CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ: ALREADY HERE?

by Bill Weinberg

The most recent attack came Sept. 30 at a vegetable market in Hilla, a Shi’ite town south of Baghdad. With a modest toll of eight dead and 41 wounded, the car bomb only rated a story at the bottom of page eight in the New York Times. The previous day’s triple truck bomb attack at Balad—again on a crowded market frequented by Shi’ites—racked up a more impressive 102 deaths, including 18 children, and at least rated a slim one column on the front page of Times. The entity calling itself “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia” claimed responsibility in an Internet communique. The group’s leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has pledged “all out war” on Iraq’s Shi’ites.

This nearly metronomic ritual of serial mass murder is now hardly newsworthy. And it is but the most obvious sign of Iraq’s disintegration. US commander in Iraq Gen. George Casey told senators in Washington Sept. 30 that the new Iraqi army is in disarray, with the number of “combat effective” battalions—those that can operate without US assistance—having fallen from three to one in recent weeks. As Sunni insurgents seize control in towns along the Syrian border, Shi’ite militias increasingly control the south and even much of the capital. On Aug. 9, one such militia, the Badr Brigades, stormed Baghdad’s municipal building, ousted the mayor at gunpoint and installed one of their own, Hussein al-Tahaan, in his place. On Sept. 18, a Kurdish MP, Faris Nasir Hussein of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, was assassinated by insurgents north of the capital. That same day, 24 bodies were found in the Tigris River—the apparent fruit of a dialectic of assassination by Sunni and Shi’ite death squads. The Shi’ites themselves are violently divided. In Basra, the Badr Brigades and rival Sadr militia have been shooting it out in street skirmishes in recent weeks. In his Senate testimony, Gen. Casey retreated from his July assessment that US forces in Iraq could see “fairly substantial” reductions in 2006.

Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Arabi’s foreign minister, warned Sept. 22 that Iraq is headed towards disintegration. “There is no dynamic now pulling the nation together,” he warned reporters at the Saudi embassy in Washington. “All the dynamics are pulling the country apart.” He urged that he was trying to get this message out “to everyone who will listen” in the Bush administration. He warned that the fracturing of Iraq along religious and ethnic lines would “bring other countries in the region into the conflict.” He concluded gravely: “This is a very threatening situation.”

One who doesn’t appear worried is British left-wing journalist Robert Fisk. He wrote for The Independent Sept. 15: “There will not be a civil war in Iraq. There never has been a civil war in Iraq. In 1920, Lloyd George warned of civil war if the British Army left. Just as the Americans now threaten the Iraqis with civil war if they leave. As early as 2003, American spokesmen warned that there would be a civil war if US forces left.”

If his point is that the US has pitted Iraq’s religious and ethnic groups against each other, it’s an obvious one. If it is that the US military presence is actually playing a destabilizing role, it is an arguable one. But his opening sentence is one of simply bewildering denial.

How interesting that Fisk actually agrees with the sanguine statements of Bush. “The terrorists will fail,” Bush told a Rose Garden press conference Sept. 28. “See, the Iraqis want to be free.” He also, of course, said that “the terrorists” will “do everything in their power to try to stop the march of freedom,” which is why more troops are headed to Iraq ahead of this month’s referendum on the new constitution.

So both the anti-war left and the White House have something invested in denying the reality in Iraq. For the left, the admission of imminent civil war would be a concession to an argument for the continuing occupation. For the White House, it would be an admission of defeat and error. But nothing is to be gained by willful blindness. By any objective standard, there is already a civil war in Iraq.

CONSTITUTIONAL MANDATE—FOR ENTROPY

The new constitution, approved by parliament Aug. 29 despite its rejection by Sunni Arab negotiators and MPs, goes before the voters Oct. 15, and everyone is expecting an increase in violence before then. If two-thirds of the voters in any three out of 18 governorates reject the charter in the referendum, it will be defeated. The Sunni Arabs, who appear to almost universally oppose it, make up 20% of Iraq’s 27 million people, and form a majority in at least four governorates.

Behind the Sunni rejection of the constitution’s call for federalism is the question of control over Iraq’s oil wealth. It is articles 109 and 110 that address this issue directly:

Article 109: Oil and gas is the property of all the Iraqi people in all the regions and provinces.

Article 110: 1st. The federal government will administer oil and gas extracted from current fields in cooperation with the governments of the producing regions and provinces on condition that the revenues will be distributed fairly in a manner compatible with the demographical distribution all over the country. A quota should be defined for a specified time for affected regions that were deprived in an unfair way by the former regime or later on, in a way to ensure balanced development in different parts of the country. This should be regulated by law.

2nd. The federal government and the governments of the producing regions and provinces together will draw up the necessary strategic policies to develop oil and gas wealth to bring the greatest benefit for the Iraqi people, relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment.

This seemingly innocuous language masks a nearly irreconcilable struggle. The language about correcting the discriminatory policies of “the former regime” clearly means not only that the Sunni center will lose its role as the favored region, but also that the formerly disfavored regions will receive a disproportionate share of oil revenues for a while. Corrective measures may be warranted, but this can only be seen as threatening by a Sunni Arab population already facing economic agony. And the new system could also be subject to abuses. For instance, the Kurdish north was certainly “deprived in an unfair way” under Saddam. But today it is the most prosperous part of the country—because it was effectively independent throughout the years of sanctions (while still receiving aid under the oil-for-food program), and was spared bombardment by the US. The Sunni center, meanwhile, faces 70% unemployment.

So if the constitution is blocked, Iraq will remain divided. And if it passes, the Sunni insurgency is likely to grow.

The constitutional dilemma also fuels the Sadr-Badr violence in the Shi’ite south. Militant Shi’ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr rejects the constitution, and opposes the occupation. The rival Badr Brigades are the armed wing of one of the principal groups in the current Iraq government, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and favor the constitution. Behind this split is the question of Iran’s influence in Iraq: SCIRI is backed by Tehran, while al-Sadr is a Shi’ite Arab nationalist. Al-Sadr fears that federalism could lead to a Shi’ite statelet in the south falling into Iran’s orbit.

