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WHY DOES Z MAGAZINE SUPPORT GENOCIDE?

Against “Leftist” Revisionism on the Srebrenica Massacre

by Bill Weinberg

With all of the current horrors in the headlines, the world has paid little note to the tenth anniversary of the July 1995 massacre of 8,000 at the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica after it was overrun by besieging Serb rebel forces. The town’s women, children and elderly were put on buses at gunpoint and expelled to Bosnian government-held territory. But the adult men were separated out and kept by the Serb forces for “interrogation.” Their whereabouts became the subject of an international investigation which is now bearing grim fruit–thousands of corpses exhumed from mass graves, held in Bosnia’s morgues, where international teams are conducting the lugubrious work of DNA identification, matching genetic material from the bones with samples provided by relatives of the missing. Some 2,000 of the dead have now been thusly identified, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) reports. The massacre is rightly called Europe’s worst since World War II.

The leadership of the Bosnian Serb Republic (which now has de facto independence under a peace deal brokered by the US shortly after the massacre) has also formally investigated, confessed to and apologized for the crime. A total of 19 people have been charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Srebrenica massacre, and 16 are currently being held at The Hague. Three Bosnian Serb soldiers have pleaded guilty to many of the charges against them.

But the supposedly “progressive” Z Magazine, and its online extension ZNet, mark the anniversary of Srebrenica by running a lengthy piece by Edward S. Herman (one of the American left’s official darlings and a one-time Noam Chomsky co-author) arguing that the massacre never happened–or that it was exaggerated, or that the victims deserved it. Like most genocide-apologist propaganda, the piece never makes its arguments explicit: it just leaves the uninitiated reader with the vague but strong impression that anyone who believes that there was a massacre at Srebrenica is a dupe of imperialist propaganda.

The piece, entitled “The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre,” spends its first half arguing that the affair must be placed in the “context” of the “convenience” of the massacre to the Bosnian Muslims, who sought Western military intervention against the Serb forces. Herman notes a string of “convenient” atrocities attributed to the Serbs, such as the deadly rocket raids on Sarajevo’s market, suggesting that they were “planned and executed by Bosnian Muslims.” Ironically, the suspicions (not facts) Herman cites in support of this speculation come almost entirely from US military and government sources. Herman does not point out the obvious “convenience” of such charges to a Pentagon that was reluctant to intercede as the Serb rebel army attempted to strangle in its birth Europe’s first Muslim-led nation.

One footnote for the claim that the Bosnian government bombed its own people in Sarajevo is an Internet link for a 1997 report from the US Senate Republican Policy Committee–so heartwarming to see leftists making common cause with their domestic enemies. This page, at least, cites some mostly European media accounts claiming secret UN studies had determined that the shells that hit Sarajevo’s market came from Bosnian government lines. But the studies themselves are not cited, and in any case these attacks account for but a handful of the 10,000 Sarajevo residents killed during the three-and-a-half-year siege of the city by the Serbs. Furthermore, even if these attacks were faked, it says nothing about whether the far more massive Srebrenica massacre was faked–and not even Republicans have dared to assert that. Yet that is implicitly (not explicitly, which would require more courage) what Herman argues. This line of reasoning (if we may so flatter it) is akin to arguing that My Lai didn’t happen because it was “convenient” to the NLF.

Most bizarrely, this pseudo-thinking fails to consider that in the post-Srebrenica peace deal brokered by the Clinton White House, the Bosnian government was forced to cede effective control of the majority of its national territory to the Serb and Croat rebel zones, which then gained a cover of legitimacy. A more accurate reading of the situation would suggest the atrocities were far more “convenient” to the Serbs, helping to force the Bosnian government to accept these harsh terms. Crime, it seems, does pay.

When Herman finally turns to the actual mechanics of the massacre, the results are even worse. Herman’s principal argument seems to be that the supposedly UN-protected “safe areas” such as Srebrenica weren’t disarmed, so (again, implicitly) the Serbs were justified in overrunning them and slaughtering 8,000 mostly civilian war captives. (He expresses no outrage that the Dutch UN peacekeepers offered no resistance as the Serbs overran the city.) He claims that Srebrenica was being used as a staging ground for raids on Serb villages in which up to a thousand civilians were killed in the three years prior to the massacre–an assertion footnoted to a report from Yugoslavia’s UN ambassador, without the slightest suggestion that this might be a dubious touchstone for veracity. This is especially ironic given that all pronouncements from the Bosnian leadership are summarily dismissed as lies. Herman regales us with horror stories about atrocities committed by Nasir Oric, a Muslim commander at Srebrenica. These are footnoted to more credible sources, but Herman seems pretty oblivious to the overwhelmingly obvious “context” (to use his favorite word)–Serb rebel armies had overrun some 70% of Bosnia by that point, expelling the Muslim inhabitants, leaving Srebrenica and a few other towns besieged pockets. This doesn’t let Oric off the hook, but it does point up Herman’s hideous double standards.

Herman’s secondary argument (more explicit if no more honest) is that the bodies said to be those of the Srebrenica victims have been unearthed from several mass graves around eastern Bosnia rather than “huge grave sites” at Srebrenica. A look at the ICMP website would tell Herman this was due to Serb commanders ordering bodies exhumed and reburied at scattered sites to hide evidence of the crime. This finding is backed up by the Serb Republic’s own investigation into the massacre–which, it emerges, actually took place at several different locations, with reburial in secondary graves intentionally adding to the confusion. Herman, who is now more intransigent on the question than the Bosnian Serb leadership, dismisses the reburial findings as “singularly unconvincing.”

Next Herman turns to the old genocide-denial trick of fudging the numbers. He guides the reader through arithmetic somersaults to “prove” that if 8,000 were executed Srebrenica’s population would have had to have exceeded its actual 37,000. Yet the ICMP has a database of 7,800 listed as missing from Srebrenica. Were these names simply invented? (Fans of such pseudo-demographic sophistry will have lots of fun at the Holocaust revisionist websites.)

Next he turns to another standard of the genocide-denial set: arguing that the majority of the dead were not executed but killed in combat. This is contradicted by the testimony of the accused at the ICTY. Momir Nikolic, former chief of intelligence in the Bratunac Brigade, one of the Serb units at Srebrenica, has pleaded guilty to his role in the massacre, stating openly that “able-bodied Muslim men within the crowd of Muslim civilians would be separated…and killed shortly thereafter. I was told that it was my responsibility to help coordinate and organize this operation.”

Nikolic’s testimony is called into question by admissions that he perjured himself following his plea-bargain, the massacre-denial crowd is quick to point out–although why he would do so is still mysterious, and he did not contradict himself on what the basic orders were, only his own role in carrying them out. But there are numerous other examples untainted by any such contradictions. Nikolic’s co-defendant Dragan Obrenovic states that he received orders that prisoners were to be shot, and describes the slaughter in intimate detail in his official confession. He notes at one point that a commander “was angry as the last group of prisoners were not taken to the dam to be executed, but were executed right there at the school and that his men (the 6th Battalion Rear Services) had to clean up the mess at the school, including the removal of the bodies to the dam.” Bosnian Serb Army infantryman Drazen Erdemovic (who first volunteered his guilt to foreign journalists and pleaded for their help in fleeing Bosnia) tearfully told the court of his participation in the killing. “I had to do it. If I’d refused, I would have been killed together with the victims.”

These accounts are also backed up by forensic evidence: tribunal investigators exhumed hundreds of blindfolds and ligatures along with the bodies, and in many cases hands were still tied behind the back. Foresnic specialists also found evidence of reburial, such as parts of the same body in separate graves. This may not be conclusive proof that all 8,000 were killed in cold blood–but it is certainly suggestive of this, and it shows Herman’s bad faith that he doesn’t even mention it.

That Herman is getting his information overwhelmingly (and his analysis exclusively) from the Serb extremists is evident from his terminology. He routinely uses the acronym BMA, for “Bosnian Muslim Army,” to refer to the Bosnian goverment’s military. The official name was the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH), and (in contrast to the self-declared “Bosnian Serb Army” of Bosnia’s “Serb Republic”) it was explicitly multi-ethnic, not “Muslim.” BMA is a propaganda term, and capitalizing it as if it were a proper noun is extremely misleading.

Finally, Herman makes much of what he calls Bosnian President Alija “Izetbegovic’s close alliance with Osama bin Laden,” how the Bosnian government provided “Al Qaeda a foothold in the Balkans.” Now isn’t this funny. The same ZNet which asks us to believe (in a Jan. 13 piece by Robert Scheer–whose name ZNet mis-spells) that “Al Qaeda [is] Just a Bush Boogeyman” prints shamelessly lurid propaganda about the Islamic menace in Bosnia. I guess al-Qaeda is just a “boogeyman” when it slams jets into New York skyscrapers or blows up trains in London and Madrid, but suddenly becomes real when it loans a few mujahedeen to protect the legitimate government of multi-ethnic Bosnia from a lawless fascist rebellion. Herman offers not a word about how Izetbegovic was driven to this alliance (if, in fact, it existed) by the West’s betrayal of Bosnia’s legal government into the hands of the Serb rebels who, with superior firepower thanks to their patrons in Belgrade, quickly subsumed the majority of Bosnia’s territory. Herman dismisses this version of events as a mere “narrative”–a word which has been subject to such abuse at the hands of the “post-modernists” that it should now be purged from the English language. Herman, who is not bothered by the use of the Islamic terrorist image to justify this illegal usurpation of power, calls the “‘Srebrenica massacre'” (in quotes of course) the “greatest triumph of propaganda” for the “colonial occupations in Bosnia and Kosovo” by NATO. One wonders if Herman is himself aware of the cognitive dissonance.

This is but the latest in a whole string of such articles Z has run by Herman and others in the decade since the climax of the Bosnian horror show, all minimizing Serb war crimes and essentially arguing (as Reagan said about the genocidal Guatemalan dictatorship) that the Serbs have been given a “bum rap.” And Z still seems to think it has any moral ground to stand on to oppose US-backed genocide in Guatemala, Colombia and so on. It is both demoralizing and terrifying that this is the level to which the supposed “left” press has sunk in this dumbed-down age.

NOTE: This article started out as a post on our weblog, and was expanded as Ed Herman (and others) weighed in with retorts. If Herman (or anyone else) has any further responses, they can be posted there: /node/757

RESOURCES:

“The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre,” by Ed Herman
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=8244&sectionID=74

“Debating Srebrenica”: responses to Herman on ZNet
http://www.zmag.org/hermanserbdebate.htm

“Srebrenica: Anatomy of a Massacre,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/tri/tri_414_1_eng.txt

Dragan Obrenovic statement to ICTY
http://www.un.org/icty/obrenovic/trialc/facts_030520.htm

Momir Nikolic statement to ICTY
http://www.un.org/icty/mnikolic/trialc/facts030506.htm

IWPR story on Momir Nikolic perjury, from FreeRepublic
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/991985/posts

ICMP press release on identification of bodies
http://www.ic-mp.org/home.php?act=news&n_id=97&

Open Democracy report, “Srebrenica: ten years on”
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-yugoslavia/srebrenica_2651.jsp

Radio Netherlands report on the Tribunal ten years after Srebrenica
http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/currentaffairs/region/easterneurope/srb050708?view=Standard

BBC story on Serb Republic apology for massacre
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3999985.stm

“Serbia Struggles to Face the Truth about Srebrenica,” by Tim Judah, Crimes of War Project
http://www.crimesofwar.org//news-srebrenica2.html

“Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?” by Robert Sheer [sic], ZNet
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=7015

Deniers of Serbia’s War Crimes, Balkan Witness
http://www.glypx.com/balkanwitness/Articles-deniers.htm

“Did Six Million Really Die?” Holocaust-denial numbers-fudging
http://theunjustmedia.com/Holocaust/Did%20Six%20Million%20Really%20Die.htm

—————

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

http://WW4Report.com

TRUTH, DEATH AND MEDIA IN IRAQ

Part Two in an Unfortunately Continuing Series

by Michael I. Niman

Earlier this year the media reported on “The Salvador Option,” referring to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s stated intent to train and employ Salvadoran-style death squads to hunt down and kill or “disappear” suspected Iraqi resistance fighters and their alleged supporters. Such wholesale execution of political opponents resulted in approximately 70,000 deaths in El Salvador during Ronald Reagan’s reign in the White House.

Knight Ridder correspondent Yasser Salihee also covered this story. Unlike stateside journalists doing research online, Salihee was on the ground in Iraq, compiling primary data–including damning evidence about extra-judicial killings. Knight Ridder, on June 27, published Salihee’s preliminary findings. Working less than a week, Salihee and another Knight Ridder journalist turned up over 30 cases of suspected extra-judicial executions by U.S.-backed Iraqi death squads.

In the article, Salihee and his co-author document how victims show up at the morgue blindfolded, with their hands tied or cuffed behind their backs. Most showed signs of Abu Ghraib-style torture. Many were last seen in police custody. They were usually killed with a singe shot to the head.

On June 24, while Salihee’s article was in-press, a U.S. military sniper killed him, also with a single shot to the head. According to Knight Ridder, it was his day off. He was on his way to his neighborhood gas station to fuel up before a family trip to a swimming pool when he encountered a makeshift U.S. checkpoint unexpectedly set up blocks from his home. Witnesses say he was shot without warning and for no apparent reason. For the record, Knight Ridder says: “There’s no reason to think that the shooting had anything to do with his reporting work.” Such disclaimers seem to be a de facto mandate these days. When an investigative reporter is shot dead by a member of an organization he or she is investigating, there’s clear reason for suspicion.

Also earlier this year, CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan made his now famous retracted comment about U.S. forces in Iraq targeting journalists. Eason’s comment cost him his job–and no genuflecting to the god of disclaimers and apologies could save it. He resigned. The problem was that he was right. This was the conclusion of a Reporters Without Borders investigation into the deaths of two journalists killed by U.S. troops in Baghdad. U.S. military documentation of the killings of journalists by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Serbia indicate that many were in fact deliberately targeted.

Journalists are the outside world’s pipeline for documentation of atrocities in war zones. When military forces remove journalists from war zones–usually through terror and intimidation, if not outright murder–they’ve successfully removed the most credible witnesses working to document their crimes. Salihee certainly appears to be one of these witnesses–uncovering the smoking gun behind a series of what appear to be Rumsfeld-ordered war crimes. It’s the brave reporting by the few remaining unembedded journalists on the ground in Iraq that allow armchair columnists like myself to write about Iraq, citing sources such as Salihee, Robert Fisk and Dahr Jamal.

Salihee’s killing at the hands of a U.S. military sniper is not an isolated incident. Since his death, two more Iraqi journalists were also shot dead by U.S. forces. Maha Ibrahim, a TV news editor who publicly opposed the U.S. occupation, was shot to death by U.S. troops who opened fire on her car as she drove to work on June 26. On June 28 , al-Sharqiya TV program director Ahmad Wail Bakri was also shot to death by U.S. troops as he drove near an American military convoy in Baghdad. The International Federation of Journalists has called for investigations into all three murders. The Committee to Protect Journalists has also expresses alarm over the killings and is launching its own investigation.

