CATASTROPHE IN CHILE

India: New freedom to find information

BANGALORE, India — In a country that has the dubious distinction of topping almost every ranking of the world’s corrupt, bribe-taking countries, a law called the Right to Information Act is altering the equation between the gigantic government and its vast citizenry.

The Right to Information Act — popularly called the RTI — was enacted as national law four years ago to pry open the opaque nature of governance in India.

Now do-gooder activists, zealous citizens and eager lawyers are turning RTI into an effective tool to whip India’s gargantuan democracy into shape. Acknowledging its power to shake up the age-old establishment, the Delhi High Court noted recently, “Sunlight is a powerful disinfectant."

“For the first time in six decades since independence, the common man has the power to right Indian democracy,” says Vikram Simha, a banker-turned-voluntary RTI activist in Bangalore.

Until recently, disclosure of public records was banned under "Official Secrets Act 1889" dating back to British rule. The RTI now allows Indians, for a small fee, to access any official record of the federal or state governments, with the exception of documents about the troubled Jammu & Kashmir state, and individuals’ income tax and medical records. Public authorities are required to respond within 30 days.

Indians are using the RTI for a range of uses, from questioning delays in getting power supply or water connections to their homes, to fixing the poor drains and missing street lights in their neighborhood — all without “chai-paani," or Hindi slang for bribes.

In New Delhi, slum workers have banded together to drive an anti-bribery campaign with RTI, using it to apply for passports, driving licenses or birth certificates.

Enthused by these small successes, Indians are starting to question major government decisions. In recent weeks, RTI has been used to scrutinize the joint statement by India and Pakistan which de-linked diplomatic talks from terror attacks. That statement, along with its drafts and file notings, is now open to public scrutiny.

Saritha Rai

Saritha Rai covers India for GlobalPost. Rai has spent her journalistic career tracking diverse subjects such as globalization, the technology industry and social change. For six years, she was the India-based business reporter for the New York Times, writing about the economy, outsourcing, liberalization and change. She has written for the International Herald Tribune, serve as the technology correspondent for Time magazine's Asia edition, and was the editor of online edition of the Economic Times, India's No. 1 business newspaper. She was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University where she focused on business, the Internet and emerging technologies, and in her early career, she worked with India Today, the country's most read newsmagazine, and the Telegraph, one of the country's largest newspapers. Rai's work has appeared in magazines such as Forbes, Worth and Ode. She has been part of documentary and feature teams for Discovery, NBC, Fox TV and the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Rai is a contributing editor with the Indian Express, one of India's biggest newspapers, and a columnist for CNET. She graduated with a degree in journalism from Bangalore.

US cites secret evidence in Mumbai attack case

U.S. prosecutors preparing to try a Pakistani-born Chicago businessman on charges he aided the 2008 Mumbai attackers invoked a secrecy law on Wednesday to control evidence disclosures in the case.

Defendant Tahawwur Rana looked on during a federal court hearing where Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, and other prosecutors asked the judge for a private hearing to lay out the government's classified evidence. The judge set the hearing for March 29.

The U.S. law in question, the Classified Information Procedures Act, seeks to balance a defendant's rights against the government's desire to protect secrets and its information-gathering sources and methods.

Rana, 49, is charged along with American David Headley with providing support to the Mumbai attackers, which killed 166 people and set India-Pakistan relations on edge. Two Pakistanis have also been charged but they are not in custody.

Headley, 49, is cooperating with prosecutors, who have detailed his role scouting targets in Mumbai and elsewhere for Islamic militant groups.

Both Headley and Rana have pleaded not guilty.

The FBI made tape-recordings of Headley and Rana purportedly discussing the Mumbai attack and a plot to attack a Danish newspaper, according to court papers.

The newspaper plot, which never came off, was to be in retaliation for cartoons it published in 2005 depicting the Prophet Mohammad that enraged Muslims, the papers said.

The plots were backed by Pakistani-based Islamic militant groups that included Lashkar-e-Taiba, the papers said.

