid treatment to accident victims, but this time we have so many corpses to deal with," said Khairun, a staff at South Aceh's health office.

A week after the disaster, the work is far from over. As of Friday, most bodies lying on the streets had been removed and buried, there are probably many more below the rubble of buildings.

"We lack corpse bags, disinfectant and masks. Many bodies have begun decomposing three days after Sunday's tsunami, so we badly need those three things," said Zarkasyi. The other thing they need is gloves, which is important to prevent the volunteers from being infected with diseases like cholera.

Contracting communicable diseases are not the only challenges but still, these volunteers are committed to their humanitarian work. "Since I was young, I joined the boy scouts and other organizations. And the latest is Red Cross (PMI). I like (doing) this. I've always wanted to do something to help the public, this is my soul call," Zarkasyi said.

The address for donations to the Indonesian Red Cross is published on Beyond Wallaciaâ€™s right side column.

Fellow bloggers spread the word

2005-01-03T01:07:00.000+08:00

Our heartfelt thanks to bloggers around the world who linked to Beyond Wallacia in our first week online and who ensured our stories on the impact of the earthquakes and tsunamis on indonesia's Aceh and North Sumatra provinces got to a wider readership.

Glenn Reynold's Instapundit
Michelle Malkin
Gary Sauer-Thompson"s Public Opinion
Norman Geras' Normblog
John Ray
Jodi's The Asia Pages
Andrea Harris's Twisted Spinster
Jon Cipriani's The Conservative Contrarian
and A Little About Everything, Say Anything, Knight Of The Mind, Six Meat Buffet and Fabian's Hammer.

Your support is a grand illustration of Der Spiegel's point that "Blogs are at the forefront of the tsunami recovery effort."

Indonesian deaths hit 80,000 - More aid needed

2004-12-31T02:39:00.000+08:00

How more heartbreaking can it get. Indonesian Health Ministry sources reportedly have told Reuters that 79,940 are now recorded as perishing in Aceh province due to the earthquakes and tsunamis on Sunday. Despite the spiralling toll, the true scale of the disaster may not be known for weeks, if ever, as rescuers battle to reach remote areas and washed-away towns.

"This isn't just a situation of giving out food and water. Entire towns and villages need to be rebuilt from the ground up," said Rod Volway of CARE Canada, whose emergency team was one of the first into Aceh. "Much of Aceh, which was closest to the epicentre of the earthquake, has been leveled and the local population urgently needs shelter and basic living supplies," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers said.

The numbers and the needs are absolutely staggering and authorities warn of more deaths to come from dysentery, cholera and typhoid fever caused by contaminated food and water, and malaria and dengue fever carried by mosquitoes.

With hundreds of thousands left homeless, distributing relief aid faces continuing logistic problems. Aceh lost almost the entirety of its provincial government in the disaster, leaving the central government with virtually no surviving civil administrative in the province to assist with relief operations.

Indonesians are taking the opportunity to show national unity in raising money and volunteering assistance for those in the disaster areas of Aceh and North Sumatra. Domestic donors range from businesspeople and politicians to students and low-income people across the diverse, 17,000 island, tropical archipelago.

Student groups throughout Java have been collecting donations at intersections and housing complexes from local residents; legislators are donating their January salaries; religious organisations are already trucking basic products such as instant noodles and sarongs to the disaster area.

Contributions from major domestic and foreign companies are also flowing in, such as PT Medco Energy Internasional donating US$1.1 million through the Indonesian Red Cross; Caltex Pacific Indonesia US$100,000; Newmont Mining Corp Rp 5 billion; Indocement Tunggal Perkasa Rp 2 billion; Jakarta International Container Terminal Rp 1 billion; and the cigarette maker Gudang Garam sending 1,000 tons of rice.

In Australia, individuals and big businesses have donated more than A$26.5 million to large appeals for Indonesia and other Indian Ocean countries. The Australian Government has also committed A$35 million and other forms of aid. Red Cross Australia alone collected more than A$3.2 million in the five hours to 5 pm yesterday -- a rate of more than A$10,660 a minute. Last night, the aid organisation had raised about A$14 million.

Amongst the big firms, Qantas has made a A$1 million cash donation -- shared between UNICEF, Care Australia, Oxfam and World Vision and has sent two aircraft to affected areas. BlueScope Steel has made an initial pledge of A$200,000 to the Australian Red Cross and will back that up by matching employee contributions up to a total of A$1 million.

Travel publisher Lonely Planet and an anonymous donor have thrown down the gauntlet to corporate Australia by daring the big end of town to match their A$500,000 donations to help tsunami victims. The City of Melbourne will donate $500,000 to the relief effort and encouraged New Year's Eve revellers to dig deep, with collection centres in town.

So much more is needed.

The Indonesian Red Cross (Palang Merah Indonesia) has already sent hundreds of personnel to Aceh along with food, body bags, tarpaulins and medicine and can use funds immediately to assist those in distress.

PMI has established a Help Aceh People bank account for donations at Bank BCA Menara Bidakara, SWIFT: CENAIDJA, account name: Kantor Pusat Palang Merah Indonesia, account number: 450.666.000.9.

After donating to this account, please inform PMI -- by telephone +62 (0)21 799-2325 or email pmi@palangmerah.org -- so they can monitor the transfer.

Aceh province death toll could reach 80,000

2004-12-30T21:02:00.000+08:00

The Indonesian death toll from Sunday's devastating earthquakes and tsunamis is now above 52,000, an official at Indonesia's Ministry of Health said today. An official from the ministry's Center for Health Problem Control said the exact figure could not be given due to bureaucratic reasons but it was in excess of 52,000, AFP reported.

Yesterday a UN official estimated that the death toll in Aceh might reach between 50,000 and 80,000. "I would say we are probably talking about somewhere in the order of 80,000 people, 50 to 80,000 people, that would be my educated guess," Michael Elmquist, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Indonesia, said as quoted by Reuters. Elmquist said the west coast town of Meulaboh alone may have had 40,000 deaths.

The Jakarta Post reports that thousands of residents of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam are streaming across the provincial border into North Sumatra. However the head of North Sumatra's social welfare office, Sylvester Lasse, found that the first victims to arrive could not be categorized as "refugees" -- displaced people who needed much financial and material assistance -- because they were mostly from the upper-middle income bracket.

At least 400 refugees were airlifted to Medan on Tuesday in five trips on an Air Force plane, with the first flight arriving at 11 am and the last at 5 pm. At least two of the 49 injured victims aboard died en route from not receiving immediate medical attention. Most of the injured refugees were relatives and personnel of the Police Mobile Brigade unit in Jeulingke, Banda Aceh.

UPDATE

The Jakarta Post further reports (30 December):

The first warship dispatched by the Indonesian Navy arrived in Meulaboh yesterday, the first aid to reach the town so far as land access and communications have been cut off. According to the chief security minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto, the soldiers and rescue teams found at least 3,400 dead during their visit. The warship dropped food such as bread, biscuits and instant noodles and bottled drinking water and then returned to its base further down the coast of Sumatra to restock.

Iskandar Muda military commander in Aceh Maj. Gen. Endang Suwarya told Antara that in addition to sending the warship, the military had sent military airplanes to Meulaboh to drop food supplies from the air since the town's airport cannot be used. "The roads are blocked, the bridges between Banda Aceh and Meulaboh have collapsed, the airport cannot be used, therefore, the most effective way is to drop supplies from the air," Endang said.

According to a local police chief Rilo Pambudi, survivors in Meulaboh had looted stores in their desperation to find food in what remained of the town. Only 20 percent of the town buildings were left standing with the rest leveled to the ground or filled with mud.

Foreign military forces provide disaster relief

2004-12-30T20:04:00.000+08:00

A US aircraft carrier group is making its way to Indonesia's Aceh province to help with relief operations. The carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and four other vessels, with 12 helicopters on board, will be stationed off the northern tip of Sumatra island to assist with humanitarian aid.

The USS Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group of seven vessels, with 25 helicopters, is heading for the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean. Five other ships of the squadron located in Guam are also moving toward the disaster-hit areas of southern Asia. Each ship can produce 90,000 gallons of fresh water a day. A sixth ship with a field hospital is also being rerouted to the region, Reuters reported.

Royal Australian Air Force C-130 cargo aircraft, carrying water purification equipment and other vital supplies, were among the first to arrive in Sumatra after Sunday's natural disasters. The Australian Defence Force team arrived in strength at Banda Aceh airport on Tuesday, bringing water, medicine, food and a medical assessment team.

UPDATE - I

Alan Sipress of the Washington Post reports (29 December):

Michael Elmquist, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jakarta, said the challenge confronting Indonesian and foreign relief agencies was unprecedented. "To organize a rescue operation of this size in a couple of days has never been done," he said, adding that. delays in moving aid out of the airport were "one of the key problems that needs to be resolved ...

At the airfield here [Bandah Aceh] , Air Force Lt. Ardian Budi said six Indonesian and two Malaysian transport planes hauling supplies had arrived by early Wednesday afternoon. He said the Indonesian military was devising a plan to convey the relief to distant refugee camps. Representatives from nearby [refugee] camps would be asked to come to the air base to pick up their supplies. He gave no time frame.

As he spoke, the first Australian C-130 transport began unloading its cargo. Group Capt. John Oddie of the Royal Australian Air Force walked briskly to the apron, where he huddled briefly with Indonesian Maj. Gen. Bambang Darmono.

Oddie told the general he was prepared to fly seven missions a day into the airfield carrying supplies for Indonesian government and U.N. relief efforts. He offered to provide a team of Australian air terminal specialists and equipment to dramatically accelerate the unloading of Australian and Indonesian planes. He also proposed providing a mobile hospital, medical staff and evacuation services to move survivors to hospitals in other Indonesian cities.

Darmono responded that he was not authorized to discuss the offer because his appointment as the military coordinator of regional relief efforts would not take effect for at least another day. He asked Oddie to return to Banda Aceh on Thursday for more talks.

Oddie diplomatically agreed. "You'll see a lot more of us in the next few days," he told reporters at the air base. "You'll see a profound strength to the relief effort building over the next few days."

UPDATE - II

Natalie J. Quinata of Guam Pacific Daily News reports (29 December):

More than 5,000 military personnel of the Navy's Expeditionary Strike Group 5 will skip their New Year's holiday on Guam to fulfill a humanitarian mission in Sri Lanka.

The USS Bonhomme Richard docked in Apra Harbor yesterday for what was originally planned to be a five-day stay, but was called to bring relief aid to the inhabitants of Sri Lanka who were devastated by a tsunami this past weekend.

Australians missing projected up to 5,000

2004-12-30T13:56:00.000+08:00

As Australians come to terms of the scale of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami disaster, the federal Department of Foreign Affairs is warning them to be prepared for an alarming increase from the current Australian death toll of nine. Based on the 57,000 calls to the department's victim helpline, 8,000 Australians were in the region when the tsunami struck on Sunday but only 3,000 of those have been accounted for.

"This is a massive undertaking to try to track people down in an environment which is understandably completely chaotic," Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer told the Sydney Morning Herald. "Many of those people will turn up. Some may not. And we just have to be patient. This is going to be an enormously difficult period for many Australians," he said.

UPDATE

Australian Department of Foreign Affairs reports (3 January):

We have reduced the number of Australians about which we have grave concerns from 107 to 79. Of the 650 still unaccounted for, in most cases, consular staff have been unable to reach the person who first made these reports, in other cases we have insufficient information about individualsâ€™Ã„Ã´ whereabouts at the time of the incident and are seeking more information from families.

We stress that these numbers will change as our enquiries overseas and in Australia continue. Australians should be prepared for a substantially higher death toll.

WHO targets Aceh epidemiological risk

2004-12-30T10:36:00.000+08:00

The World Health Organization believes that 10% of the population of the Aceh region of western Indonesia -- about 500,000 people -- are at "epidemiological risk" of serious health consequences following Sunday's massive earthquake and tsunamis, said David Nabarro, head of WHO's crisis office. "Because Aceh has had this long-term civil strife, we think the health infrastructure is in a very, very bad way. We have to treat it as a sort of special case," Mr Nabarro said, as quoted by The Washington Post (29 December). WHO has sent 20 "emergency health kits," each of which contains enough medical supplies to serve 10,000 people for three months, to Indonesia.

UPDATE

Sian Powell of The Australian reports (30 December):

Banda Aceh's general hospital remains unusable because of a sea of mud that swept through it. The only power in Banda Aceh yesterday was at the military hospital, which used a generator.

Lieutenant-Colonel Mailand Alexander, deputy of the Indonesian military hospital in Banda Aceh, the only major hospital still functioning in the city, said preventing disease was the first importance and said the supply of clean water was becoming critical.

"We don't have any more bottles of water, so we are giving the patients the IV bags to drink," he said ....

Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander said there were not nearly enough staff to deal with the disaster. "Nurses and doctors were also affected by this emergency," he said. "Some have lost their children, some have lost houses" ...

At the military hospital, the wounded moaned and wept. One woman roamed the dark corridors sobbing. "They're all still traumatised," Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander said. "That's understandable."

Malaysia may postpone Indonesian deportations

2004-12-30T00:59:00.000+08:00

Malaysia is considering halting an imminent mass deportation of nearly one million Indonesian illegal immigrants because of the natural disaster in neighbouring Aceh and North Sumatra provinces. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said Malaysia would be "sympathetic" to any appeal from Jakarta for a delay in the sweep against illegal immigrants which is due to begin on January 1, AFP reported today.

Immigration department enforcement director Ishak Mohamed told The Star (Kuala Lumpur) newspaper: "As far I am concerned, there is no instruction from the government to postpone the crackdown. However, I have received SMS from several non-governmental organisations appealing for a delay in the crackdown. This is a policy matter and it depends on the higher-ups to make the decision," he said.

Political activists tap Aceh charity fund-raising

2004-12-29T04:59:00.000+08:00

A widely-circulating Aceh Humanitarian Assistance Fund email soliciting donations for earthquake/tsunami-disaster relief work in the Indonesian province describes itself as a 'non-partisan civilian humanitarian organization.' Its encouraging message is that 'through local contacts and groups' in Aceh, it can 'reach people quickly, helping those who are often overlooked by other agencies'.

No person's name or address appears on the circular but the email address is registered to Lesley McCulloch of Villa Putra, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. When lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Tasmania in 2002, Dr McCulloch was identified by Radio Australia as co-founder of the AHAS and the fund's Commonwealth Bank account in Hobart was later used in 2002-2003 as a collection point for donations to her legal expenses when she was arrested in Aceh for breaches of her Indonesian tourist visa.

A British citizen, Dr McCulloch was jailed for five months along with her friend, US nurse Joy Lee Sadler, and their Indonesian translator, amid accusations of her spying for the Aceh armed separatist movement, GAM. On her release, she was publicised by Australian Radio National's Philip Adams as a 'pro-independence activist' and by the NSW Labor Council as a representative of the 'Free Aceh Movement'.

In May this year Dr McCulloch delivered a joint paper, Military Business in Aceh and East Timor: A Comparative Study, with Deakin University's Damien Kingsbury at the University of Singapore and was keynote speaker at the Justice For Acheh' rally in Sydney in December commemorating '28 years since the peoples declaration of a free Acheh'.

