By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
BAGHDAD — A day after Iraqis celebrated the formal withdrawal of American combat troops from towns and cities, leaders of some of the most high-profile insurgent and opposition groups had their say on Wednesday.
Statements were released by a former senior ally of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni clerical association that has sanctioned armed resistance and Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric, all of which hailed the withdrawal as a victory for the resistance and compared it to the beginning of the revolt against the British occupation in 1920.
Iraqi opposition and insurgent leaders consider themselves to have as much legitimacy as, or more than, Iraqi government officials, and formal statements on such a symbolic occasion are expected.
The statements all commanded Iraqis to continue fighting the American military until it had left the country completely; nearly 130,000 troops remain. The statements also insisted, in unusually clear language, that Iraqis not turn their violence on one another.
This appears to be a noteworthy change for the former Hussein ally, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was deputy chairman of Mr. Hussein’s Revolutionary Command Council and who American officials say has been financing and organizing Baathist insurgents.
We “have decided in this blessed day to direct all combat effort towards the invaders,” Mr. Douri’s statement said, “and forbid absolutely the killing of Iraqis or fighting them in all the formations and organs of the agent’s authority — in the so-called army, police, Awakening and the administration agencies — except for what is required in self-defense, if some spies in these agencies try to stop the resistance or harm them.”
As recently as April, Mr. Douri had called upon people to attack the Iraqi government, which he considers a puppet of the United States.
If Mr. Douri holds to this new stance it could bolster the possibility, raised by some Iraqi and American officials, that the withdrawal of American troops removes a justification that many insurgent groups used to carry out attacks, even if those attacks disproportionately killed and injured Iraqis.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical group that has condoned attacks against the American military, issued a statement in which it condemned sectarianism and urged Iraqis to avoid harming other Iraqis. “Resistance is for all Iraqis, across the spectrum, from the north to the south,” the statement read.
Mr. Sadr, who has increasingly distanced his movement from the use of violence, was less celebratory in his statement, expressing concerns that the withdrawal was a mere “media announcement.” It would be “a bright page in the honest Iraqi resistance’s history” if it were real, he said, but he highlighted the continuing presence of American military advisers, who are allowed to stay in the cities under the security agreement between Iraq and the United States, as evidence that June 30 may not be the symbolic victory the government has suggested it is.
Mr. Sadr also said that a military withdrawal was not sufficient, mentioning the continued presence of American intelligence agencies and security contractors in particular. “We want a withdrawal, and not interference, on all fronts — political, social, economic, judicial, and ministerial,” he said in his statement. “Not only the military front.”
Also on Wednesday, the Iraqi cabinet approved one bid from a public auction on Tuesday for the rights to develop Iraqi oil fields, a government spokesman announced. A consortium of BP and China National Petroleum Company has agreed to increase output of the enormous Rumaila oil field to 2.85 million barrels a day, and will receive a $2 premium for every barrel the field produces over a baseline established by the Iraqi government.
Rumaila, in Iraq’s south, is the largest of the oil fields that were part of the auction, and its development could be a significant contribution to Iraq’s economy.
The cabinet officially rejected six other bids from the auction that asked for larger amounts than the government was willing to pay, the spokesman said.
Mohammed Hussein, Anwar J. Ali and Riyadh Mohammed contributed reporting.
Jul 2, 2009
In Refugee Aid, Pakistan’s War Has New Front
By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
QASIM PULA, Pakistan — Islamist charities and the United States are competing for the allegiance of the two million people displaced by the fight against the Taliban in Swat and other parts of Pakistan — and so far, the Islamists are in the lead.
Although the United States is the largest contributor to a United Nations relief effort, Pakistani authorities have refused to allow American officials or planes to deliver the aid in the camps for displaced people. The Pakistanis do not want to be associated with their unpopular ally.
Meanwhile, in the absence of effective aid from the government, hard-line Islamist charities are using the refugee crisis to push their anti-Western agenda and to sour public opinion against the war and the United States.
Last week, a crowd of men, the heads of households uprooted from Swat, gathered here in this village in northwestern Pakistan for handouts for their desperate families. But before they could even get a can of cooking oil, the aid director for a staunchly anti-Western Islamic charity took full advantage of having a captive audience, exhorting the men to jihad.
“The Western organizations have spent millions and billions on family planning to destroy the Muslim family system,” said the aid director, Mehmood ul-Hassan, who represented Al Khidmat, a powerful charity of the strongly anti-American political party Jamaat-e-Islami.
The Western effort had failed, he said, but Pakistanis should show their strength by joining the fight against the infidels.
The authorities’ insistence that the Americans remain nearly invisible reveals the deep strains that continue to underlie the American-Pakistani relationship, even as cooperation improves in the fight against the Taliban, and public support for the war grows in Pakistan.
Yet Islamist and jihadist groups openly work the camps.
“Because of the lack of international agencies, there is a vacuum filled by actors that are Islamist and more than that, jihadist,” said Kristele Younes, a senior advocate with Refugees International, a Washington group established in 1979.
One of the most prominent jihadist charity groups, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, had been barred from the camps, according to Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmad, the head of the Pakistani Army’s disaster management group. The group was designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations Security Council in December.
Nonetheless, it set up operations in Mardan under a new name, Falah-e-Insaniyat, according to Himayatullah Mayar, the mayor of Mardan. After the order to leave the area, Falah-e-Insaniyat went underground but still appeared to be operating to some extent, Mr. Mayar said.
Signs of the organizational strength and robust coffers of Islamist charities were easy to see around the camps, often in contrast to the lack of services offered by the government.
For example, Al Khidmat, Mr. Hassan’s group, arranged to bring in eye surgeons from Punjab to staff a free eye clinic for the displaced, offering cataract operations and eyeglasses.
“Government hospitals are nonexistent here, and we are able to treat not only the displaced but the whole community,” said one of the surgeons, Dr. Khalid Jamal.
Meanwhile, Mr. Hassan was busy checking new temporary schools, health clinics and four ambulances on 24-hour service that Al Khidmat had set up.
Every day, he said, he personally supervised the distribution of food at three different places — sometimes at a home, sometimes in a camp. So far, he said, he had covered 400 of 450 villages near the city of Swabi. Always, he said, before the food is distributed, he delivers his exhortation to jihad.
By contrast, although a substantial amount of American aid is getting through, it is not branded as American, and Pakistani authorities have insisted that it be delivered in a “subtle” manner, General Ahmad said.
The general said he had told American officials that there would be an “extremely negative” reaction if Americans were seen to be distributing aid, particularly if it was delivered by American military aircraft.
“I said they couldn’t fly in Chinooks, no way,” General Ahmad said, referring to American military helicopters. The United States, he said, was seen as “part of the problem.”
That is not what American officials had hoped for. At first, the exodus of people from Swat, many of whom had suffered from the brutality of the Taliban, seemed to present a chance for Washington to improve its image in Pakistan.
“There is an opportunity actually to provide services, much as we did with the earthquake relief, which had a profound impact on the perception of America,” Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who serves as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing attended by the Obama administration’s special envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, at the start of the exodus.
In an effort to highlight American concern for the refugees, Mr. Holbrooke visited the camps in June, sitting on the floor of a sweltering tent and talking to people about their plight. “President Obama has sent us to see how we can help you,” he said. One result of the trip was an effort to send Pakistani-American female doctors to assist women in the camps.
According to the State Department, the United States has pledged $110 million for food and logistical support. In late May, the Defense Department sent several flights to Islamabad carrying ready-to-eat meals, environmentally controlled tents and water trucks. But ideas of winning back popularity with a big show of airlifts of American assistance on the scale of American earthquake relief to Kashmir in 2005 were rebuffed, and not only by the Pakistanis.
American nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan discouraged high-profile deliveries of United States government aid because anti-American sentiment was too widespread and the security risk to Americans in the camps was too high, said the head of one of the groups, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. There were many Taliban in the displaced camps, and they believed the Pakistani military was fighting against them in Swat on orders from Washington, the official said.
The restrictions on American assistance are clear in the camps and in villages like this one deep in the countryside around Mardan and Swabi, where Pakistani families have opened their homes to large numbers of displaced people.
American officials and their consultants were barely able to move beyond the highly visible refugee camps set up along the main highway between Islamabad and Peshawar, said Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American businessman who has visited the area to help find ways to bring additional aid.
“They have been almost completely neutered,” he said.
QASIM PULA, Pakistan — Islamist charities and the United States are competing for the allegiance of the two million people displaced by the fight against the Taliban in Swat and other parts of Pakistan — and so far, the Islamists are in the lead.
Although the United States is the largest contributor to a United Nations relief effort, Pakistani authorities have refused to allow American officials or planes to deliver the aid in the camps for displaced people. The Pakistanis do not want to be associated with their unpopular ally.
Meanwhile, in the absence of effective aid from the government, hard-line Islamist charities are using the refugee crisis to push their anti-Western agenda and to sour public opinion against the war and the United States.
Last week, a crowd of men, the heads of households uprooted from Swat, gathered here in this village in northwestern Pakistan for handouts for their desperate families. But before they could even get a can of cooking oil, the aid director for a staunchly anti-Western Islamic charity took full advantage of having a captive audience, exhorting the men to jihad.
“The Western organizations have spent millions and billions on family planning to destroy the Muslim family system,” said the aid director, Mehmood ul-Hassan, who represented Al Khidmat, a powerful charity of the strongly anti-American political party Jamaat-e-Islami.
The Western effort had failed, he said, but Pakistanis should show their strength by joining the fight against the infidels.
The authorities’ insistence that the Americans remain nearly invisible reveals the deep strains that continue to underlie the American-Pakistani relationship, even as cooperation improves in the fight against the Taliban, and public support for the war grows in Pakistan.
Yet Islamist and jihadist groups openly work the camps.
“Because of the lack of international agencies, there is a vacuum filled by actors that are Islamist and more than that, jihadist,” said Kristele Younes, a senior advocate with Refugees International, a Washington group established in 1979.
One of the most prominent jihadist charity groups, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, had been barred from the camps, according to Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmad, the head of the Pakistani Army’s disaster management group. The group was designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations Security Council in December.
Nonetheless, it set up operations in Mardan under a new name, Falah-e-Insaniyat, according to Himayatullah Mayar, the mayor of Mardan. After the order to leave the area, Falah-e-Insaniyat went underground but still appeared to be operating to some extent, Mr. Mayar said.
Signs of the organizational strength and robust coffers of Islamist charities were easy to see around the camps, often in contrast to the lack of services offered by the government.
For example, Al Khidmat, Mr. Hassan’s group, arranged to bring in eye surgeons from Punjab to staff a free eye clinic for the displaced, offering cataract operations and eyeglasses.
“Government hospitals are nonexistent here, and we are able to treat not only the displaced but the whole community,” said one of the surgeons, Dr. Khalid Jamal.
Meanwhile, Mr. Hassan was busy checking new temporary schools, health clinics and four ambulances on 24-hour service that Al Khidmat had set up.
Every day, he said, he personally supervised the distribution of food at three different places — sometimes at a home, sometimes in a camp. So far, he said, he had covered 400 of 450 villages near the city of Swabi. Always, he said, before the food is distributed, he delivers his exhortation to jihad.
By contrast, although a substantial amount of American aid is getting through, it is not branded as American, and Pakistani authorities have insisted that it be delivered in a “subtle” manner, General Ahmad said.
The general said he had told American officials that there would be an “extremely negative” reaction if Americans were seen to be distributing aid, particularly if it was delivered by American military aircraft.
“I said they couldn’t fly in Chinooks, no way,” General Ahmad said, referring to American military helicopters. The United States, he said, was seen as “part of the problem.”
That is not what American officials had hoped for. At first, the exodus of people from Swat, many of whom had suffered from the brutality of the Taliban, seemed to present a chance for Washington to improve its image in Pakistan.
“There is an opportunity actually to provide services, much as we did with the earthquake relief, which had a profound impact on the perception of America,” Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who serves as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing attended by the Obama administration’s special envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, at the start of the exodus.
In an effort to highlight American concern for the refugees, Mr. Holbrooke visited the camps in June, sitting on the floor of a sweltering tent and talking to people about their plight. “President Obama has sent us to see how we can help you,” he said. One result of the trip was an effort to send Pakistani-American female doctors to assist women in the camps.
According to the State Department, the United States has pledged $110 million for food and logistical support. In late May, the Defense Department sent several flights to Islamabad carrying ready-to-eat meals, environmentally controlled tents and water trucks. But ideas of winning back popularity with a big show of airlifts of American assistance on the scale of American earthquake relief to Kashmir in 2005 were rebuffed, and not only by the Pakistanis.
American nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan discouraged high-profile deliveries of United States government aid because anti-American sentiment was too widespread and the security risk to Americans in the camps was too high, said the head of one of the groups, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. There were many Taliban in the displaced camps, and they believed the Pakistani military was fighting against them in Swat on orders from Washington, the official said.
The restrictions on American assistance are clear in the camps and in villages like this one deep in the countryside around Mardan and Swabi, where Pakistani families have opened their homes to large numbers of displaced people.
American officials and their consultants were barely able to move beyond the highly visible refugee camps set up along the main highway between Islamabad and Peshawar, said Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American businessman who has visited the area to help find ways to bring additional aid.
“They have been almost completely neutered,” he said.
Facebook Activism: Lots of Clicks, but Little Sticks
By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Facebook activism, the trendy process by which we do good by clicking often, was in its full glory last week after the death of Iranian student Neda Agha Soltan, killed by gunfire in the streets of Tehran.
