THE ARREST AND TORTURE OF SYED HASHMI

An interview with Jeanne Theoharis

by Angola 3 News

Jeanne Theoharis is the author of an April, 2009 article in The Nation, entitled “Guantanamo At Home,” which focuses on the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of US citizen Syed Hashmi in a New York City prison with Guantánamo-like conditions. Theoharis holds the endowed chair in women’s studies and is an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

Syed Hashmi’s trial will begin in New York City on December 1. The website FreeFahad.com explains: “Syed Hashmi, known to his family and friends as Fahad, was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1980, the second child of Syed Anwar Hashmi and Arifa Hashmi. Fahad immigrated with his family to America when he was three years old. His father said ‘We knew there would be many opportunities for us here in the United States. We came here to find the American dream.’ The large Hashmi family settled in Flushing, New York and soon developed deep roots throughout the tri-state area. Fahad graduated from Robert F. Wagner High School in 1998 and attended SUNY Stony Brook University. He transferred to Brooklyn College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2003. A devout Muslim, through the years Fahad established a reputation as an activist and advocate. In 2003, Fahad enrolled in London Metropolitan University in England to pursue a master’s degree in international relations, which he received in 2006. On June 6, 2006, Fahad was arrested in London Heathrow airport by British police based on an American indictment charging him with material support of Al Qaida. He was subsequently held in Belmarsh Prison, Britain’s most notorious jail.”

Angola 3 News: Can you please give us background on the arrest and prosecution of Syed Hashmi? For example, what are the charges against him? What is their evidence?

Jeanne Theoharis: In June 2006, Hashmi, who is a US citizen, was arrested by the British police at Heathrow Airport (he was about to travel to Pakistan, where he has family) on a warrant issued by the US government. In May 2007, he was extradited to the United States, the first US citizen to be extradited under terrorism laws passed after 9-11. Since then, he has since been held in solitary confinement at Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC).

The US government alleges that early in 2004, a man by the name of Junaid Babar, also a Pakistani-born US citizen, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. According to the government, Babar stored luggage containing raincoats, ponchos, and waterproof socks in Hashmi’s apartment and then Babar delivered these materials to the third-ranking member of al-Qaeda in South Waziristan, Pakistan. In addition, Hashmi allegedly allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call other conspirators in terrorist plots.

The government has claimed that Babar’s testimony is the “centerpiece” of its case. Babar, who has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaeda, faces up to 70 years in prison. While awaiting sentence, he has agreed to serve as a government witness in terrorism trials in Britain and Canada as well as in Hashmi’s trial. Under a plea agreement reported in the media, Babar will receive a reduced sentence in return for his cooperation.

A3N: What can you tell us about Hashmi as a person, especially your personal experience of knowing him when he was a student of yours?

JH: Fahad was a student of mine at Brooklyn College in 2002. An outspoken Muslim student activist, Fahad wrote his senior seminar paper with me on the treatment of Muslim groups within the United States and the violations of civil rights and liberties that many groups were facing. Needless to say, this feels particularly chilling—and no longer academic—as we have now witnessed his own rights being violated.

A3N: Since his arrest, what have the conditions of his incarceration been?

JH: Under special administrative measures (SAMs) imposed in October 2007 by the former Attorney General [then acting AG Peter Keisler], Hashmi must be held in solitary confinement and may not communicate with anyone inside the prison other than prison officials. Family visits are limited to one person every other week for one and a half hours and cannot involve physical contact. While his correspondence to members of Congress and other government officials is not restricted, he may write only one letter (of no more than three pieces of paper) per week to one family member. He may not communicate, either directly or through his attorneys, with the news media. He may read only designated portions of newspapers—and not until thirty days after their publication—and his access to other reading material is restricted. He may not listen to or watch news-oriented radio stations and television channels. He may not participate in group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring inside and outside his cell—including when he showers or relieves himself—and 23-hour lock-down. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation—when it is given—inside a cage.

As the expert testimony supplied by Hashmi’s attorneys in a pre-trial motion of December 2008 attests, the conditions of Hashmi’s detention may have severe physical and mental consequences and impair his mental state and ability to testify on his own behalf.

While former acting Attorney General Keisler claimed that these measures are necessary because “there is substantial risk that [Hashmi’s] communications or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons,” Hashmi was held with other prisoners in a British jail for eleven months without incident. The SAMs were renewed by Attorney General [Michael] Mukasey in November 2008 and upheld by Judge Loretta Preska in January 2009, citing Hashmi’s “proclivity for violence.” There has been no change to the SAMs under the Obama administration. They were renewed again by Attorney General [Eric] Holder in early November 2009. Yet, Hashmi is not being charged and has never been charged with committing an actual act of violence.

Currently, according to research by the New York Times in February 2009, there are six people in the United States being held on pre-trial terrorism SAMs; three (including Hashmi) are under the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York, which has long served as a stepping stone to national political office.

A3N: Looking particularly at the harsh solitary confinement imposed on Hashmi, how is this officially justified? Do you think the stated reason is the actual motivation, or do you think there are other reasons for the solitary confinement and other harsh restrictions?

JH: My colleagues and I have begun to come to the conclusion that the use of prolonged solitary confinement is a tactic to ensure convictions. Such conditions weaken people mentally and the toll of sensory deprivation and isolation simultaneously makes people more eager to take a plea or not able to fully assist their counsel. Most experts agree it is torture. While our public discussions have tended to see torture as a tactic to get information, in cases like Hashmi’s, torture is being used to help secure convictions.

A3N: How are the prison conditions for Hashmi in NYC different from those in Guantánamo?

JH: There are key similarities of prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation between Hashmi’s treatment at MCC in lower Manhattan and what we have heard of the conditions at Guantanamo. However, there has been much less attention to these inhumane conditions within the United States.

The focus on prisons like Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Baghram stems, in part, from a larger post-civil rights paradigm that assumes the judicial process is now fair in the United States and relatively incorruptible and thus it was necessary to go outside of the US courts to do the extreme bad things.

Rather, what made Guantánamo possible stemmed from domestic legal practices, many already in place and many others expanded after 9-11, which have continued almost unabated under the Obama administration.

A3N: With Hashmi’s trial beginning on December 1, what are activists currently doing to support him?

JH: Theaters Against War began holding weekly vigils in October to draw attention to the inhumane conditions of confinement and the due process violations Hashmi and others are facing within the federal courts. Artists and actors such as Wallace Shawn, Kathleen Chalfant, Bill Irwin, Jan Maxwell, Betty Shamieh, and Christine Moore have performed at the vigils.

A3N: Any closing thoughts?

JH: Three central Constitutional issues have become clear in the treatment of Hashmi and others within the federal system: the inhumane conditions of confinement, the abridgment of due process rights , and the lack of First Amendment protections.

If these are not addressed, then moving the Guantánamo detainees into the federal system does little to return America to the rule of law, of which we are rightfully proud. I am reminded of that quote by former Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1967, “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of…those liberties…which [make] the defense of the nation worthwhile.”

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This article first appeared Nov. 18 on Angola 3 News.

Angola 3 News is a new project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3—the African American activists Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace and Robert King Wilkerson, who have been held in solitary confinement at Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary for nearly 30 years. Angola 3 News also spotlights the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more.

Resources:

For more information on the Hashmi case, also visit: Educators for Civil Liberties

“Hell Hole: The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture?”
by Atul Gawande, The New Yorker, March 30, 2009

From our Daily Report:

Second Circuit affirms civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart conviction (for violating SAMs)
World War 4 Report, Nov. 18, 2009

Gitmo detainees to Illinois?
World War 4 Report, Nov. 17, 2009

New Yorker on trial for possession of terrorist rain gear
World War 4 Report, June 4, 2007

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, December 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE ARREST AND TORTURE OF SYED HASHMI 

A CALL FOR CLARITY ON THE AFGHANISTAN WAR

by Sonali Kolhatkar, Foreign Policy in Focus

While President Barack Obama reviews his strategy on Afghanistan, a perfect moment to send a strong unified message to end the war is slipping through our fingers. Whether it’s because we seem to have bought into the lies about the goals of this war or because we mistakenly feel that a Democratic president is going to come to the right conclusion on his own, one thing is clear: There’s no debate within the Democratic Party or in the White House about whether to end the war. The only thing being debated is how to continue the war.

Similarly, there’s little debate among progressives about how this is a bad war, and at the very least we need an exit strategy. Paralysis has set in on the particular manner of ending the war: whether to wait for some sort of “peace process,” to pull out troops now versus later, to preserve troop levels until Afghanistan’s women are safe, or some variation of these questions. We’re in a bizarre situation: As Obama waffles on how to continue the war in Afghanistan, progressives are waffling on how to end the war.

Despite some major differences between the Afghan and Iraq wars, U.S. military operations and their consequences in both countries are the same. Similar to Iraq, this war kills civilians and soldiers causing misery on all sides. Similar to Iraq, this war has made women less safe. Similar to Iraq, this occupation has become unpopular on the ground. Similar to Iraq, our actions are leading to greater instability. And similar to Iraq, our tax dollars are being disappeared into a sinkhole of destruction rather than human needs. Yet, unlike Iraq, where progressives were clear right from the start on ending the war, Afghanistan seems to confuse our moral compass.

Our actions in Afghanistan have caused a perfect storm of untold numbers of civilian deaths, fundamentalist resurgence, and women’s oppression. We’re protecting a corrupt government with a puppet president and criminal warlords, and our deadly bombing raids have led to a devastated and rightly bitter population and a stronger Taliban. There’s no promising indication that our military operations can improve the situation, no matter how many troops are added. If ever the Afghanistan war ever had any legitimacy, it’s irreversibly gone.

Enabling Women’s Oppression
One of the original justifications for the war in 2001 that seemed to resonate most with liberal Americans was the liberation of Afghan women from a misogynist regime. This is now being resurrected as the following: If the U.S. forces withdraw, any gains made by Afghan women will be reversed and they’ll be at the mercy of fundamentalist forces. In fact, the fear of abandoning Afghan women seems to have caused the greatest confusion and paralysis in the anti-war movement.

What this logic misses is that the United States chose right from the start to sell out Afghan women to its misogynist fundamentalist allies on the ground. The U.S. armed the Mujahadeen leaders in the 1980s against the Soviet occupation, opening the door to successive fundamentalist governments including the Taliban. In 2001, the United States then armed the same men, now called the Northern Alliance, to fight the Taliban and then welcomed them into the newly formed government as a reward. The American puppet president Hamid Karzai, in concert with a cabinet and parliament of thugs and criminals, passed one misogynist law after another, appointed one fundamentalist zealot after another to the judiciary, and literally enabled the downfall of Afghan women’s rights over eight long years.

Any token gains have been countered by setbacks. For example, while women are considered equal to men in Afghanistan’s constitution, there have been vicious and deadly attacks against women’s rights activists, the legalization of rape within marriage in the Shia community, and a shockingly high rate of women’s imprisonment for so-called honor crimes—all under the watch of the U.S. occupation and the government we are protecting against the Taliban. Add to this the unacceptably high number of innocent women and children killed in U.S. bombing raids, which has also increased the Taliban’s numbers and clout, and it makes the case that for eight years the United States has enabled the oppression of Afghan women and only added to their miseries.

This is why grassroots political and feminist activists [in Afghanistan] have called for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from their country. After eight years of American-enabled oppression, they would rather fight for their liberation without our help. The anti-fundamentalist progressive organization, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), has called for an immediate end to the war. Echoing their call is independent dissident member of Parliament Malalai Joya, who tells her story in her new political memoir, A Woman Among Warlords. The members of RAWA and women like Joya are openly targeted by the U.S.-backed Afghan government for their feminism and political activism. RAWA and Joya have worked on the ground, risking their lives for political change, and echo the vast majority of poor and ordinary Afghan women. It’s they whom we ought to listen to and express solidarity with. If American progressives think they know better than Afghanistan’s brave feminist activists on how liberation can be achieved, we’re just as guilty as the U.S. government for subjecting them to the mercy of women-hating criminals.

No Negotiations with Fundamentalist Criminals
Some on the left have made the case that the Afghanistan war can come to an end through a negotiated peace process where everyone has a seat at the table, including women. But this ensures that only those within the corrupt clique of Afghan politics remain involved in the future of Afghanistan—such as a few female allies of the fundamentalists who are plentiful in the current government.

