Federal Minister Riaz Hussain Pirzada (Credit: dawn.com)ISLAMABAD, Jan 25: Federal Minister for Inter-provincial Coordination (IPC) Riaz Hussain Pirzada has accused the Saudi government of creating instability across the Muslim world, including Pakistan, through distribution of money for promoting its ideology.
Addressing a two-day ‘Ideas Conclave’ organised by the “Jinnah Institute” think tank in Islamabad, the federal minister said ‘the time has come to stop the influx of Saudi money into Pakistan’.
He also blasted his own government for approving military courts in the presence of an ‘independent and vibrant judiciary’ and said that military courts reflect ‘weak and coward leadership’.
“Such cowardly leadership has no right to stay in power,” Pirzada added.
In her opening remarks, Chairperson of Jinnah Institute Sherry Rehman said that the two-day conference would deliberate upon new ideas needed for a progressive and better Pakistan.
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Shafqat Mehmood said the government has failed to address the problems being faced by the common man.
Awami National Party (ANP) leader Afrasiab Khan Khattak expressed regret over military courts and said their establishment ‘has eroded democracy’. He called upon democratic elements to play their role in reversing the 21st constitutional amendment.
Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Farooq Sattar supported military courts and said there was no other option to deal with terrorists.
The Federal Minister for Commerce Khurram Dastgir while addressing the conference, said that for an elected government to deliver, they need at least a modicum of security that their leadership will exist tomorrow.
He said that lawmakers have little incentive to read legislation. They are judged by their constituents on how much patronage they can deliver.
“We are answerable to the people. No general would stand up here and take your criticism,” said Dastgir.
He further added that there is no excuse for not holding local body elections.
INDIA, Jan 23: As he scrubs the road to India’s Taj Mahal on his knees for less than five dollars a day, Ramjeet beams with pride at the thought of US President Barack Obama admiring his handiwork.
“If everything is clean then he will be impressed,” said the aching man as he took a rest with another 10 kilometres (six miles) of road still to be scoured by him and his co-workers.
“It’s hard on the knees and back,” admitted the cleaner, who is being paid just 300 Indian rupees (around $4.80) a day for his part in a massive makeover.
Ramjeet, who does not have a last name, is one of 600 cleaners mobilised in the city of Agra ahead of Tuesday’s visit by the US president and First Lady Michelle Obama to the world’s most famous temple of love.
Apart from cleaning white lines on the roads, authorities have been rounding up stray dogs, clearing cows from the streets, and have ordered a lockdown around the complex.
“There are a lot of spit stains and such that need to be washed away. The streets need to be spick and span,” said India’s former chief achaeologist KK Mohammed, who has guided world leaders around the white marbled mausoleum.
“You cannot have a VVVIP of the world come to the Taj Mahal and let him see that,” Mohammed told AFP.
The spruce-up, which comes after Modi himself launched a national clean-up campaign last October, reflects a wider determination to ensure the Obamas get to see India at its finest.
In the capital Delhi, workers have been coating buildings and bollards with fresh paint ahead of the Obamas’ attendance at a military parade on Monday.
But the frenzy has been most intense in Agra, no stranger to hosting heads of state or royalty such as Britain’s late Princess Diana.
The Obamas’ visit will be covered by a massive press pack and organisers want to ensure a picture-perfect backdrop.
Pradeep Bhatnagar, chairman of the Taj Trapezium Zone, a buffer region around the monument, said ongoing beautification work has been halted for 10 days to allow dust to settle before the guests arrive.
Suresh Chand, who is in charge of the clean-up, said stray dogs — a common sight in any Indian city — have been rounded up, and more than two tonnes of rubbish pulled from the nearby polluted Yamuna river in just two days.
Another official said cows and buffaloes roaming the streets also “would have to go”.
“When a guest comes to our house then we have to do something better than the normal,” said Chand, Agra municipal council’s chief engineer.
Inside the Taj complex, a dozen barefoot women were busy trimming lawn edges with trowels.
“Obama, Obama,” one lady, who has worked at the Taj for more than two decades and earns 100 Indian rupees a day, said with a grin.
Some 3,000 police are on duty and will conduct boat patrols of the river, said Agra police senior superintendent Rajesh Modak.
Tourists will be turned away while the Obamas are touring the Taj, built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a tomb for his beloved empress who died during childbirth in 1631.
Locals teeming the alleys around the Taj — which took 20,000 labourers 16 years to build — said they have been ordered to stay indoors.
Not everyone is happy about the lockdown, with some saying it has made them feel like criminals.
“You can’t go outside, you can’t go onto the roof, you can’t go outside to the bathroom — it’s like a curfew,” grumbled Anil Kumar Sonkar, who runs a sweet shop a stone’s throw from the Taj.
