Posts Tagged ‘war’
Beating the drums of war early in 2013
The Algerian army has beefed up its positions on the border with war-torn Mali to prevent incursions by armed rebels fleeing north. Algeria, which had always opposed military intervention in Mali, was reluctantly drawn into the conflict when it agreed to let French warplanes use its airspace, and closed its 1,400-kilometre southern border shortly afterwards. Photo: Reuters
Little noticed by the world’s media, the Munich Security Conference has in 2013 has just concluded. Its organisers and sponsors call it “the major security policy conference worldwide”. In this year’s conference – attended by about 400 participants from nearly 90 countries – a speech was delivered by the Vice President of the USA, Joseph Biden.
Biden mixed deception with aggression. This is what he said about current conflict the USA is prosecuting:
Today, we’re in the process of turning the page on more than a decade of conflict following the September 11, 2001 attack, and we ended the war in Iraq responsibly. And together we’re responsibly drawing down in Afghanistan, and by the end of next year, the transition will be complete.”
And here is what Biden has threatened:
… we took the fight to core Al Qaeda in the FATA, we were cognizant of an evolving threat posed by affiliates like AQAP in Yemen, al-Shabaab in Somalia, AQI in Iraq and Syria and AQIM in North Africa.”
The USA is estimated to have from 700 to over 1,000 military bases of all kinds in the world.
At the Munich Security Conference leading political, military and defence industry representatives of the major powers, along with invited officials from other nations, met to discuss current and future military operations and geo-strategic issues.
That’s the sanitised version. The unsanitised version is plain to see in the speeches, such as Biden’s, and the statements. What this perverse gathering of war-mongers demonstrated is the consensus that exists among the countries of western Europe, amongst the USA and its allies, for an expanded political and military drive to install puppet governments and seize control of land, water and energy in the Middle East, in Central Asia and in the African continent. [See the map of US military bases, courtesy of the New Humanist.]
Biden in his speech revealed the growing darkness of widening conflict planned by this group:
As President Obama has made clear to Iranian leaders, our policy is not containment – it is is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The ball is in the government of Iran’s court, and it’s well past time for Tehran to adopt a serious, good-faith approach to negotiations …”
And:
“The United States is taking difficult but critical steps to put ourselves on a sounder economic footing. And I might add, it’s never been a real good bet to bet against America.”
The American vice president then went on to allege that “Iran’s leaders need not sentence their people to economic deprivation and international isolation”.
Who in truth is responsible for that deprivation, what is the human cost of that designed deprivation and isolation?
US Vice President Joe Biden in a helicopter over Kabul, Afghanistan, Jan. 11, 2011. Photo: White House
Less than a week before this Munich Security Conference began, Iranian Mothers for Peace in an open letter to Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, and Margaret Chan, the Director General of the World Heath Organization, alerted them to the critical shortage of vital medication due to the US/EU-led sanctions on Iran and their deadly impact on the lives and health of the Iranian population.
Excerpts from the letter written by the Iranian Mothers for Peace:
Dear Dr. Margaret Chan
As you know, the illegal and inhumane actions led by the US and the EU, targeting the country and the population of Iran, with the stated intention to put pressure on the government of Iran, have intensified in the past two years and increasingly harsher sanctions are imposed almost on a monthly basis. The regulations governing these inhumane and arbitrary sanctions are executed with such strict inflexibility that Iran is now excluded from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) and the sanctions on banking transactions are preventing Iran from even purchasing its needed medical supplies and instruments. On the other hand, to avoid suspicion for dealing with Iran, the European banks are fearful not to engage in any kind of financial transactions with Iran and, therefore, in practice, refuse any transfer of payment for medical and health-related items and raw materials needed for the production of domestic pharmaceutical drugs, even payment for well-recognized drugs for the treatment of Special Diseases, which are not of dual use.”We ask you: What could possibly be the intended target of the wealthy and powerful US and European statesmen’s ‘targeted’ and ‘smart’ sanctions but to destroy the physical and psychological health of the population through the increase of disease and disability? The right to health and access to medical treatment and medication is one of the fundamental human rights anywhere in the world. Please do not allow the killing of our sick children, beloved families, and fellow Iranians from the lack of medicine, caught in instrumental policies of coercion and power.”
The Munich Security Conference 2013 in session,
Unheeding of the clamour for peace worldwide and blind to the appalling cost in life, the gathering of war-mongers in Munich listened to Biden:
“That’s why the United States applauds and stands with France and other partners in Mali, and why we are providing intelligence support, transportation for the French and African troops and refueling capability for French aircraft. The fight against AQIM may be far from America’s borders, but it is fundamentally in America’s interest.”
Representatives of the countries of western Europe – of the same governments bent on now impoverishing their own people just as surely as they have wreaked havoc in the countries of the South with neo-liberal mutations of the ‘structural adjustment’ doctrine of the 1980s – made clear that they were only too willing to participate in the re-colonialisation of the Middle East and North Africa in cooperation with the USA. The German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere stressed the importance of cooperation with the US and their support for the Western intervention in Syria, as well as the war in Mali.
Scholar Horace Campbell in his new book, ‘Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya‘, has argued that the military organisation is the instrument through which the capitalist class of North America and Europe seeks to impose its political will on the rest of the world, “warped by the increasingly outmoded neoliberal form of capitalism”. The intervention in Libya, he said, characterised by bombing campaigns, military information operations, third party countries, and private contractors, exemplifies this new model.
At the time, they called it ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Libya, they tolerated suppression in Bahrain and Yemen, and then they supported civil war incitement and escalation of violence in Syria. The results have been: dangerous new urban geopolitics and the militarisation of city spaces as can be seen in Aleppo, Benghazi, Cairo and Manama; the privatisation of state violence through private security firms and mercenaries; the overuse of the democratic carrot and the economic sticks of debt, fiscal discipline, and international investment; the violence with which new forms of political and social participation, organisation, and representation (which include women, the unemployed, the urban poor) are met. This is the militarised world that has been described anew by the Biden speech.