And there is plenty of “deep politics” behind the struggle for oil wealth. Kurds and Shi’ites remember massacres and atrocities as well as discrimination at the hands of Sunni Arab-dominated regimes—most recently Saddam’s. The Sunni Arabs, in turn, recall how what is now Iraq was 1,200 years ago the seat of the most powerful Islamic Caliphate, the Abbasids—only to spend the ensuing centuries under foreign rule. As the Shi’ite Safavid dynasty in Iran vied with the Ottoman empire in Turkey, the border between the two shifted back and forth across contemporary Iraq. Ottoman rule was followed by British until independence in 1932. Today, faced with the unlikely of alliance of the pro-Iran SCIRI holding seats in the US-backed Baghdad government, many Sunnis look to the insurgents as the defenders of Arab self-rule.

A second issue is the role of Islam in the constitution. The pending document overturns Iraq’s 1959 “personal status” law which directed cases concerning divorce, custody and inheritance to secular courts. The new document assigns such cases to different shariah courts—Shi’ite or Sunni—depending on the sectarian affiliation of the litigants. This is protested most fiercely by women’s rights advocates, who note that neither version would afford much protection. This debate reveals another fault line—between secularists and fundamentalists of either the Shi’ite or Sunni variety.

Yanar Mohammed of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), which opposes both the constitution and the occupation, blames the US for acceding to this policy, and making common cause with fundamentalists. She writes: “Since the beginning of the occupation, the US administration has recognized Iraqis according to their ethnic/nationalist and religious identities. This predetermined polarization of the society around its most reactionary forces has resulted [in] a most lethal weapon, which is a government of division and inequality—a potential time-bomb for a civil war that has already started.”

THE REAL RESISTANCE?

However legitimate the fears and grievances of the Sunni Arabs, the armed insurgents are seemingly the most reactionary forces in Iraq. While they appear not to have any unified leadership, their most extreme exponent is apparently behind the serial mass murder of Shi’ites. In Qaim and other villages along the Syrian border where insurgents seized power early last month, prompting brutal US air-strikes, they declared an “Islamic kingdom.” Presumed Sunni insurgents blew up a gathering of Sufis outside Baghdad in June, killing ten. In the areas they have “liberated from occupation,” Taliban-style interpretations of shariah are being enforced.

Throughout Iraq, women who dare to walk the streets unveiled are having acid thrown at them—even in Baghdad. In Baghdad and Basra, liquor stores and beauty parlors are fire-bombed. These are certainly not icons of liberation, but neither should the penalty for owning or patronizing one be death.

For all their enmity, the Sunni and Shi’ite militants share this harsh cultural agenda. Both Sadr and Badr militiamen are enforcing shariah in the streets of Basra. In April 2004, when the Sadr militia was making headlines by fighting US forces, it wiped out a Roma (“Gypsy”) village, torching homes and forcing residents to flee. Local Shi’ite government authorities applauded the Sadr militia for “cleansing the town,” which had been a hotbed of such “un-Islamic” activities as music and dance.

While these armed insurgents are too frequently referred to as “the resistance,” they are not the only resistance in occupied Iraq. OWFI helped coordinate a campaign that led to a shariah measure being defeated in the interim constitution, and is organizing opposition to the similar measure in the new charter. The Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) opposes the constitution and the occupation, and is organizing for workers’ self-management in factories from Basra in the south to Mosul in the north. Its affiliated Union of the Unemployed in Iraq is demanding jobs and restitution for the thousands thrown out of work in the chaos since the US invasion. The Oil and Gas Workers union succeeded through work actions in getting the Halliburton subsidiary KBR kicked out of the installations of Iraq’s Southern Oil Company, where it had been granted a no-bid contract by the occupation authority.

All the leaders of these organizations are under threat of assassination by death squads linked to the regime and insurgents alike. OWFI’s Yanar Mohammed has remained in Iraq in defiance of numerous death threats.

This is the resistance that seeks a democratic, secular future for Iraq, free from either imperialist domination or rule by what they call “political Islam”—reactionary fundamentalism. They oppose sectarianism and the fragmenting of Iraq. It is axiomatic that they receive no aid from Western governments. Unfortunately, too many in the so-called “anti-war” movement in the West are cheering on their deadliest enemies.

LEFTIST DENIAL

The US group Troops Out Now comes closest to taking an open stance in support of the armed insurgents, calling in their literature for the anti-war movement to “acknowledge the absolute and unconditional right of the Iraqi people to resist the occupation of their country without passing judgement on their methods of resistance.”

Does this include truck bombs designed to kill the maximum number of Shi’ite civilians? Posing the question in terms of the abstract “right to resist” is an obfuscation. At a certain point you have to look at the question of who is actually wielding the guns and bombs, and at whom. In this case, the criminal tactics of mass murder are directly tied to the totalitarian ideology of “political Islam.” These are the very forces which seek to exterminate Iraq’s secular left, along with their perceived ethno-religious enemies.

The jihadi insurgents—presumably aided by some remnant Baathists—are aiming their guns and bombs at Shi’ite, Kurdish or secular civilians far more often than at US troops these days. Groups such as Troops Out Now are actually supporting civil war in Iraq.

These groups play a cynical numbers game in order to hide the grim reality of Iraq’s insurgents. For instance, Paul D’Amato of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), another US group supporting the insurgents, has a piece on the group’s wesbite cheering on the Iraqi “resistance” and attempting to absolve it of massively targeting civilians. The piece is favorably cited by the journal Left Hook in an article entitled “Does the Resistance Target Civilians? According to US Intel, Not Really.”

D’Amato’s piece touts the findings of Anthony Cordesman, top wonk at Washington’s elite Center for Strategic and International Studies, who assembled a report from Pentagon data, “The Developing Iraqi Insurgency: Status at End—2004.” But the ISO picks from the data selectively to make its case. The sleight-of-hand relies on an obfuscatory distinction between “targeting” and “killing” civilians. Table 1 in the Cordesman report indicates more than 3,000 attacks in which coalition forces were the target and only 180 in which civilians were the target—but it also indicates around 2,000 civilians killed and nearly 3,500 wounded, with only around 450 coalition forces killed and 1,000 wounded in the same period. D’Amato doesn’t mention these numbers.

