DARFUR: NATO PREPARES INTERVENTION

Moral Imperative or “Regime Change” Strategy?

by Wynde Priddy

After two years of violence in western Sudan, in late April the African Union (AU) moved to triple its peacekeeping troops in Darfur to 7,700–and asked NATO for logistical support. NATO agreed within hours of the request and discussions have already started. The United States encouraged NATO’s involvement against French resistance. James Appathurai, NATO’s chief spokesperson, told reporters the intervention would mark “the first time NATO would be engaged in any significant way in sub-Saharan Africa.” If NATO goes in, it will be in defiance of the Sudanese government; leaders in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, insist that only African troops can be involved in the Darfur mission. But Appathurai told the press NATO and European Union (EU) diplomats are frustrated by the limited progress made by the AU.

With the UN now claiming 180,000 dead from hunger, disease and violence, the situation has certainly not improved on the ground. Motasim Adam is president of Darfur Peoples Association of New York, made up of exiles and immigrants from the war-torn region who support some kind of international intervention there. He speaks with gravity of his home village near the town of Al Fasher in North Darfur, which is now swollen with thousands of refugees from villages destroyed by the government-backed militias known as the Janjaweed. “Our town, called Tawilla, 50 kilometers west of Al Fasher, has been attacked by Janjaweed and Sudanese government warplanes,” he says. “My brother is in Darfur right now and some of my family members are still there.”

There are now some 100,000 people at Al Fasher, surviving only on international aid, and still vulnerable to militia attack. “The situation is very bad,” Adam says. “Janjaweed are still raping the girls and women.” He claims that up to 200 rape victims at Al Fasher have given birth in recent weeks.

Mark Crane with World People for Peace, which coordinates groups active around Darfur in the New York area, blames the lack of international action. “The problem is that nobody is dealing with the crisis like you deal with a crisis–which is to bring relief immediately.” When asked for a plausible solution, he says he puts his faith in the International Criminal Court (ICC)–a body that the United States refuses to recognize. “If the ICC could actually get some prosecutions going, that might have a chilling effect on these people in power” in Sudan, Crane says.

But others, in contrast, see an eagerness for intervention–and suspect motives other than the humanitarian. The new zeal of the AU and the entrance of NATO comes on the heels of a Feb. 17 meeting in Washington between George Bush, Don Cheadle, and Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager portrayed by Cheadle in the recent movie “Hotel Rwanda.” Rusesabagina, who is credited with saving hundreds of lives during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, told the press, “What is going on in Darfur is exactly what was going on in Rwanda.” This echoes the finding by Congress last July that the violence in Darfur constitutes “genocide.” Rusesabagina (who now runs a transport company in Zambia) and Cheadle had recently visited Darfur with a delegation of five U.S. Congress members.

But Phil Taylor, who worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in defense of accused war criminals with former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, sees more propaganda than genocide at work in Darfur. “The Americans are obviously driving this process,” he says. “They’re recruiting Hollywood to get people who aren’t giving this very much thought to endorse a policy which is going to involve regime change. Everybody has to be very careful about these things.”

Though some might call his recent article, “Carving Sudan” (on his website, Taylor Report), apologetic towards the Khartoum regime, Taylor says: “What I see here is a game, which is Washington’s favorite game, of demonizing. It’s a form of political and psychological warfare that I’m very much against. I’m not making apologetics for Khartoum, but I’m not going to condemn them either.”

Taylor alludes to probable U.S. covert actions behind the emergence of two guerilla groups in Darfur (the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement), which sparked the crisis early last year. “I know that by all reports a war broke out there initiated by two groups that suddenly just appeared, and they seem to be rather well armed,” he says. “Their leaders say they don’t want the African Union to be the intermediary, they say they want the United States. That’s not good.”

Dr. Ibrahim Imam Mahmoud, Philadelphia-based president of Sudan Liberation Movement, political arm of the Sudan Liberation Army, agrees that the Darfur rebels are suspicious of the AU. “I support a peacekeeping force from outside of Africa,” he says. “Even if African troops are equipped enough, they still need peacekeepers from outside to watch them. We believe African Union troops are helping, but for one thing, they are weak; for another, they are not enough; and for a third, some of them have been corrupted by the Sudanese government.”

Motasim Adam is even more explicit about corruption among AU troops. “We don’t want the African Union because they don’t report the truth. All the African Union troops come from very poor countries like Rwanda, and the Sudanese government can easily change their minds by paying them money. In countries like Rwanda, the army salary is only $40 a month. So the Sudanese government pays them $100 or $200 a month right now… They act like they are a part of the Sudanese military, not as an African Union force to keep peace.”

He also protests that the AU mandate is too limited. “They don’t have authorization to do anything even if there is an incident,” he says.

Adam also emphasizes that Sudanese government forces offer no protection from the militias–and that the two have become almost indistinguishable. “The Janjaweed come wearing the uniform of the policemen, and they attack the people. If you go complain to the police they just tell you that you are a liar and you are working for the Americans, you are an agent.”

Adam says Khartoum uses anti-U.S. and anti-UN sentiment to justify attacks against civilians. “The Sudanese government has announced a holy war against the United Nations; they say that the United Nations is just an umbrella for imperialism…”

Phil Taylor, on the other hand, is convinced that imperialist designs on Sudan are real. He says he titled his piece “Carving Sudan” because he believes the US wants “to encourage the breakup of Sudan. The US does not want to see large African states capable of fending for themselves because that makes them less dependent on London and Washington. They play the game of divide and rule.”

He challenges the Darfur rebel groups’ quest for autonomy or independence. “If someone says ‘Darfur needs to be independent,’ you’d want to look closely and see what Darfurians are they talking about. I’d like to know the demographics. Are we saying the majority would like to break away from Sudan?” He charges that “the State Department wants to encourage–and has across Africa encouraged–minority movements so as to give themselves an excuse to intervene… to make these groups their allies and put themselves in the position to exploit the resources of these countries.”

