2002
THE "Bush doctrine" is at play. It is the latest and
the most dangerous yet of any American declaration of
its supremacy of the world. Officially labelled as a
national security strategy document, the declaration,
made by US President George W. Bush on Sept. 20, is,
in its bare form, is a notice to the world that it
reserves all options, notably the military one, to
strike at any country or group that it feels threatens
the US. As the overriding element, the notice says
that the US would not allow its military supremacy to
be challenged; what it does not say but what the world
has heard is also clear: the US is free to take
whatever action it finds fit against any country or
group which does not fall in line with American
interests, and the United Nations would have no
relevance in American considerations of who is at
fault, how and why. Indeed, if anyone does not like
it, please feel free to challenge the US.
The doctrine's foundation and objective are one: The
US reserves the right to to take "pre-emptive action"
against any country it deems as hostile and any group
it sees as terrorist and developing weapons of mass
destruction.
We have seen many American doctrines, starting with
the "Manroe doctrine" -- a warning issued by the firth
president of the US, James Monroe, in 1823. It
warned that the European colonial powers that “the
American continents, by the free and independent
condition which they have assumed and maintain, are
henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future
colonisation...." and declared the US as protector
of independent nations in the Americas.
In the 180 years since then, as Peter Beaumont,
foreign affairs editor of London's Sunday Observer
acutely observes, America "has moved from local to
regional and then to global superpower."
"At the end of the American Century, the United States
stands alone as the only superpower," writes Beaumont.
"The country that once challenged those renewing their
imperial ambitions in its orbit is now declaring in
this document the 'manifest destiny' of Americans to
exercise good across the world."
The 35-page doctrine, a document every US president
has to submit every year to Congress, states:
"Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the
United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive
posture as we have in the past. ... We cannot let our
enemies strike first... as a matter of common sense
and self-defense, America will act against such
emerging threats before they are fully formed.
The key element of the doctrine is an unequivocal
statement of America's right to act on its own:
"While the United States will constantly strive to
enlist the support of the international community, we
will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to
exercise our right of self-defense by acting
pre-emptively against such terrorists to prevent them
from doing harm against our people and our country."
It also rules out American tolerance of any challenge
to the US military superiority. "Our forces will be
strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from
pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing or
equaling the power of the United States," it says.
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
My say on 9/11 - one year on
THE world was horrified on Sept. 11, 2001. It watched
in disbelief the most damaging and well-orchestrated
terror attack at the most prestigious symbols of the
United States of America. One could have never
expected an assault of that nature and magnitude, and,
sure enough, it changed the shape of the world and
turned international relations into an unprecedented
course where nothing conventional remained
conventional.
The final count of the dead in New York is put at
around 3,000 -- the highest ever deaths in a single
terror attack.
It was an act whose impact, direct and indirect,
spared no one even in the remotest corner of the
earth. No other incident in history had brought out
that kind of effect on human life. But have we learned
anything from it?
Our hearts and minds went out to the victims of the
assaults in New York and Washington and of the crash
of a fourth hijacked plane in Pennsylvania and their
families. No one could help feeling a sense of grief
and helplessness over the loss of human life. It was
never without a choking feeling that we could listen
to the tragic stories of fathers, mothers, sons,
daughters, brothers and sisters who lost their lives
in the rubble of the World Trade Center towers in New
York and the Pentagon in Washington not to mention the
fiery crash in Pennsylvania.
And then came the recriminations as the US declared a
war on terrorism. Today, after Afghanistan, the
Taliban and Al Qaeda, the US is still on a
confrontational course with the Arabs as if the entire
Arab World was behind Sept. 11.
As Americans, and indeed the rest of the world,
remember the direct and indirect victims of the
Sept.11 attacks, the sole focus should not be grief
and sorrow over what happened and a growing sense of
revenge. They should ask themselves why 9/11 happened
and why it has led to a growing divide between the US
and the Arab World, with the strong relationship the
two sides enjoyed until one year ago fading into
oblivion.
It is indeed surprising to observe that few in the US
leadership seem to have given any serious thought to
the fundamentals of what had led to Sept. 11.
While there could be no justification for the Sept. 11
slaughter, it is obvious the US could not come to
terms with the possibility that something was wrong
somewhere in its policy that might have built up into
the aerial assaults.
What we witness today is a worsening situation of
anger, aggressiveness and sense of revenge prevailing
in Washington. Perhaps justifiably so when seen from
within a strictly American vantage point with little
regard to others in the world who suffer from the
fallout of misguided American policies.
But the soul-searching should start with trying to
answer the key question: Why was the US, the country
that is being looked up at by the rest of the world
for its lofty principles of freedom, justice and
dignity for mankind, the target of the biggest terror
attack?
We have even heard absurd assertions that those behind
the attacks were motivated by frustration over their
failure to reach the American level of life and
economic prosperity. Such narrow-minded concepts are
not even worthy of being dignified by any further
comment.
The real reason is in the background but will not
manifest itself in all that it entails unless the US
suspends its knee-jerk military reaction stemming from
an overwhelming sense of being wronged and of
self-indignation backed by a conviction of being
superior to everyone in the international scene.
The real reason for the growing confrontational mood
that threatens to destablise international life is
America's policy of riding roughshod over all
international norms and seeking to target those who
do not fall in line with American interests.
The continuing military ride based on the cowboy-style
"you’re either with us or against us” insistence
would only worsen the situation because the global
situation could not be narrowed down to such
simplification.
Americans should learn to make a distinction between
vengeful emotions and the cold, hard facts of modern
political history and come to grips with political,
cultural, and historical dimensions of the
relationship between the Arab World and the US.
Instead of framing the Arabs into the mold of an
eternal enemy, they should try to understand that the
Arabs were the worst sufferers from the one-track
American approach in the Middle East; and, they stand
to suffer even worse if the US presses ahead with its
designs to reshape the Middle East, starting with its
goal of "regime change" in Iraq.
Have the American public ever been given an
opportunity to reflect on the fact that an
overwhelming majority of the Arabs respect what the US
stands for in terms of principles but hold in contempt
their official policy of being blind to the state
terrorism practised by their "most important strategic
ally" -- Israel?
Have the American public ever been given an
opportunity to absorb that the Arab World is opposed
to terrorism in all its manifestations and has been
and is a partner in the US-led war on terror in all
parts of the world, but that they make a distinction
when it comes to imposition of solutions that seek to
serve strictly American and indeed Israeli interests
in the Middle East?
The first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks not be
an occasion for the Americans to work themselves into
building a rage but should be an opportunity for them
to scrutinise themselves and their place in the world
and realise that answers to these troubling questions
are within themselves.
And once they realise the true answers to those
questions, then that would be the beginning of a new
world order that would ensure justice, freedom and
dignity for all.
in disbelief the most damaging and well-orchestrated
terror attack at the most prestigious symbols of the
United States of America. One could have never
expected an assault of that nature and magnitude, and,
sure enough, it changed the shape of the world and
turned international relations into an unprecedented
course where nothing conventional remained
conventional.
The final count of the dead in New York is put at
around 3,000 -- the highest ever deaths in a single
terror attack.
It was an act whose impact, direct and indirect,
spared no one even in the remotest corner of the
earth. No other incident in history had brought out
that kind of effect on human life. But have we learned
anything from it?
Our hearts and minds went out to the victims of the
assaults in New York and Washington and of the crash
of a fourth hijacked plane in Pennsylvania and their
families. No one could help feeling a sense of grief
and helplessness over the loss of human life. It was
never without a choking feeling that we could listen
to the tragic stories of fathers, mothers, sons,
daughters, brothers and sisters who lost their lives
in the rubble of the World Trade Center towers in New
York and the Pentagon in Washington not to mention the
fiery crash in Pennsylvania.
And then came the recriminations as the US declared a
war on terrorism. Today, after Afghanistan, the
Taliban and Al Qaeda, the US is still on a
confrontational course with the Arabs as if the entire
Arab World was behind Sept. 11.
As Americans, and indeed the rest of the world,
remember the direct and indirect victims of the
Sept.11 attacks, the sole focus should not be grief
and sorrow over what happened and a growing sense of
revenge. They should ask themselves why 9/11 happened
and why it has led to a growing divide between the US
and the Arab World, with the strong relationship the
two sides enjoyed until one year ago fading into
oblivion.
It is indeed surprising to observe that few in the US
leadership seem to have given any serious thought to
the fundamentals of what had led to Sept. 11.
While there could be no justification for the Sept. 11
slaughter, it is obvious the US could not come to
terms with the possibility that something was wrong
somewhere in its policy that might have built up into
the aerial assaults.
What we witness today is a worsening situation of
anger, aggressiveness and sense of revenge prevailing
in Washington. Perhaps justifiably so when seen from
within a strictly American vantage point with little
regard to others in the world who suffer from the
fallout of misguided American policies.
But the soul-searching should start with trying to
answer the key question: Why was the US, the country
that is being looked up at by the rest of the world
for its lofty principles of freedom, justice and
dignity for mankind, the target of the biggest terror
attack?
We have even heard absurd assertions that those behind
the attacks were motivated by frustration over their
failure to reach the American level of life and
economic prosperity. Such narrow-minded concepts are
not even worthy of being dignified by any further
comment.
The real reason is in the background but will not
manifest itself in all that it entails unless the US
suspends its knee-jerk military reaction stemming from
an overwhelming sense of being wronged and of
self-indignation backed by a conviction of being
superior to everyone in the international scene.
The real reason for the growing confrontational mood
that threatens to destablise international life is
America's policy of riding roughshod over all
international norms and seeking to target those who
do not fall in line with American interests.
The continuing military ride based on the cowboy-style
"you’re either with us or against us” insistence
would only worsen the situation because the global
situation could not be narrowed down to such
simplification.
Americans should learn to make a distinction between
vengeful emotions and the cold, hard facts of modern
political history and come to grips with political,
cultural, and historical dimensions of the
relationship between the Arab World and the US.
Instead of framing the Arabs into the mold of an
eternal enemy, they should try to understand that the
Arabs were the worst sufferers from the one-track
American approach in the Middle East; and, they stand
to suffer even worse if the US presses ahead with its
designs to reshape the Middle East, starting with its
goal of "regime change" in Iraq.
Have the American public ever been given an
opportunity to reflect on the fact that an
overwhelming majority of the Arabs respect what the US
stands for in terms of principles but hold in contempt
their official policy of being blind to the state
terrorism practised by their "most important strategic
ally" -- Israel?
Have the American public ever been given an
opportunity to absorb that the Arab World is opposed
to terrorism in all its manifestations and has been
and is a partner in the US-led war on terror in all
parts of the world, but that they make a distinction
when it comes to imposition of solutions that seek to
serve strictly American and indeed Israeli interests
in the Middle East?
The first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks not be
an occasion for the Americans to work themselves into
building a rage but should be an opportunity for them
to scrutinise themselves and their place in the world
and realise that answers to these troubling questions
are within themselves.
And once they realise the true answers to those
questions, then that would be the beginning of a new
world order that would ensure justice, freedom and
dignity for all.
Sunday, September 08, 2002
Turkey eager for spoils
pv vivekanand
TURKEY seems to be preparing to claim its spoils of war even before the first shot is fired in the possible US military strike against Iraq. Its deputy speaker of parliament has suggested that the government should declare autonomy for the Turkmen community living in northern Iraq, inlcuding the oil-rich Kirkuk area.
Murat Sokmenoglu's demand was described as a response to Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani's comment that his people would "never allow Turks to take over even a millimetre" of their soil if Turkey move in to destroy a possible Kurdish state in northern Iraq, but the assertions are ominous and are signalling the shape of events to come.
Seen coupled with Turkish Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu's recent assertions that Turkey had "historic rights" to parts of northern Iraq -- including Kirkuk and Mosul -- and his demand that the US deal with the supposedly 2.5 million strong Turkmen community in northern Iraq, it would seem a certainty that Ankara would move in to make good its claims as and when the US launches military action against Iraq.
There is more to the Turkish posture. Many nationalist Turks maintain that parts of northen Iraq, including Kirkuk and Mosul, were taken away form their country (along with other areas controlled by the Ottoman empire) when Britain and France redrew the map of the region after the collapse of the Ottoman empire at the end of World War I.
The 1924 Lausanne Treaty signed by Britan, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania and when subsequently became Yugoslavia on the one hand and Turkey on the other laid out the new borders of the remnants of the Ottoman empire. While the provisions of the treaty laid out the new borders and territories of Turkey without major dispute -- except in the case of Greece -- the Turkish-Iraqi frontiers posed a problem.
The treaty put off the issue and said that the frontier between Turkey and Iraq shall be laid down in friendly arrangement to be concluded between Turkey and Great Britain within nine months from the signing of the treaty on July 23, 1924.
In the event of no agreement being reached between the two Governments within the time mentioned, the dispute shall be referred to the Council of the League of Nations, it said.
Under the treaty, the Turkish and British governments reciprocally undertook that, pending the decision to be reached on the subject of the frontier, no military or other movement shall take place which might modify in any way the present state of the territories of which the final fate will depend upon that decision.
The issue was subsequently resolved with Turkey getting little of northern Iraq and the Kirkuk-Mosul becoming part of Iraq. Turkey had no option but to accept the deal.
However, as the latest comments indicate, Turks see the potential conflict in Iraq expected to be triggered by US military strikes as an opportunity to go back in history and reclaim what they believe as theirs.
Turkey is a vehement opponent of the Kurdish dream of creating an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq bordering Turkey, Syria and Iran. Ankara fears that the entity would be the forerunner of an expanded Kurdistan that could dig deep into what is Turkish soil today and destablise Turkey, which has a sizeable Kurdish minority.
Northern Iraqi Kurds led by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan had already set up a de facto state in the region which has been outside Baghdad's control since the 1991 Gulf war.
Against the common Turkish threats, KDP leader Masoud Barzani and PUK leader Jalal Talabani were reported to have met on Saturday in the Kurdish-held region for the first time in almost two years.
The two were believed to have discussed the growing tension with Turkey and agreed to send an Iraqi Kurdish delegation to Ankara to discuss the issue and receive a similar Turkish team.
Indeed, urgency was added to the moves by the comments made by Sokmenoglu, the deputy speaker of Turkey, who lambasted Barzani as an "imprudent clan leader."
Noting that the Iraqi Kurdish groups have already a de facto state, Sokmenoglu said that "the time has come for Ankara to announce an autonomous Turkmen region" which also includes the Kirkuk area.
The war of words between Turkey and the Kurdish groups were sparked when it became clear that the US was determined to bring about a "regime change" in Baghdad, opening up the way for unpredictable consequences in the region.
Obviously, Ankara wants to pull the rug from under the feet of the Kurdish plans to set up an independent state by taking over Kirkuk, the most important oil-producing centre in northern Iraq.
Confidential reports say that Turkey has told Washington that it would not oppose an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq if it excluded Kirkuk, which would brought under Ankara's control.
The message, say the reports, was conveyed by Hussein Qifriq Aughlu, a hig -ranking officer in Turkish army, to US Assistant Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Aughlu, who was reportedly armed with maps from the turn of the century, stated clearly that Turkey would interfere directly if a Kurdish state was established including Kirkuk, "If a condition not acceptable to us developed in north Iraq, especially in Kirkuk, as the consequences of your military operations that would be very sensitive to us and I would like to inform you that we shall interfere directly in the region in case a Kurdish state with Kirkuk is established,” he was reported to have told Wolfowitz.
Washington has not made any public comment on the Turkish posture, but is is known that the US opposes most of Turkey's demands in return for support for the possible US military action in Iraq, and hence the uncertainty and latent tension between Ankara and Washington over President George W Bush's avowed goal of a "regime change" in Baghdad.
Kirkuk is the largest city in northern Iraq and the Turkmen community (also called Turcoman) calls it an "Azeri city" since a good number of the residents in the area speak the Azeri language, but they use the Arabic script and many have Arabic or Kurdish as a second language.
Turkmen are found in Erbil, Mosul/Ninawa and Deyalah provinces as well as villages southeast of Kirkuk.
The Turkmen are represented by the Turkmen Front, established in 1995 with the merger of several Turkmen political and social organisations.
The Turkmen are third largest ethnic group in Iraq after the Arabs and Kurds and have historically formed a cultural buffer zone between the Arabs in the south and the Kurds in the north.
The Iraqi constitution of 1925 granted both Turkmen and Kurds the right to use their own languages in schools, government offices and press. However, in 1972 the Iraqi government prohibited the both the study of the Turkmen language and the Turkmen media and in 1973 any reference to the Turkmen was omitted from the provisional constitution. The revamped Iraqi Constitution of 1990 states that the "people of Iraq consists of Arabs and Kurds." Kirkuk is one of the key oil centres of Iraq. The first commercial oil field in Iraq was developed in Kirkuk in 1927. Today pipelines connect Turkey to the Mediterranean ports of Tripoli in Lebanon and Yumurtalik in Turkey.
There is little doubt that Iraqi Kurds would fight tooth and nail if Turkey were to make good its threat; indeed a Turkish-Kurdish confrontation parallel to a US-led invasion of Baghad with the aim of toppling Saddam Hussein is only one of the many possible developments that would destablise the entire Middle East.
"If Iraqi Kurds seeking separation and accepted the existing crumbs without Kirkuk, most probably Saddam Hussein would have been the first one in history who recognised an independent Kurdish state," according to RM Ahmad, a Kurdish writer
TURKEY seems to be preparing to claim its spoils of war even before the first shot is fired in the possible US military strike against Iraq. Its deputy speaker of parliament has suggested that the government should declare autonomy for the Turkmen community living in northern Iraq, inlcuding the oil-rich Kirkuk area.
Murat Sokmenoglu's demand was described as a response to Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani's comment that his people would "never allow Turks to take over even a millimetre" of their soil if Turkey move in to destroy a possible Kurdish state in northern Iraq, but the assertions are ominous and are signalling the shape of events to come.
Seen coupled with Turkish Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu's recent assertions that Turkey had "historic rights" to parts of northern Iraq -- including Kirkuk and Mosul -- and his demand that the US deal with the supposedly 2.5 million strong Turkmen community in northern Iraq, it would seem a certainty that Ankara would move in to make good its claims as and when the US launches military action against Iraq.
There is more to the Turkish posture. Many nationalist Turks maintain that parts of northen Iraq, including Kirkuk and Mosul, were taken away form their country (along with other areas controlled by the Ottoman empire) when Britain and France redrew the map of the region after the collapse of the Ottoman empire at the end of World War I.
