February 2 2005
Russian bear on a comeback trail
pvvivekanand
RUSSIA is staging a political and military comeback to the Middle East. President Vladimir Putin is keen on it and so are several Arab players, including the Syrians and Palestinians, as well as Iran, which would like to use Moscow as an ally in its running feud with the US.
Predictably, Israel is worried and the US has mounted a campaign to ensure that Russia does not pose a direct or indirect threat to the combined American-Israeli interests to contain any regional challenge to the Jewish state's military supremacy and quest for regional domination.
Putin does not have to work too hard to regain the foothold that the former Soviet Union had in the Middle East. The channels and tracks are there for him to return. Moscow has always championed the Palestinian cause, maintained a strong and steady relationship with Syria and refused to back down from its nuclear deals with Iran despite intense American pressure.
However, it kept a low profile in the region's political affairs in the last decade, and now, it seems, Putin has realised the time is opportune to strengthen the profile. No doubt, he is aware that American-Arab relations are under a strain following the Sept.11, 2001 attacks in the US, the American invasion and occupation of Iraq and Washington's firming up of its alliance with Israel; and hence a Russian alignment with the Arab position would be welcomed with enthusiasm.
He is also aware that the US involvement in Iraq has turned problematic for Washington and things could turn worse for the Bush administration there. The Russian president would like his country to be on the spot to take advantage of the situation. It suits him well to use the Syrian, Palestinian and Iranian cards to stake a fresh claim for a prominent Russian role in the Middle East. And that is what he is trying to accomplish.
At the same time, it is subject to debate how influential a political role Putin could play in the Middle East amid the US efforts to reshape the region to suit American-Israeli interests, starting with Iraq and continuing with Syria, Iran, Lebanon and other countries.
That Russia is returning to the scene was made clear with the visit to Moscow last month of two key Mideastern players -- the Syrian and Palestinian presidents.
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's visit resulted in Putin deciding to write off nearly $10 billion of Syria's military debts and advancing a deal under which Russia will supply anti-aircraft missiles to Syria.
Israel's worry
Israel has been pressuring Russia against the missile deal and Putin was reported to have assured Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the sale was not imminent, but that does not seem to have soothed Israeli fears.
Reports in the Israeli press indicate that Syria and Russia are close to finalising the $70 million deal for the sale of 20 SA-18 Igla-S batteries mounted on armoured personnel carriers.
The SA-18 Igla-S is one of the most effective missiles against low-flying aircraft on the market. The Syrians were supposed to have received the shoulder-held version of the missiles, but American pressure forced Russia to amend the deal. Now they would be mounted on APCs and Russia says they would not be operative if detached from the APC moorings.
Syria has also acquired Kornet AT-14 anti-tank missiles from Eastern Europe.
Washington's warning
In both cases, Washington has warned that if those weapons turn up in Iraq or Lebanon, America will be free to take military action against Syria.
Assad has defended his country's right to acquire surface-to-air missiles from Russia saying "these are weapons for air defence, meant to prevent aircraft from intruding in our airspace."
Israeli analyst Gerald Steinberg has said that Syrian possession of the Russian missiles "is very problematic and will pose a challenge to Israeli military planners."
In talks with Putin, Bashar gave an explicit invitation to Russia to come back to the political scene in the Middle East by reviving its Soviet-era influence in the region.
"Russia has an enormous role, and has a lot of respect from Third World countries ... which really hope that Russia will try to revive the positions it used to hold," Assad said in Moscow. He also used the opportunity to slam American policy, saying the US approach to Iraq was "disastrous."
Moscow has several times condemned the American threat to Syria of sanctions if Damascus did not withdraw its alleged support for guerrillas fighting the US-led coalition forces in Iraq and "terrorists" -- meaning Palestinian groups based in Syrian territory.
Russia abstained on a vote in the UN Security Council in September on a joint US-French resolution demanding the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon and non-interference in the Lebanese presidential elections.
Russia has described Syria as one of its "most important partners" in the Middle East.
During Assad's visit, Russia and Syria signed a number of oil, gas and transport-related deals aimed at reviving business ties.
Putin and Assad also used the visit to declare that Russia and Syria were fully supportive of efforts by the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to resume peace talks with Israel.
Abbas himself was in Moscow late last month. At the end of the visit, he and Putin signed a joint statement pledging commitment to the Quartet-backed road map plan and calling for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a step towards peace.
It was Abbas's first official visit abroad after being elected successor to Yasser Arafat and he described it as a show of "the respect the Palestinian people feel towards the Russian people and it shows the important role that Russia plays on the world arena, above all in the Middle East, namely in the Quartet, in which Russia is a most notable representative."
The joint statement said that within the framework of the road-map plan, Russia and Palestine believe Israel must withdraw troops from Gaza and the West Bank, a move that would serve as the "first step in ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine."
"There is no doubt Russia's presence on our side, our co-operation on a bilateral basis, its role in the mediating Quartet will be decisive in establishing peace in the Middle East," said Abbas.
Role in Iran
On the Iranian front, the Russians are said to be building a strong air defence system around Iran's key nuclear installations to ward off possible American or Israeli attacks against them after Moscow undertook to secure Iran's nuclear industry. A secret Moscow-Tehran agreement includes the supply and installation of sophisticated air defence equipment to military planning and operational co-operation, according to reports.
The first phase of the work was over in mid-January when Russian experts from the Raduga OKB engineering group in Dubna near Moscow completed the installation of two advanced radar systems around the Bushehr nuclear reactor on the Gulf. Work is under way on the second phase, with the Russians installing the same system at Iran's uranium enrichment plants -- which the US says could be used for military purposes -- in Isfahan in central Iran.
These improved mobile 36D6 systems, code named Tin Shield, upgraded the air defence radar protecting Iran's key nuclear facilities from missile attack, according to military experts and intelligence reports.
The Tin Shield 36D6 is a mobile radar system designed to detect air targets and perform friend-or-foe identification. It is highly effective in detecting low, medium and high altitude targets moving at almost any speed, including winged missiles and American or Israeli cruise missiles. It is capable of providing the target and bearing of active jamming, as well as integrated computer-aided systems of control and guidance of anti-aircraft missile complexes.
Tin Shield can operate independently as an observation and air detection post, as part of computer-aided control systems or as an element in an anti-air guided missile complex, where it carries out reconnaissance and targeting.
By providing the system to the Iranians, Moscow has placed a serious hurdle in the way of any American and Israel military action to curb Iran's nuclear armament.
Couple that with the missile deal with Syria, and no wonder Israel and the US are upset.
However, it remains to be seen how Putin opts to play his cards.
American-Russian relations, with Putin at the helm in Moscow, have at best been ambiguous. While Putin needs American-supported Western assistance, he has often rebelled against Washington on issues that are of deep concern to Russia. It could not be judged whether he is a friend or foe of the US because of his mercurial behaviour.
Indeed, Washington strategists have their general assessment of what to expect from Putin, but it is unlikely that they could predict with any accuracy how he would turn at any given point. Their best understanding of the man seems to be based on intelligent guesswork at times of crises.
Some might argue Moscow never left the Middle Eastern scene, but a close observation would clearly indicate that it was too preoccupied with internal issues since the collapse of the Soviet Union to adopt an effective stand on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
It is not that Putin has now settled his domestic problems to rest and is turning to the Middle East. Regardless of the issues at home, he needs to re-establish a Russian role as the US pursues its effort to reshape the Middle East.
Russia could not afford to miss the opportunity to place itself as a counterforce -- regardless of its actual impact on the ground -- to the US if only to build its political and economic relations with the Arab World and that is the driving force behind Putin.
The unknown in the equation is how far he would push it and whether he would step back when the going gets tough with the US.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Seizure in absentia
January 21 2005
Israel-Palestine conflict: Seizure 'in absentia'
pv vivekanand
THIS WEEK'S Israeli seizure of large tracts of Palestinian-owned land near occupied Jerusalem is a clear indicator of the shape of things to come under Ariel Sharon's unilateral plans regardless of whatever else is going on in terms of efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Consolidating Israel's illegal presence in the West Bank while withdrawing from the troublesome Gaza Strip is one of Sharon's objectives. It is served partly by the "separation wall" that he is building along the West Bank by fencing in the illegal Jewish settlements and huge chunks of adjoining Palestinian land.
The seizure of the land pulls the rug from under the feet of Israel's explanation to the international community that it needs the wall to check Palestinian infiltrators into Israel. For all technical and practical purposes, the seizure of the land is part and parcel of Sharon's strategy, and that was indeed true of all his predecessors.
(According to Palestinian historian and scholar Edward Atiyah, the exodus from Palestine in 1948 "was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country."
"But it was also, and in many parts of the country, largely due to a policy of deliberate terrorism and eviction followed by the Jewish commanders in the areas they occupied, and reaching its peak of brutality in the massacre of Deir Yassin," he notes.
"There were two good reasons why the Jews should follow such a policy,'" according to Atiyah. "First, the problem of harbouring within the Jewish state a large and disaffected Arab population had always troubled them. They wanted an exclusively Jewish state, and the presence of such a population that could never be assimilated, that would always resent its inferior position under Jewish rule and stretch a hand across so many frontiers to its Arab cousins in the surrounding countries, would not only detract from the Jewishness of Israel, but also constitute a danger to its existence.
"Secondly, the Israelis wanted to open the doors of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration. Obviously, the fewer Arabs there were in the country the more room there would be for Jewish immigrants. If the Arabs could be driven out of the land in the course of the fighting, the Jews would have their homes, their lands, whole villages and towns, without even having to purchase them. And this is exactly what happened.")
Walled out
The plots that the Israeli army seized this week were separated from their owners by the wall in the Bethlehem and Beit Jalla areas south of Jerusalem. The portion of the wall in these areas was completed in August last year, and since then their owners have not had access to the land.
Effectively, the lands belong to those who live in adjoining areas that do not fall inside Israel's definition of "greater Jerusalem." Most of them do not have Israeli "permission" to enter "greater Jerusalem."
Sharon has sprung a five-decade-old "law" that "permits" Israel to seize lands that belong to "absentees" -- technically meaning that the landowner is not present in Palestine to claim and utilise the land. Israel applied the so-called law primarily to Palestinians who fled or were driven out during the 1948-49 war that followed Israel's creation in Palestine. Under that law, at least 20,000 Palestinian homes in the largely Jewish West Jerusalem were seized by Israel in the 1950s.
Refusing entry
Since then, the "law" was applied to individual cases wherever possible. One of the tenets of the "law" says the owner has to be away for a period longer than seven years before the land or property could be seized. But even that was never followed, with the occupation authorities moving in against whatever they could lay their hands on. Another move to support this policy was to refuse entry back to the West Bank to Palestinians who have stayed more than two years outside their land. That denial ensured that they would be barred from Palestine for life and thus the door was open for seizure of their property under the "absentee law."
Sharon has defended the latest move by insisting that the "Custodian of Absentee Property" has the authority to "transfer, sell or lease" land in Arab East Jerusalem belonging to "absentee owners."
Never mind that the owners of the lands seized this week were not absent from the West Bank. Never mind that the lands were cultivated by their Palestinian owners until August when the wall deprived them of access to their property. They could see their land through gaps in the wall, but are unable to get there.
There are many legal arguments against Israel's seizure of the lands, but none is likely to stand up in an Israeli court. The Palestinians have no recourse to approach an international court since Israel, backed by the US, has refused to accept that the Geneva Conventions are applicable to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Of course, an international court uninfluenced by the US could handle the case and issue a ruling, but then the question that comes up is: Who will or can pressure Israel into respecting that ruling?
Sharon and his predecessors refrained from applying the "absentee law" to lands in the outskirts of their self-styled "greater Jerusalem" if only because it would have triggered a massive protest.
That Sharon has found it fit now to exercise the "absentee law" shows that he is ready for a "showdown" with the Palestinians. Obviously, he believes the situation in Palestine is opportune for Israel to move swiftly towards its strategic and territorial goals.
No doubt, Sharon would find some way to apply the essence of the "absentee law" to the rest of the West Bank and seek to "legitimise" his plans for annexing the grabbed land into Israel.
In the bargain, he is creating insurmountable obstacles in the way to a peace agreement. Obviously, a peace accord with the Palestinians is not in Sharon's cards since he should be perfectly aware that every centimetre of land taken from the Palestinians would place prospects for peace farther and farther since those who lose the land would not accept that loss as part of the price for peace; and this would make the mission of the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), all the more difficult and complex.
Perhaps that is what Sharon wants. After all, by own admission (through his adviser), Sharon's goal is to freeze any peace negotiations with the Palestinians deep in formaldehyde. What better way to do that by creating ground realities that negate all prospects for a just and dignified peace accord based on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people?
Israel-Palestine conflict: Seizure 'in absentia'
pv vivekanand
THIS WEEK'S Israeli seizure of large tracts of Palestinian-owned land near occupied Jerusalem is a clear indicator of the shape of things to come under Ariel Sharon's unilateral plans regardless of whatever else is going on in terms of efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Consolidating Israel's illegal presence in the West Bank while withdrawing from the troublesome Gaza Strip is one of Sharon's objectives. It is served partly by the "separation wall" that he is building along the West Bank by fencing in the illegal Jewish settlements and huge chunks of adjoining Palestinian land.
The seizure of the land pulls the rug from under the feet of Israel's explanation to the international community that it needs the wall to check Palestinian infiltrators into Israel. For all technical and practical purposes, the seizure of the land is part and parcel of Sharon's strategy, and that was indeed true of all his predecessors.
(According to Palestinian historian and scholar Edward Atiyah, the exodus from Palestine in 1948 "was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country."
"But it was also, and in many parts of the country, largely due to a policy of deliberate terrorism and eviction followed by the Jewish commanders in the areas they occupied, and reaching its peak of brutality in the massacre of Deir Yassin," he notes.
"There were two good reasons why the Jews should follow such a policy,'" according to Atiyah. "First, the problem of harbouring within the Jewish state a large and disaffected Arab population had always troubled them. They wanted an exclusively Jewish state, and the presence of such a population that could never be assimilated, that would always resent its inferior position under Jewish rule and stretch a hand across so many frontiers to its Arab cousins in the surrounding countries, would not only detract from the Jewishness of Israel, but also constitute a danger to its existence.
"Secondly, the Israelis wanted to open the doors of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration. Obviously, the fewer Arabs there were in the country the more room there would be for Jewish immigrants. If the Arabs could be driven out of the land in the course of the fighting, the Jews would have their homes, their lands, whole villages and towns, without even having to purchase them. And this is exactly what happened.")
Walled out
The plots that the Israeli army seized this week were separated from their owners by the wall in the Bethlehem and Beit Jalla areas south of Jerusalem. The portion of the wall in these areas was completed in August last year, and since then their owners have not had access to the land.
Effectively, the lands belong to those who live in adjoining areas that do not fall inside Israel's definition of "greater Jerusalem." Most of them do not have Israeli "permission" to enter "greater Jerusalem."
Sharon has sprung a five-decade-old "law" that "permits" Israel to seize lands that belong to "absentees" -- technically meaning that the landowner is not present in Palestine to claim and utilise the land. Israel applied the so-called law primarily to Palestinians who fled or were driven out during the 1948-49 war that followed Israel's creation in Palestine. Under that law, at least 20,000 Palestinian homes in the largely Jewish West Jerusalem were seized by Israel in the 1950s.
Refusing entry
Since then, the "law" was applied to individual cases wherever possible. One of the tenets of the "law" says the owner has to be away for a period longer than seven years before the land or property could be seized. But even that was never followed, with the occupation authorities moving in against whatever they could lay their hands on. Another move to support this policy was to refuse entry back to the West Bank to Palestinians who have stayed more than two years outside their land. That denial ensured that they would be barred from Palestine for life and thus the door was open for seizure of their property under the "absentee law."
Sharon has defended the latest move by insisting that the "Custodian of Absentee Property" has the authority to "transfer, sell or lease" land in Arab East Jerusalem belonging to "absentee owners."
Never mind that the owners of the lands seized this week were not absent from the West Bank. Never mind that the lands were cultivated by their Palestinian owners until August when the wall deprived them of access to their property. They could see their land through gaps in the wall, but are unable to get there.
