PAX AMERICANA - EMPIRE OF BLOOD AND OIL
PV VIVEKANAND
The Project for the New American Century envisions the forced creation and imposition on the world of Pax Americana, or American peace. It means creating a global empire that ensures the energy security of the United States and American domination of every part of this planet. Within the Middle Eastern context, this would easily explain why the US concocted the story that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and fraudulently manufactured proof to support that lie and threw in, for good measures, the contention that Saddam Hussein had links with Al Qaeda and posed a direct security threat to the American people. And it also explains why the US so closely aligned with Israel at the cost of its ties with the Arab and Muslim world and is gunning for Iran.
There was no intelligence failure, there was no misreading of evidence and there was no misguiding indication. The Bush administration set its objective as invasion and occupation of Iraq and then worked its way backwards to create a path leading to it. "Evidence" was manufactured whenever the need arose in the dedicated campaign to invade a sovereign country thousands of kilometres from the American shore in order to serve the interests of imperial America.
Anything that cropped up was either dismissed as irrelevant or explained away to fit in the overall scheme of things. Had there been a genuine WMD or terror threat from Iraq, it would have manifested itself. The hawks in the Bush administration would not have had to come up with fabricated charges like Saddam Hussein wanting to buy uranium from Niger and even had drones capable of hitting the US with chemical or biological weapons; nor would British Prime Minister Tony Blair's "intelligence" agencies have had to "sex up" reports on Iraq's military capabilities with outdated university theses.
It is now established that there is no ground for continued insistence that the invasion of Iraq and ouster of Saddam Hussein served to protect Americans from 9/11-style terror attacks using chemical and biological weapons.
The massive 1,000-page report prepared by the Iraq Survey Group led by American Charles Duelfer has eliminated any excuse or pretext for such insistence. The report established that Iraq had no WMD, was not engaged in any effort to develop it and its 1980s ability to produce WMD had all but eroded at the time when the US-led invading forces went into the country last year.
The 9/11 attacks helped Washington's plans to invade and occupy Iraq since they offered the Bush administration a pretext to portray Saddam as terror threat by linking him with Al Qaeda.
Lure of oil
The reality was that the US wanted to grab a piece of oil-rich real estate in the Middle East in order to secure its energy security, and, in the bargain, set up an advanced military base in the region and also get rid of a potential military threat to Washington's strategic partner, ally and protégé, Israel.
That was what happened, but what the US did not count on was messing up what it had hoped would be a smooth transition to an American-friendly regime to replace Saddam. It has proved a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and military imbroglio that defies solution.
A document drawn up in 2000 showed that George W Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure "regime change" even before he took power in January 2001.
The document, officially titled "Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century," was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The brains behind it included Dick Cheney, who went to become Bush's vice- president, Donald Rumsfeld, who was named defence secretary by Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, who now serves as Rumsfeld's deputy, Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby, who is now Cheney's chief of staff.
In fact, the document was a refurbished version of a plan drawn up by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz two years earlier. The plan was sent in January 1998 to the then president, Bill Clinton, saying:
"The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.
"In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
"We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts."
Well, Clinton did not have enough time to prepare the ground for an invasion of Iraq, and hence Bush inherited it and implemented it. Rest is history.
Colonising the world
Have a closer look at the 1998 call on Clinton. It talks only about the removal of Saddam from power "in the long term." It talks nothing about any plan beyond it. Obviously, the idea was to retain Iraq as an American colony with whatever that entails.
In fact, the 2000 report identified Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil" and Bush was only borrowing the term from the report when he started using it in late 2002.
While the report had highlighted the "nuclear" threat posed by the three countries grouped in the "axis of evil," the US military invaded and occupied the one country among the three which did not have any nuclear programme at all.
The report listed 27 people as having been closely involved in preparation of the document. Six of them assumed key defence and foreign policy positions in the Bush administration.
It was interesting to hear Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, acknowledging the truth this week that the US would have still gone to war on Iraq even if it had known that Saddam possessed no WMD. But Rice gave it a nice twist.
"He was someone who had an insatiable appetite for weapons of mass destruction. He had the means, he had the intent, he had the money to do it," said Rice. "You were never going to break the link between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. And now we know that, had we waited, he would have gotten out of the sanctions, he would have undermined them by both trying to pay off people on the Security Council and doing what he could to keep his expertise in place," she said.
Perhaps Rice should spare a little time and remind herself that Chevron -- the company in which she occupied a director's seat before joining the administration -- was among the recipients of Saddam's "oil vouchers."
Her further comments on the war were even more hilarious. "Because we invaded the country, because we were able to interview the scientists and get the documents that Saddam Hussein had refused to give to the United Nations, we now know that he did not have those stockpiles," she said.
Wow! We thought the US had irrefutable evidence that Saddam had WMD before the first American military tank crossed the border to Iraq on March 20, 2003; we had no idea that the US motive behind the war was to determine whether or not Saddam had WMD.
Rice's next comment took the cake, if indeed one was left.
"He (Saddam) would have gotten out of the sanctions, and rebuilt his weapons of mass destruction programmes," Rice said. "We know he had the means to do so, it was only a matter of time. And it was time for us to take care of this threat."
So, as far as Washington was concerned, it was enough that Saddam had a wishlist of WMD and not necessarily possess them in order for the US to strike.
That brings up the question: Who authorised the US to invade any country simply because that country wished it had WMD?
Well, that where the Project for a New American Century, or Pax Americana comes into play.
Under that doctrine, the US reserves for itself the right to take any action it deems fit not only to protect its interests anywhere in the world but also to establish itself as a global empire which will have the sole responsibility as the policeman of planet Earth.
Building bases
That is further supported by reports saying that amid the fierce guerrilla war in Iraq, the US military is building more than a dozen "enduring bases" in the country to set up a permanent military presence in the Gulf.
The bases run from Kirkuk in the north to Basra in the north and are given names like Camp Victory (adjoining Baghdad airport), Camp Renegade (in Kirkuk) etc. The two American hostages beheaded last month were working as civil engineers constructing a base in Taji, north of Baghdad,
The Pentagon has not released any details of the planned bases to the public. However, it is expected that between 50,000 and 60,000 American soldiers would be housed at these bases in Iraq once Washington realises its hoped-for goal of pacifying Iraq by next year. The plan, in principle, is a repeat of what the US did in Japan after World War II.
The only top official to indirectly refer to the plan for bases in Iraq was Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who mentioned it even before the US forces invaded that country last year. The US already has bases in Kuwait and Qatar.
Installing a token government in Baghdad through elections in January and then drawing up a permanent constitution leading to fresh elections to another government in 2006 is the American definition of pacifying Iraq.
The building of the bases is parallel and separate from the ongoing US military operations in Iraq.
The US bases in Iraq will serve the military to keep a close eye on developments in the region and move forces to quickly intervene in any area where Washington perceives its interests to be threatened.
The presence will also serve as a reminder to the countries in the region that the US has at its disposal the military capability to invade and occupy countries and remove regimes.
Supplementing the American military presence in Iraq will be Israel's strength. Israel, with only sx million people, is counted among the top 10 strongest countries in the world.
However, Iran is a wild card in the game. The US has to neutralise the Iranians since the US military cannot afford to have its bases in Iraq within Iranian missile range as long as Tehran remains hostile to Washington.
The annual cost of maintaining the bases in Iraq is estimated at between $5 billion and $7 billion, according to Gordon Adams, director of Security Policy Studies at George Washington University in Washington.
The US maintains 890 military installations in foreign countries, ranging from major air force facilities to smaller installations, say a radar station. It is expected that the planned bases in Iraq would enable the Pentagon to close a few of those facilities.
However, the key question remains unanswered: It is widely accepted that a majority of Iraqis oppose the US presence in the country. How would they accept to have permanent American military bases in their land?
But then, what the people of Iraq think is not as important as what the US wants.
Rumsfeld has dismissed suggestions that the US covets Iraqi territory by maintaining bases, but then one only has to remember that the US military still has bases in Japan, nearly 60 years after World War II ended.
The National Security Strategy outlined by President Bush on Sept.20, 2002 -- or the so-called Bush Doctrine -- outlines a newly aggressive military and foreign policy, including pre-emptive attack against those who threaten American interests.
The doctrine bases itself on the neoconservative document of 2000.
As David R Francis, a respected American journalist known for objective and accurate writing, put it, the strategy "includes a plan for permanent American military and economic domination of every region on the globe, unfettered by international treaty or concern. And to make that plan a reality, it envisions a stark expansion of our global military presence."
He quotes from the report:
"The United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of US troops."
While Bush sought to create an impression that the National Security Strategy was inspired by the Sept.11 attacks, Francis notes, the same language is used in the 2002 report.
Francis writes:
"It advocates the 'transformation' of the US military to meet its expanded obligations, including the cancellation of such outmoded defence programmes as the Crusader artillery system. That's exactly the message being preached by Rumsfeld and others.
"It urges the development of small nuclear warheads "required in targeting the very deep, underground hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries." (Francis notes that the Republican-dominated House of Representatives has given the Pentagon the green light to develop such a weapon, called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, while the Senate has so far balked at approving it).
"To preserve the Pax Americana, the report says US forces will be required to perform 'constabulary duties' -- the United States acting as policeman of the world -- and says that such actions 'demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations.'
"To meet those responsibilities, and to ensure that no country dares to challenge the United States, the report advocates a much larger military presence spread over more of the globe, in addition to the roughly 130 nations in which US troops are already deployed."
According to Francis, the report's recommendation that the US needs permanent military bases in the Middle East, in Southeast Europe, in Latin America and in Southeast Asia is being followed. He notes that the Bush administration rushed to install US troops in Georgia and the Philippines, as well as our eagerness to send military advisers to assist in the civil war in Colombia.
"The 2000 report directly acknowledges its debt to a still earlier document, drafted in 1992 by the Defence Department. That document had also envisioned the US as a colossus astride the world, imposing its will and keeping world peace through military and economic power," says Francis. . When leaked in final draft form, however, the proposal drew so much criticism that it was hastily withdrawn and repudiated by George Bush Senior, he says.
Alliance with Israel
Donald Kagan, a professor of classical Greek history at Yale and an influential advocate of a more aggressive foreign policy who served as served as co-chairman of the 2000 New Century project "willingly embraces the idea that the United States would establish permanent military bases in a post-war Iraq."
"I think that's highly possible," Francis quotes Kagan as saying. "We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time. That will come at a price, but think of the price of not having it. When we have economic problems, it's been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies."
That brings in the alliance between the US and Israel and the American quest to ensure its energy security by not allowing any Arab/Muslim country in the Middle East to reach a position where it could call the shots in the international oil market.
The strength of the US-Israel alliance is conventionally attributed to the powerful political and financial strengths and influence of the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington as well as to the image of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East sharing American "values."
However, equally important in this equation is the US anxiety to ensure the steady flow of oil from the Middle East to suit American interests.
Proponents of this theory argue that the US has been retaining and is continuing to strengthen its relationship with Israel in order not to allow an Arab/Muslim country in the Middle East to emerge as the dominant regional power that could undermine the US quest for energy security for Americans based on Arab and Muslim oil. That explains why the US was silent when Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 and why Washington today supports Israel's contention that Iran poses a threat to it by seeking nuclear weapon-capability.
Oil dependency
A report written by Erich Marquardt appearing on www.pinr.com underlines this point. Marquardt writes:
"The primary motives behind US support of Israel can be explained by Washington's foreign policy aims of securing a Middle East capable of producing a stable supply of oil at a low price that buoys the economies of oil dependent countries. Israel, a state that is dependent on the United States due to its strategic and cultural isolation in a region that is hostile to its existence, can be relied on by Washington to assist in maintaining the status quo by preventing any Middle Eastern country from accruing enough power to alter the regional balance in a way that would damage the interests of the United States and other oil dependent countries."
Michael T Klare, a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency, points out that America's dependence on imported petroleum has been growing steadily since 1972.
Domestic production in the US was 11.6 million barrels per day in 1972 and today it stands at 9mbpd and is expected to continue to decline.
"Even if some oil is eventually extracted from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, as the Bush administration desires, this downward trend will not be reversed " he asserts.
On the other hand, the total oil consumption in the US today is estimated at around 20 million barrels per day and is expected to hit 29mbpd by 2025.
"This means ever more of the nation's total petroleum supply will have to be imported - 11mbpd today (about 55 per cent of total US consumption) but 20mbpd/d in 2025 (69 per cent of consumption)," says Klare.
In an implicit reference to the Middle East, Klare notes that an increasing share of that oil will come from "hostile, war-torn countries in the developing world, not from friendly, stable countries such as Canada or Norway. "
"Because oil is viewed as the primary motive for US involvement in these (hostile) areas, and because the giant US oil corporations are seen as the very embodiment of US power, anything to do with oil - pipelines, wells, refineries, loading platforms - is seen by insurgents as a legitimate and attractive target for attack; hence the raids on pipelines in Iraq, on oil-company offices in Saudi Arabia, and on oil tankers in Yemen," according to Klaire.
Klare notes that the US military is having a tough time ensuring the security of oil installations in Iraq, meaning that the very objective of the war remains under threat.
Blood and oil
"Iraq has developed into a two-front war: the battles for control over Iraq's cities and the constant struggle to protect its far-flung petroleum infrastructure against sabotage and attack," he says. "The first contest has been widely reported in the US press; the second has received far less attention."
He points out: "Iraq is hardly the only country where US troops are risking their lives on a daily basis to protect the flow of petroleum. In Colombia, Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Georgia, US personnel are also spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to this mission.
"American sailors are now on oil-protection patrol in the Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, and along other sea routes that deliver oil to the United States and its allies. In fact, the US military is increasingly being converted into a global oil-protection service."
And the going is getting tougher for American forces, he notes.
"With thousands of kilometers of pipeline and hundreds of major facilities at risk, this task will prove endlessly demanding -- and unrelievedly hazardous," he says.
"While anti-terrorism and traditional national-security rhetoric will be employed to explain risky deployments abroad, a growing number of American soldiers and sailors will be committed to the protection of overseas oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker routes," Klare observes. "And because these facilities are likely to come under increasing attack from guerrillas and terrorists, the risk to American lives will grow accordingly. Inevitably, Americans will pay a higher price in blood for every additional litre of oil they obtain from abroad."
Seen in that vein, although Klare does not refer to that aspect, the natural Israeli role is to step in and take over part of the American policeman's job at some point or another; and countries like Iraq (had it remained under the Saddam regime) and Iran would challenge that Israeli role, and hence the need to ensure that they are reshaped to suit American interests. That is what happened in Iraq, and Iran would be subjected to similar treatment if the US plans go ahead as they were drawn up by the Project for the New American Century that aims to create a global American empire.
Monday, October 18, 2004
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Convergence of interests
Neocons and Al Qaeda
pv vivekanand
WITH two weeks to go to the day when the American people will vote in presidential elections, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has warned that there was still a
possibility that plans are afoot for terrorist attacks in the US ahead of the polls.
Couple the warning, issued by FBI Director Robert Mueller on Friday, with the assertion by some commentators that President George W Bush needs nothing less than a terrorist attack in order to be elected for a second term.
Meuller's warning that the US remained vulnerable to the threat of a terror attack before the election revived American fears after a hiatus of several weeks during which top officials stayed away from waving Al Qaeda as the bogeyman to remind voters that Bush has experience in fighting terror while Kerry is of unknown quality.
However, all officials, including Meuller, coupled the warning with a caution that there was no specific intelligence regarding the timing, location and method of such possible attacks.
While many commentators acknowledge that Bush's re-election could be guaranteed in the event of a terrorist attack taking place before Nov.2, no one — except the most bitter critics of the Bush administration — has suggested that hawks in Washington could stage such an incident in order to ensure a second White House term for the incumbent.
Indeed, it is abundantly clear that the neoconservatives in the administration have long-term plans to implement their agenda for American supremacy in the world and Israeli domination of the Near and Middle East. The neocons' political survival and implementation of their grandiose plans of imposing pax Americana on the globe depends on Bush being re-elected. They are desperate for Bush to remain in the White House. So do American corporates who are siphoning off billions of dollars spent in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Therefore it need not be top politicians who might concoct a terror attack of a containable level that would pre-empt Bush moving house in January next year. The reasoning is that Americans would see a pre-election terror attack as an attempt to influence the polls and mindlessly react with anger and fear and re-elect Bush.
Among those affirming that Bush's key to a second term at the White House is a terrorist attack is the well-known FOX News political analyst, Dick Morris.
In a programme telecast on FOX last week, Morris said he expects a "huge turnout" for the elections and this would favour Kerry.
"I do believe he’ll get a very strong, very intense minority vote," Morris said of the Democrat candidate. "There’s only one thing that can save George Bush. Think about how we felt in August. Think about how jeopardised and endangered we felt with photos of the stock exchange and IMF building circulating. The Al Qaeda militants, bombs possibly at the two conventions, the Olympics.
