More promises on Palestine, but this time Bush has his reputation on the block

The meetings between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and US President George Bush have yielded the promise of immediate talks on a Palestinian nation between Israel and Palestinian leaders, with a final treaty before the end of next year.

"We meet to lay the foundations for the establishment of a new nation, a democratic Palestinian state that will live side by side with Israel in peace and security," Bush said at a news conference in Annapolis, Md., according to this report in the Los Angeles Times.

Abbas will not be taking a damp squib to his fellow Palestinians back in Palestine. Nor will Hamas be able to say that Abbas was taken down the garden path by Olmert and Bush. The prospects for peace in the Middle East are very real.

Unfortunately the chances that the peace talks may be grounded on one of the myriad disputes surrounding the Middle East issue are still high.

The Annapolis agreement is about deciding to talk and make peace, but did not cover any of the substantive issues that divide Palestinians and Israelis. In this sense it is not a lot different from previous confidence building exercises, mediated by the Americans.

There are the issues of boundaries to be discussed, and fought over both at the negotiating table and on the ground. Will Jerusalem be partitioned or stay with Israel ? What will happen to the Israeli settlements once the new nation is formed ? Will Palestine be allowed to run its own defense ? Will Israel be recognized as a Jewish state or will the Palestinian diaspora demand the right to return ?

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday that he will not back down on his demand that East Jerusalem be named the capital of any future Palestinian state. Nor will he relent on his calls for Israel to dismantle its outposts in the West Bank, he said, according to this report in CNN.

These irksome issues have been pushed under the carpet for the grand-standing this week. For President Bush this is perhaps his last chance as President to prove his statesmanship, and win a Nobel Prize, as some wags put it. For Abbas it could be a matter of his own and Fatah’s survival that the negotiations succeed without him seeing to concede too much. As for the Israelis, they have to start delivering, rather than look for excuses to delay a resolution. There is a lot of hard work, and tough decisions for all three leaders in the days ahead.

Pakistan developments a threat to India

India has responded with diplomatic propriety to the imposition of emergency on Saturday in Pakistan. Terming as "unfortunate" the developments in Pakistan where emergency has been declared, Defense Minister, A K Antony, on Sunday said a stable government in Islamabad was good for that country as well as for India, according to this report in The Hindu newspaper.

Indian officials are however in private worried about the impact of the emergency on the Talibanization of Pakistan, and the overall growth of fundamentalism in that country.

The imposition of emergency rule, and the marginalization of both political parties and institutions like the judiciary, leaves Pakistan in a political vacuum that the fundamentalists will try to fill.

The fundamentalist elements, besides targeting Afghanistan, will also target India, stepping up its demand for an independent Kashmir. Kashmir is now partially under Pakistani control with the rest of the territory under Indian control.

The Indian government has maintained in the past that terrorist attacks in India were often perpetrated by Pakistanis with support from intelligence agencies and the military in Pakistan. The intelligence agencies were also accused of running training camps for separatists.

The fundamentalists in Pakistan are likely to attempt to move beyond the Kashmiri separatist agenda to a broader fundamentalist agenda in India. India has a large Muslim population who the fundamentalists in Pakistan would want to bring to their fold.

The other danger is that fundamentalists have already infiltrated the army and the intelligence agencies in Pakistan. While Musharraf’s government continues to receive US aid, positioning itself as an ally in the “war against terror”, the army and the intelligence agencies may subvert his agenda, and give the terrorists a wink and a nod both for their activities in North West Frontier province, and in Kashmir and the rest of India.

In an interview to ABC News, former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto said: “There's a very slim line between what are called Musharraf's people and the terrorists who tried to kill me in Karachi”. Here is a link to the interview.

India’s options are few. As in the past its view will not count in international diplomacy as long as the US is intent on backing Musharraf. Pakistan was viewed by the US as an ally against terror, even though India had frequently expressed concerns about Pakistan stoking cross-border terrorism.

What Pakistan does in Kashmir does not concern the US a lot, as it is not seen as an important theatre in its war against terror. The US is concerned about the presence of Al Qaeda in the North West Frontier province, and there Musharraf holds the cards.

Related articles:
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US impotent before “buddy” Musharraf

Who will rein in the CIA if not the Supreme Court ?

By refusing to hear the appeal from Khaled El-Masri, an illegal detainee of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), the US Supreme Court may have passed up an opportunity to rein in the CIA, and restore faith in the American way of life. El-Masri had appealed after the decision of lower courts not to hear his case against the CIA on national security grounds.

Last week, the New York Times revealed that a 2005 Justice Department memo endorsed interrogation techniques were some of the harshest ever used by the CIA. They included head-slapping, exposure to freezing temperatures and simulated drowning, known as water-boarding.

That was torture by any interpretation of the term, but frankly pales in its audacity and brutality when compared to the alleged torture of El-Masri under a CIA program called “extraordinary rendition”.

To get around US federal and international conventions, the CIA is said to have invented the concept of “extraordinary rendition”, the unlawful kidnapping of foreign citizens, and their transfer to secret prisons in countries that have little regard for human rights and legal niceties.

Suspects are detained and interrogated either by US personnel at US-run detention facilities outside US sovereign territory or, alternatively, are handed over to the custody of foreign agents for interrogation, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In both instances, interrogation methods are employed that do not comport with federal and internationally recognized standards, ACLU added.

El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin, by his account was abducted in Macedonia in 2003 and flown to Afghanistan for interrogation, under the “extraordinary rendition” program. The 44-year-old alleges he was tortured during five months in detention, four months of which were spent in a prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, nicknamed the "salt pit".

On his flight to Afghanistan, he says, he was stripped, beaten, shackled, made to wear "diapers", drugged and chained to the floor of the plane.

By his account, he was finally released in Albania after the Americans realized they had got the wrong man. For a copy of El-Masri’s petition before US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia see here.

There are a number of people kidnapped tortured by the CIA under “extraordinary rendition”, according to civil liberties unions. Some were probably terrorists, but that does not make “extraordinary rendition” justified. If the US and other free countries do not follow norms of fair play, detention, and interrogation, and instead look for subterfuges, they will lose the high moral ground they have taken with regard to the terrorists. The free world is appearing to be just a brutal as the terrorists.

Rather than give the CIA cover under the "state secrets" privilege, US courts should have seized the opportunity to bring some accountability into the CIA and the US government.

There are dangerous man at large, and not all of them are Islamic terrorists. Some of them are in the pay of the US government.

Related article:

They torture prisoners in Myanmar, Iran, and yes the US

Keyloggers in Indian cyber cafés scare liberals

Police in Mumbai, India will soon make it compulsory for cyber cafes to have keyloggers installed that will enable the capture of user activity on public computers at cyber cafes, according to a report from a Mumbai paper.

The move will help police keep a track on terrorists who are increasingly using modern technology to communicate, the report said.

Not unexpectedly, individual rights groups have expressed opposition to the move, saying it will breach privacy, according to Ars Technica

For a country that has seen a large number of terrorist attacks, protecting privacy is a small concern for people when compared to protecting their lives.

People in the country do not also transact a lot online, so fears of theft of credit card or bank information are quite exaggerated.

Mumbai itself has been the victim recently of bomb blasts on trains that killed people by the hundreds. In Hyderabad in south India, terrorist bombs killed a large number of people, including children.

It is also pretty well-documented that terrorists have used mobile phones and the Internet for their violent objectives. Public cyber cafes have provided terrorists the anonymity that a private Internet connection does not. Indian rules do allow police interception of both telephony and Internet communications in the interest of national security. The police have previously tried getting cyber cafes to ask for identity cards from users, but that hasn’t really worked out.

By opposing keylogging that could save lives, left liberals have their priorities misplaced. Reminds me of animal welfare organizations, who oppose killing of stray dogs in Indian cities, even as these dogs have been repeatedly responsible for maiming and killing children.

Honest people don’t have to worry about interception, as long as there are safeguards against misuse of private data. Civil society has to work to make sure that private data collected is not misused. That is where privacy rights organizations and all of us have a role to play.