Recently, major media in the U.S. have been implying that the rebel groups in Darfur are not disciplined enough to enforce a cease-fire within their own ranks–an idea that Dr. Mahmoud of the SLM denies. “They are organized. The problem is that every day, the Sudan government is bombing them, fighting them.” He also argues that repression has given the people of Darfur no choice but to take up arms. “Politically active in people in Darfur are being killed,” he says.

The genocide argument has been raging in the UN alongside the touchy question of intervention. In January, a UN report officially found that the violence in Darfur does not constitute “genocide” (which means that signatories to the Genocide Convention are not obliged to act), even while noting 70,000 killed and two million forced to flee. “The UN talks too much,” Adam says. “There is no action. Now they have adopted three or four resolutions regarding the Darfur conflict. But there is no compliance by the Sudanese government regarding all these resolutions.”

“What we want now is more pressure on the Sudanese government, whether politically or militarily, in order to comply,” Adam says. He warns that if refugees cannot safely repatriate in the following weeks, the humanitarian crisis will greatly deepen. “There is no security in that area, so the people cannot come back to their villages or homes. Most of them are now in Chad, in the camps. The rainy season will come in three months and the situation is really very hard. The people have no good tents or places to sleep.”

And he says that the refugees who have made it across the border to the camps in Chad face a better situation than those still in camps within Darfur. “The people who were displaced to Chad are lucky because there, there is some kind of respect for human beings. But in Darfur, the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed are coming into the camps, attacking the people and raping the women. If you open your mouth they will shoot you down and kill you immediately… There is no person to complain to; you either have to shut your mouth or be killed yourself. That the situation inside the camps.”

U.S. deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick’s brief mid-April visit to Al Fasher refugee camp speaks to the possibility Washington is seeking to exploit Darfur’s suffering for political ends. But Zoellick’s photo-op also coincided with a visit by Sudan’s intelligence chief, Salah Abdallah Gosh, to Washington, where he reportedly met with CIA and FBI personnel on increased cooperation against Islamic militants in Africa, hailed as a milestone in thawing relations between the U.S. and Khartoum. Whether NATO really intervenes in Darfur may ultimately depend less on the actual conditions there than on whether Sudan’s regime can recast itself as a U.S. ally in the eyes of the Bush administration.

RESOURCES:

“Sudan Becomes US Ally in ‘War on Terror’,” UK Guardian, April 30

“Nato poised for first African engagement in Darfur,” UK Independent, April 28, 2005

“A Sudanese city of refugees with no plans to go home,” NY Times, April 17, 2005

“Sudan death toll: 180,000 die from hunger in Darfur,” UK Guardian, March 26, 2005

“Carving Sudan: Hollywood’s helping hand,” The Taylor Report, Feb. 17, 2005

“UN ‘rules out’ genocide in Darfur,” BBC News, Jan. 31, 2005

“U.S. lobbies Security Council on Darfur prosecution,” NY Times, Jan. 29, 2005

Sudan Liberation Movement/Sudan Liberation Army

World People for Peace

See also:

Wynde Priddy, “Darfur: Power Politics Trump Genocide Convention,” WW4 REPORT #104

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://WW4Report.com

BOMBS AWAY

Global Activists Gather in New York to Revive Nuclear Disarmament Call

by Sarah Ferguson

Sometimes peace needs a good enemy.

It was President Reagan who really jump-started the nuclear freeze movement in the early 1980s with his roughhouse talk about actually using nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. “We start bombing in five minutes,” was the Gipper’s famous quip.

Now with the Bush administration threatening Iran and North Korea as it schemes about funding a whole new generation of smaller, “more usable” nukes, activists say the movement for a global moratorium on nuclear weapons is ripe for a revival.

The May 1 march in New York City from the United Nations to Central Park was a start. The protest was called by the anti-war group United for Peace and Justice and the international anti-nuke coalition Abolition Now! to highlight the Bush administration’s hypocrisy on the eve of a month-long conference at the UN to review the imperiled Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which began on May 2.

“One of the lies the Bush administration used to go to war was that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons,” says UFPJ national coordinator Leslie Cagan. “Now they’re using the same rationale to go after Iran and North Korea, so as a movement, we really need to take up this cause.”

“We’re saying that no nations should have nuclear weapons, including the US, which continues to violate this treaty by pouring billions of dollars into the arms race, at the same time that they threaten other nations for not meeting their obligations.”

First introduced in 1970, the NPT calls for the five major nuclear powers–the US, Russia, China, France and Britain–to work toward eliminating their nuclear weapons and other countries to pledge not to obtain them. But since 9-11, the Bush administration has been openly disdainful of the treaty, arguing that it is antiquated to deal with the modern threat of terrorism, and that Iran and North Korea are exploiting loopholes to obtain nuclear weapons anyway.

As if to underscore that point, on May 1 North Korea lobbed a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan, and Pentagon officials now say satellite images appear to show North Korea on the verge of conducting its first nuclear weapons test. Meanwhile, Iran has openly threatened to end a moratorium on the production of enriched uranium fuel (ostensibly for power generation).

Yet as former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, noted backstage during the rally, Bush’s “preemptive strike doctrine” and his insistence on building tactical battlefield nukes are actually pushing countries like Iran and North Korea to get nukes of their own as a deterrent to US aggression.

“Bush’s policies are certain to increase nuclear proliferation,” says Ellsberg. “We’re promoting it. The idea that somebody like Iran doesn’t have a need for nuclear weapons at this point is ridiculous.”

The president claims the US is reducing America’s arsenal of more than 10,000 warheads. But at the same time, Ellsberg notes, the Pentagon is actively seeking to build new ones and “modernize” the ones it’s keeping. Just last month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pressed Congress to fund research into earth-penetrating “bunker busters.” According to Physicians for Social Responsibility, these “busters” would be 80 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

“That’s why we need a global moratorium on all these weapons,” says Ellsberg. “Not just Iran and North Korea, but the US and Israel and everyone else, too.”