“We should be open for business and Obama should be allowed to come and sample my world-famous petha,” said Sonkar of the sweet made from sugar and pumpkin.
A similar shutdown occurred during US president Bill Clinton’s visit in 2000, prompting him to ask officials if he was visiting a ghost town, according to locals.
“We were (then) rounded up and made to stand in a line and Mr Clinton came past in his car and shook our hands,” said Sunehri Lal, as he watched children play in a rubbish heap.
“If Obama did something like that, it would be overwhelming.”
That question comes up every time terrorists purporting to be deeply religious Muslims carry out armed attacks that kill innocent people. Where, commentators ask, are the moderate Muslim leaders and why aren’t they decrying the horrors perpetuated by fellow Muslims?
In fact, mainstream Muslims are speaking out, clearly and consistently. Leaders around the world, many of whom I know personally through my work at the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, have issued strong and unambiguous statements virtually every time a violent attack has occurred, condemning such acts as immoral and counter to the fundamental precepts of Islam.
Yet somehow their responses are not being heard, barely registering in the public consciousness.
Recently, there were two major news stories of Islamist extremist attacks on innocent civilians — the holding of 17 hostages in downtown Sydney, Australia by a pro-Islamic State fanatic and the slaughter of 145 people, nearly all of them schoolchildren, in the city of Peshawar by the Pakistani Taliban.
The outcry against these evil acts by responsible Muslim leaders was nearly instantaneous. While the hostage drama was still unfolding at the Lindt Chocolate Café in Sydney, Grand Mufti Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, the country’s highest Islamic office holder, said he felt devastated by the attack, commenting:
‘The Grand Mufti and the Australian National Imams Council condemn this criminal act unequivocally and reiterate that such actions are denounced in part and in whole in Islam.
Numerous Muslim scholars and community leaders have repeatedly denounced the Islamic State as barbaric and un-Islamic.
Meanwhile, the horrific mass murder of schoolchildren by the Pakistani Taliban was met with near universal revulsion across the Islamic world. Dr. Zaruful Islam Khan, President of the All India Muslim Majlise Mushawarat, termed the attack “a blot in the face of Islam,” adding, “We don’t have words to condemn such barbaric act and savagery … There is no justification of killing of innocent children. It has nothing to do with humanity, leave aside Islam.” The Islamic Society of North America repeatedly speaks out against extremism of all kinds and were among the first Muslim organizations to denounce Boko Haram.
This is nothing new. During The summer of 2014, the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza triggered an explosion of violent anti-Semitism across Europe; many acts were committed by Muslims. While the media highlighted the very real and deeply troubling upsurge of violence in countries like France, Germany and Belgium, they rarely reported on Muslim leaders who denounced the violence.
For example, after riots by a predominantly Muslim crowd in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles attacked a synagogue and Jewish businesses, the local Muslim Association sent a letter of solidarity and support to the vice president of the synagogue. National Muslim leaders took part in an interfaith ceremony that denounced the violence and called for reconciliation. French Council of the Muslim Faith head Dalil Boubakeur, who attended the ceremony, affirmed that the vast majority of French Muslims are not anti-Semitic. How could they be, he asked, when they themselves are battling racism?
Those responses should have been part of the story. But too often, Islam is portrayed negatively, and as a monolithic entity. People don’t realize that there is a diversity of opinion within Islam and that most Muslims condemn extremism and violence.
Yes, Islamist extremism is a genuine threat to world peace. But those who lump all Muslims together, and dismiss as meaningless the courageous stand of the moderate majority against extremism, aren’t helping to win that battle. Rather, they’re strengthening extremism by perpetuating a false narrative of perpetual conflict between Islam and the West. That is something which we must fight with all our might.
Pakistan has outlawed the Taliban-linked Haqqani network, officials said on Friday, days after US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government to fight groups that threaten Afghan, Indian and US interests.
American officials blame high-profile attacks in Afghanistan on the powerful Haqqani network, which mainly operates out of Pakistan’s border areas.
Senior Pakistani government officials told Reuters a formal announcement of the ban would be made “within weeks”.
“We have decided to ban the Haqqani network as a step in implementing the National Action Plan devised after the (Peshawar) school attack,” said a cabinet member, referring to a massacre of 134 children by Taliban gunmen last month.
“The military and the government are on the same page on how to tackle militancy. There is no more ‘good’ or ‘bad’ Taliban.
“Kerry specifically pressed for action against the Haqqanis, including banning the group,” the official added.
A second official, a minister who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the decision to outlaw the Haqqani group.