Syria in 2013 and the opposition to war
The mother of a Free Syrian Army fighter mourns as his body brought home during his funeral in Aleppo December 21, 2012. Photo: Reuters/Ahmed Jadalla
A newly elected government in the USA is as intent as its predecessors were on deepening war and conflict where it already exists, and on embarking on new campaigns of state aggression and violence. The conflict in Syria has been converted by the United States of America and its partner western aggressors from a civil movement for democratic rights into a bitter and bloody civil war that has killed more than 20,000 and has made refugees of more than half a million people.
Unnoticed almost in the clamour for war that resounds in the capitals of USA and its western allies is new evidence from a United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry which has stated, finally and plainly, that a sectarian civil war is raging in Syria. Its findings are based upon extensive investigations and interviews between September 28 to December 16, 2012. The Commission has detailed massacres and gross violations of human rights that have polarised Syria.
Investigators, headed by Carla del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, have interviewed more than 1,200 victims and refugees. The report produced is a devastating indictment of the United States and other western powers – said International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) – who have worked with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to depose of Bashar al-Assad by recruiting and aiding a Sunni insurgency overwhelmingly made up of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, Salafist and Al Qaeda-style groups.
Map of the conflict areas and zones of uprising in Syria from Political Geography Now
“The UN independent panel finds more breaches of human rights law by parties to Syrian conflict,” said the UN news service. The Commission has been mandated by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to investigate and record all violations of international human rights law in Syria, where at least 20,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. The conflict is now in its 22nd month and apart from the enormous number of refugees has left an estimated 4 million people inside Syria needing urgent humanitarian assistance. “The Syrian Government has yet to allow the Commission to undertake investigations inside the country,” said the UN news report.
That lack of access may change in early 2013 if the movement Peace In Syria is successful. This initiative consists in calling a delegation of high-ranking personalities of the international public to go to Syria with the aim of opening a national dialogue between the main political and social forces involved in the ongoing armed conflict to pave a way for a political solution.
As highlighted by Monthly Review’s MRZine, the peace initiative has said: “We are highly concerned not only because the conflict has been acquiring a dangerous geo-political dimension. The legitimate and at the beginning also peaceful movement of the Syrian people – along with their Arab brothers – for democratic rights is also in danger of being converted into a sectarian civil war with massive regional and international involvement.”
Quick tabulation of the anti-war survey results from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
Utterly unmindful of the calls for peace within the Middle East and outside, the government of the USA is just as brazenly ignoring the anti-war movement at home. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press conducted a survey whose finding is that the American public continues to say that the USA does not have a responsibility to do something about the fighting there.
“And there continues to be substantial opposition to sending arms to anti-government forces in Syria,” said the survey report. “Only about quarter of Americans (27%) say the U.S. has a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria; more than twice as many (63%) say it does not. These views are virtually unchanged from March. Similarly, just 24% favor the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria, while 65% are opposed.”
Far more bluntly, Veterans For Peace has urgently called on the United States and NATO “to cease all military activity in Syria, halt all U.S. and NATO shipments of weapons, and abandon all threats to further escalate the violence under which the people of Syria are suffering. NATO troops and missiles should be withdrawn from Turkey and other surrounding nations. U.S. ships should exit the Mediterranean”.
A fire burns after what activist said was shelling by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad at Ain Terma area in Ghouta, east of Damascus December 18, 2012. Picture taken December 18, 2012. Photo: Reuters/ Karm Seif/ Shaam News Network
The organisation draws upon the experiences of military veterans in working for the abolition of war. “We have not entered into this work without consideration of many situations similar to the current one in Syria,” said the organisation, and added, “No good can come from U.S. military intervention in Syria. The people of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and dozens of other nations in Latin America and around the world have not been made better off by U.S. military intervention.”
But the USA, its aggressor western allies and NATO are intent on prosecuting war in Syria and gathering for greater, bloodier conflict. On December 17, Israel’s Haaretz reported that US cargo airplanes carrying military equipment landed in Jordanian airports over several days and that US military forces in the country have been significantly built up. The USA, Germany and the Netherlands have dispatched Patriot anti-missile systems and hundreds of troops to Turkey’s border and are seeking a pretext to use them. Hence last week, US officials accused the Syrian government of firing Scud missiles against opposition groups near Maara, north of Aleppo near the Turkish border, a claim Syria denied as “untrue rumours”. [See Al Jazeera’s live diary of events in Syria for more.]
It is now left to the citizens of the USA and its western allies – citizens who are no less bludgeoned daily by the austerity measures imposed by their governments while their criminally-minded banking and corporate elite frame and set policy both national and international – to derail the war machine. A number of good reasons for doing so can be found in the work of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, whose new 10-page update – the latest in a series of reports and updates produced by the Commission since it began its work in August 2011 – paints a bleak picture of the devastating conflict and continuing international human rights and humanitarian law violations taking place in Syria.
The full 10-page update can be viewed here – it describes the unrelenting violence resulting in many thousands of dead and wounded, and also focuses on arbitrary detention and disappearances, huge displacement and the massive physical destruction in Syria. It describes how World Heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed, as well as entire neighbourhoods of several of the country’s biggest cities. Civilians continue to bear the brunt as the front lines between Government forces and the armed opposition have moved deeper into urban areas. The Commission of Inquiry will present its fourth report to the UN Human Rights Council in March 2013.
Food, climate, conflict – all that caused the Horn of Africa refugee crisis
New arrivals from Somalia waiting to be registered at Dagehaley camp, in Dadaab. Photo: Kate Holt/IRIN
IRIN News has reported that about 1,300 Somalis are arriving at the Dadaab refugee camps in northeast Kenya every day. The help they are seeking – refuge from a severe drought and the effects of years of conflict – is being handed out as fast as possible. But in a camp complex that has already been stretched well beyond its limits, the new arrivals need more assistance than can be provided. The nutritional state of older children, as well as under fives, is of concern, but the local Kenyan population is faring little better.
