U.S. to withdraw from nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, raising fears of a new arms race

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Feb. 1 the U.S. will suspend its participation in the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. (Reuters)

By Anne Gearan ,Paul Sonne and Carol Morello-February 1 at 2:19 PM

The Trump administration announced Friday that the United States will pull out of a nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, ending a cornerstone Cold War agreement and raising fears of a new nuclear arms race in Europe and Asia.

President Trump said Russia is violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a charge Moscow denies, leaving the United States at a disadvantage because of its own compliance at a time when global threats have changed considerably in the more than 30 years since the pact was signed.

“We cannot be the only country in the world unilaterally bound by this treaty, or any other,” Trump said in a statement. “We will move forward with developing our own military response options and will work with NATO and our other allies and partners to deny Russia any military advantage from its unlawful conduct.”

[Trump administration gives Russia an ultimatum on Cold War-era arms treaty]

The treaty has been a central element of Europe’s security strategy for more than three decades and its signing was considered a crucial moment in Cold War arms control, eliminating more than 2,600 missiles and ending a years-long standoff with nuclear missiles in Europe.

But the Trump administration has argued that Russia has not been complying with the pact since 2014 and that it puts the United States at a military disadvantage against China, which is not bound by the treaty.
President Trump said Feb. 1 he wants a "new treaty" to replace the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia, from which the U.S. plans to withdraw. (Photo: Oliver Contreras/The Washington Post)

The collapse of the pact highlights the cost of poor relations between Washington and Moscow, which even during the Cold War managed to hammer out mutually agreeable arms control pacts.

The withdrawal also signals the increasing peril treaties face in a Trump administration that emphasizes national sovereignty over international cooperation. In addition to withdrawing from the INF Treaty, Trump has also left the Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord and threatened to pull out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and World Trade Organization. His withdrawal from the INF Treaty has fueled concerns that he will decline to extend the main nuclear arms treaty with Russia and risk a return to the early days of the nuclear arms race.

The demise of the INF Treaty opens the door to the deployment of American intermediate-range missiles in Europe and Asia, potentially increasing the tension in a standoff with Russia and China. 

The United States so far has said none of the intermediate-range missiles it is considering deploying would carry nuclear weapons, an effort to tamp down fears that the treaty’s collapse will presage the proliferation of nuclear missiles across Europe and Asia.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that, effective Saturday, the United States will suspend participation in the agreement, starting a six-month countdown to a final U.S. withdrawal. That leaves a slim chance that Russia could end missile programs widely seen as a violation, salvaging the treaty.

The United States did not announce plans for any new weapons or shifts in missile deployments, but Trump administration officials did not rule it out down the road.

The United States' plan to scrap this Cold War treaty raises fears of another nuclear arms buildup.(William Neff /The Washington Post)

Trump said he would like to see a “new treaty that would be much better” and apply to more nations, although chances of such an agreement are remote. Neither Russia nor China, whose military advances since the treaty was signed have changed the old Cold War calculus, would be likely to agree.

[What the INF Treaty means for the U.S. and Europe]

“The United States is hopeful that we can put our relationship with Russia back on a better footing, but the onus is on Russia to change course from a pattern of destabilizing activity, not just on this issue but on many others as well,” Pompeo said when announcing the decision Friday.

Russia is violating the treaty with the deployment of a banned missile, according to the administration, while China never faced its constraints, deploying what a senior U.S. official said was more than 1,000 intermediate-range missiles banned by the treaty.

Russia has in turn accused the United States of violating the INF Treaty through its missile defense systems in Europe, an allegation that the State Department has rebutted.

The Trump administration faced criticism among arms control experts for not doing enough to save the treaty and engaging in what critics described as a box-ticking exercise to negotiate with the Russians in recent months designed more to satisfy European allies than to save the pact.

“Withdrawing from INF . . . isn’t the best way to punish Russia for its non-compliance,” Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, wrote in a Twitter post. “Rather, sticking with it is still the best way to keep a lid on Russian threat.”

Some analysts have also faulted the Obama administration for not doing enough in its final years to induce Moscow into abiding by the treaty.

Russia has said it wants to remain in the INF, and it blames the United States for the breakdown of the treaty. But a senior Trump administration official told reporters that Russia has in fact sought to get out of the treaty for years and began violating it after Washington refused its request to end the pact.

Russian President Vladmir Putin is likely to continue seeking new arms control talks with Washington, in part because negotiating over nuclear arsenals puts Moscow on near-equal diplomatic footing with the much richer and better-armed United States, analysts say. Russia’s far more limited defense budget also incentivizes Moscow to avoid a full-fledged arms race.

There was no immediate response from the Kremlin, although Russian officials had earlier said they expected the U.S. announcement.

“I don’t think we need to take tough countermeasures right now,” Andrei Krasov, deputy head of the defense committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, told the Interfax news agency after Pompeo’s announcement. “We have a huge military potential anyway that can counter any threat.”

The Trump administration has signaled for months that it wants to end the agreement covering both nuclear and conventional ground-launch missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (311 and 3,418 miles).

Many NATO diplomats have greeted the U.S. moves with resignation, saying they would prefer to preserve the arms control treaty but that they are now focused on limiting a new arms race.

Senior Trump administration officials tried to emphasize that Washington is on the same page as its European allies, even though the White House faced criticism for Trump’s decision to announce the U.S. withdrawal on the fly last fall, before European allies had formally agreed that Washington should pull out.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg offered alliance backing for the U.S. move, saying that it is Russia’s responsibility to start complying with the treaty again.

“Russia is in material breach of the #INFTreaty & must use next 6 months to return to full & verifiable compliance or bear sole responsibility for its demise. #NATO fully supports the US suspension & notification of withdrawal from the Treaty,” Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter.

