Monday, August 28, 2006

US undoing at expense of Iraqis

August 27 2006

US undoing at the
expense of Iraqis

THE looting of a military base taken over by Iraqi security forces from British troops on Thursday was the manifestation of yet another problem facing what should ideally be a smooth transfer of facilities and control from foreign forces in Iraq to the country's government. It deals a severe blow to assertions by the Baghdad government that its security forces are capable of ensuring law and order and they could gradually replace the US-led occupation soldiers.
It could be expected that opportunists would be waiting for the right chance to loot whatever is possible in any situation of armed conflict anywhere in the world. The local authorities should have taken that into consideration and sould have been prepared to counter them. The very fact that the Iraqi security forces failed to foresee the eventuality at Camp Abu Naji in southern Iraq on Thursday and that they were too few in number to ward off the looters unveils major flaws in their planning and execution of security projects such as taking control of camps vacated by foreign forces.
There have been such transfer of possession and control from foreign forces to Iraqi authorities at several bases and all of them were reported to have gone well, but then almost all of them took place in central and northern part of the country.
In the Camp Abu Naji indident, hours after the British turned over the military base to Iraqi control, looters picked the military base clean after a brief clash with Iraqi soldiers.
For many, as one of the looters reportedly told reporters at the scene, "This is war loot and we are allowed to take it."
It could be easily asserted that the US-led foreign forces are tasting their own medicine. They stood by in silence as Iraqis stormed and looted banks, museums, government buildings, presidential palaces and public and private property immediately after the fall of Baghdad and other cities of Iraq in March and April 2003. In certain cases, it was as if the foreign forces — who had little to lose from Iraqi national losses anyway — set up the places for looting under protection as a matter of exacting revenge from the ousted Saddam Hussein regime. This gave an assurance to everyone that they could get away with their crime, and the Camp Abu Naji incident fits into that pattern.
The looting also exposes the reality that the people of Iraq do not recognise military bases — like other symbols of a central authority — as an integral part of their security system and national property. Indeed, that is the overriding factor in Iraq today, with not many feeling any sense of belonging because of a resignation to what they see as the eventual collapse of whatever system that has been built so far but undermined by sectarian hostilities and guerrilla war that spare no one. The people of Iraq seem to have lost hope that there is any light at the end of the tunnel for themselves. They have seen and are continuing to witness and suffer gross violations of their human rights, with the foreign forces, mainly American, doing as they please, including massacre, rape, summary arrests, torture and animal-style humiliation.
Washington's strategists have either failed to recognise or deliberately ignored the realities on the ground except what they see as direct challenge to the US and foreign military presence in Iraq. Their vision is narrowed to fighting off the insurgency at whatever cost and installing a US-friendly regime in Baghdad, and that is proving out to be their undoing in Iraq, but with the people of that country paying a heavy price for the American shortcomings.

Israel might 'got it alone' on Iran

August 26, 2006

Israel might 'got it alone' on Iran

AT THIS POINT, the Iranian response to the Western offer of incentives aimed at persuading Tehran to stop nuclear enrichment programme is immaterial as far as the US and its allies are concerned. The only operative basis for them is the UN Security Council demand that Iran unconditionally freeze uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities by Aug.31 or face UN sanctions.
There was fear in many circles that the Iranian insistence that it would not formally respond to the Western offer until Aug.22 was linked to an expectation that Tehran would make a dramatic announcement about its nuclear programme on that day. Some pundits predicted Iran might even announce a successful nuclear test. That exepctation fizzled out, with Iran making no such announcement. Instead, it restated its refusal to bow to the US-led demand that it halt is nuclear programme and its willingness to discuss the Western offer.
Iran has moved along predictable lines, much to the satisfaction of the US, which is now rallying its allies to come up with a united position and impose sweeping UN sanctions against the country when the Security Council takes up Tehran's position.
Predictably again, the expected sanctions would be coupled with provisions that allow for military action against Iran at some point for its defiant position. The US does not seem to be ready for military action at this point, but the UN move would offer the perfect justification and cover for it whenever Washington thinks the time is ripe to strike at Iran.
That is the US script. However, China and Russia might not go along with the move for sanctions. US President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been burning trans-Atlantic wires with their European, Russian and Chinese counterparts with a view to convincing them into joining the move against Iran. It remains uncertain how Beijing and Moscow would be persuaded to do so.
On the other hand, Israel, which would feel the heat most if Iran were to successful develop its nuclear activities, is finding fault with the US for not taking immediate military action against the Iranians.
According to defence officials quoted by the Israeli newsapaper, the Jerusalem Post, the Israeli military establishment believes that the US will not attack Iran, and that Israel might be forced to act independently to stop the Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons.
The officials believe that the Bush administration does not have political support for launching a strike against Iran's nuclear sites. "America is stuck in Iraq and cannot go after Iran militarily right now," said an official quoted by the newspaper.
It is indeed true that the US is finding it more and more difficult to assemble the forces needed for its military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a military confrontation with Iran at this time would be reckless for the US military. Furthermore, the US is also seen not to possess accurate and reliable intelligence on wha exactly the Iranians are doing at their nuclear facilities.
The Israeli leadership is said to believe that Israel "could not abide" a nuclear Iran and might have to act to disrupt Teheran's nuclear programme if the international community did not act.
The prospect of Israeli action against Iran becomes all the more real in the light of the obvious consequences of a nuclear Iran even if Israel was not bombed: It would restrict Israeli options while dealing with the Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories or Hizbollah in Lebanon or the Syrians over the Golan.
The strong assumption is Israel might not wait for the US for make up its mind and take unilateral military action against Iran as the Jerusalem Post said in its aptly titled report, Israel may "go it alone" against Iran.

