9/11 suspects ask to 'plead guilty'

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged planner of the September 11 attacks, and four other suspects have asked to plead guilty to the charges they face at a Guantanamo Bay tribunal.

"We all five have reached an agreement to request from the commission an immediate hearing session in order to announce our confessions," said a note said to be from the five read out by the judge, Army Colonel Steven Henley, at a hearing on Monday.

The note said the confessions were being made "without being under any kind of pressure, threat, intimidations or promise from any party," Henley said.

Mohammed, a Pakistani, and four others - Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali - were charged earlier this year with conspiring with al-Qaeda to kill civilians.

The judge also allowed defendants Walid bin Attash and Ali Abdul-Aziz Ali to withdraw all their motions and go to pleas, but he refused to allow the same for two other defendants saying he had concerns over their mental competence, AFP reported.

All five face the death penalty if convicted.

[More]


Comment:

I have been unable to determine why the mental competence of bin al-Shibh and Hawsawi is in question.

Karzai urges Afghan war timeline

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called for a timetable for ending the war against the Taleban in his country.

Mr Karzai made the call in a speech to a visiting UN Security Council team.

He said if Afghans had "no light at the end of the tunnel" they had the right to pursue other options, such as peace negotiations with the Taleban.

Mr Karzai also demanded an end to arrests of Afghans "in their homes, in the roads" by international forces, saying it was the job of Afghan police.

[snip]

Mr Karzai said there were two options.

First would be to set a timeline, saying that what had not been achieved in the past seven years would be achieved in the next "four years, five years or another seven years".

But he added: "If we cannot give a light at the end of the tunnel to the Afghan people, [do] the Afghan people have a right to ask for negotiation for peace? [Do] the Afghan people have a right to seek other avenues?"

Mr Karzai said he would continue to fight al-Qaeda and Taleban members "who are ideologically against the rest of the world".

However, he said Taleban members who were "part of the Afghan community" could be brought back to serve Afghanistan.

[More]


Comment:

That last part is the crux of the matter. Karzai has been (rightly) calling for negotiation with the reconcilables for quite some time now — indeed, he has actually engaged in some negotiation with the mediation of King Abdullah. His borrowing of the words "timeline" and "withdrawal" from Iraq is blatant electioneering, and nothing more.

The fact that he felt it would be beneficial to say it, however, is emblematic of a real problem, which is that we are running out of time. The good will of the Afghan people cannot last forever, and it is beginning to wear thin.

Zawahiri on Obama's election

Before anyone asks, the term that he used for "house negro" was zanujī al-beit, a word for word translation. The text under each of the pictures reads, from left to right, "Barack Hussein Obama", "Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri", and "Malcolm X Rahimatu'llah (mercy of God be upon him)".

This is a very worrying video. It's primary purpose seems to be to drive a wedge between Obama and the Black community, or at least elements thereof. Why on earth would al-Qaeda attempt something that obviously hopeless? Well, the only explanation that comes to my mind is that al-Qaeda has been making inroads into parts of the Black Muslim community, and that they're worried about losing them due to Obama's election. This would also explain why it took so long for them to respond; they probably wanted to very carefully gauge what their quarries responses would be— long term as well as the initial jubilation— so that they could act accordingly. It is, of course, impossible to tell which part of the Black Muslim community they've been working on— the focus on Malcolm X would initially suggest Nation of Islam, but when you think about it there aren't very many prominent Black Muslim civil rights activists they could have chosen.

The most interesting part of the video, in my opinion, was the subtitles, or, more precisely, the lack thereof during the first set of excerpts from Malcolm X's speeches. Obviously, American Muslims would not need the subtitles, but the Arabs, Pashtuns, etc. who would also be watching would, and they are provided during the rather lengthy explanation of the term "house negro" (which I suspect would be something of a nonce-word to the Arab audience). They were not, however, provided during the first set. Indeed, this is the only part of the video that lacks subtitles. This suggests that it was intended for the American Muslims, and explicitly not for the others. The reason for this becomes evident once the excerpts in question are considered. Of the three, only the last one has anything to do with the point Zawahiri was making about the global revolution. The other two are about the importance of those in America accepting help from their bretheren across the sea. Al-Qaeda seems to be trying to sell different jihads to different audiences— for the Black Muslims, it's about race, protecting the blacks from their white oppressors; for the others— especially the Arabs, who do not have a very amicable history with the blacks— it's about Islam.