Dr McCulloch's 'non-partisan civilian humanitarian organization' can be contacted at info@eyeonaceh.org or acehyouth@yahoo.co.uk. Its 'eye-on-aceh' website 'where one might expect transparent details on the fund's corporate registration in Australia, financial statements, Indonesian partners and record of service delivery in Aceh' is, unfortunately, still 'under construction'.

UPDATE

Another activist call for donations for Aceh was heard on Wednesday's edition of Democracy Now!, a television news program airing daily on over 300 stations in North America. Interviewed by Amy Goodman, veteren progressive journalist Allan Nairn and Suraiya IT, chairperson of New York-based International Forum for Aceh, were asked how to help the people of Aceh.

Allan Nairn recommended sending donations to "grassroots groups on the ground in Aceh" through the Washington DC-based East Timor Action Network and through the Tapol organisation (meaning political prisoner in Indonesian) in Britain. "This money will find its way to grassroots Acehnese activists who are also working for human rights, and will try to save people and build something better in the long run for Aceh", he said.

Tapol's "Aceh emergency appeal fund" webpage doesn't detail the "grassroots humanitarian organisations in Aceh" it will be forwarding the donations to. ETAN also doen't detail to whom it will forward donations for "grassroots humanitarian relief and reconstruction in Aceh." However it does offer US-tax deductibility for contributions of $50 or more made out to A.J. Muste Memorial Institute/ETAN.

Suraiya IT emphasised the need for financial aid from international communities, particularly from the United Nations. "They can give support to the mosques, to the churches," she said. "We establish the -- what we call a Fund Relief for Aceh. They can contact us, either to us or through the International Fund for Aceh."

Unfortunately there appears to be no listing for either the "Fund Relief for Aceh" or the "International Fund for Aceh" in the US and the webiste of the International Forum for Aceh is currently out of order. Those seeking more details of the charity registration of the groups and to whom funds collected will be directed could email Suraiya at ayathaib@aol.com or acehforum@aol.com (although these addresses may be out-of-date).

Please go on to: Indonesian deaths hit 80,000 - More aid needed

25,000 Indonesians feared dead from Aceh's earthquake and tsunami disaster

2004-12-28T14:11:00.000+08:00

First posted at Tim Blair

Aceh is suffering tremendously from the massive earthquake and tsunamis but there is relief, at least temporarily, from the 30-year separatist war within the province.

The Free Aceh Movement (known as GAM) has accepted the suggestion by national military commander, General Endriartono Sutarto, for a ceasefire in the conflict which has cost nearly 3,000 lives over the past four years alone.

The army is reassigning most of its 15,000 troops in the region to relief efforts and GAM has ordered its guerillas to cease hostilities and focus on humanitarian work.

However Vice President Jusuf Kalla admitted that security forces had also been overwhelmed by the disaster with some 400 soldiers missing and presumed dead and 300 police killed when their barracks were destroyed by the sea.

During his visit yesterday to the devastated area, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared three days of national mourning and announced the relaxation of martial law security restrictions to allow international relief agencies to directly fly in medicines, food and other basic necessities.

Indonesian media report that thousands of homeless families are huddled together in mosques and schools in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, only about 210 km from the earthquake's epicenter. The city's only shopping mall is reportedly a pile of rubble and the minaret of the city's 150-year-old mosque is leaning dangerously.

Remote coastal villages on both coasts were washed away in the province, home to about 4.3 million Indonesians. Local casualties are estimated at 3,000, about 60% of the national toll.

However officials now fear that the number of deaths could total more than 25,000 once information is received from isolated areas.

Ironically, the head of Aceh's civil administration, Governor Abdullah Puteh, is required in Jakarta where he went on trial for corruption yesterday.

UPDATE

Michael Casey of Associated Press reports (29 December):

â€œWe're holding back,â€� said Lt. Col. Ali Tarunajaya, an Aceh police chief. â€œWe're not going to arrest the rebels. They're looking for members of their families, just like many of our police members are looking for theirs. We're all crying together.â€�

Building Iraqi democracy from the ground up

2004-11-09T16:33:00.000+08:00

First posted at Arthur Chrenkoff

You probably have already seen the new "Iraq: Can Local Governance Save Central Government" report from the International Crisis Group.

In my view its conclusions are reasonable: "Amid spiralling violence, perhaps the only way to hold Iraq together now is to concentrate on local governance. The occupation should have focused on establishing effective, representative local institutions quickly, but it did not, having had no plan and altering strategy in response to political concerns. These mistakes have been compounded by the Iraqi authorities' distrust of decentralisation. Much territory is beyond the Interim Government's control, and national elections are likely to be postponed or held in parts of the country only. If national elections in January are not realistic, elections to provincial councils should be organised first, wherever possible and on a rolling basis so laggard governorates can vote when ready. Elected local governments must also have real powers and funding to be credible."

However, it pretty much ignores the excellent work undertaken to date in most of Iraq (which Arthur Chrenkoff has covered much of in his "Good news from Iraq" reports).

For instance, just prior to the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi interim government in June this year, the Coalition Provisional Authority reported that all provincial governments and 90 percent of Iraq's municipalities already had "sovereign operating councils" which were addressing the civic interests and needs of Iraqis at the provincial and municipal levels.

"Even before full transfer of sovereignty on June 30th, local officials are providing goods and services for local citizens and are helping Iraqis learn about democracy at a local level," the CPA said.

This directly follows from USAID's strategy of helping to establish stable local governments in post-conflict Iraq as outlined by Ross Wherry, Senior Reconstruction Advisor and leader of USAID's Washington-based Iraq Management Team in November 2003. At that time Wherry emphasized the importance of the local government structure to regain a semblance of order.

With the aid of representatives from various NGOs and U.S.-based companies, Iraqi citizens have chosen 88 neighborhood advisory councils and elected nine district councils. Iraq's government structure, Wherry said, is beginning to resemble New York City's in organization. Local groups have "sufficient inherent legitimacy" that they can represent people in their area well, said Wherry. It is local governments, he said, that can most quickly address the disruptions of civil order which face Iraq today. Local officials best serve citizens' interests because "they can't get away from them," Wherry said.

In addition, minorities have a greater chance of finding a voice within local government than they do on a national scale, Wherry said. In the last three weeks, 67 Kurdish women's groups in northern Iraq have worked together to establish clinics for women. As of now, USAID estimates that 15 million Iraqis - one-half of the country's population - are involved in at least one aspect of the political process.

While Wherry spoke in positive terms of Iraq's political progress, he warned that the formation of a stable political system is not yet inevitable. "Local government is necessary, but not sufficient," he said. The next important step is building a receptive and accountable national government upon the foundation of the local government, he added.

USAID reported in June this year that its key accomplishments to enhance local government administrations and interim representative bodies; promoting community development in cooperation with the NGO community in Iraq included:

-- Local governance teams working in all 18 governorates as part of CPA Governance Teams.

-- Facilitating an interim structure of government, the Governorate Council, to represent the population of 18 governorates, including Baghdad.Â· Establishing 16 governorate councils, 78 district councils, 192 city or sub-district councils, and 392 neighborhood councils, allowing more than 19 million people to engage in local policy discourse.

-- Committing $2.4 million for the implementation of the CPA's nationwide Civic Education Program to introduce Iraqis to democratic principles and ideas in preparation for the upcoming transition to sovereignty.

-- Awarding rapid-response grants worth $13.4 million to allow local governments to deliver essential services.

-- Rehabilitating nine key central government ministries, Baghdad mayoral buildings, headquarters of nine Baghdad municipalities, and urban water and electric authorities, while providing 40 directorates and agencies with enough furniture, equipment, and basic office supplies to enable them to return to service.

-- Assisting local governments in budget formulation.

USAID-funded local government programs include RTI training of more than 9,000 municipal council members to foster accountability through the development of financial methods, including operating and capital budgets; training on tendering and bidding processes; and documentation of financial transactions. Council members are also learning how to hold public hearings and open meetings, and how to provide information about government activities to the media.

In addition, RTI has spearheaded efforts to help Iraqi citizens develop neighborhood councils that perform watchdog roles. In Al Basrah, for instance, RTI's Local Governance Team introduced the concept of advocacy and helped new councils learn to monitor the use of funds and develop relations with provincial and city governments. In this way, informed citizens are helping ensure accountability in their local governments.

Britain has committed 50 million pounds ($90 million) to specific bilateral aid projects including local government: "Some Â£20.5m [$37 million] will be spent on capacity building for local government in southern Iraq, where some 8,000 British troops are deployed, and 16.5m [$30 million] on job creation and restoring essential services. Three million pounds [$5.4 million] will go on supporting central government efforts on economic reform particularly with respect to debt relief... Ten million pounds [$18 million] will be split between a civil society project and another on engage citizens in the political process." This new commitments takes to Â£380 million, or $680 million, the total amount earmarked by Great Britain for specific projects in the liberated Iraq.

The success of the local government initiative in Iraq relies on the service of specialist civilians. They are real heroes in my view. Even though they are mostly working in the "safe" areas such as the Kurdish north and Shiite south, they are constantly in danger.

Take for instance Wallace Rogers, previously a county administrator in Wisconsin, USA. He is currently working in Tikrit and Erbil, in the Kurdistan zone managing project teams that organize Iraqi city councils, municipal budgets and public works programs. He works closely with local and provincial authorities, usually on public works and planning projects. His tasks include organizing city and provincial councils to work on issues like constituent relations and developing good working relationships between mayors and governors, councils and legislatures.

"Although I didn't, and don't, support the politics that's involved us in Iraq, once here, we have to try to get this right," he said. "I believe democracy and democratic tendencies grow from the ground up. It won't work in Iraq, or anywhere else, unless and until ordinary people have confidence in the institution of local government and feel they can access its decision-making and policy-making processes".

"The security situation overlays everything we do," he said. "Working in a war zone severely limits what you can do. But the U.S. government and international non-governmental organizations have poured billions of dollars in resources into the country to help finance and promote the efforts of people like me who are working here."

Collins and Arafat: The challenging path of insurrectionist to nation builder

2004-10-28T17:24:00.000+08:00

First posted at Fabian's Hammer

It is said that China's Mao Zedong was a great admirer of Michael Collins, the Irish independence leader whose 114th birthday is celebrated this month. Mao and many other insurrectionists of the 20th Century applied the urban guerrilla tactics which Collins successfully used against the British in Ireland. He had smuggled arms, been elected to the British House of Commons, lead an underground army and, as a fundraiser, was so successful that Lenin went cap in hand to him after the Russian revolution.

Collins was a young man when he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood's ill-fated Easter Uprising in 1916 but became a vigorous military leader soon after. Once elected to the executive committee of the Sinn Fein independence organisation, he organised a prolonged assassination campaign against British security officials in Ireland, primarily the Royal Irish Constabulary and the army. The murder of its officers brought a tit-for-tat policy from the British.

As violence and intimidation escalated and civilian casualties increased, the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was given blunt advice by his military: "Go all out or get out". After eight hours meeting alone with George, the Irish republican president, Eamonn de Valera, ordered Collins to join Arthur Griffin in leading an Irish delegation to London to 'negotiate and conclude' a peace treaty with the British Government.

After three difficult months of talks, it was agreed that Ireland would have its autonomy returned as a self-governing dominion within the British Empire but the six Scots-Irish Protestant-dominated northern counties would be allowed to remain part of the United Kingdom.

The treaty was highly unpopular on both sides and Collins, who saw it as but part of a process that would lead to full Irish independence, knew the risks he would face when he returned home. At the treaty signing on 6 December 1921, Britain's Lord Birkenhead said to him, 'Well Collins, I signed my political death warrant'. Collins replied, 'That's nothing. I've just signed my actual death warrant'.

The Irish separatist parliament (Dail) accepted the treaty by seven votes but de Valera, in turn, rejected the parliamentary majority and the terms of the treaty. He was immediately replaced as president by Griffin and Collins was appointed chairman of the provisional government which would take over Ireland once the British had left.

Collins pleaded with de Valera not to withdraw from the parliament. "By all means oppose us in this house, castigate us, push us further so that we can go again, as we have the right under this Treaty to discuss it in the immediate years ahead, but, do it within the Dail", he said, but to no avail.

In Neil Jordan's film on Michael Collins, Collins' is shown asking de Valera to support peace: "It's not worth fighting for. Anymore. We've got to learn to build with what we have." This message is reinforced in the closing titles, which tells of the need still to "finally remove the gun from Irish politics".

After Mass, on 17 March 1922, de Valera addressed a crowd of 20,000 and he said to them: "To prevent this Treaty working, we will wade, if necessary, through brother's blood". Those who did not support the treaty fell back on violence and a civil war took place in Ireland from April 1922 to May 1923.

On 22 August 1922, Collins journeyed to County Cork. He was due to meet troops of the new Irish Army. His car was ambushed at a place called Beal na mBlath and Collins was shot dead. His body lay in state in Dublin for three days and thousands paid their respects. Thousands also lined the streets for his funeral procession.

He was just 31 years of age when he was killed but the Free State he founded evolved into the Republic of Ireland; a profoundly democratic country and now a prosperous member of the European Union.

There are some who see a similarity between Michael Collins' "land for peace" deal with Britain that enraged both Irish nationalist and British unionist no-compromise-fanatics and the 1993 Oslo Accords signed by Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestine Liberation Organisation's president, Yasser Arafat.

Again, two species of fanatics were enraged and a leader was assassinated. Many were surprised that it was Rabin who died for the peace treaty, murdered by an Israeli Jew, rather than Arafat by an Islamic militant from Hamas or one of the other Palestinian rejectionist groups sponsored by Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya.

Palestinian campaigner Edward Said, compared Arafat and Collins and the compromise over partition that led to the latter's assassination and accused Arafat of coming "away from the negotiating table with a lot less than Collins". But Arafat survived anyhow.

As Palestinian campaigner Robert Fisk put it, "Arafat is not the stuff of which martyrs are made. He knows what happened to Irish revolutionary Michael Collins after a one-sided 'peace'."

To be sure. For in none of the territories surrendered to Arafat's Palestinian Authority by the Israelis were the Arab rejectionists controlled and disarmed by the new autonomous government nor civil society and democracy introduced. Less than is worthy of a father of a nation, he denied his people their freedom from fear and for opportunity for the sake of hiding from an assassin's bullet.

Michael Collins put the required deeds of leadership into perspective in a blunt statement on his breach with de Velara at the commencement of the civil war. Words that should have been heard from the lips of Yasser Arafat.

Two duties faced [the Provisional] Government: To take over the Executive from the English, and to maintain public order during the transition from foreign to native government; and to give shape in a constitution to the freedom secured.

If the Government had been allowed to carry out these duties no difficulty would have arisen with England, who carried out her part by evacuating her army and her administration.No trouble would have arisen among our own people. And the general trend of development, and the undoubted advantages of unity, would have brought the North-East quietly into union with the rest of the country, as soon as a stable national government had been established into which they could have come with confidence.

Mr de Valera, and those who supported him in the Dail, were asked to take part in the interim government, without prejudice to their principles, and their right to oppose the ratification of the Treaty at the elections ... They did not find it possible to accept this offer of patriotic service ...