There are many legal arguments against Israel's seizure of the lands, but none is likely to stand up in an Israeli court. The Palestinians have no recourse to approach an international court since Israel, backed by the US, has refused to accept that the Geneva Conventions are applicable to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Of course, an international court uninfluenced by the US could handle the case and issue a ruling, but then the question that comes up is: Who will or can pressure Israel into respecting that ruling?
Sharon and his predecessors refrained from applying the "absentee law" to lands in the outskirts of their self-styled "greater Jerusalem" if only because it would have triggered a massive protest.
That Sharon has found it fit now to exercise the "absentee law" shows that he is ready for a "showdown" with the Palestinians. Obviously, he believes the situation in Palestine is opportune for Israel to move swiftly towards its strategic and territorial goals.
No doubt, Sharon would find some way to apply the essence of the "absentee law" to the rest of the West Bank and seek to "legitimise" his plans for annexing the grabbed land into Israel.
In the bargain, he is creating insurmountable obstacles in the way to a peace agreement. Obviously, a peace accord with the Palestinians is not in Sharon's cards since he should be perfectly aware that every centimetre of land taken from the Palestinians would place prospects for peace farther and farther since those who lose the land would not accept that loss as part of the price for peace; and this would make the mission of the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), all the more difficult and complex.
Perhaps that is what Sharon wants. After all, by own admission (through his adviser), Sharon's goal is to freeze any peace negotiations with the Palestinians deep in formaldehyde. What better way to do that by creating ground realities that negate all prospects for a just and dignified peace accord based on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people?
Saturday, January 08, 2005
What next in Palestine..
January 8 2005
Palestine: Not a question of who, but what next
pv vivekanand
IT IS not as much as who will win the Palestinian presidential election as whether the new elected leader would be able to achieve peace based on the people's legitimate rights and put an end to their more than half a century of sufferings. It is the question that is haunting the Palestinian people.
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who assumed the mantle of chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) following the death of Yasser Arafat in November, is seen to have been assured of poll victory.
He played the role of a perfect politician in the run-up to the election by assuring those who advocate armed struggle that he would protect them from Israeli attacks and pledging that he would not budge on the rights of the Palestinians while negotiating peace with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Sharon has not commented on Abu Mazen's declarations, perhaps because he thought it was only expected of a presidential candidate. The Sharon camp seems to believe that they could successfully negotiate with Abu Mazen without budging from their hard-line rejection of some of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.
At the same time, they did not stop their military crackdown on Palestinian resistance. Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip have exacted a heavy death toll and massive destruction in the final days before the election as if to underline its scorched earth policy against Palestinian resistance.
On New Year Day, Ibtihal Abu Thaher, 10, was killed in the Jabalyia Refugee Camp and her 11-year-old brother injured when an Israeli tank shell hit them as they played outside their home. At least 30 homes and shops were demolished by Israeli forces on Jan.2
On Jan.4, eight people were killed by tank shells. They included six children from the same family. The Israeli military claimed that soldiers were firing at armed men, but witnesses and doctors said the casualties were mostly children playing in an open field.
The Israeli justified the attacks saying Palestinians fired rockets at Jewish settlements. Al Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad, and Hamas' Izzeddin Al Qassam Brigades claimed the attacks, some of which caused no casualties. Some 12 Israeli soldiers were injured on Jan.5.
Hero's welcome
Some attacks came even as Abu Mazen was campaigning in the Gaza Strip, where he was given a hero's welcome despite the decision by Hamas and Islamic Jihad to boycott the election.
Hamas has said the decision was "irreversible" and that it would not enter a candidate in the race. It asserted it would not endorse any other candidate; nor would its supporters vote on election day.
Abu Mazen has said he would use persuasion with the group to work out a ceasefire with Israel.
"We will not use force with Hamas but we will use the way of persuasion and negotiation," he said.
"We consider that fighting among Palestinians is a red line that must not be crossed."
In public, Israeli leaders say that they had no "preferred candidate" but the way they have gone ahead in "helping" arrange the election indicates that they favour Abu Mazen.
However, during the campaigning, Abu Mazen made clear he would make no compromises over his people's rights.
Abu Mazen made several firm points:
* On Jan.1, in a speech marking the occasion of Fateh's 40th anniversary, he said he was committed to following Yasser Arafat's path. "Occupation would eventually end," he said. "We will not forget our brothers behind Israeli bars and we will not forget the wanted Palestinians who are heroes fighting for freedom. We will not forget the refugees..." he said.
* The right of Palestinian refugees to return home or exercise the option of receiving compensation for their properties lost in 1948 is supreme to any agreement with Israel.
* The release of the more than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners is key to any peace agreement. Without their freedom, there would be no deal.
* The prisoners should be allowed to vote. The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has filed an application with Israel for the purposes (It is unlikely to be granted, reports indicated).
* The state of Palestine that would be created after negotiations with Israel will include the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and its capital will be Arab East Jerusalem.
* The PNA will protect those waging armed resistance from Israeli attacks.
"When we see them, when we meet them, and when they welcome us, we owe them," he said. "This debt always is to protect them from assassination, to protect them from killing, and all these things they are subject to by the Israelis."
* However, the firing of rockets towards Israeli settlements and towns are counter-productive since they lead to heavy Israeli retaliation resulting in the death of Palestinian children.
"Firing these rockets is of no use. These rockets only hurt our people and lead to (Israeli) aggressions and I am making no apologies for what I said," he said in reference to his condemnation of the attacks.
"When we speak of the rule of law, we mean that we refuse security chaos and we should not allow conditions to be exploited and give Israelis any excuse to continue their aggressions," he said
The main hardline factions described his remarks "as a stab in the back of the resistance."
However, in general terms, Abu Mazen seems to have pleased many prospective voters.
Israeli views
Again, how the Israelis viewed his statements is subject to debate.
However, they should have been worried by the welcome Abu Mazen received at a gathering attended by hundreds of people and dozens of Aqsa Martyrs Brigades activists. He was treated as a hero by the Brigades, who hoisted him on their shoulders,
in a show of support that sparked criticism from the US, which called the incident "worrying."
During a Jan.4 speech in Al Bireh in the West Bank, Abu Mazen called Israel the "Zionist enemy." Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lashed back saying such comments were "unacceptable and unforgivable."
Israel has allowed Abu Mazen to campaign in Arab East Jerusalem where residents would be allowed to vote in five post offices as they did in 1996. The Israeli permission to allow him to visit the occupied city is deemed to be a concession, given that the occupation force never allowed Arafat to enter the city.
Mustafa Barghouti, who is second in line behind Abu Mazen in the race, was arrested and interrogated for three hours by Israeli police in occupied Jerusalem because they said he did not have permission to be campaigning in the city.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has announced that it would support his candidacy because the group agreed with him on a national democratic programme.
Despite the frenzy of elections, most Palestinians are sceptical whether Sharon, the hawkish Israeli prime minister, would budge from his denial of their legitimate rights.
They seem to think -- along with many in the Arab World -- that Sharon's "enthusiasm" would disappear when confronted with the reality that neither Abu Mazen nor any other Palestinian leader would make a compromise over the rights of the Palestinian people.
In the meantime, Sharon has rearranged his coalition government ahead of his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip later this year.
Sharon, who has called 2005 a "year of opportunity" for resolving the Palestinian problem, has made a deal with Shimon Peres, leader of the opposition Labour party. The Labour is to join Sharon's Likud-led government, replacing other coalition partners.
Peres, who is in favour of accepting some of the rights of the Palestinian people, supports the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and proposed resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians.
As veteran journalist Ian Black observes: "By joining Ariel Sharon's Likud-led coalition as deputy prime minister, Peres is showing that the majority of Israelis back the plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, remove its settlers and restart negotiations with the Palestinians.
"Peres's move illustrates the fact that four bloody years of armed intifada have destroyed the Israeli left but underlined the need to end the conflict. Arafat's death and replacement by the pragmatic Mahmoud Abbas is one reason things could improve -- not because Abbas will bend on the tough issues of borders, settlements and Jerusalem, but because he is likely to curb violence, embrace reform and win international backing to force Israel to accept a fair deal. Another reason is Sharon's conversion to the idea that Palestinians need their own state -- though exactly what it should consist of remains, crucially, to be agreed."
Stone wall
However, Sharon's Gaza plan is suspect. He is seen aiming at consolidating Israel's grip on the West Bank while abandoning Gaza, which has proved to be the most ungovernable occupied territory. By expanding Israeli presence in the West Bank, Sharon is seen as seeking to cut down the size of a future Palestinian state.
Confronted with that agenda, which includes a no-compromise stand over the vital issues of the right of the refugees and return of Arab East Jerusalem to the Palestinians, Abu Mazen or any other Palestinian leader elected on Jan.9 would be running into a stone wall.
At the same time, the election itself would add international legitimacy to the elected president's status as the leader of his people, something that Sharon would find hard to reject or brush aside.
Add to the equation, US President George Bush's declaration that he would spend his "political capital" that he seems to have gained by the re-election to find an end to the Palestinian problem.
If Bush were to use a way out of the inevitable Israeli-engineered pressure on him against endorsing the Palestinian rights in their truest form, then he does have the option of involving the European Union, the UN and Russia and pushing ahead the Quartet-backed roadmap for peace.
Sharon has said he endorses the roadmap for peace, but subject to 14 amendments disguised as "reservations."
These include:
* Calm will be a condition for the start and continuation of the process. The Palestinians must end "violence," dismantle security organisations and form new organisations to combat "violence." In the first phase, and as a condition for progress to the second phase, the Palestinians will dismantle resistance groups and their infrastructure and collect all illegal weapons.
* Full compliance will be a condition for progress between phases of the plan and for progress within the phases. The first condition for progress will be the full cessation of "violence."
* A new, different PNA leadership must emerge through reform before the second phase. This demand would be met on June 9. New elections must be held to the Palestinian Legislative Council.
* The monitoring mechanism will be under US management.
* The nature of the provisional Palestinian state will be determined at Israeli-Palestinian talks. The provisional state will be fully demilitarised with no military forces. Israel will control all entry and exit, as well as air space.
* The state must make declarations on Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and on the waiver of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to what is now the state of Israel.
* The end of the process will lead to the end of all claims as well as the end of the conflict.
* A settlement will be reached through agreement and direct negotiations in accordance with the vision outlined by Bush in a speech on June 24, 2003. (In that speech, Bush said: "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practising democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence. And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbours, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East).
* Issues that will not be discussed include Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, except a freeze on settlement expansion and illegal outposts, the status of the PNA and its institutions in occupied Jerusalem, and issues that will be part of a final peace agreement.
* The removal of references to a Saudi peace plan and an Arab initiative adopted in Beirut in 2003.
* The reform process will be promoted in the PNA -- a transitional Palestinian constitution will be drafted, a Palestinian legal infrastructure will be built, international efforts to rehabilitate the Palestinian economy will continue, and transfer of tax revenues will continue.
* The redeployment of Israeli forces to positions they held in September 2000 before the Palestinian uprising began will depend on absolute quiet and future circumstances.
* Subject to "security" conditions, Israel will work to restore Palestinian life to normal, promote the economy, cultivate commercial ties and assist humanitarian agencies.
* Arab countries will assist the process by condemning "violence." No link will be established between the Palestinian track and other peace tracks.
As is obvious, these "reservations" are "loaded" since most of them are vaguely outlined, obviously with a view to allowing interpretations in Israel's own way.
And that is where the catch is.
Palestine: Not a question of who, but what next
pv vivekanand
IT IS not as much as who will win the Palestinian presidential election as whether the new elected leader would be able to achieve peace based on the people's legitimate rights and put an end to their more than half a century of sufferings. It is the question that is haunting the Palestinian people.
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who assumed the mantle of chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) following the death of Yasser Arafat in November, is seen to have been assured of poll victory.
He played the role of a perfect politician in the run-up to the election by assuring those who advocate armed struggle that he would protect them from Israeli attacks and pledging that he would not budge on the rights of the Palestinians while negotiating peace with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Sharon has not commented on Abu Mazen's declarations, perhaps because he thought it was only expected of a presidential candidate. The Sharon camp seems to believe that they could successfully negotiate with Abu Mazen without budging from their hard-line rejection of some of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.
At the same time, they did not stop their military crackdown on Palestinian resistance. Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip have exacted a heavy death toll and massive destruction in the final days before the election as if to underline its scorched earth policy against Palestinian resistance.
On New Year Day, Ibtihal Abu Thaher, 10, was killed in the Jabalyia Refugee Camp and her 11-year-old brother injured when an Israeli tank shell hit them as they played outside their home. At least 30 homes and shops were demolished by Israeli forces on Jan.2
On Jan.4, eight people were killed by tank shells. They included six children from the same family. The Israeli military claimed that soldiers were firing at armed men, but witnesses and doctors said the casualties were mostly children playing in an open field.
The Israeli justified the attacks saying Palestinians fired rockets at Jewish settlements. Al Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad, and Hamas' Izzeddin Al Qassam Brigades claimed the attacks, some of which caused no casualties. Some 12 Israeli soldiers were injured on Jan.5.
Hero's welcome
Some attacks came even as Abu Mazen was campaigning in the Gaza Strip, where he was given a hero's welcome despite the decision by Hamas and Islamic Jihad to boycott the election.
Hamas has said the decision was "irreversible" and that it would not enter a candidate in the race. It asserted it would not endorse any other candidate; nor would its supporters vote on election day.
Abu Mazen has said he would use persuasion with the group to work out a ceasefire with Israel.
"We will not use force with Hamas but we will use the way of persuasion and negotiation," he said.
"We consider that fighting among Palestinians is a red line that must not be crossed."
In public, Israeli leaders say that they had no "preferred candidate" but the way they have gone ahead in "helping" arrange the election indicates that they favour Abu Mazen.
However, during the campaigning, Abu Mazen made clear he would make no compromises over his people's rights.
Abu Mazen made several firm points:
* On Jan.1, in a speech marking the occasion of Fateh's 40th anniversary, he said he was committed to following Yasser Arafat's path. "Occupation would eventually end," he said. "We will not forget our brothers behind Israeli bars and we will not forget the wanted Palestinians who are heroes fighting for freedom. We will not forget the refugees..." he said.
* The right of Palestinian refugees to return home or exercise the option of receiving compensation for their properties lost in 1948 is supreme to any agreement with Israel.
* The release of the more than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners is key to any peace agreement. Without their freedom, there would be no deal.
* The prisoners should be allowed to vote. The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has filed an application with Israel for the purposes (It is unlikely to be granted, reports indicated).
* The state of Palestine that would be created after negotiations with Israel will include the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and its capital will be Arab East Jerusalem.
* The PNA will protect those waging armed resistance from Israeli attacks.
"When we see them, when we meet them, and when they welcome us, we owe them," he said. "This debt always is to protect them from assassination, to protect them from killing, and all these things they are subject to by the Israelis."
* However, the firing of rockets towards Israeli settlements and towns are counter-productive since they lead to heavy Israeli retaliation resulting in the death of Palestinian children.
"Firing these rockets is of no use. These rockets only hurt our people and lead to (Israeli) aggressions and I am making no apologies for what I said," he said in reference to his condemnation of the attacks.
"When we speak of the rule of law, we mean that we refuse security chaos and we should not allow conditions to be exploited and give Israelis any excuse to continue their aggressions," he said
The main hardline factions described his remarks "as a stab in the back of the resistance."
However, in general terms, Abu Mazen seems to have pleased many prospective voters.
Israeli views
Again, how the Israelis viewed his statements is subject to debate.
However, they should have been worried by the welcome Abu Mazen received at a gathering attended by hundreds of people and dozens of Aqsa Martyrs Brigades activists. He was treated as a hero by the Brigades, who hoisted him on their shoulders,
in a show of support that sparked criticism from the US, which called the incident "worrying."
During a Jan.4 speech in Al Bireh in the West Bank, Abu Mazen called Israel the "Zionist enemy." Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lashed back saying such comments were "unacceptable and unforgivable."
Israel has allowed Abu Mazen to campaign in Arab East Jerusalem where residents would be allowed to vote in five post offices as they did in 1996. The Israeli permission to allow him to visit the occupied city is deemed to be a concession, given that the occupation force never allowed Arafat to enter the city.
Mustafa Barghouti, who is second in line behind Abu Mazen in the race, was arrested and interrogated for three hours by Israeli police in occupied Jerusalem because they said he did not have permission to be campaigning in the city.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has announced that it would support his candidacy because the group agreed with him on a national democratic programme.
