Elsewhere Today (419)
Al Jazeera:
Islamic Courts seek to expand war
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2006
13:13 MECCA TIME, 10:13 GMT
A Somali Islamic Courts defence chief has for the first time called on foreign Muslim fighters to join his movement's war against Ethiopia.
"We're saying our country is open to Muslims worldwide. Let them fight in Somalia and wage jihad, and God willing, attack Addis Ababa," said Yusuf Mohamed Siad, known as Inda'ade, a defence chief.
"We want anyone who can help remove the enemy to come in," he told a news conference in the Mogadishu, the Somali capital and an Islamic Courts stronghold.
Ethiopia said the call for fighters proved the "extremism" of the movement Addis Ababa accuses of being run by al-Qaeda linked fighters.
"If wishes were horses, the extremists in the Islamic Courts Union would have attacked Addis Ababa by now," Solomon Abede, a foreign ministry spokesman, said.
"Their declaration appealing to foreign Muslim fighters to help in war against Ethiopia proves their extremist behaviour."
Guerrilla warfare
Inda'ade made the call for foreign fighters after four days of clashes between Islamic opposition forces and pro-government troops.
Dozens have been killed in the fighting, with hundreds more wounded.
Tension across Horn of Africa
Also on Saturday, the Islamic Courts said it has trained special forces to carry out guerrilla warfare against Ethiopian troops supporting the UN-backed government.
"Special forces who are highly trained in guerrilla warfare are now ready to attack Ethiopians, wherever they are in Somalia," said Sheik Ibrahim Shukri Abuu-Zeynab, a spokesman for the Islamic Courts.
Islamic forces opposed to Somalia’s UN-backed transitional government have declared they want to bring the whole country under the rule of the Quran.
They have vowed to continue attacks to drive out troops from neighboring Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian nation that is providing military support to Somalia's transitional government.
The United States has also accused the Islamic opposition of drawing support from al-Qaeda. The Islamic Courts have denied such a charge.
Fighting
The most sustained combat in Somalia started late on Tuesday, the deadline the Islamic Courts had given Ethiopian troops protecting the government to leave the country or face war.
On Friday, officials said hundreds of people had been killed since Tuesday night.
Sporadic gunfire and shelling could be heard Friday around Baidoa, the transitional government's only stronghold, but residents and officials said the fighting had subsided.
Thousands of Somali civilians have fled their homes in Baidoa after fighting erupted around the town.
The clashes threaten a wider conflict in the region. Ethiopia, which has one of the largest armies in the region, and its rival Eritrea could use Somalia as the ground for a proxy war.
While Ethiopia backs the internationally recognised government, Eritrea backs the Islamic Courts.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Isaias Afewerke, the Eritrean president, denied reports that Eritrean forces are fighting alongside Islamic Courts fighters in Somalia. He said the reports were meant to justify what he called "Ethiopian occupation of Somalia."
UN response
In New York, Kofi Annan, UN secretary general, called on both sides to "cease the hostilities immediately and to resume the peace talks ... without delay and without any precondition" said his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, in a statement released late Friday.
He also voiced "grave concern" over reports of the involvement of “foreign forces ... and he implores all involved to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Somalia."
The UN issued a statement in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Friday calling for an "immediate end" to the conflict.
The UN also said both sides were using increasing numbers of child soldiers. "This conflict will push the children of Somalia into further dire crisis," it said.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AE1E58BD-5FA8-41FE-8A3C-6AEF40B5BAF7.htm
Al Jazeera:
Tension across Horn of Africa
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2006
14:08 MECCA TIME, 11:08 GMT
Here are key facts about the tense interplay of relations in the Horn of Africa, where Somalia has long been a battleground for various players' interests, particularly those of Ethiopia.
* Ethiopia and Somalia have been rivals throughout history, and memories of the 1977-78 Ogaden war between the two are still fresh.
Fought against a backdrop of shifting Cold War alliances, Ethiopia's army crushed Somali troops who tried to lay claim to the Ogaden region with the vision of recapturing ethnically Somali territories outside Somalia.
Ethiopia had seized the Ogaden in the early 1900s in what Somalis viewed as a colonialist expansion by a Christian empire.
* Ethiopia has not hesitated to send troops into Somalia to attack Somali Islamist movements, wary they could stir up trouble in the ethnically Somali regions on its side of the border.
Since the Islamic Courts took power in June after kicking US and Ethiopian-backed warlords out of Mogadishu, Addis Ababa has warned it would crush any Islamist attack.
* The current fight is a repeat of history with the same players involved. Several times from 1992 to 1998, Ethiopian soldiers attacked al-Itihaad al-Islaami, a Somali group the US has put on a list of organisations linked to terrorism.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, Islamic Courts leader, led its military wing at that time. Abdullahi Yusuf, the current interim President, then a warlord with Ethiopian money behind him, led his militias against al-Itihaad in that period.
* A report to the United Nations on arms embargo violations says Eritrea has given weapons and training and sent about 2,000 troops to back the Islamic Courts, to frustrate the Ethiopian-allied interim government.
Eritrea denies the charge, though makes no secret of its hatred of Ethiopia over their still-unresolved border dispute, which led to a 1998-2000 war.
* Military experts estimate Ethiopia has 15,000-20,000 troops inside Somalia. Addis Ababa says it only has a few hundred military trainers there.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5CDC4B60-ADCF-433F-AF79-DAAB0E968985.htm
Until Our Demands Are Met – MEND
Vanguard (Lagos) NEWS
December 23, 2006
The movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) which is holding four foreign oil workers snatched in Bayelsa State ruled yesterday negotiating the hostages' release before all its demands were met.
The four men, three Italians and a Lebanese citizen, were seized from an Agip Brass oil field in the southern state of Bayelsa on December 7.
"There will be no negotiations until our conditions are met," a spokesman of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) said in a statement.
MEND was reacting to a statement by Italian oil firm Agip, which claimed Thursday that it was negotiating "directly" with MEND on the release of the four captives.
MEND said it would only release the men, identified as Italians Arena Franco, Dieghi Roberto and and Russo Cosma Damiano and Lebanese national Saliba Amad, once all its political demands are met. The group has vowed not to trade the release of the hostages for ransom.
MEND is demanding the release from prison of former Bayelsa State governor Diepreye Alamieseigha, jailed on corruption charges, and separatist leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, facing treasonable felony charges in Abuja. MEND also wants a larger share in oil revenue for local people in the delta and compensation for communities affected by oil spills. The group on Wednesday accused Agip of offering money to middlemen claiming to be able to negotiate the release of the hostages.
"Agip is advised to disregard all who claim to be able to facilitate the release of these hostages. It will not happen. Rather than release them, the hostages will all be shot. This is a promise!", MEND said in an e-mailed statement to journalists.
On Monday MEND detonated two car bombs in Port Harcourt, the capital of the oil-rich Rivers State, and said it would step up both the intensity and the "ruthlessness" of its campaign against oil companies.
One bomb struck the residential zone of Anglo-Dutch giant Shell and the second hit property belonging to Agip. There were no casualties and the damage was minimal.
Oil companies operating in Nigeria publicly deny paying ransom to hostage-takers, but observers claim that payments have been made and that this contributed to worsening the problem.
Early Thursday, armed men attacked a flow station operated by Agip at Tebidaba in the southern Nigerian state of Bayelsa, a military officer said.
Copyright © 2006 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200612230054.html
allAfrica: 2007 Presidential Elections
Our Plans for Nigeria, By Yar'adua, Buhari, Atiku
By Jide Ajani, Political Editor
Vanguard (Lagos)
December 23, 2006
AS the 2007 general elections approach the final curve, it is instructive that after all the initial posturings, Nigerians may have to choose their next President from the trio of Alhaji Umar Musa Yar'Adua of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Action Congress (AC). This report simply takes a look at how each emerged from their political parties and their plans for the country.
WITH the shambolism that has become the Nigerian polity, with politicians cross-carpeting in a manner which suggests a collective paradigm of everyone to himself, Nigeria's future in the hands of present-day politicians is one which would require a red-sea crossing miracle for things to get any better.
Perhaps, had the ruling PDP set good examples, all might have been well and okay. But the PDP itself, with its maximum leader, President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, reaching for each other's jugular, it is perhaps tragic that almost eight years into Nigeria's Fourth Republic, the nation is still mired in the political quicksand of attrition and selfishness. Now, there are hopes of a new, bright beginning.
Today, just four months to the presidential elections, Nigerians have finally come face-to-face with the men (or one of the men) who shall, from May 29, 2007, begin to pilot the affairs of Africa's most populous nation. And that is what indeed occupies every mind in the country.
Umar Musa Yar'Adua, governor of Katsina State, is brother of late General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, the founder of the Peoples Front and initiator of the Peoples Democratic Movement, PDM. He is the candidate of the PDP for the elections next year.
Atiku Abubakar is Obasanjo's deputy, but who, strangely to some people and unexpected to others, has gone ahead to pick the presidential ticket of the Action Congress, while remaining the Vice President on the PDP ticket.
Then there is Muhammadu Buhari, a former military Head of State who has picked the ticket of the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP.
And whereas there are other political parties in the land, the potency, visibility and impact of these three parties can not be under-estimated. There is the DPA, PPA, DPP, JP, FP, and the likes, the reality on the ground is that most of the other parties do not command the same level of followership as the trio.
The likes of Chris Okotie, Orji Uzor Kalu and Attahiru Bafarawa have emerged as presidential candidates of Fresh Party, Peoples Progressive Alliance (PPA), and Democratic Peoples Party (DPP), respectively. But the real contest next year is expected to be a straight fight between Yar'Adua of PDP, Buhari of ANPP, and Atiku of AC. But how did these three personalities emerge and what actually do they stand for?
Yar'Adua: Reforms'll continue
Many people who hear the name Umaru Yar'Adua immediately get the picture of the late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, the man whose political sagacity and astuteness was acknowledged by even those who hated him. Since Umaru Yar'Adua joined the race for PDP's presidential ticket, an interesting dimension has been added to the political calculation and many people who barely knew the man beyond his relationship with his late brother, may have wondered who he truly is.
Indeed, he is a quiet man. For a man who was born with the so-called silver spoon in his mouth and who has over the years witnessed first hand the debilitating effect of poverty on people, Umar Yar'Adua, according to those who know him, believes that governance is useless if the well-being of the people is not positively impacted upon. It is this abiding conviction that has continued to shape his style of governance in Katsina. Even in the traditional Katsina Emirate where he hails from, the Yar'Adua family is the custodian of the treasury. This, perhaps, taught him the lessons of prudence in the management of affairs that belong to the commonwealth.
In a country where governors are better known for their profligacy, Umaru in an unusual show of transparency did not only declare his assets when he became governor in 1999 but out of his own volition made it public in the finest spirit of transparency.
But in this, Yar'Adua is not a blind conformist to tradition and conventions. As a young man, he was a member of the People's Redemption Party (PRP) in the Second Republic politics. Thus, he not only found himself on the left wing, but through devotion to duty and selflessness, became a leading member of the PRP think-tank, working with the likes of the late Dr. Bala Usman of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU). This underscores the abiding spirit of positive resistance that great leaders are made of.
This point becomes more poignant when viewed from the prism of the fact that though the PRP gospel was fashionable, it was almost unthinkable for a man deeply enmeshed in the fine tradition of the Northern conservatism would break rank with tradition to rebel. He dared to be different.
Governor Yar'Adua believes that the development of Nigeria is only possible when there is a diversification of the economy so that there would not be an over-dependence on a mono product - oil. What the governor has going for him, which is in sync with the present trend in governance, are his impeccable credentials as a hugely transparent, honest and humble person. It is perhaps these qualities that endeared him to the President who is bent on leaving behind a legacy of leadership that would benefit the majority rather than assure the comfort of a few.
But Nigeria is not Katsina State. Despite strident denials from his aides and political advisers, Yar'Adua is generally perceived as an unwilling aspirant who was drafted into the race by a President hell bent on anointing his successor by all means.
In his acceptance speech after defeating Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, former National Security Adviser, Rochas Okorocha, Ebitu Ukiwe, Mohammed Marwa, Sarah Jibril, Albert Horsfal, P. Sawa, Mike Akhigbe, last Saturday to clinch the PDP ticket, Yar'Adua said:
"The outcome of the election at this orderly convention is the culmination of the hardwork and dedication of our members for the last several weeks. I must say it is a source of joy for me personally and I must say for all Nigerians, that the largest party in the continent of Africa, has once again demonstrated the oneness and resolve by Nigerians to consolidate democracy for the benefit of all our teeming citizens as well as Africans wherever they are in the world.