So the insurgents are given a pass for exactly the kind of insensitivity to “collateral damage” that we rightly decry in US military tactics. And D’Amato’s piece ran in the March-April issue of the ISO’s journal International Socialist Review—after the insurgents had adopted the tactic of mass murder of Shi’ites, something not reflected in Cordesman’s 2004 figures.

In July, the team that maintains the website Iraq Body Count made a minor media splash when they announced that the number of Iraqi civilian deaths they had arrived at through media monitoring since the US invasion had passed the 25,000 mark. This figure is now used by the anti-war movement to imply 25,000 dead at hands of US forces. (So, often, is the 100,000 figure published in the Lancet medical journal last year, based on the far less cautious findings of a team from Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities that conducted interviews with Iraqi doctors.) However, the Iraq Body Count website states that its toll “includes all deaths which the Occupying Authority has a binding responsibility to prevent under the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations. This includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order…” In other words, this figure includes deaths at the hands of the insurgents.

Thirty percent of those 25,000 deaths occurred during the March-May 2003 “major combat” phase of US operations. This is not surprising, as aerial bombardment is a very effective way to kill large numbers of people, even as “collateral damage.” But since then, the majority of the deaths is attributed to criminal and insurgent violence, with the insurgents claiming an ever-growing share.

So those who cite this figure as representing directly US-inflicted casualties while simultaneously cheering on the Iraqi “resistance” engage in the most disingenuous of numbers tricks—actually attributing deaths by the forces they support to the forces they oppose.

Equally dishonest is the pretension that what is happening in Iraq is anything other than a civil war—a delusion that the anti-war left shares with its enemies in the White House. Amnesty International recently noted that the armed conflict in Colombia—which nobody hesitates to call a civil war—has claimed 70,000 lives over the past 20 years. Obviously, if the current rate of slaughter continues to obtain, the figure in Iraq 20 years hence will be around 200,000. When do we admit this is a civil war?

U.S. LEFT BETRAYS IRAQI LEFT

Behind these intellectual subterfuges is a fundamental betrayal of Iraq’s secular left by the anti-war forces in the US. Whether the US stays in Iraq or leaves, whether the current regime remains in power or is toppled by the insurgents, those fighting for women’s rights, labor rights and other basic liberties in Iraq are going to need our support. And we have a special responsibility to loan that support, as it is our government’s intervention which has plunged Iraq into civil war.

Too much of the anti-war movement seems to assume that once we achieve our aim of a US withdrawal we can wash our hands Pilate-like and walk away. Any notion that we owe Iraqis our support is dismissed with words like “patronizing” and “passing judgement”—as if it were impossible to distinguish between imperialist meddling and citizen-to-citizen solidarity.

The hard-left elements of the anti-war movement—groups like ISO and Troops Out Now—affirm the abstract right of the Iraqi people to resist the occupation, but fail to grapple with the realities of Iraq’s actually-existing armed resistance. The more moderate elements, like United for Peace and Justice, simply dodge the question entirely. They are both oblivious to an active left opposition in Iraq that opposes the occupation, the regime it protects and the jihadi and Baathist “resistance” alike. It is this besieged opposition, under threat of assassination and persecution, which is fighting to keep alive the same elementary freedoms that we fight for against the forces of authoritarianism and fundamentalism here in the US. For all the incessant factional splits in the US anti-war movement, providing this real, progressive Iraqi resistance concrete solidarity is not even on the agenda.

The foremost responsibility of the anti-war forces in the US is to loaning a voice to our natural allies in Iraq, this secular left opposition, the legitimate resistance—and this responsibility is being utterly betrayed.

It is too late to avoid civil war in Iraq. The civil war has arrived. But the question of how disastrous it will be is directly related to that of whether this civil democratic opposition is completely silenced—or crushed—by utterly ruthless armed actors. History has seen these sorts of betrayals before—for instance, in Spain in 1939. We can expect no better of Great Power politics. But what explains the willful blindness on the left?

——

RESOURCES:

Text of the pending Iraqi constitution, online at the Salt Lake Tribune website http://www.sltrib.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=2 973485

Robert Fisk, “Why is it that we and America wish civil war on Iraq?” The Independent, Sept. 15 http://www.selvesandothers.org/article11523.html

Sarah Ferguson quotes Troops Out Now on the Iraqi “resistance,” Village Voice, March 17 http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0512,ferguson1,62240,5.html

Paul D’Amato, “The Shape of the Iraqi Resistance,” International Socialist Journal, March-April http://www.isreview.org/issues/40/shapeofresistance.shtml

M. Junaid Aam, “Does the Resistance Target Civilians? According to US Intel, Not Really,” Left Hook, undated http://lefthook.org/Politics/Alam041605.html

Anthony Cordesman, “The Developing Iraqi Insurgency: Status at End—2004,” Center for Strategic and International Studies
http://www.csis.org/features/iraq_deviraqinsurgency.pdf

“25,000 civilians killed since Iraq invasion, says report,” The Guardian, July 19 http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5242694-103550,00.html

Iraq Body Count
http://www.iraqbodycount.net

Yanar Mohammed of OWFI on the new constitution
/node/946

“Islamic Kingdom” declared on Syrian border
/node/1062

Iraq “resistance” blows up Sufis
/node/558

Acid attacks on “immodest” women
/node/727

David Bacon, “Iraqi Unions Resist Occupation and Assassination,” WW4 REPORT #113
/node/1026

See also:

Bill Weinberg, “Iraq: Memogate and the Comforts of Vindication,” WW4 REPORT #111
/node/745

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Oct. 1, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

PERU’S CAMISEA GAS PROJECT: ONE YEAR LATER

Indigenous, Campesinos and Civil Society Stand Up to Pipeline Politics

by Yeidy Rosa

The Camisea gas extraction and pipeline project—extolled by the government of Peru, the companies building it, and the banks financing it, as an important contribution to Peru’s economic development, creating jobs and significantly increasing the country’s standard of living—is starting to appear more like the social and ecological disaster that civil society and environmental groups had warned of. And this after only one year of operations.