Joya struggled her way into getting a “seat at the table” through the 2005 elections. For representing her people’s views that war criminals ought to be brought to justice, she has been rewarded with death threats, assassination attempts, and the loss of her electoral title. Asking ordinary women and men to have a seat at a negotiating table with war criminals is akin to asking them to silence themselves or mark their foreheads with a target.

The reason why democratic forces in Afghanistan are completely underground and constantly living in fear of being killed is that time and again the U.S. government has insisted on bringing warlords and even Taliban leaders to the negotiating table. Asking the Obama administration to sponsor a “peace process” between civilian representatives and our warlord allies whose private militias we have armed, is the same as asking for exactly what President George W. Bush did eight years ago in Bonn, Germany, after the fall of the Taliban. That process predictably led to the establishment of today’s corrupt government. In fact, the Obama administration is very likely to patch up the recent failed presidential elections in the same way: by creating a power-sharing deal between two corrupt sides and their proxies and claiming that all sides were represented at the negotiating table.

Given our violent role in Afghanistan over the past three decades, the United States has scant credibility in sponsoring any kind of “peace” process. The most responsible action the U.S. can take is to end its occupation immediately, and clean up its mess.

Let’s Call for an Immediate End to the U.S. Occupation
Those who make the case that withdrawing U.S. troops will unleash another bloody civil war, where Afghan women and men will be at the mercy of the Taliban and warlords, are raising the exact same justification made for the war in 2001: that it’s our moral duty to protect Afghans from fundamentalist violence. This logic ignores the fact that we have nurtured and created the very fundamentalist violence that targets Afghans as explained above. By empowering war criminals and protecting a corrupt government that has forgiven the crimes of all sides including the Taliban, and that even includes some Taliban leaders, all we have done is complicate a war that was on-going. A member of RAWA who goes by the pseudonym Zoya in a U.S. speaking tour last month made it clear that it’s hard to imagine things getting worse if the U.S. does pull out immediately. The damage isn’t being prevented by the United States—it’s being carried out by the United States.

Instead of subjecting Afghans to the three oppressive forces of a stronger Taliban, a corrupt and criminal government, and a deadly foreign occupation, the first thing we Americans can control most directly is to end our occupation immediately. This alone won’t address the Taliban and Northern Alliance. But it will reduce the oppressive forces at work, and potentially reduce the legitimacy of the warlords and the motives driving the Taliban.

How do we undo the damage we have subjected innocent Afghans to? Afghans themselves have the answers to that. Surveys have shown that a majority of Afghans want a complete disarmament of our warlord allies—essentially that the U.S. needs to take back the guns we put into the hands of the Northern Alliance and their private militias. Surveys have also shown that Afghans want war crimes tribunals to hold all the corrupt and criminal fundamentalists accountable in some sort of court, perhaps even the International Criminal Court (U.S. government officials shouldn’t be exempt from this type of accountability either). With weapons, warlords, and U.S. troops gone, real democracy could potentially take root and pro-democracy forces could someday operate freely. Many have also called for a massive Marshall Plan for poverty-stricken Afghanistan, to flood the country with money in the hands of small groups, organizations, and civil society, and eventually to help rebuild the country with a strong, non-drug-based economy. With all the money freed up from military operations that would be fairly feasible.

As for the Taliban, even the U.S. government publicly admits that the Pakistani government’s own agencies have long supported the renegade army as a tool for national and regional stability. With the U.S. troops gone, the Taliban’s raison d’être inside Afghanistan would be greatly weakened. If the United States were to take the lead in regional talks between Pakistan, India, Iran, Russia, and China to address the Pakistani government’s fears of a hostile regime in Afghanistan, it would go a very long way toward undermining the Taliban.

These measures are necessary but may not guarantee stability for Afghanistan. Still, the current occupation only guarantees instability, so at the very least the time for a non-military solution is now. In other words, we can choose to repeat a failed experiment with predictably negative results by extending the war in any number of ways. Or we can implement the complex, constructive measures that could potentially help stabilize Afghanistan, undermine the fundamentalist misogynist criminals, help the Afghan people take back their country, and undermine the conditions for violence.

These are complex demands to make of the Obama administration. But it has taken a complex set of destructive American policies and many years to destroy Afghanistan. It will take a similar amount of time and complexity, as well as trial and error, to help rebuild Afghanistan for ordinary Afghans, and by extension make Americans safer. We can make these demands as secondary points in our call for an end to the war. But the primary demand easily fits on a protest placard: “End the U.S. War in Afghanistan NOW.” Let’s make that call loudly, clearly, and ubiquitously, as soon as possible, so that Obama and Congress can’t ignore us any longer.

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Sonali Kolhatkar is co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission and co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence. She has worked in solidarity with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) for nearly 10 years.

This article first appeared Nov. 2 on Foreign Policy In Focus.

Resources:

Defense Committee for Malalai Joya
http://www.malalaijoya.com

A Woman Among Warlords
The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice
Simon & Schuster, 2009

See also:

AFGHANISTAN: BUILDING ON TRADITIONS OF PEACEMAKING
Interview with Abdul Aziz Yaqubi, PeaceWork
World War 4 Report, February 2009

From our Daily Report:

Obama at crossroads on Afghanistan —and anti-war movement?
World War 4 Report, Oct. 10, 2009

Afghanistan: Karzai “legalizes rape”
World War 4 Report, April 2, 2009

Afghanistan: war criminals win amnesty vote
World War 4 Report, Feb. 23, 2007

Afghanistan: woman legislator physically attacked on parliament floor
World War 4 Report, May 9, 2006

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, December 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingA CALL FOR CLARITY ON THE AFGHANISTAN WAR 

COCA-COLA: OFF THE HOOK FOR COLOMBIA TERROR

Federal Courts Dismiss Workers’ Case

by Paul Wolf, World War 4 Report

On August 11, 2009, the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta affirmed the dismissal of a case against the Coca-Cola Company and its Colombian subsidiaries, brought by a Colombian labor union and several of the union’s leaders. The plaintiffs alleged that Coca Cola and its local bottlers collaborated with the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), a right-wing terror organization, to torture and murder the unionists, in violation of international law. The lawsuit was brought suit under the Alien Tort Claims (ATS) and Torture Victim Protection (TVPA) Acts.

The case is noteworthy, not only because Coke has been the target of boycotts and protests in relation to its labor practices, but also because the decision itself helps clarify a particularly muddy and controversial area of law. In recent years, liberal activists have sought to hold US corporations liable in US courts for their actions overseas, which either constitute war crimes, or some other conduct universally prohibited under international law.

While the outcome may be disappointing, once the details are understood, it is hardly surprising, and should not be seen as a setback for advocates of corporate responsibility. The Coke case was really a stretch. The plaintiffs did not allege that Coca-Cola USA was directly responsible for any of the murders. Instead, liability was premised on a complex chain of relationships. In the words of the Court:

Plaintiffs attempt to connect the Coca-Cola Defendants to the local facilities’ management through a series of agency and alter ego relationships. For example, in the [Isidro Segundo] Gil case, the plaintiffs’ layered theory of agency and alter ego liability is as follows: the bottling facility, Bebidas [y Alimentos, in Carepa, Antioquia], is responsible for the acts of its employees, including conspiring with local paramilitaries to rid the facility of unions. Bebidas, in turn, is an alter ego or agent of Richard Kirby, Bebidas’ owner and manager, such that Kirby is liable for any wrongful conduct by Bebidas employees that resulted in the murder of Gil. Bebidas and Kirby, in turn, are the alter egos or agents of Coca-Cola Colombia because Coca-Cola Colombia is responsible for manufacturing and distributing Coca-Cola products to Bebidas and all other bottlers in Colombia. Coca-Cola Colombia, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coca-Cola USA, in turn, is an alter ego or agent of Coca-Cola USA because Coca-Cola Colombia is under the management, control, and direction of Coca-Cola USA to the extent that its separateness is illusory.

With such a convoluted and indirect theory of liability, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the court dismissed the claims against Coca-Cola USA. The court found that the parent company did not have the requisite control over its Colombian counterparts to be held liable for theirs acts. Then, in a subsequent decision, the court found the allegations of conspiracy between the bottlers and the AUC to be insufficient, and dismissed the case entirely.

The plaintiffs appealed, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the ATS and TVPA claims. First, it considered whether the Colombian paramilitaries (AUC) could be considered agents of the Colombian state. State action is required for torture (TVPA) claims, and for ATS claims that are not closely related to a war (i.e., are not “war crimes”). The court found the plaintiffs contention that the “regular military and the civil government authorities in Colombia tolerate the paramilitaries, allow them to operate, and often cooperate, protect and/or work in concert with them” insufficient to transform the paramilitaries into “state actors.” Relying on the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in the Twombly and Iqbal cases, which have raised the bar to sue in federal court, the Court of Appeals rejected the allegations as being without factual support and lacking in detail. This is unfortunate, since the relationship between the Colombian government and the AUC is now the subject of numerous legal proceedings in Colombia. In the last two years, dozens of legislators and military officers have been prosecuted for supporting the AUC. In fact, one of Coke’s bottlers is located almost directly across the street from the Colombian army’s notorious 17th Brigade headquarters in Carepa. General Rito del Rio Alejo, who commanded this brigade at the height of the AUC’s reign of terror, is currently in the brig awaiting his trial. But because of the particular way the relationship between the government and AUC was described in the Coke case, the TVPA and non-war-crime ATS claims were dismissed for lack of state action.

The court then evaluated the plaintiffs’ alternative theory that the murders did constitute war crimes. War crimes, unlike other violations of international law, can be committed by state actors and non-state actors alike. The court rejected the plaintiff’s war crimes claims for other reasons, though. According to the court, the plaintiffs had argued that it was sufficient for the purposes of ATS jurisdiction that the crime merely occur during an armed civil conflict. “In this case there is no suggestion the plaintiffs’ murder and torture was perpetrated because of the ongoing civil war or in the course of civil war clashes,” wrote Judge Black in the decision. “The civil war provided the background for the unfortunate events that unfolded, but the civil war did not precipitate the violence that befell the plaintiffs.” In other words, the court considered the company’s alleged murder of its unionists to have been a crime committed for its own personal reasons, rather than as part of a war. This is also unfortunate, because although Coke may have had its own reasons to commit the murders (if Coke did in fact order them), the murders do fit into a widespread pattern in Colombia. In Colombia, guerrillas and their rivals battle for union influence and control, and the murder of union leaders is no different from the murder of city councilmen and business leaders, who are all prime targets for assassination in Colombia’s dirty war.

Finally, the plaintiffs’ conspiracy claims were dismissed for vagueness and lack of factual support. “The scope of the conspiracy and its participants are undefined,” the court held, and “plaintiffs’ attenuated chain of conspiracy fails to nudge their claims across the line from conceivable to plausible.” This again was in reference to the Iqbal and Twombly decisions, and is more indicative of an overall trend in conservativism in the Supreme Court, rather than hostility towards international cases.

The Coca-Cola case, then, stands as a benchmark for the factual basis needed to sue a corporation for war crimes or other violations of international law committed abroad. It is not enough that the corporation takes advantage of a lawless situation to murder its enemies, nor is it enough to say, without proof, that the foreign government tolerates or encourages the lawlessness. Moreover, Coke was a tough case from the start. The long and complex chain of liability proposed by the Coke plaintiffs would be hard to prove even if the case was a domestic one. Taken with the heightened pleading standard articulated in Twombly and Iqbal, a plaintiff really needs to have all his ducks in a row before trying to bring a case like this into court.

The death of the “Killer Coke” case may come as a disappointment to those concerned about corporate responsibility, or about the astronomically high murder rate of trade unionists in Colombia. However, this case was dismissed because of its own idiosyncrasies, with a good measure of bad luck thrown in. Had the Coke plaintiffs been able to predict the Supreme Court’s heightened pleading standard, and had the plaintiffs been a little more aggressive in alleging that the murders were part of a broad counterinsurgency campaign to rid Colombian labor unions of guerrilla influence, Coke might very well be preparing for a gruesome trial. Not to mention the fact that anyone involved in these kinds of incidents could potentially face criminal charges, particularly in Colombia, where the extradition of drug traffickers to the US is such a politically charged issue. The lesson, then, is the same. Corporations doing business in war zones are not entitled to play by the local rules.

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Paul Wolf is a lawyer in Washington, DC practicing international human rights law.