Despite the frenzy of elections, most Palestinians are sceptical whether Sharon, the hawkish Israeli prime minister, would budge from his denial of their legitimate rights.
They seem to think -- along with many in the Arab World -- that Sharon's "enthusiasm" would disappear when confronted with the reality that neither Abu Mazen nor any other Palestinian leader would make a compromise over the rights of the Palestinian people.
In the meantime, Sharon has rearranged his coalition government ahead of his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip later this year.
Sharon, who has called 2005 a "year of opportunity" for resolving the Palestinian problem, has made a deal with Shimon Peres, leader of the opposition Labour party. The Labour is to join Sharon's Likud-led government, replacing other coalition partners.
Peres, who is in favour of accepting some of the rights of the Palestinian people, supports the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and proposed resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians.
As veteran journalist Ian Black observes: "By joining Ariel Sharon's Likud-led coalition as deputy prime minister, Peres is showing that the majority of Israelis back the plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, remove its settlers and restart negotiations with the Palestinians.
"Peres's move illustrates the fact that four bloody years of armed intifada have destroyed the Israeli left but underlined the need to end the conflict. Arafat's death and replacement by the pragmatic Mahmoud Abbas is one reason things could improve -- not because Abbas will bend on the tough issues of borders, settlements and Jerusalem, but because he is likely to curb violence, embrace reform and win international backing to force Israel to accept a fair deal. Another reason is Sharon's conversion to the idea that Palestinians need their own state -- though exactly what it should consist of remains, crucially, to be agreed."
Stone wall
However, Sharon's Gaza plan is suspect. He is seen aiming at consolidating Israel's grip on the West Bank while abandoning Gaza, which has proved to be the most ungovernable occupied territory. By expanding Israeli presence in the West Bank, Sharon is seen as seeking to cut down the size of a future Palestinian state.
Confronted with that agenda, which includes a no-compromise stand over the vital issues of the right of the refugees and return of Arab East Jerusalem to the Palestinians, Abu Mazen or any other Palestinian leader elected on Jan.9 would be running into a stone wall.
At the same time, the election itself would add international legitimacy to the elected president's status as the leader of his people, something that Sharon would find hard to reject or brush aside.
Add to the equation, US President George Bush's declaration that he would spend his "political capital" that he seems to have gained by the re-election to find an end to the Palestinian problem.
If Bush were to use a way out of the inevitable Israeli-engineered pressure on him against endorsing the Palestinian rights in their truest form, then he does have the option of involving the European Union, the UN and Russia and pushing ahead the Quartet-backed roadmap for peace.
Sharon has said he endorses the roadmap for peace, but subject to 14 amendments disguised as "reservations."
These include:
* Calm will be a condition for the start and continuation of the process. The Palestinians must end "violence," dismantle security organisations and form new organisations to combat "violence." In the first phase, and as a condition for progress to the second phase, the Palestinians will dismantle resistance groups and their infrastructure and collect all illegal weapons.
* Full compliance will be a condition for progress between phases of the plan and for progress within the phases. The first condition for progress will be the full cessation of "violence."
* A new, different PNA leadership must emerge through reform before the second phase. This demand would be met on June 9. New elections must be held to the Palestinian Legislative Council.
* The monitoring mechanism will be under US management.
* The nature of the provisional Palestinian state will be determined at Israeli-Palestinian talks. The provisional state will be fully demilitarised with no military forces. Israel will control all entry and exit, as well as air space.
* The state must make declarations on Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and on the waiver of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to what is now the state of Israel.
* The end of the process will lead to the end of all claims as well as the end of the conflict.
* A settlement will be reached through agreement and direct negotiations in accordance with the vision outlined by Bush in a speech on June 24, 2003. (In that speech, Bush said: "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practising democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence. And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbours, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East).
* Issues that will not be discussed include Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, except a freeze on settlement expansion and illegal outposts, the status of the PNA and its institutions in occupied Jerusalem, and issues that will be part of a final peace agreement.
* The removal of references to a Saudi peace plan and an Arab initiative adopted in Beirut in 2003.
* The reform process will be promoted in the PNA -- a transitional Palestinian constitution will be drafted, a Palestinian legal infrastructure will be built, international efforts to rehabilitate the Palestinian economy will continue, and transfer of tax revenues will continue.
* The redeployment of Israeli forces to positions they held in September 2000 before the Palestinian uprising began will depend on absolute quiet and future circumstances.
* Subject to "security" conditions, Israel will work to restore Palestinian life to normal, promote the economy, cultivate commercial ties and assist humanitarian agencies.
* Arab countries will assist the process by condemning "violence." No link will be established between the Palestinian track and other peace tracks.
As is obvious, these "reservations" are "loaded" since most of them are vaguely outlined, obviously with a view to allowing interpretations in Israel's own way.
And that is where the catch is.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Israel over a Chinese barrel
January 2 2005
Israel over a Chinese barrel
pv vivekanand
AN intense tug-of-war pitting three sides -- China, Israel and the US -- is being waged behind the scenes over Israel's sales of arms and related services to the Chinese.
It was always known that Israel's military links with China were a source of concern for the US, particularly that the Israelis always used technical loopholes in bilateral agreements to justify their arms deals with the Chinese. The main American concern stems from a fear that the Chinese would acquire Israeli-supplied weapons systems that could challenge American-supplied equipment deployed by Taiwan.
In expert opinion, the periodic tension between Israel and Washington about arms sales "are nothing to what might happen if American soldiers were killed by Israeli weapons" in a war between China and Taiwan.
In the latest spat, Israel is holding back, at American insistence, Israel-built Harpy unmanned aerial attack (UAV) vehicles sent back by China for overhaul and upgrade.
China is furious and Beijing's posture in the equation is clear. It has told Israel in clear terms that it would no longer tolerate any behaviour that does not acknowledge that China is a world power and that the Jewish state should not renege on signed contracts. Beijing has also ruled out accepting monetary compensation for the held-back vehicles as Israel did in 2000 in a deal involving the proposed sale of Phalcon surveillance aircraft. Israel called off the deal under American pressure and China collected $350 million in indemnity for the Israeli default on the deal.
"The Chinese government suspected Israel in 2000 -- and again now -- of being disingenuous in claiming its hands are held by Washington," says the Israeli intelligence web site debka.com. "They see Israeli undertaking to supply the advanced technology to China, on the one hand, and, on the other, playing ball with the Americans to withhold it in default of a written contact."
Israel sold more than 40 Harpy UAVs to China in the late 90s and the vehicles were returned to Israel for an upgrade in 2004 because Beijing wanted it to be technologically equal to similar Israeli-made drones in Taiwan's possession. Taiwan bought the UAVs recently.
Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Tang Jiaxuan was in Israel in late December on a secret visit to demand the return of the UAVs after upgrade. He told the Israelis in unambiguous terms that China wants back the overhauled and upgraded Harpy attack vehicles as soon as possible and there could be no compromise over the deal. Tang told the Israelis that it is not a Chinese problem if they were facing pressure from the Americans.
He stated that as far as Beijing was concerned, the vehicles are Chinese property, having been bought and paid for by the Chinese government and holding them back amounted to illegal seizure and Israel would face serious reprisals if it did not honour the service contract. This could mean a set-back to Chinese-Israeli diplomatic relations and could prejudice to the interests of Israeli firms operating in China. Two-way trade is estimated at around $2 billion and Israel is harbouring ambitions to turn China as one of its key trading partners.
In Washington, the crisis over the Harpys has gone up through the ranks and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself is dealing with the file, and the problem is soon expected to raise its head in the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"For Israel, the implications are grave indeed," says the debka.com report. "The entire complex of US-Israel defence ties is now up for review in the light of Israel's compliance with or defiance of Washington's demand to withhold the Chinese UAVs. Putting the case before the Senate committee invites a review of US appropriations to Israel, including military aid, in the full realisation that delayed transfers would cause Israel severe financial damage. President George W. Bush thus signals that he would not be averse to a Senate committee reprimand of Israel and posts a hands-off sign to Israel's Capitol Hill lobbyists."
Apparently, the Harpy UAVs, which have an endurance of seven hours and a range of 550 kilometres, are central to Chinese military planning. China has been using them for several functions, including electronic warfare, airborne early warning (AEW) and ground attack roles, as well as reconnaissance and communications relay.
The Harpy UAVs are capable of patrolling the skies over a battle field or an enemy target and seeking out hostile radar by comparing its signal with the hostile emitters stored away in its computer system. Once it is verified, the drone attacks. Even if the targeted radar is switched off, they can abort the attack and hover in the area until it is reactivated and then return to the attack.
The vehicles are said to be a key element of an AEW electronic system that the Chinese have been building since the early 90s to match the US Global Hawk.
The Chinese are particularly angry because it sees the crisis over the UAVs as the direct result of Washington's "determination to deprive China of this vital system as part and parcel of its overall scheme to impair the airborne intelligence system the Chinese are building."
Without the vehicles, the Chinese programme to build what Beijing sees as the key in its military stand involving Taiwan would be set back by several years.
According to debka.com, it was Taiwan, which recently purchased the same type of drones from Israel, which informed the US that China had sent back the vehicles for overhaul and upgrade after Beijing found that the vehicles sold to Taipei were more advanced than the ones it received.
US officials say that Israel never asked permission or notified the administration about the UAV sale to China, but Israeli officials say that there was no need for such permission of notification because no American-developed technology is employed in the Harpy.
US-China conflict
The US has a long-running conflict with China and had several confrontations over its arms programmes, including the suspected transfer of advanced computer technology to China's military and accusations that China stole American nuclear secrets.
Caught between the US drive to maintain a ceiling on China's military powers and the Chinese determination to acquire advanced technology and weapons in preparation for any eventuality in the dispute with Taiwan, Israel proposed to send back the UAVs without upgrade.
However, China then threatened to take action against the operations of Israeli firms not only in mainland China but also in Hong Kong, and that warning was reaffirmed by Tang late last month.
"The tangle Israel has spun here is hard to explain -- even by the ambition to boost its defence exports," says debka.com. "Because the Chinese were supplied first, their model is less advanced than the up-to-date version sold Taiwan and other recent clients. Beijing demanded an upgrade after discovering its drone lacked the more advanced instruments incorporated in the newer version for identifying target signals not only from its library but visually -- which enables the unmanned craft to strike targets after their radar is switched off. China demanded that its Harpy drones be brought level with the UARs supplied Taiwan."
"The United States, for its part, will not hear of the drones returning to China, overhauled or not," says debka.com. "Now, Washington is watching to see how Israel picks its way out of the impasse, while at the same time preparing a bludgeon to bring down on its head. Israeli officials are frantically casting about for a way out of one of the most acute and damaging crises ever encountered by the Jewish state."
Israeli defence ministry official Amos Yaron briefed a parliamentary panel on the Harpy crisis last week, but, citing national security, he refused to provide details of the China deal. But he said he hoped the crisis would be resolved by March 2005.
More significantly and as a reflection of Israel's confidence that it would get away with anything while dealing with the US, Yaron told the Knesset committee that Washington had no business to interfere in Israeli affairs.
As a result, it was reported by sources in Washington, the Pentagon has placed a temporary lid on meetings between top defence officials from the two sides.
The last American comment on the crisis came from a Pentagon spokesman in the third week of December confirming that the US had indeed raised concerns about arms sales to China with Israel but had not demanded the resignation of any Israeli official over reported transfers of sensitive weapons or technology to Beijing.
That came in implicit response to a report by an Israeli television channel that Washington had demanded the dismissal of Yaron over the Harply deal.
According to the Pentagon, differences between the United States and Israel were "based on policy not personalities."
However, the department confirmed that it had raised longstanding US concerns about the sale and transfer of weapons systems or certain technologies to China.
However, there is no easy solution to the problem. For once, China has adopted a tough and uncompromising position that would have serious repercussions on Israel's trade and export ambitions. The US is equally adamant that Israel, which receives $3 billion in American military aid -- not to mention billions of dollars in other forms of assistance -- every year, should not be party to selling equipment to China that could challenge American interests in the dispute over Taiwan that is key to the US strategy in Asia.
Israel over a Chinese barrel
pv vivekanand
AN intense tug-of-war pitting three sides -- China, Israel and the US -- is being waged behind the scenes over Israel's sales of arms and related services to the Chinese.
It was always known that Israel's military links with China were a source of concern for the US, particularly that the Israelis always used technical loopholes in bilateral agreements to justify their arms deals with the Chinese. The main American concern stems from a fear that the Chinese would acquire Israeli-supplied weapons systems that could challenge American-supplied equipment deployed by Taiwan.
In expert opinion, the periodic tension between Israel and Washington about arms sales "are nothing to what might happen if American soldiers were killed by Israeli weapons" in a war between China and Taiwan.
In the latest spat, Israel is holding back, at American insistence, Israel-built Harpy unmanned aerial attack (UAV) vehicles sent back by China for overhaul and upgrade.
China is furious and Beijing's posture in the equation is clear. It has told Israel in clear terms that it would no longer tolerate any behaviour that does not acknowledge that China is a world power and that the Jewish state should not renege on signed contracts. Beijing has also ruled out accepting monetary compensation for the held-back vehicles as Israel did in 2000 in a deal involving the proposed sale of Phalcon surveillance aircraft. Israel called off the deal under American pressure and China collected $350 million in indemnity for the Israeli default on the deal.
"The Chinese government suspected Israel in 2000 -- and again now -- of being disingenuous in claiming its hands are held by Washington," says the Israeli intelligence web site debka.com. "They see Israeli undertaking to supply the advanced technology to China, on the one hand, and, on the other, playing ball with the Americans to withhold it in default of a written contact."
Israel sold more than 40 Harpy UAVs to China in the late 90s and the vehicles were returned to Israel for an upgrade in 2004 because Beijing wanted it to be technologically equal to similar Israeli-made drones in Taiwan's possession. Taiwan bought the UAVs recently.
Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Tang Jiaxuan was in Israel in late December on a secret visit to demand the return of the UAVs after upgrade. He told the Israelis in unambiguous terms that China wants back the overhauled and upgraded Harpy attack vehicles as soon as possible and there could be no compromise over the deal. Tang told the Israelis that it is not a Chinese problem if they were facing pressure from the Americans.
He stated that as far as Beijing was concerned, the vehicles are Chinese property, having been bought and paid for by the Chinese government and holding them back amounted to illegal seizure and Israel would face serious reprisals if it did not honour the service contract. This could mean a set-back to Chinese-Israeli diplomatic relations and could prejudice to the interests of Israeli firms operating in China. Two-way trade is estimated at around $2 billion and Israel is harbouring ambitions to turn China as one of its key trading partners.
In Washington, the crisis over the Harpys has gone up through the ranks and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself is dealing with the file, and the problem is soon expected to raise its head in the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"For Israel, the implications are grave indeed," says the debka.com report. "The entire complex of US-Israel defence ties is now up for review in the light of Israel's compliance with or defiance of Washington's demand to withhold the Chinese UAVs. Putting the case before the Senate committee invites a review of US appropriations to Israel, including military aid, in the full realisation that delayed transfers would cause Israel severe financial damage. President George W. Bush thus signals that he would not be averse to a Senate committee reprimand of Israel and posts a hands-off sign to Israel's Capitol Hill lobbyists."
Apparently, the Harpy UAVs, which have an endurance of seven hours and a range of 550 kilometres, are central to Chinese military planning. China has been using them for several functions, including electronic warfare, airborne early warning (AEW) and ground attack roles, as well as reconnaissance and communications relay.
The Harpy UAVs are capable of patrolling the skies over a battle field or an enemy target and seeking out hostile radar by comparing its signal with the hostile emitters stored away in its computer system. Once it is verified, the drone attacks. Even if the targeted radar is switched off, they can abort the attack and hover in the area until it is reactivated and then return to the attack.
The vehicles are said to be a key element of an AEW electronic system that the Chinese have been building since the early 90s to match the US Global Hawk.
The Chinese are particularly angry because it sees the crisis over the UAVs as the direct result of Washington's "determination to deprive China of this vital system as part and parcel of its overall scheme to impair the airborne intelligence system the Chinese are building."
Without the vehicles, the Chinese programme to build what Beijing sees as the key in its military stand involving Taiwan would be set back by several years.
According to debka.com, it was Taiwan, which recently purchased the same type of drones from Israel, which informed the US that China had sent back the vehicles for overhaul and upgrade after Beijing found that the vehicles sold to Taipei were more advanced than the ones it received.