Rana's attorney, Patrick Blegen, met with Fitzgerald and a representative of the U.S. government privately both inside and outside the courtroom. Blegen said little about the evidence issue afterward, but he has filed court papers demanding the government provide specifics of how Rana supported Headley and the Mumbai attackers.

Prosecutors have said Rana was deeply involved, using his immigration business to provide cover for Headley's travels.

India’s Controversial New War Doctrine

Indian Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor has attracted much attention with his suggestion at a training command seminar that India is preparing for a 'two-front' war with Pakistan and China, Harsh V Pant comments for ISN Security Watch.

By Harsh V Pant

General Kapoor underlined that this was being done as part of the larger process whereby the Indian army was revising its old war-fighting doctrine and bringing it in sync with the emerging strategic scenario so as to be able to successfully firm up its ‘Cold Start’ strategy.

After strengthening its offensive capabilities vis-à-vis Pakistan by creating a new southwestern army command in 2005, India is now concentrating on countering China effectively in the eastern sector. The Indian army chief said that there was now “a proportionate focus towards the western and northeastern fronts.”

Pakistan reacted predictably by describing India’s move as reflecting a “hegemonistic and jingoistic mindset” as well as accusing India of “betraying hostile intent,” and urged the international community to take due notice of developments in India. Pakistani officials emphasized that their nation’s “capability and determination to foil any nefarious designs against the security of Pakistan” should not be underestimated. Pakistan’s reaction was expected, as the security establishment views this as an opportunity to once again press upon the Americans the need to keep Pakistani forces intact on the India-Pakistan border rather than fighting the Taliban forces on the border with Afghanistan.

China’s response, on the other hand, was more measured, and it chose not to address the issue directly. The controversy arose at a time when the two states were beginning a new phase in their defense ties by initiating a dialogue at the level of defense secretaries. But Chinese analysts have expressed concerns in recent years about India’s growing military ambitions and a purported shift in Indian defense strategy from a passive to an “active and aggressive” nature.

It was the Kargil conflict of 1999 that exposed Indian vulnerabilities as Pakistan realized that India did not have the capability to impose quick and effective retribution. The then-Indian army chief had famously commented that the forces would fight with whatever they had, underlining the frustration in the armed forces regarding their inability to procure the arms they needed. Only because the conflict remained largely confined to the 150-kilometer front of the Kargil sector did India manage to gain an upper hand by throwing the Pakistanis out of its side of the Line of Control (LoC). Then came the standoff between the Indian and Pakistani armies across the LoC after the Indian Parliament was attacked in 2001, and again India lacked the ability to impose any significant cost on Pakistan quickly and decisively because of the unavailability of suitable weaponry and night vision equipment needed to carry out swift surgical strikes.

The nuclear aspect is important because it is part of the reason that elements within the Pakistani security establishment have become more adventurous. Realizing that India would be reluctant to escalate the conflict because of the threat of it reaching the nuclear level, sections of the Pakistani military and intelligence have pushed the envelope on the sub-conventional front.

For India, this presents a structural conundrum: Nuclear weapons have made a major conventional conflict with Pakistan unrealistic, yet it needs to find a way to launch limited military action against Pakistan without crossing the nuclear threshold. Nuclear weapons have allowed Pakistan to shield itself from full-scale Indian retaliation as well as to attract international attention on the disputes in the sub-continent.

After Operation Parakram of 2001-02, the Indian army did try to evolve a new doctrine. This ‘Cold Start’ doctrine is basically an attempt to acquire the ability to fight limited wars under the nuclear umbrella. To resolve the dilemma confronting India post-1998, Indian strategists have focused on a military doctrine that might give them the ability to launch quick, decisive limited strikes against Pakistan to seize some territory before the international community could intervene, which can then be used as a post-conflict bargaining chip.

This doctrine is still evolving and its is not clear how effective it would be in making sure that the conflict remains limited as Pakistan might be forced to bring down its nuclear threshold to respond to this challenge. Moreover, the Indian army has found little support for this doctrine from the other two services, and the civilian government has shown no interest in this venture.

As a consequence, the ‘Cold Start’ doctrine has continued to be in the limelight as India’s national security establishment has searched for policy options vis-à-vis Pakistan. Yet this doctrine remains a work in progress. Execution of this doctrine would need the right kind of equipment, something India will have to acquire on a priority basis.

