Baghdad, October 24
An Iraqi family gunned down after approaching a US patrol too fast. Dozens of men shot execution-style by sectarian death squads. Grisly killings of civilians have come to define the Iraq war. New details found in government documents released by WikiLeaks, however, provide a surprising level of detail about many attacks and raise questions about how much the US military knew during the months it sought to play down reports of the slaughter.

The documents include reports from soldiers on the ground about day-to-day violence and individual attacks, including shootings, roadside bombings, and the execution-style killings and targeted assassinations that left bodies in the streets of Baghdad at the height of sectarian violence that pushed the country to the brink of civil war. The information is full of military jargon and acronyms but often includes names of victims, times of day of the attacks and the neighbourhoods where they occurred.

That contradicted years of statements by American officials, who have repeatedly resisted providing information about civilian casualties. The US military often told journalists in Baghdad it did not keep detailed records of civilian deaths or have information on particular attacks.

In 2006 and 2007, the Bush administration and military commanders repeatedly denied Iraq was sliding into civil war and often played down the extent of civilian carnage, much of which had no direct effect on US forces. The reports also point to a higher death toll than previously believed.

Iraq Body Count, a private British-based group that has tracked the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the war started in March 2003, said it had analyzed the information and found 15,000 previously unreported deaths. That would raise its total from as many as 107,369 civilians to more than 122,000 civilians.

Rights groups criticized Washington for not releasing the information, insisting that casualty information did not pose a national security risk.

"The American public has a right to know the full human cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union said in an e-mail. "A lot of this information should have been released to the public a long time ago." The U.S. military has maintained careful records of the number of American service members who have died in Iraq , 4,425 as of yesterday.

But civilian casualty figures in the US-led war in Iraq have been hotly disputed because of the political stakes in a conflict opposed by many countries and a large portion of the American public. — AP 

Regional security and trade concerns will top the agenda for the meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Chinese premiere Wen Jiabao, scheduled for October 29.

As the Prime Minister arrived here today for the first leg of his Asia tour, sources said that the boundary issue, resuming military exchanges with China and lifting of non-trade barriers by China will be discussed during this meeting at Hanoi, on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit.

The meeting between both the heads of government has reportedly been arranged on a request by China, said the source. Besides discussing the contentious boundary issue with China, in wake of the latter claiming Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin (Ladakh) as Chinese territory, the growing influence of China in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) will also be taken up at this meeting.

This meeting gains immense significance as it is another step towards resolving the Indo- China tensions that have been brewing for a while now. The increasing Chinese influence in PoK, especially with the widening of Karakoram highway and construction in Gilgit Balistan, has raised the concerns for India.

“India is concerned about the spurt in Chinese activity there and we have already taken it up very strongly with China. Though Beijing continues to say that there is no change in its official position that India and Pakistan resolve the PoK issue bilaterally, we have noticed a change in practice,” said the source.

Sources said China has been keen to resume military exchanges with India, which had paused after China refused to grant a normal visa to Lt Gen B S Jaiswal earlier this year. The Army officer was denied a regular visa and instead China wanted to issue him a visa on a separate sheet of paper, which India had objected to.

“Though not all military links have been cut, certain high level exchanges have been put on hold till this issue of giving stapled visa is resolved. Both sides are now keen to resume full range of defence exchanges, and China has asked India that it would like to resume these exchanges at the earliest,” said the source.

A meeting of special representatives of both the countries will also take place later, to take up this issue further. Even though China has been claiming Arunachal Pradesh to be a part of its territory, it makes little difference to India, because we know that the eastern state is part of the Indian Union. Somebody chooses to draw the boundary at their will, we cannot take an official position on it, added the source.

Cambridge, October 24
In a candid overview of the state of the Left parties in India, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat has said the Leftist forces, who were still “banking on the concepts and theories of the 1940s” needed to understand the sweeping changes being witnessed by the nation.

In one of the key presentations at the ‘Lessons of Empire’ conference at the University of Cambridge in memory of noted Marxist historian Victor Kiernan, Karat admitted that Left parties were “deficient” in theory and needed to study and understand the new developments sweeping India.

Calling himself the only ‘non-scholar’ among the speakers that included academic stars such as Eric Hobsbawm and Christopher Bayly, Karat recalled Kiernan’s friendship with Indian Marxists such as PC Joshi and EMS Namboodiripad and recalled that he was always unrestrained in his criticism of some aspects of the Communist Party of India.

