A View from Afar – In this podcast, political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning analyse the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Specifically, they examine how the invading forces of Russia are struggling against a determined and well-equipped Ukraine defence.

What can we expect next from Russia?

How can western nations sustain the sanctions regime, and is there an intensifying risk of sanctions evasion taking place?

How stable is the wider region, and how serious is the fomenting unrest among the Balkan states?

How advanced is the Eurozone in facing the reality that Russia has the advantage of cutting gas supplies as winter advances in the next few months?

How sustainable is Russia’s alliance-making effort with the Stan states, the PRC, and what the west regards as rogue states like Iran, Venezuela, DPRK, Cuba, Nicaragua?

And finally, how can Russian Federation president, Vladimir Putin survive a military stalemate?

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
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If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

After the fall of Kabul, the obvious question for New Zealanders is whether we should ever have joined the American war in Afghanistan. Labour and National politicians, who sent our Special Forces there, will say yes.

The Greens, who opposed the war from the start, will say no.

Back in 2001, we were the only party to vote against a parliamentary motion to send an SAS contingent to Afghanistan. As Green foreign affairs spokesperson during the first decade of the war I was often accused by Labour and National MPs of helping the Taliban.

By their reasoning you either supported the American war effort, or you were on the side of the Taliban.

To the contrary, I said, New Zealand was helping the Taliban by sending troops. It was handing the Taliban a major recruiting tool, that of Afghans fighting for their national honour against a foreign military force.

And so it has proved to be. The Taliban didn’t win because of the popularity of its repressive theocracy. Its ideology is deeply unpopular, particularly in the Afghan cities.

But what about the rampant corruption in the Afghan political system? Wasn’t that a big factor in the Taliban rise to power? Yes, but that corruption was enhanced by the presence of the Western forces and all the largess they were spreading around.

Both sides committed war crimes
Then there was the conduct of the war. Both sides committed war crimes, and it has been documented that our SAS handed over prisoners to probable torture by the Afghan National Directorate of Security.

Western air power helped the government side, but it was also counterproductive, as more innocent villagers were killed or wounded by air strikes.

In the end all the most sophisticated American warfighting gear couldn’t uproot a lightly armed insurgent force.

Taliban claims it will respect women’s rights, press freedom. Reported by New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis for Al Jazeera. Video: AJ English

There was another course America (and New Zealand) could have taken. Back in 2001 the Greens (and others in the international community) were pushing for a peaceful resolution whereby the Taliban would hand over Osama bin Laden to justice. The Taliban were not ruling that out.

But America was bent on revenge for the attack on the World Trade Centre, and quickly went to war. Ostensibly it was a war against terrorism, but Osama bin Laden quickly decamped to Pakistan, so it became simply a war to overthrow the Taliban government and then to stop it returning to power.

The war had this exclusively anti-Taliban character when New Zealand’s SAS force arrived in December 2001. The war would grind on for 20 years causing so much death and destruction for the Afghan people.

The peaceful way of putting pressure on the Taliban, which could have been adopted back in 2001, is similar to how the world community is likely to relate to the new Taliban government.

Pressure on the Taliban
That is, there will be considerable diplomatic and economic pressure on the Taliban to give Afghan people (particularly Afghan women) more freedom than it has to date. How successful this will be is yet to be determined.

It depends on the strength and unity of the international community. Even without much unity, international pressure is having some (if limited) effect on another strongly anti-women regime, namely Saudi Arabia.

The Labour and National governments that sent our SAS to Afghanistan cannot escape responsibility for the casualties and post-traumatic stress suffered by our soldiers. Their line of defence may be that they didn’t know it would turn out this way.

However, that is not a good argument when you look at the repeated failure of Western interventions in nearby Middle Eastern countries.

America has intervened militarily (or supported foreign intervention) in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, Somalia and Libya. All of these peoples are now worse off than they were before those interventions.

“Civilising missions”, spearheaded by the American military, are not the answer, and New Zealand shouldn’t get involved. We should have learnt that 50 years ago in Vietnam, but perhaps we’ll learn it now.

Former Green MP Keith Locke was the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson. He writes occasional pieces for Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch

An Australian federal court decision upholding the legality of the police raid on the Sydney headquarters of the national public broadcaster ABC last June has dealt a major blow to the protection of journalists’ sources and poses a grave danger for the future of public interest journalism, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

In its ruling issued on February 17, the court rejected the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s challenge to the legality of the search warrant that allowed federal police to search computers, emails and USB sticks at its headquarters on 5 June 2019.

