TOTAL RECALL IN BOLIVIA

Divided Nation Faces Historic Vote

by Ben Dangl, Toward Freedom

In early July in Sicaya, Cochabamba, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that if he wins the August 10 recall vote on his presidency, “I’ll have two and half years left.” But if he loses the vote, “I’ll have to go back to the Chapare” to farm coca again. Though the recall vote is likely to favor Morales, it’s unclear if it will resolve many of the divided nation’s conflicts.

This upcoming recall vote on the president, vice president and eight of nine departmental governors is to take place at a time of historic change for the country. Half way through a five-year term in office, Morales is applying social programs aimed at fighting poverty and inequality, and developing positive relationships with Latin America’s leftist leaders. At the same time, a series of regional disputes in Bolivia over departmental autonomy, the new constitution and wealth from the partially-nationalized gas industry, continue to put the country’s stability at risk.

Since May 4, autonomy referendums have been approved by voters in the departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, Pando and Chuquisaca. These votes were organized by the country’s right-wing politicians and business elite to perpetuate neoliberal policies, resist the redistribution of land and natural gas wealth, and weaken the Morales government. Though the right points to these victories at the ballot box as proof of their mandate, the referendums are not legally recognized by the Bolivian Electoral Court, the Organization of American States, the European Union, President Morales or other major leaders throughout the region.

In addition, all of the referendums were marked by high levels of voter intimidation and abstention—Morales urged his supporters to abstain from voting. In Pando, for example, the combined number of “no” votes and abstentions was 16,303, while the “yes” votes totaled only 12,671. In other departments, Morales supporters were kidnapped, tortured and beaten by right-wing thugs in an attempt to suppress the anti-autonomy vote.

In spite of the questionable legitimacy of these referendums, the votes illustrate the growing polarization in the country. In another setback to the Morales administration, opposition prefect Savina Cuéllar, was elected in Chuquisaca on June 29. She was running against Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) candidate Walter Valda in a vote that took place in tandem with a successful autonomy referendum. However, the opposition’s apparent momentum is likely to be put in check by the August 10 recall vote.

In an attempt to break up a political impasse in December 2007, and in response to demands from the opposition, Morales proposed the recall bill which was passed on May 8, 2008 by the opposition-controlled Senate. The recall bill states that if the president, vice president and governors do not receive both a higher percentage of votes and actual number of votes in the recall referendum than what they received in the 2005 election, they will lose their position. Therefore, it’s possible to win the necessary percentage of votes but lose the necessary number of votes, thus losing the recall vote. If Morales and vice president Alvaro Garcia Linera lose, they have to hold new elections within 90-120 days, in which they themselves are likely to be strong candidates. If the governors lose, they are to be replaced by interim governors of Morales’ choosing until the next election. The recall vote on the governors will take place in eight out of the nine provinces; Chuquisaca won’t participate as Cuéllar was just recently elected governor there.

The results of the recall vote could vary widely. Polls indicate that Morales and Linera will win; they will likely be bolstered by new voters in rural areas voting for the first time after a massive voter registration drive led by the government. Morales is also likely to benefit from the fact that many voters and social organizations, in spite of any criticisms they have of his administration, will likely back him in a vote in which the alternative is essentially the right wing. As an analysis article on the Bolivian news publication BolPress explained, “[V]arious popular organizations have initiated a campaign to ratify Morales and kick out the oppositional governors, not because they consider that the actual leader [Morales] is managing the government well, it’s because the oligarchy’s return to power would imply an end to the possibility of transformation within the socio-economic structures of the country.”

Though the recall vote may invigorate Morales’ mandate, and perhaps weaken the right, it’s unlikely to resolve many of the disputes tearing the political landscape apart. The question of whether the executive and legislative powers will be based in Sucre or La Paz remains a regional controversy. The new draft of the constitution, passed in December 2007 by an assembly boycotted by opposition parties, still awaits approval in a national referendum which the opposition-controlled Senate is blocking.

Some opposition governors and their supporters will likely not respect the results of the recall vote, or even participate in it at all. Vice president Linera recently told reporters that “They will probably boycott some regions, those where they know will lose. I believe they are laying the grounds for some sort of boycott on August 10 to create conflicts.” It is also not entirely clear if the recall vote will proceed at all. Magistrate Silvia Salame, the only judge currently serving on Bolivia’s Constitutional Tribunal Court, has called on the National Electoral Court to postpone the recall vote until challenges to the vote’s legality are considered. Government officials in the Morales administration said they would ignore her decision because the Tribunal requires three votes, not one, to make a decision. In response, Bolivian Electoral Court President José Luis Exeni stated the recall vote would proceed as planned.

While debates over the recall vote go on, controversy continues to surround how to best use Bolivia’s gas and oil wealth. Right-wing governors and civic leaders in Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando are demanding more funding from the profits of the oil and gas industry, which was partially nationalized by the Morales administration on May 1, 2006. Opposition leaders denounce that the Morales government redirected $166 million dollars from oil and gas tax revenue into a new pension plan that currently gives $315 dollars per year to Bolivians over 60 years old. Right-wing governors have threatened to go on a hunger strike on August 4 in protest of the policy. Yet what the opposition doesn’t acknowledge in their pleas is that their departments now receive many times more funding from the gas industry this year than they did in 2005 thanks to the Morales administration’s nationalization policies and renegotiations with private and foreign gas companies.

Meanwhile, Washington’s influence in the coca-producing Chapare region of Bolivia is waning, and Morales is strengthening his own relations with other Latin American leaders as he presses forward with progressive economic and development policies.

On June 24, coca growers in Bolivia’s Chapare region decided to expel the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In the Chapare USAID has, among other activities, historically tried to weaken the impact and political power of coca unions. The Morales administration has also accused USAID of working to undermine the current government and strengthen the right-wing opposition. On July 14, Morales, a former coca farmer himself, said, “USAID is managing a lot of money that’s being used to confuse the population, they want to divide and create problems…”

At the same time, regional support for the Morales administration’s policies is on the rise. Venezuela and Cuba have sent doctors and teachers to rural areas in Bolivia. Cuba is building dozens of hospitals in the country, and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said his nation would continue to support the expansion of Bolivia’s gas industry: 73% of Bolivian gas now goes to Brazil. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez recently announced his government will give $883 million dollars in aid to improve and expand the output of Bolivia’s oil and gas industry. Thanks in part to increased revenue from the gas industry, Morales said that $1.8 million dollars would be contributed to the development of 21 potable water projects in Santa Cruz.

Lula and Chávez recently pledged to collectively contribute $530 million to help with the development of highways linking La Paz, Beni and Pando. The collaboration supports Morales in his efforts against pro-autonomy governors. Chávez said of the highway plan, “We’re against those who want to tear Bolivia apart.”

Back in Sicaya, where Morales said he would return to coca farming if he lost the recall vote, the president stated that now “the vote serves not only to name authorities, but also to revoke their mandate. We are talking about expanding democracy.” Yet recent history shows that democracy in Bolivia can manifest itself in unpredictable ways.

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Benjamin Dangl is the author of “The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia,” (AK Press, 2007).

This story first appeared July 23 on Toward Freedom.

See also:

POLARIZING BOLIVIA
Santa Cruz Votes for Autonomy
by Ben Dangl, Upside Down World
World War 4 Report, June 2008
/node/5579

From our Daily Report:

Evo charges: US plans bases in Peru
WW4 Report, July 6, 2008
/node/5742

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Aug. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTOTAL RECALL IN BOLIVIA 

McCAIN’S BIG OIL TIES —FROM IRAQ TO COLOMBIA

by Nikolas Kozloff, NACLA News

When you consider John McCain’s ties to Big Oil, the GOP candidate’s claim to be a political maverick taking on special interests is nothing short of absurd. According to Progressive Media USA, a Washington, DC-based non-profit, the Arizona Senator has benefited handily from the oil sector. Indeed, McCain has netted at least $700,000 from the oil and gas industry since 1989.

In Congress, he has worked tirelessly to advance the interests of the oil industry. For example, McCain’s tax plan gives the top five oil companies $3.8 billion a year in tax breaks. McCain meanwhile has voted against reducing dependence on foreign oil, has twice rejected windfall profits tax for Big Oil, and has voted against taxing oil companies to provide a $100 rebate to consumers. If that were not enough, McCain also made a risky political decision recently to back new offshore oil drilling in the US.

McCain, Iraq and Chevron
Moreover, oil companies that have contributed to McCain have benefited greatly in terms of their foreign operations. One might cite the case of Chevron, for example, which has donated to McCain’s cloak-and-dagger International Republican Institute (IRI). Though the Arizona Senator seldom talks about it, he has gotten much of his foreign policy experience working with the operation. Since 1993, McCain has served as chair of the outfit, which is funded by the US government and private money. The group, which receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year, claims to promote democracy worldwide.

The hottest country in which IRI currently operates is Iraq. According to the IRI’s own web site, since the summer of 2003 the organization “has conducted a multi-faceted program aimed at promoting the development of democracy in Iraq. Toward this end, IRI works with political parties, indigenous civil society groups, and elected and other government officials. In support of these efforts, IRI also conducts numerous public opinion research projects and assists its Iraqi partners in the production of radio and television ads and programs.”

Prior to 2003, McCain was one of the biggest proponents of invading Iraq. Now that US forces are installed in the Middle Eastern nation, McCain wants the occupation to continue indefinitely, even for “a thousand” or “a million years.” Upon closer scrutiny, it is clear that oil companies have benefited from McCain’s hawkish Iraq policy. Though George Bush has scoffed at suggestions that the invasion of Iraq had anything to do with oil, recent press reports give some credence to such claims.

In April of this year, Chevron announced that it was involved in discussions with the Iraqi Oil Ministry to increase production in an important oil field in southern Iraq. The discussions were aimed at finalizing a two-year deal, or technical support agreement, to boost production at the West Qurna Stage 1 oil field near Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city. Since McCain solidified his position as the GOP’s nominee, Chevron Chairman David O’Reilly gave $28,500 to the GOP. Meanwhile lobbyist Wayne Berman, McCain’s national finance co-chairman, counts Chevron as one of his principal clients.

Colombia’s Oil Profile
Another war-torn country attracting McCain’s attention is Colombia. In early July, McCain took valuable time out of his presidential campaign to visit the Andean nation. Catching a fast ride on a Colombian drug interdiction boat near Cartagena, McCain praised the government for prosecuting the drug war and making “substantial and positive” progress on human rights. Contrasting himself to his presidential opponent Barack Obama, McCain endorsed the pending trade deal with the South American country.

For the most part, the US media ignores Colombia. When it does cover the Andean nation, it tends to focus on drug-related issues and cocaine production. As a result, the US public doesn’t know that Colombia is also a huge oil producer and that the US has important economic interests in this part of the world. US officials would like to guarantee a safe and steady supply of crude from neighboring countries like Venezuela and Colombia, thus lessening dependence on Middle East providers. Today, Colombia is the United States’ 12th largest foreign oil supplier (and third largest in South America after Venezuela and Ecuador) and ships 150,000 barrels of oil per day to the American market.

According to Oil and Gas Journal, Colombia had 1.45 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves in 2007, the fifth-largest in South America. The bulk of Colombia’s crude oil production occurs in the Andes foothills and the eastern Amazonian jungles. However, vast unexplored and potentially hydrocarbon-rich territories remain in the country, which shares many of the geological features of oil-rich neighbor Venezuela.

Since 1999, Colombia’s government has undertaken extraordinary measures to make the investment climate more attractive to foreign oil companies (in this sense, Colombia differs from other South American countries which have adopted a more nationalistic oil policy). The authorities for example have allowed petroleum corporations to own 100 percent stakes in oil ventures. The government has also established a lower, sliding-scale royalty rate on oil projects, mandated longer exploration licenses and forced the state-owned oil company Ecopetrol to compete with private operators. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the measures “have contributed to creating one of the most attractive oil investment regimes in the world.”

McCain’s Colombia Ties
One firm attracted by the generous new financial terms has been Chevron, the same company that contributed to McCain’s campaigns and the IRI and which has benefited handsomely from the opening up of Iraqi fields. In association with Ecopetrol, Chevron operates the Ballena and Riohacha natural gas fields in the Guajira province of northeastern Colombia. Chevron’s total daily average production in 2007 was 469 million cubic feet of gas per day.

But McCain’s Colombia ties go much deeper than this.

As Sam Stein noted on the Huffington Post, McCain’s “position as an independent arbitrator on Colombia—a country often criticized for its labor and human rights practices—is undermined by a bevy of advisers who have earned large amounts either lobbying for the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, or representing corporations that do business with that country.”

To get a sense of the scope of McCain’s conflict of interest on Colombia one need look no farther than Charlie Black, a senior adviser to the Arizona senator. A successful 60-year-old Washington lobbyist, Black is a notorious figure within the GOP. Over the course of his career he has gained a reputation as a ruthless operator with a merciless instinct for exposing an opponent’s flaws.

Black, who enjoyed stints as campaign operator for George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, got to know John McCain in the late 1970s when the future Arizona senator worked as the Navy’s liaison to the Senate. In 1996, the pair became close while working on Senator Phil Gramm’s failed presidential bid. Today, Black is a frequent McCain campaign surrogate on television. On the trail he sits in a big swivel chair at the front of the “Straight Talk Express,” joining in McCain’s rolling news conferences.

Black’s Washington, DC public relations firm BKSH has developed a reputation for taking on foreign clients who display scant regard for human rights. In 1998, Black agreed to represent Occidental Petroleum (or Oxy), an energy company based in Los Angeles, California. At the time, the GOP spin master was surely aware of Occidental’s sordid past. In Colombia, the company had already acquired a reputation for its brutal and militaristic policies.

Charlie Black and Santo Domingo Massacre
The same year Black took on Occidental, the company was embroiled in controversy when the Colombian Air Force dropped cluster bombs on Santo Domingo, a village near an Occidental pipeline, killing 18 innocent civilians. Human rights groups and Colombian government officials said the bombing was a mistake that occurred because three employees of a Florida-based aerial security company employed by Occidental to monitor guerrilla movements had provided incorrect coordinates to Colombian military pilots.

The US employees of the security company dropped out of sight and Colombian government efforts to have them handed over for questioning and perhaps trial proved fruitless. Frustrated by the security company’s stonewalling, human rights groups filed suit in California in 2003 and 2004 against Occidental. Occidental still denies any responsibility for the bombing of Santo Domingo, and has claimed that it “has not and does not provide lethal aid to Colombia’s armed forces.”

Such affairs were apparently of little concern to Black, who lobbied Congress, the State Department, and the White House on Occidental’s behalf regarding “general energy issues” and “general trade issues” involving Colombia. McCain’s PR man also fought to win foreign assistance to Colombia and to block an economic embargo against the South American country.

Occidental and the U’wa
The Santo Domingo massacre was certainly a black mark on Occidental’s record. However, there were yet more controversies in store for the company.

Under an agreement with the Colombian government, Oxy acquired the right to explore for oil in the country’s northeast. Unfortunately, in granting Oxy its exploration permit, the government ignored a constitutional requirement that native peoples within the area be consulted first. Oxy quickly became embroiled in conflict with the indigenous U’wa, whose territory was nestled in the misty forests of northeast Colombia near the border with Venezuela.

As company geologists and engineers moved in to build roads through the indigenous reservation, so too did the Colombian army, which installed two military bases in the vicinity. It wasn’t long before the military began to harass local residents.

Known as a proud, strongly rooted people, the U’wa repeatedly denounced Occidental’s oil operation. The U’wa argued that oil exploration would threaten their people, damage the land, fill their territory with alien workers and destroy the world they knew. At one point the approximately 5,000 U’wa even threatened to commit collective suicide by leaping from a cliff unless the oil company stopped operations on their territory.

Tensions were ratcheted up when, in February 2000, Oxy began construction on its Gibraltar 1 drill site. Some 2,700 U’wa Indians, local farmers, students, and union members immediately attempted to stop Oxy’s construction. When indigenous peoples sought to prevent trucks from reaching the construction site, riot police used tear gas to break up a road blockade. Three U’wa children were drowned in a fast-flowing river as the U’wa fled the attack.

Two months later, when Oxy began to move heavy equipment and materials into the area, the U’wa again blocked local roads. While the protesters permitted other traffic to pass, they laid their bodies in front of Occidental trucks. In June, the government sent in riot police and soldiers; 28 demonstrators were subsequently injured and 33 arrested. Believing that the area might contain up to 1.5 billion barrels of oil, Occidental shortly thereafter began test drilling on U’wa ancestral lands.

