Month: July 2011

In yet another dose of doublespeak from the US military, Admiral Mike Mullen said of the recent increase in violence in southern Afghanistan,

There are going to be these kinds of spikes, in particular these spectacular assassinations. There are some who believe this is all they can do, given the challenges that the Taliban have faced over the course of the last couple of seasons.

So rather than acknowledging that the United States still faces a surmountable enemy, the military establishment has spun the upswing in attacks on NATO forces and Afghan officials as a last resort tactic of the Taliban fighters. The military is fearful, however, that these attacks will “erode citizens’ confidence in the Afghan government’s ability to protect its own people, and undercut U.S. efforts to turn security over to the Afghans.”

As has been seen many times during America’s fruitless war in Afghanistan, the Afghan army, intelligence, and police have proven to be woefully corrupt and inept. Just a few weeks ago, the Afghan military and police were left embarrassed as they failed to stop a suicide bombing and gun fight at the Intercontinental Hotel where Afghan and other international leaders were holding a conference. After being unable to control the situation, NATO forces were requested to put an end to the situation which was done via an all out assault using helicopters and ground forces.

Afghan distrust of the American installed, Kabul government runs deep. As Afghanistan is a tribal country, this distrust and lack of loyalty to the central government is ingrained into the minds of the Afghan people. The Afghan government’s complicity in the American led war, as well as rampant corruption and a remarkably incompetent central government, signals that the Afghan people will not have a radical shift in their views anytime soon.

These attacks by the Afghan Taliban and other associated groups are not tactics of last resort, but strategic decisions to make a mockery of what little hope there is left in winning the Afghan war on terror. Additionally, if such attacks continue, and there is no sign that they will stop otherwise except during the historical winter lull, Afghanistan will become just like Iraq. Deadlines for troop withdrawals will come and go, but no meaningful withdrawals will be made. Expect for America’s longest war in its history to go on well past the 2014 deadline, and don’t be surprised if the American military makes every effort to stay there as long as possible as is being done in Iraq today.

Human Rights Watch recently drew our attention to a recent spate of killings by armed groups in Colombia, gone virtually unreported here. On July 2, members of the Marxist guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) murdered seven civilians. FARC is very much against the U.S.-supported government of Colombia and has been wreaking havoc on the people for a very long time, receiving most of their funding from the lucrative drug trade. But incidents like the one on June 25, wherein eight civilians were murdered and some in late June and early July, where armed men shot and killed numerous indigenous leaders, have been attributed to disparate successor groups to right-wing paramilitaries formerly associated with the United Self-Defense Forces of Columbia (AUC). The successor groups to the AUC “regularly commit massacres, killings, forced displacement, rape, and extortion, and create a threatening atmosphere in the communities they control” often targeting “human rights defenders, trade unionists, victims of the paramilitaries who are seeking justice, and community members who do not follow their orders.” Seventeen massacres, “resulting in 76 deaths, were reported between January and May,” according to Human Rights Watch. “Successor groups,” said the report, “contributed to a 34 percent increase in massacres in 2010, the highest annual total since 2005.”

Why are the rising AUC-tied atrocities particularly germane to the concern of Americans? Because they are intricately tied with the Colombian government which is enthusiastically supported by the U.S. government. Plan Colombia, of course, is a U.S. plan to concentrate military and counter-narcotics cooperation and aid to Colombia under the pretext of fighting the Drug War and left-wing guerrilla groups (like FARC). Even if it means supporting equally vicious right-wing terrorists and perpetuating problems with the drug trade.

The most infamous widespread offense as of late regarding the Colombian government’s tolerance of and even collusion with these paramilitary groups was the para-political scandal, summarized well in this Congressional Research Service report (starting on page 15).

Virtually the entire government had ties to these terrorist groups, and many powerful elements within the government attempted to obstruct the criminal investigations addressing those ties. But it goes deeper than just ties with corrupt politicians. The Colombian police forces ignore the crimes committed by these groups and allow them to operate freely in various communities.

In Nariño, for example, one man complained that “the Black Eagles interrogate us, with the police 20 meters away… [Y]ou can’t trust the army or police because they’re practically with the guys.” In Urabá, a former official said the police in one town appeared to work with the successor groups: “It’s all very evident… The police control the entry and exit [of town] and … they share intelligence.” In Meta, an official said he received “constant complaints that the army threatens people, talking about how ‘the Cuchillos’ [the main successor group in the region] are coming… In some cases, the army leaves and the Cuchillos come in.”

Which introduces the other terrorist element in Colombia being directly supported by the U.S. government: the Colombian military. Due to an army policy which rewarded high body counts of leftist guerrillas, Colombian soldiers engaged in systematic massacres of Colombian civilians, dressing their dead bodies in the garb of the guerrilla fighters in order to inflate military body counts. The Prosecutor General’s human right’s team investigated “more than 1,200 cases of extrajudicial executions,” prompting the then-U.N. Special Rapporteur Philip Alston to write in 2009 that “the sheer number of cases, their geographic spread, and the diversity of military units implicated, indicate that these killings were carried out in a more or less systematic fashion by significant elements within the military” (CRS report, p 18-19).

The drug war aspects of this U.S. funded campaign of atrocities is similarly troubling. Programs of aerial eradication of drug crops (a crime in and of itself) give the impression this is really about drugs, but the fact that these U.S. supported terrorist groups receive probably a majority of their revenues from the drug trade, being “directly involved in processing cocaine and exporting cocaine from Colombia,” counters against that impression.

There are, however, both military and economic benefits to the U.S. government which apparently outweigh the nightmarish suffering being endured by the Colombian people for well over a decade. Initially, legislation in support of Plan Colombia was passed as part of the Military Construction Appropriations Act of 2001 and

On October 30, 2009, the United States and Colombia signed an agreement to provide the United States access to seven military facilities in Colombia to conduct joint counternarcotics and anti- terrorism operations over a 10-year period. The seven facilities include three Colombian air force bases at Palanquero, Apiay, and Malambo; two naval bases; and two army installations (CRS, p 32).

At the same time, the Obama administration has stepped up efforts to exploit Colombia’s oil production for the benefit of U.S.-based corporations.

The humanitarian situation in Colombia is dire. But not only is it barely reported here in the U.S., but Obama has received exactly zero flack for being a party to these ongoing atrocities. A popular opening phrase here at Antiwar.com has become, “depending on how you qualify a war…” Well perhaps Colombia ought to be tagged on that growing list of countries our interventionist in chief is terrorizing through imperial policy.

As I’ve written earlier, al-Shabaab is competing for the title of “Terror Group of the Month” with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Thanks to America’s collective, short-term memory loss, the Underwear Bomber and printer bomb plot have been all but forgotten. Al-Shabaab is the young, rising star. Pushing it to further prominence was a congressional report released today that claimed that 40 Muslim Americans have joined the fight in Somalia, 15 of which have been killed:

A report by his [Rep. Peter King] staff found that more than 40 Muslim Americans and 20 Canadians have been recruited to al Shabaab and at least 15 Americans were killed in fighting, including three suicide bombers.

“Senior U.S. counterterror officials have told the committee they are very concerned about individuals they have not identified who have fallen in with al-Shabaab during trips to Somalia, who could return to the U.S. undetected,” King said during a hearing he convened on al Shabaab.

Of the more than 40 Americans who have joined the cause, as many as 21 are believed to still be at large and unaccounted for, according to the staff report.

While the merits of this report and its accuracy can be debated, and will be with further information, what cannot be debated is al-Shabaab’s rise to notoriety. Whether it be earning the title of radicalizing America’s first ever suicide bomber or banning aid agencies from helping victims of the Horn of Africa’s record drought, the radical Islamist group is slowly earning its boogeyman status.

The recent drone strikes and the discovery of yet another secret, American prison in Mogadishu suggests that American security officials deem al-Shabaab to be a serious threat and Somalia to be a hotbed for terrorism. Perhaps they are also trying to figure out how al-Shabaab, much less glorious than its counterpart, al-Qaeda, has been so successful at recruiting American citizens. Although their motives have not been made explicitly clear, the recent surge in American activity in the stateless country is troubling.

Then again, Somalia would be an extremely valuable asset for the United States. The lack of any effective, central government would give American officials and proxies operating there even more impunity than they experience throughout the world. Additionally, its location, a stones throw away from the Arabian peninsula and in the backyard of Mogadishu, would allow for yet another point to monitor terrorism in East Africa and the Middle East.

Just as a reminder, al-Shabaab has only once attacked outside of Somalia.

The target: Uganda. The justification: foreign intervention.

A couple weeks ago, Human Right Watch issued a report calling for a criminal investigation of Bush administration officials for the illegal regime of torture and detainee mistreatment implemented following the attack of September 11th. The report recommends the investigation of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet, but also should include an examination of “the actions of the executive branch, the CIA, the military, and Congress” to find all those responsible.

Bravo, I say. This report has been and will almost certainly continue to be entirely ignored by the media and the political class, but in my mind, beginning to prosecute those responsible for the torture regime implemented in the Bush years ought to the be top priority at this point. Still, somehow the Human Rights Watch report does not go far enough.

The report focuses on investigations of Bush era abuses and individuals For the most part, the Obama administration appears in the report as having neglected its responsibility to enforce the law and initiate these criminal investigations. The extent of holding his predecessors accountable for these horrible crimes came in 2009 when Eric Holder appointed US Attorney John Durham to investigate detainee abuse but limited the probe to “unauthorized” acts, effectively eliminating any possibility of prosecuting Bush officials who authorized torture. “The Obama administration has failed to meet US obligations under the Convention against Torture to investigate acts of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees,” the report reads.

The reason this is simply not up to par (as admirable as I think the report is), is because it calls very little if any attention to the fact that Obama has continued many Bush era detainee abuses. As I wrote here, “not only has Obama decreed such ‘looking back’ not take place, he has continued the abuse and outlawry himself.” In the black site run by U.S. Special Operations forces adjacent to Bagram facilities, reports of “sleep deprivation, holding detainees in cold cells, forced nudity, physical abuse, detaining individuals in isolation cells for longer than 30 days, and restricting the access of the International Committee of the Red Cross” have been apparent since Obama took office. Two teenagers even, Issa Mohammad, then 17, and Abdul Rashid, who said he was younger than 16, told the Washington Post that they were subjected to all of these abuses, including being punched and slapped in the face. One prisoner at this site, which the US military denied even existed, lost an entire row of teeth from being hit in the face with the butt of gun by an American soldier while in custody. This is all in addition to the fact that the Obama administration has denied detainees at both Guantanamo and Bagram the right to challenge their detention. Furthermore, Obama has more than just failed to fully commit to criminal investigations of Bush crimes, he has actively protected these Bush officials from judicial scrutiny by invoking states secrets privileges as well as pressuring other governments to stop investigating these crimes, which ought to be considered obstruction of justice.

Clearly this is enough to issue a report calling for the investigation of Obama era detainee abuse as well, right?