The army will need to upgrade its capabilities significantly if it is to implement this approach. And to do this it will have to surmount a number of entrenched problems in the defense procurement system.

The 1999 and 2001 crises forced the government to react by boosting defense expenditures, but political compulsions re-asserted themselves soon after. When the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government came to power in 2004, it ordered investigations into several of the arms acquisition deals of the previous government. A series of defense procurement scandals since the late 1980s have made the bureaucracy risk-averse, thereby delaying the acquisition process. The labyrinthine bureaucratic processes involved in military procurement have left the defense forces unable to spend a large proportion of their budgets.

While Pakistan has rapidly acquired US technology over the last several years through involvement in the war on terror and China’s military modernization has gathered momentum, the modernization of the Indian army has slipped behind by as much as a decade.

The Indian army chief stated the obvious recently when he talked of India preparing for a “two-front” war. It is the job of the Indian armed forces to prepare for such wars given the security threats that India faces from its neighbors, just as the Pakistani and Chinese military take into account the possibility of a future conflict with India. But it must be kept in perspective that unlike in Pakistan and China, strategic policymaking in India is the sole preserve of the political leadership and Indian policymakers are yet to sign on to this much talked about new doctrine.

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Harsh Pant is a lecturer at King's College London. His research interests include WMD proliferation, US foreign policy and Asia-Pacific security issues. He is also presently a Visiting Fellow at CASI, University of Pennsylvania.

US to spend $50 million on media in Pakistan

The Obama administration plans to spend nearly $50 million on Pakistani media this year to reverse anti-American sentiments and raise awareness of projects aimed at improving quality of life, confirms a Washington insider.

After the Kerry-Lugar Bill debacle, the Obama administration had struggled with the idea of ‘branding’ aid and many within the State department and the USAID had argued that identifying projects may backfire.

“By announcing that a school was built and is being maintained – partly because of the aid received from America – you can alienate people,” said someone who had proposed not ‘branding’ the aid.

The US Special Representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke believes that a substantial amount of monies spent on media- especially private TV channels will reduce tension and may even bring Pakistan-US relations back on the right path.

Senator John Kerry, the main architect of Kerry-Lugar bill also supports the idea of claiming credit for all “the good work being done to improve infrastructure, energy and education,” said a source in Senator’s office.

Reuters today reported that the Obama administration has sent lawmakers a plan for funding water, energy and other projects. Report said the US intends to spend $1.45 billion of earmarked for the Kerry-Lugar bill in fiscal 2010.

The trust deficit had surged after a well intended aid package focused to uplift Pakistan’s civilian society was trashed by a section of Pakistani media. Interviews with diplomatic sources in Washington, D.C. and media coverage of the KLB debacle had demonstrated growing frustration of the Obama administration.

Although American officials publicly praise military operation in South Waziristan, in private they sing a different tune; their assessment of ”alignment” is rather pessimistic. Stories leaked to media consistently allege that al-Qaeda leadership is still enjoying safe haven in Pakistan.

Pakistan-U.S. relations have not been this tenuous before, and the Obama administration is frustrated with the outcome of the Kerry-Lugar bill. “No one had anticipated such negativity,” said an American official who did not want to be identified. “We thought Pakistanis [would] celebrate the passage of this bill. This is what we were told by representatives of Pakistani government.”

Pakistani government representatives from President Zardari to Foreign Minister Qureshi and Ambassador Hussain Haqqani further down the chain had assured the Americans that Pakistanis would be jubilant; KLB was suppose to heal all wounds, rectify all wrongs and erase memories of the past from the consciousness of the masses.

The Obama administration has shared their plan to sponsor high impact projects and communicate the value of these projects using local media.

Voice of America, a radio and TV platform that speaks for the government of the US already has a tie-up with Geo TV and now they have aligned with Express TV as well.

The Obama administration plans to help Pakistan’s democratic government meet budget shortfalls and deliver services to a population increasingly angry about economic and security troubles. As the funding builds the capacity of the government to provide basic services, the US sponsored Pakistani media will raise awareness and a build a brand for America, our sources have confirmed.