The United States accuses the Pakistani intelligence agency of supporting the Haqqani militants and using them as a proxy in Afghanistan to gain leverage there against the growing influence of its arch-rival India. Pakistan denies this allegation.
A formal announcement of the ban would show the government is keen to convince the United States it will no longer differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ militants.
But it remains to be seen if the ban will translate into significant action.
There has been intense debate within the government on whether to brand the group a terrorist organisation.
Some officials have argued the move would have little battlefield impact but risks setting back Afghan reconciliation efforts and unleashing more attacks against Pakistan.
In June last year the Pakistan army launched a long-expected military operation in the troubled North Waziristan region, said to be the base of the Haqqani group.
“Pakistan has done a lot already to disrupt the activities of the Haqqanis…within Pakistan,” said a Western diplomat.
“But they must also take follow up steps … to ensure the Haqqanis and other groups are not allowed to regroup or return to sanctuaries, their assets are frozen, their funding is blocked and their networks dismantled.”
It doesn’t take much to stir controversy over America’s relationship with Pakistan. The latest dust-up involves $532 million in economic assistance that the United States expects to provide later this year. Last week, Pakistani officials jumped the gun by suggesting the money is closer to being disbursed than it is; the news annoyed India, which doesn’t think the aid is merited.
That is a familiar complaint. Since 9/11, the United States has provided Pakistan with billions of dollars, mostly in military aid, to help fight extremists. There are many reasons to have doubts about the investment. Still, it is in America’s interest to maintain assistance — at a declining level — at least for the time being. But much depends on what the money will be used for. One condition for new aid should be that Pakistan do more for itself — by cutting back on spending for nuclear weapons and requiring its elites to pay taxes.
Doubts about the aid center on Pakistan’s army, which has long played a double game, accepting America’s money while enabling some militant groups, including members of the Afghan Taliban who have been battling American and Afghan troops in Afghanistan. The relationship hit bottom in 2011 when Osama bin Laden was found hiding in Pakistan and was killed by a Navy SEAL team. But it has since improved. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to visit Islamabad soon.
After militants massacred 148 students and teachers at an army-run school in Peshawar last month, Pakistan’s government promised that it would no longer distinguish between “bad” militant groups, which are seeking to bring down the Pakistani state, and “good” militant groups that have been supported and exploited by the army to attack India and wield influence in Afghanistan. But there is little evidence that the army has gone after the “good” groups in a serious way.
This double game is a big reason that the administration has been unable to fulfill Congress’s mandate to certify that Pakistan has met certain requirements, including preventing its territory from being used for terror attacks, as a condition of assistance. Instead, officials have had to rely on a national security waiver to keep aid flowing.
There is a case for doing that. After much foot-dragging, the Pakistani army is finally battling militants in the North Waziristan region, and American officials say there has been real progress.
Also, Pakistan has allowed American drone attacks against militants along the border to resume, and is cooperating with the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani. Pakistan’s help is essential as Mr. Ghani pursues peace talks with the Taliban. It also counts as progress that Pakistan completed a transition from one civilian government to another in 2013 and that the current government, while fragile, remains in place.
American officials say aid has allowed them to maintain some modest leverage with Pakistan’s leaders and to invest in projects that advance both countries’ interests, including energy, more than 600 miles of new roads and support for democratic governance. But it makes no sense to subsidize Pakistan’s policy failures, which include an obsession with nuclear weapons, paltry investments in education and a refusal to seriously combat extremism.
Pakistan still receives more assistance than most countries, a holdover from the days when Washington mistakenly thought it might be a real partner. But the levels are declining and should continue to do so. Cutting aid precipitously would be unwise, but a managed decrease is in line with more realistic expectations about the diminished potential for bilateral cooperation.
Paris policeman Ahmed Merabet (Credit: arabnews.com)
Ahmed Merabet, the police officer gunned down in the Charlie Hebdo attack, was killed in an act of barbarity by “false Muslims” his brother said in a moving tribute on Saturday, where he also appealed for unity and tolerance.
Speaking for a group of relatives gathered in Paris, Malek Merabet said the terrorists who ignored his brother’s plea for mercy as he lay wounded on the street may have shared his Algerian roots, but had nothing else in common.
“My brother was Muslim and he was killed by two terrorists, by two false Muslims,” he said. “Islam is a religion of peace and love. As far as my brother’s death is concerned it was a waste. He was very proud of the name Ahmed Merabet, proud to represent the police and of defending the values of the Republic – liberty, equality, fraternity.”
Malek reminded France that the country faced a battle against extremism, not against its Muslim citizens. “I address myself now to all the racists, Islamophobes and antisemites. One must not confuse extremists with Muslims. Mad people have neither colour or religion,” he said.