Will this apparent attempt at damage control be successful? As I do not know who the Black Muslims in question are it is difficult to say, but I doubt it; indeed, I'm more inclined to think that it will backfire. Azzam al-Amriki, the presumed mastermind behind this video, has been away from his homeland for far too long; he is beginning to forget what it's like here. He does not seem to have fully understood the pure, unadulterated joy African Americans felt.

CIA head says bin Laden isolated, fighting to survive

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. intelligence agencies believe Osama bin Laden is isolated from al Qaeda and spending much of his energy merely surviving, the head of the CIA said on Thursday.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said hunting down bin Laden remains his agency's priority.

"He is putting a lot of energy into his own survival -- a lot of energy into his own security," Hayden said in a speech at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

"In fact, he appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organization he nominally heads," he said.

In recent weeks, there have been several U.S. missile strikes by unmanned drones around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The United States maintains that Taliban and al Qaeda forces operate with relative impunity in tribal areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan and use those areas as staging grounds to attack U.S. forces and their allies inside Afghanistan.

Hayden said al Qaeda has been hurt by a sustained fight with the United States and its allies, but remains a threat.

"Al Qaeda has suffered serious setbacks, but it remains a determined, adaptive enemy unlike any our nation has ever faced," Hayden said. "The war is far from over."

Regardless of whether bin Laden is actively helping lead the terrorist organization, the CIA believes capturing or killing him would be a huge blow to al Qaeda, according to Hayden.

"This is an organization that has never been through a change at the top," he said. "For 20 years, bin Laden has been the visionary, the inspiration or harmonizing force behind al Qaeda."
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Hayden said it remained to be seen whether bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, could maintain unity in the ranks without him.

"The truth is, we simply don't know what would happen if bin Laden is killed or captured. But I'm willing to bet that whatever happens, it would work in our favor," Hayden said.

Via CNN.


Comment:

I have already put down my thoughts on this matter here.

'US missiles' hit Pakistan village

A suspected US drone has launched a missile strike into northwest Pakistan, reportedly killing at least 10 people.

The attack on Friday targeted a town in North Waziristan, a tribal region on the Afghan border, security officials said.

"It happened close to the border," a Pakistani military officer said.

"We have reports of 10 dead but it will take time to get more information."

The North Waziristan region is a reputed stronghold of the Taliban and al-Qaeda linked fighters.

Other Pakistani officials told the AFP news agency that up to 14 fighters were killed when the missile strike destroyed an al-Qaeda training camp.

Four missiles

Four missiles are thought to have been fired at the camp, in Kum Sham village, some 35km south of Miranshah in North Waziristan.

Security sources said the village is dominated by Wazir tribes and is near the border with South Waziristan, another hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives.

"Between 11 to 14 militants, mainly foreigners, were killed in the strike," a senior military official said.

It was not immediately clear if there were any high-value targets among those killed, sources said.

An intelligence official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "The strike successfully destroyed the camp."

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, speaking from the Pakistani capital Islamabad, said: "At the moment we are being told by sources in the area that the attack took place in the Razmak village [of North Waziristan].

"We are told that up to 17 people were also wounded in this attack.

"Just a few days ago we were in this region. And we were able to observe that even at nighttime the drones have been flying over this area.

"It has also causing considerable anger in that region because the Pakistani military forces have been deployed in very large numbers along this border and every time there is a strike deep into Pakistan it creates more public resentment. Not just against the Americans but also the local forces which are not able to stop these attacks.

"In spite of opposition by the Pakistani government, the Americans have been buzzing the Pakistani tribal territories ... and they have been picking out targets with impunity."

Sovereignity violated

At least 18 such attacks by unmanned US aircraft have occured since September.

However, this is the first since General David Petraeus, the US Central Command chief, took charge of the war in Afghanistan.

[More]


Comment:

I had been hoping that Petraeus would put an immediate end to the strikes, but I guess not. At least no civilians were killed this time.

In map-related news, I have finally found Tehsil-level maps of FATA. They turned out to be hiding in the 1998 Pakistani Census, which UC Berkeley has a copy of. This means that I can at last begin work on the base map.

U.S., Pakistani troops exchange fire

WASHINGTON — U.S. and Pakistani ground forces exchanged fire across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border on Thursday, the latest in a string of incidents that has ratcheted up diplomatic tension between the two allies.

No casualties or injuries were reported after Pakistani forces shot at two U.S. helicopters from a Pakistani border post. U.S. and Pakistani officials clashed over whether the American helicopters had entered Pakistan.

The incident follows a U.S. campaign of attacks on militant targets inside Pakistan, including a September 3 U.S. commando raid on a village compound in South Waziristan. Islamabad has protested those strikes and warned it would defend itself.

