KABUL, Afghanistan – Seven U.S. troops have died in weekend attacks in Afghanistan's embattled southern and eastern regions, while officials found the bodies Sunday of five kidnapped campaign aides working for a female candidate in the western province of Herat.
Two servicemen died in bombings Sunday in southern Afghanistan, while two others were killed in a bomb attack in the south on Saturday, and three in fighting in the east the same day, NATO said. Their identities and other details were being withheld until relatives could be notified.
The latest deaths bring to 42 the number of American forces who have died this month in Afghanistan after July's high of 66. A total of 62 international forces have died in the country this month, including seven British troops.
Fighting is intensifying with the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to bring the total number of international forces in Afghanistan to 140,000 — 100,000 of them American. Most of those new troops have been assigned to the southern insurgent strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces where major battles are fought almost daily as part of a gathering drive to push out the Taliban.
The five campaign workers were snatched Wednesday by armed men who stopped their two-vehicle convoy as it drove through remote countryside. Five others traveling in the vehicles had earlier been set free, according to a man who answered the phone at the home of candidate Fawzya Galani and declined to give his name.
Residents of Herat's Adraskan district reported finding the bodies early Sunday. They were later transported to the local morgue for identification by family members, district chief Nasar Ahmad Popul said.
No one has claimed responsibility for the killings, although Taliban insurgents have waged a bloody campaign of murder and intimidation against candidates and election workers in hopes of sabotaging the Sept. 18 parliamentary polls the 249 seats in the lower house.
In a similar attack in Herat, male parliamentary candidate Abdul Manan was shot and killed Saturday on his way to a mosque by an assassin traveling on the back of a motorcycle.
Meanwhile Sunday, two suicide bombers attempted to climb over the back wall of a compound housing the governor of the far western province of Farah, but were spotted by guards and shot, provincial police Chief Mohammad Faqir Askir said.
The men's vests exploded, although it wasn't clear if they detonated themselves or because they were hit by bullets, Askir said.
The explosions blasted a chunk out of the wall and blew out windows in the compound, but there were no other reports of deaths or injuries, he said.
NATO said eight insurgents were killed in joint Afghan-NATO operations Saturday night in the province of Paktiya, including a Taliban commander, Naman, accused of coordinating roadside bomb attacks and the movement of ammunition, supplies and fighters.
Automatic weapons, grenades, magazines and bomb-making material were found in buildings in Zormat district along the mountainous border with Pakistan. Afghan leaders frequently complain that Pakistan is doing too little to prevent cross-border incursions and shut down insurgent safe havens inside its territory.
Just to the south in Khost province, U.S. and Afghan troops raised the death toll among insurgents to more than 30 in simultaneous attacks Saturday by about 50 fighters on Forward Operating Base Salerno and nearby Camp Chapman, where seven CIA employees died in a suicide attack in December.
Insurgents wore replica American uniforms and at least 13 had strapped themselves into suicide bomb vests, NATO said.
The early morning raids appeared to be part of an insurgent strategy to step up attacks in widely scattered parts of the country as the U.S. focuses its resources on the battle around Kandahar.
The Afghan Defense Ministry said two Afghan soldiers were killed and three wounded in the fighting, although NATO said there had been no deaths among the defenders. Four U.S. troops were wounded, NATO officials said.
U.S. and Afghan officials blamed the attack on the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based faction of the Taliban with close ties to al-Qaida. In follow-up operations Sunday, a Haqqani commander involved in the attacks and two other insurgents were detained in Khost's Sabari district, NATO said.
NATO also said it launched an airstrike in the northern province of Kunduz on three insurgents, including a commander with the Taliban-allied Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan responsible for recruiting foreign fighters and leading attacks. At least one of the three was killed and another wounded, the alliance said.
NATO has stepped up efforts to provide security to allow an election whose outcome will be generally accepted as credible, hoping that will help stabilize the nation's fractious politics that are helping fuel the violence.
Yet frictions have continued to mar the relationship between the government of President Hamid Karzai and its international partners, largely over the knotty question of endemic official corruption.
On Saturday, the government criticized U.S. media reports that numerous Afghan officials had allegedly received payments from the CIA — including one who reportedly took a bribe to block a wide-ranging probe into graft.