Promoting Oil Development through Militarization
Even as tensions escalated within the U’wa reserve, McCain adviser Black was unperturbed. According to Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch, a human rights group that works on behalf of Colombian indigenous groups opposed to oil drilling, Black was “very active” while Congress was debating a $1.3 billion military assistance package to Colombia that became law in 2000. “We’d be making the rounds in Congress,” Soltani said, “and Oxy would be there making the rounds, too.”

Why would Black also be so interested in trying to secure military funding for Colombia? As Oxy’s oil operations expanded, acquiring military support proved increasingly vital for the company. Oxy was part owner of the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline. The Caño Limón pipeline leads from Arauca to the Caribbean coast and crosses through the U’wa’ traditional lands. Not surprisingly, Oxy’s activities quickly attracted the attention of left-wing guerrillas who repeatedly blew up the pipeline. The attacks caused more than $500 million in losses to the company between December 1999 and December 2000.

The U’wa had long feared that oil exploration would bring bloodshed and conflict within their ancestral lands.

And as it turned out, the Indians were right.

Soon enough, Colombia’s wider civil conflict began to spill over into U’wa traditional territory. In March 1999, three U’wa supporters from the United States—Terence Freitas, Ingrid Washinawotok, and Laheehae Gay—were kidnapped and killed by FARC guerrillas in the department of Arauca.

While it’s unclear whether Oxy had any direct involvement in the killings, the company is known to have had links to the guerrillas. In testimony given before a Congressional subcommittee, Lawrence Meriage, Oxy’s vice president for communication and public affairs, acknowledged that Occidental personnel regularly paid off guerrillas in exchange for being left alone.

Meriage also claimed during the hearing that one benefit of Occidental operations in the U’wa region had been the increased presence of government troops. Indeed, Oxy paid a fee to the Colombian government on every barrel of oil produced. Meriage said that Occidental supported increased US military assistance to Colombia, and even urged the United States to expand its military operations in Colombia

In an effort to expand military funding to Colombia, the company spent nearly $4 million lobbying Congress in Washington. The investment paid off when the US government agreed to provide military aid, equipment and training to the 18th Brigade in Arauca, a unit which had been involved in grave human rights violations including attacks against trade unions and other members of civil society.

In May 2002, following a massive outcry by environmental groups, Oxy finally announced that it would return its controversial oil block to the Colombian government. Nevertheless, the company continued to operate in Colombia. Currently, the oil firm occupies the Caño-Limón oil field located in the Llanos Basin in the northeastern part of the country. The company also holds a 35 percent interest in the Caricare field and has signed a production agreement with Ecopetrol to operate the La Cira-Infantas field in central Colombia.

Although Oxy’s Caño-Limón field has yielded hundreds of million dollars annually in profits, the pipeline has been an ongoing target for guerrilla forces. In 2007, Occidental again found itself in the midst of a human-rights mess. This time, the company was accused in congressional testimony of being “complicit”—with several other major corporations—in the murder of three labor leaders.

Hopelessly Compromised on Colombia
Despite these ominous developments, Black continued his lobbying efforts over at BKSH. Over the long haul the PR man’s loyalty to Occidental proved enormously lucrative, with Black netting $1.6 million in fees for BKSH from 2001 to 2007. Occidental was surely pleased with Black’s work: in 2003, Congress approved a special appropriation of nearly $100 million for the protection of oil pipelines in Colombia.

McCain’s aides have repeatedly argued that the senator’s presidential campaign does not have direct connections to companies represented by such advisers as Black. The Arizona senator’s handlers assert that McCain should not be held accountable for any company misdeeds nor should the public presume that McCain is unduly influenced by corporate interests.

Granted, McCain may claim that there is a degree of separation between Charlie Black and himself. There are several problems with this argument however.

To begin with McCain appointed Black to his position, which speaks volumes about McCain’s political priorities. In the second place, the Senator has a personal connection to Oxy through Ray Irani, Occidental’s chief executive. In 2008, Irani doled out $2,800 to McCain’s presidential campaign and a full $25,000 to the Republican National Committee. Irani could easily afford the donation: in 2007 he was the tenth highest paid CEO in the United States, raking in a whopping $34.2 million from Occidental.

Throughout his political career, McCain has protected Big Oil on Capitol Hill. The Arizona Senator has eagerly accepted Chevron and Occidental money to ensure his own success. The oil lobby, which is surely hoping for a McCain win come November, can count on its man to ensure a healthy “investment climate” in Iraq and Colombia. If anyone happens to interfere with petroleum investment, warrior President McCain can be relied upon to back up US oil operations with the full might and resources of the US military.

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Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008).

This story first appeared July 8 on NACLA News.

RESOURCES

McCain Source, Progressive Media USA
http://mccainsource.com/

Colombia page, Energy Information Administration, US Department of Energy
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Colombia/Oil.html

McCain Heads to Colombia, Already Tied to Country by Lobbyists
by Sam Stein, Huffington Post, July 1
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/01/mccain-heads-to-colombia_n_110108.html?page=2

“A Million Years in Iraq”—President McCain’s Dangerous Recruiting Poster for Insurgents
by Jon Soltz, Huffington Post, Jan. 4
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-soltz/a-million-years-in-iraq_b_79798.html

BKSH & Associates
http://www.bksh.com/

International Republican Institute
http://www.iri.org/

Destabilizing Haiti
New York Times editorial on the IRI, Feb. 3, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/03/opinion/edhaiti.php

United Steelworkers press release on Occidental Petroleum complicity with human rights abuses in Colombia
July 22, 2008
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=PRNI2&STORY=/www/story/07-22-2008/0004853487&EDATE=

See also:

OBAMA AND THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
World War 4 Report, July 2008
/node/5716

From our Daily Report:

FCC probe of Haiti telcom deal hits McCain backer
WW4 Report, July 29, 2008
/node/5832

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Aug. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingMcCAIN’S BIG OIL TIES —FROM IRAQ TO COLOMBIA 

COLOMBIA’S HEART OF DARKNESS IN MANHATTAN —AND D.C.

by Bill Weinberg, The Nation

Colombian paramilitary commander Diego “Don Berna” Fernando Murillo—ex-boss of Medellín’s feared Cacique Nutibara Bloc—was arraigned in federal court in Manhattan last month on cocaine charges that could land him in prison for thirty years. He is one of fourteen top commanders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) who had turned themselves in to serve reduced sentences in Colombia under the supposed demobilization plan and were summarily extradited to the United States in May. The Colombian government, justifying this violation of the terms of their surrender, charges that they had not lived up to their commitment to compensate victims and sever links to crime networks.

The US State Department has designated the AUC a terrorist group. But the US charges against Don Berna and his confederates all concern cocaine, not violence. Rights watchers fear their extradition will mean little chance of justice for their victims. Survivors have filed hundreds of complaints against each of the paramilitary blocs the fourteen led.

Although media reports have not noted it, Don Berna was linked to one particularly horrific crime—not against rival narco-lords or left-wing guerillas but against peasant pacifists who had declared their jungle village in the war-torn Urabá region a “peace community.” Since 1997, San José de Apartadó, in one of several such citizen initiatives in Colombia, has maintained a policy of non-collaboration with any of the armed actors in the country’s war—the army, paras or guerillas. For this stance, the village has been repeatedly targeted for bloody reprisals, chiefly from the paras.

In February 2005, eight San José residents, including community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra and three children, were killed in the outlying fields. The village was subsequently occupied by the army and the residents forced to take refuge in a camp they have dubbed San Josécito (Little San José).

This year fifteen army troops were arrested in connection with the massacre. In May, just before Don Berna was extradited, the highest-ranking of them, Captain Guillermo Gordillo, started to cooperate with prosecutors, confessing that the massacre was carried out as a joint operation by the army’s 17th Brigade and the Don’s local Heroes de Tolova paramilitary bloc. Gordillo added that his superiors knew of the massacre and were involved in its planning.

SOA Watch, the group that monitors the US Army’s School of the Americas (now officially the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), reports that the commander of the 17th Brigade received training at the SOA. General Héctor Jaime Fandiño Rincón attended the Small-Unit Infantry Tactics course in 1976. In December 2004 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.

The United States has provided the Colombian government with more than $6 billion in mostly military aid since the Plan Colombia initiative was launched in 2000. In 2009, total US aid to Colombia will top $750 million. Despite the AUC “demobilization,” which took effect in 2005, the “remobilzed” Black Eagles paramilitary network remains active across Colombia—and has assassinated more leaders of the San José peace community. Rights watchers continue to charge collaboration between paras and the army—this despite the “para-politics” scandal that has shaken the government of President Alvaro Uribe, with several leading politicians in jail awaiting trial on charges of paramilitary collaboration.

More than fourteen members of Colombia’s Congress, most from Uribe’s coalition, have been jailed and await trial for suspected links to the paramilitary network. Another sixty current or former legislators, including Uribe’s cousin and thirty-year political ally Mario Uribe, are under investigation for having collaborated with the AUC’s de facto control of much of Colombia’s countryside. Jorge Noguera, former chief of Colombia’s secret police, was arrested last year on charges of providing the AUC with information that led to several slayings.

In October, Sandra Suarez, Uribe’s special envoy in Washington to usher the pending free trade agreement through Congress, stepped down, stating in her resignation letter that she’d failed her government and that the agreement is dead. Although her letter didn’t explicitly mention it, the day she resigned, former secret police chief Rafael Garcia testified in Bogotá that Suarez collaborated with leaders of the AUC, and with the governors of César and Magdalena departments to establish paramilitary control over these regions.

Uribe and the White House argue that stability is returning to Colombia and point to the drop in kidnappings and guerilla attacks. But they always ignore the horrific human rights toll of this pacification. The 2008 Amnesty International annual report on Colombia states that while guerilla and paramilitary attacks are down, rights abuses by the army and security forces actually rose last year.

Compounding the betrayal of Don Berna’s victims is the irony that the United States is now replicating the disastrous Colombia model in a $1.4 billion, multi-year anti-drug program for Mexico and Central America, dubbed the Mérida Initiative. Last month, Congress approved $400 million for Mexico and $65 million for the Central American nations in the first year of the program. Critics call the project “Plan Mexico”—although, unlike Plan Colombia, it does not make a commitment to supplying US military advisers.

Under pressure from human rights groups, Congress initially included rights “conditions” in the Merida Initiative legislation. But following protests from Mexico, the language was softened, with “conditions” dropped in favor of “guidelines.” The most significant difference is that the amount of aid that can be withheld if Mexico fails to meet the “guidelines” has been dropped from 25 percent to 15 percent.

Similar conditions on Colombia aid have failed to remove that country from its position as the hemisphere’s worst rights abuser. And there is little reason for optimism in Mexico. As Mexico’s drug war quickly escalates to a real one, grisly abuses mount, with growing talk of the country’s “Colombianization.” President Felipe Calderón has sent the army to patrol northern cities and fight the drug gangs. Despite official denials that the Merida Initiative mirrors Plan Colombia, Mexico’s Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said on a trip to Bogotá in 2006 that Mexican law enforcement should “learn through an exchange of information with Colombia about the best way to combat organized crime.”

And they do seem to be learning. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission has just issued eight recommendations for prosecution of army personnel involved in grave rights violations—including homicide, “disappearance” and torture with electric shock—in anti-crime operations in the states of Sinaloa, Sonora, Michoacán and Tamaulipas.

All the incidents took place within the last year. Although the story hasn’t made headlines in the United States, the central city of León is being wracked by a scandal in which a video made of a police torture training session was leaked to a newspaper. It shows recruits having their heads submerged in excrement and being pushed into their own vomit.

John McCain’s July 1 meeting with Colombia’s hard-line President Uribe indicates he will continue the Bush Administration’s militarist agenda for Latin America. If we are lucky enough to get a President Obama, he may, at least, be more susceptible to pressure on the question. But with all eyes on Iraq and the credit crisis, human rights in Latin America have at best been relegated to an afterthought.

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Bill Weinberg is the editor of World War 4 Report.

This story first appeared July 29 in the online edition of The Nation.

RESOURCES

Amnesty International Report 2008: Colombia
http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/regions/americas/colombia

See also:

COLOMBIA: PARAS, ARMY STILL KILLING PEASANTS
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
World War 4 Report, October 2007
/node/4499

From our Daily Report:

Colombia: army colonel admits participation in Peace Community massacre
WW4 Report, Aug. 3, 2008
/node/5841

Mexico: US-UK firm teaches torture?
WW4 Report, July 14, 2008
/node/5779

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Aug. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA’S HEART OF DARKNESS IN MANHATTAN —AND D.C. 

SHAKE DJIBOUTI

Eritrea Crisis Destabilizes Imperialism’s Horn of Africa Beachhead

by Sarkis Pogossian, World War 4 Report

Last month, with the world’s eyes elsewhere, the Horn of Africa nations of Eritrea and Djibouti briefly went to war. Fighting over the cape of Ras Doumeira and Doumeira Island in Djiboutian territory reportedly left a dozen Djiboutian soldiers dead and dozens wounded. While Eritrea increasingly poses itself as an anti-imperialist vanguard in the region, much smaller Djibouti remains a de facto Western protectorate, hosting both French and US military forces for policing the region. Despite a halt in the fighting, the crisis has not been resolved—and France has already jumped into the fray.

The international community lined up behind Djibouti. As the UN Security Council, Arab League and African Union urged Eritrea to halt military action June 12, French officers stationed in the mini-state told the official Agence Djiboutienne d’Information (ADI) that France was providing Djibouti with military support—and preparing to send more troops, ships and war material. The French Defense Ministry admitted it was developing plans to establish mobile military bases close to the Eritrean border, to hold back an advance by Eritrean forces.

Paris was among the first governments to condemn the supposed Eritrean aggression. Only the US State Department’s condemnation of Eritrea was clearer. A State Department spokesperson referred to the border conflict as an Eritrean “military aggression.” The US Africa Command also has a large military presence in Djibouti. A statement read at the Security Council by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said: “The Security Council calls upon the parties to commit to a ceasefire and urges both parties, in particular Eritrea, to show maximum restraint and withdraw forces to the status-quo ante.”

The Arab League urged Eritrea to withdraw its forces from border areas near Djibouti “immediately” and to respect Djibouti’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Eritrea rejected a fact-finding mission proposed by the League. (Djibouti is an Arab League member; Eritrea is not.)

Eritrea’s Foreign Ministry issued a press release calling the massive condemnation of its military action “baseless and mendacious statements.” When accusations of an incursion first surfaced June 10, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki told Reuters: “It’s a fabrication… We decline the invitation to go into another crisis in the region.”

Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guelleh countered to the ADI: “If Eritrea wants war, it will get it.”

Although it was never reported by the mass media, the Somaliland Times website reported June 15 that at least one Eritrean gunboat was sunk after being hit by a missile. All the crew were believed dead, sources said. It was not known whether the missile was fired by French warships or the Djiboutian navy. Eritrea was reportedly using two gunboats to fire on Djiboutian ground troops attempting to dislodge Eritrean forces from positions they had seized.

Djibouti’s Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf said, “France will send warships in the coming days to the Ras Doumeira area… Our forces remain vigilant.”

In Paris, the Defense Ministry said three French ships were in the region, and two—a helicopter carrier and a frigate—had reached Djibouti’s territorial waters. “For the moment, their mission is to provide logistical, medical and intelligence support—there is no participation in combat,” armed forces spokesman Christophe Prazuck told Reuters.

A week after the apparent border skirmishes, Djibouti accused neighboring Eritrea of again illegally intruding into its territory. Foreign Minister Ali Youssef told AlJazeera June 20 that Eritrean troops crossed the border on the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait. “Eritrean troops entered Djiboutian territory and took more land,” he said. “Right now, Eritrean troops are stationed inside Djiboutian territories.”

Youssef said Djibouti was complying with international demands for de-escalation. “The UN Security Council has asked for both countries to withdraw their troops from this area,” he said. “The Djiboutian government has withdrawn its forces up to five kilometers inside Djiboutian land. But Eritrean forces have advanced.” Youssef showed Al Jazeera documents, pictures and maps Djibouti had submitted to the UN, purportedly showing trenches dug by Eritrean troops on Djibouti’s territory.

Some analysts say Eritrea has already effectively claimed the Bab Al Mandab Strait, which guards the entrance to the Red Sea—and critical shipping lanes. Political analyst Mahmoud Taha Towkal told AlJazeera: “There is a new reality. Under recent developments, the Bab Al Mandeb Strait is no longer under the control of Djibouti and Yemen. It is now controlled by three countries: Djibouti, Eritrea and Yemen. It is no longer under the control of the Arab countries.”


Djibouti Between Two Worlds
It was the opening of the Suez Canal (under joint French-British control) in 1869 that turned the Red Sea from a remote backwater to a strategic shipping route. In anticipation of the canal’s opening, France established a protectorate over Djibouti in 1862 to police the Red Sea’s southern mouth. By 1900, it had become a complete colony—known as the Cote Française des Somalis, or French Somaliland.