US officials say that Israel never asked permission or notified the administration about the UAV sale to China, but Israeli officials say that there was no need for such permission of notification because no American-developed technology is employed in the Harpy.
US-China conflict
The US has a long-running conflict with China and had several confrontations over its arms programmes, including the suspected transfer of advanced computer technology to China's military and accusations that China stole American nuclear secrets.
Caught between the US drive to maintain a ceiling on China's military powers and the Chinese determination to acquire advanced technology and weapons in preparation for any eventuality in the dispute with Taiwan, Israel proposed to send back the UAVs without upgrade.
However, China then threatened to take action against the operations of Israeli firms not only in mainland China but also in Hong Kong, and that warning was reaffirmed by Tang late last month.
"The tangle Israel has spun here is hard to explain -- even by the ambition to boost its defence exports," says debka.com. "Because the Chinese were supplied first, their model is less advanced than the up-to-date version sold Taiwan and other recent clients. Beijing demanded an upgrade after discovering its drone lacked the more advanced instruments incorporated in the newer version for identifying target signals not only from its library but visually -- which enables the unmanned craft to strike targets after their radar is switched off. China demanded that its Harpy drones be brought level with the UARs supplied Taiwan."
"The United States, for its part, will not hear of the drones returning to China, overhauled or not," says debka.com. "Now, Washington is watching to see how Israel picks its way out of the impasse, while at the same time preparing a bludgeon to bring down on its head. Israeli officials are frantically casting about for a way out of one of the most acute and damaging crises ever encountered by the Jewish state."
Israeli defence ministry official Amos Yaron briefed a parliamentary panel on the Harpy crisis last week, but, citing national security, he refused to provide details of the China deal. But he said he hoped the crisis would be resolved by March 2005.
More significantly and as a reflection of Israel's confidence that it would get away with anything while dealing with the US, Yaron told the Knesset committee that Washington had no business to interfere in Israeli affairs.
As a result, it was reported by sources in Washington, the Pentagon has placed a temporary lid on meetings between top defence officials from the two sides.
The last American comment on the crisis came from a Pentagon spokesman in the third week of December confirming that the US had indeed raised concerns about arms sales to China with Israel but had not demanded the resignation of any Israeli official over reported transfers of sensitive weapons or technology to Beijing.
That came in implicit response to a report by an Israeli television channel that Washington had demanded the dismissal of Yaron over the Harply deal.
According to the Pentagon, differences between the United States and Israel were "based on policy not personalities."
However, the department confirmed that it had raised longstanding US concerns about the sale and transfer of weapons systems or certain technologies to China.
However, there is no easy solution to the problem. For once, China has adopted a tough and uncompromising position that would have serious repercussions on Israel's trade and export ambitions. The US is equally adamant that Israel, which receives $3 billion in American military aid -- not to mention billions of dollars in other forms of assistance -- every year, should not be party to selling equipment to China that could challenge American interests in the dispute over Taiwan that is key to the US strategy in Asia.
Friday, December 31, 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?
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
A lying Iraqi for Bremer
pv vivekanand
An Iraqi woman who became a celebrity in the US because of what she described as her decade-long suffering that surpassed the ordeal of any Iraqi under the Saddam Hussein regime has been reportedly proved to be a liar, catching the Bush administration redfaced and fumbling for explanations.
It is the same woman, Jumana Mikhail Hanna, who is in her mid-30s, who was once described by Iraqi newspapers as US overseer Paul Bremer's secret lover and who was taken to the US, along with her two children and her mother Jeanne d'Arc, a few days before Bremer himself left Baghdad after handing over administration of the country to the interim government on June 28, 2003.
Her falsehood was exposed by renowned American freelance writer Sara Solovitch, who was assigned by American publishers backed by the Bush administration to write her story into a book that was supposed to become the best account of how Iraqis suffered under the Saddam regime.
"Hanna became a symbol of survival, of the indomitability of the human spirit in one of the most repressive states in modern history," Solovitch recalls. The writer quotes Donald Campbell, a New Jersey superior court judge who served as the US-led coalition's top judicial advisor in Iraq as saying: "I've been in seventy countries and taken testimony about many atrocities—including right after My Lai. And I have to tell you that I found her story to be the most compelling and tragic I've ever heard."
Solvovitch worked on the project since July 2004 and found out after four months that Jumana, an Iraqi Christian, was lying outright when she told Bremer and other Americans, including senior military officers and civilian officials, of how she was punished by Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son, for having dared to decide to marry a man of Indian origin, Haytham Jamil Anwar, son of Indian immigrants who had come to Iraq along with thousands of Indians during the British occupation of 1919 to 1932.
Haytham Jamil Anwar was uneducated and was poor. He was not accepted an Iraqi and Jumana's choice was considered shameful, she told the Americans. Her mother opposed the marriage, but the two got married anyway on Aug.15, 1993, she said. However, Jumana said she was in trouble because, as she claimed, Saddam had made it illegal for Iraqi citizens to marry non-nationals and she wanted help from Uday Hussein in this matter.
But when she took an appointment and went to see Uday Hussein a few weeks later, she told everyone, she was arrested for violating the law, taken into a cell at what she called Al Kelab al Sayba — Loose Dogs Prison — in Baghdad where she was repeatedly raped by prison guards, hung from a rod and mercilessly beaten during her imprisonment for the next three years. "Please," she said she begged her guards. "I'm like your sister."
Solovitch writes recalling from what Jumana had told her:
"After seven months, three men appeared at Jeanne d'Arc's mansion with a handwritten letter from (Jumana) Hanna, asking her mother to sign over her house in order to secure her release. Jeanne d'Arc agreed, eventually signing away two houses. Still, Hanna wasn't returned. For 19 months, the men drained Jeanne d'Arc of all her remaining wealth until, homeless, she was forced to lodge with a poor Muslim man who opened his door in an act of charity. By the time Hanna was released in 1996, her head shaved, Jeanne d'Arc didn't even recognise her.
"Anwar, too, was a changed man. He had been sodomised and beaten, his nose had been broken, and he walked with a heavy limp. He had become a heavy drinker who now beat his wife regularly. For the next seven years, Hanna walked the streets of Baghdad, begging for food and drink. The couple had two children, but because the marriage remained unsanctioned by the state, they were considered illegal aliens. In January 2001, Hanna sent her husband to the Ministry of the Interior to obtain the documentation required for Sabr and Ayyub to attend school. It was a bad idea. Once again, Anwar was arrested and returned to the very cellblock where he was previously held. This time, he never came home."
After the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Jumana hit the headlines when the Washington Post published a heartrending front-page story about her under the headline "A lone woman testifies to Baghdad's terror."
The story was touted by American conservatives as "justification alone for Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom."
And it was because American concern for her safety — since she spoke out — that Bremer moved her to the famous Green Zone in Baghdad along with her mother, 72, and two children, a seven-year-old daughter, Sabr, and a five-year-old son, Ayyub, They stayed there until late June 2004 when they were driven to Jordan and then flown to the US where she was given shelter.
Bremer and other American officials met her and questioned and then moved her to the "Green Zone."
During further questioning, she identified her jailers with such point-blank accuracy that occupation forces ultimately arrested nine Iraqi officers, including a brigadier general, on her word alone.
Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who was in Iraq as senior policy advisor for Bremer, assigned two military investigators to help her prosecute her tormentors. Their investigation lasted four months. Kerik even went to see for himself the prison where Jumana said she was held — "to be physically there, to look at the barbed wire that was hooked into the trees, to think about the stories she told and then actually see the devices they used...," he said at that time: "It was sickening."
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also toured Loose Dogs Prison and testified about Jumana before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Her courage in coming forward to offer US officials what is very likely credible information," he said, would help the coalition "root out" Baathist killers.
After she and her family were moved to the US, Solovitch regularly met them in order to write a book on her until she discovered that all the stories that Jumana recounted were lies. Yes, she had been in prison for a few days but that was because her mother opposed her marriage and wanted to frighten her, but the man was Iraqi and had nothing to do with India, and there was no Saddam law against Iraqi women marrying foreigners either.
Solovitch writes: "Family members told me that Hanna had gone to prison but that the real reason bore no resemblance to what she told authorities, the Post, or even what she wrote on her application for asylum. She had been jailed, she said, for marrying an Indian, violating an Iraqi law that forbade marriage to a non-national without government permission. In fact, there was never any such law. While intermarriage may have been discouraged, it did not require special approval, a point confirmed for me by a specialist at the Library of Congress."
Solovitch says she developed the first doubt about Jumana when she found that the woman did not have enough understanding of English although she claimed she was an Oxford graduate.
Since then, Solovitch cross-checked with Oxford — and was told they had no record of any Jumana Mikhail Hanna. Since then, everything that Jumana had been telling the Americans unravelled as outright lies, says Solovitch in an article appearing in the January issue of Esquire.
The marks that she alleged were signs of the torture she suffered in prison were discounted. All the names she gave as her fellow inmates turned out to be false and non-existent. And then it turned out that husband is a tramp in Baghdad and is alive.
The nine people that Jumana identified as her tormentors have been released and financially compensated for wrongful imprisonment.
"Far from being a story about the indomitability of the human spirit, Hanna's tale now seemed to open a window on the coalition's naivete — the willingness of its leaders to believe almost anything that fit their agenda," according to Solovitch.
Solovitch says she confronted Jumana and her mother after she learnt the truth about the lies that the Iraqi woman had been spreading.
"Yes, she now admitted, she had lied about the reasons for her imprisonment," Solovitch says. "It was Jeanne d'Arc, determined to teach her daughter a lesson and put a stop to an ill-advised marriage, who had arranged for her arrest on seven charges, including prostitution, theft, spying for the British, and plotting to overthrow the government."
Finally, the writer says, she asked Jumana why she lied about going to Oxford.
"For a second, she looked confused, and I thought, yes, finally, she was going to come clean," Solovitch recalls. "I went to Oxford!" she screamed. "Oxford College of Accounting on Oxford Street in London. It is right next to Louis the Five Hotel. I'll take you there!"
An Iraqi woman who became a celebrity in the US because of what she described as her decade-long suffering that surpassed the ordeal of any Iraqi under the Saddam Hussein regime has been reportedly proved to be a liar, catching the Bush administration redfaced and fumbling for explanations.
It is the same woman, Jumana Mikhail Hanna, who is in her mid-30s, who was once described by Iraqi newspapers as US overseer Paul Bremer's secret lover and who was taken to the US, along with her two children and her mother Jeanne d'Arc, a few days before Bremer himself left Baghdad after handing over administration of the country to the interim government on June 28, 2003.
Her falsehood was exposed by renowned American freelance writer Sara Solovitch, who was assigned by American publishers backed by the Bush administration to write her story into a book that was supposed to become the best account of how Iraqis suffered under the Saddam regime.
"Hanna became a symbol of survival, of the indomitability of the human spirit in one of the most repressive states in modern history," Solovitch recalls. The writer quotes Donald Campbell, a New Jersey superior court judge who served as the US-led coalition's top judicial advisor in Iraq as saying: "I've been in seventy countries and taken testimony about many atrocities—including right after My Lai. And I have to tell you that I found her story to be the most compelling and tragic I've ever heard."
Solvovitch worked on the project since July 2004 and found out after four months that Jumana, an Iraqi Christian, was lying outright when she told Bremer and other Americans, including senior military officers and civilian officials, of how she was punished by Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son, for having dared to decide to marry a man of Indian origin, Haytham Jamil Anwar, son of Indian immigrants who had come to Iraq along with thousands of Indians during the British occupation of 1919 to 1932.
Haytham Jamil Anwar was uneducated and was poor. He was not accepted an Iraqi and Jumana's choice was considered shameful, she told the Americans. Her mother opposed the marriage, but the two got married anyway on Aug.15, 1993, she said. However, Jumana said she was in trouble because, as she claimed, Saddam had made it illegal for Iraqi citizens to marry non-nationals and she wanted help from Uday Hussein in this matter.
But when she took an appointment and went to see Uday Hussein a few weeks later, she told everyone, she was arrested for violating the law, taken into a cell at what she called Al Kelab al Sayba — Loose Dogs Prison — in Baghdad where she was repeatedly raped by prison guards, hung from a rod and mercilessly beaten during her imprisonment for the next three years. "Please," she said she begged her guards. "I'm like your sister."
Solovitch writes recalling from what Jumana had told her:
"After seven months, three men appeared at Jeanne d'Arc's mansion with a handwritten letter from (Jumana) Hanna, asking her mother to sign over her house in order to secure her release. Jeanne d'Arc agreed, eventually signing away two houses. Still, Hanna wasn't returned. For 19 months, the men drained Jeanne d'Arc of all her remaining wealth until, homeless, she was forced to lodge with a poor Muslim man who opened his door in an act of charity. By the time Hanna was released in 1996, her head shaved, Jeanne d'Arc didn't even recognise her.
"Anwar, too, was a changed man. He had been sodomised and beaten, his nose had been broken, and he walked with a heavy limp. He had become a heavy drinker who now beat his wife regularly. For the next seven years, Hanna walked the streets of Baghdad, begging for food and drink. The couple had two children, but because the marriage remained unsanctioned by the state, they were considered illegal aliens. In January 2001, Hanna sent her husband to the Ministry of the Interior to obtain the documentation required for Sabr and Ayyub to attend school. It was a bad idea. Once again, Anwar was arrested and returned to the very cellblock where he was previously held. This time, he never came home."
After the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Jumana hit the headlines when the Washington Post published a heartrending front-page story about her under the headline "A lone woman testifies to Baghdad's terror."
The story was touted by American conservatives as "justification alone for Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom."
And it was because American concern for her safety — since she spoke out — that Bremer moved her to the famous Green Zone in Baghdad along with her mother, 72, and two children, a seven-year-old daughter, Sabr, and a five-year-old son, Ayyub, They stayed there until late June 2004 when they were driven to Jordan and then flown to the US where she was given shelter.
Bremer and other American officials met her and questioned and then moved her to the "Green Zone."
During further questioning, she identified her jailers with such point-blank accuracy that occupation forces ultimately arrested nine Iraqi officers, including a brigadier general, on her word alone.
Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who was in Iraq as senior policy advisor for Bremer, assigned two military investigators to help her prosecute her tormentors. Their investigation lasted four months. Kerik even went to see for himself the prison where Jumana said she was held — "to be physically there, to look at the barbed wire that was hooked into the trees, to think about the stories she told and then actually see the devices they used...," he said at that time: "It was sickening."
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also toured Loose Dogs Prison and testified about Jumana before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Her courage in coming forward to offer US officials what is very likely credible information," he said, would help the coalition "root out" Baathist killers.
After she and her family were moved to the US, Solovitch regularly met them in order to write a book on her until she discovered that all the stories that Jumana recounted were lies. Yes, she had been in prison for a few days but that was because her mother opposed her marriage and wanted to frighten her, but the man was Iraqi and had nothing to do with India, and there was no Saddam law against Iraqi women marrying foreigners either.
Solovitch writes: "Family members told me that Hanna had gone to prison but that the real reason bore no resemblance to what she told authorities, the Post, or even what she wrote on her application for asylum. She had been jailed, she said, for marrying an Indian, violating an Iraqi law that forbade marriage to a non-national without government permission. In fact, there was never any such law. While intermarriage may have been discouraged, it did not require special approval, a point confirmed for me by a specialist at the Library of Congress."
Solovitch says she developed the first doubt about Jumana when she found that the woman did not have enough understanding of English although she claimed she was an Oxford graduate.
Since then, Solovitch cross-checked with Oxford — and was told they had no record of any Jumana Mikhail Hanna. Since then, everything that Jumana had been telling the Americans unravelled as outright lies, says Solovitch in an article appearing in the January issue of Esquire.
The marks that she alleged were signs of the torture she suffered in prison were discounted. All the names she gave as her fellow inmates turned out to be false and non-existent. And then it turned out that husband is a tramp in Baghdad and is alive.
The nine people that Jumana identified as her tormentors have been released and financially compensated for wrongful imprisonment.
"Far from being a story about the indomitability of the human spirit, Hanna's tale now seemed to open a window on the coalition's naivete — the willingness of its leaders to believe almost anything that fit their agenda," according to Solovitch.
Solovitch says she confronted Jumana and her mother after she learnt the truth about the lies that the Iraqi woman had been spreading.