On Sept. 17, massive ruptures along the Camisea pipeline caused the evacuation of the Andean town of Toccate in Ayacucho region, reported the Lima daily El Comercio. Three hundred cubic meters, or 4,000 barrels, of natural gas liquids spilled into the soil and water of Toccate—an area considered to be one of three where the year-old pipeline is in danger of collapsing. It was the second spill near Toccate, in Ayacucho’s La Mar province, in two weeks. Omar Quezada, regional president of Ayacucho, told Reuters on Sept. 23 that Ayacucho would in fact seek legal action, on both penal and civil counts, to ensure reparations for the environmental and health hazards inflicted upon the residents of the region by the construction and operation of the project.

This has been the third Camisea gas spill since December 2004 along the pipeline, operated for an international consortium by Transportadora de Gas del Peru (TGP), in turn controlled by Techint of Argentina. On December 22, 2004, a major spill at kilometer eight of the Camisea pipeline leaked liquid natural gas into Kemariato Ravine, near the gasfields in the Peruvian Amazon.

Toccate is also the site where, in June 2003, 71 employees of the Techint Group were kidnapped by a group of armed individuals who President Alejandro Toledo termed as “remnants” of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), reported the BBC on June 11, 2003. Peru’s La Republica reported on June 16, 2003, that ex-hostages indicated that the kidnappers called themselves “Nuevo Sendero,” a group fighting for social justice. The group’s demands included food, antibiotics, and that jobs are given to local residents rather than Argentines, with equal pay and benefits as foreign workers. John Ferriter, a spokesperson from the office of external relations of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), the project’s main financer, states: “We are concerned about the spill and are closely monitoring the situation and are awaiting a full report from company and Peruvian authorities. We are confident the necessary measures will be taken to enhance pipeline security and safety and will work with the company and the Peruvian authorities to assist in carrying out such measures. The primary responsibility for pipeline security, as with construction of the pipeline, rests with the project company, Transportada de Gas del Perú (TGP). However, the IDB is committed to monitoring and evaluation as well as providing assistance in all aspects of the project.”

Nadia Martinez from the Institute of Policy Studies takes a harsher view: “The spills that have occurred demonstrate the lack of planning and attention dedicated by the operating companies in order to minimize the impacts of the project. It is not surprising that after so many problems in the stages of construction with erosion and other technical problems, that the companies are not prepared to handle this kind of disaster.” Martinez, who works with Peruvian civil society groups monitoring the Camisea project, charges that a worker was killed in the December 2004 blast on the pipeline—a fact which has never been officially acknowledged.

The Camisea Gas Project was heralded under the official slogan “Something Good is Arriving” in the summer 2004, as gas from the Camisea Basin in the Peruvian Amazon began to arrive at the Pacific coast near Lima via parallel trans-Andean pipelines. The IADB’s abstract on the (to date) $2.7 billion project hails it as in the host country’s “national interest,” saying it is “expected to greatly contribute to the economic development of Peru.” The Peruvian government says it will add a projected 0.8% to the county’s GDP growth for each year of the 33-year concession. Moreover, the pipeline is predicted to save Peru $4 billion in energy costs over the life of the project, and to earn it billions more in export earnings.

Yet, an independent monitoring report—drawn up by the local Machiguenga Council of the Urubamba River (COMARU) with Amazon Watch and the Amazon Alliance—describes the project as being “the most damaging project in the Amazon Basin,” representing a “considerable threat to the environment, rights, and health of several indigenous peoples in the location of the gas wells and along the pipeline route.”

One year after going on-line, Camisea gas reaches only 41 businesses and 600 homes in Lima, a city of over 8 million. The project continues to be cited as the cause of irreversible destruction to some of the world’s most diverse and threatened ecosystems. Reports continue of violations to the internationally-recognized rights of indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation in the rainforest near the Camisea gas field. Concerns are also raised about the health and safety of all communities located along the 800-kilometer pipeline route.

Anatomy of the Consortia

On September 19, while attending the UN World Summit in New York, President Alejandro Toledo, Peru’s first native Qechua-speaking national leader, said in an interview with Reuters that the Camisea Basin has much more than the 40-year reserves accessible today. In the 1980s, oil companies such as the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and the Mobil Corporation established a presence in the Camisea Basin, located in the Lower Urubamba River Valley of eastern Peru. These companies abandoned plans for major development in Camisea after the government of Peru rejected Shell and Mobil’s demand for a distribution monopoly and the right to set prices, as reported by the New York Times on July 17, 1998.

Current extraction wells, providing access to an estimated 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 600 million barrels of liquid petroleum gas, are located in the area known as Block 88—two thirds of which is located within the Nahua-Kugapakori Reserve for Indigenous Peoples. Home to at least four distinct indigenous groups (the Nahua/Yora, Nanti, Kugapakori, and the Machiguenga/Kirineri), this reserve is one of five created in 1990 to safeguard the rights of indigenous groups living in voluntary isolations or in initial stages of contact with national society.

The Camisea Gas Project consists of three components: the exploration and extraction of the non-renewable resource at four drilling platforms in the Urubamba Valley (the “Upstream Project”), two pipelines to transport the gas from the Urubamba Valley to the coast of Peru (the “Downstream Project”), and two processing and distribution systems on the coast near Lima (the “Distribution Project”). One of these coastal facilities, a gas processing plant, is being built within the buffer zone of the National Reserve of Paracas, a marine refuge of international significance recognized by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of 1971, ratified by Peru in 1992, which states: “Under the Convention there is a general obligation for the Contracting Parties to include wetland conservation considerations in their national land-use planning.”

Ownership the Camisea Project, awarded in 2000, is shared by two overlapping consortia, one for gas production and another for gas transportation and distribution. The Upstream Consortium is formed by Texas-based Hunt Oil, Pluspetrol (Argentina), SK Corporation (South Korea), and Tecpetro, owned by Techint Argentina.

The Downstream Project is formed by Texas-based Hunt Oil (22.2%), Tecgas N.V. (Argentina, 23.4%), Pluspetrol (Argentina, 22.2%), SK Corporation (South Korea, 11.1%), Sonatrach (Algeria, 11.1%), Tractebel (Argentina, 8%), and Graña y Montero, the sole Peruvian company, with 2% of the ultimate ownership. The Distribution Project was assigned to Tractabel (Argentina) by Transportadora de Gas del Perú (TGP). Construction of the Paracas gas processing plant is contracted to Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Ray Hunt, chief executive officer of Hunt Oil, sits on the board of Halliburton and has been a major donor to the Bush campaign.

