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By James Petras

29 April, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Two major terrorists’ attacks took place almost simultaneously: in Boston, two alleged Chechen terrorists set off bombs during the annual Boston Marathon killing three people and injuring 170; in Venezuela, terrorist-supporters of defeated presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles, assassinated 8 and injured 70 supporters of victorious Socialist Party candidate Nicolas Maduro, in the course of firebombing 8 health clinics and several Party offices and homes. In the case of Boston, the terrorist spree resulted in one further fatality – one of the perpetrators; in Venezuela, some of the terrorists are under arrest but their political mentors are still free and active – in fact they are now presented as ‘victims of repression’ by the US media.

By examining the context, politics, government responses and mass media treatment of these terrorist acts we can gain insight into the larger meaning of terrorism and how it reflects, not merely the hypocrisy of the US government and mass media, but the underlying politics that encourages terrorism.

Context of Terrorism: From Chechnya to Boston : A Dangerous Game

Chechnya has been an armed battleground for over two decades pitting the secular Russian State against local Muslim fundamentalist separatists. Washington , fresh from arming and financing Muslim jihadis in a successful war against the secular Soviet-backed Afghan regime in the 1980’s, expanded its aid program into Central Asian and Caucasian Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union .

Russian military might ultimately defeated the Chechen warlords but many of their armed followers fled to other countries, joining armed, extremist, Islamist groups in Iraq , Pakistan , Afghanistan and later Egypt , Libya and now Syria . While accepting Western, especially US arms, to fight secular adversaries of the US Empire, the jihadis’ ultimate goal has been a clerical (Islamic) regime. Washington and the Europeans have played a dangerous game: using Muslim fundamentalists as shock troops to defeat secular nationalists, while planning to dump them in favor of neo-liberal ‘moderate’ Muslim or secular client regimes afterwards.

This cynical policy has backfired everywhere – including in the US . Fundamentalists in Afghanistan took state power after the Soviets pulled out. They opposed the US , which invaded Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and have successfully engaged in a 12 year war of attrition with Washington and NATO, spawning powerful allies in Pakistan and elsewhere. Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan serve as training bases and a ‘beacon’ for terrorists the world over.

The US invasion of Iraq and overthrow of President Saddam Hussein led to ten years of Al Qaeda and related-clerical terrorism in Iraq , wiping out the entire secular society. In the case of Libya and Syria , NATO and Gulf State arms have greatly expanded the arsenals of terrorist fundamentalists in North and Sub-Sahara Africa and the Middle East . Western-sponsored fundamentalist terrorists were directly related to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington and there is little doubt that the recent actions of the Chechen bombers in Boston are products of this latest upsurge of NATO-backed fundamentalist advances in North Africa and the Middle East.

But against all the evidence to the contrary, Chechen terrorists are viewed by the White House as “freedom fighters” engaged in liberating their country from the secular Russians … Perhaps after the Boston terror attack, that appraisal will change.

Venezuela : Presenting Terrorism as “Peaceful Dissent”

The candidate of the US backed and financed opposition, Henrique Capriles, has lived up to his reputation for violent politics. In the run-up to his failed candidacy in the Venezuelan presidential election on April 15, his followers sabotaged power lines causing frequent national blackouts. His supporters among the elite hoarded basic consumer items, causing shortages, and repeatedly threatened violence if the election went against them.

With over 100 international observers from the United Nations, European Commission and the Jimmy Carter Center there to certify the Venezuelan elections, Capriles and his inner circle unleashed their street gangs, who proceeded to target Socialist voters, campaign workers, health clinics, newly-built low-income housing projects and Cuban doctors and nurses.

The “white terror” resulted in 8 deaths and 70 injuries. Over 135 right-wing street thugs were arrested and 90 were charged with felonies, conspiracy to commit murder and destroy public property. Capriles, violent political credentials go back at least a decade earlier when he played a major role in the bloody coup which briefly overthrew President Hugo Chavez in 2002. Capriles led a gang of armed thugs and assaulted the Cuban embassy, ‘arresting’ legitimate Cabinet ministers who had taken refuge. After a combined military and popular mass movement restored President Chavez, Capriles was placed under arrest for violence and treason. The courageous Venezuelan Attorney General, Danilo Anderson, was in the process of prosecuting Capriles and several hundred of his terrorist supporters when he was assassinated by a car bomb – planted by supporters of the failed coup.

Though Capriles electoral propaganda was given a face-lift – he even called himself a candidate of the “center-left” and a supporter of several of President Chavez’s “social missions”, his close ties with terrorist operatives were revealed by his call for violent action as soon as his electoral defeat was announced. His thinly veiled threat to organize a “mass march” and seize the headquarters of the electoral offices was only called off when the government ordered the National Guard and the Armed Forces on high alert. Clearly Capriles’ terror tactics were only pulled back in the face of greater force. When the legal order decided to defend democracy and not yield to terrorist blackmail, Capriles temporarily suspended violent activity and regrouped his forces, allowing the legal-electoral face of his movement to come to the fore.

Responses to Terror: Boston and Venezuela

In response to the terrorist incident in Boston, the local, state and federal police were mobilized and literally shut down the entire city and its transport networks and went on a comprehensive and massive ‘manhunt’: the mass media and the entire population were transformed into tools of a police state investigation. Entire blocks and neighborhoods were scoured as thousands of heavily armed police and security forces went house to house, room to room, dumpster to dumpster looking for a wounded 19 year old college freshman. A terror alert was raised for the entire country ad overseas police networks and intelligence agencies were involved in the search for the terrorist assassins. The media and the government constantly showed photos of the victims, emphasizing their horrific injuries and the gross criminality of the act: it was unthinkable to discuss any political dimensions to the act – it was presented, pure and simple, as an act of political terror directed at ‘cowering the American people and their elected government’. Every government official demanded that anyone, even remotely linked, to the crime or criminals face the full force of the law.

On the other hand and coinciding with the attack in Boston, when the Venezuelan oppositionist terrorists launched their violent assault on the citizens and public institutions they were given unconditional support by the Obama regime, which claimed the killers were really ‘democrats seeking to uphold free elections’. Secretary of State Kerry refused to recognize the electoral victory of President Maduro. Despite the carnage, the Venezuelan government did not declare martial law: at most the National Guard and loyalist police upheld the law and arrested several dozen protestors and terrorists; many of the former – not directly linked to violence – were quickly released. Moreover, despite the internationally certified elections by over 100 observers, the Maduro government conceded the chief demand for an electoral recount – in the hope of averting further right-wing bloodshed.

US Media Response

All the major Western news agencies, including the principle ‘respectable’ print media (Financial Times, New York Times and Washington Post) converted the Venezuelan political assassins into ‘peaceful protestors’ who were victimized for attempting to register their dissent. In other words, Washington and the entire media came out in full force in favor of political terror perpetrated against an adversarial democratic government, while invoking a near-martial law state for a brutal, but limited, act of terror in the US . Washington apparently does not make the connection between its support of terrorism abroad and its spread to the US .

The US media has blocked out discussion of the ties between Chechen terrorist front groups, based in the US and UK, and leading US neoconservatives and Zionists, including Rudolph Giuliani, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adleman, Elliott Abrams, Midge Dector, Frank Gaffney and R. James Woolsey – all leading members of the self-styled ‘American Committee for Peace in Chechnya’ (re-named Committee for Peace in the Caucasus after the horrific Beslan school massacre). These Washington luminaries are all full-throated supporters of the ‘war on terror’ or should we say supporters of ‘terror and war’ (“Chechen Terrorists and the Neocons” by former FBI official Coleen Rowley 4/19/13). The headquarters and nerve center for many ‘exile’ Chechen leaders, long sought by Russian authorities for mass terrorist activities, is Boston, Massachusetts – the site of the bombing – another ‘fact’ thus far ignored by the FBI and the Justice Department, perhaps because of long-standing and on-going working relations in organizing terrorist incidents aimed at destabilizing Russia.

Former Presidential candidate and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, after the bombing, stated that Chechens ‘were only focused (sic) on Russia ’ and not on the US (his Chechens perhaps). Interpol and US intelligence Agencies are well aware that Chechen militants have been involved in several Al Qaeda terrorist groups throughout South and Central Asia as well as the Middle East . The Russian government’s specific inquiries regarding any number of suspected Chechen terrorists or fronts have been given short shrift – apparently including the activities of one Tamerlan Tsarnaev, recently deceased.

(As a historical aside (and perhaps not unrelated), the Boston-based FBI was notorious from the 1970’s through the 1990’s for protecting a brutal gangster hit man, James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, as a privileged informant, while he murdered dozens of individuals in the New England area.)

The Deeper Meaning of the War on Terrorism

US support for Venezuelan terrorists and their political leader, Henrique Capriles, is part of a complex multi-track policy combining the exploitation of electoral processes and the clandestine funding of NGO’s for “grass roots” agitation of local grievances, together with support for ‘direct action’ including ‘trial runs’ of political violence against the symbols and institutions of social democracy. The versatile Capriles is the perfect candidate to run in elections while orchestrating terror. Past US experience with political terror in Latin America has had a boomerang effect – as evident in the Miami-based Cuban terrorist engagement with numerous bombings, gun-running and drug trafficking within the USA, especially the 1976 car bombing assassination of the exile Chilean Minister Orlando Letelier and an American associate on Embassy Row in the heart of Washington, DC – an action never characterized as ‘terrorism’ because of official US ties to the perpetrators.

