[sacw] SACW #2. | 1 Feb. 02

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - Dispatch #2. | 1 February 2002

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

#1. Journalists Petition For Release of WSJ Reporter
#2. Sri Lanka: In the Name of 'Peace': Terror stalks the North-East (UTHR)
#3. Yankee, bin Laden Jehads and the Devastation of Afghanistan=20
(PART 2) (Hassan N. Gardezi)
#4. India: Bhopal victims threaten to storm Dow Chemicals
#5.

________________________

#1.

Thu, 31 Jan 2002 20:57:15 -0500
NEWS FROM THE COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS
For more information: Abi Wright -- 212-465-1004, ext. 105 //
awright@c...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

JOURNALISTS PETITION FOR RELEASE OF WSJ REPORTER
Appeal to Captors for Daniel Pearl's Release

New York, January 31, 2002 - The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is
distributing the following appeal issued today by a leading group of 50
prominent Arab, Western, and Turkish journalists with a long history of
covering Middle Eastern and Muslim affairs. The journalists are calling for
the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

A copy of the appeal follows.

Daniel Pearl has been missing in Pakistan since January 23.

* * *
We, the undersigned, are colleagues of Daniel Pearl, who has become a
captive while reporting for The Wall Street Journal in Pakistan.

Like Daniel himself, we are journalists. As he used to, we report on event=
s
in the Middle East. We are Americans, Arabs, and others, who have spent man=
y
years, in some cases lifetimes, in the Arab part of the Islamic world.

We would like to state without hesitation that Daniel is a professional
journalist of the highest standard. During his own assignment covering the
Arab part of the Muslim world, he worked with honesty, courage, and
independence of mind to write the truth about the conflicts and problems of
the region as he saw it. Like the rest of us, he did his best to convey the
opinions and emotions of the people of the region.

We are dismayed by, and reject, accusations that Daniel is employed in any
capacity other than as a professional journalist. He is in no way
responsible for any actions or opinions other than his own. We affirm the
rights of journalists everywhere--be they Western, Arab, Muslim, or any
other nationality and religion--to perform their vital tasks without being
subject to accusations and threats.

Daniel's safe release will enable you to realize this goal.

Signed:

Ahmed Abdelmalik, Al Sharq, Doha
Mohammed al Ali, Al Jazeera, Doha
Christiane Amanpour, CNN, London
Ibrahim al Amin, As Safir, Beirut
Terry Anderson, New York
Fouzi al Asmar, Washington DC
Abdul Bari Atwan, Al Quds Al Arabi, London
Mehmet Ali Birand, CNN Turk, Istanbul
Bill Blakemore, ABC News, New York
Tom Brokaw, NBC News, New York
Cengiz Candar, Yeni Safak, Istanbul
John K. Cooley, Athens
Youssef Darwish, Al Raya, Doha
Raghida Dergham, Al Hayat, New York
Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, Paris
James M. Dorsey, The Wall Street Journal, Riyadh
Charles Glass, London
Sami Haddad, Al Jazeera, London
Assad Haydar, Al Moustaqbal, Paris
Ibrahim Helal, Al Jazeera, Doha
David Hirst, The Guardian, Cyprus
Fehmi Howeidi, Al Ahram, Cairo
Ali Jaber, Future TV, Beirut
Peter Jennings, ABC News, New York
Hisham Kassem, Cairo Times, Cairo
Khairallah Khairallah, London
Jamal Khashoggi, Arab News, Jeddah
Jihad al Khazen, Al Hayat, London
Sami Kleib, As Safir, Paris
Fehmi Koru, Yeni Safak, Istanbul
Mohammed Krishene, Al Jazeera, Doha
Kamal Eddin Labidi, Cairo Times, Cairo
John Lancaster, The Washington Post, Washington DC
Khaled al-Maeena, Arab News, Jeddah
Scott MacLeod, Time Magazine, Cairo
Hisham Milhem, As Safir, Washington DC
Hafez al-Mirazi, Al Jazeera, Washington DC
Ray Moseley, Chicago Tribune, London
Jamil Mroue, Daily Star, Beirut
Salama al-Nemaat, Al Hayat & Radio Monte Carlo, Amman
Jonathan Randal, Paris
Abdulrahman al-Rashed, Ash Sharq Al Awsat, London
Dan Rather, CBS News, New York
Eric Rouleau, Paris
Salama Ahmed Salama, Al Ahram, Cairo
Howard Schneider, The Washington Post, Cairo
Charles Sennott, Boston Globe, London
Hani Shukrallah, Al Ahram Weekly, Cairo
Gebran Tueni, An Nahar, Beirut
Mike Wallace, CBS News, New York