Admittedly, calling for global disarmament these days sounds like pie-in-the-sky idealism. But activists say their stance is actually quite mainstream. A recent ABC news poll showed two thirds of Americans believe no nations should have nukes, including the US, while 52 percent believe that a nuclear attack by one country against another is likely by 2010. In Europe and Asia, public support for disarmament is even greater.

Still, a movement has to be more than just a mechanism for marching. With the Bush administration playing the terrorism and “Axis of Evil” cards to justify its abuses of the NPT, activists will have to find new ways to unravel the spiraling militarism that keeps generating more nukes as world leaders give lip service to renouncing them.

For decades, anti-nukes has been a feel-good cause. But can activists find a way to put some teeth in it?

Chris Connor of Abolition Now! concedes public apathy is a problem. “Sometimes I think the only thing that will spark a renewed movement is if some loose nuke goes off somewhere and makes people feel really threatened by nuclear proliferation.”

Indeed, as UFPJ was marching uptown in New York City on May 1, the more hard-left Troops Out Now! coalition was rallying in Union Square to demand more jobs and to bring the troops home from Iraq. Working-class soldiers dying abroad for lack of opportunities at home, they argued, was a more appropriate May Day cause than the stereotypically lily-white anti-nuke movement. Some of the left argue it’s hypocritical for American peaceniks to call on countries like North Korea to disarm when the Bush administration has such overwhelming power to invade them.

“Personally I think to talk about global disarmament misses the point of who has weapons and who they are being used against,” says Dustin Langley, a spokesperson for Troops Out Now! and member of the International Action Center, the anti-imperialist group founded by Ramsey Clark. (IAC helped spawn the anti-war ANSWER coalition, from which they recently splintered, and has long been sympathetic to North Korea’s Kim Jong Il regime.) “We say Iran and North Korea have a right to get any kind of weapon they need to defend themselves against the largest military machine on the planet. Considering that Bush has listed them as two potential targets, they have as much right to nuclear weapons as any other country,” Langley maintains.

Though the ongoing splits in the anti-war movement may have lessened the turnout, the disarmament march was larger than many expected, especially considering that it was not all that actively promoted in NYC (perhaps, ironically, because this time the Parks Department did not contest the permit for the rally site at Central Park’s Heckscher Ballfields, which are “under renovation” and hence less precious than the Great Lawn’s grass). Organizers claimed 40,000 people turned out, noting at one point the march spanned 15 blocks. Unofficial police estimates put the crowd at 8,000 to 10,000.

Still, it was probably the largest anti-nuke demo in the U.S. since the massive march to Central Park in 1982, which drew more than 1 million. (Hundreds of thousands more marched in cities across Japan on May Day to call for a nuclear moratorium and oppose revisions in the Japanese constitution that would loosen the ban on the use of military force.)

What struck out most was how international the New York demonstration was. In addition to more than 1,000 demonstrators from Japan, there was a delegation of mayors from 35 countries and large contingents from France, Germany and New Zealand. There were also Korean drummers clanging gongs, Vietnam Vets sounding off anti-war calls, Portuguese and Finnish peaceniks, and members of the International Peace Walk, led by Japanese monks, who trekked all the way from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Oak Ridge is home to the Y-12 National Security Complex, which built some of the components of the Hiroshima bomb and is now hard at work refurbishing existing nukes to extend their shelf life.

“One of the reasons I’m marching is my father was an occupying soldier in Nagasaki with the Australian forces there,” said Bilbo Taylor, 36, of Melbourne, who made the pilgrimage from Tennessee. “When he came back from war, he got iller and iller and died when I was 15 years old. I spent the first 12 years of my life in and out of hospitals dealing with that, and now there are thousands of soldiers from this war in Iraq who will suffer for a long time because of depleted uranium.”

Photo exhibits set up in the rear of the rally showed gruesome pictures of Iraqi women and children suffering from leukemia, believed to have been caused by depleted uranium shells exploded during the 1991 Gulf War.

Others sought to bring the threat even closer to home. Longtime nuclear opponent Dr. Helen Caldicott painted a vivid picture of what would happen if one of the 40 nuclear bombs Russia still has trained on New York City were to hit town. She described an 800-foot deep crater in the center of Central Park and nuclear winds extending 20 miles out.

Luis Acosta, founder of El Puente community center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, urged the crowd to ban “New York’s secret dirty bomb”–the Radiac Research Corporation, which stores radioactive and hazardous waste in that residential neighborhood, and which they fear is a sitting duck target for a terrorist attack. “All it could take is one small spill and one spark,” for a nuclear disaster in Williamsburg, he said.

But the most chilling testimony of the day came from survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts, who came to offer a living record or the horrors of nuclear war.

Keiko Inagaki was 14 years old when the US atomic bomb struck her hometown of Nagasaki in 1945. “It was a hot wind, and a rainbow of different colors flashed in the sky. I got blown away,” said the 74-year-old, dressed in an elegant flowered kimono and holding up one-end of a 20-foot anti-nuke banner. When the bomb hit, she and her fellow classmates were working in a munitions factory, having been requisitioned for Japan’s war effort. “All the windows blew out, and I was burned on my face, chest and arms,” she recalled, speaking through a translator. Still, Inagaki counts herself as lucky. “There were two people outside the factory, and their whole skin just immediately rotted off in seconds.”

For many years, Inagaki hid the fact that she was a survivor–or “hibakusha,” as they are called in Japan–fearing that concerns about radiation poisoning would hinder her chances of marrying or getting a job. But 9-11, the US invasion of Iraq, and the growing threat of terrorism worldwide convinced her to come forward to tell her harrowing story.

“I don’t know when I’m going to die. It’s time to speak out in order to save the younger generation.” she said.