“The number has skyrocketed,” a registration expert with the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, told IRIN. The official said UNHCR had had to hire more employees, who now work in shifts, to accommodate the rush. The three Dadaab refugee camps – Dagahaley, Ifo and Hagadera – were originally meant to cater for 90,000 refugees, but housed at least 380,000 people, according to UNHCR. Despite the overcrowding, the government of Kenya has yet to allow people to move into a fourth camp, known as Ifo II, which stands empty.
“Water systems, latrines and healthcare facilities are ready to use but are standing idle,” Oxfam said in a statement. Oxfam reported that 60,000 new arrivals were living in basic tents outside the camp boundaries, with limited access to clean water or latrines, risking an outbreak of disease. Those living in these informal settlements are some of the worst-off. In the settlements on the outskirts of Dagahaley camp, 17.5 percent of children between six months and almost five years old are severely malnourished, three times the emergency level, according to Caroline Abu-Sada, a research unit coordinator with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Newly arrived Somali refugees waiting to be registered at Dagahaley camp, Dadaab in Kenya. Photo: Al Jazeera/EPA
The lack of water in the outskirts was a real concern. Refugees are only able to obtain up to three litres of water a day, 80 percent less than they need according to the Sphere Standards, which are already based on emergency situations. Some are only receiving 500ml for drinking, bathing, washing clothes, and everything else. By comparison, in North America and Japan most people use 350l a day, according to the World Water Council. Water is now being trucked to the camp outskirts by MSF and CARE, but there were previously only 48 taps for 20,000 people. Abu-Sada said diarrhoea was already rampant, along with skin rashes and respiratory infections.
More than 11 million people are estimated to be in need of humanitarian aid across the region, a UN News report has said. Almost 500,000 children in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya are suffering from imminent, life-threatening severe malnutrition. In addition, over 1.6 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished, according to UNICEF.
In addition to the thousands of people from Somalia seeking refuge in Ethiopia and Kenya, millions more are living on the brink of extreme poverty and hunger, suffering the consequences of failed rains and the impact of climate change, said the agency. UNICEF has appealed for $31.8 million to ramp up assistance to the Horn of Africa over the next three months, especially for children, who are suffering the brunt of the crisis. It says the most urgent needs include therapeutic feeding, vitamin supplementation, water and sanitation services, child protection measures and immunization.
In Geneva, two UN human rights experts appealed to the global community to take “concerted and urgent” measures to assist the millions who are suffering in the region, warning of large-scale starvation if international intervention is not forthcoming. Shamsul Bari, the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia, noted that drastically increasing food prices and continuing conflict and insecurity have caused a huge displacement of the population, with thousands of Somalis fleeing to Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti every day. Bari, who last week visited Somalia and Kenya, said the situation was markedly worse than in March, when he had expressed concerns over the slow response of the humanitarian community to the situation.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, said the international community should be prepared for more such droughts. “This crisis looks like a natural calamity, but it is in part manufactured,” De Schutter said, adding that climate change will result in such events being more frequent. He called for, among other measures, emergency food reserves in strategic positions, and better preparedness for drought, for which Governments must be held to account.
“With a rate of child malnutrition above 30 per cent in many regions of these countries, the failure of the international community to act would result in major violations of the right to food,” De Schutter said. “International law imposes on States in a position to help that they do so immediately, where lives are at stake.”
Shokuri Abdullai like most mothers in Bisle feeds her family boiled maize in the Somali region's Shinile zone (Ethiopia). Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Al Jazeera has reported that Kenya has agreed to open a new camp near its Somalia border to cope with the influx of refugees fleeing the region’s worst drought in 60 years. The lfo II camp in Dabaab will open its doors to 80,000 refugees within 10 days, the Kenyan government said. Prime Minister Raila Odinga agreed to the opening to the new camp, after visiting Dadaab’s three existing camps where an estimated 380,000 refugees are now living at facilities intended to cope with a population of 90,000 people.
A spokesman for the charity Save the Children, said “more children have died in Dadaab in the first four months of the year than all of last year”. Many Somali refugees at the camp have travelled through harsh conditions with little food or water, and no humanitarian assistance, often abandoning members of their family who have died or are so weak to travel. Al Jazeera’s Azad Essa, who reported from the Dabaab camp, said, “Over the past month, around 20,000 have made their way to Dadaab, many of them through similar means”.
Dadaab’s existing camps were set up in 1991 to host refugees fleeing war in Somalia. Between 40,000 and 60,000 are thought to be living outside the boundaries of the complex – existing as refugees beyond the current scope and control of the UN. Somalis have been fleeing from war for years now, but the drought, affecting 12 million people across the Horn of Africa, has brought the threat of a new humanitarian catastrophe to the region, with many people also seeking refuge in Ethiopia. Al Jazeera has more on the refugee crisis in the Horn of Africa here.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has provided a ‘snapshot’ of the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa country:
* 2.85 million Somalis require urgent aid – that’s one in three people
* At least one in three children are malnourished in parts of southern Somalia
* More than 460 Somali children have died in nutrition centres in Somalia between January and May this year
* Malnutrition rates among new arrivals in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya range between 30 and 40 percent
* As of late June, 60,200 Somalis were registered in Kenya this year — a more than 100 percent increase compared with the same period last year
* Life expectancy is 50.4 years, according to the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP)
* Women dying in childbirth: 1,000 per 100,000 live births reported, according to UNICEF
* One in 10 Somali children dies before their first birthday
* Primary school enrolment rate is 23 percent
* Average HIV prevalence level estimated at 0.5 percent of the population aged 15 to 49
* Percentage of people with access to safe, clean water: 29 percent
(Sources: OCHA, UNICEF, UNDP)
It is not just Somalis who are suffering, Euronews has reported. Famine is affecting all countries in the Horn of Africa. Now 11 million people need help to survive the food shortages. In Habaswein in the far north of Kenya there has been no rain for a year. Many animals have died. Others have been taken further north in search of water. Only women, children and the elderly remain in the village.
