"When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight."
Tom Engelhardt
Article dates back to June 24, 2010
America Detached from War
Bush’s Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales from the Crypt
Available on Tomdispatch.com
Admittedly, before George W. Bush had his fever dream, the U.S. had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drone surveillance planes in the skies over Kosovo in the late 1990s. By November 2001, it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan.
In November 2002, a Predator drone would loose a Hellfire missile on a car in Yemen, a country with which we weren’t at war. Six suspected al-Qaeda members, including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole would be turned into twisted metal and ash -- the first “targeted killings” of the American robotic era.
Just two months earlier, in September 2002, as the Bush administration was “introducing” its campaign to sell an invasion of Iraq to Congress and the American people, CIA Director George Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney “trooped up to Capitol Hill” to brief four top Senate and House leaders on a hair-raising threat to the country. A “smoking gun” had been uncovered.
According to “new intelligence,” Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had in his possession unmanned aerial vehicles advanced enough to be armed with biological and chemical weaponry. Worse yet, these were capable -- so the CIA director and vice president claimed -- of spraying those weapons of mass destruction over cities on the east coast of the United States. It was just the sort of evil plan you might have expected from a man regularly compared to Adolf Hitler in our media, and the news evidently made an impression in Congress.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, said that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard."
In a speech in October 2002, President Bush then offered a version of this apocalyptic nightmare to the American public. Of course, like Saddam’s supposed ability to produce “mushroom clouds” over American cities, the Iraqi autocrat’s advanced UAVs (along with the ships needed to position them off the U.S. coast) were a feverish fantasy of the Bush era and would soon enough be forgotten. Instead, in the years to come, it would be American pilotless drones that would repeatedly attack Iraqi urban areas with Hellfire missiles and bombs.
In those years, our drones would also strike repeatedly in Afghanistan, and especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, where in an escalating “secret” or “covert” war, which has been no secret to anyone, multiple drone attacks often occur weekly. They are now considered so much the norm that, with humdrum headlines slapped on (“U.S. missile strike kills 12 in NW Pakistan”), they barely make it out of summary articles about war developments in the American press.
And yet those robotic planes, with their young “pilots” (as well as the camera operators and intelligence analysts who make up a drone “crew”) sitting in front of consoles 7,000 miles away from where their missiles and bombs are landing, have become another kind of American fever dream. The drone is our latest wonder weapon and a bragging point in a set of wars where there has been little enough to brag about.
CIA director Leon Panetta has, for instance, called the Agency’s drones flying over Pakistan “the only game in town” when it comes to destroying al-Qaeda; a typically anonymous U.S. official in a Washington Post report claims of drone missile attacks, “We’re talking about precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare”; or as Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command told author Peter Singer, speaking of the glories of drones: “They don't get hungry. They are not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.”
Seven thousand of them, the vast majority surveillance varieties, are reportedly already being operated by the military, and that’s before swarms of “mini-drones” come on line. Our American world is being redefined accordingly.
In February, Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post caught something of this process when he spent time with Colonel Eric Mathewson, perhaps the most experienced Air Force officer in drone operations and on the verge of retirement. Mathewson, reported Jaffe, was trying to come up with an appropriately new definition of battlefield “valor” -- a necessity for most combat award citations -- to fit our latest corps of pilots at their video consoles. “Valor to me is not risking your life," the colonel told the reporter. "Valor is doing what is right. Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek. It is doing what is right for the right reasons. That to me is valor."
Smoking Drones
These days, CIA and administration officials troop up to Capitol Hill to offer briefings to Congress on the miraculous value of pilotless drones: in disrupting al-Qaeda, destroying its leadership or driving it “deeper into hiding,” and taking out key figures in the Taliban. Indeed, what started as a 24/7 assassination campaign against al-Qaeda’s top leadership has already widened considerably. The “target set” has by now reportedly expanded to take in ever lower-level militants in the tribal borderlands. In other words, a drone assassination campaign is morphing into the first full-scale drone war (and, as in all wars from the air, civilians are dying in unknown numbers).
If the temperature is again rising in Washington when it comes to these weapons, this time it’s a fever of enthusiasm for the spectacular future of drones (which the Air Force has plotted out to the year 2047), of a time when single pilots should be able to handle multiple drones in operations in the skies over some embattled land, and of a far more distant moment when those drones should be able to handle themselves, flying, fighting, and making key decisions about just who to take out without a human being having to intervene.
When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight.
Now it's the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized. It's the U.S. which is developing a 22-ton tail-less drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and (theoretically) land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. It's the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by 700% over the next decade.
Admittedly, there is a modest counter-narrative to all this enthusiasm for our robotic prowess, “precision,” and “valor.” It involves legal types like Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions. He recently issued a 29-page report criticizing Washington’s “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.” Unless limits are put on such claims, and especially on the CIA’s drone war over Pakistan, he suggests, soon enough a plethora of states will follow in America’s footprints, attacking people in other lands “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”
Such mechanized, long-distance warfare, he also suggests, will breach what respect remains for the laws of war. “Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield,” he wrote, “and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.”
Similarly, the ACLU has filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the U.S. government, demanding that it “disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas, as well as the ground rules regarding when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and the number of civilian casualties they have caused.”
But pay no mind to all this. The arguments may be legally compelling, but not in Washington, which has mounted a half-hearted claim of legitimate “self-defense,” but senses that it’s already well past the point where legalities matter. The die is cast, the money committed. The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelming.
It’s a done deal. Drone war is, and will be, us.
A Pilotless Military
If there are zeitgeist moments for products, movie stars, and even politicians, then such moments can exist for weaponry as well. The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment.
It’s a moment that could, of course, be presented as an apocalyptic nightmare in the style of the Terminator movies (with the U.S. as the soul-crushing Skynet), or as a remarkable tale of how “networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to day-to-day warfare” (as Christopher Drew recently put it in the New York Times). It could be described as the arrival of a dystopian fantasy world of one-way slaughter verging on entertainment, or as the coming of a generation of homegrown video warriors who work “in camouflage uniforms, complete with combat boots, on open floors, with four computer monitors on each desk... and coffee and Red Bull help[ing] them get through the 12-hour shifts.” It could be presented as the ultimate in cowardice -- the killing of people in a world you know nothing about from thousands of miles away -- or (as Col. Mathewson would prefer) a new form of valor.
The drones -- their use expanding exponentially, with ever newer generations on the drawing boards, and the planes even heading for “the homeland” -- could certainly be considered a demon spawn of modern warfare, or (as is generally the case in the U.S.) a remarkable example of American technological ingenuity, a problem-solver of the first order at a time when few American problems seem capable of solution. Thanks to our technological prowess, it’s claimed that we can now kill them, wherever they may be lurking, at absolutely no cost to ourselves, other than the odd malfunctioning drone. Not that even all CIA operatives involved in the drone wars agree with that one. Some of them understand perfectly well that there’s a price to be paid.
As it happens, the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002, but it’s also distinctly us. In fact, drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove. With its consoles, chat rooms, and “single shooter” death machines, it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer, Facebook, and video games. That our valorous warriors, their day of battle done, can increasingly leave war behind and head home to the barbecue (or, given American life, the foreclosure) also fits an American mood of the moment.
The Air Force “detachments” that “manage” the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are “detached” from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn’t. If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield (on only one side, of course) and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about, it also catches something important about the American way of war.
After all, while this country garrisons the world, invests its wealth in its military, and fights unending, unwinnable frontier wars and skirmishes, most Americans are remarkably detached from all this. If anything, since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens’ army proved disastrous for Washington’s global aims, such detachment has been the goal of American war-making.
As a start, with no draft and so no citizen’s army, war and the toll it takes is now the professional business of a tiny percentage of Americans (and their families). It occurs thousands of miles away and, in the Bush years, also became a heavily privatized, for-profit activity. As Pratap Chatterjee reported recently, “[E]very US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world.” And a majority of those contractors aren’t even U.S. citizens.
If drones have entered our world as media celebrities, they have done so largely without debate among that detached populace. In a sense, our wars abroad could be thought of as the equivalent of so many drones. We send our troops off and then go home for dinner and put them out of mind. The question is: Have we redefined our detachment as a new version of citizenly valor (and covered it over by a constant drumbeat of “support for our troops”)?
Under these circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that a “pilotless” force should, in turn, develop the sort of contempt for civilians that can be seen in the recent flap over the derogatory comments of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal and his aides about Obama administration officials.
The Globalization of Death
Maybe what we need is the return of George W. Bush’s fever dream from the American oblivion in which it’s now interred. He was beyond wrong, of course, when it came to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi drones, but he wasn’t completely wrong about the dystopian Drone World to come. There are now reportedly more than 40 countries developing versions of those pilot-less planes. Earlier this year, the Iranians announced that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones. Hezbollah used them against Israel in the 2006 summer war, years after Israel began pioneering their use in targeted killings of Palestinians.
Right now, in what still remains largely a post-Cold War arms race of one, the U.S. is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars, with few competitors in sight. In the process, we’re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty, and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances. In the process, we may not just be obliterating enemies, but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike.
We are also creating the (il)legal framework for future war on a frontier where we won’t long be flying solo. And when the first Iranian, or Russian, or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of "terrorists," we won’t like it one bit. When the first “suicide drones” appear, we’ll like it even less. And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene, we’ll be truly unnerved.
In the 1990s, we were said to be in an era of “globalization” which was widely hailed as good news. Now, the U.S. and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries, relies on the self-definitions of whoever owns the nearest drone, and establishes planetary free-fire zones. It’s a nasty combination, this globalization of death.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Some history on General Atomics and its Predator drone
A little background on brothers Neil and Linden Blue, owners and operators of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and manufacturers of the majority of predator drones. Keen emphasis on the Blues' friendship throughout the '80s with Nicaraguan then-president Anastasio Somoza, who brought you the Contra in Iran-Contra scandal and crack cocaine in Los Angeles (see Dark Alliance, a prize-winning book of journalism by the late Gary Webb). Today's piece is compelling, and adds a curious chapter to a story told in Cover-up, a documentary detailing the subterfuge beneath the story of the Iran-Contra Congressional hearings in 1987.
From Death and Taxes
Predator Drones: The All-Seeing Eye
By DJ Pangburn Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Excerpt-
While the Predator drones are generally considered a success by the Blues, General Atomics, other defense contractors and the U.S. government, their missile-strike record is horrific. According to the Brookings Institution’s Daniel Byman:
“Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died.”
From Death and Taxes
Predator Drones: The All-Seeing Eye
By DJ Pangburn Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Excerpt-
While the Predator drones are generally considered a success by the Blues, General Atomics, other defense contractors and the U.S. government, their missile-strike record is horrific. According to the Brookings Institution’s Daniel Byman:
“Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died.”
Playing catchup with drone attack stories
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sept. 14, 2010
Record level of US airstrikes hit Afghan militants
By ASIF SHAHZAD AND KIMBERLY DOZIER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS
Excerpt-
ISLAMABAD -- Drone aircraft unleashed two missile attacks in a lawless tribal region on the Afghan border Tuesday, making September the most intense period of U.S. strikes in Pakistan since they began in 2004, intelligence officials said.
The stepped-up campaign is focused on a small area of farming villages and mountainous, thickly forested terrain controlled by the Haqqani network, a ruthless American foe in Afghanistan, U.S. officials say. There is some evidence the network is being squeezed as a result, one official said.
American officials said the airstrikes were designed to degrade the Haqqanis' operations on the Pakistani side of the border, creating a "hammer-and-anvil" effect as U.S. special operations forces carry out raids against their fighters across the frontier in Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing classified operations.
The missiles have killed more than 50 people in 12 strikes since Sept. 2 in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan, according to an Associated Press tally based on Pakistani intelligence officials' reports. Many struck around Datta Khel, a town of about 40,000 people that sits on a strategically vital road to the Afghan border.
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From Huffington Post Sept. 10, 2010
CIA May Send Predator Drones Into Yemen
Excerpt-
WASHINGTON — The White House, in an effort to turn up the heat against al-Qaida's branch in Yemen, is considering adding the CIA's armed Predator drones to the fight, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.
The drones are among CIA resources that could be assigned to an existing mission by U.S. special operations forces, a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press. The official said such options were in the planning stages and would be done only with the cooperation of the Yemeni leadership in Sanaa.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.
The fact that the White House is considering supplying CIA weapons and other resources to the clandestine counterterrorist fight in Yemen was first reported in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
Yemen is the base of operations for al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the militant group that claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner last Christmas Day and counts American-born rebel cleric Anwar al-Awlaki among its leadership. The U.S. military has been working with the Yemeni counterterrorist forces for years, and that cooperation has increased under the Obama administration.
But officials say the U.S. hasn't yet brought as much pressure to bear against AQAP as they have against its parent organization, Osama bin Laden's Pakistan-based al-Qaida, and that a range of tools and tactics were being considered.
Among the CIA's most lethal tools, armed Predator drones are already hunting high-value militant targets in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. The idea is to reassign some of those to the U.S. special operations forces assisting local counterterrorist forces in Yemen.
But U.S. officials may have a hard time selling the concept to the Yemeni government in Sanaa, where reports of the potential use of drones has already touched off controversy.
A CIA drone strike made headlines in Yemen, in November 2002, when it killed an American citizen along with a group of al-Qaida operatives. Drones became shorthand in Yemen for a weak government allowing foreign forces to have their way.
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A previously referenced New Yorker article from October, 2009 ...
The Predator War: What are the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program? by Jane Mayer
A brief excerpt of note ...
"Before September 11th, the C.I.A., which had been chastened by past assassination scandals, refused to deploy the Predator for anything other than surveillance. Daniel Benjamin, the State Department’s counterterrorism director, and Steven Simon, a former counterterrorism adviser, report in their 2002 book 'The Age of Sacred Terror' that the week before Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. George Tenet, then the agency’s director, argued that it would be 'a terrible mistake' for 'the Director of Central Intelligence to fire a weapon like this.'
Yet once America had suffered terrorist attacks on its own soil the agency’s posture changed, and it petitioned the White House for new authority. Within days, President Bush had signed a secret Memorandum of Notification, giving the C.I.A. the right to kill members of Al Qaeda and their confederates virtually anywhere in the world. Congress endorsed this policy, passing a bill called the Authorization for Use of Military Force. Bush’s legal advisers modeled their rationale on Israel’s position against terrorism, arguing that the U.S. government had the right to use lethal force against suspected terrorists in “anticipatory” self-defense. By classifying terrorism as an act of war, rather than as a crime, the Bush Administration reasoned that it was no longer bound by legal constraints requiring the government to give suspected terrorists due process."
Record level of US airstrikes hit Afghan militants
By ASIF SHAHZAD AND KIMBERLY DOZIER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS
Excerpt-
ISLAMABAD -- Drone aircraft unleashed two missile attacks in a lawless tribal region on the Afghan border Tuesday, making September the most intense period of U.S. strikes in Pakistan since they began in 2004, intelligence officials said.
The stepped-up campaign is focused on a small area of farming villages and mountainous, thickly forested terrain controlled by the Haqqani network, a ruthless American foe in Afghanistan, U.S. officials say. There is some evidence the network is being squeezed as a result, one official said.
American officials said the airstrikes were designed to degrade the Haqqanis' operations on the Pakistani side of the border, creating a "hammer-and-anvil" effect as U.S. special operations forces carry out raids against their fighters across the frontier in Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing classified operations.
The missiles have killed more than 50 people in 12 strikes since Sept. 2 in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan, according to an Associated Press tally based on Pakistani intelligence officials' reports. Many struck around Datta Khel, a town of about 40,000 people that sits on a strategically vital road to the Afghan border.
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From Huffington Post Sept. 10, 2010
CIA May Send Predator Drones Into Yemen
Excerpt-
WASHINGTON — The White House, in an effort to turn up the heat against al-Qaida's branch in Yemen, is considering adding the CIA's armed Predator drones to the fight, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.
The drones are among CIA resources that could be assigned to an existing mission by U.S. special operations forces, a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press. The official said such options were in the planning stages and would be done only with the cooperation of the Yemeni leadership in Sanaa.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.
The fact that the White House is considering supplying CIA weapons and other resources to the clandestine counterterrorist fight in Yemen was first reported in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
Yemen is the base of operations for al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the militant group that claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner last Christmas Day and counts American-born rebel cleric Anwar al-Awlaki among its leadership. The U.S. military has been working with the Yemeni counterterrorist forces for years, and that cooperation has increased under the Obama administration.
But officials say the U.S. hasn't yet brought as much pressure to bear against AQAP as they have against its parent organization, Osama bin Laden's Pakistan-based al-Qaida, and that a range of tools and tactics were being considered.
Among the CIA's most lethal tools, armed Predator drones are already hunting high-value militant targets in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. The idea is to reassign some of those to the U.S. special operations forces assisting local counterterrorist forces in Yemen.
But U.S. officials may have a hard time selling the concept to the Yemeni government in Sanaa, where reports of the potential use of drones has already touched off controversy.
A CIA drone strike made headlines in Yemen, in November 2002, when it killed an American citizen along with a group of al-Qaida operatives. Drones became shorthand in Yemen for a weak government allowing foreign forces to have their way.
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A previously referenced New Yorker article from October, 2009 ...
