Elsewhere Today (420)
Al Jazeera:
Islamic courts abandon Mogadishu
Ali Mohamed Gedi, the Somali transitional government prime minister, says troops have entered Mogadishu after the Council of Islamic Courts abandoned the city.
Gedi, who met with clan leaders to discuss the handover of the city, said, "we are co-ordinating our forces to take control of Mogadishu".
Gunfire could be heard and looting has been reported in the power vacuum that has followed the departure of the Islamic courts fighters on Thursday.
Mohammed Adow, Al Jazeera's Somalia correspondent, said the Islamic courts' decision to pull out was unexpected.
He said: "They had promised the Somali people to defend Mogadishu to the last man, but this hasn't happened.
"As they head for the south, the chances look very remote for the Islamic courts to assemble their fighters again in order to be able to wage any war against the Ethiopian and Somali government fighters."
Power vacuum
One former Islamic courts fighter said: "We have been defeated. I have removed my uniform. Most of my comrades have also changed into civilian clothes."
"People are cheering as they wave flowers to the troops," said one resident of the Somali capital, adding that scores of military vehicles had passed the Somalia National University.
Mohamed Jama Fuuruh, a member of the Baidoa-based Somali parliament, said: "The government has taken over Mogadishu. We are now in charge ... There will be no problems and everything will be fine."
Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime minister, confirmed that Somali transitional government forces and Ethiopian troops would pursue the Islamic courts leaders.
"We are discussing what to do so that Mogadishu will not descend into chaos. We will not let Mogadishu burn," he said in Addis Ababa.
Speaking for the transitional government spokesman, Abdirahman Dinari said that it had some way to go towards taking over.
"We are taking control of the city and I will confirm when we have established complete control," he said.
"Our forces effectively control Mogadishu because we have taken over the two control points on the main roads outside the city."
Later Dinari told Al Jazeera the government had declared a state of emergency "to control security and stability".
'Old anarchy'
The Islamic courts' chairman has said that his side's hasty withdrawal was a tactical move in a war that began last week against Ethiopian troops defending Somalia's weak government.
One resident said: "Uncertainty hangs in the air."
"My worst fear is the capital will succumb to its old anarchy. The government should come in now and take over - this is the best chance they have before the city falls into the hands of the warlords again."
Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow said that local commanders have already begun taking over parts of the city.
"It looks now that the government has on its hands a very difficult task in pacifying Mogadishu ... It looks like Ethiopian troops will be here for some time to come".
Dinari said Yusuf Abdullahi, the Somali president, and Ali Mohamed Gedi, the prime minister, remained in the transitional government's south-central base in Baidoa and would move to Mogadishu at the earliest opportunity.
The government has long viewed Mogadishu as too dangerous to move to, but its return would be a key step in achieving greater legitimacy.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D15BD6AB-E82C-45E0-9A98-49900B48CB98.htm
Al Jazeera:
Rebels end Nigeria oilfield sieges
Nigerian oil industry spokesmen say two different armed groups have lifted sieges of two oilfield stations in the country, releasing more than 20 local workers.
About 18 staff members at Agip's Tebidaba oilfield in Bayelsa state were released on Tuesday after five days in captivity.
On the same day, five workers at Shell's nearby Nun River facility were freed after a 12-day siege.
A Shell spokesman said on Thursday that the company had begun to resume production of 14,000 barrels per day (bpd) from the facility.
The chief executive of Agip, a unit of Eni, the Italian oil giant, visited Olusegun Obasanjo, the Nigerian president, on Wednesday to discuss the crisis.
The company's spokesmen said it was unclear what led to the lifting of the two oilfield sieges on Tuesday, but that talks with the attackers were led by the state government and involved elders from nearby villages.
Escalation expected
Industry executives expect violence to escalate in the run-up to Nigeria's general elections in April as local politicians fight turf wars for access to elected office and a share of the government's oil revenue.
Four foreign oil workers - three Italians and one Lebanese - are still being held hostage by a different armed group after an attack on Agip's Brass River export terminal on December 7.
The captors, from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), have demanded money, jobs and infrastructure for their communities in the remote region of mangrove-lined creeks and swamp in southern Nigeria.
Mend says it has spurned ransom offers and wants the Nigerian government to release two jailed leaders from the region.
It has threatened to keep the men for six months.
Weekly occurrence
Kidnappings and attacks on oil facilities have become an almost weekly occurrence in the world's eighth-largest exporter.
Western oil companies recently evacuated hundreds of dependants of expatriate staff after two car bombings by Mend at oil company compounds in Port Harcourt, capital of Rivers state in the Niger Delta.
Senior industry executives say the rising tide of violence could force them to withdraw from some areas completely.
Shell has already shut down its entire oil operation in the western side of the delta after a series of attacks in February which cut Nigeria's oil output by a fifth.
Source: Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6D7EEBE3-D4C8-40AE-B384-CCB445D025DA.htm
allAfrica: Pipeline fire: 300 victims get mass burial
- IG orders arrest of fuel hawkers
By Sopuruchi Onwuka, Mansur Oladunjoye and Tunbosun Ogundare
Daily Champion (Lagos) NEWS
December 28, 2006
About 300 victims of the Tuesday's pipeline fire at Abule Egba, a Lagos suburb, were yesterday given a mass burial, just as the Federal Government announced plans to set up a joint police/military task force to smash illegal syndicates involved in vandalizing pipelines and siphoning petroleum products across the country.
This is as Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Sunday Ehindero, directed all state Commissioners of Police (CPs) to clear the roads of fuel hawkers and arrest black marketers.
Ehindero gave the order yesterday, while fielding questions from newsmen at the scene of the disaster.
The police boss, who arrived the site in a blue Peugeot 406 saloon car, marked NPF 01 at 11.20 am, lambasted black marketers and vandals for their criminal activities, causing monumental tragedies and economic sabotage in the country, just as he described the carnage as "tragic and sad."
IGP vowed to set up a Special Squad to be christened Pipeline Vandalisation Squad (PVS) to wage a relentless war against vandals in the country, disclosing that the squad would comprise the police and other security agencies teaming up to fight act of vandalisation.
Ehindero said the police had set up a team in Edo, Delta and some other areas to monitor the activities of vandals, adding that more than 100 vandals had so far been prosecuted.
"We have taken measures to ensure that people desist from acts of vandalisation of pipelines but despite that, it persists. We are going to impose a tougher measure this time around," he said.
He spoke, just as Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Edmund Daukoru, said the state of pipeline vandalisation and stealing of products from the nation's pipelines have escalated recently to worsen the crisis of supply in the market.
The victims, whose identities could not be ascertained as they were burnt beyond recognition, were said to have been buried around 2.am at Ajala area on Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway.
The bodies of the victims were buried after Muslim and Christian clerics have prayed for the repose of their souls.
Both Mr Ehindero and Daukoru speaking at the scene of the inferno, yesterday expressed regrets at the high human toll and exposure of residents to great risks.
While describing the incident as a monumental human tragedy, Mr Ehindero said the police under his administration would review its operations strategy to inject more force in dealing with crime in the country.
In response to the recent surge in crime across the country, he said, the police has started taking delivery of more arms and equipment to outclass the criminals in the use of fire power.
He said the equipment would be immediately deployed for crime combat across the country to bring all criminals operating in the country to book in the next few months.
Referring to causes of fuel scarcity in the country, he blamed the situation on the activities of pipelines vandals and illegal fuel marketers using street hawkers to sell the products at exorbitant prices.
He directed all commissioners of police in the country to arrest all those hawking the products along the roads, but warned them to carry out the task in a manner that would not lead to fire incidents.
Turning to the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr Emmanuel Adebayo, along with Julian Okpalake and Mrs Bose Daodu, Commander Area 'G' who accompanied him to the scene, the IG instructed him to commence arrest of fuel hawkers without further delay.
He also charged the CP to deploy all police intelligence units available to him in fishing out those responsible for pushing the products into the street.
The police, he said, has arrested and prosecuted over 100 pipeline vandals and also seized several tankers used in siphoning products from punctured pipelines.
Mr Ehindero regretted that the human face he injected in the attitude of the police to the public was proving counter productive, declaring that more force would be injected in the operations of the police to restore respect for law in the society.
He appealed to the public to show higher sense of responsibility by exposing criminals to enable the police to avert such disasters and tragic incidents.
When he arrived, Dr Edmund Daukoru described the incident as a shame on the vandals and syndicate that punctured the pipe, "saying their quest for petty cash has led to death of hundreds of men, women and children."
He regretted that the vandals have developed high technical capacity for hot tapping on pressurized pipelines, adding that the police did not respond to calls when residents tried to alert them on such activities.
At the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) Ikeja, where 72 victims of the fire are receiving treatment, Dr Daukoru expressed the confidence that the personnel would rise efficiently to the challenge of saving lives.
Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Dr Femi Olugbile, however, said most of the victims were still in the danger list, explaining that they sustained high degree burns.
He said the victims have been quarantined for special attention and reduced exposure to infection.
Copyright © 2006 Daily Champion. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200612280104.html
allAfrica:
Mogadishu in Chaos As Islamic Militia Leave
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
December 28, 2006
Nairobi
Thousands of people have fled their homes, and at least 13 people have been killed and dozens injured, as rival militias clashed in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, residents told IRIN on Thursday.
Medical sources added that at least 20 people have been wounded and taken to hospitals within the city which was abandoned by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) militia on Wednesday.
The fighting began in the morning in the Yaqshiid district of north Mogadishu, after militia tried to loot an arms storage warehouse, reported Hassan Mahamud Ahmed, editor of the San'aa newspaper in Mogadishu.
Ahmed said the fighting in Mogadishu was sparked by the breakdown of law and order after the UIC left the city.
"Each clan is now trying to rearm and repossess weapons taken from them by the courts, in anticipation of the return of the warlords," he said.
He added that there are also fears that the fighting might intensify if the interim government (TFG), backed by Ethiopian forces, tried to take Mogadishu by force. Some of the TFG and their Ethiopian backers are reported to be on the outskirts of Mogadishu.
Government spokesman, Abdirahman Dinari, told IRIN on Thursday that "the government did not wish to take the city by force", and that the city would not slide into lawlessness.
"We have been in constant contact with elders and civil society groups to make sure that there is a smooth and peaceful handover, and we expect that to happen soon. It was few militias who are trying to take advantage of the situation and they will be dealt with," he said.
Meanwhile, many UIC fighters and their leaders were reported to be heading south, "possibly to Kismayo", an unnamed local resident said. He added that their departure had created a vacuum in the city "and it is being filled by freelance militias".
He said clan militias had taken to the streets with "technicals" - pick-ups mounted with heavy weapons - "and have already taken over the airport and port".
The UIC has dominated Mogadishu after capturing the city in June. The Islamic Courts reopened the port and airport there in August, after they had been closed for more than 11 years.
The UIC's influence stretches throughout much of southern Somalia. But after nine days of fighting, the TFG forces, backed by Ethiopian forces with heavy weapons and aircraft, have pushed the UIC from most of the territory it controlled.
Most businesses in the city had closed on Thursday, with traders "waiting to see how things develop", the resident said.
Ali Imaan Sharmarke, the managing partner for HornAfrik, radio and television, told IRIN that "for the first time, since July, I am driving with guards".
