Daily Archives: October 20, 2009

Karzai agrees to Nov. 7 runoff in Afghanistan

Karzai agrees to Nov. 7 runoff in Afghanistan
By Sabrina Tavernise and Sharon Otterman, New York Times, October 20, 2009

Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai conceded Tuesday that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation’s disputed presidential election, and agreed to hold a runoff election with his top challenger on Nov. 7.

Flanked at a news conference in Kabul by Senator John Kerry, the head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Kai Eide, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai said he would accept the findings of an international audit that stripped him of nearly one-third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

“I call upon this country to take this as an opportunity to move this country forward and participate in this new round of elections,” Mr. Karzai said, according to the English translation of his remarks, adding that he was grateful to the international community for its help. [continued…]

Afghanistan: anatomy of an election disaster
By Jon Boone, The Guardian, October 20, 2009

For a couple of days last month at a cavernous warehouse in the bleak industrial zone of western Kabul, diplomats, UN officials and election monitors gathered to watch hundreds of ballot boxes being opened and turned out on to the floor.

The colleagues from Kabul’s western missions rolled their eyes at each other as they witnessed not a chaotic assortment of marked and folded voting forms tumble out, but entire blocks of ballot papers that had not even been torn off from their book stubs. Others contained surprisingly uniform numbers of ballots all signed in the same hand and with the same pen, and overwhelmingly in favour of a single candidate.

One box did not contain any ballot papers at all; just a results slip with the final vote score showing a massive win for Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president many believe was all too aware of attempts to steal the country’s second ever democratic attempt to choose a leader.

Everyone present could see a huge amount of cheating had taken place on 20 August, albeit rather ineptly. “Some of us joked with each other whether the Afghans, after all the billions that have gone in to trying to create a functioning government, also need to be taught how to rig an election properly,” said one of the officials present, deeply cynical after weeks of revelations about Afghanistan’s disastrous election.

It was a tawdry end to what had at times been an exciting, even uplifting, election campaign. [continued…]

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Israeli cabinet to appoint team to fight Goldstone report

Israeli cabinet to appoint team to fight Goldstone report
By Roni Sofer, Ynet, October 20, 2009

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday prevented a debate by the Security Cabinet on the possible establishment of an inquiry committee on Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

Barak said he believed such a committee would do more damage to Israel in the international arena, and commended the IDF once again for its conduct in the operation.

However the Cabinet did decide to establish a team to fight the Goldstone report, which claims Israel committed war crimes during Cast Lead, including its international and legal manifestations.

The team will be under the Foreign Ministry’s jurisdiction, and will involve officials from other ministries if need be. Its main goal is to prepare for a possible debate on the report by the UN Security Council in December. [continued…]

Goldstone to U.S. rabbis: Lieberman doesn’t want Mideast peace talks
Haaretz, October 20, 2009

The author of a damning report on Israel’s winter offensive against Hamas in Gaza, Richard Goldstone, has said that Foreign Minster Avigdor Lieberman does not want there to be an Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Goldstone, a South African Jurist, made the claim in a conference call on Sunday with 150 U.S. rabbis from left-leaning organizations. He was speaking in reference to an Israeli assertion that the report would harm peace talks.

“That just is a shallow, I believe, false allegation,” he said. “What peace process are they talking about? There isn’t one. The Israeli foreign minister doesn’t want one at all.” [continued…]

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Israel ranks 93rd in Press Freedom Index 2009

Israel ranks 93rd in Press Freedom Index 2009
Reporters Without Frontiers, October 20, 2009

Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s military offensive against the Gaza Strip, had an impact on the press. As regards its internal situation, Israel sank 47 places in the index to 93rd position. This nose-dive means it has lost its place at the head of the Middle Eastern countries, falling behind Kuwait (60th), United Arab Emirates (86th) and Lebanon (61st).

Israel has begun to use the same methods internally as it does outside its own territory. Reporters Without Borders registered five arrests of journalists, some of them completely illegal, and three cases of imprisonment. The military censorship applied to all the media is also posing a threat to journalists.

As regards its extraterritorial actions, Israel was ranked 150th. The toll of the war was very heavy. Around 20 journalists in the Gaza Strip were injured by the Israeli military forces and three were killed while covering the offensive. [continued…]

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Why liberals kill

Why liberals kill
By Thaddeus Russell, The Daily Beast, October 17, 2009

The left may be pressuring President Obama to exit Afghanistan. But their heroes—from FDR to JFK—promoted U.S. involvement in more wars than all modern GOP presidents combined.