The Predator War: What are the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program? by Jane Mayer
A brief excerpt of note ...
"Before September 11th, the C.I.A., which had been chastened by past assassination scandals, refused to deploy the Predator for anything other than surveillance. Daniel Benjamin, the State Department’s counterterrorism director, and Steven Simon, a former counterterrorism adviser, report in their 2002 book 'The Age of Sacred Terror' that the week before Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. George Tenet, then the agency’s director, argued that it would be 'a terrible mistake' for 'the Director of Central Intelligence to fire a weapon like this.'
Yet once America had suffered terrorist attacks on its own soil the agency’s posture changed, and it petitioned the White House for new authority. Within days, President Bush had signed a secret Memorandum of Notification, giving the C.I.A. the right to kill members of Al Qaeda and their confederates virtually anywhere in the world. Congress endorsed this policy, passing a bill called the Authorization for Use of Military Force. Bush’s legal advisers modeled their rationale on Israel’s position against terrorism, arguing that the U.S. government had the right to use lethal force against suspected terrorists in “anticipatory” self-defense. By classifying terrorism as an act of war, rather than as a crime, the Bush Administration reasoned that it was no longer bound by legal constraints requiring the government to give suspected terrorists due process."
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Still Killing Without Regard to Target
Article posted to Counterpunch September 9, 2010
Excerpted below are three reasons to read this article on civilians injured and killed by drones while U.S. military and political policy continues to be an increase in the use of drones and acquiesce to charges of human rights violations.
A Ground Zero Reflection
Indefensible Drones
By KATHY KELLY
"Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small 'ground zeroes' in multiple locales on an everyday basis."
"Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to "engage" the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children."
"General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it's unsafe for them to gather in the schools."
Excerpted below are three reasons to read this article on civilians injured and killed by drones while U.S. military and political policy continues to be an increase in the use of drones and acquiesce to charges of human rights violations.
A Ground Zero Reflection
Indefensible Drones
By KATHY KELLY
"Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small 'ground zeroes' in multiple locales on an everyday basis."
"Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to "engage" the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children."
"General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it's unsafe for them to gather in the schools."
Monday, August 9, 2010
Bagram AFB not resembling Afghanistan withdrawal so far
Wired.com story posted to Common Dreams Aug. 9 ...
U.S. Supersizes Afghan Mega-Base as Withdrawal Date Looms
by Spencer Ackerman
BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan - Anyone who thinks the United States is really going to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 needs to come to this giant air base an hour away from Kabul. There's construction everywhere. It's exactly what you wouldn't expect from a transient presence.
Perhaps the most conspicuous change of all: fresh concrete T-walls fortifying the northern and southern faces of the base. Step off a C-17 cargo plane, as I did very early Friday morning, and you see a flight line packed with planes. When I was last here two years ago, helicopters crowded the runways and fixed-wing aircraft were -- well, if not rare, still a notable sight. Today you've got C-17s, Predators, F-16s, F-15s, MC-12 passenger planes ... I didn't see any of the C-130 cargo craft, but they're here somewhere.
More notable than the overstuffed runways is the over-driven road. Disney Drive, the main thoroughfare that rings the eight-square-mile base, used to feature pedestrians with reflective sashes over their PT uniforms carrying Styrofoam boxes of leftovers out of the mess halls. And those guys are still there.
But now the western part of Disney is a two-lane parking lot of Humvees, flamboyant cargo big-rigs from Pakistan known as jingle trucks, yellow DHL shipping vans, contractor vehicles and mud-caked flatbeds. If the Navy could figure out a way to bring a littoral-combat ship to a landlocked country, it would idle on Disney.
Expect to wait an eternity if you want to pull out onto the road. Cross the street at your own risk.
Then there are all the new facilities. West Disney has a fresh coat of cement -- something that's easy to come by, now that the Turkish firm Yukcel manufactures cement right inside Bagram's walls.
There on the flightline: the skeletons of new hangars. New towers with particleboard for terraces. A skyline of cranes. The omnipresent plastic banner on a girder-and-cement seedling advertising a new project built by cut-rate labor paid by Inglett and Stubbs International.
I haven't been able to learn yet how much it all cost, but Bagram is starting to feel like a dynamic exurb before the housing bubble burst. There was actually a traffic jam this afternoon on the southern side of the base, owing to construction-imposed bottlenecks, something I didn't think possible in late summer 2008.
Perhaps the most conspicuous change of all: fresh concrete T-walls fortifying the northern and southern faces of the base. Insurgents have launched a number of futile attacks on the base recently, mostly inaccurate small-arms fire and the odd rocket-propelled grenade. They've mostly irritated their targets instead of killing them.
But a definite legacy is the abundance of huge barriers at the most-obvious access points to Bagram. Much of the eastern wing remains surrounded by chicken fencing topped with barbed wire, but the more sensitive points of entry are now hardened.
So, apparently, are the sentiments of local Afghans nearby. Troops here told me of shepherd boys scowling their way around Bagram's outskirts, slingshotting off the occasional rock in hopes of braining an American. Again, something else I wouldn't have believed two years ago.
By next year, the detention facility that's spirited away on a far corner of Bagram is supposed to revert to Afghan control. And maybe someday the Afghan National Army will inherit the entire base.
But two years ago there were about 18,000 troops and contractors living here. Now that figure is north of 30,000, all for a logistics hub and command post that the United States didn't ever imagine possessing before 9/11.
In 2011, the U.S. military probably won't be thinking about turning over the keys to a new, huge base. It'll be thinking about how it can finish up the construction contracts it signed months ago -- if not some it's yet to ink.
U.S. Supersizes Afghan Mega-Base as Withdrawal Date Looms
by Spencer Ackerman
BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan - Anyone who thinks the United States is really going to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 needs to come to this giant air base an hour away from Kabul. There's construction everywhere. It's exactly what you wouldn't expect from a transient presence.
Perhaps the most conspicuous change of all: fresh concrete T-walls fortifying the northern and southern faces of the base. Step off a C-17 cargo plane, as I did very early Friday morning, and you see a flight line packed with planes. When I was last here two years ago, helicopters crowded the runways and fixed-wing aircraft were -- well, if not rare, still a notable sight. Today you've got C-17s, Predators, F-16s, F-15s, MC-12 passenger planes ... I didn't see any of the C-130 cargo craft, but they're here somewhere.
More notable than the overstuffed runways is the over-driven road. Disney Drive, the main thoroughfare that rings the eight-square-mile base, used to feature pedestrians with reflective sashes over their PT uniforms carrying Styrofoam boxes of leftovers out of the mess halls. And those guys are still there.
But now the western part of Disney is a two-lane parking lot of Humvees, flamboyant cargo big-rigs from Pakistan known as jingle trucks, yellow DHL shipping vans, contractor vehicles and mud-caked flatbeds. If the Navy could figure out a way to bring a littoral-combat ship to a landlocked country, it would idle on Disney.
Expect to wait an eternity if you want to pull out onto the road. Cross the street at your own risk.
Then there are all the new facilities. West Disney has a fresh coat of cement -- something that's easy to come by, now that the Turkish firm Yukcel manufactures cement right inside Bagram's walls.
There on the flightline: the skeletons of new hangars. New towers with particleboard for terraces. A skyline of cranes. The omnipresent plastic banner on a girder-and-cement seedling advertising a new project built by cut-rate labor paid by Inglett and Stubbs International.
I haven't been able to learn yet how much it all cost, but Bagram is starting to feel like a dynamic exurb before the housing bubble burst. There was actually a traffic jam this afternoon on the southern side of the base, owing to construction-imposed bottlenecks, something I didn't think possible in late summer 2008.
Perhaps the most conspicuous change of all: fresh concrete T-walls fortifying the northern and southern faces of the base. Insurgents have launched a number of futile attacks on the base recently, mostly inaccurate small-arms fire and the odd rocket-propelled grenade. They've mostly irritated their targets instead of killing them.
But a definite legacy is the abundance of huge barriers at the most-obvious access points to Bagram. Much of the eastern wing remains surrounded by chicken fencing topped with barbed wire, but the more sensitive points of entry are now hardened.
So, apparently, are the sentiments of local Afghans nearby. Troops here told me of shepherd boys scowling their way around Bagram's outskirts, slingshotting off the occasional rock in hopes of braining an American. Again, something else I wouldn't have believed two years ago.
By next year, the detention facility that's spirited away on a far corner of Bagram is supposed to revert to Afghan control. And maybe someday the Afghan National Army will inherit the entire base.
But two years ago there were about 18,000 troops and contractors living here. Now that figure is north of 30,000, all for a logistics hub and command post that the United States didn't ever imagine possessing before 9/11.
In 2011, the U.S. military probably won't be thinking about turning over the keys to a new, huge base. It'll be thinking about how it can finish up the construction contracts it signed months ago -- if not some it's yet to ink.
Excellent blog post on ABC News tribute to the murderous glory of UAV drones
Nice work from whoever is behind http://www.spider-topihitam.com
This excerpt cuts to the core of the issue (at this point I wish there was one):
"In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable 'restraint.' They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?"
By David Walsh
14 January 2010
American television news becomes more and more unwatchable, especially in its reports on the expanding wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Perfectly coiffed, interchangeable news and anchor people repeat White House and Pentagon lies. “In-depth” reports provide nothing in the way of meaningful commentary or analysis. In general, everything is done to hide the truth from the American people.
Diane Sawyer, promoted to hosting ABC’s prime time evening news program a few weeks ago, and the rest of that network’s news personalities are in the forefront of the government’s disinformation campaign. it is worth noting that Sawyer, who began her television career doing the weather in Louisville, Kentucky, went to work for the Nixon administration in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and stayed with the disgraced former president through his forced resignation, helping him write his memoirs.
US drone in flight On Tuesday night’s evening news, Sawyer and two colleagues, David Muir and bill Weir, spent six or seven minutes extolling the merits of the US Air Force’s Predator drones and their deadly attacks in Afghanistan. The Predators, according to Pakistani government and media sources, murdered some 700 civilians in that country in 2009, but the CIA-US military program of killings by drone attack on that side of the border is “covert,” without the official sanction of the Islamabad regime (emphasis ExEd).
Thus, Sawyer and company had to be satisfied with covering the US military’s increased use of drones in Afghanistan. According to a companion piece by Weir on its web site, ABC News was “granted exclusive access to the ground control station at the California [Air Force] base, one of six in the country where the planes are flown.” In other words, the broadcast report was a component part of the military’s official propaganda effort, prepared and vetted with the collaboration of Pentagon officials. A drone control station Sawyer introduced the story from Kabul, alerting her viewers to “the war you do not see, the skyrocketing use of drones.”
She went on to explain in Orwellian fashion that the “potentially lethal” drones were “another new strategy against the rising tide of violence in this country.” Yesterday, Sawyer told her audience, “drones assisted in taking out 16 of the enemy.” she noted that airmen 8,000 miles from Afghanistan were pushing the buttons, sending 500-pound bombs or Hellfire missiles hurtling to the ground. The Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in the drone program, notes ABC, to “400 hours a day, a 300 percent increase.” From 100 three years ago, the number of drones in use has jumped to 1,200.
Muir writes on the ABC web site: “On this one California base alone, over the last six months, not one hour has gone by when Air Force pilots haven’t been watching over Afghanistan through the eyes of a at least one Predator drone. the technology has been such a game-changer that over the next year, the Air Force will now train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.”
Sawyer proudly tells us that the drone is a “high-tech symbol of American might.”
About one minute of the segment is devoted to the moral issues involved in bombing people from halfway around the world. it raises, the ABC anchorwoman notes, “new questions about what’s right and wrong,” before she quickly passes on to the “exclusive” footage shot in the California control center. Here, Muir explains, “Each drone is controlled by a two-man team, seated in front of a video screen clutching a joystick. On the screens, the men see live video from the drones in Afghanistan, picking out armed enemies on the ground who have no idea they’re being watched. The pilot can launch a missile simply by pulling a trigger. “The drones send back images in the blink of an eye—it takes just 1.7 seconds for the imagery to travel through 12 time zones. The video travels from the drone to a satellite and then down to a classified location in Europe. From there, it flows through a fiber optic nerve across the Atlantic Ocean to reach the California base. But it’s not finished—the signal then branches out to other bases, the Pentagon, and right back to the ground commander in Afghanistan.” He goes on: “We watched as a pilot monitored insurgents planting an IED [improvised explosive device] in northern Afghanistan. It made a good target, and with the punch of a button, a Hellfire missile launched, taking the insurgents out.”
As the WSWS has noted on more than one occasion in recent years, US government officials and media personalities have had no difficulty in adopting the lingo of the Mafia. ABC’s Weir reports on efforts by the American military team on the ground to determine whether a given group of Afghans seems an appropriate target to be wiped out. In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable “restraint.” They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?
As a final comment, Weir declares, “Even if he could have proven it [the potential slaughter of the children] was an honest mistake, the captain tells me that killing these five children would have undone months of work winning over local elders, and that has become the key battle in this war.”
What can one say? This is the moral state of the American media: the murder of poverty-stricken children by missiles or bombs might, after all, be no more than an “honest mistake” (and therefore pardonable), but, on the downside, it could prove an inconvenience to US war aims (and therefore should be avoided, if possible).
Bill Weir’s résumé indicates that he is well suited to deal with life-and-death questions in Central Asia. A graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California (where a typical student, according to one commentator, “tends to be devoutly Christian, right-wing, Republican,” and wealthy), Weir began his career as a weekend sportscaster at a radio station in Austin, Minnesota. He worked his way up to sports anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2002, where he hosted a weekly program that aired after Monday Night Football. He has also written and developed three television pilots for the USA and FX networks.
On the ABC web site, Muir concludes that “the drone pilots know their work is important. Every minute in the cockpit helps defend their military colleagues on the battlefield and improve their chances of getting home alive.” The entire “news report” Tuesday was nothing more nor less than a defense of neo-colonial warfare and mass murder by well-paid hirelings of the American establishment.
This excerpt cuts to the core of the issue (at this point I wish there was one):
"In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable 'restraint.' They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?"
By David Walsh
14 January 2010
American television news becomes more and more unwatchable, especially in its reports on the expanding wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Perfectly coiffed, interchangeable news and anchor people repeat White House and Pentagon lies. “In-depth” reports provide nothing in the way of meaningful commentary or analysis. In general, everything is done to hide the truth from the American people.
Diane Sawyer, promoted to hosting ABC’s prime time evening news program a few weeks ago, and the rest of that network’s news personalities are in the forefront of the government’s disinformation campaign. it is worth noting that Sawyer, who began her television career doing the weather in Louisville, Kentucky, went to work for the Nixon administration in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and stayed with the disgraced former president through his forced resignation, helping him write his memoirs.
US drone in flight On Tuesday night’s evening news, Sawyer and two colleagues, David Muir and bill Weir, spent six or seven minutes extolling the merits of the US Air Force’s Predator drones and their deadly attacks in Afghanistan. The Predators, according to Pakistani government and media sources, murdered some 700 civilians in that country in 2009, but the CIA-US military program of killings by drone attack on that side of the border is “covert,” without the official sanction of the Islamabad regime (emphasis ExEd).
Thus, Sawyer and company had to be satisfied with covering the US military’s increased use of drones in Afghanistan. According to a companion piece by Weir on its web site, ABC News was “granted exclusive access to the ground control station at the California [Air Force] base, one of six in the country where the planes are flown.” In other words, the broadcast report was a component part of the military’s official propaganda effort, prepared and vetted with the collaboration of Pentagon officials. A drone control station Sawyer introduced the story from Kabul, alerting her viewers to “the war you do not see, the skyrocketing use of drones.”
She went on to explain in Orwellian fashion that the “potentially lethal” drones were “another new strategy against the rising tide of violence in this country.” Yesterday, Sawyer told her audience, “drones assisted in taking out 16 of the enemy.” she noted that airmen 8,000 miles from Afghanistan were pushing the buttons, sending 500-pound bombs or Hellfire missiles hurtling to the ground. The Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in the drone program, notes ABC, to “400 hours a day, a 300 percent increase.” From 100 three years ago, the number of drones in use has jumped to 1,200.
Muir writes on the ABC web site: “On this one California base alone, over the last six months, not one hour has gone by when Air Force pilots haven’t been watching over Afghanistan through the eyes of a at least one Predator drone. the technology has been such a game-changer that over the next year, the Air Force will now train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.”
Sawyer proudly tells us that the drone is a “high-tech symbol of American might.”
About one minute of the segment is devoted to the moral issues involved in bombing people from halfway around the world. it raises, the ABC anchorwoman notes, “new questions about what’s right and wrong,” before she quickly passes on to the “exclusive” footage shot in the California control center. Here, Muir explains, “Each drone is controlled by a two-man team, seated in front of a video screen clutching a joystick. On the screens, the men see live video from the drones in Afghanistan, picking out armed enemies on the ground who have no idea they’re being watched. The pilot can launch a missile simply by pulling a trigger. “The drones send back images in the blink of an eye—it takes just 1.7 seconds for the imagery to travel through 12 time zones. The video travels from the drone to a satellite and then down to a classified location in Europe. From there, it flows through a fiber optic nerve across the Atlantic Ocean to reach the California base. But it’s not finished—the signal then branches out to other bases, the Pentagon, and right back to the ground commander in Afghanistan.” He goes on: “We watched as a pilot monitored insurgents planting an IED [improvised explosive device] in northern Afghanistan. It made a good target, and with the punch of a button, a Hellfire missile launched, taking the insurgents out.”