"I am proud to be associated with patriots such as you, our delegates, in making Nigeria great.
"As we continue our journey towards a great Nigerian nation where freedom, justice, equality and unity reign supreme, we must all with one loud voice express our gratitude to President Obasanjo for his patriotism, statesmanship, courage, integrity and above all his love and commitment to Nigeria. President Obasanjo has indeed earned himself an enviable position in the annals of history as the father of democracy and good government in Nigeria.
"We must acknowledge also the contribution of our heroes past. The Nigeria of today was built by the sweat and tears of both known and unknown heroes. We must salute their memories by upholding democratic ideals.
"As I accept your electing me the flag bearer of our party, I must acknowledge the statesmanship and solidarity that I received from my colleagues, the governors. In particular I am most grateful to the Governors' Forum for their confidence and support towards achieving the outcome of the election. I wish to single out my fellow contestants who in spite of their interest in being elected jettisoned their interest as a show of party solidarity and discipline. I am up till now overwhelmed by this gesture.
"Before I conclude this brief address, let me assure all and sundry that as your candidate for the office of the president, I will abide by the laudable programmes of our great party, the PDP. Let me state without any iota of doubt that the economic reforms will be vigorously pursued. I am also resolved to continue the fight against corruption and poor governance."
For Yar'Adua, he would be doing battle with the full backing of his colleagues in the PDP who control 28 states of the federation, although two (Orji Kalu of Abia State and Boni Haruna of Adamawa State) have their own paths well cut out. He would also be enjoying the full weight of the presidency and his huge crowd of PDP supporters.
RELATED:
We Can Run Govt Better Than PDP – Buhari
What I Offer, By Atiku Abubakar
Copyright © 2006 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200612230056.html
AlterNet:
Pressuring Israel May Prevent a 'Generational' Mideast War
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on December 23, 2006
The Middle East stands at the edge of an abyss, and the most powerful country in the world has become institutionally incapable of pulling it back.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that there "will be a war next summer. Only the sector has not been chosen yet." According to Israeli defense officials, "the IDF's operative assumption is that during the coming summer months, a war will break out against Hezbollah and perhaps against Syria as well."
America's best hope of containing the escalating tensions in the region would be to address the festering wound that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has represented for decades. Common sense dictates that the time has come for the United States to apply pressure on Israel to restart negotiations with the Palestinians equal to that already put on the Palestinians to recognize Israel and contain their violent factions.
That would mark a dramatic shift in policy, and would potentially transform Bush's smoldering wreckage of a Middle East agenda. It could also represent a turnaround in the larger struggle against Islamic extremism, pulling the world back from the brink of the real "Clash of Civilizations" that ideologues from both East and West apparently covet.
It would go a long way towards mending fences with our European allies - Tony Blair said recently that "resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the core of bringing peace to the Middle East" - and it would give the United States a golden bargaining chip to entice Iraq's neighbors to help clean up the mess we've made there. The Iraq Study Group - the bipartisan, blue-ribbon bunch of Wise Old Men and Women - concluded that we have little hope of stabilizing Iraq "unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict" and urged "renewed and sustained commitment by the United States on all fronts," including an aggressive push for "a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine."
Yet, it won't happen. Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, who explicitly linked Israel's conflict with Lebanon during the summer to George Bush's "War on Terror," quickly shot down the ISG's recommendations, rejecting "the attempt to create a linkage between the Iraqi issue and the Mideast issue."
And so it will be. Despite the fact that we've been very, very good to Israel for a very long time, it has become politically impossible to demand that our closest ally drop the almost impossible preconditions they've put on the Palestinians for rejoining the peace process. That's because key constituencies in both major parties - traditional Jewish "Israel voters" for the Dems and evangelical "Christian Zionists" for the Republicans - have pushed the debate in DC to such a degree that a balanced approach to the region is now impossible for the United States.
This spring, political scientists Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago created a firestorm with their study of the impact of the "Israel lobby" on U.S. foreign policy. Critics lambasted the two respected scholars, accusing them, as has become the norm, of perpetrating conspiracy theories and being closeted anti-Semites. But their point was simple. The Israel lobby, which they defined as a loosely allied group of advocacy organizations, have effectively created a rigid political orthodoxy in Washington, the result of which is that our government is now effectively incapable of pursuing U.S. interests in the Middle East if they conflict in any way with the policies of Israel's center-right governing coalition.
It would be hard to find a clearer validation of their argument than the knee-jerk rejection of the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the United States adopt a regional strategy towards stabilizing Iraq.
The Bush administration has gone further in giving Israel carte blanche in its handling of the situation in the Occupied Territories than his predecessors (including Reagan) ever did, authoring a dramatic shift in U.S. policy towards the region. The administration offered its "Roadmap" with much fanfare in 2002. But while the Bushies have condemned the Palestinians for straying from that plan, they've been silent as the Israelis have repeatedly and quite openly violated its tenets.
In April 2004, George W. Bush made a statement that sent shockwaves through the diplomatic community:
In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion.
This was the moment when the United States gave up the pretense of being an honest broker in the conflict - that pretense long being a hallmark of U.S. policy.
In 1978, Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin signed the Camp David Accords, in which he promised that Israel would halt the construction of settlements - illegal according to U.N. Security Council resolutions 446, 452, 465 and 471. At the time, the Israeli settler population in East Jerusalem and the West Bank was less than 100,000 (in 1972, it was about 10,000). But as of 2000, there were 400,000 Israeli settlers living in territories captured in 1967, according to Israeli government statistics. Since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem) has doubled.
Three years ago, Israel promised the United States, in writing, that it would halt the construction of new settlements. But in October of this year, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz released a report that Haaretz called "political dynamite." The government study found that "a secret two-year investigation by the defense establishment shows that there has been rampant illegal construction in dozens of settlements and in many cases involving privately owned Palestinian properties." The New York Times (in its "travel section" of all places), reported that while "Israel has long asserted that it fully respects Palestinian private property in the West Bank and only takes land there legally" Israeli occupation watchers have found that "39 percent of the land held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians."
While the administration has given an unprecedented green light to the Israelis, it has brought intense pressure on the Palestinians. After much-touted Palestinian elections resulted in Hamas coming to power, the administration advocated a complete cessation of aid to the Palestinian authority and approved of Israel withholding Palestinian taxes that it collects. That led to an underreported but very severe humanitarian crisis in the occupied territories.
The rationale was that elements within Hamas refused to recognize Israel and call a halt to the Intifada, which is certainly justifiable on its face. But at the same time, both Ariel Sharon and his successor Ehud Olmert flagrantly violated the provision of the Road Map that requires that any and all moves in the occupied territories be negotiated with the Palestinians. The Bush administration had no problem with Olmert campaigning on a promise to unilaterally move about 20 percent of the Israeli settlers in the West Bank from recent settlements to older ones, while annexing about 10 percent of the Palestinian territory (a plan since abandoned, at least for the moment)
Simply put, if we extend the question of recognizing the other side's "right to exist" to the "right to self-governance within the boundaries long established by international law," then it becomes clear that Palestinians must acknowledge Israel's right to exist while powerful factions within the Israeli government refuse to acknowledge the same rights for the Palestinians, and can do so with impunity, according to the Bush White house.
And Israeli unilateralism is directly contrary to U.S. interests. As the New York Times' Steven Erlanger wrote ($$), "Israeli unilateralism can be bad for America as well as for Palestinian leaders who favor talking rather than shooting."
When the United States is seen to be an active participant, pushing its ally Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, Israeli leaders can deflect domestic criticism by blaming Washington, the United States can earn credit with the Arab world for pushing Israel, and the Palestinians will be seen as an active player at the table, boosting negotiators like Mr. Abbas over the rejectionists of Hamas.
Since the Israelis pulled out of the peace process five years ago, there has been absolutely no incentive for them to return (while the Palestinians have been literally starved for voting Hamas to power).
Washington's lock-step embrace of Israeli policies goes beyond its dispute with Palestine; while Israel's massive destruction of Lebanon was viewed as a textbook example of a disproportionate response almost universally - outside of DC and Tel Aviv - there's evidence that the United States encouraged the attack. The United States also vetoed two Security Council resolutions condemning Israel for excessive violence in Gaza, which led Arab countries allied to the United States to break the economic embargo on the Palestinians.
We've dug a deep hole in the Middle East, and we just can't stop digging.
This isn't about Iraq - nothing can salvage the U.S. project there at this point. And it's not even about defeating extremism in the short-term - nobody seriously believes that militants will give up their violence overnight. But the American strategic class is talking about a "generational war" like the Cold War, and if that's the case, then we have got to take the Arab world's legitimate grievances seriously. Pressuring Israel to pursue a final settlement with the Palestinians would boost our frayed credibility (not only in the Middle East), deepen the rift in radical Islam between those who believe the West is their ultimate enemy - call them the bin Ladenists - and those who target their own, often corrupt, governments and, over the long-term, it would separate the Arab extreme from the Arab Main street. That's how you win a "war" on terror.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/45680/
Asia Times:
The Great Game on a razor's edge
By M K Bhadrakumar
Dec 23, 2006
The accidental killing of Alexander Ivanov, a Kyrgyz fuel-truck driver, by Corporal Zachary Hatfield, a US serviceman, at the Manas Air Base on the outskirts of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in December is threatening to snowball into a first-rate crisis for the United States' regional policy in Central Asia.
Manas is the lone US military base in all of Central Asia - close to the Chinese border of Xinjiang. Curiously, this was also how the year 2006 began, as Washington was grappling with the call made by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) for a timeline for the withdrawal of the US military presence in Central Asia.
In a nationally televised address, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev called for reviewing the Manas base agreement with the US. The Kyrgyz Parliament passed a resolution that given the "negative perception of the American image among our country's population", Bakiyev should examine the continuance of the base. The Foreign Ministry made a demarche with the US that Hatfield shouldn't leave until the Kyrgyz due process of law took its course.
This is rhetoric out of Latin America. Yet Bakiyev had only come to power on the crest of the US-backed "Tulip Revolution" of March 2005. But US-funded Kyrgyz "civil society" groups are nowadays arrayed against him on account of his increasingly pronounced foreign-policy leanings toward Russia and China.
They turned rowdyish in November, and humiliated him, forcing on him a new constitution curtailing his presidential powers. That is to say, Washington must now seek Bakiyev's help while backstage it could be funding and instigating political activists bent on overthrowing him. Bakiyev's overthrow may help the US firm up its grip on Manas, but today his helping hand is useful for preserving US interests. Nothing could be more surreal. Nothing would so vividly epitomize the complexities of the geopolitics of Central Asia.
Great Game slows down
The Great Game in Central Asia itself may appear to have considerably slowed down in 2006. But nothing could be more deceptive an impression. True, we've witnessed nothing like the cataclysmic events of the previous year - "Tulip Revolution" or the Andizhan uprising in Uzbekistan. Yet great-power rivalries most certainly continued - passions that were largely driven underground, where they simmered without taking a confrontational character.
Partly this was because the bickering over geopolitical influence became somewhat manifestly lopsided, with Russia and China not only retaining their gains of yesteryear but also consolidating them, and the US painstakingly attempting to recoup its lost influence in the region.
The single biggest "success story" of US diplomacy in the Great Game during the past year has been that Washington prevailed on Russia and China to give consideration to its reasoning that granting full membership to the Islamic Republic of Iran in the SCO might not be consistent with their own long-term interests. This was no mean achievement, considering that both Russia and China have such high stakes in their bilateral relations with Tehran. But Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad attended the summit as a special invitee. The SCO evidently keeps open the "threat" of Iranian membership.
Equally, the fact that, unlike its previous year's summit, the SCO meeting in June 2006 did not assume an overt anti-American overtone must remain a matter of relief for Washington. In many ways, the SCO demeanor has come to be the litmus test of the United States' geopolitical standing in Central Asia at any given time. Contrary to earlier US estimations, the SCO is increasingly acquiring a swagger that is suggestive of its potential to become the main powerhouse of the Eurasian region - arguably, a leading Eurasian economic and military bloc. The SCO comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
During the five-year period since its birth in 2001, the SCO, which has as members a number of underdeveloped countries including some desperately poor ones with nothing ostensibly to bind them together except their common geography, has not only held together but has grown in size and influence.