For more on Alien Tort Claims Act:

Federal court rules Iraq murder case can proceed against Blackwater
World War 4 Report, Oct. 25, 2009

For more on Coca-Cola’s crimes in Colombia:

Colombia: para scandal threatens trade deal
World War 4 Report, April 20, 2007

For more on litigation against corporate criminals in Colombia:

Colombia: lawsuit accuses Dole of funding paramilitaries
World War 4 Report, May 27, 2009

For more on the grisly career of Gen. Rito Alejo del Rio:

Lands cleansed by paramilitaries returned to Afro-Colombians
World War 4 Report, March 24, 2009

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Special to World War 4 Report, November 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCOCA-COLA: OFF THE HOOK FOR COLOMBIA TERROR 

IRAQI LABOR LEADERS SPEAK

Their Fight for Workers and Against Occupation

from Building Bridges, WBAI Radio

On October 5, “Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report,” hosted by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash on New York’s non-commercial WBAI Radio, ran an interview with four Iraqi labor leaders who were on the East Coast on a tour sponsored by US Labor Against the War: Hassan Jumaa, president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions; Rasim Awadi, president of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers; Sardar Mohammed, president of the Iraqi Kurdish Workers Syndicates & Unions; and Falah Alwan, president of the Federation of Workers Councils & Unions in Iraq. They spoke about the struggle for workers rights under occupation and the prospects for rebuilding Iraq’s industrial sector—and expressed sometimes divergent views on how and when the US should withdraw.

Mimi Rosenberg: Now, a Building Bridges exclusive. Iraq labor federation leaders share their views and stories on the conditions workers face on the ground, their struggles against privatization, and their perspectives on the United States occupation of their country. Why don’t we begin with our first guest, who we welcome to New York…

Rasim Awadi: Yes, I am the head of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers, which groups workers from all the provinces. In 1987, Saddam shut down all labor unions in the public sector. Right after the occupation, a lot of the factories were shut down, and remain closed to this day, not operating. So we have a limited number of members in our union. We had a conference right after [the invasion] in 2003, with a representative from the Ministry of Labor, and we held elections in all our locals. There were other unions that were formed after 2003, among them the labor union in Kurdistan, which we have a great relationship with.

There are only six labor unions operating in Iraq, because of the fact that the law still forbids union organization in the public sector. Our activity is still being hampered, our union workers are oppressed by the actual regime. Since all the funds that belonged to the previous trade unions were frozen by the [Saddam] government, our financial situation is dire, and we operate on a shoestring budget.

Falah Alwan: The situation of the workers’ movement in Iraq is a part of the situation of the whole society. Our society is a society under occupation—despite the lies of the security argument and other pretexts. We are suffering from a devastation of the fundamental structure of society—industry, the health sector, the education sector. The authorities cannot impose their law because of the hegemony of the militias in many provinces.

After the fall of Saddam, the workers organizations tried to rebuild—or rather, to build, because before that we had no real unions. The union federation in the Saddam era was a part of the state, it imposed the policies of the regime on the workers. But after [the invasion], we created our organizing committees in many sectors. Our federation held its first congress in December 2003. But the workers are still not one of the main powers in society—despite the fact that there are about 5 million workers in Iraq. If we count them with their families, there are 20 million. So they are the majority of the society. But they have no significant political role in events. Society is polarized according to religion, according to tribe, according to language—but not polarized according to class.

Ken Nash: Maybe now we should hear from the representative of the Kurdish unions…

Sardar Mohammed: In Kurdistan, we began labor union organizing after 1991 [when Kurdistan became autonomous], holding elections in our workplaces—including the public sector. The democratic political system in Kurdistan allowed us to overcome that hurdle. We have nine branches of our union across Kurdistan. However, that law [barring unionization of the public sector] is still in effect, and could be enforced in any part of Iraq. That law was never abolished.

We enjoy more freedom than in the rest of Iraq; we can organize, we can publish, we educate the workers in a democratic way. And we are trying to create a national federation with the other unions in Iraq, in order to push for a better law for the Iraqi workers. This is our struggle, we have to fight for our rights.

Ken Nash: Let’s hear from our friend from the oil workers union. I think our listeners would like to hear about the struggle against the oil privatization in Iraq.

Hassan Jumaa: I am the head of the labor union in the oil sector in Iraq. I want to emphasize the fact that we do not enjoy any protected rights under the existing laws in Iraq. We share the same problems and the same suffering as other workers in Iraq. We don;t have social security, we don’t have health plans, any benefits.

But we are one of the strongest unions, because we are in a sector that makes up 80% of Iraq’s economy. We know well the reason for the invasion and occupation of Iraq—its resources, and specifically the oil. And we struggle along side our fellow workers in other sectors of the economy in order to protect Iraq’s resources. All the sectors are in solidarity on this point; they all understand that the oil resources and revenues belong to all Iraqis, from the north to the south. We are all concerned about the dangers that the oil sector faces. We all know and understand that our salvation comes from these oil resources. Oil revenues could be used to rebuild Iraq. Therefore all the Iraqi trade unions have their reservations about the new Iraqi oil law and the current licensing of oil contracts to foreign entities. And we discuss with workers in other sectors the future and outcome of these privatizations and what they will mean for the Iraqi worker.

Mimi Rosenberg: Do the workers in Iraq see themselves as a collective force to assume power in society?

Hassan Jumaa: We hope that we can achieve that point. The working class in Iraq is a very powerful one, if given the chance it could be in the leadership position. But we’re not there yet.

Rasim Awadi: The workers nearly took power in 1959. One day after the May Day celebrations in 1959, the head of the CIA said that Iraq was now the most dangerous country in the world, because the workers were calling for power. But now the workers are more loyal to the political parties than to the unions. Some 75% of the workers belong to one of the religious political parties.

In the 1960s, even the nationalist parties, under the pressure of the working class in Iraq, adopted many reforms that were favorable to the workers. The workers were calling for power, so even the nationalist parties adopted the slogans of the workers at that time, and pretended to be socialists. But today the political powers in Iraq work to limit our activities, to prevent us from taking a leadership role.

Mimi Rosenberg: What are the effects of the occupation on being able to advance the interests of the workers in your respective unions?

Hassan Jumaa: The occupation destroyed the entire industrial infrastructure in Iraq. Nearly all the factories are not functioning. There is 50% unemployment. The only sector that is still viable is the oil sector, and there is still some leather and textile production.

Even in the port of Basra, the occupation gave concessions to foreign companies to operate the port authority, which caused the Iraqi workers there to start demonstrating and demanding their jobs back. All the arms factories, which constituted a major industry in Iraq, were closed by the occupation. They could have been converted to help rebuild the country. This decision cost the Iraqis billions of dollars. Those who govern Iraq are not Iraqis, but the Americans.

Mimi Rosenberg: What is the message of the Iraqi labor movement to President Obama and the Americans?

Hassan Jumaa: We ask President Obama and the American people to push for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. And we ask the American people for help in rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure and economy. Because all the companies that Bush brought to Iraq only looted the country. The love for the American people in Iraq is down to zero. We value the solidarity of working-class people in the US. But we believe that the troop withdrawal is not true, it’s a fallacy. We want Iraq to be governed by Iraqis, by workers and people who stand in solidarity with workers.

Mimi Rosenberg: We are often told that there is still an issue of security, so we can’t take all the troops out without jeopardizing the security of the people of Iraq. What is your response to this?

Hassan Jumaa: In our view, Iraqis after the withdrawal of American troops will be able to govern themselves.

Rasim Awadi: If there was an immediate and unplanned withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, there could be a shift in power that might put us in jeopardy. The US violated the Geneva Conventions and all the international treaties that put the responsibility on the occupier to protect the civilian population. Instead, the US promoted the coming [to power] of those militias and the factional fighting on our territory.

Mimi Rosenberg: There seems to be a different of opinion here. So I ask our friend from the oil workers, what do you think needs to be done to address this chaotic situation created by the US invasion?

Hassan Jumaa: After the Americans leave, Iraqis will be free to choose who will lead them. The US is responsible for the sectarianism that exists today. Because when the US invaded and dismantled the old regime, the new regime that the US created was based on sectarianism.

I want to give an example about the responsibility of the US forces. After the bombing of the holy shrine [at Samarra’s Golden Mosque in February 2006] that caused the sectarian war, the US forces disappeared from the streets for more than a week, in a very bad siuation of conflict between the people. And we know that in governorates like Nassiriya, where there are no occupying US forces, there is no conflict. The security situation is better there than in other provinces of Iraq. That means the security in Iraq is not provided by the US military.

So I believe another force, like the UN, can provide security for the Iraqi people. A withdrawal of US forces will create a better situation for our society.

Mimi Rosenberg: Well, I thank you, and I want to say that there are many people in this country that really do support the self-determination of our sisters and brothers in Iraq, and we will try make sure that your message is heard more here.

———

Resources:

Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions
http://www.basraoilunion.org/

General Federation of Iraqi Workers
http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/

Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq
http://fwcui.org/

Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report
http://www.buildingbridgesradio.blogspot.com/

US Labor Against the War
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/

See also:

IRAQ’S CIVIL RESISTANCE
The Secular Left Opposition Stands Up
by Bill Weinberg, WW4 Report
World War 4 Report, January 2008

VOICES OF IRAQI OIL WORKERS
Oil & Utility Union Leaders on the Struggle Against Privatization
from Building Bridges, WBAI Radio
World War 4 Report, July 2007

From our Daily Report:

Iraq: Basra oil pipeline workers score labor victory
World War 4 Report, May 9, 2009

—————————-

Reprinted and transcribed by World War 4 Report, November 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingIRAQI LABOR LEADERS SPEAK 

WORLDWATCH PLAYS ALONG

Malthus, Biofuels and Free-Market Environmentalism

by Carmelo Ruiz Marrero, World War 4 Report

The Washington DC-based Worldwatch Institute is no ordinary environmental organization. Founded by environmental maverick Lester Brown, a man hailed by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers,” Worldwatch was the first environmental think tank ever. Since its founding in 1974 it has published thoroughly researched reports on global environmental issues ranging from fisheries depletion and China’s soaring resource consumption to green economics and renewable energy.

The organization has also assumed brave and highly principled positions, for example exposing the downside of technologies like nuclear power and genetic engineering, as well as the military’s impact on the environment—issues most mainstream environmental groups dare not touch. Regarding organic agriculture and local food production, their research in recent years has been top-notch. Worldwatch senior researcher Brian Halweil’s book on the international local foods movement, Eat Here, deserves no less acclaim than the writings of Michael Pollan and Carlo Petrini.

But progressive environmentalists have long had mixed feelings about the organization because of its technocratic approach to global environmental problems, enthusiastic support for Green Revolution agriculture, and Malthusian world view. In the 1980’s Worldwatch had a long and protracted debate with Frances Moore Lappe and her fledgling organization Food First. The subtitle of the epochal book Food First, co-authored by Lappe, said it all: “Beyond the Myth of Scarcity”. The book’s thesis—that the apocalyptic “population vs. resources” equation put forth by Thomas Malthus in the 19th century (and by Paul Ehrlich in the 20th) is plain wrong, and that hunger can and does exist where resources and food are plentiful—put Lappe and company in direct contradiction not only with Worldwatch but with the conventional views of the mainstream environmental movement and its supporting foundations. Worldwatch underwriters, which included the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, no doubt were pleased with the organization’s defense of the Green Revolution and Malthusianism (1).

Lester Brown left Worldwatch in 2001 to form the Earth Policy Institute. Since then, some observers have perceived Worldwatch to be moving into some rather questionable positions and endeavors. In 2007 it joined the global debate on biofuels by releasing a report which highlighted the economic, social and environmental problems posed by the biofuels boom. (2) But, quite incredibly, the report’s conclusions fell way short of its analysis and gave biofuels a rather glib and uncritical thumbs-up.

Then in February 2009, Worldwatch released another report on the subject, titled “Smart Choices for Biofuels”, co-authored with the Sierra Club. (3) This report should be regarded with skepticism and concern. Its authors are good at pointing out the pitfalls and problems of biofuels but in the end—and against all logic—conclude that biofuel production can be made sustainable with a few reforms here and there. They assume from the start that biofuels are desirable and inevitable. The industrialized North’s voracious and irresponsible consumption is unadressed, and endless economic growth remains unquestioned. Reports like these can do more harm than good, since their most immediate and obvious effect will be to confound and divide the environmental movement on this issue.

In June 2009, Worldwatch released a report, co-authored with Ecoagriculture Partners (EAP), on the relationship between agricultural practices and global warming. (4) But some of the report’s recommendations are questionable and controversial, to say the very least, especially “biochar” and “voluntary markets for greenhouse gas emission offsets.”

