By PETER BAKER
MOSCOW — The Russian government has agreed to let American troops and weapons bound for Afghanistan fly over Russian territory, officials on both sides said Friday. The arrangement will provide an important new corridor for the United States military as it escalates efforts to win the eight-year war.
The agreement, to be announced when President Obama visits here on Monday and Tuesday, represents one of the most concrete achievements in the administration’s effort to ease relations with Russia after years of tension. But the two sides failed to make a trade deal or resolve differences over missile defense, and are struggling to draft a preliminary nuclear arms deal.
The blend of success and stalemate leading to Mr. Obama’s visit suggests that it is easier to talk about a “reset” button than to press it. The promise of a new era of cooperation was always predicated on the tenuous notion that a change of tone and a shift in emphasis might be enough to bridge deep divisions. But even with both sides eager for warmer ties, the issues that have torn Washington and Moscow apart did not go away with the transition at the White House.
Mr. Obama is less enthusiastic than President George W. Bush was about an antimissile system in Eastern Europe or NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, but has not abandoned either goal, to the consternation of the Kremlin. Despite American pressure, Moscow has not yielded in its confrontation with Georgia a year after their brief war.
So Mr. Obama’s first visit here as president will be a test of his foreign policy. American officials said that the larger message was that if the Russians did not take his open hand, he would move on to other priorities.
But Mr. Obama faces a reservoir of resentment among Russians who believe that the United States has rarely followed through on such gestures. “There’s a lot of suspicion that this has been talk, talk, talk — let’s see some real action,” said Vladimir Pozner, a state television talk show host. “At this point, there is a little bit of hope and a lot of distrust.”
Richard R. Burt, a former American arms control negotiator and a member of a Russian-American group, Global Zero, that is pushing for nuclear disarmament, said Mr. Obama must overcome that suspicion. “I just get the sense that the Russians are kind of grumpy, so there’s still some sharpness on the Russian side, despite pushing the reset button,” he said.
At the same time, Mr. Obama faces pressure not to go soft on Russia. He sounded a tough note this week, saying Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin still “has one foot in the old ways.” He is also sending Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to Georgia and Ukraine after the summit meeting to show he will not abandon them.
“We’re not going to reassure or give or trade anything with the Russians regarding NATO expansion or missile defense,” said Michael McFaul, the president’s top adviser on Russia.
Georgian officials visiting Washington last week said that they had faith in the administration, but they expressed skepticism about a real change in relations. Russia maintains as many as 15,000 troops in two breakaway Georgian republics, despite a cease-fire agreement, and last month it used its veto to end the United Nations observer mission in one of them. Both Russia and NATO recently conducted war games in the region.
“Attempts by American officials to talk with them in a civilized manner are perceived as weakness,” Grigol Vashadze, Georgia’s foreign minister, said, comparing Mr. Putin to a bandit. “Of course you can talk with him. But in the end, you know the bandit will end up kicking you and taking your wallet.”
Looking for a breakthrough for his visit, Mr. Obama tried to cut a deal to finally admit Russia into the World Trade Organization. But days after Mr. Obama’s advisers visited Russia in June to discuss the idea, Mr. Putin unexpectedly suspended Moscow’s membership bid, dashing hopes for an announcement next week.
Russian officials said they were showing good faith, pointing to their suspension of the delivery of an S-300 air defense system to Iran. “In Moscow and in Washington, people have been known to lose opportunities,” said Mikhail V. Margelov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s upper house of Parliament. “We have to hope that this time we won’t lose the opportunity.”
The new airspace agreement represents an important step. Until now, Russia has restricted use of its territory for the Afghan war to railroad shipments of nonlethal supplies. Under the new arrangement, officials said, planes carrying lethal equipment and troops will be allowed to make as many as 10 flights a day, or thousands a year over Russia.
The agreement was a priority for Mr. Obama, who has ordered 21,000 more American troops to Afghanistan. Supply routes through Pakistan have been troubled by that nation’s increasing volatility. Uzbekistan evicted American troops from a base in 2005, and Kyrgyzstan threatened to do the same, until American negotiators persuaded it to reverse itself, in a deal that increases the rent.
But with Mr. Obama about to depart for Moscow, negotiators were still hashing out a preliminary agreement on nuclear arms cuts to announce along with President Dmitri A. Medvedev. The agreement would lay out parameters of a treaty to be drafted by the end of the year to replace the expiring cold war Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
Negotiators are talking about setting a range of perhaps 1,500 to 1,700 warheads (down from 2,200 now allowed under treaty) and 500 to 1,100 delivery vehicles (down from 1,600 currently allowed). But they have not settled on the numbers, and Russia wants to link the issue to missile defense.
The two sides have agreed to create a new standing commission with subgroups on issues like climate change to work between presidential meetings. The Obama team at first proposed a new version of a commission in the 1990s named for Vice President Al Gore and Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin. But the Russians refused to pair Mr. Putin with Mr. Biden. “Putin’s not a vice president,” an American official quoted the Russians as saying.
“This is like a midsemester report card,” said Sarah E. Mendelson, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who is organizing a conference on civil society here that Mr. Obama and perhaps Mr. Medvedev will attend. “It’s not looking like an A, but it’s not a D either.”
Ellen Barry contributed reporting.
Jul 4, 2009
Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
CAIRO — Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a “velvet” revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran’s disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say.
Reports on Iranian Web sites associated with prominent conservatives said that leading reformers have confessed to taking velvet revolution “training courses” outside the country. Alef, a Web site of a conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully “welcomed being defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension and creating media chaos.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that almost everyone now detained had confessed — raising the prospect that more confessions will be made public. Ayatollah Khamenei is supreme religious leader.
The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, according to human rights groups and former political prisoners. Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of people have been detained.
They fear the confessions are part of a concerted effort to lay the groundwork for banning existing reformist political parties and preventing any organized reform movement in the future. “They hope with this scenario they can expunge them completely from the political process,” said Hadi Ghaemi, coordinator of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group. “They don’t want them to come back as part of a political party.”
The confessions are used to persuade a domestic audience that even cultural and academic outreach by some of the nation’s top academics is really cover to usher in a velvet revolution, human rights workers and former prisoners say.
“If they talk about the velvet revolution 24 hours a day people don’t care,” said Omid Memarian, a former Iranian journalist who was arrested and forced to issue his own confession in 2004. “But if reformers and journalists say they are involved in it, it makes the point for them. Once my interrogators said, ‘Whatever you say is worth 100 times more than having a conservative newspaper say the same thing.’ ”
Fars, a semiofficial news agency, reported the confession of a Newsweek reporter, Mazaiar Bahari, that he had done the bidding of foreign governments, as well as a confession by the editor of a newspaper run by Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader. And at Friday Prayer, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the government planned to put on trial several Iranian employees of the British Embassy — after confessions were extracted.
In addition to Mr. Abtahi, other prominent reformers being held include Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, Mr. Khatami’s spokesman, and Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister.
In 2007, Iran produced a pseudo-documentary called “In the Name of Democracy,” which served as a vehicle to highlight what it called confessions of three academic researchers charged with trying to overthrow the state. “They don’t like new ideas to get to Iran,” said a researcher once investigated about his work, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “They don’t like social and cultural figures in Iranian society to become very popular.”
In 2001, Ali Afshari was arrested for his work as a student leader. He said he was held in solitary confinement for 335 days and resisted confessing for the first two months. But after two mock executions and a five-day stretch where his interrogators would not let him sleep, he said he eventually caved in.
“They tortured me, some beatings, sleep deprivation, insults, psychological torture, standing me for several hours in front of a wall, keeping me in solitary confinement for one year,” Mr. Afshari said in an interview from his home in Washington. “They eventually broke my resistance.”
The problem, he said, was that he was not sure what he was supposed to confess to. So over the next several months, he said, he and his interrogators “negotiated” what he would say — and, more ominously, whom he would implicate. Once his confession was complete, he said, he practiced it for 7 to 10 days, and then it ran on state-run television.
Three years later, Mr. Memarian, the journalist and blogger, was arrested in another security sweep. He said that his interrogator at first sought to humiliate him by forcing him to discuss details of his sex life, and that when he hesitated, the interrogator would grab his hair and smash his head against the wall. He said the interrogator asked him about prominent politicians he had interviewed, asked if they ever had affairs, and asked if he had ever slept with their wives.
“I was crying, I begged him, please do not ask me this,” said Mr. Memarian, who is in exile now in the United States. “They said if you don’t talk now you will talk in a month, in two months, in a year. If you don’t talk now, you will talk. You will just stay here.”
The pressure was agonizing, he said, as he was forced to live in a small cell for 35 days with a light burning all the time and only three trips to the bathroom allowed every 24 hours. He was forced to shower in front of a camera, he said. At one point the interrogators threatened to break his fingers.
“They came up with names, and topics,” he said. “They gave me a three-page analysis and said read this and include it in your confession. My interrogator once said, ‘You have written seven years for the reformists; it’s O.K. to write for us for two months.’ ”
Mr. Memarian said that even in 2004, his interrogators were most interested in several leading reformers, including Mr. Abtahi, who at the time was an adviser to the president. When he was finally released, and after his confession was published by Fars, he was asked to testify before a committee led by the reform government investigating confessions, which included Mr. Abtahi. Mr. Abtahi, who has not been heard from since his arrest on June 16, understood even back then just how vulnerable he was, Mr. Memarian recalled.
“Abtahi said, ‘We cannot guarantee anyone’s security,’ ” Mr. Memarian said. “ ‘We know what happened to you guys. When you leave this building we do not know will happen to you, or what can happen to us in this committee.’ ”
(An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a conservative Web site that referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformer. The Web site is Alef, not Atef.)
CAIRO — Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a “velvet” revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran’s disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say.
Reports on Iranian Web sites associated with prominent conservatives said that leading reformers have confessed to taking velvet revolution “training courses” outside the country. Alef, a Web site of a conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully “welcomed being defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension and creating media chaos.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that almost everyone now detained had confessed — raising the prospect that more confessions will be made public. Ayatollah Khamenei is supreme religious leader.
The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, according to human rights groups and former political prisoners. Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of people have been detained.
They fear the confessions are part of a concerted effort to lay the groundwork for banning existing reformist political parties and preventing any organized reform movement in the future. “They hope with this scenario they can expunge them completely from the political process,” said Hadi Ghaemi, coordinator of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group. “They don’t want them to come back as part of a political party.”
The confessions are used to persuade a domestic audience that even cultural and academic outreach by some of the nation’s top academics is really cover to usher in a velvet revolution, human rights workers and former prisoners say.
“If they talk about the velvet revolution 24 hours a day people don’t care,” said Omid Memarian, a former Iranian journalist who was arrested and forced to issue his own confession in 2004. “But if reformers and journalists say they are involved in it, it makes the point for them. Once my interrogators said, ‘Whatever you say is worth 100 times more than having a conservative newspaper say the same thing.’ ”
Fars, a semiofficial news agency, reported the confession of a Newsweek reporter, Mazaiar Bahari, that he had done the bidding of foreign governments, as well as a confession by the editor of a newspaper run by Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader. And at Friday Prayer, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the government planned to put on trial several Iranian employees of the British Embassy — after confessions were extracted.
In addition to Mr. Abtahi, other prominent reformers being held include Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, Mr. Khatami’s spokesman, and Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister.
In 2007, Iran produced a pseudo-documentary called “In the Name of Democracy,” which served as a vehicle to highlight what it called confessions of three academic researchers charged with trying to overthrow the state. “They don’t like new ideas to get to Iran,” said a researcher once investigated about his work, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “They don’t like social and cultural figures in Iranian society to become very popular.”
In 2001, Ali Afshari was arrested for his work as a student leader. He said he was held in solitary confinement for 335 days and resisted confessing for the first two months. But after two mock executions and a five-day stretch where his interrogators would not let him sleep, he said he eventually caved in.
“They tortured me, some beatings, sleep deprivation, insults, psychological torture, standing me for several hours in front of a wall, keeping me in solitary confinement for one year,” Mr. Afshari said in an interview from his home in Washington. “They eventually broke my resistance.”
The problem, he said, was that he was not sure what he was supposed to confess to. So over the next several months, he said, he and his interrogators “negotiated” what he would say — and, more ominously, whom he would implicate. Once his confession was complete, he said, he practiced it for 7 to 10 days, and then it ran on state-run television.
Three years later, Mr. Memarian, the journalist and blogger, was arrested in another security sweep. He said that his interrogator at first sought to humiliate him by forcing him to discuss details of his sex life, and that when he hesitated, the interrogator would grab his hair and smash his head against the wall. He said the interrogator asked him about prominent politicians he had interviewed, asked if they ever had affairs, and asked if he had ever slept with their wives.
“I was crying, I begged him, please do not ask me this,” said Mr. Memarian, who is in exile now in the United States. “They said if you don’t talk now you will talk in a month, in two months, in a year. If you don’t talk now, you will talk. You will just stay here.”
The pressure was agonizing, he said, as he was forced to live in a small cell for 35 days with a light burning all the time and only three trips to the bathroom allowed every 24 hours. He was forced to shower in front of a camera, he said. At one point the interrogators threatened to break his fingers.
“They came up with names, and topics,” he said. “They gave me a three-page analysis and said read this and include it in your confession. My interrogator once said, ‘You have written seven years for the reformists; it’s O.K. to write for us for two months.’ ”
Mr. Memarian said that even in 2004, his interrogators were most interested in several leading reformers, including Mr. Abtahi, who at the time was an adviser to the president. When he was finally released, and after his confession was published by Fars, he was asked to testify before a committee led by the reform government investigating confessions, which included Mr. Abtahi. Mr. Abtahi, who has not been heard from since his arrest on June 16, understood even back then just how vulnerable he was, Mr. Memarian recalled.
“Abtahi said, ‘We cannot guarantee anyone’s security,’ ” Mr. Memarian said. “ ‘We know what happened to you guys. When you leave this building we do not know will happen to you, or what can happen to us in this committee.’ ”
(An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a conservative Web site that referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformer. The Web site is Alef, not Atef.)
Iran Cleric Says British Embassy Staff to Stand Trial
By JOHN F. BURNS and STEPHEN CASTLE
LONDON — A high-ranking Iranian cleric said Friday that Iran planned to put some of the detained British embassy staff members on trial, a move that could provoke a tightening of European sanctions against Iran, including the withdrawal of ambassadors.
The cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the influential Guardian Council, told worshipers at Friday Prayer in Tehran that the embassy employees had “made confessions” and would be tried for their role in inciting protests after last month’s disputed presidential election.
In London, the Foreign Office said it was urgently seeking clarification from the Iranian government as to whether the cleric’s remarks represented official policy.
“We are confident that our staff have not engaged in any improper or illegal behavior,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a statement. “We remain deeply concerned about the two members of our staff who remain in detention in Iran.”
He said he planned to speak to the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki.
Of the nine staff members seized Sunday, five were released Monday after the first British and European protests, and Iranian state media said Wednesday that three more had been freed, leaving one in custody. British officials, however, said that two remained under arrest.
As local employees of the embassy, those arrested did not have diplomatic immunity. None are British citizens.
Although the Foreign Office has denied that it had any role in stirring the ferment in Iran, officials in London have said that the embassy in Tehran had not forbidden its local employees to participate in the protests as individuals. The Iranian authorities say they have video evidence of some embassy employees at the protests.
Hours after the threat of trials, the European Union seemed to hold back from an out-and-out showdown, resolving to summon Iranian ambassadors in all 27 of the group’s countries to send “a strong message of protest against the detention of British Embassy local staff and to demand their immediate release,” said a European diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, following the group’s rules.
Other graduated measures — like a slowdown in issuing visas to Iranian officials seeking to visit Europe and a potential withdrawal of all European ambassadors — would be considered, the diplomat said. He said Iranian diplomats would be told that the arrest of the embassy employees and the threat of trials were considered a threat to all European Union diplomatic staff members in Iran.
The Iranian authorities accused the employees of fomenting and orchestrating the protests that drew tens of thousands of Iranians into Tehran’s streets after the June 12 election. The demonstrations provoked a security crackdown that had largely ended the public protests but not the political ferment over the elections. The hard-line incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been officially declared the winner by a landslide, but his main opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi, has vowed to continue his campaign to have the official result declared fraudulent.
Ayatollah Jannati, who is an ally of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not say how many of the detainees would be tried or on what charges, news reports said. But, in unofficial translations provided by news agencies, he said that the British Embassy had a “presence” in the postelection unrest and that “some people” had been arrested. It was “inevitable” that they would face trial, he said.
The Guardian Council is an influential panel of 12 clerics whose responsibilities include vetting elections. On Monday it certified Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory, a step that emboldened hard-line officials to warn of a harsher crackdown if protests continued.
Britain has sought diplomatic help from the European Union, which is thought to hold more sway with Iran. But some European countries, led by Germany, have been reluctant to risk worsening ties with Iran, particularly at a time when European diplomats have been pressing it for concessions over its nuclear program. They have argued that a withdrawal of envoys, a step urged by Britain, would leave few diplomatic options if the crisis deteriorated further.
But there were signs that the threat of trials had stiffened resolve in other countries.
“Our solidarity with Britain is total,” said President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, adding that France favored tightening sanctions.
The Iranian authorities have frequently blamed foreigners for the turmoil, but they have singled out the British as instigators. They cited Britain’s covert role in past political upheavals, including the toppling in 1941 of Reza Shah Pahlavi, suspected of having pro-German sympathies during World War II, and the ouster in 1953 of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after his government nationalized Iran’s British-dominated oil industry.
At the same time, Tehran has sent mixed signals about the fate of the embassy employees.
