Every detail of September 16, 2007, is burned in Mohammed Kinani's memory. Shortly after 9 am he was preparing to leave his house for work at his family's auto parts business in Baghdad when he got a call from his sister, Jenan, who asked him to pick her and her children up across town and bring them back to his home for a visit. The Kinanis are a tightknit Shiite family, and Mohammed often served as a chauffeur through Baghdad's dangerous streets to make such family gatherings possible.
An accompanying slideshow of Ali Kinani, his family, and the Nisour massacre can be found here.
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Mohammed had just pulled away from his family's home in the Khadamiya neighborhood in his SUV. His youngest son, 9-year-old Ali, came tearing down the road after him, asking his father if he could accompany him. Mohammed told him to run along and play with his brothers and sister. But Ali, an energetic and determined kid, insisted. Mohammed gave in, and off the father and son went.
As Mohammed and Ali drove through Baghdad that hot and sunny Sunday, they passed a newly rebuilt park downtown. Ali gazed at the park and then turned to his father and asked, "Daddy, when are you gonna bring us here?"
"Next week," Mohammed replied. "If God wills it, son."
Ali would never visit that park. Within a few hours, he would be dead from a gunshot wound to the head. While you may have never heard his name, you probably know something about how Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani died. He was the youngest person killed by Blackwater forces in the infamous Nisour Square massacre.
In May 2008 Mohammed flew to Washington to testify in front of a grand jury investigating the shooting. It was his first time out of Iraq. The US Attorney, Jeffrey Taylor, praised Mohammed for his "commendable courage." A year after the shooting, in December 2008, five Blackwater guards were indicted on manslaughter charges, while a sixth guard pleaded guilty to killing an unarmed Iraqi. American justice, it seemed to Mohammed, was working. "I'm a true believer in the justness and fairness of American law," Mohammed said.
But this past New Year's Eve, federal Judge Ricardo Urbina threw out all the criminal charges against the five Blackwater guards. At least seventeen Iraqis died that day, and prosecutors believed they could prove fourteen of the killings were unjustified. The manslaughter charges were dismissed not because of a lack of evidence but because of what Urbina called serious misconduct on the part of the prosecutors.
Then, a few days after the dismissal of the criminal case, Blackwater reached a civil settlement with many of the Nisour Square victims, reportedly paying about $100,000 per death.
Blackwater released a statement declaring it was "pleased" with the outcome, which enabled the company to move forward "free of the costs and distraction of ongoing litigation." But Mohammed Kinani would not move on. He refused to take the deal Blackwater offered. As a result, he may well be the one man standing between Blackwater and total impunity for the killings in Nisour Square.
On September 15, 2009, the night before the second anniversary of his son's death, Mohammed Kinani sued Blackwater in its home state of North Carolina, along with company owner Erik Prince and the six men Mohammed believes are responsible for his son's death. In an exclusive interview providing the most detailed eyewitness account of the massacre that has yet been published, Mohammed told his story to The Nation.
***
Mohammed Kinani, 38, is a gentle man, deeply religious and soft-spoken. When we meet, he takes off his hat as he greets me with a slight bow. He then presents me with a gift--a box of baklava--and insists that we try some right away. Before we sit down to discuss the events that led to the death of his son, Mohammed goes out of his way to assure me that no question is off limits and that he wants Americans to know what happened that day. It was as though he was telling me it was OK to ask him to relive the horror. "Those few minutes in Nisour Square, I will never forget; so whatever you ask me, I will answer with absolute clarity," he said.
Before we talk about Nisour Square, Mohammed tells me about his life. He was born in Baghdad in 1971 and grew up in a large home with his siblings, aunts, uncles and grandparents. His father, Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Sadeq Kinani, was a merchant who traded cars and auto parts. After high school, Mohammed enrolled at a technical institute in Baghdad but ultimately dropped out to take over the family business with his brothers. He avoided mandatory military service in Saddam's forces by paying his way out. He married a relative from his mother's side of the family and bought a home in Baghdad's al Adel neighborhood, and they had three sons and a daughter. Mohammed said his family despised Saddam, "a dictator who stole people's freedom."
Mohammed welcomed the arrival of US forces in Baghdad in April 2003. "On the first day the US Army entered Baghdad I was personally giving away free juice and candy in the street," Mohammed remembers. He and Ali would give out water and take photos with the troops when when Humvees passed by their house. "One of the soldiers even carried Ali on board one of the Humvees and took a photo with my son," Mohammed remembers. "My son loved the American Army."
In November 2006, as sectarian violence spread across Baghdad, Mohammed and his family were driven from their home by a prominent Sunni militia leader, and they moved into Mohammed's parents' home. Mohammed was devastated, but he also saw it as part of the price of freedom. "We cannot question God's plans," he says.
Before September 16, 2007, Mohammed had never heard of Blackwater. When he would stop at a US checkpoint, he would smile at the soldiers and thank them for being there. Ali enjoyed sticking his head out the window at checkpoints and telling Iraqi police, "I'm in the Special Forces." The police would laugh, Mohammed recalls, and wave him through, saying, "You're one of us." So when Mohammed found himself in a traffic jam that he thought was the result of a US military checkpoint at Nisour Square, nothing seemed out of the ordinary to him.
To pick up his sister, Mohammed would have to pass Nisour Square twice. The first time he passed, he noticed it was extremely congested. There was a construction project nearby and Iraqi police lingering on the roadside directing traffic. Eventually, he and Ali picked up Jenan and her three children and began the return journey.
A few blocks from the square, they encountered two Iraqi checkpoints and were waved through. As they approached the square, they saw one armored vehicle and then another, with men brandishing machine guns atop each one, Mohammed recalls. The armored cars swiftly blocked off traffic. One of the gunners held both fists in the air, which Mohammed took as a gesture to stop. "Myself and all the cars before and behind me stopped," Mohammed says. "We followed their orders. I thought they were some sort of unit belonging to the American military, or maybe just a military police unit. Any authority giving you an order to stop, you follow the order." It turns out the men in the armored cars were neither US military nor MPs. They were members of a Blackwater team code-named Raven 23.
As the family waited in traffic, two more Blackwater vehicles became visible. Mohammed noticed a family in a car next to his--a man, woman and child. The man was staring at Mohammed's car, and Mohammed thought the man was eyeing Jenan. "I thought he was checking my sister out," Mohammed remembers. "So I yelled at him and said, 'What are you looking at?'" Mohammed noticed that the man looked frightened. "I think they shot the driver in the car in front of you," the man told him.
