Elsewhere Today (394)
Aljazeera:
Nato chiefs want no curbs in Afghanistan
Saturday 09 September 2006, 17:42 Makka Time, 14:42 GMT
Defence chiefs from Nato's 26 nations have agreed that they need more troops and fewer limitations on the use of their forces to step up the fight against insurgents in the violent south of Afghanistan.
General Ray Henault, the Canadian general who chaired talks among national defence chiefs in Warsaw, told a news conference on Saturday:"Our collective assessment is that we are satisfied with military-related progress to date, particularly in the north and in the west, but less so in the south."
No pledges of extra troops were announced after two days of talks but Nato officials said the defence chiefs had agreed to consult with their capitals on reinforcements to tackle fiercer-than-expected Taliban resistance.
Asked whether the defence chiefs had indicated that they would come up with 2,000-2,500 troops, which Nato planners say they want for an offensive against Taliban insurgents in the south, he said:
"I can't give you the exact number; but the chiefs of defence are very aware of requirements...Raising the number of troops will be a political decision."
Henault said they also agreed to review the caveats, or restrictions imposed by individual Nato nations on what their troops could do, ranging from a ban on night-flying to deployments in direct combat in the violent south.
"In our meeting, we discussed national caveats and pressed for the need to reduce them to the minimum possible," he said.
Nato casualties
Nato says it has killed more than 300 insurgents and cornered hundreds more in the south since it launched its biggest offensive against the Taliban a week ago. The Taliban denies the figures.
British, Dutch and Canadian troops leading the mission in the south are taking almost daily casualties in what is the toughest ground combat mission in Nato's 57-year history.
Under pressure from Washington to do more, Nato expanded its operations from the north, west and Kabul to the south a month ago despite nations having only come up with about 85 per cent of military requests for troops and equipment.
But alliance leaders acknowledged on Thursday that they had underestimated the strength of Taliban opposition and called on countries to fill remaining commitments amounting to 2,000 to 2,500 troops plus helicopters and transport aircraft.
Germany, which leads Nato operations in the relatively quiet north, is seen under pressure to make reinforcements available despite vocal political opposition in Berlin to such a move.
Nato commanders until recently insisted that caveats, long a bane of other Nato operations, were not an issue in Afghanistan.
But the rising violence in Afghanistan appears to have prompted them to call for greater flexibility in how they can use troops.
Reuters
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AF9A8CE5-A853-4909-AF43-DA21D3119555.htm
allAfrica: Parliamentary Polls Results Out,
No Party Gains Majority
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
September 8, 2006
Bukavu
No single party gained a parliamentary majority in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the results of legislative elections announced on Friday by the Independent Electoral Commission.
The political parties needed to win 251 out of 500 parliamentary seats to guarantee control of the legislature and nominate the country's next prime minister.
The Parti du peuple pour la reconstruction et la democratie (PPRD), led by incumbent President Joseph Kabila, won 111 of the seats, ahead of Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba's Mouvement pour la libération du Congo (MLC) party, which won 64 seats.
Kabila and Bemba are due to face off in the second round of presidential elections on 29 October, having won 44.8 percent and 20 percent of the votes, respectively.
"We now have to wait and see how future alliances will evolve," Dieudonne Mirimo, the commission's spokesman, said on Friday.
He said the 150 independent candidates elected might determine the shape of future alliances.
Besides the PPRD and the MLC, the Parti Lumumbiste Unifies (PALU), led by veteran politician Antoine Gizenga, 83, emerged third with 34 seats. This order reflects the results of the presidential poll announced on 20 August, which ranked the candidates in the same order.
Mirimo said Gizenga's decision would determine the shape of the government, regardless of a parliamentary majority or the second round of the presidential elections.
Although he has not stated his future position, analysts consider Gizenga ideologically close to former President Laurent Desire Kabila, having fought alongside him against Mobutu Sese Seko, whom Kabila ousted in 1997.
"Given the current situation, we will have a parliament without a clear majority," said Philipe Biyoya, a professor of political science and constitutional affairs at the Universite Protestante of Congo. "We risk having a parliament where party politics will take precedence over the legislative agenda."
He added: "To avoid gridlock and ensure stability in government, the politicians must be pragmatic enough to negotiate a viable coalition between the major parties."
The Electoral Commission has 15 days to set the date for the new session of parliament.
From Monday, the Supreme Court will have two months to rule on appeals lodged by losers in the election. The court, which would also give the final verdict in the presidential elections, has invalidated petitions denouncing massive fraud and numerous irregularities against the provisional results.
However, the court has yet to rule on two petitions filed by the parties challenging the constitutionality of the electoral calendar.
These parties regard as unconstitutional the 29 October date for the second round of the presidential elections as the country's constitution and the electoral law requires this be done within 15 days of the publication of the final results.
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Copyright © 2006 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200609080239.html
Asia Times:
How hi-tech Hezbollah called the shots
By Iason Athanasiadis
Sep 9, 2006
BEIRUT - Hezbollah's ability to repel the Israel Defense Forces during the recent conflict was largely due to its use of intelligence techniques gleaned from allies Iran and Syria that allowed it to monitor encoded Israeli communications relating to battlefield actions, according to Israeli officials, whose claims have been independently corroborated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
"Israeli EW [electronic warfare] systems were unable to jam the systems at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, they proved unable to jam Hezbollah's command and control links from Lebanon to Iranian facilities in Syria, they blocked the Barak ship anti-missile systems, and they hacked into Israeli operations communications in the field," Richard Sale, the longtime intelligence editor for United Press International, who was alerted to this intelligence failure by current and former CIA officials, told Asia Times Online.
The ability to hack into Israel's military communications gave Hezbollah a decisive battlefield advantage, aside from allowing it to dominate the media war by repeatedly intercepting reports of the casualties it had inflicted and announcing them through its television station, Al-Manar. Al-Manar's general director, Abdallah Kassir, would not comment on the information-gathering methods that had allowed it to preempt Israel's casualty announcements, but he admitted he was in constant contact with Hezbollah's military wing.
When Israeli troops invaded southern Lebanon, they found themselves bogged down in stronger-than-expected Hezbollah resistance. The story of the handful of Hezbollah militants who single-handedly defended the border village of Aita Shaab has already become legend. Ultimately, Israel decided that the only way to neutralize them was to carpet-bomb the village, reducing it to rubble in the process.
Part of the reason for Hezbollah's decisive battlefield performance was that it was gleaning valuable information by monitoring telephone conversations in Hebrew between Israeli reservists and their families on their personal mobile phones.
"If an enemy sets up a small group of EW people familiar with the terrain and reasonably aware of the current tactical situation, a stream of in-the-clear calls could have been a gold mine of information mentioned inadvertently," said Sale, quoting a CIA official.
A London Sunday Times article titled "Humbling of the super-troops shatters Israeli army morale" reported the story last week. It stated that Hezbollah was "able to crack the codes and follow the fast-changing frequencies of Israeli radio communications, intercepting reports of the casualties they had inflicted again and again".
The development marks a potential turning point in the region's strategic balance. Hezbollah's ability to repel Israel's elite troops marked the first time that an Arab force had frustrated a concerted invasion scenario by Israel. This has led to a concerted rethink on the part of the Israeli leadership, in which it is being assisted by American experts, according to Israeli intelligence website DEBKAfile.
It adds that the American experts are particularly focused on how Iranian EW installed in Lebanese army coastal radar stations blocked the Barak anti-missile missiles aboard Israeli warships, allowing Hezbollah to hit at least one Israeli corvette, the Hanith.
"Assuming that these capabilities came from Syria and Iran, most probably by way of Russia and China, one would have to believe that both the US and Israel have learned from the experience, and that leaning process will be applied in future conflicts," said Robert Freedman, Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone professor of political science at the Baltimore Hebrew University.
The Debka article also claims that Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah was hosted throughout the war in an underground war-room beneath the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. Iranian involvement was suspected throughout the conflict, and a captured Hezbollah guerrilla confessed on Israeli television to have visited Iran for training. The most able and committed Hezbollah guerrillas usually visit Iran for religious indoctrination and training in the firing of non-Katyusha rocketry.
"It [the technological breakthrough] may mean that the US and Israel no longer have the ability to operate at lower levels of violence on a supreme basis," said a Middle East analyst. "The playing field is more leveled. This may mean more diplomacy or it may mean more, and more concentrated, violence."
Iran and Syria advanced their SIGINT (SIGnals INTelligence - intelligence-gathering by interception of signals) cooperation last November, as part of a joint strategic defense cooperation accord aimed at consolidating the strategic aspect of their long-term alliance. Aside from being an invaluable help to Hezbollah, the ability to read Israeli and US codes could aid Iran in monitoring US movements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It goes to the heart of one of the factors ... routinely regarded as one of the clear advantages for all First World versus Third World nations or forces - electronic warfare and secure communications," said Gary Sick, who was national security adviser under US president Jimmy Carter. "We are supposed to be able to read and interfere with their communications, not vice versa. A lot of calculations are based on that premise."
Iason Athanasiadis is an Iran-based correspondent.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI09Ak01.html
Asia Times:
Turkey's high-stakes march into Lebanon
By M K Bhadrakumar
Two years ago, in a political profile of Turkish Prime Minister Racep Tayyip Erdogan, Der Spiegel came close to concluding that he could be harboring a secret dream of being an Ottoman sultan.
The German magazine was metaphorically summing up Erdogan's phenomenal march from an obscure Istanbul prison cell to Turkey's prime ministership. But the hunch was stunningly prescient, too.
Curiously, even as the Turkish parliament was bracing this week for a heated debate on the wisdom of deputing troops to Lebanon as part of the United Nations' stabilization force, Erdogan chose a forum of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to speak on the subject.
The venue of the OIC conclave was highly significant - the ornate Dolmabahce Palace overlooking the Golden Horn in Istanbul, the abode of the last Ottoman sultan, Mehmet VI. Referring to the Levant, Erdogan said, "We can't forget our historic responsibility as an OIC member."
With these few words, Erdogan at once summoned memories of the Caliphate and a host of images from a distant past that modern Turkey has consciously tried to obliterate. Earlier in the evening, Erdogan was quoted as saying that a nation cut off from its past would have no future. "We should own our values," he said.
It is therefore not in the least bit surprising that the decision by the Turkish government to depute troops to Lebanon - duly endorsed by the Turkish parliament in a majority vote on Tuesday - has virtually split the country's polity into two distinct worlds.
What Erdogan perceives as Turkey's age-old "values" becomes heresy for the political opposition, which perceives it as nothing less than an invidious attempt by the Islamist ruling party to bury Kemal Ataturk's legacy of Turkey as a staunchly secular democratic-state model in the Muslim world.
In this context, referring to the pressure on the Turkish government from the United States over the Lebanon deployment, Cumhuriyet newspaper, the flag carrier of "Ataturkism" in the Turkish media, wrote, "The Bush administration is pushing Turkey to be an Islamic state favoring the US, and ignoring the solution of a secular, democratic-state model in a Muslim society."
The 340-192 vote in parliament authorizing the government to deploy a naval force for one year to patrol the waters off Lebanon, and possibly Turkish ground troops of an unspecified number, might appear deceptively simple. Actually, the topic proved to be highly divisive, with significant sections of public opinion, the country's president and all political parties other than the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) vehemently opposing the move. Dissident opinion is apparently sizable even within the AKP.
The Islamist and nationalist camps argue that the Turkish contingent in Lebanon might come to be viewed as an occupation force, which would work against "Islamic solidarity" and hurt Turkey's long-term interests. The nationalists abhor the very idea of Turkey getting entangled in any manner in the Israeli-Arab conflict. They argue that Turkey ought to concentrate attention on the pressing challenge to national security posed by Kurdish separatism.
"Leave aside Palestine; the primary interest is in Mount Kandil and Kirkuk," said top nationalist leader and former deputy prime minister Devlet Bahceli, in reference to Kurdish militant strongholds in Turkey and Iraq, respectively.
There is widespread concern that the United Nations stabilization force will be called on incrementally to serve US-Israeli interests and will prove incapable of protecting the Lebanese people from future Israeli aggression. Overarching all this is the pervasive skepticism about Turkey identifying with the United States' controversial "New Middle East" project.
In a televised address to the nation, Erdogan made a forceful case for his decision. He said the only way to safeguard Turkey's interests would be by involving itself in the region, rather than remaining a "mere bystander"; the political opposition was "failing to comprehend world realities"; Turkey's "elevated interests" demanded involvement and any failure to do so "amounted to a betrayal of our past"; the preconditions for Turkey's deployment of troops were fulfilled (a UN mandate, a ceasefire and acceptability of a Turkish military presence by all parties concerned).
Erdogan ruled out any involvement of the Turkish contingent in a combat role or in any task to disarm Hezbollah. He said, "Hezbollah is a sovereign matter for Lebanon and is an interlocutor of the Lebanese government. It is out of the question for the UN peacekeeping force to be drawn into any task of disarming Hezbollah."
