Sunday, January 12, 2003

Mossad and Kenya

pv vivekanand

ISRAEL has gone silent on its investigations into the November attacks against Israeli targets in Mombassa, Kenya, and the silence is alarming and could herald stunning revelations of the nefarious operations of its super-secret spying agency, Mossad.
It was no empty pledge that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made when he vowed that the notorious Mossad would launch its own investigations and exact revenge for the attacks.
Mossad is ruthless and employs whatever means available to it to accomplish its mission. These could include murder, intimidation, blackmail and other "incentives" to enlist help from whatever source, and the agency leaves no trace behind. "The dead can't talk," that is the philosophy followed by Mossad, as Israeli commentators have affirmed.
For all we know, Mossad could have already traced those behind the attacks and spirited them away to Israel for questioning. An Israeli announcement could be made when Mossad feels it is safe to do so.
Mossad would have no consideration whatsoever except its secrecy and confidentiality even if those could delay a triumphant announcement by the Israeli government of "success in hunting down the enemies of the Jewish people."
Who knows, it could be Sharon's master stroke to make up for the loss of popularity and decline in prospects for an election victory resulting from corruption allegations.
Regardless of the politics involved, it is a fair conclusion that Mossad would have devoted itself to the assigned task of bringing the Mombassa attackers to Israeli-style "justice."
Mossad has an added incentive. It has to "redeem" itself after it suffered a series of setbacks in recent years leading what many see as a crisis of confidence in an agency once seen as a ruthless and highly efficient secret service.
Reports from Africa indicate that Mossad agents are targeting Somalia as the prime area for investigations, probably because of suspicions that Al Ittihad Al Islamiya of that country was alleged to have ties with Al Qaeda.
However, fair-skinned Israelis would stick out like a sore thump in Somalia. As such, the agency is said to be using Ethiopian immigrants to Israel -- the so-called Falasha Jews of Ethiopia -- and other Africans as its operatives in Somalia and elsewhere in the continent.
That is only a flash of the techniques employed by Mossad, which has been responsible for assassinating dozens of Palestinians, Arabs and others who were seen as potential sources of threat for Israel in whatever manner and form.
The "reputation" stemming from those "successes" suffered a series of setbacks in recent years as a result of blotched operations.
These included:
In February 1999, two agents were arrested in Cyprus near prohibited military areas. They were carrying cameras and investigations showed that they were taking photographs for possible delivery to Turkey.
In March 1999, a retired Mossad agent was convicted of fabricating intelligence reports suggesting Syria was about to attack. It was his Mossad background that had lent credibility to the claims.
In February 1998, Mossad agents were caught installing bugging equipment at an apartment in Berne, Switzerland. In a trial that ended in July 2000, One of them was given a one-year suspended prison term and barred from entering Switzerland for five years.
The wire-tapping operation targeted a Swiss citizen of Lebanese origin who Mossad suspected of having links with Lebanon's Hizbollah. The man testified during the trial that he had no links whatsoever with the group.
Israel had furnished a $2 million bail for its operative to secure his release and kept a promise of sending him back for trial. That infuriated Mossad agents to threatening an unprecedented strike and refusal to take up missions in protest against what they saw as a lack of backing from their superiors.
The worst of Mossad operations came in September 1997 where two agents were caught in Amman after they poured a slow-acting poison into the ear of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. Israel had to provide an antidote to the poison and also release Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as well as dozens of Jordanian and Palestinian leaders in return for the two detained agents in Amman who were travelling on false Canadian passports.
Danny Yaton survived as chief of Mossad at the time of the Amman operation until February 1998 but was forced to resign after the agency carried out an in-house investigation.
The Kenyan capital of Nairobi is one of Mossad's main operating bases in Africa. Reports have suggested that it was Mossad which informed the US that Felicien Kabuga, one of the leading figures wanted for crimes in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, was being sheltered in Kenya. Subsequently, the US started applying pressure on Nairobi to hand him over for trial at the Rwandan War Crimes Tribunal.
The timing of the revelation is suspect since it followed the November attacks in Mombassa and a change of guard in the Kenyan government after late December elections.
As such, some observers believe, Mossad used its US connections to apply pressure on the new Kenyan government to ensure it co-operated with the Israeli investigations into the Mombassa bombing.
It would seem to be a far-fetched theory even though it could not be ruled out in view of Mossad's chequered record of exploiting situations to its advantage.
Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed when an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombassa is blown up by a car bomb. A simultaneous rocket attack on an Israeli airliner failed and a statement - purportedly from the Al Qaeda network -- claimed responsibility for the two attacks. It also threatened more attacks on Israeli and US targets.
In mid-December, Kenyan police cleared six Pakistanis and three Somalis who were detained after the attacks. They were only charged with entering Kenya illegally and faced fines and deportation.
Kenyan police are still questioning three people who they say witnessed the sale of the car they allege was used in the attack on the hotel.
Police have released computer-generated images of two men they suspect carried out the failed missile attack,
If, as claimed, Al Qaeda was behind the attacks, then we would be witnessing a scenario that involves Mossad tactics matched against the labyrinth of Osama Bin Laden's followers.
And indeed, the war could already be in action behind the scenes and it would have wider implications than simple Mossad-style assassinations.