Recounting the genesis and history of India’s Left, Karat recalled that Kiernan would often criticise the party leaders and cadre, some of whom he called the ‘cafe going intellectuals,’ for indulging in political gossip.

A friend and supporter of the party, Kiernan, who lived in India from 1938 to 1946 and died in 2009, was nonetheless scathing in his criticism of the lack of awareness and focus on theory among the party leaders and cadre.

Karat said: “We feel the acute need of theorising to understand the new developments in India. We need to study the big challenge posed by neo-liberal capitalism”.

“It is leading to unequal development. Its focus of exploitation is similar to primitive forms of exploitation”.

Indian Left today, he added, was facing similar kind of challenges that it faced during the 1940s. The Indian Left, Karat said, was historically wrong in writing off the institution of caste. — PTI

Adding to woes of Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, a group of religious scholars has issued a 'fatwa' declaring him "fit to be murdered", while a petition filed in the Supreme Court has sought registration of a high treason case against him.

The fatwa or edict was issued by a group of politicians and religious scholars during a meeting in Quetta on Saturday, declaring Musharraf, who is preparing to return to Pakistani political arena, 'wajibul qatal' (fit to be murdered).

It was issued over the assassination of Baloch nationalist leaders Nawab Akbar Bugti and Nawabzada Balach Marri and the 2007 military operation against a seminary linked to Islamabad's Lal Masjid. The meeting was organised by the Jamhoori Watan Party and presided over by its chief Nawabzada Talal Akbar Bugti, the son of Nawab Akbar Bugti.

Talal Bugti, recently, caused a sensation by announcing a bounty of Rs one billion and 1,000 acres of land for anyone who beheads Musharraf.

Among those who addressed yesterday's meeting were former Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam parliamentarians Maulana Noor Muhammad, Ata-ur-Rehman and Maulana Abdul Qadir Looni. They called on the SC to issue a directive for bringing Musharraf back to Pakistan through Interpol and try him for the murder of Akbar Bugti and the killing of students of Jamia Hafsa, a women seminary linked to the Lal Masjid. They also demanded action against Musharraf for abrogating the Constitution and detaining nuclear scientist AQ Khan. 

BRIEFLY

Russia marks 50th anniversary of worst space accident
Moscow: Russia on Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of the worst and long-classified space accident in which 126 designers and servicemen were killed during a launch pad accident, but bereaved families and the public was kept in dark till the Soviet collapse in 1991. Memorial services were held at the ex-Soviet Baikonur cosmodrome, now in Kazakhstan where the R-16 rocket exploded this day in 1960 and the public was informed of this accident only in mid-1990s after the Soviet collapse, Rossiya 24 channel reported. — PTI

Veteran sherpa goes missing
Kathmandu: A veteran Nepalese guide who has climbed the Mt Everest 19 times is missing along with two others, after an avalanche hit their expedition in the Himalayas. The veteran sherpa, Chhewang Nima, 43, was accompanying a British expedition to the 7,130 m Mt Baruntse. Sources in the Nepal Mountaineering Association said two other sherpas were also missing along with him. A rescue team was dispatched on a helicopter on Sunday to look for the guides. — PTI

50 injured in Bangladesh protests
Dhaka: Over 50 persons sustained bullet wounds as villagers protesting the government's attempt to acquire land for an army housing project clashed with security forces near the national capital. Angry villagers said they were forced to part with their land and attacked army camps, set a jeep on fire and damaged two other vehicles during the clashes Saturday in Roopganj, a sub-district of Narayanganj near Dhaka. — IANS

Dolphins learn to tail-walk on water
Melbourne: They are celebrated for their playful natures, and now dolphins in the wild are teaching themselves how to "walk" with their tails along the surface of water, say biologists. A team at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society in Australia claims that the mammals are developing the skill "just for fun". Dolphin tail-walking has no known practical function and has been likened to dancing in humans. — PTI

Obama gives his first iPad autograph
London: US President Barack Obama has given his first ever autograph on iPad, a tablet computer, which he had earlier denounced as a "distraction". Obama, who once said he had no clue how to work an iPad, seemed to have brushed up on his technological know-how when he agreed to give his "iSign" to a fan named Sylvester Cann during a political rally. — PTI