The benevolent bureaucrats of military occupation

Maureen Clare Murphy - 26 December 2018

Israeli occupation bureaucrats shamelessly exploit Palestinian patients from Gaza to present their military rule over a besieged people as benign or even benevolent.

One recent video published on Facebook by COGAT – which stands for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories – presents the “incredible story” of Ahmad, a Palestinian child from Gaza who was flown to India for a lung transplant.

The video states that the 15-year-old boy “was always treated respectfully in Israel,” where he has been hospitalized multiple times since his condition was diagnosed 10 years ago.

Ahmad, whose access to life-saving treatment is dependent on the approval of COGAT – which, despite its anodyne name, is an Israeli military body that controls the movement of millions of people – appears in the video alongside his father, testifying to the good care he received in Israel.

“There was no problem in that respect,” the father says.

Denied access to treatment

Close observers of Israel’s control over Gaza – and the Palestinians who have been subjected to it – would be forgiven for reading between the lines and suspecting that the boy and his family have had problems in other respects regarding the child’s treatment.

Last year, 54 patients were known to have died while awaiting Israeli permits to leave Gaza for medical treatment.

This year, some 800 Palestinians in Gaza were barred from traveling under a directive that denied patients access to medical treatment in the West Bank and Israel over alleged ties to Hamas members.

The Israeli government directive was issued in early 2017 to put pressure on Hamas to release two Israeli civilians believed to be held by the group and to return the bodies of two soldiers killed in Gaza during the 51-day military offensive in the territory in 2014.

The family of one of the slain soldiers had demanded that the government reduce the number of exit permits for Palestinians seeking to leave Gaza for humanitarian reasons.

That directive was canceled by Israel’s high court after being challenged by human rights groups.

Now human rights groups are petitioning the court over another form of collective punishment being used against medical patients in Gaza.

A girl the same age as Ahmad, the boy in the COGAT video, is among hundreds of patients in Gaza who have been denied access to treatment on the basis that they have a relative staying in Israel or the West Bank without a permit.

Israel is conditioning their permits on the return of those relatives to Gaza.

According to the rights groups challenging the policy, Israel is claiming in some cases that patients “would illegally move their residence to the West Bank” if they were granted permits.

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, the groups petitioning Israel’s high court, note “a significant increase in the number of refusals on this ground in 2018 compared to 2017.”

More than 400 medical patients were denied permission to travel on these grounds between the beginning of the year and late October.

Those patients include a 61-year-old father of 11 with an eye condition who was denied a permit because one of his nephews has been living in the West Bank.

Asma Majdalawi, a 15-year-old with a dangerous blood clot, was refused a permit to travel to a Tel Aviv hospital because she has two brothers residing in the West Bank.

“Making the permit contingent on the return of another – as close to the patient as he or she may be – represents illegitimate pressure and an illegal and immoral tactic,” Al Mezan and Physicians for Human Rights stated.

Cruel reality

The cruel reality endured by patients in Gaza bears little resemblance to the feel-good propaganda put out by COGAT.

It is unlikely that COGAT will be producing any videos about how Israeli authorities barred the transfer of vaccines for children to the West Bank and Gaza.

Sharona Weiss  هيذر شارونا@sharona_weiss

It's insane this was ever an issue - 3 different Palestinian friends I know went to vaccinate babies or toddlers recently only to be told vaccines were out as Israel was barring entry into occupied territory for arbitrary reasons. Vaccines. For children. http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=1d6tKQa107863119243a1d6tKQ …

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2:47 PM - Dec 22, 2018

But that too is the real story of healthcare for Palestinian children growing up under Israeli occupation.

As are frequent attacks on medical workers and infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza:

Read More

The five defining moments of the Israeli occupation in 2018

Middle East Eye takes a look at the five biggest political developments of 2018 in Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories

Israeli settlement in the West Bank considered illegal according to UN resolutions (AFP)

Zena Tahhan

Sunday 30 December 2018 

RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank – In the volatile reality of Israel’s ongoing occupation and campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, the news cycle never stops. The nightly military raids, arrests of young men, killing of civilians and home demolitions have continued – as they have for the past 70 years.

