ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As the United States prepares to triple its aid package to Pakistan — to a proposed $1.5 billion over the next year — Obama administration officials are debating how much of the assistance should go directly to a government that has been widely accused of corruption, American and Pakistani officials say.
A procession of Obama administration economic experts have visited Islamabad, the capital, in recent weeks to try to ensure both that the money will not be wasted by the government and that it will be more effective in winning the good will of a public increasingly hostile to the United States, according to officials involved with the project.
As American lawmakers move toward passage of the aid legislation, the administration knows it must get quick results from the increased assistance or face potential Congressional cutbacks down the road in a program envisioned to cost $1.5 billion every year for the next five years.
“We’re struggling over how much cash to give to the government,” said a senior American official involved in the planning, who declined to be named according to diplomatic custom.
The overhaul of American assistance, led by the State Department, comes amid increased urgency about an economic crisis that is intensifying social unrest in Pakistan, and about the willingness of the government there to sustain its fight against a raging insurgency in the northwest. It follows an assessment within the Obama administration that the amount of nonmilitary aid to the country in the past few years was inadequate and favored American contractors rather than Pakistani recipients, according to several of the American officials involved.
American officials say the main goals of the new assistance will be to shore up the crumbling Pakistani state by building infrastructure like roads and power plants, and to improve the standing of the United States with the Pakistani people.
In return, the Obama administration expects Pakistan to keep up the fight against Islamic militants, though there are worries that the effort will turn out to be a short-term spurt overtaken by Pakistan’s preoccupation with its archrival, India.
President Asif Ali Zardari has insisted that Pakistan cannot afford to continue its fight against terrorism without substantial American help, a number that he has sometimes put in the tens of billions of dollars. Mr. Zardari is scheduled to meet President Obama in New York this week, and assistance is expected to be a major topic.
American officials said the need to assist the Pakistani economy directly became alarmingly clear when recent power shortages across the country contributed to Pakistan’s first year of negative industrial growth. There were widespread complaints here, including by Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, that the government had solutions to improve the power output but was refusing to implement them in order to benefit a handful of power plant operators.
Another impetus came last week when 19 women were killed in a stampede for free flour in Karachi, even though Pakistan had a bumper wheat crop this year.
After a recent visit to Islamabad, the deputy secretary for management and resources at the State Department, Jacob J. Lew, expressed anxiety about how to ensure that the aid money was spent properly, saying he was concerned that “the money needed to go to the purposes for which it was intended.”
“We had to choose a method of funding that was most likely to produce results efficiently and effectively,” he said Sept. 11 at a briefing at the State Department.
Mr. Lew’s suggestions of inappropriate spending by the Pakistanis caused such a furor among government officials that the American ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, issued an unusual public statement on Wednesday intended to reassure the Pakistanis that the United States was “not depriving the Pakistani government any degree of direct funding as a result of lack of confidence or trust.”
Part of the Obama administration’s approach is to expand nonmilitary aid to Pakistan, after years in which almost all American assistance to the country was intended to help the military fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But some American officials said the Pakistani Army was diverting the money toward programs aimed at deterring India instead. A searing report by the Government Accountability Office last year said the Bush administration had relied too heavily on the Pakistani military to achieve its counterterrorism goals, and had paid too little attention to economic assistance.
Money intended to help civilians during the Bush years was generally delivered by American contractors who administered programs like training provincial government officials.
Mr. Tarin, the Pakistani finance minister, said in an interview that the private contractors absorbed up to 45 percent of the assistance in past years.
He said he understood, based on past American experiences in Pakistan, that the United States had concerns about “transparency.” He told the officials from Washington that they should work with the Pakistani government and develop “joint oversight which both of us trust.”
“I said, ‘Your interests are mine,’ ” Mr. Tarin said of his meetings. “Aid should be delivered through transparent platforms with maximum impact on the ground.”
The United States should invest in developing vast coal reserves in the province of Sindh, and in hydroelectric, wind and solar power to bolster Pakistan’s energy supply, he said.
The administration’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard L. Holbrooke, has appointed Robin L. Raphel, an experienced American diplomat, to oversee the planning of the new aid programs. Mr. Holbrooke has also sent David Lipton, a senior member of the National Economic Council, to Islamabad twice to look at ways to fix the Pakistani economy.
One key factor in trying to find more effective ways to deliver aid to Pakistan is a recognition that big projects are likely to win more Pakistani friends because they are more visible, American and Pakistani officials said.
“It was not only an assistance issue but a public image issue, too,” the senior American official said. “People talk about the Chinese nuclear reactors and the Japanese.” The United States was searching for a “signature contract,” the official said.
One road project under consideration in the troubled North-West Frontier Province would help in both improving security and gaining friends, a senior Pakistani official said. The $25 million project is designed to repair and expand the ring road around Peshawar, the capital of the province, they said.
The road has cratered because of heavy use by trucks hauling supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan from the port of Karachi through Peshawar and over the border to Afghanistan. The repairs would ease the transit of those goods, and possibly make them less vulnerable to attack by Taliban militants.
At the same time, it is hoped that the people of Peshawar who drive trucks, pedicabs, even donkey carts on the road would appreciate the American effort.
A prominent Pakistani economist, Ashfaque H. Khan, who served until recently as a senior figure in the Finance Ministry, said he had warned visiting American officials about the difficulties of plowing large amounts of American assistance into government programs without proper oversight, particularly in the power sector.
As increased American aid money pours into Pakistan, a permanent committee of American and Pakistani officials should be formed, Mr. Khan said. The members should meet every two months to review the American-financed projects, he said.
