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11 June, 2011

Countercurrents.org

“It has something to do with something called marijuana. I believe it is a narcotic of some kind.”

So said congressman Rayburn to congressman Snell’s question: “What is this bill about?”

That was way back in the summer of 1937, when congress was being asked to essentially outlaw a drug they knew nothing about, marijuana. But realistically, marijuana had little to do with it. The real issue was non-drug industrial hemp.

Industrialists were like scarab beetles, rolling around this giant ball of profit protection, and they ran right over the domestic hemp industry. Hemp presented way too much competition, too much threat to entrenched and entrenching profits. Took a pretty big ball of dung, but the scarabs rolled it expertly, professionals. Except for several years of heavy production during WWII, under the feds’ “Hemp for Victory” campaign—which told the truth about hemp and helped us win the war…not a single acre of hemp has been legally grown in America since 1937. Seventy-four years and counting. That was one enormous ball of dung. The entire hemp-prohibition infamy could be called a dung deal, especially as related to the common good.

What could have possessed grown men, congressmen even, into making it a crime to grow one of the oldest, and the most valuable crop in history? Essentially the same thing that keeps the common good in government crosshairs today, the hideous mechanics of humanity’s ultimate modern plague: obsession with corporate profits—virtually the opposite of government Of, By and For the people.

Also in 1937, in its annual report to stockholders, the DuPont company gloated over “radical changes” regarding the federal government’s conversion of taxation authority into a tool for forcing acceptance of “sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization”. They went so far as proclaiming that, after massive farm foreclosures of the depression, farmers were inhibiting America’s industrial progress. They should move to industrial cities so farmland could be consolidated into huge agribusinesses controlled by corporations—along with all other means of industrial production. Farming should be primarily for food.

DuPont’s president, Lammont DuPont, even ordained: “Synthetic plastics find application in fabricating a wide variety of articles, many of which in the past were made from natural products. The chemist has aided in conserving natural resources by developing synthetic products to supplement or wholly replace natural products.”

Yes, a world of synthetics…mother lode patents, petroleum alchemy, pollution, extinction, poverty and disease, deforestation, global warming; fascism, globalization, perpetual wars for dwindling resources; corporate centralization of all means of production—even global food supply. Concentration of money, of power, of control—power to the corporations, slavery to the people. Conversion of largely rural, agricultural America into an urban, industrial nation. Landfills brimming with immortal waste leaching death into our living systems…until death do us part.

The reason scarabs were in such a frenzy over hemp in 1937 was clearly revealed by Popular Mechanics magazine—a full six months after! the American hemp industry was effectively dead and buried via trademark corporate chicanery. The February cover story for Popular Mechanics in 1938 was titled, “The New Billion-Dollar Crop”. Imagine how much money a billion dollars was in 1938. The article told the truth, praising the advent of new machinery that would drastically reduce hemp’s labor demands; and praising a crop so valuable that in the early days of America, for farmers with a certain threshold of acreage in production, it was illegal not to grow hemp.

Imagine the chagrin of people involved in our burgeoning hemp industry upon learning that hemp had been banned in America because of “The Killer Weed from Mexico”, by the illegal Marijuana Tax Act. By law, taxes are for raising revenue, not for molding behavior. But obviously—even more so today than ever before…upper echelons of power are above the law. Laws are for “small people”—unless they facilitate, as George Bush the elder said, speaking of certain clandestine federal operations, “The continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.”

And remember DuPont’s “…radical changes regarding the federal government’s conversion of taxation authority into a tool for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization”? What about the Constitution…or as George Bush the younger calls it, that “…goddamned piece of paper”?

As for the news, the New York Times reported on August 3, 1937, that “President Roosevelt signed today a bill to curb traffic in the narcotic, marihuana, through heavy taxes on transactions”. A dung deal. Industrial hemp strains of cannabis have zero drug potential, and are NOT “marijuana”, but…never mind. Competition slammed. Profits protected. Hemp threat eliminated.

The negative impact to the common good of America from seventy-four years of hemp prohibition is difficult to fathom. But in America, despite hundreds of years of florid rhetoric to the contrary, the common good is so…common. America is about winners, not commoners. And America is largely about service jobs and financialisation, not production—despite consumer spending being 70% of our Gross Domestic Product. We offshore as much production as possible to take advantage of slave labor markets, lax environmental protections, tax incentives…. And we sink ever deeper into debt as former middle-class citizens, their jobs off-shored, become street people, and millionaires become billionaires, and billionaires shed their skins.

Please forgive my digression, but I have found the term “common good” handy lately. Spokane’s congressional representative is a republican named Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Somehow two of my email addresses got on her mailing list. I fatigued over all the trumpeting of GOP efforts to take from the poor to give to the rich, and repeatedly tried to get off Cathy’s list without success. So I replied to one of her emails by simply asking her to define her position regarding the common good of America. Bingo, I’m off Cathy’s list. Haven’t heard from her in months.

Hemp has taught us many things about how power works in America, and our education continues. Hemp’s usefulness is truly remarkable; food, fuel, fiber, paper, plastics—using modern technology, hemp offers an estimated 25,000 natural products. Hemp needs no petrochemical fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides, and is actually beneficial to the soil. Hemp is nature’s premier powerhouse for converting sunshine and water (and carbon dioxide while breathing out oxygen) into an astonishing range of superior, eco-friendly products. Perhaps one of the worst things about hemp is that, for the bulk of our perception-managed population, it sounds too good to be true. Well, for about the last 12,000 years hemp has proved true—yet for the last seventy-four years in America, growing hemp has been a crime. That’s the real crime.

The U.S. hemp industry is currently ringing up $400 million in annual retail sales—all of it on imported raw materials! The number of good, non-transferable (cannot be “off-shored”) jobs hemp prohibition costs us is shameful. We need solid jobs. We need to create value. Other economic benefits of hemp, along with the environmental benefits, are all but incalculable.