But 2018 also saw substantial political changes that will keep this year etched in the memory of many Palestinians.

Many believe that while Israel has merely continued to enact policies consistent with its Zionist ideology, this year saw such practices become even more flagrant.

“What stood out the most in 2018 is that Israeli policies have become completely overt,” Nisreen Elayyan, a Palestinian lawyer based in Jerusalem, told Middle East Eye. “It no longer tries to disguise its policies and goals, particularly with violating basic human rights.”

Here are the five biggest political events in the occupied Palestinian territory to have taken place this year.

Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip

Palestinians have been demonstrating for nine months near the fence separating Gaza from Israel (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

In the ongoing Palestinian struggle for freedom, the Great March of Return protests in the besieged Gaza Strip have been one of the biggest developments of the year.

On 30 March, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza gathered on the boundary with Israel in a mass demonstration movement known as the Great March of Return.

The demonstrations were organised to coincide with Land Day, which marks the events of 30 March 1976 when Israeli police killed six Palestinian citizens of Israel who were protesting against land theft.

The Great March of Return, which continues until today, has called for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, from which they were expelled during the Nakba - or catastrophe - amid the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The protests also called for an end to the 11-year siege of Gaza and Palestinians’ right to dignity and freedom.

READ MORE►

Gaza's Great Return March: How Palestinians are reclaiming their land

Some two-thirds of Gaza’s two million inhabitants are refugees from towns and cities in present-day Israel such as Jaffa and Asqalan - since renamed Yafo and Ashkelon.  The small Palestinian territory is highly impoverished, with more than 80 percent of its population relying on humanitarian aid.

Since the beginning of the protests, Israeli forces have killed at least 230 Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave - at least 190 of whom were killed during the March of Return demonstrations - and wounded more than 25,000 people.

“In 2018, we saw Israel continue its unlawful killing of demonstrators in Gaza. Officers repeatedly fired on protesters who posed no imminent threat to life, pursuant to expansive open-fire orders from senior officials that contravene international human rights law standards,” Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, told MEE.

Israel passes Nation-State law

Demonstrators attend a rally to protest against the nation-state bill in Tel Aviv on 14 July 2018 (AFP)

On 19 July, the Israeli parliament, known as the Knesset, passed the nation-state bill into its Basic Law - Israel’s equivalent to a constitution - affirming that the right to national self-determination in the state of Israel was “unique to the Jewish people”, a move decried by rights groups and Palestinians alike as an apartheid policy.

The nation-state law also states that Israel “views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and strengthening” - despite settlements being deemed illegal under international law.

For Jamal Zahalqa, a Palestinian-Israeli member of the Knesset, the law’s passing was the most important development of 2018 for Palestinians, especially Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up some 20 percent of the country’s population.

“What Israel did is transfer the concept of the nation-state law from the state to the cities,” Zahalqa told MEE. “The law indicates that settlements are not a choice for the state, but it is the state’s obligation. Today, the law forces the state to encourage and financially support settlements.”

READ MORE►

Israel’s ‘Jewish nation-state’ law a prelude to annexation

Zahalqa pointed to the Israeli town of Afula, whose municipality has openly pushed to “preserve the Jewish character” of the city following the passage of the nation-state law, “meaning that they would prevent Palestinians from living there and from entering the public parks there”.

“This law gives legality to the occupation, to the Judaisation of Jerusalem. It opens the door for much more. We must monitor the implementation of this dangerous law in 2019.”

Shakir agreed with the MK: “In 2018, we saw the further entrenchment of the two-tiered discriminatory system that treats Palestinians unequally - not only in the West Bank but also inside Israel proper.

“The nation-state law enshrined as a constitutional mandate Jewish supremacy over non-Jews, which has effectively guided Israeli policy for years.”

Trump moves US embassy to Jerusalem

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the US embassy opening on 14 May (Reuters)

On 6 December 2017, US President Donald Trump broke with decades of American policy towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - announcing that his country would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

On 14 May, which marked the 70th anniversary of the Nakba - and Israel’s Independence Day - the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem, infuriating the diplomatic community.