It must be remembered that the country was emerging from a revolutionary struggle. And, as was to be expected, some of our people were in a state of excitement, and it was obviously the duty of all leaders to direct the thoughts of the people away from violence and into the steady channels of peace and obedience to authority. No one could have been blind to the course things were bound to take if this duty were neglected. It was neglected, and events took their course.

The foreign Power was withdrawn. The civil administration passed into the hands of the elected representatives of the people. The fight with the English enemy was ended. The function of our armed forces was changed. Their duty now was to preserve the freedom won -- to enable the people to use it, to realise that for which they had fought -- a free, prosperous, self-governing Gaelic Ireland ...

Under the democratic system which was being established by the representatives of the people -- the freest and most democratic system yet devised -- the rights of every minority were secured, and the fullest opportunity was open for every section of opinion to express and advocate its views by appeal to reason and patriotic sentiment.

To allow such a situation to develop successfully required only common sense and patriotism in the political leaders. No one denied that the new Government had the support of the people.

Of all forms of government a democracy allows the greatest freedom -- the greatest possibilities for the good of all. But such a government, like all governments, must be recognised and obeyed.

The first duty of the new Government was to maintain public order, security of life, personal liberty, and property ... The peace and order necessary for that progress was rudely broken. The united forward movement was held up by an outbreak of anarchic violence ...

The nation which had kept the old heroic temper, but had learnt to govern it so that violence should be directed against the national enemy, and its differences should be matters of friendly rivalry, found itself faced with a small minority determined to break up the national unity and to destroy the government in which the nation had just shown its confidence.

They claimed to be fighting for the nation. That might be possible if there were any enemies of the nation opposing them. There are not. Resolved to fight, they are fighting, not against an enemy, but against their own nation. Blind to facts, and false to ideals, they are making war on the Irish people.

Michael Collins was just 31 years of age when he was killed but the Free State he founded evolved into the Republic of Ireland; a profoundly democratic country and prosperous member of the European Union.

Suicide bomber likely at Jakarta Embassy

2004-09-09T15:52:00.000+08:00

First posted at Tim Blair

The Jakarta bombing is a terrorist atrocity against the Indonesian people.

The Australian Embassy is positioned on a busy ten-lane boulevard in central Jakarta. It is well-protected with a high wall along the pavement with its building well back from the fence. A police truck and road barriers permanently reduce the service road outside the embassy to one lane to prevent parking in front.

IMO a bomb attack on the embassy would require a suicide bomber. But, even then, the main blast area had to be roadside thereby guaranteeing that all serious casualties were police, security staff and passers by.

The blast though blew out the windows of the embassy and about eight high rise office buildings alongside and opposite and there would surely be many hundreds of people cut by the flying glass.

UN Security Council on Iraqi cease-fire conditions

2003-03-17T06:27:00.000+08:00

First posted at Krisis Online

Useful sources concerning the conditions laid on Iraq for the 1991 military ceasefire following the defeat of Iraq's military forces that had invaded Kuwait. Concluding with Resolution 1441 of 2002, unanimously passed by all permanent and elected members of the Security Council:

UN security council resolution 660 on Iraq (August 2, 1990)

The Security Council ...

2. Demands that Iraq withdraw immediately and unconditionally all its forces to the positions in which they were located on 1 August 1990 ...

UN security council resolution 678 on Iraq (November 29, 1990)

The Security Council ...

1. Demands that Iraq comply fully with resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions, and decides, while maintaining all its decisions, to allow Iraq one final opportunity, as a pause of goodwil, to do so;

2. Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the foregoing resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area ...

UN security council resolution 687 on Iraq (April 3, 1991)

The Security Council ...

Conscious also of the statements by Iraq threatening to use weapons in violation of its obligations under the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, signed at Geneva on 17 June 1925, and of its prior use of chemical weapons and affirming that grave consequences would follow any further use by Iraq of such weapons ...

Aware of the use by Iraq of ballistic missiles in unprovoked attacks and therefore of the need to take specific measures in regard to such missiles located in Iraq,

Concerned by the reports in the hands of Member States that Iraq has attempted to acquire materials for a nuclear-weapons programme contrary to its obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1 July 1968 ...

Deploring threats made by Iraq during the recent conflict to make use of terrorism against targets outside Iraq and the taking of hostages by Iraq ...

8. Decides that Iraq shall unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of: (a) All chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities; (b) All ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres and related major parts, and repair and production facilities ...

12. Decides that Iraq shall unconditionally agree not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material or any subsystems or components or any research, development, support or manufacturing facilities related to the above ...

32. Requires Iraq to inform the Security Council that it will not commit or support any act of international terrorism or allow any organization directed towards commission of such acts to operate within its territory and to condemn unequivocally and renounce all acts, methods and practices of terrorism;

33. Declares that, upon official notification by Iraq to the Secretary-General and to the Security Council of its acceptance of the provisions above, a formal cease-fire is effective between Iraq and Kuwait and the Member States cooperating with Kuwait in accordance with resolution 678 (1990) ...

UN security council resolution 1441 on Iraq (December 20, 2002)

The Security Council ...

Recalling that in its resolution 687 (1991) the Council declared that a ceasefire would be based on acceptance by Iraq of the provisions of that resolution, including the obligations on Iraq contained therein ...

1. Decides that Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions ...

2. Decides, while acknowledging paragraph 1 above, to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations ...

13. Recalls ...that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations ...

President reports on Islamic State of Afghanistan

2001-12-10T05:56:00.000+08:00

First posted at Krisis Online

With the imminent return to Kabul of the government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, attention is already turning to its leadership and their capacity to work with the country' diverse communities, ethnic groups and religious practitioners after 20 years of invasion and civil war.

The State's president is Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani. To find out more about him, what follows this introduction is a collection of speeches and interviews sourced from the internet.

Born in 1940 to a Tajik family in Faizabad in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, Rabbani studied in Kabul and then in Cairo's Al-Azhar university where he received his masters degree in Islamic Philosophy. In 1971 he took over the leadership of the Jamiat-i-Islami (Islamic Society) party but the dominant communist groups of the day forced him into exile in Pakistan.

After the Soviet invasion in 1979, his party played a central role in the jihad against the Red Army and his forces were the first mujahideen group to enter Kabul in 1992. Rabbani returned to Kabul and in June he took over Afghanistan's presidency. He survived numerous attempts by rival parties to oust him from office by force of arms but then chose to withdraw from the capital in 1996 when Taliban insurgents and their foreign mercenaries threatened the city.

Still recognised by the United nations and some 50 countries, his government persisted in the north of the country and brought a wide variety of militia into its United Front (known internationally as the Northern Alliance).

Speech to World Food Summit on November 19, 1996

Afghanistan today is not only a landlocked and least developed country but also a war-stricken one. It is also very unfortunate that armed conflicts still continue in Afghanistan and cause, among other calamities, shortages in food production.

Afghanistan, by reason of its climate, is the meeting place of three Asian geographic areas: middle eastern, central Asian and south Asian. This is reflected in its agricultural output. Wheat has been produced for thousands of years, as shown by research on pre-history. In some regions of the country there is also rice cultivation.

More than 15 percent of Afghanistan's land area is arable, with more large prospects opening up through the new irrigation projects.

The historical annals and recent history show that Afghanistan has a self-sufficient agricultural economy in normal atmospheric precipitation years. However, irremedial drought and famine may occur with catastrophic consequences as happened in 1946 and 1971. This cyclical phenomenon has necessitated emergency international assistance - greater than in previous years in order to remedy the extremely harsh effects of large scale food shortages.

The foreign military invasion which started in 1971, has had serious effects on Afghan agriculture, especially because of destruction and upheavals resulting in disruptions to human life, traditional irrigation works and all other agricultural activities. From among the 1.7 million who were killed, many were people active in agricultural fields.

We agree with all the international studies and research, indicating that the equal participation of women and men is conducive to achieving sustainable food security for all. We agree with the objectives and actions proposed regarding these matters in the Plan of Action of the Summit.

To achieve food security in Afghanistan, we certainly need as a first stage, to solve conflicts peacefully and create a stable political environment and justice through respect for all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

One of the major difficulties in revitalizing animal husbandry and agriculture in Afghanistan, is the unfortunate existence of anti-personnel landmines. At least 10 million anti-personnel landmines endanger the lives of the population and especially the farmers in Afghanistan.

The gravity of the problem of landmines in our country is well-reflected in the report of his Excellency, the United Nations Secretary-General to the 47th Regular Session of the United Nations, indicating that 45 000 landmines have been discovered in an area of 25 km2.This unfortunate problem is one of the legacies of the 18-year imposed war on the Afghan people.

There is also the problem of poppy production used to produce opium and heroine which has taken an alarming turn in the last three years in the southern regions of the country which were invaded and ruled by the Taliban militias.

As our delegation in the United Nations stated at the Security Council on 16 October 1996, the reports of UNDCP make it clear that 95 percent of the fields under poppy cultivation are situated in the area which was invaded and is under the occupation of the Taliban.

Yet another legacy of the invasion are the thousands of displaced persons, among whom children, women and the elderly are the first to suffer under such circumstances. It is a matter of particular anguish, however, that still another problem is the severe food shortages.

We therefore ask the international community to help the Afghans in their endeavours to bring peace and administrative unity in their country through the cooperation of the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan.

From Muslim World News of November 25, 1996

Afghan head of state Burhanuddin Rabbani has appealed to the United Nations to put an end to the "blatant and direct interference" in his country by Pakistan.

In an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, published in the Monday edition, Rabbani said the Pakistanis were openly admitting to supporting the Taleban militia in Kabul.

"I welcome any initiative to end the war," Rabbani said, adding that as a precondition the Taleban militia had to withdraw from Kabul to enable a demilitirisation of the capital.

Rabbani said the European Union could exert its influence on Pakistan through economic pressure.

"It must apply pressure on Pakistan and convince the United States that it is wrong to support the Taliban", he was quoted as saying.

From RFE/RL Newsline of May 12, 1997

Burhanuddin Rabbani arrived in Dushanbe to meet with his Iranian and Tajik counterparts, ITAR-TASS and Interfax reported. Rafsanjani and Rakhmonov said they continue to recognize Rabbani and his government as the legitimate leadership in Afghanistan, despite the fact that the Taliban movement now control two-thirds of that country.

The three presidents reaffirmed their view that peace in Afghanistan must be achieved through political means. All three will attend the meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization that begins in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, tomorrow.

From Rediff On The Net of September 3, 1998

Afghanistan President Burhanuddin Rabbani asked Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to help dislodge the Taliban regime from Kabul, pointing out that it was aiding terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.

Rabbani, who called on Vajpayee in Durban, South Africa, on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit, told him that the war-torn country was being used as a base for launching terrorist operations in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the world.

The Indian prime minister assured full diplomatic, moral and political support to Rabbani, who heads the opposition alliance against the Taliban.

Rabbani also won a small victory when NAM refused to recognise the Taliban regime and allowed him to represent Afghanistan at the summit.

Rabbani also circulated at the NAM meeting a detailed report on Pakistan's interference in the internal affairs of the country. He accused the Pakistan military of being directly involved in the operations against the alliance forces in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Speech to United Nations Millennium Summit on September 8, 2000

The Secretary-General, under the title of "freedom from fear" explains in detail, the nature of present deadly conflicts in the world. In this rubric, more attention is paid to the intrastate conflict.

Concurring with the Secretary-General's argument, the Islamic State of Afghanistan wishes to emphasize that in most of conflicts termed "internal", external politico-economic and strategic interests and interventions play a primordial role in sustaining that conflict.

In this regard, my country has been a victim of foreign aggression twice in two decades. Albeit ample evidence in both cases, of direct involvement of foreign troops and military personnel, the UN has not been able to either condemn the aggressor or take necessary measures to stop aggression.

We strongly believe that in the 21st Century, nation-states will not disappear. Thus, States need to be strengthened and act together within common institutions based on shared rules and values.

Enduring two decades of ceaseless suffering, it is our earnest wish that the Afghan nation shall enjoy peace and security at the beginning of the 21st Century.

We desire the creation of a broad-based government in Afghanistan under the auspices of the United Nations, so that our nation can start the task of reconstruction and development of the country, in an environment removed from conspiracy and foreign interference, which have turned our land into a terrorist training camp, a center for drug smugglers and a base for spilling instability.

Speech to Afghanistan Day of Independence on August 16, 2000

Afflicted fellow citizens, The enduring Mujahid nation of Afghanistan, Peace be unto you! I wish to congratulate you on the auspicious day of restoration of Independence of our homeland.

This year like past ones, we celebrate once again August 19 (28 Assad in Afghan Calendar) at a juncture when a grand part of our country's territory is being trampled under the murky and corrupted feet of the army of ignorance and bigotry, of satanic troops who in an aim to cast aside Afghanistan's Independence at the behest of foreigners, continue their wickedness and blood-spilling, marching ahead of our enemies to kill and loot their fellow country folk.

From the day of its founding, albeit encountering conspiracies and constant intrigues, the Islamic State of Afghanistan has always been desirous of restoration of peace and reconciliation in the country, having repeatedly declared its policy, based on the acceptance of the principle of negotiations and understanding, and by proving it through its adoption of practical strides.

However, direct foreign interference, which arises from their evil intent and impure desires regarding the State of Afghanistan, accounts for the obstacles, and unfortunately the war still continues.

As everyone is aware, with continued statements by the military ruler of Pakistan, these interferences have taken an overt tone, whereby the presence of Pakistani nationals and equipment in the frontlines has made its denial impossible.

However, the international community, which statedly has no resolve in solving the Afghan crisis, refrains from any practical step, hence, providing the war-mongers the opportunity to continue their aggression.

Despite the fact that we have chosen the path of a peaceful settlement, we shall stand against the invasion and will resolutely defend inch upon inch of our homeland, advising the Armed Forces of the Islamic State of Afghanistan of perseverance, patience and piety.

Report from Radio Netherlands of October 18, 2000

Eric Beauchemin recently met the president of - what is officially known as - the Islamic State of Afghanistan and asked him about the ongoing war and the recent advances made by the Taliban.

Rabbani: "The fighting that has erupted in our country is not a civil war. As the UN Secretary General has pointed out, this is not a national crisis. It's an intervention by outside countries. The Taliban are operating with support from other countries, such as Pakistan. Outsiders are supporting and inflaming the fighting in Afghanistan."

Nonetheless, these people are threatening your government as they advance further and further. Where does your government go from here?

Rabbani: "If they capture more territory, they will create a lot of problems and difficulties. But the Islamic State of Afghanisation has faced many problems and difficulties. Let me repeat that this is not a civil war but a regional crisis. The Afghan people will not surrender to aggressors. We never have. We have asked the international community not to be indifferent to the Afghan crisis. But up until now, they have not ordered the countries involved to stop meddling in Afghanistan's internal affairs."

More and more, it seems like this conflict is becoming an ethnic war between the Pashtuns and the other ethnic groups.

Rabbani: "It's not true. This is not a tribal war between the Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns. There are many foreigners - Pakistanis, Arabs as well as the servants of other neighbouring countries - who are based in Afghanistan. They are waging war against us."

Does your government have a different vision for the future of Afghanistan than the Taliban?

Rabbani: "We believe the war in Afghanistan should come to an end. Outside military forces should be forced to leave. And then we need to pave the way to convene a grand assembly to enable Afghans to decide about their future."

