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‘Night letters’ from the Taliban threaten Afghan democracy

By Declan Walsh

Uruzgan, Afghanistan, Sept. 19— The photocopied notices appeared on the blue mosque door in Uruzgan, a small town below a line of jagged mountains, early on the morning of Sept. 17. Pinned up by an unknown hand under cover of darkness, their local name – “night letters” — has an almost romantic ring. Their message does not.

“A holy war has been declared against the infidel,” announced the first letter, attached to the door with black tape. Christians, led by the US, were invading, said the second. Any Afghan working with them would be “severely punished,” warned the third. At the bottom of each was a common signature: “The Taliban.”

Three weeks before Afghanistan’s presidential election, the black-turbaned Taliban are intensifying efforts to scupper the vote. Hunted by 18,000 US-led soldiers and scattered throughout the southern provinces, the insurgents have turned to a dual tactic of assassination and intimidation.

More than 30 election workers have been killed across the country. Two weeks ago a car bomb exploded in Kabul, killing three American security guards and at least nine other people. Then this week the US-backed interim president, Hamid Karzai — favorite to win the Oct. 9 poll — became the target.

Last Thursday, a rocket narrowly missed Karzai’s helicopter as it landed in the south-east town of Gardez. The tightly protected Karzai was forced to abandon the rally, his first of the campaign. A day later police arrested three Taliban suspects and found explosives and detonators.

A Taliban spokesman later said it intended to attack each of the 18 candidates for the presidency. But in rural areas like Uruzgan — the rugged, southern province where its fugitive leader, Mullah Omar, once lived — the Taliban are determined to discourage voters from even venturing into the polling booths.

As well as attacking the US — a remote explosion in the province wounded three soldiers on Friday — the Taliban are employing “night letters” as a primary weapon in the campaign of intimidation. Election officials, teachers and ordinary voters are receiving the threatening notes every day, said Atiqulla, the provincial electoral coordinator.

“They are told that if they cooperate with the elections, they will be killed. It’s the Taliban’s new way of preaching to them,” he said, speaking at his office in the heavily fortified UN compound in the regional capital, Tarin Kowt.

His election team in Uruzgan is virtually under siege. The central government has no control over the lawless province, where power sways between US troops, local militia, and small bands of roaming Taliban fighters.

Although the Americans provided security for voter registration, the election teams have been left on their own for the current civic education drive — considered crucial in a country that has never experienced a full democratic vote before.

On the streets of Tarin Kowt it is impossible to detect that a major election is looming, even though more than 200,000 people have reg istered to vote across the province. There are no election posters, and not one of the 18 candidates has dared to visit. In fact, few voters even know the candidates’ names, admitted Atiqulla.

“We have no newspapers, no local radio, so we depend on our teams of civic educators. And they are scared.”

Since May, five of Atiqulla’s staff have been killed and two injured. One was slashed across the chest; another held off a Taliban attack on his house for 90 minutes.

The local US military commander, LtCol Terry Sellers, said: “There’s a wrong perception that this is the wild, wild West because Mullah Omar comes from here,” he said. “There will be an increase in attacks before the election but we will be able to deal with it.”

Nevertheless, the furtive Taliban’s ability to project fear across the province remains undiminished. At the mosque in Uruzgan, where the night letters were pinned to the front door on Sept. 17 morning, the local Mullah said it was the first time such notices had appeared at his mosque. “I don’t know who did it. All I know is that they are not locals.”

Another man, Abdullah Khan, said the pamphlets must have come from outside because there was no photocopier in Uruzgan.

Moments later a US soldier ripped the letters down, and the Mullah quietly slipped away.

The question now is whether the Taliban’s intimidation tactics will slow or stop voting in rural areas like Uruzgan. Certainly, there seems to be a quiet determination to pursue democracy. More than 10.5 million of Afghanistan’s 27 million people have registered to vote, a far higher figure than had been anticipated.