"Yes, she now admitted, she had lied about the reasons for her imprisonment," Solovitch says. "It was Jeanne d'Arc, determined to teach her daughter a lesson and put a stop to an ill-advised marriage, who had arranged for her arrest on seven charges, including prostitution, theft, spying for the British, and plotting to overthrow the government."
Finally, the writer says, she asked Jumana why she lied about going to Oxford.
"For a second, she looked confused, and I thought, yes, finally, she was going to come clean," Solovitch recalls. "I went to Oxford!" she screamed. "Oxford College of Accounting on Oxford Street in London. It is right next to Louis the Five Hotel. I'll take you there!"
Monday, December 27, 2004
Questions for Rumsfeld
pv vivekanand
US Defence Secretary Ronald Rumsfeld has told American soldiers in Iraq that the insurgency there needs an Iraqi solution and that he does not expect the guerrilla attacks against the US-led forces to fade away with the elections next month.
Of course, it reflects an increasing understanding of the irrefutable realities on the ground today, but it raises one prime question: Who is responsible for the chaos in Iraq today and how does the US expect the Iraqis to come up with a solution?
The ideal scenario for the US is quite simple: All the 25 million people of Iraq do nothing other than support next month's elections without reservation, elect the people that Washington could count on to protect American interests, and then endorse the constitution the elected 275-member assembly would draft by the end of 2005.
They should not complain about the lack of security, jobs, food, water and power; nor should they object to the high-handed and contemptuous manner the US military is dealing with them; they should report without fail every "foreign militant" who enters the country, and they should allow their country to be turned into an Israeli Trojan horse in the Arab World.
In his recent tour of the region, Rumsfeld conceded that the insurgency has staying power and a seemingly endless supply of weapons, and the time has come for ordinary Iraqis to realise that they not the Americans will ultimately decide who prevails in this conflict.
He also admitted that it would be unrealistic to predict that the level of violence will recede once the Jan.30 elections are held. In the end, he said, it will be a "uniquely Iraqi solution," not American.
But then, wasn't it an American solution that the Bush administration sought to impose on Iraq with last year's war? Isn't the worsening crisis in the country is the direct result of the US attempting to play out its own script for the future of Iraq that has more to do with external interests than Iraqi interests?
How could Rumsfeld say that ending the crisis is an Iraqi responsibility when the beginning of the crisis was American initiated?
And how exactly does Rumsfeld envisage the divided Iraqi society coming together to solve the problem which the mighty US military failed to address?
While one could not really assert that the US did wrong when it toppled Saddam Hussein, given his regime's oppression of the people of Iraq, the world holds Washington responsible for the spiralling crisis in the occupied country. The international community knows that it was not the welfare of the people of Iraq or any great love for democracy in the Arab World — or anywhere else for that matter — that the Bush administration had in mind when it sent in its military to invade Iraq and that it wrong wholesale in its approach to dealing with the people of Iraq.
Washington had and still has its secret agenda in Iraq. These include using Iraq as an advanced military base in the Gulf region as part of its quest to dominate the globe, employing the oil resources of Iraq to ensure America's energy security and as a weapon to manipulate the international oil market to counter other industrialised countries in the race for global business, and removing Iraq, once among the strongest in the Arab World, as a potential threat to Israel, the staunchest American ally in the region.
Few would be ready to accept that it was any great sympthy for the "oppressed" people of Iraq that prompted the US to launch war against that country and all that Washington wanted was to save Iraqis from Saddam Hussein.
Indeed, the people of Iraq do have their role in containing the insurgency and put their country on track towards an atmosphere conducive to address some of the root problems they face. However, they were rendered unable to do so from the word go when the US took them for granted and invaded Iraq without taking into consideration the realities on the ground except that the country was ruled by a regime which challenged American interests in the region and stood in the way of an American ally's quest for regional domination.
Let us also not forget that it is the first time the people of Iraq are faced with the question of how to shape their future and the US-designed plans for them are alien to their thinking and political mindset.
Some of the key questions (not necessarily in the order given here) that would have to be answered by Rumsfeld and others in the US administration as well as the neoconservative hawks who orchestrated the invasion and occupation of Iraq include:
— Did the people of Iraq invite the US to "liberate" them from Saddam Hussein and do the half-baked job that it did?
— Did the people of Iraq ask Washington to resort to whatever deception it took — weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda links included — to justify the invasion of their country and thus lose world support for its action in Iraq?
— Did the people of Iraq ask Rumsfeld to keep down the number of American soldiers to be deployed in the war so that they were kept spread too thin and too wide to make an impact against the expected insurgency?
— Why did the US fail to realise that while its military had the ability to invade and occupy another country, it did not have any experience or expertise in administering another people with sharp cultural, social, economic, and religious differences with the American style?
— Why did the US fail to realise that it stood in absolute need of the UN in Iraq? Why did it dump the world body on the wayside and assume for itself its self-assumed supremacy of the world was enough to claim legitimacy for the illegal war?
— Why did the US fail to accept the wisdom in inviting the UN and the Arab League to take over post-Saddam Iraq with all transparency?
— Wasn't it Rumsfeld who led the Washington camp in blindly backing Iraqi exiles who hoodwinked him into believing that they had enough influence and popularity among Iraqis in order to take charge of running the country and insisted on disbanding the Iraqi armed forces and purging the administrative establishment of Baathists as a priority in post-Saddam Iraq?
— Why did the US intelligence agencies fail to establish that the American military would not be able to ride on the wave of being "liberators" for more than a few days after the ouster of the Saddam regime unless it ensured, with proper planning, that the life of Iraqis was disrupted to the minimum?
— Why did the US military fail to realise that the infrastructure that it was destroying as if with a vengeance in the war — water and power installations and facilities that US intelligence agencies knew to be genuine industrial establishments — was vital to any reconstruction effort in post-Saddam Iraq?
— Why did the US military make a beeline for Iraq's oil installations and deploy soldiers to protect them rather than preventing the chaos in the country's civil society in the days immediately after the Saddam regime fell?
— Why did the US fail to take prompt action towards ensuring the security and safety of the Iraqis and allow anarchy to reign in the country after ousting Saddam?
— Why did the US fail to realise that uncontrollable violence and chaos would follow any military action that ousts a regime unless accompanied by a well-planned strategy to deal with such a situation?
— Why did the US fail to realise that the Iraqis, like all other Arabs, are a proud people who draw immense strength and pride from their history and would not cower before the hamburger or the fish and chip culture?
— Why did the US fail to take careful note of the fact that the history of Iraq was always bloody and full of upheavals that had turned the people of Iraq into being perpetually rebellious?
— Why did the US fail to realise that the tribal roots of Iraqis are stronger than any relation that an external force would try to impose on them and they would fight the external force first before fighting their own people?
— Why did the US military adopt actions that were predictably seen as anti-people in its drive for the elusive security in Iraq, including summary storming of family homes with little regard of Arab pride and that inflicted utter humiliation on the Iraqi society?
— Why did the US adopt an obvious attitude that everything was permissible in action against Iraqis, however tough and humiliating and wherever and whenever?
— Why did the US fail to check actions that clearly implied that benefiting American corporations with tens of billions of dollars both in American as well as Iraqi money was among its top priorities in Iraq?
— Why did the US fail to see that it would be treading on the interests of others in the world, Europeans prominent among them, with the invasion of a strategically placed, oil-rich Arab country and thus alienating them into opposing American plans for the country and staying away from helping Washington?
— Why did the US fail to realise that its biased approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict had already deprived it of credibility among the Arabs, including the Iraqis, to an extent beyond repair when it tried to portray an image of honest intentions?
The sum total of answers to these questions would clearly show that the Americans went into Iraq in order to serve their own interests as well as those of their strategic partner, Israel, but made a total mess of things there beyond any hope of repair and got themselves into a Vietnam-like trap. And now their defence minister says that the problem needs an Iraqi solution.
Indeed, it has to be an Iraqi solution, but then, in order for that to happen the field should be cleared for the Iraqis to play the leading role, and the Iraqis have to decide who among them should lead them in that role. What the US has been doing and continuing to do is usurping that right from the people of Iraq.
Any hope of justifiably addressing the crisis in Iraq today needs direct Iraqi, Arab and international involvement in total transparency, and any American effort to deal with the problem while it zealously considers the country as its backyard is doomed to fail.
US Defence Secretary Ronald Rumsfeld has told American soldiers in Iraq that the insurgency there needs an Iraqi solution and that he does not expect the guerrilla attacks against the US-led forces to fade away with the elections next month.
Of course, it reflects an increasing understanding of the irrefutable realities on the ground today, but it raises one prime question: Who is responsible for the chaos in Iraq today and how does the US expect the Iraqis to come up with a solution?
The ideal scenario for the US is quite simple: All the 25 million people of Iraq do nothing other than support next month's elections without reservation, elect the people that Washington could count on to protect American interests, and then endorse the constitution the elected 275-member assembly would draft by the end of 2005.
They should not complain about the lack of security, jobs, food, water and power; nor should they object to the high-handed and contemptuous manner the US military is dealing with them; they should report without fail every "foreign militant" who enters the country, and they should allow their country to be turned into an Israeli Trojan horse in the Arab World.
In his recent tour of the region, Rumsfeld conceded that the insurgency has staying power and a seemingly endless supply of weapons, and the time has come for ordinary Iraqis to realise that they not the Americans will ultimately decide who prevails in this conflict.
He also admitted that it would be unrealistic to predict that the level of violence will recede once the Jan.30 elections are held. In the end, he said, it will be a "uniquely Iraqi solution," not American.
But then, wasn't it an American solution that the Bush administration sought to impose on Iraq with last year's war? Isn't the worsening crisis in the country is the direct result of the US attempting to play out its own script for the future of Iraq that has more to do with external interests than Iraqi interests?
How could Rumsfeld say that ending the crisis is an Iraqi responsibility when the beginning of the crisis was American initiated?
And how exactly does Rumsfeld envisage the divided Iraqi society coming together to solve the problem which the mighty US military failed to address?
While one could not really assert that the US did wrong when it toppled Saddam Hussein, given his regime's oppression of the people of Iraq, the world holds Washington responsible for the spiralling crisis in the occupied country. The international community knows that it was not the welfare of the people of Iraq or any great love for democracy in the Arab World — or anywhere else for that matter — that the Bush administration had in mind when it sent in its military to invade Iraq and that it wrong wholesale in its approach to dealing with the people of Iraq.
Washington had and still has its secret agenda in Iraq. These include using Iraq as an advanced military base in the Gulf region as part of its quest to dominate the globe, employing the oil resources of Iraq to ensure America's energy security and as a weapon to manipulate the international oil market to counter other industrialised countries in the race for global business, and removing Iraq, once among the strongest in the Arab World, as a potential threat to Israel, the staunchest American ally in the region.
Few would be ready to accept that it was any great sympthy for the "oppressed" people of Iraq that prompted the US to launch war against that country and all that Washington wanted was to save Iraqis from Saddam Hussein.
Indeed, the people of Iraq do have their role in containing the insurgency and put their country on track towards an atmosphere conducive to address some of the root problems they face. However, they were rendered unable to do so from the word go when the US took them for granted and invaded Iraq without taking into consideration the realities on the ground except that the country was ruled by a regime which challenged American interests in the region and stood in the way of an American ally's quest for regional domination.
Let us also not forget that it is the first time the people of Iraq are faced with the question of how to shape their future and the US-designed plans for them are alien to their thinking and political mindset.
Some of the key questions (not necessarily in the order given here) that would have to be answered by Rumsfeld and others in the US administration as well as the neoconservative hawks who orchestrated the invasion and occupation of Iraq include:
— Did the people of Iraq invite the US to "liberate" them from Saddam Hussein and do the half-baked job that it did?
— Did the people of Iraq ask Washington to resort to whatever deception it took — weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda links included — to justify the invasion of their country and thus lose world support for its action in Iraq?
— Did the people of Iraq ask Rumsfeld to keep down the number of American soldiers to be deployed in the war so that they were kept spread too thin and too wide to make an impact against the expected insurgency?
— Why did the US fail to realise that while its military had the ability to invade and occupy another country, it did not have any experience or expertise in administering another people with sharp cultural, social, economic, and religious differences with the American style?
— Why did the US fail to realise that it stood in absolute need of the UN in Iraq? Why did it dump the world body on the wayside and assume for itself its self-assumed supremacy of the world was enough to claim legitimacy for the illegal war?
— Why did the US fail to accept the wisdom in inviting the UN and the Arab League to take over post-Saddam Iraq with all transparency?
— Wasn't it Rumsfeld who led the Washington camp in blindly backing Iraqi exiles who hoodwinked him into believing that they had enough influence and popularity among Iraqis in order to take charge of running the country and insisted on disbanding the Iraqi armed forces and purging the administrative establishment of Baathists as a priority in post-Saddam Iraq?
— Why did the US intelligence agencies fail to establish that the American military would not be able to ride on the wave of being "liberators" for more than a few days after the ouster of the Saddam regime unless it ensured, with proper planning, that the life of Iraqis was disrupted to the minimum?
— Why did the US military fail to realise that the infrastructure that it was destroying as if with a vengeance in the war — water and power installations and facilities that US intelligence agencies knew to be genuine industrial establishments — was vital to any reconstruction effort in post-Saddam Iraq?
— Why did the US military make a beeline for Iraq's oil installations and deploy soldiers to protect them rather than preventing the chaos in the country's civil society in the days immediately after the Saddam regime fell?
— Why did the US fail to take prompt action towards ensuring the security and safety of the Iraqis and allow anarchy to reign in the country after ousting Saddam?
— Why did the US fail to realise that uncontrollable violence and chaos would follow any military action that ousts a regime unless accompanied by a well-planned strategy to deal with such a situation?
— Why did the US fail to realise that the Iraqis, like all other Arabs, are a proud people who draw immense strength and pride from their history and would not cower before the hamburger or the fish and chip culture?
— Why did the US fail to take careful note of the fact that the history of Iraq was always bloody and full of upheavals that had turned the people of Iraq into being perpetually rebellious?
— Why did the US fail to realise that the tribal roots of Iraqis are stronger than any relation that an external force would try to impose on them and they would fight the external force first before fighting their own people?
— Why did the US military adopt actions that were predictably seen as anti-people in its drive for the elusive security in Iraq, including summary storming of family homes with little regard of Arab pride and that inflicted utter humiliation on the Iraqi society?
— Why did the US adopt an obvious attitude that everything was permissible in action against Iraqis, however tough and humiliating and wherever and whenever?
— Why did the US fail to check actions that clearly implied that benefiting American corporations with tens of billions of dollars both in American as well as Iraqi money was among its top priorities in Iraq?
— Why did the US fail to see that it would be treading on the interests of others in the world, Europeans prominent among them, with the invasion of a strategically placed, oil-rich Arab country and thus alienating them into opposing American plans for the country and staying away from helping Washington?
— Why did the US fail to realise that its biased approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict had already deprived it of credibility among the Arabs, including the Iraqis, to an extent beyond repair when it tried to portray an image of honest intentions?
The sum total of answers to these questions would clearly show that the Americans went into Iraq in order to serve their own interests as well as those of their strategic partner, Israel, but made a total mess of things there beyond any hope of repair and got themselves into a Vietnam-like trap. And now their defence minister says that the problem needs an Iraqi solution.
Indeed, it has to be an Iraqi solution, but then, in order for that to happen the field should be cleared for the Iraqis to play the leading role, and the Iraqis have to decide who among them should lead them in that role. What the US has been doing and continuing to do is usurping that right from the people of Iraq.
Any hope of justifiably addressing the crisis in Iraq today needs direct Iraqi, Arab and international involvement in total transparency, and any American effort to deal with the problem while it zealously considers the country as its backyard is doomed to fail.
Saturday, December 25, 2004
No zero-sum game in Iraq
December 24, 2004
Iraq No zero- sum game
The ferocity of the insurgency in Iraq and of the US military in tackling the guerrillas has gone several notches up in recent months. We have seen it happening. It is also understandable why it is happening on both sides. Both sides are desperate.
After all, the US launched an unprecedented high-stake game when it invaded and occupied Iraq last year after toppling the Saddam Hussein regime. The next month's elections in the country are crucial to the continuation of the script, and Washington has all the reason to make sure that Iraq is pacified ahead of the polls.
