What the Red Cross centers have accomplished is visible on the streets of almost every Afghan town and village. Since the Red Cross started the program in 1988, the centers have provided prostheses to nearly 90,000 Afghans, between a third and a quarter of all those thought to have suffered disabling injuries from 30 years of warfare

December 25, 2008
A Foreign Face Beloved by Afghans of All Stripes

By JOHN F. BURNS
KABUL, Afghanistan — History has fostered a notion here that all foreign occupations of Afghanistan are ultimately doomed.

There was the catastrophic retreat of a British expeditionary force in 1842. Nearly 150 years later came the Soviet troop withdrawal of 1989. Now, with the Taliban pressing in on this city and dominating the countryside, there are fears that this occupation, too, will eventually fail.

But whatever the outcome, Afghans of all ethnic and political stripes, even the Taliban, seem likely to count Alberto Cairo as one foreigner who left the country better than he found it.

Mr. Cairo, once a debonair lawyer in his native Turin, Italy, is almost certainly the most celebrated Western relief official in Afghanistan, at least among Afghans. To the generation who have been beneficiaries of his relief work for the International Committee of the Red Cross, he is known simply as “Mr. Alberto,” a man apart among the 15,000 foreigners who live and work in this city.

That total includes civilians working for embassies or foreign relief agencies, like Mr. Cairo, and troops from 41 nations fighting to hold the line against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In Afghanistan’s turbulent history, there have rarely been as many foreigners living in Kabul, the Afghan capital, nor as much riding on what they achieve.

Mr. Cairo, 56, arrived long before the vast majority of them, in 1990, after the Soviet occupation. He had transferred from a Red Cross posting in Africa to run the orthopedic rehabilitation program of the organization — a job dedicated to helping Afghans disabled by war injuries to live normally again, by equipping them with artificial legs and arms.

What the Red Cross centers have accomplished is visible on the streets of almost every Afghan town and village. Since the Red Cross started the program in 1988, the centers have provided prostheses to nearly 90,000 Afghans, between a third and a quarter of all those thought to have suffered disabling injuries from 30 years of warfare, beginning with the Soviet invasion. Many Red Cross patients were victims of the 10 million mines strewn across the landscape during the Soviet period.

Mr. Cairo, slim, affable and an energetic enthusiast of tennis, rarely shows the edginess that wears away at the most courtly of foreigners under stress in foreign lands. But a rare impatience shows when the people who know what he has accomplished suggest that he has become a legend here. Rather, Mr. Cairo says it is he, more than his Afghan patients, who has been the greatest beneficiary of his years in Kabul.

His passion took root the moment he arrived. Not long before, he had abandoned law and retrained as a physiotherapist, seeing it as a path to a more fulfilling life. The choice grew from a teenage experience in Italy, when he joined a school trip to a rehabilitation center. Now, he says, he cannot imagine another life.

“When I’m away from Afghanistan, I can’t think of anything but what I have here,” he said during a pasta dinner he cooked at his Kabul home.

Continuing in English, which he speaks fluently and mixes, when among Afghans, with a strong working command of Dari and Pashto, Afghanistan’s two principal languages, he added: “Whenever I go to Europe, I worry that for some reason I won’t be able to come back. What I’m doing here is so rewarding. For me, it’s perfect. I feel I have been very, very lucky.”

The Kabul rehabilitation center is an airy, spacious complex built on an old hospital graveyard in northwestern Kabul. It was assigned to the Red Cross by President Najibullah, the Afghan leader during the last years of the Soviet occupation, who was lynched by the Taliban when they captured the capital in 1996. The center has remained there ever since, despite a break during a period of ethnic warfare that enveloped the neighborhood in the early 1990s. Unusually, for a highly visible operation involving foreigners, it has never been attacked.

In the traditions of the Red Cross, founded in the 1860s as a neutral intermediary in time of war, the orthopedic centers make no distinction on the basis of political affiliation. Asked whether disabled Taliban fighters were among those now under care at the centers, Mr. Cairo replied: “I hope so. We ask for a name when our patients register, but they can give any name, and we don’t investigate.”

In practice, many new patients treated at the centers now, about 6,000 a year, are not war casualties, or even victims of the mines that brought most patients in the past. Two decades of intensive mine-clearing operations by the United Nations, and by private charities like Britain’s Halo Trust, have cleared most of minefields in the lower-lying areas where Afghan villagers, particularly farmers, are vulnerable.

Instead, many of the new patients are being treated as a result of circumstances not related to war: car accidents; congenital deformities; or the effects of polio or tuberculosis.

