Vieques ponders future 10 years after Navy left

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Thousands of activists on Wednesday celebrated the anniversary of the U.S. Navy's departure from the Puerto Rican island of Vieques 10 years ago, despite concerns that progress has been slow in cleaning up and developing a place many hoped would flourish.

With the military's departure, the decades-long practice bombing of Vieques stopped, and the island has become one of the more exclusive tourist destinations in the Caribbean.

But the cleanup of the bombing range on an island the Navy once called its "crown jewel" of live-fire training is expected to take another decade, and the mayor of Vieques noted the island of roughly 10,000 people still has no hospital to treat illnesses ranging from cancer to asthma that local residents blame on military activity.

Mayor Victor Emeric said Vieques is battling an unemployment rate of nearly 20 percent and depends on a crippled ferry system that serves as the primary link to the main island of Puerto Rico.

"Time passed and everyone forgot about us," said Emeric, who was born and raised in Vieques. "None of the development that we expected has occurred."

George Withers, a senior fellow with the non-governmental Washington Office on Latin America, recently published a report calling on the U.S. to respond more aggressively to the cleanup and other problems in Vieques. He said the lack of care for ongoing health problems remain big concerns.

"The overall impact on the quality of life for the people of Vieques has not really improved in the 10 years since the Navy left," he said. "They created a toxic legacy on their island."

The island was once a cause celebre, with people such as singer Ricky Martin, actor Edward James Olmos and politician Jesse Jackson joining hundreds of other protesters to demand that the Navy leave Vieques after an errant 500-pound bomb killed a security guard in April 1999.

But after the Navy left on May 1, 2003, interest in helping boost the island's economy waned, said Emeric, blaming both the U.S. and local government.

Even the domain of the island's official government website, which translates to "Vieques Revival," is up for sale. Emeric said many local residents are still trying to find their economic footing as they seek to develop land formerly under naval control.

He dismissed criticism that American investors are the only ones reaping economic benefits, saying, "Many North Americans are here because the Viequenses themselves sold them the land."

Of the 23,000 acres (9,300 hectares) that the Navy began to use for target practice in the early 1940s, 4,000 acres (1,619 hectares) have been awarded to Vieques municipality, 3,100 acres (1,255 hectares) went to the U.S. Department of the Interior and about 800 acres (324 hectares) to the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust.

The Navy has so far cleaned 2,540 acres (1,028 hectares), with the operation expected to run through at least 2025 in one of the Navy's most extensive rehabilitation efforts, budgeted at some $350 million.

"The Navy considers Vieques to be its highest priority in the munitions cleanup program," said Dan Waddill, who is managing the process. "Vieques gets by far the most effort and the highest amount of funding."

Waddill oversees 55 employees who work Monday through Friday cleaning 15,000 acres (6,070 hectares) of the former bombing range, mostly in the island's east. He noted that two-thirds of the workers are from Vieques.

He suggested it will be impossible to find all of the abandoned munition parts.

"We don't expect to leave anything behind that people might come into contact with, but there are layers of safety that prevent that kind of contact just in case something happens to be missed," said Waddill. "When you're covering a large area ... that's just life. Sometimes you don't find everything."

In late March, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry issued a long-awaited report stating it found no proof that residents had been sickened by substances left behind by bombs and other munitions, identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as TNT, napalm, depleted uranium, mercury and lead. The report was rejected by thousands of Vieques residents, many of whom filed a lawsuit, later dismissed, that accused the U.S. government of causing illnesses by leaving harmful residues on the land.

Withers noted in his report that the Navy fired more than 300,000 munitions in Vieques from the mid-1940s to 2003, taking control of 77 percent of the land.

So far, the Navy has removed 17 million pounds of scrap metal and destroyed more than 38,000 munition items on land, according to Navy spokesman Jim Brantley.

The next step is to clear munitions underwater. Navy officials are mapping the area to determine where munitions are located, a process that will take up to 18 months, Waddill said.

"We expected that to take longer than the land cleanup," he said, adding that officials have to protect endangered coral species. "It takes time to do this kind of work safely."

Puerto Rico's Secretary of Government Ingrid Vila said the U.S. territory will push to ensure the remaining land be cleaned and returned to Vieques municipality.

Vila said officials also want to revive a 2003-2004 plan aimed at boosting the island's economy, including reopening a Vieques government office charged with economic development.

Tourism remains the island's main economic engine, with hotel occupancy growing from 41 percent to 56 percent in the past two fiscal years, according to Puerto Rico's tourism company. The number has dropped slightly so far this fiscal year.

Vila noted that a middle school is to open in Vieques in coming weeks, and that Puerto Rico's health secretary is meeting with officials in Vieques to discuss community needs.

