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COLOMBIA: TRADE PACT CONCLUDED, RIGHT SWEEPS ELECTIONS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

On Feb. 27 Colombia and the US concluded a trade pact after two years of negotiations. Peru signed a similar accord in December, and the US is seeking an agreement with Ecuador. The US hopes to consolidate the three accords into an Andean Free Trade Agreement (known as the TLC, for “free trade treaty” in Spanish) before the end of the year, when current agreements end. But there are doubts about how quickly the administration of US president George W. Bush can get required approval from its own Congress for the package.

The pact with Colombia is the most significant trade agreement the US has worked out with a Latin American country since the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which included Canada and Mexico. Colombia’s annual economic output is more than $100 billion, and trade between Colombia and the US was $14.3 billion last year. But the US–which has repeatedly failed to advance its plan for a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)–had problems negotiating even with the pro-US government of right-wing president Alvaro Uribe Velez. Three members of Colombia’s “intellectual property rights” negotiating team quit last year over what they called US intransigence. (NYT, Feb. 28)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 5

FAR RIGHT SWEEPS CONGRESS

Right-wing supporters of President Alvaro Uribe Velez swept Colombia’s March 12 legislative elections, winning 72 of the 100 seats in the Senate and at least 57% of the 167 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Abstention was nearly 60%. Center-left sectors united in the Alternative Democratic Pole won 11 seats in the Senate and now form the fifth largest force in the legislature. Presidential elections are scheduled for May 28. (Inter Press Service, AFP, March 13)

More than half the votes cast for the two Senate seats reserved for indigenous candidates were left blank, so those elections may be repeated. (IPS, March 13) Nasa indigenous leaders blamed a badly designed ballot for the confusing results; they say that the elections should not be repeated, and that the two candidates of the Indigenous Social Alliance–Jesus Enrique Pinacue and Eulalia Yagari–won the vote and should be able to take their senate seats. (Asociacion de Cabildos Nasa, March 16)

A new organization, Daughters and Sons for Memory and Against Impunity, had on March 9 publicly called on Colombians to vote against 13 candidates linked to right-wing paramilitary groups. Six of those 13 candidates did win their seats. Among those who didn’t was retired general Rito Alejo del Rio, accused of responsibility for massacres in 1997. Ivan Cepeda of Daughters and Sons for Memory and Against Impunity said that for now, “there are 17 or 18 legislators that come from highly doubtful forces” linked to paramilitary groups.

Authorities did not report any major incidents during the voting but “29 violent acts” were recorded. Blackouts took place along the Atlantic coast and in Cauca department, and in Arauca, an attack on an aqueduct left the town of Saravena without drinking water. The attack was blamed on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). (IPS, March 13)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 19

MURDER IN CIMITARRA VALLEY

The Campesino Association of the Cimitarra River Valley (ACVC) has reported a recent increase in paramilitary murders, threats and other activities in the Cimitarra Valley of Colombia’s Magdalena Medio region, where the departments of Bolivar, Santander and Antioquia intersect.

On Feb. 18, presumed paramilitaries murdered Guido Romero, vice president of the Communal Action Board in the rural community of La Victoria in Cantagallo municipality in the south of Bolivar department. The paramilitaries, said to be from the urban center of Cantagallo, came to La Victoria asking for Romero. The detained him and took him to the community’s soccer field, where they murdered him in front of other community members. Romero’s murder came two days after he met with ACVC leaders to plan a series of community actions. (Corporacion Regional para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos-CREDHOS, Feb. 22 via Colombia Indymedia; ACVC, Feb. 23)

At a subsequent meeting in Cantagallo, a paramilitary member from Barrancabermeja in Santander department announced that the legalized paramilitary groups known as Convivir must be reestablished in the town. On Feb. 22, in nearby San Pablo, a “demobilized” paramilitary commander called a meeting where he announced that the Convivir groups would be reestablished, and that the community must finance them. The Convivir “security cooperatives” were first established in neighboring Antioquia department by then-governor Alvaro Uribe Velez, now president of Colombia seeking a second term in elections in May. (ACVC, Feb. 23; CREDHOS, Feb. 24)

On Feb. 22, the body of Robinson Alberto Gonzalez was found with five bullet wounds–two in the head–between the rural communities of Campo Bijao and Cano Tigre, at a site known as Cano Panela, in the northeastern area of Antioquia, near the borders with Bolivar and Santander departments. Gonzalez worked as a traveling vendor; he had disappeared on Feb. 6 between the rural communities of Puerto Nuevo Ite and Dosquebradas in Remedios municipality.

No one has claimed responsibility for murdering Gonzalez. The Calibio Battalion of the army’s 14th Brigade operates in the area, and is said to collaborate with rightwing paramilitary groups which supposedly demobilized in Remedios several weeks ago. Leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) are also active in the area. (ACVC, Feb. 23)

Jose Gustavo Castaneda disappeared on Feb. 15 between the Estrella farm and Puerto Nuevo Ite; as of Feb. 22 he remained missing. On Feb. 13 campesino Albeiro Meza was disappeared in Cantagallo municipality. He remained missing as of Feb. 16. Julio Cesar Aparicio Diaz, a member of the Communal Action Board in Puerto Matilde, was detained in Campo Bijao, Remedios municipality, by six hooded armed men dressed in camouflage. He was tortured for two hours and threatened with death. He was reportedly released, but his whereabouts were unknown as of Feb. 16. (ACVC, Feb. 16)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 5

On March 23, the ACVC said it had determined that guerrillas from the FARC were responsible for the Feb. 18 murder of Romero. The mayor of Cantagallo and the regional newspaper Vanguardia Liberal, based in Bucaramanga, had maintained all along that the FARC’s 24th Front was responsible. The ACVC said it “deplores and rejects this murder and demands that the FARC observe the principle of…not turning civilian residents into targets.” Since the murder, several families have been displaced from La Victoria. (ACVC, March 23 via Prensa Rural)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 26

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

See also WW4 REPORT #119
http://www.ww3report.com/node/1661

See our last update on Colombia’s shift to the hard right:
/node/1771

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

ECUADOR: PROTESTS PARALYZE COUNTRY

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

OIL STRIKE IN AMAZON

The Ecuadoran government decreed a state of emergency in the Amazon provinces of Napo, Orellana and Sucumbios on March 8, two days into a strike that shut down oil production in the region. The 4,000 striking workers were employed by subcontractors to provide maintenance, security, transport, clean-up and construction for the state oil company Petroecuador. The workers are owed three months worth of salaries by the subcontractors, who have themselves not been paid by Petroecuador since last September. On March 7, the workers shut down six major oil facilities in the region; the same day, army soldiers used tear gas bombs to eject the strikers from several oil company sites. The workers released three of the sites on March 11 and ended the strike on March 12 after the government promised to arrange payment of the debts and to release three arrested strike leaders. The state of emergency was to be lifted gradually beginning on March 13. (Agencia Pulsar, March 8; AP, March 8, 12; El Comercio, Quito, March 11)

Workers and other social sectors blocked roads on March 8 in several areas of Ecuador to protest the government’s negotiations with the US over the Andean Free Trade Treaty, press for a wage increase and demand that the government cancel its contract with the US oil company Occidental Petroleum (Oxy). Mesias Tatamuez, leader of the Unitary Workers Front (FUT), called the strike “a warning message,” and said that if the government doesn’t attend to the protesters’ demands, more extreme actions will be taken. (Agencia Pulsar, March 8)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 12

INDIGENOUS PROTEST TRADE PACT

Early on March 13, indigenous Ecuadorans began a national mobilization against the Andean Free Trade Treaty (known in Spanish as the TLC), which the Ecuadoran government has said it intends to sign with the US, Colombia and Peru. The mobilization is also demanding that the government cancel its contract with Oxy, that Ecuador not participate in the US-led “Plan Colombia,” and that a National Constituent Assembly be called to write a new constitution. The mobilization was organized by the indigenous organizations Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and the Confederation of the Peoples of Kichua Nationality of Ecuador (Ecuarunari). In a joint March 13 communique announcing the start of the mobilization, the two groups called the TLC “a mortal weapon for the economy of millions of indigenous people, campesinos and small businesspeople.”

“Now 50 of every 100 indigenous children suffer from chronic malnutrition–that is, hunger–and with the TLC, which will affect the production of foods from our fields, there will be millions of children and adolescents who together with their parents will suffer hunger and will have to migrate to the big cities or to other countries,” said the communique.

March 13 began with actions in at least 14 of Ecuador’s 22 provinces and in the capital, Quito. In Carchi, some 1,500 people shut down traffic on the road leading from Tulcan to Quito. Protesters also blocked roads in Imbabura, Pichincha, Cotopaxi, Tungurahua, Canar, Loja and Zamora. In Canar, access roads to nearly every town were blocked, and 3,000 indigenous Kanari people blocked traffic in the village of Suscal along a road to the coast. Ten busloads of protesters left from Imbabura to join protests in Quito. In Latacunga, Cotopaxi, some 2,000 people took part in a protest march. In Bolivar, protesters marched and seized the governor’s offices. In Azuay, thousands marched in the city of Cuenca, and a roadway was blocked in Giron. Police repression against protesters was reported in Ayora, Pichincha. In Esmeraldas, some 200 people marched in the provincial capital. From the eastern provinces of Pastaza and Morona Santiago, some 500 people reached Banos de Ambato on a march toward Quito. In Quito, some 100 members of Campesino Social Security seized the cathedral. (CONAIE/Ecuarunari Communique, March 13)

On March 14, the second day of the mobilization, protesters who arrived that day from Imbabura joined local Quito residents in marching past the US embassy to the cathedral. Police attacked the marchers in the area around the provincial council, and at the theater plaza. Protesters continued to block roads in Carchi, Imbabura, Pichincha, Tungurahua, Bolivar and Chimborazo. Some 10,000 people marched in Latacunga, capital of Cotopaxi province; hundreds of people also marched in Salcedo, another city in Cotopaxi, before blocking a nearby highway. In Suscal, Canar, police unleashed repression on protesters–mainly women and children–and arrested several protest leaders. Despite the attacks, protesters in Suscal continued to block the road leading to Guayaquil. The march from the Amazon region continued, with 600 people reaching the city of Ambato from Zalazaza. (CONAIE/Ecuarunari Communique, March 14)

In a March 15 communique signed by CONAIE president Luis Macas, CONAIE condemned the repression faced by protesters. “At a time when the Ecuadoran government and army are incapable of defending the country from incursions by the Colombian armed forces, and they have rather turned into security guards for the oil corporations, they have sharpened their weapons against their own people, causing numerous wounded, disappeared and persecutions against peaceful, democratic and united mobilizations,” said CONAIE.

CONAIE reported that in a meeting that morning with Governance under-secretary Felipe Vega, its leaders had protested the violation of human rights and questioned the government’s lack of transparency and democracy in the TLC negotiations, and delays in the cancellation of the Oxy contract. CONAIE leaders told Vega that the mobilization would continue until the TLC negotiations are suspended, the government publishes everything it has negotiated up to now, the Oxy contract is cancelled as requested by the state prosecutor’s office, and a Constituent Assembly is convened. (CONAIE communique, March 15)

By March 15, the protests were starting to affect the economy, disrupting deliveries of corn, potatoes and milk in the central provinces where traffic was blocked, and preventing flower exporters from transporting their shipments. (Al Jazeera, March 16) In a televised speech on March 15, Ecuadoran president Alfredo Palacio criticized the protests and called on Ecuadorans to “close ranks to protect democracy.” Earlier in the day, Interior Minister Alfredo Castillo resigned after publicly stating that the protesters “are right” to demand that the TLC negotiations be “much clearer.” (El Barlovento, Mexico, March 15)

On March 17, Oxy proposed an accord with the Ecuadoran government in which the company would provide oil assistance and funds for social projects, would give up legal claims and would renegotiate its contracts in exchange for the cancellation of legal proceedings threatening its current contract. It was not clear whether the government had responded to the offer. (Reuters, March 17) Ecuarunari president Humberto Cholango responded by warning Ecuadorans that Oxy was attempting to evade the legal proceedings with the offer of $293 million in funding for public works. (Ecuarunari/CONAIE communique, March 18)

On March 18, the indigenous mobilization continued into a sixth day, with roads blocked in at least seven provinces, mainly in the central Andean region, the north and the Amazon. In Riobamba, capital of Chimborazo, wire services reported that some 4,000 people demonstrated before holding an assembly to plan subsequent actions. (CONAIE and Ecuarunari reported that 10,000 people from the surrounding areas attempted to enter Riobamba, and 5,000 eventually made it past police to the city’s central square.) In other provinces, indigenous organizations also called assemblies to plan actions for the coming week, as the Ecuadoran government prepares to hold its final round of TLC negotiations in Washington on March 23. (ANSA, March 18; Cadena Global/DPA, March 18; Ecuarunari/CONAIE communique, March 18) The provinces of Tungurahua, Cotopaxi and Pastaza reportedly ended their strikes between March 16 and 17 after the government assigned more funds for public works they were demanding. (Cadena Global/DPA, March 18)

In a March 18 communique, Ecuarunari and CONAIE reported that their respective presidents, Cholango and Macas, along with provincial protest leaders, had been threatened with arrest if they did not end the mobilization. They also reported more repression: the march from the Amazon provinces to Quito was detained for more than three hours in the area of Chasqui, though marchers finally broke through police lines to continue their trek; protester Alberto Cabascango lost his left eye in the area of Cajas, between Imbabura and Pichincha provinces; and protesters Rosa Cristina Ulcuango from Cayambe and Olga Alimana from Chimborazo were hospitalized after being injured by police and army troops.

