Category Archives: Issues

Judge faults freezing of assets in terror case

Judge faults freezing of assets in terror case
By Eric Lichtblau, New York Times, August 20, 2009

In a ruling that threw into doubt one of the government’s main counterterrorism tools, a federal judge said the Treasury Department acted unconstitutionally three years ago when it froze the assets of an Ohio charity suspected of aiding terrorists.

The ruling challenged a key tactic used by the government under an emergency executive order signed by President George W. Bush two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. If upheld, the ruling could severely undercut the government’s authority and ultimately require it to get a warrant and submit to court review in moving against charities.

In the last eight years, the Treasury Department has used its broadened authority to freeze tens of millions of dollars in assets held by eight charities within the United States and hundreds of other groups and individuals outside this country, all without warrants and court approval.

The ruling was issued late Tuesday by James G. Carr, the chief federal judge in northern Ohio. Judge Carr set a hearing in September to determine how to correct what he said were constitutional flaws in the government’s case. [continued…]

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Netanyahu’s defiance of US resonates at home

Netanyahu’s defiance of US resonates at home
By Howard Schneider, Washington Post, August 19, 2009

For five months, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been fending off U.S. pressure to halt the expansion of West Bank settlements. Now he is reaping dividends for his defiance.

Although Israeli leaders have historically been reluctant to publicly break with the United States for fear of paying a price in domestic support, polls show that Netanyahu’s strategy is working. And that means that after months of diplomacy, the quick breakthrough that President Obama had hoped would restart peace talks has instead turned into a familiar stalemate.

Arab states largely have rebuffed Obama’s request for an overture to Israel until the settlement issue is resolved — a stand that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak emphasized in a meeting with Obama on Tuesday — and the Palestinians have said a settlement freeze is a precondition for resuming negotiations. Meanwhile, the Israeli public seems to have rallied around Netanyahu’s refusal to halt all settlement construction, a backlash that intensified when the Obama administration made clear that it wanted Israel to stop building Jewish homes in some parts of Jerusalem as well as in the occupied West Bank. [continued…]

Obama says Mideast peace process is in a ‘rut’
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2009

President Obama said Tuesday that the Middle East peace process was in a “rut,” and prodded Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to help break an Arab-Israeli standoff that has frustrated the administration’s effort to restart talks.

“If all sides are willing to move off of the rut that we’re in currently, then I think there is an extraordinary opportunity to make real progress,” Obama said in an appearance with Mubarak at the White House. “But we’re not there yet.” [continued…]

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Empty slogans of change in Afghanistan

Empty slogans of change in Afghanistan
By Nushin Arbabzadah, The Guardian, August 19, 2009

The 2009 presidential election is only a day away and Afghans are basking in the global media spotlight. The Taliban are staging spectacular attacks, aware that the violence will make international headlines and provide them with free publicity. Campaigners are driving up and down the country in vehicles covered in posters, wooing the population with the promise of a better future. Free lunches, a rare concept in Afghanistan, have become the rule these days as campaigners feed the poor in the hope of getting votes in return for pilau rice. The poor, in turn, should be forgiven for wishing every day were campaign day. Such charity, after all, is a rarity in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Democracy is apparently working small wonders in Afghanistan. Local newspapers quote the Qur’an as evidence that there is no contradiction between Islam and the principles of democracy. Presidential candidates invoke early Muslim history to show that the rule of the people is rooted in Muslim tradition. Debate instead of violence; citizenship instead of clientelism; nationhood instead of tribalism; all are recurrent phrases in articles revealing the desires of progressive Afghans for their country. The second presidential debate, aired live on national TV, included Hamid Karzai and was broadly interpreted as a sign that democracy is slowly taking root in Afghanistan. The cost of the election process: $221m. Democracy doesn’t come cheap but in a country where humans are forced to live in caves for want of a roof over their heads, the electoral pomp can seem morally questionable. [continued…]

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Damascus agrees to help monitor Iraqi border

Damascus agrees to help monitor Iraqi border
By Jay Solomon and Julien Barnes-Dacey, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2009

The Obama administration and Damascus tentatively agreed to establish a tripartite committee, with Baghdad, to better monitor the Syrian-Iraqi border as the Pentagon draws down American troops from Iraq in coming months, said senior U.S. officials.

The proposed three-way border-control assessments could boost Iraqi security and patch one of the region’s most volatile fault lines. The initiative was made by a team of U.S. Central Command officers and their Syrian counterparts last week in Damascus.

