A Year After War, South Ossetia More Dependent on Russia

By JOHN WENDLE / TSKHNIVALI

Emerging from behind the cover of a tree and thick bushes, the blunt nose of a Russian eight-wheeled armored personnel carrier juts into the dirt road. In the shade, five soldiers - Special Forces and border guards - sit bored, smoking cigarettes near a burned out campfire. A sixth lulls in the vehicle, blasting techno dance music. "We are prepared for the Georgians if they come. We don't think they'll start anything, but if they do, we're ready for them," says a border guard, standing in grimy fatigues with a worn Kalashnikov over his shoulder.

Ready, and waiting. Georgia and Russia have traded increasingly belligerent accusations against the other as the anniversary of last year's 5-day war has approached in recent weeks; these soldiers, sent by Moscow to guard the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, are on the frontline of that war of words. A tour of towns north of the border shows just dependent South Ossetians are on the Russians, and how much this small region, ostensibly independent, has actually become a de facto Russian province.

Down a heavily potholed road, in some places splashed by mountain streams, the abandoned village of Eredvi comes into view. Populated by ethnic Georgians before the 2008 war, the village is now empty. Every house has been demolished and the villagers have all fled to Georgia. Plants grow between the heaps of bricks and stone. The school, which had been recently repaired before the war, today stands faded pink and windowless. Looters, who locals claim do not exist, have stripped the place - even digging wiring out of the walls. They have taken everything but the Georgian language textbooks.

Teiran Bestayev, 50, a resident of the neighboring Ossetian village of Dmenisi is unrepentant. "Now we are over here and they are over there," he says, waving vaguely towards Gori, Georgia's second largest city, which lies just a few dozen miles to the south down the broad valley below. "They have Georgia and we have South Ossetia and that's how it should be."

Most people in this village of 1000 ethnic Ossetians would probably agree. Before the war, says Bestayev, local villagers had to present passports and undergo searches when they traveled through Eredvi on the way to the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali about six miles (9.7 km) away. "Maybe those idiots will start shooting again," he said, again motioning towards Georgia, "but that would be their last shot. Our side of the border is much stronger now."

This week the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said the Kremlin would station around 3,000 troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia by the end of the year. The Russian army has already built three bases in this scrubby mountain territory, and is building a fourth. Tskhinvali, which remains pockmarked and burnt from the five days of heavy fighting here despite loans and pledges from Russia that the city would be rebuilt, is now host to a pristine Russian army base surrounded by high walls and barbed wire.

Inside, an a cappella version of "God Bless America" echoes over an empty concrete parade ground from a PA system. Long rows of mint green barracks recede down spotless, freshly laid concrete streets. A gigantic garage housing dozens of battle tanks, howitzers, armored personnel carriers and troop trucks has been constructed. Around the base, soldiers brandishing tattoos sit or stand in long lines, breaking down and cleaning rifles and machine guns. "We are ready every day to fight if we have to. That's why we are here," says 20-year-old Corporal Sergey Ifankin, a member of the artillery.

But what the soldiers might have to fight is hard to pin down. Although claims abound of cross border grenade and mortar attacks, Bestayev, the Ossetian villager from Dmenisi, said he had not heard or seen any incidents at the base of the foothills that mark the border. The soldiers sitting by their armored personnel carrier make a vague claim they had had mortars fired on them a week ago, but that the shots were uphill and off the mark. A lieutenant who has served six years in the border guards said he had not seen any attacks with his own eyes, but had heard many rumors.

The South Ossetian government claims the uptick in cross-border shooting is real and dangerous. "Practically every day, unfortunately, the Georgians are shooting into South Ossetia," says Alan Pliyev, the first deputy minister of the South Ossetian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "They have been breaking the ceasefire organized by President Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the end of the war last year." Georgia has repeatedly denied shooting into South Ossetia and blames the Russian buildup for the rising tensions.

While acknowledging that the presence of international monitors could help to stabilize the situation here, Pliyev also says that his government is "working with and have an agreement with the Russian military for the defense of South Ossetia." In fact, observers from the European Union Monitoring Mission have been denied access to the South Ossetian side of the border to verify claims of attacks as well as to observe Russian troop increases. South Ossetia, nominally an independent state, is not going to make a move without Russia's consent. That's made clear by the 1,000 Russian troops bivouacked just outside the capital with more on the way. "It is certain that we want to be united with [Russian] North Ossetia, but we aren't sure how this will be carried out. But there is the prospect," says Pliyev.

