Global News Journal

from Africa News blog:

Could Islamist rebels undermine change in Africa?

Creeping from the periphery in Africa’s east and west, Islamist militant groups now pose serious security challenges to key countries and potentially even a threat to the continent’s new success.

The biggest story in Africa south of the Sahara over the past few years hasn’t been plague, famine or war but the emergence of the world’s poorest continent as one of its fastest growing – thanks to factors that include fresh investment, economic reform, the spread of new technology, higher prices for commodity exports and generally greater political stability.

Nigeria and Kenya, the most important economies in West and East Africa respectively, are pillars of the change in Africa as well as having the largest and most easily accessible markets for foreigners.

Both now face growing battles with Islamist groups; Kenya throwing troops into neighbouring Somalia in pursuit of al Shabaab fighters, Nigeria struggling with bombings and shootings by its homegrown Boko Haram sect.

Kenyan forces have pushed into southern Somalia to drive back al Qaeda-linked militants blamed by Nairobi for a string of border incursions and kidnappings, including the abductions of foreign tourists from coastal resorts which have damaged one of Kenya’s most important industries.

Shabaab has in return called for all out war on Kenya and “huge blasts” by its unknown number of supporters there. Grenade attacks this week have killed one person, wounded more than 20 and jangled nerves in Nairobi, where more than 200 people died in an al Qaeda bombing of the U.S. embassy in 1998.

Killings by Nigeria’s Boko Haram sect (whose name means Western education is sinful) had been largely confined to a remote corner of the semi-desert northeast and ignored by much of the country until bombings struck the capital Abuja a few months back. A suicide car bombing on the U.N. headquarters in August killed 24 people.

Did Gaddafi “pass away” or was he executed?

Libya’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi on Wednesday responded to calls from United Nations officials and human rights groups for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of long-time Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly after his capture on Oct. 20 near his hometown of Sirte. 

Dabbashi told the U.N. Security Council that soldiers loyal to the National Transitional Council (NTC) who captured Gaddafi did not summarily execute him. Rather, Gaddafi died of wounds he had sustained prior to his capture, he said.

“Gaddafi was injured in the course of the clashes between his loyalists and the revolutionaries,” Dabbashi said. “When he was arrested, he was bleeding from his abdomen and head and he passed away (upon) his arrival to the hospital in Misrata. … According to initial reports, none of the revolutionaries fired at him after arresting him.”

Libya’s interim prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, has said that a stray bullet fired by one of Gaddafi’s own guards during a shootout with government forces might have killed the man who ruled the oil-producing North African state for 42 years. Gaddafi had been trying to escape the siege of Sirte when his convoy was hit by a NATO air strike. Dabbashi said the NTC was investigating Gaddafi’s death.

Video footage showing a dazed and bloodied Gaddafi still alive after being captured, and further footage showing him dead a few minutes later, has fueled speculation that the Libyan fighters quickly finished off their despised leader in the heat of the moment.

Will we ever know who killed Gaddafi?

Half time at the euro zone cup final

Covering a summit of European leaders is a bit like covering a soccer match with no ticket for the stadium and no live TV broadcast to watch. The only way you have an idea of the scoreline is from the groans and cheers from inside the ground.

With EU leaders meeting on Brussels on Sunday and again on Wednesday to try to resolve the region’s debt crisis, the emergency back-to-back summits look like a game of two halves.

A European Commission spokeswoman said as much on Monday, trying to explain why there had been no major announcements so far on solving the debt crisis: leaders had gone in for half time.

So who is playing whom? “Euro zone versus financial markets” would seem to fit the bill, although mostly it feels it is France against Germany, with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy the referee, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy getting caught out by Germany’s off-side trap every time.

Even from outside the stadium, you can hear the adulation from the Finnish and Dutch fans when they see coach Angela Merkel on the touchline, although some Greeks are angry she won’t pay for more first aid for their injured players.

The euro team has become infamous for own goals of late and the pressure is on to avoid regulation.

