LIBYA, once branded an international pariah by the US, is off the American and Western hook, not simply for now but for the foreseeable future since Tripoli's newfound relationship with Washington does not seem to be tactical but a key objective of a dramatic shift in policy, writes PV Vivekanand.
By agreeing to scrap the country's programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction and then opening up all WMD facilities without reservation to American and British inspectors, Libyan leader Muammar Abu Minyar Al Qadhafi launched the final steaps of a process that brought his country in from the cold into the international scene.
By no means the WMD gesture on its own helped Libya. Since 1999, it had followed a series of steps, beginning with the surrender of two Libyan suspects for trial on charges of engineering the 1988 bombing of an American airliner over the town of Lockerbie in Scotland and agreeing to pay compensaton to the victims of the blast after one of the suspects was found guilty and given a life sentence to be served in a Scottish prison.
The US has now announced that it is easing the sweeping sanctions it imposed on Libya in 1986 and again in 1996. It clears the way for US imports of Libyan oil as well as for American oil companies to invest money as well as technology in the country.
Oil experts say Libyan production is now only half of what it was in its peak year of 1970 when it reached 3.3 million barrels a day.
Libya had been denied American oil technology and spare parts for the oil industry since the day the sanctions were imposed.
Many countries scaled down diplomatic relations with Libya. The country's civil aviation sector was closed for external flights.
The 1996 Libya sanctions law prohibited US companies from investing in Iran and Libya. Sanctions also could be applied under the law to foreign companies that made investments in either country in excess of $20 million. In 2001, the US Congress extended the law for an additional five years. In the eight years the law has been in effect, no foreign company has been sanctioned.
The UN suspended ts sanctions imposed on Libya following the surrender of the Libyan suspects in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, but the US maintained its sanctions not only until Tripoli came up with £2.7 billion in compensation for the
bombing victims but also until a deal was reached on the country's WMD.
In In February, the United States dropped its 23-year ban on travel to Libya by American citizens and permitted them to spend money in the country.
US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns visited Libya early this year.
Washington is expected to announce the resumption of diplomatic relations with Tripoli soon in a dramatic shift from the days when the US considered Libya among its top five enemies around the world.
Today, Libya is poised to join and perhaps even lead the list of American friends in North Africa.
Having announced his decision to take his country out of the Arab League, which he accuses of inefficiency and disorientation, Qadhafi has been projecting Libya as African rather than Arab and then as a country totally committed to peaceful and diplomatic means in dealing with international relations.
As Qadhafi reaffirmed during a visit to Brussels this week — his first visit to Europe in 15 years — Libya is calling on all countries to abandon their WMD programmes and embrace the path of dialogue to settle disputes.
That the US is extremely pleased with the course of events was evident in the words of White House spokesman Scott McClellan when he announced the easing of US sanctions against Libya.
"Through its actions, Libya has set a standard that we hope other nations will emulate in rejecting weapons of mass destruction and in working constructively with international organizations to halt the proliferation of the world's most dangerous systems," McClellan said. "Libyan actions since Dec. 19 have made our country and the world safer."
It was on Dec.19 last year that Libya announced it was abandoning its WMD programmes and opening up all its WMD facilities for international inspection.
With the sanctions removed, Libyan students are eligible to study in the United States, subject to school admission and Washington will drop its objection to Libya's attempts to enter the World Trade Organistion.
In the meantime, Libyan assets held in the United States or by US banks will remain frozen, but a lifting of the freeze could follow soon.
The easing of sanctions did not include reinstating direct air service between the US and Libya, but includes expanded diplomatic relations. Washington will establish a U.S. liaison office in Tripoli, pending congressional notification and Libya is expected to send diplomats to the US soon.
Libya remains on the the US State Department's list of countries that Washington sees as "sponsors of international terorrism."
A ban on US exports to Libya under the terrorism list prohibit the sale of so-called dual-use goods — items that could be used for military purposes — such as ammunition and some goods related to civil aviation.
McCellan appeared to allude to the possibility of removing Libya from the list when he said Tripoli had "taken significant steps eliminating weapons of mass destruction programs and longer range missiles, and has reiterated its pledge to halt all support for terrorism. "
"In the last two months, the government of Libya has removed virtually all elements of its declared nuclear weapons programme, signed the IAEA Additional Protocol, joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, destroyed all of its declared unfilled chemical munitions, secured its chemical agent pending destruction under international supervision, submitted a declaration of its chemical agents to the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, eliminated its Scud-C missile force, and undertaken to modify its Scud-B missiles," the White House said.
That is indeed impressive tribute to Qadhafi, who, since assuming power in 1969, had propagated a distinct political system of his own — the Third International Theory.
'No regrets'
He had tried to spread his theory in the region and elsewhere in the world, and Libya had been accused of links with most European extremist groups including Northern Ireland's Irish Republican Army, Germany's Bader-Meinhof and Italy's Red Brigades as well as various Palestinian and Arab groups in the Middle East.
Qadhafi has defended his actions, saying on Wednesday he "absolutely does not regret the past."
"We were in a phase of fighting for emancipation, liberation....
We were accused of being terrorists, but that is the price we had to pay," he told French radio while in Belgium "If that is terrorism, then we are proud to be terrorists because we helped the liberation of the (African) continent," he said.
"I absolutely do not regret the past," he said.
He also defended Libya's support for African nationalist "freedom fighters".
"We financed, trained, formed these freedom fighters (for national movements), and this is something we are proud of," he
said. "It was for Africa, it was because of Africa."
In a speech to Belgium's parliament, also on Wednesday, he described terrorism as "the result of the imbalance in the world at the moment" and suggested that so-called terrorists had no other course of action.
"The terrorist is one who is forced to defend himself to win back rights by brutal means, terrorist means, because there are no other means," he said.
Unexpected moves
American and European diplomats and observers have expressed surprise over Libya's drmatic shift in policy. They say that they were seeing Libya doing things that nobody expected it to do.
"We have been justifiably cautious about re-engaging," said American State Department official. "We are proceeding carefully. But we have seen Libya do things nobody expected them to do, and they did them with a rapidity that has left some ... breathless."
Washington is said pressing Libya to settle outstanding disputes with Germany over the 1986 bombing of a disco in Berlinthat killed two US servicemen and a Turkish woman, and wounded 229, including 79 Americans.
Another outstanding issue is a dispute over compensation for victims of the bombing of a French UTA airliner.
On Jan.8, 2004, Libya also signed a $170 million compensation deal with the families of 170 people killed in the UTA bombing in 1989 over the Niger desert. But the French are seen to be unhappy over the deal.
Victims were of 17 nationalities, but France, with 54 dead, had the heaviest casualties.
Yet another is a feud with Bulgaria sparked by Libyan charges that Bulgarian doctors and nurses were responsible for infecting Libyan children in a hospital with HIV. The doctors are nurses are in detention but no verdict has been pronounced.
Within the region, Libya's dormant disputes include its claim of more than 32,000 square kilometres in southeastern Algeria and about 25,000 square kilometres in Niger.
Diplomatic boost
Following on the US footsteps, US President George Bush's staunchest transatlantic ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, gave a major boost to Libya's efforts to return to the international scene.
In March, Blair became the first British prime minister to visit Tripoli since Winston Churchill during World War II.
During the visit Blair lavished praise on Qadhafi for dismantling Libya's chemical, nuclear and biological programmes and said Europe was ready to do business with the country.
On a bilateral level, British police officers have travelled to Libya to continue investigations into the murder of policewoman Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in 1984. Police said then the shot that killed her came from inside the mission and after the recent visit to Libya they said they had identified the culprit. It is not known whether the man would be put on trial in the UK.
Some international experts believe Libya might be able to provide vital clues to militant groups in view of its past connections, but others are not so sure. The dissenters say Libya did not have anything to do with militant groups in the last decade or so and, as such, the information it might possess would be outdated.
In Brussels on Wednesday, Muammar Qadhafi announced that French President Jacques Chirac would visit Libya in June, adding that no firm date had yet been set.
Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanim visited Paris last week and was received by Chirac.
'Safe for investment'
Parallel to diplomatic moves, Libya has also secured for itself a distinction equal to Scandinavia and much of Eastern Europe as being relatively safe from terrorism, organised crime and political violence.
This means that Libya is now seen as among the safest places to do business.
Among the oil companies expected to move into Libya are Marathon, ConocoPhillips, Amerada Hess and Occidental. All these firms have assets in Libya but have been barred by the US government from operating there since 1986.
International insurance brokerage Aon has given an excellent rating for Libya as an investment destination.
Says Martin Stone, Aon's director of counterterrorism and political risk:
"It's an exceptional situation where there are no indigenous terror groups and a highly controlled population, just as Iraq was until Saddam Hussein was kicked out. "Western interests in Libya are almost exclusively in the energy sector, which the Libyan government has a strong interest in protecting. That means there are few attractive targets for terrorists and easier countries for them to operate in.
Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell has signed a deal worth up to $1 billion for gas exploration rights off the Libyan coast.
British defence contractor BAE Systems is in talks with the Libyans over aviation projects.
Experts believe that Libya has to implement major reforms to streamline itself in the international econcomy scene.
According to the Western experts, socialist-oriented economy depends primarily upon revenues from the oil sector, which contribute practically all export earnings and about one-quarter of GDP.
These oil revenues and a small population give Libya one of the highest per capita GDPs in Africa, but little of this income flows down to the lower orders of society. Import restrictions and inefficient resource allocations have led to periodic shortages of basic goods and foodstuffs. The nonoil manufacturing and construction sectors, which account for about 20 per cent of GDP, have expanded from processing mostly agricultural products to include the production of petrochemicals, iron, steel, and aluminum. Climatic conditions and poor soils severely limit agricultural output, and Libya imports about 75 per cent of its food.
Higher oil prices in the last three years led to an increase in export revenues, which has improved macroeconomic balances but has done little to stimulate broad-based economic growth. Libya is making slow progress toward economic liberalisation and the upgrading of economic infrastructure, but truly market-based reforms will be slow in coming, say the experts.
Pro-American course
On the political front, Libya could be expected to follow a pro-American course. that signal came to be cemented in reports, albeit unconfirmed, that Libya would allow Israeli chess players to participate in this summer's world championships to be held in Libya. If true, it would be the strongest signal yet that Libya is too happy to set itself on a course designed in Washington in relations with Israel.
The Israeli Chess Association said World Chess Federation (FIDE) officials met this week with Qadhafi's son Mohammed and it was agreed that the World Chess Championships from June 18 to July 13 in Tripoli "will be open to all."
Mohammed Gadhafi, who heads the Libyan Olympic Committee, gave the undertaking in a a letter to Israel that ended intense behind-the-scenes negotiations over entry visas for players from counties without diplomatic relations with Libya, the association claimed.
As a result of Mohammed Qadhafi's letter, FIDE issued a statement saying that Libya had guaranteed entry visas and "consequently, all the games of the championship will be played in Tripoli, Libya and no parallel event will be organised in Malta."
There was no immediate confirmation by Libya of the Israeli claim.
Caution to the West
While offering lucrative business deals and an olive branch to Europeans during his visit to Belgium, Qadhafi also implicitly warned of the "days of explosive belts" if provoked by "evil" from the West.
Addressing Belgian business leaders and Belgian parliament members, Qadhafi argued against a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and said Europe should "should not be on the sidelines" in the peace process.
"It's important that Europe raises its voice about the tragedy in Iraq," he added later.
He criticised the decision by the US-led coalition to invade Iraq despite massive street protests in many countries as evidence of the failings of Western-style democracy.
"The American people and the English people were against the aggression in Iraq," he said through an interpreter.
"So in that case, the representation was false," he said, adding "representation is falsification."
With input from wire agencies
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Sharon playing a deadly game
April 22 2004
PV Vivekanand
LET us make no mistake about it. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is poised to implement a long-term grand plan aimed at turning all the territory between the "sea" — the Mediterranean — and the "river" — Jordan — into an exclusively Jewish entity. His unilateral "disengagement" plan is the first step towards that objective — notwithstanding the 750-kilometre "separation" wall in the West Bank that many see as Sharon's definition of the border between a would-be Palestinian state and Israel. Effectively, the plan would turn the Gaza Strip and the West Bank into a large prison camp holding more than 3.5 million people who would remain under intense Israeli-induced suffering aimed at pressuring them into leaving their land.
IN A SPAN OF less than a month, Sharon dramatically changed the Middle Eastern equation. By floating and successfully securing American endorsement of his unilateral "disengagement" plan with the Palestinians he has unveiled his the beginning of his version of a solution to the Palestinian problem. By ordering and ensuring tacit American endorsement of the assassination of senior Palestinian resistance leaders, he showed that he could not care less for what the international community thought about his policy of "targeted killings" that serve his drive to impose his unilateral plans on the Palestinians.
By securing Washington's acceptance of Israel's refusal to respect the right of return of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war to their ancestral land, Sharon has also declared that, as far as the US and Israel are concerned, the refugee problem has ceased to exist, whether the Palestinians, the UN or anyone else in the world agreed with it.
Sharon's plan to end the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and remove Jewish settlers from the Mediterranean coastal strip is borne out of an Israeli need — rather than a desire to meet any Palestinian demand. The Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated areas in the world and a hotbed of Palestinian resistance, was always too hot for Israel to handle.
Continuing to militarily occupy a chunk of the strip in order to offer "security" to the Jewish settlers there has always proved to be too costly for Israel. Therefore, getting out of Gaza should not been as a magnanimous Israeli gesture. It is nothing but cutting and running away from a problem that also implies getting rid of about 1.2 million Palestinians whose long-term presence under Israeli control would only gnaw away at the Jewish identity of Israel.
Obviously, deciding to withdraw from the Gaza Strip without negotiating a smooth transition negotiated with the mainstream Palestinian leadership under Yasser Arafat, Sharon is leaving the door open for post-withdrawal chaos to prevail there pitting Palestinian groups vying for each other for control of the territory.
However, withdrawing the army and relocating the settlers does not mean any dilution of the overall Israeli control of the Gaza Strip.
As the translated version of his plan has highlighted, Israel will maintain its stranglehold on the strip. It will have control over all accesses into and out of Gaza, meaning that it could impose a crippling blockade on the flow of food and water, labour movement, trade and everything essential for the people there to survive, particularly that the strip will not have any sea or airport.
The Israeli army will be able to stage any operation against the residents of Gaza like fish in a living room bowl; and so will be the status of West Bankers.
New 'realities'?
It is the next phase of Sharon's plan — and clearly mentioned in a letter of endorsement given to the Israeli prime minister by US President George W Bush — have really changed the equation on the ground. It involves relocating the evacuated Gaza settlers by expanding existing settlements and building new colonies in the occupied West Bank. Effectively, he is giving up housing for 7,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza in return for consolidating West Bank settlements, where 250,000 Jewish settlers live.
Indeed, the plan calls for dismantling four settlements in the West Bank, but that move is seen as rather cosmetic.
As Uri Avnery, a noted Israeli pacifist and analyst, puts it: "The Americans demand a symbolic gesture in order to show that the plan does not apply to the Gaza Strip alone.
"Actually, the evacuation of the four small settlements has only symbolic value. This is a negligible area with a few small and unimportant settlements. Sharon's settlement and annexation map in any case provides for the evacuation of dozens of small settlements in the areas that will be left to the Palestinians."
Indeed, Bush in his letter of endorsement given to Sharon clearly acknowledged that Israel would not give up its absolute control of all entry and exit points to the West Bank and the same conditions as the Gaza Strip would apply.
'Separation wall'
The so-called "security" or "separation" wall/fence that Sharon is building in the West Bank, is only a tool to help his plans. In the short term, when completed, it would be a barrier against Palestinian resistance attacks and will encompass all areas which Israel considers as vital to its "strategic interests" at this point in time. Israel would be able to remove it as and when the elements have been turned into its favour and when it could claim all the land of Palestine as a Jewish state.