The idea of a “jobless recovery” is ludicrous, the term itself an oxymoron. Parasitic Wall Street casino killing off the middle class is also killing off America. Globalization is shoving us back toward feudalism. Dark-ages redux. Privatization is poisonous…and the way things are going, how long do you think it will be until some corporation privatizes the atmosphere, and we have to pay to breathe? Hemp is a powerful antidote to globalization and privatization. No other plant can actually empower entire regional economies…the antithesis of globalization. Farmers could regain the status they deserve, growing the world’s most useful crop and selling it to local markets that sell it to local processors that sell their products to locally-owned businesses that sell to local citizens that work in the hemp industry—all with the aid of public banking. All the wealth stays where it belongs—with the people that create it. This could all be happening across America right now, putting hundreds of thousands of people to work creating wealth. But…the same movers and shakers standing most in the way of America returning to hemp slither in the same den as other parasitic snakes that ripped off the whole world with complex toxic debt bombs rated as AAA investment-grade securities while at the same time profiting on bets that the toxins would foul the entire global economy—THEN when their toxic bombs burst, slithered to Congress dripping crocodile tears and begging for (and getting) $23.7 trillion! (1) of taxpayer blood via threats of global financial meltdown, and threats of martial law in America. The whole sordid nightmare represents the greatest upward transfer of wealth in history. Troubled Asset Relief Program…doesn’t paying federal taxes make you proud to be American?

So much for the “shining city upon the hill”. Too bad we commoners lack the spirit to fight for hemp and get back some shine….

Of course democrats and republicans are simply two sides of the same corporate-toady coin, despite apparent differences especially regarding the common good. In 2005, republican representative from Texas Ron Paul was chief sponsor of the “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2005”. The bill would have allowed farmers to grow industrial hemp—non-drug varieties of cannabis, differentiating between cannabis strains and setting limits on the amount of psychoactive THC allowed. Now, for the environment, the economy, the common good—for everything that deserves a future, that sounded too good to be true.

The bill died in committee.

Ron Paul tried again in 2007, 2009, and on May 12, introduced the “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011”. This time Ron Paul has twenty-two co-sponsors—and that’s where differences appear in the way democrats and republicans regard the common good; twenty of the co-sponsors are democrat, two of them republican. It’s the most co-sponsors Ron Paul has attracted so far. Sounds like hope? At this rate, perhaps in a few more decades such bills might even make it out of committee.

Chances even seem good for a democratic senator to introduce for the first time a companion bill in the Senate. But odds are overwhelming that the “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011” will die in the usual place: The Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

You might wonder why in hell an agricultural bill is going first to a committee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security. Well…sorry folks, this is America, and the bill is actually an entrenched-profits issue, common good against the ruling elite. We should all know by now what function hope has in America, but collective amnesia is epidemic. So….

Never mind.

And the ultimate clincher that scarabs might never be able to obliterate with their mighty balls, stark revealment of marijuana interdiction being an attack on hemp…it’s getting closer. Hemp was prohibited by prohibiting marijuana…but it is conceivable—even almost certain that eventually, marijuana will be legalized, but not hemp. The purported reason for banning hemp will disappear, but not the ban on hemp. Such is how power works in America. And amnesia.

The environmental benefits, the economic benefits, the major surge of job creation, the luxury of superior natural products—forget them and the countless other benefits to the common good of America; the impact to entrenched profits would be too great for the elite to ever allow hemp to be grown in America again. As long as the status quo is maintained, hemp will never have a chance.

We obviously need drastic changes to the status quo, but us commoners have a profound problem called apathy. Relentless perception management of mainstream corporate media (CorpoMedia) feeds the apathy, and amnesia. How are mainstream Americans ever supposed to learn the truth? How is the fact that we outnumber our primary oppressors nearly a million to one ever supposed to be seen clearly, and focused on as a platform for doing something…anything to correct problems such as hemp prohibition, and American imperialism being so vastly more important than us common Americans?

Hope is an elusive thing, unpredictable—just like us…we hope?

(1) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aY0tX8UysIaM

Rand Clifford’s novels Castling, Timing, Priest Lake Cathedral, and Voices of Vires are published by StarChief Press http://starchiefpress.com/ , and will be available soon as e-books.

11 June, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Many people around the world might have credulously or perhaps naively fallen in the trap of believing the tempting claims of the U.S. statesmen and politicians who say that their country is a “beacon of freedom” and a “pioneer of democracy.”

It’s a bitter reality that many of us have been defeated and overwhelmed by the propaganda of the U.S. mainstream media who incessantly attempt to make their audiences believe that democracy and freedom are originally American values and cannot be found anywhere else in the world, that all of the world nations need the United States to achieve these values and that the United States must resort to every instrument to export these home-made values to the rest of the world, including frequent military expeditions.

But what’s the reality on the ground? Who really knows about what’s taking place behind the scenes? How much difference is there between the United States which is trimmed and made neat to be put before the eyes of the international community and the United States which mercilessly and inexcusably deprives its own people of getting informed about the latest developments in the world? Isn’t it ironic that the same United States whose leaders always boast of democracy, freedom and equal opportunities set off media outlets to direct black propaganda against countries such as Iran while preventing its people from having access to the content of such media?

If you’re familiar with the conventional double standards and hypocrisy of the American type, you might have heard about the US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, popularly known as the Smith-Mundt Act.

This discriminatory and indefensible act which was first signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948 after getting approval by the 80th Congress is, in a nutshell, a regulation which allows the United States to establish and initiate media outlets which are aimed at non-American audiences in order to further the diplomatic and political objectives and interests of the U.S. overseas; however, these media outlets, including radio and TV stations, are unavailable to the U.S. citizens, and to put it more succinctly, it’s forbidden for them to have access to these media channels.

The legislation which was introduced in the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs at the request of State Department, authorizes the U.S. State Department to communicate to audiences outside of the borders of the United States through broadcasting, face to face contacts, exchanges, online activities, the publishing of books, magazines, and other media of communication and engagement. Funding for these activities comes from other legislation passed by the U.S. Congress called appropriations.

According to this law, the materials which are produced to be broadcast through certain American media outlets cannot and should not be disseminated and publicized domestically and can be only available to the members of Congress and academicians. With the concerted efforts of several U.S. Congressmen, the Act was amended to read: “no program material prepared by the United States Information Agency shall be distributed within the United States.”

