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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

[ALOCHONA] New War Rumors: U.S. Plans To Seize Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal

USA should understand, Sole Purpose of development of Atomic Bomb was to deter India from causing another Fall of Dhaka, while Punjabis would keep killing other Pakistanis as usual.
But it seems, the West is scared that rogue Pak Army would smuggle Atomic Bombs in to West and blow its cities through JehaaDis.

--- In alochona@yahoogroups.com, Isha Khan <bdmailer@...> wrote:
>
> *New War Rumors: U.S. Plans To Seize Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal*
>
> by Rick Rozoff
>
>
>
> Two recent news items emanating from the United States have begun to
> reverberate in Pakistan and give rise to speculation that growing American
> drone strikes and NATO helicopter attacks in that country may be the
> harbingers of far broader actions: Nothing less than the expansion of the
> West's war in Afghanistan into Pakistan with the ultimate goal of seizing
> the nation's nuclear weapons.
>
>
>
> The News International, Pakistan's largest English-language newspaper,
> published a report on October 13 based on excerpts from American journalist
> Bob Woodward's recently released volume "Obama's Wars" which stated that
> during a trilateral summit between the presidents of the U.S., Afghanistan
> and Pakistan on May 6 of 2009 Pakistani head of state Asif Ali Zardari
> accused Washington of being behind Taliban attacks inside his country with
> the intent to use them so "the US could invade and seize its nuclear
> weapons." [1]
>
>
>
> Woodward recounted comments exchanged at a dinner with Zardari and
> Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
> (2007-2009), to Iraq (2005-2007) and Afghanistan (2003-2005). Khalilzad was
> also a close associate of Jimmy Carter administration National Security
> Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of the U.S. strategy to support
> attacks by armed extremists based in Pakistan against Afghanistan starting
> in 1978, when he joined the Polish expatriate at Columbia University from
> 1979-1989.
>
>
>
> The baton for what is now Washington's over 30-year involvement in
> Afghanistan was passed from Brzezinski to Khalilzad in the 1980s when the
> latter was appointed one of the Ronald Reagan administration's senior State
> Department officials in charge of supporting Mujahedin fighters operating
> out of Peshawar in Pakistan. He joined the State Department in 1984 on a
> Council on Foreign Relations fellowship and worked for Paul Wolfowitz,
> then-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, at
> Foggy Bottom. His efforts were augmented by the Central Intelligence
> Agency's deputy director at the time, Robert Gates, now U.S. defense
> secretary. Two of their three chief clients, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and
> Jalaluddin Haqqani, are founders and leaders of Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin and
> the Haqqani network, against whom Gates' Pentagon is currently waging war on
> both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
>
>
>
> According to Woodward's account of the Pakistani president's accusations to
> Khalilzad in May of last year, "Zardari dropped his diplomatic guard. He
> suggested that one of…two countries was arranging the attacks by the
> Pakistani Taliban inside his country: India or the US. Zardari didn't think
> India could be that clever, but the US could. [Afghan President Hamid]
> Karzai had told him the US was behind the attacks, confirming the claims
> made by the Pakistani ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]." [2]
>
>
>
> Khalilzad, whose résumé also includes stints at the Defense Department, the
> National Security Council, the Center for Strategic and International
> Studies, the National Endowment for Democracy, the RAND Corporation (where
> he assisted in establishing the Middle East Studies Center) and the Project
> for the New American Century, reportedly took issue with Zardari's
> contention, which led to the latter responding that what he had described
> "was a plot to destabilize Pakistan," hatched in order that, according to
> Woodward's version of his words, "the US could invade and seize [Pakistan's]
> nuclear weapons."
>
>
>
> The account stated Zardari "could not explain the rapid expansion in
> violence otherwise. And the CIA had not pursued the leaders of the Pakistani
> Taliban, a group known as Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan or TTP that had
> attacked the government. TTP was also blamed for the assassination of
> Zardari's wife, Benazir Bhutto."
>
>
>
> In the Pakistani president's words: "We give you targets of Taliban people
> you don't go after. You go after other areas. We're puzzled."
>
>
>
> When Khalilzad mentioned that U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan "were
> primarily meant to hunt down members of al Qaeda and Afghan insurgents, not
> the Pakistan Taliban," Zardari responded by insisting "But the Taliban
> movement is tied to al Qaeda…so by not attacking the targets recommended by
> Pakistan the US had revealed its support of the TTP. The CIA at one time had
> even worked with the group's leader, Baitullah Mehsud," Zardari asserted.
> [3] (Three months later a CIA-directed drone strike killed Mehsud, his wife
> and several in-laws and bodyguards.)
>
>
>
> In August of 2009, while still commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in
> Afghanistan, then-General Stanley McChrystal issued his classified COMISAF