"Just as we will not let Pakistan's territory be used by terrorists for attacks against our people and our neighbors, we cannot allow our territory and our sovereignty to be violated by our friends," Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in New York on Thursday.

But in Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman insisted the helicopters had not entered Pakistan. He described the incident as "troubling" and called on Islamabad for an explanation.

"The flight path of the helicopters at no point took them over Pakistan," he said. "The Pakistanis have to provide us with a better understanding of why this took place."

According to Pakistan's military, its soldiers fired warning shots at two U.S. helicopters after they intruded into Pakistani airspace. The U.S. military said the helicopters were protecting a patrol about one mile inside Afghanistan when Pakistani forces opened fire.

UNCERTAIN BORDER

"The (helicopters) did not return fire but the ground forces fired suppressive fire at that outpost. The Pakistani forces then returned that fire. The whole exchange lasted about five minutes," said an official with U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in Afghanistan.

The U.S. forces were operating under NATO command.

Thursday's confrontation followed a dispute earlier this week over reports of a downed U.S. drone in Pakistan. Pakistani officials said a small unmanned American aircraft crashed in Pakistan, but U.S. officials denied it, saying a drone went down in Afghanistan and was recovered.

The rugged border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan is seen by Washington as critical to its fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Bush administration considers Pakistan an ally in counterterrorism but U.S. officials say Islamabad has not done enough against militants there.

The uncertain border also complicates efforts, making it difficult for forces to determine when they are in Afghanistan or Pakistan, both U.S. and Pakistani officials concede.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after meeting Zardari on Thursday, said she believed he was strongly committed to fighting militants.

"We talked about how we might assist Pakistan in doing what it needs to do, but I think there is a very strong commitment. And after all, it is the same enemy," she said in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

Via Comcast.

Comment:

The US military had better get to the bottom of this, or it risks completely alienating the tribes.

US, Pakistan, Afghanistan to create joint military force

WASHINGTON: The US is discussing with Pakistan and Afghanistan to create a joint military force to combat insurgents in the two south Asian nations, a senior US official confirmed Tuesday.

"We’re obviously taking a good look at it. We’re going to analyse it and see where we go from here," State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said, adding that "We will probably have something to say once we’ve done a thorough analysis of it."

Last month, officials from the three countries began discussing the creation of a joint military force for anti-insurgency operations on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the Washington Post quoted Afghan Defence Minister Rahim Wardak as saying Tuesday.

"The terrorists have not recognised any boundaries. So to fight them, we have to eventually come up with some arrangement, together with our neighbour Pakistan," Wardak said.

"Pakistan’s government is considering the plan. They say they are looking at it," he added.

Via OINN.

Comment:

This is more like it. The recent unilateral attacks on Pakistan have been nothing short of catastrophic.

Pakistan troops 'repel US raid'

Pakistani troops have fired warning shots at two US helicopters forcing them back into Afghanistan, local Pakistani intelligence officials say.

The helicopters flew into the tribal North Waziristan region from Afghanistan's Khost province at around midnight, the reports say.

Tensions have risen after an increase in US attacks targeting militants.

The incident comes amid mounting security fears after a militant bomb attack on the Islamabad Marriott hotel.

Pakistan's army has said it will defend the country's sovereignty and reserves the right to retaliate to any border violations.

The government has said it will take targeted action against the militants, promising raids in some "hotspots" near the border with Afghanistan.

[snip]

The latest confrontation between US and Pakistani forces took place in North Waziristan's sparsely populated Ghulam Khan district, west of the main town in the region, Miranshah, local officials say.

They told the BBC that troops at border posts in the mountainous region fired at two US helicopters which crossed into Pakistani territory.

The helicopters returned to Afghanistan without retaliating.

A senior security official based in Islamabad told the AFP news agency that the helicopters had been repelled by both army troops and soldiers from the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC).

"The helicopters were heading towards our border. We were alert and when they were right on the boundary line we started aerial firing. They hovered for a few minutes and went back," the official said.

"About 30 minutes later they made another attempt. We retaliated again, firing in the air and not in their direction, from both the army position and the FC position, and they went back."

A Pakistani military spokesman, Maj Murad Khan, said he had no information "on border violation by the American helicopters".

The US military in Afghanistan also said it had no information on the incident.

The BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad says after increased American incursions this month, the army stressed that it reserved the right to retaliate.

Our correspondent says standard procedure would be to first fire warning shots.

[More]

Comment:

I'm not sure how much credence to give this. The sources are either local or anonymous, and the governments of both nations deny it— unlike the ground assault earlier this month. On the other hand, the politics of the situation are extremely complicated, and it may well be that the two governments are trying to minimize the incident in public while duking it out behind closed doors.