However, it’s interesting to note that at the time of working on the compilation of the Smith-Mundt Act, fierce controversies had arisen among the congressmen, including a quarrel over how to “remove the stigma of propaganda” from this law, because even the U.S. lawmakers had come to the conclusion that it was an all-out replica of the propaganda machinery of the former Soviet Union and Nazi regime.

Seven radio and TV stations are covered by the Act, two of which are exclusively dedicated to Iran: Radio Farda and Voice of America. It means that the American citizens cannot watch the TV programs which VOA airs and listen to what the Radio Farda broadcasts. This clearly shows that the U.S. statesmen and politicians have predetermined and programmed plans for the nation of Iran and it’s on their agenda to sow the seeds of discord between different groups of Iranian nation by airing programs in which nothing can be traced but mere propaganda, falsification and fabrication.

A quick look at the performance of media outlets such as VOA and Radio Farda helps us comprehend that making the Iranian nation worried about the current situation of the country, spreading falsehood and untruth about the course of events and developments in the country and advertising the large-scale policies of the White House and the Israeli regime with regards to Iran are the main objectives of these state-run media which are sumptuously funded and excessively supported by the U.S. government.

According to the statistics released by Washington Post, the U.S. Congress has allocated an annual budget of $7 million to Radio Farda and by using this profuse amount of money, this soft war machine unremittingly produces and disseminates falsehood and mendacious propaganda against the nation of Iran.

Maybe, it may be necessary for the people of the United States to know where they taxes go and how their government spends on its unrelenting wars with the countries which don’t want to fall under the umbrella of U.S. hegemony.

The American people are deprived of listening to the propaganda of Radio Farda and VOA; however, it is vital for them to know that their government does not really represent a “beacon of freedom” nor does it have the features of a “pioneer of democracy” but is more of a propaganda machine programmed to wage wars and win profits.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian journalist

 

 

 

 

11 June, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Gaza: A “Hamas commander” drove a beat-up gray van in northern Gaza and theatrically spoke on his walkie-talkie as I sat in the passenger seat. The van was almost barren, save for the most basic equipment propelling it to move forward over the bumpy roads of an overcrowded refugee camp.

Iyad was not here to show me any militant training camp, or even to assess the damage that had befallen the impoverished Gaza Strip during Israel’s devastating war, Operation Cast Lead, which killed and wounded thousands in 2008-09. Scars of the damage sustained during the three-week onslaught are still visible throughout the Strip. Iyad was here to show me his latest personal project: a playground for refugee children.

At first glance, the “playground” did not seem impressive at all. All I noticed was a small plot of dirt jammed between two unsightly concrete buildings.

“So, what do you think?” asked Iyad, with a proud smile. His attempt at growing a full beard was not entirely successful, giving him a younger, albeit disheveled appearance.

“It’s impressive,” I replied, still trying to understand the nature of the accomplishment.

I learned later that the achievement was creating space out of the debris. At one time prior to December 2008, when an Israeli missile decided to drop in, a family had lived in this spot. The house had collapsed, and its residents became mere posters of mourned Palestinian faces adorning the walls of other houses in the neighborhood.

Iyad and few of “Shabab Al-Masjid” — youth of the mosque — cleared almost everything, using only their bare hands and other primitive means. The siege had made it nearly impossible to access modern technology to clear the uncountable tons of concrete scattered in and around Gaza as a result of the war. Cement remains a precious commodity in an area that needs building material above most other resources. People here somehow remain positive.

“And here will be a soccer field,” continued Iyad, who seemed to have no budget whatsoever, except the will of the “shabab”.

Predictably, Iyad’s residence is located in a refugee camp. What seemed to be a large crack around much of the house was in fact a mark left by an Israeli missile, which blew up most of the house. Iyad’s entire family — his brothers, their wives and about two dozen children — were watching TV in a room that miraculously managed to stay still as the house imploded. The neighbors rushed looking for dead and survivors, only to find everyone alive and well.

Iyad smiled in wonder.

When the unmanned drone began circling above his head, Iyad knew that the Israelis had located him. So he began running.

“I didn’t want them to know where I lived, so I began running without a clear sense of direction,” said Iyad, who reiterated that he always prepared himself for such a moment. “I am not scared of death. Life and death is in God’s hand, not some Israeli pilot, but I worried about my family.”

Then, Iyad’s house came down.

Since then, the house has been rebuilt, although in a haphazard way. New additions to the house stand above the deep cracks. There are no guarantees that the foundation is safe, or if the house is even inhabitable at all. Oblivious to war, death, unarmed drones and shaky foundations, the children are full of life.

Three of the boys in Iyad’s household carry the same name. It was the name of Iyad’s brother who was killed by an Israeli sniper as he protested the occupation during the First Palestinian Uprising (Intifada) of 1987. It was this very event that changed Iyad’s life forever. In a moment, the little boy had become a man, as expected of any “brother of a martyr”.

Iyad’s niece — a cute girl in a checkered dress — was asked to perform her nashid, a song she had learned in the street. She did so with untold enthusiasm. The song referenced paradise and martyrs and “right of return,” and of children facing missiles with bare chests. The crowed clapped, and the girl huddled by my side bashfully. Perhaps she had not expected such a passionate response from her audience. She was five years old.

Iyad, who is now studying at a local Gaza university, already speaks of a Master’s degree and a teaching career. He also remains consumed by his playground and the challenges awaiting him and the “youth of the mosque” once the uneven ground is completely flattened.

His nieces and nephews sing for the martyrs, but they are also keen to do their homework. They discuss end-of-year exams with dread and excitement. All the boys are fans of Barcelona, and devotees of a man named Lionel Messi.

“When I grow up, I wanted to study physical education,” said one of the boys, a teenager of about 14. ‘I will specialize in soccer, just like Messi’s major at the University of Barcelona,’ he added excitedly.

I laughed, and so did everyone else.

– Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com

11 June, 2011

WSWS.org

Amid continuing protests, mounting state repression and escalating pressure from the US and the European powers, there are growing signs that Syria is sliding toward civil war. Already, with thousands of refugees flowing from northwestern Syria into Turkey and threats of Israeli intervention, the crisis of the Baathist regime is having an increasingly destabilizing impact on the entire Middle East.

