Can Turkey Unify the Arabs?

Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis

WISPS OF THE PAST Beyond Istanbul's landmarks, a legacy of cosmopolitan interchange of goods and ideas.
By ANTHONY SHADID, GAZIANTEP, Turkey
Published: May 28, 2011


LESS than a mile from the Syrian frontier, in the land of Kemal Ataturk, Ahmed Sheikh Said defies the identities that borders inspire.

Mr. Said was born in the Syrian town of Azaz and raised across a line on the map in Kilis, Turkey. A grocer, he speaks Turkish like a native to his customers, while holding an ear open to the Arabic telecasts of Al Jazeera playing in his store. His wife and his mother are Turkish, but Arab blood runs through his veins, he says, “till the end of time.”

“The bread of Azaz comes from Kilis, and the bread of Kilis comes from Azaz,” said Mr. Said, whose shop sits just off a road that once carried the business of the far-flung Ottoman Empire and now marks Turkey’s limits. “We’re the same. We’re brothers. What really divides us?”

As the Arab world beyond the border struggles with the inspirations and traumas of its revolution — a new notion of citizenship colliding with the smaller claims of piety, sect and clan — something else is percolating along the old routes of that empire, which spanned three continents and lasted six centuries before Ataturk brought it to an end in 1923 with self-conscious revolutionary zeal.

It is probably too early to define identities emerging in those locales. But something bigger than its parts is at work along imperial connections that were bent but never broken by decades of colonialism and the cold war. The links are the stuff of land, culture, history, architecture, memory and imagination that remains the realm of scholarship and daily lives but often eludes the notice of a journalism marching to the cadence of conflict.

Even amid the din of the upheaval in the Arab world, that new sense of belonging represents a more pacific and perhaps more powerful undertow pulling in directions that call into question more parochial notions. The undertow intersects with the Arab revolution’s search for a new sense of self; it also builds on economic forces now reconnecting an older imperium, as well as on Turkey’s new dynamism and on efforts to bring reality to what has long been nostalgia.

Its echoes are heard in the borderlands like Gaziantep, near Mr. Said’s shop, where businessman can haggle in a patois of English, Turkish, Arabic and even Kurdish. It is seen in the blurring of arbitrary lines where the Semitic script of Arabic and Kurdish tangles with the Latin script of Turkish across the borders with Syria and Iraq. It is noticed along the frontiers where Arab and Turkish nationalism, pan-Islamism and a host of secular ideologies never seemed to quite capture the ambitions or demarcate the environments of the diverse peoples who live there.

“The normalization of history,” proclaims the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has tried to reintegrate the region by lifting visa requirements and promoting a Middle Eastern trade zone, as it deploys its businessmen along the old routes and exports Turkey’s pop culture to an eager audience.

“None of the borders of Turkey are natural,” he went on. “Almost all of them are artificial. Of course we have to respect them as nation-states, but at the same time we have to understand that there are natural continuities. That’s the way it’s been for centuries.”

There is admittedly a hint of romanticism in it all. The Arab world may in fact be bracing for years of sectarian and internecine strife in places like Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. And in seeking to be a more prominent, and steadying, influence, Turkey’s ambitions may well be greater than its means. Still, economic realities are already restoring old trajectories that joined the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, tied Batumi in Georgia to Trabzon in Turkey, and knit Aleppo into an axis of cities — Mosul, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep and Iskenderun — in which Damascus, the leading but distant Arab metropole, was an afterthought.

THE DRAWING OF 20TH-CENTURY BORDERS rendered traumas large and small. Sectarian and ethnic cleansing after World War I rid Turkey and Greece of much of their diversity. The horrors of nationalism and the Holocaust made Salonica, a celebrated melting pot, unrecognizable in its modern incarnation. Even history’s footnotes were rewritten.

One example is Marjayoun, my family’s ancestral hometown in Lebanon, nestled near the Israeli and Syrian borders in the heart of the old Ottoman realm, and little more than an afterthought on maps these days.

No one in Marjayoun would necessarily pine for the days of the Ottoman rulers. Massacres occurred, and Jews and Christians faced discrimination in taxes and commerce. There was no such thing as equality. To this day, the darkest moments of Marjayoun’s history remain those last breaths of the empire — the seferberlik. It was the Ottoman name for the draft, but it came to represent the famine, starvation and death that World War I brought to the town, when the famished searched the manure of animals to find an undigested morsel of grain.

Yet more than a few in Marjayoun today might express a nostalgia for the time and place the Ottoman Empire represented, when Marjayoun’s traders ventured to Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula and down the Nile to Sudan, by way of Palestine. The town was a way station on the route from the breadbasket of the Houran in southern Syria to Acre, the Levant’s greatest port on the coast of Palestine. Beirut was an afterthought. Marjayoun’s traders plied the steppe of the Houran, its gentry owned land in the Hula Valley, and its educated ventured to Haifa and Jerusalem to make their reputations.

World War I and the borders that followed augured the demise of this style of life, and not just in Marjayoun. The ideologies that gained prevalence in the town then were about contesting those frontiers — Arab nationalism, pan-Syrian nationalism and Communism, which itself was imagining a broader community. These movements failed as more borders were drawn in wars with Israel in 1948 and 1967. And with those lines on the map came a smaller sense of self. By the time Lebanon’s 15-year civil war began in 1975, ideologies had given way to identities, and most people in Marjayoun identified themselves simply as Christian, or perhaps Greek Orthodox, too unique to survive as a community.

A town of thousands is today a town of hundreds, strewn with the abandoned villas of another age. Hajar bala bashar, a friend once told me. “Stones without people.”

“A RECREATION OF THE HISTORIC AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT” is how Mr. Davutoglu describes his vision for the region. And indeed, that vision, which is effectively government policy, has touched in a nerve in Turkey, a country with its own unresolved questions of identity.

Just as Arab nationalism still runs run deep, with the fate of Palestine its axis, so does Turkish nationalism, which includes a sense that the country deserves a role in the region, and beyond that at least echoes of its Ottoman age. The more sophisticated Turks dismiss charges of a new rationale for Turkish imperialism and call the goal instead a peaceful partnership that might look like the free-trade zone that presaged the European Union after World War II.

“It’s been almost 100 years that we’ve been separated by superficial borders, superficial cultural and religious borders, and now with the lifting of visas to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, we’re lifting national boundaries,” said Yusuf Yerkel, a young academic on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s staff. “Turkey is challenging the traditional understanding of policy in the Middle East in place since the 20th century.”

More than the talk of a salon, the vision comes at an obvious turning point in the Middle East. Though dealt setbacks by the Arab revolution — investments have been lost in Libya and the prospect of chaos stalks Syria — Turkey has stuck to its vision of an integrated region. A railway line linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq reopened last year; a fast train is to operate between Gaziantep and Aleppo. The resources of northern Iraq are strategic for Turkey’s plans to diversify its energy sources and to feed a pipeline from Turkey to central Europe. A common free-trade area has already been agreed upon by Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

Turkish television series are dubbed into Syrian Arabic, and its stars’ posters sell by the tens of thousands in Iraq. In Baghdad, portraits of one famous actor are digitally altered to show him in traditional Kurdish or Arab dress.

Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts’ success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands of justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism. It echoes even in Turkey, where religious and national divides are increasingly blurred. Selcuk Sirin, a professor at New York University who has done extensive polling in Turkey, especially among youth, calls this the emergence of “hybrid identities.”

“Young people don’t buy into this idea of a clash, and they don’t buy into this idea of fixed identity,” he said. “They know how to negotiate these so-called polar opposites, and they’re looking for something new.”

THERE WAS A MOVIE more than a decade ago in Turkey called “Propaganda,” a dark comedy about the border drawn between Syria and Turkey, dividing family from family. It was inspired by the reality of relatives heading to the fence there on Muslim holidays — Bayram in Turkish, Id in Arabic — and throwing gifts to the other side.

These days, with the border effectively open, Syrians fill the hotels on weekends in Gaziantep, which is famous for its pistachios. Some merchants here talk about their trade growing tenfold since visa requirements were lifted. Debates rage over whether the kebab of Gaziantep is better than the kibbe in Aleppo.