The police were trying to identify the source for The Afghan Files reporting by ABC journalists Sam Clark and Dan Oakes in 2017 about the role of Australian special forces in the illegal killing of civilians in Afghanistan.

READ MORE: The Afghan Files: Defence leak exposes deadly secrets of Australia’s special forces

The reporters used material provided by a whistleblower within the Defence Ministry.

“If confirmed on appeal, this federal court ruling will set a disturbing legal precedent by turning investigative reporters and whistleblowers into criminals,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

“The ABC story never compromised national security and clearly served the interests of the Australian public, who have a right to reliable and independent information freely reported by journalists.

“We call on the federal judges to guarantee this right on appeal by recognising the search warrant’s illegality.”

Ruling fraught with consequences
Under the warrant, the police were authorised to search for evidence that the two journalists had “unlawfully obtained military information” and “dishonestly received stolen property”.

The supposedly stolen property was the leaked documents that exposed the illegal killings reported in The Afghan Files.

The federal police raid on ABC was all the more shocking for coming just one day after a raid on News Corp political editor Annika Smethurst’s home in Canberra. The timing of the two raids was widely seen as a deliberate attempt to intimidate investigative journalists.

The judicial precedents set by these two cases are particularly fraught with consequences inasmuch as Australia’s constitutional law contains no guarantees for press freedom.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Afghan Files … How the ABC reported a “Defence leak exposing deadly secrets of Australia’s special forces” in 2017. Image: Screen shot of ABC/PMC

By Pacific Media Watch

AN Australian police raid on public broadcaster ABC risks having a chilling effect on freedom of the press, its editorial director says.

Police officers left the ABC’s Sydney headquarters more than eight hours after a raid began over allegations it had published classified material.

It related to a series of 2017 stories known as The Afghan Files about alleged misconduct by Australian troops in Afghanistan.

READ MORE: Why the raids on Australian media present a clear threat to democracy

ABC editorial director Craig McMurtrie told RNZ Morning Report the message the raids sent to sources and whistleblowers who wanted to reveal things in the public interest was concerning.

LISTEN: ‘Chilling effect on freedom of the press’ – Morning Report

“We’re concerned obviously about a chilling effect it has on freedom of the press,” he said.

The stories, by ABC investigative journalists Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, revealed allegations of unlawful killings by Australian special forces in Afghanistan and were based on hundreds of pages of secret Defence documents leaked to the ABC.

McMurtrie said the ABC believed it had acted lawfully and stood by its reporters.

More stories:

• The Afghan Files
• Media raids raise questions of police power over journalists, whistleblowers
• ABC raid ‘chilling’ for freedom of the press, says editorial chief
• Why the raids on Australian media present a clear threat to democracy
• RSF warns Australia over ‘grave threat’ to investigative journalism
• MEAA blasts ‘disturbing assaults’ on press freedom after new ABC raid
• RSF condemns police raid on journalist’s home as ‘intimidation’
• MEAA protests over police raid on News Corp journalist’s home

• More Australian media raids stories

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

By Victor Mambor in Jayapura

Five civilians in Timika have reportedly been arrested by the newly reactivated military counter-terrorism unit for “aspiring” to West Papuan independence.

“At 10pm on Saturday June 9, Orpa Wanjomal (40) and his stepchild Polce Sugumol (31) were arrested at their home in the SP 2 [housing unit] in Timika,” United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) spokesperson Jakob Rumbiak said yesterday.

“Five hours later, at 3am in the morning, on Sunday June 10, Titus Kwalik was arrested at the SP 10.

“At the same time Julianus Dekme (31) and Alosius Ogolmagai (49) were arrested at Julianus’ house at the SP 6. The five civilians were arrested for aspiring to Papuan independence.”

Rumbiak said that the Joint Special Operations Command (Koopssusgab) was involved in the arrests. The Koopssusgab is a joint military counter-terrorism unit, which was recently reactivated in concert with revisions to the Anti-Terrorism Law, and is under the direct authority of Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

Commando unit
The commando unit, according to House of Representatives (DPR) Commission I chairperson Abdul Kharis Almasyhari, was formed to assist in dealing with terrorism under certain conditions if the national police request assistance.

-Partners-

According to Almasyhari, under the revisions to the 2003 Anti-Terrorism Law, which were enacted on May 25, there are additional regulations which make it more comprehensive, including the possibility of involving the TNI (Indonesian military) under certain conditions.

“However the Koopssusgab apparently can’t be formed yet because they don’t have a core budget yet,” said Almasyhari.

