Defining "terrorism" and deciding who's behind a "terrorist" attack prematurely as a form of propaganda

of course i've been following the situation in syria and the damascus suicide bombing without the slightest notion of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys (although i am strongly leaning toward the belief that both sides are pretty bad)... i also have no firm idea of who is propping up the assad regime and who is giving support to the rebels... that both the u.s. and israel have their hands in the matter up to their elbows i think is almost a given and that both of them would certainly like to see a regime emerge, no matter how brutal or totalitarian, that would befriend the u.s., tolerate israel and serve as a buffer to iran as well as turn a cold shoulder to russia and china, is hardly in doubt... it's also very interesting to note, as glenn points out, that news reports on the damascus bombing have pointedly avoided labeling it as a "terrorist" attack...

so, how utterly convenient to have the "terrorist" bulgarian bus bombing suddenly occur that, without preamble or investigation, israel can blame first on iran and, on further consideration, iran via hezbollah... israel and the israel-besotted neo-cons steering u.s. foreign policy would like nothing better than to turn loose the dogs of war in the region and will go to any lengths to make it happen... this is just another thing they can point to but, cynic that i am, would not put it out of the realm of possibility that mossad is behind it... true, it's hard to conceive of israel killing its own citizens but, given the total nutcases in charge, it's not out of the question...

glenn, as always, does a masterful job of dissecting the meaning and justifiability of terrorism in the bulgarian bus bombing in similar fashion to the job he did a few days ago with the damascus suicide bombing which, added to the analysis of "terrorism" he has been doing all along, provides a much-needed perspective on the reality of events...

meanwhile, cnn reports this...

In a televised statement Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack was "perpetrated by Hezbollah, Iran's leading terrorist proxy," as part of a global campaign that has reached a dozen countries on five continents.

But he offered no evidence. Israel's U.S. Embassy said Wednesday that it had no proof that Iran was the instigator of the attack.

mmm-hmmm...

oh, and btw, will the colorado movie theater massacre be labeled "terrorism"...? somehow, i don't think so...

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This makes me so very sad

An injured woman is escorted out of the supermarket in Kabul,
Afghanistan, where a suicide bomber killed several people.
Photograph: Rahmat Gul/AP

i've shopped at this supermarket a number of times... it's right next door to a most pleasant restaurant where i've had several most enjoyable meals in a lovely garden... several people i know live close by...

An attack by a suicide bomber on a busy Kabul supermarket close to the British embassy has killed eight people, including one child and wounded six, including up to three foreigners.

Afghan security officials were still removing bodies from the upmarket Finest supermarket in the Afghanistan capital's diplomatic neighbourhood as distraught relatives waited for news.

Kabul's police chief, Mohammad Ayub Salangi, confirmed claims by witnesses that today's attack was carried out by a single suicide bomber.

In a text message sent to the Guardian and other media organisations the Taliban's spokesman claimed responsibility for the blast, saying they were targeting the "head of Blackwater company in Afghanistan". There is no confirmation that any employee of the private US security contractor, now know as Xe Services, was in the shop at the time.

A supermarket worker, who had been packing customers' shopping, said he heard two grenades being thrown on the ground. He initially thought were falling glass bottles but when he saw they were grenades he sprinted out the front door seconds before the blasts, which were followed by the main explosion of the suicide bomb.

meanwhile, my country continues firing at people on the ground - militants and civilians alike - from unmanned drones being flown by people sitting behind computer consoles in the high desert of the u.s... when and where does this insanity stop...?

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The "terrorists" don't even CARE if their bombs explode

it could be an empty box with a cheap clock ticking inside... no matter... our national security state will use it as a pretext to further humiliate and degrade us all in the name of our "safety"...

tom engelhardt...

Here’s a singular fact to absorb: we now know that a bunch of Yemeni al-Qaeda adherents have a far better hit on just who we are, psychologically speaking, and what makes us tick than we do. Imagine that. They have a more accurate profile of us than our leading intelligence profilers undoubtedly do of them.

