Sunday, July 29, 2007

US vs Europe — new equations

US vs Europe
— new equations


THE NEW generation of leaders in Europe is definitely showing signs that they could put up a serious challenge to the implicit global domination of the United States, and this bodes well for the Middle East, which has been for long seeking a balance in the international approach to the region's crises.
There is a consensus among foreign-policy experts that Britain, France and Germany being all now under new leadership compared with four years ago, when the United States plunged it relations with Europ into their worst crisis for decades with its invasion of Iraq.
The new leaders of the three major European countries are seen to have fresh and assertive mindsets that could take them away from the US orbit, particularly given the disarray in Washington's international relations as well a domestic politics.
Indeed, the Bush administration is putting up a brave face and dismissing suggestions that the European countries are stepping into the diplomatic vacuum left by US difficulties in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
In the Middle East, the Europeans have already made their moves.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy played a key role in securing the release of six foreign medical personnel from Libya and is now involved in an intense effort to solve the political crisis in Lebanon. Sarkozy's government is also seeking the release of Myanmar's jailed democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
Sarkozy has teamed up with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in efforts to solve the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region.
Brown, who was meeting President Bush in Washington on Sunday, has also announced that he would be naming his own envoy to the Middle East in what could trigger a dispute with his predecessor Tony Blair, who was always seen as too closely aligned with Bush and who was named the international Quartet's special envoy to the Middle East.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stepped in for international action on issues like global warming, where the US has suffered badly because of its insistence on having its own way regardless of how the rest of the world feels on issues that are of global concern.
While some international experts see the European moves as making up for the major shortcomings in US foreign policy, others believe that it would only be a matter of time that the Europeans demanded their rightful role in the international scene that would supercede that of the US.
For us in the Middle East, a strengthened Europe means better prospects for a fair and just settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict and other crises in the region.
Nudged by Israel, the US has always kept the Europeans on the fringes of political efforts for peace in the Middle East, and called them in only to bankroll agreements. For long the Europeans had tried to assume a higher political profile in efforts for peace in the Middle East if only because they stand to bear the impact of all negative developments in the region.
It would seem that a door of opportunity is slowly opening for the Europeans to assume a role that befits their political, economic and military clout as well as the goodwill they enjoy among countries of the Middle East.
The Arab World could step in and accelerate the process by intensifying the ongoing Euro-Arab dialogue and setting up avenues for closer political co-operation with a view to building an international coalition that would not allow Israel to call all the shots in the Middle East through the US.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

A battle that is already

July 28, 2007

A battle that is already lost



THE US wants to handle the insurgency in Iraq the American way, enlisting friends and allies as it finds fit in order to in its bid to fight off Al Qaeda. The strategy includes forming alliances with Sunnis in the Sunni-dominated provinces and with Shiites in Shiite-majority areas. Parallel to that the US is also moving against hardline Shiite militiamen who are posing a key challenge to overall security in the country.
The US-backed Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki thinks it knows better and wants the US military to stay away from becoming friends with the Sunnis and stop recruiting Sunnis into the security apparatus without case-by-case approval by the Iraqi state intelligence apparatus. Also, the Iraqi government does not want the US military to take on Shiite militiamen alligned with Maliki's coalition partners and wants the US military commanders to keep it informed of planned operations against Shiite gunmen. It is even suggested that Maliki had advised Shiite groups like the Mahdi Army of anti-US firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr to lie low, hide their weapons and not to offer themselves as targets in the US military crackdown that was launched in February.
Maliki has reportedly told the US side that if the top US commander in Iraq, David Petraeus, continues to build alliances with the Sunnis, then the Iraqi government would arm Shiites.
With such a dramatic difference in approach and conflicting interests, it is only natural that the rift between the Maliki government and the US military is widening. The latest in growing crisis is a report that Maliki has already requested Washington to withdraw Petraeus.
On the broader front, the US administration is unhappy with Maliki because his government has not been able to meet any of the "benchmarks" that Washington has set towards meetings its objectives in Iraq.
US Ambasador Ryan Crocker faces the almost impossible task of persuading the Iraqi parliament to endorse laws that Washington sees as central pillars of a post-crisis Iraq (if ever there could be one).
Crocker's mission has acquired an added sense of urgency because he has to report to the US Congress in September on "progress" made in Iraq and explain why American soldiers are fighting and dying to give Maliki political breathing space that the Iraqi prime minister will not or cannot capitalise on.
US President George W Bush has no option but to continue to back Maliki if only because replacing the Iraqi prime minister with a more "amenable" figure and working with him to achieve the US goals in Iraq before Bush bows out of office in 18 months is not a practical idea. As such, Bush and Maliki are stuck with each other, but it is obvious that they are and remain unable to make the best of their dependence on each other.
The relationship between Washington and the Maliki government is central central to the future of Iraq and the larger Middle East. That relationship is in deep trouble now, adding yet another huge hurdle in the way of the US realising its strategic goals of its invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Words and deeds two different things