Initially drawing on the Chinese tri-fecta of "terrorism, separatism and extremism", the SCO speaks today about the establishment of a free-trade area and about common energy projects such as exploration of hyrdrocarbon reserves, joint use of hydroelectric power and water resources. But from the US perspective, the SCO agenda continues to be laden with a heavy cloud of suspicion regarding the United States' geostrategic intentions in the Central Asian region.
This impression gets further confirmed by the SCO's decision to hold large-scale joint military exercises scheduled for the coming summer in central Russia with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the military alliance that is Moscow's answer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's enlargement into the post-Soviet space. The CSTO includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
That the military exercises will take place against the backdrop of the chill that has descended on Russia-US relations in the past year or two, and in the light of the likely deployment of the first interceptors of the US missile defense systems in Central Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, is no doubt significant.
It is irrelevant whether the SCO can be called a latter-day Warsaw Pact or a "NATO of the East". What is important is that on a practical plane, when it transpired that the US aircraft deployed at Manas Air Base might be undertaking reconnaissance missions into sensitive military regions in central Russia and China's Xinjiang, Moscow and Beijing put their foot down and acted in concert within the framework of the SCO, insisting that the stated purpose of the US military presence in Central Asia must be fulfilled in letter and spirit, namely that it restricted itself exclusively to undertaking resupply missions for the "war on terror" in Afghanistan.
The then-Kyrgyz president, Askar Akayev, was caught in the middle and overthrown from power in the process as a furious Washington let loose the "Tulip Revolution" on him for his perceived intransigence in turning down the US request for the stationing of AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft in Manas. But the SCO quietly and firmly held its ground. Thereby it made an important point - that it had gained traction as a security organization. Not only that, the SCO proceeded to follow up at its summit in June 2005 with the call for the vacation of the US military presence in the region.
Indeed, going one step further, the SCO emphatically rallied behind the leadership of Uzbekistan in its move to ask for the vacation of the US air base at Karshi-Khanabad. On both counts - restrictions placed on the use of Manas and the eviction from Karshi-Khanabad - Washington meekly had to give in. In the process, Bishkek even renegotiated the bilateral agreement on Manas a few months ago by getting Washington to increase the annual rent of the base from US$2.7 million to between $150 million and $200 million.
The year 2006 has thus made it clear that the US is unlikely to become a single dominant power in Central Asia. Simply put, Russia and China have together put up the SCO dikes delimiting the US influence in the region, which will be difficult for Washington to breach for the foreseeable future. During the year, by and large Washington has vainly exhausted its energies in attempts to create misunderstandings between Russia and China and in pitting one SCO member state against another.
The heart of the matter is that apart from the bleeding wounds in Iraq and Afghanistan, which remain a major distraction for US diplomacy worldwide, US policy in Central Asia is seriously handicapped in two other respects. First, the United States' complete loss of influence in Tashkent after the Andizhan mishap in May 2005 is cramping overall US diplomacy in the region.
There is no denying that Uzbekistan is a key country in Central Asia. In the Soviet era, everyone from Josef Stalin down knew the axiom that Uzbekistan was the hub of the geopolitics of the region. True, the US put out several feelers to Tashkent through intermediaries for reconciliation, and lately even the European Union lent a hand, but Tashkent wouldn't budge. The laceration of Uzbek national pride by the US over Andizhan opened such painful wounds that forgiveness may take much time coming and will extract sincere repentance on the part of Washington for its role in the Andizhan uprising. Meanwhile, the US has been left with no option but to watch Russian and Chinese influence in Tashkent expanding by leaps and bounds.
In a similar fashion, but in an even more fundamental sense, US diplomacy in Central Asia is seriously hobbled by Washington's alienation from Iran. Ten years have gone by since the famous article by Zbigniew Brzezinski in Foreign Affairs magazine calling for unconditional abandonment of the US policy of containment of Iran. Brzezinski had brilliantly argued the case (which most US career diplomats assigned to the region then also believed) that for US regional diplomacy to be anywhere near optimal in the Caucasus, in the Caspian region and in Central Asia, it must befriend Tehran. But Washington's mental block over Iran persists.
Meanwhile, the "Greater Central Asia" strategy unveiled by Washington last April with so much elan has already fizzled out. The strategy was avowedly intended to roll back Russian and Chinese influence in the region. Testifying before the US Congress that month, a senior State Department official said, "A lot of what we do here is to give the countries of the region the opportunities to make choices ... and keep them from being bottled up between two great powers, Russia and China."
The US official conjured up visions that could only belong to the world of fantasies: "Students and professors from Bishkek and Almaty can collaborate with and learn from their partners in Karachi and Kabul, legitimate trade can freely flow overland from Astana to Islamabad, facilitated by modern border controls, and an enhanced regional power grid stretching from Almaty to New Delhi will be fed by oil and gas from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and hydropower from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan."
No wonder there are no takers in Central Asia for Washington's policy construct. Central Asian states are aware of the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan, and reckon that peace is a distant goal. Even New Delhi seems embarrassed. Islamabad keeps quiet. The only capital to evince enthusiasm for Washington's paradigm of steering Central Asian states toward South Asian allies has been Kabul.
Sino-US convergence?
But failures may often hold the key to success. In a way, the current failures in regional policy may open a window of opportunity for the US in the period ahead. The point is: Without the glue of a serious US geopolitical challenge to bind them together into undertaking collective countermeasures, can the Sino-Russian condominium hold together in Central Asia for long? It is apparent that divergences have already appeared in the respective Chinese and Russian interests in Central Asia.
China has used the SCO forum and the Russian influence in Central Asia to return to the region, which is indeed its back yard, for the first time in nearly 1,000 years. It is important to bear in mind that Beijing launched the idea of the SCO, and Russia accepted it. China views Central Asia as its "near abroad". As China's economic muscle grows, Beijing can afford to be more assertive.
China's soft power is already at work in the region. It is increasingly able to invoke its bilateral-cooperation mechanisms with Central Asian countries. There is hardly any need for China to ride piggyback on Russian goodwill or Russian influence in the region. China has used the SCO for acquiring local knowledge, and in building relations with the region's indigenous political, economic and military elites.
It is in the area of energy security that Chinese interests and concerns have already begun diverging significantly from those of Russia. The trend during 2006 has been that Russia's energy interests - in controlling the region's transportation routes for oil and gas, in sourcing the region's energy for meeting Russia's domestic needs that would leave an exportable surplus for meeting its commitments in Europe, in having a say in determining the price of energy in the region - are increasingly affected by China's robust quest for oil and gas in the region.
The early signs of this contradiction in Sino-Russian cooperation in Central Asia began appearing in 2005 when the China National Petroleum Corp acquired the PetroKazakhstan oil company for $4.18 billion.
China's gas deal with Turkmenistan in April 2006; the commissioning of an oil pipeline from Kazakhstan; China's proposal for an energy-pipeline grid for Central Asia and connecting it with Xinjiang; China's cooperation agreement with Iran in the Caspian region; China's gas deals with Uzbekistan; China's interest in participating in a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline - all these are happenings within one calendar year, each imbued with strategic significance.
This past year, too, China has waded into the controversial waters of the Caspian Sea in search of oil when last January Iran's North Drilling Co and China Oilfield Services Ltd signed an oil-exploration agreement relating to the disputed deep waters of the southern Caspian. In one way or another, all these developments cut into Russian interests in Central Asia's energy sector.
Having said that, however, the China-Russia strategic partnership has a much greater regional and global logic than Central Asia, and the attempt in Moscow and Beijing will presumably be to harmonize their differences in Central Asia from spinning out of control. Also, both Moscow and Beijing realize that Central Asian states themselves will seek out Russia to balance their relations with China.
How these contradictory tendencies will play out within the SCO processes presents an engrossing topic. Clearly, the opportunity arises for the US to establish a dialogue with the SCO. A breakthrough may come in 2007. The prominent Russia hand in the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, Ariel Cohen, wrote recently, "Given that the SCO primarily serves as a geopolitical counterweight to the US, Washington stands little chance of ever receiving full membership in the group ... But US officials do not necessarily need full membership in the organization in order to work closely with the Central Asian states. It would serve Washington's best interests to remain in close contact with the SCO. To do so, it could resubmit an application seeking observer status.
"To boost the chances of success," Cohen added, "the US should engage Central Asian states by balancing democracy promotion and democratization with its other national interests, including security and energy."
Conceivably, we may expect even a NATO overture to the SCO in the coming year. In an exclusive interview with People's Daily last month, NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Schaffer held out the interesting suggestion to Beijing that there doesn't have to be a contradiction between China's membership of the SCO and China's future cooperation with NATO.
Without doubt, a palpable sense of urgency is already apparent in US thinking to the effect that the Chinese-Russian strategic partnership poses a serious threat to the United States' geopolitical position in Central Asia, and second, that China is actively remaking Central Asia's order. Last September, the US Congress held a special hearing titled "The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Is it Undermining US Interests in Central Asia?"
Moscow seems to anticipate that another US bid for observer status with the SCO is looming - and that unlike in 2005, Beijing may not oppose it this time. Curiously, at the end of December, Russia formalized a mechanism for regular political dialogue with the Mercosur grouping of Latin American countries, which has a definite slant (comparable to the SCO's) against US economic hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.
Speaking on the occasion in Brasilia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "We have, by and large, been watching with the most sincere sympathy the integration processes in South America. We consider that the strengthening and elevation of the level of integration within the region works objectively in favor of the creation of a more stable and more fair world order in which all problems will be tackled multilaterally. I am certain that the partnership between Russia and Mercosur will be instrumental in attaining this goal."
The US estimation is basically that behind the facade of unity, China, Russia and the other SCO members and observer countries harbor serious differences of opinion. While "discord" may be too strong a word, to quote a US strategic analyst, "It is quite possible that differences will grow behind the facade of [SCO] unity. Washington must be alert to exploit any openings to gain geopolitical advantage. While the political, ideological and military dimensions of the New Great Game in Central Asia continue to heat up, it should be clear to all players that plenty of time remains in the contest. The SCO now appears to have momentum on its side, but such an advantage can dissipate quickly."
Thus the US would tell China that Russia was needlessly dragging it into an anti-American bloc, and that there was nothing irreconcilable involving US and Chinese interests in Central Asia. US strategic analysts have been arguing that both the United States and China are interested in the stability of the region; both are against the ascendancy of extremist forces in the region; both are interested in Central Asia's transition to market economies and in the region's globalization; both have stakes in the rapid development of Central Asia's hydrocarbon sector and in the diversified and efficient flow of the region's energy to the world market.
There are signs that the US is also using the oil-price issue as a wedge to divide Russia and China. The US has also been campaigning in the capitals of SCO member countries (and observer countries) that Russia is aspiring to transform the SCO into a club of energy producers and to be its dominant partner, and that if the Russian stratagem is allowed to proceed unchecked, that will be detrimental to the interests of Central Asian energy producers - and even of China and India. These are interesting straws in the wind.
The recent five-nation energy summit of major Asian consuming countries (China, Japan, South Korea, India and the US) hosted by China is partly at least an expression of Beijing's commonality of interests with Washington in leading an energy dialogue of consuming countries vis-a-vis Russia. Conceivably, Beijing may be harboring grievances that Moscow is keeping Chinese companies out of investment opportunities in Russia's strategic oil and gas fields in Russia's Siberia and the Far East, and even in the Russian pipelines leading to the Chinese market.
China may also be displeased with Gazprom's insistent attempts to get in on the Sakhalin energy projects. ExxonMobil is under pressure for a proposed gas pipeline from Sakhalin-1 to China. Russia's gas monopoly seems to want to discount any competition for its own plans for a gas pipeline to China through the Altai highlands near the Russian-Kazakh-Mongolian border. Its preference seems to be to buy all gas from Sakhalin-1 so that it remains the sole exporter of gas to China. China is also keenly watching the holdup in Sakhalin-2, being the highest-profile foreign-investment project in Russia's energy sector to date.
Important investment decisions are pending in 2007 with regard to Sakhalin-1, Sakhalin-2, Sakhalin-3, the Shtokman gas fields and the vast Russian energy reserves in the Far East on the whole. How the Kremlin makes these decisions will have a significant bearing on Chinese thinking and, indirectly, that can cast shadows on the geopolitics of Central Asia.
Besides, the ground reality is that according to recent studies, Russia will need to import 79 billion cubic meters (bcm) annually from Central Asia's gas-producing countries (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) to meet its domestic needs and to fulfill its export commitments. How this plays out in Russia's overall political and economic ties with Central Asian countries will have a significant impact on the regional milieu.
