pv vivekanand
"What a preprosterous idea!" that is how a source
close to Prince Hassan of Jordan responded when asked
whether the prince was gearing up to be the king of
Iraq after Saddam Hussein is toppled.
"Do you think Prince Hassan is the type of person who
would ride on an American tank into baghdad to rule
Iraq?" asked the source.
the very idea of restoring the hashemite monarchy in
post-war iraq came up in july when prince hassan, the
brother of the king hussein of jordan, turned up at a
meeting of Iraqi dissidents in London.
Although he insisted that he was attending the meeting
in his personal capacity, his very presence sparked
suggestions that he had made a deal with the americans
under which he would be installed as king of iraq
after saddam is ousted.
The deal, it was alleged, involved jordan joining the
american war camp against Iraq and offering military
facilities to the US military to launch strikes
against the kingdom's eastern neighbour in a course of
events leading to prince hassan taking over Iraq with
american backing.
hassan was expected to become the king of jordan but
his brother king hussein turned around a few days
before his death in February 1999 and named his son
Abdullah as his heir.
Hassan was of course disappointed. Howevdr, the pragmatic
scholar and intellectual he is, he pubicly declared
that he backed abdullah as the new king of jordan.
since then, Hassan came to be known as a king without
a throne, and the purported idea of him being named
king of iraq suited the minds of many.
american sources have confirmed that restoration of
the monarchy in iraq was one of the "many" scenarios
being considered.
however, there are many questions that are not
answered.
these include:
-- will the iraqis themselves accept a monarchy?
the hashemite monarchy was in power in iraq from 1920
until 1958 when it was overthrown. today's iraqi
generation has been for long used to the baathist
leadership and presidency, which came to power in
1968, with saddam hussein assuming power in 1979.
as such, restoration of a ruling family that today's
generation is not familiar with faces major hurdles.
The direct descendant of the Iraqi branch of the
Hashmite family is Sharif Ali Bin Hussein, who
attended the London meeting with prince hassan in
july. sharif ali heads the Constitutional Monarchy
Movement, which, as the name implies, would give the
restored hashemite family a titular power, with the
actual executive powers lying with an elected
government.
The most favoured american plan for immediate post-war
iraq is a military administration headed by a
civilian.
However, that plan seems to have run into trouble
facing rejection by the iraqi dissident groups, which
are insisting that they should be given power in
post-war iraq.
Two Iraqi groups, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP)
based in northern Iraq and the Shiite Supreme Council
for islamic revolution in Iraq (Scriri) said this week
that Washington had agreed to give the anti-Saddam
groups power in Iraq after the war.
The reported American change of mind to accepting to
allow the Iraqi opposition to rule a post-war Iraq
stems from a realization that Washington would never
be able to secure international legitimacy for a US
occupation of that country.
Earlier US plans called for a military administration
of post-war Iraq.
The country was to be administratively divided into
three sectors - the Kurdish north, the Shiite north
and the mixed central region, including Baghdad, the
capital.
The Bush administration had also firmed up the people
who were supposed to be in charge of the three
sectors: A woman ambassador and a serving general and
a former lieutenant-general, with each assigned to
three sectors of a post-war Iraq - the northern
Kurdish region, the central region including Baghdad
and the Shiite
The woman, career foreign service diplomat Barbara
Brodine, last served as the US ambassador to Yemen and
handled a difficult phase in Washington-Sanaa
relationship after the bombing of the USS Cole off
Aden in 2000 attributed to Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda
group.
The other two are: Lieutenant-General John Abizaid,
who is of Lebanese origin, and former
lieutenant-general Jay Garner, who served as the US
Army's specialist in missile defence and space-related
affairs.
The Iraqi opposition groups vehemently opposed the
plans, but Washington did not seem to be taking them
seriously. Obviously, the assumption was that these
groups would fall in line once the US military takes
firm control of Iraq.
On the international front, the US obviously hoped to
secure a UN Security Council resolution endorsing its
occupation of Iraq disguised as "administrative
control."
However, France and Russia have vowed that they would
deny
the US such legitimacy since it would also mean that
they were endorsing the legality of the US war against
Iraq that does not have Security Council
authorisation.
It was the French and Russian threats of veto that
dissuaded US President George W.Bush from seeking
approval of a new Security Council resolution and
insist that Resolution 1441 of November was enough to
launch military action against Iraq.
On Friday, one day after the war was launched, French
President Jacque Chirac threatened to veto any UN
resolution to let the US run Iraq after the war.
He said that allowing Washington and London to oversee
the creation of a new government in Iraq would reward
them for starting a war that flouted the supremacy of
the UN Security Council.
France would veto any attempt in the United Nations to
"legitimise the military intervention (and) ... give
the belligerents the powers to administer Iraq,"
Chirac said. "That would justify the war after the
event."
Chirac made his position known after British Prime
Minister Tony Blair called on the other European Union
countries to support future moves at the UN to forge a
post-Saddam "civil authority in Iraq."
On Saturday, Russian joined France in opposing the US
move.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said he expected
Washington to seek retroactive approval for their
action from the United Nations after Iraqi resistance
had been crushed but that Russia would oppose it.
"Attempts will undoubtedly be made in the UN Security
Council to find ways which would help legitimise the
military operations and the post-war (political)
set-up in Iraq," he said.
"We will follow this very carefully and we will not,
of course, give legitimacy to this action in the
Security Council," Ivanov said.
"I don't think Iraq needs a democracy brought on the
wings of Tomahawk (missiles)," he said.
In northern Iraq on Saturday, the KDP annoucned
Washington had a change of heart and had abandoned
plans to install a temporary US military
administration in post-war Iraq.
"There will be an interim Iraqi administration
immediately after the liberation," a senior KDP
official said, adding that the decision was taken
during tripartite talks in Ankara between American,
Turkish and Iraqi opposition representatives
Hoshyar Zebari of the KDP affirmed that initially, the
Americans had hoped to impose a military
administration which would not involve Iraqis.
But the US "abandoned that idea during the talks," he
said. "It will not exactly be a government, more an
authority which will be responsible for public
services," he explained.
"Power will gradually be transferred to this
authority, which will be able to negotiate with the
United Nations and with countries donating aid,"
Zebari said. "It will prepare the ground for a court
of justice and help establish a constitutional
assembly to draw up a constitution."
Abdul Aziz Hakim, deputy head of the Tehran-based
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
(SCIRI), said US representative Zalmay Khalilzad had
announced the change of plan.
Hakim said Khalilzad told them the opposition would
now take control "from the outset."
The reported American change of mind reflects
Washington's thinking that it might not be a good idea
to take its confrontation with other world powers any
further and further undermine the credibility of the
UN Security Council. "Defying the Security Council and
going ahead with its unilateral war against Iraq was
the biggest blow that the UN has ever received,"
commented a European diplomat.
"To continue along the same line and impose its own
rule in Iraq would only worsen the international
crisis, particularly at a time when the US is hoping
for world support in rebuilding Iraq and in mending
fences with European powers like France, Germany and
others."
"Unilateralism could be taken only to a point without
actually triggering a world crisis of massive
proportions worse than those prevailing today," added
the diplomat. At the same time, the "new" American
position to allow the Iraqi opposition to rule
post-war Iraq might be a smoke screen that would veil
the actual power that Washington would wield there in
post-Saddam era.
"What is stopping the US to pull its strings and have
some puppets who would obey orders?" said an Arab
diplomat.
That might not be that easy, given the
behind-the-scene struggle among Iraqi exiles to gain
power in a post-Saddam Iraq.
Leading the pack is Ahmed Chalabi, a former banker in
Jordan with a dubious reputation. Chalabi, a Shiite
who enjoys the backing of several leading figures in
the Bush administration, has made no secret of his
ambition to succeed Saddam. But he faces stiff
opposition from other exile groups such as the
Iran-backed Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, the Iraqi National Accord backed
by the Central Intelligence Agency, and the two main
Kurdish groups, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and
the Kurdish Democratic Party as well as the
Constitutional Monarchy Movement.
Meanwhile, the US plan for post-war Iraq would involve
someone who would have mission similar to that of
General Douglas MacArthur, who oversaw the
rebuilding of Japan after World War II.
US officials have affirmed that American officials,
both civilian and military, would be in charge of
post-war Iraq's affairs "as long as it takes" to
create a situation where Washington could hand over
power to an Iraqi civilian government.
What stands out in the proposed nominations is the
reported inclusion of Brodine, a woman, as
administrator of Baghdad.
Washington is being totally insensitive to the
feelings of Iraqis and the Arabs at large and it is a
perfect recipe for continued instability in Iraq since
the Iraqis would not accept a woman at the helm of
their affairs.
The decision might indeed be rooted in considerations
of Bodine's efficiency and experience in the Middle
East, but it could not but be seen as a total
disregard of the sensitivities of the people of Iraq
as well as the male-dominated Arab World at large. If
anything, it would be seen as adding insult to injury
among the Arabs, who have vehemently rejected the US
war against Iraq.
Definitely, the purported plan does not seem to have
taken into consideration Iraqi cultural, historical,
and religious sensitivities.
Iraq is indeed a secular state and Iraqi women
afforded full rights of participation in all levels of
society. However, the installing of a government run
by a non-Arab, non-Muslim woman will definitely wound
the pride of the people of Iraq.
Although modernised, tribal customs still run deep in
Iraq and tribal leaders and sheikhs would not accept
to deal with a woman who would be telling Iraqis how
to run their lives .
Iraqis agree.
"Iraqis will react to it aggressively," said an Iraqi
trader in the UAE, noting that life in Iraq, as in
most other Arab countries, is dominated by males and
Iraqis have never dealt with a woman occupying any
high political office. "The Iraqis would be the last
among the Arabs to accept that a woman running their
country," said the trader.
Another Iraqi, a business executive, laughed at the
idea. "How do you think a woman would be able to deal
with the tribal leaders and sheikhs? They would never
take orders from a woman. They would simply boycott
her."
If anything, Iraqis have an added reason to be hostile
to American female diplomats. Many Iraqis have not
forgotten that it was another American woman
ambassador, April Glaspie, who, they believe, nudged
Saddam into believing that Washington would remain
neutral if he were to invade Kuwait and was thus
implicitly encouraged to order his military across the
border to the emirate in August 1990.
"We already had an American woman leading us into
disaster," said another IraqI, a banking executive.
"If it had not been for (Glaspie's) misleading
comments, Saddam would have thought twice or thrice
before invading Kuwait and brought the catastrophe
upon the entire country."
"Why should the Iraqi need another American ambassador
who could be doing the same things all over again
although in a different context, time and place?"
asked the executive.
That might indeed be true. But do the Iraqis have any
choice?
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Chalabi and his ambitions
PV Vivekanand
For a while it seemed that Ahmed Chalabi, a
London-based Shiite and former banker who leads an
umbrella body of Iraqi exile groups, was most favoured
to take over power in a hypothetical post-Saddam Iraq.
However, American priorities and strategies have
shifted since then, and Chalabi might not find himself
in the presidential palace unless his powerful friends
in Washington turns things around. However, that might
not be easy either, writes PV Vivekanand, who also
traces Chalabi's background as a banker in Jordan and
his experience in dealing with the Iraqi exiles.
AHMED CHALABI, leader of the Iraqi National Congress
(INC) and self-styled candidate to succeed Saddam
Hussein, has been dealt a severe blow to his
aspirations to occupy the presidential palace in
Baghdad.
Obviously, Washington has its own plans and designs
for a post-Saddam Iraq and Chalabi, a Shiite with a
chequered past as a banker in Jordan, appeared to
have found little room to accommodate himself in the
American scheme of things that envisages a military
occupation of the country after toppling Saddam.
Chalabi, who maintains offices in London and
Washington as well as northern Iraq beyond Saddam'
reach, has been building a case for himself as a
potential successor to the Iraqi president since 1991.
He had been a frequent visitor to Washington in order
to promote himself and secure American political and
financial support against Saddam.