"We felt really in danger. Now we feel fat and happy. We’re felling pretty good. We turn on the TV set about Iraq. We watch it with half an eye, but nobody really thinks there’s gonna be anything happening here. If that’s the environment on November 2nd, Kerry’s gonna win. But, if — and I’m not suggesting Bush would fabricate it — but if, in fact, Al Qaeda chooses to begin actions, to threaten stuff, to do stuff here, which they did in Israel and they did in Madrid right before the election, then I think that could elect Bush...Osama Bin Laden will determine if Bush wins or not.”
There are many who argue that Bush could suffer if Al Qaeda were to stage an attack before elections since voters will back Kerry against the president, who has repeatedly boasted that he alone kept terror attacks away the US since Sept.11; but then he sent out Americans to be killed outside the US — remember the more than 1,000 Americans killed in Iraq since March 2003?
The question that remains unanswered is what are the options of the neocons not to lose their immediate grip in power in Washington. No doubt they would claw back to power sooner or later; they are bipartisan and have their inroads among the Democrats. But, given the pressing need to not to relax the grip on Iraq and maintain the course of events as they scripted it in the Middle East and elsewhere, they could ill-afford to have a "regime change" in Washington before their agenda is not fully played out.
Indeed, that is where the interests of the neocons converge with that of Osama Bin Laden — if he is alive and politically alert — in ensuring that Bush is re-elected.
Like the neocons, Al Qaeda would also suffer in the short term if Kerry wins since it needs someone as aggressive as the Republican president as well as continued American occupation of Iraq and military actions in Afghanistan in order to build and consolidate the anti-US camp in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
pv vivekanand
WITH two weeks to go to the day when the American people will vote in presidential elections, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has warned that there was still a
possibility that plans are afoot for terrorist attacks in the US ahead of the polls.
Couple the warning, issued by FBI Director Robert Mueller on Friday, with the assertion by some commentators that President George W Bush needs nothing less than a terrorist attack in order to be elected for a second term.
Meuller's warning that the US remained vulnerable to the threat of a terror attack before the election revived American fears after a hiatus of several weeks during which top officials stayed away from waving Al Qaeda as the bogeyman to remind voters that Bush has experience in fighting terror while Kerry is of unknown quality.
However, all officials, including Meuller, coupled the warning with a caution that there was no specific intelligence regarding the timing, location and method of such possible attacks.
While many commentators acknowledge that Bush's re-election could be guaranteed in the event of a terrorist attack taking place before Nov.2, no one — except the most bitter critics of the Bush administration — has suggested that hawks in Washington could stage such an incident in order to ensure a second White House term for the incumbent.
Indeed, it is abundantly clear that the neoconservatives in the administration have long-term plans to implement their agenda for American supremacy in the world and Israeli domination of the Near and Middle East. The neocons' political survival and implementation of their grandiose plans of imposing pax Americana on the globe depends on Bush being re-elected. They are desperate for Bush to remain in the White House. So do American corporates who are siphoning off billions of dollars spent in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Therefore it need not be top politicians who might concoct a terror attack of a containable level that would pre-empt Bush moving house in January next year. The reasoning is that Americans would see a pre-election terror attack as an attempt to influence the polls and mindlessly react with anger and fear and re-elect Bush.
Among those affirming that Bush's key to a second term at the White House is a terrorist attack is the well-known FOX News political analyst, Dick Morris.
In a programme telecast on FOX last week, Morris said he expects a "huge turnout" for the elections and this would favour Kerry.
"I do believe he’ll get a very strong, very intense minority vote," Morris said of the Democrat candidate. "There’s only one thing that can save George Bush. Think about how we felt in August. Think about how jeopardised and endangered we felt with photos of the stock exchange and IMF building circulating. The Al Qaeda militants, bombs possibly at the two conventions, the Olympics.
"We felt really in danger. Now we feel fat and happy. We’re felling pretty good. We turn on the TV set about Iraq. We watch it with half an eye, but nobody really thinks there’s gonna be anything happening here. If that’s the environment on November 2nd, Kerry’s gonna win. But, if — and I’m not suggesting Bush would fabricate it — but if, in fact, Al Qaeda chooses to begin actions, to threaten stuff, to do stuff here, which they did in Israel and they did in Madrid right before the election, then I think that could elect Bush...Osama Bin Laden will determine if Bush wins or not.”
There are many who argue that Bush could suffer if Al Qaeda were to stage an attack before elections since voters will back Kerry against the president, who has repeatedly boasted that he alone kept terror attacks away the US since Sept.11; but then he sent out Americans to be killed outside the US — remember the more than 1,000 Americans killed in Iraq since March 2003?
The question that remains unanswered is what are the options of the neocons not to lose their immediate grip in power in Washington. No doubt they would claw back to power sooner or later; they are bipartisan and have their inroads among the Democrats. But, given the pressing need to not to relax the grip on Iraq and maintain the course of events as they scripted it in the Middle East and elsewhere, they could ill-afford to have a "regime change" in Washington before their agenda is not fully played out.
Indeed, that is where the interests of the neocons converge with that of Osama Bin Laden — if he is alive and politically alert — in ensuring that Bush is re-elected.
Like the neocons, Al Qaeda would also suffer in the short term if Kerry wins since it needs someone as aggressive as the Republican president as well as continued American occupation of Iraq and military actions in Afghanistan in order to build and consolidate the anti-US camp in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Rommel's mines, Rabta plant and murder plot
by PV Vivekanand
LIBYA has been very much in the news this week. From a conventional point of view, the highlight was German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's groundbreaking visit to Tripoli in another move that seals the international rehabilation of Libya after decades of confrontation and sanctions that had isolated the North African Arab country. Schroder was the first German leader to visit Libya. British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited in April.
Little noticed this week was a report that the US is supporting Libya in converting a chemical-weapons plant into a factory making life-saving drugs to battle AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases. That clearly sets another pillar in the emerging scenario of a US-Libyan alliance in a dramatic turnabout when compared with the bitter enmity of the two in the 80s and 90s.
Another was the closing in a US court of a file by the 23-year sentence handed down to an American Muslim in a case involving an alleged Libyan plot to assassinate the Saudi crown prince in the fallout from a verbal clash at an Arab summit.
In the meantime, Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi lived up to his reputation by demanding from Schroder German compensation for the millions of landmines left in Libyan desert during World War II.
Surely, Qadhafi would have been remembering that Libya had paid compensation to victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in a deal with the US and UK and in the 1989 downing of a French airliner over Niger as well as to 168 non-American — mostly German — victims of the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin disco. Two Americans and a Turkish woman died in the disco bombing; compensation for the Americans is being held back on a different track with the US.
Given his record to raise controversies, it was only natural that Qadhafi would nudge up the issue of the more than 17 million landmines strewn all over Libya's western desert, particularly near the town of El Alamein, where in 1942 the British army under Bernard Montgomery decisively defeated Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps more than 60 years ago. Qadhafi complained that dozens of Libyans were still being injured and killed by the anti-tank and anti-personnel mines ( Indeed, not all the mines are German; they include British and Italian and Libya has not raised any demand for British and Italian compensation. That was one observation made by the German media after Schroder left Libya).
"Many of my countrymen die each year from these mines," Qadhafi was reported to have told Schroder. "Germany should pay towards their removal." He also showed Schröder maps of where the mines had been buried.
The Libyan demand, presented during a three-hour banquet Qadhafi hosted in honour of Schroder on Friday, should be seen against a call issued by the African Union conference in Addis Ababa last month for many European countries which fought in Africa in World War II to contribute part of their defence budgets to land-mine clearance.
And Schroder replied in the negative. "We look to normalisation between our two countries in the future — we don’t look to the past," he said in a brief statement reflecting his view that the mines issue is non-negotiable.
However, that does not negate the validity of the African Union call. Landmines are killing and maiming people dozens every day is not only in Africa but in almost every area of past conflicts, including Afghanistan, Cambodia and Vietnam.
It is an international issue and there is an international effort to address it. Libya is said to be in talks with British tycoon Branson to help pay for developing a breakthrough device to harmlessly defuse landmines.
It is unlikely that Qadhafi had expected Schroder to respond positively to his demand for compensation. It is a safe bet that the Libyan leader was only reminding Schroder that things works both ways; that the Libyans are entitled to seek compensation for German deeds since Tripoli honoured the German demand for compensation for the West Berlin blast in 1986. Never mind the issue is six decades old.
It was also typical of Libya to have sought to send another message by including in Schroder's itinerary a visit to a memorial to the victims of the US bombing of Tripoli in 1986. The US attack was in retaliation for the West Berlin blast.
Reports in Germany said Schroder's aides had a tough time shooting down the Libyan proposal and told Tripoli it was "totally unacceptable" for Schröder to make such a visit. But Libya made the point anyway since the $35 million compensation deal with Germany excludes American victims of the blast. Their demand for damages would be considered in tandem with Libya's demand for compensation for the Libyan victims of the American retaliatory missiles attacks against Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986.
Qadhafi's assertion that the West owes him thanks for Libya's role in fighting international terorrism was also politically oriented. Libya wants to go on the record in the international scene that "regardless of what other nations are doing," it is an active member of the US-led war against terorrism and is no longer a pariah. Germany and other western states owed him their gratitude "for his services to international peace," Qadhafi told Schroder, who in turn ackowledged it and welcomed the changed status of Libya.
However, Libya remains on Washington's list of countries supporting "terrorism."
In the din of the controversies raised during the Schroder visit, a report by the Washington Times did not seem to have received the media coverage it warranted.
The report said that under American recommendations, the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had approved, in principle, "technical changes" to the global treaty on chemical arms that would make conversions of chemical-weapon plants for civilian purposes.
During the deliberations of the council that the US announced it was "very supportive" of Libya's effort in this respect and urged the 41-member body to endorse the Libyan Rabta facility's conversion "to produce low-cost pharmaceuticals to treat HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, for use mainly in Africa."
"The United States supports the proposal both because it makes sense in this particular instance -- we strongly support redirecting this equipment to pharmaceutical production for the benefit of the developing world -- and because it provides a means of dealing with similar situations if they arise in the future," the State Department said.
"The process of conversion, and the facility once converted, will be subject to international verification to ensure that no materials are misused for chemical weapons purposes," it said.
Libya joined the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in February after it annouonced in December that it was abandoning its programmes for weapons of mass destruction in a secretly negotiated agreement with the US and UK.
The "technical changes" adopted by the council give Libya until 2010 to carry out the conversions.
Libya has already contracted an Italian firm to do the conversion at the Rabta plant,
Investigations triggered by Libya's disclosures about its effort to possess nuclear weapons are continuing. Prosecutors in Switzerland launched investigations last week against two Swiss citizens suspected of illegally exporting nuclear bomb-making technology to Libya.
One of the suspects is thought have been part of the clandestine international network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, which helped Libya's nuclear programme.
In yet another Libya-linked development, a prominent American Muslim activist who admitted participating in a Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz was sentenced on Friday to the maximum 23 years in prison for illegal business dealings with Libya.
Abdurahman Alamoudi, 52, pleaded guilty in July to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from high-ranking Libyan officials while serving as a go-between for them and Saudi dissidents.
Alamoudi was not charged in connection with the alleged assassination plot, but the prosecution cited the plot as reason for him to receive the maximum sentence.
A naturalised US citizen from Eritrea who helped found the American Muslim Council and related American Muslim Foundation, Alamoudi pleaded guilty to violating sanctions against travel and trade with Libya, making false statements on his immigration application, and a tax violation. As part of a plea deal, he surrendered his US citizenship.
The prosecution submitted that Libya plotted to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah after Qadhafi and the Saudi leader had a heated exchange of words during a March 2003 Arab League summit. Libyan officials were alleged to have invited Alamoudi to Tripoli and paid him several hundred thousand dollars, part of it for himself and the rest for Saudi dissidents who introduced to him associates who could carry out the plot, according to the prosecution.
The plot unravelled when British customs discovered $340,000 in cash in his possession at Heathrow airport. He was arrested in September 2003 when he returned to the US. Suspects were also detained in Saudi Arabia.
The alleged Libyan instigation of the conspiracy was played down by Washington in what was seen as a US resolve not to undermine Tripoli's changed status to a friend if not an ally and Qadhafi's move to reinstate his country into mainstream international politics.
Washington acknowledged that it had known of reports "that Libya was in contact with Saudi dissidents who have threatened violence against the Saudi royal family" before Qadhafi's pledge on Dec.19 abandoning his weapons programmes and renouncing terrorism.
"We raised those concerns directly with the Libyan leadership, and they assured us that they would not support the use of violence for settling political differences with any state," a US spokesman sad in July.
LIBYA has been very much in the news this week. From a conventional point of view, the highlight was German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's groundbreaking visit to Tripoli in another move that seals the international rehabilation of Libya after decades of confrontation and sanctions that had isolated the North African Arab country. Schroder was the first German leader to visit Libya. British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited in April.
Little noticed this week was a report that the US is supporting Libya in converting a chemical-weapons plant into a factory making life-saving drugs to battle AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases. That clearly sets another pillar in the emerging scenario of a US-Libyan alliance in a dramatic turnabout when compared with the bitter enmity of the two in the 80s and 90s.
Another was the closing in a US court of a file by the 23-year sentence handed down to an American Muslim in a case involving an alleged Libyan plot to assassinate the Saudi crown prince in the fallout from a verbal clash at an Arab summit.
In the meantime, Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi lived up to his reputation by demanding from Schroder German compensation for the millions of landmines left in Libyan desert during World War II.
Surely, Qadhafi would have been remembering that Libya had paid compensation to victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in a deal with the US and UK and in the 1989 downing of a French airliner over Niger as well as to 168 non-American — mostly German — victims of the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin disco. Two Americans and a Turkish woman died in the disco bombing; compensation for the Americans is being held back on a different track with the US.
Given his record to raise controversies, it was only natural that Qadhafi would nudge up the issue of the more than 17 million landmines strewn all over Libya's western desert, particularly near the town of El Alamein, where in 1942 the British army under Bernard Montgomery decisively defeated Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps more than 60 years ago. Qadhafi complained that dozens of Libyans were still being injured and killed by the anti-tank and anti-personnel mines ( Indeed, not all the mines are German; they include British and Italian and Libya has not raised any demand for British and Italian compensation. That was one observation made by the German media after Schroder left Libya).
"Many of my countrymen die each year from these mines," Qadhafi was reported to have told Schroder. "Germany should pay towards their removal." He also showed Schröder maps of where the mines had been buried.
The Libyan demand, presented during a three-hour banquet Qadhafi hosted in honour of Schroder on Friday, should be seen against a call issued by the African Union conference in Addis Ababa last month for many European countries which fought in Africa in World War II to contribute part of their defence budgets to land-mine clearance.
And Schroder replied in the negative. "We look to normalisation between our two countries in the future — we don’t look to the past," he said in a brief statement reflecting his view that the mines issue is non-negotiable.
However, that does not negate the validity of the African Union call. Landmines are killing and maiming people dozens every day is not only in Africa but in almost every area of past conflicts, including Afghanistan, Cambodia and Vietnam.
It is an international issue and there is an international effort to address it. Libya is said to be in talks with British tycoon Branson to help pay for developing a breakthrough device to harmlessly defuse landmines.
It is unlikely that Qadhafi had expected Schroder to respond positively to his demand for compensation. It is a safe bet that the Libyan leader was only reminding Schroder that things works both ways; that the Libyans are entitled to seek compensation for German deeds since Tripoli honoured the German demand for compensation for the West Berlin blast in 1986. Never mind the issue is six decades old.
It was also typical of Libya to have sought to send another message by including in Schroder's itinerary a visit to a memorial to the victims of the US bombing of Tripoli in 1986. The US attack was in retaliation for the West Berlin blast.
Reports in Germany said Schroder's aides had a tough time shooting down the Libyan proposal and told Tripoli it was "totally unacceptable" for Schröder to make such a visit. But Libya made the point anyway since the $35 million compensation deal with Germany excludes American victims of the blast. Their demand for damages would be considered in tandem with Libya's demand for compensation for the Libyan victims of the American retaliatory missiles attacks against Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986.
Qadhafi's assertion that the West owes him thanks for Libya's role in fighting international terorrism was also politically oriented. Libya wants to go on the record in the international scene that "regardless of what other nations are doing," it is an active member of the US-led war against terorrism and is no longer a pariah. Germany and other western states owed him their gratitude "for his services to international peace," Qadhafi told Schroder, who in turn ackowledged it and welcomed the changed status of Libya.
However, Libya remains on Washington's list of countries supporting "terrorism."
In the din of the controversies raised during the Schroder visit, a report by the Washington Times did not seem to have received the media coverage it warranted.
The report said that under American recommendations, the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had approved, in principle, "technical changes" to the global treaty on chemical arms that would make conversions of chemical-weapon plants for civilian purposes.