If these journalists in fact were not targeted by U.S. forces, and were instead just killed as unintended victims of jittery soldiers shooting up Baghdad, these killings are evidence of a depraved indifference to human life–resulting from the stress of fighting a prolonged war against a civilian population, with no clear goals or exit strategy.

If any of these journalists were killed because of their work–and Yasser Salihee’s damning investigative work certainly raises that question–then what we are witnessing is not only a war against Iraq, but against the world’s right to know what is going on in Iraq as well. With Salihee dead, it will now be more difficult to document death squad activity in Iraq. When you kill the messenger you kill the truth.

———

Dr. Michael I. Niman’s previous columns are archived at
http://www.mediastudy.com.

RESOURCES:

Reporters Without Borders investigation of the US Army’s firing at the Palestine Hotel, April 2003, at TruthOut:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022505A.shtml

See also:

“TRUTH DEATH AND MEDIA IN IRAQ, Pt. 1” by Michael I. Niman, WW4 REPORT #107
/node/283

—————

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

http://WW4Report.com

OPERATION IRON FIST

UN Troops Chase Down Child Soldiers in Congo’s Forgotten War;
Hutu Militias as Pawn in Great Game for Central Africa’s Mineral Wealth

by keith harmon snow

NINDJA, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — For some hill-tribe peasants in the remote reaches of the Congo’s South Kivu hills, the arrival of hundreds of UN ground troops on July 7 seemed more like an invasion than the liberation most have long since given up on. For Hutu rebels, it was reason to disappear.

Peasant women cultivating the steep hill slopes with primitive tools pretended to ignore the unimaginable: the sudden appearance of heavily armed Pakistani troops, backed by Guatemalan special operations forces, marching on footpaths that may have seen no outsiders for decades. Indian forces in combat helicopters supported the UN mission.

Some 1,000 troops from the South Kivu Brigade of the United Nations Observer Mission in Congo (MONUC), joined by a score of troops from the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC), participated in “Operation Iron Fist.” Its compliment, “Operation Falcon Sweep,” an ongoing heli-borne operation, was launched on July 4.

Both operations seek to infiltrate territories held by the Rwandan Hutu fighters to the north and southeast of Bukavu, in the Walungu and Kabare areas. The target areas include the vast and mysterious Kahuzi Beiga National Park.

“The Hutu rebels came here ten years ago,” says William Mukale, 30, a teacher from Bukavu. “They have done terrible things and people are suffering.” William points at the long line of UN troops moving through the hills across the valley. “But no foreigners or outsiders have been in there for many years.”

It may be as much as forty years: Belgian colonizers were here in the 1960s. It is unclear when the last white people ventured back in these hills. Hutus from Rwanda arrived in 1994.

Both Iron Fist and Falcon Sweep aim to clear the area of Hutu rebels belonging to the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Looking more like a rag-tag bunch of child soldiers and armed peasants in plastic boots than the battle-hardened terrorists they are almost universally portrayed as, the FDLR are accused of committing genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

“Most of the FDLR combatants are very young,” says Sylvie van den Wildenberg, UN Public Information Officer in Bukavu. “They obviously were not involved in genocide in Rwanda. They have been manipulated and used by their leaders.”

Congo President Joseph Kabila issued a statement June 29 that the FDLR are the enemy of Congo and the FARDC will forcibly deploy against them. The MONUC goal is to displace or drive out the FDLR in what the UN describes as “domination area operations.”

During Iron Fist, a few FDLR were sighted along remote trails as they fled. MONUC soldiers fanned out through burnt fields and searched the area but no FDLR were found. FDLR camps were located, but soldiers had fled. No shots were fired.

The Invisible Face of Terror

Over the weekend of July 10 however, some 39 civilians–most women and children–were hacked to death or burned alive in huts. Some believe this was the FDLR retaliating against locals who support the MONUC and FARDC initiatives. Some say only they were Kinyarwanda-speaking Rwandans. Some maintain that the perpetrators were infiltrators sent by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame’s Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). International media–absent the area–quickly attributed the killings to Hutu FDLR.

Other areas around Walungu and Nindja have seen recent clashes, some including heavy weapons fire, believed to be FARDC fighting with FDLR. Some people fear that combatants will move deeper into Congo’s forests. On July 11, FDLR combatants, with wives and children, were reported leaving Nindja.

Atrocities committed in South Kivu have been mostly attributed to the FDLR. Massacres in past months have occurred at night, and notes left behind were signed the “Rastas.” The Rastas are described as a mix of FDLR, Congolese collaborators, local bandits and other disaffected ex-militia. They are generally equated with the FDLR.

“All terrorist groups have two faces,” says Gen. Shujatt Alikahn, commander of MONUC’s 10th Military Region in South Kivu. “The face that is friendly to the community, and the face of terror.” He is personally leading his troops along a trail that hangs over a deep chasm in the mountains. His position on the FDLR is clear–get out of the area.

The region has for years seethed with warlords and militias who exact taxes, goods and labor from the poorest people in the world. Local fiefdoms have seen unspeakable horrors and targeted robberies believed to be committed by FDLR factions in cahoots with Congolese military collaborators or civilians. Former combatants of the Mayi-Mayi, a militia opposing Rwanda’s military presence in Kivu, and Burundian Hutu militia have also been here.

The terror is directly linked to access to minerals. Some villages suffer less than others because combatants and warlords understand that atrocities committed against the population will bring MONUC troops who will threaten their mining and taxation networks. Some areas are tenuously “managed” by both FDLR militias and FARDC soldiers.

The UN Panel on the Illegal Exploitation of DRC’s Natural Resources cites “military commercialism” as pivotal to war in Congo. Key agents included military officers from Rwanda and Uganda, with companies from the US and Europe behind them. But the recommendations of the UN investigation were ignored; multinational and regional companies and individuals named for violations successfully lobbied to be removed from the list. No government took action to stop or deter the guns-for-minerals racketeering.

A June 2005 report by Amnesty International revealed that massive arms flows to Congo continue. Weapons keep coming across the Great Lakes from Rwanda and Uganda. Gold departs the area for Uganda; coltan (coumbium-tantalite) used in cellphones and Sony Playstations crosses Lake Kivu by boat to Rwanda; there is also cassiterite (tin) mining here. Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently published a report detailing South Africa-based multinational AngloGold Ashanti’s role in supporting war and atrocities in Congo’s Ituri zone. On July 12, HRW issued a brief warning that factions are still being armed in North Kivu.

“We see the same situation in Ituri and the Kivus,” said MONUC’s Dutch Major Gen. Patrick Cammaert on July 12. Cammaert commands all MONUC forces in the provinces of Ituri, North and South Kivu. “Groups are receiving arms, equipment and ammunition from groups, organizations, and individuals from foreign countries.”

Multinational Occupation

Soldiers of one stripe or another are everywhere. There are Guatemalan soldiers speaking only Spanish; Pakistanis speaking Urdu, and some English; Indians speaking Hindi. Congolese soldiers speak French, Lingala, and some English. Hutu rebels speak Kinyarwanda and Swahili. The impoverished villagers in the remote hills around Nindja speak Swahili, French, or the local Mashi dialect of the Bashi tribe–but the voices of the average Congolese remain mostly unheard.

Operation Falcon Sweep aims to extend the security perimeter in the Walungu territory, and it is heavily focused on the dense forests around Nindja. The northern perimeter opens into the vast and wild Kahuzi Beiga National Park.

In mid-July Operation Falcon Sweep dropped Guatemalan and Pakistani special operations forces from helicopters into unknown terrain. Some missions dropped under the dense canopy of the Kahuzi Beiga forests. FDLR camps inside the park were located.

“The Park was completely a no-go zone,” says one MONUC officer. “Even the UN could not go there. It remained a mystery for about five months. The FARDC controlled the checkpoints. This is one of the richest mineral areas in South Kivu.”

Until recently, the Congolese government refused all MONUC requests for reconnaissance in the park. In late June MONUC was allowed to send sorties of armored personnel carriers (APCs) into the park. The southeastern corner of the park links directly to Lake Kivu and Rwanda.

On July 7, Operation Iron Fist deployed UN peacekeepers in vehicles and on foot, with the Indian contingent providing close air support from Russian MI-35 attack helicopters. Operation Falcon Sweep resumed with a large operation on July 10, and MONUCs Gen. Alikahn personally oversaw the burning of some remote FDLR camps on July 14.

APCs used in other MONUC operations are useless on many roads here: the roads to outposts like Nindja are rough dirt tracks with a few logs thrown over mountain streams. But flimsy bridges are the least of MONUC concerns.

Trekking Back in Time

Trekking in the mountains beyond Nindja feels like journeying back to an earlier age. Women and girls haul huge loads over narrow trails, their backs bent with heavy loads in handwoven baskets supported by braided straps lashed around their foreheads. Coming and going to local markets, their eyes speak fear as they wait aside the trail while hundreds of UN foot soldiers pass by. Some girls disappear into the bushes.

A grueling two-hour trek out of Nindja, most MONUC soldiers ran out of water. They refilled bottles from clear mountain streams that spill over waterfalls and splash through the dense undergrowth of forested valleys where guerrillas can easily hide.

Plots ablaze with fire to clear the grass and stumps of hacked-up forest blanket the scorching sun with stifling haze. Burned hillsides evidence the slash-and-burn economy of locals who have no electricity, no stores, no modern amenities, no technology, and only the crudest tools.

“And no security.” Villager Robert Mushale, 27, points down the valley where he says 15 people massacred by the Rastas are buried in a mass grave. “We all want MONUC to move the FDLR. They take taxes from us twice a week. They tax us at market. We go through their barricades and we pay taxes. It’s clear the FDLR and Rastas are working together.”

Most homes here are huts of grass and bamboo and many stand in small compounds amidst groves of banana trees. Toilets are two boards over a festering hole in a rickety shed. Huts and groves sit on small plateaus dwarfed by the abutting hills, but the outward suggestion of a tranquil, ordinary life is belied by the ubiquitous threat of terror.

Hungry people dig up riverbeds and sift through dust for minerals sold by the fractions of ounces in remote markets. Trees are felled for firewood and charcoal, and to make way for crops. Under the constant assault of six-foot long steel blades manually drawn and pushed by two laborers, the last pockets of unprotected forests in the area are falling plank by plank.

Operation Night Flash

Three and half hours march from Nindja the troops of the two spikes of Operation Iron Fist meet in a high clearing. There are two FDLR camps nearby. But for the crackle of distant fire carried like the white-naped ravens on the mountain breezes, the land is still: even the local civilians disappear in fear of the alien soldiers.

With daily killings, raping and looting from at least 2003, some areas have become almost uninhabited, especially after September 2004. March 2005 found 2500 families in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps.

“Armed factions abduct groups of civilians and hold them hostage to extort cash ransoms,” MONUC’s Human Rights section reported in March. “Women and girls held are often subjected to sexual violence and younger girls may be held for months at a time in camps where they are used as domestic workers or sex slaves. Armed Rwandan Hutu groups abducted around sixty persons in January in Walungu territory. Attacks in other nearby territories also occurred.”

On March, 12 Pakistani and FARDC soldiers began patrolling villages at night. With some 524 villages in the Walungu territory, MONUC’s “Operation Night Flash” couldn’t cover every village. Village defense committees were organized by MONUC, with village youths patrolling through the night, banging pots and blowing whistles to alert nearby soldiers’ camps when any strangers arrived.

Some 2,500 Congolese FARDC troops committing atrocities were relocated by MONUC in March and replaced with MONUC-trained integrated FARDC brigades. Incidents of terror declined with deterrence actions by MONUC, and most families filtered back to their homes.

“The new troops are better taking care of the local population,” says Pakistani Major Waqar, at an outpost in Walungu, “And they know how to behave in a military fashion.”

While the situation near Walungu has improved, Waqar believes that the Rastas likely moved into the northern zone. “Twelve girls were recently kidnapped near Kahuzi Beiga Park,” he says.

Military and civilian MONUC staff note that it is just a matter of time before unpaid and mostly uneducated FARDC soldiers recently moved to the area begin to take exactions on the populace, with the concomitant violence, corruption and impunity.

And with transnational corporations and international NGOs pouring money into Congo, there is no shortage of funds in Kinshasa from which soldiers could be paid. Four hundred million dollars poured into Congo for elections alone in recent months.

“We are supposed to have 3,000 FARDC troops,” says one MONUC staffer in Bukavu. “We trained these troops with the hopes that they would be made available to Pakistani troops for operations. When we called on them they said, ‘Oh, sorry, we have no logistics supply.'”

Biscuit Diplomacy

June to August is the dry season here. MONUC trucks fly over red dirt roads that have seen little rain for weeks. The red powder gets into everything. As the convoys pass, women turn their overloaded backs to the road and hang their heads under dust-soaked shawls, and the pitiful peddlers of biscuits or cigarettes or little piles of food duck under coats or plastic bags.

Crowds of wide-eyed, bony children, dressed in rags, hover around grassy banks with grasping hands and desperate ideas. “BEES-QUEET, BEES-QUEET, BEES-QUEET,” they scream. Months of experience tell the children that a handful of two-penny butter biscuits may fly from a passing MONUC truck: some trucks stop and hand them out; others pitch biscuits into the crowd, inciting brief riots.

MONUC soldiers and staff are sensitive to the criticisms about their troops throwing biscuits to children, to the news reports accusing MONUC of doing nothing, and to the Congolese people’s perceptions about MONUC largesse and inaction.

“People are really hungry around here,” says Major Waqar. “Just look around. They love us for sharing food. We have really changed the perceptions about what we are doing and why we are here. We are trying to bring peace. Anyway, is it wrong to give biscuits to starving children?”

Gen. Shujatt Alikahn is more blunt. “The UN Security Council said ‘no forcible disarmament by MONUC.’ Everything changed on May 23 when the FDLR mutilated 23 people. Pakistan has fifty years in the United Nations and we won’t let this terrorism happen to these people. We decided to take the risks upon ourselves.”

MONUC is one player amongst many. The MONUC mission is limited in mandate and troop strength, staff point out, but MONUC is tasked with fighting a bullet-less war against a complex and ever-moving target, and it is criticized for every effort at every turn. While atrocities have abated or declined in some areas under MONUC control, MONUC’s security reach is limited. Remote areas of northern and eastern DRC remain completely inaccessible to MONUC peacekeepers; rape remains widespread, with extortion, pillage, and sporadic massacres continuing in many areas.

Frank conversations with UN personnel about MONUC reveal the following: Bureaucracy is thick and unwieldy. Conspirators lurk within and without. Decisions are deeply politicized. Critical reports and investigations are internally buried. Essential maps and information are unavailable. Slackers who should long ago have been fired are getting a free ride because the system disallows appropriate action. Rules and regulations drafted in the 1950’s have not evolved or changed with the times. Ditto for the leadership, who are seen to be stodgy, unimaginative, hopelessly entrenched in a failed system.

Multinational corporations are pulling many strings, and profiting widely. Budgets are obscene, given the absolute poverty evident in the Congo. Member states don’t pay their dues, and then their diplomats say that the United Nations is a failure, that it needs to be dismantled. Agents bought and paid for by powerful governments serve only the narrow mandates of their masters. The United States is cited as the most obvious and shameless culprit. Recent stories about Congo that have appeared in western media only reinforce the biases held by the general public.