First, Neda showed up in our Twitter feeds, then in our Facebook status updates: "is Neda," we wrote after our own names. And when people started Facebook groups inspired by her death, we quickly joined them, feeling happy that we'd done something, that we'd contributed.
But whether our virtual virtuousness will result in real-world action is unpredictable, and has as much to do with human nature as it does with amassing enough numbers. This is the problem with activism born of social networking sites.
The numbers are impressive. News outlets cited the groups, with names like "Angel of Iran," as examples of public outcry, potential signs of a turning point in the disputed Iranian elections. The largest of these groups, called simply "Neda," currently has nearly 36,000 members; dozens more had 1,000, or 100, or 10.
Click click click. It was so simple to join.
And . . . now what? Are we done? Was clicking an end unto itself? Do our Facebook groups -- which are today often treated as the official barometer for a cause's importance; more members must signify more gravitas -- ever translate into significant change?
(And if not, what are we doing there?)
"I don't have a lot of time for rallies," says Charles Hilton, a Baltimore service technician. That's why he joined "Neda," founded by a Houston real estate agent named Ali Kohan. "I haven't been keeping up with the news a lot lately, but . . . from what I gather, there was no reason to target this woman." What Hilton knew of her story spoke to him. He was touched. So he clicked. It felt like a show of support his schedule could manage. He's not sure what happens now; he hasn't heard whether the Neda group has any actual activities planned, or what he would be able to participate in.
Hilton illustrates what Mary Joyce calls "the pluses and minuses for the low bar of entry" of Facebook groups. Joyce is the co-founder of DigiActive.org, an organization that helps grass-roots activists figure out how to use digital technology to boost their impact.
The low bar of entry means that joining -- or starting -- a cause is easy, and that causes can reach and educate a wide range of people. That's the plus. But that ease also means that well-intentioned groups could balloon to thousands of members, most of whom lack activism experience.
"Commitment levels are opaque," says Joyce, who last year took a leave from DigiActive to work as new-media operations manager for Barack Obama's campaign. "Maybe a maximum of 5 percent are going to take action, and maybe it's closer to 1 percent. . . . In most cases of Facebook groups, members do nothing. I haven't yet seen a case where the Facebook group has led to a sustained movement."
There have, of course, been big examples of single-event success: The Internet-based organization Burma Global Action Network began as one American's Facebook group, formed to support monks' protest. The group coordinated a global "day of action" in 2007 that drew protesters around the world. More measurably, the release of Fouad Mourtada, imprisoned for impersonating a member of Moroccan royalty online, was attributed in part to protests that began on Facebook and Flickr and spread offline. And politically, Obama's campaign was famously driven by social networking participation.
But more often the stories of Facebook activism look like Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement earlier this year, in which a Facebook group calling for a national strike in support of laborers gained a much-publicized 75,000 Facebook members . . . and then fizzled out in real life.
In some ways, it's harder to cite the failures than the successes, because there are simply so many of them, disintegrating before they reach the public's eye. Even some of the success stories are qualified: Participation in the Burma network decreased as coverage of it fell out of the news, Joyce says.
"Click-through activism" is the term used by Chris Csikszentmihályi, the co-director of MIT's Center for Future Civic Media to describe the participants who might excitedly flit into an online group and then flutter away to something else. In some ways, he says, the ease of the medium "reminds me of dispensations the Catholic Church used to give." Worst-case scenario: If people feel they are doing good just by joining something -- or clicking on one of those become a fan of Audi and the company will offset your carbon emissions campaigns, "to what extent are you removing just enough pressure that they're not going to carry on the spark" in real life?
A better scenario for Internet activism, Csikszentmihályi says, would be if causes could break down their needs into discrete tasks, and then farm those tasks out to qualified and willing individuals connected by the power of the Internet.
But plain old Facebook groups? Attention shifts quickly online. How many status updates that read "is Neda" last week read "is Farrah Fawcett" or "is Michael Jackson" just a few days later?
It's still too soon to tell what tangible change the thousands of virtual Neda supporters will effect. Some groups were founded as simply virtual memorials, with no plans for future action, and those groups have already fulfilled their duty. "Neda" is still drawing new members, though not as quickly as last week. Kohan, the founder, says that he hopes the group will turn into a foundation, and he's seeking donations from universities. Founders of other Neda groups, including the 4,000-member "Never Forget Neda," say they never expected their groups to grow so large, and are now considering how -- and whether -- to leverage the numbers further.
But what if we don't want to be leveraged? What if we just want to join?
Anders Colding-Jorgensen, a psychologist and lecturer on social media at the University of Copenhagen, earlier this year challenged his students to a competition for who could create the most-member-drawing Facebook group. Colding-Jorgensen personally founded "No to Demolition of Stork Fountain," a group asserting that it would oppose the transformation of the Copenhagen fountain into an H&M clothing store. Within a few days, 300 people had joined; by the end of the week he had 10,000 members. Not a bad effort for a group supporting an entirely fictitious cause. Stork Fountain was not, and had never been, in any danger of demolition.
Furthermore, anyone who bothered to visit the discussion forum would have seen that; in the forum Colding-Jorgensen had explained that the group was just a social experiment. "But people just went in and joined," Colding-Jorgensen says. "They didn't read anything." The group continued to grow -- at one point at the rate of two new members per minute -- until it reached 27,000 and Colding-Jorgensen decided to end the experiment.
What surprised Colding-Jorgensen about people's behavior on his site was that the group was "in no way useful for horizontal discussions." Users wanted not to educate themselves or figure out how to save the fountain, but to parade their own feelings of outrage around the cyber-public.
Or, as says Sherri Grasmuck, a sociology professor at Temple University who has studied Facebook profiles: "I become the social movement as an affirmation of my identity, rather than choosing the social movement because it matches my identity."
In the Neda groups on Facebook, many of the wall posts are actually links to people's individual YouTube videos, which discuss their anger at Neda's death, or links to other Neda Facebook groups so that visitors can join not just one group, but two or three or four.
Are the groups causes? Or are they accessories -- a piece of virtual flair that members could collect to show off their cultural sensitivity, their political awareness?
"Just like we need stuff to furnish our homes to show who we are," says Colding-Jorgensen, "on Facebook we need cultural objects that put together a version of me that I would like to present to the public."
Last week, we wanted to take action in response to a horrible death. We wanted to show support to her family and to other innocent victims. We wanted to spread knowledge of a terrible incident. Did we mean for our clicking to go somewhere? Or were we presenting versions of ourselves?
These groups were all about Neda. But maybe they were also all about us.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Facebook activism, the trendy process by which we do good by clicking often, was in its full glory last week after the death of Iranian student Neda Agha Soltan, killed by gunfire in the streets of Tehran.
First, Neda showed up in our Twitter feeds, then in our Facebook status updates: "is Neda," we wrote after our own names. And when people started Facebook groups inspired by her death, we quickly joined them, feeling happy that we'd done something, that we'd contributed.
But whether our virtual virtuousness will result in real-world action is unpredictable, and has as much to do with human nature as it does with amassing enough numbers. This is the problem with activism born of social networking sites.
The numbers are impressive. News outlets cited the groups, with names like "Angel of Iran," as examples of public outcry, potential signs of a turning point in the disputed Iranian elections. The largest of these groups, called simply "Neda," currently has nearly 36,000 members; dozens more had 1,000, or 100, or 10.
Click click click. It was so simple to join.
And . . . now what? Are we done? Was clicking an end unto itself? Do our Facebook groups -- which are today often treated as the official barometer for a cause's importance; more members must signify more gravitas -- ever translate into significant change?
(And if not, what are we doing there?)
"I don't have a lot of time for rallies," says Charles Hilton, a Baltimore service technician. That's why he joined "Neda," founded by a Houston real estate agent named Ali Kohan. "I haven't been keeping up with the news a lot lately, but . . . from what I gather, there was no reason to target this woman." What Hilton knew of her story spoke to him. He was touched. So he clicked. It felt like a show of support his schedule could manage. He's not sure what happens now; he hasn't heard whether the Neda group has any actual activities planned, or what he would be able to participate in.
Hilton illustrates what Mary Joyce calls "the pluses and minuses for the low bar of entry" of Facebook groups. Joyce is the co-founder of DigiActive.org, an organization that helps grass-roots activists figure out how to use digital technology to boost their impact.
The low bar of entry means that joining -- or starting -- a cause is easy, and that causes can reach and educate a wide range of people. That's the plus. But that ease also means that well-intentioned groups could balloon to thousands of members, most of whom lack activism experience.
"Commitment levels are opaque," says Joyce, who last year took a leave from DigiActive to work as new-media operations manager for Barack Obama's campaign. "Maybe a maximum of 5 percent are going to take action, and maybe it's closer to 1 percent. . . . In most cases of Facebook groups, members do nothing. I haven't yet seen a case where the Facebook group has led to a sustained movement."
There have, of course, been big examples of single-event success: The Internet-based organization Burma Global Action Network began as one American's Facebook group, formed to support monks' protest. The group coordinated a global "day of action" in 2007 that drew protesters around the world. More measurably, the release of Fouad Mourtada, imprisoned for impersonating a member of Moroccan royalty online, was attributed in part to protests that began on Facebook and Flickr and spread offline. And politically, Obama's campaign was famously driven by social networking participation.
But more often the stories of Facebook activism look like Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement earlier this year, in which a Facebook group calling for a national strike in support of laborers gained a much-publicized 75,000 Facebook members . . . and then fizzled out in real life.
In some ways, it's harder to cite the failures than the successes, because there are simply so many of them, disintegrating before they reach the public's eye. Even some of the success stories are qualified: Participation in the Burma network decreased as coverage of it fell out of the news, Joyce says.
"Click-through activism" is the term used by Chris Csikszentmihályi, the co-director of MIT's Center for Future Civic Media to describe the participants who might excitedly flit into an online group and then flutter away to something else. In some ways, he says, the ease of the medium "reminds me of dispensations the Catholic Church used to give." Worst-case scenario: If people feel they are doing good just by joining something -- or clicking on one of those become a fan of Audi and the company will offset your carbon emissions campaigns, "to what extent are you removing just enough pressure that they're not going to carry on the spark" in real life?
A better scenario for Internet activism, Csikszentmihályi says, would be if causes could break down their needs into discrete tasks, and then farm those tasks out to qualified and willing individuals connected by the power of the Internet.
But plain old Facebook groups? Attention shifts quickly online. How many status updates that read "is Neda" last week read "is Farrah Fawcett" or "is Michael Jackson" just a few days later?
It's still too soon to tell what tangible change the thousands of virtual Neda supporters will effect. Some groups were founded as simply virtual memorials, with no plans for future action, and those groups have already fulfilled their duty. "Neda" is still drawing new members, though not as quickly as last week. Kohan, the founder, says that he hopes the group will turn into a foundation, and he's seeking donations from universities. Founders of other Neda groups, including the 4,000-member "Never Forget Neda," say they never expected their groups to grow so large, and are now considering how -- and whether -- to leverage the numbers further.
But what if we don't want to be leveraged? What if we just want to join?
Anders Colding-Jorgensen, a psychologist and lecturer on social media at the University of Copenhagen, earlier this year challenged his students to a competition for who could create the most-member-drawing Facebook group. Colding-Jorgensen personally founded "No to Demolition of Stork Fountain," a group asserting that it would oppose the transformation of the Copenhagen fountain into an H&M clothing store. Within a few days, 300 people had joined; by the end of the week he had 10,000 members. Not a bad effort for a group supporting an entirely fictitious cause. Stork Fountain was not, and had never been, in any danger of demolition.
Furthermore, anyone who bothered to visit the discussion forum would have seen that; in the forum Colding-Jorgensen had explained that the group was just a social experiment. "But people just went in and joined," Colding-Jorgensen says. "They didn't read anything." The group continued to grow -- at one point at the rate of two new members per minute -- until it reached 27,000 and Colding-Jorgensen decided to end the experiment.
What surprised Colding-Jorgensen about people's behavior on his site was that the group was "in no way useful for horizontal discussions." Users wanted not to educate themselves or figure out how to save the fountain, but to parade their own feelings of outrage around the cyber-public.
Or, as says Sherri Grasmuck, a sociology professor at Temple University who has studied Facebook profiles: "I become the social movement as an affirmation of my identity, rather than choosing the social movement because it matches my identity."
In the Neda groups on Facebook, many of the wall posts are actually links to people's individual YouTube videos, which discuss their anger at Neda's death, or links to other Neda Facebook groups so that visitors can join not just one group, but two or three or four.
Are the groups causes? Or are they accessories -- a piece of virtual flair that members could collect to show off their cultural sensitivity, their political awareness?
"Just like we need stuff to furnish our homes to show who we are," says Colding-Jorgensen, "on Facebook we need cultural objects that put together a version of me that I would like to present to the public."
Last week, we wanted to take action in response to a horrible death. We wanted to show support to her family and to other innocent victims. We wanted to spread knowledge of a terrible incident. Did we mean for our clicking to go somewhere? Or were we presenting versions of ourselves?
These groups were all about Neda. But maybe they were also all about us.
No Limit in Place for Pending Request on Troops in Afghanistan
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The nation's top military officer said yesterday that no limits have been placed on the number or types of troops the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan can request as he seeks to carry out a counterinsurgency strategy there.
Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is conducting a 60-day assessment of the Afghanistan campaign and has been advised to tell Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and President Obama, "Here's what I need."
"There are no preconditions associated with that," Mullen said. "He's . . . been told, 'In this assessment, you come back and ask for what you need.' There are certainly no intended limits with respect to that kind of request."
McChrystal's predecessor, Gen. David D. McKiernan, had an unmet request for an additional 10,000 U.S. troops to deploy next year. But McChrystal is not bound by that or any prior assessment, Mullen said. "General McChrystal gets to take a fresh view and a fresh look, and he will do that."
Mullen made the remarks on the same day The Washington Post reported that national security adviser James L. Jones had recently told U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan that the Obama administration seeks to hold troop levels steady and shift the focus to the country's economic development and governance. Mullen was not asked directly about the article, but his statements suggest that the military seeks to defend McChrystal's latitude to make the case for more troops if he sees the need. Mullen voiced a high level of confidence in the ability of McChrystal, who until recently worked for Mullen as the director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff, to carry out the new strategy.
Mullen said that he, Gates and McChrystal think that military force alone cannot win the war in Afghanistan and that if the foreign troop contingent in the country grows too big, it could create the impression that it is an occupation force. However, Mullen emphasized that he does not know where that threshold lies and that the level of forces in Afghanistan has long been too low to secure the population -- the main thrust of the counterinsurgency campaign.
"We have been under-resourced in Afghanistan almost from the beginning, certainly for the last several years," Mullen said. There are currently 57,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 34,000 non-U.S. allied troops. An increase of 21,000 U.S. troops ordered by President Obama is underway and will raise the overall total of American troops there to 68,000 this year.
One consequence of the limited numbers of troops has been a heavier reliance on airstrikes, resulting in Afghan civilian casualties. McChrystal has ordered allied troops to adopt measures to diminish civilian casualties -- breaking away from fighting in villages, for example, and risking civilian casualties only where necessary to save the lives of U.S. troops. Asked whether such restrictions could increase the danger for American forces or offer an advantage to insurgents who take shelter with civilians, Mullen said that was not the intention.
"We don't want them to feel as though they're restrained and have a hand tied behind their back at all," or to cause delay or hesitation, Mullen said of the troops. He stressed that taking action was "never a question when it's a matter of saving and protecting U.S. forces' lives." Still, he said, the goal is to "to make sure they think through three or four steps ahead in an operation . . . to do all they can to minimize civilian casualties."
The shortage of troops has been particularly acute in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of Marines launched a major operation today in the restive province of Helmand.
"I expect it to be a pretty tough fight in Helmand this year. . . . We haven't had significant numbers of forces there in the past, but on the upside of that, we have enough forces now to hold, not just to win, the fight," Mullen said. Taliban insurgents had effectively created a stalemate with U.S., other NATO and Afghan forces in Helmand and other parts of the south, commanders have said in recent months.
Mullen said he is "extremely concerned" about the paucity of Afghan National Army and Afghan police forces in the south and elsewhere and about the long-standing deficit in the number of foreign military trainers needed to expand their ranks.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The nation's top military officer said yesterday that no limits have been placed on the number or types of troops the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan can request as he seeks to carry out a counterinsurgency strategy there.
Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is conducting a 60-day assessment of the Afghanistan campaign and has been advised to tell Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and President Obama, "Here's what I need."
"There are no preconditions associated with that," Mullen said. "He's . . . been told, 'In this assessment, you come back and ask for what you need.' There are certainly no intended limits with respect to that kind of request."
McChrystal's predecessor, Gen. David D. McKiernan, had an unmet request for an additional 10,000 U.S. troops to deploy next year. But McChrystal is not bound by that or any prior assessment, Mullen said. "General McChrystal gets to take a fresh view and a fresh look, and he will do that."
Mullen made the remarks on the same day The Washington Post reported that national security adviser James L. Jones had recently told U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan that the Obama administration seeks to hold troop levels steady and shift the focus to the country's economic development and governance. Mullen was not asked directly about the article, but his statements suggest that the military seeks to defend McChrystal's latitude to make the case for more troops if he sees the need. Mullen voiced a high level of confidence in the ability of McChrystal, who until recently worked for Mullen as the director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff, to carry out the new strategy.
Mullen said that he, Gates and McChrystal think that military force alone cannot win the war in Afghanistan and that if the foreign troop contingent in the country grows too big, it could create the impression that it is an occupation force. However, Mullen emphasized that he does not know where that threshold lies and that the level of forces in Afghanistan has long been too low to secure the population -- the main thrust of the counterinsurgency campaign.
"We have been under-resourced in Afghanistan almost from the beginning, certainly for the last several years," Mullen said. There are currently 57,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 34,000 non-U.S. allied troops. An increase of 21,000 U.S. troops ordered by President Obama is underway and will raise the overall total of American troops there to 68,000 this year.
One consequence of the limited numbers of troops has been a heavier reliance on airstrikes, resulting in Afghan civilian casualties. McChrystal has ordered allied troops to adopt measures to diminish civilian casualties -- breaking away from fighting in villages, for example, and risking civilian casualties only where necessary to save the lives of U.S. troops. Asked whether such restrictions could increase the danger for American forces or offer an advantage to insurgents who take shelter with civilians, Mullen said that was not the intention.
"We don't want them to feel as though they're restrained and have a hand tied behind their back at all," or to cause delay or hesitation, Mullen said of the troops. He stressed that taking action was "never a question when it's a matter of saving and protecting U.S. forces' lives." Still, he said, the goal is to "to make sure they think through three or four steps ahead in an operation . . . to do all they can to minimize civilian casualties."
The shortage of troops has been particularly acute in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of Marines launched a major operation today in the restive province of Helmand.
"I expect it to be a pretty tough fight in Helmand this year. . . . We haven't had significant numbers of forces there in the past, but on the upside of that, we have enough forces now to hold, not just to win, the fight," Mullen said. Taliban insurgents had effectively created a stalemate with U.S., other NATO and Afghan forces in Helmand and other parts of the south, commanders have said in recent months.
Mullen said he is "extremely concerned" about the paucity of Afghan National Army and Afghan police forces in the south and elsewhere and about the long-standing deficit in the number of foreign military trainers needed to expand their ranks.
Opposition Leaders Defy Iranian Authorities, Call Ahmadinejad Government Illegal
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009
TEHRAN, July 1 -- Three opposition leaders, including a former president, openly defied Iran's top political and religious authorities Wednesday, vowing to resist a government they have deemed illegitimate after official certification of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection.
Their defiance in the face of harsh official denunciations and threats of arrest and prosecution appeared to dash the government's hopes of pressuring the opposition into accepting the disputed June 12 election.
Rather than dropping his complaints of extensive vote-rigging, leading opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi took his fight to a new level Wednesday, risking arrest by urging followers to continue their protests. After formal certification of the election results Monday night by the Guardian Council, a top supervisory body of Shiite Muslim clerics and jurists, Iranian authorities warned that no further protests would be tolerated.
Mousavi, 67, a former prime minister, was joined in his dismissal of the official results by two other opposition leaders: presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, 71, a cleric and former speaker of parliament, and Mohammad Khatami, 65, a cleric who served as president for eight years before Ahmadinejad, now 52, was first elected in 2005. They also called for the annulment of the June 12 vote and the continuation of protests, although Khatami's remarks were not as tough as those of the two candidates.
The three made clear that they do not oppose Iran's system of religious government, but they charged that the country is turning into a dictatorship. The government regards Mousavi and Karroubi as bad losers who are ignoring a legal election result and are trying to overthrow the system by organizing a "color revolution" similar to those that swept away governments in Eastern and Central Europe this decade.
There was no immediate response by authorities, but Morteza Agha Tehrani, an influential pro-government member of parliament, was quoted by a local news agency as saying that some lawmakers would soon file a court case against Mousavi.
The opposition's persistence appeared to put the government in a bind. If Iran's top leaders order the arrest of Mousavi and the political and religious figures who support him, they risk further undermining the country's complex system of religious and democratic governance. But if they allow Mousavi to continue calling for protests and challenging the election results, they could jeopardize the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other key figures who have backed Ahmadinejad's reelection.
Political factions and some grand ayatollahs, senior Shiite religious leaders with tens of thousands of followers, have voiced disapproval of the violent response to street protests and have called on authorities to heed demonstrators' complaints.
"There has been a velvet revolution against the people and against the republicanism of the system," Khatami said during a meeting with families of war casualties, according to a Web site associated with his faction. "A big segment of society has lost all trust in the system, and this is a disaster."
A leading moderate party formed by reformers close to Khatami, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, called the election a "coup d'etat" and the result "unacceptable."
In Tehran late Wednesday, tens of thousands of residents shouted "Allahu akbar!" (God is great) from their balconies and rooftops, a form of protest supporting Mousavi and Karroubi. But the only traffic on the capital's normally bustling streets appeared to be special police patrolling in black SUVs. Main squares all over the city were empty, witnesses said, although Wednesday night is the traditional start of the Iranian weekend.
The country's text-messaging service, turned off since the day before the election, resumed Wednesday, with Tehran's residents sending one another carefully formulated messages to avoid attracting official attention.
Meanwhile, Iran's national police chief, Brig. Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, announced that detained protesters "have been sent to the public and revolutionary courts in Tehran." He said that 1,032 people were detained during post-election unrest and that most have been released.
The police chief also said that 20 "rioters" were killed after the election, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported. He said that no police officers died but that more than 500 of them had been injured. "The police behavior toward the illegal gatherings staged during the final days of unrest was completely legal," Fars quoted him as saying.
For his part, Ahmadinejad canceled a planned trip to Libya on Wednesday to attend an African Union summit, the Foreign Ministry announced.
Staff writer William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009
TEHRAN, July 1 -- Three opposition leaders, including a former president, openly defied Iran's top political and religious authorities Wednesday, vowing to resist a government they have deemed illegitimate after official certification of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection.
Their defiance in the face of harsh official denunciations and threats of arrest and prosecution appeared to dash the government's hopes of pressuring the opposition into accepting the disputed June 12 election.
Rather than dropping his complaints of extensive vote-rigging, leading opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi took his fight to a new level Wednesday, risking arrest by urging followers to continue their protests. After formal certification of the election results Monday night by the Guardian Council, a top supervisory body of Shiite Muslim clerics and jurists, Iranian authorities warned that no further protests would be tolerated.
Mousavi, 67, a former prime minister, was joined in his dismissal of the official results by two other opposition leaders: presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, 71, a cleric and former speaker of parliament, and Mohammad Khatami, 65, a cleric who served as president for eight years before Ahmadinejad, now 52, was first elected in 2005. They also called for the annulment of the June 12 vote and the continuation of protests, although Khatami's remarks were not as tough as those of the two candidates.
The three made clear that they do not oppose Iran's system of religious government, but they charged that the country is turning into a dictatorship. The government regards Mousavi and Karroubi as bad losers who are ignoring a legal election result and are trying to overthrow the system by organizing a "color revolution" similar to those that swept away governments in Eastern and Central Europe this decade.
There was no immediate response by authorities, but Morteza Agha Tehrani, an influential pro-government member of parliament, was quoted by a local news agency as saying that some lawmakers would soon file a court case against Mousavi.
The opposition's persistence appeared to put the government in a bind. If Iran's top leaders order the arrest of Mousavi and the political and religious figures who support him, they risk further undermining the country's complex system of religious and democratic governance. But if they allow Mousavi to continue calling for protests and challenging the election results, they could jeopardize the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other key figures who have backed Ahmadinejad's reelection.
Political factions and some grand ayatollahs, senior Shiite religious leaders with tens of thousands of followers, have voiced disapproval of the violent response to street protests and have called on authorities to heed demonstrators' complaints.
"There has been a velvet revolution against the people and against the republicanism of the system," Khatami said during a meeting with families of war casualties, according to a Web site associated with his faction. "A big segment of society has lost all trust in the system, and this is a disaster."
A leading moderate party formed by reformers close to Khatami, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, called the election a "coup d'etat" and the result "unacceptable."
In Tehran late Wednesday, tens of thousands of residents shouted "Allahu akbar!" (God is great) from their balconies and rooftops, a form of protest supporting Mousavi and Karroubi. But the only traffic on the capital's normally bustling streets appeared to be special police patrolling in black SUVs. Main squares all over the city were empty, witnesses said, although Wednesday night is the traditional start of the Iranian weekend.
The country's text-messaging service, turned off since the day before the election, resumed Wednesday, with Tehran's residents sending one another carefully formulated messages to avoid attracting official attention.
Meanwhile, Iran's national police chief, Brig. Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, announced that detained protesters "have been sent to the public and revolutionary courts in Tehran." He said that 1,032 people were detained during post-election unrest and that most have been released.
The police chief also said that 20 "rioters" were killed after the election, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported. He said that no police officers died but that more than 500 of them had been injured. "The police behavior toward the illegal gatherings staged during the final days of unrest was completely legal," Fars quoted him as saying.
For his part, Ahmadinejad canceled a planned trip to Libya on Wednesday to attend an African Union summit, the Foreign Ministry announced.
Staff writer William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.
Honduran Crisis Offers Venezuala's Chavez Some Domestic, International Openings
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009
CARACAS, Venezuela, July 1 -- An ally was in trouble, toppled in a military coup. And the television cameras were rolling.
The ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya could not have been better scripted for another Latin American leader who has taken center stage: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The populist firebrand has been Zelaya's most forceful advocate and could win international accolades if the Honduran eventually succeeds in regaining power.
Ever since Zelaya was hustled into exile Sunday by the military, Chávez has been a whirlwind of activity. Using Venezuela's oil-fueled influence to organize summits at which he has been the central speaker, he is spreading his vision of Latin America and calling for Hondurans to rise up against those who deposed Zelaya.
"I just cannot stay here with my arms crossed," Chávez declared in one of many speeches calling for the new Honduran government to step aside.
Luis Vicente León, a pollster and political analyst in Caracas, said the crisis is "perfect" for Chávez "because he's not defending a tyrant; he's defending an elected president who was overthrown. It's showtime for the showman."
The extent of Chávez's influence on the Honduran crisis is unclear, many analysts said. But with Venezuelan state media publicizing his every pronouncement, some analysts say he is using the crisis to shift his countrymen's attention from domestic problems he has struggled with at a time when his popularity has been slipping.
Indeed, Zelaya, 56, is on the surface an unlikely benefactor of Venezuela's support. He is a rancher and logger from Honduras's upper classes who came late to Chávez's alliance of left-leaning nations, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which includes Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and others.
But Chávez has characterized Zelaya as a leftist fighting for the poor and said those who overthrew him hail from an oligarchy intent on maintaining the status quo. Chávez has even taken to mockingly calling Roberto Micheletti, the lawmaker who replaced Zelaya as president, a "gorilla."
"I swear as president: We are going to make your life impossible," Chávez said in one speech, directing his ire at Micheletti.
Chávez has also said that the CIA could have had a hand in Zelaya's ouster. On Monday, Chávez gave a long speech to fellow Latin American leaders, recounting U.S. interference in the region and his survival of a brief coup in 2002. The speech was televised by government stations here and CNN's Spanish-language service.
Milos Alcalay, who was Venezuela's ambassador to the United Nations until breaking with Chávez in 2004, said the Venezuelan president has quickly taken advantage of the crisis to cast himself as the leader of progressive countries battling the dark forces of Latin America's establishment. Alcalay said that, for Chávez, there is no middle ground or nuance in his approach to the Honduran crisis -- nor recognition that Zelaya had erred by pushing a nonbinding constitutional referendum opposed by the courts and his own party.
"He is, in essence, defending his ideological project, and the rest of the countries follow along," Alcalay said, referring mainly to Venezuela's closest allies. "He is following the vision of leadership set by Simón Bolívar, a mantle that he believes he now carries. It's megalomania on the international stage."
With the United States, Europe and big regional players such as Brazil and Mexico condemning the coup, Chávez's role in propelling Zelaya's possible comeback may be peripheral, some political analysts said. Indeed, Carlos Sosa, Zelaya's ambassador at the Organization of American States, said the demands made on Micheletti by other Latin American leaders have been vital.
"Hugo Chávez's role is like that of other leaders," such as Mexico's Felipe Calderón, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, Argentina's Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Obama, Sosa said in a telephone interview.
Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group, a Washington-based policy organization that studies countries in crisis, said: "Chávez is clearly taking advantage of the opportunity, but he is not calling the shots."
Going by the Venezuelan state media, though, it would be hard to conclude that Chávez is not spearheading the effort. Nor is there any mention of the contradiction of Chávez demanding that the Hondurans adhere to democratic principles when his closest ally is communist Cuba. Although he labels Micheletti's government a military dictatorship, and decries the violence against protesters, state television makes no mention of a botched coup led by Chávez in 1992 in which dozens died.
León, the pollster, said the coverage is part of a larger strategy that helps the government deflect attention from grinding domestic problems it has been unable to address, including rampant crime and a troubled economy.
León said Chávez has been searching for a lift. The polling company León helps run, Datanalisis, said that more than 60 percent of Venezuelans supported Chávez in February, when he won a referendum on a constitutional amendment that permits him to run for reelection indefinitely.
But the popularity rating has slipped to slightly more than 50 percent in recent weeks, León said, as Venezuelans have become increasingly worried by what he called Chávez's "radicalization." Polls show that 75 percent oppose the government's expropriations targeting landholders and big companies. An additional 65 percent oppose the president's efforts to wrest power from local governments led by political opponents, León said.
"He is talking for the benefit of the local population because it allows him to put people's minds, for at least a while, on other issues and not their own problems," León said.
Still, Leon and other analysts said Chávez is often most formidable -- and effective -- on the international stage.
Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a policy group in Washington, said Chávez's attempts at leading his allies in an effort to reinstate a deposed friend dovetail effectively with his frequent invocation of images of coups against leftist leaders.
"He puts his money where his mouth is, and there's a grudging respect for that," Birns said.
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009
CARACAS, Venezuela, July 1 -- An ally was in trouble, toppled in a military coup. And the television cameras were rolling.
The ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya could not have been better scripted for another Latin American leader who has taken center stage: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The populist firebrand has been Zelaya's most forceful advocate and could win international accolades if the Honduran eventually succeeds in regaining power.
Ever since Zelaya was hustled into exile Sunday by the military, Chávez has been a whirlwind of activity. Using Venezuela's oil-fueled influence to organize summits at which he has been the central speaker, he is spreading his vision of Latin America and calling for Hondurans to rise up against those who deposed Zelaya.
"I just cannot stay here with my arms crossed," Chávez declared in one of many speeches calling for the new Honduran government to step aside.
Luis Vicente León, a pollster and political analyst in Caracas, said the crisis is "perfect" for Chávez "because he's not defending a tyrant; he's defending an elected president who was overthrown. It's showtime for the showman."
The extent of Chávez's influence on the Honduran crisis is unclear, many analysts said. But with Venezuelan state media publicizing his every pronouncement, some analysts say he is using the crisis to shift his countrymen's attention from domestic problems he has struggled with at a time when his popularity has been slipping.
Indeed, Zelaya, 56, is on the surface an unlikely benefactor of Venezuela's support. He is a rancher and logger from Honduras's upper classes who came late to Chávez's alliance of left-leaning nations, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which includes Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and others.
But Chávez has characterized Zelaya as a leftist fighting for the poor and said those who overthrew him hail from an oligarchy intent on maintaining the status quo. Chávez has even taken to mockingly calling Roberto Micheletti, the lawmaker who replaced Zelaya as president, a "gorilla."
"I swear as president: We are going to make your life impossible," Chávez said in one speech, directing his ire at Micheletti.
Chávez has also said that the CIA could have had a hand in Zelaya's ouster. On Monday, Chávez gave a long speech to fellow Latin American leaders, recounting U.S. interference in the region and his survival of a brief coup in 2002. The speech was televised by government stations here and CNN's Spanish-language service.
Milos Alcalay, who was Venezuela's ambassador to the United Nations until breaking with Chávez in 2004, said the Venezuelan president has quickly taken advantage of the crisis to cast himself as the leader of progressive countries battling the dark forces of Latin America's establishment. Alcalay said that, for Chávez, there is no middle ground or nuance in his approach to the Honduran crisis -- nor recognition that Zelaya had erred by pushing a nonbinding constitutional referendum opposed by the courts and his own party.
"He is, in essence, defending his ideological project, and the rest of the countries follow along," Alcalay said, referring mainly to Venezuela's closest allies. "He is following the vision of leadership set by Simón Bolívar, a mantle that he believes he now carries. It's megalomania on the international stage."
With the United States, Europe and big regional players such as Brazil and Mexico condemning the coup, Chávez's role in propelling Zelaya's possible comeback may be peripheral, some political analysts said. Indeed, Carlos Sosa, Zelaya's ambassador at the Organization of American States, said the demands made on Micheletti by other Latin American leaders have been vital.
"Hugo Chávez's role is like that of other leaders," such as Mexico's Felipe Calderón, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, Argentina's Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Obama, Sosa said in a telephone interview.
Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group, a Washington-based policy organization that studies countries in crisis, said: "Chávez is clearly taking advantage of the opportunity, but he is not calling the shots."
Going by the Venezuelan state media, though, it would be hard to conclude that Chávez is not spearheading the effort. Nor is there any mention of the contradiction of Chávez demanding that the Hondurans adhere to democratic principles when his closest ally is communist Cuba. Although he labels Micheletti's government a military dictatorship, and decries the violence against protesters, state television makes no mention of a botched coup led by Chávez in 1992 in which dozens died.
León, the pollster, said the coverage is part of a larger strategy that helps the government deflect attention from grinding domestic problems it has been unable to address, including rampant crime and a troubled economy.
León said Chávez has been searching for a lift. The polling company León helps run, Datanalisis, said that more than 60 percent of Venezuelans supported Chávez in February, when he won a referendum on a constitutional amendment that permits him to run for reelection indefinitely.
But the popularity rating has slipped to slightly more than 50 percent in recent weeks, León said, as Venezuelans have become increasingly worried by what he called Chávez's "radicalization." Polls show that 75 percent oppose the government's expropriations targeting landholders and big companies. An additional 65 percent oppose the president's efforts to wrest power from local governments led by political opponents, León said.
"He is talking for the benefit of the local population because it allows him to put people's minds, for at least a while, on other issues and not their own problems," León said.
Still, Leon and other analysts said Chávez is often most formidable -- and effective -- on the international stage.
Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a policy group in Washington, said Chávez's attempts at leading his allies in an effort to reinstate a deposed friend dovetail effectively with his frequent invocation of images of coups against leftist leaders.
"He puts his money where his mouth is, and there's a grudging respect for that," Birns said.
Honduras Targets Protesters With Emergency Decree
By William Booth and Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, July 1 -- The new Honduran government clamped down on street protests and news organizations Wednesday as lawmakers passed an emergency decree that limits public gatherings following the military-led coup that removed President Manuel Zelaya from office.
The decree also allows for suspects to be detained for 24 hours and continues a nighttime curfew. Media outlets complained that the government was ordering them not to report any news or opinion that could "incite" the public.
A dozen former ministers from the Zelaya government remain in hiding, some hunkered down in foreign embassies, fearing arrest. News organizations here remain polarized. Journalists working for small independent media -- or for those loyal to Zelaya -- have reported being harassed by officials.
Before emergency measures were tightened, thousands of protesters rallied Wednesday to urge Zelaya's return. They were answered by counterdemonstrations in support of the new government. Local radio reported that several bombs were found but safely defused.
Zelaya vowed that he would come back to Honduras over the weekend, while the newly appointed interim president, Roberto Micheletti, repeated in a news conference Wednesday "that when he comes into the country, he will be arrested."
Asked whether Honduras could withstand international isolation and risk losing the foreign aid that keeps the impoverished nation running, Micheletti said, "You know that the Europeans are not going to cut the aid to our country, nor will the Americans."
But on Wednesday, the Inter-American Development Bank did suspend aid, after a similar move by the World Bank. As the impasse continued in Honduras, diplomats at the Organization of American States struggled to organize a mission that would restore Zelaya to power and avoid a clash between him and the military that ousted him.
After nearly 12 hours of debate, the OAS approved a resolution shortly before dawn Wednesday that called on its secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, to undertake every effort to reinstate Zelaya. If Insulza did not succeed within 72 hours, Honduras would be suspended from the OAS, the main forum for political cooperation in the hemisphere.
The passage of the resolution prompted Zelaya to postpone a trip home he had scheduled for Thursday, which diplomats had feared could sharply escalate tensions in the Central American country.
"I am going to return to Honduras. I am the president," Zelaya told reporters Wednesday. But he added that he did not want to complicate the diplomatic efforts of the OAS over the next few days.
Insulza faces an unusually complex task in trying to reverse the coup. Normally, he would negotiate with the de facto government for the return of the deposed president. But OAS members, furious about the military ouster, do not want him to talk to Micheletti, for fear that would legitimize the new regime.
Even hard-core coup backers here say they were surprised how quickly and forcefully the Latin American countries condemned their actions.
"This coup is a mess," said the outgoing Italian ambassador, Giuseppe Magno. "Mistakes have been made on all sides, and the only solution is for a compromise. We hear that different parties are talking among themselves. That is good. The solution has to come from the Hondurans themselves. It cannot be imposed on them."
Honduras is finding itself increasingly isolated. France, Spain, Italy, Chile and Colombia began recalling their ambassadors Wednesday. The Pentagon suspended joint military operations with Honduras.
"What provoked an enormous indignation among Latin Americans, above all, was the military coup," said one diplomat involved in the planning at the OAS, referring to the way soldiers seized Zelaya at dawn and bundled him onto a plane bound for Costa Rica.
Insulza, of the OAS, is trying to establish contact with people who are not closely allied with either Zelaya or Micheletti to build a compromise, the diplomat said. It was not clear when he would fly to Honduras.
The coup is the first big test for the Obama administration's policy of seeking a more diplomatic and collegial role in a region traditionally dominated by the United States. The military action has been roundly condemned internationally, including by President Obama. But U.S. diplomats have sought to prevent a response that is so tough it leads to bloodshed.
U.S. officials said Wednesday that they would hold off formally designating the Honduran military action a "coup" until Insulza reports back to the OAS on Monday. Such a move is significant, because it would lead to the cutoff of millions of dollars in military and development aid.
However, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it had decided to reduce military contact with the Honduran armed forces. "We're still reviewing and making decisions" about what cooperation would be affected, said a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, José Ruiz.
The U.S. military also has cut off contact since Sunday with those who orchestrated the coup, officials said. The United States has a contingent of about 700 military personnel at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras, focused on disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and counternarcotics activities in Honduras and the region.
