AFGHANISTAN: WOMEN’S RIGHTS TRAMPLED DESPITE NEW LAW

from IRIN

As the world marks International Women’s Day, ambivalence, impunity, weak law enforcement and corruption continue to undermine women’s rights in Afghanistan, despite a July 2009 law banning violence against women, rights activists say.

A recent case of the public beating of a woman for alleged elopement—also shown on private TV stations in Kabul—highlights the issue.

In January domestic violence forced two young women to flee their homes in Oshaan village, Dolaina district, Ghor province, southwestern Afghanistan. A week later they were arrested in neighbouring Herat Province and sent back to Oshaan, according to the governor of Ghor, Mohammad Iqbal Munib.

“One woman was beaten in public for the elopement and the second was reportedly confined in a sack with a cat,” Munib told IRIN.

According to the governor, the illegal capture of the women was orchestrated by Fazul Ahad who leads an illegal armed militia group in Dolaina District. Locals say Ahad, a powerful figure who backed President Hamid Karzai in the August 2009 elections, has been running Oshaan as his personal fiefdom.

“When the roads reopen to Dolaina [closed by snow] we will send a team to investigate,” said the governor, adding that he was concerned that arresting Ahad could cause instability. “We have asked the authorities in Kabul for support and guidance.”

IRIN was unable to contact Fazul Ahad and verify the charges.

Self-immolation
“I poured fuel over my body and set myself ablaze because I was regularly beaten up and insulted by my husband and in-laws,” Zarmina, 28, told IRIN. She, along with over a dozen other women with self-inflicted burns, is in Herat’s burns hospital

Over 90 self-immolation cases have been registered at the hospital in the past 11 months; 55 women had died, doctors said.

“People call it the ‘hospital of cries’ as patients here cry out loudly in pain,” Arif Jalali, head of the hospital, told IRIN.

Beneath the cries lie cases of domestic violence and/or disappointment with the justice system.

“Self-immolation proves that the justice system for female victims is failing,” said Movidul-Haq Mowidi, a human rights activist in Herat.

Barriers to justice
Despite laws prohibiting gender violence and upholding women’s rights, widespread gender discrimination, fear of abuse, corruption and other challenges are undermining the judicial system, experts say.

“Women are denied their most fundamental human rights and risk further violence in the course of seeking justice for crimes perpetrated against them,” stated a report by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan on the situation of Afghan women in July 2009.

Orzala Ashraf, a women’s rights activist in Kabul, blames the government: “Laws are clear about crimes but we see big criminals thriving and being nurtured by the state for illicit political gains,” she told IRIN, pointing to the government’s alleged failure to address human rights violations committed over the past three decades of conflict.

“Because no one is put on trial for his crimes, a criminal culture is being promoted: violators have no fear of the law, prosecution and a meaningful penalty,” said Ashraf.

Deep-seated ambivalence to women’s rights is evident from a law signed off by President Hamid Karzai in early 2009: The Shia Personal Status Law, dubbed a “rape legalizing law,” was amended after strong domestic and international pressure.

“The first version [of the law] was totally intolerable,” said Najia Zewari, a women’s rights expert with the UN Fund for Women (UNIFEM). “Despite positive changes in the final version, there are articles that still need to be discussed and reviewed further,” she said.

Another example of this ambivalence is the case of the men who threw acid in the faces of 15 female students in Kandahar city in November 2008: Karzai publicly vowed they would be “severely punished” but court officials in Kandahar and Kabul have said they are unaware of the case and do not know where the alleged perpetrators are.

“Judges say the men were wrongly accused and forced to confess,” Ranna Tarina, head of Kandahar women’s affairs department, told IRIN.

Violence database
Over the past two years more than 1,900 cases of violence against women in 26 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces—from verbal abuse to physical violence—have been recorded in a database run by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and UNIFEM.