Stepping into a quagmire
The government's sensitivity has to be viewed against the backdrop of Turkey's foreign policy, which is traditionally aimed at avoiding the quagmire in the Middle East - a course originally set by Ataturk, the father of the modern Turkish state. Thus Turkey consistently refrained from taking sides in the countless vanity fairs and disputes among its Arab neighbors (who were historically part of the Ottoman Empire), or in the 50-year Arab-Israeli conflict.
This policy ensured that Turkey kept out of wars and made no fierce enemies in the region, though a deleterious side-effect, arguably, was that Turkey had no firm friends in its neighborhood, either.
Erdogan is now relegating to history that chapter of "masterly inactivity" in Turkey's Middle East policy. This hasn't happened all of a sudden. In his past three years in power, Erdogan dexterously took a huge arc, almost unobtrusively for the most part, of shifting the course of Turkish policy.
He followed a two-pronged approach. Even as he counted on the Foreign Ministry to maintain diplomatic ties with Israel on an even keel, he himself resorted to a "tilt" toward Turkey's Arab brethren at the political level. The "tilt" took the form of a more vocal stance within the OIC, intensified political exchanges with Arab countries, dealings with Hamas in Palestine, a warming of relations with Syria and Iran, and Erdogan himself directing an occasional barb or two against Israel.
Thus Turkey's political leadership blamed Israel for the latest flare-up in the Middle East, and was manifestly reluctant to criticize Hezbollah. Erdogan resorted to sharp rhetoric at the OIC's emergency meeting on Lebanon held in Kuala Lumpur on August 3. He said: "No justification can show what is happening [in Lebanon] to be innocent. This war that we are witnessing can never be accepted as legitimate by any means. It cannot be defended."
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul strode further ahead in an article in the Washington Post: "Throughout the world, the same question is being asked: Why has the sole superpower, which alone has the capability to stop this tragedy, turned a blind eye to the images of human suffering and a deaf ear to the cries for mercy? The grave tragedy that has been unfolding before our eyes in Lebanon, and the inability of the international community to bring it to an end after three weeks of suffering, unfortunately raise questions about the US and its proud legacy of leadership for freedom and justice."
Interestingly, both Washington and Jerusalem took such strident criticism calmly, estimating probably the need for the Turkish leadership to ride the crest of domestic opinion that was so overwhelmingly surcharged over the US-Israeli axis in the Middle East.
What are Erdogan's calculations? First, the Turkish military and political leaderships want to regain the ground lost in Ankara's equations with the administration of US President George W Bush after the rejection by the Turkish parliament in March 2003 of the idea of deployment of US troops on Turkish soil in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Second, in political terms, Erdogan has been bearing the brunt of the chill in US-Turkey relations. A fresh turn offers itself during his forthcoming official visit to Washington on October 6-7. US backing will become useful for him politically when Turkey prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections next year. Erdogan is equally conscious that his Islamist credentials are useful for the US in the Middle East's politics.
Third, Erdogan intends to enhance Turkey's profile as a key player in the region. He hopes that along with Turkey's regional standing, his own leadership role in the Muslim world will get a fillip, and that in turn is bound to have resonance in the Islamic constituency in Turkey, especially if he projects himself as a candidate in the presidential election in May.
Finally, through a significant military presence in Lebanon, Ankara will be drawing the attention of the European Union once again to Turkey's unmatchable role as a bridge between the Western world and Muslim Middle East.
But there are dangers in Erdogan's audacious decision. First, there are inherent uncertainties in the Lebanon situation over which Turkey has no influence. Second, what today begins as a benign peacekeeping mission by the UN can transform in due course.
Third, Erdogan may believe that Turkey has a natural role to play in the Middle East but, as Michael Rubin, former Pentagon official and prominent Middle East expert with the American Enterprise Institute, put it, "His [Erdogan's] neo-Ottomanism aside, he is neither trusted by the Israelis nor the Lebanese. Many in Israel will not forgive his statements of sympathy for Palestinian terrorist groups, and the Lebanese remember that when they had their Cedar Revolution and the world was pressuring Syria to preserve Lebanese freedom, Erdogan chose Damascus over Beirut."
Most important, Ankara is pinning hopes on Washington's capacity to appreciate its gesture. Whereas peacekeepers, when successful, are soon forgotten, in Lebanon, on the other hand, the chances of things going wrong are real, which would make Turkish participation risky.
But what will matter to the Turkish leadership (civilian and military) is the extent to which Washington is willing to reciprocate Turkey's goodwill by cooperating with Turkey's "war on terror" against the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). There is uneasiness in Ankara whether Washington will go beyond a few cosmetic moves aimed at appeasing Turkey, and proceed to take concrete steps against the Kurdish guerrillas.
To be sure, Bush's recent pledges of a larger anti-PKK effort had an effect on Erdogan. As National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley acknowledged, the PKK matter is "something we [Washington] have to address more aggressively. The president has made that assurance to Prime Minister Erdogan, and I think he was relieved. Now we've got to deliver on it."
The problem is, Washington has made such pledges in the past by way of appeasing Ankara and keeping it from intervening forcefully in northern Iraq. If Turkish expectations are not fulfilled this time around, Erdogan will face a serious problem, as he will be seen to be doing "America's job" in Lebanon.
And that is a public perception that Erdogan simply cannot afford with an election year looming. Turkish columnist Burak Bekdil recently explained that "anti-Americanism" in Turkey had traversed ideological divides and now is an apolitical phenomenon.
Bekdil wrote: "Islamists, nationalists, Kemalists, liberals, social democrats, leftists, your cleaning lady, the waiter at your favorite restaurant, the owner of the shop on the corner, the taxi driver, even the modern Turkish youth who 'try to live like the Americans' are anti-American."
Washington's moves on the PKK issue, therefore, will be a litmus test for Ankara. The Bush administration recently issued an appeal to the PKK to lay down arms. But a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman curtly reacted, "We found the statement somewhat odd, because we would expect the US to take rather more concrete steps instead of a statement expressing the obvious."
Again, Washington has appointed retired General Joseph Ralston as a "coordinator" for the PKK matter. But according to top Turkish commentator Fatih Altayli, this only "caused annoyance" to Turkish security agencies, which felt that the move held no "meaning" for Turkey as there was "no need for such a coordination group". Altayli quoted Turkish intelligence sources as sensing a "dangerous aspect" to Washington's decision, since "if a US coordinator, who will have an official title, meets with the PKK, and that, too, with Turkey's approval, and performs the role of a go-between for Turkey and the PKK, then Turkey will face a fait accompli".
The question once again returns like a bad coin to the war in Iraq: Can Washington afford to antagonize its Kurdish allies in northern Iraq?
All in all, therefore, Erdogan has taken Turkish policy into uncharted waters. He is indeed a brave and gifted politician with an extraordinary track record of salvaging the ground from hopeless situations. But as opposition leader Deniz Baykal described last week, Erdogan is taking on epic forces.
Baykal said, "Turkey is entering the vortex of the clash of civilizations. How sad, this is a Jewish-Muslim war! In all honesty, Turkey will gain if it keeps out. This is only the first phase of the conflict. One doesn't end the world's oldest conflict by sending in a UN peacekeeping force."
Yet settling a civilizational clash from the dawn of history would have been a tall order for even Suleyman the Magnificent (1520-66), the sultan under whom the Ottoman Empire reached its zenith.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HI09Ag01.html
Asia Times:
The Long War: A self-defeating prophecy
By Michael Vlahos
Early this year the United States entered a third stage in the war that began on September 11, 2001, as a new narrative for the conflict was unveiled: "The Long War".
In war, narrative is much more than just a story. "Narrative" may sound like a fancy literary word, but it is actually the foundation of all strategy, upon which all else - policy, rhetoric and action - is built. War narratives need to be identified and critically examined on their own terms, for they can illuminate the inner nature of the war itself.
War narrative does three essential things. First, it is the organizing framework for policy. Policy cannot exist without an interlocking foundation of "truths" that people easily accept because they appear to be self-evident and undeniable. Second, this "story" works as a framework precisely because it represents just such an existential vision. The "truths" that it asserts are culturally impossible to disassemble or even criticize. Third, having presented a war logic that is beyond dispute, the narrative then serves practically as the anointed rhetorical handbook for how the war is to be argued and described.
In the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review Report, the phrase is recurrent, with "long war", "long, global war" or "long, irregular war" appearing 34 times, including the title for the first chapter: "Fighting the Long War". The banner headline on Defenselink.mil announcing the report reads: "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war."
The story of war, twice transformed
This war - the "global war on terrorism", or GWOT - has had three distinct "stories". Or perhaps it would be better to say that the story of this war has been twice transformed. Its initial incarnation as a "war against terrorism" was a simple story of righteous retribution: kill the terrorists in their mountain lairs.
The second began with US President George W Bush's declaration of an "axis of evil". This represented a metamorphosis from a "terrorist" enemy to the image of an evil league of enemy powers, and thus the entire significance of the war was elevated. At one rhetorical stroke it was now possible to assert a war narrative equal to the most protean of US struggles. The war could now be given a commanding meaning equal to the mythic claim of World War II itself. Thus it instantly became a grander enterprise, where the transformed narrative actually demanded great efforts and even greater events.
It is the collapse of this enterprise that has birthed yet another story. This third incarnation is a tortured response to the debacle in Iraq, where messianic goals and millenarian promises went south. Thus the "Long War", formally unveiled in US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's speech to the National Press Club last February: "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war."
But the image of a long war - a dogged, "twilight struggle" - is not particularly attractive, especially if US failure and losses in Iraq are thus implicitly translated into a slow-bleeding vision of forever war. Such a picture certainly does not make the blood rush or the pulse race. To keep this effort up for "generations", as Bush is fond of saying, the purpose driving this war must be great, of course. But even more - and this is its greatest challenge - such purpose must explain the need for generations of pain and sacrifice.
As a template for the narrative of the "Long War", World War II no longer works, since the US continues to slog past anything like a V-J (Victory over Japan) Day endpoint. The Long War needs, if such a thing is possible to imagine, a story of World War II-like significance, but with an even bigger claim on Americans. Thus in Bush's words, this war is "the unfolding of a global ideological struggle, our time in history".
The enemy is not only powerful, a "great evil", it is also a "mortal danger to all humanity", the "enemy of civilization" - as though these men were somehow the antithesis of human and, perhaps even, inhuman. The enemy is not only "evil" (a word invoked like a litany), it also wages "war on the idea of human progress itself"/ Are not the "Islamo-fascists", in Bush's words, the successor evil to "the struggle against communism in the last century"?
There is the clear suggestion here that without US intervention, the radicals would succeed, and a caliphate would reign. This is what the official Long War briefing says. If we explicitly fight "Islamo-fascists" we must just as explicitly oppose everyone who supports or even sympathizes with Muslim resistance - and who knows how many Muslims "sympathize" at some level: a third, the majority? We are determined to reform and rehabilitate the degraded Arab and Persian worlds.
Already the narrative of the Long War has won over the faithful. FreeRepublic.com is probably the biggest conservative community blog. Most talk on the war there moves quickly to such declarations as: "History shows that wars only end with a totally defeated enemy otherwise they go on ... Either Islam or us [sic] will quit in total destruction." Or another: "Will it take an American Hiroshima to awaken the majority, to mobilize our masses against the Islamic quest of world domination?"
Moreover, pushing the mythic card to its fullest has worked in Washington politics. Its authority has trumped all opposition. Woe to Democrats (or even Republicans) who question the US mission in a great war. It has been narrative as fiat and law, and as fiat and law it has served the Bush administration well.
Islam's counter-narrative
The Long War - and its spectral subtext of a war of civilizations - clearly targets the US domestic audience. But what does it promise to achieve in the Muslim world? It has already achieved this: it has helped to re-create or, perhaps rather, resurface a deeply coded Muslim counter-narrative. This counter-narrative is also apocalyptic in nature, going back to Islam's 7th-century origins.
Today the United States takes on the role of great evil, of the Dajjal. By almost unwittingly becoming the "Dark Side" threatening Islam, the United States plays into the hands of the takfiri cause by making us Islam's enemy (takfiri, literally "excommunicator", are Islamic extremists who believe that anyone who disagrees with them is not a true Muslim). Do Muslims think more kindly on us when AM radio talk-show boosters of the Long War such as Dennis Prager relentlessly insist that the US is in a fight to the finish with only 100 million Muslims?
Moreover the Long War narrative threatens also forever to alienate civil Islamists. Non-violent - or even armed but non-takfiri Muslim revolutionaries - are the ummah's essential change agents. But the Long War posits a black-and-white choice between secular (or at least "moderate") Muslims on one hand and pure "Islamo-fascists" on the other. In this choice there is no place for non-takfiri, more community-based Islamists in the US camp.
