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Introduction

The mounting threat of a US-Israeli military attack against Iran is based on several factors including: (1) the recent military history of both countries in the region, (2) public pronouncements by US and Israeli political leaders, (3) recent and on-going attacks on Lebanon and Syria, prominent allies of Iran, (4) armed attacks and assassinations of Iranian scientists and security officials by proxy and/or terrorist groups under US or Mossad control, (5) the failure of economic sanctions and diplomatic coercion, (6) escalating hysteria and extreme demands for Iran to end legal, civilian use-related uranium enrichment, (7) provocative military ‘exercises’ on Iran’s borders and war games designed for intimidation and a dress rehearsal for a preemptive attack, (8) powerful pro-war pressure groups in both Washington and Tel Aviv including the major Israeli political parties and the powerful AIPAC in the US, (9) and lastly the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (Obama’s Orwellian Emergency Decree, March 16, 2012).

The US propaganda war operates along two tracks: (1) the dominant message emphasizes the proximity of war and the willingness of the US to use force and violence. This message is directed at Iran and coincides with Israeli announcements of war preparations. (2) The second track targets the ‘liberal public’ with a handful of marginal ‘knowledgeable academics’ (or State Department progressives) playing down the war threat and arguing that reasonable policy makers in Tel Aviv and Washington are aware that Iran does not possess nuclear weapons or any capacity to produce them now or in the near future. The purpose of this liberal backpedaling is to confuse and undermine the majority public opinion, which is clearly opposed to more war preparations, and to derail the burgeoning anti-war movement.

Needless to say the pronouncements of the ‘rational’ warmongers use a ‘double discourse’ based on the facile dismissal of all the historical and empirical evidence to the contrary. When the US and Israel talk of war, prepare for war and engage in pre-war provocations – they intend to go to war – just as they did against Iraq in 2003. Under present international political and military conditions an attack on Iran, initially by Israel with US support, is extremely likely, even as world economic conditions should dictate otherwise and even as the negative strategic consequences will most likely reverberate throughout the world for decades to come.

US and Israeli Military Calculations on Iran’s Capability

American and Israeli strategic policy makers do not agree on the consequences of Iran’s retaliation against an attack. For their part, the Israeli leaders minimize Iran’s military capacity to attack and damage the Jewish state, which is their only consideration. They count on their distance, their anti-missile shield and protection from US air and naval forces in the Gulf to cover their sneak attack. On the other hand, US military strategists know the Iranians are capable of inflicting substantial casualties on US warships, which would have to attack Iranian coastal installations in order to support or protect the Israelis.

Israel intelligence is best known for its capacity to organize the assassination of individuals around the world: Mossad has organized successful overseas terrorists acts against Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese leaders. On the other hand Israeli intelligence has a very poor track record with regard to its estimates of major military and political undertakings. They seriously underestimated the popular support, military strength and organizational capacity of Hezbollah during the 2006 war in Lebanon. Likewise, Israel intelligence misunderstood the strength and capacity of the Egyptian popular democratic movement as it rose up and overthrew Tel Aviv’s strategic regional ally, the Mubarak dictatorship. While Israeli leaders ‘feign paranoia’ – tossing clichés about ‘existential threats’– they are blinded by their narcissistic arrogance and racism, repeatedly underestimating the technical expertise and political sophistication of their Arab and regional Islamic foes. This is undoubtedly true in their facile dismissal of Iran’s capacity to retaliate against a planned Israeli air assault.

The US government has now overtly committed itself to supporting an Israeli assault on Iran when it is launched. More specifically, Washington claims it will come to Israel’s defense ‘unconditionally’ if it is “attacked”. How can Israel avoid being ‘attacked’ when its planes are raining bombs and missiles on Iranian installations, military defenses and support systems, not to mention Iranian cities, ports and strategic infrastructure? Moreover, given the Pentagon’s collaboration and coordinated intelligence systems with the Israel Defense Forces, its role in identifying targets, routes and incoming missiles, as well as integrated weapons and ordinance supply chains will be critical to an IDF attack. There is no way that the US can dissociate itself from the Jewish State’s war on Iran, once the attack has begun.

The Myths of ‘Limited War’: Geography

Washington and Tel Aviv claim and appear to believe that their planned assault on Iran will be a “limited war”, targeting limited objectives and lasting a few days or weeks – with no serious consequences.

We are told Israel’s brilliant generals have identified all the critical nuclear research facilities, which their surgical air strikes will eliminate without horrific collateral damage to the surrounding population. Once the alleged ‘nuclear weapons’ program is destroyed, all Israelis can resume their lives in full security knowing that another ‘existential’ threat has been eliminated. The Israeli notion of a war, limited in ‘time and space’, is absurd and dangerous – and underlines the arrogance, stupidity and racism of its authors.

To approach Iran’s nuclear facilities Israeli and US forces will confront well-equipped and defended bases, missile installations, maritime defenses and large-scale fortifications directed by the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Armed Forces. Moreover, the defense systems protecting the nuclear facilities are linked by civilian highways, airfields, ports, and backed by a dual purpose (civilian-military) infrastructure, which includes oil refineries and a huge network of administrative offices. To ‘knock out’ the alleged nuclear sites will require expanding the geographic scope of the war. The scientific-technological capacity of the Iranian civilian nuclear program involves a wide swath of its research facilities, including universities, laboratories, manufacturing sites, and design centers. To destroy Iran’s civilian nuclear program would require Israel (and thus the US) to attack much more than research facilities or laboratories hidden under a remote mountain. It would require multiple, widespread assaults on targets throughout the country, in other words, a generalized war.

Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stated that Iran will retaliate with a war of equivalence. Iran will match the breadth and scope of any attack with a corresponding counter-attack: ‘We will attack them at the same level as they attack us’. That means Iran will not confine its retaliation to merely trying to shoot down US and Israeli bombers in its airspace or launch missiles at offshore US warships in its waters but will take the war to equivalent targets in Israel and in US-occupied countries in and around the Gulf. Israel’s ‘limited war’ will become a generalized war extending throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Israel’s current delusional fetish about its elaborate missile defense system will be exposed as hundreds of high-powered missiles are launched from Teheran, Southern Lebanon and just beyond the Golan Heights.

The Myth of Limited War: Time Frame

Israeli military experts confidently expect to polish off their Iranian targets in a few days – some might think a mere weekend – and perhaps without the loss of even a single pilot. They expect the Jewish state will celebrate its brilliant victory in the streets of Tel Aviv and Washington. They are deluded by their own sense of superiority. Iran did not fight a brutal, decade-long war against the US-supplied Iraqi invaders and its western/Israeli military advisers, to just turn over and passively submit to a limited number of air and missile attacks by Israel. Iran is a young, educated mobilized society, which can draw on millions of reservists from across the political, ethnic, gender, religious spectrum, galvanized in support of their nation under attack. In a war to defend the homeland all internal differences disappear to confront the unprovoked Israeli-US attack threatening their entire civilization – its 5000-year culture and traditions, as well as its modern scientific advances and institutions. The first wave of US-Israeli attacks will lead to ferocious retaliation, which will not be confined to the original areas of conflict, nor will any such act of Israeli aggression end when and if Iran’s nuclear research facilities are destroyed and some of its scientists, technicians and skilled workers are killed. The war will continue in time and extend geographically.

Multiple Points of Conflict

Just as any US-Israeli attack on Iran will involve multiple targets, the Iranian military will also have a plethora of easily accessible strategic targets. Though it is difficult to predict exactly where and how Iran will retaliate, one thing is clear: The initial US-Israeli strike will not go unanswered.

