Archive for March 1st, 2008
Iran condemns Israeli atrocity against Palestine people
Iran condemns Israeli atrocity against Palestine people
Government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham on Saturday expressed outrage at Israeli systematic genocide against Palestinian people living in Gaza Strip.
Talking to reporters, he said, “The Tel Aviv regime has practically turned the Gaza Strip to another Holocaust.”
He regretted that such atrocities and Israeli state terrorism are being carried out on a systematic basis.
He denounced “silence and negligence of the UN Security Council regarding such war crimes and terrorist actions being perpetrated by Israel against the civilians living in Gaza Strip”.
“The minimum care for principles of democracy, in which the Tel Aviv regime claim to believe, requests respect for the people’s will.”
He expressed the hope that the critical situation in the occupied territories would end through attention of the Security Council to its international responsibility to provide peace and security throughout the globe.
More than 24 Palestinians, including at least nine civilians, were killed late Friday and early Saturday in escalating
Israeli-Palestinian fighting.
A baby and two teenagers were among the dead, and dozens of people were wounded.
At least 75 people have died since clashes between Israel and the Gazan ruling Hamas movement spiked Wednesday.
At least 24 were civilians, the youngest a 6-month-old boy.
Hamas said the baby, Malak Karfaneh, died just before midnight Friday in an Israeli strike on Beit Hanoun.
http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-24/0803011961141048.htm
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West’s silence about Gaza emboldens Israel
Iran says with their silence Western countries are giving Israel carte blanche to slaughter the innocent inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
The West’s selective approach of has emboldened the Zionist regime to continue committing atrocities in the Gaza Strip, said Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini.
He called on the United Nations, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Arab Union, the Nonaligned Movement, as well as other international organizations to take immediate measures to stop the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, 81 Palestinians including 19 children have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli raids and air strikes on Sunday.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=45442§ionid=351020101
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Today, 1 march 2008, 50 Palestinians die in Israel air-strike, including child and women.
West main stream media as usual talk about “clash” !! 2 million Palestinians in a total ghetto jail. A high technologies army state against people under occupation is not a “clash” or like they said in french newspaper “violence”, it’s not a clash or violence but calculated murdering. The use of semantic to protect the Israeli guilty is an old story…
Gaza need a miracle.
el Dib
Israel warns of invasion of Gaza (Update: threatens “holocaust”)
Israel warns of invasion of Gaza
(Update: threatens “holocaust”)
After an israeli air-strike
Israel’s deputy defence minister has said Israel will have “no choice” but to invade Gaza if Palestinian militants step up rocket attacks.
Matan Vilnai said Palestinians risked a “shoah”, the Hebrew word for a big disaster – and for the Nazi Holocaust.
Mr Vilnai made the comments after rockets hit the city of Ashkelon, 10km (six miles) from Gaza. His colleagues insisted he had not meant “genocide”.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said it was ready for a large-scale Israeli attack.
Israeli air strikes have killed about 30 Palestinians in the past three days.
The string of attacks came a day after a rocket fired by Hamas killed an Israeli student on the outskirts of Sderot, about a mile from Gaza, the first such death in nine months.
‘No choice’
The barrage continued on Friday with militants aiming several Grad rockets at Ashkelon, home to 120,000 people.
The Iranian-made rockets are said to have a range of about 22km (14 miles).
One rocket hit a block of flats in the city, breaking through the roof and slicing through three floors below, while another landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.
It is the first time Israeli officials have ordered Code Red sirens to be sounded in Ashkelon and reports say soldiers from the Israeli military’s Home Front Command have been hanging posters around the city instructing residents on what to do when the warning sounds.
“It’s a city with large facilities – a huge soccer stadium, and a basketball stadium, and a beach. No-one is ready for this,” Ashkelon mayor Roni Mehatzri told Israel Radio.
Israel’s leaders have been under pressure in some quarters to launch a ground invasion of Gaza to end the rocket fire and although they are reluctant, Mr Vilnai admitted on Friday that they will have “no other choice”.