The worst repression continued to be in the community of Suscal, in Canar province, where on March 18 army and police forces attacked a march of some 500 people along the road leading to the coast, beating, dragging and kicking the participants, including many women, children and elderly people. Many people were injured, including two pregnant women who had to be taken to the health center in Suscal for emergency treatment. The military and police patrols then continued their assault on the community by violently invading homes, destroying doors and windows, firing tear gas bombs, threatening people at gunpoint and carrying out mass arrests. (Ecuarunari/CONAIE communique, March 18)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 19

PROTESTS SUSPENDED—FOR NOW

On March 21, thousands of indigenous people from around the country arrived in Quito and blocked main highways with their protests. Police used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators; some protesters threw rocks at police. About 30 people were seriously injured and 100 were arrested. Another 300 people, including a number of minors, suffered asphyxia from police tear gas. (El Barlovento, March 21) CONAIE leader Luis Macas and the alternative news source Altercom reported that police were boarding buses headed for Quito and detaining anyone who looked indigenous or looked like a protester. (Adital, March 21; EB, March 21)

Late on March 21, Ppresident Palacio responded to the protests by decreeing a state of emergency in the provinces of Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Canar and Imbabura and in the districts of Tabacundo and Cayambe in Pichincha province. Under the state of emergency, constitutional rights are suspended. (EB, March 22) Thousands of police and soldiers were deployed on March 22 to clear blocked highways. (AP, March 22)

On Mar. 23, the uprising began to lose some strength in the Andean region, but more than 3,000 indigenous people from around the country marched in Quito, with the support of students and other sectors. Police used tear gas to disperse university and high school students marching through the center of Quito, and clashes between demonstrators and police left dozens of people injured. In the northern city of Otavalo, indigenous people defied the state of emergency and blocked several roads. (La Jornada, Mexico, March 24; Adital, March 23)

CONAIE suggested a dialogue with the government, mediated by the Catholic Church, but the government refused. “The ball is in CONAIE’s court,” said Minister of Government (Interior) Felipe Vega. “They should stop this action now, and five minutes later they will converse with President Alfredo Palacio.” Palacio had said hours earlier that he would dialogue with the indigenous groups if they ended the mobilization.

Later on March 23, CONAIE announced that the mobilization would be temporarily suspended. CONAIE was to meet March 31 in the Andean city of Riobamba to “redefine actions” in the continuing struggle against the TLC, and for the cancellation of the government’s contract with Oxy.

“We’re going to withdraw, but the uprising will resume after the assembly in Riobamba, if by then the government doesn’t commit to at least convene a people’s referendum to decide about the TLC,” said CONAIE vice president Santiago de la Cruz. The government will maintain the state of emergency until the country is “totally pacified,” said Communication Secretary Enrique Proano. (LJ, March 24) Proano said some protests were continuing in Otavalo on the night of March 23. By March 24, indigenous protesters had dismantled most of the road blockades.

The Ecuadoran and US governments began their 14th round of TLC negotiations in Washington on March 23. (AFP , March 24)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 26

——

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

See also WW4 REPORT #119
http://www.ww3report.com/node/1670

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

BLAMING “THE LOBBY”

AIPAC Takes the Hit for US Imperialism

by Joseph Massad

In the last 25 years, many Palestinians and other Arabs, in the United States and in the Arab world, have been so awed by the power of the US pro-Israel lobby that any study, book, or journalistic article that exposes the inner workings, the substantial influence, and the financial and political power of this lobby have been greeted with ecstatic sighs of relief that Americans finally can see the “truth” and the “error” of their ways.

The underlying argument has been simple and has been told time and again by Washington’s regime allies in the Arab world, pro-US liberal and Arab intellectuals, conservative and liberal US intellectuals and former politicians, and even leftist Arab and American activists who support Palestinian rights: namely, that absent the pro- Israel lobby, America would at worst no longer contribute to the oppression of Arabs and Palestinians and at best it would be the Arabs’ and the Palestinians’ best ally and friend. What makes this argument persuasive and effective to Arabs? Indeed, why are its claims constantly brandished by Washington’s Arab friends to Arab and American audiences as a persuasive argument? I contend that the attraction of this argument is that it exonerates the United States’ government from all the responsibility and guilt that it deserves for its policies in the Arab world and gives false hope to many Arabs and Palestinians who wish America would be on their side instead of on the side of their enemies.

Let me start with the premise of this argument, namely its effect of shifting the blame for US policies from the United States onto Israel and its US lobby. According to this logic, it is not the United States that should be held directly responsible for all its imperial policies in the Arab world and the Middle East at large since World War II, rather it is Israel and its lobby who have pushed it to launch policies that are detrimental to its own national interest and are only beneficial to Israel. Establishing and supporting Arab and other Middle East dictatorships, arming and training their militaries, setting up their secret police apparatuses and training them in effective torture methods and counter-insurgency to be used against their own citizens should be blamed, according to the logic of these studies, on Israel and its US lobby. Blocking all international and UN support for Palestinian rights, arming and financing Israel in its war against a civilian population, protecting Israel from the wrath of the international community should also be blamed not on the United States, the studies insist, but on Israel and its lobby.

Additionally, and in line with this logic, controlling Arab economies and finances, dominating key investments in the Middle East, and imposing structural adjustment policies by the IMF and the World Bank which impoverish the Arab peoples should also be blamed on Israel, and not the United States. Finally, starving and then invading Iraq, threatening to invade Syria, raiding and then sanctioning Libya and Iran, besieging the Palestinians and their leaders, must also be blamed on the Israeli lobby and not the US government. Indeed, over the years, many pro-US Arab dictators let it leak officially and unofficially that their US diplomat friends have told them time and again how much they and “America” support the Arab world and the Palestinians were it not for the influence of the pro- Israel lobby (sometimes identified by the American diplomats in more explicit “ethnic” terms).

While many of the studies of the pro-Israel lobby are sound and full of awe-inspiring well- documented details about the formidable power commanded by groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its allies, the problem with most of them is what remains unarticulated. For example, when and in what context has the United States government ever supported national liberation in the Third World? The record of the United States is one of being the implacable enemy of all Third World national liberation groups. Why then the US would support national liberation in the Arab world absent the pro-Israel lobby is something these studies never explain.

The United States has had a consistent policy since World War II of fighting all regimes across the Third World who insist on controlling their national resources, whether it be land, oil, or minerals. This extends from Iran in 1953 to Guatemala in 1954 to the rest of Latin America all the way to present-day Venezuela. Africa has fared much worse in the last four decades, as have many countries in Asia. Why the would United States would support regimes in the Arab world who would nationalize natural resources and stop their pillage by American capital absent the pro-Israel lobby?

Finally, the United States government has opposed and overthrown, or tried to overthrow, any regime that seeks real and tangible independence in the Third World, and is especially galled by those regimes that pursue such policies through democratic elections. The overthrow of regimes from Arbenz to Goulart to Mossadegh and Allende and the ongoing attempts to overthrow Chavez are prominent examples, as are the overthrow Sukarno’s and Nkrumah’s nationalist regimes. The terror unleashed on populations who challenged US-installed regimes from El Salvador to Zaire to Chile and Indonesia, resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands, if not millions by repressive police and militaries trained for these important tasks by the US. This is aside from direct US invasions of South East Asian and Central American countries that killed untold millions for decades. Why would the US and its repressive agencies stop invading Arab countries, or stop supporting the repressive police forces of dictatorial Arab regimes, and why would the US stop setting up shadow governments inside its embassies in Arab capitals to run these countries’ affairs if the pro-Israel lobby did not exist? This is never broached by these studies, let alone explained.

The arguments put forth by these studies would be more convincing if the Israel lobby was forcing the United States government to pursue policies in the Middle East that are inconsistent with its global policies elsewhere. This, however, is far from what happens. While US policies in the Middle East may often be an exaggerated form of its repressive and anti-democratic policies elsewhere in the world, they are not inconsistent with them. One could make the case that the strength of the pro-Israel lobby is what accounts for this exaggeration, but even this contention is not entirely persuasive. One could argue that it is in fact the very centrality of Israel to US strategy in the Middle East that accounts, in part, for the strength of the pro-Israel lobby and not the other way around. Indeed, many of the recent studies highlight the role of pro-Likud members of the Bush administration (or even of the Clinton administration) as evidence of the lobby’s awesome power—when, it could be easily argued that it is these American politicians who had pushed Likud and Labour into more intransigence in the 1990s and are pushing them towards more conquest now that they are at the helm of the US government.

This is not to say that the leaders of the pro-Israel lobby do not regularly brag about their crucial influence on US policy in Congress and the White House. That they have done so regularly since the late 1970s. But the lobby is powerful in the United States because its major claims are about advancing US interests and its support for Israel is contextualized in its support for the overall US strategy in the Middle East. The pro-Israel lobby plays the same role that the China lobby played in the 1950s and the Cuba lobby still plays to this day. The fact that it is more powerful than any other foreign lobby on Capitol Hill testifies to the importance of Israel in US strategy and not to some fantastical power that the lobby commands independent of and extraneous to the US “national interest.”

Some would argue that even though Israel attempts to overlap its interests with those of the US, that its lobby is misleading American policy-makers and shifting their position from one of objective assessment of what is truly in America’s best interest. The argument runs as follows: US support for Israel causes groups who oppose Israel to hate the US and target it for attacks. It also costs the US friendly media coverage in the Arab world, affects its investment potential in Arab countries, and loses it important allies in the region, or at least weakens existing alliances. But none of this is true. The United States has been able to be Israel’s biggest backer and financier, its staunchest defender and weapons-supplier while maintaining strategic alliances with most if not all Arab dictatorships, including the Palestinian Authority under both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

Moreover, US companies and American investments have the largest presence across the Arab world, most prominently but not exclusively in the oil sector. Also, even without the pathetic and ineffective efforts at US propaganda in the guise of the television station Al-Hurra, or Radio Sawa and the now-defunct Hi magazine, not to mention US-paid journalists and newspapers in Iraq and elsewhere, a whole army of Arabic newspapers and state-television stations, not to mention myriad satellite television stations, all celebrate the US and its culture, broadcast American programs, and attempt to sell the US point of view as effectively as possible, encumbered only by the limitations that actual US policies in the region place on common sense. Even the offending Al-Jazeera has bent over backwards to accommodate the US point of view, but is constantly undercut by actual US policies in the region. Al-Jazeera, under tremendous pressure and threats of bombing from the United States, has nonetheless stopped referring to the US occupation forces in Iraq as “occupation forces” and now refers to them as “coalition forces.” Moreover, since when has the US sought to win a popularity contest among the peoples of the world? Arabs no more hate or love the United States than do Latin Americans, Africans, Asians, or even and especially Europeans.

Finally we come to the financial argument, namely that the US gives an inordinate amount of money to Israel—an exorbitant cost that is out of proportion to what the US gets in return. In fact, the United States spends much more on its military bases in the Arab world, not to mention on those in Europe or Asia, than it does on Israel. Israel has indeed been very effective in rendering services to its US master for a good price, whether in channeling arms to Central American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, helping pariah regimes like Taiwan and apartheid South Africa in the same period, supporting pro-US (including Fascist) groups inside the Arab world to undermine nationalist Arab regimes from Lebanon to Iraq to Sudan, coming to the aid of conservative pro-US Arab regimes when threatened (as it did for Jordan in 1970), and attacking Arab nationalist regimes outright—as it did in 1967 with Egypt and Syria and in 1981 with Iraq, when it destroyed that country’s nuclear reactor. While the US had been able to overthrow Sukarno and Nkrumah in bloody coups, Nasser remained entrenched until Israel effectively neutralized him in the 1967 war. It is thanks to this major service that the United States increased its support to Israel exponentially. Moreover, Israel neutralized the PLO in 1982—no small service to many Arab regimes and their US patron who could not fully control the organization until then.

