1954 REVISITED

Justice and Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala

by Paul Imison, Upside Down World

The news barely raised a murmur in the US media and the BBC covered it only fleetingly, but last week the Guatemalan government of Álvaro Colom formally apologized to the family of former president Jacobo Árbenz who was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup in 1954 and later died in exile in Mexico. The apology came after a lengthy case in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that ended in a “friendly settlement” between the Guatemalan state and Árbenz’s heirs.

Through the settlement, the Guatemalan state recognizes its responsibility for “failing to comply with its obligation to guarantee, respect, and protect the human rights of the victims to a fair trial, to property, to equal protection before the law, and to judicial protection, which are protected in the American Convention on Human Rights and which were violated against former President Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, his wife, María Cristina Vilanova, and his children…”

The coup against Árbenz—one of the most infamous that the CIA executed during the Cold War—directly led to the brutal thirty-year civil war that left up to 250,000 Guatemalans dead or disappeared. The conflict saw a right-wing military dictatorship carry out a savage counterinsurgency against anybody vaguely associated with the “left,” including students, journalists and labor unionists, but particularly the country’s majority indigenous population. Some 83% of victims of the violence were indigenous Mayans. Death squads routinely massacred Guatemalan peasants, including women and children, in a strategy since classified as genocide by the UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission.

The great tragedy of the 1954 coup and all that followed is that the Guatemalan military and the CIA overthrew a democratically-elected reformist with the interests of the country’s impoverished majority at heart. Following the 1944 “October Revolution” that ousted the dictator Jorge Ubico, Guatemala had entered a politically progressive era known as the “Ten Years of Spring.” Jacobo Árbenz, elected in 1950 with 65% of the vote, took the liberal policies of his predecessor Juan José Arévalo a step further by promising to enact agrarian reform to raise the living standards of the primarily rural population.

The other great tragedy is that the coup against Árbenz came about at the whim of one major US corporation: the United Fruit Company, which since the early 1900s had been the largest employer in Central America, buying up vast tracts of land and wielding huge political sway in the region (the origin of the term “banana republic”). By the 1940s, United Fruit held controlling shares in Guatemala’s railroad, seaport, electricity, and telecommunications utilities. The company also owned some 70% of the country’s arable land, of which it utilized a mere 12%.

The agrarian reform passed by Árbenz gave his government power to expropriate only that land which was uncultivated and which belonged to estates larger than 672 acres; land that would then be allocated to individual families via agrarian councils. Árbenz offered compensation to United Fruit and other powerful landowners amounting to the value of the land claimed in their tax assessments, which were often hugely understated. A landowner himself through his wife, Árbenz gave up 1,700 acres of his own holdings in the process.

In response, the United Fruit Company sought to portray Árbenz as a communist and lobbied the US government to have him removed from power. Ironically, Árbenz had stated in his inaugural address as president that his aim was to transform Guatemala from “a backward country with a predominantly feudal economy into a modern capitalist state.” Unfortunately, the US Congress of the day contained many United Fruit shareholders, who were making a steal off the corporation’s dominance and opposed Guatemala’s moves towards economic independence.

The subsequent plot, known as Operation PBSUCCESS, was the brainchild of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, and his brother, head of the CIA Allen Welsh Dulles—both of whom happened to be shareholders in United Fruit. The inspiration was Operation Ajax, the elaborate and highly successful plot the CIA had used to overthrow Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh – another democratically-elected reformist – a year earlier. Operation Ajax in fact became a template for many a CIA-backed coups in the following years—including the Bay of Pigs Invasion—and its execution is the origin of US-Iran hostilities that persist to this day.

The first move, as in Iran, was to convince the US press and public that Árbenz’s nationalist policies were the fruit of an alliance with the Soviet Union. Five years before the Cuban Revolution, Allen Dulles dubbed Guatemala a “Soviet beachhead in the western hemisphere.” In reality, the US later abandoned a post-coup plan called PBHISTORY intended to associate Árbenz with Moscow as they simply could not find sufficient evidence of an alliance.

Operation PBSUCCESS also utilized psychological warfare within Guatemala as the CIA hijacked the country’s airwaves to broadcast anti-communist messages and airdropped leaflets urging Guatemalans to turn against Árbenz. The Catholic Church viewed communism as “God’s enemy” and readily supported the coup. Árbenz resigned as president on June 27, 1954, after opportunistic generals, fearing a US invasion was imminent, turned against him. [A CIA-organized right-wing mercenary army did invade the country from Honduras, and US Air Force warplanes bombed the capital.—WW4 Report]

Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, whom the US had replace Árbenz as president, was assassinated in 1957, but the Guatemalan military clung onto power for nearly 30 years—banning political opposition, labor unions and social movements, and waging a brutal war against dissidents of the regime, from rural peasants to the middle-class. Guerrilla groups such as the Armed Rebel Forces (FAR) sprung up in the 1960s but were powerless to bring down the regime, whose heavily-armed death squads were trained and funded by Washington.

After the UN Peace Accords of 1996 between the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) guerrillas and the National Advancement Party (PAN) administration of President Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen, the UN-backed Historical Clarification Commission attributed 93% of atrocities that took place during the civil war to the Guatemalan military and only 3% to left-wing guerrillas. The conflict left around 200,000 people dead and over 40,000 missing as well as creating some 1 million refugees.

Last week, in what The New York Times described as a “muted ceremony” in Guatemala City’s National Palace, President Álvaro Colom told Árbenz’s son Juan Jacobo: “That day [the coup] changed Guatemala and we have not recuperated from it yet. It was a crime to Guatemalan society and it was an act of aggression to a government starting its democratic spring.” In addition, the Guatemalan government will revise Árbenz’s legacy within the national school curriculum and he gets a highway and a hall of the National Museum of History named after him.

Ironically, Colom himself was elected on a progressive platform in 2007 as part of the social-democratic National Unity of Hope, but the masses who voted for him have since largely lost faith in his policies. Far from emulating the “Ten Years of Spring,” Colom’s tenure has seen the US-Central America free trade agreement (DR-CAFTA)—which Jacobo Árbenz would have fiercely opposed—have the same devastating effect on Guatemala’s rural population as NAFTA had on Mexico’s.

Although the constant and savage violence of the civil war is over, reports of human rights abuses by the military and the forced displacement of rural inhabitants are ever-present, while Guatemala is the second most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists after Colombia.

According to UN figures, roughly half of the country’s 13 million people live in poverty and 17% in extreme poverty. Despite the nation’s vast potential for food security, the neoliberal mentality prevails and a wealthy 5% controls 80% of farmland, an almost unperceivable change from the injustice that Árbenz and Guatemala’s liberal revolution railed against.

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This story first ran Oct. 28 on Upside Down World.

Resources:

An Apology for a Guatemalan Coup, 57 Years Later
New York Times, Oct. 20, 2011

Guatemala: Memory of Silence
Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999
Online at the American Association for the Advancement of Science

From our Daily Report:

Guatemala: president-elect accused in 1980s genocide
World War 4 Report, Nov. 8, 2011

See also:

GUATEMALA: GENOCIDE PLAINTIFFS TESTIFY
by Thaddeus al Nakba, Upside Down World
World War 4 Report, June 2008

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Dec. 1, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue Reading1954 REVISITED 

WILL ASEAN BETRAY BURMA’S PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT?

by Nava Thakuria, World War 4 Report

Burma’s elevation as the “would-be chair” of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has irked many—primarily the pro-democracy Burmese and their sympathizers in Asia. Terming the recent initiative of ASEAN to grant Burma the 2014 chair as “premature as the authorities have failed to fulfill key promises of reform,” a number of organizations argued that the “decision might even embolden them [the Burmese government] to continue committing human rights abuses with total impunity.”

“We call for ASEAN to keep its options open on reversing its decision on Burma’s chairing the regional bloc if the military-led government backslides on promises concerning human rights and democracy,” said the statement issued by the organizations. They also asserted that ASEAN’s decision to deliberately ignore the new war in Kachin state and escalation of military attacks in eastern Burma this year is a betrayal of its international and regional obligations to the wellbeing of ASEAN citizens. Southeast Asian leaders meeting in Bali for the 19th ASEAN Summit in November agreed to allow Burma to assume the chairmanship, and allow the country to host the annual meeting in 2014.

ASEAN’s move comes one year after elections were held in Burma for the first time since 1990. The National League for Democracy (NLD), Burma’s main opposition party, boycotted in protest of bureaucratic hurdles to candidate registration that assured a leading role to military-backed parties. Nonetheless, Burma has since then showcased some changes. As the military-ruled country was put under a semi-democratic regime, the government lifted the house arrest of opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Thousands prisoners, some of them NLD leaders, were also released from the jails. Recent reports from Rangoon reveal that Suu Kyi may contest a by-election in the coming days after completing formalities with the government.

The Burmese government led by the former general Thein Sein asked its pro-democracy activists in exile around the world to return to their country. Some of the exiles have reportedly returned, although many still have apprehension about the democratic commitment of the present Burmese regime.

The northeast of India, primarily the state of Mizoram, supports nearly 80,000 Burmese Chin people who have left their country fleeing repression. Some 20,000 other Burmese are living in India as laborers, domestic workers and petty vendors, suffering acute poverty and insecurity. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees officers in New Delhi has registered only few thousand Burmese refugees in India, facilitating some support to them. The Burmese government with its changing image wants the economic sanctions imposed by the US and various European nations to be lifted. Recently, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon accepted an invitation from Burma to visit the country in the near future. US President Barack Obama announced at Bali that his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be visiting Burma in the coming days.

Nonetheless, the ASEAN decision to offer the chair to Burma invited criticism from various political observers who argued that the country should have been offered the opportunity only after the administration at Naypyitaw initiates significant democratic changes and improves its human rights record.

“The ASEAN leaders must be prepared to face the national and regional consequences of its premature decision, including increased displacement, undocumented migration and drug production that results from its ill-timed decision to grant Burma the 2014 chair,” added the statement, which was signed by the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, the Asian Centre for Human Rights, the International Federation for Human Rights, the South Asia Forum for Human Rights, the All Student and Youth Congress of Burma, All Women’s Action Society, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, the Asian Indigenous Women’s Network, the Burma Centre Delhi, the Forum for Democracy in Burma, the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, the Women’s League of Burma, and others.

“We are extremely disappointed that ASEAN did not use the unique opportunity it had to influence the Thein Sein government to take meaningful steps towards democratic transition, peace, and national reconciliation,” asserted the statement.

Added Khin Ohmar, coordinator of Burma Partnership and chairperson of the Network for Democracy and Development: “ASEAN has never been a strong promoter of peace and democracy in Burma. Even in 2006 when Burma was due to take up the chair, it was under pressure from the West and not ASEAN itself that Burma forfeited its turn after Western nations threatened to boycott the bloc’s meetings.”

She charged that ASEAN’s decision also failed to take into consideration that the regime has not taken any steps to end the longest running civil war in the world, but has instead deployed more troops in ethnic-nationality areas, nor has it shown any willingness to engage in genuine and inclusive political dialogue with opposition forces in the country.

