DEMOCRATS INDEED! They Banned And Arrested Their Opponents

Kofi Abrefa Busia, leader of the Progress Party

By Ekow Mensah

Since 1949 the Danquah Busia Tradition has consistently claimed to be the true adherents of democracy in Ghana and yet at every   turn it has made strenuous efforts to exclude politicians and political organizations they disagree with from the political process.

After the February 1966 coup which was sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US, many elements of the Danquah- Busia tradition got into influential positions and used their influence to exclude their opponents form the political process.

Dr Kofi Abrefa Busia, who later became the leader of the Progress Party (PP) was perhaps the most influential Danquah Busiast in and around the National Liberation Council (NLC) as a political advisor.

The NLC under the influence of the self-proclaimed democrats arrested and imprisoned leaders and activists of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) without charge or trial and banned them from contesting elections.

In June 1969, the NLC banned the Peoples Popular Party (PPP) merely on suspicion that its ultimate aim was to revive the CPP and eventually facilitate the return of President Nkrumah to Ghana.

The security services raided the homes of known CPP leaders and activists in search of anything which even remotely linked the PPP with Nkrumah and his party.

A June 5, 1969 issue of the “Daily Graphic” reported extensively on the ban imposed on the Peoples Popular Party and it is reproduced here for the benefit of younger Ghanaians;  The “Daily Graphic” Report.

The National Liberation Council has proscribed the People’s Popular Party led by Dr Willie Kofi Lutterodt, an Accra medical practitioner.

In addition all its founding members and certain other person connected with the party have been disqualified from seeking election to Parliament.

 A government statement issued in Accra yesterday said that the N.L.C. is satisfied that the activities of the party are not in the best interest of the country.

 It accused the party of planning to restore deposed President Kwame Nkrumah as President it is won the forthcoming general elections.

Among those disqualified are Mr.. G Aduamah,  an Accra barrister and secretary  of the party, Mr.. O B.  Amankwa former High Commissioner  to Tanzania , Nii Odoi  Annan,  an Accra  barrister , Mr. Kwesi Amoako Atta, Mr.. J.Y. Ghann  and Mr. Imoru  Egala , all former  Ministers in the ousted regime.

 The Government statement   says: From evidenhce so far collected, the N.L.C. is satisfied that the organisation  called  the People’s Popular  Party has as its  ultimate aim the revival of the CPP in a different  guise and the eventual  return to Ghana  of the desposed President.

 Meeting

On January 21, 1969, a meeting was held in Accra in the house of Mr. G.  Aduamah , an Accra  barrister, Present at the meeting were, among others O.B. Amankwah, former  High Commissioner  to Tanzania; Nii Odoi Annan, an Accra barrister;  Kwesi Amoako-Atta. J.Y. Ghana and Imoru Egala all former Ministers in the ousted regime and Mr. G. Aduamah.

In a statement to the meeting, Mr. G. Aduamah  who had then just returned from London  disclosed  that he had held a meeting with Kojo  Botsio Kwesi Armah and W.Baidoe- Ansah from  whom he had  sought assistance in the form of money, vehicles and a printing press for the  for the  purpose of organizing a political  party. He further reported that he asked for the following.

Five Land

 3 letters from Botsio

 Rover equipped with loudspeakers to be used in areas where cars could not be conveniently used.

·         60 cars equipped with amplifiers and other equipment for party organizational purposes.

·         A printing press for the publication of a party Newspaper to be called “The Clarion” to be personally directed by Kojo Botsio.

·         An amount of £100,000 sterling to meet election expenses and for the maintenance of the fleet of vehicles to be purchased by the party.

In course of time, leadership of this “revivalist” group shifted to Mr. Imoru Egala because the members had some misgivings about the qualities of MR. Aduamah.

 Mr. Egala himself suffered a setback with the Political parties Decree, and since then Dr Willie K. Lutterodt   has assumed full leadership of this group, which is now christened the People’s Popular Party.

 On the 29^th April 1969 Dr W. K Lutterodt arrived at the Kotoka International Airport from London. A  routine search of his luggage produced inter alia, £ 420  sterling which he filed to declare; three  letters  addressed separately  to Imoru Egala , A.R. Boakye and Kwasi  Amoako-Atta  and a 16 page draft constitution  of a political  party  to be called “All People’s Party”  which  was be launched  when the ban was lifted.

On Dr W.K. Lutterodt’s person was found, the manifesto of the proposed party and a prepared inaugural speech to be delivered by Mr. Imoru Egala. The then acknowledged leader of the proposed party, on the 1^st of May 1969.

All available evidence clearly  establishes that the Draft Constitution,  the manifesto and prepared inaugural  address  were written by Kwame Nkrumah’s agents abroad, In fact  the Draft  Constitution  is the same in every respect  as the 1962  Revised Constitution of the disbanded  C.P.P.

The three letters found in the luggage of Dr. WK. Lutterodt have been proved to be in the handwriting of Kojo Botsio, one time Minister in the ousted regime, and now resident in London. In all these letters   he congratulates the addressers on their enthusiasm and hard work, apparently in their efforts to revive the prescribed CPP. In the one addressed to A. R. Boakye apologist “I hear from Kwame time and again and he’s well” “Kwame”   of cause is Kwame Nkrumah.