Source: Observer (UK)

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50,000 indigenous people march for basic rights

By Constanza Vieira

Bogota, Colombia, Sept. 16 (IPS)— A tandem bicycle with a loudspeaker moved back and forth from one end of the massive indigenous protest march to the other, as the 50,000 demonstrators made their way along the Pan-American highway into the city of Cali in southwestern Colombia.

The protesters — Nasa (better known as Páez) Indians and members of other indigenous groups as well as black communities, peasant farmers and trade unionists — reached Cali on Sept. 16, after walking or riding in trucks for a total of 62 miles since they set out on Sept. 14.

The job of the “radiocicleta” or radio-bicycle is to report on what is happening during the march through a broadcast signal linked to Radio Payumat, a small indigenous radio station that broadcasts in both the Nasa language and Spanish from Santander de Quilichao, in the southwestern department (province) of Cauca.

The march was called by the Nasa people to protest the human rights abuses and violence of the four-decade civil war, a proposed constitutional reform that would basically impose the re-election of right-wing President Alvaro Uribe, and free trade agreements currently under negotiation with the United States.

In each town they pass through, the marchers stop to hold a session of their “mobile congress.”

Since leaving the town of Santander de Quilichao Tuesday, the march has become the biggest in the history of the department of Cauca, which stretches from the Andes mountains in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and is the ancestral home of the Nasa people.

The Nasa, who the Spanish conquistadors dubbed “Páez” — which means “louse” in the Nasa language — today number around 140,000, which makes them the second-largest indigenous group in Colombia, whose 90 native ethnic groups account for around two percent of the country’s population of 43 million.

The theme of the “mobile congress” is “Minga for life, justice, happiness, freedom and autonomy.”

“Minga” is an indigenous word for an ancestral practice of communities joining efforts or “meeting for the achievement of a common goal,” journalist Mauricio Beltrán, communications adviser to the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) and the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN), told IPS.

“Among indigenous people, two of us come together for a tull (traditional planting), 10 of us come together for the harvest, 1,000 when we need to fix a road, 18,000 if we have to make decisions for the future, and all of us if we have to come out to defend justice, happiness, freedom and autonomy,” says a communique issued by the Nasa Indians prior to the march.

The statement is signed by ONIC, ACIN and the Cauca Regional Indigenous Council (CRIC), a legendary organization in the history of struggles over land in Colombia.

The demonstrators were met in Cali — the capital of the department of Valle del Cauca, which borders Cauca to the north — by students and members of Women in Black, an international peace network.

Violence has not been completely absent in the peaceful mobilization. A bodyguard of Governor Angelino Garzón, who belongs to the leftist Polo Democrático party and has supported the march, was killed at noon on Sept. 14 in Cali.

“It’s a sign for me,” Garzón told the press, while the indigenous groups that organized the march pointed out that the murder was also a message for the public at large.

The organizers say the “minga” or “mobile congress” is being held in defense of the right to life — not only of human beings, but of plants, animals, lakes and rivers as well.

They also say the meetings along the way were aimed at coming up with strategies to defend the rights and freedoms that were gained when the constitution was rewritten in 1991, which the activists say are threatened by the constitutional reforms proposed by the Uribe administration.

In addition, they hope to draft proposals for blocking a free trade treaty that Colombia is negotiating with the US government, “because the talks are taking place behind the people’s backs, and because nature and the future and the welfare of the people are endangered by the logic of turning things that cannot be sold and that must be protected into merchandise and business” opportunities.

The fourth round of negotiations of the proposed free trade deal between Washington and Peru, Ecuador and Colombia is taking place this week in Puerto Rico. In previous rounds, Washington proposed mechanisms aimed at exerting patent rights over Colombia’s biodiversity, among the richest in the world.

President Uribe opposed the march on security grounds. He also accused the indigenous organizers of expressing political positions.

“I see no link between the problems that are being brought up and the march,” said the president. “I see that the march has a political objective and it should be clearly presented as such, instead of putting forth lies.