Mohammed scanned the area and noticed that the back windshield of the white Kia sedan in front of him was shattered. The man in the car next to Mohammed began to panic and tried to turn his car around. He ended up bumping into a taxi, and an argument ensued. The taxi driver exited his car and began yelling. Mohammed tried to break up the argument, telling the taxi driver that a man had been shot and that he should back up so the other car could exit. The taxi driver refused and got back into his vehicle.
At that point, an Iraqi police officer, Ali Khalaf Salman, approached the Kia sedan, and it started to slowly drift. The driver had been shot, and the car was gliding in neutral toward a Blackwater armored car. Salman, in an interview, described how he tried to stop it by pushing backward. He saw a panicked woman inside the car; she was clutching a young man covered in blood who had been shot in the head. She was shrieking, "My son! My son! Help me, help me!" Salman remembered looking toward the Blackwater shooters. "I raised my left arm high in the air to try to signal to the convoy to stop the shooting." He said he thought the men would cease fire, given that he was a clearly identified police officer.
"As the officer was waving, the men on the armored cars started shooting at that car," Mohammed says. "And it wasn't warning shots; they were shooting as in a battle. It was as though they were in a fighting field. I thought the police officer was killed. It was insane." Officer Salman managed to dive out of the way as the bullets rained down. "I saw parts of the woman's head flying in front of me," recalled his colleague, Officer Sarhan Thiab. "They immediately opened heavy fire at us."
That's how the Nisour Square massacre began.
"What can I tell you?" Mohammed says, closing his eyes. "It was like the end of days."
Mohammed would later learn that the first victims that day, in the white Kia, were a young Iraqi medical student, Ahmed Haithem Al Rubia'y, and his mother, Mahassin, a physician. Mohammed is crystal clear that the car posed no threat. "There was absolutely no shooting at the Blackwater men," he says. "All of a sudden, they started shooting in all directions, and they shot at everyone in front of them. There was nothing left in that street that wasn't shot: the ground, cars, poles, sidewalks; they shot everything in front of them." As the Blackwater gunners shot up the Rubia'ys' vehicle, Mohammed said, it soon looked like a sieve "due to how many bullet holes it had." A Blackwater shooter later admitted that they also fired a grenade at the car, causing the car to explode. Mohammed says the Blackwater men then started firing across the square. "They were shooting in all directions," he remembers. He describes the shooting as "random yet still concentrated. It was concentrated and focused on what they aimed at and still random as they shot in all directions."
One of the Blackwater shooters was on top of an armored vehicle firing an automatic weapon, he says. "Every time he would finish his clip, he would throw it on the ground and would load another one in and would start shooting again, and finish the new one and replace it with another." One young Iraqi man got out of his car to run, and as he fled, the Blackwater shooter gunned him down and continued firing into his body as it lay on the pavement, Mohammed says. "He was on the ground bleeding, and they're shooting nonstop, and it wasn't single bullets." The Blackwater shooter, he says, would fire at other Iraqis and cars and then return to pump more bullets into the dead man on the ground. "He sank in his own blood, and every minute the [Blackwater shooter] would shoot left and right and then go back to shoot the dead man, and I could see that his body would shake with every bullet. He was already dead, but his body was still reacting to the bullets. [The shooter] would fire at someone else and then go back to shoot at this dead man." Shaking his head slowly, Mohammed says somberly, "The guy is dead in a pool of blood. Why would you continue shooting him?"
In his vehicle, as the shooting intensified, Mohammed yelled for the kids to get down. He and his sister did the same. "My car was hit many times in different places. All I could hear from my car was the gun shots and the sound of glass shattering," he remembers. Jenan was frantic. "Why are they shooting at us?" she asked him. Just then, a bullet pierced the windshield, hitting Jenan's headrest. Mohammed shows me a photo of the bullet hole.
As gunfire rained on the SUV, Jenan grabbed Mohammed's hair, yanked his head down and covered him with her body. "My young sister was trying to protect me by covering me with her body, so I forced myself out of her grip and covered her with my body to protect her. It was so horrific that my little sister, whom I'm supposed to protect, was trying to protect me." Mohammed managed to slip his cellphone from his pocket and was going to call his father. "It's customary that when in agony before death, you ask those close to you to look after your loved ones," he says. Jenan demanded that Mohammed put down the phone, reminding him that their father had had two strokes already. "If he hears what's happening, he'll die immediately," she said. "Maybe he'll die before us."
At that moment, bullets pierced the SUV through the front windshield. A bullet hit the rearview mirror, causing it to whack Mohammed in the face. "We imagined that in a few seconds everyone was going to die--everyone in the car, my sister and I and our children. We thought that every second that passed meant one of us dying." He adds, "We remained still, my sister and I. I had her rest her head on my lap, and my body was on top of her. We'd sneak a peek from under the dashboard, and they continued shooting here and there, killing this one and that one."
And then the shooting stopped.
***
Ali and his father were inseparable. Ali's older brothers called him "Daddy's favorite," and the family affectionately called him by his kid nickname, Allawi. "He was the closest of my sons to me. He was my youngest and was always indulged," recalls Mohammed. "He would sleep on my arm. He's 9 and half years old but still sleeps on my arm. He has his own room, but he never slept alone." When the boy turned 9, Ali's father thought, "This can't go on--him sleeping on my arm as his pillow. So I said, 'Son, you're older now; go sleep like your brothers, in your bed in your room. It doesn't work anymore; you're getting older. You're gonna be a man soon.'"
"As you wish, father," Ali said. "He always said that," Mohammed recalls. "As you wish, father." Ali left the room, but Mohammed looked over and saw the shadow of Ali's feet under the door. "So I called him in, and Ali opened the door and said, 'Daddy, I'm Allawi, not Ali,'" Mohammed remembers. "He was telling me that he's still young." Mohammed gave in, and Ali slept in his arms again. "He never had a pillow besides my arm," says Mohammed.
As he sat in his severely damaged SUV, Mohammed thought that, in the midst of horror, a miracle had blessed his car. We are alive, he thought. As the Blackwater forces retreated, Mohammed told Jenan he was going to go check on the man who had been repeatedly shot by Blackwater. "I was deeply impacted by that man they continued shooting at," Mohammed recalls. As he exited his car, Mohammed's nephew yelled, "Uncle, Ali is dead. Ali is dead!" Jenan began to scream.
