News Digest: ICLMG on ditching national security + 20 ans de guerre au terrorisme; The Costs and Legacy of the War on Terror; CSIS lied to the courts, again; Mazigh calls for a public inquiry into Canada's role in Afghanistan & more

International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

September 11, 2021

ICLMG: Five reasons to ditch anti-terrorism and national security

rabble.ca 10/09/2021 - Since September 11, 2001, civil liberties, human rights and anti-racism groups have been raising alarm bells over the impacts of anti-terrorism and national security laws, so much so that it may feel like old news. While the threat to civil liberties has only grown over the last 20 years, recent events have led to renewed concern: the push for the adoption of new domestic terrorism laws in the United States, the expansion of the Terrorist Entities List in Canada, the ever-growing definition of "national security," and endless increases to the powers and resources of national security agencies.

Governments attempt to justify their actions in the name of "security," but none actually go to the root causes of the violence they purport to address. What we need is to shift away from national security -- the preservation of the sovereignty and thus the power of the state -- towards human safety -- the condition of individuals being empowered and free from want and harm. The concept of "law and order" -- and later "national security" -- have been used on this territory now called Canada since European settlers decided that this land was theirs and needed to be secured from Indigenous Peoples, who were in the way of their colonial project. The RCMP was created -- then as the North West Mounted Police -- in large part as a paramilitary force to surveil, control, and displace Indigenous people; a role they are still playing to this day, prompting calls to abolish the RCMP.

Concerns around "national security" in Canada have led to:

The internment in camps of several groups during the First and Second World Wars;
The witch-hunt against homosexual public servants and military personnel from the 1950s through the early 1990s;
The targeting of Quebec separatists, communists, anti-poverty activists and labour organizers in the 1960s and 70s;
The separation of migrant and asylum-seeking families at the U.S.-Canada border;
The indefinite detention of migrants and refugees from the Global South;
The targeting and branding of Muslims (and people perceived as Muslims) as terrorists;
Entrapment by the RCMP of vulnerable individuals; and
The surveillance, harassment and detention of organizers and protesters, including Indigenous land defenders and their allies, climate justice groups and activists, anti-war, anti-globalization and anarchist groups, and even journalists.

This is only in Canada. Furthermore, as the climate crisis and COVID-19 pandemic have worsened, calls have grown to label both as "national security" threats. Some of those who have called for urgent action to address these emergencies have noticed the disproportionate amount of attention and resources poured into national security agencies and issues. They hope that the inclusion of the climate crisis and the pandemic as "national security threats" would lead to similarly serious responses. We can certainly understand the logic of seeing the existential threats to humanity that are the climate crisis and the pandemic, as well as the tensions between people resulting from their mismanagement by our governments as security issues. However, not only is the national security apparatus ill-equipped to deal with ecological and human health, but giving more resources to national security agencies will simply lead to more of the same abuses outlined above.

The words "terrorism" and "threats to national security" are powerful. Thanks to years of relentless fearmongering from governments and the media, they elicit automatic condemnation of whomever is stamped with those labels. As a result, these labels have become a very effective tool for the state (and other actors) to discredit and/or repress any group, movement or person -- especially people who challenge the status quo, oppose government policies and actions, and fight for collective liberation. How do we fix this? By getting rid of the word "terrorism," as well as anti-terror laws and tools, and by replacing "national security" and its apparatus with policies and actions that foster human safety.

Why not just reform our anti-terror laws and national security apparatus to fix its abuses and the erosion of civil liberties? Here are five reasons:

1. "Terrorism" and "national security" are easily malleable

2. The myth of the Muslim 'terrorist'

3. Diversion from states' monopoly on violence

4. Targeting Indigenous land defenders and environmental activists

5. National security cannot ensure human safety Read more - Lire plus

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20 ans depuis les attentats du 11 septembre 2001: Quels impacts sur l'état de droit?

La Ligue des Droits et Libertés 09/09/2021 - Le 11 septembre 2001. Une date fatidique qui a changé nos sociétés profondément. S’il est bien un événement qui démontre que la peur peut justifier toutes sortes de dérives liberticides et discriminatoires, c’est bien celui-là.