"Vieques has to be a priority," Vila said as she met with community leaders celebrating the Navy's departure. "It cannot become relevant only when there's an anniversary."

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Kerry in Afghanistan to prod Karzai on future ties

KABUL (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry embarked on talks Monday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai amid concerns Karzai may be jeopardizing progress in the war against extremism with his anti-American rhetoric. The session came shortly after the U.S. military ceded control of its last detention facility in Afghanistan, ending a longstanding irritant in relations.

During Kerry's 24-hour visit to the country — his sixth since President Barack Obama became president but his first as Obama's secretary of State — Kerry planned to meet with Karzai, civic leaders and others to discuss continued U.S. assistance to the country and how to wean it from such aid as the international military operation winds down, and upcoming national elections.

Karzai has infuriated U.S. officials by accusing Washington of colluding with Taliban insurgents to keep Afghanistan weak even as the Obama administration presses ahead with plans to hand off security responsibility to Afghan forces and end NATO's combat mission by the end of next year.

U.S. officials accompanying Kerry said he did not plan to lecture Karzai or dwell on the apparent animosity but would make clear once again that the U.S. did not take such allegations lightly, They said he would press Karzai on the need for May's elections to meet international standards and continue to stress the importance of Afghan reconciliation and U.S. support for a Taliban office in Qatar where talks could occur.

Karzai is expected to travel to Qatar within the week and some movement on the opening of an office is likely then.

Kerry, who arrived in Kabul from Amman, Jordan, had hoped also to travel to Pakistan on his trip to the region but put it off due to elections there. Instead, he met late Sunday in Amman with Pakistani army chief for Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, officials said.

The pair had a private dinner at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to Jordan as Pakistan continued to seethe in the aftermath of the return from exile to the country of former president Pervez Musharraf, himself a former army chief.

Earlier Monday, the U.S. military ceded control of the Parwan last detention facility near the U.S.-run Bagram military base north of Kabul, a year after the two sides initially agreed on the transfer. Karzai demanded control of Parwan as a matter of national sovereignty.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Joseph Dunford, handed over Parwan at a ceremony there after signing an agreement with Afghan Defense Minister Bismullah Khan Mohammadi. "This ceremony highlights an increasingly confident, capable and sovereign Afghanistan," Dunford said.

The dispute over the center threw a pall over the ongoing negotiations for a bilateral security agreement that would govern the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after 2014.

An initial agreement to hand over Parwan was signed a year ago, but efforts to follow through on it constantly stumbled over American concerns that the Afghan government would release prisoners that it considered dangerous.

A key hurdle was a ruling by an Afghan judicial panel holding that administrative detention, the practice of holding someone without formal charges, violated the country's laws. The U.S. argued that international law allowed administrative detentions and also argued that it could not risk the passage of some high-value detainees to the notoriously corrupt Afghan court system.

An initial deadline for the full handover passed last September and another earlier this month.

The detention center houses about 3,000 prisoners and the majority are already under Afghan control. The United States had not handed over about 100, and some of those under American authority do not have the right to a trial because the U.S. considers them part of an ongoing conflict.

There are also about three dozen non-Afghan detainees, including Pakistanis and other nationals that will remain in American hands. The exact number and nationality of those detainees has never been made public.

A new agreement, or memorandum of understanding, was signed at the ceremony by Dunford and Khan, but the U.S. military said it will not be made public. The agreement supplants one signed last March, which had been made public.

The U.S. military said in a statement that the new agreement "affirms their mutual commitment to the lawful and humane treatment of detainees and their intention to protect the people of Afghanistan and coalition forces," an apparent reference to the release of detainees deemed to be dangerous.

There are about 100,000 coalition troops in Afghanistan, including about 66,000 from the United States. American officials have made no final decision on how many troops might remain in Afghanistan after 2014, although they have said as many as many as 12,000 U.S. and coalition forces could remain.

The U.S. started to hold detainees at Bagram Air Field in early 2002. For several years, prisoners were kept at a former Soviet aircraft machine plant converted into a lockup.

In 2009, the U.S. opened a new detention facility next door. The number of detainees incarcerated at that prison, renamed the Parwan Detention Facility, went from about 1,100 in September 2010 to more than 3,000.

After Monday's handover, it was renamed the Afghan National Detention Facility at Parwan and the U.S. military said it would provide the Afghan army with advisers and $39 million in funding.

The United States has spent about a quarter of a billion dollars to build the Bagram facility along with Kabul's main prison located in the capital.

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Patrick Quinn in Kabul and Rahim Faiez in Bagram, Afghanistan contributed to this report.

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Fight for future of Bangladesh plays out in street

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — The fight for the future of Bangladesh is playing out in the streets of this troubled south Asian nation.