16 Italian sailors freed by Somali pirates

By MARTA FALCONI, Associated Press Writer

ROME – Sixteen sailors, including 10 Italians, whose tug was seized by Somali pirates four months ago are free after the pirates abandoned the ship, Italian authorities said Monday.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told SkyTg24 television news that the Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke notified him of the release in a phone call Sunday evening.

Italian and Somali authorities had been working together gathering intelligence and applying diplomacy to win the hostages' release, Frattini said.

"There was a very strong political intervention" between the Somali government and local authorities "who made the pirates understand that the only solution was the liberation of the hostages," Frattini said on SkyTg24. "The pirates withdrew."

The Foreign Ministry said no ransom was paid.

The Italian-flagged Buccaneer tug was seized April 11 in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden with a crew of 10 Italians, five Romanians and a Croat. The Italian navy ship Maestrale reached the area immediately after and maintained surveillance of the tug throughout the ordeal, ministry officials said.

Officials aboard the Maestrale confirmed that the pirates had abandoned the ship, and that the crew had retaken control, Frattini said.

"Italian special forces were there to avoid any danger, which there never was," Frattini said.

The sailors were expected to reach home within a few days.

"We are so happy that this is finally over," Alessandra Costanzo, wife of Buccaneer Cmdr. Mario Iarlori, told The Associated Press by telephone.

"I spoke to my husband briefly, he just called to say they are free."

Costanzo said she did not have any information on when the sailors would return home or how they were freed.

"It was all very stressful. This is such a big relief. We hope the moment will soon come when we can hug him again," she said.

U.S. commander says Taliban have Afghan momentum

KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban are advancing out of traditional strongholds in Afghanistan's south and east into the north and west, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in the country said in an interview published on Monday.

U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, who will soon present an assessment of the war, said the resurgent Taliban would force a change of tactics on foreign forces and warned that record casualty figures would remain high for some months.

"It's a very aggressive enemy right now," McChrystal told The Wall Street Journal newspaper (online.wsj.com/) in an interview in Kabul. "We've got to stop their momentum, stop their initiative. It's hard work."

Violence across Afghanistan this year had already reached its worst levels since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-led Afghan forces in 2001 and escalated dramatically after major offensives were launched in the south over the past two months.

With thousands of U.S. Marines and British soldiers aiming to push Taliban fighters out of populated areas in southern Helmand province, July quickly became the deadliest month of the war for troops in the country.

McChrystal said he planned to push more troops into Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban adjacent to Helmand. "It's important and so we're going to do whatever we got to do to ensure Kandahar is secure," he said.

There are now about 101,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, with U.S. numbers at about 62,000. Washington has been pouring in thousands of extra troops this year, in part to help secure August 20 presidential and provincial council elections.

Afghanistan: Training Ground for War on Russia

Global Research, July 26, 2009

A Swedish newspaper reported on July 24 that approximately 50 troops from the country serving under NATO in the so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had engaged in a fierce firefight in Northern Afghanistan and had killed three and wounded two attackers.

The report detailed that the Swedish troops were traveling in armored vehicles and "later received reinforcements from several soldiers in a Combat Vehicle 90."

The world has become so inured to war around the world and seemingly without end that Swedish soldiers engaging in deadly combat as part of a belligerent force for the first time since the early 1800s - and that in another continent thousands of kilometers from their homeland - has passed virtually without notice.

A Finnish news story of the preceding day, possibly about the same incident but not necessarily, reported that "A Finnish-Swedish patrol, part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), came under fire in northern Afghanistan" on July 23rd.

Three days before that a Swedish commander in the north of Afghanistan, where Finnish and Swedish troops are in charge of ISAF operations in four provinces, acknowledged that "During the last three months, six serious incidents have occurred in our area."

The same source revealed that in the upcoming weeks Swedish troop numbers are to be increased from 390 to 500.

The Svenska Dagbladet reported that over a twelve week period attacks on Swedish-Finnish forces in the area have doubled and that seven attacks preceded the deadly firefight described earlier. "In April, a Norwegian officer was killed by a suicide bomber in a province under Swedish-Finnish control, and several vehicles have been attacked along Mazar-i-Sharif's main road since."

Like Sweden, Finland has also increased troop deployments to Afghanistan lately, ostensibly to provide security for next month's elections but, given the escalation of fighting in the nation's north, certainly to remain there for the duration of NATO's South Asian deployment, one which a German official recently stated would last eighteen years from 2001 onward. In early July Finland dispatched 70 more troops to join the 100 already stationed in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province bordering Kunduz where German troops are waging an almost two week long military offensive.

Last month Finnish forces in the area were attacked twice and a rocket attack struck close to Finnish barracks in the capital of Kabul.

