The News (Pakistan) - Letters to the Editor

The News (Pakistan)

The mysterious way in which Maryam Siddiqui, the daughter of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, turned up at her relatives' home in Karachi raises some disturbing questions. If Dr Aafia Siddiqui was indeed captured by US authorities, then it is a mockery of the Pakistani security setup that the US intelligence agencies operate unhindered on Pakistani soil, pick up a citizen of Pakistan whenever they want and drop them off whenever and wherever they like. Are these foreign agencies accountable to anyone? How can the Pakistani security agencies not trace the captors of Maryam Siddiqui? Who is going to pay for the ordeal through which Maryam and her family went during all these years? On the other hand, if the arrest of Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her children was not the work of foreign agencies, is it correct to assume that Maryam Siddiqui has been a prisoner of her country's own security agencies? In either case, whether Dr Aafia Siddiqui's family suffered at the hands of the US or her own country, her case symbolises the horrific and inhumane nature of the war on terror which has brought death and destruction to millions of people in South Asia. The consensus verdict of the New York jury against Dr Aafia Siddiqui, declaring her guilty, shows that the disregard for human rights and justice is institutionally ingrained in western polity. Dr Aafia Siddiqui's case and the war on terror help us understand the disillusionment of the Muslim world from the west and its ideals. Moez Mobeen Islamabad ***** It is good that Dr Aafia Siddiqui's daughter, Maryam Siddiqui, is with her family now. I am pleased that the girl has joined her relatives at last. I hope that Interior Minister Rehman Malik will help recover the still missing son of Dr Aafia Siddiqui. Mr Rehman should pressurise American authorities and get Dr Alafia Siddiqui released along with all those Pakistanis who are detained illegally by the Americans. Mubashir Mahmood Karachi

Child kidnap boom that shames Pakistan

by Robert Fisk

Herald.ie

Thousands die from bombs but now, says Robert Fisk, the young are targets

Pakistan ambushes you. The midday heat is also beginning to ambush all who live in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province.

Canyons of fumes grey out the vast ramparts of the Bala Hisar fort. "Headquarters Frontier Force" is written on the ancient gateway. I notice the old British cannon on the heights -- and the spanking new anti-aircraft gun beside it, barrels deflected to point at us, at all who enter this vast metropolis of pain.

There are troops at every intersection, bullets draped in belts over their shoulders, machine guns on tripods erected behind piles of sandbags, the sights of AK-47s brushing across rickshaws, and rubbish trucks and buses with men clinging to the sides. There are beards that reach to the waist. The soldiers have beards, too, sometimes just as long.

I am sitting in a modest downstairs apartment. A young Peshawar journalist sits beside me, talking in a subdued but angry way, as if someone is listening to us, about the pilotless American aircraft which now slaughter by the score -- or the four score -- along the Afghanistan border.

GUNSHIPS

"I was in Damadola when the drones came. They killed more than 80 teenagers -- all students -- and, yes they were learning the Koran, and the madrasah, the Islamic school, was run by a Taliban commander. But 80! Many of them came from Bajaur, which would be attacked later. Their parents came afterwards, all their mothers were there, but the bodies were in pieces. There were so many children, some as young as 12. We didn't know how to fit them together."

The reporter -- no name, of course, because he still has to work in Peshawar -- was in part of the Bajaur tribal area, to cover negotiations between the government and the Taliban.

"The drones stayed around for about half an hour, watching," he says. "Then two Pakistani helicopter gunships came over. Later, the government said the helicopters did the attack. But it was the drones."

An Islamabad garden now, light with bright oak trees and big birds that bark at us from the branches, beneath which sit two humanitarian workers, both Europeans who have spent weeks in the Swat valley during and after the Pakistani army's offensive against the Taliban.

"There were dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- executed by the army. They were revenge killings by the soldiers, no doubt about it. A number of people we had reported to us as arrested -- they were later found dead. What does that mean? The Americans and the Brits were aware of this, of course they were, and they intervened with the government. But what does this say about the army? In one village, two bodies lay in the street for two days -- it was a way of showing the local people what would happen to them if they supported the Taliban. What does this say about the army? Can they control Pakistan like this?"

The drones dominate the tribal lands.

They killed 14 men in just one night last month, at Datta Khel in north Waziristan. The drones come in flocks, and five of them settled over the village, firing a missile each at a pick-up truck, splitting it in two and dismembering six men aboard.

When local residents as well as Taliban arrived to help the wounded, the drones attacked again, killing all eight of them. The drones usually return to shoot at the rescuers.

But where do the drones come from?

When Afghan President Hamid Karzai flew into Islamabad last month, what struck Pakistanis was his astonishing statement that the devastating missile attacks by pilotless US drone aircraft were not being launched from inside Afghanistan. Karzai was (for once) telling the truth. The drones attacking Pakistan come from -- Pakistan.

POOR

The Institute for Peace Studies in Pakistan has been recording every act of violence in the country since the 2001 attack on America, and concludes that just in 2009 12,632 men and women -- civilians, soldiers, Taliban militants, even victims of inter- tribal battles -- were killed. But perhaps it is Pakistan's ability to do harm to itself that most struck me -- symbolised, I fear, by the latest and most terrible affliction to strike it: child-kidnapping. Steal a little boy or a little girl, ask the parents for money, and kill the infant if they don't pay.

When Sahil Saeed, the British-Pakistani boy, was taken, the police and the British embassy helped to bring him home. But journalists covering the story found that the family home was sometimes overwhelmed with other parents, like those of six-year-old Mahnoor Fatima, who was stolen from his family in October of last year and never seen again.

"This shows the difference between rich and poor," Mahnoor's mother said. "No one even came to my house to console me. Everything is done here for the rich, but nothing for Pakistanis and the poor."

Near Peshawar, a three-year old girl called Fariha was taken from a wedding party last month, her kidnappers demanding £8,000 (€9,100) for her life. The parents couldn't pay. So Fariha was killed and thrown into a canal.

In Faisalabad two days later, another kidnapped child, seven-year-old Samina Ali, was found dead in a drain after her parents failed to pay a ransom for her. They complained that the police later demanded £120 for handing over her body.

A kidnapped boy, a six-year-old identified only as Sharjeel, was also found dead in a drain a few hours earlier.

In the first two months of this year, 240 people -- almost all of them children -- have been kidnapped in Pakistan. Only 74 have been recovered alive.

There -- not in the suicide attacks and the venality of politicians-- lies the worst statistic in Pakistan.

hnews@herald.ie

Robert Fisk: Pakistan's advocates of justice

by Robert Fisk

The Independent

The top judge is again on a collision course with the country's political leaders, this time over corruption. Robert Fisk reports from Islamabad on the judiciary's battle to uphold due process and the rule of law

Three years ago, Pakistan's dethroned chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was portrayed in the American press as a nationalist firebrand, intent on destroying the Washington-friendly Dictator-General-President Pervez Musharraf.