None of the American military bases on which many more billions are spent can claim such a stellar record. Critics argue that when the US had to intervene in the Gulf, it could not rely on Israel for the job because including it in such a coalition would embarrass Arab allies; hence the uselessness of Israel as a strategic ally. But the US also could not rely on its military bases to launch the invasions on their own and had to ship in its army. American bases in the Gulf did provide important and needed support, but so did Israel.

AIPAC is indeed powerful insofar as it pushes for policies that accord with US interests and that are resonant with the reigning US imperial ideology. The power of the pro-Israel lobby is not based solely on its organizational skills or ideological uniformity. In no small measure, anti-Semitic attitudes in Congress play a role in belief in the lobby’s (and its enemies’) exaggerated claims about its actual power, resulting in lawmakers toeing the line. One could argue it does not matter whether the lobby has real or imagined power—for as long as Congress and policy-makers believe it does, it will remain effective and powerful. I, of course, concede this point.

What, then, would have been different in US policy in the Middle East absent Israel and its powerful lobby? The answer in short is: the details and intensity but not the direction, content, or impact of such policies. Is the pro-Israel lobby extremely powerful in the United States? As someone who has been facing the full brunt of their power for the last three years through their formidable influence on my own university and their attempts to get me fired, I answer with a resounding yes. Are they primarily responsible for US policies towards the Palestinians and the Arab world? Absolutely not. The United States is opposed in the Arab world as elsewhere because it has pursued and continues to pursue policies that are inimical to the interests of most people in these countries and are only beneficial to its own interests and to the minority regimes in the region that serve those interests (including Israel). Absent these policies—and not the pro-Israel lobby which supports them—the United States could expect a change in its standing among Arabs. Short of that, the United States will have to continue its policies in the region that have wreaked, and continue to wreak, havoc on the majority of Arabs and not expect that the Arab people will like it in return.

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Joseph Massad is associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University. His recent book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question was published by Routledge.

This story first appeared in Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt,
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/op35.htm

See also:

“Arab scholar: ‘Jewish lobby’ scapegoat for imperial interests,” WW4 REPORT, March 25
/node/1774

Pappe refutes Chomsky on Israel Lobby
/node/1826

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

EL SALVADOR:

No Business as Usual as CAFTA Takes Effect

by Paul Pollack

SAN SALVADOR, March 1 — There was little fanfare and much protest today as the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) went into effect in El Salvador. The country is the first Central American nation to honor CAFTA and for the second straight day, thousands marched and traffic was snarled throughout San Salvador. Five other signatory nations have failed to meet US requirements necessary to join the agreement.

The day before, Salvadoran President Tony Saca proclaimed the start of CAFTA by announcing to George Bush (who was not present), “Come with your basket empty and take it home full.”

Today’s march started at the Salvador del Mundo Plaza and streamed for blocks to the Civic Plaza, in the heart of downtown San Salvador. Vendors of pirated CD’s and small farmers took to the streets next to unionists, students and anarchists. All declared their opposition to CAFTA, or the “TLC,” as it is known in Spanish.

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) political party announced that it intended to repeal CAFTA legislation, based on its inconformity with the Salvadoran constitution. The party submitted a lawsuit before the Supreme Court of Justice, but acknowledged that without a majority in the country’s Legislative Assembly behind them, there was not much hope for success.

Many people are looking towards the March 12 elections to decide CAFTA’s fate. If CAFTA opponents can gather 43 votes in the Legislative Assembly, they will be able to repeal enacting laws that the US deems essential for CAFTA participation.

CAFTA regulates trade in goods, services and investment, and forces governments to extend “national treatment” to foreign corporations. The agreement creates special courts to adjudicate trade disputes. These courts allow corporations to sue governments for “anticipated lost profits” if they can prove that local laws impede business. Protesters say that CAFTA will destroy local agricultural production by allowing cheap produce and grain from the US to enter tariff-free.

Perhaps the most heartening resistance to CAFTA in El Salvador has come from the informal sector. Months ago, the US demanded that El Salvador pass more stringent laws protecting copyright and brand-name logos. National police immediately launched a campaign to eliminate vendors who sold copies of popular CD’s, DVD’s and other name-brand merchandise. Instead of closing up shop however, vendors organized and fought back for their right to sell the gray-market merchandise. These vendors were in the streets yesterday in full force. One sign read: “No to originals!”

Protesters vowed to continue the fight and very few in the crowd felt that CAFTA was permanent.

——

This piece originally appeared in Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/221/1/

See also:

“El Salvador: Protests as CAFTA Starts,” Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 5
/node/1813

“Water Privatization for El Salvador?” by Paul Pollack, WW4 REPORT #119
/node/1667

“CAFTA’s Assault on Democracy,” by Tom Ricker and Burke Stansbury, WW4 REPORT #119
/node/1665

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

NAGORNO-KARABAKH:

Stalin’s Shadow Looms Over Trans-Caucasus Pipeline

by Rene Wadlow

The president of Azerbaijan, Ilhan Aliyev (son of the long-time president Heydar Aliyev), and Robert Kocharian, president of Armenia, met outside Paris, in Rambouillet Feb. 10-11, to discuss the stalemated conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Rambouillet had also been the scene for the last-chance negotiations on Kosovo just before the NATO bombing of Serbia began in 1999.

During the two years of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, 1992-1994, at least 20,000 people were killed and more than a million persons displaced from Armenia, Azerbaijan and the 12,000 square miles of Nagorno-Karabakh itself. Armenian forces now control the Nagorno-Karabakh area—an Armenian-populated enclave within Azerbaijan. Since 1994, there has been a relatively stable ceasefire. Nagorno-Karabakh has declared its independence as a separate state. No other state—including Armenia—has recognized this independent status, but, in practice, Nagorno-Karabakh is a de facto state with control over its population and its own military forces. Half of the government’s revenue is raised locally; the other half comes from the government of Armenia and especially the Armenian diaspora, strong in the United States, Canada, Lebanon, and Russia.

In addition to Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian forces hold seven small districts around the enclave, some 5,500 square kilometers that had been populated by Azeris and that are considered as “occupied territory.” One of the ideas being floated during these negotiations is an Armenian withdrawal from these occupied territories accompanied by international security guarantees and an international peacekeeping force, probably under the control of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which has been the major forum for negotiation on the Nagorno-Karabkh conflict.

The USA, France, and Russia are the co-chairmen of a mediating effort called the “Minsk Group” after an OSCE conference on Nagorno-Karabakh which was to have been held in Minsk—but then indefinitely postponed as there was no clear basis for a compromise solution. Part of the negotiating guidelines of the Minsk Group meetings is that no official report is made on the negotiations, so that analysis is always an effort at putting pieces together from partial statements, leaks, and “off-the-record” interviews with the press. This blackout on direct statements opens the door to highly partisan analysis in both countries, where the press has always been hard line. There are those who believe that both presidents are “ahead of their people” in their willingness to compromise and to move beyond the current “no war, no peace” situation which is a drain on economic and social resources.

However, in both countries, the media is under tight control of the respective governments—so the militaristic tone of the press is not against government policy. The blackout on press statements is also due to the monopoly on both sides of a small, tight group of people responsible for the negotiations. Informal “Track Two” meetings are very difficult and the few held were met by general suspicion or hostility. There is a need for a broader-based pubic peacemaking effort to counter the current narrow, militant rhetoric.

The Nagorno-Karabakh issue arises from the post-Revolution/Civil War period of Soviet history when Joseph Stalin was Commissioner for Nationalities. Stalin came from neighboring Georgia and knew the Caucasus well. His policy was a classic “divide and rule”—designed so that national/ethnic groups would need to depend on the central government in Moscow for protection. Thus in 1922, the frontiers of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia were hammered out in what was then the Transcaucasian Federative Republic. Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority area, was given a certain autonomy within Azerbaijan but was geographically cut off from Armenia. Likewise, an Azeri majority area, Nakkickevan, was created as an autonomous republic within Armenia but cut off geographically from Azerbaijan. Thus both enclaves had to look to Moscow for protection. This was especially true for the Armenians. Many Armenians living in what had been historic Armenia which came under Turkish control had been killed during the First World War; Armenians living in “Soviet Armenia” had relatives and friends among those killed by the Turks, creating a permanent sense of vulnerability and insecurity. Russia was considered a historic ally of Armenia.

These mixed administrative units worked well enough—or, one should say, there were few criticisms allowed—until 1988 when the whole Soviet model of nationalities and republics started to come apart. In both Armenia and Azerbeijan, natioanlistic voices were raised, and a strong “Karabakh Committee” began demanding that Nagorno-Karabakh be attached to Armenia. In Azerbaijan, anti-Armenian sentiment was set aflame. Many Armenians who were working in the oil-related economy of Baku were under tension and started leaving. This was followed somewhat later by real anti-Armenian pogroms. Some 160,000 Armenians left Azerbaijan for Armenia, and others went to live in Russia.

With the break up of the Soviet Union and the independence of Armenia and Azerbaijan, tensions focused on Nagorno-Karabakh. By 1992, full-scale conflict broke out in and around Nagorno-Karabkh and went on for two years, causing large-scale damage. The Armenian forces of Nagorno-Karabakh, aided by volunteers from Armenia, kept control of the area, while Azerbaijan faced repeated political crises.

The condition of “no peace, no war” followed the ceasefire largely negotiated by Russia in 1994. This status quo posed few problems to the major regional states, all preoccupied by other geo-political issues. Informal and illicit trade within the area has grown. However, interest in a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has grown as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline opened in May 2005. The pipeline is scheduled to carry one million barrels of oil a day from the Caspian to the Mediterranean by 2009. The pipeline passes within 10 miles of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The crucial question for a settlement is the acceptance by all parties and by the OSCE of an independent “mini-state.” An independent Nagorno-Karabakh might become the “Liechtenstein of the Caucasus.” After 15 years of independence, Karabakh Armenians do not want to be at the mercy of decisions made in distant centers of power but to decide their own destiny. However, the recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent states raises the issue of the status of other de facto mini-states of the region, such as Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and Kosovo in Serbia. Close attention must be paid to the potential restructuring of the area. Can mini-states be more than a policy of divide and rule? The long shadow of Joseph Stalin still hovers over the land.

——

Rene Wadlow is editor of the online journal of world politics Transnational Perspectives and an NGO representative to the UN, Geneva. Formerly, he was professor and Director of Research of the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva.

This piece originally appeared in Toward Freedom, March 21 http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/773/

RESOURCES:

For a good analysis of Stalin’s nationality policies see Helene Carrere d’Encausse, The Great Challenge: Nationalities and the Bolshevik State 1917-1930 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1992)

On the need for a wider peace constituency in the negotiations see Laurence Broers (ed), The Limits of Leadership: Elites and Societies in the Nagorny Karabakh Peace Process (London: Conciliation Resources, 2006)

See also:

“Georgia accuses Russia in pipeline blast,” WW4 REPORT, Jan. 24
/node/1526

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

HOUZAN MAHMOUD INTERVIEW

The Iraqi Freedom Congress and the Civil Resistance

by Bill Weinberg

Houzan Mahmoud is a co-founder of the Iraqi Freedom Congress (IFC), a new initiative to build a democratic, secular and progressive alternative to both the US occupation and political Islam in Iraq. Mahmoud, who fled Iraq in 1996 and is currently studying at the University of London, is also a co-founder of the Iraqi Women’s Rights Coalition and editor-in-chief of Equal Rights Now, paper of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI). A key representative abroad of the Iraqi civil resistance, she spoke in New York City on March 21 at a talk sponsored by the New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education (The New SPACE). Later that night, she spoke with WW4 REPORT editor Bill Weinberg on WBAI Radio.

BW: Welcome aboard, Houzan Mahmoud, of the Iraqi Freedom Congress and the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. You were just speaking on the Lower East Side this evening and the night before at Queens College, to raise awareness in this country about the existence of a civil, secular resistance movement in Iraq—which shamefully, many people know nothing about, even people who are supposedly progressives and committed to the anti-war movement.

HM: Yeah, that’s very true, unfortunately. So thank you very much for this opportunity, for me to be able to address the listeners about the resistance and the work we are doing to end the occupation.

BW: There’s recently been an increasing, almost apocalyptic sense of the situation in Iraq, and there’s more and more talk in this country that it’s going to over the edge into civil war. Some of us have been arguing that it’s already a civil war. It sort of depends on what your litmus test is for a civil war. Apparently the popular litmus test for the media is an actual fracturing of the coalition government which the US occupation has managed to assemble there. But if you apply another litmus test, of the actual level of violence in society, I think you could argue that there’s already a civil war in Iraq.