But the legacy of past fighting and the injuries inflicted in the current conflict — in which both Taliban and coalition forces have caused civilian casualties — keep the centers busy. Of the 90,000 people who have received new limbs, 70,000 revisit the centers every year, usually for replacement or readjustment of their prostheses, which last an average of two to three years for adults, and as little as six months for children. All the treatments, including overnight stays at the centers that can run on for weeks, are free.

A frequent complaint among Afghans is that much of the $10 billion to $15 billion in aid donated since the Taliban’s fall in 2001 goes to the salaries of foreign workers and other perks, like expensive offices and four-wheel-drive vehicles.

“They see us flashing about in big cars, and they have the impression that we don’t really belong here,” Mr. Cairo said. He is insistently frugal in his own life, giving up much of his salary to patients and ensuring that all but a handful of the jobs at the centers go to disabled Afghans, not foreigners.

Mr. Cairo’s passion for his patients is reciprocal, and nowhere is that more evident than out on the Kabul center’s open-air testing ground, a concrete platform where men, women and children, some standing for the first time in years, learn to walk again with artificial limbs. Tears flow readily, and much of the gratitude flows to “Mr. Alberto.”

Shah Mohammed, a 25-year-old policeman who lost a leg this year to a bomb buried by the Taliban, waited in a wheelchair. The Americans? “It is better that they should be here, because of the Taliban,” he said. And the Taliban? “If I find them, I’ll put them in a grinding machine.” He paused, and turned to something more immediate. “Mr. Alberto,” he said. “We love him. Please put that down. We love him.”

December 24, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Time to Reboot America

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America.

It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.

Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.

The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.

All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out — that’s the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted “lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job.”

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.

John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.

Merry Christmas!

http://thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/12/the_decline_of_the_fisheries--.html#comments

The most important book that I have read in 2008 is Bringing Nature Home by Douglas W. Tallamy.

http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Nature-Home-Sustain-Wildlife/dp/0881928542/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229820995&sr=8-1

I am both a Master Gardener and a Master Naturalist. I have principally focused on water quality and wetlands over the past couple of years; however, several friends have started discussions regarding "native plants." I listened; however, didn't really understand their message until I finally read the book they all recommended - Bringing Nature Home.

The elevator speech: Our environment is the product of millions of years of evolution. All living things evolved in the context of other living things around them and depend upon a very specific, narrow band of food sources. The lowest level of the living food chain, insects, evolved to depend on specific very narrow plant species ("native plants") as a food source. Other living things up the chain depend upon insects to convert the energy created by plants through photosynthesis into food for the rest of the food chain (including us). Take away the native plant species and the insects lose their food source. Take away the insects and the food chain collapses. Damage the food chain and the system collapses. Our love of well manicured lawns and open spaces are taking away the native species. Eventually, the system will collapse... and we will be no more.

Simply put, once you read this book I belive you will probably incorporate it into Grand Strategy thinking and your next book (the one we are expecting after "Great Powers". If we don't protect the food chain, Grand Strategy really doesn't matter.

In any case, it will probably be a pleasant and interesting diversion from your normal reading list.

Posted by Cold War Warrior | December 24, 2008 7:52 AM

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European Countries May Take Detainees
Under Bush, Nations Refused to Resettle Guantanamo Prisoners
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 23, 2008; A01

European nations have begun intensive discussions both within and among their governments on whether to resettle detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a significant overture to the incoming Obama administration, according to senior European officials and U.S. diplomats.

The willingness to consider accepting prisoners who cannot be returned to their home countries, because of fears they may be tortured there, represents a major change in attitude on the part of European governments. Repeated requests from the Bush administration that European allies accept some Guantanamo Bay detainees received only refusals.

The Bush administration "produced the problem," Karsten Voigt, coordinator of German-American cooperation at the German Foreign Ministry, said in a telephone interview. "With Obama, the difference is that he tries to solve it."

At least half a dozen countries are considering resettlement, with only Germany and Portugal acknowledging it publicly thus far.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has instructed officials to look into political, legal and logistical aspects of the matter, a ministry spokesman said yesterday. A discussion paper on the issue has been circulating among ministries in Berlin for weeks, German officials said.

European officials put out tentative feelers to Barack Obama's team to see whether it was willing to discuss the issue, but the incoming administration has rejected holding even informal talks until after the Jan. 20 inauguration, according to European and U.S. officials aware of the outreach.

"President-elect Obama has repeatedly said that he intends to close Guantanamo, and he will follow through on those commitments as president. There is one president at a time, and we intend to respect that," said Brooke Anderson, chief national security spokeswoman for the Obama transition team.

The Portuguese government pushed what had been private discussions in Europe into the open this month when Foreign Minister Luís Amado brought up the issue in a letter to his counterparts in other countries.