As the WSWS has noted on more than one occasion in recent years, US government officials and media personalities have had no difficulty in adopting the lingo of the Mafia. ABC’s Weir reports on efforts by the American military team on the ground to determine whether a given group of Afghans seems an appropriate target to be wiped out. In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable “restraint.” They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?
As a final comment, Weir declares, “Even if he could have proven it [the potential slaughter of the children] was an honest mistake, the captain tells me that killing these five children would have undone months of work winning over local elders, and that has become the key battle in this war.”
What can one say? This is the moral state of the American media: the murder of poverty-stricken children by missiles or bombs might, after all, be no more than an “honest mistake” (and therefore pardonable), but, on the downside, it could prove an inconvenience to US war aims (and therefore should be avoided, if possible).
Bill Weir’s résumé indicates that he is well suited to deal with life-and-death questions in Central Asia. A graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California (where a typical student, according to one commentator, “tends to be devoutly Christian, right-wing, Republican,” and wealthy), Weir began his career as a weekend sportscaster at a radio station in Austin, Minnesota. He worked his way up to sports anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2002, where he hosted a weekly program that aired after Monday Night Football. He has also written and developed three television pilots for the USA and FX networks.
On the ABC web site, Muir concludes that “the drone pilots know their work is important. Every minute in the cockpit helps defend their military colleagues on the battlefield and improve their chances of getting home alive.” The entire “news report” Tuesday was nothing more nor less than a defense of neo-colonial warfare and mass murder by well-paid hirelings of the American establishment.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Benazir Bhutto's niece on Asif Ali Zardari's presidency in Pakistan
Assassinated former Pakistani president Benazir Bhutto is survived by Asif Ali Zardari, who has taken her place as president, and also a niece, Fatima Bhutto, who is now publishing books and speaking on book tours.
In this London Evening Standard commentary, Fatima levels her criticisms clearly against a president she finds to be a threat to democracy and a collaborator with terrorist groups.
This is dated April 8 and has been appearing on sites this week that follow politics in Pakistan.
The London School of Economics published a report two months ago on Pakistan’s dealings with extremists, based on scores of interviews. It said Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari met 50 high-ranking imprisoned Taliban leaders in April 2010 to assure them of his government’s support.
Zardari denied the meeting through unelected spokespeople who struggle to present the president as a premier ally of democracy and Western interests. David Cameron’s recent lambasting of the current Pakistani government seems to fall short.
In 2010 alone, the Zardari government has allowed 70 American Predator drone flights to cross its airspace and kill its citizens (more than 200 dead, no top terrorists confirmed among the nameless victims), all the while asking the Obama White House for drone technology that he may use himself.
He has banned 500 websites — including YouTube, Facebook and Google — under the pretence of protesting against anti-Islamic material on the web, and has presided over a breakdown of law and order in Karachi so severe that 300 politicians and political activists have been murdered in the past eight months, according to human rights groups. In the past 48 hours, 45 people have been killed in Karachi following the assassination of a member of parliament and more than 100 people have been wounded.
The fact that Facebook has countless anti-Zardari groups was not proffered as a reason for its shutdown. Nor was the coincidence that Pakistan’s legal community, including the deputy attorney general, called for Mark Zuckerberg, the social networking site’s founder, to be arrested. No one bought the president’s Islam excuse — censorship by another name smells as foul, unfortunately for him.
President Zardari is considered one of Pakistan’s most venal figures. His nicknames run from Mr Ten Per Cent to the updated Mr Hundred and Ten Per Cent. Zardari has come under massive criticism for choosing to traipse across Europe via his usual five-star hotels while floods in northern Pakistan have killed upwards of 1,400 people, displaced 100,000 households and affected three million Pakistanis.
Zardari’s alleged corruption — in the $2-3 billion range, according to The New York Times — has not stopped Cameron or Obama’s governments from funding, supporting and propping up the government of a man whose legacy has been marked by political unpopularity, instability, large-scale graft and violence. The Pakistan People’s Party that Zardari took over after the murder of his wife Benazir Bhutto (my aunt) is referred to as the Permanent Plunder Party.
Zardari does not have the will or the understanding to cope with Pakistan’s escalating volatility. Just last year he said that his government was hard at work fighting “extremists from Aung San Suu Kyi to the Taliban”, mistaking the Burmese democracy campaigner for a terror outfit. How does Britain expect Zardari to fight terror when he’s not even sure of what the word means?
The longer Zardari and his coterie are funded in the billions and welcomed by democratic governments, the longer Pakistan will remain hostage to obtuse political posturing, corruption and violent instability. Pakistan and the world cannot afford much more of the Zardaris in power.
(Fatima Bhutto is a writer and author of Songs of Blood and Sword, published in the UK by Jonathan Cape. She is the niece of the late Benazir Bhutto)
In this London Evening Standard commentary, Fatima levels her criticisms clearly against a president she finds to be a threat to democracy and a collaborator with terrorist groups.
This is dated April 8 and has been appearing on sites this week that follow politics in Pakistan.
The London School of Economics published a report two months ago on Pakistan’s dealings with extremists, based on scores of interviews. It said Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari met 50 high-ranking imprisoned Taliban leaders in April 2010 to assure them of his government’s support.
Zardari denied the meeting through unelected spokespeople who struggle to present the president as a premier ally of democracy and Western interests. David Cameron’s recent lambasting of the current Pakistani government seems to fall short.
In 2010 alone, the Zardari government has allowed 70 American Predator drone flights to cross its airspace and kill its citizens (more than 200 dead, no top terrorists confirmed among the nameless victims), all the while asking the Obama White House for drone technology that he may use himself.
He has banned 500 websites — including YouTube, Facebook and Google — under the pretence of protesting against anti-Islamic material on the web, and has presided over a breakdown of law and order in Karachi so severe that 300 politicians and political activists have been murdered in the past eight months, according to human rights groups. In the past 48 hours, 45 people have been killed in Karachi following the assassination of a member of parliament and more than 100 people have been wounded.
The fact that Facebook has countless anti-Zardari groups was not proffered as a reason for its shutdown. Nor was the coincidence that Pakistan’s legal community, including the deputy attorney general, called for Mark Zuckerberg, the social networking site’s founder, to be arrested. No one bought the president’s Islam excuse — censorship by another name smells as foul, unfortunately for him.
President Zardari is considered one of Pakistan’s most venal figures. His nicknames run from Mr Ten Per Cent to the updated Mr Hundred and Ten Per Cent. Zardari has come under massive criticism for choosing to traipse across Europe via his usual five-star hotels while floods in northern Pakistan have killed upwards of 1,400 people, displaced 100,000 households and affected three million Pakistanis.
Zardari’s alleged corruption — in the $2-3 billion range, according to The New York Times — has not stopped Cameron or Obama’s governments from funding, supporting and propping up the government of a man whose legacy has been marked by political unpopularity, instability, large-scale graft and violence. The Pakistan People’s Party that Zardari took over after the murder of his wife Benazir Bhutto (my aunt) is referred to as the Permanent Plunder Party.
Zardari does not have the will or the understanding to cope with Pakistan’s escalating volatility. Just last year he said that his government was hard at work fighting “extremists from Aung San Suu Kyi to the Taliban”, mistaking the Burmese democracy campaigner for a terror outfit. How does Britain expect Zardari to fight terror when he’s not even sure of what the word means?
The longer Zardari and his coterie are funded in the billions and welcomed by democratic governments, the longer Pakistan will remain hostage to obtuse political posturing, corruption and violent instability. Pakistan and the world cannot afford much more of the Zardaris in power.
(Fatima Bhutto is a writer and author of Songs of Blood and Sword, published in the UK by Jonathan Cape. She is the niece of the late Benazir Bhutto)
Monday, August 2, 2010
Back from the Dead: Summer Vacation
Extraordinary Edition had virtually no posts for the month of July. Explanation: summer hiatus.
This was a family affair. Seven people rented this home for four nights. Editor could not afford to rent a closet in a spot like this on his own for half a night.
This was a family affair. Seven people rented this home for four nights. Editor could not afford to rent a closet in a spot like this on his own for half a night.
Understanding South Asia: Kashmir
The following piece is provided entirely by Aletho News from its comrade site, Axis of Logic
KASHMIR – The Dispute That Continues to Rock South Asia
aletho | August 2, 2010 at 12:20 pm | Categories: Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | URL: http://wp.me/pIUmC-3qE
By Shahid R. Siddiqi | Axis of Logic | July 18, 2010
A cartoon published in an American newspaper in 2002 showed former president George Bush sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, utterly confused by a news report he was reading about India and Pakistan going to war over Kashmir. “But why are the two countries fighting over a sweater,” he asked Dick Cheney who stood by with his usual sly smile on his face.
Besides reflecting the intellectual capacity of the American president of the time, the cartoon was a realistic portrayal of the understanding that American leaders have generally shown of this longstanding dispute between Pakistan and India.
The unresolved Kashmir conflict has rocked South Asia for six decades. It has created an environment of distrust and acrimony, forced the people to sink into poverty with the bulk of the resources consumed by the war machines and claimed lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians as well as soldiers who died in the three wars fought between India and Pakistan. India, whose forcible occupation of Kashmir in 1947 created the conflict, refuses to settle it. The other stake holders, the Kashmiri people and Pakistan, insist on a fair solution. The international community including the US and the United Nations played little or no role in diffusing it either. Consequently, the conflict has developed into one of the most intractable problems of international politics that remains a continuing threat to peace of the region.
Indian Brutalities & The International Reaction
India has not hesitated to use brutal force to maintain its hold on Indian occupied Kashmir and suppress revolt. The US, UN and other international organizations failed to take note of grave human rights violations. They failed to provide any specific, actionable proposals for a permanent solution. All they extended were diplomatic courtesies, suggested vague formulas and generalities that are open to multiple interpretations.
Although the US considers South Asia to be a sensitive and strategically important region from its geopolitical, security and economic standpoint and has expressed the desire to see peace prevail, it has so far paid only lip service to finding a permanent solution. It would not chastise India for human rights violations, which would have attracted its immediate attention if these were taking place in a country that it had chosen to punish, for fear of displeasing or alienating India which it has aggressively been courting in recent years.
This situation was compounded by the Indian dreams of regional hegemony that led it to dismember Pakistan in 1971 and go on to become a nuclear power, which forced Pakistan to develop its own nuclear deterrent for safeguarding its security.
Consequently, India has consistently and blatantly refused to honor the will of the people, negotiate Kashmir’s future status or stop the use of brutal force.
The Conflict Leads To The First Kashmir War
In the wake of the August 1947 partition of British India that brought into existence two sovereign states of the Indian Union and Pakistan, the British left after having midwifed the Kashmir dispute that has since bedeviled peace between the two countries. Essentially, the agreed principle that governed partition was that Muslim majority states to the east and west of British India would form Pakistan, while rest of the subcontinent was to form Indian Union.
Decisions by several Muslim rulers for accession of their states to Pakistan that had Hindu majorities (Hyderabad, Junagadh and Manavadar being cases in point) were rejected on the grounds that a Muslim ruler did not have the right to overrule the will of the Hindu majority population. But the decision of the Hindu Raja of the princely state of Kashmir, which was predominantly a Muslim majority state and should have acceded to Pakistan, was immediately accepted by the British viceroy and the Indian government, despite a popular Kashmiri revolt against his decision. Although an agreement of non-intervention in Kashmir had been signed between India and Pakistan, the new Indian government sent troops into Kashmir at the request of the Hindu ruler to enforce the instrument of accession and forcibly occupy the territory, in disregard of the agreed principle of accession applied elsewhere.
This led to the first Kashmir war in 1947 between India and Pakistan. In 1948 India sought cease fire, taking the issue to the UN Security Council, which passed resolution 47 on 21 April 1948 that imposed an immediate cease-fire along the line of actual control of territory by both parties and called on them to withdraw their troops. It also ruled that "the final disposition of the State of Jammu and Kashmir will be made in accordance with the will of the people expressed through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the United Nations." The cease fire was enacted in December 1948, with both governments agreeing to hold the plebiscite in areas under their control. Ever since, India has been rejecting all resolutions of the Security Council and the proposals of the UN arbitrators for demilitarization of the region – all of which were accepted by Pakistan.
The Security Council Steps In
Although the resolutions of the Security Council were regarded as the ‘documents of reference’ for a durable and internationally acceptable solution, no steps were ever taken for their implementation. This was because in technical terms these were not mandatory - not having been based under Chapter VII of the Charter. This allowed India to get away, dashing the false expectations of the Kashmiris as to the possible role of the United Nations as facilitator of a solution to the Kashmir problem.
This injustice to the Kashmiri people was intrinsically linked to the veto privilege of the permanent members of the Security Council and the lack of unanimity between them for enforcement measures according to Articles 41 and 42 of the Charter. Their plight is similar to that of the Palestinians, in whose case also resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) that call upon Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab territories are not based on Chapter VII and have hence enabled the occupying country, Israel, to ignore them.
That the United Nations Organization follows double standards was clearly visible when it adopted compulsory resolutions in other conflict situations, such as in case of the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990-1991, where the US - a permanent member was able to force the hand of other permanent members to do its bidding.
The cease fire line between the Indian and Pakistani sides of Kashmir has since become the Line of Control and continues to be monitored by UN observers.
India Annexes The Disputed Occupied Kashmir
Thereafter, ignoring the Security Council resolutions, disregarding the internationally accepted ‘disputed’ status of the state and defying the will of the people, India went on to annex Occupied Kashmir into the Indian Union through an amendment to its Constitution, claiming it to be an integral part of India. On its part Pakistan continues to regard the part of Kashmir under its control as disputed territory and allows it self rule. It continues to plead for a final settlement taking the position that the people of Kashmir on both sides must get the right to choose their future through self determination.
People of Kashmir Demand The Right Of Self Determination
The people of Kashmir had begun to wage a struggle against the Hindu Raja’s rule as far back as in 1931 and refused to accept Indian occupation from the day it was imposed in 1947. Their struggle has since intensified and they have called for accession of a united Kashmir to Pakistan. Rejecting their demand, successive Indian governments have tried to suppress the struggle by use of force.
Writing in Kashmir Watch of July 11, 2010, a Kashmiri academic, Dr. Manzoor Alam, urged world bodies like the Arab League, OIC, Asia watch, human rights organizations and the European Union to make a paradigm shift in their policies and move from ‘mere condemnation’ to throwing their political weight and resources behind the Kashmiris in their freedom struggle.
“ … we are talking about freedom from India which is our basic and fundamental right and this right was promised to us by Jawaharlal Nehru on June 26, 1952. We make an earnest and urgent appeal to the conscience of the world to act promptly to save Kashmir and her people. It is time for the United Nations to wake up to its responsibilities. It has to assume its duty in saving millions of Kashmiri lives. Enough is enough.”
Grave Human Rights Violations
Indian troops in combination with paramilitary forces and state police have let loose a consistent and massive reign of terror on unarmed civilians. Men, women and children, young and old, are being indiscriminately killed, injured and maimed and women are being raped with impunity.
A recent report on Human Rights violations states that that between 1989 to June 30, 2010 the number of Kashmiris killed at the hands of Indian security forces stands at 93,274. Additionally, there have been 6,969 custodial killings, over 107,351 children have been orphaned, 22,728 women widowed and 9,920 women gang raped. In June 2010 alone, 33 people were killed including four children, 572 people were tortured and injured and 8 women were molested, 117,345 people were arrested and 105,861 houses or structures in the use of the communities were razed or destroyed.
Human rights groups blame the culture of impunity among security forces in Kashmir on a controversial 1990 national law granting soldiers the right to detain or eliminate all suspected terrorists and destroy their property without fear of prosecution. Critics call this provision a license to kill as it does not clearly define "terrorists".
The murky cycle of violence is picking up speed. The killing of innocent civilians draws protests in all nooks and corners of the state by enraged people which in turn provoke the security forces to indulge in more killing. More recently, the state has remained on a knife’s edge since June 11, when angry protests began against the killing by Indian security forces of three 11th grade teenagers without provocation. This continues to happen also because the state or the federal government does not believe in explaining their actions or carrying out investigations and punishing those who use excessive force. Instead, the Indian government proudly calls all of these achievements 'successful counter insurgency' operations.
To punish the Muslim population of Jammu and Kashmir for the uprising, the state machinery is economically strangulating it through the ruthless action of road blockades that have resulted in acute shortages of foodstuff, medicines and other critical items of daily use in the valley. Protestors were fired upon earlier this month, resulting in the loss of hundreds of innocent lives, including some prominent leaders.
Under a well thought out plan, India has brought about a demographic change in Jammu after Hindu rule was imposed in October 1947. Muslims constituted 62% of the population there according to a 1941 census which now stands in the 30s. The Indian government is now focusing on the Kashmir valley where land allotments to Hindus from outside the state are being made to encourage population transfer in order to reduce the Muslim majority.