During the deliberations of the council that the US announced it was "very supportive" of Libya's effort in this respect and urged the 41-member body to endorse the Libyan Rabta facility's conversion "to produce low-cost pharmaceuticals to treat HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, for use mainly in Africa."
"The United States supports the proposal both because it makes sense in this particular instance -- we strongly support redirecting this equipment to pharmaceutical production for the benefit of the developing world -- and because it provides a means of dealing with similar situations if they arise in the future," the State Department said.
"The process of conversion, and the facility once converted, will be subject to international verification to ensure that no materials are misused for chemical weapons purposes," it said.
Libya joined the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in February after it annouonced in December that it was abandoning its programmes for weapons of mass destruction in a secretly negotiated agreement with the US and UK.
The "technical changes" adopted by the council give Libya until 2010 to carry out the conversions.
Libya has already contracted an Italian firm to do the conversion at the Rabta plant,
Investigations triggered by Libya's disclosures about its effort to possess nuclear weapons are continuing. Prosecutors in Switzerland launched investigations last week against two Swiss citizens suspected of illegally exporting nuclear bomb-making technology to Libya.
One of the suspects is thought have been part of the clandestine international network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, which helped Libya's nuclear programme.
In yet another Libya-linked development, a prominent American Muslim activist who admitted participating in a Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz was sentenced on Friday to the maximum 23 years in prison for illegal business dealings with Libya.
Abdurahman Alamoudi, 52, pleaded guilty in July to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from high-ranking Libyan officials while serving as a go-between for them and Saudi dissidents.
Alamoudi was not charged in connection with the alleged assassination plot, but the prosecution cited the plot as reason for him to receive the maximum sentence.
A naturalised US citizen from Eritrea who helped found the American Muslim Council and related American Muslim Foundation, Alamoudi pleaded guilty to violating sanctions against travel and trade with Libya, making false statements on his immigration application, and a tax violation. As part of a plea deal, he surrendered his US citizenship.
The prosecution submitted that Libya plotted to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah after Qadhafi and the Saudi leader had a heated exchange of words during a March 2003 Arab League summit. Libyan officials were alleged to have invited Alamoudi to Tripoli and paid him several hundred thousand dollars, part of it for himself and the rest for Saudi dissidents who introduced to him associates who could carry out the plot, according to the prosecution.
The plot unravelled when British customs discovered $340,000 in cash in his possession at Heathrow airport. He was arrested in September 2003 when he returned to the US. Suspects were also detained in Saudi Arabia.
The alleged Libyan instigation of the conspiracy was played down by Washington in what was seen as a US resolve not to undermine Tripoli's changed status to a friend if not an ally and Qadhafi's move to reinstate his country into mainstream international politics.
Washington acknowledged that it had known of reports "that Libya was in contact with Saudi dissidents who have threatened violence against the Saudi royal family" before Qadhafi's pledge on Dec.19 abandoning his weapons programmes and renouncing terrorism.
"We raised those concerns directly with the Libyan leadership, and they assured us that they would not support the use of violence for settling political differences with any state," a US spokesman sad in July.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
The Unholy Alliance
The Unholy alliance
by pv vivekanand
The US will never find success in its 'war against terrorism' without addressing its lopsided Israel-centred policies and approaches to Palestinian problem and the overall Arab-Israeli conflict.The US quest not to allow an Arab/Muslim country to emerge as a regional power and threaten American energy security is as much behind Washington's alliance with Israel as anything else.
FROM our vantage point in the Middle East, the biggest mistake the US has made is to convince itself that it could win the "war against terrorism" without touching upon its "strategic relationship" with Israel — that it could successfully tackle the threats it faces without having to introduce objective and logical thinking coupled with international legitimacy in its approach to the Palestinian problem and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict.
There could be no separation between the US-Israeli relationship and the US fight against terrorism. The two are so intertwined that without shifting stand on Israel, the US stands little chance of success in countering the threat of "terrorism."
One of the major causes of the growing distance between the US and the Arab and Muslim worlds — from where the perpetrators of the Sept.11 attacks came — is Washington's almost unlimited support for Israel and "strategic" alliance with the Jewish state.
Over the decades, the US has set a record that clearly establishes that it not overlooks but also perpetuates Israel's occupation of Arab territories and brutal treatment and oppression of the Palestinians, supports Israel's refusal to accept the legitimate rights of the Palestinians as the basis for peace in the Middle East, continues to offer Israel unrestricted military, financial, diplomatic and political support and protects Israel against international action at every forum, including the UN Security Council and regional and world organisations.
Furthermore, the US continues to send advanced military technology and weapons to Israel that the occupation power employ against the Palestinians living under its occupation and against neighbouring Arab countries (Lebanon and Syria).
Given the US conditions and end-user conditions attached to American weapon sales to any country, Washington's silence over Israel's use of US-made planes, missiles, rockets and explosives against the Palestinians has only added more colour to the scenario of the American-Israeli alliance pitted against the Arab and Muslim world.
If that was not enough, then consider Washington's public approval of Israel's policy of targeted killings of Palestinian resistance leaders and the crackdown within the US of organisations which sympathise with the Palestinian cause.
Successive US administrations since the 60s are seen as having upheld Israel's interests above American interests. Washington strategists could not but be aware that their Israel-centred policies have done severe damage to its relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds and but are unwilling to reconsider their approach.
On the internal front, the billions of American government dollars that flow to Israel have given rise to questions why the American taxpayer should subsidise a state which consistently defies the United Nations and flouts human rights to a level that embarrasses the United States. However, those questions, the intensity of which is continuing to grow, have not made any real difference to American policy in the Middle East.
Some American analysts tend to summarise that the main source for Arab and Muslim anti-US hostility is Washington's support for "unpopular" Arab and Muslim regimes. But an overwhelming majority of authoritative analysts and commentators, both in the US and outside, assert that this argument is a red herring.
Such a sentiment, if it exists, they argue, takes a backseat in the overall picture since those who harbour it would also be aware that the US would drop "friendly regimes" anywhere in the world as a hot potato if it suits its purpose and that is not the case with Israel.
There are several theories that purportedly explain why the US has established and is maintainting its alliance with Israel that has only brought grief to the people of America.
These include an argument that Jews and pro-Israeli Christian Americans control everything worth controlling in the US — including banking, the media, the film industry, the military establishment and high-tech companies as well as important segments of US intelligence networks — and therefore no American politician, Democrat or Republican, could withstand Jewish-induced pressure in favour of Israel and against Muslims and Arabs if he or she were to hope to politically survive in the US.
Then there is the perception that the US-Israeli alliance is natural if only because Israel is the sole democracy in the Middle East and the only country in the region which shares "American values" (never mind Israel's step-motherly approach its citizens of Arab origin). A US-Israeli relationship based on a democracy-based common ground is deemed to be backed by a majority of Americans regardless of religious beliefs and political ideologies; and that is why legislation favouring Israel — directly and indirectly — finds its way through the US Congress like a hot knife cutting through butter.
The third theory, which has emerged strongly to the scene in the wake of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq — is equally important and perhaps even more relevant.
Proponents of this theory argue that the US has been retaining and is continuing to strengthen its relationship with Israel in order not to allow an Arab/Muslim country in the Middle East to emerge as the dominant regional power that could undermine the US quest for energy security for Americans based on Arab and Muslim oil. That explains why the US was silent when Israeli bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 and why Washington today supports Israel's contention that Iran poses a threat to it by seeking nuclear weapon-capability.
A report written by Erich Marquardt appearing on www.pinr.com underlines this point. Marquart writes:
"The primary motives behind US support of Israel can be explained by Washington's foreign policy aims of securing a Middle East capable of producing a stable supply of oil at a low price that buoys the economies of oil dependent countries. Israel, a state that is dependent on the United States due to its strategic and cultural isolation in a region that is hostile to its existence, can be relied on by Washington to assist in maintaining the status quo by preventing any Middle Eastern country from accruing enough power to alter the regional balance in a way that would damage the interests of the United States and other oil dependent countries."
As a result, the US is rendered into a position where it does not want to pressure Israel in any aspect, let alone into making compromises involving what the Israelis consider as their God-given rights and religious tenets that are too sensitive for an external force to touch upon.
That also means Washington has to ignore Israel's refusal to abide by mandatory UN Security resolutions and to flout all international conventions, agreements and code of conduct of nations as well as its stepped-up military brutality to put down Palestinian resistance. Washington could not allow any international censure of Israel either and hence the established pattern of American veto of any Security Council resolution critical of Israel.
Thrown into that equation is the US-led war against terrorism sparked by the Sept.11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
It was reported that Palestinians on rooftops in Ramallah "celebrated" the Sept.11 attacks. Although the report was subsequently discounted as erroneous, it underlined one of the basic elements at play — that the attacks had an implicit link with the American-Israeli alliance that has not only denied the Palestinians their legitimate rights but also subjected them to untold misery and suffering under Israeli occupation.
That perception has only grown from strength to strength since then. Today, Israel is even more brutal in its efforts to subdue the Palestinians before Sept.11. It has unleashed a reign of terror in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. It is clear that it has no intention to respect and recognise the rights of the Palestinians and that it is hell-bent on eliminating Palestinian resistance ahead of forcing down their throat the Israeli version of an illegitimate solution.
More importantly, the US is no longer considered a honest mediator. If anything, Washington has aligned itself more closely than ever with Israel and is seen as having turned itself into a party to the conflict on the Israeli side of the fence. The Bush administration's endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plans to quit Gaza and consolidate and expand the Jewish settlements in the West Bank has sealed Palestinian, Arab and Muslim conviction that they could no longer expect any honest and objective American intervention in their favour in Palestine.
The way the US government treated Arabs and Muslims, including American citizens, in the wake of the Sept.11 attacks — summary detentions, deportations and humiliating treatment as well as profiling as if with a vengeance — has further alienated the Arab and Muslim world from the sole superpower.
Add to that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and unmistakable signs that Washington has lined up Syria and Iran to follow Iraq for "regime change."
Notwithstanding the oil-based geopolitical interests of the US that went into the decision to invade and occupy Iraq, the American action and plans in the region are seen as serving Israeli interests.
Today, the image the US has among the Arabs and Muslims that of a tyrannical power bent upon having its way around the globe and stopping at nothing to achieve this objective and maintaining an unbreakable alliance with a country, Israel, that considers Arabs and Muslims as less than humans.
The result: the US remains a perpetual target for extremist attacks and there would be no respite until Washington stops in its pro-Israel track and decide that it has lost and stands to lose much than it gained from its alliance with Israel.
Bill Christison, a former senior official of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Kathleen Christison, a former CIA political analyst who worked on Middle East issues for 30 years, hit the nail on the head when they wrote:
"There will be no resolution to the war on terror and no easing of the hatred of the United States by our own allies and by the Arab and Muslim world until there is a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that gives as much justice to Palestinians as to Israelis. We ignore the direct danger Israel poses to us at our own peril. Our drive for empire already came back to bite us three years ago on Sept.11, and it will come back again as long as we fail to distinguish our own interests from Israel's."
by pv vivekanand
The US will never find success in its 'war against terrorism' without addressing its lopsided Israel-centred policies and approaches to Palestinian problem and the overall Arab-Israeli conflict.The US quest not to allow an Arab/Muslim country to emerge as a regional power and threaten American energy security is as much behind Washington's alliance with Israel as anything else.
FROM our vantage point in the Middle East, the biggest mistake the US has made is to convince itself that it could win the "war against terrorism" without touching upon its "strategic relationship" with Israel — that it could successfully tackle the threats it faces without having to introduce objective and logical thinking coupled with international legitimacy in its approach to the Palestinian problem and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict.
There could be no separation between the US-Israeli relationship and the US fight against terrorism. The two are so intertwined that without shifting stand on Israel, the US stands little chance of success in countering the threat of "terrorism."
One of the major causes of the growing distance between the US and the Arab and Muslim worlds — from where the perpetrators of the Sept.11 attacks came — is Washington's almost unlimited support for Israel and "strategic" alliance with the Jewish state.
Over the decades, the US has set a record that clearly establishes that it not overlooks but also perpetuates Israel's occupation of Arab territories and brutal treatment and oppression of the Palestinians, supports Israel's refusal to accept the legitimate rights of the Palestinians as the basis for peace in the Middle East, continues to offer Israel unrestricted military, financial, diplomatic and political support and protects Israel against international action at every forum, including the UN Security Council and regional and world organisations.
Furthermore, the US continues to send advanced military technology and weapons to Israel that the occupation power employ against the Palestinians living under its occupation and against neighbouring Arab countries (Lebanon and Syria).
Given the US conditions and end-user conditions attached to American weapon sales to any country, Washington's silence over Israel's use of US-made planes, missiles, rockets and explosives against the Palestinians has only added more colour to the scenario of the American-Israeli alliance pitted against the Arab and Muslim world.
If that was not enough, then consider Washington's public approval of Israel's policy of targeted killings of Palestinian resistance leaders and the crackdown within the US of organisations which sympathise with the Palestinian cause.
Successive US administrations since the 60s are seen as having upheld Israel's interests above American interests. Washington strategists could not but be aware that their Israel-centred policies have done severe damage to its relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds and but are unwilling to reconsider their approach.
On the internal front, the billions of American government dollars that flow to Israel have given rise to questions why the American taxpayer should subsidise a state which consistently defies the United Nations and flouts human rights to a level that embarrasses the United States. However, those questions, the intensity of which is continuing to grow, have not made any real difference to American policy in the Middle East.
Some American analysts tend to summarise that the main source for Arab and Muslim anti-US hostility is Washington's support for "unpopular" Arab and Muslim regimes. But an overwhelming majority of authoritative analysts and commentators, both in the US and outside, assert that this argument is a red herring.
Such a sentiment, if it exists, they argue, takes a backseat in the overall picture since those who harbour it would also be aware that the US would drop "friendly regimes" anywhere in the world as a hot potato if it suits its purpose and that is not the case with Israel.
There are several theories that purportedly explain why the US has established and is maintainting its alliance with Israel that has only brought grief to the people of America.
These include an argument that Jews and pro-Israeli Christian Americans control everything worth controlling in the US — including banking, the media, the film industry, the military establishment and high-tech companies as well as important segments of US intelligence networks — and therefore no American politician, Democrat or Republican, could withstand Jewish-induced pressure in favour of Israel and against Muslims and Arabs if he or she were to hope to politically survive in the US.
Then there is the perception that the US-Israeli alliance is natural if only because Israel is the sole democracy in the Middle East and the only country in the region which shares "American values" (never mind Israel's step-motherly approach its citizens of Arab origin). A US-Israeli relationship based on a democracy-based common ground is deemed to be backed by a majority of Americans regardless of religious beliefs and political ideologies; and that is why legislation favouring Israel — directly and indirectly — finds its way through the US Congress like a hot knife cutting through butter.
The third theory, which has emerged strongly to the scene in the wake of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq — is equally important and perhaps even more relevant.
Proponents of this theory argue that the US has been retaining and is continuing to strengthen its relationship with Israel in order not to allow an Arab/Muslim country in the Middle East to emerge as the dominant regional power that could undermine the US quest for energy security for Americans based on Arab and Muslim oil. That explains why the US was silent when Israeli bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 and why Washington today supports Israel's contention that Iran poses a threat to it by seeking nuclear weapon-capability.
A report written by Erich Marquardt appearing on www.pinr.com underlines this point. Marquart writes:
"The primary motives behind US support of Israel can be explained by Washington's foreign policy aims of securing a Middle East capable of producing a stable supply of oil at a low price that buoys the economies of oil dependent countries. Israel, a state that is dependent on the United States due to its strategic and cultural isolation in a region that is hostile to its existence, can be relied on by Washington to assist in maintaining the status quo by preventing any Middle Eastern country from accruing enough power to alter the regional balance in a way that would damage the interests of the United States and other oil dependent countries."
As a result, the US is rendered into a position where it does not want to pressure Israel in any aspect, let alone into making compromises involving what the Israelis consider as their God-given rights and religious tenets that are too sensitive for an external force to touch upon.
That also means Washington has to ignore Israel's refusal to abide by mandatory UN Security resolutions and to flout all international conventions, agreements and code of conduct of nations as well as its stepped-up military brutality to put down Palestinian resistance. Washington could not allow any international censure of Israel either and hence the established pattern of American veto of any Security Council resolution critical of Israel.
Thrown into that equation is the US-led war against terrorism sparked by the Sept.11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
It was reported that Palestinians on rooftops in Ramallah "celebrated" the Sept.11 attacks. Although the report was subsequently discounted as erroneous, it underlined one of the basic elements at play — that the attacks had an implicit link with the American-Israeli alliance that has not only denied the Palestinians their legitimate rights but also subjected them to untold misery and suffering under Israeli occupation.