So you don't have a different vision than the Taliban?"

Rabbani: "There are many differences between the policies of the Islamic State of Afghanistan and the Taliban. The Taliban are threatening Afghanistan's independence. They are trying to eliminate the freedom of other ethnic groups. And they prevent girls from going to school, whereas we allow females to get an education."

Professor, you've insisted a lot on the international character of this war. You say that the Taliban are receiving assistance, primarily from Pakistan. But you too are receiving outside aid.

Rabbani: "It's accepted internationally that when war breaks out, the legitimate government ? and that's us, the Islamic State of Afghanistan - has the right to defend its independence, national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The opposition is jeopardising our national sovereignty. So we have the right to ask neighbouring countries for assistance. But so far, we've been receiving mainly humanitarian assistance from our neighbours."

But these countries must also be providing military assistance because you're not manufacturing the arms yourself.

Rabbani: "We are in a position to ask for military assistance because we are the legitimate government of Afghanistan. But so far we have received no military aid. Because of our lack of supplies, the Taliban have managed to capture a number of provinces.

But there have been reports of large quantities of military supplies coming over the border from Tajikistan.

Rabbani: "This is all propaganda. People are confusing military aid and humanitarian assistance."

Report from The Tribune of May 2, 2001

The Afghan opposition alliance said today it would accept a United Nations appeal for a ceasefire to prevent a humanitarian disaster if the ruling Taliban also agreed.

The chief of the UN refugee agency, Mr Ruud Lubbers, had carried his appeal for a ceasefire lasting six months to a year to Mr Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the anti-Taliban alliance fighting for its existence in north-eastern Afghanistan.

"We believe that - not only for six months - that the war should be over forever," Mr Rabbani told reporters after the men met in the alliance?s current capital Faizabad.

"Yes, we are in agreement but we want that the Taliban should also agree," said Mr Rabbani.

Mr Rabbani said he agreed with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Lubbers, that peace was necessary for the welfare of the Afghan people, suffering the twin calamities of two decades of war and the worst drought in 30 years.

Report from UNIFSA of May 30, 2001

A European Union delegation visited Faizabad, capital of Badakhshan province of Afghanistan on May 22-23 and held talks with Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan and other Government officials.

Addressing the EU concerns in their entirety, President Rabbani respectively highlighted the Government's stance toward those issues and reiterated the resolve of the Islamic State of Afghanistan to ensure human rights, avoid laying land mines, and vigorously combat narcotic drugs in the territories it holds, and shed light on the devastating effects of the concurrent sever drought throughout the country.

President Rabbani also spoke of the continued violations by Pakistan of the UN sanctions on the Taliban mercenaries in its ceaseless flow of arms and ammunition to the Taliban militia.

Report from Frontier Post Pakistan of July 18, 2001

Afghan President and head of the opposition Northern Alliance Professor Rabbani has sought Pakistan's help for the solution of the Afghan conflict and offered peace talks to the ruling Taliban in war-ravaged Afghanistan. This is the third time Rabbani has offered peace talks to Taliban for peace, progress and prosperity of the Afghan people.

He extended the offer while talking to a Quetta-based journalists from Afghanistan's Badakhshan province, reports Radio Tehran.

Rabbani said hundreds of thousands of Afghans were forced to live in foreign countries due to the continuing fighting in Afghanistan.

He called on the world community particularly Pakistan, to come forward for ending fighting and foreign interference in Afghanistan and help the Afghans.

He asked the Pakistan government to use its influence over Taliban for convincing them to hold talks with them because due to its impact on the might of Pakistan, the continuing Afghan fighting may pave the way for insecurity and fundamentalism.

Report from AFP of September 15, 2001

Afghan opposition commander Ahmad Shah Masood died Saturday after a suicide bombing plotted by Pakistan, the Taliban and alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden, ousted president Burhanuddin Rabbani said.

In the first official confirmation of the veteran commander's death, Rabbani described him as a "national hero" who had martyred himself for "jihad and resistance".

Report from AFP of October 6, 2001

Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani on Saturday hit out at United States policy in Afghanistan, accusing it of having created the ruling Taliban.

"After the defeat of Soviet troops, the United States completely forgot our country," he said.

"Washington afterwards created the Taliban, at the side of Pakistan, supported and armed them to overcome my Islamic government", Rabbani said in an interview with the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Rabbani, deposed by the Taliban in 1996 and Afghanistan's UN-recognised president, urged the United States to be "involved" in all negotiations on the future of the country.

Rabbani, who lives in northern Afghanistan among the opposition Northern Alliance, said it has at its disposal more than 25,000 armed men, faced with from 30,000 to 50,000 well-armed Taliban, of which, he said, around 2,000 have changed camp over the the last few days.

Rabbani, spoke out in the interview against the return to the throne of the former Afghan monarch Mohammed Zahir Shah, 86, who has been in exile in Rome since 1973.

"Today nobody is in a position to set up a post-war government," he said. He said that without the Northern Alliance "nothing goes."

Report from Reuters of October 6, 2001

The United States can capture Osama bin Laden without going to war, the leader of Afghanistan's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance opposition was quoted as saying.

Burhanuddin Rabbani, president of the country until he was forced from power by the Taliban in 1996, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper that outside pressure could be enough to ensure bin Laden was brought to justice.

"If the Americans are really only interested in bin Laden, then the problem can be solved through cooperation with Pakistan and by increasing the pressure on the Taliban," Rabbani said, according to a transcript of the interview due to be published on Sunday.

"You don't need a war to catch him," he added.

Washington has demanded the Taliban hand over bin Laden, blamed for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Rabbani said the Northern Alliance had felt abandoned by Washington in its fight against the Taliban in recent years. He said the Alliance had warned "loud and clear" about the danger posed by the regime.

"Nobody wanted to believe us," he said.

Rabbani said the Northern Alliance should play a crucial role in any formation of a new government for Afghanistan if the Taliban were dislodged. He said he had been in diplomatic contact with the United States, but had not been in contact with President George W. Bush directly.

"We are the ones who have been fighting the Taliban and their foreign backers for years to save our people," he said.

"Without us there would be nothing. Our Islamic government and the United Front, that the West calls the Northern Alliance, are the only power capable of getting rid of the terrorism of the Taliban and to restore peace," he added.

Rabbani was quoted as saying the Alliance had "over 25,000" fighters against an estimated 30,000 to 50,000, plus "thousands of Arabs and Pakistanis," on the Taliban side.

He said Afghanistan's former king, Zahir Shah, deposed in 1973 and living in exile in Rome, could not come back. A ruler would have to be picked by the Afghan people using a traditional meeting of elders, known as a "Loya Jirga."

Report from IranMania.com of October 7, 2001

Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani on Sunday accused Pakistan of "interfering" in Afghanistan's internal affairs amid signs a US-led anti-terrorism coalition may try to replace the ruling Taliban militia.

"Unfortunately, Pakistan has still not learned anything from its history of interfering in this country. Regional countries and Afghanistan's neighbours must allow the Afghan people to determine their fate on their own," Rabbani said in an interview with Iranian state radio.

Rabbani also again spoke out against suggestions the Taliban be replaced with a government led by former Afghan monarch Mohammed Zahir Shah, 86, who has been in exile in Rome since 1973.

"Afghanistan's problem is not a particular person or group. The determination of the fate of the Afghan people is up to the people of this country," Rabbani said.

"The Afghan people are confident in holding a Loya Jirga (session) and are ready for it. Anybody, who is chosen by the people will be accepted by us and the international community," he said.

Together with the anti-Taliban opposition, Zahir Shah recently agreed to form a "Supreme Council for the National Unity of Afghanistan" which would convene an emergency session of the Loya Jirga, an assembly of traditional chiefs, to elect the head of state and members of a transitional administration.

Rabbani invited all Afghan officials to join the council, saying "Afghanistan belongs to all those who represent the people. The council's sole aim is peace which the Afghan people strive for."

Rabbani even went as far as inviting Taliban leaders to join the Northern Alliance, but warned that those who have "dirtied their hands with the blood of others" would find no place in it.

"Taliban heads can join the Northern Alliance. Those Taliban officials who are foreigners and mercinaries and who have dirtied their hands with the blood of others, do not have a place in this council."

"The Afghan people have never had and do not have, under any circumstances, tolerance for terrorists," he said.

Report from Pravda of October 10, 2001

Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani entirely supports the US anti-terrorist effort. Rabbani said it to journalists after meeting Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov Wednesday.

According to him, the authorities of the Islamic State of Afghanistan and the Tajik President has been long pointing to the Taliban threat.

However, the international community did not hear representatives of the Afghan legitimate government which resulted in the September 11 terrorist attacks, Rabbani noted.

Report from BBC News of October 22, 2001

Afghanistan's anti-Taleban alliance has predicted victory over the Taleban following a meeting between Russian, Tajik and Northern Alliance leaders in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.

In remarks broadcast by Tajik radio, deposed Afghan leader Burhanuddin Rabbani said that, after years of struggle against the Taleban, Northern Alliance forces were confident they will now finally see victory.

"We and our friends outside Afghanistan have been carrying out a bitter struggle against terrorism for seven years," he said.

"We are confident that in this just struggle, where the whole world has become our allies, we will finally defeat terrorism."

Mr Rabbani went on to speculate about what could have happened had the Northern Alliance not retained its stronghold in the north of the country.

"You and the world should judge for yourselves... if the Taleban had taken the whole of Afghanistan, what would happen with the situation in the region and in the world?" he said.

Report from CNN of October 26, 2001

The Taliban's opponents will do everything necessary to oust the Taliban and end the Afghan war, Afghanistan's internationally recognized president said Friday.

Speaking on CNN's "Larry King Live," Burhanuddin Rabbani said no sacrifice would be too great to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban.

"Once we took the path of resistance and the cause of our homeland, we took on all the risks involved and we are prepared to make all the sacrifices," Rabbani through an interpreter.

Rabbani, who currently holds his nation's seat in the United Nations, said it was "up to the people of Afghanistan" to determine whether he would lead a post-Taliban state.

Rabbani said he plans to travel soon to the front lines of the Northern Alliance, which is leading the military fight within Afghanistan against the Taliban.

Report from Times of India of November 9, 2001

The political head of the Afghan opposition Burhanuddin Rabbani said on Thursday that his fighters could handle the Taliban on their own and did not need troops sent in from other countries.

Rabbani, who is recognised by most countries as Afghanistan's legitimate president, made the assessment after a meeting with Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, whose country plans to send 90 special-forces troops to Afghanistan.

"We do not require any troops from friendly states," Rabbani told reporters in the Tajik capital. "The only thing we need is financial, logistical and political help."

But Rabbani did not comment directly on Turkey's plans, and Sezer spokesperson Tacan Ildem said the Afghan side was "very appreciative." Ildem said the Turkish troops' main purpose would be to train anti-Taliban troops and to facilitate the transport of humanitarian aid.

Best PR strategy for the US may be a 'come-clean'

2001-11-01T05:42:00.000+08:00

First posted at Krisis Onine

When I read Susan Sach?s article U.S. Appears to Be Losing Public Relations War So Far (propaganda, New York Times, 28 October), I thought "no wonder". The US administration?s belated effort to win over Muslim public opinion to its military response to 11 September is dogged by one critical issue: the country?s own involvement in unleashing the extremist forces that terrorised the people of Afghanistan for a decade and, more recently, the United States itself.

According to the United States and its media, September 11 has no substantial past except for the crazed actions of Usama bin Laden and his band of Al Qaida brigands who, with the evil Taliban, suddenly sprang from the murky killing fields of a region swarming with religious fanatics.

The Muslim public knows, however, that bin Laden did not just appear "out of the blue" to attack the United States. They know who funded the training camps for hundreds of thousands of non-Afghanis who participated in the war against the Soviet occupation. They know some went home to cause trouble, others stayed. They know that the USA's long-time South Asian ally, Pakistan, has meddled in Afghanistan affairs for 20 years, promoted the most extremist of groups and, with US approval, managed the Taliban during its formative years. They know of the recent US and Pakistan hostility to the 'Northern Alliance'.

They know, they distrust and they fear. Hardly an appreciative audience for American explanations of good intent and even handedness.

Crisis communications is a critical factor in crisis management and its first maxim is coming clean. "Arrogance or indifference leads to predictable errors," public relations professional, James E. Lukaszewski, wrote in Good News About Bad News.

"Because public feedback quickly intensifies for reasons managers fail to understand," he explained, certain behaviors cause the first problems in emergencies, among them:

Obfuscation is the failure - deliberately or foolishly - to recognize that when time and understanding are critical, simplicity is a must. The perception is of dishonesty and insensitivity.

Prevarication is perhaps the greatest error.

There's no substitute for the absolute truth.

Pontification is dangerous.

Revelation is inevitable. If a company is guilty, that fact will be revealed ... and the disclosure is deserved.

"Each of these behaviors generates unnecessary negative perceptions in the audiences most affected by the emergency. Audience response to these perceptions is inevitable," Lukaszewski wrote.

They are amongst the lessons learnt well by US companies, large and small, but not yet by the US government.

Defusing Terrorism at the original 'Ground Zero'

2001-11-01T05:22:00.000+08:00

It is refreshing to review James Phillips masterful, Defusing Terrorism at Ground Zero: Why a New US Policy is Needed for Afghanistan, published as a Backgrounder (The Heritage Foundation) on 12 July 2000. Fourteen months before '9/11 he wrote directly to the point, with a title thsat is eerily familiar:

"When the United States helped the Afghan resistance defeat the Soviet Army in a brutal guerrilla war, it scored one of its biggest Cold War victories. However, shortly after Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the United States withdrew from active involvement in Afghan affairs. As a result, Washington squandered the residual influence that it had acquired through its $3 billion aid program for the Afghan resistance in the 1980s ..."

He described the aftermath of the Soviet occupation as a "humanitarian disaster" with two million dead, the world's largest refugee population, a limping economy, shattered infrastructure and a traumatized civil society.

"In the critical period following the 1992 collapse of the Afghan communist regime," he wrote, failure of the US to play a constructive role "weakened and demoralized moderate Afghan groups and allowed Pakistan to help create and support the radical Taliban movement [which] now dominates Afghanistan both politically and militarily and provides support to a wide spectrum of radical Islamic groups, including Osama bin Laden's terrorist network."

It was bin Laden's August 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that moved Afghanistan "off the back burner of US foreign policy," he wrote.

However, Clinton?s following hunt for Usama bin Laden, he argued, failed to grasp the extent to which he is "a lethal byproduct of the revolutionary upheaval in Afghanistan. The war-torn country has become the incubator for a malignant mixture of contagious viruses - Islamic radicalism, terrorism, and drug smuggling - that have spread to Afghanistan's neighbors and throughout the Muslim world."

He warned that the United States needed to "develop a coherent long-term policy for building an Afghanistan that is stable and peaceful and that no longer serves as a safe haven for international terrorists, drug smugglers and Islamic revolutionaries."

On Pakistani and other interference

- The Islamic rebellion sparked by the April 1978 communist coup in Kabul mushroomed into a broad-based war of national resistance following the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

- "Because Afghan nationalism was a threat to Pakistani interests, Pakistan encouraged the Afghan resistance to organize along Islamic rather than nationalist principles ... an Islamic Afghan regime installed in Kabul with Pakistani help would be a natural ally to help Pakistan block Soviet expansion and give Pakistan strategic depth with respect to arch-rival India."