It Is Now Official: The US Is a Police State

by Paul Craig Roberts

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for terrorists. Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorists” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

As there was no evidence against the “detainees” (most have been released without charges after years of detention and abuse), the U.S. government needed a way around U.S. and international laws against torture in order that the government could produce evidence via self-incrimination. The Bush regime found inhumane and totalitarian-minded lawyers and put them to work at the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) to invent arguments that the Bush regime did not need to obey the law.

The Bush regime created a new classification for its detainees that it used to justify denying legal protection and due process to the detainees. As the detainees were not U.S. citizens and were demonized by the regime as “the 760 most dangerous men on earth,” there was little public outcry over the regime’s unconstitutional and inhumane actions.

As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, an American citizen of Pakistani origin, might have been the first.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Her three young children, one an 8-month-old baby, were with her at the time she was abducted. She has no idea what has become of her two youngest children. Her oldest child, 7 years old, was also incarcerated in Bagram and subjected to similar abuse and horrors.

Siddiqui has never been charged with any terrorism-related offense. A British journalist, hearing her piercing screams as she was being tortured, disclosed her presence. An embarrassed U.S. government responded to the disclosure by sending Siddiqui to the U.S. for trial on the trumped-up charge that while a captive, she grabbed a U.S. soldier’s rifle and fired two shots attempting to shoot him. The charge apparently originated as a U.S. soldier’s excuse for shooting Dr. Siddiqui twice in the stomach, resulting in her near death.

On Feb. 4, Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a New York jury for attempted murder. The only evidence presented against her was the charge itself and an unsubstantiated claim that she had once taken a pistol-firing course at an American firing range. No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier. No evidence was presented that a weapon was fired, no bullets, no shell casings, no bullet holes. Just an accusation.

Wikipedia has this to say about the trial: “The trial took an unusual turn when an FBI official asserted that the fingerprints taken from the rifle, which was purportedly used by Aafia to shoot at the U.S. interrogators, did not match hers.”

An ignorant and bigoted American jury convicted her for being a Muslim. This is the kind of “justice” that always results when the state hypes fear and demonizes a group.

The people who should have been on trial are the people who abducted her, disappeared her young children, shipped her across international borders, violated her civil liberties, tortured her apparently for the fun of it, raped her, and attempted to murder her with two gunshots to her stomach. Instead, the victim was put on trial and convicted.

This is the unmistakable hallmark of a police state. And this victim is an American citizen.

Anyone can be next. Indeed, on Feb. 3 Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee that it was now “defined policy” that the U.S. government can murder its own citizens on the sole basis of someone in the government’s judgment that an American is a threat. No arrest, no trial, no conviction, just execution on suspicion of being a threat.

This shows how far the police state has advanced. A presidential appointee in the Obama administration tells an important committee of Congress that the executive branch has decided that it can murder American citizens abroad if it thinks they are a threat.

I can hear readers saying the government might as well kill Americans abroad as it kills them at home – Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Black Panthers.

Yes, the U.S. government has murdered its citizens, but Dennis Blair’s “defined policy” is a bold new development. The government, of course, denies that it intended to kill the Branch Davidians, Randy Weaver’s wife and child, or the Black Panthers. The government says that Waco was a terrible tragedy, an unintended result brought on by the Branch Davidians themselves. The government says that Ruby Ridge was Randy Weaver’s fault for not appearing in court on a day that had been miscommunicated to him. The Black Panthers, the government says, were dangerous criminals who insisted on a shootout.

In no previous death of a U.S. citizen by the hands of the U.S. government has the government claimed the right to kill Americans without arrest, trial, and conviction of a capital crime.

In contrast, Dennis Blair has told the U.S. Congress that the executive branch has assumed the right to murder Americans who it deems a “threat.”

What defines “threat”? Who will make the decision? What it means is that the government will murder whomever it chooses.

There is no more complete or compelling evidence of a police state than the government announcing that it will murder its own citizens if it views them as a “threat.”