India Cold Shoulders Pakistan’s Out Of The Box Solutions
Pakistan’s willingness, as stated by Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf, to get away from old paradigms and launch fresh proposals for a just and durable solution, did not draw any bold steps or a concrete response from India. Although he went so far as to say that for the sake of a settlement, options that are “unacceptable to either side” should be set aside and he went on to float the idea in December 2005 of a “United States of Kashmir” that would include all regions, India did not show any interest in engaging in a meaningful dialogue. India has continued hedging the core issue and has instead been raising peripheral issues one after the other as an evasive tactic. It has been demanding confidence building measures before any dialogue could seriously get underway but even these CBMs initiated by Pakistan did not prove enough. The track II diplomacy has also not been able to achieve much. This causes frustrations, not only for Pakistan but also among the Kashmiris, causing a very volatile climate, further raising the political temperature.
In Search Of The Solution
After six decades of bloodshed and armed confrontation, Indian leaders should realize the impossibility of sweeping the issue under the carpet or keeping the Kashmiris subjugated through force, an option which has acquired an entirely new dimension due to India and Pakistan having become nuclear powers. It is now time that India should move, and move with sincerity, towards resolving the dispute with the following in mind:
1. A solution must be pursued not only on the basis of bilateral approach involving India and Pakistan but also on the tripartite level that would take into account the wishes of the people of Kashmir.
2. Kashmir must be treated as an issue of basic human rights, which forms part of the jus cogens of general international law. Kashmir is also an issue of religious rights and identity where the majority Muslim community has been adversely affected by the partition along the “Line of Control”.
3. Kashmir is not only a regional issue in terms of territorial claims by three states, including China, but it is, at the same time, a matter concerning the international community since it has implications for global peace and security. The nuclear potential of the three powers actually controlling parts of the disputed territory can simply not be ignored.
4. The struggle of the people of Kashmir must not be confused with the so-called “global war on terror”, which happens to be a superpower agenda that is alien to this conflict. Instead of falling in this trap and making this issue further intractable, India needs to understand the dictum: “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
5. In the interest of finding a durable solution, India will have to move away from the police and military approach, or as India likes to put it as “a battle against terrorists”. Instead of dealing with symptoms, it must address the root cause of the conflict - the question of self-determination.
6. Police brutalities, rape and other human rights violations will have to come to an end and have to be prosecuted with full determination and without bias. At the same time, deliberate attacks on civilians will have to be terminated once and for all.
7. The legacy of the Security Council resolutions 38 and 47 (1948) as well as the resolutions adopted by the UNCIP in 1948 and 1949 cannot be discarded, in spite of the time that has elapsed since their adoption, as these have neither become obsolete, nor invalid nor have they been recalled by the Council at any stage. On the other hand, ten years after the initial resolutions, Security Council resolution 122 (1957) reaffirmed the same democratic principle as basis of a just solution. India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is on record fully endorsing this principle when on November 2, 1947 he said:
“We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given […] not only to the people of Kashmir but the world. We will not, and cannot back out of it. We are prepared when peace and law and order have been established to have a referendum held under international auspices like the United Nations.”
It is time for Indian present leadership to listen to its founding fathers, if it does not wish to listen to the rest of the world.
KASHMIR – The Dispute That Continues to Rock South Asia
aletho | August 2, 2010 at 12:20 pm | Categories: Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | URL: http://wp.me/pIUmC-3qE
By Shahid R. Siddiqi | Axis of Logic | July 18, 2010
A cartoon published in an American newspaper in 2002 showed former president George Bush sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, utterly confused by a news report he was reading about India and Pakistan going to war over Kashmir. “But why are the two countries fighting over a sweater,” he asked Dick Cheney who stood by with his usual sly smile on his face.
Besides reflecting the intellectual capacity of the American president of the time, the cartoon was a realistic portrayal of the understanding that American leaders have generally shown of this longstanding dispute between Pakistan and India.
The unresolved Kashmir conflict has rocked South Asia for six decades. It has created an environment of distrust and acrimony, forced the people to sink into poverty with the bulk of the resources consumed by the war machines and claimed lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians as well as soldiers who died in the three wars fought between India and Pakistan. India, whose forcible occupation of Kashmir in 1947 created the conflict, refuses to settle it. The other stake holders, the Kashmiri people and Pakistan, insist on a fair solution. The international community including the US and the United Nations played little or no role in diffusing it either. Consequently, the conflict has developed into one of the most intractable problems of international politics that remains a continuing threat to peace of the region.
Indian Brutalities & The International Reaction
India has not hesitated to use brutal force to maintain its hold on Indian occupied Kashmir and suppress revolt. The US, UN and other international organizations failed to take note of grave human rights violations. They failed to provide any specific, actionable proposals for a permanent solution. All they extended were diplomatic courtesies, suggested vague formulas and generalities that are open to multiple interpretations.
Although the US considers South Asia to be a sensitive and strategically important region from its geopolitical, security and economic standpoint and has expressed the desire to see peace prevail, it has so far paid only lip service to finding a permanent solution. It would not chastise India for human rights violations, which would have attracted its immediate attention if these were taking place in a country that it had chosen to punish, for fear of displeasing or alienating India which it has aggressively been courting in recent years.
This situation was compounded by the Indian dreams of regional hegemony that led it to dismember Pakistan in 1971 and go on to become a nuclear power, which forced Pakistan to develop its own nuclear deterrent for safeguarding its security.
Consequently, India has consistently and blatantly refused to honor the will of the people, negotiate Kashmir’s future status or stop the use of brutal force.
The Conflict Leads To The First Kashmir War
In the wake of the August 1947 partition of British India that brought into existence two sovereign states of the Indian Union and Pakistan, the British left after having midwifed the Kashmir dispute that has since bedeviled peace between the two countries. Essentially, the agreed principle that governed partition was that Muslim majority states to the east and west of British India would form Pakistan, while rest of the subcontinent was to form Indian Union.
Decisions by several Muslim rulers for accession of their states to Pakistan that had Hindu majorities (Hyderabad, Junagadh and Manavadar being cases in point) were rejected on the grounds that a Muslim ruler did not have the right to overrule the will of the Hindu majority population. But the decision of the Hindu Raja of the princely state of Kashmir, which was predominantly a Muslim majority state and should have acceded to Pakistan, was immediately accepted by the British viceroy and the Indian government, despite a popular Kashmiri revolt against his decision. Although an agreement of non-intervention in Kashmir had been signed between India and Pakistan, the new Indian government sent troops into Kashmir at the request of the Hindu ruler to enforce the instrument of accession and forcibly occupy the territory, in disregard of the agreed principle of accession applied elsewhere.
This led to the first Kashmir war in 1947 between India and Pakistan. In 1948 India sought cease fire, taking the issue to the UN Security Council, which passed resolution 47 on 21 April 1948 that imposed an immediate cease-fire along the line of actual control of territory by both parties and called on them to withdraw their troops. It also ruled that "the final disposition of the State of Jammu and Kashmir will be made in accordance with the will of the people expressed through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the United Nations." The cease fire was enacted in December 1948, with both governments agreeing to hold the plebiscite in areas under their control. Ever since, India has been rejecting all resolutions of the Security Council and the proposals of the UN arbitrators for demilitarization of the region – all of which were accepted by Pakistan.
The Security Council Steps In
Although the resolutions of the Security Council were regarded as the ‘documents of reference’ for a durable and internationally acceptable solution, no steps were ever taken for their implementation. This was because in technical terms these were not mandatory - not having been based under Chapter VII of the Charter. This allowed India to get away, dashing the false expectations of the Kashmiris as to the possible role of the United Nations as facilitator of a solution to the Kashmir problem.
This injustice to the Kashmiri people was intrinsically linked to the veto privilege of the permanent members of the Security Council and the lack of unanimity between them for enforcement measures according to Articles 41 and 42 of the Charter. Their plight is similar to that of the Palestinians, in whose case also resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) that call upon Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab territories are not based on Chapter VII and have hence enabled the occupying country, Israel, to ignore them.
That the United Nations Organization follows double standards was clearly visible when it adopted compulsory resolutions in other conflict situations, such as in case of the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990-1991, where the US - a permanent member was able to force the hand of other permanent members to do its bidding.
The cease fire line between the Indian and Pakistani sides of Kashmir has since become the Line of Control and continues to be monitored by UN observers.
India Annexes The Disputed Occupied Kashmir
Thereafter, ignoring the Security Council resolutions, disregarding the internationally accepted ‘disputed’ status of the state and defying the will of the people, India went on to annex Occupied Kashmir into the Indian Union through an amendment to its Constitution, claiming it to be an integral part of India. On its part Pakistan continues to regard the part of Kashmir under its control as disputed territory and allows it self rule. It continues to plead for a final settlement taking the position that the people of Kashmir on both sides must get the right to choose their future through self determination.
People of Kashmir Demand The Right Of Self Determination
The people of Kashmir had begun to wage a struggle against the Hindu Raja’s rule as far back as in 1931 and refused to accept Indian occupation from the day it was imposed in 1947. Their struggle has since intensified and they have called for accession of a united Kashmir to Pakistan. Rejecting their demand, successive Indian governments have tried to suppress the struggle by use of force.
Writing in Kashmir Watch of July 11, 2010, a Kashmiri academic, Dr. Manzoor Alam, urged world bodies like the Arab League, OIC, Asia watch, human rights organizations and the European Union to make a paradigm shift in their policies and move from ‘mere condemnation’ to throwing their political weight and resources behind the Kashmiris in their freedom struggle.
“ … we are talking about freedom from India which is our basic and fundamental right and this right was promised to us by Jawaharlal Nehru on June 26, 1952. We make an earnest and urgent appeal to the conscience of the world to act promptly to save Kashmir and her people. It is time for the United Nations to wake up to its responsibilities. It has to assume its duty in saving millions of Kashmiri lives. Enough is enough.”
Grave Human Rights Violations
Indian troops in combination with paramilitary forces and state police have let loose a consistent and massive reign of terror on unarmed civilians. Men, women and children, young and old, are being indiscriminately killed, injured and maimed and women are being raped with impunity.
A recent report on Human Rights violations states that that between 1989 to June 30, 2010 the number of Kashmiris killed at the hands of Indian security forces stands at 93,274. Additionally, there have been 6,969 custodial killings, over 107,351 children have been orphaned, 22,728 women widowed and 9,920 women gang raped. In June 2010 alone, 33 people were killed including four children, 572 people were tortured and injured and 8 women were molested, 117,345 people were arrested and 105,861 houses or structures in the use of the communities were razed or destroyed.
Human rights groups blame the culture of impunity among security forces in Kashmir on a controversial 1990 national law granting soldiers the right to detain or eliminate all suspected terrorists and destroy their property without fear of prosecution. Critics call this provision a license to kill as it does not clearly define "terrorists".
The murky cycle of violence is picking up speed. The killing of innocent civilians draws protests in all nooks and corners of the state by enraged people which in turn provoke the security forces to indulge in more killing. More recently, the state has remained on a knife’s edge since June 11, when angry protests began against the killing by Indian security forces of three 11th grade teenagers without provocation. This continues to happen also because the state or the federal government does not believe in explaining their actions or carrying out investigations and punishing those who use excessive force. Instead, the Indian government proudly calls all of these achievements 'successful counter insurgency' operations.
To punish the Muslim population of Jammu and Kashmir for the uprising, the state machinery is economically strangulating it through the ruthless action of road blockades that have resulted in acute shortages of foodstuff, medicines and other critical items of daily use in the valley. Protestors were fired upon earlier this month, resulting in the loss of hundreds of innocent lives, including some prominent leaders.
Under a well thought out plan, India has brought about a demographic change in Jammu after Hindu rule was imposed in October 1947. Muslims constituted 62% of the population there according to a 1941 census which now stands in the 30s. The Indian government is now focusing on the Kashmir valley where land allotments to Hindus from outside the state are being made to encourage population transfer in order to reduce the Muslim majority.
India Cold Shoulders Pakistan’s Out Of The Box Solutions
Pakistan’s willingness, as stated by Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf, to get away from old paradigms and launch fresh proposals for a just and durable solution, did not draw any bold steps or a concrete response from India. Although he went so far as to say that for the sake of a settlement, options that are “unacceptable to either side” should be set aside and he went on to float the idea in December 2005 of a “United States of Kashmir” that would include all regions, India did not show any interest in engaging in a meaningful dialogue. India has continued hedging the core issue and has instead been raising peripheral issues one after the other as an evasive tactic. It has been demanding confidence building measures before any dialogue could seriously get underway but even these CBMs initiated by Pakistan did not prove enough. The track II diplomacy has also not been able to achieve much. This causes frustrations, not only for Pakistan but also among the Kashmiris, causing a very volatile climate, further raising the political temperature.
In Search Of The Solution
After six decades of bloodshed and armed confrontation, Indian leaders should realize the impossibility of sweeping the issue under the carpet or keeping the Kashmiris subjugated through force, an option which has acquired an entirely new dimension due to India and Pakistan having become nuclear powers. It is now time that India should move, and move with sincerity, towards resolving the dispute with the following in mind:
1. A solution must be pursued not only on the basis of bilateral approach involving India and Pakistan but also on the tripartite level that would take into account the wishes of the people of Kashmir.
2. Kashmir must be treated as an issue of basic human rights, which forms part of the jus cogens of general international law. Kashmir is also an issue of religious rights and identity where the majority Muslim community has been adversely affected by the partition along the “Line of Control”.
3. Kashmir is not only a regional issue in terms of territorial claims by three states, including China, but it is, at the same time, a matter concerning the international community since it has implications for global peace and security. The nuclear potential of the three powers actually controlling parts of the disputed territory can simply not be ignored.
4. The struggle of the people of Kashmir must not be confused with the so-called “global war on terror”, which happens to be a superpower agenda that is alien to this conflict. Instead of falling in this trap and making this issue further intractable, India needs to understand the dictum: “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
5. In the interest of finding a durable solution, India will have to move away from the police and military approach, or as India likes to put it as “a battle against terrorists”. Instead of dealing with symptoms, it must address the root cause of the conflict - the question of self-determination.
6. Police brutalities, rape and other human rights violations will have to come to an end and have to be prosecuted with full determination and without bias. At the same time, deliberate attacks on civilians will have to be terminated once and for all.
7. The legacy of the Security Council resolutions 38 and 47 (1948) as well as the resolutions adopted by the UNCIP in 1948 and 1949 cannot be discarded, in spite of the time that has elapsed since their adoption, as these have neither become obsolete, nor invalid nor have they been recalled by the Council at any stage. On the other hand, ten years after the initial resolutions, Security Council resolution 122 (1957) reaffirmed the same democratic principle as basis of a just solution. India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is on record fully endorsing this principle when on November 2, 1947 he said:
“We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given […] not only to the people of Kashmir but the world. We will not, and cannot back out of it. We are prepared when peace and law and order have been established to have a referendum held under international auspices like the United Nations.”
It is time for Indian present leadership to listen to its founding fathers, if it does not wish to listen to the rest of the world.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Catching up: Pakistan, drones and international law
Running a bit behind the calendar, from Foreign Policy magazine's AfPak Channel.
Just to point out: Gul is here concerned with Pakistan's split policy on the legal ramifications of drone attacks. First off, 'split'describes Pakistan as Islamabad does not seem to reach all the way to the Islamist militant groups described below or average folks living in the Federally Administrated Tribal Region. Second, the concern among average Pakistanis is not whether the UAV strikes are legal: it's that they kill civilians indiscriminately in the hunt for suspected militants. Third, the CIA is the primary operator of the drone program. Islamabad has expressed interest in running its own drone programs, but that gesture addresses none of the above as the Central Intelligence Agency would likely continue on its present course rather than relinquish control of a program to Pakistan.
Pakistan's dueling drones debate
By Imtiaz Gul, July 2, 2010
While Pakistan's security forces battle al Qaeda-inspired Pakistani Taliban militants in the volatile tribal regions of Bajaur and Orakzai, CIA-operated drones continue chasing foreign al-Qaeda operatives hiding in the wild Waziristan region. The latest such strike on a hide-out in South Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border took out eight militants earlier this week, including an Egyptian allied with al-Qaeda, Hamza al-Jufi.
Believed to be operating out of Forward Operating Base Chapman, located across the border in Khost, Afghanistan, drones have struck targets inside Pakistan at least 141 times since 2004, including 45 attacks already this year so far. Regardless of how effective drones may be against al-Qaeda and its affiliates, their use is the subject of widespread debate, due in large part to questions about the legality of the drones.
Condemnation of such attacks and their characterization as a violation of the "sovereignty, solidarity, integrity and defense of Pakistan," in the words of Pakistani parliamentarian Imran Khan, is primarily rooted in the context of the global war against terrorism that began in October 2001 under President George Bush. This association with Bush has in part led many conservative Pakistanis and right-wing political groups such as the Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam to openly oppose the drone strikes.
Even the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Waziristan-based group that is spearheading the insurgency in the northwestern regions, has justified attacks as a reaction to the drone strikes.
Others object not to the drones, but to Pakistani public opinion on their use. For instance, Ayaz Ameer, an analyst-turned-politician, and an MP from the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, said at a recent conference hosted by my Islamabad think tank that Pakistani officials take two contradictory positions on drone strikes: publicly condemning them while endorsing them privately.
Chriss Rogers, research fellow at Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), said at the forum, "Since Pakistan formally never raised the issue at any international forum nor did it formally and officially issue statement against it, there seemed to be a tacit understanding between the United States and Pakistan over it."