MONUC has around 20 soldiers from western nations: three French; four British; eight Canadians; three Irish; three Swiss; and zero from the U.S. Soldiers come from the poorest Third World countries: they are cheap, easily manipulated and–notably–they are expendable. Indeed, there is a hierarchy of value attached to the lives of UN soldiers that varies with nationality. While soldiers suffer the hardships of malaria and rat-filled camps, risking their lives against an enemy they know little about, many are happy for low paying work and any opportunity to rise above squalid conditions in their own countries. However, incentives to high performance are often lacking, and military contingents vary in devotion to the peacekeeping cause. However, many MONUC staff, both civilian and military, put in twelve to fourteen hour days, at least six days a week, with no personal life and total dedication to stopping this brutal, ugly war.

The End of the Hutu Line

UN sources are unclear how many foreign rebels have been returned from DRC to Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda through the MONUC Disarmament, Demobilization, Repatriation, Reintegration and Reinsertion (DDRRR) program in Bukavu: estimates vary between 12,000 and 4000. Most rebels returned in the early stages of the program, but returnees reduced to a trickle after 2003.

The FDLR foot soldiers are in a tight position. Amongst them are battle-hardened Hutus accused of participating in genocide against hundreds of thousands of Tutsis killed in 1994.

But the Rwandan military led by Paul Kagame has persecuted Hutus and Tutsis alike both inside and outside of Rwanda. Thousands of Hutu refugees and returnees to Rwanda are said to have been killed over the past several years. UN High Commission for Refugees investigator Robert Gersony in September 1994 produced the first report about Rwandan Tutsi forces committing massive atrocities against Hutus. The UN in New York buried the report.

By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees were hunted down and murdered by Rwandan and Ugandan militaries that invaded Congo (then Zaire) in 1996 in what the Congolese know officially as the “War of Liberation” that ultimately overthrew the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko. New York Times journalist Howard French reported the “counter-genocide” against Hutus as early as 1997: at least 80% were women and children, and 50% were believed to be under 14 years old.

Hutus from Rwanda who survived the RPF onslaught later fought for Mobutu, but Rwanda and Uganda, with US-support, ousted Mobutu’s regime. Hutu FDLR in Congo then fought to defend President Laurent Kabila against the second Rwanda/Uganda invasion in 1998, that the Congolese now know as the “First War of Aggression.” Many of the FDLR now in the Kivus are believed to have arrived from Kinshasa as recent as 2003.

In April, 2005, thousands of Hutus fled Rwanda to Burundi after the RPF-organized “Gacaca” village genocide courts began operating, unjustly they said. The village courts–like the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda–are accused of doling out “victor’s justice” that favors the Tutsi-dominated RPF military.

The International Forum for Truth and Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa recently filed a lawsuit in a Spanish court, based on years of research, against Paul Kagame and other Rwandan military leaders. The suit accuses them of massive war crimes in the series of conflicts that engulfed Central Africa following the RPF invasion of Rwanda from Uganda in 1990.

“Rwanda will never be interested in these people going back,” a high-level MONUC source said. “The moment these FDLR go back to Rwanda the international mining companies will take over the mining areas that today benefit Rwanda. Rwanda is working with the FDLR and Congolese are definitely involved or these people wouldn’t be able to do what they are doing.”

Paradoxically, the Rwanda regime is accused of collaborating with the FDLR’s resource-extraction operations, even while intervening in Congo to hunt them down, accusing them of being filled with “genocidiares”–veterans of the Interahamwe militias that carried out mass slaughter of Hutus in 1994.

Internal squabbles have repeatedly divided the FDLR over the decade since the militia first arrived from Rwanda. Late June 2005 saw the most recent split, where a local low-ranking militiaman named Amani declared himself the leader of the FDLR and guide for their return to Rwanda.

Col. Joseph Hagirimana, an important local FDLR leader, rejected Amani’s declaration. Some FDLR interviewed by MONUC’s DDRRR team appear confused and frightened, uncertain who to trust or where to turn for help. DDRRR personnel face their own challenges here. “We have seen many FDLR declarations,” said Gen. Cammaert. “We want to see action.”

Some believe the Amani made a deal with the Congolese government, that he will be given a military command and a villa in Rwanda in exchange for removing the FDLR–the main obstacle to the vast mineral reserves of South Kivu.

“Many members rejected the FDLR leadership and broke with it in 2004,” says Jean-Marie Higiro, past president of the unarmed political wing of the FDLR. “That FDLR leadership recently split again, into factions led by Lt. Colonel Christophe Hakizabera and Dr. Ignace Murwanashyaka, who both live in Europe.”

In September 2004 exiled and disaffected Rwandans who rejected the FDLR position– mostly Hutu, and mostly in Europe–created a new organization, Urunana, with an armed wing, Imbonera, dedicated to “overthrowing the fascist dictatorship of Paul Kagame in Rwanda.” With bases inside and out of Rwanda, Imbonera will intervene in the DRC “if Rwandan refugees are hunted down as animals by General Paul Kagame’s forces.”

Congolese Air Force Gen. John Numbe is adamant that Rwanda uses the FDLR to justify meddling in Congo. “We are finishing these FDLR before the Congolese elections [in November]… Rwandan sources have told us that Kagame has a plan to destabilize the elections in Congo. We must remove the FDLR because they are the reason Kagame is always invading Congo.”

“The UN still hopes that every means of peaceful resolution can be used to deal with the FDLR,” says MONUCís Sylvie van den Wildenberg. “It is the hardliners, the Hutus, most probably involved in genocide, that are blocking the process. Rwanda has said that there will be an amnesty for people who were under fourteen years old in 1994. We think that every human being should have a choice.”

Christian is an FDLR soldier. He watched listlessly as Operation Iron Fist unfolded in Nindja. “I don’t want to go back to Rwanda because the problem I have is still there. Kagame killed my parents at Ryabega [northern Rwanda] in 1990. We cannot trust Kagame. He will kill us all.”

Christian is wearing a tattered Patagonia brand jacket made in America. Christian insists he is twenty years old, but, clearly, he is no older than sixteen. His gun is almost as big as he is, but there is no question that he knows how to use it.

“Instead of going home to be killed by Kagame, I accept to be killed by MONUC or FARDC,” he says. Alphonse has the bravado of a cornered teenage boy; behind this front is only fear.

Like Christian, many FDLR are child soldiers hardly old enough to recall the details of their flight from Rwanda. Most know nothing of the complexity of the cause they fight for. Many FDLR were born in Congo; some are held hostage here.

Christian wants only to go home. But to most of the world, Christian is no longer a human being, he is a Hutu, and there is no home on earth where he will be welcome.

RESOURCES:

“DRC: Illegal arms exports fuelling killings, mass rape and torture,” Amnesty International, July 2005 http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR620082005

“DRC: Arming Civilians Adds Fuel to the Fire,” Human Rights Watch, July 2005 http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/07/12/congo11314.htm

“DRC: Gold Fuels Massive Human Rights Atrocities,” Human Rights Watch, June 2005 http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/06/02/congo11041.htm

Veritas Rwanda Forum page on the Spanish lawsuit
http://www.veritasrwandaforum.org/

See also:

“Rwanda’s Secret War: US-Backed Destabilization of Central Africa”
/105/africa/rwandawar

More reports and images from Central Africa online at keith harmon snow’s website:
http://www.allthingspass.com

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2005

Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://WW4Report.com

THE NEW RESISTANCE IN ARGENTINA

Workers Defend “Recovered Factories”

by Yeidy Rosa

When Luis Zanon decided to abandon the ceramic factory in Argentina’s southern province of Neuquen, over which his family had held legal ownership since 1984, the factory’s debt was more than $170 million. Following Argentina’s economic collapse in 2001, the Zanon family left the country, accessing foreign accounts that had accumulated millions, and presumably leaving the factory to become a forgotten warehouse with broken windows, overgrown weeds and rusty machinery.

But 266 out of the 331 employees of the Zanon factory–some of whom had worked there for more than 15 years, and all of whom were owed months in back pay–had a more creative response. They would continue going to work every day, producing the tiles and running the factory themselves. In place of the strike, where labor is withheld in protest, Zanon’s workers opted for re-inventing forms of labor and counter-power, where organizing emerged out of participation in lived experience.

Today, Argentina’s “recovered factory “movement includes more than 200 businesses that have been successfully producing without owners or bosses, incorporating more than 10,000 otherwise unemployed or underemployed workers. Threats of eviction, kidnapings, police violence, terror by hired gangs, direct opposition from local politicians and apathy on the part of Argentina’s current president, Nestor Kirchner, are all obstacles to the movement–and constant reminders of a weak transition to democracy from the military regime that ruled Argentina from 1976 until 1983.

As workers struggle to gain legal status for their cooperatives and full expropriation of the factories within a court system designed to protect private property, a network of solidarity has formed strong links despite the state’s repressive apparatus. A laboratory of democracy within the factories and their surrounding communities has emerged, where a concrete alternative to corporate capitalism has redefined success as the creation of work and social inclusion, rather than a measurement of profits.

The Argentinazo Crisis of 2001

The failure of the neo-liberal model is epitomized in the case of Argentina, as 20 years of unrestrained borrowing left the country with the world’s highest per-capita debt by the end of 2001. When the government defaulted on its $140 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and private lenders such as Bank of Boston and Citibank, the peso, pegged one-to-one with the U.S. dollar by President Carlos Menem (1989-1999), devalued 70%–forcing half of the country’s 37 million residents below the poverty line overnight. Once the jewel of Latin American economic prosperity, Argentina found itself with unemployment rates as high as 25 percent. Menem had doubled the country’s gross domestic product by privatizing almost all national assets. Despite a rise in unemployment due to downsizing brought about by privatization, banks continued to loan Argentina billions of dollars. On December 19, 2001, the citizens of Argentina woke up to find their bank accounts frozen. With this, Argentina’s working middle class nearly evaporated.

Over the next two days, mass protests and demonstrations were staged by groups of workers and large sections of the (now former) middle class, as a shocked nation poured onto the streets of all the major cities. Over the next week, the populace forced out a total of four presidents. By refusing to wait until the next election to vote the president out, the citizens of Argentina exercised horizontal accountability in its ultimate form. “Que se vayan todos!”( “They must all go!”) was the popular cry. Argentina was holding accountable not only individual politicians, but the system itself. Notwithstanding, the country was left devastated, as police repression left 35 dead, thousands wounded and another 4,500 imprisoned. Shortly after, civil society spontaneously organized popular assemblies and elaborate barter systems termed trueque, and the piquetero movement of unemployed workers organized protests throughout the country.

The Workers Take Over

Referred to as occupied or recuperated factories, worker-run factories, grass-roots cooperatives, factories under worker control, self-organized and self-managed factories or democratic workplaces, the recovered factories of Argentina are a concrete economic alternative to corporate capitalism. The pattern is typical: The owner, after a period of cutting back on worker wages and benefits in order to cut on costs and minimize debt, locks out workers and abandons the property, perhaps filing bankruptcy and liquidating other assets in order to salvage whatever possible. The workers, defending their jobs and livelihood, organize and prepare to occupy the property, opting to get the factory running again, rather than face unemployment. Working together with other organized sectors of the community, the workers gain support from students, unions and members of the unemployed worker’s movement known as piqueteros. Together, they stage demonstrations, camp out on the property and produce literature regarding their struggle. The space is then recovered and production begins. When state forces attempt to evict the workers, the aforementioned groups unite and collectively prevent police entry. The internal organization of the factories is based on horizontalism, direct democracy and autonomy.

This process is not limited to factories, as other recovered workspaces include clinics, book publishers, hotels, supermarkets and bakeries. A working-class solution and successful act of resistance, it has not come with ease and does not enjoy certainty or security. Legal attacks, death threats and physical harm have come to workers at many of the 200 recuperated businesses operating without bosses, owners or foremen since idle workplaces began to be taken over in the late 1990s. Yet of those recovered since the 2001 economic crisis, which left 3,900 bankrupt factories in Buenos Aires alone, 60% have taken on more personnel, employees earn more, and production is higher than at the time of abandonment.

Though unique circumstances surround each case, the dominant pattern within recovered factories is the practice of direct democracy and direct action, with decisions made in a general assembly and each worker having a vote and a voice. Some are demanding to be recognized as co-operatives while others want state ownership, but all demand a say in what happens to the bankrupt businesses.

Perhaps the most crucial issue the movement has brought to light is that of legitimate ownership: What claims do workers have over factories and the machinery within them, and how does this challenge normative notions of private property? This takes on a particular relevance, since part of Menem’s neo-liberal policies was to heavily subsidize businesses such as those now “recovered” by the workers. In this way, the factories were built and run with public funds and on public land, leading workers and community members to consider themselves the subsidizers of the factories and the machines therein.

Though the government of Argentina gave many recovered businesses temporary two-year permits to function, these have all expired. The Federal Supreme Court of Argentina has ordered the eviction of workers, offering instead government-sponsored micro-enterprise projects for 150 pesos a week (roughly US$50). In the recovered factories, where all are paid equally, a worker may earn up to 800 pesos. The workers’ response has been to lobby the courts to recognize the workers’ administration as legitimate and legal. Within the present legal limbo, it is impossible for workers to secure bank loans for machinery repair or replacement costs. In defending the autonomous management of their workplaces, the workers are also petitioning the courts for a one-time government subsidy of US$5,000 per job to cover start-up costs.

The Case of FaSinPat

In Neuquen, the Zanon ceramic factory has been renamed FaSinPat by its workers, short for “Fabrica Sin Patrones” (“Factory Without Bosses”). It is the best-known and most politicized of all the recovered factories, producing without an owner or boss since March 2002. The Zanon family, who gave Italian names to the tiles they sold, had never paid taxes, had exploited workers and had stolen land and raw resources from the region’s indigenous Mapuche community. Under the management of the Zanon family, the factory had between 25 and 30 serious occupational accidents per month and one fatality per year.

Since the workers recovered the factory, working relationships have been reinvented; elected committees oversee the running of the plant and all decisions are made in assembly on general consensus, everyone has the right to be heard, every worker has a vote, all workers are paid equally, and there have been no occupational health and safety crises. There have been 170 new hires as of April 2005, production is higher than when the Zanon family locked out the workers, and the tiles now have Mapuche names in honor of the factory’s neighbors and allies.

The workers keep the community informed and involved, and a space has been created within the factory for meetings, art exhibits, musical events and community gatherings. The FaSinPat workers have resisted five eviction attempts with the solidarity and help of the Mapuche, neighbors, students, workers from the piquetero movement, and even the prisoners of the nearby Prison #11–who shared their food rations with workers when they initially recovered the factory. They have also received support from the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo–the organization of mothers and grandmothers of some of the 35,000 students, workers, union organizers and activists who disappeared during the “Dirty War” waged by the military dictatorship of 1976-1983, who have marched in Buenos Aires’ central Plaza de Mayo since 1977, demanding to know the fates of their loved ones.

Each eviction attempt has been ordered by the Federal Supreme Court and, each time, the police have been met by thousands of people defending the workers. But the eviction attempts have become increasingly violent. On March 4, a worker was kidnapped and tortured in a green Ford Falcon–the same make and model that security operatives used during the Dirty War.