A presidential office statement did not address or deny any specific allegations, but called the reports an insult to the government and an attempt to defame people within it.
The statement came the same day as a top graft-battling Afghan prosecutor said he had been forced into retirement.
Deputy Attorney General Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar has complained that Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Aloko and others are blocking corruption cases against high-ranking government officials. He said Aloko wrote a retirement letter for him earlier in the week and that Karzai accepted it.
Officials said Sunday that Faqiryar had been retired because he was 72, two years over the mandatory retirement age.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
The price of impunity By Andrew Wander
Amnesty International says that powerful countries have created a global 'justice gap' [Amnesty]
When the UN Human Rights Council convened a special session on Sri Lanka last May, many were hoping for meaningful discussion about possible war crimes committed during the final phase of the country's civil war.
Thousands of civilians, who had been trapped between the Sri Lankan military and increasingly desperate Tamil rebels, were dead. Reports allege they were shelled by the military whilst sheltering in so-called "No Fire Zones" where they had been promised safety.
Hospitals and food distribution points had also been hit, and as the council convened in Geneva, tens of thousands of survivors huddled in sprawling internment camps in the north of the island, unable to leave and rebuild their shattered lives.
You would not know this, however, from the resolution the council passed. Drafted by the Sri Lankan delegation, it "commended" the government of Sri Lanka for its treatment of civilian victims of the war.
"It was a low point in the short history of the Human Rights Council," says Widney Brown, the director of the international law programme at Amnesty International, describing how Asian countries allowed the resolution to pass unopposed.
Mind the gap
Amnesty's annual global human rights assessment,released on Thursday, says the Sri Lankan case offers a perfect example of a growing threat to the application of international law - the so-called "justice gap" between the powerful and the weak.
"We see governments holding themselves above the law," says Brown. "A lot of countries are working in regional blocs to shield themselves from criticism."
The problem is not restricted to a single country or region. Brown says that powerful countries are undermining justice efforts all over the world by refusing to submit themselves to the laws that protect civilians in conflict.
She cites US support for Israel as another manifestation of the same problem, predicting that if the situation arises, Washington will use its UN security council veto to prevent any meaningful action against Israel for possible crimes committed in Gaza.
"China, Russia and US, as permanent members of the security council, are holding themselves above the law," she says. "It's so fundamentally unfair for victims that will be denied justice."
Double standards
Meanwhile less powerful countries, particularly in Africa, feel aggrieved when they find that they are being held accountable for human rights abuseswhile more powerful countries act with impunity.
It is, Brown says, an understandable resentment at a double standard that undermines efforts to make international justice the norm rather than the exception.
"The hypocrisy and double standards undermine calls for justice that are legitimate."
She wants to see the levels of scrutiny applied to Africa extended to all countries.
"It's not a bad thing that victims in Africa have a chance of justice. We want to extend that accountability."
For many, such accountability will come too late. The Amnesty report paints a disturbing picture of human rights violations that have gone unpunished because powerful nations are unwilling to submit to international human rights standards. Rather than setting an example, campaigners say they are creating a culture of impunity.
From the failure to implement the recommendations of the Goldstone report into possible war crimes committed during the Gaza conflict, to the refusal of some of the world's most powerful countries to sign up to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the report catalogues example after example of rights abuses for which there has been no justice.
"Repression and injustice are flourishing in the global justice gap, condemning millions of people to abuse, oppression and poverty," says Claudio Cordone, Amnesty's interim secretary general.
Disturbing trends
The report identifies trends in human rights violations, including "mass forced evictions of people from their homes in Africa, for example in Angola, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, often driving people deeper into poverty".
It also records "increased reports of domestic violence against women, rape, sexual abuse, and murder and mutilations after rape," and a "sharp rise in racism, xenophobia and intolerance in Europe and Central Asia".
On a more positive note, the report documents some limited progress in the spread of accountability mechanisms including the indictment of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, by the ICC on counts of crimes against humanity and the opening of new investigations in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
But the overall message from Amnesty is clear; there is a long way to go before powerful nations stop trading away the application of justice for short-term political gains.
When the UN Human Rights Council convened a special session on Sri Lanka last May, many were hoping for meaningful discussion about possible war crimes committed during the final phase of the country's civil war.