Despite financial, political and military links between Washington and terrorists, especially fundamentalists, the latter retain their organizational autonomy and follow their own political-cultural agenda, which in most cases is hostile to the US . As far as the Chechens, the Afghans and the Al Qaeda Syrians today are concerned, the US is a tactical ally to be discarded on the road to establishing independent fundamentalist states. We should add the scores of Boston victims to the thousands of US citizens killed in New York , Washington , Libya , Afghanistan and elsewhere by former fundamentalist allies of the US .

By siding with terrorists and their political spokespeople and refusing to recognize the validity of the elections in Venezuela , the Obama regime has totally alienated itself from all of South America and the Caribbean . By supporting violent assaults against democratic institutions in Venezuela, the White House is signaling to its clients in opposition to the governments of Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador – that violent assaults against independent democratic governments is an acceptable road to restoring the neo-liberal order and US centered ‘regional integration’.

Conclusion

Washington has demonstrated no consistent opposition to terrorism – it depends on the political goals of the terrorists and on the target adversaries. In one of the two recent cases – the US government declared virtual “martial law” on Boston to kill or capture two terrorists who had attacked US citizens in a single locale; whereas in the case of Venezuela , the Obama regime has given political and material support to terrorists in order to subvert the entire constitutional order and electoral regime.

Because of the long-standing and deep ties between the US State Department, prominent neo-con leaders and Zionist notables with Chechen terrorists, we cannot expect a thorough investigation which would surely embarrass or threaten the careers of the major US officials who have long-term working relations with such criminals.

The White House will escalate and widen its support for the same Venezuelan terrorists who have sabotaged the electrical power system, the food supply and the constitutional electoral process of that country. Terror, in that context, serves as its launch pad for a full scale assault against the past decade’s social advances under the late President Hugo Chavez.

Meanwhile, in order to cover-up the Chechen-Washington working alliance, the Boston Marathon bombing will be reduced to an isolated act by two misguided youths, lead astray by an anonymous fundamentalist website – their actions reduced to ‘religious fundamentalism’. And despite an economy in crisis, tens of billions of more dollars will be allocated to expand the police state at home, citing its effectiveness and efficiency in the aftermath of the bombings while secretly sending more millions to foment ‘democratic’ terror…in Venezuela .

James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet. His publishers have included Random House, John Wiley, Westview, Routledge, Macmillan, Verso, Zed Books and Pluto Books. He is winner of the Career of Distinguished Service Award from the American Sociological Association’s Marxist Sociology Section, the Robert Kenny Award for Best Book, 2002, and the Best Dissertation, Western Political Science Association in 1968. His most recent titles include Unmasking Globalization: Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century (2001); co-author The Dynamics of Social Change in Latin America (2000), System in Crisis (2003), co-author Social Movements and State Power (2003), co-author Empire With Imperialism (2005), co-author)Multinationals on Trial (2006).

By Franklin Lamb

28 April, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Beirut: “This is one damn fine idea, what took us so long to see a simple solution that was right in front of our eyes for Christ’s sake”, Senator John McCain of “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” and “no-fly zones for Syria” notoriety, reportedly demanded to know from Dennis Ross during a recent Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) brain storming session in Washington DC.

Ross, a founder of WINEP with Israeli government start up cash (presumably reimbursed unknowingly, one way or another by American taxpayers) and currently WINEPs “Counselor”, as in “consigliere” reportedly responded to the idea of facilitating Al Qeada to wage jihad against Hezbollah with the comment: “Shiites aren’t the only ones seeking death to demonstrate their ‘resistance’ to whatever. Plenty of other Muslims also want to die as we saw last week in Boston. Let ‘em all go at it and Israel can sweep out their s— when it’s over.”

One Congressional staffer attending the WINEP event emailed to Beirut: “Dennis spoke in jest—well I assumed he did- but who knows anymore? Things are getting ever crazier inside some of these pro-Israel ‘think tanks’ around here.”

Featured on the front page of its 4/25/13 edition, the Zionist compliant New York Times writes that the Assad regime is apparently recovering but, “it must be understood that for all of the justified worries about the (al Qaeda affiliated) rebels “Assad remains an ally of Iran and Hezbollah.”

The Times adopts the views of Islamophobe, Daniel Pipes, who recommends that the US try to keep the two sides in Syria fighting as long as possible until they destroy each other. Pipes, now serving as an advisor to John McClain, wrote in the Washington Times of 4/11/13 “ Evil forces pose less danger to us when they make war on each other. This keeps them focused locally, and it prevents either one from emerging victorious and thereby posing a greater danger. Western powers should guide enemies to a stalemate by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their debilitating conflict.”

Both Jeffrey Feltman, U.N. Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs and Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N, have at a minimum impliedly joined in the intriguing idea of sic’ing Jabhat al Nusra on the Party of God. This scheme, if launched, would be Feltman’s 14th attempt to topple Hezbollah and defeat the Lebanese National Resistance to the occupation of Palestine since he first arrived in Beirut from Tel Aviv in 2005 to become US Ambassador to Lebanon. This observer, among others in this region sense that given the aura still enveloping the American Embassy here, that Jeffrey never really left his Lebanese ambassadorial post and continues to occupy this position from his new UN office.

This week Feltman warned that the spillover of Syria’s war continues to be felt in Lebanon as Susan Rice, echoed him and condemned Hezbollah for “undermining the country’s “dissociation policy.” The latter being a bit obscure in meaning but connoting something like sitting around doing nothing while this country is being shelled by jihadists from among the 23 countries currently fighting in Syria. Feltman informed the media on 4/22/13 that “The Secretary-General is concerned by reports that Lebanese are fighting in Syria both on the side of the regime and on the side of the opposition, hopes that the new government will find ways to promote better compliance by all sides in Lebanon with the “disassociation policy.”

Given current divisions in Lebanon that will not happen anymore than Lebanon’s June 9th Parliamentary elections will be held on time.

For her part, Susan lectured the UN Security Council that “Hezbollah actively enables Assad to wage war on the Syrian people by providing money, weapons, and expertise to the regime in close coordination with Iran.” This position was expressed also through a statement by US. State Department spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, who said that Washington “has always been clear concerning Hezbollah’s shameful role and the support it is providing for the Syrian regime and the violence it is inducing in Syria.” Ventrell added: “We were clear from the start concerning the destructive role played by Iran as well as the Iranian role.”

Several Israeli agents in Congress are today promoting a Jabhat el Nusra-Hezbollah war even as the Obama administration terror-lists the jihadist group. Meanwhile, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), McCain’s neocon Islamaphobe acolyte, goes a bit further and explains to Fox News, once Assad falls and Hezbollah is out of the picture “We can deal with these (jihadist) fellas.”

Recent history in Libya instructs otherwise. As Turkish commentator Cihan Celik recently noted: “A divorce with al-Nusra will not be easy in Syria.”

The past two years in Libya, that shadow of a country, reveals countless examples, three witnessed firsthand by this observer, during the long hot summer of 2011. What we saw was Gulf sponsors and funders offering young men, often unemployed, $ 100 per month, free cigarettes, and a Kalashnikov to do jihad. Plenty down and out lads still accept these offers in Libya, as they do in Syria. One reason why the militias proliferated so quickly in Libya and never melted away was the phenomenon of a wannabe jihadists deciding to be a leader and recruiting perhaps a brother or two, maybe a few cousins or tribe members, and presto, they have created a militia with power they never dreamed of. Their new life can offer many perceived benefits from running rough shod over the civilian populations and setting up myriad mini but potent criminal enterprises specializing in kidnappings, robberies, drugs, trafficking in women, and assassinations for cash. How many of these young men have turned in their weapons in Libya and returned to their former lives? Or will do so when instructed by the likes of McCain or Graham?

On 4/24/13 Jabhat Al-Nusra Front intensified its threats to officials here including the Lebanese president by releasing a challenge from its media office: “…we inform you – and you may think of that as a warning or an ultimatum – that you must take immediate measures to restrain Hezbollah, otherwise, the fire will reach Beirut. If you do not abide by this within 24 hours, we will consider that you are taking part in the massacres committed by the Hezbollah members and we will unfortunately have to burn everything in Beirut.” In addition they are calling for Jihad and the establishment of the “Resistance Factions for Jihad against the Regime in Syria” and also in Saida and Tripoli, Lebanon.

Israeli officials appear to be in agreement with the Ross/Pipes proposal to arrange for Al Qeada to launch a war against Hezbollah. The Director for External Affairs at “The Mosche Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, repeatedly claimed that the Shia are the real threat to Israel, not the Sunni and with the least threat coming from the Gulf monarchs. He offered the view recently that “Israel is now a partner of the Sunni Arab states.” Indeed, Israel hopes that Hezbollah will forget Israel when tasked with trying repel Al Nusra and other al Qaeda affiliate attacks.

According to various Israel officials who have issued statements on the subject, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan and several other members of the Arab League constitute an “alliance of anxiety for Israel” because they claim that “Sunni Arabs are not as competent as the Shia and Iran and as a result they express doubts that Israel can rely on the Sunni states in the same way that the Sunni states can reply on Israel.”

In a documentary about the Iraq war, an American soldier explains: “Actually, we don’t really have much of a problem with the Sunnis. It’s the Shias who we are afraid of. The problem has something to do with their leader who was killed centuries ago and these fellas are willing to lay their life down for the guy. Anyhow, that is that they told us in Special Ops class.”

Al Nusra fighters currently occupying parts the south west areas of Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in south Damascus, recently expressed eagerness to fight Hezbollah which they claim would give them credibility with Sunni Muslims and, oddly, in this observers view, “ credibility with western countries”, who supposedly are al Qaeda’s sworn enemies. It’s sometimes hard to know who precisely is whose enemy these days in Syria as the rebels continue using areas east and southwest of Damascus as rear bases and as gateways into the capital.