As Avnery phrases it, since "an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from the West Bank) is not feasible for the time being," Sharon "is implementing his minimum plan: to enlarge the borders of the Jewish state as much as possible, without incorporating a further large Arab population."
The "minimum" plan another clincher that has to do with "ethnic cleansing" although very subtle.
Sharon wants the Palestinians — at some point — to agree to a "population" swap: Arab Israeli towns in return for further West Bank land. Effectively, it would serve several purposes for Sharon. He could further reduce the number of Arabs who opted to stay on in their land in 1948 and accept Israeli citizenship and also strengthen the presence of Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
Sharon's mistrust of Arab Israelis is well known although he had sought their votes in elections. His approach to Arab Israelis should be seen against the 1980s and early 90s backdrop that he had been one of the ardent advocates of expelling all Arabs not only from the West Bank but also from the areas that became Israel in 1948.
Right of return
The American endorsement of Israel's refusal to respect the right of return of refugees has shocked many. But, a fine print reading would show that need not be a jolt at all.
Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, said in a Jan.8, 2001, speech — notably the last while he was in office — set the ground for the American position on the issue. He said, as Avnery recalls, "A solution...for the Palestinian refugees (will allow) them to return to a Palestinian state... Others who want to find new homes, whether in their current locations or in third countries, should be able to do so, consistent with those countries' sovereign decisions. And that includes Israel."
In Avnery's interpretation, this means that "only Israel alone will decide whether refugees will be allowed to enter its territory - and that is what Bush said, too."
The noted Israeli peace activist notes that "contrary to the official translation of his letter into Hebrew, Bush said that the refugees must be settled in the Palestinian state "rather than in Israel." The Hebrew translation said "and not in Israel"," he points out, adding "a subtle but not unimportant difference."
Palestinian refugees are defined as those who resided in Palestine two years prior to the outbreak of hostilities in 1948 and who lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of that war.
The Palestinian position on the refugees is based on UN Resolution 194 of 1948, which draws from the international law that states that refugees have the right to return to their homes of origin, receive real property restitution, and compensation for losses and damages.
UN Resolution 194 provides only two solutions: repatriation for those refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbours or compensation for those choosing not to return.
The General Assembly adopted Resolution 3236 in 1974, making the right of return an "inalienable" right.
In practical terms, according to surveys conducted in Palestinian refugee camps, the first generation of Palestinian refugees is fast disappearing and not many in the second generation wish to go back to their ancestral land which most of them could not even remember.
While there is no accurate data, a majority of the refugees are likely to opt for real property restitution, and compensation for losses and damages in lieu of their right to return, UN officials say.
In any event, they are far from any stage where they could exercise that option since Israel has steadfastly refuse to even acknowledge Resolution 194.
The majority of Palestinian refugees live in Arab countries neighbouring Israel and the occupied territories.
More than half the refugee population lives in Jordan. Approximately 37.7 per cent live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, comprising about 50 per cent of the population in the occupied territories; 15% per cent live in almost equal numbers in Syria and Lebanon; about 260,000 internally displaced Palestinians reside in Israel. The remaining refugee population lives throughout the world, including the rest of the Arab World (from the Gulf States to Egypt). Of the 3.8 million refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 33 per cent live inside UNRWA's 59 refugee camps throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon (source: Al Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition).
The Israeli argument against the right of return had been based on three points: there is no space in Israel for the refugees to return, that the return of Palestinian refugees would threaten security and lead to conflict, and finally, that the return of the refugees would jeopardise the Jewish nature of the state.
Al Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, rejects the argument. It says: "With regards to the first argument recent research shows that 78 per cent of the Jewish population of Israel resides on 15 per cent of the land. The areas where Palestinian villages were demolished lie mainly uninhabited. At the same time, all Jews worldwide are encouraged to immigrate to Israel based on the Israeli 'law of return.'
"As for security concerns, Palestinian refugees broadly accept that exercising their right to return would not be based on the eviction of Jewish citizens but on the principles of equality and human rights.
"The final argument though is a testament to Israel's false claim that it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is a Jewish democracy, and this oxymoron should not be confused with real democracy."
No end to killings
Only disappointment greeted those who might have thought that Bush's endorsement of the "disengagement" plan meant an end of Israel's policy of "target killings" and the beginning of preparations for an Israeli evacuation of the Gaza Strip. One of the first things that Sharon ordered prior to after his return from Washington last week was the killing of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (in late March) and of his successor Abdul Aziz Al Rantisi.
While assassinating noted Palestinian resistance leaders is in no way new to Israeli policy — scores have been "eliminated" in various countries the last three decades — the killing of Yassin marked a definite turn to the worse. Sharon could not have been unaware of the fury it would spark among the Palestinians and dangers such fury would bring about — plus of course international condemnation. It was all the more jolting that Sharon followed it up with assassination threats against Arafat and Lebanon's Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and then ordered the Rantisi killing.
Obviously, Sharon, boosted by the American approval of his "disengagement" plans and assured by the track record that Washington would not censure it for killing Palestinians and also offer protection against UN punitive action, no longer feels any reason to exercise any restraint in his drive to "condition" the Palestinians into accepting his terms.
He has declared that he would continue to chase and kill every Palestinian resistance leader worth the name.
That is indeed a most dangerous development. Every Israeli killing of a resistance leader, whether from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fateh or any other group, only serves to fuel Palestinian despair and frustration into undertaking suicide missions and more daring attacks against Israelis.
The Palestinian mindset was clearly spelt out by Rantisi himself in an interview a few days before his death.
"I am not afraid," he said. "I want to be a martyr and will die, not at the hands of Sharon, but when Allah wants it.
"I would prefer to die a martyr rather than of cancer or heart arrest."
While the international community was almost unanimous in condemning the Israeli policy of killing as illegal and counter-productive to any prospects for a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian problem, the US was an exception. Washington refused to criticise Israel and instead affirmed what it said was Israel's a right to defend itself.
Obviously fearing further killings, Hamas has named a successor to Rantisi, but his identity is a closely guarded secret, but it is largely easy to guess, given the prominence of some of its activists as committed and dedicated resistance leaders.
Hamas revenge for the death of its leaders could come anytime, and observers, including Israeli commentators, have said that it could be too intense and devastating. If it has not come until now, it is only because of the unprecedented security measures that Israel has adopted.
Palestinian rejection
In response to the Sharon plant, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has vowed that Palestinians will never give up their quest for an independent state and the right return of refugees.
Arafat also warned that there can be no security for Israel as long as the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands continues.
"The Palestinian people will never give up the goal of achieving freedom and independence and a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," said Arafat.
He noted that while Israel has killed Palestinian leaders over the decades, it has failed to stop the Palestinian people.
"Yes, my brothers and sisters, our fate is to defend our land, our holy shines, defend Jerusalem and the right to live in freedom and national independence and the right of refugees to return to their lands. ...
"Israeli crimes will be faced with more resistance to force Israeli occupiers and herds of settlers to leave Palestinian land," Arafat said. "Israel will not achieve security through occupation, arrogance and assassinating our leaders."
Fears are high in Palestinian circles that there could be confrontation between forces loyal to Arafat and those who back groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad to take control of Gaza as, when and indeed if the Israeli withdraw from the strip.
Intense discussions are under way among the various Palestinian faction to find a formula for shared authority in the Gaza Strip. However, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, aware that they have gained additional support in recent weeks, are holding out for a lion's share of power and influence.
'Roadmap' rolled up
On the diplomatic front, Sharon's "disengagement" has effectively killed any chance for the revival of the "roadmap" for peace backed by the Quartet — the US, the UN, the European Union and Russia.
However, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair appear to believe that the Sharon plan offers a "fantastic" opportunity for the Palestinians to negotiate peace with Israel.
It is an irony. Bush's endorsement of the Sharon plan has closed the door on two key Palestinian demands — the right of return of refugees and dismantling of all West Bank settlements; add to that the reality that Israel had been insisting on changing some of the key stipulations in the "roadmap" as conditions for its acceptance of the blueprint.
Effectively, that leaves nothing for the Palestinians to "negotiate" with Israel except the "technicalities" of how they should carry out the "civil administration" of the territory under their control on the eastern side of the "security wall" that cuts across the West Bank.
No doubt, it was fears of a wider Muslim and Christian backlash that prevented Bush from publicly endorsing Israel's "right" to the whole of Jerusalem, including the eastern part of the Holy City that it seized in the 1967 war.
While Washington's publicly stated position that the fate of Jerusalem should be negotiated between the Palestinians and Israel, it is widely held in the Arab and Muslim world that the US is only waiting for the right opportunity to announce its support for the Israeli claim to Jerusalem as its "indivisible and eternal capital."
The US-British assertion that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should continue has an implicit rider — the Palestinians should forget about ever demanding the right of return of refugees and removal of West Bank settlements.
In the hypothesis that is indeed is the way the Palestinians would opt, then the net shape of the West Bank under their nominal control would resemble South Africa's apartheid-era Buntustans — large population centres cut off from each other by access roads under the absolute control of the Israeli army.
In Avnery's words:
"Almost all the Palestinian population in the West Bank, some 2.5 million people, will be crowded into the remaining 45 per cent of the area, which, together with the Gaza Strip, will constitute about 10 per cent of the country called Palestine under the British mandate, before 1948.
"This area will be a kind of archipelago in the big Israeli sea. Each 'island' will be cut off from the others and surrounded by Israeli areas. The islands will be artificially connected by new roads, bridges and tunnels, so as to create the illusion of a 'viable, contiguous state,' as the Americans demand.
"According to the written plan: 'Israel will improve the transportation infrastructure in the Judea and Samaria region (Israeli-given name for the West Bank), in order to make possible uninterrupted Palestinian transportation.' In practice, these connections can be cut off within minutes at any time. Pretexts can always be found easily."
Why the Sharon plan?
Questions are being asked why Sharon opted to float his "disengagement" plan at this point in time.
Several theories are debates, and it would seem a combination of those theories could be the right interpretation.
These include:
Sharon is aware that Bush is finding himself in a difficult situation with regard to his prospects of re-election in November because internal and external factors (notably Iraq). Therefore, an Israeli "initiative" — notwithstanding its overwhelmingly negative points — to "settle" the Palestinian problem would never be rejected by a US president desperate for Jewish and pro-Zionist support in the polls. If anything, the president would only seek to turn around the "initiative" to his advantage and use it to highlight a dramatic turnaround in prospects for peace in Palestine.
At the same time, Sharon is also aware that he would be better off to grab whatever he could from Bush before the incumbent is possibly forced to pack up and leave the White House. No doubt, it might not be a major problem for Israel to pressure any occupant of the White House to see things the Israeli way, but why wait for a Bush successor to be installed — if indeed that is how the vote turns out in November — and then convinced into publicly accepting and supporting the Israeli "initiative"?
On the internal front, Sharon could not but be aware that apart from the cycle of killings and Palestinian resistance war, nothing much had been happening in the last two years in any movement for peace, realistic or otherwise. He had to grab the initiative and hit the headlines and, in the bargain, gain a ground advance towards creating facts on the ground that would serve his quest for his own version of "peace" and also dump the so-called "Geneva initiative" worked out by his political rivals and Palestinian leaders.
Indeed, there are some who argue that Sharon is also seeking to shield himself from prosecution in a political scandal where he is accused of accepting illegal money for his election campaign.
By setting a target of end of 2005 for implementing the plan, Sharon seemed to be seeking to stall any move by the judiciary to charge him for corruption. After all, how could a prime minister who has come up with what is definitely the most dramatic "peace initiative" that serves Israel be sent to court to face corruption charges and thus undermine the prospect of the country gaining something historic?
Again, the shape of the Middle East could change dramatically in the next 20 months, given the upheavals in Iraq and other developments in the region, thus giving Sharon additional lifeline and time to save himself from being prosecuted.And finally, there is the argument that Sharon has not really cooked up anything new.
Sharon's Likud party, long an advocate of building settlements in the occupied territories, is to vote in a referendum on the plan on May 2.
Sharon has told the party that his plan will boost Israel's security by reducing friction with Palestinians, and Likud leaders are lining up behind it. He got a strong boost when his main rival within the party, former prime minister and current finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he backed the plan.
According to Avnery, the "disengagement" plan "conforms exactly to the plan that Sharon has been propounding for decades. He just cut out a piece of it and is presenting it as an up-to-date plan. "
In fair terms, the implementation of the plan depends on how it suits Sharon's political and personal agenda.
Notwithstanding the timing, the reality today is that the president of the United States has said that it would support the annexation by the occupier of parts of the occupied territory.
One fails to see any provision whatsoever anywhere in the world that gives the United States the right to grant Palestinian territory to Israel. Obviously, that does not seem to have bothered Bush any, and, the Palestinian might get easily stuck with what the president has endorsed, given the geopolitical realities in a regional and global context.
PV Vivekanand
LET us make no mistake about it. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is poised to implement a long-term grand plan aimed at turning all the territory between the "sea" — the Mediterranean — and the "river" — Jordan — into an exclusively Jewish entity. His unilateral "disengagement" plan is the first step towards that objective — notwithstanding the 750-kilometre "separation" wall in the West Bank that many see as Sharon's definition of the border between a would-be Palestinian state and Israel. Effectively, the plan would turn the Gaza Strip and the West Bank into a large prison camp holding more than 3.5 million people who would remain under intense Israeli-induced suffering aimed at pressuring them into leaving their land.
IN A SPAN OF less than a month, Sharon dramatically changed the Middle Eastern equation. By floating and successfully securing American endorsement of his unilateral "disengagement" plan with the Palestinians he has unveiled his the beginning of his version of a solution to the Palestinian problem. By ordering and ensuring tacit American endorsement of the assassination of senior Palestinian resistance leaders, he showed that he could not care less for what the international community thought about his policy of "targeted killings" that serve his drive to impose his unilateral plans on the Palestinians.
By securing Washington's acceptance of Israel's refusal to respect the right of return of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war to their ancestral land, Sharon has also declared that, as far as the US and Israel are concerned, the refugee problem has ceased to exist, whether the Palestinians, the UN or anyone else in the world agreed with it.
Sharon's plan to end the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and remove Jewish settlers from the Mediterranean coastal strip is borne out of an Israeli need — rather than a desire to meet any Palestinian demand. The Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated areas in the world and a hotbed of Palestinian resistance, was always too hot for Israel to handle.
Continuing to militarily occupy a chunk of the strip in order to offer "security" to the Jewish settlers there has always proved to be too costly for Israel. Therefore, getting out of Gaza should not been as a magnanimous Israeli gesture. It is nothing but cutting and running away from a problem that also implies getting rid of about 1.2 million Palestinians whose long-term presence under Israeli control would only gnaw away at the Jewish identity of Israel.
Obviously, deciding to withdraw from the Gaza Strip without negotiating a smooth transition negotiated with the mainstream Palestinian leadership under Yasser Arafat, Sharon is leaving the door open for post-withdrawal chaos to prevail there pitting Palestinian groups vying for each other for control of the territory.
However, withdrawing the army and relocating the settlers does not mean any dilution of the overall Israeli control of the Gaza Strip.
As the translated version of his plan has highlighted, Israel will maintain its stranglehold on the strip. It will have control over all accesses into and out of Gaza, meaning that it could impose a crippling blockade on the flow of food and water, labour movement, trade and everything essential for the people there to survive, particularly that the strip will not have any sea or airport.
The Israeli army will be able to stage any operation against the residents of Gaza like fish in a living room bowl; and so will be the status of West Bankers.
New 'realities'?