Given Israeli-US supremacy in long and medium range sea and air power, Iran will probably rely on short-range objectives. These would include the highly valued US military facilities and supply routes in adjoining terrain (Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan) and Israeli targets with missiles launched from Southern Lebanon and possibly Syria. If a few Iranian long-range missiles escape the Jewish State’s much vaunted ‘anti-missile dome’, Israeli population centers may pay a heavy price for their leaders’ recklessness and arrogance.

The Iranian counter-strike will lead to an escalation by US-Israeli forces, extending and deepening their air and sea war to the entire Iranian national security system – military bases, ports, communication systems, command posts and government administrative centers – many in densely populated cities. Iran will counter by launching its greatest strategic asset: a coordinated ground attack involving the Revolutionary Guards together with their allies among the Iraqi Shia troops, against US forces in Iraq. It will coordinate attacks against US facilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan with the growing nationalist-Islamic armed resistance.

The initial conflict, centered on so-called military objectives (scientific research facilities), will spread rapidly to economic targets, or what US and Israeli military strategists refer to as “dual civilian-military” targets. This would include oil fields, highways, factories, communications networks, television stations, water treatment facilities, reservoirs, power stations and administrative offices, such as the Defense Ministry and headquarters of the Republican Guard. Iran, faced with imminent destruction of its entire economy and infrastructure (which occurred in neighboring Iraq with the unprovoked US invasion of 2003), would retaliate by blocking the Straits of Hormuz and sending short range missiles in the direction of the principle oil fields and refineries of the Gulf States including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, a mere 10 minute distance, crippling the flow of oil to Europe, Asia and the United States and plunging the world economy into deep depression.

It should not be forgotten that the Iranians are probably more aware than anyone in the region of the total devastation suffered by Iraqis after the US invasion, which plunged that nation into total chaos and devastated its advanced infrastructure and civilian administrative apparatus, not to mention the systematic obliteration of its highly educated scientific and technical elite. The waves of Mossad-sponsored assassinations of Iranian scientists, academics and engineers are just a foretaste of what the Israelis have in mind for Iran’s outstanding scientists, intellectuals and highly skilled technical workers. Iranians should have no illusions about the Americans and Israelis who seek to thrust Iran into the brutal dark ages of Afghanistan and Iraq. They will have no more role in a devastated Iran than their counterparts had in post-Saddam Iraq.

According to US General Mathis, who commands all US forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, ‘an Israeli first strike would be likely to have dire consequences across the region and for the United States there’ (NY Times, 3/19/12). General Mathis “dire cost” estimate only takes account of the US military losses, likely several hundred sailors on warships within missile distance of Iranian gunners.

However the most delusional and self-serving assessment of the outcome and consequences of an Israeli air attack on Iran, emanates from top Israeli leaders, academics and intelligence experts, who claim superior intelligence, superior defenses and supreme (if also racist) insight into the ‘Iranian mind’. Typical is Israeli Defense Minister Barak who boasts that any Iranian retaliation will at worst inflict minimal casualties on the Israeli population.

The ‘Judeo-centric’ view of re-ordering the balance of power in the region, which is prevalent in leading Israeli war circles, overlooks the likelihood that war will not be decided by Israeli air strikes and anti-missile defenses. Iran’s missiles cannot be easily contained, especially if they arrive several hundred a minute from three directions, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and possibly from Iranian submarines. Secondly, the collapse of its oil imports will devastate Israel’s highly energy dependent economy. Thirdly, Israel’s principle allies, especially the US and the EU, will be severely strained as they are dragged into Israel’s war and find themselves defending the straits of Hormuz, their army garrisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their oil fields and military bases in the Gulf. Such a conflict could ignite the Shia majorities in Bahrain and in the strategic oil-rich provinces of Saudi Arabia. The generalized war will have a devastating effect on the price of oil and the world economy. It will provoke the fury of consumers and workers rage everywhere as factories close and powerful shocks throughout the fragile financial system result in a world depression.

Israel’s pathological ‘superiority complex’ results in its racist leaders consistently overestimating their own intellectual, technical and military capabilities, while underestimating the knowledge, capacity and courage of their regional, Islamic (in this case Iranian) adversaries. They ignore Iran’s proven capacity to sustain a prolonged, complex multi-front defensive war and to recover from an initial assault and develop appropriate modern weaponry to inflict severe damage on its attackers. And Iran will have the unconditional and active support of the world’s Muslim population, and perhaps the diplomatic backing of Russia and China, who will obviously view an attack on Iran as another dress rehearsal to contain their growing power.

Conclusion

War, especially an Israeli-US war against Iran is indissolubly linked to the asymmetrical US-Israeli relationship, which sidelines and censors any critical US military and political analysis. Because Israel’s Zionist power configuration in the US can now harness US military power in support of Israel’s drive for regional dominance, Israeli leaders and most of their military feel free to engage in the most outrageous military and destructive adventures, knowing full well that in the first and last instance they can rely on the US to support them with American blood and treasure. But after all of this grotesque servitude to a racist ,isolated country, who will rescue the United States? Who will prevent the sinking of its ships in the Gulf and the death and maiming of hundreds of its sailors and thousands of its soldiers? And where will the Israelis and US Zionists be when Iraq is overrun by elite Iranian troops and their Iraqi Shia allies and a generalized uprising occurs in Afghanistan?

The self-centered Israeli policy-makers overlook the likely collapse of the world oil supply as a result of their planned war against Iran. Do their Zionist agents in the US realize that as a result of dragging the US into Israel’s war, that the Iranian nation will be forced to set the Persian Gulf oilfields ablaze?

How cheap has it become to ‘buy a war’ in the US? For a mere few million dollars in campaign contributions to corrupt politicians, and through the deliberate penetration of Israel-First agents, academics and politicians into the war-making machinery of the US government, and through the moral cowardice and self-censorship of leading critics, writers and journalists who refuse to name Israel and its agents as the key decision makers in our country’s Mid East policy, we head directly toward a war far beyond any regional military conflagration and toward the collapse of the world economy and the brutal impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people North and South, East and West.

By James Petras

7 April 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals.

Plans to move entire communities and put them in townships would deprive them of their livelihood and land rights

Beer-Sheva, Israel – “It is not every day that a government decides to relocate almost half a per cent of its population in a programme of forced urbanisation,” Rawia Aburabia asserted, adding that “this is precisely what Prawer wants to do”.

The meeting, which was attempting to coordinate various actions against the Prawer Plan, had just ended, and Rawia, an outspoken Bedouin leader who works for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, was clearly upset. She realised that the possibility of changing the course of events was extremely unlikely and that, at the end of the day, the government would uproot 30,000 Negev Bedouin and put them in townships. This would result in an end to their rural way of life and would ultimately deprive them of their livelihood and land rights.

Rawia’s wrath was directed at Ehud Prawer, the Director of the Planning Policy Division in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office. Prawer took on this role after serving as the deputy director of Israel’s National Security Council. His mandate is to implement the decisions of the Goldberg Committee for the Arrangement of Arab Settlement in the Negev, by offering a “concrete solution” to the problem of the 45 unrecognised Bedouin villages in the region.

An estimated 70,000 people are currently living in these villages, which are prohibited by law from connecting any of their houses to electricity grids, running water or sewage systems. Construction regulations are also harshly enforced and in this past year alone, about 1,000 Bedouin homes and animal pens – usually referred to by the government simple as “structures” – were demolished. There are no paved roads in these villages and it is illegal to place signposts near the highways designating the village’s location. Opening a map will not help either, since none of these villages are marked. Geographically, at least, these citizens of Israel do not exist.

