The Weekly Report: 7/6/2014 – 13/6/2014
Afghan Presidential Runoff Peppered with Over 150 Terror Attacks
By Hojin Choi
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
KABUL, Afhanistan – Voting in the Afghan presidential runoff ended Saturday. The runoff is to elect a successor to Hamid Karzai, who has been in office since 2001. In the first round of the election on April 5, former Foreign Affairs Minister Abdullah Abdullah received 45% of the vote, while former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani received 31.6%. The next president will be determined by a runoff because no candidate received more than 50% of the initial votes.
Abdullah joined the 2009 Presidential Election and lost to Karzai. He dropped out after the first round as a means of protest, alleging large-scale voting fraud. He served as Foreign Affairs Minister under the Karzai regime, but recently positioned himself as a political opponent to Karzai. A week before the runoff, Abdullah narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.
Ghani, another lead candidate, was a senior World Bank Economist. He gave up his U.S. citizenship to run for the 2009 Presidential Election. He also served as Finance Minister in Karzai’s administration and worked as an advisor to Karzai. Abdullah’s camp criticized him for lacking Afghan street credibility.
The runoff went on amid violence and Taliban attacks. During the election period, the Taliban abducted and executed a candidate for provincial council and nine of his supporters. They went on to attack an election commission office in Kabul causing the death of a provincial council candidate, several workers, and police officers. The Ministry of Interior was attacked by a suicide bomber, and 6 police officers died.
The Taliban’s attacks continued even after the voting ended. The Afghan authority said a roadside bomb killed 11 people, including three election workers Saturday night after the polls closed. The victims were going home from the polling center and riding a mini bus when the bomb detonated. Afghan Deputy Interior Minister said there were nearly 150 attacks throughout the country on the Election Day, and at least 46 people were killed, including civilians and security forces.
The purpose of attacks seems to be obvious as the Taliban officially announced that they would target voting. The continuous attacks have caused widespread public fear, and possibly resulted in lower voter turnout. On the day of runoff, the Taliban insurgents cut the index fingers of 11 voting participants. Most of them were the elderly returning home after their voting, and their inked fingers were the sign of their participation in the election.
Nevertheless, voter turnout remained around that of the first round, approximately 6 to 7 million, even though exact numbers were not immediately made available. The election could mark the first democratic transfer of government power in Afghanistan. Some critics suggested that the Taliban’s attacks were motivated by desperation and a fear of losing its power as a shadow state.
According to the Election Commission, official results of the runoff election will be announced July 22.
For more information please see:
CNN – Voting ends in Afghan presidential runoff – 14 June 2014
CNN – Roadside bomb kills 11 in Afghanistan, including election workers – 15 June 2014
Washington Post – This Afghan election could be historic. Or fraud and rivalries could cause chaos – 13 June 2014
BBC – Afghan election: Run-off vote held amid violence – 14 June 2014
BBC – Afghan election: Taliban ‘removed voters’ fingers’ – 15 June 2014
Syria Deeply: Top Takeaways from a Week of Turmoil
Dear Deeply Readers,
The unimaginable has a way of happening fairly often these days in the space in and around Syria’s war.
This week it was a nightmare scenario, unfolding in the march of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Mosul and a host of Iraqi cities, overwhelming that country’s military power.
“If ISIS manages to hold onto its turf in Iraq, it will control an area the size of Jordan with roughly the same population (6 million or so), stretching … from the countryside east of Aleppo in Syria into western Iraq,” the Economist writes.
“The state of Iraq is in imminent collapse,” Faisal Istrabadi, Iraq’s former deputy ambassador to the U.N. told the Financial Times.
All of this is a result of an estimated 6,000 ISIS fighters in Iraq and 3,000 to 5,000 in Syria, several hundred of them from the West, according to the Economist report. It and others have noted that the ISIS surge in Iraq was a direct result of the war in Syria; left unchecked, the conflict has given ISIS a foothold in the power vacuum. For months, the Syrian city of Raqqa has served as the de facto ISIS capital, its takeover of Syrian oil has provided recurring revenue, and its operations expanded – in line with its dreams of an Islamic caliphate that stretches across state borders.
North of Deir Ezzor, “the border has been porous for some time, and ISIS has been able to use it with impunity,” says Aymenn al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Center who studies Syrian military dynamics.
As our Karen Leigh reports, ISIS’s gains in Iraq now strengthen its hand and position in Syria’s war.
“The spoils from Iraq definitely give them additional military and financial resources to devote here,” al-Tamimi said. That includes the $425 million in cash lifted by ISIS from Mosul’s Central Bank and oil assets now in its possession.
“The conflicts in Iraq and Syria have long been fusing,” International Crisis Group told us. Through the eyes of ISIS, they form one continuous battlefront.