He said that the city was "on the brink of going back to the situation in the 1990s, when freelance militias roamed the streets".
"The civil society, along with elders, is trying to contain the situation, before it gets out of hand," Abdullahi Shirwa of the Civil Society in Action, a coalition of civil-society groups, said. "The last thing we want is return to the old ways."
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Copyright © 2006 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200612280244.html
AlterNet:
Hopeful Signs For Global Justice
By Mark Engler, TomPaine.com
Posted on December 28, 2006
To read the headlines in the morning papers during these Bush years is too often an exercise in exasperation, as each day's new outrages seem to top the last. But hidden quietly on the inside pages, and rumbling through alternative news sources, there is also a more encouraging story: Despite the challenges presented by the current administration, the global justice movement has made impressive strides in recent years.
Arguments for trade and development policies that truly address poverty and serve working people have moved from the left margins into the mainstream of international debate. The paradigm of "neoliberalism" that dominated world development for two decades has been steadily losing legitimacy. And, in its wake, some important spaces for building alternatives have appeared.
Whether in the Democratic sweep of the midterm elections, in the eruption of domestic protests supporting immigrant rights, in the leftward realignment of Latin American politics, in the collapse of the Doha round of talks at the World Trade Organization, or in extended victories in issues like debt relief, these trends continued in exciting ways in 2006.
Given that Bill Clinton's Democrats were the party of NAFTA, and that the Dems continue to rely on big money from corporate America, many global justice activists have long grown skeptical that a push for real change can be led from Capitol Hill. While this view has merit, the Democratic landslide nevertheless represented a serious blow to the reactionary Bush administration, and you would have to be unusually jaded not to see any bright spots in the electoral sweep. In fact, in terms of trade and development issues, the midterm elections helped foster a major realignment within the Democratic Party away from a corporate globalization agenda.
As the watchdogs at Public Citizen have documented, seven seats in the Senate and 28 in the House changed hands from "free trade" to "fair trade" advocates, who support using international agreements to promote stronger labor and environmental protections. Important wins include those of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a steadfast critic of neoliberalism, and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, long-time activist and author of Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed. November 7 also produced numerous state- and community-level victories, bringing into office grassroots leaders who see their local work in an internationalist context. As just one example, longtime global justice champion Mark Ritchie, founder and former executive director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, was elected as Secretary of State in Minnesota, and will be leading the effort to make the state a model for conducting clean and fair elections.
Another type of democracy - more colorful and direct - was on display in the streets this year. Most notably, 2006 witnessed a wave of massive demonstrations in favor of immigrant rights. In March, a 750,000-person mobilization in Los Angeles staked a claim as an historic event, only to be topped by a march of over a million people in that city on May 1. Such demonstrations were mirrored throughout the country, and coordinated actions were held in over 100 cities nationwide in a matter of weeks. The demonstrations gave voice to some of the most marginalized members of our society: immigrants who help prepare our food, clean our hotels and homes, and care for our children. While it is not yet possible to discern the full political significance of the immigrant rights movement, the inspiring actions challenged us to see the connections between hardship abroad and the struggle for justice at home. And they suggested that a not-so-sleepy giant awaits politicians who promote exclusion and xenophobia.
It was also an election year throughout Latin America, and citizens in many parts of the region continued to reject pro-corporate models of economic "progress." Chileans elected their first woman president, Michelle Bachelet, a left-leaning doctor whose family was imprisoned by the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s. Voters in Brazil reelected former union leader Lula da Silva. And Hugo Chávez also won a decisive reelection in Venezuela, garnering broad support for his New Deal-style social programs. In Ecuador, voters chose economist Rafael Correa, an ardent opponent of the Washington Consensus, over a banana magnate who happened to be the wealthiest man in the country.
Perhaps the most impressive of the leaders has been Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Morales, who took office in January, has since shocked the international business press by actually delivering on his campaign promises. Bolstered by well-organized social movements, the Morales government initiated the nationalization of Bolivia's oil and gas assets on May 1. The process culminated in early December, when the government signed agreements with foreign energy companies giving it majority control over oil and gas extraction and directing over half the profits toward the public good. Given that the majority of the country's population lives in poverty and has benefited little from living in a resource-rich nation, these efforts are both overdue and welcomed. In late November, Morales' party went further by passing an ambitious land reform bill that seeks to right an historic injustice by breaking up some of the enormous estates left over from colonial times and redistributing as many as 20 million hectares to campesinos who work the land.
Political realignment in Latin America, coupled with years of popular pressure elsewhere in the developing world, has dramatically changed the tenor of international trade discussions. During July negotiations in Geneva, the Doha round of talks at the World Trade Organization collapsed as developing countries stood up to U.S. and European double standards on agricultural subsidies. While the Bush administration regularly sings the praises of unfettered "free trade," it in fact supports lavish subsidies for domestic agribusiness - to the tune of $23 billion dollars a year, the great majority of which goes to our country's largest mega-farms. Delegates from poorer nations demanded significant cuts to these subsidies before they would agree to further liberalize their economies. Needless to say, the rich countries were resistant, and amidst this hypocritical display the talks fell apart.
While deadlock at the WTO does not guarantee a fairer system of global trade, Doha's demise stopped a bad WTO deal from going forward, at least for the time being. If world leaders take the hint, discussion should turn toward creating a system of trade that values grassroots self-determination and more justly distributes the benefits of international commerce.
Other advances suggest that such an agenda might not be far out of reach. On the issue of debt cancellation, the globalization movement has already succeeded in reshaping policy. Advocates effectively publicized the injustice of forcing nations with sick and malnourished populations to send large portions of their national budgets to rich countries in the form of payments on unsustainable foreign debts, many of which were accumulated by past dictators. In 2005, after a decade of pressure from grassroots groups, world leaders agreed to cancel debts of 18 impoverished nations to the IMF and World Bank. Debt cancellation has often proven to be one of the most effective forms of aid, allowing countries to use their own resources to meet social needs. But the 2005 agreement did not go far enough: it left out major regional banks like the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the leading multilateral lender in Latin America.
Members of the Jubilee debt coalition continued to push to cancel debts from the IDB, and this November they made another breakthrough. The IDB agreed to a deal canceling debts of five of the poorest countries in the Americas. If properly implemented, the agreement will eliminate obligations of up to $768 million for Bolivia, $365 million for Guyana, $1.1 billion for Honduras, $808 million for Nicaragua, and $468 million for Haiti. No doubt, there's more to be done to ensure that cancellation comes in full, without delays and without strings attached. Yet efforts to push for greater progress should be propelled by the recent string of wins.
Thousands of similar campaigns stood up to local injustices, challenged corporate power, and provided the energy that ultimately unseated presidents. As we are reminded daily of the hard realities that persist in an era of executive excess and superpower militarism, their victories might seem disparate and few. But they have shown that they can accrete and build, gradually bridging the divide that separates us from once-distant possibilities: the death of neoliberalism, the political re-creation of the Americas, the end of extreme poverty, a democratic globalization. The quiet wins of 2006 together remind us that change is more possible than we might sometimes despair - and that it is not entirely naive to invest hope in the promise of a new year.
Mark Engler is a commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus. He can be reached via DemocracyUprising.com
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/45979/
Asia Times:
The pending fourfold crisis
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Dec 23, 2006
As a political scientist, and a Hegelian at that, I have never considered making predictions more than an occasional byproduct of in-depth analysis that would be germane to an intrinsic evaluation of one's corpus of explanations.
However, that does not preclude analyzing the perspectives that offer forecasting with or without the benefit of a sound theoretical and methodological framework.
Take, for instance, King Abdullah II of Jordan's alarm of a coming "triple crisis" in the Middle East in 2007, ie, in Lebanon, Iraq and the occupied territories, although with Iraq still under foreign occupation, we must quickly add "in Palestine" to the last. How accurate is this prediction?
The situation in Lebanon is veering simultaneously toward and away from a civil war, not least because all parties have learned from the past the precious lesson that it could turn out to be a lose-lose situation and not worth the risk, particularly as the country has yet to recover minimally from the devastations of Israel's aggression last summer.
In terms of the tension between Hamas and Fatah, it is too early to tell, since the main theater of power struggle is in Gaza and not the West Bank, and the upcoming elections may succeed in taking some of the steam from the brewing conflict between the Palestinians.
In Iraq, on the other hand, there is a nexus between civil war and insurgency that has yet to be fully explored, and one wonders if the Shi'ites can hold onto their political gains as long as they are viewed as occupation collaborationists by the Sunnis. The current state of civil war in Iraq will likely continue unabated and will parallel the tempo of insurgency and counter-insurgency.
The US is now poised to increase its troop levels in Iraq, despite the opposite advice of the Iraq Study Group and the dissenting voice of former secretary of state Colin Powell, who has openly wondered what a surge in troop levels can actually accomplish (other than inflaming the nationalist sentiments of Iraqis further).
Maybe the United States should combine that with a timetable for withdrawal, a one-two punch, which avoids the binary decisions and recommendations hurled at President George W Bush these days. There is, after all, something amiss with the Iraq Study Group's pitch for a troop increase in Afghanistan because of rising insecurity there and yet refraining from making similar recommendations for Iraq, which admittedly faces a "grave and deteriorating" situation. Vice-versa, the US could apply the Afghanistan model, that is, just as the Taliban have won "sanctuaries" or "zones" of freedom in Afghanistan, similarly the US could forfeit certain areas in Iraq to the insurgents under the condition that they would not transgress their limits.
Had the US done this in Fallujah, for instance, and reached a modus vivendi with the insurgents, the situation might not have turned out as badly as it has. Another prudent move would be to give the Kurds a greater role in Iraq's security above and beyond their enclaves. Yet another idea would be somehow to bring the United Nations back in the picture and entertain the experimental infusion of UN peacekeeping forces in certain areas not too hot to handle by the UN.
Turning to Iran and the nuclear crisis, that is the other, fourth crisis that King Abdullah might have wanted to add to the list, given the impending UN sanctions and the negative ramifications of this crisis on regional security. The pertinent question is, of course, whether or not the electoral victory of a coalition of reformists and pragmatic conservatives led by the former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, will translate into continuity or change in Iran's foreign policy.
There is a good-to-excellent chance that in light of the election results, widely interpreted as a vote of no confidence in President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, the moderate politicians in Tehran will succeed in influencing the tone and content of Iran's foreign policy toward compromise and dialogue with the West. The "Eastward" orientation pushed for by Ahmadinejad has its limitations, and a return to the more balanced, neither West nor East, initial elan of the post-revolutionary regime may be called for, albeit with the positive twist of "both West and East". That is more in tune with the Iranian character, in view of Iran's history and geographical location in Europe's proximity.
At this point, a note of self-reflection. Soon after the invasion of Iraq, I published the following letter in the New York Times, dated March 20, 2003:
The war just unilaterally declared by President Bush, in addition to lacking legitimacy and harming the United States' global image for a long time, is likely to turn most if not all of Iraq into rubble. At a minimum, it will turn Baghdad into a Mesopotamian Stalingrad, causing intolerable death and destruction, as well as an ecological catastrophe.
