VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict XVI has summoned Irish bishops to the Vatican in February to chart a way forward over a child sex abuse scandal that has shaken Ireland, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
The Feb 15 to 16 meeting will address the aftermath of revelations that Church authorities covered up for paedophile priests in the mainly Catholic country for some three decades.
The pope already met on Dec 11 with Ireland’s two most senior Roman Catholic churchmen, primate of all Ireland Cardinal Sean Brady and Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, following a shock government report on the scandal in the Dublin archdiocese, Ireland’s biggest. The pope said then he shared “the outrage, betrayal and shame felt by so many of the faithful in Ireland (over) these heinous crimes” catalogued in the report issued in late November.
One priest admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children, while another accepted that he had abused on a fortnightly basis over 25 years.
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Thursday, January 6, 2011
Our population problem
IN the 1960s President Ayub Khan made population growth a major policy concern for his development-minded administration. However, since then policymakers have not given the subject of population the attention it deserves.
That is unfortunate since the dynamics associated with population growth varies according to the location of people, the patterns of migration and differences among various areas. It has had a profound impact on the way the country has developed — and not just economically.
Demography has also had a profound impact on Pakistan’s political and economic development. Today I will look at some of the broad trends in Pakistan over the past six decades, look at the way population trends are shaping globally, and see how these world trends re late to Pakistan.
When Pakistan became independent in 1947 its population was estimated at 32 million. Sixty-three years later it has increased 5.3 times to 170 million. This implies an average annual rate of growth of 2.74 per cent, one of the highest in the world. The government claims that the rate of increase has been declining in recent years and is now below two per cent, possibly no more than 1.8 per cent a year.
In 1947, only 10 per cent of the population lived in urban areas; today the figure is about 50 per cent. This means that the size of the urban population has increased 26.5 times, again one of the highest rates of growth — 5.4 per cent a year. About a third of the urban population resides in two large cities, Karachi and Lahore. As is the case with the rest of the developing world, the rate of increase in the populations of large cities in Pakistan will also decline while those of the secondary and tertiary cities will increase.
This brings me to the question of global trends. It is useful to reflect on these in order to comprehend the challenges Pakistan’s policymakers face and will do so in the future as they begin to focus on the impact of demography.
The UN’s population division now projects that world population growth will almost come to a standstill by 2050. At that time the global population will stabilise at 9.15 billion compared to the present 6.83 billion. This levelling in the rate of increase was not anticipated a couple of decades ago. In the 1980s, for instance, demographers worried about what they had begun to call the population bomb. The bomb did not explode in most parts of the developing world. That said, there is now a new worry — the distribution worldwide of the anticipated growth. The new generation of demographers has now begun to point to some population trends that could produce a great deal of economic, political and social instability.
Almost the entire growth in the world population of 2.32 billion will occur in the developing world. By the middle of this century the share of today’s rich countries will decline to only 12 per cent of the total, five percentage points lower than was the case at the beginning of the century. It is not always recognised that this is a significant reversal of past tends. At the start of the 18th century, Europe accounted for 20 per cent of the world’s population.
The advent of the industrial revolution in Britain resulted in an explosion of its population as health and sanitation facilities improved and the rates of mortality declined. In 1913, on the eve of the First World War, Europe had a population larger than that of China at that time. By that time the proportion of Europe in the context of the global population had increased to 33 per cent of the total. However, the continent was getting too crowded. There were serious food shortages in some parts; Ireland suffered what came to be known as the potato famine. In migration, the Europeans found a solution to their population problem. There was a massive movement of people to North America and Australia.
There will be other significant changes in the distribution of the population. Not only will today’s developed countries have a significantly lower proportion of the total population, their populations will also be much older and the proportion of non-working to working populations will increase considerably. Will the burden of looking after older people fall mostly on the young or will the state step in to help? If it is the latter, how will the state pay for the care of the poor? These have already become important policy issues in developed countries.
By the middle of the century more than half the global population will live in towns and cities. Most of the increase in urban populations will take place in the large- and medium-sized cities in the developing world. Even at this time these cities are proving hard to manage. Neither they nor the states in which they are located have the means to pro vide some of the essential services people need. In many of them security is a major concern. Today some 90 per cent of global homicides are committed in the urban areas of the developing world.
There will also be sig nificant demographic shifts within the developing world. Populations in Muslim countries will increase much more rapidly than in other parts. As Jack A. Goldstein says in his article, ‘The new population bomb’, in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, “most of the world’s expected population will increasingly be concentrated in today’s poorest, youngest and most heavily Muslim countries which have lack of quality education, capital and employment opportunities”. He probably had Pakistan in mind when he wrote that sentence. But the option of migration is increasingly less available to the crowded Muslim world as was the case for the Europeans 100 years ago.
This then is the context in which we should look at our demographic situation. We are engaged in a race: either develop the economy rapidly so that opportunities are created for the young or fumble with the economy and let the youth turn increasingly towards extremism. ¦
That is unfortunate since the dynamics associated with population growth varies according to the location of people, the patterns of migration and differences among various areas. It has had a profound impact on the way the country has developed — and not just economically.
Demography has also had a profound impact on Pakistan’s political and economic development. Today I will look at some of the broad trends in Pakistan over the past six decades, look at the way population trends are shaping globally, and see how these world trends re late to Pakistan.
When Pakistan became independent in 1947 its population was estimated at 32 million. Sixty-three years later it has increased 5.3 times to 170 million. This implies an average annual rate of growth of 2.74 per cent, one of the highest in the world. The government claims that the rate of increase has been declining in recent years and is now below two per cent, possibly no more than 1.8 per cent a year.
In 1947, only 10 per cent of the population lived in urban areas; today the figure is about 50 per cent. This means that the size of the urban population has increased 26.5 times, again one of the highest rates of growth — 5.4 per cent a year. About a third of the urban population resides in two large cities, Karachi and Lahore. As is the case with the rest of the developing world, the rate of increase in the populations of large cities in Pakistan will also decline while those of the secondary and tertiary cities will increase.
This brings me to the question of global trends. It is useful to reflect on these in order to comprehend the challenges Pakistan’s policymakers face and will do so in the future as they begin to focus on the impact of demography.