Should President Barack Obama continue his escalation of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it will be the liberal thing to do.

What too few Americans realize—especially the president’s anti-war supporters, who accuse him of betraying liberal or “progressive” values—is that if he accedes to General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan and intensifies the drone attacks in Pakistan, he will follow squarely in the footsteps of the great liberal statesmen he has cited as his role models. Though opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cheered loudly when Obama spoke reverentially in his campaign speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy, those heroes of the president promoted and oversaw U.S. involvement in wars that killed, by great magnitudes, more Americans and foreign civilians than all the modern Republican military operations combined. [continued…]

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Saudi-Iranian hostility hits boiling point

Saudi-Iranian hostility hits boiling point
By M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, October 21, 2009

Saudi Arabia has two great worries over Iran. First, that Obama is pressing ahead with the normalization process with Tehran – a “thaw” was visible at the Geneva talks on October 1- and Tehran has begun responding to US overtures. The worst Saudi nightmare is coming true.

King Abdullah, who had refused to visit Damascus, landed there two weeks ago on a three-day visit in a desperate attempt to bring Syria into the Arab fold and to “isolate” Iran. Riyadh is worried that Iran’s status as a regional power will get a massive boost if the normalization process with the US advances, and that can only be at the cost of Saudi Arabia’s pre-eminence in the region. Riyadh helplessly watches a beeline of other Persian Gulf states reaching out to Tehran for accommodation.

In other words, Riyadh has a vested interest, which is no less than Israel’s, to disrupt the US-Iran nuclear talks. [continued…]

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Election law stalls in Iraqi parliament

Election law stalls in Iraqi parliament
By Anthony Shadid and Nada Bakri, Washington Post, October 20, 2009

The Iraqi parliament failed for a second time Monday to vote on an election law crucial for organizing elections in January that will choose a new parliament and serve as a milestone in American plans to withdraw combat troops from the country.

As is often the case in Iraq, deadlines come and go. But election officials face a logistical challenge ahead of the Jan. 16 vote, the first national election since 2005. They say they need the law passed now to give them roughly three months to prepare for the vote, although they could gain a week or two if the election is delayed. But after that, parliament’s term expires, throwing Iraq’s nascent political system into an unconstitutional limbo, just months before the U.S. military wants to begin withdrawing troops in earnest.

“If they don’t pass a new law, a curse is going to fall on the political parties,” warned Safia Sahhal, a secular lawmaker. “Why? Because this is what Iraqis want.” [continued…]

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Kurdish rebels surrender as Turkey reaches out

Kurdish rebels surrender as Turkey reaches out
By Nicholas Birch, Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2009

In the first concrete sign that months of efforts by Turkey’s government to end a 25-year Kurdish insurgency could bear fruit, eight Kurdish rebels crossed over the border from Iraq on Monday to give themselves up.

Accompanied by 26 Kurdish villagers who fled Turkey more than a decade ago, the members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, were detained by police and taken in for questioning by Turkish prosecutors.

Though not the first time such a gesture has been made, it comes months into what Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described as his government’s “democratic opening” to Turkey’s Kurdish population, who make up about a fifth of Turkey’s 70 million inhabitants. The PKK has fought a guerrilla war aimed at separating Kurdish areas from the rest of Turkey. Tens of thousands of people, mostly Kurds, have been killed since the fighting began in 1984. [continued…]

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Eavesdropping sparks fresh border tension between Lebanon and Israel

Eavesdropping sparks fresh border tension
By Mitchell Prothero, The National, October 20, 2009

Hizbollah’s discovery of at least three eavesdropping devices planted in southern Lebanon by the Israeli military last weekend has inflamed an already tense border situation as the Lebanese armed forces fired anti-aircraft weapons at unmanned Israeli drones sent to survey the situation.

The situation began in the border village of Houla, a Hizbollah stronghold, on Sunday night, when, according to a statement by Hizbollah’s military wing, the Islamic Resistance discovered devices planted underground by Israel to spy on the group’s internal communications. One of those devices exploded on Sunday night.

“The Islamic Resistance has discovered a spying device installed by the Israeli enemy on a cable between the villages of Mays and Jebel after the 2006 war,” the Lebanese militant faction said in a statement. [continued…]

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