What it really comes down to, though, is the description of the event itself. We are fully aware that Pakistan has troops stationed along the border. I find it to be unlikely that our method of getting past these troops would be to bumble around in helicopters.

Report Says Pakistan Troops Fire on US Helos

Islamabad - Pakistani security forces and armed tribesmen on Monday foiled an attempt by US troops to enter Pakistani territory by firing shots at them, security officials said.

The attacks came as Pakistani forces killed up to 20 Taliban militants in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Two US military helicopters crossed into Pakistan and tried to land near Angor Adda area of South Waziristan tribal district along the Afghan border before dawn, a local security official said.

"But our security forces and the tribesmen who were alert opened fire at them and forced them to flee back to Afghanistan," added the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

There were conflicting official versions of the attempted US strike.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman denied the attack on U.S. forces had occurred, saying the Pakistani security official’s statement “didn’t appear to be accurate,” wire reports said.

A senior official in the country's foreign ministry said American ground troops, which were backed by US helicopter gunships, tried to cross over border, but were forced to flee by the tribesmen.

"Pakistani troops did not take part in the action," he said seeking anonymity.

No one was hurt in the incident, which an army spokesman denied took place.

"We completely deny the incident. There was no violation of our border from the Afghan side and therefore there was no question of any firing from our side," Major Murad Khan insisted.

However, he said firing was heard in the area but the army did not know where it had come from and where it was aimed.

A local resident, Sher Ali, said the tribesmen in the Angor Adda area had been on alert since September 3 when US special forces dropped by US helicopters killed more than 20 civilians.

"People had information since Sunday night that the US forces were gathering across the border so thousands of armed tribesmen were guarding their area," he added.

"Good for them (Americans) that they turned back. Otherwise, people were ready to give them the sort of welcome they deserve."

Tension has been brewing between Islamabad and Washington in recent weeks as US forces have increased missile attacks, mostly carried out by drones, at the suspected hideouts of militants who launch cross-border raids on international forces in Afghanistan.

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told the US Congress last Wednesday that Washington was planning military operations to eliminate militant sanctuaries in Pakistan.

In response, Pakistan's military chief General Ishfaq Parvez Kayani has vowed to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country "at all cost."

The US attacks have also fuelled anger among the Pakistani public which is now demanding the new government in Islamabad abandon cooperation with the US in the international fight against terrorism.

But there are no indications that the government, led by the widower of slain Benazir Bhutto, President Asif Ali Zardari, intends to do that. The government has vowed to resolve the issue through diplomacy.

On Tuesday Zardari will meet British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London to discuss the matter and next week he is expected to see US President George W Bush after he arrives in Washington on an official visit.

Meanwhile, in Bajaur tribal district up to 20 militants died as Pakistani jets, helicopters and artillery pounded positions in Kamangar, Loi Sum and Banda, according to a local security official.

Army spokesman Major Murad said several militant positions were attacked on Monday but the losses had yet to be ascertained.

Via Military.com.

Comment:

At this point, it is extremely difficult to determine what, if anything, happened. In addition to the versions reported above, it has also been claimed that "Pakistani paramilitary soldiers at a checkpoint opened fire into the air and the US troops decided not to continue forward."¹ Sher Ali's claim that the tribesmen had received reports that the US was preparing to launch an attack is almost certainly false, as there isn't anything to speak of on the other side of the border that they could have observed. The BBC version linked to above, which describes the troops as arriving in Chinook helicopters, is more likely to be correct, but even it makes very little sense, as it also says that the Chinooks were accompanied by helicopter gunships, which then just sat there during the actual incursion. The big problem with all of these versions, however, is that they claim that the troops ran away rather than fight. If you're engaging in a military incursion, you're probably ready for some combat.

Arrests over Afghan civilian deaths

Afghan police have arrested three men alleged to have provided "wrong information"
which led to the deaths of scores of civilians in a US air raid.

More than 90 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the village of Azizabad in western Herat's Shindand district on August 22, according to the Afghan government.

Police began an investigation into the incident on September 4 after villagers said US-led forces in Afghanistan had been fed false information about the presence of Taliban members in Azizabad following a tribal dispute, the interior ministry said.

A statement said: "After examining all the police reports and direct claims made by people in the area, three suspects who are said to be key people in giving false information regarding the bombardment of Azizabad, have been arrested in a police operation."

The three were on a list of people provided to Hamid Karzai, the president, by the villagers. Karzai visited relatives of the victims earlier this month and pledged to punish those responsible.

Karzai has already sacked two senior army commanders over the incident.