“I want to make another point: don’t tar everybody with the same brush, don’t burn mosques – or synagogues. You are attacking people. It won’t bring our dead back and it won’t appease the families.”
His brief speech was a moving tribute to the slain officer, loved as a son, brother, companion and uncle, but also a powerful call for harmony.
Ahmed Merabet’s death was captured in a graphic video, as he was wounded by one of the two attackers and then shot in cold blood. Photograph: Twitter
Merabet’s death was captured in a graphic video, as he was wounded by one of the two attackers and then shot in the head in cold blood. He is shot in the groin, then falls to the pavement groaning in pain and holding up an arm as though to protect himself.
The second gunman moves forward and asks the policeman: “Do you want to kill us?” Merabet replies: “No, it’s OK mate,” but the terrorist then shoots him in the head.
The images were widely shared online and one was published on the front page of a national newspaper.
Malek berated media outlets and websites that showed the graphic content, which he said was extremely painful for the family. “How dare you take this video and broadcast it? I heard his voice, I recognised him, I saw him being killed and I continue to hear him every day.”
Ahmed’s partner, Morgane Ahmad, who said she had watched footage of the shooting without realising it was him, also appealed for calm.
“What the family and I want is for everyone to be united, we want everyone to be able to demonstrate in peace, we want to show respect for all the victims and that the demonstration should be peaceful,” she said.
Ahmed had been a pillar of the family since his father died 20 years earlier, Malek said. The 42-year-old grew up in Livry-Gargan, in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris, and graduated from the local lycée in 1995. He ran a cleaning company before joining the police force eight years ago, and worked hard for a promotion.
“Through his determination, he had just got his judicial police officer [detective] diploma and was shortly due to leave fieldwork. His colleagues describe him as a man of action who was passionate about his job,” Malek said.
Merabet was called to the scene of the attack while on a bicycle patrol and arrived just as the killers were making their escape. They stopped to add him to the long list of victims.
“He was on foot, and came nose to nose with the terrorists. He pulled out his weapon. It was his job, it was his duty,” said Rocco Contento, a colleague who was a union representative at the central police station for Paris’s 11th arrondissement, where Merabet was based. He described him as a quiet and conscientious officer who was always smiling and widely liked.
As news spread that the gunned down policeman was a Muslim, the hashtag #JeSuisAhmed began spreading on Twitter in solidarity. One user, identified as @Aboujahjah, said: “I am not Charlie, I am Ahmed the dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so.”
Saudi Arabia, which has described itself as the “guardian of Islam,” released a statement on Wednesday through its official news agency condemning the attack on Charlie Hebdo as a “cowardly terrorist act” that is “incompatible with Islam.” But on Friday, the government pulled a blogger named Raif Badawi from his jail cell in Jeddah, brought him to a square in front of a mosque, and administered the first phase—fifty lashes—of a public flogging. As with Charlie Hebdo, Badawi’s offense involved the exercise of freedom of expression, often with a touch of sarcasm. He is scheduled to get another fifty lashes every Friday for the next nineteen weeks. He also faces ten years in prison and a fine that exceeds a quarter of a million dollars.
Badawi, who is thirty, ran a Web site called Saudi Liberal Network, which dared to discuss the country’s rigid Islamic restrictions on culture. One post mocked the prohibition against observing Valentine’s Day, which, like all non-Muslim holidays, is banned in Saudi Arabia. (Even foreigners aren’t allowed to buy trees for Christmas.) Religious police, known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, have reportedly patrolled flower shops and chocolate shops to warn against selling items that commemorate an infidel celebration. The Web site scoffed, “Congratulations to us for the Commission on the Promotion of Virtue for teaching us virtue and for its eagerness to insure that all members of the Saudi public are among the people of paradise.”
The site was also known to criticize conservative Muslim preachers. Saudi Arabia’s brand of Wahhabi Islam is extremely fundamentalist; Osama bin Laden was an adherent, as are many members of Al Qaeda and one of its franchises, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (A.Q.A.P.). The two shooters in Paris, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, are said to have invoked A.Q.A.P. during their rampage. United States officials say that one of them trained in Yemen, where A.Q.A.P. has been based since it was forced out of Saudi Arabia.
Badawi’s site, which the government ordered taken down, often pressed the Saudi monarchy to show the same degree of religious tolerance that is customary in the West. In one article, which has been translated and reposted elsewhere, Badawi wrote:
We have not asked ourselves how it is that America allows Islamic missionaries on its territory, and how it is that we reject under all circumstances the freedom to proselytize within our Kingdom’s land. We can no longer hide our heads like an ostrich and say that no one can see us or that no one cares. Whether we like it or not, we, being a part of humanity, have the same duties that others have as well as the same rights.