That perception has only grown from strength to strength since then. Today, Israel is even more brutal in its efforts to subdue the Palestinians before Sept.11. It has unleashed a reign of terror in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. It is clear that it has no intention to respect and recognise the rights of the Palestinians and that it is hell-bent on eliminating Palestinian resistance ahead of forcing down their throat the Israeli version of an illegitimate solution.
More importantly, the US is no longer considered a honest mediator. If anything, Washington has aligned itself more closely than ever with Israel and is seen as having turned itself into a party to the conflict on the Israeli side of the fence. The Bush administration's endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plans to quit Gaza and consolidate and expand the Jewish settlements in the West Bank has sealed Palestinian, Arab and Muslim conviction that they could no longer expect any honest and objective American intervention in their favour in Palestine.
The way the US government treated Arabs and Muslims, including American citizens, in the wake of the Sept.11 attacks — summary detentions, deportations and humiliating treatment as well as profiling as if with a vengeance — has further alienated the Arab and Muslim world from the sole superpower.
Add to that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and unmistakable signs that Washington has lined up Syria and Iran to follow Iraq for "regime change."
Notwithstanding the oil-based geopolitical interests of the US that went into the decision to invade and occupy Iraq, the American action and plans in the region are seen as serving Israeli interests.
Today, the image the US has among the Arabs and Muslims that of a tyrannical power bent upon having its way around the globe and stopping at nothing to achieve this objective and maintaining an unbreakable alliance with a country, Israel, that considers Arabs and Muslims as less than humans.
The result: the US remains a perpetual target for extremist attacks and there would be no respite until Washington stops in its pro-Israel track and decide that it has lost and stands to lose much than it gained from its alliance with Israel.
Bill Christison, a former senior official of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Kathleen Christison, a former CIA political analyst who worked on Middle East issues for 30 years, hit the nail on the head when they wrote:
"There will be no resolution to the war on terror and no easing of the hatred of the United States by our own allies and by the Arab and Muslim world until there is a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that gives as much justice to Palestinians as to Israelis. We ignore the direct danger Israel poses to us at our own peril. Our drive for empire already came back to bite us three years ago on Sept.11, and it will come back again as long as we fail to distinguish our own interests from Israel's."
Sunday, October 10, 2004
US-Iraq and Israel-Palestine
By PV Vivekanand
THERE ARE lots in common between the Israeli offensive in the occupied territories and the American assault in Iraq. Perhaps the thin line of difference is that the Americans say they are targeting "foreign terrorists" waging war against the US -led coalition in Iraq (never mind the bulk of the dead are civilians, most of them women and children) while the Israelis consider any Palestinian is a legitimate target for killing.
In both cases, the objective is to "pacify" the people through military means. Both powers use whatever means available to them to unleash indiscriminate attacks and, by and large, follow a similar pattern of actions (Could we ever hope to hear Washington rejecting this charge and saying the US military's actions are not as bad as those of the Israelis? We won't. Why? Simple. Such an assertion would be a double-edged sword for Washington, since we could quote the US coming close to calling Israeli actions barbaric).
The existence of a video footage shot from the cockpit of a US aircraft bombing a group of civilians in a Falluja street and American soldiers celebrating "taking them out" speaks volumes in themselves.
It is no coincidence that the Israeli occupation forces "expanded" their militaray operation against Palestinian resistance in Gaza parallel to the American assault against Iraqi towns known for steadfastly refusing to accept US domination of their country.
It would also seem that there is an American-Israeli understanding that Israel could get away with its actions in the Gaza Strip and West Bank with minimum outcry from an international community seized with the ferocity of developments in Iraq.
Seen in that light, the American veto of a draft resolution on Tuesday at the UN Security Council demanding an end to the Israeli assault is not surprising. Not that it should be surprising, since it fits into the long-established record of the US stepping in to protect its "strategic" ally in the Middle East from international censure. Nor should it raise any eyebrows that Washington has endorsed the Israeli offensive saying was legitimate retaliation for Palestinian rocket strikes against Israelis. All these ring very familiar to people in this part of the world, many of whom seem to be even resigned that what Israel wants Israel gets.
If adopted, the resolution, submitted to the council by the Arab states in an emergency Security Council meeting, would have also called on Israel and the Palestinians to immediately implement the internationally-backed road map peace plan.
Indeed, Israel had managed to put the UN on the defensive. It released an aerial photograph of what it describes as the loading of a Qassam rocket onto a UN vehicle. No wonder Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, announced an investigation into the Israeli accusation.
However, the Israeli government removed from its website the report containing the allegation. Obviously, it could not hold on to its argument when it was proven that the elongated object which appeared in the image was a stretcher.
The Israeli operations in Gaza come ahead of the implemenation of Ariel Sharon's grand designs to withdraw from the Strip in a manner aimed at pre-empting the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
The US-led coalition has mounted the assault in Iraq to eliminate challenges to Washington's long-term designs in the country ahead of elections expected to be held in January.
Indeed, there could not be any denial of the fact that many of the victims of guerrilla bombings and suicide blasts are innocent Iraqi civilians and they need protection. But now, Iraqi civilians face danger from both sides, and are dying by the dozens every day caught in the American-led offensive.
The US calls the civilian deaths "collateral damage;" Israel would not even care to comment on its military's killing and maiming of Palestinian women and children.
Two other notable features of the two operations include the American use of Israeli expertise to interrogate — a la Abu Ghraib style — Iraqi prisoners and demolitions of family homes of Iraqis suspected of carrying out guerrilla attacks. (To be fair, we have not heard any recent reports of such house demolitions, but it was true that the US practised this form of "collective punishment" last year and this year. But then, what are a few houses between friends anyway when an entire country is at stake?).
From our vantage point in the Middle East, it is highly unlikely that the US would succeed in "pacifying" Iraq ahead of the elections; nor would Israel be successful in quelling Palestinian resistance.
However, all sides are equally determined, come hell or high water, and that spells nothing but more violence and bloodshed of a magnitude that would make what is going on today resemble a Sunday school outing when compared with what lies ahead for the Middle East, a region that seems to be destined to bear witness to some of the worst human agonies.
THERE ARE lots in common between the Israeli offensive in the occupied territories and the American assault in Iraq. Perhaps the thin line of difference is that the Americans say they are targeting "foreign terrorists" waging war against the US -led coalition in Iraq (never mind the bulk of the dead are civilians, most of them women and children) while the Israelis consider any Palestinian is a legitimate target for killing.
In both cases, the objective is to "pacify" the people through military means. Both powers use whatever means available to them to unleash indiscriminate attacks and, by and large, follow a similar pattern of actions (Could we ever hope to hear Washington rejecting this charge and saying the US military's actions are not as bad as those of the Israelis? We won't. Why? Simple. Such an assertion would be a double-edged sword for Washington, since we could quote the US coming close to calling Israeli actions barbaric).
The existence of a video footage shot from the cockpit of a US aircraft bombing a group of civilians in a Falluja street and American soldiers celebrating "taking them out" speaks volumes in themselves.
It is no coincidence that the Israeli occupation forces "expanded" their militaray operation against Palestinian resistance in Gaza parallel to the American assault against Iraqi towns known for steadfastly refusing to accept US domination of their country.
It would also seem that there is an American-Israeli understanding that Israel could get away with its actions in the Gaza Strip and West Bank with minimum outcry from an international community seized with the ferocity of developments in Iraq.
Seen in that light, the American veto of a draft resolution on Tuesday at the UN Security Council demanding an end to the Israeli assault is not surprising. Not that it should be surprising, since it fits into the long-established record of the US stepping in to protect its "strategic" ally in the Middle East from international censure. Nor should it raise any eyebrows that Washington has endorsed the Israeli offensive saying was legitimate retaliation for Palestinian rocket strikes against Israelis. All these ring very familiar to people in this part of the world, many of whom seem to be even resigned that what Israel wants Israel gets.
If adopted, the resolution, submitted to the council by the Arab states in an emergency Security Council meeting, would have also called on Israel and the Palestinians to immediately implement the internationally-backed road map peace plan.
Indeed, Israel had managed to put the UN on the defensive. It released an aerial photograph of what it describes as the loading of a Qassam rocket onto a UN vehicle. No wonder Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, announced an investigation into the Israeli accusation.
However, the Israeli government removed from its website the report containing the allegation. Obviously, it could not hold on to its argument when it was proven that the elongated object which appeared in the image was a stretcher.
The Israeli operations in Gaza come ahead of the implemenation of Ariel Sharon's grand designs to withdraw from the Strip in a manner aimed at pre-empting the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
The US-led coalition has mounted the assault in Iraq to eliminate challenges to Washington's long-term designs in the country ahead of elections expected to be held in January.
Indeed, there could not be any denial of the fact that many of the victims of guerrilla bombings and suicide blasts are innocent Iraqi civilians and they need protection. But now, Iraqi civilians face danger from both sides, and are dying by the dozens every day caught in the American-led offensive.
The US calls the civilian deaths "collateral damage;" Israel would not even care to comment on its military's killing and maiming of Palestinian women and children.
Two other notable features of the two operations include the American use of Israeli expertise to interrogate — a la Abu Ghraib style — Iraqi prisoners and demolitions of family homes of Iraqis suspected of carrying out guerrilla attacks. (To be fair, we have not heard any recent reports of such house demolitions, but it was true that the US practised this form of "collective punishment" last year and this year. But then, what are a few houses between friends anyway when an entire country is at stake?).
From our vantage point in the Middle East, it is highly unlikely that the US would succeed in "pacifying" Iraq ahead of the elections; nor would Israel be successful in quelling Palestinian resistance.
However, all sides are equally determined, come hell or high water, and that spells nothing but more violence and bloodshed of a magnitude that would make what is going on today resemble a Sunday school outing when compared with what lies ahead for the Middle East, a region that seems to be destined to bear witness to some of the worst human agonies.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Who is this Zarqawi?
PV Vivekanand
ABU MUSAB AL Zarqawi. The name has become synonymous with extremism and militancy in the Middle East. Indeed, anything and everything that is happening in Iraq is blamed on Zarqawi these days. He has become the Americans' bogeyman in Iraq.
Behind the media headlines, Internet and television images, and statements attributed to him, many in the region are wondering whether Zarqawi is indeed alive and is really the larger than life person that he is being made out to be. Some even suggest that Zarqawi's name is used by American intelligence to serve its own purposes.
Mideast experts are puzzled why Zarqawi should be executing hostages since he or his group does not benefit from such actions. The only party that benefits from such killings is Israel since it paints Muslims in a bad light in the international scene. Any thought in this direction takes the entire debate in a different direction — that somehow Israel's Mossad is involved in claiming hostage killings on behalf of Zarqawi.
But then, in this part of the world such theories have always found fertile ground, and many simply find Israeli conspiracies under every rock.
Let us assume, for clarity sake, that Zarqawi is alive, is leading the insurgency in Iraq and is behind the kidnapping and killing of hostages.
The last sighting of Zarqawi, according to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), came in a video clip showing the "execution" of American hostage Nicholas Berg on the Internet. The clipping did have a title saying: "Sheikh Abu Musab Zarqawi slaughters an American infidel."
How did the CIA reach that conclusion that it was indeed Zarqawi? Is there some equipment that "positively identifies" faces through thick masks appearing on cyber images? That is something new, I should admit. But then, Zarqawi, as far as we are told, does not have a leg and hops around on an artificial limb (thanks to Saddam Hussein, who, the CIA said at one point, allowed him to have that fitted at a Baghdad hospital some years ago). Again, as far as we could see, none of the masked figures appearing on the infamous Berg clipping was seen limping. Zarqawi is also described as left handed by his family while he is shown using his right hand to cut Berg's throat.
Then again, some American reports have said that the report of him having lost a limb was "misinformation" and that Zarqawi has both legs.
The latest revelation about Zarqawi, who is in his mid-30s, who was born Ahmed Khalayleh in Jordan, is that he had never been a member of Al Qaeda; nor has he sworn allegiance to Osama Bin Laden although he shares Bin Laden's militant ideology.
This is the assertion made by an unidentfified source — an "Islamist Arab — who is said to have "recently" met Zarqawi in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, according to an interview carried by the respected London-based, Saudi-owned Al Hayat Arabic-language daily.
Al Hayat quoted the source as saying in reply to a question whether Zarqawi and Bin Laden were linked with each other:
"I wish that he (Zarqawi) was an Al Qaeda representative in Iraq. But the truth is that Zarqawi has his own organisation. He is not an Qaeda member and has no connection to Sheikh Osama (Bin Laden). They only employ the same method.
"There is no organisational connection between them – on the contrary, many Arab youth have said that they will swear allegiance to Zarqawi provided that he swear allegiance to Sheikh Osama. They say that so far he has not sworn allegiance, and that he used to say: 'to this day I have not sworn allegiance to Sheikh Osama and I am not acting in the framework of his organisation..'.."
The assertion of the source fitted in with the view of seasoned observers in the retion that Bin Laden and Zarqawi were not working together.
Reports have spoken about how Zarqawi went to Afghanistan in late 80s, but was disappointed that the Soviet army had by then left that country, worked as a writer before returning to Jordan where he was imprisoned for several years because of suspected links with Bin Laden.
However, observers and analysts say that there has never been any evidence that Bin Laden had enlisted Zarqawi in is Al Qaeda group.
Those who knew Zarqawi in prison in Jordan say he was too independent-minded to affiliate himself with Bin Laden.
Zarqawi went back to Pakistan/Afghanistan in late 1999 and stayed there but he operated his own group based in Peshawar in Pakistan and in Kandahar in Afghanistan where he had his own camp unconnected with Al Qaeda. No one has reported seeing Zarqawi and Bin Laden together.
Zarqawi has never claimed to speak on behalf of Al Qaeda; he has said he leads the Al Tawhid Wa'Al Jihad organisation, which he calls an independent group dedicated to "replace Arab regimes" with Islamist leaders.
Zarqawi was tried in absentia in Jordan for the murder of American diplomat Lawrence Foley in October 2002 and sentenced to death. The prosecution argued that he visited Jordan on a forged passport, set up the murder, paid more than $70,000 to the actual assassins and left the kingdom two weeks before the murder.
optional:
In the interview carried by Al Hayat, the unidentified source made the following points (Pls note the quotes and unquotes):
Zarqawi believes that "we are fighting in Iraq but our eyes are raised not only to Iraq but also to other places, such as Jerusalem." He "has a strategy and an aspiration to expand the fighting to the entire region."
Zarqawi "came to this arena only to expel the Americans from the Muslims' country (Iraq) and to establish an Islamic government. This is part of the goal, because if this is not done, how will we be able to bring about coups d'etat in neighboring countries? How can we rescue Jerusalem when we have no base from which to set out? Rescuing Jerusalem and the neighbouring countries will come only after the rise of an Islamic state from which the youth will set out to liberate the neighboring areas."
On killing of hostages, according to the source, "Zarqawi is convinced that his operations are permitted by Shari'a [Islamic law], and that the hostages are not truly hostages. There is a difference between a hostage and a spy or a captive. The sentence for spies is death. But there is some dispute about how it is to be carried out – by the sword or by shooting."
According to the source, Zarqawi "accepts comments" from ulema (Muslim religious leaders) regarding whether his killing operations are permitted or forbidden according to Islam — provided that the ulema are not connected to a regime and are offering opinions out of personal conviction, and not to please their rulers."
Zarqawi believes that "there is evidence in the Shari'a that his killings are permitted, even if they include the mutilation of corpses: 'Allah has permitted us to repay them in kind, with the same means that they use. If they kill our women, we will kill their women'."
Zarqawi rejects the suggestion that he is attacking Shiites in Iraq.
According to the source, "Zarqawi's position [on Shi'ites] is clear… The entire Salafi stream believes that the Shi'ite is an infidel ideology. I believe this and Zarqawi believes that the Shi'te is heresy. But this does not mean that we declare the Shi'ite masses infidels. We must call upon them to atone to Allah."
Zarqwi maintains that "anyone who enters this country (Iraq) together with the Americans in the context of their occupation is an infidel. We are not talking about an apostateregime, regarding which there is disagreement whether it should be declared infidel. (But) there is no dispute regarding anyone who collaborates with the occupation – he is a traitor and he must be killed, regardless of whether he is a Sunni, a Shi'ite, or a Turk."
ABU MUSAB AL Zarqawi. The name has become synonymous with extremism and militancy in the Middle East. Indeed, anything and everything that is happening in Iraq is blamed on Zarqawi these days. He has become the Americans' bogeyman in Iraq.
Behind the media headlines, Internet and television images, and statements attributed to him, many in the region are wondering whether Zarqawi is indeed alive and is really the larger than life person that he is being made out to be. Some even suggest that Zarqawi's name is used by American intelligence to serve its own purposes.
Mideast experts are puzzled why Zarqawi should be executing hostages since he or his group does not benefit from such actions. The only party that benefits from such killings is Israel since it paints Muslims in a bad light in the international scene. Any thought in this direction takes the entire debate in a different direction — that somehow Israel's Mossad is involved in claiming hostage killings on behalf of Zarqawi.