The United States and its European allies are cynically seeking to exploit the popular uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to either break Damascus from its alliance with Iran or move toward a policy of regime-change. Even as Washington, London and Paris rain down bombs on Tripoli and other Libyan towns, killing and wounding thousands of civilians and soldiers, they sanctimoniously denounce Assad for killing his own people.

On Friday, Syrian state television announced that a military action had been launched against the rebellious town of Jisr al-Shughour in the northwest of the country 12 miles from the Turkish border. Up to 5,000 troops and dozens of tanks reportedly massed on the outskirts of the town, normally occupied by 50,000 inhabitants but now largely abandoned in advance of the expected assault. Some news sources said Syrian security forces were arresting some 3,000 men who had remained in the town.

Last Monday, the government claimed that armed men had killed 120 security personnel in the town the previous day and promised to retaliate. Many reports, however, indicate that there was shooting between forces loyal to Assad and a substantial number of police and soldiers who refused to fire on protesters and mutinied.

The Sunni town, located in an area with Christian and Alawite Muslim villages, has a history of opposition to the Baathist regime, which is dominated by members of the minority Alawite sect, including the Assad family. Some reports say that Sunni police began the rebellion by refusing to obey orders to fire into crowds of protesters from their Alawite officers.

In 1980, Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hefez al-Assad, sent troops into Jisr al-Slughour to put down an uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In advance of the government crackdown, a growing number of residents of Jisr al-Slughour and the surrounding region have sought refuge across the border in Turkey. Turkish media reported Friday that nearly 4,000 people had entered Turkey. The Turkish government on Thursday authorized the construction of two refugee camps that could hold up to 10,000 people. There are reports that Ankara fears the flow of refugees could turn into a flood of as many as 1 million Syrians.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday he would continue to allow Syrian refugees to enter Turkey and, in a marked shift from his previously close alliance with Assad, denounced the regime for “savagery” and suggested he might support a United Nations resolution condemning its actions.

More ominously, Turkish officials have refused to deny a report by the veteran journalist Robert Fisk published May 30 in the British daily the Independent that the Turkish military has drawn up plans to send several battalions of Turkish troops into Syria to carve out a “safe area” for Syrian refugees inside Syria itself. The plan is reportedly aimed at preventing a flood of Syrian Kurds into Turkey’s Kurdish region in the southeast of the country.

The assault on Jisr al-Shughour coincided with widespread anti-regime protests following Friday prayers, which were once again met with violent repression. At least 28 people were shot dead at rallies across the country.

The most deadly crackdown occurred in Maarat al-Numan, a village near Jisr al-Shughour that lies 33 miles south of Syria’s second city Aleppo on the highway to Damascus. Syrian helicopter gunships reportedly fired machine guns to disperse large anti-government protests, in the first reported use of air power against three-month-old uprising.

The Associated Press reported that Assad’s forces also fired tanks shells into the town after thousands of protesters overwhelmed security officers and burned the courthouse and police station.

Four people were reportedly killed by security forces in the Qabun district of the capital Damascus, while two more were slain in the Bosra al-Harir neighborhood of southern Daraa province, where the unrest began. Another five demonstrators were reported to have been shot dead in the coastal resort of Latakia and eleven killed in Idlib province.

Small demonstrations in Aleppo were reported for the first time since the unrest began.

In a sign of possible disarray, security forces pulled out of the central city of Hama overnight Thursday, allowing tens of thousands of protesters to overwhelm its downtown Assi Square. Last Friday, troops killed 67 protesters in Hama in one of the bloodiest incidents of the uprising.

Meanwhile, the Western powers stepped up their pressure on the Assad regime on two fronts. France and Britain, supported by Germany and Portugal, continued to push for a resolution in the United Nations Security Council condemning Syria for its repressive measures. The resolution, drafted by Paris and London, calls for the Syrian regime to carry out political reforms and release political prisoners, but stops short of calling for either military action or additional sanctions.

It does, however, demand “humanitarian” access to Syrians threatened by violence, a provision sufficiently broad and vague to serve as a pretext for future intervention.

With the support of Washington, the French and British are evidently seeking to obtain passage of a resolution that could be used as a wedge for further and more direct action. They face public opposition from two veto-wielding members of the Security Council, Russia and China. In addition, Brazil, South Africa and India have expressed reservations.

Meanwhile, another UN agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has weighed in against Syria. On Thursday, the IAEA governing board voted to report Syria to the Security Council over the country’s alleged attempt to build a secret nuclear reactor in its eastern desert.

The 35-nation board approved a Western-backed resolution accusing Syria of violating its nuclear treaty obligations by building the Dair Alzour reactor, which was destroyed by Israeli warplanes in September 20007. Rejecting years of denials by Syria, the IAEA concluded in a report last month that the site was “very likely” a partially constructed nuclear reactor intended for making plutonium bombs.

The resolution opens the way for UN sanctions or other punitive measures. The 17 to 6 vote reflected widespread opposition within the board of governors. The six “no” votes included those of Russia and China. Eleven countries abstained, while another was not in attendance.

While the US has to date stopped short of demanding Assad’s resignation, it has in recent days edged closer to that position. In line with recent statements by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a seminar in Brussels, “Whether Assad still has the legitimacy to govern his own country, I think is a question everyone needs to consider.”

 

 

11 June, 2011

The Palestine Telgraph

Gaza, (Pal Telegraph) – The Israeli siege continues to disturb different facets of the living conditions for the entire population of 1.7 million living in the Gaza Strip. With news that Egypt opened the Rafah border permanently, pressure on Gazans increased. The crossing didn’t open properly and Israel still control all commercial crossings. In addition, there are severe security measures that still hinder the process of travelling for thousands of Palestinians. Limited access of food, commodities and medications are still in effect. Further confounding the problems is the fact that Palestinian national unity has not achieved the factual results expected by the besieged people. Official Israeli sources, spokespersons and media outlets are seizing on all what they can to say that there is no siege in Gaza. Whilst, only the population of Gaza suffer the repercussions of the external and internal political problems.

Health sector paralyzed

According to Gaza’s health bodies and utilities, severe shortages are hitting the sector due to the continued closure. The shortages have led to a reduction in services, including surgeries. A number of patients are on the waiting list for urgent medical operations. According to Gaza’s health ministry, the medical storage will soon be depleted, which further endangers the lives of the innocent population.