Turks may still call a mess “Arab hair.” But they also judge a gift by the standards of “apricots in Damascus.” And the old notions of Ottoman tyranny (from the Arab point of view) and Arab betrayal in World War I (as Turks see it) have given way somewhat to the promise of profit in a market still booming even amid the uprising across the border.

Hakan Cinkilic, foreign trade manager of a plastics company called Sun Pet, is reaping the benefits. Nearly 80 percent of its products go to Iraq, and the company set up a factory in Jordan last year. Its exports have more than doubled since 2008. This year he has already traveled to Libya, the United States, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

As he spoke, his cellphone rang. It was a customer in Kirkuk, Iraq, who spoke to him in Turkish. A few minutes later, a businessman called from the West Bank. The conversation unfolded in English, punctuated by Arabic expressions inflected by the vowels of his native tongue. You wouldn’t call him neo-Ottoman, given the term’s suggestion of a resurgent imperialism. He’s not really Levantine, an identity whose borders hug the Mediterranean coast. He seemed post-Ottoman, reinterpreting the past.

“It’s natural,” he said simply.

§


TORNADO experts had seen it all before: whole neighborhoods obliterated, big-box stores flattened, even a hospital badly damaged.

But what really shocked them about the powerful storm that struck Joplin, Mo., last week was the toll in lives: more than 125 and counting. “We thought we were done with the 100-dead tornadoes,” said Thomas P. Grazulis, a tornado historian in St. Johnsbury, Vt. “With warnings and Doppler radar, there was a lot of feeling that we were done with this stuff.”

Experts are not sure yet why the toll was so high. Forecasts were made and warnings were issued, and this was an area, in the heart of Tornado Alley, where people knew what to do to protect themselves. “But something didn’t work the way we’d like it to,” said Harold Brooks , a research meteorologist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.

Experts say there will always be deaths when a strong tornado scores a direct hit on a heavily populated area. The question — for all disasters, not just twisters — has been how low casualty figures can go.

“The fundamental characteristic of a major disaster is that there is going to be loss,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. “The goal of preparedness is to make that loss as minimal as possible, to optimize survival.”

During the 20th century, strides were made in optimizing survival from tornadoes. In the early part of the century, yearly deaths from twisters in the United States averaged a little less than 2 per million population, or about 200 per year in the 1920s. Beginning that decade, as awareness of the dangers increased and forecasting technologies were developed and improved, the death rate declined by an order of magnitude, reaching about 0.2 per million in the mid-1990s, or about 60 people per year.

Since then, Mr. Brooks said, it has leveled off, and while no one is certain why, researchers think the rise in mobile-home living is one reason. Lightly built and poorly anchored, mobile homes can be death traps in the extreme winds of a tornado.

This year, with more than 500 deaths already — including about 320 in an outbreak of several hundred tornadoes across Alabama and other states in late April — is an aberration, experts said, much like 1974, when there was a similar outbreak, and 1953, when strong tornadoes hit three cities: Waco, Tex.; Flint, Mich.; and Worcester, Mass. All of last year, only 45 people died, and in 2009 the number was 21. The toll next year is expected to be more like those figures than this year’s.

Mr. Brooks said the timing of the storm last week — 5:30 p.m. on a Sunday — may have had something to do with the 100-plus deaths. He compared the Joplin event to a tornado that struck Oklahoma City in 1999 and killed about one-fourth as many people. That twister hit after 7 p.m. on a Monday, when most people had settled in for the evening. “That’s not a bad time to get information to people,” Mr. Brooks said. But in Joplin, he added, “late Sunday afternoon, maybe there’s some issues with communication going on.”

Complicating the situation in Joplin was the fact that a high school graduation had occurred that afternoon, and more people were out and about, at parties or other events. And many people ended up in large stores, which tornado warnings say should be avoided because of the strong risk of collapse.

“Did people not receive the message?” Mr. Brooks said. “Did they not internalize the message in some way? Or did they make bad choices?”

While the tornado forecasting system works well, Mr. Brooks said, “we have to work on finding ways of communicating the messages better.”

“Perhaps we don’t do that in ways that people understand the threat,” he added.

And there is the possibility of issuing so many alerts that people become inured to the danger. Jasper County, where Joplin is located, receives many tornado warnings every year. “We’ve had no evidence in the past that people were overwarned,” Mr. Brooks said, “but we don’t know what the threshold of that is.” Beyond any improvements in forecasting and communication, getting even closer to zero deaths would require additional steps, said Stephen Flynn, president of the Center for National Policy, a Washington research group that studies preparedness issues. The destruction and deaths at the Joplin hospital, he said, pointed to one: replacing conventional windows with safety glass.

“Are you going to do that for a raised-ranch house?” he said. “No. But for a hospital facility where people are vulnerable, yes. And is that a huge cost issue? No, it’s not.”

But other efforts, like building community shelters for people in mobile-home parks or in areas with slab housing that lacks basements, can be costly. And the issue of cost, always major, has grown larger as economic conditions have worsened and governments have had to tighten their belts, Dr. Redlener said. “Dollars are limited,” he added. “States have to make decisions — are we going to provide health insurance for more children, or are we going to do better preparation for a disaster that may never happen?”

Beyond cost, though, are other considerations. In the case of community shelters, Mr. Brooks said, “you need to make sure that the shelter is open when people need it, but make sure it’s not open all the time, where your neighborhood pervert can do something in it.” Potential liability issues have forced many communities to abandon the idea of group shelters, he said.

Individuals can always build shelters for themselves, and one of the truths about natural disasters is that afterward, many people rush to make safety precautions they had ignored before.

Mr. Grazulis, the historian, said that no doubt some people in Joplin would rebuild their homes and include storm shelters, which can cost about $5,000 or more. “But I bet Joplin will not be hit again for a hundred or a thousand years,” he said. “The people that build these shelters — generations are not going to have to use them.”

Instead, the next disaster will happen elsewhere. And right now, Mr. Grazulis said, “the next town that needs them has no idea it needs them.”

 

Pressure For Reform in Southeast Asia

RFA

By Parameswaran Ponnudurai

2011-05-28

Singapore's 'watershed' election sends new signals for change across the region.

AFP

Singapore opposition party supporters celebrate results of general elections, May 8, 2011.

Rights activists constantly bombard Burma and its communist one-party state neighbors Vietnam and Laos for their stubborn refusal to embrace meaningful political reforms.

But shouldn't the more prosperous Southeast Asian nations—especially the founders of the ASEAN grouping—also take the flak for dragging their feet on expanding political liberties for their peoples?

The recent election in Singapore, in which the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) suffered its worst performance, has thrown the spotlight on lagging reforms not only in the island state but also in other more developed economies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.   

The PAP's share of the popular vote slipped to an all-time low of 60 percent despite the island state's strong economic growth in the last five years, including a record 14.5 percent expansion in 2010.

The opposition romped home with six parliamentary seats, the highest number it has ever taken.

Many disenchanted young voters used the social media during the elections to press for a more open political system as they spoke out against Singapore's high living costs, low wages and lax immigration laws.

Reacting swiftly, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong unveiled sweeping Cabinet changes, opting for younger ministers, and with a pledge to review the high salaries earned by ministers, a raging election issue.

His blunt-speaking father, Lee Kuan Yew, the country's first prime minister, who has little patience for dissent, also stepped down from active politics after more than half a century at the very top.

But the public is crying for more reforms in the tightly-controlled state, demanding changes to sedition, libel and electoral laws and those that control media and freedom of assembly.

"It’s time for Singaporeans to realize that they will never be entitled to the full economic rights they deserve as citizens of Singapore without first reclaiming their political rights from the PAP," said Temasek Review, a popular Internet newspaper.

It urged Singaporeans to "first fight for their basic human rights of freedom of speech and assembly as enshrined and guaranteed" under the city state's constitution.

"Sounding board"

The "political tsunami" in Singapore serves as a "sounding board for the future political landscape in Southeast Asia," wrote Kavi Chongkittavorn, editor of The Nation newspaper in Thailand.