Speaking on Israel Army Radio, Mr Vilnai said if Palestinians increased rocket fire, they would bring upon themselves a “shoah”.
The BBC’s Katya Adler in Jerusalem says many of Mr Vilnai’s colleagues have quickly distanced themselves from his comments and also tried to downplay, them saying he did not mean genocide.
“We’re getting close to using our full strength. Until now, we’ve used a small percentage of the army’s power because of the nature of the territory,” he added.
Separately, the chairman of the Knesset’s defence and foreign affairs committee, Tzachi Hanegbi, said Israel “must make a strategic decision to order the army to prepare quickly”.
A recent opinion poll has indicated a majority of Israelis favour a truce with Hamas.
‘Crazy war’
The Islamist movement, which seized control of Gaza in June, has said it will cease fire if Israel stops its military operations in Palestinian areas and ends the blockade of the territory which has cut essential supplies to its 1.5m inhabitants.
ISRAEL-HAMAS ATTACKS
Friday:
Israeli city Ashkelon activates warning system after Palestinian rocket hits
Israeli air raids continue, with four wounded in Jabaliya
Thursday:
Four children killed near Jabaliya refugee camp
Hamas militant killed near Shati refugee camp
Hamas militant killed near Beit Hanoun
Three Hamas militants and two from PRC killed in Gaza City
Wednesday:
Six-month-old boy killed near interior ministry
Five Hamas militants near Khan Younis
Islamic Jihad militant near Bureij refugee camp
Israeli civilian killed in Sderot
Addressing a crowd of around 2,000 Hamas supporters at a rally held after Friday prayers in Gaza City, Mr Haniya, a former Palestinian prime minister, said Israel was deluded if it thought it could now remove his group.
“Gaza today faces a real war, a crazy war led by the enemy against our people,” he said.
“What does a large-scale raid mean? You were in the Gaza Strip and you quit because of the resistance. What does assassination mean? If some leaders are assassinated, would the cause be assassinated?” he asked.
Mr Haniya, who was dismissed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas ousted his Fatah movement in Gaza, said any Israeli attempt to invade would “end in terrible failure just like all the other rounds have failed”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7270650.stm
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Israel’s warning: rocket fire from Gaza will result in a Palestinian ‘holocaust’
REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Palestinians evacuate a wounded man, above, after an Israeli missile destroyed the Workers Union headquarters yesterday.
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Saturday, 1 March 2008
An Israeli government minister warned yesterday that increasing rocket fire from Gaza would bring Palestinians a Shoah – the Hebrew word normally used to denote the Nazi Holocaust inflicted on Jews during the Second World War.
The declaration by the Deputy Defence Minister, Matan Vilnai, came amid fresh calls from some Israeli politicians for a ground invasion of Gaza provoked by the launch of eight Soviet-designed Grad rockets into the southern city of Ashkelon during the lethal violence of the past three days.
Mr Vilnai declared: “As the rocket fire grows, and the range increases – and they haven’t yet said the last word on this – they are bringing upon themselves a greater Shoah because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether in air strikes or on the ground.”
The former Labour minister and general in the IDF military told Army Radio: “We’re getting close to using our full strength.”
Government spokesmen launched an immediate damage limitation exercise saying that Mr Vilnai was merely using the word to mean “disaster” and not in any way intending to convey the idea of genocide. But Shoah is rarely used in modern Hebrew parlance for events other than the Holocaust.
The Israeli air strikes have killed at least 33 people, including five children, in the past two days. The strikes were launched in response to the barrage of Qassam rockets launched from Gaza, one of which killed an Israeli mature student in the southern town of Sderot on Wednesday.
The rocket attacks themselves followed the killing of five key Hamas militants in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis earlier that day.
One girl, aged 17, was injured by the more powerful, longer-range rockets fired at Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people situated 11 miles north of Gaza. Another missile went through the roof of an apartment building and landed three floors below. Palestinian militants have not used them in such quantities before.