Panélistes :

✦ Silviana Cocan, chargée de cours et chercheuse postdoctorale à la Faculté de droit de l’Université de Montréal

✦ Stéphane Leman-Langlois, professeur titulaire de criminologie, École de travail social et de criminologie de l'Université Laval

✦ Tim McSorley, coordonnateur national de la Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles (CSILC) Visionnez la conférence - Watch the conference

Over Two Decades, U.S.'s Global War on Terror Has Taken Nearly 1 Million Lives and Cost $8 Trillion

The Intercept 01/09/2021 - The U.S.-led global war on terror has killed nearly 1 million people globally and cost more than $8 trillion since it began two decades ago. These staggering figures come from a landmark report issued Wednesday by Brown University’s Costs of War Project, an ongoing research effort to document the economic and human impact of post-9/11 military operations. The report — which looks at the tolls of wars waged in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and other regions where the U.S. is militarily engaged — is the latest in a series published by the Costs of War Project and provides the most extensive public accounting to date of the consequences of open-ended U.S. conflicts in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, referred to today as the “forever wars.”

“It’s critical we properly account for the vast and varied consequences of the many U.S. wars and counterterror operations since 9/11, as we pause and reflect on all of the lives lost,” said the project’s co-director, Neta Crawford, in a press release accompanying the report. “Our accounting goes beyond the Pentagon’s numbers because the costs of the reaction to 9/11 have rippled through the entire budget.” The staggering economic costs of the war on terror pale in comparison to the direct human impact, measured in people killed, wounded, and driven from their homes. The Costs of War Project’s latest estimates hold that 897,000 to 929,000 people have been killed during the wars. Of those killed, 387,000 are categorized as civilians, 207,000 as members of national military and police forces, and a further 301,000 as opposition fighters killed by U.S.-led coalition troops and their allies. The report also found that around 15,000 U.S. military service members and contractors have been killed in the wars, along with a similar number of allied Western troops deployed to the conflicts and several hundred journalists and humanitarian aid workers.

The question of how many people have lost their lives in the post-9/11 conflicts has been the subject of ongoing debate, though the numbers in all cases have been extraordinarily high. Previous Costs of War studies have put death toll figures in the hundreds of thousands, an estimate tallying those directly killed by violence. According to a 2015 estimate from the Nobel Prize-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility, well over 1 million have been killed both indirectly and directly in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone. The difficulty of calculating death tolls is made harder by the U.S. military’s own refusal to keep track of the number of people killed in its operations, as well as the remoteness of the regions where many of the conflicts take place. Like its previous studies, the death toll calculated by the Costs of War Project focuses only on deaths directly caused by violence during the global war on terror and does not include “indirect deaths, namely those caused by loss of access to food, water, and/or infrastructure, war-related disease” that have resulted from the conflicts. The report’s footnotes also state that “some of the people classified as opposition fighters may actually have been civilians as well, since there are political incentives to classify the dead as militants rather than civilians” — a caveat that dovetails with the U.S. government’s own confessed practice of labeling any “military-age males” killed in its operations as combatants unless proved otherwise.

Such practices have continued across multiple administrations. A recent investigation from the military-focused news site Connecting Vets included leaked video and accounts from the 2019 drone campaign in Helmand province in Afghanistan. The story included testimony from former drone operators who said that they had been given the green light to kill anyone seen holding a walkie-talkie or wearing a tactical vest in the province, which had poor security and lacked reliable cell phone service. For some U.S. officials licensed to authorize drone strikes, frustrated by their inability to achieve strategic victory or even favorable negotiating terms with the Taliban, the “metric for success was racking up a body count.” The Costs of War Project report states that its findings about deaths in the wars are conservative, leaving many still uncounted. Although nearly 1 million people can be said with confidence to have been killed since the global war on terror began, even that staggering figure is, in the words of Crawford, the project co-director, “likely a vast undercount of the true toll these wars have taken on human life.” Read more - Lire plus

“Humane”: Yale Historian Samuel Moyn on “How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War”

Empire, Islamophobia and the War on Terror

Transational Institute 01/09/2021 - In this fascinating conversation, Arun Kundnani interviews Deepa Kumar who traces the longer historical and racist roots of the War on Terror that in the last 20 years has killed at least one million people.

They discuss how Arab and Muslim communities were racialised and targeted well before 9/11 and what interests this dehumanisation served. Deepa Kumar is the author of the recently published book, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: Twenty Years after 9/11. Arun Kundnani is a TNI associate and author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror. Read more - Lire plus

Michael Harris: Canada’s Islamophobia: Deep. Deadly. Growing.