And today – a year after he was restored to his Supreme Court post – Mr Chaudhry is being condemned by some as a closet fundamentalist, a pseudo-Taliban anxious to overthrow his country's dodgy democracy.

Mr Chaudhry once again became the most prominent man in Pakistan this week when he pursued the civilian government of Asif Ali Zardari over allegations of corruption. As a result of his threats, officials in Islamabad took the surprising step yesterday of asking the Swiss authorities to reopen a series of old money-laundering allegations against Mr Zardari, a move which opens the prospect of the sitting President facing a criminal investigation.

But you only have to sit in the book-lined office of Aitzaz Ahsan to realise that the West got it wrong about Pakistan's judiciary. The senior advocate at Pakistan's Supreme Court, honorary fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, Benazir Bhutto's former lawyer and leader of Mr Chaudhry's "long march" – a 2007 epic in which the marchers all travelled comfortably by bus, truck and limousine – speaks softly, like a cat controlling its anger. And he flourishes a legal folio which explains why the Chief Justice's recent decision to overturn Pakistan's dubious amnesty law – the National Reconciliation Ordinance – which pardons corrupt politicians, including President Zardari, has nothing to do with Islam.

"What we have now is a set of judges who are independent by conviction," Mr Ahsan says. "They resisted the military regime. They suffered detention and made sacrifices. They were reinstated by an energetic and frenzied mass movement. But they are now being maligned on two counts: that the chief justice is an Islamist and that he is trying to destabilise the democratic system ... The purpose? To contain Chaudhry, to put him on the defensive, the back foot. But the assumptions behind the attacks on Chaudhry are false."

Mr Chaudhry's dismissal followed his opposition to the privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills in Karachi, bought by three companies, one of which was rumoured to be a front for the then prime minister, and another on close terms with Mr Musharraf himself. Mr Chaudhry's three targets are the same now as they were in 2007: corruption, corruption and corruption. But Mr Ahsan himself likes telling the story of his finest hour. He tells it well.

"Musharraf, fearing that the judges would rule against him continuing to wear his uniform as chief of staff through an election for a second term, arrested the Chief Justice on November 3rd. I was myself arrested from this very room in my home. I was holding a press conference, condemning the imposition of the emergency and the suspension of the constitution, when the guy from downstairs called me, and said: 'The police have surrounded the house – they are going to come and get you.' I asked: 'Is there an escape route?' There was a road behind the house. He said, 'It's surrounded on every side.' I said: 'Be calm and let them come up.' I continued with the press conference. Then the police barged in."

"This was an electrifying event for the people, particularly because the chief justice had resisted the general's demand for his own resignation and had contested his dismissal before his own supreme court, where I represented him. And he had also energised the entire public by his travels in Pakistan earlier in the year. Chaudhry drove from here to Lahore – I drove him – and he stopped at every village. It should have taken four hours and it took 26 hours. There were millions of people, tens of thousands every couple of miles. Because of this, the 13 judges reinstated the chief justice on 20 July 2007 ..."

Much good did it do him. Mr Chaudhry was detained at his official residence, along with his children. "They were padlocked in," Ahsan says, still with a sense of shock. "They couldn't even go out to the back yard or the front garden for five months. He was forbidden cell-phones and television. I was myself detained all that time. We used servants with grocery baskets to pass messages. We put cellphone chips in the baskets. A one-minute call was all we could get from them before the police jammed the line."

And at this point, a palpable sense of rage almost overwhelms the bespectacled and slightly long-haired Mr Ahsan and he raises his finger in front of his face. "And during all this time, not a syllable or decibel was heard from either London or Washington or their representatives in Pakistan. There was not even a statement of concern about the children. The British and the Americans wouldn't touch us with a barge pole. All the time, they were negotiating between Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf."

Mr Ahsan shakes his head. The lawyers' movement was, he explains, non-violent, pluralistic and in favour of "moderate" values. "It was the only one of its kind in the history of the Islamic world. And the West treated us like pariahs. They embraced Musharraf, they were angry at us."

In a sense, the Pakistani judiciary had become an equivalent to the press in Britain after Tony Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq: they were the real opposition party; they – and not the politicians – represented the people.

"The fact is that until the chief justice refused to resign, there was no challenge to Pervez Musharraf," Mr Ahsan goes on. "He had had a tame judiciary – which included Chaudhry at that time – which was totally subservient. He [Musharraf] was the army chief and the military did his bidding entirely; and the popular opposition leaders – Benazir and Nawaz Sharif – were both in self-exile. It was at this point that the lawyers picked up the standard of revolt and challenged the authority of Musharraf in the face of brutal repression. The people responded and the rallies got bigger and bigger by the day."

Mr Ahsan has no doubt that America and Britain came to be regarded as adversaries rather than friends. "I kept telling them: 'Look, there's no likelihood of a suicide bomber starting his trek from Tora Bora and blowing himself up in Chicago or Manchester – it's your own citizens from Manchester of Pakistani origin who may do you damage. All they want is that you are friendly to their home country – you should espouse the rule-of-law movement.

"It was a historical opportunity missed – to embrace the people of Pakistan. For two years this opportunity was available to the West, particularly to Britain and the US. And for two years, they kicked it away."

Robert Fisk’s World: On the streets of Pakistan, it's as if the sun hasn't set on the Raj

by Robert Fisk

The Independent

Like everything else here, the bigger your cortège, the more important you are

I cruise the streets of Lahore and Rawalpindi in a rather shabby white car, me sitting next to the driver.

In the North West Frontier province, I put my Pushtu translator in the front, a good Pathan face to greet the checkpoint cops who anyway pay little attention to us, or anyone else for that matter. After all, if they stop the "right" car – the one with the bombers inside – they are likely to get "suicided" for their loyalty to Pakistan's corrupt government. Better a little flick of the hand and the comforting roar of my departing hackney.

There's a pecking order in all this, of course. Like everything in Pakistan, the bigger your cortège, the more important you are. In that order. Unlike The Independent's humble correspondent, these nabobs live in residence-fortresses, air-conditioned bunkers, seals of security which cut them off from the 150 million people of Pakistan as surely as the razor wire around their electrified gates. As Mohamed Jamil of Islamabad's Daily Times points out, this profligacy, along with the usual perks and privileges, is one of the reasons for the perpetual increase in Pakistan's fiscal deficit. "They move around with multiple-layered security escorts, equipped with the most sophisticated weapons and equipment. Exorbitantly expensive bulletproof cars and vehicles are being imported and provided to them." They are often guarded, I need hardly say, by gun-happy and brutal Western mercenaries, in some cases the direct descendants of the Brits who guarded governors general, chiefs of staff and humble district commissioners of the Raj. How typical, you might say, of the high and mighty in what we used to call the Third World – after which we called it, even more patronisingly, the developing world – but which we shall now just call Pakistan.

