One of Somalia's hardline Islamist leaders and the information minister have both told Osama Bin Laden not to interfere in Somalia's affairs.
The al-Qaeda leader on Thursday called for Somalia's president to be toppled.
Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, who denies US charges he has links to al-Qaeda, has been reported as saying only Somalis should decide on their future.
Information Minister Farahan Ali Mohamoud said Bin Laden should concentrate on his own survival.
"We know that bin Laden has his own problems in the mountainous area of Tora Bora where he is hiding, so he has no place making such statements at a time when Somalia is keen to emerge from 21 years violence," the AFP news agency quotes the information minister as saying.
“ Somalia knows [its] future and who can involve, but it is not something for Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda either ”
Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys
Bin Laden's call was published by known militant websites on Thursday, although there has been no independent confirmation of its authenticity.
President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, was inaugurated in January after UN-brokered reconciliation talks.
He has promised to introduce Sharia law to the strongly Muslim country.
But hardliners in the al-Shabab movement say his version of Sharia will not be strict enough and have continued to fight against his government.
They, and other Islamist groups, now control much of southern and central Somalia.
'Infidel'
The 12-minute audio recording of Bin Laden - entitled "Fight on, champions of Somalia" - carried an often-seen image of the al-Qaeda leader with a map of Somalia in the background.
It accused Mr Ahmed of having "changed and turned back on his heels... to partner up with the infidel" in a national unity government.
"This Sheikh Sharif... must be fought and toppled," the tape said, before comparing the Somali leader to "the [Arab] presidents who are in the pay of our enemies".
It was Bin Laden's third broadcast this year.
Mr Ahmed was a leader of the Union of Islamic Courts which controlled Mogadishu in 2006 before being ousted by Ethiopian forces, backing the previous Somali president.
Mr Aweys was also in the UIC but the two have since split.
"Somalia knows [its] future and who can involve, but it is not something for Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda either," he reportedly told Arabic TV.
Somalia, a nation of about eight million people, has not had a functioning national government since warlords overthrew President Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other.
As part of a UN-brokered deal to reconcile moderate Islamists and dissident lawmakers in a unity government, Ethiopian troops withdrew in January.
President Ahmed has the support of several Islamist groups but al-Shabab has continued to fight the Somali government and the African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu.
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Somali Proverbs
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Iran's supreme leader dismisses Obama overtures
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's supreme leader rebuffed President Barack Obama's latest outreach on Saturday, saying Tehran was still waiting to see concrete changes in U.S. policy.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was responding to a video message Obama released Friday in which he reached out to Iran on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian new year, and expressed hopes for an improvement in nearly 30 years of strained relations.
Khamenei holds the last word on major policy decisions, and how Iran ultimately responds to any concrete U.S. effort to engage the country will depend largely on his say.
In his most direct assessment of Obama and prospects for better ties, Khamenei said there will be no change between the two countries unless the American president puts an end to U.S. hostility toward Iran and brings "real changes" in foreign policy.
"They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice. We haven't seen any change," Khamenei said in a speech before a crowd of tens of thousands in the northeastern holy city of Mashhad.
In his video message, Obama said the United States wants to engage Iran, but he also warned that a right place for Iran in the international community "cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization."
Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year and accuse the country of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons in the same message.
Khamenei said there has been no change even in Obama's language compared to that of his predecessor.
"He (Obama) insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day. If you are right that change has come, where is that change? What is the sign of that change? Make it clear for us what has changed."
Still, Khamenei left the door open to better ties with America, saying "should you change, our behavior will change too."
Diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Iran were cut after the U.S. Embassy hostage-taking after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled the pro-U.S. shah and brought to power a government of Islamic clerics.
The United States cooperated with Iran in late 2001 and 2002 in the Afghanistan conflict, but the promising contacts fizzled _ and were extinguished completely when Bush branded Tehran part of the "Axis of Evil."
Khamenei enumerated a long list of Iranian grievances against the United States over the past 30 years and said the U.S. was still interfering in Iranian affairs.
He mentioned U.S. sanctions against Iran, U.S. support for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during his 1980-88 war against Iran and the downing of an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf in 1988.
He also accused the U.S. of provoking ethnic tension in Iran and said Washington's accusations that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons are a sign of U.S. hostility. Iran says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, like energy production, not for building weapons.
"Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? Even the language remains unchanged," Khamenei said.
Khamenei, wearing a black turban and dark robes, said America was hated around the world for its arrogance, as the crowd chanted "Death to America."
Prominent political analyst Saeed Leilaz said Khamenei's comments did not amount to a rejection of better ties with the Obama administration. Rather, Iran's current hard-line leaders need to publicly maintain some degree of anti-U.S. rhetoric to bolster their own position, especially with their conservative base, he said.
"Iran's ruling Islamic establishment needs to lessen tensions with the U.S. and at the same time maintain a controlled animosity with Washington," he said. "Iran can't praise Obama all of a sudden."
Khamenei will also likely stand his ground as long as he remains concerned about the United States' ability to destabilize Iran, he said.
For its part, the Obama administration must take practical steps such as lifting a ban on selling Iran spare parts for passenger aircraft or considering unfreezing Iranian assets in the U.S., Leilaz said.
Obama has signaled a willingness to speak directly with Iran about its nuclear program and hostility toward Israel, a key U.S. ally. At his inauguration last month, the president said his administration would reach out to rival states, declaring "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."
"They say we have stretched a hand toward Iran. ... If a hand is stretched covered with a velvet glove but it is cast iron inside, that makes no sense," Khamenei said.
View original source
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was responding to a video message Obama released Friday in which he reached out to Iran on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian new year, and expressed hopes for an improvement in nearly 30 years of strained relations.
Khamenei holds the last word on major policy decisions, and how Iran ultimately responds to any concrete U.S. effort to engage the country will depend largely on his say.
In his most direct assessment of Obama and prospects for better ties, Khamenei said there will be no change between the two countries unless the American president puts an end to U.S. hostility toward Iran and brings "real changes" in foreign policy.
"They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice. We haven't seen any change," Khamenei said in a speech before a crowd of tens of thousands in the northeastern holy city of Mashhad.
In his video message, Obama said the United States wants to engage Iran, but he also warned that a right place for Iran in the international community "cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization."
Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year and accuse the country of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons in the same message.
Khamenei said there has been no change even in Obama's language compared to that of his predecessor.
"He (Obama) insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day. If you are right that change has come, where is that change? What is the sign of that change? Make it clear for us what has changed."
Still, Khamenei left the door open to better ties with America, saying "should you change, our behavior will change too."
Diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Iran were cut after the U.S. Embassy hostage-taking after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled the pro-U.S. shah and brought to power a government of Islamic clerics.
The United States cooperated with Iran in late 2001 and 2002 in the Afghanistan conflict, but the promising contacts fizzled _ and were extinguished completely when Bush branded Tehran part of the "Axis of Evil."
Khamenei enumerated a long list of Iranian grievances against the United States over the past 30 years and said the U.S. was still interfering in Iranian affairs.
He mentioned U.S. sanctions against Iran, U.S. support for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during his 1980-88 war against Iran and the downing of an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf in 1988.
He also accused the U.S. of provoking ethnic tension in Iran and said Washington's accusations that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons are a sign of U.S. hostility. Iran says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, like energy production, not for building weapons.
"Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? Even the language remains unchanged," Khamenei said.
Khamenei, wearing a black turban and dark robes, said America was hated around the world for its arrogance, as the crowd chanted "Death to America."
Prominent political analyst Saeed Leilaz said Khamenei's comments did not amount to a rejection of better ties with the Obama administration. Rather, Iran's current hard-line leaders need to publicly maintain some degree of anti-U.S. rhetoric to bolster their own position, especially with their conservative base, he said.
"Iran's ruling Islamic establishment needs to lessen tensions with the U.S. and at the same time maintain a controlled animosity with Washington," he said. "Iran can't praise Obama all of a sudden."
Khamenei will also likely stand his ground as long as he remains concerned about the United States' ability to destabilize Iran, he said.
For its part, the Obama administration must take practical steps such as lifting a ban on selling Iran spare parts for passenger aircraft or considering unfreezing Iranian assets in the U.S., Leilaz said.
Obama has signaled a willingness to speak directly with Iran about its nuclear program and hostility toward Israel, a key U.S. ally. At his inauguration last month, the president said his administration would reach out to rival states, declaring "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."
"They say we have stretched a hand toward Iran. ... If a hand is stretched covered with a velvet glove but it is cast iron inside, that makes no sense," Khamenei said.
View original source
Allies 'Out Of Troops' In Afghan South
General Says NATO Can't Win Control
The military commander responsible for southern Afghanistan said yesterday that he is "out of troops" to provide security across the troubled region and that he expects a significant increase in violence this year as U.S. reinforcements arrive to push into insurgent-held territory.
Dutch Maj. Gen. Mart de Kruif, who commands 23,000 NATO troops, said his forces control about 60 percent of the populated areas in southern Afghanistan.
"There are absolutely pockets where we don't have control . . . and that is one of the reasons we need these additional boots on the ground," he said. "We are not stopped by the insurgency, but we just run out of troops," he said in a video conference with Pentagon reporters.
The influx of 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, with a large contingent going to the south, will allow a greater concentration of forces where most of the population lives, along rivers and in agricultural areas. This, de Kruif said, will lead within a couple of months "to what I think is going to be a significant spike in incidents."
The new troops will also aim to crack down not only on insurgent leaders, de Kruif said, but on the narcotics traders and weapons-makers who facilitate them.
In the south, an ethnic Pashtun heartland and a traditional Taliban stronghold, insurgents are increasing their use of roadside bombs, de Kruif said. The bombs, known in the military as improvised explosive devices or IEDs, are made increasingly of homemade explosives using large explosive charges and are triggered when vehicles roll over them, he said.
De Kruif said such bombs now cause some 70 percent of casualties among international troops. Two explosions in southern Afghanistan yesterday killed four Canadian soldiers and injured eight, the Canadian military reported.
De Kruif said he has seen no evidence that insurgents in Afghanistan are getting help with bomb-making technology from other countries, as has occurred in Iraq.
"We don't see any real signs of influence by other countries, like Iran, with the fabrication and the use of these IEDs," he said. "Most of the IEDs we find are from a relatively simple nature, and you can't compare the IEDs used here with the type of IEDs used in Iraq over the last couple of years."
To counter the makeshift bombs, Special Forces soldiers operating in the area are targeting the networks of bomb-makers. The military coalition is also increasing the use of detection systems to find the bombs before they detonate and bringing in greater numbers of mine-resistant vehicles.
Despite the prediction of heavier fighting to come, de Kruif said he was optimistic that a larger military force would allow for better security across southern Afghanistan as soon as next year.
"We can have a significant progress within three or five years," he said, one that would allow military forces to move from primarily a combat role to one mentoring and training Afghan security forces.
View original source
The military commander responsible for southern Afghanistan said yesterday that he is "out of troops" to provide security across the troubled region and that he expects a significant increase in violence this year as U.S. reinforcements arrive to push into insurgent-held territory.
Dutch Maj. Gen. Mart de Kruif, who commands 23,000 NATO troops, said his forces control about 60 percent of the populated areas in southern Afghanistan.
"There are absolutely pockets where we don't have control . . . and that is one of the reasons we need these additional boots on the ground," he said. "We are not stopped by the insurgency, but we just run out of troops," he said in a video conference with Pentagon reporters.
The influx of 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, with a large contingent going to the south, will allow a greater concentration of forces where most of the population lives, along rivers and in agricultural areas. This, de Kruif said, will lead within a couple of months "to what I think is going to be a significant spike in incidents."
The new troops will also aim to crack down not only on insurgent leaders, de Kruif said, but on the narcotics traders and weapons-makers who facilitate them.
In the south, an ethnic Pashtun heartland and a traditional Taliban stronghold, insurgents are increasing their use of roadside bombs, de Kruif said. The bombs, known in the military as improvised explosive devices or IEDs, are made increasingly of homemade explosives using large explosive charges and are triggered when vehicles roll over them, he said.
De Kruif said such bombs now cause some 70 percent of casualties among international troops. Two explosions in southern Afghanistan yesterday killed four Canadian soldiers and injured eight, the Canadian military reported.
De Kruif said he has seen no evidence that insurgents in Afghanistan are getting help with bomb-making technology from other countries, as has occurred in Iraq.
"We don't see any real signs of influence by other countries, like Iran, with the fabrication and the use of these IEDs," he said. "Most of the IEDs we find are from a relatively simple nature, and you can't compare the IEDs used here with the type of IEDs used in Iraq over the last couple of years."
To counter the makeshift bombs, Special Forces soldiers operating in the area are targeting the networks of bomb-makers. The military coalition is also increasing the use of detection systems to find the bombs before they detonate and bringing in greater numbers of mine-resistant vehicles.
Despite the prediction of heavier fighting to come, de Kruif said he was optimistic that a larger military force would allow for better security across southern Afghanistan as soon as next year.
"We can have a significant progress within three or five years," he said, one that would allow military forces to move from primarily a combat role to one mentoring and training Afghan security forces.
View original source
Saturday, 14 March 2009
Revealed: police databank on thousands of protesters
Films and details of campaigners and journalists may breach Human Rights Act
The Guardian-- Police are targeting thousands of political campaigners in surveillance operations and storing their details on a database for at least seven years, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal.
Photographs, names and video footage of people attending protests are routinely obtained by surveillance units and stored on an "intelligence system". The Metropolitan police, which has pioneered surveillance at demonstrations and advises other forces on the tactic, stores details of protesters on Crimint, the general database used daily by all police staff to catalogue criminal intelligence. It lists campaigners by name, allowing police to search which demonstrations or political meetings individuals have attended.
Disclosures through the Freedom of Information Act, court testimony, an interview with a senior Met officer and police surveillance footage obtained by the Guardian have established that private information about activists gathered through surveillance is being stored without the knowledge of the people monitored.
Police surveillance teams are also targeting journalists who cover demonstrations, and are believed to have monitored members of the press during at least eight protests over the last year.
Videographer Jason Parkinson and photographer Jess Hurd describe to Paul Lewis how they have been followed by police while covering protests Link to this audio
The Guardian has found:
• Activists "seen on a regular basis" as well as those deemed on the "periphery" of demonstrations are included on the police databases, regardless of whether they have been convicted or arrested.
• Names, political associations and photographs of protesters from across the political spectrum – from campaigners against the third runway at Heathrow to anti-war activists – are catalogued.
• Police forces are exchanging information about protesters stored on their intelligence systems, enabling officers from different forces to search which political events an individual has attended.
Lawyers said tonight they expect the Guardian's investigation to form the basis of a legal challenge against the use of police surveillance tactics.
Liberty, the human rights group, is challenging the police surveillance tactics in a judicial review at the court of appeal. But police appear not to have disclosed to the court that they were transferring private details of campaigners to a database.
Corinna Ferguson, Liberty's legal officer, said: "A searchable database containing photographs of people who are not even suspected of criminal activity may well violate privacy rights under article 8 of the Human Rights Act. It is particularly worrying if peaceful protesters are being singled out for surveillance."
Police surveillance footage from the climate camp demonstration in Kent last August, obtained by the Guardian, reveals how journalists are monitored as well as the often clumsy nature of the surveillance.
It shows police are interested in the names, clothing, whereabouts, and personal details of protesters and journalists. Three members of an ITV news crew, a Sky News cameraman and several photographers were among members of the press monitored as they left the camp. Later in the day journalists at a protest against the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station, were followed by surveillance officers to a McDonald's restaurant. Police filmed them as they used the restaurant's Wi-Fi connection to file their material.
Kent police have already apologised after official complaints about the incident and intrusive stop and searches of journalists covering the demonstration.
The National Union of Journalists has been assured that members of the press were not being targeted after it took concerns to the Home Office and senior police officers. The union documented at least eight protests since last March where its members were "routinely" photographed and filmed by police. Several journalists said police officers they had never met knew their names. "We have put this to police and the Home Office several times but they have always denied the practice or sought to avoid answering the question," said Jeremy Dear, the union's general secretary. "With this evidence there is no credibility in doing so any longer."
Police have not disclosed the number of activists on the database. But court testimony by surveillance officers has confirmed the existence of a large intelligence system which, according to one officer, contains "thousands" of campaigners.
Overt surveillance by police forward intelligence teams (Fits) or evidence gatherers (EGs) is designed to record potential criminal activity and gather useful intelligence. Pioneered by the Met's public order branch in the late 1990s, the technique is used regularly across the country. Surveillance officers use "spotter cards" to identify activists. Police have always denied surveillance is conducted for the purposes of storing information on a database.
Information released by Scotland Yard under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that while raw surveillance material is stored in a warehouse, material on certain individuals "is added to a corporate intelligence database". Scotland Yard's disclosure, in response to questions from NUJ lawyers , stated "generally, records are retained for seven years".
Superintendent David Hartshorn, from the Met's public order branch, conceded law-abiding campaigners were being added to the database. He said individuals on the system included people convicted or suspected of public order offences.
But he added "people we have seen on a regular basis involved but may not have been charged or arrested" were also stored on the database. He added that the data was reviewed every year. "In relation to what we can keep on databases, we are governed quite strictly on that. Obviously you've got the Data Protection Act but also, in terms of intelligence, we have to justify what we are able to keep."
The Guardian-- Police are targeting thousands of political campaigners in surveillance operations and storing their details on a database for at least seven years, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal.
Photographs, names and video footage of people attending protests are routinely obtained by surveillance units and stored on an "intelligence system". The Metropolitan police, which has pioneered surveillance at demonstrations and advises other forces on the tactic, stores details of protesters on Crimint, the general database used daily by all police staff to catalogue criminal intelligence. It lists campaigners by name, allowing police to search which demonstrations or political meetings individuals have attended.
Disclosures through the Freedom of Information Act, court testimony, an interview with a senior Met officer and police surveillance footage obtained by the Guardian have established that private information about activists gathered through surveillance is being stored without the knowledge of the people monitored.
Police surveillance teams are also targeting journalists who cover demonstrations, and are believed to have monitored members of the press during at least eight protests over the last year.
Videographer Jason Parkinson and photographer Jess Hurd describe to Paul Lewis how they have been followed by police while covering protests Link to this audio
The Guardian has found:
• Activists "seen on a regular basis" as well as those deemed on the "periphery" of demonstrations are included on the police databases, regardless of whether they have been convicted or arrested.
• Names, political associations and photographs of protesters from across the political spectrum – from campaigners against the third runway at Heathrow to anti-war activists – are catalogued.
• Police forces are exchanging information about protesters stored on their intelligence systems, enabling officers from different forces to search which political events an individual has attended.
Lawyers said tonight they expect the Guardian's investigation to form the basis of a legal challenge against the use of police surveillance tactics.
Liberty, the human rights group, is challenging the police surveillance tactics in a judicial review at the court of appeal. But police appear not to have disclosed to the court that they were transferring private details of campaigners to a database.
Corinna Ferguson, Liberty's legal officer, said: "A searchable database containing photographs of people who are not even suspected of criminal activity may well violate privacy rights under article 8 of the Human Rights Act. It is particularly worrying if peaceful protesters are being singled out for surveillance."
Police surveillance footage from the climate camp demonstration in Kent last August, obtained by the Guardian, reveals how journalists are monitored as well as the often clumsy nature of the surveillance.
It shows police are interested in the names, clothing, whereabouts, and personal details of protesters and journalists. Three members of an ITV news crew, a Sky News cameraman and several photographers were among members of the press monitored as they left the camp. Later in the day journalists at a protest against the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station, were followed by surveillance officers to a McDonald's restaurant. Police filmed them as they used the restaurant's Wi-Fi connection to file their material.
Kent police have already apologised after official complaints about the incident and intrusive stop and searches of journalists covering the demonstration.
The National Union of Journalists has been assured that members of the press were not being targeted after it took concerns to the Home Office and senior police officers. The union documented at least eight protests since last March where its members were "routinely" photographed and filmed by police. Several journalists said police officers they had never met knew their names. "We have put this to police and the Home Office several times but they have always denied the practice or sought to avoid answering the question," said Jeremy Dear, the union's general secretary. "With this evidence there is no credibility in doing so any longer."
Police have not disclosed the number of activists on the database. But court testimony by surveillance officers has confirmed the existence of a large intelligence system which, according to one officer, contains "thousands" of campaigners.
Overt surveillance by police forward intelligence teams (Fits) or evidence gatherers (EGs) is designed to record potential criminal activity and gather useful intelligence. Pioneered by the Met's public order branch in the late 1990s, the technique is used regularly across the country. Surveillance officers use "spotter cards" to identify activists. Police have always denied surveillance is conducted for the purposes of storing information on a database.
Information released by Scotland Yard under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that while raw surveillance material is stored in a warehouse, material on certain individuals "is added to a corporate intelligence database". Scotland Yard's disclosure, in response to questions from NUJ lawyers , stated "generally, records are retained for seven years".
Superintendent David Hartshorn, from the Met's public order branch, conceded law-abiding campaigners were being added to the database. He said individuals on the system included people convicted or suspected of public order offences.
But he added "people we have seen on a regular basis involved but may not have been charged or arrested" were also stored on the database. He added that the data was reviewed every year. "In relation to what we can keep on databases, we are governed quite strictly on that. Obviously you've got the Data Protection Act but also, in terms of intelligence, we have to justify what we are able to keep."
Two Japanese destroyers depart on antipiracy mission off Somalia
HIROSHIMA, Japan, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Two Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) destroyers departed Saturday from their base in Kure, Hiroshima prefecture, on an antipiracy mission off Somalia, marking Japan's first overseas policing action under the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) law.The escort mission of the 4,650-ton Sazanami and 4,550-ton Samidare of the 8th Escort Division of the 4th Escort Flotilla will likely begin sometime in early April as the fleet's voyage to the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden takes two to three weeks.
According to the MSDF, each of the two destroyers with a total of some 400 crew members aboard, including a special boarding unittrained in the use of heavy machine guns and eight officers from the Japan Coast Guard, will carry two patrol helicopters.
The dispatch of the warships was ordered by Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada on Friday under the maritime policing action provision of the SDF Law.
Under Article 82 of the SDF Law, which governs policing action on the seas, the MSDF will protect only Japan-related vessels, including Japanese-registered ships and foreign vessels with Japanese nationals or shipments aboard.
Also on Friday, the cabinet approved a new bill "concerning punishment and measures against piracy," which will enable MSDF personnel to protect foreign vessels. After the Diet passes the new anti-piracy law, it will be used as the basis for the MSDF dispatch off Somalia.
China Worried About U.S. Debt
Biggest Creditor Nation Demands A Guarantee
Washington Post--Exerting its new influence as the U.S. government's largest creditor, China yesterday demanded that the Obama administration "guarantee the safety" of its $1 trillion in American bonds as Washington goes further into debt to combat the economic crisis.
Chinese Premier Wen Jinbao made the demand at the end of the National People's Congress in Beijing at a time when relations between the two nations show fresh signs of strain.
"We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets," Wen said. "To be honest, I am definitely a little worried."
China surpassed Japan last year as the largest foreign holder of Treasury bonds. Any indication that it intends to cease those purchases -- or, worse, stage a sell-off -- could drive up the cost of borrowing for the U.S. government, as well as send mortgage rates higher for millions of Americans.
That reality, experts say, has given China more leverage in its dealings with Washington, with some seeing Wen's comments yesterday as amounting to economic saber-rattling. The words came only days after a confrontation in international waters between a U.S. military ship and five Chinese vessels that sparked recriminations on both sides of the Pacific. Chinese officials have also signaled alarm over a growing "protectionist" sentiment in the U.S. Congress that could further endanger its exports, now in sharp decline as world demand spirals during the global economic crisis.
Those circumstances illustrate the pitfalls the Obama administration is facing as it charts its relationship with China. In January, for instance, the administration signaled that it would confront Beijing on the manipulation of its currency, the yuan, which has been kept artificially low against the U.S. dollar, making Chinese products cheaper around the world. Critics call that one of the major factors behind the U.S. trade deficit.
"The power that China now has is that its actions are seen as a leading indicator of the confidence that foreign investors will have in the ability of the U.S. government to pay the debt," said Eswar Prasad, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "These comments are saber-rattling in the sense that they are using that leverage to tell the U.S. to back off on currency policy and trade policy."
A number of Chinese officials have expressed concern about the future of Beijing's holdings of U.S. debt. American officials have sought to ease those concerns, effectively acknowledging the importance of China's role as Washington's banker. Last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the Chinese to keep buying U.S. bonds. Asked about the increasingly jittery reaction in China to the rising U.S. debt, White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers yesterday defended the expensive policies that are forcing the nation to borrow a record $2.5 trillion this year, by White House estimates.
"In the short run, the need is to get the economy going again," Summers told a packed auditorium at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Summers acknowledged that fiscal stimulus and various financial-sector bailouts are forcing the nation to borrow massive sums, but the alternative, he said, would be much worse. "If deflation sets in, if the GDP collapses further . . . if that happens, the magnitude of the federal borrowing, as large as it is today, will be dwarfed. It will be far, far larger."
But concern is rising about the value of U.S. bonds. Though they remain the choice for investors seeking a safe haven in hard economic times, analysts are already murmuring about a possible downgrade on the rating of U.S. Treasurys in the future. The talk comes as Washington is issuing more debt and printing more dollars to stimulate the economy -- something that could bring down the value of the dollar in the months to come. That, in turn, would dilute the value of the U.S. dollar-denominated bonds held by the Chinese and other investors. Wen called on the United States to "maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of China's assets."
Wen, however, stopped far short of saying China would cease purchasing Treasurys. Although analysts say China may already be moving to curb some purchases of U.S. debt, any move to sell off its current holdings would severely deflate their value on world markets -- hurting the Chinese as well as the Americans. Years of red-hot growth have allowed China to build up the world's largest reserves -- some $2 trillion. But analysts say almost half are held in U.S.-government-backed debt.
The White House sought to reassure global investors about the safety of U.S. Treasury securities. "There is no safer investment in the world than in the United States," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Longer-term Treasurys weakened slightly in trading after Wen's comments about soaring U.S. debt.
Additionally, it is not in China's interest to enter into economic confrontation with its largest client -- the United States -- particularly as its exports are in free fall worldwide. Though the Department of Commerce yesterday said the U.S. trade deficit narrowed 9.7 percent in January to its smallest level since October 2002, the deficit with China alone actually increased slightly, to $20.57 billion.
"I think what they're trying to say right now is, 'Don't take any steps that would impair our ability to access your market,' " said Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, an organization of U.S. businesses critical of China's trade policies. "The Chinese are starting to flex their muscles, they are becoming more powerful commercially and economically, and they want us to know it."
Staff writers Lori Montgomery in Washington and Ariana Eunjung Cha in Shanghai contributed to this report.
View original source
Washington Post--Exerting its new influence as the U.S. government's largest creditor, China yesterday demanded that the Obama administration "guarantee the safety" of its $1 trillion in American bonds as Washington goes further into debt to combat the economic crisis.
Chinese Premier Wen Jinbao made the demand at the end of the National People's Congress in Beijing at a time when relations between the two nations show fresh signs of strain.
"We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets," Wen said. "To be honest, I am definitely a little worried."
China surpassed Japan last year as the largest foreign holder of Treasury bonds. Any indication that it intends to cease those purchases -- or, worse, stage a sell-off -- could drive up the cost of borrowing for the U.S. government, as well as send mortgage rates higher for millions of Americans.
That reality, experts say, has given China more leverage in its dealings with Washington, with some seeing Wen's comments yesterday as amounting to economic saber-rattling. The words came only days after a confrontation in international waters between a U.S. military ship and five Chinese vessels that sparked recriminations on both sides of the Pacific. Chinese officials have also signaled alarm over a growing "protectionist" sentiment in the U.S. Congress that could further endanger its exports, now in sharp decline as world demand spirals during the global economic crisis.
Those circumstances illustrate the pitfalls the Obama administration is facing as it charts its relationship with China. In January, for instance, the administration signaled that it would confront Beijing on the manipulation of its currency, the yuan, which has been kept artificially low against the U.S. dollar, making Chinese products cheaper around the world. Critics call that one of the major factors behind the U.S. trade deficit.
"The power that China now has is that its actions are seen as a leading indicator of the confidence that foreign investors will have in the ability of the U.S. government to pay the debt," said Eswar Prasad, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "These comments are saber-rattling in the sense that they are using that leverage to tell the U.S. to back off on currency policy and trade policy."
A number of Chinese officials have expressed concern about the future of Beijing's holdings of U.S. debt. American officials have sought to ease those concerns, effectively acknowledging the importance of China's role as Washington's banker. Last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the Chinese to keep buying U.S. bonds. Asked about the increasingly jittery reaction in China to the rising U.S. debt, White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers yesterday defended the expensive policies that are forcing the nation to borrow a record $2.5 trillion this year, by White House estimates.
"In the short run, the need is to get the economy going again," Summers told a packed auditorium at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Summers acknowledged that fiscal stimulus and various financial-sector bailouts are forcing the nation to borrow massive sums, but the alternative, he said, would be much worse. "If deflation sets in, if the GDP collapses further . . . if that happens, the magnitude of the federal borrowing, as large as it is today, will be dwarfed. It will be far, far larger."
But concern is rising about the value of U.S. bonds. Though they remain the choice for investors seeking a safe haven in hard economic times, analysts are already murmuring about a possible downgrade on the rating of U.S. Treasurys in the future. The talk comes as Washington is issuing more debt and printing more dollars to stimulate the economy -- something that could bring down the value of the dollar in the months to come. That, in turn, would dilute the value of the U.S. dollar-denominated bonds held by the Chinese and other investors. Wen called on the United States to "maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of China's assets."
Wen, however, stopped far short of saying China would cease purchasing Treasurys. Although analysts say China may already be moving to curb some purchases of U.S. debt, any move to sell off its current holdings would severely deflate their value on world markets -- hurting the Chinese as well as the Americans. Years of red-hot growth have allowed China to build up the world's largest reserves -- some $2 trillion. But analysts say almost half are held in U.S.-government-backed debt.
The White House sought to reassure global investors about the safety of U.S. Treasury securities. "There is no safer investment in the world than in the United States," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Longer-term Treasurys weakened slightly in trading after Wen's comments about soaring U.S. debt.
Additionally, it is not in China's interest to enter into economic confrontation with its largest client -- the United States -- particularly as its exports are in free fall worldwide. Though the Department of Commerce yesterday said the U.S. trade deficit narrowed 9.7 percent in January to its smallest level since October 2002, the deficit with China alone actually increased slightly, to $20.57 billion.
"I think what they're trying to say right now is, 'Don't take any steps that would impair our ability to access your market,' " said Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, an organization of U.S. businesses critical of China's trade policies. "The Chinese are starting to flex their muscles, they are becoming more powerful commercially and economically, and they want us to know it."
Staff writers Lori Montgomery in Washington and Ariana Eunjung Cha in Shanghai contributed to this report.
View original source
Friday, 13 March 2009
EU to Transfer Somali Pirates to Kenya
KENYA: EU to transfer prisoners to Kenya
1. EU-KENYA: The European Union-led Naval Force (EUNAVFOR) is to hand over to Kenya people suspected of piracy caught off the Somali coast (undfer Operation 'Atalanta'): Council Decision concerning the Exchange of Letters between the European Union and Kenya on the conditions and modalities for the transfer of persons suspected of having committed acts of piracy and detained by the European Union-led Naval Force (EUNAVFOR), and seized property in the possession of EUNAVFOR, from EUNAVFOR to Kenya and for their treatment after such transfer: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2009/mar/eu-kenya-transfer-of-prisoners-decision.pdf
and Legislative Act - full text:
"Exchange of Letters between the European Union and the Government of Kenya on the conditions and modalities for the transfer of the aforementioned persons and property, from EUNAVFOR to Kenya and for their treatment after such transfer...
Delegations also noted that any transfer of persons under the terms of the Exchange of Letters between the European Union and the Government of Kenya will take place on the basis that the authorities of Kenya will treat such persons in full compliance with the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 10 December 1984, which has been ratified by Kenya on 21 February 1997."
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2009/mar/eu-kenya-transfer-of-prisoners-text.pdf
1. EU-KENYA: The European Union-led Naval Force (EUNAVFOR) is to hand over to Kenya people suspected of piracy caught off the Somali coast (undfer Operation 'Atalanta'): Council Decision concerning the Exchange of Letters between the European Union and Kenya on the conditions and modalities for the transfer of persons suspected of having committed acts of piracy and detained by the European Union-led Naval Force (EUNAVFOR), and seized property in the possession of EUNAVFOR, from EUNAVFOR to Kenya and for their treatment after such transfer: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2009/mar/eu-kenya-transfer-of-prisoners-decision.pdf
and Legislative Act - full text:
"Exchange of Letters between the European Union and the Government of Kenya on the conditions and modalities for the transfer of the aforementioned persons and property, from EUNAVFOR to Kenya and for their treatment after such transfer...
Delegations also noted that any transfer of persons under the terms of the Exchange of Letters between the European Union and the Government of Kenya will take place on the basis that the authorities of Kenya will treat such persons in full compliance with the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 10 December 1984, which has been ratified by Kenya on 21 February 1997."
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2009/mar/eu-kenya-transfer-of-prisoners-text.pdf
Kenya: War on terrorism:Somali detainees tortured, treated inhumanly
Kenya and counter terrorism: A Time for Change, A Report by REDRESS and REPRIEVE
"In December 2006 and January and February 2007, at least 150 people, including children, of 21 nationalities, were arbitrarily detained in Kenya. Many were fleeing to Kenya from the conflict in Somalia. The individuals were first held in Kenya for several weeks without charge. The majority were denied access to a lawyer, consular assistance, the ability to challenge the legality of their detention or consideration of their potential refugee status. Some former detainees have alleged that they were tortured; that the conditions of their detention amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; and that they were interrogated by the intelligence services of foreign governments. Some of the individuals were released in Kenya or deported to their country of origin. At least 85 and potentially up to 120 individuals were ‘rendered’ to Somalia outside of any legal process.
Read the full report: Kenya and counter terrorism: A Time for Change
"In December 2006 and January and February 2007, at least 150 people, including children, of 21 nationalities, were arbitrarily detained in Kenya. Many were fleeing to Kenya from the conflict in Somalia. The individuals were first held in Kenya for several weeks without charge. The majority were denied access to a lawyer, consular assistance, the ability to challenge the legality of their detention or consideration of their potential refugee status. Some former detainees have alleged that they were tortured; that the conditions of their detention amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; and that they were interrogated by the intelligence services of foreign governments. Some of the individuals were released in Kenya or deported to their country of origin. At least 85 and potentially up to 120 individuals were ‘rendered’ to Somalia outside of any legal process.
The whereabouts of others [many Somalis] remains unknown and they thus remain the victims of enforced disappearance.Four were released from Somalia to their country of origin; the remainder are thought to have been transferred to Ethiopia. To date, approximately 72 individuals are known to have been released from Ethiopia. However, the whereabouts of others remains unknown and they thus remain the victims of enforced disappearance.
Read the full report: Kenya and counter terrorism: A Time for Change
Fresh drilling lifts hope of striking oil in Kenya
81,000 sq km area between Marsabit and the Kenya Somalia border could have as much as 1.8 billion barrels of oil in one section
Senior officials familiar with the latest data from the exploration fields in Marsabit and Isiolo could not hide increasing hopes that the first on-shore drilling since 1991 will yield commercial quantities of the “black gold”. (Isiolo and Marsabit districts are in the northern part of Kenya's Eastern Province)
The drilling, in August, will be carried out by the Chinese company CNOOC which has been prospecting for oil in Kenya’s arid north.
Good news
“CNOOC is doing very well and it may just have the good news the country has been waiting for,” said the Permanent Secretary in the ministry of Energy, Mr Patrick Nyoike, on the sidelines of a regional oil conference in Mombasa on Friday.
“We know they are doing very well,” he added, in reference to the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).
Mr Nyoike’s optimism echoed studies presented at a three-day conference on East Africa’s petroleum potential in Mombasa.
One study said the prospective area, Block 9, in Marsabit has “the potential” for substantial oil deposits. However, the experts are cautious not to excite the country ahead of the drilling.
“We consider it a significant find but we cannot discuss the commercial viability,” said a state official referring to the latest development. “Don’t quote me now.”
Geophysicist Danson Mburu said “the country has huge potential for oil, both on land and in the sea,” adding voice to numerous expert presentations at the talks.
Mr Mburu, a consultant for Vangold Company in Kenya and Rwanda, said “oil is there” in Tarbaj, an area in Mandera, northern Kenya. His presentation and that of Mr James Phillips of Africa Oil Corp highlighted parts of the country that have potential of “billions” of barrels of oil and/or gas – Mandera, Marsabit, Turkana.
Mr Neil Taylor of East African Exploration said the Mandera area had “proven rocks but unproven output owing to limited sampling”. Although scantily explored, the work already done here shows trappings of oil, he said.
Mr Mburu’s work showed that a 81,000 sq km area between Marsabit and the Kenya Somalia border could have as much as 1.8 billion barrels of oil in one section (Kenya consumes 80,000 barrels a day).
The last drilling by Shell BP stumbled on small quantities of good-quality low sulphur oil in Loperot area, Turkana in 1991.
So far, 31 exploration wells have been drilled since the exercise began 50 years ago. “We have found traces of oil and/or gas in 19 of them,” says John Omenge, chief geologist, Ministry of Energy. “Most likely we have oil in our country. Conditions for generating oil and gas are already there.”
The drilling by the Chinese company in August is likely to give an indication on the quality and quantities available in the Marsabit area. Should commercial quantities be found, it could take at least another five years before the oil could flow into the pipelines.
Huge discoveries
On average, an exploratory well such the one planned in Marsabit costs $100 million (Sh7.8 billion) to drill, while a production well costs many times this figure.
Kenya has stepped up oil exploration following huge discoveries in neighbouring Uganda, which shares the same oil-latent rocks with Kenya.
The most hopeful of the four prospecting blocks, the 400,000 sq.km Tertiary Rift Basin, comprises Nyanza and parts of the Rift Valley. “We are looking at it seriously because its geology is the same (as Uganda’s),” said Mr Omenge.
In the past 18 months, 14 exploration licenses have been awarded to 11 international companies – compared to only five in the past 48 years.
Kenya, with a long history of exploration activities, appears the only country in the region yet to discover gas or oil. Uganda stumbled on substantial deposits in the western part, Tanzania is already mining gas while Rwanda has discovered methane gas around Lake Kivu.
View original source
Optimism is high that Kenya will strike oil in the north this year, oil industry experts said on Friday.In Summary
- The drilling, in August, will be carried out by the Chinese company CNOOC which has been prospecting for oil in Kenya’s arid north.
- Should commercial quantities be found, it could take at least another five years before the oil can flow into the pipelines.
- In the past 18 months, 14 exploration licenses have been awarded to 11 international companies – compared to only five in the past 48 years.
Senior officials familiar with the latest data from the exploration fields in Marsabit and Isiolo could not hide increasing hopes that the first on-shore drilling since 1991 will yield commercial quantities of the “black gold”. (Isiolo and Marsabit districts are in the northern part of Kenya's Eastern Province)
The drilling, in August, will be carried out by the Chinese company CNOOC which has been prospecting for oil in Kenya’s arid north.
Good news
“CNOOC is doing very well and it may just have the good news the country has been waiting for,” said the Permanent Secretary in the ministry of Energy, Mr Patrick Nyoike, on the sidelines of a regional oil conference in Mombasa on Friday.
“We know they are doing very well,” he added, in reference to the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).
Mr Nyoike’s optimism echoed studies presented at a three-day conference on East Africa’s petroleum potential in Mombasa.