ICYMI: ICLMG's Brief: National Security and Islamophobia in Canada

ICYMI: Watch the ‘Islamophobia is’ Video Series

ICYMI: ICLMG's list of resources against Islamophobia

The domestic legacy of our global 'war on terror'

The Hill 03/09/2021 - Less than two months after the attacks, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act, which expanded the government’s domestic surveillance powers, including the power to review information about people that is held by third parties. It also weakened Fourth Amendment protections related to “trap and trace” searches, in which incoming phone calls to a person are recorded. In addition, President George W. Bush issued an order to ease the constraints imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on the National Security Agency (NSA). This allowed the agency to execute warrantless searches of American citizens’ emails and phone calls.

After several reauthorizations, key provisions of the PATRIOT Act expired in March 2020. However, its spirit is alive and well. The underlying surveillance apparatus, which was expansive even before 9/11, is still in place. And many surveillance activities and programs outside of the PATRIOT Act still exist in expanded form and will be with us for the foreseeable future. A second domestic legacy of the war on terror is the militarization of domestic police forces. According to one estimate, since 9/11, the Department of Defense has transferred $1.6 billion worth of equipment to law enforcement agencies — for items like mine-resistant vehicles, machine guns, grenade launchers and military aircraft. Domestic police departments have also obtained “stingrays,” or “cell site simulators,” which can be used to make cell phones transmit information, such as location and other identifiers. Originally developed for military and intelligence use abroad, these devices are now used by local law enforcement, which can spy on people in the United States with little to no oversight.

A final domestic legacy of the war on terror is civil asset forfeiture, which allows the police to seize assets from anyone suspected of illegal activity, but without having to charge them with a crime. The PATRIOT Act weakened earlier protections against forfeiture abuse, making it easier for the government to seize the property of anyone suspected of being associated with terrorist activity. Once property is seized, owners who want it back have the onus of demonstrating innocence. Further compounding this perverse system is the arrangement in which state and federal authorities share the proceeds from the sale of seized assets. Law enforcement thus has an incentive to take property assets, since the evidentiary bar is low and the benefits are high.

These expanded government powers impose high costs on many innocent people. The hardest hit are people who lack the money and time to fight back through the courts.

The famous sociologist William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) once observed that, “it is not possible to experiment with a society and just drop the experiment whenever we choose. The experiment enters into the life of society and never can be got out again.” This is certainly the case with the post-9/11 expansions of government powers. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020, there were protests against police brutality throughout the country. Protestors were monitored through aerial surveillance, and a range of military-grade equipment was deployed. More recently, since the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, there have been calls for a new war on domestic terror. Perhaps the lasting legacy of the war on terror is the expansion and entrenchment of government power over the lives of Americans. Read more - Lire plus

How U.S. Wars Abroad Are Intimately Tied to Police Brutality at Home

The Transnational Institute: An ignoble end to counter-terrorism

National security edges out human rights: 9/11's enduring legacy

The Continuing Horror of CIA’s Torture and Abuse

Canada’s spy service once again admonished by court over duty of candour

Canadian Press 01/09/2021 - A federal judge blames "institutional and systemic negligence" for the latest instance of Canada's spy service failing to be sufficiently forthcoming about applications for judicial warrants to conduct investigations. In a decision made public Tuesday in redacted form, Federal Court Justice Henry Brown said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service breached the duty of candour it owed to the court in certain October 2018 warrant applications.

The spy service had applied for several warrants to intercept the communications of a "group of individuals" deemed a threat to the security of Canada, the specifics of which were excised from the public version of the ruling. Brown found that CSIS failed to disclose that human source information relied upon to obtain the warrants might have flowed from potentially illegal activities. He also criticized the spy service for not revealing information that had the potential to reflect adversely on the reliability and credibility of the human sources. Even so, the judge concluded that the newly available information did not justify setting the warrants aside. The decision is the latest of several in recent years where the court has admonished CSIS for not disclosing important information when applying for warrants. A similar Federal Court ruling released in July 2020 said CSIS had failed to disclose its reliance on information that was probably collected illegally in support of warrants to probe extremism.

"The circumstances raise fundamental questions relating to respect for the rule of law, the oversight of security intelligence activities and the actions of individual decision-makers," Justice Patrick Gleeson wrote in that case. Gleeson called for an in-depth look at interactions between CSIS and the federal Justice Department to fully identify systemic, governance and cultural shortcomings and failures. The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, the main watchdog over CSIS, is examining the issues. Another review, completed by former deputy minister of justice Morris Rosenberg, called for improvements, including better training and clarification of roles, but stressed that they would not succeed unless the "cultural issues around warrants" were addressed. Read more - Lire plus

Mazigh: We need a public inquiry into Canada's presence in Afghanistan

rabble.ca 26/08/2021 - We need a public inquiry about the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. A decade ago, if I had made such a request, I would have been simply brushed aside as a traitor. As a Canadian Muslim, I would have likely been branded a double traitor. First, as a traitor for not standing with our troops. Second, as a traitor for siding with my "Muslim" roots and putting our national interests in danger. I am not victimizing myself or creating any particular drama.