Thousands of civilians, who had been trapped between the Sri Lankan military and increasingly desperate Tamil rebels, were dead. Reports allege they were shelled by the military whilst sheltering in so-called "No Fire Zones" where they had been promised safety.
Hospitals and food distribution points had also been hit, and as the council convened in Geneva, tens of thousands of survivors huddled in sprawling internment camps in the north of the island, unable to leave and rebuild their shattered lives.
You would not know this, however, from the resolution the council passed. Drafted by the Sri Lankan delegation, it "commended" the government of Sri Lanka for its treatment of civilian victims of the war.
"It was a low point in the short history of the Human Rights Council," says Widney Brown, the director of the international law programme at Amnesty International, describing how Asian countries allowed the resolution to pass unopposed.
Mind the gap
Amnesty's annual global human rights assessment,released on Thursday, says the Sri Lankan case offers a perfect example of a growing threat to the application of international law - the so-called "justice gap" between the powerful and the weak.
"We see governments holding themselves above the law," says Brown. "A lot of countries are working in regional blocs to shield themselves from criticism."
The problem is not restricted to a single country or region. Brown says that powerful countries are undermining justice efforts all over the world by refusing to submit themselves to the laws that protect civilians in conflict.
She cites US support for Israel as another manifestation of the same problem, predicting that if the situation arises, Washington will use its UN security council veto to prevent any meaningful action against Israel for possible crimes committed in Gaza.
"China, Russia and US, as permanent members of the security council, are holding themselves above the law," she says. "It's so fundamentally unfair for victims that will be denied justice."
Double standards
Meanwhile less powerful countries, particularly in Africa, feel aggrieved when they find that they are being held accountable for human rights abuseswhile more powerful countries act with impunity.
| "Repression and injustice are flourishing in the global justice gap" Claudio Cordone, acting Secretary General, Amnesty International |
"The hypocrisy and double standards undermine calls for justice that are legitimate."
She wants to see the levels of scrutiny applied to Africa extended to all countries.
"It's not a bad thing that victims in Africa have a chance of justice. We want to extend that accountability."
For many, such accountability will come too late. The Amnesty report paints a disturbing picture of human rights violations that have gone unpunished because powerful nations are unwilling to submit to international human rights standards. Rather than setting an example, campaigners say they are creating a culture of impunity.
From the failure to implement the recommendations of the Goldstone report into possible war crimes committed during the Gaza conflict, to the refusal of some of the world's most powerful countries to sign up to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the report catalogues example after example of rights abuses for which there has been no justice.
"Repression and injustice are flourishing in the global justice gap, condemning millions of people to abuse, oppression and poverty," says Claudio Cordone, Amnesty's interim secretary general.
Disturbing trends
The report identifies trends in human rights violations, including "mass forced evictions of people from their homes in Africa, for example in Angola, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, often driving people deeper into poverty".
It also records "increased reports of domestic violence against women, rape, sexual abuse, and murder and mutilations after rape," and a "sharp rise in racism, xenophobia and intolerance in Europe and Central Asia".
On a more positive note, the report documents some limited progress in the spread of accountability mechanisms including the indictment of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, by the ICC on counts of crimes against humanity and the opening of new investigations in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
But the overall message from Amnesty is clear; there is a long way to go before powerful nations stop trading away the application of justice for short-term political gains.
Why leadership in the world matters
The mark of a great leader is being prepared to tell your people what they don't want to hear.
It's being ready to stand up for what you believe is right, even when this entails overruling cautious advisers, or ignoring discouraging opinion polls.
A great leader knows that vindication may not come immediately, that received wisdom can move slowly (sometimes too slowly, in a democracy, to secure re-election).
But in the long run, we can see who stands on the right side of history, and who does not.
Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, each former South African presidents, fit into the former category.
Both men have flawed records, (yes, even Mandela) but at a crucial time they had the courage and wisdom to steer South Africa away from the abyss.
They dismayed hardliner supporters with their willingness, firstly, to talk to the other side, and secondly, to then make painful compromises.
They took risks that could have destroyed their careers, but the quality of their leadership was a crucial ingredient in what we now see as the near miraculous peaceful end of Apartheid.