One study said the prospective area, Block 9, in Marsabit has “the potential” for substantial oil deposits. However, the experts are cautious not to excite the country ahead of the drilling.
“We consider it a significant find but we cannot discuss the commercial viability,” said a state official referring to the latest development. “Don’t quote me now.”
Geophysicist Danson Mburu said “the country has huge potential for oil, both on land and in the sea,” adding voice to numerous expert presentations at the talks.
Mr Mburu, a consultant for Vangold Company in Kenya and Rwanda, said “oil is there” in Tarbaj, an area in Mandera, northern Kenya. His presentation and that of Mr James Phillips of Africa Oil Corp highlighted parts of the country that have potential of “billions” of barrels of oil and/or gas – Mandera, Marsabit, Turkana.
Mr Neil Taylor of East African Exploration said the Mandera area had “proven rocks but unproven output owing to limited sampling”. Although scantily explored, the work already done here shows trappings of oil, he said.
Mr Mburu’s work showed that a 81,000 sq km area between Marsabit and the Kenya Somalia border could have as much as 1.8 billion barrels of oil in one section (Kenya consumes 80,000 barrels a day).
The last drilling by Shell BP stumbled on small quantities of good-quality low sulphur oil in Loperot area, Turkana in 1991.
So far, 31 exploration wells have been drilled since the exercise began 50 years ago. “We have found traces of oil and/or gas in 19 of them,” says John Omenge, chief geologist, Ministry of Energy. “Most likely we have oil in our country. Conditions for generating oil and gas are already there.”
The drilling by the Chinese company in August is likely to give an indication on the quality and quantities available in the Marsabit area. Should commercial quantities be found, it could take at least another five years before the oil could flow into the pipelines.
Huge discoveries
On average, an exploratory well such the one planned in Marsabit costs $100 million (Sh7.8 billion) to drill, while a production well costs many times this figure.
Kenya has stepped up oil exploration following huge discoveries in neighbouring Uganda, which shares the same oil-latent rocks with Kenya.
The most hopeful of the four prospecting blocks, the 400,000 sq.km Tertiary Rift Basin, comprises Nyanza and parts of the Rift Valley. “We are looking at it seriously because its geology is the same (as Uganda’s),” said Mr Omenge.
In the past 18 months, 14 exploration licenses have been awarded to 11 international companies – compared to only five in the past 48 years.
Kenya, with a long history of exploration activities, appears the only country in the region yet to discover gas or oil. Uganda stumbled on substantial deposits in the western part, Tanzania is already mining gas while Rwanda has discovered methane gas around Lake Kivu.
View original source
One-eyed justice at The Hague double standards
Gulf News, By Abdel Bari Atwan --On March 4, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
The ICC, founded in 2002, has an ostensibly desirable and worthy mission: to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq which has resulted in the deaths of 1.2 million Iraqis springs to mind. As does the recent Israeli massacre of at least 1,200 innocent Gazan civilians (half of them children) and its ongoing genocidal policy against the Palestinians.
But, no. The eye that would recognise these crimes is closed. Only one is open and that is trained on Middle Eastern and African leaders.
The ICC has instigated four investigations since its inception - in Northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and, now, Darfur.
I deplore the atrocities and massacres in Darfur, whether committed by government troops or rebel groups. The death of even one innocent is to be deplored.
Nor do I deny that Al Bashir is guilty of using undue and excessive force against those who oppose him. I am very much in favour of an international justice mechanism but surely such an institution must be scrupulously fair and impartial.
The US has not yet ratified its membership of the ICC because the tribunal has yet to promise immunity from prosecution for American soldiers.
This does not stop the superpower using the tribunal as a political weapon, however, since Article 13 of the Treaty of Rome by which the ICC was established allows the UN Security Council to refer to the Court situations that would not otherwise fall under the Court's jurisdiction. This is exactly what happened in the case of Darfur.
This is the first time the ICC has indicted a sitting President and is, in effect, a call for regime change. The US and Israel would both like to see Al Bashir removed from power and Islamist Sudan - seen as an equally serious threat to Israel's security as Iran and Syria - dismantled.
The North is already effectively separated from the South after 18 years of civil war; now it seems the plan is to divide the North itself and isolate Darfur.
Anti-government groups - of which there are at least 30 - are armed, trained and funded by the US and Israel. Tel Aviv is home to the largest, the Sudanese Liberation Movement.
Al Bashir's real crimes are that he opposed the American invasion of Iraq, condemned Israel's recent aggression in Gaza and has failed to join the moderate Arab axis.
It is difficult not to think that if he established diplomatic relations with Israel, accepted the credentials of an Israeli ambassador in Khartoum, allowed water from the Nile to be diverted to Israel and supported US hegemony in the region, he could commit genocide against the people of Darfur without any objection from America or the West.
Using the ICC in pursuit of its hidden agenda aside, the US would do well to reconsider its policies in Sudan since these have a history of backfiring.
In 1996, for example, responding to US pressure, Al Bashir expelled Osama Bin Laden and his deputy, Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, transforming Al Qaida into the most dangerous terrorist organisation on the planet.
In Sudan, the two men were engaged in agricultural and construction projects, expressing their political beliefs non-violently. It was only when they relocated to Afghanistan that the organisation took on its present character.
If Sudan is indeed dismantled, it will become yet another failed state in the region. Al Qaida and its allies thrive in failed states - one has only to look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and, lately, Pakistan. If Bashir is removed, the way will be clear for the return of Bin Laden and like-minded militants.
Furthermore, Al Bashir is potentially capable of serving the West and has done so in the past: in 1994 he surrendered the legendary Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) fighter, Carlos 'the jackal' to the French; in 1996, as we have seen, he expelled Bin Laden and his entourage of radical Islamists and in January this year, he imprisoned the Islamist leader Hassan Al Turabi.
The international media machine is also culpable in the bias towards prosecuting Muslim leaders. Largely silent on the war crimes of Western troops and leaders, much has been made in Western media outlets of the massacre of 600,000 in Darfur by the Sudanese regime.
This figure had never been questioned or scrutinised either by journalists or the several fact-finding missions to the region.
Examining the documentary evidence against Al Bashir, however, we discover that actually the figure is nearer 35,000 and that these unfortunate people were killed by various groups, including, but not exclusively, government forces.
To have any credibility, the ICC must investigate all war crimes with equal fervour and with both eyes open. Imperialistic interests, racial bias and economic exploitation (Sudan has oil) can have no place on the agenda of Justice.
I support the prosecution of Al Bashir with the following proviso: the process should be suspended for one year (Article 16 allows for this) during which time warrants for the arrest of the world's other war criminals are issued and pursued.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina should first of all indict former US president George W. Bush and Middle East Peace Envoy (oh, the irony of that title) Tony Blair for waging an immoral and illegal war in Iraq that has resulted in the deaths of over a million people, for the many human rights violations perpetrated on their watch by soldiers against innocent Iraqi citizens and for the deaths of at least a million Iraqi children in the sanctions that preceded the 2003 invasion.
Moreno-Ocampo should next bring to justice the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, his Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak for their genocide in Gaza in January 2009 and the use of white phosphorous weapons in breach of international law.
If the ICC's interpretation of justice cannot extend to this, then it is deeply flawed.
If Al Bashir is prosecuted according to this justice and removed from power, Sudan will almost certainly descend into civil war resulting in millions of deaths (the last civil war claimed 1.9 million lives) and become an African headquarters for violent radical fundamentalists.
If the choice is between implementing flawed justice and avoiding a blood-bath, then I believe that kind of justice can wait.
The ICC, founded in 2002, has an ostensibly desirable and worthy mission: to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq which has resulted in the deaths of 1.2 million Iraqis springs to mind. As does the recent Israeli massacre of at least 1,200 innocent Gazan civilians (half of them children) and its ongoing genocidal policy against the Palestinians.
But, no. The eye that would recognise these crimes is closed. Only one is open and that is trained on Middle Eastern and African leaders.
The ICC has instigated four investigations since its inception - in Northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and, now, Darfur.
I deplore the atrocities and massacres in Darfur, whether committed by government troops or rebel groups. The death of even one innocent is to be deplored.
Nor do I deny that Al Bashir is guilty of using undue and excessive force against those who oppose him. I am very much in favour of an international justice mechanism but surely such an institution must be scrupulously fair and impartial.
The US has not yet ratified its membership of the ICC because the tribunal has yet to promise immunity from prosecution for American soldiers.
This does not stop the superpower using the tribunal as a political weapon, however, since Article 13 of the Treaty of Rome by which the ICC was established allows the UN Security Council to refer to the Court situations that would not otherwise fall under the Court's jurisdiction. This is exactly what happened in the case of Darfur.
This is the first time the ICC has indicted a sitting President and is, in effect, a call for regime change. The US and Israel would both like to see Al Bashir removed from power and Islamist Sudan - seen as an equally serious threat to Israel's security as Iran and Syria - dismantled.
The North is already effectively separated from the South after 18 years of civil war; now it seems the plan is to divide the North itself and isolate Darfur.
Anti-government groups - of which there are at least 30 - are armed, trained and funded by the US and Israel. Tel Aviv is home to the largest, the Sudanese Liberation Movement.
Al Bashir's real crimes are that he opposed the American invasion of Iraq, condemned Israel's recent aggression in Gaza and has failed to join the moderate Arab axis.
It is difficult not to think that if he established diplomatic relations with Israel, accepted the credentials of an Israeli ambassador in Khartoum, allowed water from the Nile to be diverted to Israel and supported US hegemony in the region, he could commit genocide against the people of Darfur without any objection from America or the West.
Using the ICC in pursuit of its hidden agenda aside, the US would do well to reconsider its policies in Sudan since these have a history of backfiring.
In 1996, for example, responding to US pressure, Al Bashir expelled Osama Bin Laden and his deputy, Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, transforming Al Qaida into the most dangerous terrorist organisation on the planet.
In Sudan, the two men were engaged in agricultural and construction projects, expressing their political beliefs non-violently. It was only when they relocated to Afghanistan that the organisation took on its present character.
If Sudan is indeed dismantled, it will become yet another failed state in the region. Al Qaida and its allies thrive in failed states - one has only to look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and, lately, Pakistan. If Bashir is removed, the way will be clear for the return of Bin Laden and like-minded militants.
Furthermore, Al Bashir is potentially capable of serving the West and has done so in the past: in 1994 he surrendered the legendary Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) fighter, Carlos 'the jackal' to the French; in 1996, as we have seen, he expelled Bin Laden and his entourage of radical Islamists and in January this year, he imprisoned the Islamist leader Hassan Al Turabi.
The international media machine is also culpable in the bias towards prosecuting Muslim leaders. Largely silent on the war crimes of Western troops and leaders, much has been made in Western media outlets of the massacre of 600,000 in Darfur by the Sudanese regime.
This figure had never been questioned or scrutinised either by journalists or the several fact-finding missions to the region.
Examining the documentary evidence against Al Bashir, however, we discover that actually the figure is nearer 35,000 and that these unfortunate people were killed by various groups, including, but not exclusively, government forces.
To have any credibility, the ICC must investigate all war crimes with equal fervour and with both eyes open. Imperialistic interests, racial bias and economic exploitation (Sudan has oil) can have no place on the agenda of Justice.
I support the prosecution of Al Bashir with the following proviso: the process should be suspended for one year (Article 16 allows for this) during which time warrants for the arrest of the world's other war criminals are issued and pursued.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina should first of all indict former US president George W. Bush and Middle East Peace Envoy (oh, the irony of that title) Tony Blair for waging an immoral and illegal war in Iraq that has resulted in the deaths of over a million people, for the many human rights violations perpetrated on their watch by soldiers against innocent Iraqi citizens and for the deaths of at least a million Iraqi children in the sanctions that preceded the 2003 invasion.
Moreno-Ocampo should next bring to justice the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, his Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak for their genocide in Gaza in January 2009 and the use of white phosphorous weapons in breach of international law.
If the ICC's interpretation of justice cannot extend to this, then it is deeply flawed.
If Al Bashir is prosecuted according to this justice and removed from power, Sudan will almost certainly descend into civil war resulting in millions of deaths (the last civil war claimed 1.9 million lives) and become an African headquarters for violent radical fundamentalists.
If the choice is between implementing flawed justice and avoiding a blood-bath, then I believe that kind of justice can wait.
UN envoy urges full support for new Somali gov't
NAIROBI, March 13 (Xinhua) -- The UN top envoy for Somalia Friday lauded progress made in the past month by the new government of the Horn of Africa country, which has been torn by factional strife since the overthrow of Siad Barre in 1991.
In a statement issued in Nairobi, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon' s Special Representative Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah encouraged the Somali Government of National Unity to continue working towards peace and stability and urged Somalis and the international community to support it.
"President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the Speaker and Prime Minister have demonstrated responsible leadership in all fields and the unity Government is now functioning from the capital," said Ould-Abdallah said in a statement.
"I am pleased by the number of patriotic Parliamentarians who have returned to Mogadishu to start their work. Both branches of the administration need concrete diplomatic and material assistance."
The formation of the government last month, and its return to the violence-plagued capital, Mogadishu, followed on the 2008 UN-facilitated Djibouti Agreement between the Transitional Federal Government and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, in which the two agreed to end their conflict.
Ould-Abdallah called for concrete diplomatic and material assistance for both branches of the administration.
"The Council of Ministers has met a number of times and passed important measures, including on the implementation of Sharia Law.
"All these developments will not only help the move towards normality inside the country, but will also help secure Somalia's image and reputation abroad. There is now absolutely no excuse for any Somali to continue plotting to destroy more Somali lives."
Ould-Abdallah said that planning was underway for the next meeting of the High Level Committee, which was tasked to look at issues including political cooperation and justice and reconciliation. He added that there would also be a meeting of theJoint Security Committee shortly.
"I am happy to see a vast majority of Somalis working together for the first time in many years to take the primary responsibility for their own future," he said.
"The international community must do its part to fully support the new Government. This help is not needed at some point in the future, but right now. There is no alternative to supporting this administration, and through it, the people.
The envoy said President Ahmed has received offers of support from Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere and that this is extremely encouraging.
"Somalia is now fully back on the international agenda and will be discussed at the Security Council on March 20 and at the upcoming League of Arab States Summit in Qatar," he said.
View original source
In a statement issued in Nairobi, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon' s Special Representative Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah encouraged the Somali Government of National Unity to continue working towards peace and stability and urged Somalis and the international community to support it.
"President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the Speaker and Prime Minister have demonstrated responsible leadership in all fields and the unity Government is now functioning from the capital," said Ould-Abdallah said in a statement.
"I am pleased by the number of patriotic Parliamentarians who have returned to Mogadishu to start their work. Both branches of the administration need concrete diplomatic and material assistance."
The formation of the government last month, and its return to the violence-plagued capital, Mogadishu, followed on the 2008 UN-facilitated Djibouti Agreement between the Transitional Federal Government and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, in which the two agreed to end their conflict.
Ould-Abdallah called for concrete diplomatic and material assistance for both branches of the administration.
"The Council of Ministers has met a number of times and passed important measures, including on the implementation of Sharia Law.
"All these developments will not only help the move towards normality inside the country, but will also help secure Somalia's image and reputation abroad. There is now absolutely no excuse for any Somali to continue plotting to destroy more Somali lives."
Ould-Abdallah said that planning was underway for the next meeting of the High Level Committee, which was tasked to look at issues including political cooperation and justice and reconciliation. He added that there would also be a meeting of theJoint Security Committee shortly.
"I am happy to see a vast majority of Somalis working together for the first time in many years to take the primary responsibility for their own future," he said.
"The international community must do its part to fully support the new Government. This help is not needed at some point in the future, but right now. There is no alternative to supporting this administration, and through it, the people.
The envoy said President Ahmed has received offers of support from Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere and that this is extremely encouraging.
"Somalia is now fully back on the international agenda and will be discussed at the Security Council on March 20 and at the upcoming League of Arab States Summit in Qatar," he said.
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Haunted by Somalia
The LA Times editorial board warns (again) that we need to work with moderate Islamists in Somalia in order to prevent it from becoming a terrorist haven. (Uh, might that be just what they are doing on their own?)
U.S. policy blunders helped throw the nation into anarchy
We can't say we weren't warned: In an annual assessment of major national security threats presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, military intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples revealed that Al Qaeda is strengthening its foothold in East Africa. Specifically, an Islamic terrorist group in Somalia, Al Shabab,(Somalia) has been releasing propaganda pointing out its shared ideology with Al Qaeda, suggesting, Maples said, that "a formal merger announcement is forthcoming."
This is worrisome not only because Somalia is a failed state overrun by armed militants that makes Afghanistan under the Taliban look like the garden spot of South Asia, but because Al Shabab is actively recruiting American citizens. Young men of Somali descent have been vanishing from Minnesota and other Midwestern states and heading for Somalian terrorist training camps run by Al Shabab, which means "the Youth" in Arabic. One of them has already carried out a suicide bombing in Africa, and others are believed to be forming terrorist cells to hit targets in Europe and the United States. A union with Al Qaeda makes that scenario even likelier.
And that's not the worst part. Al Shabab probably would not exist were it not for the disastrous failure of U.S. policies in Somalia. In other words, we are the authors of our own undoing.
Somalia is where well-meaning U.S. foreign policy measures go to die. Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush both failed dismally in their efforts to stabilize the anarchic country, which hasn't had a functioning government since 1991. In their experiences, and in the years that followed, we've seen clearly what doesn't work.
At the top of the list: military force, whether by U.S. troops or proxy armies. Clinton learned this in 1993 when he sent U.S. Army Rangers to hunt for the country's leading warlord at the time, Mohammed Farah Aidid. They encountered unanticipated resistance from armed groups in the capital city of Mogadishu and discovered a truism of Somali culture: A society that seems hopelessly splintered by clan identities and loyalties to opposing warlords becomes highly unified when confronted by outsiders. Clinton's operation, chronicled in the film “Black Hawk Down,” was a humiliating defeat that resulted in the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers and ended U.S. efforts to rid Somalia of its warlords.
After that, the United States was mostly content to leave Somalia's crumbling affairs to the United Nations. The U.N.-backed regime that followed was a bad joke, struggling to control the immediate vicinity of its enclave in Baidoa while leaving the rest of the country to fend for itself. But a glimmer of hope appeared in the early years of this decade when Muslim groups began banding together in a network called the Islamic Courts Union. It imposed a particularly repressive brand of Sharia law on the territories it oversaw, but also brought something the country hadn't seen for more than a decade: order.
The Islamic Courts Union disarmed the populace, tamed the warlords and stamped out piracy on the country's coast. But its versionof Islamic nationalism was deeply troubling to the Bush administration, whose intelligence services reported that it contained radical anti-American elements. Fearing a repeat of the Taliban experience in Afghanistan, the administration first armed warlords who pledged to fight the Islamists, then encouraged the government of next-door Ethiopia, a strong U.S. ally, to invade in 2006. Ethiopian troops encountered little resistance and quickly took over. But the Ethiopians found themselves confronting a grinding insurgency akin to that in Iraq, and a refugee crisis as people fled the increasingly dangerous streets of Mogadishu. Ethiopian troops pulled out in January, leaving a power vacuum behind.
Into that vacuum stepped Al Shabab. With most of the moderate elements of the Islamic Courts Union having left the country or been driven underground during the Ethiopian occupation, it was the radical young members of Al Shabab who were left to fight the insurgency, and who have emerged as probably the most powerful military force in Somalia. Islamic Courts Union.It is a measure of how badly things have deteriorated since the Ethiopian invasion that the West is looking to Somalia's latest president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, as the best hope to bring stability to the country, despite the fact that he is nearly powerless and that he had previously been a leading figure with the hated Islamic Courts Union.
In 2006, this page advised the international community to work with moderate Islamists and encourage them to form a stable government that, if it wouldn't rule over a bastion of democracy or human rights, would at least create a functioning state where the rule of law held sway, rather than a hotbed of terrorism and piracy. We're hoping the Obama administration learns from past mistakes and takes our years-old advice. That doesn't mean giving guns and money to warlords, but shoring up religious leaders such as Sheik Ahmed and identifying others who are worthy of support. Theocracy is nobody's idea of good government, but as we've learned the hard way in Somalia, it's better than anarchy.
View original source
U.S. policy blunders helped throw the nation into anarchy
We can't say we weren't warned: In an annual assessment of major national security threats presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, military intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples revealed that Al Qaeda is strengthening its foothold in East Africa. Specifically, an Islamic terrorist group in Somalia, Al Shabab,(Somalia) has been releasing propaganda pointing out its shared ideology with Al Qaeda, suggesting, Maples said, that "a formal merger announcement is forthcoming."
This is worrisome not only because Somalia is a failed state overrun by armed militants that makes Afghanistan under the Taliban look like the garden spot of South Asia, but because Al Shabab is actively recruiting American citizens. Young men of Somali descent have been vanishing from Minnesota and other Midwestern states and heading for Somalian terrorist training camps run by Al Shabab, which means "the Youth" in Arabic. One of them has already carried out a suicide bombing in Africa, and others are believed to be forming terrorist cells to hit targets in Europe and the United States. A union with Al Qaeda makes that scenario even likelier.
And that's not the worst part. Al Shabab probably would not exist were it not for the disastrous failure of U.S. policies in Somalia. In other words, we are the authors of our own undoing.
Somalia is where well-meaning U.S. foreign policy measures go to die. Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush both failed dismally in their efforts to stabilize the anarchic country, which hasn't had a functioning government since 1991. In their experiences, and in the years that followed, we've seen clearly what doesn't work.
At the top of the list: military force, whether by U.S. troops or proxy armies. Clinton learned this in 1993 when he sent U.S. Army Rangers to hunt for the country's leading warlord at the time, Mohammed Farah Aidid. They encountered unanticipated resistance from armed groups in the capital city of Mogadishu and discovered a truism of Somali culture: A society that seems hopelessly splintered by clan identities and loyalties to opposing warlords becomes highly unified when confronted by outsiders. Clinton's operation, chronicled in the film “Black Hawk Down,” was a humiliating defeat that resulted in the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers and ended U.S. efforts to rid Somalia of its warlords.
After that, the United States was mostly content to leave Somalia's crumbling affairs to the United Nations. The U.N.-backed regime that followed was a bad joke, struggling to control the immediate vicinity of its enclave in Baidoa while leaving the rest of the country to fend for itself. But a glimmer of hope appeared in the early years of this decade when Muslim groups began banding together in a network called the Islamic Courts Union. It imposed a particularly repressive brand of Sharia law on the territories it oversaw, but also brought something the country hadn't seen for more than a decade: order.
The Islamic Courts Union disarmed the populace, tamed the warlords and stamped out piracy on the country's coast. But its versionof Islamic nationalism was deeply troubling to the Bush administration, whose intelligence services reported that it contained radical anti-American elements. Fearing a repeat of the Taliban experience in Afghanistan, the administration first armed warlords who pledged to fight the Islamists, then encouraged the government of next-door Ethiopia, a strong U.S. ally, to invade in 2006. Ethiopian troops encountered little resistance and quickly took over. But the Ethiopians found themselves confronting a grinding insurgency akin to that in Iraq, and a refugee crisis as people fled the increasingly dangerous streets of Mogadishu. Ethiopian troops pulled out in January, leaving a power vacuum behind.
Into that vacuum stepped Al Shabab. With most of the moderate elements of the Islamic Courts Union having left the country or been driven underground during the Ethiopian occupation, it was the radical young members of Al Shabab who were left to fight the insurgency, and who have emerged as probably the most powerful military force in Somalia. Islamic Courts Union.It is a measure of how badly things have deteriorated since the Ethiopian invasion that the West is looking to Somalia's latest president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, as the best hope to bring stability to the country, despite the fact that he is nearly powerless and that he had previously been a leading figure with the hated Islamic Courts Union.
In 2006, this page advised the international community to work with moderate Islamists and encourage them to form a stable government that, if it wouldn't rule over a bastion of democracy or human rights, would at least create a functioning state where the rule of law held sway, rather than a hotbed of terrorism and piracy. We're hoping the Obama administration learns from past mistakes and takes our years-old advice. That doesn't mean giving guns and money to warlords, but shoring up religious leaders such as Sheik Ahmed and identifying others who are worthy of support. Theocracy is nobody's idea of good government, but as we've learned the hard way in Somalia, it's better than anarchy.
View original source
Diverted warships target Somali pirates
NATO is to divert seven warships, bound on the alliance's first-ever visit to Asia and Australia, to the coast of Somalia to fight piracy later this month, alliance ambassadors decided on Friday.
The fleet of six frigates and a tanker, which had long been scheduled to visit Pakistan, Singapore and Australia, will first spend a month fighting piracy off the Horn of Africa, NATO said.
After their anti-piracy patrol, the seven ships in the flotilla - one Portuguese, one Canadian, one Dutch, one Spanish, one American and two German - are set to travel to Karachi, Singapore and Perth on a high-profile diplomatic mission.
They will then spend a further fortnight fighting piracy off Somalia when they return from the East sometime in the early summer, NATO officials told DPA.
The diplomatic visit "demonstrates the high value that NATO places on its relationship with other partners across the globe", NATO said. NATO insiders describe the unprecedented tour as "friendly gunboat diplomacy".
NATO is deeply embroiled in Afghanistan, and is keen to show regional players, especially Pakistan, that it values them. Australia has contributed 1,090 soldiers to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Singapore has sent 20.
It is the second time NATO has sent ships to fight the growing threat of piracy on one of the main shipping lanes between Europe and Asia.
In October, the alliance sent four warships to patrol Somali waters after a spate of high-profile pirate attacks. That mission handed over to a European Union flotilla in December.
The two German vessels, one of which is a fuelling ship, will fly the NATO flag for most of the tour. However, for legal reasons they will fly the EU's flag and be attached to its Operation Atalanta while they are fighting piracy.
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The fleet of six frigates and a tanker, which had long been scheduled to visit Pakistan, Singapore and Australia, will first spend a month fighting piracy off the Horn of Africa, NATO said.
After their anti-piracy patrol, the seven ships in the flotilla - one Portuguese, one Canadian, one Dutch, one Spanish, one American and two German - are set to travel to Karachi, Singapore and Perth on a high-profile diplomatic mission.
They will then spend a further fortnight fighting piracy off Somalia when they return from the East sometime in the early summer, NATO officials told DPA.
The diplomatic visit "demonstrates the high value that NATO places on its relationship with other partners across the globe", NATO said. NATO insiders describe the unprecedented tour as "friendly gunboat diplomacy".
NATO is deeply embroiled in Afghanistan, and is keen to show regional players, especially Pakistan, that it values them. Australia has contributed 1,090 soldiers to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Singapore has sent 20.
It is the second time NATO has sent ships to fight the growing threat of piracy on one of the main shipping lanes between Europe and Asia.
In October, the alliance sent four warships to patrol Somali waters after a spate of high-profile pirate attacks. That mission handed over to a European Union flotilla in December.
The two German vessels, one of which is a fuelling ship, will fly the NATO flag for most of the tour. However, for legal reasons they will fly the EU's flag and be attached to its Operation Atalanta while they are fighting piracy.
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US officials investigate suspected terror recruitment in Minnesota
FBI takes look at group reportedly linked to al-Qaida in cases of 20 men who have turned up in Somalia
The Guardian--Minneapolis has become the focus of a wide-ranging FBI investigation into a terrorist group's recruitment of young immigrant men for service in Somalia's ethnic and religious warfare.
The group, Al-Shabab, an al-Qaida offshoot, is suspected of being involved in the disappearance of as many as 20 young Somali-Americans who have vanished from their homes in the Minneapolis-St Paul area of Minnesota and turned up with the radical Islamist group in Somalia.
Federal counterterrorism officials told a US Senate committee yesterday that the recruitment represents a potential security threat to the United States. If recruits were to be indoctrinated abroad and later returned to America, they could "provide al-Qaida with trained extremists inside the United States", said Andrew Liepman, deputy director of intelligence in the National Counterterrorism Centre of the Directorate of Intelligence.
"We have seen al-Qaida franchise itself around the world," said Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who chairs the committee. But he also said there is no evidence of the radicalisation of the Somali-American community generally.
Philip Mudd, an assistant director of the FBI's National Security Branch, said that the mostly impressionable youths recruited in Minnesota and in other Somali communities around the US seem more likely to become "cannon fodder" than high-level terrorist operatives. Mudd told the committee that some recruits are as young as 12 years old.
The concerns were highlighted by the case of Shirwa Ahmed, a 27-year-old college student from Minneapolis who is believed to be the first US citizen to become a suicide bomber. Ahmed blew himself up in Somalia in October in an attack that killed up to 30 people.
The homeland security committee investigating recruitments heard yesterday from two leaders of the Twin Cities Somali community. Osman Ahmed said his suspicions were first aroused one day last November, when school officials in Minneapolis reported that his nephew, Burhan Hassan, a good student at Roosevelt High, had missed all his classes.
"That, to us, sounded strange," Ahmed testified. "We were stunned."
Ahmed, president of the Riverside Plaza Tenants Association in Minneapolis, testified alongside Abdirahman Mukhtar, a youth programme manager at the Brian Coyle Community Centre, which serves as a resettlement hub for the city's growing Somali community.
It's a community that was deeply shocked by the story of Shirwa Ahmed, said Mukhtar, who went to Roosevelt High with the deceased bomber. "It goes against Somali culture," said Mukhtar. "It is also inherently anti-Islamic."
Despite the alarm, both Somali and US officials say the problem represents the anguish of a few vulnerable youths, not the radicalisation of the broader Somali community, which numbers more than 100,000 in the Twin Cities.
"Somali youth talk more about March Madness [the US college basketball tournament], Kobe Bryant, and the NFL draft than they do about Shirwa," Mukhtar told the Senate homeland security committee. "Many do not know much about him."
While cases like Shirwa Ahmed's and Burhan Hassan's have made Minneapolis the focus of the FBI's investigation, Somali youths have also been recruited in Columbus, Ohio and larger cities such as Seattle and San Diego.
Lieberman said the problem illustrates not only the stresses within the immigrant community, but also the decentralisation of the global jihadist movement.
Foot-soldiers from America and other western countries are "a public relations bonanza for them," testified Liepman, of the National Counterterrorism Centre of the Directorate of Intelligence.
While the relatively inexperienced Somali-American youths are of limited value as rank-and-file militia in Somalia, they possess American passports and represent a potential security threat for the United States.
But some experts caution that Al-Shabab's focus so far has been on Somalia and the US-backed Ethiopian forces that have been occupying the war-torn nation.
"The threat requires careful law enforcement, but should not be overblown," said Ken Menkhaus, a political scientist who has researched Somalia at Davidson College in North Carolina.
Local and federal law enforcement officials say they have been focusing on the group's recruitment and fundraising activities in Minnesota. But fear of getting their kids into trouble has prevented some Somali parents from cooperating with US investigators. "It's a very closed community," Mudd said.
According to Osman Ahmed, one of the first to cooperate with authorities, speaking openly has also invited the wrath of other Somali leaders who fear that the publicity will damage their community.
"We have been threatened for just speaking out," said Osman Ahmed. Some Somalis, he said, fear that if they talk to the FBI, they or their children will be sent to Guantánamo as suspected terrorists.
Those youths who disappeared, like his nephew, also appear to have been brainwashed with fear and misinformation, he said. He said the story of his nephew is typical.
Burhan Hassan, 17, was an infant when his family fled Somalia. But to stay in touch with the culture of his parents, he studied Islam at the Abu-Bakar As-Saddique mosque in Minneapolis. There, Osman Ahmed said, his nephew appears to have made contact with a "minority group" that exposed his nephew to extremist ideologies.
Osman Ahmed said that while he is not blaming the mosque itself, "these kids have no perception of Somalia except the one that was formed in their minds by their teachers at the Abu-Bakar Centre."
Mosque officials have denied teaching violence or encouraging young Somalis to take part in the fighting in their homeland.
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The Guardian--Minneapolis has become the focus of a wide-ranging FBI investigation into a terrorist group's recruitment of young immigrant men for service in Somalia's ethnic and religious warfare.
The group, Al-Shabab, an al-Qaida offshoot, is suspected of being involved in the disappearance of as many as 20 young Somali-Americans who have vanished from their homes in the Minneapolis-St Paul area of Minnesota and turned up with the radical Islamist group in Somalia.
Federal counterterrorism officials told a US Senate committee yesterday that the recruitment represents a potential security threat to the United States. If recruits were to be indoctrinated abroad and later returned to America, they could "provide al-Qaida with trained extremists inside the United States", said Andrew Liepman, deputy director of intelligence in the National Counterterrorism Centre of the Directorate of Intelligence.
"We have seen al-Qaida franchise itself around the world," said Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who chairs the committee. But he also said there is no evidence of the radicalisation of the Somali-American community generally.
Philip Mudd, an assistant director of the FBI's National Security Branch, said that the mostly impressionable youths recruited in Minnesota and in other Somali communities around the US seem more likely to become "cannon fodder" than high-level terrorist operatives. Mudd told the committee that some recruits are as young as 12 years old.
The concerns were highlighted by the case of Shirwa Ahmed, a 27-year-old college student from Minneapolis who is believed to be the first US citizen to become a suicide bomber. Ahmed blew himself up in Somalia in October in an attack that killed up to 30 people.
The homeland security committee investigating recruitments heard yesterday from two leaders of the Twin Cities Somali community. Osman Ahmed said his suspicions were first aroused one day last November, when school officials in Minneapolis reported that his nephew, Burhan Hassan, a good student at Roosevelt High, had missed all his classes.
"That, to us, sounded strange," Ahmed testified. "We were stunned."
Ahmed, president of the Riverside Plaza Tenants Association in Minneapolis, testified alongside Abdirahman Mukhtar, a youth programme manager at the Brian Coyle Community Centre, which serves as a resettlement hub for the city's growing Somali community.
It's a community that was deeply shocked by the story of Shirwa Ahmed, said Mukhtar, who went to Roosevelt High with the deceased bomber. "It goes against Somali culture," said Mukhtar. "It is also inherently anti-Islamic."
Despite the alarm, both Somali and US officials say the problem represents the anguish of a few vulnerable youths, not the radicalisation of the broader Somali community, which numbers more than 100,000 in the Twin Cities.
"Somali youth talk more about March Madness [the US college basketball tournament], Kobe Bryant, and the NFL draft than they do about Shirwa," Mukhtar told the Senate homeland security committee. "Many do not know much about him."
While cases like Shirwa Ahmed's and Burhan Hassan's have made Minneapolis the focus of the FBI's investigation, Somali youths have also been recruited in Columbus, Ohio and larger cities such as Seattle and San Diego.
Lieberman said the problem illustrates not only the stresses within the immigrant community, but also the decentralisation of the global jihadist movement.
Foot-soldiers from America and other western countries are "a public relations bonanza for them," testified Liepman, of the National Counterterrorism Centre of the Directorate of Intelligence.
While the relatively inexperienced Somali-American youths are of limited value as rank-and-file militia in Somalia, they possess American passports and represent a potential security threat for the United States.
But some experts caution that Al-Shabab's focus so far has been on Somalia and the US-backed Ethiopian forces that have been occupying the war-torn nation.
"The threat requires careful law enforcement, but should not be overblown," said Ken Menkhaus, a political scientist who has researched Somalia at Davidson College in North Carolina.
Local and federal law enforcement officials say they have been focusing on the group's recruitment and fundraising activities in Minnesota. But fear of getting their kids into trouble has prevented some Somali parents from cooperating with US investigators. "It's a very closed community," Mudd said.
According to Osman Ahmed, one of the first to cooperate with authorities, speaking openly has also invited the wrath of other Somali leaders who fear that the publicity will damage their community.
"We have been threatened for just speaking out," said Osman Ahmed. Some Somalis, he said, fear that if they talk to the FBI, they or their children will be sent to Guantánamo as suspected terrorists.
Those youths who disappeared, like his nephew, also appear to have been brainwashed with fear and misinformation, he said. He said the story of his nephew is typical.
Burhan Hassan, 17, was an infant when his family fled Somalia. But to stay in touch with the culture of his parents, he studied Islam at the Abu-Bakar As-Saddique mosque in Minneapolis. There, Osman Ahmed said, his nephew appears to have made contact with a "minority group" that exposed his nephew to extremist ideologies.
Osman Ahmed said that while he is not blaming the mosque itself, "these kids have no perception of Somalia except the one that was formed in their minds by their teachers at the Abu-Bakar Centre."
Mosque officials have denied teaching violence or encouraging young Somalis to take part in the fighting in their homeland.
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ISRAEL: People-trafficking gang uncovered
The suspected traffickers are accused of smuggling hundreds of women from the former Soviet Union into Israel to work in the sex industry.TEL AVIV, (IRIN) - The largest ever people-trafficking ring in Israel has been uncovered: Twelve members of the gang (all women) were arrested by police in Tel Aviv on 8 March following a two-year undercover operation.
The suspected traffickers are accused of smuggling hundreds of women from the former Soviet Union into Israel to work in the sex industry.
The main suspect, who is closely related to one of Israel’s so-called Mafia families, ran the network using scouts in places like Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine. The young victims were taken in by promises that they could work in Israel as dancers or waitresses in night clubs. Several said they had endured extremely harsh and violent treatment.
They had crossed into Israel from Egypt in treacherous circumstances. Testimonies collected by NGOs working with trafficked women speak of rape and abuse by Bedouin smugglers on the journey.
They were further mistreated at the hands of their “owners” in Israel if they refused to work in the sex industry under stringent conditions: They were forced to work 30 days a month for no pay until the sum the pimps paid for them - which varied from person to person - was paid off.
According to a police press release, more than 2,000 women were trafficked by the Israeli gang into Israel and Cyprus over a two-year period.
Trafficked women still at risk
While the police take great pride in the operation, NGOs like Isha L’Isha and Atzum are concerned. Some NGO workers told IRIN their main worry was that the suspects involved would use any means at their disposal to harm the women who may have testified.
The police said they had recordings of the main suspect ordering physical punishment and even the murder of some of the women who refused to work as sex slaves, and have released the recordings to local TV channels.
According to the police, one of the women who had intended to testify was killed in a hit and run accident in Uzbekistan some months ago.
Israeli efforts
According to Attorney Naomi Levenkron, head of the trafficking department at Moked (a hotline for migrant workers), the Israeli authorities have made great efforts in recent years to decrease trafficking of women into Israel, cracking down heavily on brothels, strip clubs, escort services and the like, and offering protection to trafficked women willing to testify against the traffickers.
A 2009 UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report entitled Global Report on Trafficking in Persons said Israel, Turkey and Thailand are “ranked very high in the citation index as destination countries in the global comparison”; it also provides details of people trafficking in Israel with statistics and analysis based on the 2003-2007 period.
In 2006, according to UNODC, the number of trafficking-related cases investigated in Israel was 318, and in 2007 the number of victims of trafficking (all females) sheltered in Israel was 75.
In February 2004 Israel established Maagan, a shelter for trafficked women in central Israel, where the women receive treatment and vocational training. At present over 30 women are being sheltered there.
Israel also appears in the annual US State Department's Trafficking in Persons report, which said in 2008, however, that the country was making "significant efforts" to eliminate trafficking.
Rita Chaikin, a trafficked women’s project coordinator with the Isha L’Isha NGO, told IRIN: “We applaud the police for this important operation leading to the arrest of the 12 suspects. I hope the women involved in this case will not come to any harm. We also hope that the court will not be lenient towards the suspects and will also award compensation to these women for the suffering and damages they've endured.”