Hassan Qashqavi, the foreign ministry spokesman, said Monday that Iran was eager to maintain normal diplomatic relations with the European Union, its biggest trading partner. “Reduction of ties is not on our agenda with any European country, including Britain,” he said.
But on Wednesday, the semiofficial Fars news agency said that one of the embassy employees, who was not identified by name, “had a remarkable role during the recent unrest in managing it behind the scenes.”
While Ayatollah Jannati is not a member of the government or the judiciary, his words as the head of the Guardian Council and a close associate of the supreme leader carry some weight.
At Friday Prayer — a forum Iran has often used to convey significant political messages — he accused Britain of trying to provoke a “velvet revolution.” As long ago as March, he said, the British Foreign Office had said street riots were possible during the June elections. “These are signs, revealed by themselves,” he said.
John F. Burns reported from London, and Stephen Castle from Brussels. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.
LONDON — A high-ranking Iranian cleric said Friday that Iran planned to put some of the detained British embassy staff members on trial, a move that could provoke a tightening of European sanctions against Iran, including the withdrawal of ambassadors.
The cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the influential Guardian Council, told worshipers at Friday Prayer in Tehran that the embassy employees had “made confessions” and would be tried for their role in inciting protests after last month’s disputed presidential election.
In London, the Foreign Office said it was urgently seeking clarification from the Iranian government as to whether the cleric’s remarks represented official policy.
“We are confident that our staff have not engaged in any improper or illegal behavior,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a statement. “We remain deeply concerned about the two members of our staff who remain in detention in Iran.”
He said he planned to speak to the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki.
Of the nine staff members seized Sunday, five were released Monday after the first British and European protests, and Iranian state media said Wednesday that three more had been freed, leaving one in custody. British officials, however, said that two remained under arrest.
As local employees of the embassy, those arrested did not have diplomatic immunity. None are British citizens.
Although the Foreign Office has denied that it had any role in stirring the ferment in Iran, officials in London have said that the embassy in Tehran had not forbidden its local employees to participate in the protests as individuals. The Iranian authorities say they have video evidence of some embassy employees at the protests.
Hours after the threat of trials, the European Union seemed to hold back from an out-and-out showdown, resolving to summon Iranian ambassadors in all 27 of the group’s countries to send “a strong message of protest against the detention of British Embassy local staff and to demand their immediate release,” said a European diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, following the group’s rules.
Other graduated measures — like a slowdown in issuing visas to Iranian officials seeking to visit Europe and a potential withdrawal of all European ambassadors — would be considered, the diplomat said. He said Iranian diplomats would be told that the arrest of the embassy employees and the threat of trials were considered a threat to all European Union diplomatic staff members in Iran.
The Iranian authorities accused the employees of fomenting and orchestrating the protests that drew tens of thousands of Iranians into Tehran’s streets after the June 12 election. The demonstrations provoked a security crackdown that had largely ended the public protests but not the political ferment over the elections. The hard-line incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been officially declared the winner by a landslide, but his main opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi, has vowed to continue his campaign to have the official result declared fraudulent.
Ayatollah Jannati, who is an ally of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not say how many of the detainees would be tried or on what charges, news reports said. But, in unofficial translations provided by news agencies, he said that the British Embassy had a “presence” in the postelection unrest and that “some people” had been arrested. It was “inevitable” that they would face trial, he said.
The Guardian Council is an influential panel of 12 clerics whose responsibilities include vetting elections. On Monday it certified Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory, a step that emboldened hard-line officials to warn of a harsher crackdown if protests continued.
Britain has sought diplomatic help from the European Union, which is thought to hold more sway with Iran. But some European countries, led by Germany, have been reluctant to risk worsening ties with Iran, particularly at a time when European diplomats have been pressing it for concessions over its nuclear program. They have argued that a withdrawal of envoys, a step urged by Britain, would leave few diplomatic options if the crisis deteriorated further.
But there were signs that the threat of trials had stiffened resolve in other countries.
“Our solidarity with Britain is total,” said President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, adding that France favored tightening sanctions.
The Iranian authorities have frequently blamed foreigners for the turmoil, but they have singled out the British as instigators. They cited Britain’s covert role in past political upheavals, including the toppling in 1941 of Reza Shah Pahlavi, suspected of having pro-German sympathies during World War II, and the ouster in 1953 of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after his government nationalized Iran’s British-dominated oil industry.
At the same time, Tehran has sent mixed signals about the fate of the embassy employees.
Hassan Qashqavi, the foreign ministry spokesman, said Monday that Iran was eager to maintain normal diplomatic relations with the European Union, its biggest trading partner. “Reduction of ties is not on our agenda with any European country, including Britain,” he said.
But on Wednesday, the semiofficial Fars news agency said that one of the embassy employees, who was not identified by name, “had a remarkable role during the recent unrest in managing it behind the scenes.”
While Ayatollah Jannati is not a member of the government or the judiciary, his words as the head of the Guardian Council and a close associate of the supreme leader carry some weight.
At Friday Prayer — a forum Iran has often used to convey significant political messages — he accused Britain of trying to provoke a “velvet revolution.” As long ago as March, he said, the British Foreign Office had said street riots were possible during the June elections. “These are signs, revealed by themselves,” he said.
John F. Burns reported from London, and Stephen Castle from Brussels. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.
Syrian Leader Invites Obama to Visit, Raising Hope of Policy Shift
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Syria’s president sent a Fourth of July message full of praise to President Obama on Friday and invited him to visit Syria. These were the latest signs that Syria is hedging its bets in the politics of the Middle East, warming up to the United States at a time when Syria’s longtime ally Iran is in turmoil.
The United States and its Arab allies have been hoping to pull Syria away from its alliances with Iran and Islamic militant groups in the region.
Syria seems unlikely to take such a dramatic step, but it does appear worried about Iran’s reliability and the long-term impact of postelection unrest in the country. Also, Hezbollah, a militant organization supported by Iran, suffered a setback when its coalition failed to win parliamentary elections in Lebanon last month; it was defeated by a pro-Western coalition.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has been expressing hopes for better ties with the United States for months. But the latest developments may make dialogue look more likely.
Mr. Assad sent a telegram to Mr. Obama on the occasion of Independence Day, saying, “The values that were adopted by President Obama during his election campaign and after he was elected president are values that the world needs today.”
According to the state-run news agency, SANA, the telegram said: “It is very important to adopt the principle of dialogue in relations with countries based on respect and mutual interest.”
In an interview with Britain’s Sky News, Mr. Assad invited Obama to visit Damascus to discuss Middle East peace.
“We would like to welcome him in Syria, definitely; I am very clear about this,” Mr. Assad said in English.
Asked whether such a visit could take place soon, Mr. Assad said: “That depends on him.”
He added with a smile, “I will ask you to convey the invitation to him.” President Bill Clinton was the last American chief executive to visit Syria, in 1994.
The longstanding tensions between the United States and Syria have contributed to instability in Lebanon. The United States and Israel have also said that Syria’s backing of Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization, has undermined the Arab-Israeli peace process.
If the United States can draw Syria even somewhat away from Iran and the militant groups allied with it, that would represent a major shift and could help ease tensions in the Middle East.
The Obama administration has been wooing Syria. The administration is sending an American ambassador to Damascus after a four-year break caused by accusations of Syrian involvement in terrorism. Mr. Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, became the highest-level American official to visit Damascus since 2005, and he acknowledged Syria’s significance, saying that it had a central role to play in forging a Mideast peace.
In a separate interview with Sky News, Mr. Assad’s wife, Asma, said she believed that the Syrian and American leaders could work together.
“The fact that President Obama is young — well, President Assad is also very young as well — so maybe it is time for these young new leaders to make a difference in the world,” she said.
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Syria’s president sent a Fourth of July message full of praise to President Obama on Friday and invited him to visit Syria. These were the latest signs that Syria is hedging its bets in the politics of the Middle East, warming up to the United States at a time when Syria’s longtime ally Iran is in turmoil.
The United States and its Arab allies have been hoping to pull Syria away from its alliances with Iran and Islamic militant groups in the region.
Syria seems unlikely to take such a dramatic step, but it does appear worried about Iran’s reliability and the long-term impact of postelection unrest in the country. Also, Hezbollah, a militant organization supported by Iran, suffered a setback when its coalition failed to win parliamentary elections in Lebanon last month; it was defeated by a pro-Western coalition.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has been expressing hopes for better ties with the United States for months. But the latest developments may make dialogue look more likely.
Mr. Assad sent a telegram to Mr. Obama on the occasion of Independence Day, saying, “The values that were adopted by President Obama during his election campaign and after he was elected president are values that the world needs today.”
According to the state-run news agency, SANA, the telegram said: “It is very important to adopt the principle of dialogue in relations with countries based on respect and mutual interest.”
In an interview with Britain’s Sky News, Mr. Assad invited Obama to visit Damascus to discuss Middle East peace.
“We would like to welcome him in Syria, definitely; I am very clear about this,” Mr. Assad said in English.
Asked whether such a visit could take place soon, Mr. Assad said: “That depends on him.”
He added with a smile, “I will ask you to convey the invitation to him.” President Bill Clinton was the last American chief executive to visit Syria, in 1994.
The longstanding tensions between the United States and Syria have contributed to instability in Lebanon. The United States and Israel have also said that Syria’s backing of Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization, has undermined the Arab-Israeli peace process.
If the United States can draw Syria even somewhat away from Iran and the militant groups allied with it, that would represent a major shift and could help ease tensions in the Middle East.
The Obama administration has been wooing Syria. The administration is sending an American ambassador to Damascus after a four-year break caused by accusations of Syrian involvement in terrorism. Mr. Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, became the highest-level American official to visit Damascus since 2005, and he acknowledged Syria’s significance, saying that it had a central role to play in forging a Mideast peace.
In a separate interview with Sky News, Mr. Assad’s wife, Asma, said she believed that the Syrian and American leaders could work together.
“The fact that President Obama is young — well, President Assad is also very young as well — so maybe it is time for these young new leaders to make a difference in the world,” she said.
U.N. Chief Meets With Myanmar Junta
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar — Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, asked this country’s ruling generals on Friday to free its many political prisoners, including the democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, but there was no sign yet of movement on the issue from the junta.
Mr. Ban also asked to visit Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, but said the military leaders reminded him that she was on trial. Early Saturday, Mr. Ban said that his request to see her before he left the country Saturday night had been rejected.
Mr. Ban is hoping to win the release of political prisoners — estimated at 2,100 by international humanitarian organizations — ahead of elections scheduled for 2010.
Mr. Ban’s rare meeting with Senior Gen. Than Shwe and the other four generals who constitute the ruling State Peace and Development Council came as the government declared a one-week pause in Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial.
Mr. Ban called his exchange with the generals “frank,” and a senior United Nations official described the discussion as “forceful” on both sides.
Mr. Ban said he told the generals it would be important to release Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and the other political prisoners to ensure the broadest possible participation in the election.
“This election should be a credible, fair, inclusive and legitimate one where all the Myanmar people can express their will in a free way,” Mr. Ban said after meeting with the generals. “I was assured that Myanmar’s authorities will make sure that this election will be held in fair and free and transparent manner.”
At the same time, Mr. Ban asked for a series of steps toward that goal, though it was unclear whether the military government would endorse such a development, senior United Nations official said. The steps include revamping the election laws publicly and establishing an electoral commission. Not even the aborted election of 1990, which Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won, truly covered the whole nation, so another step would be allowing the party, the National League for Democracy, to open offices across the country and to permit her to campaign.
Mr. Ban said he also urged the generals to resume their dialogue with the opposition in a substantive and meaningful way, including with Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.
Mr. Ban is expected to have an additional, unscheduled meeting with General Than Shwe on Saturday, and is due to make a speech about the country’s future to a group of nongovernmental organizations involved in relief efforts for the past 14 months. He also plans to tour the Irrawaddy Delta, where Cyclone Nargis struck a devastating blow in May 2008, killing 138,000 people. His visit at that time opened the door for international aid organizations to play a greater role in relief efforts.
But Bishow Parajuli, the humanitarian coordinator for the country, said there was currently a backlog of about 219 international aid workers seeking visas to work in the country. The visa process has slowed since March, he said, another issue Mr. Ban took up with General Than Shwe.
International human rights groups have urged Mr. Ban to take a tough line on the junta. He tried, however, to play down expectations, saying that it would be a difficult trip, but that it was important to engage the ruling generals.
“I am very pleased to continue our discussion,” Mr. Ban said in his opening remarks to General Than Shwe. “I appreciate your commitment to move your country forward.”
The meeting was held in a soaring reception room painted with a mural of Buddhist temples set in the jungle, the landscape around Naypyidaw (pronounced nay-pee-DAW), the sprawling, isolated capital the generals constructed out of the rice fields and jungle about 200 miles north of Yangon. Yangon, formerly Rangoon, is the country’s main city.
The official reception building here is called Bayinnaung Hall, named after a 16th-century warrior king who united much of what is today Myanmar, as well as parts of India, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The monarch is the favorite historical figure of the authoritarian government.
Shortly after Mr. Ban arrived in the country, the authorities said that the current trial of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years, would be adjourned for one week until July 10. The trial was delayed because of what was described as an administrative error, according to Kyi Win, a lawyer representing her.
“When the judges came onto the bench they announced that the files from the higher court had not been returned,” Mr. Kyi Win said.
“There must be other reasons,” he said in an interview. “But we hate to speculate.”
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi has not been told whether she will be meeting Mr. Ban, the lawyer said. She is on trial on charges of violating the terms of her current house arrest after an American man swam uninvited across a lake to her home.
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi has denied the charge, but could be sentenced to five years imprisonment if found guilty. She is being held at the infamous Insein Prison. John Yettaw, the 53-year-old American intruder, was charged with trespassing and is also detained there.
Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar — Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, asked this country’s ruling generals on Friday to free its many political prisoners, including the democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, but there was no sign yet of movement on the issue from the junta.
Mr. Ban also asked to visit Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, but said the military leaders reminded him that she was on trial. Early Saturday, Mr. Ban said that his request to see her before he left the country Saturday night had been rejected.
Mr. Ban is hoping to win the release of political prisoners — estimated at 2,100 by international humanitarian organizations — ahead of elections scheduled for 2010.
Mr. Ban’s rare meeting with Senior Gen. Than Shwe and the other four generals who constitute the ruling State Peace and Development Council came as the government declared a one-week pause in Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial.
Mr. Ban called his exchange with the generals “frank,” and a senior United Nations official described the discussion as “forceful” on both sides.
Mr. Ban said he told the generals it would be important to release Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and the other political prisoners to ensure the broadest possible participation in the election.
“This election should be a credible, fair, inclusive and legitimate one where all the Myanmar people can express their will in a free way,” Mr. Ban said after meeting with the generals. “I was assured that Myanmar’s authorities will make sure that this election will be held in fair and free and transparent manner.”
At the same time, Mr. Ban asked for a series of steps toward that goal, though it was unclear whether the military government would endorse such a development, senior United Nations official said. The steps include revamping the election laws publicly and establishing an electoral commission. Not even the aborted election of 1990, which Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won, truly covered the whole nation, so another step would be allowing the party, the National League for Democracy, to open offices across the country and to permit her to campaign.
Mr. Ban said he also urged the generals to resume their dialogue with the opposition in a substantive and meaningful way, including with Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.
Mr. Ban is expected to have an additional, unscheduled meeting with General Than Shwe on Saturday, and is due to make a speech about the country’s future to a group of nongovernmental organizations involved in relief efforts for the past 14 months. He also plans to tour the Irrawaddy Delta, where Cyclone Nargis struck a devastating blow in May 2008, killing 138,000 people. His visit at that time opened the door for international aid organizations to play a greater role in relief efforts.
But Bishow Parajuli, the humanitarian coordinator for the country, said there was currently a backlog of about 219 international aid workers seeking visas to work in the country. The visa process has slowed since March, he said, another issue Mr. Ban took up with General Than Shwe.
International human rights groups have urged Mr. Ban to take a tough line on the junta. He tried, however, to play down expectations, saying that it would be a difficult trip, but that it was important to engage the ruling generals.
“I am very pleased to continue our discussion,” Mr. Ban said in his opening remarks to General Than Shwe. “I appreciate your commitment to move your country forward.”
The meeting was held in a soaring reception room painted with a mural of Buddhist temples set in the jungle, the landscape around Naypyidaw (pronounced nay-pee-DAW), the sprawling, isolated capital the generals constructed out of the rice fields and jungle about 200 miles north of Yangon. Yangon, formerly Rangoon, is the country’s main city.
The official reception building here is called Bayinnaung Hall, named after a 16th-century warrior king who united much of what is today Myanmar, as well as parts of India, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The monarch is the favorite historical figure of the authoritarian government.
Shortly after Mr. Ban arrived in the country, the authorities said that the current trial of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years, would be adjourned for one week until July 10. The trial was delayed because of what was described as an administrative error, according to Kyi Win, a lawyer representing her.
“When the judges came onto the bench they announced that the files from the higher court had not been returned,” Mr. Kyi Win said.
“There must be other reasons,” he said in an interview. “But we hate to speculate.”
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi has not been told whether she will be meeting Mr. Ban, the lawyer said. She is on trial on charges of violating the terms of her current house arrest after an American man swam uninvited across a lake to her home.
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi has denied the charge, but could be sentenced to five years imprisonment if found guilty. She is being held at the infamous Insein Prison. John Yettaw, the 53-year-old American intruder, was charged with trespassing and is also detained there.
Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.