RESOURCES:

Abolition Now!

United for Peace & Justice

Troops Out Now!

Federation of American Scientists page on the NPT

RELATED STORIES:

“Two Years Later: NYC Anti-War Protests Smaller–and Tilting to the Hard Left,” by Sarah Ferguson, April 2005

“Nuclear Agenda 2005,” by Chesley Hicks, March 2005

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://WW4Report.com

THE PROVOCATEUR STATE

Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi “Insurgents”—and Global Terrorism?

by Frank Morales

The requirement of an ever-escalating level of social violence to meet the political and economic needs of the insatiable “anti-terrorist complex” is the essence of the new US militarism. What is now openly billed as “permanent war” ultimately serves the geo-political ends of social control in the interests of US corporate domination, much as the anti-communist crusade of the now-exhasuted Cold War did.

Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted there would be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. How could he be so sure of that? Perhaps because these attacks would be instigated on the order of the Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld. According to Los Angeles Times military analyst William Arkin, writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army, “a super-Intelligence Support Activity” network that would “bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception,” to stir the pot of spiraling global violence.

According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization–the “Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)”–would actually carry out secret missions designed to provoke terrorist groups into committing violent acts. The P2OG, a 100-member, so-called “counter-terrorist” organization with a $100-million-a-year budget, would ostensibly target “terrorist leaders,” but according to P2OG documents procured by Arkin, would in fact carry out missions designed to “stimulate reactions” among “terrorist groups”–which, according to the Defense Secretary’s logic, would subsequently expose them to “counter-attack” by the good guys. In other words, the plan is to execute secret military operations (assassinations, sabotage, “deception”) which would intentionally result in terrorist attacks on innocent people, including Americans–essentially, to “combat terrorism” by causing it!

This notion is currently being applied to the problem of the Iraqi “insurgency,” it seems. According to a May 1, 2005 report by Peter Maass in the New York Times Magazine, two of the top US advisers to Iraqi paramilitary commandos fighting the insurgents are veterans of US counterinsurgency operations in Latin America. Loaning credence to recent media speculation about the “Salvadorization” of Iraq, the report notes that one adviser currently in Iraq is James Steele, who led a team of 55 US Army Special Forces advisers in El Salvador in the 1980s. Maass writes that these advisors “trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses.”

The current senior US adviser at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which Maass writes “has operational control over the commandos,” is former top US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official Steve Casteel, who worked “alongside local forces” in the US-sponsored “Drug War” in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, “where he was involved in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin cocaine cartel.”

The US “drug war” in Latin America also serves as a cover for ongoing counterinsurgency, employing terrorist methods to achieve two aims: one, actually combating genuine insurgency; two, the ratcheting up of a “strategy of tension,” heightened social violence designed to induce fear among the citizenry and the subsequent call for greater “security.”

This was the essence, for example, of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of provocateur-style terrorism and deceit. The ostensible purpose of Gladio, officially launched as a covert NATO program in 1952, was to establish a clandestine network of “stay-behind” teams which would organize armed resistance and sabotage in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But the network actually took a far more proactive role. Directed by US/NATO intelligence services of the West against their own populations, Operation Gladio led to possibly hundreds of innocent people being killed or maimed in “terrorist” attacks which were then blamed on “leftist subversives” or other political opponents. The most notorious such attack was the 1980 bombing of the train station at Bologna, which left 85 dead. Initially blamed on left-wing radicals, the blast was revealed upon investigation to be the work of an ultra-right network linked to the Italy’s Gladio team; four Italian neo-fascists were eventually convicted of the crime.

The purpose was again twofold: to demonize designated enemies (the “communists”) and to frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for the national security state. It appears the Pentagon has been implementing Gladio-style operations for quite some time–possibly including 9-11. A stretch? Maybe not.

Witness the US Joint Chiefs discussion of “Operation Northwoods” back in 1962, a plan to blow up U.S. “assets”–including U.S. citizens–in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. Later, US Army Field Manual 30-31B, entitled “Stability Operations Intelligence – Special Fields,” dated March 18, 1970 and signed by Gen. William C Westmoreland, promoted terrorist attacks (and the planting of false evidence) in public places which were then to be blamed on “communists” and “socialists.” It called for the execution of terrorist attacks throughout Western Europe, carried out through a network of covert US/NATO armies, in order to convince European governments of “the communist threat.”

What’s striking is that during this period the primary source for US government info on the Russian “threat” was coming from the Gehlen Organiation, Hitlers eastern front intelligence apparatus, which in the aftermath of World War II had cut a deal with the CIA’s Allen Dulles and worked out of Fort Hunt, just outside Washington DC, before being relocated back to Munich. Headed up by super-spy Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, the Org’s “special operations” expertise was heeded, financed and well-protected by U.S. tax dollars well into the 1970’s. Could the Gehlen Org have had an influence in the production of FM 30-31B?

According to FM 30-31B, “there may be times when Host Country Governments show passivity or indecision in the face of communist subversion and according to the interpretation of the US secret services do not react with sufficient effectiveness. Most often such situations come about when the revolutionaries temporarily renounce the use of force and thus hope to gain an advantage, as the leaders of the host country wrongly consider the situation to be secure. US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger.”

The U.S. Army now claims the document was a Russian forgery. Journalist Allan Francovich in his BBC documentation on Gladio and US/NATO “special operations” terrorism, asked Ray Cline, CIA deputy director from 1962 to 1966, if he believed FM 30-31B was for real and he replied: “Well, I suspect it is an authentic document. I don’t doubt it. I never saw it but it’s the kind of special forces military operations that are described,” to be implemented at the discretion of the president and Defense Department on the “appropriate occasion.”