But hold on a moment. So much of this sad, intelligent, brave but deeply corrupted country has its roots in imperial history that you have to remember a basic tenet of all de-colonised nations – albeit that the Muslims of India were struggling for a new country called Pakistan rather than the nationalist Indian battle for an end to the Raj. And the most prominent characteristic of all post-colonial independent states is their ability, willingness and even desire to imitate their oppressors.

One of the most important features of feudal culture was that it was regarded as below the dignity of aristocrats to walk on foot like ordinary folk. I'm obliged to the perspicacious Mubarak Ali, writing in Dawn – "Qaid" Jinnah's old newspaper which, incidentally, wisely reprints articles from The Independent – for pointing out that "rich, influential and high officials always used some conveyance suitable to their status in order to impress people by showing their power and wealth. The British officials also adopted this tradition to maintain their status in the eyes of the local population".

When the president of the company of Madras went out, he took with him 400 native personal guards, his arrival presaged by the beating of kettledrums, his flag decorated with shining stars; his council members might be protected with aftabgir (umbrellas) while British officers would normally be accompanied by 20 horsemen, usually preceded by four servants carrying a silver staff (an asa) as a symbol of authority. As Mubarak Ali puts it rather quaintly, "Every English officer had elephants, horses and palanquins for his conveyance." Check palanquins in your dictionaries, Oh Readers ignorant of the Raj.

Some Brits, of course, went too far the other way – learning Persian and Urdu, the language of the nobility, as well as the Indian "natives" who learned English. In fact, some of these Brits almost forgot how to speak English. Thomas George dictated his own biography in broken English, so brilliant had become his knowledge of Persian and Urdu. Another British dignitary actually wrote his biography in Persian and sent it to London for translation into English. And the Brits also held their own versions of Mughal courts where they received an offering (nazr) from loyal servants. Mughal emperors gave their British interlocutors robes of honour – a form of jagir – and an awful lot of money. The Resident of Delhi, so Ali discovered, was awarded the title "Muntazimud-dola" – "administrator of the state".

But this was before the days of the East India Company, when fashionable integration – and the resultant Anglo-Indian families that came with it – turned into Raj rule. I have a wonderful Victorian volume at home which recounts how the British indulged themselves even when at war on the North West Frontier, one officer advancing with the Army of the Indus around the hills south-west of Peshawar with three camels to carry his personal supplies of cigars and wine. In 1842, in what was then the greatest disaster in British military history, the Army of the Indus was annihilated in the Kabul Gorge by predecessors of the Taliban.

In Peshawar last week, I was a little more circumspect. I dined on the floor at an old friend's home, talked to the North West Frontier's courageous Pakistani journalists in their press club, attacked last year by a suicide bomber – noting the unsmiling intelligence officer in the front row and the length of beards in the back row – before joining all of them for a group photograph. Ah, the pleasure of leaving Peshawar with 400 uniformed guards, 20 horsemen and servants carrying silver staffs. "Bahadur" Fisk with elephants and horses conveyed on his personal palanquin, preceded by the beating of kettledrums and flags bearing The Independent's aggressive eagle. Alas, at dusk I snuggled rabbit-like into the back seat of my little white car and trundled out of Peshawar through canyons of traffic, past mules and trucks of animal intestines that slopped on to the road, and beggars and motorcycle rickshaws and heavily bearded, armed men. I leave it to the new nabobs of Pakistan to uphold the standards of the Raj. I'm just a representative of scaredy-cat Britain, sneaking out of the North West Frontier as the sun set on the empire upon which the sun was never supposed to set.

Robert Fisk's World: As things get worse in Pakistan, the optimism continues to soar

by Robert Fisk

The Independent

Civilians have paid the price in revenge attacks that usually target the army

A few days ago, I was driving around Lahore, its population still shattered by the suicide bombers who blew themselves up next to two army trucks, killing 18 Pakistani soldiers and 48 civilians. The civilians, of course, were the usual "collateral damage" – the bad guys have even adopted our own obscene expression for unintended casualties – and they paid the price for Pakistan's continuing war against the Taliban in Swat and South Waziristan on behalf of America's "war on terror". Indeed, the conflict here is primarily between the army and the Taliban. I couldn't help noticing that the street where the bombs exploded is in the RA Barracks area of Lahore – and it took a time before I discovered that RA stands for Royal Artillery. Yes, our imperial ghosts continue to stalk this place while America's more recent empire ensures that its people suffer as they did under the Raj. Will freedom at midnight never come?

Yet far more outrageous was Richard Holbrooke's cocky, overconfident performance on CNN just three days later. Things are getting better on the "Af-Pak" scene, he told the world – how I hate these infantile expressions ("Af-Pak", "strategic depth", "spikes" and "surges") and al-Qa'ida is "under great pressure after losing key members of its leadership". Ten to 12 al-Qa'ida leaders had been "eliminated" over the past year – mostly in pilotless drone attacks on Pakistani territory, it should be added, which cost 667 lives in 2009 alone . Pakistan's civilians have paid the price in revenge attacks that usually target the Pakistani army: 322 Pakistanis killed and more than 500 wounded in 15 suicide bombings in the first 70 days of this year. The Pakistani army now has two divisions in Swat and several more in south Waziristan and Mr Holbrooke would like to see them move into north Waziristan as well, although – he generously agrees – that will be up to the commander of the Pakistani army.

So that's it, folks. Just like Bushy and Blair of Kut-al-Amara on Iraq, it's the same old story. The worse things get, the greater the optimism. If it's bad, it's getting better. By last year, Pakistan's dead since 2001 – from suicide bombers, Pakistani army operations, inter-tribal battles and Nato drone attacks – reached a total of 12,632 (with 12,815 wounded). Not bad, huh? And the overall political situation in Pakistan – where the Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif has just appealed to the Taliban to stop bombing Lahore on the grounds that residents hate the Americans (and ex-dictator Pervez Musharraf) just as much as they do – is "much better now", according to Dickie Holbrooke. After all, the Pakistani military is no longer in Pakistan's "complicated" politics. We shall see.

I can recall sitting on the lawn one evening this week with Imran Khan – among the most honest of Pakistan's politicians (there aren't many, I promise you) – as dusk fell over the Margalla mountains. And Imran was raging. "My God, these people in Waziristan, they are wonderful, beautiful people and what are we doing to them? The army fire their artillery 20km from their target, and they're told they are shooting at 11 Taliban people and then they fire and the army announce that 11 Taliban have been killed. We are killing our own people. This has to stop." But there's not much point in thinking that Obama and his dotty secretary of state care a damn. They are lost.