It is obvious that Gazprom views Central Asia as a priority area. A major development in 2006 in Central Asia's energy sector was the agreement between Gazprom and Uzbekneftgaz to undertake a geological survey of Uzbekistan. Gazprom is committing $260 million in the coming three years alone for the exploration of the Ustyurtki oil and gas deposits in Uzbekistan. Again, Russia and Kazakhstan entered an agreement in October to set up a gas joint venture at the Orenburg gas refinery in Russia - the first time Kazakhstan was making a major investment in the Russian economy.
The joint venture is expected to process 30.6bcm gas in 2012, including 15bcm from Kazakhstan's Karachaganak gas field (which has an estimated 1 trillion cubic meters of reserves), which Russia and Kazakhstan are pledged to develop jointly.
Niyazov's secret
The struggle over control of oil and gas and their transportation routes is bound to intensify in 2007. It will remain central to the geopolitics of Central Asia. In turn, pipeline politics in the Caspian can be expected to produce strange bedfellows.
Already, geopolitical circumstances in the Caspian Basin have led to a sharp deterioration in Russia-Azerbaijan relations. Again, despite all the wooing of Kazakhstan by Washington, the indefinite postponement of the Odessa-Brody pipeline project last week has stemmed from Kazakhstan having to be mindful of Russian sensitivities.
Least of all, Iran remains the wild card in the pack. Depending on which way the Iran nuclear issue develops in 2007, Iran can impact on the energy map of China, Central Asia, the Caspian, the Caucasus, Russia and Europe - and, conceivably, the United States itself.
But an entirely new ball game opens up with the sudden demise of Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov on December 21. It calls attention to the fragility of the Central Asian calculus. The political uncertainties centered on Niyazov's successor come at an extremely tricky time when Russia, China and the US are virtually preparing to besiege Ashgabat with offers and counter-offers for gaining access to Turkmenistan's gas reserves.
Will Niyazov's successor follow his policy of "positive neutrality"? Russia strives to retain its strategic leverage as the monopolist transporter and re-exporter of Turkmen gas. The European Union, supported by the US, on the other hand, is attempting to resist the Russian leverage by opening direct access to Turkmen gas.
In 2006, the US and Turkey revived the 10-year-old idea of a trans-Caspian gas pipeline project (as part of the so-called East-West Energy Corridor) to supply Turkmen gas to Europe via Turkey. Turkmenistan's gas output may well approach 80bcm annually at present. The trans-Caspian pipeline envisages an annual draw of 16bcm from the Turkmen output in the first stage, to be expanded to 32bcm in the second stage. In the US geostrategy, the project is vital for reducing Europe's heavy dependence on Russian energy supplies. Niyazov had prevaricated in the light of Moscow's opposition. But what will be the outlook of Niyazov's successor?
Russia, on the contrary, will insist on the fulfillment of its April 2003 framework agreement with Turkmenistan, which provides for a 25-year contract on gas supplies to Russia, with Ashgabat pledging to supply 100bcm per year of gas from 2010 onward (a total of 2 trillion cubic meters cumulatively over the 25-year period). Moscow now seeks to tap even more deeply into Turkmenistan's gas reserves for meeting Russia's domestic needs and for re-export to Europe as "Russian gas".
Meanwhile, Turkmenistan also stands committed to supply 8-10bcm of gas to Iran's northern region, apart from occasionally voicing interest in the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline project. China, on its part, entered an agreement with Niyazov in April for purchase of 30bcm of Turkmen gas annually from 2009 onward for a 30-year period, and jointly to explore and develop Turkmen gas deposits on the right bank of Amu Darya River.
Besides challenging Russia's monopoly control of Turkmen gas hitherto, China has also undercut the Russian practice of buying cheap Turkmen gas, by agreeing that China will pay a price "set at reasonable levels, and on a fair basis, pegged on comparable international market price". At the same time, China's deal also threatens the West, which will be a strategic loser if Turkmenistan decides to send its gas eastward instead of Europe.
The European Union's 3,400-kilometer Nabucco gas pipeline from eastern Turkey to Austria and central Europe at an estimated cost of $5.8 billion, to be commissioned in 2010, will be a net sufferer in that case, as it is predicated on the expectation that Turkmenistan can be a key supplier country.
Niyazov was always an enigmatic figure on the Central Asian political chessboard. But the biggest puzzle he has left behind was no doubt his chance remark shortly before his death in a conversation with visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Ashgabat that Turkmenistan recently discovered a super-giant gas field, South Iolotansk, with proven reserves of 7 trillion cubic meters of gas.
Like Corporal Hatfield in his sentry post in Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, Niyazov didn't probably realize what a maelstrom he was creating. If South Iolotansk indeed holds such untold treasures, the impact on the energy map of Russia, Europe and China will be dramatic. And certainly, the center of gravity of the Great Game will overnight shift eastward to the home of the fabled Ahalteke race horse - away from the SCO and all that. Central Asia, then, may never be the same again.
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/HL23Ag01.html
Guardian:
Somalia on the brink of war as clashes escalate
· Ethiopian forces advance to defend government
· Rebel Islamist fighters threaten full-scale assault
Xan Rice, East Africa correspondent
Saturday December 23, 2006
Ethiopia was reported to have moved tanks and helicopters towards the front lines in Somalia yesterday as artillery and rocket battles continued for a fourth day between Islamist and government forces.
Dozens of fighters from both sides have been killed on two fronts near the government seat of Baidoa since this week's clashes began. Fighters loyal to the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) said yesterday that tanks from neighbouring Ethiopia, which is propping up Somalia's weak government, had shelled them for the first time. Baidoa residents also saw four Ethiopian helicopters flying towards the battlefield, Associated Press reported.
If the reports are true, it would mark a serious move towards outright war in the Horn of Africa. Yesterday, the Islamists who control Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia did little to dismiss such a possible escalation. "From tomorrow the [full-scale] attack will start," Ibrahim Shukri, an SCIC spokesman, told journalists in Mogadishu.
The latest round of fighting - the heaviest since the SCIC took the capital in June and began challenging the legitimacy of the transitional government - began on Tuesday, hours after the expiry of a deadline set by the courts for Ethiopian troops to leave the country. A European Union-brokered peace agreement on Wednesday failed to hold.
Yesterday, Ethiopian tanks were reported heading towards Daynunay, the government's forward military base, 12 miles south-east of Baidoa, where fierce fighting has taken place. There were also clashes reported on a second front around Idaale, 44 miles south-west of the city.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said dozens of people had been killed, and more than 200 wounded, since Wednesday. It could not say how many of these were civilians. Agency reports, quoting aid workers, said civilians were fleeing for the relative safety of Mogadishu. Ethiopia continues to deny that it has military forces in Somalia, but makes no secret of the fact that its sympathies lie with President Abdullahi Yusuf's secular transitional government.
Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime minister, has branded the SCIC a terrorist organisation that threatens his country and the western world. The United States, which regards Ethiopia as an ally in its "war on terror", has made similar claims.
By continuing to expand its territorial control and talk of war, the SCIC has done little to advance its cause with the international community. Seen from afar, its military face-off with Ethiopia is a brave or foolish strategy. The SCIC has no air force or tanks, and is greatly outnumbered in trained soldiers.
But it has two powerful weapons: the popular dislike within Somalia for Ethiopia, and religion. Senior clerics in the movement are pitching it as a holy war against infidel invaders.
Some analysts say it is a war neither can win. Ethiopia may inflict severe damage on the battlefield, but can never destroy the support for the courts. The SCIC, for its part, is unlikely to be able to defeat Ethiopia militarily. And even if it did manage to topple the government in Baidoa, it would be seen as an international pariah, surrounded by hostile neighbours.
"Sooner or later the courts and the government will have to get back to the negotiating table," said Matt Bryden, a consultant to the International Crisis Group, based in Nairobi.
"They only question is how long this type of fighting can go on for."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1977937,00.html
Harper’s Magazine:
A Cartoon
Posted on Friday, December 22, 2006. By Mr. Fish.
This is A Cartoon, a cartoon by Mr. Fish, published Friday, December 22, 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/CartoonPlayingArmy-20061222.html
il manifesto:
«Cacceremo l'Agip dalla Nigeria»
Piuttosto uccidiamo gli ostaggi «Non vogliamo soldi in cambio dei rapiti. Piuttosto li uccidiamo. Il governo della Nigeria deve accettare le nostre richieste»
Stefano Liberti
«Cacceremo l'Agip dalla Nigeria». I ribelli del Movimento per l'emancipazione del Delta del Niger (Mend) - che dal 7 dicembre scorso tengono in ostaggio i tre tecnici italiani Francesco Arena, Cosma Russo, Roberto Dieghi e il libanese Imad Abed - lanciano una vera e propria dichiarazione di guerra al «cane a sei zampe». Con un'e-mail al manifesto (il cui testo integrale pubblichiamo qui accanto), il portavoce del gruppo Jomo Gbomo sferra un violentissimo attacco contro la società italiana. «I funzionari dell'Agip che sostengono che stiamo chiedendo un riscatto in denaro sono solo dei criminali», scrive il Mend, sottolineando quindi che il gruppo che rappresenta ha rivendicazioni squisitamente politiche. Come ha poi confermato in un messaggio successivo inviato agli organi di stampa internazionali (manifesto compreso), Gbomo sostiene di respingere categoricamente l'eventualità di un riscatto. «È contro sia le leggi italiane che quelle nigeriane». Con una circonlocuzione dai toni un po' sinistri, il portavoce del gruppo intima all'Agip di non intraprendere la strada dell'offerta di denaro. «Piuttosto che liberarli in cambio di un riscatto, li uccideremo». Quindi i ribelli del Delta ribadiscono le loro richieste «incondizionate», avanzate fin dal giorno del sequestro dei tecnici: sostanzialmente, il rilascio di quattro persone originarie della regione incarcerate dal governo centrale, a cominciare dall'ex governatore dello stato di Bayelsa Diepreye Alamieyeseigha (in prigione con l'accusa di corruzione) e da Alaji Dokubo-Asari, leader di un altro gruppo ribelle attivo nel Delta fino all'anno scorso.
Nel suo messaggio al manifesto, Gbomo chiarisce alcuni punti rispetto al sequestro e fornisce qualche indicazione sulle prossime mosse del suo gruppo: «Non abbiamo preso quelle quattro persone per caso. Le nostre fonti di intelligence ci avevano detto che Francesco Arena, il manager della Swamp area, era un buon obiettivo». Il portavoce dei ribelli anticipa poi un ulteriore assalto contro l'impianto di Brass in cui è avvenuto il rapimento: «Attaccheremo di nuovo l'installazione dell'Agip, questa volta per distruggerla». Quanto al rilascio degli ostaggi, il gruppo si dice pronto a tenerli anche un anno. Con una distinzione: «In marzo, potremmo liberare il libanese».
I tempi per il rilascio degli ostaggi sembrano quindi allungarsi. Nessuna trattativa pare sia stata attivata con i sequestratori, né da parte dell'Agip né da parte del governo nigeriano. O meglio: il Mend sostiene che la società italiana ha tentato di approcciare qualche intermediario per ottenere la liberazione dei suoi quattro tecnici in cambio di soldi. Ma aggiunge anche che una tale iniziativa, che in passato aveva portato alla risoluzione di diversi casi di sequestro, è solo controproducente. Con le sue minacce di morte, vuole indicare chiaramente all'Agip che quella strada non è percorribile.
Il gruppo ribelle sembra aver impresso una decisa accelerazione alla guerra a bassa intensità che da anni si combatte nel Delta del Niger, la regione produttrice del greggio nigeriano (2,5 milioni di barili al giorno) lasciata nel più totale abbandono dal governo centrale di Abuja. Con le loro richieste incondizionate, con i loro attacchi all'autobomba - l'ultimo solo tre giorni fa, contro un edificio dell'Agip e uno della compagnia olandese Shell - gli uomini del Mend hanno dato seguito alle minacce che da alcuni mesi brandivano contro le multinazionali del petrolio: «Porteremo la guerra totale nel Delta».
Quanto al governo nigeriano, difficilmente potrà accogliere le richieste dei ribelli: con l'approssimarsi delle elezioni generali dell'aprile prossimo, il presidente Olusegun Obasanjo non può mostrare la minima debolezza. I suoi tentativi di comprare la docilità di gruppi attivi nel Delta promettendo un piano Marshall per la regione (con investimenti a pioggia e la costruzione di una faraonica autostrada) sono miseramente falliti. La diffidenza nei confronti del governo centrale, in un periodo in cui la stessa Federazione nigeriana appare di fronte a un bivio (quello d'aprile è il primo passaggio democratico di presidente), sembra prevalere. E nel muro contro muro tra il Mend e l'esecutivo di Abuja rischiano di rimetterci i tecnici rapiti, la cui cattività appare destinata a prolungarsi inesorabilmente.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/21-Dicembre-2006/art37.html
il manifesto:
Bakolori, strage africana made in Italy?