But then, in this part of the world such theories have always found fertile ground, and many simply find Israeli conspiracies under every rock.
Let us assume, for clarity sake, that Zarqawi is alive, is leading the insurgency in Iraq and is behind the kidnapping and killing of hostages.
The last sighting of Zarqawi, according to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), came in a video clip showing the "execution" of American hostage Nicholas Berg on the Internet. The clipping did have a title saying: "Sheikh Abu Musab Zarqawi slaughters an American infidel."
How did the CIA reach that conclusion that it was indeed Zarqawi? Is there some equipment that "positively identifies" faces through thick masks appearing on cyber images? That is something new, I should admit. But then, Zarqawi, as far as we are told, does not have a leg and hops around on an artificial limb (thanks to Saddam Hussein, who, the CIA said at one point, allowed him to have that fitted at a Baghdad hospital some years ago). Again, as far as we could see, none of the masked figures appearing on the infamous Berg clipping was seen limping. Zarqawi is also described as left handed by his family while he is shown using his right hand to cut Berg's throat.
Then again, some American reports have said that the report of him having lost a limb was "misinformation" and that Zarqawi has both legs.
The latest revelation about Zarqawi, who is in his mid-30s, who was born Ahmed Khalayleh in Jordan, is that he had never been a member of Al Qaeda; nor has he sworn allegiance to Osama Bin Laden although he shares Bin Laden's militant ideology.
This is the assertion made by an unidentfified source — an "Islamist Arab — who is said to have "recently" met Zarqawi in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, according to an interview carried by the respected London-based, Saudi-owned Al Hayat Arabic-language daily.
Al Hayat quoted the source as saying in reply to a question whether Zarqawi and Bin Laden were linked with each other:
"I wish that he (Zarqawi) was an Al Qaeda representative in Iraq. But the truth is that Zarqawi has his own organisation. He is not an Qaeda member and has no connection to Sheikh Osama (Bin Laden). They only employ the same method.
"There is no organisational connection between them – on the contrary, many Arab youth have said that they will swear allegiance to Zarqawi provided that he swear allegiance to Sheikh Osama. They say that so far he has not sworn allegiance, and that he used to say: 'to this day I have not sworn allegiance to Sheikh Osama and I am not acting in the framework of his organisation..'.."
The assertion of the source fitted in with the view of seasoned observers in the retion that Bin Laden and Zarqawi were not working together.
Reports have spoken about how Zarqawi went to Afghanistan in late 80s, but was disappointed that the Soviet army had by then left that country, worked as a writer before returning to Jordan where he was imprisoned for several years because of suspected links with Bin Laden.
However, observers and analysts say that there has never been any evidence that Bin Laden had enlisted Zarqawi in is Al Qaeda group.
Those who knew Zarqawi in prison in Jordan say he was too independent-minded to affiliate himself with Bin Laden.
Zarqawi went back to Pakistan/Afghanistan in late 1999 and stayed there but he operated his own group based in Peshawar in Pakistan and in Kandahar in Afghanistan where he had his own camp unconnected with Al Qaeda. No one has reported seeing Zarqawi and Bin Laden together.
Zarqawi has never claimed to speak on behalf of Al Qaeda; he has said he leads the Al Tawhid Wa'Al Jihad organisation, which he calls an independent group dedicated to "replace Arab regimes" with Islamist leaders.
Zarqawi was tried in absentia in Jordan for the murder of American diplomat Lawrence Foley in October 2002 and sentenced to death. The prosecution argued that he visited Jordan on a forged passport, set up the murder, paid more than $70,000 to the actual assassins and left the kingdom two weeks before the murder.
optional:
In the interview carried by Al Hayat, the unidentified source made the following points (Pls note the quotes and unquotes):
Zarqawi believes that "we are fighting in Iraq but our eyes are raised not only to Iraq but also to other places, such as Jerusalem." He "has a strategy and an aspiration to expand the fighting to the entire region."
Zarqawi "came to this arena only to expel the Americans from the Muslims' country (Iraq) and to establish an Islamic government. This is part of the goal, because if this is not done, how will we be able to bring about coups d'etat in neighboring countries? How can we rescue Jerusalem when we have no base from which to set out? Rescuing Jerusalem and the neighbouring countries will come only after the rise of an Islamic state from which the youth will set out to liberate the neighboring areas."
On killing of hostages, according to the source, "Zarqawi is convinced that his operations are permitted by Shari'a [Islamic law], and that the hostages are not truly hostages. There is a difference between a hostage and a spy or a captive. The sentence for spies is death. But there is some dispute about how it is to be carried out – by the sword or by shooting."
According to the source, Zarqawi "accepts comments" from ulema (Muslim religious leaders) regarding whether his killing operations are permitted or forbidden according to Islam — provided that the ulema are not connected to a regime and are offering opinions out of personal conviction, and not to please their rulers."
Zarqawi believes that "there is evidence in the Shari'a that his killings are permitted, even if they include the mutilation of corpses: 'Allah has permitted us to repay them in kind, with the same means that they use. If they kill our women, we will kill their women'."
Zarqawi rejects the suggestion that he is attacking Shiites in Iraq.
According to the source, "Zarqawi's position [on Shi'ites] is clear… The entire Salafi stream believes that the Shi'ite is an infidel ideology. I believe this and Zarqawi believes that the Shi'te is heresy. But this does not mean that we declare the Shi'ite masses infidels. We must call upon them to atone to Allah."
Zarqwi maintains that "anyone who enters this country (Iraq) together with the Americans in the context of their occupation is an infidel. We are not talking about an apostateregime, regarding which there is disagreement whether it should be declared infidel. (But) there is no dispute regarding anyone who collaborates with the occupation – he is a traitor and he must be killed, regardless of whether he is a Sunni, a Shi'ite, or a Turk."
Arab media slowly catching up
Session on Western media and Iraq
PV Vivekanand
The Arab media showed that it is moving towards holding its ground against the continuing assault by the Western media during the recent war on Iraq and were more objective in its coverage of the conflict when compared to the Western media.
However, the Arab media have to go a long way ahead before it could actually do the job they are supposed to do in terms of being instrumental in changes in the society.
This was the consensus at discussions held here on Wednesday as part of Arab Media Summit 2003, which ended later in the day.
The session, held under the title "Iraq as a case study: Western media coverage," was moderated by Peter Arnett, a former CNN correspondent who gained prominence during the 1991 Gulf war by virtue of him being the only American television reporter in who remained in Iraq throughout the military conflict.
According to Arnett, there need not be much of a classification between the Western and Arab television channels since news organisations borrowed each other's footage.
He referred to the arrangement between CNN and Al Jazeera television during the Afghanistan whereby the American network heavily used Al Jazeera footage.
In a broader context, Arnett described the recent war against Iraq as a continuation of the 1991 Gulf war, and said it "did not have to take place."
"This is a 13-year war. It was a pre-emptive war. The US and UK did not have to launch it," he said. "In the case of World War II, there was no choice as it was a war of survival. But this war angered the Arab World as it did not have to take place," said Arnett.
He said it was a question of credibility and trust.
He recalled British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Iraq could launch its alleged weapons of mass destruction ((WMD) with a 45-minute notice and US Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out a full dossier against Iraq at the UN.
"The Iraqi side said we not have any WMD, you can search anywhere and that's what the UN did," he said. "But then, Saddam Hussein did not have any credibility," he said.
Arnett was employed by the American networks NBC and National Geographic for covering the recent Iraq war. But they fired him for saying on Iraqi TV that the US war plan had failed.
In his comments here on Wednesday, he criticised the decision to sack him.
"As journalists, we need to know the other side, we should know the other side," he said.
Arnett said CNN had brought back war reporting to the forefront. "War reporting was on a decline. CNN's success during the first war motivated others," he said. "
However, he argued that while the US had won the war on the military front, it has lost the "information war."
"Today, it is impossible for anyone to control the media. There is no embedding anymore," he said referring to the unprecedented way that American journalists were allowed to accompany military units which invaded Iraq.
Jihad Al Khazen, director and writer of the Al Hayat newspaper, said the Arab media had outdone the Western media in objectively covering war.
Clive Myrie, a BBC correspondent, said the issue should not be reduced to a beauty contest between the Arab and Western media.
"We are all involved in getting to the truth and that is what we should be doing," he said.
Arguing against certain Arab perceptions that the Western media is biased against the Arabs, he said the Western media is not a single monolith that thinks alike but consists of various perspectives and processes.
Myrie, who was one of the "embedded" journalists with the US Marines during the Iraq war, said he was viewing the war from the perspective of the men in the US army unit.
He said he had formed bonds with soldiers in the units and the impact this had on maintaining standards of objective journalism.
"They were feeding me and helping me in my task and gave me a front row seat to see the war but I still had the freedom to be objective in reporting the war," he said.
Arnett said that the concept of embedded journalists was a brilliant masterstroke of the Pentagon in trying to turn coverage of the war in their favour. The coverage of embedded journalists, he noted was perceived as highly reliable.
Janine Digiovanni, a correspondent of The Times, highlighted the need for journalists to work in underreported regions of the world like Chechnya.
She said there were several regions of the world that deserved to be covered because of the appalling abuse of human rights but were not covered because they did not have oil or pipelines or vast natural resources.
"More often than not these stories were in Africa where the level of violence and massacre is beyond horrific."
She talked about how she was one on the only three journalists to witness the fall of Grozny in Chechnya.
She also related how she was horrified by the level of damage created by Israeli tanks which levelled the West Bank town of Jenin in April 2002.
She said she was proud to see what the British press had written about what happened in the town.
However, she was less than proud of her American colleagues, whom she accused of burying the Jenin story, or brushed it off because it was not considered a massacre.
PV Vivekanand
The Arab media showed that it is moving towards holding its ground against the continuing assault by the Western media during the recent war on Iraq and were more objective in its coverage of the conflict when compared to the Western media.
However, the Arab media have to go a long way ahead before it could actually do the job they are supposed to do in terms of being instrumental in changes in the society.
This was the consensus at discussions held here on Wednesday as part of Arab Media Summit 2003, which ended later in the day.
The session, held under the title "Iraq as a case study: Western media coverage," was moderated by Peter Arnett, a former CNN correspondent who gained prominence during the 1991 Gulf war by virtue of him being the only American television reporter in who remained in Iraq throughout the military conflict.
According to Arnett, there need not be much of a classification between the Western and Arab television channels since news organisations borrowed each other's footage.
He referred to the arrangement between CNN and Al Jazeera television during the Afghanistan whereby the American network heavily used Al Jazeera footage.
In a broader context, Arnett described the recent war against Iraq as a continuation of the 1991 Gulf war, and said it "did not have to take place."
"This is a 13-year war. It was a pre-emptive war. The US and UK did not have to launch it," he said. "In the case of World War II, there was no choice as it was a war of survival. But this war angered the Arab World as it did not have to take place," said Arnett.
He said it was a question of credibility and trust.
He recalled British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Iraq could launch its alleged weapons of mass destruction ((WMD) with a 45-minute notice and US Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out a full dossier against Iraq at the UN.
"The Iraqi side said we not have any WMD, you can search anywhere and that's what the UN did," he said. "But then, Saddam Hussein did not have any credibility," he said.
Arnett was employed by the American networks NBC and National Geographic for covering the recent Iraq war. But they fired him for saying on Iraqi TV that the US war plan had failed.
In his comments here on Wednesday, he criticised the decision to sack him.
"As journalists, we need to know the other side, we should know the other side," he said.
Arnett said CNN had brought back war reporting to the forefront. "War reporting was on a decline. CNN's success during the first war motivated others," he said. "
However, he argued that while the US had won the war on the military front, it has lost the "information war."
"Today, it is impossible for anyone to control the media. There is no embedding anymore," he said referring to the unprecedented way that American journalists were allowed to accompany military units which invaded Iraq.
Jihad Al Khazen, director and writer of the Al Hayat newspaper, said the Arab media had outdone the Western media in objectively covering war.
Clive Myrie, a BBC correspondent, said the issue should not be reduced to a beauty contest between the Arab and Western media.
"We are all involved in getting to the truth and that is what we should be doing," he said.
Arguing against certain Arab perceptions that the Western media is biased against the Arabs, he said the Western media is not a single monolith that thinks alike but consists of various perspectives and processes.
Myrie, who was one of the "embedded" journalists with the US Marines during the Iraq war, said he was viewing the war from the perspective of the men in the US army unit.
He said he had formed bonds with soldiers in the units and the impact this had on maintaining standards of objective journalism.
"They were feeding me and helping me in my task and gave me a front row seat to see the war but I still had the freedom to be objective in reporting the war," he said.
Arnett said that the concept of embedded journalists was a brilliant masterstroke of the Pentagon in trying to turn coverage of the war in their favour. The coverage of embedded journalists, he noted was perceived as highly reliable.
Janine Digiovanni, a correspondent of The Times, highlighted the need for journalists to work in underreported regions of the world like Chechnya.
She said there were several regions of the world that deserved to be covered because of the appalling abuse of human rights but were not covered because they did not have oil or pipelines or vast natural resources.
"More often than not these stories were in Africa where the level of violence and massacre is beyond horrific."
She talked about how she was one on the only three journalists to witness the fall of Grozny in Chechnya.
She also related how she was horrified by the level of damage created by Israeli tanks which levelled the West Bank town of Jenin in April 2002.
She said she was proud to see what the British press had written about what happened in the town.
However, she was less than proud of her American colleagues, whom she accused of burying the Jenin story, or brushed it off because it was not considered a massacre.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Bin Laden's mouse
Abu Maysara — Bin Laden's mouse?
PV Vivekanand
The man who posts video-clippings of beheading of hostages in Iraq and statements attributed to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi calls himself Abu Maysara Al Iraqi, or father of Maysara the Iraqi. But no one knows who he actually is and US and Western intelligence agencies and cyber experts have been unable to pin him down because he constantly switches he on-line accounts and uses new and advanced technologies to post the video clippings and messages in the Internet.
It is a deadly game being played out in cyberspace.
Abu Maysara often appears on chatrooms of Islamic websites, but he does not respond to questions about himself or about the group he represents. He posts message containing the URLs of specially created websties carrying the Zarqawi group's claims of attacks on American soldiers and their allies.
Those chasing him in order to silence him do not know whether the name is real, it is a he or a she or whether he/she is an Iraqi or is in Iraq.
Abu Maysara is the most important source of news and militant statements on the guerrilla war in Iraq as well as images of executions of hostages that reach millions of people.
Silencing him has become a priority for the US since he is hampering American efforts to pacify Iraq; his work terrifies people into staying away from co-operating with the US and also incite "jihadist" anti-American hostilities around the world. Above all, his images and messages highlight that the US has failed in Iraq and is losing the guerrilla war there.
According to counterterrorism consultant, Evan F. Kohlmannm it is extremely frustrating not to be able catch Abu Maysara, who is able to send out quality videos to millions of people uncensored.
Abu Maysara said in a Sept. 19 posting on the Internet that he issues his reports so that his perspective "does not become lost in the media blackout that America imposes in order to deceive its people and its allies."
American law enforcement agencies have been closing down websites carrying Abu Maysara's messages but it has become a cat-and-mouse game.
It is difficult to trace his messages and postings from the very beginning since he used highly advance technology that enables him to access a computer in another country but passing through several other countries and leaving no traceable trail.
In recent times, Abu Maysara has acquired a software called "YouSendIt" that allows senders to create multiple links to a large file so it can be viewed by an unlimited number of people.
Users type in their e-mail addresses, upload the file and YouSendIt creates a free, anonymous Web page for them, according to the Washington Post. To distribute videos of American hostages who were kidnapped last month, Abu Maysara created dozens of links using YouSendIt and sent them to chat rooms all over the Internet, said the paper.
The Washington Post quoted experts who have been trying to trace him as saying that Abu Maysara compressed the files, or made them as small as possible so that they could be copied more quickly. By the time American monitors got word of the videos, they had been anonymously copied from computer to computer so fast, making it impossible to locate, much less destroy, all the copies of the video.
YouSendIt was developed by Canadian programmers but they are unable to check Abu Maysara's use of the software.
They say that they created the programme to help families trade pictures and videos and to help colleagues at work share files. They said they were surprised and saddened to hear that the technology was being used to spread violent messages.
Abu Maysara first surfaced in January in the Muntada Al Ansar and Islah chat rooms, where he confirmed Zarqawi's presence in Iraq and took credit for several attacks on US and other coalition troops. Since then, he has hopped from computer to computer, keeping many steps ahead of American cyberspace experts chasing him.
The messages from Abu Maysara are always in Arabic beginning with a standard greeting such as, "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful." The heart of the message is written in flowery language, recounting an attack. Abu Maysara writes in half-sentences and mixes the details of an incident with religious invocations.
That Abu Maysara was indeed the man behind the website postings was confirmed when some chatters in the chatroom suggested that the Zarqawi group make Kenneth Bigley, the 62-year-old British citizen who had been kidnapped, beg for his life to the "tyrant."