One recorded case is the murder, by her in-laws in Parwan Province north of Kabul, of a young woman who had refused to live with her abusive husband. Another is the regular physical and mental torture meted out to a woman by her husband and mother in-law in Kabul.

“The database does not give a perfect picture but it helps to highlight some of the common miseries of Afghan women,” UNIFEM’s Najia Zewari told IRIN.

UNIFEM is keen to make the database publicly available on the internet.

“Violence against women is not a new phenomenon in Afghanistan but it is good to see crimes do not remain confined to a home and a village,” said activist Orzala Ashraf.

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This story first appeared March 8 on the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

From our Daily Report:

Afghan women march against warlord impunity
World War 4 Report, Dec. 12, 2009

Afghanistan: Karzai “legalizes rape”
World War 4 Report, April 2, 2009

See also:

THE AFGHANISTAN WAR: A CALL FOR CLARITY
No to Fundamentalist Criminals, No to the U.S. Occupation
by Sonali Kolhatkar, Foreign Policy in Focus
World War4 Report, December 2009

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, April 1, 2010
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingAFGHANISTAN: WOMEN’S RIGHTS TRAMPLED DESPITE NEW LAW 

THE TRAUMAS OF IMMIGRAITON LAW

by Kent Paterson, Frontera NorteSur

It began as an ordinary academic presentation. Backed by a power-point, sociologist Alison Newby showed a crowd at New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces how more than 400 public and privately-contracted immigrant detention facilities imprison more than 440,000 people, at a cost surpassing $1.7 billion annually to the taxpayers.

“Not only are families potentially losing their breadwinners, it’s costing us to keep people in immigration detention,” Newby said, adding $95 per day on average is spent to detain an immigrant.

Newby’s talk hit home. In February, Texas-based Corplan Corrections went before the Las Cruces City Council with a plan to build what company representative Toby Michael was quoted as calling a “family residential center” for mainly women and child immigrants. In the view of critics, the envisioned facility is a buffed-up prison. Recently, Corplan made the same proposal to the city government in Benson, Arizona.

While ample attention has been placed on the dramatic increase in immigrant detention since the Bush administration, Newby traced the phenomenon to the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, both of which passed in 1996.

According to the NMSU professor, the laws expanded the definition of “aggravated felony” to encompass minor crimes for which no jail time was served, thus making greater numbers of immigrants eligible for detention and deportation. Legal reforms virtually eliminated judicial discretion to take into account individual histories, family ties and even the nature of the crime, Newby said.

A fundamental contradiction of the current system, she argued, is that violations of civil immigration laws are treated as criminal offenses without the corresponding rights to a speedy trial, rules of disclosure, a court-appointed attorney and other bedrock legal guarantees of the US justice system.

“None of this matters. The judge’s hands are potentially tied as well,” Newby said.

Then Newby got personal. She recalled that morning a little more than one year ago, on February 28, 2009, when men came knocking on her door. Representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agents spirited away Newby’s Cuban immigrant husband and charged him with an immigration law violation because of a prior drug conviction. Outside the couple’s home where their two children witnessed the arrest, several SUVs with armed men awaited, in a deployment Newby said “seemed like overkill.”

Incarcerated in a detention center in neighboring El Paso, Texas, Newby’s husband was housed with hundreds of other prisoners awaiting their fates. Navigating a legal maze, the detainee was afforded 15-minute contact visits with his children under the watchful eyes of guards. As a Cuban national, he could not be readily deported, because the Cuban government would not accept him back home. Instead, the detainee was hustled off to citizenship interviews where he sat shackled next to children getting vaccinations, according to Newby.

In the El Paso detention center, some work was available for inmates at the rate of one dollar per day. “I don’t know about the legality of the US government employing [immigrant detainees], and some of them may not have documents,” Newby quipped, sending chuckles rippling through the audience.

Newby said her husband was finally released after spending nearly one year in detention; he still awaits final disposition of his case. “This is an extremely horrific Kafkaesque system,” charged the sociologist. “It is ripping families apart… I don’t know if we are any safer.”