It is the next phase of Sharon's plan — and clearly mentioned in a letter of endorsement given to the Israeli prime minister by US President George W Bush — have really changed the equation on the ground. It involves relocating the evacuated Gaza settlers by expanding existing settlements and building new colonies in the occupied West Bank. Effectively, he is giving up housing for 7,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza in return for consolidating West Bank settlements, where 250,000 Jewish settlers live.
Indeed, the plan calls for dismantling four settlements in the West Bank, but that move is seen as rather cosmetic.
As Uri Avnery, a noted Israeli pacifist and analyst, puts it: "The Americans demand a symbolic gesture in order to show that the plan does not apply to the Gaza Strip alone.
"Actually, the evacuation of the four small settlements has only symbolic value. This is a negligible area with a few small and unimportant settlements. Sharon's settlement and annexation map in any case provides for the evacuation of dozens of small settlements in the areas that will be left to the Palestinians."
Indeed, Bush in his letter of endorsement given to Sharon clearly acknowledged that Israel would not give up its absolute control of all entry and exit points to the West Bank and the same conditions as the Gaza Strip would apply.
'Separation wall'
The so-called "security" or "separation" wall/fence that Sharon is building in the West Bank, is only a tool to help his plans. In the short term, when completed, it would be a barrier against Palestinian resistance attacks and will encompass all areas which Israel considers as vital to its "strategic interests" at this point in time. Israel would be able to remove it as and when the elements have been turned into its favour and when it could claim all the land of Palestine as a Jewish state.
As Avnery phrases it, since "an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from the West Bank) is not feasible for the time being," Sharon "is implementing his minimum plan: to enlarge the borders of the Jewish state as much as possible, without incorporating a further large Arab population."
The "minimum" plan another clincher that has to do with "ethnic cleansing" although very subtle.
Sharon wants the Palestinians — at some point — to agree to a "population" swap: Arab Israeli towns in return for further West Bank land. Effectively, it would serve several purposes for Sharon. He could further reduce the number of Arabs who opted to stay on in their land in 1948 and accept Israeli citizenship and also strengthen the presence of Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
Sharon's mistrust of Arab Israelis is well known although he had sought their votes in elections. His approach to Arab Israelis should be seen against the 1980s and early 90s backdrop that he had been one of the ardent advocates of expelling all Arabs not only from the West Bank but also from the areas that became Israel in 1948.
Right of return
The American endorsement of Israel's refusal to respect the right of return of refugees has shocked many. But, a fine print reading would show that need not be a jolt at all.
Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, said in a Jan.8, 2001, speech — notably the last while he was in office — set the ground for the American position on the issue. He said, as Avnery recalls, "A solution...for the Palestinian refugees (will allow) them to return to a Palestinian state... Others who want to find new homes, whether in their current locations or in third countries, should be able to do so, consistent with those countries' sovereign decisions. And that includes Israel."
In Avnery's interpretation, this means that "only Israel alone will decide whether refugees will be allowed to enter its territory - and that is what Bush said, too."
The noted Israeli peace activist notes that "contrary to the official translation of his letter into Hebrew, Bush said that the refugees must be settled in the Palestinian state "rather than in Israel." The Hebrew translation said "and not in Israel"," he points out, adding "a subtle but not unimportant difference."
Palestinian refugees are defined as those who resided in Palestine two years prior to the outbreak of hostilities in 1948 and who lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of that war.
The Palestinian position on the refugees is based on UN Resolution 194 of 1948, which draws from the international law that states that refugees have the right to return to their homes of origin, receive real property restitution, and compensation for losses and damages.
UN Resolution 194 provides only two solutions: repatriation for those refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbours or compensation for those choosing not to return.
The General Assembly adopted Resolution 3236 in 1974, making the right of return an "inalienable" right.
In practical terms, according to surveys conducted in Palestinian refugee camps, the first generation of Palestinian refugees is fast disappearing and not many in the second generation wish to go back to their ancestral land which most of them could not even remember.
While there is no accurate data, a majority of the refugees are likely to opt for real property restitution, and compensation for losses and damages in lieu of their right to return, UN officials say.
In any event, they are far from any stage where they could exercise that option since Israel has steadfastly refuse to even acknowledge Resolution 194.
The majority of Palestinian refugees live in Arab countries neighbouring Israel and the occupied territories.
More than half the refugee population lives in Jordan. Approximately 37.7 per cent live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, comprising about 50 per cent of the population in the occupied territories; 15% per cent live in almost equal numbers in Syria and Lebanon; about 260,000 internally displaced Palestinians reside in Israel. The remaining refugee population lives throughout the world, including the rest of the Arab World (from the Gulf States to Egypt). Of the 3.8 million refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 33 per cent live inside UNRWA's 59 refugee camps throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon (source: Al Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition).
The Israeli argument against the right of return had been based on three points: there is no space in Israel for the refugees to return, that the return of Palestinian refugees would threaten security and lead to conflict, and finally, that the return of the refugees would jeopardise the Jewish nature of the state.
Al Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, rejects the argument. It says: "With regards to the first argument recent research shows that 78 per cent of the Jewish population of Israel resides on 15 per cent of the land. The areas where Palestinian villages were demolished lie mainly uninhabited. At the same time, all Jews worldwide are encouraged to immigrate to Israel based on the Israeli 'law of return.'
"As for security concerns, Palestinian refugees broadly accept that exercising their right to return would not be based on the eviction of Jewish citizens but on the principles of equality and human rights.
"The final argument though is a testament to Israel's false claim that it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is a Jewish democracy, and this oxymoron should not be confused with real democracy."
No end to killings
Only disappointment greeted those who might have thought that Bush's endorsement of the "disengagement" plan meant an end of Israel's policy of "target killings" and the beginning of preparations for an Israeli evacuation of the Gaza Strip. One of the first things that Sharon ordered prior to after his return from Washington last week was the killing of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (in late March) and of his successor Abdul Aziz Al Rantisi.
While assassinating noted Palestinian resistance leaders is in no way new to Israeli policy — scores have been "eliminated" in various countries the last three decades — the killing of Yassin marked a definite turn to the worse. Sharon could not have been unaware of the fury it would spark among the Palestinians and dangers such fury would bring about — plus of course international condemnation. It was all the more jolting that Sharon followed it up with assassination threats against Arafat and Lebanon's Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and then ordered the Rantisi killing.
Obviously, Sharon, boosted by the American approval of his "disengagement" plans and assured by the track record that Washington would not censure it for killing Palestinians and also offer protection against UN punitive action, no longer feels any reason to exercise any restraint in his drive to "condition" the Palestinians into accepting his terms.
He has declared that he would continue to chase and kill every Palestinian resistance leader worth the name.
That is indeed a most dangerous development. Every Israeli killing of a resistance leader, whether from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fateh or any other group, only serves to fuel Palestinian despair and frustration into undertaking suicide missions and more daring attacks against Israelis.
The Palestinian mindset was clearly spelt out by Rantisi himself in an interview a few days before his death.
"I am not afraid," he said. "I want to be a martyr and will die, not at the hands of Sharon, but when Allah wants it.
"I would prefer to die a martyr rather than of cancer or heart arrest."
While the international community was almost unanimous in condemning the Israeli policy of killing as illegal and counter-productive to any prospects for a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian problem, the US was an exception. Washington refused to criticise Israel and instead affirmed what it said was Israel's a right to defend itself.
Obviously fearing further killings, Hamas has named a successor to Rantisi, but his identity is a closely guarded secret, but it is largely easy to guess, given the prominence of some of its activists as committed and dedicated resistance leaders.
Hamas revenge for the death of its leaders could come anytime, and observers, including Israeli commentators, have said that it could be too intense and devastating. If it has not come until now, it is only because of the unprecedented security measures that Israel has adopted.
Palestinian rejection
In response to the Sharon plant, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has vowed that Palestinians will never give up their quest for an independent state and the right return of refugees.
Arafat also warned that there can be no security for Israel as long as the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands continues.
"The Palestinian people will never give up the goal of achieving freedom and independence and a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," said Arafat.
He noted that while Israel has killed Palestinian leaders over the decades, it has failed to stop the Palestinian people.
"Yes, my brothers and sisters, our fate is to defend our land, our holy shines, defend Jerusalem and the right to live in freedom and national independence and the right of refugees to return to their lands. ...
"Israeli crimes will be faced with more resistance to force Israeli occupiers and herds of settlers to leave Palestinian land," Arafat said. "Israel will not achieve security through occupation, arrogance and assassinating our leaders."
Fears are high in Palestinian circles that there could be confrontation between forces loyal to Arafat and those who back groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad to take control of Gaza as, when and indeed if the Israeli withdraw from the strip.
Intense discussions are under way among the various Palestinian faction to find a formula for shared authority in the Gaza Strip. However, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, aware that they have gained additional support in recent weeks, are holding out for a lion's share of power and influence.
'Roadmap' rolled up
On the diplomatic front, Sharon's "disengagement" has effectively killed any chance for the revival of the "roadmap" for peace backed by the Quartet — the US, the UN, the European Union and Russia.
However, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair appear to believe that the Sharon plan offers a "fantastic" opportunity for the Palestinians to negotiate peace with Israel.
It is an irony. Bush's endorsement of the Sharon plan has closed the door on two key Palestinian demands — the right of return of refugees and dismantling of all West Bank settlements; add to that the reality that Israel had been insisting on changing some of the key stipulations in the "roadmap" as conditions for its acceptance of the blueprint.
Effectively, that leaves nothing for the Palestinians to "negotiate" with Israel except the "technicalities" of how they should carry out the "civil administration" of the territory under their control on the eastern side of the "security wall" that cuts across the West Bank.
No doubt, it was fears of a wider Muslim and Christian backlash that prevented Bush from publicly endorsing Israel's "right" to the whole of Jerusalem, including the eastern part of the Holy City that it seized in the 1967 war.
While Washington's publicly stated position that the fate of Jerusalem should be negotiated between the Palestinians and Israel, it is widely held in the Arab and Muslim world that the US is only waiting for the right opportunity to announce its support for the Israeli claim to Jerusalem as its "indivisible and eternal capital."
The US-British assertion that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should continue has an implicit rider — the Palestinians should forget about ever demanding the right of return of refugees and removal of West Bank settlements.
In the hypothesis that is indeed is the way the Palestinians would opt, then the net shape of the West Bank under their nominal control would resemble South Africa's apartheid-era Buntustans — large population centres cut off from each other by access roads under the absolute control of the Israeli army.
In Avnery's words:
"Almost all the Palestinian population in the West Bank, some 2.5 million people, will be crowded into the remaining 45 per cent of the area, which, together with the Gaza Strip, will constitute about 10 per cent of the country called Palestine under the British mandate, before 1948.
"This area will be a kind of archipelago in the big Israeli sea. Each 'island' will be cut off from the others and surrounded by Israeli areas. The islands will be artificially connected by new roads, bridges and tunnels, so as to create the illusion of a 'viable, contiguous state,' as the Americans demand.
"According to the written plan: 'Israel will improve the transportation infrastructure in the Judea and Samaria region (Israeli-given name for the West Bank), in order to make possible uninterrupted Palestinian transportation.' In practice, these connections can be cut off within minutes at any time. Pretexts can always be found easily."
Why the Sharon plan?
Questions are being asked why Sharon opted to float his "disengagement" plan at this point in time.
Several theories are debates, and it would seem a combination of those theories could be the right interpretation.
These include:
Sharon is aware that Bush is finding himself in a difficult situation with regard to his prospects of re-election in November because internal and external factors (notably Iraq). Therefore, an Israeli "initiative" — notwithstanding its overwhelmingly negative points — to "settle" the Palestinian problem would never be rejected by a US president desperate for Jewish and pro-Zionist support in the polls. If anything, the president would only seek to turn around the "initiative" to his advantage and use it to highlight a dramatic turnaround in prospects for peace in Palestine.
At the same time, Sharon is also aware that he would be better off to grab whatever he could from Bush before the incumbent is possibly forced to pack up and leave the White House. No doubt, it might not be a major problem for Israel to pressure any occupant of the White House to see things the Israeli way, but why wait for a Bush successor to be installed — if indeed that is how the vote turns out in November — and then convinced into publicly accepting and supporting the Israeli "initiative"?
On the internal front, Sharon could not but be aware that apart from the cycle of killings and Palestinian resistance war, nothing much had been happening in the last two years in any movement for peace, realistic or otherwise. He had to grab the initiative and hit the headlines and, in the bargain, gain a ground advance towards creating facts on the ground that would serve his quest for his own version of "peace" and also dump the so-called "Geneva initiative" worked out by his political rivals and Palestinian leaders.
Indeed, there are some who argue that Sharon is also seeking to shield himself from prosecution in a political scandal where he is accused of accepting illegal money for his election campaign.
By setting a target of end of 2005 for implementing the plan, Sharon seemed to be seeking to stall any move by the judiciary to charge him for corruption. After all, how could a prime minister who has come up with what is definitely the most dramatic "peace initiative" that serves Israel be sent to court to face corruption charges and thus undermine the prospect of the country gaining something historic?
Again, the shape of the Middle East could change dramatically in the next 20 months, given the upheavals in Iraq and other developments in the region, thus giving Sharon additional lifeline and time to save himself from being prosecuted.And finally, there is the argument that Sharon has not really cooked up anything new.
Sharon's Likud party, long an advocate of building settlements in the occupied territories, is to vote in a referendum on the plan on May 2.
Sharon has told the party that his plan will boost Israel's security by reducing friction with Palestinians, and Likud leaders are lining up behind it. He got a strong boost when his main rival within the party, former prime minister and current finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he backed the plan.
According to Avnery, the "disengagement" plan "conforms exactly to the plan that Sharon has been propounding for decades. He just cut out a piece of it and is presenting it as an up-to-date plan. "
In fair terms, the implementation of the plan depends on how it suits Sharon's political and personal agenda.
Notwithstanding the timing, the reality today is that the president of the United States has said that it would support the annexation by the occupier of parts of the occupied territory.
One fails to see any provision whatsoever anywhere in the world that gives the United States the right to grant Palestinian territory to Israel. Obviously, that does not seem to have bothered Bush any, and, the Palestinian might get easily stuck with what the president has endorsed, given the geopolitical realities in a regional and global context.
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Few options for Bush
Few options for Bush
April 16 2004
PV Vivekanand
US PRESIDENT George W Bush faces the most crucial dilemma of his politcal career in handling the Iraq crisis. Notwithstanding the brave front he is putting up, he has no assurance that the US could win the war in Iraq. His options are limited and he has no exit strategy since such a course of events was never foreseen by his hardline camp which orchestrated the invasion and occupaton of Iraq. With mounting American casualties in Iraq and revelations of deception in Washington over the Sept.11 attacks and the war against Iraq, Bush's Democratic challenger John Kerry seems already halfway through to the White House in November.
Bush could not use the UN as a smokescreen to legitimise the US dominance of Iraq since the world body demands transparency and the final say in how to democratise Iraq in a manner acceptable to the international community. Giving in to the UN demand will mean nothing but giving up the American long-term objectives of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Bush could pump in more military forces and seek to suppress Iraqi resistance but it would only inflame Iraqi passions and drag his military into a prolonged war of attrition that would undermine all hopes of a contained situation where Washington could pursue its "strategic" objectives in the Middle East.
If anything, brutal suppression of Iraqi resistance to the US-led occupation would pull the US deeper into the quagmire and ignite more anti-American sentiments not only in Iraq but elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Bush has acknowledged that the Iraq crisis has turned to be the decisive issue in his bid for re-election in November. However, he has rejected suggestions that Iraq is becoming another Vietnam but that he is ready to send more American soldiers to Iraq to put down Iraqi resistance to the US-led occupation of that country.