The 1924 Lausanne Treaty signed by Britan, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania and when subsequently became Yugoslavia on the one hand and Turkey on the other laid out the new borders of the remnants of the Ottoman empire. While the provisions of the treaty laid out the new borders and territories of Turkey without major dispute -- except in the case of Greece -- the Turkish-Iraqi frontiers posed a problem.
The treaty put off the issue and said that the frontier between Turkey and Iraq shall be laid down in friendly arrangement to be concluded between Turkey and Great Britain within nine months from the signing of the treaty on July 23, 1924.
In the event of no agreement being reached between the two Governments within the time mentioned, the dispute shall be referred to the Council of the League of Nations, it said.
Under the treaty, the Turkish and British governments reciprocally undertook that, pending the decision to be reached on the subject of the frontier, no military or other movement shall take place which might modify in any way the present state of the territories of which the final fate will depend upon that decision.
The issue was subsequently resolved with Turkey getting little of northern Iraq and the Kirkuk-Mosul becoming part of Iraq. Turkey had no option but to accept the deal.
However, as the latest comments indicate, Turks see the potential conflict in Iraq expected to be triggered by US military strikes as an opportunity to go back in history and reclaim what they believe as theirs.
Turkey is a vehement opponent of the Kurdish dream of creating an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq bordering Turkey, Syria and Iran. Ankara fears that the entity would be the forerunner of an expanded Kurdistan that could dig deep into what is Turkish soil today and destablise Turkey, which has a sizeable Kurdish minority.
Northern Iraqi Kurds led by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan had already set up a de facto state in the region which has been outside Baghdad's control since the 1991 Gulf war.
Against the common Turkish threats, KDP leader Masoud Barzani and PUK leader Jalal Talabani were reported to have met on Saturday in the Kurdish-held region for the first time in almost two years.
The two were believed to have discussed the growing tension with Turkey and agreed to send an Iraqi Kurdish delegation to Ankara to discuss the issue and receive a similar Turkish team.
Indeed, urgency was added to the moves by the comments made by Sokmenoglu, the deputy speaker of Turkey, who lambasted Barzani as an "imprudent clan leader."
Noting that the Iraqi Kurdish groups have already a de facto state, Sokmenoglu said that "the time has come for Ankara to announce an autonomous Turkmen region" which also includes the Kirkuk area.
The war of words between Turkey and the Kurdish groups were sparked when it became clear that the US was determined to bring about a "regime change" in Baghdad, opening up the way for unpredictable consequences in the region.
Obviously, Ankara wants to pull the rug from under the feet of the Kurdish plans to set up an independent state by taking over Kirkuk, the most important oil-producing centre in northern Iraq.
Confidential reports say that Turkey has told Washington that it would not oppose an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq if it excluded Kirkuk, which would brought under Ankara's control.
The message, say the reports, was conveyed by Hussein Qifriq Aughlu, a hig -ranking officer in Turkish army, to US Assistant Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Aughlu, who was reportedly armed with maps from the turn of the century, stated clearly that Turkey would interfere directly if a Kurdish state was established including Kirkuk, "If a condition not acceptable to us developed in north Iraq, especially in Kirkuk, as the consequences of your military operations that would be very sensitive to us and I would like to inform you that we shall interfere directly in the region in case a Kurdish state with Kirkuk is established,” he was reported to have told Wolfowitz.
Washington has not made any public comment on the Turkish posture, but is is known that the US opposes most of Turkey's demands in return for support for the possible US military action in Iraq, and hence the uncertainty and latent tension between Ankara and Washington over President George W Bush's avowed goal of a "regime change" in Baghdad.
Kirkuk is the largest city in northern Iraq and the Turkmen community (also called Turcoman) calls it an "Azeri city" since a good number of the residents in the area speak the Azeri language, but they use the Arabic script and many have Arabic or Kurdish as a second language.
Turkmen are found in Erbil, Mosul/Ninawa and Deyalah provinces as well as villages southeast of Kirkuk.
The Turkmen are represented by the Turkmen Front, established in 1995 with the merger of several Turkmen political and social organisations.
The Turkmen are third largest ethnic group in Iraq after the Arabs and Kurds and have historically formed a cultural buffer zone between the Arabs in the south and the Kurds in the north.
The Iraqi constitution of 1925 granted both Turkmen and Kurds the right to use their own languages in schools, government offices and press. However, in 1972 the Iraqi government prohibited the both the study of the Turkmen language and the Turkmen media and in 1973 any reference to the Turkmen was omitted from the provisional constitution. The revamped Iraqi Constitution of 1990 states that the "people of Iraq consists of Arabs and Kurds." Kirkuk is one of the key oil centres of Iraq. The first commercial oil field in Iraq was developed in Kirkuk in 1927. Today pipelines connect Turkey to the Mediterranean ports of Tripoli in Lebanon and Yumurtalik in Turkey.
There is little doubt that Iraqi Kurds would fight tooth and nail if Turkey were to make good its threat; indeed a Turkish-Kurdish confrontation parallel to a US-led invasion of Baghad with the aim of toppling Saddam Hussein is only one of the many possible developments that would destablise the entire Middle East.
"If Iraqi Kurds seeking separation and accepted the existing crumbs without Kirkuk, most probably Saddam Hussein would have been the first one in history who recognised an independent Kurdish state," according to RM Ahmad, a Kurdish writer
Thursday, September 05, 2002
Bush-Bin Laden links
PV Vivekanand
The Sept.11 saga has been given a dramatically new twist by a report that four airplanes carrying Saudi nationals, including several members of the mainstream Bin Laden family, were allowed to fly out of the United States two days after the aerial attacks in New York and Washington when US airspace was closed for passenger traffic and flights required special permission from the authorities.
The report, carried by the American magazine Vanity Fair, raises questions about the Bush family's close relationship with the Saudis, and Saudi investments in the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm where former Secretary of State James Baker is a senior counsellor and former president George HW Bush is senior adviser.
The implication in the article is that the Bush administration, influenced by personal connections as well as the diplomatic clout that the Saudi ambassador to Washington enjoyed, allowed members of the Saudi ruling family and others close to them as well as members of the mainstream Bin Laden family -- which had disowned Osama Bin Laden -- to leave the US. They appeared to be in a hurry to the US following the Sept.11 attacks when it was slowly emerging that at least some of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudi nationals.
The question is raised in the article itself:
"How was it possible that, just as President Bush declared a no-holds-barred global war on terror that would send hundreds of thousands of troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, and just as Osama Bin Laden became public enemy number one and the target of a worldwide manhunt, the White House would expedite the departure of so many potential witnesses, incluidng two dozen relatives of the man behind the attack itself?"
However, there is no suggestion that any of those who left had anything to do with the Sept.11 attacks, but that they might had had an inkling that they could face questioning by American authorities in view of their association, even by acquaintance, with any of the hijackers.
At the same time, two cousins of Osama Bin Laden had a record of affiliation with a Muslim organisation in the US; again, there is no suggestion or evidence that this group had any links with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, which is blamed for the Sept.11 attack.
The article appearing in this week's Vanity Fair quotes former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke as saying that the Bush administration allowed the flights carrying up to 140 Saudis to leave the US without being interviewed or interrogated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Every passenger plane leaving the US after Sept.11 had to have special permission to take off, but in the case of the four planes were given special clearance by top officials, and the FBI was not involved at all, says the article.
Vanity Fair said the White House had declined comment on the report, but it quoted a a source insidethe White House as saying that there no evidence to suggest that the White House ever authorised such flights.
According to Vanity Fair write Craig Unger, private detective and former Florida police officer Dan Grossi had received a call on Sept.13 asking him to escort Saudi students on a flight from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky, even though private planes were still grounded in the aftermath of the attacks.
"I was told it would take White House approval," Unger quotes Grossi as saying. However, t when the plane's pilot showed up, they took off.
In the report, Clarke says he chaired a crisis group — the Counterterrorism Security Group of the National Security Council — at the White House andits meering were attended by Vice President Dick Cheney and National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA director George Tenet and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "came and went."
"Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, leave the country," Clarke is quoted as saying.
"My role was to say that it can't happen until the FBI approves it. And so the FBI. was asked — we had a live connection to the FBI — and we asked the FBI to make sure that they were satisfied that everybody getting on that plane was someone . . okay.. to leave. And they came back and said yes, it was fine with them. So we said, 'Fine, let it happen. . . . I asked them if they had any objection to the entire event-to Saudis leaving the country at a time when aircraft were banned from flying."
Clarke, who is now working for the private sector, could not recall who had asked him for approval but said it was probably the FBI or the State Department.
Both the FBI and the State Department denied that the request came from them.
Vanity Fair quoted a State Department source as implying that Saudi Arabian Ambasasdor to the US Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, one of the most influential foreign diplomats in Washington, could have obtained permission for the flights from authorities higher than the State Department, meaning the White House.
"The likes of Prince Bandar does not need the State Department to get this done," the source told the magazine. According to Saudi Arabia's director of information, Nail Al Jubeir, the flights had been requested by the Saudis and were authorised "at the highest level of the US government."
Following is a part of a a verbatim summary of the report provided by Vanity Fair.
Quote:
After the September 11 attacks, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, was in Washington orchestrating the exodus of about 140 Saudis scattered throughout the country who were members of, or close to, the House of Saud, which rules Saudi Arabia, and the Bin Laden family.
By coincidence, even before the attacks, Bandar had been scheduled to meet President Bush in the White House on Sept.13, 2001, to discuss the Middle East peace process.
The meeting took place as planned.
Nail Al Jubeir tells Unger that he does not know if Bandar and the president discussed getting the bin Ladens and other Saudis back to Saudi Arabia.
Some Saudis tried to get their planes to leave before the F.B.I. had even identified who was on them, Unger reports. "I recall getting into a big flap with Bandar's office about whether they would leave without us knowing who was on the plane," an FBI agent says.
"Bandar wanted the plane to take off, and we were stressing that the plane was not leaving until we knew exactly who was on it."
Dale Watson, the FBI's former head of counterterrorism, tells Unger that while the Saudis were identified, "they were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations."
The bureau has declined to release the Saudis' identities.
The wealthy Bin Laden family long ago broke with their terrorist brother, Osama, but Unger reports that some members of the family have had links to militant Islam.
Abdullah and Omar Bin Laden had been under FBI investigation for their involvement with the American branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which has published writings by one of Osama bin Laden's principal intellectual influences.
According to documents obtained by the Public Education Center in Washington, the file on Abdullah and Omar was reopened on Sept.19, 2001, while the Saudi repatriation was under way. A security official who served under George W. Bush tells Unger,
"WAMY was involved in terrorist-support activity. There's no doubt about it."
The Saudis' planes took off from or landed in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Houston, Cleveland, Orlando, Tampa, Lexington, Kentucky-and Newark and Boston, both of which had been points of origin for the Sept.11 attacks.
"We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history," Tom Kinton, director of aviation at Boston's Logan airport, tells Unger, "and here we were seeing an evacuation of the Bin Ladens! . . .
"I wanted to go to the highest authorities in Washington. This was a call for them. But this was not just some mystery flight dropping into Logan. It had been to three major airports already, and we were the last stop. It was known. The federal authorities knew what it was doing. And we were told to let it come."
"I asked [the FBI] to make sure that no one inappropriate was leaving," Clarke tells Unger.
Clarke assumed the FBI had vetted the bin Ladens prior to Sept. 11. "I have no idea if they did a good job. I'm not in any position to second-guess the FBI."
Prince Bandar has had a 20-year friendship with former president George HW Bush.
Unger questions whether the long-standing Bush-Saudi relationship could have influenced the administration. The latest in a line of business links between the Bush family and the Saudis involves the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm for which George HW Bush is a senior advisor and former secretary of state James Baker III is a senior counsellor.
The Carlyle Group has received $80 million in Saudi investment, Unger reports, including $2 million from the Bin Ladens which was returned to them after Sept.11.
In 1995, Abdulrahman and Sultan Bin Mahfouz invested "in the neighbourhood of $30 million" in the Carlyle Group, according to family attorney Cherif Sedky.
Abdulrahman Bin Mafouz was a director of the Muwafaq Foundation, which has been designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as "an Al Qaeda front." (Carlyle categorically denies that the Bin Mahfouzes are now or have ever been investors.) Clarke believes the decision to let the Saudis go was made because "there's a realisation that we have to work with the government we've got in Saudi Arabia. The alternatives could be far worse. The most likely replacement to the House of Saud is likely to be more hostile-in fact, extremely hostile-to the US."
Unquote...
The Sept.11 saga has been given a dramatically new twist by a report that four airplanes carrying Saudi nationals, including several members of the mainstream Bin Laden family, were allowed to fly out of the United States two days after the aerial attacks in New York and Washington when US airspace was closed for passenger traffic and flights required special permission from the authorities.
The report, carried by the American magazine Vanity Fair, raises questions about the Bush family's close relationship with the Saudis, and Saudi investments in the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm where former Secretary of State James Baker is a senior counsellor and former president George HW Bush is senior adviser.
The implication in the article is that the Bush administration, influenced by personal connections as well as the diplomatic clout that the Saudi ambassador to Washington enjoyed, allowed members of the Saudi ruling family and others close to them as well as members of the mainstream Bin Laden family -- which had disowned Osama Bin Laden -- to leave the US. They appeared to be in a hurry to the US following the Sept.11 attacks when it was slowly emerging that at least some of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudi nationals.
The question is raised in the article itself:
"How was it possible that, just as President Bush declared a no-holds-barred global war on terror that would send hundreds of thousands of troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, and just as Osama Bin Laden became public enemy number one and the target of a worldwide manhunt, the White House would expedite the departure of so many potential witnesses, incluidng two dozen relatives of the man behind the attack itself?"
However, there is no suggestion that any of those who left had anything to do with the Sept.11 attacks, but that they might had had an inkling that they could face questioning by American authorities in view of their association, even by acquaintance, with any of the hijackers.
At the same time, two cousins of Osama Bin Laden had a record of affiliation with a Muslim organisation in the US; again, there is no suggestion or evidence that this group had any links with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, which is blamed for the Sept.11 attack.
The article appearing in this week's Vanity Fair quotes former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke as saying that the Bush administration allowed the flights carrying up to 140 Saudis to leave the US without being interviewed or interrogated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Every passenger plane leaving the US after Sept.11 had to have special permission to take off, but in the case of the four planes were given special clearance by top officials, and the FBI was not involved at all, says the article.
Vanity Fair said the White House had declined comment on the report, but it quoted a a source insidethe White House as saying that there no evidence to suggest that the White House ever authorised such flights.
According to Vanity Fair write Craig Unger, private detective and former Florida police officer Dan Grossi had received a call on Sept.13 asking him to escort Saudi students on a flight from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky, even though private planes were still grounded in the aftermath of the attacks.
"I was told it would take White House approval," Unger quotes Grossi as saying. However, t when the plane's pilot showed up, they took off.
In the report, Clarke says he chaired a crisis group — the Counterterrorism Security Group of the National Security Council — at the White House andits meering were attended by Vice President Dick Cheney and National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA director George Tenet and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "came and went."
"Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, leave the country," Clarke is quoted as saying.
"My role was to say that it can't happen until the FBI approves it. And so the FBI. was asked — we had a live connection to the FBI — and we asked the FBI to make sure that they were satisfied that everybody getting on that plane was someone . . okay.. to leave. And they came back and said yes, it was fine with them. So we said, 'Fine, let it happen. . . . I asked them if they had any objection to the entire event-to Saudis leaving the country at a time when aircraft were banned from flying."
Clarke, who is now working for the private sector, could not recall who had asked him for approval but said it was probably the FBI or the State Department.
Both the FBI and the State Department denied that the request came from them.
Vanity Fair quoted a State Department source as implying that Saudi Arabian Ambasasdor to the US Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, one of the most influential foreign diplomats in Washington, could have obtained permission for the flights from authorities higher than the State Department, meaning the White House.
"The likes of Prince Bandar does not need the State Department to get this done," the source told the magazine. According to Saudi Arabia's director of information, Nail Al Jubeir, the flights had been requested by the Saudis and were authorised "at the highest level of the US government."
Following is a part of a a verbatim summary of the report provided by Vanity Fair.
Quote:
After the September 11 attacks, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, was in Washington orchestrating the exodus of about 140 Saudis scattered throughout the country who were members of, or close to, the House of Saud, which rules Saudi Arabia, and the Bin Laden family.
By coincidence, even before the attacks, Bandar had been scheduled to meet President Bush in the White House on Sept.13, 2001, to discuss the Middle East peace process.
The meeting took place as planned.
Nail Al Jubeir tells Unger that he does not know if Bandar and the president discussed getting the bin Ladens and other Saudis back to Saudi Arabia.
Some Saudis tried to get their planes to leave before the F.B.I. had even identified who was on them, Unger reports. "I recall getting into a big flap with Bandar's office about whether they would leave without us knowing who was on the plane," an FBI agent says.
"Bandar wanted the plane to take off, and we were stressing that the plane was not leaving until we knew exactly who was on it."
Dale Watson, the FBI's former head of counterterrorism, tells Unger that while the Saudis were identified, "they were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations."
The bureau has declined to release the Saudis' identities.
The wealthy Bin Laden family long ago broke with their terrorist brother, Osama, but Unger reports that some members of the family have had links to militant Islam.
Abdullah and Omar Bin Laden had been under FBI investigation for their involvement with the American branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which has published writings by one of Osama bin Laden's principal intellectual influences.
According to documents obtained by the Public Education Center in Washington, the file on Abdullah and Omar was reopened on Sept.19, 2001, while the Saudi repatriation was under way. A security official who served under George W. Bush tells Unger,
"WAMY was involved in terrorist-support activity. There's no doubt about it."
The Saudis' planes took off from or landed in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Houston, Cleveland, Orlando, Tampa, Lexington, Kentucky-and Newark and Boston, both of which had been points of origin for the Sept.11 attacks.
"We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history," Tom Kinton, director of aviation at Boston's Logan airport, tells Unger, "and here we were seeing an evacuation of the Bin Ladens! . . .
"I wanted to go to the highest authorities in Washington. This was a call for them. But this was not just some mystery flight dropping into Logan. It had been to three major airports already, and we were the last stop. It was known. The federal authorities knew what it was doing. And we were told to let it come."