Two months before the report’s release, 147 organizations from 44 countries had signed on to an international declaration against biochar, denouncing it as a false solution to climate change. According to the declaration’s press release:

Civil society groups have called for caution on Biochar in view of serious scientific uncertainty. Many share concerns that this technology would lead to vast areas of land being converted to new plantations, thus repeating the unfolding disasters which agrofuels cause. They point out that large scale financial incentives for biochar or other soil sequestration could result in large scale land conversion and displacement of people. (5)

As for carbon offsets and market-based approaches to address global warming, these have been constantly denounced as false solutions by climate justice advocates, like the World Rainforest Movement, the North America-based Mobilization for Climate Justice and the Global Forest Coalition.

EAP describes its proposal thus: “Ecoagriculture recognizes agricultural producers and communities as key stewards of ecosystems and biodiversity and enables them to play those roles effectively. Ecoagriculture applies an integrated ecosystem approach to agricultural landscapes to address all three pillars, drawing on diverse elements of production and conservation management systems.” (6)

But University of California entomologist Miguel Altieri, one of the biggest authorities on agroecology worldwide, argues in an extensive critique that ecoagriculture is no more than a corporate-friendly mockery of organic agriculture. (7) EAP director Sara Scherr fired off a furious response to Altieri, accusing him of misstating and mischaracterizing her organization’s activities and philosophy.

Any weighing of the relative merit of each side’s arguments must consider Altieri’s consistent, principled and highly erudite defense of the principles of agroecology and progressive political positions in light of EAP’s list of “partners”. These include the World Wildlife Fund—vilified for its support for NAFTA and its collaboration with the Roundtable of Responsible Soy, a high-profile attempt to rationalize the millions of hectares of unsustainable soy monocultures in South America. (8) Other EAP partners include pillars of what could be called pro-corporate eco-capitalist nature conservation, like the Nature Conservancy, which also campaigned for NAFTA and has been accused of greenwashing soy monocultures in Brazil through its controversial partnership with Cargill grain corporation. (9) There’s also Conservation International, strongly criticized by civil society groups for its activities in Mexico’s Lacandon jungle, and the Katoomba Group, a pioneer in developing rationales for “ecosystem markets.” (10)

Altieri reported in 2004 that EAP’s partners included European biotech giants Bayer Cropscience and Syngenta (through its charitable foundation), as well as Croplife International, a trade association that represents the “plant science industry” (read: genetically engineered crops). As of July 2009, none of these appear on EAP’s web site as partners or supporters—apparently the organization wants to keep the appearance of critical distance from the biotech industry.

On July 8 2009, Worldwatch and EAP unveiled a new initiative: “a two-year project to point the world toward innovations in agriculture that can nourish people as well as the planet, supported by a $1.3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project will focus specifically on sub-Saharan Africa.” (11)

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the Gates Foundation’s joint endeavor with the Rockefeller Foundation to address the problem of hunger in Africa, has not gone without controversy. In March 2009 the Oakland Institute released a report titled “Voices from Africa: African Farmers & Environmentalists Speak Out Against a New Green Revolution in Africa”, which features essays and statements of leading African farmers, environmentalists, and civil society groups which directly challenge AGRA’s plans for the continent. (12) Well-founded critiques of AGRA were also presented by GRAIN (13), the ETC Group (14) and Food First (15).

Furthermore, in November-December 2007 the west African country of Mali hosted an international meeting on Alternatives to the Green Revolution (read AGRA). Attendees—over 150 participants from 25 African countries and 10 non-African countries—included farmers, pastoralists, environmentalists, women, youth and development organizations.

The Worldwatch/EAP initiative intends to research “practical solutions for creating sustainable food security.” Most of the “practical solutions” mentioned in the press release— rainwater harvesting, adding nitrogen-fixing plants into crop rotations, farmer-run seed banks, and involving women in decision making—cannot be thought of as innovations by any definition of the word. They are what organic and family farmers have always been doing. Other solutions mentioned, like “tapping international carbon-credit markets”, reflect once again a blind faith in discredited “market solutions”.

What’s most upsetting about the two joint Worldwatch/EAP communiques is their silence about the IAASTD report (also known as the Agricultural Assessment), an enormous document that is to world agriculture what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to global warming. Written by over 400 experts under the auspices of the World Bank and UN agencies, with the full participation of civil society, governments and industry, and subjected to two independent peer reviews, it is the most thorough appraisal of world agriculture ever undertaken. It concluded that business-as-usual Green Revolution agriculture is not an option. As an alternative, the report’s authors recommended small-scale agroecological production that utilizes local resources, precisely what organic farmers worldwide have been doing all along. As for genetically engineered crops, the Agricultural Assessment expressed caution and skepticism, which did not sit well with the biotechnology industry.

The IAASTD report was released over a year ago, Worldwatch itself took note of it in an April 18, 2008 communique. (16) To approach the subjects of world hunger and sustainable agriculture without reference to the Agricultural Assessment is to court genuine ignorance.

The alternatives to the Green Revolution model and misguided market “solutions” can be summed up in two words: food sovereignty. This innovative concept is the product of one of the most remarkable, democratic and inclusive collective thinking processes in history. It was formulated and refined through years of dialogue and debate among dozens of small farmers organizations from all over the world over a period of years, culminating in the Nyeleni Declaration issued at the World Forum on Food Sovereignty in Mali in 2007. The main architect of the food sovereignty concept is worldwide peasant federation Via Campesina, probably the single most important civil society organization in the world right now.

Global civil society is currently carrying out an exciting, hopeful, inclusive, bottom-up dialogue on food sovereignty, climate justice and the future of agriculture, which is breaking with old paradigms and offering proposals that radically break with the conventional wisdom of industrial civilization. But sadly, Worldwatch seems to have decided to play it safe instead and turn to mainstream partners like EAP, and play along with major funders like the Gates Foundation. Especially sad, considering that the organization has repeated times shown courage and willingness to step out of the herd on sensitive and important issues. It is not my intention to single out the Worldwatch institute—unfortunately it is far from being the only environmental group that has followed this sorry trend.

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Ruiz-Marrero is a Puerto Rican author, journalist and environmental educator. His articles have been published by Synthesis/Regeneration, Alternet, Corporate Watch, The Ecologist, Earth Island Journal, E Magazine, the CIP Americas Policy Program, Food First, and many other media. He currently heads the Puerto Rico Project on Biosafety.

FOOTNOTES

1. Worldwatch was founded with a $500,000 grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Philanthropic foundations founded and controlled by the Rockefellers, like RBF and the Rockefeller Foundation were key in conceiving and funding the Green Revolution. See Mark Dowie’s book American Foundations: An Investigative History (MIT Books, 2002), and also Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett’s Thy Will Be Done: Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (Harper Collins, 2005).
2. “Biofuels for Transport: Global Potential and Implications for Sustainable Agriculture and Energy in the 21st Century,” Worldwatch Institute
3. “Smart Choices for Biofuels,” Worldwatch Institute
4. “Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use,” Worldwatch Institute
5. “Biochar, a new big threat to people, land, and ecosystems,” Rainforest Rescue
6. I normally do not consult the Wikipedia as a primary source, but the EAP web page specifically directs inquiries to ecoagriculture’s Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecoagriculture
7. Altieri, Miguel. “Agroecology vs. Ecoagriculture,” Institute of Science in Society
8. See ToxicSoy.org, ResposibleSoy.org
9. “Conservation Corp.: Enviros Ally with Big Grain,” Multinational Monitor
10. Katoomba Group
11. “Worldwatch Institute Launches Initiative to Assess Agricultural Methods’ Impacts on Sustainability, Productivity,” Worldwatch Institute
12. “Voices From Africa: African Farmers & Environmentalists Speak Out Against a New Green Revolution in Africa,” Oakland Institute, March 2009
13. “A new Green Revolution for Africa?” GRAIN, December 2007
14. “Food Sovereignty or Green Revolution 2.0?” ETC Group, April 2007.
15. “Ten Reasons Why the Rockefeller and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations’ Alliance for Another Green Revolution Will Not Solve the Problems of Poverty and Hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa” by Eric Holt-Gimenez, Miguel A. Altieri and Peter Rosset. Food First, October 2006 (PDF)
16. “International Commission Calls for ‘Paradigm Shift’ in Agriculture,” Worldwatch Institute

For more information on what is biochar and what is wrong with it:
http://carmeloruiz.blogspot.com/search/label/Biochar

For more on AGRA:
http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/search/label/AGRA

For more on IAASTD:
http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/search/label/IAASTD

RESOURCES

Worldwatch Institute
http://www.worldwatch.org/

Earth Policy Institute
http://www.earth-policy.org/

Via Campesina
http://viacampesina.org/

From our Daily Report:

Colombia biofuel production linked to human rights violations
World War 4 Report, June 4, 2009

African peasants receive Zapatista maize at Nairobi WSF
World War 4 Report, Feb. 25, 2007

See also:

BIOFUELS: PROMISE OR THREAT?
by Rachel Smolker and Brian Tokar, Toward Freedom
World War 4 Report, March 2009

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Special to World War 4 Report, Aug. 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingWORLDWATCH PLAYS ALONG 

HONDURAS: THE BANANA CONNECTION —AGAIN

by Nikolas Kozloff, Señor Chichero

When the Honduran military overthrew the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya there might have been a sigh of relief in the corporate board rooms of Chiquita banana. Earlier this year the Cincinnati-based fruit company joined Dole in criticizing the government in Tegucigalpa which had raised the minimum wage by 60%. Chiquita complained that the new regulations would cut into company profits, requiring the firm to spend more on costs than in Costa Rica: 20 cents more to produce a crate of pineapple and ten cents more to produce a crate of bananas to be exact. In all, Chiquita fretted that it would lose millions under Zelaya’s labor reforms, since the company produced around 8 million crates of pineapple and 22 million crates of bananas per year.

When the minimum wage decree came down Chiquita sought help and appealed to the Honduran National Business Council, known by its Spanish acronym COHEP. Like Chiquita, COHEP was unhappy about Zelaya’s minimum wage measure. Amílcar Bulnes, the group’s president, argued that if the government went forward with the minimum wage increase employers would be forced to let workers go, thus increasing unemployment in the country. The most important business organization in Honduras, COHEP groups 60 trade associations and chambers of commerce representing every sector of the Honduran economy. According to its own Web site, COHEP is the political and technical arm of the Honduran private sector, supports trade agreements and provides “critical support for the democratic system.”

The international community should not impose economic sanctions against the coup regime in Tegucigalpa, COHEP argues, because this would worsen Honduras’ social problems. In its new role as the mouthpiece for Honduras’ poor, COHEP declares that Honduras has already suffered from earthquakes, torrential rains and the global financial crisis. Before punishing the coup regime with punitive measures, COHEP argues, the United Nations and the Organization of American States should send observer teams to Honduras to investigate how sanctions might affect 70% of Hondurans who live in poverty. Bulnes meanwhile has voiced his support for the coup regime of Roberto Micheletti and argues that the political conditions in Honduras are not propitious for Zelaya’s return from exile.

Chiquita: From Arbenz to Bananagate
It’s not surprising that Chiquita would seek out and ally itself to socially and politically backward forces in Honduras. Colsiba, the coordinating body of banana plantation workers in Latin America, says the fruit company has failed to supply its workers with necessary protective gear and has dragged its feet when it comes to signing collective labor agreements in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras.

Colsiba compares the infernal labor conditions on Chiquita plantations to concentration camps. It’s an inflammatory comparison, yet may contain a degree of truth. Women working on Chiquita’s plantations in Central America labor from 6:30 AM until 7 at night, their hands burning up inside rubber gloves. Some workers are as young as 14. Central American banana workers have sought damages against Chiquita for exposing them in the field to DBCP, a dangerous pesticide that causes sterility, cancer and birth defects in children.

Chiquita, formerly known as United Fruit Company and United Brands, has had a long and sordid political history in Central America. Led by Sam “The Banana Man” Zemurray, United Fruit got into the banana business at the turn of the twentieth century. Zemurray once remarked famously, “In Honduras, a mule costs more than a member of parliament.” By the 1920s United Fruit controlled 650,000 acres of the best land in Honduras, almost one quarter of all the arable land in the country. What’s more, the company controlled important roads and railways.