Italiani brava gente? Mica tanto: in Nigeria, nel 1980, pochi mesi prima che la classe operaia italiana fosse sconfitta ai cancelli di Mirafiori, i bulldozer Fiat raccoglievano i cadaveri di 136 persone, uccise dall'esercito perché difendevano i raccolti, distrutti dalla diga di Bakolori, costruita allora dall'impresa torinese
Roberto Pignoni
La radio parla dei tecnici italiani sequestrati in Nigeria. Cita un comunicato dell'Agip, che sostiene di aver sempre avuto ottimi rapporti con la popolazione locale. Un nome, intanto, si fa strada nella testa di chi scrive: Bakolori...
Mogadiscio, estate 1989. L'italiano è giovane, simpatico, e di lingua sciolta. E' arrivato al seguito di una delle ditte italiane che si contendono appalti miliardari per edificare le cattedrali nel deserto di cui è tappezzata la Somalia: i silos elettronici del Fondo Aiuti Italiani di Afgoi, perfettamente inutili in un luogo dove manca l'elettricità; la fabbrica chimica sulla strada di Jezira, mai entrata in funzione e completamente corrosa dalla salsedine; infine -fiore all'occhiello della nostra cooperazione- il moderno macello che, scaricando in mare le carcasse dei cammelli, richiama gli squali che fanno strage di ragazzi al lido di Mogadiscio.
Per indurre le autorità somale ad accettare «regali» del genere, le imprese italiane pagano fior di tangenti, corrompendo fino al midollo la classe dirigente uscita dalla «rivoluzione» del '69. Il risultato è sotto gli occhi di tutti: il paese procede a tappe forzate verso la guerra civile e i rapporti degli italiani con la popolazione sono, a dir poco, problematici. Eppure, quel giovane simpatico sostiene di aver visto di peggio, e racconta:
«A Bakolori, in Nigeria, stavamo costruendo una diga. Gli abitanti dei villaggi si opponevano, organizzando dimostrazioni per fermare i lavori. Una mattina, al risveglio, ci rendemmo conto che il nostro accampamento era circondato da gente armata di lance. Per fortuna c'era una parte, sul retro, dove non erano arrivati; abbiamo raccolto le jeep in quel punto, sfondato il reticolato e via a tutta velocità. Sento ancora il sibilo delle lance che sfiorano il tendone della jeep. Quando arrivò l'esercito, fu un massacro. Ho visto raccogliere i cadaveri con i bulldozer, il giorno seguente».
Un racconto attendibile? Impossibile verificarlo, allora. A Lubiana però, qualche giorno fa, quel pensiero ritorna. Chi scrive è in Slovenia per i «cancellati». La «cancellazione» è l'archetipo della non-notizia: un atto di pulizia etnica che ha colpito decine di migliaia di persone, nel cuore dell'Europa, ed è passato inosservato per oltre dieci anni. E se Bakolori fosse una strage made in Italy, mai diventata notizia?
Su internet, un motore di ricerca indica che la località esiste davvero. Esiste, e la diga in questione (5 chilometri) è una delle più lunghe del mondo. «Cogefar (ora parte di Impregilo) ha costruito la diga di Bakolori sul fiume Sokoto, un affluente del Niger. (Fiat Impresit ha dato inizio ai lavori nel 1975; la costruzione è stata ultimata nel 1983. Nel 1989 Fiat Impresit ha acquistato Cogefar e Impregilo S.p.a. da Bastogi-General Costruzioni e istituito Cogefar-Impresit, che è esistita fino alla creazione di Impregilo Group nel 1995).
Il progetto ha determinato la deportazione di 13.000 persone che non hanno avuto alcun indennizzo per i 12.000 ettari di terreno e per il legname che hanno perduto (...) Nel febbraio del 1980 le proteste culminarono nel blocco del sito della diga, e nello sterminio da parte dell'esercito di almeno 126 persone - ma probabilmente 386. La diga ha ridotto l'area delle coltivazioni di riso, a valle, di 7.000 ettari, e altre coltivazioni di 5.000 ettari. Una ricerca degli anni '80 ha messo in luce che tre quarti dei coltivatori hanno abbandonato le loro attività: solo i più ricchi continuano a produrre». (Dams Incorporated: The Record of Twelve European Dam Building Companies; Feb 2000, The CornerHouse, Società Svedese per la Conservazione della Natura).
Il testo riporta anche altri eccidi provocati dalla cooperazione in quegli anni, come quello di 400 indigeni maya Achi, che vivevano nell'area in cui si doveva realizzare la diga di Chixoy. E sono ampiamente documentati anche gli effetti delle «nostre» dighe sull'economia e sull'ambiente. Francis O. Odemerho, professore di geografia dell'University of Southern Illinois, accenna al «disastro della diga di Bakolori», provocato dalle abbondanti precipitazioni registrate nell'agosto '88 nella regione di Kano City. The Economist, 19-4-'97, aggiunge: «i benefici economici della diga di Bakolori, realizzata su un affluente del Niger, furono vanificati dalla perdita dei raccolti, delle risorse ittiche e del bestiame degli abitanti della zona a valle dell'impianto».
Il racconto udito a Mogadiscio viene dunque confermato nei minimi dettagli».
Il bacino artificiale creato dalla diga di Bakolori sul fiume Sokoto ha causato la deportazione di 13.000 persone e minacciato di distruggere le capacità di sopravvivenza di 40.000 famiglie. Nel 1979 ci fu una sollevazione contadina contro la diga appena completata. La rivolta durò 7 mesi e si concluse in un bagno di sangue a Birnin Tudu, il quartier generale dell'impresa costruttrice. Il solo vincitore, in questo guazzabuglio, fu la compagnia italiana Fiat, che aveva costruito la diga e i canali, e fornito buona parte dell'equipaggiamento tecnico - da trattori e camion alla tecnologia laser utilizzata per livellare i campi nell'area del bacino». (http://mundiclub.blogspot.com/)
Il 1980 fu un anno glorioso per la nostra industria. Pochi mesi prima che la classe operaia subisse, ai cancelli di Mirafiori, la sua storica disfatta, i bulldozer Fiat raccoglievano cadaveri nelle campagne di Bakolori.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/21-Dicembre-2006/art33.html
Internazionale:
Pinochet, 1915-2006
Il Cile era pieno di carceri segrete, centri di tortura e terrificanti casi di omicidi extragiudiziali
Christopher Hitchens
Internazionale 672, 14 dicembre 2006
Non lontano da casa mia, a Washington, c'è il monumento in memoria di Orlando Letelier, l'esule cileno ed ex ministro degli esteri assassinato con un'autobomba nella capitale statunitense il 21 settembre 1976. Non ci volle molto a capire che quell'atrocità senza precedenti (allora) sul suolo americano – che costò la vita anche a un cittadino statunitense – era stata commessa su ordine del generale Augusto Pinochet.
La testimonianza del capo della sua polizia segreta, il generale Manuel Contreras, confermò tutto. Il dipartimento della giustizia statunitense aprì un procedimento contro Pinochet. Ma l'atto d'accusa non è mai stato reso pubblico.
La morte di Pinochet è l'occasione, tra l'altro, per ricordare le vittime del suo terrorismo (che fu di stato e internazionale) e il modo vergognoso in cui è riuscito tante volte a sottrarsi alla giustizia. Pinochet ha fatto la fine dello spagnolo Francisco Franco, con una serie di addii sul letto di morte oscenamente prolungati, assistito da numerosi sacerdoti che gli offrivano l'estrema unzione.
Alla fine i cileni si sono stancati di come Pinochet s'ammalava gravemente appena i magistrati si avvicinavano ai suoi archivi o ai suoi conti bancari. Come Franco, il dittatore cileno è sopravvissuto al suo stesso regime e ha visto il paese affrancarsi dalla tutela che gli aveva imposto.
E, di nuovo come il generalissimo spagnolo, s'è guadagnato un posto nella storia tra i militari ambiziosi disposti a tradire la costituzione che avevano giurato di difendere. Aver abbattuto la democrazia nel paese latinoamericano con la più lunga tradizione democratica, sarà sempre ricordato come uno dei crimini più sconvolgenti del novecento. Il golpe di Pinochet – che avvenne l'11 settembre del 1973, per chi cerca presagi nelle date – è stato un crimine in sé, ma ne ha provocati molti altri.
Nel decennio scorso, specie dopo il suo arresto in Inghilterra nel 1998, quei crimini hanno cominciato a raggiungerlo. Pinochet si era procurato l'immunità a vita e un seggio al senato per una graduale uscita di scena. Ma queste precauzioni non gli servirono a Madrid, dove un magistrato ottenne un mandato di cattura per la "scomparsa" di alcuni cittadini spagnoli. Il mandato del giudice Baltasar Garzón trovò ascolto a Londra e fu l'inizio della fine.
Tornato in Cile, il generale fu accolto da una società civile con una nuova consapevolezza. Io stesso una volta andai a testimoniare davanti al giudice cileno Juan Guzmán, il magistrato che alla fine lo incriminò e gli prese le impronte digitali: Guzmán mi raccontò che all'inizio era stato un sostenitore del golpe e che veniva da una famiglia di militari conservatori in cui Pinochet era considerato un salvatore. Fu solo quando studiò gli incartamenti giudiziari – tanti e con prove inconfutabili di uccisioni, torture e rapimenti – che il giudice capì cosa doveva fare.
Probabilmente il crimine peggiore di Pinochet fu l'Operazione Condor, il coordinamento tra le polizie segrete di Cile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador e Brasile. La rete uccise gli esiliati politici perfino a Roma, come nel caso del democristiano cileno Bernardo Leighton, e a Washington.
Ma il Cile era pieno di terrificanti casi di omicidi extragiudiziali, carceri segrete e centri di tortura come la famigerata villa Grimaldi. Quegli anni nel Cono Sud dell'America Latina furono un incubo che, per milioni di persone, è ancora vicino come se fosse ieri.
Alcuni sostenevano che Pinochet, al di là di tutto, aveva tolto le catene all'economia cilena e lasciato spirare la brezza del liberismo alla Friedman (per questo la signora Thatcher lo invitava sempre a fare shopping a Londra). Tuttavia i paladini del libero mercato probabilmente non credono che per attuare queste politiche ci voglia la tortura, l'omicidio o la dittatura.
Ho sentito recentemente Isabel Allende dire che nessuno oggi tenterebbe il programma statalista della Unidad popular di suo zio. Ma Salvador Allende non ha mai ordinato di far sparire nessuno, ed è morto con coraggio al suo posto, e tanto basta per fare la differenza. D'altro canto, l'attrazione di Pinochet per le privatizzazioni è stata spiegata quando i conti della fallita Riggs Bank di Washington hanno mostrato ingenti depositi segreti a suo nome. Questo, combinato con il cinismo dei suoi metodi per sottrarsi alla giustizia, ha smascherato per sempre la sua meschinità.
I cileni hanno saputo restaurare la democrazia senza violenze e con metodi democratici hanno giudicato Pinochet. Ma c'è un prezzo per la lentezza e l'accuratezza di questi procedimenti. Molti cileni non sanno nulla dei loro cari spariti o di come siano morti. E mai Pinochet ha dato un'informazione o ha dimostrato un rimorso.
Come Milosevic (un altro che si è fatto beffe della giustizia morendo) e Saddam Hussein, è stato arrogante fino all'ultimo. Il Cile e il mondo se ne sono sbarazzati, e possiamo dire almeno che la sua rozza battaglia per sottrarsi alla giustizia ci ha aiutato a creare gli strumenti perché i tiranni possano essere perseguiti in tutto il mondo.
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http://www.internazionale.it/firme/articolo.php?id=14351
Jeune Afrique: Attaques en série
contre les géants pétroliers dans le sud du pays
NIGERIA - 21 décembre 2006 – AFP
Trois policiers ont été tués jeudi dans l'attaque d'un site du groupe pétrolier français Total à Obagi (sud), alors qu'une station de pompage de l'italien Agip était prise pour cible à Tebidaba, dans la même région du delta du Niger, en proie à une violence chronique.