When Badawi, a father of three, was arrested, in 2012, the charges against him included undermining Saudi security. A judge initially recommended that he be charged with apostasy, which carries an automatic death sentence. A noted Saudi cleric, Sheikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak, issued a religious ruling that Badawi was an “unbeliever,” because his site declared that Muslims, Jews, Christians, and atheists were equal, according to Human Rights Watch.
In 2013, when Badawi’s sentence was handed down, Nadim Houry, of Human Rights Watch, said, “This incredibly harsh sentence for a peaceful blogger makes a mockery of Saudi Arabia’s claims that it supports reform and religious dialogue.” The punishment also included an additional three months in prison for uquq, or parental disobedience, because Badawi had argued publicly with his father over the years.
After the sentencing, the French foreign ministry issued a statement expressing concern about “freedom of opinion and expression” in Saudi Arabia. On Thursday, in a rare intervention in the Saudi judiciary system, the State Department called on the Kingdom to “cancel this brutal punishment” and review both the case and the “inhumane punishment.” Jen Psaki, speaking for the State Department, said, “The United States strongly opposes laws, including apostasy laws, that restrict the exercise of these freedoms, and urges all countries to uphold these rights in practice.”
Saudi Arabia has also sentenced Badawi’s lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair, to fifteen years in prison—with an additional fifteen-year ban on leaving the country—for insulting the judiciary, inciting public opinion, and undermining the regime and its officials. In October, three other lawyers were sentenced to between five and eight years for criticizing the Justice Ministry. Over the past four months, the government has also detained women for driving automobiles and f0r using social media to publicly challenge the driving ban.
“These prosecutions show just how sensitive the Saudi authorities have become to the ability of ordinary citizens to voice opinions online that the government considers controversial or taboo,” Sarah Leah Whitson, of Human Rights Watch, said. “Instead of pursuing their peaceful online critics, Saudi officials would be better employed in carrying out much-needed reforms.”
Placards say ‘I am Charlie’ (Credit: usa.com)LONDON, Jan 7 — The sophisticated, military-style strike Wednesday on a French newspaper known for satirizing Islam staggered a continent already seething with anti-immigrant sentiments in some quarters, feeding far-right nationalist parties like France’s National Front.
“This is a dangerous moment for European societies,” said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London. “With increasing radicalization among supporters of jihadist organizations and the white working class increasingly feeling disenfranchised and uncoupled from elites, things are coming to a head.”
Olivier Roy, a French scholar of Islam and radicalism, called the Paris assault — the most deadly terrorist attack on French soil since the Algerian war ended in the early 1960s — “a quantitative and therefore qualitative turning point,” noting the target and the number of victims. “This was a maximum-impact attack,” he said. “They did this to shock the public, and in that sense they succeeded.”
Anti-immigrant attitudes have been on the rise in recent years in Europe, propelled in part by a moribund economy and high unemployment, as well as increasing immigration and more porous borders. The growing resentments have lifted the fortunes of established parties like the U.K. Independence Party in Britain and the National Front, as well as lesser-known groups like Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization of the West, which assembled 18,000 marchers in Dresden, Germany, on Monday.
In Sweden, where there have been three recent attacks on mosques, the anti-immigrant, anti-Islamist Sweden Democrats Party has been getting about 15 percent support in recent public opinion polls.
Paris was traumatized by the attack, with widespread fears of another. “We feel less and less safe,” said Didier Cantat, 34, standing outside the police barriers at the scene. “If it happened today, it will happen again, maybe even worse.”
Mr. Cantat spoke for many when he said the attacks could fuel greater anti-immigrant sentiment. “We are told Islam is for God, for peace,” he said. “But when you see this other Islam, with the jihadists, I don’t see peace, I see hatred. So people can’t tell which is the real Islam.”
The newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, in its raucous, vulgar and sometimes commercially driven effort to offend every Islamic piety, including the figure of the Prophet Muhammad, became a symbol of an aggressive French secularism that saw its truest enemy in the rise of conservative Islam in France, which is estimated to have the largest Muslim population in Europe.
The mood among Parisians near the scene of the attack Wednesday on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo was apprehensive and angry. “There’s no respect for human life,” said Annette Gerhard.
On Wednesday, Islamic radicals struck back. “This secular atheism is an act of war in this context,” said Andrew Hussey, a Paris-based professor of postcolonial studies. Professor Hussey is the author of “The French Intifada,” which describes the tangled relations between France and its Muslims, still marked by colonialism and the Algerian war.
