US 'War On Terror' Yields More 'Terrorism'

Inaugural Study Says Terror Attacks Worldwide Have Grown Rapidly In The Years Since 9/11 and Spiked During The US Occupation Of Iraq

After more than eleven years of the US waging wars abroad in the name of "fighting terrorism" a new report released Tuesday shows that the number of global terror attacks has dramatically increased during the post-9/11 era, not decreased.

The new Global Terrorism Index (GTI) found that while the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere generated huge spikes in terrorist activity and civilian deaths in those countries, it is North America which has been most insulated from the growth in violence.

Produced by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) the GTI is the first index to rank countries on the impact of terrorism and analyses the associated economic and social dimensions. The index is based on data from the Global Terrorism Database, which is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), headquartered at the University of Maryland.

"After 9/11, terrorist activity fell back to pre-2000 levels until after the Iraq invasion, and has since escalated dramatically," Steve Killelea, founder and executive chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace, told Reuters in an e-mail interview.

"Iraq accounts for about a third of all terrorist deaths over the last decade, and Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan account for over 50 percent of fatalities."

The glaring fault of the study, which demands note, is that it employs a very narrow definition of the term "terrorism"—a word that Glenn Greenwald says "simultaneously means nothing and justifies everything." Within the scope of GTI report, the term excludes the violence of state or government-based actors like the US armed forces or NATO's military regime.

As Reuters notes:

The researchers used the University of Maryland definition of "terrorism": "the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation".

It did not include casualties from government-backed action such as aerial bombing or other killings.

Long a critique of the "global war on terrorism" is that the definition of the word "terrorism" is meant to connotate violence perpetrated by less powerful, though committed, militant networks and not the politically motivated violence of powerful nations, such as the United States or others.

As Greenwald argued at Salon.com in 2011:

This topic is so vital because this meaningless, definition-free word — Terrorism — drives so many of our political debates and policies. Virtually every debate in which I ever participate quickly and prominently includes defenders of government policy invoking the word as some sort of debate-ending, magical elixir: of course President Obama has to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process: they’re Terrorists; of course we have to stay in Afghanistan: we have to stop The Terrorists; President Obama is not only right to kill people (including civilians) using drones, but is justified in boasting and even joking about it, because they’re Terrorists; of course some people should be held in prison without charges: they’re Terrorists, etc. etc.

And as the linguistics professor and author Noam Chomsky, commenting on the death of innocent people throughout the US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, said: "Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism."

Despite the flaws of the definition used in the report, its value remains in the close examination of the last decade and tells a stark story about the nature non-state terrorism since 2001.

One of the key lessons of the report, as Killelea told Reuters, is that foreign powers should think twice before intervening militarily in regions like Yemen and Syria (or anywhere for that matter), as the mere presence of foreign armies simply adds to the grievances and anger of local people.

Other key findings include:

• The number of terrorist incidents and the number of successful attacks has steadily increased over the last decade.
• In 2011, 91% of terrorist attacks were successful.
• From 2002 to 2011 over one third of all victims killed in terrorist attacks were Iraqi.
• In 2011 there were 4564 terrorist incidents globally, resulting in 7473 deaths and 13961 injuries.
• Most terrorist attacks occur in the context of a wider conflict situation.
• Whilst religious terrorism often gets widespread coverage, there is a significant level of terrorism from non-religious groups.
• Western Europe experiences many more terrorist incidents than the U.S. having also suffered 19 times more fatalities than the U.S.
• Over the period 2002-2011, terrorists were most likely to target private citizens and property, government, police, and business. The trends for these attacks have been increasing as a percentage for all targets since 2002. Military installations and personnel were only targeted in 4% of incidents.
• Global incidents, fatalities and injuries are dominated by events in lower middle income countries. Seven of the ten countries most affected by terrorism are from the lower middle income bracket.
• Low income countries are much less likely to suffer from terrorism than lower middle income countries. This suggests that poverty is not a prime driver of terrorism.
• The majority of global incidents, fatalities and injuries occur in countries with hybrid regimes1 and account for 46% of incidents, 54% of fatalities and 60% of all injuries.
• Terrorism correlates with low political stability, low intergroup cohesion, human rights violations and with high levels of group grievances.
• From 2002 to 2011, North America was the least likely region to suffer from a terrorist attack, followed by Western Europe.