For one week this past April, bids were accepted on the factory in a court-ordered process for paying back the debt as an alternative to declaring the company bankrupt. Under Argentina’s new bankruptcy law such “cram-down” bidding makes it easier for private (often foreign) companies to take over Argentine assets. When the week passed and nobody had placed a bid, the workers at FaSinPat considered it a step forward in their struggle to be legally recognized as a cooperative. But the judge who announced the cram down suddenly made an exception, accepting a bid that came in after the deadline. The bid came from a company named Ocabamba SA. Its owners are the son and wife of Luis Zanon.

Moving Forward

Some recovered factory workers have adopted the cry, “Stop Asking.” They have shown what happens when we stop asking and start doing. Their creativity has redefined their social and political relation to Argentina and the world, deconstructed hierarchical forms of production and social organization and challenged norms of legitimate ownership and private property–all through their refusal to allow their workplace to be taken from them. Their positive act of working has had the power to disrupt (neo-liberal) business as usual. Their experimental alternative to profit-driven production in their laboratory of democracy holds out the hope of new economic relations across the globe.

Shortly after his election in 2003, President Kirchner was visited by IMF managing director Rodrigo Rato. During the visit Rato said to Kirchner, “At the IMF we have a problem called Argentina.” Kirchner replied, “I have a problem called 15 million poor people.” Perhaps now, what is needed is for President Kirchner to act on the human rights platform he ran on and recognize the solution that Argentina’s own workers have forged.

—-

Yeidy Rosa has a master’s degree in human rights with a specialty in Latin America. She is currently the administrative associate in the national office of the War Resisters League in New York City. This article was originally published in the June issue of Nonviolent Activist, the magazine of the War Resisters League, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012, (212)228-0450, www.warresisters.org.

RESOURCES:

Obreros de Zanon: Zanon/FaSinPat workers website
http://www.obrerosdezanon.org/

Grassroots Toolkit for Action on supporting the workers of Zanon/FaSinPat http://www.hellocoolworld.com/thetake/grassroots/action/urgent/

Online petition for the Zanon/FaSinPat workers
http://www.petitiononline.com/zanon/petition.html

See also:

WW4 REPORT on Argentina’s political crisis:
http://www.ww3report.com/94.html#andean15

http://www.ww3report.com/89.html#andean20

WW4 REPORT on the legacy of Argentina’s “Dirty War”:
/node/735

http://www.ww3report.com/92.html#andean28

http://ww3report.com/31.html#shadows2

WW4 REPORT on the Mapuche struggle on the Chilean side of the border:
/node/638

——————-

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

http://WW4Report.com

PARANOIA ON ROUTE 66

An Algerian Immigrant’s Kafkaesque Journey in Post-9-11 America

by Bill Weinberg

Still Moments
A Story About Faded Dreams & Forbidden Pictures
Zighen Aym
ZAWP, POB 411, Mossville, IL 61552-411

Of all the nightmares which have befallen immigrants from the Islamic world since the September 11 attacks, those related in this short self-published memoir, Still Moments, are far from the most egregious. But the nearly surreal ironies of this story, and the straightforward, almost innocent way it is told, make it a powerful testament to how freedom is contracting as our leaders wage wars in the name of expanding freedom. As if synchronicity had conspired to drive home this point, the critical incident on which the tale turns takes place on Route 66, fabled in song (Chuck Berry) and story (Jack Kerouac) as a symbol of the uniquely American freedom of the Open Road.

The (probably pseudonymous) protagonist, Zighen Aym, who tells his tale in the first person, is a middle-class professional working as a mechanical engineer for an unnamed company in central Illinois. He is a husband and father, a naturalized US citizen, and had been in the country seven years at the time of the 9-11 disaster. He was the archetype of the “good” immigrant who really believed that the USA represents freedom. He had left his native Algeria to escape violence and repression, which was endemic there in the 1990s, and doubly targeted at members of his own people, the Berber ethnic minority.

News from home never failed to confirm the wisdom of his decision to leave. In May 1997, his young sister-in-law was killed when a bomb exploded at her high school in Algiers. But some of the salient incidents which prompted Aym to leave his homeland would take on an ironic significance as he was “profiled” as a potential terrorist by the FBI for the most unassuming acts after 9-11.

The first came in 1986, when he was vacationing with a friend at the Mediterranean port of Bejaia. An avid photographer, he began taking pictures of the port below from a scenic vista point. This activity came to the attention of a police officer. Aym was detained at the local police station, interrogated about his purposes in photographing the harbor, and given a verbal drumming about the threat of espionage and subversion from the imperialist powers. This degree of paranoia over something as innocent as photography helped inform his decision to leave the country years later.

Another concerned the food shortages which were chronic, despite the oil boom of the 1980s. After waiting in a long line for hours to triumphantly return home with ten pounds of garbanzo beans and four pounds of butter, he began to realize how his standards for material security had eroded.

Early one morning in October 2002, Aym, now living happily in Illinois, was driving along Route 66 with his camera, his eye drawn by images that could make for interesting shots, unaware of how his comfortable world was about to change. First he stops to shoot dew-glistening spider webs interlacing between corn stalks in a farmer’s field. Then—fatefully—he notices a pair of railroad tracks, “their flat surfaces reflecting sunlight and shining like two silver lines drawn into the horizon.” His interest is purely aesthetic, not at all technical: “The scene of converging rail tracks and obsolete telephone poles was a harmonious display of increasing distance and decreasing height and span; a natural 3-D visual agreement.” He again stops the car and starts clicking.

As at the port at Bejaia 15 years earlier, this activity draws the attention of the local constabulary. A state trooper pulls up, questions him about what he is doing and where he is from, asks for ID, runs a check. Aym is finally allowed to go. Weeks later, the FBI issues an alert warning of terrorist attacks on Amtrak.

In January 2003, Aym receives a call at his home from the FBI. They request an interview to discuss his “love of trains.” (The assumption seems to be he is either a terrorist or a train-spotting geek.) “I don’t love trains,” he answers. He is aware he can refuse the interview, but also aware that this would only invite an FBI visit at his workplace, which would be a public embarrassment and could even jeopardize his job. He realizes his official rights are somewhat irrelevant. He agrees to the interview.

“Even if the FBI suspects me of being a terrorist, it is better to be in America than Algeria,” he jokes to his worried wife. “Here, at least I can buy garbanzo beans at any time of the day and night.”

In the following days, as he frets over his impending interview, contacts the ACLU and is referred to a lawyer, he contemplates how freedom is diminishing in both his native and adoptive countries—and for related reasons. In the ’90s, as the Algerian regime turned post-socialist and came to be dominated by a “mafia” of corrupt generals, the new populist mantle was assumed by the Islamic fundamentalists. Their electoral victory in 1992 only prompted the regime to annul the elections and declare military rule—which in turn prompted the Islamists to take up arms, precipitating nearly ten years of civil war in which 200,000 Algerians lost their lives. And neither side—the military mafia or the Islamist guerillas—saw the Berbers as anything other than a dangerous threat to national unity.

The resurgence of a Berber movement for human and cultural rights came, unfortunately, just as 9-11 was about to transform the political landscape for the worse. On June 14, 2001, over 1 million Berbers marched in Algiers to protest the killing of an unarmed youth by the police in Kabylia, the Berber region. Ten were killed as police attacked the protesters. The White House said nothing. On July 12, 2001, Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was at the White House for an official visit; a small group of Berber protesters stood outside with a banner reading “ALGERIAN PRESIDENT AND GENERALS TO THE HAGUE.” A few weeks later, Algeria awarded a $700 million contract to Halliburton subsidiary KBR to help modernize the country’s oil industry. After 9-11, the US would step up arms sales and military-intelligence cooperation with the Algerian regime, and human and minority rights in Algeria would become more of an inconvenience than ever for Algiers and Washington alike.

So Aym’s people face persecution in his homeland precisely because they are not Arab, Algeria’s dominant ethnicity. And the Islamists and government are seen as equal threats to Berber freedom and identity. Yet in Illinois, he is profiled as an Arab/Islamic terrorist.

Aym’s interview with the FBI takes place at a federal building in a Bloomington suburb named (more irony) Normal. Once ensconced in the office of the interrogating agent, he offers to do a Google search of his own name, which would turn up freelance work confirming that he is, in fact, a photographer. The agent declines, instead asking a barrage of banal questions: “Do you know anyone, associates or friends, who may be working for any terrorist government or terrorist organization?” “Are you a terrorist or linked to a terrorist organization?”

Writes Aym: “I had a feeling of deja vu: I saw the Algerian policeman at the police station in 1986. The agent’s blank face and small but muscular body made him an extension of the repressive system. How interesting to see that repression and love of power easily cross cultural, national, and religious boundaries!”

After answering a requisite “no” to the agent’s questions, he is free to leave—until, in one final flourish of paranoid sleuthwork, the agent notices the decal on Aym’s notepad and demands he explain it. It reads “UBL,” for Ultimate Band List, a music e-store. The agent accepts this explanation. Aym is confused until his lawyer, who was allowed to be present for the interview, says to the agent, “I see that you have the picture of UBL here.” He indicates a WANTED poster for Usama bin Laden—using the FBI’s unorthodox spelling of the first name.

“I was stunned when I realized how naive I was,” Aym writes. “Both my lawyer and the agent had made the link between my UBL decal and Usama Bin Laden. My lawyer used the initials UBL as if he purposely wanted to expose my naivete to me.”

The interview had lasted an hour, but of course felt like an eternity. Upon leaving, Aym considers “heading north to get my kicks on Route 66 one more time. Instead, I drove home.”

The story is told in a brief 65 pages, and does often come across as slightly naive. But a lot of meaning is packed into this slim volume—about lost innocence, about the paradoxes of identity, and about the diminishing prospects for human freedom in both the United States of America and on planet Earth generally in the long aftermath of September 11.

RESOURCES

Zighen Aym’s homepage
http://www.geocities.com/zighenaym

——————-

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

http://WW4Report.com

CENTRAL AMERICA: CAFTA ENDGAME LOOMS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

DR-CAFTA SHOWDOWN NEARS

On June 30 the US Senate voted 54-45 to approve the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a pact largely eliminating tariffs on about $32 billion in annual trade between Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the US. Also on June 30, the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee voted 30-11 to send the measure to the full House for a vote. The House debate will probably start on July 11, when Congress returns from its Independence Day recess.

DR-CAFTA, which is strongly backed by the administration of US president George W. Bush, is expected to face serious opposition in the House, especially from Democrats. DR-CAFTA opponents are urging activists to communicate with their representatives during the recess and pressure them to vote against it. The Stop CAFTA Coalition has set up a website (www.stopcafta.org) with talking points and additional background. So far only the legislatures of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have approved the measure. (Radio Mundo Real, July 1; NYT, July 1; Campaign for Labor Rights Action Alert, June 30)

On June 29, the day before the Senate vote, the Associated Press wire service revealed that for more than a year the US Labor Department suppressed studies it had commissioned from the International Labor Rights Fund on labor conditions in Central American countries. “In practice,” one study said, “labor laws on the books in Central America are not sufficient to deter employers from violations, as actual sanctions for violations of the law are weak or nonexistent.” The Bush administration claims Central America has made progress on working conditions, and is using this as an argument in favor of DR-CAFTA. The Labor Department, which calls the studies “unsubstantiated” and “biased,” initially barred the contractor from distributing them and ordered it to remove them from its website. Under a new agreement, the International Labor Rights Fund can now distribute the studies, but it will not receive $250,000 of the $937,000 it was to be paid for the work. (Miami Herald, June 30 from AP; NYT, July 1)

In the middle of June former Wal-Mart Stores executive James Lynn filed a suit in Arkansas against the company charging that he was fired in 2002 “for truthfully reporting the abysmal working conditions in Central American factories utilized by Wal-Mart and for refusing to comply with Wal-Mart’s demand that he certify the factories in order to get Wal-Mart’s goods to market.” Wal-Mart says it fired Lynn for “having inappropriate contact with a woman who directly reported to him,” but it acknowledges it spied on him. Wal-Mart says several factories that Lynn reported on subsequently corrected their problems. But Charles Kernaghan of the New York-based National Labor Committee told the New York Times that workers at one of the factories, located in Honduras, reported continuing problems as recently as April of this year. (NYT, July 1)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 3

GUATEMALA: UNION OFFICE RAIDED

Unknown persons raided the Union of Education Workers of Guatemala (STEG) office in Guatemala City some time between the evening of June 25 and the morning of June 27. The intruders stole a computer with extensive information on the National Assembly of Teachers’ programs and history; destroyed two other computers; spilled red paint on all the files and destroyed other papers; and painted red crosses on walls and desks. A desk drawer containing cash was left open, but the money was not stolen.

Unidentified vehicles began to park outside STEG’s office in March after the union joined other groups in demonstrating against DR-CAFTA. STEG has also opposed the Law of Concessions, a measure for the privatization of public resources, and has protested government corruption and human rights abuses. Social organizations, especially those that oppose DF-CAFTA, have been subject to a large number of break-ins this year. The Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA (GHRC-USA) is asking for appeals to Guatemalan president Oscar Berger Perdomo (fax +502-2-251-2218, presidente@scspr.gob.gt) and Attorney General Juan Luis Florido (fax +502 251 2218) to insure the safety of STEG members and to carry out a thorough investigation of the break-in. (GHRC-USA Urgent Action 6/28/05; Guatemala Hoy, June 30)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 3

HONDURAS: COMMUNITY LEADER SHOT

On June 5, paramilitaries stabbed and wounded Feliciano Pineda, a leader of the Montana Verde community in Gracias municipality, Lempira department in western Honduras. Pineda was left in critical condition with stab wounds to his face, neck, back, sides and hands, and a blow to his spine. Community members took Pineda to a hospital in Tegucigalpa, but despite his precarious state of health, agents from the General Department of Criminal Investigation (DGIC) transferred him in chains to the regional jail in Gracias. (Rights Action, June 10; Consejo Civico de Organizaciones Populares e Indigenas de Honduras-COPINH Urgent Alert, June 10/) The Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) points out that the DGIC is run by Napoleon Nazar, who in the 1980s belonged to an army death squad linked to the disappearance of more than 150 activists. (Prensa Latina, June 10)

The paramilitaries who shot Pineda have been identified by eyewitnesses as Delfino Reyes, Santos Reyes, Pablo Reyes and Cecilio Reyes, some of whom were involved in the Jan. 8, 2003, violent arrest and subsequent torture of Montana Verde Lenca indigenous council members Leonardo and Marcelino Miranda, as well as in legal proceedings as false witnesses against Montana Verde community leaders. The Miranda brothers remain jailed in Gracias since their arrest. (RA, June 10; COPINH Urgent Alert, June 10)

The four paramilitaries were briefly detained but were then granted conditional freedom by Gracias judge Atiliano Vasquez. Vasquez previously served as the private accusing lawyer in two politically motivated cases against Montana Verde community leaders; after becoming a judge, he was put in charge of all the Montana Verde cases and has consistently issued flawed rulings against community members. (RA, June 10)

COPINH is calling for messages of protest to President Ricardo Maduro (fax #504-221-4552, 221-4545, 221-4647); Supreme Court president Vilma Morales (504-233-8089, 234-2367); and Congress president Porfirio Lobo Sosa (504-238-6048, 222-3471, 237-0663). Rights Action also suggests contacting US ambassador to Honduras Larry Palmer (fax #504-236-9037); Honduran ambassador to the US Mario Miguel Canahuati (fax #202-966-9751, embassy@hondurasemb.org); and Human Rights Commissioner Ramon Custodio Lopez (fax #504-232-6894, custodiolopez@conadeh.hn); with copies to COPINH at fax 504-783-0817, copinhonduras@yahoo.es.