Due to Jerusalem's importance to followers of the three Abrahamic religions, the city's status has long been the main sticking point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel occupied the eastern half of the city, which houses the Old City and religious landmarks such as the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall, in 1967. It then proceeded to annex Jerusalem in contravention of international law, and in 1980 proclaimed it as its "eternal, undivided capital".

Until Trump’s move, Israel's control and sovereignty over the city had not been recognised by any country in the international community, and all embassies were based in Tel Aviv.

READ MORE►

'Burn them, shoot them, kill them': Israelis cheer in Jerusalem as Palestinians shot in Gaza

In the wake of the US decision Guatemala and Paraguay also moved their embassies to Jerusalem - although Paraguay later rescinded the move. A number of politicians in other countries have also since called for their states to follow suit.

Palestinian leadership, which has long called for the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital as part of a two-state solution, saw Trump's declaration and embassy move as a fatal blow to the already stalled peace process.

Elayyan said the transfer of the embassy ”implicitly translated into an encouragement for Israel to continue and intensify its racist policies against Palestinians in the city”.

“The state has employed more violence, became bolder and was encouraged to transfer more Israelis into Palestinian neighbourhoods in Jerusalem,” she explained.  

In the long term the embassy move, Elayyan said, will have “many adverse political dimensions on the Palestinian people - both inside and outside Palestine”.

She added that the move would make it much more difficult in the future to establish a Palestinian state, especially if other countries followed suit.

Israel attempts to demolish Khan al-Ahmar village

Israeli policemen detain a Palestinian girl in Khan al-Ahmar, West Bank on 4 July 2018 (Reuters)

In 2018, the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, came under threat of demolition by Israeli authorities - and saw solidarity pour in from local and international activists and diplomats.

The village, home to some 200 residents and an eco-friendly school that serves children from surrounding communities, stands in the way of Israel’s plans to create a contiguous bloc of illegal settlements in the central West Bank just east of Jerusalem.

Due to Khan al-Ahmar’s strategic location in the last corridor between the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Israel’s demolition would mean the division of the West Bank in half - and the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution.

READ MORE►

Khan al-Ahmar: We are defending the dream of Palestine from demolition

When Israeli bulldozers have approached the village, activists and residents stood their ground and blocked soldiers from razing the community to the ground; many were beaten and arrested.

Israel’s security cabinet eventually put the demolition on hold, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed his government would still go ahead with the plans, without saying when the move would take place.

Several European governments and human rights organisations said the demolition of the village would constitute a war crime though the forcible displacement of an occupied civilian population.

“The problem of Khan al-Ahmar is bigger than the village itself. It is about the establishment of a Palestinian state. The so-called peace efforts depend on this village. If this village is demolished, then the Palestinian dream crumbles,” Eid Khamis, the community spokesperson and leader, wrote for MEE earlier this year.

It remains unclear whether the demolition will take place in 2019, but activists have kept a close eye on the situation, monitoring any developments.

Rights groups have warned that if Israel succeeds in destroying Khan al-Ahmar, at least 8,000 other Palestinians in similar communities may face the same fate.

Airbnb announces it will remove listings from Israeli settlements

A road sign points towards an Airbnb apartment, located in the Esh Kodesh outpost, near the Jewish settlement of Shilo and the Palestinian village of Qusra in the occupied West Bank on 20 November 2018 (AFP)

In November, the global online rental marketplace Airbnb announced it would begin a process to remove listings from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

"We concluded that we should remove listings in Israeli settlements in the West Bank that are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians," Airbnb said in a statement.

"US law permits companies like Airbnb to engage in business in these territories. At the same time, many in the global community have stated that companies should not do business here because they believe companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced," the statement read.

"We know that people will disagree with this decision and appreciate their perspective. This is a controversial issue."

Airbnb has since been pressured by Israel to rescind its decision.