“Politically, the official left in France has been in denial of the conflict between France and the Arab world,” Professor Hussey said. “But the French in general sense it.”
The attack left some Muslims fearing a backlash. “Some people when they think terrorism, think Muslims,” said Arnaud N’Goma, 26, as he took a cigarette break outside the bank where he works.
Samir Elatrassi, 27, concurred, saying that “Islamophobia is going to increase more and more.”
“When some people see these kinds of terrorists, they conflate them with other Muslims,” he said. “And it’s the extreme right that’s going to benefit from this.”
In reaction to the deadly attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, President Obama said the United States would provide France with “every bit of assistance” in fighting terrorism.
The German interior minister, Thomas de Mazière, told reporters on Wednesday: “The situation is serious. There is reason for worry, and for precautions, but not for panic.”
With each terrorist attack, however, the acceptability of anti-immigrant policies seems to reach deeper into the mainstream. In Britain, for example, which also has a large Muslim population, the U.K. Independence Party has called for a British exit from the European Union and sharp controls on immigration, emphasizing what it sees as dangers to British values and identity. The mainstream parties have competed in promising more controls on immigration, too.
“Large parts of the European public are latently anti-Muslim, and increasing mobilization of these forces is now reaching into the center of society,” Mr. Neumann said. “If we see more of these incidents, and I think we will, we will see a further polarization of these European societies in the years to come.”
Those who will suffer the most from such a backlash, he said, are the Muslim populations of Europe, “the ordinary normal Muslims who are trying to live their lives in Europe.”
Nowhere in Europe are the tensions greater than in constitutionally secular France, with as many as six million Muslims, a painful colonial history in Algeria, Syria and North Africa, and a militarily bold foreign policy. That history has been aggravated by a period of governmental and economic weakness, when France seems incapable of serious structural, social and economic reform.
Several videos showing the gunmen outside the office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, have surfaced online. The footage includes scenes of graphic violence.
The mood of failure and paralysis is widespread in France. The Charlie Hebdo attack came on the publication day of a contentious new novel, “Submission,” by Michel Houellebecq, which describes the victory of Islam in France and the gradual collaboration of the society with its new rulers from within. Mr. Houellebecq, like the well-known caricaturists and editors who were killed at Charlie Hebdo, has been a symbol of French artistic liberty and license, and his publishers, Flammarion, were reported to be concerned that he and they could be another target.
But the atmosphere has been heightened by the rise of the National Front and its leader, Marine Le Pen, who runs ahead of the Socialist Party in the polls, campaigning on the threat Islam poses to French values and nationhood.
There was much recent attention to another best-selling book by a conservative social critic, Éric Zemmour, called “The French Suicide,” attacking the left and the state for being powerless to defend France against Americanization, globalization, immigration and, of course, Islam. Another new novel, by another well-known French writer, Jean Rolin, called “The Events,” envisions a broken France policed by a United Nations peacekeeping force after a civil war.
“This attack is double honey for the National Front,” said Camille Grand, director of the French Foundation for Strategic Research. “Le Pen says everywhere that Islam is a massive threat, and that France should not support attacks in Iraq and instead defend the homeland and not create threats by going abroad, so they can naturally take advantage of it.”
The military-style attack on Wednesday creates major security questions for France, said a senior French official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on such a delicate matter. “We knew this would happen,” he said. “But we didn’t know how efficient it would be.”
Speaking in both English and French, Secretary of State John Kerry expressed solidarity with France against an attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people.
After a series of three apparently lone-wolf attacks on crowds around Christmas in France, and other attacks in Ottawa and in Sydney, Australia, there was speculation that this attack might also be a response to the September call of a spokesman of the Islamic State, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, for supporters to strike at domestic targets of the countries attacking the Islamic State.
Mr. Grand noted that at least 2,000 young French citizens have traveled to fight with the militants in Iraq and Syria. “So how do we manage our Muslim population?” he asked. “This kind of attack is very difficult to detect or prevent,” he said, adding that the state must not overreact, which is what the radicals want.
Still, he said, even given that the number of radical Muslims is a tiny minority in France, “there are definitely more than 50 crazy guys,” so it will be important to know whether the attackers had been to Syria or “wanted to go and did this instead.”
François Heisbourg, a defense analyst and special adviser to the Foundation for Strategic Research, in Paris, said that the professional military acumen of the attack reminded him of the commandos who invaded Mumbai, India, in July 2011. “This is much closer to a military operation than anything we’ve experienced in France, and that may limit the political impact,” he said.
“Between this attack and whatever real societal problems we have in France, there is a great gap,” Mr. Heisbourg said. “These were not corner-shop guys from the suburbs.”