The great, lost opportunity of US hopes for reform in the Arab world was with non-violent Islamists. That opportunity has now been fully squandered. In societies ruled by tyrants, quietist Islamists had come to represent an alternative hope for their communities. But in its chosen Iraqi showcase the US set about, perhaps unwittingly, to alienate the very Islamists on whom its successful rule relied.
Now they identify themselves as resisters of US occupation. They have become a model of Muslim political resistance - but these are not takfiri fighters; rather they are honest, committed Muslim authority. Such Islamist fighters represent a range of community resistance: from carefully quietist, such as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, to civil militias, such as the Shi'ites in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon. They even extend to groups at the margins of governance, such as Hamas or the Somali Courts Union.
Through this alienation we also move a traditionally more passive majority - who are not necessarily takfiri enthusiasts - closer in sympathy with resistance. In Muslim places currently under foreign occupation, popular support for resistance runs very high. Such resistance begins to develop a civic dimension, as in the popularly elected Hamas, or the various community-based militias of Iraq and even Somalia. Thus resistance goes beyond takfiri action and is moving into the realm of legitimate civic action.
At the same time, liberals in the Islamic world are now at risk of looking like collaborators. Since the US has so strongly championed liberal Muslim reformers, it has equally put them at risk of being seen as US agents in helping to subvert Islam. The US codified a nascent "collaborator" model through its extravagant and extra-official electoral support for Iyad Allawi - efforts that were rewarded by the minuscule vote he received. The "Cedar Revolution" is a media-backfire case in point, morphing as it did into an extended political coming-out party for Hezbollah.
When the US has sought to empower liberal politics in Iraq, it instantly also signified that they were anointed agents of the American Design. Like the "mayor of Kabul", also known as the president of Afghanistan, they must scramble desperately to show their Islamist bona fides, all the while guarded by blond American (or South African) praetorians. Meanwhile, the entire Islamic world has seen to what extent the United States is truly interested in the "triumph of democracy".
Where is all the democratic reform among America's "friends and allies in the region"? In Egypt, where a 20-year emergency law was arbitrarily extended? The all-powerful Egyptian state now has 15,000 uncharged prisoners in the tender mercy of its jails. If magistrates protest, they too are thrown into prison. The 88 Muslim Brothers now in parliament are becoming Egypt's only democratic alternative. Throughout it all the US government has almost nothing to say; but for more than 30 years it has had something to give: more than US$2 billion every year to the modern Pharaoh's regime.
In Bahrain, the 2001 "Dawn of Democracy" has turned out to be a false dawn. Its prince's fear of Iran - thanks to what has been happening in Iraq - has led to a betrayal of reform. The reform fiction is emblazoned in gerrymandering so flagrant that a two-thirds Shi'ite majority is legislatively disempowered. And in Saudi Arabia, reforms are going nowhere fast, and cannot be usefully encouraged by the United States, except at the ethereal margins of "public diplomacy". The much-heralded shura council is just so much eye candy for US consumption.
So, in the end, America's dark narrative prevents it from distinguishing reform and resistance movements it can live with from groups it absolutely must destroy. The Long War narrative cannot conceive of legitimate Muslim resistance against tyranny (unless, of course, as in Lebanon or Iran, the US is in favor of it first). Thus authentic resistance is automatically lumped with takfiri evil.
Shining as true apostates
And if the current Long War narrative is invoked in event of a war or armed clash with Iran, what may result? A Persian-US war could potentially elevate Iran's standing even among a majority Sunni ummah. Even now Muslims view Iran as the only nation-state that stands up to US power. A conflict with Iran would fully consolidate Muslim hostility and the perception that the United Stats represents the evil force in the world - the Dajjal - directly threatening Islam's very survival.
Thus even Shi'ite Iran might - in this exceptional situation - represent itself as the leader of Muslim resistance against the dark force. Thus one of the consequences of a Persian-US war would be to divide the Muslim world between those who resist evil and those who collaborate with it. This means that the rulers of Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Jordan and the Persian Gulf princelings - US "friends and allies" all - would now shine as true apostate traitors to Islam. They would be under enormous pressure: either to renounce their relationship with the Americans or risk internal collapse (from coup, civil war, insurgency). Either way the US loses.
The Long War is a failed narrative because it does not describe actual reality. Reality tells a story of a United States delivering change to the Muslim world, a force of creative destruction. If anything, this US-created reality only fires up the long-standing Muslim grand narrative of deliverance and restoration. Moreover, the Long War perversely elevates the takfiri narrative by telling Muslims that the US is the dark force that must be resisted.
The Long War is thus more than a failed narrative. It is a self-defeating narrative. It has prospered only because it speaks to a highly motivated domestic audience, the conservative Republican base that remains the passionate heart of the Bush administration's war policy.
There was an old theater in Montmartre that specialized in sensational and horrifying dramatic entertainments. It was called the Grand Guignol ("Big Puppet"). It is a fitting name for the strategy-trumping, domestic political theater of America's imperial court.
Michael Vlahos is principal professional staff at the National Security Analysis Department of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
For the original article, click here.
(Used by permission of the National Interest Online .)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HI09Aa01.html
Guardian:
Full house as leading 9/11 conspiracy theorist has his say
Audrey Gillan
Saturday September 9, 2006
They call it the 9/11 for Truth Movement, and tonight those who believe the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were carried out by the American government and not jihadist hijackers will gather in London's Conway Hall to listen to one of the biggest figures among a growing number of disbelievers.
Two days before the fifth anniversary of the attacks, David Ray Griffin, emeritus professor of philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont graduate university, and author of The New Pearl Harbor and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, will ask his audience: "Was 9/11 an inside job?"
He will be joined on stage by the ex-MI5 officer David Shayler, who will introduce the talk, for which tickets have almost sold out. Prof Griffin is a founder member of the 9/11 Scholars for Truth movement in the US. He is joined by 75 academics who write in books, journals and essays that they have overwhelming evidence that shatters the official version of events on that September morning.
And it seems that a growing number of people are listening to them. A recent poll in the US found that 36% of Americans believed it "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that their government was involved in allowing the attacks or had carried them out itself. There are many people in the UK who agree with them.
The theories as to what happened on that day, when almost 3,000 people were killed, differ but their unifying theme is that a neo-conservative cabal within the US government staged the events as a pretext to wage wars, become a dominant force in the world and establish "the new American century". The attacks, it is said, were not carried out by al-Qaida terrorists but were a "false flag" event used to justify invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Films have been made on the subject, websites show countless images that "back up" the claims, chatrooms are screaming with conspiracists and there is a plethora of published material. Much of this argues that the collapse of the Twin Towers was caused by a controlled demolition and not by the aeroplanes which slammed into their sides.
Ian Neal helped form the British 9/11 for Truth Movement, which he says is a "loose network of campaigners who have grown up over the past two years". The official 9/11 commission investigation into the attacks firmly dismissed the conspiracy theories, but those who expound them say this is precisely why there needs to be an independent inquiry.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,,1868479,00.html
Guardian:
Whatever happened to ... the anthrax attacks?
Iain Hollingshead
Saturday September 9, 2006
The media is slowly cranking into gear for the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, but the anthrax scares that followed soon afterwards have largely been forgotten. Five years later, the crime still remains unsolved.
While the strikes on the twin towers turned modern aeronautical technology into weapons, the anthrax attacks used the more old-fashioned nexus of "snail mail". Four letters, all containing the same Ames strain of anthrax, were sent to the New York Post, the TV channel NBC and two democratic senators.
Dated 9.11.01, but posted sporadically over the next few weeks, the letters - predictable denunciations of Israel and America - were written in childish capitals. The two letters to the media also advised them to "take Penacilin [sic] now". Identical messages to the senators contained a fictitious return address, the fourth grade of Greendale School in New Jersey. "You die now," stated the letter. "Are you afraid?"
Both senators survived, but five people did die, including two postal workers. Mass hysteria ensued when 17 more people were hospitalised. In Montana, specks of flour on hotdog buns were reported to the police as evidence of anthrax. Sales of the antibiotic Cipro went through the roof. Capitol Hill was closed for weeks, forcing staffers to set up offices in the back of their cars. The Washington Post branded them "wimps" for abandoning their desks.
The rest of the world endured a huge escalation in anthrax hoaxes. Clean-up costs in the US came to over $1bn. The FBI launched a huge investigation, called Amerithrax. After ruling out a possible al-Qaida link, it focused on domestic terrorists and then the US biodefence programme. To date, no one has been arrested and only Steven J Hatfill, a physician and bioterrorism expert, has been publicly identified as a "person of interest". After losing his job in the fallout, Hatfill issued a legal writs against the government and media organisations.
An FBI spokesperson now confirms that "two dedicated squads" are still working full-time on the case. Their profiling, however, appears worryingly vague. The suspect is apparently a "non-confrontational person, at least in his public life". He is likely to "prefer being by himself more often than not. If he is involved in a personal relationship, it will likely be of a self-serving nature." Members of the public are helpfully warned not to "open, smell or taste" suspicious packages, especially if "mailed from a foreign country" or containing "protruding wires".
In the absence of anything more concrete, it is not surprising that conspiracy theories abound. One of the more convincing explanations for the lack of progress on the scaled-down Amerithrax operation is that the suspect is privy to embarrassing government secrets. A Newsnight programme in 2002 featured one expert who believed it was a botched CIA project attempting to test the practicalities of sending anthrax through the mail. It has even been suggested that the killer was a misguided patriotic individual wanting to demonstrate the US's lack of preparedness for such an attack.
If so, he has certainly achieved his aim. In the wake of the attacks, George Bush announced a threefold increase in funding for research against biochemical threats. Last March, more than 700 US scientists signed a letter protesting that public health research was suffering as a result.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1868323,00.html
Guardian:
The D-day package from Senegal to Spain
West Africans are paying hundreds of pounds for a perilous 1,200-mile trip by open boat
Angelique Chrisafis in Los Cristianos and Claire Soares in Dakar
Saturday September 9, 2006
As sunbathers lay on the beach beneath towering hotels and British tourists browsed in a souvenir shop called Bloody Hell Offer On Ciggies, a strange vessel slowly floated into shore past the jet-skis and Jolly Roger pirate ships of Tenerife's prime package holiday resort.
The small, canoe-shaped African boat heaved with the weight of more than 100 people, staring exhausted at Los Cristianos, the concrete holiday metropolis that was their first glimpse of Europe. They had been on the Atlantic for 15 days with a single Yamaha motor and no cover from the sun.
This was the fifth boat of the day carrying men in various states of desperation. As supplies had dwindled some had gone without food for five days, others had not drunk for two days. The few who could no longer bear it had dipped a plastic mug into the sea and drunk the salt water, which had dehydrated them further and started to play tricks with their brain. Others had skin raw and bleeding from wet clothes rubbing against them for days on end - "a mixture of burns from the sea salt and the petrol from the boat's engine", said a local doctor. The unlucky ones before them had wounds so infected that limbs had to be amputated.
"Thank you father and mother," was painted in French on the side of one brightly decorated boat, towed into the port by the coastguard before police helped the men into a Red Cross field hospital. "I have left my family behind, I'm scared, but I thank God I'm alive," said a man waiting in a line for a coach that would take the group to a nearby detention camp. He had paid more than a year's savings to risk his life by sailing for two weeks through this breach in Fortress Europe. But he felt it was worth risking the 1,200-mile sea-journey that has drowned between 500 and 3,000 west Africans in makeshift wooden boats this year. All he wanted was a job. The migrants' motto in Wolof, the Senegalese language, is "Barca ou Barzakh" - "Barcelona or the afterlife".
In the past week around 3,000 illegal immigrants from west Africa have reached the Canary Islands by boat, taking advantage of a window of perfect sailing conditions from the coast of Senegal and Mauritania. Around 23,000 made it to the Spanish archipelago this year, five times the total for the whole of last year. Most have arrived in Tenerife.
"This is Spain's worst humanitarian crisis since the civil war," said Adán Martín, president of the Canaries' regional government. The former army barracks being used as detention centres across the Canaries are overflowing and the measures to patrol the coastlines are inadequate, he said. More than 700 teenagers who have arrived on boats without their parents have had to be made wards of the Spanish state. But accommodation for them is so full that a camp is being built at the top of Tenerife's mountain.
Spain's prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, this week vowed to expel the "cheating" immigrants. But almost all arrive without papers and refuse to reveal their nationality in order to avoid repatriation. Most are from Senegal which has no repatriation treaty with Spain, others are from Mali, Mauritania, Gambia and Guinea Bissau.
After the men have spent 40 days in a holding camp, the Spanish have no option but to release them, often flying them to cities such as Madrid or Valencia and leaving them on the street with a sandwich, no money and a paper requesting they leave Spain, which is easy to ignore. Hundreds have made their way to Barcelona where there is a large Senegalese community to help them. Others slip into illegal employment.
