How the US Funds the Taliban

Taliban fighters in an undisclosed location in Afghanistan. Reuters

It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting.

The Nation | Nov 11, 2009

By Aram Roston

On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime’s ambassador in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat’s right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

But Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1997.

Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal’s cousin President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who in a separate case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn. The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals’ private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan. One of Watan’s enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.

In this grotesque carnival, the US military’s contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. “It’s a big part of their income,” one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents.

Understanding how this situation came to pass requires untangling two threads. The first is the insider dealing that determines who wins and who loses in Afghan business, and the second is the troubling mechanism by which “private security” ensures that the US supply convoys traveling these ancient trade routes aren’t ambushed by insurgents.

A good place to pick up the first thread is with a small firm awarded a US military logistics contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars: NCL Holdings. Like the Popals’ Watan Risk, NCL is a licensed security company in Afghanistan.

What NCL Holdings is most notorious for in Kabul contracting circles, though, is the identity of its chief principal, Hamed Wardak. He is the young American son of Afghanistan’s current defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, who was a leader of the mujahedeen against the Soviets. Hamed Wardak has plunged into business as well as policy. He was raised and schooled in the United States, graduating as valedictorian from Georgetown University in 1997. He earned a Rhodes scholarship and interned at the neoconservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. That internship was to play an important role in his life, for it was at AEI that he forged alliances with some of the premier figures in American conservative foreign policy circles, such as the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.

Wardak incorporated NCL in the United States early in 2007, although the firm may have operated in Afghanistan before then. It made sense to set up shop in Washington, because of Wardak’s connections there. On NCL’s advisory board, for example, is Milton Bearden, a well-known former CIA officer. Bearden is an important voice on Afghanistan issues; in October he was a witness before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Senator John Kerry, the chair, introduced him as “a legendary former CIA case officer and a clearheaded thinker and writer.” It is not every defense contracting company that has such an influential adviser.

But the biggest deal that NCL got–the contract that brought it into Afghanistan’s major leagues–was Host Nation Trucking. Earlier this year the firm, with no apparent trucking experience, was named one of the six companies that would handle the bulk of US trucking in Afghanistan, bringing supplies to the web of bases and remote outposts scattered across the country.

At first the contract was large but not gargantuan. And then that suddenly changed, like an immense garden coming into bloom. Over the summer, citing the coming “surge” and a new doctrine, “Money as a Weapons System,” the US military expanded the contract 600 percent for NCL and the five other companies. The contract documentation warns of dire consequences if more is not spent: “service members will not get food, water, equipment, and ammunition they require.” Each of the military’s six trucking contracts was bumped up to $360 million, or a total of nearly $2.2 billion. Put it in this perspective: this single two-year effort to hire Afghan trucks and truckers was worth 10 percent of the annual Afghan gross domestic product. NCL, the firm run by the defense minister’s well-connected son, had struck pure contracting gold.

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Don’t target Muslims, troops told

nzherald.co.nz | Nov 9, 2009

By Guy Adams

The Fort Hood massacre could lead to an ugly “backlash” against the 3,000 Muslims who serve in the US Army, its chief of staff warned yesterday.

General George Casey toured breakfast television studios to emphasise that the mass shooting, in which 13 died and 29 were wounded, must not be used to excuse discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities in the Armed Forces.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old army psychiatrist accused of last Thursday’s atrocity, had yelled “Alahu Akbar” as he opened fire on his fellow-soldiers.

“I’m concerned [about] a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers and I’ve asked our army leaders to be on the lookout for that,” he said.

“Our diversity, not only in our army, but in our country, is a strength. As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

Army CID investigators have said there was no evidence that Major Hasan, in hospital recovering from four bullet wounds, was part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.

Evidence from his computer, together with family interviews, suggest that he acted alone.

Psychological problems also appear to have contributed to the attack.