The pact awaits the green light from Baghdad, which expressed frustration at being excluded from the U.S.-Syrian talks, saying they violated Iraqi sovereignty on security matters.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Tuesday. A statement issued late in the day by the Iraqi prime minister’s office in Baghdad said only that the two sides “discussed the expansion of the Iraqi and Syrian cooperation” in border control. [continued…]

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American teens gathering in Middle East pose terrorist threat

American teens are fighting back in Israel
By Matt McAllester, Men.Style.com, September, 2009

Later this year, 21-year-old Ephraim Khantsis will pack a couple of suitcases, say good-bye to his mother, leave his home in Brooklyn, and move to Israel. On arrival in Jerusalem he will enroll in a yeshiva, or religious school, that is popular with Americans. After a few months he will make his way north, to a place this young American feels is his true home: the Jewish settlement of Kfar Tapuach.

Perched on a hill just off Route 60, the main north-south road in the occupied West Bank, Kfar Tapuach is known as a particularly hard-line community. Home to about 600 people, the settlement has a history of welcoming American immigrants whose beliefs and acts raise alarms among Israeli intelligence agencies, leading them to monitor it as a haven for suspected terrorists.

Khantsis, who is in the process of applying for Israeli citizenship, will fit right in. Like the assassinated Brooklyn-born rabbi Meir Kahane, the man some in Kfar Tapuach consider their spiritual leader, Khantsis believes that all Arabs and Palestinians should be forcibly removed from territory controlled by Israel, including the West Bank.

“It’s the most humane way to solve the situation,” Khantsis—who has just graduated from Stony Brook University, on Long Island, with a degree in computer science—says, sipping a soda in an Israeli-run kosher pizzeria in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, this past June. He acknowledges that he is advocating ethnic cleansing. Continue reading →

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Huckabee says 2 states in Holy Land ‘unrealistic’

Huckabee says 2 states in Holy Land ‘unrealistic’
By Steve Gutkin, AP, August 18, 2009

US presidential contender Mike Huckabee said Tuesday there should be no Palestinian state in the West Bank and endorsed Israeli settlements there, sharply disagreeing with Washington and much of the world.

A three-day tour of Israel, hosted by a far-right group of religious nationalists, is taking Huckabee to some of the most contentious hotspots in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict including a West Bank settlement outpost that even Israel’s hard-line government considers illegal and an east Jerusalem housing project that the Obama administration has demanded be halted.[continued…]

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Israeli officials: New West Bank projects frozen (briefly)

Israeli officials: New West Bank projects frozen
By Matti Friedman, AP, August 18, 2009

Israel has quietly stopped approving new building projects in the West Bank while publicly still refusing U.S. demands for a formal settlement freeze, officials, peace activists and settlers said Tuesday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied there was any agreement among senior ministers to freeze new construction. But settlement watchdog Peace Now said no new building had been approved since Netanyahu took office in March.

President Barack Obama’s administration has been prodding Israel to shelve all settlement construction on land Palestinians want for a future state, a demand Israel has said it cannot accept. The issue has grown into a rare public disagreement between the two close allies.

However, several government officials said Tuesday that Israel has decided to temporarily stop green-lighting new projects because of the international pressure.

The move falls short of the U.S. demand because it doesn’t amount to a full freeze — projects approved in the past are still being built, and groups tracking settlements say the pace of construction in the settlements has not slowed. [continued…]

Israel agrees to freeze settlement construction as gesture to US
By Roni Sofer, Ynet, August 18, 2009

Despite pressure from right-wing ministers, the housing minister has yet to issue one building tender in the settlements, including in the large settlement blocs, since Netanyahu has taken office. This has been confirmed by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office. The ministry also did not issue new tenders in the final days of Olmert’s administration. The right-wing and the haredi sector have expressed their disappointment over this quiet policy.

Right-wing ministers claim that this policy has been forced upon Israel and undermines the country’s sovereignty in areas over which there should not be any dispute.

Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Daniel Hershkowitz attacked the settlement freeze policy: “The State of Israel is not a satellite of the US. We have a strategic alliance and close friendly relations with the Americans, but it is a two-way alliance. They need us, too, and we must stand our ground, even more so since the Palestinians show their true face anew each and every time proving that theirs is not a face of peace. As long as this remains the situation in the Middle East, the Americans must halt their pressure on the settlement and not prevent natural growth just as we do not get involved in building in Arizona. The natural growth in Judea and Samaria and the building in the settlement blocs and Jerusalem are a red line that must not be crossed.” [continued…]

U.S. group invests tax-free millions in East Jerusalem land
By Uri Blau, Haaretz, August 18, August, 2009

American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, a nonprofit organization that sends millions of shekels worth of donations to Israel every year for clearly political purposes, such as buying Arab properties in East Jerusalem, is registered in the United States as an organization that funds educational institutes in Israel.

The U.S. tax code enables nonprofits to receive tax-exempt status if they engage in educational, charitable, religious or scientific activity. However, such organizations are forbidden to engage in any political activity. The latter is broadly defined as any action, even the promotion of certain ideas, that could have a political impact.

Financing land purchases in East Jerusalem would, therefore, seem to violate the organization’s tax-exempt status. Continue reading →

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Quiet slicing of the West Bank makes abstract prayers for peace obscene

Quiet slicing of the West Bank makes abstract prayers for peace obscene
By Slavoj Zizek, The Guardian, August 18, 2009

When peace-loving Israeli liberals present their conflict with Palestinians in neutral, symmetrical terms – admitting that there are extremists on both sides who reject peace – one should ask a simple question: what goes on in the Middle East when nothing is happening there at the direct politico-military level (ie, when there are no tensions, attacks or negotiations)? What goes on is the slow work of taking the land from the Palestinians on the West Bank: the gradual strangling of the Palestinian economy, the parcelling up of their land, the building of new settlements, the pressure on Palestinian farmers to make them abandon their land (which goes from crop-burning and religious desecration to targeted killings) – all this supported by a Kafkaesque network of legal regulations.

Saree Makdisi, in Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, describes how, although the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is ultimately enforced by the armed forces, it is an “occupation by bureaucracy”: it works primarily through application forms, title deeds, residency papers and other permits. It is this micro-management of the daily life that does the job of securing slow but steady Israeli expansion: one has to ask for a permit in order to leave with one’s family, to farm one’s own land, to dig a well, or to go to work, to school, or to hospital. One by one, Palestinians born in Jerusalem are thus stripped of the right to live there, prevented from earning a living, denied housing permits, etc.

Palestinians often use the problematic cliché of the Gaza strip as “the greatest concentration camp in the world”. However, in the past year, this designation has come dangerously close to truth. This is the fundamental reality that makes all abstract “prayers for peace” obscene and hypocritical. The state of Israel is clearly engaged in a slow, invisible process, ignored by the media; one day, the world will awake and discover that there is no more Palestinian West Bank, that the land is Palestinian-frei, and that we must accept the fact. The map of the Palestinian West Bank already looks like a fragmented archipelago. [continued…]

The Holocaust’s shadow over Israel’s choices
By Bill Glucroft, Christian Science Monitor, August 18, 2009

No people mourn better than the Jewish people. For seven days after death, the family sits shiva, a vigil at home for loved ones to comfort one another and reflect on the life lost. During the following year and then beyond, the stages of mourning develop to allow next of kin to continue their lives while still remembering who is gone from them.

The process is successful for Jews, but it is failing the Jewish state. Six decades since the gravest of their tragedies, Jews have collectively yet to find a sustainable way of moving on without forgetting the Holocaust. The inability to do so poses dire consequences for Israel and the possibility for peace.

For Israel, the Holocaust didn’t end in 1945, but reconstituted itself in the country’s political and social cultures. It’s no accident that Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, is physically connected to Har Hertzl, Israel’s national cemetery. The symbolism hits you over the head: Israel was born out of the Holocaust, and the price to protect the Jewish people from another one is steep. There is truth in that, but also danger. Binding too tightly the slaughter of Jewish civilians by Nazis and the deaths of Israeli soldiers by Arabs turns every threat to Israel into another Holocaust. [continued…]

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Big challenges ahead for Mahmoud Abbas

Big challenges ahead for Mahmoud Abbas
By Helena Cobban, IPS, August 14, 2009

Mahmoud Abbas, the 74-year-old leader of the Palestinian Fatah movement, registered a significant achievement in holding the movement’s Sixth General Conference, which has been wrapping up its business in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank this week.

