Can the tens of thousands of documents on the Afghan war revealed on the WikiLeaks website serve as evidence for putting the site’s founder and director on trial? Could Julian Assange’s revelations lead to the deaths of dozens of American and British intelligence agents? What are the legal ramifications of publishing material of this kind?

All of these questioned being posed recently are important, but distract from the main issue: What is America’s actual policy in Afghanistan and will its policy toward Pakistan – which the United States considers a strategic asset and an ally – bring about victory?

The documents that were published reveal an open secret – the Pakistani security services are still cooperating with the Taliban. They reveal that the head of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, today the commander of that country’s army, was responsible for the training and funding of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan

Kayani, 58, is a Pakistani strongman and American ally who studied at two of the most prestigious military academies in the U.S., Fort Benning and Fort Leavenworth, and who won a great deal of acclaim from American generals for his struggle against the Taliban in Pakistan. But he is not exactly what the Americans had dreamed of.

Last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron accused Pakistan of double-crossing on terrorism and called on its government to abstain from “exporting terror” to Afghanistan. His remarks led to angry protests in Pakistan where people took to the streets and called on their government to break off diplomatic ties with London.

Similar demands have not yet been voiced against the U.S., but Pakistani dissatisfaction with Washington is growing, particularly in view of America’s intentions to withdraw some of its troops in July of next year. Washington, which will provide Pakistan this year with $2.5 billion worth of military aid and another $7.5 billion over the next five years in civilian aid, fears that some of the American taxpayers’ money has not made it to its target, namely the war on terror, but is instead funding the training and arming of the Taliban.

During the rule of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Americans discovered that millions of their dollars had served similar objectives or had been used to bolster the political position of the military dictator.
Kayani, whose term as military chief of staff has been extended for another three years, is the one who to a large extent determines Pakistan’s policy even though the country is headed nominally by President Asif Zardari, the widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Bhutto considered the Taliban as potential allies through whom Pakistan could use its influence inside the country, and it can be assumed that her husband has “inherited” this same policy. The extension of Kayani’s term may indicate that Pakistan’s stance is unlikely to change, especially in view of America’s intention to withdraw from Afghanistan.

The cooperation between Pakistan and the Taliban is not new. The two worked together as far back as the 1990s, when the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan and put an end to the tragic civil war that raged there after the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

The Taliban introduced a regime of religious terror but put an end to most of the rampant drug traffic and displayed the ability to impose order and stability in the country. They were so impressive in what they could do that even two American oil companies, Unocal and Enron, conducted negotiations with them about building gas pipelines. The Taliban representatives who went specially to Texas to discuss the details with Enron, set the condition that Washington must recognize the Taliban government for any deal to go through.

Enron went so far as to fund a center for training Afghani professionals at Nebraska University so that they would be able to do the maintenance work for the future gas pipeline. The deliberations ended as the result of tremendous public pressure in the United States.

But American public pressure had no bearing on the Pakistanis, a situation that continues today.
Thus Pakistan continued to strengthen its ties with Afghanistan and to pay for Taliban activities until the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, when, under heavy pressure from Washington, it changed direction and declared it would join ranks with the Americans in fighting terror.

The Pakistani government, which has to navigate carefully between liberal opposition elements and religious radicals, does not necessarily consider the Taliban an enemy, or at least not a strategic enemy.

A few weeks ago, Kayani declared to his officers that Pakistan’s chief enemy was, and remains, India. Pakistan, which is geographically and politically locked between India and Iran, both of which are seen as threats, wishes to expand its strategic footprint and the natural direction for this is in the hinterlands of Afghanistan.

In a situation where the United States is planning to leave Afghansitan, it is clear to Pakistan that Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia are the main competitors for filling the vacuum that could be created.
This is also clear to Hamid Karzai, the Afghani president, who wishes first and foremost to stabilize his rule, which necessitates Taliban support. All of this is a guarantee that the Taliban will continue to be an extremely significant political force even if the Americans succeed in killing several hundreds or thousands more of their members before the drawdown.

And that is precisely what the Americans are planning to do. The previous military strategy of fighting the Taliban while engaging locals with funding, which went into effect only a few months ago, is not working.