The deceptions, lies and concocted intelligence findings that American and British officials cited to justify the war against Iraq clearly showed how high the Bush administration and the Blair government considered the stakes to be.
It is not every second day that a country, regardless of it being the sole superpower in the world, gets to lay its hands on another nation, regardless of how small or militarily weak it might be, with a view to absolutely controlling it as part of its quest for global domination and serve its strategic ally in the region, Israel. Add to the equation the natural resources of the country under occupation and its strategic location.
Quest for control
"Failure" in Iraq is not an eventuality in the American scheme of things. To beat down any and every challenge to the US quest for absolute control of Iraq, directly or through proxies, is an American priority and part and parcel of the roots of the US approach to the Middle East in the immediate term and to the international scene in the long term. As such, it is absolutely committed to do what it takes to turn the occupied country around to the desired shape, and it would not flinch at a dozen of Fallujahs.
For the insurgents, it is vital to thwart the US plans regardless of who and what ideology (or none at all) that they represent or their perceptions of the future of the country and its people. One could come up with many reasons. They include: Allowing the election to go ahead without hindrance will, in the first place, deal a severe blow to their efforts to show the world that the US and its allied forces are no longer in control of the country; the elections would see the emergence of a Shiite-led leadership at the expense of the minority Sunnis who held the sway since the early years of last century; permitting the chaos to subside will allow the US and its ally Israel to shape Iraq to suit their interests and undermine Arab interests at large; and, for many of the "foreign militants," the US military presence in Iraq is nothing but a rare opportunity to vent their anti-American hostility by targeting American soldiers. Then there are the self-assumed "international jihadists" -- the likes of Abu Musab Zarqawi, who -- it is a strong bet -- would not be able to produce a cohesive, realistic answer to the question what they want in Iraq. Add to the equation those external players who fear that allowing the US to pacify Iraq would only lead to the American guns being turned around to be trained on them for "regime change."
It is against that backdrop that fresh evidence has emerged that the White House had authorised the use of torture against detainees in Iraq in order to extract information on insurgents. It clearly fits into the picture where American strategists are dead bent upon using every avenue available to the heart of the insurgency with a view to quelling it.
Torture approval
It should also explain why the administration even took the risk of being accused of -- as it is today -- of violating the eighth amendment of the US constitution which says:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Wouldn't an executive authorisation of torture of detainees be a violation of the US constitution? Well, it is a question that Americans should ask their administration and demand an answer. Indeed, some, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , are already asking.
Bush had declared on June 26, 2003, marking UN Torture Victims Recognition Day: "The US is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the US and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating and prosecuting all acts of torture."
Isn't the same president who is now accused by the ACLU of having issued the order authorising the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq?
The ACLU charge is backed by reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that characterise methods used by the US military as "torture."
A two-page e-mail refers to an executive order stating that the president directly authorised interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is demanding that the White House confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately release the order if it exists.
Other documents detail the methods of torture based on reports filed by field agents.
A sample is an FBI document dated June 24, 2004 -- two months after the extent of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison was fully revealed to the world -- which contains the account of an FBI agent who observed "serious physical abuses" in Iraq. Marked "urgent" and sent to FBI Director Robert Mueller, the document described strangulation, beatings and the placing of lit cigarettes into detainees' ears.
Blaming game
When the extent of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was revealed in graphic details, the White House defended itself by contenting that a few "rotten apples" in the US military establishment and private contractors were responsible for the gross violations of human rights that the pictures portrayed and those who perpetrated would be punished.
Little was said -- nor is it said now -- about how successive US administrations had laid the ground for such abuses by giving an impression that the Arabs were less than human beings and it is no big deal if they were treated as animals.
Then again, we have people like Republican Senator Jim Inhofe who has said during a debate on the abuse and torture of Iraqis: "I have to say I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cellblock 1A or 1B these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents, many of them probably have American blood on their hands, and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."
Obviously, Inhofe was not aware or chose to ignore the reality that many Abu Ghraib detainees were Iraqi civilians who had little to do with the insurgency and were picked up for petty crimes and even traffic violations.
If a proper accounting was done over why American military personnel and private contractors felt they would get away with abusing, torturing and humiliating Arabs and Muslims -- as they did in Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay -- then the ball would have gone to the very top. The White House would have had to explain that its attitude, the manner in which the invasion and occupation of Iraq was carried out, and the instructions given to lower ranks of the military through the various layers had not bred an air of contempt for Arabs and Muslims that led to the despicable treatment of Iraqi, Afghan, Arab and Muslim prisoners under American detention.
What values?
Somehow, with all-too-indignant comments and lofty declarations about American values and principles, Bush himself and his close aides like Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and other senior Pentagon officials, eased themselves out of blame. For good measures, they picked a handful of soldiers and charged them for the crimes at Abu Gharib.
However, the political leadership might not be able to squirm out of the latest fallout.
It should also not be surprising that interrogators also humiliated Arab detainees by wrapping them in Israeli flags. Indeed, in all probability, that "method" was suggested by Israelis who were hired to interrogate Iraqi detainees.
An article written by Wayne Madsen appearing on the website counterpunch.org in May 2004 noted: "With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defence Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified 'carve out' sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, 'if these images (of torture in Abu Ghraib) are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse'."
The article quotes a "political appointee" within the Bush administration and US intelligence sources as saying that "the interrogators at Abu Ghraib included a number of Arabic-speaking Israelis who also helped US interrogators develop the 'R2I' (Resistance to Interrogation) techniques. Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself."
That might indeed not be news to many, given the record of the "strategic partnership" between the US and Israel.
Desperate situation
The reality on the ground in Iraq today is that the US is finding the going tough, to put it mildly. Washington planners have realised that they desperately need to wage a ruthless, make-or-break military campaign in order to show some semblance of things under control by Jan.30, when Iraq would go to the polls.
The insurgents are determined not to allow that to happen and the Americans are determined to hit the insurgents wherever they appear. The trouble is that the ranks of those who challenge the US role in Iraq are swelling, not necessarily because of any in-built hatred towards the Americans but because he life in the country has become unbearable, contrary to expectations that the removal of Saddam would have signalled a turn to the better and an end to sufferings.
Apart from the perpetual terror of having to live with the uncertainty when, where and how a stray or intended missile, bomb or bullet could kill or maim them or destroy their homes, Iraqis are suffering in all aspects of life, and there does not seem to be any way out.
In a shambles
Forget about the elections. Iraqis are worrying about how to live let alone vote. The economy of the country is in a shambles. Crude-oil exports average 1.6 million barrels a day, around half of what the country exported before the war. Sabotage against oil pipelines is a daily occurrence, and oil exports remain frozen for days after attacks while repairs are carried out. Quite simply, oil cannot be expected to generate the income to run the economy of Iraq which has 11 per cent of the world's known reserves of oil.
There is an acute crisis sparked by shortage of petrol and diesel for the average Iraqis.
Before the war, agriculture accounted for more than one-quarter of the country's gross domestic product and 20 per cent of employment. It is now in ruins. The World Bank says it would take $3.6 billion to restore the agriculture sector.
Power generation has been halved by the war. Repairs are going on, but even before the war there was not enough power since power generation facilities were destroyed during the 1991 war. The system that existed before the 2003 war was mostly patchworked.
Clean drinking water is scarce in many parts of the country. Sewage plants, hit in the first war and never repaired, have been further damaged. Sewage from Baghdad is flowing untreated into the Tigris River.
Some 1,000 Iraqi schools need to be rebuilt as a result of damage and looting, and almost 20 per cent of the country's 18,000 school buildings need comprehensive or partial repair.
Unemployment is put somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent.
State-run hospitals are suffering from chronic shortages of all kinds. Health workers are unable to move around freely and medical supplies could not be sent to most places because of unsafe streets.
Doctors in major hospitals continue to complain of shortages of drugs used in surgery and emergency operations, anti-inflammatory drugs, vital antibiotics, and cancer drugs.
Generators break down during surgeries and patients die. There is no clean water even in hospitals.
No wonder there is not much interest among Iraqis over the elections. They want hard answers to their question when they could expect an uplift, assured of their safety and the means to earn a living and lead a dignified life.
In the meantime, the battle between the US and insurgents -- no matter what their motives and objectives and who their supporters are -- is not a zero-sum game. Neither side would win it, but they fight for different considerations and reasons.
The US military would never be able to gain absolute control of Iraq. Of course, sheer military strength might help it to eventually present an atmosphere of relatively better security. But time is on the side of the insurgents, for all they need to do is to scale down their offensive and carry out carefully planned suicide bombings and ambushes that would belie all American claims of a pacified Iraq.
By the same token, the insurgents would never be able to dislodge the US from Iraq even if they were to create another Vietnam there. The US is determined to pay whatever price it takes for it to hammer down its stakes in the Middle East.
Iraq No zero- sum game
The ferocity of the insurgency in Iraq and of the US military in tackling the guerrillas has gone several notches up in recent months. We have seen it happening. It is also understandable why it is happening on both sides. Both sides are desperate.
After all, the US launched an unprecedented high-stake game when it invaded and occupied Iraq last year after toppling the Saddam Hussein regime. The next month's elections in the country are crucial to the continuation of the script, and Washington has all the reason to make sure that Iraq is pacified ahead of the polls.
The deceptions, lies and concocted intelligence findings that American and British officials cited to justify the war against Iraq clearly showed how high the Bush administration and the Blair government considered the stakes to be.
It is not every second day that a country, regardless of it being the sole superpower in the world, gets to lay its hands on another nation, regardless of how small or militarily weak it might be, with a view to absolutely controlling it as part of its quest for global domination and serve its strategic ally in the region, Israel. Add to the equation the natural resources of the country under occupation and its strategic location.
Quest for control
"Failure" in Iraq is not an eventuality in the American scheme of things. To beat down any and every challenge to the US quest for absolute control of Iraq, directly or through proxies, is an American priority and part and parcel of the roots of the US approach to the Middle East in the immediate term and to the international scene in the long term. As such, it is absolutely committed to do what it takes to turn the occupied country around to the desired shape, and it would not flinch at a dozen of Fallujahs.
For the insurgents, it is vital to thwart the US plans regardless of who and what ideology (or none at all) that they represent or their perceptions of the future of the country and its people. One could come up with many reasons. They include: Allowing the election to go ahead without hindrance will, in the first place, deal a severe blow to their efforts to show the world that the US and its allied forces are no longer in control of the country; the elections would see the emergence of a Shiite-led leadership at the expense of the minority Sunnis who held the sway since the early years of last century; permitting the chaos to subside will allow the US and its ally Israel to shape Iraq to suit their interests and undermine Arab interests at large; and, for many of the "foreign militants," the US military presence in Iraq is nothing but a rare opportunity to vent their anti-American hostility by targeting American soldiers. Then there are the self-assumed "international jihadists" -- the likes of Abu Musab Zarqawi, who -- it is a strong bet -- would not be able to produce a cohesive, realistic answer to the question what they want in Iraq. Add to the equation those external players who fear that allowing the US to pacify Iraq would only lead to the American guns being turned around to be trained on them for "regime change."
It is against that backdrop that fresh evidence has emerged that the White House had authorised the use of torture against detainees in Iraq in order to extract information on insurgents. It clearly fits into the picture where American strategists are dead bent upon using every avenue available to the heart of the insurgency with a view to quelling it.
Torture approval
It should also explain why the administration even took the risk of being accused of -- as it is today -- of violating the eighth amendment of the US constitution which says:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Wouldn't an executive authorisation of torture of detainees be a violation of the US constitution? Well, it is a question that Americans should ask their administration and demand an answer. Indeed, some, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , are already asking.
Bush had declared on June 26, 2003, marking UN Torture Victims Recognition Day: "The US is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the US and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating and prosecuting all acts of torture."
Isn't the same president who is now accused by the ACLU of having issued the order authorising the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq?
The ACLU charge is backed by reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that characterise methods used by the US military as "torture."
A two-page e-mail refers to an executive order stating that the president directly authorised interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is demanding that the White House confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately release the order if it exists.
Other documents detail the methods of torture based on reports filed by field agents.
A sample is an FBI document dated June 24, 2004 -- two months after the extent of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison was fully revealed to the world -- which contains the account of an FBI agent who observed "serious physical abuses" in Iraq. Marked "urgent" and sent to FBI Director Robert Mueller, the document described strangulation, beatings and the placing of lit cigarettes into detainees' ears.
Blaming game
When the extent of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was revealed in graphic details, the White House defended itself by contenting that a few "rotten apples" in the US military establishment and private contractors were responsible for the gross violations of human rights that the pictures portrayed and those who perpetrated would be punished.
Little was said -- nor is it said now -- about how successive US administrations had laid the ground for such abuses by giving an impression that the Arabs were less than human beings and it is no big deal if they were treated as animals.
Then again, we have people like Republican Senator Jim Inhofe who has said during a debate on the abuse and torture of Iraqis: "I have to say I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cellblock 1A or 1B these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents, many of them probably have American blood on their hands, and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."
Obviously, Inhofe was not aware or chose to ignore the reality that many Abu Ghraib detainees were Iraqi civilians who had little to do with the insurgency and were picked up for petty crimes and even traffic violations.
If a proper accounting was done over why American military personnel and private contractors felt they would get away with abusing, torturing and humiliating Arabs and Muslims -- as they did in Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay -- then the ball would have gone to the very top. The White House would have had to explain that its attitude, the manner in which the invasion and occupation of Iraq was carried out, and the instructions given to lower ranks of the military through the various layers had not bred an air of contempt for Arabs and Muslims that led to the despicable treatment of Iraqi, Afghan, Arab and Muslim prisoners under American detention.
What values?
Somehow, with all-too-indignant comments and lofty declarations about American values and principles, Bush himself and his close aides like Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and other senior Pentagon officials, eased themselves out of blame. For good measures, they picked a handful of soldiers and charged them for the crimes at Abu Gharib.
However, the political leadership might not be able to squirm out of the latest fallout.
It should also not be surprising that interrogators also humiliated Arab detainees by wrapping them in Israeli flags. Indeed, in all probability, that "method" was suggested by Israelis who were hired to interrogate Iraqi detainees.
An article written by Wayne Madsen appearing on the website counterpunch.org in May 2004 noted: "With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defence Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified 'carve out' sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, 'if these images (of torture in Abu Ghraib) are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse'."
The article quotes a "political appointee" within the Bush administration and US intelligence sources as saying that "the interrogators at Abu Ghraib included a number of Arabic-speaking Israelis who also helped US interrogators develop the 'R2I' (Resistance to Interrogation) techniques. Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself."
That might indeed not be news to many, given the record of the "strategic partnership" between the US and Israel.
Desperate situation
The reality on the ground in Iraq today is that the US is finding the going tough, to put it mildly. Washington planners have realised that they desperately need to wage a ruthless, make-or-break military campaign in order to show some semblance of things under control by Jan.30, when Iraq would go to the polls.
The insurgents are determined not to allow that to happen and the Americans are determined to hit the insurgents wherever they appear. The trouble is that the ranks of those who challenge the US role in Iraq are swelling, not necessarily because of any in-built hatred towards the Americans but because he life in the country has become unbearable, contrary to expectations that the removal of Saddam would have signalled a turn to the better and an end to sufferings.
Apart from the perpetual terror of having to live with the uncertainty when, where and how a stray or intended missile, bomb or bullet could kill or maim them or destroy their homes, Iraqis are suffering in all aspects of life, and there does not seem to be any way out.
In a shambles
Forget about the elections. Iraqis are worrying about how to live let alone vote. The economy of the country is in a shambles. Crude-oil exports average 1.6 million barrels a day, around half of what the country exported before the war. Sabotage against oil pipelines is a daily occurrence, and oil exports remain frozen for days after attacks while repairs are carried out. Quite simply, oil cannot be expected to generate the income to run the economy of Iraq which has 11 per cent of the world's known reserves of oil.
There is an acute crisis sparked by shortage of petrol and diesel for the average Iraqis.
Before the war, agriculture accounted for more than one-quarter of the country's gross domestic product and 20 per cent of employment. It is now in ruins. The World Bank says it would take $3.6 billion to restore the agriculture sector.
Power generation has been halved by the war. Repairs are going on, but even before the war there was not enough power since power generation facilities were destroyed during the 1991 war. The system that existed before the 2003 war was mostly patchworked.