Like many others, Fatuma Ahmed depends on rations of maize, beans and oil provided by aid agencies and the government. She said: “I have no husband. I’m raising my children alone. We had some animals but they’ve all died. Now we’re depending on aid from charities. What I’m cooking now is the only meal my family will eat today.” In the village of Fini, farmers try to move a dying cow into the shade. The animal will only last a few days. This is not the first time this area has been hit by drought, but according to villagers like Mori Omar, it has never been this bad.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this. I’m 56 years old, but I look more like 80 because of many years of not having enough food. During the droughts, there’s no meat or milk,” she said. There is a growing consensus that climate change is to blame for the driest period in 60 years. The UN says droughts are becoming more frequent – before they used to be every five or 10 years, now it is every two.
IRIN News has a report, ‘Somalis living from drought to drought’, on the perilous state of food availability in Bisle, the Somali region. Every day, 500g of boiled wheat is divided up between two adults, four children, a calf, a goat and a donkey in the Farah household. It is the only food they have had after rains failed for the past two seasons. The 15kg sack of wheat is provided to about 1,200 people in the Bisle area, which has four settlements, under the government-run Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) as payment for work, such as digging water holes.
“It is boiled wheat for breakfast and for the main meal – we don’t have anything else – no milk, no meat, no vegetables, no oil,” says Maria Farah, the mother. Not surprisingly, two of her children are severely malnourished. The calf and goat that share their “ari” – a collapsible egg-shaped hut made of sticks and covered with sheeting – are emaciated. It is too hot for them outside, in temperatures that soar beyond 40 degrees Celsius. There is no water in their settlement, about 54km north of Dire Dawa town in the Somali region, one of the worst hit by drought in Ethiopia. More than a million people have been affected.
Libya, the economic reasons for invasion
Libyan artists work on revolutionary posters at press center for the new interim government on February 28, 2011 in Benghazi, Libya. Officials have set up a transitional council to run day to day affairs in the eastern half of the country controlled by the opposition to the Gaddafi regime. Photo: Al Jazeera/John Moore/Getty Images
Two hard-hitting analyses from Pambazuka help refute the lies pouring out of the corporate-military-oligopolist western mainstream news media about Libya. In ‘Five Principles Of War Propaganda’ the Pambazuka comment has pointed out that calling Libya a ‘failed state’ is like the kettle calling the pot black. Libya has the highest standard of living in Africa and unlike the US or UK, it has a high standard of healthcare, education and social infrastructure. As Noam Chomsky comments, the US is fast becoming a failed state – a danger to its own people – as the 45 million Americans living in poverty will attest to. Even in those countries where the US and its allies have claimed to support the uprisings such as Egypt and Tunisia, it is notable that to date, although the dictators have gone, the regimes remain in charge – so for the US little has changed. In a recent interview, Michel Collon of InvestigAction discusses US strategies in Africa. One of those strategies is the military occupation of Africa through AFRICOM. From this position it is clear that the propaganda of the ‘theatre of Libya’ has huge significance, as it offers access to a country that intersects with Europe [NATO], the Middle East and Africa – and one that has oil.
There is evidence of the use of depleted uranium by the neo-colonial forces attempting to invade Libya, according to this Pambazuka analysis. “Disturbingly, depleted uranium weapons have been used in Libya, both by the USA and subsequently by NATO upon assuming command and control of the NFZ responsibilities. The United States Pentagon’s denial of use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons has been met with scepticism, especially considering USAF A-10 warthog tank-buster aircraft deployed over Libya and given that the United States has a long history of only admitting to deploying DU radioactive material months or years after it has been used.” Based on news video footage, it is more than likely that depleted uranium has been used more widely than originally thought since the USA has launched shells, bombs and cruise missiles containing depleted uranium in the past in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a statement that the Libyan armed forces had used cluster bombs in Misrata. The Libyan government has denied these charges and challenged HRW to prove them; most interestingly no casualties from cluster bombs have been confirmed in Misrata.
A wounded Libyan rebel flashes the victory sign as he is carried into a hospital in Misurata. Photo: Al Jazeera/AFP
The bodies of sub-Saharan refugees who tried to escape Libya by boat have been found in the sea with gunshot wounds according to an Eritrean priest who tracks migrants as they make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean. Father Mussie Zerai, a Catholic cleric based in Rome, told The Independent that his contacts in Tripoli have seen five bodies in a hospital that were recently washed back onto the Libyan coast. Human rights groups have called on the international community to investigate the killings and have blamed Nato for not doing more to try and locate boats that have gone missing in a corner of the Mediterranean that is now bristling with international vessels.
Despite widespread opposition, France’s Parliament has approved a law which seeks to ensure that refugees from the unrest in North Africa stay outside of the republic. Under EU laws, the country of arrival is responsible for dealing with any asylum seekers, but nearly all of the migrants are Tunisians who wish to join the 600,000-strong Tunisian community in France. France has responded by unveiling plans for barely-legal border checks and new sea patrols, which have already turned back more than 1,000 exiles.
In the centre of Benghazi, the main square has sprouted new flags and new martyr memorials. The bloody combat in western Misurata has provided ample fodder for the latter. Photo: Evan Hill/Al Jazeera
Calls for democracy, economic reforms, employment opportunities and greater accountability require us to question the development model pursued in the region by institutions like the World Bank and the underlying assumptions that may have led to the failure of this model, says this article from the Bank Information Centre. In ‘North Africa: Economic Failures, Revolutions And The Role Of The World Bank’ Bicusa has said that the recent uprisings that have affected almost every country in the Middle East and North Africa region are indicative of deep structural issues that are facing societies in these countries.
IPS news has reported that the exodus out of Libya has reduced the flow of remittances to poorer countries in the region. “The exodus of migrants streaming out of Libya due to ongoing unrest has highlighted the heavy dependence of some countries on remittances from their citizens working abroad,” said the IPS report. In several countries this flow has now become choked. ‘With thousands returning home the economic impact of the unrest in Libya is that remittances will be reduced,’ Dr Mizanur Rahman, economist and research fellow at the National University of Singapore told IPS. Recent World Bank statistics indicate that developing countries got more than 325 billion dollars last year from migrant worker remittances, outstripping foreign direct investment and development assistance combined.