> (Commander of International Security Assistance Force) Initial Assessment
> which asserted the "major insurgent groups in order of their threat to the
> mission are: the Quetta Shura Taliban (05T), the Haqqani Network (HQN), and
> the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG)." [4] The first is an Afghan Taliban group
> which as its name indicates is based in the capital of Pakistan's
> Balochistan province.
>
>
>
> Steve Coll, Alfred McCoy and other authorities on the subject have
> documented the CIA's involvement with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin
> Haqqani: That they were shared with if not transferred by Pakistan's
> Inter-Services Intelligence to the CIA as private assets. Coll has
> additionally claimed that Haqqani sheltered and supported Osama bin Laden
> starting in the 1980s.
>
>
>
> At the meeting between Obama, Zardari and Karzai in May of 2009, the
> American president slighted his two counterparts for alleged lack of resolve
> in prosecuting the war on both sides of the Durand Line, although even as he
> spoke Pakistan was engaged in a major military assault in the Swat Valley
> which led to the displacement of 3 million civilians.
>
>
>
> Four days after the dinner exchange between Zardari and Khalilzad, the
> Pakistani president appeared on the May 10 edition of NBC's Meet the Press
> on a program which also included Afghan President Karzai and Steve Coll, now
> president and CEO of the New America Foundation and author of Ghost Wars:
> The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet
> Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004) and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family
> in the American Century (2008).
>
>
>
> Zardari's comments to his American audience included the claim that the
> Taliban "was part of your past and our past, and the ISI and the CIA created
> them together. And I can find you 10 books and 10 philosophers and 10
> write-ups on that…." [5]
>
>
>
> That the leaders of the other two armed groups identified by McChrystal –
> Haqqani and Hekmatyar – were among the three Mujahedin leaders financed,
> armed and trained by the CIA (the late Ahmed Shah Massoud being the third),
> makes the pattern complete: Robert Gates the defense secretary is leading a
> war against forces that Robert Gates the deputy director of the CIA earlier
> supported through one of the Agency's longest and most expensive covert
> programs, Operation Cyclone.
>
>
>
> After retiring from public life, George Kennan, the main architect of U.S.
> Cold War policy, cited a line he ascribed to Goethe to warn that in the end
> we are all destroyed by monsters of our own creation. To emend Voltaire, the
> White House rather than God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid
> to laugh.
>
>
>
> Woodward's account of last year's comments by Pakistan's president and
> Zalmay Khalilzad could be dismissed as merely anecdotal if not for an
> article that appeared in the New York Post on October 3 and developments in
> Pakistan itself over the past six weeks.
>
>
>
> Arthur Herman, a visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise
> Institute think tank, stated in an article entitled "Our Pakistan problem:
> Obama's approach is failing" that "The bitter irony is that even as Obama is
> trying to get out of the war in Afghanistan, he may be heading us into one
> in Pakistan."
>
>
>
> The author detailed that whereas in 2009 the U.S. launched 45 Predator
> unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) attacks inside Pakistan, it had tripled that
> number by the time his article appeared, and that half as many as last
> year's total strikes had been launched this September alone.
>
>
>
> Also mentioning the NATO helicopter attack in the Kurram Agency of
> Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas on September 30 which killed
> three members of the Frontier Corps and that "Raids by the CIA's
> Counterterrorism Pursuit Team – with its 3,000 Afghan troops – into Pakistan
> are also becoming routine," Herman warned:
>
> "All this adds up to a US effort in Pakistan highly reminiscent of the one
> we undertook in Laos in the 1960s – one of the springboards into the Vietnam
> quagmire.
>
>
>
> "If Obama's growing pressure on Pakistan destabilizes that government, the
> only thing keeping that country's nukes out of the hands of al Qaeda may
> have to be US troops. That's a shooting-war scenario that will make Obama
> wish his name was Lyndon Baines Johnson." [6]
>
> Herman attributes the expansion of the Afghan war into Pakistan at a
> qualitatively more dangerous level to the machinations of former CIA officer
> and current Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Bruce Riedel and the
> commander of 152,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan General David
> Petraeus.
>
>
>
> A report of October 13 documented that since Petraeus took command of the
> war effort in Afghanistan in June there has been a 172 percent increase in
> U.S. and NATO air strikes, from 257 assault missions in September of 2009 to
> over 700 last month. In addition, "Surveillance flights increased to nearly
> three times the number from September 2009 and supply flights are up as
> well….Petraeus is sometimes seen as more willing to risk the so-called
> `collateral damage' of civilian deaths….[7]
>
>
>
> Last month's drone attacks were the most in any month since the targeted
> assasinations were started in 2004 and the amount of deaths they caused –
> over 150 – the highest monthly total to date.
>
>
>
> By the middle of this month there have been at least eight drone attacks and