But veteran Palestinian analysts say Abbas’s biggest internal political challenges still lie ahead. Many of these challenges, they note, stem directly from the compromises he made to be able to convene the conference at all – and to ensure that it presented the trappings of success in the form of a political platform and leadership elections.

One of the biggest compromises was linked to the decision to hold the conference inside the Israeli-occupied West Bank. That meant there were numerous long time Fatah activists from the demographically weighty Palestinian diaspora – and from Gaza – who were barred from attending by Israel. [continued…]

Growing threat to Hamas: Gazans who think it has sold out
By Erin Cunningham, Christian Science Monitor, August 17, 2009

Two years after its takeover of the Gaza strip, Hamas has faced down its greatest challenger: A militant, Al Qaeda-inspired organization that says Hamas is not Islamic enough.

Last Friday, Hamas forces and the Jund Ansar Allah (Soldier of God) movement fought a day-long gun and artillery battle that killed about 30 in the southern Gaza town of Rafah after the group’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Abdel Latif Moussa, declared an Islamic emirate in Gaza and denounced Hamas. Mr. Moussa was killed in the fighting, centered on the mosque where he and his followers had gathered.

It was the first time an Al Qaeda-inspired group had directly challenged Hamas’ rule in the Gaza Strip but it may not be the last. Fueled by the failure of Hamas to address the area’s growing poverty and isolation, and Hamas’ relative recent restraint in its confrontation with Israel, analysts say such organizations are growing in the territory. [continued…]

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Iran official denies he made nuclear talks statement

Iran official denies he made nuclear talks statement
By Zahra Hosseinian, Reuters, August 18, 2009

A senior Iranian official denied on Tuesday he had made any statement saying Tehran was ready for talks with the West on its disputed nuclear program, state television reported.

The same television network earlier said the official — Iran’s envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Ali Asghar Soltanieh — “announced Iran’s readiness to take part in any negotiations with the West based on mutual respect.”

But it later quoted Soltanieh, Iran’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) representative, as saying he had not given any interviews or made any comments on the issue, without elaborating where the initial report came from. [continued…]

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Taliban hardliners spread out to undermine Afghanistan election

Taliban hardliners spread out to undermine Afghanistan election
By Jon Boone, The Guardian, August 17, 2009

The Taliban leadership has redeployed some of its most hardline foot soldiers into areas of Afghanistan where local insurgents are reluctant to disrupt the country’s elections on Thursday.

Details of the move emerged as a statement, said to carry the authority of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, reiterated that the movement would attempt to stop Afghans from voting.

The insurgent leadership appears to be trying to harden resolve among its men on the ground and foil deals struck between the government and individual commanders designed to guarantee peace on polling day. [continued…]

Pakistan captures aide of Taliban commander
By Zahid Hussain, Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2009

Pakistani security forces have captured a close associate of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who was believed slain in a U.S. missile strike earlier this month.

The capture of Mr. Mehsud’s close associate, Maulvi Omar, deals another blow to a Taliban insurgency that has wracked Pakistan but now appears locked in disarray. Mr. Omar’s arrest turns a key Taliban aide into a potential source of information on the militant network based operating on Afghanistan’s border.

Mr. Omar, who worked as a spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the group led by Mr. Mehsud, was arrested Monday night, say intelligence sources in Islamabad. He was believed to be traveling to a meeting with Taliban commanders. One official in the Mohmand tribal region — where Mr. Omar was based — said his arrest came with the help of local anti-Taliban militia. [continued…]

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Murder, torture, sexual orientation and gender in Iraq

Murder, torture, sexual orientation and gender in Iraq
Human Rights Watch, August 17, 2009

Iraqi militias are carrying out a spreading campaign of torture and murder against men suspected of homosexual conduct, or of not being “manly” enough, and Iraq authorities have done nothing to stop the killing, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch called on Iraq’s government to act urgently to rein in militia abuses, punish the perpetrators, and stop a new resurgence of violence that threatens all Iraqis’ safety.

The 67-page report, “‘They Want Us Exterminated’: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq,” documents a wide-reaching campaign of extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, and torture of gay men that began in early 2009. The killings began in the vast Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, a stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, and spread to many cities across Iraq. Mahdi Army spokesmen have promoted fears about the “third sex” and the “feminization” of Iraq men, and suggested that militia action was the remedy. Some people told Human Rights Watch that Iraqi security forces have colluded and joined in the killing. [continued…]

Iraq may hold vote on U.S. withdrawal
By Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post, August 18, 2009

US troops could be forced by Iraqi voters to withdraw a year ahead of schedule under a referendum the Iraqi government backed Monday, creating a potential complication for American commanders concerned about rising violence in the country’s north.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s move appeared to disregard the wishes of the U.S. government, which has quietly lobbied against the plebiscite. American officials fear it could lead to the annulment of an agreement allowing U.S. troops to stay until the end of 2011, and instead force them out by the start of that year.