I can think of other examples of bold, principled leaders; the reforming Mikhail Gorbachev of the mid-1980s, and some of the Protestant and Catholic politicians in Northern Ireland who helped bring the peace process to fruition.
So what has this got to do with our world today?
Cyprus talks
This week, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, will be trying to encourage progress in talks between ethnic Greek and Turkish leaders on the island of Cyprus.
Expectations on Cyprus are low.
Rarely has the prospect of reunification of that troubled island looked more remote.
On the list of apparently insoluble political problems, Cyprus rates high. Almost as high, in fact, as the mother of all of those insoluble problems, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Well, it just so happens that Clinton will also be wading into that one in the next few weeks.
Again, it seems that only eternal optimists, or the hopelessly naïve, believe that anything will come of the new round of talks between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership.
At this point, I cast back my mind to my childhood.
I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, in Africa and Britain. Then, it was difficult to imagine that the end of Apartheid would not be accompanied by a bloodbath, or that Irish Catholics and Protestants could reach a lasting political settlement.
I know that it is simplistic to lump together such diverse places as South Africa, Northern Ireland, Cyprus and the Middle East.
Of course, each has its own complex history, and every community has its unique list of grievances and injustices suffered.
But if there is to be any progress in talks on the Middle East or Cyprus in the next few weeks, it can only come through courage and a willingness to compromise on the part of those leaders involved.
What is frustrating is that in both places, we have a pretty good idea of what a final settlement would look like.
It's the getting there that is so difficult.
So, Cyprus, Israel and Palestine; where are your Mandelas, your FW de Klerks, your Sisulus and Tambos? Where are your John Humes?
Do you have leaders who will tell their people to give up on cherished but impossible dreams, and work for peace here and now?
By Barnaby Phillips
It's being ready to stand up for what you believe is right, even when this entails overruling cautious advisers, or ignoring discouraging opinion polls.
A great leader knows that vindication may not come immediately, that received wisdom can move slowly (sometimes too slowly, in a democracy, to secure re-election).
But in the long run, we can see who stands on the right side of history, and who does not.
Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, each former South African presidents, fit into the former category.
Both men have flawed records, (yes, even Mandela) but at a crucial time they had the courage and wisdom to steer South Africa away from the abyss.
They dismayed hardliner supporters with their willingness, firstly, to talk to the other side, and secondly, to then make painful compromises.
They took risks that could have destroyed their careers, but the quality of their leadership was a crucial ingredient in what we now see as the near miraculous peaceful end of Apartheid.
I can think of other examples of bold, principled leaders; the reforming Mikhail Gorbachev of the mid-1980s, and some of the Protestant and Catholic politicians in Northern Ireland who helped bring the peace process to fruition.
So what has this got to do with our world today?
Cyprus talks
This week, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, will be trying to encourage progress in talks between ethnic Greek and Turkish leaders on the island of Cyprus.
Expectations on Cyprus are low.
Rarely has the prospect of reunification of that troubled island looked more remote.
On the list of apparently insoluble political problems, Cyprus rates high. Almost as high, in fact, as the mother of all of those insoluble problems, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Well, it just so happens that Clinton will also be wading into that one in the next few weeks.
Again, it seems that only eternal optimists, or the hopelessly naïve, believe that anything will come of the new round of talks between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership.
At this point, I cast back my mind to my childhood.
I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, in Africa and Britain. Then, it was difficult to imagine that the end of Apartheid would not be accompanied by a bloodbath, or that Irish Catholics and Protestants could reach a lasting political settlement.
I know that it is simplistic to lump together such diverse places as South Africa, Northern Ireland, Cyprus and the Middle East.
Of course, each has its own complex history, and every community has its unique list of grievances and injustices suffered.
But if there is to be any progress in talks on the Middle East or Cyprus in the next few weeks, it can only come through courage and a willingness to compromise on the part of those leaders involved.
What is frustrating is that in both places, we have a pretty good idea of what a final settlement would look like.
It's the getting there that is so difficult.
So, Cyprus, Israel and Palestine; where are your Mandelas, your FW de Klerks, your Sisulus and Tambos? Where are your John Humes?
Do you have leaders who will tell their people to give up on cherished but impossible dreams, and work for peace here and now?
By Barnaby Phillips
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