The West’s Libya campaign has begun
De la fumée s'élève au-dessus de Benghazi où s'écrase un avion, le 19 mars 2011. Photo: Libération/AFP-Patrick Baz
French military jets have begun enforcing the UN backed no-fly zone over Libya, Russia Today has reported, as international forces prepare to carry out possible air strikes. At an emergency meeting in Paris, attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and representatives of the Arab League, it was decided to resort to military action to enforce the no-fly zone.
RT quoted news reports as having said that the operation is expected to involve British, Arab, Canadian and Danish jets, as well as French. Italy, France and Spain will provide airbases for support in the region. Arab states – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates – said they do back the no-fly zone over Libyan airspace. There is a report in the French news site Libération titled ‘Sarkozy annonce le début d’une action militaire en Libye’.
The UN news service has said that the UN Security Council “today effectively authorised the use of force in Libya to protect civilians from attack”, specifically in the eastern city of Benghazi, which Colonel Muammar Al-Qadhafi has reportedly said he will storm tonight to end a revolt against his regime.
Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which provides for the use of force if needed, the Council adopted a resolution by 10 votes to zero, with five abstentions, authorizing Member States “to take all necessary measures… to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamhariya, including Benghazi, while excluding an occupation force.” The abstentions included China and Russia, which have the power of veto, as well as Brazil, Germany and India.
The full text of the UN Security Council resolution is here.
What is the ‘no fly’ zone about, and why are the Western powers committing fighter jets to maintaining it? Aijaz Ahmad has been interviewed on MR Zine. He said: “A no-fly zone is not about flying aircrafts. It’s about laying the groundwork for occupying at least certain parts of the country and for destroying the garrisons and fighting capacity on the ground. Robert Gates and others in charge of the American defense establishment have said that a no-fly zone really means a ground attack on the country. So that’s what a no-fly zone really is about. It’s not about some great air force that Gaddafi has because he doesn’t. Part of this council that has been set up in Benghazi has called for a no-fly zone.” It is about Libyan oil and gas, after all.
Wikileaks files: torture, death squads and occupation
The site itself is swamped. The media organisations that have done the barest preliminary sifting of information from the mass of files – Al Jazeera, New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and the UK’s Channel 4 TV – are equally swamped. Other news outlets are focusing on particular aspects of the leaks, such as Iran (a reflection of recent US political focus), or the Pentagon’s reaction.
What has been uncovered often contradicts the official narrative of the conflict, reports Al Jazeera. “For example, the leaked data shows that the US has been keeping records of Iraqi deaths and injuries throughout the war, despite public statements to the contrary. The latest cache of files pertains to a period of six years – from January 1, 2004, to December 31, 2009 – and shows that 109,000 people died during this time. Of those, a staggering 66,081 – two-thirds of the total – were civilians.”
The figures are much higher than previously estimated and they will inevitably lead to an upward revision of the overall death toll of the conflict. As a result of the information contained in the war logs, the Iraq Body Count (IBC) – an organisation that kept records of the number of people killed – is about to raise its death toll estimates by 15,000: to 122,000 from 107,000.
The new material throws light on the day-to-day horrors of the war. The military calls them SIGACTs – significant action reports – ground-level summaries of the events that punctuated the conflict: raids, searches, roadside bombings, arrests, and more. All of them are classified “secret”. The reports reveal how torture was rampant and how ordinary civilians bore the brunt of the conflict.
The files record horrifying tales: of pregnant women being shot dead at checkpoints, of priests kidnapped and murdered, of Iraqi prison guards using electric drills to force their prisoners to confess. Equally disturbing is the response of the military to the civilian deaths caused by its troops. Excessive use of force was routinely not investigated and the guilty were rarely brought to book.
Britain’s The Independent has said the leaks are important because they prove much of what was previously only suspected but never admitted by the US army or explained in detail. An analysis by the paper says, “It was obvious from 2004 that US forces almost always ignored cases of torture by Iraqi government forces, but this is now shown to have been official policy.”
It was no secret that torture of prisoners had become the norm in Iraqi government prisons as it established its own security services from 2004. Men who were clearly the victims of torture were often put on television where they would confess to murder, torture and rape. But after a time it was noticed that many of those whom they claimed to have killed were still alive.
The Sunni community at this time were terrified of mass sweeps by the US forces, sometimes accompanied by Iraqi government units, in which all young men of military age were arrested. Tribal elders would often rush to the American to demand that the prisoners not be handed over to the Iraqi army or police who were likely to torture or murder them. The power drill was a favourite measure of torture. It is clear that the US military knew all about this.
From the end of 2007 the war began to change as the Americans began to appear as the defenders of the Sunni community. The US military offensives against al-Qa’ida and the Mehdi Army Shiah militia were accompanied by a rash of assassinations. Again it would be interesting to know more detail about how far the US military was involved in these killings, particularly against the followers of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Green Hunt, red money and a forest war
If this is a war in India, then the 76 Central Reserve Police Force personnel who were killed on Tuesday, 6 April 2010, were misled by their final commanding superiors, the senior officials and planners in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Union Government of India. The terrible attack, which took place in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, is being considered the worst loss in recent times in the long and bloody history of the Indian state versus leftist guerrillas. Why is India at war with itself? And what prompts the government, less than a day after the deadly ambush, to intensify its bellicose proclamations of “we will take the offensive to the Maoists” and indications that it will call in the army and even air force?
A part of the answer lies within a published comment by a political prisoner in New Delhi’s Tihar jail. “The trouble with India’s budget and economic planning is that the funds allocated to social welfare are basically geared to the vote bank needs of the ruling parties. Instead of long-term capital development towards increasing the welfare of the people, sops are handed out on a yearly basis to garner votes. Thus, while the expenditure on infrastructure is geared primarily to meet the long-term development needs of the business community, the social welfare expenditure is not oriented towards the ultimate extrication of the masses from poverty and misery. The social welfare allocations are more in the form of a dole for immediate political gains. Besides, even by the official count, only 10% of such allocations really reach the needy while the rest are swallowed up by intermediaries – officials and politicians.”