Around 187 sort of medications are missed, as well as 190 types of medical requirement. In total, 50% of Gaza’s health and medical storage have evaporated. This shortage is endangering many patients especially those of cancer, Kidney diseases, heart, eyes, nerves and psychological diseases.

This problem has been taking place for years now, since the start of the Siege some 4 years ago. Medical convoys and shipments of medications brought by International NGOs have temporarily solved the problem in the past. .

International Investigation

According to the Lancet Magazine, the Norwegian Government sent two doctors on a health mission to Gaza in April 2011 to examine Gaza’s chronic shortage of medicines. The same magazine reported of a similar mission sent in 2009, after the war, and concluded similar results to the recent one.

The report says, ” The Gaza Strip still has a persistent drug shortage, despite some recent Israeli and Egyptian talks about easing the strict blockade that has left this crowded enclave isolated since July, 2007. A political rift between the Hamas-run Government of Gaza and Fatah officials in the West Bank hinders communication and coordination between the Palestinian health ministries—adding to the hardships already faced by patients in Gaza.”

It also added that Norwegian physicians Tone Hegna and Åse Vikanes followed the delivery of 200 pallets of medical supplies from Ramallah to Gaza in early February 2011. They confirmed that many drugs and basic disposables remain in short supply, and that a bad situation is made worse by inadequate storage, transport and incineration facilities.

People close to death

The health crisis in the Strip has increased the suffering of people, with some nearing death.

Anwar Nahid, 18, suffers from early diabetes. Her illness is rare at her age. The prescribed medications are missed such as insulin injections. The absence of the medications is affecting her severely, and blurred her vision.

“I’m sick with this disease for 5 years now. My father is jobless and I have 8 siblings. In many occasions, I find it hard to find the medicines I need. If I do, it is expensive and hard to obtain. My doctors are asking me to go for a specific food for diet purposes. But, I can’t afford to bring fruits and some vegetables as the prices are really high. I hope my father works again and I get my medications.” Said young Anwar.

Her mother added that Anwar has fainted many times and the doctors said she has entered a dangerous level. Anwar was injured in a car accident and her illness make her treatment harder, as diabetes slow the healing process. Doctors warn her of a potential stroke because of the effect of the diabetes on her blood.

Sameh A. Habeeb is editor of The Palestine Telgraph

Copyright © 2011 PT News

 

 

New York Times May 05 2011,

There is only one good thing about the fact that Osama bin Laden survived for nearly 10 years after the mass murder at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon that he organised.

Follow up:

And that is that he lived long enough to see so many young Arabs repudiate his ideology. He lived long enough to see Arabs from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen to Syria rise up peacefully to gain the dignity, justice and self-rule that bin Laden claimed could be obtained only by murderous violence and a return to puritanical Islam.

We did our part. We killed bin Laden with a bullet. Now the Arab and Muslim people have a chance to do their part — kill bin Ladenism with a ballot — that is, with real elections, with real constitutions, real political parties and real progressive politics.

Yes, the bad guys have been dealt a blow across the Arab world in the last few months — not only al-Qaeda, but the whole rogues’ gallery of dictators, whose soft bigotry of low expectations for their people had kept the Arab world behind. The question now, though, is: Can the forces of decency get organised, elected and start building a different Arab future? That is the most important question. Everything else is noise.

To understand that challenge, we need to recall, again, where bin Ladenism came from. It emerged from a devil’s bargain between oil-consuming countries and Arab dictators. We all — Europe, America, India, China — treated the Arab world as a collection of big gas stations, and all of us sent the same basic message to the petro-dictators: Keep the oil flowing, the prices low and don’t bother Israel too much and you can treat your people however you like, out back, where we won’t look. Bin Laden and his followers were a product of all the pathologies that were allowed to grow in the dark out back — crippling deficits of freedom, women’s empowerment and education across the Arab world.

These deficits nurtured a profound sense of humiliation among Arabs at how far behind they had fallen, a profound hunger to control their own futures and a pervasive sense of injustice in their daily lives. That is what is most striking about the Arab uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia in particular. They were almost apolitical. They were not about any ideology. They were propelled by the most basic human longings for dignity, justice and to control one’s own life. Remember, one of the first things Egyptians did was attack their own police stations — the instruments of regime injustice. And since millions of Arabs share these longings for dignity, justice and freedom, these revolutions are not going to go away.

For decades, though, the Arab leaders were very adept at taking all that anger brewing out back and redirecting it onto the United States and Israel. Yes, Israel’s own behaviour at times fed the Arab sense of humiliation and powerlessness, but it was not the primary cause. No matter. While the Chinese autocrats said to their people, “We’ll take away your freedom and, in return, we’ll give you a steadily rising education and standard of living,” the Arab autocrats said, “We’ll take away your freedom and give you the Arab-Israel conflict.”

This was the toxic “out back” from which bin Laden emerged. A twisted psychopath and false messiah, he preached that only through violence — only by destroying these Arab regimes and their American backers — could the Arab people end their humiliation, restore justice and build some mythical uncorrupted caliphate.

Very few Arabs actively supported bin Laden, but he initially drew significant passive support for his fist in the face of America, the Arab regimes and Israel. But as al-Qaeda was put on the run, and spent most of its energies killing other Muslims who didn’t toe its line, even its passive support melted away (except for the demented leadership of Hamas).

In that void, with no hope of anyone else riding to their rescue, it seems — in the totally unpredictable way these things happen — that the Arab publics in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere shucked off their fears and decided that they themselves would change what was going on out back by taking over what was going on out front.

And, most impressively, they decided to do it under the banner of one word that you hear most often today among Syrian rebels: “Silmiyyah.” It means peaceful. “We will do this peacefully.” It is just the opposite of bin Ladenism. It is Arabs saying in their own way: We don’t want to be martyrs for bin Laden or pawns for Mubarak, Assad, Gaddafi, Ben Ali and all the rest. We want to be “citizens.” Not all do, of course. Some prefer more religious identities and sectarian ones. This is where the struggle will be.