The death of the INF Treaty raises questions about the future of other arms control agreements, including the New START pact, which limits Russian and American deployed strategic nuclear warheads and expires in two years.

Russian diplomats have said they are preparing for the potential end of that treaty, for which Moscow warns it would blame Washington.

“I truly fear that the New START treaty may have the same fate as the INF Treaty,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Russian television before Pompeo’s announcement. “It may just expire on February 5th, 2021, and not be prolonged.”

If the White House and the Kremlin do not agree to extend New START, the decision would turn the clock back to an era when Washington and Moscow possessed nuclear arms with practically no agreed restrictions and would risk the return of a full Cold War-style arms race.

The push by the Trump administration to withdraw from the INF Treaty coincided with the arrival of John Bolton as White House national security adviser. Bolton oversaw the Bush administration’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in 2002, paving the way for the erection of American missile defense systems that Russia long decried.

The INF Treaty has long been a bugbear for the former U.N. ambassador, who is a skeptic of international agreements and organizations he sees as constraining American power.

In a 2011 article in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton and ­co-author Paula DeSutter contended that the INF had outlived its usefulness. They cited a quote from the late French president Charles de Gaulle: “Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: They last while they last.”

Lawmakers broke along party lines over the withdrawal announcement, although both parties called the pact flawed.

“I completely support the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty due to Russian noncompliance,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement. “It’s a bad deal for America when Russia cheats and the United States complies.”

Democrats, however, warned that ripping up the treaty was the wrong way to steer Russia — or China — back into a treaty order more responsive to modern weapons and threats.

“The Trump Administration is risking an arms race and undermining international security and stability,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “Russia’s brazen noncompliance with this treaty is deeply concerning, but discarding a key pillar of our nonproliferation security framework creates unacceptable risks.”

Trump scoffed at that argument.

“Honestly, I don’t think she has a clue; I really don’t,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I don’t think Nancy has a clue.”

Anton Troianovsky in Moscow, Michael Birnbaum in Brussels and Karoun Demirjian in Washington contributed to this report.

'This is about saving capitalism': the Dutch historian who savaged Davos elite

Rutger Bregman never intended to take billionaires to task over tax at World Economic Forum


This is not rocket science': Rutger Bregman tells Davos to talk about tax – video

Larry ElliottEconomics editor

Fri 1 Feb 2019 13.35 GMT

Rutger Bregman had not really intended to stick it to the global elite. He never meant to have a pop at the idea that inequality could be solved by philanthropy or inviting Bono to Davos. But when the Dutch historian decided to go off-piste at the World Economic Forum and tell the assembled billionaires they should stop avoiding paying tax, he became an overnight social media sensation.

“It’s been a crazy week and just for stating the obvious,” said Bregman, when asked about a panel discussion at the WEF last month in which he said the issue was “taxes, taxes, taxes, and all the rest is bullshit in my opinion”.

Bregman had not been to Davos before. He was invited on the basis of the book Utopia for Realists,
which argued for a basic income and a shorter working week, ideas that have been taken up by some of the Silicon Valley billionaires who show up for the annual event in the Swiss Alps.

But he grew more irritated as the week wore on. Bregman gave a speech to a dinner of technology chief executives and then spoke at one of Davos’s private sessions, off limits to journalists. There he was surprised and maddened by the pushback when he mentioned tax. “One American looked at me as if I was from another planet,” he said.

As a result, Bregman decided to change his plan for a panel on inequality organised by Time magazine on the final morning of Davos. “I went to my hotel room and memorised what I wanted to say by heart,” he said.

“I more or less ignored the question asked by the moderator and gave my speech instead. It was mainly to ease my own conscience: someone has to say what needs to be said.”

What Bregman said, put simply, was the Davos emperors have no clothes. They talk a lot about how something must be done about inequality and the need to address social unrest, but cavil at the idea they might be a big part of the problem.

He told his audience that people in Davos talked about participation, justice, equality and transparency, but “nobody raises the issue of tax avoidance and the rich not paying their share. It is like going to a firefighters’ conference and not talking about water.”

Nothing happened over the weekend. Bregman went back to Amsterdam wondering whether his colourful language was a mistake, but then a video of the Time panel went viral, and it has received millions of views on Twitter alone.

Bregman, 30, is not entirely surprised at the reaction. He said he is part of a generation not traumatised by the cold war and radicalised by the financial crisis of a decade ago. “When we say what’s needed are higher taxes and the response is ‘that’s communism’, we say ‘whatever’,” he said.

“I am part of a broad social movement. Ten years ago, it would have unimaginable for some random Dutch historian to go viral when talking about taxes. Yet here we are.”

As a historian, Bregman noted the most successful period for capitalism occurred in the years after the second world war, when the top rate of tax in the US was above 90%.

“This is about saving capitalism,” he said. “Most innovation has come about through government spending. During the golden age period [after the second world war], there were way higher taxes on wealth, property, inheritance and top incomes. That’s what we need today if we are going to tame this beast called capitalism.”

Bregman was born in 1988, the year before the Berlin Wall came down. He grew up in the Dutch city of Zoetermeer, studied history at Utrecht University and contemplated doing a PhD before deciding he was not cut out for a career in academia.

“I didn’t want to waste four years on an insignificant subject nobody cares about,” he said. Instead, the global financial crisis pushed him in a different direction.

“I thought that we needed historians to take the stage and explain what’s going on. When I watched the crisis on TV, the only people being interviewed were economists, and these were the guys that didn’t see it coming. I thought that we needed some historians there, so I left academia,” Bregman said.

He spent a year working on a left-of-centre Dutch paper before joining a new journalism platform that paid him a basic income and provided the freedom to write about anything he chose. Utopia for Realists was the result.