> no fewer than 66 people killed.
>
>
>
> According to Steve Coll's New America Foundation, 1,439 of the 1,844 deaths
> caused by drone attacks in Pakistan since 2004 have occurred in 2009 and so
> far this year. [8]
>
>
>
> Similarly, the deaths of 1,111 of 2,160 U.S. and NATO soldiers killed in
> Afghanistan since 2001 occurred in the same period. Seventeen foreign
> soldiers were killed between October 13 and 16 alone.
>
>
>
> On October 13 the Pakistani press reported that NATO helicopters, until then
> operating solely in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (in four attacks
> between September 25-30 against the Haqqani network), violated the nation's
> airspace over the province of Balochistan, leading Islamabad to lodge a
> formal protest with NATO.
>
>
>
> Since the revelations from Bob Woodward's new book and the publication of
> Arthur Herman's article, commentaries in Pakistani newspapers have appeared
> which indicate the seriousness with which recent developments and even more
> ominous portents are being viewed.
>
>
>
> An October 13 feature in The Nation stated that "the ongoing war on terror
> in Afghanistan is aimed to take the operations into Pakistani territory….The
> real target is Pakistan's nuclear potential; they [the U.S. and NATO] have
> no plausible security threat from the ill-equipped Taliban or ragtag
> extremists."
>
>
>
> Commenting on the New York Post feature cited earlier, Pakistani commentator
> A R Jerral further claimed that what "Herman suggests in his write-up is in
> fact a policy direction to the US administration. He implies that the policy
> of sending drones and attacking militant hideouts in the Pakistan territory
> has not worked….[T]he thrust is Pakistan's nukes. It is a tacit way to tell
> the policymakers in Washington to keep the pressure on our country, which
> will weaken the Pakistani government's standing, causing instability. That
> will provide the reason for the US troops to move in."
>
>
>
> He added: "We know about the drone attacks as these are reported in the
> media, but what we do not know and our media does not report is the fact
> that US-led NATO forces are launching crossborder raids into Pakistan….For
> this, CIA is operating Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams in Afghanistan.
>
> "These teams are regularly mounting ground raids into Pakistani territory."
>
>
>
> "In this way, things are getting hot as far as the war on terror is
> concerned. Pakistan is moving to become centre stage in this war. Bruce
> Riedel, a former CIA and NSC [National Security Council] official, has
> advised Mr Obama to shift the focus of war `from Afghanistan to Pakistan';
> this is what we are witnessing in the shape of heightened war effort into
> the Pakistan territory." [9]
>
> A Pakistani commentary of the preceding day stated: "[W]e have…been dragged
> into giving the US access to Balochistan from where it has been attempting
> to destabilise the Iranian regime through support for the terrorist group
> Jundullah….Even more threatening, unless we change course now, we will have
> lost the battle to retain our nuclear assets because that is where the
> NATO-US trail is eventually leading to."
>
> "The free-wheeling access to US covert military and intelligence
> operatives, both officials and private contractors, is another destabilising
> factor that we seem to be unable or unwilling to check. And now there are
> the NATO incursions into our territory and targeting of even our military
> personnel, which shows how servile a state we are living in at present. [10]
>
> As the war in Afghanistan, the largest and longest in the world, proceeds
> with record casualties among civilians and combatants alike on both sides of
> the Afghan-Pakistani border, plans are afoot to further expand the war into
> Pakistan and to threaten Iran as well.
>
>
>
> Comparisons to Washington's war in Indochina have been mentioned. [11] But
> Pakistan with its 180 million people and nuclear weapons is not Cambodia and
> Iran with its population of over 70 million is not Laos.
>
>
> *Notes*
>
>
>
> 1) Shaheen Sehbai, Zardari says US behind Taliban attacks in Pakistan The
> News International, October 13, 2010
>
> http://www.thenews.com.pk/13-10-2010/Top-Story/1276.htm
>
> 2) Ibid
> 3) Ibid
> 4) Washington Post, September 21, 2009
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/21/AR2009092100110.html
>
>
> 5) Meet the Press, May 10, 2009
>
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30658135
>
> 6) Arthur Herman, Our Pakistan problem: Obama's approach is failing New
> York Post, October 3, 2010
> http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/our_pakistan_problem_1TqxfBu89mDxSlZHUtHj2K
> Obama's Pakistan Failure American Enterprise Institute, October 3, 2010
>
> http://www.aei.org/article/102612
>
> 7) ABC News Radio, October 13, 2010
> 8) New America Foundation
>
> http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones
>
> 9) A R Jerral, Shifting war on terror to Pakistan The Nation, October 13,
> 2010
>
> http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/13-Oct-2010/Shifting-war-on-terror-to-Pakistan
>
>
> 10) Shireen M Mazari, Ending Collaboration with the US on the War on
> Pakistan The Dawn, October 12, 2010
>
> http://thedawn.com.pk/2010/10/12/ending-collaboration-with-the-us-on-the-war-on-pakistan
>
>
> 11) NATO Expands Afghan War Into Pakistan Stop NATO, September 28, 2010
>
> http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/nato-expands-afghan-war-into-pakistan
>
>
>
>
> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21475
>


