Hospitals in Gaza Overwhelmed as Attacks Continue

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — It was clear from the bod­ies laid out in the park­ing lot of the ma­ter­ni­ty hos­pi­tal here that it had as­sumed new du­ties: No longer a place that wel­comed new life, it was now a make­shift morgue.

Oth­er bod­ies lay in hall­ways and on the floor of the kitchen at Hi­lal Emi­rati Ma­ter­ni­ty Hos­pi­tal. In the walk-in cool­er, they were stacked three high, wait­ing for rel­a­tives to claim them for burial.

Sat­ur­day was the sec­ond day of heavy bom­bard­ment by Is­raeli forces on this city on Gaza’s bor­der with Egypt af­ter Is­rael’s an­nounce­ment that one of its of­fi­cers had been cap­tured by Pal­es­tin­ian mil­i­tants here dur­ing a clash.

But ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing, the Is­raeli mil­i­tary an­nounced that the of­fi­cer, Sec­ond Lt. Hadar Goldin, 23, was now con­sid­ered to have been killed in bat­tle.

Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Medics at a field hospital in Rafah, Gaza Strip. More than 120 Palestinians were killed in Rafah alone on Friday and Saturday.

Is­rael’s of­fen­sive had emp­tied neigh­bor­hoods, shut­tered the city’s cen­tral hos­pi­tal and killed more peo­ple than its re­main­ing health fa­cil­i­ties could keep up with. But for the res­i­dents of this dusty city of 150,000 peo­ple — un­til re­cent­ly fa­mous as the end­point for hun­dreds of smug­gling tun­nels un­der the bor­der with Egypt — the as­sault had un­leashed such a wave of ter­ror and death that Lieu­ten­ant Goldin, whose fate was un­known when the as­sault be­gan on Fri­day, was scarcely con­sid­ered.

“It is just an ex­cuse,” said Dr. Ab­dul­lah She­hadeh,

di­rec­tor of the Abu Yousef al-Na­j­jar Hos­pi­tal, the city’s larg­est. “There is no rea­son for them to force the women and chil­dren of Gaza to pay the price for some­thing that hap­pened on the bat­tle­field.”

Af­ter two days of Is­raeli shelling and airstrikes, cen­tral Rafah ap­peared de­serted on Sat­ur­day, with shops closed and res­i­dents hid­ing in their homes. The pres­ence of Is­raeli forces east of the city had caused many to flee west, crowd­ing in with friends and rel­a­tives in neigh­bor­hoods by the Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

More than 120 Pales­tini­ans were killed in Rafah alone on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day — the dead­li­est two days in the city since the war be­gan 25 days ago. Those deaths, and hun­dreds of in­ju­ries, over­whelmed the city’s health care fa­cil­i­ties.

Mak­ing mat­ters worse, Is­raeli shells hit the cen­tral Na­j­jar hos­pi­tal on Fri­day af­ter­noon, Dr. She­hadeh said, lead­ing its em­ploy­ees and pa­tients to evac­u­ate.

To con­tinue re­ceiv­ing pa­tients, his staff mem­bers moved to the small­er Ku­waiti Spe­cial­ized Hos­pi­tal, al­though it was ill equipped to han­dle the large num­ber of peo­ple seek­ing care.

Am­bu­lances screamed in­to the hos­pi­tal’s park­ing lot, where medics un­loaded cases on­to stretch­ers some­times bear­ing the blood of pre­vi­ous pa­tients. Since the hos­pi­tal had on­ly 12 beds, the staff mem­bers had lined up gur­neys out­side to han­dle the over­flow.

The city’s cen­tral hos­pi­tal had al­so housed its on­ly morgue, so its clo­sure cre­ated a new prob­lem as the ca­su­al­ties mount­ed: where to put the bod­ies.

At the Ku­waiti Spe­cial­ized Hos­pi­tal, they were put on the floor of the den­tal ward un­der a poster pro­mot­ing den­tal hy­giene. In a back room lay the bod­ies of Sa­di­ah Abu Taha, 60, and her grand­son Rezeq Abu Taha, 1, who had been killed in an airstrike on their home near­by.

Few peo­ple ap­proached the main en­trance to the pink-and-white ma­ter­ni­ty hos­pi­tal, in­stead head­ing around back, where there was a con­stant flow of bod­ies. Near­ly 60 had been left in the morgue of the cen­tral hos­pi­tal when it closed, so am­bu­lance crews who had man­aged to reach the site brought back as many bod­ies as they could car­ry. Oth­er bod­ies came from new at­tacks or were re­cov­ered from dam­aged build­ings.

New ar­rivals were laid out in the park­ing lot or car­ried down a ramp to the kitchen, fea­tur­ing a large walk-in cool­er. Some were kept on the ground, and those not claimed right away were added to the pile in the cool­er.

Word had spread that the dead were at the ma­ter­ni­ty hos­pi­tal, so peo­ple who had lost rel­a­tives came to talk to the medics or look in the cool­er for their loved ones.

One short, sun­burned man point­ed to the body of a woman wear­ing pink sweat­pants and said she was his sis­ter Souad al-Tara­bin.

The medics pulled her out, laid her on a ta­ble and wrapped her in white cloth and plas­tic. Some teenagers helped the man car­ry her body up­stairs and lay it in the back of a yel­low taxi. A man in the front seat cra­dled a small bun­dle con­tain­ing the re­mains of the woman’s 4-year-old son, Anas.

Sit­ting near­by, As­ma Abu Ju­main wait­ed for the body of her moth­er-in-law, who she said had been killed the day be­fore and was in the morgue at the cen­tral hos­pi­tal when it was evac­u­ated.

“She is an old woman,” Ms. Abu Ju­main said. “She did noth­ing wrong.”

The move­ment of bod­ies made record-keep­ing im­pos­si­ble, al­though Arafat Ad­wan, a hos­pi­tal vol­un­teer, tried to jot down names in a small red note­book he kept in his pock­et.

He wor­ried that some bod­ies would re­main there for days, be­cause fam­ilies had been scat­tered and might not know that their rel­a­tives had been killed.

“There are peo­ple in here whose fam­ilies have no idea what hap­pened to them,” he said.

Oth­ers knew they had lost rel­a­tives but could not find them.

Mo­ham­med al-Ban­na said an airstrike the morn­ing be­fore had killed nine of his in-laws, in­clud­ing his wife’s fa­ther and four of her broth­ers.

“The ag­gres­sion here is cre­at­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of youth who want re­venge for all the crimes,” he said.

He had looked at the cen­tral hos­pi­tal the day be­fore, to no avail. Then, on Sat­ur­day, he re­ceived a mes­sage sent to lo­cal cell­phones telling those who had lost rel­a­tives to re­trieve them from the ma­ter­ni­ty hos­pi­tal. He had come right away, but had not found them.

“I’ll keep wait­ing for their bod­ies to come in so we can

take them home and bury them,” he said.

Mr. Ban­na added that he had been too wor­ried to tell his wife what had hap­pened to her fam­ily and want­ed to break the news to her grad­u­ally. Ear­lier that day, she had told him that she was start­ing to wor­ry be­cause her fa­ther’s cell­phone had been switched off all day.