“Tell the truth, say you have a political party, and that you want to march and protest, but don’t invent stories to tell the country,” Uribe said Sept. 10.

The demonstrators responded that they are not speaking for the government but on behalf of “the people.”

On the first day, the march reached the town of Villarrica, in Cauca, where the demonstrators spent the night in tents and shelters set up with plastic sheeting and tarps.

By the time the march reached Villarrica, the original 25,000 people who left Santander at 8am Sept. 14 had swelled to around 50,000, said Beltrán.

The organizers had set a target of 40,000 people. But numbers swelled to 60,000 as they marched into Cali on Sept. 16.

He also said that many residents of Cali are supporting the protesters by participating in food collection drives to help out with “the touchiest aspect, because the group is growing continually and food will become an increasingly difficult issue.”

Media coverage of the march was carried out by the Communication System for Peace (SIPAZ), which groups 138 community radio stations in 17 regions of Colombia, including 30 indigenous stations.

“Some of the indigenous stations have already begun to re-broadcast, others will begin to do so in the next few days, and the idea is to have total coverage by Sept. 18. This is the first time that such a broad network of alternative media outlets has operated in Colombia,” said Beltrán.

The local CMI TV program, filming the march, showed a police presence, but with the officers posted far away from the protesters, who are accompanied by their own indigenous guard, which was set up to assert the autonomy and neutrality of the Nasa people in the midst of the armed conflict that has had Colombia in its grip for four decades.

Uribe has suggested incorporating the indigenous guard, which is armed only with staffs that symbolically assert authority in the community, into the state security services that fight the guerrillas. But he has met with a resounding rejection.

Early this month, five indigenous leaders, including Arquímedes Vitonás, mayor of the town of Toribío in Cauca, where CRIC was founded, were kidnapped by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

But they were freed within days, after the indigenous guard staged an (unarmed) rescue mission.

The Nasa people, who have a long, successful experience in participatory municipal government and development planning, won the National Peace Prize in 2000.

And in February Vitonás received, in the name of his people, the Equator Prize from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The Nasa Project was one of seven “outstanding community initiatives” selected from a total of 400 from around the world.

Vitonás and another Nasa leader, Gilberto Muñoz, have also been recognized as “Masters of Wisdom” by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

After Vitonás was kidnapped, the UNDP issued a strongly-worded statement on his behalf.

One of the indigenous guard leaders who led the rescue of Vitonás and the other kidnapping victims “was today [Sept. 14] cooking stew for 100 people at 3:00 after walking all day long, while a chirimía (five-member Nasa musical group) played traditional songs on flutes, drums and a seed instrument,” said Beltrán.

“These communities have built a civil resistance movement like few others in the country, and today they can show with pride that the war is not a core feature of the structures of their lives,” columnist Fabio Velásquez wrote Sept. 14 in the Cali newspaper El País, criticizing Uribe’s opposition to the march.

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Armed Israeli drones hunt Palestinians

Sept.15— Israeli air strikes against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have raised speculation that Israel is arming its surveillance drones with missiles for track-and-kill missions.

Abd Al-Karim Abd Allah, a resident in the West Bank town of Jenin said, “I saw a small plane and then a flash of light, then I heard a huge explosion and a car went up in flames.”

Abd Allah was recounting how three Palestinians were slain by Israel while driving through the West Bank city on Sept. 13.

Israel has consistently refused to say whether its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have offensive capabilities.

But mounting testimony from the occupied territories as well as foreign reports show that the country is a leader in this hi-tech field of weaponry.

“The Israelis almost certainly have armed UAV programs on the go right now,” said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons. “The UAVs offer an ideal ‘closed loop’ ... spotting the target and then hitting it from the same platform.”

The United States already uses an attack drone, the Predator, one of which rocketed a car in Yemen in November 2002, killing six people.

The six were suspected of being members of al-Qaida.