HM: Yes, I agree with you. We have warned of this consequence from the very beginning, of this division that the US government has subjected the Iraqi people to, dividing them along lines of ethnic background, religious sects… What else could happen in Iraq that is worse than this situation right now? You can see all these armed militias that are killing innocent civilians, just for being labeled Sunnis or Shiites, which is really, really dangerous. Although the society as a whole is being dragged into this, I think ordinary people do not want to be part of a sectarian war. The armed militias are using the occupation as a golden opportunity to further their attacks on civilians and impose their poisonous politics on Iraqi society.

BW: You are originally from Sulaymaniyah, in Kurdistan, in northern Iraq.

HM: Yes, I am

BW: Most recently, you’ve been living in London, England.

HM: I’m a student at the University of London, and I’m a full-time activist—24 hours, I can say, almost! Trying to support the women’s movement in Iraq, the workers’ movement, and recently we formed the Iraqi Freedom Congress, our alternative against occupation and against this ethnic division of Iraq…

BW: The Iraqi Freedom Congress was founded just about a year ago, right?

HM: Yes, almost a year ago. Basically I think that’s an outcome of the struggles of women—namely Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, or OWFI. It is very widely known internationally throughout Iraq and the Middle East for its courageous work to stand up for women’s rights, for freedom, for equality, for secularism. Also the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq, which is a strong labor organization, independent from the state, and which also advocates against occupation. It is for the rights of workers to organize, to mobilize, and to have a say and a role in shaping politics in Iraq. And there have been all these movements going on.

And we who are involved in these movements decided to form an organization that is more political and can attract many more people to its ranks. And we have student union that is also part of this, and other individuals and political parties that are part of Iraq Freedom Congress. And we have our own platform—we want an end to the occupation, we want an end to this ethnic and sectarian division of Iraq, and we want people to identify themselves on the basis of their humane identity, not this kind of degrading classifications such as being Sunni or Shiite or Kurd or Arab or you name it.

So therefore, I think Iraq Freedom Congress is a hope at this moment, and we are trying to mobilize people for this movement worldwide, as well as inside Iraq to create a civil movement, with a very clear vision for an egalitarian secular system inside Iraq to be established. Ending occupation is a very important aim. But—what’s after that? What alternative? What is going on at the moment in the name of so-called resistance—it has nothing to do with people’s desire for a better life, for peace, or any sense of democracy or freedom; they just want to Talibanize Iraq. We have a social program. We want people to have a better life. And that’s what the story of IFC is about, basically.

BW: Unfortunately, the popular portrayal in the media in this country—and alas, I do not exclude the left media, or the alternative media—is that there is on the one hand the occupation and the collaborationist forces, and on the other the insurgents. And there is very little awareness that there is any other force in Iraq—and sometimes hostility to the notion that it exists. So the first question is going to be how much influence and support does the IFC actually have on the ground in Iraq?

HM: I think we have to take into consideration this chaotic situation in Iraq. We are organizing under occupation, we are organizing under the heavy presence of various Islamist armed militias who are highly brutal, who are killing and beheading and kidnapping people. So we are mobilizing amongst all this chaos and danger, standing up for secularism, standing up for women’s rights, for workers’ rights. There is a great potential in Iraqi society for these ideals. These are not new to our society. All of my comrades inside Iraq are risking their lives every moment to stand up for these principles, and for actually freeing Iraqi people from what we term the dark scenario that we’ve been subjected to. We do have grassroots support, we do have existence among the workers, among the women, and in the student movement particularly as well, after standing up against Moqtada al-Sadr in the city of Basra. Thousands of university students in Basra, took to the streets to demonstrated against Moqtada al-Sadr…

BW: This was when?

HM: This was March last year. So that led into the creation of a student union, which is progressive, which is in the same line with us…

BW: And what exactly were these strikes and protests in response to?

HM: One day there was an outing by the students, of the kind which usually takes place—you go to a picnic in a park, girls and boys, make some talk, listen to music, dance even. But nowadays they can’t dance of course—so they were just in the park, talking and listening to music, and suddenly the militias of Moqtada al-Sadr attacked the whole gathering and they killed one student and they just humiliated all the female students. So that created a lot of anger among the students, and they just decided to strike for a few days on the campuses, and then they took to the streets to demonstrate against Moqtada’s group. And Moqtada was actually forced to apologize to the students, officially.

BW: Indeed?

HM: Yeah. So therefore they have now a student union which is strong, which is mobilizing students, and it’s very progressive. And now they are part of Iraq Freedom Congress as well, because they find a platform suits them.

BW: So this mobilization against the Sadr militia was the founding struggle of a new student movement.

HM: Exactly. It’s called Student Struggle Union. So, yeah, we have grassroots support, but that’s not enough to be able to combat such difficult situations. We need to build up on it a strong civil movement inside Iraq as well as world wide—the Iraq Freedom Congress is open for membership from across the world; whoever agrees with the platform of the Iraq Freedom Congress, they can join, they can promote its activities. And I think it’s important and it’s needed. We need a very progressive civil movement world-wide against war—against the occupation of Iraq, and for promoting progressive alternatives throughout Middle East, not only in Iraq. At the moment, many of those who are in the lead of the anti-war movement are really reactionary, backward, and they’re even using anti-war demos to propagate for things that have nothing to do with Iraq in my opinion.

BW: What do you mean?

HM: For example, in UK, where I live, left groups and Islamist organizations in the Stop the War Coalition ue all their efforts to get someone elected to Parliament, like George Galloway. And what the hell—this hasn’t to do anything with Iraq.

BW: Well, I suppose they would argue that by getting their people in Parliament, they can get the UK out of Iraq.

HM: Well that’s not how things work; you have to build up a movement for that. Through one MP or two MPs…

BW: Right, but I suppose they would argue that it’s not mutually exclusive—that you can build a movement and at the same time try to get your people in Parliament…

HM: Well, I don’t agree with that notion, because even having people in Parliament, if they are hypocritical, and if they are not really for the cause itself, how can they be any influence at all? And let’s not forget who Galloway is and what he stood for in the past—saluting Saddam. For what? For killing people, for starting wars? They make heroes of such people, giving them platform. Whereas they are completely blind to the women’s movement in Iraq, to the workers’ movement in Iraq. They mention no word about these movements, they give no support to these movements, while in their official statements, they say, “unconditional solidarity with the resistance in Iraq” Who is this resistance? They mean Moqtada, they mean Zarqawi, al-Qaeda—who are terrorist networks, who are beheading people and on a daily basis creating more terror in our society. So I think really this is something that they have to be ashamed of. I think we need to build up a very progressive anti-war movement, a very progressive initiative world-wide, in support of the progressive movement inside Iraq.

SELF-DEFENSE NETWORKS, “HUMAN IDENTITY”

BW: Before we return to the international situation, why don’t you tell us more about the actual work of the IFC and its member organizations on the ground in Iraq, and some of the victories they’ve achieved.

HM: Well, at the moment lack of security is a very, very major problem in Iraq. Imagine, you go out for two seconds, and you are not sure if you can get back to your door safely. If there is no basic security, how can people mobilize effectively, how can they bring about some sense of civil society? Therefore, one of the things that IFC is trying to work on is to respond to that particular demand and need for the people of Iraq—to bring about security, by people themselves. By creating a safety force in each neighborhood and district, for people from the neighborhood themselves to create committees of security, and to not allow militias and the occupying forces to enter their neighborhood and to turn it into a battlefield. Because this is happening. Armed militias can just go attack some people in the neighborhood, kill them or behead them, just because they’re, as I said, Sunnis or whatever. We shouldn’t allow this to happen, people should feel safe in their own neighborhoods, and that’s the most important and crucial thing for people in Iraq—to believe in themselves, that they are powerful and that they can do things, they can provide security for themselves. What we say at the moment, our slogan, is “Our safety is in our own hands.” The USA cannot provide us security, armed militias cannot provide us security. Because they come to the neighborhood, if you are not 100% like them, they will kill you.

BW: How are you organizing these public safety networks? How are you actually countering these heavily armed militias?

HM: There are people in the neighborhoods who are trusted, the key people in the area—they hold gatherings, they talk to the people on how to create these committees, to watch out what’s going on in the neighborhood, and protect the people from anybody who wants to harm them…

BW: Are they armed themselves?

HM: They are armed. At the moment, in Iraq, every family, every household, has a gun. People have guns at home, to be able to defend themselves if someone is attacking them in the middle of the night. But we trying to make this more collective—to expand that protection to the whole neighborhood by preventing groups of armed militias entering.

And if they see that, if they see that everyone is united and are protecting the areas, they will not be able to attack one individual because they are weaker… And in two or three areas now we have started this initiative and it has been successful. And there’s a lot of desire for the same model from other areas of Baghdad. But we need a lot of support, we need a lot of resources.

BW: Primarily, this model is in place in a particular neighborhood in Kirkuk, I understand.

HM: Yes, it’s called Solidarity. It’s a very ethnically diverse neighborhood—Kurds, Turcomans, Arabs, Christians. All these groups lived in Kirkuk for many years and the political groups want to create hatred between these people. And we are fighitng this. We have a campaign called “The identity of Kirkuk is a human identity, not an ethnic identity.” And people live in Solidarity with peace, there’s no problem, no attacks, nothing—because they are just looking after themselves collectively. So I think that works, and I think it’s very important just to spread this principle, this idea that we’re all humans, there’s no need to attack each other, or to listen to these politicized religious groups trying to bring about this ethnic or sectarian division.

BW: Kirkuk is actually very strategic. We hear a lot more about Samara now, and last year it was Fallujah, in the center of Iraq, which is where the real violence has been recently. But the situation in Kirkuk is extremely tense, and there’s a real danger of a social explosion there.

HM: Yeah, when you look at Kirkuk, it has always been diverse, as I said. There was a diversity. But Saddam’s regime was a fascist regime. They started ethnic cleansing of Kurds; they have expelled a lot of Kurdish people from Kirkuk and replaced them with Arab families. After the occupation happened, the Kurdish nationalist parties wanted to do the same thing..

BW: Remove the Arabs and bring the Kurds back in…

HM: Exactly. The same model. You know, people have no hand in this. It’s always the political people who are in power, they try to put the seed of hatred among the people. But in reality, Kirkuk has been stable for awhile, just because of our campaigning and ongoing intervention …

BW: So this neighborhood in Kirkuk, you call it Solidarity. The name in Arabic is..?

HM: Al-Tzaman.

BW: Which means Solidarity. So you have these armed patrols to keep the ethnic and the sectarian militias out, but your strategy of resistance is one of civil resistance, rather than armed insurgency…

HM: Yes, because when you look at Iraq, now you have all these armed militias attacking everywhere—suicide bombers, terrorist attacks on civilian targets. That won’t take us anywhere, it will just drag the society into much more chaos. I am not against armed resistance in principle. I am against this kind of so-called resistance that is going on in Iraq. What I believe is that you can organize people, you can mobilize people in a mass movement. But just turning people into killing machine—is that all what so-called armed resistance is about? Or is it about bringing about a better future for people as well as fighting in this battle? I think it’s important to return the civil life to Iraqi society, because all the civil infrastructure has been destroyed, the state is not functioning anywhere—it’s dysfunctional, because it’s a puppet regime. People are shattered. People just want to see freedom, they want to see peace, and they want to live in a stable society, they don’t want chaos and terrorism. And that’s why we are different, we call ourselves a civil movement that believes in organizing people and mobilizing them—although using arms to protect people, for self-defense. Because at the moment, if you don’t have arms, even as an individual, you are at risk. So that is what the philosophy is behind this issue.

FEDERALISM VS. SELF-DETERMINATION

BW: Alright, so what is your program for what a free Iraq would look like, and what is your strategy on how to get there?

HM: Well, it’s a difficult one. It’s not an easy task. It’s a very, very difficult and dangerous battle in my opinion. Our alternative is for returning the power of people to have a say and choice and direct intervention into setting up any kind of society. We believe in, secularism, equality between men and women, abolishment of capital punishment, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of protest and strikes, labor rights, worker’s rights. In our program, if the Kurdish people want independence, they should be able to. They have the right to determine this by themselves, not to have this dictated upon them by political parties.

BW: And yet, you oppose the Kurdish nationalist parties.

HM:: Yes, because the Kurdish nationalist parties are using the issue of Kurdistan. I’m from there, and I know that the majority of Kurdish people want independence, they don’t want to be part of Iraq anymore—because they have suffered so much ethnic cleansing and oppression, and it’s always a threat. Now, the Shiites in power just say Iraq is a Muslim country, Iraq is an Arab country—so when you say that, of course, Kurdish people will feel threatened, because that’s exactly the same statement that Saddam was making: Iraq is an Arab country. So all the others are second-class citizens. People don’t want to go back to that, because in 1991, when the uprising took place, a lot of people were killed. It was a big uprising, with so many people sacrificing their lives just to be freed from Saddam.