But covert Pakistani consent does not necessarily make the strikes legal. According to Ahmar Bilal Soofi, an expert in international law, "The United States is applying drones in the name of self-defense and the war on al-Qaeda, but even this is a violation of international law and Pakistani sovereignty." Furthermore, he argues, "These means become even more objectionable because the CIA is operating drone strikes, thereby compromising issues such as transparency and accountability."
Some observers have also suggested that a Pakistani operation of the drones could significantly blunt criticism of the strikes. Indeed Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and army leaders have frequently asked that the technology be transferred to Pakistan, and has said that such a transfer would blunt criticism of the strikes..
Increasingly, Pakistani critics have also relied on arguments made by Philip Alston, a New York University law professor and the U.N. special representative on extrajudicial executions, who in a June report recommended that the U.S. military handle drone strikes against the Taliban and al-Qaeda-related militants in Pakistan, and also wrote that, "[i]f a State commits a targeted killing in the territory of another State, the second State
should publicly indicate whether it gave consent, and on what basis."
Set against the backdrop of the recent command change in Afghanistan, U.S. policy on the drone attacks may perhaps also undergo some qualitative changes. Particularly in view of Obama's search for rapid success in Afghanistan, for which Pakistan's support is crucial, the Obama administration may work out a mechanism that, while eliminating al-Qaeda members, also addresses Pakistani concerns on the legality of drone strikes. This change could also erase quite a bit of mistrust of the U.S. in Pakistan and help improve bilateral cooperation. But Pakistan's government must first end its dueling public and private positions on drones and state clearly where it stands on this simmering issue.
Imtiaz Gul heads the Center for Research and Security Studies, Islamabad and is the author of The Most Dangerous Place (Viking Penguin USA/UK).
Just to point out: Gul is here concerned with Pakistan's split policy on the legal ramifications of drone attacks. First off, 'split'describes Pakistan as Islamabad does not seem to reach all the way to the Islamist militant groups described below or average folks living in the Federally Administrated Tribal Region. Second, the concern among average Pakistanis is not whether the UAV strikes are legal: it's that they kill civilians indiscriminately in the hunt for suspected militants. Third, the CIA is the primary operator of the drone program. Islamabad has expressed interest in running its own drone programs, but that gesture addresses none of the above as the Central Intelligence Agency would likely continue on its present course rather than relinquish control of a program to Pakistan.
Pakistan's dueling drones debate
By Imtiaz Gul, July 2, 2010
While Pakistan's security forces battle al Qaeda-inspired Pakistani Taliban militants in the volatile tribal regions of Bajaur and Orakzai, CIA-operated drones continue chasing foreign al-Qaeda operatives hiding in the wild Waziristan region. The latest such strike on a hide-out in South Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border took out eight militants earlier this week, including an Egyptian allied with al-Qaeda, Hamza al-Jufi.
Believed to be operating out of Forward Operating Base Chapman, located across the border in Khost, Afghanistan, drones have struck targets inside Pakistan at least 141 times since 2004, including 45 attacks already this year so far. Regardless of how effective drones may be against al-Qaeda and its affiliates, their use is the subject of widespread debate, due in large part to questions about the legality of the drones.
Condemnation of such attacks and their characterization as a violation of the "sovereignty, solidarity, integrity and defense of Pakistan," in the words of Pakistani parliamentarian Imran Khan, is primarily rooted in the context of the global war against terrorism that began in October 2001 under President George Bush. This association with Bush has in part led many conservative Pakistanis and right-wing political groups such as the Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam to openly oppose the drone strikes.
Even the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Waziristan-based group that is spearheading the insurgency in the northwestern regions, has justified attacks as a reaction to the drone strikes.
Others object not to the drones, but to Pakistani public opinion on their use. For instance, Ayaz Ameer, an analyst-turned-politician, and an MP from the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, said at a recent conference hosted by my Islamabad think tank that Pakistani officials take two contradictory positions on drone strikes: publicly condemning them while endorsing them privately.
Chriss Rogers, research fellow at Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), said at the forum, "Since Pakistan formally never raised the issue at any international forum nor did it formally and officially issue statement against it, there seemed to be a tacit understanding between the United States and Pakistan over it."
But covert Pakistani consent does not necessarily make the strikes legal. According to Ahmar Bilal Soofi, an expert in international law, "The United States is applying drones in the name of self-defense and the war on al-Qaeda, but even this is a violation of international law and Pakistani sovereignty." Furthermore, he argues, "These means become even more objectionable because the CIA is operating drone strikes, thereby compromising issues such as transparency and accountability."
Some observers have also suggested that a Pakistani operation of the drones could significantly blunt criticism of the strikes. Indeed Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and army leaders have frequently asked that the technology be transferred to Pakistan, and has said that such a transfer would blunt criticism of the strikes..
Increasingly, Pakistani critics have also relied on arguments made by Philip Alston, a New York University law professor and the U.N. special representative on extrajudicial executions, who in a June report recommended that the U.S. military handle drone strikes against the Taliban and al-Qaeda-related militants in Pakistan, and also wrote that, "[i]f a State commits a targeted killing in the territory of another State, the second State
should publicly indicate whether it gave consent, and on what basis."
Set against the backdrop of the recent command change in Afghanistan, U.S. policy on the drone attacks may perhaps also undergo some qualitative changes. Particularly in view of Obama's search for rapid success in Afghanistan, for which Pakistan's support is crucial, the Obama administration may work out a mechanism that, while eliminating al-Qaeda members, also addresses Pakistani concerns on the legality of drone strikes. This change could also erase quite a bit of mistrust of the U.S. in Pakistan and help improve bilateral cooperation. But Pakistan's government must first end its dueling public and private positions on drones and state clearly where it stands on this simmering issue.
Imtiaz Gul heads the Center for Research and Security Studies, Islamabad and is the author of The Most Dangerous Place (Viking Penguin USA/UK).
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Competition from Lockheed Martin in UAV arms race
As evidenced by a photo of the prototype named Skunk Works, Lockheed Martin may be getting into the drone business with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrup Grumman.
With so many hands working to assemble (not to mention market) these devices, it's going to take enormous public outcry to even raise questions about the ethics of using these craft and producing more of them.
Dug up industry story on drone manufacture
The following story is a business story, meaning ...
NO ETHICAL ANALYSIS SO LONG AS THE NUMBERS LOOK GOOD--YEAAAAAA!!!
Please keep in mind while you read that there are some potentially negative effects to filling the sky with unmanned drones with electronic eyes and radio signal receiver/transmitters on board. How bout a world where 90 percent of the population starves and 10 percent live to get more robots onto the battlefield so they can be on the side of the conflict with the most robots that haven't been destroyed? Personally, I'd like to see that kind of reality safely assigned to science fiction.
The following San Diego Union-Tribune story contains some indispensable facts about unmanned aerial vehicles and the weapons contractors General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrup Grumman.
Prowling for profit
As demand rises for unmanned surveillance drones, Poway’s General Atomics Aeronautical among companies positioned to benefit
By Mike Freeman, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Every minute of every day, about 40 Predator-series unmanned aircraft are flying worldwide, providing “constant stare” surveillance over everything from war zones to U.S. borders to piracy-plagued shipping lanes.
With the U.S. military preparing to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year, the number of Predator-family aircraft flying at any given moment is likely to increase. Air Force officials said last week that more drones will be added in Afghanistan as part of the troop buildup. The Army is also fast-tracking its schedule for deploying unmanned vehicles.
All of which has focused a spotlight on Poway-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the maker of the Predator and its more advanced siblings, the Reaper, Sky Warrior and Avenger.
Three years ago, the Predator group had logged 80,000 total flight hours since the first one flew in the mid-1990s.
Today, these aircraft have flown close to 1 million hours — a good portion of that over Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the process, the drones have helped change the battlefield by giving service members — even small groups in isolated areas — their own spy plane. Not only do these aircraft provide surveillance for miles in every direction, they also can pick up enemy communications and transmit video feeds to soldiers’ handheld devices on the ground as well as to operations centers halfway around the world.
“The Predator may be the single most popular new military product introduced in this generation,” said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer with the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. “The versatility and transformational nature of the Predator allows war-fighting ideas that just weren’t feasible in the past.”
Drones have changed the battlefield to the point that insurgents in Iraq have been hacking into video feeds to see what the Predators are monitoring, according to Wall Street Journal reports last week. But U.S. officials said there’s no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights.
Although General Atomics is getting the most attention, it’s not the only one in the drone business operating in San Diego.
Northrop Grumman has a significant unmanned-aircraft division in Rancho Bernardo. Although its aircraft are assembled elsewhere, the company’s San Diego unit provides software, systems integration, business development and other functions for the high-altitude Global Hawk, the Fire Scout unmanned helicopter, a Navy version of the Global Hawk called BAMS and the stealthy, early-stage drone designed to land on aircraft carriers called the X-47 UCAS, among others.
These two companies have put San Diego near the center of a sea change in military aviation with the rise of ever-more-capable drones.
“They are the two largest by far” in the unmanned-aircraft industry, said Phil Finnegan, director for corporate analysis for The Teal Group, a defense industry research firm.
Teal estimates that the market for drone aircraft will double in the next decade, reaching $8.7 billion in annual sales worldwide. That’s just for the planes. It doesn’t include sensor systems, which often increase costs significantly.
Neither Northrop Grumman nor General Atomics provides specific revenue figures.
The companies control different market segments. Northrop Grumman’s larger, more capable and more expensive Global Hawk dominates the high-altitude, long-endurance segment. It can fly at 60,000 feet for more than 36 hours. No drone competes with it, analysts say.
Northrop Grumman has made roughly 25 of the planes to date, and they’ve flown hundreds of missions over Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force eventually plans to buy 54. The company won’t reveal the cost of the Global Hawk, but a Government Accountability Office report in 2006 said the drones cost more than $100 million each, including ground equipment, support, testing and spare parts. Northrop Grumman says that estimate is too high.
General Atomics’ Predator series dominates the medium-altitude, long-endurance market segment. The company has made more than 380 of the planes, mostly for the Pentagon. But they also are being used by the Department of Homeland Security to patrol borders, by NASA for research and by foreign military customers.
“It comes down to this: If I was trying to cover the world with an unmanned surveillance drone, I would definitely pick the Global Hawk,” said Thompson of the Lexington Institute. “But if I was trying to cover the northwest corner of Afghanistan, I would probably pick the Predator.”
Drone aircraft are less expensive to operate than manned aircraft. They also keep pilots out of harm’s way by performing some of the dull but dangerous work on the battlefield.
Some drones, such as the Predator family, can be fitted with missiles and circle a potential target for more than day. Most, though, are used only for surveillance.
Inside its San Diego-area factory, General Atomics builds Predator-series planes from scratch. Frank Belknap, director of composite manufacturing, said local workers who lost their aerospace industry jobs in the early-’90s recession — many of whom found work making composite golf shafts and tennis rackets — are now returning to aerospace to build Predators.
In 1999, Belknap was the 16th employee of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, an affiliate of privately held General Atomics. Today, the company employs more than 4,000 workers.
Over the past decade, Pentagon procurement spending on unmanned aerial vehicles has surged from $500 million to $3.5 billion. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he wants more drones in the field. He told the military to move faster to get those systems deployed, even if they have only 75 percent or 80 percent of their expected features ready for action, military officials said.
General Atomics got into the drone business after acquiring a small company out of bankruptcy in the early 1990s that had been working on the aircraft. By the mid-’90s, it had perfected the technology enough to build prototype planes.
Thomas Cassidy Jr., a retired admiral who heads General Atomics Aeronautical, went ahead without waiting for the Pentagon to come out with specifications for what it wanted. That’s unusual in the defense business, analysts say.
“Tom picked absolutely the sweetest spot in the technology,” said Dave Fulghum of Aviation Week, an aerospace industry magazine. “He essentially made a platform that you can stick almost anything into. That has been the perfect answer, and it’s the cheapest of the high-performance platforms that are out there.”
Predators, Reapers and Sky Warriors — the Army’s version of the aircraft — generally cost $4 million to $12 million each. Sometimes costs are higher, depending on sensors, communications and weapons payloads.
General Atomics makes money not only on building the planes, ground stations and some radar systems, but also gets paid for maintaining the drones.
That has become a lucrative business as use of the aircraft soared in Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts say.
“They understood the importance of the life-cycle part of the business,” said Lindsay Voss, an industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan. “These aircraft are being used at such a high rate and in such extreme environments. General Atomics can make a killing on the back end by supporting it and providing the services that are required to keep these aircraft going.”
The company is repeating the blueprint that worked in the Predator for the next generation of drone. This year, it flew the Avenger for the first time — even though it doesn’t have a customer.
The Avenger has a jet engine, a first for the Predator family, It also has other features for better performance in more contested airspace.
“General Atomics is trying to continue its ‘first mover’ advantage,” said Ryan Peoples, an associate principal with Charles River Associates, a defense industry research firm. “With the Predator, they did all this development on their own dime, so they were best positioned to capture (the Air Force contract) when it came along. And they’re just continuing that trend with the Avenger.”
The Air Force hasn’t set a firm time frame for seeking proposals for the next generation of medium-altitude drone. When it does, however, the Avenger is likely to have competition, analysts say. For example, a previously unknown stealth drone recently was spotted in Afghanistan. It has been declassified as a Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works”-designed plane. Others such as AAI Corp. and Northrop Grumman also could compete, analysts say.
“That program will be really important in the way the future of UAVs is shaped,” said Voss of Frost & Sullivan. “They could really mix it up if they choose a vendor other than General Atomics. It’s pretty unlikely, but it’s something everybody is going to be talking about.”
Mike Freeman: (760) 476-8209; mike.freeman@uniontrib.com
NO ETHICAL ANALYSIS SO LONG AS THE NUMBERS LOOK GOOD--YEAAAAAA!!!
Please keep in mind while you read that there are some potentially negative effects to filling the sky with unmanned drones with electronic eyes and radio signal receiver/transmitters on board. How bout a world where 90 percent of the population starves and 10 percent live to get more robots onto the battlefield so they can be on the side of the conflict with the most robots that haven't been destroyed? Personally, I'd like to see that kind of reality safely assigned to science fiction.
The following San Diego Union-Tribune story contains some indispensable facts about unmanned aerial vehicles and the weapons contractors General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrup Grumman.
Prowling for profit
As demand rises for unmanned surveillance drones, Poway’s General Atomics Aeronautical among companies positioned to benefit
By Mike Freeman, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Every minute of every day, about 40 Predator-series unmanned aircraft are flying worldwide, providing “constant stare” surveillance over everything from war zones to U.S. borders to piracy-plagued shipping lanes.
With the U.S. military preparing to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year, the number of Predator-family aircraft flying at any given moment is likely to increase. Air Force officials said last week that more drones will be added in Afghanistan as part of the troop buildup. The Army is also fast-tracking its schedule for deploying unmanned vehicles.
All of which has focused a spotlight on Poway-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the maker of the Predator and its more advanced siblings, the Reaper, Sky Warrior and Avenger.
Three years ago, the Predator group had logged 80,000 total flight hours since the first one flew in the mid-1990s.
Today, these aircraft have flown close to 1 million hours — a good portion of that over Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the process, the drones have helped change the battlefield by giving service members — even small groups in isolated areas — their own spy plane. Not only do these aircraft provide surveillance for miles in every direction, they also can pick up enemy communications and transmit video feeds to soldiers’ handheld devices on the ground as well as to operations centers halfway around the world.
“The Predator may be the single most popular new military product introduced in this generation,” said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer with the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. “The versatility and transformational nature of the Predator allows war-fighting ideas that just weren’t feasible in the past.”
Drones have changed the battlefield to the point that insurgents in Iraq have been hacking into video feeds to see what the Predators are monitoring, according to Wall Street Journal reports last week. But U.S. officials said there’s no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights.
Although General Atomics is getting the most attention, it’s not the only one in the drone business operating in San Diego.
Northrop Grumman has a significant unmanned-aircraft division in Rancho Bernardo. Although its aircraft are assembled elsewhere, the company’s San Diego unit provides software, systems integration, business development and other functions for the high-altitude Global Hawk, the Fire Scout unmanned helicopter, a Navy version of the Global Hawk called BAMS and the stealthy, early-stage drone designed to land on aircraft carriers called the X-47 UCAS, among others.
These two companies have put San Diego near the center of a sea change in military aviation with the rise of ever-more-capable drones.
“They are the two largest by far” in the unmanned-aircraft industry, said Phil Finnegan, director for corporate analysis for The Teal Group, a defense industry research firm.
Teal estimates that the market for drone aircraft will double in the next decade, reaching $8.7 billion in annual sales worldwide. That’s just for the planes. It doesn’t include sensor systems, which often increase costs significantly.
Neither Northrop Grumman nor General Atomics provides specific revenue figures.
The companies control different market segments. Northrop Grumman’s larger, more capable and more expensive Global Hawk dominates the high-altitude, long-endurance segment. It can fly at 60,000 feet for more than 36 hours. No drone competes with it, analysts say.
Northrop Grumman has made roughly 25 of the planes to date, and they’ve flown hundreds of missions over Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force eventually plans to buy 54. The company won’t reveal the cost of the Global Hawk, but a Government Accountability Office report in 2006 said the drones cost more than $100 million each, including ground equipment, support, testing and spare parts. Northrop Grumman says that estimate is too high.