July 27, 2007

Words and deeds are different things


Last week's vote by the US House of Representatives preventing creation of permanent US military bases in Iraq and to bar US control of Iraqi oil was a strong blow to the core of the Bush administration's strategic objectives in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The motion, presented by Democrat Representative Barbara Lee of Oakland, is indeed the strongest sign yet of congressional opposition to maintaining American forces in foreign soil. At the same time, it also puts the Republicans on the spot with little option but to adopt a similar position.
The move might or might not be binding on the administration, which could use the Senate to scale down its impact. And we could expect a lot of Democrat-Republican wrangling not only on this issue but also many other aspects of the US military presence in Iraq.
But the political message is clear: The US has no business to seek a long-term presence in Iraq and the administration should not be a proxy for American oil companies to take control of Iraq's oil.
It is known that the US is building several huge military bases in Iraq with a view to keeping a 50,000-75,000-strong rapid deployment force ready to intervene anywhere in the Middle East against whatever Washington would see as detrimental to its strategic interests in the region. The massive US embassy that is being built on the banks of the River Tigris in Baghdad is an emphatic statement that the US intends to dig in its heels in Iraq.
Washington is also applying intense pressure on the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki to persuade parliament to take up and endorse a draft legislation on the country's oil. The proposed bill, which has already been approved by the Maliki cabinet, is designed to hand over control of Iraq's rich hydrocarbon deposits to foreign — read American — companies through production sharing agreements that would undoubtedly favour the foreign partner than Iraq itself. Beyond that, it would also accelerate the northern Kurds' campaign for eventual independence once they secure authority to finalise oil agreements with foreign companies on their own.
Many arguments were heard during the House of Representatives debate on the Lee motion, including pointed Republican reminders that the US should be focusing on preventing Al Qaeda from establishing "permanent bases in Iraq and using them to stage terrorist attacks" against the US" and its allies.
Proponents of that argument are basing themselves on a wrong footing. As long as the US maintains a military presence in Iraq, it would continue to attract and encourage anti-US militants to inflict as much damage as possible on the American forces. The militants would be deprived of their main raison d'être if there is no American military presence in Iraq. If anything, one of the beneficiaries of the US military presence in Iraq is Al Qaeda itself, which is finding itself being offered US targets right in the region.
Another Republican argument is that there is no such thing as "permanent" US bases outside US territory since such facilities are subject to agreements with the host countries.
All that it needs to deflate that argument is the fact that the US is maintaining military bases in South Korea for more than 54 years, and there is no sign of the American forces leaving the Korean Peninsula. The motivations and reasoning might be different but "permanent" military bases are anything but what they are.
Of course, last week's House of Representatives vote was the latest in a series of Democratic moves against the Republican administration after the Democrats eliminated the latter's dominance of Congress in last year's elections.
Surely, we would be hearing a lot more from the Democrats. As the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, put it, the Democrats are determined to "go on record — every day if necessary — to register a judgment in opposition to the course of action that the president is taking in Iraq."
Given that there is little chance of the Bush administration moving to withdraw the US military from Iraq, the world would be watching closely how the Democrats would live up to their anti-war declarations and promises when, as widely expected, when they gain control of the White House in 2009.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