The shortsighted dreams of quick victory are likely to evaporate in a war of attrition, disruptions in the flow of Persian Gulf oil, acts of terrorism and so on - all this as a result of a war of choice, not of necessity.
My subsequent letter in the New York Times, dated September 3, 2003, explicitly stated that there was now a civil war in Iraq, reflected in the assassination of a Shi'ite leader:
Regarding the murder of the Shi'ite leader Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim and scores of others in Najaf, the United States military bears part of the responsibility for the security lapse. The ayatollah's death is a severe blow to the postwar political reconstruction of Iraq, and a sad reminder of the civil war that has followed the military invasion of the country in clear breach of the United Nations charter, notwithstanding the absence of weapons of mass destruction. The ayatollah's collaboration with the United States may have cost him his life, and he and his group may have underestimated the anti-foreign passion of Iraqis reflected in the sentiments of many younger Iraqi Shi'ites against the United States occupation.
In yet another such letter, published in April 2004, I stated that military victory in Iraq was unachievable and the US was better off thinking "shared sovereignty":
"There is no military solution to [the] Iraqi quagmire, and a prudent American policy would be to negotiate shared sovereignty at macro-levels as well as micro-levels (town by town) as the framework of a viable exit strategy."
These are just a few samples of my own "predictions", which I dare say have turned out on the mark, and, in turn, this gives me hope to keep the flame of writing that is the essence of enlightenment.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HL23Ak01.html
Guardian:
Somali forces regain Mogadishu
Staff and agencies
Thursday December 28, 2006
Somali government troops entered Mogadishu unopposed today, hours after an Islamist movement that tried to establish a government based on Sharia law abandoned the capital.
The retreat of Somalia Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) fighters was followed by looting by clan militiamen, a reminder of the chaos that once ruled Mogadishu. One resident said three men and a woman had been killed in the looting. Gunfire could he heard in many parts of the city.
"We are in Mogadishu," the Somali prime minister, Mohamed Ali Gedi, said after meeting with clan leaders to discuss the handover of the city. "We are coordinating our forces to take control of Mogadishu."
Mr Gedi was welcomed to the town of Afgoye by dozens of traditional leaders from Mogadishu and hundreds of government and Ethiopian troops who have been fighting for more than a week against the SCIC that had at one point taken over most of southern Somalia.
The Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, vowed to inflict total defeat on the SCIC, saying that he hoped the fighting would be over "in days, if not in a few weeks".
"Forces of the transitional federal government and Ethiopia are on the outskirts of Mogadishu now," he told reporters in Addis Ababa. "We are discussing what we need to do to make sure Mogadishu does not descend into chaos. We will not let Mogadishu burn."
However, it is Mogadishu's clan leaders who have the greatest influence over whether order or lawlessness follows the SCIC retreat.
The Somali president, Abdullahi Yusuf, said in a statement that his troops were not a threat to the people of Mogadishu.
"The government is committed to solving every problem that may face Somalia through dialogue and peaceful ways," the statement said.
Sheik Sharif Ahmed, the executive SCIC leader, told al-Jazeera television that he ordered his forces out of Mogadishu, which they have occupied since June, to avoid bloodshed in the capital. Residents living south of Mogadishu said they saw convoys of Islamist fighters driving south towards the port city of Kismayo.
"I have seen that the Islamists are defeated. I'm going to rejoin my clan," said Mohamed Barre Sidow. "I was forced to join the Islamic courts by my clan, so now I will return to my clan and they will decide my fate, whether I join the government or not."
Yusuf Ibrahim, an Islamist gunman until today, said around 3,000 hardcore followers decided to continue fighting against the government and Ethiopian troops and had left for Kismayo.
Other witnesses reported seeing a large number of foreign fighters in the convoys heading south. There were suggestions they were headed for a SCIC base at the southern tip of Somalia called Ras Chiamboni.
Islamist movement leaders had called on foreign Muslims to join their "holy war" against Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian nation. Hundreds were believed to have answered the call, according to reports.
Salad Gabayre, a clan militia commander in the Sinai district, said elders were calling for young men to form militias to protect their neighbourhoods.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said hospitals and other medical facilities in southern and central Somalia had admitted more than 800 wounded people in recent days.
"The ICRC is extremely concerned about civilians caught up in the fighting, wounded people and people detained in connection with the fighting," said Pascal Hundt, the head of the ICRC's Somalia delegation. The SCIC captured Mogadishu in June and went on to take much of southern Somalia, often without fighting. Its fortunes started to reverse on Christmas Eve, when Ethiopia sent reinforcements across the border to help the internationally recognised government.
Somalia's complex clan system has been the basis of politics and identity for centuries. But due to clan fighting, the country has not had an effective government since the civil war of the 1990s. Two years ago, the United Nations helped set up the interim government. It has been unable to assert much authority, in part because it has been weakened by clan rivalries.
The competition for control of Mogadishu since 1991 has involved the Abgal and Habr Gadir clans, who joined forces earlier this year to support the Islamic Courts. If Abgal elders switch allegiance to the government, probably in return for key government posts, urban warfare between the Abgal and Habr Gadir clans is likely to resume.
The conflict has caused concern among western powers, including the United States, which has accused the Islamists of harbouring al-Qaida terrorists.
Last night, the UN Security Council failed for a second day to agree on a statement calling for an immediate ceasefire in Somalia.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1979362,00.html
Guardian:
Ethiopian army nears Somalian capital amid calls for peace
Xan Rice, east Africa correspondent
Thursday December 28, 2006
Ethiopian forces pushed to within 18 miles of the Islamist stronghold of Mogadishu yesterday, as international criticism of their incursion into Somalia mounted.
Shortly after dawn, Ethiopian soldiers and forces loyal to Somalia's weak transitional government seized the key town of Jowhar, 50 miles north of Mogadishu. They later took Balad, further along the road to the traditional capital.
The warlord Mohammed Dheere, who was chased out of Jowhar by the Islamists a few months ago, was at the front of the advancing troops - an indication of how Ethiopia intends to control the territory.
The rapid retreat of the Somalia Council of Islamic Court (SCIC) militias, who have mounted little resistance to the aerial and tank attacks, means that most of their territory gained since they rose to power in Mogadishu in June has now been lost. The Somali envoy to Ethiopia said the pro-government strategy would involve besieging the SCIC base.
The UN was due to meet again last night to discuss the conflict, which could evolve into a protracted war. On Tuesday the security council failed to agree on a resolution calling for a withdrawal of "foreign forces" - Ethiopia in particular, but also Eritrea, which backs the SCIC.
Leading the support for Ethiopia's occupation was the US, which believes the Islamists have close links to al-Qaida. Britain also refused to call for Ethiopia's withdrawal, saying a ceasefire and dialogue were the primary requirements.
"Simply asking for a withdrawal of foreign forces in a vacuum is not going to achieve anything," said Paul Johnston, Britain's security council delegate. But the African Union, which on Tuesday appeared to back Ethiopia, backtracked yesterday. "We call for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops without delay," said Alpha Omar Konare, the AU chairman.
The Arab League echoed his statement, as did Somalia's neighbours Djibouti and Kenya, which will take the worst of the refugee influx if war continues. Aid agencies such as the World Food Programme have already curtailed their activities.
Analysts say an attack on Mogadishu could turn to disaster, as the SCIC, which has thousands of militiamen and significant local support, would follow up on its threats to wage a guerrilla war.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1979127,00.html
il manifesto:
Lagos, strage di «ladri di benzina»
L'esplosione di un oleodotto nella capitale conomica della Nigeria provoca centinaia di vittime. Era gente comune, attratta dalla possibilità di facili guadagni mediante la vendita del carburante al mercato nero
Stefano Liberti
Un'esplosione improvvisa, centinaia di corpi carbonizzati, un quartiere immerso in un incendio che divampa per ore. Un nuovo scoppio di un oleodotto ha colpito ieri Lagos, capitale economica della Nigeria, con un bilancio pesantissimo: ufficialmente sono stati dichiarati 269 morti, ma è molto probabile che le vittime saranno alla fine più di 500. La tragedia è avvenuta a Abule Egba, quartiere densamente popolato nella zona settentrionale della città più popolosa del paese più popoloso dell'Africa.
La scena è di quelle che si ripetono con cinica frequenza in Nigeria, ottavo esportatore di greggio mondiale ma affetto da una cronica scarsità di carburante: nella notte, alcuni ladri di benzina hanno praticato un buco nella pipeline che parte dal deposito della Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (Nnpc), la compagnia petrolifera di stato. Si trattava di professionisti del «bunkering», come viene definita in gergo la perforazione degli oleodotti in Nigeria: prima di bucare la tubatura, sono infatti venuti sul luogo con un'autocisterna, che hanno provveduto a riempire con la benzina sottratta. Ma poi sono andati via lasciando aperto il foro. È a quel punto che si è sparsa la voce per il quartiere e una folla di persone, dotata di taniche, bottiglie, borse, si è avventata sul posto, cercando di prendere un po' di benzina per rivenderla al mercato nero. L' «estrazione» è andata avanti per ore, fino all'esplosione, avvenuta in tarda mattinata e provocata con ogni probabilità da una sigaretta accesa.
Le immagini diffuse dalle agenzie di stampa internazionali mostrano un paesaggio apocalittico, con corpi letteralmente scarnificati dal fuoco, diverse case incenerite, oltre a una moschea e a una chiesa distrutte. Un funzionario della Croce rossa, citato dall'Associated Press, ha dichiarato che «l'unico modo per riconoscere i cadaveri era a partire dalla forma del cranio». Un fotografo della Reuters sul luogo ha parlato di «500 forse 700 corpi bruciati», sparsi per tutto il quartiere.
Il bilancio appare quindi destinato a salire. Senza contare che molti dei feriti, temendo di essere arrestati, si sono nascosti e non si sono fatti visitare dagli operatori della Croce rossa che si sono recati sul posto. Altri non sono andati in ospedale perché non hanno il denaro sufficiente per sostenere le cure.
La Nigeria e la città di Lagos non sono nuove a queste tragedie, che si ripetono con una certa routine e con la stessa identica dinamica: solo nel maggio scorso, in un incidente analogo, 150 persone sono morte a Inagbe Beach, alla periferia di Lagos, poco lontano da un altro luogo dove pochi mesi prima 100 persone erano perite in un'altra esplosione. Nel 2000, un devastante scoppio aveva provocato almeno mille morti a Jesse, nel Delta del Niger.