General Atomics’ Predator series dominates the medium-altitude, long-endurance market segment. The company has made more than 380 of the planes, mostly for the Pentagon. But they also are being used by the Department of Homeland Security to patrol borders, by NASA for research and by foreign military customers.
“It comes down to this: If I was trying to cover the world with an unmanned surveillance drone, I would definitely pick the Global Hawk,” said Thompson of the Lexington Institute. “But if I was trying to cover the northwest corner of Afghanistan, I would probably pick the Predator.”
Drone aircraft are less expensive to operate than manned aircraft. They also keep pilots out of harm’s way by performing some of the dull but dangerous work on the battlefield.
Some drones, such as the Predator family, can be fitted with missiles and circle a potential target for more than day. Most, though, are used only for surveillance.
Inside its San Diego-area factory, General Atomics builds Predator-series planes from scratch. Frank Belknap, director of composite manufacturing, said local workers who lost their aerospace industry jobs in the early-’90s recession — many of whom found work making composite golf shafts and tennis rackets — are now returning to aerospace to build Predators.
In 1999, Belknap was the 16th employee of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, an affiliate of privately held General Atomics. Today, the company employs more than 4,000 workers.
Over the past decade, Pentagon procurement spending on unmanned aerial vehicles has surged from $500 million to $3.5 billion. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he wants more drones in the field. He told the military to move faster to get those systems deployed, even if they have only 75 percent or 80 percent of their expected features ready for action, military officials said.
General Atomics got into the drone business after acquiring a small company out of bankruptcy in the early 1990s that had been working on the aircraft. By the mid-’90s, it had perfected the technology enough to build prototype planes.
Thomas Cassidy Jr., a retired admiral who heads General Atomics Aeronautical, went ahead without waiting for the Pentagon to come out with specifications for what it wanted. That’s unusual in the defense business, analysts say.
“Tom picked absolutely the sweetest spot in the technology,” said Dave Fulghum of Aviation Week, an aerospace industry magazine. “He essentially made a platform that you can stick almost anything into. That has been the perfect answer, and it’s the cheapest of the high-performance platforms that are out there.”
Predators, Reapers and Sky Warriors — the Army’s version of the aircraft — generally cost $4 million to $12 million each. Sometimes costs are higher, depending on sensors, communications and weapons payloads.
General Atomics makes money not only on building the planes, ground stations and some radar systems, but also gets paid for maintaining the drones.
That has become a lucrative business as use of the aircraft soared in Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts say.
“They understood the importance of the life-cycle part of the business,” said Lindsay Voss, an industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan. “These aircraft are being used at such a high rate and in such extreme environments. General Atomics can make a killing on the back end by supporting it and providing the services that are required to keep these aircraft going.”
The company is repeating the blueprint that worked in the Predator for the next generation of drone. This year, it flew the Avenger for the first time — even though it doesn’t have a customer.
The Avenger has a jet engine, a first for the Predator family, It also has other features for better performance in more contested airspace.
“General Atomics is trying to continue its ‘first mover’ advantage,” said Ryan Peoples, an associate principal with Charles River Associates, a defense industry research firm. “With the Predator, they did all this development on their own dime, so they were best positioned to capture (the Air Force contract) when it came along. And they’re just continuing that trend with the Avenger.”
The Air Force hasn’t set a firm time frame for seeking proposals for the next generation of medium-altitude drone. When it does, however, the Avenger is likely to have competition, analysts say. For example, a previously unknown stealth drone recently was spotted in Afghanistan. It has been declassified as a Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works”-designed plane. Others such as AAI Corp. and Northrop Grumman also could compete, analysts say.
“That program will be really important in the way the future of UAVs is shaped,” said Voss of Frost & Sullivan. “They could really mix it up if they choose a vendor other than General Atomics. It’s pretty unlikely, but it’s something everybody is going to be talking about.”
Mike Freeman: (760) 476-8209; mike.freeman@uniontrib.com
Laura Flanders on The Nation June 23: Drone Attacks to Stimulate Economy?
Flanders writes, "No mention there—or anywhere—of what peace activist Kathy Kelly described on GRITtv. Namely, the charred flesh of children killed by accident, by remote—or, for that matter, Peter Singer's studies showing that drone pilots suffer PTSD at the same or greater rates as other soldiers
Perhaps the lack of concern is because drones are already flying the Canadian border and Americans are already getting used to them. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson recently told The Hill, 'We are working hard to make round-the-clock aerial surveillance the standard for all 2,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border,' too.
Or it could be the impact of all those Northrop Grumman ads on TV. Or maybe it's just the economy. At $4.5 million apiece, the drone program's great for Grumman. Almost everywhere its being sold as good news in a troubled economy."
Perhaps the lack of concern is because drones are already flying the Canadian border and Americans are already getting used to them. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson recently told The Hill, 'We are working hard to make round-the-clock aerial surveillance the standard for all 2,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border,' too.
Or it could be the impact of all those Northrop Grumman ads on TV. Or maybe it's just the economy. At $4.5 million apiece, the drone program's great for Grumman. Almost everywhere its being sold as good news in a troubled economy."
Monday, July 5, 2010
As US fights, China spends to gain Afghan foothold
AP story, a tip from Afghan Conflict Monitor July 4
By TINI TRAN (AP)
KABUL, Afghanistan — Gul Akbar's tiny store is crammed from floor to ceiling with rolls of electric cables, plugs of all sizes and piles of extension cords. Virtually everything comes from China, as do most of the appliances and electronics being sold in Kabul's busy Nader Pashtun Market.
Not far away, the sparkling 10-story glass-and brick Jamhuriat Hospital rises in the midst of Afghanistan's war-torn capital. Beijing gave $25 million and the Chinese workers to build it.
Every day, Afghans wait in long lines at the Chinese Embassy for visas to let them cross the border to trade.
As the U.S. and its NATO allies fight to stabilize Afghanistan, China has expanded its economic footprint with several high-profile investments and reconstruction projects. In 2007 it became the country's largest foreign investor when it won a $3.5 billion contract to develop copper mines at Aynak, southeast of Kabul.
The U.S. is in favor of the Chinese investment. "It can be a good thing. As a matter of fact, we encourage all of the international community to take an interest in the economic development of Afghanistan," said U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid.
"Working with our coalition partners and other interested partners, we are trying to establish a viable market economy in Afghanistan. This is one way to wean people from illicit activities and also to fight the ideology of the terrorists," he said.
For China, the reward is not only expanded trade and access to natural resources, it's also security for its western flank, the vast Xinjiang region that is home to a separatist movement of minority Uighurs, said Liu Xuecheng of the China Institute of International Studies, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's think tank.
"Our interest is clear. We need a peaceful neighbor because we have our own problems in Xinjiang," Liu said. "If we have a friendly country in Afghanistan, they can help us to manage issues on the separatists, security and territorial integrity. We want Afghanistan to be successful."
Though the two countries have always been friendly, the relationship has blossomed in recent years. In March, President Hamid Karzai made his fourth trip to Beijing, bringing back agreements on economic cooperation, technical training and lower tariffs for Afghan goods.
The emerging alliance is giving Kabul an alternative to its sometimes strained ties with the West. The two neighbors share a narrow, mountainous border, the Wakhan Corridor, and links that date back centuries to the caravans of tea, spices and other riches that traveled the Silk Road.
Afghanistan is "well aware that the U.S. is likely to only be a temporary ally so it's looking for a longer-term partner in the region. China would be an obvious choice," said security analyst Christian Le Miere, editor of Jane's Intelligence Review.
China drew worldwide attention with the $3.5 billion winning bid by the state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. tap one of the world's largest unexploited copper reserves. That deal — which included commitments to build a power plant, railway, hospital and mosque, and to employ thousands of Afghans as miners — has dwarfed all other countries' foreign investments, including the U.S.
"China is the biggest buyer of raw materials in the world, whether that's in Africa, Asia or any other part of the world. So if China wants to come to Afghanistan, why not?" said Ghullam Mohammad Yalaqi, the Afghan commerce and industry minister. "We just like to do the deal."
The country's untapped minerals, including gold, iron, copper and cobalt, is valued by a U.S. estimate at nearly $1 trillion. Afghan officials say it's triple that amount.
For Yalaqi, who led a group of Afghan government and business leaders to China last month, the Chinese contribution is as important as that of Western troops.
"If we can create jobs, then youths wouldn't turn to the Taliban. A good economy also has the impact of stability," he said.
Trade between the two neighbors has mushroomed over the past decade from $25 million in 2000 to $215 million in 2009, according to Chinese figures. Yalaqi's ministry estimates the actual figure, including unofficial border trade, to be closer to double.
On display in the crowded stalls of Kabul's main electronics market are the fruits of that trade: computers, cell phones, cameras, irons, heaters and washing machines.
Squeezed into a small space is Suliman Electric, the electrical parts business owned by Gul Akbar's family. Akbar and his brother used to travel to Iran and Pakistan to buy merchandise but switched four years ago.
"We started going to China because a socket made in Germany or Iran or the U.S. is more expensive — 200 Afghanis ($4.40). But sockets from China are only one-fifth the price. The quality of Chinese goods is not the best, but it's good enough and the price is the lowest," he said.
"When I started traveling to China, my business increased by 50 percent."
Every four months, he makes the 4,800-kilometer (3,000-mile) flight to eastern China to fill up two 40-foot containers and ship them to Kabul.
"It takes two months to send it to Kabul and then another two months to sell it all. When we finish, I go back to China to buy more," he said. "I pay $50,000 for one container's worth of goods and I sell it for $60,000. I would go more often if I could afford to."
He is one of an estimated 30,000 Afghan traders shuttling between the two countries, said Sultan Baheen, Afghanistan's ambassador to China. Most head to the southern manufacturing hub in Guangzhou province, the far west city of Urumqi in Xinjiang, or the eastern city of Yiwu, home to a massive commodities market, he said.
The need to quickly shuttle goods between countries is huge. On the strength of cargo demand alone, privately owned Safi Airlines plans to launch the first-ever direct passenger and cargo flights between Kabul and Beijing this fall. Currently the only flights are between Kabul and Urumqi.
"What we found out is that the amount of visas being issued from Afghanistan to China, and vice versa, has increased dramatically. This is an indication that there's upcoming traffic, upcoming business," said Werner Borchert, Safi's chief operating officer.
China may be the biggest foreign investor, but its $180 million in development aid over the past eight years lags far behind the U.S.'s $12 billion.
Much of China's aid has gone on projects such as the Parwan irrigation system in the north, a conference hall for Karzai's presidential palace and the Jamhuriat Hospital in Kabul. It has also helped train some civil servants as well as teaching police and army officers in logistics and mine-clearance, said Baheen, the ambassador.
But by focusing on signature construction projects, often built with its own workers, China has made itself visible in a way that the U.S., has not, he said.
"America spends billions and billions of dollars, but they give out projects to contractors from different countries — China, India, Pakistan, etc. because the labor costs are low," Baheen said.
So when the average Afghan looks at an American project, "How does he know this is American money?"
The State Department's Duguid cautioned that while foreign investment is welcome, it should be done "according with Afghan laws and free and fair competition rules that much of the world respects. That would include investment from China."
The Aynak copper mine deal was shadowed by allegations that the Afghan mines minister, who has since been replaced, had collected huge bribes for steering the bid toward China.
China has also benefited by focusing its investments on Afghanistan's relatively safer north, while much of the U.S.-funded effort is in the more violent south and east regions. The Taliban is not known to have made threats against Chinese involved in Afghanistan.
Beijing has reaped admiration for projects such as the 350-bed Jamhuriat Hospital. Inaugurated last summer, it was built in three years by 200 Chinese workers who lived on-site in temporary lodgings, said hospital director Ramazan Karimi. The hospital sits empty, though, because the government hasn't allocated any operating funds, he said.
"The Afghan people prefer this gift from China. The Chinese side has done streets, roads and clinics in Afghanistan," Karimi said. "They didn't bring their troops here."
Liu, the Beijing think tank analyst, said he doubted China would ever send troops. "The war is not China's war," he said. "... But economically and socially, we can try to help."
For Afghans such as Akbar the merchant, China is an example to be emulated.
"When I travel to China, I feel safe. I see good roads and cars," he said. "I don't hear the sound of weapons. I don't worry about someone stealing. I wanted to stay there."
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
By TINI TRAN (AP)
KABUL, Afghanistan — Gul Akbar's tiny store is crammed from floor to ceiling with rolls of electric cables, plugs of all sizes and piles of extension cords. Virtually everything comes from China, as do most of the appliances and electronics being sold in Kabul's busy Nader Pashtun Market.
Not far away, the sparkling 10-story glass-and brick Jamhuriat Hospital rises in the midst of Afghanistan's war-torn capital. Beijing gave $25 million and the Chinese workers to build it.
Every day, Afghans wait in long lines at the Chinese Embassy for visas to let them cross the border to trade.
As the U.S. and its NATO allies fight to stabilize Afghanistan, China has expanded its economic footprint with several high-profile investments and reconstruction projects. In 2007 it became the country's largest foreign investor when it won a $3.5 billion contract to develop copper mines at Aynak, southeast of Kabul.
The U.S. is in favor of the Chinese investment. "It can be a good thing. As a matter of fact, we encourage all of the international community to take an interest in the economic development of Afghanistan," said U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid.
"Working with our coalition partners and other interested partners, we are trying to establish a viable market economy in Afghanistan. This is one way to wean people from illicit activities and also to fight the ideology of the terrorists," he said.
For China, the reward is not only expanded trade and access to natural resources, it's also security for its western flank, the vast Xinjiang region that is home to a separatist movement of minority Uighurs, said Liu Xuecheng of the China Institute of International Studies, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's think tank.
"Our interest is clear. We need a peaceful neighbor because we have our own problems in Xinjiang," Liu said. "If we have a friendly country in Afghanistan, they can help us to manage issues on the separatists, security and territorial integrity. We want Afghanistan to be successful."
Though the two countries have always been friendly, the relationship has blossomed in recent years. In March, President Hamid Karzai made his fourth trip to Beijing, bringing back agreements on economic cooperation, technical training and lower tariffs for Afghan goods.
The emerging alliance is giving Kabul an alternative to its sometimes strained ties with the West. The two neighbors share a narrow, mountainous border, the Wakhan Corridor, and links that date back centuries to the caravans of tea, spices and other riches that traveled the Silk Road.
Afghanistan is "well aware that the U.S. is likely to only be a temporary ally so it's looking for a longer-term partner in the region. China would be an obvious choice," said security analyst Christian Le Miere, editor of Jane's Intelligence Review.
China drew worldwide attention with the $3.5 billion winning bid by the state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. tap one of the world's largest unexploited copper reserves. That deal — which included commitments to build a power plant, railway, hospital and mosque, and to employ thousands of Afghans as miners — has dwarfed all other countries' foreign investments, including the U.S.
"China is the biggest buyer of raw materials in the world, whether that's in Africa, Asia or any other part of the world. So if China wants to come to Afghanistan, why not?" said Ghullam Mohammad Yalaqi, the Afghan commerce and industry minister. "We just like to do the deal."
The country's untapped minerals, including gold, iron, copper and cobalt, is valued by a U.S. estimate at nearly $1 trillion. Afghan officials say it's triple that amount.
For Yalaqi, who led a group of Afghan government and business leaders to China last month, the Chinese contribution is as important as that of Western troops.
"If we can create jobs, then youths wouldn't turn to the Taliban. A good economy also has the impact of stability," he said.
Trade between the two neighbors has mushroomed over the past decade from $25 million in 2000 to $215 million in 2009, according to Chinese figures. Yalaqi's ministry estimates the actual figure, including unofficial border trade, to be closer to double.
On display in the crowded stalls of Kabul's main electronics market are the fruits of that trade: computers, cell phones, cameras, irons, heaters and washing machines.
Squeezed into a small space is Suliman Electric, the electrical parts business owned by Gul Akbar's family. Akbar and his brother used to travel to Iran and Pakistan to buy merchandise but switched four years ago.
"We started going to China because a socket made in Germany or Iran or the U.S. is more expensive — 200 Afghanis ($4.40). But sockets from China are only one-fifth the price. The quality of Chinese goods is not the best, but it's good enough and the price is the lowest," he said.
"When I started traveling to China, my business increased by 50 percent."
Every four months, he makes the 4,800-kilometer (3,000-mile) flight to eastern China to fill up two 40-foot containers and ship them to Kabul.
"It takes two months to send it to Kabul and then another two months to sell it all. When we finish, I go back to China to buy more," he said. "I pay $50,000 for one container's worth of goods and I sell it for $60,000. I would go more often if I could afford to."
He is one of an estimated 30,000 Afghan traders shuttling between the two countries, said Sultan Baheen, Afghanistan's ambassador to China. Most head to the southern manufacturing hub in Guangzhou province, the far west city of Urumqi in Xinjiang, or the eastern city of Yiwu, home to a massive commodities market, he said.
The need to quickly shuttle goods between countries is huge. On the strength of cargo demand alone, privately owned Safi Airlines plans to launch the first-ever direct passenger and cargo flights between Kabul and Beijing this fall. Currently the only flights are between Kabul and Urumqi.