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

Israel paid to stay out of war

by pv vivekanand

When United Airlines appealed for $1.8 billion loan guarantees to bail itself out of financial troubles, the Bush administration turned down the plea and the airline went bust. Today, Israel is seeking $8 billion in loan guarantees and the administration appears to be more than willing to extend it, but Israel is not going to go bust if it does not receive it.
In fact, the $8 billion sought by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is in addition to another $4 billion, which would eventually be converted to aid, and that is the price Washington is paying Sharon to stay out of a possible US-led war against Iraq. That is the way leading American commentators see it, and they include columnist and former presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan.
Indeed, it is an issue to debated among American taxpayers. They are footing the bill for what their administration calls as "strategic partnership" with Israel and they should be the ones to demand an explanation to the lopsided policies of their government in the Middle East.
If they need any pointers -- from the look of things it would seem that they do indeed need a nudge since the mainstream media that reach them do not tell them the full truth -- let us remind the Americans that their country is officially paying $3.1 billion in annual aid to Israel, not to mention an equal amount that reaches Israel as contributions from powerful Jewish organisations. In addition are the periodic doses of hundreds of millions of dollars disguised as "emergency assistance," "special project aid" and various other forms. These allocations need not be cleared through the US Congress since the funding comes from the budgets of the various departments of the administration.
The American taxpayers should be looking at the per capita "tax" that they are paying to maintain their administration's "strategic" ties with Israel. Has it been useful to defending the security and safety of Americans, whether in the US or outside? Well, if anything, the US has only reaped the hostility of the Arabs and Muslims around the world. This makes it a simple equation: American tax dollars are sent to Israel and spent on increasing hostility towards the US. It has made life difficult for Americans, and, today the number of countries where American lives are perceived to be under threat and hostility is more than where they are deemed safe and secure.
As Buchanan highlighted it, "journalists and diplomats alike, returning from the Mideast, attest that our almost-blind support of Israel is a major cause of the anti-Americanism that is sweeping the Islamic world."
"Why should we do this?" he asked. "What does America get out of this? What has all the $100 billion in aid we have shovelled out to Israel bought us, other than ingratitude and the enmity of the Arab World?"
Buchanan's sharp references to the unhealthy relationship between the US and Israel represent a segment of the conservatives in the American society, but it is a minority.
However, the silver lining in the horizon, if you will, is the gradual increase in the number of people who realise that there is something wrong in the US approach to the Middle East.
Among them is Victor Marshall, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, a public policy group,.
In Jan.5 issue of the Los Angeles Times, Marshal wrote a courageous article "The lies we are told about Iraq."
He asserts that during the Gulf war of 1991, the then administration of George Bush Senior of misrepresenting the "cause of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the nature of Iraq's conduct in Kuwait and the cost of the Gulf war."
He says that the administration demonised Iraq, exaggerated Iraq's military capabilities, and used
"the confrontation to justify a more expansive and militaristic foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era."
Isn't it ironic? But the irony seems to lost on the American public at large.
On the political front, US President George W.Bush, who is reportedly "very understanding" of the Israeli request for $12 billion, seems to have a short memory.
When, in mid-2001, when Bush articulated his "vision" of Israel and a Palestinian state existing side by side, it was none other than Sharon who warned him off and had the audacity to assert that Israel had more clout in the US Congress than the president himself. Wasn't such an assertion the deepest of the depths of humiliation and insult to an American president?
Wasn't it Sharon who scoffed at Bush, who seemed to have put the prestige of the White House on the firing line and publicly asked him to withdraw the Israeli army from the West Bank?
In simpler terms, Sharon -- and indeed his predecessors -- have always acted as if it was the God-assigned responsibility and duty of the US to back Israel to the hilt wherever, whenever and however asked to do so even it meant losing American prestige and credibility. Whenever the administration showed any reluctance, Israeli leaders have always whipped out their ace card and threatened to "go to the American Congress and people."
Well, Washington has not behaved any different from the Israeli expectations either. That could perhaps also explain why the US spent more than half of the $2.5 billion funding for the much-touted "Arrow" missile defence system for Israel and seems to be willing to shell out another $1 billion for a third battery of the missile system that offers a protective umbrella against missiles that might come Israel's way.
However, the Arabs and Palestinians could not maintain silence and leave it to American debate. The US "aid" to Israel has a direct bearing on life in the Middle East. The $8 billion "loan guarantees" sought by Israel are to be spent on building more settlements in the occupied West Bank to further the Israeli grip on the Palestinian territories. It would only compound the already complex problems that need to be sorted out when the time comes up for realistic peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Again it is only a small patch in the overall picture of the Arab-Israeli equation. Had it not been for the almost unlimited political, military, diplomatic and financial support that the US extended to Israel over the decades, Israel would not have been encouraged to ridicule international laws and conventions and the situation in the Middle East today would have been different.
Amid the mounting US-condoned Israeli brutality against the Palestinians and rising clouds of war against Arab Muslim Iraq, one could only hope for a miracle that Washington wakes up to the realities of its policies and comprehend that its blind support for Israel and obvious hostility towards the Arabs are leading the Middle East to a disaster.