"The time has come for the European Union to step forward," he wrote. "As a matter of principle and coherence, we should send a clear signal of our willingness to help the U.S. government in that regard, namely through the resettlement of detainees. As far as the Portuguese government is concerned, we will be available to participate."

Amado said yesterday in a phone interview that he plans to raise the issue at a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers in late January. It will also be discussed at an E.U. General Affairs and External Relations Council meeting on Jan. 26, he added.

"I believe the new administration will have the conditions to create a new dynamic of cooperation," Amado said. He noted that when he first raised the issue of Guantanamo Bay at a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers about seven months ago, some countries resisted assisting the Bush administration.

"I assume the new administration will have someone on a plane to Europe within minutes of Obama being sworn in," said Sarah E. Mendelson, director of the Human Rights and Security Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the author of a report on closing Guantanamo Bay.

European officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because their governments have not yet formulated a public stance on the issue, said they expect the Obama administration to take steps to secure European cooperation, some of which appear to be under serious discussion by the transition team.

The Europeans want a clear commitment to close Guantanamo Bay and an acceptance of common legal principles in the fight against terrorism, including those regarding the treatment of suspects, European officials said. A series of meetings between the United States and the European Union on a legal framework for combating terrorism has considerably narrowed differences on the application of human rights law, refugee law and humanitarian law, said Amado and John B. Bellinger III, a legal adviser at the State Department.

The Europeans also want Obama to agree to transfer a small number of detainees to the United States before they attempt to sell a resettlement program to their own citizens.

"I believe that will happen," Amado said.

One group likely to be settled here is 17 Chinese Uighurs who have been held for years at Guantanamo Bay. The Bush administration has acknowledged that the Uighurs are not enemy combatants, and in October a federal judge ordered them released into the United States.

In interagency discussions, the State Department has argued that the Uighurs be brought to the United States to help persuade Europe to resettle other detainees. But a State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the departments of Homeland Security and Justice, as well as White House officials, considered resettlement in the United States a "red-line" issue.

The Justice Department has appealed the judge's order that the Uighurs be released.

"Secretary [Condoleezza] Rice and others at State argued for resettlement in the U.S. as a deal-maker," one U.S. official said. "But it's clear this administration is not going to reconsider the issue of resettlement."

Guantanamo Bay currently has about 250 prisoners, according to the Pentagon. And some European officials said a number of governments are considering the logistics of resettling a majority of the 60 prisoners already cleared for release by U.S. authorities.

The Pentagon has not identified the 60, but a study released by the Brookings Institution last week found that as well as the Chinese Uighurs, the group includes detainees from Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and the Palestinian territories. The Brookings study found that these prisoners "concentrate at the less dangerous end of the spectrum."

The U.S. military no longer holds any European citizens at Guantanamo Bay.

Thomas Steg, a German government spokesman, said yesterday that the United States will not be able to place any conditions on the handling of transferred detainees if they are accepted in Europe.

"One thing is clear: The Americans cannot ask for any special terms -- no other agreements, swaps or other strings attached," he told reporters in Berlin.

He also said all 27 members of the European Union will have to discuss the matter. Countries such as Denmark have already signaled that they will not accept any detainees, arguing that they are the sole responsibility of the United States.

"Why should they be taken into the much smaller Danish society?" Per Stig Moller, the country's foreign minister, said last month. "None of these prisoners has anything whatsoever to do with Denmark."

Some general agreement among E.U. members is required because of the freedom of travel within the union, but that prerequisite is not expected to block a resettlement deal because of the general desire in Europe "to please Obama," as one German official put it in an interview.

The Bush administration shopped lists of detainees to a number of European countries, including late last year when European officials were asked to take 16 of the 17 Uighurs, four Uzbeks, an Egyptian, a Palestinian and a Somali, according to U.S. diplomats and human rights groups.

"There was a big push last year," said Bellinger, the State Department legal adviser, who said that the administration has cabled approximately 100 countries seeking help with clearing out Guantanamo Bay. "Some countries were willing to consider it, but as part of a group. But no lead country emerged."

A number of civil liberties and human rights groups have also been holding talks with European governments with the quiet approval of the State Department, U.S. officials said.

"We have been saying to them that if you want Guantanamo to close, the [Obama] administration cannot do it without European assistance," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism program director at Human Rights Watch, who has talked with government officials in European capitals.

Mariner declined to identify the governments she spoke with, but she said there has been "a clear change in attitude" since Obama was elected.

"Before, they said, 'Why should we clean up Bush's mess?' But now they are asking deeper questions about the detainees and how they might integrate them," she said.