On June 8, police and local judicial authorities carried out a violent eviction of the Lenca indigenous community of Golondrinas, in Marcala municipality, La Paz department. Police beat up and arrested dozens of community members, stole work tools and other property and bulldozed the entire community’s homes and property to the ground. The land had been abandoned for 25 years when the community began squatting it in May 2004, and although the National Agrarian Institute (INA) ruled that the lands belonged to the municipality of Marcala, they have now been transferred to a private construction company, ASOTRAMM. (RA, June 10; PL, June 10; Community Member’s Eyewitness Report posted on indigena.nodo50.org, June 15)

In other news, some 500 members of the gay and lesbian community of San Pedro Sula marched on June 4, demanding respect for their rights. (La Prensa, Honduras, June 5)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 19

EL SALVADOR: FIRED WORKERS ON HUNGER STRIKE

Eight former employees of the Salvadoran Interior Ministry began a liquids-only hunger strike outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador on May 26 to demand severance pay. They were among 106 employees dismissed in December 2004 and denied severance pay because they worked on an annual contract and were not covered under laws against unjustified dismissal. Many had worked for the Salvadoran government for more than 20 years.

On June 23, some of the hunger strikers moved to the Legislative Assembly and occupied the chamber, causing the session to be suspended. William Huezo, president of the General Association of Public and Municipal Employees (AGEPYM), said the hunger strikers were in “critical health,” but he hoped Deputy Archbishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez would mediate so that they could win the payment of one month’s wages for each year they worked. (La Nacion, Costa Rica, June 19 from ACAN-EFE; El Diario de Hoy, San Salvador, June 24)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 26

PANAMA: SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM HALTED

Panama’s grassroots movements won a victory on June 27 in their fight against changes to the country’s Social Security Agency (CSS) when President Martin Torrijos and his council of ministers formally asked the National Assembly to approve a bill suspending the reform package for 90 days. The National Front for the Defense of Social Security (FRENADESSO)–representing thousands of construction workers, teachers, doctors and CSS workers, among other sectors–responded by immediately calling off the strike it began on May 27. The National Assembly unanimously approved the 90-day suspension of the CSS reforms on June 30, and Torrijos signed the suspension into law on July 1, exactly a month after he signed the bill enacting the reforms.

FRENADESSO had set suspension of the reforms as a condition for beginning a dialogue with the government over the measure’s more than 180 articles. The talks began on June 28, although FRENADESSO chose not to join them until the suspension of the reforms is officially enacted. Participants in the dialogue include government representatives, business associations, retiree organizations, unions and professional guilds. The Council of Rectors of Panama’s public and private universities is facilitating, with the Panama Bishop’s Conference and the National Ecumenical Committee acting as observers. The talks are scheduled to conclude on Aug. 29. (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, June 28 from AP; EFE, June 30, July 1)

Weekly News Update in the Americas, July 3

Some 6,000 Panamanians (or 2,500 to 3,000, according to police) marched on June 16 in Panama City to demand the repeal of reforms to the Social Security Agency (CSS). During the march, police used tear gas to break up a roadblock set up by students, workers and CSS employees along the trans-isthmus road. Marches also took place in the cities of Colon and David. (EFE, June 16)

Weekly News Update in the Americas, June 19

On June 4, after a six-hour meeting by strike leaders, FRENADESSO urged Panamanians to reject a planned referendum on the broadening of the Panama Canal, free trade agreements and the Puebla-Panama Plan. (La Prensa, Panama, June 5)

Weekly News Update in the Americas, June 5

Weekly News Update on the Americas
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PERU: COCALEROS CLASH WITH COPS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

On May 29 in Tocache province, in the Huallaga valley of San Martin in north central Peru, at least 3,500 campesino coca growers (cocaleros) armed with sticks surrounded a group of 230 police agents charged with carrying out coca leaf eradication operations. According to police, the resulting clash left 17 agents hurt–one by a bullet, the rest by beatings. Twenty cocaleros were injured; Tocache mayor Nancy Zagerra said three of them are in serious condition with bullet wounds. (La Jornada, Mexico, May 31, from DPA)

The 230 anti-drug police agents had arrived in the area on May 26, along with 50 workers from the Control and Reduction of Coca Crops in the Alto Huallaga (CORAH) project. On May 28, the anti-drug forces set up camp in the village of 5 de Diciembre, where according to cocalero leader Nancy Obregon they forced the campesinos from their homes and destroyed their crops, even after the campesinos showed them documents from the state-run National Coca Company (ENACO) demonstrating that the crops were legal. “They said those [documents] were no good and they threw everyone out. The people have had to sleep outside,” said Obregon. Outraged at the incident, Obregon organized nearly 4,000 cocaleros to confront the agents at their camp the next day. (La Republica, Lima, May 30)

On May 31 a representative of the Office of the Defender of the People, Manlio Alvarez Soto, traveled to Tocache from Tingo Maria, in neighboring Huanuco region, to meet with the cocaleros and gather information about the conflict. Alvarez also visited two of the wounded cocaleros in the Tingo Maria hospital, where they were taken for treatment. (LR, June 1) On June 3, some 6,000 cocaleros from Monzon and Alto Huallaga marched in Tingo Maria in support of the Tocache cocaleros. (LR, June 4) Obregon said the cocaleros will start an open-ended strike on June 27. (LR, May 30)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 5

Weekly News Update on the Americas
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BOLIVIA: PRESIDENT OUSTED AGAIN

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

PROTESTS TOPPLE PREZ–AGAIN

Indigenous and campesino protests that had shaken Bolivia since May 16 continued on June 6 around demands for the nationalization of natural gas resources and the seating of a constitutional assembly. Nearly 100,000 people demonstrated in La Paz, gathering in San Francisco Plaza and spreading out even into wealthy neighborhoods. All the main cities were affected by demonstrations, and protesters set up 78 roadblocks around the country, cutting off transit to Chile and Peru and paralyzing some of the highways to Argentina and Paraguay. Campesinos occupied a branch of an oil pipeline, causing a suspension of pumping to Chile.

During the day President Carlos Mesa Gisbert fled the Palacio Quemado, the presidential residence in La Paz. He returned, but in the evening he announced his resignation. Mesa had offered his resignation on March 6, during previous protests, but Congress had refused it and the move was viewed as a political maneuver. This time there was little question the offer was for real. Elected vice president in 2002, Mesa became president on Oct. 17, 2003, when similar protests forced Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to resign in what is now known as the “first gas war.”

Congressional leaders arranged to meet on June 9 to accept Mesa’s resignation and choose a replacement. The meeting was to be held in the country’s constitutional capital, Sucre, in order to avoid the protests in La Paz and the nearby, largely indigenous city of El Alto. Under the Constitution, the next in line would be the Senate president, followed by the president of the Chamber of Deputies and then the head of the Supreme Court of Justice. It was clear that Senate President Hormando Vaca Diez, a right-winger who represents business interests in Santa Cruz department, would not be acceptable to the protesters, nor would Chamber of Deputies President Mario Cossio. Deputy Evo Morales, a leader of the coca growers (cocaleros) and of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, pushed for Vaca Diez and Cossio to step aside in favor of Supreme Court head Eduardo Rodriguez Veltze, who would be mandated to call early elections. Polls taken before the current protests showed Morales as the leading presidential candidate.

While politicians maneuvered in preparation for Congress’s June 9 meeting in Sucre, the protesters kept up the pressure. In La Paz and El Alto unions and community groups organized a popular assembly on June 8, according to Bolivian Workers Central (COB) leader Jaime Solares, who said there were plans for provisioning committees to deal with shortages caused by the roadblocks, and for self-defense committees, because of “information that there might be a coup from the right at any moment.” A campesino group close to Morales occupied seven oilfields in Santa Cruz department belonging to the Spanish corporation Repsol and the British firm BP; the occupation cut off oil shipments to the Chilean port of Arica. Felipe Quispe, leader of the Aymara indigenous group, told a Peruvian radio program that he would welcome a “civil war” in Bolivia that would finally settle the question of who should rule the country.

The protests followed Congress to the usually quiet city of Sucre on June 9. Contingents of campesinos, students and miners marched through the Plaza 25 de Mayo, setting off sticks of dynamite, while Vaca Diez tried to build support for his presidential bid in meetings near Yotala, a community 30 km from Sucre. In the afternoon a confrontation developed between police agents and the miners. Juan Coro Mayta, president of the March 27 Miners Cooperative, was killed by a bullet to the heart. When he learned of the protester’s death, Vaca Diez fled to the headquarters of the Sucre Battalion in the outlying El Tejar neighborhood and demanded military protection.

Top generals in La Paz spoke to Vaca Diez by cellphone, telling him that their position was “at all costs to avoid a confrontation between brothers,” according to an unidentified high-ranking military officer. “And he was reminded that we’d said the voice of the people had to be listened to, the popular demands.” Vaca Diez then returned to Sucre and agreed to step aside, as did Cossio. Congress met in the evening and named Eduardo Rodriguez president. Rodriguez promised to hold early elections and scheduled meetings with leaders of various social sectors.

As of June 10 supplies were beginning to arrive in La Paz and El Alto as protesters suspended roadblocks. Mercedes Condori, a member of the executive committee of the El Alto Federation of Neighborhood Committees (FEJUVE), said an assembly of neighborhood leaders had decided to give Rodriguez 72 hours to satisfy their demands: gas nationalization, a trial of former president Sanchez de Lozada and the seating of a constitutional assembly.

On June 7, the day after Mesa announced his resignation, US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs Roger Noriega told reporters at the Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly in Fort Lauderdale, Florida: “The role of [Venezuelan] president [Hugo] Chavez in the events in Bolivia is obvious to the whole world. It’s really worrying.” Later in the day the US State Department attempted to back up Noriega’s statement with copies of news articles indicating that Evo Morales had expressed support for Chavez on various occasions. (La Jornada, Mexico, June 7 from AFP, DPA; June 8 from AFP, DPA, Reuters; June 9 from AFP, DPA, Reuters; June 10, 11/05 from correspondent)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 12

GROUPS DEMAND NATIONALIZATION

On June 18, representatives of about 70 neighborhood and community groups, unions, campesino groups and civic associations from the Bolivian departments of La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, Oruro and Sucre met in the city of Cochabamba to map out a national strategy around key demands. The groups ended the meeting with an agreement to temporarily suspend street protests and road blockades while they present their demands to Congress and to new president Eduardo Rodriguez, who replaced Carlos Mesa Gisbert on June 9. On July 23 the groups are to meet again to discuss the progress made.

The primary demand of the social organizations is for nationalization of the country’s hydrocarbons (gas and oil) resources. They are demanding that the Bolivian state immediately recover ownership of these resources and that the state oil company, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales de Bolivia (YPFB), take over all hydrocarbons production, industrialization and sales. They are also demanding that Congress revise the Hydrocarbons Law, taking out clauses that protect Bolivia’s current gas and oil contracts with transnational companies. In addition, they want a commission made up of government and social organization representatives to carry out a legal and technical audit of the transnational companies’ investments, to determine whether either the companies or the state require compensation.

The second main demand is for the immediate convening of a Constituent Assembly to write a new constitution. The groups also agreed to support demands for regional autonomy, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the state’s right to exploit natural resources or lead to the creation of a federal republic. In their final resolution, the organizations propose that a referendum on autonomy be carried out the same day as the election for the constituent assembly. (Resumen Latinoamericano 6/20/05 from La Haine]

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 26

CONGRESS FAILS TO ACT

On July 1, after three days of debate, Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies failed to approve a constitutional reform which would have allowed general elections in December. The vote was 50-54 against the reform; 105 votes–two thirds of the Chamber–were needed to approve it. The leftist Movement to Socialism (MAS) and right-wing New Republican Force (NFR) parties blocked the measure, demanding that a constituent assembly be convened before new general elections are set. The Only Union Confederation of Bolivian Campesino Workers (CSUTCB) and the Federation of Neighborhood Committees (FEJUVE) in El Alto have threatened to begin blocking roads on July 4; they are demanding that Congress be shut down and general elections be held. (AP, July 1; La Jornada, Mexico, July 2 from AFP, DPA)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 3

Weekly News Update on the Americas
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IRAQ: MEMOGATE AND THE COMFORTS OF VINDICATION

Yeah, Bush Lied–So What Do We Do About It?

by Bill Weinberg

Two years and counting after the invasion, a year after the official transfer to Iraqi “sovereignty,” and two months after the formation of an elected government, Iraq remains a classic counter-insurgency quagmire. And irrefutable documentary evidence has now emerged that Bush lied about his intentions in the war. We—the anti-war forces who warned of all this back in 2003—are vindicated. Just as the so-called “Memogate” revelations have come to light, global activists are gathering in Istanbul for a self-declared “tribunal” on US war crimes in Iraq, which is reiterating our all too obvious vindication.

This may make us feel good about ourselves. It may even be helpful in documenting US war crimes in a visible forum. But does that, alone, in any way help the people of Iraq? No. Does it even necessarily hasten the day when US troops will leave? If we merely gloat at the agony in Iraq and fail to grapple with the tough questions—again, no.

YES, IT’S A QUAGMIRE

The Bush administration itself issues statements on the state of the war laden with contradictions, a sure sign of the beginnings, at least, of official panic. Vice President Dick Cheney tells us “the insurgency is in its last throes.” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld paradoxically defended this statement, even while warning June 26 that “Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years.” He assured, however, that the fighting would eventually be left to the Iraqis. “We’re going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against the insurgency.”

President Bush’s address at Ft. Bragg on June 28 was assailed even by Republicans for its repeated invocation of 9-11, another sign of waning confidence in public support for the war. Said Bush: “The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of Sept. 11, if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden.” The obvious response is that it is the US occupation that lured al-Zarqawi to Iraq in the first place, and made the country a hotbed of Islamist terrorism.

On June 25, the UK Independent provided a survey of how the insurgency has fared over the past year since the official transfer to Iraqi sovereignty:

“Car bombers have struck Iraq 479 times in the past year, and a third of the attacks followed the naming of a new Iraqi government two months ago, according to a count compiled by the Associated Press news agency and based on reports from police, military and hospital officials. The unrelenting attacks, using bombs that can cost as little $17 (£9.30) each to assemble, have become the most-favored weapon of the government’s most determined enemies, Islamic extremists. The toll has been tremendous: From 28 April through 23 June, there were at least 160 vehicle bombings that killed at least 580 people and wounded at least 1,734. For the year from the handover of sovereignty on 28 June 2004, until 23 June, 2005, there were at least 479 car bombs, killing 2,174 people and wounding 5,520. Altogether, insurgents have killed at least 1,245 people since the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari took over on 28 April. There were 77 car bombs in May, killing 317 people and wounding 896. Last month was the most violent for Iraqi civilians since the US-led invasion to remove Saddam Hussein from power in March 2003.”

