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The village of Damadola is caught between tribal loyalties and America's wrath.
Damadola used to be about as quiet as any place on earth. Roughly 2,000 people, subsistence farmers mostly, live in this tree-shaded village of terraced wheat fields and mud-brick houses in Pakistan's northwestern tribal agency of Bajaur. But it's anything but peaceful now. The Afghan border is only two miles away, via a network of unpoliced mountain trails that link the insurgent strongholds of Kunar province (rumored to be the refuge of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri) with Peshawar and other Pakistani towns.

The location helps explain why more than 100 people in and around Damadola have been killed by U.S. Predator strikes since 2006. While the dead have apparently included some who were committed enemies of America, locals claim others were no more than bystanders—children among them. U.S. operators take extraordinary care in picking targets for Predator strikes, which in the tribal areas are thought to be conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency. (The U.S. government does not comment on alleged operations in Pakistan.) But in practice their definition of a legitimate target includes those who make it possible for militants to thrive. "If people in those communities are truly concerned about their welfare, they should not harbor terrorists, and they should oppose those who do," says one U.S. official, asking not to be named when discussing sensitive material. "These terrorists—especially the foreigners—are a menace to Pakistan and to the world at large."

In the United States, few would question that brutal calculus—one thing that both presidential candidates and the vast majority of citizens would agree upon is the legitimacy of going after the Qaeda network in Pakistan's tribal badlands. But Pakistan's new civilian leadership complains that the U.S. strikes—and the collateral damage they've caused—are making the job of pacifying the area harder. At ground level, in mountain hamlets like Damadola, things aren't always as clear as they may seem through the viewfinder of a deadly, high-flying drone.

Villagers in Damadola say it's hard to say no to men with guns, especially when many of those men are your neighbors and relatives. It's even tougher in Pakistan's tribal areas, where the Pashtuns' ancient ethical code requires that every visitor be treated hospitably. "Even if a bloodthirsty enemy comes to your door you have to welcome him," says a gray-bearded villager named Bakhti Gul. He can't help adding: "Especially those who are chased by the U.S." His nephew was among the victims of the most recent Predator attack, early on the morning of May 14. The young man had joined the militants, Bakhti Gul admits, but only after an earlier Predator strike on a nearby madrassa had killed more than 80 of his schoolmates.

That attack, in October 2006, illustrates the murkiness of the conflict in the tribal areas. Pakistani officials claimed at the time that the school was a militant training camp. Locals claim that many of the dead were youngsters, although at least a few may have been valid targets—one in particular was a close associate of Maulana Faqir Mohammad, deputy head of the Pakistan Taliban Movement, under the notorious suicide-bomb trainer Baitullah Mehsud.

Getting firm intelligence on targets from afar is nearly impossible. Shah Khan, 45, a weathered subsistence farmer, saw the first Predator strike on Damadola, before dawn on Jan. 13, 2006. He was tending a newborn calf when he heard a buzzing in the sky near his sister's house, about 100 yards up the hill. He saw a flash of light and what looked like a rain of fire—and then the house exploded. "It looked like Judgment Day," he says. The concussion knocked him down, but he staggered to his feet and ran up the hill. Three of his sister's children lay dead in the rubble. U.S. officials later said the target was Zawahiri himself, who was thought to be meeting with fellow jihadists. Local officials said the attack killed 18 people, but Zawahiri wasn't there. U.S. officials remain convinced that they barely missed him. Khan insists there were no Qaeda members or insurgents in the house.

Even good intelligence can go bad. The May 14 strike targeted a guesthouse belonging to a local preacher, Maulvi Obaidullah. Men had gathered at the house the evening before. They were a diverse group: Gul's nephew, the young militant, was there, but so were the village shopkeeper Haji Omar Shah and a local journalist named Akhondzada. Obaidullah's 14-year-old nephew sat down with the men, as did the preacher's armed militant son, Azizullah, and several local boys who were just hanging out.
The gathering was not atypical. Most men in the tribal areas are armed, and most civilians prefer the protection of the militants, who keep bandits at bay, to government forces, who almost never venture up the mountainsides. Just before dinner, a group of about a dozen Taliban insurgents knocked at the big wooden door and walked in, carrying AK-47s and laden with spare clips. Most of them, too, were local men. Everyone sat down on carpets and pillows on the floor or wooden beds against the walls and tucked into a meal of chicken, potatoes and flatbread. The conversation, the shopkeeper Shah remembers, was largely about Islamabad's messy politics, the high price of food and recent exploits by Taliban fighters.