"I asked [the FBI] to make sure that no one inappropriate was leaving," Clarke tells Unger.
Clarke assumed the FBI had vetted the bin Ladens prior to Sept. 11. "I have no idea if they did a good job. I'm not in any position to second-guess the FBI."
Prince Bandar has had a 20-year friendship with former president George HW Bush.
Unger questions whether the long-standing Bush-Saudi relationship could have influenced the administration. The latest in a line of business links between the Bush family and the Saudis involves the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm for which George HW Bush is a senior advisor and former secretary of state James Baker III is a senior counsellor.
The Carlyle Group has received $80 million in Saudi investment, Unger reports, including $2 million from the Bin Ladens which was returned to them after Sept.11.
In 1995, Abdulrahman and Sultan Bin Mahfouz invested "in the neighbourhood of $30 million" in the Carlyle Group, according to family attorney Cherif Sedky.
Abdulrahman Bin Mafouz was a director of the Muwafaq Foundation, which has been designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as "an Al Qaeda front." (Carlyle categorically denies that the Bin Mahfouzes are now or have ever been investors.) Clarke believes the decision to let the Saudis go was made because "there's a realisation that we have to work with the government we've got in Saudi Arabia. The alternatives could be far worse. The most likely replacement to the House of Saud is likely to be more hostile-in fact, extremely hostile-to the US."
Unquote...
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Lockerbie mystery added or unveiled
by pv vivekanand
CONTENTIONS that Sabri Al Banna, or Abu Nidal, was behind the 1998 mid-air bombing of an American airliner that killed 270 people and for which a Libyan is serving a life sentence in Scotland have thrown a new element to the never-say-die speculation about who was actually responsible for the blast.
The special trial of two Libyans held in the Netherlands under Scottish laws as a compromise to end the crisis between Libya, which was accused of masterminding the attack, and the UN and the conviction of an alleged Libyan intelligence agent have never really convinced many since many questions were never answered during the trial.
Similarly, the claim by Atef Abu Bakr, a one-time Abu Nidal associate, that the leader of the Fateh Revolutionary Group had told his followers that his group was behind the blast has not been substantiated by any physical evidence. If anything, it raises more questions, and, if true, pulls the rug from under the feet of the very elaborate process of the trial, conviction, appeal and reaffirmation of the verdict in the case.
At this stage, Abu Bakr's revelation is simple hearsay and, if we accept it as true, it could even be construed as Abu Nidal's way of impressing upon his people he could pull such meticulous operation as organising the bombing of an aircraft of a high-security-minded American airline and getting away with it.
However, it does not preclude the possibility that the Abu Nidal group had indeed planted the explosives that ripped PanAm flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in the night of Dec.22, 1988. The blast killed 259 people aboard the flight and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie.
What we have now is only Abu Bakr's "revelation" that his former boss, who was reportedly either shot dead or committed suicide in Baghdad two weeks ago, had claimed that he was behind the attack.
"Abu Nidal told a ... meeting of the Revolutionary Council leadership: I have very important and serious things to say. The reports that attribute Lockerbie (bombing) to others are lies. We are behind it," Abu Bakr was quoted as saying in an interview with the London-based Al Hayat daily.
He said Abu Nidal threatened those present against speaking of the group's responsibility for the bombing.
"If any one of you lets this (word) out, I will kill him even if he was in his wife's arms," Abu Bakr quoted Abu Nidal as saying.
The apparent contradiction in Abu Bakr's account is clear: Abu Nidal was never known to have dealt directly with any of his henchmen and always used his close lieutenants to direct operations and convey his "instructions." As such, it seems doubtful that the four people that Abu Bakr says were present when Abu Nidal made the claim were being told of such a major operation for the first time and that too after it took place -- unless of course Abu Bakr was speaking part truth with a view to disassociating himself and the others, whoever they are, from the blast.
In any case, it clearly indicates that there is much more to the episode than Abu Bakr's version carried by Al Hayat.
Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed Al Megrahi is serving a life sentence in Glasgow's Barlinnie prison after being convicted of having planted the explosives aboard Flight 103.
Megrahi was convicted by a special court in the Netherlands in 2000. The court acquitted another Libyan. In March this year, a Scottish appeals court upheld the conviction of Megrahi.
Why the revelation of the alleged Abu Nidal link with the bombing at this juncture in time?
An argument that it was made following Abu Nidal's death that removed the risk of his threat appeared to have been quashed when Ghassan Sharbal, Al Hayat's assistant editor who conducted the interview, said he spoke to Abu Bakr before Abu Nidal's death was "reported."
There were two other instances when Abu Nidal's group was linked to the Pan Am blast, but both times the assertions never sparked a serious independent inquiry.
Shortly after the Dec.21/22 bombing, the US State Department said that the US embassy in Helsinki, Finland, had received a call 16 days before the blast from a man who claimed to be an Abu Nidal agent and warned that there would be a bombing attempt within two weeks against a Pan Am aircraft flying from Frankfurt to the United States.
The finding of the inevitable US investigation that would have followed was never revealed, and the claimed Abu Nidal connection appeared to have died a natural death as far as public State Department comments on the issue were concerned.
In 1996, a self-confessed Abu Nidal agent standing trial for the 1994 murder of senior Jordanian diplomat Naeb Imran Maaytah in Beirut told the court that the Abu Nidal group was behind the blast and he was part of the operation.
That claim was rejected as a ruse to get Libya off the hook, with the media speculating that the man stood to lose nothing by making the claim. If anything, went the speculation, he was already headed for prison after confessing to the Jordanian diplomat's killing and he had made the claim in return for a large amount paid to his family by Libya.
What is no clear at this point is what motive Abu Nidal had to blow up the plane except the conventional argument that the avowed anti-West hard-liner simply wanted to make another attack against Westerners and that it was his way of registering his opposition to US efforts to involve the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in indirect peace negotiations with Israel.
The revelation of the Abu Nidal connection to the blast comes amid reports that Libya is considering making an announcement that it accepts "general responsibility" for the bombing of Flight 103, and is now ready "in principle" to take steps to compensate the relatives of the 270 victims.
These two steps would pave the way for the formal lifting of United Nations sanctions against Libya.
Tripoli has made no comment on Abu Bakr's assertions.
Libya reportedly hosted Abu Nidal around the time of the bombing after he was expelled from Iraq in 1993 and from Syria in 1987.
Libya, which was under intense international pressure over Lockerbie, asked him to leave the country in 1999 after he reportedly went on a spree of "eliminating" dozens of followers whom he did not trust.
At one point, Atef Abu Bakr himself was quoted as saying that Abu Nidal buried the bodies under and around the villa where he was staying in Libya. It was also alleged that he had employed some of his people to "spy" on Libya and this had infuriated Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi into expelling him.
If media accounts were true, he was in Egypt for some time after leaving Libya and then slipped out of the country to Iran and entered Iraq across the border.
If indeed Abu Nidal was behind the PanAm bombing, it is then highly unlikely that Libya was not aware of it. And if Libya was aware it, why did Tripoli use that information at least to lay a red herring in the trial that was held in the Netherlands in 2000, after Abu Nidal had left Libya?
Lawyers for the two Libyans who were tried at the specially set up Scottish court in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands suggested that the Syria-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) could have been behind the bombing. What stopped them from pointing the finger at Abu Nidal if they could have done so at the PFLP-GC?
In London, senior Labour Member of parliament Dalyell, who had consistently insisted that Abu Nidal was responsible for the blast, has renewed his demand for a investigation into the affair. Dalyell has long argued that the Libyans were not behind the attack and now he says the Foreign Office must now investigate Abu Bakr's claims "as a matter of the utmost urgency."
"If these allegations are true they blow everything relating to Lockerbie out of the water, including the trial in Holland," he said last week.
The Scottish prosecutors' office has dismissed Abu Bakr's claim. But then that was only expected since acknowledging that anyone other than the convicted Libyan -- and by extension Libya -- could be responsible for the blast would demolish their credibility.
"We deal, and have dealt with, evidence not rumour or speculation, especially about allegedly dead terrorists," an unidentified Scottish Crown Office spokeswoman was quoted as saying in response to Abu Bakr's comments.
Not many have accepted as true the prosecution version of the case, and Western and Arab legal experts have asserted that the court overlooked several strong indicators that someone other than the convicted Libyan was behind the blast.
What could establish or at least throw some light into the mystery of the blast could be an independent investigation authorised and backed by the British government in co-ordination with other European and Arab governments and agencies.
But London has consistently rejected MPs' calls for such an investigation, and there is little sign that the Blair government would change it mind after Abu Bakr made the claim.,
Even Members of the UK Families Flight 103 say many important questions remain unanswered. They are demanding to know the motive behind the bombing, why it was not prevented and why it had taken 13 years to investigate the case and to conclude legal proceedings.
The demand was warded off by the government until Megrahi's appeal, with the argument that a wide-ranging inquiry had not been possible because it could have jeopardised a criminal trial, and families of the blast victims say that now that the trial and appeal have been concluded, the reasons for postponing any further inquiries have been removed.
Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the Lockerbie explosion, has said the trial in the Netherlands only considered the guilt or innocence of the defendants, and the court's conclusion that Megrahi was involved did not mean Abu Nidal might not also have participated.
"In my view, in those days most of the groups knew what the other groups were doing," said Swire, a spokesman for the UK Families Flight 103 Group. "Abu Nidal in those days was in Tripoli. ... I think it's likely he would have known what was going on but I have no way of knowing" whether he was behind the bombing.
And it is unlikely that anyone would know either unless Abu Bakr or someone else speaks up and tears down the veil of mystery over the blast.
CONTENTIONS that Sabri Al Banna, or Abu Nidal, was behind the 1998 mid-air bombing of an American airliner that killed 270 people and for which a Libyan is serving a life sentence in Scotland have thrown a new element to the never-say-die speculation about who was actually responsible for the blast.
The special trial of two Libyans held in the Netherlands under Scottish laws as a compromise to end the crisis between Libya, which was accused of masterminding the attack, and the UN and the conviction of an alleged Libyan intelligence agent have never really convinced many since many questions were never answered during the trial.
Similarly, the claim by Atef Abu Bakr, a one-time Abu Nidal associate, that the leader of the Fateh Revolutionary Group had told his followers that his group was behind the blast has not been substantiated by any physical evidence. If anything, it raises more questions, and, if true, pulls the rug from under the feet of the very elaborate process of the trial, conviction, appeal and reaffirmation of the verdict in the case.
At this stage, Abu Bakr's revelation is simple hearsay and, if we accept it as true, it could even be construed as Abu Nidal's way of impressing upon his people he could pull such meticulous operation as organising the bombing of an aircraft of a high-security-minded American airline and getting away with it.
However, it does not preclude the possibility that the Abu Nidal group had indeed planted the explosives that ripped PanAm flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in the night of Dec.22, 1988. The blast killed 259 people aboard the flight and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie.
What we have now is only Abu Bakr's "revelation" that his former boss, who was reportedly either shot dead or committed suicide in Baghdad two weeks ago, had claimed that he was behind the attack.
"Abu Nidal told a ... meeting of the Revolutionary Council leadership: I have very important and serious things to say. The reports that attribute Lockerbie (bombing) to others are lies. We are behind it," Abu Bakr was quoted as saying in an interview with the London-based Al Hayat daily.
He said Abu Nidal threatened those present against speaking of the group's responsibility for the bombing.
"If any one of you lets this (word) out, I will kill him even if he was in his wife's arms," Abu Bakr quoted Abu Nidal as saying.
The apparent contradiction in Abu Bakr's account is clear: Abu Nidal was never known to have dealt directly with any of his henchmen and always used his close lieutenants to direct operations and convey his "instructions." As such, it seems doubtful that the four people that Abu Bakr says were present when Abu Nidal made the claim were being told of such a major operation for the first time and that too after it took place -- unless of course Abu Bakr was speaking part truth with a view to disassociating himself and the others, whoever they are, from the blast.
In any case, it clearly indicates that there is much more to the episode than Abu Bakr's version carried by Al Hayat.
Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed Al Megrahi is serving a life sentence in Glasgow's Barlinnie prison after being convicted of having planted the explosives aboard Flight 103.
Megrahi was convicted by a special court in the Netherlands in 2000. The court acquitted another Libyan. In March this year, a Scottish appeals court upheld the conviction of Megrahi.
Why the revelation of the alleged Abu Nidal link with the bombing at this juncture in time?
An argument that it was made following Abu Nidal's death that removed the risk of his threat appeared to have been quashed when Ghassan Sharbal, Al Hayat's assistant editor who conducted the interview, said he spoke to Abu Bakr before Abu Nidal's death was "reported."
There were two other instances when Abu Nidal's group was linked to the Pan Am blast, but both times the assertions never sparked a serious independent inquiry.
Shortly after the Dec.21/22 bombing, the US State Department said that the US embassy in Helsinki, Finland, had received a call 16 days before the blast from a man who claimed to be an Abu Nidal agent and warned that there would be a bombing attempt within two weeks against a Pan Am aircraft flying from Frankfurt to the United States.
The finding of the inevitable US investigation that would have followed was never revealed, and the claimed Abu Nidal connection appeared to have died a natural death as far as public State Department comments on the issue were concerned.
In 1996, a self-confessed Abu Nidal agent standing trial for the 1994 murder of senior Jordanian diplomat Naeb Imran Maaytah in Beirut told the court that the Abu Nidal group was behind the blast and he was part of the operation.
That claim was rejected as a ruse to get Libya off the hook, with the media speculating that the man stood to lose nothing by making the claim. If anything, went the speculation, he was already headed for prison after confessing to the Jordanian diplomat's killing and he had made the claim in return for a large amount paid to his family by Libya.
What is no clear at this point is what motive Abu Nidal had to blow up the plane except the conventional argument that the avowed anti-West hard-liner simply wanted to make another attack against Westerners and that it was his way of registering his opposition to US efforts to involve the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in indirect peace negotiations with Israel.
The revelation of the Abu Nidal connection to the blast comes amid reports that Libya is considering making an announcement that it accepts "general responsibility" for the bombing of Flight 103, and is now ready "in principle" to take steps to compensate the relatives of the 270 victims.
These two steps would pave the way for the formal lifting of United Nations sanctions against Libya.
Tripoli has made no comment on Abu Bakr's assertions.
Libya reportedly hosted Abu Nidal around the time of the bombing after he was expelled from Iraq in 1993 and from Syria in 1987.
Libya, which was under intense international pressure over Lockerbie, asked him to leave the country in 1999 after he reportedly went on a spree of "eliminating" dozens of followers whom he did not trust.
At one point, Atef Abu Bakr himself was quoted as saying that Abu Nidal buried the bodies under and around the villa where he was staying in Libya. It was also alleged that he had employed some of his people to "spy" on Libya and this had infuriated Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi into expelling him.
If media accounts were true, he was in Egypt for some time after leaving Libya and then slipped out of the country to Iran and entered Iraq across the border.
If indeed Abu Nidal was behind the PanAm bombing, it is then highly unlikely that Libya was not aware of it. And if Libya was aware it, why did Tripoli use that information at least to lay a red herring in the trial that was held in the Netherlands in 2000, after Abu Nidal had left Libya?
Lawyers for the two Libyans who were tried at the specially set up Scottish court in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands suggested that the Syria-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) could have been behind the bombing. What stopped them from pointing the finger at Abu Nidal if they could have done so at the PFLP-GC?
In London, senior Labour Member of parliament Dalyell, who had consistently insisted that Abu Nidal was responsible for the blast, has renewed his demand for a investigation into the affair. Dalyell has long argued that the Libyans were not behind the attack and now he says the Foreign Office must now investigate Abu Bakr's claims "as a matter of the utmost urgency."
"If these allegations are true they blow everything relating to Lockerbie out of the water, including the trial in Holland," he said last week.
The Scottish prosecutors' office has dismissed Abu Bakr's claim. But then that was only expected since acknowledging that anyone other than the convicted Libyan -- and by extension Libya -- could be responsible for the blast would demolish their credibility.
"We deal, and have dealt with, evidence not rumour or speculation, especially about allegedly dead terrorists," an unidentified Scottish Crown Office spokeswoman was quoted as saying in response to Abu Bakr's comments.
Not many have accepted as true the prosecution version of the case, and Western and Arab legal experts have asserted that the court overlooked several strong indicators that someone other than the convicted Libyan was behind the blast.
What could establish or at least throw some light into the mystery of the blast could be an independent investigation authorised and backed by the British government in co-ordination with other European and Arab governments and agencies.
But London has consistently rejected MPs' calls for such an investigation, and there is little sign that the Blair government would change it mind after Abu Bakr made the claim.,
Even Members of the UK Families Flight 103 say many important questions remain unanswered. They are demanding to know the motive behind the bombing, why it was not prevented and why it had taken 13 years to investigate the case and to conclude legal proceedings.
The demand was warded off by the government until Megrahi's appeal, with the argument that a wide-ranging inquiry had not been possible because it could have jeopardised a criminal trial, and families of the blast victims say that now that the trial and appeal have been concluded, the reasons for postponing any further inquiries have been removed.
Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the Lockerbie explosion, has said the trial in the Netherlands only considered the guilt or innocence of the defendants, and the court's conclusion that Megrahi was involved did not mean Abu Nidal might not also have participated.
"In my view, in those days most of the groups knew what the other groups were doing," said Swire, a spokesman for the UK Families Flight 103 Group. "Abu Nidal in those days was in Tripoli. ... I think it's likely he would have known what was going on but I have no way of knowing" whether he was behind the bombing.
And it is unlikely that anyone would know either unless Abu Bakr or someone else speaks up and tears down the veil of mystery over the blast.
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Ansar Al Islam - Part II
PV Vivekanand
This the second and final part of a report on the militant Ansar Al Islam group, which the US says was linked with Al Qaeda and is present in northern Iraq in what appears to an effort to establish a connection between the Baghdad government and Al Qaeda.
What is known about Ansar Al Islam?
The existence of the group and its alleged links with Al Qaeda were highlighted in a Christian Science Monitor report in March.
It is a tight-knit group of less than 800 followers -- Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and Afghans -- based in Halabja, a Kurdish village on the Iraqi-Iranian border and enforces a Taliban-style Islamic code in a cluster of villages in the area.