------------------------------------

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[ALOCHONA] Sanaullah Babu Murder : Cops have evidence of AL men's involvement



Sanaullah Babu Murder : Cops have evidence of AL men's involvement

Medical report says victim's tendon wasn't severed; main accused Zakir allegedly under MP's shelter of the Natore Awami League and the local MP are trying to portray the murder of BNP leader Sanaullah Noor Babu as a sequel to BNP's internal feud, the investigators are certain that the ruling party activists had committed the offence.

Investigation officer (IO) of the case Sub-Inspector Abdul Hannan of Detective Branch said he has specific evidence that proves the involvement of prime accused KM Zakir Hossain and other accused in the killing.

"The fact is clear like daylight. I have enough evidence against the accused but they are now hiding to escape arrests," the IO told The Daily Star, adding that his primary target is to capture the perpetrators.

"How long will they stay in hiding? Once the main accused is caught the others would come out one after another," he said.

Eyewitnesses of the killing, on condition of anonymity, also spoke against Zakir to The Daily Star.

One such witness said Zakir led a group of around hundred ruling party activists on October 8. When the procession approached the Bonpara Bazar, Zakir's group attacked the rally with sticks and other weapons and beat up the people in the procession at random.

He said while others managed to flee from the scene Babu was surrounded by the group and was beaten up for 15 minutes until he collapsed.

On October 9, Babu's wife filed a case with the police accusing 47 people with Zakir being the principal accused.

Police have so far managed to arrest one accused, Awami League worker Rappu, while the rest are absconding.

Video footage of the incident clearly shows many ruling party activists beating Babu mercilessly.

The local parliamentarian and Awami League leader Abdul Quddus on October 14 made a public speech assuring the accused that no action would be taken against them as none from the ruling party was involved in the killing.

Zakir Hossain is now using a cellphone to keep contact with his family and party leaders. The Daily Star on Saturday interviewed him over the phone.

Zakir claimed innocence and said he could not have harmed Babu since he had no feud with him. He also claimed that he tried to save Babu from the attackers.

He said Babu's tendons were not cut and that was something done after he was taken on an ambulance by BNP people.

The Daily Star managed to collect Babu's autopsy report from Rajshahi Medical College Hospital. The report mentioned injuries in the head, eyes, legs, chest, abdomen, lower back and bones. It did not say anything about severed tendons.

"The death, in my opinion, was due to hemorrhage and shock following the injuries and it was homicidal in nature," said the doctor who signed the autopsy report.

AL insiders say Zakir has decided to surrender before the court having green signal from party leaders. "His local political guru Quddus is providing him all the support in this regard," said an AL leader.

When MP Abdul Quddus was asked whether he was trying to protect the killers, he said, "As a journalist you may ask the question, but many people, who were not in Bonpara that day, were accused in the case."

"Zakir and others were trying to save Babu," he claimed.

The Daily Star asked the MP, "Then who killed him?"

Quddus replied, "I can't say that since it is a matter of investigation now."

"Then how could you say that the ruling party men were not involved - would it not affect the investigation," asked The Daily Star and the MP remained silent in reply.

Then The Daily Star further asked, "What role would you play if the investigation finds your people involved in the murder?"

Quddus said, "Then my party would decide about it."

Asked whether he backs Zakir's criminal activities, the MP became very angry and said a journalist should not taint a politician in such a manner. "He [Zakir] comes from a good family and is not involved with criminal activities," Quddus said.

ZAKIR'S PROFILE

A member of Boraigram Upazila unit AL, Zakir had taken control of Baraigram upazila soon after his party won the parliamentary elections in December 2008.

Backed by MP from Baraigram-Gurudaspur constituency Abdus Quddus, he managed to establish total control over the local politics, tender manipulation, extortion and land grabbing.

But he does not do it directly. He leads a large group comprised of leaders and activists of Jubo League, Swechchhasebok League and Chhatra League to unleash his illegal actions, locals say.

"Zakir is the all in all in Bonpara since the local MP gave him the power to deal with every affair here," said a hotel owner in Bonpara Bazar.

"He (Zakir) is now the godfather of Baraigram," a shop-keeper at the bazaar told The Daily Star, adding that Zakir, his two brothers and party leaders have joined hands to rule the upazila.

Zakir has a large family in Mohishabhanga village near Bonpara Bazaar, which is also a source of his strength. Although he is involved in various illegal activities, he tries to compensate that with the killing of his father, freedom fighter Ainal Haq, allegedly by BNP activists on March 28, 2000.

http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=159177


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[ALOCHONA] Counter-terrorism centre in Bangladesh planned:European Union (EU)



Counter-terrorism centre in Bangladesh planned:European Union (EU)

Outgoing ambassador of European Union (EU) Dr. Stefan Frowein on Tuesday said Dhaka was set to be the host of a regional counter-terrorism centre with European supports as India and Pakistan reached a consensus on the location of the proposed institute.(BSS)

"India and Pakistan have agreed that Bangladesh could be the host of the centre," he told newsmen after envoys of 9 European nations and the EU held a meeting with Foreign Minister Dr Dipu Moni at her office here.

Frowein said the center would be the focal point for exchange of expertise and ideas while it would be a hub for conferring training on combats against terrorism while counter terrorism experts from Europe recently visited Bangladesh to fix the modus operandi of the institute.

No comment from the foreign ministry was immediately available but the EU envoy's remarks came as Dhaka earlier suggested formation of a South Asian task force to fight militancy in line with ruling Awami League's election manifesto.

The idea, however, was believed to have a lukewarm response initially from the other regional stakeholders who tended to work closely on bilateral basis.

The EU envoy said energy issue was another major area to feature their talks with the foreign minister as the European entrepreneurs were eying Bangladesh as an ideal location for their investments in view of the South Asian country's energy shortage.

Frowein, however, said the European energy cooperation would be an arena for the private investors beyond the European Union despite their state-level supports for energy promotion in other forms through the international lending agencies.

The EU envoy said the European ambassadors conveyed the consorted decision of their respective countries to incorporate Bangladesh as a member of The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in line with an earlier request by Dhaka.