In Honduras the fruit companies spread their influence into every area of life including politics and the military. For such tactics they acquired the name los pulpos (the octopuses, from the way they spread their tentacles). Those who did not play ball with the corporations were frequently found face down on the plantations. In 1904 humorist O. Henry coined the term “Banana Republic” to refer to the notorious United Fruit Company and its actions in Honduras.

In Guatemala, United Fruit supported the CIA-backed 1954 military coup against President Jacobo Arbenz, a reformer who had carried out a land reform package. Arbenz’ overthrow led to more than 30 years of unrest and civil war in Guatemala. Later in 1961, United Fruit lent its ships to CIA-backed Cuban exiles who sought to overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs.

In 1972, United Fruit (now renamed United Brands) propelled Honduran General Oswaldo López Arellano to power. The dictator was forced to step down later, however, after the infamous “Bananagate” scandal, which involved United Brands bribes to Arellano. A US federal grand jury accused United Brands of bribing Arellano $1.25 million, with the carrot of another $1.25 million later if the military man agreed to reduce fruit export taxes. During Bananagate, United Brands’ president fell from a New York City skyscraper in an apparent suicide.

Go-Go Clinton Years and Colombia
In Colombia United Fruit also set up shop and during its operations in the South American country developed a no less checkered profile. In 1928, 3,000 workers went on strike against the company to demand better pay and working conditions. At first the company refused to negotiate but later gave in on some minor points, declaring the other demands “illegal” or “impossible.” When the strikers refused to disperse, the military fired on the banana workers, killing scores.

You might think that Chiquita would have reconsidered its labor policies after that but in the late 1990s the company began to ally itself with sinister forces—specifically right wing paramilitaries. Chiquita paid off the men to the tune of more than a million dollars. In its own defense, the company declared that it was merely paying protection money to the paramilitaries.

In 2007, Chiquita paid $25 million to settle a Justice Department investigation into the payments. Chiquita was the first company in US history to be convicted of financial dealings with a designated terrorist organization.

A lawsuit launched against Chiquita victims of the paramilitary violence claimed the firm abetted atrocities including terrorism, war crimes and crimes against humanity. A lawyer for the plaintiffs said that Chiquita’s relationship with the paramilitaries “was about acquiring every aspect of banana distribution and sale through a reign of terror.”

Back in Washington, DC Charles Lindner, Chiquita’s CEO, was busy courting the White House. Lindner had been a big donor to the GOP but switched sides and began to lavish cash on the Democrats and Bill Clinton. Clinton repaid Linder by becoming a key military backer of the government of Andrés Pastrana which presided over the proliferation of right-wing death squads. At the time the US was pursuing its corporately-friendly free trade agenda in Latin America, a strategy carried out by Clinton’s old boyhood friend Thomas “Mack” McLarty. At the White House, McLarty served as chief of staff and special envoy to Latin America. He’s an intriguing figure who we’ll come back to in a moment.

The Holder-Chiquita Connection
Given Chiquita’s underhanded record in Central America and Colombia, it’s not a surprise that the company later sought to ally itself with COHEP in Honduras. In addition to lobbying business associations in Honduras, however, Chiquita also cultivated relationships with high-powered law firms in Washington. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Chiquita has paid out $70,000 in lobbying fees to Covington and Burling over the past three years.

Covington is a powerful law firm which advises multinational corporations. Eric Holder, the current Attorney General, a co-chair of the Obama campaign and former Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton was up until recently a partner at the firm. At Covington, Holder defended Chiquita as lead counsel in its case with the Justice Department. From his perch at the elegant new Covington headquarters located near the New York Times building in Manhattan, Holder prepped Fernando Aguirre, Chiquita’s CEO, for an interview with 60 Minutes dealing with Colombian death squads.

Holder had the fruit company plead guilty to one count of “engaging in transactions with a specially designated global terrorist organization.” But the lawyer, who was taking in a hefty salary at Covington to the tune of more than $2 million, brokered a sweetheart deal in which Chiquita only paid a $25 million fine over five years. Outrageously, however, not one of the six company officials who approved the payments received any jail time.

The Curious Case of Covington
Look a little deeper and you’ll find that not only does Covington represent Chiquita but also serves as a kind of nexus for the political right intent on pushing a hawkish foreign policy in Latin America. Covington has pursued an important strategic alliance with Kissinger (of Chile 1973 fame) and McLarty Associates (yes, the same Mack McLarty from Clinton-time), a well-known international consulting and strategic advisory firm.

From 1974 to 1981 John Bolton served as an associate at Covington. As US ambassador to the United Nations under George Bush, Bolton was a fierce critic of leftists in Latin America such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. Furthermore, just recently John Negroponte became Covington’s vice chairman. Negroponte is a former Deputy Secretary of State, director of National Intelligence and US representative to the United Nations.

As US ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, Negroponte played a significant role in assisting the US-backed Contra rebels intent on overthrowing the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Human rights groups have criticized Negroponte for ignoring human rights abuses committed by Honduran death squads which were funded and trained by the Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, when Negroponte served as ambassador, his building in Tegucigalpa became one of the largest nerve centers of the CIA in Latin America, with a tenfold increase in personnel.

While there’s no evidence linking Chiquita to the recent coup in Honduras, there’s enough of a confluence of suspicious characters and political heavyweights here to warrant further investigation. From COHEP to Covington to Holder to Negroponte to McLarty, Chiquita has sought out friends in high places, friends who had no love for the progressive labor policies of the Zelaya regime in Tegucigalpa.

—-

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S. (Palgrave, 2006) and Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008). His website is Señor Chichero.

From our Daily Report:

Colombia: lawsuit accuses Dole of funding paramilitaries
World War 4 Report, May 27, 2009

Colombia: survivors remember “Bananera Massacre”
World War 4 Report, Dec. 10, 2008

Eric Holder: death-squad defender
World War 4 Report, Nov. 20, 2009

See also:

OTTO REICH’S FINGERPRINTS ON HONDURAS COUP?
by Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report
World War 4 Report, August 2009

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Aug. 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingHONDURAS: THE BANANA CONNECTION —AGAIN 

SELLING IRAN

Ahmadinejad, Privatization and a Bus Driver Who Said No

by Billy Wharton, Dissident Voice

A creeping assumption lies just beneath the surface of arguments concerning the disputed election in Iran. Incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is cast as an anti-US populist crusader resisting the materialistic advances of the West. His opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as his foil—a Western-backed liberal intent on implementing free-market policies. Violent street battles have been presented as a re-enforcement of the Western disposition to see the two idealized positions as the limit of what is politically imaginable. Such arguments conveniently avoid a third force—the people of Iran, whose street politics threaten to move well beyond the confines of the electoral campaigns. Questions remain. Is Ahmadinejad really a populist—the only force preventing a wave of pro-market policies in Iran? Does Mousavi’s campaign mark the limits of the reform movement?

Since his election in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, under the guidance of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has overseen a regime dedicated to the privatization of state-controlled industries. The intention of the regime, as stated by the newly appointed governor of the Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Seyyed Shams Al-din Hosseini, is to privatize 80% of state-owned industries by 2010. This mandate was made real just prior to the disputed elections as a state-owned bank, Saderat, announced it would offer 6% of its shares to private investors (Press TV, June 8, 2009). Other significant privatizations during Ahmadinejad’s reign include the postal service; two other state-run banks, Tejerat and Mellat; and, in February 2008, a 5% bloc of shares in the publicly owned steel maker, Foulad-e Mobarakeh, was sold out in eight minutes. (Iran Daily, Fen. 14, 2008). In total, since 2005, 247 enterprises have been processed by the Iran Privatization Organization, the state-ministry specifically charged with overseeing privatizations (Iranian Privatization Organization website).

Khamenei has propelled the process forward. While Ahmadinejad crafted just enough populist rhetoric to provide headlines, the Supreme Leader issued a letter in 2006 ordering the sell-off of banking, mining, industrial, and transport companies—80% across the board. Ahmadinejad’s ministers have aggressively followed suit. In September 2008, Labor Minister Mohammad Jahromi described the fact that so many of the country’s resources are located in the public sector as an “obstacle” to growth (Iran Daily, Sept. 29, 2008). Heidari Kord-Zangeneh, Ahmadinejad’s deputy finance minister and head of the Iran Privatization Organization, drew pro-market policies together with the myth of anti-imperialism. “We are going to activate our private sector and our private banks,” he exclaimed, “in order to fight against these [US] sanctions.” He punctuated this with a pre-election promise, “I promise that if I am here for the next two years, between 80 and 90 percent of the government will be sold.” (Iran Daily, Feb. 12, 2008)

Ahmadinejad’s supposed anti-Western approach stops short when it comes to allowing foreign investors to penetrate Iran’s economy. His Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Davoud Danesh-Jafari boasted at a 2008 meeting of the Islamic Development Bank that foreign direct investment in Iran had increased by 138% since 2007. (Iran Daily, Feb. 17, 2008) Some 80 projects had been initiated during that period. Key to this capital penetration was the 2004 acceptance of the International Monetary Fund’s Article VIII Obligations (IMF press release, Sept. 14, 2004). Under this provision, Iran agreed to refrain from imposing restrictions on currency transactions and other elements essential to capital flow.

While Ahmadinejad has been the implementer of privatization policies, the reform camp was its architects. Central to this process was the creative violation of Article 44 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This article mandates that key sectors of the economy remain in public hands. It represented the radical-populist edge of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Parliamentary legislation in 2004, near the end of the term of reformer Mohammad Khatami, created the first breech in Article 44. The legislation called for a “change in the role of government from direct ownership and management of enterprises to policymaking, guidance and overseeing” (Iranian Privatization Organization website). The one consistent voice pushing this process forward is Khamenei, whose tenure as Supreme Leader encompasses both reformer and populist presidential regimes.

The IMF has hailed this process, describing Iran in a 2007 position paper as, “Managing the Transition to a Market Economy.” The Fund has had a constant presence in the country since 1945, surviving even the turbulent 1979 Islamic Revolution. IMF officials have employed the usual equation of debt and technical assistance to enforce their pro-market agenda. The next phase, according to IMF planners, of market transition is to “curb the growth of internal demand” through the reduction of state subsidies. Ahmadinejad’s Central Bank appointee, Al-din Hosseini, indicated a shared sentiment, stating: “The government plans to implement a strategy that involves significant reforms, the most important of which is the reform aimed at better subsidy system.” (IMF meeting, Washington DC, Oct. 13, 2008).

Pro-market privatizations have been combined with harsh restrictions on workers’ ability to organize, in order to advance Ahmadinejad’s neo-liberal restructuring of Iran. Although Iran is technically a member of the International Labor Organization, and thereby mandated to allow free trade unions, workers are restricted from forming independent unions. Under the constitution, they are only allowed to join ideologically-centered Islamic Workers’ Councils, which hold no right to deal with worksite issues or collectively bargain. Despite these legal restrictions, privatization and soaring inflation have resulted in a series of escalating confrontations between workers and security forces.

In March 2007, thousands of schoolteachers spilled out into the streets in front of Parliament, demanding that their collective grievances be heard and their salaries increased. They were attacked by security forces and their leaders received prison sentences of up to five years. Such repression did not deter Mahmoud Salehi, a baker, from making his annual demand to celebrate May Day. Salehi was found guilty of “acting against national security” and imprisoned. This year, in a small preview of the post-election street protests, Ahmadinejad’s security apparatus was used to repress 2,000 workers who attempted to organize a May Day celebration.

But the real foil to Ahmadinejad’s pro-market policies is a middle-aged bus driver from Tehran. Mansour Osanloo, acting as the president of the 17,000 worker-strong Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, led a 2005 strike in which drivers refused to accept fares in protest of working conditions and rising fares. The strike was immediately criminalized with Osanloo and fellow leaders placed under arrest. Undeterred, Osanloo led another strike attempt in 2006. He was again arrested and today sits in a cell in Iran’s notorious Evin prison—a living testament to both the courage of Iranian workers and the repressive nature of the regime.

Soon to be joining Osanloo in Evin are thousands of protesters who have also been criminalized by Ahmadinejad and Khamenei’s regime because of their protests over the stolen election. While it is difficult to describe a candidate with as many establishment credentials as Mousavi as a reformer, it is easy to see how the demonstrations on the street have rapidly progressed beyond his campaign. Slogans have moved from “Mousavi get our votes back” to “Death to the Dictator.” With this shift come possibilities for more radical measures. Automotive workers at Khodro Automobile Company have pledged resistance, university students are conducting sit-ins, and the Bus Drivers Union has issued a call for international solidarity.