Halabja is the site of what the US has described as a massive Iraqi chemical attack towards the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war to quell Iranian Kurdish presence there -- all the more reason for the group to maintain hostility towards the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad.
Ansar Al Islam's leader Mulla Kreekar has refugee status in Norway after landing there from Iran under a UN refugee programme in 1993. He has been out of Norway for the last two years.
The Norwegian government has launched an investigation into his activities in the wake of the US allegation that the group had ties with Al Qaeda.
The group, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan which was reportedly backed by Tehran.
Iran upports everal Iranian Kurdish groups in the area with a view to countering the influence of Iraqi Kurdish factions that are dominant in northern Iraq, regional experts say.
Mullah Kreekar was a former member of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan who joined Ansar Al Islam after its formation in September 2001. He supposedly replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae - an Iraqi Kurd who allegedly trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for 10 years - and changed his name from Warya Holery. Shafae is now believed to be Ansar Al Islam's deputy leader.
Traditionally, Tehran has supported the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, and its support for other groups is seen as aimed at using them if, as and when Kurdish activities threaten Iranian interests.
Tehran is eager to ensure that the Kurds living in its north, Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds do not gang up to set up an independent Kurdistan in the border area.
Baghad might have tried to use Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the dozens of Kurdish groups that challenge its control of northern Iraq, analysts say. However, they doubt whether Saddam had much success with the group, which is said to be staunchly fundamentalist bordering on an obsession with their fight against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society in northern Iraqi villages.
According to reports, Ansar Al Islam activists have ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the veil in the areas under their control.
"Ansar Al Islam is a kind of Taliban," according to PUK leader Jalal Talabani. "They are terrorists who have declared war against all Kurdish political parties. We gave them a chance to change their ways ... and end their terrorist acts. But if we can't do it through dialogue, we are obliged to use force."
The PUK, which is engaged in a running battle with Ansar Al Islam for domination of the villages on the border, does not believe the group is backed by Iran.
"The Iranians are emphatic that this group is a threat to their own security," according to Barham Salih, a senior PUK official.
The other dominant Kurdish group, the Kurdish Democratic Party led by Masoud Barzani, has not commented on the allegations, but it is united with the PUK against Ansar Al Islam.
Another PUK official, Mustapha Saed Qada, claimed in comments carried by the Christian Science Monitor in March that his group had overrun two Ansar camps after Sept. 11 and found "the walls covered with poems and graffiti praising Bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US."
Predictably, Qada claimed that Ansar Al Islam might even have ties with Iraqi government agents operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and Ansar Al Islam. I believe that Iraq is also funding Ansar Al Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."
Given that the PUK is bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime, Qada's comments need a lot more than simple assertions, observers point out.
US officials have voiced similar doubts since the PUK has a vested interested in implicating Baghdad with Al Qaeda.
Reports in the US said the White House had rejected a proposal to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Al Ansar positions in northern Iraq.
Saddam's eldest son Udai has accused Iran of backing the group but rejected its purported links with Al Qaeda.
The ambiguity in Udai's comment was that he referred to a group called "Jund Al Islam," which US officials varying describe as either a mother group from which Ansar Al Islam broke away or an offshoot of Ansar Al Islam itself.
"They (Jund Al Islam) do not have any link whatsoever with Al Qaeda, and this is purely an Iranian game aimed at gaining influence in the area," said Udai Hussein.
Tehran rejected the accusation and said it disapproved of the group's activities.
Since mid-August, more than 1,000 Peshamargas of the PUK are figthing Ansar Al Islam around the Ansar stronghold of Halabja after pushing the group back from from villages further into north Iraq.
It was reported in early August that 19-year-old youth belonging to Ansar Al Islam surrendered to PUK authorities after he had a last-minute change of heart on his way to blow himself among PUK officials.
The youth had strapped himself with explosives and was indoctrinated by his Ansar mentors that he would be serving his people by killing PUK officials in a suicide attack.
However, the youth opted not to carry out the attack and surrendered to the same officials whom he was supposed to have killed, the reports said. He is detained at a PUK jail in Sulaimaniya in north Iraq.
Had the attack taken place, it would have been the first known suicide bombing by an Iraqi Kurd against opponents, and would have introduced a new element in the ongoing battle between Ansar Al Islam and the PUK.
Mullah Kreekar, the Ansar Al Islam leader, has given an interview to Norwegian television that is expected to be broadcast on Tuesday. Possibly, he might throw more light into the group's activities and its connections.
Regardless of all other factors, is abundantly clear that the group espouses militancy and is present in northern Iraq. However, is it not enough to prove that Baghdad is linked with the group, and, inter alia, Al Qaeda, particularly given that the group is active in an area generally under American protection?
This the second and final part of a report on the militant Ansar Al Islam group, which the US says was linked with Al Qaeda and is present in northern Iraq in what appears to an effort to establish a connection between the Baghdad government and Al Qaeda.
What is known about Ansar Al Islam?
The existence of the group and its alleged links with Al Qaeda were highlighted in a Christian Science Monitor report in March.
It is a tight-knit group of less than 800 followers -- Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and Afghans -- based in Halabja, a Kurdish village on the Iraqi-Iranian border and enforces a Taliban-style Islamic code in a cluster of villages in the area.
Halabja is the site of what the US has described as a massive Iraqi chemical attack towards the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war to quell Iranian Kurdish presence there -- all the more reason for the group to maintain hostility towards the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad.
Ansar Al Islam's leader Mulla Kreekar has refugee status in Norway after landing there from Iran under a UN refugee programme in 1993. He has been out of Norway for the last two years.
The Norwegian government has launched an investigation into his activities in the wake of the US allegation that the group had ties with Al Qaeda.
The group, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan which was reportedly backed by Tehran.
Iran upports everal Iranian Kurdish groups in the area with a view to countering the influence of Iraqi Kurdish factions that are dominant in northern Iraq, regional experts say.
Mullah Kreekar was a former member of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan who joined Ansar Al Islam after its formation in September 2001. He supposedly replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae - an Iraqi Kurd who allegedly trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for 10 years - and changed his name from Warya Holery. Shafae is now believed to be Ansar Al Islam's deputy leader.
Traditionally, Tehran has supported the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, and its support for other groups is seen as aimed at using them if, as and when Kurdish activities threaten Iranian interests.
Tehran is eager to ensure that the Kurds living in its north, Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds do not gang up to set up an independent Kurdistan in the border area.
Baghad might have tried to use Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the dozens of Kurdish groups that challenge its control of northern Iraq, analysts say. However, they doubt whether Saddam had much success with the group, which is said to be staunchly fundamentalist bordering on an obsession with their fight against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society in northern Iraqi villages.
According to reports, Ansar Al Islam activists have ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the veil in the areas under their control.
"Ansar Al Islam is a kind of Taliban," according to PUK leader Jalal Talabani. "They are terrorists who have declared war against all Kurdish political parties. We gave them a chance to change their ways ... and end their terrorist acts. But if we can't do it through dialogue, we are obliged to use force."
The PUK, which is engaged in a running battle with Ansar Al Islam for domination of the villages on the border, does not believe the group is backed by Iran.
"The Iranians are emphatic that this group is a threat to their own security," according to Barham Salih, a senior PUK official.
The other dominant Kurdish group, the Kurdish Democratic Party led by Masoud Barzani, has not commented on the allegations, but it is united with the PUK against Ansar Al Islam.
Another PUK official, Mustapha Saed Qada, claimed in comments carried by the Christian Science Monitor in March that his group had overrun two Ansar camps after Sept. 11 and found "the walls covered with poems and graffiti praising Bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US."
Predictably, Qada claimed that Ansar Al Islam might even have ties with Iraqi government agents operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and Ansar Al Islam. I believe that Iraq is also funding Ansar Al Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."
Given that the PUK is bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime, Qada's comments need a lot more than simple assertions, observers point out.
US officials have voiced similar doubts since the PUK has a vested interested in implicating Baghdad with Al Qaeda.
Reports in the US said the White House had rejected a proposal to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Al Ansar positions in northern Iraq.
Saddam's eldest son Udai has accused Iran of backing the group but rejected its purported links with Al Qaeda.
The ambiguity in Udai's comment was that he referred to a group called "Jund Al Islam," which US officials varying describe as either a mother group from which Ansar Al Islam broke away or an offshoot of Ansar Al Islam itself.
"They (Jund Al Islam) do not have any link whatsoever with Al Qaeda, and this is purely an Iranian game aimed at gaining influence in the area," said Udai Hussein.
Tehran rejected the accusation and said it disapproved of the group's activities.
Since mid-August, more than 1,000 Peshamargas of the PUK are figthing Ansar Al Islam around the Ansar stronghold of Halabja after pushing the group back from from villages further into north Iraq.
It was reported in early August that 19-year-old youth belonging to Ansar Al Islam surrendered to PUK authorities after he had a last-minute change of heart on his way to blow himself among PUK officials.
The youth had strapped himself with explosives and was indoctrinated by his Ansar mentors that he would be serving his people by killing PUK officials in a suicide attack.
However, the youth opted not to carry out the attack and surrendered to the same officials whom he was supposed to have killed, the reports said. He is detained at a PUK jail in Sulaimaniya in north Iraq.
Had the attack taken place, it would have been the first known suicide bombing by an Iraqi Kurd against opponents, and would have introduced a new element in the ongoing battle between Ansar Al Islam and the PUK.
Mullah Kreekar, the Ansar Al Islam leader, has given an interview to Norwegian television that is expected to be broadcast on Tuesday. Possibly, he might throw more light into the group's activities and its connections.
Regardless of all other factors, is abundantly clear that the group espouses militancy and is present in northern Iraq. However, is it not enough to prove that Baghdad is linked with the group, and, inter alia, Al Qaeda, particularly given that the group is active in an area generally under American protection?
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Ansar Al Islam Part I
by pv vivekanand
ANSAR AL ISLAM, the group whose name rose to prominence last week with the CNN screening of alleged testing of chemical weapons in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda members, has been active in northern Iraq since late 2001 but the connection that the US is trying to make between Baghdad and the faction -- and Al Qaeda by extension -- is weak at best, according to regional experts,
Washington has failed to establish that Baghdad had links with Al Qaeda although several attempts were made: first with a report that an Iraqi diplomat had met with Mohammed Atta, the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, in Europe in early 2001. It could not be confirmed that such a meeting took place, let alone that the two discussed Al Qaeda plans to stage anti-US attacks.
The second attempt was a matter of convenience and it came with the rash of anthrax scares in the US. The finger was immediately pointed at Iraq, since UN inspectors had found anthrax strains in Baghdad's weapons programme. However, the accusation fell apart when it was found that the particular strain in anthrax that caused the massive scare in the US was different from what the UN inspectors had discovered in Iraq.
The third attempt to link Iraq with Al Qaeda came in May with reports that a defecting Iraqi intelligence agent had seen Osama Bin Laden in Baghdad in early 2000. The US media played up the report, but then it became apparent that the defecting agent could not have been telling the truth since he had left Iraq in early 1999 and never went back.
The third attempt seeks to establish that Al Qaeda fighters are present in northern Iraq, but it appears to be a self-defeating exercise since the area where they are said to be present is outside the control of the Baghdad government. If anything, the US is offering protection to the area's residents against attacks by the Iraqi army.
Against that backdrop, the alleged Al Qaeda presence in northern Iraq could not be a strong argument for the US to target Saddam in its war against terrorism.
Regional experts are emphatic that Saddam and Bin Laden, while sharing common enmity towards the US, are ideologically too far apart to strike an alliance and work together.
Bin Laden holds Saddam responsible for having set the ground for US military presence in the region by invading Kuwait in 1990 and has often been bitterly critical of the Iraqi president.
According to Arabs who knew Bin Laden well while they were in Afghanistan and maintained contacts with his supporters after leaving the country in the mid-90s, the Al Qaeda leader had turned down Iraqi offers of asylum after he came under American focus following the 1998 bomb attacks in Kenya and Tanzania.
US intelligence reports say Ansar Al Islam fighters trained with Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000 and the group is harbouring Al Qaeda activists in northern Iraq. They are presumed to have fled overland from Afghanistan in the wake of the American military strikes against that country launched in October 2001. The implication is that they reached northern Iraq through Iranian territory.
Immediately after the CNN screening of the purported tapes of Qaeda testing of chemical weapons last week, US "experts" said it resembled a method followed by Ansar Al Islam.
The New York Times reported that US intelligence had monitored an Ansar Al Islam site in northern Iraq where chemical or biological weapons experiments were conducted with farm animals. It was initially feared this might constitute a significant chemical-biological threat, but US officials decided it was not serious enough to justify a military strike, said the paper.
Even if it is established that Ansar Al Islam, which is led by a Kurd, Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, who goes by the name of Mullah Kreekar, had links with Al Qaeda, it is far from establishing that Baghdad had connections with Ansar Al Islam.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said there are Al Qaeda members in Iraq, but he has not said where they are.
"I have said for some time that there are Al Qaeda in Iraq, and there are," he said last week. "They have left Afghanistan," he said. "They have left other locations. And they've landed in a variety of countries, one of which is Iraq."
US officials initially said Arab members of Ansar Al Islam were involved in the experimentation, but later they said it was unclear whether they were Arabs or Kurds.
Ansar Al Islam is based in northern Iraq near the border with Iran -- territory not controlled by the government of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
As such, says Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, the US, which offers "protection" to Kurds in north Iraq by enforcing a "no-fly" zone, should ask itself how it allowed the group to base itself there.
Aziz, in recent US television interviews, pointed out the irony in the US contention that the Iraqi government was harbouring a group in a territory beyond its control and "protected" by the US.
Aziz questioned why American officials have not publicly raised the Al Qaeda matter with the Kurdish groups Washington supports in northern Iraq.
What is known about Ansar Al Islam?
The existence of the group and its alleged links with Al Qaeda were highlighted in a Christian Science Monitor report in March.
It is a tight-knit group of less than 800 followers -- Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and Afghans -- based in Halabja, a Kurdish village on the Iraqi-Iranian border and enforces a Taliban-style Islamic code in a cluster of villages in the area.
Halabja is the site of what the US has described as a massive Iraqi chemical attack towards the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and to quell Iranian Kurdish presence there -- all the more reason for the group to maintain hostility towards the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad.
Ansar Al Islam's leader Mulla Kreekar has refugee status in Norway after landing there from Iran under a UN refugee programme in 1993. He has been out of Norway for the last two years.
The Norwegian government has launched an investigation into his activities in the wake of the US allegation that the group had ties with Al Qaeda.
The group, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, is reportedly backed by Tehran, which supports for several Iranian Kurdish groups in the area with a view to countering the influence of Iraqi Kurdish factions that are dominant in northern Iraq.
Mullah Kreekar was a former member of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan who joined Ansar Al Islam after its formation in September 2001. He supposedly replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae - an Iraqi Kurd who allegedly trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for 10 years - and changed his name from Warya Holery. Shafae is now believed to be Ansar Al Islam's deputy leader.
Traditionally, Tehran has supported the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, and its support for other groups is seen as aimed at using them if, as and when Kurdish activities threaten Iranian interests.
Tehran is eager to ensure that the Kurds living in its north, Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds do not gang up to set up an independent Kurdistan in the border area.
Saddam might have tried to use Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the dozens of Kurdish groups that challenge his control of northern Iraq, analysts say. However, they doubt whether Saddam had much success with the group, which is said to be staunchly fundamentalist bordering on fanatic obsession with their fight against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society in northern Iraqi villages.
According to reports, Ansar Al Islam activists have ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the veil in the areas under their control.
"Ansar Al Islam is a kind of Taliban," PUK leader Jalal Talabani has said. "They are terrorists who have declared war against all Kurdish political parties. We gave them a chance to change their ways ... and end their terrorist acts. But if we can't do it through dialogue, we are obliged to use force."
The PUK, which is engaged in a running battle with Ansar Al Islam for domination of the villages on the border, does not believe the group is backed by Iran.
"The Iranians are emphatic that this group is a threat to their own security," according to Barham Salih, a senior PUK official.
The other dominant Kurdish group, the Kurdish Democratic Party led by Masoud Barzani, has not commented on the allegations, but it is united with the PUK against Ansar Al Islam.
Another PUK official, Mustapha Saed Qada, claimed in comments carried by the Christian Science Monitor in March that his group had overrun two Ansar camps after Sept. 11 and found "the walls covered with poems and graffiti praising Bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US."
"In one, there is a picture of the twin towers with a drawing of Bin Laden standing on the top holding a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a knife in the other." he said.
He added that the group has received $600,000 from Al Qaeda and a delivery of weapons and Toyota landcruisers.
According to Qada, Ansar Al Islam might even have ties with Iraqi government agents operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and Ansar Al Islam. I believe that Iraq is also funding Ansar Al Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."
Given that the PUK is bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime, Qada's comments need a lot more than simple assertions, observers point out.
Saddam's eldest son Udai has accused Iran of backing the group but rejected its purported links with Al Qaeda. The ambiguity in Udai's comment was that he referred to a group called "Jund Al Islam," which US officials varying describe as either a mother group from which Ansar Al Islam broke away or an offshoot of Ansar Al Islam itself.
"They (Jund Al Islam) do not have any link whatsoever with Al Qaeda, and this is purely an Iranian game aimed at gaining influence in the area," said Udai Hussein.
As of Sunday, Tehran has not commented on Udai's s statement.
ANSAR AL ISLAM, the group whose name rose to prominence last week with the CNN screening of alleged testing of chemical weapons in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda members, has been active in northern Iraq since late 2001 but the connection that the US is trying to make between Baghdad and the faction -- and Al Qaeda by extension -- is weak at best, according to regional experts,
Washington has failed to establish that Baghdad had links with Al Qaeda although several attempts were made: first with a report that an Iraqi diplomat had met with Mohammed Atta, the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, in Europe in early 2001. It could not be confirmed that such a meeting took place, let alone that the two discussed Al Qaeda plans to stage anti-US attacks.
The second attempt was a matter of convenience and it came with the rash of anthrax scares in the US. The finger was immediately pointed at Iraq, since UN inspectors had found anthrax strains in Baghdad's weapons programme. However, the accusation fell apart when it was found that the particular strain in anthrax that caused the massive scare in the US was different from what the UN inspectors had discovered in Iraq.