The administration seems to have played an off-again,
on-again game with him, with the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) raising questions about his use of
American funds given to him to build a viable Iraqi
opposition front to challenge Saddam. Others say
Chalabi had spent his own money on trying to build an
anti-Saddam coalition in northern Iraq. He had even
set up a radio station to beam anti-Saddam rhetoric to
the people of Iraq. His efforts came to nought in 1996
when two Kurdish groups fought each other for
prominence in the region, and Saddam's agents managed
to penetrate into the area. That posed a direct threat
of military action and Chalabi, like others who had
set up presence there, had no choice but to order his
set-up dismantled and his people evacuated. He has
re-established an INC presence there now.
However, the most prominent American reason to
sideline him now seems to be the realisation that
other Iraqi exile groups had never really accepted the
INC leader as a possible successor to Saddam and that
he might not be the right candidate capable of dealing
with the ground realities in Iraq; and that seems to
have shut out -- at this jucture -- Chalabi's dreams
of riding atop an American military tank into the
presidential palace of Baghdad.
He has publicly rejected US plans to install an
American military administration based on the
remnants of the current Iraqi regime once Saddam is
toppled.
Speaking from an undisclosed location in northern
Iraq, Chalabi told ABC Television on Tuesday: "Iraqis
must choose their own government."
Describing as "unacceptable" the reported US plan to
have a reformed ruling Baath Party "work de facto
under the protection of US military administration,"
Chalabi told ABC: "An extended US administration...in
Iraq is unworkable....a US administration will have
very little knowledge of Arab society."
Chalabi's misfortune of falling out with the American
plans is not unique. It is simply that a liberal like
him with modern views and more attuned to dealing with
Western democratic setups than the peculiarities of
the Iraqi society is no match for the heavy
undercurrents and tribalism that dominate the Iraqi
scene today. The exigencies posed by post-war chaos in
Iraq could be too strong for him to survive.
Over the decades, the Iraqi exile groups -- at one
point there were over 60 of them -- which espouse
differing ideologies, self-interests and political
priorities have never been able to come together on a
practical platform, Their only common interest was a
desire to see Saddam departing from power. They never
trusted each other and suspected that every
group/leader was playing puppet to strings pulled by
external forces with vested interests.
It is not even likely that more than a few hundred
people might even know Chalabi in Baghdad, a fact
admitted by his spin doctor in Washington, Entifadh
Qanbar, who says that people in Baghdad "may not know
the man, but he represents their views."
That is a tall claim indeed.
Banker in Jordan
I have met Chalabi several times at public meetings
while he was a banker in Jordan during the 80s, but
never had an opportunity to get wind of his political
plans. His prominence as a Jordanian banker did not
matter much to me as a journalist since I had access
to the Shomans, who owned the Arab Bank -- the largest
commercial bank in Jordan. But then, it had never
occurred to me that Chalabi, a seemingly streetwise
banker and financier, had political ambitions; and it
is more likely that he did not have any and that he
turned himself to an active anti-Saddam activist after
leaving Jordan in a cloud of controversy and settling
down in London along with some of his close aides from
the banking era.
He established the INC in 1992 and since then his
efforts have been focused on pushing the US to finish
the uncompleted task of the 1991 war -- ouster of
Saddam.
I have spoken to him several times in London in the
late 80s and early 90s, but those conversations had to
do with the banking scandal he left behind in Amman
when he fled in July 1989, purportedly hiding in the
trunk of a car.
Those conversations formed part of the basis for my
numerous reports on the banking scam to the extent
that I was once told that my telephone was tapped
since Jordanian intelligence wanted direct access to
the information that Chalabi was "feeding" me.
However, I was never questioned by Jordanian
intelligence over Chalabi (perhaps because there was
always a trace of animosity in our conversations and I
was not always buying his versions of the scandal and
often challenged him to substantiate his contentions).
I had the first confirmation of Chalabi's political
ambitions after the Gulf war of 1991.
I received a telephone call in Jordan from a close
Chalabi associate, Ali Sarraf, in March 1991. I had
just returned from post-war Baghdad and I told him how
bad the situation was for the people of Iraq after the
war over Kuwait.
Sarraf had earlier given me clues how to locate some
of his relatives in Baghdad (I had opted aginst the
idea since establishing connections with them would
be construed as me acting as a link between Iraqi
exiles and their supporters in Baghdad; this would
have seen me rotting in one of the notorious prisons
of Iraq with my jailers having thrown away the key).
During that March 1991 conversation, the shape of
post-war Iraq came up.
"Give us one year and imagine who you'd see in power
in Baghdad," Sarraf quipped. "The doctor (Chalabi)
will be the president of Iraq and guess who would be
his finance minister," he added with an unmistakeable
echo of glee over the electronic waves, obviously
imagining himself to be in control of the finances of
a country which holds 12 per cent of the world's oil
reserves.
"Best of luck Ali," I told him, "and please tell the
doctor to grant me the first interview from the
presidential palace in Baghdad. I am sure the
Jordanians and others would be anxious to hear what he
has to say."
"Well, you wait and see what we are going to do to
Jordan and the Mickey Mouses there," was Sarraf's
rejoinder in a reference to Jordanian ministers and
officials who were at that time building a case
against Chalabi and others, including Sarraf himself.
"We'd kick butts so bad that Jordan might not exist by
the time we are finished with it."
Here it needs a little background.
Chalabi belonged to an influential Shiite family in
Iraq. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and earned a doctorate in mathematics from
the University of Chicago in 1969.
He left Iraq when the Hashemite monarchy was
overthrown in 1958. He was given refuge in Jordan,
where, using his connections with the Hashemite royal
family there, he set up Petra Bank in 1977.
By mid-80s, Petra Bank had grown to be the second
largest commercial bank in Jordan after the Arab Bank.
It even had a affiliate bank -- Petra International --
in New York. Petra also had a branch in Beirut called
MEBCO that was liquidated by the Central Bank of
Lebanon and Chalabi'ated MEBCO Geneva.
He was also generous to socio-economic projects and
educational development in Jordan. Petra Bank was
among the first to introduce computerised operations
in Jordan.
However, in the second half of the 80s, Jordan's
economy stumbled because of heavy foreign debts and
foreign exchange reserves dried up. The late King
Hussein appointed veteran Mohammed Saed Nabulsi as
governor of the Central Bank with the mandate of
shoring up the country's monetary situation.
Nabulsi took stock of the situation and asked all
commercial banks to deposit 30 per of their foreign
currency holdings in the Central Bank. All banks
obliged, but Petra Bank and another small bank did not
and this prompted a closer look at the banks'
activities. The books showed that Petra Bank held $200
million in foreign currency, but the money was
missing.
Soon, according to Nabulsi, it emerged that Petra Bank
-- and, by extension, the smaller bank -- were
involved in a complex network of illegal operations.
He ordered a Central Bank take-over of Petra Bank and
an investigation June 1989 and this opened a Pandora's
Box that led to the collapse of the bank and Chalabi's
flight from Jordan.
Nabulsi accused Chalabi of spiriting away depositors'
money and Central Bank funds. The collapse of Petra
Bank is said to have caused Jordan $500 million. The
actual amount the treasury lost was eventually put at
$300 million after the liquidation of the bank.
Investigations followed the collapse of the bank and a
government committee submitted its findings that led
to a trial in 1992.
Chalabi and 16 others -- most of them tried in
absentia -- were found guilty on several counts in a
trial after an investigating commitee reported its
findings to the government. He was sentenced in April
1992 to 22 years hard labour by the State Security
Court on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of
depositor funds and speculation with the Jordanian
dinar. The court also handed down harsh sentences and
fines to the others, including several brothers and
close relatives who were members of the board of
Petra Bank, or owners of affiliated companies.
Jordan tried to secure Chalabi's deportation from the
UK to the kingdom, but it did not work out.
Ali Sarraf --the man who wanted to become Iraq's
finance minister under a Chalabi reign in Baghdad --
was Chalabi's chief foreign exchange dealer at Petra
Bank.
When the banking scam came to light, the Jordanian
authorities had seized the passports of Chalabi as
well as several others but almost all of them managed
to flee the country in mysterious circumstances.
Chalabi was believed to have been driven to the Syrian
border by "someone high up" who used his influence to
see the Iraqi across the frontier from where he took
off for London and applied for asylum in the UK.
Sarraf was caught at Amman international airport a few
days later as he was about to board a London-bound
flight with a suitcase full of documents and over
$25,000 in cash. His passport was also seized and he
was detained for a few days and then released.
My instincts told me there was much more than met the
eye in the Petra Bank scam. I got in touch with
Sarraf after his release and invited him to a Chinese
lunch along with one of the my colleagues at the
Jordan Times. I wanted to hear his story first hand.
However, while Sarraf talked at length about how the
Jordanian government had "mistreated" Chalabi and
himself at the behest of Saddam, he gave away little
in substance about how Petra Bank collapsed. He was
evasive to pointed questions and in fact I was more
perplexed about the affair that I started off before
the lunch.
Anyway, we parted with a promise that we'd remain in
touch. He gave me Chalabi's telephone number in
London, but before I could get around to calling the
"doctor," I started receiving calls from the banker
himself, telling me his version of the Petra Bank
episode. His stories made little sense to me, perhaps
because I did not understand high finance banking
practices and the extent of Chalabi's "connections" in
Jordan. However, he used to issue regular threats
against prominent Jordanians, saying "all I need is to
open my mouth and name some names...that would make
the Central Bank governor lose his pants....."
He insisted that he left Jordan because Saddam's
agents were after him and he feared for his life. He
also accused Saddam of pressuring Jordan into forcing
the collapse of Petra Bank.
Chalabi's persistent contention was that there was
nothing wrong with Petra Bank, he had not stolen any
money and that all Jordanian charges against him were
fabricated. However, the facts of the case, as it
unfolded in a Jordanian court much later, spoke
otherwise.
After his every call to me, I tried to match what he
told me with information gleaned from Jordanian
officials, including some from the Central Bank, and
write reports in the Jordan Times. One day a friend of
mine-- with connections in Jordanian intelligence --
advised me to stop covering the Petra Bank issue. "It
is not worth to get too deep into it because it could
harm you....and your reputation" for whatever that was
worth, I was told.
A few days later, Sarraf's Amman telephone stopped
answering, and I found out he had mysteriously fled
the country.
Shortly thereafter, I estabished an excellent rapport
with the head of the committee investigating the Petra
Bank scandal, and I became privvy to an unfolding
tale of Chalabi's banking tentacles spread not only
in Jordan but also in several Arab and African
countries as well as Switzerland and the US. Some of
the details revealed to me went into reports while I
maintained the confidentially of others.
I also developed a close relationship with the finance
minister as well as the governor of the Central Bank.
I could call them on their direct line or at home
whenever I had questions for them. Obvioiusly I was
"safe" because by then they had realised that I knew
what the sensitivities were. Earlier,
the officialdom was upset because they thought Chalabi
was using me to air his version of the bank collapse
(as I came to know much later, some had even suspected
that Chalabi was paying me).
In expert opinion, Petra Bank would not have collapsed
had it not been for Chalabi's one-track mind to build
a business empire with his finger of every pie in the
industrial and trade sectors. He financed businesses,
took them over when they hit troubles and sought to
revive them after appointing "experts" loyal to him --
including a veteran Indian economist then in his 70s
-- to run them. All the "experts" were supposed to
report directly to him, and none of them knew each
other.
His business "interests" included industrial units,
computer firms, travel agencies, export companies,
hotels, real estate, construction, insurance.. you
name it and he had interests in the sector. It took
the investigating committee years to unravel them.
Jordan's banking system tottered for some time after
the Petra Bank collapse because, as officials charged,
Chalabi had drained the last of the country's scarce
foreign exchange reserves, thus adding the kingdom's
burdens.
When the whole picture was unveiled to me, I wrote a
lengthy piece in the Jordan Times saying Chalabi was
either one of the best banking brains in the Arab
World or the worst crook depending on how one viewed
him and his activities.
The very day the report appeared, I got a call from
Chalabi, who was obviously getting Jordanian newspaper
clippings faxed to him in London every day.