Despite boasts to the contrary from Jihadist types in Syria and Lebanon, it is not clear to this observer if Jihadist and al Qaeda-affiliated groups living among Hezbollah communities in Lebanon like Fatah al Islam, Jund al Sham or Osbat al Ansar which have been here for years would actually join the Zionist promoted anti-Hezbollah jihad.

But it is evident that some Lebanese Islamists and jihadists directly connected to al Qaeda do have the ability to target Hezbollah. Elements from each of these groups are startling to associate and identify with al Nusra inspired partly by the latter’s successful military operations of Jabhat al Nusra in Syria. Again, we saw the same thing in Libya. Enthusiastic, ambitious young men who want to improve their lot in life try to go with a winner. According to sources in the Ain al Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, jihadist leaders such as Haytham and Mohammed al Saadi, Tawfic Taha, Oussama al Shehabi and Majed al Majed are recruiting followers and fighters in Lebanon and offer a ticket out the the squalid army surrounded, Syrian refugee inflated camp.

Homs-based media activist Mohammad Radwan Raad claims that “the embattled residents of the rebel-controlled Homs province town of Al-Qusayr welcome Saida, Lebanon based Sunni Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir’s call for Jihad in Syria.” Claims Raad, “Al-Qusayr residents welcome Assir’s call and hope the Lebanese people help kick out Hezbollah members in the area…We need anyone who can get rid of them.” This week Assir urged his followers to join Syrian rebels fighting troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. Al-Qusayr has been under rebel control for more than a year and on the scene reports indicate that it is about to be returned to central government control.

In response, two Salafist Sunni Lebanese sheikhs urged their followers to go to Syria to fight a jihad (religious war) in defense of Qusayr’s Sunni residents. “There is a religious duty on every Muslim who is able to do so… to enter into Syria in order to defend its people, its mosques and religious shrines, especially in Qusayr and Homs,” Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir told his followers. For now, experts say, such calls on the part of Lebanon’s Salafists are largely bluster because the movement is far from able to wield either the arsenal or the fighting forces of Hezbollah.

Local analysts like Qassem Kassir argue that Jabhat al Nusra and friends are not organized enough to fight against Hezbollah in a conventional war, but they could cause great damage by organizing bomb attacks against the Party of God’s bases and militants. The latter would be enough initially for Ross and WINEP and their Zionist handlers. Creating chaos in Lebanon being one of their goals but more importantly weakening the National Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah and also challenging Syria and Iran.

In a recent speech, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah offered his party’s view about a promoted Sunni-Shia clash with Al-Nusra, AlQaida and all the groups which flocked to Syria, saying that what was wanted of them by those who sent them was to kill and get killed in Syria, in a massacre which will only serve the enemies of the Arabs and Muslims.

The coming months will reveal to us if the several pro-Zionist Arab regimes and Islamophobes including those at WINEP and other Israel first “think-tanks” are delusional in believing a “simple solution” in John McCain’s words, to those resisting the Zionist occupation of Palestine would be to assist Jabhat el Nusra type jihadists to make war against Hezbollah. And whether they could defeat Hezbollah or even whether Jabhat al Nusra and friends are capable of igniting yet another catastrophe in this region.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and Syria and can be reached c/o fplamb@gmail.com

By Bill Van Auken

27 April, 2013

@ WSWS.org

In an attempt to pave the way for a direct military intervention aimed at toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, Washington, its NATO allies, Israel and Qatar have all in recent days broadcast trumped-up charges that Syria has used chemical weapons.

In a letter to members of Congress Thursday, the White House declared, “The US intelligence community assesses with some degree of varying confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria.”

In the midst of a Middle East tour dedicated to arranging a $10 billion deal to provide Israel and the right-wing Arab monarchies with advanced weaponry directed against Iran, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel denounced the chemical weapons use, saying it “violates every convention of warfare.” He went on to acknowledge, “We cannot confirm the origin of these weapons, but [they] …very likely have originated with the Assad regime.”

Similarly, British Prime Minister David Cameron charged Syria with a “war crime,” stating: “It’s limited evidence, but there’s growing evidence that we have seen too of the use of chemical weapons, probably by the regime.”

All of these convoluted statements—“with some degree of varying confidence,” “cannot confirm the origin of these weapons,” “limited evidence” and “probably by the regime”—underscore the fraudulent character of these accusations.

There is no proof whatsoever that the Assad regime used chemical weapons. The Syrian government has itself charged the US-backed rebels—dominated by Al Qaeda-linked elements who have boasted that they have obtained such arms and are prepared to use them—of carrying out a gas attack in the village of Khan al-Assal near Aleppo last March. According to the Syrian military, the weapon was a rocket carrying chlorine gas that was fired from a rebel-controlled area at a military checkpoint in an area controlled by the government. A number of soldiers were among its victims.

The Assad regime requested that the United Nations send an inspection team to investigate the incident, but the US, Britain and France demanded that any team be given unfettered access to the entire country and all Syrian facilities. This would have created the same kind of inspection regime used to prepare the US invasion of Iraq.

Knowing that they have no proof and what evidence there is points to the Al Qaeda-affiliated elements they have supported, the US and its allies are nonetheless determined to use the accusations over chemical weapons to sell another war to the public.

Powerful sections of the ruling strata in the United States are determined to provoke a direct US military intervention and are flogging the poison gas pretext for all it is worth. Much of the corporate media is demanding that the Obama administration make good on its threat to treat the use of chemical weapons in Syria as a “red line” and a “game changer.”

But what gives the US the moral authority to proclaim “red lines” on this issue? In its nearly nine-year war in Iraq, the US military used chemical weapons to devastating effect. In its barbaric siege of Fallujah, it employed white phosphorus shells and an advanced form of napalm, both banned by international conventions, to burn men, women and children alive.

The legacy of these weapons continues to plague the Iraqi people—with huge increases in child leukemia and cancer, and an epidemic of nightmarish birth defects in Fallujah, Basra and other cities subjected to US military siege.

It should also be recalled that it was the British who introduced chemical warfare to the Middle East, dropping mustard gas bombs on Iraqi tribes that resisted British colonial rule. Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for war and air, declared at the time: “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes…[to] spread a lively terror.”

Washington continues to defend its own massive stockpiles of “weapons of mass destruction,” while reserving to itself the right to respond to any chemical attack with nuclear weapons.

Behind the sudden turn to promoting the chemical weapons pretext for direct military intervention is the growing frustration of the US and its European allies over the failure of their proxy forces in Syria to make any headway in overthrowing the Assad regime.

This is in large measure because the Syrian government retains a popular base and, even among those who detest the regime, many hate and fear even more the Islamist elements, from the Muslim Brotherhood to Al Qaeda, which are seeking to replace it.

The US and its allies are themselves increasingly wary about the potential “blowback” from the sectarian civil war that they have promoted. The governments in Britain and Germany as well as the European Union have all made statements in the last week warning of the dangers posed by hundreds of Islamists from their own countries going to Syria to join with Al Qaeda elements.

Behind the pretense that the cutthroats that rule the US and Europe are concerned about human rights and Syrian lives, the reality is that they are preparing bombings, the use of cruise missiles and Predator drones, as well as a potential ground invasion that will dramatically increase Syria’s death toll.

The motives underlying such a war have nothing to do with qualms about chemical weapons, but rather concern definite geostrategic interests.

“Syria and the changing Middle East energy map,” an article by Ruba Husari, a Middle East energy expert and editor of IraqOilForum.com, published earlier this year by the Carnegie Middle East Center, provides a glimpse into the real reasons for the mounting pressure for direct US-NATO intervention.

“Syria might not be a major oil or gas producer in the Middle East, but—depending on the outcome of the Syrian uprising—it may determine the shape of the future regional energy map,” she writes. “The country’s geographic location offers Mediterranean access to landlocked entities in search of markets for their hydrocarbons and to countries seeking access to Europe without having to go through Turkey. The opportunities presented to many in the region by the current Syrian regime could be lost in a post-crisis Syria. To others, new opportunities will emerge under a new Syrian regime.”

The principal losers in a successful war for regime change would be Iran, which recently signed a major pipeline deal—bitterly opposed by Washington—with Syria and Iraq that is ultimately aimed at bringing Iranian gas to the Mediterranean Sea, and Russia, which has sought to expand its own influence in energy development in the region.

The principal winners would be the US and its allies, together with the major US and Western European-based energy conglomerates.

Ultimately, the goal of US imperialism and its NATO allies in Syria is to isolate and prepare for a far larger war against Iran, with the aim of imposing neocolonial control over the vast energy-producing region stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Basin.

The real issue in this conflict is not the nature of the Syrian regime, but the nature of the regimes that rule the US, Britain, France and Germany, which are embarking on another predatory carve-up of the world like those that produced the First and Second World Wars.

By Jean Shaoul

27 April, 2013

28 February, 2013

Escalating violence in Iraq has led to the deaths of at least 179 people since Tuesday, the highest death toll since the withdrawal of US troops at the end of 2011.

The re-eruption of the sectarian strife that broke out under the US occupation testifies to the devastation wrought by the US-led invasion of Iraq and Washington’s whipping up of ethnic and sectarian tensions. It is also an extension of the on-going US proxy war in neighbouring Syria, in which it is backing ultra-right Sunni forces tied to Al Qaeda.

Since December, Iraqi Sunnis, including those with ties to forces active in Syria, have been protesting discrimination, arbitrary arrests, detention and the execution of oppositionists by the Shi’ite-led coalition government of Nouri Al-Maliki. They are particularly opposed to the sweeping anti-terrorism law they claim targets them for being members of Al Qaeda or of the Ba’ath Party of former President Saddam Hussein. They have called for Maliki’s resignation.

