Aafia Siddiqui’s sentence was handed down by a federal New York court.

The case, barely covered in the United States, has been closely watched in Pakistan, where for months people have been demonstrating and calling for her release.

The following video is reported by Kristen Saloomey and produced by Laila Al-Arian for Al Jazeera.

You can see my previous post (explaining why the charges are highly questionable) on Siddiqui here.

SEATTLE, AUGUST 13 – Yesterday a non-Pakistani friend here emailed me: “I wanted to ask you which you think would be the best organization to make a donation to for the current crisis in Pakistan. We usually give to MSF, but their website doesn’t seem to offer the opportunity to give specifically for Pakistan. Can you offer advice?”

This friend is British and greatly prefers British media outlets, but I need to believe that there are many Americans who also want to help flood victims in Pakistan – or who would want to, if they knew the scale and severity of the disaster.

Workers from a local NGO distribute cooked food to flood victims. (ONLINE Photo)

Why don’t they know? We can, and I do, blame “the media,” but that’s unhelpful and ultimately a cop-out. Each of us individually has the opportunity and responsibility to be aware of every tragedy in our world, and we should be willing to exert ourselves to redress them. We’re all in this together. But the real problem is that there’s too much tragedy, and it’s happening too fast, and these days Americans are distracted and confused and worried about serious problems close to home, like our own jobs and mortgages.

This is understandable. But you need to know that all indicators are pointing toward an enormous, long-term human tragedy unfolding in Pakistan, and we need to do something about it, for several good reasons. The New York Times acknowledged one of these when – belatedly, in its first significant coverage of the floods that I noticed – it headlined an August 6 article “Hard-Line Islam Fills Void in Flooded Pakistan.”

A related point is that we Americans owe Pakistanis a measure of basic human respect and compassion, as well as gratitude specifically for the sacrifices they’ve made at our behest in several wars in Afghanistan. When we repay this debt, it will also redound to our benefit. “It’s high time we showed Pakistanis the best of America,” a disaster relief specialist told me last year. “If you’re a true friend, you don’t run out on somebody when you don’t need them anymore. … Pakistanis don’t trust America anymore. We need to show Pakistanis who we really are.”

Todd Shea runs a charity hospital in the Pakistan-administered portion of the disputed region of Kashmir, where he has been working since the October 2005 earthquake that killed 80,000 people. He also responded urgently and effectively to the World Trade Center attack, the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake this January in Haiti. He’s currently on the ground in Pakistan, running medical camps and providing drinking water, food, and other relief. An August 11 update on the floods suggests the scale of the challenge:

In a recent statement appealing for more aid to Pakistan, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said: “While the death toll may be much lower than in some major disasters, taking together the vast geographical area affected, the numbers of people requiring assistance and the access difficulties currently affecting operations in many parts of the country, it is clear that this disaster is one of the most challenging that any country has faced in recent years.

There is a desperate need to send more well-equipped medical teams to the flood-hit areas to prevent the further spread of disease. The victims of the flood have lost everything and cannot cope with potential epidemics on their own.

I’m writing this article because I live and work between two worlds: the mainstream North America that I come from, and the Pakistani immigrant community. My job is to help bridge the gulf in awareness and sympathy between those worlds. What I’m seeing right now is that Pakistani-Americans and their admirable and effective nonprofit groups are jumping once more into the breach, as they always do. And, as always, they’re confined – and confining themselves – to soliciting funds from each other.

The flooding is “well timed” in the sense that the fasting month of Ramadan has just begun, and many Muslims will be directing their annual charity contributions toward flood relief. Pakistani-Americans are generally an affluent community, but there’s a limit to what they can do. Wealthy Pakistanis in Pakistan also need to help, and surely are helping. Just as important, we non-Pakistani Americans and Canadians must help. We also must somehow self-raise our own awareness, given the paucity of decent media coverage. This is important both for obvious-enough political reasons, and simply because it’s the right thing to do.

I see troubling contrasts between the outpouring of generosity and attention that followed the earthquake in Haiti and the averting of eyes from the flooding in Pakistan. I see several reasons for this: Haiti is nearby; the earthquake killed 200,000 or more people all at once. In addition, though, there’s the fact that Haiti is not a Muslim country. The earthquake fit right in with the story we were already telling ourselves about Haiti, which is all about poverty and tragedy. Dr. Paul Farmer sums it up pithily in the title of his book The Uses of Haiti. The uses of Pakistan are different. We need to move beyond the uses of both countries and toward understanding them accurately and respectfully, in their own terms. Our awareness of Haiti should be more political and of Pakistan less so, or differently so.