La carenza di carburante e la povertà che affliggono la metropoli nigeriana spingono masse di persone a dedicarsi al «bunkering» artigianale: caricarsi un paio di taniche di benzina per poi rivenderla per le strade. Secondo dati di esperti del settore petrolifero, almeno il 5 per cento della produzione di greggio nigeriano viene sottratto con il «bunkering»: un rapporto della società petrolifera di stato Nnpc sostiene che nel corso degli ultimi cinque anni si sono verificati 2.258 atti di vandalismo ai danni di oleodotti. I ladri organizzati rubano sia il prodotto non raffinato, che poi vendono a navi cisterne in attesa a largo della costa, sia la benzina, che immettono sul mercato nero. Ma le tragedie avvengono soprattutto quando i fori sono praticati da gente comune, poco consapevole dei rischi che comporta questa pratica. Dopo l'ultimo incidente, il ministro della salute dello stato di Lagos aveva esortato la Nnpc ad aumentare i controlli sulle sue pipeline, per evitare il ripetersi delle tragedie. Ma il suo appello sembra essere caduto nel vuoto.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/27-Dicembre-2006/art28.html
il manifesto: «In Nigeria il carburante non si trova
per questo la gente buca gli oleodotti»
Il governo di Abuja li vuol far passare per teppisti, ma i ribelli del Delta hanno precise rivendicazioni politiche
Stefano Liberti
«Non c'è benzina per strada. Per questo la gente si avventa sugli oleodotti». Raggiunto al telefono a Lagos, il sociologo Edward Omeire analizza le cause dell'esplosione che ha provocato ieri centinaia di vittime nella capitale economica del gigante africano. Incuria, miseria, ma anche un evento congiunturale, la mancanza di benzina nelle stazioni e il conseguente aumento del prezzo sul mercato nero.
Come mai non si trova benzina a Lagos?
Si è diffusa la voce che il governo sta pensando di lanciare un ulteriore aumento del prezzo della benzina in concomitanza con il capodanno. In attesa dell'ufficializzazione della decisione, le stazioni di rifornimento non ne vendono più, facendo fiorire il mercato nero. Oggi, il carburante per strada si compra a 200 naira al litro (circa 1,20 euro), mentre il prezzo ufficiale è di 65 naira. L'incremento del prezzo ha fatto aumentare la possibilità di profitti derivanti dal «bunkering», ossia la perforazione degli oleodotti e il furto della benzina.
Come mai la benzina costa così tanto in Nigeria, che pure è l'ottavo esportatore di greggio al mondo?
Il problema è che le nostre raffinerie non funzionano. Il greggio viene quindi venduto ad agenti internazionali, che lo raffinano in Sudafrica, in altri paesi dell'Africa occidentale o in Europa e lo rivendono poi in Nigeria. Questo fa sì che il prezzo è molto alto e che, peraltro, è tanto più alto quanto più ci si allontana da Lagos, il porto commerciale, perché ai costi di vendita bisogna aggiungere quelli di trasporto. Con il paradosso che nel Delta del Niger, che è la principale regione produttrice del paese, il carburante costa di più che a Lagos.
Ma qual è la ragione ultima della tragedia di ieri? Una volta che sottrae il greggio dalla pipeline, la gente che cosa ne fa?
Lo rivende al mercato nero. Quell'oleodotto proviene dal deposito della Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (Nnpc), la compagnia nazionale nigeriana, e non trasporta quindi greggio, ma prodotto finito. Il procedimento è quindi abbastanza semplice: la gente ruba la benzina dai buchi nella pipeline e la vende in taniche ai bordi della strada. È un'attività diffusa: la povertà spinge molte persone a lanciarsi in questo business rischioso. Spesso basta che qualcuno sul luogo si accenda una sigaretta per far saltare tutto.
Come si commenta in Nigeria il rapimento dei quattro tecnici dell'Agip da parte dei ribelli del Mend?
È indubbio che il fenomeno sta assumendo una nuova dimensione. Negli ultimi tempi, i ribelli del Delta del Niger hanno alzato il tiro: stanno mettendo autobomba, stanno moltiplicando le azioni ad effetto, fra cui il rapimento dei tecnici dell'Agip. Il governo nigeriano vuole far passare l'idea che i ribelli siano dei teppisti, ma la verità è che sono un'organizzazione strutturata con precise rivendicazioni politiche. Che, tra l'altro, sono appoggiate in larga parte dalla classe politica della regione del Delta.
Crede che l'idea del partito al potere di schierare il governatore dello stato di Bayelsa, nel Delta, come vice-presidente alle elezioni del prossimo aprile possa calmare gli animi?
La scelta del People's democratic party (Pdp) di schierare il governatore dello stato di Bayelsa Goodluck Jonathan come vice-presidente mira proprio a questo: placare i gruppi ribelli. Ma è una scelta ingenua, perché Jonathan non ha alcun seguito né tra i ribelli né tra i giovani della zona. L'unico che aveva carisma e seguito era Diepriye Alamieyeseigha (l'ex governatore, ora in carcere con l'accusa di corruzione, di cui il Mend chiede la liberazione in cambio degli ostaggi dell'Agip ndr). Se lui chiedeva di porre fine agli attacchi, i ribelli lo avrebbero ascoltato. L'attuale governatore ha molto meno presa sui gruppi locali. E la sua candidatura ha scarse chance di cambiare la situazione sul terreno.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/27-Dicembre-2006/art27.html
Jeune Afrique: Les forces islamistes
se retirent de la capitale selon leur chef
SOMALIE - 28 décembre 2006 – AFP
Le chef des tribunaux islamiques somaliens, cheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed a annoncé jeudi sur la chaîne al-Jazira que ses troupes s'étaient retirées de Mogadiscio alors que les forces gouvernementales somaliennes, appuyée par des troupes éthiopiennes, s'approchaient de la ville.
"Nous avons retiré nos troupes de Mogadiscio et plus aucune force des tribunaux islamiques ne s'y trouve", a déclaré Cheikh Sharif à cette chaîne satellitaire basée à Doha.
"Nous n'avons pas laissé la capitale au chaos, nous avons juste voulu épargner à la ville et à la population les bombardements des forces éthiopiennes qui se livrent à un génocide contre le peuple somalien", a dit ce dirigeant islamiste.
Les forces gouvernementales somaliennes avaient pris mercredi Jowhar, ville stratégique et bastion islamiste, à 90 km au nord de la capitale somalienne.
L'Ethiopie a reconnu cette semaine pour la première fois son intervention en Somalie annonçant "une contre-attaque" motivée par "son droit à la légitime défense".
Les milices des tribunaux islamiques, soupçonnées par les services de renseignement occidentaux d'abriter des agents d'Al-Qaïda, s'étaient emparées en juin 2006 de la majeure partie de Mogadiscio, après quatre mois de combats contre une alliance de chefs de guerre soutenue par les Etats-Unis.
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP55806lesfofehcru0
Mail & Guardian:
What are we celebrating?
John Matshikiza: WITH THE LID OFF
21 December 2006
Father Christmas goes “Ho, ho, ho”. The bag of goodies slung over his shoulder, hopefully, brings joy and happiness to the laughing faces of children and adults alike. But one has to ask oneself what there is to celebrate at the end of this difficult year.
One hates to continue being a doomsayer, but the gruesome murders of Avhatakali Netshisaulu Tsedu, son of Mathatha Tsedu, editor of City Press (latest advertising motto: “Liberating the country one Sunday at a time …”) and then of creative personality Taliep Peterson just won’t leave one’s brain.
These senseless killings, we all know, are just the tip of the iceberg of the accelerating spiral of violence in South Africa. They make the news because they are high profile. The government of the day - whose day is soon to pass (although who can tell for sure?) - says precious little about all of this, and does even less. High profile or no, the body count simply rises.
What about Peru? What about Guatemala? What about the gang wars in Mexico and Brazil, comes the defensive response. The world we live in is simply a violent space. Look at Gaza. Look at Baghdad. Look at the machinations that come out of the post-Communist Kremlin. Look at Darfur. Look at the murders of five prostitutes (body count probably rising) in the sleepy eastern English town of Ipswich. Et cetera, et cetera. Frankly, that is not addressing the question that everyone is asking.
Last week I spoke about Kofi Annan’s sorry legacy after 10 years at the helm of the United Nations. The world has become a worse place, not a better place, since he took the reins. The New World Order, of which he was the dark face of reason and decency, pitted against the pocked features of neo-colonialist/imperialist warrior generals George W Bush and Tony Blair, began to look as grey as his elegant haircut, and his increasingly greying face as the chips came tumbling down from Bosnia to Rwanda to the Lebanon, and, hey, even the quiet backwater of Fiji. The gods must be crazy.
Certainly not Annan.
This week one has to wonder: what is the legacy of the post-Mandela government going to be? There hasn’t exactly been a successful Boeremag coup to rival what’s going on in other parts of the world, but those guys are still hanging around in the woodwork, as far as we can tell, and nothing can be called 100% sure. It becomes harder and harder to tell which way South Africa is going, and why - politically, that is. The ruling party and all its limbs are going out of their way to keep us in the dark.
But that’s nothing compared to threats to our personal safety, without which politics becomes a generalised backdrop, a screensaver on your personal computer, an irritation in the background while you’re trying to make an important connection or concoction on your cellphone. The politicians go about their business, jail terms for fraud, rape allegations and general skullduggery notwithstanding.
Schabir Shaik makes an anguished plea from his imprisoned hospital bed that: “Hey, I wasn’t in this thing alone. How come the Zulu guy gets to spend Christmas with his family and I get to eat porridge? Is it cos I’m Indian and he’s Zulu?” And then there’s Yengi and Yengi and Yengi. And on and on and on.
What a way to end the year. The endlessly unravelling mystery surrounding the celebrated Brett Kebble murder (or was it “an assisted suicide” or just an elaborate jape on his part to get back at his sleazy father for calling him “his other daughter”, which a number of interesting characters from the Italian offshore underworld, the African National Congress Youth League, the BEE fraternity in general, the police force and private security outfits, and interests reaching right to the top of the political heap, as it would seem, all appear to be in some agreement about, to a greater or lesser extent), is the cherry on the Christmas pudding some of us are slaving over in these last, dying days of the year.
What happened? Who is really going to talk? What deals have been made, Scorpions, Vusi Pikoli (there’s a sinisterly Sicilian name for you) or no?
Which heads will roll, who’s going to end up in prison and who’s going to slumber on in his plum office job till the unearned pension kicks in, and then go off to vegetate on the farm that has been gratefully supplied by one of those offshore Italian clients or the South African Communist Party, whichever local branch holds sway at a critical, given place and time?
A friend said to me over dinner the other night (and I use this column to remind him that, in fact, dinner never arrived) that there’s a new legend doing the rounds. It goes like this: in the old days, we used to be all “them-and-us” (“hulle en ons”) people. Whites (them) came and stole the land and the Hottentots (us) complained and were shot dead or thrown onto Robben Island, and so on. Hottentots and Bushmen then came and stole the white invaders’ sheep, cattle, candlesticks, and sometimes even their women (and vice versa) in return. No one could tell any more where the problem had actually begun.
Nowadays, since Mandela and Desmond Tutu’s legendary rainbow revolution came to drown us all, there is no longer any “them-and-us”. There is only us -“ons” as represented by the bizarre sight of FW de Klerk delivering a eulogy to Mahatma Gandhi on Robben Island, right now, at the end of the year 2006.
So the new litany goes: “Ons steel te veel van ons eie skape af.” Nowadays there are no more bad guys. We’re all stealing our own sheep.
At last. No more problem. Hallelujah. Father Christmas goes “Ho, ho, ho”. Heppy-heppy-nuwe jaar or whatever.
All material copyright Mail&Guardian.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?
articleid=294227&area=/columnist__john_matshikiza/#
New Internationalist:
Sudan's other crisis
Apathy and violence plague efforts to resettle millions
REFUGEES
The turmoil in the Darfur region of west Sudan has received too little international attention. Yet the plight of the southerners has been neglected even more in recent months. In early July 2006, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was celebrating a ‘modest landmark’: the repatriation of 10,000 Sudanese refugees from neighbouring countries over a seven-month period.