On May 27, New York’s Spanish-language daily El Diario/La Prensa noted a study by Puerto Rico’s government finding that “US government reports on soldiers under U.S. command killed in Iraq are so fragmented that they account for less than half of the total number.” This analysis was confirmed by El Diario/La Prensa’s review of multiple documents, including official releases by the Department of Defense, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior and more than 230 battlefront reports, which reveal that over 4,076 troops under US command had been killed in 799 days of battle. The official toll reported in the US papers—counting only US troops, as opposed to all troops under US command—was 1,649. (It has since gone up to 1,736.)

Military affairs expert José Rodríguez Beruff from the University of Puerto Rico told El Diario that the figures showing more than 4,000 dead indicate that, far from winning the war in Iraq, “what is happening is that the troops are being worn down.” He said that traditional theorists calculate that for an occupation force to win a guerrilla war, its casualties should be one to ten of its enemy’s. In this case, that would require 40,000 casualties among the insurgents.

There is still more confusion when it comes to the wounded, which US authorities put at 12,600 and counting. But El Diario cited the German Press Agency (DPA), which ran a story reporting on US Army documents putting the number of US soldiers with war-related mental ailments at 100,000.

The figures came to light in the course of an ongoing investigation by El Diario/La Prensa into the number of Puerto Rican and Latino casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. That inquiry prompted Rep. José Serrano (D-NY) and Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, then resident commissioner of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, to request a full casualty report, which yielded a partial list of 200 Puerto Rican losses, including battlefield deaths, wounded and medical discharges. After his election as Puerto Rico’s governor, Acevedo Vilá renewed his request to the Defense Department for a total and specific accounting, but has yet to receive an answer.

According to documents reviewed by El Diario, in addition to the 1,649 fatalities among US uniformed troops, there were 88 from the UK, 92 from other coalition member countries, 238 reported by private contractors, and at least 2,000 from members of the Iraqi army. The biggest gap in the published counts is that of Iraqi troops under command of the occupying forces.

Meanwhile, as we watch the corpses pile up, the basics of ordinary life still haven’t been restored to Iraqis. In a July 1 statement, Baghdad’s mayor decried the capital’s crumbling infrastructure and its inability to supply enough clean water to residents, threatening to resign if the government won’t provide more money.

The statement from Mayor Alaa Mahmoud al-Timimi was a signal of the daily misery still endured by Baghdad’s 6.45 million people. In addition to the unrelenting bombings and kidnappings, serious shortages in water, electricity and fuel continue to make normal life untenable. “It’s useless for any official to stay in office without the means to accomplish his job,” said al-Timimi, who is seeking $1.5 billion for Baghdad in 2005 but so far has received only $85 million.

Just as al-Timimi released this statement, one of Baghdad’s central water plants was shut down by a fire, possibly resulting from insurgent mortar fire, leaving millions in the capital without water.

And, like the West Bank, Baghdad is now divided by a “security fence”—actually a huge concrete wall—that separates the Green Zone, where the US authorities and their client state have set up shop in Saddam’s old palaces and ministry buildings, from the rest of the city. The wall draws mortar and rocket fire, and the shops around it have become targets for suicide attacks, making life in central Baghdad more dangerous, not less.

YES, BUSH LIED

In his official final word in April, Charles Duelfer, the CIA’s top weapons inspector in Iraq, said that the search for weapons of mass destruction had “gone as far as feasible” and resulted in nothing. “After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted,” wrote Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, in an addendum to the 1,500-page final report he issued last fall.

In the 92-page addendum, Duelfer gave a final look at the investigation that employed over 1,000 military and civilian translators, weapons specialists and other experts. Duelfer said there is no purpose in keeping the detainees who are being held because of their supposed knowledge on Iraq’s weapons, although he did not provide details about the current number of such detainees.

This little-noted embarrassment was shortly followed by the Downing Street Memo revelations, which have made something of a bigger splash. Leaked by a “British Deep Throat” to reporter Michael Smith of the London Times in mid-May, the secret document, slugged “eyes only,” summarizes a July 23, 2002 meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, in which Richard Dearlove head of Britain’s MI-6 intelligence service (referred to by his code-name “C”) reported on a recent visit to Washington. The memo notoriously reads:

“There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action…

“It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

“The Attorney-General [Lord Peter Goldsmith] said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC [Security Council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago [November 1998 resolution calling on Saddam to cooperate with weapons inspectors] would be difficult. The situation might of course change.”

These words were written at a time when the Bush administration was still insisting that military action would be a “last resort” against Iraq.

The London Times also reported May 29 that MPs from the UK’s Liberal Democrats had received information from the Royal Air Force showing that the bombing of Iraqi targets dramatically escalated in the prelude to the invasion, in an apparent attempt to goad Saddam into war. The information shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001.

Another leaked British memo, reported in the Washington Post June 12, has proved particularly prescient. The briefing paper, prepared for Blair and his top advisers eight months before the invasion, concluded that the US military was not preparing adequately for what the memo predicted would be a “protracted and costly” postwar occupation. The eight-page memo, written in advance of the notorious July 2002 Downing Street meeting, is entitled “Iraq: Conditions for Military Action.” It notes that US “military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace,” but that “little thought” has been given to “the aftermath and how to shape it.”

WHITHER THE TRIBUNAL?

At the end of June, the World Tribunal on Iraq got underway in Istanbul, convened by leading luminaries of the global anti-war movement. Among other things, the tribunal charged the United States with: waging a war of aggression contrary to Nuremberg Principles and UN charter, targeting the civilian population, using disproportionate force and indiscriminate weapons systems, failing to safeguard the lives of civilians under occupation, using deadly violence against peaceful protesters, imposing punishments without charge or trial and using collective punishment, re-writing the laws of a country that has been illegally invaded and occupied, creating the conditions under which the status of Iraqi women has been seriously degraded, and redefining torture in violation of international law to allow the use of torture and illegal detentions.

The opening statement also calls for “recognizing the right of the Iraqi people to resist the illegal occupation and to develop independent institutions, and affirming that the right to resist the occupation is the right to wage a struggle for self-determination…”

The World Tribunal on Iraq is consciously echoing the 1967 International War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam, held in Stockholm and Copenhagen and overseen by British pacifist Bertrand Russell. Many of the criticisms that were leveled against the Russell Tribunal, as it was popularly known, are now being heard against the Istanbul tribunal: that it has no legal legitimacy, is recognized by no sovereign power, that nobody is arguing for the defense, that the jurors are all already convinced and the outcome is predermined.

At the opening session in Istanbul, Arundhati Roy delineated these charges, and answered them in her typically self-righteous style that the left finds so irresistible:

“The first is that this tribunal is a Kangaroo Court. That it represents only one point of view. That it is a prosecution without a defense. That the verdict is a foregone conclusion. Now this view seems to suggest a touching concern that in this harsh world, the views of the US government and the so-called Coalition of the Willing headed by President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have somehow gone unrepresented. That the World Tribunal on Iraq isn’t aware of the arguments in support of the war and is unwilling to consider the point of view of the invaders. If in the era of the multinational corporate media and embedded journalism anybody can seriously hold this view, then we truly do live in the Age of Irony, in an age when satire has become meaningless because real life is more satirical than satire can ever be.”

Richard Falk, author of over 30 books on international law, addressed the event’s mission in less sarcastic terms in his remarks, stating that this “Tribunal movement” works “to reinforce the claims of international law by filling in the gaps where governments and even the United Nations are unable and unwilling to act, or even speak. When governments are silent, and fail to protect victims of aggression, tribunals of concerned citizens possess a law-making authority.” But even he implicitly admitted that the verdict was a foregone conclusion, stating that in contrast to traditional tribunals, the Istanbul tribunal’s “essential purpose is to confirm the truth, not to discover it.” And indeed, the 1967 Russell Tribunal found the US guilty on every charge with a unanimity that even the judges at Nuremberg failed to achieve.

But the far bigger problem concerns the Tribunal’s stance towards the Iraqi “resistance,” which, like that of the international left generally, is muddled and naive.

The Tribunal affirms the abstract right to resist, but abjectly fails to grapple with the realities of Iraq’s actually-existing armed resistance. Arundhati Roy, for her part, has written enthusiastically of the Iraqi resistance in the past, a stance which is at least minimally clearer if no more morally consistent than that of the tribunal she now represents. It is, presumably, the same groups which are attacking US and (more often) Iraqi government forces which are also attacking perceived ethnic and religious enemies within Iraq with even greater ferocity. The June 2 suicide attack on a Sufi gathering north of Baghdad that left ten worshippers dead is but among the most deadly in a long list of recent examples.

In this light, some of the tribunal’s charges take on an ironic aspect. The US is accused of “failing to safeguard the lives of civilians under occupation”: the “resistance” that Roy and others glorify is one of the primary forces that Iraq’s civilians need to be protected from. The US is accused of “using deadly violence against peaceful protesters”: this is something else the “resistance” has done, as when presumed Sunni militants opened fire on Shi’ite protesters in Baghdad in April. Perversely, these Shi’ites were protesting against the US occupation, indicating that elements of the “resistance” are more concerned with sectarian supremacy than building a united front against the occupier.

The tribunal also accuses the US of “creating the conditions under which the status of Iraqi women has been seriously degraded.” This one is so ironic as to be hilarious when it comes from defenders of the Iraqi “resistance,” which is imposing harsh sharia law in its areas of control, as well as abducting and raping women with impunity, throwing acid in the face of those who refuse to take the veil. But perhaps these Taliban-style ultra-fundamentalist enclaves are what is meant by the “independent institutions” that the tribunal affirms the Iraqi “resistance” has the right to develop.

The situation is somewhat muddied by reports of clandestine “black propaganda” units carrying out some of the worst attacks in a bid to marginalize the resistance. But in the absence of evidence, deciding that the preponderance of the ostensible “resistance” attacks on civilians is the work of the CIA or Pentagon is arbitrary and dishonest.

The Bush administration is doubtless guilty of everything the tribunal accuses it of. If anything, the tribunal is guilty of belaboring the obvious. But our vindication does not help the Iraqis. What answer do we have for Americans who are persuaded by Bush’s warning that we can’t abandon Iraq to al-Zarqawi? That we not only intend to do exactly that, but that we actually support al-Zarqawi as “the resistance”? This is as tactically stupid as it is morally bankrupt.

The anti-war movement is guilty of a monumental abdication of its responsibility to the people of Iraq. One thing which all of the pronouncements from Istanbul has failed to emphasize is the need to seek out and loan vigorous solidarity to Iraqis who oppose the occupation not in pursuit of ethnic or sectarian supremacy but of a secular, pluralist and tolerant social order, of basic rights for women (which are also threatened by Islamists in the US-backed regime), of something more democratic, not less, than the torture state currently in power.

Such organizations do exist, and the most prominent is the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), which helped lead the successful campaign against the measure imposing recognition of sharia law in Iraq’s interim constitution. OWFI’s street protests and public advocacy are carried out in defiance of the regime and “resistance” alike, and their leaders are under constant threat of death. None of them were invited to Istanbul.

One of OWFI’s leaders, Layla Mohammed, told a gathering in Osaka in March that there is a “civil resistance” movement that considers the Iraqi people themselves to be a “third force” that can stand up against both political Islam and the US occupation. This “third force,” she said, is one that “defends human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, and asks for a secular government with separation between state and religion—where religion becomes a personal thing and no one forces anyone to believe what he or she believes. That’s the important thing.”

If only the anti-war movement in the West could be convinced of this importance.

RESOURCES:

Rumsfeld: Iraq Insurgency Could Last Years
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062705B.shtml

One Year After “Sovereignty” Iraq Still in Crisis
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062505X.shtml

El Diario-La Prensa on the casualty count
http://www.indypressny.org/article.php3?ArticleID=2128

Baghdad’s Mayor Decries Crumbling Capital
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/070105Z.shtml

WW4 REPORT on Baghdad’s “Apartheid Wall”
/node/718

Final Curtain Falls on Iraq WMD Myth
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042605Z.shtml

Bombing Raids Tried to Goad Saddam into War
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/052905X.shtml

World Tribunal on Iraq
http://www.worldtribunal.org

Brendan Smith on the “Tribunal Movement” for TruthOut
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062605Y.shtml

Arundhati Roy opening remarks
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062505Y.shtml

Richard Falk opening remarks
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/wti.shtml

WW4 REPORT on Sufi massacre
/node/558

WW4 REPORT on acid attacks on Iraqi women
/node/727

June 22 IndyBay report on Layla Mohammed in Osaka
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/06/1748740.php

See also:

Can Iraq Avoid Civil War? (And Can the US Anti-War Movement Help?)
/node/456

——————-

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

http://WW4Report.com

LEBANON’S POST-ELECTORAL CROSSROADS

Michel Aoun and the Sectarian Shadow

by Bilal El-Amine

The last round of the staggered parliamentary elections ended with a bang June 26 in the north of Lebanon. Most of the final results were predictable: the Harriri-Jumblatt alliance will control the majority in the new parliament with 72 members, the Shia Muslim bloc of Amal and Hizbullah got 35 seats, and the remaining 21 went to Michel Aoun and his allies. Ostensibly favoring a “secular” Lebanon, Aoun is a longtime opponent of the Syrian military presence in the country and many fear he is now poised to become the new political boss of the Christians–stirring recent memories of sectarian strife.

Keep in mind that these are not solid blocs and could easily come apart as they get down to work. The Harriri list, for example, includes a number of right-wing Christian parties and the supposedly anti-Syrian Aoun managed to ally himself with some of Syria’s most loyal servants like Michel Murr–who was integral to Syrian control of Lebanon as a security and defense minister and likely played a central role in suppressing the mainly “Aounist” student protests in 2000.

The big surprise came in the Mt. Lebanon round of voting the previous week as Aoun and his allies made a clean sweep of the heavily Christian Kisrwan-Jbail and Metn districts. Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement got 14 seats and tipped the scales in his allies’ favor for an additional seven. This panicked the Harriri-Jumblatt opposition who thought they were on their way to an easy majority–another Aoun upset in the north would deny them outright control of the new government. Saad Harriri reportedly rented the Quality Inn (all of it!) in the northern city of Tripoli for a week to serve as his campaign headquarters, spreading his money far and wide to assure his list a win.

In the short time between his return to Lebanon on May 7 and the staggered June elections, Aoun pulled a political somersault–with a double twist–that left many utterly puzzled as to what he was up to. In the 15 years he spent in exile, he worked tirelessly to get Syria out of Lebanon. He testified before the US Congress in support of the Syrian Accountability Act, which imposed economic sanctions, and probably had a hand in UN Resolution 1559 which finally ended the Syrian military presence in Lebanon. But even before his return to Lebanon, Aoun was butting heads with the rest of the opposition over who can take credit for expelling the Syrians and therefore deserves the bigger stake in the new government. Lebanon was apparently too small for two oppositions.

Christian Boss

Soon Aoun was striking deals with pro-Syrian politicians, even becoming the number one defender of Syria’s last loyalist in the Lebanese state, President Emile Lahoud. It would appear that such unsavory alliances would hurt Aoun’s standing, particularly among his mainly Christian base who bitterly opposed Syrian rule. But the very opposite happened and Lebanon’s Christians flocked in large numbers to vote for Aoun, making him a major player in the coming period. No one, perhaps not even Aoun, could have imagined this course of events.