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UAE acts on calls for human rights laws
The UAE's government says it has agreed to adopt thirty-six of seventy-four human rights recommendations suggested to the country recently by the United Nations
The National--The Minister of State for Foreign and Federal National Council (FNC) Affairs, Dr Anwar Gargash, will again stand before the UN’s Human Rights Council, and representatives from NGOs will be able be given an opportunity to raise issues of concern.
Among the recommendations rejected by the Government were calls to abolish the death penalty, to extend freedom of assembly and association and to grant migrant workers more rights.
In an interview yesterday, Dr Gargash outlined a plan to implement the accepted recommendations.
He said the human rights committee would distribute the recommendations to government bodies, and would expect updates on progress every six months.
Dr Gargash stressed that including NGOs in the process would be key to its success.
“This is not a perfect society, but we value issues of human rights which we intend to tackle systematically and lift the standards of human rights,” he said. “Whether it is legal changes or workshops, we will do it.” After the UAE’s session before the UN’s top human rights body on Dec 4, 74 recommendations were submitted. Of those, 21 were rejected outright and 36 were accepted.
Yesterday, Dr Gargash said a further nine had been rejected, with eight still under consideration.
“Most of the recommendations that were rejected were concerning the value system, religion and labour,” Dr Gargash said.
“The UAE is the optimal transitional society – very traditional, but also very modern at the same time. With this comes different expectations.”
Among the recommendations still under consideration is a suggestion that Emirati women married to non-citizens be allowed to pass their nationality on to their children, Dr Gargash said.
The Government is still considering whether to ratify several international treaties, including the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the International Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Civil and Political Rights.
Also still under consideration is a Norwegian proposal to unblock websites.
Among nine reccomendations rejected after some deliberation was a suggestion by Sweden that 74 recommendations were submitted f all “economic, social and cultural rights of migrant workers” be fully respected. Similarly, two issues raised by Norway to ensure freedom of expression, assembly and association and to protect human rights defenders in accordance with the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders were not adopted.
In December, the 25-member delegation led by Dr Gargash responded to more than 60 questions and comments from UN member states at the HRC.
Soon after, the Government indicated that it intended to establish a human rights commission.
Although he gave no timetable, Dr Gargash said that he expected it to be in place before the UAE next stands before the council in four years.
“There are different models of how to approach this, but whatever model we choose has to have a high level of independence and credibility and we are very clear that we want to do this and we need it,” he said.
In December, the three areas that prompted most recommendations related to labour issues, the UAE’s value system and freedom of expression, Dr Gargash said.
“Labour is a huge and complicated issue, but things are improving and we are addressing the demand for us to do more,” he said.
On the subject of allowing the formation of labour unions, he said an “acceptable formula” had yet to be found. Most of the labour-exporting countries were understanding of the UAE’s efforts in the field, he said, while others were more focused on the “general picture”.
“Labour [issues] will always be on our table because of our demographics,” he said. “We need to learn and keep working with dynamism regarding labour.”
One recommendation called for the death penalty to be scrapped. “It is difficult to superimpose another value system,” said Dr Gargash, adding that the death penalty was “part and parcel of our traditional and legal body”.
“We are not a perfect society, we are a society like any other challenged by many inequalities and issues,” he said. “But, we are also fair and good I think in our approach and we want to develop. We’ll never score 100 per cent, but we are working towards that.”
The review came as part of a process that began last year known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which will see human rights conditions in all 192 UN member states examined every four years.
The 47-member council calls the process an “interactive dialogue” between each state and other UN members.
In September, the UAE released its first human rights assessment. The report included inputs from organisations including the General Women’s Union and the Jurists and Journalists Associations.
The UAE’s review was based on three reports: the national human rights report, one compiled by UN agencies and another with contributions from organisations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and Mafiwasta.
Three countries – Indonesia, Cameroon and Argentina – were appointed by the council to act as rapporteurs on the review process. Following the Dec 4 review, representatives from those countries liaised with the UAE delegation on which recommendations from the three-hour session would be accepted.
The Government is responsible for the implementation of the recommendations it agrees to and will be held accountable for commitments when the UAE next stands before the council in 2012.
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The National--The Minister of State for Foreign and Federal National Council (FNC) Affairs, Dr Anwar Gargash, will again stand before the UN’s Human Rights Council, and representatives from NGOs will be able be given an opportunity to raise issues of concern.
Among the recommendations rejected by the Government were calls to abolish the death penalty, to extend freedom of assembly and association and to grant migrant workers more rights.
In an interview yesterday, Dr Gargash outlined a plan to implement the accepted recommendations.
He said the human rights committee would distribute the recommendations to government bodies, and would expect updates on progress every six months.
Dr Gargash stressed that including NGOs in the process would be key to its success.
“This is not a perfect society, but we value issues of human rights which we intend to tackle systematically and lift the standards of human rights,” he said. “Whether it is legal changes or workshops, we will do it.” After the UAE’s session before the UN’s top human rights body on Dec 4, 74 recommendations were submitted. Of those, 21 were rejected outright and 36 were accepted.
Yesterday, Dr Gargash said a further nine had been rejected, with eight still under consideration.
“Most of the recommendations that were rejected were concerning the value system, religion and labour,” Dr Gargash said.
“The UAE is the optimal transitional society – very traditional, but also very modern at the same time. With this comes different expectations.”
Among the recommendations still under consideration is a suggestion that Emirati women married to non-citizens be allowed to pass their nationality on to their children, Dr Gargash said.
The Government is still considering whether to ratify several international treaties, including the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the International Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Civil and Political Rights.
Also still under consideration is a Norwegian proposal to unblock websites.
Among nine reccomendations rejected after some deliberation was a suggestion by Sweden that 74 recommendations were submitted f all “economic, social and cultural rights of migrant workers” be fully respected. Similarly, two issues raised by Norway to ensure freedom of expression, assembly and association and to protect human rights defenders in accordance with the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders were not adopted.
In December, the 25-member delegation led by Dr Gargash responded to more than 60 questions and comments from UN member states at the HRC.
Soon after, the Government indicated that it intended to establish a human rights commission.
Although he gave no timetable, Dr Gargash said that he expected it to be in place before the UAE next stands before the council in four years.
“There are different models of how to approach this, but whatever model we choose has to have a high level of independence and credibility and we are very clear that we want to do this and we need it,” he said.
In December, the three areas that prompted most recommendations related to labour issues, the UAE’s value system and freedom of expression, Dr Gargash said.
“Labour is a huge and complicated issue, but things are improving and we are addressing the demand for us to do more,” he said.
On the subject of allowing the formation of labour unions, he said an “acceptable formula” had yet to be found. Most of the labour-exporting countries were understanding of the UAE’s efforts in the field, he said, while others were more focused on the “general picture”.
“Labour [issues] will always be on our table because of our demographics,” he said. “We need to learn and keep working with dynamism regarding labour.”
One recommendation called for the death penalty to be scrapped. “It is difficult to superimpose another value system,” said Dr Gargash, adding that the death penalty was “part and parcel of our traditional and legal body”.
“We are not a perfect society, we are a society like any other challenged by many inequalities and issues,” he said. “But, we are also fair and good I think in our approach and we want to develop. We’ll never score 100 per cent, but we are working towards that.”
The review came as part of a process that began last year known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which will see human rights conditions in all 192 UN member states examined every four years.
The 47-member council calls the process an “interactive dialogue” between each state and other UN members.
In September, the UAE released its first human rights assessment. The report included inputs from organisations including the General Women’s Union and the Jurists and Journalists Associations.
The UAE’s review was based on three reports: the national human rights report, one compiled by UN agencies and another with contributions from organisations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and Mafiwasta.
Three countries – Indonesia, Cameroon and Argentina – were appointed by the council to act as rapporteurs on the review process. Following the Dec 4 review, representatives from those countries liaised with the UAE delegation on which recommendations from the three-hour session would be accepted.
The Government is responsible for the implementation of the recommendations it agrees to and will be held accountable for commitments when the UAE next stands before the council in 2012.
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Why Syria and Saudi Arabia are talking again
It's about Iran, Iraq, and Israel. The two foes planned to meet in Riyadh Wednesday to solidify Arab unity amid regional volatility.
BEIRUT, Lebanon (CSM)- Saudi Arabia's steps to end its bitter dispute with Syria appear to be aimed at unifying Arabs against a trio of growing concerns: Iran's spreading influence in the region, the uncertainties of a US drawdown in Iraq, and the prospect of a right-wing government in Israel.
Saudi outreach follows Washington's tentative reengagement with Damascus, a move that diplomats hope will have more success in weaning Syria away from its Iranian ally than the Bush administration's policy of isolation.
"The Saudis want to get Syria away from Iran," says Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Washington's style is to try engagement as well, so the Arabs are trying their best to get Syria on board."
After a month of shuttle diplomacy, Saudi King Abdullah, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and Kuwaiti Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah will meet for a fence-mending summit in Riyadh Wednesday.
The rift between Syria and Saudi Arabia followed the assassination in 2005 of Rafik Hariri, a Lebanese former prime minister who was close to the kingdom's ruling family. The Syrian regime remains a leading suspect in the assassination, although it denies involvement.
The Bush administration, angered by Syrian meddling in Iraq and support for anti-Israel groups such as Hamas, imposed sanctions and froze ties with Damascus in 2005. In response, Syria strengthened its relationship with Iran and sat out President Bush's final term.
The result: an Arab world split between Western-backed Sunni states (Saudi Arabia and Egypt) and allies of Shiite Iran (Syria, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and Palestinian Hamas).
Relations between Egypt and Syria have also been cold, the result of tension between Cairo and Tehran. In December, Mr. Mubarak reportedly criticized Iran's expanding influence, saying: "The Persians are trying to swallow up the Arab states."
Arab fears of Iranian expansionism were compounded by recent unrest by Shiites in the Gulf. In December and January, Shiites rioted in Bahrain following the arrest of several Shiites on terrorism charges. In January, Saudi Shiites launched rare demonstrations after an altercation between police and Shiite worshippers in Medina.
The unrest does not appear to have been stirred by Iran, but does serve to warn Bahrain and Saudi Arabia that marginalized Shiites could provide an opening for Iranian penetration.
However, a return to traditional diplomacy by the Obama administration appears to have encouraged Saudi Arabia to bridge the rift with Syria. At an economic summit in Kuwait in January, King Abdullah invited the Syrian and Egyptian leaders to a lunch at his private residence. That ice-breaker was followed by reciprocal visits by the Saudi and Syrian foreign ministers that paved the way for the Riyadh summit.
"I do think that one of the reasons Saudi Arabia wanted to patch up with Damascus is that it realized that there was no sense in pursuing a policy that had repeatedly failed since 2006, being on bad terms with Damascus," says Sami Moubayed, a Syrian political analyst.
Even Egypt appears to have swallowed its anger at Syria, recognizing that Damascus has influence over the Palestinian unity talks under way in Cairo.
"Egypt knows very well that for the Cairo dialogue to succeed it will need the goodwill of Syria," says Ousama Safa, director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.
Last week, Jeffrey Feltman, acting US assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, and Daniel Shapiro, a National Security Council official, met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem in Damascus, the first visit to Syria by senior US officials in four years. Mr. Feltman described the meeting as "constructive," suggesting it could pave the way for further talks.
Whether the overtures will lure Syria from Iran's orbit remains to be seen. Syria has employed a fence-straddling strategy to deflect international pressure. It held indirect talks with Israel last year and helped broker an end to the political impasse in Lebanon, yet it continues to support Hamas and Hezbollah and has tightened military cooperation with Iran.
"Syria is exploiting the [international] paranoia over Iran very cleverly," says a Western diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Syria broke off the indirect negotiations with Israel in response to the Gaza war. But Mr. Assad has said he is willing to resume talks even with a right-wing Likud party-led government.
Reuters reported Wednesday that a Likud politician met Syrian diplomats in the US "and felt encouraged about peace prospects."
But Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to be Israel's next prime minister, has indicated he would prefer to concentrate on the Palestinian track.
Still, if the Saudi-Syrian rapprochement bears fruit, it could signal an easing of tensions in Lebanon before June polls – elections in which neither the Saudi and Western-backed parliamentary majority nor the Syrian-supported opposition are assured of victory.
"Elections in Lebanon are always decided by 11th hour deals [between rival factions] and if the Syrian-Saudi rapprochement continues it will impact positively on any 11th hour coalitions that are made," says Bassel Salloukh, assistant professor of politics at the Lebanese American University.
Syrian-Saudi reconciliation also could facilitate a stable transition in Iraq when the US withdraw troops. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran will be vying to exert greater influence there. "Someone has to fill that vacuum," says Mr. Moubayed. "Saudi Arabia has an ambition and so does Iran. Syria stands in the middle."
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BEIRUT, Lebanon (CSM)- Saudi Arabia's steps to end its bitter dispute with Syria appear to be aimed at unifying Arabs against a trio of growing concerns: Iran's spreading influence in the region, the uncertainties of a US drawdown in Iraq, and the prospect of a right-wing government in Israel.
Saudi outreach follows Washington's tentative reengagement with Damascus, a move that diplomats hope will have more success in weaning Syria away from its Iranian ally than the Bush administration's policy of isolation.
"The Saudis want to get Syria away from Iran," says Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Washington's style is to try engagement as well, so the Arabs are trying their best to get Syria on board."
After a month of shuttle diplomacy, Saudi King Abdullah, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and Kuwaiti Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah will meet for a fence-mending summit in Riyadh Wednesday.
The rift between Syria and Saudi Arabia followed the assassination in 2005 of Rafik Hariri, a Lebanese former prime minister who was close to the kingdom's ruling family. The Syrian regime remains a leading suspect in the assassination, although it denies involvement.
The Bush administration, angered by Syrian meddling in Iraq and support for anti-Israel groups such as Hamas, imposed sanctions and froze ties with Damascus in 2005. In response, Syria strengthened its relationship with Iran and sat out President Bush's final term.
The result: an Arab world split between Western-backed Sunni states (Saudi Arabia and Egypt) and allies of Shiite Iran (Syria, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and Palestinian Hamas).
Relations between Egypt and Syria have also been cold, the result of tension between Cairo and Tehran. In December, Mr. Mubarak reportedly criticized Iran's expanding influence, saying: "The Persians are trying to swallow up the Arab states."
Arab fears of Iranian expansionism were compounded by recent unrest by Shiites in the Gulf. In December and January, Shiites rioted in Bahrain following the arrest of several Shiites on terrorism charges. In January, Saudi Shiites launched rare demonstrations after an altercation between police and Shiite worshippers in Medina.
The unrest does not appear to have been stirred by Iran, but does serve to warn Bahrain and Saudi Arabia that marginalized Shiites could provide an opening for Iranian penetration.
However, a return to traditional diplomacy by the Obama administration appears to have encouraged Saudi Arabia to bridge the rift with Syria. At an economic summit in Kuwait in January, King Abdullah invited the Syrian and Egyptian leaders to a lunch at his private residence. That ice-breaker was followed by reciprocal visits by the Saudi and Syrian foreign ministers that paved the way for the Riyadh summit.
"I do think that one of the reasons Saudi Arabia wanted to patch up with Damascus is that it realized that there was no sense in pursuing a policy that had repeatedly failed since 2006, being on bad terms with Damascus," says Sami Moubayed, a Syrian political analyst.
Even Egypt appears to have swallowed its anger at Syria, recognizing that Damascus has influence over the Palestinian unity talks under way in Cairo.
"Egypt knows very well that for the Cairo dialogue to succeed it will need the goodwill of Syria," says Ousama Safa, director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.
Last week, Jeffrey Feltman, acting US assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, and Daniel Shapiro, a National Security Council official, met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem in Damascus, the first visit to Syria by senior US officials in four years. Mr. Feltman described the meeting as "constructive," suggesting it could pave the way for further talks.
Whether the overtures will lure Syria from Iran's orbit remains to be seen. Syria has employed a fence-straddling strategy to deflect international pressure. It held indirect talks with Israel last year and helped broker an end to the political impasse in Lebanon, yet it continues to support Hamas and Hezbollah and has tightened military cooperation with Iran.
"Syria is exploiting the [international] paranoia over Iran very cleverly," says a Western diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Syria broke off the indirect negotiations with Israel in response to the Gaza war. But Mr. Assad has said he is willing to resume talks even with a right-wing Likud party-led government.
Reuters reported Wednesday that a Likud politician met Syrian diplomats in the US "and felt encouraged about peace prospects."
But Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to be Israel's next prime minister, has indicated he would prefer to concentrate on the Palestinian track.
Still, if the Saudi-Syrian rapprochement bears fruit, it could signal an easing of tensions in Lebanon before June polls – elections in which neither the Saudi and Western-backed parliamentary majority nor the Syrian-supported opposition are assured of victory.
"Elections in Lebanon are always decided by 11th hour deals [between rival factions] and if the Syrian-Saudi rapprochement continues it will impact positively on any 11th hour coalitions that are made," says Bassel Salloukh, assistant professor of politics at the Lebanese American University.
Syrian-Saudi reconciliation also could facilitate a stable transition in Iraq when the US withdraw troops. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran will be vying to exert greater influence there. "Someone has to fill that vacuum," says Mr. Moubayed. "Saudi Arabia has an ambition and so does Iran. Syria stands in the middle."
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Kenya's power-sharing report card: 'unsatisfactory'
March 13, 2009
One year after ethnic violence tore the African nation apart, the coalition government is moving slowly – or not at all – to address the problems.
NAIROBI, KENYA (CSM) - When Kenya's grand coalition government formed last year – a kind of forced marriage of bitter political enemies – Kenyan voters had high hopes for what their new government had vowed to achieve: rewrite the country's constitution, begin land reform, arrest perpetrators of postelection violence, and reconcile ethnic groups who seemed close to a tribal war.
But after a year, the Kenyan government has little to show for itself.
Kenya's top politicians are mired in scandal. Starvation looms for millions of Kenyans after government officials sold off the country's food reserves for a profit to Southern Sudan. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people have been forced out of relief camps to return home, without any attempt to ensure that mutually suspicious communities don't fight again.
Rather than pursue fellow politicians who may have instigated violence after the Dec. 27, 2007, elections, parliament has passed a new media law that muzzles critical news reports. And a new constitution remains a promise unfulfilled.
Even members of government are unhappy.
"In my view, we have basically failed," says Jakoyo Midiwo, chief parliamentary whip for the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), one of the two main parties in the coalition government. "We may have achieved a certain level of peace in the country, but underneath that, there is nothing."
This is not a good time for failure. Kenya was becoming one of those countries that other African nations model themselves after – with stable governance, decent courts, high levels of education, and robust independent watchdog activist groups – when postelection violence set rival parties on a dangerous path in December 2007.
Painstaking negotiations, led by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, brought Kenya back from the brink. But the resulting coalition government seems unable to pass even the most basic of reforms. Ordinary Kenyans and experts alike say that if this opportunity is wasted, Kenyans will suffer, and violence will erupt once more.
"Kofi Annan has bought us three years of surface stability, without putting in structures for implementation," says François Grignon. "There were achievements. The violence stopped. The government was formed. You have a prime minister and the setup is working, and although sometimes painful to watch, you see a willingness to make it work. But the politicians, they need to show that they are making progress."
If the government does nothing to resolve issues of land ownership and the reintegration of communities torn apart by violence, observers say that these issues will re-erupt at the next electoral cycle of 2011. "You will be creating an even bigger problem for 2011," says Mr. Grignon.
The National Unity Government that formed after Mr. Annan's mediation had a set agenda for its first years in power. While some of these goals were achieved immediately – including stopping the violence, restoring basic political rights, and meeting the humanitarian needs of those displaced – others have been put on a much slower track.
Despite a year's worth of meetings by key political leaders, Kenya is far from having a new constitution. Perhaps more dangerous, Kenyan politicians have done little to address the highly charged issues of land ownership, poverty, and inequality, which fueled the postelection violence to such high levels.
C is for corruption
Instead of its legislative successes, the joint government of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga has become better known for its scandals. Some 10 million Kenyans are at risk of starvation because government officials ignored warnings of a looming food shortage, and in fact sold some of Kenya's food stocks to neighboring Sudan. The problem has been exacerbated by a poor harvest and a man-made disaster as hundreds of thousands of Kenyan farmers fled their homes during the violence of early 2008, during the key planting season.
Other scandals, including the sale of government-owned properties to cronies, are not unusual. But the cumulative effect of these scandals is rising cynicism. Many Kenyans thought that multiparty democracy would be the cure for corruption under the one-party dictatorship of President Daniel Arap Moi. Then they thought that a coalition government would force rival politicians to stay honest.
"Instead of being a check on each other, you see them give a blind eye to each other's actions," says Florence Simbiri-Jaoko, head of the Kenyan National Commission for Human Rights in Nairobi.
Kenyan multiparty democracy began in 2002, and Kenyans demonstrated the power of their vote by tossing out 70 percent of the old parliamentarians in the December 2007 elections. She still puts her hope in the intelligence and persistence of Kenyan voters. "It's a difficult situation, but I'm a strong believer in Kenyans' ability to survive this thing. We have that advantage" over other African countries, says Ms. Simbiri-Jaoko. "We have a powerful civil society, which can be a watchdog over the grand coalition. If we have elected bad parliamentarians, let's be sure they will be accountable for their actions."
No reconciliation plan
The government's failure to reconcile its warring ethnic communities in the past year is mystifying, since it was the horrifying levels of ethnic violence – with 1,500 killed and up to 600,000 displaced – that forced Kenya's two main parties into negotiation in the first place. But since the power-sharing deal was signed in April 2008, Kenyan political leaders have simply told displaced people to go home, and set a timeline to shut down camps for those who were displaced.
There was a problem with this strategy. Many Kenyans lost their homes to fire or theft, and had nowhere to return to. Others were afraid of lingering animosity from their neighbors. According to the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Monitoring Report, only 40 percent of the displaced have returned home.
Thousands of farmers now return to their lands to cultivate by day, only to return to the camps at night. The government has resettled many of these people in transit camps, set up next to newly built police stations. But tens of thousands of others still have no land to return to; no resources to rebuild their lives.
The fertile Rift Valley town of Eldoret, ground zero of the most vicious ethnic violence, was once home to tens of thousands of displaced Kikuyus. Now the camp here is all but shut down. Those who remain are businesspeople, like Rosana Kathure, who have lost their shops and are unable to start afresh with the 10,000 shillings ($125) in restitution given them by the government. Cut off from food aid and having no money for firewood, Ms. Kathure now tears off pieces of her plastic tent to burn as a toxic fuel to cook one daily meal for herself and her four children.
Grignon says that Kenyan politicians risk disaster in next election if they don't start to reconcile communities of the Rift Valley and elsewhere.
"Kenya's elite has to be careful," he warns. "If the Kikuyu displaced people don't have the support from government, they'll turn to the Mungiki (a violent Kikuyu militia) and take their land back. The Kalenjins will respond. Last time they used bows and arrows. Next time they will use guns."
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One year after ethnic violence tore the African nation apart, the coalition government is moving slowly – or not at all – to address the problems.
NAIROBI, KENYA (CSM) - When Kenya's grand coalition government formed last year – a kind of forced marriage of bitter political enemies – Kenyan voters had high hopes for what their new government had vowed to achieve: rewrite the country's constitution, begin land reform, arrest perpetrators of postelection violence, and reconcile ethnic groups who seemed close to a tribal war.
But after a year, the Kenyan government has little to show for itself.
Kenya's top politicians are mired in scandal. Starvation looms for millions of Kenyans after government officials sold off the country's food reserves for a profit to Southern Sudan. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people have been forced out of relief camps to return home, without any attempt to ensure that mutually suspicious communities don't fight again.
Rather than pursue fellow politicians who may have instigated violence after the Dec. 27, 2007, elections, parliament has passed a new media law that muzzles critical news reports. And a new constitution remains a promise unfulfilled.
Even members of government are unhappy.
"In my view, we have basically failed," says Jakoyo Midiwo, chief parliamentary whip for the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), one of the two main parties in the coalition government. "We may have achieved a certain level of peace in the country, but underneath that, there is nothing."
This is not a good time for failure. Kenya was becoming one of those countries that other African nations model themselves after – with stable governance, decent courts, high levels of education, and robust independent watchdog activist groups – when postelection violence set rival parties on a dangerous path in December 2007.
Painstaking negotiations, led by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, brought Kenya back from the brink. But the resulting coalition government seems unable to pass even the most basic of reforms. Ordinary Kenyans and experts alike say that if this opportunity is wasted, Kenyans will suffer, and violence will erupt once more.
"Kofi Annan has bought us three years of surface stability, without putting in structures for implementation," says François Grignon. "There were achievements. The violence stopped. The government was formed. You have a prime minister and the setup is working, and although sometimes painful to watch, you see a willingness to make it work. But the politicians, they need to show that they are making progress."
If the government does nothing to resolve issues of land ownership and the reintegration of communities torn apart by violence, observers say that these issues will re-erupt at the next electoral cycle of 2011. "You will be creating an even bigger problem for 2011," says Mr. Grignon.
The National Unity Government that formed after Mr. Annan's mediation had a set agenda for its first years in power. While some of these goals were achieved immediately – including stopping the violence, restoring basic political rights, and meeting the humanitarian needs of those displaced – others have been put on a much slower track.
Despite a year's worth of meetings by key political leaders, Kenya is far from having a new constitution. Perhaps more dangerous, Kenyan politicians have done little to address the highly charged issues of land ownership, poverty, and inequality, which fueled the postelection violence to such high levels.
C is for corruption
Instead of its legislative successes, the joint government of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga has become better known for its scandals. Some 10 million Kenyans are at risk of starvation because government officials ignored warnings of a looming food shortage, and in fact sold some of Kenya's food stocks to neighboring Sudan. The problem has been exacerbated by a poor harvest and a man-made disaster as hundreds of thousands of Kenyan farmers fled their homes during the violence of early 2008, during the key planting season.
Other scandals, including the sale of government-owned properties to cronies, are not unusual. But the cumulative effect of these scandals is rising cynicism. Many Kenyans thought that multiparty democracy would be the cure for corruption under the one-party dictatorship of President Daniel Arap Moi. Then they thought that a coalition government would force rival politicians to stay honest.
"Instead of being a check on each other, you see them give a blind eye to each other's actions," says Florence Simbiri-Jaoko, head of the Kenyan National Commission for Human Rights in Nairobi.
Kenyan multiparty democracy began in 2002, and Kenyans demonstrated the power of their vote by tossing out 70 percent of the old parliamentarians in the December 2007 elections. She still puts her hope in the intelligence and persistence of Kenyan voters. "It's a difficult situation, but I'm a strong believer in Kenyans' ability to survive this thing. We have that advantage" over other African countries, says Ms. Simbiri-Jaoko. "We have a powerful civil society, which can be a watchdog over the grand coalition. If we have elected bad parliamentarians, let's be sure they will be accountable for their actions."
No reconciliation plan
The government's failure to reconcile its warring ethnic communities in the past year is mystifying, since it was the horrifying levels of ethnic violence – with 1,500 killed and up to 600,000 displaced – that forced Kenya's two main parties into negotiation in the first place. But since the power-sharing deal was signed in April 2008, Kenyan political leaders have simply told displaced people to go home, and set a timeline to shut down camps for those who were displaced.
There was a problem with this strategy. Many Kenyans lost their homes to fire or theft, and had nowhere to return to. Others were afraid of lingering animosity from their neighbors. According to the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Monitoring Report, only 40 percent of the displaced have returned home.
Thousands of farmers now return to their lands to cultivate by day, only to return to the camps at night. The government has resettled many of these people in transit camps, set up next to newly built police stations. But tens of thousands of others still have no land to return to; no resources to rebuild their lives.
The fertile Rift Valley town of Eldoret, ground zero of the most vicious ethnic violence, was once home to tens of thousands of displaced Kikuyus. Now the camp here is all but shut down. Those who remain are businesspeople, like Rosana Kathure, who have lost their shops and are unable to start afresh with the 10,000 shillings ($125) in restitution given them by the government. Cut off from food aid and having no money for firewood, Ms. Kathure now tears off pieces of her plastic tent to burn as a toxic fuel to cook one daily meal for herself and her four children.
Grignon says that Kenyan politicians risk disaster in next election if they don't start to reconcile communities of the Rift Valley and elsewhere.
"Kenya's elite has to be careful," he warns. "If the Kikuyu displaced people don't have the support from government, they'll turn to the Mungiki (a violent Kikuyu militia) and take their land back. The Kalenjins will respond. Last time they used bows and arrows. Next time they will use guns."
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Somali president defends plans for Islamic law
KAMPALA (AFP) — Somalia's President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on Friday defended plans to implement Islamic law in his war-wracked country, saying it was aimed at appeasing militants opposed to his government.
"The purpose of this decision is to ensure that he who claims that he is fighting to have sharia no longer has a reason to fight," he told reporters in the Ugandan capital, where he met President Yoweri Museveni.
"Sharia does not allow for blood to be shed for political reasons. So that door is closed."
Hardline Islamist militia fighting the government have insisted on implementation of Islamic law, or sharia, which they have imposed in areas under their control.
The Somali cabinet on Tuesday agreed to introduce Islamic law which is to presented to parliament for approval.
"Sharia is something that everyone is Somalia believes in and lives by," Ahmed said. "And it has been in existence not only for years, but especially in recent years in Somalia it has been in practice."
Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, was the top official in an Islamist movement toppled by Ethiopia-backed Somali forces in early 2007.
When in power in 2006, the Islamists introduced a strict form of sharia and carried out executions, shut cinemas and photo shops, banned live music, flogged drug offenders and harassed civilians, mainly women, for failing to wear appropriate dress in public.
They also banned foreign music, romances between unmarried teens, all commerce and public transport during prayer times and decreed that Muslims who do not pray daily can be punished by death.
Ahmed was elected president on January 31 following United Nations-brokered reconciliation talks and pledged to reach out to the hardline groups.
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"The purpose of this decision is to ensure that he who claims that he is fighting to have sharia no longer has a reason to fight," he told reporters in the Ugandan capital, where he met President Yoweri Museveni.
"Sharia does not allow for blood to be shed for political reasons. So that door is closed."
Hardline Islamist militia fighting the government have insisted on implementation of Islamic law, or sharia, which they have imposed in areas under their control.
The Somali cabinet on Tuesday agreed to introduce Islamic law which is to presented to parliament for approval.
"Sharia is something that everyone is Somalia believes in and lives by," Ahmed said. "And it has been in existence not only for years, but especially in recent years in Somalia it has been in practice."
Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, was the top official in an Islamist movement toppled by Ethiopia-backed Somali forces in early 2007.
When in power in 2006, the Islamists introduced a strict form of sharia and carried out executions, shut cinemas and photo shops, banned live music, flogged drug offenders and harassed civilians, mainly women, for failing to wear appropriate dress in public.
They also banned foreign music, romances between unmarried teens, all commerce and public transport during prayer times and decreed that Muslims who do not pray daily can be punished by death.
Ahmed was elected president on January 31 following United Nations-brokered reconciliation talks and pledged to reach out to the hardline groups.
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LA Times Longs for the ICU
LA Times Longs for the ICU
Here we go again. According to the Los Angeles Times, the United States is responsible for the rise of religious extremism and the al Qaeda-linked Shabaab terror group. If we just hadn't targeted the well-meaning, though slightly radical, Islamic Courts Union, everything in Somalia would be just wonderful -- or so the Times would have you believe. Sure, there would be a Taliban-like region in the Horn of Africa, but they'd have security. And certainly there would be no ties to al Qaeda!
...But a glimmer of hope appeared in the early years of this decade when Muslim groups began banding together in a network called the Islamic Courts Union. It imposed a particularly repressive brand of Sharia law on the territories it oversaw, but also brought something the country hadn't seen for more than a decade: order.
The Islamic Courts Union disarmed the populace, tamed the warlords and stamped out piracy on the country's coast. But its version of Islamic nationalism was deeply troubling to the Bush administration, whose intelligence services reported that it contained radical anti-American elements. Fearing a repeat of the Taliban experience in Afghanistan, the administration first armed warlords who pledged to fight the Islamists, then encouraged the government of next-door Ethiopia, a strong U.S. ally, to invade in 2006. Ethiopian troops encountered little resistance and quickly took over. But the Ethiopians found themselves confronting a grinding insurgency akin to that in Iraq, and a refugee crisis as people fled the increasingly dangerous streets of Mogadishu. Ethiopian troops pulled out in January, leaving a power vacuum behind.
Into that vacuum stepped Al Shabaab. With most of the moderate elements of the Islamic Courts Union having left the country or been driven underground during the Ethiopian occupation, it was the radical young members of Al Shabaab who were left to fight the insurgency, and who have emerged as probably the most powerful military force in Somalia.
This wrong-headed argument that has been made by well meaning but totally uninformed left-wing pundits before. I debunked this notion then and it's not worth restating each misstep in their arguments except for one obvious point. TheTimes claims that "intelligence services reported that it [the Islamic Courts Union] contained radical anti-American elements." This wasn't just "reported," this is a fact.
Look no further that one of the two top leaders of the Islamic Courts: Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys. He is designated as a terrorist under Executive Order 13224. And Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the three al Qaeda operatives behind the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania who were sheltered by the Islamic Courts, served as the group's intelligence chief prior to its fall in early 2007.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, but one that should have been clearly visible to the Los Angeles Times editorial board.
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Here we go again. According to the Los Angeles Times, the United States is responsible for the rise of religious extremism and the al Qaeda-linked Shabaab terror group. If we just hadn't targeted the well-meaning, though slightly radical, Islamic Courts Union, everything in Somalia would be just wonderful -- or so the Times would have you believe. Sure, there would be a Taliban-like region in the Horn of Africa, but they'd have security. And certainly there would be no ties to al Qaeda!
...But a glimmer of hope appeared in the early years of this decade when Muslim groups began banding together in a network called the Islamic Courts Union. It imposed a particularly repressive brand of Sharia law on the territories it oversaw, but also brought something the country hadn't seen for more than a decade: order.
The Islamic Courts Union disarmed the populace, tamed the warlords and stamped out piracy on the country's coast. But its version of Islamic nationalism was deeply troubling to the Bush administration, whose intelligence services reported that it contained radical anti-American elements. Fearing a repeat of the Taliban experience in Afghanistan, the administration first armed warlords who pledged to fight the Islamists, then encouraged the government of next-door Ethiopia, a strong U.S. ally, to invade in 2006. Ethiopian troops encountered little resistance and quickly took over. But the Ethiopians found themselves confronting a grinding insurgency akin to that in Iraq, and a refugee crisis as people fled the increasingly dangerous streets of Mogadishu. Ethiopian troops pulled out in January, leaving a power vacuum behind.
Into that vacuum stepped Al Shabaab. With most of the moderate elements of the Islamic Courts Union having left the country or been driven underground during the Ethiopian occupation, it was the radical young members of Al Shabaab who were left to fight the insurgency, and who have emerged as probably the most powerful military force in Somalia.
This wrong-headed argument that has been made by well meaning but totally uninformed left-wing pundits before. I debunked this notion then and it's not worth restating each misstep in their arguments except for one obvious point. TheTimes claims that "intelligence services reported that it [the Islamic Courts Union] contained radical anti-American elements." This wasn't just "reported," this is a fact.
Look no further that one of the two top leaders of the Islamic Courts: Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys. He is designated as a terrorist under Executive Order 13224. And Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the three al Qaeda operatives behind the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania who were sheltered by the Islamic Courts, served as the group's intelligence chief prior to its fall in early 2007.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, but one that should have been clearly visible to the Los Angeles Times editorial board.
View original source
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Intelligence Pick Blames 'Israel Lobby' For Withdrawal
March 12, 2009
The withdrawal of a senior intelligence adviser after an online campaign to prevent him from taking office has ignited a debate over whether powerful pro-Israel lobbying interests are exercising outsize influence over who serves in the Obama administration.
When Charles W. Freeman Jr. stepped away Tuesday from an appointment to chair the National Intelligence Council -- which oversees the production of reports that represent the view of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies -- he decried in an e-mail "the barrage of libelous distortions of my record [that] would not cease upon my entry into office," and he was blunt about whom he considers responsible.
"The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East," Freeman wrote.
Referring to what he called "the Israel Lobby," he added: "The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views." One result of this, he said, is "the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics."
Freeman's angry rhetoric notwithstanding, the controversy surrounding the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia was broader than just Middle East politics. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair's choice of Freeman prompted a storm of complaints about his recent commercial connections to China and questions about whether he was too forgiving of that nation's leaders.
But most of the online attention focused on Freeman's work for the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that is funded in part by Saudi money, and his past critical statements about Israel. The latter included a 2005 speech he gave to the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, where he referred to Israel's "high-handed and self-defeating policies" stemming from the "occupation and settlement of Arab lands," which he called "inherently violent."
Only a few Jewish organizations came out publicly against Freeman's appointment, but a handful of pro-Israeli bloggers and employees of other organizations worked behind the scenes to raise concerns with members of Congress, their staffs and the media.
For example, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), often described as the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, "took no position on this matter and did not lobby the Hill on it," spokesman Josh Block said.
But Block responded to reporters' questions and provided critical material about Freeman, albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him, according to three journalists who spoke to him. Asked about this yesterday, Block replied: "As is the case with many, many issues every day, when there is general media interest in a subject, I often provide publicly available information to journalists on background."
Yesterday, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which tried to derail Freeman's appointment, applauded his withdrawal. But it added: "We think Israel and any presumed 'lobby' had far less effect on the outcome than the common-sensical belief that the person who is the gatekeeper of intelligence information for the President of the United States should be unencumbered by payments from foreign governments."
There was plenty of debate about that within the blogosphere immediately after Freeman's withdrawal and the publication of his e-mail.
Jonathan Chait wrote irreverently on his New Republic blog, "The old spin was that Freeman's nomination, and the failure of his critics, shows how evil the Israel lobby is. . . . The new spin will be that Freeman's, ahem, resignation shows the Israel lobby is even more powerful and sinister than we thought."
And Stephen Walt, one of two writers who in 2006 famously described the influence of the Israel lobby as dangerous, chimed in on ForeignPolicy.com: "For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel lobby,' or who admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much influence . . . think again." (Foreign Policy is owned by a subsidiary of The Washington Post Co.)
Time's Joe Klein opined that Freeman "was the victim of a mob, not a lobby. The mob was composed primarily of Jewish neoconservatives -- abetted by less than courageous public servants . . . [who have] made Washington even less hospitable for those who aren't afraid to speak their minds, for those who are reflexively contentious, who would defy the conventional wisdom."
The White House, which had sidestepped questions about Freeman twice in one week, said little yesterday. "I don't have anything to add from what Admiral Blair discussed yesterday in accepting Mr. Freeman's decision that his nomination not proceed and that he regretted it," press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
The White House did not respond last night to a question about outside influence on personnel decisions.
The earliest cry of alarm about Freeman's appointment -- a week before it was announced -- came from a former AIPAC lobbyist. Steve Rosen wrote Feb. 19 on his blog that Freeman was a "strident critic of Israel" and described the potential appointment as "a textbook case of the old-line Arabism" whose "views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry."
Rosen said yesterday that he had been "quite positive" about President Obama's previous appointments for Middle East positions but that he was "surprised" about Freeman. The appointee's "most extreme point of view," he said, was not what he had expected for the head of the NIC.
Rosen has a unique position in Washington. A former chief foreign policy lobbyist for AIPAC, he and a colleague were indicted by the Bush administration in 2005 on suspicion of violating the Espionage Act, the first nongovernment employees ever so charged. AIPAC cut him loose, and a trial date has been set for May.
Meanwhile, Rosen is limited in what he can do. He said he cannot talk to AIPAC employees, nor can he lobby Congress. He has talked to "a number of journalists" who called him about Freeman, but not members of Congress. He did not answer when asked yesterday whether he has talked to Hill staff members.