Nevertheless, the ULMWP is sure that the arrests were carried out by Koopssusgab.

“The use of the special military anti-terrorist force against West Papuan civilians is irresponsible and morally wrong”, said Rumbiak.

The West Papuan people were not terrorists, and had never carried out terrorist acts, unlike Indonesian terrorists or extremists.

The West Papuan people’s right to self-determination is guaranteed under the Indonesian Constitution, the United Nations Human Rights Charter, UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 (1960), the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights (2007) and UN General Assembly Resolution 1752 Chapters XVII and XII.

Tabloid Jubi has attempted to contact Mimika District Police Chief Assistant Superintendent Agung Marlianto via WhatsApp for clarification of the alleged arrests. As of posting this article however, Marlianto has not responded.

Translated by James Balowski for the Indoleft News Service. The original title of the article was “ULMWP: 5 warga sipil Timika ditangkap karena aspirasi Papua Merdeka”. Victor Mambor is editor of Tabloid Jubi.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Marguerite Afra Sapiie and Nurul Fitri Ramadhani in Jakarta

Indonesia’s Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko has claimed that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had expressed his consent to bringing back to life the suspended military Joint Special Operations Command (Koopsusgab) tasked with countering terrorism.

The team, which included and will again include personnel of the Army’s Special Forces (Kopassus), the Navy’s Denjaka squad and the Air Force’s Bravo 90 special force, would be put on standby and be ready to be mobilised at any time when terror threats emerged, Moeldoko said.

“This joint force was well trained and prepared in terms of its capacity, and it could be deployed anywhere on the country’s soil as fast as possible […]. Its role would be to assist the National Police,” Moeldoko said.

READ MORE: Jokowi to issue perppu if House fails to revise terror law

His statement has followed a recent string of terrorist attacks that has thrust Indonesia into a state of paranoia.

The joint force was first established under Moeldoko when he served as the Indonesian Military (TNI) commander in 2015. The special command’s operations, however, were suspended under the leadership of Moeldoko’s successor, retired General Gatot Nurmantyo.

-Partners-

Further tasks of the special command would be discussed between TNI commander Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto and National Police chief General Tito Karnavian, with the latter to have the final say on whether it needed the assistance of the TNI’s special team or not, Moeldoko said.

“This operation must be carried out for preventive purposes, so that the public can feel safe […]. We [the security apparatus] are ready to face any kind of situation, so people should put their trust in us and not worry,” he said.

Planned amendment
The revitalisation of the joint force did not require any new regulations, Moeldoko said, adding that the details about the command’s tasks would be adjusted with the planned amendment to the 2003 Terrorism Law.

The announcement came as the House of Representatives and the government began to clear up contentious articles that had caused deadlock in the deliberation of the Terrorism Law revision, including the legal definition of terrorism and the military’s level of involvement in counterterrorism operations.

A greater level of involvement has stirred debate among experts and human rights activists.

Seven ruling parties and the government had agreed on a definition of terrorism that included acts that had “political and ideological motives and threaten national security”, United Development Party (PPP) lawmaker Arsul Sani said.

More leeway
It is widely believed that such a definition would provide leeway for greater involvement of the TNI in counterterrorism efforts.

As the government and the lawmakers appear to be on the same page now, observers expect the bill to be passed into law in the near future.

Jokowi has recently said he would issue a regulation in lieu of law (Perppu) on the Terrorism Law if the House failed to conclude deliberations on the bill by June.

Members of a committee tasked with deliberating the bill said it was the leading opposition Gerindra Party and the Democratic Party, both political parties with strong military influence, that had demanded the inclusion of the contentious provisions.

“We support [the terrorism bill],” Gerindra chairman Prabowo Subianto said during his visit to the House.

Deliberation of the bill is believed to have been stalled mainly because of a tug-of-war between the TNI and the police, which led to division among political parties factions into pro-TNI and pro-police camps.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

On Saturday, 30 years ago in 1988, I smelled death for the first time – literally.

A sickening, almost suffocating, stench assaulted my nostrils in a dank cave where 21 men – 19 Kanak militants and two French military – had been killed the previous day in what lives on infamously as the “Ouvéa Island massacre” in New Caledonia.

Our feet sunk deep into the loose layer of moist loam the gendarmes had shovelled from the jungle outside onto the cave floor to cover the blood and waste of the dead.

On what we trod it was impossible to know. I dry retched.

My ABC cameraman Alain Antoine, sound recordist Stewart Palmer and I were the very first of the first group of journalists to be allowed inside the Gossannah cave complex on Ouvéa where the Kanaks had died in an assault by French Special Forces.