The suspect was ideologically opposed to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he had referred to as part of “a war on Islam”, and he had been desperate to avoid an imminent posting to the Middle East, The New York Times reported.

He was also emotionally scarred from his counselling work.

Major Hasan had recently contributed to extremist internet forums.

But there is no evidence that he had contact with a known terrorist.

Neither did the mass shooting seem designed to advance a specific political agenda.

He is under armed guard in hospital in Texas.

Yesterday, he was taken off a ventilator.

If he survives, prosecutors say he is likely to face prosecution in the military rather than civilian courts.

The independent Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman has announced that he intends to lead a government investigation into the incident, to get to the bottom of suggestions that the army missed “strong warning signs” that Major Hasan was a potential threat.

He once had links to the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia.

Newspaper reports said the mosque was attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers.

But the mosque’s influence on Major Hasan’s recent behaviour is debatable as there is no evidence that he had visited it for some years.

Muslims at Fort Voice Outrage and Ask Questions

Sgt. Fahad Kamal participated in Friday prayers at the mosque of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen outside Fort Hood. Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

New York Times |  Nov 6, 2009

By MICHAEL MOSS

KILLEEN, Tex. — Leaders of the vibrant Muslim community here expressed outrage on Friday at the shooting rampage being laid to one of their members, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who had become a regular attendee of prayers at the local mosque.

But some of the men who had befriended Major Hasan at the mosque said the military should examine the policies that might have caused him to snap.

“When a white guy shoots up a post office, they call that going postal,” said Victor Benjamin II, 30, a former member of the Army. “But when a Muslim does it, they call it jihad.

“Ultimately it was Brother Nidal’s doing, but the command should be held accountable,” Mr. Benjamin said. “G.I.’s are like any equipment in the Army. When it breaks, those who were in charge of keeping it fit should be held responsible for it.”

The mosque, the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, sits off Highway 195, near Fort Hood. Major Hasan began attending prayers about two months ago.

The mosque has about 75 families who have lived peacefully with their Christian neighbors.

“After 9/11, nothing happened here,” said Ajsaf Khan, who owns three convenience stores with his brother, Abdul Khan. “We are very cooperative.”

A mosque leader, Dr. Manzoor Farooqi, a pediatrician, when asked if he feared retribution for the shootings, said he hoped good relations would prevail.

Major Hasan was one of about 10 men from Fort Hood who attended prayers in their uniforms, Dr. Farooqi said, and he was shocked to see the major’s face on television identified as that of the gunman. “He is an educated man. A psychiatrist,” he said. “I can’t believe he would do such a stupid thing.”

“I have no words to explain what happened yesterday,” Dr. Farooqi said at Friday afternoon prayers, in which about 40 men were led by the mosque’s imam, Syed Ahmed Ali. “Let’s have a moment of silence to bless those who lost their life.”

“The Islamic community strongly condemns this cowardly attack, which was particularly heinous in that it was directed at the all-volunteer army that protects our nation,” Dr. Farooqi said.

Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said, “We reiterate the American Muslim community’s condemnation of this cowardly attack. Right now, we call on all Americans to assist those who are responding to this atrocity. We must ensure that the wounded are treated and the families of those who were murdered have an opportunity to mourn.”

Among those attending Friday prayers at the Killeen mosque was Sgt. Fahad Kamal, 26, an Army medic who wore his Airborne uniform, and later he said he was angered on several levels. “I want to believe it was the individual, and not the religion, that made him do what he did,” said Sergeant Kamal, who returned to the United States last year after a 15-month tour in Afghanistan. “It’s an awful thing. I feel let down. We’re better than this.”

It was Major Hasan, though, who increasingly felt let down by the military, and deeply conflicted by his religion, said those who knew him through the mosque. Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood, said Major Hassan was told he would be sent to Afghanistan on Nov. 28, and he did not like it.

“He said he should quit the Army,” Mr. Reasoner said. “In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.”