Honduras also is facing a freeze on petroleum exports from Venezuela and a halt in trade from other Central American countries.
"In the 21st century, these kinds of coups don't last long. It is very hard for a country like Honduras to maintain this kind of position in the face of overwhelming rejection by the world, and especially the region and its major trading partners," a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.
Zelaya is a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who led a bloc of leftist governments in pressing the OAS to suspend Honduras immediately and support Zelaya's quick return to the country -- even at the risk of his being arrested. The governments believe that unless there is a tough response to the coup, their own leftist governments could be threatened, diplomats said.
Venezuela's ambassador to the OAS, Roy Chaderton, described the approach as "diplomatic asphyxiation." The Venezuelan government provided a plane for Zelaya's trips Tuesday to the United Nations and the OAS.
Sheridan reported from Washington.
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, July 1 -- The new Honduran government clamped down on street protests and news organizations Wednesday as lawmakers passed an emergency decree that limits public gatherings following the military-led coup that removed President Manuel Zelaya from office.
The decree also allows for suspects to be detained for 24 hours and continues a nighttime curfew. Media outlets complained that the government was ordering them not to report any news or opinion that could "incite" the public.
A dozen former ministers from the Zelaya government remain in hiding, some hunkered down in foreign embassies, fearing arrest. News organizations here remain polarized. Journalists working for small independent media -- or for those loyal to Zelaya -- have reported being harassed by officials.
Before emergency measures were tightened, thousands of protesters rallied Wednesday to urge Zelaya's return. They were answered by counterdemonstrations in support of the new government. Local radio reported that several bombs were found but safely defused.
Zelaya vowed that he would come back to Honduras over the weekend, while the newly appointed interim president, Roberto Micheletti, repeated in a news conference Wednesday "that when he comes into the country, he will be arrested."
Asked whether Honduras could withstand international isolation and risk losing the foreign aid that keeps the impoverished nation running, Micheletti said, "You know that the Europeans are not going to cut the aid to our country, nor will the Americans."
But on Wednesday, the Inter-American Development Bank did suspend aid, after a similar move by the World Bank. As the impasse continued in Honduras, diplomats at the Organization of American States struggled to organize a mission that would restore Zelaya to power and avoid a clash between him and the military that ousted him.
After nearly 12 hours of debate, the OAS approved a resolution shortly before dawn Wednesday that called on its secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, to undertake every effort to reinstate Zelaya. If Insulza did not succeed within 72 hours, Honduras would be suspended from the OAS, the main forum for political cooperation in the hemisphere.
The passage of the resolution prompted Zelaya to postpone a trip home he had scheduled for Thursday, which diplomats had feared could sharply escalate tensions in the Central American country.
"I am going to return to Honduras. I am the president," Zelaya told reporters Wednesday. But he added that he did not want to complicate the diplomatic efforts of the OAS over the next few days.
Insulza faces an unusually complex task in trying to reverse the coup. Normally, he would negotiate with the de facto government for the return of the deposed president. But OAS members, furious about the military ouster, do not want him to talk to Micheletti, for fear that would legitimize the new regime.
Even hard-core coup backers here say they were surprised how quickly and forcefully the Latin American countries condemned their actions.
"This coup is a mess," said the outgoing Italian ambassador, Giuseppe Magno. "Mistakes have been made on all sides, and the only solution is for a compromise. We hear that different parties are talking among themselves. That is good. The solution has to come from the Hondurans themselves. It cannot be imposed on them."
Honduras is finding itself increasingly isolated. France, Spain, Italy, Chile and Colombia began recalling their ambassadors Wednesday. The Pentagon suspended joint military operations with Honduras.
"What provoked an enormous indignation among Latin Americans, above all, was the military coup," said one diplomat involved in the planning at the OAS, referring to the way soldiers seized Zelaya at dawn and bundled him onto a plane bound for Costa Rica.
Insulza, of the OAS, is trying to establish contact with people who are not closely allied with either Zelaya or Micheletti to build a compromise, the diplomat said. It was not clear when he would fly to Honduras.
The coup is the first big test for the Obama administration's policy of seeking a more diplomatic and collegial role in a region traditionally dominated by the United States. The military action has been roundly condemned internationally, including by President Obama. But U.S. diplomats have sought to prevent a response that is so tough it leads to bloodshed.
U.S. officials said Wednesday that they would hold off formally designating the Honduran military action a "coup" until Insulza reports back to the OAS on Monday. Such a move is significant, because it would lead to the cutoff of millions of dollars in military and development aid.
However, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it had decided to reduce military contact with the Honduran armed forces. "We're still reviewing and making decisions" about what cooperation would be affected, said a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, José Ruiz.
The U.S. military also has cut off contact since Sunday with those who orchestrated the coup, officials said. The United States has a contingent of about 700 military personnel at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras, focused on disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and counternarcotics activities in Honduras and the region.
Honduras also is facing a freeze on petroleum exports from Venezuela and a halt in trade from other Central American countries.
"In the 21st century, these kinds of coups don't last long. It is very hard for a country like Honduras to maintain this kind of position in the face of overwhelming rejection by the world, and especially the region and its major trading partners," a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.
Zelaya is a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who led a bloc of leftist governments in pressing the OAS to suspend Honduras immediately and support Zelaya's quick return to the country -- even at the risk of his being arrested. The governments believe that unless there is a tough response to the coup, their own leftist governments could be threatened, diplomats said.
Venezuela's ambassador to the OAS, Roy Chaderton, described the approach as "diplomatic asphyxiation." The Venezuelan government provided a plane for Zelaya's trips Tuesday to the United Nations and the OAS.
Sheridan reported from Washington.
ACLU Says Detainee Mohammed Jawad Was Tortured Into Confessions
By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday accused the Obama administration of using statements elicited through torture to justify the confinement of a detainee it represents at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The ACLU is asking a federal judge to throw out those statements and others made by Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who may have been as young as 12 when he was captured. His attorney argued that Jawad was abused in U.S. custody, threatened and subjected to intense sleep deprivation.
"The government's continued reliance on evidence gained by torture and other abuse violates centuries of U.S. law and suggests the current administration is not really serious about breaking with the past," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Hafetz, who is representing Jawad in a lawsuit challenging his detention.
Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said the government would not comment on the types of evidence it will use in Jawad's case challenging his imprisonment. "We intend to prove our case in court rather than attempt to do so through the media," Boyd said.
In court papers, the Justice Department alleges that Jawad threw a grenade into a vehicle containing two U.S. Special Forces soldiers and their Afghan interpreter on Dec. 17, 2002. Jawad was also associated with a group tied to Osama bin Laden, the government alleges.
After the grenade attack, Jawad was picked up by Afghan police, according to military and federal court records.
During U.S. military commission hearings on his case, a judge found that Afghan interrogators threatened to kill Jawad and his family if he did not confess to playing a role in the attack. Jawad then admitted to participating in the attack, wrote the judge, Army Col. Stephen R. Henley.
Later the same night, he was questioned by U.S. Special Forces and confessed again, Henley wrote.
In November, Henley found that the first set of statements were elicited through "physical intimidation and threats of death" and that Jawad's fears "had not dissipated by the second confession." He ruled that prosecutors could not use either of the confessions during military commission proceedings.
Despite Henley's ruling, Hafetz said the Justice Department wants to use those very confessions to justify Jawad's detention in the detainee's lawsuit before U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle.
Hafetz said he is also asking Huvelle to suppress other statements Jawad made to interrogators at the U.S. military prisons at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay. Those statements were tainted, Hafetz said, because Jawad was beaten, forced into painful "stress positions," and chained to a wall and deprived of sleep in Bagram. At Guantanamo, Jawad was interrogated more than 50 times and subjected to sleep deprivation, Hafetz said.
Jawad's situation received attention last year when a military prosecutor abruptly quit his post, saying that the case was riddled with problems and that the prisoner had suffered physical and psychological mistreatment while in custody.
That former prosecutor, Darrel Vandeveld, later filed a declaration supporting Jawad's challenge to his confinement in a federal lawsuit.
"It is my opinion, based on my extensive knowledge of the case, that there is no credible evidence or legal basis to justify Mr. Jawad's detention," Vandeveld wrote.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday accused the Obama administration of using statements elicited through torture to justify the confinement of a detainee it represents at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The ACLU is asking a federal judge to throw out those statements and others made by Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who may have been as young as 12 when he was captured. His attorney argued that Jawad was abused in U.S. custody, threatened and subjected to intense sleep deprivation.
"The government's continued reliance on evidence gained by torture and other abuse violates centuries of U.S. law and suggests the current administration is not really serious about breaking with the past," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Hafetz, who is representing Jawad in a lawsuit challenging his detention.
Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said the government would not comment on the types of evidence it will use in Jawad's case challenging his imprisonment. "We intend to prove our case in court rather than attempt to do so through the media," Boyd said.
In court papers, the Justice Department alleges that Jawad threw a grenade into a vehicle containing two U.S. Special Forces soldiers and their Afghan interpreter on Dec. 17, 2002. Jawad was also associated with a group tied to Osama bin Laden, the government alleges.
After the grenade attack, Jawad was picked up by Afghan police, according to military and federal court records.
During U.S. military commission hearings on his case, a judge found that Afghan interrogators threatened to kill Jawad and his family if he did not confess to playing a role in the attack. Jawad then admitted to participating in the attack, wrote the judge, Army Col. Stephen R. Henley.
Later the same night, he was questioned by U.S. Special Forces and confessed again, Henley wrote.
In November, Henley found that the first set of statements were elicited through "physical intimidation and threats of death" and that Jawad's fears "had not dissipated by the second confession." He ruled that prosecutors could not use either of the confessions during military commission proceedings.
Despite Henley's ruling, Hafetz said the Justice Department wants to use those very confessions to justify Jawad's detention in the detainee's lawsuit before U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle.
Hafetz said he is also asking Huvelle to suppress other statements Jawad made to interrogators at the U.S. military prisons at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay. Those statements were tainted, Hafetz said, because Jawad was beaten, forced into painful "stress positions," and chained to a wall and deprived of sleep in Bagram. At Guantanamo, Jawad was interrogated more than 50 times and subjected to sleep deprivation, Hafetz said.
Jawad's situation received attention last year when a military prosecutor abruptly quit his post, saying that the case was riddled with problems and that the prisoner had suffered physical and psychological mistreatment while in custody.
That former prosecutor, Darrel Vandeveld, later filed a declaration supporting Jawad's challenge to his confinement in a federal lawsuit.
"It is my opinion, based on my extensive knowledge of the case, that there is no credible evidence or legal basis to justify Mr. Jawad's detention," Vandeveld wrote.
Saddam Hussein Said WMD Talk Helped Him Look Strong to Iran
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.
Hussein, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region."
Former president George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq six years ago on the grounds that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to international security. Administration officials at the time also strongly suggested Iraq had significant links to al-Qaeda, which carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Hussein, who was often defiant and boastful during the interviews, at one point wistfully acknowledged that he should have permitted the United Nations to witness the destruction of Iraq's weapons stockpile after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The FBI summaries of the interviews -- 20 formal interrogations and five "casual conversations" in 2004 -- were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute, and posted on its Web site yesterday. The detailed accounts of the interviews were released with few deletions, though one, a last formal interview on May 1, 2004, was completely redacted.
Thomas S. Blanton, director of the archive, said he could conceive of no national security reason to keep Hussein's conversations with the FBI secret. Paul Bresson, a bureau spokesman, said he could not explain the reason for the redactions.
The 20 formal interviews took place between Feb. 7 and May 1, followed by the casual conversations between May 10 and June 28. Hussein was later transferred to Iraqi custody, and he was hanged in December 2006.
The formal interviews covered Hussein's rise to power, the Kuwait invasion, and Hussein's crackdown on the Shiite uprising in extensive detail, while the subject of the weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda were raised in the casual conversations, after the formal interviews. Blanton said this suggests that the FBI received new orders from Washington to delve into topics of intense interest to Bush administration officials.
The FBI spokesman did not know why those subjects were raised in the later meetings. In an interview last year on CBS's "60 Minutes," George L. Piro, the agent who conducted the interviews, said he purposely put Hussein's back against the wall "psychologically to tell him that his back was against the wall," but he did not use coercive interrogation techniques, because "it's against FBI policy." The interviews released yesterday do not suggest any use of coercive techniques.
During the interviews, Piro, who conducted them in Arabic, often appeared to challenge Hussein's account of events, citing facts that contradicted his recollections. He even forced Hussein to watch a graphic British documentary on his treatment of the Shiites, though that did not appear to shake the former president.
At one point, Hussein dismissed as a fantasy the many intelligence reports that said he used a body double to elude assassination. "This is movie magic, not reality," he said with a laugh. Instead, he said, he had used a phone only twice since 1990 and rarely slept in the same location two days in a row.
Hussein's fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. Iran and Iraq had fought a grinding eight-year war in the 1980s, and Hussein said he was convinced that Iran was trying to annex southern Iraq -- which is largely Shiite. "Hussein viewed the other countries in the Middle East as weak and could not defend themselves or Iraq from an attack from Iran," Piro recounted in his summary of a June 11, 2004, conversation.
"The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors," Piro wrote. "Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq."
Hussein noted that Iran's weapons capabilities had increased dramatically while Iraq's weapons "had been eliminated by the UN sanctions," and that eventually Iraq would have to reconstitute its weapons to deal with that threat if it could not reach a security agreement with the United States.