Via: "Common Dreams"

Aggressive War & Terrorism Are One and The Same!

So Who Are The Real Terrorists?

By Gary D. Barnett
Courtesy Of "Lew Rockwell"

Recently by Gary D. Barnett: The Intent of the U.S. Ruling Class Is Total Tyranny: We Must Stop It!

Do U.S. politicians and their puppets in the mainstream press really want to talk about terrorism and genocide happening in other countries? Do they really think that these accusations will not come back to haunt them? 

Contradictions and hypocrisy abound in this conversation, and it is about time that the truth is told.

According to Wikipedia, the word "terrorism" has over 100 meanings, and currently has no universally agreed upon, legally binding, criminal law definition. This is unfortunate, but most understand the real meaning whether they choose to apply it properly or not. The word "terror" comes from the Latin verbterrere meaning to be frantic with fear or terror. Generally speaking, terrorism is the use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes. It is violent acts intended to create fear, and these acts are perpetrated for a religious, political or ideological goal, and deliberately target or disregard the safety of civilians. In November of 2004, a United Nations Secretary General report described terrorism as any act "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act." I think of terrorism as any act whatsoever intended to harm in any manner any innocent citizen or his property for the sake of gaining politically or economically, or by instilling fear so that these same ends can be achieved. In other words, any individual, group of individuals, or government apparatus that carries out any deliberate act of aggression that harms innocent civilians is committing a terrorist act! So who are the real terrorists in this world?

Certainly, anyone who straps a bomb to his body with the intent to harm others would be considered a terrorist. Any group that planned and carried out any act that would maim or kill innocents in order to make a political statement would be considered terrorists. But also, any government or nation-state that ordered and carried out aggressive military exercises that resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians, whether purposeful or not, would be committing acts of terror in my opinion. But those who practice self-defense by protecting themselves, their families, their friends, their countrymen, and their property from harm, whether individually or collectively, are certainly not terrorists!

So where does this leave us? The answer to a few questions might help us understand who or what is the real threat. Who instills the most fear worldwide? Who maims and kills the most civilians and non-combatants? Who gains more power, control, and wealth, and benefits the most due to terrorism?

If you answered al-Qaeda, you would be dead wrong. Of course, we in this country have been programmed by government and the media to immediately equate all terrorism with Muslims, the adherents of Islam, and while there are certainly plenty of Muslim terrorists, their numbers pale in comparison to the real terrorists among us. In fact, if one takes the time to research modern terrorism, it is evident that most believe it only applies to those individuals and fringe groups who are outside so-called democratic nations. Most, especially the neo-conservatives think that terrorism is the scourge of only democratic governments. The Arab world is far and away considered the main source of terrorism, but in my opinion, that is because of not only a lack of understanding by the masses of what terrorism really is, but also because governments and their puppets in the press have continually lied about the atrocities being committed.

I will make few friends with the following statement, but let me say clearly that in my opinion, the United States government, and those in the U.S. military who willingly do the bidding of the government by prosecuting immoral and aggressive wars and acts of hostility, and those who are partners in these crimes, are the worst terrorists in the world today! Bold as this may sound, let me explain why this is so.

Without question, the worst single terrorist act in United States history was the attack that took place on September 11, 2001. On that horrible day, 2,996 people were killed, and many others wounded. It was truly awful, and was purposely meant to harm the innocent. If one goes to Wikipedia and does a little research to find out what are supposed to be the worst terrorist attacks in history, the worst event listed since the 1940s is 9/11. But it is important to understand that the nuclear bombs purposely dropped on civilian centers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII, (remember our definitions) bombings that killed 200,000 innocent people, are not even mentioned as terrorist attacks for that period. The slaughter of innocents including many women and children at Waco by our own government is also not listed. Obviously, those entities reporting on such matters simply do not consider any attacks against innocents by the U.S. government as terrorism. They also ignore all U.S. attacks during wars, aggressive or not, even if targeted purposely against civilians, and do not consider them terrorist acts. This is telling. 