Mr. Benjamin, who worked as a private contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan after leaving the Army in 2000, said the military should have let Major Hassan resign. “They should take more consideration of the human beings in the uniform,” he said, “rather than simply say, ‘We invested our money in you and need to get our money’s worth.’ ”

Still, Mr. Benjamin added, Major Hassan had overlooked an important, and peaceable, tenet of Islam. “We do have the right to retaliate,” he said, “but he who does not is twice blessed.”

Fort Hood shooting: American Muslims express fear, frustration

The news that the suspect is one of their own brings up familiar feelings. Besides fears of retribution, they’re tired of sensing pressure to apologize for someone else’s ‘maniacal brutality.’

LA Times | Nov 6, 2009

By Duke Helfand and Richard Fausset

The news made Nihad Awad sick to his stomach.

Like the rest of the nation, Awad, who heads the Council on American-Islamic Relations, learned this week that it was a Muslim who opened fire at a U.S. Army base in Texas, killing 13 people and injuring many more. According to soldiers, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan issued the great, exalting cry of his faith before opening fire:

“Allahu akbar!” God is great.

Hearing the story, Awad, too, would invoke his maker — but with a weary lament that is echoing coast to coast among moderate American Muslims.

“I said, ‘Oh God, here we go again,’ ” recalled Awad. “We know what will come when a Muslim name flashes across the [television] screen. What will come is guilt by association.”

In the wake of Thursday’s shooting, mosques around the country Friday denounced the violence and implemented a range of overt and subtle security measures. In the Los Angeles area, Islamic groups contacted police and sheriffs, who stepped up patrols of mosques and community centers.

Janan Al-Henaid, a USC sophomore, got a call from her mother Friday asking the student to come home to Claremont and to be careful when going out. “And she’s never done that before,” Al-Henaid said.

Muslim groups participated in a conference call Friday with federal agencies — including the Homeland Security and Justice departments — to discuss Muslim Americans’ safety.

Eight years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, mainstream Islam remains a subject of suspicion to some Americans — a perception fueled by prejudice and fear, but also by recent reports of broken-up terrorist plots hatched by homegrown Muslim radicals.

Despite eight years of post- 9/11 education campaigns, the suspicion and the scrutiny remain a source of deep frustration for Muslim American leaders.

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles, said that the massacre would be exploited “by groups like Al Qaeda, that will use it as a card to justify more religious extremism and violence, and by Muslim-haters — who will use it to divide our country and foment fear and hatred.”

Al-Marayati said he first prayed for the victims. Then he offered another prayer.

“We prayed,” he said, “that it was not a Muslim.”

Hasan, a Virginia-born psychiatrist, was in many ways a product of the American mainstream. But among some observers, the rampage freshly stoked long-standing fears about the divided loyalties of even moderate Muslims.

The right-wing news site WorldNetDaily argued that Hasan was “just the tip of a jihadist Fifth Column operating within the ranks of the US military.” Lt. Col. Lee Packet, an Army spokesman, called the assertion “total speculation.”

Muslim community leader Maher Hathout addressed such fears head-on in a raw, emotional sermon at the Friday afternoon prayer service at the Islamic Center of Southern California. Speaking to 2,000 quiet worshipers, Hathout told of a call he had received after the shooting. The caller posed a question: Could any Muslims be trusted now?

“This is the question on the minds of your co-workers, on the minds of your neighbors — this is the trust and we have to do something about it,” Hathout said.

Hathout implored fellow Muslims not to hide in the aftermath of the shooting, but to speak with their neighbors about any lingering misperceptions.

Muslim groups who say they represent the mainstream rushed to denounce the Texas shooting in the most forceful terms — much as they did after Sept. 11 and after the breakup of other foiled terror plots.

Awad’s Washington-based group, known as CAIR, noted that it had launched an anti-terrorism petition drive and a TV ad campaign against religious extremism, and coordinated an anti-terrorism fatwa, or religious ruling, condemning extremism and terrorism.