Fight off the snister game

August 25, 2006

Fight off the sinister game


THE hint from Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee that New Delhi is considering recalling its 775-strong unit serving in the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is the latest slap to the US-Israeli designs in the region. Beyond that, a withdrawal of the troops would also be a political move, given that the UN peace-keepers in Lebanon would be, at a point sooner than later, engaging in a war on behalf of Israel and the US.
Granted that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 does not call for UNIFIL to disarm Hizbollah. That task is left to the Lebanese army. However, the US administration is trying to push through another Security Council resolution which would "authorise" the UN force to adopt an aggressive posture and allow it to open fire in the course of "duty."
The US is also trying to expand the mandate of the UN force so that it could be deployed along the Lebanese-Syrian border. It is also a political landmine for the countries contributing soldiers to the UN force. Syria has vowed to resist the move, and, given the build-up of events in the Middle East, the situation could turn highly explosive along the lines that the US and Israel want it to be.
India enjoys a reputation of neutrality in the international scene and its participation in the UN peace-keeping operations has always been highly welcomed. There are indeed suggestions that it might not have acted wisely in the Sri Lankan crisis in the early 90s, but then the peculiarity of Indian-Sri Lankan relations was linked to those assertions.
India's willingness to contribute troops to UN peace-keeping forces was always seen as the country living up to international expectations, responsibilities and obligations. In the case of Lebanon, the task would eventually deviate from these principles. The US and Israel are trying to use the international community, including countries which have an excellent record of living up to their international responsibilities dictated by their role in the world comity of nations, to fight the US-Israeli war against Arab and Muslim resistance and thus involve them in a broader and sinister game of subduing the Middle East. This would include the UN peacekeepers being manoeuvred into a position where they would be forced to take armed action against Hizbollah and Palestinian armed groups in Lebanon in the name of upholding international legitimacy, namely implementation of UN Resolution 1559 and subsequent moves that call for disarming all non-government military forces present in Lebanon.
The Israeli objection against the participation of Muslim countries like Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia in the expanded UN force stems from its realisation that Muslim soldiers would not be ready to wage a war on Arab and Muslim forces on behalf of the Jewish state. Of course, Israel has no real say in the matter, but it would definitely have its way, given the US support it enjoys.
Some of the European countries have realised the US-Israeli game and they are also balking at sending soldiers as peacekeepers to Lebanon because they know that the troops would not be keeping peace but fighting to serve Israeli and US interests.
India should indeed be drawing its conclusion from the situation that it would be putting on the firing line the international respect it commands and the close friendship it has with the Arab and Muslim world if it allows itself to be used as a pawn by any country.
However, it is not simply enough for India to consider quitting UNIFIL. New Delhi should exert all efforts to pre-empt the UN from being exploited in order to help serve any country's drive for global supremacy and regional hegemony, and that would indeed be befitting the country which is indeed a global powerhouse in Asia.