 On May 4, 1969 at a meeting is a classroom in Kaneshie one Aidoo addressing the gathering stated among other things that the party would be launched under the chairman of Dr W.K. Lutterodt  to be called People’s Popular Party; and that if his party won the elections it would invite Kwame Nkrumah to be President of Ghana.  Present at this meeting were among others Mr.  J.F. S. Hassen, District Magistrate in Accra and one Auntie Lydia former leader of the women’s section the disbanded CPP.

It is known that this party is actively supported by the former C.PP Ministers and party activists. A document found in Mr. Hansen’s house contained inter alia, the following “Dr Lutterodt had been a backroom supporter of the CPP.  All along. He had even been of great assistance in getting the various groups to come together under Egala. He is a businessman with some wealth. This explains why the progressive group around Egala chose him instead he is not ambitious and had to be forced to accept the position of interim chairman cum leader of the party”.

Security

 Further security checks have revealed that Mr.. Hansen, the District Magistrate mentioned earlier had plans to form a political party to be called People’s  Progressive Party to propagate communist ideology. He is known to be in touch with an embassy in Ghana for assistance.

 The Government is in possession of a hand written draft of a manifesto for this party. The handwriting has been proved to be that of Mr. Hansen.

Portions of this manifesto read; “The central theme of our policies will be the promotion of international socialism.”

On “African Policy” the manifesto declares that party will establish socialist parties and fronts throughout Africa. “In this gigantic exercise on the African Continent we need the strongest support of the socialist countries….” 

On the February 24 revolution itself Mr. Hansen declares in the manifesto:

“In view of the military regime that had been established in Ghana since February 24, 1966, it will be our duty to remove from office all the officers who either participated in the Military take-over on the day of the coup d’etat or in the running of the military administration of the country. We shall replace these officers with younger officers more favorable to our cause.

“We shall institute political training within the army to strengthen the ideological orientation of the Armed Forces personnel. We shall integrate the army with the people generally by making the Armed Forces participate in development projects such as farming food distribution, road building, etc. In so doing we shall be able to turn the army into a People Militia with an understanding of the aspirations of the people”.

 In February 1969, the Government had information that five former students of the Ideological Institute had started to organize underground. A party called the Peoples Progressive Party.

The leading members of this underground party were traced to be Mr. Hansen, the District Magistrate:  Joseph Halifax Ashirifie. Photographer of the Ghana Academy of Sciences: Mr. H.A. M Quaye, until recently of the Workers Brigade: and his younger brother A.M. Quaye, former lecturer in the Ideological Institute and now District Administrative Officer, Koforidua; and a number of former students of the erstwhile ideological Institute. This underground organization was the nucleus of Mr. Hansen’s P.P.P. whose manifesto he had prepared in advance.

The founding members of the PPP. (underground)  are now known to have joined the People’s Popular Party and Mr Hansen is now one of the leading advisers of Dr W. K. Lutterodt. It is significant to note that the name of Dr Lutterodt’s Peoples Popular Party is chosen in such a way as to retain the same initials “PPP” as Mr Hassen Peoples Progressive Party.

Information

Another Accra Lawyer, Mr. Nii Odoi Annan is known to be actively connected with Dr lutterodt’s .P.P.P. He serves on its finance committee together with Magistrate Hansen.

 No Government in possession of the information presently possessed by the N.L.C and conscious of its duty to the nation will sit unconcerned. The Government has accordingly decided that the political party called the Peoples Popular Party should be proscribed, and that steps be immediately taken to ensure that no person or group of persons indulge in any such activities  as will frustrate the objectives of the glorious February 24 revolution and return the people of Ghana to serfdom.

Editorial

WELCOME TO A COMRADE

Angela Davis, an African- American activist, a scholar and author is in Ghana and is scheduled to give a lecture at the Dubois Centre in Accra Tomorrow.

For more than 40 years, Angela Davis has been one of the sane voices in the United States of America protesting the waste of resources on imperialist wars and all forms of exploitation and oppression.

 An advertisement put out in the name of the Third World Network, Organization of Women Writers of Africa and Mbaasam says “Through her activism, writing and teaching, Angela Davis remains an iconic rallying voice and campaigner for human dignity and justice, and against war, authoritarian repression and all forms of oppression and injustice in the USA and around the world”.

The Insight salutes comrade Angela Davis for her participation in the struggles of oppressed peoples throughout the world and welcome her to Ghana.

We urge all progressive forces and those who stand for human dignity to participate in Angela Davis’ lecture at the Dubios Centre between 4:00 pm and 7.00 pm tomorrow.

The Insight will be there to join in the celebration of a citizen of the world who has done so much in the fight against injustice.

The smallholders’ last stand

 A visit to Mozambique dispels any notion that big business is going to ‘feed Africa’. Hazel Healy reports on a land rush in full swing.