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Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth sequel program recruits world religions for holy war on changing climate

Al Gore. Photograph by Graeme Robertson

“I’ve done a Christian [-based] training program; I have a Muslim training program and a Jewish training program coming up, also a Hindu program coming up. I trained 200 Christian ministers and lay leaders here in Nashville in a version of the slide show that is filled with scriptural references. It’s probably my favourite version, but I don’t use it very often because it can come off as proselytising.”

Nobel winner adapts fact-based message to reach those who believe they have a moral duty to protect the planet in Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis

guardian.co.uk | Nov 2, 2009

Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth sequel stresses spiritual argument on climate

by Suzanne Goldenberg

Al’s Gore’s much-anticipated sequel to An Inconvenent Truth is published today, with an admission that facts alone will not persuade Americans to act on global warming and that appealing to their spiritual side is the way forward.

In his latest book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, the man who won a Nobel prize in 2007 for his touring slideshow on disappearing polar ice and other consequences of climate change, concludes: “Simply laying out the facts won’t work.”

Instead, Gore tells Newsweek magazine in a pre-publication interview, that he has been adapting his fact-based message – now put out by hundreds of volunteers – to appeal to those who believe there is a moral or religious duty to protect the planet.

“I’ve done a Christian [-based] training program; I have a Muslim training program and a Jewish training program coming up, also a Hindu program coming up. I trained 200 Christian ministers and lay leaders here in Nashville in a version of the slide show that is filled with scriptural references. It’s probably my favourite version, but I don’t use it very often because it can come off as proselytising,” Gore tells Newsweek.

Gore’s book arrives at a time of intense international scrutiny of America’s moves on the environment ahead of an international meeting on global warming at Copenhagen, now just more than a month away.

It draws on the scholarly approach Gore developed for Inconvenient Truth. Since 2007, the former vice-president has been calling experts together from fields ranging from agriculture to neuroscience to discuss possible solutions to climate change.

The book draws on 30 such “solutions summits”, as well as Gore’s countless telephone conversations with scientists at America’s best institutions. According to the book’s press release, “Among the most unique approaches Gore takes in the book is showing readers how our own minds can be an impediment to change.”

New polling last month showed a steep decline in the numbers of Americans who share Gore’s sense of urgency in acting on climate change.

Related

Gore poised to become world’s first “carbon billionaire”

The book aims to reach those Americans by familiarising readers with emerging alternative energy sources, such as geothermal, biomass and wind power, as well as the possibilities of making cleaner coal power plants, and developing a more efficient and responsive “smart” electrical grid.

Gore also explores how deforestation, soil erosion, and the rising world population are multiplying the effects of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Much of the material was developed through the series of brainstorming sessions organised by Gore. Since 2007, the former vice-president has been calling experts together to discuss possible solutions to climate change. He has also held countless telephone conversations with scientists at America’s best institutions.

“He is one of the only politicians that takes the time to actually talk to scientists who are producing the cutting-edge stuff and he comes in with questions. He doesn’t ask us how our results impinge on a particular policy he actually asks about science,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who spoke to Gore along with colleagues four or five times for the book. “Nobody that we have dealt with has ever taken as much time to understand the subtlety of the science and all the different complications and what it all means as Al Gore.”

Those conversations led Gore to politically inconvenient conclusions in this new book. In his conversations with Schmidt and other colleagues at the beginning of the year, Gore explored new studies – published only last week – that show methane and black carbon or soot had a far greater impact on global warming than previously thought. Carbon dioxide – while the focus of the politics of climate change – produces around 40% of the actual warming.

Gore acknowledged to Newsweek that the findings could complicate efforts to build a political consensus around the need to limit carbon emissions.

“Over the years I have been among those who focused most of all on CO2, and I think that’s still justified,” he told the magazine. “But a comprehensive plan to solve the climate crisis has to widen the focus to encompass strategies for all” of the greenhouse culprits identified in the Nasa study.