Egalement cible récurrente d'attaques, la compagnie anglo-néerlandaise Shell a annoncé jeudi qu'elle avait commencé à déplacer les familles de ses employés pour les mettre à l'abri après l'explosion d'une bombe dans les résidences des employés dans la région.
Pour sa part, Total a précisé à Paris qu'aucun employé du groupe n'avait été tué lors de l'attaque.
"A Obagi (Etat de Rivers, ndlr), nous avons trois morts parmi les forces de police qui gardaient l'installation", a déclaré un porte-parole. "Aucun employé de Total n'a été tué", a-t-il ajouté. "Une douzaine d'assaillants ont attaqué le site vers 03H30 du matin, heures locales".
Un responsable industriel, s'exprimant sous couvert de l'anonymat, avait déclaré auparavant à l'AFP que l'attaque d'Obagi avait été menée par des hommes masqués arrivés à bord de canots à moteur.
"Nous savons qu'ils étaient déguisés lorsqu'ils sont arrivés sur les lieux", a-t-il ajouté.
Dans la même nuit de mercredi à jeudi, des hommes armés ont attaqué une installation de la compagnie pétrolière italienne Agip, filiale du groupe Eni, à Tebidaba, dans l'Etat de Bayelsa, également dans le sud du Nigeria.
"Il y a eu une attaque à la station de pompage d'Agip à Tebidaba", a déclaré un officier nigérian. "Je ne sais pas s'il y a eu des pertes, des blessés ou des otages".
L'attaque a été confirmée par Eni sur son site internet.
Eni a affirmé qu'à sa connaissance "il n'y avait pas de dégâts matériels", mais a indiqué que la station de pompage était toujours occupée et sa production de 40.000 barils par jour suspendue.
Seuls dix-huit employés locaux étaient présents sur les lieux, selon cette même source.
De son côté, Shell a annoncé jeudi des mesures de protection: elle a commencé à déplacer les familles de ses employés après l'explosion, le 18 décembre, d'une bombe dans les résidences des employés dans le delta du Niger (sud).
"Il s'agit d'une décision de précaution", a indiqué un porte-parole de Shell, précisant que le personnel n'était pas évacué, mais relocalisé.
Des sources industrielles ont cependant affirmé que des familles avaient été évacuées à l'étranger et que 400 personnes étaient concernées.
Le delta du Niger, qui abrite l'industrie du pétrole et du gaz, est régulièrement secouée par des attaques de militants armés réclamant un meilleur partage des bénéfices de la manne pétrolière et disant lutter pour la communauté ijaw (14 millions de personnes).
Un des groupes armés, le Mouvement d'émancipation du delta du Niger (MEND), qui avait revendiqué l'explosion de deux voitures piégées contre des unités appartenant à Shell et à Agip, a en revanche nié, dans un courriel, toute responsabilité dans l'attaque contre Total.
C'est ce même MEND qui avait revendiqué le 8 décembre l'enlèvement de trois Italiens et d'un Libanais dans la région, toujours retenus en otages, et annoncé de nouvelles attaques.
Le gouvernement de l'Etat de Rivers a tenu jeudi une réunion de sécurité avec Shell et Agip, selon un communiqué officiel.
En 2006, au moins 37 soldats nigérians ont été tués et une cinquantaine d'expatriés pris en otages avant d'être libérés.
Premier producteur de pétrole d'Afrique, le Nigeria perd pratiquement 25% de sa production totale de 2,6 millions de barils/jour du fait des violences.
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP23036attaqsyapud0
Jeune Afrique:
La bataille fait rage dans le sud de Baïdoa
SOMALIE - 22 décembre 2006 – AFP
Pour le troisième jour consécutif, la bataille faisait rage vendredi en Somalie sur le front de Baïdoa (sud-ouest), siège des fragiles institutions de transition somaliennes, où les troupes gouvernementales, appuyées par l'Ethiopie, affrontaient les forces des tribunaux islamiques.
Vendredi, le gouvernement a affirmé que des combats avaient éclaté dans une troisième ville, Dinsoor, située à 120 km au sud de Baïdoa et contrôlée par les islamistes depuis début décembre.
Si ces combats étaient confirmés, il s'agirait d'une escalade dans la bataille, au lendemain de la déclaration de guerre contre l'Ethiopie lancée par le chef des islamistes somaliens, cheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys.
Le chef islamiste a une nouvelle fois jugé jeudi que "tous les Somaliens devraient s'engager dans la guerre contre l'Ethiopie".
Ces combats à Dinsoor prouveraient également que les forces loyalistes ont progressé depuis le début des combats, engagés tôt mercredi peu après l'expiration d'un ultimatum posé par les islamistes aux troupes éthiopiennes pour quitter la Somalie.
"Les combats continuent sur les deux fronts", a déclaré à l'AFP le ministre de l'Information, Ali Jama. "L'essentiel des combats se déroule à Idale (60 km au sud de Baïdoa) et Dinsoor".
Sur la seconde ligne de front - située sur un autre axe routier -, des bombardements étaient également en cours à Deynunay, ville à une trentaine de kilomètres au sud de Baïdoa qui abrite une importante base gouvernementale.
Jeudi soir, des habitants de Baïdoa ont fait état du passage dans la ville d'un convoi de chars éthiopiens qui prenait la direction de Deynunay. "J'ai vu dix chars éthiopiens dans la ville et ils prenaient la direction de Deynunay", a raconté l'un d'eux, Mohamed Sahal.
Depuis le début des combats, gouvernement et islamistes ont affirmé de part et d'autre avoir infligé de lourdes pertes à leurs rivaux.
Vendredi, le ministre de l'Information a affirmé que les forces loyalistes avaient tué "environ 200" combattants islamistes et blessé des centaines d'autres: "Les islamistes ont subi de lourdes pertes car ils attaquent et nous nous défendons. Ils ont perdu environ 200 hommes, dont des combattants étrangers".
Aucun bilan des affrontements de source indépendante n'est disponible et les deux camps assurent avoir pris l'avantage sur le terrain.
Les islamistes ont déclaré continuellement ces derniers mois le jihad (guerre sainte) contre l'Ethiopie qu'ils accusent d'avoir "envahi" la Somalie, pays ravagé par la guerre civile depuis 1991.
Addis Abeba rejette ces accusations, mais a annoncé à plusieurs reprises être prête à une opération militaire contre les islamistes.
Le gouvernement éthiopien, qui affirme avoir seulement dépêché "quelques centaines" d'instructeurs militaires en Somalie, affiche la même confiance dans l'issue de la bataille que le gouvernement de transition somalien.
Ce dernier fait savoir qu'il est confiant "dans le fait qu'il repoussera de façon décisive toute tentative des tribunaux islamiques d'attaquer Baïdoa".
Face aux souffrances continues de la population somalienne depuis 1991, le coordonnateur humanitaire de l'ONU pour la Somalie, Eric Laroche, a jugé jeudi qu'"engager un conflit au moment où une partie de la population se débat pour sa survie est inacceptable".
Près d'un million de Somaliens sont affectés par de récentes inondations dévastatrices qui ont frappé le sud du pays, dont la région de Baïdoa, faisant au moins 141 morts, dont certains ont été dévorés par des crocodiles.
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP12616labataodabe0
Página/12:
Un espíritu libre y torturado
A CINCUENTA AÑOS DE LA MUERTE DE ROBERT WALSER, UN ESCRITOR DE ESCRITORES
Admirado por Kafka, Robert Musil, Thomas Bernhard, Walter Benjamin y Elías Canetti, el autor de Los hermanos Tanner y El dependiente murió en un psiquiátrico tras 23 años de internación.
Por Silvina Friera
Sábado, 23 de Diciembre de 2006
Era un perfecto Bartleby, un espíritu libre y tan molesto como sus personajes. El escritor suizo Robert Walser vagabundeaba tan a gusto como escribía. Sus libros producen esa sensación que dejan las caminatas al aire libre: escenas livianas, ligeras, aparentemente pasajeras, se cruzan con pensamientos o ensoñaciones que taladran esa superficie de la trivialidad hasta llegar al hueso de las miserias humanas. Era capaz de observar un incendio en el teatro como si fuese “un desastre encantador”. En una de sus novelas más conocidas, El paseo, el protagonista observa a unos chicos que corretean alegremente y dice: “Dejémoslos ir tranquilos y sin frenos; la edad se encargará de asustarlos y frenarlos. Demasiado pronto, por desgracia”. Y demasiado pronto, por desgracia, ese joven que empezó a publicar a principios del siglo pasado, esperanzado “en un destino singular” –como cuenta su último editor, Siegfried Unseld, en El autor y su editor–, conoció la mezquindad y la indiferencia de un sistema literario y editorial que se reservó el “derecho de admisión” excluyéndolo de la publicación. Hace 50 años, un día después de pasear con Carl Seelig, benefactor interesado en publicar sus obras, en la Navidad de 1956, Walser apareció muerto en la nieve, cerca del hospital psiquiátrico de Herisau, lugar donde estuvo internado los últimos veintitrés años de su vida.
Walser, nacido el 5 de abril en Biel, cantón de Berna (Suiza), en 1878, pertenece a ese linaje de escritores de culto a los que se los conoce más por la celebridad de sus admiradores –Robert Musil, Thomas Bernhard, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka y Elías Canetti– que por la familiaridad con su obra, aunque hacia fines de los ’90 la editorial Siruela comenzó a reeditar sus libros. A semejanza de muchos de sus personajes, su existencia fue un compendio de incomprensión, penurias y dolores y, sin embargo, en sus páginas no hay amargura ni rencores. Hay –como diría Leónidas Lamborghini cuando cita a Discépolo– “tanto dolor que hace reír”. Y sorprende siempre con frases deslumbrantes e impredecibles: “¿De qué le sirven a un hombre sus ideas y ocurrencias si tiene, como yo, la sensación de no saber qué hacer con ellas?”, dice el protagonista de Jakob von Gunten. Y ese mismo joven también advierte: “Los que obedecen suelen ser una copia exacta de los que mandan”. Canetti escribió que la peculiaridad de Walser consistía en que nunca habla de sus motivaciones. “Es el más oculto de todos los escritores. Siempre está bien; siempre está encantado con todo. Pero su entusiasmo es frío, porque prescinde de una parte de su persona, y de ahí que sea también siniestro.”
A los 14 años abandonó los estudios y ejerció diversos oficios: fue empleado de banca, secretario, archivero, incluso sirvió de criado en un castillo de Silesia. A esa edad escribió la que se considera su primera obra, El estanque. Quiso ser actor, pero alguien lo disuadió, y eligió ser poeta. Cuando cumplió los 20, reunió los poemas y textos líricos que había escrito en un cuaderno y se los envió a quien era considerado el crítico más prestigioso de Suiza, Joseph Widmann, del diario Der Bund. Widmann publicó seis poemas bajo el título Primicias líricas, pero sin consignar el nombre del autor. El efecto Walser prendió en un lector, el crítico, ensayista y antologista austríaco Franz Blei, quien llamó a la redacción para pedir los datos del poeta anónimo. El escritor suizo empezó a publicar poemas, textos en prosa y pequeños dramas en la revista Die Insel. Cuando aún conservaba un mínimo de expectativa respecto de su futuro literario escribió: “La intranquilidad y la incertidumbre, así como la intuición de un destino singular, quizá me han impulsado a tomar la pluma para intentar reflejarme a mí mismo”.
En 1904 consiguió que le editaran su primer libro, Las composiciones de Fritz Kocher (recientemente editado por Eudeba, con ilustraciones de Karl Walser, su hermano, y prólogo de Herman Hesse), donde el escritor reúne los supuestos trabajos del estudiante Fritz Kocher –muerto en plena juventud–, que ya habían sido publicados como artículos en Der Bund y habían provocado la indignación de algunos lectores. “Había algo sugestivo en la manera de Walser de llevar sus peculiares pensamientos al primer plano, tan sin prisa y sin énfasis, haciéndolos rodar casi como bolas de billar que se deslizaran con suavidad sobre un paño verde. Y un hechizo de ensueño envolvía al lector con la intuición de algo bello que se había cernido y pasado ante él en la más extrema cercanía”, apuntó Widmann en la reseña que escribió sobre Las composiciones. Aunque fue bien recibido por la crítica, el libro, que había tenido una tirada de 1300 ejemplares, vendió sólo 47 copias. Después aparecieron las novelas Los hermanos Tanner (1907), El dependiente (1908) y Jakob von Gunten (1909).