Those arriving say the passage to the Canary Islands in an open fishing boat, known as a "pirogue" or "cayuco", is referred to in Senegal as the "D-day package" after the Normandy landings. For at least £400 per person, a boat of 60 or more passengers will set out with petrol for the motor, rice, biscuits and water and gas bottles to cook and keep warm. Seventeen people died last month when a gas bottle exploded. Most of the passengers cannot swim and are scared of water so sit rigidly in one place getting sores on their backs and shoulders from rubbing against the wood.
The trip can take a week to two weeks, but there have been cases of boats getting lost and taking 20 days. Many of the boats have a global positioning device, but some malfunction. Earlier this year one boat washed up on the other side of the Atlantic in Barbados with 11 desiccated corpses on board.
High in the mountainous pine forest of northern Tenerife, Mamadou Gueye, 17, who recently arrived by boat, sat at a school desk in a teenage holding centre concentrating on his Spanish lesson.
"I'm the oldest of four, I had to come here to help my parents," Mamadou said. "It's just a normal part of life. At home everyone knows someone who has left by boat. I came in a pirogue with 140 people, none of whom I knew. We sailed for a week, eating rice. When the waves got high, the others said: 'Don't worry, as soon as we get to Spanish waters, our suffering will be over'. When I left my father said to me, 'If you need to cheer yourself up, think about football. Say your prayers, don't fight other boys and behave well.' I'll stay for five years and then go home to beautiful Senegal."
Senegal, despite its relative stability, has an unemployment rate of 40% and half the population is under 18. Of 11 million Senegalese, around 3 million are living abroad. Most are working illegally and sending home £363m in official remittances a year - equivalent to 9% of the country's GDP.
In Los Cristianos, locals in bikinis line up at the port to watch as each new boat comes in. "Soon our kids will be learning African history at school, not Spanish, and there will be no jobs for them," said one woman. A poll by Spanish radio station Cadena Ser found 89% of Spaniards thought too many people were arriving.
A handful of immigrants whose corpses came ashore in boats are buried in Tenerife's capital's cemetery in graves marked "unknown immigrant". Many locals are sad that the blue expanse around the islands are now known as the watery graves of Africa. "It's not the image we'd want," said a Spanish tourist from Bilbao.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,,1868506,00.html
Harper's Magazine:
A Cartoon
Posted on Friday, September 8, 2006. By Mr. Fish
This is A Cartoon, a cartoon by Mr. Fish, published Friday, September 8, 2006. It is part of The Cartoons of Mr. Fish: a Selection, which is part of Features, which is part of Harpers.org.
Written By
Fish, Mr.
Permanent URL
http://harpers.org/Ahmadinejad-20060908.html
il manifesto:
Terrore nei cieli di Londra Allarme rosso «à la carte»
Complotti Il «nuovo 11 settembre» di Londra era una bufala?
Del grande complotto estivo sventato a Londra restano solo le presunte rivendicazioni-video degli aspiranti martiri. E «lettere di suicidi» dice la polizia. «Solo il testamento di papà, vecchio di dieci anni», replica l'avvocato Né bombe né biglietti Il NYTimes: non imminenti gli attentati agli aerei. Ma a Londra c'è la censura. Dietro la retata informazioni pakistane e della Cia, infiltrata nel gruppo. Offensiva inglese sulla sicurezza: stop ai bagagli a mano. Compagnie in rivolta
John Andrew Manisco Alessandro Mantovani
Londra 9 agosto
La polizia ora parla di «suicide notes», lettere di suicidio. E sarebbe il colmo se alla fine avesse ragione l'avvocatessa Gareth Peirce che assiste uno dei 25 arrestati per il presunto complotto terroristico del 10 agosto scorso, il più giovane che ha solo 17 anni: «Non ci sono suicide notes, ci sono solo dei wills», ossia testamenti, atti di ultima volontà. «Sono datati 1995 - dice l'avvocato - quando il ragazzo aveva sei anni, chiamarli suicide notes è scandaloso». Erano in una scatola che la polizia ha trovato dalla madre del giovane: probabilmente erano carte di suo padre, che se n'è andato da un pezzo e negli anni 90 faceva assistenza umanitaria ai musulmane di Bosnia. Notes o wills che siano, sono testi scritti e non filmati di rivendicazione registrati in vista del martirio jihadista ormai imminente. Il materiale video sequestrato rimane segretissimo, come tutte le prove.
Senza rivendicazioni video verrebbe giù così un altro pilastro dell'operazione che ha tenuto il mondo intero con il fiato sospeso e bloccato per due giorni il traffico aereo da e per l'Inghilterra, «il nuovo 11 settembre» sventato dai servizi e dalla polizia di sua maestà britannica, il piano che doveva far saltare in aria «nove o dieci» e poi quattro o cinque aerei di linea sulle tratte dalla Gran Bretagna agli Stati Uniti, forse sull'Atlantico e forse - dicono gli americani - addirittura nei cieli delle città Usa, utilizzando un micidiale e inaudito esplosivo liquido che sfuggirebbe ai metal detector degli aeroporti, pronto per essere innescato nelle toilette.
Che l'attacco più spettacolare del secolo non fosse imminente l'ha ormai rivelato il New York Times, senza ricevere smentite. Gli arrestati, e tra loro gli otto presunti aspiranti martiri, probabilmente non avevano mai fissato la data per entrare in azione, altro che il «go now» ordinato dal Pakistan dal presunto capo Rashid Rauf. Non avevano i biglietti aerei, ha scritto il Nyt, alcuni non avevano nemmeno i passaporti. E soprattutto non avevano a disposizione l'esplosivo liquido, che ancora non si sa bene cosa sia e come funzioni. Secondo la rivista tecnica inglese The Register doveva essere un composto di acqua ossigenata, acetone e acido solforico, «un prodotto molto sexy dei film thriller di Hollywood...», ma praticamente impossibile da ottenere in una toilette d'aereo senza bruciare sia l'attentatore che la toilette. Quindi potrebbe trattarsi di giovani arrabbiati che sognavano attentati e jihad a Londra per riscattare l'Afghanistan o l'Iraq.
Di più non si può sapere, la stampa inglese è letteralmente imbavagliata dalle leggi antiterrorismo che vietano la pubblicazione di notizie relative a processi che devono ancora svolgersi. Sembra incredibile ma è vero, la «controinchiesta» che ha impegnato un drappello di giornalisti del Nyt non è stata pubblicata sull'Herald Tribune, il giornale stampato in Europa dello stesso gruppo editoriale, né - almeno in un primo momento - sul sito internet della prestigiosa testata liberal newyorkese, perché l'ufficio legale consigliava di non sfidare le leggi britanniche. La ricostruzione del Nyt, riportata in Italia da Repubblica, a Londra non è apparsa nemmeno sul Guardian, che si è limitato a dar notizia dell'autocensura del giornale Usa.
Dei 24 presunti terroristi arrestati nella notte tra il 9 e il 10 agosto, tutti cittadini britannici d'origine pakistana, di età compresa tra i 17 e i 35 anni, undici sono stati formalmente accusati dalla magistratura di «cospirazione per uccidere persone» e di essere coinvolti «nella preparazione di una atto terroristico». Per conoscere le prove, però, anche gli avvocati devono aspettare. Due degli arrestati rimarranno in prigione fino a una formale udienza, il 18 settembre, in cui verranno accusati di aver preparato l'attentato e di detenzione illegale di armi, ovvero una pistola con silenziatore e un fucile detenuti senza autorizzazione ma che non hanno nulla a che fare con il «nuovo 11 settembre». Altre tre persone, inclusa una giovane madre, sono state accusate di non aver informato le autorità di quello che sapevano del presunto complotto. Il diciasettenne rappresentato dall'avvocato Gareth Peirce dovrà affrontare il 19 settembre, accuse non connesse al piano terroristico. Altri sette invece sono stati rilasciati senza accusa, tre l'altro ieri, dopo 28 giorni di detenzione, il limite massimo consentito dalle nuove leggi antiterrorismo volute da Blair.
Il gruppo era sotto inchiesta da oltre un anno, da prima ancora dell'attentato nella metropolitana di Londra del 7 luglio 2005. Fonti ufficiali confermano che Tony Blair, in vacanza su uno yacht nei pressi delle Bahamas, aveva informato George Bush del complotto prima che scattasse la retata. E dalla mattina del 9 agosto l'ambizioso segretario agli interni inglese John Reid parlava di «minacce» terroristiche incombenti da parte di «fascisti solitari», quasi «islamo-fascisti» come dirà poi Bush.
Su quei pakistani d'Inghilterra la polizia inglese era tornata, di recente, su sollecitazione dei servizi di Islamabad, imbeccati a loro volta dalla Cia, che notoriamente infiltra i gruppi jihadisti tra Pakistan e Afghanistan e in particolare il gruppo al-Muhajiroun. La fonte delle informazioni che hanno portato a considerare «imminente» l'attacco con le bombe liquide agli aerei transatlantici è un uomo detenuto nelle carceri pakistane, Rashid Rauf, cittadino britannico di 25 anni, il presunto «capo» della cellula attiva a Londra, colui che avrebbe dato il «via libera» all'operazione, arrestato ben prima del 10 agosto. Rauf, secondo i pakistani, si sarebbe incontrato alla frontiera afghana con un presunto dirigente di Al Qaeda per ricevere istruzioni sull'assemblaggio delle bombe liquide da usare e sulle tecniche per evitare i controlli aeroportuali inglesi.
Dietro il suo arresto potrebbe esserci lo zampino della Cia e dei servizi americani, che senz'altro sono intervenuti per spingere Londra ad anticipare la retata. E' quello che raccontano all'autorevolissima Nbc americana «fonti della polizia britannica e Usa», mentre gli inglesi - dice ancora la Nbc - avrebbero preferito continuare a osservare il gruppo per un'altra settimana per raccogliere altri indizi». Addiritura un alto funzionario inglese avrebbe informato la Nbc che gli americani avevano minacciato di rapire dal Pakistan Rauf se le autorità inglesi non avessero proceduto immediatamente agli arresti.
In Italia i servizi e gli apparati di più ortodossa obbedienza atlantista giurano e spergiurano sul lavoro dei colleghi inglesi, «se si deve fare prevenzione bisogna intervenire prima, al massimo si può discutere la tempistica dell'operazione», osserva un alto funzionario dell'intelligence che ha seguito da vicino il drammatico agosto londinese. Altri però, nei servizi come nelle forze di polizia, sono più scettici. «Dal primo momento abbiamo compreso che la portata dell'allarme era stata enfatizzata», confida un investigatore. E infatti, al di là delle misure di facciata e dei controlli eseguiti nell'immediato su realtà collegate all'estremismo islamico internazionale, comprese le «retate» che hanno fatto discutere, al Viminale il 10 agosto sono rimasti calmi e tranquilli. Ancora peggiori sarebbero state, secondo alcune fonti, le reazioni dei servizi di intelligence di altri paesi dell'Ue.
Il complotto sventato ha senz'altro favorito Blair che da luglio affronta la crisi del Labour e della sua leadership. E non ha fatto guadagnare molti punti a Bush nei sondaggi in vista delle elezioni di novembre. Ma a Londra è servito anche a rilanciare la battaglia contro il bagaglio a mano sugli aerei, che approfondisce il conflitto con le compagnie aeree già danneggiate dal blocco del traffico e dalla perdita di decine di migliaia di valigie che si registrò nel caos. Oltre che dalle voci su possibili speculazioni sui loro titoli connesse a quella giornata di paura efollia. Vorrebbero abolire del tutto i bagagli in cabina, per poter controllare i colli uno a uno in assenza del proprietario, o almeno far rispettare il limite dei 5 chilogrammi. A Bruxelles hanno detto picche, Londra ci riproverà.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/08-Settembre-2006/art11.html
il manifesto:
La resistibile riconquista afghana dei taleban
Come gli «studenti di teologia» stanno riacquisendo passo passo il controllo del paese che governavano fino al 2001. Con buona pace dell'Isaf e del governo Karzai
Syed Saleem Shahzad*
Tre anni fa, un comandante americano di base nel sud-ovest dell'Afghanistan accennò all'ipotesi di un'offensiva di primavera contro i taleban nel suo settore. Questa semplice allusione è bastata ad infiammare l'immaginazione del comando taleban. Anno dopo anno, la presunta offensiva primaverile, considerata imminente, ha provocato minacce di rappresaglie sempre più violente contro le forze occidentali. Intanto gli anni passavano e della famosa offensiva non c'era la minima traccia. Alla fine, nella primavera 2006, sono stati i taleban a passare all'attacco.
Il comando taleban del sud-ovest dell'Afghanistan ha dedicato la maggior parte del 2005 a organizzare la manovra. Le cosiddette «sessioni di addestramento», guidate da un gruppo di sperimentati combattenti provenienti dalla resistenza irachena, sono servite soprattutto a dare un nuovo orientamento alla strategia del terrore che si voleva diffondere in Waziristan, regione pakistana alla frontiera con l'Afghanistan. È nei due distretti del Waziristan, sud e nord, che alla caduta di Kandahar, nel dicembre 2001, si sono radunati, in piccole basi rudimentali, gruppi pastun dotati di armi pesanti e un mosaico di mercenari arabi, uzbechi e ceceni.