The former vice-president has been working behind the scenes to try to nudge the White House and Congress to move forward on a 920-page proposed law to cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions and encourage its use of clean energy sources like solar and wind power.

On Saturday, he told the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, he was “almost certain” Obama would attend the negotiations. The White House has so far refused to make a commitment.

But Gore has also been confronted with almost daily fresh reminders of the difficulties of prodding Americans to action.

The proposed legislation has set off a ferocious debate about the costs of dealing with climate change – with conservative Democrats and Republicans saying reducing America’s use of oil will deepen unemployment and hurt average American families.

Republicans in the Senate have threatened to boycott a session today that had been called to move forward a draft of a 920-page proposed law to deal with climate change.

Progress on the bill is seen as crucial to getting a binding deal at Copenhagen. Barbara Boxer, the chair of the Senate’s environment and public works committee, said yesterday she was ready to move ahead without any Republican participation.

__________
Glenn Beck-Lord Monckton Debate Global Warming

Obama ’sees role for Taliban in Afghanistan’s future’

President Barack Obama is prepared to accept a role for the Taliban in Afghanistan’s political future in a major shift of policy towards the Islamic radicals who are attacking US and British troops, it has been reported.

Telegraph | Oct 9, 2009

By Philip Sherwell in New York

As he assesses a request from his top commander in Afghanistan to dispatch another 40,000 troops to fight the Taliban, he is also “inclined” to send only as many as needed to keep al-Qaeda at bay.

The assessment was given to the Associated Press by a senior official involved in Mr Obama’s discussions with his top national security and military advisors about Afghanistan strategy.

There is believed to be a growing favour in his war council for differentiating between native Afghan Taliban factions and the foreign extremists of al-Qaeda. Several of the president’s advisors are arguing that the Taliban are predominantly fighting against what is perceived as Nato “occupation” while it is al Qaeda that poses a threat to US defence.

Aides have made clear that Mr Obama is unlikely to reach a final decision on strategy and troop numbers before the end of October.

But it seems increasingly unlikely that he will grant the request from Gen Stanley McChrystal, the commander he appointed only this summer, for an extra 40,000 US troops to join the 68,000 who will already be in Afghanistan by the end of the year.

Gen McChrystal’s recommendations have not been made public, but he is widely reported to have warned that the US faces “failure” in Afghanistan without his requested troop surge.

Obama adviser says Islamic Sharia Law is misunderstood

President Barack Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has provoked controversy by appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Sharia Law.

Telegraph | Oct 8, 2009

By Andrew Gilligan and Alex Spillius in Washington

Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was “oversimplified” and the majority of women around the world associate it with “gender justice”.

The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party.

The group believes in the non-violent destruction of Western democracy and the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia Law across the world.

Miss Mogahed appeared alongside Hizb ut Tahrir’s national women’s officer, Nazreen Nawaz.

During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular “man-made law” and the West’s “lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism”.

They called for Sharia Law to be “the source of legislation” and said that women should not be “permitted to hold a position of leadership in government”.

Miss Mogahed made no challenge to these demands and said that “promiscuity” and the “breakdown of traditional values” were what Muslims admired least about the West.

She said: “I think the reason so many women support Sharia is because they have a very different understanding of sharia than the common perception in Western media.

“The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance.

“The portrayal of Sharia has been oversimplified in many cases.”

Sharia in its broadest sense is a religious code for living, which decrees such matters as fasting and dressing modestly. However, it has also been interpreted as requiring the separation of men and women.

It also includes the controversial “Hadd offences”, crimes with specific penalties set by the Koran and the sayings of the prophet Mohammed. These include death by stoning for adultery and homosexuality and the removal of a hand for theft.

Miss Mogahed admitted that even many Muslims associated Sharia with “maximum criminal punishments” and “laws that… to many people seem unequal to women,” but added: “Part of the reason that there is this perception of Sharia is because Sharia is not well understood and Islam as a faith is not well understood.”