Remember, those bombs were dropped after the Japanese government, military, and Emperor had agreed to surrender, only asking that the Emperor remain in place. (John V. Denson explains the truth about these horrendous terrorist attacks in his article, The Hiroshima Myth.) These unwarranted attacks against Japan were far and away the two single greatest terrorist attacks in history!

No individual, group of individuals, or any country’s government and it’s complicit partners have in recent history caused as much death and maiming of innocents as the U.S. Empire. None! In my opinion, the U.S. has never been in any morally legitimate war since the American Revolution, and in the past century only the two world wars were congressionally declared. Even if I leave out all war and aggression prosecuted by the U.S before 1946, the list of aggressive actions and undeclared wars since is staggering. Over that period of time, American military interventions have been responsible for the death of millions, the wounding of many millions more, and the displacement of untold millions more; over 10 million refugees in just Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq alone. Many, if not most of these casualties were innocent civilians and non-combatants. No country or foreign government has attacked the U.S. during this period of time, yet U.S. forces have continually practiced aggression, including total war and occupation, against countries worldwide. These are but a recognizable few of the places that the U.S. has intervened militarily against in the past 65 years: The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Korea, Iran, Vietnam, Central America, Iraq, Cuba, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Haiti, Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria.

According to the study I linked to above, which is a partial list, American military interventions against foreign countries have occurred 80 times since 1946. Not a single one of these countries ever attacked the U.S. mainland. There were certainly terrorist attacks against American interests during this period, but those were criminal acts, not acts of war. Almost all of them happened outside of this country where American military presence was felt. If they were aimed toward civilians, they were evil, and if they were aimed at our military during any aggressive occupation, then they were in most every instance not acts of terror, but of self-defense. It would be no different here if we were aggressively occupied by a foreign power, regardless of the so-called reasoning. We would, and properly so, defend ourselves with all our might. Would we then also be terrorists?

My intent is not to just target or bash America, but any who practice terrorism individually or collectively. My aim is to expose that which is hidden by governments and the mainstream media, but known in the hearts of most around the world. That is that governments are the worst terrorists among us. It is time to tell the truth about the horrors of terrorism and war because these things are now one and the same. Immoral acts of evil now occur almost every day, and all around the world. Innocents are terrorized constantly, and are at more risk than ever before of being harmed due to this lunacy.

This nation has become the poster child of aggressive war and occupation, of murder, of imperialism, of torture, and of imprisonment without trial. Our government over just the last few decades has been responsible for the deaths of millions of innocents, and to this day is continuing to advance that reign of terror. Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes in 1996 ask our own Secretary of State at the time, Madeline Albright: "is the price worth it?" when speaking of the deaths of 500,000 thousand Iraqi children; their deaths due strictly to brutal U.S. sanctions. These innocent children were all 5 years of age or younger. Her reply: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it." What an admission! Was it worth it for our national security or was it worth it for the oil? Neither reason of course is legitimate.

As I write this, the U.S. Empire has once again started and is waging another war of aggression against Libya. This is by all accounts an evil display of force that will surely result in the deaths of many more innocents. It is also the third war being waged by the U.S. at one time, with other wars surely in the works. While those warmongers clamoring for yet another war to "save" the people of Libya are applauding, their hypocrisy is evident. More innocent civilians will perish from this earth while the politicians scream about protecting the innocent. What a tangled web they weave with their lies. Their terrorism continues in earnest!

This madness must be stopped, not only for the sake of all those innocent victims overseas, but also for the sake of all of us. These atrocities are being done in our name by our own corrupt and evil government. The more terror that is spread by the U.S. governing apparatus, the more reprisal we all will face in the future. For the sake of humanity, I hope the masses take their heads out of the sand and accept this truth. The country that currently poses the greatest threat to the world is the United States, and the U.S. government and its accomplices are also the primary instigators of world terrorism. All of us have a moral responsibility to stop those in government who would terrorize others. Who will stop them if we don’t?