Mohammed rushed around to Ali's door and saw that the window was broken. He looked inside and saw his son's head resting against the door. He opened it, and Ali slumped toward him. "I was standing in shock looking at him as the door opened, and his brain fell on the ground between my feet," Mohammed recalls. "I looked and his brain was on the ground." He remembers people yelling at him, telling him to get out while he could. "But I was in another world," he says. Then Mohammed snapped back to consciousness. He put Ali back in the car and placed his hand over his son's heart. It was still beating. He got in the driver's seat of his car, tires blown out, radiator damaged, full of bullets, liquids leaking everywhere, hoping still that he could save Allawi's life. Somehow he managed to get the car near Yarmouk Hospital, right near the square. He picked up Ali and ran toward the hospital. He nearly collapsed on the road, and an Iraqi police officer took Ali from his arms and ran him into the hospital.
Mohammed checked that the other children were safe and then dashed to the hospital. "I entered the emergency room, and blood was everywhere, dead people, injured people everywhere," he remembers. "My son was in the last bed; the doctor was with him and had already hooked him with an IV line." As Mohammed stood by Ali's bed, the doctor told him that Ali was brain dead. "His heart is beating," the doctor said, "and it will continue to beat until he bleeds out and dies." The doctor told him that if there were any hope to be found, it would require taking Ali in an ambulance to a neurological hospital across town. The fastest route meant that they had to pass through Nisour Square. Iraqi police stopped them and told them they could not pass. "The US Army is here and won't let you through," the officer told them. The driver took an alternate route and was going so fast the ambulance almost crashed twice. When they got to the hospital, Mohammed offered to pay the driver--at least for the gas, which is customary. The driver refused. "No, I would like to donate blood to your son if he needs it," he told Mohammed. A few moments later, Mohammed stood with a doctor who told him there was nothing they could do. Ali was dead.
Mohammed wanted to take his son's body home with him, but the hospital regulations required that he get papers from the police. So Mohammed had to leave. He spent hours tracking down the right authority to sign off. Finally he was able to take Ali's body to prepare him for a Muslim burial. That night there was no electricity in Baghdad, so they had to run a generator to keep air-conditioning going to protect Ali's body from the sweltering heat. The next morning they took Ali to the southern holy city of Najaf to be buried at the family plot. "As Muslims, we believe that Ali died innocent with no obligation," says Mohammed. "My son died at an age where there were no strings attached. My son was young and innocent, so he flew up [to heaven] like a white dove. This is what's making it easier on me. I always tell my wife that your son is a bird in heaven, he's with God and when we die we will be united eternally." Mohammed looks down and then up. "I still thank God for everything. I thank him because we were six in that car, and he's the only one to go. Although that one is piece of my heart, it happened and I can't change it. I have my other kids that I will raise, and hopefully I'll be able to keep them safe."
***
After Ali's death, some of Mohammed's friends came to him and asked him if the death had changed his attitude toward the Americans. It hadn't, he told them. "I honestly separate distinctly between Blackwater and the American people and the American government," he says. "I honestly love America and the American people. What happened to my family is totally isolated from the American people and government."
Mohammed carries with him a letter to his family signed by Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of US forces in Iraq, dated June 25, 2009. The letter is the result of an extraordinary gesture made by the Kinanis after Ali's death. The US Embassy offered to provide a $10,000 condolence payment to the families of the victims of Nisour Square, making clear it was not a remedy for what happened and not a substitute for any potential legal action against the shooters. Initially Mohammed refused the money, but the embassy pursued his family, urging them to take it. They eventually did, but with one condition: that the US military accept a $5000 donation from the Kinanis to the family of a US soldier killed in Iraq. Mohammed's wife, Fatimah, delivered the gift to the US Embassy. "My wife labeled it as a gift from a mother who sacrificed a son on the path to freedom, a gift from Ali's family to whichever US military family the embassy chose, to any soldier's family that was killed here in Iraq, who lost his life in Iraq for the sake of Iraq." Soon thereafter, Fatimah received the letter from General Odierno. "Your substantial generosity on behalf of the families of fallen American soldiers has touched me deeply," Odierno wrote.
After Ali's death, the thought of suing Blackwater didn't cross Mohammed's mind. He readily cooperated with the US military and federal investigators, and he believed that justice would be done in America. But when he would go to the US Embassy, Mohammed recalls, he would get "hammered there. They all wanted me to shut up so they could defend Blackwater." He says an embassy official tried to convince him that there had been a firefight that day, not a massacre. Mohammed was unfazed by what he considered a grand lie and continued to cooperate with the US investigation. Then, he says, Blackwater stepped in.
In a letter to ABC News threatening a defamation lawsuit for a story the network had done about Nisour Square, a Blackwater attorney denied that Blackwater had killed Ali, claiming instead that he was killed by "a stray bullet" possibly fired by the US military "an hour after Blackwater personnel had departed the scene." The letter claimed Ali was killed by a "warning shot" that "ricocheted and killed the nine-year-old boy." It said it was not "even possible" Blackwater "was responsible."
Then an Iraqi attorney working with Blackwater approached Mohammed. But he wasn't just any lawyer. Ja'afar al Moussawy was the chief prosecutor of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal, which prosecuted Saddam Hussein and other leading officials. He was the Iraqi lawyer.
Mohammed agreed to meet with Moussawy and Blackwater's regional manager. When Mohammed arrived at the Blackwater headquarters in the Green Zone, there was a lunch spread laid out on the table. Moussawy asked Mohammed if he wanted to eat, and Mohammed said he would, "to show you that I have nothing against you personally." Mohammed says he told them, "My problem is not with any of you, rather with the guys who killed my son." After lunch, the manager asked Mohammed to tell him what happened in the square that day. Mohammed did. The manager then said he had an offer for him.
"We want to give you $20,000," Mohammed recalls the Blackwater manager saying.
"I'm not taking a penny from you," Mohammed told him. "I want no money."
Mohammed asked for a blank piece of paper and a pen. "Look I have the paper and I can sign and waive all my [legal] rights. All my rights, I will sign away now, but under one condition: I want the owner of Blackwater to apologize to me publicly in America and say, 'We killed your son, and we're sorry.' That's all I want."
The Blackwater manager asked Mohammed why it was so important to have an apology. Mohammed reminded him of Blackwater owner Erik Prince's Congressional testimony two weeks after the Nisour Square shootings. In his testimony, Prince said his men "acted appropriately at all times" at Nisour Square and that the company had never killed innocent civilians, except perhaps by "ricochets" and "traffic accidents." At that hearing, on October 2, 2007, a document was produced showing that before Nisour Square the State Department, Blackwater's employer, had coordinated with Blackwater to set a low payout for Iraqi shooting victims because, in the words of a Department security official, if it was too high Iraqis may try "to get killed by our guys to financially guarantee their family's future."