ASEM was established in 1996 to strengthen Asian-European relations, which had traditionally been weak, in contrast to strong Asian-North American and European-North American relations.

The ambassador said climate change was another issue of common concern of Bangladesh and EU and since Dhaka was expected to play a crucial role in the upcoming COP 16 in Cancun, the European Union was expected to put its weight for Bangladesh to uphold the cause.

Spanish Ambassador Arturo Perez Martinez, Italian Ambassador Dr. Itala Occhi, French Ambassador Charley Causeret, Netherlands Ambassador Alphons Hennekens, Charge d' Affaires of German Embassy Rolf Dieter Reinhard, Charge d' affaires of Danish Embassy Jan Moller- Hansen, Charge d' affaires of Swedish embassy Ylva Sorman-Nath, Deputy British High Commissioner Nick Low and Tirza Theunissen of the Netherlands Embassy joined the meeting also attended by senior Foreign Ministry officials.

 http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2010/10/20/news0910.htm



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[ALOCHONA] Re: Barrister Rafiqul Huq on judgements of higher courts



Condition of court is grave: Rafique

Senior Supreme Court lawyer Rafique-ul Huq on Tuesday said the culture of changing verdicts with changes in power must be stopped to ensure human rights, justice and democratic progress.

'Judgements are not being pronounced on the merit of the cases. The same judge is pronouncing judgements differently on a similar issue with changes in power,' he said at a session of the Bangladesh Tomorrow colloquium on human rights, democracy and governance organised by the Centre for Sustainable Development at the Sheraton Hotel.
  

'I think enforcement of human rights needs establishment of rule of law. And to establish rule of law, the court needs to be independent, courageous and should not consider any party affiliation. I fear contempt rule might be issued to me for saying so. Somewhere I had said it becomes contemptuous for them if anyone sneezes and the court issued a contempt rule to me,' said the senior lawyer.
  

He said, 'The condition of court is really grave. No one will go to court unless he commits a great amount of sin.'If the whimsical acts of judges are not stopped, human rights cannot be established, said Rafique, also a former attorney general.
  

The government has enacted a law regarding human rights and defined it from a very wider spectrum but the question is how to implement it, he said. 'If you go to Court 1, you will get a type of judgment and if you go to Court 5, the judgment will be different.'
  

He also alleged that sometimes the verdict depends on who is moving the case.
   'We the lawyers often say among us that someone went to Jamaat's court,some one to Awami League's court, another went to BNP's court. We feel sorry for this. Think of the level we have degraded to. How could you establish human rights with such a condition of court?' he said.
   Citing Mahmudur Rahman's case, Rafique said the court sentenced him to six months' imprisonment with a fine of Tk 1 lakh, although the law stipulated a fine of Tk 2000. 'The same court later awarded a month's imprisonment and a fine of Tk 100 in a similar case,,' he said.
   'While press freedom is essential for enforcement of democratic ideals and human rights, see how Mahmudur Rahman has been treated for writing the truth,' the said.
  

Rafique said the government was not solely responsible for the situation in court, the opposition also shared the responsibility. 'Not only is the government responsible for the condition of court, the opposition is also equally responsible. Why does not the opposition go to the parliament? Were not the elected? They can boycott the parliament for some time but how could they decide not go to the house at all?'
   He said he was was happy at the institution of Human Rights Commission with the status of its chairman same as that of a judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court.'If the commission wishes, it can do a lot for human rights enforcement. If it applies the authority bestowed on it, it could change the human rights scenario,' he said.
  

Awami League leader Mahmudur Rahman Manna, also a former vice-president of Dhaka University Central Students' Union, said the parliament was similar to a one-person rule. The prime minister of Bangladesh is the goddess and things move in whatever direction she talks of. 'There are many talks about amending the constitution but will Article 70 would ever be changed?' he said.
  

Mahmudur said the intelligentsia should be vocal about human rights issues. 'There is court ruling on the constitution. Talks are on to restore secularism and cabinet yesterday [Monday] resolved to carry out the job after consulting the political parties, especially the parties based on religion,' he said.
   Dhaka University law professor Borhan Uddin Khan read out the keynote paper at the discussion, also attended by BRAC University professor Piash Karim, New Age editor Nurul Kabir and Bangladesh Human Rights Foundation chairman Alena Khan.

http://www.newagebd.com/2010/oct/20/front.html



On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 2:32 PM, Isha Khan <bdmailer@gmail.com> wrote:
Barrister Rafiqul Huq on judgements of higher courts
 
 



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[ALOCHONA] FW: Indonesian Vice President urges Muslims to stand up against Islamic Radicals



                 Why can't Bangladeshi politicos have the heart to call upon people to resist lies and
falsehoods spread by Jamaat and its cronies in the name of Islam?
 
                  How can we have the Constitution reprinted to reflect the cancellation of the notorious
5th Amendment  and still allow "religion based political parties"?  Can God belong to one political party
and not belong to another party?  What kind of 'shereki' is this cheating game?
 
                   I urge everyone to do something -- raise awareness and warn the politicians you may
know and stop the nonsene.  We have sacrificed enough and had been patient for far too long!
 