______

#2.

1 Feb 2002
In the Name of 'Peace': Terror stalks the North-East
...In these circumstances, it falls to the other actors concerned in=20
the peace process to safeguard children's rights and create normal=20
conditions on the political front as well. A huge responsibility=20
falls on Norway that has been called upon to play a facilitating=20
role. We need to put mechanisms in place to monitor not only=20
violations of the truce between the State and the LTTE, but also the=20
use of terror and violations against the civilians by both sides.=20
This is the time for the office of the Special Representative of the=20
UN Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict to play a=20
crucial role in this regard.=20

It is, moreover, only right that the NGO community and other civil=20
society groups should campaign for some concrete measures rather than=20
issue ritual statements. The lists of names provided by us are not=20
meant to become part of a database to study children in war, and to=20
present papers in academic fora, but mainly to aid timely action to=20
stop crimes against them. No one can today give shoddy reasons for=20
the continuation of inhuman practices. A cease-fire is in place and=20
many powerful interests are pushing for permanent peace. Is it a=20
crime against peace, simply to demand that children in the=20
North-East, and their parents too, be allowed a semblance of=20
normality? ......

=20
UTHR(J) Bulletin No: 28
The latest UTHR(J) bulletin No 28 is released today (1st Feb, 2002)=20
and its accessible at the link
<http://www.uthr.org/bulletins/bul28.htm>http://www.uthr.org/bulletins/bu=
l28.htm

UTHR(J)
<http://www.uthr.org>www.uthr.org

______

#3.

Yankee, bin Laden Jehads and the Devastation of Afghanistan (Part 2)

by Hassan N. Gardezi

Neither did Pakistan escape the bitter legacy of its deep
involvement in Afghanistan's prolonged and bloody strife. It left its ugly
marks and enduring distortions on the entire institutional structure of
the Pakistani society. It enhanced the intimidating power of the Islamic
political parties, breeding religious intolerance and sectarian violence.
Allowed to operate freely, without legal and constitutional restrictions,
these parties began to raise their own jehadi militias, lashkars, and
terrorist squads perpetrating murderous attacks on rival Muslim sects and
non- Muslim minorities. At the same time the massive infusion of
sophisticated weapons into Afghanistan spilled back across the border and
into private hands, producing a dramatic increase in armed robberies,
sectarian murders, political killings and blatant public displays of
automatic weapons as status symbols - the "klashnikov culture," as the
entire phenomenon came to be known. Drug running became a new menace.
While in 1978, the word heroin was hardly known in Pakistan, by mid-1990s
Pakistan was supplying a major share of the world heroin market and
millions of its own people had become heroin edicts. Wheeling and dealing
in the lucrative drug trade drew many top civil and military elite into
its orbit of corruption. Most importantly, the ISI generals began to act
independently of the government, setting their own foreign policy agendas
and interfering in domestic politics, by engineering political alliances
and funding the election campaigns of right-wing politicians.