Mohammed said he wanted Prince to publicly reject this characterization of "Iraqis as mercenaries." The Blackwater manager, he says, told him Blackwater does not apologize. "You killed my son!" Mohammed exclaimed. "What do you want, then? Why did you bring me here?"
Mohammed then confronted the Blackwater manager about the letter to ABC News. "I told him that Blackwater was trying to stain the reputation of the American Army" by blaming Ali's death on US soldiers. Mohammed recalls asking, "Aren't you an American company, and this is your national army? Why would you do this to your own?" Mohammed says he threw the pen and paper at the Blackwater manager and left. In a statement to The Nation, a Blackwater spokesperson confirmed that the company had offered Mohammed a "condolence payment" and that he declined it.
It was then that Mohammed decided that his best recourse would be to cooperate with the US criminal investigation of the incident and to sue Blackwater in civil court the United States. "I want Blackwater, who refused to apologize, to get what they deserve according to the rule of law," Mohammed says. "I had no other option but to go down the legal path, to have justice applied--something that will be comforting to victims' families and something that might deter other criminals from committing the same act."
***
Mohammed's American lawyers contend, as did federal prosecutors, that the Blackwater men disobeyed orders from superiors not to leave the Green Zone, which ultimately led to the shooting at Nisour Square, and that they did not follow proper State Department guidelines for the use of force, instead shooting unprovoked at Mohammed's car and the other civilians in the square. They also allege that Blackwater was not guarding any US official at the time of the shooting and that the Nisour Square killings amounted to an offensive operation against unarmed civilians. "Blackwater was where it shouldn't have been, doing something it was not supposed to do," says Mohammed's lawyer Gary Mauney. They "weren't even supposed to be in Nisour Square, and if they hadn't have been, no shootings would have occurred."
Unlike the other civil suits against Blackwater, which were settled in federal court in January, Mohammed's case was filed in state court in North Carolina. It is also different because Mohammed is directly suing the six Blackwater men he believes were responsible for the shooting that day. The suit also argues that Prince and his network of Blackwater companies and affiliates are ultimately responsible for the conduct of the men at Nisour Square. The Blackwater shooters "weren't doing anything related to their work for the government," Mauney says. "After the events happened, Blackwater came out and said, 'We support what they did. We think it was justified.' They ratified the conduct of their employees."
Moreover, Mohammed's lawyers contend that the evidence that was ruled inadmissible in the criminal Nisour Square case because it was obtained in exchange for a promise of immunity and reportedly under threat of termination is valid evidence in their civil case. Several statements by Blackwater guards who were at the square that day directly bolster Mohammed and other Iraqis' claim that it was an unprovoked shooting.
Perhaps the most potent piece of evidence in Mohammed's case comes from one of the men he is suing. Jeremy Ridgeway, a turret gunner on the Raven 23 team that day, pleaded guilty to killing an unarmed civilian. In his sworn proffer that accompanied his guilty plea, Ridgeway admitted that he and the other five defendants "opened fire with automatic weapons and grenade launchers on unarmed civilians...killing at least fourteen people" and wounding at least twenty others. "None of these victims was an insurgent, and many were shot while inside of civilian vehicles that were attempting to flee" the Blackwater forces. Ridgeway also admitted that Raven 23 had "not been authorized" to leave the Green Zone and that after they departed, they "had been specifically ordered" by US Embassy officials to return. "In contravention of that order," they proceeded to Nisour Square. Ridgeway admitted to shooting and killing Dr. Al Rubia'y in the Kia sedan, adding that another Blackwater shooter launched an M-203 grenade, "causing the vehicle to erupt in flames." He acknowledged that "there had been no attempt to provide reasonable warnings to the driver." As the Raven 23 convoy exited the square against the flow of traffic, Ridgeway admitted, Blackwater forces "continued to fire their machine guns at civilian vehicles that posed no threat to the convoy."
Evidence in the criminal case also reveals that three other men on the Raven 23 convoy--Adam Frost, Mark Mealy, Matthew Murphy--were "horrified" at what their colleagues had done in the square that day. In a journal entry he wrote after the shooting, Frost recounted returning to the Green Zone, where he and Murphy confronted the men who did the killings at Nisour Square. "We started to curse at them and tell each other how fucked up they were," he wrote. "We could not believe what we had just seen." Murphy told the grand jury his colleagues were shooting "for nothing and for no reason." Mealy described two of the defendants, Evan Liberty and Paul Slough, giving each other high-fives, "patting each other on the back and bragging about what a great job they had done." In his testimony, Murphy described what he had seen that day as "pretty heinous shit."
Frost, who prosecutors say did not fire his weapon at Nisour Square, wrote in his journal that he "prayed for comfort to be given to those families that we had broken." When the FBI launched its investigation of the shooting, Frost said he was "strongly encouraged," though not ordered, by Blackwater management not to answer its questions. He said a Blackwater manager had told him that the company was already fully cooperating with the State Department and had been honest in detailing the shooting. "I thought to myself, you fuckers have been anything but honest with the State Department and their investigation," Frost wrote.
Mauney and his partner, Paul Dickinson, believe that these statements and others like them, along with the accounts of scores of Iraqi witnesses and forensic evidence, paint a case of overwhelming guilt on the part of the Blackwater shooters who killed Ali Kinani and the other Iraqis that day. "I think it's important for folks to know that Blackwater has not won," says Mauney. In addition to Mohammed, Mauney and Dickinson represent five other families impacted by Nisour Square, including those of two others killed by Blackwater. "They've come here with a heart full of belief in the US justice system," says Dickinson. In late January on a visit to Baghdad, Vice President Joe Biden announced that the United States would appeal the dismissal of the criminal cases, saying the judge's ruling was "not an acquittal." Blackwater's lawyers have said they believe the appeal will fail.
As we wrap up the interview, Mohammed Kinani gathers up all the photos he has brought to show me: pictures of Ali and his other children, pictures of his wife and of his severely damaged car. He stops and stares at a school portrait of Ali. We look at a video on his laptop of his home--the one currently occupied by the Sunni militia leader--and then he pauses and clicks on another video file. The screen pops up, and there is Ali, hopping around a swimming pool with his cousins and siblings. With a wide smile, Ali approaches Mohammed's cellphone camera and says, "I am Allawi!"
Mohammed tells me, "I wish the US Congress would ask [Erik Prince] why they killed my innocent son, who called himself Allawi. Do you think that this child was a threat to your company? This giant company that has the biggest weapons, the heaviest weapons, the planes, and this boy was a threat to them?" he says. "I want Americans to know that this was a child that died for nothingLINK."