Anyway, back to my friend’s question. The short answer is that, as always, grassroots groups are more nimble and effective, and your money will be put to better use if you give it to groups that are nearer the ground. This is why the nonprofit groups founded and run by Pakistani-Americans are crucially important. I’m including links to several of these below, and I recommend them all.

I was jolted the other day when another friend suggested that being asked to donate to the excellent Islamic Medical Association of North America “could possibly turn some people off.” He’s probably right, but shame on them if so. We need to get over our knee-jerk aversion to the word “Islamic.” Your doctor might be a member of IMANA. As a Haitian woman told Paul Farmer years ago, “Tout moun se moun” – all people are people. We’re all in this together.

Please contribute to flood relief in Pakistan through one of these organizations (listed in alphabetical order):

APPNA

The Citizens Foundation

Edhi Foundation

Human Development Foundation

IMANA

Islamic Relief USA

Relief International

SHINE Humanity

UNICEF

Ethan Casey is the author of the travel books  Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004) and Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip (2010)  He is currently writing Bearing the Bruise: A Lifetime in Haiti for publication in spring 2011. He can be emailed at ethan@ethancasey.com and his books and articles are available online at www.ethancasey.com/books and www.facebook.com/ethancaseyfans. Until further notice, he is donating 20% of profits from sales of his Pakistan books to flood relief in Pakistan, and from his Haiti book to the Colorado Haiti Project.

The three-week trial made it sound like Siddiqui, who U.S. authorities had previously described as an al-Qaida sympathizer, had suddenly appeared in Afghanistan where she was arrested and then interrogated by Afghan and U.S. officials. (It was during that interrogation that Siddiqui allegedly staged her attack using a rifle a U.S. officer had left unattended in the room.)

The truth is Siddiqui had been “disappeared” in Pakistan by Pakistani intelligence forces in 2003 (She likely was picked up because U.S. intelligence agencies were saying she had terrorist links).

A report in the Pakistani press said that Siddiqui and her kids, then 7, 5, and 6 months old, had been seen being detained by Pakistani authorities. Days later, a spokesman for Pakistan’s interior ministry and two unnamed U.S. officials confirmed that she was in custody and being interrogated. Several days later, however, Pakistani and American officials apparently changed their minds, saying it was unlikely she was being held.

Siddiqui’s mother, Ismet, has said that a few days after Siddiqui’s disappearance, a man on a motorcycle arrived at her house and told her Aafia was being held and that she should keep quiet if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again.

Interestingly enough, on July 7, 2008, only a few weeks before Siddiqui’s arrest in Afghanistan, Yvonne Ridley, an award-winning British journalist and patron of Cage Prisoners, a human rights organization, had sparked an uproar by calling a press conference in Islamabad to demand that the United States hand over an unidentified female prisoner being held at the U.S.-run Bagram prison in Afghanistan.

Ridley said the woman, whom she called the “Gray Lady of Bagram,” had been held in solitary confinement for years. And while no one knew for sure the identity of that prisoner, Ridley said she thought it was Siddiqui. Several former U.S. captives have also reported that a female prisoner, known only as prisoner 650, was being held in Bagram. And according to news reports, the former captives said she had lost her sanity, and cried all the time.

Ridley had written previously about “Prisoner 650″ and her four-year ordeal of torture and repeated rapes, saying that her cries had prompted the male prisoners to go on a hunger strike. And, at the Islamabad press conference, Ridley said she called her a “Gray Lady” because she was almost a “ghost, a specter whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her.”

At her trial in New York, Siddiqui said she had been tortured and held in a secret prison before her detention. AP reported that she said charges that she attacked U.S. personnel who wanted to interrogate her were “crazy.” “It’s just ridiculous,” Siddiqui told the court.

And it is ridiculous. More likely this woman has been charged, and now convicted, of these crimes to cover up years of U.S. torture. The United States will never regain a position of trust in the world as long as a miscarriage of justice like this is unchallenged and uncorrected.

“Today, I will begin circulating two privileged resolutions which will trigger debate and votes on a timely withdrawal of U.S troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States makes it Congress’ responsibility to determine whether or not we go to war or stay at war. Consistent with Article 1, Section 8, the privileged resolutions will invoke the War Powers Resolution of 1973. I ask for your support of these resolutions, which will be introduced in the House in January.

“Yesterday, with the US Secretary of Defense at his side, the President of Afghanistan declared that his country’s security forces will need financial and training assistance from the United States for the next 15-20 years.