A few days later, a video clip appeared on the website of Bigley pleading to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to save him.
PV Vivekanand
The man who posts video-clippings of beheading of hostages in Iraq and statements attributed to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi calls himself Abu Maysara Al Iraqi, or father of Maysara the Iraqi. But no one knows who he actually is and US and Western intelligence agencies and cyber experts have been unable to pin him down because he constantly switches he on-line accounts and uses new and advanced technologies to post the video clippings and messages in the Internet.
It is a deadly game being played out in cyberspace.
Abu Maysara often appears on chatrooms of Islamic websites, but he does not respond to questions about himself or about the group he represents. He posts message containing the URLs of specially created websties carrying the Zarqawi group's claims of attacks on American soldiers and their allies.
Those chasing him in order to silence him do not know whether the name is real, it is a he or a she or whether he/she is an Iraqi or is in Iraq.
Abu Maysara is the most important source of news and militant statements on the guerrilla war in Iraq as well as images of executions of hostages that reach millions of people.
Silencing him has become a priority for the US since he is hampering American efforts to pacify Iraq; his work terrifies people into staying away from co-operating with the US and also incite "jihadist" anti-American hostilities around the world. Above all, his images and messages highlight that the US has failed in Iraq and is losing the guerrilla war there.
According to counterterrorism consultant, Evan F. Kohlmannm it is extremely frustrating not to be able catch Abu Maysara, who is able to send out quality videos to millions of people uncensored.
Abu Maysara said in a Sept. 19 posting on the Internet that he issues his reports so that his perspective "does not become lost in the media blackout that America imposes in order to deceive its people and its allies."
American law enforcement agencies have been closing down websites carrying Abu Maysara's messages but it has become a cat-and-mouse game.
It is difficult to trace his messages and postings from the very beginning since he used highly advance technology that enables him to access a computer in another country but passing through several other countries and leaving no traceable trail.
In recent times, Abu Maysara has acquired a software called "YouSendIt" that allows senders to create multiple links to a large file so it can be viewed by an unlimited number of people.
Users type in their e-mail addresses, upload the file and YouSendIt creates a free, anonymous Web page for them, according to the Washington Post. To distribute videos of American hostages who were kidnapped last month, Abu Maysara created dozens of links using YouSendIt and sent them to chat rooms all over the Internet, said the paper.
The Washington Post quoted experts who have been trying to trace him as saying that Abu Maysara compressed the files, or made them as small as possible so that they could be copied more quickly. By the time American monitors got word of the videos, they had been anonymously copied from computer to computer so fast, making it impossible to locate, much less destroy, all the copies of the video.
YouSendIt was developed by Canadian programmers but they are unable to check Abu Maysara's use of the software.
They say that they created the programme to help families trade pictures and videos and to help colleagues at work share files. They said they were surprised and saddened to hear that the technology was being used to spread violent messages.
Abu Maysara first surfaced in January in the Muntada Al Ansar and Islah chat rooms, where he confirmed Zarqawi's presence in Iraq and took credit for several attacks on US and other coalition troops. Since then, he has hopped from computer to computer, keeping many steps ahead of American cyberspace experts chasing him.
The messages from Abu Maysara are always in Arabic beginning with a standard greeting such as, "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful." The heart of the message is written in flowery language, recounting an attack. Abu Maysara writes in half-sentences and mixes the details of an incident with religious invocations.
That Abu Maysara was indeed the man behind the website postings was confirmed when some chatters in the chatroom suggested that the Zarqawi group make Kenneth Bigley, the 62-year-old British citizen who had been kidnapped, beg for his life to the "tyrant."
A few days later, a video clip appeared on the website of Bigley pleading to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to save him.
Monday, October 04, 2004
Rumsfeld and masked truth
By 'Inad Khairallah
FOR THE first time, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the senior-most Bush administration officials who pushed for war against Iraq, has admitted — inadverently perhaps but nonetheless the truth — that he was not aware of any "strong, hard evidence" linking Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
Rumsfeld's "clarification" that his comment was "misunderstood" does not pull much water, given the explict way it was made.
Indeed, Rumsfeld's "revelation" came after US President George W Bush also made a comment that somehow implied that he was also not sure whether Saddam had links with Osama Bin Laden.
However, Bush's official response was somewhat different to the finding of the so-called 9/11 Commission's report in June that there was no “collaborative relationship” between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and thus the ousted Iraqi leader had no role in the Sept.11, 2001 attacks.
“The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," said Bush at the time despite evidence having shown that Al Qaeda had repeatedly approached Saddam’s regime about working together and the Iraqi strongman had turned down the call. Some accounts say that it was the other way around and that Bin Laden never considered Saddam as a suitable ally and therefore he rebuffed Iraq's approaches.
In any case, Bush and Rumsfeld and a host of other administration officials are now trying to give an impression that US intelligence agencies had given false information and it was not their fault if they had gone wrong in judging that Saddam/Iraq had links with Bin Laden/Al Qaeda. Take it any order you like; it means the same thing.
Rumsfeld's affirmation of what most people in the Middle East had known for long came in an appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York this week.
"I have seen the answer to that question (whether Saddam had links with Al Qaeda) migrate in the intelligence community over a period of a year in the most amazing way. Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was," Rumsfeld said.
"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two," he said.
"I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who's connected to Al Qaeda who was in and out of Iraq. And it is the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship and why he might not have had a relationship. It may have been something that was not representative of a hard linkage."
Let us now go back to what Rumsfeld said on Sept.26, 2002.
"We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical and biological agent training. And when I say contacts, I mean between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Rumsfeld said at the time.
"We have what we believe to be credible information that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq, reciprocal non-aggression discussions. We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire ... weapons of mass destruction capabilities," said the defence secretary.
(Obviously, Rumsfeld's comment embarassed the White House, particularly given that it came after Bush was seen fumbling in his campaign debate with rival John Kerry. That explained why Rumseld apparently found it fit to remember, a few hours after Tuesday's comments in New York, that he had made the Sept.26, 2002 statement.That was perhaps why he felt the need to issue a formal Pentagon press release stating his comment "regrettably was misunderstood" by some and affirming that since September 2002 he had stated that there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda).
The only explanation, if there is one indeed, is that Rumsfeld was perhaps betting that he could refer to the difference between "strong, hard evidence" and "credible information.... credible evidence" to get himself off the hook.
However, it is not that easy.
Rumsfeld also took cover behind US intelligence on Tuesday.
"Why the intelligence proved wrong, I'm not in a position to say," he said. "I simply don't know. But the world is a lot better off with Saddam Hussein in jail than they were with him in power."
There could never have been any doubt in the minds of average Americans that Rumsfeld was affirming in September 2002 that Saddam was party to the Sept.11, 2001 attacks that are blamed on Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.
Indeed, it was not only Rumsefeld but also many others who had made that assertion — explicitly stating that one of the reasons, apart from Iraq's (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction, for the invasion and occupation of that country was the "threat" that Saddam posed through Al Qaeda to the security of the United States of America.
However, they are now falling back on the argument that removing Saddam from power was a good thing for not only Iraq but also for the Middle Eastern neighbourhood as well as the international community at large.
James Bovard, is author of the to-be-released book, "The Bush Betrayal" and policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation, has put together a collection of Bush statements that clearly stated that he was acting against Iraq as part of his war against terror that was launched post-9/11.
In an article titled "Saddam as the 20th hijacker" appearing in the September 2004 edition of Freedom Daily, Bovard notes:
A March 18, 2003 memo that Bush sent to the US Congress states that he was was launching the war against Iraq as part of "the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organisations, including those nations, organisations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept.11, 2001."
Bush's State of the Union address on Jan.29, 2002 groouped Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea, was part of an “axis of evil.”
On Sept.25, 2002, Bush told reporters:
"Al Qaeda hides, Saddam doesn’t, but the danger is... that they work in concert. The danger is that Al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam’s madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world.... You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.... They’re both equally as bad, and equally as evil, and equally as destructive."
The president told a mostly Republican audience in Cincinnati on Oct.7, 2002:
"We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.
"Some Al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior Al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks...."
(The reference here is to Jordanian militant Ahmed Khalayleh aka Abu Musab Zarqawi, who the Central Intelligence Agency said had an artificial limb fitted in a Baghdad hospital with Saddam's blessing. Now the CIA says it is no longer sure whether that was indeed true).
Again on Nov.1, 2002, Bush told another Republican gathering, this time in New Hampshire:
"We know he’s (Saddam) got ties with Al Qaeda. A nightmare scenario, of course, is that he becomes the arsenal for a terrorist network, where they could attack America, and he’d leave no fingerprints behind."
In the 2003 State of the Union address, Bush pushed the ante all the way up and told Americans that they were vulnerable to a terror attack engineered by Saddam.
“Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda....," he said. "Imagine those 19 (Sept.11) hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. "
However, while he consistently implied that Saddam was involved in the Sept.11 attacks, he also stopped short being explicit (perhaps a hindsight that he might be pulled up one day?).
The Christian Science Monitor has observed:
"Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks.... The White House appears to be encouraging this false impression, as it seeks to maintain American support for a possible war against Iraq."
The administration did succeed in its drive and the the "damage" was done by one month before the invasion of Iraq: a February 2003 opinion poll found that 72 per cent of Americans believed that Saddam was “personally involved" in the 9/11 attacks.
The questions that we face is:
Do we need to convince the Americans that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and thus defend him? What purpose would it serve anyway?
First, we are not defending Saddam; nor are we apologists for him and his oppression of his people. The people of Iraq are better off without him (never mind that they are worse off on the ground today).
But we need to set the record straight. And the straight record is: The Bush administration took not only the Americans but also the international community at large on a ride (read war) on false pretexts. The clinch is: They were perfectly aware that they were (mis)leading everyone on a ground that existed only in their determination to realise their multi-pronged goal: Gaining control of Iraq's oil in order to influence the world market to American advantage; setting up an advance military base in the Gulf; and clearing the ground for Israeli domination of the region by removing a potentially mighty Arab foe.
FOR THE first time, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the senior-most Bush administration officials who pushed for war against Iraq, has admitted — inadverently perhaps but nonetheless the truth — that he was not aware of any "strong, hard evidence" linking Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
Rumsfeld's "clarification" that his comment was "misunderstood" does not pull much water, given the explict way it was made.
Indeed, Rumsfeld's "revelation" came after US President George W Bush also made a comment that somehow implied that he was also not sure whether Saddam had links with Osama Bin Laden.
However, Bush's official response was somewhat different to the finding of the so-called 9/11 Commission's report in June that there was no “collaborative relationship” between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and thus the ousted Iraqi leader had no role in the Sept.11, 2001 attacks.
“The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," said Bush at the time despite evidence having shown that Al Qaeda had repeatedly approached Saddam’s regime about working together and the Iraqi strongman had turned down the call. Some accounts say that it was the other way around and that Bin Laden never considered Saddam as a suitable ally and therefore he rebuffed Iraq's approaches.
In any case, Bush and Rumsfeld and a host of other administration officials are now trying to give an impression that US intelligence agencies had given false information and it was not their fault if they had gone wrong in judging that Saddam/Iraq had links with Bin Laden/Al Qaeda. Take it any order you like; it means the same thing.
Rumsfeld's affirmation of what most people in the Middle East had known for long came in an appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York this week.
"I have seen the answer to that question (whether Saddam had links with Al Qaeda) migrate in the intelligence community over a period of a year in the most amazing way. Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was," Rumsfeld said.
"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two," he said.
"I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who's connected to Al Qaeda who was in and out of Iraq. And it is the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship and why he might not have had a relationship. It may have been something that was not representative of a hard linkage."
Let us now go back to what Rumsfeld said on Sept.26, 2002.
"We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical and biological agent training. And when I say contacts, I mean between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Rumsfeld said at the time.
"We have what we believe to be credible information that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq, reciprocal non-aggression discussions. We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire ... weapons of mass destruction capabilities," said the defence secretary.
(Obviously, Rumsfeld's comment embarassed the White House, particularly given that it came after Bush was seen fumbling in his campaign debate with rival John Kerry. That explained why Rumseld apparently found it fit to remember, a few hours after Tuesday's comments in New York, that he had made the Sept.26, 2002 statement.That was perhaps why he felt the need to issue a formal Pentagon press release stating his comment "regrettably was misunderstood" by some and affirming that since September 2002 he had stated that there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda).
The only explanation, if there is one indeed, is that Rumsfeld was perhaps betting that he could refer to the difference between "strong, hard evidence" and "credible information.... credible evidence" to get himself off the hook.
However, it is not that easy.
Rumsfeld also took cover behind US intelligence on Tuesday.
"Why the intelligence proved wrong, I'm not in a position to say," he said. "I simply don't know. But the world is a lot better off with Saddam Hussein in jail than they were with him in power."
There could never have been any doubt in the minds of average Americans that Rumsfeld was affirming in September 2002 that Saddam was party to the Sept.11, 2001 attacks that are blamed on Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.
Indeed, it was not only Rumsefeld but also many others who had made that assertion — explicitly stating that one of the reasons, apart from Iraq's (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction, for the invasion and occupation of that country was the "threat" that Saddam posed through Al Qaeda to the security of the United States of America.
However, they are now falling back on the argument that removing Saddam from power was a good thing for not only Iraq but also for the Middle Eastern neighbourhood as well as the international community at large.
James Bovard, is author of the to-be-released book, "The Bush Betrayal" and policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation, has put together a collection of Bush statements that clearly stated that he was acting against Iraq as part of his war against terror that was launched post-9/11.
In an article titled "Saddam as the 20th hijacker" appearing in the September 2004 edition of Freedom Daily, Bovard notes:
A March 18, 2003 memo that Bush sent to the US Congress states that he was was launching the war against Iraq as part of "the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organisations, including those nations, organisations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept.11, 2001."
Bush's State of the Union address on Jan.29, 2002 groouped Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea, was part of an “axis of evil.”
On Sept.25, 2002, Bush told reporters:
"Al Qaeda hides, Saddam doesn’t, but the danger is... that they work in concert. The danger is that Al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam’s madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world.... You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.... They’re both equally as bad, and equally as evil, and equally as destructive."
The president told a mostly Republican audience in Cincinnati on Oct.7, 2002:
"We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.
"Some Al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior Al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks...."
(The reference here is to Jordanian militant Ahmed Khalayleh aka Abu Musab Zarqawi, who the Central Intelligence Agency said had an artificial limb fitted in a Baghdad hospital with Saddam's blessing. Now the CIA says it is no longer sure whether that was indeed true).
Again on Nov.1, 2002, Bush told another Republican gathering, this time in New Hampshire:
"We know he’s (Saddam) got ties with Al Qaeda. A nightmare scenario, of course, is that he becomes the arsenal for a terrorist network, where they could attack America, and he’d leave no fingerprints behind."
In the 2003 State of the Union address, Bush pushed the ante all the way up and told Americans that they were vulnerable to a terror attack engineered by Saddam.
“Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda....," he said. "Imagine those 19 (Sept.11) hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. "
However, while he consistently implied that Saddam was involved in the Sept.11 attacks, he also stopped short being explicit (perhaps a hindsight that he might be pulled up one day?).
The Christian Science Monitor has observed:
"Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks.... The White House appears to be encouraging this false impression, as it seeks to maintain American support for a possible war against Iraq."
The administration did succeed in its drive and the the "damage" was done by one month before the invasion of Iraq: a February 2003 opinion poll found that 72 per cent of Americans believed that Saddam was “personally involved" in the 9/11 attacks.
The questions that we face is:
Do we need to convince the Americans that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and thus defend him? What purpose would it serve anyway?
First, we are not defending Saddam; nor are we apologists for him and his oppression of his people. The people of Iraq are better off without him (never mind that they are worse off on the ground today).
But we need to set the record straight. And the straight record is: The Bush administration took not only the Americans but also the international community at large on a ride (read war) on false pretexts. The clinch is: They were perfectly aware that they were (mis)leading everyone on a ground that existed only in their determination to realise their multi-pronged goal: Gaining control of Iraq's oil in order to influence the world market to American advantage; setting up an advance military base in the Gulf; and clearing the ground for Israeli domination of the region by removing a potentially mighty Arab foe.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Zarqawi is not Al Qaeda
This is the first time that it has been made
explicit that Zarqawi is not an Al Qaeda activist.
The interview is credible and Al Hayat would not have
carried it if the source was not credible.
Jordanian militant Ahmed A Khalayleh, better
known as Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who is blamed for the
wave of guerrrilla attacks, kidnappings and beheadings
in Iraq, has never been an Al Qaeda activist; nor has
he sworn allegiance to Osama Bin Laden although he
shares Bin Laden's militant ideology.
This is the assertion made by an unidentfified source
— an "Islamist Arab" — who is said to have recently
met Zarqawi in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, according
to an interview carried by the respected London-based,
Saudi-owned Al Hayat Arabic-language daily.