History

The State’s relationship with the Bedouin has been thorny from the beginning. Before the establishment of the state of Israel, about 70,000 Bedouin lived in the Negev. Following the 1948 war, however, only 12,000 or so remained, while the rest fled or were expelled to Jordan and Egypt.

Under the directives of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, many of the remaining Bedouin were uprooted from the lands they had inhabited for generations and were concentrated in the mostly barren area in the north-eastern part of the Negev known as the Siyag (enclosure) zone. This area comprises one million dunams [one dunam = 1,000m 2 ], or slightly less than ten per cent of the Negev’s territory. Through this process of forced relocation, the Negev’s most arable lands were cleared of Arab residents and were given to new kibbutzim and moshavim , Jewish agriculture communities, which took full advantage of the fertile soil.

After their relocation and up until 1966, the Bedouin citizens of Israel were subjected to a harsh military rule; their movement was restricted and they were denied basic political, social and economic rights. But even in the post-military rule of the late 1960s, many Israeli decision makers still considered the Bedouin living within the Siyag threatening and occupying too much land, so, despite the relocation that had been carried out in the 1950s, the state decided to find a better solution to the “Bedouin problem”.

The plan was to concentrate the Bedouin population within semi-urban spaces that would ultimately comprise only a minute percentage of their original tribal lands. Over the course of several years, government officials met with Bedouin sheikhs and reached agreements with many of them. In a gradual process, spanning about 20 years, seven towns were created – Tel-Sheva, Rahat, Segev Shalom, Kusaife, Lqya, Hura and Ar’ara.

In some cases, Bedouin were already living where the town was built, but the large majority of the Bedouin were relocated once again and moved into these Bedouin-only towns. Some did it of their own volition, while others were forced. The price that most families had to pay for their own displacement was hefty: renouncing the right to large portions of their land and giving up their rural way of life.

For many years following the establishment of each town, the Bedouin residents were not allowed to hold democratic elections and their municipalities were run by Jewish officials from the Ministry of Interior. The towns also rapidly turned into over-crowded townships, with dilapidated infrastructure and hardly any employment opportunities. Currently, all seven townships, which are home to about 135,000 people, are ranked one on the Israeli socio-economic scale of one (lowest) to ten (highest), and are characterised by a high unemployment, high birth rates and third-rate education institutions.

After years of indecision, the government appointed Prawer to try, yet again, to solve the “Bedouin problem” once and for all. His mandate is to relocate the Bedouin who had been unwilling to sign over their property rights and remained in unrecognised villages. The government’s justification for not recognising these villages is that they are relatively small (ranging from a couple of hundred to several thousand people) and are scattered across a large area, all of which makes it difficult, in the government’s view, to provide them with satisfactory infrastructure. In the name of modernism, then, the government wants to concentrate the Bedouin in a small number of towns.

Wadi al Na’am

After meeting Rawia, I drove to Wadi al Na’am, an unrecognised Bedouin village located about 20 minutes south of my house in Beer-Sheva. I wanted to ask some of the people there what they think of Prawer’s Plan.

Along the highway, I passed literally hundreds of Bedouin dwellings made from tin panels, scrap wood and canvas. Chicken, sheep, goats and donkeys adorned the terraces. I was again struck by Bedouin wheat pastures because they are not irrigated, and the height of the stalk depends on the amount of rain that falls during a given year; it is easy to identify a Bedouin pasture because the stalk is miniscule when compared with “Jewish” wheat, which receives plenty of water.

Although I had been to Wadi al Na’am a few times before, I suddenly felt unsure about where I was supposed to turn off the highway and called Ibrahim Abu Afash to ask for directions. “Don’t you remember,” he said, “at the road sign pointing towards the electricity plant take a left and I will wait for you on top of the hill.”

I followed Ibrahim’s Subaru on dirt roads for about ten minutes until we reached his shieg , a large tent towering over a concrete floor covered with rugs, a row of mattresses and pillows scattered along the perimeter. In the middle of the tent, there was a hole in the concrete, with an iron pot of tea simmering over burning coals. Ibrahim sat on a mattress next to his brother Labad and right behind them were a few young men smoking Israeli cigarettes and drinking tea.

Ibrahim is the sheikh of Wadi al Na’am. When he was young he served as a scout for the Israeli military, which may explain why his Hebrew is better than mine. After a few niceties, he cut to the point.

“I met Prawer and he is a good man,” he said, and then added that “often good men, do bad things.”

“The fact that Wadi al Na’am, like many other unrecognised villages, is located right under electricity grids and next to central water pipes and that we were never allowed to connect our homes to these basic services is no doubt a criminal act of discrimination.”

“You know,” he continued, “in the past two decades, several dozen single-family Jewish farms have been established throughout the Negev and more recently, ten new Jewish satellite settlements have been approved and will be constructed on Bedouin land near the Jewish town Arad. Incidentally, at least two unrecognised Bedouin villages, al-Tir and neighbouring Umm al-Hiran, are due to be emptied of their combined 1,000 residents to make way for these new Jewish communities.”

Ibrahim did not mention that in the northern Negev there are already 100 Jewish settlements scattered about, each one home to an average 300 people, but he nonetheless managed to underscore that Prawer’s scheme is biased at its very core. And even though he never came out and said that the true motivation behind the plan is the desire to Judaise the land, it is obvious that this is indeed the objective. There is no other feasible explanation for why the state does not relent and legalise the unrecognised villages.

The Bedouin as a threat

As he was formulating the plan, Ehud Prawer met many Bedouin in order to understand the complex issues involved in trying to provide a solution to the unrecognised villages. Years of service within Israel’s security establishment have led him, however, to relate to Bedouin less as individual bearers of rights and more as a national risk that needs to be contained.

Working closely with Prawer are a few people who, like him, were for many years part of one of Israel’s security arms. His right hand man, Doron Almog, is a retired military general, while Yehuda Bachar, chairman of the Directorate for the Coordination of Government and Bedouin Activities in the Negev, was a senior officer in Israel’s police force. Not coincidentally, before submitting the plan to the government, Prawer asked Yaakov Amidror, the Director of the National Security Council, to provide his stamp of approval.

The fact that the life experiences of almost all of the people responsible for providing a solution for the unrecognised Bedouin orbited around issues of security is not a minor matter, since for them the Bedouin are first and foremost an internal threat. The “Bedouin problem”, accordingly, has little to do with rights and much more to do with managing risks.

Algorithm of expropriation

Ironically, the plan Prawer drafted and the proposed law based on the plan do not really address the problems of these villages.

“If the state is so adamant about not recognising the villages in their existing locations, I would have at least expected Prawer to state clearly that the government will build a specific number of villages and towns for the Bedouin, to specify exactly where they will be located, and to promise that they will be planned so as to take into account the Bedouin’s rural form of life,” Hia Noach, the Director of the Negev Co-existence Forum, explained in an interview.

“Instead, the plan, which will soon become law, focuses on creating an algorithm for dividing private property among the Bedouin, while discussing in a few ambiguous sentences the actual solution for the unrecognised villages. Isn’t it mysterious that the plan dealing with the relocation of the Bedouin does not include a map indicating where the Bedouin will be moved to?”

Prawer’s algorithm is an extremely complex mechanism of expropriation informed by the basic assumption that the Bedouin have no land rights. He is aware that, in the 1970s, as Israel was relocating Bedouin to townships, about 3,200 Bedouin filed petitions to the Justice Ministry, claiming rights over property that had belonged to their family for generations.