Sus personajes son huidizos por naturaleza, siempre deambulan sin propósito, coquetean con la ingenuidad, detestan la idea del éxito, combaten con orgullo la fama y tienen una suerte de instintiva aversión por todo lo que es “grande” y “pretencioso”. Como el autor, sus criaturas se van tornando invisibles, se desvanecen, se difuminan, son como “un botón colgante que nadie se toma la molestia de coser”. En El paseo (1917) se sirve de la ficción para apuntalar una “teoría” que imbrica vida y escritura: “Pasear me es imprescindible para animarme y para mantener el contacto con el mundo vivo, sin cuyas sensaciones no podría escribir media letra más ni producir el más leve poema en verso o prosa. Sin pasear estaría muerto”. Es similar al “vivamos primero, que las observaciones vendrán luego por sí solas”, que puso en boca de Jakob.
Sin domicilio fijo –en sólo diez años llegó a mudarse 17 veces de casa– y con problemas económicos, Walser comenzó a sufrir trastornos nerviosos y alucinaciones auditivas; se embriagaba y tenía períodos de agresividad. Intentó suicidarse, pero fue incapaz de hacer un nudo corredizo. Su hermana Lisa lo llevó al hospicio de Waldau, donde se internó en 1929. Los médicos dictaminaron que era un esquizofrénico. “Hölderlin pensó que era oportuno, es decir, prudente, renunciar a su sano juicio a los cuarenta años. ¿Me ocurrirá lo mismo que a él?”, se preguntaba Walser. Y anotó: “La gente no tiene confianza en mi trabajo (quieren que escriba como Hesse). Y ésa es la razón por la que terminé en el sanatorio”. El último libro publicado fue La rosa (1925), ya ni siquiera aparecían sus artículos en diarios y revistas, porque muchos lectores “amenazaban con suspender la suscripción si continuaban publicando esas tonterías”. En 1933 fue trasladado al asilo de Herisau, y enmudeció en vida, se hundió en el anonimato que tanto anhelaba y no volvió a escribir una línea más. El escritor decía a quienes lo visitaban –según cuenta Seelig en Paseos con Robert Walser– que “es absurdo y grosero, sabiendo que estoy en un hospicio, pedirme que siga escribiendo libros”. Quizá ningún otro autor pensó en el lector de manera constante, tan tierna y gentilmente como lo hizo él. Por más que intentó “sobresalir” en el difícil arte de pasar inadvertido, de no desear nada, de desaparecer, a causa de su escritura no fue capaz de concluir la obra maestra de la invisibilidad.
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http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/espectaculos/4-4893-2006-12-23.html
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Una muerte pura
Por Enrique Vila-Matas*
Sábado, 23 de Diciembre de 2006
Me fascinan en Robert Walser los microgramas, lo que él llamaba el método del lápiz y que consistía en escribir en hojas de almanaque (que solía cortar por la mitad) y en todo otro tipo de papeles –más bien papelillos– que encontraba por ahí. Como comentara ya el gran Juan José Saer, la constante en la utilización de ese soporte material de papelitos (con la curiosa particularidad en muchos casos de que el texto tiene una extensión que coincide casi al milímetro con el tamaño de la hoja) ha sugerido a los estudiosos de la obra de Walser la hipótesis de que era el tipo de papel y su formato lo que originaba en este narrador el proceso de escritura. ¡Qué desmitificación más grande, por cierto, de las grandes temas y secuencias de la literatura! Y es que Walser era un escritor sin motivo, escribía sin ninguna finalidad externa, cualquier tema le parecía interesante. Todo estaba bien siempre para él y quizás esto explique por qué su literatura carece de intenciones y de esqueleto.
El poético método de Walser en sus microgramas consistía en terminar de escribir su historia en el momento justo en el que se acababa el papelillo. Nada tan divertido y profundo como esto. No puedo evitar verle un parecido con este artículo mismo que estoy ahora escribiendo y para el que se me ha pedido un número muy concreto de caracteres. También estas breves líneas, como si de un micrograma se tratara, terminarán en el momento en que se acabe mi espacio. Hace quince días participé en París en una mesa redonda sobre Robert Walser con motivo del cincuenta aniversario de su muerte, en el día de Navidad de 1956. Empezaron a decir mis colegas que su final en la nieve había sido mitificado. Fue providencial entonces la intervención de mi amiga Fleur Jaeggy, que se dirigió a mí, como si quisiera dar la espalda a los demás componentes de la mesa redonda: “¿Pero no te parece que fue una muerte pura, poética, perfecta, indiscutible, bellísima?”.
* Escritor.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/espectaculos/
subnotas/4893-1669-2006-12-23.html
Página/12:
El sueño de ser cero
Por Alan Pauls*
Sábado, 23 de Diciembre de 2006
Robert Walser tiene 26 años cuando escribe Las composiciones de Fritz Kocher (1904). Esa antología de balbuceantes redacciones escolares (“El hombre”, “El otoño”, “Tema libre”, “La patria”, etc.) le alcanza para inventar el primer héroe de un gran linaje de anémicos –el estudiante Kocher, muerto en plena juventud– y sentar las bases de una poética menor, monocromática, a la vez frágil e irreductible, cuyas frases se despliegan –es Benjamin el que habla– con la gracia pobre y soberana de una guirnalda. “Nada es más seco que la sequedad, y para mí nada vale más que la sequedad, la insensibilidad”, escribe Kocher. La frase suena como el lema precoz de esa táctica del renunciamiento con la que Walser deshidratará toda imaginación y todo estilo literario. Poco después, en Berlín, entre 1907 y 1909, Walser redacta las tres ficciones que sostienen su gloria de artista imperceptible: Los hermanos Tanner, El dependiente y Jakob von Gunten, también conocida como El Instituto Benjamenta. Llamarlas novelas es más necio que apresurado; son libros sin corregir, inconclusos, que nada añoran menos, sin embargo, que esos orillados del oficio narrativo. Son documentos íntimos, pantallazos de una autobiografía apenas disimulada, pero lo que importa en ellos no es tanto la verdad que encierran como el tono raído que la distancia y la vuelve impersonal. Lisa, la hermana que Walser idolatró, es sin duda el original de Hedwig, la institutriz abnegada de Los hermanos Tanner. Es fácil reconocer en El dependiente los rastros de la temporada que Walser pasó como empleado contable en Wädenswil. El instituto que regentea el señor Benjamenta, dedicado a formar “ceros a la izquierda magníficos, redondos como una pelota”, es el calco de la academia berlinesa donde el mismo Walser aprendió de joven a servir. Pero ¿qué valor pueden tener esas referencias, ancladas todas en una vida preexistente, comparadas con la extraña forma de vida que esas páginas hacen existir? Como Kafka, que le debió todo, Walser habló y escribió mucho sobre sí mismo, aunque lo que anima su verborragia es una voluntad encarnizada de extinción, el sueño paradójico, tal vez imposible, de no ser nadie, de ser menos que nadie, de ser cero.
* Escritor.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/espectaculos/
subnotas/4893-1670-2006-12-23.html
The Independent:
Banality and barefaced lies
Here in America, I stare at the land in which I live and see a landscape I do not recognise
Robert Fisk,
Published: 23 December 2006
I call it the Alice in Wonderland effect. Each time I tour the United States, I stare through the looking glass at the faraway region in which I live and work for The Independent - the Middle East - and see a landscape which I do no recognise, a distant tragedy turned, here in America, into a farce of hypocrisy and banality and barefaced lies. Am I the Cheshire Cat? Or the Mad Hatter?
I picked up Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at San Francisco airport, and zipped through it in a day. It's a good, strong read by the only American president approaching sainthood. Carter lists the outrageous treatment meted out to the Palestinians, the Israeli occupation, the dispossession of Palestinian land by Israel, the brutality visited upon this denuded, subject population, and what he calls "a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights".
Carter quotes an Israeli as saying he is "afraid that we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arabs subjects with few rights of citizenship...". A proposed but unacceptable modification of this choice, Carter adds, "is the taking of substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to them".
Needless to say, the American press and television largely ignored the appearance of this eminently sensible book - until the usual Israeli lobbyists began to scream abuse at poor old Jimmy Carter, albeit that he was the architect of the longest lasting peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbour - Egypt - secured with the famous 1978 Camp David accords. The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print", ho! ho!) then felt free to tell its readers that Carter had stirred "furore among Jews" with his use of the word "apartheid". The ex-president replied by mildly (and rightly) pointing out that Israeli lobbyists had produced among US editorial boards a "reluctance to criticise the Israeli government".
Typical of the dirt thrown at Carter was the comment by Michael Kinsley in The New York Times (of course) that Carter "is comparing Israel to the former white racist government of South Africa". This was followed by a vicious statement from Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who said that the reason Carter gave for writing this book "is this shameless, shameful canard that the Jews control the debate in this country, especially when it comes to the media. What makes this serious is that he's not just another pundit, and he's not just another analyst. He is a former president of the United States".
But well, yes, that's the point, isn't it? This is no tract by a Harvard professor on the power of the lobby. It's an honourable, honest account by a friend of Israel as well as the Arabs who just happens to be a fine American ex-statesman. Which is why Carter's book is now a best-seller - and applause here, by the way, for the great American public that bought the book instead of believing Mr Foxman.
But in this context, why, I wonder, didn't The New York Times and the other gutless mainstream newspapers in the United States mention Israel's cosy relationship with that very racist apartheid regime in South Africa which Carter is not supposed to mention in his book? Didn't Israel have a wealthy diamond trade with sanctioned, racist South Africa? Didn't Israel have a fruitful and deep military relationship with that racist regime? Am I dreaming, looking-glass-like, when I recall that in April of 1976, Prime Minister John Vorster of South Africa - one of the architects of this vile Nazi-like system of apartheid - paid a state visit to Israel and was honoured with an official reception from Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, war hero Moshe Dayan and future Nobel prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin? This of course, certainly did not become part of the great American debate on Carter's book.
At Detroit airport, I picked up an even slimmer volume, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report - which doesn't really study Iraq at all but offers a few bleak ways in which George Bush can run away from this disaster without too much blood on his shirt. After chatting to the Iraqis in the green zone of Baghdad - dream zone would be a more accurate title - there are a few worthy suggestions (already predictably rejected by the Israelis): a resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, an Israeli withdrawal from Golan, etc. But it's written in the same tired semantics of right-wing think tanks - the language, in fact, of the discredited Brookings Institution and of my old mate, the messianic New York Times columnist Tom Friedman - full of "porous" borders and admonitions that "time is running out".
The clue to all this nonsense, I discovered, comes at the back of the report where it lists the "experts" consulted by Messrs Baker, Hamilton and the rest. Many of them are pillars of the Brookings Institution and there is Thomas Freedman of The New York Times.
But for sheer folly, it was impossible to beat the post-Baker debate among the great and the good who dragged the United States into this catastrophe. General Peter Pace, the extremely odd chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said of the American war in Iraq that "we are not winning, but we are not losing". Bush's new defence secretary, Robert Gates, announced that he "agreed with General Pace that we are not winning, but we are not losing". Baker himself jumped into the same nonsense pool by asserting: "I don't think you can say we're losing. By the same token (sic), I'm not sure we're winning." At which point, Bush proclaimed this week that - yes - "we're not winning, we're not losing". Pity about the Iraqis.
I pondered this madness during a bout of severe turbulence at 37,000 feet over Colorado. And that's when it hit me, the whole final score in this unique round of the Iraq war between the United States of America and the forces of evil. It's a draw!
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2097774.ece
The Independent:
The little town that symbolises the suffering of the Middle East
Bethlehem tells us something revealing. There is an exodus of the people responsible for what little prosperity there was
Published: 23 December 2006
In one of the unfailing ironies of the place religious believers call the Holy Land, its most famous emblem of peace - the little town of Bethlehem - is once again a symbol of its troubles. Its economy is in crisis. Concerns over security are keeping many tourists away. Israel's security wall has cut the town off from much of its agricultural hinterland. Unemployment stands at 65 per cent. The West's financial boycott against the Palestinian Authority has meant no salaries have been paid at the municipality for four months.
It is a complex business. The wall reflects legitimate Israeli security concerns; half the suicide bombers in 2004 are said to have come from Bethlehem. And, although Israel ceased its military activity in the Gaza Strip a month ago, Palestinian militants continue to launch rockets against Israel from there. On the other side, the recent escalation of internecine strife between the Palestinian factions has added to the tensions which have been building since voters ousted the corrupt Fatah leadership and replaced it with the more militant Hamas. Yesterday fierce gun battles raged between the two groups; some predicted all-out civil war.