"I have half a mind to sue the hell out of you and
your paper for calling me a crook," he told me in a
stern voice. Go ahead and do that, I told him
(knowing well that he stood no chance against me in a
Jordanian court at that point in time). "Don't worry,
I won't do that," he said. "But I am flattered by the
picture you painted of me... that of a banking
superman sitting behind a computer console in the
top-floor office my bank manipulating the economy,
banking and finances of Jordan..."
Well, that was exactly what he was doing and he had
left Jordan in a serious mess.
Jordanian sources who were close to Chalabi affirm
that anti-Saddam politics was never his priority while
in the kingdom. The picture that emerges is of a man
who portrayed himself to be Saddam's victim and
started believing in his own tales and transformed
himself to be a leading opponent of the Iraqi
strongman.
Chalabi now says he was targeted for assassination by
Iraqi agents in at least nine attempts since his
flight from Jordan. Probably it is true.
Senior Iraqi officials whom I met after the 1991 war
dismissed Chalabi as irrelevant and non-consequential.
That was indeed a short-sighted assumption since
Chalabi went on to make himself dear to the US
administration, secured the support of leading
congressmen and built a strong lobby for himself. He
managed to project himself as a possible successor to
Saddam, but fell afoul of US intelligence agencies
when they detected what they saw as discrepancies in
the way he used to spend American funds.
Ironically, a story that went around in Jordan in the
mid-90s was how a group of Iraqi army generals plotted
a coup against Saddam over several months and managed
to keep it top secret. The coup, according to the
sources who had the story, would have been
successfully staged had it not been for the "mistake"
that the generals made by informing Chalabi of their
plans. The next thing the plotters knew was their own
arrest by Saddam's secret police. Almost all of them
and their supporters were executed, went the story.
How did that happen? Well, the story says that when
Chalabi was informed of the plot, he tipped off the
CIA and Saddam got wind of the plans through a CIA
"leak."
Or did Chalabi himself use his channels to tip off
Saddam because he feared that a coup would only lead
to generals assuming power in Baghdad and that would
have dealt the death blow to his own ambitions?
Despite his split with the US over plans for post-war
Iraq, Chalabi might yet stage a comeback. He has
powerful friends in Washington. Apart from influential
members in the US Congress, those who favoured
Chalabi as a democratic alternative to Saddam include
Vice President Richard Cheney, Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfled, Defence Policy Board head Richard
Perle, Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and
the Pentagon's Middle-East policy executors such as
Peter Rodman, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Michael
Rubin, says American writer Robert Dreyfuss.
With such a heavyweight lobby behind him, Chalabi
seemed to have all but clinched his role as Saddam's
successor a few months ago. At that point, the shrewd
banker even promised that American oil companies would
have the run of Iraq's oil wealth as and when he
assumed power in Baghdad.
However, his detractors are in the CIA and the State
Department who describe him as better suited to the
cut and thrust of exile politics and diplomacy in the
West than the cut-throat politics of post-Saddam Iraq
where tribalism is expected to play the dominant role.
Chalabi's hope of salvation hinges on his success to
set up a "leadership" council made up of Iraqi exile
leaders and appoint himself as its head. That would
give him a position of prominence if and when he
enters a Saddamless Iraq or he would find himself as
one of the thousands of exiles returning to their
homeland. Obviously, the way to the top from the
"leadership" council would be easy if his friends in
Washington turns the thinking around in the CIA and
the military establishment.
But then, keeping him popped up in power could come at
the cost of American lives since it would pit the
Chalabi camp against what is emerging as a powerful
alliance grouping the two main Kurdish parties, the
Kurdistan Democratic Party and thePatriotic Union of
Kurdistan, the Iraqi National Accord, a CIA-backed
faction, and the Iranian-supported Supreme Council for
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,
For a while it seemed that Ahmed Chalabi, a
London-based Shiite and former banker who leads an
umbrella body of Iraqi exile groups, was most favoured
to take over power in a hypothetical post-Saddam Iraq.
However, American priorities and strategies have
shifted since then, and Chalabi might not find himself
in the presidential palace unless his powerful friends
in Washington turns things around. However, that might
not be easy either, writes PV Vivekanand, who also
traces Chalabi's background as a banker in Jordan and
his experience in dealing with the Iraqi exiles.
AHMED CHALABI, leader of the Iraqi National Congress
(INC) and self-styled candidate to succeed Saddam
Hussein, has been dealt a severe blow to his
aspirations to occupy the presidential palace in
Baghdad.
Obviously, Washington has its own plans and designs
for a post-Saddam Iraq and Chalabi, a Shiite with a
chequered past as a banker in Jordan, appeared to
have found little room to accommodate himself in the
American scheme of things that envisages a military
occupation of the country after toppling Saddam.
Chalabi, who maintains offices in London and
Washington as well as northern Iraq beyond Saddam'
reach, has been building a case for himself as a
potential successor to the Iraqi president since 1991.
He had been a frequent visitor to Washington in order
to promote himself and secure American political and
financial support against Saddam.
The administration seems to have played an off-again,
on-again game with him, with the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) raising questions about his use of
American funds given to him to build a viable Iraqi
opposition front to challenge Saddam. Others say
Chalabi had spent his own money on trying to build an
anti-Saddam coalition in northern Iraq. He had even
set up a radio station to beam anti-Saddam rhetoric to
the people of Iraq. His efforts came to nought in 1996
when two Kurdish groups fought each other for
prominence in the region, and Saddam's agents managed
to penetrate into the area. That posed a direct threat
of military action and Chalabi, like others who had
set up presence there, had no choice but to order his
set-up dismantled and his people evacuated. He has
re-established an INC presence there now.
However, the most prominent American reason to
sideline him now seems to be the realisation that
other Iraqi exile groups had never really accepted the
INC leader as a possible successor to Saddam and that
he might not be the right candidate capable of dealing
with the ground realities in Iraq; and that seems to
have shut out -- at this jucture -- Chalabi's dreams
of riding atop an American military tank into the
presidential palace of Baghdad.
He has publicly rejected US plans to install an
American military administration based on the
remnants of the current Iraqi regime once Saddam is
toppled.
Speaking from an undisclosed location in northern
Iraq, Chalabi told ABC Television on Tuesday: "Iraqis
must choose their own government."
Describing as "unacceptable" the reported US plan to
have a reformed ruling Baath Party "work de facto
under the protection of US military administration,"
Chalabi told ABC: "An extended US administration...in
Iraq is unworkable....a US administration will have
very little knowledge of Arab society."
Chalabi's misfortune of falling out with the American
plans is not unique. It is simply that a liberal like
him with modern views and more attuned to dealing with
Western democratic setups than the peculiarities of
the Iraqi society is no match for the heavy
undercurrents and tribalism that dominate the Iraqi
scene today. The exigencies posed by post-war chaos in
Iraq could be too strong for him to survive.
Over the decades, the Iraqi exile groups -- at one
point there were over 60 of them -- which espouse
differing ideologies, self-interests and political
priorities have never been able to come together on a
practical platform, Their only common interest was a
desire to see Saddam departing from power. They never
trusted each other and suspected that every
group/leader was playing puppet to strings pulled by
external forces with vested interests.
It is not even likely that more than a few hundred
people might even know Chalabi in Baghdad, a fact
admitted by his spin doctor in Washington, Entifadh
Qanbar, who says that people in Baghdad "may not know
the man, but he represents their views."
That is a tall claim indeed.
Banker in Jordan
I have met Chalabi several times at public meetings
while he was a banker in Jordan during the 80s, but
never had an opportunity to get wind of his political
plans. His prominence as a Jordanian banker did not
matter much to me as a journalist since I had access
to the Shomans, who owned the Arab Bank -- the largest
commercial bank in Jordan. But then, it had never
occurred to me that Chalabi, a seemingly streetwise
banker and financier, had political ambitions; and it
is more likely that he did not have any and that he
turned himself to an active anti-Saddam activist after
leaving Jordan in a cloud of controversy and settling
down in London along with some of his close aides from
the banking era.
He established the INC in 1992 and since then his
efforts have been focused on pushing the US to finish
the uncompleted task of the 1991 war -- ouster of
Saddam.
I have spoken to him several times in London in the
late 80s and early 90s, but those conversations had to
do with the banking scandal he left behind in Amman
when he fled in July 1989, purportedly hiding in the
trunk of a car.
Those conversations formed part of the basis for my
numerous reports on the banking scam to the extent
that I was once told that my telephone was tapped
since Jordanian intelligence wanted direct access to
the information that Chalabi was "feeding" me.
However, I was never questioned by Jordanian
intelligence over Chalabi (perhaps because there was
always a trace of animosity in our conversations and I
was not always buying his versions of the scandal and
often challenged him to substantiate his contentions).
I had the first confirmation of Chalabi's political
ambitions after the Gulf war of 1991.
I received a telephone call in Jordan from a close
Chalabi associate, Ali Sarraf, in March 1991. I had
just returned from post-war Baghdad and I told him how
bad the situation was for the people of Iraq after the
war over Kuwait.
Sarraf had earlier given me clues how to locate some
of his relatives in Baghdad (I had opted aginst the
idea since establishing connections with them would
be construed as me acting as a link between Iraqi
exiles and their supporters in Baghdad; this would
have seen me rotting in one of the notorious prisons
of Iraq with my jailers having thrown away the key).
During that March 1991 conversation, the shape of
post-war Iraq came up.
"Give us one year and imagine who you'd see in power
in Baghdad," Sarraf quipped. "The doctor (Chalabi)
will be the president of Iraq and guess who would be
his finance minister," he added with an unmistakeable
echo of glee over the electronic waves, obviously
imagining himself to be in control of the finances of
a country which holds 12 per cent of the world's oil
reserves.
"Best of luck Ali," I told him, "and please tell the
doctor to grant me the first interview from the
presidential palace in Baghdad. I am sure the
Jordanians and others would be anxious to hear what he
has to say."
"Well, you wait and see what we are going to do to
Jordan and the Mickey Mouses there," was Sarraf's
rejoinder in a reference to Jordanian ministers and
officials who were at that time building a case
against Chalabi and others, including Sarraf himself.
"We'd kick butts so bad that Jordan might not exist by
the time we are finished with it."
Here it needs a little background.
Chalabi belonged to an influential Shiite family in
Iraq. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and earned a doctorate in mathematics from
the University of Chicago in 1969.
He left Iraq when the Hashemite monarchy was
overthrown in 1958. He was given refuge in Jordan,
where, using his connections with the Hashemite royal
family there, he set up Petra Bank in 1977.
By mid-80s, Petra Bank had grown to be the second
largest commercial bank in Jordan after the Arab Bank.
It even had a affiliate bank -- Petra International --
in New York. Petra also had a branch in Beirut called
MEBCO that was liquidated by the Central Bank of
Lebanon and Chalabi'ated MEBCO Geneva.
He was also generous to socio-economic projects and
educational development in Jordan. Petra Bank was
among the first to introduce computerised operations
in Jordan.
However, in the second half of the 80s, Jordan's
economy stumbled because of heavy foreign debts and
foreign exchange reserves dried up. The late King
Hussein appointed veteran Mohammed Saed Nabulsi as
governor of the Central Bank with the mandate of
shoring up the country's monetary situation.
Nabulsi took stock of the situation and asked all
commercial banks to deposit 30 per of their foreign
currency holdings in the Central Bank. All banks
obliged, but Petra Bank and another small bank did not
and this prompted a closer look at the banks'
activities. The books showed that Petra Bank held $200
million in foreign currency, but the money was
missing.
Soon, according to Nabulsi, it emerged that Petra Bank
-- and, by extension, the smaller bank -- were
involved in a complex network of illegal operations.
He ordered a Central Bank take-over of Petra Bank and
an investigation June 1989 and this opened a Pandora's
Box that led to the collapse of the bank and Chalabi's
flight from Jordan.
Nabulsi accused Chalabi of spiriting away depositors'
money and Central Bank funds. The collapse of Petra
Bank is said to have caused Jordan $500 million. The
actual amount the treasury lost was eventually put at
$300 million after the liquidation of the bank.
Investigations followed the collapse of the bank and a
government committee submitted its findings that led
to a trial in 1992.