Rosen's initial posting was the first of 17 he would write about Freeman over a 19-day period. Some of those added more original reporting, while some pointed to other blogs' finds about Freeman's record. In the process, Rosen traced increasing interest in the appointment elsewhere in the blogosphere, including coverage by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard, and Chait and Martin Peretz of the New Republic.
Interest also was growing among members of Congress.
On March 2, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) wrote Blair to raise concerns based on what he had read about Freeman's positions. Two days later, he called for Blair to withdraw the appointment.
Also on March 2, the Zionist Organization of America called for support of a letter by Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) that called on the DNI inspector general to investigate Freeman for possible conflicts of interest because of his financial relations with Saudi Arabia. That letter, signed by Kirk and seven other congressmen, including House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), was sent to Inspector General Edward Maguire on March 3.
Close observers of the events consider that request a turning point in the effort to stop Freeman's candidacy, and Rosen's blog began focusing almost exclusively on the appointment.
On Monday, the seven Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee wrote Blair to protest his choice, which was not subject to Senate confirmation, and threatened to review the NIC's work as long as Freeman chaired that body.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting one day later, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) told Blair of his own concerns, and he added that the controversy "is not going to go away until you or Ambassador Freeman find a way to resolve it." Hours later, Freeman withdrew.
Freeman explained his decision last night on National Public Radio: "It became apparent that, no matter what the National Intelligence Council or the intelligence community might put out under my chairmanship, I would be used as an excuse -- if something was said that wasn't politically correct -- to disparage the quality and the credibility of the intelligence."
View original source
The withdrawal of a senior intelligence adviser after an online campaign to prevent him from taking office has ignited a debate over whether powerful pro-Israel lobbying interests are exercising outsize influence over who serves in the Obama administration.
When Charles W. Freeman Jr. stepped away Tuesday from an appointment to chair the National Intelligence Council -- which oversees the production of reports that represent the view of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies -- he decried in an e-mail "the barrage of libelous distortions of my record [that] would not cease upon my entry into office," and he was blunt about whom he considers responsible.
"The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East," Freeman wrote.
Referring to what he called "the Israel Lobby," he added: "The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views." One result of this, he said, is "the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics."
Freeman's angry rhetoric notwithstanding, the controversy surrounding the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia was broader than just Middle East politics. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair's choice of Freeman prompted a storm of complaints about his recent commercial connections to China and questions about whether he was too forgiving of that nation's leaders.
But most of the online attention focused on Freeman's work for the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that is funded in part by Saudi money, and his past critical statements about Israel. The latter included a 2005 speech he gave to the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, where he referred to Israel's "high-handed and self-defeating policies" stemming from the "occupation and settlement of Arab lands," which he called "inherently violent."
Only a few Jewish organizations came out publicly against Freeman's appointment, but a handful of pro-Israeli bloggers and employees of other organizations worked behind the scenes to raise concerns with members of Congress, their staffs and the media.
For example, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), often described as the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, "took no position on this matter and did not lobby the Hill on it," spokesman Josh Block said.
But Block responded to reporters' questions and provided critical material about Freeman, albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him, according to three journalists who spoke to him. Asked about this yesterday, Block replied: "As is the case with many, many issues every day, when there is general media interest in a subject, I often provide publicly available information to journalists on background."
Yesterday, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which tried to derail Freeman's appointment, applauded his withdrawal. But it added: "We think Israel and any presumed 'lobby' had far less effect on the outcome than the common-sensical belief that the person who is the gatekeeper of intelligence information for the President of the United States should be unencumbered by payments from foreign governments."
There was plenty of debate about that within the blogosphere immediately after Freeman's withdrawal and the publication of his e-mail.
Jonathan Chait wrote irreverently on his New Republic blog, "The old spin was that Freeman's nomination, and the failure of his critics, shows how evil the Israel lobby is. . . . The new spin will be that Freeman's, ahem, resignation shows the Israel lobby is even more powerful and sinister than we thought."
And Stephen Walt, one of two writers who in 2006 famously described the influence of the Israel lobby as dangerous, chimed in on ForeignPolicy.com: "For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel lobby,' or who admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much influence . . . think again." (Foreign Policy is owned by a subsidiary of The Washington Post Co.)
Time's Joe Klein opined that Freeman "was the victim of a mob, not a lobby. The mob was composed primarily of Jewish neoconservatives -- abetted by less than courageous public servants . . . [who have] made Washington even less hospitable for those who aren't afraid to speak their minds, for those who are reflexively contentious, who would defy the conventional wisdom."
The White House, which had sidestepped questions about Freeman twice in one week, said little yesterday. "I don't have anything to add from what Admiral Blair discussed yesterday in accepting Mr. Freeman's decision that his nomination not proceed and that he regretted it," press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
The White House did not respond last night to a question about outside influence on personnel decisions.
The earliest cry of alarm about Freeman's appointment -- a week before it was announced -- came from a former AIPAC lobbyist. Steve Rosen wrote Feb. 19 on his blog that Freeman was a "strident critic of Israel" and described the potential appointment as "a textbook case of the old-line Arabism" whose "views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry."
Rosen said yesterday that he had been "quite positive" about President Obama's previous appointments for Middle East positions but that he was "surprised" about Freeman. The appointee's "most extreme point of view," he said, was not what he had expected for the head of the NIC.
Rosen has a unique position in Washington. A former chief foreign policy lobbyist for AIPAC, he and a colleague were indicted by the Bush administration in 2005 on suspicion of violating the Espionage Act, the first nongovernment employees ever so charged. AIPAC cut him loose, and a trial date has been set for May.
Meanwhile, Rosen is limited in what he can do. He said he cannot talk to AIPAC employees, nor can he lobby Congress. He has talked to "a number of journalists" who called him about Freeman, but not members of Congress. He did not answer when asked yesterday whether he has talked to Hill staff members.
Rosen's initial posting was the first of 17 he would write about Freeman over a 19-day period. Some of those added more original reporting, while some pointed to other blogs' finds about Freeman's record. In the process, Rosen traced increasing interest in the appointment elsewhere in the blogosphere, including coverage by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard, and Chait and Martin Peretz of the New Republic.
Interest also was growing among members of Congress.
On March 2, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) wrote Blair to raise concerns based on what he had read about Freeman's positions. Two days later, he called for Blair to withdraw the appointment.
Also on March 2, the Zionist Organization of America called for support of a letter by Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) that called on the DNI inspector general to investigate Freeman for possible conflicts of interest because of his financial relations with Saudi Arabia. That letter, signed by Kirk and seven other congressmen, including House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), was sent to Inspector General Edward Maguire on March 3.
Close observers of the events consider that request a turning point in the effort to stop Freeman's candidacy, and Rosen's blog began focusing almost exclusively on the appointment.
On Monday, the seven Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee wrote Blair to protest his choice, which was not subject to Senate confirmation, and threatened to review the NIC's work as long as Freeman chaired that body.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting one day later, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) told Blair of his own concerns, and he added that the controversy "is not going to go away until you or Ambassador Freeman find a way to resolve it." Hours later, Freeman withdrew.
Freeman explained his decision last night on National Public Radio: "It became apparent that, no matter what the National Intelligence Council or the intelligence community might put out under my chairmanship, I would be used as an excuse -- if something was said that wasn't politically correct -- to disparage the quality and the credibility of the intelligence."
View original source
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Somaliland lies in waiting as Somalia struggles
Somaliland has had some success at attracting companies to explore for oil, but is burdened by Somalia’s troubles and by its lack of international recognition, writes Nadine Marroushi.
Norwegian minnow Asante Oil is the latest player to be awarded blocks in breakaway Republic of Somaliland’s under-explored territory (AE 136/15). It was awarded onshore Blocks 13 and 14, covering 20,000km2 east of Hargeisa and south of Burco. Most blocks in the region were assigned to major oil companies when former Somali president Mohamed Siad Barre was in power, but the licence holders declared force majeure when civil war broke out in 1991.
Asante’s chief executive Jarand Rystad told African Energy he was “not concerned by any of the former concession holders. We relate to the new legitimate Somaliland government that has been in power for 17 years. To my knowledge, previous licence holders have been asked to come back, but have declined. Moreover, exploration periods are normally three to seven years and activity is required.”
White Nile Ltd’s experience in the Government of Southern Sudan region suggests things might not be as simple as Rystad claims. The Somaliland government is not internationally recognised, and as far as the original licence holders are concerned, their force majeure remains in place. Prime Resources, which holds Block 26, place a lot of emphasis on the fact that its acreage has had no previous owners.
In phase one, Asante has committed to acquiring seismic data, but has yet to award a contract. “Seismic crews are services in high demand these days, but we have been in concrete talks with several providers and hope to close a deal soon,” Rystad said. In phase two, Asante plans to drill. The potential is based on it being an extension of the Jurassic rift graben in Yemen. If hydrocarbons are discovered, Asante’s production-sharing agreement is structured so that an increasing share of the profit goes to the government as prices or volumes get higher.
The licence was approved by the cabinet in July. Asante did not pay a signature bonus, but has committed to sponsoring a water drilling rig and social programmes. It has also sponsored a seismic and aeromagnetic acquisition programme for the entire country. Rystad said: “With regards to our operations in Somaliland we are following the advice of the Norwegian government programme Petrad. This works with governments in Africa and elsewhere to foster transparency and a fair distribution of income from the petroleum sector. We want to bring the best of the Norwegian tradition of wealth distribution from the oil sector to the entire population of Somaliland.”
Rystad was first approached a year ago by Norwegian Somalilanders to participate in the region’s oil business. “I believe that most companies have been hesitant about getting involved because of security concerns and political risks in Somalia. However, we are impressed by the fact that Somaliland has been able to maintain a peaceful state with limited international support. We regard the current elected government for Somaliland as a legitimate government, and expect that the stability will continue going forward,” he told African Energy.
Striving for independence
Somaliland “had all the ingredients of catastrophe and avoided it,” Royal African Society director Richard Dowden told a Frontline Club event in London on 9 September entitled Somaliland: Getting it Right in Africa. The main theme was to analyse how Somaliland, whose neighbour is war-torn Somalia, has managed to shelter itself from clan fighting, and what prevents it gaining international recognition as a sovereign state. To sum up a long and complex story, the influence of British values on Somaliland during the colonial era, compared to the mindset of Italian rule in Somalia, coupled with the inherent democratic values of the Somali National Movement, which fought against Siad Barre’s dictatorship, have all played a role in shaping Somaliland today. Although it is far from international recognition, the former British colony is widely accepted as one of the most peaceful areas in the region.
Having successfully broken away from Somalia, Somaliland now strives for independence. Edward Mason at Independent Diplomat, a not-for-profit diplomacy consultancy, said: “Its sovereignty is a political not a legal issue. Somalia’s governing Transitional Federal Government (TFG) opposes Somaliland’s independence, and its location makes it a matter for the African Union, which lacks the capacity. Also, the TFG is a member of the AU giving it vetoing power, Somaliland isn’t.”
The disputed territory between Somaliland and the neighbouring breakaway Republic of Puntland is also an obstacle (AE 135/24). Both sides lay claim to a territory believed to be resource-rich and two clans, the Dhulbahante and Warsengeli, believe they are not served adequately either by Somaliland or Puntland. Many say the dispute goes back as long as Somalia has existed; Dowden said clan elders were able to manage the two communities peacefully. But the issue is with borders. Puntland has already given a large part of this region to Australian minnow Range Resources for exploration, while Somaliland invaded Laas Canood earlier this year to stake its claim. Range’s plans to drill in the area were put off, and they are now working further north in the Dharoor basin. Somaliland’s UK representative Adam Musa Jibril told African Energy: “neither president has had direct contact to discuss this issue,” although he insists it will be resolved peacefully.
External threats
The attention of international oil companies in Somaliland is positive, but with the issue of borders still in such a fragile state, it begs the question of whether exploration may fuel further tension. Somaliland Focus chairman Michael Wallis told African Energy that “there have been clashes on the border between Ethiopia and Somaliland with clans who thought the Somaliland soil was oil rich. I hope no oil is found before the other issues are resolved, because it will fuel tension.”
A concern for Jibril is the growing influence of Islamists in Somalia, where the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) is leading an insurgency against the Ethiopian-backed TFG, which ousted it from government in December 2006 with US assistance in its fight against the ‘global war on terror’. The ICU recently took over the southern Somali town of Kismayo, whose main constituents are from the same majority clan found in Puntland, the Majeerteen. However, this may not be all bad: Mason and Wallis said it might take a crisis like the resurgence of Islamist power in Somalia for the international community, particularly the United States, to take notice, and could encourage moves to give Somaliland its independence.
Short of international recognition and a seat at the United Nations, Somaliland is increasingly being recognised by international major institutions, such as the European Union, World Bank Group (WBG) and International Monetary Fund. The EU is paying for Somaliland’s March 2009 presidential elections, and the WBG provides some development assistance. Somalilanders can also often travel with a Somaliland passport.
View original source
Norwegian minnow Asante Oil is the latest player to be awarded blocks in breakaway Republic of Somaliland’s under-explored territory (AE 136/15). It was awarded onshore Blocks 13 and 14, covering 20,000km2 east of Hargeisa and south of Burco. Most blocks in the region were assigned to major oil companies when former Somali president Mohamed Siad Barre was in power, but the licence holders declared force majeure when civil war broke out in 1991.
Asante’s chief executive Jarand Rystad told African Energy he was “not concerned by any of the former concession holders. We relate to the new legitimate Somaliland government that has been in power for 17 years. To my knowledge, previous licence holders have been asked to come back, but have declined. Moreover, exploration periods are normally three to seven years and activity is required.”
White Nile Ltd’s experience in the Government of Southern Sudan region suggests things might not be as simple as Rystad claims. The Somaliland government is not internationally recognised, and as far as the original licence holders are concerned, their force majeure remains in place. Prime Resources, which holds Block 26, place a lot of emphasis on the fact that its acreage has had no previous owners.
In phase one, Asante has committed to acquiring seismic data, but has yet to award a contract. “Seismic crews are services in high demand these days, but we have been in concrete talks with several providers and hope to close a deal soon,” Rystad said. In phase two, Asante plans to drill. The potential is based on it being an extension of the Jurassic rift graben in Yemen. If hydrocarbons are discovered, Asante’s production-sharing agreement is structured so that an increasing share of the profit goes to the government as prices or volumes get higher.
The licence was approved by the cabinet in July. Asante did not pay a signature bonus, but has committed to sponsoring a water drilling rig and social programmes. It has also sponsored a seismic and aeromagnetic acquisition programme for the entire country. Rystad said: “With regards to our operations in Somaliland we are following the advice of the Norwegian government programme Petrad. This works with governments in Africa and elsewhere to foster transparency and a fair distribution of income from the petroleum sector. We want to bring the best of the Norwegian tradition of wealth distribution from the oil sector to the entire population of Somaliland.”
Rystad was first approached a year ago by Norwegian Somalilanders to participate in the region’s oil business. “I believe that most companies have been hesitant about getting involved because of security concerns and political risks in Somalia. However, we are impressed by the fact that Somaliland has been able to maintain a peaceful state with limited international support. We regard the current elected government for Somaliland as a legitimate government, and expect that the stability will continue going forward,” he told African Energy.
Striving for independence
Somaliland “had all the ingredients of catastrophe and avoided it,” Royal African Society director Richard Dowden told a Frontline Club event in London on 9 September entitled Somaliland: Getting it Right in Africa. The main theme was to analyse how Somaliland, whose neighbour is war-torn Somalia, has managed to shelter itself from clan fighting, and what prevents it gaining international recognition as a sovereign state. To sum up a long and complex story, the influence of British values on Somaliland during the colonial era, compared to the mindset of Italian rule in Somalia, coupled with the inherent democratic values of the Somali National Movement, which fought against Siad Barre’s dictatorship, have all played a role in shaping Somaliland today. Although it is far from international recognition, the former British colony is widely accepted as one of the most peaceful areas in the region.
Having successfully broken away from Somalia, Somaliland now strives for independence. Edward Mason at Independent Diplomat, a not-for-profit diplomacy consultancy, said: “Its sovereignty is a political not a legal issue. Somalia’s governing Transitional Federal Government (TFG) opposes Somaliland’s independence, and its location makes it a matter for the African Union, which lacks the capacity. Also, the TFG is a member of the AU giving it vetoing power, Somaliland isn’t.”
The disputed territory between Somaliland and the neighbouring breakaway Republic of Puntland is also an obstacle (AE 135/24). Both sides lay claim to a territory believed to be resource-rich and two clans, the Dhulbahante and Warsengeli, believe they are not served adequately either by Somaliland or Puntland. Many say the dispute goes back as long as Somalia has existed; Dowden said clan elders were able to manage the two communities peacefully. But the issue is with borders. Puntland has already given a large part of this region to Australian minnow Range Resources for exploration, while Somaliland invaded Laas Canood earlier this year to stake its claim. Range’s plans to drill in the area were put off, and they are now working further north in the Dharoor basin. Somaliland’s UK representative Adam Musa Jibril told African Energy: “neither president has had direct contact to discuss this issue,” although he insists it will be resolved peacefully.
External threats
The attention of international oil companies in Somaliland is positive, but with the issue of borders still in such a fragile state, it begs the question of whether exploration may fuel further tension. Somaliland Focus chairman Michael Wallis told African Energy that “there have been clashes on the border between Ethiopia and Somaliland with clans who thought the Somaliland soil was oil rich. I hope no oil is found before the other issues are resolved, because it will fuel tension.”
A concern for Jibril is the growing influence of Islamists in Somalia, where the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) is leading an insurgency against the Ethiopian-backed TFG, which ousted it from government in December 2006 with US assistance in its fight against the ‘global war on terror’. The ICU recently took over the southern Somali town of Kismayo, whose main constituents are from the same majority clan found in Puntland, the Majeerteen. However, this may not be all bad: Mason and Wallis said it might take a crisis like the resurgence of Islamist power in Somalia for the international community, particularly the United States, to take notice, and could encourage moves to give Somaliland its independence.
Short of international recognition and a seat at the United Nations, Somaliland is increasingly being recognised by international major institutions, such as the European Union, World Bank Group (WBG) and International Monetary Fund. The EU is paying for Somaliland’s March 2009 presidential elections, and the WBG provides some development assistance. Somalilanders can also often travel with a Somaliland passport.
View original source
Monday, 9 March 2009
Barack Obama's Economic Recovery Plan.
Interview with Prof. Jack Rasmus
by Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign
The following is an interview with Prof. Jack Rasmus by the Workers Emergency Relief Campaign (WERC). Rasmus is a professor of economics at St. Mary's College and Santa Clara University in Northern California. Below he outlines the details of Obama's economic recovery plan, showing the plan's inadequacies and the resulting implications.
WERC: What is your assessment of Obama's economic recovery plan? Can you describe it for our readers and tell us if you think it will deliver the jobs and benefits that people are anxiously awaiting?
Jack Rasmus: The Obama Plan has five major components, The first is the $787 billion stimulus plan that was adopted recently by the U.S. Congress. The second, third and fourth parts aim to resuscitate the financial markets: Part 2 is the PPIF, or Public-Private Investment Fund; Part 3 is the TALF, or Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility; and Part 4 is the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan. The fifth component is Obama's proposed 2009 budget -- which is likely to be modified substantially by the Republicans before it is finally adopted.
As for the stimulus package: As I have stated repeatedly, it's too little too late. First, it's not a jobs bill. By the end of 2009, there could be a total of 20 million people unemployed. We are now at 14 million jobs lost, and the job losses are accelerating. Over the past three months, we lost one million jobs each month, when job losses are calculated correctly. This package is not going to regenerate the jobs that we are talking about -- and jobs are the most important thing, because job loss is what's driving the collapse of consumption and bringing down the economy.
Thirty-eight percent of the stimulus package goes to providing aid; that is, unemployment, food stamps, vets' benefits, medical aid, COBRA -- as well as aid to state and local governments. This is all necessary, but what it shows is that this plan is aimed at softening the collapse, not at creating jobs. This aid will have little effect in terms of job creation. As for the aid to state and local governments, it is nowhere near the amount needed to halt the massive job cuts in state after state.
WERC: This is clear. In California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is demanding that public-sector workers across the state take two days off per month with no pay. His plan also calls for tens of thousands of layoffs statewide.
The Progressive States Network (PSN) reported that the Obama stimulus plan would cover less than half of projected state deficits. The authors of the PSN report note, "A new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities details that state deficits are projected to be $350 billion over the next 30 months. But the stimulus recovery plan includes only about $150 billion that can be used to address those shortfalls, meaning that 55% to 60% of projected state deficits will remain."
Rasmus: Indeed. These "shortfalls" will mean millions of destroyed jobs, lives, families, and entire communities.
To continue with the stimulus plan: Another 38% of the package, or $300 billion, is tax cuts: (1) business tax cuts, (2) reversing the alternative minimum tax; and (3) payroll tax cuts. The business tax cuts will not have any effect in stimulating the economy. Some economists in fact are arguing they will have a negative effect that the spending from the tax cuts will be less than the amount of the tax cuts; they call this "negative multipliers."
When you're in a deep downturn like this, businesses sit on their tax cuts, waiting for better days ahead; they use the money to pay off their debts and that sort of thing. Even the payroll taxes will have virtually no effect in terms of consumption and stimulating the economy.
Only 24% of the stimulus plan, or $200 billion, will go to federal spending, with just $27 billion allocated this year to job-creating expenditures. The rest is long-term alternative energy technology and other similar projects, all of which are capital intensive.
The point is this: It's not a jobs bill. Obama says the plan will create 3 million to 4 million jobs. But over what time period? It's over multiple years, with the hope that the biggest impact will come in the second year.
This year the total spending impact of this bill, dollar-wise, is only $180 billion, which is roughly what 2008 stimulus package was last year. It had virtually no effect last year, and the conditions are even worse this year. We will continue to be gushing jobs this year at the continued rate of half a million to 1 million jobs per month.
We're going to be in very bad shape at the end of the year. The number one cause driving foreclosures is job loss. I was just reading a statistic today that 72% of all the sub-prime loans issued between 2005 and 2007 are going to default. In other words, we haven't seen the total impact of the housing price collapse. Housing prices will fall at least another 20%. There is no light at the end of this downturn tunnel.
With 20 million unemployed at the end of the year, with an additional 5 million to 7 million people losing their homes to foreclosure, the stimulus plan fails miserably when it comes to creating jobs -- so bad that I predict they will have to come up with a Stimulus Plan II at some point.
So if there not a program this year to deal with this situation, the odds go up significantly that what I call an epic recession will become a classic global depression in 2010. We are on the cusp of this now. The momentum is moving in that direction.
WERC: Let's look at the other components of Obama's program. You mentioned that the administration is putting most of its hopes into reviving the banking system as a means to jump-start the economy. What about the Public-Private Investment Fund, for example?
In mid-February Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced that up to $1 trillion would be provided by the Treasury to "provide financing for private investors to buy 'distressed securities.'" Geithner said the the goal is to clean up the banks' "toxic assets so that the credit crunch that is hobbling the economy can be ended." What is your take on the PPIF?
Rasmus: This is really Part Two of the big banks' rescue plan -- and the $1 trillion figure that Geithner presents is just for starters; the figure is going to increase significantly.
As you say, they plan to use taxpayer money to help the banks and investors buy bad assets that exist in these banks and financial institutions. It's the existence of these bad assets that prevent the banks from making loans to businesses and homeowners. It's what's been clogging up the system.
But the Treasury has refused to deal with these bad assets. If you go back to then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Troubled Assets Relief Plan (TARP), you can see that we gave the banks $700 billion in bailout funding. But Paulson didn't buy up the bad assets, which was the whole idea behind the rescue plan. Why is that?
It's because the banks are on strike. The banks don't want to lend, or if they do, it's at ridiculously high rates. They don't want to sell all the bad assets on their books because they are essentially worthless now, and they don't want to sell at their worthless market price.
If they sold them at their market prices, they would have even greater losses than they have now. They don't want to loan when their balance sheets are so negative, because if they loan that reduces their reserves on hand. And this is freezing up the system.
Paulson and TARP could not buy them at above-market prices because Congress was looking over their shoulders and saying, "Hey! What are you doing, subsidizing these banks, giving them more than the market value of these assets?"
So, Paulson looked around, saw that he couldn't do anything, and did nothing in relation to these bad assets.
Today, with the PPIF, we have essentially the same situation, but with a little twist.
What they're trying to do with PPIF is to create a market price to sell these bad assets, thereby subsidizing not only the banks but the investors who would buy them. In other words, this $1 trillion is designed to give money incentives to the banks to make up the difference between what the price would be and what the market value would be. So, they are giving the banks a windfall to encourage them to sell at above-market price.
At the same time, they're giving an incentive to the investors; in other words, they are subsidizing the investors as well, with taxpayer money, to come in and buy. They hope this will create a new market price that will take off on its own and unblock the lending. It's going to cost well over $1 trillion to get that going, and it's really questionable whether investors will want to buy those bad assets at any price.
WERC: All the business media report that investors are not willing to buy these assets, even at higher rates. ...
Rasmus: That's right. And if the $1 trillion doesn't work, the government is prepared to throw more money at them. The investors know this, so they are going to sit and wait, saying that the price is not high enough and that you have to subsidize us even more. With the government already so committed to this effort, they will throw more money at the banks. Geithner and Obama are already saying that this is just a start, and that we may have to throw more money into this bad assets plan some time soon.
WERC: Some economists, and even some top-level financial gurus such as Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, are saying that the government should simply take over and nationalize these bad assets. They say the Obama plan is doomed to fail.
Rasmus: The banks would love this. Keep in mind that Obama and Geithner are not talking about confiscating these bad assets. They are talking about is buying them. But they would have to buy at above-market price because the banks won't sell them. The bankers are holding out for even-higher prices. That's the crux of the problem.
And when Greenspan and the others talk about nationalization, we must be clear, that's a misnomer. They don't really mean nationalization. Buying preferred stock or even common stock does not amount to nationalization. It's just partial receivership, or subsidization, at taxpayer expense.
Seizure of private companies on behalf of investors is not nationalization. Their goal is to buy the bad assets and then sell them back to private investors at below-market prices -- all at taxpayers' expense.
WERC: What is the total amount of bad assets, assuming there's agreement on the amount?
Rasmus: Professor Rubini at New York University estimates that there's at least $3.6 trillion in bad assets. Fortune magazine says $4 trillion. Geithner, last June, indicated he thought there was about $6 trillion.
So to buy these bad assets, the taxpayers; would have to fork over $6 trillion.
WERC: The figure is staggering. Clearly, this situation calls out for true nationalization.
Rasmus: Yes, it does. But what is true nationalization? It means totally taking over these banks and financial institutions -- with bondholders and shareholders not just taking a haircut, but taking a scalping. It means getting rid of management. It means consolidating and running these banks on behalf of the interests of the working-class majority in the country. You don't pay dividends. You don't pay stock shares. you take full day-to-day operational control of all strategic decision-making. You run it and turn over the profits for public investment, not to line the pockets of private investors.
Without a doubt, what we need is a fully nationalized banking system.
WERC: Many of the initiators of the Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign are calling for the nationalization of the banks without compensation. They also say that the $700 billion in the Paulson plan -- funds that are simply sitting in the banks waiting to ride out the recession -- should be confiscated by the government and placed at the service of job creation.
Today, the government could nationalize the banks and use that $1 trillion in the PPIF fund -- just to give one example -- to put people back to work. If we assume a living wage of $50,000 per worker for one year, and we multiply this number by the 20 million projected unemployed workers, this gives us exactly $1 trillion. Shouldn't the Obama administration earmark that $1 trillion to provide unionized, living-wage jobs for one year to the 20 million unemployed? Isn't this a better way to jump-start the economy?
Rasmus: That's the point I have been making all along. People are referring to the Great Depression. But what got us out of the Depression? It was not the New Deal.
The New Deal did not really come on the scene till 1935, with some success. It stopped the decline, but it did not generate the recovery, and after two years, Roosevelt and others started dismantling the New Deal. Once they started doing this and trying to balance the budget, in mid-1937, we went right back into the Depression. We did not come out of the Depression till 1942. Why was this? It was because government spending, i.e., public investment, rose from 20 percent to 40 percent of annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total annual spending in the economy.
WERC: How are they planning to finance the PPIF: Would it be through the Treasury?
Rasmus: Yes. They've got about $190 billion left over from that $700 billion TARP fund, and they will put in initially another $810 million, again, to subsidize the investors and the banks with the hope that they will come into the market to start buying and selling the bad assets at above the market price. They want to induce a market and a price, and they hope that once they do this, all the investors will step in and follow suit. But that's a big if. I don't see it coming.
Now the second part of the financial plan is designed to work in conjunction with the PPIF, and that's the TALF, or Term-Backed Securities Loan Facility. This will be run by the Federal Reserve.
The Fed had $200 billion assigned for this last November 2008, but it just held onto it. Now in about a week they are going to issue another $800 billion. So they'll have an addition $1 trillion for TALF.
WERC: Will this mean that the Federal Reserve will issue bonds for the TALF?
Rasmus: Not exactly. The idea is for Fed to lend money to investors, particularly investors in the hedge funds, money-marked mutual funds, and private equity funds -- that is, to the shadow banks that are responsible for so much of the speculation that got us into the mess we're in today -- so that they can buy the bad assets. As you see, they are coming at it from two directions.
But bad assets of what? The plan is to buy up the securitized bonds and loans associated with consumer credit. We are on the verge of another sub-prime-like bust in the consumer credit markets -- meaning auto loans, student loans, credit card loans, and commercial property loans.
The whole idea here is that the Fed will loan money to hedge funds and private equity funds to buy these bad assets that are about to collapse. Estimates are that defaults on credit cards alone are going to rise from their current 2% to 3% today to 8% to 10%.
It's ironic, when you think about it, that the government is going to try to resurrect this thing through the shadow banking system and securitized markets, which collapsed from more than a trillion dollars in credit a few years ago and which have lost close to $4 trillion total. The hedge funds have lost $1 trillion of their total value, and yet we are going to give them money to buy out all these bad assets ... all of this to try to stimulate and increase the lending to industry, to commerce, and the like.
This doesn't make any sense. It just shows that the government has absolutely no confidence that the commercial banks can lead a recovery.
The question is, Is anyone going to re-enter into these securitized markets that have collapsed and buy up these bad assets, even with these government loans? Does anyone want to touch the toxic securitized markets? I don't think so. Even with loans ... unless the government gives them interest-free loans -- and if that happens, the government should just enter and take over these consumer credit markets and provide credit directly through the Fed the auto, student, commercial property and other markets. Let the Fed provide the funds directly to, for instance, credit unions as the local loaning institutions. Why have middle-men come in and skim off the profits?
We must also keep in mind that the $2 trillion they are throwing at the banks with this plan is just the beginning. Everyone is lining up at the trough for a taxpayer payout.
WERC: Let's talk now about Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, which is both the third financial package and the fourth component of the Obama recovery plan.
Rasmus: There are two parts to it. The first is $200 billion to go to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because they already ran through the $200 billion we gave them back in August 2008. They have bought up the bad housing loans, or mortgage loans -- and as their values continue to fall as housing prices fall, the values of the loans they bought up have collapsed. So they have run through their $200 billion, and they need $200 billion more.
It's not really going to improve anything when you just keep buying up these bad loans. That's the first part.
Regarding the second part, we have to keep in mind that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG, which is now supposedly "government owned," only constitute about 20% to 30% of the housing market. That leaves 70% to 80% of the bad housing mortgage market, which the government had not been addressing. It's this other portion that the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan now addresses -- but with only $75 billion, a paltry sum!
And even this $75 billion is targeting subsidies to mortgage lenders; in other words, it's trickle-down once again -- that is, give money to the mortgage lenders to have the government and taxpayers pay to lower the interest rates on new home loans -- up to $75 billion, which is not all the many home loans.
And what's even more outrageous, these loans are to go to new buyers -- not to those 5 million to 7 million homeowners who face foreclosure, delinquency, or default. The government is not attempting to do anything about people who are losing their homes. What they plan to do is subsidize the markets, so that the lenders can create new, affordable buyers to buy up some of the foreclosed homes.
This is a sop, a freebie, thrown to the mortgage lenders who are asked to come in buy some of the foreclosures and some of the huge stock of homes, to help them sell all the new homes. So really, it's a plan to benefit the mortgage lenders and construction firms holding all these new, unsold homes.
WERC: Now, let's get to the last item: the 2009 budget. This is the part that many are touting as New Deal and even "socialist," if we are to believe Rush Limbaugh.
Rasmus: This is a $3.6 trillion budget with a lot of spending. There is going to be a firestorm over it. Watch the Republicans, the corporations and the banking interests come out of the woodwork. The gloves are going to come off. This is where the big split in the capitalist class is going to reveal itself, because there are some proposals in this plan that would shift income. It's a shift that is insufficient, -- too little too late, once again -- but it is certainly moving in a better direction.
This is what we know so far about the budget:
It will increase taxes on the wealthiest 2% of households -- but it will only increase taxes from 35% to 39.5%. This will effect people making more than $250,000 per year. This amounts to a rollback to the Clinton period. But that tax increase on the top-margin rate does not take effect until 2011, when the Bush tax cuts expire. This is absurd. It should take effect in 2009. They shouldn't be putting it off, when funding is needed so desperately to stop teacher layoffs, prevent home foreclosures, or to stop autoworker layoffs.
What's more, they will not come close to obtaining the funding they need for a real economic recovery by only rolling back the capital gains' and capital incomes' tax cuts only to the 1990s levels. They have to roll them back to the pre-Reagan, pre-1980s, rates. They have to raise these rates back to 50%, minimum.
So there is some increase in the tax rate, but it is delayed and it is far less than what is needed. Again, 2009 is a critical juncture year. If the declining situation is not reversed, the odds are increasing that we will be moving in 2010 to a global recession. There really is no way out without a real re-distribution of income, reversing the redistribution of income from workers to investors and corporations that has been going on since 1980.
Second, on healthcare. The budget calls for $634 billion in healthcare funding, but this is only half of what is needed for single-payer. Also, if this funding goes to the private insurance companies, as appears to be the case, there will be no real solution to the healthcare crisis in our country. Only single-payer offers a solution.
Third, the budget calls for deprivatizing student loans. This is one point that is commendable in the plan.
The details of the plan are only emerging. We will have to monitor it closely. But one thing is certain: What has been proposed by the Obama administration is likely to be modified substantially by the Republicans and centrist Democrats. There is going to be a big fight, with major changes expected.
WERC: The government is talking about incurring a $1.75 trillion deficit with this budget. What does this mean? How will the deficit be financed?
Rasmus: First, it should be noted that the real deficit by 2010 will be $2.25 trillion.
One way they are talking about financing this deficit is with carbon credits. These are carbon pollution permits. The government is expecting a $526 billion revenue from this source, though it's questionable whether they will be able to raise this amount. Governments and corporations in Europe want to give corporations credits for free. They'll try that here too.
They will issue more Treasury bonds, and they will simply have go to the printing presses and print more money. Clearly, they are in a bind -- especially if the economy continues to tank.
WERC: You have made many predictions that have actually come true -- unlike just about every mainstream economist and forecaster. What are your predictions today?
Rasmus: We're on the knife's edge of a transition between this epic recession and a depression. The bank bailout will require trillions more dollars. And even then, the impact is likely to be marginal.
The depression could be triggered by one or more of the following factors: sovereign debt crises in Eastern Europe, deepening job losses in the United States, the collapse of the treasuries' markets; the collapse of the global bond markets. These are among the many possible scenarios.
WERC: What is to be done?
Rasmus: I have outlined some policy recommendations here. Readers who would like to delve into this question in greater depth can get my full set of proposals on my website, which is www.kyklosproductions.com. You can also see my latest article in the March 2009 of "Z" magazine, where I describe my full set of proposals for recovery as an alternative to the Obama program.
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by Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign
The following is an interview with Prof. Jack Rasmus by the Workers Emergency Relief Campaign (WERC). Rasmus is a professor of economics at St. Mary's College and Santa Clara University in Northern California. Below he outlines the details of Obama's economic recovery plan, showing the plan's inadequacies and the resulting implications.
WERC: What is your assessment of Obama's economic recovery plan? Can you describe it for our readers and tell us if you think it will deliver the jobs and benefits that people are anxiously awaiting?
Jack Rasmus: The Obama Plan has five major components, The first is the $787 billion stimulus plan that was adopted recently by the U.S. Congress. The second, third and fourth parts aim to resuscitate the financial markets: Part 2 is the PPIF, or Public-Private Investment Fund; Part 3 is the TALF, or Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility; and Part 4 is the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan. The fifth component is Obama's proposed 2009 budget -- which is likely to be modified substantially by the Republicans before it is finally adopted.
As for the stimulus package: As I have stated repeatedly, it's too little too late. First, it's not a jobs bill. By the end of 2009, there could be a total of 20 million people unemployed. We are now at 14 million jobs lost, and the job losses are accelerating. Over the past three months, we lost one million jobs each month, when job losses are calculated correctly. This package is not going to regenerate the jobs that we are talking about -- and jobs are the most important thing, because job loss is what's driving the collapse of consumption and bringing down the economy.
Thirty-eight percent of the stimulus package goes to providing aid; that is, unemployment, food stamps, vets' benefits, medical aid, COBRA -- as well as aid to state and local governments. This is all necessary, but what it shows is that this plan is aimed at softening the collapse, not at creating jobs. This aid will have little effect in terms of job creation. As for the aid to state and local governments, it is nowhere near the amount needed to halt the massive job cuts in state after state.
WERC: This is clear. In California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is demanding that public-sector workers across the state take two days off per month with no pay. His plan also calls for tens of thousands of layoffs statewide.
The Progressive States Network (PSN) reported that the Obama stimulus plan would cover less than half of projected state deficits. The authors of the PSN report note, "A new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities details that state deficits are projected to be $350 billion over the next 30 months. But the stimulus recovery plan includes only about $150 billion that can be used to address those shortfalls, meaning that 55% to 60% of projected state deficits will remain."
Rasmus: Indeed. These "shortfalls" will mean millions of destroyed jobs, lives, families, and entire communities.
To continue with the stimulus plan: Another 38% of the package, or $300 billion, is tax cuts: (1) business tax cuts, (2) reversing the alternative minimum tax; and (3) payroll tax cuts. The business tax cuts will not have any effect in stimulating the economy. Some economists in fact are arguing they will have a negative effect that the spending from the tax cuts will be less than the amount of the tax cuts; they call this "negative multipliers."
When you're in a deep downturn like this, businesses sit on their tax cuts, waiting for better days ahead; they use the money to pay off their debts and that sort of thing. Even the payroll taxes will have virtually no effect in terms of consumption and stimulating the economy.
Only 24% of the stimulus plan, or $200 billion, will go to federal spending, with just $27 billion allocated this year to job-creating expenditures. The rest is long-term alternative energy technology and other similar projects, all of which are capital intensive.
The point is this: It's not a jobs bill. Obama says the plan will create 3 million to 4 million jobs. But over what time period? It's over multiple years, with the hope that the biggest impact will come in the second year.
This year the total spending impact of this bill, dollar-wise, is only $180 billion, which is roughly what 2008 stimulus package was last year. It had virtually no effect last year, and the conditions are even worse this year. We will continue to be gushing jobs this year at the continued rate of half a million to 1 million jobs per month.
We're going to be in very bad shape at the end of the year. The number one cause driving foreclosures is job loss. I was just reading a statistic today that 72% of all the sub-prime loans issued between 2005 and 2007 are going to default. In other words, we haven't seen the total impact of the housing price collapse. Housing prices will fall at least another 20%. There is no light at the end of this downturn tunnel.