BW: And this is a cycle that had just repeated itself for the past 20 years before that in Iraq. There was the campaign against the Kurds in 1988 and then in the 1970’s as well.

HM: So, yeah, that is one of the IFC’s programs as well. If we manage to get into power, the Kurdish question needs to be solved.

BW: But do you see the potential for some kind of solution short of separatism for Kurdistan? You say, in fact, that you oppose a federalist solution for Iraq and that you prefer to see it as a unitary state.

HM: Federalism is a reactionary solution. Because that means that [local authorities] in their own areas can do whatever they want. If the Sunnis have their own area, the Shiites to have their own space, and Kurds in the North, they can just carry on with oppression of women, or killing workers, and killing socialists and activists, and just carry on with Islamic Sharia law and say, well, this is my culture and this is my area. I’m not for that, I’m against it. In my opinion, the best solution is to have a secular, egalitarian state system, whereby people—everybody, every person in Iraq—are considered equal citizens regardless of whatever their origins are. Then people will not feel so much degraded. You are not divided or classified as a second-class citizen because you are Sunni, or because you are Shiite you have more power. This is the problem, this is what creates inequality and problems.

BW: OK, so you do see the potential for a solution for Kurdistan short of secession.

HM: Well, with this current setting, in this puppet regime, there’s no solution at all, and people are always threatened. There’s a lot of protests in the North, in Kurdistan, and people are really angry…

BW: Big protests in Halabja recently, against the Kurdish nationalist party which is in power there [The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani]…

HM: Exactly. They are very unhappy with the way they are dealing with the issues of Kurdistan and using the oppression of Kurds just to stay in power. So I don’t see any solutions with them. They have never represented the desires of Kurdish people anyway.

BW: But it the IFC achieves its aim of a secular state, you believe in the possibility that the state could include areas in the North?

HM: Yeah, but there should not be any force to keep them in Iraq. They just have to go ahead with it, and have a free referendum for the independence of Kurdistan. And that’s what I think is the best solution, basically.

SHARIA AND THE NEW CONSTITUTION

BW: Let’s talk a bit more about some of the member organizations in the IFC and what they’ve achieved. The Organization of Women’s Freedom—OWFI—is the group you’re most closely associated with of the IFC member organizations. They led a campaign which was successful against the measure in the interim constitution which would have imposed Sharia law. But now there are similar measures in the new permanent constitution which was approved by a popular referendum in December.

HM: Yes, This so-called constitution is very reactionary. It’s totally based on Islam. It even says that the judges should have high command of Islamic Sharia law. This was never a requirement before. And even before writing up the constitution, they were practicing Islamic Sharia law—in Najaf and Karbala and Mosul and some parts of Basra…

BW: The local authorities were imposing it…

HM: Yeah, the Shiites in power are just imposing it, conducting everything on the basis of Sharia law. It is the forced Islamization of Iraq. And they just are trying to institutionalize women’s oppression, and all kinds of discrimination against women. And that’s what we are really up against.

BW: What does the new constitution actually say in regard to Sharia?

HM: Well, I’m sure people are very well aware if they know the history of OWFI, that two years ago, when they tried to pass Resolution 137 to implement Islamic Sharia law, we led a world-wide campaign against that, and so it was defeated.

BW: Right, that was in the interim constitution.

HM: Exactly. But in this new constitution they are not so openly calling for full Sharia law. They say the constitution and the laws of Iraq are based on Islam; Islam is the official religion of the country. When you say the country is based on Islam, that means Islamic Sharia law to us. So we kept going on and we keep opposing that constitution. We boycotted the referendum for the so-called constitution, because we thought this is just a piece of paper to legalize women’s oppression, nothing else.

BW: So the constitution which is in place now sort of dodges the question, or it’s a little bit vague on that point.

HM: It’s vague on many points, actually; it’s contradictory in many parts. And in reality, when you start reading the constitution, it looks like you are reading the Koran. It’s written in a very religious way.

BW: How so?

HM: It starts with the name of Allah. A constitution is about law, not about religion. So why do they have to bring in these things about Islam? It’s funny, and strange at the same time. And sad, of course.

BW: So even though the constitution is sort of ambiguous on this, you still see the potential for imposition of Sharia law in the courts at the local level.

HM: Yes, and as I said, in so many parts of Iraq it’s already happening.

BW: Just recently, on March 8, International Women’s Day, OWFI had a gathering in Baghdad, in spite of the extremely dangerous atmosphere there.

HM: Yes, it was held at our headquarters, in Baghdad. Almost 100 women took part; we had a press conference and an exhibition of art painted by women themselves, who have been imprisoned, who have been tortured, who have seen the torture of children, rape of women…

BW: By whom? By the local militias?

HM: By the local Iraqi police, as well as by the American soldiers. So it was a very important gathering, because recently, as you know, there has been a lot of sectarian religious warfare, and there have been curfews in Baghdad, a really, really chaotic situation. But the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq is determined to make women’s voices heard all over. So they had a successful event to celebrate International Women’s Day.

WORKERS LIBERATE POWER PLANT FROM OCCUPATION

BW: Another inspiring example that you mentioned earlier tonight is how in areas where there is insufficient electricity, the workers have in some cases actually taken over the generation plants, and got them going and supplied power.

HM: Yeah, that’s true. There was a power station that was actually being used by the occupying soldiers, at al-Musayib just outside Baghdad. And the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions led a protest of the workers in that power station—hundreds of workers, among them women. And they were treated very badly, they were assaulted by the soldiers because they were protesting. So it took a long time—they were on strike and in protest for several days. We had a campaign for them internationally to make the issue known, and Falah Halwan, the president of the Federation of Workers Councils, had a very important role in leading this. And the workers in that power station, found that they can deliver electricity to the people, 24 hours a day. It was just because the occupying soldiers were there, they were not allowing them to go and do their work, and as a result, people had just five hours a day of electricity. So you can see the occupying soldiers are turning the factories and working places and the schools into a military zone.

BW: What were the US troops doing there? Were they supposedly providing security for the plant?

HM: Not at all. They were just there…

BW: Just using it as a barracks, so to speak?

HM: Yeah.

BW: And they finally did leave?

HM: Yeah, because the strike continued and there was a lot of pressure, and even the man who was in charge of the police forces in al-Musayib town was very grateful, because he could never ask the US to leave that power plant. It was our federation who actually brought this about.

BW: And when did they finally leave?

HM: Just a few months ago the whole thing happened. I think the soldiers left around September, October…

CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

BW: I should ask you some Devil’s advocate questions now—because these are the questions which a lot of activists here in the United States are concerned with, in terms of the notion of supporting a civil resistance movement in Iraq. And one is the fear that after the US pulls out, it’ll just be like a house of cards and society will collapse into ethnic and sectarian warfare. A lot of people are afraid to take a position of immediate withdrawal of US troops. They’re afraid that will plunge Iraq into the abyss. So, I’d like to hear your response to that.

HM: I think it’s already there. Iraqi society is already being smashed up—by the occupation itself, by the chaos that has been created, by the lack of security and stability for the Iraqi people, by imposing a puppet regime on the Iraqi people which is heavily divided on the basis of sectarian lines. And you know, so many of them are criminals, they have to be brought to justice, but instead they are actually being imposed on us. And you have all these armed militias on the ground, they have just brought a civil war, a sectarian civil war, a religious war. We have seen the occupying forces there for the last three years. Every day we see the situation is getting worse; I think we haven’t seen any week or any day in a month that there haven’t been hundreds of people killed—suicide bombings, terrorist attacks—and they are using occupation as a pretext to justify those criminal acts. Having the occupation there is not solving any of this, actually. It’s just deepening the problems, just deepening the division among people. So therefore, I think the withdrawal of troops, actually, is going to ease a lot of problems. The majority of Iraqi people want to see every troop to leave Iraq. And you know, these armed militia—what other excuse will be there to terrorize people or to kill them or to kidnap them? What other excuses will they have? It’s occupation. So therefore I think it’s wrong, that notion that pulling out will create more problems. I think it will not. It won’t be as worse than this, in my opinion.

BW: So you think a US withdrawal will actually open more space for the existence of some kind of secular civil alternative?

HM: I think it will then be us and them.

BW: And who are the “them” that you mean?

HM: Armed militias and Islamists, terrorist networks, who basically have no other excuses to be there, apart from using the occupation as a justification for their criminal acts, as I said.

BW: Well, again playing Devil’s advocate—You say it would just be you and them. Is that necessarily a good thing? No mediating force?

HM: The US and the occupying powers, in my opinion, are protecting terrorist networks, rather than secular, progressive movements inside Iraq. The occupying forces were the first to prevent Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq from having a demonstration against the rape and abduction. We were told that we are not allowed to have a demonstration without their permission. The first Union of the Unemployed in Iraq sit-in strikes in Baghdad, in the very beginning of the occupation—its leaders were arrested by the US occupying powers. So they don’t want to see any progressive, militant, secular, egalitarian movement inside Iraq which have a vision for a better future, for an alternative, for a government that is not a puppet of the US They just want to put puppets there, they don’t care what’s happening to the society… what they care is just their own interest. We are not protecting their interest, we are protecting the interest of the Iraqi people; that’s why they don’t want us to grow and they won’t be any support to us at all.

BW: The second argument which I frequently get, is that we have to support the insurgents, because the insurgents are the actually existing resistance to US imperialism. That supporting a civil or secular movement is a distraction, and that we have no right to tell the Iraqi people what form their resistance will take.

HM: I myself have been told so many times abroad in various meetings and seminars, “Why you are not allying with the so-called resistance, and fighting together against occupation?” I think this question is either very naive, or it’s actually stupid, just to think about that. They are Islamists who are killing women and beheading them for not wearing the veil. How can I, in any sense, as the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, go into alliance with the enemy of women in Iraq? Or, those Islamists who have no eye to see a secular person, who consider anyone who is secular as infidels who therefore they have to be killed? How can I form any alliances with these kind of people? And plus, what is their social program? You need to have a social program to agree on—is just fighting occupation everything? I have to sacrifice women’s rights, I have to sacrifice workers’ rights, secularism, I have to sacrifice my rights as a human being to fight the occupation? I don’t. I think it’s a historical mistake and it’s suicidal for my movement inside Iraq to go that route, just to please some marginalized leftists in the US or Europe, for their fantasizing or romanticizing the issue of resistance against imperialism.

These Islamists have no sense of anti-imperialist vision. They have no sense of working class struggle or any kind of anything like that. They are people who have primitive notions of running societies, you know? The Talibanization of Iraq, that’s what they want—I don’t want to be part of that destructive agenda. The best thing in Iraq that has ever happened are these movements that we are leading. I think if we are progressive people, if we are from an egalitarian point of view, we have to promote something that is for women’s rights, for workers’ rights, that promotes secularism—and we shouldn’t support bigots, we shouldn’t support reactionary movements who are oppressive in any way.

BW: Well you say that the leftists who are taking this line are marginalized, but unfortunately, they’re not all that marginalized. I mean, they’re in positions of leadership in some of the major anti-war organizations in this country.

HM: But in reality again they are marginalized in daily politics, in the struggles that are going on in society. Where are they when the workers are going on strike? Are they doing anything? Do they have any women’s movement? A lot of violence is going on in this country against women as well, it is not only intrinsic to the Middle East. There are a lot of working class struggles here too, that they have nothing to do with. These leftist organizations have turned so far right that they ally with Islamists, under the umbrella of multiculturalism, cultural relativism. They actually betray their own principles…

BW: I would take issue with the notion that multiculturalism and cultural relativism are synonymous. I support multiculturalism in one form or another, but I would not support cultural relativism in the sense in which you’re using it. Those are distinct things.

HM: I agree with you. But for example, let’s take the case of London. London is a multicultural city, people are living here with different cultures. But I don’t want to see backward cultures. I don’t want to see oppressive cultures. It has to be challenged. That is my difference on this issue. It’s racism to say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter—honor killings, for example, is part of the culture for Middle Eastern people.” It’s not a culture, this is a political, criminal act. Beating up your wife in public—this is your culture? No, anybody has to stand up against this. So I look at it as racism. And for people who call themselves socialist—they shouldn’t be like this. They should stand up for freedom, for human rights, for everybody.

BW: Another concern which has been raised is that your call for international solidarity could paradoxically hurt you in Iraq, that you could thereby be portrayed as not truly indigenous, as the pawns of outside forces.