"Changes, albeit small and at a snail pace, as it may be in the island republic, sends a strong signal to similar kinds of governments in ASEAN that they either take up reform or soon be challenged by their own people," he said.

Rapid economic growth "is no longer sufficient criteria to sustain power holding without democracy and acceptable governance."

Reforms and polls

Elections are also approaching in Thailand in July and in Malaysia possibly within a year with planned reforms weighing heavily in the polls.

In Thailand, a high level panel that has recommended decentralizing the government's powers in a bid to give more rights to citizens was disbanded this month ahead of the elections.

The National Reform Committee was set up last year following political violence in a bid to heal deep social divisions, strengthen civil society and promote fairness as part of a government reconciliation agenda.

“Political parties (campaigning in the election) should make national reform a major policy. But so far no party has a clear-cut policy,” lamented Thailand's ex-premier Anand Panyarachun, who headed the panel.

The election is set to boil down to a clash between prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and exiled businessman Thaksin Shinawatra, who was twice elected premier only to be forced out by the military in 2006.

Any reform will have to scrutinize the role of the army in Thailand, which has endured at least 18 coups in the last eight decades. The military is believed backed by a small establishment of royalists and business elite.

Race-based policy

In Malaysia, reforms to a four-decade-old race-based policy that has led to blatant abuses and corruption and spawned a patronage-ridden economy have failed to take off one year after they were announced.

Prime Minister Najib Razak appears reluctant to move forward with his "New Economic Model" to revamp the affirmative action policy favoring majority ethnic Malays, due to opposition from right-wing  groups.

While the new model envisions an open high-income economy and attempts to ease criticism of racial discrimination against the ethnic minority Chinese and Indians, it does not go far enough in grappling with the enormous challenges facing the economy.

The reform plan "doesn't reflect and address the structural challenges or even identify them adequately," said Kamal Malhotra, a senior United Nations Development Programme official, Malaysia's official Bernama news agency reported.

Democratic reforms are also slow to come by in Malaysia, which still maintains a draconian law that allows indefinite detention of without trial. Newspapers must renew their licenses every year, and cannot petition the courts if the government revokes them.

Political parties

In the Philippines, much delayed political party reforms are still languishing in the legislature despite support from many lawmakers and non-government organizations.

The reforms set limits to campaign contributions and state financing for political campaigns as well as prohibit political turncoatism in a country driven by personality politics and where political parties are almost inconsequential.

The current Philippine system requires a "radical re-engineering as it is studded with opportunism and turncoatism and there is no transparency or accounting of political contributions or donations," said veteran politician and senator Edgardo Angara.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino, who was elected by a landslide last year, has also come under fire for not being firm in efforts to weed out corruption and poverty in the archipelago where more than 40 per cent of the people live on less than U.S. $2 a day.

It took eight months for Aquino to get cracking on a committee to plan the government's agenda and prioritize legislative programs. Even then, the initial list did not include bills that he had championed, including those on reproductive health and freedom of information.

Islamic radicalism

In Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest state, efforts to spread democracy have slowed and some hard-fought reforms implemented following dictator President Suharto ouster in 1998 risk being rolled back due to pressure from conservatives, according to reports.

Rising Islamic radicalism is also posing a threat in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told American journalists who traveled to Indonesia recently that his country was serious in conducting reforms but admitted it will be a long and "painful" process" and that "democracy takes time."

Electoral management, the fight against corruption and the lack of protection of minority rights are major areas where conservatives have sought to unwind reforms, Australia-based scholar Marcus Mietzner said in a report.

He argued that a civil society push-back was the only reason there had not been a full-blown reversal.

Swift reforms in the leading ASEAN countries are key to prodding the others in the group to open up their economies, especially Burma, which is under increasing pressure to release the more than 2,000 political prisoners it holds at present.

"It’s not wrong to regard Burma as the epitome of an evil regime in Southeast Asia, but this view shouldn’t prevent us from exposing and resisting the varying shades of authoritarianism in the region that are anathema to the building of a genuine democracy," said Mong Palatino, Southeast Asia editor at the international bloggers' forum Global Voices.

Pakistani military worried about collaborators

BANARAS KHAN/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES - Pakistani security forces fire toward an attacker next to a security checkpoint in Quetta on May 17, 2011.

By Karin Brulliard, Friday, May 27, 1:52 PM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Embarrassed by the Osama bin Laden raid and by a series of insurgent attacks on high-security sites, top Pakistani military officials are increasingly concerned that their ranks are penetrated by Islamists who are aiding militants in a campaign against the state.

Those worries have grown especially acute since the killing of bin Laden less than a mile from a prestigious military academy. This week’s naval base infiltration by heavily armed insurgents in the megacity of Karachi — an attack widely believed to have required inside help — has only deepened fears, military officials said.

Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who like the civilian government has publicly expressed anger over the secret U.S. raid, was so shaken by the discovery of bin Laden that he told U.S. officials in a recent meeting that his first priority was “bringing our house in order,” according to a senior Pakistani intelligence official, citing personal conversations with Kayani.

“We are under attack, and the attackers are getting highly confidential information about their targets,” the intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Pakistan’s top military brass claimed to have purged the ranks of Islamists shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Since then, the nation’s top officials have made repeated public assurances that the armed forces are committed to the fight against extremists, and that Pakistan’s extensive nuclear arsenal is in safe hands.

But U.S. officials have remained unconvinced, and have repeatedly pressed for a more rigorous campaign by Pakistan to remove elements of the military and intelligence services that are believed to cooperate with militant groups.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a surprise visit to Islamabad on Friday, emphasized U.S. demands for greater cooperation in the war against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other violent Islamist organizations that have taken root in Pakistan. Standing beside Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Clinton said the United States would be looking “to the government of Pakistan to take decisive steps in the days ahead.”

It is unclear how authentically committed Kayani and other top military leaders are to cleansing their ranks. U.S. officials and Pakistani analysts say support by the nation’s top military spy agency for insurgent groups, particularly those that attack in India and Afghanistan, is de facto security policy in Pakistan, not a matter of a few rogue elements.

But Kayani is under profound pressure, both from a domestic population fed up with the constant insurgent attacks and from a suspicious international community, which views the bin Laden hideout as the strongest evidence yet that Pakistan is playing a double game.

U.S. officials say they have no evidence that top Pakistani military or civilian leaders knew about bin Laden’s redoubt, though they are still examining intelligence gathered during the raid. Some say they doubt Kayani or Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, head of the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, had direct knowledge; others find it hard to believe they did not, particularly because Kayani was head of the ISI in 2005, when bin Laden is believed to have taken refuge in Abbottabad.

“I think he was in protective custody,” one former U.S. official who worked closely on Pakistan issues said of bin Laden.

Pakistan strenuously denies that. But military officials acknowledge that members of the services have cooperated with militants. One senior military official said military courts have in recent years convicted several soldiers for roles in attacks on security installations — convictions that have not been made public. Four naval officers previously arrested on suspicion of links with militants were questioned this week in connection with the assault on the naval base in Karachi, another security official said.

The senior military official said belief in militant jihad — long glorified in the national education curriculum — is prevalent in the rank and file, making screening for it a daunting task that the military has been loath to perform.






The ISI is believed to have an entire branch — known as the “S Wing” — devoted to relationships with militant organizations. Some analysts believe the wing operates with relative independence, whether by design or default, that gives top brass plausible deniability when cooperation between the spy service and insurgents comes to light.

U.S. officials, for example, say they do not believe Pasha or Kayani knew about Pakistani militants’ plans to attack Mumbai in 2008. But federal prosecutors have implicated the ISI in a trial underway in Chicago, where the star witness has said he was paid by the spy agency to help arrange the siege.

U.S. officials have emphasized since the bin Laden raid that billions of dollars in U.S. assistance could end if Pakistan is found to have harbored the al-Qaeda leader. Pakistani officials said that pressure has included demands that the military purge Islamists in its ranks and identify agents connected to bin Laden.

“We take the Pakistanis at their word that they’re committed to an aggressive fight against militants and to the investigations they’ve announced. But it’s way too early to say that their actions are honoring their stated commitments,” one U.S. official said.