However, the crisis in Iraq is fast becoming an American battle to avert defeat rather than an effort to "civilise" and "democratise" Iraq as the Bush administration is claiming.
Bush has several options in Iraq — but none better or worse than the other.
What is at stake for Bush in Iraq is not only his re-election prospects but also the perceived American invincibility and admitting defeat there would seal his departure from active politics.
Bush has to deliver on his promise to set up a pro-Western, democratic Iraq. He could not afford to be forced into leaving Iraq since that would signal the end of America's newfound global dominance.
American commentators are asking whether Bush has any assurance that he would win the war. He might be able to fight off Iraqi querrillas but it is turning out to be a full-time job for his miltary and allies in Iraq. Without security, no elections could be held in Iraq, and without elections, there will be no democracy.
As former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan puts it:
"President Bush faces three options. He can continue to draw down troops and transfer power to the Iraq Governing Council on June 30, and risk a collapse in chaos or civil war. He can hold to present US force levels and accept a war of attrition of indefinite duration, a war on which his countrymen have begun to sour.
"Or he can send in more troops and unleash US power to crush all resistance, while declaring our resolve to "pay any price" and fight on to victory, even if it takes two, five or 10 years. The problem with playing Churchill is that, as in Vietnam, it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
"The incidence of attacks on our troops, aid workers and Iraqi allies is rising. The more fiercely we fight back, the higher the casualties we inflict on insurgent and civilian alike, and the greater the hostility grows to our war and our presence. "Indeed, if our occupation itself is the cause of the insurgency, how do we win the war by extending and deepening it?"
Uncompromising stand
The best reference to Bush's current uncompromising position that he had done the right thing before and after the Sept.11, 2001 attacks and the war against Afghanistan and Iraq came in a combination speech and news conference at the White House on Tuesday.
He did not even acknowledge that the crises in both Afghanistan and Iraq were serious and hence the question of offering new ideas to solve them did not arise at all.
Everything he said was a reiteration of known positions and a deliberate attempt at keeping the focus away from the key issues at stake and trying to reinforce the image that his administration did nothing wrong in any aspect.
Throughout the encounter with the press, Bush maintained that he was determined to "win" the war in Iraq and was confident that he would have presidential mandate renewed in November.
He faced tough questions from the media about whether he felt he had made "mistakes" in handling the terror threat to the US, perceived and otherwise, prior to and after Sept.11, whether he was right in handling Afghanistan the way he did and whether the coalition was wavering in the face of the crisis in Iraq.
Predictably, he offered no apology for the government's failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq despite that it was the very reason that he cited as justification for the war that ousted Saddam Hussein and led to the US military occupation of that country.
Wobbling explanations
Some Americans might have bought some of his explanations, reaffirmations of known positions and assertions that his administration had adopted a straight-forward approach to everything. But, as commentators indicate, not many Americans were bought by his words since the facts on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere are different from the way he portrayed them.
For one thing, he insisted that the US was determined to bring democracy to Iraq and let Iraqis run their country from July 1.
What he did not say was that the "interim government" which will "take over" Iraq on June 30 will be handpicked by the US occupation authority and that government would have little power on its own except those granted by the US military.
The pointed refusal to touch upon this key aspect of the future of Iraq would not have been lost on anyone.
"America's commitment to freedom in Iraq is consistent with our ideals and required by our interests." he said. "Iraq will either be a peaceful, democratic country or it will again be a source of violence, a haven for terror and a threat to America and to the world," he said.
No one bothered or was allowed to seek an explanation how Iraq was a threat to America.
Notable among them was his contention that the crisis in Iraq was the work of thugs and terrorists and rejection that Iraq was becoming another Vietnam — a quagmire without an easy exit.
"I think that analogy is false," he said. "I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy."
Declaring that he he was "proud" of the coalition of countries that had send troops to Iraq, he said he would seek for a new UN Security Council resolution "that will help other nations to decide to participate" in Iraq's reconconstruction. What he did not say was that such participation will be on American terms and not UN terms.
He contented that the war of resistance in Iraq was not a popular uprising. "The violence we've seen is a power grab by ... extreme and ruthless elements" from inside Iraq and from outside, according to Bush.
Asked whether he believes he has acted correctly even if it costs him his job, he replied quickly, "I don't intend to lose my job. Because I'm going to tell the American people I have a plan to win the war on terror."
"Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens," Bush said. "I don't. It's a tough time for the American people to see that. It's gut-wrenching."
Iraq figures in Bush's decline in public opinion polls in two areas that are critical for his re-election campaign. Approval of his handling of Iraq has declined to the mid-40 per cent level, and approval for his handling of terrorism has dipped into the mid-50s. Growing numbers of people say the military action in Iraq has increased rather than decreased the threat of terrorism.
Questions of Sept.11
While Bush opened with remarks about Iraq at Tuesday's press conference, the questions were broader — focusing as well on the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Had I had any inkling whatsoever that people were going to fly airplanes into buildings, we would have moved heaven and earth to protect the country. Just like we're working to prevent further attacks," he said.
Asked whether he felt any responsibility for the attack, Bush said he grieved for the families of the victims and said in retrospect he wished, for example, the Homeland Security Department had been in place. Bush initially opposed creation of the agency but changed his mind under prodding from Congress.
He said said a highly publicised intelligence briefing he received on Aug. 6, 2001, contained "nothing new" in terms of disclosing that Osama Bin Laden hoped to attack the United States. He was heartened, he said, by the disclosure that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) was conducting numerous investigations.
But that claim was undercut earlier in the day at a televised hearing by the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks. Former Acting FBI director Thomas Pickard testified that he did not know where the information about the FBI investigations came from, and one commission member, Slade Gorton, suggested many of the investigations related to fund raising, not the threat of attacks.
Kerry an alternative?
At least 83 US forces have been killed and more than 560 wounded this month, according to the US military, as American troops fight on three fronts: against Sunnis in Fallujah, Shiite militiamen in the south and guerrillas in Baghdad and on its outskirts. At least 678 US troops have died since the war began in March 2003.
Additionally, four American employees of a private security company working in Iraq were killed and their bodies mutilated two weeks ago, and Thomas Hamill, an employee of another firm, was seized as a hostage last week.
What are the chances of Bush's rival in the November elections, Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, reversing Bush's "policy of war" if he wins the race?
Well, Kerry has clearly said that he will continue the policy and there are many who see a vote for Kerry as a vote for war. Writing in the editorial pages of the Washington Post on Tuesday entitled, “A Strategy for Iraq," Kerry said that "no matter who is elected president in November... we will persevere” in Iraq.
"We need to set a new course in Iraq," Kerry wrote. "We need to internationalise the effort and put an end to the American occupation. We need to open up the reconstruction of Iraq to other countries. We need a real transfer of political power to the UN."
“While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed,” wrote Kerry. “The extremists attacking our forces should know they will not succeed in dividing America, or in sapping American resolve, or in forcing the premature withdrawal of US troops."
What Kerry took for granted was that there is indeed a united American stand in favour of the war in Iraq. There is no such thing as American resolve for war; Americans are deeply divided over the wisdom of having gone to Iraq in the first place; many of them resent that Bush administration officials hoodwinked them into seeing the war on Iraq as protecting their security; many have realised that the war was an agenda of the neoconservatives around Bush; many have seen through the ruse that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and had a role in the Sept.11 attacks; most have realised that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has cost and will continue to cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars; and
many have understood that certain groups and businesses close to the Bush administration are the beneficiaries of the billions spent in Iraq. Add to that the reality that as the American casualty figures continue to mount in Iraq, so does the voice of anti-war movements in the US.
Would that mean voters opting for Kerry in November? Most probably, for better or worse, the answer — at this juncture in time — seems to be yes.
With input from wire agencies
April 16 2004
PV Vivekanand
US PRESIDENT George W Bush faces the most crucial dilemma of his politcal career in handling the Iraq crisis. Notwithstanding the brave front he is putting up, he has no assurance that the US could win the war in Iraq. His options are limited and he has no exit strategy since such a course of events was never foreseen by his hardline camp which orchestrated the invasion and occupaton of Iraq. With mounting American casualties in Iraq and revelations of deception in Washington over the Sept.11 attacks and the war against Iraq, Bush's Democratic challenger John Kerry seems already halfway through to the White House in November.
Bush could not use the UN as a smokescreen to legitimise the US dominance of Iraq since the world body demands transparency and the final say in how to democratise Iraq in a manner acceptable to the international community. Giving in to the UN demand will mean nothing but giving up the American long-term objectives of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Bush could pump in more military forces and seek to suppress Iraqi resistance but it would only inflame Iraqi passions and drag his military into a prolonged war of attrition that would undermine all hopes of a contained situation where Washington could pursue its "strategic" objectives in the Middle East.
If anything, brutal suppression of Iraqi resistance to the US-led occupation would pull the US deeper into the quagmire and ignite more anti-American sentiments not only in Iraq but elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Bush has acknowledged that the Iraq crisis has turned to be the decisive issue in his bid for re-election in November. However, he has rejected suggestions that Iraq is becoming another Vietnam but that he is ready to send more American soldiers to Iraq to put down Iraqi resistance to the US-led occupation of that country.
However, the crisis in Iraq is fast becoming an American battle to avert defeat rather than an effort to "civilise" and "democratise" Iraq as the Bush administration is claiming.
Bush has several options in Iraq — but none better or worse than the other.
What is at stake for Bush in Iraq is not only his re-election prospects but also the perceived American invincibility and admitting defeat there would seal his departure from active politics.
Bush has to deliver on his promise to set up a pro-Western, democratic Iraq. He could not afford to be forced into leaving Iraq since that would signal the end of America's newfound global dominance.
American commentators are asking whether Bush has any assurance that he would win the war. He might be able to fight off Iraqi querrillas but it is turning out to be a full-time job for his miltary and allies in Iraq. Without security, no elections could be held in Iraq, and without elections, there will be no democracy.
As former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan puts it:
"President Bush faces three options. He can continue to draw down troops and transfer power to the Iraq Governing Council on June 30, and risk a collapse in chaos or civil war. He can hold to present US force levels and accept a war of attrition of indefinite duration, a war on which his countrymen have begun to sour.
"Or he can send in more troops and unleash US power to crush all resistance, while declaring our resolve to "pay any price" and fight on to victory, even if it takes two, five or 10 years. The problem with playing Churchill is that, as in Vietnam, it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
"The incidence of attacks on our troops, aid workers and Iraqi allies is rising. The more fiercely we fight back, the higher the casualties we inflict on insurgent and civilian alike, and the greater the hostility grows to our war and our presence. "Indeed, if our occupation itself is the cause of the insurgency, how do we win the war by extending and deepening it?"
Uncompromising stand
The best reference to Bush's current uncompromising position that he had done the right thing before and after the Sept.11, 2001 attacks and the war against Afghanistan and Iraq came in a combination speech and news conference at the White House on Tuesday.
He did not even acknowledge that the crises in both Afghanistan and Iraq were serious and hence the question of offering new ideas to solve them did not arise at all.
Everything he said was a reiteration of known positions and a deliberate attempt at keeping the focus away from the key issues at stake and trying to reinforce the image that his administration did nothing wrong in any aspect.
Throughout the encounter with the press, Bush maintained that he was determined to "win" the war in Iraq and was confident that he would have presidential mandate renewed in November.
He faced tough questions from the media about whether he felt he had made "mistakes" in handling the terror threat to the US, perceived and otherwise, prior to and after Sept.11, whether he was right in handling Afghanistan the way he did and whether the coalition was wavering in the face of the crisis in Iraq.
Predictably, he offered no apology for the government's failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq despite that it was the very reason that he cited as justification for the war that ousted Saddam Hussein and led to the US military occupation of that country.
Wobbling explanations
Some Americans might have bought some of his explanations, reaffirmations of known positions and assertions that his administration had adopted a straight-forward approach to everything. But, as commentators indicate, not many Americans were bought by his words since the facts on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere are different from the way he portrayed them.
For one thing, he insisted that the US was determined to bring democracy to Iraq and let Iraqis run their country from July 1.
What he did not say was that the "interim government" which will "take over" Iraq on June 30 will be handpicked by the US occupation authority and that government would have little power on its own except those granted by the US military.
The pointed refusal to touch upon this key aspect of the future of Iraq would not have been lost on anyone.
"America's commitment to freedom in Iraq is consistent with our ideals and required by our interests." he said. "Iraq will either be a peaceful, democratic country or it will again be a source of violence, a haven for terror and a threat to America and to the world," he said.
No one bothered or was allowed to seek an explanation how Iraq was a threat to America.
Notable among them was his contention that the crisis in Iraq was the work of thugs and terrorists and rejection that Iraq was becoming another Vietnam — a quagmire without an easy exit.
"I think that analogy is false," he said. "I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy."
Declaring that he he was "proud" of the coalition of countries that had send troops to Iraq, he said he would seek for a new UN Security Council resolution "that will help other nations to decide to participate" in Iraq's reconconstruction. What he did not say was that such participation will be on American terms and not UN terms.
He contented that the war of resistance in Iraq was not a popular uprising. "The violence we've seen is a power grab by ... extreme and ruthless elements" from inside Iraq and from outside, according to Bush.
Asked whether he believes he has acted correctly even if it costs him his job, he replied quickly, "I don't intend to lose my job. Because I'm going to tell the American people I have a plan to win the war on terror."
"Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens," Bush said. "I don't. It's a tough time for the American people to see that. It's gut-wrenching."
Iraq figures in Bush's decline in public opinion polls in two areas that are critical for his re-election campaign. Approval of his handling of Iraq has declined to the mid-40 per cent level, and approval for his handling of terrorism has dipped into the mid-50s. Growing numbers of people say the military action in Iraq has increased rather than decreased the threat of terrorism.
Questions of Sept.11
While Bush opened with remarks about Iraq at Tuesday's press conference, the questions were broader — focusing as well on the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Had I had any inkling whatsoever that people were going to fly airplanes into buildings, we would have moved heaven and earth to protect the country. Just like we're working to prevent further attacks," he said.
Asked whether he felt any responsibility for the attack, Bush said he grieved for the families of the victims and said in retrospect he wished, for example, the Homeland Security Department had been in place. Bush initially opposed creation of the agency but changed his mind under prodding from Congress.
He said said a highly publicised intelligence briefing he received on Aug. 6, 2001, contained "nothing new" in terms of disclosing that Osama Bin Laden hoped to attack the United States. He was heartened, he said, by the disclosure that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) was conducting numerous investigations.
But that claim was undercut earlier in the day at a televised hearing by the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks. Former Acting FBI director Thomas Pickard testified that he did not know where the information about the FBI investigations came from, and one commission member, Slade Gorton, suggested many of the investigations related to fund raising, not the threat of attacks.
Kerry an alternative?
At least 83 US forces have been killed and more than 560 wounded this month, according to the US military, as American troops fight on three fronts: against Sunnis in Fallujah, Shiite militiamen in the south and guerrillas in Baghdad and on its outskirts. At least 678 US troops have died since the war began in March 2003.
Additionally, four American employees of a private security company working in Iraq were killed and their bodies mutilated two weeks ago, and Thomas Hamill, an employee of another firm, was seized as a hostage last week.
What are the chances of Bush's rival in the November elections, Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, reversing Bush's "policy of war" if he wins the race?
Well, Kerry has clearly said that he will continue the policy and there are many who see a vote for Kerry as a vote for war. Writing in the editorial pages of the Washington Post on Tuesday entitled, “A Strategy for Iraq," Kerry said that "no matter who is elected president in November... we will persevere” in Iraq.
"We need to set a new course in Iraq," Kerry wrote. "We need to internationalise the effort and put an end to the American occupation. We need to open up the reconstruction of Iraq to other countries. We need a real transfer of political power to the UN."