Jul 3, 2009
Untold Truths About the American Revolution
By Howard Zinn, July 3, 2009
There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and you want to do something about them. You have a just cause. But our culture is so war prone that we immediately jump from, “This is a good cause” to “This deserves a war.”
You need to be very, very comfortable in making that jump.
The American Revolution—independence from England—was a just cause. Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?
How many people died in the Revolutionary War?
Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it’s likely that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let’s take the lower figure—25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get England off our backs.
You might consider that worth it, or you might not.
Canada is independent of England, isn’t it? I think so. Not a bad society. Canadians have good health care. They have a lot of things we don’t have. They didn’t fight a bloody revolutionary war. Why do we assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to get rid of England?
In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather rich.
Who actually gained from that victory over England? It’s very important to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And it’s very important to notice differences among the various parts of the population. That’s one thing were not accustomed to in this country because we don’t think in class terms. We think, “Oh, we all have the same interests.” For instance, we think that we all had the same interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same interests.
Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England, because England had set a line—in the Proclamation of 1763—that said you couldn’t go westward into Indian territory. They didn’t do it because they loved the Indians. They didn’t want trouble. When Britain was defeated in the Revolutionary War, that line was eliminated, and now the way was open for the colonists to move westward across the continent, which they did for the next 100 years, committing massacres and making sure that they destroyed Indian civilization.
So when you look at the American Revolution, there’s a fact that you have to take into consideration. Indians—no, they didn’t benefit.
Did blacks benefit from the American Revolution?
Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we wrote slavery into the Constitution. We legitimized it.
What about class divisions?
Did ordinary white farmers have the same interest in the revolution as a John Hancock or Morris or Madison or Jefferson or the slaveholders or the bondholders? Not really.
It was not all the common people getting together to fight against England. They had a very hard time assembling an army. They took poor guys and promised them land. They browbeat people and, oh yes, they inspired people with the Declaration of Independence. It’s always good, if you want people to go to war, to give them a good document and have good words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, when they wrote the Constitution, they were more concerned with property than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You should take notice of these little things.
There were class divisions. When you assess and evaluate a war, when you assess and evaluate any policy, you have to ask: Who gets what?
We were a class society from the beginning. America started off as a society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston, and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to pretend in this country that we’re all one happy family. We’re not.
And so when you look at the American Revolution, you have to look at it in terms of class.
Do you know that there were mutinies in the American Revolutionary Army by the privates against the officers? The officers were getting fine clothes and good food and high pay and the privates had no shoes and bad clothes and they weren’t getting paid. They mutinied. Thousands of them. So many in the Pennsylvania line that George Washington got worried, so he made compromises with them. But later when there was a smaller mutiny in the New Jersey line, not with thousands but with hundreds, Washington said execute the leaders, and they were executed by fellow mutineers on the order of their officers.
The American Revolution was not a simple affair of all of us against all of them. And not everyone thought they would benefit from the Revolution.
We’ve got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.
Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is the only way it could have happened. No.
We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.
Howard Zinn is the author of “A People’s History of the United States.” The History Channel is running an adaptation called “The People Speak.” This article is an excerpt from Zinn’s cover story in the July issue of The Progressive.
There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and you want to do something about them. You have a just cause. But our culture is so war prone that we immediately jump from, “This is a good cause” to “This deserves a war.”
You need to be very, very comfortable in making that jump.
The American Revolution—independence from England—was a just cause. Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?
How many people died in the Revolutionary War?
Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it’s likely that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let’s take the lower figure—25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get England off our backs.
You might consider that worth it, or you might not.
Canada is independent of England, isn’t it? I think so. Not a bad society. Canadians have good health care. They have a lot of things we don’t have. They didn’t fight a bloody revolutionary war. Why do we assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to get rid of England?
In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather rich.
Who actually gained from that victory over England? It’s very important to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And it’s very important to notice differences among the various parts of the population. That’s one thing were not accustomed to in this country because we don’t think in class terms. We think, “Oh, we all have the same interests.” For instance, we think that we all had the same interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same interests.
Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England, because England had set a line—in the Proclamation of 1763—that said you couldn’t go westward into Indian territory. They didn’t do it because they loved the Indians. They didn’t want trouble. When Britain was defeated in the Revolutionary War, that line was eliminated, and now the way was open for the colonists to move westward across the continent, which they did for the next 100 years, committing massacres and making sure that they destroyed Indian civilization.
So when you look at the American Revolution, there’s a fact that you have to take into consideration. Indians—no, they didn’t benefit.
Did blacks benefit from the American Revolution?
Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we wrote slavery into the Constitution. We legitimized it.
What about class divisions?
Did ordinary white farmers have the same interest in the revolution as a John Hancock or Morris or Madison or Jefferson or the slaveholders or the bondholders? Not really.
It was not all the common people getting together to fight against England. They had a very hard time assembling an army. They took poor guys and promised them land. They browbeat people and, oh yes, they inspired people with the Declaration of Independence. It’s always good, if you want people to go to war, to give them a good document and have good words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, when they wrote the Constitution, they were more concerned with property than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You should take notice of these little things.
There were class divisions. When you assess and evaluate a war, when you assess and evaluate any policy, you have to ask: Who gets what?
We were a class society from the beginning. America started off as a society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston, and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to pretend in this country that we’re all one happy family. We’re not.
And so when you look at the American Revolution, you have to look at it in terms of class.
Do you know that there were mutinies in the American Revolutionary Army by the privates against the officers? The officers were getting fine clothes and good food and high pay and the privates had no shoes and bad clothes and they weren’t getting paid. They mutinied. Thousands of them. So many in the Pennsylvania line that George Washington got worried, so he made compromises with them. But later when there was a smaller mutiny in the New Jersey line, not with thousands but with hundreds, Washington said execute the leaders, and they were executed by fellow mutineers on the order of their officers.
The American Revolution was not a simple affair of all of us against all of them. And not everyone thought they would benefit from the Revolution.
We’ve got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.
Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is the only way it could have happened. No.
We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.
Howard Zinn is the author of “A People’s History of the United States.” The History Channel is running an adaptation called “The People Speak.” This article is an excerpt from Zinn’s cover story in the July issue of The Progressive.
This July 4th, Let’s Be True to Our Principles
By Jeanne Theoharis, July 3, 2009
It’s the Fourth of July in America, and a U.S. citizen sits in solitary confinement in New York — and he hasn’t even been convicted of a crime.
His name is Syed Fahad Hashmi. His treatment stands in stark contrast to the freedoms we celebrate on this holiday.
For more than two years, Hashmi has awaited trial on four charges of providing material support to Al Qaeda. Hashmi has never previously been charged with a crime.
He grew up in Flushing, Queens, in New York and became an outspoken Muslim student activist. Now he sits in the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
He is allowed no contact with anyone outside his lawyer and, in very limited form, his parents.
He is allowed to write one letter to one family member a week and cannot use more than three sheets of paper.
His cell is electronically monitored inside and out, with shower and toilet in view of the camera.
He is allowed only one hour out of his cell a day — which is periodically withheld — and is not permitted fresh air but forced to exercise inside in a solitary cage.
He is forbidden any contact, directly or through his attorneys, with the news media and can only read portions of newspapers approved by his jailers, and not until 30 days after publication.
The government publicly claims the centerpiece of its case will be the testimony of Junaid Babar, who alleges he stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks in early 2004, stored luggage containing raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks in Hashmi’s apartment, used Hashmi’s cell phone to call other conspirators and then delivered these materials to the third-ranking member of Al Qaeda in South Waziristan, Pakistan.
Much of the evidence against Hashmi is classified. While his lawyers went through a CIA-level clearance to view it, they are not allowed to discuss it with Hashmi himself.
Hashmi’s case is unfortunately not an aberration. Other terrorism suspects in the United States have been stripped of many of their due process rights.
Yet we, as Americans, tend to think that the abuses in the War on Terror happened outside the United States and are a thing of the past. We’ve focused our attention on our Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the CIA’s secret prisons but neglected the abuses right here at home.
Seeking to reassure the American public about closing Guantanamo, President Obama in May decried the techniques used there during the Bush years as “not America.” Two weeks later in Cairo, Egypt, he promised to “speak the truth as best I can.”
The truth — yet to be acknowledged by the Obama administration — is that such treatment is unfortunately still America.
Cases like Hashmi’s should be at the center of the public conversation about truth and civil liberties in the post-Bush era.
On this July Fourth, we must affirm the rule of law here in America, ending inhumane conditions of confinement and reaffirming the right to due process in court.
Jeanne Theoharis is the endowed chair in women’s studies and associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College of CUNY and the author of numerous books on civil rights. For more on Hashmi’s case, see www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org. Theoharis can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.
It’s the Fourth of July in America, and a U.S. citizen sits in solitary confinement in New York — and he hasn’t even been convicted of a crime.
His name is Syed Fahad Hashmi. His treatment stands in stark contrast to the freedoms we celebrate on this holiday.
For more than two years, Hashmi has awaited trial on four charges of providing material support to Al Qaeda. Hashmi has never previously been charged with a crime.
He grew up in Flushing, Queens, in New York and became an outspoken Muslim student activist. Now he sits in the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
He is allowed no contact with anyone outside his lawyer and, in very limited form, his parents.
He is allowed to write one letter to one family member a week and cannot use more than three sheets of paper.
His cell is electronically monitored inside and out, with shower and toilet in view of the camera.
He is allowed only one hour out of his cell a day — which is periodically withheld — and is not permitted fresh air but forced to exercise inside in a solitary cage.
He is forbidden any contact, directly or through his attorneys, with the news media and can only read portions of newspapers approved by his jailers, and not until 30 days after publication.
The government publicly claims the centerpiece of its case will be the testimony of Junaid Babar, who alleges he stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks in early 2004, stored luggage containing raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks in Hashmi’s apartment, used Hashmi’s cell phone to call other conspirators and then delivered these materials to the third-ranking member of Al Qaeda in South Waziristan, Pakistan.
Much of the evidence against Hashmi is classified. While his lawyers went through a CIA-level clearance to view it, they are not allowed to discuss it with Hashmi himself.
Hashmi’s case is unfortunately not an aberration. Other terrorism suspects in the United States have been stripped of many of their due process rights.
Yet we, as Americans, tend to think that the abuses in the War on Terror happened outside the United States and are a thing of the past. We’ve focused our attention on our Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the CIA’s secret prisons but neglected the abuses right here at home.
Seeking to reassure the American public about closing Guantanamo, President Obama in May decried the techniques used there during the Bush years as “not America.” Two weeks later in Cairo, Egypt, he promised to “speak the truth as best I can.”
The truth — yet to be acknowledged by the Obama administration — is that such treatment is unfortunately still America.
Cases like Hashmi’s should be at the center of the public conversation about truth and civil liberties in the post-Bush era.
On this July Fourth, we must affirm the rule of law here in America, ending inhumane conditions of confinement and reaffirming the right to due process in court.
Jeanne Theoharis is the endowed chair in women’s studies and associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College of CUNY and the author of numerous books on civil rights. For more on Hashmi’s case, see www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org. Theoharis can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.
Drug-Cartel Links Haunt an Election South of Border
By JOEL MILLMAN and JOSE DE CORDOBA
COLIMA, Mexico -- The candidacy of Mario Anguiano, running for governor in a state election here Sunday, says a lot about Mexican politics amid the rise of the drug cartels.
A brother of the candidate is serving a 10-year prison sentence in Mexico for peddling methamphetamine. Another Anguiano is serving 27 years in a Texas prison for running a huge meth ring. A few weeks ago, a hand-painted banner hung on a highway overpass cited the Zetas, the bloodthirsty executioners for the Gulf Cartel drug gang, praising the candidate: "The Zetas support you, and we are with you to the death."
Mr. Anguiano says his meth-dealing brother was just an addict who sold small amounts to support his habit. He says the man jailed in Texas, reported by local media to be his cousin, may or may not be a relative. "If he is my cousin, I've never met him," he says. Denying any involvement with traffickers, he says the supposed Zetas endorsement was just a dirty trick by his election rivals.
If so, it backfired. In the weeks after the banner made local headlines, new polls showed Mr. Anguiano pulling ahead in the race. He is expected to be elected governor on Sunday.
The reaction suggests how blasé some voters have become about allegations of ties between their politicians and the drug underworld, as Mexico prepares to elect a new lower house of Congress, some state governors and many mayors. This, even as political experts and law-enforcement people worry that violent drug gangs are increasingly bankrolling a wide range of politicians' campaigns across Mexico, in return for turning a blind eye to their activities.
Cartel Turf Wars
The election comes amid President Felipe Calderón's all-out war on drug gangs, which wield armies of private gunmen and account for the bulk of illegal drugs sold in the U.S. The conservative president has deployed 45,000 troops to fight the gangs. In bloody confrontations between his forces and the cartels, and especially in turf battles among the cartels, an estimated 12,000 lives have been lost since Mr. Calderón took office in late 2006. June was the deadliest month yet: 769 drug-related killings, according to a count by Mexican newspapers.
Until recent years, Mexican drug traffickers focused the bulk of their bribery efforts on law enforcement rather than politicians. Their increasing involvement in local politics -- in town halls and state capitals -- is a response, experts say, to the national-level crackdown, to changes in the nature of the drug trade itself and to the evolution of Mexico's young democracy.
Mario Anguiano's campaign for governor in Mexico reveals the problems of power in a country with increasing narcotics trafficking and violence. WSJ's Joel Millman reports.
Starting in 2000, a system of fiercely contested multiparty elections began to replace 71 years of one-party rule, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. "In this newly competitive, moderately democratic system, it takes serious money to run a political campaign," says James McDonald, a Mexico expert at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. "This has given the narcos a real entree into politics, by either running for office themselves or bankrolling candidates."
In addition, the gangs have evolved from simple drug-smuggling bands into organized-crime conglomerates with broad business interests, from local drug markets to extortion, kidnapping, immigrant smuggling and control of Mexico's rich market in knockoff compact discs. "There is more at stake than before. They need to control municipal governments," says Edgardo Buscaglia, a professor of law and economics at both Columbia University and Mexico's ITAM University.
Because of the federal crackdown and the warfare between rival cartels the drug traffickers also need more political allies than ever before.
Politicians who won't cooperate sometimes are threatened. On Monday, in the drug-producing state of Guerrero, a grenade blew up a sport-utility vehicle belonging to Jorge Camacho, a congressional candidate from President Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN. A message next to the destroyed car said, "Look, you S.O.B. candidate, hopefully, you will understand it is better you get out, you won't get a second chance to live."
Mr. Buscaglia says criminal groups' one-two punch of bribes and threats has given them either influence or control in 72% of Mexico's municipalities. He bases his estimate on observation of criminal enterprises such as drug-dealing and child-prostitution rings that operate openly, ignored by police.
According to a September 2007 intelligence assessment by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the governors of the states of Veracruz and Michoacán had agreements with the Gulf Cartel allowing free rein to that large drug-trafficking gang. In return, said the report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the cartel promised to reduce violence in Veracruz state and, in Michoacán, financed a gubernatorial race and many municipal campaigns across the state.
In Veracruz, the FBI report said, Gov. Fidel Herrera made a deal with the cartel letting it secure a drug route through the state. In an interview, Mr. Herrera said the allegation is "absolutely false, and has no basis in fact -- it never happened." The PRI politician said he has never had any dealings with a criminal organization and blamed a rival political operative, whom he declined to name, for trying to sabotage his career.
In Michoacán, the FBI report said, "in exchange for funding, the Gulf Cartel will be able to control the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, to continue to introduce cocaine and collect a 'tax'" from other Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
Control of Ports
Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, the Michoacán governor from the leftist PRD party who was in the office when the FBI said the deal was made, says the allegation is "totally false." Mr. Cárdenas Batel, grandson of the former Mexican president for whom the port is named, said Mexican ports are controlled by federal agencies, so drug traffickers have nothing to gain from bribing state officials in connection with them.
His successor, the winner of the 2007 election, is Leonel Godoy, also of the PRD. He calls the FBI allegation "an infamy" with "not a shred of evidence or any proof," and said he had never met or cut deals with drug traffickers. Messrs. Cárdenas Batel and Godoy both say they had alerted authorities before the elections about the growing infiltration of drug traffickers in Michoacán.
None of the three men -- Messrs. Cárdenas Batel, Godoy and Herrera -- have been charged with any crime. U.S. intelligence documents have occasionally proved unreliable in the past.
Police agents in Mexico City stand guard in May after a group of top officials from Michoacán were detained due to their alleged ties to 'La Familia' drug cartel. Ten mayors and 17 other officials were detained.
The Gulf Cartel doesn't appear to be the only gang with alleged influence in Michoacán officialdom. In May, soldiers and federal police arrested 10 mayors, as well as 17 police chiefs and state security officials, including a man who was in charge of the state's police-training academy. They have been charged with collaborating with "La Familia," the state's violent homegrown drug gang. Those arrested, who have said they are innocent victims of political vendettas, represented all three of Mexico's main political parties. On Monday, three more people, including the mayor of Lázaro Cárdenas, were arrested and charged with the same offense, according to the attorney general's office.
Five hundred miles to the north in the wealthy Monterrey suburb of San Pedro Garza GarcÃa, a mayoral candidate from President Calderón's party sparked a scandal in June when he was recorded telling a gathering of supporters that security in the town was "controlled by" members of one of Mexico's most fearsome drug cartels, the Beltran Leyva gang.
The candidate, Mauricio Fernandez, seemed to suggest he would be willing to negotiate with the Beltran Leyvas if elected. "Penetration by drug traffickers is for real, and they approach every candidate who they think may win," Mr. Fernandez was recorded saying. "In my case, I made it very clear to them that I didn't want blatant selling."