Why, only a few months ago, la Clinton was bitching about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to stop building settlements following Obama's "reach-out" – another of those bloody phrases – to Muslims. She meant all settlements, she said. Illegal settlements, "legal" settlements, outposts, whatever the Israelis liked to call it. And when Netanyahu offered his ridiculous "freeze" on just West Bank Jewish colonies for a mere six months – not in Jerusalem, mark you – off la Clinton trotted to the Arab League to publicise this extraordinary and "unprecedented" offer by the land-grabbers of the Netanyahu government.

Now she is huffing and puffing again. Joe Biden turns up in the land to which the United States has donated almost £200bn over the past decade in the hope of getting the Israelis and Palestinians to talk to each other again – and Netanyahu's government announces another 1,600 Jewish homes in East Jerusalem. Biden, of course, should have jumped back on his plane and flown back to America. Hasn't the US, after all, registered 39 vetoes to protect its little Middle Eastern Prussia in the UN? No way. The timing of the statement – the timing, mark you – was "unhelpful". Netanyahu said he didn't know about the announcement in advance – which, if true, suggests we should all believe in Father Christmas and fairies at the bottom of the garden.

But what does la Clinton do? Not appreciating that Biden and she and Obama have been treated by the Israelis with the contempt they deserve, she rants on the phone to Netanyahu about the "affront" and the "insult" of the timing of the announcement. But this is preposterous.

The affront and the insult were not caused to la Clinton or Obama. So self-regarding is this wretched woman that she could not grasp that the real affront and insult were being endured by the Palestinians – who are again being driven from their homes and dispossessed so that Netanyahu's Israeli colonists can move further into east Jerusalem. La Clinton should have asked Netanyahu how he could inflict such punishment on innocent Palestinians – but she thought that she and Obama were the victims.

My guess is that it's only a matter of time before Obama's pitiful envoy George Mitchell will be replaced by a tougher man – and who better than Dickie Holbrooke, the tough guy who knows how to handle "Af-Pak" and will know how to handle Netanyahu? Why, it's not so long ago that he produced "peace" in Bosnia at Dayton, Ohio – one S Milosevic being an honoured guest – while telling a pleading delegation of Kosovo Muslims to get lost. Nothing should get in the way of peace in Bosnia. So the Kosovars departed to endure their own ethnic cleansing when Nato went to war with Serbia. You may remember that we were fighting this war to get the Kosovo Albanians back into their homes – even though most of them were in their homes when our USAF and RAF warriors started their bombing campaign against Serbia.

But who cares? Things are getting better in Pakistan. It's only the Americans who are upset about Netanyahu. One thing at a time. That's what Holbrooke told the Kosovo Muslims. Al-Qa'ida are on the run. And they expect us to believe all this guff.

Robert Fisk: The mysterious case of the Grey Lady of Bagram

by Robert Fisk

The Independent

How does a neuroscientist and mother of three end up in jail as an al-Qa'ida agent?

Dr Shams Hassan Faruqi sits amid his rocks and geological records, shakes his bearded head and stares at me. "I strongly doubt if the children are alive," he says. "Probably, they have expired." He says this in a strange way, mournful but resigned, yet somehow he seems oddly unmoved. As a witness, supposedly, to the mysterious 2008 re-appearance of Aafia Siddiqui – the "most wanted woman in the world", according to former US attorney general John Ashcroft – I guess this 73-year-old Pakistani geologist is used to the limelight. But the children, I ask him again. What happened to the children?

Dr Faruqi is Aafia Siddiqui's uncle and he produces a photograph of his niece at the age of 13, picnicking in the Margalla hills above Islamabad, a smiling girl in a yellow shalwar khameez, half-leaning against a tree. She does not look like the stuff of which al-Qa'ida operatives are made. Yet she is now a semi-icon in Pakistan, a country which may well have been involved in her original kidnapping and which now oh-so-desperately wants her back from an American prison. Her children, weirdly, disconcertingly, have been forgotten.

Aafia Siddiqui's story is now as famous in Pakistan as it is notorious in a New York City courtroom where her trial for trying to kill an American soldier in the Afghan city of Ghazni in 2008 – she was convicted this month and faces a minimum of 20 years in prison on just one of the charges against her – is regarded as a symbol of American injustice. "Shame on America," posters scream in all of Pakistan's major cities. She is known as the "grey lady of Bagram", supposedly tortured for five years in America's cruel Afghan prison. Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari has asked American envoy Richard Holbrooke to repatriate Siddiqui under the Pakistan-US prisoner exchange scheme, while the Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has dubbed her a "daughter of the nation". Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif promises to demand her release. But none of them mention the children. Ahmed, Sulieman and Maryam are their names.

Ahmed was returned to Pakistan from Afghanistan in 2008, but Dr Faruqi tells me he doesn't believe for a moment that it is Aafia Siddiqui's son. "He came here to stay with me, but he said he didn't know Aafia until he was taken to Ghazni. He said to me: 'I was in the big earthquake in Afghanistan and my brothers and sisters were killed in their home while I was out fetching water – that's what saved my life.' He told me that after the earthquake, he was put in an orphanage in Kabul. He was shown a photograph of my niece Aafia and said he did not know this lady, that he had never seen her before. Then he was taken to Ghazni and told to sit next to this woman – my niece. The boy is intelligent. He is simple. He is honest."

All such mysteries require a "story-so-far". It goes like this. Aafia Siddiqui, a 38-year-old neuroscientist, an MIT alumna and Brandeis university PhD, disappeared after leaving her sister's home for Karachi airport in 2003, taking Ahmed, Sulieman and Maryam with her. The Americans say she was a leading al-Qa'ida operative. So does her ex-husband. She had re-married Ammar al-Baluchi, currently in Guantanamo Bay, a cousin of Ramzi Yousef who was convicted for the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. Not, you might, say, a healthy curriculum vitae in the West's obsessive "war on terror". In 2004, the UN identified her as an al-Qa'ida operative.

But released inmates from the notorious American prison at Bagram near Kabul– where torture is commonplace and at least three prisoners have been murdered – have stated that there was a woman held there, a woman whose nightly screams prompted them to go on hunger strike. She was dubbed the "grey lady of Bagram". At her New York trial, Siddiqui demanded that Jewish members of the jury be dismissed, she fired her own defence lawyers who said she had become unbalanced after torture; Siddiqui blurted out that she had been tortured in secret prisons before her arrest. "If you were in a secret prison ... where children were murdered..." she said.