“I told her maybe he has no elec­tricity and his phone is dead,” Mr. Ban­na said.

 

BY BEN HUBBARD AND FARES AKRAM (New York Times), August 3, 2014

 

 

Graphic Humor 238 (Israel-Gaza-USA)

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world. There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them. Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them. Farewell!. (CTsT)

 

Graphic Humor 236

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world. There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them. Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them. Farewell!. (CTsT)

 

‘I want my father, bring me my father’

A photo of a desperate young Palestinian boy, badly wounded and screaming for his father as he clutches at the shirt of a paramedic in a hospital, has captured the tragic and bloody tension of the Gazan conflict.

Shirtless and with cuts to his face, torso, arms and legs, the child clings to the hospital worker who is attempting to lay him flat on a girdle.

The Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian publication, reports the photo, taken at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City last Thursday, was captioned with the boy’s desperate cry: ‘I want my father, bring me my father’, according to Fairfax.

The Palestinian paper claims the young boy was one of four siblings brought to the hospital wounded, two of them just three years old.

 

It comes as grinning Israeli tank commanders were pictured flashing the victory signs as they blast their way through Gaza in the bloodiest day of the offensive so far – as one resident of the troubled region said: ‘The gate of hell has opened.’

At least 65 people have been killed since this yesterday’s dawn strike on Gaza City’s Shijaiyah neighbourhood – including the son, daughter-in-law and two small grandchildren of a senior Hamas leader.

Hamas says it has captured an Israeli soldier – a scenario that has proven to be fraught with difficulties for the country in the past – but Israel’s U.N. Ambassador has denied the claims.

The neighbourhood has come under heavy tank fire as Israel widened its ground offensive against Hamas, causing hundreds of residents to flee.

The dead and wounded – including dozens of women and children – have reportedly been left in streets, with ambulances unable to approach.

Source: (July 21, 2014)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2699772/This-desperate-little-boy-face-tragedy-Palestinian-toddler-clutches-shirt-hospital-worker-screaming-I-want-father-bring-father.html?ito=social-facebook

 

Graphic Humor 232

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world. There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them. Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them.

Farewell!. (CTsT)

 

UN chief Ban Ki-moon pleas for Gaza ceasefire

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appealed for a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Mr Ban urged both sides to exercise restraint, saying the Middle East could not afford “another full-blown war”.

More than 80 Gazans have been killed since Israel’s operation began on Tuesday, Palestinian officials say.

Israel says it has hit more than 100 targets in Gaza since midnight, while Palestinian militants are continuing to fire rockets into Israel.

Israel launched its operation after a surge in rocket-fire amid a crackdown on Hamas members in the West Bank last month, as Israel hunted for the abductors of three Israeli teenagers.

The teenagers were found murdered, and tensions were raised further with the killing of a Palestinian teenager in a suspected revenge attack days later.

 

James Reynolds reporting from the Kfar Aza kibbutz where the community has been “shaken” by rocket attacks

Israel says its targets in Operation Protective Edge have been militant fighters and facilities including rocket launchers, weapons stores, tunnels and command centres.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, many of those who have died were women and children.

 

At the scene: BBC’s Yolande Knell in Gaza

On a normal day, the streets of Gaza City are teeming with people and cars honk their horns as they sit in traffic jams. Now they are eerily quiet. Occasionally someone strides past purposefully, or a car or ambulance races by. The shops are all shuttered.

Most people here are staying at home trying to keep safe. Some will also be catching up on sleep after a noisy night when Israeli naval ships bombarded this coastal strip, making buildings shake and babies cry.

Local television stations can hardly keep up with the pace of news from inside busy hospitals and outside demolished homes. They show shocking images of dead children being pulled from the rubble on repeat.

The increasing number of civilians killed is alarming. Some people have moved in with other family members who they deem to live in safer areas. Egypt has opened its border crossing with Gaza for casualties but otherwise there is no way to leave the Palestinian territory because of the Egyptian and Israeli blockade.

At the scene: BBC’s James Reynolds on Israel’s Gaza border

Shortly before 0300 ( midnight GMT) in Ashkelon, a rocket siren sounded. I woke and headed to the secure room of our hotel (joined by guests in their pyjamas). There was no all-clear siren so, after a minute or two, we guessed that the threat from the rocket had passed, and headed back to our rooms.

This morning, near the border with Gaza, my colleagues and I saw a column of black smoke in a field – a fire caused by a rocket attack. Farmers drove tractors over the flames to put out the fire.

We drove on and saw Gaza itself, a few miles away, on the horizon. We saw three jet plumes of white smoke shoot up from Gaza – rockets being fired from the Palestinian territory.

More than 20 people have been killed in the latest air raids on Gaza, Palestinian officials say – most of whom were in a house and a cafe in Khan Younis.

Elsewhere on Thursday:

• Three people died in an Israeli air strike on a car in the west of Gaza City, Palestinian media reports said. Reuters said the victims were militants from Islamic Jihad
• Three people were killed in an air strike targeting a Hamas activist in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, Palestinian officials said
• The Palestinian health ministry said that in addition to the dead, some 540 people had been injured overall
• The armed wing of Hamas said it had fired two M75 rockets at Tel Aviv – Israel said its Iron Dome missile defence system had intercepted one. The Israeli military also said communities in the southern Negev desert were targeted.

 

Ban Ki-moon: “The lives of countless innocent civilians and the peace process itself are in the balance”

Israel says militants have fired more than 365 rockets from Gaza since Tuesday – many of which have been intercepted by the Iron Dome system – and that it has attacked about 780 targets over the same time.

Meanwhile, an Israeli military spokesman said an attack on a house in Khan Younis on Tuesday in which eight people were killed was “a tragedy – not what we intended”, adding people had returned to the building too soon following a telephone warning.

The home was said to be that of Odeh Kaware, a local Hamas commander.

Israeli sources say a second warning was given when a projectile without a warhead was fired at the building in a tactic known as a “tap on the roof”, but people went back.

“They were told to leave, they returned, and the missile was already on the way. It was too late,” the Jerusalem Post newspaper quoted an Israeli security source as saying.

The Palestinian Maan news agency said dozens of people had gathered on the roof after the family had been warned by Israel that the building would be targeted.

A Palestinian thought to have been wounded in an Israeli air strike waits to cross into Egypt

Residents of Netivot in southern Israel look at the damage caused by a Palestinian missile strike

Israeli leaders say a ground offensive might happen “quite soon”

The site of an Israeli strike in Gaza City

Egypt’s role

Separately, Egyptian state television said the government had decided to open the Rafah border crossing on Thursday to evacuate some of those wounded in the Israeli attacks.

Hospitals in North Sinai have been placed on standby and 30 ambulances sent to the crossing.

Egypt says it is in contact with both sides. But while it has played a key role in the past as a mediator, it currently appears to be biding its time, says the BBC’s Orla Guerin in Cairo.

Analysts say Egypt is in no hurry to broker a ceasefire that might benefit Hamas – as happened under ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in November 2012.

Egypt sees Hamas, an offshoot of Mr Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, as a direct threat.