Hundreds of thousands have been locked up for years, many without charges, in prisons run by sectarian militias. More than 1,400 people face execution.

The government’s reliance on dictatorial methods is bound up with the rising level of unemployment and seething discontent over the lack of electricity, water, sanitation and the failure to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by US sanctions and war. This is despite the fact that oil production grew by 24 percent last year, with Iraq overtaking Iran to become the biggest member, after Saudi Arabia, in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

This violence follows armed raids by government troops on a Sunni camp in Hawija, near Kirkuk, 170 kilometres north of Baghdad, four days after militants attacked a military and police checkpoint, seized their weapons and killed a soldier. Ensuing clashes left 53 people dead, including three soldiers.

Sunni protesters in Anbar and Nineveh provinces have called for a general strike and there has been a wave of armed clashes beyond Hawija, killing dozens more. Gunmen tried to storm army posts in the nearby towns of Rashad and Riyadh, killing 13. In Ramadi, Anbar’s capital, protesters threw stones at a military convoy and set army vehicles ablaze. In Fallujah, about 1,000 people took to the streets chanting, “War, war.” Armed clashes broke out and there were three attacks on Sunni mosques.

In Suleiman Beg, between Baghdad and Kirkuk, government forces used helicopters against Sunni gunmen who took over a police station. A military spokesman said that the army had made a tactical withdrawal “so we can work on clearing the region, corner by corner.”

At least ten policemen and 31 Sunni gunmen were killed in armed clashes in northern Iraq after Sunni gunmen seized control of the eastern part of Mosul. It took three days for the army to regain control after prolonged gun battles.

In eastern Baghdad, at least eight people were killed and 23 more wounded when a car bomb exploded.

Insurgents attacked a pipeline carrying oil from Kirkuk to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Kirkuk is the subject of a bitter dispute between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government, which wants to include it into its autonomous region. A crowd of mourners in Kirkuk numbering in the thousands chanted, “Death to Maliki” and “Revenge to the agents of Iran.”

Some Sunni sheikhs have joined with clerics, declaring that the government has crossed “red lines.” They are calling for activists to arm themselves and attack the army, security forces and government collaborators.

Two Sunni ministers in Maliki’s coalition government have resigned over Hawija, adding to the string of defections, including a boycott of his government by Kurdish ministers.

Maliki has blamed the current unrest on Al Qaeda and “remnants of Ba’ath Party for creating rift” in the country. He had earlier called the protesters’ demands “stinking and sectarian”, but on Thursday adopted a more conciliatory stance, saying “their demands were legitimate.”

He offered some concessions, including changes to anti-terrorism laws targeting the Sunni community, and announced an inquiry into the Hawija clashes under the chairmanship of the Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlag. He said that the families of those killed and injured in Hawija would be compensated.

The upsurge in violence comes just days after the April 20 provincial elections, themselves characterised by violence against candidates, mainly of the Sunni al-Iraqiya coalition. Fourteen of its candidates were assassinated. It won 91 seats in the 2010 parliamentary elections, two more than Maliki’s State of Law coalition.

Car bombs went off at rallies and meetings, killing dozens. In the mainly Sunni provinces of Anbar and Nineveh, the government postponed the elections, now set for July 4, with no date set for the disputed province of Kirkuk. Elections will be held in the three Kurdish provinces in the autumn.

Maliki heads a corrupt, unpopular and isolated government, made up of shifting coalitions, parties and factions that are constantly splitting and fighting over influence and sinecures.

Preliminary results of Saturday’s provincial elections testify to the government’s isolation. Official estimates claim that 50 percent of the electorate voted, small itself, but local monitoring networks claim that the real figure was 37 percent. In some provinces, voters found that their names were not on the electoral list, which is still based upon the ration card system issued by the Saddam Hussein regime as there has been no comprehensive census for years.

Maliki’s State of Law coalition appears to have won a reduced majority, winning 20 fewer seats and possibly eight of the twelve voting provinces, including Baghdad and Basra provinces. His Sunni allies did not increase their vote, while Shi’ite areas gave their votes for independent politicians.

Incapable of resolving the vast socio-economic problems besetting Iraq, the neo-colonial regime in Baghdad, installed by Washington and supported by Iran, is focused on dividing and oppressing the Iraqi working class. Maliki has concentrated power in his own hands, holding the defence and interior posts, and used the anti-terrorist laws against his Sunni rivals, whipping up sectarian tensions to divide the working class.

A key factor is the on-going sectarian war for regime change in Syria that has pitted Sunni Islamist militias against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ism. This has been sponsored, financed and supplied by Iran’s Sunni Gulf rivals, and also Turkey, at Washington’s behest.

They also fear that Maliki, whose installation as prime minister was sanctioned by Washington, is too close to Tehran. They are acutely conscious of the seething discontent among their own increasingly embittered populations, many of whom are Shi’ite, who have not shared in the ruling families’ oil- and gas-based wealth.

Iraqi Sunni Islamist fighters linked to Al Qaeda of Iraq have longed played a prominent role in the Syrian civil war, sending Jihadi fighters through Anbar province. The Al-Nusra Front, the largest and most effective fighting force, recently openly swore allegiance to Al Qaeda in Iraq. At the same time, some members of Iraqi Shia militias are fighting for the Assad government.

The Maliki government has refused to join in the demands for Assad’s ouster, earning the enmity of the Sunni monarchies.

Death stalks the Syrian regime just as it does  the rebels. But on the front line of the war, the regime’s army is in no mood to surrender – and claims it doesn’t need chemical weapons

By Robert Fisk

Friday, 26 April 2013

@ The Independent

Clouds hang oppressively low over the Syrian army’s front-line mountain-top in the far north of Syria.

Rain has only just replaced snow, turning this heavily protected fortress into a swamp of mud and stagnant ponds where soldiers man their lookout posts with the wind in their faces, their elderly T-55 tanks – the old Warsaw Pact battlehorses of the 1950s – dripping under the showers, their tracks in the mud, used now only as artillery pieces. They are “rubbish tanks” – debeba khurda – I say to Colonel Mohamed, commander of the Syrian army’s Special Forces unit across this bleak landscape, and he grins at me. “We use them for static defence,” he says frankly. ‘They do not move.’”

Before the war – or “the crisis” as President Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers are constrained to call it – Jebel al-Kawaniah was a television transmission station. But when the anti-government rebels captured it, they blew up the towers, cut down the forest of fir trees around it to create a free-fire zone and built ramparts of earth to protect them from government gunfire. The Syrian army fought their way back up the hillsides last October, through the village of Qastal Maaf – which now lies pancaked and broken on the old road to the Turkish border at Kassab – and stormed on to the plateau which is now their front line.

On their maps, the Syrian army codenamed “Kawaniah Mountain” according to their own military co-ordinates. It became “Point 45” – Point 40 lies east through the mountain gloom – and they spread their troops in tents under the trees of two neighbouring hills. I climb on to one of the T-55s and can see them through the downpour. There are dull explosions across the valley and the occasional “pop” of small arms fire and, rather disconcertingly, Col Mohamed points out that the nearest forest is still in the hands of his enemies, scarcely 800 metres away. The soldier sitting in the tank turret with a heavy machine-gun doesn’t take his eyes off the trees.

It is always an eerie experience to sit among Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers. These are the “bad guys” of the regime, according to the rest of the world – although in truth the country’s secret police deserve that title – and I’m well aware that these men have been told that a Western journalist is coming to their dug-outs and basement headquarters. They ask me to use only their first names for fear that their families may be killed; they allow me to take any photographs I wish, but not to picture their faces – a rule that the rebels sometimes ask of journalists for the same reason – but every soldier and officer to whom I spoke, including a Brigadier General, gave their full names and IDs to me.

Such access to the Syrian army was almost unimaginable just a few months ago and there are good reasons why. The army believe they are at last winning back ground from the Free Syrian Army and the al-Nusra Islamist fighters and the various al-Qa’ida satellites that now rule much of the Syrian countryside. From Point 45 they are scarcely a mile and a half from the Turkish frontier and intend to take the ground in between. Outside Damascus they have battled their way bloodily into two rebel-held suburbs. While I was prowling through the mountaintop positions, the rebels were in danger of losing the town of Qusayr outside Homs amid opposition accusations of the widespread killing of civilians. The main road from Damascus to Latakia on the Mediterranean coast has been reopened by the army. And the line troops I met at Point 45 were a different breed of men from those soldiers who became corrupted after 29 years of semi-occupation in Lebanon, who fell back to Syria without a war to fight in 2005, the discipline of the soldiers around Damascus a joke rather than a threat to anyone. Bashar’s Special Forces now appear confident, ruthless, politically motivated, a danger to their enemies, their uniforms smart, their weapons clean. Syrians have long grown used to the claims by Israel – inevitably followed by the Washington echo machine – that chemical weapons have been used by Bashar’s forces; as an intelligence officer remarked caustically in Damascus: “Why should we use chemical weapons when our Mig aircraft and their bombs cause infinitely more destruction?” The soldiers up at Point 45 admitted the defections to the Free Syrian Army, the huge losses of their own men – inevitably referred to as “martyrs” – and made no secret of their own body counts for battles lost and won.