Arye Mekel, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, reinforcing comments made by Mr Vilnai’s own spokesman, added: “Matan Vilnai used the Hebrew phrase that included the term Shoah in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust.”
But Hamas was quick to seize on the minister’s remark. A spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, said: “We are facing new Nazis who want to kill and burn the Palestinian people.”
One man was slightly wounded by a rocket attack on Sderot yesterday – one of 16 which the military said had been fired during the day. Palestinian sources in Gaza said that five people – including two children – had been wounded in three air strikes in the northern Strip yesterday.
Tony Blair, envoy for the Middle East international Quartet, while “utterly condemning” the rocket attacks from Gaza, said last night: “It is vital that in action against them, everything possible is done to avoid the loss of innocent Palestinian life, so that there are not even more victims of the situation created in Gaza.”
The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is thought to be very wary of authorising a major ground offensive in Gaza. But Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset foreign affairs and defence committee and a hawkish member of Mr Olmert’s ruling Kadima party, said yesterday: “The State of Israel must make a strategic decision to order the IDF to prepare quickly to topple the Hamas terror regime and take over all the areas from which rockets are fired on Israel.” He said the IDF should prepare to remain in those areas for years if necessary.
Yossi Beilin, the former minister and ex-leader of the left of centre Meretz Party, said that a diplomatic rather than military solution was needed.
He said that Hamas had at least twice made requests “via a third party” to agree a truce. He added: “My solution is to reach a ceasefire with Hamas.”
A Haaretz-Dialog poll this week showed that 64 per cent of Israelis were in favour of such an agreement to end the rocket fire, and secure the release of the Israeli corporal, Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by Gaza militants in June 2006.
On a visit to Ashkelon, however, the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, gave little sign that the government was contemplating such a course. “Hamas is directly responsible for the current situation and will be the one to bear the cost of our response. An Israeli response is necessary and will be carried out,” he said.
Ismail Haniyeh, the de facto Hamas prime minister in Gaza, speaking at a mosque near his home in his first public appearance for a month, said: “What does a large-scale raid mean? You Israelis were in the Gaza Strip and you quit because of the resistance.”
Near Collapse: FDIC only has $52 Billion to insure $4.2 Trillion in Deposits!
FDIC only has $52 Billion to insure $4.2 Trillion in Deposits
- Bank Reserves: MINUS $18 Billion -TAF increased to $60 billion loaned to near insolvent Banks by the Feds…
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/Current/
The approximately $41 billion in reserves that the US banks used to have on their books are now provided by the Term Auction Credit (TAF) to the tune of $60 Billion, without which the banks would be insolvent: when the run on banks begins, only 1 customer in 20 may get some money, if lucky…
The FDIC Bad Joke: only $52 Billion Fund – not all of it liquid and available – to PROTECT/INSURE $4.2 Trillion Deposits = 1.22% Ratio, or 1.2 cents on the Dollar…
The FDIC may protect your deposits in times of average financial failures, BUT don’t count on it in the expected Financial Melt-Down: for more information, click on the 2007 FDIC Annual Report in the link below…
file:///C:/FDIC/Financial%20Reports.htm
The article on the inadequacy of the FDIC reserves linked below uses older figures, but its conclusion could not be any clearer…
“The bottom line is this: your bank accounts are insured unless there is a banking crisis. Then, you must hope for the best.”
http://www.garynorth.com/public/91print.cfm
There truly is very little now separating your money on bank deposits or in brokerage accounts and the Abyss that will open wide when the first Banks officially go belly up, since they’re now mostly insolvent and the FDIC will be useless…
China, India, play it again for Uncle Sam
China, India, play it again for Uncle Sam
By M K Bhadrakumar 
American diplomacy was on splendid display this week in two key Asian capitals – Beijing and New Delhi. China and India rolled out the red carpet to visiting cabinet officials from Washington. By a curious coincidence, the two top US officials – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – chose the same block of dates to befriend the two Asian “rivals”.