Working against any reform effort is the fervent anti-Americanism felt throughout Pakistan, including within the armed forces. Some Pakistani officials and soldiers accuse the United States of using the bin Laden raid to embarrass the nation into doing American bidding. This week, talk-show pundits condemned the navy’s security lapse at the Karachi base but also brimmed with conspiracy theories about CIA orchestration of the siege.

“Any public action on the part of the military at this point will be seen as capitulating to U.S. demands,” said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

One Pakistani security official said the Karachi attack had prompted the military to begin a “thorough overhauling” of the armed forces. But, he asked: “If someone is helping the militants from inside the forces, why are they doing it? And the answer, to us, is their disdain for the U.S. and anger at Pakistanis cooperating with Americans.”


Special correspondents Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar and Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report. Staff writer Greg Miller contributed from Washington.

Mongolian Protests Spread

2011-05-26

Thousands in northern China march to government buildings.

SMHRIC

Protests at Inner Mongolia's Left Ujumchin banner, May 26, 2011.

Protests by ethnic Mongolians living in northern China spread across the region on Thursday, as thousands more took to the streets to demand protection of their rights following the death of a herder run over by a truck.

Protesters marched in Inner Mongolia's Hunveet Shar and Left Ujumchin banners, the equivalent of counties, on Thursday, according to the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC).

"Thousands more Mongolian herders and students took to the streets...to urge the Chinese authorities to respect the Mongolian herders' right to their land and right to maintain their traditional way of life," SMHRIC said in an e-mailed press release.

Protesters held banners and posters carrying the slogan "Defend the rights of Mongols" and "Defend the Homeland" and marched towards the government buildings of their respective banners, it said.

Photos posted online and sent to RFA by participants showed a group of elementary school children among the protesters, holding a banner with the slogan "Protect our Grasslands." The children were later taken back to school by teachers, sources said.

"There were students and herders from the countryside on the streets," said one protester on Thursday. "The banners they carried called for the protection of the grasslands."

Ecosystem

A section of the protests at Inner Mongolia's Huveet banner, May 26, 2011

The Chinese government has begun relocating more than 250,000 nomads from Inner Mongolia's grasslands in recent years, saying the move is necessary to protect the fragile ecosystem of the region.

The policy has been seen among ethnic Mongolians as further marginalization for Mongolian nomadic herders, who are already vastly outnumbered by Chinese peasants.

"There were more than 1,000 of us who left Xiwu banner together," the protester said. "But I daren't say much more than that because I think there aren't just going to be protests here today, but right across all the banners in the Xilinhot League."

Local officials said the government had already paid out nearly a million yuan (U.S.$154,000) in compensation to the family of Murgen, the man killed following clashes between Mongolian herders in Abag banner (in Chinese, Abagaqi) and mining company truck drivers.

Murgen's relatives only agreed to his cremation once the deal had been struck, sources said.

A Chinese Communist Party committee member from Murgen's home township of Haoletu said:
"We thought the government's arrangements were okay, actually. The government has even paid compensation for the polluted grasslands."

"They also gave a million to Murgen's family, so as to resolve this issue, which was all settled on May 23 and 24," the official said.

Murgen's death on May 11 sparked protests by more than 2,000 students and herders in Xilinhot city on Wednesday.

They dispersed after officials promised to bring to justice the driver involved in the incident.

Mines shut

But the Haoletu official said he didn't know if the herders detained in the May 11 clashes had been freed.

"I don't really know about that," the official said. "That was done by the banner-level government. We are just the rural level of government."

He said the mines accused of polluting the grasslands had been opened last year. "They have been open for nearly a year now," the official said. "The mines have stopped operation now, and there are no more trucks."

But he said he didn't know whether they would stay shut.

"We rural herding people don't know much about what is going on," he said.

Protesters also called online Thursday for further protests in towns and cities in the herding district of Inner Mongolia.

Using online social networking tools like QQ and Facebook, Mongolians were invited to further gatherings in Alshaan Left Banner on Friday, Ordos city on Saturday and Tongliao on Sunday, SMHRIC said.

A further protest was scheduled in Erenhot, on the border with Mongolia, on Monday, it said.

Nahubisgalat, an ethnic Mongolian Chinese national currently living in Japan, said Mongolians across the Xilinhot region would be watching to see what happened next.

"A lot of banners are likely to take part," he said. "It's not just a matter of one or two. This is likely to get bigger."

Organizing skills

He said there was a lot of resentment about development of the grasslands regions, and that herding families had been getting poorer and poorer.

"There is no organization here," he said. "People are just coming out onto the streets."

However, the protesters appeared to have learned from the nationwide crackdown on "Jasmine" rallies in major Chinese cities in recent months in the wake of uprisings in the Middle East. The chinese rallies fizzled out as they attracted more police than participants.

According to New Zealand-based rights activist Wang Ning, who lived in the Xilinhot area for many years, the protesters were organizing themselves at the very last minute.

"They are being very, very secret about it, so that the authorities have no way to know," Wang said. "They don't put it on the Internet until the people have pretty much arrived [at the protest site.]"

"They also change arrangements at the last minute," he said. "They will say, today we are going to the government buildings, then they will show up at the television station, and walk to the government buildings."

Currently, ethnic Mongols represent a tiny 17 percent of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region’s 23 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom are Han Chinese.

Reported by Ding Xiao for RFA's Mandarin service, and by Dai Weisen for the Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

CIA to search bin Laden compound

Image via WikipediaBy Greg Miller and karen DeYoung, Updated: Thursday, May 26, 12:53 PM

Pakistan has agreed to allow the CIA to send a forensics team to examine the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, giving the agency permission to use sophisticated equipment in a search for al-Qaeda materials that might have been hidden inside walls or buried at the site, U.S. officials said.

The arrangement would allow the CIA for the first time to enter a complex that it had previously scrutinized only from a distance, using satellites, stealth drones and spies operating from a nearby safe house that was shuttered when bin Laden was killed.

U.S. officials said a CIA team is expected to arrive at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, within days, and that the objective is to scrub the site for items that were not recovered by American commandos during the raid or Pakistani security forces who secured the facility in the aftermath.

“The assault team was there for only 40 minutes,” a U.S. official said. The aim is to return to the site “to do another, more thorough, look.” The officials, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

CIA Deputy Director Michael J. Morell negotiated access to the Abbottabad site during a trip to Islamabad last week, when he met with the head of Pakistan’s main intelligence service, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, officials said.

Pakistan’s agreement is seen as an encouraging sign that the two spy services will continue cooperating despite anger in Islamabad over the American operation to kill bin Laden, and a series of recent ruptures between the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart.

Pakistan has also agreed to allow the CIA to examine materials that Pakistan’s security forces have recovered from the compound, officials said. The agency has also asked Pakistan’s spy agency, known as the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, for assistance in analyzing some of the records that were seized in the raid and brought to a CIA document exploitation facility in Northern Virginia.

In particular, U.S. officials said that the CIA is seeking help in deciphering references to names of individuals and places. U.S. intelligence officials have described the stash of material recovered from the bin Laden compound as the largest intelligence haul ever recovered relating to al-Qaeda or any other terrorist network.

The materials include dozens of computer storage devices as well as thousands of pages of paper.

Even so, U.S. officials said they want to be sure that other material has not been overlooked. The CIA plans involve the use of infrared cameras and other devices capable of identifying materials embedded behind walls, inside safes or underground.

Pakistan agreed in part because it does not have such equipment, officials said, and breaking through portions of the structure to conduct a search might risk destroying any materials hidden inside.

The agency also has equipment that could be used to recover information that has been burned or otherwise damaged. U.S. officials have said that residents burned their trash inside the compound’s walls.

U.S. officials said they have seen no evidence that there were tunnels underneath the compound. Indeed, one official said that the CIA and other U.S. spy agencies concluded before the May 2 raid that there were not likely to be any underground escape routes for bin Laden because the water table in Abbottabad is so close to the surface.

The CIA has already been given access to three of bin Laden’s wives who were taken into custody by Pakistan after the raid. But officials said none of them has been cooperative with U.S. interrogators or provided meaningful intelligence.