Forcing world to act

August 24, 2006

Forcing the world to act

IT IS A great political idea to have a Palestinian national unity government, which is the central theme of a two-day Fatah Central Committee meeting that began in Amman on Wednesday that brought together some of the best-known veterans in the Palestinian liberation movement launched by the late Yasser Arafat. Indeed, things have changed a lot since the Fatah leadership met last. Those meeting in Amman face the tough challenge of shoring up Fatah itself, given the internal divisions that manifested themselves in the results of the January elections to the Palestinian parliament.
The task facing the Amman meeting is not easy, but that is not only the sole and sound option for the future of the Palestinian struggle for freedom but also the most feasible one that would confront the world with a realistic chance for peace in the vital Middle East region.
We could not agree more with Palestinian National Council Speaker and Fatah Central Committee member Salim Zanoun that a unity government is "the only way out for all Palestinian factions to face the difficulties and hardships of the present moment."
It is indeed subject to speculation how far a national unity government would be successful in breaking the current deadlock in every effort to find the right key to open the door for a negotiated solution to the Palestinian problem. However, presenting a united front on the basis of the common goal of liberating Palestine is the best option available to the Palestinians as the first step towards unscrambling the messed-up scenario in the effort for peace in the Middle East.
The fundamentals in the equation are clear: Israel has its own ideas about a solution and this falls far short of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people in terms of the rights of refugees, the status of Arab East Jerusalem and the territory that would constitute an independent Palestinian state. It does not matter to Israel who is willing to sign the agreement on the Palestinian side as long as the Jewish state does not have to make compromises on its positions and demands and as long as the Palestinian partner is capable of containing hardliners and protecting Israel from armed resistance. Indeed, it is an unrealistic approach and hence the Israeli position that it does not have a Palestinian negotiating partner.
On the Palestinian side, Hamas represents the Islamist trend which, in principle, does not have room to allow the existence of Israel in Palestine. This trend calls for an Islamic state of Palestine to be created in all the territory that constituted British mandate Palestine before 1948. Whether the call is realistic is not the key issue for the Islamists. It is their position in principle, but there are enough signals that they would be willing to made "compromises" that would allow them a starting ground. Notwithstanding all the ifs and buts, it is a dead certainty that the Hamas leadership would act with pragmatism and realism at the right time and under the right conditions.
Fateh, which represents a nationalist movement as opposed to an Islamist trend, already signed onto "compromises" when it endorsed and accepted the 1993 Oslo agreements, which put off the key issues — refugees, Jerusalem and the borders of the proposed state of Palestine — for negotiations in five years. That deadline ran out in 1998, and the Oslo agreements are now as good as dead since Israel put up obstacles at every stage of the accords' implementation and deprived them of real substance.
The other Palestinian factions, which are varyingly described as militant, hardline and moderate depending on idelogies and perceptions, fit into the overall picture. All of them want a free and independent Palestine to start with but without making compromises on the core of the Palestinians' legitimate rights.
Today, the Palestinian leadership is dominated by Hamas, which defeated Fatah in January elections in a fair and just manner, and is under an international boycott if only because it is refusing to recognise the state of Israel, give up armed resistance and accept the Oslo accords.
We don't need to go any deep into the current crisis resulting from the capture of an Israeli soldier two months ago (because it could be resolved easily within the wider context of a push for negotiated peace. Indeed, there are many other serious issues that need to be addressed, including the priority issue of the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, in that broader context).
However, in order to reach that point, the Palestinian side has to be ready and a government that represents the Palestinians as a whole is the first step towards that objective. The Palestinians have to put up a united front and deal with all issues from a point of representative authority, and a national unity government is the best means to to do so.
At the same time, Israeli hardliners are aware that Israel might not have a way out of negotiations if the Palestinians come up with a united front and they should try every trick in the book and outside it to pre-empt that eventuality.
Let us hope that the Palestinian side realises the challenges as well as the opportunities before them. Combined with the Arab initiative based on the decisions taken by the Beirut summit and reaffirmed at all subsequent Arab deliberations on efforts for Middle East peace, a united Palestinian front could force the international community, including the staunchest backers of Israel, to take a new look at the situation and act accordingly. Effectively, forming a solid common platform for the Palestinians means forcing the world's hand to act seriously towards a fair and just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict rather than letting the US trying to impose Israeli-dictated terms on the Arabs.