Amid the debris of the George W Bush administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East, what is often overlooked is the extraordinary diplomatic gusto with which Washington goes about convincing the two Asian giants, China and India, that each is a privileged partner of the US’s global strategies.
Indeed, it is difficult to be judgmental about the relative importance that the US attaches to its relations with China and India – or, conversely, what goes on in the inscrutable minds of such ancient peoples as the Chinese or Indians. But Chinese pronouncements insist that the US is inviting China to be a “stakeholder” in the affairs of the 21st century and Beijing is responding. On the contrary, the Indian strategic community remains confident that the US is painstakingly building up Indian capabilities as a first-class power so as to make it a counterweight to China.
Full credit must be given to American diplomacy. Welcoming Gates to Delhi, the Indian Defense Ministry noted in an effusive press release that the George W Bush presidency “witnessed unprecedented acceleration in India-US engagement and qualitative transformation in the relationship, particularly in defense”. It added that Gates’ visit “reaffirms the importance of Indo-US relations and the strong political support in the US for our strategic partnership”.
China was characteristically restrained in welcoming Rice to Beijing. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said, “China and the United States will exchange views during Rice’s visit on bilateral relations and the significant regional and international issues of common concern.” All the same, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who was on a visit to Beijing last week, underscored the high importance of US-China relations. He told the China Daily on Sunday, “I consider that his 1972 visit to China the single-most important thing I did in government and the one that had the best permanent effect.”
Rice sees China as stakeholder
But then, the problem with Kissinger is that he has a rare ability to make his interlocutors feel special. On balance, however, it does stand out that the US is cruising on a velvet patch in its relations with both the Asian powers. Things couldn’t be better from the American point of view. Both China and India place great store on their respective strategic cooperation with the US.
Rice said in Beijing China is reaching out for a greater role in global affairs and is opening up, and that’s good news. “I can’t get into their motivations, but … China is opening up to the world in a lot of ways,” Rice said after talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders. She noted, “I do believe that there is more of an effort to reconcile China’s size and influence in international politics, which is a relatively new thing, with China’s foreign policy behavior.”
She added, “There is a broadening, I think, in general of China’s view of itself in international politics and I think we’re benefiting from it.” Rice singled out China’s cooperative role over the North Korea problem, Myanmar and Sudan’s Darfur region, where “China is making an impact”.
Rice said, “I see them grappling with the ‘responsible stakeholder idea’, which everybody said they couldn’t translate. It turns out that they can translate it and they talk about it actually.” She flatly dismissed the idea of using Summer Olympic Games as leverage, “We’ve been very clear, the president has been very clear, that this is a sporting event.” And Bush plans to attend the opening ceremony in Beijing in August.
Clearly, the focus of Rice’s visit to Beijing was on the North Korea problem where China and the US are in the process of working out detailed arrangements for the next phase of talks on Pyongyang dismantling its nuclear weapons. Washington needs Beijing’s help. Top US nuclear negotiator on North Korea, Christopher Hill, was “ordered” by Rice to visit Beijing last week, according to US media reports, and China facilitated “a good substantial discussion” for Hill with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan. China also chaired a meeting of North and South Korean officials to discuss the economic underpinnings of the six-party talks.
Equally, Rice would have discussed the Iran problem with the Chinese leaders. Tehran acutely senses it may pave the way for a third United Nations Security Council resolution on tighter sanctions against Iran. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi telephoned Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, on Wednesday soon after Rice concluded her talks in Beijing. At any rate, Tehran abruptly called off on Wednesday the signing of the long-awaited US$16 billion deal with China Offshore Oil Corporation for the development of its North Pars gas fields, which is estimated to have reserves of 80 trillion cubic feet. The reason attributed was that the Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari couldn’t attend the signing ceremony in Tehran.
Again, Beijing agreed this week, after having rejected US appeals previously, to send a battalion of engineers to Darfur. Rice was quick to laud the Chinese move. The US, on its part, is attending to China’s core concern, the Taiwan issue. As Kissinger put it, “I think Beijing and Washington will cooperate and really pressure Taipei that if they do not pull back, it could look extremely unfavorable. I believe that we will avoid a crisis in the Taiwan Strait.”