Shah walked home about 9:30 p.m., he says. Obaidullah left, too, after hospitably prevailing on Akhondzada, the journalist, to stay the night. Shah says he's sure no foreigners or other strangers had been there, and other villagers say the same.

But late that night another band of armed men arrived at the guesthouse. An Afghan Taliban source tells NEWSWEEK that Obaidullah's son had called a meeting of local militants to welcome an important visitor: a senior Qaeda financial operative known as Sheik Suleiman al-Jazeeri. According to the Afghan source, who has proved very reliable in the past and who declines to be named for security reasons, the Algerian-born moneyman often traveled through the area, shuttling between his base in Kunar province and the financial facilities of Peshawar. Secrecy is a matter of basic survival for someone like al-Jazeeri; only one or two local militants may have been told that he was on his way. The arrivals of senior operatives like him generally seem to be scheduled after most villagers are sound asleep.

The Predator's commanders were awake, however, and watching. The blast from the Hellfire missile was so loud that Khan Mohammad says he thought it was the end of the world. The 30-year-old farmer peered outside and then raced to where his neighbor's guesthouse had been. The house where Obaidullah lives and the mosque where he preaches were untouched, but nothing of the guesthouse remained standing other than charred pieces of two walls. Mohammad and other neighbors clawed through heaps of broken bricks, dried mud and twisted steel reinforcing rods in search of survivors.

Villagers say they think 17 people died that night, including Obaidullah's 14-year-old nephew and the visiting journalist, a father of eight. They can't be sure al-Jazeeri was among the dead. Armed militants took control of the site by sunup, spiriting away several corpses to be buried in secret. Local journalists were kept from filming or photographing any of the dead. Pakistani security forces stayed studiously away until the militants left 12 hours later, having combed through the debris.

Could the villagers of Damadola save themselves by simply not "harboring terrorists," as the Americans say? Mohammed Abdul Mateen, a retired science teacher who left Damadola several years ago but visits frequently, agrees the militants are destroying the place, but says the Hellfire attacks only increase their strength. "Soon the last educated villagers will be gone, leaving an illiterate people in the hands of narrow-minded mullahs," he says. Kids in once quiet Damadola are now terrified by loud noises, which could signal an incoming U.S. spy plane. "The land under our feet is on fire," says shopkeeper Haji Omar Shah. "Where can we run?" Since mid-May, villagers say U.S. choppers and drones have been flying over Damadola regularly, swooping low to the ground. They're sure more trouble is coming.

Msnbc

At least 20 others wounded in Sunday attack
BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomb exploded near an American patrol base Sunday in northern Iraq, killing one soldier and wounding 20 other people, the U.S. military said.

Eighteen of the wounded were American soldiers and two were Iraqi contractors working at the base in Tamim province, according to a brief statement from the military.

Tamim has a mixed population of Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen, with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as its capital.
Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir, a senior officer in the Kirkuk police department, said the car bomb targeted a U.S. patrol base in a mostly Sunni Arab residential area in Rashad, about 25 miles southwest of Kirkuk.

The suicide attacker rammed his vehicle into blast walls outside the gates of the U.S. base, Qadir said.

Earlier, the U.S. military issued a statement saying an American soldier died late Saturday when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad.

The casualties' names were withheld until the families could be notified.

At least 4,094 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Associated Press

Rescuers have brought to the surface alive two miners missing after a gas explosion at a Ukrainian colliery, and tried to push down a ventilation shaft to find 34 of their missing comrades.

The regional mine inspectorate in Ukraine's Donbass coalfield said the body of a third miner was also found about 750m below the surface at the Karl Marx mine northeast of the regional centre Donetsk.

Officials overseeing rescue work said teams were unable to push any deeper through rubble in the goods shaft at the mine, in operation for the past 110 years.

Efforts focused on moving through a ventilation shaft to get down to 1000 metres, the depth where the powerful explosion occurred and where the remaining miners were believed to be trapped.

Rescue workers told Ukrainian television they believed other miners might still be alive 1000m below the surface.

"They say they have heard voices at two levels," Coal Industry Minister Viktor Poltavets told Fifth Channel television.

"For the moment we don't know what is going on at 1000m. But it is our understanding that there are people up to that depth. So we have to get through faster."

The television said the two rescued miners were brought to the surface in a small metal cage, briefly examined and taken to hospital. Both appeared to be in good health.

"We made our way to 750m. They had made their presence known by tapping so we knew there were people there," rescuer Valentyn Kliyenko told Fifth Channel. "We put them in the cage, took them up and handed them over to the medics."