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WASHINGTON: The commander of US forces in Afghanistan said in an interview published on Monday that senior Taliban leaders could join a new government in Kabul.

Although US leaders started talking publicly about including the Taliban in a political solution earlier this month, Gen Stanley McChrystal went a step ahead when he spoke of also accepting senior Taliban leaders in a possible new arrangement.

When asked if senior Taliban leaders might eventually become government leaders in Kabul, Gen McChrystal said: “I think that anybody who dedicates themselves to the future and not the past, and anybody whose future is focussed on the right kinds of things for Afghanistan,” might participate in government.

In a related development, the leader of the UN mission in Afghanistan called for the removal of some Taliban leaders from the UN terrorist list as a step towards beginning negotiations.

In an interview to The New York Times, Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative, also implored the American military to meet another Taliban demand -- speed up its review of the roughly 750 detainees in its military prisons in Afghanistan.

Mr Eide said he hoped that the two steps would eventually open the way to face-to-face talks between Afghan officials and Taliban leaders, many of whom are hiding in Pakistan. “The two sides have been at an impasse for years over almost every fundamental issue, including the issue of talking itself,” the NYT noted.

Diplomatic observers in Washington say that Gen McChrystal’s remarks are particularly significant because they come before an international conference on Afghanistan in London on Thursday, which is expected to address a framework for transferring security responsibilities to the Afghans.

In an interview with the Financial Times and also published in a number of US newspapers on Monday, Gen McChrystal said high-level political negotiations with leaders of the Taliban could help bring an end to the conflict.

“I think that (negotiations) is in the purview of the government of Afghanistan to do, but I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it’s the right outcome. I think that the re-integration of fighters can take a lot of the energy out of the current levels of the insurgency. Then I think you open up, the option, the possibility, for everybody to look at what’s the right combination of participation in the government here,” he said.

The Christian Science Monitor observed that Gen McChrystal’s statement “could be aimed toward influencing the conference in London”.

The remarks by the US commander and the UN envoy were the latest in a series of Afghan and Western efforts to engage the Taliban movement with diplomatic and political means.

American, Afghan and Nato leaders are also preparing to start an ambitious programme to persuade rank-and-file Taliban fighters to give up fighting in exchange for schooling and jobs. That plan, expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, will be the focus of the London conference as well.

The plan aims at the bottom of the Taliban hierarchy — the foot soldiers who are widely perceived as mostly poor, illiterate, and susceptible to promises of money and jobs. In 2007 and 2008, a similar effort unfolded in Iraq, where some 30,000 members of the country’s Sunni sect — many of them former insurgents — were put on the American payroll. “Partly as a result, violence there plummeted,” the NYT noted.

Last week, the American envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan signalled some willingness to allow the names of some Taliban to be taken off the UN list as long as they were not senior commanders responsible for atrocities or associated with Al Qaeda.

“A lot of the names don’t mean much to me,” Richard Holbrooke said in Kabul. “Some of the people on the list are dead, some shouldn’t be on the list and some are among the most dangerous people in the world.

“I would be all in favour of looking at the list on a case-by-case basis to see if there are people on the list who are on the list by mistake and should be removed, or in fact are dead,” he said.

Reuters adds: Gen McChrystal expressed the hope that increased troop levels will weaken the Taliban enough that their leaders will accept a peace deal.

He told the Financial Times on Monday that there had been ‘enough fighting’ and held out the possibility the Taliban could eventually help run the countryLINK

President Obama hailed the healthcare reform bill coming out of the Senate as the "most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s." Former Democratic Party chair Howard Dean denounced it as a "giveaway to insurance companies."
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Larry Summers, Obama's lead economic adviser, described the $780 billion recovery plan as the largest stimulus plan in the country's history. Economists like Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz warned from the beginning that it was too small to lift us out of the Great Recession.
The president described the administration's financial reform package as a "sweeping overhaul," a "transformation on a scale not seen since...the Great Depression." Former Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker warned that the proposed "safety net" for big banks would encourage much greater "risk taking."
Congressman Ed Markey, chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence, hailed the energy bill that was passed by the House as "the most important energy and environmental bill in our nation's history." Environmental leaders were underwhelmed; some considered it worse than the current law.
The discordant reality of these times is that these conflicting statements are all essentially true. "I want you to be ready," Bill Clinton warned bloggers about healthcare reform at the Netroots Conference in August, to "accept less than a full loaf." He could easily have been talking about the Obama presidency itself. Progressives must determine how to respond now that the fierce resistance to change has revealed itself.
The euphoria of a year ago is dissipating. Then, in the wake of a calamitous and discredited conservative government, Americans voted for change, electing a stunningly gifted leader and large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. A mobilized activist base appeared ready to throw itself into the fray, and an emerging majority coalition suggested the potential for a long-term realignment.
Now the struggles of the first year of the Obama administration are generating increasing demoralization and anger. Disappointment about reforms in motion--healthcare, jobs, climate change--marks those who care the most. The recovery plan, which has revived Wall Street but not working families, is fueling dangerous right-wing populism. Substituting an unwinnable "good war" in Afghanistan for the unwinnable "bad war" in Iraq, along with a military budget exceeding that of George W. Bush, is a recipe for failure. The administration's foreign policy--despite the promise in Cairo of engaging the Muslim world and in Prague of embracing disarmament--is increasingly described by neocons as providing more continuity than change from the Bush years. Democrats cringe at prospects for the fall elections. Despite all the obvious eloquence and intelligence of the new president, many wonder what happened to the transformational presidency.
It Ain't Easy; Everything's Broken
Turns out, Obama is not the Messiah, and those who thought so were always fooling themselves. The disappointments of Obama's first year are less the product of his failures than of the balance of forces he faces in Washington and in the country. Many progressives thought we had taken back America with the election of 2008, but in reality the work had only just begun.
In fact, the president has been bolder than many expected, summoning the country to address fundamental challenges it can no longer afford to ignore. Yet the ambition of Obama's vision has been accompanied by a marked caution in conception and execution. Obama clearly aspires to a historic presidency, one that defines a new era as FDR's or Reagan's did. But he has never been a movement progressive the way Reagan was a movement conservative. He has surrounded himself with the brightest and best of the Democratic establishment, drawn inevitably from those marinated in the Clinton years. Many of his leading advisers--from Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner to Robert Gates--were directly implicated in the decisions that helped to drive us off the cliff. These voices are not advocates of transformation.
So the reform proposals that emerge from the administration often fall short not only of the hopes of progressives but of the objectives the president himself defines and the change the country needs. Obama outlined a new foundation for the economy in his "Sermon on the Mount," but the big banks were rescued, not reorganized, and no industrial policy accompanied the commitment to a new economy. Bankers were chastised for their bonuses, but there was no drive to hold executives accountable and empower workers, both central to an economy that sustains a broad middle class. The president shelved Bush's failed cowboy bellicosity, but the decision to escalate in Afghanistan accedes to the Bush folly of waging war against terrorism rather than intensifying global law enforcement.
Most surprising has been the reluctance to engage the right boldly in the war of ideas. Reagan consolidated the conservative era in part by bludgeoning reigning liberalism with a relentless conservative critique. He tacked and retreated on policy when necessary, but his ideological assault never faltered. Obama has a rare ability to frame the contrast with the right, to counter its market fundamentalism and virulent nihilism with a compelling statement of our shared values, with government as the necessary instrument of our common purpose.
But for much of the year, Democrats have been having policy debates--on the public option, on cap and trade, on systemic risk regulation--while Republicans and the resurgent right have been waging an argument about values and ideas, on liberty and free markets, freedom and small government. Although the administration has reminded Americans of the catastrophic legacy left by the Bush years, it has seldom indicted the conservative ideas that were the source of the calamity. Instead the president prefers to blame the process--"partisanship...politics...ever quickening news cycles...endless campaigns focused on scoring points instead of meeting our common challenges."
That default complements an insider Congressional strategy that prefers backroom compromise to public mobilization. This president enunciates the elements of his reform proposals and then lets Congress and his aides to do their work offstage. But that cedes the terrain to the legions of the old order that are mobilized to fend off real reform.
The past months have exposed the elements of that resistance--the cynical Republican strategy of lockstep obstruction, the Senate rules that empower a handful of small-state conservatives and the embittered Joe Lieberman. (It is worth remembering that there were majorities in both houses of Congress for a bolder stimulus and far better healthcare reform.)
And of course, at the heart of the opposition are the entrenched corporate complexes that feed off public subsidies and a corrupt Congress. These have been boom times for Democratic lobbyists and former officeholders. The commercial banks deployed nearly 417 registered lobbyists in 2009. The insurance and drug lobbies spent about $1.4 million a day, with 350 former legislators and staffers lined up to weaken healthcare reform. Legislators in both parties succumbed to the pervasive corruptions of our money politics.
The result is that even when historic reforms like healthcare emerge, they are so battered that supporters end up dispirited. Democrats face going into the 2010 midterm elections with double-digit unemployment, rescued bankers awarding themselves million-dollar bonuses, rising casualties in Afghanistan, the right mobilized and progressive activists dismayed. If Republicans score major victories in the election, that will make everything harder; the administration will become more cautious, not less. Clearly, if we are not to squander the best opportunity for progressive reform in thirty years, something will have to changeLINK.