Mr. Fernandez has acknowledged the audiotape's authenticity, but says his statements were taken out of context and that he had never met with members of the Beltran Leyva cartel. He says the full tape captures him saying he would not negotiate with the drug traffickers. As the election nears, he leads polls by a wide margin.
Meanwhile, in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, Mayor David Monreal of the town of Fresnillo denied having anything to do with 14.5 tons of marijuana police found months ago in a chili-pepper-drying facility owned by his brother. Mr. Monreal, who plans to seek the governorship next year, said his political enemies planted the mammoth stash.
In the campaign, the state of Mexico's economy appears to trump the drug issue for many voters. The economy is shrinking amid slumps in oil production, in exports to the U.S., in tourism and in remittances from emigrants. Polls give the PRI, the party that ruled for seven decades, an advantage of about six percentage points.
The governing party has made President Calderon's campaign against drug traffickers its main theme, and polls show his policy of using the military in the effort is widely popular. But they also show a majority of Mexicans don't think he is winning the narco-war.
Drugs are certainly campaign fodder in the border state of Chihuahua, where former Ciudad Juárez Mayor Héctor MurguÃa is the PRI's candidate for a congressional seat. Two years ago, Mayor MurguÃa named as his chief of public security a businessman named Saulo Reyes Gamboa. Last year, Mr. Reyes was arrested by U.S. law-enforcement agents in El Paso, Texas, after allegedly paying someone he thought to be a corrupt U.S. federal officer to help smuggle drug loads. During the operation, federal agents found nearly half a ton of marijuana in a Texas house, which they say Mr. Reyes had arranged to smuggle from Mexico.
Mr. Reyes, who pleaded guilty and is now serving eight years in a federal prison in Kentucky, couldn't be reached for comment. Mayor MurguÃa says that he has had no involvement with the Juárez Cartel and that Mr. Reyes never contributed "even five pesos" to support his political career.
Despite the bad publicity, Mr. MurguÃa is leading in polls and is expected to win Sunday -- not unlike Mr. Anguiano, the candidate in Colima with the supposed endorsement from the Zetas.
Talking Frankly
In Colima, the candidate for governor from President Calderón's party, Martha Sosa Govea, hasn't faced any narco-tie allegations. But there has been plenty of comment about her protegé, national assembly candidate Virgilio Mendoza Amezcua, thanks to a tape of him talking frankly about politics and drug traffickers, recorded by members of a rival party he was trying to win over.
[Drug-Cartel Links Haunt Election]
"You don't imagine how many 'nice' people have relations with those drug-trafficking bastards, and through them, the bastards bring things to you," he said on the tape. "They try to seduce you....They got close to me like they get close to half the world, and they sent me money."
Mr. Mendoza declined to comment, but has previously denied he took any money from the cartels. Ms. Sosa said the tape might have been doctored, and in any case, "just because they have him on a tape getting an offer of dirty money, there's still nothing on tape proving he accepted it."
The tape was turned over to federal authorities to determine whether it had been altered. Citing the proximity to the election, the Attorney General's office declined to comment on any of the drug cases.
Colima, though largely exempt from the narco-violence raging in neighboring states, has a reputation as a haven for traffickers, a sleepy place where residents don't ask questions about rich new neighbors. In the 1980s, Colima was home to a gentleman rancher from Guadalajara whom everybody knew as Pedro Orozco. He spent lavishly on schools, gave to charity and hung around with politicians.
In 1991, Mr. Orozco was gunned down in a firefight in Guadalajara, then Mexico's drug capital. It turned out the generous man-about-town was actually Manuel Salcido Uzueta, a top drug capo better known as Cochiloco, meaning the Mad Pig.
Ever since, Colima residents have grown cynical about the influence of drug gangs in politics. "Corruption? Drug ties? They say that about everyone who runs for office. Who can you believe?" says Salvador Ochoa, a local lawyer.
Ms. Sosa has been hammering her opponent, Mr. Anguiano, with claims that he has links to drug trafficking. But, she concedes, the response of many voters is, "Poor guy, why don't they just leave him alone?"
Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com and Jose de Cordoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com
COLIMA, Mexico -- The candidacy of Mario Anguiano, running for governor in a state election here Sunday, says a lot about Mexican politics amid the rise of the drug cartels.
A brother of the candidate is serving a 10-year prison sentence in Mexico for peddling methamphetamine. Another Anguiano is serving 27 years in a Texas prison for running a huge meth ring. A few weeks ago, a hand-painted banner hung on a highway overpass cited the Zetas, the bloodthirsty executioners for the Gulf Cartel drug gang, praising the candidate: "The Zetas support you, and we are with you to the death."
Mr. Anguiano says his meth-dealing brother was just an addict who sold small amounts to support his habit. He says the man jailed in Texas, reported by local media to be his cousin, may or may not be a relative. "If he is my cousin, I've never met him," he says. Denying any involvement with traffickers, he says the supposed Zetas endorsement was just a dirty trick by his election rivals.
If so, it backfired. In the weeks after the banner made local headlines, new polls showed Mr. Anguiano pulling ahead in the race. He is expected to be elected governor on Sunday.
The reaction suggests how blasé some voters have become about allegations of ties between their politicians and the drug underworld, as Mexico prepares to elect a new lower house of Congress, some state governors and many mayors. This, even as political experts and law-enforcement people worry that violent drug gangs are increasingly bankrolling a wide range of politicians' campaigns across Mexico, in return for turning a blind eye to their activities.
Cartel Turf Wars
The election comes amid President Felipe Calderón's all-out war on drug gangs, which wield armies of private gunmen and account for the bulk of illegal drugs sold in the U.S. The conservative president has deployed 45,000 troops to fight the gangs. In bloody confrontations between his forces and the cartels, and especially in turf battles among the cartels, an estimated 12,000 lives have been lost since Mr. Calderón took office in late 2006. June was the deadliest month yet: 769 drug-related killings, according to a count by Mexican newspapers.
Until recent years, Mexican drug traffickers focused the bulk of their bribery efforts on law enforcement rather than politicians. Their increasing involvement in local politics -- in town halls and state capitals -- is a response, experts say, to the national-level crackdown, to changes in the nature of the drug trade itself and to the evolution of Mexico's young democracy.
Mario Anguiano's campaign for governor in Mexico reveals the problems of power in a country with increasing narcotics trafficking and violence. WSJ's Joel Millman reports.
Starting in 2000, a system of fiercely contested multiparty elections began to replace 71 years of one-party rule, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. "In this newly competitive, moderately democratic system, it takes serious money to run a political campaign," says James McDonald, a Mexico expert at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. "This has given the narcos a real entree into politics, by either running for office themselves or bankrolling candidates."
In addition, the gangs have evolved from simple drug-smuggling bands into organized-crime conglomerates with broad business interests, from local drug markets to extortion, kidnapping, immigrant smuggling and control of Mexico's rich market in knockoff compact discs. "There is more at stake than before. They need to control municipal governments," says Edgardo Buscaglia, a professor of law and economics at both Columbia University and Mexico's ITAM University.
Because of the federal crackdown and the warfare between rival cartels the drug traffickers also need more political allies than ever before.
Politicians who won't cooperate sometimes are threatened. On Monday, in the drug-producing state of Guerrero, a grenade blew up a sport-utility vehicle belonging to Jorge Camacho, a congressional candidate from President Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN. A message next to the destroyed car said, "Look, you S.O.B. candidate, hopefully, you will understand it is better you get out, you won't get a second chance to live."
Mr. Buscaglia says criminal groups' one-two punch of bribes and threats has given them either influence or control in 72% of Mexico's municipalities. He bases his estimate on observation of criminal enterprises such as drug-dealing and child-prostitution rings that operate openly, ignored by police.
According to a September 2007 intelligence assessment by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the governors of the states of Veracruz and Michoacán had agreements with the Gulf Cartel allowing free rein to that large drug-trafficking gang. In return, said the report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the cartel promised to reduce violence in Veracruz state and, in Michoacán, financed a gubernatorial race and many municipal campaigns across the state.
In Veracruz, the FBI report said, Gov. Fidel Herrera made a deal with the cartel letting it secure a drug route through the state. In an interview, Mr. Herrera said the allegation is "absolutely false, and has no basis in fact -- it never happened." The PRI politician said he has never had any dealings with a criminal organization and blamed a rival political operative, whom he declined to name, for trying to sabotage his career.
In Michoacán, the FBI report said, "in exchange for funding, the Gulf Cartel will be able to control the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, to continue to introduce cocaine and collect a 'tax'" from other Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
Control of Ports
Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, the Michoacán governor from the leftist PRD party who was in the office when the FBI said the deal was made, says the allegation is "totally false." Mr. Cárdenas Batel, grandson of the former Mexican president for whom the port is named, said Mexican ports are controlled by federal agencies, so drug traffickers have nothing to gain from bribing state officials in connection with them.
His successor, the winner of the 2007 election, is Leonel Godoy, also of the PRD. He calls the FBI allegation "an infamy" with "not a shred of evidence or any proof," and said he had never met or cut deals with drug traffickers. Messrs. Cárdenas Batel and Godoy both say they had alerted authorities before the elections about the growing infiltration of drug traffickers in Michoacán.
None of the three men -- Messrs. Cárdenas Batel, Godoy and Herrera -- have been charged with any crime. U.S. intelligence documents have occasionally proved unreliable in the past.
Police agents in Mexico City stand guard in May after a group of top officials from Michoacán were detained due to their alleged ties to 'La Familia' drug cartel. Ten mayors and 17 other officials were detained.
The Gulf Cartel doesn't appear to be the only gang with alleged influence in Michoacán officialdom. In May, soldiers and federal police arrested 10 mayors, as well as 17 police chiefs and state security officials, including a man who was in charge of the state's police-training academy. They have been charged with collaborating with "La Familia," the state's violent homegrown drug gang. Those arrested, who have said they are innocent victims of political vendettas, represented all three of Mexico's main political parties. On Monday, three more people, including the mayor of Lázaro Cárdenas, were arrested and charged with the same offense, according to the attorney general's office.
Five hundred miles to the north in the wealthy Monterrey suburb of San Pedro Garza GarcÃa, a mayoral candidate from President Calderón's party sparked a scandal in June when he was recorded telling a gathering of supporters that security in the town was "controlled by" members of one of Mexico's most fearsome drug cartels, the Beltran Leyva gang.
The candidate, Mauricio Fernandez, seemed to suggest he would be willing to negotiate with the Beltran Leyvas if elected. "Penetration by drug traffickers is for real, and they approach every candidate who they think may win," Mr. Fernandez was recorded saying. "In my case, I made it very clear to them that I didn't want blatant selling."
Mr. Fernandez has acknowledged the audiotape's authenticity, but says his statements were taken out of context and that he had never met with members of the Beltran Leyva cartel. He says the full tape captures him saying he would not negotiate with the drug traffickers. As the election nears, he leads polls by a wide margin.
Meanwhile, in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, Mayor David Monreal of the town of Fresnillo denied having anything to do with 14.5 tons of marijuana police found months ago in a chili-pepper-drying facility owned by his brother. Mr. Monreal, who plans to seek the governorship next year, said his political enemies planted the mammoth stash.
In the campaign, the state of Mexico's economy appears to trump the drug issue for many voters. The economy is shrinking amid slumps in oil production, in exports to the U.S., in tourism and in remittances from emigrants. Polls give the PRI, the party that ruled for seven decades, an advantage of about six percentage points.
The governing party has made President Calderon's campaign against drug traffickers its main theme, and polls show his policy of using the military in the effort is widely popular. But they also show a majority of Mexicans don't think he is winning the narco-war.
Drugs are certainly campaign fodder in the border state of Chihuahua, where former Ciudad Juárez Mayor Héctor MurguÃa is the PRI's candidate for a congressional seat. Two years ago, Mayor MurguÃa named as his chief of public security a businessman named Saulo Reyes Gamboa. Last year, Mr. Reyes was arrested by U.S. law-enforcement agents in El Paso, Texas, after allegedly paying someone he thought to be a corrupt U.S. federal officer to help smuggle drug loads. During the operation, federal agents found nearly half a ton of marijuana in a Texas house, which they say Mr. Reyes had arranged to smuggle from Mexico.
Mr. Reyes, who pleaded guilty and is now serving eight years in a federal prison in Kentucky, couldn't be reached for comment. Mayor MurguÃa says that he has had no involvement with the Juárez Cartel and that Mr. Reyes never contributed "even five pesos" to support his political career.
Despite the bad publicity, Mr. MurguÃa is leading in polls and is expected to win Sunday -- not unlike Mr. Anguiano, the candidate in Colima with the supposed endorsement from the Zetas.
Talking Frankly
In Colima, the candidate for governor from President Calderón's party, Martha Sosa Govea, hasn't faced any narco-tie allegations. But there has been plenty of comment about her protegé, national assembly candidate Virgilio Mendoza Amezcua, thanks to a tape of him talking frankly about politics and drug traffickers, recorded by members of a rival party he was trying to win over.
[Drug-Cartel Links Haunt Election]
"You don't imagine how many 'nice' people have relations with those drug-trafficking bastards, and through them, the bastards bring things to you," he said on the tape. "They try to seduce you....They got close to me like they get close to half the world, and they sent me money."
Mr. Mendoza declined to comment, but has previously denied he took any money from the cartels. Ms. Sosa said the tape might have been doctored, and in any case, "just because they have him on a tape getting an offer of dirty money, there's still nothing on tape proving he accepted it."
The tape was turned over to federal authorities to determine whether it had been altered. Citing the proximity to the election, the Attorney General's office declined to comment on any of the drug cases.
Colima, though largely exempt from the narco-violence raging in neighboring states, has a reputation as a haven for traffickers, a sleepy place where residents don't ask questions about rich new neighbors. In the 1980s, Colima was home to a gentleman rancher from Guadalajara whom everybody knew as Pedro Orozco. He spent lavishly on schools, gave to charity and hung around with politicians.
In 1991, Mr. Orozco was gunned down in a firefight in Guadalajara, then Mexico's drug capital. It turned out the generous man-about-town was actually Manuel Salcido Uzueta, a top drug capo better known as Cochiloco, meaning the Mad Pig.
Ever since, Colima residents have grown cynical about the influence of drug gangs in politics. "Corruption? Drug ties? They say that about everyone who runs for office. Who can you believe?" says Salvador Ochoa, a local lawyer.
Ms. Sosa has been hammering her opponent, Mr. Anguiano, with claims that he has links to drug trafficking. But, she concedes, the response of many voters is, "Poor guy, why don't they just leave him alone?"
Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com and Jose de Cordoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com
Amnesty International Accuses Israel and Hamas of War Crimes in Gaza
By ALAN COWELL
PARIS — Amnesty International on Thursday accused both Israel and Hamas, the militant movement that controls Gaza, of committing war crimes during the three weeks of fighting there early this year.
The human rights group singled out what it called the “unprecedented” scale and intensity of the Israeli onslaught and the “unlawful” Palestinian use of rockets against Israeli civilians.
Both Hamas and Israel rejected the report as unbalanced.
The Israeli military suggested that the “slant” of the report “indicates that the organization succumbed to the manipulations” of Hamas. Moreover, it said in a statement, the report ignored Israeli efforts to minimize civilian casualties.
The statement also said Israel’s investigations into the behavior of its forces during the war in late December and January proved that the military “operated throughout the fighting in accordance with international law, maintaining high ethical and professional standards.” It acknowledged, however, that the inquiries “found a few, unfortunate incidents” resulting from Hamas’s decision “to fight from within civilian population centers.”
A Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, quoted by The Associated Press, declared: “The report equated the victim and the executioner and denied our people’s right to resist the occupation. The report ignores the scale of destruction and serious crimes committed by the occupation in Gaza and provides a misleading description in order to reduce the magnitude of the Israeli crimes.”
The Amnesty International report was the second this week by an international human rights organization calling into question Israeli military practices in the Gaza war.
A report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch said 29 civilians were killed in what appeared to be six missile strikes by Israeli drones. The group questioned whether Israeli forces had taken “all feasible precautions” to avoid civilian casualties. Israel’s military has never acknowledged using the remotely piloted planes to fire missiles.
Amnesty International, which is based in London, released its 117-page report on Thursday. It explicitly rejected Israeli claims that Hamas used civilians as human shields but said that in several cases, Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians, including children, as “human shields, endangering their lives by forcing them to remain in or near houses which they took over and used as military positions.”
“The scale and intensity of the attacks on Gaza were unprecedented,” the report said, citing the deaths of hundreds of unarmed civilians, including many children.
Referring to breaches of the “laws of war” in the conflict, Amnesty International said Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel — cited by Israel as its reason for invading Gaza — killed three civilians, wounded scores and drove “thousands from their homes.”
“For its part, Hamas has continued to justify the rocket attacks launched daily by its fighters and by other Palestinian armed groups into towns and villages in southern Israel during the 22-day conflict,” Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty International official who led an investigation team in Gaza and southern Israel in January and February, said in a statement. “Though less lethal, these attacks, using unguided rockets which cannot be directed at specific targets, violated international humanitarian law and cannot be justified under any circumstance.”
PARIS — Amnesty International on Thursday accused both Israel and Hamas, the militant movement that controls Gaza, of committing war crimes during the three weeks of fighting there early this year.
The human rights group singled out what it called the “unprecedented” scale and intensity of the Israeli onslaught and the “unlawful” Palestinian use of rockets against Israeli civilians.
Both Hamas and Israel rejected the report as unbalanced.
The Israeli military suggested that the “slant” of the report “indicates that the organization succumbed to the manipulations” of Hamas. Moreover, it said in a statement, the report ignored Israeli efforts to minimize civilian casualties.