The United States is now returning the familiar policy of targeted assassinations. The real fear is what kind of region it will leave behind.

Anyone who is wondering, can take a look at what is happening in Iraq.

Tuesday’s cross-border firefight between Israeli and Lebanese government forces might simply have been a misunderstanding. And the rockets fired from Gaza and the Israeli air strikes  on the besieged territory over the past week could be viewed as periodic blip in business as usual on that front. By the same token, last Friday’s unprecedented joint visit  to Beirut by the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Syria could be viewed simply as a move to stop the conflict between their Lebanese proxies turning nasty. And British Prime Minister David Cameron’s  pleas to Turkey to keep open its communication channels with Israel’s leaders are quotidian diplomatic common sense. Viewed in a wider context, however, each of those events could be taken as signs of why many in the Middle East believe that despite the outward calm, the region may be on the brink of another catastrophic war.

A new report based on extensive conversations with regional decisionmakers released Monday by the International Crisis Group, the respected mediation organization of former diplomats, warns of the possibility of war. “The situation in the Levant is … exceptionally quiet and uniquely dangerous, both for the same reason,” the Crisis Group warns. “The buildup in military forces and threats of an all-out war that would spare neither civilians nor civilian infrastructure, together with the worrisome prospect of its regionalization, are effectively deterring all sides.” But while Hizballah and its regional backers, Syria and Iran, believe that the buildup in the Shi’ite militia’s arsenal and capabilities is deterring Israel from launching attacks on any of them, Israel views the acquisition by Hizballah of a missile arsenal capable of raining destruction on Israeli cities as an intolerable threat. “As Hizballah’s firepower grows,” the Crisis Group notes, “so too does Israel’s desire to tackle the problem before it is too late … What is holding the current architecture in place is also what could rapidly bring it down.” (See rare pictures of Hizballah’s youth movement.)

Should a new war break out, Israel is determined to strike a more devastating blow more quickly than it did during the last conflict, in which it failed in its objective of destroying Hizballah. It has publicly warned that it would destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, and that Syria, as Hizballah’s armorer, would not be off-limits. But Hizballah believes its capacity to fire missiles into Tel Aviv is key to restraining Israel from returning to finish off the Shi’ite militia. And, of course, amid regional tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, members of the self-styled “axis of resistance” – Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizballah – have deepened their alliance, raising the possibility of any one of those groups joining the fray should any of the others come under attack from Israel or the U.S. (See pictures of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon.)

Although all of the main players have good reason to avoid initiating another war right now, the Crisis Group warns that “tensions are mounting with no obvious safety valve.” At some point, Hizballah’s growing deterrent could cross Israel’s red line. And the Western diplomatic boycott of the resistance camp is cause for alarm because there are no effective channels through which the various antagonists can be made to understand how their actions could produce unintended consequences – in the tragic tradition of Middle Eastern wars that erupted in part because the adversaries failed to understand one another’s intentions. Indeed, after proclaiming his movement’s “divine victory” in standing up to Israel’s 2006 offensive, a feat that made him a hero on the streets of the Arab world, Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah did admit that had he known Israel would respond with a full-blown invasion, he would have avoided the provocation of snatching the Israeli troops that started the showdown. (See pictures of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.)

The danger posed by the lack of communication channels between the resistance camp and the Israelis explains why British Prime Minister David Cameron, a recent guest at the White House, last week went to Ankara to urge Turkey to maintain its ties with Israel and use its ties to the likes of Syria to facilitate communication that could mitigate an outbreak. Turkey has been pilloried in some quarters in the West – and certainly in Israel – for its diplomatic rapprochement with the likes of Syria, Iran and Hamas, but Cameron’s appeal was a tacit admission that the continuing Bush-era policy of refusing to engage with the region’s designated “radicals” has sharply diminished the ability of the U.S. and the European Union to influence events in the Middle East. Peace talks between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Israelis are all very well, but Abbas is not at war with Israel, nor would he be even if a new round of fighting broke out in Gaza. (Comment on this story.)