Bregman is working on a new book in which he intends to challenge the view that humans are inherently selfish. It is not true, he said, that people revert to their true, nasty selves when the thin veneer of civilisation is stripped away.

Forty years since revolution, Iran taunts 'declining' America

FILE PHOTO: An elderly Iranian man walks past a large poster of Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in front of Tehran University, at the start of Friday prayers June 4, 2004. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl/Files

FEBRUARY 1, 2019

DUBAI (Reuters) - Forty years after its revolution, Iran has no fear of a “declining” America, a senior cleric said on Friday at the start of official commemorations of the uprising that made the country a permanent enemy of the United States.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a famously hardline cleric who is the secretary of the Guardian Council, a body with huge influence over the way Iran is run, used his speech to mock the leadership of President Donald Trump.

“Even many of America’s allies don’t listen to it anymore and they are not afraid of it,” Jannati said at the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who returned from exile in France to lead the revolution exactly 40 years ago.

“America cannot manage its own affairs now,” Jannati said in remarks carried by state television, adding that “millions of people are hungry there and America’s power is in decline.” He did not say what he was basing that assertion on.

The 1979 uprising deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a secular king allied to the West. Later that year, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy and held 52 Americans for 444 days - an affront to U.S. pride that still colours how Iran is viewed from Washington.

Trump last year pulled out of an international agreement under which Iran curbed its nuclear work in exchange for a sanctions relief. The re-imposed sanctions caused a currency crash, rampant inflation and added to investors’ hesitancy about doing business there.

Jannati, who opposed President Hassan Rouhani’s decision to negotiate away some of Iran’s nuclear rights, said: “Unfortunately, some of our officials believe that we cannot manage the country without America’s help. May such wrong thoughts be damned!”

Among many programmes on state TV featuring achievements since the revolution, was a short animation showing an Iranian-made Ghadir navy submarine surfacing near a U.S. aircraft carrier and other vessels which then inexplicably sink without any sign of an attack or explosion.

In December, the USS John C. Stennis entered the Gulf, ending a long absence of U.S. aircraft carriers.

Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Robin Pomeroy

Trump Once Wanted to Negotiate With Russia Over Nukes. Then Mueller Happened.

The U.S. president might be too hemmed in by the Russia probe to attempt a successor to the INF or START treaties.

U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands before attending a joint press conference after a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki on July 16, 2018. (Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images)

BY MICHAEL HIRSH

| FEBRUARY 1, 2019, 4:48 PM

More than 30 years ago, when he was still a builder in Manhattan, Donald Trump said he had one great ambition: He wanted then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan to appoint him America’s envoy to Moscow to negotiate a nuclear arms deal. “It’ll take one hour of discussion before the Cold War is over,” Trump was said to have boasted at the time.

Plainly, the Trumpian grandiosity was always there, but what happened to the ambition? Now that he’s president, Trump doesn’t need to wait for an appointment to try his hand at nuclear negotiation. Only last year the president called nuclear weapons “the biggest problem in the world.” And yet Trump has barely mentioned the issue while his administration announced Friday it is pulling out of the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and is possibly setting its sights on former President Barack Obama’s 2011 New START treaty, the strategic arms reduction pact that will expire about two weeks into the next presidential term if it isn’t extended. Negotiations on such an extension would need to begin soon.

 

Trump has always yearned for the big deal, and he’s demonstrated that he’s not fond of any treaty he didn’t negotiate himself, especially if it was Obama’s doing. Trump pulled out of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, Paris climate pact, and Trans-Pacific Partnership, and he replaced former President Bill Clinton’s NAFTA trade deal with the slightly retooled U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, even though the not-yet-confirmed accord retains most of the provisions of the original one.

But the nuclear arms arena is especially wide open and ripe for fresh presidential negotiation, many nuclear experts say. While some lament the likely demise of the INF pact—having served notice, Washington now has six months to formally withdraw—they also acknowledge that to some extent the treaty was based on outdated threats and technology. And they say Trump could, at long last, put his own stamp on nuclear arms negotiations in this new era.

“I would tell the president that, given the decision on INF, there’s an opportunity here not only to preserve New START but to make your own groundbreaking agreement with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” said Lynn Rusten, who served as senior director for arms control on Obama’s National Security Council. “And you can do it relatively easily and quickly by extending New START. You don’t need new underlying verification and inspection procedures. You can just build on it.”

In contrast to the INF Treaty, which Washington has accused Russia of violating for years, the Trump administration has not questioned whether Putin is adequately observing the New START treaty.
There may be several reasons why Trump is not moving ahead on nuclear weapons negotiations, despite his long-ago ambitions. One, they are notably difficult and abstruse, and Trump is not known as a details person (though the same reputation did not stop Reagan, who signed the INF Treaty in 1987). Second, Trump has purged his administration of moderate internationalists who tend to favor diplomacy—with Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly the most recent departures. His ultra-hawkish national security advisor, John Bolton, has long inveighed against both the INF and New START treaties.

But the main reason may have more to do with the multiple investigations into Trump’s Russia ties, especially special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the 2016 Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Moscow. Last July, shortly before Trump flew to Helsinki for his first summit with Putin, he was asked by reporters what he hoped to accomplish. “No more nuclear weapons anywhere in the world, no more wars, no more problems, no more conflicts,” he declared. Trump also said he thought he and Putin would have “an extraordinary relationship.”

The summit, however, was widely deemed a political disaster for Trump, and it was perhaps the last time the president spoke in such positive terms of his relationship with the Russian leader. At the summit, Trump fumbled by appearing to accept Putin’s denials of election interference in the 2016 election over the findings of his own U.S. intelligence agencies, and since then the president has been hemmed in by almost constant questions in the media about whether he has been compromised by Putin and Russian intelligence—financially, sexually, or in some other way. The FBI at one point even opened up an investigation into whether Trump was a Russian counterintelligence asset. At the G-20 summit in Argentina in November 2018, Trump felt pressured to cancel his one-on-one with Putin (though he later held an “informal” meeting, the White House said, at which once again no official note-takers were reportedly present).