The advantages of using UAVs for such lightning strikes, analysts say, are obvious. Being propeller-driven and capable of altitudes of up to 10,000 feet, they make none of the giveaway rotor or jet noise of conventional combat aircraft.

Lacking pilots who get tired and with low fuel consumption, UAVs can cruise for hours, their cameras relaying live images to operators on the ground, which allows an almost instant “fire” order once a target is spotted.

The website of Northrop Grumman, an American avionics firm, says it has rigged its Israeli-designed Hunter drone with missiles that are completely silent, coasting out of the sky onto their targets by using glider fins rather than a propulsion system.

Hewson said Israel had its own UAV-fired munitions, adapted from tank shells and rockets. “We are positive Israel has developed specific low-collateral guided weapons for these platforms,” he said.

Israeli officials do not discuss the tactics of the state’s controversial policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders which has been in force since 2001.

But it insists efforts are made to reduce non-combatant or “collateral” casualties.

Drones were also said to have been part of a planned attack by Jewish extremists on Al-Aqsa Mosque, according to Israel’s minister of public security, Tzahi Hanegbi.

Three innocent bystanders were injured in the Sept. 13 Jenin strike. Such distinctions are often lost on Palestinians fighting Israeli occupation — or Israel itself — since Middle East peace talks stalled in 2000.

“The Israelis have never cared who they kill,” said Mushir al-Masri, a spokesman for the resistance movement, Hamas, in Gaza.

“There is no difference between this or that [Palestinian] blood. All these crimes shall not go unpunished,” he added.

Source: Al-Jazeera

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Dalai Lama’s overtures to seek Tibet solution

By Antoaneta Bezlova

Beijing, China, Sept. 17 (IPS)— Two high-profile envoys of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, have arrived in China amidst hopes that their visit could lead to a substantive dialogue with the Chinese government after tentative behind-the-scenes contacts in recent months.

The Dalai Lama is said to seek assurances from Beijing that it would not usurp his authority in appointing religious figures and interpreting religious texts. At 68, and in exile for 45 years, the Tibetan leader also wants China to allow him to return to his homeland.

The visit may lay the foundation for overcoming an impasse in the dialogue between China and Tibet, which broke off 10 years ago without negotiating a settlement to a question that continues to blacken Beijing’s international image. Contacts between the Tibetans and the Chinese were re-established in September 2002 and a second visit by the Tibetan delegation took place in May last year.

China has confirmed that supporters of the Dalai Lama were visiting the country and said it hoped they would take a positive message back to the Tibetan spiritual leader.

“We have always welcomed overseas Tibetan compatriots to come to China, including to visit the Tibet region, to have a look there and to meet their friends and relatives,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a news briefing on Sept. 16.

Many see the visit of these Tibetan envoys as a way for China to enter into meaningful dialogue with the exiled Tibetan leadership that seeks to chalk out an amicable solution to the Tibet issue.

“The potential of this third visit is significant,” said Mary Beth Markey, executive director of the International Campaign for Tibet, based in Washington. “Those who follow the process closely will be looking for indications that the Chinese government is ready to change its hard-line approach and address serious substantive issues through dialogue.”

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese communist rule over the Himalayan region. He has since lived in exile in Dharmsala, India. A Nobel Peace prize-winner and the world’s most famous advocate of non-violence, the Dalai Lama is still worshipped inside and outside of Tibet as a living god.

In the past 20 years however, his demands have shrunk from seeking full independence for Tibet to a mere plea for tolerance and autonomy.

“There are two things the Dalai Lama wants to talk with China [about] during this mission — that the right of edit and transfer of religious texts lies with him and that he is allowed to go back to his residence in Potala,” a Beijing-based diplomat with close connections to the government in Dharmsala told IPS.

In the past China had insisted that the Dalai Lama would have to live in Beijing if he ever returned to stay. China also disputes the Dalai Lama’s right to choose Tibetan religious leaders. The two sides have bickered bitterly over the recognition of the Panchen Lama — the second most revered Tibetan figure.