Having crushed the Brotherhood over the past year, it wants to see Hamas suffer the same fate, our correspondent says. In that sense, it is on the same page with Israel, she adds.

Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield

1. Enemy fires missile or artillery shell
2. Projectile tracked by radar. Data relayed to battle management and control unit
3. Data analysed and target co-ordinates sent to the missile firing unit
4. Missile is fired at enemy projectile

 

* Source: BBC, 10 July 2014

 

Mathematicians and Computer Scientists Shrug over the NSA Hacking

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has upset a great many people this year. Since June, newspapers have been using documents leaked by former intelligence worker Edward Snowden to show how the secretive but powerful agency has spied on the communications of US citizens and foreign governments. Last month, the media reported that the NSA, which is based in Fort Meade, Maryland, had undermined Internet security standards. The revelations have sparked international outrage at the highest levels — even the president of Brazil cancelled a visit to the United States because of the spying.

 

Yet amid the uproar, NSA-supported mathematicians and computer scientists have remained mostly quiet, to the growing frustration of others in similar fields. “Most have never met a funding source they do not like,” says Phillip Rogaway, a computer scientist at the University of California, Davis, who has sworn not to accept NSA funding and is critical of other researchers’ silence. “And most of us have little sense of social responsibility.”

Mathematicians and the NSA are certainly interdependent. The agency declares that it is the United States’ largest maths employer, and Samuel Rankin, director of the Washington DC office of the American Mathematical Society, estimates that the agency hires 30–40 mathematicians every year. The NSA routinely holds job fairs on university campuses, and academic researchers can work at the agency on sabbaticals. In 2013, the agency’s mathematical sciences programme offered more than US$3.3 million in research grants.

Furthermore, the NSA has designated more than 150 colleges and universities as centres of excellence, which qualifies students and faculty members for extra support. It can also fund research indirectly through other agencies, and so the total amount of support may be much higher. A leaked budget document says that the NSA spends more than $400 million a year on research and technology — although only a fraction of this money might go to research outside the agency itself.

 

Many US researchers, especially those towards the basic-research end of the spectrum, are comfortable with the NSA’s need for their expertise. Christopher Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park, is among them. He previously had an NSA grant for basic research on controlling cold atoms, which can form the basis of the qubits of information in quantum computers. He notes that he is free to publish in the open literature, and he has no problems with the NSA research facilities in physical sciences, telecommunications and languages that sit on his campus. Monroe is sympathetic to the NSA’s need to track the develop­ment of quantum computers that could one day be used to crack codes beyond the ability of conventional machines. “I understand what’s in the newspapers,” he says, “but the NSA is funding serious long-term fundamental research and I’m happy they’re doing it.”

Dena Tsamitis, director of education, outreach and training at Carnegie Mellon University’s cybersecurity research centre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also wants to maintain the relationship. She oversees visitors and recruiters from the NSA but her centre gets no direct funding. She says that her graduate students understand the NSA’s public surveillance to be “a policy decision, not a technology decision. Our students are most interested in the technology.” And the NSA, she says — echoing many other researchers — “has very interesting technology problems”.

 

The academics who are professionally uneasy with the NSA tend to lie on the applied end of the spectrum: they work on computer security and cryptography rather than pure mathematics and basic physics. Matthew Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, says that these researchers are unsettled in part because they are dependent on protocols developed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to govern most encrypted web traffic. When it was revealed that the NSA had inserted a ‘back door’ into the NIST standards to allow snooping, some of them felt betrayed. “We certainly had no idea that they were tampering with products or standards,” says Green. He is one of 47 technologists who on 4 October sent a letter to the director of a group created last month by US President Barack Obama to review NSA practices, protesting because the group does not include any independent technologists.

Edward Felten, who studies computer security at Princeton University in New Jersey, says that the NSA’s breach of security standards means that cryptographers will need to change what they call their threat model — the set of assumptions about possible attacks to guard against. Now the attacks might come from the home team. “There was a sense of certain lines that NSA wouldn’t cross,” says Felten, “and now we’re not so sure about that.”

 

* Ann Finkbeiner, Nature,  October 8, 2013

 

2nd Bombing Suspect Caught After Frenzied Hunt Paralyzes Boston

The teenage suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, whose flight from the police after a furious gunfight overnight prompted an intense manhunt that virtually shut down the Boston area all day, was taken into custody Friday night after the police found him in nearby Watertown, Mass., officials said.

The suspect, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, was found hiding in a boat just outside the area where the police had been conducting door-to-door searches all day, the Boston police commissioner, Edward Davis, said at a news conference Friday night.

“A man had gone out of his house after being inside the house all day, abiding by our request to stay inside,” Mr. Davis said, referring to the advice officials gave to residents to remain behind locked doors. “He walked outside and saw blood on a boat in the backyard. He then opened the tarp on the top of the boat, and he looked in and saw a man covered with blood. He retreated and called us.”

“Over the course of the next hour or so we exchanged gunfire with the suspect, who was inside the boat, and ultimately the hostage rescue team of the F.B.I. made an entry into the boat and removed the suspect, who was still alive,” Mr. Davis said. He said the suspect was in “serious condition” and had apparently been wounded in the gunfight that left his brother dead.

A federal law enforcement official said he would not be read his Miranda rights, because the authorities would be invoking the public safety exception in order to question him extensively about other potential explosive devices or accomplices and to try to gain intelligence.

The Boston Police Department announced on Twitter: “Suspect in custody. Officers sweeping the area,” and Mayor Thomas M. Menino posted: “We got him.”

President Obama praised the law enforcement officials who took the suspect into custody in a statement from the White House shortly after 10 p.m., saying, “We’ve closed an important chapter in this tragedy.”

The president said that he had directed federal law enforcement officials to continue to investigate, and he urged people not to rush to judgment about the motivations behind the attacks.

The discovery of Mr. Tsarnaev came just over 26 hours after the F.B.I. circulated pictures of him and his brother and called them suspects in Monday’s bombings, which killed three people and wounded more than 170. Events unfolded quickly — and lethally — after that. Law enforcement officials said that within hours of the pictures’ release, the two shot and killed a campus police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, carjacked a sport utility vehicle, and led police on a chase, tossing several pipe bombs from their vehicle.

Then the men got into a pitched gun battle with the police in Watertown in which more than 200 rounds were fired and a transit police officer was critically wounded. When the shootout ended, one of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, a former boxer, had been shot and fatally wounded. He was wearing explosives, several law enforcement officials said. But Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joe-HARR tsar-NAH-yev) managed to escape — running over his older brother as he sped away, the officials said.

His disappearance, and fears that he could be armed with more explosives, set off an intense manhunt. SWAT teams and Humvees rolled through residential streets. Military helicopters hovered overhead. Bomb squads were called to several locations. And Boston, New England’s largest city, was essentially shut down.

Transit service was suspended all day. Classes at Harvard, M.I.T., Boston University and other area colleges were canceled. Amtrak halted service into Boston. The Red Sox game at Fenway Park was postponed, as was a concert at Symphony Hall. Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts urged residents to stay behind locked doors all day — not lifting the request until shortly after 6 p.m., when transit service in the shaken, seemingly deserted region was finally restored.