The statement also said Israel’s investigations into the behavior of its forces during the war in late December and January proved that the military “operated throughout the fighting in accordance with international law, maintaining high ethical and professional standards.” It acknowledged, however, that the inquiries “found a few, unfortunate incidents” resulting from Hamas’s decision “to fight from within civilian population centers.”
A Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, quoted by The Associated Press, declared: “The report equated the victim and the executioner and denied our people’s right to resist the occupation. The report ignores the scale of destruction and serious crimes committed by the occupation in Gaza and provides a misleading description in order to reduce the magnitude of the Israeli crimes.”
The Amnesty International report was the second this week by an international human rights organization calling into question Israeli military practices in the Gaza war.
A report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch said 29 civilians were killed in what appeared to be six missile strikes by Israeli drones. The group questioned whether Israeli forces had taken “all feasible precautions” to avoid civilian casualties. Israel’s military has never acknowledged using the remotely piloted planes to fire missiles.
Amnesty International, which is based in London, released its 117-page report on Thursday. It explicitly rejected Israeli claims that Hamas used civilians as human shields but said that in several cases, Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians, including children, as “human shields, endangering their lives by forcing them to remain in or near houses which they took over and used as military positions.”
“The scale and intensity of the attacks on Gaza were unprecedented,” the report said, citing the deaths of hundreds of unarmed civilians, including many children.
Referring to breaches of the “laws of war” in the conflict, Amnesty International said Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel — cited by Israel as its reason for invading Gaza — killed three civilians, wounded scores and drove “thousands from their homes.”
“For its part, Hamas has continued to justify the rocket attacks launched daily by its fighters and by other Palestinian armed groups into towns and villages in southern Israel during the 22-day conflict,” Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty International official who led an investigation team in Gaza and southern Israel in January and February, said in a statement. “Though less lethal, these attacks, using unguided rockets which cannot be directed at specific targets, violated international humanitarian law and cannot be justified under any circumstance.”
Russia’s Neighbors Resist Wooing and Bullying
By ELLEN BARRY
MOSCOW — This was supposed to be Russia’s round in the battle over its backyard. All year, despite its own economic spasms, Moscow has earmarked great chunks of cash for its impoverished post-Soviet neighbors, seeking to lock in their loyalty over the long term and curtail Western influence in the region.
But the neighbors seem to have other ideas. Belarus — which was promised $2 billion in Russian aid — is in open rebellion against the Kremlin, flaunting its preference for Europe while also collecting money from the International Monetary Fund. Uzbekistan joined Belarus in refusing to sign an agreement on the Collective Rapid Reaction Forces, an idea Moscow sees as an eventual counterweight to NATO.
There are other examples, like Turkmenistan’s May signing of a gas exploration deal with a German company, and Armenia’s awarding of a major national honor to Moscow’s nemesis, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia. But the biggest came last week when Kyrgyzstan — set to receive $2.15 billion in Russian aid — reversed a decision that had been seen as a coup for Moscow, last winter’s order terminating the American military’s use of the Manas Air Base there.
“A game of chance has developed in the post-Soviet space: Who can swindle the Kremlin in the coolest way?” wrote the military analyst Aleksandr Golts, when news of the Manas decision broke. “Such a brilliant result of Russia’s four-year diplomatic efforts!”
There are few projects that matter more to Russia than restoring its influence in the former Soviet republics, whose loss to many in Moscow is still as painful as a phantom limb. Competition over Georgia and Ukraine has brought relations between Moscow and Washington to a post-cold-war low, and the matter is bound to be central to the talks that begin on Monday between Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, and President Obama.
Russia’s ability to attract its neighbors to its side and keep them there is unimpressive. The Kremlin’s methods have been reactive and often bullying, combining incentives like cheap energy or cash disbursement with threats of trade sanctions and gas cutoffs.
The war in Georgia seems to have hurt Moscow in that regard. Rather than being cowed into obedience, as most Western observers feared, the former republics seem to have grown even more protective of their sovereignty. Moreover, the leaders themselves have thrived by playing Russia and the West and, in some cases, China off against one another, although that has not brought stability or prosperity to their countries.
In Moscow’s so-called zone of privileged interests, in other words, Russia is just another competitor.
“There is no loyalty,” said Oksana Antonenko, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in London. “Rivalry is the persistent dynamic. They have to play in that game, to compete.”
Kyrgyzstan’s reversal on Manas is a case study in canny horse trading. Russian officials, including Mr. Medvedev, have said they blessed the decision, and that may be true, but President Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev is the one who walked away with what he wanted.
Moscow wanted the base, a key transit hub for the United States’ war in Afghanistan, shut down; Kyrgyzstan wanted more money. In February, Moscow seemed to have achieved a master stroke — at a news conference announcing the pledge of $2.15 billion in Russian aid, Mr. Bakiyev said the United States would have to leave Manas in six months.
The first Russian payments — a $150 million emergency grant and a $300 million low-interest loan — arrived in April, allowing Mr. Bakiyev to pay wages and pensions as he began his re-election campaign. Then Kyrgyzstan shocked the region by announcing a new agreement with the United States. Washington will pay more than triple the rent for the base — now called a “transit center” — increasing its annual payment to $60 million from $17.4 million, while kicking in upwards of $50 million in grants to the government. No one knows if the Kremlin will make good on the rest of its pledge.
Mr. Bakiyev “played the Russians, then he played us,” said Alexander A. Cooley, an associate professor of political science at Barnard College who addressed the Manas dispute in a recent book, “Base Politics.” “It’s all about getting as much as they can.”
This should be easier for Russia, which dwarfs its Eurasian neighbors in both size and wealth. Russia retains a military presence in more than half the former Soviet countries, and huge swaths of their populations rely on Russian media for their news. Russia can offer muscular assistance in elections, as in Moldova, which has just received a Russian pledge of $500 million four weeks before voters go to the polls to elect a new Parliament.
But Russia’s strategy for consolidating support in neighboring capitals can hardly be called a strategy. Belarus’s president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who is avidly pursuing Western partners, has been barraged with carrots and sticks from Moscow — first promised $2 billion in Russian aid, then bitterly chastised for his economic policy, then punished with a crippling ban on the import of milk products, then rewarded by a reversal of the import ban. Russia regards Mr. Lukashenko’s truculence as a bluff.
“He is imitating a quarrel with Russia until the West demands serious changes from his regime, at which point, he will, of course, surrender,” said Parliament member Konstantin F. Zatulin, a standard-bearer for Russia’s ambitions in former Soviet space. “It’s just his greedy line of behavior.”
But the examples extend much farther. Every post-Soviet country that can manage it is pursuing a “multivector policy,” Mr. Zatulin acknowledged. Mr. Zatulin said he was not upset by these tacks away from Russia, but there was an edge to his answer.
“What is the point of being disappointed?” Mr. Zatulin said. “Pride comes before a fall. These are weak, dependent and poor countries which want to attract attention to themselves — not only attention, but aid. I cannot criticize them for that. But there are some red lines that shouldn’t be crossed.”
Herein lies the problem: Russia’s appeal to them just does not sound very seductive. Ideally, it would present an attractive model for its neighbors, politically and economically. Young generations would learn Russian because they wanted to, and the post-Soviet alliances would be clubs its neighbors are lining up to join.
In any case, Moscow will have to use tools other than wire transfers if it hopes to emerge from the financial crisis with a solid political bloc. As Alexei Mukhin, director of the nonprofit Center for Political Information, put it, “Love bought with money will not last long.
“That is purchased love,” he said. “It’s not very reliable.”
MOSCOW — This was supposed to be Russia’s round in the battle over its backyard. All year, despite its own economic spasms, Moscow has earmarked great chunks of cash for its impoverished post-Soviet neighbors, seeking to lock in their loyalty over the long term and curtail Western influence in the region.
But the neighbors seem to have other ideas. Belarus — which was promised $2 billion in Russian aid — is in open rebellion against the Kremlin, flaunting its preference for Europe while also collecting money from the International Monetary Fund. Uzbekistan joined Belarus in refusing to sign an agreement on the Collective Rapid Reaction Forces, an idea Moscow sees as an eventual counterweight to NATO.
There are other examples, like Turkmenistan’s May signing of a gas exploration deal with a German company, and Armenia’s awarding of a major national honor to Moscow’s nemesis, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia. But the biggest came last week when Kyrgyzstan — set to receive $2.15 billion in Russian aid — reversed a decision that had been seen as a coup for Moscow, last winter’s order terminating the American military’s use of the Manas Air Base there.
“A game of chance has developed in the post-Soviet space: Who can swindle the Kremlin in the coolest way?” wrote the military analyst Aleksandr Golts, when news of the Manas decision broke. “Such a brilliant result of Russia’s four-year diplomatic efforts!”
There are few projects that matter more to Russia than restoring its influence in the former Soviet republics, whose loss to many in Moscow is still as painful as a phantom limb. Competition over Georgia and Ukraine has brought relations between Moscow and Washington to a post-cold-war low, and the matter is bound to be central to the talks that begin on Monday between Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, and President Obama.
Russia’s ability to attract its neighbors to its side and keep them there is unimpressive. The Kremlin’s methods have been reactive and often bullying, combining incentives like cheap energy or cash disbursement with threats of trade sanctions and gas cutoffs.
The war in Georgia seems to have hurt Moscow in that regard. Rather than being cowed into obedience, as most Western observers feared, the former republics seem to have grown even more protective of their sovereignty. Moreover, the leaders themselves have thrived by playing Russia and the West and, in some cases, China off against one another, although that has not brought stability or prosperity to their countries.
In Moscow’s so-called zone of privileged interests, in other words, Russia is just another competitor.
“There is no loyalty,” said Oksana Antonenko, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in London. “Rivalry is the persistent dynamic. They have to play in that game, to compete.”
Kyrgyzstan’s reversal on Manas is a case study in canny horse trading. Russian officials, including Mr. Medvedev, have said they blessed the decision, and that may be true, but President Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev is the one who walked away with what he wanted.
Moscow wanted the base, a key transit hub for the United States’ war in Afghanistan, shut down; Kyrgyzstan wanted more money. In February, Moscow seemed to have achieved a master stroke — at a news conference announcing the pledge of $2.15 billion in Russian aid, Mr. Bakiyev said the United States would have to leave Manas in six months.
The first Russian payments — a $150 million emergency grant and a $300 million low-interest loan — arrived in April, allowing Mr. Bakiyev to pay wages and pensions as he began his re-election campaign. Then Kyrgyzstan shocked the region by announcing a new agreement with the United States. Washington will pay more than triple the rent for the base — now called a “transit center” — increasing its annual payment to $60 million from $17.4 million, while kicking in upwards of $50 million in grants to the government. No one knows if the Kremlin will make good on the rest of its pledge.
Mr. Bakiyev “played the Russians, then he played us,” said Alexander A. Cooley, an associate professor of political science at Barnard College who addressed the Manas dispute in a recent book, “Base Politics.” “It’s all about getting as much as they can.”
This should be easier for Russia, which dwarfs its Eurasian neighbors in both size and wealth. Russia retains a military presence in more than half the former Soviet countries, and huge swaths of their populations rely on Russian media for their news. Russia can offer muscular assistance in elections, as in Moldova, which has just received a Russian pledge of $500 million four weeks before voters go to the polls to elect a new Parliament.
But Russia’s strategy for consolidating support in neighboring capitals can hardly be called a strategy. Belarus’s president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who is avidly pursuing Western partners, has been barraged with carrots and sticks from Moscow — first promised $2 billion in Russian aid, then bitterly chastised for his economic policy, then punished with a crippling ban on the import of milk products, then rewarded by a reversal of the import ban. Russia regards Mr. Lukashenko’s truculence as a bluff.
“He is imitating a quarrel with Russia until the West demands serious changes from his regime, at which point, he will, of course, surrender,” said Parliament member Konstantin F. Zatulin, a standard-bearer for Russia’s ambitions in former Soviet space. “It’s just his greedy line of behavior.”
But the examples extend much farther. Every post-Soviet country that can manage it is pursuing a “multivector policy,” Mr. Zatulin acknowledged. Mr. Zatulin said he was not upset by these tacks away from Russia, but there was an edge to his answer.
“What is the point of being disappointed?” Mr. Zatulin said. “Pride comes before a fall. These are weak, dependent and poor countries which want to attract attention to themselves — not only attention, but aid. I cannot criticize them for that. But there are some red lines that shouldn’t be crossed.”
Herein lies the problem: Russia’s appeal to them just does not sound very seductive. Ideally, it would present an attractive model for its neighbors, politically and economically. Young generations would learn Russian because they wanted to, and the post-Soviet alliances would be clubs its neighbors are lining up to join.
In any case, Moscow will have to use tools other than wire transfers if it hopes to emerge from the financial crisis with a solid political bloc. As Alexei Mukhin, director of the nonprofit Center for Political Information, put it, “Love bought with money will not last long.
“That is purchased love,” he said. “It’s not very reliable.”
Head Scarf, or Jilbab, Emerges as Indonesia Political Symbol
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
JAKARTA, Indonesia — The three parties competing in Indonesia’s presidential election next week have plastered this city with campaign billboards and posters depicting, predictably, their presidential and vice presidential choices looking self-confident.
But one party, Golkar, has also put up posters of the candidates’ wives next to their husbands, posing demurely and wearing Muslim head scarves known here as jilbabs. The wives recently went on a jilbab shopping spree in one of Jakarta’s largest markets, and published a book together titled “Devout Wives of Future Leaders.”
Most polls suggest that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of the Democratic Party will be re-elected in next Wednesday’s vote, after running a smooth campaign based on his economic policies and a popular anticorruption drive. Despite television debates, the personality-driven campaigns have focused little on differences over policies or ideas, except regarding the wearing of the jilbab.
It is perhaps not surprising that the jilbab, the Islamic style of dress in which a woman covers her head and neck, has become an issue in a presidential campaign this year. Jilbab sales have been booming for three years across a country where women have traditionally gone unveiled, and where the meaning of wearing the jilbab — or not wearing one — remains fluid. The issue also cuts to a central, unresolved debate in Indonesia’s decade-old democracy: the role of Islam in politics.
“It’s the first time that the jilbab has become an issue in a presidential campaign in Indonesia,” said Siti Musdah Mulia, a professor of Islamic studies at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University here and a leading proponent of women’s rights. “There are so many more important issues that should be addressed in the campaign,” said Ms. Mulia, who has worn a jilbab for eight years. “Why this one?”
But it would not be the first time that politicians tried to co-opt religious symbols to win votes. The ruckus over the jilbab began a few months ago when Mr. Yudhoyono, whose wife, Kristiani Herawati, does not wear a jilbab, and Vice President Jusuf Kalla, whose wife, Mufidah, does, decided not to run together again.
The president selected as his new vice presidential running mate a respected central banker, Boediono, whose wife, Herawati, goes unveiled. Mr. Kalla, in turn, decided to run for president as the Golkar Party’s standard-bearer and picked as his No. 2 a retired general, Wiranto, whose wife, Rugaya, is veiled. (Many Indonesians go by only one name.)
Perhaps sensing an opening as it trailed in the polls, the Golkar Party soon put up posters of the veiled wives. With the news media in tow, the wives went shopping together for jilbabs at Tanah Abang, the city’s largest textile market, where the general’s wife was known as a regular, but Mr. Kalla’s wife was not.
Golkar Party officials rejected accusations by the president’s party that they were trying to exploit Islam for politics; they also denied having anything to do with the recent distribution of leaflets that stated, falsely, that Boediono’s wife was not Muslim, but Roman Catholic.
President Yudhoyono was also getting pressure from a current coalition ally, the Prosperous Justice Party, the country’s largest Islamic party. A party leader said that members were gravitating toward the Golkar candidates because of their jilbab-wearing wives.
The country’s Islamic parties have core supporters that are coveted by the major parties, though the Islamic parties have failed to make inroads among mainstream voters. In fact, in April’s parliamentary elections, they suffered a steep drop in support compared with five years ago, a decline interpreted as mainstream voters’ rejection of Islam in politics.
Neng Dara Affiah, an official at Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s largest Islamic organization, which espouses moderate Islam, said the fight over the meaning of wearing the jilbab was taking place between “fundamentalists” and “progressives.”
The fundamentalists are trying to force women to wear the jilbab as an act of submission, and had already done so in various municipalities across the Indonesian archipelago in recent years, Ms. Neng said. For the progressives, she said, wearing the jilbab was an expression of a woman’s right.
“For women in Indonesia, whether they want to wear the jilbab or not is their choice,” said Ms. Neng, who started wearing one five years ago. “It shouldn’t be political.”
Despite being the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia does not have a tradition of Islamic dress. Most Indonesian women started wearing the jilbab in the last decade, after the fall in 1998 of President Suharto, who had kept a close grip on Islamic groups.
Fashion and clothing industry experts said the number of women wearing jilbabs rose sharply in the past three years, for reasons of religion, fashion or something undefined.
“If you ask 10 different women why they’re wearing jilbab, you’ll get 10 different answers,” said Jetti R. Hadi, the editor in chief of Noor, a magazine specializing in Muslim fashion, which features jilbab-clad models on its cover. “You cannot assume that because a woman is wearing a jilbab, she’s a good Muslim.”
At Tanah Abang, the market where the political wives shopped for jilbabs, many small shop owners had recently switched from selling Western clothes to jilbabs to capitalize on the boom. One shop owner, Syafnir, 53, said 7 of his 15 relatives working in the market had begun to sell jilbabs in the past two years. He himself now has two stores; the second opened just two months ago.