That direct telling of the facts as they are come from Kobad Gandhy, a well-known Maoist intellectual and now prisoner. Gandhy’s short comment is only one amongst many – from academics, activists and even conscientious bureaucrats – who have understood the reasons that give rise to armed Maoism or Naxalism in India, and in particular in those states which have high poverty and are also host to natural resources (forests and minerals, particularly). The bald truth, unpalatable to the Union Government of India but a truth which is lived out every day by tens of millions in the country, is that the possible benefits of economic growth have passed them by. Denied rights, ignored by development work, marginalised by a combination of bureaucratic neglect and rank opportunism of the politician-business combine, Indian citizens in states like Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand live miserable lives in heart-rending conditions.
[Gandhy’s article can be found in the (Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 45, No. 14, April 03-April 09, 2010]
These are also the states in which the Maoist and Naxalite groups are active. Why can the central government not make the connection when most others do? Even India’s Planning Commission, its foremost development policymaking body, has considered the special needs of “disturbed areas” with a specific economic and social development programme aimed at remving the root causes of militancy. But that has not been the approach of the state. Instead, it has piled one counter-insurgency operation upon another in a spiral that is ever more expensive in terms of lives and money. The operations mounted by the central government in these areas have led to unprecedented bloodshed, massacres of civilian populations and rampant violations of constitutional rights in the area. Unmindful of many independent commissions of inquiry over the last two decades, the central government with fanfare announced its latest campaign, named Operation Green Hunt. In this – as in many other campaigns before it – the central government insists on treating the affected areas as a “war zone”, and has shown little inclination towards tackling the huge backlog of tribal oppression that has created fertile ground for such violence.
Writing in the 10 March 2010 issue of the journal ‘Liberation‘ (published by the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation), Arindam Sen warned: “The UPA government is clearly preparing the ground for a full-scale intensification of Operation Green Hunt. To begin with, the government has embarked on a massive propagation of its new found doctrine of security which singles out Maoism as the biggest threat to national security. The government is also busy cobbling a grand political consensus around this doctrine and it has already achieved a good deal of success in this regard. If Narendra Modi (Gujarat chief minister) is effusive in praising Chidambaram’s clarity and firmness, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (West Bengal chief minister) too clearly speaks the same language as Chidambaram.”
The CPI-ML also warns that whoever is not ready to join this ‘coalition of the willing’ (a menacing throwback to former US president G W Bush’s terminology) or dares question the wisdom of this approach is being branded a Maoist sympathiser. Time and again Chidambaram has blamed intellectuals and the civil society, bracketing them all with Maoists. It is not just a case of branding; many are already being harassed, hounded out and persecuted. Himanshu Kumar, a practising Gandhian, of the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram of Bastar saw his ashram in Chhattisgarh ransacked and razed to the ground; fact-finding teams trying to make an independent assessment of the actual situation have all been debarred from visiting ‘conflict zones’ whether in Chhattisgarh or West Bengal. Meanwhile, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) is being invoked on a daily basis to arrest people across the country, states Liberation.
In his analysis, ‘1000 rebels & none saw? Blood spills a home truth‘, in The Telegraph (Kolkata), Sankarshan Thakur wrote: “A senior Chhattisgarh police officer admitted as much to The Telegraph today, affirming that the site of the massacre is not remote enough for nearby tribal settlements to have been unaware. “We get very little information from tribals, and that is a fact and a huge disadvantage,” the officer said, “and what little we get is often stale or even tainted information, but those are the odds we work against. We have not been able to build networks, we are still deeply mistrusted by people, whereas Maoists have access either because of fear or genuine support.” Palpably rattled, he pleaded that today’s was an avoidable tragedy, but having said so, he added a chilling note: “Let me tell you it is neither the first nor the last, such disasters are built into the framework of Operation Green Hunt.”
While the Indian government has the tax payer as the source of its funds for such counter-insurgency operations, how do the Maoists find the money to take on armed units of the state? Ajit Kumar Singh and Sachin Bansidhar Diwan of the Institute for Conflict Management have provided some answers in their explanation of the Indian Maoists’ funds flow, entitled ‘Red Money‘. The evidence has come several seizures of documents and electronic evidence made since 2007 in the Maoist-affected states.
The Maoists target road contractors, contractors for forest products like ‘tendu’ leaves, bamboo and wood. They have reportedly made deals with poachers, smugglers and liquor and timber runners in the forests. In the areas under their control, including district towns, Maoists levy a ‘tax’ on small enterprises such as spinning mills, tobacco units, rice and flour mills, grocery, medical, cigarette and liquor shops, and private doctors. All ‘illegal’ operators, including private schools operating in villages and district towns, are also coerced to pay. The Maoists also secure large revenues from iron and coal mining companies. Apart from abductions, extortion and looting, Maoists also set up unofficial administrations to collect ‘taxes’ in rural areas, where the official government apparatus appears largely to be absent.
How much money can they and have they collected? In November 2009, Chhattisgarh Director General of Police Vishwa Ranjan claimed that the Maoists annually extort up to 20 billion Indian rupees all over India (Rs 2,000 crore, about US$ 447 million). In the states of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh their collections ranged from 2 to 3 billion rupees a year, and this was in 2007. Other states that are important for the Maoists monetarily are Maharashtra (where they have been active since the 1960s in the eastern part of the state), Chhattisgarh itself, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka (the northern part of which contains iron ore mines).