Clean drinking water is scarce in many parts of the country. Sewage plants, hit in the first war and never repaired, have been further damaged. Sewage from Baghdad is flowing untreated into the Tigris River.
Some 1,000 Iraqi schools need to be rebuilt as a result of damage and looting, and almost 20 per cent of the country's 18,000 school buildings need comprehensive or partial repair.
Unemployment is put somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent.
State-run hospitals are suffering from chronic shortages of all kinds. Health workers are unable to move around freely and medical supplies could not be sent to most places because of unsafe streets.
Doctors in major hospitals continue to complain of shortages of drugs used in surgery and emergency operations, anti-inflammatory drugs, vital antibiotics, and cancer drugs.
Generators break down during surgeries and patients die. There is no clean water even in hospitals.
No wonder there is not much interest among Iraqis over the elections. They want hard answers to their question when they could expect an uplift, assured of their safety and the means to earn a living and lead a dignified life.
In the meantime, the battle between the US and insurgents -- no matter what their motives and objectives and who their supporters are -- is not a zero-sum game. Neither side would win it, but they fight for different considerations and reasons.
The US military would never be able to gain absolute control of Iraq. Of course, sheer military strength might help it to eventually present an atmosphere of relatively better security. But time is on the side of the insurgents, for all they need to do is to scale down their offensive and carry out carefully planned suicide bombings and ambushes that would belie all American claims of a pacified Iraq.
By the same token, the insurgents would never be able to dislodge the US from Iraq even if they were to create another Vietnam there. The US is determined to pay whatever price it takes for it to hammer down its stakes in the Middle East.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Abuse on the ground
December 23, 2004
Blessing from the top for abuse on ground
pv vivekanand
WHEN vivid, irrefutable images of prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison hit international news channels early this year, the White House contented that a few "rotten apples" in the US military establishment and private contractors were responsible for the gross violations of human rights that the pictures portrayed. Little was said about the build-up to the violations i.e. the way successive US administrations had dealt with the Arabs over the decades had given Americans the confidence that a free-for-all and no-holds-barred approach to the Arabs was permissible and accepted without question, and no one would be held accountable.
If a proper accounting was done over why American military personnel and private contractors felt they would be get away with abusing, torturing and humiliating Arabs and Muslims -- as they did in Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay -- then the ball would have gone to the very top. The White House would have had to explain that its attitude, the manner in which the invasion and occupation of Iraq was carried out, and the instructions given to lower ranks of the military through the various layers had not bred an air of contempt for Arabs and Muslims that led to the despicable treatment of Iraqi, Afghan, Arab and Muslims prisoners under American detention.
Somehow, with all-too-indignant comments and lofty declarations about American values and principles, President George W. Bush himself and his close aides like Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and senior Pentagon official, eased themselves out of blame. For good measures, they picked a handful of soldiers and charged them for the crimes at Abu Gharib.
However, they might not be able to squirm out of the latest fallout. Documents which have come to the possession of the American Civil Liberties Union show that Bush himself had issued an executive order authorising the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq.
The ACLU has also released a series of other documents, including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) complaints about the interrogation methods used by the US military and suggest that there has been always been a cover-up of the abuses.
The release of these documents follows a court order that directed government agencies to comply with a year-old request under the Freedom of Information Act filed by the ACLU, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.
ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero states: "These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests. Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers."
The Los Angeles Times was more blunt: "When will the president respond to the cascading allegations of prisoner abuse by the military?"
It continued: "The cascading allegations of prisoner abuse, of which these are but a few examples, long ago demolished the president's claim that only a few bad apples were responsible. So did reports that soldiers and officers who complained to their superiors about this mistreatment were threatened with reprisals and even physical harm. Yet as reports of unexplained deaths, humiliations and depravity across the services multiply, President Bush has recently remained silent."
Noting that Bush had said shortly after the Abu Ghraib abuses became public that "the cruelty of a few cannot diminish the honour and achievement" of the thousands who have served honourably in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times said: "It is now clear that 'the few' are in fact many. So many that either US troops are not under their commanding officers' control or they are beating, burning and sodomising suspects with the blessing -- or worse, at the direction -- of their commanders and Washington policymakers."
The ACLU has released a two-page e-mail that refers to an executive order stating that the president directly authorised interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is demanding that the White House confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists.
The e-mail is said to note that "all of those (techniques) used in these scenarios" were approved by the deputy secretary of defence in line with the presidential executive order.
The documents also seems explain what was a mystery in Iraq -- the appearance of Israeli flags in Fallujah and several other areas as reported in the Iraqi press.
It was claimed in the reports that Israeli soldiers took part in the assault along with the Americans when bodies draped in the Israeli flag were reportedly seen by many in Fallujah.
The ACLU documents say that using Israeli flags was the US military's way of humiliating Arab captives.
The Iraqi Lawyers Union have said that they had eyewitness accounts of Israeli-flag-draped bodies in Fallujah. Iraqi sources said that they had seen insurgents captured from Fallujah being shrouded in the Israeli flag in order to humiliate them.
The Los Angeles Times report did not speak about any Israeli flag in Fallujah.
The ACLU-released documents include reports of instances in which FBI officials said military interrogators pretended to be FBI agents and used the scheme as a "ruse" to glean intelligence information from prisoners.
An FBI agent said in a report to his seniors that he had witnessed military interrogators and government contract employees at the US Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using "aggressive treatment and improper interview techniques" on prisoners. Prisoners taken in Afghanistan are held there.
Another FBI field agent described abuses such as "strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings and unauthorised interrogations."
Another FBI report said that an Abu Ghraib detainee was "cuffed" and placed into a position the military called "the Scorpion" hold. Then he was doused with cold water, dropped onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the stomach.
The prisoner was spat upon and then beaten when he attempted to roll onto his stomach to protect himself. American soldiers were "beating him and grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious.
Another agent reported that he often saw detainees chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor "with no chair, food or water."
"Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left for 18-24 hours or more," the agent wrote, according to the documents.
Sometimes, the room was chilled to where a "barefooted detainee was shaking with cold." Other times, the air-conditioning was turned off and the temperature in the unventilated room rose to well over 100 degrees.
"The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him," the agent reported. "He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."
Add to these charges reports coming from Fallujah that the US military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians during the recent American assault against the restive town. Eyewitnesses quoted in the international media speak of unrestrained use of missiles, rockets and bomb and of American military trucks simply rolling over wounded civilians in the streets.
Every vehicle in the town was bombed out because of fears that they might be rigged with explosives as reported in a London paper before the Americans launched the offensive, and caught in the bombing spree were hundreds of bystanders.
Several American news organisations and newspapers have reported that the US soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians holding white flags trying to flee the conflict zones of Fallujah. In an incident that is a classic example, American soldiers on the shores of the Euphrates called in helicopter gunships to sink boats carrying civilians, including women and children, who were frantically seeking refuge from the fighting.
There are scores of reports of such horrifying incidents that have appeared in the mainstream media.
American military commanders have revealed their troops had orders to shoot all males of fighting age seen on the streets, armed or unarmed, and ruined homes across the city attest to a strategy of overwhelming force.
The military behaviour in Fallujah was such that many American soldiers themselves were traumatised by the sight of appalling injuries, the screams of wounded comrades, the fear of death, or simply the chaotic hell of combat, according to psychologists.
So what do we have here? The military of the world's sole superpower is running amok in an occupied country against the occupied people with no constraints or rules of conduct and with the blessing of their government and the world is unable to do anything about it.
In a civilised world, not only those who carried out such heinous attacks but also those who gave them the green light would be put on trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But then, it does not apply to the US, which had foreseen the eventuality and excluded its nationals from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and made sure most other countries of the world would not send Americans to the ICC by signing bilateral agreements with them.
For all we know, what has emerged so far might only be the tip of an iceberg, and more might surface, including the existence of concentration camp like facilities in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.
Someone, somewhere has to answer the charges and the White House is silent.
Blessing from the top for abuse on ground
pv vivekanand
WHEN vivid, irrefutable images of prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison hit international news channels early this year, the White House contented that a few "rotten apples" in the US military establishment and private contractors were responsible for the gross violations of human rights that the pictures portrayed. Little was said about the build-up to the violations i.e. the way successive US administrations had dealt with the Arabs over the decades had given Americans the confidence that a free-for-all and no-holds-barred approach to the Arabs was permissible and accepted without question, and no one would be held accountable.
If a proper accounting was done over why American military personnel and private contractors felt they would be get away with abusing, torturing and humiliating Arabs and Muslims -- as they did in Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay -- then the ball would have gone to the very top. The White House would have had to explain that its attitude, the manner in which the invasion and occupation of Iraq was carried out, and the instructions given to lower ranks of the military through the various layers had not bred an air of contempt for Arabs and Muslims that led to the despicable treatment of Iraqi, Afghan, Arab and Muslims prisoners under American detention.
Somehow, with all-too-indignant comments and lofty declarations about American values and principles, President George W. Bush himself and his close aides like Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and senior Pentagon official, eased themselves out of blame. For good measures, they picked a handful of soldiers and charged them for the crimes at Abu Gharib.
However, they might not be able to squirm out of the latest fallout. Documents which have come to the possession of the American Civil Liberties Union show that Bush himself had issued an executive order authorising the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq.
The ACLU has also released a series of other documents, including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) complaints about the interrogation methods used by the US military and suggest that there has been always been a cover-up of the abuses.
The release of these documents follows a court order that directed government agencies to comply with a year-old request under the Freedom of Information Act filed by the ACLU, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.
ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero states: "These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests. Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers."
The Los Angeles Times was more blunt: "When will the president respond to the cascading allegations of prisoner abuse by the military?"
It continued: "The cascading allegations of prisoner abuse, of which these are but a few examples, long ago demolished the president's claim that only a few bad apples were responsible. So did reports that soldiers and officers who complained to their superiors about this mistreatment were threatened with reprisals and even physical harm. Yet as reports of unexplained deaths, humiliations and depravity across the services multiply, President Bush has recently remained silent."
Noting that Bush had said shortly after the Abu Ghraib abuses became public that "the cruelty of a few cannot diminish the honour and achievement" of the thousands who have served honourably in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times said: "It is now clear that 'the few' are in fact many. So many that either US troops are not under their commanding officers' control or they are beating, burning and sodomising suspects with the blessing -- or worse, at the direction -- of their commanders and Washington policymakers."
The ACLU has released a two-page e-mail that refers to an executive order stating that the president directly authorised interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is demanding that the White House confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists.
The e-mail is said to note that "all of those (techniques) used in these scenarios" were approved by the deputy secretary of defence in line with the presidential executive order.
The documents also seems explain what was a mystery in Iraq -- the appearance of Israeli flags in Fallujah and several other areas as reported in the Iraqi press.
It was claimed in the reports that Israeli soldiers took part in the assault along with the Americans when bodies draped in the Israeli flag were reportedly seen by many in Fallujah.
The ACLU documents say that using Israeli flags was the US military's way of humiliating Arab captives.
The Iraqi Lawyers Union have said that they had eyewitness accounts of Israeli-flag-draped bodies in Fallujah. Iraqi sources said that they had seen insurgents captured from Fallujah being shrouded in the Israeli flag in order to humiliate them.
The Los Angeles Times report did not speak about any Israeli flag in Fallujah.
The ACLU-released documents include reports of instances in which FBI officials said military interrogators pretended to be FBI agents and used the scheme as a "ruse" to glean intelligence information from prisoners.
An FBI agent said in a report to his seniors that he had witnessed military interrogators and government contract employees at the US Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using "aggressive treatment and improper interview techniques" on prisoners. Prisoners taken in Afghanistan are held there.
Another FBI field agent described abuses such as "strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings and unauthorised interrogations."
Another FBI report said that an Abu Ghraib detainee was "cuffed" and placed into a position the military called "the Scorpion" hold. Then he was doused with cold water, dropped onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the stomach.
The prisoner was spat upon and then beaten when he attempted to roll onto his stomach to protect himself. American soldiers were "beating him and grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious.
Another agent reported that he often saw detainees chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor "with no chair, food or water."
"Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left for 18-24 hours or more," the agent wrote, according to the documents.
Sometimes, the room was chilled to where a "barefooted detainee was shaking with cold." Other times, the air-conditioning was turned off and the temperature in the unventilated room rose to well over 100 degrees.
"The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him," the agent reported. "He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."
Add to these charges reports coming from Fallujah that the US military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians during the recent American assault against the restive town. Eyewitnesses quoted in the international media speak of unrestrained use of missiles, rockets and bomb and of American military trucks simply rolling over wounded civilians in the streets.
Every vehicle in the town was bombed out because of fears that they might be rigged with explosives as reported in a London paper before the Americans launched the offensive, and caught in the bombing spree were hundreds of bystanders.
Several American news organisations and newspapers have reported that the US soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians holding white flags trying to flee the conflict zones of Fallujah. In an incident that is a classic example, American soldiers on the shores of the Euphrates called in helicopter gunships to sink boats carrying civilians, including women and children, who were frantically seeking refuge from the fighting.
There are scores of reports of such horrifying incidents that have appeared in the mainstream media.
American military commanders have revealed their troops had orders to shoot all males of fighting age seen on the streets, armed or unarmed, and ruined homes across the city attest to a strategy of overwhelming force.
The military behaviour in Fallujah was such that many American soldiers themselves were traumatised by the sight of appalling injuries, the screams of wounded comrades, the fear of death, or simply the chaotic hell of combat, according to psychologists.
So what do we have here? The military of the world's sole superpower is running amok in an occupied country against the occupied people with no constraints or rules of conduct and with the blessing of their government and the world is unable to do anything about it.
In a civilised world, not only those who carried out such heinous attacks but also those who gave them the green light would be put on trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But then, it does not apply to the US, which had foreseen the eventuality and excluded its nationals from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and made sure most other countries of the world would not send Americans to the ICC by signing bilateral agreements with them.
For all we know, what has emerged so far might only be the tip of an iceberg, and more might surface, including the existence of concentration camp like facilities in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.
Someone, somewhere has to answer the charges and the White House is silent.
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Unrealisable US dreams
THE BATTLE between the US-led coalition forces in Iraq and insurgents will never produce a winner. So decked are the elements at play. All sides are determined to fight on. Elections scheduled for January have only given an additional impetus to all sides. The US is dead bent upon showing that is has the situation under control by the time Iraqis vote on Jan.30 while the insurgents have vowed not to let that happen, not because the elections are in an end in themselves, but because they want to inflict as much damage as possible on the Americans and still keep going. It is no wonder that both sides have stepped up their activities, but the escalating violence goes beyond the US goal of ensuring the smooth conduct of the elections or the insurgents' drive to undermine the polls. Caught in the middle are the majority of the people of Iraq, writes PV Vivekanand
THE ferocity of the insurgency in Iraq and of the US military in tackling the insurgents has gone several notches up in recent months. We have seen it happening. It is also understandable why it is happening on both sides. After all, the US launched an unprecedented high-stake game when it invaded and occupied Iraq last year after toppling the Saddam Hussein regime, and next month's election in the country is crucial to the continuation of the script, and Washington has all the reason to make sure that the country is pacified ahead of the polls.
The deceptions, lies and concocted intelligence findings that US and British officials cited to justify the war against Iraq clearly showed how high the Bush administration and the Blair government in London considered the stakes to be.
It is not every second day that a country, regardless of it being the sole superpower in the world, gets to lay its hands on another country, regardless of how small or militarily weak it might be, with a view to absolutely controlling it as part of its quest for global domination an serve its strategic ally in the region. Add to the equation the natural resources of the country under occupation and its strategic location in the region.
"Failure" in Iraq is not an eventuality in the American scheme of things. To beat down any and every challenge to the US quest for absolute control of Iraq, directly or through proxies, is an American priority and part and parcel of the roots of the US approach to the Middle East in the immediate term and to the international scene in the long term. As such, it is absolutely committed to do what it takes to turn the occupied country around to the desired shape, and it would not flinch at a dozen of Fallujas.