The UN’s population division now projects that world population growth will almost come to a standstill by 2050. At that time the global population will stabilise at 9.15 billion compared to the present 6.83 billion. This levelling in the rate of increase was not anticipated a couple of decades ago. In the 1980s, for instance, demographers worried about what they had begun to call the population bomb. The bomb did not explode in most parts of the developing world. That said, there is now a new worry — the distribution worldwide of the anticipated growth. The new generation of demographers has now begun to point to some population trends that could produce a great deal of economic, political and social instability.
Almost the entire growth in the world population of 2.32 billion will occur in the developing world. By the middle of this century the share of today’s rich countries will decline to only 12 per cent of the total, five percentage points lower than was the case at the beginning of the century. It is not always recognised that this is a significant reversal of past tends. At the start of the 18th century, Europe accounted for 20 per cent of the world’s population.
The advent of the industrial revolution in Britain resulted in an explosion of its population as health and sanitation facilities improved and the rates of mortality declined. In 1913, on the eve of the First World War, Europe had a population larger than that of China at that time. By that time the proportion of Europe in the context of the global population had increased to 33 per cent of the total. However, the continent was getting too crowded. There were serious food shortages in some parts; Ireland suffered what came to be known as the potato famine. In migration, the Europeans found a solution to their population problem. There was a massive movement of people to North America and Australia.
There will be other significant changes in the distribution of the population. Not only will today’s developed countries have a significantly lower proportion of the total population, their populations will also be much older and the proportion of non-working to working populations will increase considerably. Will the burden of looking after older people fall mostly on the young or will the state step in to help? If it is the latter, how will the state pay for the care of the poor? These have already become important policy issues in developed countries.
By the middle of the century more than half the global population will live in towns and cities. Most of the increase in urban populations will take place in the large- and medium-sized cities in the developing world. Even at this time these cities are proving hard to manage. Neither they nor the states in which they are located have the means to pro vide some of the essential services people need. In many of them security is a major concern. Today some 90 per cent of global homicides are committed in the urban areas of the developing world.
There will also be sig nificant demographic shifts within the developing world. Populations in Muslim countries will increase much more rapidly than in other parts. As Jack A. Goldstein says in his article, ‘The new population bomb’, in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, “most of the world’s expected population will increasingly be concentrated in today’s poorest, youngest and most heavily Muslim countries which have lack of quality education, capital and employment opportunities”. He probably had Pakistan in mind when he wrote that sentence. But the option of migration is increasingly less available to the crowded Muslim world as was the case for the Europeans 100 years ago.
This then is the context in which we should look at our demographic situation. We are engaged in a race: either develop the economy rapidly so that opportunities are created for the young or fumble with the economy and let the youth turn increasingly towards extremism. ¦
Curfew in Hyderabad Deccan after sectarian clashes
HYDERABAD, India: Indian police on Tuesday imposed a curfew across a third of the southern city of Hyderabad, home to global IT giants Google and Microsoft, after days of inter-religious clashes.
At least one man died in street battles between Hindu and Muslim mobs during violence triggered by arguments over putting up decorations for a religious festival, Hyderabad Police Superintendent AK Khan told AFP.
He said the victim, a Hindu youth, was stabbed to death on Monday and scores of people had been injured. “We have imposed a curfew on parts of the city because we did not want the situation to escalate,” Khan said.
Violence spread over the weekend through the Muslim-dominated “old city” of Hyderabad with crowds pelting stones at each other near the tourist landmark of the Charminar mosque. Five smaller mosques and one Hindu temple were slightly damaged, police said, as shops, buses and cars were set on fire. Hyderabad, a city of eight million people, has attracted major investment from global information technology and pharmaceuticals firms, and is a symbol of India’s emerging economy.
But it has also suffered from historically deep communal tension and growing unrest over the proposed division of Andhra Pradesh state into two entities — an issue that has also led police to impose curfews in recent months. Frequent strikes and road and rail blockades in the city, which is the state capital of Andhra Pradesh, have caused widespread disruption to business over the last year. Analysts say the turmoil has created a sense of uncertainty among investors, though social networking group Facebook chose Hyderabad earlier this month for its first office in India.
About 2,000 extra security personnel were sent to reinforce the city’s police on Tuesday as Hindus marked a festival celebrating the birth of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman. Many shops and offices were closed and the streets were quiet as residents stayed indoors. At least 100 suspected rioters have been detained.
Police patrolled in large numbers through the city’s troubled areas, which remained calm during the day. “The curfew will remain in force till the situation is brought to normalcy,” said Sabita Indra Reddy, home minister of Andhra Pradesh.
The modern parts of Hyderabad where the multinational companies are based were unaffected by the unrest. Hyderabad’s star rose during the 1990s as India established itself as an IT outsourcing destination offering low-cost services to multinational companies for a fraction of the cost in their domestic markets.
At least one man died in street battles between Hindu and Muslim mobs during violence triggered by arguments over putting up decorations for a religious festival, Hyderabad Police Superintendent AK Khan told AFP.
He said the victim, a Hindu youth, was stabbed to death on Monday and scores of people had been injured. “We have imposed a curfew on parts of the city because we did not want the situation to escalate,” Khan said.
Violence spread over the weekend through the Muslim-dominated “old city” of Hyderabad with crowds pelting stones at each other near the tourist landmark of the Charminar mosque. Five smaller mosques and one Hindu temple were slightly damaged, police said, as shops, buses and cars were set on fire. Hyderabad, a city of eight million people, has attracted major investment from global information technology and pharmaceuticals firms, and is a symbol of India’s emerging economy.
But it has also suffered from historically deep communal tension and growing unrest over the proposed division of Andhra Pradesh state into two entities — an issue that has also led police to impose curfews in recent months. Frequent strikes and road and rail blockades in the city, which is the state capital of Andhra Pradesh, have caused widespread disruption to business over the last year. Analysts say the turmoil has created a sense of uncertainty among investors, though social networking group Facebook chose Hyderabad earlier this month for its first office in India.
About 2,000 extra security personnel were sent to reinforce the city’s police on Tuesday as Hindus marked a festival celebrating the birth of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman. Many shops and offices were closed and the streets were quiet as residents stayed indoors. At least 100 suspected rioters have been detained.