Recently, they released an online magazine laying out just how much the two U.S.-bound cargo-bay bombs that caused panic cost them: a mere $4,200 and the efforts of “less than six brothers” over three months. They even gave their plot a name, Operation Hemorrhage (and what they imagined hemorrhaging, it seems, was not American blood, but treasure).

Now, they're laughing at us for claiming the operation failed because -- thanks reportedly to a tip from Saudi intelligence -- those bombs didn’t go off. “This supposedly ‘foiled plot,’” they wrote, “will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. That is what we call leverage.”

They are, they claim, planning to use the "security phobia that is sweeping America” not to cause major casualties, but to blow a hole in the U.S. economy. "We knew that cargo planes are staffed by only a pilot and a co-pilot, so our objective was not to cause maximum casualties but to cause maximum losses to the American economy" via the multi-billion-dollar U.S. freight industry.

This is a new definition of asymmetrical warfare. The terrorists never have to strike an actual target. It’s not even incumbent upon them to build a bomb that works. Just about anything will do. To be successful, they just have to repeatedly send things in our direction, inciting the expectable Pavlovian reaction from the U.S. national security state, causing it to further tighten its grip (grope?) at yet greater taxpayer expense.

things can't go on this way much longer... somethin's gonna snap...

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Karachi ablaze

not good...

al jazeera...

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Peshawar - paralyzing a population with fear

i've been following the increasing violence in the northwest frontier province of pakistan and the city of peshawar in particular... in all honesty, the violence in afghanistan and kabul pales in comparison to the horrific atrocities being perpetrated against pakistanis by their own people, not only in number of deaths but also frequency of occurrences and overall destruction... if the intent is to destabilize the government of pakistan and render the population helpless with fear, they're doing a damn good job...

al jazeera on the latest...

Residents of the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar are are becoming increasingly fearful as car bomb attacks continue to plague their hometown.

At least 11 people were killed in the latest attack on Saturday, which happened within 24 hours of a similar one.

The attacks appear to be aimed at weakening the government's military operation against Taliban groups.

i know many afghans in kabul who have relatives in peshawar and it pains me greatly to see this happening... when i was first in afghanistan, i knew several individuals who chose to have their immediate families live in peshawar expressly because it was considered safer than kabul... several have since moved those families back to kabul in a remarkable twist of fate...

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Firefight ongoing in Kabul [UPDATE 1, 2 & 3]

[BUMPED]



i came to the office early just as this was coming down... not a lot of details yet except to say it's still going on... we had to take an alternate route as the one we regularly use passes right through the middle of the area where it's all happening... the good news is that everybody else was told to stay home so i've pretty much got the office to myself... such peace and quiet...!

Heavy gunfire has erupted at a guest house used by U.N. staff in Kabul, and Afghan police said five people were killed. A U.N. spokesman said U.N. staff were believed to have fled the building and efforts were under way to determine if they were all safe.

The fighting broke out Monday after dawn. The crackle of automatic gunfire reverberated through the streets.

U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards confirmed the guest house was used by U.N. staff but he believed all had fled the building. He didn't know how many international staff were living there.

sigh...

[UPDATE 1]

about 45 minutes ago, there were several mortar rounds that landed in the vicinity of the serena hotel in central kabul which isn't far from where i'm sitting here in the office... we had to go to the safe room for a while but evidently things have quieted down and i'm now back at my desk...

this is the latest news report i've been able to find...

Afghan forces exchanged gunfire with a group of militants holed up inside an international guest house in the centre of Kabul on Wednesday, police said.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said it was possible some of its staff and other foreigners were inside.

Intense automatic weapons fire and an explosion resounded in the capital, and plumes of black smoke rose above buildings.

A Reuters witness said a number of streets had been cordoned off by the police as the gunfire continued, and sirens reverberated across the city.