Sunday, January 05, 2003

Who will wink first

PV Vivekanand

I was asked the other day what I thought was the reason for the contrasting American approach to Iraq and North Korea. The US insists on a military confrontation with Iraq which says it has no weapons of mass destruction and poses no threat to its neighbourhood. On the other hand, the US is softpedalling around North Korea which has openly declared it is capable of producing nuclear weapons and poses a threat to US allies South Korea and Japan, and, if need be, the US itself.
Well, I had thought, until the question was put to me, that the situation was fairly clear and did not really need an explanation since the whole affair was and is superficial. There was never the possibility of the Korean "dispute" getting out of hand and North Korea firing a nuclear weapon (not that it is known it has one; even if it had, it knows well that it would definitely lead to the obliteration of North Korea as we know it today. There is no reason to believe that the reclusive North Korean leadership is turning suicidal either).
On the surface, North Korea has done everything to attract international punitive measures of a higher intensity than Iraq warrants. It has been established that it has a nuclear weapons programme and it is not willing to co-operate with the world community, whereas it has yet to be proven that Iraq has such a programme and Baghdad is indeed co-operating with UN weapons inspectors .
Why still the US says diplomacy is the way to resolve the Korean "crisis" while it maintains that military means is the way to deal with Iraq?
In direct comparison, it was the US which pushed the Iraq situation into a real crisis and created the possibility of war for purposes that suit American interets, while North Korea was the culprit on the Asian front but with non-war objectives in mind.
The contradiction between the two "problems" is also clear: the US intends to follow up its anti-Iraq campaign with a war in the Middle East whereas North Korea seems to be the last country interested in war and the US would not be drawn into one either.
Pyongyang's implied and implicit suggestions that poses a nuclear threat in its neighbourhood are the roar of a paper tiger aimed at realising its objective of solving critical internal crises. It is hoping to kill two birds with one stone -- securing external help without compromising its isolationist ideology or exposing its leadership to political risks. And it seeks a position to strength to drive a hard bargain.
Deeply mired in economic problems that have led to starvation and mounting unrest among its people and political isolation that has denied timely external help, the North Korean leadership wants a way out. Pyongyang believes that the US is its best bet for securing foreign aid, including food and fuel. But the Stalinist leadership also knows that they would have to "lose face" if they were to seek direct help and that such help would be at the expense of opening up the country which they are not yet ready to do.
North Korea has also accepted the reality that it could no longer count on its traditional friend China to pull it out of the quagmire. Beijing has its own preoccupation with its newfound economic strength without compromising communism and it is highly unlikely that it would risk a halt to its international windfall by throwing its weight behind a "loser" like North Korea.
As such, it appears to me, Pyongyang found the best means to solve its internal problems through external engagement, and the process was launched from a confrontational approach to the US.
It announced that it had violated a 1994 nuclear agreement with the US, was determined to pursue its nuclear plans, kicked out nuclear inspectors, and broke open the seals of a mothballed nuclear plant deemed capable of producing a nuclear bomb. The world has no idea at this point in time whether such a bomb has already been produced, is being produced or whether the country already had a nuclear arsenal at the outset of the "dispute."
In retaliation, the US and others suspended aid to North Korea and turned off the fuel taps, but Washington has consistently maintained that the way out of the crisis was through diplomacy and dialogue. It has ruled out a pre-emptive strike to eliminate North Korea's nuclear facilities and it has not assembled military force to do so either.
As such, it emerges that Washington is fully aware of North Korea's ulterior objective of sitting down to discuss and resolve the "dispute" and there is little chance of a military conflict erupting in the Korean peninsula despite the mix of threatening rhetoric and calls for diplomatic talks oozing out of Pyongyang.
Armed with that knowledge that North Korea is seeking to assume a high ground -- a positions of strength from its point of view -- in eventual negotiations to settle the crisis, the US is letting Pyongyang have its way for the time being until Washington is ready to sit down for talks. Under normal circumstances, the anti-US language coming out of North Korea is not the kind of talk that Washington would tolerate, but then it knows it is not a war cry but an invitation to dialogue.
Indeed, in public statements, the US has ruled out any negotiations with North Korea saying it would be tantamount to nuclear blackmail. It demands that Pyongyang freezes its nuclear weapons programmes first. But North Korea believes agreeing to the US demand would show that it is vulnerable to pressure and therefore rules it out.
South Korea and Japan are caught in the middle. They are not fully convinced and pacified that the North would not use nuclear weapons against them, but then such successful pacification would not serve the US strategic objective of maintaining control in the region since the bogeyman in the equation would cease to exist.
In the US-North Korean dispute it is only a matter of who will wink first and what could follow is a tug-of-war to determine how much Washington -- and its allies -- are willing to foot the bill and take care of Pyongyang's chronic internal problems.