The US iron is hot enough

August 23, 2006

The US iron is hot enough


RUMBLINGS are getting stronger within the US in protest against the openly biased American foreign policy in the Middle East which has brought only disasters to Washington and damaged the US standing around the world. While it had always been taken for granted that there would not be any shift in the US stand behind Israel no matter how much the pressure, indications are emerging that mainstream American society has started wondering over the plus and minus points in their country's relationship with the Middle East and almost unlimited support for the Jewish state.
However, it does not mean that the Bush administration would turn around overnight and put Israel on the spot. George W Bush is described as the friendliest American president for Israel, and there is no reason to believe there could be any change in that situation while he remains in power at the White House.
The basic question raised by critics of the US alliance with Israel is why Israel's interests are given priority at the expense of American interests.
By blindly supporting Israel and going out of its way to protect the Jewish state at world forums, the US has dealt a major blow to its own interests around the world. World countries go along with US decisions and actions only because of Washington's immense financial and military clout which it uses whenever needed, most of the time to serve Israeli interests. That currency is fast running out because of overusage. In the bargain, the US has also credibility.
The world, American public included, saw how the US manoeuvred itself during the recent Lebanese crisis and offered Israel time to try to achieve its objectives in Lebanon. While the US accused Iran and Syria of supplying arms to Hizbollah, it also rushed advanced weapons and aviation fuel to Israel to help it continue its military assault on Lebanon. That was a blatant statement on where the US stood and stands in the Middle Eastern conflict.
The American financial and military assistance to Israel is also yet another key bone of contention.
The "pro-American" camp within the US is pointing out that the billions of dollars worth of aid the US sends to Israel every year could be put to better use to serve Americans themselves. They are questioning why American taxpayers's money should be spent on subsidising Israel, a country which is known not only for its aggressive designs and stubborn refusal to abide by international will but also for putting US interests on the firing line. Israel is the only country which has got away with spying in the US and with holding back vital information that could have helped Washington pre-empt disasters, perhaps even the Sept.11, 2001 attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 American lives.
In more specific terms, it is also being openly discussed in the US that Israel wants to provoke another war in the Middle East involving Syria and Iran and to let American soldiers wage the war to serve Israeli objectives. Phrases like "yet another American soldier dies for Israel in Iraq" are becoming common place in the US in an obvious recognition of the fact that the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq had as much to do with Israel's strategic goals as the American quest for unchallenged global supremacy.
American travellers are becoming increasingly aware that the reason that they are advised to avoid countries and even to hide their identity was US citizens is not that Americans are hated around the world as a rule but that their administration's misguided policy is behind the threat that they perceive.
Today, the Arabs have an opportunity to drive home to the Americans the truth that it is their administration's policy that is posing the biggest danger to themselves and that the only demand that the Arabs and Muslims have is for the US to live up to its founding principles and adopt international legitimacy, justice and fairness as the basis for its foreign policy. It is not an easy task, given the grip that the pro-Israeli camp in Washington has on American decision-making. But the Arabs have to start somewhere and the time is opportune now.

Iraq sliding deeper into abyss

August 23, 2006
THE SECTARIAN divide in Iraq has widened further with Sunday's massacre of Shiite Muslim pilgrims marking a major religious event in the capital, Baghdad. Surely, the main goal of the snipers was to fuel Sunni-Shiite hostilities and push the country further into the deep abyss of bloodshed and violence.
The questions many have in mind but are not being asked in public include: Have the Shiite and Sunni communities of Iraq crossed the point of no return? Is it possible that the communities — with the northern Kurds thrown in as the third partner — could still come back together and retain national unity? Are the wounds in the Iraqi society too deep to be healed?
The people of Iraq have lived through worse hardships and crises, but they survived as one national entity, although many of them bitterly opposed the shotgun marriage they found themselves in as a result of colonial designs. The reason that Iraq survived as a single entity — until 1991 when the Kurds broke out and set up their autonomous enclave away from Saddam Hussein's army — was that the rulers held them together through whatever it took — oppression and coersion.
People in the Middle East understood this clearly. For their own reasons, they accepted it as inevitable because any tampering with Iraq would have led to unravelling of the precarious bindings that held the country's people together as one national entity, and no one was ready to face the consequences.
Those bindings fell loose with the US invasion and ouster of Saddam Hussein from power in 2003. It has been and remains a free-for-all since then, with the occupying forces and their allies unable to make any real difference in terms of containing the insurgency. Thrown into the bargain are the international jihadists who are fighting the US and allied forces in Iraq for the sake of fighting the US wherever possible.
Today, with an average of 80 people being killed every day in sectarian strife, things do look too gloomy for Iraq to recover. Many would see the country as beyond salvation and proceeding on the way towards disintegration into ethnic enclaves. Tens of thousands would die as a result.
Efforts are indeed made for reconciliation among the people of Iraq, but no one is willing to compromise on what they consider as bottom lines for themselves. It is highly unlikely that the present US strategy of feeding whomever it finds fit to be fed and hitting whomever it finds fit to be hit would work. External and internal forces are at work which have scrambled the entire scene to an extent that it is impossible to determine who represents the genuine interests of the people of Iraq, whether Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish, or any other.
The US, which should be leading the effort for national reconciliation in Iraq, is also lost between its strategic interests and the need to stabilise the country. The Arab World could help, but only to a limited extent until such time enough trust and confidence is built between the players in Iraq and the rest of the Arab countries.
No one has any overnight solutions to the crisis in Iraq and many feel the situation may be beyond salvation and the broad goal of preventing the country's disintegration.
The only hope to preserve Iraq's national unity is through collective action of the world community and the Arab World. The world community is represented by the UN while the Arab League represents the Arab World. The US should accept that its grand designs in the Middle East have failed and should make room for a collective UN-Arab effort to succeed in Iraq. As long as the US balks at doing so, hundreds of Iraqis would continue to die every day.