With 20 million unemployed at the end of the year, with an additional 5 million to 7 million people losing their homes to foreclosure, the stimulus plan fails miserably when it comes to creating jobs -- so bad that I predict they will have to come up with a Stimulus Plan II at some point.
So if there not a program this year to deal with this situation, the odds go up significantly that what I call an epic recession will become a classic global depression in 2010. We are on the cusp of this now. The momentum is moving in that direction.
WERC: Let's look at the other components of Obama's program. You mentioned that the administration is putting most of its hopes into reviving the banking system as a means to jump-start the economy. What about the Public-Private Investment Fund, for example?
In mid-February Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced that up to $1 trillion would be provided by the Treasury to "provide financing for private investors to buy 'distressed securities.'" Geithner said the the goal is to clean up the banks' "toxic assets so that the credit crunch that is hobbling the economy can be ended." What is your take on the PPIF?
Rasmus: This is really Part Two of the big banks' rescue plan -- and the $1 trillion figure that Geithner presents is just for starters; the figure is going to increase significantly.
As you say, they plan to use taxpayer money to help the banks and investors buy bad assets that exist in these banks and financial institutions. It's the existence of these bad assets that prevent the banks from making loans to businesses and homeowners. It's what's been clogging up the system.
But the Treasury has refused to deal with these bad assets. If you go back to then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Troubled Assets Relief Plan (TARP), you can see that we gave the banks $700 billion in bailout funding. But Paulson didn't buy up the bad assets, which was the whole idea behind the rescue plan. Why is that?
It's because the banks are on strike. The banks don't want to lend, or if they do, it's at ridiculously high rates. They don't want to sell all the bad assets on their books because they are essentially worthless now, and they don't want to sell at their worthless market price.
If they sold them at their market prices, they would have even greater losses than they have now. They don't want to loan when their balance sheets are so negative, because if they loan that reduces their reserves on hand. And this is freezing up the system.
Paulson and TARP could not buy them at above-market prices because Congress was looking over their shoulders and saying, "Hey! What are you doing, subsidizing these banks, giving them more than the market value of these assets?"
So, Paulson looked around, saw that he couldn't do anything, and did nothing in relation to these bad assets.
Today, with the PPIF, we have essentially the same situation, but with a little twist.
What they're trying to do with PPIF is to create a market price to sell these bad assets, thereby subsidizing not only the banks but the investors who would buy them. In other words, this $1 trillion is designed to give money incentives to the banks to make up the difference between what the price would be and what the market value would be. So, they are giving the banks a windfall to encourage them to sell at above-market price.
At the same time, they're giving an incentive to the investors; in other words, they are subsidizing the investors as well, with taxpayer money, to come in and buy. They hope this will create a new market price that will take off on its own and unblock the lending. It's going to cost well over $1 trillion to get that going, and it's really questionable whether investors will want to buy those bad assets at any price.
WERC: All the business media report that investors are not willing to buy these assets, even at higher rates. ...
Rasmus: That's right. And if the $1 trillion doesn't work, the government is prepared to throw more money at them. The investors know this, so they are going to sit and wait, saying that the price is not high enough and that you have to subsidize us even more. With the government already so committed to this effort, they will throw more money at the banks. Geithner and Obama are already saying that this is just a start, and that we may have to throw more money into this bad assets plan some time soon.
WERC: Some economists, and even some top-level financial gurus such as Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, are saying that the government should simply take over and nationalize these bad assets. They say the Obama plan is doomed to fail.
Rasmus: The banks would love this. Keep in mind that Obama and Geithner are not talking about confiscating these bad assets. They are talking about is buying them. But they would have to buy at above-market price because the banks won't sell them. The bankers are holding out for even-higher prices. That's the crux of the problem.
And when Greenspan and the others talk about nationalization, we must be clear, that's a misnomer. They don't really mean nationalization. Buying preferred stock or even common stock does not amount to nationalization. It's just partial receivership, or subsidization, at taxpayer expense.
Seizure of private companies on behalf of investors is not nationalization. Their goal is to buy the bad assets and then sell them back to private investors at below-market prices -- all at taxpayers' expense.
WERC: What is the total amount of bad assets, assuming there's agreement on the amount?
Rasmus: Professor Rubini at New York University estimates that there's at least $3.6 trillion in bad assets. Fortune magazine says $4 trillion. Geithner, last June, indicated he thought there was about $6 trillion.
So to buy these bad assets, the taxpayers; would have to fork over $6 trillion.
WERC: The figure is staggering. Clearly, this situation calls out for true nationalization.
Rasmus: Yes, it does. But what is true nationalization? It means totally taking over these banks and financial institutions -- with bondholders and shareholders not just taking a haircut, but taking a scalping. It means getting rid of management. It means consolidating and running these banks on behalf of the interests of the working-class majority in the country. You don't pay dividends. You don't pay stock shares. you take full day-to-day operational control of all strategic decision-making. You run it and turn over the profits for public investment, not to line the pockets of private investors.
Without a doubt, what we need is a fully nationalized banking system.
WERC: Many of the initiators of the Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign are calling for the nationalization of the banks without compensation. They also say that the $700 billion in the Paulson plan -- funds that are simply sitting in the banks waiting to ride out the recession -- should be confiscated by the government and placed at the service of job creation.
Today, the government could nationalize the banks and use that $1 trillion in the PPIF fund -- just to give one example -- to put people back to work. If we assume a living wage of $50,000 per worker for one year, and we multiply this number by the 20 million projected unemployed workers, this gives us exactly $1 trillion. Shouldn't the Obama administration earmark that $1 trillion to provide unionized, living-wage jobs for one year to the 20 million unemployed? Isn't this a better way to jump-start the economy?
Rasmus: That's the point I have been making all along. People are referring to the Great Depression. But what got us out of the Depression? It was not the New Deal.
The New Deal did not really come on the scene till 1935, with some success. It stopped the decline, but it did not generate the recovery, and after two years, Roosevelt and others started dismantling the New Deal. Once they started doing this and trying to balance the budget, in mid-1937, we went right back into the Depression. We did not come out of the Depression till 1942. Why was this? It was because government spending, i.e., public investment, rose from 20 percent to 40 percent of annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total annual spending in the economy.
WERC: How are they planning to finance the PPIF: Would it be through the Treasury?
Rasmus: Yes. They've got about $190 billion left over from that $700 billion TARP fund, and they will put in initially another $810 million, again, to subsidize the investors and the banks with the hope that they will come into the market to start buying and selling the bad assets at above the market price. They want to induce a market and a price, and they hope that once they do this, all the investors will step in and follow suit. But that's a big if. I don't see it coming.
Now the second part of the financial plan is designed to work in conjunction with the PPIF, and that's the TALF, or Term-Backed Securities Loan Facility. This will be run by the Federal Reserve.
The Fed had $200 billion assigned for this last November 2008, but it just held onto it. Now in about a week they are going to issue another $800 billion. So they'll have an addition $1 trillion for TALF.
WERC: Will this mean that the Federal Reserve will issue bonds for the TALF?
Rasmus: Not exactly. The idea is for Fed to lend money to investors, particularly investors in the hedge funds, money-marked mutual funds, and private equity funds -- that is, to the shadow banks that are responsible for so much of the speculation that got us into the mess we're in today -- so that they can buy the bad assets. As you see, they are coming at it from two directions.
But bad assets of what? The plan is to buy up the securitized bonds and loans associated with consumer credit. We are on the verge of another sub-prime-like bust in the consumer credit markets -- meaning auto loans, student loans, credit card loans, and commercial property loans.
The whole idea here is that the Fed will loan money to hedge funds and private equity funds to buy these bad assets that are about to collapse. Estimates are that defaults on credit cards alone are going to rise from their current 2% to 3% today to 8% to 10%.
It's ironic, when you think about it, that the government is going to try to resurrect this thing through the shadow banking system and securitized markets, which collapsed from more than a trillion dollars in credit a few years ago and which have lost close to $4 trillion total. The hedge funds have lost $1 trillion of their total value, and yet we are going to give them money to buy out all these bad assets ... all of this to try to stimulate and increase the lending to industry, to commerce, and the like.
This doesn't make any sense. It just shows that the government has absolutely no confidence that the commercial banks can lead a recovery.
The question is, Is anyone going to re-enter into these securitized markets that have collapsed and buy up these bad assets, even with these government loans? Does anyone want to touch the toxic securitized markets? I don't think so. Even with loans ... unless the government gives them interest-free loans -- and if that happens, the government should just enter and take over these consumer credit markets and provide credit directly through the Fed the auto, student, commercial property and other markets. Let the Fed provide the funds directly to, for instance, credit unions as the local loaning institutions. Why have middle-men come in and skim off the profits?
We must also keep in mind that the $2 trillion they are throwing at the banks with this plan is just the beginning. Everyone is lining up at the trough for a taxpayer payout.
WERC: Let's talk now about Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, which is both the third financial package and the fourth component of the Obama recovery plan.
Rasmus: There are two parts to it. The first is $200 billion to go to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because they already ran through the $200 billion we gave them back in August 2008. They have bought up the bad housing loans, or mortgage loans -- and as their values continue to fall as housing prices fall, the values of the loans they bought up have collapsed. So they have run through their $200 billion, and they need $200 billion more.
It's not really going to improve anything when you just keep buying up these bad loans. That's the first part.
Regarding the second part, we have to keep in mind that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG, which is now supposedly "government owned," only constitute about 20% to 30% of the housing market. That leaves 70% to 80% of the bad housing mortgage market, which the government had not been addressing. It's this other portion that the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan now addresses -- but with only $75 billion, a paltry sum!
And even this $75 billion is targeting subsidies to mortgage lenders; in other words, it's trickle-down once again -- that is, give money to the mortgage lenders to have the government and taxpayers pay to lower the interest rates on new home loans -- up to $75 billion, which is not all the many home loans.
And what's even more outrageous, these loans are to go to new buyers -- not to those 5 million to 7 million homeowners who face foreclosure, delinquency, or default. The government is not attempting to do anything about people who are losing their homes. What they plan to do is subsidize the markets, so that the lenders can create new, affordable buyers to buy up some of the foreclosed homes.
This is a sop, a freebie, thrown to the mortgage lenders who are asked to come in buy some of the foreclosures and some of the huge stock of homes, to help them sell all the new homes. So really, it's a plan to benefit the mortgage lenders and construction firms holding all these new, unsold homes.
WERC: Now, let's get to the last item: the 2009 budget. This is the part that many are touting as New Deal and even "socialist," if we are to believe Rush Limbaugh.
Rasmus: This is a $3.6 trillion budget with a lot of spending. There is going to be a firestorm over it. Watch the Republicans, the corporations and the banking interests come out of the woodwork. The gloves are going to come off. This is where the big split in the capitalist class is going to reveal itself, because there are some proposals in this plan that would shift income. It's a shift that is insufficient, -- too little too late, once again -- but it is certainly moving in a better direction.
This is what we know so far about the budget:
It will increase taxes on the wealthiest 2% of households -- but it will only increase taxes from 35% to 39.5%. This will effect people making more than $250,000 per year. This amounts to a rollback to the Clinton period. But that tax increase on the top-margin rate does not take effect until 2011, when the Bush tax cuts expire. This is absurd. It should take effect in 2009. They shouldn't be putting it off, when funding is needed so desperately to stop teacher layoffs, prevent home foreclosures, or to stop autoworker layoffs.
What's more, they will not come close to obtaining the funding they need for a real economic recovery by only rolling back the capital gains' and capital incomes' tax cuts only to the 1990s levels. They have to roll them back to the pre-Reagan, pre-1980s, rates. They have to raise these rates back to 50%, minimum.
So there is some increase in the tax rate, but it is delayed and it is far less than what is needed. Again, 2009 is a critical juncture year. If the declining situation is not reversed, the odds are increasing that we will be moving in 2010 to a global recession. There really is no way out without a real re-distribution of income, reversing the redistribution of income from workers to investors and corporations that has been going on since 1980.
Second, on healthcare. The budget calls for $634 billion in healthcare funding, but this is only half of what is needed for single-payer. Also, if this funding goes to the private insurance companies, as appears to be the case, there will be no real solution to the healthcare crisis in our country. Only single-payer offers a solution.
Third, the budget calls for deprivatizing student loans. This is one point that is commendable in the plan.
The details of the plan are only emerging. We will have to monitor it closely. But one thing is certain: What has been proposed by the Obama administration is likely to be modified substantially by the Republicans and centrist Democrats. There is going to be a big fight, with major changes expected.
WERC: The government is talking about incurring a $1.75 trillion deficit with this budget. What does this mean? How will the deficit be financed?
Rasmus: First, it should be noted that the real deficit by 2010 will be $2.25 trillion.
One way they are talking about financing this deficit is with carbon credits. These are carbon pollution permits. The government is expecting a $526 billion revenue from this source, though it's questionable whether they will be able to raise this amount. Governments and corporations in Europe want to give corporations credits for free. They'll try that here too.
They will issue more Treasury bonds, and they will simply have go to the printing presses and print more money. Clearly, they are in a bind -- especially if the economy continues to tank.
WERC: You have made many predictions that have actually come true -- unlike just about every mainstream economist and forecaster. What are your predictions today?
Rasmus: We're on the knife's edge of a transition between this epic recession and a depression. The bank bailout will require trillions more dollars. And even then, the impact is likely to be marginal.
The depression could be triggered by one or more of the following factors: sovereign debt crises in Eastern Europe, deepening job losses in the United States, the collapse of the treasuries' markets; the collapse of the global bond markets. These are among the many possible scenarios.
WERC: What is to be done?
Rasmus: I have outlined some policy recommendations here. Readers who would like to delve into this question in greater depth can get my full set of proposals on my website, which is www.kyklosproductions.com. You can also see my latest article in the March 2009 of "Z" magazine, where I describe my full set of proposals for recovery as an alternative to the Obama program.
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New hope ahead of East Africa oil meeting
Efforts to promote East Africa as a viable investment destination for petroleum exploration and development will get a boost during the 4th EA Petroleum Conference (EAPC '09) starting in Mombasa on Wednesday.
Recent petroleum discoveries and exploration activities focusing on the potential of the hydrocarbons in the region will feature in the three-day conference organised by the East African Community secretariat.
With Uganda having discovered oil and gas near Lake Albert and Tanzania tapping natural gas from huge offshore reserves for power generation, the days of East Africa being a net oil importer could be numbered.
Rwanda has methane gas tapped in Lake Kivu while petroleum exploration is going on in the Rusizi and Lake Tanganyika basins.In Kenya, there are currently several international oil companies carrying out petroleum exploration with 31 oil wells already drilled.
Over 600 delegates and officials responsible for petroleum and investment promotions and other players in the industry from within East Africa and beyond will be in attendance at the Mombasa meeting.
EAPC '09 will serve as a forum for Governments in the region and oil firms from all over the world to engage in active dialogue and exchange ideas on the upstream petroleum industry.
"This would lead to increased awareness of the potential for petroleum development in the region, thereby stimulating investment in the sector," said Mr Owora Richard-Othieno, the acting head of the EAC public relations unit.
EAPC'09 is taking place at a time when current global financial meltdown reduction in oil prices have grossly impacted on the exploration financing base of many oil companies in the world.
Presentations will also be made on new exploration opportunities, evolving technologies and achievements in the search for new hydrocarbon reserves.
An exhibition will run concurrently with the meeting with the partner states, as well as oil and service companies showcasing the region's potential and other available investment opportunities.
Pre-conference excursions will take place in Kenya and Rwanda to be followed by similar exercises after the meeting in Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda.
Enhancing Exploration and Exploitation of Oil and Gas for Socio-Economic Development will be the theme of this year's conference to be opened by President Mwai Kibaki.
Besides delegates from EAC member countries and oil companies from across the world, other players in the industry from Ethiopia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Somalia have been invited.
The Mombasa meeting is the fourth in a series of petroleum conferences held every two years in EAC partner states since the first one took place in Nairobi in 2003.
Kampala hosted the second conference in 2005 followed by the 2007 meeting in Arusha.
View original source
Recent petroleum discoveries and exploration activities focusing on the potential of the hydrocarbons in the region will feature in the three-day conference organised by the East African Community secretariat.
With Uganda having discovered oil and gas near Lake Albert and Tanzania tapping natural gas from huge offshore reserves for power generation, the days of East Africa being a net oil importer could be numbered.
Rwanda has methane gas tapped in Lake Kivu while petroleum exploration is going on in the Rusizi and Lake Tanganyika basins.In Kenya, there are currently several international oil companies carrying out petroleum exploration with 31 oil wells already drilled.
Over 600 delegates and officials responsible for petroleum and investment promotions and other players in the industry from within East Africa and beyond will be in attendance at the Mombasa meeting.
EAPC '09 will serve as a forum for Governments in the region and oil firms from all over the world to engage in active dialogue and exchange ideas on the upstream petroleum industry.
"This would lead to increased awareness of the potential for petroleum development in the region, thereby stimulating investment in the sector," said Mr Owora Richard-Othieno, the acting head of the EAC public relations unit.
EAPC'09 is taking place at a time when current global financial meltdown reduction in oil prices have grossly impacted on the exploration financing base of many oil companies in the world.
Presentations will also be made on new exploration opportunities, evolving technologies and achievements in the search for new hydrocarbon reserves.
An exhibition will run concurrently with the meeting with the partner states, as well as oil and service companies showcasing the region's potential and other available investment opportunities.
Pre-conference excursions will take place in Kenya and Rwanda to be followed by similar exercises after the meeting in Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda.
Enhancing Exploration and Exploitation of Oil and Gas for Socio-Economic Development will be the theme of this year's conference to be opened by President Mwai Kibaki.
Besides delegates from EAC member countries and oil companies from across the world, other players in the industry from Ethiopia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Somalia have been invited.
The Mombasa meeting is the fourth in a series of petroleum conferences held every two years in EAC partner states since the first one took place in Nairobi in 2003.
Kampala hosted the second conference in 2005 followed by the 2007 meeting in Arusha.
View original source
How war is big business
George W Bush’s allies did very well from conflict, says Anthony Holden
Privatising war: Halliburton's army is a vast foreign legion of third-world workers imported to war zones to service the military
American taxpayers footing the $125 billion bill for rebuilding Iraq are understandably shocked by recent revelations that senior military officers are under investigation for alleged bribery and corruption, on the evidence of a US arms dealer shot dead in 2004. In truth, they don’t know the half of it. Much of the rest they can learn from this book.
The US military contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) has just been awarded a $35 million contract for further electrical work in Iraq, despite the fact that it is currently facing allegations of criminal bribery in Nigeria and the wrongful deaths of Americans at sundry overseas bases.
This may be a mere drop in the KBR bucket already overflowing with the $25 billion the company has made out of American belligerence in the last five years alone, but it is also stark evidence of a how even a Messianic new president is obliged to rely on a system long subjected to allegations of greed, abuse and corruption.
KBR was until recently a subsidiary of Halliburton, the Houston-based corporation of which the former vice president Dick Cheney was the chief executive officer for five years before becoming George W Bush’s running-mate in 2000.
The “army” of this book’s title is the vast foreign legion of third-world workers the company imports to war zones to service the US military.
That most wind up being allegedly paid less than the minimal rates they are promised – for work they are unqualified to perform – elicits no more than a shrug from managers inured to allegations of systemic fraud and overcharging the Pentagon .
Throughout the Bush presidency, and especially after the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq, the name of Halliburton became a focus for allegations of corporate malfeasance and political cronyism .
Now Pratap Chatterjee, an investigative reporter with the requisite degree of determination and doggedness, has travelled the world with the blazing sense of injustice required to put factual flesh on conjectural bones.
In a calm and measured but insistent voice, Chatterjee charts the pattern of wrongdoing built into KBR from its origins in the late Thirties, when the first congressional race of 28-year-old Lyndon B Johnson was financed by the Texas oil firm Brown and Root, which later merged with Halliburton.
The political backhanders that continued through the Vietnam War were first drawn to public attention by, of all people, the young Rumsfeld, a mentor to the younger Cheney. As their political lives criss-crossed, the pair managed to throw a whole lot of work the way of Halliburton. When Cheney became its CEO, the company halved its lobbying budget; his connections were worth that much.
While they and other members of the Bush administration were supposedly debating the pros and cons of invading Iraq, at the UN and elsewhere, KBR was already there, laying down the necessary support system.
In Iraq alone, Halliburton’s “army” is estimated to have served some 750 million meals to American military personnel, and driven more than 400 million miles of convoy missions. Chatterjee’s travels result in vivid descriptions of the vast, portable, purpose-built bases in which US troops enjoy gymnasia, libraries and volleyball courts as well as hospitals, chapels and lavish Thanksgiving dinners, outnumbered by the workers who lay it all on at great personal risk with allegedly no contractual security. If an army marches on its stomach, as Napoleon avowed, America’s military might derives from Fijian and Filipino flunkeys.
Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, Chatterjee takes us behind the scenes in other recent trouble spots from Somalia, Yugoslavia and Uzbekistan to Guantánamo Bay and New Orleans, in all of which KBR was handed lucrative contracts. His investigations end in the tax haven of Dubai, where Halliburton moved its headquarters in 2007 after “spinning off” KBR.
Chatterjee’s story begins and ends with Cheney, Rumsfeld and their wives dining out in self-congratulatory mode. With both now retired from the scene, the whistle-blowers who have provoked Congressional investigations are systematically disowned or discredited, while the lawsuits are seen off with out‑of-court settlements.
When Halliburton relocated to Dubai, one of the first to raise questions about alleged tax-dodging was the New York Senator Hillary Clinton. If the dust finally does settle over Iraq, while moving on to Afghanistan, the new secretary of state may well find many more questions to ask about the company’s conduct in recent years. President Obama’s track record suggests that her boss, too, will be wanting some answers. Anyone reading this important book will be demanding answers too.
Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionised the Way Americans Make War
View original source
Privatising war: Halliburton's army is a vast foreign legion of third-world workers imported to war zones to service the military
American taxpayers footing the $125 billion bill for rebuilding Iraq are understandably shocked by recent revelations that senior military officers are under investigation for alleged bribery and corruption, on the evidence of a US arms dealer shot dead in 2004. In truth, they don’t know the half of it. Much of the rest they can learn from this book.
The US military contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) has just been awarded a $35 million contract for further electrical work in Iraq, despite the fact that it is currently facing allegations of criminal bribery in Nigeria and the wrongful deaths of Americans at sundry overseas bases.
This may be a mere drop in the KBR bucket already overflowing with the $25 billion the company has made out of American belligerence in the last five years alone, but it is also stark evidence of a how even a Messianic new president is obliged to rely on a system long subjected to allegations of greed, abuse and corruption.
KBR was until recently a subsidiary of Halliburton, the Houston-based corporation of which the former vice president Dick Cheney was the chief executive officer for five years before becoming George W Bush’s running-mate in 2000.
The “army” of this book’s title is the vast foreign legion of third-world workers the company imports to war zones to service the US military.
That most wind up being allegedly paid less than the minimal rates they are promised – for work they are unqualified to perform – elicits no more than a shrug from managers inured to allegations of systemic fraud and overcharging the Pentagon .
Throughout the Bush presidency, and especially after the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq, the name of Halliburton became a focus for allegations of corporate malfeasance and political cronyism .
Now Pratap Chatterjee, an investigative reporter with the requisite degree of determination and doggedness, has travelled the world with the blazing sense of injustice required to put factual flesh on conjectural bones.
In a calm and measured but insistent voice, Chatterjee charts the pattern of wrongdoing built into KBR from its origins in the late Thirties, when the first congressional race of 28-year-old Lyndon B Johnson was financed by the Texas oil firm Brown and Root, which later merged with Halliburton.
The political backhanders that continued through the Vietnam War were first drawn to public attention by, of all people, the young Rumsfeld, a mentor to the younger Cheney. As their political lives criss-crossed, the pair managed to throw a whole lot of work the way of Halliburton. When Cheney became its CEO, the company halved its lobbying budget; his connections were worth that much.
While they and other members of the Bush administration were supposedly debating the pros and cons of invading Iraq, at the UN and elsewhere, KBR was already there, laying down the necessary support system.
In Iraq alone, Halliburton’s “army” is estimated to have served some 750 million meals to American military personnel, and driven more than 400 million miles of convoy missions. Chatterjee’s travels result in vivid descriptions of the vast, portable, purpose-built bases in which US troops enjoy gymnasia, libraries and volleyball courts as well as hospitals, chapels and lavish Thanksgiving dinners, outnumbered by the workers who lay it all on at great personal risk with allegedly no contractual security. If an army marches on its stomach, as Napoleon avowed, America’s military might derives from Fijian and Filipino flunkeys.
Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, Chatterjee takes us behind the scenes in other recent trouble spots from Somalia, Yugoslavia and Uzbekistan to Guantánamo Bay and New Orleans, in all of which KBR was handed lucrative contracts. His investigations end in the tax haven of Dubai, where Halliburton moved its headquarters in 2007 after “spinning off” KBR.
Chatterjee’s story begins and ends with Cheney, Rumsfeld and their wives dining out in self-congratulatory mode. With both now retired from the scene, the whistle-blowers who have provoked Congressional investigations are systematically disowned or discredited, while the lawsuits are seen off with out‑of-court settlements.
When Halliburton relocated to Dubai, one of the first to raise questions about alleged tax-dodging was the New York Senator Hillary Clinton. If the dust finally does settle over Iraq, while moving on to Afghanistan, the new secretary of state may well find many more questions to ask about the company’s conduct in recent years. President Obama’s track record suggests that her boss, too, will be wanting some answers. Anyone reading this important book will be demanding answers too.
Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionised the Way Americans Make War
View original source
Somali leader in Kenya, pledges to improve ties
NAIROBI, March 9 (Xinhua) -- Somalia's newly-elected President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed arrived in Kenya late Sunday for a two-day visit during which he is scheduled to hold talks with his host, President Mwai Kibaki.
President Ahmed, who is scheduled to discuss the African Union and United Nations backed reconciliation efforts, pledged to improve ties between the two neighboring countries.
President Ahmed, who was elected in neighboring Djibouti in January, will on Monday discuss security issues, training of Somali police and border guards with President Kibaki, besides seeking bilateral support.
"I will do everything in my power to restore stability and get regional support," he said on arrival.
Besides a meeting with President Kibaki and European Union diplomats based in Kenya, the Somali leader will also meet heads of donor and charitable organizations in Nairobi.
The former Islamist rebel leader was elected Somalia President in Djibouti, following the resignation of former President Abdullahi Yusuf.
Yusuf resigned in January at the height of an insurgency against the Transitional Federal Government and occupation of Ethiopian forces.
Kenya's Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetang'ula dismissed claims that Kenya is under threat from Somali Islamists. He said adequate precautions were in place to deal with any threat to Kenya's security.
Wetang'ula said the Kenyan border with Somalia would be kept secure, especially after the Al-Shaabab group, which allegedly has links to Al-Qaeda, made a foray into Kenya last year and kidnapped two Italian nuns in Mandera.
The minister was responding to remarks by Sheikh Hassan Yakoub Ali, a spokesman of the Coalition of Islamists controlling the Juba region in Southern Somalia, who said his group was ready to defend itself against Kenya.
"Kenya wants to invade us and we are ready to defend our land," Sheikh Yakoub said.
The east African nation has repeatedly expressed concern that the rise of a hard line Islamist administration in the southern port city of Kismayo and surrounding areas risked having negative repercussions on security within its borders.
Ahmed was elected Somalia's new president but his forces are struggling to reclaim control of the capital Mogadishu and the southern third of the country remains firmly under insurgent control.
President Ahmed, who is scheduled to discuss the African Union and United Nations backed reconciliation efforts, pledged to improve ties between the two neighboring countries.
President Ahmed, who was elected in neighboring Djibouti in January, will on Monday discuss security issues, training of Somali police and border guards with President Kibaki, besides seeking bilateral support.
"I will do everything in my power to restore stability and get regional support," he said on arrival.
Besides a meeting with President Kibaki and European Union diplomats based in Kenya, the Somali leader will also meet heads of donor and charitable organizations in Nairobi.
The former Islamist rebel leader was elected Somalia President in Djibouti, following the resignation of former President Abdullahi Yusuf.
Yusuf resigned in January at the height of an insurgency against the Transitional Federal Government and occupation of Ethiopian forces.
Kenya's Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetang'ula dismissed claims that Kenya is under threat from Somali Islamists. He said adequate precautions were in place to deal with any threat to Kenya's security.
Wetang'ula said the Kenyan border with Somalia would be kept secure, especially after the Al-Shaabab group, which allegedly has links to Al-Qaeda, made a foray into Kenya last year and kidnapped two Italian nuns in Mandera.
The minister was responding to remarks by Sheikh Hassan Yakoub Ali, a spokesman of the Coalition of Islamists controlling the Juba region in Southern Somalia, who said his group was ready to defend itself against Kenya.
"Kenya wants to invade us and we are ready to defend our land," Sheikh Yakoub said.
The east African nation has repeatedly expressed concern that the rise of a hard line Islamist administration in the southern port city of Kismayo and surrounding areas risked having negative repercussions on security within its borders.
Ahmed was elected Somalia's new president but his forces are struggling to reclaim control of the capital Mogadishu and the southern third of the country remains firmly under insurgent control.
East African defense ministers seek ways of stabilizing region
NAIROBI, March 9 (Xinhua) -- East African defense ministers began a meeting in Nairobi on Monday to seek ways of stabilizing the war-ravaged East Africa region.
Speaking when he officially opened the meeting in Nairobi, Kenyan Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka said Peace and security was vital for fastening economic growth and a solution for Africa's underdevelopment.
He told a two-day conference for Council of Ministers of Defense of the Eastern African region that it is only under a peaceful and secure environment that the continent can be able to address the many developmental challenges as it had the necessary human and natural resources.
"Achieving the Millennium Development Goals and the war against poverty cannot be won unless Africa seriously repackages her strategies for sustainable peace and security for all her people," Musyoka told the meeting attended by participants from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Comoros, Djibouti, Burundi, Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda.
Musyoka at the same time said it was high time Africa seeks ways and means of solving her own problems instead of relying on the international community to intervene in most of its conflicts.
"In the past, the continent has relied on the international community to intervene in most of its conflicts. But it is now high time for our continent to seek ways and means of solving its own problems," said Musyoka.
He said there was urgent need to set up an African security infrastructure in the form of African Standby Force (ASF) to pursue the security agenda.
"Peace and security is the central pillar for economic activities to take place. Unfortunately constant wars and conflicts over a long time in many parts of the continent have led to underdevelopment in Africa," said Musyoka.
"The goal of peaceful, stable and secure Africa at peace with itself and the world is definitely not outside our reach. Despite its numerous constraints, Africa has the necessary human and natural resources to handle its problems," added Musyoka.
He noted that it was in light of the challenges of African peace and security that the Protocol establishing the Peace and Security Council was signed at the inaugural Summit of the African Union held in Durban, South Africa in July, 2002.
"To follow in the footsteps of the African Union, the Heads of State of the Eastern Africa region adopted the Policy Framework establishing the Eastern Africa Standby Brigade at the first Summit held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in April 2004.
The Director of Eastern Africa Standby Brigade Coordination Mechanism (EASBRICOM), Simon Mulongo, called on African governments to set aside resources for their missions.
The Director said it was not good for the countries to expect support from United Nations when their governments could not support their own missions.
He said EASBRIG stands with the position taken with African Union on the indictment of President Omar Al Bashir of Sudan.
Meanwhile, Musyoka said there is adequate conflict resolution mechanism within Kenya's Grand Coalition to enable it survive any wrangles and serve Kenyans for a full term.
Musyoka said that no member of the Grand Coalition was willing to quit because the challenge now is to deliver services to Kenyans like employment for the youth, to fight poverty and hunger, insecurity and impunity.
He said it was not appropriate for the former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to call President Mwai Kibaki, for a meeting in Geneva to discuss the progress of the Grand Coalition government.
Musyoka said the UN Secretary General is always welcome to come to Nairobi and have consultations with President Kibaki, saying those leaders who had attended the Serena talks were well placed to meet him in Geneva.
Speaking when he officially opened the meeting in Nairobi, Kenyan Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka said Peace and security was vital for fastening economic growth and a solution for Africa's underdevelopment.
He told a two-day conference for Council of Ministers of Defense of the Eastern African region that it is only under a peaceful and secure environment that the continent can be able to address the many developmental challenges as it had the necessary human and natural resources.
"Achieving the Millennium Development Goals and the war against poverty cannot be won unless Africa seriously repackages her strategies for sustainable peace and security for all her people," Musyoka told the meeting attended by participants from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Comoros, Djibouti, Burundi, Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda.
Musyoka at the same time said it was high time Africa seeks ways and means of solving her own problems instead of relying on the international community to intervene in most of its conflicts.
"In the past, the continent has relied on the international community to intervene in most of its conflicts. But it is now high time for our continent to seek ways and means of solving its own problems," said Musyoka.
He said there was urgent need to set up an African security infrastructure in the form of African Standby Force (ASF) to pursue the security agenda.
"Peace and security is the central pillar for economic activities to take place. Unfortunately constant wars and conflicts over a long time in many parts of the continent have led to underdevelopment in Africa," said Musyoka.
"The goal of peaceful, stable and secure Africa at peace with itself and the world is definitely not outside our reach. Despite its numerous constraints, Africa has the necessary human and natural resources to handle its problems," added Musyoka.
He noted that it was in light of the challenges of African peace and security that the Protocol establishing the Peace and Security Council was signed at the inaugural Summit of the African Union held in Durban, South Africa in July, 2002.
"To follow in the footsteps of the African Union, the Heads of State of the Eastern Africa region adopted the Policy Framework establishing the Eastern Africa Standby Brigade at the first Summit held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in April 2004.
The Director of Eastern Africa Standby Brigade Coordination Mechanism (EASBRICOM), Simon Mulongo, called on African governments to set aside resources for their missions.
The Director said it was not good for the countries to expect support from United Nations when their governments could not support their own missions.
He said EASBRIG stands with the position taken with African Union on the indictment of President Omar Al Bashir of Sudan.
Meanwhile, Musyoka said there is adequate conflict resolution mechanism within Kenya's Grand Coalition to enable it survive any wrangles and serve Kenyans for a full term.
Musyoka said that no member of the Grand Coalition was willing to quit because the challenge now is to deliver services to Kenyans like employment for the youth, to fight poverty and hunger, insecurity and impunity.
He said it was not appropriate for the former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to call President Mwai Kibaki, for a meeting in Geneva to discuss the progress of the Grand Coalition government.
Musyoka said the UN Secretary General is always welcome to come to Nairobi and have consultations with President Kibaki, saying those leaders who had attended the Serena talks were well placed to meet him in Geneva.
Uganda plane crash kills 10
The chartered cargo plane was en route to Mogadishu, Somalia.
ENTEBBE, Uganda (AFP) — A Soviet-era jet caught fire and crashed into Lake Victoria on Monday after taking off from Uganda's main airport, killing 10 people, including three top Burundi army officers, officials said.
The burning Ilyushin 76, which was headed to Mogadishu from Kampala's Entebbe airport, plunged into the lake, which is next to Entebbe.
A rescue operation was launched with speedboats moving around the wreckage and civil aviation, military and Red Cross teams at the scene.
"It was carrying 10 people and water purification equipment en route to Mogadishu," Uganda's Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Ignia Igundura said.
"All people on board are feared dead," Igundura said, adding the plane had three or four crew.
The disaster took place at 5:14 am (0214 GMT) near the airport, which is some 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the Ugandan capital.
Burundi army spokesman Adolphe Manirakiza said there were three Burundian officers on the plane, including a brigadier general and a colonel.
"They were on board a small plane and according to information we are receiving fire broke out on board and then the plane crashed," Manirakiza explained.
The three officers were part of the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, known as AMISOM, and were travelling with Ugandan troops, Manirakiza said. Uganda's military spokesman confirmed the details.
AMISOM comprises some 3,400 troops from Uganda and Burundi.
The deputy commander of Burundi's contingent in Somalia Nicolas Bwakira said they received the news of the crash with "sadness and shock."
"Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that there are survivors," he added.
Monday's plane crash was the latest setback to the mission. On February 22, 11 Burundian troops were killed and 15 wounded in a suspected suicide attack on their base in southern Mogadishu.
The AU deployed forces in the Somali capital in March 2007 to help pacify the war-wracked country, but have come under repeated attacks by hardline Islamist insurgent groups.
The effectiveness of the AU mission has been hampered by under-funding and lack of equipment as Somalia's civil war, dating back to 1991, drags on.
Somalia has had no central government since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre sparked a dealy clan rivalry and fighting which has defied numerous attempts to restore stability.
View original source
ENTEBBE, Uganda (AFP) — A Soviet-era jet caught fire and crashed into Lake Victoria on Monday after taking off from Uganda's main airport, killing 10 people, including three top Burundi army officers, officials said.
The burning Ilyushin 76, which was headed to Mogadishu from Kampala's Entebbe airport, plunged into the lake, which is next to Entebbe.
A rescue operation was launched with speedboats moving around the wreckage and civil aviation, military and Red Cross teams at the scene.
"It was carrying 10 people and water purification equipment en route to Mogadishu," Uganda's Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Ignia Igundura said.
"All people on board are feared dead," Igundura said, adding the plane had three or four crew.
The disaster took place at 5:14 am (0214 GMT) near the airport, which is some 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the Ugandan capital.
Burundi army spokesman Adolphe Manirakiza said there were three Burundian officers on the plane, including a brigadier general and a colonel.
"They were on board a small plane and according to information we are receiving fire broke out on board and then the plane crashed," Manirakiza explained.
The three officers were part of the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, known as AMISOM, and were travelling with Ugandan troops, Manirakiza said. Uganda's military spokesman confirmed the details.
AMISOM comprises some 3,400 troops from Uganda and Burundi.
The deputy commander of Burundi's contingent in Somalia Nicolas Bwakira said they received the news of the crash with "sadness and shock."
"Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that there are survivors," he added.
Monday's plane crash was the latest setback to the mission. On February 22, 11 Burundian troops were killed and 15 wounded in a suspected suicide attack on their base in southern Mogadishu.
The AU deployed forces in the Somali capital in March 2007 to help pacify the war-wracked country, but have come under repeated attacks by hardline Islamist insurgent groups.
The effectiveness of the AU mission has been hampered by under-funding and lack of equipment as Somalia's civil war, dating back to 1991, drags on.
Somalia has had no central government since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre sparked a dealy clan rivalry and fighting which has defied numerous attempts to restore stability.
View original source
NATO Bases From the Balkans To the Chinese Border
The Role of Robert F. Simmons, Jr.
Mr. Simmons' Mission:
Global Research--The death of American sociologist C. Wright Mills at 45 years of age in 1962 was an irreparable loss not only to the United States but to the world, and not only to his generation but the three that have succeeded it and on into the indefinite future.
He was as at home quoting Rousseau, Balzac and Jacob Burckhardt, always to good purpose, as he was formulating such concepts and models as military metaphysics, mass society, the higher immorality and the cult of celebrity as early as 1955.
Mills did so in his mature, post-university writings with a simplicity of style and expression matching the profundity and perspicacity of his observations and conclusions.
In his work of the same name Mills defined the sociological imagination as the intersection of biography and history.
The same may be said of politics, particularly world politics, and if the word can still be used in the current 'postmodern' and 'post-historical' epoch, destiny. Indeed for Mills sociology was no dry discipline, no mere compendium of data and experimental results but living history, the historical dynamic captured in the moment, and perhaps the collective human exemplification of philosophical principles employed in a conscious manner.
History is replete with examples of an individual's personal trajectory paralleling and illustrating the trends of a historical period and process, for better or worse, with benign or malignant effects. Sometimes with both.