Asked whether faith was fueling the boom, he shook his head emphatically. Fashion was, he said, an answer echoed by others in the market.
Deni Sartika, 36, who was shopping with her mother and young daughter, all three of them veiled, said she started wearing a jilbab in 1991, long before most Indonesian women did. She was a member of the Prosperous Justice Party, the Islamic party that supports President Yudhoyono.
Ms. Deni said she would vote for Mr. Yudhoyono and his vice president even though their wives did not wear jilbabs.
“I’m looking at the candidates themselves instead of their wives,” she said, before adding, “but we’d be happy if the wives wore jilbabs.”
JAKARTA, Indonesia — The three parties competing in Indonesia’s presidential election next week have plastered this city with campaign billboards and posters depicting, predictably, their presidential and vice presidential choices looking self-confident.
But one party, Golkar, has also put up posters of the candidates’ wives next to their husbands, posing demurely and wearing Muslim head scarves known here as jilbabs. The wives recently went on a jilbab shopping spree in one of Jakarta’s largest markets, and published a book together titled “Devout Wives of Future Leaders.”
Most polls suggest that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of the Democratic Party will be re-elected in next Wednesday’s vote, after running a smooth campaign based on his economic policies and a popular anticorruption drive. Despite television debates, the personality-driven campaigns have focused little on differences over policies or ideas, except regarding the wearing of the jilbab.
It is perhaps not surprising that the jilbab, the Islamic style of dress in which a woman covers her head and neck, has become an issue in a presidential campaign this year. Jilbab sales have been booming for three years across a country where women have traditionally gone unveiled, and where the meaning of wearing the jilbab — or not wearing one — remains fluid. The issue also cuts to a central, unresolved debate in Indonesia’s decade-old democracy: the role of Islam in politics.
“It’s the first time that the jilbab has become an issue in a presidential campaign in Indonesia,” said Siti Musdah Mulia, a professor of Islamic studies at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University here and a leading proponent of women’s rights. “There are so many more important issues that should be addressed in the campaign,” said Ms. Mulia, who has worn a jilbab for eight years. “Why this one?”
But it would not be the first time that politicians tried to co-opt religious symbols to win votes. The ruckus over the jilbab began a few months ago when Mr. Yudhoyono, whose wife, Kristiani Herawati, does not wear a jilbab, and Vice President Jusuf Kalla, whose wife, Mufidah, does, decided not to run together again.
The president selected as his new vice presidential running mate a respected central banker, Boediono, whose wife, Herawati, goes unveiled. Mr. Kalla, in turn, decided to run for president as the Golkar Party’s standard-bearer and picked as his No. 2 a retired general, Wiranto, whose wife, Rugaya, is veiled. (Many Indonesians go by only one name.)
Perhaps sensing an opening as it trailed in the polls, the Golkar Party soon put up posters of the veiled wives. With the news media in tow, the wives went shopping together for jilbabs at Tanah Abang, the city’s largest textile market, where the general’s wife was known as a regular, but Mr. Kalla’s wife was not.
Golkar Party officials rejected accusations by the president’s party that they were trying to exploit Islam for politics; they also denied having anything to do with the recent distribution of leaflets that stated, falsely, that Boediono’s wife was not Muslim, but Roman Catholic.
President Yudhoyono was also getting pressure from a current coalition ally, the Prosperous Justice Party, the country’s largest Islamic party. A party leader said that members were gravitating toward the Golkar candidates because of their jilbab-wearing wives.
The country’s Islamic parties have core supporters that are coveted by the major parties, though the Islamic parties have failed to make inroads among mainstream voters. In fact, in April’s parliamentary elections, they suffered a steep drop in support compared with five years ago, a decline interpreted as mainstream voters’ rejection of Islam in politics.
Neng Dara Affiah, an official at Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s largest Islamic organization, which espouses moderate Islam, said the fight over the meaning of wearing the jilbab was taking place between “fundamentalists” and “progressives.”
The fundamentalists are trying to force women to wear the jilbab as an act of submission, and had already done so in various municipalities across the Indonesian archipelago in recent years, Ms. Neng said. For the progressives, she said, wearing the jilbab was an expression of a woman’s right.
“For women in Indonesia, whether they want to wear the jilbab or not is their choice,” said Ms. Neng, who started wearing one five years ago. “It shouldn’t be political.”
Despite being the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia does not have a tradition of Islamic dress. Most Indonesian women started wearing the jilbab in the last decade, after the fall in 1998 of President Suharto, who had kept a close grip on Islamic groups.
Fashion and clothing industry experts said the number of women wearing jilbabs rose sharply in the past three years, for reasons of religion, fashion or something undefined.
“If you ask 10 different women why they’re wearing jilbab, you’ll get 10 different answers,” said Jetti R. Hadi, the editor in chief of Noor, a magazine specializing in Muslim fashion, which features jilbab-clad models on its cover. “You cannot assume that because a woman is wearing a jilbab, she’s a good Muslim.”
At Tanah Abang, the market where the political wives shopped for jilbabs, many small shop owners had recently switched from selling Western clothes to jilbabs to capitalize on the boom. One shop owner, Syafnir, 53, said 7 of his 15 relatives working in the market had begun to sell jilbabs in the past two years. He himself now has two stores; the second opened just two months ago.
Asked whether faith was fueling the boom, he shook his head emphatically. Fashion was, he said, an answer echoed by others in the market.
Deni Sartika, 36, who was shopping with her mother and young daughter, all three of them veiled, said she started wearing a jilbab in 1991, long before most Indonesian women did. She was a member of the Prosperous Justice Party, the Islamic party that supports President Yudhoyono.
Ms. Deni said she would vote for Mr. Yudhoyono and his vice president even though their wives did not wear jilbabs.
“I’m looking at the candidates themselves instead of their wives,” she said, before adding, “but we’d be happy if the wives wore jilbabs.”
In Iraq, Biden to Press Officials to Forge Progress
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
BAGHDAD — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. landed in Baghdad on Thursday, beginning a two-day diplomatic mission that he said was intended to “re-establish contact” with Iraqi leaders and prod them toward settling internal disputes over oil revenues and political power-sharing.
Mr. Biden’s surprise trip, just days after American combat forces officially withdrew from Iraqi cities, underscores the concern in the White House about the fragility of the security situation. President Obama has asked Mr. Biden to serve as a kind of unofficial envoy to the country, and the vice president said this would be his first in a series of trips to the region.
The trip is unusually long for such a high-level official; when Mr. Obama visited Iraq, he spent just a few hours here, and President George W. Bush did not spend more than a day. But Mr. Biden said Iraq was at a pivotal moment, “the moment where a lot of Iraqis cynically believed we’d never keep the agreement.” He said the White House wanted to send a message to Iraqi leaders that it was engaged at the highest levels.
Earlier on Thursday, the Iraqi government said it had reached a tentative agreement to buy armaments from France and had signed a series of business deals with French companies to help rebuild Iraq.
The announcements came during a visit to Baghdad by the French prime minister, François Fillon, and about 30 French business executives. In February, President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Baghdad, and in May, Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, traveled to France.
The agreements announced Thursday represent a resumption of the close ties that existed between the French and Iraqi governments during the regime of Saddam Hussein. The relationship was interrupted by the United States-led invasion in 2003, which France opposed.
The contracts call for French companies to build roads, railroads, water treatment plants and a cement factory, as well as an airport south of Baghdad between the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala to accommodate the millions of pilgrims who visit the cities each year.
The arms agreement, announced Thursday in a news release by the Iraqi government, states that the two nations intend to sign contracts to “buy, modernize and repair weapons and military equipment,” and that the French will provide training in the use of the armaments.
The release did not specify what sort of weapons Iraq intended to buy. During the 1970s and 1980s, France was a major supplier of arms to Iraq.
While Mr. Obama has hailed the withdrawal of combat troops as an “important milestone,” he has also expressed concern that the Iraqis are not moving quickly enough to forge a stable government. Just last week, Mr. Obama told reporters, “I haven’t seen as much political progress in Iraq negotiations between the Sunni, the Shia and the Kurds as I would like to see.”
Mr. Biden said he was here to deliver that message in person. “What is their plan to resolve the real differences that exist?” he asked.
But the vice president, who spent years as a senator developing relations with Iraqi officials, must now navigate a thicket of relationships within the Obama administration and avoid stepping on his colleagues’ toes as he takes on the added role of White House point man on Iraq.
Mr. Biden’s visit comes as the relationship between Baghdad and Washington is changing. Mr. Bush took a deeply personal interest in Iraq and conducted regularly scheduled secure video conference calls with Mr. Maliki. But Mr. Obama ended that practice; aides say he thought it more appropriate for his ambassador, Christopher R. Hill, and the top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, to handle such day-to-day contacts.
In putting Mr. Biden in the role of unofficial envoy, Mr. Obama may have recognized that he needed to pay greater attention to Baghdad. Mr. Biden said the job was Mr. Obama’s idea: “The president said, ‘Joe, go do it.’ ”
Mr. Biden is to meet with leaders, including Mr. Maliki, on Friday and celebrate the Fourth of July with troops. His son Beau is a captain in the Army National Guard in Iraq, and aides said the two would probably see each other at some point during the visit.
Like all high-level trips to Iraq, Mr. Biden’s journey was planned in secrecy.
Amir A. al-Obeidi, Riyadh Mohammed and Duraid Adnan contributed reporting.
BAGHDAD — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. landed in Baghdad on Thursday, beginning a two-day diplomatic mission that he said was intended to “re-establish contact” with Iraqi leaders and prod them toward settling internal disputes over oil revenues and political power-sharing.
Mr. Biden’s surprise trip, just days after American combat forces officially withdrew from Iraqi cities, underscores the concern in the White House about the fragility of the security situation. President Obama has asked Mr. Biden to serve as a kind of unofficial envoy to the country, and the vice president said this would be his first in a series of trips to the region.
The trip is unusually long for such a high-level official; when Mr. Obama visited Iraq, he spent just a few hours here, and President George W. Bush did not spend more than a day. But Mr. Biden said Iraq was at a pivotal moment, “the moment where a lot of Iraqis cynically believed we’d never keep the agreement.” He said the White House wanted to send a message to Iraqi leaders that it was engaged at the highest levels.
Earlier on Thursday, the Iraqi government said it had reached a tentative agreement to buy armaments from France and had signed a series of business deals with French companies to help rebuild Iraq.
The announcements came during a visit to Baghdad by the French prime minister, François Fillon, and about 30 French business executives. In February, President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Baghdad, and in May, Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, traveled to France.
The agreements announced Thursday represent a resumption of the close ties that existed between the French and Iraqi governments during the regime of Saddam Hussein. The relationship was interrupted by the United States-led invasion in 2003, which France opposed.
The contracts call for French companies to build roads, railroads, water treatment plants and a cement factory, as well as an airport south of Baghdad between the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala to accommodate the millions of pilgrims who visit the cities each year.
The arms agreement, announced Thursday in a news release by the Iraqi government, states that the two nations intend to sign contracts to “buy, modernize and repair weapons and military equipment,” and that the French will provide training in the use of the armaments.
The release did not specify what sort of weapons Iraq intended to buy. During the 1970s and 1980s, France was a major supplier of arms to Iraq.
While Mr. Obama has hailed the withdrawal of combat troops as an “important milestone,” he has also expressed concern that the Iraqis are not moving quickly enough to forge a stable government. Just last week, Mr. Obama told reporters, “I haven’t seen as much political progress in Iraq negotiations between the Sunni, the Shia and the Kurds as I would like to see.”
Mr. Biden said he was here to deliver that message in person. “What is their plan to resolve the real differences that exist?” he asked.
But the vice president, who spent years as a senator developing relations with Iraqi officials, must now navigate a thicket of relationships within the Obama administration and avoid stepping on his colleagues’ toes as he takes on the added role of White House point man on Iraq.
Mr. Biden’s visit comes as the relationship between Baghdad and Washington is changing. Mr. Bush took a deeply personal interest in Iraq and conducted regularly scheduled secure video conference calls with Mr. Maliki. But Mr. Obama ended that practice; aides say he thought it more appropriate for his ambassador, Christopher R. Hill, and the top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, to handle such day-to-day contacts.
In putting Mr. Biden in the role of unofficial envoy, Mr. Obama may have recognized that he needed to pay greater attention to Baghdad. Mr. Biden said the job was Mr. Obama’s idea: “The president said, ‘Joe, go do it.’ ”
Mr. Biden is to meet with leaders, including Mr. Maliki, on Friday and celebrate the Fourth of July with troops. His son Beau is a captain in the Army National Guard in Iraq, and aides said the two would probably see each other at some point during the visit.
Like all high-level trips to Iraq, Mr. Biden’s journey was planned in secrecy.
Amir A. al-Obeidi, Riyadh Mohammed and Duraid Adnan contributed reporting.
For Hispanic Firefighter in New Haven Bias Suit, Awkward Position but Firm Resolve
By A. G. SULZBERGER
NEW HAVEN — The two dozen firefighters who packed into Humphrey’s East Restaurant were celebrating a coming marriage, drinking and jawboning in the boisterous style of large men with risky jobs, but Lt. Ben Vargas spent the evening trying to escape the tension surrounding his presence.
During a trip to the bathroom, he found himself facing another man. Without warning, the first punch landed. When Lieutenant Vargas awoke, bloodied and splayed on the grimy floor, he was taken to the hospital.
Lieutenant Vargas believes the attack, five years ago, was orchestrated by a black firefighter in retaliation for his having joined a racial discrimination lawsuit against the city over its tossing out of an exam for promotion that few minority firefighters passed. (No arrests were made in the attack, and the black firefighter vigorously denies having been involved.)
When the Hispanic firefighters’ association and its members — including Lieutenant Vargas’s brother — refused to publicly stand behind him, he quit the organization.
Lieutenant Vargas, who posted the sixth-highest score on the exam, was ridiculed as a token, a turncoat and an Uncle Tom — all of which, he said, “made my resolve that much stronger.”
When the United States Supreme Court ruled this week in the firefighters’ favor, Lieutenant Vargas, 40, the son of Puerto Rican parents, found himself celebrating amid an awkward racial dynamic: As the lone Hispanic among the 18 plaintiffs who had challenged an affirmative action policy, he had also challenged an appeals court decision joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court.
“She’s from Puerto Rico, and I’m from Puerto Rico,” he said. “She obviously feels differently than I do.”
The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision is expected to have repercussions on employment discrimination law that go well beyond fire departments, where minority groups have been woefully underrepresented, particularly in leadership positions. On the steps of the federal courthouse in New Haven on Monday, a lawyer for the firefighters, Karen Lee Torre, said they had “become a symbol for millions of Americans who have grown tired of seeing individual achievement and merit take a back seat to race and ethnicity.”
For Lieutenant Vargas, the ruling will probably mean a long-awaited promotion to captain in a 350-member department that he has admired since childhood but that has been plagued for decades by racial tension and recriminations.
“I consider myself an American — I was born and raised here,” he said in an interview on the porch of his home in the wooded suburb of Wallingford. “I love my people. I love my culture. I love our rice and beans, our salsa music, our language — everything my parents raised us with. But I am so grateful for the opportunity only the United States can give.”
He grew up in the troubled Fair Haven neighborhood of New Haven, a complicated city known for Yale University but also for urban decay, high crime rates and failed prospects, roots he sees as similar to Judge Sotomayor’s in a Bronx public housing project.
His father was a factory worker, and his mother took care of the couple’s three children. (In addition to his brother, David, who did not respond to interview requests, he has a sister who now lives in Puerto Rico.) The family spoke Spanish at home, making his adjustment to school “traumatic,” he said.
Lieutenant Vargas decided to follow the path of an older friend, John Marquez, whom he looked up to. Mr. Marquez had worked his way out of the neighborhood by joining the Fire Department.
“I used to tell him, ‘You know where I came from — if I can make it, anyone can,’ ” Mr. Marquez, now a deputy chief in the department, said in an interview. “ ‘But don’t expect anything to be handed to you. Work for it.’ ”
But Lieutenant Vargas’s aspirations were stymied by a 1988 lawsuit, filed by black firefighters, that shut down hiring for years. The lawsuit challenged a written test that relatively few nonwhites passed. In 1994, the city agreed to disregard the test, over union complaints, and hire 40 firefighters — 20 white, 10 black and 10 Hispanic, according to The New Haven Register.
Lieutenant Vargas was among those hired. That later led some people to criticize him as trying to shut the door that welcomed him, though he maintained that it was impossible to know how he would have done under the old hiring process.
He was promoted to lieutenant in 2000, and he now leads a four-person crew at a red-brick single-engine firehouse not far from where he grew up. He also works part time as a consultant for a company that sells equipment for firefighters.
“When I leave the firehouse, I bring it home with me,” he said. “I read about it. Think about it. I love this job. I don’t think there’s anything else I could do better.”
In 2003, Lieutenant Vargas was one of 56 people in the department who passed a test for promotion; 15 were black or Hispanic. When city officials discovered that only two of those were likely to be immediately promoted, they decided to throw out the test, citing concerns that minority candidates might again sue, alleging discrimination.
Instead, a group of white firefighters sued. The results had been posted by race, without names, and when Lieutenant Vargas learned that a Hispanic firefighter had scored sixth among 41 lieutenants on the test to become a captain, he joined the suit. Only later did he discover that the score was his.
“I would have carried the load all by myself,” he said of filing the suit. “Luckily there were enough people out there who felt like I did that we could stand together.”