Meanwhile, somewhere deep inside Evin prison, clandestine communications may be being initiated between a jailed bus driver and a newly minted student radical or an ailing baker and young rock-throwing worker. These actors need little help in understanding that Ahmadinejad’s regime, despite all his populist rhetoric, has worked hand-in-hand with IMF privatizers. After failing to deliver on his populist rhetoric, Ahmadinejad has stolen the election. Now, his only recourse is state repression. On the streets, something far more brilliant is underway—an open-ended emancipation project demanding nothing less than political freedom.

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Billy Wharton is the editor of The Socialist magazine and the Socialist WebZine. His articles have recently appeared in the Washington Post, Common Dreams, Monthly Review Zine, NYC Indypendent and the Links Journal.

This story first appeared June 28 on Dissident Voice.

RESOURCES

Iranian Privatization Organization
http://www.ipo.ir/

International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI)
http://www.workers-iran.org/

From our Daily Report:

Iran: ayatollah calls for death penalty for “rioters”
World War 4 Report, June 27, 2009

Iran: many beaten, arrested at May Day rallies
World War 4 Report, May 2, 2009

See also:

AGAINST U.S. AGGRESSION; AGAINST THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
Iranian Left-Opposition Activist Azar Majedi Says No to Both
from Riposte Laique
World War 4 Report, December 2007

IRAN: THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST CASE AGAINST NUCLEAR POWER
by Reza Fiyouzat, Dissident Voice
World War 4 Report, August 2007

IRAN: THE LEFT OPPOSITION SPEAKS
An Interview with Bina Darabzand of Salam Democrat:
Against Bush, Against Ahmadinejad, For Oaxaca
by Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report
World War 4 Report, March 2007

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, July 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingSELLING IRAN 

KIDNAP, NO RANSOM

by Peter Gorman, Fort Worth Weekly

The drug war raging along the US-Mexico border might seem distant to many in North Texas, but it landed squarely in one Fort Worth woman’s living room in late February, when her grown son, a US citizen, was kidnapped by armed gunman in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas.

Two months later, she still has not heard a word from the kidnappers regarding a ransom and believes that her 19-year-old son and two other relatives may have been taken to serve as slave labor in some drug boss’ operation. It’s a better outcome to imagine than believing her son has been killed.

Unfortunately, she’s not alone in her worries: A recent US State Department travel alert notes that “In recent years, dozens of U.S. citizens have been kidnapped in Mexico,” in crimes believed to be the work of drug gangs. Some have been heard from, and others haven’t. The travel alert noted that many of the cases remain unresolved. In fact, such kidnappings by drug gangs are epidemic in Mexico. Sylvia, who is being identified only by her first name, said other members of her own family in Mexico have already disappeared in similar incidents.

Names are withheld to protect Sylvia and her son from retaliation. Rather than give either of her son’s names, he is referred to in this story as Julio.

“In my heart I don’t believe my son is dead,” Sylvia said. “I believe he is being forced to work for the cartels. Those who are not dead must work to earn their food, and as no one has asked the family there or sent word to me for a ransom, that’s what I’m praying has happened.”

Julio, she said, was visiting relatives in the small village of Sombrerete when a caravan of late-model vehicles roared up to the ranch house. The armed men who emerged ordered everyone inside to get in the cars. In addition to Julio, two of his male cousins, ages 15 and 21, three women from the family, and one infant were taken.

The kidnappers are believed to be members of the Zetas, the US-trained Mexican drug war soldiers who years ago changed their allegiance, became notoriously violent enforcers for the Gulf Cartel, and now in some areas are believed to have broken off and formed their own cartel.

“The Zetas just move into the town, and they take whatever they want,” said Sylvia. “They just tell people to move out if they want a house or tell farmers to give them a cow if they want one. And no one will stand up to them, because if they do the men will come and kill them. It’s very bad there now.”

An official in an investigative agency of the Zacatecas government, who would not give his name, said that, until about a year ago, Sombrerete was out of the range of the drug war. But with Mexico’s push to clamp down on the cartels, the town, like many others in rural Mexico, was essentially invaded by young gang members looking for a place where the military and other gangs wouldn’t search for them. “The disruption caused by the drug war is causing all sorts of movement through the country,” said the official. “We’re seeing cartel members cropping up in places we never have before.”

The description of the kidnapping came from one of the women who were abducted. After driving through the hillsides for more than two hours, she said, she, the other women, and the baby were released. The woman told Sylvia that she counted 15 cars in the caravan. She said the men were dressed in military-looking uniforms and carrying automatic weapons.

It’s not the first time the Zetas have preyed on her family, Sylvia said. “Last summer the father of the family [in Sombrerete] was kidnapped, and his oldest son brought a ransom. Neither of them has been seen since. And now they’ve taken that family’s two other sons and my son as well. I don’t know how the word does not get out about what’s happening in Zacatecas, but maybe it’s because the people who write the news are afraid to report about it because they’ll be killed if they do.”

Sylvia said she begged Julio not to visit his cousins. “After he graduated high school last year in Oakland, California, I decided we should move here to Fort Worth. It’s just three of us: Julio, his eight-year-old brother, and me. And Julio found work building houses and saved money. But when they stopped building houses here, he got restless and wanted to go. I told him not to, that it wasn’t safe.”

She said Julio promised her that nothing would happen to him because he doesn’t do the things that would get him in trouble. “He doesn’t fight or even drink beer,” she said. “I told him if he had to go, then to make it a short visit. But then he found a girlfriend and decided to stay a little longer, and then this happened.”

After learning of her son’s abduction, Sylvia got in touch with a community activist on Fort Worth’s East Side. Together they contacted authorities in Mexico to report what had happened. Mexico responded by sending the equivalent of an assistant district attorney to Fort Worth to talk with them.

“The woman who came was very nice, but I don’t think she’ll do anything,” said the activist, who also asked not to be named. “The situation is so bad in some places that the government really can’t do anything.”

Andy Laney, a spokesman for the State Department, said his agency has known about the incident since shortly after it happened. “I am told that the FBI office in Dallas has been involved in the case, and the FBI takes the lead on cases involving kidnapping of American citizens in Mexico,” he said. But the Washington, DC-based official said he had no knowledge of what had happened to the young men in Sombrerete.

Typically, kidnappings are followed by ransom demands, often after the abductees have been tortured into telling their kidnappers about relatives in the United States who might be able to raise ransom money.

In other cases, however, no ransom demand is ever delivered, either because the victims have been killed or because they are being forced to work for the drug lords. The forced-labor movement is well known in Mexico but has not received much coverage in this country.

One kidnapping that did make the US news occurred on Nov. 10, 2008, when 27 farm workers were abducted in Sinaloa state just outside the capital of Culiacán. According to a New York Times report, the men were thought to have been taken to work under duress on marijuana plantations.

The anonymous Zacatecan investigative official acknowledged that forced labor is becoming more common throughout certain areas of Mexico. But he added, “We have had no confirmed cases of it happening here in Zacatecas.”

Author and freelance investigative journalist Bill Weinberg, whose specialty is Latin America, said that while it’s often difficult to prove, “There is strong reason to believe” that some people are being kidnapped to work in marijuana or opium fields. Others are used to move drugs for the cartels or as inductees into groups like the Zetas and others, he said.

“There is a history of forced labor in Mexico since colonial times,” he said. “Recently, where drugs are concerned, it’s mostly gone on in remote areas where the indigenous are held in semi-feudalism to the local bosses. But now, with Mexico spinning out of control and with drug-war kidnapping at epic proportions all over the country, it simply stands to reason that this is happening.”

A spokesperson for the FBI in Washington DC said that the kidnapping of US citizens in Mexico, particularly along the border, is a frequent problem, but she could not confirm any cases of US citizens kidnapped into forced labor in Mexico. She confirmed that the agency is investigating dozens of kidnap-for-ransom cases but said she had no statistics to show how many other cases might involve family squabbles or child custody, for instance, versus drug cartel activity.

“We cannot be under the illusion that the war in Mexico is not crossing the border,” said the Fort Worth activist who is helping Sylvia. “It is affecting the United States. This is just one case, but there are hundreds more around the country.”

—-

This story first appeared April 29 in the Fort Worth Weekly.

From our Daily Report:

Mexico: shake-up in wake of Zacatecas jailbreak
World War 4 Report, May 23, 2009

Mexico: gunmen kill reporter, kidnap farmworkers
World War 4 Report, Nov. 15, 2008

Marcos: forced labor camps in Sonora
World War 4 Report, Oct. 26, 2006

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, June 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingKIDNAP, NO RANSOM 

DARFUR: THE SHOCK OF RESPONSIBILITY

Al-Bashir and the International Criminal Court

by Rene Wadlow, Toward Freedom

After a thorough examination of the evidence presented by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a panel of three judges has issued an arrest warrant against President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan. There are seven charges against al-Bashir, including crimes against humanity, murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, rape, attacks against civilian population and pillaging. The ICC confirms the statements that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been making to UN human rights bodies since early 2004.

The evidence against al-Bashir had been collected at the request of the UN Security Council and had been added to by the High Level Mission established by the UN Human Rights Council in December 2006, chaired by Prof. Jody Williams, the 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate for her work on a ban on landmines. The High Level Mission confirmed that there is a high level of destruction, millions of people are displaced, and a large number of people have been killed. There is a refugee flow to Chad and a danger of the conflict spreading to Chad and the Central African Republic. The High Level Mission also indicated that the responses of the Sudanese government are inadequate. Their report stated that “Mechanisms of justice and accountability, where they exist, are under-resourced, politically compromised and ineffective. The region is heavily armed, further undercutting the rule of law, and meaningful disarmament and demobilization of the Janjaweed, other militias and rebel movements is yet to occur. Darfur suffers from longstanding economic marginalization and underdevelopment, and the conflict has resulted in further impoverishment.”

The indication that the national court system is inadequate is crucial, as the ICC can act only when the national court system is unable or unwilling to prosecute the person in question.

This first ICC arrest warrant against a ruling head of state is an historic moment in the development of world law. There is a distinction between “international law” and “world law” that is made, at least by advocates of world citizenship and some international law professors such as the late Louis Sohn of Harvard Law School. International law is basically treaty law and deals with relations among states. World law is the law of the world community and thus deals with individuals. Most human rights standards, the ICC and the ad hoc courts dealing with former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone can be considered “world law” as they deal with individuals. The ICC deals with an individual not an entire state. However, the standards against which the individual is judged have often been set out in treaties and conventions such as the 1948 Convention on Genocide. Thus there is a close relationship between international law and world law, but it is intellectually useful to make the distinction between the two. World law is likely to grow.

The earlier heads of state to face an international court had already lost power prior to being arrested: Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia; Charles Taylor of Liberia; Radovan Karadzic of the Republika Srpska, the Serbian unit of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Taylor and Karadzic have not yet been tried.

The fate of al-Bashir is uncertain. Only speculation is possible. He originally came to power in June 1989 as the “front man” for the intellectual ideologue Hassan al-Turabi, who became speaker of the parliament. Al-Turabi had the intellectual vision of a new Islamic-based society. Al-Bashir had no ideas, but as a military man with an outgoing personality he fitted the image of a head of state. Al-Bashir and al-Turabi parted ways in February 2001. Al-Bashir’s power base is narrow, mostly security people from the army and the police. My guess is that he will be eased out of power and go into exile in some “safe haven” such as Arabia, which was willing to take in [Idi] Amin Dada of Uganda whose crimes were at least as evident.

In the meantime al-Bashir is still able to make life worse for the people of Sudan. His first move was to expel 13 foreign humanitarian NGOs and to close down one of the more active Sudanese relief agencies. Some observers fear that the situation in Sudan could get worse without al-Bashir, but it is difficult to see how the situation can get worse.

There is no obvious replacement for al-Bashir from within his own camp. However, there is a good deal of political talent in Sudan, if the political structures were more open. There are probably a good number of people who see themselves in the president’s chair once al-Bashir is pushed out. Hopefully, there can be enough international pressure to speed his departure, even if his arrest and transfer to the ICC is unlikely.

Leaders of the African Union and the Arab League are watching the situation closely in a state of near shock. If one of their own can be held responsible for crimes against humanity by the ICC, does this not open a courtroom door for many of them?