ABCD of making peace in Palestine

July 25, 2007



ABCD of making
peace in Palestine


IT IS welcome news that former British prime minister and the international Quartet's special envoy Tony Blair is seeing "sense of possibility" for peace between Israel and Palestinians.
By his own admission, Blair, on his first visit to the Middle East in his capacity as the Quartet's envoy, intends at this stage "to listen, to learn and to reflect" in his talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Well, that is a good beginning as any because that posture would be an opportunity for Blair to learn of the respective positions of the two sides and explore means to advance from there and find common ground.
Surely, Blair needs no background lessons of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After all, it was Britain, wittingly or otherwise, which created the Palestinian problem in the first place and then did little to correct the injustices that were perpetrated on the Palestinians. Throughout his dealings with Middle Eastern leaders in his previous capacity as prime minister of Britain, Blair would have learnt not only about the core issues of the conflict but also the key reasons why the problem has not been solved.
For success in his Quartet mission, he should have the courage to call a spade a spade and accept that it was and is Israel's insistence that a settlement to the Palestinian problem should be at its own terms that has been and is blocking a just and fair peace agreement in Palestine. Blair should learn to deal with Israel and the Palestinians on equal footing
It would be a folly if Blair supports the Israeli argument that Palestinians are engaged in "terrorist" actions and the Jewish state "will not negotiate under fire." What Israel calls "terrorism" is a legitimate war of resistance waged by a people under foreign occupation against their occupiers. What is indeed terrorism is the Israeli state's use of its mighty military against the Palestinians in the name of quelling militancy. Israel has no right to be in the Palestinian territories in the first place and the only means for the Palestinians to oppose Israel's occupation of their land is to engage in armed resistance. It is particularly so after the experience the Palestinians had while dealing with Israel after signing the 1993 Oslo accords that laid a path towards negotiations on the final status of the occupied territories, including Arab East Jerusalem, and other issues such as the rights of Palestinian refugees. Israel has clearly established that it was not willing to concede anything substantial in return for peace with the Palestinians and that was why the Oslo process collapsed. Its refusal to dismantle the Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank is one of the clearest manifestations of its intentions to force down its own version of a peace agreement down the Palestinian throat.
Being in a position of miltiary strength and in physical control of the Palestinian territories, Israel has adopted a "take-it-or-leave-it" approach. Blair should be addressing this core point with a view to convincing Israel that there could never be a durable and fair settlement with the Palestinians if it continued to adopt this position.
Similarly, the Hamas-Fatah split in the Palestinian ranks should not be a reason for Blair to demand that the Palestinians set their house in order before moving towards peace with Israel.
That is not to say that the split among Palestinians could be easily healed. But it is an interal Palestinian affair that should be and could be sorted out among the Palestinian factions. Blair could actually facilitate the healing process by creating a situation where the Palestinians, whether Hamas or Fatah or any other group, know exactly what they would be getting in return for making peace with Israel and decide their course of action. He should be applying pressure on Israel and stay away from pressuring the Palestinians into accepting unacceptable compromises and concessions to their occupiers.
Equally important for Blair, who assumed the new mission at the insistenc of US President George W Bush, should assert his independence and steer clear of acting as a US representative seeking to impose Israeli-dictated terms on the Palestinians. Only then there is any meaningful hope for his mission for peace in Palestine.