Tribal dispute

Locals told Al Jazeera that the air raid hit a memorial service at a compound belonging to Reza Khan, a tribal leader who had been in dispute with Nader Tawakal, another local leader.

"We were holding a prayer ceremony when the bombs started to fall ... it was heavy bombardment. The whole village was on fire and about 90 were killed," Abdul Rasheed, the brother of one of the dead, said.

Villagers have denied that the gathering was a meeting of the Taliban, which has been fighting Afghan and international forces since being forced from power in 2001. They said that Khan, who died in the raid, was a businessman with security contracts at a nearby US base.

"Nader gave the US special forces wrong information," Gullah Ahmed, one villager, said.

"But instead of surrounding the village they just started bombing."

Nader was not among those arrested on Friday.

The US military maintains that between 30 and 35 Taliban fighters were killed, but has agreed to reopen the investigation after a mobile phone video emerged showing bodies of people said to have been killed in the attack.

It says the original investigation found that a senior Taliban commander was among the dead in the air raid, which was called in after Afghan army US-led ground forces came under intense fire.

Civilian casualties

One resident of Azizabad said that US forces raided his house after the bombing and demanded to be shown the bodies of the dead Taliban fighters.

"I said there were no Taliban here," he told Al Jazeera. "I saw their facial expressions when they realised that civilians had been killed."

More than 500 civilians have been killed during military operations by foreign and Afghan forces so far this year, according to the Afghan government and some aid groups.

Daoud Sultanzoy, an Afghan MP, said that such incidents were destroying people's faith in the Afghan government and international forces in the country.

"The weak Afghan government and weak leadership is trying to take advantage of this and trying to deflect attention from their own problems that are the root cause of these kind of things," he told Al Jazeera.

"Lack of co-ordination of our intelligence, lack of co-ordination of our security forces and lack of co-ordination of our leadership have led to these kind of problems ... if we are not careful we will cross a threshold and alienate the civilian population."

Via Al Jazeera.

Comment:

This is turning out to be quite the fiasco. I had initially not covered it because the differences between the numbers provided by the military and those provided by the locals had led me to believe that it was primarily, though not necessarily entirely, an attempt by Taliban sympathizers at propagandizing. It turns out, though, that the military's figures were based on an embedded FOX news reporter, who turned out to be, almost unbelievably, Oliver North.

Al Jazeera has suggested elsewhere that Bush is apparently ratcheting up efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan in hopes of capturing Osama bin Laden before his term expires. I hope to God that this is not true. Everything that Bush has ever tried to do has failed. If he attempts to, as an American commander put it, "kill [his] way to victory," we might as well just start paying bin Laden a pension right now.

'US drone' fires on Pakistan target

A suspected US drone aircraft has left at least eight people dead in northern Pakistan, while dozens of suspected fighters have been killed in the Bajaur region, Pakistani officials say.

The drone aircraft on Friday fired on a house near Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region, leaving another 10 people injured.

North Waziristan, seen by the US as a safehaven for supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, is part of a belt of tribally governed territory where Pakistan's government has little control.

Residents said two missiles were fired at a former government school where suspected fighters and their families were living in Tul Khail village, 5km east of Miran Shah.

Those killed were members of Al Badar, the armed Afghan group of veteran leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, according to an unnamed Pakistani official.

Heykmatyar is an Afghan leader who fought against Soviet occupation in the 1980s and against the Taliban in the 1990s. He reportedly allied with the deposed group after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, demanding the withdrawal of foreign forces.

US tensions

Friday's missile attack brings to five the number of such raids in the past two weeks.

Thirty-eight people, including women and children, have been killed in the past week's missile attacks.

Both the US military and the CIA operate drone aircraft armed with missiles of the type believed to have killed two senior al-Qaeda commanders in Pakistani territory earlier this year. Pakistan says it does not have missile-equipped drones.

Tensions between the US and Pakistan have further risen after a raid last week in which helicopter-borne US commandos landed in Pakistan's South Waziristan - the first known incursion into Pakistan by US troops since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan's military chief, on Wednesday denounced the apparent US raids, saying unilateral actions risked undermining their co-operation.

He warned that "the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country will be defended at all cost. No external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan."

A day later, The New York Times reported that George Bush, the US president, had secretly approved orders in July to allow US special forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government.

Bajaur fighting

Concurrent with the attack in North Waziristan, Major Murad Khan, a Pakistani military spokesman, announced 32 fighters had been killed, as well as two soldiers, over the last day during violence in the Bajur region.