It could be that in Iraq–and elsewhere around the world–the “appropriate occasion” has arrived. Bush’s war on terrorism could be the ultimate manifestation of the provocateur state; carrying out of clandestine “executive actions” and “special operations” directed against populations, including our own, who are truly ignorant of the real “enemy” in the face of the ever-present manufactured one, traumatized by strategic terror designed to engender fear and acquiescence to further “security measures”–thereby enriching the military, police agencies, and munitions and nuclear business enterprises.

RESOURCES:

Peter Maass, “The Salvadorization of Iraq?,” New York Times Magazine, May 1, 2005.

A.K. Gupta, “Unraveling Iraq’s Secret Militias,” Z Magazine, May 2005

Lila Rajiva, “The Pentagon’s ‘NATO Option’,” CommonDreams, Feb. 10, 2005.

Statewatch Briefing on Operation Gladio

US Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Operation Northwoods”, 1962

National Security Archives on Operation Northwoods

US Army, Field Manual 30-31B, 1970

FM 30-31B excerpts from Cryptome.org

WW4 REPORT #58 on P2OG

Frank Morales, “John Negroponte and the Death Squad Connection,” WW4 REPORT #108

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://WW4Report.com

TWO YEARS LATER: NYC Anti-War Protests Smaller—and Tilting to the Hard Left

by Sarah Ferguson

The March 19 demonstrations in New York to mark the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq were a good deal smaller than last year’s 100,000-strong march through Midtown, let alone the impassioned outpouring of dissent on February 15, 2003, just before the bombing began.

But activists say the many thousands who marched from Harlem to Central Park, and the 35 who got arrested during civil disobedience actions outside military recruiting stations in Times Square and downtown Brooklyn, signaled a "revival" of the anti-war movement, and proof of its deepening resolve.

"We have made history," declared Nellie Bailey of the Harlem Tenants Council, shouting through a bullhorn from a flatbed truck outside the 125th Street Recruiting Station, to a crowd that stretched for many blocks. "We are standing tall together–as black, Latino, white, working class, Asians–to say we will no longer be taken for granted."

Charging that the war was being financed on the backs of the working poor, Bailey assailed the Democratic Party for not standing against it. "We want the Democratic Party to have complete opposition to the war. No more of this weaving and waffling!"

Members of the War Resisters League, which organized the civil disobedience actions, and the Troops Out Now! coalition, which mobilized the march from Harlem, said both protests were efforts to re-energize a peace movement derailed by the campaign to defeat President Bush, and then demoralized by his re-election.

"What we are doing today is not popular," Congressman Charles Rangel told the several thousand sprawled over Central Park’s East Meadow, acknowledging how torn the American public remains over the war. "But it is the right thing to do."

"It’s one thing to go to war. It’s another to mislead the American people," Rangel added. "If those people who took us to war had been in combat, or if their children had to fight, there never would have been this war. The Wolfowitzes, the Cheneys, the Rumsfelds–all these people knew they were going to war before Bush got elected. They have used 9-11 as an excuse!"

The march from Harlem drew anywhere from 4,500 people, according to an unofficial police estimate, to nearly 10,000, according to legal observers, to 15,000, according to organizers.

But its significance, organizers said, lay less in its size and more in the fact that this was the first Black-led anti-war march to emerge from Harlem, a neighborhood they say symbolizes the disproportionate impact the war has had on communities of color.

Although African Americans were overwhelmingly opposed to the war–as some 72 percent of those polled in September were–that dissent hasn’t always translated into foot power on the street. Many activists of color say they often feel alienated from what they see as a largely white peace movement.

Saturday was an effort to change that dynamic. "We made it clear today that this is a movement with significant Black and people-of-color leadership, and our issues will not be ignored or relegated to the back burner by the established anti-war movement," said Bailey, who helped initiate the Troops Out Now! Coalition. "We are at the table whether they like it or not."

Admittedly, the march might have been bigger had United for Peace and Justice, the nation’s largest anti-war coalition, actively promoted it. Some activists termed UFPJ’s lack of involvement "unconscionable."

UFPJ organizers said they steered clear because they objected to some of the more strident rhetoric that appeared in the Troops Out Now! literature, including a call to support the "absolute and unconditional right of Iraqi people to resist the occupation," regardless of the insurgents’ methods or fundamentalist ideologies. Given the often hideously brutal attacks on civilians by foreign jihadists and other elements of the Iraqi resistance, that’s a stance that neither the national UFPJ coalition nor the New York local felt they could take.

"There was a concern that this would develop into an actual demand or theme of the demonstration, and neither the national nor the local New York UFPJ coalition has taken a position on that," says UFPJ’s national coordinator Leslie Cagan.

UFPJ was also put off by the central role played by the International Action Center, the same group of hard-left anti-imperialists–widely perceived as a front for the neo-Stalinist Workers World Party–that helped spawn the International ANSWER coalition, and who have sparred with UFPJ over past demonstrations.

On the street, however, such factionalism didn’t seem to matter, as contingents from a bewildering array of left-wing and Marxist splinter groups jostled alongside Raging Grannies, Radical Cheerleaders, and just plain-old pissed-off Americans, like Ellen Graves, a 65-year-old massage therapist from Springfield, Massachusetts, who sported a button that read: "4 Moron Years."

"I just think it’s very important to come together so that people around the world realize there’s a lot of us here still opposed to the war," Graves said.

By beginning the march in Harlem, organizers also hoped to paint in real terms the terrible burden this war has placed on the poor and working class.

The message was made clear along the march route, as the crowd trekked past shuttered storefronts, cheap mattress parlors, and 99-Cent stores along 125th Street, to the Armed Forces Recruiting Station, which, though closed, was well guarded by numerous police brass and several officers from the Technical Assistance Response Unit videotaping all who passed by.

Noting that Army recruitment is down 41 percent among African Americans, City Councilman Charles Barron told the crowd: "We are saying to the nation and to Bush that will not be cannon fodder for your illegal, immoral war for oil! We know the money they are sending to Iraq could balance every budget deficit in America."