“There are ways you can minimize the risk of corruption by close coordination between the two sides,” he said.
PUNCAK, 21 September 2009 (IRIN) - Indonesia has been struggling to cope with a surge of Afghan asylum-seekers since the beginning of 2009, officials say.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that between 1 January and 31 August it had registered 1,371 Afghan asylum-seekers, and that in the first six months of 2009 there had been a 925 percent increase in the number of asylum-seekers on the figure for the whole of 2008.
It has also officially recognized 142 as refugees.
However, Indonesian immigration officials say their actual numbers probably run into the thousands, as many slip into the country unrecorded.
“We started noticing an increase in August 2008. It’s not consistent every month, but in general it’s going up most months in increasing numbers,” Robert Ashe, UNHCR's regional representative in Jakarta, told IRIN.
Afghans accounted for over 60 percent of the 2,414 asylum-seekers and refugees currently registered by the UNHCR in Indonesia.
Most claim to come from Afghanistan’s central province of Ghazni, and 80 percent are from the ethnic Hazara group (mainly Shia and making up about 9 percent of the population).
Destination Australia
Most of the Afghans seen by the UNHCR have made it to Indonesia using agents, including people smugglers and traffickers, and their main destination is Australia. Most have also transited through Pakistan or Iran, and are fleeing from generalized violence, rather than individual persecution.
“The main reason [for the increase] is the push factor - the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating,” said the UNHCR’s Ashe.
“It’s possible we are getting Afghan refugees from Pakistan as well. As the situation in Pakistan has deteriorated… they feel they have to move to safer places,” he said.
Giant risks
Afghan migrants travelling by boat to Indonesia take giant risks: the seas around Indonesia are among the most treacherous in the world, and barely seaworthy boats filled beyond capacity often drift or sink.
In May, nine Afghan refugees drowned when their vessel capsized near the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Ali Reza Noori, a UNHCR-recognized refugee, was among thousands of unregistered Afghans who have tried, unsuccessfully, to reach Australia several times by boat. The last “horrible” attempt almost cost him his life, he said.
“The boat pump broke after a few days. There were 140 people on board. Everybody panicked and prayed. We had to drink water from the sea,” he told IRIN at a house provided by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Puncak, near Jakarta.
The leaking craft was spotted by the Indonesian authorities after being adrift for 14 days, shortly after supplies had run out.
Struggling to cope
The cash-strapped Indonesian government has been taken by surprise by the sudden increase in Afghans entering the country in search of a better life.
“For Indonesia, the problem is they have limited capacity in their detention centres, and this large influx - as they start to pick people up - has stretched their capacity,” said Ashe.
Indonesia is not a party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, nor does it have a refugee status determination system, so asylum-seekers do not receive official status.
The country also lacks a law against people-smuggling, which means offenders are prosecuted under other legislation, such as immigration laws, and only locked up for limited periods of time, said Ashe.
“It’s not enough to stop people smugglers from operating,” he said.
Detention centres overflowing
Another refugee, Ali Ahadi, left behind his wife and four children and paid US$4,000 to people smugglers - a huge amount, given Afghanistan’s per capita income of US$300 - for the journey to Australia via the Indonesian island of Flores, near Bali.
The boat that was supposed to pick him up never came, and Ahadi ended up in a detention centre called Kalideres, near Jakarta.
“It looks like a jail. They put six people in a room that is supposed to fit two, and then they lock the door,” he told IRIN from the city of Medan, where he is living in an IOM house as a recognized refugee.
Maroloan Barimbing, a spokesman for the Indonesian immigration service, admitted the detention centres were crowded.
“Indonesia has 13 detention centres, but they are not designed to have that many refugees. The largest can accommodate around 50 people, but most are only for 30 people,” he said.
New centres have been built to shelter an additional 600 refugees of all nationalities, but that is not nearly enough.
“We cannot handle it ourselves. We have to get the international community to understand that this should not be Indonesia’s problem (alone),” said Barimbing.
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Recent moves in Indonesia, including plans by one province to stone adulterers to death, have raised concerns about the reputation of the world's most populous Muslin country as a beacon of moderate Islam.
The provincial assembly in the westernmost province of Aceh -- at the epicenter of the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 170,000 people there nearly five years ago -- this week decreed the ancient Islamic penalty of stoning to death for adultery.
The decision could still be overturned once Aceh's new parliament is sworn in next month.
But many, including Aceh's governor, the central government in Jakarta, and local businessmen, are concerned about the impact a broadcast public execution by stoning could have on Indonesia's international reputation.
"The perception and the reaction from the international community would be condemnation," said Anton Gunawan, chief economist at Bank Danamon, who stressed he thought an actual stoning unlikely.
"For investors who are relatively familiar with Indonesia and know it is mostly moderate, it might not have an impact. But for people who don't know Indonesia, they will think 'Oh, now I have to be careful of it'," he said.
The Aceh case is one of several showing how hardline Muslim groups are influencing policy in Indonesia.
Local governments, given wide latitude to enact laws under Indonesia's decentralization program, have begun to mandate sharia regulations, including dress codes for women.
One ethnic Chinese Indonesian businessman, a practicing Christian who asked not to be quoted by name, said he feared if the trend continued it could lead to capital flight by the wealthy Chinese, Christian minority.
"A lot of regional laws are going in that direction. It's already alarming the way it's going. It's a minority who are doing this, but the problem is that the silent majority just keep silent."
ANTIPORNOGRAPHY LAW
Last year, the government imposed restrictions on Ahmadiyya, a minority Muslim cult, following intense lobbying by hardline Muslim groups to have them banned.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's party also backed an anti-pornography law, which imposes restrictions on certain forms of dance, traditional dress and the depiction of nudity in art.