By 7am work parties are already fanning out along the road’s edge. The people of Chiure district in rural Mozambique are setting out before the heat kicks in. Gangs of children stride along with hoes over their shoulders; women make slower progress with babies tied to their backs, balancing large bundles on their head, trailing toddlers with the free hand.

It’s hard to see where this stream of people is headed at first. Then, looking closer you see the rise and fall of dull metal, the flash of a headdress as small plots of maize appear in among the brush and waist-high grasses.

‘They'll have to kill us first’. The land of villagers in Kitica, Cabo Delgado province, is under threat from a local landgrabber. They pose with machete, hoe and a coil of homegrown tobacco, the trappings of home – and self defence. Hazel Healy 

The lands of small-scale farmers like these are characterized as ‘under-used’. Since the state – which legally owns all territory – declared it had seven million hectares going spare, investors have snapped up 2.5 million. Mozambique has stayed in the ‘top 10 most targeted’ countries for large-scale deals ever since.

The age-old tussle over resources is nothing new. But the speed at which large swathes of the Global South are being transferred into private hands has not been seen since colonial times.

The cast has changed. Modern day landgrabbers are a varied bunch: the Saudis want to raise poultry and grow grains in Sudan; forests in the Philippines are disappearing under Asia’s insatiable appetite for palm oil; the finance hubs of London and New York have bought into El Tejar, which farms 800,000 hectares in South America.^1,2,3 Companies from rapidly growing India and South Africa are at the fore, alongside Western firms.

‘They will send us to places with poor soil. Then how will we live?’ 

While agricultural deals are happening all over the world from South Asia to Latin America, the most powerful ‘empty land myth’ centres on Africa. In Mozambique, where the global grab collides with explosive economic growth, the land rush is accelerating.

Green grabbing

In Chuire district, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, investors are seeking agricultural land for everything from bananas to biofuels. 

Sandrina Muaco, one of the six per cent of Mozambicans who live past 50, is smoking with her maize-husk roll-up turned lit side in – something of a trend in Maurunga village. She is one of 171 households displaced by a bevy of companies – both foreign and domestic – who have moved in on the fertile fields near the Lurio River.

Sandrina Muaco

Muaco’s six hectares of cashew trees were cleared to make way for Eco-Energia de Moçambique’s Ouroverde (Greengold) sugar processing plant.

‘We used to spend a week picking nuts every harvest,’ she recalls. ‘I would sell the cashews and make alcohol from the fruits. The land produced a lot.’

Villagers here, like 80 per cent of Mozambicans, rely on agriculture to survive. But Muaco wasn’t a subsistence farmer. Her plot was four times the size of the average land holding.

Eco-Energia – described by a land expert as ‘one of the better companies’ – paid $664 in compensation for Muaco’s trees and house, which was cleared to make way for the sugar cane plantation. But two years on, the money is long spent – on a new home, a sarong and the rental of an exhausted plot of land nearby where Muaco scratches out a living growing cassava and maize. She concludes: ‘I lost everything.’

The chair of Eco-Energia’s parent company is entrepreneurial Swede Per Carstedt, former CEO of Europe’s leading bioethanol importer SEKAB.⁴ He hopes to clean-up the polluting transport systems of the industrialized world via African fields in both Tanzania and Mozambique.

The Eco-Energia Ouroverde sugar factory, as yet unused, occupies the spot where Sandrina Muaco's cashew trees once grew. 

Ouroverde has absorbed at least $1.3 million to date (50 per cent from the Dutch government’s private investment arm) and has rights to 1,000 hectares for the next 25 years.⁵ In the long term, Eco-Energia hopes to scale up to 30,000 hectares across the province, export organic sugar to Europe and distil bioethanol. It’s a prime example of what the Journal of Peasant Studies has defined as ‘green-grabbing – or ‘the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends’.

In the dark

‘We were taken by surprise,’ says one widow, whose land has to sustain nine grandchildren. ‘The first we heard of it, we were told to go to our fields to get the large trees painted [for compensation].’ She blames the chef de aldea (lowest ranking government official) for signing away her cashew, banana and mango trees. She now rents a plot half a day’s walk from her house. Aching muscles mean she can only farm on alternate days. Other villagers claim that the compensation process lacked transparency and was haphazard, missing out some families altogether.

Eco-Energia responded by email that the compensation process is unfinished, and they have received no complaints through their grievance procedures. It also maintains that the principles of free, prior and informed consent were followed during an extensive consultation. 

But despite the company’s efforts, the villagers did not know what they were getting into. Traditional leader, Martiño Silva thought the lease was for four years.

‘After independence we occupied the land. We farmed there. Then Monika came,’ he recalls, in reference to Monika Branks, Executive Director of Eco-Energia. ‘She said, “I want some land.” We agreed. We thought it would be a small area by the river. Then they said they needed more…’

The plantation has created jobs, but villagers say these are only ‘good for young men’.

‘It’s too risky for someone with children,’ says the widow. ‘Three days here, 25 days there. And it doesn’t leave you time to sow your own fields.’