You can only understand what happened after you factor in Lebanon’s sectarian politics, which, everyone agrees, animated the parliamentary elections from beginning to end. By the time the voting reached the Christian heartland of Mt. Lebanon, it appeared to voters there that a Muslim tsunami–made up of the Harriri-Jumblatt-Amal-Hizbullah quartet–was about to swallow them whole. So they turned to Aoun to save them from oblivion. Aoun has always maintained that he is a strict secularist and sought to lead a multi-religious movement. Unwittingly perhaps, he has now become Lebanon’s new Christian boss, or zaim in Arabic.

The question remains where does Aoun really stand, who are his supporters, and what do they want for Lebanon?

Many have accused the former army general of having shady Washington connections, particularly with the neo-cons and even the Israeli lobby. Others–Muslim as well as Christian–say he is the best hope for Lebanon and point to his unstinting opposition to sectarianism and corruption, the two plagues of Lebanese politics. He is probably somewhere between: closer to a Lebanese nationalist (right-leaning but with populist overtones) who nevertheless still falls within the general outlook of the Christian sectarian right.

Internally, Aoun represents a break from the failed strategy of Maronite power that crashed and burned in the civil war. His movement reflects a willingness to try another, perhaps less confrontational strategy–maybe even sharing the country with Lebanon’s Muslims on an equal footing. He advocates a “Lebanon First” type of populism that calls for reforming the Lebanese state and economy, something that appeals to a lot of Lebanese regardless of religion.

New Beginning

But regionally and internationally, Aoun bears some of the hallmarks of the Christian right by questioning the Arab identity of Lebanon–which is another way of saying that the key regional question of Palestinian is not a Lebanese concern–and preferring a Western orientation instead. That the Christian vote catapulted him into parliament may in the end force him to play the traditional role of a zaim, representing the narrow concerns of Lebanon’s Maronites–something that Aoun may not have been planning on.

Given the short lifespan of almost any political observation one makes about Lebanon, this may not continue to hold true. Aoun may very well start to be more cooperative given the balance of power in parliament, and join the new government. The real test for all the political parties will be in the coming weeks, as the government grapples with the hardest issues: a new election law, Hizbullah’s weapons, the $44 billion national debt, and replacing the president, to name just a few.

Many here are pessimistic given the sectarian nature of Lebanon’s first (theoretically) free elections. And there are legitimate fears that Lebanon is now passing into of the hands of new external powers–this time, France and the US (some add Saudi Arabia)–who will have final say in critical decisions the country takes. The daily and public appearances of the French and American ambassadors, airing their views on what most consider internal Lebanese matters, only inflames such fears.

But there is also a widespread sense that a new beginning may finally be possible, now that both the Israelis and Syrians have left. US and French meddling is certainly worrisome, but it should not be viewed as inevitable. Much will depend on how the Lebanese will respond. The cataclysmic events sparked by Rafiq Harriri’s assassination in February–the mass demonstrations, the Syrian pullout, and the parliamentary elections–have only whetted people’s appetite for change, some real change finally in Lebanon. More importantly, they learned that they also, and not only their political bosses or parties, can make it happen.

I am—like most Lebanese—both wary and hopeful.

Beirut, June 28, 2005

—

Bilal El-Amine is founder and former editor of Left Turn magazine, (www.leftturn.org/). He recently returned to his native Lebanon. He can be contacted at zaloom33 (at) yahoo.com

LEBANON SCORECARD: WHO ARE THE PLAYERS

by David Bloom

FACTIONS

HEZBOLLAH (the party of God): Founded with political and military wings in 1982 to fight the Israeli invaders, after the Shi’ites–who originally welcomed the Israelis because they were getting rid of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), then using Lebanon as a base–turned against Israel’s occupation. It is funded by Iran and close to the hardline elements of the Iranian regime. It is considered a Shi’ite fundamentalist organization. Although Israel pulled out of its occupation zone in Lebanon’s south in 2000, Hezbollah still remains armed, and fights with Israel for a strip of land called Shaba’a Farms which was Lebanese under the French Mandate (1920-41) and now considered by the UN to be Syrian territory, but controlled by Israel. Hezbollah states as a goal the liberation of Jerusalem and has been connected to Palestinian resistance activities. It is led by Shiek Hassan Nasrallah, formerly of Amal. Hezbollah is considered terroist group by the US and most western countries.

AMAL: Established in 1975 by Imam Musa as Sadr, an Iranian-born Shi’ite cleric of Lebanese ancestry who had founded the Higher Shia Islamic Council in 1969. Amal, which means hope in Arabic, is the acronym for Afwaj al Muqawamah al Lubnaniyyah (Lebanese Resistance Detachments), and was initially the name given to the military arm of the Movement of the Disinherited, created in 1974 by Sadr as a vehicle to promote the Shi’ite cause in Lebanon.

Sadr refused to engage Amal in the fighting during the 1975 Civil War. This reluctance discredited the movement in the eyes of many Shi’ites, who chose instead to support the PLO or other leftist parties. Amal was also unpopular for endorsing Syria’s intervention in 1976. Nonetheless, several factors caused the movement to undergo a dramatic resurgence in the late 1970s. First, Shi’ites became disillusioned with the PLO and its Lebanese allies. Second, the mysterious disappearance of Sadr while on a visit to Libya in 1978 rendered the missing imam a religious martyr. Third, the Iranian Revolution revived hope among Lebanese Shi’ites and instilled in them a greater communal spirit. When the growing strength of Amal appeared to threaten the position of the PLO in southern Lebanon, the PLO tried to crack down on Amal by military force. This strategy backfired and rallied even greater numbers of Shi’ites around Amal. By the early ’80s, Amal had become the largest organization in Lebanon. Led by Nabih Berri, Amal was perceived as pro-Syrian, as opposed to the Iran-oriented than Hezbollah. Amal called for national unity and did not push an Islamic state in Lebanon. Berri’s followers tend to be educated, middle class and secular; a second faction, led by Daud Daud, is of more religious and peasant orientation. In 2000, Syria decided to favor Hezbollah by giving both groups equal representation on their lists of candidates for Lebanon’s elections.

THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT: Two parties of the Christian right in Lebanon are officially banned, but still organize: the Lebanese Forces, founded in 1977 as a confederation of Christian factions by Bashir Gemayal of the Phalange (Kataeb) party; and the Guardians of the Cedars. The Guardians of the Cedars believe Lebanese are descended from the Phoenicians, and the founders of western civilization; the explicitly reject an Arab identity. Both groups openly allied with the Israeli military during its incursions in Lebanon. The Guardians of the Cedars operated death squads against Palestinians with Israeli complicity. The official slogan of the organization adopted in 1976 was “It is the duty of each Lebanese to kill one Palestinian.” The Kateab or Phalangist movement, mostly Maronite Christian, also collaborated with the Israelis. It was a Phalangist unit under the command of Elie Hobieka (now in exile) that committed the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Chatila camps in 1982 after Gemayel’s assassination. Elements of the Guardians joined the Southern Lebanon Army (SLA), a proxy force armed by and allied with Israel, many of whom are now in exile in Israel. After Gemayel’s death, the Lebanese Forces were led by Samir Geagea, currently serving a life sentence for assassinations carried out during the civil war. The Lebanese Forces were politically prominent in this year’s “Cedar Revolution” which resulted in the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.

PEOPLE

GEN. MICHEL AOUN: Born in 1935 in Beirut. Lebanon’s former prime minister, acting president, and armed forces chief. Aoun, coming from a lower-middle class Maronite background, considers himself more of a Lebanese patriot than a sectarian partisan. Although he is now said to be close to US neo-cons, according to Sandra Mackay, author of Lebanon: Death of a Nation (Doubleday, 1991), Washington and Aoun have not always seen eye-to-eye. In the summer of 1989, during the Aoun-led revolt against the Syrian occupation, the general–then serving as prime minister–appealed to the West to “Save the Christians”; Aoun was “stunned,” Mackay wrote, when George Bush senior ignored the plea. “Picking up the sword of intimidation, Aoun wielded an ugly anti-American propaganda campaign. At the same time, his gunners harassed US helicopters flying in supplies to the American mission in Beirut. And on two occasions, Aoun’s supporters created a human blockade around the American ambassador’s residence while chanting that nothing would go in or out until Aoun’s demands for greater American involvement in solving Lebanon’s crisis were met. On Sept. 2, Aoun, caught up in his own propaganda, told the French newspaper Figaro that perhaps he should settle Lebanon’s problems through ‘Christian terrorism’ by taking ‘twenty American hostages.’ It was the final straw. On Sept. 5, three United States Military helicopters landed at the American compound in the hills overlooking East Beirut and plucked Ambassador John McCarthy and the thirty other staff members from the embassy. There was a chilling paradox in the event. After pro-Iranian Muslims bent on forcing the United States out of Lebanese territory had twice bombed the American embassy, killed 241 Marines, and held American citizens hostage for years, it was the pro-Western Christians who finally drove Uncle Sam out of Lebanon.” Aoun spent years in exile after losing to the Syrians. He remained a force in Lebanon during his period of exile through the United Free Lebanon Movement, which opposed the Syrian occupation. He returned in 2005 and stunned the Lebanese political scene by allying himself with pro-Syrian Lebanese political forces, reasoning that since Syria had pulled out of the country there was no longer a need for enmity. The move has left him the major Christian power broker in Lebanon.

RAFIK HARRIRI: Former Lebanese prime minister, assassinated on Feb.. 14, 2005. Born to a Sunni family of modest means in Sidon in 1944, Harriri became a self-made billionaire through work in Saudi Arabia. He returned to Lebanon in 1992 and became prime mister, a role reserved for Sunnis under the previous year’s peace accords. He earned plaudits for Lebanon’s post-war reconstruction, though he was criticized for ignoring the poor. He resigned in protest of the extension of President Emile Lahoud’s term under Syrian pressure in 2004. His assassination sparked the political upheaval in Lebanon that led to the withdrawal of Syrian forces. His son Saad Harriri leads the anti-Syria coalition that just won a majority in last month’s historic parliamentary elections.

A report on Beirut Indymedia claims that the Harriri family reconstruction company, Soldiere, ran roughshod over homeowners whose houses it wanted to destroy to make way for its plan to reconstruct Beirut. According to the report, Solidere used a number of illegal tactics to force owners who refused the company’s offer of compensation out of their homes and offices, including cutting off their water and electricity; suspending trash service; and overtly threatening their safety.

GEN. EMILE LAHOUD: Born in 1936, the current pro-Syrian president of Lebanon. His father, Gen. Jamil Lahoud, was a leader of the Lebanese independence movement. Lahoud, a Maronite Christian, served under Gen. Michel Aoun. After the war ended in 1990, Lahoud made political ties with the Syrians, who promoted his career. He ran for the presidency and won in 1998, limited to one six-year term. In 2004 his term was extended by parliament under Syrian pressure for three years, after which Hariri resigned in protest.

WALID JUMBLATT: Born in 1949, the most prominent leader of Lebanon’s Druze community. His father, Kamal Jumblatt, founded the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon. Allied with Syrian forces, Jumblatt’s militia in 1982-3 rampaged through 60 Maronite villages, killing thousands, in retaliation for earlier Maronite hostilities. Known for his shifting alliances, Jumblatt campaigned for an end to the Syrian occupation after the death of longtime Syrian strongman Hazef el-Assad in 2000.

MICHEL MURR: Greek Orthodox Christian construction magnate who supported the Phalangist forces in the civil war, but was expelled from the Phalangist successor organization, the Lebanese Forces, when he threw his support behind the Syrian intervention. In 1994, he became head of the Interior Ministry, which he ran as a fiefdom with his son Elias (the security chief and President Lahoud’s son-in-law). Currently deputy speaker of parliament

See also:

“Hizbollah and the Beirut Poll” by Bilal El-Amine
/node/563

WW4 REPORT’s last weblog post on Lebanon
/node/669

For more on Gen. Aoun, see WW4 REPORT #79
/79.html#shadows2

——————-

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

http://WW4Report.com

CENTRAL AMERICA: TERROR TARGETS ANTI-CAFTA RESISTANCE

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

GUATEMALA: CAMPESINO LEADER KIDNAPPED

An unidentified group of armed men intercepted and abducted Maria Antonieta Carrillo, a local leader of Guatemala’s Campesino Unity Committee (CUC), on May 28 in the village of La Arenera, Puerto de San Jose municipality, in the southern department of Escuintla, according to a communique the CUC released on May 29. “We hold the government and the business sector responsible,” the CUC said. “This act is part of the repressive policy [Guatemalan president Oscar] Berger has mounted against the indigenous and campesino movement.” According to the CUC, La Arenera is a leading community in the “struggle for land and for campesinos’ labor rights” in an area which has the highest concentration of large sugar plantations in the country.

The kidnapping came at a time when human rights organizations say they are the victims of a wave of intimidation. A little more than a week before, a source in Unity for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders told the Cuban wire service Prensa Latina that 656 threats or attacks against activists and social organizations had been reported from the beginning of the year to May 13. The most frequent targets were groups that oppose privatization, human rights violations, increased mining and the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a trade pact pushed by the US. (PL, May 29; El Nuevo Herald, Miami, May 29)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 5

HONDURAS: CAMPESINO LEADER MURDERED

On May 24, an unidentified assailant shot to death campesino leader Ericson Roberto Lemus on an urban bus in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. The assailant boarded the bus, went straight to Lemus and shot him four times in the head before fleeing. No arrests have been made. Lemus was regional secretary of the National Federation of Agricultural Workers (CNTC) for the northern region of Honduras, a post to which he was elected in March of this year. “We in the CNTC believe Lemus was murdered for reasons linked to his tasks in the organization, since he was following up with several campesino groups in the region which are fighting for a piece of land,” said CNTC finance secretary Ivan Romero in Tegucigalpa. Romero said the CNTC is demanding that the government investigate the murder and punish those responsible. “With the murder of Lemus now there have been 15 comrades who in the past three years have spilled their blood for a piece of land in this country, and none of the cases have been investigated, nor have any of those responsible been punished,” said Romero. (ACAN-EFE, Panama,. May 25)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 29

CAFTA CRITICS HARASSED

Unknown persons broke into the office of Guatemala’s National Coordinating Committee of Peasant Organizations (CNOC) on May 8. The intruders stole 15 computers with sensitive information stored in their hard drives, but other valuable equipment was left behind. CNOC is a member of the Indigenous, Campesino, Union and Popular Movement (MICSP), an umbrella organization opposed to the DR-CAFTA; it organized massive demonstrations against the treaty in March. The information stolen included details of MICSP activities against DR-CAFTA, and the way MICSP is organized, as well as CNOC’s records of land conflict cases and its membership database.

After the break-in, CNOC moved into the offices of the Institute of Comparative Studies in Criminal Sciences of Guatemala (ICCPG). This office was broken into on May 10 in an apparent attempt to intimidate the staff of CNOC. Nothing was taken. On the same night two other MICSP member organizations suffered break-ins: the General Confederation of Workers of Guatemala (CGTG) and the Confederation of Labor Unity of Guatemala (CUSG).