Human rights violations and atrocities in northeastern Burma have significantly increased since the supposed reformer President Thein Sein came to power in March 2011. Between August 2010 and July 2011, the Burmese regime forced at least 112,000 people—the highest estimate in a decade—to flee their homes in eastern Burma. In addition, over 20,000 fled their homes as a result of Burmese army offensives in Kachin state and northern Shan state. The government has released a few high-profile prisoners, but there are believed to be over 1,600 political prisoners still behind bars—despite the recent denials of Burmese Information Minister Kyaw Hsan that there are any political prisoners in Burma. The new parliament has refused to repeal oppressive laws that facilitated the imprisonment of political dissidents, and in fact adopted new restrictive laws that disenfranchise many activists convicted in the past.

Debbie Stothard, coordinator of Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma claims that narcotics production and trafficking continues to run rampant throughout Burma with active support of the regime. Speaking to this writer from Bangkok, Stothard asserted that Burma is the second largest producer of opium in the world. In some areas of Shan state under the control of the military-led government, opium cultivation has increased by nearly 80% within the last two years, creating a greater threat to the security of neighboring states, she added.

In short, these critics maintain, the Thein Sein government has embarked on a series of largely cosmetic changes with the aim of gaining international legitimacy—but the reality on the ground remains almost the same.

—-

Resources:

Western states dismiss Burma’s election
BBC News, Nov. 8, 2010

Meth madness behind Mekong massacre?
Global Ganja Report, Nov. 1, 2011

Burma prepares offensive against Shan State Army
Global Ganja Report, March 26, 2010

From our Daily Report:

Obama’s Australia deployment signals new cold war with China?
World War 4 Report, Nov. 19, 2011

See also:

INDIA-BURMA ALIGNMENT AGAINST ETHNIC GUERILLAS
New Delhi Betrays the Pro-Democracy Movement
by Nava Thakuria, World War 4 Report
World War 4 Report, October 2011

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Special to World War 4 Report, Dec. 1, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingWILL ASEAN BETRAY BURMA’S PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT? 

“THEIR CHILDREN ARE LIKE OUR CHILDREN”

The Mosque that Sheltered Jews

by Annette Herskovits, Turning Wheel

“Yesterday at dawn, the Jews of Paris were arrested. The old, the women, and the children. In exile like ourselves, workers like ourselves. They are our brothers. Their children are like our own children. The one who encounters one of his children must give that child shelter and protection for as long as misfortune—or sorrow—lasts. Oh, man of my country, your heart is generous.”

— A tract read to immigrant Algerian workers in Paris, asking them to help shelter Jewish children

There is in the center of Paris a handsome mosque with a tall slender minaret and lovely gardens. It was built in the 1920s, as an expression of gratitude from France for the over half-million Muslims from its African possessions who fought alongside the French in the 1914-1918 war. About 100,000 of them died in the trenches.

During World War II, when the Germans occupied France, the mosque sheltered resistance fighters and North Africans who had escaped from German POW camps. (The French had recruited 340,000 North African troops into the French army in 1939.) When the French police started rounding up Jews and delivering them to the German occupiers, the mosque sheltered Jews as well, most of them children.

The Nazi program called for eliminating all Jews, of any age. More than 11,600 Jewish children under 16, including 2,000 younger than six, were deported from France to be murdered at camps in eastern Europe. Still, 83% of the Jewish children living in France in 1939 survived. Most were “hidden”—that is, given non-Jewish identities to keep them out of the authorities’ reach. This required massive help from the French people.

Hiding children entailed a complex, extended organization. Rescuers had to get hold of the children, which often meant absconding them from detention centers or Jewish children’s homes in full view of the Nazi occupiers. They had to procure false papers, find shelter (in foster homes, boarding schools, convents), raise funds to pay for upkeep, and send the payments without attracting attention.

They had to keep records, in code, of the children’s true and false names and whereabouts, bring the children to their hiding places in small groups, and visit them regularly to ascertain that they were well treated. Many who participated in this work—both Jews and non-Jews—perished.

Innumerable French citizens provided aid of a less active kind: they remained silent, even when they suspected that children were fugitives. Many of the children were recent immigrants who spoke French with an accent and did not “look” French. A child might disclose his or her true name when surprised—or in defiance. Most at risk were very young children who needed repeated coaching.

I know this because I was a hidden child. When my parents were deported from Paris to Auschwitz in June of 1943, never to return, my 13-year-old sister and myself, just turned four, were in a foster home in the French countryside. With no more money coming for our keep and the danger to people sheltering Jews, our foster parents balked at keeping us. In the fall, I found myself hiding in a shabby Paris hotel room with my 17-year-old brother. My sister became a maid for a French family.

But by winter, thanks to my brother’s astuteness and courage, my sister and I were taken in charge by a clandestine child rescue network, a secular organization in which Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and communist men and women participated. The organization saved 500 children, including my sister and me. As for my brother, he survived by his wits.

I learned of Muslims who helped rescue Jewish children only recently, in the newsletter of Enfants Cachés (Hidden Children), an association of Jews who survived the Holocaust in France as children.

The mosque-based resistance network consisted of people from Algeria’s mountainous Kabylia regions. Kabyls are one of several North African groups who have preserved their Berber language and culture; the Berbers inhabited North Africa before the Arabs invaded and introduced Islam in the 7th century. At least 95% of Algerian immigrants to France came from Kabylia. In their networks, the Kabyls communicated in their Berber dialect, Tamazight, making infiltration almost impossible.

The soul of the network was the mosque’s rector, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, a man with three nationalities—Algerian, Moroccan, and French—who moved with ease in all three worlds, and whose Islam was tolerant and inclusive.

More than 1,700 people are thought to have found short-term shelter in apartments on or near the grounds of the mosque. Benghabrit set up an alert system that allowed fugitives to disappear swiftly in case of a raid—if necessary to the prayer room’s women’s section, where men were normally not admitted. He wrote numerous false birth certificates making Jewish children into Muslims.

Access to Paris’ sewers directly beneath the mosque’s grounds provided an escape path, as did the mosque’s proximity to the city’s central wine market on the Seine, where barges laden with wine barrels came and went. One woman recalled being taken out of Paris on a barge; a Kabyl at the helm took fugitives concealed in his cargo to the south of France, where they could be smuggled to Algeria or Spain.

The French League against Racism and Anti-Semitism has asked Israel’s Yad Vashem Institute to recognize Benghabrit as one of “The Righteous among the Nations,” a title honoring non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Benghabrit would be the first Muslim to earn this distinction.

***

In these times of mutual hatred, a hatred that is sustained by distorted views of the “other,” the story of Muslims saving Jewish children struck me as one Jews and Arabs especially should hear. This history strengthens my sense that mutuality and harmony make up the natural fabric of human relations. Division and cruelty are like torn places in that fabric. Surely, at certain times and places the tearing can be so thorough that it seems the fabric is not there. But that is an illusion.

My friend Mathis Szykowski, also a Holocaust survivor and a hidden child, testifies to this: “It must be said and repeated that in any account of survival, there are many people who will help, at great risk to themselves, people who appear almost mysteriously, whom you trust instinctively. No one can survive such circumstances by themselves. So it becomes obvious that in life as in death, we are all interdependent.” A human being whose mind has not been distorted by ideology will instinctively help another in danger, especially a child.

Again and again over the years, I have heard stories of help that appeared unexpectedly, almost mysteriously, during those dark days. A friend recalls that when she was 11, living in Czechoslovakia, her parents were taken away by the Gestapo. By chance, she and her nine-year-old sister had been left behind, so they went to Gestapo headquarters themselves and told the guard they wanted to be reunited with their parents. The guard said “Go away!” several times, speaking softly so as not to be overheard, until they left. Somehow they survived. The SS guard had saved their lives.

Enmities between peoples come and go depending on intricate historical, psychological, and economic forces. Political powers will conceal or twist reality to suit their own ends. For most of the 1,400 years since Islam’s birth, Jews and Muslims lived in relative harmony in Arab lands.

Like the Christians, Jews were dhimmis (protected people): Islam protected their lives, property, and right to worship. Jews enjoyed no such rights in the Christian world until the French Revolution. To be sure, dhimmis were placed below Muslims—they had to pay a special tax, could not ride horses, etc.—but the application of these restrictions varied; with enlightened rulers, the Jews prospered.

In his book Le Passé d’une Discorde: Juifs et Arabes du VIIe Siècle à Nos Jours (The Days Before the Breach: Jews and Arabs from the 7th Century to Today), Israeli historian Michel Abitbol writes about “the historical drama which, in less than half a century, ended two thousand years of Jewish life in the Arab countries.” And he describes the “resplendent Judeo-Arab civilization, one whose inexhaustible intellectual and religious riches nourished the entire Jewish world until the dawn of modern times.”

***

On July 16, 1942, Paris police set out to arrest 28,000 Jews on orders of the French Vichy collaborationist government. They had in hand names and addresses, obtained from a census of Jews the Germans had ordered soon after they occupied France. That day and the next, the police fanned out through the city, packing the arrested Jews into requisitioned city buses. They found only 13,000—largely because some police officers had spread the word ahead of time and many Jews had fled. More than 4,000 children aged 2 to 16 were among those arrested.

On the second day, a tract was circulated through the miserable hotels that were home to immigrant Algerian workers. The tract, in Tamazight, was read out loud to the mostly illiterate men: “Yesterday at dawn, the Jews of Paris were arrested. The old, the women, and the children. In exile like ourselves, workers like ourselves. They are our brothers. Their children are like our own children. The one who encounters one of his children must give that child shelter and protection for as long as misfortune—or sorrow—lasts. Oh, man of my country, your heart is generous.”

We can’t know how much help these men were able to give.

***

Most of the children captured in that July raid were taken with their mothers to camps near Paris. There, French police used truncheons and water hoses to separate mothers from the younger children.

The adolescents and their mothers were taken to Drancy (the French camp from where trains departed for the east) and then deported to Auschwitz. The 3,500 younger children left behind had been taken on the initiative of Vichy’s prime minister, Pierre Laval—the Germans had not requested it. The Vichy government waited for Berlin to authorize their deportation. When approval came, the children were packed into boxcars, each with a few adults. All were killed in the gas chambers on arrival.

The thought of such moments of ultimate darkness used to obscure the entire world for me. As I have pieced together the many stories I have heard and read over the years, I became able to simultaneously see light shining in many places. The story of the Muslims who saved Jewish children is one that affirmed that vision.

The words of the Kabyl tract read to poor immigrant men taught me to trust whispers of unity: Those dead children are like myself. They are like my own children. So are the Israeli children killed in bombed-out buses. So are Iraqi children lost as “collateral damage” and the million Palestinian children who every day must struggle with fear—of Israeli soldiers with machine guns, tanks, bulldozers, helicopters, rockets—and the many dead and wounded among them.

With gratitude to Derri Berkani, whose film Une Resistance Inconnu: La Mosquée de Paris introduced me to this story.

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This article initially appeared in Turning Wheel, the journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and later ran in the February 2005 edition of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Street Spirit.