Forest lost

Elsewhere in Chiure, villagers have lost access to valuable common resources. A German mining firm Graphite Kropfmühl has cordoned off forests around scores of exploration sites. From one day to the next, farmers were cut off from lean season staples such as wild tubers and beans, game like hares, guinea fowl and small deer, as well as firewood, bamboo and medicinal plants. 

Meanwhile, the intense investor interest has sparked a speculative land rush by local élites. In nearby Kitica, villagers are under threat from a cattle rancher, who has tried to evict them by force, without the niceties of compensation. ‘We depend on our own strength to feed our children,’ says Laurinda Mitilage. ‘They will send us to places with poor soil. Then how will we live?’

Luis Muchanga from national peasant union UNAC likens the competition for land to a race. ‘Companies have a strong appetite,’ he says. ‘There’s a lot of them, chasing resources. Internally this sparks speculation, which goes beond the capacity of local government.’

The stories from Chiure are repeated in large-scale deals the world over. The land acquired was not ‘empty’, despite Mozambique’s low population density. Investors compete for land with local farming communities, who are pushed into marginal areas – women in particular, are losing out. Consultations, when they happen, are fraught with power imbalance and unequal access to information. The work generated on plantations is not sufficient – either in salary or security – to replace lost livelihoods; nor is compensation. Land activist Diamantino Nhampossa puts it bluntly: ‘The people are being cheated.’ Whether investors are motivated by the ‘will to improve’, the environment, or profit – or a mix of all three – the outcome can be equally catastrophic for the people forced off their land.⁶

White elephants

The free-market logic dictates that the eviction of farming communities is an unfortunate necessity – we need more productive farms to meet the world’s food requirements. Yet even the World Bank – an avid backer of large land deals – acknowledges that no research has given the green-light to large-scale agriculture in Africa.

No research has given the green-light to large-scale agriculture in Africa

In fact, there’s a pretty low success rate across the board. A land expert tells me that bar sugar, he is unaware of a single successful large-scale farm over 1,000 hectares in Mozambique – they have all gone bust. 

But the poor track record has not stopped ever-bigger players from entering the ‘development’ fray. Last May, the group of G8 nations launched the ‘new alliance for food security and nutrition’, which proposes using giant agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto, to end hunger in Mozambique and five other countries. Writer Joe Hanlon notes the G8’s first act of charity was to subsidize grain giant Cargill to take over 40,000 hectares of Mozambican soil (they got 10,000).

Agribusiness presents these investments as ‘win-win’. But it’s a struggle to locate a single community that has benefited. Some outgrower schemes – where companies provide a guaranteed market for smallholders, after providing seeds and inputs – come in for cautious praise. But these work best as an alternative to large-scale land acquisitions, not in addition.

There are reams of practical ideas for how to make deals fairer through partnerships such as equity shares. But improvements remain the exception. As the UNDP pointed out in its 2012 Human Development Report: ‘Private investors naturally prioritize their own objectives, not the wellbeing of the poor and the vulnerable.’

Elsewhere in East Africa, there’s evidence that big farms even fail against their own yardstick of profitability. A recent study of the Awash valley in north-eastern Ethiopia found that economic returns earned by pastoralists were higher than those of the irrigated state farms for sugar and cotton, which displaced them.⁷

Ambivalent state

The Socialist origins of Mozambique’s ruling party FRELIMO incline it towards mechanized farms. But the government sends out mixed messages over large-scale investment. On the one hand, it’s enjoying being a development success after years of civil war and persistent poverty. Hailed as one of the African lions, it’s hell-bent on modernization and has an economy growing at seven per cent.

Yet it has also passed (in 1997) the most progressive community land rights law in Africa. It has been trying to row back from this high tide mark ever since and, in practice, rights are not enough to stop widespread dispossession. Politicians are also prone to staking claims to large tracts of lands themselves; companies enjoy a host of tax breaks and the land is almost free at just 40 cents rental per hectare.

On a district level, government officials are increasingly unhappy about investor-fuelled rural conflicts in places like Chiure. But Jacinto Tualufo, the head of the land surveying office in Maputo that processes land requests, confirms that applications are increasing in size and volume. ‘We must capitalize on this investment,’ he says. ‘If we are afraid of development, we will lose these opportunities’. 

By selling rights to these resources, it’s hoped that wealth will trickle down even though there is little evidence of that to date. Mozambique’s GDP may be climbing upwards, but the poverty reduction rate has flatlined in recent years; rural poverty is increasing in some areas. Corruption is also on the rise. The acid test for the government at present is how it will manage resources – and mass community displacement – in the wake of the recent discovery of vast reserves of coal and gas. The contours of Cabo Delgado, for example, are now almost completely obscured by overlapping concessions. The second major threat is the ProSavana scheme.