Troops from the other Scandinavian nations have fared even worse. Three Danish soldiers were killed in a bomb attack in Helmand on June 17, bringing the country's death toll to 26. Norway has lost four soldiers.

To illustrate the integration of Finland and Sweden military forces in Afghanistan and under NATO control in general, in late June it was announced that Sweden was purchasing 113 armored vehicles from Finland. Approximately 1,200 of the Finnish-made vehicles "have been ordered by other customers and [they are] currently used operationally in Finland, Poland, Slovenia and Croatia, for example in operations in Afghanistan."

NATO Deployment In Afghanistan "Improves Readiness For Defense Of Finland"

Last month a major Finnish daily newspaper in a feature called "Afghanistan: Now it's Finland's war, too" contained this striking revelation:

"[F]rom the point of view of the Finnish Defense Forces, there is still another important reason for the Afghanistan operation: it improves readiness for the defense of Finland."

The Finnish source quoted the former commander of the nation's troops in Afghanistan, Ari Mattola, as saying, "This is a unique situation for us, in that we will get to train part of our wartime forces. That part will get to operate as close to wartime conditions as is possible."

Comparable claims about the Afghan war being the training ground for military action on their borders - and that can only mean in relation to Russia - have been made by defense and military officials in the Baltic states, Poland and Georgia.

Early this month Finnish Defense Minister Jyri Hakamies divulged that he would further drag his nation into NATO's plans for a drive east aimed against Russia and is paraphrased as asserting that "NATO had approached Finland with an opportunity to take part in cyber warfare training and the country should accept NATO's offer."

NATO's Article 5: Cyber Warfare And Nuclear Weapons

On June 15 US President Barack Obama and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves met at the White House with American National Security Adviser James Jones, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, and discussed cyber security - which is to say, as the Finnish Defense Minister more honestly called it, cyber warfare. The Estonian president, raised in the United States and a former Radio Free Europe employee, "thanked the United States for its assistance in establishing the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center in the Estonian capital of Tallinn...."

The head of the U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. Kevin Chilton, indicated this May what US and NATO cyber warfare plans might include when he said that "the White House retains the option to respond with physical force - potentially even using nuclear weapons - if a foreign entity conducts a disabling cyber attack against U.S. computer networks...."

The NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania authorized the establishment of the Alliance's cyber warfare center in Estonia in 2008 and last month the Pentagon complemented that initiative by approving a unified U.S. Cyber Command.

For two years American and NATO officials have spoken bluntly about invoking NATO's Article 5 war clause, used for the invasion of Afghanistan and the buildup to that of Iraq, in response to alleged Russian cyber attacks.

Encirclement Of Russia: Finland Offers NATO 237,000 Troops, 1,300 Kilometer Border

This January Finland released a Security and Defense Policy Report which stated that "Finland regards NATO as the most important military security cooperation organisation", and that "there will continue to be a strong case for considering Finland's membership of NATO in the future".

Mandatory weapons interoperability is a key component of full NATO membership and in April the Finnish Defense Ministry announced "the team of Norwegian Kongsberg and US Raytheon has been selected to fulfill Finland's future Medium Range Air Defense Missile System (MRADMS) requirements....The new NATO-compliant anti-aircraft missile system will replace the Russian-made BUK systems purchased in 1996 that will be taken out of service. The key reason for giving up the Russian systems is their lack of compatibility and interoperability with NATO systems...."

The Helsinki Times of July 23 quoted Finnish Russian experts Esa Seppanen and Ilmari Susiluoto on Russian responses to what is now an all but certain development: Finland's joining NATO and providing the Alliance a new 1,300-kilometer border with the nation that has always been NATO's main target.

The two scholars are quoted as saying that "Russia is concerned about Finland's NATO option. It will not remain passive if Finland becomes a member."

The article also says that "NATO is marketed in Finland as a global peacekeeper. However, the Russians see it as a territorial threat specifically aimed at them" and "Russia fears that NATO membership would bring NATO's military structures to Finnish soil.

"NATO's expansion in the Nordic countries would finish off the military-political stability of the entire region. The Baltic Sea would become 'NATO's sea,' with the exception of Kaliningrad and the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland."

In addition to securing NATO's encirclement of Russia from the Barents to the Baltic to the Blacks Seas, an article titled "Finland Rearms," in reference to the Finnish government recently agreeing to boost military spending to 2% of its budget - a standard NATO demand - says "By raising their spending, Finland pulls more of its weight in the alliance and thus is more likely to get a favorable response to any future requests for defense aid. Finland is a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace program, and, with their new emphasis on added security, are likely to grow a closer relationship in the future.