LADDAH: Taliban released on Saturday another audio message purportedly containing the voice of their chief Hakimullah Mehsud, in a bid to scotch rumours about his death in a US drone missile attack three days ago.

Security officials, who insisted that chief of the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban had been killed in the missile attack on Thursday in Shaktoi in South Waziristan, said they were now convinced that the fresh audio was real.

Hakimullah said that he was releasing the message on Jan 16 and the missile attack had been carried out in Shaktoi on Jan 14.

He clarified that some elements were trying to discount his earlier audio message, released a day after the missile attack, as an old recording.

“Despite releasing (an) audio message, our enemy was propagating that I had been killed,” he said.

In the first message, Hakimullah had not mentioned the time and the place of the attack, which created an impression that the message had been recorded before the Shaktoi attack.

The tape said that TTP spokesman Azam Tariq had also issued a statement soon after the drone attack and denied reports about Hakimullah’s death.

“Media should act patiently,” he said, adding that such baseless news disturbed Taliban.

AFP adds: “I am neither wounded nor dead, I am fine,” he said.

“Our enemies are being defeated both in the air and on the ground and are therefore using the media for fabricated propaganda,” he added.

Tags: hakimullah mehsud,TTP,US dronesLINK

MIAMI: Haiti's devastating earthquake has moved Hollywood and pop music stars to lead a rally for disaster relief donations and open their own wallets.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were the first to reach out to Haiti by donating $1 million from their foundation to Doctors Without Borders, which has been tending to victims of the quake that demolished buildings in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday. Tens of thousands are feared dead.

Actress Alyssa Milano, a goodwill ambassador for Unicef, on Thursday used her blog on The Huffington Post to challenge US corporations to match her donation. She said the funds would go to buy medical supplies, tarpaulins, food and water kits for Haiti.

“I cried and then I did the only thing I could do ... I wrote a check to the US Fund for Unicef for $50,000,” she wrote.

Haiti-born hip-hop musician Wyclef Jean launched a texting campaign, calling on fans to donate $5 to his Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund charged to their cell phone bills by texting “Yele” to 501501.

Jean has already raised more than $1 million for the disaster relief effort and is in Haiti “giving aid and assessing the situation,” according to his www.yele.org website.

Actor George Clooney will host a telethon on MTV next week to raise funds for victims of Tuesday's earthquake, the music network said on Thursday.

The event will be broadcast on all MTV Network channels on Jan. 22. Clooney is expected to be joined by as yet unnamed pop music and movie stars.

Grammy-winning Latina pop singer Shakira asked her fans for donations to help rebuild Haiti to be channeled through Unicef and Wyclef Jean's foundation.

Coldplay musician Chris Martin called for donations through Oxfam, whose global ambassador, actress Scarlett Johansson, also appealed for contributions for Haiti.

Oprah Winfrey got involved on Wednesday by asking viewers of her popular show to donate to the Red Cross.

Actor Ben Stiller, who has been raising money for a school in Ceverine in Haiti through Save the Children, also made an appeal on CNN's “Larry King Live” for $10 donations charged to phone bills by texting “Haiti” to 90999.

First lady Michelle Obama made a public appeal for this texting campaign, which had raised $5.9 million dollars for the red Cross by late Thursday.

Cycling legend Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong Foundation pledged $250,000 to help Haiti's recovery, according to its website. The money will go to Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health founded by Harvard professor Paul FarmerLINK.

When students at UCLA recently demonstrated against tuition hikes and as a result were treated like children and warned about the "limits of protest," my mind immediately raced back to October 1964 when officials at Berkeley expressed similar finger-wagging contempt for students who believed that the First Amendment didn't end at the gates to the campus. Out of that sprung the Free Speech Movement, the first mass protest on a college campus since the 1930s. The FSM not only helped light the fire of student activism in Berkeley and across the country, it also spawned one of the most memorable quotes to come out of the '60s as well as maybe the decade's best student speech. First, the quote. The protest was ignited when a graduate student and civil rights activist named Jack Weinberg was arrested for "illegal activity" on the campus -- the illegal activity being the manning of a CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) table on the school's plaza. After Weinberg was placed in the back of a police car, several thousand students surrounded it, beginning a bladder-busting stand-off that lasted thirty-two hours until charges against Weinberg were dropped. I visited Weinberg fifteen years ago while researching a book on the '60s. Let him tell the rest of the story:
"A few weeks after the police police car incident, the San Francisco Chronicle's education reporter, James Benet, interviewed a number of the protest leaders for a Sunday newspaper story. He started to ask me questions about what was behind the movement and I [mistakenly] thought he was fishing for quotes to back up the "communist conspiracy" theory. "…We young people were the driving force behind our own movement. I wanted to make this point as forcefully as possible. I wanted to get the reporter thinking about why people his age were incapable of giving people my age credit for our own accomplishments. To razz him I said, 'We have a saying in the movement that you can't trust anyone over thirty.' "
With that comment, the generation gap, as it came to be known, was born. I should say that although he was a pleasant host, Weinberg was clearly tired of retelling the story. "I'm proud of the many important things I did during my years as a movement activist," he told me. "It's a bit disappointing that the one event that puts me in the history books -- the one thing people ask me to comment on -- is an off-the-wall put down I once made to a reporter." Then there was the speech. Like Weinberg, Mario Savio was also a civil rights activist and grad student at Berkeley when the protest erupted , and as Weinberg sat in the back of the police cruiser, Savio climbed onto the hood and made a galvanizing speech to the crowd. But it was some two months later when negotiations failed to establish free speech on the campus that Savio led a sit-in at the campus's Sproul Hall uttered the words that made him famous (and also got him arrested):
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."
Savio died in 1996. The gears, of course, continue to turn. Here's The Nation's story on the FSM from 1964.
Have a question about any aspect of The Nation's archives or its history? Drop me a line.To be notified of new posts to this blog, follow me on twitter @jeffisme.LINK

