Stop FBI Raids and Harassment, Protest Actions on Sept 27-28

Emergency Actions to Support Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists

A demonstration has been called at 
The Minneapolis FBI Office 
(111 Washington Ave. S.).

Monday, September 27th at 4:30pm

We denounce the Federal Bureau of Investigation harassment of anti-war and solidarity activists.  The FBI raided seven houses and an office in Chicago and Minneapolis on Friday, September 24, 2010.  The FBI handed subpoenas to testify before a federal grand jury to eleven activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. The FBI also attempted to intimidate activists in California and North Carolina.

This suppression of civil rights is aimed at those who dedicate their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war.   The FBI has indicated that the grand jury is investigating the activists for possible material support of terrorism charges.

The activists involved have done nothing wrong and are refusing to be pulled into conversations with the FBI about their political views or organizing against war and occupation.  The activists are involved with many groups, including:  the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. These activists came together with many others to organize the 2008 anti-war marches on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. 

We ask people of conscience to join us in fighting this political repression, as we continue working to build the movements against US war and occupation.

Take Action
Call the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at 202-353-1555 or write an email to:  AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.
Plan and Support national days of protest at FBI offices or Federal Buildings, September 27 and 28th.



Demand
- Stop the repression against anti-war and international solidarity activists.
- Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc.
- End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists.

In Solidarity, the Anti-War Committee – www.antiwarcommittee.org

The following is a list of the 19 planned protests that we have heard of so far, and the list is growing. Please participate in the one nearest you, or if there is not one in your city, organize one and let us know at iacenter@iacenter.org so we can publicize it and add it to the list:
Please be in touch with the Minnesota Anti-War Committee - www.antiwarcommittee.org

Monday 9/27

Minneapolis, MN - 4:30, FBI Office Monday, 111 Washington Ave. S.

Chicago, IL - 4:30 Fedeeral Building, Federal Plaza.

Kalamazoo, MI - 4:30 Federal Building, 410 W Michigan Ave

Salt Lake City, Utah - 9 AM at Federal Building

Durham, NC - 12 noon Federal Building, 323 E Chapel Hill St

Buffalo, NY- 4:30 pm at FBI Building - Corner of So. Elmwood Ave. & Niagara St.

Gainesville, FL - Monday, 4:30 PM at FBI Building
 

Tuesday 9/28

NYC, NY -  4:30 to 6pm Federal Building, 26 Federal Plaza,

Newark, NJ - 5 to 6pm Federal Building Broad Street

Philadelphia, PA - 4:30pm Federal Building, 6th & Market,

Washington DC -  4:30 – 5:30 FBI Building, 935 Pennsylvania Ave NW.

Boston, MA -  5 pm, JFK Federal Building

Detroit, MI -  4:30 pm McNamara Federal Building, Michigan Ave. at Cass

Raleigh, NC -  9 am. Federal Building, 310 New Bern Ave

Asheville, NC -  5 pm Federal Building,

Atlanta, GA - Noon, FBI Building

Los Angeles, CA - 5 pm, Downtown Federal Building, 300 N Los Angeles St

Tucson, AZ - 5 pm Federal Building

Wednesday 9/29

Albany, NY -  5 to 6 pm Federal Building

...

Karzai Walking on Thin Ice

Karzai unpopular with policymakers

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO Secretary General, wrote in Washington Post on January 17 that Afghanistan’s current problems were because of “too little good governance (and not) too much Taliban.” Nearly eight years in coalition with Karzai, NATO’s Secretary General’s observation is no less than Karzai’s searing public and political indictment. He added that Afghans needed a government that deserved their loyalty and trust. Karzai, his lieutenants have failed to command both the loyalty and trust of their people. Some still refer to him as “Mayor of Kabul.”

Seven years almost wasted

Seven years into a relentless military campaign, both the US forces and the NATO commanders do not see much credibility that Karzai and his government could have commanded. Both Scheffer and US President Obama’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrook have joined their whistle blowing on Karzai. The West is now waking up to the reality of continued poor and corrupt governance that has taken the frustration and violence of the Afghan people to a new level. This political disenchantment pushed more Afghans into militancy and that called for the American troops surge. Many observers of the region believe that this would not help much because the more military will not resolve the problems of governance and political fragmentation. Troops surge would rather increase the sentiment against both the Karzai government and the foreign troops.

Voices for alternates

Building further on his vision about the region, Ambassador Holbrook emphasized upon the need that the Americans be told the truth that the war “will last a long time (and) success will require new policies with regards to…tribal areas in Pakistan, drug lord of Afghanistan and the incompetence of the Afghan government.”[1] Karzai has remained Washington’s best bet in Afghanistan since the fall of Taliban in early 2002 but he has not taken Afghanistan anywhere. Another important voice in Washington, Fareed Zakaria, expressed his disappointment with Karzai’s performance that has brought the Taliban back to fill in the vacuum. He noted that Taliban were equally or more unpopular in various areas of Afghanistan but they promised justice and a very rough justice rather than the chaos of the Karzai reign. Zakaria also noted that the upcoming presidential and local elections in Afghanistan must be free and fair and “should take place without disruption (with) viable alternative candidates” free to campaign.[2]

Why displeasure now?