Resources:

International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism
http://www.licra.org

From our Daily Report:

Paris: 1961 massacre of Algerians commemorated —and officially denied
World War 4 Report, Oct. 21, 2011

See also:

THE MOSQUE CONTROVERSY —IN CHINA
by Sarkis Pogossian, World War 4 Report
World War 4 Report, September 2010

HOLOCAUST DENIAL IN THE ARAB WORLD
Why It Is On the Rise
by Gilbert Achcar and Pierre Puchot, Mediapart
World War 4 Report, January 2010

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Nov. 1, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue Reading“THEIR CHILDREN ARE LIKE OUR CHILDREN” 

CO-RESISTANCE VS. CO-EXISTENCE

by Maath Musleh, Ma’an News Agency

For decades, many powers worked on portraying the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a problem of co-existence. Millions have been pumped into co-existence projects, projects that have just reinforced relations between the oppressor and the oppressed.

If any had had a little time to read history, they would know that Palestine was actually the land of co-existence for hundreds of years.

It’s the land that hosted the Armenians when they were massacred by the Turks. It’s the land that embraced the Jews who were oppressed in Europe. And the co-resistance that takes place daily here is a clear example that there isn’t any co-existence problem. The real problem is Zionism.

Zionism is not only the enemy of the Palestinians and Arabs, but also, the enemy of the Jews worldwide.

A lot of Jews who were born with Israeli citizenship have realized that Zionism and the Israeli regime is their enemy. It’s our common enemy. Thus, the trend of co-resistance has been evolving for years in Palestine. Jews carrying Israeli citizenship have been part of the popular resistance taking place in Palestine. Co-resistance is a danger to the state of Israel.

Even the mainstream media has been avoiding recognizing those activists as Israelis. The Israeli media refers to them as just “Anarchists.”

Co-resisting with Israeli citizens has been also a sensitive topic in the Palestinian community. A lot of activists fear to fall in the trap of normalization. The basis to this fear is true. The PA and its supporters tried on several occasions to counter Palestinian activists that diverted from the PA’s political path with rumors. They used the fact that Palestinian activists co-operate with their Israeli counterparts to spread distorted rumors of their involvement in normalization work. The involvement of the left Zionists in several demonstrations has added more vagueness to the issue.

We have to be open about the subject now more than ever. We have to set the standards for our co-resistance. Yes we do co-operate with the Jewish citizens of the State of Israel. But the standards of this co-operation are clear. We work together with every Israeli that opposes Zionism and fully recognizes the Palestinian rights, freedom, equality, and the right of the return.

Together with them we co-resist the Israeli occupation and the Zionist enemy. Together we call for the rights of the Palestinians that have been disregarded not only by Israel and western powers, but also by Arab regimes. Some Arab regimes have either prioritized their business interests or just simply lost belief in the possibility of achieving the full Palestinian rights. We still have the belief.

And those rights are indivisible. These are basic human rights. You either believe in it, or you don’t. Freedom, equality, and the right of the return.

As Zionism is also the enemy of the Jews, those Israelis have the right to resist it. Those activists are not only there for solidarity. It’s also their war. The Palestinians who try to portray the co-resistance as normalization have to first go down to the front line and resist. We have nothing to hide. Our work of co-resistance is under the sun. It’s not underground. And we oppose co-operating with the leftist Zionists who take part in demonstrations or call themselves peace activists.

Those left Zionists do not care about the Palestinian rights. They just understood that the occupations’ and settlers’ practices will harm their Zionist dream, a dream that disenfranchises the Palestinians of their rights in their homeland.

The State of Israel clearly does not speak for the Jews. Its practices have started a new wave of hatred towards the Jews worldwide. To help end that wave, the anti-Zionist Jews should file a lawsuit against the State of Israel to forbid it from speaking in the name of Jews. A lot of them have said it before, “Not in our name.” But this shout should be louder. And legal actions should be taken. The concept of co-resistance will continue to grow larger.

The anti-Zionist Israeli activists are heroes and their courage is admirable. Those activists have been marginalized in their own communities. They went through a lot of troubles. They have been always on the front lines. They have been beaten up, shot at, and arrested. They come week after week knowing that they put their own lives in danger. They do it because they have the belief, the belief in rights and humanity.

They have principles, and for that I respect them a lot more than many of my people who have given up. Yes, we co-operate with those activists. They’re our comrades. And this is co-resistance.

—-

Maath Musleh is a Palestinian from Jerusalem and an activist in the Palestinian youth movement. He is a freelance social media consultant and producer.

This story first appeared July 14 on Ma’an News Agency

Resources:

New Jewish Resistance
http://newjewishresistance.org

From our Daily Report:

Israelis march in Jerusalem for an independent Palestine
World War 4 Report, July 16, 2011

See also:

ISRAEL & PALESTINE: COMBATANTS FOR PEACE SPEAK OUT
by Bassam Aramin, Sara Burke and Yaniv Reshef, Peacework
World War 4 Report, January 2010

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Nov. 1, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCO-RESISTANCE VS. CO-EXISTENCE 

INDIA-BURMA ALIGNMENT AGAINST ETHNIC GUERILLAS

by Nava Thakuria, World War 4 Report

The militant outfits of Northeast India, who are operating from the jungles of northern Burma (Myanmar), have a hard time ahead. As India and Burma have strengthened their strategic relationship, it is understood that Indian separatist groups will face more attacks in Burmese soil. Burmese President Thein Sein’s October visit to India is seen as a signal that the crackdown on the separatists may go intensive in the coming weeks

One of the active armed groups of India, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), has admitted that their camps in Burma have been facing offensives from the Burmese military in recent weeks. ULFA military chief Paresh Baruah is reported to have received bullet wounds. The news cannot be confirmed by the Burmese government at Nay Pie Taw, which has little visibility in these remote areas which have in reality been ruled by the arms and drug mafias for decades now. The ULFA report indicates that the Burmese regime may now be moving to clear the region of militant groups.

The Sagaing region (formerly a “division”) of Burma is used for shelter by many militant groups, including the ULFA, the SS Khaplang-led faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, the Manipur People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) of Manipur, and the People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK). They each have hundreds of trained cadres in their hideouts in the jungles of northern Burma.

In response to reports, the ULFA asserted that its leader Paresh Baruah had not received any injuries in the offensive, and released a photograph of the elusive ULFA leader. The email statement charged that that the Indian central government in New Delhi had paid a huge amount of arms and money to the Burmese regime to open its offensive against the ULFA.

It is public record that the Indian government had recently supplied 52 military trucks loaded with arms and ammunition to the Burmese government. India has sought to build a strategic and military relationship with the Burmese regime even after receiving brickbats from the international community. Expressing resentment at India’s continued military relationship with Nay Pie Taw, hundreds of pro-democracy Burmese activists and various Indian civil society groups demonstrated in New Delhi on July 22, arguing that “supplying arms to the most brutal military dictatorship may have grave consequences to millions of innocent lives.”

The demonstrators also sent a memorandum to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging him to renew New Delhi’s support of the Burmese people’s movement for restoration of peace and democracy in Burma. Till the early ’90s, the Indian government supported the democratic movement led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. But later it changed the course and started engaging the military regime then known as the State Peace and Development Council. “We believe that India is a nation founded on sound democratic principles and time and again India has proven to uphold the principles of constitutionally elected governments,” the statement read. “Further, as a nation committed to playing an important, if not pivotal role in maintaining peace in the region, it is unbecoming…to supply arms to countries known for abusing military power.” The letter was signed by nearly hundred Indian civil society groups and Burmese dissident leaders.

The ULFA, which was born in 1979 to win Assam’s independence from India, today is a divided house, as its chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa with his followers have joined in the peace process with New Delhi. However, ULFA’s commander-in-chief Paresh Baruah continues sticking to the primary demand for a Swadhin Asom (Sovereign Assam). The intransigent leader is said to have left Bangladesh recently and now is believed to reside somewhere in Burma-China border areas, where from he leads his self-proclaimed “armed struggle.”

Paresh Baruah’s close associate Arunoday Dahotiya issues e-mails on behalf of the UFLA. He flatly charged that New Delhi “paid a special economic package worth as high as Indian Rupees 20,000 crores [1 crore = 10 million] to flush out the rebel camps from the Burmese soil. Additionally, the Burmese government is offered [by Indian government] Rs 100 crore to kill Paresh Baruah.”

It additionally charged that New Delhi has before paid neighboring countries for such purposes. The Indian government paid a 1,000-crore Rs package to Bhutan to destroy ULFA camps there, Arunoday Dahotiya claimed. Indeed, Bhutanese troops flushed out the ULFA camps in December 2003.

The Indian government is also said to have offered money to the Bangladeshi government with a request to take actions against the ULFA leaders and cadres taking shelter in that country. Accordingly, Dhaka handed over many militant leaders—including ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa—to the Indian authorities in 2009. Though India and Bangladesh do not have an extradition treaty, the Bangladeshi authorities arrested the militant leaders and secretly handed them over to India. No official statement was issued by the Bangladesh government on the matter, and even the Bangladeshi newspapers had to depend on India’s media to report about on the issue.

Whatever the truth of the UFLA’s claims, Burmese pro-democracy dissidents as well as separatist guerillas may find themselves betrayed by New Delhi’s growing alignment with the military regime.

—-

From our Daily Report:

Burma: eco-dissidents score win over state hydro-hurbis
World War 4 Report, Oct. 2, 2011

India: more terror in Assam
World War 4 Report, Dec. 23, 2008

Maoist terror in Bhutan?
World War 4 Report, Jan. 24, 2008

Oil cartel eyes Nagaland; factional strife in guerilla struggle
World War 4 Report, April 13, 2007

Burma resumes crackdown on Naga guerillas
World War 4 Report, Jan. 12, 2006

From our Archive:

India: “Ultra” Terror Explodes in Northeast
World War 4 Report, October 2004

US-India Terror Summit: Who is the Enemy?
World War 4 Report, September 2004

See also:

WHO IS BEHIND THE ASSAM TERROR?
Converging Conflicts in Northeast India
by Nava Thakuria, World War 4 Report
World War 4 Report, December 2008

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Special to World War 4 Report, Nov. 1, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingINDIA-BURMA ALIGNMENT AGAINST ETHNIC GUERILLAS 

CONCRETE AND FROM BELOW

US Solidarity with Iran

by Raha Iranian Feminist Collective, WIN Magazine

As members of a feminist collective founded in part to support the massive post-election protests in Iran in 2009 while opposing all forms of US intervention, we take this opportunity to reflect on the meaning and practice of transnational solidarity between US-based activists and sections of Iranian society. Both protests against and expressions of support for Ahmadinejad are articulated under the banner of support for the “Iranian people.”

In particular, critics of the Iranian regime have advocated the use of “targeted sanctions” against human rights violators in the Iranian government as a method of solidarity. Despite their name, these sanctions trickle down to punish broader sections of the population. They also stand as a stunning example of US power and hypocrisy, since no country dares sanction the United States for its illegal wars, torture practices, and program of extrajudicial assassinations. Some “anti-imperialist” activists not only oppose war and sanctions on Iran but also defend Ahmadinejad as a populist president expressing the will of the majority of the Iranian people.