Given that there are 340,000 more Sudanese refugees to be taken home, this may not sound like such a significant achievement. But to the UNHCR and anybody else who knows the headaches the exercise has encountered since its launch at the end of 2005, the progress is satisfactory.
The refugees are being repatriated after the war in southern Sudan, which lasted more than two decades and ended with a peace agreement last year. The war pitted the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) – southern black Africans who are largely Christian – against the country’s Muslim rulers who kept the benefits of development concentrated in the north of the country. Wanting to impose sharia law on the rebelling southerners, the Government employed a scorched-earth policy that sent Sudan’s southern population streaming into neighbouring countries.
By April 2006, the UNHCR had secured only $8.6 million of its appeal for the $63.4 million that it believes is needed to repatriate and resettle southern refugees from the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Uganda. Lam Akol, Sudan’s foreign minister, says only a third of the funds donors pledged last year to enable the country’s post-war resettlement have been released.
This lack of commitment from the international community continues to hamper efforts to resettle both refugees living outside the country and the four million people that have been internally displaced by war. Uganda hosts 172,312 Sudanese refugees – the biggest concentration of Sudanese refugees among the countries offering asylum – but only 30,000 are registered for the journey back home. The target is to send home 5,000 of them this year.
Warrap State Governor Anei Kuei says: ‘Ours is a sea of problems. In my state alone, I have about 1.8 million people waiting to be reintegrated. How do I establish state machinery, provide a civilian livelihood for former soldiers, calm the volatile hostilities between some of our tribes? Where do I start?’
Those returning are facing uncertain futures. Some resettlement areas are still littered with landmines and unexploded ordnance. In addition, the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebels continue to reach into southern Sudan, killing civilians and looting property. Travelling in June with a UNHCR convoy for refugees from Uganda to Sudan, the mood was sombre. Here were people returning to their home after a decade or more with only a few bare necessities to enable them to start a new life. According to refugee James Kenyi, 34, whether or not his family will join him soon depends upon the reception he receives, the amenities in place like education and health institutions, and the opportunities to begin a new peaceful life. ‘We don’t know whether the people who are there will welcome us or not because everybody I knew fled from our village.’
Wairagala Wakabi
http://www.newint.org/columns/currents/2006/11/01/sudan/
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Ayer Darfur, hoy Somalia, mañana Eritrea
LA VIOLENCIA ENTRE ISLAMICOS Y SECULARES SE EXTIENDE EN AFRICA OCCIDENTAL
Las luchas de poder en el Cuerno de Africa se originan en conflictos locales, pero a su vez se retroalimentan a través de alianzas y alineamientos con las potencias mundiales. Desde hace una semana ha estallado la violencia en Somalia.
Por María Laura Carpineta
Jueves, 28 de Diciembre de 2006
La espiral de violencia se extiende por el continente africano. En la provincia sudanesa de Darfur hace tres años explotó una guerra entre fuerzas islámicas y tribus africanas. Hoy el enfrentamiento se repite en Somalia. Mañana puede ser Eritrea.
Para los países vecinos y para el mundo, el conflicto en Darfur se trataba sólo de una lucha de poder local. Sin embargo, los bandos fueron sumando aliados externos hasta involucrar a casi toda la región conocida como el Cuerno de Africa. Los gobiernos seculares de la región salieron en apoyo –aunque nunca lo oficializaron– de los rebeldes de Darfur. Ahora uno de estos gobiernos, el etíope, se lanzó en una cruzada militar para salvar al débil y casi inexistente gobierno de transición somalí del avance de los milicianos de las Cortes Islámicas. Este nuevo enfrentamiento entre fuerzas islámicas y movimientos cristianos o seculares fortaleció las alianzas tejidas alrededor del conflicto sudanés e, incluso, permitió sumar nuevos países a esta escalada de violencia que ya amenaza con desestabilizar a toda la región occidental de Africa.
El gobierno central de Sudán, dirigido por el presidente Omar Ahmad al Bashir, no tenía una buena relación con los gobiernos vecinos desde antes de que estallara el conflicto en Darfur. Los gobiernos seculares y pro occidentales de Chad, Etiopía, Uganda y Kenia mantuvieron siempre una relación distante, y en algunas ocasiones tensa, con el régimen islámico sunnita sudanés y sus alianzas con grupos como Hezbolá, Hamas, Al Qaida y gobiernos como el iraní y el sirio. Por eso, cuando las tribus de Darfur decidieron levantarse contra la represión y las imposiciones de Al Bashir encontraron en estos países sus principales aliados.
Según el gobierno sudanés, los rebeldes reciben constante ayuda financiera y militar desde el exterior. Tanto el presidente chadiano Idriss Déby como el primer ministro etíope, Meles Zenawi, han incluido al gobierno de Al Bashir dentro de la lista de enemigos a combatir en la globalizada guerra contra el terrorismo.
Para Etiopía, las Cortes Islámicas en Somalia también están en esa lista y, por eso, hace ya casi una semana sus aviones están bombardeando todo el sur del país. Pero la enemistad de estos dos países es mucho más antigua que la división del mundo que fomentan desde Washington. Al revés de lo que sucede ahora, a fines de la Guerra Fría, Somalia era el aliado de Washington, mientras Etiopía hacía de contrapeso soviético. Pero todo cambió con el golpe de Estado que derrocó al dictador Mohammed Siad Barré en 1991 y sumió al país en una guerra civil que todavía hoy continúa.
La anarquía y el avance de las fuerzas islámicas, sumadas al descubrimiento de vastas reservas de petróleo, le dieron una nueva importancia geopolítica a Etiopía, que llamó instantáneamente la atención de la Casa Blanca. Para 1993, los soldados etíopes ya peleaban hombro a hombro con los marines estadounidenses que habían desembarcado para imponer la paz en Somalia, un país estratégico por donde pasa casi el 15 por ciento del tráfico marítimo mundial. Pero las cosas no salieron como Washington esperaba. Trece marines murieron frente a las cámaras de televisión y el gobierno de Bill Clinton tuvo que retirar a sus hombres. Este episodio le dio fama mundial a la crisis somalí y marcó el cambio de estrategia estadounidense. A partir de ahí, Washington se dedicó a financiar y entrenar a los soldados etíopes para que sean ellos los que peleen la próxima vez.
Mientras la invasión etíope reforzó la alianza de los países seculares y pro occidentales del Cuerno de Africa, también provocará la inclusión de nuevos países africanos a esta inestabilidad regional. El más importante es Eritrea, el pequeño estado al norte de Somalia que goza de una estratégica salida al Mar Rojo. A pesar de no ser un gobierno islámico, Eritrea es el principal enemigo de Etiopía en la región. Desde la descolonización, este último ha intentado incorporarlo como una provincia. Sus esfuerzos, nada diplomáticos, provocaron dos guerras.
Esta rivalidad se tradujo en los últimos tiempos en el apoyo económico y militar a las Cortes Islámicas de Somalia, que también gozan de la ayuda encubierta de los gobiernos iraní y sirio.
La entrada de Eritrea podría sumar a este clima de tensión a sus socios comerciales en la región, Libia y Egipto, y en el mundo, Alemania y Francia. A ninguno de ellos le convendría que el puerto de Eritrea quedara inutilizado por una guerra o una agresión externa. Como tampoco estarán felices muchos países europeos y asiáticos si los combates se extienden a toda Somalia y afectan sus puertos.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-78331-2006-12-28.html
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Narcoejércitos
Por Horacio Verbitsky
Jueves, 28 de Diciembre de 2006
El gobierno de la provincia de Buenos Aires se propone conseguir hoy la sanción de una ley de agencias de seguridad privada que en el mejor de los casos permitirá la equiparación de los sistemas público y privado de seguridad y en el peor el establecimiento de verdaderos narcoejércitos. El sistema que se pretende aprobar a la disparada suprime restricciones al origen de los capitales y límites al número de efectivos y privilegia la sociedad anónima o la sociedad de responsabilidad limitada como forma societaria, lo cual oscurecerá la propiedad y disminuirá el control.
La autoridad de aplicación será un directorio de cuatro integrantes con diez años de estabilidad, es decir hasta dentro de dos o tres gobernadores. La difusión oficial presentó la ley como un mecanismo de control de patovicas, luego del asesinato de un adolescente en una discoteca de Lanús, y de habilitación de guardias vecinales desarmados. Sin embargo, suprime la exigencia actual de que los patovicas lleven uniforme y no porten armas.
Desde hace años se afirma la sospecha de que empresas de seguridad privada extranjeras, vinculadas con los servicios de informaciones de sus respectivos países, además de vender protección e inteligencia empresarial, realizan inteligencia política. El año pasado la estadounidense Kroll fue acusada de espiar a dos ministros del Brasil y en la Argentina el escribano Raúl Juan Pedro Moneta usó esos servicios para denigrar a quienes cuestionaban su estilo de hacer negocios. Así se abre la puerta también al modelo colombiano, brasileño o mexicano de los narcoejércitos.
El proyecto autoriza a las empresas de seguridad privada a fabricar su propio material, a instalar dispositivos electrónicos y transmitir señales, aunque formalmente siga prohibida la intercepción de comunicaciones. El gobierno sólo contaba el año pasado con quince personas para controlar a cerca de 800 agencias con 45 mil hombres. Aún así encontró irregularidades en el 94 por ciento de las que inspeccionó, con sofisticados armamentos y equipos de comunicación sin declarar.
Sumada a la reforma procesal penal que también podría tratarse hoy, esta ley constituiría el más grave retroceso en cuestiones de seguridad, justicia y derechos humanos desde la gestión del ex gobernador Carlos Rückauf y sus inolvidables ministros Jorge Casanovas, Aldo Rico y Ramón Orestes Verón. Esto hace injustificable el vertiginoso trámite que le imprimió el gobierno, con el propósito de evitar cualquier debate, sobre un tema que afectará la vida y la libertad de las personas.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-78338-2006-12-28.html
The Guardian (Nigeria):
'What? 10 of my friends died here?'
By Chuka Nnabuife, Regina Akpabio, Seye Olumide and Isaac Taiwo
TWENTY-Four hours after a massive blaze from a vandalised fuel pipeline claimed hundreds of lives in Lagos State, Adegboye Oyetunbi, is still in shock.
As he waded through the vast expanse of land that the Sawmill area of Segun Akinola Street, Abule Egba, in the state had become, the 24-year-old Oyetunbi could not but shake his head in sorrow.
To no one in particular, he inquired: "Where are they? I mean, my friends? They were all here yesterday morning. Where can they be?"
He named some of his friends presumed dead in the inferno simply as Owolabi, Alfa, Ojubinti, Godwin and Tobi. They were all mechanics and vulcanisers in one of the workshops that were razed in the fire.
Oyetunbi yesterday could not understand why he was still alive, knowing full well that had he not suffered a slight headache, he would have joined his friends to scoop the "Christmas bonus of death."
His friends had left him for the crater gushing out Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), when they sensed that his ill health could only slow them down at the operation.