“We cannot afford these wars. We cannot afford the loss of lives. We cannot afford the cost to taxpayers. We cannot afford to fail to exercise our constitutional right to end the wars.

“Please sign onto the privileged resolutions to end the wars and to bring our troops home.
Stand up for the troops. Stand up for the truth. Stand up for the Constitution and Congress’ responsibility.”

Kucinich also sent the following letter to his colleagues under the heading, Require the President to Withdraw from Afghanistan and Pakistan:

“According to ABC News, Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, in a joint press conference with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, remarked that his country’s security forces will need financial and training assistance from the United States for the next 15-20 years. This is especially disturbing since the Administration is already sliding back the timeline the President established only last week. What Mr. Karzai did not say is that would cost U.S. taxpayers an additional $2-3 trillion.

“As President Obama prepares to escalate military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we must reassert our Constitutional prerogative as it relates to war. The United States has been involved in military action both in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the inception of the Obama Administration, despite the fact that the President has never submitted a report to Congress pursuant to Section 4(a) (I) of the War Powers Resolution.

“When Congress returns in 2010, I intend to bring to the floor of the House privileged resolutions reasserting this prerogative. My bills, which would trigger a timeline for a timely withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan, invoke the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and are intended to secure the Constitutional role of Congress, as directly elected representatives of the people, under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, to decide whether or not America enters into war, continues a war, or otherwise introduces armed forces or materiel into combat zones.

“Despite the President’s assertion that previous Congressional action gives him the authority to respond to the attacks of September 11, 2001, a careful reading of the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) makes clear that the AUMF did not supersede ‘any requirement of the War Powers Resolution’ and therefore did not undermine Congress’ ability to revisit the constitutional question of war powers at a later date.

“I invite you to join in reasserting Congress’ Constitutional right and obligation in these matters…”

Draft copies of the Kucinich bills can be read here and here.

And the protests are continuing. On Saturday, Seattle activists are gathering at 2 p.m. in Westlake Park at the urging of ANSWER (The Act Now to Stop War and End Racism coalition). The planned demonstration and protest is also endorsed by The World Can’t Wait, a group that began organizing in opposition to the Bush administration.

ANSWER described its opposition in a statement issued right after Obama said he was sending more troops to Afghanistan:

“The U.S. cannot ‘win’ the war in Afghanistan. It was losing the war when Barack Obama took office. In March 2009, President Obama ordered another 30,000 troops. Rather than reverse the outcome, the U.S. and NATO effort lost even more ground. Now President Obama has ordered another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan…

Bush and Cheney ordered the invasion thinking it would be easy going. They thought Iraq would be easy, too. They were going to wipe out the governments in Iran, Syria and North Korea. This colonial-type fantasy, nourished by ‘great nation’ arrogance and the acquiescence of a caste of corrupt politicians in Congress, set the stage for the current catastrophe of a war without end.

After eight years of war, more than 140 armed insurgent groups of Afghans now exist as a response to the invasion and they control large parts of the country. The people in Afghanistan perceive the occupation as a colonial-type takeover of their country. September 11 was a pretext, but there were no Afghans or Iraqis who hijacked the planes. The people of Afghanistan, like the people in Vietnam, will never accept foreign military occupation in their country.”

Meanwhile, violence in the region continues.

In Rawalpindi, Pakistan, news reports said, militants attacked a mosque near army headquarters, killing at least 36 worshippers, including six military officers, during Friday prayers. Officials said they sprayed gunfire and threw grenades before blowing themselves up.

The Associated Press said, “Violence in nuclear-armed Pakistan has escalated since the army launched an offensive in mid-October against Taliban militants in the northwestern tribal area of South Waziristan near the Afghan border.”

In Afghanistan, U.S. Marines launched a major operation today,

According to The Associated Press, “Hundreds of troops from the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines and the Marine reconnaissance unit Task Force Raider were dropped by helicopter and MV-22 Osprey aircraft behind Taliban lines in the northern end of the Now Zad Valley of Helmand province, scene of heavy fighting last summer.”

Siddiqui, according to the official U.S. version of events, was arrested in Afghanistan on July 17, 2008, for “suspicious behavior.” On July 18, while still in custody, so that version goes, the 90-pound neuroscientist grabbed an unattended rifle and attempted to shoot the agents before she was wounded by gunfire.