                   Farida Majid
 


Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:56:24 -0400
Subject: Indonesian Vice President urges Muslims to stand up against Islamic Radicals

 
 October 18, 2010

Indonesian Vice President urges Muslims 
to stand up against Islamic Radicals

Ulma Haryanto & Anita Rachman
The Jakarta Globe

JAKARTA - 
Vice President Boediono has received cautious praise after calling on the "silent majority" to take a stand against a growing radicalism that he describes as threatening to take the country down a path of destruction. "Once we allow radicalism to take over our way of thinking, it will lead us toward destruction," the vice president said in a speech on Saturday at the opening of the Global Peace Leadership Conference, organized by Nahdlatul Ulama.  

"Freedom of expression has been used by certain groups to spread hatred," he added.

Though racism and interreligious conflict are fundamental issues that exist in most societies, Boediono said, Indonesians should protect the foundation upon which the country was built — the principle of unity in diversity. "Although Islam is the religion of the majority of people, Indonesia is not an Islamic state," he said. Boediono said the country must not abandon the basic principle that guarantees religious freedom for all.

To do this, he called on the silent majority to take a stand. "Radicals are usually vocal, though they are few in number. They drown out the silent majority," he said. "But there are times when the silent majority must dare to speak out. We must loudly reject radicalism and return to the original agreement of the founding fathers of the nation."

Pluralism advocates applauded him for speaking out strongly on a threat they have long warned of but that officials have paid little attention to. Week after week, stories of discrimination against minority religious groups fill news pages, and several surveys have pointed to a worrying increase in intolerance among Indonesians. 

Dhyah Madya Ruth, chairwoman of Lazuardi Birru, a group that aims to educate young people about the dangers of extremism, said it was important that the government made a clear stand. 

"We have to create a synergy between the government, the people and civil society organizations in solving this problem," she said. "Most important in this is not just the silent majority, but the silent government has to make a firm stand." Burhanuddin Muhtadi, an analyst from the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI), said that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had never strongly addressed radicalism. 

In August Yudhoyono decried "groups that threatened the nation," but his vague message could not be grasped by the public, Muhtadi said. "He is too focused on his own image. He doesn't want to be considered antagonistic toward Islamic hard-liners." Another important government figure who needs to stand up against those who promote hatred is the religious affairs minister, said Ulil Abshar Abdalla, the founder of the Liberal Islam Network and a Democratic Party politician.

"For example, in several Islamic gatherings people openly call for the banishment of [minority Islamic sect] Ahmadiyah. That should not be allowed," he said, adding that he regretted that Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali had adopted a conservative approach that fostered radicalism. Suryadharma has openly advocated banning the Ahmadiyah sect.




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RE: [ALOCHONA] New War Rumors: U.S. Plans To Seize Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal



               For all his faithful services for the ISI, surely they would grant MBI Munshi some favors.  I wonder
whether Munshi would be kind enough to grant me a little wish which I had harbored since 1993.  That was when
the World Trade Center was first bombed and Osama bin Laden's picture was all over the media.
              My girl friend and colleague, another professor of English at CUNY, Dr. Mildred Ware, an Irish
Catholic, thought Osama was very handsome. "He looks like Jesus Christ," she cooed.  It would be
very nice if through the kind solicitation of MBI Munshi, I could acquire an autographed photograph of Osama
bin Laden before he is smashed up by the US drones.
 
                     Yours very humbly
        
                     Farida Majid
 


From: bdmailer@gmail.com
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:14:14 +0600
Subject: [ALOCHONA] New War Rumors: U.S. Plans To Seize Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal

 
New War Rumors: U.S. Plans To Seize Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal

by Rick Rozoff
 
 

Two recent news items emanating from the United States have begun to reverberate in Pakistan and give rise to speculation that growing American drone strikes and NATO helicopter attacks in that country may be the harbingers of far broader actions: Nothing less than the expansion of the West's war in Afghanistan into Pakistan with the ultimate goal of seizing the nation's nuclear weapons.

 

The News International, Pakistan's largest English-language newspaper, published a report on October 13 based on excerpts from American journalist Bob Woodward's recently released volume "Obama's Wars" which stated that during a trilateral summit between the presidents of the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan on May 6 of 2009 Pakistani head of state Asif Ali Zardari accused Washington of being behind Taliban attacks inside his country with the intent to use them so "the US could invade and seize its nuclear weapons." [1]

 

Woodward recounted comments exchanged at a dinner with Zardari and Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (2007-2009), to Iraq (2005-2007) and Afghanistan (2003-2005). Khalilzad was also a close associate of Jimmy Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of the U.S. strategy to support attacks by armed extremists based in Pakistan against Afghanistan starting in 1978, when he joined the Polish expatriate at Columbia University from 1979-1989.