"There are five or six terrorists inside," said Waheed Sadiqi, a policeman at the scene.

double sigh...

[UPDATE 2]

here's more...

Gunmen with automatic weapons and suicide vests stormed a guest house used by U.N. staff in the heart of the Afghan capital early Wednesday, killing at least seven people including three U.N. staff, officials said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility, saying it was meant as an assault on the upcoming presidential election.

Heavy gunfire reverberated through the streets shortly after dawn and a large plume of smoke rose over the city following the attack on the hostel in the Shar-e-Naw district. Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahman said seven people were killed, including some attackers.

U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards confirmed that three U.N. staff were among the dead and one was seriously wounded. He said 20 U.N. staff were living at the guest house, some of them known to be registered there but he was unsure whether all were there at the time of the attack.

Flames could be seen on the roof of the guest house. Hours after the attack began, three explosions could be heard but it was unclear if they were from that location.

triple sigh...

[UPDATE 3]

this is the sight that greeted me this morning on my way to the office...


Smoke can be seen rising in central Kabul Wednesday Oct. 28, 2009.
Gunmen attacked a guest house used by U.N. staff in the Afghan capital
of Kabul early Wednesday, killing at least seven people including three
U.N. staff, officials said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility,
saying it was meant as an assault on the upcoming presidential election.
(AP Photo/Bob Reid)

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More ugliness in Kabul

oh, just lovely... another afghan ministry office in kabul has been targeted by a suicide bomber... the last attack on a ministry took place the day before i was to leave for kabul the end of last october... this one is the day before i leave for kabul for my third trip...

Official: 17 killed, 46 wounded in Kabul attacks

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry says 17 people were killed and 46 wounded in multiple attacks on government building attacks in Kabul.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi says that eight attackers also died in the attacks outside the Justice Ministry and other government buildings Wednesday. He says all attackers had suicide vests, but only three assailants set them off.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The coordinated attacks — in the heart of the city and a stone's throw from the presidential palace — come ahead of a visit by President Barack Obama's special envoy to the region.

according to some of the folks at the project i work with, all movement of project folks in the city has been halted... i hit ground there on saturday afternoon... we'll see what the situation is then...

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More violence in Peshawar

now that i've got some good friends in this part of the world, i pay much closer attention than usual to news from the area...

one of my good friends is the computer systems administrator for the project where i work... he moved his family from kabul to peshawar, pakistan, some time back for several reasons, not the least of which was their safety and security... he also felt that the schools there were much better for his kids... since then, he's been working tirelessly for weeks at a time (he also handles the regional offices of the project in several other afghan cities), and then takes a week or ten days to drive over the khyber pass to peshawar to spend time with his family...

in recent months, the trip has become increasingly dangerous... bereft of any identification or even a cell phone, he takes a taxi to the border crossing into pakistan and then catches another taxi on the other side for the remainder of the trip... his language, ability to speak the regional dialect, and appearance allow him to blend in and remain inconspicuous, but it's still a frightening, 9 hour ordeal...

he told me a few weeks ago that, come school vacation time, he'll be moving his family back to kabul... with stories like this, i can see why...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A car bomb killed at least 20 people and wounded scores in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday, officials said.

The blast occurred near an assembly hall of minority Shi'ite Muslims in a crowded part of the city. One building collapsed in flames and several others were badly damaged and on fire.

"It shook the entire area like an earthquake," said resident Rahim Gul as he tried to remove rubble with his bare hands. "It was a huge and terrible explosion. As we reached here it was all burning. There was rubble all around."

Khizar Hayat, the chief doctor at the city's main government hospital, said at least 20 people had been killed and 50 wounded, 20 of them seriously.

people indiscriminately killing other people... sigh...

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Thanksgiving day in Kabul

i was just walking in the door of the office here in kabul this morning when i heard the blast... needless to say, the cell phone networks immediately went gridlock as everyone was trying to find out what was going on... the mother of one of my afghan friends lives near the square where it took place and, when she first tried to call, her mother wasn't picking up the phone... it took about three tries, but then she answered and all is ok...