With Finland in NATO the bloc would gain an additional "237,000 troops, beefed up with the latest infantry weapons and heavy armor...."

Finland, Sweden Forced Into NATO And Overseas Wars Against Will Of The People

In a recent newspaper interview the Finnish Speaker of the Parliament Sauli Niinisto spoke of the surreptitious campaign underway - indeed almost completed - to pull his nation into an expanding worldwide military alliance despite its citizens not only being opposed to but not even aware of it.

He characterized the process in this manner: "The logic of silent agreements has been brought very far in thinking in which closer Finnish participation in NATO is seen to bring us security points from the United States and NATO."

Niinisto listed several instances of how NATO is transitioning Finland into full membership without public debate or cognizance. Referring to the purchase of NATO interoperable fighter jets, he said that "It was a silent preliminary contract involving confidence that more supplies would come later."

He also cited Finland's participation in NATO's international Rapid Response Force as well as in the European Union's Nordic Battlegroups. More will be said later about the integration of the EU and NATO in global deployments and strike forces but this (not so) hypothetical observation by the Finnish Speaker offers an initial insight:

"All European defense activities are always under the NATO umbrella. What if the EU could be collectively a NATO member? What would Finland do then? Would Finland secede? The EU now seeks to act as a collective in all organizations. Why would security policy be a big exception?"

An identical campaign, covert and concerted, in being conducted in Sweden, where as in Finland polls regularly register a majority of citizens opposed to NATO accession, and is being addressed and combated by the Sptoppa smyganslutningen till NATO/Stop surreptitious accession to NATO, whose web address is: http://www.stoppanato.se

European Union, NATO Symbiosis: Global Battlegroups And War In The Caucasus

Mention has already been made of the European Union Battlegroups and on July 21 Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt visited NATO Headquarters in Brussels - to "address the North Atlantic Council on the priorities of the Swedish EU Presidency" - further endorsed the project and "expressed his support here [Brussels] for the EU's battlegroup concept, under which about 1,500 troops from three or more countries are on standby on a six-month rotation."

The article the preceding is taken from added "Bildt, whose country holds the six-month rotating EU presidency...said there was 'huge demand' for Europe in the world and that the best way for the EU to improve its crisis management capability, of which battlegroups are a part, is by implementing the EU's Lisbon Treaty.

"He said they must remain ready to be deployed within 10 days."

As to where such deployments may occur in the future, "Bildt also hopes to secure backing from fellow EU foreign ministers early next week for a one-year extension to the EU's peace monitoring mission in Georgia" and "says he will insist on the mission's right to monitor the situation in the two regions [Abkhazia and South Ossetia]...."

He was referring to re-deploying European Union monitors - including troops - to the borders of Georgia with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where in the latter case a war erupted last August after a Georgian assault and a Russian response. Bildt and the EU in fact don't consider that there are national borders connecting the three states but that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are part of Georgia. Russia, which has recognized the independence of both, disagrees and as such opposes EU troops returning to the area, where Abkhazia has accused them of collaborating with the Georgian government of Mikhail Saakashvili in launching attacks on its territory.

What Bildt is actually advocating is something substantially more serious and fraught with the danger of a conflict far worse than the war of last August.

The Chairman of the Georgian Parliamentary Commission on Defense and Security, Givi Targamadze, said on July 21 "The deoccupation [regarding Russian troops] of this territory [Abkhazia and South Ossetia], but not the presence of the observation mission in an expanded format, is important for us. However, U.S troops' participation in the mission will be a step forward."

That is, the EU will insinuate itself into South Caucasus conflict zones and US troops will be inside the Trojan Horse. If that scenario evolves, troops from the world's two major nuclear powers can face off against each other in the next war.

Three days after visiting NATO Headquarters Bildt was in Afghanistan, during the exact moment the battle described at the beginning of this article occurred, to meet with US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke and to visit an ISAF European Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT).

Regarding the effective merger of EU and NATO international security and military missions and how the EU is being employed to hasten NATO's absorption of nations like Sweden and Finland, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who will turn his post over to former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen this week, in early July "expressed frustration...over the lack of progress in NATO's relationship with the European Union" and said:

"I will leave my office in three weeks' time frankly disappointed that a true strategic partnership that makes such eminent sense for both organizations (NATO and the EU) has still not come about.

"I am convinced that if ... North America and Europe are to defend their values and interests and solve [common] challenges, then we will need to do a much better job of combining the complementary assets of NATO and the EU. We should work together where necessary, not just where we can.