The oddity of Trump’s furtive relations with Putin under the shadow of the Russia probe is that he had previously said one of his goals as president was to dramatically improve relations with Moscow. And shortly before the Helsinki summit, Trump said he planned to discuss nuclear arms reduction with Putin.

“If we can do something to substantially reduce them, I mean, ideally get rid of them, maybe that’s a dream, but certainly it’s a subject that I’ll be bringing up with him,” Trump said. “The proliferation is a tremendous, I mean, to me, it’s the biggest problem in the world, nuclear weapons, biggest problem in the world.”

Experts say advances in technology—both in the nuclear arms themselves and in the ability to monitor them—justify creative new arms control deals building on the INF and New START treaties, since the older pacts don’t account for many of these changes. The Russians, for example, say they are working on advanced new weapons systems such as an “unlimited range” cruise missile as well as hypersonic weapons, while in his U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, Trump outlined the development of a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile.

Meanwhile “we’re still doing verification with technologies from the 1970s,” said Alexandra Bell, a former senior Obama administration official now at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “The technology and tools of the information age haven’t been incorporated.”

New surveillance and verification technology not available during the INF Treaty era could also shift the focus from delivery systems—which are observable from space—to monitoring the number of nuclear warheads themselves. And despite some Russian concern over the possible passing of the INF Treaty—which covered ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear weapons targeted at Europe—Moscow’s own advances in air- and sea-launched weapons have rendered the agreement partly dated from its perspective as well.

Even so, the Kremlin remains concerned over the size of the U.S. arsenal and, with an economy roughly one-tenth the size of America’s, Putin knows he can’t afford another arms race of the kind that once bankrupted the Soviet Union.

“If I were playing the Russian hand, I would say, ‘Let’s have a new treaty, a Donald Trump treaty rather than an Obama treaty,’” said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear arms specialist at Harvard University’s Belfer Center. “If the Russians were clever, they would propose something to Trump attractive enough to get his Nobel Peace Prize juices flowing.” By tweaking the New START pact as he did with NAFTA—and there are ample opportunities, since a slew of new missile systems not currently covered by the treaty could then be accounted for—Trump could call the new accord his own.

Added Bunn: “Then Trump would be able to go out and say: That Obama was so stupid.”

But Trump may need to get past his Putin problem first. “I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics,” Trump said in Helsinki. He now has an opportunity to prove it.

EU rules out Brexit renegotiation

Matt Frei-30 Jan 2019Europe Editor and Presenter

In Brussels the resounding chorus to Theresa May’s proposal has been a no, although with a few dissenting voices.

Bangladesh: Mirpur liberated us from darkness to walk in the glorious light

by Anwar A. Khan-Jan 31, 2019

Jan 31, 2019

More than two decades, the Pakistani rulers used fear, intimidation and murder to brutally oppress over the Bengalis who sought justice and equality from them. But the most brutal, ugly, desperate, and vicious form of aggression happened due to them in our history in 1971. Never before in history has such a sweeping fervour for freedom expressed itself in great mass movements and mass armed struggles which drove down the bastions of Pakistani President Yahya Khan’s empire. This wind of change blowing through out Bangladesh was no ordinary wind. It was a raging hurricane against which the old order of the Pakitani Military Junta and their local brutal collaborators could not stand. The great millions of Bangladesh grew impatient of being hewers of wood and drawers of water, and were in an armed rebelling against the oppressive Pakistan’s Army. The year 1971 saw the emancipation of the Bengali nation which finally witnessed the total liberation of the country-Bangladesh from the brutal Pakistani rule and their exploitation except Mirpur area of Dhaka.

M.E. Estemil said, “National freedom is an expensive gift always worth fighting for. Even if it costs us!” And undoubtedly, we paid a very high price to gain our motherland. Bangladesh was born on December 16, 1971 after a 9-month long war having or covered with or accompanied by blood because of large-scale massacre by the brutal Pkakistan’s Army and their local cruel mango-twigs. But Mirpur, an important part of the metropolitan Dhaka city, was occupied by the Bihari (non-Bengali) butchers from early March to January 30, 1972. The place of Mirpur was finally liberated on January 31, 1972. Hence, January 31 is generally known as the Victory Day of Mirpur in Bangladesh.

But this year, the day should not pass silently like the previous years. So many precious lives including the lives of eminent journalist Shahidullah Kaiser, noted film maker & novelist ZahirRaihan, and famous poet Meherunnisa were brutally slaughtered in Mirpur area before it was liberated from the cruel clutches of the non-Bengalees (the Bihari people) and some Bangla speaking Pakistanis like QaderMolla and the likes of him belonged to the criminal organisation, Jamaat-e-Islami. It is very sad that no words for it were from any corner in the country on this very important day of our History of War of Liberation in the past. But we had to bear witness to the worst of human brutality and atrocity during that time in that important area and throughout Bangladesh. Like John Burns, we wish to say, “We are depressed rather at the wave of brutality sweeping over the country” during our nine months of long struggle to achieve Bangladesh. During the past several years, I only heard the roaring voice ofSyed Shahidul Haque Mama (died a year back) from abroad, the 1971 war veteran and who actively participated in all operations to free Mirpur from those hyenas.

The biggest threat against the survival of humanity is not only brutality and unkindness, it is also stupidity and selfishness but we really encountered horror, terror, brutality, mass killing, and genocide from an opposing Pakistan’s military force and a hostile group of local people supported by them who used our holy religion-Islam to annihilate us from this sacred soil of ours. The war against the tyrannical rule of the Pakistani commands in 1971 was truly our mankind’s war of liberation. We are sorry for those who have never had the experience of seeing the victory of a national liberation struggle, and we should feel cold contempt for those who jeer at it.