HM: No, that’s not the case. Why don’t they say that about the government being installed by US and UK? Why don’t they say that about Zarqawi, bin Laden, Moqtada al-Sadr? They have all this support from people in Europe…

BW: I would imagine al-Sadr would have more support from Iran, and Zarqawi from Saudi Arabia…

HM: But still…these are not from Iraq. Why not see them as that? And plus—if there are any movements in any part of the world, there is international solidarity coming in from different people across the world. This has been part of the history of our universalist movements. They say unconditional support for the so-called resistance? Why are they not saying the same to the progressive movements in the Middle East, why not unconditional support for us?

BW: Well, it’s different people who have raised this criticism. People who are not supportive of the insurgents in Iraq have also expressed to me concerns that international solidarity could paradoxically harm your cause.

HM: I think it’s just an excuse not to give support, that’s what I believe. It comes from prejudice against progressive movements in the Middle East. Because they just have this media portrayal of the Middle East and Iraq as ignorant, uneducated people who have no sense of struggle, people who have no history of a women’s movement, no history of working-class struggle. And that’s very untrue. In Iraq, there has been a very strong workers’ movement, there has been a women’s movement. It has been repressed, but then it comes back into force, you know, that’s how it works. And I think it has to be viewed in this way—that there are progressive movements, socialist movements, throughout the Middle East. People have to open up their eyes and accept the concept that yes, the Middle East is like any other part of the world, there are different movements…

Like in US, you have fundamentalist Christians who are blowing up abortion clinics; that’s not everybody in the USA who is doing that. And you know, in the Middle East is the same. I think supporting the so-called resistance is like supporting Christian fundamentalists because they are blowing up abortion clinics… I think people have to stand up to these reactionary ideas and to start thinking about bringing about a progressive movement, and reviving the sense of internationalism and unconditional solidarity for the progressive socialist movements throughout the world…

BW: Meanwhile, you are calling for international support for the Iraqi Freedom Congress. And you’re calling for people to join it, it’s actually an international organization….

HM: Definitely. Yes.

BW: So, what kind of concrete support are you looking for, and how can people join? What does that entail?

HM: Well, whoever is going to read our literature on our website will see how our organization functions, what its platform is, and how to become a member. They can have rights and participation in everything that’s going on in the IFC. It’s a transparent organization. And they can create branches, they can fundraise for our activities. Because one of the major problems that we are facing is lack of resources, to be able to expand our work throughout Iraq—and to have a media, to have a satellite television station, to be in every house, to mobilize people…

BW: That’s a very ambitious idea.

HM: And all these reactionary forces, they each have their own TV channels and they are trying to engineer the minds of people in this way. So as a progressive organization we need to have our own independent voice.

BW: So the Iranian state satellite network is supporting the Shiite forces in Iraq, and I suppose al-Jazeera is supporting the Sunnis…

HM: Exactly. All of them have their own strong media, and even the Western media is behind them in so many cases. But we need to have our own independent media whereby we can mobilize people. So we want people to support us politically, morally, and financially.

BW: Any other closing words, here just mere days after the third anniversary of the initiation of hostilities against Iraq? Any words on where the political situation in Iraq stands, and what are the prospects for bringing about some kind of civil alternative, some kind of secular democratic anti-imperialist alternative?

HM: I think these three years have been one of the most difficult times in our contemporary history. And this doesn’t only affect Iraqi people—the issue of the Iraq occupation is an international issue. It is very important for us to avert this dark scenario from going on, and to bring about our own alternative. Because that will have a very important impact on the Middle East and in the world as well. America, by attacking Iraq and invading it, and now occupying it for the last three years, wants to implement its own project and to impose its supremacy all over the world. Its models in Iraq, if they are successful, will have a very negative impact on the world. And I think the defeat of the occupation, the defeat of America in Iraq, by the progressive secularists, socialists, leftists in Iraq, is very, very, very important, to everybody in the world. I think if the political Islamists, these reactionary forces, defeat the occupation in Iraq it will be a major setback for progressive forces in Iraq and the Middle East. It will be another disaster for at least the next few decades to come. And I hope we don’t see this. We are determined in our movement to bring about our own alternative and to free the Iraqi people from this disastrous situation. I think this is important for people in the world, especially in the US, where the government is engaged in so much destruction in Iraq, and where the soldiers have no idea why they are there—soldiers who have been recruited because of poverty, the sons and daughters of the working class people in this country. Killing them will not solve any problem for me in Iraq. But the best thing is, to mount the pressure, to mobilize this international world-wide movement to end the occupation. And it’s important for people in the US to have a direct intervention in ending that. That’s what I want.

Transcription by Melissa Jameson

RESOURCES:

Iraqi Freedom Congress
http://www.ifcongress.com

Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq
http://equalityiniraq.com

Houzan Mahmoud’s blog
http://houzanmahmoud.blogspot.com/

See also:

“From Baghdad to Tokyo: Japanese Anti-War Movement Hosts Iraqi Civil Resistance,” WW4 REPORT, February 2006
/node/1660

“The Civil Opposition in Iraq: An Interview with Yanar Mohammed of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq,” WW4 REPORT, Aug. 9, 2004
/iraq3.html

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

CAFTA’S ASSUALT ON DEMOCRACY

The New Corporate Agenda for Central America

by Tom Ricker and Burke Stansbury

What does tightening intellectual property laws have to do with “free” trade? That’s the question many people in Central American and the Dominican Republic are asking as the United States trade representative continues to insist on dramatic changes to constitutional laws in the six countries involved in the US-Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (otherwise known as CAFTA).

As if the agreement itself weren’t bad enough for the region—critics say CAFTA will hurt small farmers, worsen workers rights, and lead to environmental degradation, among other negative effects—the US is manipulating the implementation process to demand even further concessions by the six countries involved.

January 1, 2006 marked the date that the Bush Administration set for CAFTA implementation. However, progress has been frustrated due to US insistence on significant constitutional reforms in the CAFTA countries. CAFTA approval in the US Congress is sited by the Bush administration as one of its few legislative successes of 2005, despite the fact that the two-vote margin was the closest ever for such an agreement. In fact, the flawed implementation process lumps CAFTA in a series of administration failures on trade which include stalled negotiations towards the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the Doha round of the WTO.

One country has achieved the reforms necessary for implementation: El Salvador. But much like El Salvador’s turbulent ratification of the agreement—which occurred at 3:00 in the morning in an assembly surrounded by riot police—the process has been fraught with problems. In December the National Assembly rammed through 14 constitutional changes without any substantial debate, leading to the eruption of massive protests by informal-sector market vendors a few weeks later. The reforms will impose fines and even jail time for those who sell and purchase pirated goods, thereby destroying the livelihood of many poor Salvadorans who depend on the informal economy.

The Salvadoran executive introduced the CAFTA reforms just two days prior to the vote, prompting legislators from the largest opposition Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) to abstain from the vote and walk out of the Assembly session. Said Salvador Arias, a leading economist and deputy for the FMLN, “The right is giving our national legislation a coup de grace by putting it completely at the service of transnational corporations’ commercial interests, to the detriment of the common good.”

The Bush administration continues to demand that intellectual property rights protections be tightened in the other CAFTA countries before they can be certified to join the agreement. The US government is criticizing Guatemala’s pending intellectual property law for not being strict enough, using CAFTA implementation to pressure for tighter restrictions on drug patents—benefiting pharmaceutical corporations but certainly not poor people in need of affordable drugs. It’s no wonder that in Guatemala 20,000 protestors demonstrated against the National Assembly’s vote in favor of CAFTA last March.

Despite such popular opposition, the Central American governments continue to promote CAFTA as the great savior of the Central American people, bringing jobs, investment and opportunities for all. But resistance to CAFTA in the region continues to grow, and polls show that Central Americans believe that CAFTA will not improve their economic situation.

Perhaps more embarrassing for the Bush administration is that Costa Rica, representing one of the largest economies in the region, has yet to vote on CAFTA. Opposition has been fierce and is growing stronger. The new US ambassador in Costa Rica recently criticized that country for not having moved forward on CAFTA, and threatened that it could lose its textile export benefits under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) if it fails to approve the trade deal.

Similarly, in September 2005 under Secretary of State Robert Zoellick was sent to Nicaragua to threaten cuts in development aid should that country not pass the accord. CAFTA was introduced, “debated,” and voted on in one afternoon the week following Zoellick’s visit. Indeed, such threats have been the norm throughout the CAFTA negotiation, ratification, and implementation process.

Meanwhile, legal challenges have accompanied popular mobilization in the region. In Nicaragua, the National Workers Front (FNT) challenged CAFTA implementation before the Supreme Court, identifying 15 specific requirements of CAFTA that contravene the country’s constitution, including the provision granting transnational corporations special legal rights to seek monetary damages in response to regulatory efforts. Court battles are also pending in El Salvador.

Organizations from throughout Central America recently met in Costa Rica for the Sixth Mesoamerican Forum where they pledged to continue fighting CAFTA by monitoring its negative effects in the region and by mobilizing in the streets. In the US, the Stop CAFTA Coalition organized coordinated, local anti-CAFTA actions in January to denounce the likely effects of the agreement in Central America and to hold accountable representatives and senators who voted in favor of CAFTA last July. The actions also celebrated the continued resistance in Central America to “free” trade, privatization, and US economic domination.

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Tom Ricker is co-director of the Quixote Center‘s Quest for Peace Program. Burke Stansbury is Executive Director for the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Both organizations are founding members of the Stop CAFTA Coalition.

This story originally appeared in Upside Down World, Jan. 31 http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/179/1/

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, March 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

“OPERATION GREEN COLOMBIA”

Coca Eradication Brings War to Endangered National Parks

by Memo Montevino

Last June, following months of political contest between the administration of President Alvaro Uribe and environmentalists, Colombia’s government announced that the aerial spraying of glyphosate to wipe out coca crops would be extended to the country’s national parks. Claiming 11 of Colombia’s 49 national parks had been invaded by cocaleros, Uribe named three parks slated for imminent fumigation: Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria, a northern snow-capped peak which is a UN-recognized biosphere reserve; and two in the lush cloud-forests where the eastern Andean slopes fall towards the Amazon basin. This cloud forest belt is the most biodiverse zone of Colombia, and among the most conflicted. These two parks—Cataumbo, in Norte de Santander department, and La Macarena in Meta—are both in areas hotly contested by Colombia’s military and guerillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The fumigation was held up as Colombian environmentalists challenged the spray order before administrative courts and petitioned the US Congress—which funds the spraying program—to intervene. In December, Uribe made a new announcement: that he would order manual eradication of coca crops in the parks as a compromise measure. A thousand-strong work force was sent into La Macarena to uproot the illicit crops. The military and National Police would oversee the program, which was dubbed, with a keen eye to public relations, “Operation Green Colombia.”

“We are going to recuperate for the country [La Macarena] nature park, an area that unfortunately has been harmed mercilessly by illicit crops,” Gen. Jorge Daniel Castro, director of the National Police, told the press.

But the reality has proved considerably less than “green.” On Feb. 6, six National Police agents, part of the contingent sent in to protect the eradication team, were killed in an attack by FARC guerillas in La Macarena. Another six were killed in a FARC mortar strike Feb. 15. At least one of the workers, who make about $12 a day, was injured in the crossfire between the guerillas and security forces, leading the majority of the team to quit because of the danger.

Uribe responded by ordering air strikes on the national park. The park would be evacuated before the strikes were ordered, Uribe told Colombia’s RCN TV from Washington, where he was negotiating a free-trade deal with United States. “It seems we need to be more aggressive in terms of bombing the areas within the park where the guerrillas are located,” Uribe said.

Air Force planes struck positions within the park Feb. 16. “In those areas where guerilla concentrations have been identified or in those places where military targets have been identified, we will proceed with all the istruments that are available to the public forces to neutralize them,” Defense Minister Camilo Ospina told Bogota’s El Tiempo.

Uribe said four areas identified as FARC bases within the park were targeted, but the military could not confirm that any guerillas had been killed. “This has not been an indiscriminate attack,” Ospina told El Tiempo Feb. 17. “The bombardment caused no damage beyond that needed to neutralize some points.”

The force backing up the eradication team consisted of 2,000 army troops and 1,500 members of the National Police. Since the fighting, just a third of the original 1,000 workers are left to tackle the task of clearing La Macarena of an estimated 4,600 hectares of coca. Uribe insisted he remains committed to the operation, while backing away from the original goal of completing the eradication by April.

The distinction between the eradication and anti-guerilla campaign is almost completely disappearing. Uribe chose La Macarena as the first park to be targeted by “Colombia Verde” after a FARC attack on an army detachment just outside the park left 29 troops dead.

“We cannot pretend that eliminating the checkbook of the guerilla will be an easy process,” Ospina told El Tiempo Feb. 16. “The process in La Macarena consist of the eradication of coca in one of the zones of the world with the greatest cultivations, which represents the most important source of financing for subversive groups, specifically the FARC.”