"Our missions, our geographical areas of interest, our capabilities...are increasingly overlapping, not to speak of our memberships. Our definition of the security challenges and the means to tackle them is also increasingly a shared one." [19]

Scheffer added "NATO-EU relations will be an important part of the
alliance's new Strategic Concept, which serves as guidelines for all actions," a subject doubtlessly addressed with Bildt, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, two weeks later.

Applying NATO's War Clause Globally

At the same press conference the NATO chief said "I hope the new Strategic Concept will finally lay to rest the notion that there is any distinction between security at home and security abroad. Globalization has abolished the protection that borders or geographical isolation from crisis areas used to provide."

Significantly, Scheffer affirmed that NATO's Article 5 mutual military assistance provision can "apply outside NATO territory as much as inside."

To the South Caucasus, for example.

Four previous articles in this series have addressed NATO's plans to absorb Finland and Sweden as full members and US and NATO plans to confront Russia in what the Alliance calls the High North, the Arctic Ocean and by extension the Baltic Sea.

Scandinavian Nations Move Military Into Arctic Circle

Sweden's and Finland's Scandinavian neighbors Denmark and Norway, both NATO members, have recently joined the battle for the Arctic.

Last month Norway revealed that it was moving it Operational Command Headquarters from the south of the nation at Stavanger north to Reitan outside Bodo, "thus making Norway the first country to move its military command leadership to the Arctic."

Last year "Norway's government decided to buy 48 Lockheed Martin F-35 jets at a cost of 18 billion crowns ($2.81 billion), rating them better than rival Swedish Saab's Gripen at tasks such as surveillance of the vast Arctic north."

A few days after the Norway's announcement that it was shifting its military command headquarters to the Arctic the Danish government said that increasing competition for resources and more importantly military advantage in the Arctic "will change the region's geostrategic significance and thus entail more tasks for the Danish Armed Forces".

Because "The risk of confrontation in the Arctic seems to be growing," Denmark plans to "set up a joint-service Arctic Command and is considering expanding the military base at Thule in northern Greenland, which was a vital link in US defenses during the Cold War" and "create an Arctic Response Force, using existing Danish military capabilities that are adapted for Arctic operations."

Copenhagen itself has no direct claim to the Arctic but is using Greenland and the Faroe Islands, both effectively colonies, for a military buildup that can only be aimed against Russian claims in the region.

An article titled "Danish militarization of Arctic" adds these details:

"The higher focus on the Arctic is part of the Danish defense plan for the period 2010-2014 approved by Parliament, the Folketinget, on 24 June.

"Denmark [is also considering applying] fighter jets in monitoring operations and sovereignty protection at and around Greenland. The country might also consider to give the Thule Base a more central role in cooperation with partner countries." [28]

The partners in question are fellow NATO members and Arctic claimants the United States, Canada and Norway.

From August 6 to 28 Canada will conduct its major annual Arctic military exercise, Operation NANOOK, with "land, sea and air forces operating in the Baffin Island region." [29] This year Canadian special forces will join the war games. "Col. Michael Day, commanding officer of Canada's Special Operations Forces Command, said units such as the Special Operations Regiment and Joint Task Force 2 have rarely been involved in northern military exercises."

Arctic: Russia's Last Stand Against Missile Shield First Strike Threat

Two previous articles have examined the fact that the Arctic Circle is the only spot on the planet where Russian nuclear deterrent and retaliation capacities can be based in order to evade potential US and NATO missile shield-linked first strikes.

Earlier this month former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev appeared on Russian television and warned that "missile defense installations in Europe are a threat to Russia" and "are aimed at creating a situation that makes it possible for NATO to be first to launch a nuclear strike while staying under the shield."

On June 30th the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen was in Poland where Washington intends to install interceptor missiles and "said he was hopeful Washington and Warsaw could wrap up talks on a deal tied to a anti-missile plan opposed by Russia....

On July 13-14 Russia carried out test launches of two Sineva intercontinental ballistic missiles and "The United States was reportedly unable to detect the presence of Russian strategic submarines in the area before they launched the missiles."

As a government official said of the tests, "Russian submarines not only fired ballistic missiles while submerged, they also did it from under ice floe near the North Pole, which proves that the Russian Navy has retained the capability of moving under Arctic ice and striking targets while undetected."

At the beginning of this month NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer officiated over a change of command for the Alliance's top military commander, swearing in Admiral James Stavridis. The latter's comments at the event included:

"With me are over seventy thousand shipmates - military and civilian - in three continents from the populated plains and coasts of Europe to the bright blue of the Mediterranean Sea; from the high mountain passes of Afghanistan to the distant Arctic Circle."

