Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:
• 30 March 2008
• Global Research
• By John W. Warnock

In Canada the debate on Afghanistan has had a very narrow focus. The primary concern has been the role of the Canadian Forces in the counter-insurgency war. How many more Canadians will be killed? How long will our forces be in Kandahar province? What will the U.S. government think if Canada withdraws from the southern zone of conflict? If Canada pulls its forces out of Afghanistan, will there be chaos?

It is time for Canadians to consider what the Afghan people want. At the top of the list would certainly be an end to the death, destruction and despair, the other 3-D policy. A variety of surveys show at least 70% of Afghans do not want to see a return of the dreaded Taliban. Yet an even larger percentage supports a negotiated settlement with the Taliban to end the war. The U.S.-NATO policy, supported by recent Canadian governments, perpetuates the war.

• News source:
• 31 March 2008
• Niagara Falls Review
• By Posted by Grant LaFleche

If Canada’s mission in Afghanistan is going to succeed, the nation will have to remain engaged there for at least the next four decades, retired Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire says.

Speaking at Brock University Sunday afternoon, the Quebec senator said political debates about ending the mission in the next few years have missed the point.

“The objective is not to fight for 40 years, but it will take that long to reach the point where our military and development people and diplomats will be able to say Afghanistan can take care of itself,” he said.

• News source:
• 31 March 2008
• New York Times
• By Helene Cooper with contributions by Isabel Kershner

JERUSALEM — Israel agreed Sunday to remove about 50 roadblocks in the West Bank and promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is visiting here, that it would upgrade its checkpoints to reduce the waiting time for Palestinians who have been hampered in their efforts to go about their daily lives.

• News source:
• 31 March 2008
• Philippines Sun Star
• By Edmund B. Sestoso

A REDEMTORIST priest called on the Philippine Government Saturday to resume peace negotiations with the underground National Democratic Front (NDF)…

In his sermon, Fr. Picardal pointed out that the raging armed conflict across the nation is one of the manifestations of the “culture of death.” He said one of the reasons why he is biking throughout the country is to urge both parties to put an end to the conflict.

He also urged the government and the communist group to resume peace negotiations without preconditions and to come up with a peace settlement that addresses the root of the conflict.

• News source:
• 31 March 2008
• IMEMC
• By Ghassan Bannoura

The President of the Israeli right wing Shass movement and the Minister of the Israeli security cabinet, Eli Yishai, told Israeli army radio on Monday that he is willing to hold direct talks with the Hamas movement regarding a possible prisoner deal.

• News source:
• 30 March 2008
• Thaindian News
• By Dipankar De Sarkar

London – Sikh and Muslim leaders in Britain are to be taken to Northern Ireland – a province that is just emerging from decades of sectarian violence – to help ease religious tensions said to be rooted in events surrounding India’s independence. Faith Matters, a charity run by Fiyaz Mughal, a Liberal Democrat councillor in east London, has been given 30,000 pounds by the Department of Communities and Local Government in order to address simmering Sikh-Muslim tensions, according to media reports.

• News source:
• 28 March 2008
• Associated Baptist Press
• By Greg Warner

ATLANTA (ABP)—Every faith group has its extremists, but not all extremists turn violent. What makes the difference?

While most religious violence follows common patterns, faith seldom turns violent except in response to social oppression, say experts who study extremists.

When that happens, religious doctrine is distorted to rationalize violence, Walker and others agree. And no faith system is exempt from that danger.

“Religious extremist violence is a potential in all major religious faiths,” said Bruce Knauft, an anthropologist and director of Emory University’s Institute for Comparative and International Studies, which recently hosted a conference on extremism.

• News source:
• 29 March 2008
• Irish Times

The death toll mounted today in the Iraqi capital Baghdad as US and British forces supported an Iraqi government crackdown on militants loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

More than 200 people have been reported killed in the five days of fighting across southern Iraq and Baghdad since Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched a crackdown on Mr al Sadr’s followers in the southern city of Basra…

Salah al-Ubaidi, a senior aide to Mr al Sadr said his representatives had met Iraq’s highest Shi’ite religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in an effort to end the violence.

The influential Ayatollah rarely intervenes in politics. His spokesman in Beirut declined to comment on the reported meeting but an al Sadr aide said Ayatollah Sistani wanted the conflict to end.

His views, if made public, would carry authority among Shi’ites in both Mr al Sadr’s movement and in the political parties that support Mr Maliki.

• News source:
• 26 March 2008
• Wall Street Journal
• By ROBERT MCFARLANE

Ten days ago in Cairo, I participated in the fourth gathering of senior Iraqi religious leaders in a process designed to nurture political reconciliation, the missing element required for there to be any hope of a stable future for Iraq. This process was established by the Anglican priest Andrew White a little over a year ago.

Prior to last week’s sessions the co-chairs of the process — Sunni Sheikh Dr. Abdul Latif Humayeem (former personal Imam to Saddam Hussein), and Shiite Ayatollah Sayed Ammar Abou Ragheef (Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s chief of staff) — had been meeting every two weeks in an effort to define how best to bring the two major religious communities closer together. These meetings were profoundly important in producing the gains that did occur last week.

The meeting was notable because of the standing and influence of the participants, and because of the profound change in their apparent commitment to accelerating the pace of reconciliation among the religious communities.

