December 2008

Jerusalem, Wednesday 31 December 2008 Vicky Samantha Rossi On the fifth day of Israel’s aerial assault on Gaza, 374 Palestinians and four Israelis had been killed according to BBC. The number of Palestinians injured was estimated to be 1,600. These figures for the dead and injured rose in the days subsequent to this interview with Ramiz Younis and his wife Sarah, who managed to get out of Gaza on the third day of bombing thanks to the intervention of the United Nations. Ramiz is Palestinian. He has been working, in Gaza, as a Programme Coordinator for Save the Children (Sweden). Previously, he worked for eight years for the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights. Ramiz obtained a Presidential Scholarship that enabled him to complete an MA in International Policy Studies in the US. His specialisation was human rights and conflict resolution. His wife Sarah is an American national, who works for the Food and...

December 30, 2008Jonathan Power LONDON – “Is the state an opponent?”, I asked one top Gothenburg lawyer, Christina Ramberg, a former academic and now working in a prosperous private practice. “No it’s a friend”, she replied, although she never votes for the Socialists, the supposed authors of Sweden’s top heavy welfare state. Another, Alexandra von Schwerin, an aristocratic businesswoman paying high taxes, said “No, it’s a father.” Not even Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, leader of a conservative coalition that two years’ ago replaced the habitual governing party, the Social Democrats, is much against the state. He has dropped the old right wing mantra of calling for lowering taxes and wants to see only “a more efficient and less conformist state and society”. In an interview just before Christmas he told me that “We are not asking for a different system, just for better results.” The sense of equality goes deep...

December 23, 2008Jonathan Power LONDON – Whatever Paul McCartney, says or does is news, sometimes big news. In September, when he went to give a concert in Israel – making up for the Beatles concert that the Israeli government forbad at the last moment, forty three years ago – he was slashed at by some pro-Palestinian critics for “singing to the enemy” (1). No matter the “enemy” audience was perhaps 20% Arab, that he also used his trip to visit the West Bank not only to see Jesus’ birth place but to call in on Edward Said’s music school. When he sang he also in his trademark low key, non-preachy, way pointed his audience in the direction of compromise and healing. One of the prices of the fame he has is to see his honest words and honest thoughts twisted almost out of recognition. I saw this happen close up...

December 15, 2008 Jonathan Power LONDON – However tense becomes the relationship between India and Pakistan the government of Manmohan Singh is highly unlikely to initiate or participate in a nuclear war with Pakistan. That would go against the deeply held moral beliefs of the prime minister. Both he and Congress Party chairman, Sonia Gandhi, have told me privately that they both are utterly repelled by such an act. Nevertheless, Singh has had few qualms about supporting the build up of India’s nuclear deterrent, regarding it as an inevitable process given India’s place in the world – and has been a passionate advocate of the new nuclear deal with the U.S., that has resulted in Washington lifting its thirty year-old embargo on nuclear supplies for India. Although, immediately after the Mumbai atrocities, tough talk seem to billow out of quarters of India’s military and foreign affairs establishment, Singh quickly fanned...

he demonstrated his roguish side. Yet even many of his opponents in Pakistan will concede that since he deposed Nawaz Sharif and assumed power he has been largely a benevolent dictator. Compared with last days of the Shah- and many in the American foreign policy establishment are falsely comparing what happened then with what is happening today in Pakistan- the country remained until this assassination rather stable, except in its lawless frontier provinces that border Afghanistan, a problem area even in British colonial days. Until now Musharraf has rarely cracked the whip. His riot police act with relative moderation. His jails are not full. Executions are rare and never for political offences. When one sits down and talks with Musharraf one get answers rather than bluster. Pakistan today is not Iran of yesterday, neither in the type of leadership nor in its degree of religious fervour: the Islamist parties have...

December 3, 2008Jonathan Power LONDON – “Those whom the gods destroy they first make mad.” There is a madness about the triangular relationship between India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. They all have resented and often hated each other, made alliances against each other, worked together when it was opportune, supported or, at least, turned too much of a blind eye to terrorists in each other’s countries and became profoundly angry if terrorism was unleashed against them. These cleavages have their roots back to the days of the Great Game of the nineteenth century, the British-Russian struggle for supremacy in Afghanistan and central Asia. But ever since the Red Army invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and was finally defeated by the Taliban aided by American, Saudi Arabian and Indian arms and training, the intensity of the Game has been ratcheted up and extended step by step to now frightening proportions, worsened by America’s...