When Oyetunbi finally regained full consciousness at about 9.00 a.m. and took his receptacle to head to the scene of free fuel, monumental damage had been done. A time distance of only about 18 minutes.
As he recalled the events of Tuesday morning to The Guardian yesterday, Oyetunbi did not even hear the commotion going on at the scene. Half-awake, his attention was drawn to the devastation ahead by someone he told was heading for the free fuel well.
"Thank God-o!" That was his way of showing gratitude for the miraculous escape from sudden death.
He said: "I live in the old Army Barracks, Abule Egba. I sell clothes at Katangwa Market in Ile-Epo. On Christmas morning, my friends told me there was a place we could get 'fuel' and we agreed to go later.
"We went for the party at about 10.00 p.m. We had a lot of drinks at the party.
"Already, we had our kegs ready to join them in the morning to scoop the petrol.
"When I woke up yesterday (Tuesday) morning, I was very weak because I had taken a lot of drinks at the party. So, I slept again.
"At about 9.00 a.m., I picked my kegs and headed for the site. I was on my way when somebody told me: 'Wo waju' meaning 'look ahead'".
That was how Oyetunbi escaped death.
He added that he knew at least 10 persons among the estimated 500 people who died in the fire incident.
For the owners of a plastic company, Saheed Afolabi, it was the jerry cans of hoarded fuel at his office premises that put him off, making him to escape death from the pipeline fire.
"I came to my office with a hired vehicle to resume work at about 7.00 a.m. What caught my eyes were jerry cans of fuel packed everywhere round my office premises. I could not see anywhere to enter the office since the entrance was blocked also. Besides, it was hard to breath since the atmosphere air was saturated with the smell of petrol", he said.
Seeing that he could not cope with such environment, Afolabi decided to suspend the work for that day and returned home.
"It was then that I decided to return home and suspend the work for that day", he stated.
He ended up saving not just his life, but those of his employees as well, as he told them to return home and forget about the day's job.
"As I was going home, I met my workers coming to resume the day's work. I told them of the situation and that they should not bother about working for that day. As I was talking to them, the explosion occurred," he added.
Afolabi said that he lost property worth N2 million to the pipeline inferno.
Another survivor, Mr. Olalekan Balogun, who had no trace of burnt on his body, was lucky to live and tell the story. He was saved by a stroke of luck.
He said: "I received a call at about 8.00 a.m. to come to the office quickly because of the fuel packed round my office premises. I left everything and rushed to the office. There were jerry cans of fuel packed at every available space".
Out of curiosity, Balogun did not bother going into his office but went out to see where the fuel was gushing out. No sooner had he approached the ditch than the explosion occurred.
"It was in my presence that the explosion occurred. I was in the midst of those scooping, very close to the hole where the fuel was gushing out. I ran for my dear life. Most of the people running together got burnt because their clothes were soaked with fuel. What saved me was that I was just coming from home and the fuel did not touch my body. About 50 people were already burnt and their body white, as they were running across the road, looking for sympathisers to take them to the nearest hospital", he recounted.
He appealed to the government to come to their aid as the fire had razed their sources of livelihood, saying: "If government does not come to help us, we may be forced to do negative things to get money to sustain ourselves."
For the family of Sheriff, it was an endless search for the 13-year old Abdulrazak who may have been burnt to ashes in the fire.
His sister, Miriam, who came to complain of his absence at home, said: "We sent him to go and grind beans and he did and returned home with it. We did not know that he later left home to join them in fetching the fuel. Since that day, the ground beans is still at home but we have not seen him".
However, among the 70 victims said to have escaped the pipeline fire explosion on Tuesday, 58 of them had been reported dead as at 3.30 p.m. yesterday from various hospitals they were admitted.
Fifty families have also lodged complaint about their missing relatives.
The Resource Development and Training Manager, Nigeria Red Cross Society of Nigeria, Mr. Ige Oladimeji, told The Guardian that reports reaching the organisation from various hospitals as at 3.30 p.m. yesterday indicated that 58 out of the 70 injured persons had died.
He also said that 269 bodies were removed from the scene of the incident and had been taken away for mass burial.
Said he: "Since yesterday morning, more than 50 families had lodged complaints of missing relatives. Several of them came from as far as Mushin, Sango, Iyana Ipaja, Agbado Ijaye and others.
"One of those scooping, Mutiu Shittu, who sustained minor injuries, came up yesterday morning and we were able to re-unite him with his family but shortly after, he ran away perhaps for the fear of being apprehended."
However, some private photographers who were able to get some pictures of the scene and human carcasses during the inferno turned the arena to a business centre as they sold each of the pictures to anxious Lagos residents for N70.
Most people who saw the pictures screamed at the gory sight.
A senior government official who visited the site yesterday bought a copy of a picture for N5,000 while he was leaving.
The community leader of Abule Egba, Alhaji Tajudeen Adeola, pleaded with the government to ensure that the sawmill and auto-technician shops along with other structures erected on the pipeline way were removed and the place fenced off.
An elderly woman lamented that her 25 year-old son, an automobile technician left home at 6.00 a.m. on Tuesday to scoop fuel.
"When my son was leaving, I shouted at him not to go but he refused. A few minutes later, he came back with a keg full of petrol and left for the scene again and that was the last I saw of him," she lamented.
Several relatives of the victims, who spoke on condition of anonymity, blamed government for the unfortunate incident.
They said the disaster would have been avoided if necessary steps had been taken.
Some relations of the victims refused to disclose the identities of their loved ones who died during the incident for security reasons, but confirmed that many of their people who left to scoop fuel could not be found since Tuesday.
2003 - 2006 @ Guardian Newspapers Limited (All Rights Reserved)
http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/news/article01
The Guardian (Nigeria):
UN worried over pipeline disasters in Nigeria
From Laolu Akande, New York
THERE is a growing international concern about the frequency of fuel pipeline explosions in Nigeria, which have led to the deaths of hundreds of citizens.
A statement on Tuesday from the outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan summarised the international mood on the matter.
The Ghanaian-born world technocrat, who ends his tenure at the UN this year, captured the international mood about the tragedy, especially the possibility of such frequent catastrophes spilling to other parts of West Africa.
He called for a review of Nigeria's fuel management supply "including a thorough regional review of risks that could lead to other environmental or technological disasters in West Africa."
A statement from the world body said that Annan was "deeply saddened at the deaths of hundreds of people as a result of the explosion of a fuel pipeline in Abule Egba district of Lagos, Nigeria. He extends his deepest condolences to the government, the bereaved families and to all others affected by this disaster."
But in an apparent diplomatic knock, the UN statement added: "The theft of fuel from Nigerian pipelines has become a frequent occurrence, often with tragic consequences."
Consequently, according to the statement, Annan called for a review of Nigeria's fuel supply management, "as well as a thorough regional review of risks that could lead to other environmental or technological disasters in West Africa."
The UN also offered to help Nigeria in such an endeavour and in disaster management. According to the statement: "The United Nations stands ready to assist in this endeavour, and to help in assessing current gaps in risk mapping and disaster response in the region."
All through Boxing Day, television stations across the globe reported the day's explosion at the Abule Egba area of Lagos State, with initial report putting the death toll at over 200.
The international media generally expressed concern about the Nigerian government's management of its petroleum resources, which appeared to be more of a source of tragedies than blessings.
The Associated Press (AP) in its reports said: "Pipeline tapping is a common practice in Nigeria, where a majority of the country's 130 million people live in poverty despite their country's role as Africa's leading crude producer."
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) recalled previous similar explosions in Nigeria, including one in May this year, as well as in December 2004, September 2004, June 2003, July 2000, March 2000, October 1998 and the Jesse incident of 1999 that killed over 1,000.
Commenting on the development, a U.S.-based Nigerian lawyer, Mr. Kayode Oladele, lamented that the "Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has no structure and capacity to ensure effective and efficient surveillance of the pipelines. It is even doubtful whether the NNPC has pipeline protection units or patrol teams nor any advanced technology for monitoring these pipelines."
He added that as long as the country has no enforcement agency to monitor the pipelines, it would remain "susceptible to explosions whether caused by vandalism or even careless activities such as construction or irrigation."
He urged the Federal Government to designate communities with pipelines as major accident hazard areas and adopt regulations for emergency plans in case of future disasters.
Oladele expressed fears that an end to pipeline fire disasters might not be in sight if the statistics of previous tragedies were a guide. He said: "It is a matter of when and where; but this can be prevented or at least, minimised with adequate protection and emergency plans."
2003 - 2006 @ Guardian Newspapers Limited (All Rights Reserved)
http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/news/article03
The Independent:
What freedom of information?
Ministers are accused of scuppering right-to-know legislation
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Published: 28 December 2006
Labour's flagship freedom of information laws are being blocked by ministers who are increasingly refusing to answer routine inquiries about government policy, new figures show.
Seven government departments, including the department in charge of monitoring the new powers, are identified in a Whitehall report as refusing to give answers to more than half of all requests made by the public.
The Foreign Office has the worst record by claiming exemptions for 70 per cent of all requests it has received. In total, of the 62,852 requests made to central government since 1 January 2005, 26,083 have not been granted. And of those questions the Government considers properly resolved many have not been answered to the questioner's satisfaction.
The report also shows that public requests for information have fallen to the lowest number since the laws were implemented.
The Department for Constitutional Affairs, which has responsibility for implementing the "right to know" laws, has the second worst record, by only providing full answers to 39 per cent of all requests.
Next month the Government is to go to court to try to prevent the public using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain even innocuous information about "the formulation" of policy after the Information Commissioner, the legislation's watchdog, ruled that ministers must reveal material that does not harm policy-making. Government lawyers are to appear before the Information Tribunal in an attempt to have the commissioner's decision overturned by arguing that all policy-related information must be withheld.
The legal challenge will be followed by the introduction of regulations designed to stop the media from making full use of the new powers. These regulations represent a direct attack on the spirit of the law, once heralded by Labour as the end of the culture of Whitehall secrecy. The media and other organisations will be restricted to a handful of requests a year, while the time taken by officials and ministers to consult and consider requests will now be counted when calculating whether people should be charged for any disclosure.
Figures released by the Department for Constitutional Affairs reveal requests to central government fell to a low of 7,641 between July and September, compared with 13,603 in the first three months after the law came into force. Freedom of information campaigners warn that this might be evidence that the public have become frustrated with their failure to get answers.
Overall, the success rate for requests across all departments has fallen by 2 per cent to 60 per cent in the past six months.
While Labour has been happy to release documents embarrassing the previous Tory administration over its handling of "Black Wednesday" - Britain's forced withdrawal from the ERM - ministers have been less willing to let the public use the Act to shed light on Labour's own political controversies.
For example, ministers are still refusing to release earlier drafts of the Attorney General's advice on the legality of the war with Iraq.
At the heart of its strategy is the Orwellian-sounding Central Clearing House where all sensitive or difficult requests are sent. Set up by ministers before the introduction of the laws, the unit employs 12 staff to monitor the public's use of the legislation.
Maurice Frankel, the director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, says the Government's approach "strikes at the very heart" of the legislation. Michael Smyth, the head of public policy at the law firm Clifford Chance, said that while he acknowledged the Freedom of Information Act had opened up government, the regulations, due to come into force in April, will "emasculate" the media. "The Government dined out on the mantra that the FoI Act was to be motive-blind ... but these bizarre proposals will turn FoI requests into something where motive will become relevant," Mr Smyth said.