In fact, Ahmadinejad’s aggressive neo-liberal economic policies represent a right-wing attack on living standards and on various social welfare provisions established after the revolution. We offer an alternative notion of and method for building international solidarity “from below,” one that offers a way out of “lesser evil” politics and turns the focus away from the state and onto those movement activists in the streets.

“Targeted” Sanctions
From 1990 until 2003, a US-led UN coalition placed crippling financial and trade sanctions on Iraq in an ostensible effort to weaken Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime. Sanctions, we were told, amounted to a humane way of combating intransigent authoritarianism around the world while avoiding mass bloodshed. The complete collapse of the Iraqi economy during 13 years of sanctions coupled with the inability of ordinary Iraqi people to access banned items necessary for their day-to-day survival—such as ambulances and generators—led to over half a million Iraqi civilian deaths. Furthermore, the sanctions were an utter failure in their purported primary goal—thwarting the Hussein regime while avoiding full-scale war. Finally, in March 2003, the United States and a small “coalition of the willing” began a full-scale military intervention in Iraq, which has shredded the fabric of Iraqi society and left a network of permanent US military bases—and Western oil companies—behind.

Some form of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran has been in place with little effect for more than 30 years. But since President Barack Obama took office, the sanctions have been amped up. In June 2010, a US-led UN coalition passed the fourth round of economic and trade sanctions against the Islamic Republic since 2006. The stated goal: limiting Iran’s nuclear program. Soon after, the European Union imposed its own set of economic sanctions. A month later, with the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions Accountability and Divestment Act of 2010 (CISADA), President Obama signed into law the most extensive sanctions regime Iran has ever seen.

It should not be surprising, given the United States’ historic attempts to control Iranian oil, that CISADA’s primary target is the management of the Iranian petroleum industry. These sanctions would penalize any foreign company that sells Iran refined petroleum products, which are a necessity for the country’s primary industry, as well as for the everyday functioning of modern life. This winter, shortages of imported refined gasoline forced the Iranian government to convert petro-chemical plants into makeshift refineries that produce fuel loaded with dangerous particles. As a result, the capital city of Tehran has been plagued by unprecedented levels of pollution, shutting down schools and businesses for days at a time and leading to skyrocketing rates of respiratory illnesses and at least 3,641 pollution-related deaths.

Parts and supplies for a great deal of machinery—and not only those potentially associated with nuclear industry—are denied entry into Iran; indeed, one of the deadly examples of the effects of these sanctions in recent years has been the spate of crashes by commercial Iranian aircraft due to faulty or out-of-date parts.

No member of any Iran-based opposition group—from leaders of the “green” movement, to activists in the women’s and student movement, to labor organizers—has called for or supported the US/UN/EU sanctions against the Islamic Republic. On the contrary, leaders from virtually all of these groups have vocally opposed the implementation of sanctions precisely because they have witnessed the Iranian state grow stronger, and the wellbeing of ordinary Iranians suffer, as a result. The US government’s long record of either complicity with or silence regarding the treatment of dissidents in Iran—from the 1950s when it helped train the brutal SAVAK torture squads right through to the post-election crackdown in 2009—makes it nothing if not hypocritical on the issue of human rights in Iran.

The Spectrum of Support
In stark contrast to the range of groups protesting the Iranian president and the Islamic Republic’s policies, some 130 activists from antiwar, labor and anti-racist organizations took an altogether different approach in September 2010, attending a dinner with Ahmadinejad hosted by the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. According to one attendee, the goal of the dinner was to “share our hopes for peace and justice with the Iranian people through their president and his wife.” During two and half hours of speeches, activists embraced Ahmadinejad as an ally and partner in the global struggle for peace and, with few exceptions, ignored the fact that his administration is responsible for a brutal crackdown on dissent.

Rather than listening to the millions of Iranians who protested unfair elections and political repression, these activists heard only the siren song of Ahmadinejad’s “anti-imperialist” stance, his vehement criticism of Israel, and his statements about US government complicity with the September 11 attacks. Many of these groups are numerically small organizations with histories of denying atrocities carried out by heads of state that oppose US domination.

One of the most bewildering misrepresentations of Ahmadinejad outside Iran has been around his economic policies, which are often represented by the US left as populist or even pro-working class. In reality, the extent and speed of privatization in Iran under Ahmadinejad has been unprecedented and disastrous for the majority of the Iranian people. Recently, despite vast opposition even from the parliament, the government annulled gasoline and food subsidies that have been in place for decades. The massive unregulated import of foreign products, especially from China, has made it impossible for agricultural and industrial domestic producers to survive. These hasty and haphazard developments have severely destabilized Iran’s economy in the past few years, leading to rocketing inflation (25–30 percent) and growing poverty. Unemployment is very high; no official statistics are available, but rough estimates are around 30 percent, creating fertile ground for recruitment into the state’s military and police apparatus (similar to the “poverty draft” in the United States).

Anti-Imperialist?
The 1978–79 revolution was one of the most inspiring popular uprisings against imperialism and homegrown despotism the world has seen, successfully wresting Iran away from US control over Iranian oilfields and ending its role as a watchdog for US interests in the region. Denunciations of US imperialism were a unifying rallying cry and formed a key pillar of revolutionary ideology. However, in the more than 30 years since, the Iranian government has, like all nations, ruthlessly pursued its interests on the world stage. Despite its anti-American/anti-imperialist rhetoric, Iran cannot survive without capital investment from and trade with other “imperial” nations, without integration into a world market that is ordered according to the relative military and economic strength of various states.

The Iranian government’s support for Palestinians scores it major points with many leftists in the United States and around the world. While the Iranian government does send material aid to Palestinians suffering under Israeli blockades and in refugee camps in Lebanon, it has also manipulated the situation for purposes that have nothing to do with Palestinian liberation. Using money to buy support from Palestinians and financing and arming the Hezbollah army in Lebanon are crucial ways the Islamic Republic exerts its influence in the region.

Currently no form of independent organizing, political or economic, is tolerated in Iran. Attempts at organizing workers and labor unions have been particularly subject to violent repression. No opposition parties are allowed to function. No independent media—no newspapers, magazines, or radio or television stations—can survive, other than websites that must constantly battle government censorship. The prisons are full of journalists and activists from across Iranian society. Prisoners are deprived of any rights or a fair trial, a violation of Iranian law. Iran has the second-highest number of executions among all countries and the highest number per capita. In January 2011, executions soared to a rate of one every eight hours.

The women’s movement has been another major target of repression in the past few years. Dozens of activists have been arrested and imprisoned for conducting peaceful campaigns for legal equality; many have been forced to flee the country, and many more are continually harassed and threatened. Women collecting signatures on a petition demanding the right to divorce and to child custody are often unfairly accused of disturbing public order, threatening national security, and insulting religious values.

Ahmadinejad’s anti-immigrant positions and policies are the harshest of any administration in the past few decades. The largest forced return of Afghan immigrants happened under his government, ripping families apart and forcing thousands across the border (with many deaths reported in winter due to severe cold). Marriage between Iranians and Afghan immigrants is not allowed, and Afghan children do not have any rights, not even to attend school. Moreover, government has been repressive toward different ethnic groups in Iran, particularly Kurds. It is promoting a militarist Shia-Islamist-nationalist agenda and escalating Shia-Sunni divisions.

Despite the many differences between the individuals and groups represented at that dinner with Ahmadinejad, what the overwhelming majority of them have in common is a mistaken idea of what it means to be anti-imperialist or antiwar. Part of the confusion may stem from a distorted notion of what it means to speak from inside “the belly of the beast.” In other words, the argument goes, those of us in the United States have a foremost responsibility to oppose the actual and threatened atrocities of our own government, not to sit in hypocritical judgment over other, lesser state powers. But in the case of the vicious crackdown on all forms of dissent inside Iran, not judging is, in practice, silent complicity. If anti-imperialism means the right to criticize only the US government, we end up with a politics that is, ironically, so US-centric as to undermine the possibility of international solidarity with people who have to simultaneously stand up to their own dictatorial governments and to the behemoth of US power.

Solidarity: Concrete and from Below
There is no contradiction between opposing every instance of U.S. meddling in Iran—and every other country—and supporting the popular, democratic struggles of ordinary Iranians against dictatorship. Effective international solidarity requires that the two go hand in hand, for example, by linking the struggles of political prisoners in Iran with those of political prisoners in the United States, not by counterposing them.

Internationalism has to start from below, from the differently articulated aspirations of mass movements against state militarism, dictatorship, economic crisis, and gender, sexual, religious, class, and ethnic oppression, in Iran, in the United States, and all over the world. For activists in the United States, this means being against sanctions on Iran, whether they are in the name of “human rights” or the nuclear issue. It means refusing to cast the United States as the land of progress and freedom while Iran is demonized as backward and oppressive. Solidarity is not charity or pity; it flows from an understanding of mutual—though far from identical—struggle.

For solidarity to be effective, it must be concrete. US-based activists need to educate ourselves about Iran’s historic and contemporary social movements and, as much as possible, build relationships with those involved in various opposition groups and activities in Iran so that our support is thoughtful, appropriate to the context, and, ideally, in response to specific requests initiated from within Iran. It is our hope that these struggles may be increasingly linked as social justice activists in the United States and Iran find productive ways of working together, as well as in our different contexts and locations, toward the similar goals of greater democracy and human liberation.

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Raha Iranian Feminist Collective is a New York City-based group of Iranian and Iranian-American women working toword gender and sexual justice and opposed to militarism and imperialism. They believe that all genuine liberation comes from below. Contact them at rahanyc[at]gmail.com.

A longer version of this article appeared Feb. 19 in Jadaliyya, the online magazine of the Arab Studies Institute. This version ran in the Spring edition of WIN, the magazine of the War Resisters League.

From our Daily Report:

Iran: contract workers demand rights
World War 4 Report, June 9, 2011

Idiot leftists schmooze Ahmadinejad
World War 4 Report, Sept. 25, 2010

See also:

SELLING IRAN
Ahmadinejad, Privatization and a Bus Diver Who Said No
by Billy Wharton, Dissident Voice
World War 4 Report, July 2009

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, July 1, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCONCRETE AND FROM BELOW 

ROOTS OF EGYPT’S REVOLUTION

Labor Unions and the Uprising in Tahrir Square

by Dan Read, Toward Freedom

Kamal Abbas
Kamal Abbas comes across as a modest man. As coordinator of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS) in Egypt, nearly twenty years of activism under repressive conditions seem to him little reason to boast. Others beg to differ.

Kamal recently arrived in the UK as part of a speaking tour to visit with British activists and trade unionists. His talks focused on the victory won four months ago when Abbas and his fellow activists overthrew long-hated President Hosni Mubarak.

“What we witnessed in Egypt and Tunisia, and now in Libya, Syria and Yemen, is that the struggle for freedom is not limited to one nation,” said Kamal, his quietly spoken Arabic relayed via a translator to an enthralled London audience.