 

The baton for what is now Washington's over 30-year involvement in Afghanistan was passed from Brzezinski to Khalilzad in the 1980s when the latter was appointed one of the Ronald Reagan administration's senior State Department officials in charge of supporting Mujahedin fighters operating out of Peshawar in Pakistan. He joined the State Department in 1984 on a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship and worked for Paul Wolfowitz, then-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, at Foggy Bottom. His efforts were augmented by the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director at the time, Robert Gates, now U.S. defense secretary. Two of their three chief clients, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, are founders and leaders of Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin and the Haqqani network, against whom Gates' Pentagon is currently waging war on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

 

According to Woodward's account of the Pakistani president's accusations to Khalilzad in May of last year, "Zardari dropped his diplomatic guard. He suggested that one of…two countries was arranging the attacks by the Pakistani Taliban inside his country: India or the US. Zardari didn't think India could be that clever, but the US could. [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai had told him the US was behind the attacks, confirming the claims made by the Pakistani ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]." [2]

 

Khalilzad, whose résumé also includes stints at the Defense Department, the National Security Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the National Endowment for Democracy, the RAND Corporation (where he assisted in establishing the Middle East Studies Center) and the Project for the New American Century, reportedly took issue with Zardari's contention, which led to the latter responding that what he had described "was a plot to destabilize Pakistan," hatched in order that, according to Woodward's version of his words, "the US could invade and seize [Pakistan's] nuclear weapons."

 

The account stated Zardari "could not explain the rapid expansion in violence otherwise. And the CIA had not pursued the leaders of the Pakistani Taliban, a group known as Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan or TTP that had attacked the government. TTP was also blamed for the assassination of Zardari's wife, Benazir Bhutto."

 

In the Pakistani president's words: "We give you targets of Taliban people you don't go after. You go after other areas. We're puzzled."

 

When Khalilzad mentioned that U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan "were primarily meant to hunt down members of al Qaeda and Afghan insurgents, not the Pakistan Taliban," Zardari responded by insisting "But the Taliban movement is tied to al Qaeda…so by not attacking the targets recommended by Pakistan the US had revealed its support of the TTP. The CIA at one time had even worked with the group's leader, Baitullah Mehsud," Zardari asserted. [3] (Three months later a CIA-directed drone strike killed Mehsud, his wife and several in-laws and bodyguards.)

 

In August of 2009, while still commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, then-General Stanley McChrystal issued his classified COMISAF (Commander of International Security Assistance Force) Initial Assessment which asserted the "major insurgent groups in order of their threat to the mission are: the Quetta Shura Taliban (05T), the Haqqani Network (HQN), and the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG)." [4] The first is an Afghan Taliban group which as its name indicates is based in the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province.

 

Steve Coll, Alfred McCoy and other authorities on the subject have documented the CIA's involvement with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani: That they were shared with if not transferred by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence to the CIA as private assets. Coll has additionally claimed that Haqqani sheltered and supported Osama bin Laden starting in the 1980s.

 

At the meeting between Obama, Zardari and Karzai in May of 2009, the American president slighted his two counterparts for alleged lack of resolve in prosecuting the war on both sides of the Durand Line, although even as he spoke Pakistan was engaged in a major military assault in the Swat Valley which led to the displacement of 3 million civilians.

 

Four days after the dinner exchange between Zardari and Khalilzad, the Pakistani president appeared on the May 10 edition of NBC's Meet the Press on a program which also included Afghan President Karzai and Steve Coll, now president and CEO of the New America Foundation and author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004) and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).

 

Zardari's comments to his American audience included the claim that the Taliban "was part of your past and our past, and the ISI and the CIA created them together. And I can find you 10 books and 10 philosophers and 10 write-ups on that…." [5]

 

That the leaders of the other two armed groups identified by McChrystal – Haqqani and Hekmatyar – were among the three Mujahedin leaders financed, armed and trained by the CIA (the late Ahmed Shah Massoud being the third), makes the pattern complete: Robert Gates the defense secretary is leading a war against forces that Robert Gates the deputy director of the CIA earlier supported through one of the Agency's longest and most expensive covert programs, Operation Cyclone.

 

After retiring from public life, George Kennan, the main architect of U.S. Cold War policy, cited a line he ascribed to Goethe to warn that in the end we are all destroyed by monsters of our own creation. To emend Voltaire, the White House rather than God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

 

Woodward's account of last year's comments by Pakistan's president and Zalmay Khalilzad could be dismissed as merely anecdotal if not for an article that appeared in the New York Post on October 3 and developments in Pakistan itself over the past six weeks.

 

Arthur Herman, a visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, stated in an article entitled "Our Pakistan problem: Obama's approach is failing" that "The bitter irony is that even as Obama is trying to get out of the war in Afghanistan, he may be heading us into one in Pakistan."

 

The author detailed that whereas in 2009 the U.S. launched 45 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) attacks inside Pakistan, it had tripled that number by the time his article appeared, and that half as many as last year's total strikes had been launched this September alone.

 

Also mentioning the NATO helicopter attack in the Kurram Agency of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas on September 30 which killed three members of the Frontier Corps and that "Raids by the CIA's Counterterrorism Pursuit Team – with its 3,000 Afghan troops – into Pakistan are also becoming routine," Herman warned:

"All this adds up to a US effort in Pakistan highly reminiscent of the one we undertook in Laos in the 1960s – one of the springboards into the Vietnam quagmire.

 

"If Obama's growing pressure on Pakistan destabilizes that government, the only thing keeping that country's nukes out of the hands of al Qaeda may have to be US troops. That's a shooting-war scenario that will make Obama wish his name was Lyndon Baines Johnson." [6]

Herman attributes the expansion of the Afghan war into Pakistan at a qualitatively more dangerous level to the machinations of former CIA officer and current Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Bruce Riedel and the commander of 152,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan General David Petraeus.