Aggressive war is the epitome of terrorism, and the U.S. is the king of aggressive war!

March 21, 2011

Gary D. Barnett [send him mail] is president of Barnett Financial Services, Inc., in Lewistown, Montana.

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

The Best of Gary D. Barnett

Combated Terrorism By Addressing Its Source

Published: 10:35 p.m. Saturday, March 19, 2011
Courtesy Of "The Statesman"

U.S. Rep. Peter T. King, R-N.Y., had said his congressional hearing on Muslim radicalization would investigate the causes of the problem. It didn't.

I have long been calling, in newspaper columns and at public forums, for a serious investigation of the causes of Muslim anti-Americanism and terrorism. Some researchers have made in-depth inquiries about it, but U.S. administrations, Congress and news media have brushed them aside.

Muslim radicalization in America and the West is a recent trend. It's the outcome mainly of Western Muslim' identification with their fellow Muslims overseas who are fighting U.S. and Israeli forces occupying their lands or deployed on them. As we know, 15 of the 19 terrorists who hijacked the aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, were Saudis. They apparently had been pissed off by the deployment of American troops in Saudi Arabia. In October 1991, I was stunned by the extent of anti-American rage among Saudi youth that I hadn't seen before. In the Saudi Arabian cities of Jeddah and Medina, some of them vociferously denounced the stationing of American troops on the "holy land of Islam." Five years later Osama bin Laden would be railing against the presence of these forces "on the land of Muhammad." And in April 2003 when the United States, at the insistence of the Saudi monarchy, abandoned its Sultan City airbase, al Qaeda celebrated it as the fulfillment of one of its 9/11 objectives.

Muslims have never hated America per se. During the colonial era, the Muslim world viewed the United States as the only good Western power. In 1956, when the Eisenhower administration forced Israeli, British and French invaders to pull out of Egyptian territory, America was showered with accolade from Muslims everywhere. Then in the 1980s thousands of Muslim militants, including Bin Laden, collaborated with the CIA in the war against Soviet invaders in Afghanistan. Neither is Islam a source of Muslim anti-Americanism. Muslims have been reading their scripture and practicing their faith for 1,400 years. The so-called "Islamic terrorism" against American targets didn't begin until the 1990s.

Robert Pepe has done a thorough study of suicide terrorism. He investigated terrorists belonging to the Hindu Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Marxist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey, Sunni Muslim and Christian Palestinian organizations and Lebanese Shiite groups. "What over 95 percent of all suicide attacks since 1980 have had in common," concluded the University of Chicago professor in his book Dying to Win, "is not religion but a specific strategic objective: to compel a democratic state to withdraw combat forces from territory the terrorists consider their homeland or prize greatly."

King is well-known as a staunch defender of the Provisional Irish Republican Army's terrorist campaign against what he called "British imperialism." He should know that Muslim terrorism against Americans and American interests isn't anymore "Islamic" than IRA terrorism was "Catholic." It is transnational Irish social and cultural solidarity that drove him and many other Irish-Americans into supporting the IRA.

Ever since the Crusades, the bond of the transnational Muslim community, the umma, has inspired Muslims to defend fellow Muslims in different lands against foreign aggression and hegemony. Umma solidarity has now galvanized many of them to support in various ways the victims of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, bombing raids in Pakistan and Yemen and the occupation of Palestine by Israel, with which America is joined at the hip. These anti-American Muslims include those who, unfortunately, resort to terrorism.

Muslim terrorism in America, a terrible crime as it is, can't be combated successfully without addressing its source. That source is the U.S. foreign policy of occupation and domination of Muslim societies. A witchhunt of law-abiding American Muslims, which the King hearing could escalate, can only detract America from that overdue task.

Mustafa Malik is a Washington-based columnist and blogger. He completed several tours of fieldwork in the Middle East and South Asia as a researcher for the University of Chicago Middle East Center and other American think tanks.

Suicidal Tendencies

Mining 30 Years Of Data, Chicago Political Scientist Robert Pape Identifies Foreign Occupation, Not Religious Extremism, As The Cause Of Suicide terrorism.