To chart the implications, we’ve picked out four major takeaways from this week – elements of the fallout from the ISIS ascendancy that are likely to have major consequences for Syria, Iraq and the Middle East as a whole.
1) U.S. containment strategy isn’t containing anything.
President Barack Obama’s long-held position on Syria was echoed in his Friday speech on the situation in Iraq, which was something along the lines of: “The U.S. can only do so much.” Reluctant and limited military engagement is under discussion. Meanwhile, Washington sends a modicum of weapons, training and support – without getting its hands too dirty. Allies like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey are left to pick up the slack, supporting the rebels we find palatable in whatever ways fit with their respective national interests.
It’s a dangerous, passive-aggressive form of foreign policy – a wishful containment strategy that hasn’t contained much at all.
The ISIS expansion was “a loud wake-up call for those leaders – in the West, the East and in between – desperately hoping all they need to do is provide governments with weapons and money, and sit back,” wrote the defense and security analysts at the Guardian.
But Obama’s speech did not reflect that urgency, instead framing ISIS as “a regional problem … a long-term problem.” He said the U.S. would combine “selective actions by our military” with “a very challenging international effort” to boost the strength of the Iraqi state. He was not especially confident or specific in describing how that would happen, at a point when the Iraqi security establishment has functionally disintegrated.
2) We’re facing all-out sectarian war, beyond any state control.
What had long been a deadly, simmering sectarian conflict putting Sunnis against Shiites has just exploded.
This week the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, Ayatollah Ali Sustani, issued a rare call to arms compelling his followers to fight the Sunni extremists of ISIS. His deputy told them to protect Shiite Islam’s holy shrines in Karbala, Najaf and other locals. Adherents have reportedly begun to enlist at their local mosques.
In the same beat, the ultra-conservative Sunni leaders of ISIS called on supporters to fight against Shiites – practically daring them to desecrate the most sacred Shiite landmarks.
“We have a score to settle,” said ISIS spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani in an audio recording cited by the Financial Times. “We will settle our differences … in Karbala, the filth-ridden city, and in Najaf, the city of polytheism.”
3) The U.S. and Iran, rivals in Syria, could be fighting on the same side in Iraq.
There are times in the Middle East when U.S. and Iranian interests align, and we’re quickly approaching one of them. The U.S. doesn’t want to see ISIS in the ascendant; Iran doesn’t want ISIS to overwhelm the Iraqi state. They both see Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as an ally, though he’s had a strained relationship with Washington.(With an authoritarian and highly polarizing leadership style, some Iraqis see him as a new Saddam Hussein serving a Shiite constituency.)
While they haven’t publicly acknowledged the possibility of working together, both the U.S. and Iran have said they’re ready to help Iraq’s government counter the ISIS threat. President Obama hinted at the possible use of air power – unmanned drones or manned aircraft – while the head of Iran’s Qods Force, Major General Qassem Soleimani, has reportedly been in Baghdad to discuss ground support. Despite locking horns over President Bashar al-Assad, among other issues, the U.S. and Iran may be forced to collaborate if they want to effectively deflate the rise of ISIS.
4) By beating back ISIS, Kurds have sealed their independence.
Outperforming Iraq’s own army by a long shot, Kurdish fighters of the peshmerga were able to beat back ISIS from their territories, going even further to win control of the oil-rich jewel of Kirkuk, a city that the Kurdistan Regional Government had long hoped to absorb into its borders.
“As ISIS rolls towards Baghdad, Kurds are gaining oil, ground and power,” read one headline in Foreign Policy, smartly entitled Revenge of the Kurds. That helps cement Kurdistan’s functional independence from Iraq’s central government; it means a stark hangover for Iraq and shot of empowerment for Kurdish minorities in countries like Turkey and Syria.
“This may be the end of Iraq as it was. The chances that Iraq can return to the centralized state that al-Maliki was trying to restore are minimal at this point,” Marina Ottaway of the Wilson Center told Foreign Policy.
“Things are definitely going in the right direction for Kurdistan, as long as ISIS leaves them alone.”
In Other News, Syria’s War Carries On
As attention is focused on ISIS, fighting continues across Syria. The AP reports that a car bomb exploded in a pro-government neighborhood Thursday, killing at least seven people. In Damascus, a mortar shell killed one person and injured four others in a southern residential neighborhood.
CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh reports from rebel-held Aleppo, which he calls a “skeleton” of the city he first visited 22 months ago.
“We are in hell, just go outside, the city is flattened,” one resident told him.
In the same city, snipers are shooting at children.
“Children in Aleppo cannot escape their nightmares. Snipers maim and kill them in the street. Airstrikes crush them at school and at home,” wrote Dr. Samer Attar.