In 1945, like other French colonies, Djibouti was made an official French territory—but the enclave was still largely ruled from Paris, and deemed particularly critical. On coming to power in 1958, Charles de Gaulle gave each French African territory the option of immediate independence—except Djibtouti.

The drive for Somali self-determination after Somalia became free from Britain in 1960 prompted Paris to hold a referendum on independence in 1967—for which France aggressively mobilized the non-Somali population (mostly Afars and Issas) to vote “no.” After the independence initiative was defeated, France tellingly changed the name of the colony to the Territoire Française des Afars et des Issas. It would be another ten years before Djibouti gained independence—and France would continue to maintain its largest African military force in the former colony.

Since 9-11, the US has joined France in militarizing Djibouti. The US Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) has been operating from Djibouti since December 2002. Some 1,600 US troops are at Djibouti’s Camp Lemonier, France’s largest base in Africa. The troops include infantry and special operations forces from all the services. Helicopters and refueling aircraft are also based there. CJTF-HOA forces have carried out special operations, supposedly against al-Qaeda forces, throughout the Horn of Africa.

In addition to being an imperial military beachhead for policing the region, Djibouti is also slated to become a cultural and financial beachhead for corporate globalization—with a mega-scheme in the offing for a bridge across the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb between Djibouti and Yemen. This would be an historic first land link between the Arabian peninsula and Horn of Africa.

Middle East Development LLC, the Dubai-based construction company controlled by Tarek Mohammad bin Laden—half-brother of Osama bin Laden—announced last month it is seeking to raise $190 billion to build two new cities in Djibouti and Yemen and a 28.5-kilometer bridge linking them. The new cities would be on the model of King Abdullah Economic City project in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait’s Silk City project, developed in recent years as an investment for fast-accumulating petro-dollars.

Such Persian Gulf heavy-hitters as Qatar’s state-owned Qatari Diar Real Estate Co. and Dubai’s port operator DP World Ltd. and investment company Istithmar PJSC are also sinking money in Djibouti development. Bloomberg reports that the Bechtel Group has also expressed interest in the bridge mega-project.

While elite planners envision Djibouti as as a bridge to bring free markets and high-tech stability from the Arabian Peninsula to the Horn of Africa, it could actually become a bridge to bring the insurgent violence of the Horn back to the Arabian heartland.

Yemen itself is facing both a terror campaign from clandestine Sunni militants on al-Qaeda’s model and a tribal insurgency from Zaydi Shi’ite rebels in the north. In fact, announcement of the bridge mega-project coincided with a major escalation of violence in Yemen. On May 31, government forces beat back an advance by the Zaydi rebels who brought their battle to within 12 miles of the capital San’a. Homes in Bani Heshiash, outside the capital, were destroyed by artillery fire.

That same day, “al-Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula—Yemen Soldiers Brigades” claimed responsibility for a mortar attack on a refinery in the southern port city of Aden the previous day, which officials said did not cause damage. In addition to both being at war on the government, Yemen’s Sunni and Shi’ite militants also appear to be at war with each other, blowing up each other’s mosques. On May 30, a gunman opened fire in a mosque at Kohal, in Amran northern province, killing at least eight as they knelt for prayer and wounding dozens of others. On May 2, a bomb rigged to a motorcycle exploded outside another mosque in the north, killing at least 12 worshipers.

Yemen has also been shaken by food riots this year—and Djibouti is also facing grave food shortages, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) warns. Some 130,000, including 50,000 in Djibouti’s capital, already require emergency food assistance, the network found. FEWS Net also noted that the recent border conflict with Eritrea could aggravate the situation. “Approximately 1,000 people have been displaced in and around the conflict zone, and as many as 22,000 could be displaced, should the violence worsen,” it stated in an alert.

“The situation has remained calm, but both countries are sending additional troops to the area, threatening renewed violence,” the network stated. “The border conflict could have important food security implications for Djibouti and the greater East Africa region.”

Djibouti’s pastoral communities, which rely on Eritrean markets for food, are already affected by the conflict and reportedly fleeing to Khorangar, Obock City, or further inland. A semi-desert state that experiences frequent droughts and imports all its staple foods, Djibouti is classified by the UN as both a least developed and a low-income, food-deficit country—as the region’s elite planners chart futuristic schemes.


Secret War for Somalia
The crisis with Eritrea broke out just as a peace deal between Somalia’s transition government and Islamist rebels was concluded in Djibouti. Although few media accounts made the connection, this was likely not coincidental.

The accord was signed with the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS)—based in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, and politically backed by Eritrea. A significant faction of the ARS boycotted the talks, saying there can be no dialogue until Ethiopian occupation troops leave Somalia.

Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, leader of the Council of Islamic Courts, flew to Mogadishu after the accord, saying he signed the UN-mediated peace agreement because it provides a 120-day timetable for an Ethiopian withdrawal from Somalia. But ARS hardliners, led by Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys in Asmara, say the accord legitimizes the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia.

Violence has continued virtually unabated in Mogadishu since the accord was signed, with scores killed in ambushes and skirmishes. Nonetheless, Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein insisted Ethiopian occupation troops would be withdrawn within 120 days of the signing in Djibouti. “The agreement between us and the opposition is a historic one and the Somali government would implement it,” Hussein said.

That may not happen if the hardliners maintain enough of an upper hand within the ARS to keep alive an armed resistance.

Late last year, when Asmara brokered formation of the ARS among the Somali opposition factions, Abu Mansur Robow, ex-deputy defense secretary with Somalia’s ousted Islamic Courts Union, told Mogadishu radio that his Shabaab resistance group has “nothing to do” with the new rebel alliance. Robow said al-Shabaab was “not satisfied” with the Asmara conference. The Shabaab, which probably controls most of the insurgents on the ground in Mogadishu, may now join ranks with the dissident faction of the ARS that boycotted the Djibouti talks.

Somalia is going deeper into crisis. The number of people in Somalia in need of emergency food aid is likely to rise one million from the current 2.5 million in the coming months, the United Nations warns. Mark Bowden, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the region, says Somalia faces a worse situation than Darfur.

Hundreds of youths hurled stones and blocked roads with burning tires May 6 in a second day of protests over food prices in Mogadishu, where the price of corn meal has more than doubled since January and rice has risen from $26 to $47.50 for a 110-pound sack. On May 5, tens of thousands took to the streets and five people were killed by government troops and armed shopkeepers.

Continued US intervention in Somalia also fuels popular anger. More than a thousand people demonstrated in Dusamareb, central Somalia, May 4 against a US air-strike that killed an alleged al-Qaeda militant and at least 11 others.

In the May 1 pre-dawn attack, US missiles destroyed the home of reputed al-Qaeda leader Aden Hashi Ayro in Dusamareeb. The attack killed 24 others in the targeted house and nearby homes. “This will not deter us from prosecuting our holy war against Allah’s enemy,” Sheik Muqtar Robow, a spokesman for Ayro’s Shabaab militia told AP via telephone. “If Ayro is dead, those he trained are still in place and ready to avenge against the enemy of Allah.”

A US submarine fired three Tomahawk cruise missiles into southern Somalia March 3, aiming at what the Defense Department called terrorist targets. The missiles hit the town of Dobley, five miles from Somalia’s border with Kenya, partly destroying a house and injuring local residents. The strike was supposedly aimed at Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Kenyan wanted by the FBI for questioning in 2002 terror attacks on a hotel and an Israeli airliner in Mombasa which were claimed by al-Qaeda. Others said the target was Shabaab leader Hassan Turki.

But the continued Ethiopian military presence in the country is probably the greatest source of unrest. In one all too typical incident April 20, Ethiopian troops opened fire on civilians in a street in Baidoa, killing 13 after an explosion there killed two soldiers.

In a May, Amnesty International called for an investigation into the role of the US in Somalia following publication of a report accusing its Ethiopian allies of committing war crimes. The report, “Routinely Targeted: Attacks on Civilians in Somalia,” says Ethiopian troops in Somalia are killing civilians, slitting the throats of insurgent suspects, and gang-raping women. Ethiopia’s government dismissed the report was unbalanced and “categorically wrong.”

In February 2007, the New York Times reported that the US had quietly provided intelligence aid for Ethiopia’s December 2006 invasion of Somalia, which one unnamed Washington official called a “blitzkrieg.” The story by Michael R. Gordon also claimed that a US Special Operations unit deployed in Ethiopia, Task Force 88, had ventured into Ethiopian-occupied Somalia for clandestine missions, and that US military advisors had trained Ethiopia’s elite Agazi Commandos for the Somali invasion.

The “proxy war” between Eritrea and Ethiopia in Somalia may survive the Djibouti accord. And Eritrea’s apparent seizure of Djiboutian territory during the talks may have been an effort to derail them.


Puntland & Somaliland: Autonomy Under Attack
Not all of Somalia is under the control of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and Ethiopian occupation. The northern enclaves of Puntland and Somaliland are de facto independent states, and have been spared the harsh cycle of insurgent and repressive violence which has left thousands displaced from Mogadishu. But these enclaves are now increasingly embroiled in the region’s crisis.

The flag of Eritrea was set on fire June 16 in Garoowe, capital of Puntland, in what local authorities called a protest “to condemn the Eritrean attack on Djibouti.” The autonomous government’s ministers were among those who oversaw the ritual flag-burning amid chants of “Down with Eritrea, Victory to Djibouti!”

Puntland health minister Abdirahman Said Mahmud aka Degaweyne said blood was being donated at blood banks to assist Djibouti’s armed forces, and that livestock had been handed over to Djibouti to be slaughtered for use by its armed forces. Information minister Abdirahman Muhammad Bangah said Puntland was ready to form a united front against Eritrea.

In June 2007, the regional website Geeska Afrika reported that US warplanes based in Djbouti were overflying Puntland in preparation for air-strikes against suspected al-Qaeda fugitives. The report also stated that a US Navy warship shelled the Puntland coastal town of Bargal, killing at least 12 Islamist fighters.

The moves also came amid growing talk that Eritrea was attempting to destabilize Puntland as a step towards destabilizing TFG-controlled Somalia. Puntland President Adde Mussa accused Eritrea of infiltrating both Ethiopian and Somali opposition exiles into the enclave to foment unrest. “The so-called Free Parliament and Union of Islamic Courts members in Eritrea have joined up to pay money to some Puntland government members who were sacked, but Puntland will not be affected by such manipulation continued by that alliance,” he said. Mussa said that the mayor of Bosaso, Qadar Abdi Hashi, and five other local officials were sacked because they received bribes from the “Asmara group”—a reference to Eritrea’s capital—”to create violence and political tension in the region.”

“Puntland troops resisted the invasion carried out by a group of Somali and foreign terrorists,” Mussa added, alluding to further armed conflict in the enclave which the world press have ignored.

Puntland also clashed with neighboring Somaliland in April 2007 over a disputed strip of land along their shared border in the Sanag region. “Puntland forces attacked the town of Dahar around 8:00 this morning,” Somaliland Information Minister Ahmed Hagi Dahir said in a statement. “The attacking forces were supported by 17 technicals and 3 big trucks.” Technicals are pick-up trucks mounted with weapons, the Somali version of a tank. At least one fighter was reported killed.

Somaliland is the former colony of British Somaliland, along the Gulf of Aden and bordering Djibouti. It claims independence from Somalia, and is seeking international recognition of this stance. Puntland and TFG-controlled Somalia to the south together constitute the former Italian Somaliland, which London gave to Rome as a reward for lining up with the Allies in World War I (and took back by military force in World War II). Puntland has not formally seceded, but is effectively autonomous. Puntland and Somaliland have fought for years over the Sool and Sanag regions, partially claimed by Puntland on an ethnic basis. Somaliland says they are part of its territory under the colonial border Britain left. Since the Djibouti crisis, these tensions have again become inflamed—threatening both regions’ status as relatively peaceful enclaves.


Ethiopia: Proxy Faces Blowback
Ethiopia, which invaded Somalia with US support, may itself face destabilization as blowback from its military adventure. On May 29, a little-known Somali group claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that killed three in Ethiopia on the eve of national celebrations marking the 17th anniversary of the current regime’s ascent to power. “We will keep on fighting until we liberate our country from the Ethiopian invaders,” said Haji Abukar, a spokesman for the previously unknown Islamic Guerrillas, after claiming responsibility for the bombing two days earlier at Nagele, 560 kilometers south of the capital, Addis Ababa. “Our fighters will continue their holy war against the enemy of Somalia and we will target them everywhere.” The Guerillas’ statement said: “We are an Islamic group that stands for the liberation of Somalia and have a good relationship with the rest of the insurgents in Somalia.”

The Islamic Guerillas may or may not be linked to the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF)—a secular rebel group of ethnic Somalis fighting for self-rule in Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden region along the Somali border. The oil-rich Ogaden Basin was the goad of a brief war between Ethiopia and Somalia in the Ogaden Crisis of 1977, when Somalia invaded in support of Ogaden separatists but was driven back after three months of fighting. The ONLF have stepped up their attacks since Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia—and are facing a brutal counterinsurgency campaign.

The Pentagon’s new Africa Command officially still has no headquarters on the continent, with African governments reluctant to draw terror attacks and accusations of acquiescing with neo-colonialism. For the moment, it remains officially based in Stuttgart. But Djibouti constitutes a sort of de facto African headquarters, and Ethiopia is a close second.

The Pentagon has, astutely, chosen an African American as first chief of the new Africa Command, Gen. William “Kip” Ward—and his first official visit to the continent was, of course, to chief US ally Ethiopia. Meeting with African Union leaders in Addis Ababa last November, Ward explicitly addressed widespread fears of the US establishing a permanent military presence on the continent. “Any notion of a militarization of the continent because of this? Absolutely false; not the case,” said Gen. Ward. “Africa Command is not here to build garrisons and military bases.”

That same day, Somali insurgents dragged the bodies of dead Ethiopian soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu, amid fighting that killed at least 20 and sparked a further exodus from the city. “It is our belief that every individual in Somalia has to participate in the resistance and the defeat of the Ethiopian occupation,” Somali opposition leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told AFP from Eritrea.

Given that the specter of foreign soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu is obviously redolent of the similar incident involving US troops there in 1993, Washington is wise to be using proxies this time around. But these proxies may have to bear the brunt of the backlash—as the new Djibouti crisis indicates.


Whither Eritrea?
Eritrea prides itself on having fought—and won—against both superpowers, or at least their local proxies. “It’s not easy fighting against regimes supported by superpowers,” Afewerki said in a rare interview with the New York Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman last October. “But we did it.”

The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) waged an armed struggle against Ethiopia when it was under the Soviet-backed Mengistu Haile Mariam from the mid-1970s through the early ’90s—and then waged a border war with the US-backed Ethiopia of Meles Zenawi from 1997-2000.

Eritrea is a product of Italian colonialism. First establishing a protectorate at Assab on the southern coast in 1882, by 1889 Italy had brought the entire territory under its direct rule—for the first time uniting the Afar, Danakil, Beja and other Muslim peoples of the coastal lowlands with the Tigrinya of the inland plateau. While the highlands had sometimes been under the rule of Ethiopia’s predecessor states such as Axum and the Abyssinian kingdom (and are predominantly Orthodox Christian), the coastal lowlands never were—they were a patchwork of small Muslim kingdoms, which eventually came under Ottoman rule (1557-1865). Italy used Eritrea as a staging ground for annexationist adventures in Ethiopia, which it invaded in 1880 and (more successfully) 1936.

In World War II, Eritrean insurgents and a British expeditionary force succeeded in driving out the Italians. After the war, Britain remained in control of the territory as the UN debated its future. The US, envisioning naval bases on Eritrea’s coast under the compliant Ethiopian regime of King Haile Selassie, strongly backed Ethiopia’s proposal to annex the territory. As a “compromise,” the UN finally agreed to a “federation” in which Eritrea would have broad autonomy under Ethiopian rule. This took effect in 1952. But in 1962, Ethiopia unilaterally abrogated Eritrea’s autonomy, disbanding its assembly and declaring the territory “the 14th province of the Ethiopian Empire”—with the promised US naval base at Kagnew.

When the fall of the Ethiopian monarchy to a leftist revolution in 1974 failed to bring any concessions to Eritrea’s national aspirations after three years, the EPLF took up arms. In the 1980s, the EPLF was allied with Meles Zenawi’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which sought to overthrow Mengistu’s Soviet-backed regime. The twin guerilla movements survived Mengistu’s genocidal counter-insurgency. When Mengistu fell in 1991, Meles Zenawi took power in Ethiopia. Eritrea under the EPLF prepared a referendum on independence—which was overwhelmingly approved in 1993.