Al Hayat quoted the source as saying in reply to a
question whether Zarqawi and Bin Laden were linked
with each other:
"I wish that he (Zarqawi) was an Al Qaeda
representative in Iraq. But the truth is that Zarqawi
has his own organisation. He is not an Qaeda member
and has no connection to Sheikh Osama (Bin Laden).
They only employ the same method.
"There is no organisational connection between them –
on the contrary, many Arab youth have said that they
will swear allegiance to Zarqawi provided that he
swear allegiance to Sheikh Osama. They say that so far
he has not sworn allegiance, and that he used to say:
'to this day I have not sworn allegiance to Sheikh
Osama and I am not acting in the framework of his
organisation..'.."
The assertion of the source fitted in with the view of
seasoned observers in the retion that Bin Laden and
Zarqawi were not working together.
Reports have spoken about how Zarqawi went to
Afghanistan in late 80s, but was disappointed that the
Soviet army had by then left that country, worked as a
writer before returning to Jordan where he was
imprisoned for several years because of suspected
links with Bin Laden.
However, observers and analysts say that there has
never been any evidence that Bin Laden had enlisted
Zarqawi in is Al Qaeda group.
Those who knew Zarqawi in prison in Jordan say he was
too independent-minded to affiliate himself with Bin
Laden.
Zarqawi went back to Pakistan/Afghanistan in late 1999
and stayed there but he operated his own group based
in Peshawar in Pakistan and in Kandahar in Afghanistan
where he had his own camp unconnected with Al Qaeda.
No one has reported seeing Zarqawi and Bin Laden
together.
Zarqawi has never claimed to speak on behalf of Al
Qaeda; he has said he leads the Al Tawhid Wa'Al Jihad
organisation, which he calls an independent group
dedicated to "replace Arab regimes" with Islamist
leaders.
In the interview carried by Al Hayat, the unidentified
source made the following points (Pls note the quotes
and unquotes):
Zarqawi believes that "we are fighting in Iraq but our
eyes are raised not only to Iraq but also to other
places, such as Jerusalem." He "has a strategy and an
aspiration to expand the fighting to the entire
region."
Zarqawi "came to this arena only to expel the
Americans from the Muslims' country (Iraq) and to
establish an Islamic government. This is part of the
goal, because if this is not done, how will we be able
to bring about coups d'etat in neighboring countries?
How can we rescue Jerusalem when we have no base from
which to set out? Rescuing Jerusalem and the
neighbouring countries will come only after the rise
of an Islamic state from which the youth will set out
to liberate the neighboring areas."
On killing of hostages, according to the source,
"Zarqawi is convinced that his operations are
permitted by Shari'a [Islamic law], and that the
hostages are not truly hostages. There is a difference
between a hostage and a spy or a captive. The sentence
for spies is death. But there is some dispute about
how it is to be carried out – by the sword or by
shooting."
According to the source, Zarqawi "accepts comments"
from ulema (Muslim religious leaders) regarding
whether his killing operations are permitted or
forbidden according to Islam — provided that the ulema
are not connected to a regime and are offering
opinions out of personal conviction, and not to please
their rulers."
Zarqawi believes that "there is evidence in the
Shari'a that his killings are permitted, even if they
include the mutilation of corpses: 'Allah has
permitted us to repay them in kind, with the same
means that they use. If they kill our women, we will
kill their women'."
Zarqawi rejects the suggestion that he is attacking
Shiites in Iraq.
According to the source, "Zarqawi's position [on
Shi'ites] is clear… The entire Salafi stream believes
that the Shi'ite is an infidel ideology. I believe
this and Zarqawi believes that the Shi'te is heresy.
But this does not mean that we declare the Shi'ite
masses infidels. We must call upon them to atone to
Allah."
Zarqwi maintains that "anyone who enters this country
(Iraq) together with the Americans in the context of
their occupation is an infidel. We are not talking
about an apostateregime, regarding which there is
disagreement whether it should be declared infidel.
(But) there is no dispute regarding anyone who
collaborates with the occupation – he is a traitor and
he must be killed, regardless of whether he is a
Sunni, a Shi'ite, or a Turk."
explicit that Zarqawi is not an Al Qaeda activist.
The interview is credible and Al Hayat would not have
carried it if the source was not credible.
Jordanian militant Ahmed A Khalayleh, better
known as Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who is blamed for the
wave of guerrrilla attacks, kidnappings and beheadings
in Iraq, has never been an Al Qaeda activist; nor has
he sworn allegiance to Osama Bin Laden although he
shares Bin Laden's militant ideology.
This is the assertion made by an unidentfified source
— an "Islamist Arab" — who is said to have recently
met Zarqawi in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, according
to an interview carried by the respected London-based,
Saudi-owned Al Hayat Arabic-language daily.
Al Hayat quoted the source as saying in reply to a
question whether Zarqawi and Bin Laden were linked
with each other:
"I wish that he (Zarqawi) was an Al Qaeda
representative in Iraq. But the truth is that Zarqawi
has his own organisation. He is not an Qaeda member
and has no connection to Sheikh Osama (Bin Laden).
They only employ the same method.
"There is no organisational connection between them –
on the contrary, many Arab youth have said that they
will swear allegiance to Zarqawi provided that he
swear allegiance to Sheikh Osama. They say that so far
he has not sworn allegiance, and that he used to say:
'to this day I have not sworn allegiance to Sheikh
Osama and I am not acting in the framework of his
organisation..'.."
The assertion of the source fitted in with the view of
seasoned observers in the retion that Bin Laden and
Zarqawi were not working together.
Reports have spoken about how Zarqawi went to
Afghanistan in late 80s, but was disappointed that the
Soviet army had by then left that country, worked as a
writer before returning to Jordan where he was
imprisoned for several years because of suspected
links with Bin Laden.
However, observers and analysts say that there has
never been any evidence that Bin Laden had enlisted
Zarqawi in is Al Qaeda group.
Those who knew Zarqawi in prison in Jordan say he was
too independent-minded to affiliate himself with Bin
Laden.
Zarqawi went back to Pakistan/Afghanistan in late 1999
and stayed there but he operated his own group based
in Peshawar in Pakistan and in Kandahar in Afghanistan
where he had his own camp unconnected with Al Qaeda.
No one has reported seeing Zarqawi and Bin Laden
together.
Zarqawi has never claimed to speak on behalf of Al
Qaeda; he has said he leads the Al Tawhid Wa'Al Jihad
organisation, which he calls an independent group
dedicated to "replace Arab regimes" with Islamist
leaders.
In the interview carried by Al Hayat, the unidentified
source made the following points (Pls note the quotes
and unquotes):
Zarqawi believes that "we are fighting in Iraq but our
eyes are raised not only to Iraq but also to other
places, such as Jerusalem." He "has a strategy and an
aspiration to expand the fighting to the entire
region."
Zarqawi "came to this arena only to expel the
Americans from the Muslims' country (Iraq) and to
establish an Islamic government. This is part of the
goal, because if this is not done, how will we be able
to bring about coups d'etat in neighboring countries?
How can we rescue Jerusalem when we have no base from
which to set out? Rescuing Jerusalem and the
neighbouring countries will come only after the rise
of an Islamic state from which the youth will set out
to liberate the neighboring areas."
On killing of hostages, according to the source,
"Zarqawi is convinced that his operations are
permitted by Shari'a [Islamic law], and that the
hostages are not truly hostages. There is a difference
between a hostage and a spy or a captive. The sentence
for spies is death. But there is some dispute about
how it is to be carried out – by the sword or by
shooting."
According to the source, Zarqawi "accepts comments"
from ulema (Muslim religious leaders) regarding
whether his killing operations are permitted or
forbidden according to Islam — provided that the ulema
are not connected to a regime and are offering
opinions out of personal conviction, and not to please
their rulers."
Zarqawi believes that "there is evidence in the
Shari'a that his killings are permitted, even if they
include the mutilation of corpses: 'Allah has
permitted us to repay them in kind, with the same
means that they use. If they kill our women, we will
kill their women'."
Zarqawi rejects the suggestion that he is attacking
Shiites in Iraq.
According to the source, "Zarqawi's position [on
Shi'ites] is clear… The entire Salafi stream believes
that the Shi'ite is an infidel ideology. I believe
this and Zarqawi believes that the Shi'te is heresy.
But this does not mean that we declare the Shi'ite
masses infidels. We must call upon them to atone to
Allah."
Zarqwi maintains that "anyone who enters this country
(Iraq) together with the Americans in the context of
their occupation is an infidel. We are not talking
about an apostateregime, regarding which there is
disagreement whether it should be declared infidel.
(But) there is no dispute regarding anyone who
collaborates with the occupation – he is a traitor and
he must be killed, regardless of whether he is a
Sunni, a Shi'ite, or a Turk."
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Year-ender 2004 Palestine
IN SHARP CONTRAST with the situation when we entered the year 2004, the New Year this time around holds out a ray of hope, at least for apperance sake, for some movement in the Israeli-Palestinian track for peace. Let us put aside all our reservations and scepticism for a moment and welcome the year 2004 with guarded optimism that the new realities on the ground would usher in a fresh atmosphere conducive to realistic progress towards peace in Palestine.
However, we should not lose sight of the constants in the equation ie. Israel's predetermined state of mind not to recognise, respect and honour the central pillars of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people — their right to set up an independent state with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital and a fair and just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees, a problem that has been haunting the world for more than 56 years now.
The most positive plus point for the Palestinians, the underdogs who are pitted against an country and government backed to the hilt by the world's sole superpower, would be that the person who would lead the effort to make peace with Israel would be undeniably their own choice exercised in transparent democracy. That is what they would be doing on Jan.9.
Israel's hawkish camp led by Ariel Sharon would not be able to argue against whoever emerges the winner in the Palestinian presidential elections next week. They would not be in a position to assert that autocracy is the rule of the day for the Palestinians and brush aside all efforts to renew negotiations for peace.
As things stood this week, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) appeared to be headed for victory in the elections (although the decision by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to throw its weight behind Marwan Barghouthi would indeed have an effect on the elections).
We know Abu Mazen as a man committed to his people's cause. We know of his unwavering rejection of any compromise of his people legitimate political and territorial rights although Sharon seems to be betting that he would be able to twist Abu Mazen around his fat thump.
The responsibility for the course of the peace process from Jan.9 rests with the United States. On Jan.10, the US, and the international community at large, would indeed have a Palestinian president to succeed Yasser Arafat and who is committed not to spare any effort to achieve peace in Palestine based on the rights of the Palestinians.
Despite all criticism of the US bias in favour of Israel, we are aware that the administration in Washington, whether led by George W Bush or anyone else for that matter, has its limitations while dealing with Israel. It requires a sea change in thinking in Washington to be more realistic and objective in its approach to efforts to solve the Palestinian problem.
We have heard Bush reaffirming his vision of a "two-state solution" to the Palestinian problem. Indeed, that is the only solution. But then, what matters is the shape and nature of the Palestinian segment of the two-state solution. If Bush or anyone else believes that the Palestinian state should be confined to the Gaza Strip and some parts of the West Bank then that is no solution. It is only the best recipe for continued bloodshed in Palestine.
We are not appealing to the US to rally behind the Palestinians and take on Israel at whatever cos. Far from it, if anything.
All that Bush and his Mideastern strategists have to do is to step out of the shackles imposed on them by Israel and its powerful supporters and think and act with an independent mindset based, first and foremost, on American interests.
It does not need years of research to figure out that the present US approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict only harms American interests. The Americans should know it themselves without we having to point it out, but then they seem to be in a slumber and it is incumbent upon us to remind them of some of the facts of life.
The American administration is deceiving no one but itself and the American people at large when they argue that the threat of terrorism that they face has to do with a hatred towards their way of life. They are deliberately ignoring the truth that their successive governments' strange commitment to uphold Israeli interests over American interests had given birth of the anti-American sentiment that was evident in the Sept.11 attacks and is very visible in the continuing assaults against American and allied targets around the world.
One does not have to look far to realise that the US-led "war against terror" has collapsed far short of achieving anything tangible in terms of averting the threats that the security of the people of America.
Today, the Americans are living in perpetual fear, conceived or otherwise, that someone, somewhere is plotting terror attacks against them. Is it because the plotters hate the American way of life? Well, that is what the Bush administration would like them to believe and that is exactly where the White House has to do some soul-searching.
The US is a great country founded on the noblest of noble principles that uphold the dignity of people and their right to determine their future without any external influence. All the Bush administration has to do is to ensure that these principles are the basis for all conflicts involving foreign occupation and an occupied people.
We know that it is wishful thinking that things were as simple as that. But then, is that asking for too much?
However, we should not lose sight of the constants in the equation ie. Israel's predetermined state of mind not to recognise, respect and honour the central pillars of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people — their right to set up an independent state with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital and a fair and just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees, a problem that has been haunting the world for more than 56 years now.
The most positive plus point for the Palestinians, the underdogs who are pitted against an country and government backed to the hilt by the world's sole superpower, would be that the person who would lead the effort to make peace with Israel would be undeniably their own choice exercised in transparent democracy. That is what they would be doing on Jan.9.
Israel's hawkish camp led by Ariel Sharon would not be able to argue against whoever emerges the winner in the Palestinian presidential elections next week. They would not be in a position to assert that autocracy is the rule of the day for the Palestinians and brush aside all efforts to renew negotiations for peace.
As things stood this week, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) appeared to be headed for victory in the elections (although the decision by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to throw its weight behind Marwan Barghouthi would indeed have an effect on the elections).
We know Abu Mazen as a man committed to his people's cause. We know of his unwavering rejection of any compromise of his people legitimate political and territorial rights although Sharon seems to be betting that he would be able to twist Abu Mazen around his fat thump.
The responsibility for the course of the peace process from Jan.9 rests with the United States. On Jan.10, the US, and the international community at large, would indeed have a Palestinian president to succeed Yasser Arafat and who is committed not to spare any effort to achieve peace in Palestine based on the rights of the Palestinians.
Despite all criticism of the US bias in favour of Israel, we are aware that the administration in Washington, whether led by George W Bush or anyone else for that matter, has its limitations while dealing with Israel. It requires a sea change in thinking in Washington to be more realistic and objective in its approach to efforts to solve the Palestinian problem.
We have heard Bush reaffirming his vision of a "two-state solution" to the Palestinian problem. Indeed, that is the only solution. But then, what matters is the shape and nature of the Palestinian segment of the two-state solution. If Bush or anyone else believes that the Palestinian state should be confined to the Gaza Strip and some parts of the West Bank then that is no solution. It is only the best recipe for continued bloodshed in Palestine.
We are not appealing to the US to rally behind the Palestinians and take on Israel at whatever cos. Far from it, if anything.
All that Bush and his Mideastern strategists have to do is to step out of the shackles imposed on them by Israel and its powerful supporters and think and act with an independent mindset based, first and foremost, on American interests.
It does not need years of research to figure out that the present US approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict only harms American interests. The Americans should know it themselves without we having to point it out, but then they seem to be in a slumber and it is incumbent upon us to remind them of some of the facts of life.
The American administration is deceiving no one but itself and the American people at large when they argue that the threat of terrorism that they face has to do with a hatred towards their way of life. They are deliberately ignoring the truth that their successive governments' strange commitment to uphold Israeli interests over American interests had given birth of the anti-American sentiment that was evident in the Sept.11 attacks and is very visible in the continuing assaults against American and allied targets around the world.
One does not have to look far to realise that the US-led "war against terror" has collapsed far short of achieving anything tangible in terms of averting the threats that the security of the people of America.
Today, the Americans are living in perpetual fear, conceived or otherwise, that someone, somewhere is plotting terror attacks against them. Is it because the plotters hate the American way of life? Well, that is what the Bush administration would like them to believe and that is exactly where the White House has to do some soul-searching.
The US is a great country founded on the noblest of noble principles that uphold the dignity of people and their right to determine their future without any external influence. All the Bush administration has to do is to ensure that these principles are the basis for all conflicts involving foreign occupation and an occupied people.
We know that it is wishful thinking that things were as simple as that. But then, is that asking for too much?
Saturday, September 25, 2004
"Zarqawi" in beheading video?
The beheading of an American on video by
militants who said it was in retaliation for American
abuse of Iraqi prisoners has highighted the intense
focus on Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the man who has emerged
as the key Al Qaeda militant active in Iraq.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has said that it
tends to believe that the masked man who was seen as
sawing off Nicholas Berg's head was indeed Zarqawi as
the video, released ll May 2004, is titled: "Abu Musab
Al Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American."
A CIA assessment of the video showing Berg's death
concludes it is a "high probability" Zarqawi is the
hooded speaker who is shown decapitating Berg.