A major source of funding for the Maoists, say Singh and Diwan in the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal, is poppy or opium cultivation. Portions of Jharkhand and Bihar are reported to be the principal pockets of poppy cultivation exploited by the Maoists. Opium fields are screened and hidden behind peripheral maize cultivation. The Union Finance Ministry in its annual report for 2009-10, released in March 2010, said that the Central Bureau of Narcotics destroyed at least 1,443 hectares in 2009 alone. How much do the Maoists make from such cultivation? The illicit crops destroyed two districts alone in the state of West Bengal were estimated to have a value of over 12 billion rupees, if diverted to drug cartels for the manufacture of heroin. In India, opium is cultivated under strict licensing in select pockets of three states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The entire opium crop is bought by the government and processed in public sector factories for their further use in pharmaceutical industries.
That is but a small aspect of the Maoist organisation in India. What happens now, after the 6 April massacre? The reactions of the Ministry of Home Affairs, judging by the statements of its minister, P Chidambaram, are not encouraging. Chidambaram rejected one opportunity to depart from the spiral of violence in February, when the Maoists made an offer to begin talks on the condition that the central and state governments suspend their anti-naxalite operations for 72 days. At the time he said: “It was a somewhat bizarre offer. Many weeks ago, I had offered to facilitate talks with the CPI (Maoist) provided they abjured violence. There was no meaningful response to that offer. Nevertheless, on February 23, 2010 I responded that if the CPI (Maoist) made a short, simple and unconditional statement that they would abjure violence, Government would be prepared to hold talks with them. I have received no response to my statement.”
This has been seen as a mistake by several who have been following contemporary Maoism and Naxalism in India. “We welcome the announcement by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) to observe a ceasefire and enter into talks with the Government of India,” said a joint letter to the Government of India written by a number of prominent citizens including Justice Rajindar Sachar, Randhir Singh, B D Sharma, Arundhati Roy, Amit Bhaduri, Manoranjan Mohanty, Prashant Bhushan, Sumit Chakravartty and S A R Geelani. “Given the government’s expressed willingness to engage in talks, we hope that this offer will be reciprocated. This necessarily requires an immediate halt to all paramilitary armed offensive operations (commonly known as Operation Green Hunt). It is also imperative that there should be complete cessation of all hostilities by both sides during the currency of the talks.”
There was no halt and there was no reciprocation. For many, the reasons are not far to seek. Any meaningful dialogue and solution will require that compulsory acquisition of tribal lands and habitats be stopped; that tribals should not be displaced by infrastructure and industrial projects (as is happening on a large scale in the affected states). This is because the central government is bound under law to comply with the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution which safeguards manifold rights of the tribals, including their ownership over land and resources.
“There is a common pattern to the emergence of Maoist violence in many areas,” stated a joint letter written by academics and activists Aditya Nigam, Dilip Simeon, Jairus Banaji, Nivedita Menon, Rohini Hensman, Satya Sivaraman, Sumit Sarkar, and Tanika Sarkar. “First a non-violent mass organisation like the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) in West Bengal or Chasi Muliya Adivasi Sangh (CMAS) in Orissa arises in response to marginalisation, displacement or violence against tribals by the police and paramilitaries. Then the Maoists step in, attempting to take over the movement and giving it a violent turn. The state responds with even more violence, which is directed not only against the Maoists but also against unaffi liated adivasis. At this point, some adivasis join the Maoists in self-defence, their leaders like Chhatradhar Mahato, Lalmohan Tudu, Singanna are either arrested or gunned down in fake encounters and large numbers of unaffi liated adivasis are branded Maoists or Maoist sympathisers and arrested, killed or terrorised by the state.”
This is the crux of the matter, which cannot be solved by Operation Green Hunt and its tragic failures.
[My comment in the Khaleej Times is an abridged version of this posting]
Billions of euros, and the zero-rupee note
The German weekly newspaper, Die Zeit, is easily among the best designed papers in the world. It is also consistently critical in its investigations and reporting, and just as consistently innovative in the manner in which it presents subjects. Visually, Die Zeit’s pages have few peers worldwide, if at all.
This is a typical example of how Die Zeit is able to hold its readers’ interest, dramatically present numeric data and at the same time make a strong political statement about state spending.
The title of this arresting full page graphic is ‘Seid verschlungen, Milliarden!’, which means ‘Billions swallowed up’. The graphic purports to be an aid to politicians who notoriously have no idea, says Die Zeit, how many zeros there are in a billion but who blithely continue to agree to spend billions (of public money).
There are some eye-popping numbers represented by the coloured squares on this page. The German healthcare system is 245 billion euro, the income of the church in Germany is 330 billion euro, Germany’s federal budget for ‘Bildung und Forschung’ (education and research) is 11 billion euro, Germany must reserve 283 billion euro for pensions (which is separate from the 36 billion euro to be spent on pensions for its government officials).
The cost of sending all children in developing countries to school for five years is reckoned to be 321 billion euro, the development aid of the richest developed/industrialised countries is 72 billion euro, the cost of halving the incidence of poverty in developed countries (as under the UN’s Millennium Development Goals) is 32 billion euro, the cost to the USA of the 2003 Iraq war was 40 billion euro, and the cost to date of the Iraq and Afghanistan war to the USA is 1,242 billion euro.
While on the subject of money and public spending, The Economist has reported the issue of the zero rupee currency note. The surprising note looks like the typical 50-rupee note, except it is for ‘zero rupees’. In place of ‘Reserve Bank of India’ it says ‘Eliminate Corruption at all Levels’ and in the same vein has replaced the usual “I promise to pay the bearer…” with “I promise to neither accept nor give bribe”. This excellent public campaign has been launched by a Chennai-based NGO called 5th Pillar (P O Box No 5338, Chennai 600024, phone +91 44 65273056).
Vijay Anand is president of the NGO and is also, according to the Economist report, an expatriate Indian physics professor from the University of Maryland “who, travelling back home, found himself harassed by endless extortion demands. He gave the (zero rupee) notes to the importuning officials as a polite way of saying no.” 5th Pillar reportedly had 25,000 zero rupee notes printed and publicised to mobilise opposition to corruption. The idea caught on and the NGO says it has distributed a million zero rupee notes since 2007. Haven’t seen any in Mumbai though – although in Mumbai it’s at least a hundred that the most junior traffic policeman will settle for and for municipal jobs one starts with 500 rupees, so 5th Pillar will need to do a Mumbai and Delhi set of zero-rupee notes in those colours, not 50-rupee colours.