Piro raised bin Laden in his last conversation with Hussein, on June 28, 2004, but the information he yielded conflicted with the Bush administration's many efforts to link Iraq with the terrorist group. Hussein replied that throughout history there had been conflicts between believers of Islam and political leaders. He said that "he was a believer in God but was not a zealot . . . that religion and government should not mix." Hussein said that he had never met bin Laden and that the two of them "did not have the same belief or vision."
When Piro noted that there were reasons why Hussein and al-Qaeda should have cooperated -- they had the same enemies in the United States and Saudi Arabia -- Hussein replied that the United States was not Iraq's enemy, and that he simply opposed its policies.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.
Hussein, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region."
Former president George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq six years ago on the grounds that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to international security. Administration officials at the time also strongly suggested Iraq had significant links to al-Qaeda, which carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Hussein, who was often defiant and boastful during the interviews, at one point wistfully acknowledged that he should have permitted the United Nations to witness the destruction of Iraq's weapons stockpile after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The FBI summaries of the interviews -- 20 formal interrogations and five "casual conversations" in 2004 -- were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute, and posted on its Web site yesterday. The detailed accounts of the interviews were released with few deletions, though one, a last formal interview on May 1, 2004, was completely redacted.
Thomas S. Blanton, director of the archive, said he could conceive of no national security reason to keep Hussein's conversations with the FBI secret. Paul Bresson, a bureau spokesman, said he could not explain the reason for the redactions.
The 20 formal interviews took place between Feb. 7 and May 1, followed by the casual conversations between May 10 and June 28. Hussein was later transferred to Iraqi custody, and he was hanged in December 2006.
The formal interviews covered Hussein's rise to power, the Kuwait invasion, and Hussein's crackdown on the Shiite uprising in extensive detail, while the subject of the weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda were raised in the casual conversations, after the formal interviews. Blanton said this suggests that the FBI received new orders from Washington to delve into topics of intense interest to Bush administration officials.
The FBI spokesman did not know why those subjects were raised in the later meetings. In an interview last year on CBS's "60 Minutes," George L. Piro, the agent who conducted the interviews, said he purposely put Hussein's back against the wall "psychologically to tell him that his back was against the wall," but he did not use coercive interrogation techniques, because "it's against FBI policy." The interviews released yesterday do not suggest any use of coercive techniques.
During the interviews, Piro, who conducted them in Arabic, often appeared to challenge Hussein's account of events, citing facts that contradicted his recollections. He even forced Hussein to watch a graphic British documentary on his treatment of the Shiites, though that did not appear to shake the former president.
At one point, Hussein dismissed as a fantasy the many intelligence reports that said he used a body double to elude assassination. "This is movie magic, not reality," he said with a laugh. Instead, he said, he had used a phone only twice since 1990 and rarely slept in the same location two days in a row.
Hussein's fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. Iran and Iraq had fought a grinding eight-year war in the 1980s, and Hussein said he was convinced that Iran was trying to annex southern Iraq -- which is largely Shiite. "Hussein viewed the other countries in the Middle East as weak and could not defend themselves or Iraq from an attack from Iran," Piro recounted in his summary of a June 11, 2004, conversation.
"The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors," Piro wrote. "Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq."
Hussein noted that Iran's weapons capabilities had increased dramatically while Iraq's weapons "had been eliminated by the UN sanctions," and that eventually Iraq would have to reconstitute its weapons to deal with that threat if it could not reach a security agreement with the United States.
Piro raised bin Laden in his last conversation with Hussein, on June 28, 2004, but the information he yielded conflicted with the Bush administration's many efforts to link Iraq with the terrorist group. Hussein replied that throughout history there had been conflicts between believers of Islam and political leaders. He said that "he was a believer in God but was not a zealot . . . that religion and government should not mix." Hussein said that he had never met bin Laden and that the two of them "did not have the same belief or vision."
When Piro noted that there were reasons why Hussein and al-Qaeda should have cooperated -- they had the same enemies in the United States and Saudi Arabia -- Hussein replied that the United States was not Iraq's enemy, and that he simply opposed its policies.
Marines Launch Mission in Afghanistan's South Focused on Security and Governance
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan, July 2 -- Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban has evicted local police and government officials and taken power.
Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of mounting a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.
"We're doing this very differently," Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. "We're going to be with the people. We're not going to drive to work. We're going to walk to work."
Similar approaches have been tried in the eastern part of the country, but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half the world's supply of opium and provide the Taliban with a valuable source of income.
The operation launched early Thursday represents a shift in strategy after years of thwarted U.S.-led efforts to destroy Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and extend the authority of the Afghan government into the nation's southern and eastern regions. More than seven years after the fall of the Taliban government, the radical Islamist militia remains a potent force across broad swaths of the country. The Obama administration has made turning the war around a top priority, and the Helmand operation, if it succeeds, is seen as a potentially critical first step.
Traveling through swirling dust clouds under the light of a half-moon, the first Marine units departed from this remote desert base shortly after midnight on dual-rotor CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters backed by AH-64 Apache gunships and NATO fighter jets. Additional forces poured into the valley during the pre-dawn hours on more helicopters and in heavy transport vehicles designed to withstand the makeshift but lethal bombs that Taliban fighters have planted along the roads.
The initial Marine units did not face resistance as they converged on their destinations. Marine commanders said before the start of the operation that they expected only minimal Taliban opposition at the outset but that assaults on the forces would probably increase once they moved into towns and began patrols. Field commanders have been told to prepare for suicide attacks, ambushes and roadside bombings.
Officers here said the mission, which required months of planning, is the Marines' largest operation since the 2004 invasion of Fallujah, Iraq. In the minutes after midnight, well-armed Marines trudged across the tarmac at this sprawling outpost to board the Chinooks, which lumbered aloft with a burst of searing dust. A few hours later, another contingent of Marines boarded a row of CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters packed onto a relatively small landing pad at a staging base in the desert south of here. As the choppers clattered through the night sky, dozens of armored vehicles rolled toward towns along the river valley.
The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an-eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.
In areas south of the provincial capital, local leaders, and even members of the police force, have fled. An initial priority for the Marines will be to bring back Afghan government officials and reinvigorate the local police forces. Marine commanders also plan to help district governors hold shuras -- meetings of elders in the community -- in the next week.
"Our focus is not the Taliban," Nicholson told his officers. "Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet."
But Nicholson and his top commanders recognize that making that happen involves tackling numerous challenges, starting with a lack of trust among the local population. That mistrust stems from concern over civilian casualties resulting from U.S. military operations as well as from a fear that the troops will not stay long enough to counter the Taliban. The British army, which had been responsible for all of Helmand since 2005 under NATO's Afghan stabilization effort, lacked the resources to maintain a permanent presence in most parts of the province.
"A key to establishing security is getting the local population to understand that we're going to be staying here to help them -- that we're not driving in and driving out," said Col. Eric Mellenger, the brigade's operations officer.
With the arrival of the Marines, British forces have redeployed around the capital of Helmand, Lashkar Gah, where they are conducting a large anti-Taliban operation designed to complement the Marine mission. Two British soldiers were reported killed in fighting in the province Wednesday.
The Marines have also been vexed by a lack of Afghan security forces and a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel. Nicholson had hoped that his brigade, which has about 11,000 Marines and sailors, would be able to conduct operations with a similar number of Afghan soldiers. But thus far, the Marines have been allotted only about 500 Afghan soldiers, which he deems "a critical vulnerability."
"They see things intuitively that we don't see," he said. "It's their country, and they know it better than we do."
Despite commitments from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that they would send additional personnel to help the new forces in southern Afghanistan with reconstruction and governance development, State has added only two officers in Helmand since the Marines arrived. State has promised to have a dozen more diplomats and reconstruction experts working with the Marines, but only by the end of the summer.
To compensate in the interim, the Marines are deploying what officers here say is the largest-ever military civilian-affairs contingent attached to a combat brigade -- about 50 Marines, mostly reservists, with experience in local government, business management and law enforcement. Instead of flooding the area of operations with cash, as some units did in Iraq, the Marine civil affairs commander, Lt. Col. Curtis Lee, said he intends to focus his resources on improving local government.
Once basic governance structures are restored, civilian reconstruction personnel plan to focus on economic development programs, including programs to help Afghans grow legal crops in the area. Senior Obama administration officials say creating jobs and improving the livelihoods of rural Afghans is the key to defeating the Taliban, which has been able to recruit fighters for as little as $5 a day in Helmand.
In meetings with his commanders at forward operating bases over the past three days, Nicholson acknowledged that focusing on governance and population security does not come as naturally to Marines as conducting offensive operations, but he told them it is essential that they focus on "reining in the pit bulls."
"We're not going to measure your success by the number of times your ammunition is resupplied. . . . Our success in this environment will be very much predicated on restraint," he told a group of officers from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines on Sunday. "You're going to drink lots of tea. You're going to eat lots of goat. Get to know the people. That's the reason why we're here."
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 2009
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan, July 2 -- Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban has evicted local police and government officials and taken power.
Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of mounting a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.
"We're doing this very differently," Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. "We're going to be with the people. We're not going to drive to work. We're going to walk to work."
Similar approaches have been tried in the eastern part of the country, but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half the world's supply of opium and provide the Taliban with a valuable source of income.
The operation launched early Thursday represents a shift in strategy after years of thwarted U.S.-led efforts to destroy Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and extend the authority of the Afghan government into the nation's southern and eastern regions. More than seven years after the fall of the Taliban government, the radical Islamist militia remains a potent force across broad swaths of the country. The Obama administration has made turning the war around a top priority, and the Helmand operation, if it succeeds, is seen as a potentially critical first step.
Traveling through swirling dust clouds under the light of a half-moon, the first Marine units departed from this remote desert base shortly after midnight on dual-rotor CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters backed by AH-64 Apache gunships and NATO fighter jets. Additional forces poured into the valley during the pre-dawn hours on more helicopters and in heavy transport vehicles designed to withstand the makeshift but lethal bombs that Taliban fighters have planted along the roads.
The initial Marine units did not face resistance as they converged on their destinations. Marine commanders said before the start of the operation that they expected only minimal Taliban opposition at the outset but that assaults on the forces would probably increase once they moved into towns and began patrols. Field commanders have been told to prepare for suicide attacks, ambushes and roadside bombings.
Officers here said the mission, which required months of planning, is the Marines' largest operation since the 2004 invasion of Fallujah, Iraq. In the minutes after midnight, well-armed Marines trudged across the tarmac at this sprawling outpost to board the Chinooks, which lumbered aloft with a burst of searing dust. A few hours later, another contingent of Marines boarded a row of CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters packed onto a relatively small landing pad at a staging base in the desert south of here. As the choppers clattered through the night sky, dozens of armored vehicles rolled toward towns along the river valley.
The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an-eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.
In areas south of the provincial capital, local leaders, and even members of the police force, have fled. An initial priority for the Marines will be to bring back Afghan government officials and reinvigorate the local police forces. Marine commanders also plan to help district governors hold shuras -- meetings of elders in the community -- in the next week.
"Our focus is not the Taliban," Nicholson told his officers. "Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet."
But Nicholson and his top commanders recognize that making that happen involves tackling numerous challenges, starting with a lack of trust among the local population. That mistrust stems from concern over civilian casualties resulting from U.S. military operations as well as from a fear that the troops will not stay long enough to counter the Taliban. The British army, which had been responsible for all of Helmand since 2005 under NATO's Afghan stabilization effort, lacked the resources to maintain a permanent presence in most parts of the province.
"A key to establishing security is getting the local population to understand that we're going to be staying here to help them -- that we're not driving in and driving out," said Col. Eric Mellenger, the brigade's operations officer.
With the arrival of the Marines, British forces have redeployed around the capital of Helmand, Lashkar Gah, where they are conducting a large anti-Taliban operation designed to complement the Marine mission. Two British soldiers were reported killed in fighting in the province Wednesday.
The Marines have also been vexed by a lack of Afghan security forces and a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel. Nicholson had hoped that his brigade, which has about 11,000 Marines and sailors, would be able to conduct operations with a similar number of Afghan soldiers. But thus far, the Marines have been allotted only about 500 Afghan soldiers, which he deems "a critical vulnerability."
"They see things intuitively that we don't see," he said. "It's their country, and they know it better than we do."
Despite commitments from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that they would send additional personnel to help the new forces in southern Afghanistan with reconstruction and governance development, State has added only two officers in Helmand since the Marines arrived. State has promised to have a dozen more diplomats and reconstruction experts working with the Marines, but only by the end of the summer.
To compensate in the interim, the Marines are deploying what officers here say is the largest-ever military civilian-affairs contingent attached to a combat brigade -- about 50 Marines, mostly reservists, with experience in local government, business management and law enforcement. Instead of flooding the area of operations with cash, as some units did in Iraq, the Marine civil affairs commander, Lt. Col. Curtis Lee, said he intends to focus his resources on improving local government.
Once basic governance structures are restored, civilian reconstruction personnel plan to focus on economic development programs, including programs to help Afghans grow legal crops in the area. Senior Obama administration officials say creating jobs and improving the livelihoods of rural Afghans is the key to defeating the Taliban, which has been able to recruit fighters for as little as $5 a day in Helmand.
In meetings with his commanders at forward operating bases over the past three days, Nicholson acknowledged that focusing on governance and population security does not come as naturally to Marines as conducting offensive operations, but he told them it is essential that they focus on "reining in the pit bulls."