The march then headed south down Malcolm X Boulevard, past boarded-up brownstones alternating with newly renovated ones, and teams of Latin American day laborers hanging out in front of newly-gutted tenements–part of the urban renewal that is sweeping many longtime Harlem residents out.

Though organizers hoped to capture some of the disaffection simmering in Harlem, many locals said they were not aware of the march. "I think it’s good, but I think it’s a little late. A lot of people done got killed over there already," said Earl Williams, a barber at the Brite Lite barbershop, who is battling to save the 85-year-old shop from the landlord’s efforts to triple the rent.

Besides engaging more people of color, the tenor of the Troops Out Now! protest was sharply to the left of past large anti-war demonstrations.

At the Marcus Garvey Park amphitheatrer, where the march assembled, the crowd gave a standing ovation to radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who was convicted last month of aiding terrorists by relaying messages from jailed Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Calling herself a "poster girl for repression at home," Stewart told her supporters, "We are here as the great resistance…to this dirty, rotten, self-aggrandizing war made by misguided men in high places."

And a secretary from City College who was arrested during a protest there last week spoke less of the campaign to kick military recruiters off campus and more of the need to "overthrow capitalism."

Other speeches in Central Park included former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who reiterated his call to impeach Bush; a tape-recorded message from death row star Mumia Abu Jamal, and more firebrand rhetoric from Councilman Barron. "It’s time to call it like it is: This as a war for oil and for the protection of Israel," said Barron, who vowed to "build a progressive, revolutionary radical new order."

Indeed, the march took on class-war overtones when a still-hardy crowd of 4,000 set off from the park to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s townhouse on 79th Street near Fifth Avenue. The contrast from Harlem was clear as the jeering protesters filed past the Upper East Side’s marbled residences, chanting things like: "Rich people, that’s okay, you can work for us one day!" and "Money for jobs, not for war!" But the reaction from passersby remained surprisingly positive–including blown kisses and "thank you’s" from a well-appointed wedding party getting into limos outside Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church on Park Avenue.

"We came from Wisconsin for my niece’s wedding, but we would have joined the protest if we could," said Marlene Dion, a nurse from Appleton, Wisconsin, adding that she was disappointed there were not more anti-war protests where she’s from. "This war should never have happened. I’m against anything from this administration."

About 1,500 people made it to the corner of 79th Street and Fifth–half a block from Bloomberg’s residence, which was as close as the cops would let them get. The police, though numerous, remained relatively low-key as speakers assailed Bloomberg and "the wealthy who don’t like protests on Fifth Avenue"–a reference to the organizers’ battle over the right to march down the avenue, which is reserved for cultural parades.

Brandishing a poster of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Troops out Now! leader Larry Holmes justified the attack on Bloomberg as a mayor who, while publicly neutral about the war, has nevertheless done his best to suppress dissent over it in the city. "He’s a billionaire and he’s close to Bush, and we want that $80 billion that Bush is spending on war–we want that money in New York and all these other cities that are suffering now."

No doubt Bloomberg would also like a piece of that $80 billion as he grapples with steep cuts to federal aid for housing and mass transit, and the shortchanging of homeland security dollars to New York.

But Holmes was adamant: "If Bloomberg is not with us, he is against us."

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RESOURCES:

Troops Out Now!

United for Peace & Justice

See also Sarah Ferguson’s coverage of last year’s protests in WW4 REPORT #97

And our coverage of the original February 2003 mobilization in WW4 REPORT #73

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April. 10, 2005 Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://WW4Report.com

BOLIVIA: GAS BILL ADVANCES, PROTESTS PARALYZE COUNTRY

by Weekly News Update on the Americas

DEPUTIES PASS GAS BILL

On March 15, with virtually all of Bolivia’s cities shut down by road blockades on the first day of a 48-hour national strike, Bolivian president Carlos Mesa Gisbert announced he would present the legislature with a proposal calling new general elections for Aug. 28, 2005. Mesa complained that the growing wave of protests and roadblocks was making the country ungovernable. Nine days earlier, on March 6, Mesa had presented his resignation under similar circumstances, but Congress rejected it. (La Republica, Lima, March 17, 18; Los Tiempos de Cochabamba, March 16; Centro de Documentacion e Informacion de Bolivia [CEDIB], March 17; El Diario, La Paz, March 18; La Razon, La Paz, March 16)

On March 9, Mesa had asked the Bolivian attorney general’s office to order district prosecutors to arrest protesters; the prosecutors refused, saying in a joint statement that it is not their job to intervene in social conflicts. On March 17, the attorney general’s office ratified that decision, while at the same time agreeing to launch an investigation into the protest organizers. (CEDIB, March 17; ED, March 18; Servicio de Informacion Indigena [SERVINDI], March 15)

Mesa’s March 15 call for new elections came as Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies was in the midst of a heated and lengthy final debate over a controversial new hydrocarbons law. The Chamber’s economic commission had recommended a version of the law backed by Bolivia’s social movements, which would grant the state 50% of royalties from all hydrocarbons production; Mesa had proposed an alternative under which the state would maintain its 18% share of royalties while imposing a 32% "complementary tax on hydrocarbons" (ICH). Mesa insisted his proposal would add up to the same 50%, but critics complain that the ICH tax would be imposed gradually over time, and could be offset by tax credits and deductions.

In the pre-dawn hours of March 16, after 12 hours of debate, the lower house voted 47-36 to approve a compromise version of the bill proposed by Chamber of Deputies president Mario Cossio. The new version would maintain the 18% royalties and create a 32% "direct tax on hydrocarbons production" (IDPH), to be imposed immediately and with no deductions or loopholes. The bill now goes to Bolivia’s Senate. (La Republica, March 17; LTdC, March 16; CEDIB, March 17; ED, March 18; La Razon, March 16)

Deputies from the Movement to Socialism (MAS) and the Indigenous Pachacuti Movement (MIP) voted against the compromise bill, along with a few legislators from the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) and the New Republican Force (NFR). The remaining MIR, MNR and NFR deputies voted for the bill. (LT, March 16) Still, MAS deputy and campesino leader Evo Morales Ayma said he was moderately satisfied with the legislation, although he insisted that "the struggle will continue in the National Senate" to achieve the 50% in royalties.