The Rise of the Taliban
Out of this anarchic situation on both sides of the border was
born yet another sinister force in the name of religion, soon to be known
as Taliban. Around 1994, a new militia appeared in Southeastern
Afghanistan under the leadership of Mullah Mohammad Omar. Himself one of
the ex-mujahideen fighters, Omar reportedly disliked the corruption and
debauchery of commanders around him. He soon gathered a large following of
young Pushtuns from the refugee camps of Pakistan who had been sheltered
and taught in the madrasas run by Pakistan's Islamist parties (therefore
the name Taliban, meaning students). Other than learning the Qur'an by
root, these students were drilled in unquestioning acceptance of an
austere and misogynist code of conduct enshrined in the Wahabi Islamic
doctrine of Saudi origin.

Mullah Omar's militia of Taliban soon attracted the attention and
support of smugglers, drug dealers and traders who were fed up with paying
heavy tolls and taxes to local mujahideen warlords. By this time the
Pakistan military establishment was also thoroughly disillusioned with its
warring mujahideen prodigies installed as the interim government in Kabul
and decided to throw its weight behind the Taliban. Reinforced with all
this support, Omar's militia, overran the mujahideen strongholds and
checkpoints in and around Kandhar, captured Herat in 1995 and Kabul in
1996 chasing Ahmed Shah Masood, the star of the anti-Soviet jehad, out of
the capital along with the interim president Burhanuddin Rabani. The
Taliban also dragged out Najibullah from the United Nation's compound,
tortured him to death and left his corps dangling in the city's main
thoroughfare, with his genitals stuffed in his mouth. Within two years
that saw the worst massacres of civilians since the start of the
anti-Soviet jehad, Taliban with the assistance of Pakistan's army
established their control over most of Afghanistan, except a small area in
the North commanded by the Northern Alliance, a shaky coalition of ethnic
Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras.

Having consolidated their control over Kabul, the Taliban began
to rule the country as a theocracy under the watchful one eye of their
supremo, Mullah Omar. Although the ideological framework of the theocracy
they established under the name of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was
conceived and nurtured inside Pakistan in the Wahabi madrasas and
seminaries, its operating norms were enforced in Afghanistan with the
pathological zeal of young Taliban and semi-literate mullahs, many of them
raised as orphans, bearing the mental and physical scars of the prolonged
war. As is well known now, they stripped women of their jobs confining
them in their homes and burqas (veils), banned education of girls, burned
films and cinema houses, hacked TV sets and VCRs (except those being
smuggled from Dubai to Pakistan), massacred Shia Hazaras and ethnic Tajiks
and Uzbeks, and as a final act of contempt for human civilization, blasted
with cannon fire the rare giant Buddha statutes of Bamiyan. For their
spiritual cleansing, if not sport, they now and than stoned to death some
men and women in the disused soccer stadium of Kabul in the name of
Islamic shari'a laws.

Unfortunately, this new wave of misery and destruction unleashed
on the people touched no humanitarian impulse among those who had set out
in 1979 and earlier to save Afghanistan from the tyranny of "godless
communism." Pakistan recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government
of Afghanistan immediately after their capture of Kabul, followed by Saudi
Arabia and United Arab Emirate. The United States too welcomed the
establishment of Taliban rule, although remained short of giving it
official recognition. For Washington the rise of Taliban was an asset in
facilitating access to the vast Central Asian oil and gas reserves through
Afghanistan. Soon after the fall of Herat to Taliban in 1995 the US oil
company UNCOL, with links with the family of President Bush, signed a
deal with Turkmenistan to build a multi-billion dollar pipeline through
Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea port of Gawadar in Pakistan. The strict
rule of Taliban was seen as necessary for the execution and safety of this
project.(Ahmed Rashid, op.cit., 2000).