Their last “martyr” at Point 45 was shot by a rebel sniper two weeks ago, 22 year-old Special Forces Private Kamal Aboud from Homs. He at least died as a soldier. Colonel Mohamed spoke ruefully of the troopers on family leave who, he said, were executed with knives when they entered enemy territory. I remind myself that the UN is bringing war crimes charges against this army and I remind Colonel Mohamed – who has four bullet wounds in his arms to show that he leads his soldiers from the front, not from a bunker – that his soldiers were surely meant to be liberating the Golan Heights from Israel. Israel is to the south, I say, and here he is fighting his way north towards Turkey. Why?

“I know, but we are fighting Israel. I joined the army to fight Israel. And now I am fighting Israel’s tools. And the tools of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, so in this way we are fighting for Golan. This is a conspiracy and the West is helping the foreign terrorists who arrived in Syria, the same terrorists you are trying to kill in Mali.” I have heard this before, of course. The “moamarer”, the conspiracy, sits beside me at all interviews in Syria. But the colonel admits that the two Syrian T-55s which fire shells at Point 45 every morning – the very same vintage war-carts as his own tanks – are sets of twins, that his enemies have taken their artillery from the government army and that his opponents include men from Bashar al-Assad’s original army.

On the road to Qastel Maaf, a general tells me that on the highway to the Turkish border, the army have just killed 10 Saudis, two Egyptians and a Tunisian – I am shown no papers to prove this – but the soldiers at Point 45 produce for me three handset radios they have captured from their enemies. One is marked “HXT Commercial Terminal”, the other two are made by Hongda and the instructions are in Turkish. I ask them if they listen to the rebel communications. “Yes, but we don’t understand them,” a major says. “They are speaking in Turkish and we don’t understand Turkish.” So are they Turks or Turkmen Syrians from the villages to the east? The soldiers shrug. They say they have also heard Arabic voices speaking with Libyan and Yemeni accents. And given that the great and the good of Nato are now obsessed with “foreign jihadis” in Syria, I suspect these Syrian soldiers may well be telling the truth.

The laneways of this beautiful northern countryside conceal the viciousness of the fighting. Clusters of red and white roses smother the walls of abandoned homes. A few men tend the mass of orange orchards that glow around us, a woman combs her long hair on a roof. The lake of Balloran glistens in the spring sunshine between mountains still topped with a powder of snow. It reminds me, chillingly, of Bosnia. For several miles the villages are still occupied, a Christian Greek Orthodox township of 10 families with a church dedicated to the appearance of the Virgin to a woman called Salma; a Muslim Alawite village, then a Muslim Sunni village close to the front lines but still co-existing; a ghost of the old secular, non-sectarian Syria which both sides promise – with ever decreasing credibility – will return once the war is over.

Then I am in a smashed village called Beit Fares where hundreds of Syrian soldiers can be seen patrolling the surrounding forests, and another general fishes into his pocket and produces an army mobile phone video of dead fighters. “All are foreign,” he says. I watch closely as the camera lingers over bearded faces, some contorted in fear, others in the dreamless sleep of death. They have been heaped together. And, most sinister of all, I observe a military boot which descends twice on the heads of the dead men. On the wall of the dugout, someone has written: “We are soldiers of Assad – to hell with you dogs of the armed groups of Jabel al-Aswad and Beit Shrouk.”

These are the names of a string of tiny villages still in rebel hands – you can see the roofs of their houses from Point 45 – and Col Mohamed, a 45-year-old veteran of the Lebanese war between 1993 and 1995, lists the others: Khadra, Jebel Saouda, Zahiyeh, al-Kabir, Rabia… Their fate awaits them. When I ask the soldiers how many prisoners they took in their battles, they say “None” with a loud voice. What, I ask, even when they claim to have killed 700 “terrorists” in one engagement? “None,” they reply again.

Opposite a bullet-riddled school building is a pulverised house. “A local terrorist leader died there with all his men,” the colonel states. “They did not surrender.”

I doubt if they had the chance. But at Beit Fares, some rebels did escape earlier this year, along – so says General Wasif from Latakia – with their own local leader, a Syrian businessman. We clump into the man’s ruined villa on the hills of this abandoned Turkmen village – the inhabitants are now in Turkish refugee camps, the general tells me – and it seems that the businessman was wealthy. The villa is surrounded by irrigated orchards of lemon and pistachio and fig trees. There is a basketball court, an empty swimming pool, children’s swings, a broken marble fountain – in which there are still Turkish-labelled tins of stuffed vine leaves – and marble-walled living rooms and kitchens and a delicate plaque in Arabic above the front door saying: “God Bless This House.” It seems He did not.

I pluck some figs from the absentee businessman’s orchard. The soldiers do the same. But they taste sharp and too sour and the soldiers spit them out, preferring the oranges that hang by the roadside. General Fawaz is talking to a colleague and lifts up an exploded rocket for inspection. It is locally manufactured, the welding unprofessional – but identical to all the Qassam missiles which the Palestinian Hamas movement fires into Israel from the Gaza Strip. “Someone from Palestine told the terrorists how to make this,” General Fawaz says. Colonel Mohamed remarks quietly that when they stormed into the village, they found cars and trucks with Turkish military plates – but no Turkish soldiers.

There is an odd relationship with Turkey up here. Recep Tayyip Erdogan may condemn Assad but the nearest Turkish frontier station a mile and a half away stays open, the only border post still linking Turkey and government-controlled Syrian territory. One of the officers refers to an old story about the Umayyad Caliph Muawiya who said that he kept a thin piece of his own hair “to connect me to my enemies”. “The Turks have left this one frontier open with us,” the officer says, “so as not to cut the hair of Muawiya.” He is not smiling and I understand what he is saying. The Turks still want to maintain a physical connection with the Assad regime. Erdogan cannot be certain that Bashar al-Assad will lose this war.

Many of the soldiers show their wounds; more valuable to them, I suspect, than medals or badges of rank. Besides, the officers have already removed their gold insignia on the front lines – unlike Admiral Nelson, they do not wish to be picked off by the rebels’ early morning snipers. Dawn seems to be the killing time. On a roadway, a second lieutenant shows me his own wounds. There is a bullet’s entry below his left ear. On the other side of his head, a cruel purple scar runs upwards towards his right ear. He was shot right through the neck and survived. He was lucky.

So were the Special Forces soldiers who patrolled towards a hidden land-mine, an IED in Western parlance. A young Syrian explosives ordnance officer in Qastal Maaf shows me the two iron-cased shells that were buried under the road. One of them is almost too heavy for me to lift. The fuse is labeled in Turkish. An antenna connected to the explosives was strung from the top of an electricity pole for a line-of-sight rebel bomber to detonate. A technical mine-detector – “all our equipment is Russian,” the soldiers boasted – alerted the patrol to the explosives before the soldiers walked over them.

But death hovers over the Syrian army, just as it haunts their enemies. The airport at Latakia is now a place of permanent lamentation. No sooner do I arrive than I find families crying and tearing their faces in front of the terminal, waiting for the bodies of their soldier sons and brothers and husbands, Christians for the most part but Muslims too, for the Mediterranean coast is the heartland of Christians and Shia Alawites and a minority of Sunni Muslims. One Christian woman is restrained by an old man as she tries to lie down on the road, tears streaming down her face. A truck by the departure hall is piled with wreaths.

A general in charge of the army’s bereaved families tells me that the airport is too small for this mass mourning. “The helicopters bring our dead here from all over northern Syria,” he says. “We have to look after all these families and find them housing, but sometimes I go to homes to tell them of the death of a son and find that they have already lost three other sons as martyrs. It is too much.” Forget Private Ryan. I see beside the control tower a wounded soldier hobbling along on one foot, a bandage partly covering his face, his arm around a comrade as he limps towards the terminal.

Military statistics I was shown suggest that 1,900 soldiers from Latakia  have been killed in this awful war, another 1,500 from Tartus. But you must add up the statistics of the Alawite and Christian mixed villages in the hills above Latakia to understand the individual cost. In Hayalin, for example, the village of 2,000 souls has lost 22 soldiers with another 16 listed as missing. In real terms that’s 38 dead. Many were killed in Jisr al-Shughur back in June of 2011 when the Syrian army lost 89 dead in a rebel ambush. A villager called Fouad explains that there was one survivor who came from a neighbouring village. “I telephoned him to ask what happened to the other men,” he said. “He said: ‘I don’t know because they cut out my eyes.’ He said that someone led him away and he thought he would be executed but found himself in an ambulance and was taken to hospital in Latakia.” One of the Jisr al-Shughur dead was returned to Hayalin, but relatives found that his coffin contained only his legs. “The latest martyr from Hayalin was killed only two days ago,” Fouad told me. “He was a soldier called Ali Hassan. He had just got married. They couldn’t even return his body.”

The 24 Syrian helicopter gunships that throb on the apron beyond the terminal project the power of the government’s hardware. But soldiers tell their own stories of fear and intimidation. That rebel forces threaten the families of government soldiers is a long-established fact. But one private told me bleakly of how his elder brother was ordered to persuade him to desert the army. “When I refused, they broke my brother’s legs,” he said. When I asked if others had shared this experience, an 18-year old private was brought to me. The officers offered to leave the room when I spoke to him.

He was an intelligent young man but his story was told simply and untutored. His was no set propaganda speech. “I come from Idlib Province and they came to my father and said they needed me there,” he said. “But my father refused and said, ‘If you want my son, go and bring him here – and if you do, you will not find me here to greet him.’ Then my father sent most of his family to Lebanon. My father and mother are still there and they are still being threatened.” I tell the officers later that I do not believe every Syrian defector left because of threats to his family, that some soldiers must have profoundly disagreed with the regime. They agree but insist that the army remains strong.