The false facade of security

July 24, 2007

The false facade of security


THE US is planning to bribe Iraqi nationals working for the US government by granting them refugee status with a view to ensuring their loyalty and commitment to staying on in their jobs in chaotic Iraq.
This is what could be understood from a report that US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Cocker has recommended that all Iraqis working for the US government to be granted refugee status by the US.
Being formally classified by the US as refugee clears the way for those given the status to proceed to the US when the US job is done in Iraq (Of course the question remains unanswered what exactly the US job in Iraq is and what would be a realistic timeline for it to be completed).
According to a cable sent by Cocker and a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Post, if Iraqi employees were not assured of safe haven in America, they would quit, weakening the ability of the US government to make an impact in Iraq even as it tries frantically to stabilise the country.
The cable says in part that Iraqis in US government employment "work under extremely difficult conditions, and are targets for violence including murder and kidnapping. Unless they know that there is some hope of a (migration to the US) in future, many will continue to seek asylum, leaving our mission lacking in one of our most valuable assets."
There is poetic justice in the recommendation. Iraqis working for the US government — meaning the occupation military — are risking their life. They are among the first targets along with US soldiers for the insurgents, who consider them as traitors since they work for the US.
They serve as interpreters, translators, and guides in for the US military. Many serve in various capacities for the US diplomatic mission in Iraq and others are intelligence agents and informants.
Few of the Iraqis in the US payroll in Iraq would volunteer the information that they work for the occupying power. Among the prime reasons is the fear that they could be targeted for killing by insurgents. Some might also be prompted to remain silent about their jobs since they realise that they are doing something not very right as Iraqis.
No definite numbers are available on how many Iraqis would qualify for refugee status as recommended by Cocker, but they would definitely run into several thousands, many of them living in the "safe and secure" environment of the fortified "Green Zone" in Baghdad and US military camps across the country.
The US record of accepting Iraqis as immigrants speaks for itself. Some 825 Iraqis have been given migration status in the US since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and tens of thousands of Iraqi applicants are pending with the US government, which is no longer accepting applications from Iraqis who have fled the country.
Washington promised to take in some 7,000 Iraqis during the fiscal year October 2006 to September 2007, but it has processed less than 140 applications by July 2007, with little or no hope of meeting even 10 per cent of the promised figure.
In simple terms, the US authorities do not trust Iraqis, perhaps except those who work under their direct control and whose credentials have been proved to suit US purposes. One could not really find fault with this argument. Every country has to put its interests first and that is precisely the US is doing, but in Iraq it has to be done at the expense of the people of Iraq as the disastrous US occupation has proven.
One also wonders what would be the fate of many Iraqi exiles who rode back into their country atop US military tanks in 2003. Many of them had to scale down their political ambitions as the realities of post-war Iraq set in. Would they dare to stay on in post-US Iraq or would they take the first flight to safety in their plush homes in Europe and elsewhere?
The Danish government seems to have set an example for other countries with military presence in Iraq. Denmark, which has some 450 soldiers serving with the US-led coalition forces in Iraq, accepted some 200 Iraqis and their families as immigrants this month ahead of the expected withdrawal of the Danish troops from Iraq. The airlifted Iraqis used to work with the Danish military unit in Iraq.
There is indeed suspicion that the disclosure about Cocker's cable was a "planned leak" in order to send an indirect message of reassurance to Iraqis in US government payroll in Iraq without any commitment on the part of the administration.
In any event, Cocker's implicit admission that Iraqis on US government pay in Iraq need assurances of their future highlights the reality that they realise that the US would be leaving behind a chaotic Iraq, if and when it decides to quit the country and there would be no future for anyone deemed to have worked for the US occupation authorities. That also exposes their understanding that the US would not be able to stabilise Iraq and leave the country with the satisfaction that the objectives of the invasion and occupation were achieved. Had the case been otherwise, then everyone in Iraq could be expected to be assured of their safety and security in a post-US Iraq.
Wasn't it — as we heard last from Washington — for the liberation of Iraqis from the Saddam Hussein regime and democratisation of Iraq that the US invaded the country? Shouldn't it follow then that whatever the US is doing in occupied Iraq is aimed at ensuring the freedom, safety and security of the liberated people of Iraq and safeguarding their future? Why then the Iraqis who are helping the US in that mission need any reassurance of their future?
When the people who are supposed to run Iraq themselves do not have faith in the declared US drive to hand over the country to Iraqis, then one should be wondering about the whole American exercise.
No that there ever was any realistic hope that the US would be able to pacify Iraq, what with the irreversible blunders it made at the very outset of its occupation of the country. The Cocker recommendation underlines that the US would not mind turning Iraqis into Americans as along as they serve Washington's purposes in Iraq. However, given that the US purposes in Iraq have faded away from the horizon of realism, reason and logic, Washington seems to be ready to try any gimmick to hang on in the country at least until the present administration remains in office.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

With aides like these

July 22, 2007

With aides like these....