The law was widely condemned by minority religious and ethnic groups, including Balinese.
A new film law passed this month goes even further, prohibiting depictions of drug use, gambling and pornography, and requiring film-makers to have their plots approved by the Minister of Culture before production can begin.
"I think the Islamic parties will be a strong influence on the law-making of the next cabinet," said Suma Mihardja, who led a campaign against the anti-pornography law.
"Tension could be directed toward xenophobia, racism, or religious conflict as we see in Malaysia today."
Other legislation on the cards at the national level includes a bill making halal certification compulsory, instead of voluntary as is now the case.
That would result in higher costs for many food and pharmaceuticals companies, domestic and foreign, ranging from Nestle and Unilever to Kraft Foods Inc and Cadbury Plc, said Suroso Natakusuma from the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
"Every single item will need halal certification and an external audit process may follow," he said.
"The auditor may need to be sent to the country where the product was made to check the process is halal. That means air tickets, hotels. This will mean a lot of extra costs."
ISLAMIC VOTE FALLING
The religiously-inspired laws seem to run against the wishes of the electorate.
In the 2009 parliamentary election, the vote for the conservative Islamic party PPP declined 2.8 percentage points to just 5 percent of the total vote, while the vote for another Islamic group, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), rose only 1.5 percentage points to 9 percent of the total.
Overall, the share of votes for Islamic parties has steadily declined.
"People appear to be pandering to an audience that isn't really asking for anything," said James Bryson of HB Capital, which invests in Indonesian stocks. "The halal bill is not winning any votes and it's making an already complex system of certification even more expensive."
"Many of these laws lately are becoming more conservative,' said Said Abdullah of secular opposition party PDI-P who is on the committee debating the halal bill. "The government is trying to accommodate the Muslim community but they are actually not following our real constitution."
President Yudhoyono, a former general, won a second five-year term in July on promises to continue the battle against corruption and spur economic growth.
In the run-up to elections, Yudhoyono and his secular Democrat Party shifted closer to a clutch of religious parties including the hardline Islamist PKS, as relations with his main coalition partner, Golkar, grew increasingly strained.
Resources-rich Aceh suffered a decades-long conflict between secessionists and the Indonesian military. The tsunami and the 9.1 earthquake that spawned it brought billions of dollars in aid to the devastated land. That paved the way for a peace agreement with separatists -- whose political party won April's election, and now must deal with the new adultery law.
Aceh wants to attract more investment, just like many other parts of Indonesia. Holding public executions by stoning, which could be televised and shown around the world, could well make that more difficult.
In cautioning the government against depending on private militias for fighting the Taliban, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has raised a valid point of concern.
As the HRCP conceded, it is true that the government faces enormous law and order challenges in Swat and other parts of Malakand. While the military has been largely successful in breaking the hold of the Taliban, pockets of resistance remain.
The affected areas consist of remote settlements and large swathes of unpopulated mountainous regions, making it easy for terrorists to vanish at will. And then there’s the fact that a Taliban sympathiser is overtly indistinguishable from a peaceful citizen until he chooses to show his true colours. These circumstances render daunting the task of eradicating the militant menace for good.
That said, over-reliance on highly armed private militias may prove to be a step that the country comes to regret. Given the great anger that exists among the local population against the Taliban, there is a danger the lashkars may morph into uncontrolled reprisal armies. As the HRCP pointed out, ‘it is difficult to control the private militias and neither the government nor the military can vouch for their conduct.’
Already, there have been reports of the lashkars perpetrating not only reprisal attacks but also being used as tools for settling private scores. In some cases, the killings are disturbingly reminiscent of Taliban tactics. The region cannot afford to turn the effort to root out the Taliban into a witch-hunt. As Gandhi observed, ‘an eye for an eye leaves us all blind.’
The responsibility of ensuring peace in the region must rest with the state and its functionaries. While the involvement of civilians with local know-how has proved valuable — and may continue to do so — limits must be laid on the scope of their participation.
The government must find means of ensuring that any suspected terrorist is produced after his capture before a competent court of law, and that every death is fully investigated. Ordinary citizens, who lack the constitutional authority to conduct trials, must not be placed in the role of judge, jury and executioner.
Women in Jalka village in Yavatmal district have been going to Kalavati Bandurkar, ever since Rahul Gandhi’s famous visit to her house last year. They are in need of help; of houses; and of some respite from distress.
It is the plight of these women and that of the countless more hit by the agrarian crisis which Kalavati will project when she contests this Assembly election from Wani. The alliance of Sharad Joshi’s Shetkari Sanghatana and Vidarbha Jan Andolan’s Kishore Tiwari announced her candidature on Saturday.
“I am not standing for elections to enter politics; I am putting forth the issue. Farm suicides should end. Women should get help. That’s what I will say; nothing else. Women from the village come to me and tell me their problems. They say, ‘your needs have been met, what about us?’,” Kalavati told The Hindu, amidst a flurry of phone calls and media interviews.
In spotlight
Mr. Tiwari said fielding Kalavati may not bring victory, but it would put the agrarian crisis in the spotlight.
Over one lakh women have lost their debt-ridden husbands to the farm crisis. Kalavati is one of them. Her husband committed suicide in 2005, leaving her to pay off a huge debt and run a large family of four daughters, two sons and grandchildren.
“She [Kalavati] lost her husband at 50, but there are women in their 20s whose lives have been ruined after their husbands committed suicide. They should be rehabilitated. Suicides must end. When I asked her if she would contest, she said let’s fight,” Mr. Tiwari said.