- Pakistan also sought to forestall the formation of a unified Afghan resistance movement that could operate independently. "Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, which controlled the flow of supplies to Pakistani-based mujahideen, funneled aid to seven rival resistance groups in order to divide the mujahideen and keep them as dependent on Pakistan as possible. Mohammed Yousef, former Director of the ISI, revealed that the ISI channeled more than 70 percent of American and Saudi aid to extremist mujahideen groups."

- Following the April 1992 collapse of Afghan President Najibullah's communist dictatorship, a loose coalition of resistance groups took power in Kabul, founded the Islamic State of Afghanistan and selected Sibgatullah Mojadidi, the leader of one of the smallest mujahideen groups, as first president.

- The unity dissolved into warring factions when the new government was opposed by Pakistani-backed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

- "The ruthless leader of one of the largest and most radical mujahideen groups, the Party of Islam, Hekmatyar was a virulently anti-Western revolutionary who was determined to seize absolute power. Arab Islamic radicals, Libya, and Pakistan gave him the lion's share of the foreign arms supplied to the mujahideen."

- Hekmatyar's forces besieged Kabul from 1992 to 1996, bombarding the city with artillery and rockets that killed thousands of civilians. "Periodically he launched offensives against the city in league with a shifting constellation of other anti-government groups, such as the Unity Party, an Iranian-backed umbrella coalition of Shia Muslim groups."

On Rabbani and Massoud

- The backbone of the provisional government was Burhannudin Rabbani's Islamic Society, "a moderate Islamist party predominantly composed of ethnic Tajiks from northern Afghanistan." Rabbani replaced Mojadidi as president in June 1992 and refused to relinquish the rotating presidency in December 1994 as scheduled, because of escalating fighting.

- Rabbani's chief lieutenant, Ahmad Shah Massoud, was the most effective mujahideen commander to emerge from the war against the Soviets. A "pragmatic and popular Tajik political leader as well as an astute military strategist," became the Minister of Defense and the linchpin of the provisional government.

- In January 1994, after Massoud's forces blocked Hekmatyar's campaign to storm Kabul and whittled away his military forces, the Uzbek militia defected from the provisional government. The militia's leader, General Abdul Rashid Dostam, whose defection had helped seal the fate of the Najibullah regime, then fought Massoud's forces to a standstill for two years. "The rise of the Taliban forced both to put aside their differences and join forces in the Northern Alliance in October 1996."

On the Taliban

- The Taliban first emerged in early 1994 in the Pushtun tribal areas of southern Afghanistan. Their Islamic vigilantism was widely applauded by Pushtun tribesmen but they "also benefited from extensive Pakistani logistical and military support. Pakistan's Interior Ministry mobilized thousands of young Pushtun students from religious schools and transported them to the front.

- These eager zealots, many of whom grew up in teeming refugee camps in Pakistan, were indoctrinated in the strict fundamentalist Deobandi school of Islam. Many of their schools were little more than 'jihad factories' that prepared impressionable young men for continuous warfare. The Taliban's revolutionary ardor and rural roots made them 'an Afghan version of the Khmer Rouge.'"

- "Washington initially misjudged the depth of anti-Western hostility within the Taliban and perceived it as a possible ally against Iran. The State Department was overly optimistic that the Taliban's rule would bring stability to Afghanistan and underestimated the threat it posed to regional stability. It urged other nations to ?engage? the Taliban in hopes of moderating its radical policies.

- "Washington's attitude toward the Taliban also was affected by hopes that a stabilized Afghanistan could provide a transit route for oil and gas produced in Central Asia. This would have contributed to the economic development of post-Soviet Central Asia. It also would have preempted a possible pipeline through Iran and reduced Russian leverage over Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, both of which were seeking outlets for their surplus energy resources.

- "The Clinton Administration supported plans for two pipelines, projected to cost $2 billion each, to transport oil and gas from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan, where the oil would be routed to an export terminal in Karachi."

- "Julie Sirrs, an Afghanistan expert who recently visited northern Afghanistan, confirms that the Taliban appears to rely heavily on foreign support, given the large number of Taliban prisoners of war that Massoud has captured who were originally from Pakistan, China, and Yemen ... The Taliban's heavy dependence on foreigners, particularly Pakistanis, is resented by many Afghans, who distrust foreign influence and complain about a creeping Pakistani invasion."

On bin Laden and Al Qaida

- Since 1996, Afghanistan has been "ground zero for an international terrorist network controlled" by Usama bin Laden, the heart of which is his Al Qaida umbrella group. His first anti-US terrorist attack was a December 1992 bombing of a hotel in Yemen used by American soldiers en route to humanitarian operations in Somalia.

- "In February 1998, he announced the formation of the 'International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders' and signed a fatwa calling on all Muslims 'to kill the Americans and their allies - civilian and military.'"

- "For the past two years, the primary goal of Washington's Afghanistan policy has been to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. The United States has pressed the Taliban repeatedly to seize or expel him. The Taliban regime, however, maintains that bin Laden is an honored guest who is not guilty of terrorism and cannot be handed over to kafirs."

Despite growing diplomatic and economic pressures, the Taliban regime has refused to cooperate. "The reasons for this defiance - which ultimately could threaten the Taliban's hold on power - lie in the nature of the Taliban and the Afghan political scene."

James Phillips' recommendations for a new US policy:

Maximize international pressure on the Taliban to halt its support of terrorism (Push for UN Security Council total trade and arms embargo against Taliban zones. This would also make it more difficult to export drugs under the cover of legal goods).

Pressure Pakistan to end its support for the Taliban (threaten a tilt to India, exploit Pakistan's disastrous economic situation, convince Pakistan that the Taliban will become an increasing drain on its limited economic resources, as well as a long-term foreign policy liability).

Provide military, diplomatic and economic support to the Taliban opposition (cooperate with Russia, Turkey and Central Asian neighbors to support any Afghan group opposing terrorism. But financial and extensive military aid should be channeled through Commander Massoud's effective organization within the Northern Alliance to strengthen coordination and to prevent corruption).

Forge a regional coalition to support anti-Taliban opposition and an Afghan peace settlement (The conflict is a transnational one, not a purely internal conflict as ethnic and religious groups straddle the borders. Strengthen resistance to the Taliban and encourage emergence of a more moderate Pushtun leadership. USA, Russia and the six neighbors should negotiate a treaty similar to the 1955 State Treaty that set the rules for Austrian neutrality. US should work closely with Pakistani allies China and Saudi Arabia to convince Pakistan of the benefits of dropping th Taliban).

Build an internal Afghan consensus for peace (promote an inclusive political dialogue between representatives of the factions and all ethnic, religious, and political groups and assist the gathering of a loya Jirga).

Designate the Taliban as a terrorist organization (empower US financial institutions to freeze Taliban assets, block fund-raising activities inside the US and deny visas to Taliban officials. Will set the stage for declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism if it stubbornly continues to support the Taliban).

Provide humanitarian aid (US provides about $80 million/year in humanitarian aid through the UN. Shift most to a bilateral cross-border aid program to help counter the perception that the US abandoned the Afghan people. Base the aid program in Tajikistan rather than Pakistan).

Allow the Northern Alliance to reopen the Afghan embassy. (US should recognize the Northern Alliance again as the legitimate government of Afghanistan and allow its ambassador to reopen Afghanistan's embassy in Washington).

Revive bipartisan congressional activism on Afghanistan (US Congress played a critical role in shaping policy toward Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Congress often prompted the Reagan Administration to increase its efforts to support the Afghan resistance

This is a blueprint for success.

The US State Department covert pro-Taliban policy

2001-11-01T05:12:00.000+08:00

First posted at Krisis Online

Comment: Watching the US cable services following '9/11' I happened across a House of Representatives? International Relations Committee session with Secretary of State Powell. I was impressed with one member who politely insisted on disclosure of state department records dealing with Afghanistan. He said he had been denied the documents by former secretary Madeline Fulbright. He received an equally negative response from Powell. I later learned the Congressman is Dana Rohrabacher of California. The following is testimony he submitted to the Senate?s Foreign Relations Subcommittee on South Asia on April 14, 1999:

Mr Chairman:

Thank you for allowing me to testify this morning. This hearing is especially significant, because beyond the important matters of human rights violations, especially against women, terrorism and drug proliferation, what transpires in Afghanistan today will have a profound impact on the entire region of Central Asia for years to come.

I have been involved with Afghanistan since the early 1980s when I worked in the White House as a speech writer and special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.

In 1988, immediately after I was elected to Congress I traveled into Afghanistan with mujahideen fighters and participated in the battle of Jalalabhad against the Soviets. At that time I learned first hand of the courage and generosity of the Afghan people.

I also learned from the Afghans that I traveled with and the villagers that housed me that the average Afghan is not a fanatic or an religious extremist, but to the contrary, very hospitable and generous, by the very essence of their traditional culture. What has happened during the past few years under Taliban rule is a tragic perversion of Afghan culture and religious heritage.

Having been closely involved in US policy toward Afghanistan for some twenty years, I have called into question whether or not this administration has a covert policy that has empowered the Taliban and enabled this brutal movement to hold on to power. Even though the President and the Secretary of State have voiced their disgust at the brutal policies of the Taliban, especially their repression of women, the actual implementation of U.S. policy has repeatedly had the opposite effect. I base this claim on the following reasons:

· In 1996, the Taliban first emerged as a mysterious force that swept out of so-called religious schools in Pakistan to a blitzkrieg type of conquest of most of Afghanistan against some very seasoned former-mujahideen fighters. As a so-called "student militia," the Taliban could not have succeeded without the support, organization and logistics of military professionals, who would not have been faculty in religious schools.

· The US has a very close relationship with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, in matters concerning Afghanistan, but unfortunately, instead of providing leadership, we are letting them lead our policy. This began during the Afghan war against the Soviets. I witnessed this in the White House when U.S. officials in charge of the military aid program to the mujahideen permitted a large percentage of our assistance to be channeled to the most anti-western non-democratic elements of the mujahideen, such as Golbodin Hekmatayar. This was done to placate the Pakistan ISI military intelligence.

· In 1997, responding to the pleas of the Afghan-American community and the recognized Afghanistan ambassador, I led an effort to stop the State Department from permitting the Afghanistan embassy in Washington from being taken under the control of a diplomat loyal to the Taliban. Instead, of permitting a new ambassador who was assigned by the non-Taliban Afghan government that is still recognized at the United Nations, the State Department claimed "we don't take sides," and forced the embassy to be closed against the will of the Afghanistan United Nations office.

· During late 1997 and early 1998, while the Taliban imposed a blockade on more than two million people of the Hazara ethnic group in central Afghanistan, putting tens of thousands at risk of starving to death or perishing from a lack of medicine during the harsh winter months, the State Department undercut my efforts to send in two plane loads of medicines by the Americares and the Knightsbridge relief agencies. State Department representatives made false statements that the humanitarian crisis was exaggerated and there was already sufficient medical supplies in the blockaded area. When the relief teams risked their lives to go into the area with the medicines - without the support of the State Department they found the hospitals and clinics did not have even aspirins or bandages, no generators for heat in sub-zero weather, a serious lack of blankets and scant amounts of food. The State Department, in effect, was assisting the Taliban's inhuman blockade intended to starve out communities that opposed their dictates.

· Perhaps the most glaring evidence of this administration's tacit support of the was the effort made during a Spring 1998 visit to Afghanistan by Mr. Indefurth and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson. These administration representatives convinced the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance not to go on the offensive against a then-weakened and vulnerable Taliban. And instead convinced these anti-Taliban leaders to accept a cease-fire that was proposed by Pakistan. The cease fire lasted only as long as it took the Paks to resupply and reorganize the Taliban. In fact, within a few months of announcement of the U.S.-backed "Ulema" process, the Taliban, freshly supplied by the ISI and flush with drug money, went on a major offensive and destroyed the Northern Alliance. This was either incompetence on the part of the State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies or indicative of the real policy of our government to ensure a Taliban victory.

· Can anyone believe that with the Taliban, identified by the United Nations and the DEA as one of the two largest producers of opium in the world, that they weren't being closely monitored by our intelligence services, who would have seen every move of the military build up that the Pakistanis and Taliban were undertaking. In addition, at the same time the U.S. was planning its strike against the terrorist camps of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. How could our intelligence services not have known that Osama bin Laden's forces had moved north to lead the Taliban offensive, where horrendous brutality took place.

· In addition, there has been no major effort to end the flow of opium out of Afghanistan, which is the main source of the revenues that enables the Taliban to maintain control of the country, even though the US Government observes by satellite where the opium is grown.

I am making the claim that there is and has been and is a covert policy by this administration to support the Taliban movement's control of Afghanistan. It is my guess, that this amoral or immoral policy is based on the assumption that the Taliban would bring stability to Afghanistan and permit the building of oil pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan.

We have a choice between believing that this administration's policy toward Afghanistan has been incompetent beyond belief, or is directed toward achieving a covert purpose.

I believe the administration has maintained this covert goal and kept the Congress in the dark about its policy of supporting the Taliban, the most anti-Western, anti-female, anti-human rights regime in the world. It doesn't take a genius to understand that this policy would outrage the American people, especially America's women.

Perhaps the most glaring evidence of our government's covert policy to favor the Taliban is that the administration is currently engaged in a major effort to obstruct the Congress from determining the details behind this policy.

Last year in August, after several unofficial requests were made of State Department, I made an official request for all diplomatic documents concerning US policy toward the Taliban, especially those cables and documents from our embassies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. As a senior Member of the House International Relations Committee I have oversight responsibility in this area.

In November, after months of stonewalling, the Secretary of State herself promised before the International Relations Committee that the documents would be forthcoming. She reconfirmed that promise in February when she testified before our Committee on the State Department budget. The Chairman of the Committee, Ben Gilman, added his voice to the record in support of my document request. To this time, we have received nothing.

There can only be two explanations. Either the State Department is totally incompetent, or there is an ongoing cover-up of State Department's true fundamental policy toward Afghanistan. You probably didn't expect me to praise the State Department at the end of this scathing testimony. But I will.

I don't think the State Department is incompetent. They should be held responsible for their policies and the American people should know, through documented proof, what they are doing.

Update: The original transcript is no longer available on the internet.

What if fighting does continue during Ramadan?

2001-10-23T05:03:00.000+08:00

First posted at Krisis Online

Indonesia?s foreign minister, Mr Hassan Wirayuda has warned the United States of an "explosive reaction" in the Islamic world if it continues its military strikes in Afghanistan into the Moslem fasting month of Ramadan. He said Indonesia and other countries with large Muslim populations will be ?destablised? by such prolonged military conflict (The Jakarta Post, 22 October 2001).

Like many others interested in the Taliban's and Al Qaida's sense of religious obligations during their declared 'Jihad', I's like to know whether there is a formal Islamic prohibition on fighting during Ramadan. The literature suggests that there is not:

The Prophet Muhammad fought during Ramadan to reclaim Mecca in 624.

Anwar Sadat's Egypt launched its 1973 war again Israel during Ramadan (the first strike occurred on the most important Jewish Holy Day, Yom Kippur).

