IDEALS

Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s team
once talked openly about the need to remove Ahmed Wali Karzai,
Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s brother and the most powerful man
in Kandahar, from power.

Last October, as reports of Wali Karzai’s role in the opium trade
were circulating, McChrystal’s intelligence chief Gen. Michael T.
Flynn said, “If we are going to conduct a population-centric
strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs,
then we are just undermining ourselves.”

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KARACHI, (May 5, 2009) IPS/GIN – Till two months back, Shireen Zada
of the private television channel Express News would carry a pistol
whenever he covered the news in the restive Swat Valley in
Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

“But the day the peace accord was signed between the Taliban and
the government, on Feb. 16, I put away my gun,” he said.

“It literally weighed me down. Honestly speaking, my pen and the
mike in my hand are enough for my protection,” he said, speaking
to Asia Media Forum (AMF) over the phone from Swat. Read the rest of this entry →

PESHAWAR, (May 6, 2009) IPS/GIN – Thousands of civilians are
continuing to migrate to safer places from Upper Dir and Buner
districts – the new theatres of an internal war between Pakistan’s
Taliban and the military in the North West Frontier Province
(NWFP).

“We fled to escape the military operation,” says Mohammad Riaz from
Nowagai area in Buner where the army launched an attack on Apr. 28
to flush out Islamic militants who have infiltrated from
neighbouring Swat, a volatile district. Read the rest of this entry →

WASHINGTON, (Apr. 8, 2010) IPS/GIN – Hollywood and Silicon Valley
leaders have teamed up with Middle Eastern royalty and high-level
U.S. diplomats to send a message to heads of state who are
gathering here in Washington next week: the world needs to reduce
its nuclear arsenal to zero as soon as possible.

Next week, U.S. President Barack Obama will host leaders of 47
countries in Washington – including Russian President Dmitri
Medvedev, Chinese President Hu Jintao, French President Nicolas
Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel – to discuss how to
keep nuclear weapons out of terrorists’ hands. India and Pakistan
are expected to attend but Iran and North Korea have not been
invited. Read the rest of this entry →

UNITED NATIONS, (May 14, 2009) IPS/GIN – As the humanitarian crisis
in Sri Lanka takes a turn for the worse, U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon is sending one of his most senior officials to take stock
of the situation in the war zone, where hundreds of civilians are
being killed both by government and rebel forces.

Under-Secretary-General Vijay Nambiar, the secretary-general’s
chief of staff, is scheduled to make a second visit to Sri Lanka
to convince the government of the need to rescue the estimated
50,000 civilians being used as human shields by the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam, listed as a “terrorist organisation” by
several countries, including the United States. Read the rest of this entry →

SAN FRANCISCO, (May 11, 2009) IPS/GIN – A U.S. soldier shot five
of his colleagues dead at a base in Baghdad, Iraq, on Monday. The
Pentagon says at least two other people were hurt in the shootings
and the gunman is in custody.

The incident happened at a stress clinic where troops get help for
personal issues or combat trauma.

At an afternoon press conference, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates
was tight-lipped about the details of the shooting, the first such
spree by a U.S. soldier through six years of war in Iraq. Read the rest of this entry →

WASHINGTON, (May 12, 2009) IPS/GIN – The choice of Lt. Gen. Stanley
McChrystal to become the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan has been
hailed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and national news media
as ushering in a new unconventional approach to counterinsurgency.

But McChrystal’s background sends a very different message from
the one crafted by Gates and the news media. His long
specialisation in counter-terrorism operations suggests an officer
who is likely to have more interest in targeted killings than in
the kind of politically sensitive counterinsurgency programs that
the Obama administration has said it intends to carry out. Read the rest of this entry →

SAN FRANCISCO, (Mar. 29, 2010) IPS/GIN – It’s been seven years
since Fernando Suarez del Solar buried his son, Jesus. Seven years
since Mar. 27, 2003, when just one week into the U.S. invasion of
Iraq, Lance Corporal Jesus Suarez del Solar stepped on a piece of
unexploded ordnance and came home in a flag-draped coffin.

When he died, Jesus left behind a wife and infant son, Erik, who
even today doesn’t understand what happened to his father.
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WASHINGTON, (Jul. 1, 2009) IPS/GIN – Pakistani public opinion
remains supportive of the military’s fight against the Pakistani
Taliban, said a new poll released Wednesday. However, Pakistanis
roundly reject the U.S. military campaign in the region.

The poll, from WorldPublicOpinion.org, a project of the Programme
of International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of
Maryland, is being released as Pakistani forces continue their
campaign to push the Taliban out of the Swat Valley and are
reportedly planning to increase operations aimed at Pakistani
Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud in the province of South
Waziristan. Read the rest of this entry →