L'offensiva scatenata nella primavera 2006 non mirava tanto ad un'insurrezione generale contro il governo di Hamid Karzai quanto a rivitalizzare le reti taleban del sud-ovest. Il progetto ha però richiesto la riunificazione e la mobilitazione di fazioni apparentemente diverse. Quali i risultati sperati dal mullah Omar, guida suprema dei taleban? Infliggere un colpo decisivo al morale delle truppe della potente macchina da guerra americana e proclamare la propria sovranità sia sul sud dell'Afghanistan che sulle zone tribali pachistane adiacenti. In altri termini, preparare la strada perché i taleban riconquistassero un ruolo determinante come forza regionale.
A fine maggio 2006, la visita apparentemente anodina di un emissario del comando taleban nelle basi del Waziristan avrebbe cambiato radicalmente lo stato dei rapporti di forza nella zona. Si trattava del mullah Dadullah, un comandante di una quarantina d'anni, privo di una gamba e dotato di grandi capacità diplomatiche. Con la sua folta barba, è il capo militare più temuto della regione.
Durante il viaggio nei due Waziristan, il mullah Dadullah distribuisce copia di una lettera del mullah Omar: «Cessate immediatamente i combattimenti contro le forze pachistane. È un'impresa caotica che non deve essere confusa con il vero jihad islamico. Il jihad è stato lanciato in Afghanistan; perciò raggiungeteci in Aghanistan per combattere gli americani e gli infedeli loro alleati». Poiché il mullah Omar ha sempre avuto grande influenza sui gruppi pro-taleban, quali essi siano, il suo invito è accolto da tutti. Così i 27mila uomini del nord e i 13mila del sud annunciano la tregua con l'esercito pachistano. I gruppi taleban si raccolgono nelle città di Shawal e Birmal, sulle montagne di Ghulam Khan al nord, e Shakai al sud.
Il mullah Dudallah sfrutta al meglio la sua visita. Racconta che nel marzo 2006, una delegazione di tre persone, inviata in Afghanistan da Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi (leader di al Qaeda in Iraq) ha incontrato Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri (numero due di al Qaeda) e il mullah Omar. Spiega che quest'ultimo è stato riconosciuto da tutti gli altri come capo della resistenza in Iraq e in Afghanistan.
La delegazione aveva utilizzato dei video per giustificare gli attentati suicidi. La società afghana, molto praticante, considera in genere il suicidio un peccato. Anche se in passato si è assistito al sacrificio di kamikaze isolati, questa pratica non è mai diventata prassi corrente. Per ottenere che si generalizzasse, il mullah Dadullah ha utilizzato questi video per dimostrare come la resistenza irachena se ne serviva in modo efficace. In questo modo è riuscito a convincere diversi gruppi del Waziristan, Tagikistan, Uzbekistan e di varie città del Pakistan. Una prima squadra di 450 membri, è addestrata nella valle di Kunar. Ne fanno parte 70 donne, provenienti per lo più dai paesi arabi o dall'Asia centrale. Alcune avevano avuto parenti uccisi in Afghanistan o nel Waziristan; altre sono incitate a combattere dal marito o dal padre. Altre ne seguiranno l'esempio...
Contemporaneamente i taleban hanno cominciato a compiere sporadici attacchi in tutto l'Afghanistan unendo le proprie forze, poche migliaia di uomini disseminati per il paese, a quelle dei vari signori della guerra. Il rinforzo di quarantamila uomini venuti dal Waziristan ha dato un notevole sostegno all'offensiva di primavera, peraltro guidata da un uomo di grande esperienza, il veterano Jalaluddin Haqqani.
Piccolo e magro, il comandante Haqqani detiene il record delle vittorie sulle truppe sovietiche, soprattutto quella di Matun, nel 1991, destinata ad essere la pietra miliare del crollo dei sovietici e al controllo definitivo di Kabul da parte dei mudjahiddin nel 1992. Quando poi, nel 1994, i taleban si impongono, è l'unico ad offrire la resa incondizionata del suo feudo, Matun. Ma non è un taleban, non ha fatto in alcun modo parte del movimento, e quindi è rifiutato. Sotto il regime dei taleban (1996-2001), benché ministro delle frontiere, non è mai stato consultato su questioni politiche.
Durante la ritirata del 2001 di fronte agli Stati uniti e ai loro alleati, Haqqani offre a tutti i combattenti in fuga un rifugio nel suo santuario nel Waziristan nord. In vista dell'offensiva del 2006, il mullah Omar gli lascia carta bianca. Haqqani è dunque, dopo di lui, il personaggio più importante dell'Afghanistan. Ha contatti ovunque nel paese, con uzbechi, tagichi o pastun. Ha inviato molte giovani reclute ai signori della guerra locali, per lo più non taleban, delle province di Herat, Logar e Laghman. Tutte province che costituivano gli anelli deboli della rete taleban. Haqqani vi ha negoziato la presenza di santuari per i suoi uomini grazie a grosse somme di denaro versate ai «signori» locali.
Ha anche creato gruppi di combattenti per inviarli nelle zone di frontiera di Kandahar, Helmand, Paktia e Paktika con il compito di reclutare altri adepti per una guerra di logoramento. Questi gruppi devono operare solo con azioni suicide e unicamente contro le forze della coalizione. È stato poi istituito un comando di dieci persone, ognuna delle quali è responsabile di una regione. \ Tra giugno e luglio, i taleban sembrano avanzare in profondità da Kabul a Kandahar; gli attentati suicidi seminano gran panico, la coalizione ha ormai i nervi a fior di pelle. Così riduce le sue azioni all'interno delle grandi città. È quello che i taleban aspettavano dal 2003. Il mullah Dadullah, entrando in scena nel sud-ovest dell'Afghanistan, occupa numerosi distretti a Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul e Helmand cacciandone l'amministrazione. Per i simpatizzanti dei taleban è la prova che sono tornati. Il sostegno locale ne è vivificato.
Ora stanno applicando una nuova strategia. Non appena entra in azione l'aviazione americana, si ritirano in zone sicure. Poi, quando gli eserciti della coalizione, spalleggiati dalle forze afghane, entrano in azione, bombe nascoste e attacchi suicidi infliggono perdite quali la coalizione non aveva più avuto dall'epoca della disfatta del taleban nel 2001. A metà luglio 2006, sembra che i taleban abbiano vinto la loro scommessa nel sud. S'impadroniscono ogni giorno di nuovi distretti. Certo le forze della coalizione possono rientrarne in possesso. Ma questo giocare a nascondino non potrà durare a lungo. Ragionevolmente i taleban contano di occupare il sud-ovest ben prima dell'inverno...
*Direttore dell'ufficio pachistano dell'Asia Time On line. Una versione più lunga di questo articolo uscirà sulla versione italiana di Le Monde diplomatique, in edicola con il manifesto il 15 settembre
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/08-Settembre-2006/art40.html
il manifesto:
Il campanile di Puigcerdà
La guerra civile spagnola nel racconto di un superstite
Nel paese sui Pirenei solo il campanile salvato dagli anarchici e Josè Maurell hanno memoria della guerra civile. Il campanile fu risparmiato per ospitare un cannone, Maurell perché era «un uomo qualunque»
Riccardo De Gennaro
Della chiesa medievale di Puigcerdà, un paesino dei Pirenei all'estremo confine con la Francia, non è rimasto che il campanile. Il resto lo tirarono giù gli anarchici a forza di picconate all'inizio della guerra civile al grido «Viva la rivoluzione». Era l'estate del '36. Anziché predicare la pace tra i due fronti, i sacerdoti e le autorità ecclesiastiche spagnole avevano scelto di schierarsi con i militari che si erano ribellati alla Repubblica. Ne pagarono le conseguenze: gli anarchici non si fermarono, le chiese distrutte furono migliaia in tutta la Spagna, numerosissimi i preti fucilati. La chiesa di Santa Maria, tuttavia, non è mai stata ricostruita. Al suo posto c'è una piazza che combacia con il perimetro dell'edificio distrutto, come si può verificare una volta in cima al campanile. Alla base, una piccola targa ricorda i caduti della guerra civile a Puigcerdà, che oggi conta 8mila abitanti.
Allo scoppio della guerra civile, il 18 luglio 1936, Puigcerdà fu immediatamente conquistata dai lavoratori della Cnt, il grande sindacato anarchico. La vittoria è netta, al punto che il 26 luglio il prefetto dei Pirenei orientali riceve un dispaccio dove si dice che a Puigcerdà è stata proclamata «la repubblica sovietica». Il Comitato rivoluzionario si muove in linea con i precetti della rivoluzione. Decide di sopprimere la proprietà privata, distrugge gli archivi notarili, organizza la collettivizzazione dei negozi. La seconda chiesa della cittadina, San Domenecq, è trasformata in un più utile magazzino comunale, una parte è anche adibita a tribunale e a prigione, mentre il convento diventa una scuola pubblica dove si cominciano a insegnare i princìpi della libertà e dell'uguaglianza, la fine dei privilegi, la società senza classi.
Le fiamme salivano in cielo
Josè Maurell Turiera, 80 anni, è uno dei pochi testimoni oculari ancora in vita e abita a un centinaio di metri dal campanile. «Ero un bambino, avevo soltanto dieci anni - racconta - ricordo solo le fiamme che salivano alte nel cielo. Quanti erano? Non più di quattro o cinque, armati di pale e picconi. Sono riusciti a distruggere tutto, poi hanno incendiato quello che restava. Hanno risparmiato soltanto il campanile per poterci piazzare in cima un cannone antiaereo». Poi, siccome la rivoluzione non è un pranzo di gala, ha inizio la fase del terrore: «I primi mesi sono stati terribili - prosegue Maurell - la gente si sparava anche per un niente. Era un po' come una lotteria, il problema è che qualcuno aveva in tasca tutti i numeri per cui il suo usciva per forza». Nel mese di agosto vengono giustiziati il segretario del giudice di Puigcerdà che stava con i fascisti e il cappellano dell'ospedale. All'inizio di settembre un nuovo Comitato composto da anarchici e comunisti destituisce il consiglio comunale rivoluzionario, arresta il sindaco e procede all'esecuzione di ventuno «fascisti accertati», come dicono le carte. Secondo Maurell, «molte esecuzioni erano regolamenti di conti, che non c'entravano nulla con la guerra civile». L'assalto alle carceri e la liberazione di tutti i detenuti ha ridato la libertà anche ad alcuni criminali comuni che, una volta fuori, hanno approfittato del caos per qualche vendetta. Ma la responsabilità è personale e va attribuita a loro, non agli anarchici.
A parte questi casi, lo scontro tra civili ha un'indiscutibile matrice ideale e politica. I nemici sono i fascisti, ma l'obiettivo degli anarchici è la rivoluzione, che non è invece una priorità per i comunisti spagnoli legati a Stalin. Maurell fa parte di quella fascia di persone neutrali, mai sfiorate dall'idea di schierarsi: «Non sono mai stato né con la destra, né con la sinistra, la mia unica preoccupazione era lavorare e portare un po' di denaro a casa. Forse è proprio per questo che mi sono salvato». All'età di dieci anni lavorava in un'officina meccanica che riparava motori. Suo padre era muratore: «Il fatto - dice - è che la domenica aiutava il parroco a servire messa e la situazione per lui si è fatta subito pericolosa. È scappato a Barcellona, io sono rimasto qui con mia madre. Non l'ho più rivisto». Lui e la madre tiravano avanti grazie a un orto che coltivavano dietro il palazzo dell'azienda telefonica, ma la fame non era un problema. «A Puigcerdà, durante la guerra civile, mangiavamo anche pollo e coniglio - racconta Maurell - mentre a Barcellona quelli come noi erano costretti a frugare nella spazzatura. Abbiamo sofferto la fame più nei primi anni del franchismo che durante la guerra. Soltanto Peròn aiutava Franco inviando conserve di carne dall'Argentina».
La morte dell'anarchico Martìn
La situazione a Puigcerdà cambia completamente nella primavera del '37, quando lo stesso governo repubblicano, ormai dominato dagli stalinisti, invia i carabineros per riprendere il controllo del confine in mano agli anarchici guidati da Antonio Martìn, promotore della collettivizzazione dei negozi. Ne accenna anche George Orwell in «Omaggio alla Catalogna», che ha ispirato «Terra e libertà» di Ken Loach: «A Puigcerdà, presso la frontiera francese - scrive lo scrittore inglese che ha combattuto la guerra civile nelle file del Poum, il partito operaio d'ispirazione trotzkista - un gruppo di carabineros era stato mandato a occupare la dogana, già in possesso degli anarchici. Antonio Martìn, notissimo anarchico, era rimasto ucciso». Secondo lo storico francese Bartolomè Bennassar, Martìn viene invece ucciso durante i tafferugli scoppiati con gli abitanti del vicino villaggio di Bellver. La versione di Orwell trova, tuttavia, conferma nelle ricerche di altri due storici francesi, Pierre Broué e Emile Témime, che parlano di uno scontro a fuoco con i carabineros nel quale muoiono otto anarchici, tra i quali Martìn.