Abbas’ story, however, begins way before the tumultuous events witnessed in Tahrir square; it is part of a legacy of resistance that goes back decades. Under the regime of former President Mubarak, grass-roots workers’ organizations in Egypt had to operate in conditions that could at best be described as “semi-legal.” This had been the rule since 1957, when President Nassar had ordained it necessary for all Egyptian unions to join a single organization, known as the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF).

This became the norm in much of the Arab world, where mainstream union leaders held to a tradition that saw the state as being integral to the functioning of the labor movement. In the case of Egypt, the ETUF tried to hold onto its government-approved monopoly, even at the expense of other, independent and democratic initiatives such as the CTUWS.

“The Egyptian trade unions were a lot like those in the Stalinist countries,” said Eric Lee, international trade union activist and founder of the LaborStart campaign website. “They were a state-controlled federation. It was a complete monopoly; you could not form an independent trade union. And the federation just supported the state—if the state supported privatizations they the federation supported privatizations.”

It was not unheard of for disillusioned workers to seek their own solutions to wider problems of poverty, unemployment and draconian government measures. Kamal Abbas himself began his time as a worker activist when he participated in a strike at the steel works in Helwan, just south of Cairo. The strike was put down with several deaths, yet despite brutal repression, the ETUF did little to help the workers’ cause. Abbas and others then decide to start a new, grass-roots workers organization.

“The situation for trade unions in Egypt was difficult,” Abbas explained. “The official federation was dominated by the government since its establishment. However, in 1990 we managed to form the CTUWS and for the next twenty years were advocating and defending workers’ rights such as the right to strike and form independent trade unions.”

Unsurprisingly, then President Mubarak did not look kindly on such endeavors. Kamal and those like him were frequently harassed and arrested by security forces. In 2007, the organization came under particularly heavy pressure due to their involvement in on-going strikes in the textile sector. Although less than a year later over twenty thousand workers were again on strike, the CTUWS headquarters in Helwan was shut down, alongside several other branch offices.

In this instance the ETUF directly turned on the CTUWS, attacking them in the media and blaming them for the onset of industrial unrest. The CTUWS in turn claimed they had a responsibility to defend the workers, yet coupled with increased government scrutiny over CTUWS moves to annul state interference in internal trade union elections, the union was largely forced underground.

“They had endless difficulties,” Eric Lee said. “Kamal was in and out of jail often. What the union was clever about was that they looked for international support from early on. They knew that international support would help them survive the onslaughts. But they faced constant repression. When I attended a meeting with them last year, only nine months before the regime was overthrown, they said to all of us ‘you are aware that at any moment the police could burst in and arrest everyone.’ That was the atmosphere, even as recently as a year ago.”

Uprising
The Arab Spring appeared to catch Western commentators off guard. Given that the mainstream media appeared to want to avoid reporting on events such as the 2006-2007 textile strikes, this is perhaps unsurprising.

Revolutions, however, do not appear out of thin air. “People who think that revolutions come out of nowhere have never studied revolutions,” said Lee. “Many international activists knew that Egypt was absolutely bubbling in turmoil. When I was there last year I knew very little about Egypt—the Solidarity Centre which is the AFL-CIO’s foreign policy arm—was there in strength, they had been backing the CTUWS for some time. And they were distributing a book which had some academic material about the Egyptian working class which covered right up to about a year ago.”

The book described the past decade’s union struggle which led to a wave of strikes which continued for the last five years. The strike, explained Lee, “involved millions and millions of workers, and enormous street demonstrations—they had ten thousand workers camped outside the Prime Minister’s office. This proved that society was losing its grip—the police couldn’’ control the streets, ten thousand workers camped out is a very significant protest and this wasn’t picked up on most of the global media; they just weren’t looking for it. Trade unionists who were involved did know about it.”

When mass street protests erupted last January, however, the CTUWS began to play a decisive role. As demonstrators took to the streets in their thousands and huge swathes of the urban working class came out on strike, Tahrir square became world famous as the focal point for revolution. It was in this square that Kamal Abbas made his first appeal for a new federation of trade unions.

“On January 30th we met with representative of other independent trade union organizations and we discussed forming a new federation,” said Abbas. “We then made an announcement in Tahrir square, calling for a new federation. But at the time we had no idea what would happen. Since then this call has been responded to by the workers. The challenge now that the revolution has succeeded is to be able to build a society of social justice.”

During this time, the old ETUF largely ignored the protest movement and instead committed itself to “monitoring” the labor force for signs of discontent. In the process, they effectively signed their death warrant as an alleged workers’ organization by showing clearly which side they were on.

Additionally, the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (ICATU)—a conservative body influenced by Muamour Gadaffi—appears to have taken a back seat in the face of independent unionism. Having long pursued a policy of Arab nationalism that saw non-Arabs in the Middle East excluded from membership, some have called for the ICATU’s disbandment and the formation of a more ethnically inclusive body.

“ICATU does not accept unions that are not Arab,” said Lee. “So people like the Kurds are not welcome, Iranians are not welcome and of course the Israelis are not welcome. Not only that, but the Palestinians are not welcome. The Palestine General Federation of trade unions, which is generally accepted to be the Palestinian labor movement, has never been a member of ICATU because ICATU deemed they were tainted by collaboration with Zionism.”

ICATU, arguably now something of a relic which fails to represent the true ethnic diversity of the Middle East, now stands to be swept away by a new tide of popular trade unionism standing in a different tradition than that of Arab nationalism and state control.

Hope for the future now takes precedence in the minds of a population long accustomed to living under a repressive government. With the military government having made moves to ban strikes and curtail workers’ organizations, Egyptians are generally feeling optimistic about future possibilities.

“This revolution in Egypt started with the uprising of young people, which shows that this revolution has a great future,” said Abbas.

It remains to be seen how far the Arab Spring may continue, considering the convoluted situation in Libya and the savage repression in Yemen and Syria. Given that the Egyptian and Tunisian former presidents in particular were long-supported by western powers, another question is what relationship the new Egypt may pursue with their former imperial partners in the west.

Abbas believes that the political situation may have changed fundamentally with the entry of popular protest and upheaval. “The policy-makers of Europe and America have been shown that the people in the Middle East are not satisfied with dictatorships. This revolution has really forced them to acknowledge that the people themselves can act in their own interests.”

—-

Dan Read is a freelance writer in Britain. Photo of Abbas by Hossam el-Hamalawy.

This story first ran June 22 on Toward Freedom.

From our Daily Report:

Egypt: protesters clash with security forces in Tahrir Square —again
World War 4 Report, June 29, 2011

Egypt: Suez Canal zone workers go on strike again
World War 4 Report, Feb. 20, 2011

See also:

INTERNATIONALISM, LIBYA AND THE ARAB REVOLTS
by Pierre Beaudet, Viento Sur
World War 4 Report, March 2011

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, July 1, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingROOTS OF EGYPT’S REVOLUTION 

THE TWO WARS IN LIBYA

Revolutionary Struggle and NATO Intervention

by Art Young, Green Left Weekly

Two wars are being waged simultaneously in Libya. One has grown out of a revolutionary struggle for democracy. The other is an attempt by imperialism to strengthen its domination of the country.

Both wars appear to share the goal of “regime change,” but they stand at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

The regime change that the revolutionary struggle seeks to achieve is the overthrow of the Muammar Gaddafi dictatorship and the establishment of a system of democratic rule.

As is the case elsewhere in the Arab world, the struggle for democracy in Libya encompasses diverse layers of society. The more thorough the democratic transformation, the stronger will be the position of Libyan workers and their allies in the ensuing social struggles.

The Libyan struggle for democracy is an integral part of the great Arab awakening of 2011, a movement of millions of people that threatens the imperialist status quo.

Victory or defeat in Libya will have a huge impact on revolutionary struggles across the region. It deserves our wholehearted support.

The military form of the struggle (now with many aspects of a civil war) was largely imposed on the movement by Gaddafi’s regime.

During the first couple of weeks, the liberation struggle took the form of largely spontaneous uprisings in one city after another, spreading quickly across the country.

Sections of the army and major regime figures defected. The pro-Gaddafi forces were paralysed by the movement’s speed and power, and the readiness of many to die for the cause of freedom.

It looked like Libya would follow the path of Tunisia and Egypt. But Gaddafi had other ideas—and the resources to implement them.

He unleashed a systematic bloodbath. The insurgents were forced to take up arms to defend themselves as best they could.

Gaddafi’s forces took no quarter, murdering many peaceful demonstrators and reducing entire cities to rubble. Gradually, they gained the upper hand and began to march toward Benghazi, the heart of the insurrection.

The United States and NATO are waging a very different war. It only took a few days for them to transform the supposed United Nations-sponsored police action to protect civilians into an all-out war against Libya.

The “regime change” they want is to replace the Gaddafi clique with clients who can defend their interests more reliably. The NATO allies also hope to cow the rebellious Arab peoples with a demonstration of how foreign powers can still frustrate their attempts to win freedom.

This is a reactionary war without an ounce of progressive, humanitarian content.

Resolution 1973 of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), adopted on March 17, gave the green light to foreign intervention in Libya.

A wide-ranging debate in liberal and left-wing circles has ensued. Figures such as Gilbert Achcar and Juan Cole supported the resolution’s call for a no-fly zone to protect civilians.

I was in the other camp, but the debate over the no-fly zone has been superseded by subsequent events.

There is little value in continuing to discuss whether the intervention authorised by the UNSC resolution “saved” Benghazi from imminent massacre, whether one may in principle somewhere at some time support foreign intervention, or whether certain historical precedents apply in this case.

The Libyan people are not facing an abstract no-fly zone. They are the victims of a far-reaching imperialist assault that includes cruise missile attacks, a naval blockade, bombing of military and strategic infrastructure targets, close-in air attacks (the so-called no-drive zone) and any other facilities and assets the NATO commanders wish to destroy.

A growing number of reports attest to the presence of “boots on the ground” of special forces from France, Britain and the US.

This assault on the Libyan people was the real objective behind the smokescreen of a no-fly zone. The UNSC resolution was carefully worded to allow for an open-ended escalation of the conflict.

The fighting in Libya has produced a somewhat unstable equilibrium.

On the eve of the foreign intervention, the rebellion was reeling from a string of military defeats. Now the rebel forces have consolidated their position in Benghazi, the country’s second-largest city, and in the cities and towns further east.

West of Benghazi, a see-saw battle continues on the road from Ajdabiya to Brega.

Further west, Misurata, the third-largest city located between the Gaddafi strongholds of Tripoli and Surt, remains largely in the hands of the insurgent local population, which has resisted weeks of merciless heavy bombardment from loyalist forces.

The Gaddafi loyalists have consolidated their hold on the western part of the country, often through ruthless repression.

However, the pro-democracy forces have paid a huge political price for the respite that they have achieved in the east. The imperialists have succeeded in entangling Libya’s war for democratic freedoms with their war against the country’s sovereignty.

The rebel bands are far too weak to defeat the loyalists without military assistance from the outside powers.