Iraq commenced its war with Iran during Ramadan and both countries, during their brutal eight-year war in the 1980s, fought through the corresponding eight holy months.

In 1981, Saddam Hussein's Iraq offered a cease-fire for Ramadan, but the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran rejected it due to military advantage.

In Afghanistan itself during the period of Soviet occupation, resistance forces continued to press their attacks through the holy months (Ref: Tod Lindberg, The Standard).

It is therefore highly unlikely that the United States and its allies will agree to terminate military actions against declared enemies for one month. It would also be very unlikely to expect the Taliban and Al Qaida to also do otherwise.

That leaves Indonesia with important questions:

How will the destablisation manifest itself inside Indonesia?

What plans has the Indonesian government got in place to contain the destabilization and to restore stability?

What further damage will the destablisation inflict on the Indonesian economy?

'End bombing' and the matter of 'non-interference'

2001-10-20T04:52:00.000+08:00

First posted at Krisis Online

Addressing an Istiqlal Mosque ceremony celebrating the Prophet Mohammed's ascension (Sunday, October 14), President Megawati Soekarnoputri made a special announcement. "Violence should not be answered with violence," she said. "Whoever commits terror must be punished. But it is unacceptable that someone, a group or even a government - arguing that they are hunting down perpetrators of the terror - attack people or another country for whatever reason." she said.

Comment: Obtuse, 'unofficial' or not, the president?s speech was immediately acknowledged and applauded by all major Indonesian political parties and Muslim organizations as a significant shift from its position on the US military action underway in Afghanistan as expressed in its policy announcement of 8 October.

"There is a new development in the President's latest statement, but there will be consequences," Mr Syafi'i Ma'arif, chairman of Muhammadiyah, said (The Jakarta Post, 16 October 2001).

"It was delivered in such an elegant manner and I believe that the message is conveyed to the U.S. government," National Awakening Party (PKB) acting chairman, Mr Alwi Shihab, said.

"The statement is an expression of her statesmanship," Indonesian Ulemas Council co-chairman Amidhan said, adding that the government should now use the UN to "pressure the United States to terminate the military strikes on Afghanistan."

"Megawati's remark was expressed very timely," former Defense Minister and foreign affairs expert, Mr Juwono Sudarsono said, adding that it "implicitly reflected disapproval of a possible ground invasion."

The day before, Vice President Hamzah Haz also called on the US to stop the bombing over Afghanistan. His statement was made at the national meeting of the United Development Party (PPP), which he chairs.

There has been no comment, however, on the statement?s possible implications for Indonesia?s longstanding 'Asian style' diplomacy and its adherence to the principles of the 1955 Bandung Conference and the Association of South East Asian States (ASEAN).

Fact: Indonesia maintains diplomatic relations with the Islamic State of Afghanistan headed by President Prof Burhanuddin Rabbani. Its embassy is located at Jl Dr Kusumaatmaja SH, No 15, Menteng, Jakarta. [Tel 314-3169]. The United Nations, likewise, only recognizes Rabbani?s Islamic State as the legal government of Afghanistan.

Fact: The Islamic State of Afghanistan has been engaged in a 6-year military struggle against Taliban insurgents and their allies (foreign mercenaries lead by Usama bin Laden and, up to last month, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the only country recognizing the Taliban as rulers of Afghanistan).

Fact: The Islamic State of Afghanistan and its United Front army, internationally known as the 'Northern Alliance', is encouraging both the US bombing of Taliban (and bin Laden) military and strategic assets and the possible entry of allied ground forces into their country.

Prior to hardening its stance on the US military activity within Afghanistan, did Indonesia review its diplomatic relations with the Islamic State of Afghanistan or consult it through its embassy in Jakarta?

If not, Indonesia may have abrogated two of the five major principles of the Bandung Conference: respect for [Afghanistan's] sovereignty and non-interference in [Afghanistan's] internal affairs. The doctrine of non-interference is also the central plank of ASEAN.

Ironically Mr Yasril Ananta Baharuddin, the chairman of the House of Representatives? commission on defence and security, reportedly advised President Megawati Sukarnoputri not to meet with Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, during the APEC meeting in Shanghai.

Mr Baharuddin said Indonesians were insulted by comments made by Mr Howard about Jakarta's criticism of USpled military strikes against Afghanistan - and resented Australian interference in Indonesia's internal affairs."

Minister, is there a bin Laden network in Indonesia?

2001-10-19T04:12:00.000+08:00

First posted at Krisis Online

"We do not know about the presence of an Osama-linked terrorist network here. We need to check and recheck it so as to avoid making false conclusions and statements," Indonesia?s Minister of Defense, Mr Matori Abdul Djalil said (The Jakarta Post, October 14, 2001). National Police chief Gen. Surojo Bimantoro and Army chief of staff Gen. Endriartono Sutarto both agreed there was no evidence yet of the presence of an bin Laden-linked network in Indonesia. "The allegation was made by an official of the U.S. State Secretariat and published by The New York Times, claiming that the al-Qaeda business group network, chaired by bin Laden, also existed in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia."

10 July, 2006

Mr Matori Abdul Djalil
Minister of Defense
Jl Medan Merdeka Barat No 13-14
Jakarta 10110

Dear Minister,

I noticed that an newspaper article (Jakarta Post, October 14), said you had announced on Friday that the US government had yet to prove its allegation that an international terrorist network associated with the US's most-wanted Osama bin Laden existed in Indonesia.

The allegation, made by an official of the US State Secretariat and published by The New York Times, claimed the al-Qaeda business group network, chaired by bin Laden, also existed in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.

"We do not know about the presence of an Osama-linked terrorist network here. We need to check and recheck it so as to avoid making false conclusions and statements," you were quoted as saying by Antara.

The Jakarta Post also stated that National Police chief Gen. Surojo Bimantoro had said that police had yet to find evidence of the allegation and that Army chief of staff Gen. Endriartono Sutarto previously said there was no evidence yet of the presence of an Osama-linked network in Indonesia.

It appears, however, that there are a number of people that should be spoken to about this matter as they have placed on public record a number of English-language statements confirming that they have links with or knowledge of people with links to Osama bin Laden?s network.

I am not a lawyer so I do not know how such declarations are regarded under Indonesian law nor how they are viewed as leads by police and intelligence organizations. However, since I have collected the articles for various clients I thought you might be interested in reviewing them:

Don Greenlees, The Australian, September 4, 2001:

The deputy chief of the Indonesian army, Lieutenant-General Kiki Syahnakri, has warned Indonesia is bracing for a rise of foreign terrorist activity over the next three years, which could involve attempts to recruit Indonesian militants into international terrorism.

"The chances are very high that in the next three years, we will fight terrorism, specifically international terrorism that enters Indonesia," Lieutenant-General Syahnakri said in an interview. "We also received information from America, as well as other parties, of Osama bin Laden's presence in Indonesia."

Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times, September 23, 2001:

Ja'far Umar Thalib is the kind of extremist Muslim that Americans fear most. The 39-year-old Indonesian fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s along with Osama bin Laden ... Ja'far said he met bin Laden in 1987 in Pakistan after both had traveled there to help Islamic rebels in Afghanistan fight invading Soviet troops. At the time, bin Laden did not have the long beard that connotes devotion to Islam. "He still had the jet-set look," Ja'far said, noting bin Laden's family wealth.

"When I met him, he told me he wanted to join the Mujahadeen," Ja'far recalled. "I felt that he was actually empty. He didn't have any knowledge about religion but he had a lot of money." Bin Laden fell under the influence of a "bad sect' that believes in using suicide bombers and opposing legitimate Islamic governments, Ja'far said.

Two months ago, Ja'far said, bin Laden sent an emissary to the Moluccas to invite the Laskar Jihad to join his terrorist network. Ja'far said he refused. "Today is just like old times," Ja'far said. "I don't respect him at all."

Ja'far said it is possible bin Laden was behind the attacks on New York and Washington because they required the kind of financial backing he could have provided. He said it also is possible bin Laden is operating in Indonesia, as Western authorities contend. "I think that's true," Ja'far said.

John McBeth, Far Eastern Economic Review, September 27, 2001:

Last July 17, seven Afghan nationals flew into the strife-torn Moluccan capital of Ambon to a warm greeting from local police officers and a welcoming party of Indonesian Muslim militants. When officials wanted to check their identities by looking at their passports, the Laskar Jihad militants brushed them aside before whisking their mystery guests away. They joined about 200 other Afghans, Pakistanis and Malaysians, whom Western intelligence sources claim remain on the Indonesian island to help the Laskar Jihad in their violent campaign against a cowed Christian population.

Lindsay Murdoch, Sydney Morning Herald, September 28, 2001:

"Mr Al Chaidar, who heads one of 14 factions of the radical Darul Islam movement, told the [Sydney Morning] Herald that bin Laden's organisation had sent more than 1.2 billion rupiah, the equivalent of about $243,000, to fund anti-Christian operations in Indonesia. "Yes, we've got funding and assistance from the Osama bin Laden group since we went helping Afghanistan in the 1980s," Mr Al Chaidar said ...

Mr Al Chaidar was quoted earlier by the Jakarta-based Rakyat Merdeka newspaper as saying that bin Laden's representatives had twice travelled to Indonesia's Maluku islands, where Muslims have been waging holy war against Christians. He was quoted as saying representatives had also visited Indonesia's province of Aceh, where more than 30,000 soldiers and police have launched a brutal operation against separatist rebels. "The relationship between Darul Islam and Osama bin Laden is just undeniable," he said.

Mr Al Chaidar said Darul Islam had maintained an "intensive relationship" with Afghanistan since thousands of its members had gone there to help fight the Russians in the 1980s. "That's why I'm very sure that the relationship between Osama bin Laden and some factions of Darul Islam here is very special."

Herry Mohammad, Irwan Andri Atmanto, Kholis Bahtiar Bakri, and Sujoko, Gatra Magazine, September 29, 2001:

Osama's trusted man, Abu Abdil Aziz, visited Ambon on July. "They approached Laskar Jihad," said Ja'far. "But we refused because we have no experience in handling visa for foreigners," said Ja'far laughingly. Al Chaidar, an Islamic activist, admitted that Osama people had visited Indonesia.

Leslie Lopez, Jay Solomon, Rin Hindryati, The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, October 1, 2001:

"[We] will defend Osama bin Laden and the Islamic government of the Taliban," declares Abu Bakar Baasir, a Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia leader who is wanted by Malaysian authorities but operates openly in Indonesia.

Warren Caragata, Asiaweek, October 5, 2001:

The most immediate threat to the stability of the country may come from Laskar Jihad, Indonesia's best-known radical group. The group's leader, Ja'far Umar Thalib, told Asiaweek that if the government offers more than lip service to the Americans, Megawati "can start counting the days before she is pushed from power."

Ja'far says Laskar's 10,000 warriors would attack Western interests in the event of U.S. retaliation, and that it would target people "with a direct connection to American power." The extent of the attacks would depend on the nature of the US response and religious considerations, he says.

Despite allegations that Laskar is part of bin Laden's terror network, Ja'far says his group refused an offer of help from a bin Laden emissary who visited Indonesia two months ago. "They came to us to ask us to cooperate in a jihad," he says. Ja'far rejected the request because of doubts about the piety of bin Laden, whom he met in Afghanistan when both were fighting the Soviets. "He is very empty about the knowledge of religion," Ja'far says, criticizing bin Laden using suicide bombers, which is against Islam.

Associated Press, Wednesday, October 10, 2001

Today, one group, Darul Islam, said it had links with bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network and Afghanistan's Taliban rulers. "Some factions in Darul Islam have had close contact with the al-Qaida movement and close contact with persons in Afghanistan," said the group's spokesman, Al Chaidar. "They have, several times, invited Osama bin Laden to Indonesia. But Osama himself has not had a chance to go to Indonesia."

Raissa Robles in Manila and Baraddan Kuppusamy in Kuala Lumpur, South China Morning Post, October 11, 2001:

In Indonesia, armed Islamic fundamentalist groups including Laskar Jihad had received money, men and arms from the bin Laden group and its allies, US officials said. Western intelligence sources in Jakarta said several hundred foreign Mujahedeen had been sighted in the religious war in the Maluku islands, and training of Indonesian holy warriors had taken place under al-Qaeda's wing in Pakistan and Indonesia.

Krisnadi Yuliawan, Sigit Indra, and Kholil Bahtiar Bakri, Gatra Magazine, October 12, 2001:

"The church bombing was not the type of terror practiced by Osama movement," said Riza Sihbudi. Al Chaidar, a political observer who is an activist of Darul Islam, also rejected the accusation that Osama bin Laden participated in spreading terror in Indonesia. "What happened is on the contrary that the Islamic movements in Indonesia had been working real hard to meet Osama to request financial assistance," he said.

And yet Al Chaidar believes that several Islamic movements received financial supports from Osama. Certain people in Indonesia managed to get funds from Osama but not for the jihad purpose. "I know that certain party got rich because using the funds from Osama to do business," said Al Chaidar.

I hope this brief information is of use to you.

Yours sincerely,

Geoffrey MG

What evidence links bin Laden to September 11?

2001-10-18T03:56:00.000+08:00

First posted at Krisis Online

"There's not enough evidence of Usama bin Laden's involvement in the attacks on America," the head of Muhammadiya, Mr Syafi'I Maarif told The Jakarta Post (October 9).

So, how much evidence is enough for an international indictment?

Most governments appear to accept that there is more than enough to support the original US indictment of bin Laden for the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa that killed 224 people and injured thousands of others.

Based on that indictment, the United Nations Security Council demanded (Resolution No 1267 of 1999) that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan turn over Usama bin Laden without further delay.

Although there are now almost daily disclosures, worldwide, of new bin Laden-related terrorist plots, the British Parliamentary Paper remains the most comprehensive official document linking bin Laden to '9/11'.

It makes a great deal of use of the evidence and testimony presented at the trial of four bin Laden associates who were convicted on May 29, 2001 for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies.

Incidentally, following those bombings, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi disassociated his regime from bin Laden's group (BBC News, August 23, 1998). More recently and coinciding with reports that the bin Laden-affiliated Fighting Islamic Group has sworn to replace Gaddafi with an Islamic regime by force of arms, Interpol confirmed that Libya has issued a 'red notice' warrant for the arrest of bin Laden on terrorist charges.

The Algerian government also accused bin Laden of financing and arming the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which it alleges is to blame for horrific massacres in Algeria, Arabic News reported (October 9, 1998).

Information is also available about another important trial involving bin Laden?s network. Jordan's military prosecutor general, Col. Mahmoud Obeidat, said 28 Arabs linked to bin Laden's Al Qaida organisation had plotted to bomb Israeli and US targets in the kingdom.

These included tourist sites such as Mount Nebo, where tradition says Moses saw the Promised Land and a Christian settlement along the Jordan River said to be the site where John baptised Jesus.

On September 18, 2000, six of the militants were convicted and sentenced to death by Jordan?s State Security Court.

Bin Laden?s own video taped statement (October 7) says a lot about his '9/11' connection: "God Almighty hit the United States at its most vulnerable spot. He destroyed its greatest buildings. Praise be to God. Here is the United States. It was filled with terror from its north to its south and from its east to its west ... When Almighty God rendered successful a convoy of Muslims, the vanguards of Islam, He allowed them to destroy the United States. I ask God Almighty to elevate their status and grant them Paradise."