After the 10th Panchen Lama died almost 14 years ago, the Chinese rejected the Dalai Lama’s choice of his successor and seized the boy and his family. Instead, Beijing appointed its own candidate who will one day probably be called upon to lead the Tibetans during the period until a new Dalai Lama is recognized and reaches adulthood.

After the Panchen Lama confrontation, talks between Tibetans and Chinese broke off but had quietly revived in the last 18 months amid speculation that China might be willing to take a new path in its policy toward the Dalai Lama.

Incumbent party chief Hu Jintao who oversaw a harsh crackdown in Tibet in 1989 by imposing martial law, is seen as keen to push the China-Tibetan dialogue forward and learn from earlier mistakes.

Hopes have risen too that as Beijing prepares to host the 2008 Olympic Games, China might be more willing to re-start a genuine dialogue with the Tibetan exiled leaders.

The situation in Tibet these days hardly equals challenges China faces in hot local spots like Hong Kong with its growing clamour for democracy and Taiwan with its incremental push for independence.

With China’s rise as a global power in recent years, the Tibetan fight for independence has been losing supporters in the Western world, all too keen on keeping businesses with China booming.

Focused on its global war against terrorism, the Bush administration has given the future of Tibet a lower priority in talks with China than the previous Clinton administration. European leaders — once vociferous in demanding Tibetan rights — have chosen, too, to stay on side with Beijing, refusing to meet the Dalai Lama or according him only low levels of reception.

But while the Tibetan issue has gradually faded from prominence internationally, it remains an explosive one for Beijing. Every new generation of communist Chinese leaders has tried to negotiate a settlement of the question that is unlikely to go away, at least while the Dalai Lama lives.

The Communist party’s 198-member Central Committee began Sept. 16 a four-day closed-door gathering aimed at coining more effective party policies on national reunification and issues that may challenge China’s ascent as a major global power in the 21st century.

For months now, China watchers and party members have been speculating about undercurrent tensions between President Hu Jintao and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who remains chief of the armed forces.

President Hu, now 62, and elderly Jiang are said to diverge on issues ranging from economic growth to foreign policy. Both however, are believed to share a common uncompromising line on issues of China’s sovereignty and national security.

In May, Beijing issued a strongly worded White Paper on Tibet which sent conflicting signals about the Chinese leadership’s readiness to engage in talks beyond the confidence-building meetings of the previous two visits.

“The destiny and future of Tibet can no longer be decided by the Dalai Lama and his cliques. Rather, it can only be decided by the whole Chinese nation, including the Tibetan people,” said the 30-page paper released by the Information Office of the State Council. “This is an objective political fact in Tibet that cannot be denied or shaken.”

Citing a rise in global terrorism since Sept. 11, the local garrison of the People’s Liberation Army, police and paramilitary forces practiced countering hijackings and explosions, biochemical weapons and seizure of terrorists.

International human rights groups have expressed concern that China is using the global war on terrorism as an excuse to crack down on Tibet.

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Bolivian peasants turn to lynch law

By Reed Lindsay

Sept. 19— The blood has been washed away but the blackened concrete below a broken lamppost in this sluggish town’s main plaza is an inescapable reminder of the grisly lynching that took place here this summer.

The mayor of Ayo Ayo, Benjamín Altamirano, was hanged from the lamppost and set ablaze. The post mortem suggested he had been severely beaten.

Apart from his family, no one mourns for Altamirano in Ayo Ayo, a poor rural municipality an hour’s drive from La Paz on the windswept Altiplano plain, homeland of the Aymara people. In fact, most people in the town approve of the killing. No one has claimed responsibility, but the authorities have arrested at least 10 suspects.

“Altamirano was corrupt, just like the rest of the politicians,” said 59-year-old tailor Emilio Mamani as he walked through the plaza. “We told him if he did not keep his promises we would take more drastic measures. We told him very clearly. But he would not listen.”