"We're not going to measure your success by the number of times your ammunition is resupplied. . . . Our success in this environment will be very much predicated on restraint," he told a group of officers from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines on Sunday. "You're going to drink lots of tea. You're going to eat lots of goat. Get to know the people. That's the reason why we're here."
Cory Aquino in Serious Condition
News Desk
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Publication Date: 02-07-2009
The cancer-stricken Corazon Aquino has been moved from the intensive care unit to a regular room of Makati Medical Centre and has refused to undergo another cycle of chemotherapy, her spokesperson Deedee Siytangco said Wednesday night.
In an earlier phone interview at 6:20pm, Siytangco said the former president, who is battling colon cancer, had been confined at the hospital for a week and a half because of loss of appetite, but was conscious.
“Her whole family is with her now. She’s in serious condition but we’re hoping for the best,” Siytangco said.
There was no word from actress and TV host Kris Aquino, the former President’s youngest daughter and for a time the family spokesperson on her mother’s condition.
Kris’ manager and longtime friend Boy Abunda said she was weeping and inconsolable.
Abunda said he spoke with Kris by phone at around 6pm Wednesday.
“She asked the people to allow her this time for herself. She said she would rather not talk about her mom’s condition at the moment,” Abunda said.
Call for prayers
Earlier Wednesday at the first of a novena of healing Masses for the 76-year-old Aquino at the Greenbelt 5 chapel in Makati City, Siytangco said “Tita Cory” could “talk and pray” but was “not well”.
“She needs all your prayers,” Siytangco said.
The open-sided chapel was standing room only for the noontime Mass dedicated to Aquino and others afflicted with cancer.
“Our hearts are burdened because of the illness of our beloved former president, and the pain and discomfort she has to endure,” broadcaster Korina Sanchez said, reading the novena prayer.
“You took the hand of our dear sister Cory, as she struggled through every trial, as she confronted every challenge, and embraced every cross of her life. Take her hand now and have mercy on her and upon all poor souls who are in agony and make Your will known to them,” said Sanchez, who has asked the former president to be a sponsor at her wedding to Senator Mar Roxas.
Among those present at the Mass were former members of the Aquino Cabinet led by former Senate president Franklin Drilon and wife Mila, former finance secretary Ramon del Rosario Jr, Popoy Juico and his wife Margie, who served as Aquino’s appointments secretary, Manila Mayor Fred Lim, and anti-Arroyo activists Dinky Soliman and Leah Navarro of the Black and White Movement.
In Negros Occidental, Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra also called on the faithful to pray for Aquino’s well-being.
Kabankalan Bishop Patricio Buzon did the same in extolling Aquino’s legacy to the nation, which was to end the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986 and restore freedom and democracy to the nation.
‘We need her’
In a statement issued by his office, Aquino’s only son, Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, said he “sincerely thanks all those who attended the novena Mass and those who continue to pray for his mother’s healing".
Drilon said he last spoke with Noynoy Aquino last week and that the latter “did not sound very optimistic because of his mother’s appetite problem”.
“We have no other recourse but to pray, pray very hard, for her,” Drilon said in a phone interview. “It’s very difficult to lose Cory at this time when we need her most.”
Aquino, known as the icon of Filipino people power, remained active in social and political causes even after stepping down from office.
In July 2005, she added her voice to the growing call for President Arroyo’s resignation over allegations of vote-rigging and corruption, and later joined protest rallies against the administration.
Senators Roxas and Manuel Villar Jr, both presidential aspirants, called on the people to pray for Aquino.
“I have heard the news that President Aquino is undergoing a difficult time in her illness,” Roxas said, adding that he joined the people in praying for her quick recovery.
“President Cory is one of the greatest leaders I respect and emulate,” he said, adding:
“Mrs President, please fight on. We need you.”
Villar said the former president was entering “a critical period in the battle against cancer”.
“We will forever be indebted to President Cory for her significant contribution to the restoration of democracy in the country. In this time when there are serious threats to our democracy, she remains the icon that our people turn to for hope,” Villar said in a statement.
“Our prayers are also with the members of her family. May their unshakeable faith in God strengthen them in this difficult time,” he said.
‘Let’s storm heaven’
Even Malacañang called on the public to pray for Aquino’s immediate recovery.
“That’s bad news,” Cabinet Secretary Silvestre Bello, who served as justice secretary during the Aquino administration, said of reports that Aquino was seriously ill.
“Let’s start praying for her. Let’s storm heaven with our prayers for the former President to be given a new lease on life,” Bello said in a phone interview.
He said he had always included Aquino in his prayers, and that he would go to St Jude Church near Malacañang to offer prayers for her.
Malacañang held a thanksgiving Mass early in May for the successful colon cancer operation of Aquino at Makati Medical Centre. Arroyo, then in Syria, called to instruct her Cabinet officials to organise the Mass.
In attendance at that Mass was Aquino’s brother Jose Cojuangco and wife Margarita Cojuangco, and brother-in-law Agapito “Butz” Aquino.
Reports from Fe Zamora, Allison W. Lopez, Marinel R. Cruz, Christine O. Avendaño and TJ Burgonio in Manila; Carla P. Gomez, Inquirer Visayas
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Publication Date: 02-07-2009
The cancer-stricken Corazon Aquino has been moved from the intensive care unit to a regular room of Makati Medical Centre and has refused to undergo another cycle of chemotherapy, her spokesperson Deedee Siytangco said Wednesday night.
In an earlier phone interview at 6:20pm, Siytangco said the former president, who is battling colon cancer, had been confined at the hospital for a week and a half because of loss of appetite, but was conscious.
“Her whole family is with her now. She’s in serious condition but we’re hoping for the best,” Siytangco said.
There was no word from actress and TV host Kris Aquino, the former President’s youngest daughter and for a time the family spokesperson on her mother’s condition.
Kris’ manager and longtime friend Boy Abunda said she was weeping and inconsolable.
Abunda said he spoke with Kris by phone at around 6pm Wednesday.
“She asked the people to allow her this time for herself. She said she would rather not talk about her mom’s condition at the moment,” Abunda said.
Call for prayers
Earlier Wednesday at the first of a novena of healing Masses for the 76-year-old Aquino at the Greenbelt 5 chapel in Makati City, Siytangco said “Tita Cory” could “talk and pray” but was “not well”.
“She needs all your prayers,” Siytangco said.
The open-sided chapel was standing room only for the noontime Mass dedicated to Aquino and others afflicted with cancer.
“Our hearts are burdened because of the illness of our beloved former president, and the pain and discomfort she has to endure,” broadcaster Korina Sanchez said, reading the novena prayer.
“You took the hand of our dear sister Cory, as she struggled through every trial, as she confronted every challenge, and embraced every cross of her life. Take her hand now and have mercy on her and upon all poor souls who are in agony and make Your will known to them,” said Sanchez, who has asked the former president to be a sponsor at her wedding to Senator Mar Roxas.
Among those present at the Mass were former members of the Aquino Cabinet led by former Senate president Franklin Drilon and wife Mila, former finance secretary Ramon del Rosario Jr, Popoy Juico and his wife Margie, who served as Aquino’s appointments secretary, Manila Mayor Fred Lim, and anti-Arroyo activists Dinky Soliman and Leah Navarro of the Black and White Movement.
In Negros Occidental, Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra also called on the faithful to pray for Aquino’s well-being.
Kabankalan Bishop Patricio Buzon did the same in extolling Aquino’s legacy to the nation, which was to end the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986 and restore freedom and democracy to the nation.
‘We need her’
In a statement issued by his office, Aquino’s only son, Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, said he “sincerely thanks all those who attended the novena Mass and those who continue to pray for his mother’s healing".
Drilon said he last spoke with Noynoy Aquino last week and that the latter “did not sound very optimistic because of his mother’s appetite problem”.
“We have no other recourse but to pray, pray very hard, for her,” Drilon said in a phone interview. “It’s very difficult to lose Cory at this time when we need her most.”
Aquino, known as the icon of Filipino people power, remained active in social and political causes even after stepping down from office.
In July 2005, she added her voice to the growing call for President Arroyo’s resignation over allegations of vote-rigging and corruption, and later joined protest rallies against the administration.
Senators Roxas and Manuel Villar Jr, both presidential aspirants, called on the people to pray for Aquino.
“I have heard the news that President Aquino is undergoing a difficult time in her illness,” Roxas said, adding that he joined the people in praying for her quick recovery.
“President Cory is one of the greatest leaders I respect and emulate,” he said, adding:
“Mrs President, please fight on. We need you.”
Villar said the former president was entering “a critical period in the battle against cancer”.
“We will forever be indebted to President Cory for her significant contribution to the restoration of democracy in the country. In this time when there are serious threats to our democracy, she remains the icon that our people turn to for hope,” Villar said in a statement.
“Our prayers are also with the members of her family. May their unshakeable faith in God strengthen them in this difficult time,” he said.
‘Let’s storm heaven’
Even Malacañang called on the public to pray for Aquino’s immediate recovery.
“That’s bad news,” Cabinet Secretary Silvestre Bello, who served as justice secretary during the Aquino administration, said of reports that Aquino was seriously ill.
“Let’s start praying for her. Let’s storm heaven with our prayers for the former President to be given a new lease on life,” Bello said in a phone interview.
He said he had always included Aquino in his prayers, and that he would go to St Jude Church near Malacañang to offer prayers for her.
Malacañang held a thanksgiving Mass early in May for the successful colon cancer operation of Aquino at Makati Medical Centre. Arroyo, then in Syria, called to instruct her Cabinet officials to organise the Mass.
In attendance at that Mass was Aquino’s brother Jose Cojuangco and wife Margarita Cojuangco, and brother-in-law Agapito “Butz” Aquino.
Reports from Fe Zamora, Allison W. Lopez, Marinel R. Cruz, Christine O. Avendaño and TJ Burgonio in Manila; Carla P. Gomez, Inquirer Visayas
Americans Expect Security in Iraq to Worsen After Pullout
PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup polling conducted on June 30, the deadline for U.S. forces to withdraw from urban areas of Iraq, finds Americans largely pessimistic about the likely impact of this change. Overall, 58% of Americans believe the security situation in Iraq will worsen now that much of it is in the hands of Iraqi security forces; only 36% believe security will stay the same or improve.
According to the detailed responses, Americans who believe deterioration in Iraqi security will follow the recent U.S. pullout are closely divided in their perceptions of how severe it will be. About 3 in 10 Americans say security will get a little worse while 27% say it will get a lot worse. Very few -- only 4% -- believe it will get a lot better.
Late last year, the Iraqi parliament voted to approve the Status of Forces Agreement reached between President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that established a time frame for the gradual reduction of U.S. military involvement in that country. The June 30 deadline for withdrawal of U.S. forces from major cities and towns represents the first phase of that build-down. The agreement calls for the removal of all U.S. troops from all areas of Iraq by December 31, 2011.
Despite the timely implementation of Phase 1, only 27% of Americans believe the complete withdrawal will happen by the 2011 deadline. Democrats (35% of whom expect that deadline to be met) are only slightly more confident about this withdrawal than are Republicans and independents (22% each).
Americans have been waiting a long time for the United States to pull out of Iraq. Gallup polling as far back as June 2005 found a majority of U.S. adults (51%) saying they favored a timetable for removing U.S. troops from Iraq, rather than maintaining forces there indefinitely. By September 2007, that figure was 60%, and it remained 60% in Gallup's last measure in February 2008.
Gallup polling that month also found 65% of Americans saying the U.S. has an obligation to establish a "reasonable level of stability and security" in Iraq before leaving. With violence in Iraq generally trending downward and the January elections there having gone smoothly, Americans no doubt welcome this week's milestone. However, even though the United States has thus far lived up to its part of the security pact with Iraq by withdrawing forces from urban areas and turning security there over to the Iraqis, most Americans are skeptical that the full withdrawal will occur on time.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,011 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted June 30, 2009, as part of Gallup Poll Daily tracking. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Polls conducted entirely in one day, such as this one, are subject to additional error or bias not found in polls conducted over several days.
New Editor-in-chief for The South China Morning Post
The South China Morning Post just announced a long rumored shift in editorial lineup. Below is the internal memo released a short while ago.
To: All Staff
From: Kuok Hui Kwong
Date: 2 July 2009
To all my colleagues,
It is with regret that I announce Mr. C.K. Lau’s decision to resign from his position as Editor of the South China Morning Post, after a long and distinguished career with us. C.K. discussed with me a couple of months ago regarding his plan to pursue his personal interests. We have mutually agreed that his last day with us will be 10 July 2009. During his tenure at the Post, C.K. has played a key role in strengthening and improving our editorial operations. A committed and well-respected professional, he has contributed significantly to the Post and to the overall media community in Hong Kong.
Effective from 13 July 2009, Mr. Reginald Chua will join us as Editor-in-Chief. On top of managing the day-to-day editorial operations of the Post, Reg will work with me on the long-term strategies for our editorial coverage. Reg has enjoyed a successful career at the Wall Street Journal spanning the past 16 years. He was most recently Deputy Managing Editor at The Wall Street Journal based in New York, where he led, amongst other responsibilities, the development of the Journal’s computer-assisted reporting capabilities and oversaw the paper’s graphics. Prior to moving to New York, he was the Editor of the Journal’s Hong Kong-based Asian edition. Reg graduated with a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics from the University of Chicago.