But Lieutenant Vargas bore more than his share of the criticism, said Lt. Matthew Marcarelli, who was among the plaintiffs and has known Lieutenant Vargas since they were classmates at the fire academy. “Why the other guys viewed him as a turncoat I really don’t understand. He did it because he’s principled and he thought it was the right thing to do. Benny’s nobody’s token.”
Chief Marquez said his old protégé was “an easy target because he didn’t fall in line.”
“It seems that if you’re not the right type of minority, you get hammered,” he said.
The president of the black firefighters’ group in New Haven did not return calls seeking comment.
Despite the ugly episode at Humphrey’s East shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Lieutenant Vargas said that little tension remained in the department, and that he was hopeful that the court decision would end the rest.
He noted that the Hispanic firefighters’ association reversed course in February, after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and publicly endorsed his position.
Gesturing toward his three young sons, Lieutenant Vargas explained why he had no regrets. “I want them to have a fair shake, to get a job on their merits and not because they’re Hispanic or they fill a quota,” he said. “What a lousy way to live.”
NEW HAVEN — The two dozen firefighters who packed into Humphrey’s East Restaurant were celebrating a coming marriage, drinking and jawboning in the boisterous style of large men with risky jobs, but Lt. Ben Vargas spent the evening trying to escape the tension surrounding his presence.
During a trip to the bathroom, he found himself facing another man. Without warning, the first punch landed. When Lieutenant Vargas awoke, bloodied and splayed on the grimy floor, he was taken to the hospital.
Lieutenant Vargas believes the attack, five years ago, was orchestrated by a black firefighter in retaliation for his having joined a racial discrimination lawsuit against the city over its tossing out of an exam for promotion that few minority firefighters passed. (No arrests were made in the attack, and the black firefighter vigorously denies having been involved.)
When the Hispanic firefighters’ association and its members — including Lieutenant Vargas’s brother — refused to publicly stand behind him, he quit the organization.
Lieutenant Vargas, who posted the sixth-highest score on the exam, was ridiculed as a token, a turncoat and an Uncle Tom — all of which, he said, “made my resolve that much stronger.”
When the United States Supreme Court ruled this week in the firefighters’ favor, Lieutenant Vargas, 40, the son of Puerto Rican parents, found himself celebrating amid an awkward racial dynamic: As the lone Hispanic among the 18 plaintiffs who had challenged an affirmative action policy, he had also challenged an appeals court decision joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court.
“She’s from Puerto Rico, and I’m from Puerto Rico,” he said. “She obviously feels differently than I do.”
The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision is expected to have repercussions on employment discrimination law that go well beyond fire departments, where minority groups have been woefully underrepresented, particularly in leadership positions. On the steps of the federal courthouse in New Haven on Monday, a lawyer for the firefighters, Karen Lee Torre, said they had “become a symbol for millions of Americans who have grown tired of seeing individual achievement and merit take a back seat to race and ethnicity.”
For Lieutenant Vargas, the ruling will probably mean a long-awaited promotion to captain in a 350-member department that he has admired since childhood but that has been plagued for decades by racial tension and recriminations.
“I consider myself an American — I was born and raised here,” he said in an interview on the porch of his home in the wooded suburb of Wallingford. “I love my people. I love my culture. I love our rice and beans, our salsa music, our language — everything my parents raised us with. But I am so grateful for the opportunity only the United States can give.”
He grew up in the troubled Fair Haven neighborhood of New Haven, a complicated city known for Yale University but also for urban decay, high crime rates and failed prospects, roots he sees as similar to Judge Sotomayor’s in a Bronx public housing project.
His father was a factory worker, and his mother took care of the couple’s three children. (In addition to his brother, David, who did not respond to interview requests, he has a sister who now lives in Puerto Rico.) The family spoke Spanish at home, making his adjustment to school “traumatic,” he said.
Lieutenant Vargas decided to follow the path of an older friend, John Marquez, whom he looked up to. Mr. Marquez had worked his way out of the neighborhood by joining the Fire Department.
“I used to tell him, ‘You know where I came from — if I can make it, anyone can,’ ” Mr. Marquez, now a deputy chief in the department, said in an interview. “ ‘But don’t expect anything to be handed to you. Work for it.’ ”
But Lieutenant Vargas’s aspirations were stymied by a 1988 lawsuit, filed by black firefighters, that shut down hiring for years. The lawsuit challenged a written test that relatively few nonwhites passed. In 1994, the city agreed to disregard the test, over union complaints, and hire 40 firefighters — 20 white, 10 black and 10 Hispanic, according to The New Haven Register.
Lieutenant Vargas was among those hired. That later led some people to criticize him as trying to shut the door that welcomed him, though he maintained that it was impossible to know how he would have done under the old hiring process.
He was promoted to lieutenant in 2000, and he now leads a four-person crew at a red-brick single-engine firehouse not far from where he grew up. He also works part time as a consultant for a company that sells equipment for firefighters.
“When I leave the firehouse, I bring it home with me,” he said. “I read about it. Think about it. I love this job. I don’t think there’s anything else I could do better.”
In 2003, Lieutenant Vargas was one of 56 people in the department who passed a test for promotion; 15 were black or Hispanic. When city officials discovered that only two of those were likely to be immediately promoted, they decided to throw out the test, citing concerns that minority candidates might again sue, alleging discrimination.
Instead, a group of white firefighters sued. The results had been posted by race, without names, and when Lieutenant Vargas learned that a Hispanic firefighter had scored sixth among 41 lieutenants on the test to become a captain, he joined the suit. Only later did he discover that the score was his.
“I would have carried the load all by myself,” he said of filing the suit. “Luckily there were enough people out there who felt like I did that we could stand together.”
But Lieutenant Vargas bore more than his share of the criticism, said Lt. Matthew Marcarelli, who was among the plaintiffs and has known Lieutenant Vargas since they were classmates at the fire academy. “Why the other guys viewed him as a turncoat I really don’t understand. He did it because he’s principled and he thought it was the right thing to do. Benny’s nobody’s token.”
Chief Marquez said his old protégé was “an easy target because he didn’t fall in line.”
“It seems that if you’re not the right type of minority, you get hammered,” he said.
The president of the black firefighters’ group in New Haven did not return calls seeking comment.
Despite the ugly episode at Humphrey’s East shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Lieutenant Vargas said that little tension remained in the department, and that he was hopeful that the court decision would end the rest.
He noted that the Hispanic firefighters’ association reversed course in February, after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and publicly endorsed his position.
Gesturing toward his three young sons, Lieutenant Vargas explained why he had no regrets. “I want them to have a fair shake, to get a job on their merits and not because they’re Hispanic or they fill a quota,” he said. “What a lousy way to live.”
U.S. Shifts Strategy on Illicit Work by Immigrants
By JULIA PRESTON
Immigration authorities had bad news this week for American Apparel, the T-shirt maker based in downtown Los Angeles: About 1,800 of its employees appeared to be illegal immigrants not authorized to work in the United States.
But in contrast to the high-profile raids that marked the enforcement approach of the Bush administration, no federal agents with criminal warrants stormed the company’s factories and rounded up employees. Instead, the federal immigration agency sent American Apparel a written notice that it faced civil fines and would have to fire any workers confirmed to be unauthorized.
The treatment of American Apparel, which has more than 5,600 factory employees in Los Angeles alone, is the most prominent demonstration of a new strategy by the Obama administration to curb the employment of illegal immigrants by focusing on employers who hire them — and doing so in a less confrontational manner than in years past.
Unlike the approach of the Bush administration, which brought criminal charges in its final two years against many illegal immigrant workers, the new effort makes broader use of fines and other civil sanctions, federal officials said Thursday.
Federal agents will concentrate on businesses employing large numbers of workers suspected of being illegal immigrants, the officials said, and will reserve tough criminal charges mostly for employers who serially hire illegal immigrants and engage in wage and labor violations.
“These actions underscore our commitment to targeting employers that cultivate illegal work forces by knowingly hiring and exploiting illegal workers,” said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
On Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency known as ICE, said it had sent notices announcing audits of hiring records, like the one it conducted at American Apparel, to 652 other companies across the country. Officials said they were picking up the pace of such audits, after performing 503 of them in 2008.
The names of other companies that received notices have not been made public. American Apparel became a window into the new enforcement tactics because, as a publicly traded company, it issued a required notice on Wednesday about the hiring audit.
The Obama administration’s new approach, unveiled in April, seems to be moving away from the raids that advocates for immigrants said had split families, disrupted businesses and traumatized communities. But the outcome will still be difficult for illegal workers, who will lose their jobs and could face deportation, the advocates said.
Immigration officials have not made clear how they intend to deal with workers who are unable to prove their legal immigration status in the course of inspections, but they said there was no moratorium on deportations.
Executives at American Apparel were both relieved and dismayed after receiving the warning from the immigration agency of discrepancies in the hiring documents of about one-third of its Los Angeles work force. The company has 30 days to dispute the agency’s claims and give immigrant employees time to prove that they are authorized to work in the United States, immigration officials said. If they cannot, the company must fire them, probably within two months.
But no criminal charges were lodged against the company and no workers have been arrested, American Apparel executives and immigration officials said.
The fines followed discussions over 18 months between federal officials and American Apparel, after immigration agents first inspected the company’s files in January 2008, said Peter Schey, an immigration lawyer representing the company. Mr. Schey said a raid had been averted because the company cooperated with the audit and because immigration agents had not found any labor abuses.
“There is no evidence of any exploitation of workers or violation of labor laws,” he said. “And there is not a single allegation that the company knowingly hired an undocumented worker.”
American Apparel and its outspoken chief executive, Dov Charney, have waged a campaign, emblazoned on T-shirts sold across the country, criticizing the immigration crackdown of recent years and calling on Congress to “Legalize L.A.” by granting legal status to illegal immigrants.
Most garment workers in American Apparel’s huge shop in Los Angeles work directly for the company, not for subcontractors, its records show. They earn at least $10 to $12 an hour, well above minimum wage, and receive health benefits.
At a news conference last year, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles publicly lauded Mr. Charney for helping the city with its faltering economy by providing “the dream of a steady paycheck and good benefits for countless workers.”
While it has been no secret that American Apparel’s largely Latino work force probably included many illegal immigrants, Mr. Schey said the company had been careful to meet legal hiring requirements. Many illegal immigrants use convincingly forged Social Security cards or other fake documents when seeking work.
In a statement, Mr. Charney said that many of his workers cited by the immigration agency were “responsible, hard-working employees” who had been with the company for more than a decade. Mr. Charney, an immigrant from Canada, said he hoped they would be able to prove their legal status. But because of the recession, the company said, it will not be hurt financially if it has to replace them.
Mr. Schey said the hiring audit at American Apparel had been “professionally done.” By contrast, Mr. Schey has brought more than 100 damage claims against the immigration agency on behalf of American citizens who said they were illegally arrested last year in Los Angeles in an immigration raid at a different company, Micro Solutions Enterprises.
Immigration officials, who asked not to be identified because the case is continuing, said the fines to American Apparel so far were about $150,000.
Kelly A. Nantel, a spokeswoman for the immigration agency, said it had taken steps to limit negotiations with employers that in the past had resulted in steep reductions in fines the employers ultimately paid.
Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a California Republican who heads an immigration caucus in the House, said the amount of the fines was crucial.
“If this is a truly conscientious effort to get tough with employers to say the days are over of profiteering with illegal immigrants, that’s fine,” said Mr. Bilbray, who opposes any effort to give legal status to illegal immigrants. “But if the fine will be so low that it’s just part of doing business, there’s no deterrent.”
Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, an advocacy group, said she welcomed the end to “showboat enforcement raids.” But in the end, Ms. Salas said, “there is still enforcement of laws that are broken,” adding, “The workers will still lose their jobs.”
Immigration authorities had bad news this week for American Apparel, the T-shirt maker based in downtown Los Angeles: About 1,800 of its employees appeared to be illegal immigrants not authorized to work in the United States.
But in contrast to the high-profile raids that marked the enforcement approach of the Bush administration, no federal agents with criminal warrants stormed the company’s factories and rounded up employees. Instead, the federal immigration agency sent American Apparel a written notice that it faced civil fines and would have to fire any workers confirmed to be unauthorized.
The treatment of American Apparel, which has more than 5,600 factory employees in Los Angeles alone, is the most prominent demonstration of a new strategy by the Obama administration to curb the employment of illegal immigrants by focusing on employers who hire them — and doing so in a less confrontational manner than in years past.
Unlike the approach of the Bush administration, which brought criminal charges in its final two years against many illegal immigrant workers, the new effort makes broader use of fines and other civil sanctions, federal officials said Thursday.
Federal agents will concentrate on businesses employing large numbers of workers suspected of being illegal immigrants, the officials said, and will reserve tough criminal charges mostly for employers who serially hire illegal immigrants and engage in wage and labor violations.
“These actions underscore our commitment to targeting employers that cultivate illegal work forces by knowingly hiring and exploiting illegal workers,” said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
On Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency known as ICE, said it had sent notices announcing audits of hiring records, like the one it conducted at American Apparel, to 652 other companies across the country. Officials said they were picking up the pace of such audits, after performing 503 of them in 2008.
The names of other companies that received notices have not been made public. American Apparel became a window into the new enforcement tactics because, as a publicly traded company, it issued a required notice on Wednesday about the hiring audit.
The Obama administration’s new approach, unveiled in April, seems to be moving away from the raids that advocates for immigrants said had split families, disrupted businesses and traumatized communities. But the outcome will still be difficult for illegal workers, who will lose their jobs and could face deportation, the advocates said.
Immigration officials have not made clear how they intend to deal with workers who are unable to prove their legal immigration status in the course of inspections, but they said there was no moratorium on deportations.
Executives at American Apparel were both relieved and dismayed after receiving the warning from the immigration agency of discrepancies in the hiring documents of about one-third of its Los Angeles work force. The company has 30 days to dispute the agency’s claims and give immigrant employees time to prove that they are authorized to work in the United States, immigration officials said. If they cannot, the company must fire them, probably within two months.
But no criminal charges were lodged against the company and no workers have been arrested, American Apparel executives and immigration officials said.
The fines followed discussions over 18 months between federal officials and American Apparel, after immigration agents first inspected the company’s files in January 2008, said Peter Schey, an immigration lawyer representing the company. Mr. Schey said a raid had been averted because the company cooperated with the audit and because immigration agents had not found any labor abuses.
“There is no evidence of any exploitation of workers or violation of labor laws,” he said. “And there is not a single allegation that the company knowingly hired an undocumented worker.”
American Apparel and its outspoken chief executive, Dov Charney, have waged a campaign, emblazoned on T-shirts sold across the country, criticizing the immigration crackdown of recent years and calling on Congress to “Legalize L.A.” by granting legal status to illegal immigrants.
Most garment workers in American Apparel’s huge shop in Los Angeles work directly for the company, not for subcontractors, its records show. They earn at least $10 to $12 an hour, well above minimum wage, and receive health benefits.
At a news conference last year, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles publicly lauded Mr. Charney for helping the city with its faltering economy by providing “the dream of a steady paycheck and good benefits for countless workers.”
While it has been no secret that American Apparel’s largely Latino work force probably included many illegal immigrants, Mr. Schey said the company had been careful to meet legal hiring requirements. Many illegal immigrants use convincingly forged Social Security cards or other fake documents when seeking work.
In a statement, Mr. Charney said that many of his workers cited by the immigration agency were “responsible, hard-working employees” who had been with the company for more than a decade. Mr. Charney, an immigrant from Canada, said he hoped they would be able to prove their legal status. But because of the recession, the company said, it will not be hurt financially if it has to replace them.
Mr. Schey said the hiring audit at American Apparel had been “professionally done.” By contrast, Mr. Schey has brought more than 100 damage claims against the immigration agency on behalf of American citizens who said they were illegally arrested last year in Los Angeles in an immigration raid at a different company, Micro Solutions Enterprises.
Immigration officials, who asked not to be identified because the case is continuing, said the fines to American Apparel so far were about $150,000.
Kelly A. Nantel, a spokeswoman for the immigration agency, said it had taken steps to limit negotiations with employers that in the past had resulted in steep reductions in fines the employers ultimately paid.
Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a California Republican who heads an immigration caucus in the House, said the amount of the fines was crucial.
“If this is a truly conscientious effort to get tough with employers to say the days are over of profiteering with illegal immigrants, that’s fine,” said Mr. Bilbray, who opposes any effort to give legal status to illegal immigrants. “But if the fine will be so low that it’s just part of doing business, there’s no deterrent.”
Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, an advocacy group, said she welcomed the end to “showboat enforcement raids.” But in the end, Ms. Salas said, “there is still enforcement of laws that are broken,” adding, “The workers will still lose their jobs.”
U.S. Faces Resentment in Afghan Region
By CARLOTTA GALL
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — The mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting incoming American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban and winning over the population.
Villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes, several community representatives interviewed said. Others have been moved to join the insurgents out of poverty or simply because the Taliban’s influence is so pervasive here.
On Thursday morning, 4,000 American Marines began a major offensive to try to take back the region from the strongest Taliban insurgency in the country. The Marines are part of a larger deployment of additional troops being ordered by the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to concentrate not just on killing Taliban fighters but on protecting the population.
Yet Taliban control of the countryside is so extensive in provinces like Kandahar and Helmand that winning districts back will involve tough fighting and may ignite further tensions, residents and local officials warn. The government has no presence in 5 of Helmand’s 13 districts, and in several others, like Nawa, it holds only the district town, where troops and officials live virtually under siege.
The Taliban’s influence is so strong in rural areas that much of the local population has accepted their rule and is watching the United States troop buildup with trepidation. Villagers interviewed in late June said that they preferred to be left alone under Taliban rule and complained about artillery fire and airstrikes by foreign forces.