For the insurgents, it is vital to thwart the US plans regardless of who and what ideology (or none at all) that they represent or their perceptions of the future of the country and its people. One could come up with many reasons. They include: Allowing the election to go ahead without hindrance will, in the first place, deal a severe blow to their efforts to show the world that the US and its allied forces are no longer in control of the country; the elections would see the emergence of a Shiite-led leadership of the country at the expense of the minority Sunnis who held the sway since the early years of last century; permitting the chaos to subside will allow the US and its ally Israel to shape Iraq to suit their interests and undermine Arab interests at large; and, for many of the "foreign militants," the US military presence in Iraq is nothing but a rare opportunity to vent their anti-American hostility by targeting American soldiers. Then there are the self-assumed "international jihadists" — the likes of Abu Musab Zarqawi, who — it is a strong bet — would not able to produce a cohesive, realistic answer to the question what they want in Iraq. Add to the equation those external players who fear that allowing the US to pacify Iraq would only lead to the American guns being turned around to be trained on them for "regime change."
It is against that backdrop that fresh evidence has emerged that the White House had authorised the use of torture against detainees in Iraq in order to extract information on insurgents. It clearly fits into the picture where American strategists are dead bent upon using every avenue available to the heart of the insurgency with a view to quelling it.
It should also explain why the administration even took the risk of being accused of — as it is today — of violating the eighth amendment of the US constitution which says:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Wouldn't an executive authorisation of torture of detaiees be a violation of the US constitution? Well, it is a question that Americans should ask their administration and demand an answer. Indeed, some, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , are already asking.
US President George Bush declared on June 26, 2003, marking UN Torture Victims Recognition Day:
"The US is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the US and the community of law abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating and prosecuting all acts of torture."
Isn't the same president who is now accused by the ACLU of having issued the order authorising the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq?
The ACLU charge is backed by reports gained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that characterise methods used by the US military as "torture."
A two-page e-mail refers to an executive order stating that the president directly authorised interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is demanding that the White House confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists.
Other documents details the methods of torture based on reports filed by field agents.
A sample is an FBI document dated June 24, 2004 — two months after the extent of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison was fully revealed to the world — which contains the account of an FBI agent who observed "serious physical abuses" in Iraq. Marked "urgent" and sent to FBI Director Robert Mueller, the document described strangulation, beatings and the placing of lit cigarettes into detainees' ears.
When the extent of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was revealed in graphic details, the White House defended itself by contenting that a few "rotten apples" in the US military establishment and private contractors were responsible for the gross violations of human rights that the pictures portrayed and those who perpetrated would be punished.
Little was said – nor is it said now — about how successive US administrations had laid the ground to such abuses by giving an impression that the Arabs were less than human beings and it is no big if they were treated as animals.
Then again, we have people like Republican Senator Jim Inhofe who has said during a debate on the abuse and torture of Iraqis:
"I have to say I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cellblock 1A or 1B these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents, many of them probably have American blood on their hands, and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."
Obviously, Inhofe was not aware or chose to ignore the reality that many Abu Ghraib detainees were Iraqi civilians who had little to do with the insurgency and were picked up for petty crimes and even traffic violations.
If a proper accounting was done over why American military personnel and private contractors felt they would get away with abusing, torturing and humiliating Arabs and Muslims — as they did in Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay — then the ball would have gone to the very top. The White House would have had to explain that its attitude, the manner in which the invasion and occupation of Iraq was carried out, and the instructions given to lower ranks of the military through the various layers had not bred an air of contempt for Arabs and Muslims that led to the despicable treatment of Iraqi, Afghan, Arab and Muslims prisoners under American detention.
Somehow, with all-too-indignant comments and lofty declarations about American values and principles, Bush himself and his close aides like Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and senior Pentagon official, eased themselves out of blame. For good measures, they picked a handful of soldiers and charged them for the crimes at Abu Gharib.
However, they might not be able to squirm out of the latest fallout.
It should also not be surprising that interrogators also humiliated Arab detainees by wraping them in Israeli flags. Indeed, in all probability, that "method" was suggested by Israelis who were hired to interrogate detainees in Iraq.
An article written by Wayne Madsen appearing on the website counterpunch.org in May 2004 noted: "With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defence Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified 'carve out' sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, 'if these images (of torture in Abu Ghraib) are released to the public, obviously its going to make matters worse'."
The article quotes a "political appointee" within the Bush administration and US intelligence sources as saying that "the interrogators at Abu Ghraib included a number of Arabic-speaking Israelis who also helped US interrogators develop the 'R2I' (Resistance to Interrogation) techniques. Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself."
That might indeed not be news to many, given the record of the "strategic partnership" between the US and Israel.
The reality on the ground in Iraq today is that the US is finding the going tough, to put it mildly. Washington planners have realised that they need to wage a ruthless, make-or-break military campaign in order to show some semblance of things under control by Jan.30, when the country would go to the polls.
The insurgents are determined not to allow that to happen and the Americans are determined to hit the insurgents wherever they appear. The trouble is that the ranks of those who challenge the US role in the country are swelling, not necessarily because of any in-built hatred towards the US but because life in the country has become unbearable, contrary to expectations that the removal of Saddam would have signalled a turn to the better and an end to suffering.
Apart from the perptual terror of having to live with the uncertainty when, where and how a stray or intended missile, bomb or bullet could kill or maim them or destroy their homes, Iraqis are suffering in all aspects of life, and there does not seem to be any way out.
Forget about the elections. Iraqis are worrying about how to live let alone vote.
The economy of the country is in shambles.
Crude-oil exports average 1.6 million barrels a day, around half of what the country exported before the war. Sabotage against oil pipelines isa daily occurrence, and oil exports remain frozen for days after attacks while repairs are carried out. Quite simply, oil cannot be expected to generate the income to run the economy in the country which has 11 per cent of the world's known reserves of oil.
There is an acute crisis sparked by shortage of petrol and diesel for average Iraqis.
Before the war, agriculture accounted for more than one-quarter of the country's gross domestic product and 20 percent of employment. It is now in ruins. The World Bank says it would take $3.6 billion to restore the agriculture sector.
Electricity production was halved by the war. Repairs are going on, but even before the war there was not enough power since power generation facilities were destroyed during the 1991 war. The system that existed before the 2003 war was mostly patchworked.
Clean drinking water is scarce in many parts of the country. Sewage plants, hit in the first war and never repaired, have been further damaged. Sewage from Baghdad is flowing untreated into the Tigris River.
Some 1,000 Iraqi schools need to be rebuilt as a result of damage and looting, and almost 20 percent of the country's 18,000 school buildings need comprehensive or partial repair.
Enemployment is put somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent.
State-run hospitals are suffering from chronic shortages of all kinds. Health workers are unable to move around freely and medical supplies could be not sent to most places because of unsafe streets.
Doctors in major hospitals continue to complain of shortages of drugs used in surgery and emergency operations, anti-inflammatory drugs, vital antibiotics, and cancer drugs.
Generators break down during surgeries and patients die. There is no clean water even in hospitals.
No wonder there is not much interest among Iraqis over the elections. They want hard answers to their question when they could expect an uplift, assured of their safety and the means to earn a living and lead a dignified life.
In the meantime, the battle between the US and insurgents — no matter what their motives and objectives and who their supporters are — is not a zero sum game. Neither side would win it, but for different considerations and reasons.
The US military would never be able to gain absolute control of Iraq. Of course, sheer military strength might help it to eventually present an atmosphere of relatively better security, but time is on the side of the insurgents, for all they need to do is to scale down their offensive and carry out carefully planned suicide bombings and ambushes that would belie all American claims of a pacified Iraq.
By the same token, the insurgents would never be able to dislodge the US from Iraq even if they were to create another Vietnam there. The US is determined to pay whatever price it takes for it to hammer down its stakes in the Middle East.
THE ferocity of the insurgency in Iraq and of the US military in tackling the insurgents has gone several notches up in recent months. We have seen it happening. It is also understandable why it is happening on both sides. After all, the US launched an unprecedented high-stake game when it invaded and occupied Iraq last year after toppling the Saddam Hussein regime, and next month's election in the country is crucial to the continuation of the script, and Washington has all the reason to make sure that the country is pacified ahead of the polls.
The deceptions, lies and concocted intelligence findings that US and British officials cited to justify the war against Iraq clearly showed how high the Bush administration and the Blair government in London considered the stakes to be.
It is not every second day that a country, regardless of it being the sole superpower in the world, gets to lay its hands on another country, regardless of how small or militarily weak it might be, with a view to absolutely controlling it as part of its quest for global domination an serve its strategic ally in the region. Add to the equation the natural resources of the country under occupation and its strategic location in the region.
"Failure" in Iraq is not an eventuality in the American scheme of things. To beat down any and every challenge to the US quest for absolute control of Iraq, directly or through proxies, is an American priority and part and parcel of the roots of the US approach to the Middle East in the immediate term and to the international scene in the long term. As such, it is absolutely committed to do what it takes to turn the occupied country around to the desired shape, and it would not flinch at a dozen of Fallujas.
For the insurgents, it is vital to thwart the US plans regardless of who and what ideology (or none at all) that they represent or their perceptions of the future of the country and its people. One could come up with many reasons. They include: Allowing the election to go ahead without hindrance will, in the first place, deal a severe blow to their efforts to show the world that the US and its allied forces are no longer in control of the country; the elections would see the emergence of a Shiite-led leadership of the country at the expense of the minority Sunnis who held the sway since the early years of last century; permitting the chaos to subside will allow the US and its ally Israel to shape Iraq to suit their interests and undermine Arab interests at large; and, for many of the "foreign militants," the US military presence in Iraq is nothing but a rare opportunity to vent their anti-American hostility by targeting American soldiers. Then there are the self-assumed "international jihadists" — the likes of Abu Musab Zarqawi, who — it is a strong bet — would not able to produce a cohesive, realistic answer to the question what they want in Iraq. Add to the equation those external players who fear that allowing the US to pacify Iraq would only lead to the American guns being turned around to be trained on them for "regime change."
It is against that backdrop that fresh evidence has emerged that the White House had authorised the use of torture against detainees in Iraq in order to extract information on insurgents. It clearly fits into the picture where American strategists are dead bent upon using every avenue available to the heart of the insurgency with a view to quelling it.
It should also explain why the administration even took the risk of being accused of — as it is today — of violating the eighth amendment of the US constitution which says:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Wouldn't an executive authorisation of torture of detaiees be a violation of the US constitution? Well, it is a question that Americans should ask their administration and demand an answer. Indeed, some, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , are already asking.
US President George Bush declared on June 26, 2003, marking UN Torture Victims Recognition Day:
"The US is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the US and the community of law abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating and prosecuting all acts of torture."
Isn't the same president who is now accused by the ACLU of having issued the order authorising the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq?
The ACLU charge is backed by reports gained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that characterise methods used by the US military as "torture."
A two-page e-mail refers to an executive order stating that the president directly authorised interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is demanding that the White House confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists.
Other documents details the methods of torture based on reports filed by field agents.
A sample is an FBI document dated June 24, 2004 — two months after the extent of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison was fully revealed to the world — which contains the account of an FBI agent who observed "serious physical abuses" in Iraq. Marked "urgent" and sent to FBI Director Robert Mueller, the document described strangulation, beatings and the placing of lit cigarettes into detainees' ears.
When the extent of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was revealed in graphic details, the White House defended itself by contenting that a few "rotten apples" in the US military establishment and private contractors were responsible for the gross violations of human rights that the pictures portrayed and those who perpetrated would be punished.
Little was said – nor is it said now — about how successive US administrations had laid the ground to such abuses by giving an impression that the Arabs were less than human beings and it is no big if they were treated as animals.
Then again, we have people like Republican Senator Jim Inhofe who has said during a debate on the abuse and torture of Iraqis:
"I have to say I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cellblock 1A or 1B these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents, many of them probably have American blood on their hands, and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."
Obviously, Inhofe was not aware or chose to ignore the reality that many Abu Ghraib detainees were Iraqi civilians who had little to do with the insurgency and were picked up for petty crimes and even traffic violations.
If a proper accounting was done over why American military personnel and private contractors felt they would get away with abusing, torturing and humiliating Arabs and Muslims — as they did in Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay — then the ball would have gone to the very top. The White House would have had to explain that its attitude, the manner in which the invasion and occupation of Iraq was carried out, and the instructions given to lower ranks of the military through the various layers had not bred an air of contempt for Arabs and Muslims that led to the despicable treatment of Iraqi, Afghan, Arab and Muslims prisoners under American detention.
Somehow, with all-too-indignant comments and lofty declarations about American values and principles, Bush himself and his close aides like Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and senior Pentagon official, eased themselves out of blame. For good measures, they picked a handful of soldiers and charged them for the crimes at Abu Gharib.
However, they might not be able to squirm out of the latest fallout.
It should also not be surprising that interrogators also humiliated Arab detainees by wraping them in Israeli flags. Indeed, in all probability, that "method" was suggested by Israelis who were hired to interrogate detainees in Iraq.
An article written by Wayne Madsen appearing on the website counterpunch.org in May 2004 noted: "With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defence Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified 'carve out' sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, 'if these images (of torture in Abu Ghraib) are released to the public, obviously its going to make matters worse'."
The article quotes a "political appointee" within the Bush administration and US intelligence sources as saying that "the interrogators at Abu Ghraib included a number of Arabic-speaking Israelis who also helped US interrogators develop the 'R2I' (Resistance to Interrogation) techniques. Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself."
That might indeed not be news to many, given the record of the "strategic partnership" between the US and Israel.
The reality on the ground in Iraq today is that the US is finding the going tough, to put it mildly. Washington planners have realised that they need to wage a ruthless, make-or-break military campaign in order to show some semblance of things under control by Jan.30, when the country would go to the polls.
The insurgents are determined not to allow that to happen and the Americans are determined to hit the insurgents wherever they appear. The trouble is that the ranks of those who challenge the US role in the country are swelling, not necessarily because of any in-built hatred towards the US but because life in the country has become unbearable, contrary to expectations that the removal of Saddam would have signalled a turn to the better and an end to suffering.
Apart from the perptual terror of having to live with the uncertainty when, where and how a stray or intended missile, bomb or bullet could kill or maim them or destroy their homes, Iraqis are suffering in all aspects of life, and there does not seem to be any way out.
Forget about the elections. Iraqis are worrying about how to live let alone vote.
The economy of the country is in shambles.
Crude-oil exports average 1.6 million barrels a day, around half of what the country exported before the war. Sabotage against oil pipelines isa daily occurrence, and oil exports remain frozen for days after attacks while repairs are carried out. Quite simply, oil cannot be expected to generate the income to run the economy in the country which has 11 per cent of the world's known reserves of oil.
There is an acute crisis sparked by shortage of petrol and diesel for average Iraqis.
Before the war, agriculture accounted for more than one-quarter of the country's gross domestic product and 20 percent of employment. It is now in ruins. The World Bank says it would take $3.6 billion to restore the agriculture sector.
Electricity production was halved by the war. Repairs are going on, but even before the war there was not enough power since power generation facilities were destroyed during the 1991 war. The system that existed before the 2003 war was mostly patchworked.
Clean drinking water is scarce in many parts of the country. Sewage plants, hit in the first war and never repaired, have been further damaged. Sewage from Baghdad is flowing untreated into the Tigris River.
Some 1,000 Iraqi schools need to be rebuilt as a result of damage and looting, and almost 20 percent of the country's 18,000 school buildings need comprehensive or partial repair.
Enemployment is put somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent.
State-run hospitals are suffering from chronic shortages of all kinds. Health workers are unable to move around freely and medical supplies could be not sent to most places because of unsafe streets.
Doctors in major hospitals continue to complain of shortages of drugs used in surgery and emergency operations, anti-inflammatory drugs, vital antibiotics, and cancer drugs.
Generators break down during surgeries and patients die. There is no clean water even in hospitals.
No wonder there is not much interest among Iraqis over the elections. They want hard answers to their question when they could expect an uplift, assured of their safety and the means to earn a living and lead a dignified life.
In the meantime, the battle between the US and insurgents — no matter what their motives and objectives and who their supporters are — is not a zero sum game. Neither side would win it, but for different considerations and reasons.
The US military would never be able to gain absolute control of Iraq. Of course, sheer military strength might help it to eventually present an atmosphere of relatively better security, but time is on the side of the insurgents, for all they need to do is to scale down their offensive and carry out carefully planned suicide bombings and ambushes that would belie all American claims of a pacified Iraq.
By the same token, the insurgents would never be able to dislodge the US from Iraq even if they were to create another Vietnam there. The US is determined to pay whatever price it takes for it to hammer down its stakes in the Middle East.
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