Sponsored by NMSU’s Center for Latin American and Border Studies and International Relations Institute, Newby’s talk resonated in other presentations at a conference on immigration and human rights held at the university’s main Las Cruces campus earlier this month. Many speakers examined the impact of toughened immigration law enforcement on children, families and communities in the New Mexico borderlands and beyond.

Nicholas Dagones, regional manager of protective services for the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, touched on thorny situations in which his agency’s staff come into custody of minors whose immigrant parents are detained.

Since many families have citizen and undocumented parents, the mixed status of many immigrant households creates complications, Dagones said. Undocumented children who are in state custody could face deportation when they turn 18, according to the child advocate. To address individual cases, the state government of New Mexico works with the Mexican Consulate, he said.

Dr. Pat Sandau-Beckler of NMSU’s School of Social Work told the New Mexico conference researchers have detected Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome in many children whose immigrant parents have been arrested. According to Sandau-Beckler, three of every four such children experience eating and sleeping problems. Adolescents, she said, have been observed more withdrawn than even younger children.

“Families of mixed status along the US-Mexico border are living under siege,” contended Vicky Gaubeca, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Regional Center for Border Rights in Las Cruces. “The only part of the economy that seems to be growing is the law enforcement economy.”

Calling for family protection, Gaubeca and other presenters urged sweeping reforms to the immigration law system.

Together with other New Mexico immigrant rights activists, the ACLU participates in the Task Force for Immigration Advocacy and Services (TIAS), a two-year-old initiative of different service providers and advocates. The task force supports measures that will ensure family unity, increase possibilities for citizenship and residence, uphold equal rights for all workers, end local enforcement of federal immigration laws, reform detention standards, eliminate privatized immigrant prisons, and restore due process and constitutional rights to all regardless of immigration status.

Johnny Young, executive director of migration and refugee services for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington. DC, joined other speakers in Las Cruces in calling for reform. The ordeal of Newby’s family, Young said, is a “vivid example” of a “broken” immigration system.

A former US ambassador to Sierra Leone, Togo, Bahrain and Slovenia, Young said the Roman Catholic leadership organization has an 80-year history of involvement in immigration issues, and has helped settle about one million new immigrants to the US since 1975.

“This is part of our religion, the Judeo-Christian tradition, welcoming the stranger,” Young said.

Currently, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is mounting a campaign to send three million postcards to Congress in support of immigration law reforms that include a pathway to legalization for undocumented residents, a new guest worker program and the elimination of detention centers. The bishops also support a March 21 pro-immigrant rally in Washington that will include calls to pass an immigration reform bill sponsored by Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Illinois.

Although Young voiced confidence that momentum was building on the side of reform advocates, opponents of legalizing undocumented residents are also gearing up for action. For instance, members of the Tea Party movement and their allies plan numerous rallies across the United States on April 15.

“Despite the fake polls, bought and paid for by the Open Borders Lobby groups, the truth remains that 80 percent of Americans oppose Amnesty for illegal aliens and turning millions of illegals into voters would have a catastrophic effect on America,” said William Green of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC in a statement this week.

“We will be sending tens of thousands of people out to support Tea Party events on April 15 to properly present public opposition to illegal immigration and Amnesty for illegals,” Green said. To help organize opposition to the Gutierrez bill and related proposals, the Tea Party
Against Amnesty has set up a website at AgainstAmnesty.com.

Broadening their reach, anti-amnesty groups are also utilizing Twitter and Facebook to mobilize.

The Gutierrez bill does not advocate blanket amnesty, but proposes a $500 fine as part of a package of steps leading to the legalization of undocumented residents.

Immigration law reform was at the center of a flurry of activity in Washington on Thursday, March 11, when President Obama met with two key senators, Republican Lindsay Graham and Democrat Charles Schumer, to discuss prospects for passing legislation. According to a dispatch from the Associated Press, Obama earlier met with the National Council of La Raza and other immigrant advocates, assuring the activists he was still committed to immigration reforms.