All in all, they petitioned for a million and a half dunams, of which 971,000 were claims regarding property belonging to individuals, and the remaining half a million dunams were land that had been used by communities for pasture. Over the years, the Ministry of Justice has denied claims relating to two thirds of the land, which means that, currently, property claims amounting to about 550,000 dunams, or four per cent of the Negev’s land, are still waiting to be settled.

Prawer’s plan aims to settle all the remaining petitions in one fell swoop. Ironically, though, his underlying assumption is that all such claims are all spurious. At the very end of the government decision approving the Prawer Plan (Decision 3707, September 11, 2011), one reads:

“The state’s basic assumption over the years … is that at the very least the vast majority of the claimants do not have a recognised right according to Israeli property laws to the lands for which they have sued … By way of conclusion, neither the government decision nor the proposed law that will be brought forth in its aftermath recognise the legality of the property claims, but rather the opposite – a solution that its whole essence is ex gratia and is based on the assumption of the absence of property rights.”

The strategy is clear: Take everything away, forcing the Bedouin to be grateful for any morsel given back. And this, indeed, is how Prawer’s algorithm of expropriation works.

First, only land that is disputed (meaning land that families filed suit for 35 years ago) and that a family has lived on and used consecutively (as opposed to pasture areas that have been collective) will be compensated with land, but at a ratio of 50 per cent. So if a person has 100 dunams, lived on this land and planted wheat on it for the past three-and-a-half decades, this person will be given 50 dunams of agricultural land. Most of this newly “recognised land” will not be located on the ancestral lands, but at a location wherever the state decides.

Second, cash compensation for land that had been petitioned for, but held by the state and therefore not used by Bedouin will be uniform, regardless of the location of the land and whether or not it is fertile, remote or attractive.

Third, the rate of compensation will be about 5,000 shekels ($1,300) per dunam, a meagre sum considering that half a dunam in a township such as Rahat costs about 150,000 shekels ($40,300). The cost of a plot is important, since the families will have to buy plots in the towns. If a Bedouin landowner has five or six offspring, by the time he buys plots for the family, he will be left with little, if any, land for agricultural use. Finally, Bedouin who filed land claims and do not settle with the state within five years will lose all ownership rights.

To where?

Hia Noach estimates that of the existing 550,000 dunams of unsettled land claims, about 100,000, which is less than one per cent of the Negev’s land, will stay in Bedouin hands after the Prawer Plan is implemented. But this, she emphasises, is only part of the problem. Another central issue has to do with the actual relocation. Where will the Bedouin be moved to and to what kind of settlement? These are precisely the questions Ehud Prawer is yet to answer.

One detail that has become public knowledge is that the unrecognised Bedouin will be relocated east of route 40, which is the Negev’s more arid region situated close to the southern tip of the occupied West Bank. While this part of Prawer’s plan is reminiscent of Ben Gurion’s strategy of concentrating the Bedouin within certain parameters in order to vacate land for Jews, it may be the case that there is something more sinister at hand. If there are ever one for one land swaps with the Palestinians in the West Bank, what could be more convenient for the Jewish state than handing over some parched Negev land with a lot of Bedouin on it?

Regardless of what the Bedouin think about this scheme, the government is going ahead with the plan and has decided to allocate about $2bn for relocating 70,000 Bedouin. Incidentally, this is more or less the same sum that was allocated for relocating the 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The government has also stated that about $300m will be allotted to the existing townships, indicating that at least some of the Bedouin will be moved to these dilapidated municipalities.

It is unclear how people accustomed to living off agriculture and raising sheep will make ends meet once they are forcefully relocated. This is not merely a theoretical concern, considering that the majority of Bedouin who moved to the first seven towns never succeeded in socialising to more urban life. There are talks that three more towns will be created, but if history is any indication, it is unlikely that these will be any better suited for the Bedouin’s rural form of life.

Before leaving Wadi al Na’am, I asked Ibrahim what he thinks will happen if they do not reach an agreement with the government. He paused for a moment and then replied that he does not want to think about such an option, adding that “they will not put us on buses and move us, they will simply shut down the schools and wait. When we see we cannot send our children to school we will ‘willingly’ move”.

This is how forced relocation becomes voluntary and how Israel will likely represent it to the world.

This article first appeared in Al Jazeera. A shorter version of the article also appeared in the London Review of Books.

By Neve Gordon

3 April 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Neve Gordon is the author of Israel’s Occupation . He can be reached through his website .

UN HRC votes 36-1 to probe Israeli Settlements. China & Russia FOR, United States AGAINST UN rights body launches probe into Israeli settlements. (Reuters) – The United Nations launched an international investigation into Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, with the United States isolated in voting against the initiative brought by the Palestinian Authority.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/03/22/un-israel-settlements-idINDEE82L0I920120322

UN Panel uses the strongest language to date to highlight Israeli racism and system of discrimination

United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), was “appalled” by Israel’s racial segregation policies and that an advanced version of an upcoming CERD report indicates that racial prejudice can be found in almost every facet of Israeli life.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/116872593/CERDCISRCO14-16

Defense of Children International-Palestine branch: Bound, Blindfolded and

Convicted: Children held in military detention

http://www.dci-palestine.org/sites/default/files/report_0.pdf

Pictures from Land Day events around the world (inspiring)

http://gm2j.com/main/gmj-photos/

Our video of the Land Day event in Bethlehem was watched by hundreds but some indicated problem seeing content.  Here it is again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U1qQVqVnsM

More videos of Land Day events

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=339Txk8sfNY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bfJQSLnujw

UPDATE: Mustafa Barghouti stable after being struck in head at Qalandiya; Palestinian protester reports Barghouti attacked by fellow protesters

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/03/mustafa-barghouti-stable-after-being-struck-in-head-by-teargas-canister-at-qalandiya-israelis-claim-palestinians-attacked-him.html

The Global March on Jerusalem–from Bethlehem by Skip Schiel

http://skipschiel.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/with-an-open-heart-photos-stories-from-palestine-israel-the-global-march-on-jerusalem-from-bethlehem/

Stay Human, Get engaged, Come visit Palestine

http://bienvenuepalestine.com/

http://welcometopalestine.info/

http://www.palestinejn.org

By Mazin Qumsiye

3 April 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

http://qumsiyeh.org

The search for the political truth will always be a difficult task even in our times, when science has placed in our hands a huge amount of knowledge. One of the most important was the possibility to know and study the fabulous power of the energy contained in matter.

The person who discovered that energy and its possible use was a peaceful and amiable man who, despite being against violence and war, asked the United States to develop it. The US president back then was Franklin D. Roosevelt, a man who had adopted a well-known anti-fascist stand; he was the leader of a country that was going through a deep crisis and helped to save the nation by adopting strong measures that earned him the hatred of the extreme right of his own class. Today, that State imposes on the world the most brutal and dangerous tyranny ever known to our fragile species.

The news received from the US and its NATO allies refer to their misdeeds and those of their accomplices. The most important cities in the United States and Europe are the theatre of continued pitched battles between demonstrators and a well-trained and well-fed police, equipped with armored cars and helmets, beating and kicking and throwing gases against women and men, twisting the hands and the necks of people, young and old, showing to the world the coward actions that are committed against the rights and the lives of the citizens of their own countries.

How much longer these barbaric acts would last?

I will not expand on this, since these tragedies will continue to be seen, more and more, on television and in the entire press; they will be like the daily bread that is denied to those who have less. I will just quote the news received today from an important western news agency:

“Much of the coast of Japan in the Pacific Ocean could be flooded by a tidal wave of more than 34 meters (112 feet) that would be generated if a powerful earthquake hits its coastline, according to revised estimates of a government panel.