With the revelation last night/this morning that veteran Democratic Senators Christopher Dodd (CT) and Byron Dorgan (ND) are not seeking re-election this year, the mainstream press is going wild with speculation that these retirements herald doom for the Democrats in this year's midterm elections. This is despite that fact that they are almost a year away and that six, count 'em (Bunning, Brownback, LeMieux, Bond, Gregg, and Voinovich) six, GOP senators are retiring this year as well as several other Republicans in the House. Still, a narrative is forming (and we all know how powerful political narratives can be) and if Obama and the Democrats don't get in front of this soon it could become a self-fulfilling prophesy--the pundits have decided it's 1994 all over again.
For those youngsters out there who may not remember, in November of '94 Congressional approval was at an all-time low and President Clinton's approval numbers were mired in the low 40s after his failure to pass healthcare reform. The result was a Republican landslide that dominated Congress until 2006. But 2010 can be different and in some ways it already is. The public clearly has a lot more good will in the bank for Obama, he remains close to or at 50 percent approval in most public opinion polls--despite roughly six months of consistently bad press. Healthcare reform will likely be passed by the end of this month, albeit a comprised bill, but a political and strategic victory nonetheless. In addition if the Democrats get aggressive on immigration, education and climate change (which are all on the legislative agenda for this year) and continue to rack up victories it'll be easier to contrast themselves with "The Party of No". Naturally there needs to be significant movement on jobs too by the White House and Democrats in Congress, my hunch is that 10 percent number hovers like a shadow over anything the party in power does.
True, losing Dorgan (as John Nichols writes) is a significant blow. He was a strong progressive in an undeniably right-leaning state and it will be exceedingly difficult for any other Democrat to replace him. Chris Dodd, on the other hand, despite having many virtues, was totally tainted by scandal (even Michael Moore went after him in Capitalism: A Love Story) and was likely to lose his re-election campaign. His departure, while perhaps bittersweet, clears the way for Connecticut's popular Democratic attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, to capture his seat. It seems unlikely to me that a progressive state like Connecticut would send a Republican to represent their state alongside nominal Independent Joe Lieberman.
There is no question though that even with some more legislative victories and hopefully some drop in the unemployment rate, Obama and the Democrats will face a tough fight come election time this year. Every midterm the pundits conveniently forget that historically the party in control always gets clobbered in midterms--with the recent exception of 2002, where the GOP's first stab at politicizing a terrorist attack paid off in spades. No wonder President Obama feels forced to behave like Bush on airport security. Still, the Democrats have an impressive weapon in their arsenal that they're not using quite enough. They at least have ideas. No, they may not be as progressive or strong as we'd like but at least they are putting forward a comprehensive jobs bill, a climate change bill, etc. Meanwhile, the Republicans are content to sit on their hands and block anything that has a Democrat or the president's name attached to it.
The polls show that voters believe by a significant margin that Democrats have tried harder to (and I hate to use this overused phrase) "reach across the aisle" and I think if Obama can regain his confidence and footing and starts to really wring a few more wins out of this super-majority as long as he has it, it'll really take the wind out of the GOP's sails. I know, I know, this is a lot of wishful thinking on my part--but I don't think it's time to surrender either, as disappointing as the Democratic-led Congress has been, I would hate to see what could happen to my country with Mitch McConnell and John Boehner at the helm. Not a pretty pictureLINK

She has given maximum hits in past two years and now Katrina Kaif has been voted the sexiest Asian actress by Eastern Eye. But she claims that she is just like any other working girl trying to make a living in Mumbai.
"Me? Hot and sexy? Nah. People should see me at home. I'm painfully unglamorous. Just another working girl making a living," Katrina told media.
Commenting on reports about buying a new house, she said: "I know, I've been reading about relocating my home. I admit I've looked at a few properties. But nothing seriously.”
"Though it's a little noisy on my street I'm too attached to the place I stay in. I'm also too lazy to make a move. Yes, I'll need a bigger place when my sister Isabelle joins me. But right now she's studying acting in the US. There's still time."
On the work front, she said: "It's very sweet of directors to mention my name in forthcoming projects. I feel privileged. But I haven't said yes to anything new. At the moment I've cut my workload by half because of my ill health," said the actress who recently underwent a minor surgery.LINK

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Wednesday, while criticising the government for the second time, observed that the system in the country was in jeopardy and the concept of democracy would remain shattered until fundamental rights of the citizens were ensured.

“What type of democracy do we have wherein fundamental rights of the people could not be ensured,” Justice Javed Iqbal observed while heading a three-member bench of the apex court, hearing petitions of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and others.

He said no institution is working properly, the system is on the verge of disaster and someone has to intervene to save it. When the Supreme Court tries to remove the fault, uproar is made, he added.

The court directed Asma Jehangir, counsel for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), to present a consolidated list of the missing persons within two weeks so that if the court constitutes a commission in the matter, the list could be presented before it.

The missing people are believed to have been picked up by intelligence agencies for interrogation over their alleged link to Balochistan separatists and other militant groups in the country. Their relatives claimed they were picked up by intelligence agencies but never brought before the courts.

According to the earlier list of the HRCP prepared in 2007, there were 198 people missing of which 99 were traced out while 99 were still missing.

People whose whereabouts were still unknown included 66 from Balochistan, 13 from the NWFP, 12 from Sindh, seven from the Punjab while one is a foreigner. During the hearing, JusticeJaved Iqbal in his observation said no work was being done effectively and when the court tries to point out the flaws in the system, great hue and cry is created.

The court also ordered the Karachi police chief to present a report of 28 persons, who have been missing from Karachi since 1996. One Babar Anees, brother of Syed Gohar Anees who was missing, appeared in-person before the court and said the whereabouts of his brother were still unknown.

Justice Javed Iqbal observed that the MQM has been in power in every era, how Altaf Bhai could not trace out his missing persons? He, however, said that the court would also look into the matter and would deal it on equal footings.

The court taking up the matter of one Mustafa Azam of Karachi, who was kidnapped from Karachi, summoned the inspector general of Police Frontier Corps and Major Ibrahim before the court within two weeks.