READ MORE►

Airbnb and Israel: U-turn on settlements listings would be worse than staying silent

Human rights groups have long shamed Airbnb and other companies for doing business in the occupied Palestinian territories, exposing how it contributes to a two-tiered system of discrimination.

“Airbnb took the only course of action that it could to comply with its responsibilities under the UN guiding principles on business and human rights - not to directly facilitate and profit from rights abuse,” said Shakir of Human Rights Watch.

“I think its an important message - not only to other businesses that continue to do business in and with settlements, but also to the Israeli government - that the international community will not be a party to the abuses associated with its ongoing ugly occupation of the West Bank.”

Hasina wins Bangladesh elections as opposition rejects polls

Officials declare massive victory for alliance led by PM Sheikh Hasina's party, while opposition dubs polls 'farcical'.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina cast her vote in the morning during the election in Dhaka [Sangbad Sangstha/Reuters]

by Saif Khalid- 30 December 2018

Dhaka, Bangladesh - Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League (AL) party has won Bangladesh's parliamentary vote, the country's election commission has announced, after the main opposition alliance rejected the violence-marred polls.

Three-hundred seats were up for grabs in the 350-member parliament, or Jatiya Sangshad, in Sunday's elections. Another 50 seats are reserved for women.

An AL-led coalition on Sunday won 287 of the 298 seats for which results have been declared for, while the main opposition alliance dominated by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) secured just six seats. A party needs 151 seats to form a government.

"My congratulations to the Awami League," Helal Uddin Ahmed, secretary of the Election Commission Secretariat, said in a televised address as he read the results.

Bangladesh's ruling party had surged ahead within hours of the counting of the votes - an outcome the Jatiya Oikya Front, the BNP-led opposition alliance had feared.

In a hurriedly called news conference earlier on Sunday night, the leader of the Jatiya Oikya Front dubbed the election "farcical".

"We reject the farcical election and want the election commission to hold a fresh election under a non-partisan administration," said Kamal Hossain, an 82-year-old jurist who wrote the country's secular constitution.

Fourth term

Hasina, who has headed the AL since 1981, went into the polls on the back of a decade of impressive GDP growth and booming garment exports. Bangladesh is the world's second-largest exporter of garments after China.

The 71-year-old leader is set for a record fourth term in office in the South Asian Muslim-majority nation of 160 million.

The sheer scale of the victory, as of now, reveals the nature and scale of the rigging. It cannot be described as the verdict of the voters.

ALI RIAZ, PROFESSOR AT ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY

She has been applauded for hosting nearly one million Rohingya refugees who took shelter in Bangladesh after fleeing a brutal military offensive in neighbouring Myanmar.

But critics have accused Hasina of authoritarianism and crippling the opposition. Her bitter political rival and leader of the BNP, Khaleda Zia, 73, is serving a 17-year jail term for corruption.

Opposition alliance accused Hasina's party of using stuffed ballot boxes [Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera]

Voting in the capital, Dhaka, was largely peaceful as convoys of soldiers and paramilitary forces were on the streets, where most traffic was banned.

At least 17 people were killed across the country in clashes between members of rival parties on Sunday despite the deployment of around 600,000 security personnel to prevent violence.

More than 40 opposition candidates pulled out of the election after polls opened, citing vote-rigging and ballot-stuffing, according to the Daily Star.

The opposition claimed thousands of its activists were arrested in the lead-up to the polls.
"We are getting disturbing reports outside Dhaka that overnight votes have been cast illegally," said Hossain of Jatiya Oikya Front.

'A travesty of an election'

Ali Riaz, professor at the department of politics and government at Illinois State University in the US, said: "It was a travesty of an election".

"What happened throughout the country, polling centre by centre, from driving out the polling agents to ballot stuffing, can't be called an election, let alone a credible election.

"The sheer scale of the victory, as of now, reveals the nature and scale of the rigging. It cannot be described as the verdict of the voters," Riaz told Al Jazeera over the phone.

READ MORE

Bangladesh elections 2018: What you need to know

The elections commission, which has yet to announce the voter turnout rate, said it would investigate allegations of vote rigging.