Pakistani officials say hundreds of fighters have been killed there during a week-long offensive, which has forced 500,000 people to flee their homes. Officials acknowledge that civilian have been killed and villages badly damaged in the fighting.

Rehman Malik, the Pakistani interior minister, had previously announced a government ceasefire with fighters in Bajaur and other tribal areas in honour of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

First off, a note on the article itself. As is mentioned, only militants were killed in the raid. Nevertheless, Al Jazeera decided to include a picture of a wounded child, the explanation given being that "Earlier air raids, which have killed and wounded civilians, have angered Pakistanis." This is blatantly biased, the sort of thing I'd expect from FOX, and if it continues I may have to reconsider using Al Jazeera as my primary news source.

As for the raid, ordinarily I would not have objected to it, because if Pakistan wants to claim that it has sovereignty over Waziristan, then it needs to actually exercise that sovereignty. However, it has now begun to do just that. With Pakistan finally taking the threat from TTP seriously, there is no need for us to intervene directly. Doing so, especially against their expressly declared wishes, is foolish.

Apologies on not posting more often. I have my hands full with my Persian lit. class.

Ground assault by US-led forces: Women, children among 20 killed in Waziristan

WANA, Sept 3: At least 20 people, most of them women and children, were killed in an assault by US-led coalition forces on a village near the Afghan border on Wednesday.

According to people in Musa Neka Ziarat, three US helicopters landed in the plains at around 4am, troops disembarked from them and attacked a house, killing 10 people.

They said that two children, three women and five men were killed in the attack on the house of one Payo Jan Torjikhel. A woman survived the indiscriminate shooting, they said.

The troops then opened fire on villagers who had come out of their homes, killing another 10 people. The victims, including three children and two women, belonged to the families of Faiz Mohammad and Nazar Jan.

Payo Jan and Nazar Jan were also killed.

Local people said Payo Jan and the two other families had no association with militants.

“The Americans came in helicopters, landed, walked up to the houses, started shooting and then flew back towards Afghanistan,” a villager told Dawn.

“It is an outrage,” NWFP Governor Owais Ahmad Ghani said in a statement. “This is a direct assault on the sovereignty of Pakistan and the people expect that the armed forces of Pakistan will rise to defend the sovereignty of the country and give a befitting reply.”

The attack comes amid an increase in the number of missile and predator attacks on suspected Al Qaeda hideouts in Waziristan in recent days.

It was the first known ground assault of its kind.

A security official said the Americans no longer shared information with Pakistan before launching missile or predator attacks in the tribal region. “They are not sharing any information with us. These are all totally unilateral actions.”

Our Reporter in Islamabad adds: Inter-Services Public Relations chief Maj-Gen Athar Abbas said, “In the wee hours of the morning on Sept 3, Isaf (International Security Assistance Force) troops in two helicopters landed at a village near Angoor Adda, South Waziristan Agency, and as per reports received so far, killed seven innocent civilians.”The army spokesman condemned the “completely unprovoked act of killing” and regretted the loss of precious lives.

He blamed the coalition forces for the violent act and said that such acts of aggression would not serve the common cause of fighting terrorism and militancy in the area.

He said the Pakistan Army had lodged a strong protest with the Office of the Defence Representative in Pakistan and said that “we reserve the right of self-defence and retaliation to protect our citizens and soldiers against aggression”.

There were unconfirmed reports that the Isaf troops had also captured some people and taken them to Afghanistan.

Via Dawn.


Comment:

Hmm. I smell something here. According to Al Jazeera, "Both the US-led forces operating in Afghanistan and the separate Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) have said they have no knowledge of the incident."¹ Ordinarily I wouldn't attach too much importance to this, but the only sources for this raid are South Waziri locals, who are not exactly impartial, and the account of the raid simply doesn't make sense. Why on earth would they have gotten out of their helicopters? Why would they have even left the country? We have Predators for that sort of thing. South Waziristan is an extremely dangerous place, and I can't imagine us needlessly risking our troops lives like that.

Afghan family killed in house raid

A family of four, including two children, have been killed in an overnight raid by international troops, a police official and witnesses said.

Residents in Hud Kheil in the east of the capital said one of the two children was eight months old and grenades killed the family members during a joint Afghan-US special forces operation.

US special forces said they were not involved. Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said they were investigating media reports.

The deaths are likely to further strain relations between Afghanistan and the US and other foreign forces in the country, who have been accused of using excessive force in civilian areas.

Hundreds of people blocked a road in Kabul, protesting against the raid.

"It was past one o'clock when the troops came and surrounded our houses," said Sulaiman, one resident.

"They threw hand grenades in one house and killed three family members," he said.