And so to the town of Ghazni, south of Kabul. It was here that Afghan police stopped her in 2008, carrying a handbag which supposedly contained details of chemical weapons and radiological agents, notes on mass casualty attacks on US targets and maps of Ghazni. American soldiers and FBI agents were summoned to question her and arrived in Ghazni without realising that Siddiqui was in the same room, sitting behind a curtain. According to their evidence, she managed to take one of their M-4 assault rifles and opened fire with the words, "Get the fuck of here. May the blood of [unintelligible] be on your [head or hands]." She missed but was cut down by two bullets from a 9mm pistol fired by one of the soldiers. Hence the charges. Hence the conviction.

She wasn't helped by an alleged statement by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – the man who supposedly planned 9/11 and who is the uncle of her second husband, Ammar al-Baluchi – who claimed that Aafia Siddiqui was a senior al-Qa'ida agent. But then, he'd just been waterboarded 183 times in a month – which hardly makes his evidence, to use a phrase, water-tight.

The questions are obvious. What on earth was a Pakistani American with a Brandeis degree doing in Ghazni with a handbag containing American targets? And why, if her family was so fearful for her, didn't they report her missing in 2003, go to the press and tell the story of the children? Ahmed – son of Siddiqui or Afghan orphan, depending on your point of view – is now staying with Siddiqui's sister, Fauzia, in Karachi; but she refuses to let him talk to journalists. The Americans have shown no interest in him – even less in the other two, younger children. Why not?

It's odd, to say the least, that Dr Faruqi also maintains that in 2008 – before the Ghazni incident – Aafia Siddiqui turned up at his home in the suburbs of Islamabad. "She was wearing a burqa and got out of the car, just outside here," he says, pointing to the tree-lined street outside his office window. "I only caught sight of her once, and I said 'You have changed your nose'. But it was her. We talked about the past, her memories, it was her voice. She said the ISI (the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence) had let her come here. She wanted to get away, to go back to Afghanistan where she said the Taliban would protect her. She said that since her arrest, she knew nothing of her children. Someone told her they had been sent to Australia."

More questions. If Siddiqui was a "ghost prisoner" in Afghanistan, how come she turned up at Dr Faruqi's home in Islamabad? Why would she wear an Afghan "burqa" in the cosmopolitan capital of her own country? Why did she not talk more about her children? Why could she not show her face to her own uncle? Did she really come to Islamabad?

Fauzia Siddiqui is now touring Pakistan to publicise her sister's "unfair" trial, her torture at the hands of Americans. Most of the Pakistan press have taken up her story with little critical attention to the allegations against her. She has become a proto-martyr, a martyr-in-being; if her story is comprehensible, it requires a willing suspension of disbelief. But America's constant protestations of ignorance about her whereabouts before 2008 have an unhappy ring about them.

And the children? Rarely written about in Pakistan, they, too, in a sense, were "disappeared" from the story – until the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, paid an uneasy visit to Pakistan this week and, according to Fauzia, told the Interior minister, Rehman Malik, that "the children of Aafia Siddiqui will be sent home soon". Was Karzai referring to the other two children? Or to all three, including the "real" Ahmed? And if Aafia's two/three children are in Afghanistan, where have they been kept? In an orphanage? In a prison? And who kept them? The Afghans? The Americans?

Robert Fisk: Into the terrifying world of Pakistan's 'disappeared'

by Robert Fisk

The Independent

In the first of a series of reports from Pakistan, our correspondent meets the wife of one of 8,000 citizens who have gone 'missing' at the hands of the state

If you want to know how brutally Pakistan treats its people, you should meet Amina Janjua. An intelligent painter and interior designer, she sits on the vast sofa of her living room in Rawalpindi – a room that somehow accentuates her loneliness – scarf wound tightly round her head, serving tea and biscuits like the middle-class woman she is. And although neither a soldier nor a policeman has ever laid a hand on her, she is a victim of her country's cruel oppression. Because, five years ago, her husband Masood became one of Pakistan's "disappeared".

It is a scandal and a disgrace and, of course, a crime against humanity. Ask not where Masood Janjua has gone – Amina does ask, of course, all the way up to the President – for he has entered that dark world wherein dwell up to 8,000 of Pakistan's missing citizens, men, for the most part, seized from their homes or from the streets by cops and soldiers on the orders of spies and intelligence agents and Americans since 11 September, 2001. In Lahore alone, there are 120 "torture houses" just for the missing of the Punjab. Their shrieks of pain from the basements could be heard by residents – who complained only that the buildings might provoke bomb attacks. In Pakistan today, preservation counts for more than compassion.

Masood Janjua was 44 when he was "disappeared" on 30 July 2005. He ran an IT college and a travel agency, the father of two boys – Mohamed and Ali, and a girl, Aisha. He just never came home. Nobody saw what happened. Amina, who was 40 at the time, glows when she speaks of him. "We were so extremely close, so happy, our world was so heavenly – we were always visiting friends, having parties at home. He was so caring and kind to our children, so affectionate. That he should be taken from me! I think it was a very big mistake that they did. But when they do it – like this – they never say they were wrong."

"They". Everyone I talk to here talks about "they". Many refuse to talk in case it provokes "them" to undertake a quick execution. "They" is the Inter-Services Intelligence. "They" is military intelligence. "They" are the Americans, some of them present – according to the few "disappeared" who have been released – during torture sessions. The Defence of Human Rights Pakistan (DHRP), the movement which Amina founded with 25 other bereft families, has gathered evidence of English-speaking interrogators who calmly ask victims questions during their torment. Ironically, Amina lives in a military district of Rawalpindi, beside an old British barracks, where US soldiers are observed in Pakistani uniforms – sometimes female American soldiers dressed, so she says, in the uniforms of Pakistani military paramedics.

Even more ironic was the first word she had of her husband after he disappeared. "When I went to the Supreme Court to demand his return, witnesses came forward to say they saw Masood inside an army barracks here in Rawalpindi, very close to his family. Just think – it was within walking distance from our home! He was inside a cell at 111 Brigade barracks. It was so sad for me – it was as if they were being cynical, to keep him so close to his family."

Amina Janjua found that one of the court witnesses lived in Peshawar and she travelled to the North West Frontier Province to speak to him five months after her husband disappeared. "He had been in the army facility in Rawalpindi. The prisoners were kept in solitary confinement and only when they were taken to the lavatory did they come close to other prisoners. They were forced to wear big hoods – hoods that went right down and covered their shoulders – and the detainees would get no chance to talk to another human being. This man said my husband was there – he even heard the guard call him 'Janjua'."

There is evidence that Pakistan's "disappeared" are moved around, between barracks and interrogation centres and underground torture facilities in different towns and cities. There are also terrible rumours – fostered, some say, by the security authorities – that the army has thrown detainees from helicopters, that the cops dispose of bodies at night by dumping them in swamps or in open countryside so that decay and animal mutilation will cover the marks of torture before the bodies are found. But Amina Janjua believes most of them are alive. You might say she has to believe that.