Police patrolled in large numbers through the city’s troubled areas, which remained calm during the day. “The curfew will remain in force till the situation is brought to normalcy,” said Sabita Indra Reddy, home minister of Andhra Pradesh.
The modern parts of Hyderabad where the multinational companies are based were unaffected by the unrest. Hyderabad’s star rose during the 1990s as India established itself as an IT outsourcing destination offering low-cost services to multinational companies for a fraction of the cost in their domestic markets.
Using its leverage at last
Islamabad finally managed to extract formal apologies from the US and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for the Sept 30 raid on a Pakistani border security post in Kurram Agency, in which two Frontier Corps soldiers were killed.
The apologies were offered by Ambassador Anne Patterson and Gen David Petraeus, commander of the NATO-led ISAF in Afghanistan. Admiral Mike Mullen, Richard Holbrooke, special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen also expressed regrets at the incident. Subsequently, Pakistan reopened the key Torkham route for supplies to the NATO forces in Afghanistan, after 10 days of closure.
It was surprising that the Pakistani authorities denied suggestions that the closure of the Torkham supply route was in response to the attack on the border post by NATO helicopter-gunships and the killing of Pakistani soldiers. Instead, the suspension of the supplies was attributed to the enhanced security threat to the convoys passing through Pakistan amid the emotions caused in the country by the repeated violation of the country's borders and, in this case, the death of the two Pakistani soldiers, Lance Naik Nawazish Khan of Peshawar and Sepoy Shahinshah of Mianwali.
At least four big attacks subsequently took place in all four provinces of Pakistan on stranded oil-tankers carrying fuel for the NATO forces. More than a hundred oil tankers were burnt and several people, including drivers, guards and bystanders were killed, with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its allied groups quickly claiming responsibility.
The attacks showed that the security threat mentioned by Pakistan was real, but the assault on the oil tankers stranded in Shikarpur in Sindh raised eyebrows as no presence of militants had been reported there until then. The attacks in Khairabad in Nowshera in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and in Mithri in Bolan district in Balochistan were also reportedly easy jobs, as the parked oil tankers, without proper security to guard them, were sitting ducks for the militants or anyone else who wanted to attack them.
The attack on oil tankers in the limits of the Islamabad Capital Territory, close to the ICT's boundary with Punjab, also caused suspicion because of the ease with which the attackers managed to escape after the daring assault. The situation became complex and confusing when the Islamabad Police, like their counterparts elsewhere in the country, argued that it wasn't their responsibility to protect the NATO convoys, blaming the lapse on the private security assigned to do the job. The US embassy in Islamabad responded by saying that it was the responsibility of the Pakistani government to give protection to the supplies for NATO forces.
This kind of blame-game and the activities raising suspicion could have been avoided, had Pakistan made it clear at the outset that it stopped NATO supplies through one of its two border crossings to Afghanistan in retaliation for the attack on its clearly marked security post flying the Pakistani flag. The claims of "victory" by government ministers after Pakistan received apologies from the US and NATO, would have sounded credible if it had been made obvious that the supplies had been blocked in response to the raid on the border post and the killing of the two soldiers.
That wasn't done, out of fear that the US and its NATO partners would be antagonised. A rather strange method was adopted to convey Pakistan's anger and put pressure on the US and NATO to tender the apology. At the same time, Islamabad failed to close the Chaman border route through which close to 20 per cent of all NATO supplies passing through Pakistan enter Afghanistan. The US and NATO planes using Pakistan's airspace to fly supplies to their troops in Afghanistan also continued to operate.
The closure of the Torkham route, through which almost 80 per cent of NATO supplies of food, fuel and other goods passing through Pakistan are transported to Afghanistan, was thus meant to be a temporary measure aimed at conveying Islamabad's anger and making the US and its allies realise that Pakistan's cooperation was vital for the achievement of NATO's war objectives in Afghanistan.
Pakistan was and is in no mood to completely and permanently shut down the NATO supplies or end its military alliance with the US. Instead, Islamabad is using to its best advantage the leverage given to it by the dependence of NATO forces in Afghanistan on the shorter and less expensive supply route through Pakistan.
Pakistan's weak and muted response to its border violations by US forces in the past meant that its demand for an apology this time wasn't taken seriously. It had failed to lodge a strong protest and seek apology for a far more serious incident of border violation in 2008 when 14 Pakistani soldiers were killed in a cross-border attack by US helicopter-gunships on the Gorparai security post in Mohmand Agency. They all belonged to the Frontier Corps.
As in the incident in Kurram Agency, missiles were fired to attack the clearly marked Pakistani border post. There were also two more serious incidents of border violations in Angoor Adda in South Waziristan and in Saidgi in North Waziristan in which twenty-one and three Pakistanis, respectively, were killed, and a few taken away in military helicopters that had actually landed inside Pakistani territory.
Pakistan had specified "red lines" warning against such incidents in which US and NATO troops operated and launched attacks on its soil. Promises were made at the time by the US and NATO authorities that such incidents would be avoided in the future, although the promises were never honoured. The closure of the Torkham supply route was also seen in Kabul, Washington and Brussels as a temporary measure for a brief period. It was only after realisation dawned on the US and NATO authorities that the closure of the Torkham border could go on and threaten their military operations in Afghanistan that they agreed to offer formal apologies.
Initially, the US and NATO military authorities tried to justify the Kurram Agency attack by arguing that it was undertaken in self-defence because their helicopter-gunships were fired at. This is strange logic because the two military helicopters had menacingly intruded about 200 metres into Pakistani territory and threatened the border post manned by Frontier Corps soldiers. The soldiers, who opened fire with their G-3 rifles after coming under attack, were certainly firing warning shots. In fact, it was they who were using their right of self-defence, and not the Americans intruding into and violating Pakistan's borders.
No principle of "hot pursuit" was involved in this incident as no militant activity was reported in that part of the Pak-Afghan border. In any case, Pakistan has made it clear it hasn't agreed to any "hot pursuit" operations by the NATO forces in Pakistani territory because the ISAF mandate is confined to Afghanistan. Besides, Pakistan has mostly ignored and kept silent whenever the NATO forces have carried out operations against militants operating on or near the Pak-Afghan border.