The Maliki government’s announcement came on the day that the top U.S. general in Iraq proposed a plan to deploy troops to disputed areas in the restive north, a clear indication that the military sees a continuing need for U.S. forces even if Iraqis no longer want them here. [continued…]

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When it comes to terrorist suspects in detention, Obama is finding that Bush set a difficult precedent to break

Overdue process
By Adam Serwer, The American Prospect, August 17, 2009

The cavernous room in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., was nearly empty, except for a few journalists holding yellow legal pads. A small parade of government lawyers marched in and rested their briefcases on their desks before approaching the trio of lawyers representing Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan national who was detained in 2002 after being accused of throwing a grenade at an American convoy, injuring several American soldiers. He was between 12 and 17 years old at the time and has been in U.S. custody for seven years. The hearing, held in June, was not related to Jawad’s guilt or innocence. Rather, it was his habeas corpus proceeding — the legal challenge to the government’s ability to hold him in the first place.

It is widely believed that Jawad’s confession, offered to Afghan authorities shortly after his capture, was coerced through torture. Jawad is illiterate, and the confession was written in a dialect he didn’t speak, accompanied by a separate page bearing only his thumbprint. His military defense attorney, Maj. Eric Montalvo, says that as soon as Jawad was asked about the incident in a language he could understand, he denied everything. Then, Montalvo says, Jawad was handed over to American interrogators who tortured him (“They did things that were classified”). After Jawad attempted suicide in his Guantánamo cell in 2003, he was subjected to the government’s “frequent flyer” program, in which the detainee is moved from cell to cell every few hours for days or weeks on end, in order to deny him sleep.

Because Jawad was technically captured “on the battlefield,” he appeared before a military commission in 2007. At the hearing, the presiding judge threw out the coerced confessions and the original prosecutor, Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, resigned in disgust, penning a letter in which he denounced the commissions as a travesty. Jawad has been denied a criminal trial, where his culpability might be determined according to the high standards of federal courts. “Under the Bush administration, there was this attempt to blur the criminal-justice system and the military-justice system and create this hybrid system that lacked due-process safeguards,” says Stacy Sullivan, a counterterrorism adviser for Human Rights Watch. “We hoped that during the Obama administration we’d be able to put those pieces back where they belong. That doesn’t seem to be happening.” [continued…]

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Israel envoy to U.S.: We have no plan to strike Iran

Israel envoy to U.S.: We have no plan to strike Iran
Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren interviewed by Fareed Zacharia, CNN, August 16, 2009

ZAKARIA: Let’s talk about Iran.

John Bolton has recently said that he believes that Israel is likely to attack Iran by the end of this year. Is that true?

OREN: I don’t think it’s true. I think that we are far from even contemplating such things right now.

The government of Israel has supported President Obama in his approach to Iran, initially the engagement, the outreach to Iran. The prime minister…

ZAKARIA: You’re just saying this, Michael. You don’t really — it is well known that the government of Israel was deeply uncomfortable and nervous about the idea of an engagement with Iran.

OREN: We were. But we were greatly comforted during the prime minister’s visit here in May, when the president told the prime minister, sure, that there would be a serious reassessment of the engagement policy before the end of the year.

And we are further reassured now that that end-of-the-year deadline has been moved up to September. We actually have a date when it’s going to occur.

We are comforted by the fact that the administration, in the aftermath of recent events in Iran, has exhibited greater willingness to consider formulating a package of serious sanctions against Iran, even now in advance of the reassessment.

ZAKARIA: Isn’t it true that we now know something about Iran that we weren’t quite sure about, which is, there are many moderates in Iran, both on the streets of Tehran and the rest of the country, but also within the government.

OREN: Unquestionably. We know that the Iranian — certainly, the Iranian people, but even the Iranian leadership, is not as monochromatic as we thought, that there are dissenters. Not necessarily moderates in the sense of their relationship with Israel, but moderates certainly in an internal Iranian context.