The Second Coming of Osama bin Laden
After the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan, the foreign holy
warriors also began to drift back to their countries of origin looking for
new jehads to pick up. Thousands of them returned to their Arab lands
taking pride in their feat of defeating one of the worlds only two
superpowers. With their expertise in guerrilla warfare, making and
handling of explosives and indoctrination in extremist Islamic ideologies,
they constituted a floating army of God's soldiers, ready to take on any
power defined as enemy of Islam or oppressor of Muslims. But their
introduction on the world scene remained of little concern to the founders
of the Yankee jehad. Asked if he regretted having supported and armed
future terrorists in the interview already cited, Brzezinsky snapped
back, "what is most important to the history of the world? Some stirred up
Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"

One of these very "stirred up Muslims" was Osama bin Laden. On his
return to Saudi Arabia, he found non-Muslim US troops entrenched in the
sacred land of Mecca and Madina in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Angered
at this state of affairs he redefined his erstwhile patrons as occupiers
of Islam's holy lands and subjugators of Muslims by virtu of their actions
in Palestine and Iraq. The Yankee jehad now branched into bin Laden jehad
in which the American infidels became the prime target. The Saudi royal
family also became the object of bin Laden's condemnation for being an
accomplice in the US imperialist designs. The Saudis forthwith stripped
him of his citizenship and bin Laden moved to Sudan where he set up the
initial base of his new jehadi organization, Al-Qaeda. But within two
years he was also forced out of Sudan under US and Saudi pressure. In the
summer of 1996 he returned to his familiar bunkers in Afghanistan where he
was welcomed by Mullah Omar whom he had previously met at the Binori
Mosque, a major Wahabi center of worship and teaching in Karachi.

Soon after his return to the Taliban's Afghanistan, bin Laden was
implicated in several terrorist attacks on US citizens and installations
around the world, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in
New York. But he continued to enjoy the sanctuary of Taliban's
Afganistan, without suffering any personal reprisals. From the security of
his camps there, he also recommenced the training and funding of Muslim
militants from places as far as Chechniya, Xinjiang, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Philippines, Algeria and Morocco, this time for the global jehad of his
own definition to free the world Islamic community, the umma, from the
domination of infidels of all colors as well as the corrupt and
contaminated Muslim rulers. But oddly enough, the powerful US intelligence
agencies, the FBI and CIA maintained a studied incompetence in
investigating the alleged threats posed to the United States by bin Laden
and his Al-Qaeda network. (Michael Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind:
Afghanistan's Taliban Movement, Herndon, Verginia, Stylus Publications,
1998).

Then on August 7, 1998 US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were
bombed and a couple of weeks later President Clinton surprised the world
by lobbing over 70 of his arsenal's very expensive, state of the art cruse
missiles on Sudan and eastern Afghanistan in retaliation. The Sudan
strikes destroyed the country's only pharmaceutical factory depriving the
people of some badly needed life saving medicines. The Afghanistan strikes
launched from Pakistan's territorial waters of the Indian Ocean hit some
jehad training camps killing a number of Pakistani, Arab and Afghan
militants but the intended target, Osama bin Laden, walked away safely
acquiring international publicity as an invincible holy warrior of Islam
in some quarters. He was also forewarned by this incident to move his
operations to his secret and safer mountain fortifications. The missile
strikes did boost the popularity of Bill Clinton in the public opinion
polls at home, as the US media and men love the machismo of their
presidents. That these strikes could be branded as terrorist attacks, in
violation of international laws regarding the territorial sovereignty of
states did not bother in the least the US leaders and their apologists.

US Unilateralism and the Destruction of Afghanistan
It is quite plausible that the Clinton missile strikes were more
of a spectacular declaration of US intent than a credible attempt to kill
Osama bin Laden. They certainly carried a message for all those inclined
to defy US power that America possessed awesome technological military
power; that the US fully intended to use this deadly power against its
enemies no matter what the "collateral damage;" and that if necessary the
United States was prepared to act unilaterally on the international stage
without regard to international law or treaties.