Muhammad Azam, father of Mustafa Azam, told the court that after abduction, his son Mustafa Azam was kept in a prison in Karachi, however, later on he was arrested by the Frontier Corps for his alleged involvement in a Peshawar blast some two months back.

He told the court that the IG Frontier Corps and Major Ibrahim told him that Mustafa Azam was arrested but later on released for being mentally upset. The court also directed DIG Hazara Syed Altaf Imtiaz to furnish a report regarding Attiqur Rehman, who has been missing since 2007.

Brother of six sisters, Attiqur Rehman was allegedly picked up by the secret agencies on his wedding day from Abbottabad. DIG Abbottabad, Hazara Syed Altaf Imtiaz told the court that the police handed over Attiqur Rehman to the Intelligence Bureau (IB).

At this, Justice Javed Iqbal said that even the IB was not above the law and the court would proceed against it as well. “It came to know that the previous government handed over more than 200 people to foreign countries,” the court asked Attorney General Anwar Mansoor Khan. The court adjourned the hearing in the case for two weeks.LINK

KOLKATA: At least 18 New Year's revellers, including seven children, were feared drowned after an overcrowded boat capsized in a river in eastern India, officials said on Monday.

About 29 people were on board the small boat when it capsized late on Sunday in West Bengal state's Kolaghat town, about 60 km from Kolkata, the state capital.

“Operations are on to trace bodies and chances of rescuing any more survivors looks slim,” C.D. Lama, a senior government official, said after 11 people were rescued by fishermen.LINK

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KARACHI: Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the Ashura blast is unlikely a suicide blast and culprits will be trace out soon.

Talking to media in Rangers headquarter with Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Dr. Farooq Sattar, Malik said the investigations will be completed till tomorrow. The markets were set on fire with a proper planning.

He said prime minister is concerned over Karachi situation. Some persons have been arrested after identified in the footage. Anyone involve in the target killing will not be spared. Not only MQM but PPP workers were also killed in target killing incidents, he added.

Dr. Farooq Sattar at this occasion said target killing of MQM activists is continued and two more workers were killed on the last day 2009.

He denounced the target killing incidents and said city’s peace should be retained. Land and drug mafia are behind these killings, Dr. Farooq added.LINK

Karachi's art scene presented some rich and vibrant canvases of local artists and also those coming in from other cities. Most of the art galleries remained busy mounting new shows regularly.

The many faces of art

By Mohsin S. Jaffri

At Ocean Art Gallery

A play with colours

Azra Fatimi chose to display her work at Ocean Art Gallery, Clifton, a semi commercial outlet plus an art gallery. She was displaying some 20 paintings, all in abstract made up of 'all bright and beautiful" colours. In a colour packed composition, in acrylic and with flat shapes and sizes, some canvases projected moving colours and reflected a sense of balance.

The artist, in her statement talks about society and art and the intricacies of life. She has this way of communicating with her canvases.

The exhibition was inaugurated by Syed Mahmood Hashmi, CE, Orient Advertising, very much into art and culture and social events. He not only appreciates all these happenings but at times participates and helps organise such events.

At VM Art Gallery

A cultural snapshot

This was an interesting setting and a beautiful installation. 60x60 seconds in fact gets the name from 'sixty one –minute' films made by some twenty artists and film makers from three countries. The artists from Britain, India and Pakistan, in a collaborative mood managed to get together and produced highly moving shots well thought off, filmed with the subject in mind. The films deal with the complexities of issues, cultures, migration, nationality and the dividing lines.

It was something to watch, think and try to see the inside – the meaning and depth – some abstract issues, sensual and provocative with a meaning, defining human emotions and relationship - various other issues and elements. The whole set up was deeply thought-off taking concerned aspects of life and designed and presented by artists and their sense of vision.

At KSA Art Gallery

Images conversing

Newly opened and well organised KSA Art Gallery in fact is situated within the school building where the environment is highly artistic and appreciative. This is a fine place for holding art exhibitions as it provides art within art and among artists of all calibre especially the ones learning to be one.

After a great success of "Sentiments" an exhibition based on the works of some senior artists, the second one, 'Its all about Image' an exhibition of photography. In today's world, with technology taking over our lives, it is difficult to imagine that it's the man behind a camera that can make the difference to the camera capturing images, Here, one needs to grasp the environment, the object, the central theme before an artistic image may be captured. At the same time, an image may be worked with and played around for the artists to fuse it with images in their own minds. Some seven artists, Imran Mohammad, Yawar Abbas, Kashan Ahmed, Asif Shah, Moeed Ahmed, Saleem Ansari and Amir Taj participated and received appreciation.

At Unicorn Gallery

Zest for life

Seemab Arzam Tariq exhibited his works at Unicorn Gallery. Here is an artist who mixes his words and reflects the same in his paintings. A stylist painter produces images resembling more than one thing and a style that defines lines, figures and bright colours, He dwells in abstract yet finds and produces meanings on his canvases. Although, the shapes, lines and motifs are very much intermingled, the clarity, as an overall image is obvious.

ISLAMABAD (APP) – President Asif Ali Zardari Thursday night deleted the following four laws from the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution thereby allowing the provinces to make any changes in the local government laws they deemed appropriate to suit their own peculiar needs and circumstances. The laws thus deleted from the Sixth Schedule on the eve of the New Year include (i) The Balochistan Local Government Ordinance, 2001 (XVIII of 2001), (ii) The North West Frontier Province Local Government Ordinance, 2001 (XIV of 2001) (iii), The Punjab Local Government Ordinance, 2001 (XIII of 2001) and (iv) The Sindh Local Government Ordinance, 2001 (XXVI of 2001). Spokesperson to the President former Senator Farhatullah Babar said that while signing the Order few hours before the strike of the clock the President described it as the New Year gift to the nation to further advance the process of provincial autonomy and harmony. He said that as the clock strikes tonight heralding the advent of 2010 the provinces would be free to make their own laws relating to the local bodies either through legislation or ordinances. The provinces will also be free to do whatever they liked whether to hold elections to the local bodies on the expiry of their term or appoint administrators instead to run the affairs of local government. Farhatullah Babar said that although the Local Bodies is a provincial subject, the then dictatorship had included it in the sixth schedule of the Constitution thereby barring the provincial governments from making changes in it for six years until 31st December, 2009 without the prior approval of the President. The Sixth Schedule of the Constitution states that the laws included in it cannot be changed until December 31, 2009 without prior and formal approval of the President. Although this was patent interference in the provincial autonomy and against the spirit of the 1973 Constitution and was roundly criticised by the provinces and the people, the dictatorship insisted on usurping the provinces powers to manipulate politics at the grassroots level for pursuing its own political agenda, he said.LINK