The video of the broadcast has now been prominently posted on the front page of Hizb ut Tahrir’s website.

Miss Mogahed, who was born in Egypt and moved to America at the age of five, is the first veiled Muslim woman to serve in the White House. Her appointment was seen as a sign of the Obama administration’s determination to reach out to the Muslim world.

She is also the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, a project which aims to scientifically sample public opinion in the Muslim world.

During this week’s broadcast, she described her White House role as “to convey… to the President and other public officials what it is Muslims want.”

Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, said Miss Mogahed was “downplaying” Sharia Law.

“There is a reason sharia has got a bad name and it is how it has been exercised. Regrettably in the US there have been acts of injustice perpetrated against women that are driven by the Sharia-type mindset that women are objects not human beings,” she said.

She cited the example of Muzzammil Hassan, a Buffalo man who ran a cable channel aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes and was charged earlier this year with beheading his wife after she filed for divorce.

“Americans understand by example, it’s not as if we are an ignorant mass of people. Just as we don’t broad brush all Muslims, so should Dalia not downplay the serious nature of sharia law.”

Blackwater Offers Training to ‘Faith Based Organizations’

rebelreports.com | Sep 17, 2009

By Jeremy Scahill

In its ever-evolving re-branding campaign, Blackwater has created a new alter-ego for part of the company’s business. Meet the “Personal Security Awareness” program, which appears to be an off-shoot of Erik Prince’s Greystone, Ltd., a classic mercenary operation registered offshore in Barbados. On its website, which was registered on February 20, 2009 and went live recently, the “program” is described as “a multi-phase course which is designed to assist Non-Government Organizations, Faith Based Organizations and Commercial Businesses by providing individual personal awareness and driver training for their personnel when deployed to unfamiliar environments.” It adds: “Greystone recognizes the importance of “preparation by doing” and looks forward to you joining us for this exciting training!”

Blackwater, of course, works for such organizations as the International Republican Institute, but “Faith Based Organizations?” Are they serious? I’m sure there are just scores of Islamic aid groups just lining up to take courses from Blackwater, Xe,  US Training Center, Greystone,  Personal Security Awareness. Moreover, any legitimate “faith based organization” that wants harmony with other faiths would be insane to work with this company. One of the courses offered is described as teaching “persons traveling to foreign environments how to remain safe during their travels in a vehicle.” This truly is surreal. What would seem more appropriate would be a company offering courses on how to  “remain safe” in a vehicle when going anywhere near Blackwater forces. Remember how those unarmed Iraqi civilians were blown up in their car by Blackwater operatives at Nisour Square? Or the Afghan civilians allegedly killed in their car by Blackwater operatives in Afghanistan in May?

Also, lets remember that Blackwater—headed by a man described in a sworn statement by a former employee as “view[ing] himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe”— is itself a twisted faith-based organization—and a very violent one at that.

Then there is this course in Session III: “Teaches rules of the road and includes specific driving techniques for a specific region.” I can just imagine what goes on during this course: If you are trying to convert Muslims in a Muslim country and some Muslims happen to come near you, “‘lay [the] Hajiis out on cardboard’ as ‘payback for 9/11.’”

In Session I there is a course that purportedly “Describes the criminal mindset.” Well, that’s something Blackwater knows a lot about. I hope they assign, as part of the curriculum, the US Justice Department’s 34-count indictment of Blackwater forces for the Nisour Square massacre.

Indonesian adulterers to be stoned to death

100 lashes for pre-marital sex

London Times | Sep 15, 2009

Anne Barrowclough in Sydney

Adulterers will be stoned to death under draconian new laws passed in the Indonesian province of Aceh yesterday.

Hardline Muslim politicians in the semi-autonomous region unanimously passed the Sharia edict, under which single people will also be given 100 lashes for pre-marital sex, just weeks before a new, more moderate government dominated by the Aceh Party is due to take power.