There could be two reasons to the recent displeasure and fatigue with Karzai government. 1. His supporters in the West now believe that he has been incompetent to deliver. 2. Displeasure could be a pressure tactic to pressing him to do more. In both situations, Karzai and his government would not be able to swing into a quick action and claim some success on the most important front in the world in war on terror.

Alternatives to Karzai

The most potent contender against Karzai is the United Front, former Northern Alliance with strong components of Shoorai Nezar, led by Gen. Dostum, Prof. Rabbani’s Jamiate Islami and Karim Khalili’s Hizbe Wahdat. Many Afghan observers believe that the United Front will support a joint candidate and to ensure the larger Pashtoon support for success, Mustafa Zahir, grandson of former King Zahir Shah, is at the moment a likely choice. He is thought little known in Afghanistan and a lot of hard work would be expected of him. Among other alternatives, Ashraf Ghani and Ali Ahmed Jalali are other potential candidates and also have a good working relationship with both the American and the NATO in Afghanistan. Another dark horse could be Gul Agha Sherazi, governor Nangarhar who is believed to be a go-getter and a risk-taker. His performance in his province has win him many favors but unlike Ashraf and Ali Ahmed, he does not have much of a working history and relationship with the foreign presence.

Karzai’s best chance

According to CBS News, many Pentagon officials have recommended a policy shift in the region by targeting Taliban and Al-qaeda safe havens in Paksitan’s tribal areas whom they see the main cause of Afghan instability. Any such change will require continuity in Kabul as Karzai has a shared history with Washington. Interesting is the fact that many senior defense officials in Obama’s administration, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, propose on the contrary because a continuous support for Karzai directly means the continuation of the long and bloody battle in Afghanistan, a country and nation having history of unflinching resistance against foreign occupation. Ambassador Holbrook faces a gigantic challenge of putting things right in both the policy formulation and implementation. Much of the new policy’s success would depend on the cooperation between the defense and the intelligence communities of America. The conflicting visions in Washington at this moment are among the strong saviors of Karzai but would it continue? It seemingly looks harder by the day.

[1] Washington Post. Jan. 17. [2] Newsweek. Jan. 31.

Comments/remarks: pager@crss.pk

CRSS is not part of any political grouping or party and firmly adheres to academic as well as intellectual neutrality.

Pakistan Isn’t a Sideshow…

Pakistan Isn’t a Sideshow…
It’s the Main Event

A Polish engineer is beheaded in Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban threaten attacks on Islamabad. In a desperate effort to turn around the struggle against Islamicist extremists, the Pakistani government considers permitting the imposition of sharia law in a key battleground.

Maybe it’s time to admit we don’t have an Afghanistan problem. We have a Pakistan problem, and Afghanistan is simply aggravating it.

Hamid Mir writes in Pakistan’s The News that the Taliban is threatening a major escalation of its violent campaign against the counterinsurgency operation that the Pakistani Army and Frontier Corps are mounting in the ethnic Pashtun North West Frontier Province and affiliated Federated and Tribal Areas at America’s behest:

ISLAMABAD: The local Taliban leadership has decided to send its fighters to Islamabad as a reaction to the operations in Darra Adamkhel and Swat Valley and in this regard chalkings on the walls of Islamabad are already appearing, forcing the Islamabad administration to whitewash these messages quickly.

Many religious scholars in Islamabad have also received messages from the Taliban that they have only two options, either to support the Taliban or leave the capital or they will be considered collaborators of the “pro-American Zardari government” which, they claim, is not different from the previous Musharraf regime.

Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, is in the sedentary and urbanized heartland of Punjab far from the Pashtun areas. The Taliban don’t attack Islamabad unless they believe they can make an immediate and effective political statement.

In this case, the statement would probably be that Pakistanis are dying and their country fragmenting for the sake of a Western agenda for Afghanistan that few inside Pakistan endorse.

There appears to be a major disconnect between U.S. and Pakistani strategies for dealing with the Taliban’s entrenched presence and its increasing reach into non-Pashtun areas.

Pending a review by the Obama administration, the U.S. considers the battles in west Pakistan an adjunct to the faltering Afghan adventure. As I argued elsewhere, this is a fatal misreading of the facts on the ground and ranks as a strategic blunder of historical portions.

It turns out the war against the Taliban is a counterinsurgency operation across the entire Pashtun ethnic area, on both sides of the Durand Line that arbitrarily splits the Pashtun homeland into Afghan and Pakistani jurisdictions, and in which the Taliban have discovered that their key bulwark against NATO and U.S. operations is, unsurprisingly, the Pakistan side.

U.S. attempts to deny the Pakistan havens to the Taliban have simply encouraged the Taliban to focus on the weakest element in the counter-insurgency equation, the Pakistan government, entrench themselves not only in the semi-autonomous FATA areas but also in key districts of the NWFP such as the Swat valley, and make it clear that the cost of any U.S. success against them and in Afghanistan will be borne by Pakistan.