Price rise devastating
A farm labourer, Kalavati underscored the key issues plaguing agriculture, like the right price for cotton and jowar. “When we take our produce to the market it’s cheap. When it reaches the dealer, the price goes up. How? It’s the middlemen who do it.” Then, the steep rise in prices of tur and sugar had been devastating.
Kalavati has had to tackle a barrage of questions on going against Rahul Gandhi and the Congress. “I am not against Rahul Gandhi. I am not against the government. I am satisfied [with the help I got],” she said.
With the help she received at Rahul’s behest, Kalavati built a home. “The government announces houses, but the panchayats and the middleman don’t give them to you,” she said.
Kalavati’s cup of woes is far from empty. Jealousy and resentment against her abound in her remote village, making her fear for the well-being of her children.
“I won’t go anywhere to campaign. Maybe once or twice in the car. But, I have to be back home by 6 p.m. What if someone murders my children?
“People in the village are maligning me. Let them talk. I am talking for the farmers,” she says.
Hundreds of garment workers demonstrated in front of the BGMEA Bhaban at Kawran Bazar on Saturday, demanding payment of still-due salaries and allowances ahead of Eid, barely days away.
Workers of factories in Savar and Gazipur also erupted in protests as, still owed salaries and bonuses, they remained unpaid just days ahead of Eid.
Employees of Season Sweaters Ltd, in Ashulia, arrived at the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association head office in three trucks at around seven in the evening and continued their agitation for over two hours, police said.
"Our salaries have now been due for two or three months. After an earlier protest, the factory authorities assured us they would settle pay back pay and allowances by Sept 6; this failed to happen," factory worker Al Amin told bdnews24.com.
He said Saturday's demonstration was sparked when the factory's owners said the workers would not receive their dues after all ahead of the Eid break.
Top Ramna police officials went to the scene, while a huge number of law enforcers were deployed to check any unpleasant situation during the demo.
BGMEA president Abdus Salam Murshedi told bdnews24.com, "It's a very sad incident. We are trying to contact the owner of the factory. He too is giving inconsistent statements. And now, he is not even taking phone calls."
After discussions, the workers received some compensation from BGMEA to tide them over. Murshedi told bdnews24.com: "Considering humanitarian grounds, a temporary solution has been found. We tried our best to give them some help."
He said BGMEA, the industry's largest trade body, would try to bring a more permanent solution through a meeting with the factory's owners on Sept 30.
"Steps will be taken after discussion on Sept 30."
Asked what steps might be taken against owner Ziaul Amin, the BGMEA president said, "He will most probably get a show-cause notice. After discussion we will decide if any other action should be taken against him."
Savar unrest
Labour unrest had erupted earlier in the day at two Savar garment factories, including Season Sweater Ltd.
Ashulia police chief Monowar Hossain told bdnews24.com workers of Season Sweater had protested at Ashulia Police Station, demanding immediate payment of the last three months' salary and Eid bonus.
They also sought cooperation from police in making the owners pay. The workers later went on to demonstrate in front of BGMEA Bhaban.
Savar police officer Abu Taher told bdnews24.com workers of Biswas Group of Industries Ltd of Rajfulbaria abstained from work and demonstrated instead for their dues and Eid bonus.
Police went on the spot and try to calm them. Later police managed to communicate with the factory owner.
The situation became normal in the evening as factory authorities paid up the workers' dues.
Gazipur also erupts
Earlier in the day, employees of four garment factories in Gazipur also refused to start work on Saturday and instead demonstrated for dues, including allowances and 15 days' salary for the current month, police said.
Workers at Rita Textile Mill, in Konabari Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation industrial area in Gazipur Sadar, began their agitation at nine in the morning.
The workers called off the demonstration at 1:30pm when factory authorities promised to meet their demands, Mohammad Yusuf Ali, sub-inspector of Konabari Police Post, told bdnews24.com.
At one point police intervened to stop a fight between sewing machine operators and security guards of the factory, said Ali.
Employees of Stylo Fashions Limited, in Gazipur Sadar upazila, also organised a demonstration demanding payment of their arrears.
The workers shattered a number of windows in the factory building, although they called of the action when the owners promised to clear their back pay, sub-inspector of Hotapara Police Station, Mohammad Rafiqul Islam, told bdnews24.com.
In a third incident, over 600 employees of garment factory Win Wear Ltd, in the Kolomeshwar area of Gazipur Sadar, withdrew their labour and organised a rally demanding payment of salaries and allowances.
The workers started their action at noon, and only called a halt to their demonstration at 3.45 in the afternoon when factory authorities promised to clear their arrears, said Mollah Shoeb Ali, sub-inspector at Joydevpur Police Station. Deadlines come and go
Workers unions had earlier given the deadline of Sep 16 (Wednesday) for owners to pay up the dues and bonuses that workers depend on to celebrate Eid with their families.
Workers of at least six garment factories, who had closed their doors without paying salaries and festival bonus to around 1,500 employees, marched towards the prime minister's office last Wednesday, with only one working day to go for payment of their salaries and festival allowances before the long Eid holiday began.
The plight of workers of closed factories ahead of Eid was mentioned in parliament earlier in the week, against the backdrop of protests over late payment of dues and bonuses.
Commerce minister Faruq Khan said his ministry would address the issue, making sure all workers were paid up in time for Eid.
He told parliament last Tuesday, "The owners have assured the government that they will pay the workers all dues ahead of Eid."
"The government has been closely monitoring the situation."