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This story was made possible in part by a grant from the McCune Charitable Foundation for Frontera NorteSur‘s special coverage of key issues in the southern New Mexico borderland.

Resources:

Corplan Corrections
http://www.corplancorrections.com/

AgainstAmnesty.com.
http://www.AgainstAmnesty.com

See also:

A NEW DEAL FOR IMMIGRANTS IN 2010?
by David L. Wilson, MR Zine
World War 4 Report, January 2010

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, April 1, 2010
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE TRAUMAS OF IMMIGRAITON LAW 

AFRICOM AND THE USA’s HIDDEN BATTLE FOR AFRICA

by Ba Karang, The Hobgoblin

What is the current meaning of “War against Terror” for Africa? The true intention of America’s recent military interventions in the African continent (both covert and open) is nothing other than the expansion and consolidation of Western capital. It all started in 2001 when George W. Bush declared his “War on Terror” in the continent, but has developed in a manner that has gone beyond human imagination in the body counts on the streets of Somalia, in the jungles of Uganda and Congo, and deserts of Sudan. The chief of the US African Command, General E. Ward, explained this in language more clear than that of any US politician when he stated that an Africa in which “African populations are able to provide for themselves, contribute to global economic development and are allowed access to markets in free, fair, and competitive ways, is good for America and the world…”

AFRICOM (or USAFRICOM) is a Unified Combatant Command of the US Department of Defense, responsible for US military operations and military relations with 53 African nations (excepting Egypt). Africa Command was established October 1, 2007, and formally activated October 1, 2008 at a public ceremony at the Pentagon attended by representatives of African nations. It has become clear that the idea was not primarily to fight against the Islamic terror, which was said to be growing in influence, but to protect and help expand American military and economic (mainly energy) interests.

Pending legislation, “The Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act 2009,” being pushed by Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) would empower AFRICOM not only to give technical support but to physically go to war with the armed groups that both Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo Forces have not been able to dislodge. Royce said:

Africa’s emerging potential as a major oil producer and supplier to the United States, has been of interest to the Sub-Committee on Africa that I’ve chaired for some time. The sub-committee held a hearing to look at this topic in 2000. It’s clearly in our national interest to diversify our energy supply, especially given the turbulent political climate in key parts of the world today. The expansion of energy production in Africa matches to that interest…

This is big money talk rather than humanitarian outrage. On January 2, 2002, a Washington DC symposium held to discuss African oil came up with a document entitled “African Oil: A Priority for US National Security and African Development,” which paved the way for the rest to happen. It was attended by Washington’s Africa heavyweights: people like Barry Schutz, a Bush administration specialist on Africa; Lt-Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a high-ranking Air Force officer, and Water Kansteiner, Bush’s under-secretary of State for African Affairs. The Christian Science Monitor reported on the Symposium thus:

In January last year [2002], the IASPS [Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies] hosted a symposium in Houston, Texas, which was attended by government and oil industry representatives. An influential working group called the African Oil Policy Initiative Group (AOPIG) co-chaired by IASPS researchers Barry Schutz and Paul Michael Wihbey, which has been largely responsible for driving American governmental policy concerning west African oil, emerged from the symposium… The document urges Congress and the Bush administration to encourage greater extraction of oil across Africa, and to declare the Gulf of Guinea ‘a area of vital interest’ to the US.”

We have now definitely entered the aggressive birth of AFRICOM. The man who is put in charge of this task, Gen. William E. “Kip” Ward, is not new to the battlefields of Africa. He was in Somalia in 1993 when US forces were serious bitten by small insurgent groups, forcing the US to withdraw from that crisis.

Africom in Action
AFRICOM justifies its presence in Africa on its website as follows:

Africa is growing in military, strategic and economic importance in global affairs. However, many nations on the African continent continue to rely on the international community for assistance with security concerns. From the US perspective, it makes strategic sense to help build the capability for African partners, and organizations such as the African Standby Force, to take the lead in establishing a security environment. This security, will, in turn, set the groundwork for increased political stability and economic growth.

This helps explain why the AFRICOM budget rose from $50 million in the fiscal year of 2007 to $310 million in FY 2009 fiscal year—in running costs, not military aid to the member countries. It also shows the significance of this program for the US government. The command gave the US military the possibility of having a physical presence in numerous African countries and assigning Defense Department personnel to US embassies and diplomatic missions to coordinate Defense Department programs. The US Africa Command is now spending billions in training and arm supplies. It is expecting to spend nothing less than $20 billion in 2010, and this will benefit the armies of a very many repressive regimes.

Take the case of Sudan. Openly, Western governments, including the US, have never been more critical of the regime in Khartoum, even accusing it of committing genocide in Darfur. The fact that the head of Sudan’s intelligence agency, wanted by the International Criminal Court, was secretly jetted to the US by the CIA to discuss military interests in the Horn of Africa was one of the most disgusting acts of hypocrisy by the Bush administration.

The right-wing Republican lobbyists for AFRICOM never made their intentions secret. They have said time and again that America cannot rely on the unconquered Middle East for its oil supply; for them, Africa is the answer. But the aggressive nature of this thirst for African oil and other resources has no doubt also been fueled by the presence of China in key strategic areas.

Today, US Africa Command is involved in almost 38 African countries with the presumed agenda of training anti-terrorist forces. These include Chad, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone. The expansion of the AFRICOM central command in Djibouti adds to the significance that the US government puts into this project. According to AFRICOM, “US Central Command maintains its traditional relationship with Egypt, but AFRICOM coordinates with Egypt on issues relating to Africa security.” In Egypt, the US state is spending billions of American tax payers’ money in military equipment and training to arm one of the most repressive military forces in the continent. All of this speaks for itself rather than the simple and cheap rhetoric of bringing stability to the continent in the name of the “war against terror.”

The 2006 invasion of Somalia by the Ethiopian forces was clearly a proxy war, with AFRICOM providing the logistics—allowing a criminal organization like al-Shabab to claim a legitimate reason for its war and brutal terror against the very people both sides claim to be freeing: the poor ordinary Somalis. It is significant that as debate was held on where the headquarters of AFRICOM should be located, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared that Ethiopia will be willing to work closely with the Command. According to a UN situation report of February 5, 2010, an estimated 3.2 million people in Somalia are in need of emergency food aid, one in six children are seriously malnourished, and the internally displaced population is in the millions and continues to rise.

The planned assault on Mogadishu has registered its first civilian casualties this March, forcing more civilians to flee the capital. The aim of this military operation is to retake control of the capital from the al-Shabab militants. The Obama administration has been planning this assault for a while now. Assistant secretary of state for Africa, Johnnie Carlson is said to have been very instrumental in the preparation. He nonetheless said: “This is not an American offensive… the US military is not on the ground in Somalia. Full stop.” In another press briefing Carlson held with the Ertharin Cousin, US ambassador to the UN Mission in Rome, he said: “We have provided limited military support to the Transitional Federal Government… We do so in the firm belief that the TFG seeks to end the violence in Somalia that is caused by al-Shabaab and other extremist organizations…”

True, there might not be any US troops on the ground—but it is an American war contracted to some Somalis, African Union forces, and Ethiopians. The US has been training intelligence forces, providing surveillance, logistic support and money to buy bullets and guns; and there are even speculations that American forces might provide aerial bombing of militant positions.

This is against the recent advice given to the Obama administration, which warns of a need for a change of approach from US support to the Transitional Federal Government headed by Sheik Ahmed Sharif. The Report, “Somali: A New Approach,” prepared by the Council on Foreign Relations, advised the administration to engage in “Constructive Disengagement” rather than spending so much on ineffective government that has very little support among the Somali population. Critics might be right to say that the Obama administration is playing into the hands of the Islamic extremists.