The simultaneous and coordinated US and NATO military buildup in the Arctic Ocean, the Baltic Sea and the Barents Sea are moving the line of confrontation with Russia ever closer. With Finland's and Sweden's integration into NATO the armed forces of both nations will have something far more formidable and dangerous to contend with than firefights in Northern Afghanistan.

Source: Global Research.
Link: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14538.

Israeli warplanes bomb tunnel along Gaza border

By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM – Israeli warplanes bombed a smuggling tunnel along the Gaza-Egypt border early Monday in response to Palestinian rocket and mortar fire, in a brief flare-up of violence at a time of relative quiet in the volatile Palestinian territory.

Such exchanges of fire, once routine, have become rare in recent months. Rocket fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza has largely subsided since a fierce Israeli offensive against militants early this year.

There were no reports of casualties in any of the attacks.

On Sunday, Gaza militants launched mortar shells at a border crossing between Gaza and Israel just as Palestinian patients were being transferred into Israel for medical treatment, according to Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Gaza Health Ministry.

Hassanain said it was a "miracle" that no one was hurt.

According to the procedure, Palestinian patients are brought to the crossing in local ambulances, transferred to Israeli ambulances and taken to hospitals inside Israel.

Two small Palestinian militant factions said they fired 12 mortars at the Erez crossing. The Israeli military said about six shells exploded near the crossing as the transfer was in progress.

The military said Monday's airstrike came in response to the renewed militant fire and targeted a smuggling tunnel running underground between Egypt and Gaza.

Gaza has been subject to a blockade by Egypt and Israel since Hamas seized power in the territory two years ago, with Israel allowing in only vital supplies. Gazan smugglers use the tunnels to bring in everything from gas to livestock, clothes and weapons.

Opium takes over entire Afghan families, villages

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer

SARAB, Afghanistan – Open the door to Islam Beg's house and the thick opium smoke rushes out into the cold mountain air, like steam from a bathhouse. It's just past 8 a.m. and the family of six — including a 1-year-old baby boy — is already curled up at the lip of the opium pipe.

Beg, 65, breathes in and exhales a cloud of smoke. He passes the pipe to his wife. She passes it to their daughter. The daughter blows the opium smoke into the baby's tiny mouth. The baby's eyes roll back into his head.

Their faces are gaunt. Their hair is matted. They smell.

In dozens of mountain hamlets in this remote corner of Afghanistan, opium addiction has become so entrenched that whole families — from toddlers to old men — are addicts. The addiction moves from house to house, infecting entire communities cut off from the rest of the world by glacial streams. From just one family years ago, at least half the people of Sarab, population 1,850, are now addicts.

Afghanistan supplies nearly all the world's opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, and while most of the deadly crop is exported, enough is left behind to create a vicious cycle of addiction. There are at least 200,000 opium and heroin addicts in Afghanistan — 50,000 more than in the much bigger, wealthier U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a 2005 survey by the U.N. A new survey is expected to show even higher rates of addiction, a window into the human toll of Afghanistan's back-to-back wars and desperate poverty.

Unlike in the West, the close-knit nature of communities here makes addiction a family affair. Instead of passing from one rebellious teenager to another, the habit passes from mother to daughter, father to son. It's turning villages like this one into a landscape of human depredation.

Except for a few soiled mats, Beg's house is bare. He has pawned all his family's belongings to pay for drugs.

"I am ashamed of what I have become," says Beg, an unwashed turban curled on his head. "I've lost my self-respect. I've lost my values. I take the food from this child to pay for my opium," he says, pointing to his 5-year-old grandson, Mamadin. "He just stays hungry."

Beg's forefathers owned much of the land in the village, located beside a gushing stream at the end of a canyon of craggy mountains in Badakshan province, hundreds of miles (kilometers) northeast of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.

He once had 1,200 sheep. He sold them off one by one to pay for drugs.

The land followed. He's turned his spacious home, once lined with ornamental carpets, into a mud shell. He grows potatoes in rows in the last of his fields and each time he harvests the crop, he has to make a choice — feed his grandchildren, or buy opium. He usually chooses drugs.

Basic necessities like soap long ago fell by the wayside.

"If we have 50 cents, we buy opium and we smoke it. We don't use the 50 cents to buy soap to clean our clothes," explains Raihan, Beg's daughter and the mother of the 1-year-old. The toddler wears a filthy shirt and no underwear. "I can be out of food, but not out of opium."

The country's few drug treatment centers are in cities far from villages like this one. And even those able to get themselves to the cities are often unable to get help. The drug clinic in Takhar province, the nearest to Sarab, has a waiting list of 2,000 people and only 30 beds.