But independent Eritrea and “liberated” Ethiopia shortly fell out over border demarcation, leading to the 1997-2000 war. Today arch-rivals, Isaias Afewerki and Meles Zenawi have both been in power since 1991, and have both suppressed opposition—the prior somewhat more thoroughly.

Isaias Afewerki has banned all political parties except his EPLF. While all countries in the region have pretty horrific human rights records, Eritrea has come under special criticism. Amnesty International says thousands of prisoners of conscience are behind bars, and religious minorities (principally Protestant converts) are barred from practicing their faith. Reporters and even musicians have been imprisoned, and especially brutal treatment is meted out for those who resist military service.

Isaias Afwerki’s Eritrea is something of an enigma. Eritrea hosts Somalia’s exiled Islamist leaders even as it has banned female genital mutilation, a barbarity carried out in the dubious name of “Islam.” In addition to offering support and sanctuary to the deposed ICU leaders, Eritrea brokered dialogue among Somali clan leaders who oppose the Ethiopian occupation, leading to the formation of the ARS.

Eritrea is playing an increasingly active role in the region, even deploying peacekeepers to the Chad-Sudan border—while its Ministry of Information attacks deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur as “neo-colonialism.” While Asmara hosts the leaders of Darfur guerilla organizations, it has also brokered a peace deal between Khartoum and the Beja rebels in Sudan’s east.

Eritrea is clearly trying to insert itself in the regional game, and build a counter-force to the pro-US Egypt-Ethiopia-Uganda bloc. This necessitates dealing with Islamists like the ICU and the Sudan regime. Yet President Isaias’ speech on the occasion of Eritrea’s 16th Independence Day celebration May 25, 2007 took several swipes at regional rival Ethiopia—while making no reference to Islam. (Isaias himself is of Christian background.)

So the alliance between Somalia’s Islamists and Eritrea’s secular dictatorship would appear to be one of convenience. How long will it last? And is Isaias Afwerki’s regime planting the seeds of its own destabilization?

Ironically, the Eritrean regime initially sought to curry favor with Washington by invoking a mutual Islamist threat in the aftermath of 9-11. Immediately after the 9-11 attacks, Afwerki unleashed a purge, imprisoning several journalists, students and dissidents, accusing them of being al-Qaeda or (paradoxically) Ethiopian agents. In December 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld flew to Eritrea to meet with Isaias Afwerki, becoming the highest-ranking US official to do so since Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993.

There is a militant Islamist underground in Eritrea. An “Eritrean Islamic Jihad” has launched a few armed actions against what it calls the “Christian regime” and (ironically) the “terrorist regime.” This is believed to be linked to the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), an early rival to the EPLF which continues to exist in clandestinity. First launched in the 1960s by Muslim Afars from the coast, the ELF was superseded in the late ’70s by the EPLF, led by Isaias Afewerki from the Christian-majority Hamasien highlands. While both groups professed a secular Marxist ideology (as nearly all African armed struggles did in that innocent time), the ELF received aid from the Arab nations, and may now have links to the Islamists.

But the US alliance with Ethiopia inevitably drew Eritrea into conflict with Washington. The split became clear just over a year ago. The Geeska Africa Online news service, reporting from Nairobi in April 2007, quoted Jendayi Frazer, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, accusing Eritrea of backing the Islamist insurgents in Somalia. “No insurgency group can survive without support from neighboring countries, certainly Eritrea is the country of greatest concern,” Frazer said. She added that while the “global jihadist network” is also supporting the Shabaab insurgents, Eritrea will do “anything that will hurt” its southern neighbor. “This is very much aimed at Ethiopia,” she said after returning to Nairobi after five hours in Baidoa—the first trip to Somalia by a US official in over a decade.

Eritrea dismissed the charges. “The Eritrean government is not disposed to reply to such a statement by an amateur diplomat that does not reflect the US administration’s official stance,” a statement posted on the government Web site said.

Speaking at the end of a visit to Ethiopia in September, Frazer issued the strongest threat yet that Eritrea could be officially labeled a sponsor of terrorism. Frazer said the presence of exiled Somali Islamist leader Hassan Dahir Aways in Asmara was further evidence that Eritrea provided sanctuary for terrorists. Hassan Dahir Uways is officially labelled a “terrorist” by Executive Order 13224 of Sept. 23, 2001.

A report to the UN Security Council last summer found that Eritrea had secretly supplied “huge quantities of arms” to Somali insurgents, in violation of an international embargo. “Somalia is awash with arms,” the Monitoring Group on Somalia said in its report handed in to the Security Council in July 2007 and leaked to the AP. It accused Eritrea of flying shipments of surface-to-air missiles, explosives and other arms to the Shabaab. Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu called the accusations a “big lie,” adding: “These allegations are not new and we know where they are coming from. The UN is acting as a megaphone of the United States.” But the report also had criticisms of Ethiopia, accusing its troops of using white phosphorous bombs against insurgents.

Recently Eritrea has clamped down on UN operations on its territory, in retaliation for the failure to implement the border ruling by an independent commission which ended the 1997-2000 war with Ethiopia. Ethiopia has not withdrawn its troops from the disputed border town of Badme, which the commission awarded to Eritrea. Eritrea wants the international community to put more pressure on Ethiopia to comply with the ruling.

Like Sudan, Eritrea is wooing Chinese investment for its resource sector. Eritrea’s Ministry of Mines has granted two exploration licenses to a Chinese base metal company and a joint Chinese-Eritrean gold venture, the Beijing Donia Resources Ltd and the Eritrea-China Exploration & Mining Share Company, respectively.

But the government is emphasizing a drive towards self-sufficiency. The Los Angeles Times noted last October that Eritrea, one of the world’s poorest nations, “walked away from more than $200 million in aid in the last year alone, including food from the United Nations, development loans from the World Bank and grants from international charities to build roads and deliver healthcare.” Afewerki vows he will not lead another “spoon-fed” African country “enslaved” by international donors.

“We need this country to stand on its two feet,” Isaias told the LA Times. Fifty years and billions of dollars in post-colonial international aid have done little to lift Africa from poverty, he said. “These are crippled societies,” Afewerki said of neighbors who he charged rely heavily on donors. “You can’t keep these people living on handouts because that doesn’t change their lives.”

Isaias Afewerki has conscripted about 800,000 of Eritrea’s citizens for the self-sufficiency drive, which the LA Times admitted “so far has shown promising results. Measured on a variety of UN health indicators, including life expectancy, immunizations and malaria prevention, Eritrea scores as high, and often higher, than its neighbors, including Ethiopia and Kenya.”

Official isolation and paranoia may be the price of this policy. “It’s like they have self-imposed sanctions,” the LA Times quoted one diplomat, who feared government retribution if identified. “They’re turning into an Albania or North Korea.”

But the self-sufficiency policy could help Eritrea ride out sanctions and regional war—while Djibouti, a heavily dependant enclave, could prove far more brittle, even with the big guns of Paris and Washington behind it.

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See also:

YEMEN: THE NEXT QUAGMIRE
Washington’s New Terror War Flashpoint?
by Mohamed Al-Azaki
World War 4 Report, September 2007
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From our Daily Report:

Somalia: Islamists attack traditional dance ceremony
WW4 Report, July 1, 2008
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Eritrea crisis worsens Djibouti food shortages
WW4 Report, June 29, 2008
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Special to World War 4 Report, July 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingSHAKE DJIBOUTI 

ISRAEL & PALESTINE: DEMANDING CO-EXISTENCE

Book Review:

DARK HOPE
Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine
by David Shulman
University of Chicago, 2007

by Bill Griffin, Catholic Worker

David Shulman is a professor in the department of comparative religion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a member of Ta’ayush or the Arab Jewish Partnership. The Arabic word literally means “living together.” Founded in October, 2000, Ta’ayush activists have repeatedly and tirelessly engaged in small, concrete acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against the occupation of the West Bank by the Israeli military and encroaching Israeli civilians. The latter are creating settlements illegally, but are tolerated by the Israeli government. Numbering only several hundreds of students, academics, lawyers, writers and retirees, Ta’ayush volunteers have concentrated on the protection of Palestinian civil rights under the law and on the immediate relief of their physical suffering during emergencies. Their actions have included the delivery of massive supplies of food and blankets, voluntary manual labor to help with the harvesting of olives and grapes, and the provision of expert legal services.

Ta’ayush was started in response to and in solidarity with the broadly-based Palestinian uprisings against the Israeli occupation, collectively known by the Arabic term, intifada, which means “shaking off.” If some striking manifestations of the uprising have been horrifically violent, the Intifada is not predominantly of a violent nature according to David Shulman, who provides much evidence for that position which we do not often hear of in this country. He is viscerally and existentially aware of the terrible weight of terrorism and has suffered his own intense, personal losses but, he writes, this “cannot concern me here; my concern in these pages is with the darkness on my side.”

Furthermore, he asserts that “we should also bear in mind the vast disparity in power between the two sides. Israel has the power to change reality, to make peace. Were she genuinely to want to do this, and were her American backer and banker to want it, Israel could, I am certain, create the conditions for a breakthrough. Anyone who knows the Palestinian reality, in all its complexity, on the ground knows the powerful forces that are ready and eager to move toward peace.”

This book is presented in diary form. David Shulman’s entries run from January 2002 to September 2006. Five nonviolent campaigns which took place in different parts of Israel/Palestine make up the subject matter. Each section is introduced by an essay which clearly lays out the relevant political and historic context. Each diary entry is self-contained but linked to the others. Organizational and logistical details which are part of every civil disobedience action are mixed with vivid descriptions of marches and strategy meetings. Confrontations with the Israeli military and irate Israeli settlers, who consider the Jewish members of Ta’ayush traitors, are graphically pictured. The great harmonious beauties of the landscapes and skies of Israel/Palestine are contrasted with the tragic disharmony which reigns among the human beings who are the prisoners of clashing social roles. David Shulman is a poet. He also gives us numerous thumbnail sketches of salt-of-the-earth Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists, such as Christian Peacemaker Teams members. These portraits are also meditations on what it means to believe in a philosophy of nonviolence.

Something more needs to be said about David Shulman’s background because his personal history makes this book much more than reportage. He was born in Iowa. His Jewish grandparents had immigrated there after the First World War from the Ukraine. He, himself, chose to emigrate to Israel in 1967 when he was eighteen years old. At the Hebrew University he studied Arabic and Islam but gravitated eventually to Indian studies and became deeply influenced by the writings of Mohandas Gandhi. He served as a medic in the Israeli army during its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and saw that war as, “at best an arrogant folly, at worst a crime.” David Shulman describes his own political evolution as “slow, cumulative and uneven.”

His choice of what is important to emphasize reveals a great deal about his beliefs in nonviolence. He is not drawn to any great heroics but rather to the small human gesture of kindness and to the sharply felt moments when a keen sense of community between Palestinians and Israelis is fleetingly achieved. In contrast, he can also write with great anger at the injustices which he sees are being inflicted collectively on the Palestinian people in order to drive them from their ancestral lands. Such injustices have nothing to do with real security concerns, as David Shulman illustrates.

One of the more surreal campaigns of nonviolent resistance organized by Ta’ayush occurred in the remote South Hebron Hills. There, the organization undertook the defense of the homes of several thousand Palestinian peasants who inhabited a network of caves. They had lived there for hundreds of years tending their flocks of sheep. However, a newly-founded, very small, nearby settlement of Israelis invoked security fears and persuaded the Israeli army to seal up the caves of the Palestinians. Ta’ayush volunteers came for days at a time to manually excavate the caves laboriously by hand. In his poignant fashion, David Shulman asks, “How can a soldier bury a home? Did it mean nothing to him to run a bulldozer up to the entrance, to gouge out chunks of earth and rock and pour them over it, sealing it for years…? How could he bury a family’s entire memory under the ground?”

Another of the intense questions haunting Israeli society today has to do with the refusal by some of its soldiers to perform their military service in the West Bank. David Shulman goes into this burning issue in his chapter entitled, “Saying No.” There, he describes a raucous conference held at the Hebrew University in which the “refuseniks,” as they are known, were given a platform from which to explain their position. Shulman quotes from the speech given by the philosopher David Enoch, who is a “refusenik” himself. Here is part of what that thinker said:

It would be easy to go on, analyzing argument after argument, but what we must bear in mind is something else. Think about the occupation and what it means—the continuous repression, the large-scale seizure of land, the humiliation, killings, dispossessions, the impoverishment of millions. Think about arrogance and domination, about arbitrary injustice, about the planned route of the Separation Wall. Think about the abysmal disregard for human rights, the cynical contempt for other human beings. Think about the lies we have been told and continue to tell ourselves—as if all this were really related to the war on terror (terror, in itself, is an abomination). Were the war on terror truly the goal, the means would certainly be very different.

David Shulman struggles often with feelings of despair in the pages of his diary. The dire crisis in Israel/Palestine seems insoluble. He personally believes in a two-state solution but has no grand scheme to propose in order to achieve this goal. His emphasis is always on the personal sufferings he sees all around him. He writes that he always wants to be aware of them because he has “dogged convictions about what it means to remain human.” And, mysteriously, he is given, again and again, the hope and energy to return to the fray.

Here is a final example of his inspiring writing. These reflections came to him after the civil disobedience action at the Palestinian village of Bil’in when Ta’ayush activists joined with the group led by Abdallah Abu Rahmeh, the “Palestinian Gandhi.” Their aim was to block construction of the Separation Wall. Many were arrested and Shulman is returning to the village center in search of his comrades:

I am walking with Asaf who I remember from Silwan and other actions. We greet each of the villagers we meet, and they answer graciously with the melodious blessings of the host. As we reach the main street a group of men sitting on a balcony high above us call down to us. ‘We thank you. We honor you for coming here.’ It is the happiest moment of the day, this simple obviously genuine statement of welcome, bonding, thanks. It was all worth it—there is no doubt. For them and for us. We faced it together. And suddenly I am aware of a feeling that has been slowly building up in me throughout the day but that only now becomes fully explicit—a breathtaking experience of freedom, perhaps more complete and more satisfying than at any other point in my life. Later I will wonder what such freedom consists of and why I felt it this way. Clearly it has little to do with armies, policemen, jails. It is not, however, disconnected from external things, despite what people (especially those of a romantic temper) sometimes say. Above all, this sense of being free must be linked to a mode of being with—Ta’ayush—of acting, of caring, or caring enough, of overcoming fear, not looking away. It is not so easy not to look away…

—-

This story originally appeared in the March-April edition of the Catholic Worker, an organ of the Catholic Worker Movement, 36 East First St. New York, NY 10003

RESOURCES

Ta’ayush—Arab-Jewish Partnership
http://www.taayush.org/

See also:

CONSCIENCE UNDER OCCUPATION
by Matt Vogel, Catholic Worker
World War 4 Report, December 2004
http://www.ww3report.com/105/bookreview/conscience

From our Daily Report:

West Bank: Israeli forces again attack anti-wall protest
WW4 Report, June 8, 2008
/node/5614

Israeli army seizes non-violent activist —in front of UN and Amnesty officials
WW4 Report, Dec. 9, 2006
/node/2893

Settler tree-theft from Palestinian cave-dwellers
WW4 Report, Feb. 23, 2006
/node/1644

Israel represses non-violent protest in occupied West Bank
WW4 Report, Sept. 9, 2005
/node/1060

——————-

Reprinted by World War 4 Report, July 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingISRAEL & PALESTINE: DEMANDING CO-EXISTENCE 

JOHN HAGEE AND MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: FEARFUL SYMMETRY

by Bill Weinberg, Israel e-News

John McCain’s decision to reject the endorsement of Rev. John Hagee is a glimmer of hope, though it is disturbing that he sought his support in the first place. It is more disturbing still that he continues to maintain some Beltway credibility. David Brog, director of Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI), spoke at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington June 4. (Hagee himself spoke to the 2007 AIPAC meet.) Sen. Joe Lieberman, while saying Hagee’s comments on the Holocaust were “hurtful,” also told Fox News after the controversy: “He represents a lot of people in this country, particularly Christians who care about the state of Israel.”

Not all in Israel are happy about this kind of support. Colette Avital, commenting on the Hagee affair for the daily Haaretz, wrote: “Do we still need to point out that Jesus can return only after Armageddon, and to this end it is best if Israel continues to be at war?”

But most disturbing—especially in the event McCain gains the Oval Office—is how Hagee closely mirrors the leader of Iran that he and candidate McCain both profligately condemn. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to office in 2005 declaring his intention to “hasten the emergence” of the Mahdi—the Twelfth Imam, or successor to the Prophet Muhammed, who the Shi’ite faithful believe will return from a millennium of “occultation” to redeem the world. The New York Times reported May 20 that Ahmadinejad said in a nationally broadcast speech that the Mahdi “supported the day-to-day workings of his government and was helping him in the face of international pressure.” He has even established a “well-financed foundation” to prepare his nation for the imam’s return.