While the government of Peru has repeatedly pointed out the benefits of Camisea gas being used in Peruvian homes and businesses, the focus of project proposals is in making Peru a net exporter of gas—with plans to sell gas to Mexico, Chile, Argentina and the West Coast of the United States as soon as 2007. President Toledo has stated that Camisea gas will unify South America, yet Amazon Watch reports that half of all Camisea gas is intended to be exported to the western United States by 2009. When asked about the planned Camisea gas exports, President Toledo told the Miami Herald on July 12: “Let the free market operate.”

Initially intended to be mainly financed by loans from the Inter-American Development Bank and the US Export-Import Bank—both tax-payer backed institutions—the latter rejected a request for a $214 million loan for the Camisea consortium, citing environmental concerns. The IADB—in which the US government holds 30% of the voting power—delayed consideration of the project on two occasions due to outstanding concerns and pressure from lawmakers in Congress, environmental and human rights groups. Of main concern was the bank’s violation of its own environmental and social standards, which the Bush administration had played a key role in tightening. A likely reason for the Bush administration’s interest in tightening environmental standards is that it allows President Bush to negotiate an agreement requiring countries to offer greater market access if a violation occurs. Monetarily fining violators also benefits the US, as trade is not disrupted as with sanctions.

In September 2003, the US abstained in a vote on the project, and a $135 million loan was approved. Had the US voted a clear “no,” other member countries may have been swayed to oppose the loan as well. Critics consider the approval of the loan a breach of both modern industry standards and international environmental guidelines.

It is interesting to note that the World Bank and the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) kept their distance from the Camisea Project due to its failure to meet international social and environmental protection measures, citing the consortium companies’ inexperience and poor records. Other banks involved in the financing of the project include SACE (Italy, $20 million), the Andean Development Corporation ($50 million), Ducroire (Belgium, $170 million investment insurance), and BNDES (Brazil) and BICE (Argentina) with a combined $125 million. Citigroup serves as the consortium’s financial advisor.

Ethnocidal Impacts

The recent spill in Toccate is only the most recent of disasters caused by the oil and gas companies involved in the Camisea Basin. In the 1980s, the presence of the Shell Group directly contributed to the death of over half of the Yora/Nahua indigenous population living in voluntary isolation. The isolated Nahua had no immune defenses to common sicknesses such as the flu, gastro-intestinal and respiratory illnesses brought to the area by Shell employees and the loggers and missionaries that used Shell access roads to gain entry into the area. Today, illnesses within isolated indigenous groups are on the rise along the Rio Urubamba, as are reports of forced contact by the Camisea companies’ workers. The project also threatens the livelihood of indigenous peoples through water contamination, deforestation and erosion.

There are some 30 voluntarily isolated peoples in the Peruvian Amazon, exercising their internationally-recognized right to choose the moment and manner in which they make contact with national society. From the initial stages of the Camisea Project, this right has been violated. Amazon Alliance, an NGO focusing on the indigenous and traditional peoples of the Amazon Basin, reports that other subcontractors have left items such as machetes, clothing, knives, and mattresses along seismic lines; items which carry a potentially catastrophic disease threat. There have also been reports that TGP has allowed their helicopters to be used by missionaries in order to force contact with voluntarily isolated groups for religious purposes. These abuses are outlined in an August 2003 statement against the project by the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP).

The Bank Information Center has records of forced contact by Camisea member companies dating back to August 2002, when Pluspetrol anthropologist Jose Luis Cabral openly admitted that groups of Pluspetrol representatives, accompanied by a Machiguenga guide, approached isolated groups by announcing their presence through a loud speaker. A separate incident, reported by anthropologist Kacper Swierk in July 2002, involved forced contact with a settlement of Shiateni by Pluspetrol personnel. The group was reportedly forced to leave their homes, threatened with arrest by the army as “terrorists,” and told that disease would kill them if they did not abandon the area. Workers from the subcontracted Canadian company Veritas forced contact with an isolated Kirineri settlement, telling the settlers to relocate in order for seismic testing to take place. Though a Peruvian government agency for indigenous peoples, the National Commission of Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Peoples (CONAPA), was created in 2001 to address such issues, it has yet to develop and implement a plan to protect isolated indigenous peoples from contact. Instead, it provides guidelines for company workers as to what to say and do in the event of contact.

The issue of forced contact is particularly worrisome, considering the flawed compensation negotiations which have taken advantage of the lack of community experience in calculating monetary value in regards to their land and natural resources. Coupled with weak government oversight, the companies have taken to causing damages beyond the scope of agreements and then returning to the unprepared community to negotiate minimal compensation. In a summary of findings from June 2003 Investigative Mission to Indigenous Communities Affected by the Camisea Project, it is reported that in the village of Shimáa, consortium companies led the community to believe that outstanding compensation agreements will not be fulfilled unless the community agrees to additional construction.

The Washington Post website featured the Machiguenga community living in the village of Shimáa in a video documenting a landslide caused by the pipeline, as well as resulting erosion, water contamination, and the effects of construction noise on the group’s hunting, on August 19, 2003.

Irreparable impacts resulting from massive landslides and soil erosion caused by the pipelines’ steep route are directly linked to the health and safety of the local population. As heavy rains wash thousands of tons of soil and vegetation into local rivers, groups find themselves without the fish and clean water their survival depends on. Noise and pollution from river and air traffic has scared away game for groups that depend on hunting. Deficient local diets due to such severe declines pose immediate health dangers, while the erosion of traditional subsistence practices could have long-term effects on the cultural identity of the group. All of the above violate the minimum standards on the rights of indigenous peoples as set in the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, ratified by Peru in 1993, particularly the right of prior consultation regarding any project on indigenous territories.

Also feared are waves of loggers and developers in the wake of the oil companies–the usual pattern–causing further deforestation, environmental degradation, social pressures, and resource conflicts.