Journalist Yadira Ferrer, writing for Inter-Press Service just before the air strikes on the national park, spoke to some of the Colombian environmentalists who opposed the “Colombia Verde” program.

“The manual eradication in La Macarena may represent progress as a technique,” said Ricardo Vargas, Colombian coordinator in Colombia for Acción Andina, a group that monitors issues around drug trafficking in the region. “However, it doesn’t replace the government’s erroneous policy, which is to try to get rid of the drug trafficking problem by going after the weakest link: the peasant farmer who feels obligated to grow coca in order to survive.”

“If the government doesn’t directly attack the sources of financing for drug trafficking, those groups will continue to shift to other areas, as they have been doing for years,” he added.

La Macarena was declared a national park in 1989 and declared a “heritage of humanity” site by the UN Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Some 2,500 families of colonos—settlers—are thought to be living within its 630,000 hectares. Most arrived over the past two generations, before it was declared a national park. However, settlement of the park has increased in recent years as the coca economy in the region has exploded. “Colombia Verde” calls for the forced removal of these settlers from the park, although details of how this will be carried out or where they will be resettled have not been revealed.

Vargas charged that Colombian government has never carried out “a serious state policy” for the country’s national parks. He insisted that means of livelihood must be provided for any settlers relocated from La Macarena, and that the eradication be accompanied by a broader development plan drawn up with input from the impacted communities.

According to Colombia’s Integrated System for Monitoring Illicit Crops (SIMCI), in 2004 there were 5,364 hectares of coca planted in 13 of the nation’s parks, equivalent to 0.05 percent of the country’s total protected area and 7.0 percent of the total area cultivated with illegal crops. Protected areas in total cover 10 million hectares—10 percent of national territory. The government’s goal is to eradicate 40,000 hectares of illegal drug crops in 2006.

SOURCES:

“Colombian rebels kill six coca eradication police,” Reuters, Feb. 16:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N15347957.htm

“Colombian Rebels Kill Six Police Guards,” AP, Feb. 15:
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/ap/2006/02/15/ap2530658.html

“Colombia to bomb FARC guerrillas,” BBC, Feb. 16: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4719460.stm

“El Estado llegó a La Macarena para quedarse: Ministro de Defensa,”
El Tiempo, Bogota, Feb. 16
http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/coar/ACC_MILITARES/

“Fuerza Aérea lanzó cuatro bombardeos sobre áreas de La Macarena,”
El Tiempo, Bogota, Feb. 17
http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/coar/ACC_MILITARES/

“The Difficult Rescue of La Macarena,” by Yadira Ferrer, IPS, Feb. 9:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32106

See also “Colombia: Chemical Warfare Expands,” WW4 REPORT #110 /node/566

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, March 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

COLOMBIA: MILITARY TERROR IN CAUCA, ARAUCA, LA GUAJIRA

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

CAUCA: ARMY KILLS CIVILIANS

On Jan. 8, Colombian army troops from the No. 26 Cacique Piguanza Infantry Battalion, headed by Lt. Hoyos, shot to death 17-year-old Hortensia Neyid Tunja Cuchumbe and Manuel Antonio Tao Pillimue and wounded William Jose Cunacue Medina in Inza municipality, in the southern department of Cauca. On the night of Jan. 7 Tunja left her home in the community of San Antonio, accompanied by Cunacue, to attend a party in the nearby community of Belen. At 4 AM Tunja’s mother was informed by neighbors that her daughter was wounded on the road about 100 meters from Belen. When the mother arrived, she found her daughter dead, lying face down on the side of the road with bullet holes in her body. Uniformed and hooded soldiers threatened Tunja’s mother and told her that her daughter was a leftist rebel who had been killed along with a rebel “commander.” The soldiers then forced the mother to leave her daughter’s body at the site and go to Belen; they claimed they were waiting for officials from the attorney general’s office to come to the site to officially record the deaths.

The soldiers then blocked anyone from leaving Belen and attacked and beat a number of people at the party there; several people were injured, including one who was hit in the head with a rifle butt. When family members of Tunja and Tao tried to return to the site where their bodies lay, the soldiers fired their rifles in the air to force them to retreat. Around 6 AM, Tunja’s mother managed to return to the site and found the soldiers still there but her daughter’s body gone. She was told that the corpses had been taken to the town of La Plata in Huila department, where the attorney general’s office would file the report on them. Under Colombian law, only the attorney general’s office is allowed to move cadavers from the location where they are found; the army’s removal of the bodies from the site was in blatant violation of the law.

As Tunja’s mother and other family members headed toward La Plata, they found Tunja’s and Tao’s bodies covered up and dumped on the side of the highway about 30 minutes from Belen in the village of Puerto Valencia. Army troops at the site forced the family members to leave the area after telling them that the bodies would be left there for the attorney general’s office to deal with. The army then took the bodies to the military base in La Plata, where they were handed over to the families around 4 PM on Jan. 8. The family members took the bodies to the local hospital. There soldiers again intimidated the family members.

Tunja was a domestic worker who had been employed in Bogota since April 2005; she had been on vacation visiting her family in San Antonio since Dec. 27. Tao Pillimue was a young campesino who lived in the community of San Isidro in Inza municipality; he had left his home on Jan. 7 to go to the party in Belen. Tunja and Tao were members of the Campesino Association of Inza -Tierradentro (ACIT). William Jose Cunacue Medina suffered several bullet wounds and was taken to the hospital in La Plata, where army troops detained him and accused him of “rebellion.” Community members insist that none of the three youths were members of any armed organization; they say the army falsified evidence, planting weapons on the corpses and claiming the victims were guerrillas. (ACIT Communique, Jan. 11)

LA GUAJIRA: WIWA INDIGENOUS LEADERS MURDERED

On Jan. 3, Colombian army troops from the Rondon de Buenavista Group came to the indigenous Wiwa community of Seminke, in the area of San Juan del Cesar and Riohacha municipalities in the northeastern department of La Guajira. They took away community members Celso Carrillo Perea and Ricardo Arias Solis; the next day shots and explosions were heard at a distance from where the two were seized. The decomposed bodies of the two men were found in Riohacha on Jan. 5. In a joint communique, the Yugumaiun Bunkuanarrua Tayrona Wiwa Organization (OWYBT) of San Juan del Cesar, the Kogui-Malayo-Arhuaco Reserve in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and Prensa Indigena correspondent Guillermo Riguera indicated that Carrillo and Arias had no links to armed groups and were just campesinos engaged in agriculture to support their families. Their families were linked to an International Red Cross project in the community.

Last Dec. 9, troops from the Rondon de Buenavista Group arrived in the Wiwa community of Ulago and took resident Laudelino Mejia Montano from his home; the next day shots, explosions and a helicopter were heard nearby, and Mejia was subsequently found murdered.

The Wiwa communities are concerned because a number of residents and community leaders have been accused of being rebels or rebel sympathizers; those who are detained often turn up dead, presented as rebels killed in combat.

On Jan. 9 two individuals on a motorcycle assassinated Fernando Montano Armenta, a resident of the Wiwa indigenous community of La Pena de los Indios. He was murdered in San Juan del Cesar municipality. The community does not know which armed group is responsible for his murder. (Prensa Indigena, Jan. 3; Adital, Feb. 3)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Feb. 5

ARAUCA: COMMUNITY LEADER MURDERED

On Feb. 4, community leader Alirio Sepulveda Jaimes was shot to death in Saravena municipality in the eastern Colombian department of Arauca, just a block and a half from an outpost of the National Police. The Departmental Association of Campesinos (ADUC) reports that Sepulveda was murdered by hired killer Edgar Guiza Gamboa, who permanently accompanies the National Army’s “Gabriel Reveis Pizarro de Saravena” Mechanized Cavalry Group No. 18, commanded by Lt. Col. Carlos Vicente Prada Garces. (ADUC, Feb. 10 via Colombia Indymedia) Prada Garces, whose first name was given in some sources as Jose Vicente, is likely the same person listed in the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) graduate list as Carlos Vicente Prado Garces; as a cadet he took SOA’s C-3 Arms Orientation Course for Cadets in January 1984, when the school was still in Panama. (SOA Graduates List)

Sepulveda’s body was picked up by several individuals on motorcycles whom witnesses recognized as members of the National Army’s S2 military intelligence unit, dressed in civilian clothing. After the killing, witnesses say Guiza went to a local shopping center where he drank alcoholic beverages and threatened passersby with the same gun he had used to shoot Sepulveda. According to ADUC, Guiza claims to be the commander of the Saravena paramilitaries.

Sepulveda was detained on Nov. 12, 2002 with 42 other Arauca community leaders, based on allegations by former rebels who were allowed to demobilize if they accused others. Sepulveda was freed for lack of evidence, but he continued to suffer constant threats and harassment; the army claimed he was a member of the National Liberation Army (ELN). (ADUC, Feb. 2 via Colombia Indymedia)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Feb. 20

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

See also WW4 REPORT #118
http://www.ww3report.com/node/1536

“Colombia’s army chief sacked in brutal hazing ritual” WW4 REPORT, Feb. 27
/node/1652

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, March 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

ARGENTINA: ECO-PROTESTERS BLOCK URUGUAY BORDER

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

ENTRE RIOS: PAPER MILL PROTESTS CONTINUE

On Dec. 30, hundreds of protesters blocked traffic along three bridges which span the Uruguay River, linking Argentina’s Entre Rios province with Uruguay, to protest the Uruguayan government’s decision to allow the construction of paper mills along the river. Residents say the mills will pollute the river and cause serious harm to the environment.

The largest protests were led by residents and local officials of Gualeguaychu, Argentina; protesters there blocked the General San Martin bridge leading to the Uruguayan city of Fray Bentos, in Rio Negro department, where the paper mills are being built by the Finnish company Botnia and the Spanish company Ence. Another group of protesters blocked traffic for several hours across the Gen. Jose Artigas bridge linking the Argentine city of Colon with the city of Paysandu in Uruguay’s Paysandu department. Eventually the demonstrators opened one lane of traffic and allowed cars and trucks to pass, but the protest caused serious delays for travelers. The third protest was held on the bridge linking Concordia in Argentina to the city of Salto in Salto department, Uruguay. There residents distributed informational flyers to travelers. The protests were timed to cause maximum impact at a time when Argentine holiday vacationers traditionally flock to Uruguay’s beaches.

Gualeguaychu mayor Daniel Irigoyen supports the protest; a spokesperson for his office, Hernan Rossi, told AFP that if Uruguayan authorities don’t cancel construction of the paper mills, residents will carry out “programmed and surprise blockades” along the bridges throughout the summer vacation period. (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, Dec. 31 from AFP; AP, Dec. 30; Resumen Latinoamericano, Dec. 30) Entre Rios governor Jorge Busti also supports the protests. The Argentine national government said on Dec. 29 that it would send 200 gendarmes (federal border police agents) to the region to control traffic during the protests.

On Dec. 29 the Uruguayan government announced that the construction of the paper mills was “irreversible,” while unofficial sources reported that the Argentine government was urging Uruguay to move the paper mills elsewhere, a proposition expected to cost between $10 million and $14 million. On Dec. 27, Argentine deputy foreign minister Ricardo Garcia Moritan said his government is urging Uruguay to halt construction of the paper mills until an impartial environmental impact study is carried out. (Resumen Latinoamericano, Dec. 30)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Jan. 1

CHACO: VIOLENT SQUATTER EVICTION

On Jan. 5, some 400 agents of the provincial police of Chaco province, Argentina, used violence to carry out an eviction order against 200 families who had taken over public housing units earlier that day in Puerto Vilelas, 21 kilometers south of Resistencia, the provincial capital. The families, including many children, took over the recently built houses after having lost their homes in a storm on Dec. 16, and having unsuccessfully sought help from the government. In scenes recorded by news cameras and viewed around the country, police agents from Infantry and Cavalry units and the Special Operations Command–protected by helmets, shields and bullet-proof vests–fired rubber pellets at residents and used whips, clubs and kicks against those who fell to the ground or who were handcuffed. A number of people were treated for injuries. German Pomar, a photographer for the daily newspaper Norte was hit with 12 rubber pellets in his leg. (Prensa Latina, Jan. 5)

POLICE SENTENCED IN PIQUETERO KILLINGS

On Jan. 9, the Oral Tribunal No. 7 of Lomas de Zamora sentenced former police inspector Alfredo Fanchiotti and former sergeant Alejandro Acosta to life in prison for the killing of piquetero (organized unemployed) activists Dario Santillan and Maximiliano Kosteki during a demonstration on June 26, 2002, in the Buenos Aires suburb of Avellaneda. Fanchiotti and Acosta were also convicted of attempted homicide for wounding seven other demonstrators with live bullets.