After the ICC arrest warrants, things are starting to fall into place. Hassan al-Turabi “for reasons of health” was released from jail in Port Sudan on March 9 and sent by government plane to his home in the suburbs of Khartoum. Al-Turabi has been, since his break with al-Bashir in 2001, in and out of jail but most of the time under house arrest. In January 2009, after suggesting that al-Bashir was guilty of the crimes charged by the ICC and should give himself up to the Court, al-Turabi was re-arrested and placed in a prison in Port Sudan, far from his supporters, many still in government service in Khartoum. Al-Turabi has a good number of people influenced by his thinking in all sections of the Sudanese elite, including among the Darfur insurgencies. His release is a sign that a post-al-Bashir future is being considered, though not yet openly discussed.

—-

This story first appeared March 10 in Toward Freedom.

See also:

DARFUR AND SUDAN: TOWARDS REVOLUTION
Justice & Equality Movement Seeks Power, Not Separatism
by Savo Heleta, Pambazuka News
World War 4 Report, November 2008

PRESIDENTS IN THE DOCK
An End to Africa’s Reign of Impunity?
by Michael Fleshman, Africa Renewal
World War 4 Report, February 2007

From our Daily Report:

Darfur rebels sentenced to death in Khartoum attack
World War 4 Report, April 25, 2009

International lines drawn in Sudan war crimes warrant
World War 4 Report, March 15, 2009

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, May 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingDARFUR: THE SHOCK OF RESPONSIBILITY 

AFRICOM: MAKING PEACE OR FUELING WAR?

by Daniel Volman and William Minter, Foreign Policy in Focus

At the end of President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony, civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery invoked the hope of a day “when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors.” No one expects such a utopian vision to materialize any time soon. But both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have spoken eloquently of the need to emphasize diplomacy over a narrow military agenda. In her confirmation hearing, Clinton stressed the need for “smart power,” perhaps inadvertently echoing Obama’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq as a “dumb war.” Even top US military officials, such as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, have warned against overly militarizing US foreign policy.

In practice, such a shift in emphasis is certain to be inconsistent. At a global level, the most immediate challenge to the credibility of change in foreign policy is Afghanistan, where promised troop increases are given little chance of bringing stability and the country risks becoming Obama’s “Vietnam.” Africa policy is for the most part under the radar of public debate. But it also poses a clear choice for the new administration. Will de facto US security policy toward the continent focus on anti-terrorism and access to natural resources and prioritize bilateral military relations with African countries? Or will the United States give priority to enhancing multilateral capacity to respond to Africa’s own urgent security needs?

If the first option is taken, it will undermine rather than advance both US and African security. Taking the second option won’t be easy. There are no quick fixes. But US security in fact requires that policymakers take a broader view of Africa’s security needs and a multilateral approach to addressing them.

The need for immediate action to promote peace in Africa is clear. While much of the continent is at peace, there are large areas of great violence and insecurity, most prominently centered on Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia. These crises require not only a continuing emphasis on diplomacy but also resources for peacemaking and peacekeeping. And yet the Bush administration has bequeathed the new president a new military command for Africa—the US Africa Command, known as AFRICOM. Meanwhile, Washington has starved the United Nations and other multilateral institutions of resources, even while entrusting them with enormous peacekeeping responsibilities.

The government has presented AFRICOM as a cost-effective institutional restructuring and a benign program for supporting African governments in humanitarian as well as necessary security operations. In fact, it represents the institutionalization and increased funding for a model of bilateral military ties—a replay of the mistakes of the Cold War. This risks drawing the United States more deeply into conflicts, reinforcing links with repressive regimes, excusing human rights abuses, and frustrating rather than fostering sustainable multilateral peacemaking and peacekeeping. It will divert scarce budget resources, build resentment, and undercut the long-term interests of the United States.

AFRICOM in Theory and Practice
Judging by their frequent press releases, AFRICOM and related programs such as the Navy’s Africa Partnership Station are primarily focused on a constant round of community relations and capacity building projects, such as rescue and firefighting training for African sailors, construction of clinics and schools, and similar endeavors. “AFRICOM is about helping Africans build greater capacity to assure their own security,” asserted Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Theresa Whelan in a typical official statement. AFRICOM defenders further cite the importance of integrating development and humanitarian programs into the program’s operations.

Pentagon spokespeople describe AFRICOM as a logical bureaucratic restructuring that will ensure that Africa gets the attention it deserves. They insist AFRICOM won’t set the priorities for US policy toward Africa or increase Pentagon influence at the expense of civilian agencies. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August 2007, Whelan denied that AFRICOM was being established “solely to fight terrorism, or to secure oil resources, or to discourage China,” countering: “This is not true.”

But other statements by Whelan herself, by Gen. William “Kip” Ward, the four-star African-American general who commands AFRICOM, and Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller, his military deputy, lay out AFRICOM’s priorities in more conventional terms. In a briefing for European Command officers in March 2004, Whelan said that the Pentagon’s priorities in Africa were to “prevent establishment of/disrupt/destroy terrorist groups; stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction; perform evacuations of US citizens in danger; assure access to strategic resources, lines of communication, and refueling/forward sites” in Africa.

On Feb. 19, 2008, Moeller told an AFRICOM conference that protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market” was one of AFRICOM’s “guiding principles,” citing “oil disruption,” “terrorism,” and the “growing influence” of China as major “challenges” to US interests in Africa. Appearing before the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, General Ward echoed the same views and identified combating terrorism as “AFRICOM’s number one theater-wide goal.” Ward barely mentioned development, humanitarian aid, or conflict resolution. US official discourse on AFRICOM doesn’t engage with the parallel discussions in the United Nations and the African Union about building multilateral peacekeeping capacity. Strikingly, there was no official consultation about the new command with either the United Nations or the African Union before it was first announced in 2006.

In practice, AFRICOM, which became a fully independent combatant command on Oct. 1, 2008, with its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, is built on the paradigm of US military commands which span the globe. Although AFRICOM features less “kinetic” (combat) operations than the active wars falling under CENTCOM in Iraq and Afghanistan, its goals and programs are more conventional than the public relations image would imply. The Pentagon now has six geographically focused commands, each headed by either a four-star general or admiral—Africa (AFRICOM); the Middle East and Central Asia (Central Command or CENTCOM); Europe and most of the former Soviet Union (European Command or EUCOM); the Pacific Ocean, East and South Asia (Pacific Command or PACOM); Mexico, Canada, and the United States (Northern Command or NORTHCOM); and Central and South America (Southern Command or SOUTHCOM), as well as others with functional responsibilities, such as for Special Forces and Nuclear Weapons.

Before AFRICOM was established, US military operations in Africa fell under three different commands. EUCOM handled most of Africa; but Egypt and the Horn of Africa fell under the authority of CENTCOM (Egypt remains under CENTCOM rather than AFRICOM); Madagascar and the island states of the Indian Ocean were the responsibility of PACOM. All three were primarily concerned with other regions of the world that took priority over Africa, and had only a few middle-rank staff members dedicated to Africa. This reflected the fact that Africa was chiefly viewed as a regional theater in the global Cold War, as an adjunct to US-European relations, or—in the immediate post-Cold War period—as a region of little concern to the United States. But Africa’s status in US national security policy and military affairs rose dramatically during the Bush administration, in response both to global terrorism and the growing significance of African oil resources.

The new strategic framework for Africa emphasizes, above all, the threat of global terrorism and the risk posed by weak states, “empty spaces,” and countries with large Muslim populations as vulnerable territories where terrorists may find safe haven and political support. This framework is fundamentally flawed. No one denies that al-Qaeda has found adherents and allied groups in Africa, as evidenced most dramatically by the bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. But Islamist ideology has had only limited impact among most African Muslims, and even in countries with extremist Islamist governments or insurgent groups (such as Algeria, Sudan, and Somalia), the focus has been on local issues rather than global conflict. Counterinsurgency analysts such as Robert Berschinski and David Kilcullen have warned that “aggregating” disparate local insurgencies into an all-encompassing vision of global terrorism in fact facilitates al-Qaeda’s efforts to woo such groups. Heavy-handed military action such as air strikes that kill civilians and collaboration with counter-insurgency efforts by incumbent regimes, far from diminishing the threat of terrorism, helps it grow.

Examining the Record: Somalia
The most prominent example of active US military involvement in Africa has been the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). Speaking not for attribution at a conference in early 2008, a senior AFRICOM official cited this task force, which has taken the lead in US engagement with Somalia, as a model for AFRICOM’s operations elsewhere on the continent. In October 2002, CENTCOM played the leading role in the creation of this joint task force, designed to conduct naval and aerial patrols in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the eastern Indian Ocean, in order to counter the activities of terrorist groups in the region. The command authority for CJTF-HOA was transferred to AFRICOM as of October 1, 2008.

Based since 2002 at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, the CJTF-HOA is comprised of approximately 1,400 US military personnel—primarily sailors, Marines, and Special Forces troops. Under a new five-year agreement signed in 2007, the base has expanded to some 500 acres. In addition, the CJTF-HOA has established three permanent contingency operating locations that have been used to mount attacks on Somalia, one at the Kenyan naval base at Manda Bay and two others at Hurso and Bilate in Ethiopia. A US Navy Special Warfare Task Unit was recently deployed to Manda Bay, where it is providing training to Kenyan troops in anti-terrorism operations and coastal patrol missions.

The CJTF-HOA provided intelligence to Ethiopia in support of its invasion of Somalia in December 2006. It also used military facilities in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya to launch air raids and missile strikes in January and June of 2007 and May of 2008 against alleged al-Qaeda members involved in the Union of Islamic Courts in Somalia. At least dozens of Somali civilians were killed in this series of air attacks alone, and hundreds wounded. These were only a fraction of the toll of the fighting during the invasion, in which hundreds of civilians were killed and over 300,000 people displaced by mid-2007. By the end of 2008, over 3.2 million people (43% of Somalia’s population), including 1.3 million internally displaced by conflict, were estimated to be in need of food assistance. The US air strikes made US backing for the invasion highly visible.

These military actions, moreover, represented only part of a broader counterproductive strategy shaped by narrow counterterrorism considerations. In 2005 and 2006, the CIA funneled resources to selected Somali warlords to oppose Islamist militia. The United States collaborated with Ethiopia in its invasion of Somalia in late 2006, overthrowing the Islamic Courts Union that had brought several months of unprecedented stability to the capital Mogadishu and its surroundings. The invasion was a conventional military success. But far from reducing the threat from extremist groups, it isolated moderates, provoked internal displacement that became one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, inflamed anti-U.S. sentiment, and even provoked the targeting of both local and international humanitarian operations.

In short, Somalia provided a textbook case of the negative results of “aggregating” local threats into an undifferentiated concept of global terrorism. It has left the new Obama administration with what Ken Menkhaus, a leading academic expert on Somalia, called “a policy nightmare.”

Examining the Record: The Sahel
Less in the news, but also disturbing because of the wide range of countries involved in both North and West Africa, is the US military involvement in the Sahara and Sahel region, now under AFRICOM. Operation Enduring Freedom Trans Sahara (OEF-TS) provides military support to the Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) program, which comprises the United States and eleven African countries: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal. Its goals are defined on the AFRICOM web site as “to assist traditionally moderate Muslim governments and populations in the Trans-Sahara region to combat the spread of extremist ideology and terrorism in the region.” It builds on the former Pan Sahel Initiative, which was operational from 2002 to 2004, and draws on resources from the Department of State and USAID as well as the Department of Defense.

Operational support comes from another task force, Joint Task Force Aztec Silence (JTFAS), created in December 2003 under EUCOM. JTFAS was specifically charged with conducting surveillance operations using the assets of the US Sixth Fleet and to share information, along with intelligence collected by US intelligence agencies, with local military forces. Among other assets, it deploys a squadron of US Navy P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft based in Sigonella, Sicily.

In March 2004, P-3 aircraft from this squadron and reportedly operating from the southern Algerian base at Tamanrasset were deployed to monitor and gather intelligence on the movements of Algerian Salafist guerrillas operating in Chad and to pass on this intelligence to Chadian forces engaged in combat against the guerrillas. In September 2007, an American C-130 “Hercules” cargo plane stationed in Bamako, the capital of Mali, as part of the Flintlock 2007 exercises, was deployed to resupply Malian counter-insurgency units engaged in fighting with Tuareg forces and was hit by Tuareg ground fire. No US personnel were injured and the plane returned safely to the capital, but the incident signaled a significant extension of the US role in counter-insurgency warfare in the region.