We cannot predict the outcome. All we can hope for is that this time there really will be a struggle of ideas — that in a region where extremists go all the way and moderates tend to just go away, this time will be different. The moderates will be as passionate and committed as the extremists. If that happens, both bin Laden and bin Ladenism will be resting at the bottom of the ocean

 

Published: June 14 2011 17:16 | Last updated: June 14 2011 17:16

‘I always like to be the underdog’: Abhisit Vejjajiva, Thai prime minister, faces a tight race next month, according to polls

Thailand’s beleaguered prime minister is facing potential defeat in next month’s elections at the hands of a man who has not set foot in the country for more than three years.

The July 3 ballot has become a referendum on the legacy of Thaksin Shinawatra, the controversial former prime minister who lost office in a 2006 military coup and now lives in Dubai to avoid a two-year sentence for corruption.

Despite his exile, Mr Thaksin, a telecommunications billionaire, has maintained an iron grip on the opposition Puea Thai, which is leading in opinion polls. Last month he engineered the appointment of his younger sister, Yingluck, as the party’s prime ministerial candidate.

But in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday, Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Eton and Oxford-educated prime minister, came out swinging, warning that a vote for the opposition Puea Thai party could extend the country’s already long record of political instability and accusing the party of misleading the electorate.

“There is a risk of instability. And you just have to ask why, as political parties, as representatives of the people, do you want to risk the country’s future just to whitewash one man?” he told the FT.

Mr Abhisit’s repeated warnings that Puea Thai’s push to clear the way for Mr Thaksin’s return could lead to further problems has become a regular mantra for the prime minister, which some interpret as a warning and others as a threat.

Rise to power

Abhisit Vejjajiva, 46, is the scion of a long line of doctors with connections to Thailand’s royal family. He was born in Newcastle, England, where his father was practising medicine, and went on to attend Eton and Oxford.

He became leader of the Democrat party in 2005, when it was in opposition.

He won the premiership in December 2008 in a parliamentary vote called after the pro-Thaksin government was dissolved by court order.

He is married to Pimpen Sakuntabhai, a lecturer. They have two children.

But Mr Abhisit is right that Mr Thaksin is at the heart of Thailand’s deep political divisions. Loved by his supporters for policies such as cheap healthcare and village loans, he is loathed by the country’s powerful establishment, who accuse him of corruption and hijacking the country’s democracy.

Those divisions were behind the 2006 coup that unseated Mr Thaksin. But they have refused to go away, and in April and May of last year they exploded into violence when the army moved in against thousands of Thaksin supporters who had taken over swaths of central Bangkok. At least 91 people died and almost 2,000 were injured in eight weeks of demonstrations.

Mr Thaksin has not hidden his agenda. He has described Mrs Yingluck, a political neophyte who until three weeks ago ran a property development company, as his “clone”. Some of her less charitable critics have dubbed her “Thaksin in a frock”, although she is substantially more photogenic than her brother.

Most of Thailand’s notoriously unreliable polls have the Democrats trailing Puea Thai – which translates as For Thais – and Mr Abhisit admitted that his party are 3-4 percentage points behind.

But he insisted that could serve as an advantage on the campaign trail. “They look OK to me,” he said of the polls. “It’s a tight race and I always like to be the underdog: it makes your people work harder.”

Mr Abhisit accused Puea Thai of camouflaging an agenda to rehabilitate Mr Thaksin behind populist promises such as a 40 per cent rise in the minimum wage and a tablet computer for every high school student.

“What is becoming more and more of a concern is that Puea Thai is still very much centred around the idea of amnesty and whitewashing Thaksin. It is not the country’s nor the people’s priority,” Mr Abhisit said.

“They want their economic problems, particularly in terms of high prices, addressed; they want to see issues like drugs being one of the top concerns. The last thing they want to see is more conflict and controversy surrounding proposals like that.”

 

 

 

 

 

Russia is different. The Americans, the Brits and the French by and large approve of their forces’ Libya bombing spree (yes, some doubt that it’s a good bang for the buck). The Russians are flatly against it, with no ifs, ands or buts. The Russian Ambassador in Tripoli, Vladimir Chamov, came back to a hero’s welcome in Moscow. President Dmitri Medvedev had dismissed him publicly after the Ambassador sent him a cable. In the five-points cable leaked to media, the Ambassador called Medvedev’s response to Libya crisis a “betrayal of Russian national interests”. (Meanwhile, the sides climbed down a bit: the Foreign Office said Chamov was not “fired”, just “called back” from Tripoli, and retained his ambassadorial rank and salary, while Chamov denied he had used the word “betrayal”.)

The Russians do not like the Western intervention in Libya. The rebels do not appear genuine, note the Russian bloggers; they are a peculiar mixed bag of Kaddafi’s ex-ministers fired for corruption, al-Qaeda mujahedeen, well-clod riff-raff beefed up by SAS soldiers and supported by these best friends of every Arab, American cruise missiles. The Russian media discovered that the first reports of massive civil casualties inflicted by the ruthless Kaddafi apparently were invented by editors in London and Paris. More civilians were killed by the Western intervention than by the government fighting the rebels. The mass-readership Komsomolskaya Pravda published reports from the Russian expats in Libya that flatly disproved claims of Kaddafi’s planes bombing residential quarters: this was done by the French and British bombers.

The Russians tend to a conspiratorial view of politics. They presume that the Arab risings were organised by their enemy: some “orange” Western forces, NED, CIA, Mossad, you name it, in order to create chaos, Iraq-style. They quote Israeli and American doctrines for the promotion of “constructive chaos”. And then they support Kaddafi, or even feel sympathy for Mubarak. This is especially true for patriotic Russians who remember that Kaddafi stood by Russia in 2008 during the Georgia conflict, and for a business community who were involved in many projects in Libya from gas to railways.

President Dmitri Medvedev has good reason to regret the haste with which he joined in the Western media onslaught, for he will be blamed for what already looks to Russians as Kosovo II. Probably he was misled by his media advisers who suggested he should jump on the internationally-acceptable media bandwagon of “stop the massacre in Libya”, and on he jumped. The first reports of the alleged massacre were still reverberating when President Medvedev warned Kaddafi of “crimes against humanity”, and later on he added that Kaddafi is persona non grata in Russia. Medvedev supported the decision to pass Libya’s case to ICC; though by that time he could have learned from the Russians present in Libya that nothing all that extraordinary took place in the country; that it was nothing beyond a small-scale rising on the way to being put down. It could be compared to Los Angeles riots of 1965 (threescore dead and thousands wounded) or of 1992 (fifty dead and thousands wounded), except that the LA blacks had no Tomahawks for aerial support.