"Allegations are coming from across the country and those are under investigation," SM

Asaduzzaman, spokesperson for the elections commission told Reuters news agency. 

"If we get any confirmation from our own channels then measures will be taken as per rules."

Later, the election commission suspended voting at 22 centres across the country.

Syed Moazzem Hossain Alal, joint secretary-general of the BNP, the main party in the opposition alliance, called the election a "mockery".

But Mahbubul Alam Hanif, joint secretary-general of the ruling party, said he was satisfied with Sunday's vote.

"We are happy with the way the vote turned out. I believe Awami League will gain an absolute victory," he said.

About 104 million people were registered to vote in the country's 11th general election.

Additional reporting by Saqib Sarker from Dhaka

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS

HSBC divests from Israeli arms maker Elbit

Campaigners protest inside an HSBC branch in Brighton. (Brighton BDS)

Ali Abunimah -27 December 2018

Banking giant HSBC is divesting from the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems following a grassroots campaign.

“HSBC has taken a positive first step in divesting from Elbit Systems, the notorious manufacturer of drones, chemical weapons, cluster bomb artillery systems and other technology used in attacks against Palestinian civilians, and to militarize walls and borders around the world,” Ryvka Barnard of War on Want said on Thursday.

View image on Twitter

PSC@PSCupdates

CAMPAIGN VICTORY!

After tireless campaigning by members of PSC alongside @WarOnWant, @CAATuk & other organisations, banking giant @HSBC_UK has announced it has divested in full from Israeli weapons manufacturer @ElbitSystemsLtd!

STATEMENT: https://bit.ly/2SioGnn 

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4:48 AM - Dec 27, 2018

The campaign group said that HSBC confirmed its decision in an email to War on Want and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign last week.

“Doing business with companies like Elbit means profiting from violence and human rights violation, which is both immoral and a contravention of international law,” Barnard added.

Elbit Systems has already been excluded from pension and investment funds around the world over its involvement in supplying surveillance systems and other technology to Israel’s separation wall and settlements in the occupied West Bank.

A 2017 report by War on Want revealed how HSBC and other UK financial institutions are complicit in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people by financing arms deals and owning shares in arms makers.

For more than a year, UK campaigners have held pickets at HSBC branches, dubbing it “the world’s lethal bank” – a play on an HSBC ad campaign marketing the global behemoth as “the world’s local bank.”

Despite HSBC’s move, Elbit, one of Israel’s biggest arms manufacturers, remains a favorite of governments that purport to champion human rights.

In 2014, the Obama administration awarded Elbit a lucrative contract to provide surveillance equipment as part of US efforts to militarize its border with Mexico.

And the European Union has plowed millions of dollars of “research” funds into Elbit, despite the revelation of how the company manufactures banned cluster weapon systems.

In 2015, Elbit scored a $150-million contract to provide “advanced systems” jointly to the militaries of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Last year, Australia’s famous Royal Flying Doctor Service pulled out of a joint venture with Elbit, a move Palestine solidarity campaigners celebrated as a victory.

Now campaigners are seeing HSBC’s move as an important milestone towards holding Israel accountable.

Ben Jamal, director of the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign, called HSBC’s decision “proof positive that collective campaigning works.” He noted that people all over the UK “were involved in pushing HSBC to divest from Elbit through pickets, email campaigns and other actions designed to pressure the company.”

“HSBC’s announcement demonstrates the effectiveness of boycott, divestment and sanctions as a tactic against Israel’s continued flouting of international law and human rights,” Jamal added.

War on Want is demanding that HSBC follow up by divesting from other war industry firms including Caterpillar, which makes militarized bulldozers Israel uses to demolish Palestinian homes, and BAE Systems, “whose weapons are used in war crimes by Israel, Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes.”

Taliban changes as State power comes within grasp

Saturday, 29 December 2018 

Given the global powers’ very determined efforts to bring peace to war-torn Afghanistan by talking to the Taliban, it is likely that the radical Islamic insurgent group will be in the seat of power sooner or later.