Ironic, isn’t it, that “the war on terror” to make us safe ends in a police state with the government declaring the right to murder American citizens whom it regards as a threat.

War Spending America Into Ruin

One of history’s most important lessons is that politicians should never be given a free hand to borrow money to cover the costs of wars, overseas adventures, or military spending.

More empires have been brought down by reckless spending than by invaders. The late Soviet Union, which wrecked its economy by buying too many tanks, is the most recent example. Now, the United States appears headed in the same direction.

Even so, President Barack Obama calls the US $3.8 trillion budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America’s economic health.

In fact, it’s another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug of debt.

Washington’s deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, which the US already owes $1.5 trillion. The United States has put its fate in the hands of two nations who bear it little good will.

Debt service will cost Washington $250 billion, and may reach over a third of the total Federal budget within the next decade. Washington is still paying for past wars while considering starting a new one against Iran.

To understand the immensity of one trillion dollars, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today.

Obama’s total proposed annual military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret "black programs" (about $70 billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan (including bribes); 225,000 military "contractors" (mercenaries and workers); and veteran’s costs. Add $75 billion (nearly 2.5 times France’s total defense budget) for 16 poorly functioning intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees who keep tripping over one another.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far) will cost $200–250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama’s Afghan "surge" of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion – more than Germany’s total defense budget.

These figures do not account for wear and tear on US military equipment, costs of reconfiguring the US military to wage colonial wars in the Third World, or the cost of replacing worn-out equipment. Pentagon bookkeeping is about as flexible as Enron’s bookkeeping.

No wonder US defense stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama’s "austerity" budget.

Military and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as the official unemployment figure hovers near 10% and the economy bleeds red ink. Some estimates put real unemployment at over 20%.

America has become the Sick Man of the Western World, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire whose inept financial management was legendary.

The Pentagon colossus now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add America’s rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75%.

China and Russia combined spend only a paltry 10% of US on defense.

There are 750 US military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea. President George W. Bush doubled military spending – much of which accrues to Republican states – to wage his faux war on terror.

Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. America is on a permanent war footing. Many Americans believe the president’s primary role is as a war leader rather than chief executive of the republic.

Like Bush, President Barack Obama is paying for America’s wars through supplemental authorizations – i.e. putting them on the nation’s already maxed-out credit card. Wage war now – pay later. Future generations will be stuck with the bill.

This presidential and congressional jiggery-pokery is the height of public dishonesty.

America’s wars ought to be paid for through taxes, not bookkeeping fraud. If US taxpayers had to actually pay for the Afghan and Iraq wars, these conflicts would end in short order.

America needs a fair, honest war tax. But hardly any politicians – save the courageous and honest Rep. Ron Paul – dare admit this hard truth.

The US has clearly reached the point of imperial overreach. Military spending and debt servicing are cannibalizing the US economy, the real basis of its world power. Besides the late USSR, the US also increasingly resembles the dying British Empire in 1945, crushed by immense debts incurred to wage WWII, unable to continue financing or defending the imperium, yet still imbued with imperial pretensions.

It is increasingly clear the president is either not in control of America’s runaway military juggernaut, or working with it.

Sixty years ago, the great President Dwight Eisenhower, whose portrait I keep by my desk, warned Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex. Six decades later, partisans of permanent war, fear-mongering, and world domination have joined Wall Street’s money lenders to put America into thrall.

Increasing numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway deficits. But many do not understand their political leaders are also spending their nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a vainglorious attempt to control much of the globe – what neocons call "full spectrum dominance" – using the canard of terrorism to justify an imperial policy that often closely resembles that of the old British Empire.

If Obama were really serious about restoring America’s economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars, and break up the nation’s five giant Frankenbanks that now control 40% of all deposits.

But the president won’t, of course, and neither will Congress. They would see the nation go over the financial falls rather than change course.

The Terror-Industrial Complex

By Chris Hedges

The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security comes not from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.

The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief. Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years. The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children.