Medvedev is also perceived as the man who ordered his Ambassador in the Security Council to abstain. Russia and China usually vote in agreement if they intend to go against the will of the world sheriff – ever since the fateful Zimbabwe vote in 2008 when Russia activated its veto for the first time since God-knows-when and stopped the West-proposed sanctions against the African nation. Then, the BBC reported, the UK foreign secretary David Miliband said Russia used its veto despite a promise by President Dmitry Medvedev to support the resolution. This time, apparently, Medvedev prevailed and acquiesced in what looks now as another Suez campaign (if you can still remember 1956, when the Brits and the French had tried to liberate Egypt from its Hitler-on-the-Nile, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and keep the Canal for themselves).

A few days later, the strongman of Russia, Vladimir Putin, roundly criticised this step of Medvedev; he called the Western intervention, “a new crusade”, and proposed the Western leaders should “pray for their souls and ask the Lord’s forgiveness” for the blood shed. People loved it. Medvedev tried to rebuff with a meaningless “don’t you speak of crusades”, but even he could not find anything positive about the NATO campaign in Libya.

Now as always, the Russians’ gut reaction is against any Western intervention. They were against American interventions in Vietnam and Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, against British and French colonial wars – just like you were, my wonderful readers, the enlightened spiritual minority in the West. The Russians do not believe that the reasons for the Western intervention have anything to do with love of democracy, human rights or value of human life. For them, a rose is a rose is a rose, a Western intervention is a Western intervention, one of many they were on the receiving end of.

However, Medvedev did not let the Western intervention march on for purely sentimental reasons of “supporting Europe”. The idea is, better let NATO be occupied in the South than in the East. Libya is much less important for Russians than Georgia, Ukraine or even Afghanistan. If this beast has to eat somebody, let it better be somebody in the Maghreb, where the Russians never had strong positions anyway. A WPR writer called this turn a “Tilsit moment” for NATO: acknowledging the immutability of the West’s Eastern borders in exchange for a free hand in the South flank. That is why Poland was unhappy with the Odyssey Dawn operation: instead of being on the frontline of the most important confrontation, this southern switch left the Poles in a geopolitical cul-de-sac.

Indeed we should not be captivated by East-West thinking. As the US slowly declines, the European powers begin to reassess their role. The Libya war is a French project. The Libya war was started by Sarkozy as an attempt to rebuild the French Empire in North Africa fifty years after the Evian treaty ostensibly sealed its fate. This was his old idea, and he called for the establishment of a Mediterranean Union during his election campaign. The MU project was supported by Israelis – and now Bernard Henry Levy is the foremost proponent on the intervention. Turkey strongly opposed the MU and now the Turks oppose the intervention in their subtle way, as Eric Walberg has correctly described. Italy supported the MU and expectedly supported the intervention. Germany was against the MU and is against the intervention. From this point of view, the intervention in Libya is the beginning of a new wave of European colonization of the Maghreb.

A Russian observer noticed an uncanny resemblance of this operation to one that occurred one hundred years ago in Libya during the previous colonisation wave. Then, recently united aggressive Italy in search for its empire decided to seize Libya, an Ottoman province. Then, as now, the newspapers wrote of freedom-loving Libyans suffering under the Ottoman heel and of the Italians’ moral duty to liberate them. The Turks were in a bad shape and they tried to find a face-saving way to surrender. They proposed to hand Libya over to Italians for management and colonization provided the suzerainty should remain with the Sublime Porte. The Italians refused, and their Dawn Odyssey began. The Turks fought valiantly, and among them a young officer proved his valour: that was Mustafa Kemal, later nicknamed Ataturk. A lone voice against intervention was that of young Italian socialist Benito Mussolini. The Italians’ Libya campaign was the first ever air bombing, exactly one hundred years ago in 1911, and history has preserved the name of the first bomber, Flt Lt Giulio Gavotti, who was the first man ever to perform a bombing run.

Modern Russia is not the USSR; it has few world-wide ambitions. It is worried about its own part of the world, and is not keen to get involved elsewhere. For the Russians, Europe’s drive south is not a threat, rather a resumption of France’s regional role. That is why the Russians abstained at UNSC. So it will be the task of the enlightened forces of the West to stop the aggression – instead of relying on the Russian veto.

President Kaddafi succeeded in annoying a lot of people in a lot of places. He annoyed both the French and the Russians by striking deals and then not sticking to them. Wikileaks cables refer to that many times, notably in 10PARIS151 saying: “the French are growing increasingly frustrated with the Libyans’ failure to deliver on promises regarding visas, professional exchanges, French language education, and commercial deals. “”We (and the Libyans) speak a lot, but we’ve begun to see that actions do not follow words in Libya.” He annoyed the Saudis and worse, he annoyed his own people.

We are certainly against the intervention; but the case of supporting Kaddafi is not all that clear-cut. Muammar Kaddafi was/is a dual figure: on one hand, an autochthonous leader who provided his countrymen with the highest standard of living in Africa, with generous subsidies, free medical care and education, who supported the vision of One State in Palestine/Israel and befriended Castro and Chavez. On the other hand, for the last five years Kaddafi and his clique have been busy dismantling the Libyan welfare state, privatising and cannibalising their health and education systems, hoarding wealth, dealing with transnational oil and gas companies to their personal advantage. The “New Kaddafi” took away a lot of social achievements and did not give his people elementary political freedoms. His support of One State in Palestine dried up in 2002, a long time ago.

My friends in Tripoli do not support Kaddafi. They are certainly against western intervention, but they dislike the old colonel for his dictatorial habits. They are grown-ups, they want to be involved in the decision-making, they do not like corruption, they also want bigger role for Islam. In their eyes, Kaddafi kept his anti-imperialist rhetoric for public use, but his praxis was Western and neo-liberal. It is fine that Kaddafi teased the Saudi royals and brandished his sword against the western leaders; but at the same time he gave away Libyan wealth to the foreigners. So while certainly standing against the intervention, we should not forget that not all anti-Kaddafi forces are Western stooges or al-Qaeda fighters.