But what concerns us, at the end of the day, is not so much a change of personalities, but a change of policy. We would like to see an Iranian willingness to desist from supporting terrorist groups, Hezbollah, Hamas. We’ve seen none of that; on the contrary, business as usual.

We would like to see indications of Iranian willingness to suspend the enrichment of uranium. We’d like to see a willingness evinced on the part of the Iranians to stop producing the centrifuges that enrich that uranium. We’ve seen none of that. On the contrary, we see business as usual for the Iranians, even in their rhetoric across the board. [continued…]

Throwing Ahmadinejad a lifeline
By Hossein Askari and Trita Parsi, New York Times, August 14, 2009

The economics of a gasoline embargo simply doesn’t make sense. Iran imports roughly 40 percent of its domestic gasoline consumption at world prices and then sells it along with domestically refined gasoline at a government-subsidized price of about 40 cents per gallon. As a result, domestic gasoline consumption is high. It is also smuggled and sold to neighboring countries.

Over the past 10 years, this policy has cost Iran in the range of 10 to 20 percent of its G.D.P. annually, depending on world prices and the government-mandated pump price. Yes, a whopping 10 to 20 percent of G.D.P. In need of additional revenues, the regime has wanted to eliminate this subsidy, raise the price to world levels and reduce consumption, but has been paralyzed by the specter of a domestic backlash.

Even assuming that a gasoline embargo would be effective, what would be its result? Consumption would decline by 40 percent and government revenues would go up, because no payment would be needed for gasoline imports.

If Tehran allowed the reduced supply of gasoline to be sold at a price that would equate demand to supply, the price would increase to a level that would eliminate the subsidy, meaning no subsidy for imported gasoline and no subsidy for domestically refined gasoline. The government would have more revenue to spend elsewhere. The sanctions would have done what Tehran has wanted to do for years and the government would not be held responsible! [continued…]

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Mubarak to tell U.S. Israel must make overture

Mubarak to tell U.S. Israel must make overture
By Michael Slackman, New York Times, August 17, 2009

In White House meetings beginning Monday, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is expected to tell the Obama administration that Arab nations want peace, but are unwilling to abide Mr. Obama’s call to make good-faith concessions to Israel until Israel takes tangible steps like freezing settlements, an Egyptian official said.

As part of its effort to resuscitate the peace process, the Obama administration has asked Arab countries to make small but symbolic gestures to normalize relations with Israel, like allowing planes to fly through their airspace or improving cultural ties. The administration has also asked Israel to freeze all growth in settlements.

So far, neither side has agreed to Mr. Obama’s proposed first steps, and so the president is expected to look to Mr. Mubarak for help in breaking the latest Middle East deadlock, regional analysts said. [continued…]

Too gung-ho? Israel military rabbis draw criticism
By Matti Friedman, AP, August 17, 2009

Most Israelis expect their military rabbis to confine themselves to such tasks as making sure the army provides kosher food and respects the Sabbath. But lately, some of them are asserting their own idea of Jewish virtue at the risk of stepping into the country’s culture wars.

Some critics worry that the rabbinate and its charismatic chief, Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki, are infusing a militant mix of Judaism and nationalism into a traditionally secular institution that embodies the Israeli consensus.

On the Palestinian side, Islamic hard-liners already see their war with Israel through an uncompromising religious lens, and the rabbinate’s critics warn that the Jewish state must not follow suit and risk pushing the conflict closer to a zero-sum holy war. [continued…]

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Afghanistan’s tyranny of the minority

Afghanistan’s tyranny of the minority
By Selig S Harrison, New York Times, August 17, 2009

As the debate intensifies within the Obama administration over how to stabilize Afghanistan, one major problem is conspicuously missing from the discussion: the growing alienation of the country’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtun tribes, who make up an estimated 42 percent of the population of 33 million. One of the basic reasons many Pashtuns support the Taliban insurgency is that their historic rivals, ethnic Tajiks, hold most of the key levers of power in the government.

Tajiks constitute only about 24 percent of the population, yet they largely control the armed forces and the intelligence and secret police agencies that loom over the daily lives of the Pashtuns. Little wonder that in the run-up to Thursday’s presidential election, much of the Taliban propaganda has focused on the fact that President Hamid Karzai’s top running mate is a hated symbol of Tajik power: the former defense minister Muhammad Fahim.