Chalabi and 16 others -- most of them tried in
absentia -- were found guilty on several counts in a
trial after an investigating commitee reported its
findings to the government. He was sentenced in April
1992 to 22 years hard labour by the State Security
Court on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of
depositor funds and speculation with the Jordanian
dinar. The court also handed down harsh sentences and
fines to the others, including several brothers and
close relatives who were members of the board of
Petra Bank, or owners of affiliated companies.
Jordan tried to secure Chalabi's deportation from the
UK to the kingdom, but it did not work out.
Ali Sarraf --the man who wanted to become Iraq's
finance minister under a Chalabi reign in Baghdad --
was Chalabi's chief foreign exchange dealer at Petra
Bank.
When the banking scam came to light, the Jordanian
authorities had seized the passports of Chalabi as
well as several others but almost all of them managed
to flee the country in mysterious circumstances.
Chalabi was believed to have been driven to the Syrian
border by "someone high up" who used his influence to
see the Iraqi across the frontier from where he took
off for London and applied for asylum in the UK.
Sarraf was caught at Amman international airport a few
days later as he was about to board a London-bound
flight with a suitcase full of documents and over
$25,000 in cash. His passport was also seized and he
was detained for a few days and then released.
My instincts told me there was much more than met the
eye in the Petra Bank scam. I got in touch with
Sarraf after his release and invited him to a Chinese
lunch along with one of the my colleagues at the
Jordan Times. I wanted to hear his story first hand.
However, while Sarraf talked at length about how the
Jordanian government had "mistreated" Chalabi and
himself at the behest of Saddam, he gave away little
in substance about how Petra Bank collapsed. He was
evasive to pointed questions and in fact I was more
perplexed about the affair that I started off before
the lunch.
Anyway, we parted with a promise that we'd remain in
touch. He gave me Chalabi's telephone number in
London, but before I could get around to calling the
"doctor," I started receiving calls from the banker
himself, telling me his version of the Petra Bank
episode. His stories made little sense to me, perhaps
because I did not understand high finance banking
practices and the extent of Chalabi's "connections" in
Jordan. However, he used to issue regular threats
against prominent Jordanians, saying "all I need is to
open my mouth and name some names...that would make
the Central Bank governor lose his pants....."
He insisted that he left Jordan because Saddam's
agents were after him and he feared for his life. He
also accused Saddam of pressuring Jordan into forcing
the collapse of Petra Bank.
Chalabi's persistent contention was that there was
nothing wrong with Petra Bank, he had not stolen any
money and that all Jordanian charges against him were
fabricated. However, the facts of the case, as it
unfolded in a Jordanian court much later, spoke
otherwise.
After his every call to me, I tried to match what he
told me with information gleaned from Jordanian
officials, including some from the Central Bank, and
write reports in the Jordan Times. One day a friend of
mine-- with connections in Jordanian intelligence --
advised me to stop covering the Petra Bank issue. "It
is not worth to get too deep into it because it could
harm you....and your reputation" for whatever that was
worth, I was told.
A few days later, Sarraf's Amman telephone stopped
answering, and I found out he had mysteriously fled
the country.
Shortly thereafter, I estabished an excellent rapport
with the head of the committee investigating the Petra
Bank scandal, and I became privvy to an unfolding
tale of Chalabi's banking tentacles spread not only
in Jordan but also in several Arab and African
countries as well as Switzerland and the US. Some of
the details revealed to me went into reports while I
maintained the confidentially of others.
I also developed a close relationship with the finance
minister as well as the governor of the Central Bank.
I could call them on their direct line or at home
whenever I had questions for them. Obvioiusly I was
"safe" because by then they had realised that I knew
what the sensitivities were. Earlier,
the officialdom was upset because they thought Chalabi
was using me to air his version of the bank collapse
(as I came to know much later, some had even suspected
that Chalabi was paying me).
In expert opinion, Petra Bank would not have collapsed
had it not been for Chalabi's one-track mind to build
a business empire with his finger of every pie in the
industrial and trade sectors. He financed businesses,
took them over when they hit troubles and sought to
revive them after appointing "experts" loyal to him --
including a veteran Indian economist then in his 70s
-- to run them. All the "experts" were supposed to
report directly to him, and none of them knew each
other.
His business "interests" included industrial units,
computer firms, travel agencies, export companies,
hotels, real estate, construction, insurance.. you
name it and he had interests in the sector. It took
the investigating committee years to unravel them.
Jordan's banking system tottered for some time after
the Petra Bank collapse because, as officials charged,
Chalabi had drained the last of the country's scarce
foreign exchange reserves, thus adding the kingdom's
burdens.
When the whole picture was unveiled to me, I wrote a
lengthy piece in the Jordan Times saying Chalabi was
either one of the best banking brains in the Arab
World or the worst crook depending on how one viewed
him and his activities.
The very day the report appeared, I got a call from
Chalabi, who was obviously getting Jordanian newspaper
clippings faxed to him in London every day.
"I have half a mind to sue the hell out of you and
your paper for calling me a crook," he told me in a
stern voice. Go ahead and do that, I told him
(knowing well that he stood no chance against me in a
Jordanian court at that point in time). "Don't worry,
I won't do that," he said. "But I am flattered by the
picture you painted of me... that of a banking
superman sitting behind a computer console in the
top-floor office my bank manipulating the economy,
banking and finances of Jordan..."
Well, that was exactly what he was doing and he had
left Jordan in a serious mess.
Jordanian sources who were close to Chalabi affirm
that anti-Saddam politics was never his priority while
in the kingdom. The picture that emerges is of a man
who portrayed himself to be Saddam's victim and
started believing in his own tales and transformed
himself to be a leading opponent of the Iraqi
strongman.
Chalabi now says he was targeted for assassination by
Iraqi agents in at least nine attempts since his
flight from Jordan. Probably it is true.
Senior Iraqi officials whom I met after the 1991 war
dismissed Chalabi as irrelevant and non-consequential.
That was indeed a short-sighted assumption since
Chalabi went on to make himself dear to the US
administration, secured the support of leading
congressmen and built a strong lobby for himself. He
managed to project himself as a possible successor to
Saddam, but fell afoul of US intelligence agencies
when they detected what they saw as discrepancies in
the way he used to spend American funds.
Ironically, a story that went around in Jordan in the
mid-90s was how a group of Iraqi army generals plotted
a coup against Saddam over several months and managed
to keep it top secret. The coup, according to the
sources who had the story, would have been
successfully staged had it not been for the "mistake"
that the generals made by informing Chalabi of their
plans. The next thing the plotters knew was their own
arrest by Saddam's secret police. Almost all of them
and their supporters were executed, went the story.
How did that happen? Well, the story says that when
Chalabi was informed of the plot, he tipped off the
CIA and Saddam got wind of the plans through a CIA
"leak."
Or did Chalabi himself use his channels to tip off
Saddam because he feared that a coup would only lead
to generals assuming power in Baghdad and that would
have dealt the death blow to his own ambitions?
Despite his split with the US over plans for post-war
Iraq, Chalabi might yet stage a comeback. He has
powerful friends in Washington. Apart from influential
members in the US Congress, those who favoured
Chalabi as a democratic alternative to Saddam include
Vice President Richard Cheney, Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfled, Defence Policy Board head Richard
Perle, Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and
the Pentagon's Middle-East policy executors such as
Peter Rodman, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Michael
Rubin, says American writer Robert Dreyfuss.
With such a heavyweight lobby behind him, Chalabi
seemed to have all but clinched his role as Saddam's
successor a few months ago. At that point, the shrewd
banker even promised that American oil companies would
have the run of Iraq's oil wealth as and when he
assumed power in Baghdad.
However, his detractors are in the CIA and the State
Department who describe him as better suited to the
cut and thrust of exile politics and diplomacy in the
West than the cut-throat politics of post-Saddam Iraq
where tribalism is expected to play the dominant role.
Chalabi's hope of salvation hinges on his success to
set up a "leadership" council made up of Iraqi exile
leaders and appoint himself as its head. That would
give him a position of prominence if and when he
enters a Saddamless Iraq or he would find himself as
one of the thousands of exiles returning to their
homeland. Obviously, the way to the top from the
"leadership" council would be easy if his friends in
Washington turns the thinking around in the CIA and
the military establishment.
But then, keeping him popped up in power could come at
the cost of American lives since it would pit the
Chalabi camp against what is emerging as a powerful
alliance grouping the two main Kurdish parties, the
Kurdistan Democratic Party and thePatriotic Union of
Kurdistan, the Iraqi National Accord, a CIA-backed
faction, and the Iranian-supported Supreme Council for
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,
Questions that the US must answer
PV Vivekanand
AT THIS JUNCTURE where the United States is ardently pushing the international community to war against Iraq in the name of the United Nations and citing Baghdad's non-compliance with Security Council resolutions, Washington has to answer a few questions that it has been ducking,
Foremost of those questions are:
Why is it that Washington cites Iraq's violations of UN Security Council resolutions to justify an all-out war while overlooking that US allies like Turkey and Israel continue to violate dozens of Security Council resolutions?
Isn't it a blatant addition of insult to injury when the US not only endorses Israel's aggressive policies but also prevents the international community from pressuring Israel into seeing logic, justice, fairness and reason?
Why does Washington block other countries from taking military action to force truants to comply with Security Council resolutions? Or is it that it is a right it has reserved for itself as the sole superpower?
Isn't it true that the US warning that the Security Council could lose its "relevance" is based on how far the world body agrees to abide by American commands?
Why does Washington insist that Iraq poses a threat to American national security while there is no evidence whatsover of Baghdad had or has any link with any group that has carried out anti-American attacks or has issued any such threat?
Isn't it clear that a war against Iraq would play into the hands of militants and increase the same "security threats" that Washington cites as a reason for a war?
Why does Washington see an Iraqi threat to other Middle Eastern countries while none of them - except Israel - sees such threat?
Why does Washington refrain from acknowledging that it had given an implicit go ahead to Iraq to invade Kuwait in 1990 by saying it would have no role in an "Arab-Arab" dispute?
Why does Washington cite Iraq's use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war and conveniently sidestep the truth that it was the US which provided such weapons to Iraq and also offered satellite intelligence that helped the Iraqi military to pinpoint Iranian positions to be targeted?
Why does Washington speak in general terms and avoid being specific on its allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction?
Why is that the superb satellite intelligence of the US unable to tell the UN inspectors where to look for such weapons in Iraq?
Why does the US waste no opportunity to hit at Iraqi targets in the "no-fly" zones at the slightest "provacation" while not employing the same warplanes to bomb out any Iraqi weapons site? Isn't it because it has failed to find any such site?
Why does the US cite human rights concerns and the "oppression" of the people of Iraq as a reason for war whereas its record speaks of decade-old alliances with much worse regimes than that of Saddam Hussein? Why is the US not applying the same standards and why the sudden concern for the people of Iraq?
Why does the US refrain from any concern for the oppressed people of Palestine who live under perpetual terror posed by the mighty military machinery of the occupying Israeli forces?
Why does the US allow Israel to use US-supplied weapons and military gear against the Palestinians while it insists on such bans attached to military sales to other countries?
How long would it take the US to recognise that the real threat to peace in the Middle East is posed by Israel's expansionist ambitions and oppressive policies against the Palestinians?
Why does the US fail to acknowledge that a war against Iraq would have serious repercussions on the Middle East?
Isn't the American plan for an open-ended military occupation of Iraq a reincarnation of colonialism?
Isn't it true that the planned war against is aimed at securing control of Iraq's oil to serve American economy and oil companies and shutting out Europeans and others in Washington's quest for absolute global dominance?
Isn't it true that the scenario of war was prepared years ago and the ongoing effort at the Security Council for a new resolution is simply a charade?
Isn't it true that the failure of the council to adopt the new resolution would have no impact on the American determination to go to war against Iraq?
Isn't it true that the administration is trying to muzzle the media citing national security in order to ensure that the American people hear only what Washington wants them to hear?
Isn't it true that the US is ignoring Arab concerns for regional security and stability because it has ceased to care for such issues and is arrogantly confident that it would be able to deal with any eventuality -- even it means total chaos in the region?