In 2005, the late Jack Layton was called "Taliban Jack" by politicians and media commentators when he courageously stood up in the House of Commons asking his political opponents to negotiate a peaceful solution to get out from the murky and slippery mission the Canadian government had engulfed itself in. Back then, the Taliban were already showing signs of resistance, but nobody was ready to listen to the facts on the ground. Our blind support of a purely American decision' the militaristic adventure; the deals signed with big arms firms were paying off more than any political courage. The Canadian mission in Afghanistan, the second largest Canadian military deployment since the Second World War, was conducted from its start with empty words like those used in a motion issued in Parliament by Joe Clark, former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party: to "defend freedom and democracy." [...]

A majority of Canadian politicians, military commanders and media commentators kept misleading Canadians about the legitimacy and the prospects of winning this war. Former prime minister Jean Chrétien, speaking about the Canadian mission on October 7, 2001, pompously proclaimed "I can promise it will be won!" without even having any vote or debate about the mission. Then there were the endless efforts led by former prime minister Stephen Harper and his close advisors in 2008 to overcome Stéphane Dion's staunch opposition to extending the mission, as the then-Liberal leader highlighted the mistakes that had already been made. [...]

Over 20 years, Canada spent an estimated $20 billion on the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. The war took the lives of 158 Canadian soldiers, wounded and injured more than 2,000 others. In Afghanistan, the toll of death and destruction is higher by far. It is estimated that 66,000 Afghan forces were killed; an additional 47,245 were killed among the civilians and 51,191 were killed among the Taliban and opposition forces. Now, imagine for a second if this money had been invested at home, in schools, in hospitals, in social housing, without the media and some politicians screaming and denouncing it as a socialist or a communist takeover. Imagine if we made a more courageous and wiser decision and decided to invest a billion dollars per year in our healthcare system, in our research centres in universities or in building affordable housing.

For example, last April, the federal budget promised $2.4 billion over five years, beginning with nearly $1.8 billion this fiscal year, for affordable housing. Unfortunately, this is too little and too late. A report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer has indicated that the number of Canadian households in need of an affordable place to live will increase to about 1.8 million within five years unless more funding flows toward the problem. During this election time, I don't understand how we keep giving our politicians a pass for this failed Canadian mission. Many politicians failed us. They made us believe that they had no other choice than to join a supposedly "winnable" war. They ended up losing the war and their credibility. Let's ask for a public inquiry into the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. Let's ask for truth and justice. Read more - Lire plus

Rep. Barbara Lee, Who Cast Sole Vote After 9/11 Against “Forever Wars,” on Need for Afghan War Inquiry

“An Inquiry Needs to Take Place”: Jeremy Corbyn on Afghanistan & Preventing the Next War

Lettre ouverte: Vingt années d’une guerre destructrice

Collectif Échec à la guerre 28/08/2021 - Le retour au pouvoir des talibans en Afghanistan et l’évacuation en catastrophe des Occidentaux ont beaucoup retenu l’attention des médias ces derniers jours. S’il y a lieu de s’inquiéter du sort des femmes dont les droits avaient progressé dans les centres urbains sous l’occupation étrangère, il est déplorable de constater, encore une fois, l’instrumentalisation de ces droits pour tenter de laver plus blanc que blanc une guerre de 20 ans dont les effets ont été catastrophiques. Dénonçant fortement, dès 2001, cette « guerre contre le terrorisme » et ses prétendus objectifs de promotion des droits humains et de la démocratie, le mouvement citoyen anti-guerre avait anticipé la débandade actuelle.

Les objectifs de la guerre en Afghanistan n’ont jamais été la démocratie, l’éducation ou l’égalité. Au Canada, le chef d’état-major de la Défense Rick Hillier était déjà très clair là-dessus en 2005, lui qui se réjouissait que l’armée canadienne puisse enfin y jouer son vrai rôle : celui de pourchasser « ces ordures et ces assassins détestables » et « d’être prête à tuer des gens ». La guerre en Afghanistan a marqué le lancement de la « guerre contre le terrorisme », qui a semé la mort, la terreur et la destruction non seulement en Afghanistan mais aussi en Irak, en Syrie et au Yémen. Selon le projet Costs of War du Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs de l’Université Brown, environ 241 000 civils et combattants ont été tués dans les zones de guerre en Afghanistan et au Pakistan depuis 2001, dont 71 000 civils. [...]