Correspondent Karin Brulliard in Islamabad contributed to this report.

 

Egyptian bloggers rally against military

Hundreds risk potential prosecution to voice criticisms of post-revolution military rule and slow pace of reforms.

Evan Hill Last Modified: 23 May 2011 19:34

Kareem Amer was the first blogger to face trial in Egypt; such prosecutions have continued under the army [Evan Hill]       Hundreds of Egyptians have staged an unprecedented show of online defiance against their country's military leadership, taking to their blogs to write at times scathing critiques of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that assumed power after longtime president Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February. The show of anger on Monday came ahead of a "million-man" protest that activists have called for Friday, one they hope will be the largest since the revolution and will demonstrate widespread public support for their call to put former government officials on trial and restrain the power of the armed forces. Criticising the military in any form is a dangerous act in Egypt and is sometimes considered a crime. Maikel Nabil, a pacifist who blogged against the army, was tried and sentenced to three years in prison by a military court in April. It was the first trial of a blogger since the revolution. But on Monday, the military appeared to strike a different tone. "This is freedom of expression, and we have no problem with it," a spokesman told Al Jazeera. The bloggers - the vast majority of whom published in Arabic, but a few in English - said they believed their sheer numbers, and their tone, would help spare them from arrest. By Monday afternoon, at least 203 blogs criticising the Council had been published, according to one widely cited count on Facebook. "I'm 10 per cent worried, but I specifically write in very sarcastic ways, and I never directly insult," said Amr Bassiouny, a research manager at a real estate investment and development firm. "So no matter what I say, all they can do is take me in for making fun of them." Mohamed Abdelfattah, a freelance journalist, said the point of the day was to blog collectively and mitigate the risk of being singled out. "The military council cannot silence hundreds of bloggers who are adamant at showing its violations and mistakes," he said. "We said we will all blog on May 23rd, and they can arrest us all if they want." The blogging campaign was mirrored by a continuous stream of commentary on Twitter, where a multitude of well-known activists and other users were making scores of remarks every minute with the "noSCAF" hashtag. "I am now, for the first time in my life, setting up a blog," wrote Noor Noor, the son of once-jailed opposition presidential candidate Ayman Nour. "This step is ignited by my dissatisfaction with the SCAF." The day of online activism also happened to coincide with the release of dozens of people who had been arrested by the army at a May 15 protest at the Israeli embassy and put before military trials. The majority of the prisoners were handed one-year suspended sentences. Mosaab Elshamy, one of the men arrested, wrote on Twitter about his mistreatment while in army custody, spurring more attention for the anti-military campaign. Soldiers allegedly used homosexual slurs to describe prisoners with long hair or beards, and everyone was routinely made to watch soldiers abuse newly arrived detainees. Near the end of their detention, an officer spoke with the group in an attempt to convince them of the military's good intentions. He said Egyptians were living in "turbulent times," that the country was on the verge of bankruptcy, and that it was "naive" to protest. At the end of their stay, Elshamy said, another officer told him that he would likely be under surveillance by military intelligence for years. "The sheer spite they had for us and for the revolution will never be forgotten," he wrote. Backwards from Mubarak Most of the bloggers on Monday focused on the need to achieve what they said were the revolution's twin goals: freedom and social justice. Military rule presents an obstacle to achieving those goals, and in some cases represents a step back from the Mubarak era, they wrote. "This post is simply a comparison between back then in the Mubarak days and now in the SCAF days," wrote Mostafa Sheshtawy, a 23-year-old graduate student in computer science. "Back then, in the Mubarak days, protesters used to be beaten up by the [Central Security Forces] and arrested, then tortured by them in the prisons. Now the army arrest the protesters, beat them up and torture them in their military prisons." Amira Mikhail, who helps run a student leadership scholarship programme at the American University in Cairo, quoted Vaclav Havel, the post-Communism president of Czechoslovakia, as she described the qualities she hoped to see in Egypt's new politicians. "[Havel] wrote of the 'higher responsibility' that is placed on politicians and leaders," Mikhail wrote. "When I hear these words from a man who at the time was leading his country through a transition to democracy, similar to that of Egypt's now, I ask myself if the men that lead my country now are also grounded in the same principles and values that guided Havel." Mikhail noted that 100 days had passed since Mubarak's ouster, and she had not seen evidence of Havel's "higher responsibility" in the army's conduct. "SCAF, a ruling military council, is making the mistake of functioning in the old manner of dictatorship, where instead the people need them to speak and lay things out transparently," she wrote. In the months since Mubarak stepped down, activists say the military has illegally arrested, imprisoned and tried as many as 10,000 civilians, without providing access to lawyers or family members. The army has been criticised for routinely breaking up demonstrations with violence, not bringing enough former regime officials to trial, and not moving quickly to transfer power to a civilian government. Mikhail and Amr Moneib, another blogger, described how any trust they might have had in the military's leadership had disappeared since the revolution. "The Egyptian army has long been seen as the saviour of this country ... Yet, we can't and we shouldn't forget that those officers who have implemented the [1952] coup d'etat ... sent us to 60 years of ultimate dictatorship," Moneib wrote. "Four months later and we can see that every single person who had his doubts was right and all those who handed their revolution on a silver plate to the SCAF were so naive that they almost lost us everything." The military has muffled freedoms of speech and assembly, made unilateral decisions about electoral laws, overseen "charade" trials of former regime officials, and failed to defend churches and protesters from damage and attack, he wrote. In Arabic, the same demands The hundreds who wrote their entries in Arabic expressed similar anger, though some tied the United States and the West into the army's conduct. "What we are doing now is not just fighting against the remnants of the regime, because in my opinion they are really only a tool for implementing the vision of those who do not want a truly democratic Egypt," wrote Mohamed Effat, an independent journalist who was briefly detained at the Israeli embassy protest. "Come and let's look at those who don't want want true democracy to begin in Egypt: Israel, America, and Europe, timidly." Those countries, Effat wrote, had provided enormous military aid to Egypt, filling the coffers of the army, which was loyal and close to Mubarak's regime. The army also continues to maintain its massive investments in the state, including factories, hotels, tourist resorts and agriculture, he said. The first step, Effat wrote, is to change the leadership of the Egyptian media and remove the "hypocrites" on television who opposed the revolution during its early days. He echoed calls for a large protest on Friday. Mona Seif, an activist who helps lead the No to Military Trials for Civilians campaign, appealed to anyone who had suffered from the armed forces: "If you know a relative or a friend or anyone who was beaten in a protest by the army ... If you were standing before a military court that should not try your case ... If you turned on Egyptian [state] television to Channel One and found a picture of your brother bearing marks of beating and torture and under that the word 'thug,' ... join us and monitor the military council, by writings, video, pictures, sound recording, blog entries, [and] notes on Facebook." Some bloggers appeared to have taken up the call. Tamer Saleh, an information technology worker in Alexandria, wrote that the "noSCAF" campaign had inspired him to write again, and his entry on Monday was his first in 2011. "Most Egyptians agree on one demand ... and we are all prepared to sacrifice ourselves for it. The demand is freedom and justice," he wrote. "Around 100 days after Mubarak's ouster, we have discovered that nothing we demanded has been achieved and also that the military council has sold to us the same package that we refused to buy from Mubarak." Maged Roland, a blogger who wrote in both Arabic and English and identified himself as a part-time mechanic employed in the tourism industry, wrote that he believed the military leadership was deliberately provoking fears of a security vacuum and economic breakdown to make the public feel they need them. This fall, when Ramadan arrives, those suffering from high food prices are likely to revolt again, he said. A revolution online, and perhaps in the streets Though hundreds took to the Internet to criticise the Council, some activists wondered how much of the Egyptian public held the same opinions. "Sadly, I don't think it is that widespread," Mikhail said. From taxi drivers to her upper class colleagues, most tell her that the armed forces are the only power Egypt has left, and that without them, the country will become like Iraq and fall into anarchy. Bassiouny agreed, but said the situation had been similar before the revolution. "We're back to being a small base of educated aspiring Egyptians who want to create real change, and the rest just want to get along with their lives," he said. He anticipated that the turnout on Friday would be similar to those who protested on January 25, the first day of Egypt's uprising, but that the military and remnants of Mubarak's regime would send people to make trouble. Bassiouny said he did not think the new wave of protests would reach "critical mass," as happened during the revolution. The media does not back the anti-military movement, he said, and the army is "a much more dangerous animal than the police ever was". "When the [Central Security Forces] used to attack, we could stand up and fight them," he said. "But then what do you do against military soldiers? You run."