The Taliban are no strangers to State power. They ran a government called the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” between 1996 and 2001. Before 1996, they were an insurgent group. And after being ousted from power by US-led forces in 2001, they returned to insurgency and have continued to be rebels, to date.

Nevertheless, while being quintessentially anti-systemic, the Taliban have been exercising full or partial “de facto” control over much of Afghanistan, running a state within a state as it were.

There were glimmerings of change in the outlook of the anti-systemic Taliban in 2003. Since then, they have been seeing themselves not just as an insurgent group destroying everything and every institution that they consider “un-Islamic”, but also as an administrative group, delivering social, economic and other State-like services to people in areas under their control or areas in which they share power in varying degrees with the legitimate government headquartered in Kabul.

Changes in environment 

The reorientation of the Taliban is due to changes in the political and geo-strategic environment. The US has of late been showing an increasing inclination to disengage from Afghanistan militarily and is having talks with the Taliban to bring about an “Afghan-negotiated” peace settlement which will end the war while ensuring that the social and political gains of the democratic interregnum remain.

The US had roped in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Haqqani Network for preliminary talks with the Taliban in Qatar recently. The Saudis have been funding the Taliban. Pakistan has provided bases and personnel to them. And the Haqqani Network, known for its military prowess, is part of the Taliban.

By talking to the Taliban with a plan to withdraw its military from Afghanistan, the US had met the Taliban’s most important pre-condition for negotiations.

If all goes well, an estimated 22,000 Western troops, including 14,000 from the US, are likely to get back home, though no official commitment to a total withdrawal has been announced yet. The 17-year Afghan misadventure has cost the US $1 trillion to date. Remember, the US and its allies had, at one stage, 130,000 troops in Afghanistan.

The US had had to keep its client regime in Kabul, led by President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, out of the talks at the insistence of the Taliban. But the incumbent regime in Kabul is being kept informed about developments.

As for President Ashraf Ghani, he had formed a team to negotiate peace with the Taliban for a settlement which is “Afghan-owned and Afghan-led”. As one commentator put it, launching and owning a peace process seems to be the only achievement that can ensure his political survival and potential re-election sometime in 2019.

Pakistan is in the talks because its new Prime Minister Imran Khan is for peace and economic development and not war. China has teamed up with Pakistan to play a constructive role in Afghanistan as it needs peace to make a success of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the Central Asian region. And Russia is interested in expanding its influence in Afghanistan to fill the gap when America withdraws. The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, met a Taliban delegation recently.

Filling a gap

The other change in the situation is the poor record of the democratic governments led, in succession, by Presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani. To their credit, both had opened up and liberated Afghans from the thralldom of Taliban’s harsh version of Islamic orthodoxy. But their administrations have become a byword for inefficiency and corruption. They have also not been effective in countering the Taliban militarily. In a country wracked by war, and saddled with weak institutions, the Taliban’s moralism and brute power to enforce edits appear to have an appeal.

The Taliban have been exploiting the developing situation to portray themselves as a more desirable alternative. In fact, the Taliban have shed some of their rigidity and have been co-opting some of the State and non-State institutions to administer the areas which they control or have partial power over.

Shadow State

In their paper in ‘Afghan Analysts Network’ entitled ‘One Land, Two Rules: Service delivery in insurgent-affected areas,’ Jelena Bjelica and Kate Clark say that the Taliban consider themselves as a “government in absentia”.

Since 2003, the Taliban have been, with varying degrees of commitment and effectiveness, trying to deliver services normally associated with a State and to develop ‘civilian’ structures of governance.

Right from the beginning of the insurgency in the 1980s, the Taliban have been having courts of their own to deliver justice. After 2001, whenever Taliban insurgents moved into an area, they prioritised the setting up alternatives to the state’s judicial system. Because of the corruption and inefficiency in the government’s judicial system, the Taliban’s courts were popular and became one of the insurgency’s main strengths, Bjelica and Clark say.