Former police inspector Felix Vega and ex-police agents Carlos Quevedo and Mario de la Fuente were each sentenced to four years of prison for aggravated concealment. Former police agents Gaston Sierra and Lorenzo Colman got three and two years, respectively, for aggravated concealment, but will not go to jail. Francisco Celestino Robledo, a retired police agent who carried out arrests during the 2002 protest despite not being in active service, gota suspended sentence of 10 months in prison for usurping authority.

More than 400 uniformed and plainclothes police agents took part in the operation against protesters who tried to march across the Pueyrredon bridge into the city of Buenos Aires. The agents were from three federal units (Gendarmeria, Prefectura and Federal Police) and the Buenos Aires provincial police. Retired agents were also called up to take part in the operation. (Resumen Latinoamericano, Jan. 12; Cronica, Buenos Aires, Jan.. 22)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Jan. 22

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

See also WW4 REPORT #117
http://www.ww3report.com/node/1439

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Feb. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

THREE CITIES AGAINST THE WALL

US, Israeli and Palestinian Artists Unite Across Borders

by Robert Hirschfield

Transposed upon the face of the famous Wall, in the photo-shop print by Suleiman Mansour, is Michaelangelo’s hand of God and hand of Adam reaching toward one another—only separated by a chasm, not a inch, as on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Mansour’s print is part of the Three Cities Against The Wall exhibit that began Nov. 9 in Ramallah, Tel Aviv and New York. The New York site, ABC NO RIO, a gallery in an old tenement building on the Lower East Side that evolved from a squat into a center for art and activism, was chosen by artist Seth Tobocman, the primary organizer of the show in the US.

“We knew that ABC was very independent, and wouldn’t allow themselves to be prevented from doing the show,” he said.

The idea for the show grew out of Tobocman’s meeting with artist Tayseer Barakat in Ramallah four years ago. Israeli artists were not included in their original plans, but when Tobocman discussed the show with Steven Englander, the director of ABC NORIO, he thought it would be good to have Israeli participation in the project to broaden its political scope.

“I wrote Tayseer a proposal for Three Cities Against The Wall. I chose to focus on the Wall because that was one area where the young Israeli artists I knew had proven themselves. They had been involved in actions the Wall where people had been shot by the soldiers. They were legitimate activists.”

Barakat appointed Mansour as his outreach person to the Israelis, as he was a Palestinian artist from East Jerusalem who was more easily able to travel around Israel and keep in contact with the Israeli artists.

“Suleiman,” said Tobocman, “has been a major figure in the resistance of Palestinian artists to Israeli occupation.”

At the show’s opening in New York—jammed with neighborhood people, as well as Palestinians, Israelis, Europeans—the works displayed ranged from Hamadi Hijazi’s brooding oil painting of ladders with broken rungs climbing the blood red Wall into an ochre-colored sky, to a photo display by American artist Susan Greene of little children painting the Wall with flowers, with fish, with green and red streaks, with a huge yellow bird, its beak pointing skyward.

Suleiman Mansour was among the crowd. A white-bearded man with deep set eyes, he spoke of how the Wall throws his life as an artist into daily chaos.

“I live in East Jerusalem, and my studio is on the other side of the Wall, towards Ramallah. Coming back from the studio, it can take me two or three hours to get through the checkpoints.”

He shrugged. “I am desperate,” he said, “but my work is not desperate.” He was jailed three times by the Israelis, once for photographing a West Bank village he wanted to paint. He was imprisoned a month for that.

“They put sacks on my head. I was beaten. I was made to stand up for long periods of time.”

Palestinian art, he said, has tended to reflect the stages of the Palestinian struggle. In the years following the Nakba, artists painted refugees. When the Fatah was formed in the mid-sixties, they painted fighters. During the first Intifada, when the emphasis was on self-reliance and the boycotting of Israeli products, Palestinian artists stopped buying oils from Israel.

“We began using other materials. I came up with mud. I painted with the land itself.”

In the early ’70s, Mansour was one of eigtheen Palestinian artists who decided to form a union. They asked the Israeli military authorities for permission. It was denied.

“We went ahead and started our union anyhow. We called it Legal Palestinian Artists in the Occupied Territories.”

Mansour related that the shipment of American art works bound for Ramallah was seized by Israeli security at the airport in Tel Aviv. They refused to release the works until the addressee in Ramallah came to claim them. A Kafkaesque excursion, given Israeli travel restrictions.

The artists involved in the Three Cities exhibit drafted a statement. Part of it reads as follows: “Through this collaborative exhibition, the organizers and participating artists will draw attention to the reality of the Wall and its disastrous impact on the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians by the separation of Palestinian communities from each other and from the fertile lands, water resources, schools, hospitals and work places, thereby ‘contributing to the departure of Palestinian populations’, as the International Court of Justice has warned.”

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This story originally appeared in the January issue of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

RESOURCES:

Three Cities Against the Wall page, ABC NO RIO website
http://www.abcnorio.org/againstthewall/

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Feb. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

CENTRAL AMERICA: CAFTA DELAYED; REPRESSION CONTINUES

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

U.S. DELAYS CAFTA

On Dec. 30 Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) spokesperson Stephen Norton announced that the US was postponing implementation of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), which was scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1. Although “various countries are almost ready for their startup, none have completed their internal procedures,” he said, referring to enabling legislation the participating countries have to pass for DR-CAFTA to go into effect. The trade pact will be implemented progressively, according to Norton, “to the extent that the countries make sufficient progress to comply with the promises set in the accord.” Until then, the countries will continue to benefit from tariff reductions under the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA).

DR-CAFTA is intended to bring Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the US together into a trade pact which would largely eliminate tariffs between the countries. Costa Rica’s legislature has yet to approve the pact; the legislatures of all the other participating countries have approved it despite major protests by labor, campesino, environmental and other groups.(El Nuevo Herald, Jan. 30, 31, quotes retranslated from Spanish)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Jan. 1

GUATEMALA: NEW VIOLENCE AT OCCUPIED RANCH

Four Guatemalan campesinos were reportedly wounded when private security guards opened fire on Jan. 20 on protesters attempting to renew their occupation of the Nueva Linda ranch in Champerico municipality, Retalhuleu department. At least two of the campesinos were injured seriously and were taken to a hospital in Retalhuleu. The names of three of the wounded were given: Roberto Gonzalez, Macario Gomez and Bernardo Guillen.

Twelve people, including protesters and police agents, were killed at Nueva Linda on Aug. 31, 2004, when hundreds of police used force to end a year-long occupation by thousands of campesinos protesting the disappearance of ranch administrator and campesino leader Hector Rene Reyes; some of the campesinos renewed their occupation in September 2004 but were removed without major violence two months later. There were conflicting reports about the Jan. 20 incident. The leftist Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) party said the campesinos had wanted to talk to people at the ranch about their demands for justice for Reyes, while the National Indigenous and Campesino Coordinating Committee (CONIC) reported that the campesinos, who have maintained a protest along the highway outside Nueva Linda, were trying to reoccupy the ranch. Other sources said they had succeeded in renewing the occupation.

The Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA (GHRC-USA) is calling for letters to President Oscar Berger Perdomo (fax: +502-2251-2218), Interior Minister Carlos Vielman (fax: +502-2362-0237, e-mail: ministro@mingob.gob.gt) and others to demand a full investigation of the current incident and prosecution of those responsible for Reyes’ disappearance and the deaths in 2004. (GHRC-USA urgent action, Jan. 20)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Jan. 22

GUATEMALAN RESEARCHER THREATENED

On Jan. 9 Fredy Peccerelli, the head of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG), received a text message on his mobile phone with a death threat against his brother, Gianni Peccerelli. “Stop the exhumations, sons [of bitches],” the message ended, referring to the FAFG’s work exhuming mass graves of those killed by the Guatemalan military and their civilian adjuncts in the early 1980s.

On Jan. 10 Fredy Peccerelli’s sister, Bianka Peccerelli Monterroso, and her husband, Omar Giron de Leon, who is the laboratory coordinator for the FAFG, received an anonymous letter deposited in their mailbox. “We’re going to kidnap your sister and rape her again and again,” the letter read, “and if you don’t stop, we’ll send her to you piece by piece. Omar will be a widower, but only for a few minutes. Then we’re going to put a bullet in your head. One by one we will kill you. Death to the anthropologists.”

Fredy Peccerelli, his family and other members of the FAFG have received numerous threats over the last several years. After an earlier threat to Bianka Peccerelli and Giron de Leon, the government provided some police protection. But the police agents began skipping shifts in December and stopped guarding the couple completely on Jan. 7. The human rights organization Amnesty International is recommending letters expressing concern to Vice-Minister of the Interior Julio Cesar Godoy Anleu (+502 2361 5914) and Head of Special Prosecutor’s Office on Human Rights Rosa Maria Salazar Marroquin (+502 2230 5296), with copies to Ambassador to the US Jose Guillermo Castillo (fax: 202-745-1908, e-mail: info@guatemala-embassy.org). (AI Urgent Action, Jan. 13)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Jan. 15

HONDURAS: INDIGENOUS ARRESTED

On Jan. 12, Margarito Vargas Ponce and Marcos Reyes, members of the Honduran indigenous community of Montana Verde, presented themselves in court in the town of Gracias, Lempira department, in an attempt to end their persecution by security forces. The judge acceded to their written request to revoke an arrest order against them. Then, according to the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), another judge at the court, Hermes Omar Moncada, vacated the order in what COPINH called an “abuse of authority.” COPINH noted that Moncada is the same judge who refused to dismiss charges against “Luciano Pineda” (Feliciano Pineda), a member of the Montana Verde community who was jailed last June after being shot and wounded by paramilitaries. (COPINH press release, Jan. 17)

On Jan. 19, Amnesty International began an international campaign to win the release of Feliciano Pineda and two other Montana Verde activists, Marcelino and Leonardo Miranda. All three were charged with the 2001 murder of Juan Reyes Gomez, another community member, in an alleged land dispute. Last December, Pineda was acquitted of homicide charges in the case, but the judge refused to dismiss theft and vandalism charges, even though the statute of limitations on those crimes had run out. The Miranda brothers were arrested on Jan. 8, 2003; they were convicted of murder in December 2003 and are each serving 25-year prison sentences, even though evidence showed that the charges were falsified in retaliation for their efforts to win recognition of their community’s land rights.

AI has adopted Pineda and the Miranda brothers as prisoners of conscience and is demanding their immediate release, as well as a full and thorough investigation into the murder of Juan Reyes Gomez. “The criminal charges against Feliciano Pineda and the Miranda brothers are part of a campaign against indigenous leaders and human rights defenders in Honduras that aims to deter them from their work to secure land titles and to protect the environment,” said AI in a press release. (AI press release, Jan. 20)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Jan. 22

EL SALVADOR: TORTURE VERDICT UPHELD

On Jan. 4 a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta reversed its own earlier ruling and upheld a jury’s $54.6 million verdict against two retired Salvadoran generals accused of responsibility for torture by soldiers under their command. The same panel had thrown the verdict out on Feb. 28, 2005, saying a 10-year statute of limitations had expired. But the panel reversed its decision after concluding that it had made factual errors on the dates. “I have never, ever heard of such a thing,” the defendants’ attorney, Kurt Klaus, Jr., said on learning that the panel had reversed its own decision.

Three Salvadorans living in the US filed the suit on May 11, 1999 under the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act against former defense ministers Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova and Gen. Jose Guillermo Garcia, who both left El Salvador in 1989 and now live in Florida. A federal jury found the generals liable for torture in July 2002. Vides Casanova left office as defense minister on May 31, 1989, less than 10 years before the suit was filed. In addition, in its new ruling the panel decided that the statute of limitations did not apply until 1992, when the Salvadoran government signed a peace accord with the rebel Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN), since until then the government “remained intent on maintaining its power at any cost and acted with impunity to do so.” (New York Times, Jan. 8)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Jan. 8

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

See also WW4 REPORT #117
http://www.ww3report.com/node/1440

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Feb. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

CounterVortex

Tag: Syndicated Content

COLOMBIA: TRADE PACT CONCLUDED, RIGHT SWEEPS ELECTIONS

ECUADOR: PROTESTS PARALYZE COUNTRY

BLAMING “THE LOBBY”

EL SALVADOR:

NAGORNO-KARABAKH:

HOUZAN MAHMOUD INTERVIEW

CAFTA’S ASSUALT ON DEMOCRACY

“OPERATION GREEN COLOMBIA”

COLOMBIA: MILITARY TERROR IN CAUCA, ARAUCA, LA GUAJIRA

ARGENTINA: ECO-PROTESTERS BLOCK URUGUAY BORDER

THREE CITIES AGAINST THE WALL

CENTRAL AMERICA: CAFTA DELAYED; REPRESSION CONTINUES