Colonel Mohamed, who mixes military strategy with politics, says he regards the foreign “plot” against Syria as a repeat version of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of the First World War, when Britain and France secretly decided to divide up the Middle East – including Syria – between them. “Now they want to do the same,” he says. “Britain and France want to give weapons to the terrorists to divide us, but we want to have a united Syria in which all our people live together, democratically, caring not about their religion but living peacefully…” And then came the crunch. “…under the leadership of our champion Dr Bashar al-Assad.”

But it is not that simple. The word “democracy” and the name of Assad do not blend very well in much of Syria. And I rather think that the soldiers of what is officially called the Syrian Arab Army are fighting for Syria rather than Assad. But fighting they are and maybe, for now, they are winning an unwinnable war. At Beit Fares, I peak over the parapet once more and the mist is rising off the mountains. This could be Bosnia. The country is breathtaking, the grey-green hills rolling into blue velvet mountains. A little heaven. But the fruits along this front line are bitter indeed

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

March 26, 2013

@ Global Research

Url of this article:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/dangerous-crossroads-the-threat-of-a-pre-emptive-nuclear-war-directed-against-iran/5328466

For more than a decade, Iran has been doggedly accused without evidence of developing nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic is relentlessly portrayed by the Western media as a threat to the security of Israel and of the Western World.

In a bitter irony, the assessment of America’s Intelligence Community concerning Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons capabilities refutes the barrage of media disinformation as well as the bellicose statements emanating from the White House. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE): “judges with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” (2007 National Intelligence Estimate Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities; November 2007, See also Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI))

“We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.

– We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.

– Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.” (2007 National Intelligence Estimate Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities; November 2007)

In February 2011, The Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper (image right) – while presenting the 2011 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – intimated -with some hesitation – that the Islamic Republic was not seeking to develop nuclear weapons capabilities: “we do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

The 2011 NIE largely confirms the findings undertaken by the US intelligence community in the 2007 NIE, which remains, according to The New York Times, “the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.”

Post 9/11 pre-emptive nuclear war doctrine

First formulated in the Bush administration’s 2002 ‘Nuclear Posture Review’, the pre-emptive nuclear war doctrine -integrated into the Global War on Terrorism – started to take shape in the immediate wake of the war on Iraq. A pre-emptive‘defensive’ nuclear attack on Iran using tactical nuclear weapons was envisaged to annihilate the Islamic Republic’s non-existent nuclear weapons program.

So-called ‘mini nukes’ were identified as the ‘ideal weapon’ to conduct a pre-emptive nuclear attack.

In 2003, the mini nukes, consisting of bunker-buster bombs with nuclear warheads, were re-categorized by the US Senate as bona fide conventional weapons. The new definition of a nuclear warhead has blurred the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons.

Senator Edward Kennedy, at the time, accused the Bush Administration for having developed “a generation of more useable nuclear weapons.”

Through a propaganda campaign which enlisted the support of‘authoritative’ nuclear scientists, the mini-nukes were upheld as an instrument of peace rather than war.

    “Administration officials argue that low-yield nuclear weapons are needed as a credible deterrent against rogue states [Iran, North Korea]. Their logic is that existing nuclear weapons are too destructive to be used except in a full-scale nuclear war. Potential enemies realize this, thus they do not consider the threat of nuclear retaliation to be credible. However, low-yield nuclear weapons are less destructive, thus might conceivably be used. That would make them more effective as a deterrent.”(Opponents Surprised By Elimination of Nuke Research Funds, Defense News, November 29, 2004)

In an utterly twisted piece of logic, nuclear weapons are presented as a means to building peace and preventing ‘collateral damage’. The Pentagon had intimated, in this regard, that the mini-nukes are ‘harmless to civilians’ because the explosions ‘take place underground’. Each of these mini-nukes, nonetheless, constitutes – in terms of explosion and potential radioactive fallout – a significant fraction of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Estimates of yield for Nagasaki and Hiroshima indicate that they were respectively of 21,000 and 15,000 tons. Mini-nukes have a yield (explosive capacity) between one third and six times a Hiroshima bomb.

Following the 2003 Senate Green Light, which upheld mini nukes as ‘humanitarian bombs’, a major shift in nuclear weapons doctrine has unfolded. The low-yield nukes had been cleared for‘battlefield use’. In contrast to the warning on a packet of cigarettes (see the proposed Food and Drug Administration label) the ‘advisory’ on the ‘dangers of nuclear weapons to human health’ is no longer included in military manuals. The latter have been revised. This ‘new’ generation of tactical nuclear weapons is considered ‘safe’. The dangers of nuclear radiation are no longer acknowledged. There are no impediments or political obstacles to the use of low yield thermonuclear bombs.

The ‘international community’ has endorsed nuclear war in the name of World Peace.

Mini-nukes: Preferred weapons system of ‘pre-emptive nuclear war’

While reports tend to depict the tactical B61 bombs as a relic of the Cold War era, the realities are otherwise: mini-nukes are the chosen weapons system under the doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear war, to be used in the conventional war theater against terrorists and ‘state sponsors of terrorism’, including the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Concrete plans to wage a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Iran have been on the Pentagon drawing board since 2004. A pre-emptive nuclear attack would consist in the deployment of B-61 tactical nuclear weapons directed against Iran. The attacks would be activated from military bases in Western Europe, Turkey and Israel.

In 2007, NATO confirmed its support for America’s nuclear pre-emption doctrine in a report entitled ‘Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership’. The report (authored by former defense chiefs of staff of the US, UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands, and sponsored by the Dutch Noaber Foundation) calls for a pre-emptive ‘first strike’ use of nuclear weapons, against non-nuclear states as:

“the ultimate instrument of an asymmetric response – and at the same time the ultimate tool of escalation. Yet they are also more than an instrument, since they transform the nature of any conflict and widen its scope from the regional to the global. Regrettably, nuclear weapons – and with them the option of first use – are indispensable, since there is simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world.” (Ibid, p.96-97, emphasis added).

According to the authors, Iran constitutes a major strategic threat – not only to Israel, “which it has threatened to destroy, but also to the region as a whole.” (Ibid, p.45) What is required is for the Atlantic Alliance to “restore deterrence through [military] escalation.”

In this context, the Report, endorsed both by NATO and the Pentagon, contemplates the notion of:

“escalation dominance, the use of a full bag of both carrots and sticks—and indeed all instruments of soft and hard power, ranging from the diplomatic protest to nuclear weapons.” (Report, p.96. emphasis added)

In December 2011, less than a year following the publication of the 2011 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which underscored that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, a‘no options off the table’ agenda directed against Iran was put forth by the Obama administration. What was envisaged was a planned and coordinated US-NATO Israel military posture with regard to Iran. It was understood, as intimated by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, that Israel would not act unilaterally against Iran. In the case of an attack on Iran, the green light would be granted by Washington.

“Any military operation against Iran by Israel must be coordinated with the United States and have its backing,“ said Panetta.

The various components of the military operation would be firmly under US Command, coordinated by the Pentagon and US Strategic Command Headquarters (USSTRATCOM) at the Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska.

Military actions by Israel would be carried out in close coordination with the Pentagon. The command structure of the operation is centralized and ultimately Washington decides if and when to launch the military operation.

In March 2013, the ‘all options’ resolution in relation to Iran was on the agenda during the president’s official visit to Israel. While an integrated US-NATO-Israel approach in response to‘the perils of a nuclear-armed Iran’ war was reasserted, the tone of the discussions was in the direction of military action against Iran.

Obama’s visit to Israel was preceded by high-level bilateral consultations, including the visit of IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz to Washington in February for discussions with the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey pertaining to Iran and Syria. Benny Gantz was accompanied by Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, director of IDF Military Intelligence, at the meeting with his US counterparts. The new head of the Pentagon Chuck Hagel will be visiting Israel in April in a follow-up meeting.

“Tweeters pointed out that when Obama took his jacket off, Netanyahu promptly mimicked the president. Everything seems well coordinated.”(Photo from twitter.com user @netanyahu)

In the course of Obama’s visit, Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated the need for “a clear and credible threat of military action [against Iran],” while intimating that Israel could act unilaterally. In this regard, it is worth noting that in August 2012, a few months prior to the US presidential elections, a leaked IDF briefing document (translated from Hebrew) revealed the details of Netanyahu’s proposed “shock and awe attack” on Iran.

“The Israeli attack will open with a coordinated strike, including an unprecedented cyber-attack … A barrage of tens of ballistic missiles would be launched from Israel toward Iran … from Israeli submarines in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf. The missiles would be armed with … high-explosive ordnance equipped with reinforced tips designed specially to penetrate hardened targets. … A barrage of hundreds of cruise missiles will pound command and control systems, research and development facilities, … among the targets approved for attack— Shihab 3 and Sejil ballistic missile silos, storage tanks for chemical components of rocket fuel, industrial facilities for producing missile control systems, centrifuge production plants and more.” (Quoted in Richard Silverstein, Netanyahu’s Secret War Plan: Leaked Document Outlines Israel’s ‘Shock and Awe’ Plan to Attack Iran, Tikun Olam and Global Research, August 16, 2012, emphasis added).

The strike details mentioned in the leaked IDF briefing above pertain solely to the use of conventional weapons systems.

This article was originally published on RT Op-Edge

Michel Chossudovsky‘s latest book, Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011).

By Omar Rashid Chowdhury

25 April, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Bangladesh stands petrified as an unprecedented horror unfolds in Savar, near the capital city Dhaka. In the morning of 24th of April, a nine-story building crashed down in Savar Bazaar. Thousands of garments workers were in the building. The death toll, till the composition of this article, was more than 175, with more than 1,000 injured, according to a Dhaka daily. Thousands are still trapped under the pile of rubble.