La « guerre contre le terrorisme » s’est aussi caractérisée par un ensemble de sites d’emprisonnement et de torture : Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, de même que plusieurs sites secrets de la CIA (notamment en Pologne, en Roumanie, en Lithuanie, en Thaïlande et au Maroc) [...] Rien de tout cela ne nous est rappelé alors que les grands médias occidentaux zooment tous sur le chaos à l’aéroport de Kaboul et pérorent sur les droits des femmes afghanes et notre prétendue responsabilité morale à cet égard. Lire plus - Read more

Was Afghanistan the First “Feminist War”? Examining the Role of “White Feminism” in the Longest U.S. War

U.S. Winds Down Afghanistan Occupation Like It Began, with Drone Strikes & Civilian Casualties

DemocracyNow! 30/08/2021 - U.S. troops in Afghanistan are racing to evacuate people from the country ahead of Tuesday’s withdrawal deadline as the Kabul airport is targeted by rocket fire from militant groups. The rocket attacks come just days after over 175 people, including 13 U.S. troops, died after a suicide bomb outside the airport, with the group ISIS-K claiming responsibility for the attack.

The Pentagon has publicly acknowledged that some of the people killed outside the airport on Thursday may have been shot dead by U.S. servicemembers in the panic after the suicide bombing. The U.S. retaliated over the weekend with two airstrikes the Pentagon says targeted more potential suicide bombers, but local residents say the strikes also killed Afghan civilians, including as many as six children. “We see how the war on terror in Afghanistan started and how it is ending now: It’s with drones and civilian casualties,” says Emran Feroz, an Austro-Afghan journalist and author. He says the U.S. airstrikes in the final days of the war — and the innocent people they killed — are emblematic of the entire 20-year conflict. “In many rural areas, these things happened on a daily basis,” says Feroz. Read more - Lire plus

New Documentary Series: “Turning Point”: Legacy of the U.S. Response to 9/11 Is Terror, Domestic Surveillance & Drones

Peace Activist Kathy Kelly on Reparations for Afghanistan & What the U.S. Owes After Decades of War

DemocracyNow! 31/08/2021 - As the United States ends its military presence in Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation and war, the Costs of War Project estimates it spent over $2.2 trillion in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and by one count, over 170,000 people died during the fighting over the last two decades. Kathy Kelly, longtime peace activist who has traveled to Afghanistan dozens of times and coordinates the Ban Killer Drones campaign, says it will be important to keep international focus on the people of Afghanistan. “Everybody in the United States and in every country that has invaded and occupied Afghanistan ought to make reparations,” Kelly says. “Not only financial reparations for the terrible destruction caused, but also to address … the systems of warfare that ought to be set aside and dismantled.” [...]

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Biden had political courage in pulling out, to the extent that they have, publicly, the last U.S. troop, the photograph sent out by the Pentagon, by the general getting on the last transport carrier and leaving?

KATHY KELLY: I think had President Biden said that he was also going to go up against the United States Air Force request for $10 billion to enable over-the-horizon attacks, that would have been the kind of political courage that we need to see. We need a president who will stand up to the military contracting companies that make billions by marketing their weapons, and say, “We’re done with all of it.” That’s the kind of political courage we need.

AMY GOODMAN: And the over-horizon attacks, for people who are not familiar with this term, what it means, how the U.S. is set up to attack Afghanistan now from outside?

KATHY KELLY: Well, the $10 billion that the U.S. Air Force requested will go to maintaining both drone surveillance and attack drone capacity and manned aircraft capacity in Kuwait, in the United Arab Emirates, in Qatar and in an aircraft and the middle of the ocean. And so, this will always make it possible for the United States to continue to attack, often people who aren’t the intended victims, and also to say to every other country in the region, “We are still here.”

AMY GOODMAN: We thank you, Kathy, so much for being with us. Ten seconds on reparations. What would it look like, when you say the U.S. owes reparations to the people of Afghanistan?