Siddiqui was discovered in 2008 disoriented and apparently aggressive and hostile, in Ghazni, Afghanistan, with her oldest son. She allegedly was carrying plans to make explosives, lists of New York landmarks and notes referring to “mass-casualty attacks.” But despite these claims the government prosecutors chose not to charge her with terrorism or links to al-Qaida—the reason for her original appearance on the FBI’s most-wanted list six years ago. Her supporters suggest that the papers she allegedly had in her possession when she was found in Afghanistan, rather than detail coherent plans for terrorist attacks, expose her severe mental deterioration, perhaps the result of years of imprisonment and abuse. This argument was bolstered by some of the pages of the documents shown briefly to the court, including a crude sketch of a gun that was described as a “match gun” that operates by lighting a match.

“Justice was not served,” Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network and the spokesperson for Aafia Siddiqui’s family, told me. “The U.S. government made a decision to label this woman a terrorist, but instead of putting her on trial for the alleged terrorist activity she was put on trial for something else. They tried to convict her of that something else, not with evidence, but because she was a terrorist. She was selectively prosecuted for something that would allow them to only tell their side of the story.”

The government built its entire case instead around disputed events in the 300-square-foot room of the Ghazni police station. It insisted that on July 18, 2008, the diminutive Siddiqui, who had been arrested by local Afghan police the day before, seized an M4 assault rifle that was left unattended and fired at American military and FBI agents. None of the Americans were injured. Siddiqui, however, was gravely wounded, shot twice in the stomach.

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No one, other than Siddiqui, has attempted to explain where she was for five years after she vanished in 2003. No one seems to be able to explain why a disoriented Pakistani woman and her son, an American citizen, neither of whom spoke Dari, were discovered by local residents wandering in a public square in Ghazni, where an eyewitness told Harpers Magazine the distraught Siddiqui “was attacking everyone who got close to her.” Had Siddiqui, after years of imprisonment and torture, perhaps been at the U.S. detention center in Bagram and then dumped with one of her three children in Ghazi? And where are the other two children, one of whom also is an American citizen?

Her arrest in Ghazi saw, according to the official complaint, a U.S. Army captain and a warrant officer, two FBI agents and two military interpreters arrive to question Siddiqui at the police headquarters. The Americans and their interpreters were shown to a meeting room that was partitioned by a yellow curtain. “None of the United States personnel were aware,” the complaint states, “that Siddiqui was being held, unsecured, behind the curtain.” The group sat down to talk and “the Warrant Officer placed his United States Army M-4 rifle on the floor to his right next to the curtain, near his right foot.” Siddiqui allegedly reached from behind the curtain and pulled the three-foot rifle to her side. She unlatched the safety. She pulled the curtain “slightly back” and pointed the gun directly at the head of the captain. One of the interpreters saw her. He lunged for the gun. Siddiqui shouted, “Get the fuck out of here!” and fired twice. She hit no one. As the interpreter wrestled her to the ground, the warrant officer drew his sidearm and fired “approximately two rounds” into Siddiqui’s abdomen. She collapsed, still struggling, and then fell unconscious.

But in an article written by Petra Bartosiewicz in the November 2009 Harper’s Magazine, authorities in Afghanistan described a series of events at odds with the official version.

The governor of Ghazni province, Usman Usmani, told a local reporter who was hired by Bartosiewicz that the U.S. team had “demanded to take over custody” of Siddiqui. The governor refused. He could not release Siddiqui, he explained, until officials from the counterterrorism department in Kabul arrived to investigate. He proposed a compromise: The U.S. team could interview Siddiqui, but she would remain at the station. In a Reuters interview, however, a “senior Ghazni police officer” suggested that the compromise did not hold. The U.S. team arrived at the police station, he said, and demanded custody of Siddiqui. The Afghan officers refused, and the U.S. team proceeded to disarm them. Then, for reasons unexplained, Siddiqui herself somehow entered the scene. The U.S. team, “thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and took her.”

Siddiqui told a delegation of Pakistani senators who went to Texas to visit her in prison a few months after her arrest that she never touched anyone’s gun, nor did she shout at anyone or make any threats. She simply stood up to see who was on the other side of the curtain and startled the soldiers. One of them shouted, “She is loose,” and then someone shot her. When she regained consciousness she heard someone else say, “We could lose our jobs.”