Civil Society and Camisea

The Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP), Peru’s main advocacy group for the region’s indigenous peoples, demands complete abandonment of the project and immediate withdrawal from indigenous lands. However, many of the Peru’s civil society bodies have expressed a commitment to the development of the Camisea Project within the parameters of social and environmental safeguards.

Mobilization around the issue of the Camisea Project by Peruvian civil society, environmental, and indigenous groups has been the largest the country has ever seen. Over twenty organizations have united to demand full participation in the negotiations regarding the project. The Peruvian constitution states that all natural resources belong to all Peruvians, and any private party that exploits them must pay a “gas canon fee” equaling 50% of the total income that the state earns through taxes and royalties for the use of any resource. This distribution is one of the rights demanded by civil society groups, in a “Positions and Recommendations” document submitted to the IADB in July 2003. Other demands include continuous monitoring of the consortia, independent health and environmental monitoring, and relocation of the plant near the Paracas Marine Reserve. They also demand that the rights of the indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation are guaranteed, that no right-of-way routes be constructed, that the project be transparent, that affected communities have a say throughout the life of the project, and that a Camisea Project Ombudsman serve the communities throughout the life of the project.

The government of Peru, however, passed law #28455, which allocates 40% of the royalties from the project into a special fund to buy arms for the military and national police force. Moreover, no fund has been created to mitigate the impacts of the project on the communities and ecosystems affected. Regarding this law, Nadia Martinez states that, “It is truly unthinkable that funds that should be used for the ‘development’ of the country, especially for the development of the affected communities on the local level, be used to buy arms and maintain armed forces. The conditions that the IADB demanded included a development fund that would utilize 7% of the profits. As far as I know, this requirement has not been fulfilled. Yet 40% has been allocated for arms without consequence.”

While the IADB has agreed to a series of public meetings with civil society and non-governmental organizations, community members have complained that these do not represent a real exchange, but rather presentations of the consortiums’ plans and visions. The affected groups have gone as far as to boycott the meetings, stating that they are un-transparent, undemocratic, and that they are not allowed time to speak.

At a meeting in Lima regarding an expansion of the project into Blocks 56 and 76, referred to as Camisea II, community members stated that they were not presented the details of the project in a comprehensible form, and that the communities were given only one month to read the 4,000-page document and prepare their comments.

Such unfair negotiations have marked the project since its inception, critics charge. The Nahua, in a rare communication with national society, sent an advocate to publicly voice their rejection of such an expansion.

Asked via e-mail if the recent spills would affect their decision on financing an expansion of the Camisea Project, Ferriter of the Inter-American Development Bank states: “Involvement of the IDB in any future expansion of the project will depend on a number of complex factors, among them the environmental and social issues.”

Asked what impact the mishaps will have on expansion of the project, Nadia Martinez of the Institute for Public Policy says: “I would say that surely it will delay it for a bit, but it will not stop it. In December there was an explosion that left one dead, and just days later the IADB disbursed the loan to the consortium, which goes to show that this kind of disaster is considered part of the expected impacts and is not taken seriously enough for there to be serious consequences for the operating companies or the government.”

Asked if the Camisea Project could be carried out from this point forward in a socially and environmentally responsible way, Martinez answers: “It is too late. The damage is done… The IADB claims to be concerned about the poor in Latin America, yet they support devastating projects like Camisea that benefit primarily foreign oil companies and a few elites in the Peruvian government.”

Martinez says the next challenge facing the IADB will be whether to fund the expansion of the project. “If the IADB has learned anything from the disastrous Camisea experience, they will not go near the expansion project known as Camisea II. But if they do, we’ll be there to make sure they remember all they did wrong in the first one.”

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RESOURCES:

For an extensive list of resources in English and Spanish regarding the Camisea Gas Project, including articles, contacts, official documents, civil society analysis and meeting minutes, and useful websites, please visit The Bank Information Center at:

http://www.bicusa.org/bicusa/issues/camisea_natural_gas_project_peru/index.php

Amazon Alliance summary of independent monitoring report “Summary of Findings from June 2003 Investigative Mission to Upper and Lower Urubamba River Valley, Peru”
http://www.amazonalliance.org/camisea.html

Amazon Watch, “Peru: Camisea Natural Gas Project”
http://www.amazonwatch.org/amazon/PE/camisea/

Declaration of Indigenous Peoples in Defense of Life, Territory and the Environment, AIDESEP, Lima, Aug. 25, 2003 http://www.bicusa.org/bicusa/issues/AIDESEP_camisea_statement_25.08.03.pdf

Proyecto Camisea
http://www.camisea.com.pe/project.asp

IADB Sector Department page on the Camisea Project http://www.iadb.org/pri/english/dbase/projectSummary.cfm?ProjectNumber=PE0222

ECA Watch: International NGO Campaign on Export Credit Agencies http://www.eca-watch.org/problems/americas/peru/2001_01_25_sace.html

Halliburton Watch on Hunt Oil
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/board_political_donations.html

Washington Post, Aug. 19, 2003, “Pipeline Problems: Shimaa, Peru” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/photo/081903-1v.htm

BBC, Aug. 10, 2004, “Peru prepares for the gas age”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3543060.stm

See also our last report on the Camisea Project:
/peru2.html

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Oct. 1, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

CENTRAL AMERICA: CAFTA PASSES, STATE TERROR RESURGENT

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Congress has now passed the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), with proponents claiming it will lead the isthmus to secure democracy, prosperity and modernity. But even as revelations continue to emerge about the state terror that claimed thousands of lives in the 1980s, the death squads show signs of resurgence—this time targeting opponents of the trade treaty, as well as criminal gangs. Meanwhile in Nicaragua, the left-opposition Sandinista Front which held power in the ’80s is divided over ex-president Daniel Ortega’s unlikely alliance with his former foes—potentially weakening the anti-CAFTA forces in that country, one of the last two in Central America where the treaty’s ratification is still pending.—WW4 REPORT

U.S. APPROVES DR-CAFTA

The US House of Representatives voted 217-215 in the early morning of July 28 to approve the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). The US Senate approved the measure on June 30; President George W. Bush, a strong supporter, is expected to sign it quickly. The trade pact requires ratification by the legislatures of all the participating countries. In addition to the US Congress, the legislatures of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have ratified; the measure is still awaiting a vote in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.