More importantly, Pakistan seems to have accepted as a fait accompli the drone attacks that the US carries out with increasing intensity and impunity in its tribal areas. The government denies that these missile strikes are undertaken by the US in tacit agreement with the Pakistani military, since some of the drone attacks have killed some most-wanted TTP commanders, such as Baitullah Mahsud.
The apologies have been received and accepted and NATO supplies through Pakistan have resumed. But there are no guarantees that cross-border attacks on Pakistani territory will not take place again. However, Pakistan has finally learnt to use its leverages while interacting with the US and NATO to make its point and restore some of its lost dignity.
Nearly 500 trucks and a large number of oil tankers pass daily through Pakistan to meet almost 80 per cent needs of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, and the alternative route via Russia and the Central Asian states costs two to three times more and takes twenty days longer. This is the greatest leverage that Pakistan has and it is no longer shy of using it to protect its interests.
The apologies were offered by Ambassador Anne Patterson and Gen David Petraeus, commander of the NATO-led ISAF in Afghanistan. Admiral Mike Mullen, Richard Holbrooke, special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen also expressed regrets at the incident. Subsequently, Pakistan reopened the key Torkham route for supplies to the NATO forces in Afghanistan, after 10 days of closure.
It was surprising that the Pakistani authorities denied suggestions that the closure of the Torkham supply route was in response to the attack on the border post by NATO helicopter-gunships and the killing of Pakistani soldiers. Instead, the suspension of the supplies was attributed to the enhanced security threat to the convoys passing through Pakistan amid the emotions caused in the country by the repeated violation of the country's borders and, in this case, the death of the two Pakistani soldiers, Lance Naik Nawazish Khan of Peshawar and Sepoy Shahinshah of Mianwali.
At least four big attacks subsequently took place in all four provinces of Pakistan on stranded oil-tankers carrying fuel for the NATO forces. More than a hundred oil tankers were burnt and several people, including drivers, guards and bystanders were killed, with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its allied groups quickly claiming responsibility.
The attacks showed that the security threat mentioned by Pakistan was real, but the assault on the oil tankers stranded in Shikarpur in Sindh raised eyebrows as no presence of militants had been reported there until then. The attacks in Khairabad in Nowshera in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and in Mithri in Bolan district in Balochistan were also reportedly easy jobs, as the parked oil tankers, without proper security to guard them, were sitting ducks for the militants or anyone else who wanted to attack them.
The attack on oil tankers in the limits of the Islamabad Capital Territory, close to the ICT's boundary with Punjab, also caused suspicion because of the ease with which the attackers managed to escape after the daring assault. The situation became complex and confusing when the Islamabad Police, like their counterparts elsewhere in the country, argued that it wasn't their responsibility to protect the NATO convoys, blaming the lapse on the private security assigned to do the job. The US embassy in Islamabad responded by saying that it was the responsibility of the Pakistani government to give protection to the supplies for NATO forces.
This kind of blame-game and the activities raising suspicion could have been avoided, had Pakistan made it clear at the outset that it stopped NATO supplies through one of its two border crossings to Afghanistan in retaliation for the attack on its clearly marked security post flying the Pakistani flag. The claims of "victory" by government ministers after Pakistan received apologies from the US and NATO, would have sounded credible if it had been made obvious that the supplies had been blocked in response to the raid on the border post and the killing of the two soldiers.
That wasn't done, out of fear that the US and its NATO partners would be antagonised. A rather strange method was adopted to convey Pakistan's anger and put pressure on the US and NATO to tender the apology. At the same time, Islamabad failed to close the Chaman border route through which close to 20 per cent of all NATO supplies passing through Pakistan enter Afghanistan. The US and NATO planes using Pakistan's airspace to fly supplies to their troops in Afghanistan also continued to operate.
The closure of the Torkham route, through which almost 80 per cent of NATO supplies of food, fuel and other goods passing through Pakistan are transported to Afghanistan, was thus meant to be a temporary measure aimed at conveying Islamabad's anger and making the US and its allies realise that Pakistan's cooperation was vital for the achievement of NATO's war objectives in Afghanistan.
Pakistan was and is in no mood to completely and permanently shut down the NATO supplies or end its military alliance with the US. Instead, Islamabad is using to its best advantage the leverage given to it by the dependence of NATO forces in Afghanistan on the shorter and less expensive supply route through Pakistan.
Pakistan's weak and muted response to its border violations by US forces in the past meant that its demand for an apology this time wasn't taken seriously. It had failed to lodge a strong protest and seek apology for a far more serious incident of border violation in 2008 when 14 Pakistani soldiers were killed in a cross-border attack by US helicopter-gunships on the Gorparai security post in Mohmand Agency. They all belonged to the Frontier Corps.
As in the incident in Kurram Agency, missiles were fired to attack the clearly marked Pakistani border post. There were also two more serious incidents of border violations in Angoor Adda in South Waziristan and in Saidgi in North Waziristan in which twenty-one and three Pakistanis, respectively, were killed, and a few taken away in military helicopters that had actually landed inside Pakistani territory.
Pakistan had specified "red lines" warning against such incidents in which US and NATO troops operated and launched attacks on its soil. Promises were made at the time by the US and NATO authorities that such incidents would be avoided in the future, although the promises were never honoured. The closure of the Torkham supply route was also seen in Kabul, Washington and Brussels as a temporary measure for a brief period. It was only after realisation dawned on the US and NATO authorities that the closure of the Torkham border could go on and threaten their military operations in Afghanistan that they agreed to offer formal apologies.
Initially, the US and NATO military authorities tried to justify the Kurram Agency attack by arguing that it was undertaken in self-defence because their helicopter-gunships were fired at. This is strange logic because the two military helicopters had menacingly intruded about 200 metres into Pakistani territory and threatened the border post manned by Frontier Corps soldiers. The soldiers, who opened fire with their G-3 rifles after coming under attack, were certainly firing warning shots. In fact, it was they who were using their right of self-defence, and not the Americans intruding into and violating Pakistan's borders.