"After 9/11, everyone was worried. People were ruthlessly disappeared after the New York attacks. No one knew why their loved ones were taken. The first few months were like hell for me. Then I regained my consciousness and said I could not accept all this. I said I would fight. I said I would get my husband back." Brave words. Brave lady.

So she turned to the only brave institution still fighting in Pakistan: the lawyers and the judges and the courts. So far, the Supreme Court in Islamabad and the Lahore High Court have squeezed around 200 detainees out of the maw of the country's security apparatus – those, that is, who were still in Pakistan. Many are known to have been freighted off to the tender mercies of the Americans at Bagram in Afghanistan, where Arab detainees have long ago testified to being beaten and sodomised with broom sticks. There have been prisoner murders, too, in Bagram, the jail that President Barack Obama refuses to close.

"At the beginning, I went to the International Red Cross about Masood," Amina Janjua says. "I saw them over several months. There was no progress. My father-in-law went to many people, he even went to President Musharraf – he trained in the military with Musharraf and they knew each other very well – and Musharraf said, 'I will do something for you'– but he never did. After that, when we called the President's house, they would start avoiding us. We wrote to all the Pakistan intelligence agencies. All said my husband could not be found."

Many families have been given false hopes. "In some villages way out in the country," Amina recalls, "families were told by the authorities that their sons were coming home. These were poor people but they were so happy, so delighted. They would hold a party and give out sweets and slaughter valuable animals to show their happiness. But then the sons didn't come home. Can you imagine treating people like this?"

Amina Janjua's fraudulent hope came in a phone call in 2006, a year after Masood's disappearance. "We had our first breakthrough when the military secretary of the President called Masood's father to say that his son was alive and that they had heard about him, though he had been ill – in a fever. That was our first sign of relief.

"Then he started avoiding us again. There was no message after that. Then we were told 'No, he is not with us, but we are making every effort because the President has made this request to help you.' I went on asking senior people in the army what had happened to my husband, and they – I put it like this – they started shivering. They would shudder. They could not disclose any information."

Teaching herself law and fighting her own case, Amina Janjua returned to the Supreme Court. "When I did this, I started hearing of many other cases and things that are happening. And that's when I realised. It's not about 'missing' people – this is about abduction. I started organising files on these abducted people and eventually I had 788 families on my list and I started conducting research. And we got about 200 prisoners released. The courts ordered this. They were all still in Pakistan. Others, we know, had been taken to Bagram, three or four to Guantanamo Bay where at least we knew they were alive."

But Amina's research could prove terrifying. She discovered not only that abducted men were alive. They were also dead. "I suspected some of them had died," she said. "I know of three prisoners who are dead. One was Mohamed Shafiq; he was a coach driver and they released his death certificate – it said he died of 'some illness'. He was in his 40s. One of the prisoners, a businessman called Said Menon, died shortly after he was released.

"All of the 200 we got released had been tortured. Initially, it was very ruthless – they were not allowed to sleep; there were beatings and thrashings; they were hanged upside down. There was loud music. There were actual torture rooms where the things were done to them. The prisoners told us they didn't think their torturers were human beings at all. The faces of the torturers, they said, were horrifying. It was no longer a real world for them. The torturers seemed so powerful, like monsters, so big."

The questions they were asked were repetitive, according to Amina Janjua. Where are the guns? Where are the weapons? Where is Mullah Omar? Two prisoners described to Amina's committee how they were made to wear orange jumpsuits, shaven till they were bald and taken for questioning to Islamabad. "They were interrogated by foreigners – they could see them. They were English-speaking. They didn't know if they were Americans or British."

The DHRP now holds public protests in all the cities of Pakistan where the prisoners have their homes – in Lahore, Sagoda, Quetta, Faisalabad, Karachi, Peshawar – but the families focus on Islamabad where they demonstrate their fury and their anguish outside the Supreme Court and the offices of President Asif Ali Zardari and the Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani. The DHRP files show that there are 1,700 missing from Baluchistan alone. At least 4,000 appear to be in the hands of the Pakistani interior ministry, while 2,000 have been handed over to what the DHRP describes as "foreign agencies" – usually, the Americans. Perhaps 750 of the missing Pakistanis are believed to have been taken by the Americans – illegally, of course – to Bagram, the Policharki prison outside Kabul, or to Herat in western Afghanistan.

'Long March' for Aafia's release from 10th

by Farehia Rehman

The Nation

ISLAMABAD – Exhibiting grave concerns over the alleged sluggishness of the PPP-led regime to get Dr Aafia Siddique released from illegal imprisonment of USA, civil society activists on Wednesday announced to launch “Long March” from 10th of March.

A series of events are in pipeline as a part of a “Long March” that would be launched from Faisalabad Bar Association. The announcement was made in a peaceful demonstration at Abpara Chowk organised by the Pakistan Professionals Forum and student community of the twin cities to condemn and convey shock and abhorrence against the unjust verdict in Dr Aafia Siddique’s case and to show solidarity with her and her family.

Dr Fauzia Siddqui, Dr Afia’ s sister was also present at the occasion along with the representatives of the Pakistan Professionals Forum, Defence of Human Rights (DHR) and the civil society activists. Peoples belonging to all walks of life including doctors, engineers, lawyers, academicians, students, and other professionals also massively participated in the demonstration and rejected, in unequivocal terms, the illegal detention and conviction of Dr Aafia Siddiqui by NY court. The demo was held during rain. Participants on the occasion vehemently condemned her detention and appealed for efforts to secure her immediate release.

They opined that Dr Afia Siddiqui is a citizen of Pakistan and she was illegally abducted by Pakistani intelligence agencies and handed over to US authorities. Pakistan has the legal authority and jurisdiction to hear her trial and decide her fate, if she has ever committed a crime. Handing her over to US authorities is a gross violation of the constitution of Pakistan and an insult to the judicial system in Pakistan and the nation as a whole.

They also said that the horrifying case of Aafia Siddiqui and her three children is a glaring example of the criminal and inhuman practices of US imperialism and its ally, the Pakistani government.

While addressing the gathering, Dr Fauzia Siddqui said that the aggrieved families of the missing persons under the leadership of Amna Janjua have been waiting for the recovery of their relatives and consider that the current situation is contrary to what the government and other people from ruling parties are announcing.

She said that the Kangaroo court of New York has held Dr Aafia Siddiqui guilty for a crime that she never committed despite the fact that no fingerprints of Dr Aafia were found on the gun; neither witnesses could testify their statements.

“Abduction, illegal imprisonment, torture and rape of Dr Aafia by US forces is insult of national integrity, dignity and sovereignty of 170 million Pakistani people,” she noted.