Finally, isn't true that the entire war scenario where the US would spend tens of billions of dollars and engage upto 250,000 American soldiers is scripted to suit the interests of Israel?
AT THIS JUNCTURE where the United States is ardently pushing the international community to war against Iraq in the name of the United Nations and citing Baghdad's non-compliance with Security Council resolutions, Washington has to answer a few questions that it has been ducking,
Foremost of those questions are:
Why is it that Washington cites Iraq's violations of UN Security Council resolutions to justify an all-out war while overlooking that US allies like Turkey and Israel continue to violate dozens of Security Council resolutions?
Isn't it a blatant addition of insult to injury when the US not only endorses Israel's aggressive policies but also prevents the international community from pressuring Israel into seeing logic, justice, fairness and reason?
Why does Washington block other countries from taking military action to force truants to comply with Security Council resolutions? Or is it that it is a right it has reserved for itself as the sole superpower?
Isn't it true that the US warning that the Security Council could lose its "relevance" is based on how far the world body agrees to abide by American commands?
Why does Washington insist that Iraq poses a threat to American national security while there is no evidence whatsover of Baghdad had or has any link with any group that has carried out anti-American attacks or has issued any such threat?
Isn't it clear that a war against Iraq would play into the hands of militants and increase the same "security threats" that Washington cites as a reason for a war?
Why does Washington see an Iraqi threat to other Middle Eastern countries while none of them - except Israel - sees such threat?
Why does Washington refrain from acknowledging that it had given an implicit go ahead to Iraq to invade Kuwait in 1990 by saying it would have no role in an "Arab-Arab" dispute?
Why does Washington cite Iraq's use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war and conveniently sidestep the truth that it was the US which provided such weapons to Iraq and also offered satellite intelligence that helped the Iraqi military to pinpoint Iranian positions to be targeted?
Why does Washington speak in general terms and avoid being specific on its allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction?
Why is that the superb satellite intelligence of the US unable to tell the UN inspectors where to look for such weapons in Iraq?
Why does the US waste no opportunity to hit at Iraqi targets in the "no-fly" zones at the slightest "provacation" while not employing the same warplanes to bomb out any Iraqi weapons site? Isn't it because it has failed to find any such site?
Why does the US cite human rights concerns and the "oppression" of the people of Iraq as a reason for war whereas its record speaks of decade-old alliances with much worse regimes than that of Saddam Hussein? Why is the US not applying the same standards and why the sudden concern for the people of Iraq?
Why does the US refrain from any concern for the oppressed people of Palestine who live under perpetual terror posed by the mighty military machinery of the occupying Israeli forces?
Why does the US allow Israel to use US-supplied weapons and military gear against the Palestinians while it insists on such bans attached to military sales to other countries?
How long would it take the US to recognise that the real threat to peace in the Middle East is posed by Israel's expansionist ambitions and oppressive policies against the Palestinians?
Why does the US fail to acknowledge that a war against Iraq would have serious repercussions on the Middle East?
Isn't the American plan for an open-ended military occupation of Iraq a reincarnation of colonialism?
Isn't it true that the planned war against is aimed at securing control of Iraq's oil to serve American economy and oil companies and shutting out Europeans and others in Washington's quest for absolute global dominance?
Isn't it true that the scenario of war was prepared years ago and the ongoing effort at the Security Council for a new resolution is simply a charade?
Isn't it true that the failure of the council to adopt the new resolution would have no impact on the American determination to go to war against Iraq?
Isn't it true that the administration is trying to muzzle the media citing national security in order to ensure that the American people hear only what Washington wants them to hear?
Isn't it true that the US is ignoring Arab concerns for regional security and stability because it has ceased to care for such issues and is arrogantly confident that it would be able to deal with any eventuality -- even it means total chaos in the region?
Finally, isn't true that the entire war scenario where the US would spend tens of billions of dollars and engage upto 250,000 American soldiers is scripted to suit the interests of Israel?
Monday, February 24, 2003
Garner to "govern" Iraq
by pv vivekanand
Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant-general of the US Army, whose name has started figuring in reports about American plans for post-war Iraq, is tipped to be Washingtons' choice as the man to head a military occupation of Iraq after Saddam Hussein is toppled in war.
Not much is known about Garner except that he served in the Gulf during the 1991 war and headed American military-led relief operations for the Kurds in northern Iraq after the war when they came under Iraqi army attack following an ill-fated revolt against Saddam.
Garner's specialisation is missile defence, having served as the US Army's programme executive officer for missile defence and overseen the development of both theater and national missile defence systems for the army.
He submitted a comprehensive report to the US Congress in 1992 on how the Patriot missiles successfully performed during the Gulf war as a defensive shield against incoming missles. Patriot missiles were deployed in Saudi Arabia as well as Israel during the war.
Garner headed the US Army Space and Strategic Defence Command before retirment. In that capacity, he directed the activities of the US Army Space Command, Colorado Springs, the Missile Defence and Space Technology Centre, Huntsville, the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands -- test range for ballistic missile defence systems -- and a high energy laser test facility at White Sands, New Mexico where the US is conducting laser research, development, test, and evaluation.
Garner figures in a scandal involving a $48 million contract given by the Space and Missile Defence Command (SMDC) to SY Technology. Garner, who was the president of SV Technology at that time, accuses congressional candidate Biff Baker of making false allegations against his company that have cost it millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Baker, a Libertarian candidate for the House of Representatives from Colorado, continued his public statements against the company and asserted that in addition to the $48 million site activation command (SAC) contract, there were three other contracts worth a total of nearly $100 million in illegal "sweetheart deals" between the active duty generals in Space and Missile Defence Command (SMDC) and Garner. Federal law requires most contracts to be awarded on a competitive bidding basis. Baker is now under a gag order.
SY Tehnology has filed a lawsuit in El Paso county saying Baker falsely accused Garner and SY Technology of fraud, and is asking for millions of dollars in compensation.
Garner now heads a special office consisting of 100 officials from the departments of State, Treasury and Agriculture, the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence arms of the govenment, and the White House's Office of Management and Budget.
Garner, according to reports, has steafastly declined to be interviewed after taking over the new office.
While he heads the special office, he is giving particular focus on preparations for organising, integrating and co-ordinating civilian aid, reconstruction, and civil administration or governance in post-war Iraq.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that the office for post-war Iraq held a secret session over the weekend to assess plans for securing and rebuilding Iraq if Saddam Hussein is toppled.
Washington is said to be bracing for an 18-month-to-two-year military occupation of Iraq after Saddam is ousted in war. However, that timeframe is seen as a deliberate misrepresentation since the US is planning to stay as long as it takes to "slap and shape" the country into a shape suitable to serve US interests, others say.
The secret "classified" meeting was held at the Eisenhower Hall of the National Defence University in Washington and was also attended by representatives of allied countries that have supported Washington on Iraq. , officials told the New York Times.
The Times quoted Douglas J. Feith, the under-secretary of defence for policy, as saying that the meeting reviewed "work that has been done in a number of areas, such as civil administration and reconstruction" in post-war Iraq.
He insisted that the planning office's mission would not be to run Iraq, but other reports said Garner was indeed tipped to take over the military occupation of the country after the war.
The weekend meeting also appears to have been a strategy meeting ahead of a gathering of Iraqi exiles where the US plan for military occupation of post-war Iraq is expected to draw stiff rejection.
The reported plan has unnerved Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) who has made no secret of his plans to occupy the presidential palace in Baghdad, as well as heads of other Iraqi dissident groups opposed to Saddam.
Chalabi's plans call for setting up "a leadership council of the transitional government of Iraq" drawn from the 65 members of a steering committee appointed at an opposition conference in London in December. The leadership council will draft a temporary constitution and assign an executive committee head to create the first post-Saddam government.
There was concern among American officials that Chalabi might use a meeting of anti-Saddam groups in northern Iraq to annouce the council and US President George W.Bush's special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad agreed to attend the conference only s after its Kurdish hosts guaranteed there would be no declaration of a provisional government.
However, as of Monday, reports said Chalabi himself was not invited to the Irbil meeting but the gathering is expected include independents like former ministers and diplomats.
Khalilzad and a small group of American officials arrived in Turkey on Sunday to attend the meeting inside northern Iraq.
The Bush administration has given up hope of unifying the bickering Iraqi exiles and hence the significance of the plan for bringing the country under military occupation. The American who heads it will be given the title "military governor" backed by an "advisory council" of independent Iraqis. The day-to-day government would be left in the hands of low-level Ba'ath party members who are now in the bureaucracy under the current regime.
Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant-general of the US Army, whose name has started figuring in reports about American plans for post-war Iraq, is tipped to be Washingtons' choice as the man to head a military occupation of Iraq after Saddam Hussein is toppled in war.
Not much is known about Garner except that he served in the Gulf during the 1991 war and headed American military-led relief operations for the Kurds in northern Iraq after the war when they came under Iraqi army attack following an ill-fated revolt against Saddam.
Garner's specialisation is missile defence, having served as the US Army's programme executive officer for missile defence and overseen the development of both theater and national missile defence systems for the army.
He submitted a comprehensive report to the US Congress in 1992 on how the Patriot missiles successfully performed during the Gulf war as a defensive shield against incoming missles. Patriot missiles were deployed in Saudi Arabia as well as Israel during the war.
Garner headed the US Army Space and Strategic Defence Command before retirment. In that capacity, he directed the activities of the US Army Space Command, Colorado Springs, the Missile Defence and Space Technology Centre, Huntsville, the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands -- test range for ballistic missile defence systems -- and a high energy laser test facility at White Sands, New Mexico where the US is conducting laser research, development, test, and evaluation.
Garner figures in a scandal involving a $48 million contract given by the Space and Missile Defence Command (SMDC) to SY Technology. Garner, who was the president of SV Technology at that time, accuses congressional candidate Biff Baker of making false allegations against his company that have cost it millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Baker, a Libertarian candidate for the House of Representatives from Colorado, continued his public statements against the company and asserted that in addition to the $48 million site activation command (SAC) contract, there were three other contracts worth a total of nearly $100 million in illegal "sweetheart deals" between the active duty generals in Space and Missile Defence Command (SMDC) and Garner. Federal law requires most contracts to be awarded on a competitive bidding basis. Baker is now under a gag order.
SY Tehnology has filed a lawsuit in El Paso county saying Baker falsely accused Garner and SY Technology of fraud, and is asking for millions of dollars in compensation.
Garner now heads a special office consisting of 100 officials from the departments of State, Treasury and Agriculture, the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence arms of the govenment, and the White House's Office of Management and Budget.
Garner, according to reports, has steafastly declined to be interviewed after taking over the new office.
While he heads the special office, he is giving particular focus on preparations for organising, integrating and co-ordinating civilian aid, reconstruction, and civil administration or governance in post-war Iraq.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that the office for post-war Iraq held a secret session over the weekend to assess plans for securing and rebuilding Iraq if Saddam Hussein is toppled.
Washington is said to be bracing for an 18-month-to-two-year military occupation of Iraq after Saddam is ousted in war. However, that timeframe is seen as a deliberate misrepresentation since the US is planning to stay as long as it takes to "slap and shape" the country into a shape suitable to serve US interests, others say.
The secret "classified" meeting was held at the Eisenhower Hall of the National Defence University in Washington and was also attended by representatives of allied countries that have supported Washington on Iraq. , officials told the New York Times.
The Times quoted Douglas J. Feith, the under-secretary of defence for policy, as saying that the meeting reviewed "work that has been done in a number of areas, such as civil administration and reconstruction" in post-war Iraq.
He insisted that the planning office's mission would not be to run Iraq, but other reports said Garner was indeed tipped to take over the military occupation of the country after the war.
The weekend meeting also appears to have been a strategy meeting ahead of a gathering of Iraqi exiles where the US plan for military occupation of post-war Iraq is expected to draw stiff rejection.
The reported plan has unnerved Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) who has made no secret of his plans to occupy the presidential palace in Baghdad, as well as heads of other Iraqi dissident groups opposed to Saddam.
Chalabi's plans call for setting up "a leadership council of the transitional government of Iraq" drawn from the 65 members of a steering committee appointed at an opposition conference in London in December. The leadership council will draft a temporary constitution and assign an executive committee head to create the first post-Saddam government.
