We applaud Human Rights Watch for continuing to document the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan even as it has fallen off the media radar screen. But we question their assumption that Karzai "needs more support from the US," given that it is his own security forces that are doing much of the killing...

Afghanistan: Violence Surges
Karzai Needs More Support from U.S.

(New York, May 24, 2005) -- Afghanistan's security situation has deteriorated significantly in recent weeks, with a spate of political killings, violent protests, and attacks on humanitarian workers, Human Rights Watch said today. The instability comes as President Hamid Karzai visits the United States this week.

The same day Amnesty International released its annual report with unprecedented criticism for the US, comes this chilling release from Human Rights Watch:

Pakistan: US Citizens Tortured, Held Illegally
Human Rights Watch

Tuesday 24 May 2005

FBI participated in interrogations despite apparent knowledge of torture, abduction.

U.S. FBI agents operating in Pakistan repeatedly interrogated and threatened two U.S. citizens of Pakistani origin who were unlawfully detained and subjected to torture by the Pakistani security services, Human Rights Watch said today.

Amnesty International's 2005 annual report, released today, accuses the US government of damaging human rights worldwide with its attitude to torture and treatment of detainees, which granted "a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity." The report criticizes the ongoing lack of a full independent investigation into abuses against detainees in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The report finds US-led coalition forces in Iraq have engaged in "unlawful killings, torture and other violations," while Afghanistan is slipping into a "downward spiral of lawlessness and instability."

Although it has recieved little coverage elsewhere, the Cuban daily Ahora reports today that on May 20, Bush received a Cuban-American delegation at the White House led by Luis Zúñiga Rey of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), presumably to discuss the Posada Carriles affair. The article calls Zúñiga a "terrorist," and quotes Percy Alvarado, AKA Agent Frayle, a Guatemalan who infiltrated anti-Castro terror groups for Cuban state security: "Zúñiga told me, face to face, that it was necessary to be violent and cold-blooded, calculating and merciless, to overthrow Fidel and the Revolution. I can still see him that November night in 1993, when he proposed sinister plans by the CANF to set off powerful bombs in Havana’s Hotel Nacional and in a famous restaurant in that city."

Posada Carriles - the 77-year-old former CIA asset and accused terrorist - was charged last week with illegal entry into the US and is being detained by the Homeland Security Department at Florida's Homestead Air Force Base. US authorities have remained silent on whether he will be extradited to Venezuela to face terrorism charges. (Prensa Latina, May 18) (See our last blog post on the affair)

Yesterday, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez publicly broached breaking diplomatic ties with the US if Washington refuses to extradite. "If they don't extradite him (Mr Posada Carriles) in the time allowed in our agreement, we will review our relations with the United States," Chavez said in his regular Sunday TV programme. Washington has up to 60 days to consider Venezuela's extradition request under a 1922 treaty between the two countries.

Robots seem to be gaining reproductive rights even as women are losing theirs.

Robots at Cornell University are making copies of themselves without human intervention. In principle, the machines will thus be able to repair and reproduce themselves autonomously in remote environments. "Our self-replicating robots perform very simple tasks compared with intricacies in biological reproduction," said engineer Hod Lipson, a Cornell assistant professor. "But we think they demonstrate that mechanical self-reproduction is possible and not unique to biology."

WW4 REPORT readers are aware that the Nasa Indian community of Toribio in southern Colombia's Cauca department have been under siege for the past several weeks as guerillas and army troops fight for control of their village. Army and guerillas alike are operating in violation of the constituionally-recognized autonomy rights of the Nasa, who have declared their territories closed to all armed actors. (See our recent report.) Two representatives from Toribio are currently in New York City to raise awareness about the situation their people face, and will be speaking in Manhattan this Friday.

In February, eight civilians, including community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra and three children, were massacred in the Colombian Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. Witnesses identified the killers as members of the Colombian military, and peace community members saw the army’s 17th and 11th Brigades in the area around the time of the murders. SOA Watch, the group that monitors the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (now officially the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), reports that the commander of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army received training at the SOA. Gen. Héctor Jaime Fandiño Rincón attended the "Small-Unit Infantry Tactics" course in 1976. In December of 2004 he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General.