Some locals told Al Jazeera there was an exchange of fire, and that the family may have been caught in the crossfire.

Damaged building

"Are these two children Al Qaeda?" an angry resident asked, as the bodies were taken for burial.

"We don't expect anything from the government because we don't have a government," Sulaiman said.

Several US and Nato military bases are located in the area. Three people were taken away by the troops, residents said.

The operation came a day after Nato said it received information from a "reliable source" that pro-Taliban fighters may be planning to falsely claim that international forces killed up to 70 civilians in southern Afghanistan.

The operation also comes Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, sacked an Afghan army general and a major after more than 100 civilians were reported to have been killed in an attack by US-led coalition forces.

Eyewitnesses and local people said more than 100 civilians, many of them women and children, were killed in the attack.

US officials, who said only three civilians were killed along with 25 Taliban fighters, have agreed to take part in a joint investigation with Afghanistan into the attacks.

Ground and air

Afghanistan's cabinet demanded last week a change in the rules governing international troops in the country, after the claims that more than 100 Afghans died in air attacks.

Despite Monday's deaths being caused by a ground operation, Daoud Sultanzoy, an Afghan MP, told Al Jazeera last week that it was air raids by Nato and US-led troops in villages and civilian areas that were causing the most damage.

The cabinet said that a review should focus on the "authorities and responsibilities" of troops and demand an end to air attacks in civilian areas, illegal detentions and unilateral houe searches.

"The authorities and responsibilities of the international forces in Afghanistan must be regulated through a "status of force agreement" consistent with both international and Afghan laws.

"Air strikes on civilian targets, unco-ordinated house searches and illegal detention of Afghan civilians must be stopped," a government statement said.

"With either good or bad intelligence, the most important lesson to learn from this is that we need to rely more on ground troops.

"Since Nato and the coalition don't have these troops, the reliance on air support is greater.

"If [Nato and the US] can increase their ground operations it would probably alleviate some of these problems."

The United Nations says that 255 of the almost 700 civilian deaths in fighting in Afghanistan this year have been caused by Afghan and international troops.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

Fun fact: As of July, there were 162,000 US troops in Iraq.¹

American terror

Most of you probably already know that Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney was recently murdered. What you do not know is that there appears to be something darker going on.

Gwatney's killer, Tim Johnson, was a follower of Neo-Nazi talk radio host Hal Turner. Turner had recently called for the assassination of county and state chairmen, and is taking credit for having inspired the killing.

Turner has recently cancelled his radio show, and his website goes offline tomorrow. On a temporary site, he has this to say:

"I decided in early July 2008 that I would end the show because the time for talking is over. The time for action is here.

"Instead of telegraphing my thoughts in public, I now move to the shadows with my bretheren to take sudden, dramatic, irreversible, direct action.

"Let us be like surgeons; carving out the cultural, religious, social and political cancer which is killing our nation.

"Let us enjoy the hunt as we make trophies of 'men' who are little more than beasts infesting urban Serengetis that used to be our cities.

"It is time once again for Whites to rule the night."

However, it has been alleged that Hal Turner is in fact an FBI informant, and this may well just be him being retired in an attempt at damage control now that his cover has been, if not blown, then at least compromised.

However, Bill Gwatney is still dead.

Hmm...

δβ’t x’ šyrt ’yδyt prδβnw kwn'nd w’nw ’ty wyšnt γnd’kryty prkyš'nd.

'Split verdict' on bin Laden driver

A US military jury at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp has reached a split verdict in the trial of Osama bin Laden's former driver, clearing him of some charges but convicting him of others.

Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen, was cleared on Wednesday of conspiracy to commit war crimes but was found guilty of providing material support to terrorism.

He had been held at the detention centre for more than six years and faced 10 specific charges.

Hamdan had denied the allegations against him, saying he worked for bin Laden only as a driver and had no knowledge of al-Qaeda attacks.

The trial is first US war crimes tribunal since the second world war.

Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman, who is at the trial in Guantanamo Bay, said that the jury, comprised of US military officers, has since retired and is to resume deliberations on Hamdan's sentence on Thursday.

The jury had deliberated for about eight hours over three days following the two-week trial.

Hamdan, wearing a white turban and long white robe, stood tensely in the courtroom beside his lawyers as the verdict was announced, listening via headphones to the tribunal's English-Arabic interpreter.

He later wept into his hands when the guilty verdict was announced.

War crimes charge

The Bush administration has faced heated criticism over the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and the special tribunals, which operate under different rules to other military courts or civilian ones.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said after the verdict that the Bush administration was pleased that Hamdan had received a "fair trial".