When Ahmadinejad came under criticism from some clerics for too closely mingling religion and politics, he defended himself at a news conference: “To deny the help of the imam is very bad It is very bad to say that the imam will not emerge for another few hundred years; who are you to say that?”

Hagee’s book Jerusalem Countdown similarly calls for speeding along worldly events to prepare for the End Times—and (now notoriously) says the Holocaust was God’s retribution on the Jews for rebelling against Him, as well as His way of driving them to re-establish the state of Israel, a prerequisite for Armageddon.

Hagee has also got his own “well-funded foundation” to prepare for Christ’s return, CUFI. Its website warns: “There is a new Hitler in the Middle East—President Ahmadinejad of Iran.”

We can only be encouraged by any falling-out between Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs—even if it is a case of real zealots and ideologues breaking with what they see as cynical political exploitation of the apocalyptic faith.

But there needs to be a clear-cut break between Washington power and apocalyptic evangelicalism in the United States. A US-Iran confrontation fueled on both sides by eschatological fervor is a threat which will persist.

Iraq could be a likely flashpoint. In the profusion of Shi’ite militias in the Iraq conflict, one, known as the Jund al-Samaa—”Soldiers of Heaven”—took up arms in Najaf last year with the apparent intention of hastening the return of the Mahdi. Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army also hopes for an imminent return of the Twelfth Imam. Iran’s links to these factions is unclear, and possibly overstated by the White House. But the nightmarish violence in Iraq will continue to fuel such movements.

Hagee’s counterparts in Israel are also gaining ground, and are a growing presence at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, site of the last Jewish temple—which today houses the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, and al-Aksa Mosque, or Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third holiest site.

The Jewish fundamentalist group “Ateret Cohanim” and the Muslim Waqf that administers the Haram al-Sharif accuse each other of carrying out illegal excavations at the Temple Mount. At issue is the long-lost Ark of the Covenant, whose re-emergence is held by the Jewish fundamentalists as signaling the coming of the messiah. One fundamentalist group, the Temple Mount Faithful, openly seeks to build a new Jewish temple at the site—which would, of course, mean demolishing the Dome of the Rock, adding to fears about the Israeli-approved excavations.

“Temple Movements” sacrificed goats at the site before Israel’s courts issued a ruling barring the ritual. But the self-proclaimed “New Sanhedrin Council”—conceived by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz as a revival of the ancient Hebrew supreme religious body, the Sanhedrin Court—refuse to recognize Israel’s secular courts. In February 2007, six children were shot and wounded in a Hebron protest against the Jewish archeological work at the Temple Mount. Tisha b’Av, the Jewish holiday commemorating the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, generally falling in August, always sees security beefed up at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.

Ironically, the Jewish fundamentalists arguably have more of an ear in Washington’s corridors of power than Tel Aviv’s. The mutual enmity between Hagee and Ahmadinejad reflects their fundamental unity. A clear repudiation of such politics in post-Bush America would go a long way towards staving off unparalleled disaster. Unfortunately, that still hasn’t quite happened.

—-

Bill Weinberg is the editor of World War 4 Report.

This story first appeared June 20 on Israel e-News.

SOURCES

After McCain Ditches Hagee, He Gets a Warm Reception at AIPAC
The American Prospect, via Israel e-News, June 12, 2008

CUFI: They only appear to be supporters
by Colette Avital, Ha’aretz, via Israel e-News, June 4, 2008

Lieberman defends radical McCain ally John Hagee
Israel e-News, May 21, 2008

Christians United for Israel
http://www.cufi.org/

See also:

JOHN McCAIN’S PASTORS
Nuclear War, Ethnic Cleansing and Media Double Standards
by Michael I. Niman
World War 4 Report, April 2008
/node/5311

BEHIND THE “SOLDIERS OF HEAVEN”
The Shi’ite “Cult” Militia and Iraq’s Apocalypse
by Sarkis Pogossian
World War 4 Report, February 2007
/node/3118

From our Daily Report:

John Hagee and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: fearful symmetry
WW4 Report, May 22, 2008
/node/5534

——————-

Reprinted by World War 4 Report, July 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingJOHN HAGEE AND MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: FEARFUL SYMMETRY 

OBAMA AND THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS

by Nikolas Kozloff, NACLA News

For a candidate who talks the talk on human rights, Barack Obama has little to say about the infamous School of the Americas (SOA). Originally established in the Panama Canal Zone in 1946, the school later moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1984. Since its inception, the institution has instructed more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers in military and law-enforcement tactics.

The Pentagon itself has acknowledged that in the past the School of the Americas utilized training manuals advocating coercive interrogation techniques and extrajudicial executions. After receiving their training at the institution, officers went on to commit countless human rights atrocities in countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia.

Activists long lobbied Congress to shut down the school, and in the waning days of the Clinton presidency they nearly achieved their goal. In July 1999, the House passed an amendment that cut funding for the military institution, but the Senate decided to pass its own version of the bill that included funding. Compromise legislation between the House and Senate deleted the funding cut, effectively restoring public support for the school. Shortly afterwards Congress renamed the school Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) and revised the institution’s structure and curriculum.

Now fast forward to the 2006 mid-term Congressional election: hoping to make use of their newfound majority on Capitol Hill, some Democrats sought to eliminate WHINSEC’s funding once and for all. Shortly after their victory in November they nearly succeeded with 203 legislators voting against ongoing public support of the school and 214 in favor. The closeness of the vote suggested that if the Democrats were able to increase their legislative majority in 2008, then the WHINSEC might indeed be history.

Outside the halls of Congress a number of prominent organizations joined calls to shut WHINSEC including the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the NAACP, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ, and over 100 US Catholic Bishops.

Still, the Democratic presidential candidates refused to take a stand against WHINSEC. In fact, the only two Democrats who expressed opposition to the institution were long shots Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich (on the Republican side, Ron Paul said he too would shutter WHINSEC).

In the early stages of the presidential race, Kucinich pledged to close the school if he were elected. A longtime foe of WHINSEC who had voted repeatedly to close the institution while serving in Congress, Kucinich even attended a political protest held at the gates of the school in late 2007.

But now that Kucinich and the other Democratic contenders have bowed out of the race the question is: where does Obama stand? On International Human Rights Day last year the Senator remarked, “We in the United States enjoy tremendous freedoms, but we also carry a special responsibility—the responsibility of being the country so many people in the world look to…for human rights leadership.”

Obama then added that Bush had undermined human rights: “We were told that waterboarding was effective. We were assured that shipping men off to countries that tortured was good for national security. We were led to believe that our military and civilian courts were inadequate, and so we established a network of unaccountable prisons.” He continued, “We have not only vacated the perch of moral leader; we have also compounded the threat we face, spurring more people to take up arms against us.”

Obama lamented that the Bush administration had destroyed the moral credibility of the United States worldwide. In Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, Russia, and Pakistan, human rights violations were on the rise. Unfortunately, Washington no longer enjoyed any international respect and could not speak with authority on human rights.

Poignantly, Obama closed by stating, “The very depth of the anti-Americanism felt around the world today is a testament not to hatred but to disappointment, acute disappointment. The global public expects more from America. They expect our government to embody what they have seen in our people: industriousness, humanity, generosity, and a commitment to equality. We can become that country again.”

Obama likes to employ soaring rhetoric when discussing human rights. But late last year, he failed to take a strong position opposing WHINSEC. When pressed, the candidate praised Congress’ revision of the school’s curriculum but said that he wanted to continue to evaluate the institution.

What more information could Obama possibly need to reach a final decision on the matter? An Obama spokesman said the senator “has not committed to closing down the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, but he will take a hard look at the program and the progress it has made once he is elected.” The spokesman reiterated Obama was pleased with the institution’s inclusion of human rights courses.

To put this in all in perspective then, on this issue Obama has staked out a position to the right of Ron Paul, many members of Congress, and mainstream labor and Church organizations.

Given widespread public disgust towards torture and the like, Obama’s meekness on WHINSEC is perplexing. In the wake of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and revelations about so-called waterboarding, many US citizens have soured on the War on Terror. Meanwhile, the prisoner detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has become an international eyesore. Even President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have publicly said they’d prefer to close the facility.

Obama also supports closing Guantánamo, which makes his statements on WHINSEC all the more befuddling. In the present political climate, what does the Senator have to lose by coming out against the former School of the Americas? Perhaps he fears the GOP might accuse him of being weak on defense. But Republican nominee John McCain is not likely to use torture as ammunition during the campaign—it hardly seems a winning electoral issue for the Arizona Senator. What’s more, many voters are oblivious to WHINSEC and have little knowledge of, or interest in, US policy towards Latin America.

No, it’s not fear of GOP retaliation on the campaign trail that keeps Obama quiet on WHINSEC. What the Senator is really concerned about is offending the movers and shakers within the military-industrial complex. Closing WHINSEC would demonstrate that the United States has no interest in dominating the peoples of Latin America by military means. Obama, however, is reluctant to make a clean break from the United States’ imperialist past.

On the other hand, try as he might to skirt the issue, Obama will soon be obliged to take a clearer stand on WHINSEC. That’s because the House recently approved the McGovern-Sestak-Bishop amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2009. The amendment obliges WHINSEC to publicly release the names, rank, country of origin, courses, and dates of attendance of the school’s graduates and instructors.

Legislators pressed for the measure because in recent years WHINSEC has withheld vital information that would have helped to identify the perpetrators of massacres, targeted assassinations, and human rights abuses committed in Latin America. In a resounding defeat for the Pentagon, the measure was approved by a vote of 220 to 189. The amendment now heads to the Senate where all eyes will be on Obama.

The vote, however, will not resolve the larger question of whether WHINSEC should be shuttered once and for all. If it chose to, the media could prod the candidates to address US military policy towards Latin America during the fall campaign. So far however reporters and pundits have ignored the topic, preferring instead to ask Obama about his flag pin.

McCain has suggested the two candidates participate in town-hall style debates, potentially allowing more direct engagement with voters. The U.S. public would surely welcome this departure from the relentless and insipid questioning featured in previous debates. It would certainly be refreshing to see Obama questioned on issues of real substance such as the historic U.S. role in Latin America, military policy, and human rights.

—-

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008).

This story first appeared June 24 on NACLA News.

RESOUCES

School of the Americas Watch
http://www.soaw.org

From our Daily Report:

McCain, Obama: both pro-nuke
WW4 Report, June 24, 2008
/node/5691

Obama pledges new direction on Latin America
WW4 Report, May 25, 2008
/node/5548

SOA graduates implicated in Bogotá “false attacks”
WW4 Report, Jan. 24, 2008
/node/4975

——————-

Reprinted by World War 4 Report, July 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingOBAMA AND THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS 

WILL BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION END COAL MINING IN VENEZUELA?

by James Suggett, VenezuelAnalysis

Plans for new coal mining in the Sierra de Perijá, the northwestern region of the state of Zulia, Venezuela, were suspended by President Hugo Chávez last year following anti-coal declarations by Chávez and several ministers. The Wayúu, Yukpa, and Barí indigenous communities who would have been displaced by the projects cautiously interpreted the suspension as a temporary sign of relief. But their struggle against coal mining has lasted a quarter of a century and will not conclude until mining concessions are repealed for good.

On May 11, 2008 President Hugo Chávez announced on his weekly Sunday talk show Aló Presidente that Corpozulia, the state-owned development corporation in the oil and mineral-rich state, would acquire 51% of all coal mining projects in the region within two years. Transnational coal companies which already operate in Zulia, such as Carbones de la Guajira, which is controlled by the Chevron-Texaco-owned holding company Inter-American Coal, shall be turned into state-run “socialist” enterprises, the president said.

Have plans for new coal mining been renewed, this time under the management of the state rather than the transnationals? The federal government did indeed decide in 2005 to create a federal mining company that would replace transnational companies. Since then, Venezuela’s electricity, telecommunications, oil, cement, and steel sectors have been nationalized, which suggests that coal could be the newest front.

However, a recent anti-coal decision by the Ministry of the Environment suggests otherwise. On May 15, Minister Yubirí Ortega proclaimed a total ban on open-pit coal mining and gold mining in the Imataca Forest in southeastern Venezuela, and the revocation of the environmental permits previously granted to transnational gold mining companies in that region. An official statement of the Toronto-based gold mining corporation Crystallex, which had coveted the Imataca concession for years, said the ministry “appears to be in opposition to all mineral mining in the Imataca region.”

Minister Ortega cited environmental concerns and protests from local indigenous communities in the Imataca region as the reasons for her decision, but it is unclear if the ministry will extend this policy to the Sierra de Perijá.

Coal policy in Zulia has gone through several back-and-forth changes in the last four years since new coal plans were announced, partially because the homebase of decision-making power in the region has been obscured. Corpozulia, nicknamed the “second government of Zulia” by the indigenous communities, has contradicted federal policies on several occasions. Corpozulia and transnational corporations are allies, and their pro-coal tentacles grip and surreptitiously manipulate local, state, and federal decision-making bodies, including the federal ministries under whose authority the state corporation is officially ascribed. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Zulia’s governor is Manual Rosales, who was an active participant the US-backed April 2002 coup and ran against Chávez in the 2006 presidential elections.

The government’s indecisiveness could also be because the choice about whether to expand or eliminate coal mining aggravates a persistent contradiction in Venezuela’s evolving, multi-faceted development model.

On the one hand, it appears the government seeks to expand the exploitation of natural resources, necessarily displacing the local population, while administering the projects in a more worker-friendly way and investing the profits in housing, education, health care and other social programs for which the Chávez administration is renown.

On the other hand, a large sector of the indigenous communities of the Sierra de Perijá have taken the initiative to organize their communities in an empowering, ecologically sustainable way that allows the local economy, culture, language, and identity to survive and be determined by the local people. They oppose any type of “progress” that includes coal exploitation.

Such community-led projects have been embraced by the federal government in other instances. The 23 Enero barrio in Caracas is an inspiring example. But will local empowerment initiatives be prioritized in the region that holds 80% of Latin America’s coal?

Only by way of tireless struggle and confrontation have the local indigenous peoples injected their voices and opinions into the debate over whether the Bolivarian Revolution will carry on coal’s legacy in the Sierra de Perijá. It is crucial to review the history of this conflict in order to shed light on the realities which have led up to the ambiguous present situation, and to anticipate what the future holds.

Coal in the Bolivarian Revolution
In 2004, the Venezuelan government approved mining concessions for three mines along the Socuy, Mache, and Cachirí rivers in northwestern Zulia to be operated by the Brazilian, US and Dutch conglomerate Vale do Rio Doce; the Dutch and United States company Inter-American Coal; and the Irish coal company Caño Seco; along with Corpozulia and its state-owned affiliate Carbozulia. The same year, the government also turned over a 12,000-hectare (30,000-acre) concession of lands formerly demarcated for the Barí indigenous community to the Chilean coal company Carbones del Perijá.

Corpozulia president Martínez Mendoza announced during a ceremony presided over by President Chávez that the projects would contribute $20 million to social programs in the Zulian region in the first year. Corpozulia spokesperson Hernando Torrealba, projected that yearly national coal production would be increased from 8.3 million tons to 39 million tons. Given that Venezuela’s internal coal consumption hovers around 100,000 tons of coal per year, the majority of the extracted coal was destined for the United States, Japan, Europe, and South America, Torrealba confirmed.

These developments fit the plans of South American Regional Infrastructure Integration plan (IIRSA), which was based on the recommendations of the World Bank and the Southern integration organization MERCOSUR, of which Venezuela currently aspires to become a member.

Chávez and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe collaborated to concretize IIRSA plans for the massive expansion of export infrastructure including the Port of Bolívar (some said it would be called the Port of America) in the gulf of Venezuela, railroads, superhighways, and bridges. All of this would be necessary to export coal by way of the Colombian Pacific Ocean, Panama and Central America, and the “Andean Axis” of IIRSA which would link South American countries.

These announcements ignited the most recent phase of the anti-coal struggle of the indigenous communities allied with ecologist groups from Zulia’s state capital Maracaibo and Venezuela’s alternative media network, ANMCLA.

The communities of the Socuy, Maché, and Cachirí rivers had already received refugees who had been displaced by the two open-pit mines opened along the nearby Guasare River in 1988 and in the late 1990s, which still operate today. The Devil’s Pass Mine and North Mine are controlled by Carbones del Guasare, a conglomerate which includes the US company Peabody, the English and South African company Anglo-American Coal, and Inter-American Coal.