Nel frattempo, l'aeronautica fascista continua ad accanirsi sulla linea ferroviaria che passa da Puigcerdà. «Bombardavano la ferrovia, dove transitavano i treni della linea diretta Parigi-Barcellona, indispensabile per gli approvvigionamenti della regione catalana, che era in mano ai repubblicani», dice Maurell, che quando vide arrivare gli aerei per la prima volta non potè fare altro che gettarsi sotto una panchina di pietra della piazza, rifugi antiaerei non ce n'erano, pochi avevano immaginato che Puigcerdà fosse un obiettivo militare. Maurell non ama parlare della guerra civile, probabilmente è tra coloro che, in Spagna, sostengono sia meglio accantonare l'argomento per non aprire vecchie ferite. Non sono la maggioranza, per fortuna. «Per noi le guerre non sono una bella cosa, tantomeno una guerra fratricida», dice. Lui non ha mai indossato una divisa e, durante la guerra civile, non possedeva neppure la tessera di un sindacato. È stato costretto a prendere quella della Falange soltanto durante la dittatura. Il fatto è che, lo si vede, Maurell ama la vita tranquilla. È forse per questo che ha sempre abitato nella casa dov'è nato, al numero 1 di calle Ferrers. Il suo appartamento è piuttosto anonimo, non ci sono oggetti particolari che lo segnino. Sulla mensola all'ingresso c'è una statuetta della Madonna, al muro le foto dei suoi tre figli, che nel frattempo sono diventati grandi. Non ha rimpianti, non ha rabbia in corpo, vive con serenità i suoi ottant'anni accanto alla moglie. È riuscito a «zigzagare», senza gravi danni, attraverso le pieghe della Storia, sicuramente non cambierà ora.
Franchisti, obbligatoriemente
«Il primo anno della guerra l'officina dove stavo ha lavorato per gli anarchici, il secondo per i carabineros, il terzo per la Guardia d'assalto, poi siamo diventati tutti necessariamente franchisti», dice come se volesse dimostrare la sua imparzialità. Del regime di Franco, d'altronde, dice: «Se non esprimevi opinioni, tutto andava bene». L'uomo qualunque non è un'invenzione italiana. Non a caso, c'è una vicenda della guerra civile di Puigcerdà che Maurell tende a sottolineare ed è l'aiuto dato dai repubblicani alle famiglie con simpatie nazionaliste affinché espatriassero. Usciti dal confine di Puigcerdà, che si trova all'altezza di Andorra, i fuggiaschi potevano infatti rientrare comodamente in Spagna dal lato di Irun, vicino all'Atlantico, dove sarebbero stati al sicuro perché i Paesi baschi erano già in mano all'esercito di Franco. Sebbene qualche giornalista spagnolo si ostini a parlare di analogie tra le divisioni della Spagna attuale e quelle della vigilia della guerra civile, il vecchio Maurell sa che oggi non ci sono né un «pericolo rosso», come sostenevano i fascisti, né il rischio di un golpe militare. Al contrario di settant'anni fa, quando fu terrorizzato da quelle fiamme che arrivavano al cielo, ora può passeggiare tranquillamente lungo il laghetto artificiale, costruito nel 1380 e circondato dalle ridenti casette di villeggiatura della buona borghesia di Barcellona.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/08-Settembre-2006/art87.html
Jeune Afrique:
La vie au Nord, mode d’emploi
CÔTE D'IVOIRE - 3 septembre 2006
par PASCAL AIRAULT, ENVOYÉ SPÉCIAL À BOUAKÉ
Taxes, impôts et autres prélèvements… En quatre ans, les Forces nouvelles ont mis en place des structures quasi étatiques pour faire tourner l’économie. Avec ses succès et ses échecs.
« Tu paies combien pour faire monter tes camions d’engrais ?
- 40 000 F CFA [61 euros, NDLR] par camion. Et toi ?
- Ils m’ont demandé 45 000 F CFA et m’ont dit que c’était le prix que tu avais accepté. Mais j’ai négocié à 40 000 F CFA. »
À la Nouvelle Librairie de Côte d’Ivoire de Bouaké, les deux responsables de compagnies cotonnières concurrentes, qui s’enquièrent de leurs négociations respectives avec les percepteurs de taxes des Forces nouvelles (FN, ex-rébellion), éclatent de rire. Quatre ans ont passé depuis le putsch manqué du 19 septembre 2002, qui a marqué le début de la partition du pays. Les opérateurs économiques de Côte d’Ivoire se sont habitués aux nouvelles règles du jeu imposées par l’ex-rébellion, qui tient le Nord. Dans cette zone de près de 193 000 km2 (60 % du territoire), la devise n’a pas changé : les affaires sont les affaires. Les marchés de Bouaké, Korhogo et des villes secondaires sont suffisamment approvisionnés pour que la vie continue comme si de rien n’était. On y trouve à peu près tous les produits locaux et de grande consommation : viande, poisson, céréales, fruits et légumes, café, chocolat, thé, vêtements, chaussures, films, disques, matériel hi-fi-vidéo, électroménager, téléphones… Même s’il a connu des hauts et des bas liés aux soubresauts du conflit, l’approvisionnement n’a réellement jamais été interrompu.
Persuadés que leur légitimité ne saurait se construire sur le dos des populations, les ex-rebelles ont rapidement cherché à organiser le territoire sous leur contrôle. « Nous avons entamé la réflexion sur l’organisation économique de la zone nord dès novembre 2002, explique Alain Lobognon, secrétaire à la communication des FN. Très vite, il a fallu prévoir l’acheminement des marchandises et la levée de taxes pour financer l’année scolaire. Alors que les chefs discutaient des accords de paix à Lomé, nous sommes entrés en relation avec les transporteurs et les commerçants du marché de gros de Bouaké. Nous avons instauré des taxes de convoyage des marchandises, ainsi que des frontières à l’entrée des principales villes. » Des discussions ont été également engagées avec les principaux opérateurs économiques, notamment avec les entreprises cotonnières et sucrières. « La Société sucrière africaine [Sucaf] a été la première à nous verser des redevances pour chaque convoi dans le sud du pays », précise-t-il.
Toutefois, les intérêts particuliers et militaires des chefs de guerre ont rapidement gêné l’organisation collective. En témoignent les casses des grandes banques et la fermeture des établissements financiers. Un coup dur pour l’organisation de la zone. Et surtout, l’obligation, pour les FN, de rationaliser un peu les choses.
En avril 2003, Guillaume Soro, secrétaire général des FN, demande à Moussa Dosso, son « économiste en chef », actuellement titulaire du portefeuille du Commerce au sein du gouvernement de Charles Konan Banny, de réfléchir à la mise en place d’une véritable administration pour gérer les activités. Cinq mois plus tard, les FN créent la Direction de la mobilisation des ressources, aujourd’hui rebaptisée « la Centrale ». La structure est chargée de collecter les taxes au niveau des corridors routiers du pays, mais aussi de prélever les impôts sur les secteurs productifs et les services (agriculture, hydrocarbures, mines, bars et restaurants…). En tout, ce sont quelque 15 000 personnes qui y travaillent.
Plusieurs types de prélèvements sont instaurés : taxe de passage, de sécurité, péage, etc. « Il en coûte de 400 F CFA à 2 000 F CFA par zone pour les voitures et de 5 000 à 50 000 F CFA, selon qu’il s’agit d’un bus ou d’un car de voyage », explique Mohamed, un habitué des voyages Bouaké-Lomé. Les transporteurs ont, par ailleurs, la possibilité de se payer une escorte pour sécuriser leur parcours. En sus de cet impôt de circulation, les FN imposent également des taxes sur les marchandises qui entrent ou sortent du territoire sous leur contrôle. Les conducteurs des camions de 35 tonnes doivent ainsi payer entre 50 000 et 70 000 F CFA pour pénétrer dans le nord de la Côte d’Ivoire. Pour un chargement de bœufs, il faut débourser environ 1 000 F CFA par tête.
La compagnie ferroviaire Sitarail, qui assure la ligne Abidjan-Ouagadougou, n’est pas épargnée. Ses exploitants versent une caution de 30 millions de F CFA pour que ses trains puissent traverser le territoire sous contrôle des FN. Chaque wagon de marchandises est taxé à hauteur de 30 000 F CFA.
Quant au carburant, les FN ont proposé aux particuliers d’occuper les stations-service délaissées par leurs gérants au lendemain de la partition. « Nous payons à la Centrale une caution de 1 million de F CFA et une taxe de 6 F CFA sur chaque litre vendu », explique un homme d’affaires, qui a sauté sur cette opportunité. L’essence vient de Lomé et du Nigeria par camion-citerne. Régulièrement, les propriétaires viennent discuter des modalités de leur réinstallation. Ils demandent surtout aux « gérants temporaires » de ne pas endommager leurs centres de distribution. Les populations, quant à elles, s’y retrouvent. Le litre de carburant est vendu 520 F CFA contre plus de 650 F CFA à Abidjan. Riz et viande sont également moins chers que dans la capitale.
Toutes les recettes collectées servent officiellement à assurer l’alimentation des soldats et leurs soins, à faire fonctionner l’école, les services de santé et à assurer l’entretien des routes. L’ensemble des dépenses représente un budget annuel non négligeable sur lequel les dirigeants FN restent discrets.
Au quotidien, la majorité des transactions se font en liquide. La fermeture des établissements bancaires entraîne des surcoûts et des risques. « J’envoie régulièrement des passeurs en moto à Sikasso (Mali) pour aller me chercher de l’argent liquide. C’est la solution la plus discrète pour ramener des espèces », explique un grand commerçant de Korhogo. Les particuliers, quant à eux, font appel aux sociétés de transport pour le convoyage d’espèces au Nord. Les guichets des compagnies de la gare routière d’Adjamé, à Abidjan, proposent ainsi à leurs clients, outre des titres de voyage, le transfert d’argent.
La volonté affichée des FN d’organiser, dès le début, les activités dans leur zone n’a toutefois pas réussi à enrayer la propagation d’une économie souterraine.
« De nombreux opportunistes ont profité de la crise pour se lancer dans les affaires. Les Libanais exploitent illégalement le bois et font du petit commerce, les Indiens exportent l’anacarde et collectent la ferraille, les Chinois ont installé des pharmacies et des officines médicales », explique Seydou, un commerçant de Bouaké. Pis, selon l’ONG Global Witness, les FN feraient elles-mêmes travailler des milliers de creuseurs dans les mines de diamant de trois villages du nord-ouest, Seguéla, Bobi et Diarabala, ainsi que dans la région de Tortilla. Les pierres seraient écoulées sur le marché international via le Mali. L’or fait également l’objet de trafics en attendant l’arrivée de groupes bien établis, qui comptent développer la production, une fois la paix revenue. Des équipes de Randgold, la grande entreprise minière sud-africaine, se rendent régulièrement à Tongon pour préparer les modalités d’exploitation industrielle du métal jaune.
Les commerçants sénoufos, quant à eux, ont su trouver des opportunités. Ainsi, Seydou se rend régulièrement à Tema (Ghana) et à Lomé (Togo) pour acheter des voitures et des pièces détachées. La plupart des automobiles viennent d’Allemagne et sont en transit jusqu’au nord de la Côte d’Ivoire. Les autorités burkinabè ne voient aucun inconvénient à laisser les affaires prospérer. « Nous n’allons tout de même pas laisser mourir les populations du Nord, explique un haut cadre des services de sécurité. Nous laissons passer les particuliers, les camions et les convois tant qu’il ne s’agit pas de marchandises volées. » Ainsi, en décembre dernier, des camions de coton de la société LCI n’ont pu traverser le territoire burkinabè, la direction de l’entreprise ayant alerté Ouaga du vol, à Korhogo, de la marchandise par des hommes armés. Plus récemment, les FN, elles-mêmes, sont intervenues pour mettre un terme aux importations frauduleuses de sucre en provenance du Nigeria et du Burkina. Mais l’entreprise se révèle difficile. Les commerçants ne manquent pas d’imagination. Certains ont ainsi fait confectionner des sacs plastique floqués du sigle de la Sucaf. Résultat : l’industrie sucrière locale estime avoir subi 12 milliards de F CFA de pertes depuis la partition du pays.
La crise a permis à de nouveaux opérateurs, militaires ou grands commerçants (les deux parfois étant associés), de prospérer. La soldatesque de base continue, pour sa part, à racketter les populations en milieu rural. Dans certaines zones, les villageois doivent payer des taxes pour aller vendre leurs produits sur les marchés. Et les vols de bétail et d’aliments, bien que moins répandus qu’auparavant, n’ont pas complètement disparu. De même que les séquelles de l’économie de guerre - et ses règles propres - ne disparaîtront pas sitôt le pays réunifié.