According to the Asia Times, at a meeting of the military top brass in March 1971, Pakistan’s military dictator President Yahya Khan declared, “Kill 3 million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands.” Accordingly, on the night of 25 March, the Pakistani Army launched “Operation Searchlight” to crush Bengali resistance wherever found in this country; the Bengali members of military services were disarmed and killed, students and the intelligentsia were systematically liquidated and able-bodied Bengali males just picked up and were gunned down.

Mama Guerilla Bahini Chief Syed Shahidul Haque Mama recounted, “On March 27, 1971, Abdul QuaderMollah, Hasib Hasmi, Abbas Chairman, AkhterGunda, Nehal and many others killed poet MeherunNesa, her brothers and mother and chopped their bodies into pieces in Mirpur. AkhterGunda and his accomplices forcibly brought one Pallab from Thathari Bazar to Muslim Bazar in Mirpur. Then Akhter and his accomplices cut his fingers and hung him up on a tree and killed him mercilessly.” He also said, “QuaderMollah and his accomplices took part in the election campaign in 1970 for the “infamous” GhulamAzam, the then Ameer of East Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami and a candidate of the Mirpur area for membership of the Pakistan National Assembly.”

The enemies were the Pakistan army personnel, Jamaat-e-Islami men, Al-Badr men, Al-Shams men and Razakars. At the fag end of our glorious War of Independence in 1971, the Biharis, Pakistan’s Military personnel, Jamaat-e-Islami along with the members of IslamiChhatraSangha (now IslamiChhatraShibir), the-then student wing of Jamaat built a strong resistance in Mohammadpur and Mirpur areas. Jamaati gangsters convinced the Biharis that Bangladesh would turn into a part of Pakistan once again.A fearless freedom fighter Mama recollected that on December 17, 1971, he recovered the bodies of martyred intellectuals from the Rayerbazar killing field; and he said, “I found a small sack full of human eyes.” He further added that they picked up many killers who were hiding in Mohammadpur and following their information, they recovered the bodies of hundreds of intellectuals from the brick kilns of Rayerbazar. We know very well that the martyred intellectuals were our best sons of the soil of Bangladesh. The killing of intellectuals was a clear manifestation of the grave brutality unleashed by the Al-Badrs, Al-Shams and the Razakars.

According to the celebrated Journalist and columnist Syed Badrul Ahsan (SBA), “Let us get the facts straight. When Bangladesh stood liberated, as a whole, on December 16, 1971, there were yet small pockets where Pakistan’s defeated soldiers were putting up last ditch resistance. That resistance would come to an end within days. But there was, unbelievably, one small portion of the country which non-Bengali collaborators of the Pakistan occupation army kept in their grip for about one and a half months after liberation.” And it was the place of Mirpur. SBA further added, “There is Quazi Rosy to tell you all about it. And there is Syed Shahidul Haque, popularly known as Mama, to remind you of the gathering gloom which would descend on the Bengalis inhabiting Mirpur in the stirring times that were in 1971. Even as a resurgent Bengali nation, led by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, brought Pakistan to a grinding halt in March 1971, the non-Bengalis in Mirpur went on a spree of coercion and intimidation of the Bengali population in the locality”.

According to Christopher Hitchens, “Freedom is the decision to live and die, doing what you love” and we decided to die; we decided to live and we decided to do what we loved in 1971. And we loved to attain independence from the shackles of the Pakistani rule marked by unjust severity or arbitrary behaviour and we finally achieved Bangladesh. Mirpur was a heartless terror in 1971 till the end of January, 1972. Yes. Terrible, and…A wise saying has spelt out,“When somebody challenges you from the wrong path, fight back.” And our freedom fighters fought back those cruel devils valiantly with patriotism and liberated Mirpur. It was a milestone in the annuals of our struggle for freedom from the Pakistani regime.

In man – in the history of mankind, this has happened many times, and occupation leaders cling on to the land that they are occupying. People fight to liberate their land. But in the end, the people’s will is what achieves victory. Brutal and heavy acts must be fought back suitably and vanquished by the patriotic forces. Our people stood up as best they could to the disgusting stupidity and brutality of Pakistani Military. It was a fight to the bitter end, one in which we are defending our ideals or beliefs. Eons of suffering, brutality and struggle have paved the way through the corridors of time to create this moment, where we now exist as an exalted expression of lives. According to George Weah, “My fellow revolutionaries; liberation is a noble cause. We must fight to obtain it” and our people took it as a noble cause and so, we have won it.

Mirpur liberated us from darkness to walk in the glorious light. We should not miss to celebrate the good days like Mirpur Victory Day with pureness and due solemnly because there were brutal days in the past. Like Paulo Freire, we wish to say, “Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.” 

In closing, we wish to use the words of eminent journalist Zulfikar Ali Manik, “It is impossible to forget the grief of the gruesome killings of 1971 but this time we at least have the consolation that we could ensure justice.” And justice has been happening in the country though belatedly. We should pray for the departed souls to reside in Heaven in peace who were brutally murdered by those lummoxes before the liberation of Mirpur on 31st January 1972. We also should commiserate for the families of those victims.

-The End –

The writer is a senior citizen of Bangladesh, writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs.

Australia Day 2019: Celebration and Controversy

By Siri Gamage

Australians celebrated Australia Day on the 26th of January, 2019. This is a day that marks the end of annual holiday period for Australians that began with Christmas 2018. Ceremonies associated with this event were held in cities and country towns together with grants of citizenship to new citizens i.e. immigrants. More importantly, on this day Australians celebrate the rights, achievements and freedoms they enjoy in a peaceful environment. The fact that it marks the end of annual holiday period is important to note in a country where work is given priority during the rest of the year. It is also noteworthy that Australia Day 2019 was celebrated in a context where the summer heat was extreme in most parts of the country.