However, Thursday was the last working day before Eid, Saturday was the last banking day, and many factories were yet to pay their workers by Sunday.
There are around 2,010 garments factories in Dhaka and adjacent areas of Narayanganj, Savar, Ashulia, Tongi, employing over one million workers.
Some 80 factories have shut down in recent months due to recession-related troubles, according to authorities.
According to a police intelligence report another 51 factories with "no work orders" were in danger of closing their doors with owners absconding—as they had no way to pay dues before Eid—and their workers most likely to go unpaid.
Mr Bakrie, who is chief social minister in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's government, is a member of the Golkar Party, the political machine which dominated parliament for decades under former President Suharto but which has lost much of its support in Indonesia's post-Suharto democracy.
Mr Bakrie, whose family controls coal-miner Bumi Resources, plantations, property, and telecoms firms, is regarded as a holdover from the Suharto era.
He is an opponent of Ms Sri Mulyani Indrawati, the finance minister and coordinating economic minister who has promoted reform and the fight against graft.
Mr Bakrie also owns infrastructure businesses such as toll roads.
'What they (investors) want is infrastructure,' followed by less red tape and more transparency, Mr Bakrie said in an interview with Reuters on Monday.
'During the Suharto era, total investment per year was much more than now, and at that time the corruption was a lot compared to now, yet they (foreigners) invested.'
Witnesses in western Somalia say at least 17 people have been killed in fresh fighting between Islamist militants and government forces.
Residents of Yeed, a town on Somalia's border with Ethiopia, say fighters from the insurgent group al-Shabab attacked government soldiers on Sunday.
Both sides claimed victory in the clash, and it was not clear who controlled the town Monday.
Most of those killed are said to be combatants.
Al-Shabab and its ally Hizbul Islam have been on the offensive since early May. The groups are trying to overthrow Somalia's government and set up an Islamic state.
Pakistani police are restricting the movements of an Islamist militant group leader accused by India of masterminding last year's Mumbai attack.
Police said Monday they stopped Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, as he was leaving his home for Eid al-Fitr celebrations marking the end of a month-long fast for Muslims. Police said authorities gave verbal orders to keep Saeed in his house.
On Saturday, Pakistan acknowledged for the first time that the militant Islamic leader is under investigation in connection with last year's Mumbai terrorist attacks.
India accuses the hardline Pakistani cleric and his outlawed group of masterminding last November's carnage that left 166 people dead.
This confinement is the second time authorities have restricted Saeed's movements. Saeed was placed under house arrest in December after a U.N. committee put him on a list of people accused of supporting al-Qaida.
A Pakistani court released him in June because of insufficient evidence.
Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Sunday that Pakistan has concluded its own investigation into the Mumbai attacks using what he described as "sketchy" information provided by India. Malik said the evidence and other relevant material have been presented to the court, which will indict seven other suspects later this week.
He said Saeed will be arrested only if authorities can provide solid evidence against him.
India has been pressing Pakistan to prosecute or hand over militants accused of planning the Mumbai attacks, before the two rival nuclear powers resume peace talks.
The foreign ministers of the two countries are expected to meet on the sidelines of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly in New York.
He said their production and use were prohibited, and that US allegations of a covert programme were false.
His comments come days after the US said it was modifying plans for defences against Iranian missiles and shelving a long-range missile shield.
Six world powers are to hold talks with Iran on 1 October that are expected to cover global nuclear disarmament.
Western powers believe Iran is developing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian programme.
Ayatollah Khamenei's comments were seen as the first official response to the US decision to scrap a European missile initiative put forward by the former Bush administration to counter any long-range Iranian missile threat.
US President Barack Obama said the US would instead develop sea and land-based interceptors against Iran's short and medium-range missile threat.
But Ayatollah Khamenei said that the US knew it was "wrong" when it asserted that Tehran was pursuing a covert nuclear bomb.
"We fundamentally reject nuclear weapons and prohibit the production and the use of nuclear weapons," he said in a speech broadcast on state television.
Israeli assurance
Iran has always denied assertions from the US, Israel and other European powers that it is seeking to build nuclear arms.
Tehran insists its uranium enrichment initiative is for a purely peaceful civilian nuclear energy programme.
Meanwhile Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that Israel had assured him that it had no plans to attack Iran.
“ My Israeli colleagues told me they were not planning to act in this way, and I trust them ” Dmitry Medvedev on the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran
Mr Medvedev told US network CNN that Israeli President Shimon Peres gave the assurance during a visit to Moscow at the end of August.
According to a transcript of an interview released by the Kremlin, he said such a strike would cause a "humanitarian disaster" and be "the worst thing that can be imagined".
"My Israeli colleagues told me they were not planning to act in this way, and I trust them," he said.
The United States, Russia, the UK, France, China and Germany are set to attend international talks with Iran on 1 October.
The EU says it expects the meeting to take place in Turkey.
The 81-year-old king of Thailand has been admitted to hospital suffering from a fever.
Doctors said King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-serving monarch, had shown signs of fatigue and was being treated with antibiotics.
King Bhumibol is deeply revered by most Thais and his health is a matter of public anxiety.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters there was "nothing to be concerned about".
People have gathered at the hospital to offer prayers and convey their good wishes.
Wide respect
A statement from Thailand's royal household said King Bhumibol was taken to the Siriraj hospital in Bangkok on Saturday night.
The Royal Household Bureau said the king was suffering from a fever, fatigue and loss of appetite. He is being treated with intravenous drips and antibiotics.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Sunday that he was aware the king had been admitted to hospital, but insisted it was only for a check-up.
"His Majesty's condition is not a problem," Mr Abhisit told reporters.