Even in the besieged Palestinian territory, however, neither side is looking to restart full-blown hostilities of the type that left the territory devastated 18 months ago. The projectiles fired from the Palestinian side last week caused no casualties, and the Israeli military believes they were fired not by Hamas, but by some of the smaller rival groups that occasionally challenge the cease-fire Hamas has imposed since February 2009. Some Israeli analysts suspect that Hamas may have momentarily eased up its enforcement of the cease-fire to remind the U.S. and Israel of the perils of leaving it out of the peace process. Still, although Israel targeted Hamas commanders in weekend air strikes, Israel’s handling of Gaza has brought it increasing diplomatic isolation, which a new round of fighting would likely accelerate.

But the Hamas cease-fire that has largely held for the past 18 months is a unilateral one, with no clear channels of communication or agreed-upon rules of engagement, meaning that the danger of escalation is ever present. The same is true on the Israel-Lebanon border, where both sides have been preparing for the next war ever since the last one ended, neither desiring that option but both accepting it as inevitable. In the absence of any peace process by which Syria can recover the Golan Heights occupied by Israel since the 1967 war, Syria continues to support Hizballah as its prime form of leverage against the Jewish state. The diplomatic dynamic over the past decade has also deepened Damascus’ alliance with Tehran, which in turn makes Israel even more leery of engaging with the Syrians. And conventional wisdom has long held that should Iran’s nuclear facilities come under attack, Hizballah’s rockets would figure prominently in Tehran’s retaliation plans.

So, the potential triggers on different fronts for a new round of hostilities have multiplied, as has the danger of them going off in sequence as a result of the ties between some of the key players. And right now, the Crisis Group warns, “there is no mechanism in place to either address or ease” those mounting tensions. Absent a political process that can credibly resolve or regulate conflicts ranging from Gaza and the Golan Heights to Iran, “the world should cross its fingers that fear of a catastrophic conflict will continue to be reason enough for the parties not to provoke one.”

When the Treaty of Lisbon was signed, it brought into effect a clause that gives special consultation rights to religious organisations. It is something the Vatican has been trying to achieve for decades. Now that Article 17 is in place, it commits the EU to holding “an open, transparent and regular dialogue with… churches and (non-confessional and philosophical) organisations”.

In fact, these consultations had been taking place long before the Treaty was ratified. But, this month, more than two dozen Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders — joined by a representative each from the Hindu and Sikh communities (a development that did not please the Catholic Church) — met the presidents of the European Parliament, European Commission and European Council.

But opponents of the Article say that because many Europeans are secular, and an increasing number practise non-Christian religions, churches should not have special rights. Jean de Brueker, deputy secretary general of the European Humanist Federation, which advocates more secularism in Europe said: “Leaders need to respect the separation between church and state”. De Brueker’s organisation, to which the NSS is affiliated, says separate consultation agreements should be limited to elected officials and those with recognised special expertise.

Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, said the EU was a secular organisation but spoke about the “moral significance” of the 27-country bloc, hinting at the need for spiritual and religious input. He told reporters: “The European Union has to be a union of values. That is our added value in the world. That is the soft power of Europe in the world”.

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of Poland, who spent decades in the Vatican as private secretary to Pope John Paul II was, of course, over the moon about Article 17. “I believe there is a need for such consultations with churches so as not to make mistakes on moral or ethical issues, for the benefit of societies,” Dziwisz told Reuters in December, displaying the arrogance and complacency for which he is famous. “Let’s not forget that religion is also a great force that creates cultures and societies. It cannot be bypassed.”

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek has announced that the European Parliament will meet Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox leaders on 30 September to discuss how to implement Article 17.

One way or another, debate over what role the Church, and by extension churches, can play in engaging with the European Union is only likely to intensify. The EU’s hopes of ‘reaching out’ to religious communities may very well end up drawing it deeper into a complex, centuries-old debate.

And the campaigns for religious influence have already started. MEP Martin Kastler of Bavaria wants to see a Europe-wide law prohibiting shops and businesses from opening on Sundays. He is trying to use a new right from the EU that says any citizen can introduce legislation if they can collect one million supporting signatures from across nine EU countries within a year.