It was perhaps the supreme confidence and arrogance implied in
this declaration of intent which was impeding the ability of US
administration to deal adequately with the ground realities of the twin
phenomena of Taliban misrule and bin Laden Jehad. The Taleban, pampered
and pandered to by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, continued with the
atrocities of their governance, while at the same time providing sanctuary
to bin Laden and his means of propagating Islamic militancy around the
world. The United States continued to play cat and mouse with Mullah
Omar's defacto "Emirate." The main reason for Washington's ambivalent
attitude towards the Taliban was the singular interest of its oil industry
in exploiting the vast oil and gas reserves of landlocked Central Asian
region through Afghanistan. As concluded by Rashid during the course of
his research, "the strategy over pipelines had become the driving force
behind Washington's interest in Taliban...." (Ahmed Rashid, op.cit., 163).
The sudden appearance of some Afghan expatriates with links to a major US
oil company in key positions of Afghanistan's post-Taliban dispensation
lends much credibility to Rashid's conclusion. The French newspaper Le
Mondereported on December 13, 2001 that Hamid Karzai the Chairman of the
new Interim Administration of Afghanistan constituted in Bonn happens to
be a past advisor to the US based oil company UNCOL. On December 31
President Bush announced the appointment of Afghan- born Zalmay Khalilzad
, a naturalized US citizen, to the post of his special envoy to
Afghanistan. Khalilzad who had publicly lobbied for a sympathetic policy
towards Taliban was also an advisor to UNCOL. (Patrick Martin, "Oil
Company Advisor Named US Representative to Afghanistan," World Socialist
Web Site, 3 January, 2001).

Even more problematical is the manner in which the US
administration and its highly resourceful intelligence agencies have dealt
with bin Laden's jehad and its terrorist potential. The exclusive focus on
the capture of Osama bin Laden, "dead or alive," as a solution to the
problem of terrorist attacks on US establishments diverted much needed
attention from the wider and more explosive phenomenon of Islamic
militancy initiated by the CIA itself as a Cold War weapon. A product of
this militancy were the Afghani Arabs, bin Laden included, the veterans of
Afghanistan's guerrilla wars who had returned to their Arab lands after
the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the fall of Najibullah's government.
On return to their native lands they constituted a critical mass
attracting around them a host of Islamic radical organizations and
individuals ready to undertake extremist actions to remedy the wrongs they
perceived their fellow Arabs were suffering at the hands of the United
States. Whether the American policy makers consider it justified or not,
these Afghani Arabs specially harbor a great reservoir of anger, despair
and frustration at the US military presence in Saudi Arabia, US support of
the brutal and illegal occupation of Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, the
use of US supplied helicopter gunships by Israel to strafe Palestinian
towns and villages, US condoned destruction of Beirut, US sponsored
sanctions leading to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children, US
support of corrupt and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and so
forth.

All this should not be news to the American authorities but they
obviously failed to recognize that such a reservoir of anger, despair and
frustration could produce the type of a suicide mission that resulted in
the horrific atrocity of 911. No matter what links the perpetrators of
this tragedy had with bin Laden, it was a colossal failure of the US
intelligence agencies not to be able to anticipate their actions and track
them down as they planed their September 11, 2001 operation on the ground,
while flying in and out of the United States for an extended period of
time.
Once the unbelievable did occur, the US reaction was swift and
stark. President Bush at once declared "war on terrorism" and warned that
those who did not side with him were with the terrorists. In other words
war was declared against all the people of the world who did not approve
the retaliatory action Bush intended to take. In reality, it turned out to
be a war against the luckless Afghans, although the suicide attackers of
911 were all Arabs, mainly from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. On October 7, the
US B52 bombers and cruise missiles began to unleash a new wave of death
and destruction on Afghanistan with the stated objective of ousting the
unmanageable Taliban from their control of Afghanistan and smoking out
Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda followers from their holes, to use the
cowboy jargon of George W. Bush..
It was unmistakably the awesome use of military power signaled in
the 1998 US missile attacks. As the CNN began to fascinate its world-wide
audience with apocalyptic booms and mushroom clouds of megaton cluster
bombs, for the people of Afghanistan there was no place to hide. It looked
like the entire population of the country was on the move. Men women and
children abandoning their mud huts, bombed villages and dead relatives
began to run helter- skelter with their meager belongings loaded on their
bent backs, donkeys and carts, some reaching the Pakistan borders only to
be beaten back by the border guards. The UN officials pleaded in vain
for bombing pauses to be able to deliver food and relief supplies to the
famine stricken people. More of what was standing in Kabul and other
cities was reduced to rubble and rubble was reduced to dust. But how many
innocent civilians were killed, maimed and starved to death? no one knows,
no one was even bothering to count because these were not the precious
lives, just the wretched poor of a third world race.