There was concern among American officials that Chalabi might use a meeting of anti-Saddam groups in northern Iraq to annouce the council and US President George W.Bush's special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad agreed to attend the conference only s after its Kurdish hosts guaranteed there would be no declaration of a provisional government.
However, as of Monday, reports said Chalabi himself was not invited to the Irbil meeting but the gathering is expected include independents like former ministers and diplomats.
Khalilzad and a small group of American officials arrived in Turkey on Sunday to attend the meeting inside northern Iraq.
The Bush administration has given up hope of unifying the bickering Iraqi exiles and hence the significance of the plan for bringing the country under military occupation. The American who heads it will be given the title "military governor" backed by an "advisory council" of independent Iraqis. The day-to-day government would be left in the hands of low-level Ba'ath party members who are now in the bureaucracy under the current regime.
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Israel and Falashas
by pv vivekanand
In the most serious and telling move yet of its intentions to retain the Palestinian territories in its control, Israel has decided to bring in some 20,000 Jewish migrants from Ethiopia who were left behind in transfers carried out in the 1980s and 90s. While it has not been announced where they would be housed, it is a foregone conclusion that they would be herded to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank in a process paid for by the Americans.
Israel's decision this week to authorise the immigration of 20,000 Jews from Ethiopia - otherwise known as Falasha -- exposes the reality that the government of Ariel Sharon has little or no intention of returning the occupied territories to the Palestinians and allowing the creation of a viable Palestinian state there.
There is little doubt that the newcomers would be sent to the occupied West Bank and live in Jewish settlements there -- meaning the construction of new settlements and expansion of existing ones -- and add to the nearly 200,000 settlers already living there.
The irony, if you will, is that the United States would pay for their transfer and resettlement in the West Bank without the American taxpayer being aware of it or being told about it.
It is naive to argue that the Falashas would be settled in "mainland Israel" that existed within the 1967 borders. "Black" Jewish migrants from Ethiopia smuggled to Israel in 1980s and 1990s have found it difficult to live alongside "white" Jews of European and Middle Eastern origin who look down upon them. They complain they are being segregated in separate neighbourhoods and are denied the same services as other Israelis. Hence, it is elementary that they be settled in dedicated communities away from the "mainstream" society, and that is where the West Bank comes in handy. Furthermore, it suits the thinking of Prime Minister Sharon, who wants to increase the number of Jews living in the occupied territories and thus consolidate the Jewish state's grip of the land where the Palestinians want to set up an independent state.
The 20,000 Falashas, who are also called Black Jews and Beta Israel and live in the Gondar and Tigray regions of northwestern Ethiopia, expected to be airlifted to Israel represent the last of their community there. Most of them have converted to Christianity and their assimilation into Israel would involve a "reconversion and purification" process.
Part of a pattern
The Israeli move to bring them to Palestine comes alongside a continuing flow of Jews from the former Soviet Union, and the Jewish Agency, the organisation which handles the "return" of Jews to their "promised land," is very active in the former Soviet republics scouting for potential migrants. Some 800,000 Jews arrived in Israel from the Soviet republics since the 1980s, and many families have been given free or subsidised accommodation in the illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Notwithstanding the ongoing controversy in Israel over the "Jewishness" of the Falashas and concerns that the new move could encourage many of non-Jewish origin to disguise their religious background and claim the right to d to immigrate to Israel under the country's "law of return," the decision to allow in 20,000 more Ethiopian Jews reflects nothing but Sharon's determination to fight off the Palestinian struggle for statehood.
The Israeli move also comes amid mounting fears that Sharon intends to use the chaos of the expected US-led war on Iraq to expel tens of thousands of Palestinians to the East Bank -- the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan -- in another step to quell Palestinian resistance and reduce the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank. While the feasibility of such a move and international reaction to it remain unpredictable, Jordanian commentators have expressed serious concern that the rules of the game of co-existence under the 1994 Jordan-Israeli peace treaty might not remain valid in the event of a war against Iraq.
The Jordanian fears have to been seen against the fact that Sharon has been an ardent proponent of the "Jordan is Palestine" theory and favours the en masse transfer of all Arabs -- including the nearly one million Arab Israelis -- to Jordan.
Funding the transfer
Indeed, the planned transfer of 20,000 Falashas from Ethiopia to Israel and onto the occupied West Bank demands hundreds of millions of dollars and reports in the Israeli press say that there is no government budget available for the purpose.
However, that is where the $8 billion in "loan guarantees" that Sharon is seeking from the US come into play. Officially, the loan guarantees would be used to give a kick-start to Israel's recession-hit economy, but there is little doubt that part of the loan facilities would be channelled into funding the transfer and resettlement of the wave of Falashas.
The sought-for $8 billion is in addition to $4 billion in additional military assistance and the just under $3 billion a year a year it receives automatically after it signed the 1979 Camp David agreement with Egypt. Another $2 billion to $3 billion reach Israel from the US every year in funds disguised as departmental, project-specific assistance and as direct contributions from major Jewish corporates and organisations.
Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington and well-known critic of American aid to Israel, doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. Stauffer argues that the bonds are likely to be structured so they do not pay interest until they reach maturity and the US would end up paying principal as well as interest in about 10 years.
He also argues that the US would also have to make good its guarantees of $10 billion in commercial loans to Israel and $600 million in "housing loans" granted in the early 90s when they reach maturity.
From 'illegal' to 'hurdle'
What would be the Bush administration's position on the loan guarantees being channelled, directly or indirectly, into financing Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories?
Officially, the US position has changed from calling the settlements illegal (in the 1980s) to describing them as a hurdle (in the 90s) in the path to peace with the Palestinians.
Recent US "initiatives" for Israeli-Palestinian peace called for a freeze in Israel's settlement activities in the occupied territories parallel to peace negotiations, but Israel has steadfastly rejected the calls. It has maintained a cool approach to the so-called "roadmap" for peace drafted the Quartet -- the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- which also calls for a suspension of Israel's building activities in the occupied lands. Obviously, the plan's objective in this context is to leave the issue of settlements to be worked out between the Palestinians and Israel -- that is, if they ever resume peace talks in the present framework. The catch there is that the US and others know only too well that Israel would not compromise on its position that it would not dismantle the settlements and the Palestinians could be eventually forced to accept that situation.
Washington officials have made no comment on the Israeli request for the loan guarantees and additional aid, but speculation is that the assistance would be given as part of a supplemental spending bill that is likely to be passed early this year, perhaps figured in and accounted along with the cost of a war with Iraq.
George Bush Senior used an Israeli request for $10 billion in housing loan guarantees to pressure the then Israeli government of Yitzhak Shamir into attending the 1991 Madrid conference where Arab-Israeli peace negotiations were launched.
Shamir said later that he had agreed to attend the conference and launch peace talks with the Arabs because of American pressure but that he had no intention of ever working out an agreement with the Palestinians. He said he wanted to stretch the negotiations for 10 or 20 years without actually yielding anything to the Palestinians.
Disguised spending
Bush Senior, coming under Arab pressure against Israel's colonialisation of the West Bank, had also attached a condition that the amount that Israel spends on its settlement activities in the occupied territories would be reduced from the guarantee amount. A few hundred million dollars were actually deducted from the loan guarantees but that were made up in other forms of American assistance to Israel.
Furthermore, the loan guarantees afforded Israel the luxury of freeing other funds to be spent on the settlements and thus reduce by more than 80 per cent the actual amount that was deducted from the credit facility guarantees by the US.
But then the loan guarantees of 1991 or that are requested now are only a flash on the pan of American aid to Israel.
Stauffer, the Washington economist, tallies that since 1973 the US has given Israel and spent $1.6 trillion to serve Israeli interests in direct and indirect forms -- more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.
According to Stauffer, adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel.
In addition are direct and indirect US losses resulting from the 1973 oil embargo, several Israeli-blocked arms sales the Arabs and directly and indirectly Israeli-linked sanctions against trade with some Arab and Middle Eastern countries.
However, these figures are not released for public knowledge in the US, although, in Stauffer's tally, every American has paid $5,700 each in aid to Israel and to protect Israeli interests since 1973.
Rather than moving to reduce its assistance to Israel, the US has been raising it over the years, and the latest loan guarantees should be seen as part of that trend, particularly when we see signs of what analysts call a "cohesive Bush-Sharon doctrine" aimed consolidating Israel's status as the dominating power in the Middle East through eliminating Iraq as a potential medium-term threat to the Jewish state.
Seen in light of that "doctrine," it does not take much imagination to reach the conclusion that the Bush administration would think nothing about American tax dollars spent for the air passage of the 20,000 Falashas from Ethiopia to Palestine, for the cost of "reconverting and purifying them" and for resettling them in Jewish colonies built on land to which Israel has no legitimate right.
In the most serious and telling move yet of its intentions to retain the Palestinian territories in its control, Israel has decided to bring in some 20,000 Jewish migrants from Ethiopia who were left behind in transfers carried out in the 1980s and 90s. While it has not been announced where they would be housed, it is a foregone conclusion that they would be herded to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank in a process paid for by the Americans.
Israel's decision this week to authorise the immigration of 20,000 Jews from Ethiopia - otherwise known as Falasha -- exposes the reality that the government of Ariel Sharon has little or no intention of returning the occupied territories to the Palestinians and allowing the creation of a viable Palestinian state there.
There is little doubt that the newcomers would be sent to the occupied West Bank and live in Jewish settlements there -- meaning the construction of new settlements and expansion of existing ones -- and add to the nearly 200,000 settlers already living there.
The irony, if you will, is that the United States would pay for their transfer and resettlement in the West Bank without the American taxpayer being aware of it or being told about it.
It is naive to argue that the Falashas would be settled in "mainland Israel" that existed within the 1967 borders. "Black" Jewish migrants from Ethiopia smuggled to Israel in 1980s and 1990s have found it difficult to live alongside "white" Jews of European and Middle Eastern origin who look down upon them. They complain they are being segregated in separate neighbourhoods and are denied the same services as other Israelis. Hence, it is elementary that they be settled in dedicated communities away from the "mainstream" society, and that is where the West Bank comes in handy. Furthermore, it suits the thinking of Prime Minister Sharon, who wants to increase the number of Jews living in the occupied territories and thus consolidate the Jewish state's grip of the land where the Palestinians want to set up an independent state.
The 20,000 Falashas, who are also called Black Jews and Beta Israel and live in the Gondar and Tigray regions of northwestern Ethiopia, expected to be airlifted to Israel represent the last of their community there. Most of them have converted to Christianity and their assimilation into Israel would involve a "reconversion and purification" process.
Part of a pattern
The Israeli move to bring them to Palestine comes alongside a continuing flow of Jews from the former Soviet Union, and the Jewish Agency, the organisation which handles the "return" of Jews to their "promised land," is very active in the former Soviet republics scouting for potential migrants. Some 800,000 Jews arrived in Israel from the Soviet republics since the 1980s, and many families have been given free or subsidised accommodation in the illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Notwithstanding the ongoing controversy in Israel over the "Jewishness" of the Falashas and concerns that the new move could encourage many of non-Jewish origin to disguise their religious background and claim the right to d to immigrate to Israel under the country's "law of return," the decision to allow in 20,000 more Ethiopian Jews reflects nothing but Sharon's determination to fight off the Palestinian struggle for statehood.
The Israeli move also comes amid mounting fears that Sharon intends to use the chaos of the expected US-led war on Iraq to expel tens of thousands of Palestinians to the East Bank -- the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan -- in another step to quell Palestinian resistance and reduce the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank. While the feasibility of such a move and international reaction to it remain unpredictable, Jordanian commentators have expressed serious concern that the rules of the game of co-existence under the 1994 Jordan-Israeli peace treaty might not remain valid in the event of a war against Iraq.
The Jordanian fears have to been seen against the fact that Sharon has been an ardent proponent of the "Jordan is Palestine" theory and favours the en masse transfer of all Arabs -- including the nearly one million Arab Israelis -- to Jordan.