KATHY KELLY: A massive amount of money put in by the U.S. and all the NATO countries into perhaps an escrow account, that would not be under the guidance or the distribution of the United States. The United States has already shown that it can’t do that without corruption and failure. But I think we would have to look to the U.N. and groups that have a reputation for being able to truly assist people in Afghanistan, and then reparations through dismantling the war system. Read more - Lire plus

Biden Defends Ending “Forever War” in Afghanistan & Criticizes Using War as Tool for Nation-Building

A CIA Drone Analyst Apologizes to the People of Afghanistan

I Fought in Afghanistan — And Want to Stop Similar Wars Before They Start

US Expects to Admit More Than 50,000 Evacuated Afghans

9/9 and 9/11, 20 years later: We may never know the full contours of the whole riddle inside an enigma when it comes to 9/11 and related issues

'What are they hiding?' 9/11 families fight for U.S. documents (podcast)

“9/11’s Unsettled Dust”: Bush’s EPA Hid Health Risks from Toxic Dust at Ground Zero & Thousands Died

Taliban’s Victory In Afghanistan Mustn’t Prevent Closure Of Guantánamo – OpEd

Eurasiareview 03/09/2021 - As the final US troops left Afghanistan two weeks ago, and the Taliban rolled into Kabul, taking the Presidential Palace on August 15 after President Ashraf Ghani fled, the presence of one particular Taliban member — Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir — caught the attention of the western media, when he declared that he had been held at Guantánamo for eight years. Guantánamo: the mere mention of the word, from the mouth of a conquering Talib, standing in the very place so recently occupied by the US-backed president, reinvigorated the right-wingers in Congress, and in the US media, who had been worried that President Biden might finally close their beloved gulag once and for all. [...]

The cynical reports about the Taliban and Guantánamo fail to take into account that, of the 39 men still held at Guantánamo, only two are Afghans, and neither were members of the Taliban. One, Asadullah Haroon Gul, should have been released after the first peace deal was agreed in 2016, between the Afghan government and HIG (Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin), a militia led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had been prominent in the campaign against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. However, the US Justice Department, shamefully, continues to maintain that it can continue to hold him because of spurious Al-Qaeda connections.

The second Afghan still held is Muhammad Rahim, who allegedly worked with Al-Qaeda, although he, like Gul, has never been charged with a crime. The current hysteria is undoubtedly intended to foment renewed opposition to the release of any prisoners from Guantánamo, whether Afghans or otherwise, but President Biden needs to stand firm when it comes to the growing recognition, across the US establishment, that it is unacceptable, with the 20th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo approaching, and now with the end of the US presence in Afghanistan, to continue holding forever men who have not been and never will be charged with a crime. [...]

Last week, under the heading “The Taliban’s Rise Is Complicating Biden’s Efforts To Close Guantánamo’s Prison,” NPR spoke to lawyers who feared complications, but who were adamant that no rationale exists for serious obstacles being raised to delay or prevent the prison’s closure. Alka Pradhan, part of the defense team for one of the prisoners in the long-delayed 9/11 trial, who previously represented other prisoners as part of Reprieve, said, “Every guy I have represented just wants to get as far away from the United States’ reach as they can. They want to go away, live quietly. They never want to be incarcerated again. So the idea that they’d leave Guantánamo after 20 years [and] want to go to Afghanistan to that kind of chaos — it’s just psychologically not where any of them are.” And Candace Gorman, who represents one of the men still held, said of Biden, “If he stands firm that what he did with moving out of fghanistan was right, he should stand firm that closing Guantánamo is also the right thing.” I couldn’t agree more. Read more - Lire plus

CIA Torture Cover-Up Still Looms Over 9/11 Trials at Guantánamo

The U.S. Has Held Me For 19 Years Without A Charge. I Have Just One Chance To Be Freed.

A Former Guantánamo Detainee Shares His Story

Carol Rosenberg: Trial Guide: The Sept. 11 Case at Guantánamo Bay

Proceedings in 9/11 Case Resume, and Then Are Delayed Again

No chance of a fair trial for Indonesian and Malaysian inmates held for 18 years in Guantanamo, defence lawyers say

Just Security: There is a way to close Guantanamo

Gitmo’s Forgotten Ex-Detainees

Guantanamo Bay explained in maps and charts

‘Blacklisting’ terrorist groups: the post-9/11 strategy that only serves to prolong wars

The Guardian 09/09/2021 - In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States spearheaded an international campaign to contain the threat from militant groups, like al-Qaida, by encouraging states to blacklist “terrorist” groups. Perhaps the most significant part of this effort was the passing of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373 (UNSC 1373), on 28 September 2001. Twenty years later, the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan is just one example of how this heavy-handed anti-terror strategy failed.