“For me, Sunday is a family day,” said Mr. Kastler, and like many Christians, he thinks his beliefs should be enforced by law.

Article 17 also calls for dialogue with “non-confessional and philosophical organisations” and after pressure from Brussels, the EU is to hold a summit with atheists and freemasons on 15 October, inviting them to a political dialogue which is supposed to parallel the religious summit.

David Pollock, president of the European Humanist Federation, told EUobserver that he was dismayed at the inclusion of freemasons with humanists, secularists and atheists, saying “I find it rather odd. … Some of the Grand Lodges are secularist organisations, and strongly for separation of church and state, but they also retain all sorts of gobbledygook and myths such as the Great Architect of the Universe. Their public face is that they do charitable work and they do indeed engage in this, but there are also rituals involving blindfolded candidates with their trouser-legs rolled up during initiation.”

The EHF, along with the NSS and many other secular organisations, fought hard for the “religion clause” to be deleted from the Lisbon Treaty, arguing that no-one has the right to special treatment – not even the churches.

“Neither religious groups nor non-religious ones have any greater claim to taking up the time of commissioners,” said Mr Pollock. “But, sadly, we lost that battle, and so with the atheist summit, at least we’re being treated equally, although I’d rather if we were there along with the churches. Instead we’re being bundled off with the Freemasons.”

Keith Porteous Wood, NSS Executive Director, commented: “The apparent level playing field created by ostensibly reciprocal religious and non-religious elements of Article 17 is illusory. The religious are hierarchical, wealthy and well established in the corridors of power – an arm of the Catholic Church even has its own diplomatic corps and a seat at the UN. Article 17 helps the religious to hold on to the immense power they already have and even expand it. Indeed, the churches’ ambitions to exploit Article 17 go far beyond an occasional meeting in Brussels. They hope that it will eventually give them privileged access to other EU agencies, notably the Fundamental Rights Agency, as well as with the bloc’s new diplomatic corps, the External Action Service.

“By contrast, the non-religious by their very nature are heterogeneous and non-hierarchical – and as a consequence, poorly funded. They have practically no power or vested interests to protect, so Article 17 brings them very little. The net effect of Article 17 is to substantially increase the religious hegemony in European politics at the very time religious observance in Europe is in its steepest decline.”

This power is graphically illustrated in an excellent new DVD entitled In Defence of Secularism that has been launched by the Centre d’Action Laïque in Belgium. It explores the depth of penetration in European Institutions that the Churches have achieved, threatening secularism and church-state-separation throughout the EU.

The film shows how the churches are building a strategy to influence political decisions and promote their views. Among many examples, they chose to focus on three countries: Romania, Ireland and Italy. Those examples invite and incite the defenders of secularism to remain alert.

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* How the churches intend to increase their influence in the EU When the Treaty of Lisbon was signed, it brought into effect a clause that gives special consultation rights to religious organizations.

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* Ahmadinejad challenges Obama to TV debate on solving world’s problems Proposal comes as Iran deals with a new wave of international sanctions – driven by Washington – aimed at pressuring the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.

* Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood to boycott elections Main opposition group will not participate in November 9 vote.

* Obama confirms plan for US troop withdrawal from Iraq US President Barack Obama has confirmed the end of all combat operations in Iraq by August 31.

* Fayyad rejects bi-national state idea PA prime minister: Unilateral declaration of statehood a pipedream.

* US warns N. Korea, Iran: Abandon nukes Pyongyang believed to have plutonium for at least 6 nuclear bombs.

Perhaps it’s the European atmosphere, or the lovely garden with the fountain and the goldfish, or maybe the politeness of the waiters. But the American Colony Hotel, in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, gives off a sense of being extraterritorial.

Anyone who passes through the hotel’s front door leaves Jerusalem behind and enters a neutral zone. Perhaps this is why the hotel, considered one of the best boutique hotels in Israel and the entire Middle East, has served for decades as a meeting place for politicians, journalists, diplomats, spies, artists and businessmen.