Funding the transfer
Indeed, the planned transfer of 20,000 Falashas from Ethiopia to Israel and onto the occupied West Bank demands hundreds of millions of dollars and reports in the Israeli press say that there is no government budget available for the purpose.
However, that is where the $8 billion in "loan guarantees" that Sharon is seeking from the US come into play. Officially, the loan guarantees would be used to give a kick-start to Israel's recession-hit economy, but there is little doubt that part of the loan facilities would be channelled into funding the transfer and resettlement of the wave of Falashas.
The sought-for $8 billion is in addition to $4 billion in additional military assistance and the just under $3 billion a year a year it receives automatically after it signed the 1979 Camp David agreement with Egypt. Another $2 billion to $3 billion reach Israel from the US every year in funds disguised as departmental, project-specific assistance and as direct contributions from major Jewish corporates and organisations.
Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington and well-known critic of American aid to Israel, doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. Stauffer argues that the bonds are likely to be structured so they do not pay interest until they reach maturity and the US would end up paying principal as well as interest in about 10 years.
He also argues that the US would also have to make good its guarantees of $10 billion in commercial loans to Israel and $600 million in "housing loans" granted in the early 90s when they reach maturity.
From 'illegal' to 'hurdle'
What would be the Bush administration's position on the loan guarantees being channelled, directly or indirectly, into financing Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories?
Officially, the US position has changed from calling the settlements illegal (in the 1980s) to describing them as a hurdle (in the 90s) in the path to peace with the Palestinians.
Recent US "initiatives" for Israeli-Palestinian peace called for a freeze in Israel's settlement activities in the occupied territories parallel to peace negotiations, but Israel has steadfastly rejected the calls. It has maintained a cool approach to the so-called "roadmap" for peace drafted the Quartet -- the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- which also calls for a suspension of Israel's building activities in the occupied lands. Obviously, the plan's objective in this context is to leave the issue of settlements to be worked out between the Palestinians and Israel -- that is, if they ever resume peace talks in the present framework. The catch there is that the US and others know only too well that Israel would not compromise on its position that it would not dismantle the settlements and the Palestinians could be eventually forced to accept that situation.
Washington officials have made no comment on the Israeli request for the loan guarantees and additional aid, but speculation is that the assistance would be given as part of a supplemental spending bill that is likely to be passed early this year, perhaps figured in and accounted along with the cost of a war with Iraq.
George Bush Senior used an Israeli request for $10 billion in housing loan guarantees to pressure the then Israeli government of Yitzhak Shamir into attending the 1991 Madrid conference where Arab-Israeli peace negotiations were launched.
Shamir said later that he had agreed to attend the conference and launch peace talks with the Arabs because of American pressure but that he had no intention of ever working out an agreement with the Palestinians. He said he wanted to stretch the negotiations for 10 or 20 years without actually yielding anything to the Palestinians.
Disguised spending
Bush Senior, coming under Arab pressure against Israel's colonialisation of the West Bank, had also attached a condition that the amount that Israel spends on its settlement activities in the occupied territories would be reduced from the guarantee amount. A few hundred million dollars were actually deducted from the loan guarantees but that were made up in other forms of American assistance to Israel.
Furthermore, the loan guarantees afforded Israel the luxury of freeing other funds to be spent on the settlements and thus reduce by more than 80 per cent the actual amount that was deducted from the credit facility guarantees by the US.
But then the loan guarantees of 1991 or that are requested now are only a flash on the pan of American aid to Israel.
Stauffer, the Washington economist, tallies that since 1973 the US has given Israel and spent $1.6 trillion to serve Israeli interests in direct and indirect forms -- more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.
According to Stauffer, adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel.
In addition are direct and indirect US losses resulting from the 1973 oil embargo, several Israeli-blocked arms sales the Arabs and directly and indirectly Israeli-linked sanctions against trade with some Arab and Middle Eastern countries.
However, these figures are not released for public knowledge in the US, although, in Stauffer's tally, every American has paid $5,700 each in aid to Israel and to protect Israeli interests since 1973.
Rather than moving to reduce its assistance to Israel, the US has been raising it over the years, and the latest loan guarantees should be seen as part of that trend, particularly when we see signs of what analysts call a "cohesive Bush-Sharon doctrine" aimed consolidating Israel's status as the dominating power in the Middle East through eliminating Iraq as a potential medium-term threat to the Jewish state.
Seen in light of that "doctrine," it does not take much imagination to reach the conclusion that the Bush administration would think nothing about American tax dollars spent for the air passage of the 20,000 Falashas from Ethiopia to Palestine, for the cost of "reconverting and purifying them" and for resettling them in Jewish colonies built on land to which Israel has no legitimate right.
Monday, February 17, 2003
Shutting out dissent
By PV Vivekanand
Shutting out voices which raise substantiated questions about the truth/lies in the Bush administration's contentions about Iraq seems to be an integral part of Washington spin doctors. The latest to suffer from what is widely perceived as a dedicated campaign to deny critics any forum was a website which has been critical of the administration's policies and allowed a former Iraqi scientist to point out the hollowness of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's contention that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons.
A website which was taken off the Internet after it carried a strong refuttal of charges made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell against Iraq early this month is back in business. While the company which hosted the site cited technical reasons for the shut-down, those who maintained the site argues that the move reflected Washington's anxiety to shut out any dissenting voice against its plans to wage war on that country.
The website, yellowtimes.org, was advised by its hosting company that the site was being shut on Feb.10, less than three days after it carried an article by Imad Khadduri, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist, countering Powell's allegations against Iraq made in a Feb.5 speech at the UN.
The operators of the website has found a new server and host and is now accessible under the same address, according to Firas Al Atraqchi, who is a regular columnist on the website.
Atraqchi says that "the campaign to stifle dissent and censor any questioning of current US policies vis a vis the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular, has reached new levels."
He asserted that websites which host alternative views, and/or views that contradict US foreign policy are no longer tolerated on the Internet and are systematically coming under hacker attack and political pressures to "relocate."
The hosting company claimed that "we were using up too many CPU resources and therefore slowing down their other sites," said Atraqchi. "By CPU resources, I do not mean hard drive
space or bandwidth. We did not exceed what we were paying for (over $100 a month). Yet we were told that they simply no longer had the technical requirements to run our site as is."
He adds that the site had been under "constant malicious attack from people (and groups) regarding our content -- e-mail attacks, defamation, hacking into our website, and possibly denial of service attacks."
Imad Khadduri's articles on the Iraqi nuclear science programme only heightened such activities, says Atraqchi.
The YellowTimes.org website, according to Atraqchi, drew fire because it published views that "directly question, criticise, and berate the US official line regarding the impending invasion of Iraq."
Khadduri, who is now based in Canada, wrote under the title "the nuclear bomb hoax" that the "evidence" that Powell said the US had against Iraq was at best flimsy.
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, in his Feb.14 report to the UN Security Council, has also raised questions about Powell's assertions.
The charges Powell made in his speech reveal the US administration's "untenable attempt to cover with a fig leaf their thread bare arguments and misinformation campaign" against Iraq, wrote Khadduri, who cited a series of questions based on the realities on the ground in Iraq. These realities, he said, quashed Powell's allegations.
Khadduri, who has a MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham, wrote that Powell had a wrong translation of a declaration that Iraqi scientists were asked to sign with a condition that they faced execution if they did not abide by it. The declaration, according to Powell, bound the signatory not to reveal secrets to the International Automic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection teams.
"Exactly the opposite is true," said Khadduri, who worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. "The four or five, as I recall such declarations, which I read in detail, held us to the penalty of death in the event that we did not hand in all of the sensitive documents and reports that may still be in our possession."
"Had Powell's intelligence services provided him with a copy of these declarations, and not depended on testimonies of "defectors" who are solely motivated by their self-promotion in the eyes of their "beholders," and availed himself to a good Arabic translation of what these declarations actually said, he would not, had he in any sense been abiding by the truth, mentioned this as "evidence."
According to Khadduri, "the cache of documents" seized from the house of scientist Faleh Hamza and cited by Powell as evidence that Iraq is hiding or is still working on its "third" uranium enrichment process was actually reported to the UN inspectors in 1997.
The documents contained the summary of a failed project that dated back to 1988 and that the disclosure of the programme had been acknowledged by Mohammed Al Baradei, the head of the IAEA, according to Khadduri, who was able to leave Iraq in late 1998 with his family. and now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada
"The 3,000 pages of documents were financial statements and Faleh's own lifetime research work, and had nothing to do with the nuclear weapon programme," wrote Khadduri. "That is why he kept them at his home."
"Powell only accused but did not provide any evidence that Iraq had tried to get nuclear grade fissile material since 1998," according to Khadduri. "He vainly gave the impression that everything was set and readily waiting for just this material to be acquired and the atomic bomb would be rolling out the other door."
Khadduri has also charged Khidhir Hamza, a former Iraqi scientist with whom Khadduri worked, with fabricating and exaggerating his importance in Iraq's nuclear program outlined in Hamza's book "Saddam's Bombmaker."
Khadduri wrote that Powell should have sought answers to some key questions in order to find the truth behind his charges. These included:
"Where is the scientific and engineering staff required for such an enormous effort when almost all of them have been living in abject poverty for the past decade, striving to simply feed their families on $20 a month, their knowledge and expertise rusted and atrophied under heavy psychological pressures and dreading their retirement pension salary of $2 a month?
"Where is the management that might lead such an enterprise? The previous management team of the nuclear weapon programme in the eighties exists only in memories and reports. Its members have retired, secluded themselves, or turned to fending for their livelihood of their families.
"Where are the buildings and infrastructure to support such a programme? The entire nuclear weapon programme of the 80s has been either bombed by the Americans during the war or uncovered by the IAEA inspectors. It is impossible to hide such buildings and structures. Powell should only take a look at North Korea's atomic weapon facilities, or perhaps even Israel's, to realise the impossibility of hiding such structures with the IAEA inspectors scouring everything in sight."
"Powell need only ask those on the ground, the IAEA inspectors delegated by the UN upon America's request, to receive negative answers to all of the questions above," according to Khadduri. "Instead, he chose to fabricate an untruth."
Shutting out voices which raise substantiated questions about the truth/lies in the Bush administration's contentions about Iraq seems to be an integral part of Washington spin doctors. The latest to suffer from what is widely perceived as a dedicated campaign to deny critics any forum was a website which has been critical of the administration's policies and allowed a former Iraqi scientist to point out the hollowness of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's contention that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons.
A website which was taken off the Internet after it carried a strong refuttal of charges made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell against Iraq early this month is back in business. While the company which hosted the site cited technical reasons for the shut-down, those who maintained the site argues that the move reflected Washington's anxiety to shut out any dissenting voice against its plans to wage war on that country.
The website, yellowtimes.org, was advised by its hosting company that the site was being shut on Feb.10, less than three days after it carried an article by Imad Khadduri, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist, countering Powell's allegations against Iraq made in a Feb.5 speech at the UN.
The operators of the website has found a new server and host and is now accessible under the same address, according to Firas Al Atraqchi, who is a regular columnist on the website.
Atraqchi says that "the campaign to stifle dissent and censor any questioning of current US policies vis a vis the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular, has reached new levels."
He asserted that websites which host alternative views, and/or views that contradict US foreign policy are no longer tolerated on the Internet and are systematically coming under hacker attack and political pressures to "relocate."
The hosting company claimed that "we were using up too many CPU resources and therefore slowing down their other sites," said Atraqchi. "By CPU resources, I do not mean hard drive
space or bandwidth. We did not exceed what we were paying for (over $100 a month). Yet we were told that they simply no longer had the technical requirements to run our site as is."
He adds that the site had been under "constant malicious attack from people (and groups) regarding our content -- e-mail attacks, defamation, hacking into our website, and possibly denial of service attacks."
Imad Khadduri's articles on the Iraqi nuclear science programme only heightened such activities, says Atraqchi.
The YellowTimes.org website, according to Atraqchi, drew fire because it published views that "directly question, criticise, and berate the US official line regarding the impending invasion of Iraq."