A standard example is that of Talleyrand-Perigord ("Regimes may fall and fail, but I do not"), whose diplomatic career both reflected and affected for the 45 years from 1789-1834 the tumultuous developments in France from the fall of the ancien regime to the abrupt end of its restoration.
A person performing such a role, whether possessed of a more than usual degree of energy and ambition or of a steadily plodding nature, will be the equivalent of a tracer bullet or dye injected into the bloodstream for an angiogram. One can view in the person the intricacy of broader patterns and learn to spot the presence and trajectory of the second by that of the first.
A person matching the description offered, though not likely to be discussed centuries later like Talleyrand or even decades afterward like Mills, is Robert F. Simmons, Jr.
Biographical information on him is scant and basically reducible to the official sketch provided for him on the NATO International website dated December 14, 2007 at:
http://www.nato.int/cv/scr/simmons-e.htm
Dates aren't often provided, but the NATO site mentions that Simmons was US State Department Deputy Director of the Office of Regional Political and Security Issues in the Bureau of European Affairs at some point presumably in the mid-1990s.
The entry in question mentions that in the above position "[H]e managed U.S. policy in connection with NATO, the OSCE, and European security architecture. The issues he covered included NATO enlargement; NATO adaptation, including the creation of EAPC and PfP; and the development of the role of the OSCE. Previously he was assigned as Deputy Political Advisor to the U.S. Mission to NATO and U.S. Representative to the NATO Political Committee."
PfP is the Alliance's Partnership for Peace transitional program to full membership and was inaugurated in 1994. In the intervening years it has absorbed all fifteen former Soviet republics, recently completed grabbing all six former Yugoslav federal republics and every once neutral state in Europe - Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta - except for Cyprus, although the European Union has of late applied pressure on the island nation, now that it's in the EU, to join the Partnership for Peace.
The EAPC is the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which subsumes all current NATO members with all candidate and other PfP nations as well as assorted bilateral partnerships, conceivably as many as a third of the countries in the world.
The PfP and EAPC have prepared twelve (with Macedonia thirteen) states for full NATO integration and ten have already become members - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia over the past decade, with Albania and Croatia to join next month at the 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg and Kehl.
In addition, as mentioned above, Simmons was instrumental in determining "the development of the role of the OSCE," the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, the world's largest intergovernmental security organization with 56 members in Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and North America, which assumed its current dimensions and name in 1995.
Although in theory a multinational structure for cooperation in providing and maintaining security throughout greater Europe, the OSCE has evolved into yet another mechanism which the major Western powers employ to threaten other nations on the eastern periphery of NATO and the EU.
Simmons' role in establishing and consolidating these four post-Cold War initiatives - an expanding NATO, the latter's Partnership for Peace and Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and an Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe under the control of a power not even in Europe, the United States - alone would make him worthy of attention that his career to date has somehow not received.
After performing the functions listed, he, again according to the NATO biographical sketch, "served as Senior Advisor to the United States Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs on NATO. As Senior Advisor, Mr Simmons played a significant role in developing U.S. policy on the full range of NATO and European security issues."
In 2003 he was transferred from the US State Department to NATO headquarters in Brussels, much as every few years American generals are shifted from the Pentagon to Brussels to assume the mantle of NATO Supreme Allied Commander (the first being General Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1951-1952) as well as the complementary position of chief commander of the United States European Command.
His transfer to the European branch office of the US Departments of State and Defense, as it were, was to take up new duties described on the same NATO page as "Deputy Assistant Secretary General of NATO for Security Cooperation and Partnership in September 2003. As Deputy Assistant Secretary General, he is responsible for NATO-Russia and NATO Ukraine relations, Euro-Atlantic Integration and Partnership, and relations with other organisations, including the European Union."
His preceding decade in the State Department had prepared Simmons well for his new role and for that which would be added to it the following year, 2004.
It was within months of his move to Brussels that the string of so-called color revolutions commenced in Georgia in November of 2003.
Modeled after the joint CIA, National Endowment for Democracy effort to topple the government of Yugoslavia in September and October of 2000, Mikheil Saakashvili, who came to the US on a State Department grant in the early 1990s and received his law degree at Columbia University, seized power from standing president Eduard Shevardnadze, who was manhandled by young Kmara thugs trained by their Pora prototypes in Serbia, and introduced a new model of Western-financed putsches in the former Soviet Union. (1)
In the summer of 1999 a BBC story, 'CIA ordered to topple Milosevic': US report, detailed the genesis and gestation period of Washington's new and refurbished coup design:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/387463.stm
Replete with sledgehammer-wielding toughs, rent-a-mobs attacking the parliament building, ballots in the contested election being burned by Western-controlled 'democracy advocates' and suitcases of domestic and foreign currency provided by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright smuggled in from Hungary, the 2000 Belgrade coup was the fons et origo of all subsequent 'regime change' campaigns in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, replicated in Georgia in 2003.
The scenario would be repeated in most every particular a year later in Ukraine, which readers will recall was one of Simmons' main bureaux at his new NATO post.
The third 'color' coup, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, occurred shortly after Simmons in September of 2004 added to his NATO portfolio the title and function of the Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The Kyrgyz coup in March of 2005 would emulate to a predictable and even tedious degree those of Georgia and Ukraine, sixteen and three months earlier, respectively.
In all three instances, as with the Yugoslav precedent, well-financed and -organized street demonstrations would accompany and follow national elections in which Western and Western-funded poll watchers, exit pollsters and media would cry foul when the incumbent appeared to have won and demands for unconstitutional - that is unprecedented and illegal - special elections were put forward as the price for domestic peace.
And in all cases the opposition was a triumvirate of party leaders, two men and a woman. In Georgia the trio consisted of Mikheil Saakashvili, Nina Burjanadze and Zurab Zhvania; with Ukraine Viktor Yuchshenko, Yulia Tymoshenko and Oleksandr Moroz; and in Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Roza Otunbayeva and Felix Kulov. Zhvania would die shortly after the so-called Rose Revolution's first anniversary, with the government attributing his death to accidental causes and his family accusing Saakashvili of ordering his murder.
Such a well-crafted model could not have been created domestically.
Simmons' former colleagues in the State Department no doubt led the charge, but he himself was no bit player in the new drama, having donned the mantle of NATO's special envoy to the South Caucasus and Central Asia in the interval between the Georgian prototype and its replication in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
His position was one of several initiatives unfolded at NATO's summit in Istanbul, Turkey in June of 2004.
Indeed never in history had a military bloc at one time expanded so broadly both in terms of new members and partners and in the breadth of its geographical sweep.
The Istanbul summit issued in
- The incorporation of all former Warsaw Pact members outside the ex-Soviet Union not already brought into NATO, adding Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, inducted in 1999, and eastern Germany which was brought into the Alliance in 1989 with the nation's reunification
- The accession of the first former Yugoslav federal republic, Slovenia
- The hitherto unimaginable absorption of three former Soviet republics: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
- Under the rubric of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, the upgrading of NATO's seven Mediterranean Dialogue members - Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia - to a heightened partnership status and the introduction of a formal military alliance with the six Persian Gulf Cooperation Council states, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Growing out of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative were Individual Cooperation Programmes with Egypt and Israel
With the three Baltic states and the Black Sea nations of Bulgaria and Romania joining NATO, only Georgia and Ukraine remained to complete a full military cordon along Russia's entire Western flank. (As will be seen later, Simmons has had a role to play with those two countries' NATO integration also.)
Simmons' appointment would extend that presence along Russia's complete southern one.
His purview includes eight of fifteen former Soviet federal republics and in 2004 two-thirds of the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States members: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the Caucasus; Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia.
The three Caucasus nations are all members of NATO's Partnership for Peace; Azerbaijan and Georgia have both had troops gaining combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and Armenia deployed troops to the first.
After Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were brought into the NATO fold and the eight nations assigned to Simmons to soften up are added to the column, only Belarus and Moldova remain of the Soviet Union outside of Russia itself.
Moldova sent troops to Iraq under Partnership for Peace obligations and both it and Belarus are now targeted by the European Union's Eastern Partnership for further distancing from the Commonwealth of Independent States and Russia and to be corralled into the EU-NATO-US paddock.
Though the lion's share of the task remains with Simmons.
His objective and the underlying geostrategic exigencies actuating it are clear.
"[T]he only alternative [to Kyrgyz] routes into Afghanistan are from the north, through the Central Asian countries...Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are pivotal.
"NATO’s greater strategic interest is in the South Caucasus East-West Corridor, which, some commentators have said for years, is much more than three energy pipelines.
"With NATO allies Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey on the western and southern shores of the Black Sea, Georgia, on the eastern shore, is the natural gateway to a corridor that connects Europe to Afghanistan." ("From Peshawar to Batumi: Time to Realize the East-West Corridor," Georgian Daily, December 29, 2008)
A Turkish analyst traces the intended trajectory as follows:
"The recent struggle around the Black Sea region has now reached Georgia, having moved from Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria and Romania, one by one.
"Poland and the Czech Republic could be added to this list, since the clash over the missile shield has led to the perception of an encirclement policy.
"The U.S. is gradually directing its resources away from Europe towards the Middle East, the Caucasus and its neighboring regions." ("The new battle zone for global hegemony: the Caucasus," Turkish Daily News, October 22, 2008)
In conjunction with the State Department's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried (2) and its Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (and previously Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy) Matthew Bryza (3) - who arrived at their current posts in May and June of 2005, respectively - reviewing Simmons' travels and actions over the past year is the best manner in which to examine how his and his superiors' plan is progressing.
He continues to hold two top NATO posts, that of Deputy Assistant Secretary General of NATO for Security Cooperation and Partnership as well as Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, and as such his range is broad though his projects are integrally related.
In January of last year, seven months before the Georgia-Russia Caucasus war and the near US/NATO-Russian showdown in the Black Sea, Simmons was paraphrased as advocating that "NATO is ready to contribute to resolution of conflicts in the Black Sea region."
In his own words,“NATO can play a significant role in the establishment of stability in the region.” (PanArmenian.net, January 14, 2008)
Two days later he was in the capital of Moldova, one of the few post-Soviet nations he's not directly tasked to draw into NATO, where "According to the Moldovan Foreign Ministry, Robert Simmons will have meetings with Moldovan officials to discuss the current relations between Moldova and NATO, the head of state’s initiatives aimed at solving the Transdniestrian dispute and the implementation of the NATO Individual Partnership Action Plan." (Reporter.MD, January 16, 2008)
"Solving the Transdniestrian dispute" alludes to NATO intervening in one of the four so-called frozen conflicts in the ex-Soviet Union. He would attempt to intrude the Alliance into the other three after his trip to Chisinau.
In Azerbaijan in March of the same year, Simmons announced that "NATO is prepared to provide aid to South Caucasus and Central Asia countries to protect energy facilities." (Trend News Agency, March 7, 2008)
The above report added "There are large energy facilities in Azerbaijan, including oil and gas terminals in Sangachal, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Novorossiysk and Baku-Supsa and South-Caucasus gas pipelines."
While in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku he also said that “NATO is ready to consider the membership of Azerbaijan,” as he oversaw the second part of the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) for the nation. (Interfax, March 8, 2008)
Azerbaijan had recently withdrawn its contingent of troops serving with NATO's Kosovo Command because it feared that the Western-engineered secession of the Serbian province might serve as a precedent for Nagorno-Karabakh, which Baku still insists it will regain by military means.
But the position of the local government, president and parliament alike, meant nothing to Simmons, such is NATO's contempt even for its partners, who averred "I think the situation on the withdrawal of Azerbaijan’s peacekeeping forces from Kosovo can change."(Azeri Press Agency, March 8, 2008)
His main goal was achieved, though, as he had delivered the second phase of the Individual Partnership Action Plan.
"Simmons said that the key issues in the Plan are training of Azerbaijan’s army for participation in the joint operations with NATO forces, the holding of trainings, as well as military training and support by the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry."(Trend News Agency, March 10, 2008)
A few days earlier Simmons had stirred up a controversy by claiming that Uzbekistan had agreed to turn the Khanabad base it had evicted US military forces from almost two years before back over to the Pentagon for the war in South Asia, which elicited this reaction from an Uzbek official: "Farkhad Murtazayev bristled at comments made earlier by NATO special envoy to Central Asia and the Caucasus Robert Simmons, who insisted that Uzbekistan was ready to give its go-ahead."(Voice of Russia, March 7, 2008)
And this from the Russian Defense Ministry:
"The Defence Ministry of the Russian Federation has...reported that any notices from the military establishment of Uzbekistan about permitting the US to use the Uzbek airbase didn’t come to the Russian Defense Department.
"'It, maybe, was 'a trial balloon', a sort of probe,' said a spokesman of the Ministry, meaning the utterances of the representative of NATO." (WarAndPeace.ru, March 7, 2008)
Later in March Simmons would repeat his plan for a NATO military buildup in the Caspian Sea, an Alliance complement to former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's proposed Caspian Guard:
“Establishing a military-marine fleet in the Caspian is part of our co-operation with Central Asia and the Caucasus.
"It mostly deals with the defence of infrastructure in the Caspian.
"We are holding talks with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan with regards to the defence of energy facilities, and the issue of establishing a military-marine fleet remains open.”(Trend News Agency, March 21, 2008)
Another Azerbaijani press source added "He said secure transportation of hydrocarbon resources to Europe is what NATO is concerned about." (AzerTag, March 27, 2008)
The following month Simmons reprised his intentions, saying "the issue of protecting energy infrastructure belonging both to NATO members and their partners was on the agenda." (The Financial [Georgia] April 5, 2008)
Later in April he was in Kazakhstan promoting the accession of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO and taunting Russia with "“Russia protested against the admitting of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary into NATO as well and the enlargement of the Alliance into the Balkan Peninsula. But, these countries became NATO member states.” (Trend News Agency, April 12, 2008)
Not longer afterward in Georgia, Simmons met with the nation's State Minister for Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili - the person who would help prepare the invasion of South Ossetia and a five-day war with Russia less than four months later - and in reference to a reported Russian overflight the minister said "If Georgia had been a member of the program, then NATO, not just Georgian radars would have registered the April 20 attack of the Russian fighter in Georgian air space and it's departure to Russian territory." (Interfax, April 25, 2008)
This is no record that Simmons did anything other than nod willing agreement to the comments, especially with his statement that "I think it's fair to say that a number of allies believe that recent Russian actions, which we condemn, do call into question Russian neutrality as an arbitrator or facilitator of the [South Ossetian and Abkhazian peace] process." (Associated Press, April 24, 2008)
While in the Georgian capital Simmons also consulted with the Georgian Defense Minister and the ambassadors of NATO member states in the nation and the "sides discussed the resources of NATO which can be used in the conflict zones to improve the peacekeeping process there." (Rustavi 2, April 25, 2008)
That is to say, Commonwealth of Independent States-mandated peacekeepers must leave and be supplanted by NATO troops so that the US- and NATO-trained Georgian armed forces would have a free hand to invade Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania had finished three weeks earlier and Georgia's full membership bid had been held up for two reasons: Unresolved conflicts on its soil and foreign (non-NATO) troops in its presumed territory, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Simmons, above, indicated NATO's plans for eliminating those barriers to complete integration.
Understanding the message that Simmons was delivering, the president of Abkhazia, Sergei Bagapsh, responded as reported in a dispatch worth quoting in length:
"'The replacement of Russian peacemakers will lead to a direct conflict. We will not let foreigners into Abkhazia and all of us will stand at the border.'
"Concerning the recent statements of NATO’s representative the in South Caucasus [Robert Simmons], who cast doubt on the role of Russian peacemakers in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone, Bagapsh said:
"'This right is the right of the strong. This is the same right as the one not to take into consideration of the decision of the Security Council on Yugoslavia.
"'Well, the Security Council hasn’t reached any decision, so let’s bomb Yugoslavia!'
"'And once the Council didn’t [resolve] the question, they themselves have settled the question regarding Kosovo.
"'This is, to our great regret, the right of the strong that now leads to the fact that such an important institute of the world community as the United Nations Organization loses its prestige and becomes pointless.'" (Interfax, April 25, 2008)
The Russian forces didn't leave as Simmons demanded but war in South Ossetia ensued four months later anyway.
He revisited the issue after Georgia launched an invasion of South Ossetia on August 8 as will be seen further on.
In May of 2008, though, Simmons headed to Turkmenistan on the Caspian Sea.
With the sudden death of Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov, who had run an autarkic government since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country was open to foreign penetration and NATO wasted no time in moving on it, both for military transit and trans-Eurasian energy projects; Simmons' demand for NATO naval presence in the Caspian Sea two months before was documented earlier.
Meeting with President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, Simmons pledged that "NATO is going to continue building up its relations with Turkmenistan" and "the interlocutors discussed issues related to cooperation within the format of NATO's Partnership for Peace program, as well as pressing problems related to strengthening stability in the region." (Turkmenistan.ru, May 14, 2008)
Turkmenistan is rich, it's not yet determined how rich, in natural gas, and lies off the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea with Iran to its south.
Securing NATO overflight, basing and surveillance rights in the nation - not to mention deployment of naval forces inside the Caspian - would be a direct threat to Iran and part of the general displacement of both Russia and China from the region and denial of its resources to both.
The succeeding month, June, Simmons returned to Azerbaijan on the eastern side of the Caspian directly across from Turkmenistan and Iran's neighbor to the northwest. There he officiated over annual NATO week events.
During the seven days Simmons oversaw a NATO/Partnership for Peace Trust Fund seminar, "organized for the first time in a partner country" that brought together "NATO member and partner countries, as well as about seventy representatives from the Mediterranean Dialogue [Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia] countries...." (AzerTag, June 16, 2008)
Another illustration of NATO's integration of European, Caucasus, Central Asian, Middle Eastern and North African nations into a rapidly evolving global military nexus.
Later in the same month, and with the countdown to war in the South Caucasus nearing, Simmons joined the State Department's Matthew Bryza and Georgia's Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili in Warsaw, Poland for a meeting of the New Group of Friends of Georgia, which included the participation of "Top officials from the foreign ministries of Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Sweden, Latvia [and] Bulgaria." (Civil Georgia, June 24, 2008)
That is, a month and a half before the Caucasus war commenced, top NATO and US officials orchestrated a meeting of Baltic, Black Sea and other nations to shore up support for the Saakashvili regime in its impending showdown with South Ossetia and Russia.
The very next day, June 25, Simmons was in the world's new nation, Montenegro, which of course is neither in the Caucasus or Central Asia but the Balkans, where he met with deputy ministers of the ministries of defense and foreign affairs and initiated "A first round of consultations at staff level [which] opened the Intensified Dialogue between NATO and Montenegro on 24 June 2008." (NATO International, June 25, 2008)
Three months later Simmons would host Bosnia's Deputy Minister of Defence at NATO Headquarters in Brussels in the first staff level meeting to plan the nation's Intensified Dialogue with the Alliance. Bosnia and Montenegro have recently been pulled into the Adriatic Charter, a mechanism devised by the US State Department to initially transition Albania, Croatia and Macedonia into full NATO Membership.
Simmons' role in the integration of the five former Yugoslav republics not already in NATO extends and complements that of expanding the bloc into the Black Sea region, the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea Basin, Central Asia and, as the next paragraph shows, South Asia.
The always mobile Simmons was back in Azerbaijan in late June ordering more Azeri troops for NATO's Afghan war, in fact doubling them.(Today.AZ, June 28, 2008)
After the August 8-12 Georgian-Russian war, one which was fraught with potential for a one-on-one showdown between the world's two major nuclear powers as Georgia's army is a US proxy creation and US warships were deployed within kilometers of their Russian opposite numbers in the Black Sea, Robert Simmons was in the Georgian capital to aid in rebuilding the nation's military capabilities for a new round of hostilities.
He was quoted in Tbilisi stating, "NATO will help Georgia in seven ways. First of all this means air defense and the restoration of defensive infrastructure." (Russian Information Agency Novosti, August 21, 2008)
Meeting with Simmons and NATO Supreme Allied Commander US General John Craddock, Georgian Defense Minister David Kezerashvili said that "NATO's 26 member-countries will form a special group, which will study the Georgian defence system" and that "the group will study the country’s need in the defence sphere and the size of aid the alliance can render to Georgia." (Trend News Agency, August 22, 2008)
During the same visit and apparently to reward Georgia for triggering the Caucasus war of only two weeks prior, Simmons asserted, “I can say that Georgia’s movement towards the action plan for its membership in NATO is operative and I can confirm that Georgia will become a NATO member for sure.” (Focus News Agency, August 22, 2008)
In October of last year Simmons was back in neighboring Azerbaijan to attend the inauguration of the country's reelected president, Ilham Aliev, an unconventional role for a special envoy for NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, in the midst of general consultations on Alliance integration.
In January of 2009 after the government of Kyrgyzstan began the process of closing the US and NATO airbase in Manas that had been employed for the war in Afghanistan over several years, Simmons was dispatched to that nation to preserve the base.
Before his departure it was announced that "during the visit a new contact officer for NATO in Central Asia will be introduced." (Trend News Agency, January 30, 2009)
An Azerbaijani news source reported on his visit.
"Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said at a news conference in Moscow that the Manas air base would be shut down.
"NATO Special Representative for the South Caucasus [and Central Asia] Robert Simmons said during his visit to Kyrgyzstan several days ago that the organization would like to see the continuation of this agreement...." (Trend News Agency, February 4, 2009)
Leaving Kyrgyzstan, Simmons led a NATO delegation to the capital of Turkmenistan.
Within a few days he headed a delegation of NATO experts to Ukraine to craft the Ukraine-NATO national program for 2009. Note how seamlessly Simmons shifts between his two NATO posts and roles while always advancing a common geostrategic agenda, the campaign to gain control of post-Soviet space and Eurasia as a whole.
Within a few brief months he worked at integrating the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan into NATO; accelerating the integration of ex-Yugoslav nations onto the Alliance's conveyor belt to imminent membership; demanding that Russian peacekeepers leave Abkhazia and South Ossetia, leaving both open to an onslaught by the Georgian army, trained and armed and advised by the Pentagon and NATO; failing that, rushing to Georgia after the August war to provide assistance in upgrading its military including its air defense system; visiting the Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan just as the new US presidential administration assumed power and began to implement the intensification of the war in South Asia.
If Simmon's work in the South Caucasus, Ukraine and the Balkans is read in Russia as completing the process of its encirclement and if his frequent visits to Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on the Caspian Sea are seen by Iran as efforts to isolate and besiege it, then his efforts to more tightly bind Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the Alliance and its escalating war in Afghanistan (and into Pakistan) will be viewed with serious concern by China, which has borders with the three aforementioned Central Asian nations.
China and Russia have even more reason for apprehension. Roberts Simmons post as NATO envoy for the Caucasus and Central Asia pits him and the bloc directly against the post-Soviet Collective Security Treaty Organization (Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan).
Armenia is part of Simmons' Caucasus assignment and to the degree he succeeds in strengthening NATO's grip on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, China and Russia both will lose the only collective security partnerships they have in their own neighborhoods in favor of a Western military bloc, effectively depriving them of influence even in neighboring nations.
Simmons is his dual capacity at NATO is the main agent in driving the Alliance from the Balkans and the Black Sea through the Caucasus and into Central and South Asia, isolating and separating Russia, China and Iran.
Should that scenario develop, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization would cease to exist and with them the only effective challenges to Pentagon and NATO international military superiority and impunity in Eurasia and in the world as a whole.
In his 1956 volume The Power Elite in the chapter called The Military Ascendancy, C. Wright Mills warned that "war has become seemingly total and seemingly permanent" and that "diplomacy becomes merely a prelude to war or an interlude between wars" in service to "what can only be called a military definition of reality."
View original source
Mr. Simmons' Mission:
Global Research--The death of American sociologist C. Wright Mills at 45 years of age in 1962 was an irreparable loss not only to the United States but to the world, and not only to his generation but the three that have succeeded it and on into the indefinite future.
He was as at home quoting Rousseau, Balzac and Jacob Burckhardt, always to good purpose, as he was formulating such concepts and models as military metaphysics, mass society, the higher immorality and the cult of celebrity as early as 1955.
Mills did so in his mature, post-university writings with a simplicity of style and expression matching the profundity and perspicacity of his observations and conclusions.
In his work of the same name Mills defined the sociological imagination as the intersection of biography and history.
The same may be said of politics, particularly world politics, and if the word can still be used in the current 'postmodern' and 'post-historical' epoch, destiny. Indeed for Mills sociology was no dry discipline, no mere compendium of data and experimental results but living history, the historical dynamic captured in the moment, and perhaps the collective human exemplification of philosophical principles employed in a conscious manner.
History is replete with examples of an individual's personal trajectory paralleling and illustrating the trends of a historical period and process, for better or worse, with benign or malignant effects. Sometimes with both.
A standard example is that of Talleyrand-Perigord ("Regimes may fall and fail, but I do not"), whose diplomatic career both reflected and affected for the 45 years from 1789-1834 the tumultuous developments in France from the fall of the ancien regime to the abrupt end of its restoration.
A person performing such a role, whether possessed of a more than usual degree of energy and ambition or of a steadily plodding nature, will be the equivalent of a tracer bullet or dye injected into the bloodstream for an angiogram. One can view in the person the intricacy of broader patterns and learn to spot the presence and trajectory of the second by that of the first.
A person matching the description offered, though not likely to be discussed centuries later like Talleyrand or even decades afterward like Mills, is Robert F. Simmons, Jr.
Biographical information on him is scant and basically reducible to the official sketch provided for him on the NATO International website dated December 14, 2007 at:
http://www.nato.int/cv/scr/simmons-e.htm
Dates aren't often provided, but the NATO site mentions that Simmons was US State Department Deputy Director of the Office of Regional Political and Security Issues in the Bureau of European Affairs at some point presumably in the mid-1990s.
The entry in question mentions that in the above position "[H]e managed U.S. policy in connection with NATO, the OSCE, and European security architecture. The issues he covered included NATO enlargement; NATO adaptation, including the creation of EAPC and PfP; and the development of the role of the OSCE. Previously he was assigned as Deputy Political Advisor to the U.S. Mission to NATO and U.S. Representative to the NATO Political Committee."
PfP is the Alliance's Partnership for Peace transitional program to full membership and was inaugurated in 1994. In the intervening years it has absorbed all fifteen former Soviet republics, recently completed grabbing all six former Yugoslav federal republics and every once neutral state in Europe - Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta - except for Cyprus, although the European Union has of late applied pressure on the island nation, now that it's in the EU, to join the Partnership for Peace.
The EAPC is the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which subsumes all current NATO members with all candidate and other PfP nations as well as assorted bilateral partnerships, conceivably as many as a third of the countries in the world.
The PfP and EAPC have prepared twelve (with Macedonia thirteen) states for full NATO integration and ten have already become members - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia over the past decade, with Albania and Croatia to join next month at the 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg and Kehl.
In addition, as mentioned above, Simmons was instrumental in determining "the development of the role of the OSCE," the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, the world's largest intergovernmental security organization with 56 members in Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and North America, which assumed its current dimensions and name in 1995.
Although in theory a multinational structure for cooperation in providing and maintaining security throughout greater Europe, the OSCE has evolved into yet another mechanism which the major Western powers employ to threaten other nations on the eastern periphery of NATO and the EU.
Simmons' role in establishing and consolidating these four post-Cold War initiatives - an expanding NATO, the latter's Partnership for Peace and Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and an Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe under the control of a power not even in Europe, the United States - alone would make him worthy of attention that his career to date has somehow not received.
After performing the functions listed, he, again according to the NATO biographical sketch, "served as Senior Advisor to the United States Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs on NATO. As Senior Advisor, Mr Simmons played a significant role in developing U.S. policy on the full range of NATO and European security issues."
In 2003 he was transferred from the US State Department to NATO headquarters in Brussels, much as every few years American generals are shifted from the Pentagon to Brussels to assume the mantle of NATO Supreme Allied Commander (the first being General Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1951-1952) as well as the complementary position of chief commander of the United States European Command.
His transfer to the European branch office of the US Departments of State and Defense, as it were, was to take up new duties described on the same NATO page as "Deputy Assistant Secretary General of NATO for Security Cooperation and Partnership in September 2003. As Deputy Assistant Secretary General, he is responsible for NATO-Russia and NATO Ukraine relations, Euro-Atlantic Integration and Partnership, and relations with other organisations, including the European Union."
His preceding decade in the State Department had prepared Simmons well for his new role and for that which would be added to it the following year, 2004.
It was within months of his move to Brussels that the string of so-called color revolutions commenced in Georgia in November of 2003.
Modeled after the joint CIA, National Endowment for Democracy effort to topple the government of Yugoslavia in September and October of 2000, Mikheil Saakashvili, who came to the US on a State Department grant in the early 1990s and received his law degree at Columbia University, seized power from standing president Eduard Shevardnadze, who was manhandled by young Kmara thugs trained by their Pora prototypes in Serbia, and introduced a new model of Western-financed putsches in the former Soviet Union. (1)
In the summer of 1999 a BBC story, 'CIA ordered to topple Milosevic': US report, detailed the genesis and gestation period of Washington's new and refurbished coup design:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/387463.stm
Replete with sledgehammer-wielding toughs, rent-a-mobs attacking the parliament building, ballots in the contested election being burned by Western-controlled 'democracy advocates' and suitcases of domestic and foreign currency provided by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright smuggled in from Hungary, the 2000 Belgrade coup was the fons et origo of all subsequent 'regime change' campaigns in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, replicated in Georgia in 2003.
The scenario would be repeated in most every particular a year later in Ukraine, which readers will recall was one of Simmons' main bureaux at his new NATO post.
The third 'color' coup, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, occurred shortly after Simmons in September of 2004 added to his NATO portfolio the title and function of the Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The Kyrgyz coup in March of 2005 would emulate to a predictable and even tedious degree those of Georgia and Ukraine, sixteen and three months earlier, respectively.
In all three instances, as with the Yugoslav precedent, well-financed and -organized street demonstrations would accompany and follow national elections in which Western and Western-funded poll watchers, exit pollsters and media would cry foul when the incumbent appeared to have won and demands for unconstitutional - that is unprecedented and illegal - special elections were put forward as the price for domestic peace.
And in all cases the opposition was a triumvirate of party leaders, two men and a woman. In Georgia the trio consisted of Mikheil Saakashvili, Nina Burjanadze and Zurab Zhvania; with Ukraine Viktor Yuchshenko, Yulia Tymoshenko and Oleksandr Moroz; and in Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Roza Otunbayeva and Felix Kulov. Zhvania would die shortly after the so-called Rose Revolution's first anniversary, with the government attributing his death to accidental causes and his family accusing Saakashvili of ordering his murder.
Such a well-crafted model could not have been created domestically.
Simmons' former colleagues in the State Department no doubt led the charge, but he himself was no bit player in the new drama, having donned the mantle of NATO's special envoy to the South Caucasus and Central Asia in the interval between the Georgian prototype and its replication in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
His position was one of several initiatives unfolded at NATO's summit in Istanbul, Turkey in June of 2004.
Indeed never in history had a military bloc at one time expanded so broadly both in terms of new members and partners and in the breadth of its geographical sweep.
The Istanbul summit issued in
- The incorporation of all former Warsaw Pact members outside the ex-Soviet Union not already brought into NATO, adding Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, inducted in 1999, and eastern Germany which was brought into the Alliance in 1989 with the nation's reunification
- The accession of the first former Yugoslav federal republic, Slovenia
- The hitherto unimaginable absorption of three former Soviet republics: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
- Under the rubric of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, the upgrading of NATO's seven Mediterranean Dialogue members - Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia - to a heightened partnership status and the introduction of a formal military alliance with the six Persian Gulf Cooperation Council states, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Growing out of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative were Individual Cooperation Programmes with Egypt and Israel
With the three Baltic states and the Black Sea nations of Bulgaria and Romania joining NATO, only Georgia and Ukraine remained to complete a full military cordon along Russia's entire Western flank. (As will be seen later, Simmons has had a role to play with those two countries' NATO integration also.)
Simmons' appointment would extend that presence along Russia's complete southern one.
His purview includes eight of fifteen former Soviet federal republics and in 2004 two-thirds of the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States members: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the Caucasus; Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia.
The three Caucasus nations are all members of NATO's Partnership for Peace; Azerbaijan and Georgia have both had troops gaining combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and Armenia deployed troops to the first.
After Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were brought into the NATO fold and the eight nations assigned to Simmons to soften up are added to the column, only Belarus and Moldova remain of the Soviet Union outside of Russia itself.
Moldova sent troops to Iraq under Partnership for Peace obligations and both it and Belarus are now targeted by the European Union's Eastern Partnership for further distancing from the Commonwealth of Independent States and Russia and to be corralled into the EU-NATO-US paddock.
Though the lion's share of the task remains with Simmons.
His objective and the underlying geostrategic exigencies actuating it are clear.
"[T]he only alternative [to Kyrgyz] routes into Afghanistan are from the north, through the Central Asian countries...Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are pivotal.
"NATO’s greater strategic interest is in the South Caucasus East-West Corridor, which, some commentators have said for years, is much more than three energy pipelines.
"With NATO allies Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey on the western and southern shores of the Black Sea, Georgia, on the eastern shore, is the natural gateway to a corridor that connects Europe to Afghanistan." ("From Peshawar to Batumi: Time to Realize the East-West Corridor," Georgian Daily, December 29, 2008)
A Turkish analyst traces the intended trajectory as follows:
"The recent struggle around the Black Sea region has now reached Georgia, having moved from Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria and Romania, one by one.
"Poland and the Czech Republic could be added to this list, since the clash over the missile shield has led to the perception of an encirclement policy.
"The U.S. is gradually directing its resources away from Europe towards the Middle East, the Caucasus and its neighboring regions." ("The new battle zone for global hegemony: the Caucasus," Turkish Daily News, October 22, 2008)
In conjunction with the State Department's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried (2) and its Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (and previously Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy) Matthew Bryza (3) - who arrived at their current posts in May and June of 2005, respectively - reviewing Simmons' travels and actions over the past year is the best manner in which to examine how his and his superiors' plan is progressing.
He continues to hold two top NATO posts, that of Deputy Assistant Secretary General of NATO for Security Cooperation and Partnership as well as Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, and as such his range is broad though his projects are integrally related.
In January of last year, seven months before the Georgia-Russia Caucasus war and the near US/NATO-Russian showdown in the Black Sea, Simmons was paraphrased as advocating that "NATO is ready to contribute to resolution of conflicts in the Black Sea region."
In his own words,“NATO can play a significant role in the establishment of stability in the region.” (PanArmenian.net, January 14, 2008)
Two days later he was in the capital of Moldova, one of the few post-Soviet nations he's not directly tasked to draw into NATO, where "According to the Moldovan Foreign Ministry, Robert Simmons will have meetings with Moldovan officials to discuss the current relations between Moldova and NATO, the head of state’s initiatives aimed at solving the Transdniestrian dispute and the implementation of the NATO Individual Partnership Action Plan." (Reporter.MD, January 16, 2008)
"Solving the Transdniestrian dispute" alludes to NATO intervening in one of the four so-called frozen conflicts in the ex-Soviet Union. He would attempt to intrude the Alliance into the other three after his trip to Chisinau.
In Azerbaijan in March of the same year, Simmons announced that "NATO is prepared to provide aid to South Caucasus and Central Asia countries to protect energy facilities." (Trend News Agency, March 7, 2008)
The above report added "There are large energy facilities in Azerbaijan, including oil and gas terminals in Sangachal, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Novorossiysk and Baku-Supsa and South-Caucasus gas pipelines."
While in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku he also said that “NATO is ready to consider the membership of Azerbaijan,” as he oversaw the second part of the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) for the nation. (Interfax, March 8, 2008)
Azerbaijan had recently withdrawn its contingent of troops serving with NATO's Kosovo Command because it feared that the Western-engineered secession of the Serbian province might serve as a precedent for Nagorno-Karabakh, which Baku still insists it will regain by military means.
But the position of the local government, president and parliament alike, meant nothing to Simmons, such is NATO's contempt even for its partners, who averred "I think the situation on the withdrawal of Azerbaijan’s peacekeeping forces from Kosovo can change."(Azeri Press Agency, March 8, 2008)
His main goal was achieved, though, as he had delivered the second phase of the Individual Partnership Action Plan.
"Simmons said that the key issues in the Plan are training of Azerbaijan’s army for participation in the joint operations with NATO forces, the holding of trainings, as well as military training and support by the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry."(Trend News Agency, March 10, 2008)
A few days earlier Simmons had stirred up a controversy by claiming that Uzbekistan had agreed to turn the Khanabad base it had evicted US military forces from almost two years before back over to the Pentagon for the war in South Asia, which elicited this reaction from an Uzbek official: "Farkhad Murtazayev bristled at comments made earlier by NATO special envoy to Central Asia and the Caucasus Robert Simmons, who insisted that Uzbekistan was ready to give its go-ahead."(Voice of Russia, March 7, 2008)
And this from the Russian Defense Ministry:
"The Defence Ministry of the Russian Federation has...reported that any notices from the military establishment of Uzbekistan about permitting the US to use the Uzbek airbase didn’t come to the Russian Defense Department.
"'It, maybe, was 'a trial balloon', a sort of probe,' said a spokesman of the Ministry, meaning the utterances of the representative of NATO." (WarAndPeace.ru, March 7, 2008)
Later in March Simmons would repeat his plan for a NATO military buildup in the Caspian Sea, an Alliance complement to former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's proposed Caspian Guard:
“Establishing a military-marine fleet in the Caspian is part of our co-operation with Central Asia and the Caucasus.
"It mostly deals with the defence of infrastructure in the Caspian.
"We are holding talks with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan with regards to the defence of energy facilities, and the issue of establishing a military-marine fleet remains open.”(Trend News Agency, March 21, 2008)
Another Azerbaijani press source added "He said secure transportation of hydrocarbon resources to Europe is what NATO is concerned about." (AzerTag, March 27, 2008)
The following month Simmons reprised his intentions, saying "the issue of protecting energy infrastructure belonging both to NATO members and their partners was on the agenda." (The Financial [Georgia] April 5, 2008)
Later in April he was in Kazakhstan promoting the accession of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO and taunting Russia with "“Russia protested against the admitting of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary into NATO as well and the enlargement of the Alliance into the Balkan Peninsula. But, these countries became NATO member states.” (Trend News Agency, April 12, 2008)
Not longer afterward in Georgia, Simmons met with the nation's State Minister for Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili - the person who would help prepare the invasion of South Ossetia and a five-day war with Russia less than four months later - and in reference to a reported Russian overflight the minister said "If Georgia had been a member of the program, then NATO, not just Georgian radars would have registered the April 20 attack of the Russian fighter in Georgian air space and it's departure to Russian territory." (Interfax, April 25, 2008)
This is no record that Simmons did anything other than nod willing agreement to the comments, especially with his statement that "I think it's fair to say that a number of allies believe that recent Russian actions, which we condemn, do call into question Russian neutrality as an arbitrator or facilitator of the [South Ossetian and Abkhazian peace] process." (Associated Press, April 24, 2008)
While in the Georgian capital Simmons also consulted with the Georgian Defense Minister and the ambassadors of NATO member states in the nation and the "sides discussed the resources of NATO which can be used in the conflict zones to improve the peacekeeping process there." (Rustavi 2, April 25, 2008)
That is to say, Commonwealth of Independent States-mandated peacekeepers must leave and be supplanted by NATO troops so that the US- and NATO-trained Georgian armed forces would have a free hand to invade Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania had finished three weeks earlier and Georgia's full membership bid had been held up for two reasons: Unresolved conflicts on its soil and foreign (non-NATO) troops in its presumed territory, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Simmons, above, indicated NATO's plans for eliminating those barriers to complete integration.