So at the second half on Wednesday, the euro squad will come back out onto the field to an impatient crowd and needing to win 3-0 to be certain of victory.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

She came, she saw, she confounded: Clinton in Pakistan

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recently concluded visit to Pakistan has left us none the wiser about how the United States and its allies will end the  Afghan war. In her public comments, she spoke of action "over the next days and weeks – not months and years, but days and weeks".  She promised the United States would tackle Taliban militants in eastern Afghanistan in response to a long-standing Pakistani complaint that Washington had neglected the region when  it decided to concentrate its forces in population centres in southern Afghanistan in 2010 (remember "government in a box"?).

She called, in return, for cooperation on the Pakistani side of the border to "squeeze these terrorists so that they cannot attack and kill any Pakistani, any Afghan, any American, or anyone."  Between the two countries, they would tackle the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban.

But squeeze them to what end?  To weaken all but the hard-core leadership of the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network so that they agree to lay down arms and rejoin the political process in Afghanistan? Or to entice them into serious negotiations through which they might be offered a share of power in Kabul, or accommodated in a "soft partition" of Afghanistan (an idea deeply unpopular among Afghans) which leaves them in control of the south and the east?

As Pakistani columnist Ejaz Haider wrote in Pakistan Today just before Clinton arrived, the current U.S. policy looks a bit like the dialogue between Alice and the Cheshire Cat. "‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ asked Alice. ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. ‘I don’t much care where—’ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat."

True, Clinton stressed the need for a peace process to reach a political settlement in Afghanistan.  But that idea has been on the diplomatic agenda  for nearly two years. By the second half of last year, we were hearing that the United States had endorsed talkswith all of Afghanistan's main insurgent groups, including the Haqqani network. By January this year, western countries said there would be no preconditions set for insurgents entering peace talks - only end-conditions that they sever ties with al Qaeda, renounce violence and agree to respect the Afghan constitution. In February, Clinton stressed the need for negotiations in a landmark speech to the Asia Society which coincided with reports the United States had begun direct talks with the Taliban.

In other words, we have heard a lot about talk about talks without any explanation as to why these have achieved so little so far (some blame U.S. military strategy, others Pakistani interference, others Taliban intransigence, others poor Afghan governance).   And the danger is that as long as these talks about talks continue without  yielding results, all parties to the Afghan conflict arm themselves up in readiness for an escalating civil war.

True,  Clinton admitted in public during her visit to Islamabad that the United States had held a preliminary meeting with representatives of the Haqqani network. But we already knew that.    According to The Washington Post, U.S. officials met Ibrahim Haqqani, the brother of the group’s patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, in a Gulf kingdom in August. The meeting was arranged by the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who also attended, it reported.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Trusting the masses: US tiptoes into democracy in Pakistan

In his book "Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination", an edited collection of his Chapati Mystery blog, historian Manan Ahmed complained about the United States' past support for former president Pervez Musharraf, and its refusal, at the time to trust Pakistan with democracy.  In an entry written in 2007, he described Pakistan as the "the not yet nation" - a country for which democracy might be a good thing in the long run, but  was in American eyes not yet ready.

"We fear the multitudes on two fronts. One is that we conceive of them as masses without politics – forever hostage to gross religious and ideological provocations. Masses which do not constitute a body politic or act with an interest in self-preservation or self-growth. Faced with that absence of reason, we are forced to support native royals to do the job (from Egypt to Pakistan). We justify it by stressing that we may not like these dictators but we know that if we did not have them, the masses would instantly betray us to the very forces of extremism that we seek to destroy," he wrote.

"Second is that these masses are Muslim. This fear grounded in our history can, at best, be understood as the fear of the “Other” and, at worst, as the Lewis/Huntington model of civilizational clash. Either case, it is borne out of our inherent belief in 'difference'. They are not like us. They do not possess reason, etc."

That U.S. attitude has been changing slowly over the past few years, underpinned by the Arab spring, and in the case of Pakistan, Washington's increasingly difficult relationship with the Pakistan Army over its alleged support for, or tolerance of, Islamist militants based in Pakistan. 

Democracy has become the new mantra, expressed most recently by former White House adviser Bruce Riedel in an op-ed in the New York Times.

