Written by Mark Millar. Art for Ultimate X-Men by Adam Kubert, and for Ultimate War by Chris Bachalo. What are these comics about? : The X-Men are a group of mutants who are training under the tutelage of Professor Charles Xavier. Xavier dreams of peaceful co-existence between mutants and humans, in sharp contrast to Magneto, who leads the terrorist group called the Brotherhood of Mutants. Xavier faked Magneto's death in order to rehabilitate his former friend, but it didn't work and now the X-Men are in the middle of a modern war on terror. Some of Xavier's students include Logan (Wolverine), Jean Grey (Marvel Girl), Scott Summers (Cyclops), Ororo Munroe (Storm), Hank McCoy (Beast), and Peter Rasputin (Colossus). Recommended Reading : Read the beginnings of the Ultimate X-Men in Ultimate X-Men Vol. 1 : The Tomorrow People. The conflict between the X-Men and the Ultimates after Magneto's return is told in Ultimate War, a four-issue series that will probably be collected into a trade paperback soon.
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India and Pakistan Camp X-Ray |
Panels from Ultimate War #3 : Camp X-Ray.
All covers and panels are copyright Marvel Comics.India and Pakistan (last updated June 3, 2002) (back to top)Religion and territorial claims have divided India and Pakistan for decades, but recent years have seen tensions escalate with the development of nuclear weapons, dramatic political changes such as a 1999 coup in Pakistan by General Pervez Musharraf, and the global war on terrorism. Much of the conflict centers around the province of Kashmir, which has a predominantly Muslim population but has been part of predominantly Hindu India for more than half a century.Since late 2001, the two countries have become enveloped in a crisis relating to terrorist actions against India made by people allegedly based in Pakistan. General Musharraf then ordered massive arrests and made a public address in January 2002 promising that Pakistan would not be used as a base for terrorism while still re-iterating support for Kashmir's independence from India. This action brought a brief reprieve, but India began amassing troops on the shared border in late May 2002 after an armed attack by three men led to more than 30 deaths in Kashmir, and both countries were again on the verge of war as of early June 2002. Facing pressure from the United States, both countries have made statements that they would refrain from using their nuclear weapons, but a conventional war still seems possible. On May 31, the United States warned all American citizens to leave India and Pakistan due to the "serious tensions" there, and the United Nations followed with a similar order. United States officials such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld plan to visit the area in early June 2002.Both countries were created in August 1947 out of the remnants of the British colonial empire. The entire subcontinent had been under British colonial rule officially since the 1850s and unofficially for even longer, but the Hindu and Muslim populations could not reach agreement on a united country and so partition was deemed necessary. The partition, which took place just one month after the British announced they would leave, caused massive upheaval, chaos, and death; an estimated 10 million people tried moving from one newborn state to the other, and about 1 million of them never reached their destination. Now, India is mostly Hindu (81.3 percent) but also has a sizeable Muslim minority population (12 percent). Pakistan is almost entirely Muslim (97 percent), of whom three-quarters are Sunni and a fifth are Shi'a. Both countries have a low gross national product per capita and about 35-40 percent of the population in both countries live below the poverty line, but India has some industry while Pakistan does not. At the very center of the conflict between India and Pakistan is the province of Jammu and Kashmir, commonly known just as Kashmir, that lies in an especially precarious and strategically important location: it is India's northernmost province and it has Pakistan to its west and China on its north and east. Kashmir is protected on all sides by mountains (it is in the Himalayas) and has few passes in or out, and it is where the rivers which flow down into Pakistan start. Kashmir was long been predominantly Muslim, but in 1947 it was also ruled by a Hindu maharajah, Hari Singh, who could choose which country his province would join. Singh delayed making this decision for months, but in October 1947, soldiers from the Northwest Frontier Province, which had joined Pakistan after partition, invaded. Singh requested military assistance from India, but received it only after agreeing to accede and have Kashmir become part of India. Even with India's assistance, fighting continued in Kashmir for two years, ending with a cease-fire brokered by the United Nations in 1949. As part of the cease-fire, India retained most of Kashmir, and agreed to allow a plebiscite in which locals could decide which nation the province would join. However, this plebiscite has never taken place as India has refused to allow this plebiscite until all fighting stops. Other rounds of fighting between Indian and Pakistani soldiers occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the late 1980s, Kashmiri rebels, many of whom had Pakistani support or received training from Pakistan or from Islamic militant groups, began uprisings against Indian control, a guerrilla struggle that has continued for more than a decade. An estimated 30,000 have died since then.Given all this, the Indian subcontinent was unstable enough, and then both countries became nuclear powers.In May 1998, India shocked the world - and caught the US intelligence community entirely off-guard - when it conducted three nuclear bomb tests on May 11 and another two on May 13. The move was an effort by the recently elected and still fragile Hindu-led government to rally support, and the move succeeded immensely. Pakistan, however, followed with its own explosions on May 29. The United States imposed sanctions on both countries, but little happened for months. Finally, in February 1999, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan came together to pledge to take steps to reduce the risk of nuclear war.Nevertheless, another round of fighting between Indian and Pakistani soldiers occurred in May 1999. Events began when Pakistani soldiers entered Kashmir and seized key land in what is now called the Kargil operation after one of the towns so seized. India mobilized its own military force, and the two countries engaged in fighting and were on the brink of outright war for 10 weeks. Finally, with some help from President Bill Clinton, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said he would persuade his military to withdraw their forces. Pakistan's backing down from the Kargil operation, however, helped cost Sharif his position and freedom. The military, led by General Pervez Musharraf, who reportedly wanted to push the Kargil operation even further, carried out a coup in October 1999, and Sharif was subsequently convicted of corruption and exiled. The coup and Musharraf's rule were validated on May 12, 2000 by Pakistan's supreme court, which also granted Musharraf executive and legislative authority