The global blacklisting regime has not only failed to contain the Taliban but it has also made it harder to end wars across the globe. Resolution 1373 encouraged member states to set up their own blacklists to sanction the support of terror groups. But in the absence of a UN definition of what actually constitutes “terrorism”, the resolution led to states identifying suspects in light of their own national interests. Beyond al-Qaida and the Taliban, armed groups as diverse as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the Communist Party of Nepal, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey, the Communist Party of the Philippines and Hamas in Palestine were listed as terrorists.

States had been designating terror groups for decades, of course, but being labelled as such took on a whole different meaning following 9/11. UNSC 1373 was the first legally binding UN security council resolution to address international terrorism as a global phenomenon with no reference to a particular state or region, imposing a blanket mandatory sanctions regime on all terrorists. It was also the first time the right to self-defence had been invoked in the context of violence by a non-state actor.

Ultimately, the resolution furthered the sense that one side in conflicts – the non-state actor – is illegitimate and violent, and the other side – the state – is legitimate and should be unquestionably supported in its fight against “terrorists”. [...]

And while before 9/11 the argument could be made that particular non-state armed groups should be considered as insurgents, or fighting for self-determination, today they are all just “terrorists”. This includes social and political organisations with no links to violent actions, as seen in Spain’s Basque country, where youth and cultural associations have been blacklisted, and more recently in the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte pushed through a controversial anti-terrorism bill allowing even the mildest government critics to be labelled as such. In Egypt today human rights defenders, academics and even business owners are routinely accused of being part of terrorist organisations.

The terrorist tag is no longer just a label used by belligerents against each other; the whole international community has been standing behind this label for 20 years, with clear implications. Armed conflicts have been reshaped globally, pushing politics underground and raising the entry cost for dialogue and negotiations. It has encouraged a blunt-edged, security-oriented approach that allows little space to tackle the root causes of violence and has even lent targeted groups credibility as resistance movements. [...] The anti-terror blacklisting mindset has also made international policy lose sight of a cental conflict dynamic: state violence. Western governments and international organisations have found themselves aligned with and supporting dubious military and policing strategies, often accompanied by human rights violations, in the name of combating blacklisted groups. Accordingly, they end up pouring more fuel on the fire of such conflicts.

It is time to change this failed policy of blacklisting, which merges the actor and the act of terrorism. Instead of listing non-state armed groups, international policy should focus on criminalising the acts instead – both those of armed groups and those of the state. By doing this, and rejecting the go-to solution of dehumanising all groups and their supporters as “terrorists”, change – and thus peace – is put within closer reach. Read more - Lire plus

How 9/11 helped China wage its own false ‘war on terror’

Al Jazeera 08/09/2021 - Over the past two decades, the crisis in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has drastically worsened. This has much to do with the major expansion after 2001 of repressive measures directed at suppressing dissent among Uighurs, dressed in the rhetoric of anti-terrorism. Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States launched the global “war on terror”, which supported efforts in other countries to dismantle terror organisations. It is following these events that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) defined Uighur resistance as part of the worldwide “terrorism” emergency and not as a local issue of “separatism” as it used to in the past.

This definition was directly validated by the US government when it classified the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an obscure armed group operating in Afghanistan, as a “terrorist organisation” and imprisoned Uighurs in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Thus America’s “war on terror” helped China launch a massive crackdown on the Uighur population, which has gone as far as the imprisonment of 1 million ethnic Uighurs in a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy”, according to the United Nations.

For centuries, Uighurs have been living in the region alternately known as Altishahr, East Turkestan, or Xinjiang. In 1759, they came under the rule of the Qing Empire, which called their homeland the “New Territory” (Xinjiang). Despite several rebellions in the early 20th century, the province remained part of China and, in 1955, it was granted autonomy by CCP leader Mao Zedong.

In the following decades, economic and material investment in the region raised the standard of living and provided some advantages for its non-Han inhabitants, but these services came at a cost. Increasing Han migration displaced Uyghurs from their indigenous lands and started causing tensions. It is these changing social dynamics that set the scene for unrest in Xinjiang, not a religious drive to wage “jihad” as has been claimed. Thus, in the late 20th century, ethnic tensions in the province were rooted in Uighur concerns over self-governance, cultural preservation, educational opportunities, or labour and health issues.

The disparities between Han immigrants and Indigenous people played a significant role in fuelling separatist sentiments and movements in the region. Uighurs had legitimate concerns about their sovereignty and freedoms but had little power to enact change. Often local demonstrations against government policies were suppressed, with state violence intensifying after the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Throughout the 1990s both local and transnational movements calling for Uighur independence were established, most notably the East Turkestan Information Center and the World Uyghur Youth Congress. [...]