As the hundreds of police officers fanned out across New England looking for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, investigators tried to piece together a fuller picture of the two brothers, to determine more about the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, (tam-arr-lawn tsar-NAH-yev) was interviewed by the F.B.I. in 2011 when a foreign government asked the bureau to determine if he had extremist ties, according to a senior law enforcement official. The government knew that he was planning to travel there and feared that he might be a risk, the official said.

The official would not say which government made the request, but Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s father said that he traveled to Russia in 2012.

“They had something on him and were concerned about him and him traveling to their region,” the official said. The F.B.I. conducted a review, examining Web sites that he had visited, trying to determine whether he was spending time with extremists and ultimately interviewing him. The F.B.I. concluded that he was not a threat. “We didn’t find anything on him that was derogatory,” the official said. The F.B.I. released a statement late Friday confirming it had scrutinized Mr. Tsarnaev but “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign.” It had requested more information from the foreign government, it said, but had not received it.

Now officials are scrutinizing that trip, to see if he might have met with extremists while abroad.

The brothers were born in Kyrgyzstan, an official said, and were of Chechen heritage. Chechnya, a long-disputed Muslim territory in southern Russia, sought independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union and then fought two bloody wars with the authorities in Moscow. Russian assaults on Chechnya were brutal, killing tens of thousands of civilians as terrorist groups from the region staged attacks in central Russia.

The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, traveled to Russia from the United States early last year and returned six months later, on July 17, a law enforcement official said. His father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said his son had mostly stayed with him at his home in Makhachkala, the capital of the Dagestan region, but that the two men had also visited Chechnya.

“We went to Chechnya to visit relatives,” Mr. Tsarnaev said in an interview in Russia.

The trip will come under intense scrutiny to determine whether he met with extremist groups or received training, current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials said. Kevin R. Brock, a former senior F.B.I. and counterterrorism official, said, “It’s a key thread for investigators and the intelligence community to pull on.”

Anzor Tsarnaev, who maintained that his sons were innocent and had been framed, said that during the trip to Chechnya his son had “only communicated with me and his cousins.”

The hunt for the bombing suspects took a violent turn Thursday night when the two men are believed to have fatally shot an M.I.T. police officer, Sean A. Collier, 26, in his patrol car, the Middlesex County district attorney’s office said. After that, a man was carjacked nearby by two armed men, who drove off with him in his Mercedes S.U.V.

At one point, the suspects told the man “to get out of the car or they would kill him,” according to a law enforcement official. But then they apparently changed their plans, and forced the man to drive, the official said. At one point, the older brother took the wheel.

“They revealed to him that they were the two who did the marathon bombings,” the official said, adding that the suspects also made some mention to the man of wanting to head to New York. At one point they drove to another vehicle, which the authorities believe was parked and unoccupied. There, the suspects got out and transferred materials, which the authorities believe included explosives and firearms, from the parked car to the sport utility vehicle.

The victim was released, uninjured, at a gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, law enforcement officials said.

After he called the police, they went off in search of his car, and a frenzied chase began.

The police and the suspects traded gunfire, and “explosive devices were reportedly thrown” from their car, law enforcement officials said. A transit police officer, Richard H. Donohue, was shot in the right leg and critically wounded.

Officer Donohue had nearly bled to death from his wound when he arrived at the hospital, said a person familiar with his treatment. The hospital’s trauma team gave him a transfusion and CPR, and got his blood pressure back up, but he was still on a ventilator, the person said.

Finally, the brothers faced off against the police on a Watertown street in what officials and witnesses described as a furious firefight.

A Watertown resident, Andrew Kitzenberg, 29, said he looked out his third-floor window to see two young men of slight build engaged in “constant gunfire” with police officers. A police vehicle “drove towards the shooters,” he said, and was shot at until it was severely damaged. It rolled out of control, Mr. Kitzenberg said, and crashed into two cars in his driveway. The gunmen, he said, had a large, unwieldy bomb that he said looked “like a pressure cooker.”

“They lit it, still in the middle of the gunfire, and threw it,” he said. “But it went 20 yards at most.” It exploded, he said, and one man ran toward the gathered police officers. He was tackled, but it was not clear if he was shot, Mr. Kitzenberg said.

The explosions “lit up the whole house,” another resident, Loretta Kehayias, 65, said. “I screamed. I’ve never seen anything like this, never, never, never.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Kitzenberg said, the other man got back into the sport utility vehicle he had been driving, turned it toward officers and “put the pedal to the metal.” The car “went right through the cops, broke right through and continued west.”

He left behind his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who had been gravely wounded, and who was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Dr. David Schoenfeld, who was catching up on paperwork at his home in Watertown after midnight on Friday, had heard the sirens, and then the gunfire, and the explosions. So he called Beth Israel Deaconess, where he works in the emergency room, and told them to prepare for trauma patients for the second time this week.

He said that he arrived about 1:10 a.m. Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance carrying Tamerlan Tsarnaev pulled up. He was handcuffed, unconscious, and in cardiac arrest, Dr. Schoenfeld said.

As a throng of police officers looked on, Dr. Schoenfeld and a team of other trauma doctors and nurses began to perform CPR.

“There was talk before the patient arrived about whether or not it was a suspect,” Dr. Schoenfeld said. “But ultimately it doesn’t matter who it is, because we’re going to work as hard as we can for any patient who comes through our door and then sort it out after. Because you’re never going to know until the dust settles who it is.”

The trauma team put a breathing tube in the patient’s throat, Dr. Schoenfeld said, then cut open his chest to see if blood or other fluid was collecting around his heart. His handcuffs were removed at some point during the resuscitation attempt, he said, because “when the patient is in cardiac arrest and we’re doing all these procedures, we need to be able to move their arms around.”

The team was unable to resuscitate him, and pronounced him dead at 1:35 a.m. Only as they prepared to turn the body over to the police did Dr. Schoenfeld look closely at the patient’s face and see that he resembled one of the suspects whose pictures had been released by the F.B.I. hours earlier. “We all obviously had some suspicion given the really large police presence,” he said, “but we didn’t have a clear identification from the police.”

Dr. Schoenfeld, whose emergency room treated a number of people injured in the bombings on Monday, said he had not had time to process what he had been through early Friday.

“I can’t say what I’ll be feeling as I reflect on this later on,” he said in an interview before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured. “But right now I’m more concerned with everybody who’s still out there and still in harm’s way.”

He added, “I worry about everybody in the city, that everyone’s going to be O.K.”

 

* NYT, April 20, 2013

Katharine Q. Seelye reported from Boston, and William K. Rashbaum and Michael Cooper from New York. Reporting was contributed by Richard A. Oppel Jr. and John Eligon from Cambridge, Mass.; Jess Bidgood from Watertown, Mass.; Serge F. Kovaleski and Timothy Rohan from Boston; Ravi Somaiya from New York; Eric Schmitt and Michael S. Schmidt from Washington; Andrew Siddons from Montgomery Village, Md.; Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul; Ellen Barry and Andrew Roth from Moscow; and Andrew E. Kramer from Asbest, Russia.

 

Dorchester neighbors mourn Martin Richard, 8-year-old boy killed in Boston Marathon bombings

Grief-stricken neighbors gathered in small clumps today outside the Dorchester home of Martin Richard, the eight-year-old boy who was killed when two bombs detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday.

Richard was fatally injured and his mother and sister seriously wounded as they waited for their father and husband, Bill Richard, at the finish line on Boylston Street, friends said. Bill Richard was active in the Ashmont community issues.

Neighbor Dan Aguilar said the Richard family was close-knit, and that on most days — regardless of the weather – Martin Richard and his brother were in the family’s backyard, playing soccer, hockey or baseball.

“They are just your average little boys,’’ Aguilar told reporters gathered near the family’s home on Carruth Street. “They are a good family. They are always together.’’

Aguilar said he last spoke with the family on Easter Sunday when they were gathered outside, enjoying the day.

He said, he is still wrestling with the idea that a child he knows has died.

“That little boy will never come home again,’’ Aguilar said. “It’s still unreal. I have no words. I have no words.’’

Richard is one of three people killed in the bomb explosion, and so far is the only victim to have been publicly identified by friends and colleagues.

This morning, no one was at home at the Richard house, which was watched over by a Boston police officer parked in a cruiser nearby.

At the end of the driveway, someone had written the word, “Peace.’’

 

Text  by Evan Allen and John R. Ellement, Globe Correspondent and Globe Staff  (Boston Globe, 4-16-2013)

 

U.S. ramping up missile defense to meet North Korea threat

The Pentagon announced Friday it will spend $1 billion to add 14 interceptors to a West Coast-based missile defense system, responding to what it called faster-than-anticipated North Korean progress on nuclear weapons and missiles.

 

Threats will only “further isolate” North Korea, Carney says

Citing a “series of irresponsible and reckless provocations” by Pyongyang, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said he is determined to ensure protection of the U.S. homeland and stay ahead of the North Korean missile threat.

“We will strengthen our homeland defense, maintain our commitment to our allies and partners, and make clear to the world that the United States stands firm against aggression,” Hagel told a Pentagon news conference.

The Pentagon intends to add the 14 interceptors to 26 already in place at Fort Greely, Alaska. That will expand the system’s ability to shoot down long-range missiles in flight before they could reach U.S. territory. In addition to those at Greely, the U.S. also has four missile interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon, Friday, March 15, 2013. / AP Photo/Cliff Owen

James Miller, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said the project would cost about $1 billion. CBS News correspondent David Martin reported that how much added security that will buy is subject to debate, since the interceptors have an uneven test record.

“The reason we’re advancing our program here for homeland security is to not take any chances, is to stay ahead of the threat and to assure any contingency,” Hagel said.

The Pentagon announced on March 15, 2013 it will spend $1 billion to add 14 interceptors to a West Coast-based missile defense system, responding to what it called faster-than-anticipated North Korean progress on nuclear weapons and missiles.

Martin also reported that U.S. intelligence does not believe North Korea yet has a nuclear-armed missile capable of reaching the U.S. But a photo of a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile in a military parade last year heightened concerns they are working hard to develop one.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates once said North Korea could have an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) by 2016, added Martin, but the extra interceptor missiles to shoot it down won’t all be in place until 2017.

Miller and Hagel said the U.S. will conduct environmental studies on three additional potential locations for interceptors in the United States, including on the East Coast, as required by Congress. Hagel said no decision on a particular site has been made, but the studies would shorten the timeline should a decision be made.

Miller said that would provide options for building an interceptor base on the East Coast or adding more interceptors in Alaska, should either approach become necessary due to further future increases in the threat from Iran and North Korea.

The threat of a missile strike from North Korea was the rationale for building the missile defense sites in Alaska and California during the administration of President George W. Bush. Technical difficulties with the interceptors slowed the pace at which they were installed at Greely and Vandenberg.

“Our policy is to stay ahead of the threat — and to continue to ensure that we are ahead of any potential future Iranian or North Korean ICBM capability,” Miller said in a speech Tuesday at the Atlantic Council.

Miller noted that last December, North Korea launched a satellite into space, demonstrating its mastery of some of the same technologies required for development of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

“Our concern about Pyongyang’s potential ICBM capability is compounded by the regime’s focus on developing nuclear weapons,” he said. “North Korea’s third nuclear test last month is obviously a serious concern for all nations.”

North Korea recently threatened to reduce Seoul to a “sea of fire” and stage pre-emptive nuclear attacks on Washington.

“North Korea’s shrill public pronouncements underscore the need for the U.S. to continue to take prudent steps to defeat any future North Korean ICBM,” Miller said in his speech Tuesday.

In this handout image provided by the German Bundeswehr armed forces a patriot missile is fired during the Operation Red Arrow exercise on October 15, 2008 in Crete, Greece. Germany’s cabinet agreed on Thursday to send Patriot missiles and up to 400 soldiers to Turkey to act as a deterrent against any spread of the conflict in Syria across the border. (Photo by Peter Mueller/Bundeswehr via Getty Images)* CBS (March 15, 2013)

 

Bomber Strikes at U.S. Embassy in Turkey

Turkey’s interior minister, Muammer Guler, said law-enforcement authorities had information the bomber was a member was a Turkish man in his 30s who had been previously jailed on terrorism charges and was a known member of the outlawed leftist group, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C.

In a statement on the website Halkin Sesi, which is affiliated with the group, DKHP-C said the attack was in retaliation for U.S. imperialism and Turkey’s submission to American colonialism. The website, which translates as “People’s Voice,” also posted two photos of the alleged bomber, Ecevit Alisan Sanli. The site called on followers to go to the Black Sea province of Ordu in Turkey’s northeast to attend Mr. Sanli’s funeral.

The DHKP-C, which wants a socialist state and is vehemently anti-American, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. The group has been relatively quiet in recent years, but has used suicide bombers in the past.

The alleged bomber came from Germany via Greek islands, according to Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.

Mr. Sanli was jailed following his conviction in connection with a terror attack on a military recreational facility in Istanbul in 1997, and was released from prison in 2001, according to the Turkish Interior Ministry.

The attack comes against the backdrop of the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, assault on U.S. posts in Benghazi, Libya. In the aftermath of that attack, in which four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens were killed, lawmakers faulted State Department security procedures, while officials there said Congress had cut its security budgets.

 

 

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the fact that the bomber struck at a perimeter checkpoint showed the post in Turkey had sufficient protection. “The level of security protection at our facility in Ankara ensured that there were not significantly more deaths and injuries,” she said. She said the checkpoint where the blast occurred was “far from the main building.”

Two other guards were “shaken up” in Friday’s attack, the U.S. official said, and a Turkish visitor was in serious condition. Several U.S. and Turkish staff members at the embassy were struck by flying debris and were released after treatment at an embassy clinic.

The Ankara blast occurred on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s last day on the job. John Kerry is taking over as the chief U.S. diplomat, leaving his seat as a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry’s staff was briefed as quickly as State Department officials received information, Ms. Nuland said.

Mrs. Clinton spoke by phone with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and with U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone, Ms. Nuland said. She also spoke with senior embassy staffers.

In addition to declaring the blast a terrorist attack, the State Department said the incident illustrates the need for congressional funding for improvements in diplomatic security. Ms. Nuland said that the Ankara post has been steadily upgraded over the past decade, but that it is a 1950s building due to be upgraded.

“Ankara is one of the posts that is due for a completely new embassy compound in the future, and it is one of the posts that will go on the lists if the department gets the money that we are looking from the Congress for security,” she said.

Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chairman of the House foreign-affairs committee, said the bombing in Turkey is another reminder of the threat against U.S. interests abroad. “Coming after Benghazi, it underscores the need for a comprehensive review of security at our diplomatic posts,” he said. “The committee stands ready to assist the State Department in protecting our diplomats.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who was especially critical of the State Department over the Benghazi attack, said reports on Friday indicated that protective measures in place in Ankara succeeded in limiting deaths and injuries, and showed the importance of physical security standards.

“Unfortunately, it confirms in my mind … that these were the kinds of physical security standards that should have been in place in Benghazi before the September 11, 2012 attack,” she said.

In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the attack showed a need for international cooperation against terrorism and was aimed at disturbing Turkey’s “peace and prosperity.”

 

 

Yavuz Ozden/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

WSJ’s Emre Peker joins the News Hub to discuss an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Turkey by a suicide bomber. Reports list one casualty and two additional people as injured. Photo: AP Images.

Analysts said early evidence suggested the attack bears little resemblance to the Libya assault. “This attack looks amateurish and not very well organized. It seems very different from the Benghazi operation,” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat in Istanbul, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Analysts said that militant leftist groups, although marginal, have mobilized against Ankara’s cooperation with its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies and Washington during the Syria crisis. Some 50 alleged members of the DHKP-C, including nine lawyers who have represented it, were detained in a recent police operation.

Turkish media reported that DHKP-C members in January assaulted German troops they mistook for U.S. soldiers who were accompanying a Patriot-missile battery in southern Turkey set to be deployed along the Syrian border.

“Although such groups represent a marginal political current, they could have an outsized impact. Iranian and Russian media have covered these incidents extensively in order to feed an anti-NATO slant and increase Ankara’s political costs for supporting the Syrian opposition,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkey Research Program at the Washington Institute, a think tank. “This narrative could spur further unrest in Turkey, amplifying perceptions of instability.”

The U.S. moved its consulate in Istanbul to a safer location on top of a hill from a busy and cramped downtown district after a 2003 al Qaeda attack on the U.K. consulate a few blocks away. In four bombings during November 2003, the terrorist organization targeted two synagogues, the British consulate and the local headquarters  killing 67 people.

In 2008, three Turkish nationals fired on the policemen outside the U.S. Istanbul consulate, killing three officers. All three assailants were shot dead at the scene. There was speculation that the attackers were al Qaeda members, but local authorities never confirmed that, saying only that they were terrorists.

 

—Peter Nicholas and Siobhan Gorman in Washington contributed to this article. (Feb.2, 2013)

 

Peru lets paroled Berenson go to US for holidays

A Peruvian court has authorized American Lori Berenson who spent 15 years in jail over her ties with leftist guerrillas to go to the United States for the holidays, after her 2010 release on parole.

Berenson will be allowed to travel to the United States any time through January 11, an appeals court ruled Thursday, overturning a lower court’s decision, her husband and lawyer Anibal Apari told local media.

New York-born Berenson, 42, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1995 for having collaborated with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) leftist guerrilla group.

Berenson was convicted of participating in a foiled MRTA plot to seize control of Peru’s congress and take lawmakers hostage. She allegedly used her press credentials to gather information used to prepare for the takeover.

Despite her support for the MRTA, Berenson has repeatedly denied she was involved in any acts of violence.

She was released on parole last year after spending 15 years in prison, but Peruvian law requires Berenson to live in Lima for the remainder of her sentence.

The appeals court granted Berenson’s request for holiday leave, saying her travels to the United States “would not prevent her from serving the remainder of her sentence.”

Anti-terror prosecutor Julio Galindo denounced the ruling, saying, “There is no guarantee that this former MRTA member will return to Peru.”

Berenson’s 2010 release sparked a public outcry in Peru, where she is remembered as a defiant foreigner raising her fist and chanting leftist slogans during her trial in 1995 — a tirade broadcast on television.

The MRTA has since disintegrated, with most of its members either dead or in prison following a fierce government crackdown on leftist guerrilla groups in the 1990s under then president Alberto Fujimori.

It gained notoriety for taking over the Japanese ambassador’s Lima residence in December 1996, taking 72 hostages. The standoff lasted four months until a raid that left 14 rebels and one hostage dead.

MRTA was less well known than the Shining Path, another guerrilla group that has largely been eliminated.

* AFP, 12/16/2011

 

Bin Laden’s ghost

Repressive Arab regimes and their ideologies fuelled bin Laden and his supporters, and his death should wake them up.

Osama bin Laden is a product of Wahhabi teachings [GALLO/GETTY]
Osama bin Laden’s death in his Pakistani hiding place is like the removal of a tumour from the Muslim world. But aggressive follow-up therapy will be required to prevent the remaining al-Qaeda cells from metastasising by acquiring more adherents who believe in violence to achieve the ‘purification’ and empowerment of Islam.

Fortunately, bin Laden’s death comes at the very moment when much of the Islamic world is being convulsed by the treatment that bin Laden’s brand of fanaticism requires: the Arab Spring, with its demands for democratic empowerment (and the absence of demands, at least so far, for the type of Islamic rule that al-Qaeda sought to impose).

But can the nascent democracies being built in Egypt and Tunisia, and sought in Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, see off the threats posed by Islamic extremists? In particular, can it defeat the Salafi/Wahhabi thought that has long nurtured Osama bin Laden and his ilk, and which remains the professed and protected ideology of Saudi Arabia?

The fact is that before the US operation to kill bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s symbolic head, the emerging democratic Arab revolutions had already, in just a few short months, done as much to marginalise and weaken his terrorist movement in the Islamic world as the war on terror had achieved in a decade. Those revolutions, whatever their ultimate outcome, have exposed the philosophy and behaviour of bin Laden and his followers as not only illegitimate and inhumane, but actually inept at achieving better conditions for ordinary Muslims.

What millions of Arabs were saying as they stood united in peaceful protest was that their way of achieving Arab and Islamic dignity is far less costly in human terms. More importantly, their way will ultimately achieve the type of dignity that people really want, as opposed to the unending wars of terror to rebuild the caliphate that Bin Laden promised.

After all, the protesters of the Arab Spring did not need to use – and abuse – Islam to achieve their ends. They did not wait for God to change their condition, but took the initiative by peacefully confronting their oppressors. The Arab revolutions mark the emergence of a pluralist, post-Islamist banner for the faithful. Indeed, the only people to introduce religion into the protests have been rulers, such as those in Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria, who have tried to use fear of the Shia or Sunni “other” to continue to divide and misrule their societies.