Requests, officially denied
Can you please disclose the public cost of guarding Charles and Camilla?
The Royal Family is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. It would not be in the public interest to reveal information not covered by this exemption because of the potential threat to royal security.
Would you reveal the discussions relating to the Home Office's original decision to reclassify cannabis?
We believe that disclosure would lead to reluctance on the part of officials, ministers and others to provide frank advice in future.
Can we see the documents and briefing papers for Lord Levy's meetings with American diplomats over the Middle East crisis?
It is not in the public interest to disclose any of this material. Such a revelation would also harm international relations.
Please disclose the correspondence between the Food Standards Agency and Cadbury Schweppes in respect of the chocolate bar salmonella scare earlier this year.
Disclosure of some of the information held would prejudice any possible prosecution and may prejudice the commercial interest of Cadbury's.
Can we see the report into the links between MRSA rates and bed occupancy written by the Department of Health's chief economic adviser?
This would be detrimental to the future formulation of government policy.
How about Tony Blair's Christmas card list?
Many of the addressees are foreign dignitaries. This information would be harmful to international relations.
Could you send us all the written evidence given by police forces to the Government's 2004 public consultation on prostitution?
Disclosure might harm police efforts to prevent and detect crime.
Please disclose the minutes of Margaret Thatcher's last cabinet meeting.
It is important that ministers' discussions in cabinet are full and frank. To arrive at agreed policy positions and plans for actions, discussion needs to be free and uninhibited.
Can we have a look at the correspondence and documents relating to Alastair Campbell's decision to resign as director of communications?
This is personal information given in confidence.
OK then, can we see the correspondence and documents relating to Alan Milburn's resignation?
This is also personal information given in confidence.
Please disclose any Ministry of Defence research that has not already been published.
This request is too widely framed so that it would incur disproportionate costs.
What are the highest fees paid by the BBC and who earns them?
This is privileged and personal information.
You've already published the names of the guests who attended Chequers with Tony and Cherie Blair in 2004 so can we now see the guest list for last year?
We may want to publish this information at a later date so we can't give it to you now.
Can we see all the documents, memos and e-mails supporting the Attorney General's advice on the legality of the war in Iraq?
The Government finally published the written advice earlier this year after it was leaked to the media. But some of the other documents have been withheld on the grounds of professional legal privilege which protects disclosure of advice between the Attorney General and his client, in this case the Government.
Can we see Home Office reports on the impact of its plans for compulsory ID cards?
Disclosure would harm the formulation and development of government policy.
Would you tell us a little more about the sweater given to George Bush by Tony Blair?
This information is not in the public interest.
Please disclose all papers concerning the role of the British Government in the arrest and continued detention of the UK residents in Guantanamo Bay.
These documents are covered by privilege and would be exempt because of national security and harm to international relations.
Can we see the documents relating to the policy discussions for the future funding of Britain's schools?
Although this information may be innocuous it could inhibit the free and frank provision of advice and exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation.
Please give us information about the cases referred to the secretive unit, known as the 'clearing house', which fields tricky or potentially embarrassing questions made under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act?
Such information would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs.
Robert Verkaik
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article2108210.ece
The Nation:
View From the Future
by REBECCA SOLNIT
[posted online on December 21, 2006]
I've been writing the year-end other-news summary for TomDispatch since 2004; somewhere around 2017, however, the formula of digging up overlooked stories and grounds for hope grew weary. So for this year, we've decided instead to look back on the last twenty-five years of the twenty-first century -but it was creatures from 60 million years ago who reminded me how to do it.
The other day, I borrowed some kids to go gawk with me at the one thing that we can always count on in an ever-more unstable world: age-of-dinosaur dioramas in science museums. This one had the usual dramatic clash between a tyrannosaurus and a triceratops; pterodactyls soaring through the air, one with a small reptile in its toothy maw; and some oblivious grazing by what, when I was young in another millennium, we would have called a brontosaurus. Easy to overlook in all that drama was the shrewlike mammal perched on a reed or thick blade of grass, too small to serve even as an enticing pterodactyl snack. The next thing coming down the line always looks like that mammal at the beginning-that's what I told the kids-inconsequential, beside the point; the official point usually being the clash of the titans.
That's exactly why mainstream journalists spent the first decade of this century debating the meaning of the obvious binaries-the Democrats versus the Republicans, McWorld versus global jihad-much as political debate of the early 1770s might have focused on whether the French or English monarch would have supremacy in North America, not long before the former was to be beheaded and the latter evicted. The monarchs in all their splashy scale were the dinosaurs of their day, and the eighteenth-century mammal no one noticed at first was named "revolution"; the early twenty-first-century version might have been called "localism" or maybe "anarchism," or even "civil society regnant." In some strange way, it turned out that windmill-builders were more important than the US Senate. They were certainly better at preparing for the future, anyway.
That mammal clinging to the stalk had crawled up from the grassroots, where the choices were so much more basic and significant than, for instance, the one between fundamentalism and consumerism that was on everyone's lips in the years of the Younger George Bush. If the twentieth century was the age of dinosaurs-of General Motors and the Soviet Union, of McDonald's, globalized entertainment networks and information superhighways-the twenty-first has increasingly turned out to be the age of the small.
You can see it in the countless local-economy projects-wind-power stations, farmers' markets, local enviro organizations, food co-ops-that were already proliferating, hardly noticed, by the time the Saudi Oil Wars swept the whole Middle East, damaging major oilfields and bringing on the Great Gasoline Crisis of 2009. That was the one that didn't just send prices skyrocketing but actually becalmed the globe-roaming container ships with their great steel-box-loads of bottled water, sweatshop garments and other gratuitous commodities.
The resulting food crisis of the early years of the second decade of the century, which laid big-petroleum-style farming low, suddenly elevated the status of peasant immigrants from what was then called "the undeveloped world," particularly Mexico and Southeast Asia. They taught the less agriculturally skilled, in suddenly greening North American cities, to cultivate the victory gardens that mitigated the widespread famines then beginning to sweep the planet. (It also turned out that the unwieldy and decadent SUVs of the millennium made great ecological sense, but only if you parked them facing south, put in sunroofs and used the high-windowed structures as seed-starter greenhouses.) The crisis spelled an end to the epidemic of American obesity, both by cutting calories and obliging so many Americans to actually move around on foot and bike and work with their hands.
Bush, the Accidental Empire Slayer
For a brief period, in the early years of that second decade of this chaotic century, a whole school of conspiracy theorists gained popularity by suggesting that Bush the Younger was actually the puppet of a left-wing plot to dismantle the global "hyperpower" of that moment. They pointed to the Trotskyist origins of the "neoconservatives," whose mad dreams had so clearly sunk the American empire in Iraq and Afghanistan, as part of their proof. They claimed that Bush's advisers consciously plotted to devastate the most powerful military on the planet, near collapse even before it was torn apart by the unexpected Officer Defection Movement, which burst into existence in 2009, followed by the next year's anti-draft riots in New York and elsewhere.
The Bush Administration's mismanagement of the US economy, while debt piled up, so obviously spelled the end of the era of American prosperity and power that some explanation, no matter how absurd, was called for-and for a while embraced. The long view from our own moment makes it clearer that Bush was simply one of the last dinosaurs of that imperial era, doing a remarkably efficient job of dragging down what was already doomed. If you're like most historians of our quarter-century moment, then you're less interested in the obvious-why it all fell-than in discovering the earliest hints of the mammalian alternatives springing up so vigorously with so little attention in those years.
Without benefit of conspiracy, what Bush the Younger really prompted (however blindly) was the beginning of a decentralization policy in the North American states. During the eight years of his tenure, dissident locales started to develop what later would become full-fledged independent policies on everything from queer rights and the environment to foreign relations and the notorious USA Patriot Act. For example, as early as 2004, several states, led by California, began setting their own automobile emissions standards in an attempt to address the already evident effects of climate change so studiously ignored in Washington.
In June 2005, mayors from cities across the nation unanimously agreed to join the Kyoto Protocol limiting climate-changing emissions-a direct rejection of national policy-at a national meeting in Seattle. Librarians across the country publicly refused to comply with the USA Patriot Act, and small towns nationwide condemned the measure in the years before many of those towns also condemned what historians now call the US-Iraq Quagmire.
It was the bullying of the Bush Administration that pushed these small entities to fight back, to form local administrations and set local regulations-to leave the Republic behind as they joined the journey to a viable future. And when their withdrawal was finished, so was the Republic.
Now the thousands of tons of high-level radioactive waste that pro-nuclear-reactor Washington policies had brought into being are buried in the granitic bedrock underlying the former capital-known as the Nuclear Arlington in contrast with the Human Arlington to the south, which will receive the remains of a few more nostalgic officers from the Gulf Wars, then close for good. The whole history of armament, radioactive contamination, disarmament and alternative energy research is on display in the museum housed in the former Supreme Court Building, though many avoid the area for fear of radiation contamination.
In hindsight, we all see that the left-right divide so harped upon in that era was but another dinosaur binary. After all, small government had long been (at least theoretically) a conservative mantra, as was (at least theoretically) left-wing support for the most localized forms of "people power"-and yet neither group ever pictured government or people power truly getting small enough to exist as it does today, at its most gigantic in bioregional groups about the size of the former states of Oregon or Georgia-but, of course, deeply enmeshed in complex global webs of alliances. All this was unimagined in, for instance, the dismal year of 2006.
By the time the Republican Party itself split in 2012 into two adversarial wings dubbed the Fundament party and the Conservatives, the American Empire was dismantling itself. Of course, the United States still nominally exists-we'll pay a bow to it this year at the Decolonization Day fireworks on July 4-but it is a largely symbolic entity, like the British Royal Family was for a century before its dissolution in 2020.
A similar death-of-the-dinosaurs moment was at work in the mainstream media-the big newspapers and television networks of that era. During the early years of the century, as Bush the Younger dragged the country deeper into the mire of unwinnable wars and countless lies, most of the big newspapers and television news programs lost their nerve, their edge or even their eyesight, and failed dismally to report the stories that mattered. Some fell to scandal-the New York Times was never the same after the Judith Miller crisis of 2005. Some were sabotaged from without, like the Los Angeles Times, undercut by its parent corporation's "cost-cutting" programs. Some withered away as younger readers fled paper pages for the Internet. But behind them, below them, in their shadow, regarded as puny and insignificant back then-even though their scoops kept upstaging and prodding the print media-were bloggers, alternative media such as small magazines and websites, the glorious Indymedia movement, progressive radio, even the text-messaging that had helped organize the first great Latino march of the immigrant rights movement at its beginnings in April 2006.
The Latin American Renaissance
The Latino-ization of the United States had brought some long missing civic engagement and pleasure back into public life and tied the country (and Canada) to the splendid insurgencies of the Southern Hemisphere. The era of postcommunist revolution that would explode from Tierra del Fuego to Tijuana in the second decade of the century is usually traced back to the entrance of Mexico's indigenous Zapatistas onto the world stage on January 1, 1994.