The lynching came less than two months after Aymara people in a village in neighboring Peru lynched a mayor also accused of corruption. And it won’t be the last, warn Aymara leaders. Fed up with corrupt, unresponsive government institutions long controlled by a white and mestizo elite in La Paz, the people of the Altiplano are taking justice into their own hands.

Residents of Ayo Ayo defend the killing of Altamirano as the rightful exercise of communal justice, a homegrown legal system practiced semi-clandestinely in the region since the time of the Incas. Critics say the killing is little more than savagery.

What is certain is that, less than a year after thousands of Aymara peasants and urban slum dwellers staged massive road-blocking protests that drove Bolivia’s President from power, the harsh Altiplano remains a redoubt of fierce anti-government defiance and, some analysts say, the most tangible threat to the precarious administration of interim President Carlos Mesa.

At various times in recent years, Aymara peasants have expelled police, judges and prosecutors from Ayo Ayo and other towns. Some are demanding self-rule.

“We Aymara carry rebellion in our blood,” said Ramón Coba, who heads the leading Ayo Ayo peasant organization. “Bolivia is totally corrupt, not just the mayor. All of them should be finished in the same way, if not burnt then drowned or strangled or pulled apart by four tractors... It’s the only way they are going to learn.”

Ayo Ayo is steeped in revolt. The municipality is the birthplace of Tupaj Katari, a legendary warrior who led an uprising of thousands of Aymara peasants against Spanish colonialists in 1781 before he was captured and executed. The lamppost where Altamirano was hanged stands in the shadow of a towering bronze statue of Katari.

People in Ayo Ayo began demanding Altamirano’s resignation after he was accused of embezzlement in 2002. A group of locals held him captive until he promised to resign, and they burnt down his house. But Altamirano, who is also Aymara, then refused to step down. As a two-year legal battle dragged on with no resolution in sight, Ayo Ayo residents opposed to Altamirano lost their patience. “We would have been satisfied if Benjamín had admitted he had made mistakes, or if he had proposed a punishment for himself, or if the authorities had fined him,” said Coba. “But none of this happened. What else could we do?”

Communal justice is widely practiced in rural Aymara communities, where it usually resolves mundane issues such as compensating peasants whose crops have been destroyed by a neighbor’s cattle or sheep. Physical punishment is rare, and generally limited to a public lashing. The death penalty is used in extreme cases when the entire community decides there is no alternative.

Ayo Ayo typifies a growing disillusionment among Bolivians with their representative democracy, which has brought rising rates of poverty, unemployment and crime.

There have been 27 lynchings in Bolivia since 2001, compared to six in the previous five years, according to Juan Ramón Quintana, director of Cordillera University’s Democracy and Security Observatory.

Source: Observer (UK)

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Israel paralyzed by nationwide strike

Compiled by Greg White

Sept. 22 (AGR) — Israel was temporarily paralyzed by a general strike as trade unions imposed a shutdown in protest of local authorities’ failure to pay thousands of staff amid a budget clampdown by the right-wing government. Tens of thousands of public-sector workers began an open-ended strike on Sept. 21, shutting down much of the country and bringing activity at Israel’s international airport to a standstill.

The strike ended abruptly on Sept. 22, after a labor court ordered striking staff back to work and told the government to pay months of back salaries.

While the strike lasted only slightly longer than 24 hours, the whole country felt its shockwave. It included an estimated 400,000 public-sector employees.

Ben Gurion international airport, near Tel Aviv, was also closed after the strike began at 8:30 am. Airport officials allowed incoming flights already in the air to land, but flights taking off after that time were canceled.

Aircraft of state-owned flag-carrier El Al, which had already arrived in Israeli airspace, were forced to divert to Cyprus, Austria, and Hungary after striking flight controllers said they could not guarantee their safe landing.

Banks, post offices, and government ministries were all shut while trains were not running. Schools were open but part of the private banking sector joined the strike in a show of solidarity.