Understanding the message that Simmons was delivering, the president of Abkhazia, Sergei Bagapsh, responded as reported in a dispatch worth quoting in length:
"'The replacement of Russian peacemakers will lead to a direct conflict. We will not let foreigners into Abkhazia and all of us will stand at the border.'
"Concerning the recent statements of NATO’s representative the in South Caucasus [Robert Simmons], who cast doubt on the role of Russian peacemakers in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone, Bagapsh said:
"'This right is the right of the strong. This is the same right as the one not to take into consideration of the decision of the Security Council on Yugoslavia.
"'Well, the Security Council hasn’t reached any decision, so let’s bomb Yugoslavia!'
"'And once the Council didn’t [resolve] the question, they themselves have settled the question regarding Kosovo.
"'This is, to our great regret, the right of the strong that now leads to the fact that such an important institute of the world community as the United Nations Organization loses its prestige and becomes pointless.'" (Interfax, April 25, 2008)
The Russian forces didn't leave as Simmons demanded but war in South Ossetia ensued four months later anyway.
He revisited the issue after Georgia launched an invasion of South Ossetia on August 8 as will be seen further on.
In May of 2008, though, Simmons headed to Turkmenistan on the Caspian Sea.
With the sudden death of Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov, who had run an autarkic government since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country was open to foreign penetration and NATO wasted no time in moving on it, both for military transit and trans-Eurasian energy projects; Simmons' demand for NATO naval presence in the Caspian Sea two months before was documented earlier.
Meeting with President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, Simmons pledged that "NATO is going to continue building up its relations with Turkmenistan" and "the interlocutors discussed issues related to cooperation within the format of NATO's Partnership for Peace program, as well as pressing problems related to strengthening stability in the region." (Turkmenistan.ru, May 14, 2008)
Turkmenistan is rich, it's not yet determined how rich, in natural gas, and lies off the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea with Iran to its south.
Securing NATO overflight, basing and surveillance rights in the nation - not to mention deployment of naval forces inside the Caspian - would be a direct threat to Iran and part of the general displacement of both Russia and China from the region and denial of its resources to both.
The succeeding month, June, Simmons returned to Azerbaijan on the eastern side of the Caspian directly across from Turkmenistan and Iran's neighbor to the northwest. There he officiated over annual NATO week events.
During the seven days Simmons oversaw a NATO/Partnership for Peace Trust Fund seminar, "organized for the first time in a partner country" that brought together "NATO member and partner countries, as well as about seventy representatives from the Mediterranean Dialogue [Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia] countries...." (AzerTag, June 16, 2008)
Another illustration of NATO's integration of European, Caucasus, Central Asian, Middle Eastern and North African nations into a rapidly evolving global military nexus.
Later in the same month, and with the countdown to war in the South Caucasus nearing, Simmons joined the State Department's Matthew Bryza and Georgia's Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili in Warsaw, Poland for a meeting of the New Group of Friends of Georgia, which included the participation of "Top officials from the foreign ministries of Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Sweden, Latvia [and] Bulgaria." (Civil Georgia, June 24, 2008)
That is, a month and a half before the Caucasus war commenced, top NATO and US officials orchestrated a meeting of Baltic, Black Sea and other nations to shore up support for the Saakashvili regime in its impending showdown with South Ossetia and Russia.
The very next day, June 25, Simmons was in the world's new nation, Montenegro, which of course is neither in the Caucasus or Central Asia but the Balkans, where he met with deputy ministers of the ministries of defense and foreign affairs and initiated "A first round of consultations at staff level [which] opened the Intensified Dialogue between NATO and Montenegro on 24 June 2008." (NATO International, June 25, 2008)
Three months later Simmons would host Bosnia's Deputy Minister of Defence at NATO Headquarters in Brussels in the first staff level meeting to plan the nation's Intensified Dialogue with the Alliance. Bosnia and Montenegro have recently been pulled into the Adriatic Charter, a mechanism devised by the US State Department to initially transition Albania, Croatia and Macedonia into full NATO Membership.
Simmons' role in the integration of the five former Yugoslav republics not already in NATO extends and complements that of expanding the bloc into the Black Sea region, the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea Basin, Central Asia and, as the next paragraph shows, South Asia.
The always mobile Simmons was back in Azerbaijan in late June ordering more Azeri troops for NATO's Afghan war, in fact doubling them.(Today.AZ, June 28, 2008)
After the August 8-12 Georgian-Russian war, one which was fraught with potential for a one-on-one showdown between the world's two major nuclear powers as Georgia's army is a US proxy creation and US warships were deployed within kilometers of their Russian opposite numbers in the Black Sea, Robert Simmons was in the Georgian capital to aid in rebuilding the nation's military capabilities for a new round of hostilities.
He was quoted in Tbilisi stating, "NATO will help Georgia in seven ways. First of all this means air defense and the restoration of defensive infrastructure." (Russian Information Agency Novosti, August 21, 2008)
Meeting with Simmons and NATO Supreme Allied Commander US General John Craddock, Georgian Defense Minister David Kezerashvili said that "NATO's 26 member-countries will form a special group, which will study the Georgian defence system" and that "the group will study the country’s need in the defence sphere and the size of aid the alliance can render to Georgia." (Trend News Agency, August 22, 2008)
During the same visit and apparently to reward Georgia for triggering the Caucasus war of only two weeks prior, Simmons asserted, “I can say that Georgia’s movement towards the action plan for its membership in NATO is operative and I can confirm that Georgia will become a NATO member for sure.” (Focus News Agency, August 22, 2008)
In October of last year Simmons was back in neighboring Azerbaijan to attend the inauguration of the country's reelected president, Ilham Aliev, an unconventional role for a special envoy for NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, in the midst of general consultations on Alliance integration.
In January of 2009 after the government of Kyrgyzstan began the process of closing the US and NATO airbase in Manas that had been employed for the war in Afghanistan over several years, Simmons was dispatched to that nation to preserve the base.
Before his departure it was announced that "during the visit a new contact officer for NATO in Central Asia will be introduced." (Trend News Agency, January 30, 2009)
An Azerbaijani news source reported on his visit.
"Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said at a news conference in Moscow that the Manas air base would be shut down.
"NATO Special Representative for the South Caucasus [and Central Asia] Robert Simmons said during his visit to Kyrgyzstan several days ago that the organization would like to see the continuation of this agreement...." (Trend News Agency, February 4, 2009)
Leaving Kyrgyzstan, Simmons led a NATO delegation to the capital of Turkmenistan.
Within a few days he headed a delegation of NATO experts to Ukraine to craft the Ukraine-NATO national program for 2009. Note how seamlessly Simmons shifts between his two NATO posts and roles while always advancing a common geostrategic agenda, the campaign to gain control of post-Soviet space and Eurasia as a whole.
Within a few brief months he worked at integrating the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan into NATO; accelerating the integration of ex-Yugoslav nations onto the Alliance's conveyor belt to imminent membership; demanding that Russian peacekeepers leave Abkhazia and South Ossetia, leaving both open to an onslaught by the Georgian army, trained and armed and advised by the Pentagon and NATO; failing that, rushing to Georgia after the August war to provide assistance in upgrading its military including its air defense system; visiting the Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan just as the new US presidential administration assumed power and began to implement the intensification of the war in South Asia.
If Simmon's work in the South Caucasus, Ukraine and the Balkans is read in Russia as completing the process of its encirclement and if his frequent visits to Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on the Caspian Sea are seen by Iran as efforts to isolate and besiege it, then his efforts to more tightly bind Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the Alliance and its escalating war in Afghanistan (and into Pakistan) will be viewed with serious concern by China, which has borders with the three aforementioned Central Asian nations.
China and Russia have even more reason for apprehension. Roberts Simmons post as NATO envoy for the Caucasus and Central Asia pits him and the bloc directly against the post-Soviet Collective Security Treaty Organization (Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan).
Armenia is part of Simmons' Caucasus assignment and to the degree he succeeds in strengthening NATO's grip on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, China and Russia both will lose the only collective security partnerships they have in their own neighborhoods in favor of a Western military bloc, effectively depriving them of influence even in neighboring nations.
Simmons is his dual capacity at NATO is the main agent in driving the Alliance from the Balkans and the Black Sea through the Caucasus and into Central and South Asia, isolating and separating Russia, China and Iran.
Should that scenario develop, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization would cease to exist and with them the only effective challenges to Pentagon and NATO international military superiority and impunity in Eurasia and in the world as a whole.
In his 1956 volume The Power Elite in the chapter called The Military Ascendancy, C. Wright Mills warned that "war has become seemingly total and seemingly permanent" and that "diplomacy becomes merely a prelude to war or an interlude between wars" in service to "what can only be called a military definition of reality."
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US Continues Military Encirclement Of Russia
Recent Words Aside
Global Research--American Vice-President Joseph Biden at the Munich Security Conference in early February pledged to "press the reset button" with Russia.
Since then prominent Washington officials have repeated their intention to reset, reboot and so forth relations with Russia but have, starting with Biden at Munich, not relented in any substantive manner on any of the behaviors and projects that have antagonized Moscow.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently and American President Obama is to meet with his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev n London early next month.
Russia has permitted the US and its NATO allies transit rights for non-military goods to assist the West's expanding war in South Asia, though in the process is abetting the extension of the NATO military nexus from the Baltic to the Black to the Caspian Seas and hence tightening the noose around its own neck.
How are the US and NATO demonstrating their supposed resolve to mend ties with Russia, not in words but in deeds?
Starting at Russia's northwestern most border and proceeding counter-clockwise, in the following manner:
In nine days NATO will commence a ten-day military exercise, Cold Response 2009, consisting of 7,000 troops from thirteen nations in northern Norway, off the coast of the Norwegian Sea, adjoining the Barents Sea and the Russian coast.
It will be a full spectrum exercise with land, naval and air forces simulating an 'emergency' military intervention.
The Barents Observer reports:
"This year, about 700 of the participants are special forces. The [imaginary] conflict increased in 2008 when Northland attacked and occupied Midland. After a cease-fire Northland withdraws its forces and a power vacuum which NATO has to fill, occurred."
Moving slightly southwest, NATO has just completed the four-day Baltic Host 2009 exercise in Estonia, which Russia's Novosti described as involving "a series of scenarios simulating the arrival and deployment of NATO troops in a member country."
Participating in the war games were forces from the United States, Britain, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in "the first exercise of this type in the Baltic region, which could become a regular event in the future to improve interoperability between NATO troops."
Continuing southward, nine days ago Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski met with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and insisted that American Patriot missiles would be deployed in his country.
The new US Patriot PAC-3 missile covers seven times the area of the original model and has double the range, enabling such missiles in Poland to hit Russian territory in the Kaliningrad region.
Two weeks ago US Defense Secretary Robert Gates signed a pact with his Polish opposite number Defense Minister Bogdan Klich "to bolster Poland's special forces and enhance how it operates within the NATO military command structure" as the US armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes reported.
This was two days after Poland's Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw Komorowski said, as quoted by Interfax-Ukraine, "that there is much more of a discussion right now within the alliance [NATO], to a large extent because many partners realize that the enemy unfortunately can be much closer to our borders" and "We have to take this into account when we plan the future of the alliance."
At the same time NATO announced that it was going to establish a permanent military force in Eastern Europe which would draw troops from the NATO Response Force (NRF).
Further pursuing the path south and east along the Russian border, the Chief Commander of the Ukrainian Navy, Ihor Tenyukh, announced that the annual US-led Sea Breeze NATO military exercises in Crimea would "be of a larger scale regarding the strength and number of military personnel" than any of its predecessors.
His claim was made within weeks of the signing of the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership.
At the Krakow, Poland meeting of NATO defense chiefs on February 20 the Alliance's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer pledged that "NATO remains ready to assist Ukraine in undertaking comprehensive reforms in its defence and security structures. We are determined to continue to develop this strategic partnership."
Down the Black Sea coast, NATO's annual Cooperative Longbow/ Cooperative Lancer month-long Caucasus military exercises are to be held in Georgia starting on May 3 and as the Georgian Times reported "Georgia's participation in NATO trainings is seen as the first serious step NATO has taken after the August conflict and the subsequent creation of the NATO-Georgian Commission in September."
900 troops from 23 nations will participate in the exercises.
Two weeks ago US defense chief Gates reiterated that the Pentagon has a "continuing security relationship with Georgia both bilaterally and through NATO-Georgia Commission" and according to Civil Georgia "We're involved in training. We are involved in military reform in Georgia."
On the western end of the Black Sea directly across from Georgia - and Russia - the US has begun the two-week Thracian Spring 2009 joint air and infantry exercises with the Bulgarian armed forces, starting at the US's newly acquired Bezmer airbase.
Two weeks ago the US European Command spoke of its expanding military presence in Bulgaria and its Black Sea neighbor Romania: "It is larger in scale than it has been in previous years and we think that is an important consideration. If our current plans hold, we'll cycle a number of U.S. companies through both Romania and Bulgaria under battalion-level leadership to partner with the Bulgarians and the Romanians for the training that will occur roughly from July through October. So a larger presence and for a longer period of time...."
Southeast of Georgia and on Russia's southern flank, US Central Command chief David Petraeus announced that Azerbaijan would be used as a transit route for NATO arms headed to the Afghan war theater. The US has also ordered more Azerbaijani troops deployed there to serve under NATO command and the US Missile Defense Agency is considering expanding its global missile shield program to include what is now a Russian surveillance base in Garbala, Azerbaijan.
Indeed, in late February former US National Security Adviser and arch-Russophobe Zbigniew Brzezinski stated, "We should work so that Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan do not become victims of the US-Russia dialogue....We should do everything to defend these countries."
Proceeding steadily toward the east, the Pentagon and NATO have recently secured transit rights for the Afghan war with Kazakhstan, which borders both Russia and China.
A year ago the US Defense Department signed a military treaty with Kazakhstan, and as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Mitchell Shivers vowed, "As a member of NATO, the U.S. is committed to helping Kazakhstan in improving its inter-operability with equipment and training to U.S. and NATO standards."
In 2006 the Pentagon held a military exercise in Mongolia, Khaan Quest 2006, which also borders Russia and China.
At the far opposite end of Russia from where this survey began, the Barents Sea, the US has begun ICEX-2009 by deploying nuclear submarines for simulated warfare exercises off the coast of Alaska and into the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The last such exercise, in 2007, included US and British nuclear submarines maneuvering under the polar ice cap.
Several days earlier the chief of the Russian general staff, General Nikolai Makarov, warned that "Russia will respond to any attempts to militarize the Arctic," as Reuters reported.
A news dispatch of two days ago mentioned a recent poll that demonstrated half of all Russian adults fear military aggression from foreign nations. Small wonder, notwithstanding ingenuous blandishments from the likes of Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates.
View original source
Global Research--American Vice-President Joseph Biden at the Munich Security Conference in early February pledged to "press the reset button" with Russia.
Since then prominent Washington officials have repeated their intention to reset, reboot and so forth relations with Russia but have, starting with Biden at Munich, not relented in any substantive manner on any of the behaviors and projects that have antagonized Moscow.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently and American President Obama is to meet with his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev n London early next month.
Russia has permitted the US and its NATO allies transit rights for non-military goods to assist the West's expanding war in South Asia, though in the process is abetting the extension of the NATO military nexus from the Baltic to the Black to the Caspian Seas and hence tightening the noose around its own neck.
How are the US and NATO demonstrating their supposed resolve to mend ties with Russia, not in words but in deeds?
Starting at Russia's northwestern most border and proceeding counter-clockwise, in the following manner:
In nine days NATO will commence a ten-day military exercise, Cold Response 2009, consisting of 7,000 troops from thirteen nations in northern Norway, off the coast of the Norwegian Sea, adjoining the Barents Sea and the Russian coast.
It will be a full spectrum exercise with land, naval and air forces simulating an 'emergency' military intervention.
The Barents Observer reports:
"This year, about 700 of the participants are special forces. The [imaginary] conflict increased in 2008 when Northland attacked and occupied Midland. After a cease-fire Northland withdraws its forces and a power vacuum which NATO has to fill, occurred."
Moving slightly southwest, NATO has just completed the four-day Baltic Host 2009 exercise in Estonia, which Russia's Novosti described as involving "a series of scenarios simulating the arrival and deployment of NATO troops in a member country."
Participating in the war games were forces from the United States, Britain, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in "the first exercise of this type in the Baltic region, which could become a regular event in the future to improve interoperability between NATO troops."
Continuing southward, nine days ago Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski met with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and insisted that American Patriot missiles would be deployed in his country.
The new US Patriot PAC-3 missile covers seven times the area of the original model and has double the range, enabling such missiles in Poland to hit Russian territory in the Kaliningrad region.
Two weeks ago US Defense Secretary Robert Gates signed a pact with his Polish opposite number Defense Minister Bogdan Klich "to bolster Poland's special forces and enhance how it operates within the NATO military command structure" as the US armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes reported.
This was two days after Poland's Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw Komorowski said, as quoted by Interfax-Ukraine, "that there is much more of a discussion right now within the alliance [NATO], to a large extent because many partners realize that the enemy unfortunately can be much closer to our borders" and "We have to take this into account when we plan the future of the alliance."
At the same time NATO announced that it was going to establish a permanent military force in Eastern Europe which would draw troops from the NATO Response Force (NRF).
Further pursuing the path south and east along the Russian border, the Chief Commander of the Ukrainian Navy, Ihor Tenyukh, announced that the annual US-led Sea Breeze NATO military exercises in Crimea would "be of a larger scale regarding the strength and number of military personnel" than any of its predecessors.
His claim was made within weeks of the signing of the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership.
At the Krakow, Poland meeting of NATO defense chiefs on February 20 the Alliance's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer pledged that "NATO remains ready to assist Ukraine in undertaking comprehensive reforms in its defence and security structures. We are determined to continue to develop this strategic partnership."
Down the Black Sea coast, NATO's annual Cooperative Longbow/ Cooperative Lancer month-long Caucasus military exercises are to be held in Georgia starting on May 3 and as the Georgian Times reported "Georgia's participation in NATO trainings is seen as the first serious step NATO has taken after the August conflict and the subsequent creation of the NATO-Georgian Commission in September."
900 troops from 23 nations will participate in the exercises.
Two weeks ago US defense chief Gates reiterated that the Pentagon has a "continuing security relationship with Georgia both bilaterally and through NATO-Georgia Commission" and according to Civil Georgia "We're involved in training. We are involved in military reform in Georgia."
On the western end of the Black Sea directly across from Georgia - and Russia - the US has begun the two-week Thracian Spring 2009 joint air and infantry exercises with the Bulgarian armed forces, starting at the US's newly acquired Bezmer airbase.
Two weeks ago the US European Command spoke of its expanding military presence in Bulgaria and its Black Sea neighbor Romania: "It is larger in scale than it has been in previous years and we think that is an important consideration. If our current plans hold, we'll cycle a number of U.S. companies through both Romania and Bulgaria under battalion-level leadership to partner with the Bulgarians and the Romanians for the training that will occur roughly from July through October. So a larger presence and for a longer period of time...."
Southeast of Georgia and on Russia's southern flank, US Central Command chief David Petraeus announced that Azerbaijan would be used as a transit route for NATO arms headed to the Afghan war theater. The US has also ordered more Azerbaijani troops deployed there to serve under NATO command and the US Missile Defense Agency is considering expanding its global missile shield program to include what is now a Russian surveillance base in Garbala, Azerbaijan.
Indeed, in late February former US National Security Adviser and arch-Russophobe Zbigniew Brzezinski stated, "We should work so that Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan do not become victims of the US-Russia dialogue....We should do everything to defend these countries."
Proceeding steadily toward the east, the Pentagon and NATO have recently secured transit rights for the Afghan war with Kazakhstan, which borders both Russia and China.
A year ago the US Defense Department signed a military treaty with Kazakhstan, and as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Mitchell Shivers vowed, "As a member of NATO, the U.S. is committed to helping Kazakhstan in improving its inter-operability with equipment and training to U.S. and NATO standards."
In 2006 the Pentagon held a military exercise in Mongolia, Khaan Quest 2006, which also borders Russia and China.
At the far opposite end of Russia from where this survey began, the Barents Sea, the US has begun ICEX-2009 by deploying nuclear submarines for simulated warfare exercises off the coast of Alaska and into the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The last such exercise, in 2007, included US and British nuclear submarines maneuvering under the polar ice cap.
Several days earlier the chief of the Russian general staff, General Nikolai Makarov, warned that "Russia will respond to any attempts to militarize the Arctic," as Reuters reported.
A news dispatch of two days ago mentioned a recent poll that demonstrated half of all Russian adults fear military aggression from foreign nations. Small wonder, notwithstanding ingenuous blandishments from the likes of Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates.
View original source
Sunday, 8 March 2009
BBC Newsreader speaks out on failure of UK multiculturalism
Bristol--For many television viewers George Alagiah has become a friendly face as they kick back at the end of their working day.
As the presenter of the BBC's News at Six, he's become a familiar part of all our lives, and he received an affectionate welcome from the audience of about 400 people who gathered to hear him talk at Red Maids' School in Westbury-on-Trym on Friday night.
But anyone who was expecting a light-hearted evening, with amusing tales about the life of a broadcast journalist and gossip from the newsroom, was in for a surprise.
Mr Alagiah, who received an OBE last year for his services to journalism, chose to use the occasion to cast off his usual BBC objectivity, and give his very personal opinions about immigration.
"Multiculturism has, in some places, delivered exactly the opposite of what it was designed to create," he said.
"Some areas have become distinctive by entire communities that have developed into an enclave, based entirely on their place of origin.
"I've been to certain places, Bradford for example, where it feels like I'm reporting from a foreign country.
"In that city, they even have linking projects to bring together white children from the white neighbourhoods, with Asian children from the Asian neighbourhoods. They bus one group of children across the city, just so they get to interact with the others.
"Linking projects were something I remember reporting on in South Africa, as the country was trying to come out of hundreds of years of institutionalised racism, but this is in England after 40 years of supposed multiculturalism. Something has clearly gone wrong with the dream of multiculturalism."
Mr Alagiah gives to the Beeb an air of trustworthiness and gravitas; a sense of familiarity without the injection of undue personality, and an endless reserve of calm professionalism. He has become emblematic of a typically British news reading persona – despite the fact his roots are far from English.
Born in Sri Lanka in 1955, his primary education was in Ghana, where his parents moved in 1961. He attended secondary school at St John's College in Portsmouth, and later Durham University.
"I felt I had to become British when I first arrived here," he said. "Today we should be saying to immigrants: welcome to our country, but what will you do for us? What can you contribute?
"I think if we start to ask that question of immigrants, you might feel you would prefer to have them here, rather than those who have their Britishness as a birthright, but fail to live up to the responsibilities with it."
The former foreign correspondent added: "My story epitomises what I call the magic of migration. If you had told my parents 50 years ago their little boy would grow up to become a senior BBC journalist, they would have laughed, because in those days it wouldn't have been possible.
"That's how I know we've come a long way towards a multicultural society, but it's a dream that needs working on.
"It lost its way in the Seventies and Eighties because anyone who created a debate about it was branded a racist.
"I think people are beginning to realise it's a debate that you can have without it descending into racism."
View original source
As the presenter of the BBC's News at Six, he's become a familiar part of all our lives, and he received an affectionate welcome from the audience of about 400 people who gathered to hear him talk at Red Maids' School in Westbury-on-Trym on Friday night.
But anyone who was expecting a light-hearted evening, with amusing tales about the life of a broadcast journalist and gossip from the newsroom, was in for a surprise.
Mr Alagiah, who received an OBE last year for his services to journalism, chose to use the occasion to cast off his usual BBC objectivity, and give his very personal opinions about immigration.
"Multiculturism has, in some places, delivered exactly the opposite of what it was designed to create," he said.
"Some areas have become distinctive by entire communities that have developed into an enclave, based entirely on their place of origin.
"I've been to certain places, Bradford for example, where it feels like I'm reporting from a foreign country.
"In that city, they even have linking projects to bring together white children from the white neighbourhoods, with Asian children from the Asian neighbourhoods. They bus one group of children across the city, just so they get to interact with the others.
"Linking projects were something I remember reporting on in South Africa, as the country was trying to come out of hundreds of years of institutionalised racism, but this is in England after 40 years of supposed multiculturalism. Something has clearly gone wrong with the dream of multiculturalism."
Mr Alagiah gives to the Beeb an air of trustworthiness and gravitas; a sense of familiarity without the injection of undue personality, and an endless reserve of calm professionalism. He has become emblematic of a typically British news reading persona – despite the fact his roots are far from English.
Born in Sri Lanka in 1955, his primary education was in Ghana, where his parents moved in 1961. He attended secondary school at St John's College in Portsmouth, and later Durham University.
"I felt I had to become British when I first arrived here," he said. "Today we should be saying to immigrants: welcome to our country, but what will you do for us? What can you contribute?
"I think if we start to ask that question of immigrants, you might feel you would prefer to have them here, rather than those who have their Britishness as a birthright, but fail to live up to the responsibilities with it."
The former foreign correspondent added: "My story epitomises what I call the magic of migration. If you had told my parents 50 years ago their little boy would grow up to become a senior BBC journalist, they would have laughed, because in those days it wouldn't have been possible.
"That's how I know we've come a long way towards a multicultural society, but it's a dream that needs working on.
"It lost its way in the Seventies and Eighties because anyone who created a debate about it was branded a racist.
"I think people are beginning to realise it's a debate that you can have without it descending into racism."
View original source
Africa Seeks a Single Currency
Globalization Marches on as Politicians Seek to Recreate Euro in Africa
Establishing a common currency would have the effect of uniting the continent of Africa, both economically and politically. The Afro would facilitate trade, lower the cost of conducting business on the continent, and reduce the confusion caused when multiple currencies are used.
Wycliffe Oparanya, the Minister of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030, said that establishing a single currency for Africa would require difficult political decisions to be made. A central African Government would be created that would regulate the entire continent's banking industry. The central bank of Africa would set the interest and currency exchange rates for the entire continent.
Africa has unique challenges when it comes to integrating the continent with a single currency. The European Union was able to integrate under the Euro, but it has significantly different economic conditions than Africa does. The European per capita GDP is $25,289, while Africa's per capita GDP was reported to be $2,975 in 2007. About 36% of Africa's population survives on under $1 a day. There are only 100,000 millionaires on the continent, compared to 2.6 million European millionaires, even though Africa's population is larger than Europe's. Zimbabwe's economy is currently affected by hyperinflation. Somalia is currently a collapsed state known for continued fighting and piracy.
"African Union." Wikipedia
"Economy of Africa." Wikipedia.
"Economy of Europe." Wikipedia.
Kimani, O'Brien. "Congress Pushes for Single African Currency." Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, March 2, 2009.
Niyiragira, Yves. "Push for Single African Currency Begins." AU Monitor, March 2, 2009.
"Somalia." Wikipedia.
In a recent meeting of the African Union in Nairobi, Kenya, African economists put their heads together in an attempt to create a single African currency, similar to that of the Euro in Europe. This group will continue to work on the proposal over the next few months, and will be makingAfrica Seeks a Single Currency recommendations to the various heads of state during a summit this July.The Abuja treaty, signed in 1991, created the African Economic Community as a part of the African Union. The African union consists of 53 member states, and was established on July 9, 2002. The treaty hoped to create the Afro by 2028, with a central African bank issuing the continent-wide currency. The African Union is currently working on establishing the central bank in Abuja, Nigeria.
Establishing a common currency would have the effect of uniting the continent of Africa, both economically and politically. The Afro would facilitate trade, lower the cost of conducting business on the continent, and reduce the confusion caused when multiple currencies are used.
Wycliffe Oparanya, the Minister of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030, said that establishing a single currency for Africa would require difficult political decisions to be made. A central African Government would be created that would regulate the entire continent's banking industry. The central bank of Africa would set the interest and currency exchange rates for the entire continent.
Africa has unique challenges when it comes to integrating the continent with a single currency. The European Union was able to integrate under the Euro, but it has significantly different economic conditions than Africa does. The European per capita GDP is $25,289, while Africa's per capita GDP was reported to be $2,975 in 2007. About 36% of Africa's population survives on under $1 a day. There are only 100,000 millionaires on the continent, compared to 2.6 million European millionaires, even though Africa's population is larger than Europe's. Zimbabwe's economy is currently affected by hyperinflation. Somalia is currently a collapsed state known for continued fighting and piracy.
The creation of a single African currency will probably be a challenging undertaking, but further discussions will bring the concept closer to reality during the government summit in July. If all the bugs can be worked out, a single currency might help stabilize the continent and Africa Seeks a Single Currency increase prosperity in a nation that truly needs it. The development of this currency should [be very] interesting [thing]to watch.Sources:
"African Union." Wikipedia
"Economy of Africa." Wikipedia.
"Economy of Europe." Wikipedia.
Kimani, O'Brien. "Congress Pushes for Single African Currency." Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, March 2, 2009.
Niyiragira, Yves. "Push for Single African Currency Begins." AU Monitor, March 2, 2009.
"Somalia." Wikipedia.
Niceties aside, a threat is still a threat
Editorial (Taipei Times)Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s (溫家寶) speech to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and the National People’s Congress last Thursday drew a lot of international media coverage. Wen said the two sides of the Taiwan Strait would hold consultations and strengthen cross-strait economic cooperation. While it might appear relations have taken a big step toward stability, a hidden threat was largely overlooked by the international and domestic media. The sticking point: Beijing’s good will hinges on Taiwan’s acceptance of the “one China” principle.
China’s national defense budget has grown by more than 10 percent annually for the past decade and will rise by at least 15 percent this year — and that’s just according to the official figures. The size of the People’s Liberation Army, with more than 3 million people in its land forces alone, means personnel costs are immense. However, China’s stated goal this year is upgrading its naval and air forces. The Chinese navy is working to building its own aircraft carrier. As Chinese naval strength grows, it will expand throughout the South China Sea and into the Indian Ocean.
Taiwan is a vital link, so China keeps making economic overtures and expressing good will while continuing to make military preparations. China keeps increasing its military spending even though cross-strait tension is low. It is clear that the Taiwan issue is only a pretext for China to expand its military power.
These days, Taiwan appears to be almost the only country that cares about the shifting balance of military power across the Taiwan Strait, as the Taiwan question has dropped off the radar in international politics. This puts Taiwan in a precarious position.
China no longer sees the Taiwan issue as a problem since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office. Nevertheless, it continues to deploy more missiles along its southeast coast, which now number about 1,500.
For his part Ma, apparently doesn’t view all those missiles as a threat and naively discounts the possibility of hostile behavior by China. Taiwan’s military budget has been cut and arms purchases have almost ceased. Ma and his defense minister are more concerned with how fast soldiers can run, whether they can swim or perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. This complacency is the biggest threat to national security.
Since it views Taiwan as under control, China’s next step must be to extend its power across the East and South China Seas. It will undoubtedly assert its claim over the Diaoyutai (釣魚台) islands more forcefully, without regard to the inclusion of those islands as a peripheral concern under US-Japan joint security agreements. China’s recent contribution of warships to escort commercial ships off the coast of Somalia can be seen as a bid to extend its naval power beyond the South China Sea and provide its navy with an internationally sanctioned military exercise.
Today Taiwan and the international community are focusing on China’s massive market and economic clout. China does indeed have an important role to play in dealing with the global financial crisis, and can help Taiwan and other countries to get through the slump. At the same time, however, Taiwan and other countries must be aware that China remains a huge threat to their way of life. If the Chinese tiger gets angry, who is going to tame it?
View original source
China’s national defense budget has grown by more than 10 percent annually for the past decade and will rise by at least 15 percent this year — and that’s just according to the official figures. The size of the People’s Liberation Army, with more than 3 million people in its land forces alone, means personnel costs are immense. However, China’s stated goal this year is upgrading its naval and air forces. The Chinese navy is working to building its own aircraft carrier. As Chinese naval strength grows, it will expand throughout the South China Sea and into the Indian Ocean.
Taiwan is a vital link, so China keeps making economic overtures and expressing good will while continuing to make military preparations. China keeps increasing its military spending even though cross-strait tension is low. It is clear that the Taiwan issue is only a pretext for China to expand its military power.
These days, Taiwan appears to be almost the only country that cares about the shifting balance of military power across the Taiwan Strait, as the Taiwan question has dropped off the radar in international politics. This puts Taiwan in a precarious position.
China no longer sees the Taiwan issue as a problem since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office. Nevertheless, it continues to deploy more missiles along its southeast coast, which now number about 1,500.
For his part Ma, apparently doesn’t view all those missiles as a threat and naively discounts the possibility of hostile behavior by China. Taiwan’s military budget has been cut and arms purchases have almost ceased. Ma and his defense minister are more concerned with how fast soldiers can run, whether they can swim or perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. This complacency is the biggest threat to national security.
Since it views Taiwan as under control, China’s next step must be to extend its power across the East and South China Seas. It will undoubtedly assert its claim over the Diaoyutai (釣魚台) islands more forcefully, without regard to the inclusion of those islands as a peripheral concern under US-Japan joint security agreements. China’s recent contribution of warships to escort commercial ships off the coast of Somalia can be seen as a bid to extend its naval power beyond the South China Sea and provide its navy with an internationally sanctioned military exercise.
Today Taiwan and the international community are focusing on China’s massive market and economic clout. China does indeed have an important role to play in dealing with the global financial crisis, and can help Taiwan and other countries to get through the slump. At the same time, however, Taiwan and other countries must be aware that China remains a huge threat to their way of life. If the Chinese tiger gets angry, who is going to tame it?
View original source
Sharia law marks a sea change as Sharif woos Somali militias
In a compromise agreement with hardliner opposition, the new President of war-torn Somalia, Ahmed Sheikh Sharif, will adopt Islamic Sharia as the law of the land.
But will this help restore order to the country, and what does it really signify in the present context?
While the spectre of Sharia law sets off alarms in the Western world, for the Somalis themselves, reaching political consensus on the issue of Sharia does not necessarily signal a radical shift in the parameters governing their existence.
Islamic norms and ideals have shaped Somalia society for centuries. Most Somali have always lived according to Islamic precepts. Somali’s secular legal code ceased to operate in 1993, and Islamic legal principles have been filling the vacuum ever since.
Islam can be a great source of legitimacy for despotic governments: Syad Barre agreed to a similar proposition at an early point in his rule.
A stratagem for appeasing religious leaders, it was never implemented, as this would have meant ceding temporal and moral authority to opponents of his regime.
Even when the intention is sincere, there is a more critical problem. Declaring Islamic law paramount is one thing — institutionalising the Sharia raises a range of issues.
The problem is not at the source (the Koran and the Hadith, or traditions of the Prophet). The real issues arise farther downstream, so to speak. The gap between ideal and application is unavoidable in any system of secular or religious justice.
The Muslim poet and scholar, Jalaluddin Rumi, used the metaphor of a pure spring located high above the city to address the Sharia problem:
“Consider the water that flows in Turut towards the city. There, where the fountainhead is, see how pure and fine it is!
“But when it enters the city and passes through the various quarters and the houses of the inhabitants, so many people wash their hands and feet and other parts in it, and their clothes and their carpets, and the urine of all the quarters and dung of horses and mules are poured into it and mixed with it.
“Look at it when it passes out of the other side of the city! Though it is still the same water, turning the dust to clay, slaking the thirsty, making the plain verdant, yet it requires no discriminator to discover that the water has not retained its former clarity and that disagreeable things have been mingled with it.”
Rumi observes: “The believer is sagacious, discriminating, understanding, intelligent.” He was, of course, referring to conditions where this public good and its management were already institutionalised.
The Sharia has always governed family law and the domestic affairs of Muslims across the larger region.
The rise of Islamic Courts in southern Somalia represented an essentially incremental expansion of the Sharia to the commercial sector and to criminal cases in circumstances where ethnic factors complicated administration of Somali customary law.
Before colonisation, culumo religious leaders shared power with clan elders, and the Islamic Courts Union formalised the same arrangement.
In practice, the Islamic courts were localised institutions and the Sharia figured as a court of appeal, invoked when the lower elders’ court failed to resolve a case or provided cause for parties to challenge their decision.
Implementation of the Sharia consensus should be straightforward if this simply means the courts will resume operation as arbitrators of the law.
If it involves elevating the Sharia to the paramount national institution defining law and governance, Somalia’s ongoing power struggle will probably intensify.
Questions that immediately come to mind are:
1) Which madhabu, or school of Islamic jurisprudence, will serve as foundation for legal practice?
2) Who will be the authority behind it? and,
3) What will become of the clan leaders, elders councils, other civil actors, and cultural practices providing the critical barrier against societal anomie and chaos?
Most Muslims in East Africa, including the Somali, are Sunni of the Shafi school.
Differences among the four Sunni schools are relatively minor, and the madhabu issue would not have posed a problem in Somalia at independence in 1960 or even as late as 1993. But agents of Wahhabism, have taken centrestage during the interim.
Wahhibism began as a reformist religious movement based on the teachings of Abdul Wahhab. It was installed across the Arabian peninsula by the conquering armies of Ibn Saud during the latter decades of the 19th century.
Based on the literal interpretation of Islamic sources and emblematic of Saudia Arabia’s religious conservatism, Wahhabism has provided a template for even more extremist phenomena like the Deobandi movement’s Taliban in Afghanistan and the anti-Western Salafi militancy of Al Qaeda.
It should also be stated that Wahhabi stress on personal discipline and as a driver of social reform explains its attraction to modern Muslims.
Such qualities recall Weber’s Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic, and account for why Somali Wahhabis are now a dominant force within the private sector at home and across the diaspora.
The Islamic Courts movement emerged at a point in post-state Somalia marking the confluence of reformist religious and economically resilient forces.
The ICU provided a veneer covering significant religious and political differences distinguishing the militant jihadi faction led by the former Al-Ittihad leader, Hassan Dahir Aweis, and the movement’s Muslim Brotherhood-style progressives and civil society professionals.
Although the radical Islamists claimed a central role in developments leading to the rise of the ICU, factual analyses of the events do not support this.
Before the intervention of neighbouring states and those prosecuting George W. Bush’s Long War on Terror, Aweis and his colleagues controlled only three of the city’s 16 courts, and Al Shabaab was a s-––mall militia specialising in murder and assassination.
The events of 2006 transformed internal power relations, first placing Aweis and an expanded Al Shabaab in control of the ICU, which led to its demise following Ethiopian intervention on behalf of Abdullahi Yusuf’s feeble Transitional Federal Government.
The conflict cycle instigated by these events appears to have gone full circle when Ahmed Sheikh Sharif, leader of the moderate Islamist faction, linked up with the ethnically representative but yet to be actualised TFG as its new president.
These political developments and the Sharia law pact have not, however, curbed the hardliner’s military insurgency spearheaded by Al Shabaab.
Political scientist and long term Somalia analyst Ken Menkaus divides developments unfolding in post-state Somalia into several distinct phases: The clan civil war, the spread of lawlessness, and the regionalisation of power under local warlords and other clan-based leaders.
This provides the context for a contributor to the Hiraan Online website, who castigated Ahmed Sheikh Sharif for joining the TFG alliance of recycled clan politicians and warlords.
Somalia, he argues, has undergone a paradigm shift — society has retreated from the clan-based politics and conflict of the past, embracing Islam as its fundamental organisational force in its place.
While many may dismiss this hypothesis out of hand, evolving socio-economic conditions in Somalia lend it a degree of support.
The current stasis, viewed through the prism of Mahmoud Ibrahim’ insightful study, Merchant Capital and Islam, displays a number of intriguing parallels with those in Mecca and Arabia when the Prophet Mohammed introduced Islam.