"America needs a new policy for dealing with Pakistan. First, we must recognize that the two countries’ strategic interests are in conflict, not harmony, and will remain that way as long as Pakistan’s army controls Pakistan’s strategic policies. We must contain the Pakistani Army’s ambitions until real civilian rule returns and Pakistanis set a new direction for their foreign policy," he said.

Somewhat more diplomatically, President Barack Obama made a point of saying that the United States' argument was  not with the people of Pakistan but with the army's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), agency.

from Afghan Journal:

The Taliban in Afghanistan’s once impregnable Panjshir Valley

Last month driving up Afghanistan's magnificent Panjshir valley, you couldn't help thinking if the resurgent Taliban would ever be able to break its defences, both natural and from the Tajik-dominated populace. With its jagged cliffs and plunging valleys, Panjshir has been largely out of bounds  for the  Taliban, whether during the civil war or in the past 10 years when it has expanded a deadly insurgency against western and Afghan forces across the country. But on Saturday, the insurgents struck, carrying out a suicide bombing at a provincial reconstruction team base housing U.S. and Afghan troops and officials.

They were halted outside the base, but according to the provincial deputy governor they succeeded in  killing two civilians and wounding two guards when they detonated their explosives. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the first suicide bombing in a decade was a message to Western forces that they were not secure anywhere in the country. They said the  bombers came from within Panjshir, which if true  would worry people even more  because that would suggest the penetration was deeper and there could be more attacks.

The Long War Journal's Bill Roggio wrote that the bombing was a propaganda coup for the Taliban. Panjshir is the home of the legendary Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud who was assassinated by two days before the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. Under Massoud's leadership the Panjshir Valley held out against not only against the Taliban, but famously the Soviet before them.

All along the drive by the side of the rushing Panjshir river on way to Massoud's hilltop mausoleum, the relics of the war against the Russians have been preserved : rusted tanks on roadsides and an overturned  armoured personnel carrier in the river. There were giant Massoud posters everywhere and because it was the anniversary of his assassination at the hands of a pair of men who pretended to be journalists, the ceremonial gates to the valley were draped in black.

And yet there were concerns even then . Security was tight at each of the gates on the narrow and winding highway through the tall mountains, and the Afghan police who stood guard said if Panjshir had been spared the kind of attacks the Taliban had mounted in the rest of Afghanistan,  it wasn't for lack of trying . They had already carried out attacks in neighbouring Nuristan province and according to a local Afghan police commander responsible for security at one of the checkpoints, American helicopters had been spotted in the area a few days before the anniversary, firing rockets over a hilltop. It wasn't clear who they were targeting, the commander said.

Even the proud Panjshiris were worrying about the expanding Taliban influence, especially concerned at the time about government attempts to seek reconciliation with them.  One Afghan elder who lost his son in the war against Russians said his village was fully armed to fight  the Taliban.  There was no way they were going to accept the Taliban in the Panjshir, he told me.

Waiting for Europe’s “appropriate response”

Will the euro zone finally act decisively?

Investors are hoping for something big from European leaders at the EU summit on Oct. 23 and of the Group of 20 on Nov. 3. But they also know the 17 nations of the euro have a habit of offering delayed, half-hearted rescues that have cost them credibility.

So there’s been a lot of “urging” and “warning” in Brussels lately — politicians and central bankers have all been demanding Europe act as international alarm grows that its sovereign debt problems may drag the world into recession. “Further delays are only aggravating the situation,” said European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet on Tuesday in his last appearance at the European Parliament, before he hands over the post to Mario Draghi on Nov. 1.

A day earlier, Germany’s Deputy Finance Minister, Joerg Asmussen, at the parliament to promote his candidacy to join the ECB‘s board, made his call, saying “cooperation has to be increased,” across the euro members, divided as to who should pay to rescue the heavily indebted nations of southern Europe. “I want to see a solution for debt sustainability for Greece,” Asmussen said. So do so many others, especially Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who in Brussels on Thursday said it was a “crucial element to make the necessary decisions concerning Greece.”

The European Roundtable of Industrialists, a business lobby of multinationals ranging from French car maker Renault to Spain’s Telefonica, has also come through Brussels to make its point. The group’s head, Leif Johansson, who is also chairman of Swedish phone maker Ericsson, warned that if European leaders fail to act, businesses could see a repeat of the liquidity freeze that followed the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.

“The worst element of the 2008/2009 crisis was when liquidity froze,” he said. “The worst scenario we have right now is that that could happen again … and there is a real downside risk.” 

The Oct. 23 summit is being billed as a make-or-break event where Germany and France, the main powers in the euro zone, must come up with the solutions investors want. A meeting last Sunday between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, and their promise of a comprehensive strategy, suggests there will be a serious attempt to put forward a framework to try to resolve the crisis.

Tragedy or stagecraft: N. Korea’s food crisis

Tim Large, editor of Thomson Reuters Foundation’s AlertNet humanitarian news service, gives the back story to his special report Crisis grips North Korean rice bowl <http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/07/us-korea-north-food-idUSTRE7956DU20111007> . Any opinions expressed are his own.

Malnourished children presented at a clinic in North Korea during a guided tour of a disaster-hit province. (Reuters/Tim Large)

Could a malnourished eight-year-old really look like a three-year-old? Were the 28 orphans in the primary school clinic really so stunted by years of hunger that they had the bodies of toddlers, as the authorities claimed?

Or had they been assembled here for our benefit, infant imposters wheeled in to add poignancy to North Korea’s appeal for food aid?

Western nutrition experts who have worked in the country for years assured me that such extreme stunting was absolutely the norm.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

We need to talk about the Haqqanis

In a question and answer session last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about how the United States would balance its need to work with Pakistan while also putting it under pressure to end its alleged support for the Haqqani network.

Her answer, according to the State Department transcript, was to remind her audience that the United States had also played a role in creating the mujahideen to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

"Now, I also think it’s important to take a little historical review. If you go on YouTube, you can see Sirajuddin Haqqani with President Reagan at the White House, because during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the United States Government, through the CIA, funded jihadis, funded groups like the Haqqanis to cross the border or to, within Afghanistan, be part of the fight to drive the Soviets out and bring down the Soviet Union," she says.

I have to assume she means Jalaluddin Haqqani, the elderly father who has since passed on much of the leadership of the Haqqani network to his son, Siraj. Yet here is the thing. I cannot find any evidence that Haqqani ever visited the White House. I have asked around among Afghanistan and Pakistan experts. I have skimmed through my copy of Charlie Wilson's War.  I have asked on Twitter if anyone could show that Haqqani had ever visited the United States. 

And so far I have nothing.  I am not going to say definitively that Jalaluddin Haqqani never visited the United States - the little voice in my head that says people who live in glass houses should not throw stones stops me from doing that.  But my working assumption - until proved otherwise - is that Clinton was wrong.

So why does it matter? The United States and Saudi Arabia did fund the mujahideen in the 1980s and to some extent bear the responsibility for what is happening now.

It matters for three reasons. It matters because if we can't get our historical facts right, policy decisions are being made based on very shaky foundations.  The nature of U.S.,  Saudi and Pakistani support for the jihad against the Soviets is still very much open to debate.

from Africa News blog:

Was South Africa right to deny Dalai Lama a visa?

By Isaac Esipisu

Given that China is South Africa’s biggest trading partner and given the close relationship between Beijing and the ruling African National Congress, it didn’t come as a huge surprise that South Africa was in no hurry to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama.

Tibet’s spiritual leader will end up missing the 80th birthday party of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a fellow Nobel peace prize winner. He said his application for a visa had not come through on time despite having been made to Pretoria several weeks earlier. (Although South Africa’s government said a visa hadn’t actually been denied, the Dalai Lama’s office said it appeared to find the prospect inconvenient). Desmond Tutu said the government’s action was a national disgrace and warned the President and ruling party that one day he will start praying for the defeat of the ANC government.

It’s the second time the Dalai Lama has been unable to honour an invitation to South Africa by Tutu after failing to make it to a meeting in 2010.

South Africa will certainly win more plaudits in Beijing, which last week agreed to $2.5 billion in investment projects with during a visit by South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe.

But pro-Tibet activists say South Africa is undermining its credentials as a country of freedom and democracy, established after the end of white minority rule a generation ago.