The third attempt to link Iraq with Al Qaeda came in May with reports that a defecting Iraqi intelligence agent had seen Osama Bin Laden in Baghdad in early 2000. The US media played up the report, but then it became apparent that the defecting agent could not have been telling the truth since he had left Iraq in early 1999 and never went back.
The third attempt seeks to establish that Al Qaeda fighters are present in northern Iraq, but it appears to be a self-defeating exercise since the area where they are said to be present is outside the control of the Baghdad government. If anything, the US is offering protection to the area's residents against attacks by the Iraqi army.
Against that backdrop, the alleged Al Qaeda presence in northern Iraq could not be a strong argument for the US to target Saddam in its war against terrorism.
Regional experts are emphatic that Saddam and Bin Laden, while sharing common enmity towards the US, are ideologically too far apart to strike an alliance and work together.
Bin Laden holds Saddam responsible for having set the ground for US military presence in the region by invading Kuwait in 1990 and has often been bitterly critical of the Iraqi president.
According to Arabs who knew Bin Laden well while they were in Afghanistan and maintained contacts with his supporters after leaving the country in the mid-90s, the Al Qaeda leader had turned down Iraqi offers of asylum after he came under American focus following the 1998 bomb attacks in Kenya and Tanzania.
US intelligence reports say Ansar Al Islam fighters trained with Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000 and the group is harbouring Al Qaeda activists in northern Iraq. They are presumed to have fled overland from Afghanistan in the wake of the American military strikes against that country launched in October 2001. The implication is that they reached northern Iraq through Iranian territory.
Immediately after the CNN screening of the purported tapes of Qaeda testing of chemical weapons last week, US "experts" said it resembled a method followed by Ansar Al Islam.
The New York Times reported that US intelligence had monitored an Ansar Al Islam site in northern Iraq where chemical or biological weapons experiments were conducted with farm animals. It was initially feared this might constitute a significant chemical-biological threat, but US officials decided it was not serious enough to justify a military strike, said the paper.
Even if it is established that Ansar Al Islam, which is led by a Kurd, Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, who goes by the name of Mullah Kreekar, had links with Al Qaeda, it is far from establishing that Baghdad had connections with Ansar Al Islam.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said there are Al Qaeda members in Iraq, but he has not said where they are.
"I have said for some time that there are Al Qaeda in Iraq, and there are," he said last week. "They have left Afghanistan," he said. "They have left other locations. And they've landed in a variety of countries, one of which is Iraq."
US officials initially said Arab members of Ansar Al Islam were involved in the experimentation, but later they said it was unclear whether they were Arabs or Kurds.
Ansar Al Islam is based in northern Iraq near the border with Iran -- territory not controlled by the government of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
As such, says Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, the US, which offers "protection" to Kurds in north Iraq by enforcing a "no-fly" zone, should ask itself how it allowed the group to base itself there.
Aziz, in recent US television interviews, pointed out the irony in the US contention that the Iraqi government was harbouring a group in a territory beyond its control and "protected" by the US.
Aziz questioned why American officials have not publicly raised the Al Qaeda matter with the Kurdish groups Washington supports in northern Iraq.
What is known about Ansar Al Islam?
The existence of the group and its alleged links with Al Qaeda were highlighted in a Christian Science Monitor report in March.
It is a tight-knit group of less than 800 followers -- Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and Afghans -- based in Halabja, a Kurdish village on the Iraqi-Iranian border and enforces a Taliban-style Islamic code in a cluster of villages in the area.
Halabja is the site of what the US has described as a massive Iraqi chemical attack towards the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and to quell Iranian Kurdish presence there -- all the more reason for the group to maintain hostility towards the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad.
Ansar Al Islam's leader Mulla Kreekar has refugee status in Norway after landing there from Iran under a UN refugee programme in 1993. He has been out of Norway for the last two years.
The Norwegian government has launched an investigation into his activities in the wake of the US allegation that the group had ties with Al Qaeda.
The group, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, is reportedly backed by Tehran, which supports for several Iranian Kurdish groups in the area with a view to countering the influence of Iraqi Kurdish factions that are dominant in northern Iraq.
Mullah Kreekar was a former member of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan who joined Ansar Al Islam after its formation in September 2001. He supposedly replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae - an Iraqi Kurd who allegedly trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for 10 years - and changed his name from Warya Holery. Shafae is now believed to be Ansar Al Islam's deputy leader.
Traditionally, Tehran has supported the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, and its support for other groups is seen as aimed at using them if, as and when Kurdish activities threaten Iranian interests.
Tehran is eager to ensure that the Kurds living in its north, Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds do not gang up to set up an independent Kurdistan in the border area.
Saddam might have tried to use Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the dozens of Kurdish groups that challenge his control of northern Iraq, analysts say. However, they doubt whether Saddam had much success with the group, which is said to be staunchly fundamentalist bordering on fanatic obsession with their fight against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society in northern Iraqi villages.
According to reports, Ansar Al Islam activists have ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the veil in the areas under their control.
"Ansar Al Islam is a kind of Taliban," PUK leader Jalal Talabani has said. "They are terrorists who have declared war against all Kurdish political parties. We gave them a chance to change their ways ... and end their terrorist acts. But if we can't do it through dialogue, we are obliged to use force."
The PUK, which is engaged in a running battle with Ansar Al Islam for domination of the villages on the border, does not believe the group is backed by Iran.
"The Iranians are emphatic that this group is a threat to their own security," according to Barham Salih, a senior PUK official.
The other dominant Kurdish group, the Kurdish Democratic Party led by Masoud Barzani, has not commented on the allegations, but it is united with the PUK against Ansar Al Islam.
Another PUK official, Mustapha Saed Qada, claimed in comments carried by the Christian Science Monitor in March that his group had overrun two Ansar camps after Sept. 11 and found "the walls covered with poems and graffiti praising Bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US."
"In one, there is a picture of the twin towers with a drawing of Bin Laden standing on the top holding a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a knife in the other." he said.
He added that the group has received $600,000 from Al Qaeda and a delivery of weapons and Toyota landcruisers.
According to Qada, Ansar Al Islam might even have ties with Iraqi government agents operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and Ansar Al Islam. I believe that Iraq is also funding Ansar Al Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."
Given that the PUK is bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime, Qada's comments need a lot more than simple assertions, observers point out.
Saddam's eldest son Udai has accused Iran of backing the group but rejected its purported links with Al Qaeda. The ambiguity in Udai's comment was that he referred to a group called "Jund Al Islam," which US officials varying describe as either a mother group from which Ansar Al Islam broke away or an offshoot of Ansar Al Islam itself.
"They (Jund Al Islam) do not have any link whatsoever with Al Qaeda, and this is purely an Iranian game aimed at gaining influence in the area," said Udai Hussein.
As of Sunday, Tehran has not commented on Udai's s statement.
Friday, August 16, 2002
Syria and Iran after Iraq
BY PV VIVEKANAND
SYRIA and Iran should have enough reasons to be worried. It is emerging that the planned US action against Iraq for "regime change" in Baghdad could be part of a grand plan to remove all those who challenge US strategic interests in the Middle East, and Syria could be the next US target after Iraq to be followed by Iran.
There are indeed signs of a wider American campaign to consolidate the US' standing as the unchallenged sole superpower of the world, and the Middle East is a very important test case for Washington.
Reports from Washington indicate that the driving force behind the campaign is a small group of "neoconservatives" with powerful political allies and which seeks to serve Israeli interests more than those of the US.
Indeed, it is no coincidence that the three US targets in the Middle East, Iraq, Syria and Iran, are also among the most vocal against Israel. It is not simply a matter of convenience for the US that fundamental changes are made in these countries to remove the challenge to Israel if not to better suit the interests of Washington's sole "strategic ally" in the Middle East; it is indeed a policy objective just as the ouster of Saddam Hussein is.
Washington flirted with Syria in the early 90s because it suited US interests to do so but now Damascus has become more of a liability than an asset only because it insists on its rights and represents the toughest of all Arab parties on whom Israel wants to impose its version of peace.
Similarly, the US hoped it could do business with Iran when "moderate" Mohammed Khatami was elected president in 1997. However, those hopes failed to materialise in view of the "hardline" religious establishment's grip on power on a parallel track with that of the government but with overriding authority.
Now that Khatami would soon step down after serving two terms, the US has little hopes that another "moderate" might take his place, and hence the recent posture that Washington had "given up" on Khatami.
On the Syrian front, George Bush Senior broke new ground in Washington's ties with Damascus by holding a meeting with the late president Hafez Al Assad in late 1990 and secured his endorsement for the US-led military action that evicted Iraq from Kuwait in early 1991.
In the bargain, Bush promised Assad at least two things: The US would ensure that an Arab-Israeli peace process is launched soon after the war over Kuwait and Washington would not question Syria's role in Lebanon.
The peace process, Assad was assured, would aim at implementing United Nations resolutions based on international legitimacy. In the end, apart from a solution to the Palestinian problem, Syria would have its Golan Heights back from Israeli occupation.
But when Arab-Israeli negotiations got under way in earnest after launched in Madrid in late 1991, it became clear that Israel had no intention of returning the Golan Heights, and the Arab camp became weak, as the late Assad saw it, because of the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo accords of 1993 and the peace treaty that Jordan signed with Israel in 1994 -- both under American auspices.
Assad, a political realist, was ready to accept peace with Israel and normal relations with the Jewish state in exchange for the return of the Golan in its entirety.
From the Israeli perspective, there is no way it could return the Golan to Syria since the Heights represents its main source of water. Giving it up would mean surrendering Israel's control over its source of water and that is not a chance it would take no matter what cost. As such Assad's insistence on a return to the lines of June 4, 1967 offered a perfect cover for Israel to stall the process.
Despite flirting with Syria, it would seem that the US never actually "trusted" it. It did not remove Syria from the list of "countries sponsoring terrorism" and demanded a series of reforms before it would think of doing so. Assad tried to comply with some of the demands by expelling some of the groups named as "terrorist" by the US, but it was not enough for Washington.
The US also found it was difficult to keep its pledge to stay away from intervening in Lebanon as calls mounted from Lebanese right-wing groups backed by France for an end to the Syrian domination of Lebanese affairs. Furthermore, Damascus failed to heed American demands to rein in Lebanese resistance against Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, and it soon became apparent that Washington could not do business with Syria.
Indeed, the US hoped that Bashar Al Assad, who succeeded his father in 2000, would be more amenable to its demands. But the hope was short-lived since Bashar remained firm on his father's lines in the peace process.
The US is now convinced that it would be wasting time to persuade Damascus to accept anything less than its demands in the peace process and to dilute the Syrian role in Lebanon. And so, a "regime change" in Damascus is the only way out, as far as the US sees it under the givens today.
On the Iranian front, "liberal" Khatami has been unable to weaken the hardline theologians' grip on power. In the American view, the religious establishment's constitutional authority is too deep-rooted to be pried away through conventional political means adopted by political forces within the country. Again, in the US eyes, a "regime change" aiming at destroying the religious leaders' power is the order of the day in Iran.
The hostility of the theologians towards the US stemmed from the American backing for the ousted Shah dynasty. The hostility was further strengthened and turned into a way of life for the religious establishment of Iran when the US implicitly backed Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Iran's support for Lebanon's Hizbollah and Palestinian groups is a constant source of concern for Israel, and, by extension, the US. Further compounding the concern are the advances that Iran has reportedly made in developing long-range missiles which could hit Israel, its acquisition of two Russian submarines and the ongoing construction of a nuclear power plant on the Gulf coast.
Now it is almost foregone conclusion short of divine intervention or a miracle that US President George W. Bush would not be dissuaded from his plans to launch military strikes against Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. It is also clear that the US action would lead to a reshaping of Iraq, including a disintegration of that country as we know it today.
It is not a new discovery. It was always known that toppling Saddam could not been seen as a surgical operation conducted in isolation from all other realities in Iraq, and Arab leaders have repeatedly warned the US against such action that would definitely have wide-ranging regional implications.
It was also clear these fears plus the immense difficulty in toppling Saddam had forced the then administration of George Bush Senior to stop short of ordering American forces into Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf war.
As such, and given that the ground realities today make it much more predictable that military action against Iraq would destabilise the region, it appears that Washington has accepted the inevitability of such a course of events and, if anything, it suits the post-Sept. 11 American thinking.
That would definitely mean that the "regime change" in Iraq that Bush is seeking is the first step in the grand American plan to change the shape of the region and would be followed by similar action in Syria and Iran.
However, there could be more than meets the eye in the equation.
There is a growing school of thought that believes that purely Zionist -- read Israeli or vice versa -- interests aimed controlling the world's destiny are the guiding force behind the US administration's actions that ultimately would serve Israel rather than the US itself.
A recent report indicated that the main force driving Bush into undertaking such actions is the group of "neoconservatives" in Washington.
Some might even argue that it sounds more like a Zionist-led circle which had planned in the first half of the last century that the best means to serve the goal of Zionist domination of the world was to control the superpower which dominates the world.
The report, carried by Reuters, said that the group known was "neocons" first emerged in the 1960s when a group of thinkers, many of them Jewish and all passionately anti-Communist, became disillusioned with what they saw as a dangerous radical drift within the Democratic Party to which they then belonged.
Some researchers argue that the group was actually formed in the 30s, with Prescott Bush, grandfather of the present president, taking a leading role as an American Christian supporter of Israel but manipulated by Zionist leaders.
That group is now aligned with the Republicans, and might find Bush Junior a willing tool in its hands to serve Israeli interests if only because of his relative inexperience in international affairs, critics say.
It was under this group's influence that the then president Ronald Reagan took the unprecedented step of bombing a foreign country in peace time arguing that it was involved in attacks against Americans.
Under Reagan's orders, American warplanes bombed the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1985 after intelligence reports said that Libya was behind a grenade attack at a Berlin disco frequented by American soldiers. One woman was killed in the grenade attack while the American bombing killed five people, including Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi's adopted daughter.
In concept, it fitted in with the Israeli policy of military retaliation for attacks targeting Israeli interests, and Reagan appeared to have been prompted to taking an Israeli leaf by the Zionist group.
(It is even argued by some critics that the all-too powerful "neocons" were behind "framing" Libya in the 1988 Lockerbie affair despite evidence that pointed the finger at Syria and Lebanon as well as "rogue" agents of the Central Intelligence Agency. The argument goes on to say that the group thought Libya posed an immediate challenge to US interests and Washington was not ready yet to take on Syria or Iran).
Today, according to Stephen Walt, a dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the group, which he described as "small but well-placed" and including "neoconservative officials and commentators, is primarily interested in eliminating what they regard as a threat to Israel."
"Absent their activities, the United States would be focusing on containing Iraq, which we have done successfully since the Gulf War, but we would not be trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein. We would also be pursuing a more evenhanded policy in the Middle East in general," Walt told Reuters.
Among the "allies" of the group are Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz.
Another ally of the group is said to be Richard Perle, another former Reagan Defence Department hawk who serves as chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, "a formerly sleepy committee of foreign policy old timers that Perle has refashioned into an important advisory group."
Incidentally, it was Perle who organised a briefing by RAND Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec, who has no firsthand experience whatsoever with the Middle East.
In his briefing -- which was very conveniently "leaked" to the Washington Post -- Murawiec portrayed Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the US, an assertion that prompted the Pentagon to issue a denial that it is not official policy.
The "neocon" circle is backed by conservative magazines like Commentary, and the Weekly Standard, and think-tanks such as the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for the New American Century, says Reuters.
James Zogby, chairman of the Arab American institute, appeared to have put, perhaps unwittingly, his finger on the Zionist pulse of the group when he commented that the circle's "attitude towards an Iraq invasion is, if you have the ability and the desire to do it, that's justification enough."
That is precisely a part the Zionist ideology, and this seen at work today in the brutal military approach adopted and practised by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against the Palestinians and his attitude towards the Arabs at large.
SYRIA and Iran should have enough reasons to be worried. It is emerging that the planned US action against Iraq for "regime change" in Baghdad could be part of a grand plan to remove all those who challenge US strategic interests in the Middle East, and Syria could be the next US target after Iraq to be followed by Iran.
There are indeed signs of a wider American campaign to consolidate the US' standing as the unchallenged sole superpower of the world, and the Middle East is a very important test case for Washington.
Reports from Washington indicate that the driving force behind the campaign is a small group of "neoconservatives" with powerful political allies and which seeks to serve Israeli interests more than those of the US.
Indeed, it is no coincidence that the three US targets in the Middle East, Iraq, Syria and Iran, are also among the most vocal against Israel. It is not simply a matter of convenience for the US that fundamental changes are made in these countries to remove the challenge to Israel if not to better suit the interests of Washington's sole "strategic ally" in the Middle East; it is indeed a policy objective just as the ouster of Saddam Hussein is.
Washington flirted with Syria in the early 90s because it suited US interests to do so but now Damascus has become more of a liability than an asset only because it insists on its rights and represents the toughest of all Arab parties on whom Israel wants to impose its version of peace.
Similarly, the US hoped it could do business with Iran when "moderate" Mohammed Khatami was elected president in 1997. However, those hopes failed to materialise in view of the "hardline" religious establishment's grip on power on a parallel track with that of the government but with overriding authority.
Now that Khatami would soon step down after serving two terms, the US has little hopes that another "moderate" might take his place, and hence the recent posture that Washington had "given up" on Khatami.
On the Syrian front, George Bush Senior broke new ground in Washington's ties with Damascus by holding a meeting with the late president Hafez Al Assad in late 1990 and secured his endorsement for the US-led military action that evicted Iraq from Kuwait in early 1991.
In the bargain, Bush promised Assad at least two things: The US would ensure that an Arab-Israeli peace process is launched soon after the war over Kuwait and Washington would not question Syria's role in Lebanon.
The peace process, Assad was assured, would aim at implementing United Nations resolutions based on international legitimacy. In the end, apart from a solution to the Palestinian problem, Syria would have its Golan Heights back from Israeli occupation.
But when Arab-Israeli negotiations got under way in earnest after launched in Madrid in late 1991, it became clear that Israel had no intention of returning the Golan Heights, and the Arab camp became weak, as the late Assad saw it, because of the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo accords of 1993 and the peace treaty that Jordan signed with Israel in 1994 -- both under American auspices.
Assad, a political realist, was ready to accept peace with Israel and normal relations with the Jewish state in exchange for the return of the Golan in its entirety.