Facing opposition from unions and even some business groups, DR-CAFTA supporters pulled out all the stops to achieve their narrow victory. President Bush visited the Capitol on July 27 in an unusual personal lobbying effort for the measure; Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and several other cabinet members were also there lobbying. The House’s Republican leaders began the voting shortly after 11 PM on July 27, but when it became clear that they didn’t have the votes to pass the measure in the normal 15-minute limit, they extended the time to nearly an hour. With all but 15 Democrats in opposition, the leadership put heavy pressure on Republican holdouts. According Lori Wallach, director of the DC-based Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch (GTW), Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) talked about breaking arms “into 1,000 pieces.” There were even suggestions of vote tampering. Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) insisted he voted no but was counted as not voting due to a malfunction in the electronic voting system. (CNN, Miami Herald, GTW statement, July; NYT, July 29)

US Trade Representative Bob Portman called DR-CAFTA a “gateway” deal to more ambitious trade pacts, like the Andean trade pact with Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, which negotiators hope to complete in spring 2006, and the hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The House vote sent “a powerful signal” that the US would “continue to lead in opening markets and leveling the playing field,” according to Portman.

But to Eric Farnsworth of the Council of the Americas, a New York-based pro-“free trade” group, “[t]hat it was so close, instead of an overwhelming victory, and so clearly split on partisan lines even in states such as Florida that depend on trade with Latin America and the Caribbean, indicates that the pro-trade consensus that used to prevail in Congress is on life support.” According to GTW’s Wallach, the close vote on “a trade deal of small economic significance” like DR-CAFTA “shows that any economically significant” measures like FTAA “would be dead on arrival.” (MH, July 28; GTW , Financial Times, July 28)

DR-CAFTA still faces hurdles in the three countries that haven’t voted. Costa Rican president Abel Pacheco has yet to send the measure to the legislature, which he wants to pass a fiscal reform bill first. Costa Rican unionists, environmentalists, students and farmers, especially rice growers, oppose the pact. The National Civic Movement has threatened social rebellion and national civil disobedience if the government proceeds with it.

Some 160 Dominican organizations have asked Parliament not to approve DR-CAFTA, and some legislators are insisting that the government include measures to compensate agricultural producers.

In Nicaragua a coalition of center-right legislators, including some members of the majority Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC), claim to have the 47 votes needed to get DR-CAFTA through the National Assembly. But the current National Assembly president, Rene Nunez of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), hasn’t put the measure on the agenda. The FSLN, which lacks the votes to block the measure, may be planning to compromise. FSLN deputy Alba Palacios is calling for Nicaragua and Costa Rica to negotiate a five-year grace period before they join the pact, while FSLN deputy Edwin Castro wants DR-CAFTA to include “financing for infrastructure and other measures that will promote development and compensate the sectors that will be affected.” A study indicates that the trade pact will hurt 700,000 families and 200,000 agricultural producers in Nicaragua, which has a population of 5.4 million. (Servicio Informativo “Alai-amlatina,” MH, July 29)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 31

GUATEMALA: RIGHTS DEFENDER KILLED

Heavily armed men shot and killed Guatemalan human rights activist Alvaro (“Alvarito”) Juarez the night of July 8 while he was in his home in San Benito in the northern department of Peten. Juarez was a leader in the Alliance for Life and Peace and a member of the Association of the Displaced of the Peten. He reportedly informed the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Office in Guatemala City about threats he had received several days before his murder.

In a July 13 statement the Alliance for Life and Peace of the Peten said that Juarez’s death “occurred in the context of the struggles the Guatemalan people are carrying out against the Free Trade Agreement with the US [DR-CAFTA], the struggle against the dams on the Rio Usumacinta, the privatization of the Yaxha National Park, the struggle against mining in our lands….” Guatemalan human rights analysts note that two other human rights defenders have received written death threats. Like Juarez, they are leaders who have been important in the movement and active in the struggle against DR-CAFTA but have not been public.

The Association of the Displaced of the Peten has decided not to seek publicity in the media at this time, but activists are urged to appeal to President Oscar Berger Perdomo (fax +502 251 2218, email presidente@scspr.gob.gt) and Attorney General Juan Luis Florido (+502 251 2218) for a thorough investigation of the case and protection of Juarez’s family members and other human rights defenders. (Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA Urgent Action, July 12; Alianza por la Vida y la Paz de Peten statement, July 13)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 17

GUATEMALA: APOLOGY FOR MASSACRE

In an official ceremony on July 18, the Guatemalan government recognized the state’s responsibility in the 1982 massacre of 268 people in the village of Plan de Sanchez, Rabinal municipality, in Baja Verapaz department. The formal ceremony at the site of the massacre, in which Vice President Eduardo Stein apologized directly to survivors and relatives of the victims, was mandated in a Nov. 24, 2004 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica. Stein also visited the chapel where the victims were buried, and said that the $8 million in compensation ordered by the Inter-American Court will be put into a special fund.

“It’s not enough to ask forgiveness for the damages,” said Rosalina Tuyuc, president of the National Compensation Commission (CNR). “Now the most important thing is that the Public Ministry facilitate the investigations and sentence those with material and intellectual responsibility for the massacre.”

On July 18, 1982, a commando of some 60 army soldiers, military commissioners, court officials and civilian paramilitary patrollers dressed in military uniforms and armed with assault rifles entered Plan de Sanchez. The commando members first raped the women and girls of the village and killed them, then took the men, older women and children to a nearby site and murdered them. The next day military commissioners ordered the survivors to quickly bury the bodies at the site of the massacre. (Guatemala Hoy, July 19 from Agencia Cerigua, El Periodico, Prensa Libre, Diario de Centro America)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 24

EL SALVADOR: VIOLENCE AT FARE PROTESTS

Starting at 6 am on July 4, residents of La Campanera and El Limon neighborhoods in the Salvadoran municipality of Soyapango blocked the main access road to protest a July 1 increase in bus fares from $0.20 to $0.25. The protesters said they would block the road until the old fare was restored. There were reports that the transport companies had agreed in the afternoon to reduce the fare; the protesters opened the road but said they would resume the blockade if the companies failed to honor the agreement. Soyapango is one of several large municipalities surrounding San Salvador. (Diario Colatino, El Salvador, July 14)

At 7 AM on July 6 some 50 to 200 students from the University of El Salvador (UES), in the northern part of San Salvador, protested the fare hike by blocking streets in front of the campus with burning tires. There was some tension with doctors and employees from the nearby Social Security clinic for the Atlacatl neighborhood. One patient arriving for an appointment told the students that in the 1970s they all would have been killed; but others supported the students. In mid-morning some 100 police agents from the Order Maintenance Unit (UMO) arrived and attacked the students, who threw rocks and withdrew into the campus. The police followed them to the edge of the university grounds and began firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the campus. Three police agents and at least six protesters were injured during the fighting, as were six journalists, who said masked youths threw rocks at them, calling them “manipulators.”