In well-documented reports by independent media, these refugees describe how they were promised to be moved to fertile lands and promised health care, housing, educational and cultural activities, and how these promises were unkept. Reports are plentiful of rashes, lung diseases, fertile lands rendered infertile, aborted livestock pregnancies, and the protracted contamination of the Guasare River on which local communities depend for subsistence.

Proponents of new mines have also promised local residents that the coal will be extracted cleanly and they will benefit from the profits. There is evidence that these promises are more credible than those of previous governments. Indeed, the government’s subsidized food market, Mercal, Barrio Adentro health care clinics, and educational programs have impacted the neighborhoods just outside of the lands the coal companies seek.

Despite having received some benefits from these government programs, the 350 indigenous families living on top of the coal deposits are skeptical of any promises coming from Corpozulia or the government. They have taken the reins to organize alternative community programs which respond better to their culture, native language, and history.

The two active mines employ approximately 2,200 workers including the transportation workers. Most engineers are creole or white, and most lower-level workers are of indigenous descent and lived off the land before the mines took over. Workers have denounced not being paid and not receiving health benefits. Lung disease is extremely common. Workers have been intimidated or fired when they organized to defend their rights. Worker unions are small and dominated by the leadership, which in some cases has made deals with the management to push sections of the workforce, particularly transportation workers, into lower-paid, less protected contract work. The workers thus contracted were registered by Corpozulia as “worker cooperatives” promoted by the state company, even though cooperativism was not the real purpose.

On several occasions, the workers, with the financial and political backing of Corpozulia and Zulia’s principal newspaper Panorama, have defended the coal industry and asserted that coal exploitation does not actually contaminate the environment. However, the workers are not clamoring for nationalization, and have on other occasions acquiesced to government proposals for a transition away from coal.

The towns in the area are frequented by both coal workers and small farmers who sell their products or attend school in the city. The towns are not wholly dependent on coal, and coal mining is not a big part of Venezuela’s economy. It composes less than one percent of national GDP, and Venezuelan coal deposits represent less than 1.5% of the coal in the world, according to professors from the University of Zulia in Maracaibo.

On January 3, 2005, the waste disposal site of the Devil’s Pass mine spilled an estimated 20,000-120,000 liters of diesel waste into the Guasare River, according to an investigation by the National Front for the Defense of Water and Life, made up mainly of professors and activists from western Venezuela. Indigenous communities downriver, which had not been originally forced from their land when the mine arrived, were no longer able to survive in the zone due to the contamination. Many of them migrated to lands nourished by the Socuy, Maché, and Cachirí rivers. Two years later, $90 million was allocated from the National Development Fund (FONDEN) for the cleanup of the Guasare River.

Following this incident, amidst increasing pressure from the indigenous communities of the Sierra de Perijá and their growing network of social movement allies across western Venezuela, President Chávez and several of his ministers began to change their rhetoric on mining policy.

In September 2005, Chávez proclaimed a “big turnaround” in national mining policy, assuring that Venezuela would no longer grant private mining concessions to national or foreign companies, but instead would favor state-run “socialist” enterprises and small-scale mining cooperatives that would act more responsibly. Chávez said, “we are going to launch a national mining company of our own—we do not need [outside] investment.”

The policy shift was substantiated when 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of mining land were handed over to local cooperatives and 125 new state-owned Social Production Units (UPS) were created, mainly in another of Venezuela’s principal mining regions near the Imataca Forest in the southeastern state of Bolívar where similar conflicts have occurred among indigenous communities, transnational gold-mining corporations, and the government.

Shortly after this in 2006, the Venezuelan National Assembly unanimously voted to reform the mining law to force companies with idle mines to become minority partners in mixed enterprises with the state.

This set the legal precedent for Chávez’s most recent declarations. The government had decided to stand up to transnationals by taking charge of coal mining, but showed no signs that the mining would be halted. It remained unclear what effect this would have on the active mines, and whether new coal extraction plans would proceed under state management.

In January 2006 during the World Social Forum in Caracas, indigenous communities from the Sierra de Perijá and their allies marched to demand that all new mining plans be discarded. Independent media allies pounded their networks with news on the reclamations being made.

Then, on May 24 of that year, Chávez made his first public statements in opposition to coal mining in Zulia. Chávez told the press in the Miraflores presidential building in Caracas that he had said to Corpozulia President Martínez Mendoza, “look, if there is no method of assuring the respect of the forests and the mountains..in the Sierra de Perijá, where the coal is…this coal will remain below the ground.” This is “a concept that each day should become more of a reality, it should be concretized in our model of construction of socialism,” Chávez added.

The president repeated his anti-coal statements on June 10, 2006 in Maracaibo. Paradoxically, during the same press conference, he ratified the construction of the Bolívar Port, railways, mega-highways, and bridges that were an integral part of the 2004 plan to expand coal exploitation in Zulia as part of IIRSA. He also announced plans to construct a grand pipeline between Venezuela and Panama.

At that point, the government and Corpozulia’s paths diverged, their policy agendas began to clash, and Chávez’s declarations were sometimes out of sync with the actions of his supporters.

On November 17 of that year, the president launched the Energy Revolution Mission, a federal program which replaced 300,000 light bulbs across the country with energy-efficient florescent bulbs, demonstrating the government’s commitment to save energy so as not to rely on coal-powered electricity, which was the previous plan.

Meanwhile, Corpozulia stepped up its acts of brutal intimidation against indigenous communities’ efforts to organize in the Sierra de Perijá. The weekend of Indigenous Resistence Day, October 12, the communities invited activist allies to gather in the Socuy River community known in the Wayúu language as Wayuumana for an anti-coal conference. Before the activists from the city arrived, Corpozulia functionaries accompanied by armed National Guard troops arrived in Wayuumana, uninvited, and aggressively interrogated and threatened the Wayúu gathered there. The interrogators quickly retreated, however, when a community leader pulled out a hand-held video camera that had been gifted by independent journalists.

Those months were especially tense because Chávez was running for re-election against Zulia’s coup-supporting governor, Manuel Rosales. The communities in the Socuy area were suspected of being agents of the opposition because they criticized the president during election season. The indigenous peoples and their allies were frequently accused by Corpozulia and pro-Chávez electoral campaigners of being counter-revolutionaries, terrorists, and lackeys of the empire.

In reality, Governor Rosales has always been recognized by the communities in the Sierra de Perijá as an ally of transnational coal corporations, along with Corpozulia, although Corpozulia and Rosales are publicly at odds. Both red-shirted (pro-Chávez) and blue, green and yellow-shirted (opposition) government officials from the federal, state, and local levels have worked in the interests of pro-coal sectors, and are not trusted by the community. The community does not claim to be Chavista or anti-Chavista, but rather in an indigenous struggle of which the government is sometimes an ally.

In the midst of this, anti-coal momentum seemed to be on the rise. In October 2006, the Minister of the Environment Jacqueline Farías made a sweeping statement that coal was “unnecessary” for national development, since Venezuela had plenty of oil to rely on. She clarified, however, that coal extraction would be permitted only by presidential order in areas where the mining would not harm the rivers which are Maracaibo’s principal source of potable water. Since Chávez had previously come out against coal, Sierra de Perijá communities rejoiced at what they perceived to be a sign of victory.

An executive ministry report from July 2005 shows that Minister Farías had originally made this exact policy recommendation more than a year before she made public statements about it.

In a strange and unfortunate turn of events, Minister Farías was dismissed shortly following her nationally televised declarations. The new minister appointed after President Chávez’s landslide re-election in December 2006, Yubirí Ortega (who currently holds the post), did not immediately uphold Farías’ policy pronouncements. At the same time, Corpozulia and ministry officials repeatedly arrived in the Sierra de Perijá in their satellite technology-equipped jeeps and hummers for purposes that were not explained to the local community, and it soon became clear that the pro-coal campaign in the region was still underway.

Sierra de Perijá communities marched on Caracas once again in March 2007, this time as part of the broader “March for All Our Struggles.” The march was promoted by ANMCLA and included the Ezequiel Zamora National Farmer’s Front, a radical small farmer’s rights group, Urban Land Committees (CTUs) representing Venezuela’s barrio-based revolutionaries, and the left wing of Venezuela’s workers movement. These groups collectively sent the message that, while they support President Chávez as a leader of the revolution, the persistent contradictions which perpetuate many forms of oppression in the country must be overcome, and the oppressed must be the protagonists in team with the government.

A smaller counter-march occurred in front of the Ministry of the Environment in Caracas. Workers from the active mines on the Guasare River and community councils from the municipality of Mara where the miners live were brought to Caracas by their employers. They declared that “coal is life” and demanded that the Ministry of the Environment provide them with an alternative form of subsistence if the mines are closed.

While the anti-coal indigenous communities and their allies rejected new coal mining projects, they called for a gradual end to the active mines. Some anti-coal activists met with miners to discuss possible methods of phasing out coal while supporting the miners as they find alternative forms of subsistence.

Success seemed once again on the horizon for the anti-coal movement. The next day, on March 20, 2007, the new Minister of the Environment declared that, by presidential order, plans for new coal mines and the expansion of existing coal mines in the state of Zulia were officially suspended.

Simultaneously, the community councils from the municipality of Mara declared their support for the Environment Ministry’s proposal of sustainable agriculture and tourism as alternatives to coal mining in their communities.

Two months later, Chávez reiterated publicly that he had “ordered [coal mining] to stop” and that “between the forests and coal, I’ll keep the forests, the rivers, the environment… coal remains below the ground!” He acknowledged the “high level of lung diseases in all those communities where the coal big-rigs pass through,” and said he had flown in a helicopter over the prospective coal mining areas and seen the beautiful forest for himself.

During the same declaration, however, the president stated, “now, if someday a technology is developed to extract this coal without destroying the forest, well then, that would be a reserve for the future, it is possible.” To this day, coal concessions have not been officially repealed by the president, and the mines on the Guasare River continue to operate.

The pro-coal campaign of Corpozulia persisted in the face of the government’s anti-coal rhetoric. On May 14, 2007, the Panorama newspaper, which is usually pro-government, published a two-page, color advertisement defending the coal mines. The ad accused ecologist groups of being counter-revolutionary, and criticized the Wayúu, Barí, and Yukpa communities of sadly falling into the scheme of the opposition led by Governor Rosales.

Since the Ministry of the Environment and the coal miners` community councils came to an agreement on an alternative form of subsistence for mining communities, no further steps have been taken toward this end.

Also, the IIRSA infrastructure expansion plan is still officially underway. In October 2007, Chávez and Colombia President Álvaro Uribe jointly announced the completion of a 220 kilometer pipeline connecting Venezuela, Panama, and the Pacific Ocean. The two presidents signed a gas industries integration accord with Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa. The project was promoted as a symbol of the regional integration of which South American independence fighter Simón Bolívar dreamed. But for the anti-coal movement, it caused uncertainty as to whether coal mining would eventually be made part of the project again.

Uncertain Future
After four years of conflict over coal exploitation in Zulia, the outcome of this complex and drawn-out debate over Venezuela’s development paradigm is far from clear.

Sources from within Corpozulia have leaked that Chávez recently made firm, private statements to Corpozulia directors that new coal projects will not proceed. The president’s enthusiasm for the construction of the Port of Bolívar, which was one of the principal projects Chávez had planned in 2004 with President Uribe, has also waned, possibly because of the current diplomatic dispute between the two countries, these sources report.

Meanwhile, Corpozulia continues campaigning for coal exploitation on several new fronts. The state company is asserting various forms of control over local community councils, promising to help indigenous communities become shareholders in the future coal projects, and hiring infiltrators of indigenous descent to carry out the company’s media campaign and intelligence work with a lower profile. This local and regional battle for control of community councils, for the demarcation of indigenous territories, and the ways this has been affected by recent secessionist efforts by anti-Chávez sectors of the Zulia state legislature, shall be examined in the second part of this series.

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This story first appeared June 3 on VenezeulAnalysis, and was subsequently run by Upside Down World.

See also:

VENEZUELA: SECESSION IN THE OIL ZONE
Interventionist Legacy Behind Zulia Separatist Movement
by Nikolas Kozloff, WW4R
World War 4 Report, Dec. 1, 2006
/node/2855

IIRSA: THE FTAA’S HANDMAIDEN
South American “Infrastructure Integration” for Free Trade
by Raul Zibechi, IRC Americas Program
World War 4 Report, July 1, 2006
/node/2150

SOUTH AMERICAN PIPELINE WARS
Chavez Bloc Races with Oil Cartel to Grid the Continent
by Bill Weinberg, WW4R
World War 4 Report, Feb. 1, 2006
/node/1531

From our daily report:

Separatist “contagion” spreading in Andes?
WW4 Report, May 10, 2008
/node/5479

Venezuela: indigenous people salute Zapatistas
WW4 Report, July 26, 2007
/node/4263

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, July 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingWILL BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION END COAL MINING IN VENEZUELA? 

Global Article 9 Conference Statement to the G8

In our globalized world, the problems facing humanity are inter-connected more than ever. Global issues such as the environment, development with the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals as a first step and political issues including the “war on terror” and nuclear non-proliferation, can no longer be dealt with separately. Progress cannot take place in the absence of peace.

As major powers, G8 countries must take the initiative to break the cycle of violence and work multilaterally towards building a peaceful, non-violent, gender-balanced, just and sustainable world for all, based on respect of human rights and the fulfillment of human security. To achieve this goal, disarmament must take place and innovative financing mechanisms for development must be mobilized.

In its annual resolutions on the subject, the UN General Assembly has urged the international community “to devote part of the resources made available by the implementation of disarmament and arms limitation agreements to economic and social development, with a view to reducing the ever-widening gap between developed and developing countries.” It also encourages governments to “make greater efforts to integrate disarmament, humanitarian and development activities.” The Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War joins UN efforts to push forward the promising debate on the relationship between disarmament and development.

May 4-6, 2008

As top military spenders (accounting for 70% of the world military expenditures), the G8 countries must take the lead in drastically reducing their military expenditures and diverting such resources towards peace, development and the protection of the environment.

We, the under-signed participants and supporters of the Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War, recall the recommendations made in the final declaration of the conference about the potential of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution as an international mechanism to promote peace and global stability, and further call on G8 leaders, ahead of the Summit taking place in July in Hokkaido, Japan, to:

Peace
Promote and realize the fundamental human right to live in peace by supporting conflict prevention, peace-building and human security initiatives by peaceful means.

“War on Terror”
Put an end to the open-ended US-led “war on terror” that generates fear and repression and promotes hatred and violence; and instead address the root causes of terrorism through international cooperation, using international law and respecting human rights.

Disarmament, including the abolition of nuclear weapons
Strengthen multilateral efforts to achieve nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament towards the abolition of nuclear weapons. G8 countries must promote negotiations towards the early conclusion of the Arms Trade Treaty; foster a government-level process towards a total ban of cluster munitions; ensure the full implementation of the Landmine Ban Treaty; and build an international consensus for prohibiting the use of depleted uranium as a first step towards a comprehensive process of disarmament and demilitarization.

Development
Promote initiatives linking disarmament to development and human security, and establish a ratio of military spending to be dedicated to national development expenditure towards the MDGs and beyond.

Environment
Recognize and reverse the negative impacts of war and the military on the environment and commit to address the well-recognized threat posed by outside interference and fight for control of the increasingly scarce natural resources and energy sources as a catalyst of conflict.

Global Corporate Social Responsibility to Peace
Create and enforce structures and systems to uphold the corporate social responsibility of the private sector, including towards peace, human rights and environmental protection.

Continue ReadingGlobal Article 9 Conference Statement to the G8 

Global Article 9 Declaration to Abolish War

Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution renounces war and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. Further, it prohibits the maintenance of armed forces and other war potential.1 Article 9 is not just a provision of Japanese law; it can also act as an international peace mechanism that can be adopted by other states to maintain peace throughout the world. The Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War strives to build an international movement supporting Article 9 as a shared property of the world, and calls for a global peace that does not rely on force.

Throughout history, humanity has strived for a world without war. Indigenous traditions and great figures in our collective history, especially women who have always actively opposed war, have sought to move humankind along a trajectory to peace.

In the last century, the sufferings inflicted by modern warfare have led us to take steps along this path.

In 1928, the Kellogg-Briand Pact clearly renounced war as an instrument of national policy and in 1945 the United Nations’ Charter bound its members to “refrain from the threat or use of force” except under well-defined extraordinary circumstances.

Created in 1947 in the aftermath of Japanese aggression in the Asia-Pacific region and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Article 9 builds on the foundations of the UN Charter and is a step further in the evolution of international norms towards maintaining world peace, for it does not foresee any exception allowing the use of force.