Mesa, on the other hand, immediately announced he would refuse to sign the version passed by the Chamber of Deputies unless it undergoes revisions. (La Republica, March 17) Two oil and gas companies with major investments in Bolivia–the Spanish-Argentine Repsol-YPF and the Brazilian state company Petrobras–also expressed their displeasure with the bill. On March 20, the Bolivian Chamber of Hydrocarbons, a petroleum industry business group, chimed in, calling the bill "regressive and counterproductive," and saying it would effectively constitute "a confiscation" of private investments. If the Senate makes changes to the bill, the revised version would go to a vote in a plenary session of the full legislature. (AFP, March 20; La Jornada, Mexico, March 19)

At a March 16 press conference, Evo Morales and Bolivian Workers Central (COB) executive secretary Jaime Solares announced that the country’s social, labor and political movements would temporarily suspend their protest blockades, but would resume mobilizations as soon as the Senate begins considering the new law. While criticizing the political coalition that passed the compromise version, Morales said the bill contains a number of strong points which must be defended in the Senate against Mesa’s attempts to remove them: it would guarantee state ownership of all hydrocarbons; force companies with existing contracts to submit to the new provisions; reestablish the state oil company, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales de Bolivia (YPFB); and recognize the right of indigenous communities to decide about oil and gas projects in their territory. (ED, March 17)

On Mar. 17, after Congress rejected his proposal for early elections, Mesa announced that he would remain in his post for the remainder of his term, until August 2007. (ED, March 18)

Morales announced on March 19 that when the Senate convenes on March 22, hundreds of campesinos will start a vigil and pijcheo (ritual coca leaf chewing) outside the Senate building in La Paz to demand that the bill not be weakened. (Prensa Latina, March 20)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 20

PREZ MANEUVERS, PROTESTS BUILD

In a 45-minute televised speech on March 6, President Mesa complained that constant protests, strikes and blockades were making Bolivia ungovernable and that he would offer his resignation to Congress the following day. Mesa harshly criticized campesino leader Evo Morales and his MAS for having announced the start of stepped-up roadblocks around the country. The protests, underway since the previous week, demanded that Congress pass a hydrocarbons law instating 50% royalties on private companies, and also that elections be called for a constitutional assembly. Mesa dismissed the constitutional assembly proposal, and said the royalty increase was "not viable" because "the international community is against it" and the country depends on "foreign handouts." (Clarin, Argentina, March 6; Agencia Latinoamericano de Informacion [ALAI], March 7)

Morales said that with the resignation threat, Mesa was "resorting to blackmail, maneuvering, insults and divisiveness, showing that he has a racial gripe against indigenous people and campesinos who are the majority of this country, just because we are struggling to recover the territory, to defend our national resources like water and to obtain 50% royalties from the oil companies." According to Bolivia’s 2001 national census, 62% of Bolivians over 15 years old identify themselves as indigenous–31% Quechua, 25% Aymara and 6% from other ethnic groups. (ALAI, March 7, 9)

In his speech, Mesa also criticized Abel Mamani, leader of the Federation of Neighborhood Committees (FEJUVE) of the city of El Alto, for leading a movement which is demanding the departure of the Aguas del Illimani water company. Mesa said that if the government breaks its contract with Aguas del Illimani–a consortium partly owned by the French transnational Suez–then Bolivia would have to immediately pay $17 million to creditor organizations and might lose a $50 million lawsuit threatened by the company. Last Jan. 12, three days into a civic strike in El Alto organized by FEJUVE, the government signed a decree pledging to cancel the contract with Aguas del Illimani.

But since then the government had backtracked, and FEJUVE responded with a new civic strike beginning March 2 demanding the company’s expulsion. The strike also included demands for the 50% gas royalties, the constitutional assembly and a full trial of ex-president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and his cabinet members for an October 2003 massacre of protesters in El Alto. Mamani had announced plans to step up the protests on March 7 and had called a march to La Paz for March 8. (Clarin, March 6)

Mesa also criticized the civic and business leaders of gas-rich Santa Cruz department who have been pushing for regional autonomy. (El Diario, La Paz, March 7) Mesa’s surprise resignation announcement came amid a flood of protests around the country, including El Alto and Cochabamba. In Sucre, Chuquisaca department, campesinos protested to demand the constitutional assembly be held before any referendum on regional autonomy; they were also demanding the trial of ex-president Sanchez de Lozada, and rejecting any immunity for US soldiers in Bolivia. (The US is pressuring Bolivia and many other countries to agree not to send any US soldiers to face charges before the International Criminal Court.)

In Santa Cruz department, residents of the city of Camiri blocked the highway to Yacuiba, on the Argentine border, in a protest demanding that their city be the headquarters for the state-owned oil company, YPFB, when it is reformed under the terms of a July 2004 referendum. In Yapacani, protesters demanded that oil-producing municipalities get 10% of oil royalties and non-oil-producing ones get 3%. In Pailon, residents blocked the highway to Trinidad to demand government attention to local needs.