Although the administration of Governor Irwandi Yusuf had opposed the legislation, when the chairman of the 69-seat regional parliament asked if the bill could be passed into law its members answered in unison: “Yes, it can.”

The legislation, which has drawn immediate criticism from human rights groups, comes at a difficult time for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as he prepares to be sworn in for his second term in office.

Widely praised for restoring democracy to Indonesia, he now risks seeing his country once more viewed by the international community as a heartland of radical Islamism.

The stoning law is the most recent, and most draconian law to be introduced since 2001, when Jakarta allowed Aceh to replace Indonesia’s criminal code with Sharia, partly to appease hardliners in the province.

Although the early regulations brought in under Sharia were relatively moderate, observers said they have seen a gradual tightening of the laws, most recently in 2006 when caning was introduced as punishment for women who did not wear headscarves.

Dozens of public canings have been carried out by the Sharia police since, although it seems to be more a symbolic than physical punishment. Strict regulations controlling the angle and power of the cane stroke protect the women from injury.

But human rights activists point out it would be impossible similarly to protect a woman who was sentenced to be stoned.

“They take pride in not hurting women when they cane them, but stoning is something very different,” a human rights worker who asked not to be named told The Times. “You can’t say you’re not physically harming a woman when you’re stoning her to death.

“The future is very bleak,” she added. “In Aceh, once you give out this sort of candy out you can’t take it back.”

The new law also imposes tough sentences and fines, to be paid in kilograms of gold, for rape and paedophilia, and severe prison terms and public lashings for other “morally unacceptable”behaviour such as homosexuality.

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Aceh Province Legislators Vote to Impose Stricter Sharia Law

VOA News | Sep 15, 2009

By Katie Hamann

Shariah officials bring Acehnese woman onto stage for caning as part of implementation of Islamic Shariah law, outside mosque in Banda Aceh, (2006 file photo)

Lawmakers in the Indonesian province of Aceh have passed a law that could see Muslim adulterers stoned to death. Religious parties have pushed for a stricter interpretation of Sharia law to be enforced in the region. But the religious parties’ influence may be waning and there are doubts the new law will be implemented.

Aceh’s newest Sharia regulation includes punishments for Muslims found guilty of consuming alcohol, rape, pedophilia and homosexuality. Only married adulterers could face being stoned to death.

Caning has already been used in the province for several years, a punishment meted out for Muslims found guilty of gambling and drinking, and for unwed couples caught fraternizing.

United Development Party and legislative member Bachrom Rashid said the new law is designed to save people from hell.

He says Sharia law is already being applied in Aceh and all Achenese people are Muslim. He says as a Muslim, it is impossible for him to refuse the regulations of Allah.

Aceh’s Governor Irwandi Yusuf has faced considerable pressure from religious hardliners to implement full Sharia law, although public support for it is weak. The new regulation does not require his signature to take effect.

Indonesia’s Legal Aid Institute has already indicated it will challenge the bill in the Supreme Court.

“But Aceh has autonomy so it is very difficult to make some strong statement,” said Nur Kholis, a member of the National Commission on Human Rights. “We should respect what we call autonomy, on one side, but we should follow also the national law which mentions that we don’t have any type of punishment like stoning.” He expresses concern that the regulations violate Indonesia’s national law.

Aceh was granted the right to impose Sharia law as part of a special autonomy deal. Peace was finally declared in the province in 2005 after nearly three decades of fighting between the Indonesian military and separatist rebels.

The vote on Sharia took place on Monday, just hours before the parliament session ended. In October, a new parliament begins working, one that is not dominated by religious parties. Governor Irwandi Yusuf’s secular Aceh party will hold almost 50 percent of the seats.

A spokesman for the governor says he opposes harsh punishments and the government may seek to amend the legislation.

More than 200 million Indonesians are Muslims, but most follow a moderate form of the faith. The national government is secular. Many human rights groups in the country have said they oppose the strict implementation of Sharia law in Aceh.