King Bhumibol has long been seen as the only unifying figure in a nation that has seen at least 24 prime ministers, 17 constitutions and more than a dozen military coups during his 63-year reign.
He is widely respected among the Thai people - and he is sometimes accorded an almost divine reverence.
The Bangkok Post newspaper quoted a 60-year old woman, Warinan Phurahong, as saying she ran to the hospital when she heard about the king's condition and plans to stay there until His Majesty recovers.
The king, a constitutional monarch, made a rare call for stability and reconciliation in Thai politics last month. Factions for and against the ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra are jostling for power, often using the king's name and image to strengthen their case.
The weekend saw another outbreak of street demonstrations from the opposing political camps.
Mr Thaksin's supporters, the "red shirts", marked his ousting in a coup three years ago with peaceful rallies in Bangkok.
Mr Thaksin, criticised by his opponents for not showing enough respect to the monarchy when he was in office, spoke to the crowd from exile by video link. He wants fresh elections and a pardon for a conflict of interest conviction.
Meanwhile, the largely pro-government "yellow shirts" demonstrated on the Thai border with Cambodia in a long-running sovereignty dispute over a temple complex that straddles the boundary.
Their protests ended in violent clashes with Thai police.
Thailand remains deeply divided three years after the 19 September 2006 coup which drove out Mr Thaksin while he was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly.
Mr Abhisit is on his way to the same event, but the chief of the kingdom's powerful army has scotched rumours that there would be another putsch in his absence.
Sudanese soldiers have been fighting with rebels in the Darfur region in recent days, the army has confirmed.
The clashes, in Korma in northern Darfur, were the first major battles since a UN commander said last month that the region was no longer at war.
The joint African Union-United Nations force Unamid is investigating.
Sudanese officials say 10,000 people have died since the conflict broke out in 2003. The UN says 300,000 have died and 2.7 million have been displaced.
From 2003 to 2005, when the conflict was at its height, aid agencies labelled the situation in Darfur as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Rebels 'purged'
A faction of the main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), said the latest clashes broke out on Thursday and continued into Friday.
The group said 20 civilians were killed during the fighting.
In a statement, the Sudanese military confirmed the clashes but said nothing about casualties.
DISPLACED IN DARFUR
2006 547,420 people fled their homes
2007 302,794
2008 317,000
2009 (first six months) 137,000
Total to date: 2.7m Source: UN humanitarian agency Ocha
The statement said only that government forces had "purged the areas of the remnants" of the SLA.
None of the claims have yet been independently verified.
Unamid said it was planning to send an investigation team to the area.
"We are waiting to sent an urgent mission there to verify and assess the security and humanitarian situation," said spokesman Nourredine Mezni.
The clashes are the first of any note since Unamid's outgoing military commander Gen Martin Agwai said the war in Darfur was effectively over.
The Nigerian officer characterised the violence in Sudan's Western province as closer to criminality than an outright war.
Next month peace talks on Darfur will continue in the Qatari capital Doha.
But the BBC's James Copnall in Sudan says Abdel Wahid Mohamed el-Nur, leader of the SLA faction involved in the recent clashes, has made it clear he is very unlikely to attend.
On Sunday President Omar al-Bashir appealed to all the armed movements in Darfur to join the talks.
He called on "the remaining sons of Darfur who took up arms against the government" to stop fighting and join the peace process.
The war broke out in the arid and impoverished region early in 2003 when rebel groups attacked government targets, accusing Khartoum of oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs.
Pro-government militiamen hit back with brutal force, which the US and some rights groups have labelled genocide.
Khartoum denies supporting the militias, but the international court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant earlier this year for Mr Bashir, accusing him of war crimes.
"War is peace" was one of the memorable slogans on the facade of the Ministry of Truth, Minitrue, in "Newspeak," the language invented by George Orwell in 1948 for his dystopian novel 1984. Some sixty years later, a quarter-century after Orwell's imagined future bit the dust, the phrase is, in a number of ways, eerily applicable to the United States.
Last week, for instance, a New York Times front-page story by Eric Schmitt and David Sanger was headlined "Obama Is Facing Doubts in Party on Afghanistan, Troop Buildup at Issue." It offered a modern version of journalistic Newspeak.
"Doubts," of course, imply dissent, and in fact just the week before there had been a major break in Washington's ranks, though not among Democrats. The conservative columnist George Will wrote a piece offering blunt advice to the Obama administration, summed up in its headline: "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan." In our age of political and audience fragmentation and polarization, think of this as the Afghan version of Vietnam's Cronkite moment.
The Times report on those Democratic doubts, on the other hand, represented a more typical Washington moment. Ignored, for instance, was Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's end-of-August call for the president to develop an Afghan withdrawal timetable. The focus of the piece was instead an upcoming speech by Michigan Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He was, Schmitt and Sanger reported, planning to push back against well-placed leaks (in the Times, among other places) indicating that war commander General Stanley McChrystal was urging the president to commit 15,000 to 45,000 more American troops to the Afghan War.
Here, according to the two reporters, was the gist of Levin's message about what everyone agrees is a "deteriorating" US position: "He was against sending more American combat troops to Afghanistan until the United States speeded up the training and equipping of more Afghan security forces."
Think of this as the line in the sand within the Democratic Party, and be assured that the debates within the halls of power over McChrystal's troop requests and Levin's proposal are likely to be fierce this fall. Thought about for a moment, however, both positions can be summed up with the same word: More.