We’d been flown from the capital Nouméa in a French military helicopter. As we’d scrambled onto the Ouvéa tarmac we bumped into a giant Kanak prisoner sporting red shorts, yellow T shirt and manacles being led the other way by French military (pictured below).

A few days earlier on the main island I experienced for the first of many times in my career the shock of having a cocked, loaded gun pointed at me. We’d happened upon the helicopter evacuation of a French officer wounded in an ambush. He later died.

Not worth shooting
A frightened, angry adrenalin-charged soldier raced up to our car screaming and pointing his automatic weapon before being calmed by a superior who chose to believe we were civilian journalists, not rebels and not worth shooting.

They were tense days.

The Ouvéa event is still cloaked in controversy (French President Emmanuel Macron visited Ouvéa yesterday for the 30th anniversary but, under pressure from families of the dead, refrained from laying a wreath at the graves of the 19 Kanaks).

The action and its context is described by respected Pacific author David Robie in Pacific Journalism Review (2012, pp. 214-215):

“I wrote the following in my book Blood on their Banner[1989, pp. 275-278] – the “blood” being that symbolised by the Kanak flag as being shed by the martyrs of more than a century of French rule:

“Mounting tension as the French security forces were built up in New Caledonia to 9500 for the elections finally erupted on Friday, 22 April 1988, two days before the poll. Kanak militants, arguably the first real guerrilla force in the territory, seized a heavily armed Fayaoué gendarme post on Ouvéa, in the Loyalty Islands.

“Armed with machetes, axes and a handful of sporting guns hidden under their clothes, they killed four gendarmes who resisted, wounded five others and seized 27 as hostages.

“They abducted most of their prisoners to a three-tiered caved in rugged bush country near Gossanah in the north-east of the island; the rest were taken to Mouli in the south.

As almost 300 gendarmes flown to Ouvéa searched for them, the militants demanded that the regional elections be abandoned and that a mediator be flown from France to negotiate for a real referendum on self-determination under United Nations supervision. They threatened to kill their hostages if their demands were not met.

“Declaring on Radio Djiido that he was dismayed by the attack, Tjibaou blamed it on the “politics of violence” adopted by the Chirac government against the Kanak people.

“‘The [colonial] plunderers refuse to recognise their subversive lead,’ he said. ‘From the moment they stole our country, they have tried to eliminate everybody who denounces their evil deeds. It has been like that since colonialism began.’

Appeal for calm
“(French President) Mitterrand appealed for calm and a halt to spiral of violence; (Premier) Chirac condemned the ‘savage brutality’ of the attack, claiming the guerrillas were ‘probably full of drugs and alcohol’.

“The guerrillas freed 11 hostages but remained hidden in their Wadrilla cache with the others. Another hostage, who was ill, was later released.

“[French Minister for Territorial Affairs Bernard] Pons portrayed the guerrilla leader, Alphonse Dianou, as a ‘Libyan-trained religious fanatic’. In fact, he had trained at a Roman Catholic seminary in Fiji and was regarded by people who knew him as ‘a reflective man, found of books and non-violent’. He spent hours explaining to his captives why they had been seized.

“At dawn on Thursday, May 5, French military and special forces launched their attack on the Ouvéa cave and killed 19 Kanaks in what was reported by the authorities to be a fierce battle. The hostages were freed for the loss of only two French soldiers.

“If the military authorities were to be believed, their casualties were from the 11th Shock Unit of the DGSE. (This unit was formerly the Service Action squad, used to bomb the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour on 10 July 1985).

“The assault came just three days before the crucial presidential vote, and hours after three French hostages had been freed in Lebanon following the Chirac government’s reported payment of a massive ransom.

“To top it off, convicted Rainbow Warrior bomber Dominique Prieur, now pregnant, was repatriated back from Hao Atoll to France.

Massacre ‘engineered’

Leaders of the [pro-independence] FLNKS immediately challenged the official version of the attack. Léopold Jorédie issued a statement in which he questioned how the “Ouvéa massacre left 19 dead among the nationalists and no one injured” and the absence of bullet marks on the trees and empty cartridges on the ground at the site”.

Yéiwene Yéiwene insisted that at no time did the kidnappers intend to kill the hostages – ‘this whole massacre was engineered by Bernard Pons who knew very well there was never any question of killing the hostages”. Nidoish Naisseline also condemned the action:

“Pons and Chirac have behaved like assassins. I accuse them of murder. They could have avoided the butchery. They preferred to buy votes of [Nationalist Front leader] Le Pen’s friends with Kanak blood.”