The air war and the advance or retreat of the rebels on the ground appears as complementary activities of a single strategy. It strains credulity to believe that the fighting and bombing are not being closely coordinated.

The indigenous character of the struggle risks being overshadowed by the great powers’ war of aggression. Meanwhile, the imperialists lay claim to the mantle of the freedom fighters.

We should not close our eyes to the political retreat from the moral high ground, independent of the ebbs and flows of the military struggle.

Whether the insurgency could have pursued another course is a different matter. They had to contend with many constraints over which they had little or no control—not only Gaddafi’s murderous refusal to yield an inch, but also the specific history, culture and social structure of Libya.

They were forced to wage their struggle under conditions much less favourable than those faced by their counterparts in Egypt.

It is also apparent that the imperialist war has greatly strengthened Gaddafi’s political standing in Libya and internationally. It has allowed him to appear as the defender of the unity and sovereignty of Libya, thereby appealing to wavering elements and strengthening the resolve of his loyalists.

The disintegration of the dictator’s forces came to an end and the loyalist counteroffensive began just as the NATO powers’ threats of war reached their peak.

Gaddafi’s hand is further strengthened by the “collateral damage” produced by the Western air attacks. Despite the silence of the mainstream media, the civilian victims are no doubt many.

Does the entanglement of the two wars mean the revolutionary democratic struggle has been defeated?

Has the anti-Gaddafi rebel movement been reduced to a simple appendage of the NATO forces who aim to conquer and rule Libya in the interests of imperialism? Are the rebels the new quislings?

That is one possible outcome. But in my opinion such a conclusion is premature.

It is also unduly pessimistic. The revolutionary struggle for democracy is still alive and its future course remains an open question.

We should note the repeated complaints from the British and US leaders that they “do not know” the leaders in Benghazi. Of course they know them.

They are saying that they do not trust them—they are not sure that the rebels’ armed base will submit to the big powers’ plans for the country or that the Benghazi leaders will be able to keep their base under control, above all in the context of the wave of change sweeping the region.

Moreover, the continuing resistance in Misurata and the lengthy resistance in Zawiyah, a city just west of Tripoli, attest to the deep-rooted, plebeian, and nation-wide character of the freedom struggle.

Future developments in the region, particularly in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt, will also influence the struggle’s outcome.

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Art Young is a long-time socialist and solidarity activist based in Toronto, Canada.

This story, abridged from Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, first ran April 17 on Australia’s Green Left Weekly.

From our Daily Report:

Qaddafi shells Misrata, calls for ceasefire
World War 4 Report, April 30, 2011

See related story, this issue:

SYRIA: THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL
by Rene Wadlow, Transcend Media Service
World War 4 Report, May 2011

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, May 1, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE TWO WARS IN LIBYA 

LIBYA AND THE LEFT

by Seth Weiss, World War 4 Report

The Libyan uprising and subsequent NATO intervention have already, much in the manner of the conflict in the Balkans in the 1990s, precipitated considerable debate and acrimony, along with disorientation and paralysis, within the Left. Some opposed to intervention, displaying a narrow and reflexive anti-imperialism, lend support, tacitly or otherwise, to Qaddafi’s forces. Others opposed to intervention endeavor a principled “neither/nor” position, neither Qaddafi nor NATO. Here, committed to opposing both Western imperialism and the Qaddafi regime, we ask if a strict anti-interventionist position—specifically, opposition to the rebels’ call for a “no-fly zone”—is consistent with a commitment to protecting civilian populations and supporting freedom struggles in Libya and throughout the region.

The Arab Spring Reaches Libya
On February 15th, four days after Hosni Mubarak was toppled in Egypt, Fathi Terbil, a prominent Libyan human rights advocate and attorney, was arrested by security agents at his home in Benghazi, an eastern port city and the country’s second largest. With Terbil’s arrest, the Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia and Egypt and has now spread to Bahrain, Jordan, Syria, and Yemen, reached Libya. Terbil, along with a handful of other lawyers, was representing the families of the more than 1200 political prisoners murdered at Benghazi’s Abu Salim prison in 1996. According to the New York Times, “a crowd armed with gasoline bombs and rocks” gathered in Benghazi to demanded Terbil’s release, and “demonstrators, estimated at several hundred to several thousand, marched to the city’s central square, where they clashed with riot police officers.” (“Protests Take Aim at Leader of Libya,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2011)

By February 17—a date which apparently previous to the February 15 events had been designated as a “Day of Rage” via social media websites like Facebook and Twitter—protest had spread across the country, reaching the capital, Tripoli. By the 19th, as reported in the Times, thousands were in the streets, including a demonstration of 20,000 at the courthouse in Benghazi; protestors were met with brutal force, the Times also reported, producing a death toll in Human Rights Watch’s estimation of 104 people (“Cycle of Suppression Rises in Libya and Elsewhere,” New York Times, February 19, 2011)

By the 20th, the rebels had taken Benghazi, and mass unrest rocked Tripoli and a number of other towns and cities. According to the Times, “Though the Libyan revolt began with a relatively organized core of longtime government critics in Benghazi, its spread to the capital was swift and spontaneous, outracing any efforts to coordinate the protests… [T]he revolt in Tripoli appears far more genuinely spontaneous and unorganized than the Benghazi uprising or, for that matter, the revolutions that toppled the leaders of Tunisia or Egypt.” (“Qaddafi’s Grip on the Capital Tightens as Revolt Grows,” New York Times, February 22, 2011)

Popular councils materialized in cities and towns throughout the east. On March 5, the official establishment of the Interim Transitional National Council was announced in Benghazi. The Council, in a statement on its website, recognizes its obligation to “Guarantee every Libyan citizen … the right to vote in free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections” and to “denounce violence, terrorism, intolerance and cultural isolation…” As well, the Council recognizes its obligation to ensure “[t]he nation’s economy to be used for the benefit of the Libyan people… in order to eradicate poverty and unemployment” and that “the state will guarantee the rights and empowerment of women in all legal, political, economic and cultural spheres.” (“A Vision of a Democratic Libya,” National Transitional Council).

The leadership of the Interim Transitional National Council, including its chairman, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, a former Justice Minister, comes largely from elite sectors of Libyan society. A piece in Foreign Policy—which describes allegations by Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s commander for Europe, of “flickers in the intelligence of potential al-Qaeda, Hezbollah” present among the rebel forces as “representing a new level of irresponsibility”—characterizes the Council as “led by a group of well-known and respected Libyan professionals and technocrats.” (“Getting Libya’s Rebels Wrong,” Foreign Policy, March 31, 2011).

Still, this is not reason to lose sight of the popular and democratic character of the uprising that some on the Left have endeavored to downplay, focusing instead on the opposition’s purported links to al-Qaeda, CIA support, and co-optation by Western powers (see, for instance, the commentary of Alexander Cockburn and Vijay Prashad in Counter Punch). Bill Weinberg offers a more nuanced portrait, noting the different layers composing the rebel force, in his World War 4 Report:

…the Libyan opposition does indeed seem to be a “hodge-podge”: In one corner, a small coterie of aspiring bourgeois-democratic technocrats (now in ascendance thanks to deals being quietly made in Paris and Washington); in the other, a few fanatical cells of jihadi types like the “Islamic Emirate of Barqa”; and in the middle, a very large swath of very angry Libyans who have no particular ideological commitment but basically secular and progressive instincts. [“Libya: What is the imperial agenda—and where do anti-war forces stand?” World War 4 Report, March 27, 2011]

Jihan Hafiz, reporting on the ground in Libya for the Real News Network, also draws out the popular character of the rebellion. Her video reporting from the International Women’s Day march in Benghazi is especially worth viewing. (“Libyan Women March in Support of Rebellion,” Real News Network, March 10, 2011). According to Hafiz, this was an unprecedented event, in which thousands of women, most for the first time in their lives, marched and protested. Also notable in Hafiz’s reporting is her documentation of the shift on the ground in Benghazi from opposition to Western intervention to calls for assistance. (“Jihan Hafiz on Reporting From Libya,” Real News Network, April 2, 2011)

In March, Qaddafi’s forces had decisively regained the offensive. The rebels reported more than 8,000 killed in the regime’s brutal crackdown. (“Libya rebel spokesman: More than 8,000 Libyans killed in revolt,” Haaretz, March 20, 2011)

On March 12, in an unprecedented move, the Arab League, meeting in Cairo, voted in favor of a no-fly zone over Libya, and on March 17th the United Nation Security Council, with Russia and China abstaining, also voted in favor a no-fly zone. By this point an attack on Benghazi, with the likely possibility of a massacre of civilian populations, was imminent.

At present, it seems the NATO bombing campaign has yielded a stalemate between the rebel armies and Qaddafi’s forces, as the Financial Times reports. (“West sees Libyan conflict heading for lengthy stalemate,” Financial Times, April 1, 2011). Meanwhile, there are reports of Qaddafi’s sons proposing a transition to a constitutional democracy under the leadership of one of his sons, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, the London School of Economic’s doctorate who had threatened Libyans with “rivers of blood” in February. (“2 Qaddafi Sons Are Said to Offer Plan to Push Father Out,” New York Times, April 3, 2011).

With events still unfolding, we turn now to the Left’s response to the question of intervention.

Left Anti-imperialist Response
Those on the Left advancing an anti-interventionist position can be divided into two camps. The first camp supports the Qaddafi regime, some explicitly and others tacitly, as a bulwark in a struggle against Western imperialism. Most prominent here are Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Also in this camp are many of the same Left intellectuals and journalists—including Alexander Cockburn, Jean Bricmont, Michel Chossudovsky, and Diana Johnstone—who carved out an anti-imperialist position on the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s by way of genocide denial and apologetics for Slobodan Milosevic and his henchmen. Here, a narrow and reflexive anti-imperialism—that is, an “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of mentality—prevails.

Consider, for instance, a recent announcement by a Trotskyist group in New York City for a meeting on Libya at the CUNY Graduate Center. It stresses:

Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, Libyan rebels have avidly sought Western aid,
and eventually bombs against Qaddafi. Rebels who fly the flag of the 
monarchy while allying with religious reaction and the CIA are appealing 
to imperialism instead of fighting it. [“Forum: Obama’s African War,” New York Activist Calendar, posted April 10, 2011]

As Trotsky himself noted in reply to this kind of mechanical anti-imperialism:

In ninety cases out of a hundred the workers actually place a minus sign where the bourgeoisie places a plus sign. In ten cases however they are forced to fix the same sign as the bourgeoisie but with their own seal, in which is expressed their mistrust of the bourgeoisie. The policy of the proletariat is not at all automatically derived from the policy of the bourgeoisie, bearing only the opposite sign—this would make every sectarian a master strategist … [“Learn to Think: A Friendly Suggestion to Certain Ultra-Leftists,” May 1938, online at Marxists Internet Archive]

A second camp of the Left anti-interventionists endeavors a principled anti-imperialist position which rejects both NATO intervention and the Qaddafi regime. Most in this camp also, although not all, share a genuine commitment to supporting popular forces for freedom within Libya. However, a narrow anti-imperialism, although of a different sort, also prevails here. This camp faces a real antinomy between its anti-imperialist principles and its interest in supporting freedom struggles in Libya and throughout the region. It has been unable to find a positive resolution to the contradiction, and it has allowed opposition to Western intervention to trump both solidarity with freedom struggles and protection of civilian populations from massacre by tank brigades and aerial bombardment.