Declaration of war in Oslo
The sorry record of the Nobel Prize committee of the last 20 years became sorrier still when it awarded the current US president the 2009 Peace prize. The speech made by the recipient on 10 December 2009 to claim that award would have been sorrier still, if it was not instead a chilling reminder of the words and methods of George W Bush, the winner’s predecessor.
This year’s Peace prize award has joined together black farce, opera noir and state terror in a menacing new construction. One point in the short citation by the Nobel Committee for the prize awarded to Barack Obama reads: “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” An open-ended pledge to wage indefinite and murderous war is a “value and attitude shared by the majority of the world’s population”?!?
Obama acknowledged that he is the “Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars” and presented war as a legitimate means of pursuing national interests. He declared that “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace”, that “all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace” and that imperialist troops should be honored “not as makers of war, but as wagers of peace”. Since he has now been awarded the Nobel Peace prize, the Nobel Committee must quickly announce a new Nobel, for Inspired Propaganda, and award the first such prize to Obama’s speech-writer.
The more sensible of the world’s press has struck a note of resigned outrage today. Here’s Granma, the excellent Cuban newspaper, on the Nobel scandal:
“Para iniciar las guerras se necesitó un presidente inculto con mensaje directo y lágrimas fáciles —así era George W. Bush. Pero para continuar las guerras que no se podrían ganar, y al mismo tiempo mantener las ganancias suculentas de Wall Street mientras el pueblo se empobrecía más, se requería un presidente intelectual como Barack Obama, con capacidad de crear promesas hipnotizadoras, con sonrisa fácil y amigable, que haría olvidar por un tiempo al pueblo la incertidumbre económica del país. Como dice el refrán: no importa el color del gato, siempre y cuando cace ratones.”
[Translation]: To start the wars it took an uneducated president with direct message and tears it was so easy-George W. Bush. But to continue the wars that could not win, and at the same time maintain succulent gains on Wall Street while impoverishing more people, they needed a president like Barack Obama intellectual, able to create mesmerizing promises, with an easy smile and friendly, that would put the people for a time of economic uncertainty the country. As the saying goes: no matter the color of the cat as long as it catches mice.
And here’s Die Tageszeitung, Berlin’s excellent analytical daily, on the Nobel scandal:
“Das Thema Afghanistan griff Obama auch bei der Preiszeremonie in seiner Dankesrede auf. Die Menschen müssten akzeptieren, dass Staaten manchmal Kriege führen müssten, um ihre Bürger vor Terror oder feindlichen Regimen zu schützen. Kriege seien nie eine “glorreiche Angelegenheit”, sondern eine bedauerliche Notwendigkeit: “Eine gewaltfreie Bewegung hätte Hitlers Armeen nicht stoppen können. Verhandlungen können die Al-Qaida-Führer nicht dazu bringen, ihre Waffen niederzulegen.” In seiner Würdigung des Preisträgers versuchte Thorbjørn Jagland, Vorsitzender des Nobelpreiskomitees, die Entscheidung noch einmal zu begründen. Er griff dazu den Obama-Satz auf, der Preis sei wohl als Appell gemeint: “Präsident Obama hat das Nobelkomitee ganz perfekt verstanden.”
[Translation]: The issue of Afghanistan was taken on by Obama even during the awards ceremony in his acceptance speech. The people must accept that states must sometimes fight wars, to protect its citizens from terrorist or hostile regimes, he said. Wars are never a “glorious affair”, but an unfortunate need for “a nonviolent movement would not be able to stop Hitler’s armies. Negotiations can not take the Al-Qaeda leaders to lay down their weapons.” In its assessment of the winner Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, tried to justify the decision again. He reached to the Obama sentence, that the prize was probably meant as an appeal: “President Obama has understood the Nobel Committee perfectly.”
“The United States is unique today among major states in the degree of its reliance on military spending, and its determination to stand astride the world, militarily as well as economically. No other country in the post-Second World War world has been so globally destructive or inflicted so many war fatalities. Since 2001, acknowledged U.S. national defense spending has increased by almost 60 percent in real dollar terms to a level in 2007 of $553 billion. This is higher than at any point since the Second World War (though lower than previous decades as a percentage of GDP).”
“Le prix Nobel de la paix ayant été fondé par Alfred Nobel l’inventeur de la dynamite, peut-être n’y a-t-il pas lieu de s’étonner. Tout de même, la coïncidence est immanquable. Dix jours après avoir annoncé l’envoi de renforts en Afghanistan, Barack Obama est arrivé jeudi matin 10 décembre, à Oslo (Norvège). Le “war president” est couronné d’un prix Nobel de la paix. La Maison Blanche ne pouvait pas ignorer l’ironie. Depuis plusieurs jours, elle n’entend que cela. Le porte-parole Robert Gibbs a fini par être agacé. Barack Obama “comprend qu’il n’appartient pas à la même catégorie que Mandela ou Mère Teresa”, a-t-il dit. “Mais il est fier des gestes faits par son gouvernement pour renouer avec le monde”. Dans son discours, le président devait lui-même expliquer, comme Franklin Roosevelt en son temps, qu’il y a parfois des guerres justes et “nécessaires”.”
[Translation]: The Nobel Peace was founded by Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite, maybe is there not surprising. Still, the coincidence is inevitable. Ten days after announcing sending reinforcements to Afghanistan, Barack Obama arrived Thursday morning December 10 in Oslo (Norway). The “war president” is crowned with a Nobel Prize for peace. The White House could not ignore the irony. For several days she heard this. The spokesman Robert Gibbs came to be annoyed. Barack Obama “understands that he does not belong to the same category as Mandela or Mother Teresa,” he said. “But he is proud of gestures made by his government to revive the world”. In his speech, the president must explain himself, as Franklin Roosevelt in his time, sometimes there are just wars and “necessary”.