CONTRARY to mainstream media reports, it was not the US Defence Department which criticised Hillary Clinton, a senator and presidential hopeful, for seeking a formal Pentagon briefing on contingency plans for withdrawal from Iraq. It was Eric Edelman, an under-secretary of defence for planning, who sent a letter to Clinton reprimanding her for requesting information that she, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had every right and reason to seek. Clear in Edelman's reply was evidently the neoconservatives' distaste for anyone who dares to raise the issue of US withdrawal from Iraq.
It should have been Robert Gates, the defence secretary, who should have replied to Clinton's request for a Pentagon briefing. But Edelman seemed to have assumed the job for himself perhaps because he did not think his boss was up to the job of having to use the occasion to use the strongest of expressions rejecting any debate on withdrawal from Iraq. The question has not been satisfactorily answered whether Edelman had the authority to respond to a request from a member of congress, but then everything and anything goes in the neoconservative-run Washington.
A part of the letter appearing in cyberspace reads:
"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. … Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risk in order to achieve compromises of national reconciliation."
A well-constructed paragraph but its contents are deceptive.
Edelman is willing concede only that the US is "perceived" to have abandoned its allies in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia whereas the truth is that the US had no option but to cut and run from the three countries when the going got real tough. It could not care less for its allies.
As to "unnerving" of the US's allies in Iraq, Edelman sidesteps the reality that it was "the very same Iraqi allies" that nose-led the US into the disaster in Iraq if only because they wanted to topple the Saddam Hussein regime not for the sake of the country or its people but to serve their self-interests of assuming positions of power, authority and wealth. Some of them were also found to be engaged in spying for foreign governments hostile to the US.
They are indeed assuming "enormous personal risk" but not to "achieve compromises of national reconciliation" as Edelman asserts.
Of course, a cursory glance at Edelman's record would explain how he came up with these views and how he, the third man in charge at the Pentagon, took the initiative of writing a letter to a member of congress that definitely establishes him as firmly entrenched in the Republican camp.
Edelman is one of the die-hard neoconservatives. He counts among his close friends and allies fellow neocons as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz.
He served as Dick Cheney's national security adviser and, along with ex-Cheney aide Lewis Libby, was heavily involved in preparing the ground for the invasion of Iraq. He has a long record of coming up with all kinds of arguments and theories to defend the US decision to go to war and how every neocon involved in pulling the strings for war was acting in the best interests of the US.
By suggesting that Hillary Clinton was undermining national interests — many other phrases could be used as variations of the same thing — Edelman was only living true to his neoconservative identity that does not brooke criticism of whatever nature and whatever issue, least of all the decision to invade and occupy Iraq. The neocons have made sure that their allies and friends are everywhere in the corridors of bureaucratic power in Washington. They know what they are doing and they are indeed doing a good job.
It is indeed people like Edelman and his neocon bosses and friends, past and present, who are blocking any serious and objective discussion of the realities on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and preventing any meaningful move towards addressing the core roots the problems the US faces in the region.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