Before news of her arrest in Afghanistan, no one, at least publicly, had heard of Siddiqui since she was disappeared by Pakistani intelligence forces in 2003 (She likely was picked up because U.S. intelligence agencies were saying she had terrorist links). A report in the Pakistani press said that Siddiqui and her kids, then 7, 5, and 6 months old, had been seen being detained by Pakistani authorities. Days later, a spokesman for Pakistan’s interior ministry and two unnamed U.S. officials confirmed that she was in custody and being interrogated. Several days later, however, Pakistani and American officials apparently changed their minds, saying it was unlikely she was being held.

Siddiqui’s mother, Ismet, has said that a few days after Siddiqui’s disappearance, a man on a motorcycle arrived at her house and told her Aafia was being held and that she should keep quiet if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again.

The treatment and fate of Siddiqui’s children, who are all U.S. citizens, is one of many troubling aspects of this case. The oldest, 11-year-old Ahmed, who had been detained with his mother in Afghanistan, was recently released from Afghan custody into his aunt’s care. Siddiqui has said that her younger son died in custody; her 5-year-old daughter remains unaccounted for.

Interestingly enough, on July 7, 2008, only a few weeks before Siddiqui’s arrest, Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist and patron of Cage Prisoners, a human rights organization, had sparked an uproar by calling a press conference in Islamabad to demand that the United States hand over an unidentified female prisoner being held at the U.S.-run Bagram prison in Afghanistan.

Ridley said the woman, whom she called the “Gray Lady of Bagram,” had been held in solitary confinement for years. And while no one knew for sure the identity of that prisoner, Ridley said she thought it was Siddiqui. Several former U.S. captives have also reported that a female prisoner, known only as prisoner 650, was being held in Bagram. And according to news reports, the former captives said she had lost her sanity, and cried all the time.

Ridley had written previously about “Prisoner 650″ and her four-year ordeal of torture and repeated rapes, saying that her cries had prompted the male prisoners to go on a hunger strike. And, at the Islamabad press conference, Ridley said she called her a “Gray Lady” because she was almost a “ghost, a specter whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her.”

Ridley is an award-winning journalist who was detained for 11 days by the Taliban in 2001 while on an assignment in Afghanistan. Months after her release she converted to Islam.

Siddiqui supporters plan a rally for the opening day of her trial in front of the U.S. District Court in New York City.

According to a letter sent out today from the Baloch Human Rights Council of Canada to Norway’s representative in Ontario, Norwegian Ehsan Arjemandi had gone to Pakistan to visit his family in July.

The BHRC said Arjemandi was traveling to Karachi by bus in August when several “unidentified vehicles intercepted the bus, armed men got into the bus and took Mr. Ehsan Arjemandi out of the bus and covered his head with a black blanket and took him away.”

His family hasn’t heard from him since. The council said that witnesses to the abduction say that Arjemandi was abducted by a team led by Major Mohammed Shahid, a military intelligence officer.

The BHRC said that Arjemandi has been “a very active voice in Norway and Europe against the human rights violation in Balochistan… had organized several peaceful processions in front of the Pakistan Embassy in Norway against the illegal abduction of political workers in Balochistan, where more than 8000 political workers have been made disappeared by the Pakistan military.”

The BHRC also said that it believes the Pakistan army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) carried out the abduction “to punish Mr. Ehsan Arjemandi and at the same time silence the voice of the Baloch Diaspora against the Pakistan army’s brutalities in Balochistan.”

Balochistan or Baluchistan is an area that covers parts of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Baloch political leaders in Pakistan want greater control of the region’s resources, protection for the Baloch minority and a halt to the building of military bases. The government has also used the Baloch region to test its nuclear weapons.

Some militant forces want the entire Baloch region to be an independent country and have carried out bombings and other violent actions to get attention. Of course, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan want their territories to remain intact.

Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission backs up much of what the BHRC says about abductions and torture. It has tracked hundreds of Baloch political party members, students, doctors and tribal leaders who have been detained by government security forces, many disappearing for months or even years. Some have been tortured or have died in custody, according to the commission.

Members of Arjemandi’s family, who were already worried because Arjemandi has a heart condition, expressed fears that he would be tortured by the Pakistan military.

However, the BHRC said that they had confirmation that the Pakistan military had handed Arjemandi over to Iranian authorities who had transferred him to Zahidan prison.

The BHRC said it believes that Arjemandi’s life is now in even more danger because several Baloch political activists who were handed over to Iranian Authorities have been hanged after being tortured.

The U.S. aid package would give Pakistan $1.5 billion annually over the next five years ostensibly for democratic, economic and social development programs. That’s all fine. Those programs should be encouraged. But it’s the part that allows “such sums as are necessary” for military aid that bother me.