“Any tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9 earthquake in the Nankai Trough, which extends from the main Japanese island of Honshu to the southern island of Kyushu, could reach 34 meters high, the committee said.

“A previous estimate in 2003 estimated that the maximum height of the wave would be less than 20 meters (66 feet).

“The Fukushima plant was designed to withstand a tsunami of 6 meters (20 feet), less than half the height of the wave that hit the plant on March 11, 2011.”

But, there are no reasons to worry. Another piece of news dated two days ago, on March 30, could give us some peace of mind. It was published by a really well informed media. I’ll summarize it in just a few words: “If you were a soccer player, and Arab sheik or an executive of a big multinational, what kind of technology would make you sigh?

“Recently, some famous luxury shops in London inaugurated an entire section dedicated to technology-lovers with bulging wallets.

“One million dollar TV sets, Ferrari camcorders and individual submarines are some of the fetish to delight millionaires.”

“The one million dollar TV set is the crown jewel.”

“In the case of ‘Apple’, the company has committed to deliver its new products on the same day they are launched in the market.”

“Let us suppose that we have left our mansion and we are already tired of hanging around with our yacht, limousine, helicopter or jet. We still have the choice to buy an individual submarine or a submarine for two persons.”

The offer goes on to advertise cells with stainless steel casings; 1.2 GHz and 8G memory processors; NFC technology to make payments through cell phones and Ferrari camcorders.

Capitalism, compatriots, is a truly wonderful thing! Maybe it is our fault that not every citizen has its own private submarine at the beach.

It was them, not me, who mixed up the Arab sheiks and the executives of the big transnationals with the soccer players. The latter, at least, entertain millions of persons and are not enemies of Cuba; I should state that very clearly.

By Fidel Castro Ruz

3 April, 2012

@ Cuba Debate

Fidel Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party’s foundation in 1961 until 2011

“Oh the ship set out from England, and they were not far from shore.

When the rich refused to associate with the poor,

So they put them down below, where they’d be the first to go,

It was sad when that great ship went down.” (folksong)

On April 15, 1912, almost exactly 100 years ago, the RMS Titanic sank on her maiden voyage, after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. She carried 2,223 passengers, among whom were some of the wealthiest people in the world, accommodated in unbelievable luxury in the upper parts of the ship. Available for the pleasure of the first class passengers were a gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries, luxurious restaurants and opulent cabins. Meanwhile, below, crammed on the lower decks below the water line, were about a thousand emigrants from England, Ireland and Scandinavia, seeking a new life in North America. The Titanic carried only lifeboats enough for 1178 people, but the ship had so many advanced safety features that it was thought to be unsinkable.

Why does the story of the Titanic fascinate us? Why was an enormously expensive film made about it? Why has a cruse ship recently retraced the Titanic’s route? I think that the reason for our fascination with the story of the Titanic is that it serves as a symbol for the present state of modern society. We are all in the great modern ship together. On top are the enormously rich, enjoying a life of unprecidented luxury, below the poor. But rich and poor alike are in the same boat, headed for disaster – surrounded by the miracles of our technology, but headed for a disastrous collission with environmental forces, the forces of nature that we have neglected in our pride and arrogance.

Te ancient Greeks were very conscious of the sin of pride – “hubris”, and it played a large role in their religion and literature. What the Greeks meant can be seen by looking in Wikipedia where the following words appear:

“Hubris means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality, and an overestimation of one’s own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power…. The word is also used to describe actions of those who challenged the gods or their laws, especially in Greek tragedy, resulting in the protagonist’s fall. ”

“…loss of contact with reality, and overestimation of one’s own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power…”? Can we recognize this today? I think that we can.

Suggestions for further reading

1. Adams, Simon, “Eyewitness, Titanic”, DK Publishing, New York, (2009).

2. Aldridge, Rebecca, “The Sinking of the Titanic”, Infobase Publishing, New York, (2008).

3. Cairns, Douglas L., “Hybris, Dishonour and Thinking Big”, Journal of Helenic Studies, 116, 1-32, (1966).

4. Fisher, Nick, “Hybris: a study in the values in honour and shame in ancient Greece”, Aris & Phillips, UK, (1992).

By John Scales Avery

16 April, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist noted for his research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. Since the early 1990s, Avery has been an active World peace activist. During these years, he was part of a group associated with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. Presently, he is an Associate Professor in quantum chemistry at the University of Copenhagen

Saudi Arabia’s ruling clique is dying off. It may be up to the new defense minister to guide the kingdom through a turbulent Middle East.

The senior members of the Saudi royal family are looking increasingly frail, and the buzz in the Gulf is that there will be not just one, but two, changes in the kingdom’s leadership during the course of the next year. Although there is no fixed succession plan if that comes to pass, the newly minted defense minister, Prince Salman, looks well-placed to ascend to the throne.

The evidence suggests that Saudi Arabia’s current ruling clique is on its last legs. This week, the 89 year-old King Abdullah presided over the usual meeting of the council of ministers from the vantage point of his own palace in Riyadh rather than travelling to the council building. Propped in his chair, a cushion supporting his back, he looked as uncomfortable personally as he probably was politically with the state of the Arab world. It grieves him that Syria, a country with which he has family ties, is in such bloody turmoil, and it infuriates him that Washington does not share his view of the danger of Iran.

Within a day or so, the Saudi heir to the throne, the 79 year-old Crown Prince Nayef, is due to return home after more than a month away from the kingdom. He initially went to Morocco on “vacation,” but within a week traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, for “routine” medical tests, before flying to Algeria. Such an itinerary — and an absence of photographs of him since leaving Cleveland — has raised speculation that he is unwell. In recent months, he has added a stick to his wardrobe and regained a steroidal puffiness, renewing speculation that cancer, probably leukemia, has returned after an apparent respite of several years.

A leadership role is increasingly being taken by Prince Salman, 76 years old, who was promoted to minister of defense last November after the death of then Crown Prince Sultan. The pages of Saudi newspapers have been filled in recent weeks by reports and photos of Salman visiting military units across the country. And last week, Salman visited London in a major demonstration of Riyadh’s close military supply relationship with Britain, its most significant link after its longtime alliance with the United States. Bypassing the U.S. capital may conveniently have served to emphasize that the White House’s apparent obsession with political change in the Middle East is not appreciated in Riyadh.

As a former long-serving governor of the kingdom’s giant Riyadh province, Salman is a known quantity to visiting international dignitaries. However, his familiarity with the world does not make him particularly worldly. Soon after the terror attacks on New York and Washington of September 2001, he told newly arrived U.S. ambassador Robert Jordan that the 9/11 attacks had been a “Zionist plot.” The ambassador had to request that CIA briefers visit the kingdom to convince royals, including then Crown Prince Abdullah and Prince Nayef, otherwise (Jordan related this story during a 2009 Washington Institute Policy Forum).

Even if Salman soon becomes king, he is no spring chicken himself — there is no certainty that he will reign for long. Salman himself has had at least one stroke — photographs suggest that, despite physiotherapy, his left arm does not work as well as his right. And his line of the family has a history of health problems: His two oldest sons, Fahd and Ahmad, have already died as a result of heart problems. Saudi Arabia — the world’s largest oil exporter and a leader in the Islamic world and Arab world — may still be a long way from political stability.