Afghanistan says Taliban leader Omar has ‘disappeared’

Arshad Butt/ AP - Local residents stand outside a shop with graffiti reading "leader of Muslims Mullah Mohammad Omar," on Sunday, May 8, 2011, in Pashin, 100 kilometers south of Quetta, Pakistan.

By Sayed Salahuddin and William Branigin, Updated: Monday, May 23, 11:15 AM

KABUL — Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency said Monday it is investigating reports that Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and some of his top commanders have left their hideout near the Afghan-Pakistan border and cannot be located.

The reports led some Afghan media outlets to say that Omar might have been killed. But the Taliban staunchly denied that in a statement issued Monday.


“Claims and rumors were spread this morning by the Kabul stooge regime’s intelligence directorate, other officials and some media outlets that the esteemed Amir ul-Mumineen was martyred in Pakistan,” the Taliban statement about Omar said. “We strongly reject these false claims of the enemy.” The statement referred to Omar by a high Islamic title that translates as “commander of the faithful.”

A spokesman for Afghanistan’s intelligence bureau, Lutfullah Mashal, told reporters in Kabul that he “cannot confirm officially whether [Omar] is dead or alive.”

Mashal quoted unidentified “sources” on the Pakistani side of the border as saying Omar “disappeared from his location in the last four or five days.” He said Omar has been living in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, for 10 years.

“Our sources and senior Taliban commanders have confirmed that they have not been able to contact Mullah Omar,” Mashal said. “So far, we cannot confirm the death or killing of Mullah Omar officially, but we can confirm that he has ... disappeared from his hideout in Quetta of Baluchistan.” Quetta, a city of about 900,000 people, lies 124 miles southeast of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Afghan Taliban and long a stronghold of the Islamist radical movement in southern Afghanistan.

Omar, who is believed to be in his early 50s, was born into an impoverished Pashtun family near Kandahar and joined the fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. He lost an eye in battle from a shrapnel wound sometime in the 1980s and began studying and teaching in Islamic seminaries, or madrassahs, in Pakistan. It was during this period when he reportedly met Osama bin Laden, who went on to found the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

The Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Afghanistan in 1989, leaving behind a Soviet-backed government that fell three years later. In the ensuing chaos of civil war among the anti-Soviet mujaheddin factions, Omar began organizing madrassah students in an armed Islamist movement that became known as the Taliban.

By September 1996, the movement had captured Kabul, although the civil war continued in northern parts of the country against an alliance led largely by ethnic Tajiks. The Taliban formed a government called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, with Omar as the de facto head of state. The movement imposed a harsh version of Islamic law on the country. It suppressed women, forced men to wear long beards, punished transgressors with stonings and amputations and destroyed the country’s renowned pre-Islamic Buddha statues at Bamiyan.

Omar mostly stayed away from Kabul, preferring to lead a reclusive existence in Kandahar, where he lived in a house reportedly built for him by bin Laden and shunned contact with most foreigners.

Omar remained close to bin Laden, however, allowing the al-Qaeda leader to set up training camps and safehouses and plot terrorist attacks against the United States, including the strikes of Sept. 11, 2001. In retaliation for those attacks, the United States launched a campaign of airstrikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and helped the Afghan forces known as the Northern Alliance drive the Taliban from Kabul in November 2001.

Omar fled Kandahar and went into hiding. Bin Laden escaped across the border into Pakistan, eventually establishing himself in a fortress-like house in the military garrison city of Abbottabad, about a two-hour drive north of the capital, Islamabad. There, U.S. commandos found and killed him in a raid early on May 2.

In a November 2001 interview with the BBC’s Pashto service, conducted through an intermediary, Omar declared as a goal “the destruction of America” and predicted that “this will happen within a short period of time.” He said a plan to destroy the United States was “being implement,” adding: “But it is a huge task, which is beyond the will and comprehension of human beings.”

Branigin reported from Washington.

President’s obscene pay to be cut and will be backdated to 21 May 2011

Image via Wikipedia May 23rd, 2011 | Author: Temasek Review


The obscene salary of the Singapore President appears likely to be cut after it was increased recently to an eye-popping S$4 million dollars annually.

According to a press statement from the Prime Minister’s Office on 22 May, the Committee to Review Salaries of the President, Prime Minister and political appointment holders will review the basis and level of salaries for these office-holders to help ensure honest and competent government.

It will take into account the following guidelines for the President:

“While the salary of the President should reflect the President’s high status as the head of state and his critical custodial role as holder of the second key, it should also take into account the fact that unlike the Prime Minister he does not have direct executive responsibilities except as they relate to his custodial role; the salary of ministers should have a significant discount to comparable private sector salaries to signify the value and ethos of political service.”

President S R Nathan, who will not be seeking re-election when his term ends in August this year, has informed Prime Minister Lee that he will adopt the new salary from 21 May 2011.

The timely move is likely to soothe frayed nerves among disgruntled Singaporeans who are long unhappy with the astronomical salaries of the PAP ministers. It remains to be seen if the Committee will reduce their pay to a more ‘respectable’ level in line with those of other First World nations.

Indonesia's Islamic Vigilantes

Image via Wikipedia
May 19, 2011 - NYT

By AUBREY BELFORD

CIREBON, INDONESIA — Before he strapped on his suicide vest, walked into a crowded police station mosque and blew himself up last month, Muhammad Syarif was typical of the scores of angry young men who pass their days at fundamentalist mosques in this coastal Javanese city.

Mr. Syarif, 31, was a familiar face at often-violent protests, organized by local clerics, against alleged places of immorality, like karaoke bars and unregistered Christian churches. Last year, he joined mobs wielding sticks, staves and machetes who clashed with members of Ahmadiyya, a minority Muslim sect deemed heretical by fundamentalists.

But to the police, Mr. Syarif was of little interest. Like many members of a small and vocal fringe of Islamist vigilante groups in Cirebon, Mr. Syarif operated with near-impunity as the local authorities turned a blind eye to — or even tacitly condoned, liberal Muslim leaders say — an atmosphere of intimidation against minorities and others deemed un-Islamic.

No one, it seems, saw it coming when Mr. Syarif slipped into the police station mosque during Friday Prayer and detonated his bomb, killing himself and wounding 30 people, including the local police chief.

The attack, which shocked Indonesians by occurring in a place of worship, points to what some analysts say is a disturbing trend. Across the country, they say, the authorities have largely stood by as fundamentalist vigilante groups have increasingly used street-level violence and intimidation in an attempt to turn Indonesia — a nonsectarian democracy where moderate Islam predominates — into a conservative Islamic state. Now, emboldened by a lack of official action, it appears some Islamist vigilantes are turning to terrorism.

“I think there is a merging of extremist agendas,” said Sidney Jones, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, “and that’s why it becomes imperative that the government address the issue of intolerance.”

“Because if we have a merging of the moralist agenda with the terrorist agenda, then ignoring the hard-liners that use blunt physical force in the effort to impose their views of morality, you are giving a green light to people who move one step further in using terrorism,” she said.

Conservative Islam has exploded in influence in this Muslim-majority country since the 1998 protests ended the three-decade dictatorship of Suharto, which held political Islam firmly in check. For the most part, this has manifested itself in the growth of private piety and the development of a significant minority of Islamic politicians in local and national government. But there has also been growth at the fringe.

At the most extreme end, terrorist groups have staged a series of deadly attacks, including the 2002 bombings in Bali, which killed 202 people. Successive police crackdowns have seen hundreds of militants arrested and key leaders killed. Terrorism is now at a low ebb, although militants still plan attacks — in April the police also uncovered a group that was alleged to have planned to bomb a church at Easter and to have sent mail bombs to prominent figures deemed “enemies of Islam.”