As Gilbert Achcar argues in a recent interview with Stephen Shalom on Z Net:

…if Gaddafi were permitted to continue his military offensive and take Benghazi, there would be a major massacre. Here is a case where a population is truly in danger, and where there is no plausible alternative that could protect it. The attack by Gaddafi’s forces was hours or at most days away. You can’t in the name of anti-imperialist principles oppose an action that will prevent the massacre of civilians. In the same way, even though we know well the nature and double standards of cops in the bourgeois state, you can’t in the name of anti-capitalist principles blame anybody for calling them when someone is on the point of being raped and there is no alternative way of stopping the rapists. [“Libyan Developments,” Z Net, March 19, 2011]

At stake, as well, was the fate of the Libyan revolution and perhaps that of the other Arab revolutions, too. A victory for Qaddafi, draining the confidence of the masses and emboldening other despots in the region, might well have spelled the end of the Arab Spring.

In the Z Net interview, Ashcar goes on to argue that:

…without coming out against the no-fly zone, we must…advocate full vigilance in monitoring the actions of those states carrying it out, to make sure that they don’t go beyond protecting civilians as mandated by the UNSC resolution. In watching on TV the crowds in Benghazi cheering the passage of the resolution, I saw a big billboard in their middle that said in Arabic “No to foreign intervention.” People there make a distinction between “foreign intervention” by which they mean troops on the ground, and a protective no-fly zone. They oppose foreign troops. They are aware of the dangers and wisely don’t trust Western powers.

Such qualifications, especially on the issue of boots on the ground, are extremely important. The issue of military aid to the rebels also needs careful consideration. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 doesn’t affirm the right of the rebels to arm themselves or loosen up the arms embargo to the rebels’ advantage. As well, calls for Qaddafi’s frozen assets to be handed over to the rebels to fund arms purchases have gone unanswered.

Military aid is not likely, of course, to come without strings attached, and the Western powers are free to favor groupings more compliant to their interests over others for aid. Some have argued that such circumstances present a case for advocating a no-fly zone rather than military aid. Still, others argue that what distinguishes NATO planes from arms in the rebels’ hands is direct control over the weapons by the rebels. Regardless, one thing is clear: The Left has no immediate way of coming to the aid of the rebels on its own, no international brigades to send to fight, and no resources to provide military assistance.

To be sure, solidarity with the Libyan freedom struggles doesn’t demand uncritical support. (And there may be much that deserves strong criticism and condemnation; allegations of reprisals against black Africans alleged to be in the pay of the Qaddafi regime are especially disturbing.) It should also go without saying that NATO intervention is not motivated by humanitarian concern, and the rhetoric of Obama, Sarkozy, and Cameron has reached astounding levels of hypocrisy. Moreover, Western intervention may well have very negative repercussions, including drawing the rebels into positions of accommodation. (This latter argument may be overstated by some—is there not some possibility that the Libyan masses, having thrown off the yoke of one tyrant, will not readily accept a new one?) Still, for all of this, what is the alternative to supporting the rebels’ call for assistance?

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From our Daily Report:

Qaddafi shells Misrata, calls for ceasefire
World War 4 Report, April 30, 2011

See related story, this issue:

THE TWO WARS IN LIBYA
Revolutionary Struggle and NATO Intervention
by Art Young, Green Left Weekly
World War 4 Report, May 2011

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Special to World War 4 Report, May 1, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingLIBYA AND THE LEFT 

SYRIA: THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

by Rene Wadlow, Transcend Media Service

The United Nations has tried to stop the downward spiral of Syria into repression and potential chaos. It has been five weeks that what began as peaceful protests and demands for limited reforms have been increasingly met by government violence. Discussions on what the UN could do to help the Syrian people and to speed up necessary reforms started in both New York and Geneva. Governments and UN Secretariat members discussed different possibilities against the backdrop of the UN Security Council resolutions on Libya and the continued fighting there.

The representatives of China and Russia who had not blocked the resolution to use “all necessary force” to protect the civilian population in Libya but who have grown increasingly ill-at-ease with the NATO-led attacks did not want to open the door to a possible repeat over Syria. Thus all possibility of action within the Security Council was blocked with the insistence on the part of China and Russia that the situation was an internal affair of Syria and did not pose a danger to regional peace.

Thus the UN focus moved to Geneva and the UN Human Rights Council, for if events in Syria did not pose a danger to peace in the area, the events were still an open violation of the UN human rights standards. Syria is a party to all the major UN human rights conventions. Thus, on April 29, 2011—when the eyes of much of the world were turned to London and a Royal wedding—in Geneva a path-making Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council was being held. A Special Session is the “highest profile” which the Council can give to a situation. It can be called on short notice, but before a Special Session is held, there are usually intense negotiations among governments. The representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also have a short time to prepare common positions and statements for a Special Session. Since NGOs speak after the governments, there is usually time for only a few statements prior to voting on the outcome resolution. However, for this Special Session, government representatives stuck to their time limits, and 16 NGOs were able to speak even if few said anything which had not already been said by governments.

The human rights situation in Syria was well set out at the start by Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kyung-Wha Kang of Korea:

Information gathered since mid-March points a disturbing picture: the widespread use of live fire against protestors; the arrest, detention, and disappearance of demonstrators, human rights defenders, and journalists; the torture and ill-treatment of detainees; the sharp repression of press freedoms and other means of communication; and the attacks against medical personnel, facilities and patients.

Yet even these deplorable practices have been exceeded over the past week. According to reports, entire towns have been besieged. Tanks have been deployed and shelled densely-populated areas. The delivery of food has been impeded. Access to electricity has been cut. And transportation systems have been shut down. There have been reports of snipers firing on persons attempting to assist the injured or remove dead bodies from public areas.

We have noted with concern that military and security officers have been among those killed. Still, the preponderance of information emerging from Syria depicts a widespread, persistent and gross disregard for basic human rights by the Syrian military and security forces. Syrian and international human rights organizations have already documented more than 450 killings and around four times that number of injuries…

Let me conclude by emphasizing the importance of holding perpetrators of serious human rights violations accountable, and in this regard, the urgent need for an independent, impartial, effective and prompt investigation into recent events in Syria. The convening of this Special Session should not only convey to the people of Syria that the international community is aware of their plight and supports their struggle for fundamental rights and freedoms. It should affirm to people everywhere that the Human Rights Council will be resolute in ensuring justice for victims of human rights worldwide.

As with all serious UN meetings, the decisions have been negotiated before the meeting starts. There was broad agreement that the Human Rights Council would vote the creation of a working group for an independent, impartial investigation to be named by the President of the Council after consultation. The consultations have started, but the names of the members have not yet been announced. It is unclear at this stage if Syria will allow the group to enter to carry out interviews and other investigations. The working group on the situation in Darfur was not able to enter Sudan, and Israel did not allow the working group chaired by Justice Goldstone to enter Israel.

However, some countries have allowed Special Rapporteurs on country situations named by the Human Rights Council or the earlier Commission on Human Rights to visit the country in question. Much of the debate during the Special Session concerned basic attitudes on general human rights matters over which negotiations would not lead to any compromise. There are States which do not want country-specific discussions, basically by fear that they might one day be discussed. This is the long-standing position of China and Cuba and can be taken up by others depending on the specific case. With the situation in Syria, there was a newer and more interesting balance to be found between those States who, in addition to the creation of an investigation body, wanted a condemnation of the current violations in Syria on the basis of information now available and those States which wanted “constructive dialogue.” Those for constructive dialogue stressed that while not opposing an investigation, felt that there was an opportunity to “engage in constructive dialogue with the Syrian government.” They maintained that condemnation measures would hinder finding peaceful solutions. This group of States, largely led by Pakistan and the Russian Federation, put an emphasis on the reforms which had already taken place after the start of the demonstrations, in particular the lifting of the state of emergency, abolishing the State Security Court, the granting of citizenship to 250,000 Kurds who had been registered until then as “aliens” and the replacement of the Cabinet and some governors of provinces.

The Syrian Ambassador, Faysal Khabbas Hamoui, could have played on these calls for engagement and dialogue, and he may have done so in private. In his public statements prior to the start of the debate and again just prior to the vote, his position was so “hard line” as to destroy any idea that “constructive dialogue” was possible at all. He attacked the idea of having a Special Session at all and then went on to attack the protesters as agents of a foreign-led conspiracy and as extremists wanting violence. His presentation left no visible door open for dialogue, and there was no call for a possible national reconciliation.

The vote on the only resolution, A/HRC/S-16/1 came with few surprises:

Votes in favor: 26
Against, 9: Bangladesh, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Gabon, Malaysia, Mauritania, Pakistan, Russian Federation
Abstentions, 7: Cameroon, Djbouti, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Uganda, Ukraine
Left the room so they could not be counted in any category, 4: Angola, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar

The motivations of Angola are unclear. However, given the solid structuring of power in Syria, the inter-twinning of power and wealth, the mosaic of security services, quick reforms are unlikely. As President Bashar al-Assad has said “haste comes at the expense of the quality of reforms.” There may be a possibility for external NGOs, civil society organizations in Syria and the Syrian government to discuss peaceful advances toward a more just and inclusive society. We need to keep looking for possible doors even as people are being killed on the ground.

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Rene Wadlow, is representative to the United Nations at Geneva for the Association of World Citizens

This story also appeared May 1 on Transcend Media Service.

From our Daily Report:

Syrian security forces split over “day of rage” repression?
World War 4 Report, April 30, 2011

See related story, this issue:

LIBYA AND THE LEFT
by Seth Weiss, Marxist-Humanist Initiative
World War 4 Report, May 2011

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, May 1, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingSYRIA: THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL 

LIBYA: THE WASHINGTON-LONDON DILEMMA

by Paul Rogers, OpenDemocracy

The emerging pattern of resistance and repression in Libya following the outbreak of protest in the eastern city of Benghazi on February 15 is very different from that in other parts of the Arab world. In part this reflects the distinctive nature of the country, and of the regime of Moammar Qaddafi which has ruled Libya for 42 years.

The military-political standoff there, and the degree of violence the regime is using (and seems prepared to use) to maintain and restore its control, raises the acute question of what and how much the international community can do to support Libyans’ rights and security.

The question has been forcefully raised in the United States and Britain in the first week of March 2011, where domestic pressures from senior members of the media and the foreign-policy community have combined to press the respective governments to take a firm stand.

The hardening rhetoric has included talk (especially from Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron) of some form of military action against Libya, including the imposition of a “no-fly zone”; though states such as Russia and Turkey instantly discounted this suggestion, and the US defense secretary Robert M. Gates—with a reference to “loose talk” that represents a coded rebuke of Cameron—is notably cautious about the logistics of enforcing such a zone.