As nature abhors a vacuum, so does the Saudi royal family. But who will emerge as next in line after Salman is even murkier. There are another half-dozen sons of the kingdom’s founder, King Abdul Aziz, a.k.a. Ibn Saud, but no obvious contender. Prince Muqrin, the youngest son and the current intelligence chief, is one candidate, though his lack of good maternal pedigree (she was a Yemeni concubine) is probably a major handicap.

In the interim, it is easy to predict an increasingly open rivalry between the sons of Abdullah, Nayef, and Salman. The king’s most prominent but not eldest son, Mitab, is the head of the national guard; a younger son, Abdul Aziz, is deputy minister of foreign affairs. Crown Prince Nayef’s son Mohammed is the assistant minister of the interior, and well-respected for his counterterrorism prowess. Salman’s son, Abdul Aziz, is assistant minister of oil.

The machinery of government, however, remains largely in the hands of long-serving functionaries. During an interregnum, they can be relied on to at least — to choose an appropriate metaphor — keep the oil tanker on course. At King Abdullah’s side is Khalid al-Tuwaijri, the son of the late Abdul Aziz al-Tuwaijri, one of Abdullah’s closest associates. Each day, Khalid — dubbed the “uncrowned king” — receives or discerns instructions from his monarch. Another such figure is Musaid al-Aiban, a minister of state with a Harvard doctorate who now looks after the Yemen portfolio and who accompanied Salman to London.

The advanced age of Saudi Arabia’s ruling elite virtually ensures that the kingdom will undergo a series of leadership changes in the coming years, throwing an already troubled region into further turmoil. With Syria burning, Yemen in chaos, and Iran possibly inflamed by sanctions and diplomatic pressures, foreign capitals view Saudi Arabia’s immediate future with unsurprising nervousness.

BY SIMON HENDERSON

10 APRIL 2012

@ Foreign policy

Simon Henderson, the Baker fellow and the director of the Gulf and Energy Policy program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is author of After King Abdullah: Succession in Saudi Arabia.

Qalandia town and refugee camp, home to a notorious checkpoint separating Jerusalem from the northern West Bank, has a somewhat scary reputation as a place where the ‘shebab’ (young guys with over-active throwing arms) are likely to chuck stones in the direction of the soldiers/ police—no matter what their elders might ask of them—thereby giving their ‘targets’, although far out of throwing range, the excuse they’d be looking for to move from the merely unpleasant (‘skunk water’, tear gas, the generation of ear-splitting [at least for the under-thirty majority] noise, and the occasional ‘sound bomb’) to the injurious and potentially lethal ­ rubber-coated steel pellets euphemistically referred to as ‘rubber bullets’ and live ammunition. That’s where the March 30 Global March to Jerusalem (GFM2J) events for the Ramallah-area were scheduled to take place, and Ramallah was where I had decided to participate in the GM2J.

I arrived in Jerusalem on Wednesday morning (the 28th) and passed through passport control with none of the difficulties I’d imagined I might encounter due to the fact of my name having appeared as representing IJV-Canada on the March on at least four websites (well, five, if you count my own), not all of them friendly. Maybe the Shabak (Israeli secret police) don’t read all our internal communications, after all . . .) After spending the day visiting and e-mailing and sleeping , I ventured to enter Ramallah on Thursday. Again my apprehensions—”They’ll stop me at the check point and discover that I hold Israeli as well as Canadian citizenship and will either fine me for attempting to enter the forbidden-to-Israelis “Area A” or (far more likely) refuse me entry, at least until after the March”—were misplaced. In fact, the Palestinian bus I was riding in wasn’t even checked (apparently the common practice at that checkpoint, in that direction these days) and in I went..

The ISM media office /apartment where I was scheduled to spend the next couple of weeks being inundated with visiting activists, I got to stay, at least for a couple of days, with Neta Golan and her young and growing family (pictures in a future post, I promise).

There is no ISM ( International Solidarity Movement ) group as such in Ramallah, but for the GM2J-related demonstration today, about a dozen ISMers and friends of the ISM descended on the apartment that houses the ISM Media Office here from West Bank cities as far north as Nablus and Jenin and as far south as Hebron. The preparation meeting last night was well-run and extremely helpful, and included nonjudgemental self-evaluation of our ‘level of comfort’ with proposed roles in the demonstration, pairing up with ‘buddies’ to watch out for each other at the demo, formation of small affinity groups, and a role-play of ‘dearresting’ of self and others, including tips on ‘best practices’ from a couple of the more experienced activists (I’m talking about folks with months of residence in West Bank hotspots and multiple demos). I left that meeting much reassured, despite Qalandia’s reputation as a “hot spot” and history of wounded demonstrators.

In short supply, however—both at that meeting and as far as I couldd see, at the demonstration itself—were significant numbers of interrnationals, on a scale even minimally comparable to the many thousands who were expected to converge on the states bordering the Palestinian territories for the GM2J events; e.g., in Lebanon, Jordan, and possibly Syria. I don’t know what the situation was at other sites in the West Bank (not to mention Gaza), but Rana and I from Canada and a former ISMer from Scotland who was there on other business—and of course the dozen or so folks camped at the ISM office—were the only ones in evidence at Qalandia Refugee Camp today after noon-time prayers.

I haven’t yet heard or read detailed accounts of the other demonstrations, but the fact that only one fatality has so far been reported (despite multiple woundings, many of them at Qalandia) suggests that perhaps a combination of the numbers of internationals and the high media profile the multinational reporting generated for the GMJ may indeed have had the desired effect of making it safer for the Palestinian demonstrators.

Nonetheless, the dearth of internationals at Qalandia was a disappointment. Another disheartening aspect of today’s demonstration—besides this and the perhaps predictable period of stone-throwing by the abovementioned over-exuberant shebab (admonitions from Abdullah Abu Rahmah from Bil’in, and perhaps others, to stop notwithstanding), which led to the predictable response—was a fight witnessed by one of my seat-mates in the service-taxi back to Ramallah, between members of rival Palestinian factions over who would lead the march toward the checkpoint, in which an ambulance was damaged and its patient beaten (rumour has it that the patient in question was Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, leader of one of the ‘warring’ factions). This blog on the independent 972 Magazine site (http://972mag.com/land-day-at-qalandia-falls-flat/39695/) captures the feel of the demo at Qalandia accurately, at least as it felt to me.

My personal experience, by contrast, was a pleasant surprise. I had an attentive and reassuring “buddy” in the person of an experienced ISM organizer. I learned (also from her) that alcohol-impregnated hand-sanitizer wipes combined with a bandana or (in my case) a doubled-over T-shirt over one’s nose provided amazingly effective protection from the ultra-irritating form of teargas used in recent years (imagine mixing ‘regular’ tear gas with pepper spray and you about have it); and to my surprise, repeat exposures seemed to have a decreasing effect on me (or maybe the wind-aided fast dispersal of the gas was just doing its job), and I didn’t break and run. Maybe—just maybe—I might even chance the Friday the thirteenthh demo that will cap the upcoming Bil’in International Conference (April 10 ­ 13); or maybe I’ll just pay another visit to Beit Ummar and hope  this time to experience one of their purportedly stone-throwing-free demos.

Meanwhile, for an overview of Qalandia and some other demonsrations today, check out http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Land-Day and http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/03/201233018384736481.html

And this video clip from the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/thousands-protest-israel-gaza-man-killed-122/2012/03/30/gIQArKjplS_video.html

The rest of my Qalandia photos are at https://picasaweb.google.com/maxinekaufmanlacusta3/GM2JAtQalandia?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCLPG9dL4h7Hv7gE&feat=directlink

Maxine is a Canadian-Jewish peace activist and is author of the book, Refusing to be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation. She is a member of Peace for Life and was part of our Peace Pilgrimage and Solidarity Mission to Palestine in 2007.