What is particularly revealing about this statement is that it praises the very acts - terrorism and suicide ? that senior Moslem religious leaders (including the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and the Ayatollah of Iran) have condemned as "criminal" and un-Islamic.

A hidden history of Usama bin Laden - the Zionist!

2001-10-17T02:44:00.000+08:00

Comment: Once you agree that "Jews control everything", not the least, the entire United States, you can "prove" anything. This article, a parody of that technique, reveals that Usama bin Laden is a "Zionist agent".

Following its publication, one section elicited strong interest: its mention of the claim that 4,000 Israelis/Jews called in sick from their jobs at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11.

When I quoted the original Al-Manar (Lebanon) television report, I was not aware that the story - and one about a trip to NYC on September 11 by Israel's Sharon being cancelled at the last moment - was accepted as fact throughout Indonesia.

A detailed presentation of the allegations is Zionists masterminded attacked on WTC, Pentagon by Abdul Rahman, published in Voice of Islam (October 2001).

Two competent rebuttals of the "4,000 Jews claim are In Certain Quarters, No Doubt by Jefferson Morley (Washington Post, October 14, 2001) and 4,000 Jews, 1 Lie: Tracking an Internet hoax by Bryan Curtis (Slate, October 5, 2001).

As for Sharon's planned visit to NYC on September 11, all the evidence is that anti-Israel groups were publicising a major demonstration to protest his visit to NYC scheduled for September 23.

Following the article's publication I discovered two websites that, seriously, take bin Laden conspiracy theories even further.

The first, Why the Real Name Is 'Osama Bin London', is from LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review. It argues ("since 1996") that Usama bin Laden, "is in fact a creation of US and British intelligence services operating under the doctrine of Zbigniew Brzezinski, and his Trilateral Commission underling Samuel Huntington's theory of the 'Clash of Civilizations'."

The second, Bible Believers' Newsletter, asks: "Have ever wondered why the Middle East was divided as it is, why Pakistan and the Islamic members of the Russian Federation and the Balkan's are so situated, or why Rockefeller and the CIA created Indonesia, Islam's most populous nation?"

It answers "these are all pawns in the game of Satan's Synagogue which in the nineteenth century decided that World War III should be between the Political Zionists and Islam" and exposes the ruler of "Satan's Synagogue" as "the 'Black' Pope, Count Hans Kolvenbach, the Jesuit's General."

A hidden history of Usama bin Laden

There is general agreement that the suicide attacks on United States on 11 September 2001, were the result of a brutal conspiracy to force a war between Islam and the rest of the world. The hijacking of four US domestic jetliners, the murder of passengers - some by their throats crudely slit with box cutters - the crashing of the planes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, all designed to maximize the lose of life, has inflamed public opinion in the USA and throughout its allies in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia.

There has been great efforts made by national leaders and global media to accuse "Moslem fanatics" for the both the attack and the conspiracy.

"The investigation of the CIA and FBI has concluded that the attackers were Muslims," the Islam Review reported. "Nineteen educated Muslims committed suicide and killed thousands of innocent men, women and children in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the four planes they flew on that black Tuesday. Those nineteen Muslims did that because of their deep conviction that they will go directly to paradise to enjoy sensual pleasures, and because of their terrible hatred for America; a country populated by a Christian majority."

As Dr Azzam Tamimi, a researcher at the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London, explained clearly in The Jakarta Post (September 25, 2001): "The Israelis and their Zionist propaganda worldwide immediately seized on the pain and sorrow of the American people by agitating against Islam and the Muslims. Former as well as present political figures were given ample space in the media to tell the world of their expertise regarding 'Islamic terrorism'."

Strangely, every Moslem country - including Iran, Syria, Sudan and, yes, Iraq - immediately condemned the attacks as "criminal" and un-Islamic.

Consider the verdict by the Grand Mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia:

"That these matters that have taken place in the United States and whatever else is of their nature of plane hijackings and taking people hostage or killing innocent people, without a just cause, this is nothing but a manifestation of injustice, oppression and tyranny, which the Islamic Shari'ah does not sanction or accept, rather it is expressly forbidden and it is amongst the greatest of sins.

"That the Muslim who learns the details of his religion, and who acts upon the Book of Allaah and the Sunnah of His Prophet (sallallaahu alaihi wasallam) does not allow himself to fall into the likes of these actions, due to what they contain of exposing oneself to the wrath of Allaah, and then what results from them of harms and corruption (upon the earth).

"It is obligatory upon the Scholars of the Muslim Ummah that they explain the truth concerning the likes of these affairs (ie terrorist attacks) and that they make clear to the world at large that the Shari'ah of Allaah and the religion of Islam does not sanction these types of actions, ever."

How can it be that even the most respected religious leader of the Sunni Moslem world as well as the Ayatollah of Shiite Iran should condemn, unequivocally, the attacks, and yet, followers of Islam still stand accused.

The leader?

One group stands out: Al Qaida (The Base). It has been clearly fingered by the Americans - and strangely accepts credit for numerous terrorist acts.

Its leader, Usama bin Laden, speaks one minute like a religious teacher and the next like a sly prison inmate ? letting out small hints of crimes without stating the obvious ? negotiating the value of every phrase.

He claims he knows every terrorist who?d served time in Afghanistan ? whether he does or not, the suspects in question are collared by their enemies, for sure.

One of the heirs to a $6 billion construction business that has connections at the highest level in Saudia Arabia, the USA and the UK (see further in this expose), he was known in his younger days as a hard-drinking, fornicating playboy, protected by the Saudi secret police. Then he went to Afghanistan and was trained by the CIA and Pakistanis to enjoy another side of life - killing and big-noting.

Here?s how he admitted to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks ? remember that his video tape (October 7, 2001) coincidentally was screened immediately the US bombing campaign of Taliban bases commenced in Afghanistan: "God Almighty hit the United States at its most vulnerable spot. He destroyed its greatest buildings. Praise be to God. Here is the United States. It was filled with terror from its north to its south and from its east to its west ... When Almighty God rendered successful a convoy of Muslims, the vanguards of Islam, He allowed them to destroy the United States. I ask God Almighty to elevate their status and grant them Paradise."

He has a well-trained sense of the dramatic ? choosing his words so that any enemy hearing think they feel the chill of an eternal war with a bitter enemy: "Any effort directed against America and the Jews yields positive and direct results - Allah willing. It is far better for anyone to kill a single American soldier than to squander his efforts on other activities." he boasted to American ABC reporter, John Miller, in May 1998.

In the same interview he confirmed the bombing of Riyadh and in Khobar in Saudi Arabia as "a clear and powerful signal to the governments of the countries which willingly participated in the aggression against our countries and our lives and our sacrosanct symbols" and said that "among the young men who responded to our call are Khalid Al Said and Abdul Azeez Al... and Mahmud Al Hadi and Muslih Al Shamrani. We hope Allah receives them as holy martyrs."

On Ramzi Yousef, one of the original World Trade Center conspirators: "He is a Muslim who wanted to protect his religion jealously from the oppression practiced by America against Islam. He acted with zeal to make the Americans understand that their government was attacking Muslims in order to safeguard the American-Jewish interests."

On Wali Khan Amin Shah, captured in Manila and accused of planning an assassination attempt on President Clinton: "Wali Khan is a Muslim young man; his nickname in Afghanistan was the Lion. He was among the most courageous Muslim young men. He was a close friend and we used to fight from the same trenches in Afghanistan ? As to what you said about him working for me, I have nothing to say. We are all together in this; we all work for Allah and our reward comes from him. As to what you said about the attempt to assassinate President Clinton, it is not surprising."

Describing the situation when his men took down American forces in Somalia: "They went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war ?They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier ? He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging."

In an interview with ABC News, USA (December 22, 1998) he continued to boast of his command of terrorism:

Did you bomb the two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? "We, in the World Islamic Front for jihad against Jews and Crusaders, have, by the grace of God Almighty, issued a crystal clear fatwa calling on the Nation to carry on jihad aimed at liberating Islamic holy sites, and the Ancient House (The Holy Ka'aba), and Al-Aksa Mosque and all Islamic lands ? If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans, in order to liberate Al-Aksa Mosque, and the Holy Ka'aba, is considered a crime, let history be a witness that I am a criminal."

How can the deaths of so many Africans be justified? "Suppose that the Americans have attacked an Islamic country and kidnapped my children ? to use as a shield, and then started to kill Muslims ? According to Islamic jurisprudence if we abstain from firing on the Americans lest we should kill these Muslims (used as shields), the harm that could befall Muslims at large, who are being attacked, outweighs the good of saving the lives of these Muslims used as a shields. This means that in a case like this, when it becomes apparent that it would be impossible to repel these Americans without assaulting them, even if this involved the killing of Muslims, this is permissible under Islam."

What?s the benefit?

Taking on the Americans, their allies and their controllers - the Zionists - is like declaring World War III.

"If the United States invades Iraq, bombs Hezbollah and conducts strikes on Syria and Iran, this war will metastasize into a two-continent war from Algeria to Afghanistan, with the United States and Israel alone against a half-dozen Arab and Muslim states. The first casualties would be the moderate Arabs ? Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states ? who were our Cold War and Gulf War allies," the editorial writer of the Zionist Occupied Government of America (ZOG), wrote.

So who is bid Laden fronting for?

"The war Netanyahu and the NeoCons want, with the United States ? fighting all of the radical Islamic states, is the war bin Laden wants, the war his murderers hoped to ignite when they sent those airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," ZOG explained.

Pakistan Taliban confidante, Sheik Ul-Hadith, similarly told Indonesia?s Tempo magazine that he believed that "it was the Jewish power brokers inside the US who did it" particularly as the "Muslim people do not have the capability or advanced technology to pull off such an amazing feat." (October 15, 2001).

However the idea that Muslims are too stupid to be effective and innovative terrorists is well contested by A H Amin. Writing in the Pakistan News (September 18) he argued there were only five essentials for any party to execute such a grand attack: huge financial potential to breakthrough security of the US airports; outstanding planning capability, accurate intelligence, hi-tech potential and the motivation ? the last being the key.

If bin Laden is motivating Arab and other Al Qaida members to the service of the Zionists, how has he managed such cunning subterfuge?

Adian Husaini, secretary of the Indonesian Committee for World Muslims' Solidarity (KISDI), brilliantly described this tactic in an article published prominently in the Jakarta Post (January 10, 2001)

"Creating the image of an oppressed group is something that Israel Zionist leaders usually did par excellence. The Zionist leaders allowed the massacre of Jews in Europe to create the image of an oppressed group, which benefited in the long run.

"In his book, A Hidden History of Zionism, Ralph Schoenman revealed evidence of collaboration between Zionist leaders and Nazi leaders. The Zionist leaders deliberately let the holocaust, the massacre of 6 million German Jews, take place, and used the tragedy as their eternal campaign to elicit world sympathy. They used the campaign to slaughter and massacre the Palestinians, and take over their land.

"Many of the Indonesian Muslim activists remember vividly how some military leaders in the past skilfully engineered stigmatization and the creation of situations where Muslims were marginalized and treated as extremists.

"Given this history, it is understandable that they now question whether the various recent incidents - which again stigmatized Muslims - were yet another campaign by a certain party to marginalize Muslims."

When did Osama bin Laden become a Zionist agent?

It may be news to many that his journey as a Zionist terrorist did not start in 1990-1991. Any honest biographical description of bin Laden should not overlook his activities in the 1980s when he was deputed by the CIA to Afghanistan to finance and oversee the resistance to the Soviets.

"He was groomed as a theocratic-terrorist by the U.S. openly. In fact, there is lot of weight in the thesis that the modern Jehadi-Islam is a byproduct of intrigues by the West to keep the Islamic world under its suzerainty, devoid of any kind of democratic processes. And also to use it as a whipping boy occasionally whenever attention needs to be diverted from issues raised by anti-globalisation campaigners," wrote Shamsul Islam in The Hindu, India (September 27, 2001).

In Zionists Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, outlined the critical linkages between the Zionist alliance and the `monster' which it created:

"Among these thousands of foreign recruits was a young Saudi student, Osama Bin Laden, the son of a Yemeni construction magnate, Mohammed Bin Laden, who was a close friend of the late King Faisal and whose company had become fabulously wealthy on the contracts to renovate and expand the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina.

"The ISI had long wanted Prince Turki Bin Faisal, the head of Istakhbarat, the Saudi Intelligence Service, to provide a Royal Prince to lead the Saudi contingent in order to show Muslims the commitment of the Royal Family to the jehad. Only poorer Saudis, students, taxi drivers and Bedouin tribesmen had so far arrived to fight. But no pampered Saudi prince was ready to rough it out in the Afghan mountains.

"Bin Laden, although not a royal, was close enough to the royals and certainly wealthy enough to lead the Saudi contingent so when Bin Laden decided to join up, his family responded enthusiastically.

"He first traveled to Peshawar in 1980 and met the Mujaheddin leaders, returning frequently with Saudi donations for the cause until 1982, when he decided to settle in Peshawar. In 1986, he helped build the Khost tunnel complex, which the CIA was funding as a major arms storage depot, training facility and medical center for the Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains close to the Pakistan border."

The book also demolishes the CIA claim that after 1990 there were no contacts with bin Laden. Surprisingly, just a few weeks before the US Embassy bombings in Africa, the book tells us, "the Saudi conundrum was even worse. In July 1998 Prince Turki had visited Kandahar and a few weeks later 400 new pick-up trucks arrived in Kandahar for the Taliban, still bearing their Dubai license plates."

Likewise, the infrastructure paid for by CIA dollars was also well-utilized by bin Laden and his organizations. According to the New York Times (August 24, 1998), his "camps, hidden in the steep mountains and mile-deep valleys of Paktia province [represent] the last word in NATO engineering techniques ? Some of the same warriors who fought the Soviets with the CIA?s help are now fighting under Mr bin Laden?s banner."

How far can we explore this conspiracy?

"Let's imagine that bin Laden et al are still CIA employees. Could it be that the missile attack was not intended to destroy bin Laden or his supporters? Could it be the attack was intended to build respect for bin Laden among Muslims who oppose the U.S. government? To lend him credibility as a serious opponent of U.S. domination? Is his new job to siphon Arab anger into regressive fundamentalist movements and thereby destabilize secular Muslim societies which might resist U.S. control?" asked Jared Israel, editor of the emperors-clothes.com, following the African bombing crisis.

Most commentators agree that bin Laden and Al Qaida could not currently survive without having the closest support of the Talibam, the de facto rulers of much of Afghanistan whose outside links are equally dubious.

"The Taliban in Afghanistan reflect the danger of Muslims playing pawns in the hands of others, especially anti-Muslim forces. The product of British and American intrigue, the Taliban have now assumed a life of their own but are still susceptible to manipulation by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two regimes beholden to the US," the Muslimedia detailed (September 16-30, 1998).

Leaving nothing to chance, the Zionists are also directly involved in managing bin Laden and his motley crew in Afghanistan. "Mossad has been infiltrating Afghan-born Jews into Kabul," Gordon Thomas, author and intelligence expert, exposes on his website. "They are at the cutting edge of intelligence gathering - their task equated as being as dangerous as the Mossad agents who operate deep within Saddam Hussein's regime."