until October 2002. India's prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has faced his own problems keeping power, but has been more successful than his former counterpart. He narrowly lost a vote of no confidence in April 1999, but has managed to rebuild a governing coalition since then and has continued to maintain power into 2002.In late 2001, India and Pakistan again almost came to war over a crisis relating to terrorist actions allegedly by people based in Pakistan. On December 13, 2001, a group of five armed terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament, killing 9 people as well as causing their own deaths. Indian officials said that Pakistani terrorists within two groups, the Army of the Pure and the Army of Muhammad, were to blame and that Pakistan was not doing enough to contain such groups. India mobilized forces along the Pakistan border, while Pakistan had forces stationed on its western border with Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda members from fleeing that country. Tensions began to ease somewhat in early January 2002, after General Musharraf took actions against terrorists located within Pakistan. He ordered the arrest of leading members of the two groups accused of the December 13 attacks. In a major address on January 12, 2002, he publicly pledged that he would not allow Pakistan to be used as a base for terrorism and he banned the Army of the Pure and the Army of Muhammad within Pakistan or within Kashmir. At the same time, he reiterated that Kashmir was still a disputed issue between the two countries and that Pakistan supported non-militant Muslims' efforts for independence from India. India has a larger and more advanced military than Pakistan, though both are far behind the United States in terms of weapons capabilities. India spent about $13.02 billion on its military in FY 2001, and Pakistan spent less than a fifth of that, about $2.435 billion, in FY 1999-2000. Sources: Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India, sixth edition. Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Proudest Day: India's long road to independence (W.W. Norton, 1999). Michael R. Gordon, Kashmir threat eases, but U.S. still sees dangers, New York Times, January 20, 2002. The State Department has country background notes on India and on Pakistan on-line via here. Information on the countries' economies and military is taken from the CIA World Factbook 2001, on-line here.
Camp X-Ray : Detainment of Al Qaeda and Taliban Fighters (last updated October 20, 2002) (back to top)As of summer 2002, more than 500 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan were being detained at the United States' base at Guantanamo Bay in two detention centers known as "Camp X-Ray" and "Camp Delta." The first detainees began arriving at Camp X-Ray in mid-December 2001, and hundreds were transferred to Camp Delta in late April 2002.According to a Bush administration policy announced in early February 2002, all Taliban soldiers are considered prisoners of war and all al-Qaeda fighters are considered unlawful combatants, a distinction that determines the detainees' rights under international law. "Prisoners of war" are protected by the Third Geneva Convention -- adopted by the international community in 1949 and ratified by the United States in 1955 -- and can thus refuse to answer most questions, cannot be tortured, have religious freedom, and must be quartered in conditions equal to the United States forces at the same location. "Unlawful combatants," on the other hand, lack such rights. Initially, the Bush administration had decided that all detainees were not prisoners of war and did not merit an individualized tribunal process to confirm that status. This policy, announced in mid-January 2002, was criticized by other countries, groups such as Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who reportedly believed that detainees were at least entitled to an individualized process. Bush then announced that he had changed the policy upon reconsideration.It is unclear what eventually will happen to the detainees. Officials have said that they expect that detainees will be either released or charged with crimes, though it is not clear whether they would be charged under the civilian criminal justice system, military courts, or the special military tribunals that Bush authorized on November 13, 2001 to try foreigners charged with terrorism. In any event, administration officials have defended Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta as humane and within the spirit of the Geneva Convention's protections, regardless of what status a detainee officially has. In a January 22, 2002 press briefing, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that treatment of inmates at Camp X-Ray "is proper, it's humane, it's appropriate, and it is fully consistent with international conventions. No detainee has been harmed, no detainee has been mistreated in any way. And the numerous articles, statements, questions, allegations and breathless reports on television are undoubtedly by people who are either uninformed, misinformed, or poorly informed." Earlier in January, Amnesty International had expressed concern about the "alleged ill-treatment of prisoners in transit and in Guantanamo, including reports that they were shackled, hooded and sedated during transfer, their beards were forcibly shaved, and that they are housed in small cages in Guantanamo that do not protect against the elements." Other groups expressed similar concerns. Detainees at Camp X-Ray lived in 8 feet by 8 feet units, with open-air, chain-link walls, a concrete floor, a roof made of wood and metal, and no indoor plumbing. Detainees at Camp Delta, which has been described as a more secure facility, live in slightly smaller units (8 feet by 6 feet, 8 inches) that have indoor plumbing and a metal bed frame. Located on the southeast corner of Cuba since 1903, Guantanamo Bay is the oldest United States base overseas. Since the 1990s, the base has been used to hold refugees from Haiti and from Cuba (for more on such refugees as interdicted by the Coast Guard, go here). Sources: Rudi Williams, GITMO General Rates Force Protection High with Detainee Care, American Forces Press Service, June 21, 2002, on-line here. Katharine Q. Seelye and David E. Sanger, Bush reconsiders stand on treating captives of war, New York Times, January 29, 2002. Katharine Q. Seelye, Powell asks Bush to reverse stand on war captives, New York Times, January 27, 2002. The January 22, 2002 press briefing by Donald Rumsfeld is on-line here, and a relevant Janaury 9, 2002 White House press briefing by Ari Fleischer is on-line here. Amnesty International is on-line here; the press release quoted was dated January 15, 2002. The Third Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (aka the Third Geneva Convention), adopted on August 12, 1949, entered into force in 1950, and ratified by the United States in 1955, is available via the International Committee of the Red Cross's page on international humanitarian law, on-line here. Information about Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is on-line here. Bush's executive order of November 13, 2001 authorizing military tribunals is on-line here.
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