The feasibility of a continued presence of international forces in Afghanistan has come into question following recent events in the country. Calls have been made by both Afghans and foreigners, encouraging international forces to leave. The nature and timing of a transition of control from international forces to Afghans has various influencing factors, including the Afghan presidential election in 2014.

Recent events in Afghanistan have fuelled speculation over the ability of international forces to continue their presence in the country until 2014. In January 2012, four American Marines in Helmand were shown in a video urinating on Afghan corpses. In February, in a case that appears to have been no more than exceedingly poor judgement, copies of the Qur’an were burnt, damaged and treated disrespectfully manner. In March, a US army staff sergeant in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province is believed to have killed seventeen individuals (many of them women and children) in a single night.

These events are extreme outliers that have captured the imagination of Afghans and foreigners alike, and seem to many to be a continuation of the past decade of war. In the perception of many Afghans, the difference between these extreme events and the ongoing more frequent violence of night raids, large military operations and so on seems marginal. A number of prominent international voices have called on the United States (and the forty-nine other countries serving in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition) to start leaving Afghanistan immediately. Their argument is that foreign forces are unable to play a positive role in Afghanistan, that they will be unable to start doing so, and that large numbers of lives and amounts of money are being spent to no avail.

Aside from this international discourse, there have also been calls from inside Afghanistan for international forces to leave – most loudly by the various groups that make up the insurgency. This is echoed to some extent by public opinion, although it is difficult to get an accurate reading of people’s attitudes in the current environment. The general themes of Afghan public opinion – as gathered from discussions with Afghans and by following civil society debate and media discourse – towards the foreign presence is a deep scepticism towards anyone’s promises. Outside the major cities, there is a severe lack of trust in international forces or in any overall positive vision of Afghanistan’s future. It seems that few are hopeful that Afghanistan will be better off five years from now.

A key metric that illustrates this is the number of Afghans leaving the country for neighbouring countries, and travelling further afield. This group includes a large number of children and youth. In fact, 2011 saw the highest number of such departures since the United States-led invasion began in 2001 – more than 30,000. This paper will assess the current staying power of the international presence in Afghanistan from a military and broader strategic perspective. To what extent are they able to continue to carry out their mission? What are the likely key milestones between now and 2014? And to what extent do the on-going discussions between the United States and the Taliban offer a way to make this transition period easier?

On paper, the transition or enteqal process has a number of benchmarks, some of which have already been reached. This year, Afghanistan will most likely sign the highly contested Status of Forces Agreement with the United States. The agreement provides a legal and practical framework for the US presence in Afghanistan after 2014. The central sticking point in the ongoing bilateral discussions has been the extent to which the US will be allowed to continue to operate out of bases in Afghanistan. Chicago will host a NATO conference in May, and this will be followed by a conference in Kabul. These are expected to affirm the ‘transition’ process and endorse its continued implementation. The upcoming US presidential election on 6 November will provoke intense speculation, hedging and political stasis within Afghanistan in the months leading up to it as all parties to the conflict predict how their fortunes may rise or fall depending on electoral outcomes. Afghanistan is scheduled to have its own presidential elections in 2014, although the precise dates and mechanics of that election remain unclear.

While ‘transition’ is regarded as a multilevel process, it appears primarily to be premised on a transfer of military control to Afghans. International military forces will be reduced and control of those areas from which international forces are withdrawn will fall to Afghan security forces (of whatever shape or form). This includes the army and police forces. This year, a number of private security companies that protect local and international programmes, offices and staff around the country are due to transition into the Afghanistan Public Protection Force (APPF). This has been delayed several times, however, and some entities will be exempt from the process. The militia forces that ISAF has been installing around the country – for example, in Kunduz, Kandahar and Helmand – will play a key part in this transition process and will mimic the Soviet withdrawal in the late 1990s. The issue of a political transfer of power will also come to the fore in 2014, when President Hamid Karzai is to hand over power to a new president after elections. The US will want to find a way to involve itself in this process in a useful way.

The various elements of this transition process have all been called into question over the past year. Each element is the subject of heated debate, as was seen during recent testimony by ISAF commander, General John R. Allen on 20 March. The factual basis for claims of progress as well as the nature of the process itself are still under debate.

The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and its ability to perform as required by the transition plan have repeatedly been challenged over the past year. The Afghan National Army is still only able to field only one battalion capable of operating independently. The use of militia forces – under a plethora of names and designations – has not been problem-free. These groups have been involved in the same human rights violations, corruption and uses of violence that they were set up in part to prevent. The Afghan government has yet seriously to tackle the issue of internal corruption, and attempts to block investigations have come from as high up as President Karzai himself. Also, in terms of their forward-planning, there are few indications that the US has started to anticipate the various possible scenarios surrounding the 2014 Afghan presidential elections, a milestone that it needs to start engaging with immediately.

This catalogue of doubt as to the efficacy of the international mission in Afghanistan is undeniable, but does it call into question the staying power of those forces? After all, previous years have also seen problems and mistakes, but international forces remained and even expanded their presence.

The Taliban and its affiliated groups continue to remain an issue, in part because their continued attacks make it difficult for NATO/ISAF to claim the upper hand. After all, the realities of the levels of violence only count if the population does not believe that these trend shifts are not going to be permanent or meaningful for their own lives and that of their children. The Taliban will likely attempt to demonstrate its continued ability to operate throughout the country, albeit through a continued emphasis on asymmetric tactics such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), assassinations and ’spectacular’ operations.

This is unlikely to be quantitatively different from attacks and threats that the international forces within Afghanistan have already faced. Even if we assume there will be more individual incidents of the type that we saw in recent weeks or even on the level of the border incident between US and Pakistani forces in November 2011, it is unlikely that the reaction to these would be such that international forces would have to accelerate their departure. Undoubtedly, it is the fact of their looming departure that itself plays a role in accentuating some of these disputes.

It is in this context that the ongoing, sometimes faltering, negotiation process is being held. The promise of negotiations with the insurgency is very much part of the US ‘transition’ strategy. There has been increasing talk about a political solution that potentially holds the promise of stopping the current downward spiral and which could not only prepare the ground for the withdrawal of foreign troops but even achieve much-desired stability in Afghanistan that will prevent the country from again becoming a terrorist haven. If they are left as they are, there is considerable doubt that the current Kabul government will remain viable and that the Afghan security forces will have the ability to control and counter the growing insurgency. Riddled with corruption and stripped of legitimacy by endemic election fraud, much of the central state seems to be plagued with internal conflict and is currently held together only by foreign actors. On the other hand, a potential political process that would see a change in the balance of power within the central state as well as on the local level will be met with considerable resistance from the incumbent elite.

While there might be incentives to find a political solution, there are also factions within both the insurgency and the Afghan government that are opposed to a settlement or to a substantial inclusion of the insurgency into the current political paradigm. Karzai has stressed that he seeks reconciliation but there are significant voices within the current administration that are not interested in any such process. While the ongoing capture-or-kill campaign is removing credible negotiation partners among the Taliban, the current Afghan government also lacks credibility. Time, however, is of the essence.