The hotel was established in the late 19th century by a small American evangelical community, and in 2004, it celebrated its 120th birthday. Moshe Hananel, a historian, says in his book “The Jerusalemites” that in the early 20th century, General Edmund Allenby used to hold meetings there.

It is also where Lawrence of Arabia met with New York Times newsmen. In addition, the hotel hosted authors John Le Carre, Graham Greene and many others.

The hotel is especially convenient for secret or semi-official meetings because of its location, on the fault line between the Jewish side of the city and the Arab side. Like Orient House, the building that housed the Palestinian Authority’s offices in East Jerusalem until the second intifada, the hotel has become the accepted location for meetings with Palestinian politicians.

“The hotel became a center for journalism, a center for espionage, a place for secret meetings, a home for authors, diplomats and romantics,” wrote Hananel in his survey of the hotel’s last four decades.

Many diplomats from various embassies and consulates frequent the hotel, as do members of East Jerusalem’s Palestinian elite. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, who has served for the past few years as the Quartet’s representative in the Middle East, is also based there.

The world’s third most wanted Nazi suspect, who allegedly participated in the murder of more than 430,000 Jews at the Belzec death camp, was involved in the entire killing process: From taking victims from trains to pushing them into gas chambers to throwing their corpses into mass graves, according to court documents.

A state court in the western city of Bonn released new details Thursday of last week’s indictment against Samuel Kunz, an 88-year-old former ministry employee who has lived undisturbed in the village of Wachtberg outside Bonn for many years.

“The accused was deployed in all areas of the camp,” court spokesman Matthias Nordmeyer told The Associated Press.

The court’s statement describes in gruesome detail some of the crimes the suspected former death camp guard allegedly committed in occupied Poland from January 1942 to July 1943.

The court also announced Thursday that Kunz has been charged in a German youth court because he was a minor at the time — meaning he could be brought to trial as an adolescent and face a more lenient sentence.

Kunz was 20 years old when he allegedly started working as a guard at Belzec in January 1942. According to German law, people between 18 and 21 can be brought to trial either as minors or adults.

“It will be up to the judge to decide whether he will be sentenced as an adolescent or an adult,” Nordmeyer said.

In its statement, the court described the deadly routine at Belzec, claiming that Kunz supposedly participated as a camp guard in all areas of the Nazis’ organized mass murder of Poland’s Jewry.

After the victims arrived by train at the death camp, they were told that before they could start working they had to be deloused and take a shower, the statement said, describing the terrifying killing process that by now is well known.

“Threatening them with pistols, whips and wooden clubs, the victims were told to hurry up. … They had to undress … the women had their hair cut off, and then first the men, then women and children were pushed into the gas chambers,” the statement said.

After the victims were killed, “the corpses were searched for gold and valuables and then thrown into prepared graves.”

In addition to being charged with participating in the execution of the Holocaust, Kunz — who is the No. 3 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most-wanted Nazi suspects — is also accused of “personal excesses” in the alleged shooting of 10 Jews.

“In July 1943, the defendant is accused of having shot two persons who had escaped from a train going to the death camp and had been captured by guards,” the statement said.

Between May and June 1943, he reportedly killed eight others who had been wounded but not killed by another guard at Belzec.

“The defendant then took the weapon from the other guard to shoot the wounded victims to death,” according to the statement.

Kunz had long been ignored by the German justice system, where former officials were not that interested in going after relatively low-ranking camp guards. But in the past 10 years, a younger generation of German prosecutors has emerged that wants to bring all surviving Nazi suspects to justice.

While Kunz ranked fairly low in the Nazi hierarchy, he is among the top most wanted due to the large number of Jews he is accused of having been involved in killing — which the prosecutor’s office in Dortmund puts at 430,000.

The highest-profile guard on trial now is John Demjanjuk, the 90-year-old retired autoworker being tried in Munich for being an accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. He denies he was ever a camp guard.

Kunz’s case came to light because of Demjanjuk. Authorities recently stumbled over Kunz’s case when they studied old documents from German postwar trials about the SS training camp Trawniki.

Prosecutors allege that both Kunz and the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, who was deported to Germany from the U.S. last year, trained as guards at the Trawniki SS camp.