There may be elements of diplomatic bluff in the efforts of Washington and London in particular to exert pressure on the Qaddafi regime. But words have consequences, and the effect of the rhetoric is also to create expectations (including among Libyans) that action will be taken to resolve the crisis in a positive way. The relatively tough resolution passed on February 26 by the United Nations Security Council, and the International Criminal Court’s declaration on March 3 that it would investigate leading figures of the Qaddafi regime for possible crimes against humanity, contribute to the sense of momentum here.

Yet the international community and its leading states still face broader problems over whether and how to intervene in relation to Libya. They involve calculations over how the complex and fluid conflict inside Libya will unfold, assessments of the capacity and impact of the instruments at their disposal, and issues relating to the legitimacy and inheritance of earlier interventions in the wider region—especially those led by the United States and Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Libyan Prospect
The immediate problem is the uncertain course and outcome of the crisis within Libya. The regime appears to be maintaining reasonably firm control of the greater Tripoli district; this contains nearly a third of Libya’s population of 6.1 million, including many of those with direct or indirect links to the regime (including key army units).

It is just possible that Moammar Qaddafi and his key allies (including his immediate family) will seek to consolidate this area and refrain from serious attempts to regain control of the whole country—in turn providing a degree of space for some new form of governance to be introduced.

The assaults on Libyan oil-terminal towns such as Brega towards the east on March 2-3 make this option look even less likely, however. Against it, the evident determination and effectiveness of those resisting his rule may succeed in eroding the confidence of some of his forces and create a tipping-point of change towards a different order.

But perhaps a more feasible development (and in many ways the worst-case one) is that the regime deploys extensive force against lightly-armed protesters, inflicting many casualties and much destruction. The regime has greatly superior military resources at its disposal: strike-aircraft, helicopter-gunships, and elite forces, such as the 32nd Brigade and paramilitary units attached to the security and intelligence organizations.

The Military Response
The problem of what the international community should do is highlighted by the rapid switch in David Cameron’s position towards greater denunciation of Qaddafi, which followed stinging criticism of the delays and inefficiency of his government’s response to the crisis (especially in evacuating British civilians from Libya).

The new approach soon proved equally vulnerable, as it coincided with the revelation of weaknesses in national defense—over the Eurofighter project (now costing around £100 million per plane), the announcement of cuts of 11,000 in armed-forces personnel (including soldiers returned from Afghanistan), and a report from a parliamentary foreign-affairs committee critical of the military-political strategy in Afghanistan.

The Barack Obama administration too has been obliged to take account of a wider climate of opinion. This is composed of both belligerent Republicans who see in every foreign-policy crisis a military solution, and policy experts concerned that the US develop a more coherent policy towards the Arab uprisings (and, in the case of Libya, explore ways of implementing the “responsibility to protect”—that is, the obligation of United Nations member-states to act together to protect people’s lives and safety when these are under attack, including from their own government).

The administration’s response has centered on the redeployment of the US Navy’s sixth fleet. The fleet is headquartered near Naples; its carrier battle-group (headed by the USS Enterprise), recently on anti-piracy patrol off Somalia, transited the Suez Canal into the eastern Mediterranean on March 2. This powerful amphibious-assault capability includes the USS Kearsarge and the USS Ponce. The Kearsarge alone is a 41,000-ton Wasp-class ship twice the size of Britain’s recently decommissioned aircraft-carrier, HMS Ark Royal; it is normally deployed with 1,850 marines, forty-two CH46 transport helicopters and five AVH-8B jump-jets.

This build-up, together with that of other naval and US aerial forces in the region, is significant. But in itself it does not offer a solution to the interventionist dilemma.

The Interventionist Dilemma
The combination of events on the ground, public pressure and limited military re-deployments (as well as the humanitarian crisis resulting from the large-scale flow of displaced workers of many nationalities inside Libya) is difficult enough for Western governments to handle. It would become even more so if a war of attrition develops further in Libya, with greater suffering and increased calls (including by Libyans at the sharp end of conflict) for direct foreign military intervention.

The broad-based appeals for international action from within the region include one from a coalition of over 200 Arab non-government organizations drawn from eight countries, including Egypt, Morocco, Qatar, Syria and Saudi Arabia (see Thalif Deen, “Arab Civil Society Calls for No-Fly Zone over Libya,” TerraViva/IPS, March 1).

Even the proposal of a no-fly zone over the Tripoli area would be a huge operation that would require several carrier battle-groups and aircraft with permission to operate out of neighboring countries. The effort to stop Libyan strike-aircraft from flying would (as the US defense secretary outlined before a congressional panel on March 2) require the suppression of air-defense missile systems, associated radar stations and command-and-control centers; after all this, even more difficult would be preventing the use of helicopters (an issue whose omission from the ceasefire agreement that concluded the war over Kuwait in 1991 allowed Saddam Hussein to crush the Shi’a uprising in southern Iraq with extreme violence).

Moreover, there remains a possibility that—even were a no-fly zone to be established and succeed in controlling aircraft movements—the regime might still be able to maintain control via the intensive use of ground forces. In that event, the coalition enforcing the zone would be required either to acknowledge failure or escalate.

The Political Dilemma
The current scenario plans of leading states must take such concerns into urgent account. But there is a further problem over military intervention (as opposed to other forms), which is at heart political.

Any successful campaign to protect Libyans from the Qaddafi regime by military means would need to be organized by the United States, and be aided by supportive countries such as Britain. The reputation of these states across the region remains in key respects very negative, however, after what is perceived as their history of self-interested and illegitimate intervention (most of which had minimal United Nations approval).

Thus, the imposition of a no-fly zone (and its accompanying attacks) would be portrayed by the Qaddafi regime as part of a campaign to colonize Libya and grab its oil—a narrative that would almost certainly resonate even among many of the Libyans who had called for such a policy (and many other people in the region).

The immediate transformation from an internal war to one of “external aggression” would also have many implications beyond Libya, including in the Arab countries whose citizens have been mobilizing in support of freedom and democracy. It would not take many air-strike targeting disasters of the kind that have become so common in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia for ambivalence at western action to revert to deep hostility.

All this emphasizes the position of the United Nations in relation to the debate over intervention, and in particular the doctrine of the international “responsibility to protect” (R2P) developed in the late 1990s following the disastrous failures to prevent genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. The work of putting this doctrine into practice at the highest level then collided with rival geopolitical agendas, especially following 9-11 and the George W. Bush administration’s declaration of the “war on terror.”

The UN was from the start central to the discussions over R2P, many of which led to a recommendation that a UN standing force supported by a full logistics capability was essential to put the idea into effective practice. In the event, this proposal has so far come to nothing, leaving a handful of individual states with any kind of rapid-intervention capability: Britain and France (on a small scale), India (in theory, and close to its borders), and the United States (the only state with a global reach).

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have had appalling human consequences. But their damage goes far wider, for they have made genuine international cooperation in pursuit of shared human interests—including the “responsibility to protect”—much more difficult. In the absence of a sudden capitulation by Libya’s regime, the costs of this damage may continue to be demonstrated in the coming days and weeks.

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This story first ran March 3 on Open Democracy.

See related story, this issue:

THE LAST CIRCLE IN LIBYA
by Rene Wadlow, Toward Freedom
World War 4 Report, March 2011

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, March 6, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingLIBYA: THE WASHINGTON-LONDON DILEMMA 

THE LAST CIRCLE IN LIBYA

by Rene Wadlow, Toward Freedom

While the People’s Revolution in Tunisia and Egypt was largely non-violent, the revolution in Libya may turn still more violent as the last of the palace guard circle around Colonel Qaddafi, his family and a small number of people with tribal ties to him.

Somewhat too late in the day, the UN Security Council demanded an embargo on arms sales to Libya. However, the country has more arms than it can use. The Security Council also requested the International Criminal Court to investigate if there have been war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Libya as well as freezing the foreign bank holdings of the Qaddafi family.

The UN Human Rights Council, like the Commission on Human Rights, had been silent on human rights violations in Libya for years. In fact, the then Libyan Ambassador, Najat al-Hajjaji, a former wife of one of the Qaddafi sons, had chaired the Commission on Human Rights in 2003. There is now discussion of expelling Libya from the Human Rights Council; however, the Libyan representatives in both New York and Geneva have resigned in order to join the opposition. At this stage, Colonel Qaddafi is not interested in diplomatic symbols.

The representatives of the European Union are worried, especially of a possible migration of Africans through Libya towards Europe. Colonel Qaddafi had signed an agreement that he would try to control migration through Libya toward Europe, and he had been given speed boats from Europe to help him in his task. The Europeans are also worried about energy supplies from Libya, although Libya represents a very small—some 2 percent—of energy to Europe, easily replaced from other sources. However, revolution in Libya and unrest in other parts of the Arab world has moved oil prices upward, and they are not likely to go down soon. NATO planners are meeting, reflecting the same worries as those of the EU officials.

The EU and US officials remind one of the aristocrats watching the French Revolution from safety in London or Belgium. They had not seen that the people were getting tired of the contempt in which they were held, nor that there was a rise of an educated middle class that could take care of itself without the nobles and the clergy. Likewise many in the Arab world can do without the kings and tribal chiefs, without the higher military officers who played a role of nobles and without the preaching of the Islamic clergy.

Today’s People’s Revolution, like that of France in 1789, is the victory of an educated middle class bringing along with it in its current a mass of the unemployed, small merchants, regular soldiers often from the rural farming milieu which has little prospered from modernization.

The question now is how will the young and educated middle class in the Arab world be able to structure a new society based on relative equality and justice. In each country, there are remains of the old society with some power, some skills, and a continuing sense of their own importance. We have seen in Tunisia how some of the old structure wanted to continue in power though this was met with continuing street protests.

Creation of new structures in a society is never easy. Both Tunisia and Egypt face an influx of workers fleeing Libya. Just as the French Revolution did not have only friends abroad, the People’s Revolution of the Arab world has more sceptical observers saying “what next?” than friends.

The governments, such as those of Algeria, Morocco and Jordan where only the first shocks have been felt, are promising “reforms” or “bread and circuses” but probably too little and too late.

The People’s Revolution is just that, the rise of a new people, not yet structured into a real social class. It has some leaders but rarely on a national level, and interest groups are only partly structured. This is not chaos except in the sense described by the classical Greek thinker Hesiod who saw chaos, creativity, and transformation working together. For Hesiod, chaos was not confusion but a richly creative space which flowed from the dual cosmic forces of heaven and earth or as in Chinese philosophy, from Yin and Yang. From this chaos comes new and more mature organization, one with more complexity and greater adequacy for dealing with the challenges of life.

Thus we need to find ways to support the People’s Revolution, to keep an eye open for counter-revolutionary activities and to watch closely as the next structures are put into place.

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Rene Wadlow is a representative to the United Nations, Geneva, for the Association of World Citizens. This story first ran March 3 in Toward Freedom.

See related story, this issue:

INTERNATIONALISM, LIBYA AND THE ARAB REVOLTS
by Pierre Beaudet, Viento Sur
World War 4 Report, March 2011

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, March 6, 2011
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE LAST CIRCLE IN LIBYA