Afghan Police Say Bomb Explodes Near U.S. Embassy

Afghan police say a suicide car bomb has exploded about 200 yards outside the main entrance to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing at least one.

i had come from the hotel where i was watching the news reports on the mumbai situation, so this on top of that wasn't good news, for sure...

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I'm heading to Kabul on Thursday

and the news from there isn't particularly cheery...

A gunfire attack killed two Western employees of the international shipping firm DHL in Afghanistan's capital on Saturday, police said. An Afghan was also killed.

The shooting took place in front of the DHL office in downtown Kabul. The city's deputy police chief said the two slain foreigners were German, but another police official, Abdul Raouf, later identified them as a Briton and a South African. Two Afghans were wounded.

The slain employees were the director and deputy director for DHL in Afghanistan, said Zemeri Bashary, the Interior Ministry spokesman.

[...]

The attack follows the slaying in Kabul of a dual South African-British citizen by gunmen earlier in the week. The Taliban immediately claimed responsibility for that shooting, saying the woman had been proselytizing.

Security has deteriorated around Afghanistan in the last two years, although violence against Westerners in the capital has been relatively rare.

Also Saturday, international security companies warned their clients in Kabul about intelligence indicating that militants were planning a large-scale attack on a restaurant frequented by Westerners.

to top it off, i'm going to be staying at the hotel that was the target of a suicide bomb attack last january...

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The Indian Embassy blast in Afghanistan hits a little close to home for me

the indian embassy is directly across the street from where i regularly held meetings...

from reuters...



and, needless to say, our worthless u.s. news media doesn't bother to give us the full background...

juan cole...

[A] suicide bomber struck at the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing 28 persons and wounding 141. The Indian ambassador was not there at the time, but Indian embassy guards and possibly other Embassy personnel appear to have been killed.

India has 3,000 nationals doing reconstruction work in Afghanistan. Since the neo-Taliban want to pull down the Karzai government, trying to scare the Indians into leaving would be a way of removing one foreign pillar of support from the edifice of state.

Since the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence is alleged to be secretly backing some Taliban elements, there is a danger that New Delhi will read this assault on its embassy in Kabul as an indirect strike by Pakistan. Pakistan had long considered Afghanistan its sphere of influence (which the military called its 'strategic depth' against India). Pakistan exercised its regional hegemony through the Taliban in the 1990s. The Northern Alliance gradually allied with India, Russia and Iran. The Taliban were mostly Pushtun, while the Northern Alliance was Tajik (Persian-speaking) , Hazarah (ditto but Shiite) and Uzbek. So from a Pakistani and Pushtun Taliban point of view, when the US put the Northern Alliance in charge of Kabul in late 2001, it more or less turned Afghanistan into an Indian sphere of influence. Pakistan and the Taliban are fighting back against this change.

The bombing in Kabul came after allegations over the weekend that the US had mistakenly bombed a wedding party and earlier had also killed civilians in another area in an air strike aimed at militants.

virtually every afghan i talked to when i was there made the same point - that pakistan is working diligently to destabilize afghanistan and has been the force behind the most deadly attacks... meanwhile, the u.s. continues to pour billions of dollars into the pakistan military, knowing full well what's going on...

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Thursday photoblogging - the two faces of Kabul, Afghanistan

this morning on the northeast side of town...

from the ap...


Afghan and foreign security officials gather
at the site after a suicide attack in the
city of the city of Kabul, Afghanistan on
Thursday, May 29, 2008. A suicide car bomber
hit a convoy of international soldiers in
Kabul on Thursday, killing three Afghans
caught in the blast, while a clash in the
west was said to have killed two dozen Taliban
fighters.
(AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

this afternoon, on the west side of town, two afghan friends and i went to lunch at a lovely restaurant overlooking qargheh reservoir...