“While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed,” wrote Kerry. “The extremists attacking our forces should know they will not succeed in dividing America, or in sapping American resolve, or in forcing the premature withdrawal of US troops."
What Kerry took for granted was that there is indeed a united American stand in favour of the war in Iraq. There is no such thing as American resolve for war; Americans are deeply divided over the wisdom of having gone to Iraq in the first place; many of them resent that Bush administration officials hoodwinked them into seeing the war on Iraq as protecting their security; many have realised that the war was an agenda of the neoconservatives around Bush; many have seen through the ruse that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and had a role in the Sept.11 attacks; most have realised that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has cost and will continue to cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars; and
many have understood that certain groups and businesses close to the Bush administration are the beneficiaries of the billions spent in Iraq. Add to that the reality that as the American casualty figures continue to mount in Iraq, so does the voice of anti-war movements in the US.
Would that mean voters opting for Kerry in November? Most probably, for better or worse, the answer — at this juncture in time — seems to be yes.
With input from wire agencies
Monday, April 12, 2004
Media handling of Iraq
Matter of interests
by pv vivekanand
BRITON Garry Teeley or American Thomas Hamil or any of the dozens of foreigners captured as hostages in Iraq might have given a second thought to what they were doing when they went to post-war Iraq, whether on business or on military contracts or as servicemen committed to obey orders. Some of them might or might not released soon and could be used as bargaining chips by their captors, thus leading to long sagas of the ordeal of their families and friends back home and the embarassment and dilemma of their government that are now occupying large chunks of international agency reports.
It is indeed the routine followed by Western wire agencies, newspapers and other media outlets to focus on any Westerner whenever he or she is caught in a foreign situation of conflict, facing an uncertain fate, all the more so if the individual happens to be American or British as if Western lives are more precious than others.
A human life is a human life, whether American or Iraqi. But is that the rule that the Western media follow in Iraq?
We have been reports describing the four Americans killed in Falloujah last week as "civilian contractors." There was indeed a deliberate effort to suppress the truth that they were nothing but armed mercenaries who were paid top wages to protect convoys carrying supplies to the US military. They understood their job perfectly well; remove anything and anyone who stood between them and their job and that is why they were carrying guns. No doubt, if they were given a chance, they would have mercilessly slaughtered their Iraqi assailants and lived to tell the tale. It was their misfortune — or calculated risk, if you will — that they did not get a chance to open up with their guns and survive. Cest la vie.
Their bodies were mutilated, dragged through the streets of Fallouja and hung up on a bridge. What cruelty, cried the media. Washington was indignant. How could the Iraqis insult and humilate Americans, even if they are dead, screamed American officials. American pride was hit and damaged, said a few others. I have no dispute with any of their assertions. They are American and that is the way they are supposed to feel, speak and behave in such situations. Nor am I going into any debate over how the Iraqis should or should have behaved (it is not for me to tell them that they should respect the Geneva Conventions and treat American or allied soldiers and those who extend logistic support for them with the respect that military uniforms warrant in a situation of war — we don't even know whether the four were wearing military fatigues or civlian clothes). However, it might be an idea for some of the Western media personnel covering Iraq to present a better picture of the sentiments of the Iraqis today as to why the Fallouja incident in the first place and of the motivations of those Iraqis who dragged the American bodies through the streets.
What followed in the American media was also cest la vie — thousands of words about how the killed Americans were loved fathers, husbands, brothers and sons, how committed and skilled they were in their respective jobs etc.etc. Fair enough. Their families and towns need to know about them, remember them. That is the way American life is all about.
But how many of those newspapers, magazines and agencies cared to focus on how life is for an Iraqi today in Iraq?
With a few exceptions, what we read today is mostly dedicated to highlighting that the suffering of the people of Iraq under US military occupation is the result of either local militants fighting the Americans, "foreign terorrists" who have infiltrated into the country ready to do whatever it takes to make the point that they are fighting the Americans for the sake of fighting the Americans anywhere in the world (Iraq happens to be convenient since the US presence there offers some of the best targets of anti-American "terrorists.")
How many media outlets in the West have bothered to see things from the Iraqi, Arab and Middle Eastern perspective? How many of them could appreciate the frustration, despair and suffering of the people of Iraq? Or that the US military had no business ever to be in Iraq, regardless of Saddam Hussein? Or that if the Iraqis were to be "liberated" from Saddam then the most qualified to do so was the United Nations under a transparent mandate? Or that the American action in Iraq could never been seen in isolation from Washington's "strategic" relations with Israel, which is occupying Arab and Muslim land?
Even worse that their failure to understand the Iraqi situation from an Arab and Muslim perspective is their attempt to laugh off the connection between Iraq and Palestine. Some even implied that Israeli assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was exploited as a propaganda stunt by Moqtada Sadr in a bid to rally supporters. Those who make such assertions know very little or feign to know very little about the inseparability of the situations in Iraq and the overall Arab cause, whether in Palestine or elsewhere.
The people of Iraq do not have to do any research and figure out that their natural resources have had something to do with bringing the American military to rule their country, order them around and impose conditions that are not only alien to their culture, tradition and way of life but also aims at serving American and Israeli interests in the Middle East.
Very few reports in the Western press highlight that it is a war of resistance going on in Iraq. The US media have turned to be cheerleaders of the US military, portraying an image of the American occupation authorities as the legitimate government in Iraq and all those challenging them as bloodthirsty terrorists and militants. The latest coinage to describe them is "rebels" — a term that is by and large used to refer to people who are challenging the legitimacy of a government but definitely not indigeous people fighting a war of resistance against occupying forces.
Then there is perceived scenario of "civil war" in Iraq.
The world defines "civil war" as pitting two or more indigenous groups against each other but not a conflict between occupation forces and local resistance.
In Iraq's case, the term does not apply at all at whatever level as long as the Americans remain in the country since they are a foreign element in the equation and thus the conflict is not confined to Iraqis alone and makes it a civil war. Nor is it like the American military maintaining its presence there to separate warring Iraqi groups. It is very much a party to the entire conflict. The US military might be supported by some Iraqi groups, but those groups would collapse the moment Washington calls of the American military involvement in the country. So, who is going to fight whom in Iraq after a hypothetical American withdrawal? Loyalists of Moqtada Sar pitted against forces loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani or the so-called pro-Iranian groups in the south or the Sunnis or Kurds elsewhere? Or will it be the Kurds against Turkomen in the north? The Kurds against Sunnis in central Iraq? Or the groups that were in comfortable exile while the Iraqis suffered under Saddam taking on those who challenge their quest for dominance in the country? We don't know. But we do know that what is happening in Iraq is no civil war; it is the expression of defiance and struggle of a people who have seen people who posed as their "liberators" turning to be their oppressors with little care or concern for their problems and issues of daily life.
How did it end up that way? Definitely, that was not the way it was designed. Pre-war American intelligence went wrong in assessing Iraqi sentiments on the street and the administration could not care less when the truth emerged since, by then, the US military had secured control of the country. Most of the US media continued with their "patriotic" reporting, but always basing themselves first on their country's misguided "national security interests" and thus egging the administration while smoke-screening the realities on the ground.
And today we hear American officials accusing Arab media of biased reporting if only because they are asking uncomfortable questions and conveying the realities from an Iraq, Arab and Muslim perspective. What a laugh!!!!
Obviously, Washington has a different sets of rules of conduct, objectivity, accuracy and honesty for the American media and Arab media. But that does not mean the Arab media have to abide by the US-set rules and keep a safe distance from exposing the truth of how the Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims feel and experience from the results of American adventurism and quest for dominance.
by pv vivekanand
BRITON Garry Teeley or American Thomas Hamil or any of the dozens of foreigners captured as hostages in Iraq might have given a second thought to what they were doing when they went to post-war Iraq, whether on business or on military contracts or as servicemen committed to obey orders. Some of them might or might not released soon and could be used as bargaining chips by their captors, thus leading to long sagas of the ordeal of their families and friends back home and the embarassment and dilemma of their government that are now occupying large chunks of international agency reports.
It is indeed the routine followed by Western wire agencies, newspapers and other media outlets to focus on any Westerner whenever he or she is caught in a foreign situation of conflict, facing an uncertain fate, all the more so if the individual happens to be American or British as if Western lives are more precious than others.
A human life is a human life, whether American or Iraqi. But is that the rule that the Western media follow in Iraq?
We have been reports describing the four Americans killed in Falloujah last week as "civilian contractors." There was indeed a deliberate effort to suppress the truth that they were nothing but armed mercenaries who were paid top wages to protect convoys carrying supplies to the US military. They understood their job perfectly well; remove anything and anyone who stood between them and their job and that is why they were carrying guns. No doubt, if they were given a chance, they would have mercilessly slaughtered their Iraqi assailants and lived to tell the tale. It was their misfortune — or calculated risk, if you will — that they did not get a chance to open up with their guns and survive. Cest la vie.
Their bodies were mutilated, dragged through the streets of Fallouja and hung up on a bridge. What cruelty, cried the media. Washington was indignant. How could the Iraqis insult and humilate Americans, even if they are dead, screamed American officials. American pride was hit and damaged, said a few others. I have no dispute with any of their assertions. They are American and that is the way they are supposed to feel, speak and behave in such situations. Nor am I going into any debate over how the Iraqis should or should have behaved (it is not for me to tell them that they should respect the Geneva Conventions and treat American or allied soldiers and those who extend logistic support for them with the respect that military uniforms warrant in a situation of war — we don't even know whether the four were wearing military fatigues or civlian clothes). However, it might be an idea for some of the Western media personnel covering Iraq to present a better picture of the sentiments of the Iraqis today as to why the Fallouja incident in the first place and of the motivations of those Iraqis who dragged the American bodies through the streets.
What followed in the American media was also cest la vie — thousands of words about how the killed Americans were loved fathers, husbands, brothers and sons, how committed and skilled they were in their respective jobs etc.etc. Fair enough. Their families and towns need to know about them, remember them. That is the way American life is all about.
But how many of those newspapers, magazines and agencies cared to focus on how life is for an Iraqi today in Iraq?
With a few exceptions, what we read today is mostly dedicated to highlighting that the suffering of the people of Iraq under US military occupation is the result of either local militants fighting the Americans, "foreign terorrists" who have infiltrated into the country ready to do whatever it takes to make the point that they are fighting the Americans for the sake of fighting the Americans anywhere in the world (Iraq happens to be convenient since the US presence there offers some of the best targets of anti-American "terrorists.")
How many media outlets in the West have bothered to see things from the Iraqi, Arab and Middle Eastern perspective? How many of them could appreciate the frustration, despair and suffering of the people of Iraq? Or that the US military had no business ever to be in Iraq, regardless of Saddam Hussein? Or that if the Iraqis were to be "liberated" from Saddam then the most qualified to do so was the United Nations under a transparent mandate? Or that the American action in Iraq could never been seen in isolation from Washington's "strategic" relations with Israel, which is occupying Arab and Muslim land?
Even worse that their failure to understand the Iraqi situation from an Arab and Muslim perspective is their attempt to laugh off the connection between Iraq and Palestine. Some even implied that Israeli assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was exploited as a propaganda stunt by Moqtada Sadr in a bid to rally supporters. Those who make such assertions know very little or feign to know very little about the inseparability of the situations in Iraq and the overall Arab cause, whether in Palestine or elsewhere.
The people of Iraq do not have to do any research and figure out that their natural resources have had something to do with bringing the American military to rule their country, order them around and impose conditions that are not only alien to their culture, tradition and way of life but also aims at serving American and Israeli interests in the Middle East.
Very few reports in the Western press highlight that it is a war of resistance going on in Iraq. The US media have turned to be cheerleaders of the US military, portraying an image of the American occupation authorities as the legitimate government in Iraq and all those challenging them as bloodthirsty terrorists and militants. The latest coinage to describe them is "rebels" — a term that is by and large used to refer to people who are challenging the legitimacy of a government but definitely not indigeous people fighting a war of resistance against occupying forces.
Then there is perceived scenario of "civil war" in Iraq.
The world defines "civil war" as pitting two or more indigenous groups against each other but not a conflict between occupation forces and local resistance.
In Iraq's case, the term does not apply at all at whatever level as long as the Americans remain in the country since they are a foreign element in the equation and thus the conflict is not confined to Iraqis alone and makes it a civil war. Nor is it like the American military maintaining its presence there to separate warring Iraqi groups. It is very much a party to the entire conflict. The US military might be supported by some Iraqi groups, but those groups would collapse the moment Washington calls of the American military involvement in the country. So, who is going to fight whom in Iraq after a hypothetical American withdrawal? Loyalists of Moqtada Sar pitted against forces loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani or the so-called pro-Iranian groups in the south or the Sunnis or Kurds elsewhere? Or will it be the Kurds against Turkomen in the north? The Kurds against Sunnis in central Iraq? Or the groups that were in comfortable exile while the Iraqis suffered under Saddam taking on those who challenge their quest for dominance in the country? We don't know. But we do know that what is happening in Iraq is no civil war; it is the expression of defiance and struggle of a people who have seen people who posed as their "liberators" turning to be their oppressors with little care or concern for their problems and issues of daily life.
How did it end up that way? Definitely, that was not the way it was designed. Pre-war American intelligence went wrong in assessing Iraqi sentiments on the street and the administration could not care less when the truth emerged since, by then, the US military had secured control of the country. Most of the US media continued with their "patriotic" reporting, but always basing themselves first on their country's misguided "national security interests" and thus egging the administration while smoke-screening the realities on the ground.
And today we hear American officials accusing Arab media of biased reporting if only because they are asking uncomfortable questions and conveying the realities from an Iraq, Arab and Muslim perspective. What a laugh!!!!
Obviously, Washington has a different sets of rules of conduct, objectivity, accuracy and honesty for the American media and Arab media. But that does not mean the Arab media have to abide by the US-set rules and keep a safe distance from exposing the truth of how the Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims feel and experience from the results of American adventurism and quest for dominance.
Thursday, April 08, 2004
A war that can't be won
April 8 2004
A war that cannot be won
PV Vivekanand
IT IS a pre-emptive war that the US and its coalition partners are waging on several fronts in Iraq — with the Sunnis to the northwest and northeast of Baghdad and the Shiites in the south. It is amply clear that the US provoked the clashes with the clear objective: Setting the ground for elimination of all groups and individuals of any signifance who could challenge the absolute US dominance of Iraq after the June 30 transition even before the symbolic and namesake transfer of power takes place.
It would be naive to assume that if something goes wrong with the US plans and somehow mounting American and coalition casualties might persuade the US into deciding to call it quits in Iraq. Leaving Iraq is not in the American cards, now or for the next decade or more, nothwithstanding any change of guard at the White House.
Iraq is too central and crucial to American strategic designs in the Middle East. It is unthinkable for Washington to pack up and let go of the strategic prize — direct and indirect but absolute control of Iraq — after having committed itself so deep there with hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
As William Cordesman, a widely respected American commentator puts it, defeat in Iraq would be an American disaster far greater than Vietnam.
"Regardless of whether the United States should have invaded Iraq, the fact is that it did," says Cordesman. "Its power and prestige are on the line. It also has stakes in the future of allied leaders in Britain, Australia, Italy, Spain, Poland. ... Its influence in the Gulf — with some 60 percent of the world's proven reserves of crude oil – is at risk, as is its strategic position in the rest of the Middle East."
However, the war is getting highly unpopular among Americans.
The latest Pew Research opinion poll showed that only 32 per cent of Americans believe the White House has a “clear plan” of what to do in Iraq. Only 50 per cent want to keep US troops in the country, down from 63 per cent in January. President George W Bush’s personal approval rating of 43 per cent is the lowest the survey has ever registered.
Against that backdrop, subduing Iraq and showing the American people that the US is continuing to call the shots in the country is equally vital to Bush's prospects for re-election.