Invest, but not like this

It’s not hard to see why Mozambique may be tempted to outsource its agriculture. Small-scale farming is not a runaway success. Some 35 per cent of people live in perpetual hunger. Farmers toil with hoes, and yields are the lowest in southern Africa. Despite its much-vaunted 36 million hectares of arable land, Mozambique is a net food importer.
But traditional farming needs to be given a chance. Smallholders have been ignored for 20 years – structural adjustment programmes imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund saw to that. It would be easy to boost production with support for rural infrastructure and inputs. And there’s plenty of evidence that employment-intensive, small-scale commercial farming can be more productive as well as pro-poor.
Land grabs that uproot millions of smallholders – who grow 70 per cent of the world’s food – are a high-risk experiment that is inflicting great losses on the world’s poor.
Promised agribusiness jobs are failing to materialize, and industrialization to mop up the landless is an unlikely prospect.

Surrendering control over resources will not lead to development that benefits the poor. Instead, communities need investment and protection. At least we know that campaigns are beginning to bear fruit and have halted many a controversial deal.

Companies are pushing harder than ever before to access land and resources in the Majority World. It’s time to stop flirting with big business; it won’t deliver. We need to reverse the trend: secure land rights, invest in the family farms. 

If not, the land crisis will deepen and conflicts proliferate; we will be in for a rough ride.

1.       ‘Joint investment firm to boost Saudi-Sudan links’, farmlandgrab.org

Israeli Security Brutalize Christian Clergy

A Statement from the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, concerning the Israeli police measures on Holy Saturday- May 2013

Israeli security beats worshippers

We, the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, watched with sorrowful hearts the horrific scenes of the brutal treatment of our clergy, people, and pilgrims in the Old City of Jerusalem during [Orthodox calendar] Holy Saturday last week. A day of joy and celebration was turned to great sorrow and pain for some of our faithful because they were ill-treated by Israeli policemen who were present around the gates of the Old City and passages that lead to the Holy Sepulcher.

We understand the necessity and the importance of the presence of security forces to ensure order and stability, and for organizing the celebration of the Holy Fire at the Church of the Resurrection. Yet, it is not acceptable that under pretext of security and order, our clergy and people are indiscriminately and brutally beaten, and prevented from entering their churches, monasteries and convents.

We urge the Israeli authorities especially the Ministry of Interior and the police department in Jerusalem, to seriously consider our complaints, to hold responsibility and to condemn all acts of violence against our faithful and the clergy who were ill-treated by the police. We deplore that every year, the police measures are becoming tougher, and we expect that these accidents will not be repeated and the police should be more sensitive and respectful if they seek to protect and serve.

We also denounce all those who are blaming the churches and holding them responsible for the Israeli measures during Holy Week celebrations. On the contrary, the heads of churches in Jerusalem condemn all of these measures and violations of Christians’ rights to worship in their churches and Holy Sites. Therefore, we condemn all measures of closing the Old City and urge the Israeli authorities to allow full access to the Holy sites during Holy Week of both Church Calendars.

The Heads of Churches of Jerusalem

+Patriarch Theophilos III, GreekOrthodox Patriarchate
+Patriarch Fouad Twal, Latin Patriarchate
+Patriarch Norhan Manougian, Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarchate
+Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, OFM, Custos of the Holy Land
+Archbishop Anba Abraham, Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate, Jerusalem
+Archbishop Swerios Malki Murad, Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate
+Aba Fissiha Tsion,  Locum Tenensof the Ethiopian Orthodox Patriarchate
+Archbishop Joseph-Jules Zerey, Greek-Melkite-Catholic Patriarchate
+Archbishop Moussa El-Hage, Maronite Patriarchal Exarchate
+Bishop Suheil Dawani, E piscopa lChurch of Jerusalem and the Middle East
+Bishop Munib Younan, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land
+Bishop Pierre Melki, Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarchate
+Msgr. Joseph Antoine Kelekian, Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarchate

A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood 

Nek Muhammed, centre, was a Pashtun militant who was killed in 2004

By Mark Mazzetti

The C.I.A. has carried out hundreds of strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. 

On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan’s army in the country’s western mountains. He asked one of his followers about the strange, metallic bird hovering above him.

Less than 24 hours later, a missile tore through the compound, severing Mr. Muhammad’s left leg and killing him and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16. A Pakistani military spokesman was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, saying that Pakistani forces had fired at the compound. 

That was a lie. 

Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.

That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization. 

The C.I.A. has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike. While it was not the first country where the United States used drones, it became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war. 

Neither American nor Pakistani officials have ever publicly acknowledged what really happened to Mr. Muhammad — details of the strike that killed him, along with those of other secret strikes, are still hidden in classified government databases. But in recent months, calls for transparency from members of Congress and critics on both the right and left have put pressure on Mr. Obama and his new C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, to offer a fuller explanation of the goals and operation of the drone program, and of the agency’s role.

Mr. Brennan, who began his career at the C.I.A. and over the past four years oversaw an escalation of drone strikes from his office at the White House, has signaled that he hopes to return the agency to its traditional role of intelligence collection and analysis. But with a generation of C.I.A. officers now fully engaged in a new mission, it is an effort that could take years.

Today, even some of the people who were present at the creation of the drone program think the agency should have long given up targeted killings. 