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_jeune_afrique.asp?
art_cle=LIN03096lavieiolpme0
Página/12:
Alta tensión en el frente libanés
Ayer se levantó el bloqueo marítimo, pero hubo incidentes en la frontera entre el ejército israelí y milicianos chiítas.
Sábado, 09 de Septiembre de 2006
“El bloqueo naval a el Líbano ha sido levantado”, afirmó ayer Miri Eisin, portavoz del primer ministro israelí, Ehud Olmert. Así, un día después de levantar el bloqueo aéreo, Israel puso fin también a ocho semanas de bloqueo marítimo. Barcos franceses, italianos y griegos comenzaron a patrullar las costas del país árabe ayer al mediodía, en espera del despliegue de una flota alemana que tomará el control de la parte marítima de la Fuerza Interina de Naciones Unidas en Líbano (Finul) en las próximas dos o tres semanas. En tanto, soldados israelíes detuvieron a seis hombres en la zona sur del Líbano.
Israel había levantado el bloqueo aéreo el jueves por la tarde, pero prolongó el bloqueo marítimo a causa de las dificultades jurídicas para definir la misión de la fuerza naval temporal. Las dificultades se resolvieron ayer. “El bloqueo marítimo y aéreo terminó. Un almirante italiano asume en este momento el control de las aguas territoriales bajo mandato de la ONU y con el acuerdo del gobierno libanés”, dijo Massimo D’Alema, el jefe de la diplomacia italiana.
El gobierno israelí confirmó la noticia. “La fuerza naval de la ONU, dirigida por Italia, tomó la responsabilidad del sector en coordinación total con el ejército israelí y hará aplicar el embargo sobre las armas destinadas al Hezbolá en Líbano”, precisó Eisin. Este embargo está previsto en la resolución 1701 del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU, que puso fin el 14 de agosto a más de 30 días de combates entre Israel y la milicia chiíta Hezbolá, desencadenados por el secuestro de dos soldados israelíes por parte de Hezbolá en la frontera entre Líbano e Israel.
En un comunicado difundido en Nueva York, el secretario general de la ONU, Kofi Annan, saludó el despliegue de la fuerza naval multinacional, señalando que colaborará en “asegurar la frontera marítima y los puntos de entrada marítima a el Líbano”.
El primer día de cese del bloqueo tuvo, sin embargo, sus críticas. Las fuerzas navales israelíes interceptaron un barco sin identificar a 60 millas de la costa libanesa y le impidieron continuar hacia el puerto de Beirut. El ejército libanés no tardó en criticar a Israel. “Esta es una violación de la resolución 1701 de las Naciones Unidas y el anuncio del levantamiento del bloqueo marítimo”, sostuvo la declaración del ejército.
Más allá de la buena noticia del cese del bloqueo, ayer se vivieron horas de tensión en el sur del Líbano. Cinco hombres fueron arrestados en Aita al Shaab y un sexto en Marwaheen. Ambas localidades todavía se encuentran bajo control israelí. De acuerdo con informes libaneses, entre los hombres se encuentran un colaborador de las fuerzas de seguridad libanesas y varios maestros que inspeccionaban una escuela.
Los israelíes se defendieron ante las denuncias de que las personas fueron secuestradas. “No hay secuestrados. Ha habido un incidente al sur de la aldea libanesa de Aita al Shaab, cuando una patrulla ordinaria del ejército israelí detectó a cinco milicianos armados. Ahora están siendo interrogados”, dijo una portavoz militar.
En tanto, la fuerza multinacional de la ONU continúa su despliegue en el sur del Líbano, reemplazando a los militares israelíes que se encuentran en la zona. El ministro israelí de la Defensa, Amir Peretz, confirmó que Israel pretende retirar todas sus tropas del Líbano de aquí a dos semanas al recibir al jefe de la diplomacia alemana Frank-Walter Steinmeier, de visita en Jerusalén. En tanto, el Congreso español respaldó el jueves por unanimidad el envío de hasta 1100 militares al Líbano, de los cuales la mitad partieron ayer con ese rumbo.
La diplomacia también sigue su camino. Los países europeos y Rusia intensificaron esta semana sus esfuerzos para mantener y consolidar el alto el fuego en el Líbano e intentar revitalizar el proceso de paz con los palestinos.
En los últimos días, los jefes de las diplomacias de Italia, Rusia y Alemania se sucedieron tanto en el Líbano, como en Israel y Cisjordania, mientras que el primer ministro británico, Tony Blair, es esperado hoy en la noche en Israel y el lunes en Beirut para intentar reflotar el proceso de paz.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72737-2006-09-09.html
Página/12:
Armitage delató a la espía
NUEVAS REVELACIONES DEL CASO PLANE EN EE.UU.
Por Rupert Cornwell*
Desde Washington, Sábado, 09 de Septiembre de 2006
¿Quién filtró el nombre de Valerie Plane, la glamorosa aunque no tan secreta agente de la CIA y tapa de Vanity Fair? Durante tres años, el misterio obsesionó a todo el Washington político, los medios liberales y los que odian a Bush alrededor del mundo. La historia siempre fue intrincada, con un trasfondo tan denso que había que leer tres veces los artículos en los diarios para entenderlos. Pero para los aficionados, las implicaciones eran claras. Se debía encontrar a los culpables entre los belicistas y los vengativos en la Casa Blanca, siendo los sospechosos 1 y 2, Karl Rove (el cerebro de Bush) y Lewis Libby (el poderoso jefe del gabinete del vicepresidente Dick Cheney).
Se presumía que estos ruines funcionarios habían revelado la identidad de Plane para vengarse de su marido, el ex embajador Joseph Wilson, por sus declaraciones de que la administración había tergiversado la inteligencia para justificar la invasión a Irak. Bueno, no exactamente. Ahora se sabe que el que filtró la noticia, por propia admisión, fue Richard Armitage, irreverente y muy querido vice del ex secretario de Estado Colin Powell. Esta semana, Armitage confesó su “terrible error” a varios periodistas selectos. Aparentemente se le había escapado la real profesión de Plane en un aparte de chimentos a reporteros allá por mediados de 2003. “Valoro mi habilidad para guardar secretos de Estado”, le dijo al New York Times ayer. “Estuvo mal y realmente me siento muy mal por esto”. Pero nadie lo está tirando sobre carbones ardientes.
¿Por qué se lanzó tanto veneno sobre Libby y Rove? Simplemente porque Armitage, que dejó la administración junto con Powell a fines de 2004, era uno de los “tipos buenos” para los medios liberales, una voz de sentido común, famoso por su desprecio por los “loquitos” en el Pentágono y en la oficina del vicepresidente. Durante mucho del 2004 y 2005, la filtración de la CIA era una de las historias de más interés de la ciudad.
Sin embargo, hay preguntas específicas piden una respuesta a gritos. Según parece, Armitage, allá por 2003, le dijo al fiscal Fitzgerald (que estaba a cargo de la investigación) que él podría haber sido el involuntario autor de la filtración. Inusitadamente, el ex subsecretario de Estado nunca contrató a un abogado: “Merecía lo que me pudiera suceder. No necesitaba un abogado para decir la verdad”, dice Armitage ahora. ¿Pero, por qué Fitzgerald continuó con sus investigaciones cuando parece haber sabido la verdad desde el comienzo?
* De The Independent de Gran Bretaña. Especial para Página/12
Traducción: Celita Doyhambéhère
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72735-2006-09-09.html
Página/12:
Arde el laborismo británico
YA EMPEZO LA PELEA POR LA SUCESION DE BLAIR
Por Walter Oppenheimer*
Desde Londres, Sábado, 09 de Septiembre de 2006
Charles Clarke, uno de los pesos pesado del Partido Laborista, echó ayer más leña al fuego de la crisis que atraviesan los laboristas británicos al llamar “estúpido” a Gordon Brown. Clarke puso en duda la capacidad de Brown para suceder a Tony Blair y criticó en especial que el miércoles, en medio del máximo furor de la crisis, se dejara fotografiar con una amplia y más bien cínica sonrisa al salir por la puerta trasera de Downing Street tras una tensa entrevista con el primer ministro.
“Parte del problema es su falta de confianza. Está nervioso. Eso puede cambiar cuando se libere de la carga de esperar (a llegar a ser primer ministro) y probablemente así será. Pero el problema es que nadie lo sabe a ciencia cierta”, afirma Clarke en una entrevista publicada por el vespertino London Evening Standard. “No es el que acostumbraba a ser. Tiene talento y es brillante pero están esas pequeñas cosas, como esa irónica sonrisa en el coche que da una imagen terrible”, añade aludiendo a la fotografía. Esta fue reproducida en primera página por numerosos diarios el jueves y da la sensación de que Brown, que hasta entonces no había abierto la boca en público, estaba disfrutando de lo lindo por los apuros de Blair, reforzando la impresión de que él ha sido el organizador de la revuelta y dañando así su propia imagen.
“Mucha gente se ha molestado y se ha sentido vejada. Ha sido algo estúpido”, sostiene el ex ministro, cuyas relaciones con Brown son malas desde hace años. Clarke cuestionó que el canciller del Exchequer –ministro del Tesoro– “esté en condiciones de ser primer ministro” y se refirió al archiblairista Alan Milburn, enemigo jurado de Brown, como “carne de primer ministro”. Sus palabras amenazan con reabrir el conflicto laborista, precariamente cerrado con el anuncio de Blair de que dejará el cargo antes de un año y el aparente pacto de que, en febrero, durante el congreso de primavera del Partido Laborista, anunciará que dimitirá el 4 de mayo, un día después de las elecciones locales y regionales y dos días después de que se cumplan los 10 años de su entrada en Downing Street.
Pero no parece que sus palabras hayan sido orquestadas por los blairistas. Clarke tiene peso específico e independencia para hablar por su cuenta y, aunque históricamente próximo a Blair, sus relaciones con el primer ministro se han deteriorado desde que éste lo cesó la pasada primavera como ministro del Interior. El portavoz oficial del primer ministro no quiso entrar en el debate: “No tengo absolutamente nada que decir. Sólo me interesa el trabajo del gobierno”, dijo, y varios ministros y diputados le reprocharon a Clarke sus comentarios. Gordon Brown dio ayer un nuevo paso para relajar la tensión con el primer ministro al referirse “al valiente liderazgo de Tony Blair” en un artículo en el diario The Sun en el que se alinea con su política en materia antiterrorista y de seguridad ciudadana. En el mismo artículo considera obvio que la policía necesite más de 28 días para investigar a los sospechosos de terrorismo, en línea con las intenciones de Blair de pedir al Parlamento que aumente el período de detención.
Brown, que en los próximos días viajará a Nueva York coincidiendo con el quinto aniversario de los atentados del 11 de septiembre, afirma que va allí a “reafirmar al pueblo estadounidense que Gran Bretaña se mantiene ahora, como entonces, hombro con hombro con ellos”. Significativamente, Brown no se refiere al presidente George Bush, sino al “pueblo estadounidense”.
* De El País de Madrid. Especial para Página/12.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72736-2006-09-09.html
Página/12:
Los simuladores
INVENTARON UN ATENTADO EN COLOMBIA
Sábado, 09 de Septiembre de 2006
A la violencia de las guerrillas izquierdistas y paramilitares de ultraderecha se suma en Colombia la fabricación de atentados por el ejército. El jueves, tras la denuncia del hecho por parte de la prensa, el Ministerio de Defensa se vio obligado a revelar que cuatro oficiales del ejército están implicados en un atentado con bomba que mató a un civil e hirió a diez soldados como parte de un montaje para mostrar resultados positivos de la institución. En un comunicado leído ayer por el comandante del ejército, general Mario Montoya, el ministerio señaló que el ataque, atribuido inicialmente a la guerrilla de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), así como el supuesto decomiso de varios explosivos en los últimos dos meses, al parecer no corresponde a la realidad.
Según un informe del Ministerio de Defensa, el propósito de los militares con estos atentados o simulaciones de ataques sería mostrar resultados positivos que posicionaran al ejército durante una época candente, como la previa a la toma de posesión del presidente, además de cobrar recompensas que el gobierno ofrece a informantes. Los analistas coincidieron en que este hecho debilita la imagen de la política de seguridad democrática, bandera del gobierno de Uribe, que asegura que durante su primer gobierno (2002-2006) logró reducir todos los indicadores de violencia en el país.