Moreover, the perception among the Taliban is that it is ‘winning’. Numerous military and political leaders have announced that the insurgency’s momentum has been reversed, but this does not reflect the perception of much of the general public – particularly in Afghanistan’s south and east but increasingly in the north as well. The underlying assumption of the US troop surge, that negotiations need to be held from a position of strength and that the Taliban should be forced to the negotiation table by military pressure, offers a bleak prospect for peace. A key incentive in the other direction can be found in the realisation that present conditions are a precursor for civil war. This prospect of a return to civil war – similar to that of the 1990s – offers an incentive for all participants in Afghanistan to begin working on a political settlement that could prevent this from becoming a reality.

The status of the US-Pakistani relationship is likely to play a key role in this process. While the two countries will likely remain caught in their false embrace – each needing the other but not caring much for the other at the same time – the extent of Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban’s operations could make a huge difference in terms of how active the group is between now and 2014. Pakistan retains the capacity to clamp down on the leadership, logistics and operational activities of the Afghan Taliban within Pakistan.

It is likely that the international transition plan will happen more or less on schedule, with all the relevant milestones achieved. There is a considerable amount of leeway for this to happen and even with all the problems noted above, 2014 will see an attempt on the part of all parties to the conflict (from the US to the Taliban) to declare victory. Indeed, both are already doing this. This is not to say that the ideal solution to Afghanistan’s problems is likely to be achieved by 2014; too much would have to change for that to be possible. Instead, the transition process offers a way out for the current large international presence within the country. From the group’s statements over the past year, it becomes clear that the discourse of those calling for reform is focused on several key issues: unemployment, housing, institutional reform and popular political participation, and the issue of prisoners of conscience and prisoners held without trial. This reformist discourse does not consider recent political decisions to be evidence of progress towards real political participation. Consequently, the recent decision on the participation of women was not celebrated, as the experience of women in these councils can at most be equal to that of their male predecessors, namely, the realisation of the ineffectiveness of the elected. Moreover, the decision came at a time when reform movements were campaigning to expand the powers of these councils and make them independent and fully-elected.

The lack of a path and a space through which women can engage in the political process renders decisions supporting women’s rights akin to a car with no road to drive upon. It can only remain still, hovering over the same spot. It will remain difficult to capitalise on these decisions in the confining context in which the elites – particularly the political and religious elites – are to be held responsible. Women will not be able to succeed and find the space to voice their demands and act to achieve them if they are not present and active in these institutions in ways that will help to push forward the renewal of religious thought, and find appropriate forms for the country’s political economy that will ensure a role for the individual citizen, whether man or woman. Any success for women in bringing about change in these two areas has the potential to reverberate more broadly, affecting the entire society and the network of social relations. If and when this is achieved, the restructuring of society will be one from which all will benefit.

By Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn

March 2012

@ Afro-Middle East Centre

Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn live in Kandahar, Afghanistan. They edited the autobiography of Taliban leader Abdul Salam Zaeef, My Life with the Taliban. In 2006, they founded AfghanWire.com to improve awareness of issues relating to Afghanistan through a newsletter and informational database.

Syrian Martyrs

The Embassy of the Syrian Arab Republic presents its compliments and in referring to the current situation in Syria, has the honour to provide the following information on the Syrian martyrs from civilians, military personnel, security forces, kidnapping, vandalism and robbery perpetrated by armed terrorist groups since the beginning of the crisis until 15th March, 2012   :

1.   Civilian martyrs                                                              :           3,211

2.   Police forces martyrs                                                      :           478

3.   Army and security forces martyrs (until 21.03.2012)      :           2,088

4.   Targeted assassination martyrs                                      :           106

5.   Women martyrs                                                               :           204

6.   Children martyrs                                                              :           56

Total number of Syrian martyrs                                             :           6,143

7.   Vehicles stolen                                                                :           2,256

8.   1,560 civilians, military personnel and security forces kidnapped, out of which 931 are unaccounted for.

Source: The Embassy of Syrian Arab Republican in Kuala Lumpur.

Syria’s murky, multi-level conflict continues to grow worse. So does public confusion here in the west as the US, British and some European media keep depicting Syria’s civil war as a simple passion play pitting the evil Asad regime in Damascus against mostly unarmed democratic protestors.

We saw this same one-dimensional, deceptive reporting recently in Libya that was designed to support foreign intervention. It’s as incomplete today about Syria as it was in Libya which, by the way, is turning into a dangerous mess.

My assessment based on reliable primary sources in Washington, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon:

Support for the Asad family’s Ba’ath regime, now in power for 41 years, is clearly slipping. But important sections of the armed forces, the 17 intelligence and security agencies, the powerful Alawai minority, most Syrian Christians, tribal elements and much of the commercial middle and upper class still back the Asad’s. In spite of intense western efforts to overthrow  him, Bashar Asad, a  mild-mannered former eye specialist, is still hanging on.

The US, Britain, France, and some conservative Arab allies have funded and armed the Syrian rebellion from its start a year ago. In fact, the US has been funding anti-Asad groups since the mid 1990’s. Arms and munitions are said to be flowing to Syria’s rebels through Jordan and Lebanon. Extreme rightwing groups in Lebanon, funded by western and Arab powers and Israel, are playing a key role in infiltrating gunmen and arms into northern Syria.

The Sunni Muslim Brotherhood has once again risen against the Alawi-dominated regime in Damascus. In 1982, this writer was outside the Syrian city of Hama when government forces crushed a Brotherhood uprising, killing an estimated 10,000 people and razing part of the city with heavy artillery.

Enter the jihadis. Recently, small numbers of al- Qaida veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have entered Syria and are using car bombs to try to destabilize the government. Current al-Qaida leader, Dr Ayman al- Zawahiri, has called for all-out war against the Asad regime.

Interestingly, the US, France and Britain now find themselves in bed with the very jihadist forces they profess to abhor – but, of course, whom they used in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and, lately, in Libya.

Add to this dangerous mix growing numbers of local militias in Syria who are battling one another and committing many of the atrocities against civilians, recalling Iraq and Lebanon’s bloody civil wars.

Washington’s key objective in Syria is to overthrow the Asad regime in order to injure its closest ally, Iran. There is so much anti-Iranian hysteria now in the US, that any blow against the Islamic republic is seen as good. Former US fears of a chaotic, post-Asad Syria are now forgotten in the rush to undermine Iran, by destabilizing Syria. Republicans, led by Sen. John McCain, are baying for war against Syria as President Barak Obama tries to hold back the war hawks.

Israel, whose influence in Washington in this election year is unprecedented, is stoking war fever against Syria and Iran. Israel is delighted that the crises with both nations have eclipsed the issue of Palestine and of Syria’s Golan Heights, which were illegally annexed by Israel in 1981. Golan supplies on third of Israel’s total water. Israel’s objective is to see Syria splintered into feuding cantons like today’s Iraq.

France’s right wing, led by President Nicholas Sarkozy’s UMP party, has long desired to re-establish France’s former colonial influence in Lebanon and Syria. The Asad regime in Syria has been a thorn in France’ side for four decades, particularly so in Lebanon, which Syria still insists is a historical part of Syria. France hopes to duplicate in Syria its success in stirring up and profiting from the uprising in Libya.

Russia has been defending the Asad regime and is determined not to be outfoxed in Syria by a false “humanitarian” intervention as it was in Libya. China is similarly cautious. But both are slowly lessening their former staunch support of Damascus as seen by last week’s UN Security Council call for a new peace plan in Syria.

A cease fire is urgently needed. Syria must stop using heavy weapons in urban areas. But outside powers  must also stop supporting violent armed groups that Damascus calls “terrorists.” There are no clean hands in Syria.

by Eric Margolis

28 March 2012

@ ericmargolis.com

copyright Eric S. Margolis 2012