End of an ordeal and wave of relief

July.18 2007

End of an ordeal and wave of relief


THE DEAL that led to the commuting of death sentences handed down to five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV into life terms has sent a wave of relief across the world.
The next step in the long drawn-out affair is expected to be the transfer from Libya to Bulgaria of the six under a prisoner transfer agreement signed between the two countries in the 1980s but never used before.
It might take some time before the formalities are completed and the five Bulgarian woman and the male Palestinian doctor Ñ who has been granted Bulgarian citizenship Ñ are sent to Bulgaria to serve out the remaining term. All six have been in Libyan detention since 1999, and were twice convicted of deliberately injecting 438 children Ñ 56 of them died Ñ in a Benghazi hospital with HIV-tainted blood. The death penalty had been confirmed for a third time by Libya's Supreme Court last week.
But Libya's top legal body, the Supreme Judicial Council, commuted the death sentences to life in prison on Tuesday after the families of the infected children received money under a compensation deal with the Qadhafi foundation.
The world kept a close watch on the proceedings, particularly that it was difficult to accept that six people had ganged up to infect hundreds of children with HIV as if part of a sinister plot against the people of Libya.
Experts suggested that the HIV infections started before the medics arrived at the hospital, and are more likely to have been a result of poor hygiene, a theory that was turned down during the trials of the six.
Indeed, we have heard the six allege that the confessions they signed were taken from them under duress and that they were innocent of any crimes. They also stood trial for slandering Libyan police for alleging that they were tortured while in custody.
Now their ordeal is coming to an end, and we could expect to hear more about what went behind the scenes once the six are out of Libya.
Libya acted wisely in accepting the compromise deal under which parents of the infected children will receive $1 million per child. Had Tripoli gone ahead with the death penalty, it would have been a huge black spot against Libya at a time when it is returning to the mainstream international diplomatic scene after more than 15 years of isolation in connection with the 1988 Lockerbie bombing case.
Few around the world failed to notice the similarity of sorts between the Lockerbie case and the HIV affair. Libya settled the Lockerbie case by accepting responsibility for the bombing and paying $10 million each to the 370 victims ÑÊ359 aboard the plane and nine on the ground. Many around the world read between the lines a Libyan determination to use the HIV case to implicitly highlight its "innocence" in the Lockerbie case notwithstanding the acceptance of responsibility. It was as if Libya was telling the world that if the six medics were innocent in the HIV case, then it was also true that Libya itself was innocent in the Lockerbie case.
All said and done, the affair is drawing to a relatively happy conclusion and the chapter would hopefully be closed when the six medics leave Libyan airspace under the transfer deal in the works.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Symphony of another 'shock and awe'

July 16 2007

Symphony of another 'shock and awe'