After an intervention by UES rector Isabel Rodriguez and Human Rights Ombudsperson Beatrice Alamanni de Carrillo, the police began a staged withdrawal. At around this time, a group of masked people thought to be students took over a bus near the campus and set it on fire. Children from a nearby school had to be evacuated because of fears that the burning bus might explode.

Legislators from the right-wing ruling Republican National Alliance (ARENA) party charged that the leftist Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN) is promoting the conflicts in order to destabilize the country and prevent the US Congress from approving the Free Trade Agreement. (DC, July 6; Diario El Mundo, El Salvador, July 6; El Nuevo Herald, Miami, July 7)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 10

EL SALVADOR: DEATH SQUADS REAPPEAR?

The bodies of three unidentified youths were found in the beginning of July on the highway from San Salvador to Santa Ana. Their hands were tied, and they had been shot in the head. Human rights groups said they feared this might indicate a return to the sort of summary executions that right-wing death squads carried out in the 1980s. “These murders, whose motive could be social cleansing for the extermination of gang members, show that the structures of the death squads are still present,” said Maria Julia Hernandez of the San Salvador Catholic archdiocese’s legal office. (ENH, July 5)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 24

NICARAGUA: RIGHT-LEFT PACT PROTESTED

On July 17, thousands of people marched in the Nicaraguan city of Granada to protest an agreement between ex-president Daniel Ortega Saavedra (1984-1990) of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and ex-president Arnoldo Aleman (1997-2002) of the rightwing Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC). (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, July 18) The two parties joined forces last November to approve a packet of constitutional reforms which weaken the role of the presidency and strengthen the power of the National Assembly. President Enrique Bolanos has refused to accept the reforms, citing a March 29 ruling by the Central American Court of Justice (CCJ) which deemed them “legally inapplicable.” (El Mostrador, Chile, July 19)

Participants in the march decried the “pact” and demanded changes to Nicaragua’s electoral laws to make the presidential elections of 2006 “more democratic.” Activists said they gathered 1,500 signatures at the march on a petition supporting changes to mandate primary elections for party presidential candidates.

Former Managua mayor Herty Lewites and former vice president Sergio Ramirez spoke at the rally. (Nicaragua News Service, July 12-18; ENH, July 18) Lewites was expelled from the FSLN by unanimous vote of the Sandinista Assembly on Feb. 26 of this year because he sought to compete with Ortega for the party’s presidential candidacy for the 2006 elections. His campaign manager, Victor Hugo Tinoco, was also expelled. (Nicaragua News Service, Feb. 22-28) The FSLN then named Ortega as its presidential candidate at an assembly on March 5. (ENH, March13)

Lewites still plans to run for president in 2006, and on July 14 he announced that in September he would launch a “great coalition” to challenge the “strongmen that control almost all the institutions and branches of government.” Lewites was accompanied by Tinoco and ex-FSLN leaders Luis Carrion and Victor Tirado. (NNS, July 12-18)

The July 17 march was organized by the “Network for Nicaragua,” an alliance of civic and political groups which came together in June to challenge the PLC-FSLN pact and ensure that other parties are not excluded from the elections. Participants included members of leftist groups like Lewites’ “Rescue Sandinismo” movement as well as rightwing dissidents from the PLC and members of the Conservative Party and Bolanos’ Alliance for the Republic Party (APRE). (ENH, July 18 from AFP)

On July 19, Ortega headed an event marking the 26th anniversary of the day in 1979 when the FSLN overthrew the brutal US-backed right-wing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The celebration took place near the Managua waterfront at the Plaza de la Fe Juan Pablo II, named for Pope John Paul II, who spoke there in February 1996. Independent pro-Sandinista newspaper El Nuevo Diario said the FSLN event filled the plaza to overflowing, but gave no crowd estimates; the anti-Sandinista La Prensa and the Spanish news service EFE both said only that “thousands” attended, while a pro-Ortega article by Francisco Chavarria in the European leftist internet publication Rebelion said the turnout of “more than 500,000” showed that “those who want to divide the party have suffered a resounding failure.”

Ortega told the crowd that the people will give him a new opportunity to be president of Nicaragua in next year’s elections. He blasted those who march against the FSLN-PLC pact, accusing them of polarizing the country and promoting confrontations. Ortega also criticized PLC leader Aleman, calling him a thief, according to El Nuevo Diario.

The theme of the event was reconciliation and peace, and its special guests included several former opponents of the FSLN, including right-wing politicians Jaime Morales Carazo and Azucena Ferrey; Atlantic coast leaders Steadman Fagoth and Brooklyn Rivera, who led armed “contra” forces against the FSLN government in the 1980s; and auxiliary bishop of Managua Msgr. Eddy Montenegro. (Rebelion, July 22 via Resumen Latinoamericano; END, July 20; LP, July 20; El Mostrador, July 19) A day earlier, July 18, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo–a prominent anti-Sandinista figure–headed up a “mass for reconciliation” attended by top FSLN leaders, including Ortega, who was photographed by the press accepting communion from his former opponent. (EM, July 19; El Diario-La Prensa, NY, July 20)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 24

Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html

See also WW4 REPORT #111
/node/752

Our last blog post on Nicaragua’s political crisis
/node/784

RESOURCES:

Global Trade Watch
http://www.citizen.org/trade/index.cfm

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://WW4Report.com