The CCP’s conflation of Uighur dissent and demands for rights and freedoms with “Islamic fundamentalism” and “terrorism” reflects the logic of the US “war on terror”, which automatically equates Muslim political activity with terrorism. In the past few years, the plight of the Uighurs finally attracted international sympathy, especially after revelations about the abhorrent conditions Uighur detainees face in internment camps. In 2020, the US finally removed the ETIM’s designation as a “terrorist organisation” and went as far as declaring suppression of Uighurs a genocide. This, however, cannot erase the key role the US government played in leading international acceptance of Beijing’s repressive measures against the community. The US “war on terror” has been truly devastating for millions of Muslims, who have had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, including Uighurs. Read more - Lire plus

'I'm Part of Something That's Really Evil': Podcast

The New York Times 09/09/2021 - The soty of Terry Albury, an F.B.I. agent so disillusioned by the war on terror that he was willing too leak classified documents. In the days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States announced a wide-ranging war on terror. For the F.B.I., everything changed in an instant: The agency went from a focus on law enforcement to a focus on intelligence.

Terry Albury joined the bureau just before the attacks, drawn in by its work fighting child exploitation. His role quickly changed after 9/11 however, and he subsequently spent over a decade working in counterterrorism. Around 2015, he began to deeply question his work. “I came home one day and looked in the mirror,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Who are you?’” “This is not what I joined the F.B.I. to do.” His disillusionment about the bureau’s workings led him to leak classified information to journalists. Today, we hear his story. Read more - Lire plus

Article & podcast: 'I Helped Destroy People' the story of Terry Albury

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism

ReliefWeb 01/09/2021 - The Special Rapporteur stresses the need for the alignment of counter-terrorism capacity-building and technical assistance with sustained efforts to increase rule of law effectiveness, sustainable development priorities, anti-corruption measures, accountable institutional structures and the alignment of such priorities with existing development goals and processes. She identifies a pervasive failure to ensure that capacity-building and technical assistance is owned by a wide and diverse variety of stakeholders, including civil society at the national level. Civil society participation in and civilian oversight of the security sector is essential to prevent terrorism effectively.

She decries a supply-driven, consumer request model of counter-terrorism capacity-building and technical assistance whose rationales are often far removed from genuine engagement with the conditions conducive to terrorism and lie in regime survival, parasitic co-option of security resources and funds and self-interest from security sectors. She cautions United Nations entities engaged in counter-terrorism capacity-building and technical assistance that their due diligence obligations must be observed rigorously and that they cannot be complicit in strengthening systems of coercion and violence in the name of countering terrorism or preventing (violent) extremism. Counter-terrorism capacity-building and technical assistance practices are in dire need of transparency, accountability and overhaul to be both effective and human rights compliant. Read more - Lire plus

Why encryption is important: 10 facts to counter the myths

AccessNow 31/08/2021 - Fact #1: Strong encryption is essential for internet security

Fact #2: Giving law enforcement exceptional access threatens human rights and democracy

Fact #3: Strong encryption strengthens privacy and security

Fact #4: Law enforcement has entered the golden age of surveillance — without breaking encryption

Fact #5: Backdoors to encrypted systems will not stop criminals and terrorists from using strong encryption

Fact #6: Strong encryption contributes to children’s safety online

Fact #7: Mandating “traceability” will risk privacy and chill free expression

Fact #8: Strong encryption is crucial for cybersecurity and protects national security

Fact #9: Strong encryption maintains trust in the digital ecosystem and supports economic growth

Fact #10: Law enforcement and intelligence agencies don’t have to break encryption to investigate crime Read more - Lire plus

ACTIONS & EVENTS

NEW Outreach to Canadian Parliamentarians: Actions You Can Take

This message is a follow-up to the Justice for Hassan Diab Support Committee Campaign for Outreach to Canadian Parliamentarians.

The September 20 Federal election in Canada gives us a chance to let politicians know that Hassan Diab’s case is important to us. Here is a list of some ways to do that:

1) Suggested questions to ask parliamentarians and candidates. Read more

2) Interacting with door-to-door election canvassers. Read more

3) Personal meetings with parliamentarians and candidates. Read more

4) Attending all-candidates meetings. Read more

5) Using social media to connect with candidates regarding Hassan’s case. Read more

Please do what you can!

Thank you for your continued support!