However, the Taliban have found it virtually impossible to accept the modern secular educational system. In 2006, they issued their first Layha or Code of Conduct. While the Code allowed education, it could be given only in a mosque or similar Islamic institution with the course content being highly Islamic. Schools which did not follow this diktat would be closed or burned. Any contract of an educational institution with an NGO, in exchange for money or educational material, had to be authorised by the Taliban at the highest level.

In 2008-2009, provision of State-like services with accountability were introduced. “The Taliban set up a more responsive complaints system, whereby, inhabitants of rural areas could request investigations even into corrupt Taliban commanders or members. Two new committees, one to handle complaints from commanders and fighters, and another to deal with villagers’ grievances, were set up in 2008,” Bjelica and Clark point out.

The Codes introduced in 2009 and 2010 set up policy and administrative commissions for various subjects such as Health, Education, Companies and NGOs.

By 2010, the Taliban changed their attitude to education. In 2009, the order to attack schools and teachers was removed from the Code of Conduct. The Taliban started engaging with the Ministry of Education, which had also decided to re-start negotiations with the Taliban. But the Taliban force changes in the school curriculum and are involved in hiring and firing teachers.

Bjelica and Clark point out say that the Taliban are more likely to support education if they get control over the curriculum, distribution of government funds, teacher hiring and placement, monitoring of attendance and performance and health and security arrangements at and around maktabs (ornon-religious schools). Varying arrangements are possible through negotiations, they say.

The Taliban never objected to the delivery of health services because they saw health delivery as less “political” than education. To show that they can do development work too, the Taliban have been posting videos showing their cadres involved in constructing roads and other infrastructure.

Co-option of Government structures 

Bjelica and Clark observe that the Taliban’s sectoral commissions do not themselves provide services, but co-opt services rendered by the legitimate Government. They also co-opts NGOs and private companies and control them.

The Taliban indulge in taxation as well as extortion. Media outlets, businessmen, truckers, and even Provincial Council members and other officials, are taxed. They had begun to tax mobile networks after Government boasted that it had earned $ 1.4 million by increasing tax on them by 10%. But the Taliban boast that by maintaining tight security they allow businesses to operate safely.

The Taliban are exploiting Governmental corruption to present themselves as a contrasting outfit. Stinging reports of the Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee’s (MEC) add grist to the Taliban’s mill.

Trump’s Lies are, ever so slowly, Making Way for the Truth!

AS THE MUELLER PROBE HEATS UP . . .

by Selvam Canagaratna-December 29, 2018, 6:19 pm 

"No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it."
– Theodore Roosevelt, Address, January 1904.

With one shoe after another dropping in Special Counsel Robert Muellerʼs Trump-Russia probe, James Risen, writing in The Intercept, was of the view that the increasing pressure was inevitably prompting the President to inadvertently blurt out the truth – "or at least as close to the truth as a serial liar like Trump can get."

In late November, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty in federal court to lying to Congress about a deal to build a Trump-branded skyscraper in Moscow. Most notably, he admitted that he had misled lawmakers when he told them that discussions about the project had ended by January 2016 when, in fact, the project was still under active consideration by Trump and his business organization just as the Republican Party was about to nominate Trump as its presidential candidate in the summer of 2016.

Cohen said that he lied in order to help Trump avoid the likely political fallout from the disclosure that the candidate was still trying to cut a business deal with people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin just as he clinched the Republican nomination.

Cohen’s latest admissions, including the disclosure that he talked to Trump about the proposed deal more frequently than he had previously acknowledged and discussed it with others in Trump’s family, are very significant because they shed new light on the relationship between Trump and Russia during the height of the presidential campaign.

Cohen now admits that ʽTrump Moscowʼ was still being considered as late as June 2016, the same month that the infamous Trump Tower meeting occurred in New York. During that meeting, Trump’s oldest son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, then his campaign chairman, met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others, including Rob Goldstone, a publicist for Emin Agalarov, a Russian singer and son of Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire with close ties to Putin.