by pv vivekanand


THE US administration has reportedly shifted back to the option of military action against Iran in the name of Tehran's nuclear programme before President George W Bush leaves office in 18 months. The shift, reported by the British Guardian newspaper on Tuesday, is seen as a triumph of the hawkish neoconservative camp working through senior administration officials headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney.
The purported losers are the relative moderates led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates who favour diplomacy and sanctions to resolve the nuclear dispute with Iran.
Scott Horton, a New York attorney an expert in international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict who lectures at Columbia Law School, pins the blame directly on Cheney.
Horton writes on www.harpers.org:
"For the dead-ender neoconservatives (and indeed, neoconservatives are by their psychology just the sort of people who make excellent dead-enders), the solution to the current dilemma Ð a catastrophic failure in Iraq, badly miscast plans in Lebanon, an increasingly angry American electorate Ñ is simple: we need a new war. Nothing focuses the mind and silences the opposition quite like a good little war, they believe. And while times may be difficult for the neocons generally, not to worry Ð they still have the key man. One man is the 'decider' on questions respecting Iran. His name is Dick Cheney."
The elements at play have not changed much during the period when talk of military action against Iran was toned down at the insistence of Rice and Gates, with never-say-die Cheney looking for the right tool to silence the call for diplomacy.
Today, the US military remains bogged down in Iraq despite the "surge" in troop strength since February with little sign that the insurgency is being brought under control let alone being fought off.
Washington accuses Iran of fanning the flames of the insurgency by supplying arms and explosives to anti-US groups in Iraq and Afghanistan and training Iraqis in guerrilla warfare. The US administration's contentions, critics say, are designed to convince Americans to accept military action against Iran on the ground that Iran is behind the killing of American soldiers.
The charges, which are rejected outright by Iran, might or might not be true. It might also be possible that non-governmental Iranian groups are involved in anti-US activities in Iraq while the Tehran regime looks the other way.
Reason dictates that Iran wants a peaceful and stable Iraq ruled by its allied groups there, but they want an Iraq without the US military hanging around. Iran fears that it would be the next target for "regime change" if the US military is able to stabilise Iraq and hence it is understandable that Tehran is not exactly very anxious to help Washington pacify the Iraqis.
Parallel to the developments in Iraq, Iran continues to defy calls for suspending its nuclear enrichment programme and implicitly dares the US to take military action. Obviously, Tehran believes Washington knows it well that the Iranians and their proxies in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere could wage a devastating defensive war against the US.
But then, concerns over how Iran would retaliate for military action might not figure much in the hard-line camp in Washington, some argue. The neocons wants the US to go to war with Iran and then let the conflict takes its own course regardless of what it might entail.
As Charlie Reese, an American journalist with 50 years of experience, observes: "The neocons are not only idiots, they are evil. They show a complete disdain for peace, a callous disregard for human life, and utter contempt for the rule of law."
Indeed, we do have in Iraq the best example of the neocon posture, which refuses to acknowledge the realities on the ground and maintains that the US should continue to absorb heavy human and material losses and press ahead with the military option. It should be stunning to the international community that a handful of such people are calling the shots for the world's sole superpower.
In the immediate context, no one seems to have accurate information on the status of Iran's nuclear programme with varying estimates of how long it would take it to build nuclear weapons despite Tehran's denials that its nuclear activities are strictly for peaceful purposes.
Israel is growing impatient by the hour to have a go at Iran's nuclear facilities because the Jewish state feels it cannot afford to have anyone in the Middle Eastern neighbourhood Ñ except itself Ñ to have even the technology that could lead to nuclear weaponisation and possibly challenge its nuclear-based military posture in the regional conflict.
Caught in the middle of the verbal fireworks are the region's countries, which are already reeling back from the direct and indirect impact of the crisis in Iraq and are anxious to avert yet another military conflict in the region.
Drowned in the din of the war of words between the US and Iran are reason and logic that call for serious and substantial dialogue to address the roots of the ever-growing US-Iranian hostility that has to do more with US policies in the Middle East than anything else.
The Iranians are no angels either. They have their own agenda, and many suspect that Tehran hard-liners have dusted off their campaign ÑÊthat was shelved because of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s ÑÊto export their "Islamic revolution" to the immediate Gulf region and beyond and thus threaten what the US considers as its strategic interests.
According to Monday's Guardian report, the Washington "moderates" prevailed over Bush until recently ÑÊand hence the freezing of military plans against Iran ÑÊbut an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department over the last month gave fresh life to the military option.
Cheney, who is known to favour military action against Iran, engineered the shift by convincing Bush by expressing "frustration" at the lack of progress in pressuring Iran and give up its nuclear programme and an assessment that diplomatic manoeuvring would still be continuing in January 2009, according to the Guardian.
"The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," according to a source quoted by the paper.
"Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo," says another source cited in the report.
"Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact," Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is quoted as saying in the report.
No one is overlooking the Israeli angle.
"The red line is not in Iran. The red line is in Israel. If Israel is adamant it will attack, the US will have to take decisive action," according to Cronin. "The choices are: tell Israel no, let Israel do the job, or do the job yourself."
However, despite the presence of a large US naval force in the region, including two aircraft carrier groups, no decision on military action is expected until next year as the State Department continues to pursue the diplomatic route. That seemed to be a concession given to the moderate camp led by Rice, the secretary of state.
As such, in the short term, efforts would be intensified for an agreement among UN Security Council members for a new round of sanctions against Iran, with Washington seeking tough measures and Russia and China favouring low-profile action.
In the meantime, the ground is being prepared for military action. The US Senate recently adopted a bill that contains an amendment deploring alleged Iranian anti-US activities in Iraq. The amendment accuses Iran of murdering American soldiers, and of committing other acts of war, and that is enough justification and implicit "authorisation" for the Bush administration to launch military action against that country.
Respected commentator Jim Lobe observes on www.antiwar.com: "It may be that the American people are opposed to another war in the Middle East: that may even be the last thing on their minds. Yet our elected 'representatives' could not care less about popular opinion, or else they would have gotten us out of Iraq last year. The lobby is plumbing for war with Iran, and the tom-toms are beating out their message of fear, intimidation, and vaunting Ñ the prelude to another symphony of 'shock and awe'."