Xinhua news agency reported that Hu and Rice “agreed to step up bilateral constructive and cooperative relations and handle the bilateral relations in a long-term and strategic perspective”. Hu told Rice, “The cooperation arena keeps expanding and the strategic significance of the bilateral ties grow higher and higher”. Rice responded that Washington hopes to see Beijing continuing to play a constructive role in addressing international issues. At a meeting with State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, she said the US wanted to strengthen cooperation with China “so as to promote the resolution of the issues facing the world”. She added that as a responsible member of the international system, China has played a key role in global affairs.
Tang said, “China-US relations have gone far beyond the bilateral dimension and hold increasing global influence and important strategic meanings.” He underlined that Rice’s visit came at “a very important moment” as the international and regional situation was evolving. Both Tang and Premier Wen Jiabao stressed that China-US cooperation makes an important contribution to the peace, stability and development of the word. Rice concurred that the “fruitful bilateral relationship and cooperation could help better resolve the complicated and difficult issues in the international system”.
US’s defense trade with India
Thus, it came as no surprise that Gates kept his visit to Delhi focused strictly on US-India military relations. He said, “I don’t see our improving military relationships in the region in the context of any other country, including China. These expanding relationships don’t necessarily have to be directed to anybody. They are a set of bilateral relationships that are aimed at improving our coordination and the closeness of our relationships for a variety of reasons.”
Gates’ talking points in Delhi related primarily to defense trade. India’s procurement of 126 multi-role combat aircraft in a deal estimated at $10 billion – and possibly, as high as $ 16 billion – was number one priority for him and for the American defense contractors accompanying him. The principal bidders include Lockheed Martin’s F-16 and Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet.
The importance of the deal is not only commercial, but that the new generation aircraft will be in use with the Indian Air Force for the next 40-year period and, therefore, clinching the deal becomes absolutely vital for the US if it is to aim at “inter-operability” with India. Gates knows it is the sort of deal that will ensure US-India military-to-military cooperation becomes irreversible and pin India down as the US’s strategic ally in the region.
Indian defense industry sources already speculate that Lockheed Martin could be pushing for closer ties with India’s military to increase its chances in the above tender. American companies are also keen to secure another Indian tender for 312 helicopters for its air force and navy worth about $1 billion. In January, India closed a $1 billion deal with Lockheed Martin for six C-130 Hercules aircraft for its special forces. India is expected to spend another $30 billion on military purchases by 2012. Gates’ message to Indian officials was that the US defense trade offers the “full package” – sale, technology transfer, guaranteed supply of spares and co-production.
Gates expressed satisfaction over the entry that the US has made in the Indian market, which is traditionally dominated by Russia. He said, “We have tried for some years now to get a seat at the table, and we’re finally there.” Washington is determined to throw Russia out of the Indian defense market in the coming years. The assertiveness of the US sales pitch is evident from the remark by a US official in Gates’s entourage, “When you go into joint production and cooperative development with the US, you’re getting not only the best product in the world, but you have the best support system, the best maintenance package over the life of the product. You also have companies that operate with integrity, which is different than what India has seen with other partners in the world. We’re very transparent.”
Washington will incrementally try to persuade India to get rid of its tendering mechanism altogether – bureaucratic buying and selling processes – and instead take recourse to direct negotiations. India has already moved in this direction and begun talks with the US on the purchase of P-8i long-range maritime reconnaissance patrol aircraft with anti-submarine war capabilities to replace Russian-made Tu-142M bombers. The deal could be worth $2 billion, the biggest defense deal so far between the two countries.
Meanwhile, the quantum jump in US-Indian strategic ties in the past two to three years needs to be consolidated. “We’re not looking for quick results or big leaps forward, but rather a steady expansion of this relationship that leaves everybody comfortable,” Gates modestly said.