She maintained that government of Pakistan has not made sincere efforts to get Dr Aafia released from illegal imprisonment of USA during last two years.

She urged the leading political parties of Pakistan and their leaders, particularly, Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif to put their act together and make sincere efforts beyond making press statements for immediate repatriation of Dr Aafia to her family in Karachi, otherwise nation would not forgive them forever.

In her address Amna Masood Janjua, Chairperson Defence of Human Rights (DHR) and wife of one of the missing persons Masood Janjua said that they demand that government of Pakistan should immediately withdraw its cooperation with US in so-called war on terror and ban all transit supplies of US and NATO armed forces to Afghanistan from Pakistan.

“Dr Aafia is daughter of Pakistan and her return to Pakistan is very vital issue, and government must take immediate steps for safe recovery of all the missing persons including Dr Aafia,” she noted.

Mr. Fish's Cartoons - Droning On and On

by Mr. Fish

Truthdig

Democracy Now! - Headlines for February 17, 2010

Democracy Now!

Afghan Civilian Toll Rises in NATO Assault on Marjah

The civilian death toll from the US-led assault on the Afghan town of Marjah has reached at least nineteen. Earlier today, NATO confirmed the killings of another three civilians since Sunday’s rocket attack that killed twelve people in the same home. Ten of the victims were from the same family. The US military initially claimed the rockets missed their target, but now says the home was intentionally attacked because Taliban fighters were inside. The bodies of the victims were handed over for burial on Tuesday.

US Drone Attack Kills 3 in Pakistan

Meanwhile in Pakistan, at least three people have been killed in a suspected US drone attack. The strike reportedly destroyed a home in a village in North Waziristan. Pakistan meanwhile has confirmed reports the Taliban’s top military commander has been captured by Pakistani and US forces. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is in Pakistani custody but is also being interrogated by US officials. He is considered to be the most significant Taliban figure detained in the over-eight-year Afghan war.

Study: Haiti Damage Could Top $13.2B

In Haiti, a new study says the damage from last month’s earthquake is worse than after the 2004 Asian tsunami. The Inter-American Development Bank says the damage could cost anywhere between $7.2 billion to $13.2 billion, compared to initial estimates of around $5 billion. Study co-author Andrew Powell said the earthquake could be the most destructive natural disaster in modern history.

Andrew Powell: “In relation to Haiti’s size, its population or its economic income, it’s really a terrible tragedy, one of the worst events that the world has seen for a country proportionate to the country’s size. And so, it’s really a devastating impact that the earthquake has had. We may well be talking of anything up to $13 or $14 billion of damages, and, of course, reconstruction needs is somewhat different to damages.”

Clinton: Iran World’s “Largest Supporter of Terrorism”

Tensions between the US and Iran are intensifying in the latest war of words over Iran’s nuclear program. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience in Saudi Arabia the Iranian government is the world’s largest supporter of terrorism.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “Iran has threatened other countries, including the Kingdom. Iran has funded terrorists that have launched attacks within other countries, including the Kingdom. Iran is the largest supporter of terrorism in the world today.”

Clinton was speaking before a women’s college in the town of Jeddah. When asked by a student why the US has not insisted Israel abandon its nuclear weapons, Clinton did not respond.

Ahmadinejad: Iran Open to Fuel Swap

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, said Iran remains open to a nuclear fuel swap. Under the long-discussed plan, Iran would send enriched uranium abroad in return for nuclear fuel to power a reactor for medical use. Iran appeared to have rejected the proposal last year. But on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad said, “We are still ready for an exchange, even with America.” Ahmadinejad also warned against imposing new sanctions against his government, saying, “Our response will not be like before.”

White House Won’t Rule Out Military Action in Iran

Meanwhile in Washington, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the Obama administration continues to leave the option of military action on the table.

Journalist: “And on Iran, you said there will be consequences.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs: “Yes.”

Journalist: “Do you rule out military consequences?”

Secretary Gibbs: “I wouldn’t rule out anything. Our focus has been on the process of engagement. The Iranians have, at virtually every turn, either ignored or disregarded that engagement, demonstrating to the world that its nuclear program is not of the means and type that they have tried to convince others that it’s for; that, as a result of that, not living up to their responsibilities, that consequences will follow.”

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit over Gitmo Deaths

A US district judge has dismissed a case against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and US military officials over the deaths of two Guantánamo Bay prisoners. The military has claimed the prisoners—Yasser Al-Zahrani and Salah Al-Salami—and another prisoner committed suicide at Guantánamo in 2006. But a recent article in Harper’s Magazine said the prisoners may have been suffocated and tortured at a secret black site facility at Guantánamo known as “Camp No.” The prisoners’ families had been seeking damages under the Alien Tort Claims Act. But on Tuesday, District Judge Ellen Huvelle said their case is barred by the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

No Civil Rights Charges in Police Killing of Sean Bell

The Justice Department has announced it won’t bring civil rights charges against any of the police officers who killed the unarmed New York resident Sean Bell in 2006. Bell, an African American, died in a hail of fifty police bullets on the morning of what would have been his wedding day. He was twenty-three years old. The civil rights investigation began after three of the officers were acquitted in a 2008 trial.

La. Jury Acquits White Officers in Killing of 73-Year-Old African American

Meanwhile in Louisiana, the Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the family of a seventy-three-year-old African American man killed by police in the town of Homer one year ago. Bernard Monroe was shot seven times in his front yard by a white police officer who claimed Monroe was carrying a gun. Several witnesses say Monroe only had a water bottle and accused the officers of placing a gun next to his body. Monroe had been left mute after suffering from throat cancer. Earlier this month, a jury acquitted the officers of Monroe’s murder.

Democracy Now! Headlines for January 11, 2010

Democracy Now!

Four Killed in US Drone Strike in Pakistan

The US use of drones in Pakistan appears to be intensifying. On Saturday, four people were killed in a drone strike in North Waziristan. It was at least the sixth drone strike so far this year.

Report: US Overwhelmed by Air Force Drone Intelligence

The New York Times reports the military is being overwhelmed by the amount of video captured by drones. Air Force drones collected nearly three times as much video over Afghanistan and Iraq last year as they did in 2007. It would take twenty-four years to watch what was recorded last year by the drones. And that volume is expected to multiply in the coming years as drones are added to the fleet and as some start using multiple cameras to shoot in many directions.

US to Double Amount of Military Stockpiles in Israel

The publication Defense News reports the US Army will double the value of emergency military equipment it stockpiles on Israeli soil and that Israel will be allowed to use the US ordnance if needed. The $800 million stockpile will include missiles, armored vehicles, aerial ammunition and artillery ordnance.