Khadduri, who is now based in Canada, wrote under the title "the nuclear bomb hoax" that the "evidence" that Powell said the US had against Iraq was at best flimsy.
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, in his Feb.14 report to the UN Security Council, has also raised questions about Powell's assertions.
The charges Powell made in his speech reveal the US administration's "untenable attempt to cover with a fig leaf their thread bare arguments and misinformation campaign" against Iraq, wrote Khadduri, who cited a series of questions based on the realities on the ground in Iraq. These realities, he said, quashed Powell's allegations.
Khadduri, who has a MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham, wrote that Powell had a wrong translation of a declaration that Iraqi scientists were asked to sign with a condition that they faced execution if they did not abide by it. The declaration, according to Powell, bound the signatory not to reveal secrets to the International Automic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection teams.
"Exactly the opposite is true," said Khadduri, who worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. "The four or five, as I recall such declarations, which I read in detail, held us to the penalty of death in the event that we did not hand in all of the sensitive documents and reports that may still be in our possession."
"Had Powell's intelligence services provided him with a copy of these declarations, and not depended on testimonies of "defectors" who are solely motivated by their self-promotion in the eyes of their "beholders," and availed himself to a good Arabic translation of what these declarations actually said, he would not, had he in any sense been abiding by the truth, mentioned this as "evidence."
According to Khadduri, "the cache of documents" seized from the house of scientist Faleh Hamza and cited by Powell as evidence that Iraq is hiding or is still working on its "third" uranium enrichment process was actually reported to the UN inspectors in 1997.
The documents contained the summary of a failed project that dated back to 1988 and that the disclosure of the programme had been acknowledged by Mohammed Al Baradei, the head of the IAEA, according to Khadduri, who was able to leave Iraq in late 1998 with his family. and now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada
"The 3,000 pages of documents were financial statements and Faleh's own lifetime research work, and had nothing to do with the nuclear weapon programme," wrote Khadduri. "That is why he kept them at his home."
"Powell only accused but did not provide any evidence that Iraq had tried to get nuclear grade fissile material since 1998," according to Khadduri. "He vainly gave the impression that everything was set and readily waiting for just this material to be acquired and the atomic bomb would be rolling out the other door."
Khadduri has also charged Khidhir Hamza, a former Iraqi scientist with whom Khadduri worked, with fabricating and exaggerating his importance in Iraq's nuclear program outlined in Hamza's book "Saddam's Bombmaker."
Khadduri wrote that Powell should have sought answers to some key questions in order to find the truth behind his charges. These included:
"Where is the scientific and engineering staff required for such an enormous effort when almost all of them have been living in abject poverty for the past decade, striving to simply feed their families on $20 a month, their knowledge and expertise rusted and atrophied under heavy psychological pressures and dreading their retirement pension salary of $2 a month?
"Where is the management that might lead such an enterprise? The previous management team of the nuclear weapon programme in the eighties exists only in memories and reports. Its members have retired, secluded themselves, or turned to fending for their livelihood of their families.
"Where are the buildings and infrastructure to support such a programme? The entire nuclear weapon programme of the 80s has been either bombed by the Americans during the war or uncovered by the IAEA inspectors. It is impossible to hide such buildings and structures. Powell should only take a look at North Korea's atomic weapon facilities, or perhaps even Israel's, to realise the impossibility of hiding such structures with the IAEA inspectors scouring everything in sight."
"Powell need only ask those on the ground, the IAEA inspectors delegated by the UN upon America's request, to receive negative answers to all of the questions above," according to Khadduri. "Instead, he chose to fabricate an untruth."
Sunday, February 09, 2003
US weaving a web of lies
by 'Inad Khairallah (pen name)
IT IS DISGUSTING at best and frustrating at worst to hear senior US officials continuing to air their self-deceptive contentions about Iraq as they try to con the world into accepting that there is legitimate ground for war against that country. It is as if the rest of the world is ignorant, could not think on its own, and is incapable for ascertaining facts for itself.
The US approach is indeed typical: The US wants to wage war on Iraq in order to serve its strategic, economic and political interests and it is building a web of unsubtantiated allegations and hypothetical scenarios tailored to suit its thinking. Nothing that contradicts its thinking is allowed to stand in its way.
It is like fixing a dome in the air on wobbling poles and then trying to build those poles into concrete pillars. The blatant doctoring of academic studies into intelligence documents is only part of that effort and should not surprise anyone.
It is definitely not as if the US is working through the UN process to prove beyond any trace of doubt that Iraq is in material breach of Security Council resolutions. Washington is perched high in the middle of its planned war scenario, trying to affirm to the world at every given opportunity and building the slightest question against Iraq into massive arguments for war. We heard National Security Council Advisor Condaleeza Rice on CNN on Sunday repeating the themes that Iraq had 12 years to disarm but did not and that Baghdad is a "serious abuser" of UN Security Council resolutions.
It was even more revulsive to hear Rice talk about the UN's credibility and how US viewed the Security Council as the strongest and most powerful international body whose orders have to be obeyed by the world community because that was the very purpose for which it was created.
It is on old story anyway, and it is being replayed now but it only goes to highlight the double-standards that the US had consistently followed while dealing with the Middle East.
Conveninently ignoring the international rejection of a unilateral US war against Iraq and demand for a UN context for such action that forced President George W. Bush into seeking Security Council Resolution 1441, Rice spoke as if her boss had voluntarily taken the issue to the Security Council in September in all good faith.
Don't we all know that Bush was cornered into entering the council rather than voluntarily going in? Don't we know that had it not been for bitter opposition from fellow Security Council permanent members France, Russia and China coupled with bitter European, Arab, Muslim and Third World criticism that left Bush little choice but to seek some grain of legitimacy for his plans against Iraq through the UN?
Indeed, assumptions like those made by Rice and her colleagues in Washington, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others as well Bush's spin doctors could be swallowed by Americans, but not people in this part of the world.
We wish there was some way of reminding them that we could see through their game because we know the realities on the ground in this region.
We also heard Rice talk about the need to preserve the UN Security Council all-embracing authority in world affairs, and how Iraq's behaviour was in total disregard of Security Council decisions. One would indeed be prompted by hearing such lofty assertions that the US and indeed the world community had always taken every country to task for violating UN Security Council resolutions.
Just in case Rice has a short memory, let us remind her:
For more than 50 years Israel has consistently violated UN Security Council resolutions with impunity. It has scoffed at the resolutions, rejecting them out of hand and continuing its practices as if it was beyond the UN Security Council's authority -- that was emphatically highlighted by Rice on Sunday.
For more than 34 years Israel has illegally occupied other's territory. It has refused to accept international conventions and charters that uphold the rights of the Palestinians and reject human rights violations.
It has steadfastly refused to allow UN investigators entry to the Palestinians territories it occupies.
We would like to ask Rice and her colleagues a few questions:
Where is the authority of the Security Council when confronted with the Israeli refusal every year when the investigators seek to go in?
Where was the authority of the Security Council when Israel contented that the mandatory Fourth Geneva Conventions do not apply to the territories it occupies?
Where is the authority of the Security Council when Israel rejects implemention of Resolution 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973 -- and indeed the dozens of other council demands since 1948?
Where is the authority of the Security Council when Israel scoffs at demands that it sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and open its nuclear programmes for inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency?
Why is the Security Council keeping quiet while it is known that Israel's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction is more than those of all other countries in the Middle East put together?
And then we are told by people like Rice of the need to disarm Iraq; even at that there is no substantiation that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
It is adding insult to injury when we are reminded of Iraq's violations of UN resolutions while we know that Israel is in material breach of at least 70 Security Council resolutions (not to mention the scores of draft resolutions that were vetoed by its guardian angel, the US).
It is all the more ironic or even funny that the US administration officials pushing hard to open up the guns against Iraq could keep a straight face while coming out with assertions that any level-headed person would reject.
Who knows, perhaps they themselves are so much indoctrinated that they have started to believe in what they are saying.
IT IS DISGUSTING at best and frustrating at worst to hear senior US officials continuing to air their self-deceptive contentions about Iraq as they try to con the world into accepting that there is legitimate ground for war against that country. It is as if the rest of the world is ignorant, could not think on its own, and is incapable for ascertaining facts for itself.
The US approach is indeed typical: The US wants to wage war on Iraq in order to serve its strategic, economic and political interests and it is building a web of unsubtantiated allegations and hypothetical scenarios tailored to suit its thinking. Nothing that contradicts its thinking is allowed to stand in its way.
It is like fixing a dome in the air on wobbling poles and then trying to build those poles into concrete pillars. The blatant doctoring of academic studies into intelligence documents is only part of that effort and should not surprise anyone.
It is definitely not as if the US is working through the UN process to prove beyond any trace of doubt that Iraq is in material breach of Security Council resolutions. Washington is perched high in the middle of its planned war scenario, trying to affirm to the world at every given opportunity and building the slightest question against Iraq into massive arguments for war. We heard National Security Council Advisor Condaleeza Rice on CNN on Sunday repeating the themes that Iraq had 12 years to disarm but did not and that Baghdad is a "serious abuser" of UN Security Council resolutions.
It was even more revulsive to hear Rice talk about the UN's credibility and how US viewed the Security Council as the strongest and most powerful international body whose orders have to be obeyed by the world community because that was the very purpose for which it was created.
It is on old story anyway, and it is being replayed now but it only goes to highlight the double-standards that the US had consistently followed while dealing with the Middle East.
Conveninently ignoring the international rejection of a unilateral US war against Iraq and demand for a UN context for such action that forced President George W. Bush into seeking Security Council Resolution 1441, Rice spoke as if her boss had voluntarily taken the issue to the Security Council in September in all good faith.
Don't we all know that Bush was cornered into entering the council rather than voluntarily going in? Don't we know that had it not been for bitter opposition from fellow Security Council permanent members France, Russia and China coupled with bitter European, Arab, Muslim and Third World criticism that left Bush little choice but to seek some grain of legitimacy for his plans against Iraq through the UN?
Indeed, assumptions like those made by Rice and her colleagues in Washington, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others as well Bush's spin doctors could be swallowed by Americans, but not people in this part of the world.
We wish there was some way of reminding them that we could see through their game because we know the realities on the ground in this region.
We also heard Rice talk about the need to preserve the UN Security Council all-embracing authority in world affairs, and how Iraq's behaviour was in total disregard of Security Council decisions. One would indeed be prompted by hearing such lofty assertions that the US and indeed the world community had always taken every country to task for violating UN Security Council resolutions.
Just in case Rice has a short memory, let us remind her:
For more than 50 years Israel has consistently violated UN Security Council resolutions with impunity. It has scoffed at the resolutions, rejecting them out of hand and continuing its practices as if it was beyond the UN Security Council's authority -- that was emphatically highlighted by Rice on Sunday.
For more than 34 years Israel has illegally occupied other's territory. It has refused to accept international conventions and charters that uphold the rights of the Palestinians and reject human rights violations.
It has steadfastly refused to allow UN investigators entry to the Palestinians territories it occupies.
We would like to ask Rice and her colleagues a few questions:
Where is the authority of the Security Council when confronted with the Israeli refusal every year when the investigators seek to go in?
Where was the authority of the Security Council when Israel contented that the mandatory Fourth Geneva Conventions do not apply to the territories it occupies?
Where is the authority of the Security Council when Israel rejects implemention of Resolution 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973 -- and indeed the dozens of other council demands since 1948?
Where is the authority of the Security Council when Israel scoffs at demands that it sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and open its nuclear programmes for inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency?
Why is the Security Council keeping quiet while it is known that Israel's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction is more than those of all other countries in the Middle East put together?
And then we are told by people like Rice of the need to disarm Iraq; even at that there is no substantiation that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
It is adding insult to injury when we are reminded of Iraq's violations of UN resolutions while we know that Israel is in material breach of at least 70 Security Council resolutions (not to mention the scores of draft resolutions that were vetoed by its guardian angel, the US).
It is all the more ironic or even funny that the US administration officials pushing hard to open up the guns against Iraq could keep a straight face while coming out with assertions that any level-headed person would reject.
Who knows, perhaps they themselves are so much indoctrinated that they have started to believe in what they are saying.
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