The following extract sums up claims and counter claims:

According to a later report of Captain Philippe Legorjus, then GIGN leader: “Some acts of barbarity have been committed by the French military in contradiction with their military duty”. In several autopsies, it appeared that 12 of the Kanak activists had been executed and the leader of the hostage-takers, Alphonse Dianou, who was severely injured by a gunshot in the leg, had been left without medical care, and died some hours later. Prior to this report, Captain Philippe Legorjus was accused by many of the GIGN agents who took part in the operation of weaknesses in command and to have had “dangerous absences” (some even said he fled) in the final stages of the case. He was forced to resign from the GIGN after this operation, since nobody wanted him as chief and to fight under him anymore.

The military authorities have always denied the version of events given by Captain Philippe Legorjus. Following a command investigation, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Minister of Defence of the Michel Rocard government, notes that “no part of the investigation revealed that there had been summary executions”. In addition, according to some participants of the operation interviewed by Le Figaro, no shots were heard on area after the fighting ended.

Legorjus said French Premier Jacques Chirac, who was challenging Mitterrand in the French presidential elections, wanted to stage the assault. And Pons said that he had acted throughout the drama on the orders of Chirac, who believes the “separatist” movement should be outlawed.

Radio NZ on Saturday: “The two-week hostage crisis in 1988 was a turning point in the separatist campaign of the indigenous Kanaks because it ushered in reconciliation talks, which led to the 1988 Matignon Accord.

The Accord and its subsequent 1998 Noumea Accord allowed for the creation of a power-sharing collegial government and the phased and irreversible transfer of power from France to New Caledonia.”

Whatever the truth, the blood of 1988 will stain this territory for a long time yet.

Max Uechtritz is managing director of Kundu Productions Pty Ltd and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission. Photos thanks to France TV Outre-Mer and revolutionpermanente.fr

References:
Robie, D. (2012). Gossanah cave siege tragic tale of betrayal. Pacific Journalism Review,  18(2), 212-216.
Robie, D. (1989). Blood on their banner: nationalist struggles in the South Pacific (pp. 275-280). London, UK: Zed Books.

Southern Cross radio comment about the Ouvéa visit on 5 May 2018 by President Macron.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Riani Sanusi Putri in Jakarta

Indonesia’s Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) has demanded police investigate the cause of death of terrorist suspect Muhammad Jefri in Indramayu.

This is deemed important since the information about his death is unclear and appears to involve a violation of law.

“The case of Muhamad Jefri or MJ is under the authority of National Police’s counterterrorism squad Densus 88,” KontraS coordinator Yati Indriyani said at the weekend.

Jefri was arrested by Densus 88 since he was allegedly involved in a number of terrorism cases.

However, his family mentioned that his arrest was not under an official warrant. Jefri was in good health when the police took him in.

The news of his death was delivered by the police on February 15, 2018, yet he died a week prior. Yati said that this kind of treatment of terrorist suspects would spark controversy since there was no transparency and the authorities neglected human rights (HAM) parameters and the law.

“It is concerned that this will trigger, create or flourish other links of terrorist acts,” Yati said.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

United States Defence Secretary James Mattis has watched Indonesian special forces smash concrete blocks with their heads, walk barefoot across a flaming log, and drink blood from still-slithering bodies of snakes, reports New York Magazine.

The demonstration came at the end of a three-day visit to Indonesia this week that was part of Mattis’s Southeast Asian tour.

His next stop is Vietnam, where authorities will have trouble following this act, writes Adam K. Raymond.

After several days of meetings, Mattis was apparently ready for the show yesterday.

“The snakes! Did you see them tire them out and then grab them? The way they were whipping them around — a snake gets tired very quickly,” the man known as “Mad Dog” told reporters.

‘Mission Impossible’
The press traveling with the retired US Marine Corps general was only expecting a hostage rescue drill, Reuters reports, but the Indonesians delivered much more:

Wearing a hood to blind him, one knife-wielding Indonesian soldier slashed away at a cucumber sticking out of his colleague’s mouth, coming just inches from striking his nose with the long blade. …

-Partners-

At the end of the demonstration, to the tune of the movie “Mission Impossible,” the Indonesian forces carried out a hostage rescue operation, deploying stealthily from helicopters – with police dogs. The dogs intercepted the gunman.

“Even the dogs coming out of those helicopters knew what to do,” Mattis said after the show.

A Washington Post video clip of the Indonesian special forces event.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz