International peacekeepers clashed with a 30-strong group of armed men in Kabul and captured some wearing the new Afghan police uniform, a spokesman for multinational force said Saturday. Gen. Deen Mohammad Joorat, the Interior Ministry security chief, said the seven men captured were members of the official security force and alleged their intention was to destabilize the interim Afghan administration. Fifth columnists? Now doesn't that come as a surprise? Oh. It doesn't. But it's pretty blatant.
"Six of them belong to the police of the zone and the other one is from the 61st division of the armed forces. They are part of the government," he told Reuters. And it will be really interesting to see what the government does with them, and which part of the government steps forward to ask that they be treated lightly...
"They are under investigation. They pretended they were chasing a group of thieves, but the reality is that they wanted to sabotage the security situation in Kabul. That was for sure their intention," Joorat charged. To what advantage? More important, to whose advantage?
Joorat said all seven men captured in Kabul after the clashes with British soldiers from the Royal Anglian regiment were Hazaras, a Shi'ite ethnic group which is a minority in largely Sunni Afghanistan. The clash occurred in an area of southwest Kabul which is largely populated by Hazaras and has been plagued by gangs of armed robbers believed to be unemployed soldiers of the Northern Alliance which helped oust the Taliban late last year. That's pretty interesting. The Hazaras took it harder than most under the Taliban. They have traditionally close ties with Iran, and the "Iranian delegation" attempting to sow discord in the Herat area turned out to be members of the Hezb-i-Wahdat, the Hazara party. The party's leader, Karim Khalili, has expressed support for the US and distanced himself from Iran. This being Afghanistan we're discussing, it's not unheard of for them to throw in with yesterday's enemy for an immediate tactical advantage. And Khalili probably also has asked himself (and his minions) many times what the status of the Hazaras is going to be under the post-Loya Jirga regime. And on top of that, Hezb-e-Wahdat isn't the only Hazara - or at least Shi'a party, and they have their own ambitions...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
Fighting erupted between the forces of two rival commanders in Afghanistan's Wardak province. Nine people were killed and 12 wounded as the forces of interim government commander Muzaffaruddin and Ghulam Rohani Nangali fought around Maidan Shahr, the capital of Wardak province, west of Kabul. Rockets and heavy artillery were used in overnight fighting and, in addition to the known dead and wounded, 18 Nangali fighters were missing. Nangali controls a large area of the province. There are several of these little fights going on. Makes a body wonder how many of them are connected and who's the connection.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Talks scheduled for this month between Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have been postponed at Baghdad's request, Annan's spokesman said Friday. Iraq sought the delay because it didn't want to distract attention from the crisis in the Middle East, Annan spokesman Fred Eckhard said. The talks had been scheduled for April 18-19 in New York City. No new date for the discussions was set immediately. Is this something that's going around? Actually, it probably is. The Iraqis don't know how the Palestinian thing is going to play out. If it can be settled down, that's a real incentive to go into talk-talk-delay mode until it can be heated up again.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
The U.S. ambassador to South Korea said Saturday Washington is cautiously optimistic about resuming dialogue with North Korea but Pyongyang should make up its mind with a sense of urgency. Thomas Hubbard, who has long experience negotiating with North Korea, told the Cheju Peace Forum conference the United States remained concerned about human rights and food shortages in the North as well as missile proliferation and arms sales. I can see an extended period of cat-mouse discussions about starting talks, which is "fixin' to get ready to form a committee to discuss whether discussions should begin..." They'll be on, they'll be off and eventually the wind will blow strong in one direction or the other or all the North Koreans will have starved to death and there won't be anything to talk about.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Iran, which had built up friendly ties with deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said Saturday the fiery populist's ouster by the military was in part hatched by the United States. State television said Washington was concerned that Venezuela -- the world's No 4 oil exporter and a leading supplier of petroleum products to the U.S. -- would heed a call by Iran to cut oil supplies for one month to countries that support Israel. Noting that Chavez's foreign policies "were contrary to American interests in Latin America" it said the flamboyant ex-paratrooper's fall "reminds one of the American-backed coup by General Augusto Pinochet in Chile in 1973." Hell, yeah. Shoulda thought of that. It didn't matter than no one in Venezuela could stand him, it hadda be the Great Satan. If the ayatollahs keep dwelling on that idea, then it stands to reason that they'll remain in power indefinitely because they've taken every precaution against American plots. It's a very tuneful whistle in the darkness...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said on Saturday that heavily armed Russian troops had begun to pull out of a remote gorge 24 hours after their sudden arrival sparked a diplomatic row. Dozens of Russians in blue peacekeeping helmets and body-armor landed by helicopter on Friday in the Kodori Gorge, a no-man's-land on the edge of Georgia's rebel Abkhazia region, without Tbilisi's permission. The move enraged Georgia's parliament and came just weeks before the planned arrival of U.S. military instructors on a training mission that has infuriated Moscow. But Shevardnadze told reporters that the Russians had now begun to withdraw, honoring a pledge that he negotiated with the Russian commander on Friday after flying out to the zone.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Friday that Moscow had sent the unit to the gorge under an agreement brokered this month requiring Russian and U.N. observers to patrol there. Russia has around 1,500 peacekeepers monitoring a rickety cease-fire established after Abkhaz separatists evicted Georgian troops from the region, on the Black Sea, in a 1992-93 war. But Georgia says that deal made no mention of armed Russian troops. The chief U.N. military observer, Major-General Anis Bajwa, urged Russia to withdraw its troops immediately. Ouch. Clumsy.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
PML (J) and PML (N) have decided to reunify, with the possibility of PML (F) also joining them. An agreement to this effect was reached at during a meeting between PML(N) Chairman Raja Zafarul Haq and PML(J) President Chaudhry Hamid Nasir Chattha, here on Friday. The move appeared to have been launched after the recent meeting of the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), chaired by Chattha in Islamabad, which was divided over the question of supporting or opposing the referendum meant to elect Gen Pervez Musharraf as president for five more years after the October general elections.
The majority of the GDA participants had even proposed that the member parties should join the ARD while others opposed it and threatened to break away if referendum was not supported.
PML(QA) earlier launched an effort for reunification of all factions, excluding the PML(N), and a party team met Pir Pagaro, chief of the PML(F), and Chattha. However, that meeting met with failure as both of them rejected the proposal, criticising the PML(QA) for hobnobbing with the army regime by ditching their political rivals. The PML(QA) not only abandoned the efforts for reunification ever since but also shut the doors of future negotiations with both these factions. Pakistan Muslim League is fragmented into ego-based factions tied to various leaders with varying degrees of rivalry. PML (QA) appears to be in Musharraf's camp - he recently gave a speech wearing a turban. PML (N) is the Nawaz Sharif faction, and Perv ripped him in a speech the other other day, apparent recognition that there won't be an alliance there, or a play on his anticorruption theme. They're kind of aligning with the religious loons, took the government to court over jugged al-Qaeda members and opposed Perv's Afghan policies. Qazi, has been beating them with the same corruption stick, by the way, so they may have no friends at all. PML(Q) is in Perv's corner, so they'll stay away from the reunification process. PML(N) appears to be the most influential faction, followed by PML(J).
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
The Lahore High Court, Rawalpindi Bench, on Friday dismissed a petition challenging the holding of referendum by General Pervez Musharraf for extending his tenure as the president of Pakistan. Azmat Ali Qureshi had stated in his petition that Mr Musharraf being a government servant was not entitled to hold referendum to become the president. I think this was the suit Qazi filed last week. Wasn't much of a chance of a ruling in his favor, especially since the origianl judge they shopped "wasn't available."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Jamiat Ulem-i-Islam (JUI) Amir Maulana Fazlur Rehman has flayed the proposed presidential referendum, and termed it an unconstitutional step to remain in power. He said that through the so-called referendum, present rulers were trying to suspend all the democratic process and political activities in the country. No surprise there. Fazl is Binny's pal and Perv actually did jug him when the riots got out of hand, at least for a little while...
The Maulana said Musharraf's plan of holding a referendum was aimed at legitimizing his stay in the presidential office, and it had proved his disinterest in restoring real democracy in the country. Sounds good until you get Fazl discussing what "real democracy" actually is...
JUI chief said that on the one hand General Musharaf was criticizing Ayub Khan and Ziaul Haq while on the other he was seeking cooperation from their sons- Gohar Ayub khan and Ejazul Haq. It was sufficient to prove that he had adopted dual policies. This is Pakistan we're talking about. Everybody has "dual policies." It's called following the main chance.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, the Pakistan Muslim League acting president, said on Friday a vote in favour of President Gen Pervez Musharraf in the referendum would be tantamount to voting for dictatorship. He claimed that the president was critical of former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto for personal reasons. The referendum, he said, would be no different than the one held by the late Gen Zia-ul Haq. And probably with the same eventual end results. The turbans will be doing their best to have him bumped off...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
The leaders of the religious parties have rejected the idea of presidential referendum. Amir of Jamaat-i-Islami, Swat, and a former member of the National Assembly Haji Khaliqdad Khan in a statement on Friday said that all the religious parties had banded together on a single platform of the Mutahidda Majlis Amal (MMA), which had already rejected the referendum and termed it unconstitutional. He alleged that President Gen Pervez Musharaf was pursuing the US policies, which could never be in the interest of Muslims. He said the MMA had decided to launch a joint campaign against the referendum as it was against the will of the people's majority. He accused Musharraf of attempting to turn the country into a secular state and warned that his policies would be opposed tooth and nail, with the help of the masses. If you have a secular state, who are mullahs and maulvis and maulanas gonna do for their money? Couldn't have that.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam has opposed the referendum and urged the people to avoid casting their vote. The party criticized policies of the government and alleged that the idea of the referendum had been floated in order to distract the people from the tyranny the Muslims were being subjected to the world over. The JUI workers were asked to stay away from the polling stations on the day of referendum and convince the people not to cast their vote in favour of the president. That's a pretty good sign they expect the "yes" votes to go Perv's way.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
An international commission handed down its ruling Saturday defining a new border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, seeking to ensure a permanent end to a conflict that killed 80,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more. The judgment was presented to the two countries at the Permanent Court of Arbitration here, but was not made public. During a closed meeting, the panel displayed maps showing the suggested new international boundary. "The countries will respond to the report Monday" when the compete decision is made public, court spokeswoman Evelien ter Meulen said. Ethiopia and Eritrea have pledged to respect the decision by the board of judges, treaty experts and international jurists. That has raised hopes that the ruling could be the final push needed to normalize relations between the Horn of Africa countries after years of hostility. That'd take away that particular excuse to go around shooting people. It's a good sign. This one's been going on for too many years.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Vandals have defaced a Jewish cemetery in the eastern French city of Strasbourg by painting swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans on about 20 tombstones and on a wall, police said on Saturday. Police have opened an inquiry into the desecration, the fourth at a Jewish site in the Cronenbourg section of Strasbourg this month. An unexploded bomb was found at another Cronenbourg cemetery in early April after an arson attack there and a fire at a nearby synagogue. Two young men of North African origin have been detained and three more put under investigation in connection with the arson attacks at the Cronenbourg cemetery, police sources said. Nope. No anti-Semites here. Just some rambunctious North African youths. No harm done, hardly. Boys will be boys, after all. (Those Jews! They're so excitable!)
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
The sprawling slums of Venezuela's capital seethed with rage on Saturday at the military coup that toppled populist President Hugo Chavez as his political backers struggled to regroup and organize protests. A wildly gesticulating group surrounded a Reuters crew at a market in the grimy working-class neighborhood of Petare, shouting that they would fight back. "There's going to be a civil war here. The people are going to rise up," yelled Antonio Orellana, 65. With the fiery former paratrooper in military custody, his supporters said they would try to take their seats in the National Assembly for a scheduled session on Monday even though the new military-backed interim government has decreed the parliament's abolition. That should make things interesting, without helping the country much...
It seems that the coup has collapsed, and Chavez is now back in power. Apparently not just the slum dwellers rebelled, but large numbers of enlisted people in the armed forces rebelled against the junta, which thereupon collapsed. I have no idea what's going to happen next, except that Washington, which praised Chavez's ouster, now has a ration of egg on its face and the problem of dealing with a person who is now going to be absolutely insufferable. Posted by Joe 4/14/2002 10:01:06 AM
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
FoxNews reports Yasser has issued a condemnation in Arabic of terror attacks and specifically of Friday's suicide bombing.
Reuters reports: "We strongly condemn the violent operations directed at Israeli civilians, especially the latest operation in Jerusalem," Arafat said in a statement carried in Arabic by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA. He also condemned "the massacres and slaughters committed by the Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian civilians and refugees in the city of Nablus, the Jenin camp and against the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem." I'm surprised he actually said the words, but probably by this point, after refusing for a couple weeks to utter anything like them, he can claim to the terror high command that it was coerced.
I think Arafat has established the principle that he always has to get a payoff for his words, and that there always will be a payoff for his words. It's basically an economic decision -- if he condemns terrorism too often, that devalues the currency.
I think, of course, that paying Arafat off for words instead of deeds is incredibly short-sighted, but . . . Posted by Joel Rosenberg 4/13/2002 2:44:52 PM
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
In Bethlehem, a standoff continued at the Church of the Nativity, one of Christianity's holiest sites. Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers were circling the church compound and soldiers made calls through the night for the 200 armed Palestinians holed up inside to surrender. It should end soon. Most of the propaganda points have been wrung out of it and they're starting to repeat themselves.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, called Friday's suicide bombing punishment for Israel's military offensive. "If Israel thinks that after what they did in Jenin and Nablus they will not be punished, they are mistaken," Yassin said. Even if Yasser was sincere, which he ain't, this guy would spike any agreement. He really does need to be on somebody's hit list.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Secretary of State Colin Powell was examining a statement on Saturday by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat condemning terrorism and a Friday suicide bombing that prompted him to put talks with Arafat on hold, a senior State Department official said. "We've got the statement and we're looking at it. We expected him to condemn terrorism. We expected him to do so. Now he's made a statement and we're looking at it," an official said. They'll be looking for weasel words and tell-tale grease spots.
Powell, who issued a statement in the early hours urging Arafat to condemn the bombing that threw his peacemaking mission into disarray on its first day, said earlier he would decide on Saturday whether to meet the Palestinian leader. Thereby tying the statement to a meeting without explicitly saying so.
The official noted that the United States had not publicly made the condemnation a condition for a meeting between Arafat and Powell, who held lengthy talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Friday. Not publicly, no. But privately certainly, though intermediaries, and along with that implicitly.
Powell's spokesman however called for a condemnation in the same statement in which he announced that the planned talks with Arafat on Saturday had been canceled. Yup. That's pretty implicit.
However he did not rule out a meeting in future, saying when asked if the talks were being rescheduled for Sunday, "We'll see." "If we have time. We might have to do our hair that day. We'll letcha know."
The chances of the statement leading to a positive decision by Powell were increased by the fact that Arafat issued his condemnation in Arabic. Chances statements by most politicians are understood increase when they're made in the local language.
Powell has called on Israel to end its military offensive against Palestinian targets in the West Bank, where Arafat has been besieged in his Ramallah headquarters by Israeli tanks and troops. That was pretty much obligatory, wasn't it?
Update: FoxNews says Powell will meet with Yasser on Sunday. James Zogby, on Tony Snow's show, says he expects there will be more detailed condemnations from Yasser in the coming days. Rooters, on the other hand, reports that
A senior aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said Saturday, following Friday's suicide bombing in Jerusalem, that the Palestinian Authority had always condemned all attacks on civilians on both sides. But Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo charged that the United States only condemned attacks against Israelis while ignoring what he called "massacres" by the Israeli army during a 15-day-old West Bank offensive.
And there's the obligatory dilution for internal consumption. Pretty good bet that statement was in Arabic.
This would also be the cue for the Hamas boomers to try and swarm before tomorrow...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Lebanon's Syrian-backed Hizbollah guerrillas attacked Israeli positions in a disputed border zone on Saturday, defying diplomatic pressure for calm on Israel's volatile northern frontier. The attack came a day after Secretary of State Colin Powell demanded that Syria rein the group in, and after Hizbollah's other patron Iran signaled it did not want violence on the Israeli-Lebanon border to spark a wider conflict. Witnesses said Hizbollah fighters fired anti-tank missiles, mortar rounds and machineguns at Israeli troops in the Shebaa Farms, a 10 square mile patch of uninhabited land by the Lebanese border and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. In a statement, Hizbollah said its fighters had scored "direct hits" on Israeli posts in Shebaa Farms. Smoke and flame rose from the Rweisat al-Alam hilltop, where witnesses said Hizbollah's rockets had hit an Israeli tank. Israeli responded by shelling locations near the Lebanese border town of Kfar Shouba. There were no immediate reports of casualties. I still think most of this is for internal Lebanese consumption.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
The death toll from a surge of Maoist violence sweeping the landlocked Himalayan country of Nepal climbed to at least 112 on Saturday and will rise as more bodies are found, officials said. The prediction follows the discovery of at least 36 bodies of Maoist rebels in a ditch in west Nepal on Saturday taking the toll from gun battles on Thursday to 90, officials said. "The bodies were found in a field and were all in combat dress," Junior Interior Minister Devendra Raj Kandel told Reuters. "There are definitely many more bodies lying in the ditch and they will be taken out tomorrow." Officials said at least 22 people, including two children, had been killed in a fresh wave of violence since Friday. In the most recent attack, a land mine blast in western Nepal killed three people. The Maoists don't seem to mind expending large numbers, and their numbers don't seem to mind being expended. I wonder how many of them are Nepali?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2002 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