That would not be possible if the US let the present situation in Iraq to continue. Washington wants to pre-empt all significant challenge to the post-June 30 situation in Iraq.
Bush himself declared that the US had to “stay the course, and we will stay the course [in Iraq].”
Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry does not think much differently.
While he favours UN involvement in Iraq, Kerry has also pledged his full support for “whatever’s necessary to protect our troops that are there and to provide for stability and success.”
Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a former secretary of state in the first Bush administration, has declared: “We have to start the killing... We have to do whatever it takes to put these people down.” Asked if the US should assassinate Sadr like the Israelis had murdered Sheikh Yassin, Eagleburger responded: “I think so.”
Not simple hostility
It is not simply anti-American sentiments that are driving the Shiites of the south to take up arms against the occupation.
With upto 60 per cent majority in the Iraqi population but under repression by the Saddam Hussein regime, the Shiites had seen Saddam's ouster as opening the door for them to exercise their democratic rights in the country. It presented them with the very opportunity that they had been awaiting for decades.
The Shiites did not engage themselves in armed struggle against the Americans. It could even be said that they gave one year to the Americans to prove themselves, but found that their interests were not being protected. On the contrary, they found that the US-drafted transitional constitution undermined their aspirations to keep Iraq undivided with all its natural and oil resources. The interim constitution gives the northern Kurds a veto of sorts while drawing up the final shape of the country; this could mean the Kurds possibly opting to break away and take with them the rich oilfields of Kirkuk (notwithstanding Turkish objections), according to the Shiite thinking.
Another equally strong reason for Shiite youth to step up their rejection of the American-led occupation and join Sadr was that little was changed on the ground in their daily life in the wake of their "liberation."
The Shiites of southern Iraq had always been denied social justice by the Saddam regime and their hopes of an improvement in the situation were shattered when they found out that the occupation army could not care less about their social conditions. Under Saddam, they were able to make a living, but under the occupation they were even deprived of that opportunity.
They also found that the American-led occupation authority in Baghdad was more interested in installing their hand-picked men in power and was giving priority to Baghdad and its surroundings in reconstruction work while the southern parts remained as neglected as they were under the Saddam regime; even more so, if anything.
Their hopes that they would be able to correct the wrongs of the past and exercise their majority power to improve their lot were dealt a severe blow when it became clear that real power will remain in American hands even after the June 30 transition, which is aimed at creating an impression that Iraqis are ruling Iraq. The new interim government will only be implementing the decisions made in Washington. It will have little credibility among Iraqis. To make things even worse, the senior-most Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, and most Sunni leaders have rejected the US plan.
While Sistani has so far not been associated with violent challenges to the US quest for supremacy in Iraq, others have dared to take up arms against the Americans in the country. And that is why the US provoked the ongoing confrontation with the firebrand Shiite leader Mortada Sadr and other Iraqi resistance groups in the so-called "Sunni triangle" outside Baghdad.
However, Sistani has extended implicit support for Sadr. He has issued a statement appealing for calm but condemning the US-led coalition and declaring that the actions of Sadr’s supporters were “legitimate.”
In return, Sadr has promised to deliver a "liberated Najaf in a silver platter" to Sistani, thus establishing that the two have reached an understanding under which Sadr would not challenge Sistani's status as the senior-most Shiite leader in Iraq.
The Iranian angle
It is unclear yet what role Iran is playing in the crisis. Tehran has a vested interest in averting a US-controlled government taking power in Baghdad. Surely Iranian intelligence agents are at work among the Iraqi Shiites, but the extent of Tehran's involvement remains uncertain at this point in time.
At the same time, Iranian traders are said to be active in southern Iraq.
Reports in Iraqi newspapers have complained that Iranian merchants are crossing the Shatt Al Arab waterway and exploiting the situation in Basra and nearby areas by buying en masse whatever is available in the market such as spare parts for automobiles and industrial equipment being brought in as well as scrap material, thus fuelling inflation in real terms and making it very expensive for reconstruction and revival of industries in southern Iraq.
That might indeed an issue of secondary importance, but it does contribute to a growing sense of despair among the Shiites that they are being victimised by all concerned.
To top it all came the Israeli assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Palestine last month and the US position condoning the killing as demonstrated in White House statements as well as the veto the US used against a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for the killing.
While the American behaviour was in no way a jolt from the blue — as Washington's track record shows its bias in favour of Israel — it was a reminder to the Shiites, as indeed for most other Iraqis. It highlighted that Washington could not care less about the elimination of Arab and Muslim leaders to serve Israel's interests and added to the growing anti-American sentiments among them.
'Benefit of confrontation'
That the US provoked the confrontation now with ulterior motives was underlined by the Washington Post this week.
The Post wrote: "There may ultimately be a benefit to this confrontation, which began just 88 days before the scheduled transfer of sovereignty from the US-led occupation authority to a new Iraqi government."
The confrontation is “a painful but necessary battle” and “US commanders should not hesitate to act quickly and use overwhelming force” to suppress the Iraqi revolt, said the paper.
The Post acknowledged that fighting had “a cost in Iraqi and American lives,” but it insisted that “the alternative—to step back from confrontation with Iraq’s extremists — would invite even worse trouble.”
Well, the "worse trouble" clearly means a major blow not only to Bush's chances of re-election in November but to America's quest for domination of the Middle East region and, in wider context as international commentators content, the global scene.
The ongoing clashes pitting Sadr forces and coalition soldiers from Spain, Itlay, Poland, Ukraine and Bulgaria in south Iraq and the American miltiary assault on Sadr City in Baghdad is sure to lead to a battle to the finish for both sides.
In practical terms, Sadr and his Mahdi Army on their own could put up stiff resistance and challenge the US military for some time but eventually they would be simply be crushed and eliminated from playing any significant role in the country's future. Surely, in the bargain, the US would have to take heavy casualties, but then Washington is ready to absorb them.
There is no shortage of conventional weapons in Iraq, and no doubt the anti-US forces have access to them, thus making certain that the US military would pay a heavy cost for putting down the rebellion.
There is no doubt that the US would employ whatever force and tactic it would take to wipe out Sadr and his supporters as well as his newfound Sunni allies even it means carpet bombings and raining missles on them wherever they are. It would be a bonus if the US military could catch Sadr alive because they could parade him in captivity for the benefit of American voters.
Indeed, Sadr has vowed fight until death in Najaf, the Shiite holy city in the south. Conventional wisdom says that the Americans might not launch an allout assault against Najaf because of religious sensitivities, but Wednesday's US assault of a mosque in Falloujah showed that those considerations play second fiddle to the goal of wiping out Iraqi resistance.
The American timing
Whether by design or coincidence, the US military strength in Iraq is a post-war peak now.
An overlap in the rotation of troops has increased the number of US soldiers in Iraq from 120,000 to 134,000, and the US has found the situation fit to launch the critical assault now, while retaining the option of sending reinforcements.
The US provocation started with the closure of Sadr's Al Hawza newspaper in late March on charges that it was inciting violence against coalition forces. Then the occupation authorities, working through the namesake Iraqi judiciary, arrested a close Sadr aide, Mustafa Al Yaacubi, and issued a warrant against Sadr himself on charges of being party to the killing of Ayatollah Khoei, a pro-West Shiite cleric who was flown to Najaf along with American forces shortly after the launch of the war in March 2003.
The moves were not scare tactics but were part of a well-scripted scenario.
The US military and the US overseer in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, knew that the moves against Sadr would have led to mass protests in both Najaf and Baghdad and armed clashes, setting the ground for the US push to "take out" Sadr and his top lieutenants.
Sadr has chosen to make his do-or-die stand in Najaf, and he is surrounded by his fighters who might be able to inflict considerable casualties among the Americans, but they are no match to the militarily stronger US forces in an overall context.
The US determination to "get" Sadr was amply demonstrated in the words of US General Mark Kimmitt: “Whether Sadr decides to come peacefully, or whether he decides to come not peacefully — that choice is the choice of Mister Moqtada Sadr.”
“Individuals who create violence, who incite violence... will be hunted down and captured or killed.," said Kimmit. "It’s that simple.”
Equally strong determination has been voiced by Sadr's Mahdi Army: "We are ready to sacrifice our lives for our leader Moqtada if the coalition troops touch a single strand of his hair.”
To make things worse for the US, tribal leaders of Sunni regions and from the largest resistance movement in Iraq have offered their services to Sadr.
Reports from Baghdad said that on Tuesday, three Sunni clerics handed over the message of support to the leaders of the Mahdi Army.
Abari said he represented the tribal sheikh of the Anbar province which contains Fallujah and Ramadi where fierce clashes were raging between US Marines and the Army of Mohammed, an umbrella organisation responsible for most of the anti-coalition violence over the last year.
A letter to Sadr's Mahdi's Army from Sheikh Harrath Salman Al Tey, the leader of the largest Sunni tribe and a man with massive influence Anbar, declared: "We are the Army of Mohammed and all of Ramadi and Fallujah (offer) our army and people and souls and hearts and weapons under your command. There is no more Shiite and Sunni, only Muslims, and now we will fight each other no more and together fight the same enemy."
That should indeed be a nightmare for the US in terms casualties on the ground, but certainly not enough to dissuade the Washington strategists for whom such declarations of open defiance help them identify hostile forces which need to be eliminated.
The intensity of the American military assault on Falloujah was no doubt fuelled by the killing of four Americans who served as gunmen for hire for private contractors. American television showed their bodies being dragged through the street, set afire and hung on a bridge.
Obviously the scenes were too much for Americans to take and that is reflected in the US military's action in Falloujah where they bombed out a mosque, killing at least 40 Iraqis who had taken shelter there.
Some analysts refer to the crisis in Iraq as the beginning of a civil war. That interpretation is countered by an argument that it is not as if two Iraqi groups are fighting each other; it is a war of resistance where the people of Iraq are resisting occupation forces, notwithstanding that the occupiers are backed by a few thousand Iraqi employees.
That might indeed be a tall claim, given that Sadr could not claim to represent even one third of the Shiites in Iraq. But he would pick up support from them in proportion to the use of American military strength to eliminate Sadr and his lieutenants.
US strategists are no doubt aware that they are not exactly enlisting more supporters in Iraq as every day passes by with no solutions to the daily life issues of the people of the beleaguered country. There should be a sense of urgency in Washington and we could expect to see it manifest in the days ahead.
A war that cannot be won
PV Vivekanand
IT IS a pre-emptive war that the US and its coalition partners are waging on several fronts in Iraq — with the Sunnis to the northwest and northeast of Baghdad and the Shiites in the south. It is amply clear that the US provoked the clashes with the clear objective: Setting the ground for elimination of all groups and individuals of any signifance who could challenge the absolute US dominance of Iraq after the June 30 transition even before the symbolic and namesake transfer of power takes place.
It would be naive to assume that if something goes wrong with the US plans and somehow mounting American and coalition casualties might persuade the US into deciding to call it quits in Iraq. Leaving Iraq is not in the American cards, now or for the next decade or more, nothwithstanding any change of guard at the White House.
Iraq is too central and crucial to American strategic designs in the Middle East. It is unthinkable for Washington to pack up and let go of the strategic prize — direct and indirect but absolute control of Iraq — after having committed itself so deep there with hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
As William Cordesman, a widely respected American commentator puts it, defeat in Iraq would be an American disaster far greater than Vietnam.
"Regardless of whether the United States should have invaded Iraq, the fact is that it did," says Cordesman. "Its power and prestige are on the line. It also has stakes in the future of allied leaders in Britain, Australia, Italy, Spain, Poland. ... Its influence in the Gulf — with some 60 percent of the world's proven reserves of crude oil – is at risk, as is its strategic position in the rest of the Middle East."
However, the war is getting highly unpopular among Americans.
The latest Pew Research opinion poll showed that only 32 per cent of Americans believe the White House has a “clear plan” of what to do in Iraq. Only 50 per cent want to keep US troops in the country, down from 63 per cent in January. President George W Bush’s personal approval rating of 43 per cent is the lowest the survey has ever registered.
Against that backdrop, subduing Iraq and showing the American people that the US is continuing to call the shots in the country is equally vital to Bush's prospects for re-election.
That would not be possible if the US let the present situation in Iraq to continue. Washington wants to pre-empt all significant challenge to the post-June 30 situation in Iraq.
Bush himself declared that the US had to “stay the course, and we will stay the course [in Iraq].”
Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry does not think much differently.
While he favours UN involvement in Iraq, Kerry has also pledged his full support for “whatever’s necessary to protect our troops that are there and to provide for stability and success.”
Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a former secretary of state in the first Bush administration, has declared: “We have to start the killing... We have to do whatever it takes to put these people down.” Asked if the US should assassinate Sadr like the Israelis had murdered Sheikh Yassin, Eagleburger responded: “I think so.”
Not simple hostility
It is not simply anti-American sentiments that are driving the Shiites of the south to take up arms against the occupation.
With upto 60 per cent majority in the Iraqi population but under repression by the Saddam Hussein regime, the Shiites had seen Saddam's ouster as opening the door for them to exercise their democratic rights in the country. It presented them with the very opportunity that they had been awaiting for decades.
The Shiites did not engage themselves in armed struggle against the Americans. It could even be said that they gave one year to the Americans to prove themselves, but found that their interests were not being protected. On the contrary, they found that the US-drafted transitional constitution undermined their aspirations to keep Iraq undivided with all its natural and oil resources. The interim constitution gives the northern Kurds a veto of sorts while drawing up the final shape of the country; this could mean the Kurds possibly opting to break away and take with them the rich oilfields of Kirkuk (notwithstanding Turkish objections), according to the Shiite thinking.
Another equally strong reason for Shiite youth to step up their rejection of the American-led occupation and join Sadr was that little was changed on the ground in their daily life in the wake of their "liberation."
The Shiites of southern Iraq had always been denied social justice by the Saddam regime and their hopes of an improvement in the situation were shattered when they found out that the occupation army could not care less about their social conditions. Under Saddam, they were able to make a living, but under the occupation they were even deprived of that opportunity.
They also found that the American-led occupation authority in Baghdad was more interested in installing their hand-picked men in power and was giving priority to Baghdad and its surroundings in reconstruction work while the southern parts remained as neglected as they were under the Saddam regime; even more so, if anything.
Their hopes that they would be able to correct the wrongs of the past and exercise their majority power to improve their lot were dealt a severe blow when it became clear that real power will remain in American hands even after the June 30 transition, which is aimed at creating an impression that Iraqis are ruling Iraq. The new interim government will only be implementing the decisions made in Washington. It will have little credibility among Iraqis. To make things even worse, the senior-most Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, and most Sunni leaders have rejected the US plan.
While Sistani has so far not been associated with violent challenges to the US quest for supremacy in Iraq, others have dared to take up arms against the Americans in the country. And that is why the US provoked the ongoing confrontation with the firebrand Shiite leader Mortada Sadr and other Iraqi resistance groups in the so-called "Sunni triangle" outside Baghdad.
However, Sistani has extended implicit support for Sadr. He has issued a statement appealing for calm but condemning the US-led coalition and declaring that the actions of Sadr’s supporters were “legitimate.”
In return, Sadr has promised to deliver a "liberated Najaf in a silver platter" to Sistani, thus establishing that the two have reached an understanding under which Sadr would not challenge Sistani's status as the senior-most Shiite leader in Iraq.
The Iranian angle
It is unclear yet what role Iran is playing in the crisis. Tehran has a vested interest in averting a US-controlled government taking power in Baghdad. Surely Iranian intelligence agents are at work among the Iraqi Shiites, but the extent of Tehran's involvement remains uncertain at this point in time.
At the same time, Iranian traders are said to be active in southern Iraq.