In 1949, Costa Rica followed Japan’s precedent, demonstrating that states can exist peacefully without maintaining armed forces or self-defence forces.

Indeed, the spirit of Article 9 demands that all wars be outlawed and promotes the inherent human right for all to live in peace, free from fear and free from want.

Article 9 in the World Today
Today, however, the world remains engulfed in violent conflicts, massive poverty, increased disparities, arms proliferation and global climate change. The open-ended US-led “war on terror” has resulted in further wars, undermined the role of the United Nations, renewed the global arms race, encouraged torture and eroded human rights worldwide.

In addition, despite the growing awareness of the impact of violent conflict on civilians; especially on women, children and the elderly; the percentage of civilians killed, wounded and displaced in wars has reached unprecedented and horrifying heights.

This desperate situation, crystallized by the war and occupation in Iraq, has made it clear that peace and democracy cannot be imposed by force. In this critical context, it is more important than ever to maintain and extend the principles of Article 9 as an international mechanism to promote peace and global stability.

Yet, even Japan has failed to fulfill its constitutional obligations to uphold Article 9, and the clause’s very existence is under threat. Today, Japan’s Self-Defence Force is one of the largest armies in the world; the United States holds military bases throughout the country; and the increasingly intensifying Japanese-US military cooperation is taking Japan even further away from the spirit of Article 9.

In this context, the attempts to amend the constitution to allow Japan’s full-fledged military support to the US are generating anxious reactions in Japan, from its neighbors in the region, and internationally.

Further, Japan has still not fully acknowledged its war responsibilities to its neighbors and reconciliation has not been achieved, leaving unstable Cold War structures in place in Northeast Asia.

Article 9 and Global Civil Society
While states have historically been the only recognized actors in international relations, peoples’ movements have also played an important role. Since the 1990s, uniting at the grassroots level and beyond borders, global civil society has increasingly participated in determining the future of humanity and acted as a major force for peace, human rights, democracy, gender and racial equality, environmental protection and cultural diversity.

Vibrant examples of the rising power of global civil society as agents of change include the adoption of the Ottawa Treaty to Ban Landmines (1997), the holding of the Hague Appeal for Peace conference (1999), the establishment of the International Criminal Court (2002), the unprecedented mobilization against the Iraq war (2003), and current movements to ban cluster munitions, control small arms, outlaw nuclear weapons, and advocate for global peace, economic and social justice. It is time for global civil society to take up the cause and spirit of Article 9, extend its key principles, and carry out its mechanism for peace at the global level.

Realizing the Promise of Article 9
To implement the key principles of Article 9 at the international level, all states, from small to major powers, must bear the responsibility to prevent violent conflicts from arising and renounce the threat and the use of force under all circumstances, applying instead a non-violent human, gender-balanced dimension to security.

Poverty and inequalities have long been recognized as root causes of conflict. As current trends of globalization are deepening the North-South divide and increasing disparities everywhere, governments must achieve the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals as a first step and mobilize resources toward building lasting sustainable prosperity and social justice for all people.

By enabling states to exist peacefully, Article 9 paves the way to finding innovative financial mechanisms for development and supplements the UN Charter Article 26’s call to regulate armaments and minimize the amount of resources spent on military expenses.

The spirit of Article 9 thus discourages military build-up, arms proliferation and its industry, and instead advocates disarmament, including of small arms, landmines, cluster munitions, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. It also rejects dependence on nuclear weapons in security policies, demanding that nuclear weapons be outlawed and abolished.

Decreasing worldwide military expenditures and reallocating the world’s limited resources to sustainable development will therefore, as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon reiterated, increase global human security and mitigate the negative effects of military activities on the environment.

The World Summit and UN Commission on Sustainable Development have called on governments and corporations to develop regulations to preserve the earth’s climate, water, forests, biodiversity, food and energy supply. Investing to protect our planet from the extreme impacts of climate change is equally crucial, as the looming climate crisis threatens to generate, contribute to and exacerbate conflict.

In July 2005, the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC)’s Action Agenda declared that “Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution has been the foundation for collective security for the entire Asia Pacific region,” recognizing its crucial contribution to stability and its enormous potential to help build a comprehensive and lasting peace in the region. Other parts of the world have built regional frameworks, such as the European Union, the African Union, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. In Northeast Asia, Article 9 could serve as a basis toward regional integration for peace.

Building a peaceful, just and sustainable world is achievable. However, it can only happen if all countries agree to engage in genuine multilateralism and respect their international commitments, particularly towards the United Nations. The implementation of Article 9 and its adoption by other countries requires parallel reforms of the international system. Additionally, the unique capacity of civil society for mobilizing, providing peaceful alternatives to violence and building peace through local, national, regional and global networks must be utilized to stop militarism and prevent future wars.

In order to achieve these goals, we, the participants of the Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War, make the following recommendations.

We call on all governments to:

1. Honor their international commitments, including the UN Charter, the Millennium Development Goals, international humanitarian law, and disarmament agreements including the Non-Proliferation Treaty;

2. Promote and protect all human rights; recognize and consecrate the inherent human right to live in peace without which other human rights cannot be realized; and strengthen accountability and reparation mechanisms for cases of human rights violations;

3. Support and finance conflict prevention, peace-building and human security initiatives by peaceful means; and recognize the importance of working with civil society in these endeavors;

4. Decrease military expenditures and invest instead in health, education and sustainable social development;

5. Set up Ministries or Departments of Peace, and insist that Education Ministries make peace education systematic and compulsory at all levels of the education system, including in school curricula, teacher training and in the production of manuals and materials;

6. Recognize the important role played by women as agents of peace and implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325 to ensure the full and active participation of women in significant numbers in all decision and policy-making forums;

7. Recognize conscientious objectors’ rights, and strengthen accountability and justice systems for crimes committed by military forces, particularly the possibility of prosecution for the crime of aggression in the International Criminal Court;

8. Enact a comprehensive and effective Arms Trade Treaty and establish demilitarized zones (DMZs) as a first step towards the verifiable and irreversible disarmament of all weapons – from weapons of mass destruction to small arms and light weapons;

9. Commence immediately to pursue in good faith, and bring to a conclusion, negotiations for the total abolition of all nuclear weapons in keeping with the 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice and the unequivocal commitments made in the 2000 Final Document of the NPT Review Conference;

10.Promote the establishment of nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs) as a step in action towards the speedy, universal and verifiable abolition of nuclear weapons;

11.Commit to address global climate change; reverse the negative environmental impacts of war and the military; and invest resources in establishing an International Sustainable Energy Agency that promotes and shares technology for clean and safe energy ensuring the sustainability of the planet;

12.Make the United Nations, the best suited multilateral forum to maintain peace and security, more democratic by abolishing the veto power and revitalizing the role of the General Assembly;

13.Renounce war, and the use and threat of use of force as a means of settling international disputes, by including a peace clause in national constitutions, similar to Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and Article 12 of the Costa Rican Constitution.

We encourage the Japanese government to:

1. Respect, revitalize, and truly implement and protect the spirit of Article 9 as a shared heritage for the world, and realize its potential as an international peace mechanism;

2. Resist the path of militarization and avoid taking steps that threaten to endanger the fragile peace in Northeast Asia;

3. Take a leading role in the international community by investing in human security for sustainable development worldwide, and by fulfilling its responsibilities as a major economic power to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

We, members of civil society, commit ourselves to:

1. Work relentlessly to mobilize globally to promote the maintenance and extension of the key principles of Article 9 and disseminate a culture of peace;

2. Affirm the universality and indivisibility of all human rights (political, civil, economic, social, cultural), and call for the official recognition of the human right to live in peace as a sine qua non condition for the realization of all human rights;

3. Build effective networks; strengthen local capacities by increasing cooperation among different sectors (peace, human rights, humanitarian assistance, disarmament, the environment, sustainable development etc.); and establish regular communication channels with government officials, state bodies and international institutions for a more active civil society participation at the local, regional and global levels;

4. Learn from the past and promote peace and reconciliation initiatives as a form of conflict prevention, learning from the experience of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission;

5. Support peace education in formal and informal educational systems to empower people at all levels with the peacemaking skills of mediation, consensus-building and non-violent social change;

6. Challenge the concentration of powers in the globalized economy that generates inequalities, damages the environment and generates conflicts; and support the creation of a just and demilitarized economy that invests in peace, development and the environment;

7. Monitor and discourage the production and trade of weapons, and call for the inclusion of peace mechanisms among the accountability norms in Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives;

8. Implement the above recommendations as well as other peace initiatives, especially the Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century (1999 UN Document A/54/98), GPPAC’s Regional and Global Action Agendas (2005), the Vancouver Appeal for Peace (2006), and the Charter for a World without Violence (2007);

9. Build on the outcomes of this conference and establish follow-up and monitoring mechanisms for the Global Article 9 Campaign to Abolish War.

May 4-6, 2008

Continue ReadingGlobal Article 9 Declaration to Abolish War 
kyutu

THE GLOBAL ARTICLE 9 CONFERENCE

Japanese Activists Envision “Abolition of War”

by John Junkerman, Japan Focus

While much of Japan was enjoying the extended holiday of Golden Week this year, supporters of Article 9, the war-renouncing clause of Japan’s constitution, were hard at work. The first Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War drew 15,000 people to its plenary session and concert outside of Tokyo on May 4, while 7,000 gathered on May 5 to participate in a day of symposiums and workshops. The crowds far surpassed the expectations of the organizers, who hastily staged an ad hoc rally in a nearby park for several thousand people who were unable to get into the main arena on the first day.

An affiliated conference in Hiroshima on May 5 drew 1,100 participants, and on May 6 another large arena in Osaka was filled with 8,000 people while 2,500 attended a fourth conference in Sendai. Overall, organizers counted more than 30,000 admissions to the series of events.

The Looming Threat to Article 9
The gatherings took place at a time when Article 9 faces the most serious threat of being abandoned since the postwar constitution was enacted in 1947. Prior to leaving office abruptly last September, then-Prime Minister Abe Shinzo—who had made revising the constitution the paramount goal of his administration—pushed a bill through the Diet that provides for national referendums on constitutional changes. The law, which takes effect in May 2010, started the clock ticking toward a showdown.

With this date in mind, the revision camp formed the Diet Members Alliance to Establish a New Constitution in the spring of 2007 with the explicit goal of “placing constitutional revision on the political schedule.” The alliance now counts 239 current and former members of the Diet in its ranks. Although the overwhelming majority are Liberal Democratic Party members, the group includes 14 members from the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, including party secretary-general Hatoyama Yukio, vice-president Maehara Seiji, and supreme advisor Fujii Hirohisa.

The alliance held its own meeting in Tokyo on May 1, where Abe repeated his hallmark call to action: “The determination to write a constitution of our own is a spirit that will open up a new era.” Japanese conservatives deride the constitution as having been imposed on the country by the post-defeat US occupation, and (together with their present-day American allies) single out Article 9 as a constraint on Japan’s full participation in the strong and deepening military alliance with the US.

This constraint was dramatically highlighted on April 17, when the Nagoya High Court ruled that the dispatch of Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force to Iraq violates Article 9. Transporting armed troops into a combat zone, the court ruled, constituted “the use of force as a means of settling international disputes,” which is explicitly renounced in Article 9. In essence, the court repudiated the government’s decades-long practice of “interpreting” the constitution to allow a steady expansion of the capacity and role of Japan’s armed forces within the framework of American power.

The unprecedented ruling, however, came in the text of the decision and carried no provision for enforcement. It thus left the status quo intact, and the government doggedly pledged to continue the mission to Iraq. Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo declared, “I have no intention of doing anything in response.”

Partly in backlash against Japan’s first-ever dispatch of the SDF to an overseas combat zone, public support for Article 9 has revived from the postwar lows registered earlier in the decade. In a poll released by the liberal Asahi Shimbun on May 3, 66% of the public favored retaining Article 9, while only 23% supported its revision. This represented a 17% increase in support for Article 9 over a similar poll conducted a year ago. Some polls show majorities in favor of amending other clauses of the constitution, but when the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun conducted its annual poll on the subject in March, it found that support for revision in general had also lost its plurality (42.5% for and 43.1% against) for the first time in 15 years, while revising Article 9 was opposed by a margin of 60% to 31%.

Article 9 on a Global Stage
This renewed support for Article 9 was evident in the spillover crowds that jammed the global conference to celebrate and advocate the renunciation of war. At the same time, the government’s continuing efforts to eviscerate and evade the spirit and substance of the clause, the incongruous reality of Japan’s powerful military forces, and the heavy presence of US military bases on the archipelago were never far from the center of discussion.

The conference aimed to reframe the debate over Article 9 by removing it from the narrow confines of domestic Japanese politics and placing it on an international stage. “The war in Iraq has demonstrated that even the strongest, largest army in the world cannot maintain peace in a single city, Baghdad,” conference organizer Yoshioka Tatsuya noted in his opening remarks. “This tells us that peace cannot be achieved through aggression. The 21st century requires a new system of values, and Article 9 can be Japan’s contribution to the world.”

The conference slogan was “The world has begun to choose Article 9,” and numerous speakers pointed to the examples of Costa Rica and Panama, both of which have constitutions that prohibit standing armies, while more than 20 other, mostly smaller countries around the world likewise have no military forces. Bolivia has drafted a war-renunciation clause in its new constitution, though ratification has been placed on hold during that country’s ongoing political crisis. Meanwhile, Ecuador has drafted an amendment to its constitution that would prohibit the basing of foreign troops on its soil.

“Article 9 continues to inspire many people throughout the world,” declared keynote speaker Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her efforts to end the conflict in Northern Ireland. “Many of us are concerned to know that there are those who wish to endanger such policies and abandon Japan’s peace constitution. All peace-loving people must unite to oppose such a backward step.”

In another keynote speech laced with the refrain, “Now is the time to put an end to militarism,” Cora Weiss, American peace activist and president of the Hague Appeal for Peace, told the crowd, “I have come to help spread Article 9. Japan is not alone. You have support from around the world.” Suggesting that every time we type a Web address beginning www, we should think “world without war,” she encouraged each of the members of the audience to become “Article 9 ambassadors” and to lobby lawmakers throughout the world to adopt war-renunciation clauses in their constitutions.

Stressing the costs of militarism to the environment, economic development, and human health and security, video messages to the conference were sent by Nobel Peace Prize laureates Wangari Muta Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, and Jody Williams of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Among the 150-plus foreign guests attending from 40 countries and territories were soldiers who fought on opposite sides of the war in Iraq who spoke during a part of the plenary session devoted to “Creating a World without War.” Kasim Turki, now a humanitarian aid worker, was a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard when the war began in 2003. He has lost family members and friends to the war. “I was raised to believe that the military defends the people, but it did not. Nonviolence is the only way to defend people.” Aidan Delgado, a former US soldier who was sent to fight in Iraq, became a conscientious objector after witnessing the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. “Article 9 is international,” he said. “I have decided to walk down the same path.”

Takato Nahoko, a young Japanese aid volunteer who was taken hostage while bringing emergency relief to Iraq in 2003, told the gathering that she believes she was freed and not executed because she spoke at length with her captors about the Japanese constitution and her commitment to nonviolence. “While I would never wish that experience on anyone, it inspires me to think that Article 9 saved my life.”

Other speakers included Tsuchiya Kohken, former chair of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations; South Korean lawyer and human rights activist Lee Suk-tae; former US Army colonel and antiwar activist Ann Wright; and Beate Sirota Gordon, drafter of the equal rights clause of the Japanese constitution. Gordon, now 84 and the only person involved in drafting the constitution still living, spoke in Japanese and told the gathering, “I believe Article 9 can be a model for the entire world.”

A Determined Effort to Broaden the Base
The Tokyo gatherings were held at the Makuhari Messe convention center in the city of Chiba, about an hour from downtown Tokyo. The choice of venue was something of a gamble, not only because of its large capacity and steep rental fee, but because the complex, which is best known for auto shows and trade expos, was unfamiliar territory for the peace movement.

The central organizers of the event were the Japanese NGO Peace Boat and the Japan Lawyers International Solidarity Association, who since 2005 have spearheaded a campaign to promote the values of Article 9 on a global scale, as a concrete means of abolishing war. Given the ambitious scope of the conference, they formed an organizing committee in January 2007 to plan and publicize the events. The committee eventually grew to include more than 60 civil society organizations. Signing on as co-initiators were 88 prominent individuals, led by the writer Ikeda Kayoko, author of If the World Were a Village of 100 People; playwright Inoue Hisashi; popular fashion critic Peeco; and director of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Doyukai), Shinagawa Masaji.