So the villagers are drowning in opium. They begin taking it when they are sick, relying on its anesthetic properties — opium is also used to make morphine. Sarab, a village located at 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) and snowed in for up to three months a year, is a day's walk over mountain paths to the nearest hospital. The few shops in town do not even sell aspirin.

"Opium is our doctor," says Beg. "When your stomach hurts, you take a smoke. Then you take a little more. And a little more. And then, you're addicted. Once you're hooked, it's over. You're finished."

When his grandson Shamsuddin, 1, cut his finger in the door jamb, Beg blew opium smoke into the child's mouth, a common practice in this part of the world which is now resulting in rampant child addiction. He doesn't want his grandchild to become an addict, but he says he has no choice. "If there is no medicine here, what should we do? The only way to make him feel better is to give him opium."

From a single smoke, they progress to a three-times-a-day habit that spreads. When Beg began using opium, it wasn't just his wife and daughter who followed suit. It was his brother. Then his brother's wife. Like an epidemic, it makes its way across the village.

Health workers say that to treat the addiction, they need to treat the entire community. Last year, the Ministry of Health took 120 addicts from Sarab to a facility in a town one day's drive away to be treated. Three months later, they found that 115 of the 120 had relapsed.

"First my neighbor started doing opium again," explains Noor, one of the women treated, whose eyes are dark caves. "Then my cousin. Then my husband. And then after a while, I also started."

Most of the addicts spend $3 to $4 a day on opium in a part of the world where people earn on average $2. They sell their land and go deeply into debt to maintain their habit.

"I used to be a rich man," says Dadar, a man who looks to be in his 70s and whose family of seven is addicted. "I had cattle. I had land. And then I started smoking. I sold the cattle. I sold my land. Now I have nothing."

He wears an old windbreaker encrusted with dirt. His wife pulls back her lips to show a mouth full of diseased teeth. Their grandchildren have knotted hair and ripped clothes stained with muck.

Because they've sold their cattle, they no longer eat meat. When they sold the last of their land, they also lost their wheat, potatoes and greens. Their diet now consists of tea and the occasional piece of bread given by a neighbor.

Village chief Sahib Dad says even those who are not addicted are forced to pay a price.

"When a person gets addicted, he has nothing to eat," says Dad. "That affects his neighbor because the neighbor is forced to give over a part of his food. For this reason, all of us are poorer."

After selling their land, some families resort to even more desperate measures. They take loans from the shopkeepers who sell them drugs. Then they sell their daughters, known as 'opium brides,' to settle the debt. They lease their sons.

"I know he is angry with me. But what can I do? I have nothing left to sell," says Jan Begum, who has sent her 14-year-old to do construction work for the drug dealers. "I tried to stop, but I can't. Whenever I do, the pain becomes unbearable."

The problem is compounded by Afghanistan's neighbors. Iran immediately to the west has the world's highest per capita heroin use. The heroin labs there, as well as in Pakistan to the east, use opium imported from Afghanistan. These countries are now exporting heroin addiction back to Afghanistan in the form of returning refugees.

Like opium, heroin in Afghanistan is biting off whole families. Gul Pari, 13, watched her mother get high on heroin when she and her brother were in elementary school. Now she lies in a bed in a drug treatment center for women in Kabul. Her 15-year-old brother Zaihar is across town in a rehab facility for men.

Their bodies are like brittle sticks. The 13-year-old tries to push herself up on one elbow, but her thin arm cannot hold her up, so she falls back onto the pillow. Her emaciated brother leans against a wall to steady himself.

What will happen when they go home is unknown. They live with their mother — a recovering heroin addict — under a tarp in the yard of an abandoned house.

Mohammad Asef, a health worker at the clinic taking care of Zaihar Pari, says he is worried about the boy's chances of recovering. "In America people go and get high in the park. In Afghanistan, they do it in the home," says Asef. "They bring it inside. They burn it on the family stove. Everyone sees. So everyone is affected."

In Sarab, villagers who are not addicted keep their distance from those who are. They don't invite them into their homes. They discourage them from coming to village meetings. It's as if they are trying to quarantine themselves.

Beg says that for him all hope is lost. Even after he is buried, it'll take 70 years for the opium to ooze out of his bones. His hope, he says, are his grandkids — the only people in the family who are not yet addicts.

As Beg is getting high on a recent morning, the 1-year-old crawls over and starts playing with the opium pipe. He picks it up and shakes it, as if it were a rattle. Then, imitating his grandfather, he raises the pipe to his mouth.