Five staff on the surface suffered burns and other injuries after being struck by equipment tossed about in the explosion, which blocked the two main shafts. Veteran miners described it as one of the most powerful blasts experienced in the industry.

Gas explosions are a frequent occurrence in Ukraine's mines, many of which are unprofitable and date from the 19th century. Many coal deposits are at a depth of 1 km or more, making mining operations more difficult.

The Karl Marx mine in the town of Yenakiyevo was one of 23 where work had been suspended to check on documented safety violations and only restoration and repair work was permitted.

Officials said such work was being conducted at the colliery on Sunday and dangerous concentrations of gas had been detected shortly before the blast.

Post-Soviet authorities have come under pressure to shut down the pits.

Eleven miners were killed in the last explosion in the Donbass coalfield two weeks ago. Three blasts at the Zasyadko mine in Donetsk late last year killed 106 men in two weeks.

Reuters

A systematic government campaign of murder and brutality has eliminated any chance of a fair presidential election in Zimbabwe, an international rights group says.

A report by US-based Human Rights Watch said it had documented at least 36 politically-motivated murders and 2000 victims of a campaign of killings, abductions, beatings and torture by the ruling ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe.

It said more than 3000 people had fled the violence which began after March 29 elections in which ZANU-PF lost control of parliament for the first time and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in the presidential race.

Official results showed Tsvangirai fell short of the absolute majority needed for outright victory and a run-off against Mugabe will be held on June 27.

"Since the run-off was announced, the violence in Zimbabwe has got even worse. Zimbabweans cannot vote freely if they fear their vote may get them killed," said the human rights group's Africa director Georgette Gagnon.

The report said the government had incited and perpetrated the violence to intimidate and punish opposition supporters and had failed to prosecute those responsible, who included the security forces, liberation war veterans and youth militia. The violent campaign "has extinguished any chance of a free and fair presidential runoff," HRW said.

Mugabe accuses the opposition of inciting violence and Deputy Attorney-General Johannes Tomana on Monday told the state-controlled Herald newspaper that both sides were involved.

Human Rights Watch said ZANU-PF and its allies had established torture camps and re-education meetings around the country to try to force opposition supporters to vote for Mugabe. Hundreds of people had been beaten with logs, whips and bicycle chains.

The group said party officials and war veterans beat six men to death and tortured another 70 people including a 76-year-old woman at a re-education meeting in northeastern Zimbabwe. In another incident, around 20 men suspected of voting for Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were beaten in front of their village. A 45-year-old man said he was beaten with whips, chains and iron bars and his leg was broken.

HRW said it had extensive evidence that senior army and police officers were directly implicated in the violence.

"President Robert Mugabe and his government...bear full responsibility for these serious crimes. They have shown gross indifference to the plight of the people, allowing senior-ranking security officers, war veterans, youth militia and ZANU-PF free rein to commit horrifying abuses," Gagnon said.

Six MDC lawmakers have been arrested since the first poll and Tsvangirai was detained twice last week while campaigning. The High Court on Saturday overturned a police ban on several planned MDC rallies.

The government last week accused aid agencies of political interference and ordered them to stop humanitarian programmes.

Deputy Attorney-General Tomana told the Herald authorities had prosecuted over 80 cases of political violence.

"In some provinces it is almost 50-50, with both parties violating the law. We have treated both offenders equally, we deny them bail and speedily handle the cases," he said.

HRW called on the African Union and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to pressure Mugabe to end the violence and urged them to deploy strong poll observer teams.

It said violence had been particularly bad in the ZANU-PF's former rural strongholds where the MDC made significant gains in the March 29 elections.

Reuters

Spanish truckers have begun an indefinite strike over rocketing fuel prices, smashing windscreens of vehicles that crossed picket lines and Spaniards stockpiled petrol over fears of shortages.

Long lines of trucks formed on the Spanish-French border today, Spanish television showing pictures of vehicles with broken windscreens, lights ripped out and tyres punctured after they tried to defy the strike.

Long queues formed outside Spanish petrol stations and at some hypermarkets, and truckers say supermarkets will run out of goods within days once the strike bites.

The truckers have put up blockades throughout Spain in their call for assistance to cope with a more than a 35 percent increase in fuel costs this year.

Truckers' leaders dismissed a government offer of credit lines and other measures for drivers on Sunday as insufficient.

FUEL PRICE PROTESTS DISRUPT TWO INDIAN STATES

Indian police used water canon and batons in Kashmir on Monday to disperse hundreds of government employees protesting over fuel price rises, while a general strike also shut down the northeastern state of Assam.