Much more successful have been above-ground fundamentalist groups that use strong-arm tactics to push for Indonesia’s Islamization. Emerging after 1998, these groups have mounted raids against vices like gambling and prostitution and led mobs that have burned and ransacked churches. In politics, they have seen success by allying themselves with more mainstream conservative Muslim politicians, lending their muscle to campaigns to ban pornography and Ahmadiyya. For the most part, they are rarely arrested.

In a striking example of official reluctance to tackle vigilante violence, video footage taken in February showed the police in West Java standing by as a mob killed three Ahmadiyya members and mutilated their bodies. Rather than lead to a crackdown on vigilantes, the incident prompted provincial and local governments to issue decrees curtailing the rights of Ahmadis to worship.

In the case of the Cirebon bombing, it appears that Mr. Syarif was one person drawn from vigilante violence into terrorism, amid an atmosphere of official tolerance for hard-line intimidation, said Marzuki Wahid, co-founder of the Fahmina Institute, a Muslim human rights group.

“My impression is that the authorities are letting this happen,” Mr. Marzuki said. “They’re cowards when it comes to facing these groups. Frankly, they’re rearing a tiger that wants to jab its master.”

In Cirebon, a coalition of extremists grouped under an alliance called the Islamic Community Forum has during the past decade taken control of the city’s imposing central mosque and Islamic center, drawing power from a smattering of nearby mosques and boarding schools. From offices financed in part by the city government, the Forum-allied vigilante groups have mounted their campaigns, with the police often seeing them as an aid in maintaining local order, said Nuruzzaman, the local leader of Ansor, the youth movement of Indonesia’s largest mainstream Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama.

Local vigilante groups, however, see themselves as a last resort in the face of democratic Indonesia’s growing Westernization and official corruption, said Andi Mulya, a bearded cleric who heads the city’s most active group, the Forum’s Anti-Apostasy and Anti-Heresy Movement, also known as Gapas, whose protests Mr. Syarif attended.

Like other Indonesian groups of its kind, Mr. Mulya said, Gapas documents cases of vice and blasphemy and reports them to the police. It is only if the police do not follow up, he said, that Gapas takes action. “What gets branded ‘radical,’ ‘anarchic’ or ‘violent’ is due to the failure of the government and the police to fairly enforce the law,” Mr. Mulya said.

It was into this world that Mr. Syarif drifted several years ago as a poor, young man upset by his parents’ divorce, according to a younger brother, Muhammad Fatoni. Falling under the spell of Forum-aligned preachers, Mr. Syarif denounced less religious family members as “infidels,” Mr. Fatoni said.

Although the police initially portrayed the bombing as the lone act of a self-starter jihadi, they now say Mr. Syarif was part of a larger terrorist cell that had planned further attacks and was linked to Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid, or J.A.T., the above-ground organization of Abu Bakar Bashir, an elderly cleric who is a founder of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network and is currently on trial for overseeing another terrorist network in Aceh.

So far the police have arrested 13 people in connection with the bombing, killed two suspects and recovered 14 additional bombs. One of the arrested was a brother of Mr. Syarif, Muhammad Basuki. The police have not yet said when and how they believe Mr. Syarif joined the terrorist cell, but a pattern of increasing radicalism and violence is clear.

Despite a reputation for violence at Gapas protests, Mr. Syarif largely stayed off the police radar until last September, when he joined a group of 11 people who smashed bottles of alcohol in Cirebon convenience stores. Those raids were organized by the local leader of J.A.T., Agung Nur Alam, who operates in alliance with other clerics at Cirebon’s city mosque. The police now say that Mr. Syarif was a member of J.A.T., although Mr. Nur Alam has denied this.

Among the items seized when the police arrested six members of the group was a laptop containing video showing Mr. Syarif being trained for a terrorist attack, the police said. Whether this piece of evidence went unnoticed, or was simply not acted on, is unclear. In early April, Mr. Syarif’s driver’s license was found at the scene of the fatal stabbing of a soldier. Less than two weeks later, Mr. Syarif carried out his bombing.

For Mr. Nuruzzaman, the local youth movement leader, it is no surprise the police missed the budding terrorist group in their midst.

“Because the government is letting things go, groups like this are doing ‘sweeping’ operations on minorities, so they feel they’ve got the power to do anything,” Mr. Nuruzzaman said. “If the state was acting firmly against them, I’m convinced this wouldn’t go on.”

The police, however, deny there is any broader connection between the rising tide of vigilante violence and the uncovered network.

The man who became police chief after the bombing, Lt. Col. Asep Edi Suheri, denied that the police condoned Islamic hard-liners, or that the latter presented a security risk. “Not everyone in these Islamic organizations is a radical,” he said. “It’s a just a few rogue individuals.”

Abhisit versus Thaksin

May 18th, 2011 by Andrew Walker



Pheua Thai’s nomination of Yingluck Shinawatra as their candidate for Prime Minister gives Thailand the electoral contest it had to have. It’s not quite Abhisit versus Thaksin, but it’s as close as Thailand can get to a historical confrontation that has been ten years in the making.

Thaksin Shinawatra has dominated Thai politics for a decade. Electorally he is the most popular politician Thailand has produced. In his last electoral confrontation with the Democrats, in 2005, he flogged them. Like any political leader he had his vulnerabilities, but the forces arrayed against him in 2005 and 2006 had neither the wit nor patience to chip away at his power via electoral means. The Democrats (or, as I used to refer to them, the “Democrats-except-when-you-can’t-win-an-election-and-then-a-coup-is-ok”) refused to rise to the occasion when Thaksin called their bluff with a snap-election in April 2006. The Democrat boycott of that election helped to pave the way for the military coup that came only five months later.

Given all that has passed since, it is easy to forget the central reality of recent Thai politics: Thaksin was a thrice-elected Prime Minister who was forcibly deposed by an illegal military coup. For a great many in Thailand his electoral legitimacy remains intact.

The Democrats are terrified of another contest with Thaksin. Together with their allies in the army, the judiciary and the palace, they have done everything they can to neuter his power. The coup was just the beginning. It was followed by the dissolution of two opposition parties, the banning of scores of Thaksin’s political colleagues, the imposition of a new constitution that can be used to sabotage electoral decisions, the conviction of Thaksin for one of his more trivial infractions, and the seizure of Thaksin’s assets as punishment for his success in contributing to a buoyant stock market. But it’s been an uphill battle for the Democrats, despite the backing they have received from the military and the palace. In the 2007 election, when the smooth and urbane Abhisit faced the odious Samak Sundaravej, the Democrats fared well in the party list vote, but were soundly beaten in the constituencies.

Yingluck is a much better proxy for Thaksin than Samak. That she is more presentable goes without saying. More importantly, she does not have Samak’s long and volatile political history and the whiff of maverick independence and unpredictability that went with it. Yingluck is clearly Thaksin’s woman: “Thaksin thinks, Pheua Thai acts”. Unlike Samak, Yingluck perfectly symbolises Thaksin’s appeal to generational change; her femininity underlines his challenge to established expressions of power; her business background echoes his CEO style; her economic success excites the aspirations that Thaksin cultivated; and, most potent of all, her surname is Shinawatra.

In political terms, Yingluck is Thaksin in a frock.

The government can fume all they like about her being Thaksin’s proxy—with her ear always to the phone—but, of course, that is exactly the point.

This will be a fascinating contest. If Ahbisit can win, he will be able to claim some electoral legitimacy. But he will have to manage that claim carefully, given the numerous shackles that have been placed on his opponents over the past five years. It’s not really a level playing field. Nevertheless, an Abhisit victory would surely force Pheua Thai to re-think the potency of the Thaksin brand.

If Yingluck wins, we’re back to 2005, except with political divisions hardened and a symbolic power vacuum opening up as Thailand contemplates the not-too-distant coronation of an unpopular king. A Shinawatra victory would set the scene for very interesting times indeed.