Also by keylogging cyber cafes in Mumbai alone, the police may force terrorists to move to Mumbai’s suburbs or other cities. The measure will have to be countrywide.

A white Jihadi !!

The arrest in Germany of two white terror suspects this week has demolished stereotypes of jihadi terrorists.

Until now the Jihadi was perceived as a person of West Asian or South Asian extract, fanatically religious, and unable to separate politics from religion.

Now it is that boy next door ! As if the number of west Asian and south Asian immigrants were not a large enough threat, it is the boy next door turning against Western civilization.

What makes a youngster, in the prime of life, strap bombs to his body, head to a crowded place, and blow himself and others around ? Until now this was an almost academic question about some people across the borders, or in some ghetto. Now it could be a question about a youth at home or in the neighborhood.

Rather than ask these questions, Germany is not unexpectedly slipping into knee jerk reflexes like exploring the option of monitoring the activities of German converts to Islam. See this report in Spiegel

It is becoming more clearer that unlike in conventional warfare, the “war against terror” will not be won by a large defense arsenal. Those were to an extent useful against organized terrorist militias in the Middle East like the Taliban, but they are increasingly less so when the new face of terrorism is increasingly an ordinary civilian in your neighborhood – most often a migrant, but sometimes that blond boy across the road..

Our weapons may be superior to that of the terrorist, but pray tell me where do you find him first ? He may be in our neighborhood, in our community. He may even be at the same place of work. And he will show his or her hand at a time suitable, typically when our guard is down.

We could get ham fisted, and back our government to search, intimidate, and harass communities which are suspected to breed terrorists . In the past our governments dropped some bombs hoping to kill terrorists, but also killed a lot of civilians in the bargain, as the Americans did recently in Afghanistan, hoping to kill some of the Taliban in a village. But you can’t do that on native soil.

If we harass and kill a lot of people in trying to catch a terrorist, we are doing a part of his work for him by alienating large parts of the community. If our laws become more draconian, we are again doing his work for him. Most terrorists have always believed that democracy is a sham that conceals an iron, dictatorial hand.

The American decision to house prisoners, suspected to be terrorists, in Guantánamo Bay, without access to the provisions of the Geneva Convention, did not cover America with glory. The fig-leaf of a pretext that Guantánamo was not American territory, and therefore the prisoners were not under the jurisdiction of US law, once again showed that we can expediently abandon democratic principles. Now Germany seems to be veering towards a surveillance policy that could seriously curb personal freedom.

It helps to have an army or police in the background to protect people, repeat to protect people if there is an attack. But soldiers and police armed to the teeth cannot be your diplomats, the carriers of your message of reconciliation.

Politicians and concerned people have to start communicating with suspects and those on the fence, break down the barriers, get around their fears and anxiety. The old ploy of identifying a “bogey-man” and attacking him may bring votes, but will not save lives.

Let us not try to change their way of life, their culture, because that is exactly what they suspect is our hidden agenda. When some of us talk, as does President George Bush, of exporting democracy to countries known to have large terror groups, we may in fact be insulting their way of life. It comes across as patronizing as some colonialists of yore who wanted to bring the colonized in Asia and Africa our of their “backward” living and beliefs into a more European and Christian way of life.

The NGOs should move in with aid, rather than prescriptions. The American people, the Indian people, the Russians, the British people, and all others who have been affected by the threat of terrorism should reach out to these people, talk to them about helping them, talk to them about restoring their dignity, their lives. This is not a job for governments, or the military, but for civil society.

The terrorist is in our midst. That brings up the opportunity for civil society to win them over on mutual terms. It is also a time to look within – what about US and European politics and culture, for example, are driving its young to other religions and culture ?

At the same time civil society cannot harbor the illusions that this will be an easy process. There will always be the more determined terrorists, planning a bomb attack, even while you are talking peace with them. While communicating with terrorists as people, civil society has to also communicate with one another, to keep a discreet eye on unusual activity, unusual objects lying around in our neighborhoods, unusual people.