“Todos estamos sorprendidos y consideramos estos hechos totalmente censurables, rechazables. Procederemos a tomar todas las medidas del caso para que los responsables sean castigados de forma ejemplar”, dijo el ministro de Defensa, Juan Manuel Santos. “Se trata de un caso aislado, como otros que se han conocido en meses pasados”, agregó. El ministro desestimó críticas de que el hecho esté motivado por la presión del gobierno a los militares para exigir resultados en la lucha contra las guerrillas. “No es producto de la presión, sino de corrupción y lo vamos a castigar. Aquí había un interés de querer cobrar la recompensa y no es producto de la presunta presión del gobierno”, enfatizó Santos.
El ataque, en el que murió un indigente y diez soldados resultaron heridos, se realizó el 31 de julio en Bogotá, al paso de dos camiones militares. El gobierno ofreció entonces una recompensa de más de 410.000 dólares por informaciones que permitieran capturar a los responsables.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72745-2006-09-09.html
Página/12:
Colgar del gancho, no
Por Osvaldo Bayer
Sábado, 09 de Septiembre de 2006
Cuando éramos chicos, allá por los treinta, para nosotros “Federal” era el jabón con que se lavaba la ropa. La propaganda salía con un gaucho vestido de rojo. Y escuchábamos por Radio Nacional (que después pasó a ser Radio Belgrano) “Chispazos de Tradición”, una audición de diálogos gauchos donde los paisanos le decían tatita al padre. ¡Cómo cambiaron los tiempos! Ahora Federal se llama Value-Brand, pertenece a capital estadounidense y europeo y ha cometido despidos despiadados. Decimos despiadados porque hay que tener un sentido negativo de la vida para despedir a 38 trabajadores que mantienen a sus familias bien proletarias. A estos señores empresarios de otras orillas habría que decirles aquellas palabras kantianas de que si hay violencia de abajo es porque primeramente se violenta desde arriba. Primero se despidió a un activista muy querido. La solidaridad llevó como reacción de la empresa al despido de 37 obreros más. Algo al parecer que se tiene como un “derecho”, de los que no tienen en cuenta a la sociedad integral. Muy bien, el Ministerio de Trabajo y la Justicia reaccionaron advirtiendo a la empresa que tiene que aceptar la conciliación obligatoria. El abogado de la empresa, Raúl Pizarro Posse, se creyó que habían vuelto los tiempos donde los trabajadores debían agachar el lomo porque si no “desaparecían”, como en Siderca-Dálmine, donde estuvo en ese período nefasto. Pizarro Posse les dijo ahora a los abogados defensores de los despedidos de la ex Federal una frase que quedará para la historia de la lucha eterna entre los poderosos y los humillados: “Los voy a colgar de un gancho”. Lindo título para un capítulo de esa historia. Los obreros de Zanon han salido a la palestra para apoyar a estos obreros en huelga y resolvieron crear un fondo de huelga para ayudar a los despedidos. Justo como en aquellos años en que Julio Argentino Roca hizo aprobar la ley de residencia que expulsaba a los obreros extranjeros de “ideas antiargentinas” y entonces los obreros argentinos disponían de parte de sus jornales para ayudar a las esposas y pequeños hijos de los extranjeros expulsados a sobrevivir a la injusticia. Contra la impunidad del poder, la fuerza de la mano abierta de la solidaridad.
En este sentido, una actitud de arriba nos ha entristecido. Es algo similar pero en una escena distinta. Hace tiempo, la asamblea barrial de Floresta decidió convocar a varias asambleas –método democrático por excelencia– para cambiar el nombre de la Plaza Coronel Ramón Falcón. ¿Por qué? Porque el único hecho famoso cometido por este personaje que fue nombrado jefe de la policía de la Capital fue la espantosa masacre de los obreros en la Plaza Lorea el 1º de mayo de 1909. No hay ya nadie que pueda defenderlo, salvo, claro está, quienes sienten como una molestia los derechos de los humildes a llevar una vida digna. Los obreros recordaron en esa fecha a los Mártires de Chicago, ahorcados en esa ciudad estadounidense por pedir las ocho horas de trabajo. Fue una demostración absolutamente pacífica por algo que hoy nadie podría discutir: repito, las sagradas ocho horas de trabajo. Cuando los primeros oradores proletarios comenzaron a hablar, el jefe de policía coronel Falcón ordenó el despliegue y el ataque de los fusileros policiales e inmediatamente el ataque de la caballería. Aquello fue una matanza cobarde y cruel. Hasta los diarios, en sus crónicas, no pueden explicarse el porqué de la represión. Los obreros no pedían ni el poder político ni el poder de las fábricas, pedían las ocho horas de trabajo. El sórdido uniformado se creyó dueño de la vida y de la muerte. Es otro de los episodios de cómo la oligarquía que gobernaba esos tiempos argentinos buscaba meter miedo entre los que luchaban por sus derechos. Pensar que en 1813, los patriotas aprobaron estos bellos versos de nuestro himno: “Ved en trono a la noble igualdad/ libertad, libertad, libertad”. Y ese coronel casi un siglo después les metía bala a los valientes obreros que pedían no igualdad sino un trato humano. Qué habría dicho Mariano Moreno frente a ese asesino de poder y uniforme. Los obreros de aquellos años no eran humillados que se arrodillaban para pedir piedad ante quien estaba en el trono. Aguardaron varios meses para que se hiciera justicia contra el criminal oficial. Nada pasó. El coronel siguió en su desprecio criminal sobre la vida obrera. Hasta que siete meses después un joven de 18 años, Simón Radowitzky, va a ejecutar la condena del pueblo: va a ajusticiar al criminal de sello oficial. Y finalmente, en el transcurso de la historia, la realidad les dio la razón a los obreros: consiguieron las ocho horas de trabajo en todos los gremios, hoy traicionada en muchos casos.
La asamblea de vecinos de Floresta se preguntó por qué una de sus plazas lleva el nombre de ese represor. Claro que ese nombre fue puesto por gobiernos no elegidos por el pueblo. Y la asamblea invitó a que se votara democráticamente entre los vecinos convocados. Se eligió para la plaza el nombre de Che Guevara. Pues bien, todo fue en vano. Las autoridades han resuelto rebautizarla con el nombre del homicida de obreros, coronel Falcón. Lo han anunciado en estos últimos días con grandes carteles en la plaza y los alrededores. Yo preguntaría a las autoridades que mérito tiene ese coronel para tener la segunda calle más larga de Buenos Aires con su nombre, además, por qué –miren qué ejemplo– el colegio donde se preparan nuestros oficiales de policía tiene el nombre del cobarde represor y más, por qué ahora se le devuelve el nombre a la plaza cuando el vecindario había votado el cambio. ¿Cuál es el argumento? ¿Por qué la Legislatura porteña no llama a un debate de historiadores sobre qué mérito tiene ese uniformado? ¿Por qué no se actúa democráticamente y se aceptan disposiciones de gobiernos anteriores sin basamento democrático? ¿Por qué tanta falta de coraje civil? Si les asusta el nombre de Che Guevara, piensen que la misma ciudad de Alta Gracia, en Córdoba, ha promocionado el museo Che Guevara, donde el héroe latinoamericano pasó once años de su vida. Por todos lados en esa bellísima ciudad hay carteles que guían al visitante hacia la casa que fue de los padres del Che. ¿Por qué tanto miedo en Buenos Aires? Bien, si no quieren por lo menos que lo digan y que den argumentos para negar al héroe. Sería muy bueno saber las verdades de cada uno y no el silencio o la resolución tomada en la oscuridad, como esto de devolver el nombre del asesino Falcón a una hermosa plaza de nuestra querida ciudad.
Esperemos pues que nuestros legisladores y nuestra Justicia no permitan que vayan “a colgar de un gancho” a los obreros de Jabón Federal que dijeron no al representante patronal que miró para otro lado –durante la dictadura de Videla– cuando se hacía desaparecer a los “molestos”. Y con respecto al coronel que mató a obreros, que las autoridades den una explicación de por qué se devuelve su nombre. A mí la ciudad de Buenos Aires me dio el título de Ciudadano Ilustre y me pongo, como tal, a disposición de los mandatarios y de la Legislatura para llevar las pruebas históricas de esa vileza de matar a los humillados y ofendidos. Nada más que la verdad histórica. Es lo único que nos debe servir para ir sembrando un camino de ética para las generaciones que vendrán. Colgar del gancho, no. Etica y Derecho.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-72739-2006-09-09.html
The Independent:
Why 'victory' in first phase of war on terror unravelled
Patrick Cockburn
Published: 09 September 2006
It is the war that was meant to have ended for good. Just under five years ago the Taliban fled Kabul without firing a shot. But yesterday the Islamic militants showed they were back with a vengeance when a massive suicide bomb blew up beside an American convoy in the city killing 18 Afghans and two US soldiers. Fighting between the Taliban and Nato forces is raging across the south of the country.
The victory won by President George Bush in 2001 after the 11 September al-Qa'ida attacks on America has evaporated. "The fighting is extraordinarily intense. The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis," the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Brig Ed Butler said this week. Taliban units have taken over swaths of country around Kandahar and are increasingly active in and around the capital.
Nato defence chiefs meeting in Poland yesterday asked for a further 2,000 to 2,500 men to supplement the 18,500 Nato troops already in Afghanistan. Nato commander James L Jones called for reinforcements saying the next few weeks could be "decisive".
The suicide bomb near the US embassy was the largest to explode in Kabul since the overthrow of the Taliban. The bomber drove a Corolla packed with explosives which he detonated beside a US Humvee, tearing the vehicle apart. A spiral of brown smoke rose high into the sky from the blazing wreckage. The explosion was powerful enough to gouge a 6ft-deep crater in the road.
US troops stood guard over the bodies of two of their soldiers, one lying slumped in the gutter and the other covered by a plastic sheet. Near by were the remains of other bodies, Muslim prayer caps, floppy khaki coloured military caps and shoes. Some of the dead were street cleaners and seven were said to be foreigners.
Among the dead was the body of an elderly woman who had been sitting with her grand-daughter outside the apartment building where they both lived.
The victory by the US and its local allies after 9/11 was deceptively easy. Pounded by US bombers flying so high they could not be seen and often heavily bribed by emissaries of the CIA the warlords fighting with the Taliban changed sides or went home.
As the Taliban broke up in December 2001 I drove from Kabul to Kandahar and was amazed by how few people had been killed. Everywhere deals were being done between the old and the new regime so the Taliban could retire gracefully to their villages or across the border into Pakistan.
It was all too easy. Many of the local warlords stayed in business. There was little change in who held power on the ground. I visited one warlord south of Kabul who was so averse to giving his allegiance to Hamid Karzai, soon to be elected President, that he only recognised the authority of the UN and raised its blue flag over his village.
President Bush believed the victory was total and the Taliban had gone forever. By the spring of 2002 his administration was already planning to invade Iraq.
The White House and Downing Street exaggerated its own achievements in Afghanistan. The US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld said that what had happened in Afghanistan was "a breathtaking accomplishment", even as US forces devoted their time to a vain pursuit of al-Qa'ida and Osama bin Laden.
But it took some time before the fragility of the regime became apparent. The Taliban had been deeply unpopular. Many Afghans believed it had been foisted on them by Pakistani military intelligence backed by Saudi money. In a country where there were land mines everywhere but few bridges and roads there was also a desperate desire for peace and development.
But President Karzai never controlled the four fifths of the country outside Kabul. One third of the MPs in the new parliament elected last year were warlords and drug smugglers. Aid was inadequate. For farmers in the southern provinces growing opium poppies was the only cash crop that could pay off their debts. Meanwhile the Taliban were raising fresh men. From a few hundred last year they claimed to have 12,000 men under arms in the south this year.
The most striking feature of the 4,000-strong British force dispatched to southern Afghanistan is its small size. Even the armies that Britain dispatched to Afghanistan, usually with disastrous results, in the 19th century were larger in number. There are hardly enough soldiers to defend themselves, still less to start an ambitious "hearts and minds" campaign.
In July 2002, 1,000 British peacekeepers were withdrawn as Britain handed over control of the international peacekeeping force to Turkey, leaving just 300 British peacekeepers.
The same month, 1,700 soldiers from the Royal Marines 45 Commando were sent home having largely failed to find al Qa'ida leaders in joint missions with US forces. Britain ignored entreaties from President Karzai for more troops. The military build-up for the Iraq invasion was already being planned.
Four years on, Nato troops are fighting for their lives in Afghanistan in battles which left hundreds of Taliban dead this week alone. The Taliban use tactics found so effective by guerrillas in Iraq. Suicide bombers driving vehicles packed with explosives, as happened yesterday in Kabul, are a horribly effective way of destabilising a government. It forces foreign forces to retreat into fortified bases.
The roadside bomb, which has inflicted half of American casualties in Iraq, is a simple but fierce some weapon against a vehicle-borne army.
The British Government was warned what might happen. Generals admitted privately that in Afghanistan and in Iraq British soldiers could end up penned into their encampments unable to move outside its fortifications. It is nevertheless strange that the Government, having become entangled in a messy guerrilla war in Iraq, should make exactly the same mistake in Afghanistan.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1431080.ece
posted by attilav at 22:21
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home