Reports in Iraqi newspapers have complained that Iranian merchants are crossing the Shatt Al Arab waterway and exploiting the situation in Basra and nearby areas by buying en masse whatever is available in the market such as spare parts for automobiles and industrial equipment being brought in as well as scrap material, thus fuelling inflation in real terms and making it very expensive for reconstruction and revival of industries in southern Iraq.
That might indeed an issue of secondary importance, but it does contribute to a growing sense of despair among the Shiites that they are being victimised by all concerned.
To top it all came the Israeli assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Palestine last month and the US position condoning the killing as demonstrated in White House statements as well as the veto the US used against a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for the killing.
While the American behaviour was in no way a jolt from the blue — as Washington's track record shows its bias in favour of Israel — it was a reminder to the Shiites, as indeed for most other Iraqis. It highlighted that Washington could not care less about the elimination of Arab and Muslim leaders to serve Israel's interests and added to the growing anti-American sentiments among them.
'Benefit of confrontation'
That the US provoked the confrontation now with ulterior motives was underlined by the Washington Post this week.
The Post wrote: "There may ultimately be a benefit to this confrontation, which began just 88 days before the scheduled transfer of sovereignty from the US-led occupation authority to a new Iraqi government."
The confrontation is “a painful but necessary battle” and “US commanders should not hesitate to act quickly and use overwhelming force” to suppress the Iraqi revolt, said the paper.
The Post acknowledged that fighting had “a cost in Iraqi and American lives,” but it insisted that “the alternative—to step back from confrontation with Iraq’s extremists — would invite even worse trouble.”
Well, the "worse trouble" clearly means a major blow not only to Bush's chances of re-election in November but to America's quest for domination of the Middle East region and, in wider context as international commentators content, the global scene.
The ongoing clashes pitting Sadr forces and coalition soldiers from Spain, Itlay, Poland, Ukraine and Bulgaria in south Iraq and the American miltiary assault on Sadr City in Baghdad is sure to lead to a battle to the finish for both sides.
In practical terms, Sadr and his Mahdi Army on their own could put up stiff resistance and challenge the US military for some time but eventually they would be simply be crushed and eliminated from playing any significant role in the country's future. Surely, in the bargain, the US would have to take heavy casualties, but then Washington is ready to absorb them.
There is no shortage of conventional weapons in Iraq, and no doubt the anti-US forces have access to them, thus making certain that the US military would pay a heavy cost for putting down the rebellion.
There is no doubt that the US would employ whatever force and tactic it would take to wipe out Sadr and his supporters as well as his newfound Sunni allies even it means carpet bombings and raining missles on them wherever they are. It would be a bonus if the US military could catch Sadr alive because they could parade him in captivity for the benefit of American voters.
Indeed, Sadr has vowed fight until death in Najaf, the Shiite holy city in the south. Conventional wisdom says that the Americans might not launch an allout assault against Najaf because of religious sensitivities, but Wednesday's US assault of a mosque in Falloujah showed that those considerations play second fiddle to the goal of wiping out Iraqi resistance.
The American timing
Whether by design or coincidence, the US military strength in Iraq is a post-war peak now.
An overlap in the rotation of troops has increased the number of US soldiers in Iraq from 120,000 to 134,000, and the US has found the situation fit to launch the critical assault now, while retaining the option of sending reinforcements.
The US provocation started with the closure of Sadr's Al Hawza newspaper in late March on charges that it was inciting violence against coalition forces. Then the occupation authorities, working through the namesake Iraqi judiciary, arrested a close Sadr aide, Mustafa Al Yaacubi, and issued a warrant against Sadr himself on charges of being party to the killing of Ayatollah Khoei, a pro-West Shiite cleric who was flown to Najaf along with American forces shortly after the launch of the war in March 2003.
The moves were not scare tactics but were part of a well-scripted scenario.
The US military and the US overseer in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, knew that the moves against Sadr would have led to mass protests in both Najaf and Baghdad and armed clashes, setting the ground for the US push to "take out" Sadr and his top lieutenants.
Sadr has chosen to make his do-or-die stand in Najaf, and he is surrounded by his fighters who might be able to inflict considerable casualties among the Americans, but they are no match to the militarily stronger US forces in an overall context.
The US determination to "get" Sadr was amply demonstrated in the words of US General Mark Kimmitt: “Whether Sadr decides to come peacefully, or whether he decides to come not peacefully — that choice is the choice of Mister Moqtada Sadr.”
“Individuals who create violence, who incite violence... will be hunted down and captured or killed.," said Kimmit. "It’s that simple.”
Equally strong determination has been voiced by Sadr's Mahdi Army: "We are ready to sacrifice our lives for our leader Moqtada if the coalition troops touch a single strand of his hair.”
To make things worse for the US, tribal leaders of Sunni regions and from the largest resistance movement in Iraq have offered their services to Sadr.
Reports from Baghdad said that on Tuesday, three Sunni clerics handed over the message of support to the leaders of the Mahdi Army.
Abari said he represented the tribal sheikh of the Anbar province which contains Fallujah and Ramadi where fierce clashes were raging between US Marines and the Army of Mohammed, an umbrella organisation responsible for most of the anti-coalition violence over the last year.
A letter to Sadr's Mahdi's Army from Sheikh Harrath Salman Al Tey, the leader of the largest Sunni tribe and a man with massive influence Anbar, declared: "We are the Army of Mohammed and all of Ramadi and Fallujah (offer) our army and people and souls and hearts and weapons under your command. There is no more Shiite and Sunni, only Muslims, and now we will fight each other no more and together fight the same enemy."
That should indeed be a nightmare for the US in terms casualties on the ground, but certainly not enough to dissuade the Washington strategists for whom such declarations of open defiance help them identify hostile forces which need to be eliminated.
The intensity of the American military assault on Falloujah was no doubt fuelled by the killing of four Americans who served as gunmen for hire for private contractors. American television showed their bodies being dragged through the street, set afire and hung on a bridge.
Obviously the scenes were too much for Americans to take and that is reflected in the US military's action in Falloujah where they bombed out a mosque, killing at least 40 Iraqis who had taken shelter there.
Some analysts refer to the crisis in Iraq as the beginning of a civil war. That interpretation is countered by an argument that it is not as if two Iraqi groups are fighting each other; it is a war of resistance where the people of Iraq are resisting occupation forces, notwithstanding that the occupiers are backed by a few thousand Iraqi employees.
That might indeed be a tall claim, given that Sadr could not claim to represent even one third of the Shiites in Iraq. But he would pick up support from them in proportion to the use of American military strength to eliminate Sadr and his lieutenants.
US strategists are no doubt aware that they are not exactly enlisting more supporters in Iraq as every day passes by with no solutions to the daily life issues of the people of the beleaguered country. There should be a sense of urgency in Washington and we could expect to see it manifest in the days ahead.
Monday, April 05, 2004
No going near key issues
April 4, 2004
No going near key issues
PV Vivekanand
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States is hearing serving and former administration officials on the "facts and causes" of the Sept.11 attacks. The exercise aims at establishing whether the Bush administration failed in taking counter-measures despite having received intelligence warnings that attacks similar to Sept.11-style aerial assaults were possible. However, the hearings are not expected to touch upon the historic and political background,
DEBATE within the US is focused on whether the Bush administration gave "high priority" to fighting terrorism after being warned prior to the Sept.11 attacks and who did what in the corridors of power and policymaking in Washington before and after the attacks.
National Security Adviser Condaleezza Rice, seen as one of the most loyal aides to President George W Bush, has agreed to testify under oath in public before the independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the US. Bush himself and Vice-President Dick Cheney have also agreed to answer the panel's questions but on their own terms and conditions.
Among those who appeared before the commission last month were US Secretary of State Colin Powell, his predecessor in the Clinton administration Madeline Albright, Secretary of defenCe Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, and Clinton defence chief William Cohen; Clinton national security adviser Samuel Berger; and Richard Clarke, a counter-terrorism adviser to both Clinton and Bush, who resigned on the eve of the Iraq war and who has accused Budh of using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for invading and occupying Iraq.
Within the context of the American political system, the panel's hearings are a highly relevant exercise if only because the elected and appointed officials are answerable to the American public. Revelations of the true nature of what took place behind the scenes might or might not lead to heads rolling in Washington, but it would definitely have an impact on Bush's re-election prospects in November.
It is unquesitonably clear that complete details of the panel's findings are never going to be released to the public. The administration will see to that by citing "national security" and "intelligence-specific" reasons. Obviously that would mean that the circumstances that led to the Sept.11 attacks would never be revealed to the people. More importantly, there would never be a public accounting of the policy of the Bush administration — and indeed of its predecessors — that is cited many American, European, Arab and Asian commentators as having set the ground for 9/11.
By no means that assertion implies, explictly or implictly, any justification for the attacks that could never be condoned.
The question here is how relevant is the ongoing panel hearing to the people of the Middle East? Is it going to expose the gross bias in US policy in favour of Israel and help arrive at a just and fair solution to the Palestinian problem?
'The Palestinian link'
Let us take note that it was an American media outlet which reported that Palestinians were dancing of the roottops of Ramallah upon hearing of the Sept.11 attacks (the report was later discounted).
Obviously the idea was to establish some implicit and latent link between the Palestinian problem and the Sept.11 attacks.
Why should it be so? If indeed the US media did feel that there was a Palestinian angle to the attacks, however distant, why was the idea not followed up? Why was there a deliberate attempt not to bring in the Palestinian angle to the forefront of American public attention in the context of Sept.11?
Was it because it would have given focus to an issue that the US administration wants to keep away from American public debate?
Why was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon given top billing in the American media list of foreign leaders sending condolences to Bush over the attacks when others like British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac were equally if not more strong in their expressions of sympathy for the US and pledges to help Washington fight terror?
Well, the answer is rather simple: The powers that pull the media strings in the US were used, wittingly or unwittingly, to highlight Israel as a "fellow victim of terror" and the Palestinians as "terrorists."
Well, if we borrow a leaf from the same exercise, then the next question is:
Will the panel hearings in Washington unveil the shortcomings in US policy — particularly the fact that it was the staunch, unwavering and almost unlimited American support over the decades and the influence of pro-Israelis in the circles of power that matter in Washington that have led to anti-American sentiments among Arabs and Muslims?
Hardly likely, since American foreign policy is not being debated. Nor is the reality that Israel's arrogance and defiance of international law owes itself to the conviction that it would be protected by the Americans no what what and where.
Mysterious Israeli angle
There is a mysterious Israeli angle to 9/11.
On Sept.11, 2001, the Washington Times carried a report which quoted from a paper by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies which said that the he Israeli intelligence service Mossad "has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."
It was reported that nearly 130 Israelis were arrested immediately after the Sept.11 attacks. Some of them had trailed suspected Al Qaeda members in the United States without informing federal authorities and some others had indeed the opportunity of making "friends with them" since they disguised themselves as Palestinians since they could speak fluent Arabic and knew enough to pass off as Palestinians with an axe to grind against the US for its support of Israel.
Some of them lived for a period of time in Hollywood, Florida, where Mohammed Atta, identified by the US as the leader of the 9/11 suicide hijackers, and three others lived for some time before Sept.11.
Were the Israeli in touch with Atta and others? Was it possible that they posed as Palestinians and offered help and information to the hijackers? Their "handlers" could not have but known that the planned attacks would unleash a series of events that would benefit no one but Israel.
The Israeli agents were at work in the US for some time before they were questioned.
Between early 2000 and September 2001, agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had found that dozens of young Israelis falsely claiming to be art students used to visit federal offices, including those of the DEA.
The Israelis claimed to be art students offering artwork for sale and visited the homes of numerous DEA officers and other senior federal officials.
According to reports, agents of the DEA, the US Air Force, Secret Service, the FBI, and US Marshals Service documented some 130 separate incidents of "art student" encounters. Some of the Israelis were observed drawing up the inside of federal buildings and carrying photographs of federal agents. One was discovered with a computer printout that referred to "DEA group."
The Weekly Planet of Tampa, Florida, reported on April 22, 2002 that "DEA agents say that the 60-page document was a draft intended as the base for a 250-page report. The larger report has not been produced because of the volatile nature of suggesting that Israel spies on America's deepest secrets."
The Israelis visited locations not known to the public, including DEA offices not identified as such.
One Israeli was found in possesion banking receipts for nearly $200,000 in withdrawals and deposits over a two-month period.
Mystery surrounds how the US law enforcement agencies dealt with the 126 Israeli agents arrested immediately after the 9/11 attacks. But reports in the Israeli press have said that all of them were released without charges after the Israeli government intervened with the Bush administration.
Focus of debate
The ongoing debate essentially focuses on America's national security, the measures that were in place or should have been in place pre-9/11, and the responsibility of the government functionaries to have ensured the security of American people after they received specific information that attacks were being planned against them.
Seen from the Middle Eastern vantage point, it is like treating the symptoms than addressing the ailment's roots.
Why then is such a pointed direction away from the real issues as seen from the Arab and Muslim point of view and understanding? Aren't the Americans smart enough to realise that there is indeed something wrong in their government's handling of the Middle Eastern conflict? Or are they willing to accept without question the argument that the motivation for the Sept.11 attacks was Arab and Muslim intolerance or even jealousy of the way of American life?
Or that Arabs and Muslims are born terrorists who are going around the world looking for American targets to be hit simply because they hate the US for some inexplicable reason?
Lot to hide
It will be equally interesting to see how Rice, the national security adviser, who says she has nothing to hide from the investigating panel, answers the questions (if they are asked of course): Did the administration ever have the flimsiest of evidence that Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda and therefore had a role in the Sept.11 attacks?
If not, why did the president assert in January 2002 that Iraq posed a threat to the US and was poised to supply biological and chemical weapons to be used in future Sept.11-style attacks against the American people?
The former Bush counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke. has charged that the Bush administration not only failed to act in response to the threat of an impending Al Qaeda attack but also seized upon 9/11 as the pretext for launching the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In response, Rice claimed in an interview that the invasion and occupation of Iraq were part of a “broad war” on terrorism, despite the absence of any evidence that Saddam Hussein had links Al Qaeda or had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.
Rice did confirm Clarke’s charge that, on Sept.12, 2002, Bush ordered a search for a link between the assailants and the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.
According to Clarke, he responded to Bush: “Mr. President, we’ve done this before...we’ve been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind, there’s no connection.”
Bush, says Clarke, ordered: “Iraq, Saddam, find out if there’s a connection." The president implied that it was an order that Clarke produce the desired "connection."
Until the White House very magnanimously relented to Rice appearing before the investigating committee, it was argued that the administration’s rejection of the demand that Rice publicly testify is “creating the impression for honest Americans all over the country and people all over the world that the White House has something to hide, that Condi Rice has something to hide,"
Well, the people of the Middle East, particularly the Arabs and Muslims, and indeed a big chunk of the international community, do have to take "impressions." They know the administration has a lot to hide and it is the reality that it was the manipulated US foreign policy that led to 9/11 and the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Limited mandate
Indeed, the mandate of the investigating commission is carefully drafted in order to avoid an expanded mission that would take in Iraq and US foreign policy. The committee is mandated only with investigating “the facts and causes relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept.11, 2001,” and making “a full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding the attacks, and the extent of the United States’ preparedness for, and immediate response to, the attacks.”
Of course the word "causes" could be interpreted as opening the door for questions on American policy towards the Arab and Muslim worlds, but they are highly unlikely to be raised.
The hype has already been created in the US to keep the focus strictly on how the administration handled the threats to security despite warnings.
Rice has played a key role in the administration's failure to be prepared against Sept.11 despite intelligence warnings but also in the administration’s manipulation of the 9/11 disaster to prepare the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
On the first count, according to Clarke, if "Rice had been doing her job ... if she had a hands-on attitude to being national security adviser,” she would have gained critical information from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding the presence of known Al Qaeda operatives in the US and their preparations for using hijacked aircrafat as missiles.