WikiLeaks and the Altantuya Murder

Written by Our Correspondent

Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Cables show the US embassy in KL feared "prosecutorial misconduct" during the sensational 2009 trial The US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur closely followed the trial of the accused killers of Mongolian interpreter Altantuya Shaariibuu and frequently discussed whether current Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak was involved in the killing, according to diplomatic cables supplied to Asia Sentinel by the WikiLeaks website. The diplomats, like much of the public, also speculated that the trial was being deliberately delayed and feared what one cable calls "prosecutorial misconduct" that was being politically manipulated. The embassy officials based their concerns on sources within the prosecution, government and the political opposition. The cables also draw attention to an intriguing allegation that then Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi may have attempted to use the proceedings to implicate Najib, a claim that was quickly hushed up in the Malaysian press. Altantuya was murdered in October 2006 by two of Najib's bodyguards, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri, 30 and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar, 35. who stood trial and were pronounced guilty in April 2009.  Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Najib's best friends and Altantuya's lover, was accused of participating in the murder but was freed without having to put on a defense. The murder has been tied closely to the US$1 billion acquisition of French submarines by the Malaysian ministry of defense, which Najib headed as defense minister during the acquisitions. Altantuya reportedly acted as a translator on the transaction, which netted Razak Baginda's company a €114 million "commission" on the purchase.  Reportedly she had been offered US$500,000 for her part in translating.  After she was jilted, she vainly demanded payment. A letter she had written was made public after her death saying she regretted attempting to "blackmail" Razak Baginda. French lawyers are investigating whether some of the €114 million was kicked back to French or Malaysian politicians. Despite the scandal, the US government has not publicly backed away from Najib. In April 2010, Najib visited the White House and was praised by President Barack Obama for the parliament's passage of an act allowing Malaysian authorities to take action against individuals and entities engaged in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The cables are replete with accounts of a long series of meetings with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who repeatedly told the Americans that Najib was connected to corrupt practices in the acquisition of the submarines as well as the purchase of Sukhoi Su-MCM-30 Flanker fighter jets from Russia.  Anwar also called attention to Najib's connection to the Altantuya case. A Jan. 24, 2007 cable, marked "secret," wrote that "Perceived irregularities on the part of prosecutors and the court, and the alleged destruction of some evidence, suggested to many that the case was subject to strong political pressure intended to protect Najib." In a Feb. 1, 2008 cable, the embassy's Political Section Chief, Mark D. Clark, wrote that a deputy prosecutor had told him "there was almost no chance of winning guilty verdicts in the on-going trial of defendants Razak Baginda, a close advisor to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, and two police officers.  She described the trial as interminably long." (That, of course, turned out to be wrong. Sirul and Azilah were ultimately convicted and have appealed their sentence) Clark called the trial a "a prosecutorial embarrassment from its inception, leading many to speculate that the ineptitude was by design.  On the eve of the trial,Malaysia's Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail dropped his lead prosecutors and replaced them with less experienced attorneys.  Similarly, a lead counsel for one of the defendants abruptly resigned before the trial 'because of (political) attempts to interfere with a defense he had proposed, in particular to protect an unnamed third party.'" The protracted nature of the case, Clark continued, led "at least one regional newspaper to speculate that 'the case is being deliberately delayed to drive it from public view. Malaysia's daily newspapers rarely mention the case's latest developments, and it is unprecedented in Malaysian judicial history that a murder trial could drag on for seven months and still not give the defense an opportunity to present its case.  Such an environment has led many to conclude that the case was too politically sensitive to yield a verdict before the anticipated general elections." A January 2007 cable called attention to Razak Baginda's affidavit confirming that he sought the help of Musa Safri, later identified by reporters as Najib's aide-de-camp, in ridding him of the jilted woman, and in other cables pointed out that Musa had never been called for questioning. In another cable, dated May 16, 2007, Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh, a deputy home affairs minister in former Prime Minister Ahmad Abdullah Badawi's cabinet told US Embassy officials that he was "certain that government prosecutors would limit their trial activities to the murder itself and the three defendants; prosecutors would not follow up on allegations of related corruption or other suspects." In a Jan. 27, 2007 cable, marked "Secret," embassy officials wrote that "In December we heard from one of (Anwar's) lawyers that Razak Baginda's wife was in contact with Anwar and Wan Azizah, suggesting one possible source for Anwar's information."  Razak Baginda's wife, during one of his first appearances in court, screamed that her husband "doesn't want to be prime minister." That was taken by observers as a reference to the fact that Najib reportedly had been having an affair with Altantuya but passed her on to Razak Baginda because it would be unseemly to have a mistress when he succeeded Abdullah Badawi as premier.  Najib has offered to swear on the Koran that he had never met the woman. However, in July 2008, P Balasubramaniam, a former policeman and private detective who had been hired by Razak Baginda to protect him from Altantuya, filed a sworn statement saying he had been told by the accused man that Najib not only knew the murdered woman but had an affair with her and introduced her to him, passing her on because he did not want the onus of having a mistress in the event that he would become prime minister. In a telephone interview on May 9, Anwar, however, told Asia Sentinel that Razak Baginda's wife was not the source of his knowledge of Najib's connection and that instead he had been told of the connection by Setev Shaariibuu, Altantuya's father, who said he had wished to present evidence of Najib's involvement, but was not allowed to do so.  Multiple attempts to contact Setev by Asia Sentinel have been unsuccessful. Almost immediately after he made the statement, Balasubramaniam was picked up and driven to a police station, where he was forced to withdraw the statement and write a new one saying Razak Baginda had told him nothing of the sort. Balasubramaniam fled Malaysia for India.  He later said Najib's brother, Nizam,  and wife, Rosmah Mansor, had met with him and that he was offered RM5 million (US$1.48 million) to forget his statement connecting Najib to Altantuya. Balasubramaniam displayed a flock of checks drawn on the account of an associate of Najib's wife.  The former private detective has made a a series of statements from outside the country about Najib's involvement. A February 2008 cable from Political Section Chief Clark gives a hint that Abdullah Badawi himself may have been trying to get rid of Najib by forcing Razak Baginda to implicate him in the murder. "In the latest turn of the ongoing Altantuya murder trial (reftels), accused political insider Abdul Razak Baginda, who has remained calm and composed through most of the proceedings, unleashed an emotional tirade shortly after the February 20 noon recess on the trial's 90th day," Clark wrote. "Referring to the Prime Minister by his nick-name 'Pak Lah,' Razak reportedly exclaimed:  'You can die, Pak Lah! (in Malaysian - Matilah kau, Pak Lah!) I'm innocent!' according to unpublished journalist accounts.  "Local  newspapers and the government news service Bernama reported the fact of the outburst, but did not print Razak's  statements.  The short-lived exception was the English language newspaper The Sun, which included the quotations from Razak in its early morning February 21 edition.  Sources at newspaper confirmed to us in confidence that the Ministry of Internal Security compelled The Sun to withdraw and recall thousands of copies of their first run paper in which the original quote was included.  Prime Minister Abdullah serves concurrently as Minister of Internal Security." During the trial, Clark wrote, Razak Baginda, "appeared uneasy throughout the morning session of court on February 20.  Razak's father, Abdullah Malim Baginda had whispered something to him shortly before the trial had begun for the morning and apparently upset the accused.  Razak had remained quiet throughout the morning hearings, but just after the noon recess was called and as he was leaving the courtroom he kicked and banged the door and yelled "You can die, Pak Lah! Die, Pak Lah!  I am innocent.  I am innocent."  He was later seen crying before his lawyer while his mother attempted to comfort him." "Speculation is rife in Malaysia's on-line community concerning what it was that set off Razak Baginda  outburst, including conspiracy theories alleging the Prime Minister's office had urged Razak to implicate Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak …in return for  sparing Razak a guilty verdict and its mandatory death sentence," officials wrote.   The cable goes on to write, "Regardless, the Internal Security Ministry would want to limit any possibly inflammatory reference to the Prime Minister at the trial, and particularly at this juncture due to the proximity of Malaysia's general election to be held on March 8.  Any connection between the Prime Minister and the murder trial would be scandalous.  The GOM (government of Malaysia) reportedly has worked hard to 'drive (the case) from public view' … and is not about to allow the case to influence the coming elections."