A lot indeed depends on the fate of the US-India nuclear civilian deal. Washington is keeping its fingers crossed about the Indian government’s grit to push the deal despite vehement domestic opposition. Untrammeled technology transfer to India and a qualitative shift of the strategic partnership to de facto alliance depend on the deal going through. Washington is, therefore, pulling all stops.
The worrisome thing for Washington, paradoxically, is that India has a democratic system. Indian politics are in flux with approaching parliamentary elections, while big-ticket items such as India’s participation in the US defense missile system, India’s ties with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or India’s role in regional security remain to be finessed. Of course, the elite leaderships in India’s two centrist parties – Congress and Bhartiya Janata Party – are equally zealous about making India a “natural ally” of the US. Gates made it a point to touch base with the opposition BJP.
However, there is a flip side insofar as Indian politics have entered a coalition era and interest groups are multiplying. Outside of the middle class immersed in the enchantments of globalization, the vast majority of Indians grapple with sheer day-to-day survival – a newborn zone of development surrounded by endless horizons of depletion.
But then it is not Gates’ problem if acute contradictions are playing out in India with no historical precedents to guide it. He returns to Washington a happy man. He said his discussions with India’s leaders were positive and like-minded. “I encountered enthusiasm in all of the leaders here I talked to,” he added. “I think … they see it as we do … a long-term enterprise by two sovereign states. We are mindful of India’s long tradition of non-alignment and are respectful of that, but I think there are a lot of opportunities to expand on this relationship, and I think that was the feeling on the part of the Indian leaders that I met with, as well.”
US’s Asian strategy
The tricky part for Washington is that the US must not create apprehensions in the Chinese mind. Clearly, Washington accords number one priority in its Asian strategy to relations with China. US-China economic ties are inexorably gaining a global character. US-China economic interdependence rules out a “containment” policy toward China.
As a People’s Daily commentary in December pointed out, the subprime loan or mortgage crisis in the US “poses a sound opportunity for the two sides US and China to reach overall, wide-ranging consensus. With the seizure of this rare opportunity, the risk-reduction capacity for both nations will beef up”.
At the Third China-US Strategic Economic Dialogue in Beijing in December, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said, “I think one of our jobs in the dialogue is to make the case as to why trade is good, why China’s economic success is good for the US, and the US economic success is good for China.” He stressed that the US-China relationship has become central to each nation’s interests and to maintaining “a stable, secure and prosperous global economic system”. Paulson has paid as many as five visits to China during the 20 months since he assumed office. (He visited Delhi once during this period.)
Unsurprisingly, therefore, Gates avoided any of the political rhetoric regarding Asian security that came naturally to his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. First, in the near term, it is Russia and not China that threatens the US’s global dominance. India is awkwardly placed with regard to US-Russia-China equations. Russia is still viewed largely as an ally, while China remains an adversary in the Indian perception. But Washington sees things differently.
The US Annual Threat Assessment presented on February 5 by the Director of US National Intelligence Michael McConnell suggests repeatedly that US-Russian relations stand to become more confrontational. It highlights the gradual resurgence of Russia’s military forces. Also, an unspoken factor is that the energy exporting countries are increasingly challenging the US-dominated post-Bretton Woods global economic system. Russia, Iran and Venezuela have spoken of dispensing with the US dollar as the principal currency of settling energy accounts. There is talk of the gas-producing countries forming a cartel along the lines of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which would of course pose a major challenge to the prevailing international economic system.
Beijing expressed misgivings last year about a “quadripartite” alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India. But the alliance has since become moribund due to the change of governments in Japan and Australia and the priorities of the new leaderships toward relations with China. The accent for Washington, too, has changed and is now on drawing in Beijing as a mainstream player to be part of a multilateral framework. India is the odd man out, still figuring out how to come to terms with China’s rise.
For all these reasons, Gates was careful not to give an “anti-China” flavor to the US’s burgeoning military ties with India. There are other inter-linkages as well. Ironically, the US-India nuclear deal, which would boost their strategic ties, itself cannot go through without China’s cooperation. The minimum that Beijing expects from Washington is that US-India strategic cooperation will not be directed against China.