For a month, masses of moderate activists have camped at a Dhaka intersection demanding harsh punishment for those accused of crimes during the 1971 independence war from Pakistan, a stance that dovetails with the prime minister's position.

Meanwhile, their bitter enemies in a hardline Islamic opposition party that wants to install Shariah law have been attacking government buildings and setting fire to trains in a rampage that — along with a crackdown by security forces — has killed more than 60 people. The party, Jamaat-e-islami, says the government is using a war crimes tribunal to decimate the party leadership, and claims it is in a fight for its very existence.

"Our backs have been pushed to the wall. If we can't stop the fascist government from holding the trials, all our main leaders will be hanged," said Rafiqul Haq, a Jamaat leader based in Dhaka's Uttara district. "We will die rather than let the government kill our leaders."

The latest round of violence — sparked by the tribunal sentencing a party leader to death — has prompted calls for Jamaat to be branded a terrorist organization, and Law Minister Shafiq Ahmed told Parliament this week that the government was looking into ways to ban the party.

Looming over the protests and violence are general elections expected within the next year, and fears that in this fledgling democracy with a history of coups, the military might take over if the situation in the streets gets too far out of hand.

"The people are deeply worried about what is going on," said Hassan Shahriar, a political analyst. "If the violence continues, the government may hit back with harsh measures like a state of emergency." Military intervention is possible as well, he said.

Much of the chaos centers on the fate of Jamaat, the country's largest Islamic party. Its leaders are facing charges they helped Pakistani forces in the fighting four decades ago, which Bangladesh says left 3 million people dead and 200,000 women raped.

Jamaat had opposed breaking away from Pakistan, arguing that staying as one strong Muslim-majority nation would be better for Islam. Citizen brigades formed by Jamaat helped Pakistani forces, unfamiliar with Bangladesh, identify independence activists. Jamaat leaders deny any link to war crimes.

After independence, founding President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, banned the party and stripped many of its leaders of citizenship. But he was slain in 1975 and military ruler Ziaur Rahman, husband of current opposition leader Khaleda Zia, lifted the ban and wooed Jamaat as an ally for his Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Though Jamaat has never won big at the ballot box, routinely garnering around 4 percent, it has been an important coalition ally for Zia, and even received Cabinet posts when she won elections in 2001

Despite its violent history, Jamaat developed a loyal cadre by devoting attention to the poor. It runs a bevy of charities, hospitals and hundreds of Islamic schools. It has gained the loyalty of poor students through its scholarships and earned a reputation, even among opponents, for honest behavior amid the usual government corruption.

"The activists are highly dedicated and Jamaat also has lots of money to maintain a huge army of trained cadres," Shahriar said. He noted that its loyalists are trained almost like guerrilla fighters.

At the same time, its ideology has failed to make much headway in the country, where many look down on it as a local version of Pakistan's Taliban. And many remain angry that the party never apologized for its role in the war.

When the war crimes tribunals inaugurated by Hasina began handing down decisions earlier this year, lines were drawn. Many cheered that the country was finally dealing with its past. Others lashed them as a plot to destroy the opposition, since 11 of the 12 defendants are politicians from Jamaat and Zia's opposition party.

"The trials are nothing but a ploy to hide the failures of the government," Zia said last week.

When Abdul Quader Mollah appeared smiling last month after being given a life sentence, people poured into the streets, demanding his execution. Many here believe that if Zia wins the upcoming election, she will grant clemency to those convicted, leaving a swift execution as the only way of ensuring justice is delivered.

"I'm not bothered about politics," said Nazrul Islam, a Dhaka University student who was among the protesters. "What I want is that those who killed our people, raped our women must be punished."

When Delwar Hossain Sayedee, a top Jamaat leader, was then given a death sentence last week, Jamaat struck back with violent attacks.

In northern Bogra district, Jamaat activists used loudspeakers to urge supporters to pour into the streets and then led them to attack police stations, dragging four policemen from the outposts and beating them to death, police and private TV stations reported. In eastern Noakhali and Comilla districts, Jamaat activists attacked about a dozen temples and dozens of Hindu homes, police said. Hindus are seen as supporters of Hasina's ruling party.

Images of bloodied and bullet-ridden bodies heaped on ashes of burned homes were shown on television.

With most of Jamaat's top leaders in jail, including its president, Matiur Rahman Nizami, the party is being run by mid-level leaders, most of them in hiding.

"It's a do or die situation for Jamaat," said political analyst Mofizur Rahman, with Dhaka University. "The entire leadership of Jamaat is facing elimination."

Many people left homeless after their houses were torched were confused and devastated that they were dragged into this national crisis.

"Have we committed any crime?" asked Pushpa Das, a 45-year-old woman as she sat on the wreckage of her tin-roof house, destroyed by attackers in Chittagong district, southeast of Dhaka. "Why have they attacked us?"

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