No principle of "hot pursuit" was involved in this incident as no militant activity was reported in that part of the Pak-Afghan border. In any case, Pakistan has made it clear it hasn't agreed to any "hot pursuit" operations by the NATO forces in Pakistani territory because the ISAF mandate is confined to Afghanistan. Besides, Pakistan has mostly ignored and kept silent whenever the NATO forces have carried out operations against militants operating on or near the Pak-Afghan border.
More importantly, Pakistan seems to have accepted as a fait accompli the drone attacks that the US carries out with increasing intensity and impunity in its tribal areas. The government denies that these missile strikes are undertaken by the US in tacit agreement with the Pakistani military, since some of the drone attacks have killed some most-wanted TTP commanders, such as Baitullah Mahsud.
The apologies have been received and accepted and NATO supplies through Pakistan have resumed. But there are no guarantees that cross-border attacks on Pakistani territory will not take place again. However, Pakistan has finally learnt to use its leverages while interacting with the US and NATO to make its point and restore some of its lost dignity.
Nearly 500 trucks and a large number of oil tankers pass daily through Pakistan to meet almost 80 per cent needs of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, and the alternative route via Russia and the Central Asian states costs two to three times more and takes twenty days longer. This is the greatest leverage that Pakistan has and it is no longer shy of using it to protect its interests.
NATO against ragtag warriors
The 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is struggling to achieve victory, or should one say avoid defeat, in its maiden military engagement outside Europe. In fact, the Afghanistan conflict is the first real war that the Western military alliance, set up 61 years ago, has ever fought. Losing it, and that too against the ragtag Taliban fighters, could unravel NATO and raise questions about the strength and morale of the heavily-armed, hi-tech armies comprising the US-led defence bloc.
Meeting in Portugal’s capital Lisbon on November 19-20, leaders of NATO member countries and their allies discussed a host of issues, but the one that took up most of their time was the war in Afghanistan. Forty-eight countries that make up the NATO-led International Security Assistance Security Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and represented at the summit signed an agreement with President Hamid Karzai to begin handing over control of the war to his government in early 2011 and cede command also by the end of 2014. Karzai, installed by the US and sustained in power by NATO forces, had little choice in the matter even though he would have liked the Western armies to stay longer in Afghanistan. However, it needs reminding that it was President Karzai who first mentioned 2014 as the deadline for handing over security to the Afghan forces. His Western supporters have gone by his word even though this could turn out to be a misjudgement by Karzai.
Staying beyond 2014 in Afghanistan in a diminished role is indeed the most debated issue in NATO member countries right now. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s hawkish Danish secretary general, made it clear that the 2014 withdrawal deadline did not mean that the military alliance would leave behind a vacuum in Afghanistan that could be filled by enemies waiting out the exit of NATO forces. Just like Denmark’s prime minister who annoyed Muslims worldwide by refusing to condemn the blasphemous cartoons of Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) published in a Danish newspaper, Rasmussen insisted that NATO would stay committed to Afghanistan as long as it takes to finish the job.
The ‘job’ at hand, though, has changed over the past nine years when the US invaded Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda and punish the Taliban as a revenge for the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda have survived the assault despite suffering painful blows and the Taliban are back and in a much stronger position after suffering defeat in 2001. Other aspects of the ‘job’ that the US-led Western powers took upon themselves were to do some nation-building in Afghanistan and turning it into a democracy. Achieving those goals would require years and a lot more money, some of it lining the pockets of those in power and contributing to making Afghanistan the second most corrupt country in the world.
The ‘job’ that Rasmussen has in mind right now is to prevent the Taliban from capturing power as NATO believes this would amount to providing safe havens again to Al-Qaeda and other likeminded groups in Afghanistan. The Western leaders have been talking about fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan in places like Helmand to stop them from attacking cities in Europe and Northern America. By drawing such parallels, they at times raise unnecessary alarm and make their own mission even more difficult and unachievable in Afghanistan.
NATO Secretary General Rasmussen, enthusiastic and confident in keeping with the demands of his job and not required to heed the anti-war public opinion in the West as he no longer is contesting elections, is already being contradicted by certain Western government functionaries, more importantly by the US. Among them is Vice President Joe Biden, who has been calling for scaling back the US military involvement in Afghanistan. He described 2014 as the ‘drop-dead date’ for troops’ withdrawal and said it did not mean that the US would still have near 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2013. He and President Barack Obama, along with civil and military officials, have been reassuring the American people that their soldiers would start coming home from July 2011 onwards as promised.
There were question marks about the July 2011 date until now due to statements hinting otherwise by certain US officials, particularly the ISAF and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, but the NATO summit’s joint communiqué and the deal signed with President Karzai should mostly put those concerns at rest. However, the beginning of the withdrawal of the US troops by July 2011 would still be symbolic instead of substantial and the military authorities could still come up with arguments to delay or alter the manner of the pullout.
More importantly, though, is the fact that the US decision to start withdrawing troops has opened a window of opportunity for its reluctant NATO allies to consider pulling out most of their soldiers from Afghanistan in 2011, or much before the 2014 deadline. Once the principal power, the US, is ready to withdraw, it would become easier for other countries to extricate themselves from a war that has become increasingly unpopular with their electorate. The Dutch have already left, more so due to political compulsions and the force of public opinion than any other reason, and the Canadians are preparing to fully pullout in 2012. Other countries would then come under growing pressure from their citizens to withdraw. Most NATO countries or their ISAF partners are promising to provide military trainers and resources after ending their combat operations to make amends and to quickly train Afghanistan’s security forces to take over responsibility from the departing foreign troops.
Here lies the crunch because the biggest challenge now would be training the Afghan national army, police and other security forces not only to reach the targeted strength but also make them capable enough to stop the Taliban and the Hezb-i-Islami (Hekmatyar) fighters from overthrowing the government in Kabul or capturing provinces in the south, east and even the west. The US and NATO military commanders until now are dissatisfied with the performance of the Afghan security forces and it is debatable if they would become satisfied with their capabilities in the remaining three years. The Afghan national army has been suffering from an unusually high rate of desertions and raise in pay might not be enough of an incentive to check this trend. The army has a serious ethnic imbalance due to inadequate Pashtun representation and this cannot be overcome unless a major restructuring is done and more Pashtuns in the officers’ ranks are recruited.