The holiday period starting on Christmas day is a time of festivities among families and communities. Children who work in cities and other parts of the country travel back to where their parents and other relatives live. Often this involves traveling to remote country towns, farms and similar properties. Families unite during this period to enjoy and entertain together. For those who do not have close family, some churches organise a public Christmas lunch where anyone can attend. Emergency service workers such as those working in hospitals, police service have to work on such holidays on a roster basis. After the Christmas celebrations, those in cities and country towns tend to go to beach areas for annual holidays and spend a week or more relaxing with friends and family. Others take their caravans and travel across the country (a habit of senior citizens in particular) or go on camping to a remote location (e.g. couples and those with small children) like a national park or a river. Those on holiday, enjoy visiting different places, eating food, meeting new people, reading, having favourite drinks such as beer, and most importantly forgetting about work and other worries. Year’s savings are devoted to accessing such leisures. When the time comes for adults to begin work in the new year or children to go to school, they are well rested and re-energised. Thus, Australia Day marks the end of this restive and re-energising process. Having such a process and practice is part of the modern Australian culture.

The day before Australia Day, an event was held in Canberra with the participation of the Prime Minister to announce Australian of the year, Senior Australian of the year, Young Australian of the year, Local Hero etc. Two professional cave divers who helped in the rescue of children trapped in a Thai cave last year were jointly awarded Australian of the year award from a list of nominees. An Aboriginal Rap singer was awarded young Australian of the year award. Senior Australian award went to a paediatrician who has devoted her life for child welfare and advocacy. Australia’s local hero award went to a couple whose daughter experienced bullying and consequently ended her life. The parent couple has transformed to be anti-bullying campaigners. Thus, Australia Day awards are granted to people who have contributed significantly to improve the lives of people in different capacities by showing dedication, resilience and moving beyond the personal to public space.

While there is much to celebrate on days like Australia Day, there is also reason to be more reflective, concerned and futuristic in our attitudes and behaviour in 2019. Dissatisfaction with mainstream politics and politicians is growing due to lop sided attention given to rural and remote areas compared to the amount of spending in cities. One issue of concern to many Australians is the influx of migrants to main cities while the rural and remote towns are starving for more population. There are no significant plans to develop infrastructure in country towns to attract more people including migrants. There are no concrete plans to introduce high speed rail to such areas with the potential to reduce population pressure in the cities. Instead, Australians are compelled to rely on domestic air travel –some of which is costly-and slow train services between cities and country towns. One example is that the Country Link Train between Armidale –a small town in New South Wales with a university- and Sydney with a distance of about 500ks take 8 hours. It stops at more than 20 locations sometimes to pick a couple of passengers slowing down the train. Such practices are quite the opposite of what is happening in China and European countries. For major infrastructure projects, it takes decades rather than years to complete in Australia. E.g. second airport in Sydney.

Some Australians object to Australia Day as it is being celebrated on 26th January, the day that Captain Cook landed in Australia. Those who object mainly come from Indigenous community. They celebrate it as national Sorry Day - being the day that British colonisation of the continent and its people started with. In recent years, national sorry day has become resistance day with marches through the cities. In each march, several thousand people including non-Indigenous supporters attend. This year in Sydney, a smoking ceremony was held at Barrangaroo near Darling Harbour by Indigenous people where the State’s political leaders participated. It is a cleansing ceremony. The speaker emphasised the need to recognise what happened to indigenous people in terms of dispossession and destruction during colonisation and move forward.

During these years of destruction and dispossession, what helped indigenous people to survive was their culture, family and community e.g. culture in terms of songs, dance, ceremony and art. Even during the smoking ceremony, Didgeridoo – an instrument made from wood-was played. This instrument unique to Australian indigenous people produces a distinctive vibrating sound that in essence connects history, environment, people in a deep sense. Elders in indigenous communities play a critical role in maintaining culture and family life according to indigenous norms.

Though there are debates about the particular day when Australia Day is currently held and some argue that it needs to be moved to a different day, the fact that it provides a day of celebration on one hand and recognition for those who engage in service to the multicultural community on the other is an important factor. Celebrations include musical shows on public grounds, activities for children, food stalls, fireworks in the evening, and special guests called Australia Day Ambassadors giving speeches at the ceremony. Such events also start with a welcome to the land ceremony performed by indigenous actors. This year, as the day fell on a Saturday, following Monday was a holiday. Thus, Australians had a long weekend.

There is much unresolved business in terms of national reconciliation with the Aboriginal/ indigenous people. In this respect, there are important conversations continuing in the media, academia, leaders of government and Indigenous communities. The fact that there is no treaty between Indigenous people and the colonisers makes it difficult to find concrete and acceptable contours of reconciliation. It is noteworthy that young Indigenous people are coming forward in areas such as tertiary education, professional training, media personalities, local activism with specific views about the way forward. Increasingly, there is recognition of the fact that Australia was inhabited by Indigenous people for over 40,000 years before white settler arrival and they had a rich culture, knowledge system, and languages that could provide answers to some of the problems that we face in modern consumer oriented society today. Recognising this history, knowledge and culture and teaching it in schools and universities are important steps to follow. In a media discussion, one indigenous commentator pointed out that if we recognise this heritage, we can be elders for the whole world. Instead of focussing on the past destruction and impact of British arrival, this may be the way for the future of Australia and Australians.

This is a year of elections in Australia. Federal parliamentary election is due in May this year. In New South Wales, the State government election is also due early this year. Thus, we can expect much activity, debate, contention and competition among political actors. Climate Change and its effects have become more severe as witnessed by extreme heat in the summer months. Independent candidates are emerging in crucial seats to contest sitting MPs from the liberal party who deny that climate change is happening.