One bold reflection of a changing continent in those years was the election of progressive leaders-including leftist Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Michele Bachelet in Chile, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Evo Morales of Bolivia, all by 2006-even eventually Alicia Ponce de Leon in Colombia in 2014, three years after US war funding dried up (along with the America that paid for it). Chávez (president from 1998 to 2013) termed this the Bolivarian Revolution.
As a group, they were not bad as national leaders then went, but one great blow against nationalism proved to be the British seizure of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998 for crimes against humanity and his in-absentia trial in Spain, a saga that dragged on until the blood-drenched dictator's heart failed at the end of 2006. The new world is both more transnational and more local than the one it eclipsed, and nobody will ever be beyond the reach of justice again. (Africans, for example, recovered from Swiss and offshore bank accounts the hundreds of billions of dollars stolen by their former dictators, which gave a huge boost to the fight against AIDS and desertification.)
Whatever the names of their leaders, the real force in Latin America- and increasingly elsewhere-would be in the grassroots activism that the Zapatistas heralded, which, in the view from 2026, clearly signaled the fading relevancy of nation-states. Latin indigenous movements, labor movements, neighborhood groups, worker takeovers in Argentina's factories from 2001 onward and the Argentine ideology of horizontalidad (or horizontalism) that went with it were just early signs of this development.
Like the regionalist policy-making entities of the United States, these movements undermined even progressive presidents to set more radical policies and grew to include many indigenous autonomous zones across the hemisphere. For example, in late 2006, the 8,000-member Achuar tribe (whose region spans what was once the Peru-Ecuador border) took hostage and defeated Peru's main oil and gas-extraction corporation in a mode of victorious resistance that would become increasingly common. In Mexico, the stolen presidential election of 2006 that resulted in the inauguration of PAN Party candidate Felix Calderón was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. In the years to follow, the Second Mexican Revolution spread from Chiapas, Oaxaca and Mexico City, slowly dissolving that nation into a network of populist regional strongholds. Seventeen of them reinstated a local indigenous language as their official tongue.
Global Justice and the Drowned Lands
The Latin American Renaissance also created a network of communities strong enough to take in some of the climate-change refugees from Central America and Southern Mexico, who fled both north and south, along with Sunbelt-and what came to be called Swampbelt-émigrés from the southern United States. The great population transitions thus went more smoothly in the Western Hemisphere than across the Atlantic, where Europeans engaged in escalating anti-Muslim confrontations before realizing that only immigration could prop up the economies of nations whose native-born white-Christian populations were rapidly aging and, thanks to ultra-low birthrates, declining.
The end of those bloody squabbles is generally considered to have been marked by the election in 2020 of Chancellor Amira Goldblatt al-Hamid by what was then only a loosely federated association of German-speaking bioregional principalities. Similar crises-and, in some cases, cross-community, cross-religion bloodlettings-took place elsewhere, especially as populations moved away from increasingly desertifying, ever hotter hot zones in Africa and Southern Asia. Some historians have regarded the devastating global bird-flu pandemic of 2013 as fortunate in relieving climate-change population-shift pressures; others-including the noted historian Martha Moctezuma from the University of San Diego-Tijuana's Davis Center on Public Luxury-discard that perspective as callous.
Every schoolchild now knows the Old Map/New Map system and can recite the lands that vanished: half the Netherlands, much of Bangladesh, the Amazon Delta, the New Orleans and Shanghai lowlands. And who today can't still sing the popular ditties about those famed "fundamentalists without their fundamentals"-the senators who lost the state of Florida as it rapidly became a swampy archipelago. Most schoolchildren can also cite the World Court decision of 2016 that gave all shares in the major oil companies to Pacific Islanders, mainly resettled in New Zealand and Australia, whose homes had been lost to rising oceans (a short-lived triumph as the fossil-fuel economy ebbed away).
More creative responses to climate change included the tree-traveler and polar-bear collectives. These eco-anarchist clans-now popular contemporary heroes-first nursed plant populations on their unnatural journeys north by means of extensive rainy-season nursery cultivation and summer planting programs that have since become huge outdoor festivals. Today, many city parks and town squares have statues of Cleo Dorothy Chan, who organized the first small tree-traveler collective in southern Oregon and is now hailed globally as the twenty-first century's Johnny Appleseed. ("You can't choose between grief and exhilaration; they are the left and right foot on which we hike onward," said the T-shirts of the tree-travelers.) As for the polar-bear folks, they were initially a group of zoologists and circus trainers who, inspired by the tree-travelers, mobilized to teach young polar bears to adapt to changed habitat. They are often credited with saving that one charismatic species in the wild, even as thousands of less emblematic ones vanished.
The Principles of Change
A mature oak tree always looks significant, and when we look at it, we're willing to respect acorns, but the rest of the time the seeds of the next big thing are just trodden upon and overlooked. The ideas that made our era and pulled us back from the brink, the stakes that went through the hearts of the dinosaurs and the more incremental forces that rendered them extinct were all at work in the 1990s. They just didn't look very impressive yet, and people were intimidated by the heft of those dinosaurs and swayed by their arguments.
The World Court and related human rights, environmental rights and criminal courts became more powerful presences as the sun set on the era of the nation-state. Multiple changes often combined into scenarios impossible to foresee: for example, the belated US recognition in 2011 that the International Criminal Court did indeed have war-crimes jurisdiction over Americans coincided with the worldwide anti-incarceration movement. This explains why, for example, former President Bush the Younger, extradited from Paraguay and found guilty in 2013, was never imprisoned but sentenced to spend the rest of his life working in a Fallujah diaper laundry. (People who are still bitter about his reign are bitter too that the webcam there suggests, even at his advanced age, he still enjoys this work that accords so well with his skill set.) His assets-along with those of his Vice President, and of Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon and other war profiteers-were famously awarded to the Vietnamese Buddhist Commission for the Iraqi Transition. After almost a decade of the bitterest bloodshed, Iraq, too, had broken into five nations, but by this time so many nation-states were being reorganized into more coherent units that the Iraqi transition, led by the Women's Alliance of Islamic Feminists (nicknamed the Islamofeminists), was surprisingly peaceful when it finally came.
"As I've said many times, the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed," said the sci-fi novelist William Gibson in 1999. In retrospect, the arrival of the Age of Mammals should have been easy to foresee. On every front-family structure and marriage, transportation, energy and food economies, localized power structures-everyday life was being reinvented in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. From India to Indiana an interlocking set of new ideas began to emerge and coalesce, becoming in the end the new common sense that new generations of thinkers and activists were guided by. Who now thinks it's radical to advocate that decentralization is better than consolidated power, that capitalism's worldview is vicious and dishonest, that the public matters as much or more than the private, that enforced homogeneity is not a virtue either on a farm or in a society?
The basic tools were already in place long before our era; here and there, a few at a time, people picked them up and started building a better future. Some new inventions mattered, such as the superefficient German and Japanese solar collectors and methane generators that revolutionized energy production, but much of the march toward a more environmentally sane future didn't require fancy scientific breakthroughs and technologies, just modesty. We scaled back on consumption and production. For example, the collapse of the US military put an end to the world's single most polluting entity, while the near-end of recreational air travel also made a significant contribution to rolling back greenhouse-gas production.
The law of unintended consequences continued to prevail: When touristic air travel withered, so did Hawaii's tourist economy-making the retaking of the islands by indigenous Hawaiians via the King Kamehameha Council a piece of cake. Of course, sailing ships still travel the triangular trade-winds route between Latin America, Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest.
Everything was changing then, is changing now, and some years back the Principles of Change were codified. These simply recited the history of popular and nonviolent resistance from slave uprisings (Hochschild '05) and Gandhian tactics (Schell '03) to the principles of direct action (D. Solnit '09) and social change (see Marina Sitrin horizontalism, '06) and drew the obvious conclusions about how change works, what powers civil society has, how war can be sabotaged from below and why violence ultimately fails.
Believers in authoritarian power had prophesied a globalized world of corporate nation-states (and indeed, the 2012 Olympics featured teams identified by branding rather than nation, such as the Dasani and Nokia track teams and the Ikea Decathaletes); but even as the polar bears survived, a different kind of change in the global climate doomed most of the large corporations. The outlawing of corporate personhood was launched in Porter Township, Pennsylvania, in December 2002 and gradually became the law of the land. By 2015, the "human rights" US courts had given to corporations in the 1880s had been globally stripped away from them again.
Of course, there were revolts against the new world-just as the Republican dinosaurs led a long rearguard movement against women's rights, queer rights, the rights of the environment and science education, so there were corporations that resisted the new order, most spectacularly when Arkansas was taken over wholesale by Wal-Mart for seventeen months in the early teens. The heavily armed Arkansans rose up, Wal-Mart's private army changed sides and what was once the world's biggest corporation joined the dung-heap of history along-most famously-with Monsanto, derailed by the Schmeiser verdict, the precedent-setting World Court decision to award all assets in the genetic-engineering corporation to small farmers previously terrorized for not paying royalties on crops contaminated by Monsanto's genetically altered strains.
Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who had been appointed ambassador to the United States from the Republic of Wal-Mart, was sentenced to three years as a sweeper at an Arkansas farmers' market and became locally beloved in the role. In the American Middle East (known as the Midwest until modern geographers pointed out that the West starts at the Continental Divide), sectarian feuding, which kept the region in a state of subdued civil war for almost a decade, still flares up occasionally.
Periodic sorties by the Fundaments against new programs and lifestyles are considered part of normal life, though Kansas's John Brown Society provides a degree of protection against them. The Republic of Northern Idaho was another outpost of different-sex-only marriage laws and creationism, but the need to work with downriver communities on salmon restoration and dam removal eventually dissolved the breakaway half-state into the Columbia River Drainage federation. Other historians claim that the tattooed love freaks of the Seattle region, who found common ground with the ex-truckers and elk-hunters of Idaho, dissolved the Idahoan Republic via bicycle races and beer fests. Some also say the same-sex desires of elk hunters were legendary and led to negotiations for a direct rail link to San Francisco and Los Angeles.
In 1996, the Pentagon prepared imaginary scenarios describing five potential futures by 2025. Most of them were based on the belief that a better world was one dominated by American military power-which is to say, by the threat of state violence. That they came up with five possible futures demonstrated, at least, how wide open the next two decades seemed, even to a Tyrannosaurus-Rex bureaucracy that thought it was soon to own the planet. Some of their technological, corporate and militaristic futures could have come to pass.
Had people not come to believe strongly enough in their own power, in a horizontalist society and in a planetwide ability to work with the environmental changes the Industrial Age had loosed on us, we might be living in a very different, unimaginably catastrophic world-one in which the mammals would never have proliferated. They might even have breathed their last without ever emerging from under the fern fronds and out of the grasses. The future, of course, is not something you predict and wait for. It is something you invent daily through your actions. As Mas Kodani, a Buddhist in Los Angeles, said in the early twenty-first century: "One does not stand still looking for a path. One walks; and as one walks, a path comes into being."
We make it up as we go, and we make it up by going, or as the Zapatistas more elegantly put it, "Walking we ask questions." What else can you do? Perhaps respect the power of the small and the mystery of the future to which we all belong.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070108/solnit
posted by attilav at 23:05
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