“We Muslims don’t like them — they are the source of danger,” said a local villager, Hajji Taj Muhammad, of the foreign forces. His house in Marja, a town west of this provincial capital that has been a major opium trading post and Taliban base, was bombed two months ago, he said.
The southern provinces have suffered the worst civilian casualties since NATO’s deployment to the region in 2006. Thousands of people have already been displaced by fighting and taken refuge in the towns.
“Now there are more people siding with the Taliban than with the government,” said Abdul Qadir Noorzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in southern Afghanistan.
In many places, people have never seen or felt the presence of the Afghan government, or foreign forces, except through violence, but the Taliban are a known quantity, community leaders said.
“People are hostages of the Taliban, but they look at the coalition also as the enemy, because they have not seen anything good from them in seven or eight years,” said Hajji Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, a district council leader from Nadali in Helmand Province.
Foreign troops continue to make mistakes that enrage whole sections of this deeply tribal society, like the killing of a tribal elder’s son and his wife as they were driving to their home in Helmand two months ago. Only their baby daughter survived. The tribal elder, Reis-e-Baghran, a former member of the Taliban who reconciled with the government, is one of the most influential figures in Helmand.
The infusion of more American troops into southern Afghanistan is aimed at ending a stalemate between NATO and Taliban forces. The governor of Helmand, Gulab Mangal, said extra forces were needed since the Taliban were now so entrenched in the region that they had permanent bases.
Last year an American Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2,400 men secured a small but critical area in the district of Garmser in southern Helmand, choking off Taliban supply routes from the Pakistani border while reopening the town for commerce. The operation had a crippling effect on Taliban forces operating farther north in neighboring Oruzgan Province, according to Jelani Popal, who oversees local affairs for President Hamid Karzai’s government.
This year military officials hope to replicate that operation in more places, according to Lt. Gen. James Dutton, the British deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The extra forces will be critical to create confidence among the locals and persuade insurgents to give up the fight, said Mr. Mangal, the Helmand governor. Yet he and others warn that there will be more bloodshed and that the large influx of foreign forces could prompt a backlash.
In parts of Helmand and Kandahar, resentment and frustration are rampant. People who traveled to Lashkar Gah from the districts complained of continued civilian suffering and questioned American intentions. “They come here just to fight, not to bring peace,” said Allah Nazad, a farmer.
People from Marja said that foreign troops carrying out counternarcotics operations conducted nighttime raids on houses, sometimes killed people inside their homes, and used dogs that bit the occupants.
“The people are very scared of the night raids,” said Spin Gul, a local farmer. “When they have night raids, the people join the Taliban and fight.”
“Who are the Taliban? They are local people,” interjected another man, who did not give his name. One man, Hamza, said he would fight if foreigners raided his house. “I will not allow them,” he said. “I will fight them to the last drop of blood.”
Many do not side with the Taliban out of choice, however, and could be won over, community leaders said.
Fazel Muhammad, a member of the district council of Panjwai, an area west of Kandahar, said he knew people who were laying mines for the Taliban in order to feed their families. He estimated that 80 percent of insurgents were local people driven to fight out of poverty and despair. Offered another way out, only 2 percent would support the Taliban, he said.
Yet mistrust of the government remains so strong that even if the Taliban were defeated militarily, the government and the American-led coalition would find the population reluctant to cooperate, said Hajji Abdullah Jan, the leader of the provincial council of Helmand. “These people will still not trust the government,” he said. “Even if security is 100 percent, it will take time because the government did not keep its promises in the past.”
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — The mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting incoming American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban and winning over the population.
Villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes, several community representatives interviewed said. Others have been moved to join the insurgents out of poverty or simply because the Taliban’s influence is so pervasive here.
On Thursday morning, 4,000 American Marines began a major offensive to try to take back the region from the strongest Taliban insurgency in the country. The Marines are part of a larger deployment of additional troops being ordered by the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to concentrate not just on killing Taliban fighters but on protecting the population.
Yet Taliban control of the countryside is so extensive in provinces like Kandahar and Helmand that winning districts back will involve tough fighting and may ignite further tensions, residents and local officials warn. The government has no presence in 5 of Helmand’s 13 districts, and in several others, like Nawa, it holds only the district town, where troops and officials live virtually under siege.
The Taliban’s influence is so strong in rural areas that much of the local population has accepted their rule and is watching the United States troop buildup with trepidation. Villagers interviewed in late June said that they preferred to be left alone under Taliban rule and complained about artillery fire and airstrikes by foreign forces.
“We Muslims don’t like them — they are the source of danger,” said a local villager, Hajji Taj Muhammad, of the foreign forces. His house in Marja, a town west of this provincial capital that has been a major opium trading post and Taliban base, was bombed two months ago, he said.
The southern provinces have suffered the worst civilian casualties since NATO’s deployment to the region in 2006. Thousands of people have already been displaced by fighting and taken refuge in the towns.
“Now there are more people siding with the Taliban than with the government,” said Abdul Qadir Noorzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in southern Afghanistan.
In many places, people have never seen or felt the presence of the Afghan government, or foreign forces, except through violence, but the Taliban are a known quantity, community leaders said.
“People are hostages of the Taliban, but they look at the coalition also as the enemy, because they have not seen anything good from them in seven or eight years,” said Hajji Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, a district council leader from Nadali in Helmand Province.
Foreign troops continue to make mistakes that enrage whole sections of this deeply tribal society, like the killing of a tribal elder’s son and his wife as they were driving to their home in Helmand two months ago. Only their baby daughter survived. The tribal elder, Reis-e-Baghran, a former member of the Taliban who reconciled with the government, is one of the most influential figures in Helmand.
The infusion of more American troops into southern Afghanistan is aimed at ending a stalemate between NATO and Taliban forces. The governor of Helmand, Gulab Mangal, said extra forces were needed since the Taliban were now so entrenched in the region that they had permanent bases.
Last year an American Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2,400 men secured a small but critical area in the district of Garmser in southern Helmand, choking off Taliban supply routes from the Pakistani border while reopening the town for commerce. The operation had a crippling effect on Taliban forces operating farther north in neighboring Oruzgan Province, according to Jelani Popal, who oversees local affairs for President Hamid Karzai’s government.
This year military officials hope to replicate that operation in more places, according to Lt. Gen. James Dutton, the British deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The extra forces will be critical to create confidence among the locals and persuade insurgents to give up the fight, said Mr. Mangal, the Helmand governor. Yet he and others warn that there will be more bloodshed and that the large influx of foreign forces could prompt a backlash.
In parts of Helmand and Kandahar, resentment and frustration are rampant. People who traveled to Lashkar Gah from the districts complained of continued civilian suffering and questioned American intentions. “They come here just to fight, not to bring peace,” said Allah Nazad, a farmer.
People from Marja said that foreign troops carrying out counternarcotics operations conducted nighttime raids on houses, sometimes killed people inside their homes, and used dogs that bit the occupants.
“The people are very scared of the night raids,” said Spin Gul, a local farmer. “When they have night raids, the people join the Taliban and fight.”
“Who are the Taliban? They are local people,” interjected another man, who did not give his name. One man, Hamza, said he would fight if foreigners raided his house. “I will not allow them,” he said. “I will fight them to the last drop of blood.”
Many do not side with the Taliban out of choice, however, and could be won over, community leaders said.
Fazel Muhammad, a member of the district council of Panjwai, an area west of Kandahar, said he knew people who were laying mines for the Taliban in order to feed their families. He estimated that 80 percent of insurgents were local people driven to fight out of poverty and despair. Offered another way out, only 2 percent would support the Taliban, he said.
Yet mistrust of the government remains so strong that even if the Taliban were defeated militarily, the government and the American-led coalition would find the population reluctant to cooperate, said Hajji Abdullah Jan, the leader of the provincial council of Helmand. “These people will still not trust the government,” he said. “Even if security is 100 percent, it will take time because the government did not keep its promises in the past.”
Jobless Rate Climbs to 9.5%, Deflating Recovery Hopes
By PETER S. GOODMAN
The American economy lost 467,000 more jobs in June, and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.5 percent in a sobering indication that the longest recession since the 1930s had yet to release its hold.
“The numbers are indicative of a continued, very severe recession,” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh. “There’s nothing in here to show that the economy and the market are pulling out of the grip of recession.”
The Labor Department’s monthly snapshot of employment, released Thursday, challenged visions of a recovery already taking root. The numbers intensify pressure on the Obama administration to show returns on programs aimed at improving national fortunes — not least its $787 billion stimulus plan.
Some economists are now calling for another dose of government spending to stimulate the economy, though the White House maintains that enough money is in the pipeline already.
“Not all the recovery money has been put to work yet,” said the labor secretary, Hilda L. Solis. “We’re making progress.”
But Ms. Solis acknowledged that joblessness was already much worse than the administration projected in January when it created its stimulus spending bill, suggesting then that joblessness would peak at about 8 percent.
Asked why the unemployment rate is already much higher, Ms. Solis noted that much of the stimulus money was moving slowly, with construction projects in particular requiring time-consuming government permits.
“Over all, it’s been a challenge,” Ms. Solis said. “We still have a ways to go.”
That explanation echoed criticism that some initially leveled at the spending package when it was debated in Congress: many of the projects would take too long to get going, creating too few jobs in the near term. Still, Ms. Solis portrayed the program as a success.
“We would have done much worse had we not put the recovery plan in place,” she said.
In recent weeks, positive signs have emerged that automakers are beginning to see stronger sales, factories are gaining more orders, and housing prices have stopped falling in some markets. But the jobs report injected the sense that paychecks are disappearing so swiftly that consumer spending is likely to be tight, limiting economic activity. The gloomy news caused the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index to tumble more than 2 percent.
Indeed, the report reinforced a consensus that high levels of unemployment are likely to afflict American life for many months and perhaps much longer. That will dump more jobless people into a weak job market, making it harder for those already unemployed to find work and pressing down wages and hours.
After a May report that showed the pace of deterioration was moderating, some economists expressed hopes that an economic recovery might finally be emerging. But the June report tempered such thoughts.
For another month, manufacturing jobs disappeared, dipping by 136,000, while construction jobs shrank by 79,000 and retail by 21,000. Health care remained a rare bright spot, adding 21,000.
The losses for June lifted net jobs shed since the beginning of the recession to 6.5 million — equal to the net job gain over the previous nine years.
“This is the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all jobs growth from the previous business cycle,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said in a research note. She called this fact “a devastating benchmark for the workers of this country and a testament to both the enormity of the current crisis and to the extreme weakness of jobs growth from 2000 to 2007.”
The June figures did show continued slowing in the pace of job losses. From November to March — after the collapse of some prominent financial institutions — the labor market lost an average of 670,000 jobs each month. From April to June, the decline slowed to 436,000 a month.
The Obama administration seized on those numbers to argue that its stimulus spending plan was gradually working.
“We’re seeing a kind of leveling off here,” said Ms. Solis, the labor secretary.
Some economists contend that a recovery is indeed in its early stages, cautioning that the job market tends to lag behind progress in other areas.
Michael T. Darda, chief economist at the research and trading firm MKM Partners, pointed to a recent rally in the corporate bond market as a sign that normalcy was returning to the financial system. He asserted that this presaged the resumption of economic growth in the second half of this year and vigorous activity next year.
“The labor market is going to lag the recovery process to a certain degree,” he said.
But other experts argued that employment was a more crucial source of spending power than in downturns past, given how many alternate sources of cash had been lost.
Consumer spending amounts to 70 percent of overall American economic activity. In recent times, Americans found myriad ways to fuel spending even as incomes for many households stagnated, borrowing against the once-rising value of homes and tapping credit cards.
Now, the paycheck has returned as the primary source of spending. Yet pay is eroding even for those who have jobs.
The average workweek for rank-and-file employees in the private sector — roughly 80 percent of the work force — slipped by a fraction to 33 hours, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1964.
The so-called underemployment rate — which captures not only the jobless but also those working part time because their hours have been cut or they cannot find a full-time job — increased to 16.5 percent.
Some economists contend that while unemployment remains high, millions of Americans will continue to watch their spending.
“It looks really bad,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “There are no green shoots here. People can’t spend when they don’t have the money.”
For another month, the average length of official unemployment increased, this time to 24.5 weeks — the highest level since the government began tracking such data in 1948. The unemployment rate, 9.5 percent, is the highest since 1983.
Layoffs have slowed in recent months, but hiring has yet to pick up, meaning that jobless people face a more frustrating search.
In the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Jeffrey Jones, 40, has found no work since losing his job as a cook at a senior center in October. He worries about paying rent and caring for his four children.
“I know I’m not supposed to be letting it stress me out,” he said. “The way I’m going now, I won’t be able to make it too much longer. I can’t go this long without doing something for my family.”
Jack Healy contributed reporting.
The American economy lost 467,000 more jobs in June, and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.5 percent in a sobering indication that the longest recession since the 1930s had yet to release its hold.
“The numbers are indicative of a continued, very severe recession,” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh. “There’s nothing in here to show that the economy and the market are pulling out of the grip of recession.”
The Labor Department’s monthly snapshot of employment, released Thursday, challenged visions of a recovery already taking root. The numbers intensify pressure on the Obama administration to show returns on programs aimed at improving national fortunes — not least its $787 billion stimulus plan.
Some economists are now calling for another dose of government spending to stimulate the economy, though the White House maintains that enough money is in the pipeline already.
“Not all the recovery money has been put to work yet,” said the labor secretary, Hilda L. Solis. “We’re making progress.”
But Ms. Solis acknowledged that joblessness was already much worse than the administration projected in January when it created its stimulus spending bill, suggesting then that joblessness would peak at about 8 percent.
Asked why the unemployment rate is already much higher, Ms. Solis noted that much of the stimulus money was moving slowly, with construction projects in particular requiring time-consuming government permits.
“Over all, it’s been a challenge,” Ms. Solis said. “We still have a ways to go.”
That explanation echoed criticism that some initially leveled at the spending package when it was debated in Congress: many of the projects would take too long to get going, creating too few jobs in the near term. Still, Ms. Solis portrayed the program as a success.
“We would have done much worse had we not put the recovery plan in place,” she said.
In recent weeks, positive signs have emerged that automakers are beginning to see stronger sales, factories are gaining more orders, and housing prices have stopped falling in some markets. But the jobs report injected the sense that paychecks are disappearing so swiftly that consumer spending is likely to be tight, limiting economic activity. The gloomy news caused the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index to tumble more than 2 percent.
Indeed, the report reinforced a consensus that high levels of unemployment are likely to afflict American life for many months and perhaps much longer. That will dump more jobless people into a weak job market, making it harder for those already unemployed to find work and pressing down wages and hours.
After a May report that showed the pace of deterioration was moderating, some economists expressed hopes that an economic recovery might finally be emerging. But the June report tempered such thoughts.
For another month, manufacturing jobs disappeared, dipping by 136,000, while construction jobs shrank by 79,000 and retail by 21,000. Health care remained a rare bright spot, adding 21,000.
The losses for June lifted net jobs shed since the beginning of the recession to 6.5 million — equal to the net job gain over the previous nine years.
“This is the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all jobs growth from the previous business cycle,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said in a research note. She called this fact “a devastating benchmark for the workers of this country and a testament to both the enormity of the current crisis and to the extreme weakness of jobs growth from 2000 to 2007.”
The June figures did show continued slowing in the pace of job losses. From November to March — after the collapse of some prominent financial institutions — the labor market lost an average of 670,000 jobs each month. From April to June, the decline slowed to 436,000 a month.
The Obama administration seized on those numbers to argue that its stimulus spending plan was gradually working.
“We’re seeing a kind of leveling off here,” said Ms. Solis, the labor secretary.
Some economists contend that a recovery is indeed in its early stages, cautioning that the job market tends to lag behind progress in other areas.
Michael T. Darda, chief economist at the research and trading firm MKM Partners, pointed to a recent rally in the corporate bond market as a sign that normalcy was returning to the financial system. He asserted that this presaged the resumption of economic growth in the second half of this year and vigorous activity next year.
“The labor market is going to lag the recovery process to a certain degree,” he said.
But other experts argued that employment was a more crucial source of spending power than in downturns past, given how many alternate sources of cash had been lost.
Consumer spending amounts to 70 percent of overall American economic activity. In recent times, Americans found myriad ways to fuel spending even as incomes for many households stagnated, borrowing against the once-rising value of homes and tapping credit cards.
Now, the paycheck has returned as the primary source of spending. Yet pay is eroding even for those who have jobs.
The average workweek for rank-and-file employees in the private sector — roughly 80 percent of the work force — slipped by a fraction to 33 hours, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1964.
The so-called underemployment rate — which captures not only the jobless but also those working part time because their hours have been cut or they cannot find a full-time job — increased to 16.5 percent.
Some economists contend that while unemployment remains high, millions of Americans will continue to watch their spending.
“It looks really bad,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “There are no green shoots here. People can’t spend when they don’t have the money.”
For another month, the average length of official unemployment increased, this time to 24.5 weeks — the highest level since the government began tracking such data in 1948. The unemployment rate, 9.5 percent, is the highest since 1983.
Layoffs have slowed in recent months, but hiring has yet to pick up, meaning that jobless people face a more frustrating search.
In the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Jeffrey Jones, 40, has found no work since losing his job as a cook at a senior center in October. He worries about paying rent and caring for his four children.
“I know I’m not supposed to be letting it stress me out,” he said. “The way I’m going now, I won’t be able to make it too much longer. I can’t go this long without doing something for my family.”
Jack Healy contributed reporting.
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