This was the case too with “Operation Lightning Thunder” in 2008, involving Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the liberated Southern Sudan. It was clear to all sincere analysts that the Lord’s Resistance Army was cornered and pacified, and that operation “Lightning Thunder” was no more than the clearing of the oil fields. Dr. Jendayi Frazer, then an assistant secretary of state in the Bush government, was said to have been the main initiator of that operation. Riek Machar, vice president of Southern Sudan, said as much in a documentary aired by the AlJazeera TV. Ugandan military commanders have openly confirmed that they have received logistics support from the Americans, including satellite phones, GPS receivers, maps and US contributions to fuel costs of the military vehicles involved in the operation. The results: over 1,000 civilians dead and the internal displacement of an estimated half million people. All this followed the 2006 failed operation by a UN team of US-trained Guatemalan commando to assassinate Joseph Kone, leader of LRA—in which all members of the commando were killed by the LRA. Southern Sudan refused to actively take part, only closing their borders to avoid crossing of arm groups into their territory.

Conclusion
When the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project was put on the table in the prelude to AFRICOM’s unveiling, the oil companies made sure of IMF and World Bank support. This was not because of lack of capital. These two institutions are the most reliable and effective discipliners of the African nations involved should they at any time violate the contract against the interest of the big oil companies involved in the project. The arrangement was never designed for transparency, and when the initial funds of the project were embezzled in the member countries there was never a call to halt the project—even though the World Bank had put in a code of conduct as condition for the funding.

There is nothing new in armies conquering territories before the looting begins. For centuries states have been using their armies in foreign adventures in the interest of capital. The modern world has just surpassed the crude methods that were used in centuries past, and is now utilizing sophisticated techniques consciously designed to confuse the human mind. With the “moral high ground” of free market capitalism, the African bourgeoisie are content with being sub-contractors; the whole mathematics becomes easier, especially when it comes to the “ethical sharing” of the wealth from the looting. To say that Africans are benefitting from the project through employment and the creation of a middle class are fine words that defy the lawlessness and suffering on the continent.

But the fact of AFRICOM’s involvement in any battle ground in the continent strengthens the resolve of the African people to define their struggle on their own.

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This story first appeared in slightly longer form March 19 in the UK Marxist-Humanist journal The Hobgoblin

Resources:

Doubts grow on Somali offensive’s chances at peace
Associated Press, March 20, 2010

US Aiding Somalia in Its Plan to Retake Its Capital
New York Times, March 5, 2010

US Policy in Somalia — No Direct Support for Somali Government Military Operations
Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of Africa press briefing, March 12, 2010

Somalia: A New Approach
Council on Foreign Relations, March 2010

After Operation Lightning Thunder: Protecting communities and building peace
ReliefWeb, April 28, 2009

Hard Target: The hunt for Africa’s last warlord
Newsweek, May 16, 2009

See also:

AFRICOM: MAKING PEACE OR FUELING WAR?
by Daniel Volman and William Minter, Foreign Policy in Focus
World War 4 Report, May 2009

DARFUR: NOT A “CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS”
Global Capital Connives with African Genocide
by Ba Karang, The Hobgoblin
World War 4 Report, November 2007

CHINA IN AFRICA: THE NEW DEBATE
by Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus
World War 4 Report, May 2007

SOMALIA: THE NEW RESISTANCE
Successor Factions to the Islamic Courts Union
by Osman Yusuf, World War 4 Report
World War 4 Report, April 2007

DARFUR: NATO PREPARES INTERVENTION
Moral Imperative or “Regime Change” Strategy?
by Wynde Priddy, World War 4 Report
World War 4 Report, May 2005

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, April 1, 2010
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingAFRICOM AND THE USA’s HIDDEN BATTLE FOR AFRICA