The Afghan government would need to win over more Pashtuns and induct them not only into the security forces but also other segments of the administration in order to deny the Taliban the opportunity to recruit from among the ethnic group to which most of them belong. More importantly, the Pashtuns and also sections of the other ethnic groups would have to be convinced that they would have a better future siding with the West-backed Afghan government than the Taliban.
As for the NATO, it cannot afford to lose the war that was a test of its capability to intervene in distant lands to fight potential enemies and bring regime changes to its liking. Its faltering military campaign against the lightly-armed Taliban guerrillas would have to be turned around to avoid defeat and embarrassment. The US is willing to put anything and everything into this war and its recent decisions to send tanks to Afghanistan and build and expand military airbases are indicators that it still believes it can achieve victory in a country that has been described as a graveyard of empires. All this is understandable because some experts think defeat for the US in Afghanistan could well herald the beginning of the end for America as the leading military power in the world.
Meeting in Portugal’s capital Lisbon on November 19-20, leaders of NATO member countries and their allies discussed a host of issues, but the one that took up most of their time was the war in Afghanistan. Forty-eight countries that make up the NATO-led International Security Assistance Security Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and represented at the summit signed an agreement with President Hamid Karzai to begin handing over control of the war to his government in early 2011 and cede command also by the end of 2014. Karzai, installed by the US and sustained in power by NATO forces, had little choice in the matter even though he would have liked the Western armies to stay longer in Afghanistan. However, it needs reminding that it was President Karzai who first mentioned 2014 as the deadline for handing over security to the Afghan forces. His Western supporters have gone by his word even though this could turn out to be a misjudgement by Karzai.
Staying beyond 2014 in Afghanistan in a diminished role is indeed the most debated issue in NATO member countries right now. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s hawkish Danish secretary general, made it clear that the 2014 withdrawal deadline did not mean that the military alliance would leave behind a vacuum in Afghanistan that could be filled by enemies waiting out the exit of NATO forces. Just like Denmark’s prime minister who annoyed Muslims worldwide by refusing to condemn the blasphemous cartoons of Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) published in a Danish newspaper, Rasmussen insisted that NATO would stay committed to Afghanistan as long as it takes to finish the job.
The ‘job’ at hand, though, has changed over the past nine years when the US invaded Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda and punish the Taliban as a revenge for the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda have survived the assault despite suffering painful blows and the Taliban are back and in a much stronger position after suffering defeat in 2001. Other aspects of the ‘job’ that the US-led Western powers took upon themselves were to do some nation-building in Afghanistan and turning it into a democracy. Achieving those goals would require years and a lot more money, some of it lining the pockets of those in power and contributing to making Afghanistan the second most corrupt country in the world.
The ‘job’ that Rasmussen has in mind right now is to prevent the Taliban from capturing power as NATO believes this would amount to providing safe havens again to Al-Qaeda and other likeminded groups in Afghanistan. The Western leaders have been talking about fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan in places like Helmand to stop them from attacking cities in Europe and Northern America. By drawing such parallels, they at times raise unnecessary alarm and make their own mission even more difficult and unachievable in Afghanistan.
NATO Secretary General Rasmussen, enthusiastic and confident in keeping with the demands of his job and not required to heed the anti-war public opinion in the West as he no longer is contesting elections, is already being contradicted by certain Western government functionaries, more importantly by the US. Among them is Vice President Joe Biden, who has been calling for scaling back the US military involvement in Afghanistan. He described 2014 as the ‘drop-dead date’ for troops’ withdrawal and said it did not mean that the US would still have near 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2013. He and President Barack Obama, along with civil and military officials, have been reassuring the American people that their soldiers would start coming home from July 2011 onwards as promised.
There were question marks about the July 2011 date until now due to statements hinting otherwise by certain US officials, particularly the ISAF and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, but the NATO summit’s joint communiqué and the deal signed with President Karzai should mostly put those concerns at rest. However, the beginning of the withdrawal of the US troops by July 2011 would still be symbolic instead of substantial and the military authorities could still come up with arguments to delay or alter the manner of the pullout.
More importantly, though, is the fact that the US decision to start withdrawing troops has opened a window of opportunity for its reluctant NATO allies to consider pulling out most of their soldiers from Afghanistan in 2011, or much before the 2014 deadline. Once the principal power, the US, is ready to withdraw, it would become easier for other countries to extricate themselves from a war that has become increasingly unpopular with their electorate. The Dutch have already left, more so due to political compulsions and the force of public opinion than any other reason, and the Canadians are preparing to fully pullout in 2012. Other countries would then come under growing pressure from their citizens to withdraw. Most NATO countries or their ISAF partners are promising to provide military trainers and resources after ending their combat operations to make amends and to quickly train Afghanistan’s security forces to take over responsibility from the departing foreign troops.
Here lies the crunch because the biggest challenge now would be training the Afghan national army, police and other security forces not only to reach the targeted strength but also make them capable enough to stop the Taliban and the Hezb-i-Islami (Hekmatyar) fighters from overthrowing the government in Kabul or capturing provinces in the south, east and even the west. The US and NATO military commanders until now are dissatisfied with the performance of the Afghan security forces and it is debatable if they would become satisfied with their capabilities in the remaining three years. The Afghan national army has been suffering from an unusually high rate of desertions and raise in pay might not be enough of an incentive to check this trend. The army has a serious ethnic imbalance due to inadequate Pashtun representation and this cannot be overcome unless a major restructuring is done and more Pashtuns in the officers’ ranks are recruited.
The Afghan government would need to win over more Pashtuns and induct them not only into the security forces but also other segments of the administration in order to deny the Taliban the opportunity to recruit from among the ethnic group to which most of them belong. More importantly, the Pashtuns and also sections of the other ethnic groups would have to be convinced that they would have a better future siding with the West-backed Afghan government than the Taliban.