Some 7,000 members of various religious councils joined the strike, preventing people from registering for weddings or burying dead relatives.

The Histadrut Labor Federation announced the strike Sept. 20 to show solidarity with thousands of workers at local municipalities, who had not been paid in months.

The staff of 57 municipalities -- some 18,000 employees in all -- had not been paid for several months. Workers for a further 17 local councils had not received their August wages.

Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu withheld funds for the municipalities, demanding that they agree to cut back spending, much of it the government claimed was being spent on high salaries for officials. Netanyahu charged that the municipalities are also guilty of mismanagement.

Both sides claimed victory in the dispute, which was Israel’s third nationwide strike since April 2003.

Amir Peretz, head of the Histadrut labor federation, welcomed the decision of the court in ordering the back payment of salaries to its members.

“This is a day we can all be proud of. We are ending this struggle,” he said.

But Israel’s finance ministry also welcomed the ruling, saying it linked payments to regional governments which agreed to embark on a recovery plan.

Austerity moves have already sparked a spate of industrial action in Israel. Municipal gravediggers went on strike briefly earlier this year, prompting a call from rabbis for the bereaved to bury their own dead, while port employees also staged industrial action.

It was the third nationwide walkout since April 2003 in protest of the right-wing government’s sweeping budget cuts, although unions have held smaller strikes that closed state offices and seaports for long periods in the past year causing millions of dollars in economic damages.

Commentators put the stand-off in the broader context of a Histadrut campaign to prevent Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carrying out further reforms to trim the public sector and restrain pay increases.

In other news, the United States has announced plans to sell Israel $319 million worth of air-launched bombs, including 500 “bunker busters” that could be effective against Iran’s suspected underground nuclear facilities.

The Pentagon said in June it was considering the sale to Israel of 500 BLU-109 warheads, which can penetrate 15 feet of fortifications, in a package meant to “contribute significantly to US strategic and tactical objectives.” Mounted on satellite-guided bombs, BLU-109s can be fired from F-15 or F-16 jets, US-made aircraft in Israel’s arsenal.

The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in June that the potential deal “will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that has been an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East.”

Haaretz, the leading Israeli daily newspaper, citing Israeli government sources, said the sale would take place after the US elections in November.

Earlier this month, Haaretz said Israel wanted bunker buster bombs for a possible future strike against Iran’s atomic program, which the Jewish state considers a strategic threat.

Israel drew heavy criticism after a one-ton smart bomb meant for a senior Palestinian militant also killed 15 civilians in an attack in the Gaza Strip in July 2002.

Sources: Agence-France Press, AP, BBC, Reuters

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Who seized Simona Torretta?

By Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill

Sept. 16— When Simona Torretta returned to Baghdad in March 2003, in the midst of the “shock and awe” aerial bombardment, her Iraqi friends greeted her by telling her she was nuts. “They were just so surprised to see me. They said, ‘Why are you coming here? Go back to Italy. Are you crazy?’”

But Torretta didn’t go back. She stayed throughout the invasion, continuing the humanitarian work she began in 1996, when she first visited Iraq with her anti-sanctions NGO, A Bridge to Baghdad. When Baghdad fell, Torretta again opted to stay, this time to bring medicine and water to Iraqis suffering under occupation. Even after resistance fighters began targeting foreigners, and most foreign journalists and aid workers fled, Torretta again returned. “I cannot stay in Italy,” the 29-year-old told a documentary film-maker.

Today, Torretta’s life is in danger, along with the lives of her fellow Italian aid worker Simona Pari, and their Iraqi colleagues Raad Ali Abdul Azziz and Mahnouz Bassam. Eight days ago, the four were snatched at gunpoint from their home/office in Baghdad and have not been heard from since. In the absence of direct communication from their abductors, political controversy swirls around the incident. Proponents of the war are using it to paint peaceniks as naive, blithely supporting a resistance that answers international solidarity with kidnappings and beheadings.