A minor node in the networks linking Mediterranean powers like Byzantium and Rome, Yemen, and Persia at the onset of the 6th century, Mecca’s commercial star began to rise during the following decades.
This was to have profound consequences for the city’s static social order. Its location along trade routes and the annual pilgrimage to the Kaaba underpinned the growing prosperity of Mecca’s merchant class.
Initially, the accruing capital reinforced Mecca’s rigid traditional society — belief in the deities inhabiting Mecca’s haram, a primary source of its commercial wealth, soared.
Agriculture was limited to the highlands of southern Arabia and isolated pockets.
Products of aromatic plants marketed through long-distance trade generated considerably more value than foodstuffs produced for local markets — and both were controlled by Arabia’s royalty and landed families. This meant Mecca’s prospering merchants could not invest in the means of production.
Capital accumulation normally reinforces the position of an economic elite; in Mecca, the fortunes of the merchant class instead acted to intensify the social order’s internal contradictions.
Prosperity also attracted settlers, altering the internal balance of tribes, widening the gap between rich and poor, and exacerbating other challenges threatening the status quo based on clan solidarities, status and wealth.
Ibrahim meticulously traces the introduction of elements of a new order from written contracts to allegiance to the larger umma, and how elite resistance to Mohammed’s Islamic reforms morphed into civil war.
The social revolution accompanying the triumph of Islam insured the dominance of merchant capital over tribe and clan: The decline of the tribe or clan as a social unit ... was accompanied by a decline in the authority of tribal and clan leaders. Tribal institutions were no longer able to meet the needs of a growing dependent population.
This not only made the gap between the rich and poor more visible, but also narrowed the social base of the wealthy, which exposed them to threats of social violence.
Despite his focus on economic forces and the wider regional social order, Ibrahim acknowledges the religious significance of Mohammed’s message.
Prevailing over the arrogant insularity of Jahliyya Arabian society required the spiritual agency of a prophet.
Those familiar with the congruencies and contradictions of contemporary Somalia, where crisis acted to reinforce the traditional clan-based politics while providing new opportunities for accumulation, should find it easy enough to connect the dots.
For sagacious and discriminating Muslims, the concern is not Sharia law, but the distance separating its more vociferous advocates in the city from its upstream source.
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But will this help restore order to the country, and what does it really signify in the present context?
While the spectre of Sharia law sets off alarms in the Western world, for the Somalis themselves, reaching political consensus on the issue of Sharia does not necessarily signal a radical shift in the parameters governing their existence.
Islamic norms and ideals have shaped Somalia society for centuries. Most Somali have always lived according to Islamic precepts. Somali’s secular legal code ceased to operate in 1993, and Islamic legal principles have been filling the vacuum ever since.
Islam can be a great source of legitimacy for despotic governments: Syad Barre agreed to a similar proposition at an early point in his rule.
A stratagem for appeasing religious leaders, it was never implemented, as this would have meant ceding temporal and moral authority to opponents of his regime.
Even when the intention is sincere, there is a more critical problem. Declaring Islamic law paramount is one thing — institutionalising the Sharia raises a range of issues.
The problem is not at the source (the Koran and the Hadith, or traditions of the Prophet). The real issues arise farther downstream, so to speak. The gap between ideal and application is unavoidable in any system of secular or religious justice.
The Muslim poet and scholar, Jalaluddin Rumi, used the metaphor of a pure spring located high above the city to address the Sharia problem:
“Consider the water that flows in Turut towards the city. There, where the fountainhead is, see how pure and fine it is!
“But when it enters the city and passes through the various quarters and the houses of the inhabitants, so many people wash their hands and feet and other parts in it, and their clothes and their carpets, and the urine of all the quarters and dung of horses and mules are poured into it and mixed with it.
“Look at it when it passes out of the other side of the city! Though it is still the same water, turning the dust to clay, slaking the thirsty, making the plain verdant, yet it requires no discriminator to discover that the water has not retained its former clarity and that disagreeable things have been mingled with it.”
Rumi observes: “The believer is sagacious, discriminating, understanding, intelligent.” He was, of course, referring to conditions where this public good and its management were already institutionalised.
The Sharia has always governed family law and the domestic affairs of Muslims across the larger region.
The rise of Islamic Courts in southern Somalia represented an essentially incremental expansion of the Sharia to the commercial sector and to criminal cases in circumstances where ethnic factors complicated administration of Somali customary law.
Before colonisation, culumo religious leaders shared power with clan elders, and the Islamic Courts Union formalised the same arrangement.
In practice, the Islamic courts were localised institutions and the Sharia figured as a court of appeal, invoked when the lower elders’ court failed to resolve a case or provided cause for parties to challenge their decision.
Implementation of the Sharia consensus should be straightforward if this simply means the courts will resume operation as arbitrators of the law.
If it involves elevating the Sharia to the paramount national institution defining law and governance, Somalia’s ongoing power struggle will probably intensify.
Questions that immediately come to mind are:
1) Which madhabu, or school of Islamic jurisprudence, will serve as foundation for legal practice?
2) Who will be the authority behind it? and,
3) What will become of the clan leaders, elders councils, other civil actors, and cultural practices providing the critical barrier against societal anomie and chaos?
Most Muslims in East Africa, including the Somali, are Sunni of the Shafi school.
Differences among the four Sunni schools are relatively minor, and the madhabu issue would not have posed a problem in Somalia at independence in 1960 or even as late as 1993. But agents of Wahhabism, have taken centrestage during the interim.
Wahhibism began as a reformist religious movement based on the teachings of Abdul Wahhab. It was installed across the Arabian peninsula by the conquering armies of Ibn Saud during the latter decades of the 19th century.
Based on the literal interpretation of Islamic sources and emblematic of Saudia Arabia’s religious conservatism, Wahhabism has provided a template for even more extremist phenomena like the Deobandi movement’s Taliban in Afghanistan and the anti-Western Salafi militancy of Al Qaeda.
It should also be stated that Wahhabi stress on personal discipline and as a driver of social reform explains its attraction to modern Muslims.
Such qualities recall Weber’s Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic, and account for why Somali Wahhabis are now a dominant force within the private sector at home and across the diaspora.
The Islamic Courts movement emerged at a point in post-state Somalia marking the confluence of reformist religious and economically resilient forces.
The ICU provided a veneer covering significant religious and political differences distinguishing the militant jihadi faction led by the former Al-Ittihad leader, Hassan Dahir Aweis, and the movement’s Muslim Brotherhood-style progressives and civil society professionals.
Although the radical Islamists claimed a central role in developments leading to the rise of the ICU, factual analyses of the events do not support this.
Before the intervention of neighbouring states and those prosecuting George W. Bush’s Long War on Terror, Aweis and his colleagues controlled only three of the city’s 16 courts, and Al Shabaab was a s-––mall militia specialising in murder and assassination.
The events of 2006 transformed internal power relations, first placing Aweis and an expanded Al Shabaab in control of the ICU, which led to its demise following Ethiopian intervention on behalf of Abdullahi Yusuf’s feeble Transitional Federal Government.
The conflict cycle instigated by these events appears to have gone full circle when Ahmed Sheikh Sharif, leader of the moderate Islamist faction, linked up with the ethnically representative but yet to be actualised TFG as its new president.
These political developments and the Sharia law pact have not, however, curbed the hardliner’s military insurgency spearheaded by Al Shabaab.
Political scientist and long term Somalia analyst Ken Menkaus divides developments unfolding in post-state Somalia into several distinct phases: The clan civil war, the spread of lawlessness, and the regionalisation of power under local warlords and other clan-based leaders.
This provides the context for a contributor to the Hiraan Online website, who castigated Ahmed Sheikh Sharif for joining the TFG alliance of recycled clan politicians and warlords.
Somalia, he argues, has undergone a paradigm shift — society has retreated from the clan-based politics and conflict of the past, embracing Islam as its fundamental organisational force in its place.
While many may dismiss this hypothesis out of hand, evolving socio-economic conditions in Somalia lend it a degree of support.
The current stasis, viewed through the prism of Mahmoud Ibrahim’ insightful study, Merchant Capital and Islam, displays a number of intriguing parallels with those in Mecca and Arabia when the Prophet Mohammed introduced Islam.
A minor node in the networks linking Mediterranean powers like Byzantium and Rome, Yemen, and Persia at the onset of the 6th century, Mecca’s commercial star began to rise during the following decades.
This was to have profound consequences for the city’s static social order. Its location along trade routes and the annual pilgrimage to the Kaaba underpinned the growing prosperity of Mecca’s merchant class.
Initially, the accruing capital reinforced Mecca’s rigid traditional society — belief in the deities inhabiting Mecca’s haram, a primary source of its commercial wealth, soared.
Agriculture was limited to the highlands of southern Arabia and isolated pockets.
Products of aromatic plants marketed through long-distance trade generated considerably more value than foodstuffs produced for local markets — and both were controlled by Arabia’s royalty and landed families. This meant Mecca’s prospering merchants could not invest in the means of production.
Capital accumulation normally reinforces the position of an economic elite; in Mecca, the fortunes of the merchant class instead acted to intensify the social order’s internal contradictions.
Prosperity also attracted settlers, altering the internal balance of tribes, widening the gap between rich and poor, and exacerbating other challenges threatening the status quo based on clan solidarities, status and wealth.
Ibrahim meticulously traces the introduction of elements of a new order from written contracts to allegiance to the larger umma, and how elite resistance to Mohammed’s Islamic reforms morphed into civil war.
The social revolution accompanying the triumph of Islam insured the dominance of merchant capital over tribe and clan: The decline of the tribe or clan as a social unit ... was accompanied by a decline in the authority of tribal and clan leaders. Tribal institutions were no longer able to meet the needs of a growing dependent population.
This not only made the gap between the rich and poor more visible, but also narrowed the social base of the wealthy, which exposed them to threats of social violence.
Despite his focus on economic forces and the wider regional social order, Ibrahim acknowledges the religious significance of Mohammed’s message.
Prevailing over the arrogant insularity of Jahliyya Arabian society required the spiritual agency of a prophet.
Those familiar with the congruencies and contradictions of contemporary Somalia, where crisis acted to reinforce the traditional clan-based politics while providing new opportunities for accumulation, should find it easy enough to connect the dots.
For sagacious and discriminating Muslims, the concern is not Sharia law, but the distance separating its more vociferous advocates in the city from its upstream source.
View original source
Somalia insurgents accuse Kenya over border security
MOGADISHU, March 8 (Reuters) - Islamist insurgents controlling southern Somalia have accused Kenyan troops of crossing into their territory and warned the east African nation to stop troop movements along their common border.
"Kenya has been making false allegations of facing danger from the border, and that is a great danger to the region's security and stability," the Islamists said on their web site www.kataaib.info.
"We believe that they intend to destroy the Islamic administration implemented in Somalia," said al Shabaab, a hardline Islamist group opposed to a new moderate president.
The group has been angry at Kenya since it helped capture Islamists trying to flee Ethiopian and Somali government troops in early 2007.
Kenya closed the 1,200-km (745-mile) border after the Ethiopians chased the Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu early in 2007, but the flow of refugees increased despite the closure.
In December, al Shabaab crossed into the country through the remote border town of El Wak and kidnapped two Italian nuns who were held in Mogadishu for 101 days.
Al Shabaab, which is on Washington's list of terrorist groups, and allied Islamist militia control most of southern Somalia.
Kenya's foreign minister said earlier the government was on high alert and was increasing security at the border. He said the border would remain closed until there was stability in the failed state.
Opening the border would expose the country and the region to instability, he said.
Al Shabaab's statement came as newly-elected President Sheikh Shariff Ahmed was due to begin his first official visit to Kenya since his election in Djibouti last month.
Ahmed will also visit Uganda and Burundi, which contribute troops to a 3,500 strong African Union (AU) peace force in Mogadishu.
Analysts say al Shabaab is the biggest threat to the new government, the 15th attempt to bring lasting peace to the Horn of Africa country which has been without a government since 1991.
At least 16,000 civilians have been killed and a million more driven from their homes since the Islamist insurgency began, while the ensuing humanitarian crisis has been termed one of the worst in the world.
"If Kenya does not stop violating our country we shall defend ourselves and fighting will not take place only in Somalia," the statement said.
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"Kenya has been making false allegations of facing danger from the border, and that is a great danger to the region's security and stability," the Islamists said on their web site www.kataaib.info.
"We believe that they intend to destroy the Islamic administration implemented in Somalia," said al Shabaab, a hardline Islamist group opposed to a new moderate president.
The group has been angry at Kenya since it helped capture Islamists trying to flee Ethiopian and Somali government troops in early 2007.
Kenya closed the 1,200-km (745-mile) border after the Ethiopians chased the Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu early in 2007, but the flow of refugees increased despite the closure.
In December, al Shabaab crossed into the country through the remote border town of El Wak and kidnapped two Italian nuns who were held in Mogadishu for 101 days.
Al Shabaab, which is on Washington's list of terrorist groups, and allied Islamist militia control most of southern Somalia.
Kenya's foreign minister said earlier the government was on high alert and was increasing security at the border. He said the border would remain closed until there was stability in the failed state.
Opening the border would expose the country and the region to instability, he said.
Al Shabaab's statement came as newly-elected President Sheikh Shariff Ahmed was due to begin his first official visit to Kenya since his election in Djibouti last month.
Ahmed will also visit Uganda and Burundi, which contribute troops to a 3,500 strong African Union (AU) peace force in Mogadishu.
Analysts say al Shabaab is the biggest threat to the new government, the 15th attempt to bring lasting peace to the Horn of Africa country which has been without a government since 1991.
At least 16,000 civilians have been killed and a million more driven from their homes since the Islamist insurgency began, while the ensuing humanitarian crisis has been termed one of the worst in the world.
"If Kenya does not stop violating our country we shall defend ourselves and fighting will not take place only in Somalia," the statement said.
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Ex-detainee says UK supplied torture questions
London - A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner has accused British intelligence of feeding questions to the CIA that he says were put to him while he was tortured in Pakistani and Moroccan jails. The allegations by Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, looked set to fuel demands by human rights groups for a full investigation into whether Britain's support for the U.S. "war on terror" amounted in his case to complicity with torture.
"When I realized that the British were co-operating with the people torturing me, I felt completely naked," Mohamed told the Mail Sunday newspaper in his first interview since being freed from the Guantanamo prison camp on Cuba last month.
A spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office said: "We abhor torture and never order it or condone it. We take allegations of mistreatment seriously and investigate them when they are made."
Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen, said he and his lawyers, in the course of legal action in the United States, had seen copies of telegrams from Britain's MI5 intelligence service to the Central Intelligence Agency.
He said an MI5 memo sent while he was held in Pakistan in 2002 offered to provide useful background information that would help interrogators identify any inconsistencies in his answers.
"This will place the detainee under more direct pressure and would seem to be the most effective way of obtaining intelligence on Mohammed's (sic) activities/plans concerning the UK," the alleged memo said.
British Files
Mohamed quoted telegrams he said were sent by MI5 to the CIA while he was held between 2002 and 2004 in Morocco, where he says he endured horrific torture including scalpel cuts to his penis.
One of them, headed "Request for further Detainee questioning," included a list of written questions about another individual, whether Mohamed knew him, where he met him, where he had gone and what his intentions were.
Mohamed said he remembered clearly the moment when MI5's questions were first relayed by his Moroccan interrogators.
"They started bringing British files to the interrogations - thick binders, some of them containing sheaves of photos of people who lived in London and places there like mosques," he said. "It was when they started asking the questions supplied by the British that my situation worsened. They sold me out."
U.S. authorities at one point accused Mohamed of conspiring to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States, but eventually freed him from Guantanamo without charge.
The British government last month defended its decision not to release classified information supplied to it by the United States on Mohamed's case, saying to do so would jeopardize intelligence cooperation with Washington.
Britain's attorney-general has said she will see if there is sufficient evidence to order an investigation into the actions of the British government and its intelligence officers.
"We need now to wait for her report," the Foreign Office spokesman said. "We have long pressed for the closure of Guantanamo, and we worked hard to achieve Binyam Mohamed's release."
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Nosedive in Afghan-US relations
Relations between President Karzai's Afghan government and Washington are at an all-time low. As Richard Holbrooke - President Obama's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan - prepares to make his first visit to the region since being appointed, the BBC's Ian Pannell in Kabul looks at why the relationship has soured.
Hamid Karzai has become increasingly vociferous in his criticism of American military tactics and has been making half-hearted threats to shift his allegiance to Moscow if he does not get his way.
Washington has yet to publicly declare its hand but a series of well-placed leaks, briefs and snubs have raised the prospect that it could move its support elsewhere in this year's presidential election.
One Afghan newspaper spoke of "a new cold war".
A senior Afghan government official says the new Obama administration has insulted President Karzai and one prominent MP accuses America of "running a shadow-government".
'Narco-state'
The decline in relations began with a visit last year by Joe Biden, now the vice-president, to Kabul.
At the time, as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, he attended a private meeting with Mr Karzai.
A well-placed source describes Mr Biden, exasperated at not getting "straight answers" on drugs and corruption, launching into a verbal tirade and storming out of the meeting.
In a country where honour and decorum are second only to God and country, this was less than tactful.
On the campaign trail and more recently in confirmation hearings, senior members of President Barack Obama's team have questioned the effectiveness and honesty of Hamid Karzai's government.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's written statement to Congress during her confirmation hearing called Afghanistan a "narco-state" that was "plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption".
She may have been wise enough not to use the phrase in her public testimony but by the time it was reported on the front page of the newspapers in Kabul, it did not really make much difference.
'Potential impediment'
Earlier in January the Nato secretary-general wrote an opinion piece about the lack of leadership in the country, laying the blame not at the feet of the Taleban but the lack of governance.
Then there was a recent article in the New York Times. Quoting anonymous "senior administration officials", it said Washington planned to take a tougher-line with Kabul and that Hamid Karzai was now regarded as "a potential impediment to American goals" in the country.
Hamid Karzai is an avid reader of the Western press and is known to be highly sensitive to criticisms they may have of him. Publicly he has not responded but he is now under considerable pressure.
His government's writ is limited to Kabul, the north and a few urban spots elsewhere in the country.
His own popularity has fallen and some whisper privately and mischievously about his "state of mind".
When asked whether the country was heading towards a crisis, one senior political figure responded that the country was already in one.
Old Afghan hand
President Karzai has been holding a series of meetings with former Mujahedeen commanders in the past few weeks amid suggestions that he is trying to align the country with Russia.
That has certainly been his public stance. As well as a deliberately leaked "letter of understanding" with Moscow, President Karzai publicly warned America that unless it supplied the military hardware he wanted, he would look to other countries for support.
No-one was in a moment's doubt who this meant. The Russian ambassador, Zamir Kabulov, an old Afghan hand, was seen strutting around parliament last week.
He has warned that the US and Nato are repeating the same mistakes of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As he was posted to the Soviet Embassy at the time, his opinion is worth considering.
Now President Karzai has sent a document to Nato outlining new "rules of engagement". If implemented they would substantially alter the mandate for foreign forces in the country.
It seems inconceivable that there could be a real and lasting schism between Kabul and Washington. It will be the job of Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, to ensure that does not happen.
But the date has been set for Afghanistan's presidential election and the West's disappointment with Hamid Karzai can no longer be disguised.
A number of challengers are jostling for American support and in the current climate, their chances are starting to improve.
View original source
Hamid Karzai has become increasingly vociferous in his criticism of American military tactics and has been making half-hearted threats to shift his allegiance to Moscow if he does not get his way.
Washington has yet to publicly declare its hand but a series of well-placed leaks, briefs and snubs have raised the prospect that it could move its support elsewhere in this year's presidential election.
One Afghan newspaper spoke of "a new cold war".
A senior Afghan government official says the new Obama administration has insulted President Karzai and one prominent MP accuses America of "running a shadow-government".
'Narco-state'
The decline in relations began with a visit last year by Joe Biden, now the vice-president, to Kabul.
At the time, as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, he attended a private meeting with Mr Karzai.
A well-placed source describes Mr Biden, exasperated at not getting "straight answers" on drugs and corruption, launching into a verbal tirade and storming out of the meeting.
In a country where honour and decorum are second only to God and country, this was less than tactful.
On the campaign trail and more recently in confirmation hearings, senior members of President Barack Obama's team have questioned the effectiveness and honesty of Hamid Karzai's government.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's written statement to Congress during her confirmation hearing called Afghanistan a "narco-state" that was "plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption".
She may have been wise enough not to use the phrase in her public testimony but by the time it was reported on the front page of the newspapers in Kabul, it did not really make much difference.
'Potential impediment'
Earlier in January the Nato secretary-general wrote an opinion piece about the lack of leadership in the country, laying the blame not at the feet of the Taleban but the lack of governance.
Then there was a recent article in the New York Times. Quoting anonymous "senior administration officials", it said Washington planned to take a tougher-line with Kabul and that Hamid Karzai was now regarded as "a potential impediment to American goals" in the country.
Hamid Karzai is an avid reader of the Western press and is known to be highly sensitive to criticisms they may have of him. Publicly he has not responded but he is now under considerable pressure.
His government's writ is limited to Kabul, the north and a few urban spots elsewhere in the country.
His own popularity has fallen and some whisper privately and mischievously about his "state of mind".
When asked whether the country was heading towards a crisis, one senior political figure responded that the country was already in one.
Old Afghan hand
President Karzai has been holding a series of meetings with former Mujahedeen commanders in the past few weeks amid suggestions that he is trying to align the country with Russia.
That has certainly been his public stance. As well as a deliberately leaked "letter of understanding" with Moscow, President Karzai publicly warned America that unless it supplied the military hardware he wanted, he would look to other countries for support.
No-one was in a moment's doubt who this meant. The Russian ambassador, Zamir Kabulov, an old Afghan hand, was seen strutting around parliament last week.
He has warned that the US and Nato are repeating the same mistakes of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As he was posted to the Soviet Embassy at the time, his opinion is worth considering.
Now President Karzai has sent a document to Nato outlining new "rules of engagement". If implemented they would substantially alter the mandate for foreign forces in the country.
It seems inconceivable that there could be a real and lasting schism between Kabul and Washington. It will be the job of Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, to ensure that does not happen.
But the date has been set for Afghanistan's presidential election and the West's disappointment with Hamid Karzai can no longer be disguised.
A number of challengers are jostling for American support and in the current climate, their chances are starting to improve.
View original source
Obama hints at talks with Taleban
President Obama has suggested there could be talks with moderate elements of the Taleban in Afghanistan as part of a process of reconciliation.
Mr Obama told the New York Times that US forces in Iraq had persuaded some Islamic radicals alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda to co-operate.
He said there might be similar opportunities in Afghanistan, although the situation there was more complex.
Asked if the US was winning in Afghanistan, Mr Obama replied: "No."
A month into his presidency, Mr Obama authorised the deployment of up to 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan.
“ You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes ”
President Obama
More than seven years after US-led forces ousted the Taleban regime in Afghanistan shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks in America, the militants have regrouped and are waging an intensifying insurgency.
At an event on Sunday in Kabul to mark International Women's Day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said it was "good news" that Mr Obama had backed talks with moderate elements of the Taleban.
"This is the Afghan government's long stand," he said. "We wanted this and we support and stand with them to bring peace and stability to this land."
Correspondents say the notion of reconciliation with the fundamentalist Islamic movement appears to be gathering momentum as a way of reining in the escalating violence in Afghanistan.
Mr Obama and his advisors are reviewing the US strategy on Afghanistan, and have looked at what has worked in Iraq.
"There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region," he told the New York Times on board Air Force One.
After discussing US success in reaching out to its enemies in Iraq, Mr Obama added: "The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex.
"You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes.
"Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge.
"I think we still have to think about how do we deal with that kind of scenario," he added.
Some foreign diplomats have also long advocated moves to reach out to the Taleban or at least moderate elements within the group, in search of a political settlement.
This weekend a former British special forces commander said the UK's effort in Afghanistan was "worthless".
"We hold tiny areas of ground in Helmand and we are kidding ourselves if we think our influence goes beyond 500 metres of our security bases," ex-SAS commander Maj Sebastian Morley told a newspaper.
'Irreconcilables'
Correspondents say coalition forces face three types of insurgent in Afghanistan:
- fighters with links to al-Qaeda (deemed to be irreconcilable to the Kabul government)
- nationalists, whose primary aim is to expel foreign forces
Afghans who joined the insurgency for personal reasons, such as abuse at the hands of the authorities - Security analysts believe the last two types of fighter could eventually be reconciled to the government.
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Big rise in head teacher sackings
The number of senior secondary leaders sacked each year has increased five-fold, with at least 150 dismissed in England last year, research suggests.
The Association of School and College Leaders says the pressure to turn round struggling schools is "unrealistic".
ASCL leader Dr John Dunford drew similarities to the world of top-flight football management, where managers can be forced out almost overnight.
But ministers say children do not have time to lose during their school years.
ASCL found that £4.3m was paid in compensation to their dismissed secondary school leaders in England last year.
In most cases, compensation for a contract terminated early would be paid by the local authority or out of school funds.
In 2004-05, the ASCL contacted all its members who were senior leaders in secondary schools, and found just 30 had lost their jobs. Last year the figure was 150.
The association believes that the increase in dismissals is down to the higher expectations placed upon school leaders to turn around school results.
The ease with which school leaders can be sacked will act as a disincentive to those wishing to work in challenging school, the union says.
Pressure
"Some heads are losing their jobs without being given adequate time," said ASCL General Secretary, Dr John Dunford.
"The LEAs or governing bodies may pull the trigger, but there is often somebody else loading the gun."
He said the culture was changing in schools and there was no longer the security of tenure of the past.
"I have no problem with a degree of pressure to improve performance," he said.
"We all expect that in services. But sometimes the existing head teacher could achieve the results with more support."
On occasions heads were being sacked over a weekend, he said, although he accepted there was "on rare occasions" a need for urgency.
On the comparison to the quick-fire approach in football management, he said: "Governments and local authorities are often not going through the normal competency procedure, and our heads have to be appropriately compensated."
ASCL says that of the 150 sacked last year, half were dismissed from "National Challenge" schools or schools being turned into Academies.
The National Challenge requires schools to achieve 30% of all pupils attaining five good GCSE grades including maths and English. The government targets schools not achieving this benchmark with particular support, to ensure results improve.
When an new Academy is formed, often from a low-performing school, the private sponsor and the government may wish to appoint a new senior leadership team.
The government said that high quality leadership was vital to turning around poorly-performing schools as quickly as possible, but that where schools were making good progress, it was right to keep its leaders in place.
Schools Minister, Jim Knight, said all decisions on school leadership were rightly for governing bodies and local authorities.
He said: "No school should accept low attainment as the status quo, and the great strength of the National Challenge has been its ability to diagnose individual schools' problems and provide the resources to solve the issues holding schools back.
"Of course, in some cases, this has turned the spotlight on senior leadership teams."
He added that a career as a head teacher was more attractive than ever to teachers.
View original source
The Association of School and College Leaders says the pressure to turn round struggling schools is "unrealistic".
ASCL leader Dr John Dunford drew similarities to the world of top-flight football management, where managers can be forced out almost overnight.
But ministers say children do not have time to lose during their school years.
ASCL found that £4.3m was paid in compensation to their dismissed secondary school leaders in England last year.
In most cases, compensation for a contract terminated early would be paid by the local authority or out of school funds.
In 2004-05, the ASCL contacted all its members who were senior leaders in secondary schools, and found just 30 had lost their jobs. Last year the figure was 150.
The association believes that the increase in dismissals is down to the higher expectations placed upon school leaders to turn around school results.
The ease with which school leaders can be sacked will act as a disincentive to those wishing to work in challenging school, the union says.
Pressure
"Some heads are losing their jobs without being given adequate time," said ASCL General Secretary, Dr John Dunford.
"The LEAs or governing bodies may pull the trigger, but there is often somebody else loading the gun."
He said the culture was changing in schools and there was no longer the security of tenure of the past.
"I have no problem with a degree of pressure to improve performance," he said.
"We all expect that in services. But sometimes the existing head teacher could achieve the results with more support."
On occasions heads were being sacked over a weekend, he said, although he accepted there was "on rare occasions" a need for urgency.
On the comparison to the quick-fire approach in football management, he said: "Governments and local authorities are often not going through the normal competency procedure, and our heads have to be appropriately compensated."
ASCL says that of the 150 sacked last year, half were dismissed from "National Challenge" schools or schools being turned into Academies.
The National Challenge requires schools to achieve 30% of all pupils attaining five good GCSE grades including maths and English. The government targets schools not achieving this benchmark with particular support, to ensure results improve.
When an new Academy is formed, often from a low-performing school, the private sponsor and the government may wish to appoint a new senior leadership team.
The government said that high quality leadership was vital to turning around poorly-performing schools as quickly as possible, but that where schools were making good progress, it was right to keep its leaders in place.
Schools Minister, Jim Knight, said all decisions on school leadership were rightly for governing bodies and local authorities.
He said: "No school should accept low attainment as the status quo, and the great strength of the National Challenge has been its ability to diagnose individual schools' problems and provide the resources to solve the issues holding schools back.
"Of course, in some cases, this has turned the spotlight on senior leadership teams."
He added that a career as a head teacher was more attractive than ever to teachers.
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Police arrest Thai website editor
Police in Thailand have arrested the editor of a leading political website, on charges of carrying content that threatens national security.
The Bangkok-based Prachatai website is well-known for carrying content that Thai newspapers will not publish.
The charge carries a maximum five-year jail sentence.
Thailand's reputation for media freedom has suffered in recent years, in particular through lese-majeste laws, which ban criticism of the monarchy.
Armed with an arrest warrant Thai police entered the offices of Prachatai, and detained Chiranuch Premchaiporn, the woman who founded the popular news website five years ago.
She has been charged under a new law which makes it an offence to carry computer content that endangers national security.
Freedom of expression
When asked to explain what kind of content had brought about the charge, the police refused to comment, saying it was too sensitive.
But one officer, who did not want to be named, told the BBC it was comments about the monarchy posted by readers on the website at the end of last year that were at issue.
The Thai authorities have been increasingly intolerant of perceived criticism of the monarchy in recent months.
Thousands of websites have been blocked, and a number of people charged and arrested, including a well-known academic, who fled to Britain before he could be detained.
However the use of the severe lese-majeste law has provoked widespread condemnation around the world, and a campaign by academics to have the law changed.
By instead invoking the new computer crimes law - passed just 18 months ago - the authorities may be hoping to stifle debate about the monarchy without stirring up another outcry over freedom of expression in Thailand.
View original source
The Bangkok-based Prachatai website is well-known for carrying content that Thai newspapers will not publish.
The charge carries a maximum five-year jail sentence.
Thailand's reputation for media freedom has suffered in recent years, in particular through lese-majeste laws, which ban criticism of the monarchy.
Armed with an arrest warrant Thai police entered the offices of Prachatai, and detained Chiranuch Premchaiporn, the woman who founded the popular news website five years ago.
She has been charged under a new law which makes it an offence to carry computer content that endangers national security.
Freedom of expression
When asked to explain what kind of content had brought about the charge, the police refused to comment, saying it was too sensitive.
But one officer, who did not want to be named, told the BBC it was comments about the monarchy posted by readers on the website at the end of last year that were at issue.
The Thai authorities have been increasingly intolerant of perceived criticism of the monarchy in recent months.
Thousands of websites have been blocked, and a number of people charged and arrested, including a well-known academic, who fled to Britain before he could be detained.
However the use of the severe lese-majeste law has provoked widespread condemnation around the world, and a campaign by academics to have the law changed.
By instead invoking the new computer crimes law - passed just 18 months ago - the authorities may be hoping to stifle debate about the monarchy without stirring up another outcry over freedom of expression in Thailand.
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UN fails to agree on Sudan action
Key powers at the United Nations have failed to agree on a statement asking Sudan to reverse its decision to expel aid agencies.
The UN Security Council was holding its first meeting since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.
Sudan's decision to expel 13 aid agencies has been widely condemned.
Khartoum's UN ambassador denied the expulsions were politically-motivated, levelling accusations at the agencies.
"We have a full dossier of information against those organisations," Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed said.
"They are messing up everything as far as stability and security of Darfur is concerned. They are abusing the hospitality of the Sudanese people," the AFP news agency reported him as saying.
Council split
The latest criticism of Sudan came from US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, who called the move callous and reckless.
She said the move threatened the lives of innocents, and that the US was "gravely concerned" at the situation.
"The humanitarian situation in the country is already dire and this callous step threatens the lives of innocents already suffering from years of war and upheaval."
The key powers at the UN Security Council - Russia, China, France, the US and Britain - met to discuss a statement which called on Sudan to reverse the expulsions.
But diplomats say China, Sudan's key ally and trading partner, objected.
A delegation from the African Union and the Arab League is due in New York soon to ask the Security Council to suspend the war crimes case against Sudan's president.
The council is divided: China, Russia and African countries are in favour, says the BBC's Laura Trevelyan, at the United Nations.
They say the case undermines efforts to bring peace to Darfur, she adds, while the US, UK and France say there is no reason to halt proceedings.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for Mr Bashir on 4 March, accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
It is the first such warrant served against a serving head of state.
View original source
The UN Security Council was holding its first meeting since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.
Sudan's decision to expel 13 aid agencies has been widely condemned.
Khartoum's UN ambassador denied the expulsions were politically-motivated, levelling accusations at the agencies.
"We have a full dossier of information against those organisations," Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed said.
"They are messing up everything as far as stability and security of Darfur is concerned. They are abusing the hospitality of the Sudanese people," the AFP news agency reported him as saying.
Council split
The latest criticism of Sudan came from US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, who called the move callous and reckless.
She said the move threatened the lives of innocents, and that the US was "gravely concerned" at the situation.
"The humanitarian situation in the country is already dire and this callous step threatens the lives of innocents already suffering from years of war and upheaval."
The key powers at the UN Security Council - Russia, China, France, the US and Britain - met to discuss a statement which called on Sudan to reverse the expulsions.
But diplomats say China, Sudan's key ally and trading partner, objected.
A delegation from the African Union and the Arab League is due in New York soon to ask the Security Council to suspend the war crimes case against Sudan's president.
The council is divided: China, Russia and African countries are in favour, says the BBC's Laura Trevelyan, at the United Nations.
They say the case undermines efforts to bring peace to Darfur, she adds, while the US, UK and France say there is no reason to halt proceedings.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for Mr Bashir on 4 March, accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
It is the first such warrant served against a serving head of state.
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Afghan operation is 'worthless'
The UK's operation in Afghanistan is "worthless" and akin to the start of the Vietnam war, former SAS commander Maj Sebastian Morley has said.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, he said the government had "blood on its hands" over the "unnecessary" deaths of four soldiers.
BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said many on the ground felt the campaign has been "under-resourced".
But the MoD insisted the security challenge was "manageable".
The former SAS commander resigned after Cpl Sarah Bryant and three of her colleagues died when their Snatch Land Rover hit an anti-tank mine in Helmand province in June 2008.
Cpl Bryant was the first female soldier to die in Afghanistan.
Mr Davies had said commanders had a choice of vehicles, although he has subsequently said he had not meant to cause any offence.
Speaking for the first time since his resignation, Maj Morley launched a scathing attack on the state of the military campaign as a whole.
"This is the equivalent to the start of the Vietnam conflict, there is much more to come.
"We hold tiny areas of ground in Helmand and we are kidding ourselves if we think our influence goes beyond 500 metres of our security bases.
"We go out on operations, have a punch-up with the Taleban and then go back to camp for tea. We are not holding the ground."
"I had warned (the MoD) time and time again that there were going to be needless deaths if we were not given the right equipment, and they ignored this advice. There is blood on their hands.
"There was no other vehicle to use. The simple truth is that the protection on these vehicles is inadequate and this led to the unnecessary deaths."
The BBC's Caroline Wyatt said the ex-commander sounded "profoundly disillusioned" by his experiences", adding that there were an "incredibly diverse" range of views on the progress of the campaign in Afghanistan.
However, she said: "It is a campaign that many people on the ground say has been under resourced [and] under funded on all sides."
Our correspondent pointed to the US' decision to deploy a further 17,000 military personnel to Afghanistan as evidence that the current situation in the country is problematic and there is a desire for a new strategy.
'Making progress'
A spokesman for the MoD acknowledged that the Snatch was not suitable for high-risk environments, but was "mission critical" for certain operations.
He added that new technology and state-of-the art armoured vehicles were continuing to reach Afghanistan, and the anticipated arrival of additional US troops meant the fight would be taken to the Taleban with greater vigour than ever.
"It is true that in an area the size of Helmand there is a limit to how much ground we can hold," the spokesman said.
"But that does not mean we are not making progress. We are.
"The security challenge is manageable by the available forces and the overriding mood of the local population is one of optimism and hope."
He added: "Quentin Davies has already made clear that any offence caused by remarks he made on the issue was entirely inadvertent."
View original source
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, he said the government had "blood on its hands" over the "unnecessary" deaths of four soldiers.
BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said many on the ground felt the campaign has been "under-resourced".
But the MoD insisted the security challenge was "manageable".
The former SAS commander resigned after Cpl Sarah Bryant and three of her colleagues died when their Snatch Land Rover hit an anti-tank mine in Helmand province in June 2008.
Cpl Bryant was the first female soldier to die in Afghanistan.
“ We go out on operations, have a punch-up with the Taleban and then go back to camp for tea. We are not holding the ground ”Maj Morley, 40, said he was compelled to stand down after Quentin Davies, the Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, told an "unacceptable lie" in the wake of the deaths.
Maj Sebastian Morley
Mr Davies had said commanders had a choice of vehicles, although he has subsequently said he had not meant to cause any offence.
Speaking for the first time since his resignation, Maj Morley launched a scathing attack on the state of the military campaign as a whole.
"This is the equivalent to the start of the Vietnam conflict, there is much more to come.
"We hold tiny areas of ground in Helmand and we are kidding ourselves if we think our influence goes beyond 500 metres of our security bases.
"We go out on operations, have a punch-up with the Taleban and then go back to camp for tea. We are not holding the ground."
“ The security challenge is manageable by the available forces and the overriding mood of the local population is one of optimism and hope. ”And, addressing the use of Snatch Land Rovers, which he deemed to be unsafe and prompted his decision to stand down, he said: "I had to resign.
MoD spokesman
"I had warned (the MoD) time and time again that there were going to be needless deaths if we were not given the right equipment, and they ignored this advice. There is blood on their hands.
"There was no other vehicle to use. The simple truth is that the protection on these vehicles is inadequate and this led to the unnecessary deaths."
The BBC's Caroline Wyatt said the ex-commander sounded "profoundly disillusioned" by his experiences", adding that there were an "incredibly diverse" range of views on the progress of the campaign in Afghanistan.
However, she said: "It is a campaign that many people on the ground say has been under resourced [and] under funded on all sides."
Our correspondent pointed to the US' decision to deploy a further 17,000 military personnel to Afghanistan as evidence that the current situation in the country is problematic and there is a desire for a new strategy.
'Making progress'
A spokesman for the MoD acknowledged that the Snatch was not suitable for high-risk environments, but was "mission critical" for certain operations.
He added that new technology and state-of-the art armoured vehicles were continuing to reach Afghanistan, and the anticipated arrival of additional US troops meant the fight would be taken to the Taleban with greater vigour than ever.
"It is true that in an area the size of Helmand there is a limit to how much ground we can hold," the spokesman said.
"But that does not mean we are not making progress. We are.
"The security challenge is manageable by the available forces and the overriding mood of the local population is one of optimism and hope."
He added: "Quentin Davies has already made clear that any offence caused by remarks he made on the issue was entirely inadvertent."
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