These operations illustrate how strengthening counterinsurgency capacity proves either counterproductive or irrelevant as a response to African security issues—which may include real links to global terrorist networks but are for the most part focused on specific national and local realities. On an international scale, the impact of violent Islamic extremism in North Africa has direct implications in Europe, but its bases are urban communities and the North African diaspora in Europe, rather than the Sahara-Sahel hinterland. Insurgencies along the Sahara-Sahel divide, in Mali, Niger, and Chad, reflect ethnic and regional realities rather than extensions of global terrorism. The militarily powerful North African regimes, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, have very distinct experiences with Islamic extremism. But none have a record of stability based on democratic accountability to civil society. And associating all threats to security in Nigeria with the threat of extremist Islam is a bizarre stereotype ignoring that country’s real problems.

In his November 2007 paper on AFRICOM, cited above, Berschinski noted that the United States and Algeria exaggerated the threat from the small rebel group GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), officially allied with al-Qaeda. A scary, if geographically inappropriate, headline in Air Force Magazine in November 2004, heralded the threat from a “Swamp of Terror in the Sahara.” The emphasis on counterinsurgency, Berschinski argues, has disrupted traditional trade networks and allowed local governments to neglect the need for finding negotiated solutions to concerns of Tuareg areas and other neglected regions. In the case of Mali, Robert Pringle—a former US ambassador to that country—has noted that the US emphasis on anti-terrorism and radical Islam is out of touch with both the country’s history and Malian perceptions of current threats to their own security. The specifics of each country differ, but the common reality is that the benefits of US collaboration with local militaries in building counterinsurgency capacity haven’t been demonstrated.

Cases to the contrary, however, aren’t hard to find. In Mauritania, Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz overthrew the elected government in August 2008, leading to sanctions from the African Union and suspension of all but humanitarian aid from France and the United States. US aid to Mauritania for the 2008 fiscal year that was suspended included $15 million in military-to-military funding, as well as $4 million for peacekeeping training—and only $3 million in development assistance. More generally, the common argument that US military aid promotes values of respect for democracy is decisively contradicted by what resulted in Latin America from decades of US training of the region’s military officers. If democratic institutions are not already strong, strengthening military forces is most likely to increase the chances of military interventions in politics.

Potential Threats
With at least a temporary withdrawal of Ethiopian troops and the election of moderate Islamic leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed as president of the transitional Somali government, there is at least the option of a new beginning in that country. But no one expects any quick solution, with all parties internally divided (including the insurgent militia known as Al-Shabaab) and international peace efforts distracted by multiple agendas. There will be a continuing temptation to continue a narrow anti-terrorist agenda, even if this path is now more widely recognized as self-defeating.

In the region covered by Operation Enduring Freedom Trans Sahara, the conflict in Chad, where the World Bank abandoned efforts to ensure accountability for oil revenues, is still intimately tied with the larger conflict in Darfur to the east, as well as with the legacy of Libyan intervention. Although the United States has deferred to France in active military and political involvement in Chad, it has also supported President Idriss Deby, who has been in power since 1991 and changed the constitution in 2005 to allow himself another term. Despite attacks by rebels on the capital in February 2008, Deby retained control with French military assistance. In northern Niger, uranium resources threaten to provide new incentives for the conflict with the Tuareg minority reignited there and in Mali since 2007. Mali is generally seen as one of West Africa’s most successful democracies, but it’s also threatened by Tuareg discontent which requires a diplomatic rather than military solution.

Of particular strategic importance for the future is Nigeria, where US military concerns of anti-terrorism and energy security converge. As Nigeria specialists Paul Lubeck, Michael Watts, and Ronnie Lipschutz outline in a 2007 policy study, the threat to Nigeria from Islamic extremism is wildly exaggerated in statements by US military officials. In contrast, they note, “nobody doubts the strategic significance of contemporary Nigeria for West Africa, for the African continent as a whole, and for the oil-thirsty American economy.” But the solution to the growing insurgency in the oil-rich Niger Delta isn’t a buildup of US naval forces and support for counter-insurgency actions by the Nigerian military. The priority is rather to resolve the problems of poverty and environmental destruction, and to promote responsible use of the country’s oil wealth, particularly for the people of the oil-producing regions.

Currently, US military ties with Nigeria and other oil-producing states of West and Central Africa include not only bilateral military assistance, but also the naval operations of the Africa Partnership Station and other initiatives to promote maritime safety, particularly for the movement of oil supplies. In recent years, United States military aid to Nigeria has included at least four coastal patrol ships to Nigeria, and approximately $2 million a year in other funds, including for development of a small boat unit in the Niger Delta. According to the State Department’s budget request justification for the 2007 fiscal year, military aid to the country is needed because “Nigeria is the fifth largest source of US oil imports, and disruption of supply from Nigeria would represent a major blow to US oil security strategy.”

In fact, maritime security is a legitimate area for concern for both African nations and importers of West African oil. Piracy for purely monetary motives, as well as the insurgency in the Niger Delta, is a real and growing threat off the West African coast. Yet strengthening the military capacity of Nigeria and other oil-producing states, without dealing with the fundamental issues of democracy and distribution of wealth, won’t lead to security for African people or for US interests, including oil supplies. Likewise, a military solution can’t resolve the issue of piracy in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea.

The threats cited by US officials to justify AFRICOM aren’t imaginary. Global terrorist networks do seek allies and recruits throughout the African continent, with potential impact in the Middle East, Europe, and even North America as well as in Africa. In the Niger Delta, the production of oil has been repeatedly interrupted by attacks by militants of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). More broadly, insecurity creates a environment vulnerable to piracy and to the drug trade, as well as to motivating potential recruits to extremist political violence.

It doesn’t follow, however, that such threats can be effectively countered by increased US military engagement, even if the direct involvement of US troops is minimized. The focus on building counter-insurgency capacity for African governments with US assistance diverts attention from more fundamental issues of conflict resolution. It also heightens the risks of increasing conflict and concomitantly increasing hostility to the United States.

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Adapted from a longer story that appeared March 13 in Foreign Policy in Focus.

RESOURCES

US Africa Command
http://www.africom.mil/

From our Daily Report:

African leaders, civil society reject Pentagon’s Africa Command
World War 4 Report, Feb. 27, 2008

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, May 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingAFRICOM: MAKING PEACE OR FUELING WAR? 

AMNESTY NOW: HOW AND WHY

by Jane Guskin, Huffington Post

Most analysts agree that the chances of immigration reform in the first year or two of Obama’s administration are extremely slim. We can’t expect politicians and policymakers to take action. The change we want to see has to come from below.

We can make it happen if we unite around a common goal: swift, practical, inclusive legalization NOW, as a first step, and eliminating the backlog for people whose immigration cases are in process. Bring people out of the shadows, resolve their status, reunite their families. (And don’t worry about what to call it—amnesty, legalization, regularization, path to citizenship, etc. We know what we’re talking about, and we’re not fooling our opponents by coming up with new names for it.)

A simple bill we could get behind might look something like this:

1) Change the “registry date” in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), currently set at January 1, 1972, to January 1, 2006. That will allow anyone here since that date to apply for residency through the relatively straightforward registry process.

2) Restore Section 245(i) of the INA, which lets people who entered the US without permission adjust their immigration status here without having to first return home and face the punitive 10-year bar. Section 245(i) has been lapsed since 2000, leaving millions of people without options to legalize.

3) Get rid of the national origin quotas on family-based petitions and expand the total number of family-based visas available, so people don’t have to wait 20 years to reunite with their relatives.

4) Pass the Child Citizen Protection Act, to restore the power of judges to weigh the impact on children when considering the deportation of a parent.

Those four steps will provide options for a huge number of people, including those who would benefit from measures like the DREAM Act (undocumented youth) or AgJobs (farmworkers.) If we’re strong enough, we can also win the Uniting American Families Act (equal immigration rights for same-sex couples), a repeal of the harsh 1996 laws, an end to employer sanctions and other badly-needed measures.

We can win these changes now if we:

– Mobilize, organize, march, petition. We need mobilizations twice as big as the ones we saw between Valentine’s Day and May Day in 2006, in the months after the House passed anti-immigrant bill HR4437. Those mobilizations changed the whole climate in Washington, leading the Senate to approve a package that included AgJobs and the Dream Act. Unfortunately, the mobilizations didn’t continue past May 1, 2006, and the measures approved by the Senate never made it through the House.

– Don’t wait. The sooner we act, the sooner we’ll see results. By the time Obama’s administration passes the 100-day mark on May 1, millions of people should be marching in the streets and calling or visiting their members of Congress.

– Dialogue. Slogans and soundbites won’t convince people who aren’t already on our side. We need to get people talking to each other about immigration, sharing thoughts and experiences, working through fears and doubts and taking a deeper look at the root causes.

Let’s not forget that Congress, not the president, has power over immigration. We don’t need to convince Obama, we just need to make sure that the Democrats in Congress understand that they will benefit from swiftly passing a measure to legalize the undocumented—and they will pay a price if they don’t. Latino voters were key in this latest election, and even though many Latinos are not immigrants and many immigrants are not Latino, a large number of US-born Latinos have immigrant relatives, have experienced anti-immigrant racism and are sympathetic to immigrants. Most naturalized immigrant voters are also sympathetic, having struggled through the system themselves.

Inclusive legalization can consolidate the demographic shift of rural America and permanently change the electoral map. Many of the rural areas which overwhelmingly voted for McCain include substantial immigrant populations—often working in agriculture, meatpacking or other industries—which have been clamoring for legalization. In Finney County, southwestern Kansas, fewer than 10,000 people voted in this year’s presidential election, and McCain beat Obama by 35 percentage points (67%-32%). Yet on April 10, 2006, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people rallied for legalization in Garden City, the county seat, out of a total population of around 30,000. McCain won with similar numbers in nearby Ford County, where several thousand people rallied for immigration reform in the county seat, Dodge City, in April 2006. Over in Madison County, Nebraska, with just over 13,500 voters, McCain won 69%-30%; on April 10, 2006, the Tyson Fresh Meats pork plant in the county seat, Madison, had to shut down because so many of its employees walked out to demand legalization. McCain won with 62% of just over 20,000 votes in Hall County, Nebraska, where on May 1, 2006, hundreds marched in the county seat, Grand Island, for immigrant rights.

It’s clear in the minds of most immigrants and their friends and families that during eight years in power, the Republicans did nothing good on immigration. Most people don’t remember the anti-immigrant bills approved under the Clinton administration, or that the last amnesty came under a Republican presidency. So right now, while the Republican Party is busy trying to develop a strategy for winning Latino support without alienating its white racist base, the Democrats have a chance to move. The Democratic Party needs to see that if it approves legalization now, it will win the continuing loyalty of a large bloc of existing voters, and at the same time create a large bloc of future voters, spread over rural and urban areas, whose gratitude could boost the party’s standing over the next decades.

Will there be a backlash if Congress approves legalization? The 52% of voters who elected Obama mostly don’t hate immigrants, so they won’t get too riled up about legalization, and many will support it, especially if we work to win over those still unconvinced. Among the other 48% of voters, many probably resent immigrants and oppose legalization, but three years from now, most will have forgotten about it or will have gotten used to it. We will likely see a rise in hate crimes and racist attacks over the next four years, with or without legalization for immigrants, but a focus on dialogue will help to ensure that hateful acts don’t gain wide support. And if everyone has legal status, at least immigrants will be able to report threats to police and protest publicly when they are victimized.

There’s no time to waste. Any delays in pushing through legalization will hurt its chances. We need to mobilize behind a united demand, and make our voices heard every single day until we get what is needed.

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Jane Guskin is co-author of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, published by Monthly Review Press in July 2007. She lives in New York City, where she is co-director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute, a grassroots foundation supporting nonviolent action for social justice.

This story first appeared March 4 on Huffington Post.

See also:

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS HITS THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE
by David L. Wilson, MR Zine
World War 4 Report, January 2009

A MATTER OF JUSTICE
Sami Al-Arian Case Exposes Federal Immigration Gulag
by Jane Guskin, Huffington Post
World War 4 Report, October 2008

THE “SI SE PUEDE” INSURRECTION
A Class Analysis
by George Caffentzis, Metamute
World War 4 Report, August 2006

From our Daily Report:

US detains record number of immigrants: report
World War 4 Report, March 17, 2009

Deadly repression greases “guest worker” program (on AgJOBS Act)
World War 4 Report, May 25, 2007

Arizona: students march against anti-immigrant measures (and for DREAM Act)
World War 4 Report, Jan. 13, 2007

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, April 1, 2009
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingAMNESTY NOW: HOW AND WHY