The mood in Paris, near the scene of the attack, was both apprehensive and angry. Ilhem Bonik, 38, said that she had lived in Paris for 14 years and had never been so afraid. “I am Arab, Tunisian, Muslim, and I support the families, the journalists and all the people involved,” she said. “This is against Islam.”
When journalists are killed for expressing their views, it is one step away from burning books, said Annette Gerhard, 60. “It’s like Kristallnacht,” Ms. Gerhard said, noting that her family had died in Nazi deportations. “There’s no respect for human life.”
Rachel Donadio and Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris, and Alison Smale from Berlin.
WASHINGTON: After 13 years, the United States is winding down its war in Afghanistan, plagued by doubts about what was accomplished at such a high cost.
Instead of a sense of triumph at the close of the longest conflict in America’s history, there is mostly regret and fatigue over a war that claimed the lives of more than 2,300 American troops and cost more than a trillion dollars.
US commanders insist the Afghan security forces will hold the line in a stalemate with the Taliban. But some officials fear a repeat of Iraq, in which an American-trained army virtually collapsed in the face of an extremist onslaught.
A large majority of Americans now say the war was not worth it, and only 23 per cent of US soldiers believe the mission has been a success, according to recent polls.
But when it began, the war enjoyed overwhelming support and victory seemed within reach.
Less than a month after Al Qaeda’s attacks of September 11, 2001, president George W. Bush captured the nation’s sense of righteous anger as he announced military action in Afghanistan in a televised address in October.
The goal was to “disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations,” Bush said, and to attack the Taliban regime that had hosted Al Qaeda and refused to hand over its leaders.
Toppling the Taliban
US objectives were met with stunning speed. Al Qaeda training camps were wiped out and Northern Alliance fighters — backed by US-led air strikes and a small number of American special forces — toppled the Taliban regime within a month.
For the United States, the war seemed all but over. But the Taliban eventually regrouped from safe havens, even as Washington’s attention shifted to a new war in Iraq.
The Taliban grew into a virulent insurgency that exploited resentment of a corrupt, ineffective government in Kabul.
The United States formed the backbone of an international force that found itself in a protracted fight with insurgents.
The US-led contingent steadily expanded — while the goals of the war became increasingly ambitious as well.
Washington and its allies embraced the lofty ideals of nation-building, vowing to fight corruption, foster economic development, and forge a “stable, democratic state” in an impoverished land mired in war for decades.
The results were often disappointing. International aid helped build roads and schools, but it also was blamed for fuelling rampant corruption, with some of the money ending up with the insurgents.
Attempts to broker peace talks with the Taliban in recent years came to nothing. Critics say Washington missed a chance at cutting a deal early in the war, when the insurgents were on the retreat.
Fighting the elusive Taliban, with their homemade bombs and Pakistani sanctuaries, proved frustrating for Western troops, who struggled to grasp the language and tribal rivalries of an alien culture.
Commanders appealed for more troops. And Washington kept sending forces “in the vain hope that something might somehow improve”, wrote retired general Daniel Bolger, author of “Why We Lost”.
Having reached a peak of more than 100,000 US forces, the American presence is down to about 11,000 troops, now that Nato’s combat mission is over.
‘Big test’
The balance sheet for the campaign is decidedly mixed.
The intervention deprived Al Qaeda of a sanctuary, ousted the Taliban from power, eased the repression of women and created an Afghan army that could make it difficult for the insurgents to return to their once dominant role, analysts said.
But Al Qaeda — even after its leader Osama bin Laden was killed by US commandos — has spawned cells elsewhere and inspired new extremists in Syria and Iraq, while women’s advances are fragile and could easily unravel.
The Taliban may no longer run ministries but they are far from defeated and could yet turn the tide against the Kabul government’s army, which has suffered unsustainably high casualties and desertions.
“The Taliban have nowhere near the power they did in 2001, but they are certainly not finished,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.
US officials hope a huge investment in the Afghan security forces will pay off, but already the insurgents have clawed back control in some areas in the south where American troops have pulled out.
The newly created security force, riddled with ethnic divisions, remains “a question mark”, Felbab-Brown said.
“Next year is a big test for them,” said Carter Malkasian, author of a book on the war who worked as a US diplomat for two years in southern Helmand province.
“If they lose ground, that’s an indication that this war is going to keep going,” he told AFP.
“If that happens, the Taliban are going to get bolder, because the Taliban are not going to see a reason to negotiate.”
On Tuesday morning, the Senate intelligence committee released an executive summary [1] of its five-year investigation into the CIA’s interrogation and detention program. (Read the executive summary here. [2])
Among the report’s most striking revelations is that CIA interrogators were often untrained and in some instances made up torturous techniques as they went along.