During the holidays however, Australian politicians tend to make it a point not to discuss politics unless it is a matter of urgent national importance. By and large, the media also adheres to this practice. Regular TV shows wind up around Christmas and re-start in February. In the national radio, instead of regular programs, summer specific programs are conducted. Through such programs discussions and interactions with people on more reflective and deep side of life can be heard. Political talk does not dominate such programs during the holiday period.

Expansion of new technologies such as internet, lap tops and mobile phones, is supposed to create more space for the people to rest and relax. However, the opposite is happening. While such technologies allow people to work from home on some days of the week, the work pressures on life and family are not less. If one rings a company or a government department, it takes at least 15 minutes before one can talk to an actual human being. Marketing and advertising material are broadcast on the phone until a human being answers the call. Children who normally play and interact with parents, siblings and grandparents are hooked into computer games through tablets, ipads and mobile phones. Such practices tend to create a gap between children and parents as well as grandparents. Thus, technology has become a curse in many ways for work as well as leisure.

These Marines were falsely accused of war crimes. Twelve years later, they have vindication.

Retired Maj. Fred Galvin, pictured at his home in Hono­lulu, fought unproven allegations that members of the elite commando force he led in Afghanistan gunned down unarmed bystanders after an ambush. (Marie Eriel S. Hobro/For The Washington Post)

By Andrew deGrandpre-January 31 at 6:15 PM

 

A Marine veteran who fought the Pentagon for 12 years over a war-crimes case brought against him and six others will have his permanent record wiped clean, an extraordinary affirmation of his claim that their reputations were destroyed by the military’s effort to imprison the men.

The Marines were members of an elite commando force expelled from Afghanistan in 2007 amid unproven allegations that they massacred innocent bystanders in the frantic minutes following an ambush. They were cleared of wrongdoing more than a year later, after the case was heard by a military court, but have maintained that senior leaders did little to set the record straight and, consequently, fostered the stigma that has dogged them ever since.

A report approved in January by the Navy Department is a major victory for retired Maj. Fred Galvin, the Marines’ commanding officer. Its conclusions, he says, are a rebuke of those who condemned his men before the facts were clear, the investigator whose work was shown in court to be sloppy and the generals who refused Galvin’s pleas for public absolution.

In its ruling, the Board for Correction of Naval Records said Galvin, 49, should be considered for a retroactive promotion. If granted, he would be entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in back salary and future government pension benefits, as he was forced to retire in 2014 after his superiors relied on “inequitable and unjust” performance appraisals, the report states, to prevent him from advancing in rank. Of the seven swept up in the case, Galvin is the only one to pursue such vindication.

More broadly, the board’s determination closes one of the Afghanistan war’s darkest chapters, an episode that unleashed international outrage only to be proved a fabrication engineered by the Taliban to fuel distrust of the U.S. military. Those involved fought for their lives that day only to be denounced by senior officers who had an obligation to protect their presumption of innocence.

“This was a big betrayal,” said Steve Morgan, a retired Marine officer and decorated combat veteran who in 2008 was part of the court panel that found Galvin’s Marines acted honorably on the battlefield. The panel also memorialized the failures committed by the Marines’ superiors during and after the investigation.

“Fred has finally come out on the right side of things, but it has come at a very steep price,” Morgan added. “The lies. The deceit. That makes me so mad. That kind of behavior doesn’t inspire confidence in the ethics of our military’s leaders. It corrodes public trust in the institution.”

[69 Afghans’ families get a U.S. apology]

Galvin was the commanding officer of Marine Special Operations Company Fox. On March 4, 2007, as he and 29 others traveled in a six-vehicle convoy through the village of Bati Kot, a suicide bomber driving a van packed with explosives attacked the American vehicles and then fighters on both sides of the road opened fire. The Marines fought back and escaped with only one minor casualty.

But in the fight’s immediate aftermath, images of bullet-riddled vehicles and ambulances loading bloodied Afghan men were transmitted worldwide. Accounts gathered at the scene portrayed the Marines as murderers, and allegations of wrongdoing were fueled by erroneous media coverage and a bogus narrative fostered by American military officials who fed false information to news outlets, the court’s conclusions would later make clear.

From left, Lt. Col. Scott Jack, military counsel; Galvin, commander of Fox Company; and Mark Waple, civilian counsel, arrive for a court appearance at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in January 2008. (Chuck Beckley/Associated Press)

Galvin harbors resentment for many, peers and superiors alike. “That 12-page report is an indictment,” he said. “It shows the decay of ethical and moral leadership in our military. And the people who did this to us got a free pass.”

Chief among his adversaries is John W. Nicholson Jr., who retired from the Army last year after ascending to the rank of four-star general and serving for 2 ¹ / ₂ years as the head of all NATO forces in Afghanistan. When the incident occurred, Nicholson was a colonel and brigade commander overseeing operations in the area, along the mountainous span of Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan that was thought to be harboring al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Francis H. Kearney III, then a two-star Army general with purview of covert Special Operations activity in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East, dispatched his chief of staff, Patrick Pihana, to investigate.

Independent assessments of the casualty count varied widely. Amid widespread protests in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, the country’s president at the time, condemned the Marines. Hoping to contain the backlash, Nicholson broadcast an apologetic statement declaring the incident a “stain” on the U.S. military’s honor.

Privately, officials were suspicious of the unit because of a separate incident involving Galvin’s men in which, days after the ambush, they deceived him and other leaders to undertake a mission in an area declared off limits. Commanders in Afghanistan, still riled by the allegations of indiscriminate killing, pointed to the Marines’ duplicity as evidence that Galvin had lost control of his unit. He was relieved of command and Fox Company was sent home.