Deadliest of all such incidents in recent history, the crash site is now a jumbled pile of concrete. The situation worsens with the scorching heat. The challenge now is to rescue the survivors. The dead can wait for now. Time is running short and the death toll will rise with each passing day.

The building was not approved by the RAJUK, the authority for capital city development. Nonetheless it was there. On 23rd of April, it developed cracks in some pillars which were considered fatal and the building was ordered to remain closed until further scrutiny by experts from Bangladesh University of Technology (BUET). A number of garments factories were in the building. Though ordered by the Industrial Police to suspend all operations, the factory owners decided to continue it. So, the workers were forced to join despite their protest. They were chased with clubs to join work, according to a number of Dhaka dailies.

At around nine a.m. the whole structure collapsed in minutes. Around 4,000 workers were working inside the nine storied structure while the building sandwiched to a two-story height! A hell was created on earth!

What is it like to be buried alive? It is stygian dark, the air seems vacant and the debris all around press down so no movement is possible. But the worst part is when one realizes that there is no hope. No one is going to come. The memory of light slowly fades away, dehydration creeps in, heart beats slower, and then death comes and the victim can feel every painful second of it. And, that may be the situation now under that pile of concrete in Savar.

Facts surpass fictions. Above are hard facts, emotionless facts, faceless facts. More than 175 dead, thousands injured, all are facts. Crushed lives, crashed dreams, those are facts too! And those toiling bodies that now lie bloodied, mangled, devastated, crushed, cease now to be mere numbers! Hands that built are broken, faces that laughed are broken, legs that ran are broken, hearts that beat are broken.

Those workers, they came to the city from villages. They came to Dhaka to earn a simple living, to support their families. They wanted to earn, they dreamed to break free from poverty, they dreamed their children to be educated, they desired to live like anyone else. And, now they can dream no more. The child who has lost his parents, the parents who have lost their child, the wife who has lost her husband, the husband who has lost his wife, they all had so many dreams. And now they are no more. They were cheated in life and now they have been cheated in death. And, all they wanted was to live decently.

Rescue operation is going on. The authorities say it may take two or three days. With a small mistake the whole situation can turn worse as the giant debris are precariously angled and risks unsettling with the slightest jolt. Oxygen and water has been supplied. As the dead pile up, the living stands in horror. Blame game is going on. Some are unable to comment and some are just out of reach. The nation mourns.

But haven’t we mourned enough? Haven’t we asked enough for explanations? Haven’t we cried enough for justice? Yet, why do those remain unanswered? Who will answer for the crushing of thousands of dreams? And, who will stand trial for the killing of hundreds of lives?

Lives of workers are the least costly of all commodities. The Savar crash incident stands gruesomely true to that fact. They were herded like sheep to work and they were slaughtered like sheep. The building housed garments factories and that was enough reason to keep them open despite warnings. The cruelty and injustice of it is just unacceptable to a humane, rational mind.

Or maybe those workers were simply expendable tools to create profit. Their labor was bought cheap and that in turn made their lives cheaper. Millions of such faces are out there and a profiteer need only just buy. The faces turn into nothingness, and their dreams go into oblivion and pounds of profit take their place. They are sold cheap, they work cheap and they die cheap! The individual is lost as they simply reduce to be numbers. Their names appear in news as they die in hundreds and thousands. Then they are forgotten. Maybe we just like it to be that way.

Shakila is searching for her son Idris among the debris. She came from Jamalpur as she heard the news. She points to a photo of her son as tears run down her cheeks and asks “Where is my Bazan (son)? Where have you gone? Will he survive two more days?” (The Daily Star). We do not know the answers to these questions. And maybe it’s time we should ask some questions. Maybe it’s time the rein of plunder-based profiteering is checked. May be it’s time to reclaim the right to a normal death.

(The author is a student of Civil Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology)

April 22, 2013

By Salma Yusuf

In post-war Sri Lanka, a reprioritising of the national agenda, a change in attitude to state structures and innovating new approaches to embrace forgotten stakeholders remain critical for social change

Though social justice and the advancement of peace has not yet evolved to occupying centre-stage in the corporate agenda, a significant development in the international arena is that businesses are no longer averse to the idea. Moreover, there has been acknowledgement within the international business sector that the credibility of its operations can be strengthened by subscribing to altruistic ideological pursuits and embracing its latent social role.

In Sri Lanka too, there has begun a national momentum to raise awareness on the need to develop the social conscience of the private sector, following the conclusion of the three-decade war that ravaged the country. In this context, what is required is a more radical reprioritising of the national agenda in the post-war situation to socio-economic and political aims to facilitate such a progressive movement.

What must be recommended is the adoption of investment in four areas as critical to a strategy for contributing to reconciliation and peace-building: First, livelihood and income generation activities; second, training and empowerment through capacity building in soft-skills including those that increase innovation, entrepreneurship and employability; third, a need to engage directly with individuals and communities in war-affected regions of the country and finally, to ensure that all endeavours undertaken embrace the vision of preventing economic stagnation which has been at the root of most political conflicts.

The attractiveness of investing in the north of the country must not be forgotten in this endeavour. The availability of rich natural resources in the region such as limestone, land, groundwater, sea salt, fisheries and agriculture could be tapped into in order to create industries, income generation and livelihood opportunities.

Additionally, the market demand for produce and jobs is increasing with the return of formerly displaced persons to their original habitats. Further, there exists potential for development of tourism-related infrastructure as Jaffna is gaining increasing currency as a tourist destination, both by locals and foreigners. It was recorded that with the removal of travel restrictions to the north of the country, a total of 31,000 persons had travelled to the north in 2012 alone. This in itself is a testament to the promise for both local and foreign tourism in the north of the country which would benefit immensely from private sector investment.

The conflict between the north and south of Sri Lanka has been largely due to the lack of economic opportunities. Waiting for perfect conditions to invest can be counter-productive to social progress. Reflecting on the Sri Lankan political history, both insurrections in the south, and the north, were largely resource, class and caste related. Leaving behind a segment of the community whether in the north or the south will result in the seeds of dissent taking root. Allowing marginalisation of a segment of the community will result in ethnic entrepreneurs exploiting it for personal and political advantage.

To this end, certain considerations need to be made when decisions to invest in the north and the east are taken, namely, that youth and adult populations in the north have been deprived of basic education during the conflict. Capacity building is a sine qua non for generating employability and creating opportunities for income generation.

The business community is well placed for developing capacity of potential entrepreneurs by playing a major role in skill building. Hence, recognition of such a role for the private sector and business community must be taken seriously. Although engagement of the business community has been acknowledged as essential for peace-building by both the World Bank and the United Nations, a system of rewards to lure early private sector entry has yet to be devised, at the international and national levels.

Further, it is recommended that involving the private sector in the larger work of formulating the post-war recovery strategy in Sri Lanka will help generate ownership of the process, and in turn sustainability of outcomes. This would require innovative thinking by both the public and private sectors.

The challenge therefore lies in finding new means to make such engagement attractive by establishing appropriate economic and non-economic incentives for investment.

Possible incentives would be, first, to demonstrate to businesses how early – entry into the war – torn regions are a test of the resilience of the sector’s ability to navigate adverse conditions and establish suitable conditions for economic proclivity.

Second, it can play a crucial self-serving role in shaping of the market for decades to come by securing preferential rights for early entrants and contributing to developing the legal and regulatory framework in which they will have to operate. Such need to be highlighted to the private sector in Sri Lanka who are still weary of potential fallouts associated with investing in the war-affected regions of the country; and are only now being sensitised to the critical role that they can play in re-building the nation and fostering durable peace.

Closely related to this is the need to cultivate a positive attitude towards state structures, administrative structures, public service and international institutions. Hence, these two considerations ought to be integral to Sri Lanka’s foreign policy strategy, which would necessarily involve both direct bilateral and multi-lateral engagement with relevant foreign powers and world bodies.

In Sri Lanka, the need for economic prosperity or at least movement away from abject poverty and economic hopelessness is pivotal to moving towards reconciliation and peace building if the spirit of peace is to not falter and be extinguished. It is the private sector that can provide in the long-term economic growth opportunities, jobs and wealth creation.

By Benjamin Lytal

21 April 13

@ The Daily Beast

As everyone followed the Boston manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers, thoughts turned to Tolstoy’s final novel, ‘Hadji Murad,’ about Chechen rebels fighting Russian imperialism. Benjamin Lytal checks in on the master’s tale of anti-heroism and betrayal.

On Friday, while CNN was making constant reference to the Tsarnaev brothers’ attempt “to go out in a blaze of glory,” a micro-meme lit up social media: didn’t Leo Tolstoy have a novel about Chechnyan rebels, called Hadji Murad? He does: it was his last, a thin book that everyone should read. While it offers few overt parallels to a case of 21st century terrorism, Tolstoy’s novel sets the stage for the Chechen grievance-and tribal dysfunction. But what is more piercing, when Dzokhar Tsarnaev’s image is haunting the public eye, is Tolstoy’s insight into the dire symbiosis between heroic desires and boyish innocence.

Tolstoy would have been the first to reject an idea like “going out in a blaze of glory.” In battle scenes he was a master of anticlimax: perhaps the best-remembered moment in all of War and Peace is young Nikolai Rostov’s first cavalry charge: knocked from the saddle by a bullet the bewildered twenty-year-old turns tail: “They’re not after me! They can’t be after me! Why? They can’t want to kill me! Me. Everybody loves me!'” Like, one suspects, many a hunted young man-boy, Nikolai is haunted by “all the love he had from his mother, from his family and his friends.” He can’t reconcile such a background with all the trouble he has gotten into.