In particular, I was very encouraged that Moqtada al-Sadr, Shiite leader of the Mahdi Army, chose to send an emissary. The active participation of his designee, Sheikh Salah al Obaidi, offers hope that the Sadrists may be considering participation in Iraq’s political process and turning away from the violence to achieve their aims.

• News source:
• 29 March 2008
• Daily Star (Lebanon)
• By David Ignatius

The Bush administration is coming to a crunch point soon in the two biggest conflicts in the Middle East – the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate and the struggle to create a stable Iraq. In each case, we can see the limits of military power in combating the “bad guys” who the administration believes are obstructing the path to peace.

• News source:
• 27 March 2008
• Christian Science Monitor
• Unarmed civilian peacekeepers are saving lives today.
• By Rolf Carriere and Michael Nagler

Over the past 25 years nonviolent peacekeepers have been going into zones of sometimes intense conflict with the aim of bringing a measure of peace, protection, and sanity to life there. Rather than use threat or force, unarmed peacekeepers deploy strategies of protective accompaniment, moral and/or witnessing “presence,” monitoring election campaigns, creating neutral safe spaces, and in extreme cases putting themselves physically between hostile parties…

• News source:
• Spring 2008
• McGill Headway
• Payam Akhavan believes genocide can be predicted—and prevented.
• By Jeff Roberts

Payam Akhavan sips coffee amidst student chatter in a downtown Montreal cafe. Gentle eyes and salt-and-pepper hair complement the gracious voice that has persuaded everyone from first-year law students to the United Nations about his very big ideas on conflict resolution and genocide.

Since his seminal article “Beyond Impunity: Can International Criminal Justice Prevent Future Atrocities?” was published in the American Journal of International Law in 2001, Akhavan has been regarded as one of the most influential human rights thinkers. “The world is the ultimate human rights laboratory,” says the associate professor in McGill’s Faculty of Law. His efforts to bring about reconciliation in Rwanda, Uganda, Bosnia, Cambodia, Guatemala, East Timor and other countries ripped apart by war and genocide have been integral in developing new frontiers for international justice. Driven by his personal encounters with survivors of atrocities, Akhavan is adamant that genocide is not an inevitable part of the future.

• News source:
• 28 March 2008
• The Lawyers' Weekly
• By Ellen Desmond

Even when presented with a very positive compensation package, some clients struggle with ending the litigation process. In many instances, they have not had the opportunity to have their story told or the wrong they have suffered has not been publicly recognized.

Three jurisdictions in Canada have now introduced “apology legislation” which will allow a party an opportunity to offer their regrets while having the protection of legislation that this expression of sympathy will not be admissible in court as evidence of fault or liability: B.C., Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

• News source:
• Earth Hour

On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m., join millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off your lights for Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife Fund.

Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagships–Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco and Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

• News source:
• 27 March 2008
• The New Times (Kigali)
• By Eddie Mukaaya And Paulus Kayiggwa

KIGALI – Rwanda coffee farmers are to start a marketing alliance in a bid to have collective efforts towards marketing coffee on the international market.

The alliance comes at a time when different coffee farmers’ cooperatives and exporters have been working independently and competing against each other.

• News source:
• 25 March 2008
• Reuters

NEW YORK – Shareholders of Google Inc will propose that the Web search company take steps to ensure freedom of Internet access and establish a review of its operations’ effect on human rights, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday.

• News source:
• 25 March 2008
• Globe and Mail
• Part 3
• By Graeme Smith

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN – Canadian troops and their allies have been drawn into an ancient tribal feud that simmers beneath the conflict in southern Afghanistan.

In a sample of ordinary insurgents, 42 fighters in Kandahar province were asked by The Globe and Mail to identify their own tribe, and the results point to a divide within the Taliban ranks: Only five named themselves as members of the three major tribes most closely associated with the government, suggesting that tribal animosity has become a factor that drives the recruitment of insurgents…

But many experts say it’s wrong to view the tribal aspect of the war as a reason for despair, because the notion that the tribes always fight each other is false. Afghanistan has enjoyed decades of peace among the tribes, as recently as the 1960s and 1970s.

“Power dynamics have something to do with it; there were relatively more Ghilzai in the Taliban government, and that gave the current Durrani leadership an excuse to under-represent them in government,” said Sarah Chayes, an American author who lives in Kandahar. “But I think it is wrong to characterize this conflict as a manifestation of age-old tribal conflicts, or as a kind of fight for the spoils among groups eagerly trying to loot Afghanistan. Treating it that way will be a self-fulfilling prophesy.”

• News source:
• 25 March 2008
• Globe and Mail
• By John Manley

Parliament’s recent vote to conditionally extend the mission in Afghanistan sets the table for a historic opportunity to remodel Canada’s Afghan mission. It also enables Canada, working with the United Nations and like-minded countries, to significantly influence how the international community deals with failed and failing states. But these achievements will only be realized if the opportunity to do things better is not lost….

We need a new and different approach to our mission in Afghanistan. In particular, there must be greater emphasis on diplomacy, reconstruction, development and building Afghan institutions of governance.

• News source:
• 24 March 2008
• Playground Builders

BRITISH COLUMBIA – Local organization Playground Builders and their Iraqi partners Al-Noor Humanitarian Organization have successfully completed their first playground in war torn Baghdad.

• News source:
• added to YouTube 28 February 2008
• ABC