In sum, Rice’s mission to Beijing and Gates’s stopover in Delhi become a case study of the US’s evolving Asian strategy. Washington’s preoccupation with containing resurgent Russia is set to become a major driving force behind the US’s Asian strategy. And the isolation of Russia can work only if Washington whittles down Sino-Russian (and Russian-Indian) strategic cooperation.
Alongside comes Washington’s need to make China a stakeholder in global security. US-China economic interdependence has reached a level where any attempt by Washington to hurt China can result in hurting itself and the world economy. Thus, Gates’ visit to Delhi becomes a reality check for Indian strategists.
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M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India’s ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
Afghanistan mission close to failing – US
Afghanistan mission close to failing – US
Injection of troops and aid has not brought stability says intelligence chief
Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Richard Norton Taylor
The Guardian, Friday February 29 2008
After six years of US-led military support and billions of pounds in aid, security in Afghanistan is “deteriorating” and President Hamid Karzai’s government controls less than a third of the country, America’s top intelligence official has admitted.
Mike McConnell testified in Washington that Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10%, and the remainder is under tribal control.
The Afghan government angrily denied the US director of national intelligence’s assessment yesterday, insisting it controlled “over 360″ of the country’s 365 districts. “This is far from the facts and we completely deny it,” said the defence ministry.
But the gloomy comments echoed even more strongly worded recent reports by thinktanks, including one headed by the former Nato commander General James Jones, which concluded that “urgent changes” were required now to “prevent Afghanistan becoming a failed state”.
Although Nato forces have killed thousands of insurgents, including several commanders, an unrelenting drip of violence has eroded Karzai’s grip in the provinces, providing fuel to critics who deride him as “the mayor of Kabul”.
A suicide bomb at a dog fight near Kandahar last week killed more than 80 people. Yesterday fighting erupted in neighbouring Helmand when the Taliban ambushed a police patrol. The interior ministry said 25 militants were killed; a Taliban spokesman said they lost one.
A day earlier, the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation aid agency said it feared that Cyd Mizell, an American employee kidnapped in Kandahar last month, had been killed in captivity.
A big injection of foreign troops has failed to bring stability. The US has almost 50,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and – twice as many as in 2004 – while the UK has 7,700, mostly in Helmand. Another 2,200 US marines are due to arrive next month to combat an expected Taliban surge.
Nato commanders paint the suicide bombs and ambushes as signs of a disheartened enemy. Yesterday, Brigadier Andrew Mackay, commander of the British contingent in southern Afghanistan, said the Taliban were “worn down”, running low on fighters, and being ostracised by local communities. “Logistically they are also challenged. The cumulative effect of all of this is that they are having to change their modus operandi, and that is why we are seeing more asymmetric attacks and suicide bombings in places such as Kandahar,” he said.
But analysts believe the Taliban is successfully adapting the brutal guerrilla tactics that have served Iraqi insurgents so well. The six British soldiers killed in Helmand over the past three months were victims of roadside bombs. The drugs trade is swelling the Taliban coffers – according to the highest estimates, 40% of profits, or tens of millions of pounds, go to the insurgency. Attacks have made the main road from Kandahar to Kabul too dangerous for foreigners. Afghan truck drivers travel with armed escort.
The insecurity has penetrated the capital. Since an assault on Kabul’s Serena Hotel last January, westerners have disappeared from the streets of Kabul. This week Taliban commanders threatened to step up the campaign with more bombs.
The key to the Taliban’s success, McConnell said, “is the opportunity for safe haven in Pakistan”. Meanwhile the surge in violence has placed a big strain on Nato. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has agreed to deploy a battalion near Kabul after America has criticised European states for refusing to join the fight in the south and Canada threatened to withdraw its troops from Kandahar next year if reinforcements do not arrive.
An Oxfam report yesterday said international and national security forces, as well as warlords, criminals and the Taliban, were perceived by ordinary Afghans as posing security threats.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/afghanistan.terrorism