Bin Laden’s era

Now that the US has eradicated bin Laden’s physical presence, it needs to stop delaying the rest of the therapeutic process. For the US has been selectively – and short-sightedly – irradiating only parts of the cancer that al-Qaeda represents, while leaving the malignant growth of Saudi Wahabism and Salafism untouched. Indeed, despite the decade of the West’s war on terror, and Saudi Arabia’s longer-term alliance with the US, the Kingdom’s Wahhabi religious establishment has continued to bankroll Islamic extremist ideologies around the world.

Bin Laden, born, raised, and educated in Saudi Arabia, is a product of this pervasive ideology. He was no religious innovator; he was a product of Wahhabism, and later was exported by the Wahhabi regime as a jihadist.

During the 1980’s, Saudi Arabia spent $75 bn for the propagation of Wahhabism, funding schools, mosques, and charities throughout the Islamic world, from Pakistan to Afghanistan, Yemen, Algeria, and beyond. The Saudis continued such programs after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and even after they discovered that “the Call” is uncontrollable, owing to the technologies of globalisation. Not surprisingly, the creation of a transnational Islamic political movement, boosted by thousands of underground jihadi websites, has blown back into the Kingdom.

Like the hijackers of 9/11, who were also Saudi/Wahhabi ideological exports (15 of the 19 men who carried out those terror attacks were chosen by bin Laden because they shared the same Saudi descent and education as he), Saudi Arabia’s reserve army of potential terrorists remains, because the Wahhabi factory of fanatical ideas remains intact.

So the real battle has not been with bin Laden, but with that Saudi state-supported ideology factory. Bin Laden merely reflected the entrenched violence of the Kingdom’s official ideology.

Bin Laden’s eradication may strip some dictators, from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, of the main justification they have used for their decades of repression. But the US knows perfectly well that al-Qaeda is an enemy of convenience for Saleh and other American allies in the region, and that in many cases, terrorism has been used as a pretext to repress reform. Indeed, now the US is encouraging repression of the Arab Spring in Yemen and Bahrain, where official security forces routinely kill peaceful protesters calling for democracy and human rights.

Al-Qaeda and democracy cannot coexist. Indeed, bin Laden’s death should open the international community’s eyes to the source of his movement: repressive Arab regimes and their extremist ideologies. Otherwise, his example will continue to haunt the world.

Mai Yamani’s most recent book is Cradle of Islam.

A version of this article first appeared on Project Syndicate.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera /05 May 2011

 

Beyond Osama bin Laden

Terrorism will not end with bin Laden’s death without significant political and economic change in the Middle East.

The success of the revolution in Egypt and the momentum of others across the Middle East create a unique opportunity for positive change [GALLO/GETTY]
The killing of Osama bin Laden by United States special forces constitutes a significant victory over global terrorism. But it is a milestone, not a turning point, in what remains an ongoing struggle with no foreseeable end.

The significance of what was accomplished stems in part from bin Laden’s symbolic importance. He has been an icon, representing the ability to strike with success against the US and the West. That icon has now been destroyed.

Another positive consequence is the demonstrated effect of counter-terrorism operations carried out by US soldiers. As a result, some terrorists, one hopes, will decide to become former terrorists – and some young radicals might now think twice before deciding to become terrorists in the first place.

But any celebration needs to be tempered by certain realities. Bin Laden’s demise, as welcome as it is, should in no way be equated with the demise of terrorism.

Terrorism is a decentralised phenomenon – in its funding, planning, and execution. Removing bin Laden does not end the terrorist threat. There are successors, starting with Ayman al-Zawahiri in al-Qaeda, as well as in autonomous groups operating out of Yemen, Somalia, and other countries. So terrorism will continue. Indeed, it could even grow somewhat worse in the short run, as there are sure to be those who will want to show that they can still strike against the West.

Prevention

The best parallel that I can think of when it comes to understanding terrorism and how to deal with it is disease. There are steps that can and should be taken to attack or neutralise certain types of viruses or bacteria; to reduce vulnerability to infection; and to reduce the consequences of infection if, despite all of our efforts, we become ill. Disease is not something that can be eliminated, but often it can be managed.

There are obvious parallels with terrorism. As we have recently witnessed, terrorists can be attacked and stopped before they can cause harm; individuals and countries can be defended; and societies can take steps to bolster their resilience when they are successfully attacked, as on occasion they inevitably will be. These elements of a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy can reduce the threat to manageable, or at least tolerable, levels.

But tolerable is not good enough when it comes to protecting innocent life. We want to do better. The answer is to be found in the realm of prevention. More must be done to interrupt the recruitment of terrorists, thereby reducing the threat before it materialises.

Most terrorists today are young and male. And, while the overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslims are not terrorists, many of the world’s terrorists are Muslim. It would help enormously in this regard if Arab and Muslim political leaders spoke out against the intentional killing of men, women, and children by anyone or any group for political purposes. There is also a pivotal role here for religious leaders, educators, and parents. Terrorism must be stripped of any legitimacy that it may be viewed as having.

‘Arab Spring’

One potential positive development here stems from the political changes that we are seeing in many parts of the Middle East. There is a greater chance than before that young people will become more integrated in their own societies (and less susceptible to the appeal of extremism) if they enjoy greater political and economic opportunity.

Pakistan will most likely prove critical in determining the future prevalence of terrorism. Unfortunately, while it is home to some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists, it is decidedly less than a full partner in the struggle against it. Some parts of the Pakistani government are sympathetic to terrorism and unwilling to act against it; other parts simply lack the capacity to act against it effectively.

Capacity is much easier to provide than will. The outside world can and should continue to provide assistance to help Pakistan acquire the strength and skills required to tackle modern-day terrorists.

But no amount of external assistance can compensate for a lack of motivation and commitment. Pakistani leaders must choose once and for all. It is not enough to be a limited partner in the struggle against terror; Pakistan needs to become a full partner.

There will be Pakistanis who protest against the recent American military action, arguing that it violated Pakistan’s sovereignty. But sovereignty is not an absolute; it involves obligations as well as rights. Pakistanis must understand that they will forfeit some of those rights if they do not meet their obligation to ensure that their territory is not used to shelter terrorists.

If things do not change, the sort of independent military operation carried out by US soldiers will become less the exception than the rule. This is not nearly as desirable an outcome as Pakistan joining what should be a common international effort. At stake is not only assistance, but Pakistan’s own future, for, in the absence of genuine commitment to counter-terrorism, it is only a matter of time before the country falls victim to the infection that it refuses to treat.

Richard N. Haass, formerly director of Policy Planning in the US State Department, is president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The article was first published by Project Syndicate.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera/05 May 2011

 

After Osama, China fears the next target

Although relieved with bin Laden’s death, many Chinese are scared where Washington will focus its attention next.

The Chinese reaction to the circumstances surrounding Osama bin Laden’s death were mixed with admiration for a successful covert operation, and fear for where Washington would start focusing its attention next [EPA]
The United States’ most vilified terrorist foe has been dead only a week but China is already haunted by the phantom of the next big US enemy. Almost simultaneously with the spread of the news of Osama bin Laden’s death in a covert US operation in Pakistan, Chinese analysts had begun the guessing game of where Washington will focus its attention next.