Ross Newland, who was a senior official at the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va., when the agency was given the authority to kill Qaeda operatives, says he thinks that the agency had grown too comfortable with remote-control killing, and that drones have turned the C.I.A. into the villain in countries like Pakistan, where it should be nurturing relationships in order to gather intelligence. 

As he puts it, “This is just not an intelligence mission.” 

From Car Thief to Militant

By 2004, Mr. Muhammad had become the undisputed star of the tribal areas, the fierce mountain lands populated by the Wazirs, Mehsuds and other Pashtun tribes who for decades had lived independent of the writ of the central government in Islamabad. A brash member of the Wazir tribe, Mr. Muhammad had raised an army to fight government troops and had forced the government into negotiations. He saw no cause for loyalty to the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani military spy service that had given an earlier generation of Pashtuns support during the war against the Soviets. 

Many Pakistanis in the tribal areas viewed with disdain the alliance that President Pervez Musharraf had forged with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They regarded the Pakistani military that had entered the tribal areas as no different from the Americans — who they believed had begun a war of aggression in Afghanistan, just as the Soviets had years earlier. 

Born near Wana, the bustling market hub of South Waziristan, Mr. Muhammad spent his adolescent years as a petty car thief and shopkeeper in the city’s bazaar. He found his calling in 1993, around the age of 18, when he was recruited to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and rose quickly through the group’s military hierarchy. He cut a striking figure on the battlefield with his long face and flowing jet black hair. 

Mr. Muhammad, a Pashtun militant leader, reached a truce with the Pakistani military in April 2004. But the truce was a sham and two months later he was killed in a C.I.A. drone strike at Pakistan’s behest. 

When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001, he seized an opportunity to host the Arab and Chechen fighters from Al Qaeda who crossed into Pakistan to escape the American bombing. 

For Mr. Muhammad, it was partly a way to make money, but he also saw another use for the arriving fighters. With their help, over the next two years he launched a string of attacks on Pakistani military installations and on American firebases in Afghanistan. 

C.I.A. officers in Islamabad urged Pakistani spies to lean on the Waziri tribesman to hand over the foreign fighters, but under Pashtun tribal customs that would be treachery. 

Reluctantly, Mr. Musharraf ordered his troops into the forbidding mountains to deliver rough justice to Mr. Muhammad and his fighters, hoping the operation might put a stop to the attacks on Pakistani soil, including two attempts on his life in December 2003. 

But it was only the beginning. In March 2004, Pakistani helicopter gunships and artillery pounded Wana and its surrounding villages. Government troops shelled pickup trucks that were carrying civilians away from the fighting and destroyed the compounds of tribesmen suspected of harboring foreign fighters. 

The Pakistani commander declared the operation an unqualified success, but for Islamabad, it had not been worth the cost in casualties. 

A cease-fire was negotiated in April during a hastily arranged meeting in South Waziristan, during which a senior Pakistani commander hung a garland of bright flowers around Mr. Muhammad’s neck. The two men sat together and sipped tea as photographers and television cameras recorded the event. 

Both sides spoke of peace, but there was little doubt who was negotiating from strength. Mr. Muhammad would later brag that the government had agreed to meet inside a religious madrasa rather than in a public location where tribal meetings are traditionally held. “I did not go to them; they came to my place,” he said. “That should make it clear who surrendered to whom.” 

The peace arrangement propelled Mr. Muhammad to new fame, and the truce was soon exposed as a sham. He resumed attacks against Pakistani troops, and Mr. Musharraf ordered his army back on the offensive in South Waziristan. 

Pakistani officials had, for several years, balked at the idea of allowing armed C.I.A. Predators to roam their skies. They considered drone flights a violation of sovereignty, and worried that they would invite further criticism of Mr. Musharraf as being Washington’s lackey. But Mr. Muhammad’s rise to power forced them to reconsider. 

The C.I.A. had been monitoring the rise of Mr. Muhammad, but officials considered him to be more Pakistan’s problem than America’s. In Washington, officials were watching with growing alarm the gathering of Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas, and George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director, authorized officers in the agency’s Islamabad station to push Pakistani officials to allow armed drones. Negotiations were handled primarily by the Islamabad station. 

As the battles raged in South Waziristan, the station chief in Islamabad paid a visit to Gen. Ehsan ul Haq, the ISI chief, and made an offer: If the C.I.A. killed Mr. Muhammad, would the ISI allow regular armed drone flights over the tribal areas? 

In secret negotiations, the terms of the bargain were set. Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that they be allowed to approve each drone strike, giving them tight control over the list of targets. And they insisted that drones fly only in narrow parts of the tribal areas — ensuring that they would not venture where Islamabad did not want the Americans going: Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, and the mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India. 

Blatant US hypocrisy in accusations of Chinese hacking

By Rick Falkvinge

Washington needs to clean up its own act before trying to assert the moral high ground over the Chinese for their alleged hack attacks on the US.

The United States is accusing China of trying to hack into US defense computers for espionage purposes. This claim comes across as hypocritical and posturing: For several decades, the United States has happily wiretapped every other nation's conversations whenever possible.