From the Israeli perspective, there is no way it could return the Golan to Syria since the Heights represents its main source of water. Giving it up would mean surrendering Israel's control over its source of water and that is not a chance it would take no matter what cost. As such Assad's insistence on a return to the lines of June 4, 1967 offered a perfect cover for Israel to stall the process.
Despite flirting with Syria, it would seem that the US never actually "trusted" it. It did not remove Syria from the list of "countries sponsoring terrorism" and demanded a series of reforms before it would think of doing so. Assad tried to comply with some of the demands by expelling some of the groups named as "terrorist" by the US, but it was not enough for Washington.
The US also found it was difficult to keep its pledge to stay away from intervening in Lebanon as calls mounted from Lebanese right-wing groups backed by France for an end to the Syrian domination of Lebanese affairs. Furthermore, Damascus failed to heed American demands to rein in Lebanese resistance against Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, and it soon became apparent that Washington could not do business with Syria.
Indeed, the US hoped that Bashar Al Assad, who succeeded his father in 2000, would be more amenable to its demands. But the hope was short-lived since Bashar remained firm on his father's lines in the peace process.
The US is now convinced that it would be wasting time to persuade Damascus to accept anything less than its demands in the peace process and to dilute the Syrian role in Lebanon. And so, a "regime change" in Damascus is the only way out, as far as the US sees it under the givens today.
On the Iranian front, "liberal" Khatami has been unable to weaken the hardline theologians' grip on power. In the American view, the religious establishment's constitutional authority is too deep-rooted to be pried away through conventional political means adopted by political forces within the country. Again, in the US eyes, a "regime change" aiming at destroying the religious leaders' power is the order of the day in Iran.
The hostility of the theologians towards the US stemmed from the American backing for the ousted Shah dynasty. The hostility was further strengthened and turned into a way of life for the religious establishment of Iran when the US implicitly backed Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Iran's support for Lebanon's Hizbollah and Palestinian groups is a constant source of concern for Israel, and, by extension, the US. Further compounding the concern are the advances that Iran has reportedly made in developing long-range missiles which could hit Israel, its acquisition of two Russian submarines and the ongoing construction of a nuclear power plant on the Gulf coast.
Now it is almost foregone conclusion short of divine intervention or a miracle that US President George W. Bush would not be dissuaded from his plans to launch military strikes against Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. It is also clear that the US action would lead to a reshaping of Iraq, including a disintegration of that country as we know it today.
It is not a new discovery. It was always known that toppling Saddam could not been seen as a surgical operation conducted in isolation from all other realities in Iraq, and Arab leaders have repeatedly warned the US against such action that would definitely have wide-ranging regional implications.
It was also clear these fears plus the immense difficulty in toppling Saddam had forced the then administration of George Bush Senior to stop short of ordering American forces into Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf war.
As such, and given that the ground realities today make it much more predictable that military action against Iraq would destabilise the region, it appears that Washington has accepted the inevitability of such a course of events and, if anything, it suits the post-Sept. 11 American thinking.
That would definitely mean that the "regime change" in Iraq that Bush is seeking is the first step in the grand American plan to change the shape of the region and would be followed by similar action in Syria and Iran.
However, there could be more than meets the eye in the equation.
There is a growing school of thought that believes that purely Zionist -- read Israeli or vice versa -- interests aimed controlling the world's destiny are the guiding force behind the US administration's actions that ultimately would serve Israel rather than the US itself.
A recent report indicated that the main force driving Bush into undertaking such actions is the group of "neoconservatives" in Washington.
Some might even argue that it sounds more like a Zionist-led circle which had planned in the first half of the last century that the best means to serve the goal of Zionist domination of the world was to control the superpower which dominates the world.
The report, carried by Reuters, said that the group known was "neocons" first emerged in the 1960s when a group of thinkers, many of them Jewish and all passionately anti-Communist, became disillusioned with what they saw as a dangerous radical drift within the Democratic Party to which they then belonged.
Some researchers argue that the group was actually formed in the 30s, with Prescott Bush, grandfather of the present president, taking a leading role as an American Christian supporter of Israel but manipulated by Zionist leaders.
That group is now aligned with the Republicans, and might find Bush Junior a willing tool in its hands to serve Israeli interests if only because of his relative inexperience in international affairs, critics say.
It was under this group's influence that the then president Ronald Reagan took the unprecedented step of bombing a foreign country in peace time arguing that it was involved in attacks against Americans.
Under Reagan's orders, American warplanes bombed the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1985 after intelligence reports said that Libya was behind a grenade attack at a Berlin disco frequented by American soldiers. One woman was killed in the grenade attack while the American bombing killed five people, including Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi's adopted daughter.
In concept, it fitted in with the Israeli policy of military retaliation for attacks targeting Israeli interests, and Reagan appeared to have been prompted to taking an Israeli leaf by the Zionist group.
(It is even argued by some critics that the all-too powerful "neocons" were behind "framing" Libya in the 1988 Lockerbie affair despite evidence that pointed the finger at Syria and Lebanon as well as "rogue" agents of the Central Intelligence Agency. The argument goes on to say that the group thought Libya posed an immediate challenge to US interests and Washington was not ready yet to take on Syria or Iran).
Today, according to Stephen Walt, a dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the group, which he described as "small but well-placed" and including "neoconservative officials and commentators, is primarily interested in eliminating what they regard as a threat to Israel."
"Absent their activities, the United States would be focusing on containing Iraq, which we have done successfully since the Gulf War, but we would not be trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein. We would also be pursuing a more evenhanded policy in the Middle East in general," Walt told Reuters.
Among the "allies" of the group are Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz.
Another ally of the group is said to be Richard Perle, another former Reagan Defence Department hawk who serves as chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, "a formerly sleepy committee of foreign policy old timers that Perle has refashioned into an important advisory group."
Incidentally, it was Perle who organised a briefing by RAND Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec, who has no firsthand experience whatsoever with the Middle East.
In his briefing -- which was very conveniently "leaked" to the Washington Post -- Murawiec portrayed Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the US, an assertion that prompted the Pentagon to issue a denial that it is not official policy.
The "neocon" circle is backed by conservative magazines like Commentary, and the Weekly Standard, and think-tanks such as the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for the New American Century, says Reuters.
James Zogby, chairman of the Arab American institute, appeared to have put, perhaps unwittingly, his finger on the Zionist pulse of the group when he commented that the circle's "attitude towards an Iraq invasion is, if you have the ability and the desire to do it, that's justification enough."
That is precisely a part the Zionist ideology, and this seen at work today in the brutal military approach adopted and practised by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against the Palestinians and his attitude towards the Arabs at large.
Thursday, August 01, 2002
Like a broken music record
by pv vivekanand
AFTER failing to establish a link between Saddam
Hussein and Osama Bin Laden -- and by extension to
prove an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks in the US
-- President George W. Bush is citing charges that
Baghdad is continuing to develop weapons of mass
destruction as his reason to launch military action
aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein.
But how authentic is the charge?
On the face of it, the international community is
being told to accept that Iraq has eluded the most
advanced satellite surveillance -- with equipment that
could arguably trace the contours of a grain of wheat
on the ground -- and the strictest-ever
air-sea-land-blockade backed by intense interceptions
and inspection of anything and everything crossing its
border -- and managed to resume its clandestine
weapons programme.
The assertion is based on an argument that the
departure of UN inspectors who were withdrawn by
Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- often wrongly
described by the US as their expulsion by Iraq -- in
late 1998 allowed Baghdad to pick where it had left
off following the destruction of most of its weapons
of mass destruction under the UN verification and
destruction programme.
A review of the UN programme would raise serious
questions about the US charge against Baghdad.
It was known that Baghdad and the UN mission never got
on well and there were always skirmishes, both
diplomatic and otherwise.
Iraq and the UN inspection teams have had many
standoffs, some of them resulting from the personal
postures adopted by inspectors and others because the
Iraqis tried to prevent vital papers on their
country's weapons programme as well as intelligence
documents unrelated to arms inspections being removed
by the UN officials.
"We hated each other's guts," as a former member of
the UN team put it.
It had become clear that Iraq had a much larger weapon
programme than was known to the international
community when the UN inspectors launched their
mission in 1991 as the United Nations Special
Commission (UNSCOM).
It took several years before UNSCOM managed to unravel
the programme, with the Iraqis revealing information
in bits and pieces and only when they were cornered
with solid evidence, and it became a cat-and-mouse
game.
It was not until late 1995 that the UN managed to get
a clear picture of Iraq's military programmes and that
came from Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel,
who "defected" to Jordan in August of that year.
Kamel, who served as Iraq's defence minister and head
of the country's military industry commission, was
believed to have been debriefed not only by the then
UNSCOM chairman, Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, but also by
American and European intelligence agencies.
At that time Kamel's "defection" and revelations about
his country's weapons programmes were seen as
Baghdad's opportunity to come clean with its secrets
to UNSCOM. In fact, Baghdad blamed Kamel for having
kept the secrets for himself and handed over several
cupboards full of files that it said were stashed away
by the defector at his farmhouse outside Baghdad.
The information gained from those files represented a
key pillar of UNSCOM strategy, and it was believed
that the UN mission had managed to unearth more than
90 per cent of Iraq's weapon programmes.
Shortly before the inspections came to a premature end
prompted by Iraq's insistence that a clear blueprint
be given for what was expected of it before the
sweeping UN sanctions imposed on it in 1990 are lifted
and Washington's refusal to meet the demand, UNSCOM
officials had asserted that the bulk of their work was
over although they were seeking answers to some vital
questions, and those questions are now being dusted
off and presented as the reasons for the charges
against Iraq.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which
followed an independent verification programme, said
that it had located Iraq's nuclear programme and had
eliminated the country's nuclear material and
equipment as well as the ability to renew them. But
when the IAEA tried to close the "nuclear file," the
US intervened it and aborted the move.
On the "missiles" file, Richard Butler, who succeeded
Ekeus as UNSCOM chairman, said in July/August 1997
that the UN team had accounted for all but less than
12 long-range Scud missiles that Iraq was known to
have bought from the then Soviet Union and modified.
He also said that the bulk of Iraq's chemical and
biological weapons were destroyed but that the UN team
had not received all answers.
"UNSCOM did a fantastic job," he said. "You have to
understand that when the Gulf war was ended there was
revealed an awesome array of weapons of mass
destruction: almost a nuclear bomb, long-range
missiles, chemical, biological, all of the weapons of
mass destruction. And we, with Iraq, got hold of most
of it, got an account of it or got rid of it."
Such comments had also come from several other key
members of the UN mission as well as American and
international military experts who had access to
classified information collected by UNSCOM.
Seen against the backdrop of such assertions, a look
at the claims and assertions that Iraq continues to
build weapons of mass destruction -- the reason that
Bush cites for his plans to launch military action
aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein -- unveils a
contradiction.
The key question is: With all entry points into Iraq
under close surveillance and a ban on all commercial
and military planes in and out of the country, how is
it possible that Baghdad continued to develop weapons
of mass destruction in the absence of the UN
inspectors since late 1998?
In an appearance before the US Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Butler asserted that Iraq had
extensive chemical and biological weapons programmes
and that there is evidence it has stepped up it
alleged nuclear programmes in recent years.
Is the world then to believe that Iraq managed to get
equipment and material past the American armada
patrolling the seas and checking anything and
everything heading for Iraq, and indeed "suspect"
material headed for Iraq's neighbours that could be
sent to Iraq, and renewed its weapons programme?
It has been 12 years since the sweeping trade embargo
was imposed on Iraq.
Isn't it not fair to anyone to expect that the
enforcers of the sanctions would have perfected their
art?
Almost every vessel, small or big, is inspected before
it docks in Iraq or anywhere with access to Iraq.
American intelligence agents are present in all
neighbours of Iraq -- although to a lesser extent in
Iran -- to ensure that no "contraband" material enters
the country; nothing beyond food and medicine and
related items approved under the UN's oil-for-food
programme is allowed into the country. Any item which
could have slightest "military use" is blocked from
entering Iraq.
An example is caustic soda, a key element in cleaning
and washing of dairy equipment. It could also be used
in production of chemical weapons, according to
experts.
Since the day the sanction and verification regime was
put into place, no consignment of caustic soda has
been allowed into Iraq, and efforts by Jordan-based
exporters to send the material to Iraq across the
border -- presumably for legitimate purposes -- have
been repeatedly thwarted.
That is only an indication of the effectiveness of the
blockade, and it is difficult to see how the Iraqis
managed to lay their hands of components of chemical
weapons.
However, that is not to say that Iraq could not have
done it. Then again, reports from Washington and
London indicate that military generals on both sides
of the Atlantic are not really convinced that Iraq had
developed weapons as alleged or that poses a real
threat to the region. Such scepticism has been voiced
by officers who should be in a position to have access
to classified and top secret information on Iraq's
military capabilities as a key pillar of any strategy
to launch a war on that country.
Some of the allegations are also based on accounts by
Iraqi defectors, both identified and unidentified.
However, the credibility and authenticity of such
accounts are brought under question when considering
that almost all the "defectors" are produced and
paraded by Iraqi dissident groups which have a vested
interest in convincing the world that Baghdad is evil.
In some cases, it has also been found that the
defectors had left Iraq around the same time the UN
inspections were halted and they were making claims
linked to the period after their departure from the
country.
However, regardless of all reasonings and logic based
on available facts that expose the hollowness of the
American argument for striking at Iraq, the Bush
administration is dead bent upon carrying out their
designs in the region and Saddam Hussein has no room
in their strategy.
'Spying' charges
AS was expected sooner or later, the Swedish diplomat
who headed the UN arms inspection programme in Iraq
until 1997 has turned around and extended implicit
endorsement of Baghdad's assertion that the
inspections were mostly a smokescreen for American
intelligence activities in the country.
Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, who chaired UNSCOM since its
creation in 1991 until he quit in 1997, affirmed in
public comments this week that some of his team
members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to
weapon inspections.
In comments carried by Swedish radio, Ekeus said the
US and other powers had exploited UN teams in Iraq
for their own political ends, including monitoring
President Saddam Hussein's movements and that, at
times, crises were created that could possibly form
the basis for military action.
"There is no doubt that the Americans wanted to
influence the inspections to further certain
fundamental US interests," Ekeus said in his first
affirmation that he was aware of what was going on.
That partly vindicates Baghdad's accusations,
particularly that Ekeus was one of the harshest
critics of Iraq while he headed UNSCOM and thereafter
until this week's comments.
Indeed, one of the key arguments Iraq is putting up
against the US demand for renewed inspections of
Baghdad's alleged programmes of producing weapons of
mass destruction is the record that previous
inspectors had spied on the country.
It is not a new position and some of those who served
in the UN mission for verification of arms in Iraq
until it was stopped in late 1998 had admitted in
public that some of their colleagues were intelligence
agents rather than arms experts.
In a statement that went largely unnoticed or played
down deliberately or otherwise, Iraqi Deputy Prime
Minister Tareq Aziz said in mid-1998 -that many of the
UN inspectors appeared unaware of what they were
supposed do in the realm of arms inspections and Iraqi
officers assigned to working with them found a marked
ignorance among them of technical issues related to
weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, it had also been reported that some of the
inspectors were reporting directly to Israel with or
without US knowledge.
In fact, it was Aziz's statement that enraged
Australian diplomat Butler, who assumed charge of the
UN inspections as successor to Ekeus in mid-1997, and
led to a course of events that culminated in the UN
decision to withdraw the inspectors ahead of
US-British military strikes against Iraq in December
1998.
Obviously Butler was counting on American military
strikes against Iraq everytime he reported to the UN
Security Council that Baghdad was not extending the
level of co-operation he demanded. He was frustrated
that his mission was not making any real headway and
knew within a few months' time and several visits to
Iraq that he would not get anywhere in his mission.
The real reason for the failure was his high-handed
approach and effort to dictate terms from his
self-assumed position of strength stemming from
American military powers to "punish" Iraq if it did
not fall in line with his commands.
It was clear that Aziz's pointed comments angered
Butler if only because he had hand-picked some of
members of the inspection team and the Iraqi
minister's accusation was seen as questioning his
abilities.
He was visibly upset when he appeared before the press
in Bahrain after his last visit to Baghdad during
which Aziz had made the statement to the press.
When asked about a report that a British minister had
said that Iraq was loading missiles with chemical
warheads at the rate of one a day Butler said he was
not aware of the report. In a report he presented to
the UN Security Council two days after the Bahrain
appearance he made no reference to any such Iraqi
activity.
However, a few hours after he presented the report, he
appeared before a pro-Israeli gathering in New York
and accused Iraq of arming missiles with chemical
weapons aimed at "destroying" Israel. He repeated that
allegation in a New York Times interview shortly
thereafter, leaving one wondering why he failed to
include it in his official report to the Security
Council, the very body which had assigned him the
mission and to which he was supposed to report.
The impression one got was that Butler took his
failure in Iraq too personal and waged a pointed
campaign during which he spared no effort to build the
case against Baghdad. And that culminated in the
December 1998 military "punishment" for Iraq.
Scott Ritter, an American who served under Ekeus as
well as Butler, has affirmed in public comments that
some of his team members were obviously engaged in
work unrelated to weapon inspections.
Against such a backdrop, it is only natural that
Baghdad continues to see any renewed inspection as
aimed at gathering more intelligence on the country in
preparation for eventual action to eliminate the
Saddam regime.
The Iraqi reaction to Ekeus's comments was also
predictable.
An official spokesman called the Swedish diplomat's
comments as "another important confirmation of many
statements by Iraq, international parties and foreign
personalities on the exploitation by the United
States of UN arms inspectors to perform tasks that
contradict their mandate as defined by Security
Council resolutions on Iraq."
"The remarks come at a time when extremists in the US
administration are trying to distract attention from
Iraq's legitimate rights according to Security
Council resolutions, in the forefront of them lifting
of the unjust sanctions and respecting Iraq's
sovereignty," he said.
"The new comments by Ekeus confirm Iraq's legitimate
concerns expressed in the questions submitted to the
UN secretary-general in talks on May 7," the
spokesman added. Those questions sought answers
whether US threats against Saddam were a breach of
international law to whether US "spies" would serve on
inspection teams.
Iraq is now demanding that the Security Council answer
Iraq's queries as "a first move to stop the United
States' exploitation of the apparatus of the United
Nations for ends contradicting those stipulated in
the council's resolutions and the UN Charter," said
the spokesman.