“Why didn’t they catch him alive?” speculated military affairs analyst Guo Xuan. “Because he was no longer needed as an excuse for Washington to take the anti-terror war outside of the US borders. It is because of bin Laden that the US were allowed to increase their strategic presence in many places around the world as never before. But Libya and NATO’s attack there have changed the game. They (the US) no longer need bin Laden to assert their authority.”

Even before bin Laden’s death, Beijing had expressed concern that the US strategists are diverting their attention from the war on terror to containing the rise of China and other emerging economies.

A long article on Libya stalemate published by the editor of Contemporary International Relations magazine, Lin Limin, argued that the US has been unwilling to take the lead role in the Libya conflict because it has “finally woken up to the fact that its main reason to worry are the emerging countries.

“If the US position on Libya is not only a tactical stance but a strategic one and they have really come to understand that they should not waste military power and energy in numerous directions ‘spreading democracy’ all over the world but should begin focusing their attention on the rise of emerging countries, then we do have a reason to worry,” Lin argued.

The US presence in Afghanistan has always been a controversial one for Chinese politicians. China joined the global war on terror because bin Laden’s political agenda of setting up an Arab caliphate and sponsoring terrorism presented a direct threat to its restive Muslim north-western region of Xinjiang. But Beijing has been suspicious of the US intentions, worrying that Washington is pursuing a broader agenda for long-term presence in the region, which China regards as its backyard.

Beijing officially hailed the killing of the terrorist leader by the US as “a milestone and a positive development for the international anti-terrorism efforts”.

“Terrorism is the common enemy of the international community. China has also been a victim of terrorism,” foreign ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying after bin Laden’s death.

She was referring to Xinjiang, where Muslim separatists have been waging a bloody insurgency against Chinese rule. Beijing had linked the global war against terror with its struggle to quell separatist sentiments in the Muslim region, insisting insurgents are aided from outside.

Chinese public reaction to the news of bin Laden’s death has mixed reluctant admiration at the success of the secret mission played out reportedly on screens in front of US president Barack Obama with outright fear over what comes next.

“The whole thing seemed like an intelligence operation lifted straight out of ’24’ (a TV series about US counter-terrorism agents),” said Huang Mei, a TV producer with barely concealed awe. “How advanced and confident they must be to ask their president to watch the killing mission on screens live!”

But some see bin Laden’s demise as a blow to efforts to promote a school of Anti-American thought.

“The great anti-America fighter bin Laden was murdered by the US! How sad!” wrote one commenter on Sina’s popular Weibo micro-blogging site.

“Is this real? Excellent!” wrote another of the news. “Now the only terrorist left is the United States!”

Commentators have begun analysing the political capital reaped by Obama and preparing for the possibility that he may win a second term in office. Writing in Beijing’s Xinjing Bao, commentator Chen Bing predicted the US will exploit the death of bin Laden to expand its influence in the Middle East and bring the Arab spring to an end.

“What a great way to issue a warning to all anti-American politicians in the region,” Chen said. “And a declaration that it (the US) intends to mould the Middle East according to its own design.”

A version of this article first appeared on Inter Press Service news agency.

* Source: IPS/06 May 2011

 

Here’s a Woman Fighting Terrorism. With Microloans.

LAHORE, Pakistan: An old friend of mine here fights terrorists, but not the way you’re thinking. She could barely defeat a truculent child in hand-to-hand combat, and if she ever picked up an AK-47 — well, you’d pray it was unloaded.

Roshaneh Zafar is an American- educated banker who fights extremism with microfinance. She has dedicated her life to empowering some of Pakistan’s most impoverished women and giving them the tools to run businesses of their own. The United States should learn from warriors like her.
Bullets and drones may kill terrorists, but Roshaneh creates jobs and educational opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people — draining the swamps that breed terrorists.

“Charity is limited, but capitalism isn’t,” Roshaneh said. “If you want to change the world, you need market-based solutions.” That’s the point of microfinance — typically, lending very poor people small amounts of money so that they can buy a rickshaw or raw materials and start a tiny business.
Roshaneh grew up in elite circles here in Lahore and studied business at the Wharton School and economics at Yale. After a stint at the World Bank, she returned to Pakistan in 1996 to start her microfinance organization. She called it the Kashf Foundation.
Everybody thought Roshaneh was nuts. And at first nothing went right. The poor refused to borrow. Or if they borrowed, they didn’t repay their loans.

But Roshaneh persisted, and today Kashf has 152 branches around the country. It has dispersed more than $200 million to more than 300,000 families. Now Roshaneh is moving into microsavings, to help the poor build assets, as well as programs to train the poor to run businesses more efficiently. She is even thinking of expanding into schools for the poor.
Microfinance is sometimes oversold as a silver bullet — which it’s not. Careful follow-up studies suggest that gains from microloans are often quite modest.
Some borrowers squander money or start businesses that fail. Some micro-lenders tarnish the field because they’re incompetent, and others because they rake in profits with sky-high loan rates. Microfinance has also generally been less successful in Africa than in South Asia.

Yet done right, microfinance can make a significant difference. An outside evaluation found that after four years, Kashf borrowers are more likely than many others to enjoy improved economic conditions — and that’s what I’ve seen over the years as I’ve visited Kashf borrowers.
On this trip, I met a woman named Parveen Baji, who says she never attended a day of school and until recently was completely illiterate. She had 14 children, but five died.
Ms. Parveen’s husband, who also never attended school, regularly beat her and spent the family savings on narcotics, she says. The family’s only possessions were four cots on which they slept, crammed three or four to a cot, in a rented apartment.

“One night all my children were hungry,” she remembered. “I sent my daughter to ask for food from a neighbor. And the neighbor said, ‘you’ve become a beggar,’ and refused.”
Then Ms. Parveen got a $70 loan from Kashf and started a jewelry and cosmetics business, buying in bulk and selling to local shops. Ms. Parveen couldn’t read the labels, but she memorized which bottle was which. As her business thrived, she began to struggle to learn reading and arithmetic — and proved herself an ace student. I fired math problems at her, and she dazzled me with her quick responses.

Ms. Parveen began to start new businesses, even building a laundry that she put her husband in charge of to keep him busy. He no longer beats her, she says, and when I interviewed him separately he seemed a little awed by her.
Eventually, Ms. Parveen started a restaurant and catering business that now has eight employees, including some of her daughters. She bought a home and has put some of her children through high school — and a son, the brightest student, through college. She has just paid $5,800 for a permit for him to move to London to take a health sector job.
Ms. Parveen tried to look modest as she told me this, but she failed. She was beaming and shaking her head in wonder as she watched her son speak English with me, dazzled at the thought that she was dispatching her university-educated son to Europe. “Microfinance has changed my life,” she said simply.

That’s an unusual success story. But the larger message is universal: helping people start businesses, create jobs and support education is a potent way to undermine extremism.
We Americans overinvest in firepower to defeat extremism and underinvest in development, and so we could learn something useful from Roshaneh. The toolkit to fight terrorism includes not only missiles but also microfinance and economic opportunity.
The antonym of “militant” is often “job.”

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (NYT), November 13, 2010