Mitchell Issues Loan Guarantee Threat to Israel

The news of the military equipment deal comes amid some tension between Israel and the Obama administration. Last week US envoy George Mitchell said Washington could penalize Israel financially to force it into making concessions to the Palestinians. Mitchell’s comments were widely criticized in Israel as well as by some of Israel’s staunchest supporters on Capitol Hill, including independent Senator Joseph Lieberman.

Senator Joseph Lieberman: “Any attempt to pressure Israel, to force Israel to the negotiating table by denying Israel support, will not pass the Congress of the United States. In fact, Congress will act to stop any attempt to do that. I don’t think we’re going to come to that point, because I think the President and his administration understand that."

In other news from the region, three Palestinians died Sunday by an Israeli tank in Gaza. Palestinians said the three men were militants who were in a field often used to launch rockets toward Israel. Meanwhile, Israel has announced plans to construct two walls along its southern border with Egypt in an attempt to prevent African refugees and asylum seekers from entering Israel. The two walls will cover a total of seventy miles.

ICE Officials Accused of Covering Up Immigrant Deaths in Detention

The New York Times reports federal officials have used their role as overseers to prevent the media from reporting deaths inside the nation’s immigration jails. Immigration and Customs Enforcement now admit 107 immigrants died in ICE custody since October 2003, but for years the deaths went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. The Times revealed jail officials and federal workers strategized about how to keep information about the deaths and mistreatment from the news media. In at least one case, jail medical personnel falsified a medication log in an effort to cover up the death of a twenty-two-year-old man from El Salvador. In another case, ICE officials considered paying to send the body of a Guinean man back to his home country to deflect news coverage of the man’s death in ICE custody. Some Bush administration era officials who played a role in the cover-ups remain in top posts in the Obama administration.

Federal Court to Hear Apartheid Reparations Case

Here in New York, a federal court will hear arguments today in a lawsuit against several international corporations accused of aiding South Africa’s apartheid-era government. Companies named in the lawsuit include Daimler AG, General Motors, Ford Motor Company and IBM.

Activists Start Fast on Anniversary of Opening of Guantanamo

And over 125 activists have started a twelve-day fast to mark the beginning of the ninth year of the US military prison detention at Guantanamo. The Fast for Justice will continue until January 22, the date by which President Obama had initially vowed to close the prison.

Democracy Now! Headlines for January 7, 2010

Democracy Now!

13 Killed in US Drone Attacks in Pakistan

At least thirteen people have been killed in a pair of US drone attacks in Pakistan. The strikes reportedly hit a militant training camp in Pakistan’s tribal region of North Waziristan.

Aid Convoy Reaches Gaza

A humanitarian aid convoy carrying food and medical supplies has arrived in the Gaza Strip nearly a month after it embarked from Britain. Members of the Viva Palestina convoy began passing through Egypt’s Rafah border crossing into Gaza on Wednesday. They are expected to spend the next forty-eight hours distributing the aid supplies. The convoy was delayed by more than a week following a dispute with the Egyptian government. As it entered Rafah, convoy leader and British parliamentarian George Galloway criticized the delay.

George Galloway: “We are very sorry that we are late. We would like to apologize to our friends in Palestine for arriving late. But the whole world knows why we were late.”

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Survivor of Both Atomic Bombings, Dies at 93

And in Japan, the only person known to have survived both US atomic attacks during World War II has died. Tsutomu Yamaguchi was ninety-three years old. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima when the US dropped the first atomic bomb on August 6th, 1945. He suffered several wounds but returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, which was bombed three days later. In his elder years, Yamaguchi became a vocal proponent of nuclear abolition.

U.S. Contemplates More of the Scarcely Believable in ‘Af-Pak’

by William Pfaff

Truthdig

The writer David Halberstam, author of a cruel analysis of the people who gave America the Vietnam War, “The Best and the Brightest,” observed that “no matter how small the initial step, a policy has a life and a thrust of its own, it is an organic thing. More, its thrust and its drive may not be in any way akin to the desires of the president who initiated it.” He had a hard time making his Vietnam-era interlocutors agree, for part of being one of the military and civilian best and the brightest was that you didn’t need advice from journalists.

It is another characteristic of official life that you are discouraged from applying lessons from experience and history (in the military case, before that experience has been incorporated into field manuals and regulations placed in front of you).

This rumination is motivated by the scarcely believable news that the people who are running the war in Afghanistan are contemplating an air attack on a Pakistan city in order to kill one of the most important figures in Pakistan’s own foreign and security policy.

Pakistan, as most sensible people know, is in the grip of forces that could tear the country apart if that happened—which would make it the third nation, after Iraq and Afghanistan, to be devastated by the United States since that fateful day in September 2001 when the so-called war on terror began.

The idea is for the United States to bomb Quetta, one of Pakistan’s principal cities, the capital of its largest province, Balochistan, which already experiences separatist forces. Quetta is a major Pakistan military base, home of the century-old Command and Staff College inherited from the British army.

A reported American threat is not just one of sending drones over this city of 850,000 people, with missiles meant to kill Mullah Omar, the leading figure in at least one branch of the Taliban; senior al-Qaida figures also supposedly in Quetta; and Siraj Haqqani, called the most important Taliban leader in the country, whose men are supposed to pose the biggest threat to NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Haqqani is also, as it happens, a major and longstanding Pakistani strategic asset and ally. He will be a vital factor in the regional reconciliation and strategic settlement that will follow America and NATO’s defeat. That is the most important objection to the supposed plan.

The Pakistanis believe that the NATO expedition in Afghanistan is an ill-conceived and futile affair from which, after killing and being killed in large numbers, and accomplishing nothing useful, the Europeans and Americans will depart, just as the U.S retreated from Lebanon under Ronald Reagan, after the 1983 attack on the troops’ barracks in Beirut, and Bill Clinton pulled U.S. troops out of Somalia not long after losing the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993.

After the foreigners leave, Pakistan will find itself once again in the awkward geopolitical and militarily dangerous situation in which nature and the vagaries of man have placed it. Its avowed great enemy is India, with which Pakistan shares a very long eastern border, with Iran to its west, and Afghanistan on its long northwestern frontier. A friendly Afghanistan therefore offers strategic depth in case of Indian attack, and access to Central Asia, while Iran is a corridor to the Middle East. This is the sort of thing they teach at the Quetta Command and General Staff College.

The American generals seem to be saying to Pakistan: You henceforth will ignore your own national security interests and devote yourself to our interests, whatever the cost to you. You will hand over all of the Taliban’s leaders and men in your country, and place your army under our strategic control. Otherwise, we will bomb your cities.

Why, according to the Los Angeles Times, “senior U.S. officials” think this is a good plan I cannot for the life of me tell you. I think it is a way to wreak further havoc in the region and do fundamental damage to the United States itself.

Visit William Pfaff’s Web site at www.williampfaff.com.