By Jason Kelly
Courtesy Of "The University Of Chicago Magazine"

---

Common detonator: The U.S. invasion of Iraq ignited a surge in suicide terrorism.

Until the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there had never been a suicide terrorist attack in the country. The first occurred days after American troops arrived, and the number increased to 256 in 2007 before declining.

In his book Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It (University of Chicago Press, 2010), Chicago political scientist Robert A. Pape, PhD’88, and coauthor James K. Feldman argue that foreign military occupation, not religious extremism, fueled that rise. At an October 12 conference in Washington, Pape outlined data from his research into 30 years of suicide attacks worldwide. 

“What over 95 percent of all suicide attacks since 1980 have had in common is not religion but a specific strategic objective: to compel a democratic state to withdraw combat forces from territory the terrorists consider their homeland or prize greatly.”

As director of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST), Pape has compiled a database of more than 2,000 incidents. To root out the common causes, he’s investigated recordings that bombers left behind, information about their religious affiliations and socioeconomic status, and other personal details.

From 1980 to 2003, suicide terrorism was relatively rare, and the threat to American citizens was minimal: fewer than 15 percent of the 343 such attacks around the world were directed against U.S. interests. Yet from 2004 to 2009, there were 1,833 suicide strikes—92 percent aimed at American targets.

Before that increase, of course, came September 11, 2001, which brought the effects of suicide terrorism into sharp relief in the United States. Less than a decade earlier, Islamic terrorists killed six people in a World Trade Center bombing. Yet the February 26, 1993, attack “did not turn the American government, our military, and much of the country upside down to prevent it from happening again,” Pape and Feldman write in Cutting the Fuse.

The difference, the authors argue, was suicide terrorism, which inflicts disproportionate horror—19 perpetrators killed thousands of civilians, which was possible in large part because they were willing to sacrifice their own lives. As Pape puts it, “Suicide terrorists are the ultimate smart bomb.” Such attacks accounted for only three percent of global terrorism between 1980 and 2001, but caused 70 percent of the deaths.

Seldom have the attackers been seeking religious martyrdom. In the 24 years before the Iraq invasion, the secular Tamil Tigers committed the most suicide attacks of any terrorist organization worldwide—committing 78 against Sri Lanka between 1987 and 2001.

Even among fundamentalist groups, repelling foreign military occupation was the underlying motivation. 

From Lebanon in the 1980s—the first suicide attacks since World War II kamikazes—to Iraq and Afghanistan now, the presence of foreign troops from democratic countries, which are considered “vulnerable to coercive punishment,” has coincided with a rise in suicide terrorism.

Even in Iraq, where a 2008 decline in attacks overlapped with an increase in U.S. troops, Pape’s findings still hold: despite the “surge,” he points out, the net result was a smaller foreign military presence because coalition troops were leaving at a higher rate than U.S. forces were arriving.

Pape and Feldman found similar circumstances in Afghanistan. There were fewer than 15 suicide attacks in the country from 2003 to 2005, but the number spiked to 87 in 2006 and 128 the following year. “It stays high,” Pape said. “Why?” From 2001 onward, international forces arrived in increasing numbers in Kabul, then in the country’s north and west. But they did not spread to the Pashtun homeland in southern Afghanistan until October 2006. After that, Pashtun suicide terrorism ignited.

It’s a predictable pattern: Pape and Feldman identify these correlations in the eight major suicide terror campaigns dating to the early 1980s. Including an October 23, 1983, suicide truck bomb that killed 241 U.S. Marines, there were 30 attacks in occupied Lebanon between 1982 and 1986.

At the time, Hezbollah’s Shia Muslim attackers led many people to believe religious fundamentalism was the organization’s driving motivation. Cutting the Fuse explains that Hezbollah did not exist before Israel’s June 1982 invasion. By that July, it had formed.

In the four years that followed, those 30 attacks were “all directly or tacitly coordinated by Hezbollah.” 

As foreign troops left the country—first the United States, then France, then Israel—the number of suicide attacks declined. “Since Israel’s military withdrawal in 2000,” Pape said, “there has not been a single Lebanese suicide attack.”