The essence of this "debate" comes down to: more of them versus more of us (and keep in mind that more of them--an expanded training program for the Afghan National Army--actually means more of "us" in the form of extra trainers and advisers). In other words, however contentious the disputes in Washington, however dismally the public now views the war, however much the president's war coalition might threaten to crack open, the only choices will be between more and more.
No alternatives are likely to get a real hearing. Few alternative policy proposals even exist because alternatives that don't fit with "more" have ceased to be part of Washington's war culture. No serious thought, effort or investment goes into them. Clearly referring to Will's column, one of the unnamed "senior officials" who swarm through our major newspapers made the administration's position clear, saying sardonically, according to the Washington Post, "I don't anticipate that the briefing books for the [administration] principals on these debates over the next weeks and months will be filled with submissions from opinion columnists.... I do anticipate they will be filled with vigorous discussion...of how successful we've been to date."
State of War
Because the United States does not look like a militarized country, it's hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere at any moment. Similarly, we've become used to the idea that, when various forms of force (or threats of force) don't work, our response, as in Afghanistan, is to recalibrate and apply some alternate version of the same under a new or rebranded name--the hot one now being "counterinsurgency" or COIN--in a marginally different manner. When it comes to war, as well as preparations for war, more is now generally the order of the day.
This wasn't always the case. The early Republic that the most hawkish conservatives love to cite was a land whose leaders looked with suspicion on the very idea of a standing army. They would have viewed our hundreds of global garrisons, our vast network of spies, agents, Special Forces teams, surveillance operatives, interrogators, rent-a-guns and mercenary corporations, as well as our staggering Pentagon budget and the constant future-war gaming and planning that accompanies it, with genuine horror.
The question is, What kind of country do we actually live in when the so-called US Intelligence Community (IC) lists sixteen intelligence services ranging from Air Force Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency to the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Security Agency? What could "intelligence" mean once spread over sixteen sizable, bureaucratic, often competing outfits with a cumulative 2009 budget estimated at more than $55 billion (a startling percentage of which is controlled by the Pentagon)? What exactly is so intelligent about all that? And why does no one think it even mildly strange or in any way out of the ordinary?
What does it mean when the most military-obsessed administration in our history, which, year after year, submitted ever more bloated Pentagon budgets to Congress, is succeeded by one headed by a president who ran, at least partially, on an antiwar platform, and who has now submitted an even larger Pentagon budget? What does this tell you about Washington and about the viability of non-militarized alternatives to the path George W. Bush took? What does it mean when the new administration, surveying nearly eight years and two wars' worth of disasters, decides to expand the US Armed Forces rather than shrink the US global mission?
What kind of a world do we inhabit when, with an official unemployment rate of 9.7 percent and an underemployment rate of 16.8 percent, the American taxpayer is financing the building of a three-story, exceedingly permanent-looking $17 million troop barracks at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan? This, in turn, is part of a taxpayer-funded $220 million upgrade of the base that includes new "water treatment plants, headquarters buildings, fuel farms, and power generating plants." And what about the US air base built at Balad, north of Baghdad, that now has fifteen bus routes, two fire stations, two water treatment plants, two sewage treatment plants, two power plants, a water bottling plant and the requisite set of fast-food outlets, PXes and so on, as well as air traffic levels sometimes compared to those at Chicago's O'Hare International?
What kind of American world are we living in when a plan to withdraw most US troops from Iraq involves the removal of more than 1.5 million pieces of equipment? Or in which the possibility of withdrawal leads the Pentagon to issue nearly billion-dollar contracts (new ones!) to increase the number of private security contractors in that country?
What do you make of a world in which the United States has robot assassins in the skies over its war zones, 24/7, and the "pilots" who control them from thousands of miles away are ready on a moment's notice to launch missiles--"Hellfire" missiles at that--into Pashtun peasant villages in the wild, mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan? What does it mean when American pilots can be at war "in" Afghanistan, 9 to 5, by remote control, while their bodies remain at a base outside Las Vegas and then can head home past a sign that warns them to drive carefully because this is "the most dangerous part of your day"?
What does it mean when, for our security and future safety, the Pentagon funds the wildest ideas imaginable for developing high-tech weapons systems, many of which sound as if they came straight out of the pages of sci-fi novels? Take, for example, Boeing's advanced coordinated system of hand-held drones, robots, sensors and other battlefield surveillance equipment slated for seven Army brigades within the next two years at a cost of $2 billion and for the full Army by 2025; or the Next Generation Bomber, an advanced "platform" slated for 2018; or a truly futuristic bomber, "a suborbital semi-spacecraft able to move at hypersonic speed along the edge of the atmosphere," for 2035? What does it mean about our world when those people in our government peering deepest into a blue-skies future are planning ways to send armed "platforms" up into those skies and kill more than a quarter century from now?
And do you ever wonder about this: If such weaponry is being endlessly developed for our safety and security, and that of our children and grandchildren, why is it that one of our most successful businesses involves the sale of the same weaponry to other countries? Few Americans are comfortable thinking about this, which may explain why global-arms-trade pieces don't tend to make it onto the front pages of our newspapers. Recently, the Times Pentagon correspondent Thom Shanker, for instance, wrote a piece on the subject which appeared inside the paper on a quiet Labor Day. "Despite Slump, US Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows" was the headline. Perhaps Shanker, too, felt uncomfortable with his subject, because he included the following generic description: "In the highly competitive global arms market, nations vie for both profit and political influence through weapons sales, in particular to developing nations..." The figures he cited from a new congressional study of that "highly competitive" market told a different story: The United States, with $37.8 billion in arms sales (up $12.4 billion from 2007), controlled 68.4 percent of the global arms market in 2008. Highly competitively speaking, Italy came "a distant second" with $3.7 billion. In sales to "developing nations," the US inked $29.6 billion in weapons agreements or 70.1 percent of the market. Russia was a vanishingly distant second at $3.3 billion or 7.8 percent of the market. In other words, with 70 percent of the market, the US actually has what, in any other field, would qualify as a monopoly position--in this case, in things that go boom in the night. With the American car industry in a ditch, it seems that this (along with Hollywood films that go boom in the night) is what we now do best, as befits a war, if not warrior, state. Is that an American accomplishment you're comfortable with?