The Navy review board sided with Galvin here, too, concluding that his superiors “grossly overreacted” and did not differentiate between the two incidents when ordering the Marines to leave.

Nicholson and Kearney, who retired as a three-star general in 2012, are not named in the new report. However, it makes clear that senior U.S. officials made “gross errors in judgment” leading up to Kearney’s decision to eject the Marines from Afghanistan, and that along with the Taliban’s deception, Army leaders were the “proximate causes” for inciting the chain of events that led to that decision.

The report’s harshest language is directed at Pihana, whose investigation, it notes, was discredited in court years ago, in part because he was found to have suppressed evidence that supported the Marines’ version of events — and was suspected by the court of having been influenced by Kearney, his direct superior.

“The magnitude of his errors,” the report says, “cannot be overstated.” Pihana’s conclusion — that Galvin and the others should be charged with negligent homicide or dereliction of duty — is “explicable only as gross negligence or a mission with a predetermined outcome,” the report says.

Neither Nicholson, Kearney nor Pihana responded to requests for comment.

Galvin, who earned a Kuwaiti Liberation Medal, pictured above, deployed in support of numerous military operations over the course of his military career. (Marie Eriel S. Hobro/For The Washington Post)

Morgan has urged members of Congress to push the Pentagon to reexamine whether Nicholson, Kearney or Pihana violated military regulations or laws in their pursuit of a criminal case and, if so, to hold them accountable.

“Nicholson and Kearney perpetuated the myth these Marines did bad things, and they’ve done nothing to set the record straight,” Morgan told The Washington Post. “I’ve got no time for those guys.”

In 2015, when Military Times reexamined this case in a multipart series, Kearney said he ordered the investigation at the Marine Corps’ request because, he recalled, there was pressure on the military to demonstrate accountability in light of two unrelated war-crimes cases involving U.S. personnel in Iraq. “If these Marines have heartburn,” he said, “it should be with the Marine Corps.”

It was Jim Mattis, a revered Marine general and recently departed defense secretary, who convened the tribunal that ultimately determined that none of the Marines should be charged. The hearings spanned three weeks in January 2008. Four months later, at the outset of Memorial Day weekend, Mattis’s successor, having assessed the court’s findings, issued a brief statement affirming that Galvin’s men had “acted appropriately.”

[No charges for two Marines in deaths of Afghans]

That phrase still bothers the Marines, who say it was not a firm enough declaration of their innocence, and that it has been misinterpreted inside and outside the military to mean “we got away with murder,” Galvin said. He also questions the announcement’s timing, calling it a deliberate move to bury the story. As a consequence, those assigned to the unit were ostracized.

“Sometimes now, when I reflect on it, I think that if this didn’t happen, I’d be four years from retirement. I could have stayed in and made that my career,” said one of the Marines who was falsely accused and left the military voluntarily in 2008, when his contract expired. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing lingering concerns about retaliation.

“This devastated my life — my family, my legal expenses, being separated from the Marine Corps, not knowing if one day someone was going to knock on my door and take me to Fort Leavenworth,” he added, referring to the Army post in northeast Kansas that is home to the military’s only supermax prison.

A scrapbook made by Galvinʻs late sister includes images from his military career along with encouraging messages. (Marie Eriel S. Hobro/For The Washington Post)

The stress — and the shame — has been a burden on all of them, leading to substance abuse, divorce and thoughts of suicide in some cases, Galvin said.

As their former commanding officer, Galvin has continued to press Marine Corps headquarters to do more to set the record straight. Beginning in 2015, with support from five members of Congress, multiple entreaties have been made to the service’s most senior officer: first, to Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff later that year, and then to Dunford’s successor, Gen. Robert B. Neller.

When approached by lawmakers, Dunford and Neller each declined to revisit the matter or make any public statements of support for the Fox Company Marines. In his correspondence to members of Congress, Dunford restated the court’s findings from years prior, saying that neither Galvin nor his men faced any punitive measures. “Nor is there any adverse information in their military records associated with this incident,” the general noted then, incorrectly.

[Pentagon exonerates Marines blackballed by war-crimes case. They doubt the gesture is sincere.]

Galvin grew hopeful when Neller announced in 2016 that he was making suicide prevention a signature focus of his term as the Marine Corps commandant. “We can’t afford to lose a single Marine to anything, whether it be accident, injury or suicide,” Neller told Marine Corps Times then. 

“I can tell you — giving my solemn word — that the Marine Corps will try to help anyone who comes forward.”

Galvin received this letter from Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), who has advocated for Fox Company since 2007. (Marie Eriel S. Hobro/For The Washington Post)

Last February, under pressure from Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), Neller’s staff director at the time, Maj. Gen. Frederick M. Padilla, pledged that the service would provide counseling and other assistance to Galvin and his men. “We are concerned to hear of the challenges many members of Fox Company are facing — which are, unfortunately, all too common among our combat 

veterans,” Padilla wrote to Jones. “I have asked the Commanding Officer of our Wounded Warrior Regiment to follow-up with these Marines to ensure they are receiving appropriate and all necessary care and support.”

No one from the Marine Corps contacted them, Galvin said, until reading about Padilla’s directive in The Post several weeks later.

At the Pentagon, Dunford and Neller have acknowledged the review board’s determination. “General Dunford was pleased to learn about Maj. Galvin’s exoneration and also appreciates his efforts to take care of the Marines from Fox Company,” said Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for the chairman.

Neller said: “We have a system through which Marines can try to remediate actions believed to have been unfair or incorrect. In this case, it seems the system worked as designed, and Maj. Galvin had his record cleared. We all wish him well.”

The Marines hope the military will do more to demonstrate that they are not outcasts but victims. “Military justice requires that those who . . . have conducted wrongdoing be held accountable,” Galvin said, “not just that those offended be patted on the back.”