So, he asked rhetorically, paraphrasing a question from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: 

Were more terrorists being produced than the United States was capturing or killing? Pape presents his research as an emphatic yes: “Foreign occupation is the trigger for suicide terrorism,” he said, “much like smoking is the trigger for lung cancer.”

Media Fueling Terrorists

Reporting On Religious Violence

By Samiaji Bintang
Journalist based in Jakarta.
Monday, 29 November 2010 14:09
Courtesy Of "On Islam"

In the digital age, in the midst of intense competition among media, journalists always seem to be in a race against time.

“To what extent does the media’s coverage of terrorism fuel terrorists?” a member of a mailing list group named Jurnalisme that I subscribe to recently asked. Like the media practitioners, activists in non-governmental organizations, and students of journalism joining this mailing list, this is a question that has also been on my mind.

In the digital age, in the midst of intense competition among media, journalists always seem to be in a race against time. There is an impression that the best news site is the one that pushes out broadcasting news reports the fastest, even at the risk of sacrificing accuracy and depth.

This is the case with the media’s coverage of violence and terrorism in the name of religion in Indonesia. Verifying facts, which is a fundamental principle of journalism, seems to have gone by the wayside in the demand to broadcast news reports as fast as possible, often by relying on information provided by only one or two sources, such as police officers or government officials.

Terrorist acts in the name of religion and intolerance between religious communities have, for the umpteenth time, become the topics of lead stories in Indonesian media. Recent headlines are filled with reports of a series of armed robberies allegedly linked to a terrorist network in the province of North Sumatra, an attack on an Ahmadi (known as Ahmadiyya in Indonesia) mosque in Bogor in West Java, and an assault on two church leaders in Bekasi, also in the province of West Java.

For these incidents and others, the media is the main source of information for the public. However, instead of helping prevent the conflict from escalating further, the media seem to be trapped in sensationalism.

Take a look at the titles and labels used in the media: terms like “radicals”, “hardliners”, “fundamentalists” and even “terrorists” are often associated in the media with Islam and Muslims. The selection and use of these terms are often highly biased, spreading a negative image of all Muslims, even those who condemn such violence in the name of religion.

The media’s responsibility is not merely to report and provide accurate information. The media must also be aware of the possible negative impact of its intensive coverage of religious issues.

To reverse this trend, I suggest that the media focus instead on the crimes committed by the culpable individuals or groups. For example, instead of using the aforementioned terms, the media should use “bomber” to describe someone guilty of creating and/or detonating explosives, “armed robber” to refer to someone who commits such robberies, and “vandal” to refer to someone who defaces a place of worship.

Labeling perpetrators as “criminals” rather than “radicals” or “hardliners” prevents these individuals from hijacking religion to defend their heinous and religiously unjustified actions.

The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) published a book in 2006, Fighting Words: How Arab and American Journalists Can Break Through to Better Coverage. This book provides constructive recommendations for journalists in other parts of the world as well. Three recommendations stick out in my mind:

First, reporters and producers need to educate themselves about culture and religion. I would recommend attending or joining cross-cultural forums such as conferences organized by the ICFJ and the UN Alliance of Civilizations.

Second, journalists covering religious issues need to avoid stereotypes and sensationalism. More specifically, they should include details and sufficient context in stories, as well as verifying facts and giving fair and balanced reports.

Third, newsrooms need to define loaded words, set policies about how to use them and create guidelines for the use of images, which should be reviewed from time to time.

Diversity becomes problematic when the media neglects its social responsibility to report professionally on the clashes resulting from this very diversity. Otherwise, the diversity of religions enriches human civilizations while also providing a rich source of newsworthy reporting.

This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews). Copyright permission is granted for publication to Onislam.net.

Samiaji Bintang is a contributor for the Aceh Feature Service (www.acehfeature.org), which covers the post-tsunami and post-conflict situation in Aceh. He participated in February 2010’s  training on intercultural reporting organized by the UN Alliance of Civilizations, the International Center for Journalists and Search for Common Ground in Jakarta.