Mobilization for the conference was boosted by the steady growth of the Article 9 Association (A9A) movement. These grassroots associations, created throughout the country in response to a 2004 appeal by Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo and eight other prominent intellectuals, now number more than 7,000. Many of these individual groups (as well as more long-standing groups, such as the Peace Constitution League) were active participants in the global conference, although the A9A network itself has a strict policy of not endorsing activities outside of the network.

The A9A movement itself was launched in part to free the defense of Article 9 from the narrow confines of the opposition Socialist (now Social Democratic Party) and Communist parties, which historically were the bastions of the peace constitution but have become increasingly marginalized in recent years. While activists from these parties have been involved in forming some of the A9A groups, the movement has achieved a level of penetration that is unprecedented in the postwar history of Japanese citizens’ organizations. Their advocacy and educational efforts are widely credited with swinging public opinion back to support for Article 9. This is despite the fact that mainstream Japanese media have paid very little attention to the movement, from its very inception.

Strategically, the global conference was an effort to shift the movement from simply defending Article 9 to positioning it as a proactive component of the international disarmament campaign. Japanese activists have drawn inspiration from the 1999 Hague Appeal for Peace, the largest international peace conference in history, which set an agenda for the new millennium under the slogan “It is Time to Abolish War.” Article 9 has since been embraced by the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), an international network of NGOs formed in 2005 at the urging of former UN secretary general Kofi Annan. Serving as the regional secretariat for GPPAC Northeast Asia, Peace Boat has strengthened its links to many of the international activists who participated in the conference.

The conference also aimed to broaden the base of support for Article 9 among young people, and it was largely successful in this effort. The bedrock of support for Article 9 has traditionally been the generation that experienced the devastation and lack of political liberty during World War II, but with the aging of that generation, the movement to defend Article 9 has struggled to shake the image that it is out of step with the times. But the crowds that gathered at Makuhari were diverse, with heavy participation of people in their 20s and 30s.

 

Peace Boat, which has been organizing round-the-world peace cruises since 1983, is staffed by and oriented to young people, and the group provided the core of the organizing staff and volunteers. Artist Naruse Masahiro designed a coordinated set of images for the conference, including a charming character that was given the nickname “Kyûto-chan” (a pun on “cute” and “kyû”, the Japanese word for nine). Naruse’s son and other young animation artists created a short film that opened the conference.

One youth-centered event was an Article 9 Peace Walk from Hiroshima to Chiba that covered 750 miles in 69 days. Over 7,000 mostly young people participated in various legs of the walk, which culminated in a procession onto the stage during the conference plenary session.

Suzuki Michiru, a 29 year-old woman, started in Hiroshima with plans to walk for a week, but stayed with the march most of the way. Concerned about the environment, but never before interested in the constitution, she was drawn to the upbeat, free-spirited style of the walk: “I began to realize that Article 9 sustains the small joys of our daily lives,” she said after finishing the trek. “We now have to make this Article 9 our own, and to defend it.

Ash Woolson, a 6-year veteran of the US military and one of eleven who walked the entire route, told his fellow marchers about flashbacks of aiming his rifle at Iraqi children. “Nothing good comes from war,” he said. “People say Article 9 is idealistic, but why is it necessary kill each other?”

The first day’s events ended with a live concert, featuring the hit vocalist UA, veteran popular artists Harada Shinji and Kato Tokiko, and the up-and-coming trans-genre group Funkist, fronted by South African-Japanese vocalist Someya Saigo.

A boisterous web account of the Funkist performance reported, “Young and old, Japanese and foreigners, all perfect strangers, linked arms and rocked to the music. The arena became a tight unit and Makuhari Messe heated up. ‘My mother is South African,’ Someya told the crowd, ‘and my father is Japanese. Under apartheid, I wouldn’t have been allowed to come into this world. But now the color of my skin doesn’t matter. We are at peace here tonight. Let’s spread the call for peace from this spot to the entire world.”

Asahi columnist Hayano Toru quoted a pregnant UA on stage: “As one woman, as a mother, as a human being, as a spirit born on this earth, I believe the day will come when we hear the news that all of the wars on this planet have ended.” “Despite the difficulty of their lives,” Hayano commented, “young people, in their own words and ideas, in their own songs, are trying to create a ‘solidarity of kindness.'” Asahi editorial board member Kokubo Takashi, in a separate column, commented on the “lithe and natural words and conduct of those who gathered at Makuhari Messe. The constitution’s Article 9 has spread its roots farther and deeper among young people than we political reporters who regularly cover the Diet would ever imagine.”

Facing the Challenges of Globalizing Article 9
While the mood of the first day was idealistic and celebratory, the second day of symposiums and workshops focused on the problems and prospects of moving toward a world where Article 9 might spread and indeed become the model for “peace without force” that its supporters envision. Sessions were devoted to world conflicts and nonviolence, Article 9 within Asia, peace and the environment, nuclear weapons, and the crisis and future of Article 9. Additional panels focused on women’s involvement in peace-movement initiatives, lawyers’ efforts on six continents, globalization, and disarmament education.

The panel on Asia focused on the contradiction between Article 9 and the US military presence in Asia, in particular its deepening military alliance with Japan. Historian Kwon Heok Tae from Sungkonghoe University in Seoul embraced the “bright side” of Article 9, the model for demilitarization that has led him to establish an Article 9 network in South Korea. But he said it is equally important to acknowledge the “dark side” of the geopolitical context of Article 9: the rising danger of military confrontation in Asia, where all of the major countries have boosted defense spending while historical disputes fester. Article 9 is under attack, but even without revising the constitution, “Japan is a heavily armed nation,” through the combined might of the powerful Self-Defense Force and the US military bases and nuclear weapons. “Why is this situation allowed to persist?” he asked.

Takasato Suzuyo of Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence noted, “What shapes Japan today is not Article 9, but the US-Japan Security Treaty.” On Okinawa, that treaty is visible to the eye: 75% of US bases in Japan are concentrated on the small main island, many in close proximity to heavily populated cities. “On Okinawa,” she said, “the constitution is being violated every day.” She called for a redefinition of “national security,” to return it to a standard of actual self-defense, with a priority on addressing human needs and guaranteeing respect for human beings.

Joseph Gerson of the American Friends Service Committee pointed to the US strategy of encircling China. The structure of US bases and military presence has been diversified and bolstered, beginning with the stationing of missile defenses in Japan, renewed access to the Philippines and to Vietnamese ports, military cooperation with Indonesia, the continuing status of Australia as the “American sheriff,” and new US bases in Afghanistan and former Soviet republics. Marines are being moved to Guam in an effort to defuse opposition in Okinawa, but the US is seeking to build a new Marine base at Henoko, in the remote northern end of the island, while Guam itself is being transformed into a military hub. He noted that Japan has one of the world’s most advanced destroyer forces and is increasing its ability to project its military forces overseas by obtaining in-flight refueling capacity for its air force and building a small aircraft carrier. “In fact,” Gerson noted, “the two Koreas see Japan as a greater threat than the US. At the same time, Washington and Tokyo have inflamed the North Korean threat, in an effort to change the cultural and ideological context they operate in.”

It remains true that since Japan’s constitution was enacted, no human being has been killed under the right of belligerency of the Japanese state. Article 9, as a pledge to the people of Asia that Japan would never again engage in aggression, has also contributed to keeping peace in the region. But, Kwon pointed out, that peace has been “built on the sacrifice of the people of Okinawa and South Korea.” Within the context of the present system, he added, the fact that young people in Japan have no military obligation and the fact that young people in South Korea do, “are not unconnected. The conclusion to be drawn from this, however, is not that Japan should reintroduce compulsory military service, but that Korea should eliminate it.”

Conference participants drafted a declaration, placing Article 9 in the context of a global disarmament agenda as well as a statement to the G8 countries that will be meeting in Japan in July. Plans are already being discussed for follow-up conferences, perhaps to be held in Costa Rica and elsewhere.

The success of the conference and the international attention focused on Article 9 generated strong enthusiasm and optimism. But for Japanese activists, it also placed in sharp focus the large gap between the potential of Article 9 and the reality shrouding Japan—and the work that remains to be done. After an international participant called for a campaign to award Article 9 a Nobel Peace Prize, conference co-chair Ikeda Kayako responded in her closing remarks, “A Nobel Peace Prize? That’s out of the question. When I think of the actual situation of Article 9 in Japan, when I think of the US-Japan Security Treaty, when I think of Okinawa, all I feel is pain in my heart.”

Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution:

1) Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

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John Junkerman is an American documentary filmmaker and Japan Focus associate, living in Tokyo. His most recent film, “Japan’s Peace Constitution” (2005), won the Kinema Jumpo and Japan PEN Club best documentary awards. It is available in North America from First Run Icarus Films. He was a co-initiator of the Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War. Japan Focus associate Douglas Lummis, another co-initiator, contributed to this report.

This article first appeared May 25 on Japan Focus.

Conference statements:

Global Article 9 Declaration to Abolish War
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Global Article 9 Conference Statement to the G8
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RESOURCES

Global Article 9 Campaign to Abolish War
http://www.article-9.org/en/index.html

Article 9 Association
http://www.9-jo.jp/en/index_en.html

Appeal from the Article 9 Association, June 2004
http://www.9-jo.jp/en/appeal_en.html

Article 9 Peace Walk
http://homepage3.nifty.com/peace_walk/Welcome.html

Peace Constitution League
http://www.9joren.net/

Peace Boat
http://www.peaceboat.org/

Japanese Lawyers International Solidarity Association
http://homepage3.nifty.com/jalisa/english/index.html

Hague Appeal for Peace
http://www.haguepeace.org/

Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict
http://www.gppac.net/

Article 9 on YouTube
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=SbA5BZE1wEA

See also:

FROM BAGHDAD TO TOKYO
Japanese Anti-War Movement Hosts Iraqi Civil Resistance
by Bill Weinberg, WW4 Report, March 2006
/node/1660

From our daily report:

Japan to end Iraq mission in 2009?
WW4 Report, May 26, 2008
/node/5551

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, June 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE GLOBAL ARTICLE 9 CONFERENCE 

THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST CASE FOR TIBETAN FREEDOM

by Bill Weinberg, AlterNet

With the crisis in Tibet, the left in the US finds itself once again at risk of losing precious moral credibility with the American people by apologizing for atrocities. If “Free Tibet” has become an unthinking bandwagon for many, so too has a kneejerk reaction from sectors of the radical left against the Tibetan struggle.

Over the past two months since the March 10 uprising, the Chinese security forces have carried out sweeps and “disappearances,” occupied monasteries and villages, and opened fire on unarmed protesters. When such actions are carried out by US allies such as Israel or Colombia—or in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan—we don’t have to ask ourselves whose side we are on. Like the Palestinians, the Tibetans have been pushed into exile, denied self-government in their homeland, and overwhelmed with settlers sent by the occupying power. We have a greater responsibility of solidarity to the Palestinians, because our government funds their oppression. But the fact that US imperialism is attempting to exploit their struggle does not mean we have no responsibilities to the Tibetans.

Tibet will especially need solidarity from anti-imperialists in the West if it is to avoid becoming a pawn in the Great Game for control of Asia. The US exploits the Tibetan movement for moral leverage against China (which has as its ultimate aims market penetration and military domestication, not Tibetan freedom), but is not going to risk a complete break with Beijing by supporting Tibet to the ultimate consequences. The CIA backed a small Tibetan insurgency in the ’50s—then did nothing as it was brutally crushed. The worst of the repression was in 1956—the same year the Hungarian workers learned a similarly bitter lesson. The Iraqi Kurds would also learn it in the aftermath of Desert Storm.

Today, the National Endowment for Democracy provides funds for Tibetan human-rights groups in exile, and the Dalai Lama has met with Bush and received the Congressional Medal of Honor. It pains us to see the Dalai Lama cozying up to Washington—just as it should pain us to see Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez cozying up to Beijing. However, there are reasons behind such alliances. Bolivia and Venezuela need a non-US market for their hydrocarbons if they are to break free of the US orbit. The Tibetans perceive that they need powerful allies if they are to recover their homeland and right of self-determination. Leftist betrayal of the Tibetan struggle will only entrench whatever illusions the Tibetan exile leadership harbor about US intentions.

The Dalai Lama is not demanding independence for Tibet. He wants autonomy for Tibet within a unified People’s Republic of China. His demand is essentially the same as that of the Zapatistas, who seek local Maya autonomy within Mexico. He calls for coexistence with Han Chinese. Hardliners in the exile community in India—especially in the Tibetan Youth Congress—are rapidly losing patience with such tolerant positions, as Beijing remains intransigent. Again, a betrayal of Tibetan solidarity by progressives in the West will only validate the hardline stance.

We must also realize that the US-China tensions are about imperial rivalry only (and especially the scramble for Africa’s oil)—not ideology. China is not communist in anything other than name. Some of the most savage capitalism on earth prevails in the so-called “People’s Republic.” The lands of peasants are expropriated in sleazy deals for industrial projects and the vulgar mansions of the nouveau riche—leading to a wave of harsh repression against peasant communities over the past few years. Especially in the industrial heartland around Fujian, peasants have taken up farm implements against police in militant protests over the enclosure and pollution of their village lands. The state has struck back with sweeps, “disappearances” and programs of forced sterilization—the same tactics US client states use in Latin America. In “illegal” factories—which do not exist on paper but are encouraged by corrupt authorities—workers don’t even have the minimum social security or wages, and labor in virtual servitude. Shantytowns have sprung up around the industrial cities of the northeast. The fruits of this hyper-exploitation are sold to US consumers at WalMart.

Despite the recent tensions, the Beijing bureaucracy has embraced the methods and ideology of the US “war on terror,” and joined Washington in demonizing the Uighur self-determination struggle in China’s far western Xinjiang province, known to the Muslim Uighurs as East Turkestan. The US added the East Turkestan Islamic Movement to the “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” list in a bid to win China’s connivance with military action against Iraq at the UN in 2002. In March of this year, with the world’s eyes on Tibet, China also put down a wave of Uighur protests in Xinjiang—while the US holds Uighur militants at Guantanamo.

Whatever we thought about Chinese communism, it is long gone. Mao is being de-emphasized in the school textbooks—and he is chiefly celebrated for giving China the nuclear bomb, not for leading a peasants’ revolution. The Beijing bureaucracy may rule in the name of a Chinese Communist Party, but it arguably has more in common with Pinochet’s model than Mao’s. If under Mao, Han chauvinism was linked to an ultra-left ideology, today it is linked to ultra-capitalism. Tibet is turned into a Disney-fied Tibetland for the international tourism trade—even as journalists are barred, and the inhabitants are relocated into government-controlled (and Orwellianly-named) “socialist villages.”

A March 18 AP shot by photographer Ng Han Guan said it all: Wen Jiabao’s giant face spews forth anti-Tibet invective from a screen overlooking a Beijing mall—directly above a McDonald’s golden-arches symbol.

Tibet could explode again during the Beijing Olympics, and progressives in the West will have to determine whose side they are on. It is important that we not be drawn into an ethnic divide-and-conquer strategy. One reason China’s rulers are so intransigent on Tibet could be the potential for an alliance between the Tibetans and Han Chinese workers and peasants against the Beijing bureaucracy.

Indigenous peoples around the world instinctively understand the Tibetan struggle. They see in Tibet their own struggles for recovery of land and autonomy. When Chilean president Michelle Bachelet opposed a measure by her congress in support of Tibet, a solidarity website for Chile’s Mapuche people commented: “The government of Bachelet…know that they have their own Mapcuhe Tibet.” First Nations leaders in Canada have threatened to launch a Tibet-style protest campaign around the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. “We find the Tibetan situation compelling,” said Phil Fontaine, chief of Canada’s Assembly of First Nations.

If we are going to speak up on these and other such struggles in our own hemisphere, tactical considerations as well as moral imperatives demand that we not remain silent now about Tibet—or loan comfort to its oppressors and occupiers.

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Bill Weinberg is editor of the online journal World War 4 Report and author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso 2000).

This article first appeared May 14 on AlterNet.

RESOURCES

Dalai Lama statement on the current crisis, April 6, 2008
http://dalailama.com/page.228.htm

Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy
http://www.tchrd.org/

Tibetan Youth Congress
http://www.tibetanyouthcongress.org/

Uyghur Human Rights Project
http://www.uhrp.org/

AP photo on Wen’s McCommunism
http://www.daylife.com/photo/07AraZ64Xm3oE

From our daily report:

China arrests Tibetan nuns in Sichuan
WW4 Report, May 22, 2008
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US defends detention of Uighurs at Gitmo; China defends detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang
WW4 Report, April 6, 2008
/node/5322

China: repression follows peasant protests over reproductive rights
WW4 Report, May 26, 2007
/node/3947

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, June 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE ANTI-IMPERIALIST CASE FOR TIBETAN FREEDOM