Elsewhere in the country, though, life continued as normal as protests over last week's rise in fuel prices appeared to taper off.

India increased petrol and diesel prices by around 10 percent last Wednesday, after the cost of subsidising fuel in the face of record-breaking crude prices had brought state oil companies close to bankruptcy.

With less than a year to go to elections, the government's communist allies and the opposition called for protests against the move, but many people complained that strikes in several states last week had only made a difficult situation worse.

The fuel price blow was also cushioned after several state governments announced duty cuts of between two and five percentage points, although Kashmir has not yet announced any duty cuts and Assam made only a tiny cut in sales tax.

In Kashmir, dozens of people were also detained after government employees gathered outside the office of the state's chief minister in the heart of Srinagar to protest against the fuel price rise.

"Roll back price of petrol, diesel and cooking gas," the protesters shouted before being dispersed by police.

A four-day strike called by private transport operators demanding an increase in passenger fares and freight charges also forced thousands of people to walk to work.

Reuters

Australia is to lead the way on kick-starting the faltering nuclear disarmament process, with former foreign minister Gareth Evans to co-chair an international commission.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his plan to establish an international commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament after an emotional visit to the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Japan, the only country to have come under nuclear attack, will be asked to take part, as will other nations, Mr Rudd told students at Kyoto University.

"It's impossible to visit Hiroshima and not be moved by what you see," Mr Rudd told reporters after his speech.

"It is a graphic human story of the horrendous impact of nuclear weapons."

The bomb that flattened Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing 140,000 people, was a single 15 kilotonne bomb.

"Across the world today we have some 10,000 nuclear warheads currently in operation and some 20,000 in storage - many, and probably most, of greater capacity than that bomb which took out Hiroshima all those years ago," Mr Rudd said.

The commission will examine the work of two similar earlier panels, the Australian-led Canberra Commission and Japan's Tokyo Forum, to develop a plan of action for the next nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in 2010.

Its first task will be to report to a major international conference of experts in Australia late next year.

Mr Rudd will discuss the question of who should co-chair the commission alongside Mr Evans with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in Tokyo on Thursday.

Mr Rudd said the NPT was under great pressure with some countries developing nuclear weapons outside its framework and others like North Korea defying the international community and leaving the treaty altogether.

"There are two courses of action available to the community of nations - to allow the NPT to continue to fragment, or to exert every global effort to restore and defend the treaty," he said.

The focus on the danger of nuclear weapons had dropped off since the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States and stockpiles dwindled from their peaks in the late 1980s, he said.

Russia and the US had negotiated treaties to cut the number of weapons while South Africa and Ukraine had shown it was possible for nuclear states to disarm.

"We no longer live with the daily fear of nuclear war between the superpowers. But nuclear weapons remain," he told the students.

"New states continue to seek to acquire them. Some states, including states in our own region, are expanding their existing capacity.

"Hiroshima reminds us of the terrible power of these weapons ... Hiroshima should remind us that we must be vigilant afresh to stop their continued proliferation."


AAP

Britain's Labour Party deputy leader Harriet Harman was forced to leave home as two protesters camped out on her roof to demand that divorced fathers be given better access to their children.

The two are from the Fathers 4 Justice protest group, which has staged several high profile stunts in the past including pelting then Prime Minister Tony Blair with condoms full of purple flour in the House of Commons debating chamber in 2006.

Police surrounded Harman's house in south London and waited for the two costumed men, who said they had enough food for a week, to come down.

"I don't think it is fair to the police resources to be tied up outside my house because of this demonstration when they could be doing other important policing work," she told reporters outside her home.

"I also think it is unfair on the neighbours, so we are moving out," she said, adding that although the protesters said they wanted to meet her they had made no attempt to do so.

Fathers 4 Justice says the justice system is prejudiced against divorced fathers, denying them basic visitation rights to see their children.

The two protesters, clad as comic superheroes, hung a banner reading "A father is for life not just conception" down the side of the house and gave media interviews on mobile phones as they sat on the roof in balmy summer weather.

Fathers 4 Justice founder Matt O'Connor, who was not in the rooftop protest, told Reuters the pair had simply walked into Harman's garden while she was at home and used a ladder to climb onto the house.

He said he had asked to meet Harman through his member of parliament but had been rebuffed.

"Harriett Harman and the government have refused all dialogue with F4J for the past two years," O'Connor said.

"We are now resuming a full-scale campaign of direct action against the government, its ministers and the judiciary. F4J is now the last line in the defence of fatherhood."


Reuters

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