Qargheh as seen from Google Earth


Qargheh Restaurant


Overlooking Qargheh Reservoir from
the restaurant balcony


Inspecting the menu

back "home," relaxing and watching the sunset at the end of the day...



just another day in afghanistan...

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A grab-bag of perspectives and stories about what's happening in Afghanistan

there's been a noticeable increase in violent activity here in afghanistan over the past few weeks as the warm weather takes hold... just like an increase in temperature causes atoms and molecules to move faster, those committed to death and destruction, sadly, tend to do the same...

Burqa-Clad Suicide Bomber Kills 16 In Afghanistan

A suicide bomber apparently wearing a burqa detonated in a busy bazaar in southwestern Afghanistan Thursday, killing 16 people including four policemen, a provincial governor said.

Growing number of insurgent attacks seen in Afghanistan

Attacks by insurgents in eastern Afghanistan have risen sharply, NATO said yesterday, expressing concerns that Pakistani agreements with the Taliban may be creating safe havens for militants.

NATO spokesman James Appathurai said attacks were up 50 percent in April compared to the same period last year - a significant jump that could indicate the militants are getting help on the Pakistani side of the border.

UN: Foreign agents behind spate of Afghan killings

A U.N. rights official has alleged that foreign intelligence agents have taken part in secret raids in Afghanistan that have killed civilians.

U.N. special rapporteur Philip Alston told reporters Thursday he is aware of at least three such recent raids in the country's south and east. He said no one was taking responsibility for the killings.

More must be done to avoid Afghan deaths

Afghan forces, international troops and Taliban insurgents need to do more to avoid civilian casualties or many more innocents will be killed in the ongoing conflict, a U.N. rights expert said on Thursday.

U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston said the level of complacency over civilian killings was "staggeringly" high and a great many deaths could be avoided.

"The bottom line of my report is that there are many killings which are avoidable," he told a news conference at the end of a 12-day visit to Afghanistan.

Some 200 civilians have been killed by international and Afghan forces so far this year, he said, while Taliban insurgents have killed around 300 in the same period.

Alston called for more accountability from the more than 50,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, who together with Afghan government troops are engaged in daily battles with a resurgent Taliban mainly in the south and east of the country.


Press conference by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions

My focus is on extrajudicial executions or what might be called unlawful killings. The principal actors whose conduct I have been examining include the Government, particularly the police, the international military forces and the anti-government elements, including the Taliban. The bottom line of my report is that there are many killings which are avoidable.

I have summarized my findings with the following statement: police killings must cease; widespread impunity within the legal system for killings must be rejected; the killings of women and girls must end; the international military forces must ensure real accountability for their actions; and the United Nations itself must give greater prominence to human rights in its activities.

In terms of the international military forces, it has been reported that as many as 200 civilians have been killed in the first four months of this year, often in joint operations with Afghan security forces.

finally, this most interesting perspective...

Is Nato repeating the USSR's mistakes?

Zamir Kabulov, Russian Ambassador in Kabul

"There is no mistake made by the Soviet Union that was not repeated by the international community here in Afghanistan," Mr Kabulov said, listing the problems.

"Underestimation of the Afghan nation, the belief that we have superiority over Afghans and that they are inferior and they cannot be trusted to run affairs in this country."

His list goes on.

"A lack of knowledge of the social and ethnic structure of this country; a lack of sufficient understanding of traditions and religion."

Not only that, but he says the country's new patrons are making their own new mistakes as well.

"Nato soldiers and officers alienate themselves from Afghans - they are not in touch in an everyday manner. They communicate with them from the barrels of guns in their bullet-proof Humvees."

And he admits to some satisfaction, watching those who once backed the mujahideen now suffering in the same way.

"To some extent, yes, I would not hide that. But I am even more satisfied by not having Russian soldiers among Isaf [Nato's International Security Assistance Force] because I don't want them to suffer the same results, implications your soldiers are suffering."

pick a perspective, any perspective...

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