As for the NATO, it cannot afford to lose the war that was a test of its capability to intervene in distant lands to fight potential enemies and bring regime changes to its liking. Its faltering military campaign against the lightly-armed Taliban guerrillas would have to be turned around to avoid defeat and embarrassment. The US is willing to put anything and everything into this war and its recent decisions to send tanks to Afghanistan and build and expand military airbases are indicators that it still believes it can achieve victory in a country that has been described as a graveyard of empires. All this is understandable because some experts think defeat for the US in Afghanistan could well herald the beginning of the end for America as the leading military power in the world.
Collateral damage
‘Collateral damage’ is a seemingly bland phrase, but it indicates stomach-churning contempt for human life. It was fashionable during the Vietnam war, when countless thousands of civilians were blown to bits, burned to death by napalm, or otherwise destroyed or maimed by a military machine that was out of control.
In later years the jargon words fell into disfavour with those who killed civilians in conflict, if only because the world had realised that when some robotic mouthpiece mentioned ‘collateral damage’ in a media briefing it was certain that official savagery had resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of innocent people. But the phrase came back into fashion.
During NATO’s war against the Serbs there was a particularly repulsive spokesman called Jamie Shea whose smug account of the destruction of a bridge in May 1999 was a typical attempt to justify the killing of civilians. Of this particular blunder the BBC recorded that “At least 11 civilians were reported killed and a further 40 injured when NATO bombers mounted a daylight raid on a bridge in south-central Serbia… Rescuers who went to aid the injured were hit in the second attack.”
And Shea announced that the bombs were directed at a “legitimate designated military target.” There was no regret for the massacre, or even for the killing of patients when NATO planes bombed a hospital in Belgrade.
Then came the sublime moment, the resurrection of the We-are-the-Masters jargon, after a US airstrike on a train killed a dozen civilians. It provided an opportunity for Shea to declare “We regret any loss of life that this may have caused because our policy remains to minimise collateral damage.” The fool couldn’t see the absurd callousness of his statement – and he could hardly admit that ‘collateral damage’ is usually caused by criminal incompetence and sometimes with criminal intent.
The phrase wasn’t used much during the Iraq fiasco and has been avoided during the equally senseless war in Afghanistan. Which doesn’t mean to say there have not been enormous numbers of civilian deaths. Many blameless civilians have been killed in Afghanistan – and Pakistan – by foreign forces and their video-gamers in the sky.
In Afghanistan in October, for example, the reporter Kathy Kelly related that : “…the first picture showed his cousin’s ruined home. A US aerial bombardment had destroyed the dwelling. The next pictures were of two bloodied children. ‘All of his children were killed,’ the spokesperson said. ‘All his family, his wife, his five children, by an attack from the air’.”
In Pakistan most of the killing of civilians by US drone-fired missiles goes unrecorded. There is no doubt many of the 100 drone strikes this year have killed some very nasty people, but it would be ridiculous to claim there have been no civilian casualties. The attacks take place in remote areas of the country, and the dead are rarely seen by independent witnesses. But the slaughter of his fellow citizens by US missiles is not a cause for concern to Pakistan’s President Zardari who is reported in Bob Woodward’s ‘Obama’s Wars’ as telling the director of the CIA in 2008 that “Collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me.”
Give that man an ‘A’ for bluntness. And a ‘Z’ for decency, honour, loyalty and compassion.
The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousef Raza Gilani, had no problems with drone strikes either, and in 2008 told the US ambassador in Islamabad (as learned through Wikileaks) “I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.” What a fine example of caring democracy, to be sure.
But only too often American missiles and assassination squads do not “get the right people”. The US military and the CIA have an appalling record in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the numbers of ‘collateral damage’ deaths have been enormous; and there has been a policy of official lying about civilian casualties until forced by facts to admit the truth.
It is difficult to conduct investigations into drone killings in Pakistan’s isolated valleys, but a Washington-based organisation, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, managed to probe some of the strikes and determined there had been “30 civilian deaths in just nine cases that we investigated – all since 2009 – including 14 women and children.” In one account, “In June 2010, Shakeel Khan was sitting in his home in North Waziristan with his family when a drone missile struck: ‘I was resting with my parents in one room when it happened. God saved my parents and I, but my brother, his wife, and children were all killed’.”
But there is not only butchery in the drone campaign; there is colossal damage being done to Pakistan, with massive propaganda advantage to insurrectionists, extremists, and thugs and anarchists of all descriptions. The country is in ferment and on the edge of social disaster. There could hardly be a worse time for the US, in concert with an unpopular, corruption-struck and feeble government, to carry on blitzing. The US has achieved control and lost credibility. But the government of Pakistan has lost both. That’s collateral damage, too.
In later years the jargon words fell into disfavour with those who killed civilians in conflict, if only because the world had realised that when some robotic mouthpiece mentioned ‘collateral damage’ in a media briefing it was certain that official savagery had resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of innocent people. But the phrase came back into fashion.
During NATO’s war against the Serbs there was a particularly repulsive spokesman called Jamie Shea whose smug account of the destruction of a bridge in May 1999 was a typical attempt to justify the killing of civilians. Of this particular blunder the BBC recorded that “At least 11 civilians were reported killed and a further 40 injured when NATO bombers mounted a daylight raid on a bridge in south-central Serbia… Rescuers who went to aid the injured were hit in the second attack.”
And Shea announced that the bombs were directed at a “legitimate designated military target.” There was no regret for the massacre, or even for the killing of patients when NATO planes bombed a hospital in Belgrade.
Then came the sublime moment, the resurrection of the We-are-the-Masters jargon, after a US airstrike on a train killed a dozen civilians. It provided an opportunity for Shea to declare “We regret any loss of life that this may have caused because our policy remains to minimise collateral damage.” The fool couldn’t see the absurd callousness of his statement – and he could hardly admit that ‘collateral damage’ is usually caused by criminal incompetence and sometimes with criminal intent.
The phrase wasn’t used much during the Iraq fiasco and has been avoided during the equally senseless war in Afghanistan. Which doesn’t mean to say there have not been enormous numbers of civilian deaths. Many blameless civilians have been killed in Afghanistan – and Pakistan – by foreign forces and their video-gamers in the sky.
In Afghanistan in October, for example, the reporter Kathy Kelly related that : “…the first picture showed his cousin’s ruined home. A US aerial bombardment had destroyed the dwelling. The next pictures were of two bloodied children. ‘All of his children were killed,’ the spokesperson said. ‘All his family, his wife, his five children, by an attack from the air’.”