Effective the same date, Mr. David Lague will be appointed as Managing Editor. As a member of the newsroom’s senior management team, David will oversee editorial quality and standards, training and projects. He will also be involved in daily news operations. A news and features writer with the South China Morning Post in 1987-88, David returns to the paper after more than two decades as a reporter and editor in the Asia-Pacific region. Most recently, he was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times in Beijing. Before joining New York Times Company, he was managing editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. David was also China correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. David graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in science from Murdoch University.
David will work closely with Wang Xiangwei and Cliff Buddle, the Post’s deputies, to help manage the newsroom, steer its coverage, and continue to build on the paper’s strong position. Xiangwei, Cliff and David will report to Reg.
On behalf of the Board of Directors and the Management of SCMP Group, we express our deep appreciation to C.K. for his contribution and persevering dedication, and wish him the very best in his new endeavours. Please also join me in welcoming Reg and extending your full support to him, and in welcoming David back to Post.
Hui Kuok
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Thailand's Press Club Faces Police Probe Over Lese Majeste
| Pravit Rojanaphruk The Nation (Thailand) Publication Date: 02-07-2009 |
|
For the first time in its five-decade history, the whole board of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) has been accused of committing lese majeste, a crime with a maximum jail sentence of 15 years. Laksana Kornsilpa, 57, a translator and a critic of ousted and convicted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra filed a lese majeste complaint against the 13-member board at Lumpini police station on Tuesday night. Laksana was quoted on ASTV Manager website as claiming the board's decision to sell DVD copies of Jakrapob Penkair's controversial speech at the club back in 2007 constituted an act of lese majeste. She alleged that the whole board "may be acting in an organised fashion and the goal may be to undermine the credibility of the high institution of Thailand". ASTV Manager daily also quoted Laksana as saying some major local newspapers may also part of a movement to undermine the monarchy. FCCT president Marwaan Macan-Markar said the board members have decided not to give separate interviews. It issued a statement saying: "The FCCT will cooperate with such an inquiry [by the police]." The board, includes three British nationals including the BBC's Bangkok correspondent Jonathan Head, three American nationals, including two working for Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, an Australian national and a Thai news reader for Channel 3, Karuna Buakamsri. Social critic and lese majeste case defendant Sulak Sivaraksa, reacting to the news, told The Nation yesterday that "the problem of [abusing] lese majeste law is now utterly messy". "The fact that leading world intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and others have petitioned to [PM] Abhisit [Vejjajiva to reform the law] is a testimony to it. If we let it goes on like this it will get even messier. It's time for the government to do something." A source within the FCCT, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was "surprised" at the latest allegation, which came after two years of the speech being made, adding that "it places Thailand in a very poor light". DVDs were set up largely for club members who missed interesting talks and sales are restricted solely for FCCT members. Few copies of the Jakrapob talk are understood to have been sold because a manuscript of his talk circulated in Bangkok shortly after he was charged, and the video can be downloaded free from some websites. In the comments' section on ASTV Manager's website, most posters expressed support for Laksana and praised her for the move. One said: "Put them in jail for 99 years." Another asked the site to post a picture of Jonathan Head so the person could attack him if he or she ran into him. |
Jul 1, 2009
Young Malay Malaysians Not Ready for Non-Malay, Non-Muslim or Woman PM
30 Jun 09 : 3.53PM
By Shanon Shah
shanonshah@thenutgraph.com
The prime minister's office in Putrajaya (Public domain; source: Wiki commons)
PETALING JAYA, 30 June 2009: Malay Malaysians are the group least ready to accept a non-male, non-Malay or non-Muslim as prime minister, a Merdeka Center for Opinion Research survey has found.
Of the 2,518 randomly selected Malaysian youths aged between 20 and 35 polled by the centre, only 32% of Malay Malaysians were ready to accept a woman prime minister.
More strikingly, only 7% were ready to accept a non-Malay, non-Muslim prime minister, while only 36% would accept a non-Malay but Muslim prime minister.
By contrast, more than 80% of Chinese, Indian and non-Muslim bumiputera Malaysians were ready to accept a woman, a non-Malay Muslim or a non-Malay, non-Muslim Malaysian as prime minister.
Merdeka Center program director Ibrahim Suffian said the poll was conducted between November and December 2008. He said the socio-political climate in Malaysia at that time was coloured by Barack Obama's election as US president, and the vacancy of the Kuala Terengganu parliamentary seat due to the death of the Umno incumbent.
"It is important to note that a survey is merely a snapshot, not a prediction of the future, even though a survey can pick up on certain trends," he said at a press conference today to launch the survey findings.
Survey question: How strongly would you accept a
Breakdown of 2,518 respondents. Click on image for bigger view (Source: Merderka Center)
Lower racial identification
The survey also found that 43% of its respondents identified themselves primarily as Malaysians first, while 38% identified themselves by religion first. Only 15% identified themselves by ethnic categories first.
The survey posed a question — "If you can only choose one identity, would you say that you are...?" — to all respondents.
More than 50% of East Malaysians identified themselves as Malaysian first, while only 34% of respondents in the peninsula identified similarly. From the ethnic breakdown, Malay Malaysians were the lowest number of respondents who identified as Malaysians first, at 29%.
"Young Malay [Malaysians] are moving away from ethnic identification, and Islam is playing an important role in supplanting this ethnic identification," Ibrahim said.
"More than 60% of Malay Malaysian respondents saw themselves as Muslim first, while only 10% saw themselves as Malay first," he added.
Ibrahim said, however, that with this increased identification with Islam came stronger demands for a clean government, better rule of law and democratic improvements.
Interestingly, among respondents who attended Chinese medium schools, 52% identified as Malaysians first. Conversely, only 39% of respondents who attended national schools identified as Malaysians first. Ibrahim said the lower percentage in national schools could be because more Malay Malaysians attend these schools, thus dragging the percentage down.
Survey question: If you could only choose one identity, would you say that you are...?
Breakdown of 1,083 respondents who provided "Malaysian" as their first choice.
Click on image for bigger view (Source: Merdeka Center)
Paradoxes in identity
Ibrahim also noted that younger Malay Malaysians seem to be more socially conservative.
"They might be more vocal about calling for the abolishment of the Internal Security Act, but they are also the same group that wants concerts to be gender segregated."
The paradox of this combination of political openness and religious conservatism could also be seen in young Malay Malaysians rejecting a woman as prime minister, Ibrahim explained.
"This [conservatism] could be the result of our education policies and political orientation over the past 20 to 30 years," Ibrahim said.
He added that their rejection of a non-Muslim Malay, or a non-Muslim non-Malay Malaysian as prime minister could also indicate that young Malay Malaysians have not entirely discarded ethnic identification.
Ibrahim said these findings would probably colour the agendas of the various political parties in getting Malay Malaysian support in the future, as young Malay Malaysians would set new standards of ethics in governance and public life.
The survey concluded that "ethnicity and religion [remain] an important factor in influencing views on whether women or minorities can hold top positions in the country".
It also polled respondents on other areas such as media consumption, lifestyle choices, political efficacy, electoral participation and general issues of interest.
The survey was conducted with funding support from the Asia Foundation**
Full report of survey available here.
New York Council Votes to Add Muslim Holy Days as School Holidays
Spurred by a broad coalition of religious, labor and immigrant groups, the City Council overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Tuesday to add two of the most important Muslim holy days to the public schools’ holiday calendar.
But the vote, which was nonbinding, put the Council in conflict with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has the final say to designate the days off and has said he is resolutely opposed to the idea.
The mayor told reporters before the vote that not all religions could be accommodated on the holiday schedule, only those with “a very large number of kids who practice.”
“If you close the schools for every single holiday, there won’t be any school,” he said. “Educating our kids requires time in the classroom, and that’s the most important thing to us.”
The current school calendar recognizes major Christian and Jewish holy days like Christmas and Yom Kippur, but no Muslim holy days.
Mr. Bloomberg’s stance has irritated advocates of the measure, and some said he risked alienating many in New York’s fast-growing Muslim population as he seeks re-election in the fall.
Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid, a leader of the campaign to add the holidays, said that if the mayor continued to oppose the move, the results for him at the voting booth could be “catastrophic” among the city’s roughly 600,000 Muslims.
“We really have confidence in the mayor’s intelligence,” said Imam Talib, head of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem. “It’s an election year.”
The proposal to add the two holy days — Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha — has not drawn much visible public opposition. Some council members have expressed reservations about subtracting more classroom days from the school calendar, though only one, G. Oliver Koppell of the Bronx, voted against it.
After the vote, Mr. Koppell said the existing schedule of religious holidays might have to be reviewed and trimmed, lest other growing religions in New York start demanding their own days off. “Where are we going to end with this?” he asked.
The resolution’s advocates said that since about 12 percent, or more than 100,000, of the city’s public school students are Muslim, they deserved recognition. The two holidays have already been adopted by school districts including Dearborn, Mich., and several municipalities in New Jersey.
Supporters also say that since the Ids (pronounced eeds) are floating holidays whose timing is set by the lunar calendar, they often fall on other religious holidays, on weekends or during the summer. During the next decade, for instance, at least one of the two Ids each year is expected to coincide with summer recess or an existing school holiday, according to a report by the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University.
It was unclear on Tuesday whether Mr. Bloomberg would continue to have final say on the issue, because the State Legislature still has not passed a bill to extend his control over the schools. But some officials said that even if the bill did not pass, he would be able to exert indirect control through appointments to the Board of Education.
The Council resolution also urged the Legislature to pass two pending bills that would amend state education law to require the holidays in the city’s school calendar. That could allow the move without the mayor’s approval, said Councilman Robert Jackson of Manhattan, a co-sponsor of the resolution and a Muslim.
Id al-Fitr celebrates the end of Ramadan, the sacred month of fasting, and Id al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, marks the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims traditionally observe these days by praying in the morning, then celebrating with family and friends, exchanging gifts and sharing a large meal.
The holy days have long posed a painful choice for Muslim students: Should they go to class in the interest of their grades and attendance record, or cut class to be with their families?
When Rebecca Chowdhury, 18, was young, she said, she generally skipped school. But as she grew older and faced more academic demands, she often had to forgo the celebrations.
“It created a great divide between myself and my family,” said Ms. Chowdhury, who graduated last week from Stuyvesant High School.
The campaign to recognize the two holy days has been coordinated by La Fuente, a grass-roots organizing group, and supported by a coalition; at its core are dozens of Muslim organizations.
Some leaders said the coalition’s successes reflected the political maturation of the city’s diverse Muslim population, which has at times seen its social and political ambitions hamstrung by schisms among competing groups.
“When there are issues of common concern and broad-based impact,” Imam Talib said, “the people put aside other differences and unite around a common cause.”
Members of the coalition said the current effort stems from a decision by the state in 2006 to schedule the Regents exam on Id al-Adha, which angered Muslims and spurred state legislators to pass a bill ordering the State Department of Education to make a “bona fide effort” to schedule mandated exams on days other than religious holidays.
While there have been scattered efforts for years to put the Id holy days on school calendars, the efforts finally coalesced into a formal campaign after the passage of the state bill.Malaysia Dilutes Its System of Ethnic Preferences
BANGKOK — Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, announced Tuesday a major rollback in the system of ethnic preferences that has defined the country’s political system for almost four decades.
The new policy would severely weaken a requirement that companies reserve 30 percent of their shares for ethnic Malays, the country’s dominant ethnic group.
The 30-percent rule was once considered politically untouchable, and Mr. Najib described the change in policy as a “tricky balancing act.”
Malaysia has long given ethnic Malays and members of other indigenous ethnic groups — known as bumiputra, or sons of the soil — political and economic privileges. But that system has come under strain amid growing resentment by minority groups and poorer Malays.
The government offers bumiputra discounts on houses, scholarships and other perks. But some benefits, like government contracts and stock-market allocations, have been beyond the reach of working-class Malays.
Anger among Chinese and Indians, the country’s main minority groups, over the ethnic preferences was perhaps the main reason that the opposition made large gains in elections last year that nearly dismantled the governing coalition led by Mr. Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organization.
“We want to be fair to all communities,” Mr. Najib said in a speech in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. “No one must feel marginalized.”
Mr. Najib’s success in rolling back the ethnic preferences will depend in large part on his ability to hold together his coalition and fend off a resurgent opposition led by Anwar Ibrahim, a former finance minister.
Mr. Anwar, who leads a diverse group of opposition parties, has promised to undo the system of ethnic preferences.
By positioning himself as a reformer, Mr. Najib, who came to power in April, appears to be calculating that he can stave off opposition advances and be seen as an agent of change.
“The world is changing quickly, and we must be ready to change with it or risk being left behind,” he said Tuesday.
The change would leave some ethnic preferences intact and come with caveats. But it would dilute one of the most important components of what is known as the New Economic Policy, introduced in 1971: the requirement that companies listing on the stock exchange sell 30 percent of their shares to ethnic Malays.
That requirement was scrapped for companies already listed on the stock exchange and reduced to 12.5 percent for initial public offerings. The requirement will remain in place for “strategic industries” like telecommunications, water, ports and energy.
Mr. Najib also said he would lower barriers for foreign investors. The government would eliminate a special vetting process for foreign companies wanting to invest in, merge or take over a Malaysian company, he said.
“The global economic crisis is amplifying the need to be a preferred investment destination,” he added.
Malaysia’s trade-dependent economy is expected to contract by 5 percent this year.
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