But Bethlehem tells us something revealing. The Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster, who arrived there on a Christmas pilgrimage earlier this week, have expressed concern - not just at the barrier which is "strangling" the place, but also at the flight of Christians from the town. Christians constituted more than 85 per cent of the population in 1948; today they make up just 12 per cent. This matters because it is the Christians who own most of the town's hotels, restaurants and shops. Throughout the West Bank and Gaza there is an exodus of the middle classes responsible for what little prosperity there was.
Prosperity for Palestinians holds the key to peace. A meeting is urgently needed between President Abbas and the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. They have a lot to discuss. High on the agenda must be the rocket attacks on Israel and the Israeli incursions into the Palestinian territories. They must also make progress on the release of Palestinian prisoners, in which they would be assisted by Hamas freeing the Israeli soldier they captured last June. To do so would be an important signal from Hamas that it intends to continue to move along the path of political realism it adopted by contesting the elections in the first place. But their guiding strategy must be to give the Palestinians the prospect of prosperity. Mr Olmert needs to look beyond short-term security considerations and ease those Israeli restrictions that are hampering the organic growth of the Palestinian economy. A new horizon of prosperity, even more than symbolic political gestures, is essential to dispelling the sense of despair that grips so many Palestinian youths.
Shifts are needed internationally too. The recent Baker-Hamilton plan called for movement in US policy on the Israeli/Palestinian problem. President Bush needs to heed that. And the European Union, which has salved its conscience in the past by giving more aid to charities working with Palestinians, needs to get off the fence and apply some political pressure to Israel.
In the midst of it all, the innocents - terrified children, disabled people, women cut off from hospitals by security checkpoints - continue to suffer. Two of the three charities for which we are raising money in our Christmas appeal this year work with such people. Supporting them is the only gesture of solidarity open to most of us. We exhort our readers to be generous in their giving. In the end, though, personal hopes must be allied to politics. If there is anything good in the present flux it is that it offers a chance to find new ways forward.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2097757.ece
The Independent:
'What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today?'
Johann Hari on the plight of pregnant women in the West Bank, where babies are dying needlessly
Published: 23 December 2006
In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem - but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.
Fadia Jemal is a gap-toothed 27-year-old with a weary, watery smile. "What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today? She would endure what I have endured," she says.
Fadia clutches a set of keys tightly, digging hard into her skin as she describes in broken, jagged sentences what happened. "It was 5pm when I started to feel the contractions coming on," she says. She was already nervous about the birth - her first, and twins - so she told her husband to grab her hospital bag and get her straight into the car.
They stopped to collect her sister and mother and set out for the Hussein Hospital, 20 minutes away. But the road had been blocked by Israeli soldiers, who said nobody was allowed to pass until morning. "Obviously, we told them we couldn't wait until the morning. I was bleeding very heavily on the back seat. One of the soldiers looked down at the blood and laughed. I still wake up in the night hearing that laugh. It was such a shock to me. I couldn't understand."
Her family begged the soldiers to let them through, but they would not relent. So at 1am, on the back seat next to a chilly checkpoint with no doctors and no nurses, Fadia delivered a tiny boy called Mahmoud and a tiny girl called Mariam. "I don't remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital," she says now. For two days, her family hid it from her that Mahmoud had died, and doctors said they could "certainly" have saved his life by getting him to an incubator.
"Now Mariam is at an age when she asks me where her brother is," Fadia says. "She wants to know what happened to him. But how do I explain it?" She looks down. "Sometimes at night I scream and scream." In the years since, she has been pregnant four times, but she keeps miscarrying. "I couldn't bear to make another baby. I was convinced the same thing would happen to me again," she explains. "When I see the [Israeli] soldiers I keep thinking - what did my baby do to Israel?"
Since Fadia's delivery, in 2002, the United Nations confirms that a total of 36 babies have died because their mothers were detained during labour at Israeli checkpoints. All across Bethlehem - all across the West Bank - there are women whose pregnancies are being disturbed, or worse, by the military occupation of their land.
In Salfit, on the other side of the West Bank, Jamilla Alahad Naim, 29, is waiting for the first medical check-up of her five-month pregnancy. "I am frightened all the time," she says. "I am frightened for my baby because I have had very little medical treatment and I cannot afford good food ... I know I will give birth at home with no help, like I did with Mohammed [her last child]. I am too frightened to go to hospital because there are two checkpoints between our home [and there] and I know if you are detained by the soldiers, the mother or the baby can die out there in the cold. But giving birth at home is very dangerous too."
Hindia Abu Nabah - a steely 31-year-old staff nurse at Al Zawya Clinic, in Salfit district - says it is "a nightmare" to be pregnant in the West Bank today. "Recently, two of our pregnant patients here were tear-gassed in their homes ... The women couldn't breathe and went into premature labour. By the time we got there, the babies had been delivered stillborn."
Many of the medical problems afflicting pregnant women here are more mundane than Jamilla's darkest fears: 30 per cent of pregnant Palestinians suffer from anaemia, a lack of red blood cells. The extreme poverty caused by the siege and now the international boycott seems to be a key factor. The doctors here warn grimly that as ordinary Palestinians' income evaporates, they eat more staples and fewer proteins - a recipe for anaemia. There is some evidence, they add, that women are giving the best food to their husbands and children, and subsisting on gristle and scraps. The anaemia leaves women at increased risk of bleeding heavily and contracting an infection during childbirth.
Earlier this year, conditions for pregnant women on the West Bank - already poor - fell off a cliff. Following the election of Hamas, the world choked off funding for the Palestinian Authority, which suddenly found itself unable to pay its doctors and nurses. After several months medical staff went on strike, refusing to take anything but emergency cases. For more than three months, the maternity wards of the West Bank were empty and echoing. Beds lay, perfectly made, waiting for patients who could not come.
In all this time, there were no vitamins handed out, no ultrasound scans, no detection of congenital abnormalities. Imagine that the NHS had simply packed up and stopped one day and did not reopen for 12 weeks, and you get a sense of the scale of the medical disaster.
Some women were wealthy enough to go to the few private hospitals scattered across the West Bank. Most were not. So because of the international boycott of the Palestinians, every hospital warns there has been an unseen, unreported increase in home births on the West Bank.
I found Dr Hamdan Hamdan, the head of maternity services at Hussein Hospital, Bethlehem, pacing around an empty ward, chain-smoking. "This ward is usually full," he said. "The women who should be in this hospital - what is happening to them?"
They have been giving birth in startlingly similar conditions to those suffered by Mary 2,000 years ago. They have delivered their babies with no doctors, no sterilised equipment, no back-up if there are complications. They have been boycotted back into the Stone Age. The strike ended this month after the PA raised funds from Muslim countries - but the effects of stopping maternity services are only now becoming clear. Hindia Abu Nabah says: "There is a clear link between the deteriorating health situation and the international boycott.
Amid this horror, one charity has been supporting pregnant Palestinian women even as their medical services fell apart.
Merlin - one of the three charities being supported by the Independent Christmas Appeal - has set up two mobile teams, with a full-time gynaecologist and a paediatrician, to take medical services to the parts of the West Bank cut off by the Israeli occupation. They provide lab technicians and ultrasound machines - the fruits of the 21st century.
I travelled with the team to the Salfit region - scarred by Israeli settlements pumping out raw sewage on to Palestinian land - to see women and children desperately congregating around them seeking help. Amid the dozens of nervous women and swarms of sickly children, Rahme Jima, 29, is sitting with her hands folded neatly in her lap. She is in the last month of her pregnancy, and this is the first time she has seen a doctor since she conceived.
"The nearest hospital is in Nablus, and we can't afford to pay for the transport to get there through all the checkpoints," she says, revealing she is planning - in despair - to give birth at home. Even if she had the cash, she says she is "too frightened of being detained at the checkpoint and being forced to give birth there". She sighs, and adds: "I will be so relieved to finally be seen by a doctor, I have been so worried." But when she returns from seeing the doctor, she says: "I have anaemia, and they have given me iron supplements," supplied by Merlin. She can't afford to eat well; she lives with her husband and four children in a room in her mother-in-law's house, and her husband, Joseph, has been unemployed since his permit to move through the checkpoints expired. "The doctor says I should have been seen much earlier in my pregnancy. My baby will probably be born too small."
All the problems afflicting these 21st century Marys are paraded in Merlin's clinic. One terrified, terrorised mother after another presents herself to the specialists here, and leaves clutching packs of folic acid, calcium, iron and medicine. Dr Bassam Said Nadi, the senior medical officer for this area, says: "I thank Merlin for the specialist care they have brought. Not long ago, we didn't even have petrol in our cars. Alongside other organisations, they are helping us survive this terrible period in our country's history."
Merlin can only maintain these mobile clinics with your help. Leaning in the doorway of her bare clinic, Hindia Abu Nabah says: "Tell your readers that we need their help. There are no Hamas or Fatah foetuses. They don't deserve to be punished. I couldn't stand to look another anaemic woman in the eye and tell her that her baby will be underweight or malformed and we don't have iron supplements to give her. I can't go back to that. I can't."
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/appeals/indy_appeal/article2097790.ece
ZNet | Latin America
Reflections on Pinochet's Death
by Juan Antonio Montecino; December 23, 2006
By now the world has had enough time to reflect on the irony of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's death Sunday, December 10, International Human Rights Day. Now the dictator responsible for the death, torture and disappearance of thousands will never face justice.
It's been over 33 years since Pinochet rose to power in Chile through what is generally recognized as one of the bloodiest coups of the 20th century. On September 11, 1973, Gen. Pinochet led the bombing of the Chilean presidential palace, La Moneda, overthrowing the democratically elected government of Socialist, Salvador Allende. To those mourning his death, Pinochet was a hero and patriot who saved Chile and its waning economy from the clutches of Marxism and Soviet influence. But to me and countless others he's the reason I grew up with one less family member.
In 1973, in the weeks following Pinochet's coup, my uncle, Cristián Montecino, was abducted from his apartment by the military police and executed in a military barrack for no reason other than taking pictures. Throughout the 17-year dictatorship, Pinochet's secret police, the DINA, murdered and kidnapped approximately 3,000 people, ranging from leftist dissidents to clergymen, university professors and journalists. Even today, many of the victim's family members still deal with the pain and uncertainty of not knowing if their disappeared loved-ones were killed or not.
When I was still a child an Argentine woman came over to my house to ask my father to help her find her long-lost lover, disappeared since 1973. My father wasn't home at the time and so I helped her search through his archive of pictures of political prisoners in Santiago's national stadium. Still clutching a half-faded picture of her lost lover, the woman patiently watched my father's computer screen as I zoomed in and out of the faces of those who most likely never made it out of the stadium alive. But the hundreds of pictures yielded no clues and the woman had no choice but to live on with her solemn conviction that one day, if not reunited with her missing lover, at least she'd know his fate for sure.
When I was teenager growing up in post-Pinochet Chile, I struggled to convey my feelings about the dictatorship to my friends and classmates, many of them who were pro-Pinochet. Some of them, no doubt instructed by their wealthy parents, said things like: “Pinochet is a hero” or “it's too bad so many had to die but it was in our country's best interest.” Now I am continually shocked at how often I hear the same defenses from educated adults, people who cowardly refuse to see the thousands dead as more than mere faceless numbers or collateral damage.
Was my childhood babysitter and close family friend, Rodrigo Rojas, who was burned alive and left to rot in a roadside ditch, merely collateral damage? Can economic growth offset the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of such crimes against humanity or the pain suffered by Rodrigo's family?
The good thing is most people don't think so anymore and the overwhelming public reaction in Chile to Pinochet's death was celebration as news reached the U.S. that Chilean liquor stores have sold out of Champagne. But even though Pinochet's corruption and crimes are now almost universally condemned and Chile has even elected a former torture victim, Michelle Bachelet, as its President, I for one am not celebrating.
His death is far too convenient for him and his supporters because now he will never be convicted for his crimes. Those on the Right callous enough to still stand by their "General" can now forever live in fantasy. Fortunately, Bachelet's government spokesmen have announced that Pinochet will receive no special funeral from the state. Now the cult of Pinochet is finally in decline and this year's International Human Rights Day can go down in history as a truly appropriate one indeed.
Perhaps Pinochet's death marks the true end of the Cold War in Latin America.
Juan Antonio Montecino, a former Institute for Policy Studies intern, is a student at the University of British Columbia and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=20&ItemID=11690
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