Aras Agalarov had hosted Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow at a concert hall he owned; he had also been involved in discussions with Trump about building the skyscraper in Moscow. It was during the Trump Tower meeting that Veselnitskaya first mentioned she had derogatory material about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Faced with Cohen’s late-November admissions in court, Trump at first tried to talk his way out of the corner by saying that Cohen was a "weak person and not a very smart person." But he quickly switched gears and effectively confirmed what Cohen had said. "There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?"

Risenʼs apt observation on Trumpʼs admission in the face of the Cohen disclosure in court: "They show the coarse, cynical approach Trump takes toward public service. But more ominously for him, they also reveal that he had much deeper connections to Russia in the midst of the campaign than he has ever previously acknowledged. It suggests that Trump will lie about his Russian connections until he realizes he can no longer get away with it, and then will quite casually admit that he has been lying all along."

Added Risen: "Of course, Cohen isnʼt Trumpʼs only problem. In fact, in the weeks since the midterm elections, a series of new disclosures has suggested that the Trump-Russia investigation is intensifying. And one sure sign that the President is worried about Mueller’s probe is the increased frequency with which Trump is now publicly attacking Mueller."

In fact, it seems that Trump’s biggest post-election nightmare has been Paul Manafort, especially after Mueller’s team said that Manafort has been lying to them in violation of a plea agreement he had reached with the prosecutors. Mueller’s team now wants a federal judge overseeing the case to set a sentencing date for Manafort, at which prosecutors say they will detail "the nature of the defendantʼs crimes and lies."

Mueller’s get-tough approach suggests that he thinks Manafort is still withholding critical information on the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia. Meanwhile, Manafort’s previous life as a longtime consultant to the pro-Russian leader of the Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and his financial ties to a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, have raised questions about whether he had, in fact, acted as an intermediary between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

In addition to Cohen and Manafort, argues James Risen, the role of the incendiary Roger Stone has come under further scrutiny. Apparently, there is new evidence – including in a draft court document – that Mueller is continuing to probe whether Stone served as an intermediary in 2016 between WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign.

Russian intelligence operatives hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee and stole emails that were later released by WikiLeaks and proved highly damaging to Clinton. The Mueller investigation has also raised questions about whether conservative author Jerome Corsi had warned Stone ahead of time that WikiLeaks planned to release materials that would hurt Clinton’s campaign. Corsi has said that he has rejected a plea agreement with Mueller.

To top it off, George Papadopoulos, the onetime Trump campaign foreign policy aide, finally reported to prison recently. He had pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with Mueller in exchange for a very light sentence of just two weeks in prison. He had lied to investigators about his contacts with Joseph Mifsud, a mysterious professor who had told Papadopoulos that the Russians had thousands of emails with derogatory information about Clinton well before their existence was publicly known.

"Given all this," concluded Risen, "it’s fair to say that the thrashing the Republicans suffered in the midterm elections wasn’t the worst thing that has happened to Donald Trump."

Meanwhile, in an Op-Ed in Truthout magazine, Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, noted that as evidence of law breaking by Donald Trump continues to emerge, commentators were speculating whether a sitting President could be indicted, even though the Department of Justice had twice before opined in the negative – during the Nixon and Clinton administrations.

Her view, however, was that nothing in the Constitution would prevent Trump from being criminally indicted while he occupies the Oval Office. Trump is apparently implicated in at least three federal criminal investigations: Mueller is examining violations of campaign finance laws in connection with Trump Tower Moscow; Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have documented campaign finance violations stemming from hush money paid to Trump’s alleged paramours in order to influence the presidential election; and the New York US attorney’s office is analyzing whether Trump’s inaugural committee received illegal payments for presidential access and policy influence.

Marjorie Cohn noted that Richard Painter, chief ethics attorney in the George W. Bush administration, had recently said that Trump’s only chance to protect himself and his family from legal jeopardy was to strike a plea bargain with prosecutors. "Donald Trump is in serious trouble," Painter stated. "His lawyers ought to be telling him to negotiate a plea deal. Get him out of the White House. Have him resign, plead guilty to lower charges and let’s move on as a country."

Concluded Cohn: "The Constitution does not prohibit indictment of a sitting President. Will Mueller recognize this reality in his actions going forward?"