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Right signals, wrong reading

July.12, 2007

Right signals, wrong reading

WHEN ISRAELIS start expressing "fears" of an impending war, we would better sit up and take note. But what do we do when the source of such expressions of fears is the US?
The ground for such fears have been set in recent months with a flurry of mostly Israel-origin reports that the Syrians were acquiring advanced weapons, mainly from Russia.
To us in the Arab World, the reports are indicative of Syria's fears of an Israel-launched war rather than the Syrians beginning a military conflict with the Jewish state. Damascus is exercising its sovereign right to defend itself by making sure that Israel knows well that it would have to pay a heavy price if it launches military hostilities against Syria.
There are so many reasons for Syria not to go to war, including the fact that Damascus is perfectly aware that the US/Israel combine is waiting for an opportunity to bring about forced regime change in Syria. Surely, Syria is not going to give them the opening that they are looking for.
This time around, US officials and former officials are expressing fear that a confrontation between Syria and Israel may happen this summer. Foremost among them is Dennis Ross, a former senior US Middle East peace negotiator, who was quoted by an Israeli newspaper as saying he thinks "there is a risk of war" between Syria and Israel in the summer. "The Syrians are positioning themselves for war," according to Ross, who wants the Bush administration to "squeeze the Syrian economy" by using "sticks before carrots" in dealing with Damascus.
Let us not go into debating why the US should go after Syria for the sake of Israel. It has become part of life in this part of the world that the US has undertaken not only to defend and protect Israel but also to serve Israeli interests even at the cost of US interests (That is why we have seen the US steadily losing its credibility and getting into disasters after disasters in the Middle East under advice from the pro-Israeli camp in Washington).
Interestingly, the Israeli military does not share Ross's thoughts.
Its deputy chief, Moshe Kaplinsky says that he does not believe a war with Syria is imminent.
While expressing concerns over what he describes as a growing Iranian involvement in promoting regional instability and Syrian involvement in the rearming of Hizbollah following the war in Lebanon, Kaplinksy is also convinced that the Syrian procurement of weapons and intensified military training are part of Syria's defensive measures.
For the moment, let us assume that Kaplinsky means what he says, and Ross and others in Washington are shooting in the dark. And we know that Syria would not be the one to start a war with Israel.
Against the backdrop of all talk of war, Syria have been sending clear messages that it is genuinely interested in peace with Israel; the only problem is that Israel wants peace on its own terms that would be difficult for any self-respecting country to accept, least of all Syria.
Progress was indeed made in Syrian-Israeli peace talks before they were broken off in the late 1990s but secret contacts continued off and on, but it was the US which reportedly forbade Israel from advancing on the secret track.
US President George W. Bush has shown little enthusiasm for an Israeli-Syrian peace track, casting doubt on the chances of progress.
Probably, it is time he had a second thought.
According to the UN's Middle East envoy, Michael Williams, Syria has expressed willingness to change its relationship with Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas if progress were made towards a peace deal with Israel.
The reported Syrian willingness is not contradictory to the stated positions of Damascus since making fair, just and respectable peace with Israel would do away with any necessity to have any questionable relationship.
If Israel and the US have not taken note of Williams' impressions from talks with Syrian leaders in recent months, then it is time for them to do so and take it up from there and snuff out all talk of yet another conflict that the Middle East could ill afford.