There was a break-in at the offices of Children for Identity and Justice, against Forgetting and Silence (HIJOS) the night of May 11. HIJOS works on behalf of children whose parents “disappeared” in armed conflicts, but it has also been actively opposed to DR-CAFTA. The back doors of the office were forced, and the intruders examined the organization’s files and took two computers containing sensitive information about the organization’s work. A brand-new computer with no information stored on it was not taken, and other valuable office equipment was also left behind. In a possibly related incident, two armed men robbed HIJOS member Francisco Sanchez and tried to abduct him; they stopped when he resisted.

There have been 15 break-ins at human rights and social movement offices this year; eight took place between May 7 and May 12. (Amnesty International Alert, May 13; HIJOS Alert, May 12; Servicio Informativo “Alai-amlatina”, May 17)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 22

MORE ANTI-CAFTA PROTESTS IN HONDURAS

Some 300 indigenous people and campesinos from the Honduran provinces of Intibuca, Comayagua and Santa Barbara protested on May 11 in front of the US embassy in Tegucigalpa to demand that DR-CAFTA not be ratified. “For the right to health, education and work, no to the TLC [free trade treaty],” read a banner held by the protesters in front of the embassy, which was surrounded by riot police. The demonstration was timed to coincide with a series of protests in the US against DR-CAFTA. According to Salvador Zuniga of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), the protesters reject the “servile” role played by the Central American presidents who were meeting in the US to promote DR-CAFTA. “These presidents are offering the riches of the Central American peoples on a silver platter, and in the case of the president of Honduras, asking that an anti-national and anti-Honduran treaty be ratified which will only bring more unemployment and poverty,” Zuniga said. (Tiempo, Honduras, May 12; AP, May 11)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 15

PROTESTS GREET U.S. CAFTA TOUR

Three Central American presidents gathered in Miami on May 9 to launch a four-day 10-city US tour by a total of six presidents to promote the Free Trade Agreement, which US president George W. Bush is trying to get approved by Congress before the summer. Oscar Berger of Guatemala, Ricardo Maduro of Honduras and Enrique Bolanos of Nicaragua joined with Florida governor Jeb Bush to speak, under tight security, at the Port of Miami. Dozens of protesters–steel workers, retirees, Latino group representatives and others–stood holding placards on the corner outside behind a line of 18-wheelers waiting to enter the port. “It was hard to do interviews because all the trucks were honking [in support of the protesters],” Eric Rubin, the director of the Florida Fair Trade Coalition, told the Miami Herald. “I think we got our message across.” (Florida FTAA press release, May 8; MH, May 10)

Dominican president Leonel Fernandez visited New York on May 10 to talk up DR-CAFTA at a luncheon at the City College of New York in Harlem. Dozens of members of the 1199/SEIU health care union, Dominican community organizations and Central American solidarity groups marched through the campus chanting “No to CAFTA, yes to life” in Spanish. Sonia Ivany of the New York state AFL-CIO told a rally that DR-CAFTA is based on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which she said caused the loss of 780,000 jobs nationally in the garment and textile industries, 56,000 of them in New York. (El Nacional, Santo Domingo, May 12; El Diario-La Prensa, NY, May 11)

Salvadoran President Tony Saca visited Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Fe before arriving in Washington on May 11 to join Fernandez, Berger, Maduro, Bolanos and Costa Rican president Abel Pacheco for what was supposedly the first lobbying action at the US Congress by six presidents at one time. They met with Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-TN), Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Richard Lugar (R-IN) and other senators. A meeting with House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was hastily cancelled when the Capitol was evacuated because a small civilian airplane had wandered off course over downtown Washington. On May 12 the six presidents met with President Bush at the White House, where Bush told reporters that DR-CAFTA meant “stability and security, which can only be achieved with freedom.” (AP, May 10, 11; El Nuevo Herald, Miami, May 1 from AP, quote retranslated from Spanish)

Other Central Americans were in Washington to lobby against DR-CAFTA, including Salvadoran legislative deputy Salvador Arias of the leftist Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN). Arias also took part in anti-CAFTA demonstrations, along with another FMLN deputy, Lourdes Palacios. Salvadoran interior minister Rene Figueroa reportedly said Arias’ participation in the protests was “no more than an act of treason.” Arias told reporters that “in El Salvador this is a death sentence.” He said the FMLN would be taking extra security measures for him when he returned to El Salvador. (ED-LP, May 14 from AP)

The New York Times reports that DR-CAFTA is “the current centerpiece of President Bush’s trade agenda” but that it “is facing unusually united Democratic opposition as well as serious problems in overcoming well-entrenched special interest groups like sugar producers and much of the textile industry.” The UK Financial Times notes that “[i]n a hemisphere where anti-Americanism has become the norm, Central American governments have been among Mr. Bush’s most loyal allies… [I]f Mr. Bush fails to win congressional support, he will let down his closest friends and send a bleak message to pro-US politicians further south. Defeat on CAFTA would also sound the death knell for more ambitious liberalization such as the continent-embracing Free Trade Area of the America (FTAA).” (NYT , May 10; FT, May 13)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 15

So far only the legislatures of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have ratified the agreement. The US Senate Committee on Finance began considering DR-CAFTA on April 6. The administration would like to hold the vote before July 1, the expiration date for the “fast-track” rule which keeps Congress from changing or amending trade agreements. The Senate is expected to approve, but the measure faces problems in the House of Representatives. On May 4, four centrist representatives–Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), Adam Smith (D-WA), Arthur Davis (D-AL) and Ron Kind (D-WI)–announced they were not backing DR-CAFTA. The opposition is “very strong,” Tauscher said, but she couldn’t say whether it would be enough to stop the trade pact.

Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 8

MAY DAY MARCHES BLAST CAFTA

May Day marches in Central America focused on opposition to DR-CAFTA and neoliberal economic policies. (La Jornada, Mexico, May 2 from AFP, DPA, Reuters)

In Guatemala City, nearly 30,000 people marched five kilometers from a labor monument to Constitution Plaza to protest the free trade treaty. The march was organized by the Indigenous, Campesino, Union and Grassroots Movement. Similar protests were held in the departments of Izabal, Quetzaltenango, Suchitepequez, Escuintla and Jutiapa, among others. (EFE, May 1; Guatemala Hoy, May 2)

More than 40,000 workers and students marched in the Salvadoran capital on May Day to protest DR-CAFTA and call for respect for labor rights. Participants were demanding that El Salvador ratify all the International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions, including one which refers to the right of public sector workers to be represented by unions. (EFE, May 1; Argenpress, May 3)

More than 70,000 people marched in 10 Honduran cities to protest DR-CAFTA and Mexico’s Plan Puebla-Panama, as well as government corruption and the high price of basic necessities. The marches in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, La Ceiba, Puerto Cortes and six other towns were also commemorating the 51st anniversary of a strike by banana workers against the US multinationals Standard Fruit and Chiquita Brands, which marked the birth of the Honduran labor movement. (Argenpress, May 3)

In Nicaragua, there were two opposing May Day marches, together drawing about 4,000 people. One march was headed by rightwing President Enrique Bolanos; the other was led by leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) founder and leader Tomas Borge. (EFE, May 2; LJ, May 2 from AFP, DPA, Reuters)

For the second year in a row, thousands of workers and students marched on May 1 in San Jose, Costa Rica to demand that the government reject DR-CAFTA. This year there were no clashes or incidents. (La Nacion, Costa Rica, May 2; EFE, May 1)

On April 26, Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco announced that he would designate a commission of five “notables”–supposedly with no political, business or union affiliations–to study DR-CAFTA and make a recommendation which will help him decide whether or not to send the measure to Congress for approval. On May 5, Pacheco designated the commission’s first member, Franklin Chang, a US astronaut of Costa Rican descent. Pacheco said that once he gets the report from the commission he will proceed in accordance with his conscience. (La Republica, Costa Rica, May 6)

Thousands of workers and students marched in Panama City to protest proposed social security “reforms,” demand an increase in the minimum wage, and condemn government corruption. (EFE, May 2) As the march ended, three agents from the National Police arrested Carlos Obaldia, finance secretary of the Single Union of Construction and Similar Workers (SUNTRACS), a combative union which has been active in the struggle against the privatization of social security. Obaldia was released after a half hour; he said police claimed they arrested him for painting graffiti, though he denied doing so. (La Prensa, Panama, May 2)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 8

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: MAY DAY AGAINST CAFTA

On May 1 in the northern Dominican Republic city of Santiago, transport workers marched with members of neighborhood and grassroots organizations to protest the government’s economic policies and DR-CAFTA. The march was organized by the Alternative Social Forum of the Northern Region, whose spokesperson, Victor Breton, warned that DR-CAFTA will deepen the economic crisis affecting Dominican farmers. Breton noted that “thousands” of workers have been laid off from the country’s “free trade zones,” tourism is down and unemployment is at its highest rate in years. Fidel Santana, general spokesperson of the Alternative Social Forum, also spoke at the march, saying that DR-CAFTA will make Dominicans poorer. Hundreds of workers from the northern region took part in the march in Santiago, which was joined by a delegation of grassroots leaders from Santo Domingo. (EFE, May 1)

The Dominican Senate has conditioned its approval of DR-CAFTA on a series of compensatory measures for national producers, who will be unable to compete with the other treaty partners. On May 3, a mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which was in the Dominican Republic to evaluate an accord signed with the government last January, recommended a fiscal reform to recover the income which the country will lose when DR-CAFTA takes effect. (Hoy, NY, May 6 from wire services)

The Alternative Social Forum, which groups more than 50 union and grassroots organizations from throughout the Dominican Republic, organized a mass march to the National Palace in Santo Domingo on April 20 to protest DR-CAFTA and put forth alternative economic proposals. The march was blocked by a heavy police and military presence. The Forum also organized a picket on April 28 outside the National Social Security Council to protest the privatization of health care and demand that the government continue to provide medical insurance to Dominican workers. (Hoy, NY, April 29)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 8

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

COLOMBIA: PARAMILITARY AMNESTY PASSES, NEW AID PENDING

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

AMNESTY LAW PASSES

On June 20, the last day of ordinary sessions for the Colombian Congress, the Senate approved the “Justice and Peace” law, which paves the way for a “demobilization” and amnesty process under negotiation with the country’s right-wing paramilitaries since last July. The law grants the paramilitaries political status, allowing them to potentially benefit from pardons. Under the demobilization program, paramilitary commanders are supposed to confess all their crimes in order to benefit from reduced sentences of 4-8 years in prison. The Chamber of Representatives approved the law on June 21 in an extraordinary session. Colombia’s right-wing paramilitaries have historically been strongly supported by the state. (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, June 21 from AP; Inter Press Service, June 22)

Under the “Justice and Peace” law, which President Alvaro Uribe Velez signed on June 22, a group of 20 prosecutors will investigate within a maximum period of 60 days the crimes of each of the 10,000 paramilitary members who are eligible to demobilize from now through December.

Congressional representative Gustavo Petro of the leftist Independent Democratic Pole (PDI) party accuses Uribe of pushing through the “Justice and Peace” law in order to benefit relatives linked to paramilitary groups in Antioquia, where Uribe served as governor from 1995 to 1997. Petro said that Santiago Uribe Velez, the president’s brother, formed and financed a paramilitary group called “The 12 Apostles” around 1993-1994. The group, based out of the Uribe family’s La Carolina ranch in Yarumal, Antioquia, killed at least 50 people. Santiago Uribe was interrogated in 1997 about the group but the case was archived in 1999 for lack of evidence. Relatives of the victims of the June 1990 Campamento massacre, in which four people were killed and two disappeared by “The 12 Apostles,” have brought the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Petro also said two first cousins and an uncle of President Uribe led a paramilitary group known as “Los Erre,” linked to the killings of another 50 or more people in Titiribi and Armenia-Mantequilla municipalities in Antioquia. Carlos Alberto Velez Ochoa, Juan Diego Velez Ochoa and Mario Velez Ochoa were initially sentenced in the case but were released from prison after a year for lack of evidence. President Uribe and his family also apparently had close ties to Antioquia drug lords Pablo Escobar Gaviria and Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, who is related to the Velez Ochoa family.
(ENH, June 23 from correspondent; IPS, June 22)

On June 20, Colombia’s Congress approved two other laws pushed by Uribe’s government: a pension reform law which will take effect in 2010, and a law providing foreign investors with legal guarantees protecting their contracts from any changes in law or policy. But Congress rejected four legislative proposals presented by Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe, including one which would have unified the state’s intelligence services and another which would have increased the length of obligatory military service from 18 to 24 months. The defense minister narrowly avoided being fired the previous week when the Chamber of Representatives–but not the Senate–passed a vote of censure against him. (ENH, June 21 from AP)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 26

U.S. HOUSE OK’S NEW MILITARY AID

On June 28, the US House of Representatives voted 189-234 to defeat an amendment which would have cut $100 million in military aid for Colombia from a $734 million “Andean Counterdrug Initiative” in the 2006 foreign operations appropriations bill (HR 3057). The amendment to cut funding for the US-sponsored “Plan Colombia” military program was introduced by Reps. James McGovern (D-MA), Betty McCollum (D-MN) and Dennis Moore (D-KS). The Washington-based Latin America Working Group (LAWG) described the Colombia amendment as “the single most hotly-debated issue on the foreign operations bill.” Congress members who spoke out against it included Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), who noted how Afro-Colombians and indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected by Colombia’s ongoing internal violence, and amendment co-sponsor McCollum, who pointed out that in Colombia, “90% of violent crimes…go unpunished, and human rights abuses among Colombia’s military are all too common.”

Later on June 28, the House voted 393-32 to approve the full bill, officially titled the Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2006. In addition to the $734 million Andean Counterdrug Initiative, the bill will provide military aid of $2.3 billion for Israel and $1.3 billion for Egypt. In order for the bill to become law, a final version must be passed by both the House and Senate and then signed by the president. A subcommittee met June 29 to begin work on the Senate version. (LAWG Update, June 30; News from Lutheran World Relief, July 1; US Department of State Press Release, June 29 via allAfrica.com; Press Release from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, June 28 via US Newswire)

Weekly New Update on the Americas, July 3

SOLDIERS CHARGED IN MASSACRE

The Colombian attorney general’s office has ordered the arrest of six soldiers to face homicide charges for the killing of five civilians on April 10, 2004, in the village of Potosi, Cajamarca municipality, Tolima department. The army claimed the five villagers were killed in crossfire as a military patrol was pursuing a group of leftist guerrillas; the soldiers argued that they hadn’t been able to distinguish the victims as civilians because dense fog limited their visibility. The attorney general’s office ordered the arrests after an autopsy on 17-year old campesino Albeiro Mendoza showed he was shot at a distance of between 30 and 60 centimeters–practically point blank. The other victims were Mendoza’s son, six-month old Cristian Albeiro Mendoza Uruena; the baby’s mother, 17-year old Yamile Uruena Arango; 14-year old Julio Cesar Santana; and 24-year old Norberto Mendoza. The family was taking the baby to the doctor for an ear infection when they were killed. (El Tiempo, Bogota, July 1 via Servicio Prensa Rural)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 3

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

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