“In one day, we treated three children shot in the abdomen by snipers. All of them were saved in underground operating rooms. We could not save the boy shot in the head.”
In Lebanon, children are being compelled to work as child laborers – 80% of them working in the fields as agricultural labor, as young as 10 years old. The Guardian published a photo essay telling their story.
With no sign of a solution to Syria’s war – only escalation and complication, thanks to ISIS – former U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said the country could become a “failed state,” similar to Somalia.
“It will not be divided, as many have predicted. It’s going to be a failed state, with warlords all over the place,” he told Spiegel online.
The former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford echoed that assessment. He said his resignation was the result of feeling helpless in the face of an ineffectual U.S. response.
“As the situation in Syria deteriorated, I found it ever harder to justify our policy. It was time for me to leave,” he wrote in an oped for the New York Times.
“We must have a strategy that deals with both Mr. Assad and the jihadists,” said Ford. As of this week, that strategy will be even harder to produce.
Highlights from Syria Deeply:
For ISIS, Iraq’s Spoils Could Tip Balance in Eastern Syria
Syria ER: Out of Cash, a Hospital Is Forced to Close
Syrian Rebels Unite to Fight Off an ISIS Eastward Push
Conversations: After Rounds on the Rebel Battlefield, a Return to Civilian Life
Arts + Culture: Meet the Rebel Artist Painting on Mortar Shells
Underfunded Aid Organizations Battle Donor Fatigue, Revise Delivery Plans
Murder of Arab Families in Hassakeh Points to Rising Tensions Between Islamists and Kurds
One on One: Roy Gutman, Middle East Correspondent, McClatchy Newspapers
Headlines from the Week
Carnegie Middle East Center: Syria’s Very Local Regional Conflict
The Guardian, in Pictures: Syrian Refugee Children in Lebanon Forced to Seek Work
Washington Post: Famed Syrian Storyteller’s Life Upended by War
Associated Press: Syrian Woman Survives 700 Days of Blockade
Daily Beast: Syria’s Guardian Angels Turned Refugees
NPR: In One Map, the Dramatic Rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria
Human Rights Watch: ISIS Summarily Killed Civilians
We’re fielding your feedback on how to better serve you and cover the story. You can reach our team on email at info@syriadeeply.org.
Sincerely,
The News Deeply Team
UN Urges Papua New Guinea to Take Action to Stop Vigilante Witchcraft Killings
by Max Bartels
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania
Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (PNG) is under heavy criticism by the UN for doing little to combat the killing of women and sometimes men for suspected sorcery. Across the country deaths and illnesses are often blamed on sorcerers, those suspected of sorcery are often subject to vigilante killings. UN investigations have concluded that sorcery is often used in PNG to mask violence against women. Even though the PNG government has taken steps to combat the violence they have not been effective, impunity is often still given at the local level to those who kill alleged sorcerers.
(Photo Curtesy of The Telegraph)
These problems in PNG were brought to the forefront of the international community a year ago when a 20-year-old woman was killed for alleged witchcraft when a young boy died of illness. The town’s people blamed the young woman for the death, she was striped naked, tortured and burned alive at the stake. Even though the attack was over a year ago no one has been brought to justice for the killing. Since this disturbing murder the number of vigilante attacks on suspected witches has increased sharply, causing an increase of violence and unrest.
The PNG government has responded to the UN demands to deter these attacks by repealing the Sorcery Act of 1971, which created the defense of sorcery for defendants on murder charges. The country has also responded by reinstating the death penalty for murder and rape in hopes that it will deter these violent attacks on women. The UN has criticized the reinstatement of the death penalty, saying that the death penalty does not help deter the violence in anyway. Instead the UN advises that prompt investigation and trials would be effective in halting the attacks.
Even with these heavy-handed measures to combat the violence, bringing those responsible for the killings to justice proves difficult. At the local level, those who kill witches or sorcerers are not deemed to be criminals by the population. Arresting them and convicting them is difficult when their local communities do not think of them as criminals. Since the death penalty reinstatement not one person has been given the capital punishment, the deterrence is not effective if the punishment is never given out for the crime.
The UN has recently held a conference in Port Moresby, the capital of PNG to discuss these issues with the PNG government. The PNG Deputy Secretary for Legal and Justice Affairs has stated that the UN conference should form the basis for legislative reform in the country. Other government agencies have also voiced their support for the UN conference and possible policy and legislative reforms to combat the issue of witchcraft killings.
For more information, please see:
BBC News — UN Urges Action on Papua New Guinea Sorcery Attacks — 13 June 2014
Yahoo News — UN Urges End to Impunity for PNG Sorcery Attacks — 13 June 2014
MSN News NZ — UN Urges Action on PNG Sorcery Attacks — 13 June 2014