On the day I'm writing this piece, "Names of the Dead," a feature which appears almost daily in my hometown newspaper, records the death of an Army private from DeKalb, Illinois, in Afghanistan. Among the spare facts offered: he was 20 years old, which means he was probably born not long before the First Gulf War was launched in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush. If you include that war, which never really ended--low-level US military actions against Saddam Hussein's regime continued until the invasion of 2003--as well as US actions in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia, not to speak of the steady warfare underway since November 2001, in his short life, there was hardly a moment in which the US wasn't engaged in military operations somewhere on the planet (invariably thousands of miles from home). If that private left a one-year-old baby behind in the States, and you believe the statements of various military officials, that child could pass her tenth birthday before the war in which her father died comes to an end. Given the record of these last years, and the present military talk about being better prepared for "the next war," she could reach 2025, the age when she, too, might join the military without ever spending a warless day. Is that the future you had in mind?
Consider this: War is now the American way, even if peace is what most Americans experience while their proxies fight in distant lands. Any serious alternative to war, which means our "security," is increasingly inconceivable. In Orwellian terms then, war is indeed peace in the United States and peace, war.
American Newspeak
Newspeak, as Orwell imagined it, was an ever more constricted form of English that would, sooner or later, make "all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended," he wrote in an appendix to his novel, "that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought...should be literally unthinkable."
When it comes to war (and peace), we live in a world of American Newspeak in which alternatives to a state of war are not only ever more unacceptable, but ever harder to imagine. If war is now our permanent situation, in good Orwellian fashion it has also been sundered from a set of words that once accompanied it.
It lacks, for instance, "victory." After all, when was the last time the US actually won a war (unless you include our "victories" over small countries incapable of defending themselves like the tiny Caribbean Island of Grenada in 1983 or powerless Panama in 1989)? The smashing "victory" over Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War only led to a stop-and-start conflict now almost two decades old that has proved a catastrophe. Keep heading backward through the Vietnam and Korean Wars and the last time the US military was truly victorious was in 1945.
But achieving victory no longer seems to matter. War American-style is now conceptually unending, as are preparations for it. When George W. Bush proclaimed a Global War on Terror (aka World War IV), conceived as a "generational struggle" like the cold war, he caught a certain American reality. In a sense, the ongoing war system can't absorb victory. Any such endpoint might indeed prove to be a kind of defeat.
No longer has war anything to do with the taking of territory either, or even with direct conquest. War is increasingly a state of being, not a process with a beginning, an end, and an actual geography.
Similarly drained of its traditional meaning has been the word "security"--though it has moved from a state of being (secure) to an eternal, immensely profitable process whose endpoint is unachievable. If we ever decided we were either secure enough, or more willing to live without the unreachable idea of total security, the American way of war and the national security state would lose much of their meaning. In other words, in our world, security is insecurity.
As for "peace," war's companion and theoretical opposite, though still used in official speeches, it, too, has been emptied of meaning and all but discredited. Appropriately enough, diplomacy, that part of government which classically would have been associated with peace, or at least with the pursuit of the goals of war by other means, has been dwarfed by, subordinated to, or even subsumed by the Pentagon. In recent years, the US military with its vast funds has taken over, or encroached upon, a range of activities that once would have been left to an underfunded State Department, especially humanitarian aid operations, foreign aid, and what's now called nation-building. (On this subject, check out Stephen Glain's recent essay, "The American Leviathan" in The Nation.)
Diplomacy itself has been militarized and, like our country, is now hidden behind massive fortifications, and has been placed under Lord-of-the-Flies-style guard. The State Department's embassies are now bunkers and military-style headquarters for the prosecution of war policies; its officials, when enough of them can be found, are now sent out into the provinces in war zones to do "civilian" things.
And peace itself? Simply put, there's no money in it. Of the nearly trillion dollars the US invests in war and war-related activities, nothing goes to peace. No money, no effort, no thought. The very idea that there might be peaceful alternatives to endless war is so discredited that it's left to utopians, bleeding hearts and feathered doves. As in Orwell's Newspeak, while "peace" remains with us, it's largely been shorn of its possibilities. No longer the opposite of war, it's just a rhetorical flourish embedded, like one of our reporters, in Warspeak.
What a world might be like in which we began not just to withdraw our troops from one war to fight another, but to seriously scale down the American global mission, close those hundreds of bases--recently, there were almost 300 of them, macro to micro, in Iraq alone--and bring our military home is beyond imagining. To discuss such obviously absurd possibilities makes you an apostate to America's true religion and addiction, which is force. However much it might seem that most of us are peaceably watching our TV sets or computer screens or iPhones, we Americans are also--always--marching as to war. We may not all bother to attend the church of our new religion, but we all tithe. We all partake. In this sense, we live peaceably in a state of war.
About Tom Engelhardt
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site, has just been published. Focusing on what the mainstream media hasn't covered, it is an alternative history of the mad Bush years. Engelhardt is also the author of The End of Victory Culture, recently updated in a newly issued edition that covers victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
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