The tragic irony of all this is that the ouster of the
Taliban misrule and the disappearance of Osama bin Laden from the face of
the earth has not won the United States its war against terrorism. The
Bush administration's pretense of winning a military victory over
terrorism is totally unrealistic unless the root causes of terrorism, the
global injustices and inequalities, are addressed. But this is something
the Bush administration steadfastly refuses to do. Indeed, In the climate
of war hysteria created in the United States even a suggestion of root
causes of terrorism provokes accusations of siding with the "enemy."

Neither has the US military victory over the Taliban, with all its
human costs, brought Afghanistan any closer to peace. The Yankee jehad,
metamorphosed into war on terrorism, has not only reduced the country
into a physical wasteland, its remaining inhabitants have been driven
apart more than ever into bitter tribal and ethnic enemies. The warlords
who masqueraded as CIA-ISI sponsored mujahideen for more than two decades
are now going to be waging their wars of revenge and material gain for
many more years to come in a cycle of bloodshed.

For the US this will serve as the pretext, if one is needed, to prolong
it's military presence in Afghanistan, and administer the aid funds for
reconstruction of the country until UNCOL is done with laying its pipeline
and beyond. What the ghost of bin Laden jehad will be doing in all this is
anybody's guess.

_____

#4.

Sify news
Feb 01, 2002
Bhopal victims threaten to storm Dow Chemicals

Sanjay Sharma in Bhopal

Survivors of the world's worst industrial disaster- Bhopal gas=20
tragedy- have threatened to storm the Mumbai office of US-based Dow=20
Chemicals next month if their demand for clean drinking water and=20
other services were not met by then.

Satinath Sarangi, a member of the Bhopal Group of Information and=20
Action (BGIA), who claimed to have apprised the Dow Chemicals=20
management about the forthcoming agitation said, "We have urged them=20
to provide clean drinking water and set up a medical research=20
facility failing which the survivors of the tragedy would be forced=20
to take the protest to the company's Mumbai office next month".

On Dow Chemicals' refusal to recognise that it acquired the=20
liabilities of the erstwhile Union Carbide along with the assets, the=20
survivors' organisations assert, "Paying compensations and=20
rehabilitation is a liability that Union Carbide had. And Dow=20
Chemicals, by virtue of acquiring Union Carbide, cannot escape these=20
liabilities. It must clean up the mess that has been left by Union=20
Carbide."

A toxic gas leak in December 1984 from a pesticide plant the Union=20
Carbide, which has since been acquired by Dow Chemicals, killed=20
between 3,500 and 7,500 people and left more than half a million=20
seriously injured who are still strugging to cope with the aftermath=20
of the disaster.

Some 10,000 families living near the factory now have to depend on=20
contaminated drinking water, it is reported.

"By drinking the water, the victims are affected by ailments such as=20
tuberculosis and cancer, while newborn babies are turning mentally=20
retarded," said Satinath Sarangi.

The number of gas victims with mental disorders are still showing a=20
surge with each passing year.

The number of persons having psychiatric problems is expected to be=20
around 3,000 currently, while the doctors put the toll officially at=20
1,500.

The survivors' organisations are also calling for a quick disbursal=20
of compensation payments, many of which have been entangled in=20
legislation, and for lifetime pensions for those left permanently=20
disabled.

______

#5.

South Asians Against Nukes
A web based information diffusion list on the dangers of=20
Nuclearisation in South Asia
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