AFTER failing to establish a link between Saddam
Hussein and Osama Bin Laden -- and by extension to
prove an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks in the US
-- President George W. Bush is citing charges that
Baghdad is continuing to develop weapons of mass
destruction as his reason to launch military action
aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein.
But how authentic is the charge?
On the face of it, the international community is
being told to accept that Iraq has eluded the most
advanced satellite surveillance -- with equipment that
could arguably trace the contours of a grain of wheat
on the ground -- and the strictest-ever
air-sea-land-blockade backed by intense interceptions
and inspection of anything and everything crossing its
border -- and managed to resume its clandestine
weapons programme.
The assertion is based on an argument that the
departure of UN inspectors who were withdrawn by
Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- often wrongly
described by the US as their expulsion by Iraq -- in
late 1998 allowed Baghdad to pick where it had left
off following the destruction of most of its weapons
of mass destruction under the UN verification and
destruction programme.
A review of the UN programme would raise serious
questions about the US charge against Baghdad.
It was known that Baghdad and the UN mission never got
on well and there were always skirmishes, both
diplomatic and otherwise.
Iraq and the UN inspection teams have had many
standoffs, some of them resulting from the personal
postures adopted by inspectors and others because the
Iraqis tried to prevent vital papers on their
country's weapons programme as well as intelligence
documents unrelated to arms inspections being removed
by the UN officials.
"We hated each other's guts," as a former member of
the UN team put it.
It had become clear that Iraq had a much larger weapon
programme than was known to the international
community when the UN inspectors launched their
mission in 1991 as the United Nations Special
Commission (UNSCOM).
It took several years before UNSCOM managed to unravel
the programme, with the Iraqis revealing information
in bits and pieces and only when they were cornered
with solid evidence, and it became a cat-and-mouse
game.
It was not until late 1995 that the UN managed to get
a clear picture of Iraq's military programmes and that
came from Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel,
who "defected" to Jordan in August of that year.
Kamel, who served as Iraq's defence minister and head
of the country's military industry commission, was
believed to have been debriefed not only by the then
UNSCOM chairman, Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, but also by
American and European intelligence agencies.
At that time Kamel's "defection" and revelations about
his country's weapons programmes were seen as
Baghdad's opportunity to come clean with its secrets
to UNSCOM. In fact, Baghdad blamed Kamel for having
kept the secrets for himself and handed over several
cupboards full of files that it said were stashed away
by the defector at his farmhouse outside Baghdad.
The information gained from those files represented a
key pillar of UNSCOM strategy, and it was believed
that the UN mission had managed to unearth more than
90 per cent of Iraq's weapon programmes.
Shortly before the inspections came to a premature end
prompted by Iraq's insistence that a clear blueprint
be given for what was expected of it before the
sweeping UN sanctions imposed on it in 1990 are lifted
and Washington's refusal to meet the demand, UNSCOM
officials had asserted that the bulk of their work was
over although they were seeking answers to some vital
questions, and those questions are now being dusted
off and presented as the reasons for the charges
against Iraq.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which
followed an independent verification programme, said
that it had located Iraq's nuclear programme and had
eliminated the country's nuclear material and
equipment as well as the ability to renew them. But
when the IAEA tried to close the "nuclear file," the
US intervened it and aborted the move.
On the "missiles" file, Richard Butler, who succeeded
Ekeus as UNSCOM chairman, said in July/August 1997
that the UN team had accounted for all but less than
12 long-range Scud missiles that Iraq was known to
have bought from the then Soviet Union and modified.
He also said that the bulk of Iraq's chemical and
biological weapons were destroyed but that the UN team
had not received all answers.
"UNSCOM did a fantastic job," he said. "You have to
understand that when the Gulf war was ended there was
revealed an awesome array of weapons of mass
destruction: almost a nuclear bomb, long-range
missiles, chemical, biological, all of the weapons of
mass destruction. And we, with Iraq, got hold of most
of it, got an account of it or got rid of it."
Such comments had also come from several other key
members of the UN mission as well as American and
international military experts who had access to
classified information collected by UNSCOM.
Seen against the backdrop of such assertions, a look
at the claims and assertions that Iraq continues to
build weapons of mass destruction -- the reason that
Bush cites for his plans to launch military action
aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein -- unveils a
contradiction.
The key question is: With all entry points into Iraq
under close surveillance and a ban on all commercial
and military planes in and out of the country, how is
it possible that Baghdad continued to develop weapons
of mass destruction in the absence of the UN
inspectors since late 1998?
In an appearance before the US Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Butler asserted that Iraq had
extensive chemical and biological weapons programmes
and that there is evidence it has stepped up it
alleged nuclear programmes in recent years.
Is the world then to believe that Iraq managed to get
equipment and material past the American armada
patrolling the seas and checking anything and
everything heading for Iraq, and indeed "suspect"
material headed for Iraq's neighbours that could be
sent to Iraq, and renewed its weapons programme?
It has been 12 years since the sweeping trade embargo
was imposed on Iraq.
Isn't it not fair to anyone to expect that the
enforcers of the sanctions would have perfected their
art?
Almost every vessel, small or big, is inspected before
it docks in Iraq or anywhere with access to Iraq.
American intelligence agents are present in all
neighbours of Iraq -- although to a lesser extent in
Iran -- to ensure that no "contraband" material enters
the country; nothing beyond food and medicine and
related items approved under the UN's oil-for-food
programme is allowed into the country. Any item which
could have slightest "military use" is blocked from
entering Iraq.
An example is caustic soda, a key element in cleaning
and washing of dairy equipment. It could also be used
in production of chemical weapons, according to
experts.
Since the day the sanction and verification regime was
put into place, no consignment of caustic soda has
been allowed into Iraq, and efforts by Jordan-based
exporters to send the material to Iraq across the
border -- presumably for legitimate purposes -- have
been repeatedly thwarted.
That is only an indication of the effectiveness of the
blockade, and it is difficult to see how the Iraqis
managed to lay their hands of components of chemical
weapons.
However, that is not to say that Iraq could not have
done it. Then again, reports from Washington and
London indicate that military generals on both sides
of the Atlantic are not really convinced that Iraq had
developed weapons as alleged or that poses a real
threat to the region. Such scepticism has been voiced
by officers who should be in a position to have access
to classified and top secret information on Iraq's
military capabilities as a key pillar of any strategy
to launch a war on that country.
Some of the allegations are also based on accounts by
Iraqi defectors, both identified and unidentified.
However, the credibility and authenticity of such
accounts are brought under question when considering
that almost all the "defectors" are produced and
paraded by Iraqi dissident groups which have a vested
interest in convincing the world that Baghdad is evil.
In some cases, it has also been found that the
defectors had left Iraq around the same time the UN
inspections were halted and they were making claims
linked to the period after their departure from the
country.
However, regardless of all reasonings and logic based
on available facts that expose the hollowness of the
American argument for striking at Iraq, the Bush
administration is dead bent upon carrying out their
designs in the region and Saddam Hussein has no room
in their strategy.
'Spying' charges
AS was expected sooner or later, the Swedish diplomat
who headed the UN arms inspection programme in Iraq
until 1997 has turned around and extended implicit
endorsement of Baghdad's assertion that the
inspections were mostly a smokescreen for American
intelligence activities in the country.
Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, who chaired UNSCOM since its
creation in 1991 until he quit in 1997, affirmed in
public comments this week that some of his team
members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to
weapon inspections.
In comments carried by Swedish radio, Ekeus said the
US and other powers had exploited UN teams in Iraq
for their own political ends, including monitoring
President Saddam Hussein's movements and that, at
times, crises were created that could possibly form
the basis for military action.
"There is no doubt that the Americans wanted to
influence the inspections to further certain
fundamental US interests," Ekeus said in his first
affirmation that he was aware of what was going on.
That partly vindicates Baghdad's accusations,
particularly that Ekeus was one of the harshest
critics of Iraq while he headed UNSCOM and thereafter
until this week's comments.
Indeed, one of the key arguments Iraq is putting up
against the US demand for renewed inspections of
Baghdad's alleged programmes of producing weapons of
mass destruction is the record that previous
inspectors had spied on the country.
It is not a new position and some of those who served
in the UN mission for verification of arms in Iraq
until it was stopped in late 1998 had admitted in
public that some of their colleagues were intelligence
agents rather than arms experts.
In a statement that went largely unnoticed or played
down deliberately or otherwise, Iraqi Deputy Prime
Minister Tareq Aziz said in mid-1998 -that many of the
UN inspectors appeared unaware of what they were
supposed do in the realm of arms inspections and Iraqi
officers assigned to working with them found a marked
ignorance among them of technical issues related to
weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, it had also been reported that some of the
inspectors were reporting directly to Israel with or
without US knowledge.
In fact, it was Aziz's statement that enraged
Australian diplomat Butler, who assumed charge of the
UN inspections as successor to Ekeus in mid-1997, and
led to a course of events that culminated in the UN
decision to withdraw the inspectors ahead of
US-British military strikes against Iraq in December
1998.
Obviously Butler was counting on American military
strikes against Iraq everytime he reported to the UN
Security Council that Baghdad was not extending the
level of co-operation he demanded. He was frustrated
that his mission was not making any real headway and
knew within a few months' time and several visits to
Iraq that he would not get anywhere in his mission.
The real reason for the failure was his high-handed
approach and effort to dictate terms from his
self-assumed position of strength stemming from
American military powers to "punish" Iraq if it did
not fall in line with his commands.
It was clear that Aziz's pointed comments angered
Butler if only because he had hand-picked some of
members of the inspection team and the Iraqi
minister's accusation was seen as questioning his
abilities.
He was visibly upset when he appeared before the press
in Bahrain after his last visit to Baghdad during
which Aziz had made the statement to the press.
When asked about a report that a British minister had
said that Iraq was loading missiles with chemical
warheads at the rate of one a day Butler said he was
not aware of the report. In a report he presented to
the UN Security Council two days after the Bahrain
appearance he made no reference to any such Iraqi
activity.
However, a few hours after he presented the report, he
appeared before a pro-Israeli gathering in New York
and accused Iraq of arming missiles with chemical
weapons aimed at "destroying" Israel. He repeated that
allegation in a New York Times interview shortly
thereafter, leaving one wondering why he failed to
include it in his official report to the Security
Council, the very body which had assigned him the
mission and to which he was supposed to report.
The impression one got was that Butler took his
failure in Iraq too personal and waged a pointed
campaign during which he spared no effort to build the
case against Baghdad. And that culminated in the
December 1998 military "punishment" for Iraq.
Scott Ritter, an American who served under Ekeus as
well as Butler, has affirmed in public comments that
some of his team members were obviously engaged in
work unrelated to weapon inspections.
Against such a backdrop, it is only natural that
Baghdad continues to see any renewed inspection as
aimed at gathering more intelligence on the country in
preparation for eventual action to eliminate the
Saddam regime.
The Iraqi reaction to Ekeus's comments was also
predictable.
An official spokesman called the Swedish diplomat's
comments as "another important confirmation of many
statements by Iraq, international parties and foreign
personalities on the exploitation by the United
States of UN arms inspectors to perform tasks that
contradict their mandate as defined by Security
Council resolutions on Iraq."
"The remarks come at a time when extremists in the US
administration are trying to distract attention from
Iraq's legitimate rights according to Security
Council resolutions, in the forefront of them lifting
of the unjust sanctions and respecting Iraq's
sovereignty," he said.
"The new comments by Ekeus confirm Iraq's legitimate
concerns expressed in the questions submitted to the
UN secretary-general in talks on May 7," the
spokesman added. Those questions sought answers
whether US threats against Saddam were a breach of
international law to whether US "spies" would serve on
inspection teams.
Iraq is now demanding that the Security Council answer
Iraq's queries as "a first move to stop the United
States' exploitation of the apparatus of the United
Nations for ends contradicting those stipulated in
the council's resolutions and the UN Charter," said
the spokesman.
Monday, July 29, 2002
Iraqi exiles on diverse courses
by pv vivekanand
AGREEMENT among the six major groups of Iraqi dissidents is key to any US plan to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, but Washington might find it elusive not only because of the uncertainties of its campaign and regional undercurrents but also the conflicting agendas of the various parties to the oust-Saddam scenario before, during and after it is played out.
Without a unified approach grouping the six factions representing the political and military segments of Iraqis they claim to represent, it is a no-go for the US to implement its plans. Latest reports speak of a purported plan to launch a sudden invasion of Iraq in October and achieve its objectives before the end of the year.
Washington, worried by clear signs of divisions among the groups, has invited their leaders for talks on Aug. 9, but the change in fundamentals that are vital to an agreement among them is unlikely by October or beyond as long as the US does not make it clear whom it wants to install as Saddam's successor i.e. in the hypothesis that it manages to topple the Iraqi president and assumes a position of strength where it could call the shots in Baghdad.
Apart from the problems in trying to find common ground among the diverse agendas of the dissident groups, it would be very difficult for the US to achieve parity between its own "political and strategic as well as oil interests" in Iraq with the interests of Iraqi exiles at this stage with a view to ensuring that an Uncle Sam man is installed in Baghdad.
The six invited to the Washington meeting are:
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr Al Hakim, leader of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Ahmed Chalabi, chairman of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), Sharif Ali Hussein of the INC, Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) based in northern Iraq, Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and also based in northern Iraq, and Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord , which claims to represent dissident Iraqi army officers from all sects in the country.
Each of these six men represents distinct and conflicting interests, and none of them is likely to join meaningful alliances without guarantees that their interests would be protected. But the US would not be able to provide that guarantee with convincing assurances because of the very disparity in their respective positions.
The only cause they share is the ouster of Saddam, and it's anyone's guess how these groups plan to behave in the run-up to the hypothetical ouster of Saddam and in a post-Saddam Iraq.
It is not clear who would attend the Washington meeting.
It is unlikely that SCIRI would accept the invitation but all others are likely to.
In Damascus, the Syrian representative of SCIRI, Bayan Jabber, said his group was invited but had not decided if it would attend. Others have indicated they might go.
In any scenario, Iranian-backed Ayatollah Hakim will seek to ensure that the majority Shiites of Iraq would have a dominant say in the future of a post-Saddam Iraq, but the US, wary of Hakim's Iranian connections, would not want to see Shiite domination of Iraqi affairs.
It is also unclear how Hakim could find compatibility between joining an alliance for military action against Iraq and Tehran's vehement rejection of such a course of events.
Obviously, Iran feels that it could be the next target for American action after Iraq, and Tehran could be counted on to do everything in its power to throw a spanner in the works to ensure that Washington does not achieve its objectives in Iraq. That is arguably one of the strongest wild cards in the equation.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein claim to represent the democratic school among Iraqis, but the INC's influence among its constituents is limited. Reports from Washington indicate that officials do not trust the INC, particularly when it comes to funds.
Chalabi, who fled Jordan in 1988 in a $300 million scandal after operating a bank there for more than 10 years, has been accused of diverting anti-Saddam US funds.
Chalabi has boasted to this writer, immediately after the war of 1991, that the day was near when he would occupy the presidential palace in Baghdad while one of his old-time lieutenants -- chief foreign exchange dealer at his collapsed Petra Bank in Jordan -- would be his "finance minister."
Sharif Hussein is a descendant of the Hashemite family which ruled Iraq until it was ousted in a bloody coup in 1958, and he has remained a mysterious figure playing his cards close to his chest despite his role in the INC as leader of the small Constitutional Monarchy Movement.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein are known not to see eye-to-eye on many issues, but the two have tried to put up a picture of close alliance in recent times, and that the US found it fit to invite both of them to the Aug. 9 meeting is an implicit recognition of the differences between them.
Talabani and Barzani, the Kurdish leaders who hold sway in northern Iraq -- or what they call Kurdistan -- under an uneasy alliance after bitter fighting, claim to represent the interests of the nearly five million Kurds living in Iraq.
Doubts are cast on their political inclinations after they worked out a modus videndi under American pressure. The two are the two main powers in the northern Iraq, which is beyond the control of the Baghdad government.
The two groups seem to be more interesting in collecting taxes and tolls from local residents as well as Baghdad-bound vehicles passing through their territory with goods and back across the border to Turkey with oil in violation of the UN sanctions against Iraq.
The KDP is known to be flirting with Baghdad and it was with Saddam's army support that the group managed to consolidate its grip in the north after a round of fierce fighting in 1996.
Both Talabani and Barzani are likely to be wary of any US plan to topple the Saddam regime without assurances that their fiefdoms would not be challenged and their revenues are guaranteed. Equally important, they would demand iron-clad promises that the US would not desert them and leave them in the lurch half-way through military action against Saddam.
In return, the US would demand from them a pledge that they would not seek to secede from Iraq and to set up an "independent and sovereign Kurdistan" -- the dream of the 30 million Kurds scattered in the region but anathema to Turkey, Syria and Iran.
It is easy to figure out why such an entity would be rejected by the region's countries. The so-called Kurdistan in northern Iraq represents, according to a nationalist Kurdish website, only 18 per cent of the "Kurdish homeland." The rest of the territory, it says, was usurped following World War I: Turkey took 43 per cent of the followed by Iran (31 per cent), Syria (six per cent) and the former Soviet Union (two per cent).
With sizeable Kurdish populations in these areas, fears are strong that "Kurdistan" would not be happy to remain in the 18 per cent in Iraq.
Finances are also expected to play a major influencing role the choices of the Kurdish groups.
Under the UN's oil-for-food programme with Iraq, the Kurds living under KDP and PUK control in the north get 17 per cent of the proceeds from exports of Iraqi oil under UN supervision. This has helped improve the post-war lot the Kurds and indirectly boosted the standing of Talabani and Barzani. As such, neither of them is likely to upset the applecart without ensuring that their constituencies would not be deprived of the relative improvement in life brought about by the oil proceeds.
Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord says he represents dissident Iraqi officers both in and out of the country. His group was once seen closer to the US (it was under American pressure the late king Hussein of Jordan allowed Alawi to open an office in Amman in 1996).
Obviously, according to sources close to the Iraqi National Accord, the group believes that the military should be in control of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the hoped-for ouster of Saddam.
Without a strong military grip throughout Iraq, the group reportedly argues, the country would simply disintegrate.
The Iraqi National Accord claims the support of top Iraqi officers who deserted the country after the 1991 war and also of that of many who continue to serve the regime. The claim has never been put to test.
Thrown into the bargain are assertions by Iraqi exiles that Washington has already shortlisted some 15 former Iraqi generals and would designate one of them to take over Baghdad as Saddam's succesor.