Meanwhile, a growing number of Islamic leaders are hinting that the raid on A Bridge to Baghdad was not the work of mujahideen, but of foreign intelligence agencies out to discredit the resistance.

Nothing about this kidnapping fits the pattern of other abductions. Most are opportunistic attacks on treacherous stretches of road. Torretta and her colleagues were coldly hunted down in their home. And while mujahideen in Iraq scrupulously hide their identities, making sure to wrap their faces in scarves, these kidnappers were bare-faced and clean-shaven, some in business suits. One assailant was addressed by the others as “sir.”

Kidnap victims have overwhelmingly been men, yet three of these four are women. Witnesses say the gunmen questioned staff in the building until the Simonas were identified by name, and that Mahnouz Bassam, an Iraqi woman, was dragged screaming by her headscarf, a shocking religious transgression for an attack supposedly carried out in the name of Islam.

Most extraordinary was the size of the operation: rather than the usual three or four fighters, 20 armed men pulled up to the house in broad daylight, seemingly unconcerned about being caught. Only blocks from the heavily patrolled Green Zone, the whole operation went off with no interference from Iraqi police or US military — although Newsweek reported that “about 15 minutes afterwards, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away.”

And then there were the weapons. The attackers were armed with AK-47s, shotguns, pistols with silencers and stun guns — hardly the mujahideen’s standard-issue rusty Kalashnikovs. Strangest of all is this detail: witnesses said that several attackers wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms and identified themselves as working for Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister.

An Iraqi government spokesperson denied that Allawi’s office was involved.

But Sabah Kadhim, a spokesperson for the interior ministry, conceded that the kidnappers “were wearing military uniforms and flak jackets.” So was this a kidnapping by the resistance or a covert police operation? Or was it something worse: a revival of Saddam’s mukhabarat disappearances, when agents would arrest enemies of the regime, never to be heard from again?

Who could have pulled off such a coordinated operation — and who stands to benefit from an attack on this anti-war NGO?

On Sept. 13, the Italian press began reporting on one possible answer. Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, from Iraq’s leading Sunni cleric organization, told reporters in Baghdad that he received a visit from Torretta and Pari the day before the kidnap. “They were scared,” the cleric said. “They told me that someone threatened them.” Asked who was behind the threats, al-Kubaisi replied: “We suspect some foreign intelligence.”

Blaming unpopular resistance attacks on CIA or Mossad conspiracies is idle chatter in Baghdad, but coming from Kubaisi, the claim carries unusual weight; he has ties with a range of resistance groups and has brokered the release of several hostages. Kubaisi’s allegations have been widely reported in Arab media, as well as in Italy, but have been absent from the English-language press.

Western journalists are loath to talk about spies for fear of being labelled conspiracy theorists. But spies and covert operations are not a conspiracy in Iraq; they are a daily reality. According to CIA deputy director James L. Pavitt, “Baghdad is home to the largest CIA station since the Vietnam war,” with 500 to 600 agents on the ground. Allawi himself is a lifelong agent who has worked with MI6, the CIA and the mukhabarat, specializing in removing enemies of the regime.

A Bridge to Baghdad has been unapologetic in its opposition to the occupation regime. During the siege of Falluja in April, it coordinated risky humanitarian missions. US forces had sealed the road to Falluja and banished the press as they prepared to punish the entire city for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater mercenaries. In August, when US marines laid siege to Najaf, A Bridge to Baghdad again went where the occupation forces wanted no witnesses. And the day before their kidnapping, Torretta and Pari told Kubaisi that they were planning yet another high-risk mission to Falluja.

In the eight days since their abduction, pleas for their release have crossed all geographical, religious and cultural lines. The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, the International Association of Islamic Scholars and several Iraqi resistance groups have all voiced outrage. A resistance group in Falluja said the kidnapping suggests collaboration with foreign forces. Yet some voices are conspicuous by their absence: the White House and the office of Allawi. Neither has said a word.

Source: Guardian (UK)