Clarke referred to Nawaf Al Hazmi and Khalid Al Midha — two of the 19 people identified by the US as the 9/11 assailants — whom the CIA had monitored from the time they attended a a meeting in Malaysia until they entered the US. The two stayed with an undercover FBI informant in San Diego.
Had Rice been more aware of her responsibilities, she could have acted and pre-empted 9/11, Clarke argued.
"Scurrilous,” that was Rice described the allegation.
Contradictions
In a flurry of statements and media interviews she gave in order to refute Clarke's charges, Rice has contradicted herself several times.
However, such contradictions were not limited to her counterattack against Clarke last month.
In May 2002, she denied charges that Washington had ignored pre-9/11 evidence of a plot involving the hijacking of airplanes to be used as missiles.
“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use ... a hijacked airplane as a missile," she said.
However, Bush had in fact received an intelligence memo on Aug. 6, 2001 that Al Qaeda was planning a a major attack within the US using hijacked of US aircraft. Rice could not have been unaware of the memo since handling such issues is part and parcel of her job.
In September 1999, the National Intelligence Council had warned that Al Qaeda could hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings in retaliation for US air strikes against targets in Afghanistan.
“Suicide bomber (s) belonging to Al Qaeda’s Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,” the report said.
Rice, in a classified testimony behind closed doors before the investigating commission, corrected herself and said she had "mispoken." and said Clarke had himself warned of the possibility of such an attack (this was revealed by one of the commission members who was present during her testimony).
On the second count of Clarke's charges — that the Bush administration immediately sought to turn the 9/11 attacks into an apportunity to go to war against Iraq — Rice said in a public comment: “It was Afghanistan that became the focus of the American response. And Iraq was put aside with the exception of worrying about whether Iraq might try and take advantage of us in some way.”
That assertion clashes head on against a Washington Post report on Jan.12, 2003 that “six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2 1⁄2 page document marked ‘top secret'" that dealt with Afghanistan but “directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.”
In September 2002, CBS News reported that within hours of the Sept.11 attacks, “Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq.”
Both reports, and dozens similar to them in theme, have not been denied by the administration.
Another "whistleblower" was Paul O’Neill, the former treasury secretary in the Bush administration.
In the book “The Price of Loyalty" by Ron Suskind, O'Neill says that Rice had attended a Camp David meeting one week after Sept.11 where Iraq was discussed.
“It was like changing the subject —Iraq is not where bin Laden is and not where there’s trouble,” according to O’Neill. “I was mystified. It’s like a bookbinder accidentally dropping a chapter from one book into the middle of another one. The chapter is coherent in its own way, but it doesn’t seem to fit in this book.”
Indeed, O’Neill says that the Bush administration began high-level discussions of invading and conquering Iraq as soon as Bush entered the White House in January 2001.
According to his account, invasion and occupation of Iraq was decided on long before 91/11 and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were used as a pretext.
O’Neill has affirmed that war against Iraq was a top priority itesm in the agenda of the first National Security Council meeting of the Bush administration on Jan.30, 2001.
“From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out,” he said. “It was about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying, ‘Fine. Go find me a way to do this'.”
Obviously, the pro-Israeli hawks in Washington — neoconservatives as they are known — found a way to do it. But, will the Americans -- or anyone else for that matter — will ever know why 9/11 in the first place?
No going near key issues
PV Vivekanand
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States is hearing serving and former administration officials on the "facts and causes" of the Sept.11 attacks. The exercise aims at establishing whether the Bush administration failed in taking counter-measures despite having received intelligence warnings that attacks similar to Sept.11-style aerial assaults were possible. However, the hearings are not expected to touch upon the historic and political background,
DEBATE within the US is focused on whether the Bush administration gave "high priority" to fighting terrorism after being warned prior to the Sept.11 attacks and who did what in the corridors of power and policymaking in Washington before and after the attacks.
National Security Adviser Condaleezza Rice, seen as one of the most loyal aides to President George W Bush, has agreed to testify under oath in public before the independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the US. Bush himself and Vice-President Dick Cheney have also agreed to answer the panel's questions but on their own terms and conditions.
Among those who appeared before the commission last month were US Secretary of State Colin Powell, his predecessor in the Clinton administration Madeline Albright, Secretary of defenCe Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, and Clinton defence chief William Cohen; Clinton national security adviser Samuel Berger; and Richard Clarke, a counter-terrorism adviser to both Clinton and Bush, who resigned on the eve of the Iraq war and who has accused Budh of using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for invading and occupying Iraq.
Within the context of the American political system, the panel's hearings are a highly relevant exercise if only because the elected and appointed officials are answerable to the American public. Revelations of the true nature of what took place behind the scenes might or might not lead to heads rolling in Washington, but it would definitely have an impact on Bush's re-election prospects in November.
It is unquesitonably clear that complete details of the panel's findings are never going to be released to the public. The administration will see to that by citing "national security" and "intelligence-specific" reasons. Obviously that would mean that the circumstances that led to the Sept.11 attacks would never be revealed to the people. More importantly, there would never be a public accounting of the policy of the Bush administration — and indeed of its predecessors — that is cited many American, European, Arab and Asian commentators as having set the ground for 9/11.
By no means that assertion implies, explictly or implictly, any justification for the attacks that could never be condoned.
The question here is how relevant is the ongoing panel hearing to the people of the Middle East? Is it going to expose the gross bias in US policy in favour of Israel and help arrive at a just and fair solution to the Palestinian problem?
'The Palestinian link'
Let us take note that it was an American media outlet which reported that Palestinians were dancing of the roottops of Ramallah upon hearing of the Sept.11 attacks (the report was later discounted).
Obviously the idea was to establish some implicit and latent link between the Palestinian problem and the Sept.11 attacks.
Why should it be so? If indeed the US media did feel that there was a Palestinian angle to the attacks, however distant, why was the idea not followed up? Why was there a deliberate attempt not to bring in the Palestinian angle to the forefront of American public attention in the context of Sept.11?
Was it because it would have given focus to an issue that the US administration wants to keep away from American public debate?
Why was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon given top billing in the American media list of foreign leaders sending condolences to Bush over the attacks when others like British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac were equally if not more strong in their expressions of sympathy for the US and pledges to help Washington fight terror?
Well, the answer is rather simple: The powers that pull the media strings in the US were used, wittingly or unwittingly, to highlight Israel as a "fellow victim of terror" and the Palestinians as "terrorists."
Well, if we borrow a leaf from the same exercise, then the next question is:
Will the panel hearings in Washington unveil the shortcomings in US policy — particularly the fact that it was the staunch, unwavering and almost unlimited American support over the decades and the influence of pro-Israelis in the circles of power that matter in Washington that have led to anti-American sentiments among Arabs and Muslims?
Hardly likely, since American foreign policy is not being debated. Nor is the reality that Israel's arrogance and defiance of international law owes itself to the conviction that it would be protected by the Americans no what what and where.
Mysterious Israeli angle
There is a mysterious Israeli angle to 9/11.
On Sept.11, 2001, the Washington Times carried a report which quoted from a paper by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies which said that the he Israeli intelligence service Mossad "has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."
It was reported that nearly 130 Israelis were arrested immediately after the Sept.11 attacks. Some of them had trailed suspected Al Qaeda members in the United States without informing federal authorities and some others had indeed the opportunity of making "friends with them" since they disguised themselves as Palestinians since they could speak fluent Arabic and knew enough to pass off as Palestinians with an axe to grind against the US for its support of Israel.
Some of them lived for a period of time in Hollywood, Florida, where Mohammed Atta, identified by the US as the leader of the 9/11 suicide hijackers, and three others lived for some time before Sept.11.
Were the Israeli in touch with Atta and others? Was it possible that they posed as Palestinians and offered help and information to the hijackers? Their "handlers" could not have but known that the planned attacks would unleash a series of events that would benefit no one but Israel.
The Israeli agents were at work in the US for some time before they were questioned.
Between early 2000 and September 2001, agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had found that dozens of young Israelis falsely claiming to be art students used to visit federal offices, including those of the DEA.
The Israelis claimed to be art students offering artwork for sale and visited the homes of numerous DEA officers and other senior federal officials.
According to reports, agents of the DEA, the US Air Force, Secret Service, the FBI, and US Marshals Service documented some 130 separate incidents of "art student" encounters. Some of the Israelis were observed drawing up the inside of federal buildings and carrying photographs of federal agents. One was discovered with a computer printout that referred to "DEA group."
The Weekly Planet of Tampa, Florida, reported on April 22, 2002 that "DEA agents say that the 60-page document was a draft intended as the base for a 250-page report. The larger report has not been produced because of the volatile nature of suggesting that Israel spies on America's deepest secrets."
The Israelis visited locations not known to the public, including DEA offices not identified as such.
One Israeli was found in possesion banking receipts for nearly $200,000 in withdrawals and deposits over a two-month period.
Mystery surrounds how the US law enforcement agencies dealt with the 126 Israeli agents arrested immediately after the 9/11 attacks. But reports in the Israeli press have said that all of them were released without charges after the Israeli government intervened with the Bush administration.
Focus of debate
The ongoing debate essentially focuses on America's national security, the measures that were in place or should have been in place pre-9/11, and the responsibility of the government functionaries to have ensured the security of American people after they received specific information that attacks were being planned against them.
Seen from the Middle Eastern vantage point, it is like treating the symptoms than addressing the ailment's roots.
Why then is such a pointed direction away from the real issues as seen from the Arab and Muslim point of view and understanding? Aren't the Americans smart enough to realise that there is indeed something wrong in their government's handling of the Middle Eastern conflict? Or are they willing to accept without question the argument that the motivation for the Sept.11 attacks was Arab and Muslim intolerance or even jealousy of the way of American life?
Or that Arabs and Muslims are born terrorists who are going around the world looking for American targets to be hit simply because they hate the US for some inexplicable reason?
Lot to hide
It will be equally interesting to see how Rice, the national security adviser, who says she has nothing to hide from the investigating panel, answers the questions (if they are asked of course): Did the administration ever have the flimsiest of evidence that Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda and therefore had a role in the Sept.11 attacks?
If not, why did the president assert in January 2002 that Iraq posed a threat to the US and was poised to supply biological and chemical weapons to be used in future Sept.11-style attacks against the American people?
The former Bush counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke. has charged that the Bush administration not only failed to act in response to the threat of an impending Al Qaeda attack but also seized upon 9/11 as the pretext for launching the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In response, Rice claimed in an interview that the invasion and occupation of Iraq were part of a “broad war” on terrorism, despite the absence of any evidence that Saddam Hussein had links Al Qaeda or had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.
Rice did confirm Clarke’s charge that, on Sept.12, 2002, Bush ordered a search for a link between the assailants and the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.
According to Clarke, he responded to Bush: “Mr. President, we’ve done this before...we’ve been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind, there’s no connection.”
Bush, says Clarke, ordered: “Iraq, Saddam, find out if there’s a connection." The president implied that it was an order that Clarke produce the desired "connection."
Until the White House very magnanimously relented to Rice appearing before the investigating committee, it was argued that the administration’s rejection of the demand that Rice publicly testify is “creating the impression for honest Americans all over the country and people all over the world that the White House has something to hide, that Condi Rice has something to hide,"
Well, the people of the Middle East, particularly the Arabs and Muslims, and indeed a big chunk of the international community, do have to take "impressions." They know the administration has a lot to hide and it is the reality that it was the manipulated US foreign policy that led to 9/11 and the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Limited mandate
Indeed, the mandate of the investigating commission is carefully drafted in order to avoid an expanded mission that would take in Iraq and US foreign policy. The committee is mandated only with investigating “the facts and causes relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept.11, 2001,” and making “a full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding the attacks, and the extent of the United States’ preparedness for, and immediate response to, the attacks.”
Of course the word "causes" could be interpreted as opening the door for questions on American policy towards the Arab and Muslim worlds, but they are highly unlikely to be raised.
The hype has already been created in the US to keep the focus strictly on how the administration handled the threats to security despite warnings.
Rice has played a key role in the administration's failure to be prepared against Sept.11 despite intelligence warnings but also in the administration’s manipulation of the 9/11 disaster to prepare the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
On the first count, according to Clarke, if "Rice had been doing her job ... if she had a hands-on attitude to being national security adviser,” she would have gained critical information from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding the presence of known Al Qaeda operatives in the US and their preparations for using hijacked aircrafat as missiles.
Clarke referred to Nawaf Al Hazmi and Khalid Al Midha — two of the 19 people identified by the US as the 9/11 assailants — whom the CIA had monitored from the time they attended a a meeting in Malaysia until they entered the US. The two stayed with an undercover FBI informant in San Diego.
Had Rice been more aware of her responsibilities, she could have acted and pre-empted 9/11, Clarke argued.
"Scurrilous,” that was Rice described the allegation.
Contradictions
In a flurry of statements and media interviews she gave in order to refute Clarke's charges, Rice has contradicted herself several times.
However, such contradictions were not limited to her counterattack against Clarke last month.
In May 2002, she denied charges that Washington had ignored pre-9/11 evidence of a plot involving the hijacking of airplanes to be used as missiles.
“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use ... a hijacked airplane as a missile," she said.
However, Bush had in fact received an intelligence memo on Aug. 6, 2001 that Al Qaeda was planning a a major attack within the US using hijacked of US aircraft. Rice could not have been unaware of the memo since handling such issues is part and parcel of her job.
In September 1999, the National Intelligence Council had warned that Al Qaeda could hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings in retaliation for US air strikes against targets in Afghanistan.
“Suicide bomber (s) belonging to Al Qaeda’s Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,” the report said.
Rice, in a classified testimony behind closed doors before the investigating commission, corrected herself and said she had "mispoken." and said Clarke had himself warned of the possibility of such an attack (this was revealed by one of the commission members who was present during her testimony).
On the second count of Clarke's charges — that the Bush administration immediately sought to turn the 9/11 attacks into an apportunity to go to war against Iraq — Rice said in a public comment: “It was Afghanistan that became the focus of the American response. And Iraq was put aside with the exception of worrying about whether Iraq might try and take advantage of us in some way.”
That assertion clashes head on against a Washington Post report on Jan.12, 2003 that “six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2 1⁄2 page document marked ‘top secret'" that dealt with Afghanistan but “directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.”
In September 2002, CBS News reported that within hours of the Sept.11 attacks, “Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq.”
Both reports, and dozens similar to them in theme, have not been denied by the administration.
Another "whistleblower" was Paul O’Neill, the former treasury secretary in the Bush administration.
In the book “The Price of Loyalty" by Ron Suskind, O'Neill says that Rice had attended a Camp David meeting one week after Sept.11 where Iraq was discussed.
“It was like changing the subject —Iraq is not where bin Laden is and not where there’s trouble,” according to O’Neill. “I was mystified. It’s like a bookbinder accidentally dropping a chapter from one book into the middle of another one. The chapter is coherent in its own way, but it doesn’t seem to fit in this book.”
Indeed, O’Neill says that the Bush administration began high-level discussions of invading and conquering Iraq as soon as Bush entered the White House in January 2001.
According to his account, invasion and occupation of Iraq was decided on long before 91/11 and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were used as a pretext.
O’Neill has affirmed that war against Iraq was a top priority itesm in the agenda of the first National Security Council meeting of the Bush administration on Jan.30, 2001.
“From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out,” he said. “It was about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying, ‘Fine. Go find me a way to do this'.”
Obviously, the pro-Israeli hawks in Washington — neoconservatives as they are known — found a way to do it. But, will the Americans -- or anyone else for that matter — will ever know why 9/11 in the first place?
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