However our correspondent says the prosecution is likely to be disappointed by the verdict.

Hamdan was captured at a roadblock in southern Afghanistan in November 2001, allegedly with two surface-to-air missiles in his car but was cleared on conspiracy to commit war crimes.

"The jury had apparently heeded the defence's contention that it cannot be a war crime to intend to use weapons against soldiers on the field of battle," Ackerman said.

[More]


Comment:

Now the question is, will the time he's spent in Guantánamo count towards his sentence?

Believe Me, It’s Torture

What more can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience. The author undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist—not inflict—it.

by Christopher Hitchens August 2008

Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding” was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.

[snip]

Which returns us to my starting point, about the distinction between training for something and training to resist it. One used to be told—and surely with truth—that the lethal fanatics of al-Qaeda were schooled to lie, and instructed to claim that they had been tortured and maltreated whether they had been tortured and maltreated or not. Did we notice what a frontier we had crossed when we admitted and even proclaimed that their stories might in fact be true? I had only a very slight encounter on that frontier, but I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath.

[More]


Comment:

Were it any president other than Bush, this would result in instantaneous impeachment.

Talks on US-Iraq pact at 'dead end'

Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, says talks with the US on a new long-term security pact have reached a "dead end". The US and Iraq are negotiating a new agreement to provide a legal basis for US troops to stay in Iraq after December 31, when their UN mandate expires.

They are also negotiating a long-term strategic framework agreement on political, diplomatic, economic, security and cultural ties.

"We have reached a dead end, because when we started the talks, we found that the US demands hugely infringe on the sovereignty of Iraq, and this we can never accept," al-Maliki said during a visit to Jordan on Friday.

[More]


Comment:

Thank God. If Bush had successfully been able to push this through, it would have been a catastrophe. Not only would it have tied up the troops that are so badly needed in Afghanistan, but it would have eliminated any credibility that the Iraqi government may have had, almost certainly throwing the country into turmoil as the current fragile political coalition disintegrates. This would have made it immensely more difficult for President Obama to redeploy.

Speaking of Afghanistan, I am making progress on figuring out which districts are currently held by the Taliban. Most of the country is actually much quieter than I had realized, with almost all of the fighting being confined to a relatively small area.

US court deals blow to Bush

The US Supreme Court has said foreigners held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison have the right under the US constitution to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. The court ruled on Thursday that detainees in the US jail in southern Cuba "have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus".

The ruling, passed by a vote of five to four, is a setback to the administration of George Bush, the US president.

"It's a very significant milestone in this very long running battle," Rob Reynolds, Al Jazeera's senior Washington correspondent, said.

"Really its a victory for the proper system of justice. The reason that Guantanamo was chosen was because it was not on American soil ... the White House believed that because they would be on foreign soil they would be beyond the reach of American justice," he said. "It's been a very long process but through a series of lawsuits ... the justices have chipped away at the unusual means under which these individuals are being detained."

Constitutional rights

The court ruled that even if the base was officially on Cuban territory, it was in fact operating as if it were on American soil and therefore detainees had the same constitutional rights as all Americans. The ruling is the third on Guantanamo that has gone against the Bush administration. Detainees and their legal teams could now demand that the government reveal the evidence against them to justify their continued detention. The government has refused to do this arguing it would be against the interests of national security. Detainees have long protested that they had been mistreated, and rights groups have questioned the legality of the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

Hallelujah. Justice returns to America.

9/11 Trial Begins

So. This is Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the man who bears the single greatest responsibility for the horrors of September 11.

I'll have a more detailed analysis of the trial later on, when I'm more awake.

9/11 'mastermind' to face tribunal

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the US in 2001, is set to face a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on nearly 3,000 counts of murder. Mohammed and four other detainees will be arraigned for the first time on Thursday inside a high-security courthouse at the US naval base.

The United States claims Mohammed confessed to masterminding the September 11 attacks but his lawyers say the confession was extracted by torture. Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003, will be given the chance to address the tribunal, officials said.

Death penalty

All five suspects could face the death penalty if convicted. They were transferred to Guantanamo in Cuba in September 2006 after spending about three years in secret CIA prisons. Thursday's arraignment poses the highest-profile test yet of a US military tribunal system that faces an uncertain future. The US supreme court struck down an earlier system as unconstitutional in 2006, and is to rule this month on the rights of Guantanamo prisoners, potentially delaying or halting the proceedings. With less than eight months remaining in office for George Bush, the US president, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain both say they want to close the military's offshore detention centre.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

Nobody tortured him into starring as himself in an Al Jazeera documentary on the attacks.