According to intelligence information made available
to Malayalamanorama, Zarqawi, 37, a
Jordanian-Palestinian Sunni, leads a group called
Jamaat Al Tawhid wa'l-Jihad (Unity and Jihad Group) as
well as Ansar Al Islam, which is said to be linked to
Al Qaeda.
Zarqawi, who real name is Ahmed Fadeel Al Khailaleh
and who is also known as Ahmad Fadil Nazzali Abu Al
Mu'ataz, comes from a prominent Palestinian family
which fled to Jordan when Israel was created in
Palestine in 1948.
He worked with Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in
Afghanistan in the 90s and maintained his own unit and
camp in Herat, Afghanistan, until the US-led invasion
of that country in 2001. He financed himself to a
large extent from funding received from a business his
family operated in Europe.
The US is offering a $10 million reward for
information leading to his capture dead or alive.
Following is a summary of the intelligence information
available on Zarqawi:
He has ties with several groups, including Al Qaeda,
Asbat Al Ansar and Hizbollah as well as Beyyat Al
Imam in Turkey. He was behind the October 2002
killing of American diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman.
He was earlier indicted indicted in absentia in
Jordan for his role in an Al Qaeda Millennium bombing
plot targeting the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman as well
as other American, Israeli, and Christian religious
sites in Jordan.
In Iraq, he is said to have been behind the bombing of
the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad in 2003.
Nearly 120 alleged members of his group have been
arrested in various countries, including Germany,
France, Spain, Turkey and Jordan.
His links with Al Qaeda dates back to 1999 when he
went to Pakistan and contacted Bin Laden with a
request that Jordanian militants be trained in use of
weapons and making of bombs. as well as chemical
weapons. Bin Laden agreed.
Subsequently, Zarqawi moved to Afghanistan and
supervised the flow of Jordanians and
Palestinian-origin Jordanians for training at Al
Qaeda's Al Farouq camp. He called his followers Jund
Al Sham. He was in Kandahar in June and July 2001.
He moved to northern Iraq in an area beyond the reach
of Saddam Hussein when the US invaded Afghanistan in
2001. There he set up an Ansar Al Islam camp. The camp
was cited by the US government as evidence that Saddam
has links with Al Qaeda. But, the intelligece report
shows that, there was no such link and Washington
officials were totally off the mark when they said
chemical weapons were stored in the northern Iraq
camp. When the claim was made, international media
organisations rushed to the site and found no trace
whatsover of any chemical weapons. "The closest to any
chemical we found there was detergents to wash
clothes," said one newspaper report.
While in Iraq, Zarqawi established contacts with
Lebanon-based secretive Asbat Al Ansar, which the US
has designated as an international terrorist
organisastion, and Hizballah of Lebanon in order to
smuggle Palestinian fighters into Israel to fight the
occupation forces in Palestine. Some of the fighters
managed to make it while others were caught. Those who
made it have given training on explosives, poisons,
and remote controlled devices to other Palestinians in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Zarqawi travelled to Baghdad in May of 2002 for
medical treatment and stayed for two months during
which secret meetings were held with Iraqi groups and
fellow militants from the Arab world who had gone to
Iraq to meet him.
His Iraqi contacts helped him co-ordinate the movement
of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq
for his network. He received funds from Bin Laden, but
there is no estimate of the amount.
There is no evidence to support charges that he had
met with senior Saddam Hussein aides during the two
months he spent in Baghdad.
(An earlier intelligence report has said that Zarqawi
was wounded in the Afghan war and he reached Iraq
through Iran and that he had one of his legs amputated
during the two months of "medical treatment" in
Baghdad. He was fitted with a prosthetic device).
Abuwatia, said to be a Zarqawi follower and detained
by the US during the Afghan war, has admitted to
dispatching at least nine North African extremists to
travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive
attacks. They planned chemical attacks with various
toxins in Britain, France, Georgia's Pankisi Gorge,
and Chechnya, says the intelligence information.
According to Matthew A. Levitt, a senior fellow in
terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy:
"The Zarqawi network highlights the matrix of
relationships that define today's international
terrorist threat. Indeed, international terrorism is a
web linking many disparate groups. Senior US and
European officials have noted that although Hizbollah
and Al Qaeda do not appear to share operational
support, they have engaged in logistical cooperation
on an ad hoc and tactical basis, as well as
co-operative training."
Zarqawi is blamed for the March 2 bombings in Baghdad
and Karbala in which at least 181 people died and the
coordinated suicide bombings in Basra in April in
which at least 74 people, including many
schoolchildren, were killed.
Zarqawi was targeted for killing on three separate
occasions for US military strikes since June 2002,
according to NBC News. And three separate times the
attack was called off.
German intelligence information shows that Zarqawi
heads Al Tawhid ("unity of all the faithful" ), which
is a core Palestinian Sunni movement with roots in
Jordan and waging a campaign against the Jordanian
royal family.
The group advocates "jihad" as a "fight against
non-believers and crusaders."
The group, which was set up in Beckum, Germany around
the same time as the Sept.11 attacks in the US,
included as members Mohamed Abu Dhess Shadi Abdallah,
Ashraf Al Dagama and Ismail Shalabi.
It group specialised in smuggling militants and
forging passports of dozens of countries. It planned
to carry out an attack on a busy square in a German
town or city and to explode hand grenades in another
German town in the immediate vicinity of an Israeli or
Jewish property with the aim of killing as many people
as possible. The plans were foiled because German
intelligence was keeping tabs on the group and
arrested Shadi Abdullah, Mohammed Abu Dhess, Ashraf
Al Dagma and Ismail Shalabi as well as
Dusselfdorf-based Jamal Mustafa on April 23, 2002.
All five of them are currently in detention in
Germany.
Zarqawi slipped through the fingers of Jordanian
security agencies in mid-September 2002 when he was
there planning and financing the murder of Lawrence
Foley. He managed to evade capture and entered Syria,
from there he crossed into Iraq and went to the Ansar
Al Islam camp in northern Iraq.
That camp was attacked by the US invaders in March and
April 2001 during the war that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Several key Zarqawi aides were caught alive and now
they are in US custody.
Zarqawi again managed to elude arrest and went
underground. Since then, he appeared in Baghdad
several times, but the US forces were not able to
capture him. He left a hideout apartment in the Dora
neighbourhood of Baghdad less than 10 hours before the
US forces stormed the place late last year.
Editors (For your information only):
Please note that it is widely held among the Arabs
that the Berg beheading was staged by American agents
in order to deflect public opinion from the Abu Ghraib
prison abuses. The Arabs who favour this theory
believe that Zarqawi died sometime in Iraq and the
Americans are maintaining that he is alive in order to
keep reports of the alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda terrorism
link, which Washington has not been able to prove.
It has been suggested that Berg was in American
custody shortly before his decapitated body was found
by the roadside outside Baghdad).
Both Pravda and Al Jazeera have questioned the
authenticity of the Nick Berg video (as has this guy).
The thesis is that Zarqawi has a prosthetic leg, but
the tape's alleged Zarqawi seems limber. Zarqawi
identifies himself by name on the tape but wears a
mask, presumably to hide his identity. why?
Monday, September 20, 2004
Betting on confusion
pv vivekanand
GEORGE W Bush is betting on the American people's
confusion over the outcome so far of his war against
terrorism to see him through to another four years at
the White House. Bush's challenger John Kerry's
scathing criticism, citing the administration's
failure to remove the threat of terrorism in the US,
is at best dented since there has been no extremist
attack in the US since the Sept.11, 2001 air assaults.
Most Americans have difficulty in judging whether the
Bush administration succeeded or failed in its
anti-terror campaign.
On the internal front, the majority of Americans seem
to believe that the campaign has so far been fairly
successful, notwithstanding the fears that senior
administration officials have been drumming up of an
impending Al Qaeda attack in the US.
On the external front, it is not lost on the US
electorate that removing the Taliban from power in
Afghanistan and ousting the Saddam Hussein regime in
Iraq has not brought down the level of threats that
the Americans face outside their country.
The Americans are aware of the administration's
failure to capture Osama Bin Laden and his top aides
and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. However, in the
absence of any terror attacks within the US since
9/11, they seem to be satisfied with the performance
of the Bush White House so far in this context.
If indeed, the administration could capture Bin Laden
and parade him for the benefit of the public (as the
Americans did with Saddam Hussein) ahead of the
elections, then it would seal the outcome of the polls
in favour of Bush. At this juncture, it could not be
ruled out either.
On Iraq, the president is coming under increasing
criticism. A commentary carried by the Washington Post
pinpointed where he went wrong and is going wrong in
the American perspective.
"His description of Iraq is bland to the point of
dishonesty," it said on Sunday, adding that Bush has
been saying "despite ongoing acts of violence," Iraq
has a strong prime minister, a national council and
that it will hold elections in January.
"Not only has Mr. Bush not said how, or whether, he
intends to respond to the worsening situation - he
doesn't really admit it exists," the Post said. "This
duck-and-cover strategy may have its political
advantages, but it is also deeply irresponsible and
potentially dangerous," it said.
Notwithstanding such criticism, the reality that the
US has only reaped more hostility and enmity from the
anti-terror war and that the Bush administration
resorted to deception and false intelligence to
justify the war against Iraq has not yet dealt a
serious blow to Bush's re-election prospects. That is
what we could judge from the lead that Bush has shown
in recent opinion polls.
Otherwise, the situation in the ground in Iraq and
Afghanistan and the worsening strife in both countries
should have damaged Bush beyond repair ahead of the
elections in November.
In Afghanistan, the situation is fluid ahead of that
country's first post-war presidential elections in
October. The country remains largely lawless in many
parts where warlords with conflicting agendas reign
supreme. The Taliban seem to be regrouping and gaining
strength. The attack last week on the helicopter
carrying President Hamid Karzai was the best evidence
of the uncertain security situation there.
In Iraq, two weeks of murderous attacks by insurgents
as well as the US-led coalition forces have underlined
the truth that control of the country is drifting
farther from the US military and its allies there.
Without dramatic action that would result in massive
civilian casualties, the US would not be able to
prepare the ground for Iraqi elections in January.
However, Bush re-election strategists are also aware
that images of massacres in Iraqi towns which resist
the US presence in the country would detrimental to
Bush if they are flashed to the Americans before
Nov.2.
Probably that is why they have opted to give an
impression through the US military that an assault on
insurgent-controlled areas like Fallujah, Ramadi,
Baqouba, Samarra and others would come only after the
November elections, perhaps as late as December.
Again, it could easily be predicted that insurgent
attacks against American and allied forces in Iraq
would go up dramatically in the run-up to the
elections, leaving the US strategists no option to
but to retaliate with a heavy hand.
Obviously, there is no consensus or agreement among
the various groups fighting the coalition forces in
Iraq on what strategy to follow.
If it was left to Al Qaeda, that is, of course, if the
group has its own political strategists, then it is a
safe bet that it would follow a course that would
ensure that Bush returns to the White House for a
second term. For, only then Al Qaeda would continue to
benefit from mounting Arab and Muslim anger over the
US policies, particularly in the Palestinian and Iraq
contexts.
The other groups — Saddam loyalists, independent and
Sunni factions and Iraqi "nationalists" as well as
"foreign Islamists" — taking part in the guerrilla
war against the coalition forces are hoping to wear
down the US military into leaving the country.
Ironically, most of them do not seem to have realised
that quitting Iraq is not an American option.
However, it is unlikely that they would call off their
war even if they did realise that maintaining control
over Iraq and building a powerful American advance
base in the Gulf to deal with any eventuality is a
strategic objective of the US.
In any event, Kerry seems to be rolling up his
sleeves to fight Bush where the incumbent president is
deemed vulnerable by his election strategists:
Exposing that Bush has taken the US deeper into abyss
of international hostility that is the breeding
ground for extremist threats against Americans and
thus he failed in his war against terrorism.
Kerry has six weeks to thrust home his message to the
American people, and a lot could happen in those weeks
that could work either way. But, in a conservative
perception, six weeks is too short a period to swing
American voters except without a mighty weapon, and
the current resident of the White House is better
equipped to wield whatever that might be than his
challenger.
GEORGE W Bush is betting on the American people's
confusion over the outcome so far of his war against
terrorism to see him through to another four years at
the White House. Bush's challenger John Kerry's
scathing criticism, citing the administration's
failure to remove the threat of terrorism in the US,
is at best dented since there has been no extremist
attack in the US since the Sept.11, 2001 air assaults.
Most Americans have difficulty in judging whether the
Bush administration succeeded or failed in its
anti-terror campaign.
On the internal front, the majority of Americans seem
to believe that the campaign has so far been fairly
successful, notwithstanding the fears that senior
administration officials have been drumming up of an
impending Al Qaeda attack in the US.
On the external front, it is not lost on the US
electorate that removing the Taliban from power in
Afghanistan and ousting the Saddam Hussein regime in
Iraq has not brought down the level of threats that
the Americans face outside their country.
The Americans are aware of the administration's
failure to capture Osama Bin Laden and his top aides
and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. However, in the
absence of any terror attacks within the US since
9/11, they seem to be satisfied with the performance
of the Bush White House so far in this context.
If indeed, the administration could capture Bin Laden
and parade him for the benefit of the public (as the
Americans did with Saddam Hussein) ahead of the
elections, then it would seal the outcome of the polls
in favour of Bush. At this juncture, it could not be
ruled out either.
On Iraq, the president is coming under increasing
criticism. A commentary carried by the Washington Post
pinpointed where he went wrong and is going wrong in
the American perspective.
"His description of Iraq is bland to the point of
dishonesty," it said on Sunday, adding that Bush has
been saying "despite ongoing acts of violence," Iraq
has a strong prime minister, a national council and
that it will hold elections in January.
"Not only has Mr. Bush not said how, or whether, he
intends to respond to the worsening situation - he
doesn't really admit it exists," the Post said. "This
duck-and-cover strategy may have its political
advantages, but it is also deeply irresponsible and
potentially dangerous," it said.
Notwithstanding such criticism, the reality that the
US has only reaped more hostility and enmity from the
anti-terror war and that the Bush administration
resorted to deception and false intelligence to
justify the war against Iraq has not yet dealt a
serious blow to Bush's re-election prospects. That is
what we could judge from the lead that Bush has shown
in recent opinion polls.
Otherwise, the situation in the ground in Iraq and
Afghanistan and the worsening strife in both countries
should have damaged Bush beyond repair ahead of the
elections in November.
In Afghanistan, the situation is fluid ahead of that
country's first post-war presidential elections in
October. The country remains largely lawless in many
parts where warlords with conflicting agendas reign
supreme. The Taliban seem to be regrouping and gaining
strength. The attack last week on the helicopter
carrying President Hamid Karzai was the best evidence
of the uncertain security situation there.
In Iraq, two weeks of murderous attacks by insurgents
as well as the US-led coalition forces have underlined
the truth that control of the country is drifting
farther from the US military and its allies there.
Without dramatic action that would result in massive
civilian casualties, the US would not be able to
prepare the ground for Iraqi elections in January.
However, Bush re-election strategists are also aware
that images of massacres in Iraqi towns which resist
the US presence in the country would detrimental to
Bush if they are flashed to the Americans before
Nov.2.
Probably that is why they have opted to give an
impression through the US military that an assault on
insurgent-controlled areas like Fallujah, Ramadi,
Baqouba, Samarra and others would come only after the
November elections, perhaps as late as December.
Again, it could easily be predicted that insurgent
attacks against American and allied forces in Iraq
would go up dramatically in the run-up to the
elections, leaving the US strategists no option to
but to retaliate with a heavy hand.
Obviously, there is no consensus or agreement among
the various groups fighting the coalition forces in
Iraq on what strategy to follow.
If it was left to Al Qaeda, that is, of course, if the
group has its own political strategists, then it is a
safe bet that it would follow a course that would
ensure that Bush returns to the White House for a
second term. For, only then Al Qaeda would continue to
benefit from mounting Arab and Muslim anger over the
US policies, particularly in the Palestinian and Iraq
contexts.
The other groups — Saddam loyalists, independent and
Sunni factions and Iraqi "nationalists" as well as
"foreign Islamists" — taking part in the guerrilla
war against the coalition forces are hoping to wear
down the US military into leaving the country.
Ironically, most of them do not seem to have realised
that quitting Iraq is not an American option.
However, it is unlikely that they would call off their
war even if they did realise that maintaining control
over Iraq and building a powerful American advance
base in the Gulf to deal with any eventuality is a
strategic objective of the US.
In any event, Kerry seems to be rolling up his
sleeves to fight Bush where the incumbent president is
deemed vulnerable by his election strategists:
Exposing that Bush has taken the US deeper into abyss
of international hostility that is the breeding
ground for extremist threats against Americans and
thus he failed in his war against terrorism.
Kerry has six weeks to thrust home his message to the
American people, and a lot could happen in those weeks
that could work either way. But, in a conservative
perception, six weeks is too short a period to swing
American voters except without a mighty weapon, and
the current resident of the White House is better
equipped to wield whatever that might be than his
challenger.
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