Obviously, it implies that democracy is far from the US mind in a post-Saddam Iraq.
Lending credit to that argument is the complaint by the INC that despite its "commitment" to democracy Washington is not giving it the due consideration it thinks it deserves.
One of those "shortlisted" generals is said to be former army chief Nizar Al Khasraji who served as Iraq's army chief of staff when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. He fled Iraq after the 1991 war and now lives in Copenhagen. The US plans involving him appear to have suffered a setback after the Dutch government launched an investigation into charges that he led an Iraqi military campaign against Kurds after the eight-year Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988.
The US accuses Saddam and some of his close associates of war crimes for the anti-Kurd operations and it would be out of place for Washington to continue to groom Khasraji after limelight has fallen on him as one of those who had masterminded and carried out the alleged crimes against Kurds.
The deep splits among the Iraqi exiles over aspirations for power and strategies forced the INC to call off plans to announce a "government in exile" on Saturday.
The fundamental difference is over who should be named as what in the "government in exile." It is widely perceived that the line-up would be followed in as and when -- and of course "if" -- the "exiles" move into Baghdad. As such, naming the "functionaries" would be as good as tipping the hands of the various groups. Beyond that is the reality that most of those who are left out would opt to remain outside the coalition and might even try to torpedo its moves.
Furthermore, there are some who want a role in running Iraq but are not ready to emerge into the open yet, and they, if the exiles are to be believed, include a few within the Saddam regime who would be signing their fate if prematurely identified as sympathisers of the anti-Saddam campaign.
The difficulties and differences facing the Iraqi exile groups were no more pronounced than when they could not even announce in public the names of the members of a committee they elected at their recent London meeting and they could not agree on who should chair it.
Against the array of divergent interests and agendas, it would be an almost miracle if the US managed to cobble the exiles together into a coherent alliance with the potential to serve its interests in Iraq -- that is, indeed, not to mention the fundamental fault lines in the US approach in defiance of Arab and international public opinion against its plans to oust the leadership of a sovereign country.
AGREEMENT among the six major groups of Iraqi dissidents is key to any US plan to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, but Washington might find it elusive not only because of the uncertainties of its campaign and regional undercurrents but also the conflicting agendas of the various parties to the oust-Saddam scenario before, during and after it is played out.
Without a unified approach grouping the six factions representing the political and military segments of Iraqis they claim to represent, it is a no-go for the US to implement its plans. Latest reports speak of a purported plan to launch a sudden invasion of Iraq in October and achieve its objectives before the end of the year.
Washington, worried by clear signs of divisions among the groups, has invited their leaders for talks on Aug. 9, but the change in fundamentals that are vital to an agreement among them is unlikely by October or beyond as long as the US does not make it clear whom it wants to install as Saddam's successor i.e. in the hypothesis that it manages to topple the Iraqi president and assumes a position of strength where it could call the shots in Baghdad.
Apart from the problems in trying to find common ground among the diverse agendas of the dissident groups, it would be very difficult for the US to achieve parity between its own "political and strategic as well as oil interests" in Iraq with the interests of Iraqi exiles at this stage with a view to ensuring that an Uncle Sam man is installed in Baghdad.
The six invited to the Washington meeting are:
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr Al Hakim, leader of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Ahmed Chalabi, chairman of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), Sharif Ali Hussein of the INC, Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) based in northern Iraq, Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and also based in northern Iraq, and Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord , which claims to represent dissident Iraqi army officers from all sects in the country.
Each of these six men represents distinct and conflicting interests, and none of them is likely to join meaningful alliances without guarantees that their interests would be protected. But the US would not be able to provide that guarantee with convincing assurances because of the very disparity in their respective positions.
The only cause they share is the ouster of Saddam, and it's anyone's guess how these groups plan to behave in the run-up to the hypothetical ouster of Saddam and in a post-Saddam Iraq.
It is not clear who would attend the Washington meeting.
It is unlikely that SCIRI would accept the invitation but all others are likely to.
In Damascus, the Syrian representative of SCIRI, Bayan Jabber, said his group was invited but had not decided if it would attend. Others have indicated they might go.
In any scenario, Iranian-backed Ayatollah Hakim will seek to ensure that the majority Shiites of Iraq would have a dominant say in the future of a post-Saddam Iraq, but the US, wary of Hakim's Iranian connections, would not want to see Shiite domination of Iraqi affairs.
It is also unclear how Hakim could find compatibility between joining an alliance for military action against Iraq and Tehran's vehement rejection of such a course of events.
Obviously, Iran feels that it could be the next target for American action after Iraq, and Tehran could be counted on to do everything in its power to throw a spanner in the works to ensure that Washington does not achieve its objectives in Iraq. That is arguably one of the strongest wild cards in the equation.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein claim to represent the democratic school among Iraqis, but the INC's influence among its constituents is limited. Reports from Washington indicate that officials do not trust the INC, particularly when it comes to funds.
Chalabi, who fled Jordan in 1988 in a $300 million scandal after operating a bank there for more than 10 years, has been accused of diverting anti-Saddam US funds.
Chalabi has boasted to this writer, immediately after the war of 1991, that the day was near when he would occupy the presidential palace in Baghdad while one of his old-time lieutenants -- chief foreign exchange dealer at his collapsed Petra Bank in Jordan -- would be his "finance minister."
Sharif Hussein is a descendant of the Hashemite family which ruled Iraq until it was ousted in a bloody coup in 1958, and he has remained a mysterious figure playing his cards close to his chest despite his role in the INC as leader of the small Constitutional Monarchy Movement.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein are known not to see eye-to-eye on many issues, but the two have tried to put up a picture of close alliance in recent times, and that the US found it fit to invite both of them to the Aug. 9 meeting is an implicit recognition of the differences between them.
Talabani and Barzani, the Kurdish leaders who hold sway in northern Iraq -- or what they call Kurdistan -- under an uneasy alliance after bitter fighting, claim to represent the interests of the nearly five million Kurds living in Iraq.
Doubts are cast on their political inclinations after they worked out a modus videndi under American pressure. The two are the two main powers in the northern Iraq, which is beyond the control of the Baghdad government.
The two groups seem to be more interesting in collecting taxes and tolls from local residents as well as Baghdad-bound vehicles passing through their territory with goods and back across the border to Turkey with oil in violation of the UN sanctions against Iraq.
The KDP is known to be flirting with Baghdad and it was with Saddam's army support that the group managed to consolidate its grip in the north after a round of fierce fighting in 1996.
Both Talabani and Barzani are likely to be wary of any US plan to topple the Saddam regime without assurances that their fiefdoms would not be challenged and their revenues are guaranteed. Equally important, they would demand iron-clad promises that the US would not desert them and leave them in the lurch half-way through military action against Saddam.
In return, the US would demand from them a pledge that they would not seek to secede from Iraq and to set up an "independent and sovereign Kurdistan" -- the dream of the 30 million Kurds scattered in the region but anathema to Turkey, Syria and Iran.
It is easy to figure out why such an entity would be rejected by the region's countries. The so-called Kurdistan in northern Iraq represents, according to a nationalist Kurdish website, only 18 per cent of the "Kurdish homeland." The rest of the territory, it says, was usurped following World War I: Turkey took 43 per cent of the followed by Iran (31 per cent), Syria (six per cent) and the former Soviet Union (two per cent).
With sizeable Kurdish populations in these areas, fears are strong that "Kurdistan" would not be happy to remain in the 18 per cent in Iraq.
Finances are also expected to play a major influencing role the choices of the Kurdish groups.
Under the UN's oil-for-food programme with Iraq, the Kurds living under KDP and PUK control in the north get 17 per cent of the proceeds from exports of Iraqi oil under UN supervision. This has helped improve the post-war lot the Kurds and indirectly boosted the standing of Talabani and Barzani. As such, neither of them is likely to upset the applecart without ensuring that their constituencies would not be deprived of the relative improvement in life brought about by the oil proceeds.
Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord says he represents dissident Iraqi officers both in and out of the country. His group was once seen closer to the US (it was under American pressure the late king Hussein of Jordan allowed Alawi to open an office in Amman in 1996).
Obviously, according to sources close to the Iraqi National Accord, the group believes that the military should be in control of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the hoped-for ouster of Saddam.
Without a strong military grip throughout Iraq, the group reportedly argues, the country would simply disintegrate.
The Iraqi National Accord claims the support of top Iraqi officers who deserted the country after the 1991 war and also of that of many who continue to serve the regime. The claim has never been put to test.
Thrown into the bargain are assertions by Iraqi exiles that Washington has already shortlisted some 15 former Iraqi generals and would designate one of them to take over Baghdad as Saddam's succesor.
Obviously, it implies that democracy is far from the US mind in a post-Saddam Iraq.
Lending credit to that argument is the complaint by the INC that despite its "commitment" to democracy Washington is not giving it the due consideration it thinks it deserves.
One of those "shortlisted" generals is said to be former army chief Nizar Al Khasraji who served as Iraq's army chief of staff when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. He fled Iraq after the 1991 war and now lives in Copenhagen. The US plans involving him appear to have suffered a setback after the Dutch government launched an investigation into charges that he led an Iraqi military campaign against Kurds after the eight-year Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988.
The US accuses Saddam and some of his close associates of war crimes for the anti-Kurd operations and it would be out of place for Washington to continue to groom Khasraji after limelight has fallen on him as one of those who had masterminded and carried out the alleged crimes against Kurds.
The deep splits among the Iraqi exiles over aspirations for power and strategies forced the INC to call off plans to announce a "government in exile" on Saturday.
The fundamental difference is over who should be named as what in the "government in exile." It is widely perceived that the line-up would be followed in as and when -- and of course "if" -- the "exiles" move into Baghdad. As such, naming the "functionaries" would be as good as tipping the hands of the various groups. Beyond that is the reality that most of those who are left out would opt to remain outside the coalition and might even try to torpedo its moves.
Furthermore, there are some who want a role in running Iraq but are not ready to emerge into the open yet, and they, if the exiles are to be believed, include a few within the Saddam regime who would be signing their fate if prematurely identified as sympathisers of the anti-Saddam campaign.
The difficulties and differences facing the Iraqi exile groups were no more pronounced than when they could not even announce in public the names of the members of a committee they elected at their recent London meeting and they could not agree on who should chair it.
Against the array of divergent interests and agendas, it would be an almost miracle if the US managed to cobble the exiles together into a coherent alliance with the potential to serve its interests in Iraq -- that is, indeed, not to mention the fundamental fault lines in the US approach in defiance of Arab and international public opinion against its plans to oust the leadership of a sovereign country.
Sunday, July 21, 2002
US poised to hit Iraq
by pv vivekanand
IF reports are accurate, then a US military strike against Iraq is imminent although it defies logic even in military terms, terrain and weather and of course the regional situation in the Middle East. Perhaps that is the mysterious element in the American approach to executing its declared plan to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein despite international opposition.
Be that it may, the fact remains that there is no well-established legal basis for the US plan within or outside the UN framework.
UN Security Council Resolution 665 adopted in August 1990 authorised the use of force against Iraq since that country had invaded another sovereign state, Kuwait, and Resoluton 678 of November of the same year set the Jan. 15 deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face war. The international community, including a majority of members of the Arab League, backed the use of force against Iraq at that time after Baghdad refused to quit Kuwait.
The mission was accomplished and Iraq was evicted from February1991 and the authorisation for war offered by UN Security Council resolutions 665 and 678 was terminated when Resolution 687 was adopted in April 1991 formally ending the military action launched by a US-led coalition of 31 countries.
Since then, the UN Security Council has adopted dozens of resolutions related to Iraq, but all of them covered the various by-products of the 1990 Iraqi invasion and the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and none of them prescribed another war or an invasion of Iraq and ouster of its leadership. Those resolutions dealt with the UN trade embargo against Iraq and the conditions under which the sanctions could be lifted and with the "oil-for-food" programme.
In fact, there is no UN endorsement of the "no-fly" zones imposed and patrolled by the US and UK in the north and south of Iraq, and, by extension, their frequent attacks on Iraq in retaliation for alleged provocations have no legal basis within the UN system. Nor was there any UN endorsement of the several rounds of massive missile attacks and bombings of targets in Iraq carried out by the US.
In the framework of the various resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council since the Gulf war of 1991, there is no authorisation for the use of force against Iraq related to its shortl-lived occupation of Kuwait.
In strict legal terms, Iraq's refusal to allow the return of UN inspectors could be construed as defiance of the UN Security Council resolutions that calls for the elimination of Baghdad' alleged weapons programme. However, there is no UN stipulaton for military action for its perceived rejection of the world body's decisions and demands.
Indeed, the Bush administration could revoke the US right to defend itself as a justification for military action in the wake of the Sept.11 attacks in New York and Washington as it did in order to execute the Afghanistan war. The right to self-defence is clearly enshrined in the UN Charter. But can the US rely on the same right to strike against Baghdad now?
Asserting that Iraq was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks and proving it beyond reasonable doubt are two different things. Even in the hypotheis that the US manages to establish such a link -- as it is obviously trying to do through relying on Iraqi defectors with little or no credibility -- would that provide the legal umbrella for a US invasion of iraq?
One of the reasons cited by US President George W. Bush for his moves against Iraq is the alleged Iraqi development and possession of weapons of mass destruction that he contented Baghdad was using to "terrorise" the region.
According to Bush, action against countries "terrorising" neighbours with weapons of mass destruction is part of the US-led war on terrorism; but then how many of Iraq's neighbours are complaining of being "terrorised" by Baghdad? If anything, all of them have opposed the US plan for military action against Iraq and are highly concerned about the repercussions of such a course of events in the region.
No doubt Washington strategists and legal experts are too familiar with the thin ice Washington is skating on towards invading Iraq; and it is obvious why the US reacts with vehemence whenever any government refers to the lack of a legal foundation for its plans to topple Saddam Hussein.
Obviously, the Bush administration is too aware of the futility of an exercise to secure UN endorsement for its designs even from the very same UN members it contents are threatened and terrorised by Baghdad. Any such effort would only open a Pandora's box from where skeletons would emerge of American unilateralism.
As far as Washington is concerned, UN authorisation for whatever action against Iraq already exists in UN Security Council resolutions -- although it fails to be specific -- and of course tough luck if the world fails to see it that way.
The US stand is an affront to the international community and the very foundations of the UN as a watchdog to ensure justice for all, but the sad reality is that no one seems to be able or willing enough to contain the self-assumed US posture of as the sole policeman, judge and executioner of the world.
IF reports are accurate, then a US military strike against Iraq is imminent although it defies logic even in military terms, terrain and weather and of course the regional situation in the Middle East. Perhaps that is the mysterious element in the American approach to executing its declared plan to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein despite international opposition.
Be that it may, the fact remains that there is no well-established legal basis for the US plan within or outside the UN framework.
UN Security Council Resolution 665 adopted in August 1990 authorised the use of force against Iraq since that country had invaded another sovereign state, Kuwait, and Resoluton 678 of November of the same year set the Jan. 15 deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face war. The international community, including a majority of members of the Arab League, backed the use of force against Iraq at that time after Baghdad refused to quit Kuwait.
The mission was accomplished and Iraq was evicted from February1991 and the authorisation for war offered by UN Security Council resolutions 665 and 678 was terminated when Resolution 687 was adopted in April 1991 formally ending the military action launched by a US-led coalition of 31 countries.
Since then, the UN Security Council has adopted dozens of resolutions related to Iraq, but all of them covered the various by-products of the 1990 Iraqi invasion and the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and none of them prescribed another war or an invasion of Iraq and ouster of its leadership. Those resolutions dealt with the UN trade embargo against Iraq and the conditions under which the sanctions could be lifted and with the "oil-for-food" programme.
In fact, there is no UN endorsement of the "no-fly" zones imposed and patrolled by the US and UK in the north and south of Iraq, and, by extension, their frequent attacks on Iraq in retaliation for alleged provocations have no legal basis within the UN system. Nor was there any UN endorsement of the several rounds of massive missile attacks and bombings of targets in Iraq carried out by the US.
In the framework of the various resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council since the Gulf war of 1991, there is no authorisation for the use of force against Iraq related to its shortl-lived occupation of Kuwait.
In strict legal terms, Iraq's refusal to allow the return of UN inspectors could be construed as defiance of the UN Security Council resolutions that calls for the elimination of Baghdad' alleged weapons programme. However, there is no UN stipulaton for military action for its perceived rejection of the world body's decisions and demands.
Indeed, the Bush administration could revoke the US right to defend itself as a justification for military action in the wake of the Sept.11 attacks in New York and Washington as it did in order to execute the Afghanistan war. The right to self-defence is clearly enshrined in the UN Charter. But can the US rely on the same right to strike against Baghdad now?
Asserting that Iraq was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks and proving it beyond reasonable doubt are two different things. Even in the hypotheis that the US manages to establish such a link -- as it is obviously trying to do through relying on Iraqi defectors with little or no credibility -- would that provide the legal umbrella for a US invasion of iraq?
One of the reasons cited by US President George W. Bush for his moves against Iraq is the alleged Iraqi development and possession of weapons of mass destruction that he contented Baghdad was using to "terrorise" the region.
According to Bush, action against countries "terrorising" neighbours with weapons of mass destruction is part of the US-led war on terrorism; but then how many of Iraq's neighbours are complaining of being "terrorised" by Baghdad? If anything, all of them have opposed the US plan for military action against Iraq and are highly concerned about the repercussions of such a course of events in the region.
No doubt Washington strategists and legal experts are too familiar with the thin ice Washington is skating on towards invading Iraq; and it is obvious why the US reacts with vehemence whenever any government refers to the lack of a legal foundation for its plans to topple Saddam Hussein.
Obviously, the Bush administration is too aware of the futility of an exercise to secure UN endorsement for its designs even from the very same UN members it contents are threatened and terrorised by Baghdad. Any such effort would only open a Pandora's box from where skeletons would emerge of American unilateralism.
As far as Washington is concerned, UN authorisation for whatever action against Iraq already exists in UN Security Council resolutions -- although it fails to be specific -- and of course tough luck if the world fails to see it that way.
The US stand is an affront to the international community and the very foundations of the UN as a watchdog to ensure justice for all, but the sad reality is that no one seems to be able or willing enough to contain the self-assumed US posture of as the sole policeman, judge and executioner of the world.
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