Beware red herrings

The attack on the World Trade center in New York, will become a defining moment in this history of the world. It may already mean that the Zionist New World Order is on its express run.

The enemy is very shrewd. A favourite trick of the Zionists is to place news and opinion that appears correct but can be easily dismissed by their global media.

Take the following example:

Lebanon's Al-Manar Television broadcast a news report on September 17 that 4,000 Israelis called in sick from their jobs at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11.

This item spread quickly around the world and even the Russian Communist Party placed the item on its Pravda website on September 21.

However, the Zionists quickly countered with the true facts ? Jews had attended work that day - a clever maneuver that forced the Russians to remove the item within hours, stating they had made a "great and foolish mistake."

A big fish had been caught with a simple bait.

The Traitor Uncovered

Usama bin Laden, the Zionist agent, is up to only one thing ? betrayal.

"From the very beginning of history, as told many times in the Holy Books, be it the Bible or Koran, the Jews have repeated their betrayals," W. Pienandoro of Bogor, West Java, clearly revealed in The Jakarta Post (November 2, 2000).

But as a Zionist betrayer, bin Laden must be uncovered in all his vile manners of conduct:

The pornographer

As it is well known that Jews "dominate the production and distribution of porn" it comes as no surprise that Osama bin Laden is working with pornographers to hide "encrypted blueprints of the next terrorist attack against the United States or its allies" in the "X-rated pictures on several pornographic Web sites," Jack Kelly exposed in USA Today.

The corrupter

"Immoral Jews promoting alcohol abuse pervert those who allow them to live in their land and play them for fools ... Muslims and western nations using reasoning and hindsight should be enraged by this example of wicked deeds of Jewish spies," the Christian Legal Reformation Club reminds us. And how well Usama bin Laden prepared his dupes in the final days before the suicide attacks in the USA: "in Shuckums Oyster Pub and Seafood Grill ? Al-Shehri drank rum and coke; Atta knocked back five Stolichnaya vodkas with orange juice," The Guardian, UK reported.

The drug dealer

When we understand that "Jews are more and more taking over drug trafficking in the world" it comes as no surprise that Usama bin Laden and the Taliban have become synonymous with opium growing and drug trafficking.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1333 (2000) demanded that the Taliban halt all illegal drugs activities "the proceeds of which finance Taliban terrorist activities."

In 1999 Taliban-controlled Afghanistan produced a bumper crop of 4,600 tons of opium and that this has been verified by a number of sources including the United Nations Drug Control Program as well as in a multitude of press stories. The 2000 harvest was close to 3,300 tons.

The 2001 crop was promising to be just as big ? and possibly flooding the market and lowering street prices ? when Mullah Omar of the Taliban ordered a ban on poppy cultivation in July 2000 and the destruction of remaining stocks ? after receiving $43 million in cash in May from none less than the United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell!

The financial manipulator

A further, significant indicator, is money. As Mahathir, the long-term Prime Minister of Malaysia, an Islamic country in South East Asia, memorably wrote, "the Jews ? are not merely hook nosed, but understand money instinctively."

The Russian Communist Party?s newspaper, Pravda, reported this year that bin Laden had "granted to the Taleban over 100 million dollars", much of which was "transferred by companies partly or completely belonging to bin Laden"

That is because he is a rich man. Born into great wealth, he is believed to have inherited as much as $300 million when his father mysteriously died.

The Paris-based newspaper Al Watan Al Arabi reported that bin Laden operates through holding companies in Luxembourg and Amsterdam; that he pays people unconnected to his movement to act as front men; and that he handles the multibillion-dollar opium earnings of his hosts in the Taliban movement, who control Afghanistan.

According to the Washington Post (August 28, 2001) " he also maintains a network of legitimate businesses, including a European fertilizer wholesaler called Wadi al-Aqiq and a Sudanese road contracting firm called Al-Hiraj, plus banks, venture capital firms and export-import ventures."

However, the bin Ladens's business connections go further ? right to the top of the White House and an American dynasty. On June 4, 1992, the Houston Chronicle reported:

"Federal authorities are investigating the activities of a Houston businessman - a past investor in companies controlled by a son of President Bush - who has been accused of illegally representing Saudi interests in the United States. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network - known as FinCEN - and the FBI are reviewing accusations that entrepreneur James R. Bath guided money to Houston from Saudi investors who wanted to influence U.S. policy under the Reagan and Bush administrations, sources close to the investigations say. FinCEN, a division of the U.S. Department of Treasury, investigates money laundering ?

"In sworn depositions, Bath said he represented four prominent Saudis as a trustee [one of whom was Saudi Sheik Salem M. Binladen and that he would use his name on their investments. In return, he said, he would receive a 5 percent interest in their deals. Tax documents and personal financial records show that Bath personally had a 5 percent interest in Arbusto 79 Ltd., and Arbusto 80 Ltd., limited partnerships controlled by George W. Bush, President Bush's eldest son ?

"George W. Bush's company, Bush Exploration Co., general partner in the limited partnerships, went through several mergers, eventually evolving into Harken Energy Corp., a suburban Dallas-based company. Bush, known informally as George Jr., is a shareholder and director of Harken, which has been granted lucrative offshore drilling rights off the coast of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. One of the top shareholders of Harken, a public company, is Saudi businessman Abdullah Taha Bakhsh."

According to a 1976 trust agreement, drawn shortly after Bush was appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Sheik Salem M. Binladen appointed Bath as his business representative in Houston. Binladen, along with his brothers, owns Binladen Brothers Construction, one of the largest construction companies in the Middle East.

"Bath said he was the sole director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd., a company that a court document shows is owned by Khaled bin Mahfouz. Bin Mahfouz had been a major shareholder in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a banking empire that has been accused of money laundering and of using Mideast oil money to seek ties to political leaders in several countries. Mahfouz and his family own the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia.

"In 1990, Bath bought the Express Auto Park garage at Hobby Airport for $8.4 million, which included a $1.4 million loan provided by Mahfouz, according to transaction documents. Bath received a 5 percent interest in the companies that own and operate Houston Gulf Airport after purchasing it on behalf of Binladen in 1977. After Binladen died in 1988, his interests in the airport were taken over by Mahfouz, according to court documents ..."

Are these connections the mark of a man fighting the "Crusader-Jewish" alliance or an agent of them? But, jump ahead nine years ... until September 27, 2001 ? just 16 days after the WTC and DC attacks.

On this day the Wall Street Journal reports that the Saudi Binladin Group, the conglomerate owned by Osama bin Laden's family, has invested in " the Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington merchant bank specializing in buyouts of defense and aerospace companies."

With a position as well as a consultant, George Bush Sr. is now closely linked to the bin Ladens. As are other powerhouse U.S. politicians. Carlyle?s chairman and managing director is former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci (college roommate of the current Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld). Partners include former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Fred Malek and ? George Soros ? the very top Jew who caused Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir to defend his nation?s currency in 1997.

"The Jews are not happy to see the Muslims progress. The Jews robbed the Palestinians of everything, but in Malaysia they could not do so, hence they do this, depress the ringgit," Mahathir said of Soros ? as quoted by the New York Times (October 16, 1997).

Is this "arms length" or will the Bushes and bin Ladens and their American and Jewish associates profit handsomely from the arms industry during the so-called "war against terrorism"?

The targets

If bin Laden is dealt with quickly by the Moslem people, at least four great causes will benefit immediately: Palestine, Afghanistan, economic stability and military parity.

Palestine

"There has been much debate over how much the failure of the Israel-PA 'peace process' has to do with the terrorist attacks on the US," Sam Schulman commented in the Jewish World Review. The answer is "Everything"!

The bin Laden task is to assist the Zionist leaders to derail the true peace settlement proposed by Chairman Arafat and the Palestine Authority.

"Pushing back the assault of the non-believers can only be achieved through jihad. Those who sympathize with the infidels, such as the PLO in Palestine, or the so-called Palestinian Authority, have ? laid down their arms and abandoned what is called "violence" these days and ran after peaceful bargaining ?" is bin Laden?s calculated vitriol to excite undisciplined masses to disrupt the peace process.

Afghanistan

Lt Col (Retd) Muhammad Zaman Malik, recently examined the Zionist interest in Afghanistan in Pakistan?s Defence Journal.

He told of how "huge amount of wealth could not persuade" the Sultan of Turkey "to sell Palestine to the Jews" so the Zionists conspired to start the first World War to get the British on side, then the second World War to get the Americans on side.

"This kind of hypocrisy was seeded by CIA of the American Jews in Afghanistan, from 1980 onwards, which has flourished to the detriment of Islam and the followers of Islam," he wrote.

Enter Usama bin Laden

The UN Ambassador of the anti-bin Laden, anti-Taliban, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan reported last year that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, in alliance with the Taliban and Usama Bin Laden, subjected the Afghan people to persecution by terrorists from "South-East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East."

And bin Laden, the master manipulator, happily describes how false praise gives him control of the head of the Taliban, his son-in-law, the Amir: "The Commander of the Faithful is the only legitimate ruler of the state of Afghanistan, where God, Praise and Glory be to him, has guided the steps of Muslims so that an Islamic country can be ruled by God's Shari'a for the first time in tens of years."

In fact, Bin Laden and his Taliban stooges have provoked a war designed to destroy Afghanistan and threaten the Moslem hegemony in oil rich Central Asia.

Economic destruction

Another factor is the economic stability of Moslem countries. We have quoted Malaysia's Mahathir before and his remarks about Jews hating Moslem countries are supported throughout the world.

"Most anything bad that happens, prices going up, whatever, this can usually be attributed to the IMF and the World Bank, which are synonymous with the United States. And who controls the United States? The Jews do," the Jamanti-I-Islami political party in Pakistan, added.

Moslem groups duped into supporting the Zionist bin Laden, Al Qaida and Taliban will witness their country?s economies wrecked over night.

And not by sanctions or war ? just by panic from investors and traders who have now been conditioned to fear Islam because of the Al Qaida's Master Terrorism script, produced by the Zionists, who have much practice with such disaster movies as they also control Hollywood.

Military control

The final factor is the Zionist dream of bringing the eastern powers under their global control. "The expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance to the East should be started with those countries, which took the side of the USA and Europe in the struggle against terrorism. These countries are Russia, India, China and Japan," Israeli Foreign Minister Peres told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter as quoted by the Russian communist Pravda newspaper (October 12, 2001).

"The global defense system must adjust itself for that struggle. NATO?s huge resources could be used for the struggle with modern dangers instead of the struggle with yesterday?s enemies," Peres stated, adding that the new danger "had no limits."

Bin Laden is a master agent, indeed!

Indonesia needs to clarify its stance on Afghanistan

2001-10-16T02:15:00.000+08:00

First published in The Jakarta Post, OpEd, 16 October 2001

Despite the goodwill generated by President Megawati Soekarnoputri's timely visits to the USA and Japan to promote investment and aid, global media attention is now focusing on domestic demands for Indonesia to break relations with the USA and to back the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with financial and military assistance.

There is considerable disquiet that senior religious authorities have couched the Afghanistan situation in religious terms and that politicians have argued that the motivations behind the terror attacks on the United States are morally valid.

As a result, threats against American and other foreign residents and tourists and diplomatic, cultural and business interests are being taken seriously by governments and individuals alike, at great cost to Indonesia?s trade and development opportunities.

This is all very confusing to business partners, investors and aid facilitators who assumed that Indonesia?s well established foreign policy and international commitments reflected its national interests and the sentiments of its citizens.

According to public record, four consecutive Indonesian presidents and their administrations have instituted or maintained specific diplomatic policies aligning Indonesia with anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

Decisions of the United Nations Security Council also appear to further bind Indonesia to supporting action against the Taliban, to banning any contact with Usama bin Laden, to criminalize any financial assistance to terrorists, to suppress any recruitment of members for terrorists and to eliminate the supply of weapons to terrorists.

Does Indonesia support the Taliban regime in Afghanistan?

On the contrary, Indonesia recognizes the Taliban-s enemy - the Islamic State of Afghanistan under its president, Prof Burhanuddin Rabbani - as the lawful government of Afghanistan. Just check the embassy [Jl Dr Kusumaatmaja SH, No 15, Menteng, Jakarta. Tel 314-3169].

Is the government recognized by Indonesia active inside Afghanistan?

President Rabbani's army, known internationally as the "Northern Alliance", is unleashing a major action against the Taliban and may soon capture Kabul. It has agreed to participate in an interim administration through a broad Supreme National Unity Council whose first task will be to call a meeting of the traditional Loya Jirga tribal council.

Who does the United Nations recognize as the government of Afghanistan?

The UN only recognizes Rabbani's Islamic State of Afghanistan. Only one UN member - Pakistan - recognizes the Taliban.

Who does the Organization of the Islamic Conference recognize?

No one. Afghanistan?s seat at the Conference has been empty since 1996

Which outside power is currently accused of causing grief to the Afghanistan people?

The Ambassador of the Islamic State of Afghanistan reported to the UN that Pakistan?s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, in alliance with the Taliban and Usama Bin Laden, had recruited extremists "from all corners of the world" to bases in Afghanistan. He said the Afghan people had been persecuted by terrorists from "South-East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East". Pakistan has since withdrawn its diplomats from Afghanistan, supported US military action against the Taliban and sacked the head of its Inter-Services Intelligence.

Have accusations against Taliban and Bin Laden been made too hastily? Shouldn?t the UN deal with this matter?

Commenting on the US military action in Afghanistan, UN secretary general Kofi Annan referred to the "inherent right of individual or collective self-defence" in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. "The States concerned have set their current military action in Afghanistan in that context," he said.

This is the result of a series of binding resolutions of the UN Security Council. As a member of the UN, Indonesia has Charter obligations to "accept and carry out" the decisions of the Security Council. Indonesia represented Asia on the Security Council in 1995-1996.

Importantly, the first resolution, 1076 (1996) denounced the "discrimination against girls and women and other violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Afghanistan."

Resolution 1189 (1998) called on all states to cooperate to apprehend those who bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and to "bring them swiftly to justice". No 1214 (1998) demanded the Taliban "stop providing sanctuary and training for international terrorists and their organizations."

Following bin Laden's indictment for the African bombings, No 1267 (1999) demanded the Taliban "turn over Usama bin Laden without further delay." It ruled that all countries must freeze Taliban funds.

Resolution 1333 (2000) ruled all countries must stop the supply of arms to the Taliban and military training of Taliban forces and must freeze funds and assets of Usama bin Laden and the Al-Qaida organization. It demanded that the Taliban halt all illegal drugs activities "the proceeds of which finance Taliban terrorist activities".

Resolution 1368 (2001) called on all countries to "bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors" of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and stressed that "those responsible for aiding, supporting or harbouring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these acts will be held accountable."

Finally, resolution 1373 (2001) reaffirming that acts of international terrorism "constitute a threat to international peace and security" and "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence" binds all countries to criminalize the funding of terrorists, to suppress all "recruitment of members of terrorist groups" and to eliminate "the supply of weapons to terrorists".

There is an urgent need for Indonesia to clearly articulate and explain its diplomatic position and international legal obligations.