Tolstoy was a complicated man, however. He understood glory, even in its shallowness. Maxim Gorky tells the story, in his priceless Recollections, of Tolstoy’s reaction to two proud young cuirassiers, walking down the street in their shining armor. As they approached, he cursed them: “What magnificent idiocy! They’re nothing but circus animals trained with a stick . . . ” But as they passed, Tolstoy gazed on admiringly: “How beautiful they are! Ancient Romans, eh, Lyovushka?”

Tolstoy’s 1904 novel begins with a fifteen-year-old boy staring at the eponymous hero. “Everyone in the mountains knew Hadji Murad, and how he slew the Russian swine.” Betrayed by the Chechnyan chieftain, Shamil, Murad is at the novel’s beginning a fugitive, wrapped in a burka. The boy can’t stop staring at him-indeed, the boy’s “sparkling eyes, black as ripe sloes” contain all the sickly-sweet potential of a desperate boy’s life. Several chapters later the boy’s village, where Murad had taken refuge, will be razed by Russian troops.

The Russians, no less than the Chechnyans, are eager to get a look at Murad. Forced by his feud with Shamil to defect, he arranges to ride over to the Russians: the officer who takes him into custody has no translator, and has to gesture and smile. Murad smiles back, “and that smile struck Poltorátsky by its childlike kindliness. . . . He expected to see a morose, hard-featured man; and here was a vivacious person, whose smile was so kindly that Poltorátsky felt as if he were an old acquaintance. He had but one peculiarity: his eyes, set wide apart, gazed from under their black brows attentively, penetratingly and calmly into the eyes of others.” The much-feared Murad charms the Russians. They give him a translator and allow him to pray at the appointed times. “He is delightful, your brigand!” reports an officer’s wife. Tolstoy is very sensitive to the way we look at our babyfaced enemies: our outward condescension, our inner relief, our deluded, liberal belief that we already know them.

It is strange that Tolstoy, by this time a guru of peaceful resistance who would inspire Ghandi, wrote his final novel about a hero who kept multiple daggers on his person. To be clear: neither Murad nor the other Chechnyans in Tolstoy’s book are terrorists. They are rebel insurgents defending their homeland against Russian invaders, who want to annex the Caucasus in order to connect their empire to Georgia. Murad hopes that the Russians will give him an army that he might march against Shamil. He dreams about how he would “take [Shamil] prisoner, and revenge himself on him; and how the Russian Tsar would reward him, and he would again rule over not only Avaria, but also over the whole of Chechnya.” Most Chechnyans in this book are sworn to some form of political violence. But it is usually directed at other Chechnyans: theirs is a world of mutually recognized blood feuds. It is a function of their myopic passion that they think they of the Russian Empire as a pawn in their game.

As with War & Peace or Anna Karenina, Tolstoy built Hadji Murad out of multiple plots, which he cycles between for cunning, highly-contrastive effect. But because Hadji Murad is only 100 pages long, its structure is more obvious, even flashy. Ludwig Wittgenstein, of all people, admired it. It has the cold, distilled clarity of late work. Critic John Bayley reads the book as a fantasy, for Tolstoy, of certainty: the ruthless Murad being the opposite of the Tolstoy who, dying at the Astapovo railway station repeated over and over, “I do not understand what it is I have to do.” But the book must also be read as a study in just this kind of indecision. Fit into its 100 pages is every viewpoint: Tolstoy fully characterizes and motivates everyone from Tsar Nicholas I (a useless letch) to individual soldiers-like Butler, a good man heartbreakingly addicted to gambling, or Avdeev, whose death opens up a startling sidelight on his peasant parents-to several of Murad’s disciples (notably shy Eldár, with his ram’s eyes) to Shamil himself.

In so much context, anybody’s brave death basically has to be meaningless. If Murad is a hero, perhaps Bayley is right: it is simply because he is resolute. Tired of waiting on the Russians to make up their minds about his cause, he rides out with his disciples one day, shakes his escort, and makes for the mountains. However, in trying to cut across a flooded rice field, he and his friends are bogged down. They decide to hide, and sleep through the night. Meanwhile a peasant tips off the army. At dawn, Murad finds a line of Russians advancing on one side. On the other-and this is the decisive tactical fact-are Chechnyan fighters who have betrayed him.

With the right soundtrack, in the hands of a Hollywood director, it could have been a blaze of glory. But we know that Murad’s life is no longer glorious. He has spent the entire novel in the waiting rooms of Russian generals. The decision to cross the rice field seems stupid, meaningless. Tolstoy is a master of anticlimax. Apocalypse is not, as some terrorists have it, now. If his final novel presents a more balanced view of imperialist politics than even Heart of Darkness (with which it was contemporary), it is because Tolstoy knows there are no climaxes: conflicts like this one will drag on forever.

Ultimately, Tolstoy cares less about glory than about another theme: He’s interested in the way that childhood haunts heroism. Murad’s head is cut off and carried from camp to camp: “The shaven skull was cleft, but not right through, and there was congealed blood in the nose. . . . Notwithstanding the many wounds on the head, the blue lips still bore a kindly, childlike expression.” The Russians who had befriended Murad turn away, shocked.

It is just before his final, rebellious escape, that Murad meditates on his own childhood-and on that of his son, whom he fatefully, tragically wants to rescue. He is reminded of a song, one his mother composed at his birth, addressed to his father:

“Thy sword of Damascus-steel tore my white bosom;

But close on it laid I my own little boy;

In my hot-streaming blood him I laved; and the wound

Without herbs or specifics was soon fully healed.

As I, facing death, remained fearless, so he,

My boy, my dzhigit, from all fear shall be free!”

**All quotes are from Aylmer Maud’s translation of Hadji Murad (Orchises: Alexandria, VA, 1996).

By Dan Beeton

17 April 2013

@ Americas Blog

Opposition protests turned deadly on April 15, 2013, with at least seven people having been reported killed and over 61 others injured as opposition groups reportedly burned the homes of PSUV leaders, community hospitals, and mercales (subsidized grocery stores), attacked Cuban doctors, attacked state and community media stations, and threatened CNE president Tibisay Lucena and other officials.

Violence is likely to continue on April 16, 2013, as both Capriles and Maduro have called for their supporters to demonstrate in the streets. Maduro and other senior government officials have condemned the acts and have warned that the opposition is attempting a coup d’etat. PSUV legislators have suggested they may pursue legal action against Capriles for promoting instability.

The campaign of violent protest, in conjunction with opposition candidate Henrique Capriles’ refusal to recognize the election results, represents the first major extra-legal destabilization attempt by Venezuela’s opposition since the failed coup in 2002 and oil strike in 2003. It is also significant in that the US is backing Capriles’ position, thereby helping to provoke conflict in Venezuela — even though most Latin American nations and many other governments around the world have congratulated Maduro on his victory and called for the results to be respected.

The opposition strategy is predictably divisive, however. Factions within Venezuela’s opposition have long opposed extra-legal and especially violent methods of attempting to force change. Some in the opposition have also hinted that Capriles’ cries of “fraud” are not credible. Opposition-aligned CNE rector Vicente Diaz has said that, while he supports a full audit of the votes, he has no doubt in that the results given by the CNE are correct. Diaz made comments to this effect on opposition station Globovision on April 15, 2013; the TV hosts then quickly concluded the interview.

Opposition blogger Francisco Toro, meanwhile, has criticized the opposition strategy of crying fraud, noting that, if any such fraud exists, it will be found in the 54 percent audit of the votes that the CNE conducts as a routine verification for each election.

Toro writes:

Listen, I understand how “count every vote” is an appealing slogan: bumperstickable and easy to understand and hard to resist.

It’s also a red herring: the evidence of fraud, if fraud happened, isn’t some exotic species out there that you have to go out and hunt. The evidence of fraud, if fraud did happen, is already in the thousands of paper-based hand-tally reports from the “hot audit” now in the hands of opposition witnesses all over the country. That hot audit has [been] done as a matter of routine in a randomly-selected 54% of all voting tables on election night after every vote since 2005, and includes at least one table in every voting center in the country. MUD’s job now — and it’s not a trivial one — is to put all those tally-sheets under one roof, key them into a computer, and check.

It is unclear exactly how such fraud could have been committed, given the safeguards in Venezuela’s electoral process, and few media outlets seem interested in pressing the Capriles campaign for answers.

Foreign media reports, while downplaying the extent of the violence in opposition protests, have also noted that Capriles and the members of the opposition who back him risk delegitimizing themselves by refusing to accept the results and waging a protest campaign in response. Reuters reported today:

The strategy could backfire if demonstrations turn into prolonged disturbances, such as those the opposition led between 2002 and 2004, which sometimes blocked roads for days with trash and burning tires and annoyed many Venezuelans.

A protracted fight also could renew questions about the opposition’s democratic credentials on the heels of their best showing in a presidential election, and just as Capriles has consolidated himself as its leader. “Where are the opposition politicians who believe in democracy?” Maduro said on Tuesday.

It is also noteworthy that three opposition legislators, Ricardo Sanchez, Carlos Vargas, and Andres Avelino, publicly broke with Capriles last month, decrying what they described as a plan to stoke instability by refusing to accept the election results, and use students as “cannon fodder” in a violent protest campaign. While this did get some scattered attention in Venezuela at the time, it was regrettably ignored by major foreign media outlets.

Dan Beeton is International Communications Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Follow Beeton on Twitter @Dan_Beeton. This article was first published in CEPR’s Americas Blog on April 16, 2013 under a Creative Commons license.