The CIA was “unprepared” to begin the enhanced interrogation program, the Senate report concluded. The agency sent untrained, inexperienced people into the field to interrogate Abu Zubaydah, the first important Al Qaeda suspect the US captured.
Within weeks of Zubaydah’s arrival, while he was still in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound, CIA headquarters was planning to throw him in all-white room with no natural lighting, blast rock music 24/7, strip him of his clothes, and keep him awake all day. They did. Extreme interrogations like these, identified as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” went on for more than three months before CIA officers received any sort of training in the new techniques from anyone.
As the overall detention and interrogation program proceeded, many untrained CIA personnel continued to do whatever they wanted, without authorization or supervision. At one facility in 2002, code-named COBALT, “untrained CIA officers…conducted frequent, unauthorized, and unsupervised interrogations of detainees using harsh physical interrogation techniques that were not—and never became—part of the CIA’s formal ‘enhanced’ interrogation program,” the report found. COBALT is reportedly [9] a prison in Afghanistan the agency nicknamed “the Salt Pit.” In one example identified by the report, an interrogator left a COBALT detainee chained naked to the concrete floor. The detainee later died of suspected hypothermia.
The CIA also put a junior official with absolutely no relevant experience in charge of this entire facility. Later, when the CIA’s inspector general investigated COBALT, the CIA said it knew little about what happened there. Several interrogators at the site became uncomfortable with their coworkers’ methods, not sure that they were safe or effective. According to John Helgeron, the CIA inspector general who conducted a formal review of the agency’s detention and interrogation program, CIA interrogators at COBALT had zero training guidelines before December 2002. The report claims, quoting Helgeron: “Interrogators, some with little or no training, were ‘left to their own devices in working with detainees.'”
In 2004, the CIA chief at another detention site, code-named BLACK, penned a long email about his disillusionment with the program, especially deficiencies in training:
And in one particularly heinous example, the CIA headquarters sent an untrained interrogator to question Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a man the CIA claimed was an Al Qaeda “terrorist operations planner” involved in several bombings. One senior CIA official had reservations about sending the untrained interrogator, noting that he heard the man was “too confident, had a temper, and had some security issues.” But the man got sent anyway.
While there, the interrogator allegedly forced Nashiri to stand with his hands over his head for two and a half days, blindfolded him, pushed a pistol up against his head, and revved up a cordless drill close to his body. When this produced no new information, the interrogator slapped the detainee repeatedly on the back of the head, told him he’d sexually assault his mother in front of him, blew cigar smoke in his face, and made him sit in such stressful positions that a medical officer was concerned the detainee’s shoulders would be dislocated.
The CIA base chief let this happen because he thought this interrogator was sent to “fix” the problem of an uncooperative detainee and had permission from headquarters to take such extreme steps. Both men were later reprimanded, according to the report.
The problem of untrained amateurs questioning and torturing of detainees wasn’t unique to the CIA. In 2008, Mother Jones explored [8] the world of untrained interrogators with testimony from Ben Allbright—a soldier who recalls using harsh interrogation techniques while serving as a military guard at a small Iraqi prison called Tiger in Western Iraq:
Ben was not a “bad apple,” and he didn’t make up these treatments. He was following standard operating procedure as ordered by military-intelligence officers. The MI guys didn’t make up the techniques either; they have a long international history as effective torture methods. Though generally referred to by circumlocutions such as “harsh techniques,” “softening up,” and “enhanced interrogation,” they have been medically shown to have the same effects as other forms of torture. Forced standing, for example, causes ankles to swell to twice their size within 24 hours, making walking excruciating and potentially causing kidney failure.
The Senate intelligence committee did not address allegations of torture or abuse by the US military. In fact, when members of the US military stopped by COBALT, they decided it was too risky for them to be involved at all.
In July 2002, CIA headquarters recommended that a group of interrogators, “none of whom had been trained in the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques,” try to “break” a detainee named Ridha al-Najjar, who was arrested in Pakistan and identified as a former bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.
When officers from the US military arrived for a debriefing, the military’s legal adviser took note of the extreme techniques being used. The interrogators left Najjar hanging handcuffed to an overhead bar for 22-hour periods. He was left in total darkness and cold temperatures, hooded and shackled. They forced him to wear a diaper and didn’t provide a bathroom. And on top of that, the US military officer claimed that the warden in charge “[had] little to no experience with interrogating or handling prisoners.”
At the end of the visit, the legal adviser concluded that the treatment of the prisoner and the concealment of the facility were too big a liability for the military to get involved. But even then, Najjar’s treatment became a “model” for future interrogations, according to the report.