In other words, Afghanistan is the sideshow and Pakistan is the main event.

In my view, the Obama foreign policy team should be burning the midnight oil trying to figure out how to support Pakistan in its long term struggle to integrate the Pashtun areas into the national system, not only militarily but politically, ideologically, and culturally, in order to neutralize the Taliban challenge inside Pakistan, while simply holding the line in Afghanistan--and not the other way around.

Indeed, as the Pakistan government points out resentfully, in 2008 Pakistan suffered a death toll of 2000 from terrorist attacks—and still is subjected to incessant U.S. bullyragging concerning its lackadaisical counterinsurgency efforts against the Taliban.

Relations between Pakistan and the Afghan government are quite frosty—Pakistan’s arch enemy, India, has been welcomed into Afghanistan, raising fears of strategic encirclement--and it’s safe to say that few people in Pakistan’s army or general population are enthusiastic about dying for the sake of Hamid Karzai’s regime. And when the Taliban reacts to U.S. (or U.S. mandated) pressure in the tribal areas by attacks in Pakistan’s heartland, the result has historically been anger directed not only the terrorists, but the U.S. effort in Afghanistan that brings so much suffering but little apparent benefits to Pakistan beyond a corrupting financial subsidy.

The central government of Pakistan, both under Musharraf and Zardari, has been loathe to employ solely military measures against the Taliban, in order to avoid radicalizing the Pashtun population and bringing a battle in the marginal mountainous border areas into Pakistan’s populous heartland.

The United States, on the other hand, has insisted that Pakistan subordinate its own fears of instability and terrorism to the needs of the Afghan campaign. With the Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan, the United States has adopted a strategy that appears supremely counter-productive: pressuring Pakistan to achieve a military victory in the Pashtun areas—a goal that has eluded non-Pashtuns for centuries—on a timetable designed to forestall a military collapse in Afghanistan next spring.

The disconnect was strikingly illustrated in Mir’s story:

Some diplomatic sources have revealed that initially Pakistan was ready to release some arrested Taliban fighters in exchange for the abducted Polish and Chinese engineers but the US authorities raised objections and a deal could not be finalised.

The Pakistani authorities successfully negotiated the release of a kidnapped Pakistani diplomat Tariq Azizuddin in 2008 and the release of kidnapped Army personnel in 2007 by releasing some Taliban fighters. But this time the US pressure complicated the situation.

The Polish engineer was subsequently decapitated.

The most genuinely eye-popping revelation of Mir’s article concerns the stated willingness of the NWFP governor—and President Zardari—to permit the imposition of sharia law in the embattled Swat Valley:

[A top Army official stated,] “We are no more fighting the secular insurgents, we are fighting with the Taliban and they are demanding the enforcement of the Islamic law in Swat and all the local secular political leaders are supporting this demand under public pressure.”

Chief Minister of NWFP Ameer Haider Hoti, Governor Awais Ghani and the Army high command have strongly recommended to enforce the long pending Sharia regulations, which will be called the “Nifaz-e-Adal regulation”.

District Police Officer of Swat Dilawar Khan Bangash said the Taliban will have no justification to fight against the state after the enforcement of the Islamic law in Swat.

Swat, which was a princely state till July 28, 1969, had Qazi courts operating when the state was finally merged into Pakistan. Residents of Swat think that it was easy to get justice before 1969 through the Qazi courts but after the imposition of the English law, the poor people of Swat are not getting justice.

Taliban have exploited this delay in justice and also instigated the poor people to rise against the big landlords. The Awami National Party swept the valley of Swat in 2008 election with the slogan of peace and justice and now this party is ruling the NWFP in collaboration with the PPP.

Sources have claimed that the ANP leadership has convinced President Asif Ali Zardari to promulgate the Sharia regulations in Swat and the president will announce the promulgation in a few days.

Maulana Sufi Muhammad of the Tehrik-e-Nafaze Shariat Muhammadi has assured the ANP leadership that he will start a long march from Dir to Swat valley after the imposition of the Sharia law and he will appeal to his son-in-law Maulana Fazalullah and other Taliban leaders to surrender.

For the Western powers, attempting to democratize Afghanistan and turn it away from Islamic fundamentalism, there are few issues more hot-buttony than Pakistan acquiescing to the imposition of sharia law in a key battle zone.

So it’s possible that President Zardari is raising the threat of sharia law as a wake-up call to the United States and NATO that the largely military counter-insurgency effort in western Pakistan is not viable, and an alternate strategy—call it engagement, call it appeasement, in any case a protracted political, propaganda, and economic effort that de-emphasizes vain hopes of a quick military solution in time to save the Karzai regime—that gives a more central position to Pakistan’s needs and priorities, indeed its survival as a democratic state, and treats the exploitation of Pakistan havens by the Taliban primarily as one element of Pakistan’s thorny Pashtun issue.

China Hand

In Greater Vancouver, Join Pakistanis protesting against US Empire's Drone Attacks on Pakistan on Feb 19/09