Residents of Entre Rios demanded that 40% of Tarija department’s oil royalties go to their municipality. In La Paz department, residents of Patacamaya demanded expansion of the local university, while Lahuachaca residents blockaded roads to demand the creation of a teacher training school. In Cochabamba department, residents of Ivigarzama blockaded roads over a border conflict with the neighboring municipality of Chimore. The Confederation of Bus Drivers postponed a 48-hour national strike demanding higher fares, saying their protest "would go unnoticed" amid so many others. (CEDIB, March 5)

Some protests were lifted on March 7 following Mesa’s resignation announcement, including the week-old blockades in Chuquisaca department, which had cut off the city of Sucre from supplies, and in Yapacani. But many protests continued, and some were intensified or renewed, including a blockade which shut down the road between Santa Cruz and Cochabamba on March 7. Leaders of Bolivia’s grassroots social movements ratified their protest plans and their unified demands at a meeting in El Alto on March 7. Oscar Olivera, president of the Coordinating Committee on Water, pointed out that the protests "did not demand and are not demanding the resignation of Carlos Mesa; in fact, their national demands, with the exception of [the departure of] Aguas del Illimani, are not even directed at the executive, but rather at the legislature." (La Razon, La Paz, March 8)

On March 8, Bolivia’s Congress unanimously rejected Mesa’s resignation and ratified his continuation as president for the term ending Aug. 6, 2007. A majority of deputies–not including those from the MAS or the MIP–then approved a vaguely-worded "national agenda," in which they committed the Congress and president to work together on the hydrocarbons law, regional autonomy and a constitutional assembly.

The agenda promises to "approve as quickly as possible a hydrocarbons law which respects the mandate of the July 18, 2004 referendum and within that framework guarantees the maximum benefit in favor of the Bolivian state, attention to the internal market, industrialization and the current and future export commitments of our hydrocarbons, preserving investments in strict respect and observance of national sovereignty." The agenda also pledges, "on the basis of regional consensus, to put forward a plan for approval of the legal instruments to guarantee the holding of elections for governor [a key demand of the autonomy movement], the referendum on departmental autonomy and the convoking of a constitutional assembly." Following the vote on the agenda, deputies from the MAS and MIP walked out in protest before Mesa addressed the Congress. (ED, March 9)

On Mar. 9 the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) joined with Bolivia’s main campesino, indigenous and neighborhood organizations in a "Pact for the Defense of Dignity and National Sovereignty," pledging to step up the nationwide protests on their united demands. (ALAI, Econoticiasbolivia.com, March 9) The same day, Mesa apologized publicly for his harsh words against Evo Morales and asked Morales to meet with him. Morales said he would participate in a meeting if it included the rest of the union and grassroots leaders included in the new pact.

The two sides met for four hours on March 10, without reaching any agreements. Mesa tried to convince the protest leaders that his proposal for 18% royalties and 32% taxes will add up to the same as 50% in royalties. Opponents say the government will find a way to manipulate the taxes so they don’t really add up to the full 50%, though Mesa promises the taxes will be charged on actual production, with no sneaky calculations involved. "The blockades are going to continue, they are going to radicalize until the parliament approves the 50% royalties," warned Morales. "We’re not demanding exclusion, or confiscation, or expropriation of the transnationals’ property. It’s important to have partners, but those partners should put in half, 50 [for them], and 50 in royalties for the Bolivian state." (ED, March 10, 11)

Morales said the 50% royalties would produce an extra $550 million a year in tax revenue–enough to eliminate Bolivia’s deficit. Mesa told foreign journalists on March 9 that the 50% royalty rate would invite massive lawsuits by foreign companies with gas contracts in Bolivia, but that his 32% tax and 18% royalty formula would bring "an explosion" of new investment, eliminating the country’s need for foreign aid. However, some oil industry analysts say even Mesa’s more moderate plan might provoke lawsuits by corporations because it would change their existing contracts. (Miami Herald, March 10)

Protests were back in force around the country on March 9. Members of Bolivia’s Landless Movement (MST), the Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Santa Cruz and the National Council of Qullasuyo [Aymara] Communities (Conamaq) arrived in La Paz after traveling from the country’s lowlands and highlands, respectively, to demand the constitutional assembly and indigenous participation in democracy. They said they would not block roads, and were not part of the pact signed by the other social movements. The same day, chaos broke out in the city of Santa Cruz when bus drivers tried to raise fares to make up for fuel price increases and bus riders rebelled. Police used tear gas; at least 10 people were injured and 59 arrested. In Cochabamba, the road to Santa Cruz was completely blocked by protests organized by the Six Federations of the Tropics, an organization of campesino coca producers. The campesinos also set up vigils surrounding four oil wells, and campesino leader Feliciano Mamani said blockades were in effect on highways linking Cochabamba to Oruro and Chuquisaca. (ED, March 10)

On Mar. 10, marches called by President Mesa to oppose the grassroots roadblocks drew light crowds in Bolivia’s major cities. The same day, the FEJUVE of El Alto called for a suspension of its blockades in the city, saying the people were "tired" and that new pressure tactics would be taken up the next week on the demands against Aguas del Illimani. (ED, March 11)

Mesa’s resignation offer appeared to be aimed at dividing and weakening Bolivia’s grassroots movements, both by exerting counter-pressure on Congress, which is leaning toward popular demands on the gas law, and by empowering certain sectors of the public to actively oppose the protests. "The gamble is to get the people who tolerated these protests in the past to go out and say they won’t tolerate it," Jaime Aparicio, Bolivia’s ambassador in Washington, said in a phone interview with the New York Times. "It may be effective, but we’ll have to wait and see." (NYT, March 8)

Thousands of people did mobilize around the country in support of Mesa following his March 6 resignation announcement, and on March 7 dozens of counter-protesters waving white handkerchiefs broke windows at the FEJUVE offices in El Alto and tried to disrupt the meeting of grassroots leaders there. Mamani, the FEJUVE leader, said death threats were called in to his mobile phone. (LR, March 8) Bolivian media made much of the "white handkerchief" movement, citing counter-protesters’ chants urging Mesa to take a "heavy hand" against protesters and to send "Evo and Mamani to the firing squad." (ALAI, March 9)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 13

Weekly News Update on the Americas

For recent Bolivia coverage, see:

WW4 REPORT #107

WW4 REPORT #106

WW4 REPORT #104

WW4 REPORT #102

WW4 REPORT #101

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://ww4report.com