Under Washington’s ‘Echelon’ global wiretapping network, this includes most industrialized nations – such an obscene a violation of international trust when discovered, most didn't want to believe the Echelon program actually existed and was operational.

This network of wiretapping stations isn't just used by the United States for military purposes – it has long been asserted that it is also used to give United States industries the upper hand in purely industrial applications, in competition with its international counterparts.

In Europe, it is not enough for the United States to listen in to all conversations using the Echelon program. The US also demands information on all SWIFT bank transactions in Europe, ostensibly in the name of combating terrorism, but such information again gives US industries an upper hand in industrial espionage.

To criticize China for doing what the US has been doing to the rest of the world for decades comes across as hypocritical posturing of the worst sort, regardless of whether or not the allegations are true. But it gets worse: This alleged Chinese hacking was implied to have military connotations, and the US claimed it was a violation of "international trust."

To date, only two national powers are known to have used hacking in military applications: The United States and Israel, in their joint attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities that used malicious software of sophistication never before seen by the security community. (As a bonus, before it was discovered that the US was behind the attack, NATO used this hacking attack as a scare to ask for increased funding.)

No, what this really is about is a threat to Pax Americana – the idea that world peace is guaranteed by the United States, but only on the terms of that same United States. (We can easily observe how those terms are changed daily, and then enforced, by killer drones.)

If any other nation should gain superiority in any single field, Washington's already-overstretched capability to project military violence anywhere in the world could come crumbling down. Though the US Military spends practically as much as the rest of the industrialized world's militaries combined, this would account for little if an Achilles Heel in their dominance is allowed to develop.

Therefore, it is absolutely vital to US interests that they – and only they – get to wiretap the rest of the world and hack into their industrial interests, in order to maintain and fund a superior military, which is in turn used to maintain a peace-through-superior-firepower dominance throughout the world: The Pax Americana.

If any other nation develops such wiretapping or hacking capabilities, they would present a long-term threat to US dominance. Therefore, it comes as little surprise that Washington would criticize others it. But screaming about "violations of trust?” Those claims couldn't have rung more hollow.

That international trust was violated a long time ago, and not by the Chinese. The United States doesn't have the moral high ground, or a single leg with which to stand on it.

 

Turning over a new leaf in Pakistan

Newly Elected Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif

By Eric Walberg

Pakistan's elections come at a key junction in the region's geopolitics, with the public firmly opposed to the US 'war on terror' being conducted on Pakistani soil with no regard for its sovereignty.

Pakistan’s new prime minister has a mandate to take his country in a new direction, but will he use it? Steel magnate Nawaz Sharif is the country's fourth wealthiest citizen, a protégé of General Zia ul-Haq, toppled in a 1999 military coup, sentence to life imprisonment and exiled to Saudi Arabia. His Muslim League (PML-N) has enough seats to avoid the need for a coalition with second-place former cricketer Imran Khan’s Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI), and/or the Bhutto family’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which until last week presided over Pakistan’s first full-term civilian government. Despite pre-poll violence that killed at least 40 people, voter turnout was a robust 60%.

On the surface, a win-win for Sharif, Khan, Pakistan, and even the West, which very much needs a stable government there. But Sharif, prime minister for the third time (having served from 1990-1993 and 1997-1999), has loads of baggage: his love of neoliberal trickle-down economics, his close ties with Saudi Arabia, his abiding interest in closer links with Central Asia republics (echoes of past regimes’ regional hegemonic designs). And though he loudly supported the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudry (dismissed by Pervez Musharraf in 2007), he is no stranger to intimidating judges, having ousted Supreme Court chief justice Sajjad Ali Shah in 1997. He notoriously ‘pressed the button’ to bring Pakistan into the nuclear age in 1998. And he was best friends with the military until he was 'betrayed' by his own 1998 appointee as army chief of staff, Pervez Musharraf.

What do the tea leaves tell us? Well, for one thing, ex-General Musharraf, who hounded Sharif into exile, better put a strong lock on his home near Islamabad, where he is now under house arrest. And Pakistanis better brace themselves for IMF-style austerity. US strategists also should be prepared for a continuation of the cooling of relations. Sharif’s brother Shahbaz, chief minister of Punjab, has stopped all USAID projects in Punjab province as a protest against Washington’s use of drones (3,000 dead since 2004), though we can be sure Nawaz is unlikely to jeopardize the $2 billion in annual US ‘aid’.

Speaking of Nawaz’s brother, his son Hamza is a member of the National Assembly. And Nawaz’s daughter Maryam is leader of the PML-N. And, and … Politics is a family affair in Pakistan, though as the falling-out and scandals of the various Bhuttos (and Sharif’s nasty alliance with Benazir’s brother Murtaza) suggests, the families are not always happy. So much for “cleaning up corruption”.

Is there any hope for a new direction? Well, Sharif considers himself a friend of the environment, a fan of “bioconservatism”, having established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1997. He is committed to Islamization, including a more sharia-based legal system, though there is little to suggest that social justice plays any role at all in his deen. He may actually try to patch up relations with India; he tried to with the Lahore declaration in 1999 until undermined by clashes in Kargil, Kashmir.