"What we found out is that the amount of visas being issued from Afghanistan to China, and vice versa, has increased dramatically. This is an indication that there's upcoming traffic, upcoming business," said Werner Borchert, Safi's chief operating officer.
China may be the biggest foreign investor, but its $180 million in development aid over the past eight years lags far behind the U.S.'s $12 billion.
Much of China's aid has gone on projects such as the Parwan irrigation system in the north, a conference hall for Karzai's presidential palace and the Jamhuriat Hospital in Kabul. It has also helped train some civil servants as well as teaching police and army officers in logistics and mine-clearance, said Baheen, the ambassador.
But by focusing on signature construction projects, often built with its own workers, China has made itself visible in a way that the U.S., has not, he said.
"America spends billions and billions of dollars, but they give out projects to contractors from different countries — China, India, Pakistan, etc. because the labor costs are low," Baheen said.
So when the average Afghan looks at an American project, "How does he know this is American money?"
The State Department's Duguid cautioned that while foreign investment is welcome, it should be done "according with Afghan laws and free and fair competition rules that much of the world respects. That would include investment from China."
The Aynak copper mine deal was shadowed by allegations that the Afghan mines minister, who has since been replaced, had collected huge bribes for steering the bid toward China.
China has also benefited by focusing its investments on Afghanistan's relatively safer north, while much of the U.S.-funded effort is in the more violent south and east regions. The Taliban is not known to have made threats against Chinese involved in Afghanistan.
Beijing has reaped admiration for projects such as the 350-bed Jamhuriat Hospital. Inaugurated last summer, it was built in three years by 200 Chinese workers who lived on-site in temporary lodgings, said hospital director Ramazan Karimi. The hospital sits empty, though, because the government hasn't allocated any operating funds, he said.
"The Afghan people prefer this gift from China. The Chinese side has done streets, roads and clinics in Afghanistan," Karimi said. "They didn't bring their troops here."
Liu, the Beijing think tank analyst, said he doubted China would ever send troops. "The war is not China's war," he said. "... But economically and socially, we can try to help."
For Afghans such as Akbar the merchant, China is an example to be emulated.
"When I travel to China, I feel safe. I see good roads and cars," he said. "I don't hear the sound of weapons. I don't worry about someone stealing. I wanted to stay there."
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Shrine blast: Pakistan rages against Taliban
Times of India piece by Omer Farooq Kahn July 4, India
Quick acknowledgement: discrepancies in general slant exist between this piece and the AOL News that preceded it. India recently announced a pact with Pakistan on the systematic apprehension and reduction of terrorist attacks. This is the same India who received green lights from former President Bush on its military nuclear program while Iran faces U.N. sanctions on its claimed-to-be-domestic nuclear program. Plus this one is two days behind the story that claims the Pakistani population is largely lashing out at the U.S. presence in the country as a response to the violence.
ISLAMABAD: The Taliban may have overplayed their hand by attacking Lahore's Data Gunj Baksh shrine with thousands of people, including conservative religious groups, taking to Pakistan's streets on Saturday, to denounce terrorist groups for the first time since the near-daily roll call of suicide attacks in the country.
On Saturday, as thousands demanded a new offensive against the Taliban, shops and businesses were shut in major cities. The protest appeared to reflect Pakistan's deep anger against the second major attack in a month on Pakistan's cultural hub, Lahore and on its famous Sufi shrine.
In one of Lahore's important shopping areas, baton-wielding protesters forced bystanders and passers-by to join in and shops to close . Protests also erupted in Karachi, Rawalpindi, Faislabad, Hyderabad and the northwestern Pashtun-dominated town of Peshawar. Emotions ran high in Karachi.
"We will not end our protest until culprits are punished,'' said Sunni Muslim Council leader Raghib Naeemi. The council was one of the groups which had called for a strike on Saturday. Naeemi urged the government to step up its efforts against extremism.
The council's chief Sahibzada Fazal thanked Pakistanis for holding protests. ''Today's successful strike shows that people behind terrorist acts. People have rejected these hired assassins.''
Authorities also ordered a crackdown on suspects. Police said they had rounded up several suspected militants around Lahore and recovered 20 suicide vests, police uniforms and and large amounts of ammunition on Friday night.
Pakistan prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani visited the scene and vowed to bring the
attackers to justice. ''We've to be united to defeat terrorism and have appealed to the international community to help us,'' he said. This was a rare visit of Pakistan's head of government, who comes from a Sufi family, to a terror attack scene.
The attack on the Lahore shrine has also intensified calls for reigning in extremist seminaries that have mushroomed across Pakistan during the US-backed Jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Quick acknowledgement: discrepancies in general slant exist between this piece and the AOL News that preceded it. India recently announced a pact with Pakistan on the systematic apprehension and reduction of terrorist attacks. This is the same India who received green lights from former President Bush on its military nuclear program while Iran faces U.N. sanctions on its claimed-to-be-domestic nuclear program. Plus this one is two days behind the story that claims the Pakistani population is largely lashing out at the U.S. presence in the country as a response to the violence.
ISLAMABAD: The Taliban may have overplayed their hand by attacking Lahore's Data Gunj Baksh shrine with thousands of people, including conservative religious groups, taking to Pakistan's streets on Saturday, to denounce terrorist groups for the first time since the near-daily roll call of suicide attacks in the country.
On Saturday, as thousands demanded a new offensive against the Taliban, shops and businesses were shut in major cities. The protest appeared to reflect Pakistan's deep anger against the second major attack in a month on Pakistan's cultural hub, Lahore and on its famous Sufi shrine.
In one of Lahore's important shopping areas, baton-wielding protesters forced bystanders and passers-by to join in and shops to close . Protests also erupted in Karachi, Rawalpindi, Faislabad, Hyderabad and the northwestern Pashtun-dominated town of Peshawar. Emotions ran high in Karachi.
"We will not end our protest until culprits are punished,'' said Sunni Muslim Council leader Raghib Naeemi. The council was one of the groups which had called for a strike on Saturday. Naeemi urged the government to step up its efforts against extremism.
The council's chief Sahibzada Fazal thanked Pakistanis for holding protests. ''Today's successful strike shows that people behind terrorist acts. People have rejected these hired assassins.''
Authorities also ordered a crackdown on suspects. Police said they had rounded up several suspected militants around Lahore and recovered 20 suicide vests, police uniforms and and large amounts of ammunition on Friday night.
Pakistan prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani visited the scene and vowed to bring the
attackers to justice. ''We've to be united to defeat terrorism and have appealed to the international community to help us,'' he said. This was a rare visit of Pakistan's head of government, who comes from a Sufi family, to a terror attack scene.
The attack on the Lahore shrine has also intensified calls for reigning in extremist seminaries that have mushroomed across Pakistan during the US-backed Jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Pakistan Lashes Out at US After Deadly Shrine Bombings
AOL News story by Babar Dogar
LAHORE, Pakistan (July 2) -- Pakistanis lashed out Friday at the U.S., blaming its alliance with their government and its presence in Afghanistan for spurring two suicide bombers to kill 42 people at the country's most important Sufi shrine.
The reactions showed the challenge facing Washington and the Pakistani government when it comes to rallying public support against the Islamist extremism that has scarred the South Asian nation, even after an audacious attack on the moderate, Sufi-influenced Islam most Pakistanis practice.
Thousands of people had gathered late Thursday at the green-domed Data Darbar shrine in Lahore when bombs went off minutes apart. The blasts ripped concrete from the walls and left the white marble floor awash with blood. There was no claim of responsibility, but Islamist extremists consider Sufism - a mystical strand of Islam - to be heretical.
But on Friday, few Pakistanis interviewed saw militants at the root of the problem.
"America is killing Muslims in Afghanistan and in our tribal areas (with missile strikes), and militants are attacking Pakistan to express anger against the government for supporting America," said Zahid Umar, 25, who frequently visits the shrine, where 180 people were also wounded.
Pakistanis are suffering because of American policies and aggression in the region, said Mohammed Asif, 34, who runs an auto workshop in Lahore. He and others said the attacks would end if the U.S. would pull out of Afghanistan.
Several other Pakistanis interviewed blamed the Ahmadis, a minority sect that has long faced discrimination in Pakistan. On May 28 in Lahore, gunmen and a suicide squad targeted two Ahmadi mosques, massacring at least 93 people, and some Pakistanis claimed the sect must have been seeking revenge.
Others cast about for additional villains - though America's hand was seen there, too.
Washington "is encouraging Indians and Jews to carry out attacks" in Pakistan, said Arifa Moen, 32, a teacher in the central city of Multan.
Pakistani officials condemned the bombings, using language they have frequently used to try to convince the population that the fight against militancy is not one they can ignore.
"Those who still pretend that we are not a nation at war are complicit in these deaths," said Farahnaz Ispahani, a spokeswoman for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
The U.S. Embassy issued a statement Friday condemning the attack and saying it "demonstrates the terrorists' blatant disregard for the lives of the Pakistani people and the future of this country."
The targeted shrine is that of Data Ganj Bakhsh Hajveri, who lived hundreds of years ago and traveled throughout the region spreading a message of peace and love. He eventually settled in the Lahore area, and his shrine is the most revered and most popular of Sufi shrines in the nation.
Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, is a key military, political and cultural hub. The city has witnessed several audacious attacks on diverse targets over the past two years, from crowded markets to Sri Lanka's cricket team.
The Pakistani government has been accused of lacking the will to crack down on militants in Punjab, the country's most populous and most powerful region. Many of the militants are part of now-banned groups launched with government support in the 1980s and '90s to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and pressure archenemy India.
Some recent attacks in Punjab have been blamed on the "Punjabi Taliban." The group is a relatively new network of al-Qaida-linked militants who have split off from other local insurgent groups but also has ties to the Pakistani Taliban, which has its bases in the northwest tribal regions.
The suicide bombings have fueled anger against Pakistan's weak police forces, who appear helpless to stop the killings. In the hours after Thursday's bombings, demonstrators gathered outside the shrine to protest the security lapse, only to be dispersed after police fired into the air and threw rocks at them.
Senior Lahore government official Khusro Pervez said recent intelligence alerts about possible attacks lacked details.
"The intelligence agencies alerted us that terrorists could target prominent places, shrines and mosques in Lahore. They mentioned names of major places as a possible target, but no specific information was available to us," he said.
Also Friday, militants attacked a security checkpoint on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing three officers, said Safwat Ghayur, a regional commander of the Frontier Constabulary security force.
He said officers returned fire and killed some of the attackers.
Associated Press Writer Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.
LAHORE, Pakistan (July 2) -- Pakistanis lashed out Friday at the U.S., blaming its alliance with their government and its presence in Afghanistan for spurring two suicide bombers to kill 42 people at the country's most important Sufi shrine.
The reactions showed the challenge facing Washington and the Pakistani government when it comes to rallying public support against the Islamist extremism that has scarred the South Asian nation, even after an audacious attack on the moderate, Sufi-influenced Islam most Pakistanis practice.
Thousands of people had gathered late Thursday at the green-domed Data Darbar shrine in Lahore when bombs went off minutes apart. The blasts ripped concrete from the walls and left the white marble floor awash with blood. There was no claim of responsibility, but Islamist extremists consider Sufism - a mystical strand of Islam - to be heretical.
But on Friday, few Pakistanis interviewed saw militants at the root of the problem.
"America is killing Muslims in Afghanistan and in our tribal areas (with missile strikes), and militants are attacking Pakistan to express anger against the government for supporting America," said Zahid Umar, 25, who frequently visits the shrine, where 180 people were also wounded.
Pakistanis are suffering because of American policies and aggression in the region, said Mohammed Asif, 34, who runs an auto workshop in Lahore. He and others said the attacks would end if the U.S. would pull out of Afghanistan.
Several other Pakistanis interviewed blamed the Ahmadis, a minority sect that has long faced discrimination in Pakistan. On May 28 in Lahore, gunmen and a suicide squad targeted two Ahmadi mosques, massacring at least 93 people, and some Pakistanis claimed the sect must have been seeking revenge.
Others cast about for additional villains - though America's hand was seen there, too.
Washington "is encouraging Indians and Jews to carry out attacks" in Pakistan, said Arifa Moen, 32, a teacher in the central city of Multan.
Pakistani officials condemned the bombings, using language they have frequently used to try to convince the population that the fight against militancy is not one they can ignore.
"Those who still pretend that we are not a nation at war are complicit in these deaths," said Farahnaz Ispahani, a spokeswoman for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
The U.S. Embassy issued a statement Friday condemning the attack and saying it "demonstrates the terrorists' blatant disregard for the lives of the Pakistani people and the future of this country."
The targeted shrine is that of Data Ganj Bakhsh Hajveri, who lived hundreds of years ago and traveled throughout the region spreading a message of peace and love. He eventually settled in the Lahore area, and his shrine is the most revered and most popular of Sufi shrines in the nation.
Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, is a key military, political and cultural hub. The city has witnessed several audacious attacks on diverse targets over the past two years, from crowded markets to Sri Lanka's cricket team.
The Pakistani government has been accused of lacking the will to crack down on militants in Punjab, the country's most populous and most powerful region. Many of the militants are part of now-banned groups launched with government support in the 1980s and '90s to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and pressure archenemy India.
Some recent attacks in Punjab have been blamed on the "Punjabi Taliban." The group is a relatively new network of al-Qaida-linked militants who have split off from other local insurgent groups but also has ties to the Pakistani Taliban, which has its bases in the northwest tribal regions.
The suicide bombings have fueled anger against Pakistan's weak police forces, who appear helpless to stop the killings. In the hours after Thursday's bombings, demonstrators gathered outside the shrine to protest the security lapse, only to be dispersed after police fired into the air and threw rocks at them.
Senior Lahore government official Khusro Pervez said recent intelligence alerts about possible attacks lacked details.
"The intelligence agencies alerted us that terrorists could target prominent places, shrines and mosques in Lahore. They mentioned names of major places as a possible target, but no specific information was available to us," he said.
Also Friday, militants attacked a security checkpoint on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing three officers, said Safwat Ghayur, a regional commander of the Frontier Constabulary security force.
He said officers returned fire and killed some of the attackers.
Associated Press Writer Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.
July 1 Pakistan incident: Twin Attacks on Sufi Shrine in Pakistan Kill Dozens
The Pakistani Taliban appears to have engaged in a critical error by attacking Sufi Muslims.
AOL News story by Adnan R. Kahn
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (July 2) -- Two suicide bombers detonated more than 65 pounds of explosives in one of Lahore's iconic cultural landmarks, killing at least 37 people and wounding 175. The attack on the Sufi shrine, locally known as Data Darbar, has sent shockwaves through Pakistan's Sufi community, who have lived in fear of such violence for four years.
Sufism, the mystical strand of Islam, is a largely nonviolent, apolitical religious creed that places an individual's relationship with God above the demands of any single doctrine. It is credited with producing some of Islam's greatest works of art, in poetry, literature and music, as well as some of Islam's leading contributions to science and philosophy.
It is also hated by fundamentalists like the Taliban and al-Qaida.
The attack on the shrine of the Sufi saint Syed Ali bin Usman Hajweri came as pilgrims were gathering for a traditional Thursday night prayer. One suicide bomber reportedly struck devotees as they were performing the washing all Muslims perform before prayer, while the second struck a crowd gathered in one of the shrine's courtyards.
The dead and wounded were rushed to hospitals amid a scene of chaos and carnage. Some are reported to have died during a stampede that immediately followed the blasts, others succumbed to their injuries at hospital, according to doctors there who also warned that the death toll is likely to rise.
Video cameras captured both explosions, showing waves of dust engulfing the crowd and people running in panic.
No group has claimed responsibility, but Sufi devotees are commonly targeted by militants in Pakistan who accuse them of polytheism because of their veneration of the shrines of their saints, a crime in most fundamentalist branches of Islam punishable by death. A similar attack in 2005 at the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif Kazmi in Islamabad, targeting a group of people crowded around a musician singing devotional songs, killed 50. Other, smaller attacks and targeted killings have frightened many of Pakistan's Sufi devotees away from the shrines of their beloved saints.
Sufism reached its apex in the early years of Islam, producing some of its greatest thinkers between the 10th and 13th centuries, men -- and some women -- like Omar Khayyam, Rabia Balkhi, Jelaludin Rumi, and the ecstatic poet Hafiz, who was killed for declaring publicly, "I am the Truth."
Many Islamic experts point to the decline of Sufism as the starting point in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, arguing that historical evidence clearly places the Golden Age of Islam during its Sufi era, when tolerance and the creative impetus were an integral part of Islamic society.
Its decline coincided with the rise of Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya, the 14th-century Islamic scholar considered to be the father of fundamentalist Islam. His arguments have been modified and refined over the centuries to a point now where in Saudi Arabia, the heartland of the Wahabbi branch of fundamentalist Islam, possessing Sufi literature remains a capital crime.
But in Pakistan, Sufism is considered a national treasure. During the military dictatorship of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a national campaign to promote Sufism extolled Pakistan as "The Land of the Sufis." But the rising influence of the Wahabbi school, promoted by both the Taliban and al-Qaida, has terrorized the Sufi community here.
"Fear is our natural state now," said Khyber Muhammad, a musical instrument maker and Sufi devotee in Peshawar. "We have always been quietists -- you will never know if you are in the presence of a Sufi master. He could be a shoemaker, or a garbage collector, or even a beggar. But how can we express our love for our dead masters if the militants keep attacking our shrines?"
