Author: mopress

“In a war between nations, peace journalism requires you to be non-partisan – to give equal coverage to peace efforts in your nation and those of all other combatant nations,” argued Curtin University’s Asian Media Studies professor Dr Krishna Sen speaking at the Asia Media Summit in Kuala Lumpur.

But News World Asia chairman Dr Andrew Taussig, said he disliked the phrase as it implied that journalism was “loaded”. [Does Dr. Taussig employ “war correspondents”?]

“While we know that peace for some may be defeat for others, let us, in particular, not depict peace journalists either as proxies of third parties or as people who can function only if they have squads of conciliators and psychotherapists following in their train.”

Dr. Sen warned that “development journalism” had been co-opted by governments to “supress rather than enlighten.” [By acting like business pages and Wall Street shows?] She said peace journalism shares that danger.

In what Reuters and AP call “two flashpoint cities” of Iraq, battles at Falluja and Najaf were somewhat calmed. But Western media do not report that air assaults continue.

Sunni Falluja was calmed by truce on the ground, although F-16s and Apache gunships continued to raid the vicinity via air, as Iraqi police vowed to collect heavy weapons from rebels, and the US promised to make way for ambulances and access to the city’s hospital. US troops are allowing 50 families per day back into the city, which emptied of about 1/3 of its 200,000 residents when US forces attacked in response to the killing and mutilation of American contractors there. It remains to be seen how negotiations between US authorities and civic leaders will hold up in the eyes of local militia, says Reuters.

“The difficulty with these discussions, as I understand them, is that the people who are causing the trouble aren’t part of the discussions,” Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing, referring to the Fallujah negotiations involving Iraqi and Sunni Muslim leaders, Fallujah officials and US representatives.

Calling Falluja a “final stand,” Rumsfeld said: “Thugs and assassins and former Saddam henchmen will not be allowed to carve out portions of that city and to oppose peace and freedom.”

But peacemaker Lakhdar Brahimi told Arab media that, “Collective punishments are not acceptable – cannot be acceptable, and to cordon off and besiege a city is not acceptable.”

Three reporters who made their way to Falluja via back roads report claims that Americans tried to take a bridge during the cease fire, but were deterred by insurgents. Meanwhile, F16s and Apache gunships were busy in the air. “Bush doesn’t need to dig mass graves – he collapses our houses on top of us,” shouted Abed Eid, pointing to the remains of three metal casings marked as AGM-114s – helicopter-fired “Hellfire” missiles – which slammed into his home [near Fallujah.]

And at Najaf, some civilians returned home as US forces prepared, “to pull back from a forward base,” in their attack on Al Sadr’s rebels.

“The Shi’ite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, called for a halt to attacks on Spain’s 1,400 troops near Najaf after the new government in Madrid said it was pulling out of the U.S.-led occupying coalition.”

Reuters quotes a senior US official saying he’s not sure what arrangements are being made between Iraqi negotiators at Najaf.

US commander Gen. Sanchez says he’s ready to resume the attack on the holy city of Najaf and kill Sadr. “We’ll be applying the same levels of constraint that we’ve always applied in operating in this country and making sure that we respect the people and that we respect their religious shrines,” he said.

Sam Hamod of Al Jazeera Information Service reports that, “according to short wave radio from the Aab world, many of the pilgrims who came to Najaf and Karbala for the Arabayn (40 days of respect for the martyr Husayn) have stayed on to support Sadr and to fight the Americans if necessary. Remember, these Shi’a pilgrims have come from all over the world; thus, other nations may become involved if their citizens are harmed by the U.S. troops with an attack on Najaf. Also, if America attacks Najaf, there will never be an end to Shi’a desire for revenge, as a matter of honor and of religious duty in their minds.But these matters, as important as they are, are rarely is talked about on American mass media.”

In a “cricket for peace” program this week, 31 teenage cricket players from India are touring five cities in Pakistan, playing a series of games with a 15-member team from Pakistan. “Selections for the Indian team were made on the basis of essay and story competitions arranged by Rupert Murdoch’s Channel V, Viacom’s MTV and the daily, Indian Express. Former Pakistani Test player Ashfaq Ahmad helped pick 15 young men from middle- and working-class families for the Pakistan team.”

“Civil society organisations Action Aid (India and Pakistan chapters), the Insaan Foundation Lahore, Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, and Leapfrog India have organised the programme to promote people-to-people contacts.”

For the first time in 14 years, India’s national team held a full cricket series in Pakistan, with citizens of the rival nations sharing a stadium and a televised broadcast. Plans call for meetings of foreign secretaries in May or June, and foreign ministers in July or August. Meanwhile, the top politicians seem to be dragging their feet on a comprehensive peace plan for Kashmir. A “Western diplomat in Islamabad” is quoted as saying, “There are substantive measures they can look at….There is the ceasefire [since November], the free movement of people across the Line of Control, economic development. They are all concrete things, and in a sense the process becomes the solution.”

But rediff columnist Lalit Koul complains that Pakistan is getting off lite. “The Indian team’s wins in Pakistan do not bring peace of mind to thousands of Indian parents who continue to lose their loved ones to Pakistani-sponsored terrorism. [Indian Prime Minister] Vajpayee’s message of peace does not bring peace to more than 400,000 Kashmiri Hindus who were uprooted from their homes in Kashmir and have been living without a HOME since 1990.”

“What happened to Vajpayee’s stand that India will not talk unless Pakistan stops supporting cross-border terrorism? Were there any external forces that forced Vajpayee’s hand? Were there any back-room dealings and promises that convinced Vajpayee to relax his conditions? Is Musharraf setting a July-August deadline because he has been told by Bush and Powell to deliver Mullah Omar, Ayman Zawahari and Osama bin Laden by August, just in time for the US presidential election?”

As one hawkish columnist to another, Koul says, “Tom Friedman of The New York Times recently wrote that it was not General Powell who convinced Vajpayee to retreat its armed forces back to peace-time positions. It was rather General Electric whose call-centre operations are run by Indian companies in Bangalore.” Koul slams Friedman’s double standard that pleads with Americans to “give war a chance” but glorifies pacification to corporate interests abroad. So long as US aid money is funnelled to Kashmir terrorists, General Electric will face terror with the rest of India, argues Koul.

But along the borderlands of Kashmir, silent Pakistani guns were a welcome relief to voters who cast ballots via electronic voting machines in India’s parliamentary elections.

Reports the BBC: “For the residents of border villages like Suchetgarh, the current ceasefire between India and Pakistan is the best thing to have happened in their lives.” The election is predicted to go well for ruling Hindu nationalists, despite calls for boycott by Islamic insurgents in Kashmir, who have been waging a 15-year war of independence against Indian rule.

Cynthia Fain’s son is a US soldier in Iraq. Soon she will be a Peace Corps worker in the Vanuatu Islands of the South Pacific. The percentage of PC seniors has risen from 1 percent to 6 percent, standing at 452, according to a 2004 report.