In Pakistan most of the killing of civilians by US drone-fired missiles goes unrecorded. There is no doubt many of the 100 drone strikes this year have killed some very nasty people, but it would be ridiculous to claim there have been no civilian casualties. The attacks take place in remote areas of the country, and the dead are rarely seen by independent witnesses. But the slaughter of his fellow citizens by US missiles is not a cause for concern to Pakistan’s President Zardari who is reported in Bob Woodward’s ‘Obama’s Wars’ as telling the director of the CIA in 2008 that “Collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me.”
Give that man an ‘A’ for bluntness. And a ‘Z’ for decency, honour, loyalty and compassion.
The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousef Raza Gilani, had no problems with drone strikes either, and in 2008 told the US ambassador in Islamabad (as learned through Wikileaks) “I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.” What a fine example of caring democracy, to be sure.
But only too often American missiles and assassination squads do not “get the right people”. The US military and the CIA have an appalling record in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the numbers of ‘collateral damage’ deaths have been enormous; and there has been a policy of official lying about civilian casualties until forced by facts to admit the truth.
It is difficult to conduct investigations into drone killings in Pakistan’s isolated valleys, but a Washington-based organisation, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, managed to probe some of the strikes and determined there had been “30 civilian deaths in just nine cases that we investigated – all since 2009 – including 14 women and children.” In one account, “In June 2010, Shakeel Khan was sitting in his home in North Waziristan with his family when a drone missile struck: ‘I was resting with my parents in one room when it happened. God saved my parents and I, but my brother, his wife, and children were all killed’.”
But there is not only butchery in the drone campaign; there is colossal damage being done to Pakistan, with massive propaganda advantage to insurrectionists, extremists, and thugs and anarchists of all descriptions. The country is in ferment and on the edge of social disaster. There could hardly be a worse time for the US, in concert with an unpopular, corruption-struck and feeble government, to carry on blitzing. The US has achieved control and lost credibility. But the government of Pakistan has lost both. That’s collateral damage, too.
Good for democracy
Since 9-11, the US government, through Presidents Bush and Obama, has increasingly told the US public that “state secrets” will not be shared with citizens. Candidate Obama pledged to reduce the use of state secrets, but President Obama continued the Bush tradition. The Courts and Congress and international allies have gone meekly along with the escalating secrecy demands of the US Executive.
By labeling tens of millions of documents secret, the US government has created a huge vacuum of information.
But information is the lifeblood of democracy. Information about government contributes to a healthy democracy. Transparency and accountability are essential elements of good government. Likewise, “a lack of government transparency and accountability undermines democracy and gives rise to cynicism and mistrust,” according to a 2008 Harris survey commissioned by the Association of Government Accountants.
Into the secrecy vacuum stepped Private Bradley Manning, who, according to the Associated Press, was able to defeat “Pentagon security systems using little more than a Lady Gaga CD and a portable computer memory stick.”
Manning apparently sent the information to Wikileaks - a non profit media organization, which specializes in publishing leaked information. Wikileaks in turn shared the documents to other media around the world including the New York Times and published much of it on its website.
Despite criminal investigations by the US and other governments, it is not clear that media organizations like Wikileaks can be prosecuted in the US in light of First Amendment. Recall that the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Outraged politicians are claiming that the release of government information is the criminal equivalent of terrorism and puts innocent people’s lives at risk. Many of those same politicians authorized the modern equivalent of carpet bombing of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, the sacrifice of thousands of lives of soldiers and civilians, and drone assaults on civilian areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. Their anger at a document dump, no matter how extensive, is more than a little suspect.
Everyone, including Wikileaks and the other media reporting the documents, hopes that no lives will be lost because of this. So far, that appears to be the case as McClatchey Newspapers reported November 28, 2010, that ‘US officials conceded that they have no evidence to date that the [prior] release of documents led to anyone’s death.”
The US has been going in the wrong direction for years by classifying millions of documents as secrets. Wikileaks and other media which report these so called secrets will embarrass people yes. Wikileaks and other media will make leaders uncomfortable yes. But embarrassment and discomfort are small prices to pay for a healthier democracy.
Wikileaks has the potential to make transparency and accountability more robust in the US. That is good for democracy.
By labeling tens of millions of documents secret, the US government has created a huge vacuum of information.
But information is the lifeblood of democracy. Information about government contributes to a healthy democracy. Transparency and accountability are essential elements of good government. Likewise, “a lack of government transparency and accountability undermines democracy and gives rise to cynicism and mistrust,” according to a 2008 Harris survey commissioned by the Association of Government Accountants.
Into the secrecy vacuum stepped Private Bradley Manning, who, according to the Associated Press, was able to defeat “Pentagon security systems using little more than a Lady Gaga CD and a portable computer memory stick.”
Manning apparently sent the information to Wikileaks - a non profit media organization, which specializes in publishing leaked information. Wikileaks in turn shared the documents to other media around the world including the New York Times and published much of it on its website.
Despite criminal investigations by the US and other governments, it is not clear that media organizations like Wikileaks can be prosecuted in the US in light of First Amendment. Recall that the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Outraged politicians are claiming that the release of government information is the criminal equivalent of terrorism and puts innocent people’s lives at risk. Many of those same politicians authorized the modern equivalent of carpet bombing of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, the sacrifice of thousands of lives of soldiers and civilians, and drone assaults on civilian areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. Their anger at a document dump, no matter how extensive, is more than a little suspect.
Everyone, including Wikileaks and the other media reporting the documents, hopes that no lives will be lost because of this. So far, that appears to be the case as McClatchey Newspapers reported November 28, 2010, that ‘US officials conceded that they have no evidence to date that the [prior] release of documents led to anyone’s death.”
The US has been going in the wrong direction for years by classifying millions of documents as secrets. Wikileaks and other media which report these so called secrets will embarrass people yes. Wikileaks and other media will make leaders uncomfortable yes. But embarrassment and discomfort are small prices to pay for a healthier democracy.
Wikileaks has the potential to make transparency and accountability more robust in the US. That is good for democracy.
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