 

A report of October 13 documented that since Petraeus took command of the war effort in Afghanistan in June there has been a 172 percent increase in U.S. and NATO air strikes, from 257 assault missions in September of 2009 to over 700 last month. In addition, "Surveillance flights increased to nearly three times the number from September 2009 and supply flights are up as well….Petraeus is sometimes seen as more willing to risk the so-called 'collateral damage' of civilian deaths….[7]

 

Last month's drone attacks were the most in any month since the targeted assasinations were started in 2004 and the amount of deaths they caused – over 150 – the highest monthly total to date.

 

By the middle of this month there have been at least eight drone attacks and no fewer than 66 people killed.

 

According to Steve Coll's New America Foundation, 1,439 of the 1,844 deaths caused by drone attacks in Pakistan since 2004 have occurred in 2009 and so far this year. [8]

 

Similarly, the deaths of 1,111 of 2,160 U.S. and NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 occurred in the same period. Seventeen foreign soldiers were killed between October 13 and 16 alone.

 

On October 13 the Pakistani press reported that NATO helicopters, until then operating solely in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (in four attacks between September 25-30 against the Haqqani network), violated the nation's airspace over the province of Balochistan, leading Islamabad to lodge a formal protest with NATO.

 

Since the revelations from Bob Woodward's new book and the publication of Arthur Herman's article, commentaries in Pakistani newspapers have appeared which indicate the seriousness with which recent developments and even more ominous portents are being viewed.

 

An October 13 feature in The Nation stated that "the ongoing war on terror in Afghanistan is aimed to take the operations into Pakistani territory….The real target is Pakistan's nuclear potential; they [the U.S. and NATO] have no plausible security threat from the ill-equipped Taliban or ragtag extremists."

 

Commenting on the New York Post feature cited earlier, Pakistani commentator A R Jerral further claimed that what "Herman suggests in his write-up is in fact a policy direction to the US administration. He implies that the policy of sending drones and attacking militant hideouts in the Pakistan territory has not worked….[T]he thrust is Pakistan's nukes. It is a tacit way to tell the policymakers in Washington to keep the pressure on our country, which will weaken the Pakistani government's standing, causing instability. That will provide the reason for the US troops to move in."

 

He added: "We know about the drone attacks as these are reported in the media, but what we do not know and our media does not report is the fact that US-led NATO forces are launching crossborder raids into Pakistan….For this, CIA is operating Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams in Afghanistan.

"These teams are regularly mounting ground raids into Pakistani territory."

 

"In this way, things are getting hot as far as the war on terror is concerned. Pakistan is moving to become centre stage in this war. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA and NSC [National Security Council] official, has advised Mr Obama to shift the focus of war 'from Afghanistan to Pakistan'; this is what we are witnessing in the shape of heightened war effort into the Pakistan territory." [9]

A Pakistani commentary of the preceding day stated: "[W]e have…been dragged into giving the US access to Balochistan from where it has been attempting to destabilise the Iranian regime through support for the terrorist group Jundullah….Even more threatening, unless we change course now, we will have lost the battle to retain our nuclear assets because that is where the NATO-US trail is eventually leading to."

"The free-wheeling access to US covert military and intelligence operatives, both officials and private contractors, is another destabilising factor that we seem to be unable or unwilling to check. And now there are the NATO incursions into our territory and targeting of even our military personnel, which shows how servile a state we are living in at present. [10]

As the war in Afghanistan, the largest and longest in the world, proceeds with record casualties among civilians and combatants alike on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, plans are afoot to further expand the war into Pakistan and to threaten Iran as well.

 

Comparisons to Washington's war in Indochina have been mentioned. [11] But Pakistan with its 180 million people and nuclear weapons is not Cambodia and Iran with its population of over 70 million is not Laos.


Notes

 

1) Shaheen Sehbai, Zardari says US behind Taliban attacks in Pakistan The News International, October 13, 2010

http://www.thenews.com.pk/13-10-2010/Top-Story/1276.htm

2) Ibid
3) Ibid
4) Washington Post, September 21, 2009
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/21/AR2009092100110.html  

5) Meet the Press, May 10, 2009

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30658135

 6) Arthur Herman, Our Pakistan problem: Obama's approach is failing New York Post, October 3, 2010
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/our_pakistan_problem_1TqxfBu89mDxSlZHUtHj2K
Obama's Pakistan Failure American Enterprise Institute, October 3, 2010

http://www.aei.org/article/102612 

7) ABC News Radio, October 13, 2010
8) New America Foundation

http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones

9) A R Jerral, Shifting war on terror to Pakistan The Nation, October 13, 2010

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/13-Oct-2010/Shifting-war-on-terror-to-Pakistan 

10) Shireen M Mazari, Ending Collaboration with the US on the War on Pakistan The Dawn, October 12, 2010

http://thedawn.com.pk/2010/10/12/ending-collaboration-with-the-us-on-the-war-on-pakistan 

11) NATO Expands Afghan War Into Pakistan Stop NATO, September 28, 2010

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/nato-expands-afghan-war-into-pakistan 

 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21475




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