Sanctions Unlikely to Stop Iran's Nuclear Quest

By TONY KARON

Unless Iran responds positively to President Obama's offer of talks on its nuclear program by next month, it could face what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls "crippling sanctions." That was the message from Administration officials touring the Middle East in recent weeks. And it's backed by congressional moves to pass legislation aimed at choking off the gasoline imports on which Iran relies for almost a third of its consumption, by punishing third-country suppliers. It sounds impressive and, for an undiversified economy like Iran's, potentially calamitous. But a number of Iran analysts are skeptical that new sanctions will break the stalemate.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government has promised to present a new package of proposals on the nuclear issue to Western negotiators in the coming weeks. But that package is unlikely to reflect any shift in Tehran's rejection of the U.S. demand that it forgo the right to enrich uranium as part of its nuclear-energy program. "If the U.S. position remains unchanged," says Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii, "Iran may well come to the table, but only in order to demonstrate to its own people that its regime has been recognized, not to seriously engage with U.S. proposals or give ground."

Iran's postelection turmoil has left Ahmadinejad politically weakened, and his focus in the coming weeks will be on assembling a government and stabilizing a divided regime, rather than on seeking a compromise with the Western powers he blames for the election debacle. "Iranians have never responded well to deadlines and red lines," says Farhi, "and there's no reason to believe they will do so now."

In a TV interview two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Iran, "You have a right to pursue the peaceful use of civil nuclear power. You do not have a right to obtain a nuclear weapon. You do not have the right to have the full enrichment and reprocessing cycle under your control." But both the Iranian government and its opposition believe that Iran is due the same rights as any other signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which includes the right to enrich uranium to the levels necessary for reactor fuel, under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "There is no disagreement among political leaders in Iran on proclaiming Iran's right to enrich uranium," says Farhi. Iran's previous government had shown flexibility on the pace of an enrichment program, but not on the principle. Explains Farhi: "It is simply not feasible for any political leader in Iran to accept an arrangement that denies Iran the rights enjoyed by others, that treats Iran as a special case."

Iran's current enrichment efforts are monitored by IAEA inspectors and certified as within permissible limits. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, recently wrote to Congress that "it is unlikely that Iran will have the technical capability to produce [weapons-grade uranium] before 2013". Blair added that U.S. intelligence believes Iran has not yet decided whether to produce weapons-grade materiel, and would be unlikely to do so while its nuclear effort remains under international scrutiny. But with hawks painting Iran's nuclear program as a grave and gathering danger and the Israelis threatening to take preemptive military action, the Obama Administration is under pressure to produce results from its efforts to engage Iran.

Effective sanctions, say Administration officials, require participation by Iran's key trading partners. That's a problem, since neither Russia nor China is convinced that there's an imminent danger of Iran producing nuclear weapons. Coalition of the willing–style sanctions of the sort envisaged by the congressional legislation may have limited impact because they're unlikely to be implemented by neighbors such as Turkey and Iraq. And the use of naval power to enforce a blockade could easily provoke a war that the U.S. military is eager to avoid.

But even if "crippling sanctions" were somehow imposed, Tehran still might not back down. "If it were possible to choke off the gasoline supply into Iran, the likelihood is that Iran's existing refinery capacity would be used first and foremost to ensure that the needs of the security forces and the regime are taken care of," says Dr. Gary Sick, a Columbia University professor and former National Security Council Iran specialist. "Those who are going to suffer most will be the ordinary Iranians with whom we sympathize. You can argue that this might spur them to revolt, but more likely is that if their fuel rations are suddenly cut in half, ordinary Iranians will be very upset with the West."

"The economic well-being of the Iranian people has never been a first-tier priority for the Iranian regime," says Carnegie Endowment Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour. "The last three decades have shown us that this regime is willing to endure tremendous hardship rather than compromise for reasons of economic or political expediency."

Farhi points out that Iran's regime began making preparations for U.S. petroleum sanctions as early as 2007, diversifying its sources of supply, moving to upgrade its refineries and implementing a comprehensive rationing system, all of which can help the regime manage the impact of a fall in gasoline imports.

So what can the West possibly do? A number of Iran watchers recommend that in the postelection turmoil the Obama Administration should simply reset its clock. "We should continue to allow the rifts between political Élites, and the rift between the people and regime, to widen on their own," suggests Sadjadpour. "As Napoleon once said, 'If your enemy is destroying himself, don't interfere.' The truth is, we don't know how sanctions on refined petroleum could play out, and our bottom line should be to do no harm to the prospects for political change in Iran."

Easy enough for policy analysts to say, but not for a President. "A lot of people are going to be putting immense pressure on President Obama to set a deadline and take firm action," says Sick. The Administration may have no good options beyond continuing to explore diplomacy, he warns, but "it's extraordinarily difficult to sell that to a chorus of people shouting 'Do something!'"