In Peshawar, the swarming heartland of Pakistan's Islamic militancy, even the word "Sufi" has become dangerous. Men like Muhammad refer to each other only as "seekers" in reference to their spiritual journey to enlightenment. Their gatherings, or dergahs, often marked by music and poetry readings, have virtually vanished or gone deep underground.
But this was not always the case. As little as four years ago, Pakistanis seeking the guidance of Sufi saints frequented the Khyber tribal agency adjoining Peshawar. "Sufism was very strong in both Khyber and Peshawar," said Anwar Shah, a local resident. "There are shrines all over Khyber, and we had peace when we were able to visit them."
In recent years, Khyber has witnessed the rise of a local militant, Mangal Bagh, who has eliminated Sufi practices. Bagh rose to prominence in 2006, after his followers, under the banner of jihad, defeated men loyal to a local pir, or Sufi saint, in fighting that turned Khyber into a battleground. Evidence has emerged over the years that Bagh was supported by Pakistan's spy agency, the Interservices Intelligence, which often backs militant groups they believe can be used to promote Pakistan's interests in India and Afghanistan.
The results have been devastating for Khyber and Peshawar. A significant minority of Sikhs living in Khyber, welcomed by the tolerant Sufi creed, have fled the region, their homes and businesses targeted by members of Bagh's Lashkar-i-Islam militants. Sufi shrines, once cared for by the local people, lie in ruins. In Peshawar, Muhammad's tabla business, thriving when Sufi musicians were prevalent, is nearing collapse.
"If the musicians stop playing," he laments, "what need is there for instruments?"
Anwar Shah is deeply saddened by the loss of Peshawar's Sufi traditions. But he is not alone. Sufi movements around the Muslim world -- and the tolerance they promote -- are under threat. The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh was often frequented by Hindu devotees, as are dozens of other Sufi shrines in India and Pakistan. In Turkey, Israelis regularly visit the shrine of Jelaludin Rumi in Konya, praising him as an enlightened human with the mystical knowledge to lead all of humanity on the path of unity.
The suicide blasts in Lahore are a reminder that unity is something militant Islamists fear. "With unity, inspired by a deep love for humanity, comes peace," said Ejazullah Baig, a Sufi mystic in Pakistan's northern mountains. "Intolerance requires disunity for its logic to function. These fundamentalists need chaos for their own survival."
But when asked why Sufis haven't done more to counter the influence of the fundamentalists, Baig fought back tears and struggled to provide an answer. "We are a quiet people," he said at last. "We spend our days studying and meditating. It is part of our creed not to interfere with the spiritual path an individual has chosen, even if it is leading him to violence. But we are talking more about what we can do. It is on our minds."
AOL News story by Adnan R. Kahn
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (July 2) -- Two suicide bombers detonated more than 65 pounds of explosives in one of Lahore's iconic cultural landmarks, killing at least 37 people and wounding 175. The attack on the Sufi shrine, locally known as Data Darbar, has sent shockwaves through Pakistan's Sufi community, who have lived in fear of such violence for four years.
Sufism, the mystical strand of Islam, is a largely nonviolent, apolitical religious creed that places an individual's relationship with God above the demands of any single doctrine. It is credited with producing some of Islam's greatest works of art, in poetry, literature and music, as well as some of Islam's leading contributions to science and philosophy.
It is also hated by fundamentalists like the Taliban and al-Qaida.
The attack on the shrine of the Sufi saint Syed Ali bin Usman Hajweri came as pilgrims were gathering for a traditional Thursday night prayer. One suicide bomber reportedly struck devotees as they were performing the washing all Muslims perform before prayer, while the second struck a crowd gathered in one of the shrine's courtyards.
The dead and wounded were rushed to hospitals amid a scene of chaos and carnage. Some are reported to have died during a stampede that immediately followed the blasts, others succumbed to their injuries at hospital, according to doctors there who also warned that the death toll is likely to rise.
Video cameras captured both explosions, showing waves of dust engulfing the crowd and people running in panic.
No group has claimed responsibility, but Sufi devotees are commonly targeted by militants in Pakistan who accuse them of polytheism because of their veneration of the shrines of their saints, a crime in most fundamentalist branches of Islam punishable by death. A similar attack in 2005 at the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif Kazmi in Islamabad, targeting a group of people crowded around a musician singing devotional songs, killed 50. Other, smaller attacks and targeted killings have frightened many of Pakistan's Sufi devotees away from the shrines of their beloved saints.
Sufism reached its apex in the early years of Islam, producing some of its greatest thinkers between the 10th and 13th centuries, men -- and some women -- like Omar Khayyam, Rabia Balkhi, Jelaludin Rumi, and the ecstatic poet Hafiz, who was killed for declaring publicly, "I am the Truth."
Many Islamic experts point to the decline of Sufism as the starting point in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, arguing that historical evidence clearly places the Golden Age of Islam during its Sufi era, when tolerance and the creative impetus were an integral part of Islamic society.
Its decline coincided with the rise of Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya, the 14th-century Islamic scholar considered to be the father of fundamentalist Islam. His arguments have been modified and refined over the centuries to a point now where in Saudi Arabia, the heartland of the Wahabbi branch of fundamentalist Islam, possessing Sufi literature remains a capital crime.
But in Pakistan, Sufism is considered a national treasure. During the military dictatorship of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a national campaign to promote Sufism extolled Pakistan as "The Land of the Sufis." But the rising influence of the Wahabbi school, promoted by both the Taliban and al-Qaida, has terrorized the Sufi community here.
"Fear is our natural state now," said Khyber Muhammad, a musical instrument maker and Sufi devotee in Peshawar. "We have always been quietists -- you will never know if you are in the presence of a Sufi master. He could be a shoemaker, or a garbage collector, or even a beggar. But how can we express our love for our dead masters if the militants keep attacking our shrines?"
In Peshawar, the swarming heartland of Pakistan's Islamic militancy, even the word "Sufi" has become dangerous. Men like Muhammad refer to each other only as "seekers" in reference to their spiritual journey to enlightenment. Their gatherings, or dergahs, often marked by music and poetry readings, have virtually vanished or gone deep underground.
But this was not always the case. As little as four years ago, Pakistanis seeking the guidance of Sufi saints frequented the Khyber tribal agency adjoining Peshawar. "Sufism was very strong in both Khyber and Peshawar," said Anwar Shah, a local resident. "There are shrines all over Khyber, and we had peace when we were able to visit them."
In recent years, Khyber has witnessed the rise of a local militant, Mangal Bagh, who has eliminated Sufi practices. Bagh rose to prominence in 2006, after his followers, under the banner of jihad, defeated men loyal to a local pir, or Sufi saint, in fighting that turned Khyber into a battleground. Evidence has emerged over the years that Bagh was supported by Pakistan's spy agency, the Interservices Intelligence, which often backs militant groups they believe can be used to promote Pakistan's interests in India and Afghanistan.
The results have been devastating for Khyber and Peshawar. A significant minority of Sikhs living in Khyber, welcomed by the tolerant Sufi creed, have fled the region, their homes and businesses targeted by members of Bagh's Lashkar-i-Islam militants. Sufi shrines, once cared for by the local people, lie in ruins. In Peshawar, Muhammad's tabla business, thriving when Sufi musicians were prevalent, is nearing collapse.
"If the musicians stop playing," he laments, "what need is there for instruments?"
Anwar Shah is deeply saddened by the loss of Peshawar's Sufi traditions. But he is not alone. Sufi movements around the Muslim world -- and the tolerance they promote -- are under threat. The shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh was often frequented by Hindu devotees, as are dozens of other Sufi shrines in India and Pakistan. In Turkey, Israelis regularly visit the shrine of Jelaludin Rumi in Konya, praising him as an enlightened human with the mystical knowledge to lead all of humanity on the path of unity.
The suicide blasts in Lahore are a reminder that unity is something militant Islamists fear. "With unity, inspired by a deep love for humanity, comes peace," said Ejazullah Baig, a Sufi mystic in Pakistan's northern mountains. "Intolerance requires disunity for its logic to function. These fundamentalists need chaos for their own survival."
But when asked why Sufis haven't done more to counter the influence of the fundamentalists, Baig fought back tears and struggled to provide an answer. "We are a quiet people," he said at last. "We spend our days studying and meditating. It is part of our creed not to interfere with the spiritual path an individual has chosen, even if it is leading him to violence. But we are talking more about what we can do. It is on our minds."
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Amy Goodman: We Can't Afford War
Truthdig.com piece by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman June 29
The point of this piece, as indicated by the title, is the current economic state of society in America and contradictory eternal strategy in Afghanistan (to put on hold the emerging issue of withdrawal from Iraq).
A separate note by Goodman mid-piece nearly warrants an entirely separate investigation and article. Oftentimes in his work, scholar Noam Chomsky has provided analysis of handling popular opinion when it falls inconsistent with the direction the powerful intend to move in the present. The following excerpt is an example of such late modern propaganda, which some would maintain exists only in the political culture of Soviet Russia or one of its authoritarian leftist side projects ... (excerpt)
The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.org, which received international attention after releasing leaked video from a U.S. attack helicopter showing the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad, has just posted a confidential CIA memo detailing possible public relations strategies to counter waning public support for the Afghan War. The agency memo reads: “If domestic politics forces the Dutch to depart, politicians elsewhere might cite a precedent for ‘listening to the voters.’ French and German leaders have over the past two years taken steps to preempt an upsurge of opposition but their vulnerability may be higher now.”
Goodman's conclusion is a highly rational, morally inexorable argument that perplexes the mind in step with the current official rhetoric ...
(second excerpt)
I just returned from Toronto, covering the G-20 summit and the protests. The gathered leaders pledged, among other things, to reduce government deficits by 50 percent by 2013. In the U.S., that means cutting $800 billion, or about 20 percent of the budget. Two Nobel Prize-winning economists have weighed in with grave predictions. Joseph Stiglitz said, “There are many cases where these kinds of austerity measures have led to ... recessions into depressions.” And Paul Krugman wrote: “Who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.”
In order to make the cuts promised, Obama would have to raise taxes and cut social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Or he could cut the war budget. I say “war budget” because it is not to be confused with a defense budget. Cities and states across the country are facing devastating budget crises. Pensions are being wiped out. Foreclosures are continuing at record levels. A true defense budget would shore up our schools, our roads, our towns, our social safety net. The U.S. House of Representatives is under pressure to pass a $33 billion Afghan War supplemental this week.
We can’t afford war.
Amy Goodman on Truthdig.com June 29, 2010
The point of this piece, as indicated by the title, is the current economic state of society in America and contradictory eternal strategy in Afghanistan (to put on hold the emerging issue of withdrawal from Iraq).
A separate note by Goodman mid-piece nearly warrants an entirely separate investigation and article. Oftentimes in his work, scholar Noam Chomsky has provided analysis of handling popular opinion when it falls inconsistent with the direction the powerful intend to move in the present. The following excerpt is an example of such late modern propaganda, which some would maintain exists only in the political culture of Soviet Russia or one of its authoritarian leftist side projects ... (excerpt)
The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.org, which received international attention after releasing leaked video from a U.S. attack helicopter showing the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad, has just posted a confidential CIA memo detailing possible public relations strategies to counter waning public support for the Afghan War. The agency memo reads: “If domestic politics forces the Dutch to depart, politicians elsewhere might cite a precedent for ‘listening to the voters.’ French and German leaders have over the past two years taken steps to preempt an upsurge of opposition but their vulnerability may be higher now.”
Goodman's conclusion is a highly rational, morally inexorable argument that perplexes the mind in step with the current official rhetoric ...
(second excerpt)
I just returned from Toronto, covering the G-20 summit and the protests. The gathered leaders pledged, among other things, to reduce government deficits by 50 percent by 2013. In the U.S., that means cutting $800 billion, or about 20 percent of the budget. Two Nobel Prize-winning economists have weighed in with grave predictions. Joseph Stiglitz said, “There are many cases where these kinds of austerity measures have led to ... recessions into depressions.” And Paul Krugman wrote: “Who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.”
In order to make the cuts promised, Obama would have to raise taxes and cut social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Or he could cut the war budget. I say “war budget” because it is not to be confused with a defense budget. Cities and states across the country are facing devastating budget crises. Pensions are being wiped out. Foreclosures are continuing at record levels. A true defense budget would shore up our schools, our roads, our towns, our social safety net. The U.S. House of Representatives is under pressure to pass a $33 billion Afghan War supplemental this week.
We can’t afford war.
Amy Goodman on Truthdig.com June 29, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Drones at home: FAA approves Predator drone to monitor Texas border
Dallas Morning News AirlineBiz blog
12:53 PM Wed, Jun 23, 2010
by Dave Michaels
Quick note: If we get drones in domestic operation, why would any of us think they wouldn't be used to hunt US: on a bad license plate number in a search for a fugitive or any other number of police operations conducted on poorly gathered intelligence, clerical errors and the like. Blackhawk helicopters are used to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border now, which I have seen with my own eyes east of San Diego. That doesn't mean those helicopters aren't used for other domestic purposes directed at civilians. For the details of my view on drones, do a quick search on this site ... or watch the Terminator movies again. Every action has an equal an opposite reaction. Your government is hunting foreigners with machines. I don't want to be hunted with machines, do you?
Full text ...
We reported earlier today that Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, had held up the nomination of the FAA's #2 official over aerial surveillance of Texas border. It seems that hold is now moot: the FAA today approved an unmanned aircraft to monitor 1,200 miles of the border, from El Paso to Brownsville, according to Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.
"Today marks a critical next step in securing the Texas-Mexico border. By permanently positioning this aircraft in Texas, CBP can further combat illegal activity along our southern border," Cuellar said in a statement. "For five years, other southern border states have benefited from this technology and this will ensure Texas has the same tools in the box to combat the spectrum of threats we face."
Cuellar's press release says the plane will be based in Corpus Christi. Read on for more from the congressman about the FAA's decision:
Earlier this month, CBP began flying a remotely-piloted aircraft based in Arizona over a portion of West Texas. FAA's most recent approval will allow CBP to fly over the remainder of the Texas-Mexico border between El Paso and Brownsville along the Rio Grande.
In addition, CBP will patrol the state's coastline along the Gulf of Mexico. The remotely-piloted aircraft, known as a Predator B, can fly for up to 20 hours and provide to CBP real-time critical intelligence information from attached cameras, sensors and radar systems.
"Increasingly these aircraft will become a familiar means for providing homeland security," said Congressman Cuellar. "By putting eyes in the sky, we can provide real-time information to our law enforcement on the ground. This combination of technology and manpower keeps our law enforcement a cut above the challenges they face."
According to CBP, since 2005 Predator Bs have flown more than 1,500 hours in support of border security missions and have assisted in the apprehension of more than 4,000 illegal aliens, in addition to the seizure of more than 15,000 pounds of marijuana.
For more information on the CBP UAV program, visit cbp.gov
12:53 PM Wed, Jun 23, 2010
by Dave Michaels
Quick note: If we get drones in domestic operation, why would any of us think they wouldn't be used to hunt US: on a bad license plate number in a search for a fugitive or any other number of police operations conducted on poorly gathered intelligence, clerical errors and the like. Blackhawk helicopters are used to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border now, which I have seen with my own eyes east of San Diego. That doesn't mean those helicopters aren't used for other domestic purposes directed at civilians. For the details of my view on drones, do a quick search on this site ... or watch the Terminator movies again. Every action has an equal an opposite reaction. Your government is hunting foreigners with machines. I don't want to be hunted with machines, do you?
Full text ...
We reported earlier today that Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, had held up the nomination of the FAA's #2 official over aerial surveillance of Texas border. It seems that hold is now moot: the FAA today approved an unmanned aircraft to monitor 1,200 miles of the border, from El Paso to Brownsville, according to Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.
"Today marks a critical next step in securing the Texas-Mexico border. By permanently positioning this aircraft in Texas, CBP can further combat illegal activity along our southern border," Cuellar said in a statement. "For five years, other southern border states have benefited from this technology and this will ensure Texas has the same tools in the box to combat the spectrum of threats we face."
Cuellar's press release says the plane will be based in Corpus Christi. Read on for more from the congressman about the FAA's decision:
Earlier this month, CBP began flying a remotely-piloted aircraft based in Arizona over a portion of West Texas. FAA's most recent approval will allow CBP to fly over the remainder of the Texas-Mexico border between El Paso and Brownsville along the Rio Grande.
In addition, CBP will patrol the state's coastline along the Gulf of Mexico. The remotely-piloted aircraft, known as a Predator B, can fly for up to 20 hours and provide to CBP real-time critical intelligence information from attached cameras, sensors and radar systems.
"Increasingly these aircraft will become a familiar means for providing homeland security," said Congressman Cuellar. "By putting eyes in the sky, we can provide real-time information to our law enforcement on the ground. This combination of technology and manpower keeps our law enforcement a cut above the challenges they face."
According to CBP, since 2005 Predator Bs have flown more than 1,500 hours in support of border security missions and have assisted in the apprehension of more than 4,000 illegal aliens, in addition to the seizure of more than 15,000 pounds of marijuana.
For more information on the CBP UAV program, visit cbp.gov
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