But don’t hold your breath. Sharif is in fact a logical heir to Pakistan’s tragic history, which continues to unfold, regardless of who sits on top. Since partition in 1947, intended by the British to leave a prostrate subcontinent which would be beholden to empire, Pakistani politics has been mostly dominated by military rule and crises. This makes sense, as Pakistan’s Muslims are a highly pluralist mix of Sunni and Shia, with large communities of Ahmadi, Bahai and others, and tension often boil over, requiring a firm, neutral hand.

But then Pakistan is not so different from other majority-Muslim states, which all share a history of authoritarian, top-down forced adoption to western modernity, characterized by accepting an imposed economic system of capitalism and a political system composed of ‘sovereign’ ethnically distinct nation states. The entire Muslim world was subjected to this in some form, be it by a monarch, a military dictator, a colonial administration or a neocolonial ‘independent’ administration. This includes Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Indonesia and Malaysia, with Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states the ‘exceptions that prove the rule’.

Pakistan and Turkey have striking similarities. Both Pakistan and Turkey’s military staged coups from the 1950s to the 1980s to stop moves towards promoting more religious practice, though the coup in Pakistan in 1977 and in Turkey in 1980 changed the nature of the ‘game’, as the US began to openly embrace so-called mujahideen across the Muslim world as its Cold War ace against the Soviet Union.

Pakistan’s colonial nightmare differs from Egypt’s at that time. Pakistan’s partition and ethnic/ sectarian tensions among uprooted peoples did not allow the formation of a Muslim Brotherhood-type organization which could unite the country around a program of Islamic social justice. Egypt’s military coup of 1952 was necessary to pre-empt the Muslim Brotherhood, which would have been the clear winner in any elections. Unlike Pakistani and Turkish military strongmen, Egypt’s populist Gamel Abdel-Nasser was as a result prompted to follow a socialist anti-imperialist path to independence, and became the toast of the Muslim world-until US-Israeli hegemony was asserted in the region in 1967, humiliating the hero of Arab nationalism and undoing fatally this secular socialist path.

On the surface, the imperial strategy of creating a weak, divided Indian subcontinent largely worked. India’s experiment with socialism was mild, and only Pakistan’s Zulfikar Bhutto flirted briefly with socialism and anti-imperialism in the 1970s-and was rewarded by being hanged (by Sharif’s patron Zia ul-Haq). With the demise of the Soviet Union, the empire consolidated its hold on both India and Pakistan, letting them continue their spat over Kashmir, a senseless and massive drain on both the Indian and Pakistani budgets, but excellent divide-and-conquer geopolitics for the US. The socialist 'threat' was wiped out in the horrendous ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan, which unleashed al-Qaeda types on the world.

As a result, when Sharif grabbed the reins of power in the 1990s, he found he was riding a tiger. The Taliban were the real thing, so to speak: unlike craven Pakistani politicians, they wanted to attack the very empire itself. Pakistan’s relations with the US deteriorated and have continued to deteriorate ever since as various leaders try unsuccessfully to square the circle, encouraging the Taliban and pacifying the Americans.

A new leaf for Pakistan will probably not be the work of Sharif. Rather, the logic of regional developments will continue to assert itself. The PPP government was forced by popular pressure to cut off the NATO supply route to Afghanistan and to restrict US military activity. At the same time, it increased military and economic cooperation with China and Iran. Sharif’s PML-N will continue this. US policy is pushing its once subservient ally into the hands of its ‘enemies’.

The best than can be hoped for in Pakistan is that a (slightly less) corrupt Sharif will patch up relations with India, which the army can do little to stop, given the failed state that Pakistan finds itself in. This means ending demands to tear Kashmir away from India, and abandoning the Taliban. A return of the Taliban may be what some hardliners are rooting for, but given the unwillingness of any of the major players-in the first place India, Russia, Iran, China and of course the US-to allow this, Sharif has a stronger hand this time, if he’s sensible enough to play it, for peace with India can only come by letting go of Afghanistan.

If Sharif can strike a peace accord with India and work with regional players-including Iran- and the US in Afghanistan, peace will break out in the region. This would reopen the borders with India, creating an economic boom across the region. At the same time, it will accelerate a genuine withdrawal of US forces from the region, end its threats to invade Iran, and-please note, US strategists-the US would still have quite a bit of influence in post-pullout Afghanistan. In fact, its profile across the region would be transformed for the better.

This would also dash Pakistan’s goal of becoming regional hegemon. But peace with both Afghanistan and India would be a win-win for it too, slashing the parasitical military and raising living standards through mutually profitable cooperation with India, Iran and China. The centerpiece will be the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) Peace Pipeline. Even if Pakistani politics remains corrupt (and it will), the new regional cooperation would give a huge boost to its economy.

If Sharif has the courage to do this, it would start the difficult process of turning over a new leaf for Pakistan. It would also guarantee him a second term, which combined with his peaceful accession to power, would mean a gratifying political bookend for his rule, making him ‘independent’ Pakistan’s true founder.