Mr. Fahim and his allies have been entrenched in Kabul since American forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001 with the help of his Tajik militia, the Northern Alliance, which was based in the Panjshir valley north of the capital. A clique of these Tajik officers, known as the Panjshiris, took control of the key security posts with American backing, and they have been there ever since. Washington pushed Mr. Karzai for the presidency to give a Pashtun face to the regime, but he has been derided from the start by his fellow Pashtuns with a play on his name, “Panjshir-zai.” [continued…]

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Inside the Taliban: ‘The more troops they send, the more targets we have’

Inside the Taliban: ‘The more troops they send, the more targets we have’
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Guardian, August 15, 2009

Instead of the trademark Taliban uniforms of turbans, eyeliner and flip-flops, these men wore Russian and Nato poncho raincoats over their shalwars, and boots and trainers. Most striking was the way they held their guns. Instead of carrying them in the standard militia style, on their shoulders or holding them like walking sticks, they wore them strapped around their chests, one hand by the trigger and the other holding the muzzle down. They stood just like the Americans.

The stout commander, Mawlawi Jalali, sat surrounded by his men. One carried the white flag of the Taliban and another a video camera, which he kept pointed at me at all times.

“We are Afghans fighting the jihad and defending our country under the leadership of Jalaluddin Haqqani,” the commander said. He spoke in a schoolmasterly tone. As well as being a commander, Mawlawi Jalali is a teacher in Haqqani’s madrasa.

“The Americans toppled the emirate [of the Taliban] and we are fighting to bring it back. When the Taliban were here the jihad was only in Afghanistan. Now, thanks to the Americans, the jihad has spread to many other countries.”

How did he plan to pursue his holy war? “We use different tactics: mining the streets, fighting and direct attacks. Here in this camp we make all the preparations and have all the men we need for these different tactics.”

What about the new American surge, I asked. Did it concern him?

“We attack the towns, like in Wazi Zadran, where there is a strong American and Afghan garrison, and mine the streets every day. We average two or three attacks a day against the Americans and their allies. The more troops they send, the more targets we have, so it’s good.” [continued…]

Why Taliban leaders prefer dead diplomats
By Jason Burke, The Observer, August 16, 2009

Also, the Taliban do not get most of their money from narcotics, as is often said, but they receive a significant amount from private donors in the Gulf or elsewhere in the Islamic world who are much less keen to pay for violence directed at voting Afghans than strikes on western troops or their “stooges”.

So it makes sense that the Taliban, or in this case probably the allied insurgent group led by hardline cleric and warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, have preferred to launch the first genuinely spectacular strike since the beginning of the election campaign against a diplomatic western target.

As their spokesman explained, rather than hit the military, the Taliban would have preferred dead diplomats. Though a bomb outside the Isaf headquarters would show the insurgents’ ability to strike anywhere, their key target is international public opinion. Given the number of journalists and TV crews in the Afghan capital to cover the elections, a spectacular suicide bombing was always going to be an easy way of getting the media coverage that they need. [continued…]

Afghanistan passes ‘barbaric’ law diminishing women’s rights
By Jon Boone, The Guardian, August 14, 2009

Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.

“It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her,” the US charity Human Rights Watch said. [continued…]

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If they won’t make peace we may have to make it for them

If they won’t make peace we may have to make it for them
By Tony Karon, The National, August 15, 2009

Until now the Obama administration has clung to the basic assumptions of the Oslo process: incremental steps on both sides build the confidence necessary to negotiate a bilateral agreement on final-status issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees. Plainly that approach has failed so far, and it’s hard to see it succeeding simply because there is a new cast of actors in the lead roles. The problem may be in the script rather than the casting.

There is no domestic political pressure on Netanyahu to make the territorial compromises necessary for a deal. On the contrary, his once precarious domestic political position has been strengthened by his resistance to the settlement freeze demands, and Israelis are unlikely to accept the conflict that would erupt if their government tried to evict thousands of West Bank settlers under a peace agreement. Nor are the Palestinians inclined to make compromises that the refugees would consider surrender of their rights.

In the absence of domestic pressure on either side to force a compromise, restarting talks would be either a repeat of the Annapolis failure or a demonstration that the gap between the two sides cannot be bridged by mutual consent. Either way, the parameters of a two-state solution will have to be prescribed by the international community, just as they were in 1947 – except this time with enough international clout and domestic support to prevent a repeat of the tragedy that followed the last UN partition of Palestine. [continued…]

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