Politics do not provide a bed of laurels to recline on. With all due respect to Muammar Kaddafi and his past achievements, he overstayed his prime time. There are reasons to hope he will survive the storm; we heartily wish him the defeat of the interventionist forces. But that should be a departure point for democracy in Libya, not necessarily democracy-European style, but a better way for Libyans to participate in forging their own lives.

(Follow-up: Russian politics in Libya Mirror)

 

Watch the summit of the SCO starting tomorrow Wed….in Astana, Kazakhstan!

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/13/us-afghanistan-secret-talks-on-security-partnership

Secret US and Afghanistan talks could see troops stay for decades

Russia, China and India concerned about ‘strategic partnership’ in which Americans would remain after 2014

 

US-Afghanistan security negotiations continue despite Hillary Clinton saying recently that Washington did not want any ‘permanent bases in Afghanistan’. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

American and Afghan officials are locked in increasingly acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement which is likely to see US troops, spies and air power based in the troubled country for decades.

Though not publicised, negotiations have been under way for more than a month to secure a strategic partnership agreement which would include an American presence beyond the end of 2014 – the agreed date for all 130,000 combat troops to leave — despite continuing public debate in Washington and among other members of the 49-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan about the speed of the withdrawal.

American officials admit that although Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, recently said Washington did not want any “permanent” bases in Afghanistan, her phrasing allows a variety of possible arrangements.

“There are US troops in various countries for some considerable lengths of time which are not there permanently,” a US official told the Guardian.

British troops, Nato officials say, will also remain in Afghanistan long past the end of 2014, largely in training or mentoring roles.

Although they will not be “combat troops” that does not mean they will not take part in combat. Mentors could regularly fight alongside Afghan troops, for example.

Senior Nato officials also predict that the insurgency in Afghanistan will continue after 2014.

There are at least five bases in Afghanistan which are likely candidates to house large contingents of American special forces, intelligence operatives, surveillance equipment and military hardware post-2014. In the heart of one of the most unstable regions in the world and close to the borders of Pakistan, Iran and China, as well as to central Asia and the Persian Gulf, the bases would be rare strategic assets.

News of the US-Afghan talks has sparked deep concern among powers in the region and beyond. Russia and India are understood to have made their concerns about a long-term US presence known to both Washington and Kabul. China, which has pursued a policy of strict non-intervention beyond economic affairs in Afghanistan, has also made its disquiet clear. During a recent visit, senior Pakistani officials were reported to have tried to convince their Afghan counterparts to look to China as a strategic partner, not the US.

American negotiators will arrive later this month in Kabul for a new round of talks. The Afghans rejected the Americans’ first draft of a strategic partnership agreement in its entirety, preferring to draft their own proposal. This was submitted to Washington two weeks ago. The US draft was “vaguely formulated”, one Afghan official told the Guardian.

Afghan negotiators are now preparing detailed annexes to their own proposal which lists specific demands.

The Afghans are playing a delicate game, however. President Hamid Karzai and senior officials see an enduring American presence and broader strategic relationship as essential, in part to protect Afghanistan from its neighbours.

“We are facing a common threat in international terrorist networks. They are not only a threat to Afghanistan but to the west. We want a partnership that brings regional countries together, not divides them,” said Rangin Spanta, the Afghan national security adviser and the lead Afghan negotiator on the partnership.

Dr Ashraf Ghani, a former presidential candidate and one of the negotiators, said that, although Nato and the US consider a stable Afghanistan to be essential to their main strategic aim of disrupting and defeating al-Qaida, a “prosperous Afghanistan” was a lesser priority. “It is our goal, not necessarily theirs,” he said.

Though Ghani stressed “consensus on core issues”, big disagreements remain.

One is whether the Americans will equip an Afghan air force. Karzai is understood to have asked for fully capable modern combat jet aircraft. This has been ruled out by the Americans on grounds of cost and fear of destabilising the region.

Another is the question of US troops launching operations outside Afghanistan from bases in the country. From Afghanistan, American military power could easily be deployed into Iran or Pakistan post-2014. Helicopters took off from Afghanistan for the recent raid which killed Osama bin Laden.

“We will never allow Afghan soil to be used [for operations] against a third party,” said Spanta, Afghanistan’s national security adviser.

A third contentious issue is the legal basis on which troops might remain. Afghan officials are keen that any foreign forces in their country are subject to their laws. The Afghans also want to have ultimate authority over foreign troops’ use and deployment.

“There should be no parallel decision-making structures … All has to be in accordance with our sovereignty and constitution,” Spanta said.

Nor do the two sides agree over the pace of negotiations. The US want to have agreement by early summer, before President Barack Obama’s expected announcement on troop withdrawals. This is “simply not possible,” the Afghan official said.

There are concerns too that concluding a strategic partnership agreement could also clash with efforts to find an inclusive political settlement to end the conflict with theTaliban. A “series of conversations” with senior insurgent figures are under way, one Afghan minister has told the Guardian.

A European diplomat in Kabul said: “It is difficult to imagine the Taliban being happy with US bases [in Afghanistan] for the foreseeable future.”

Senior Nato officials argue that a permanent international military presence will demonstrate to insurgents that the west is not going to abandon Afghanistan and encourage them to talk rather than fight.

The Afghan-American negotiations come amid a scramble among regional powers to be positioned for what senior US officers are now describing as the “out years”.

Mark Sedwill, the Nato senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, recently spoke of the threat of a “Great Game 3.0” in the region, referring to the bloody and destabilising conflict between Russia, Britain and others in south west Asia in the 19th century.

Afghanistan has a history of being exploited by — or playing off — major powers. This, Dr Ghani insisted, was not “a vision for the 21st century”. Instead, he said, Afghanistan could become the “economic roundabout” of Asia.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

 

Watch the summit of the SCO starting tomorrow Wed….in Astana, Kazakhstan!

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/13/us-afghanistan-secret-talks-on-security-partnership

Secret US and Afghanistan talks could see troops stay for decades

Russia, China and India concerned about ‘strategic partnership’ in which Americans would remain after 2014

 

US-Afghanistan security negotiations continue despite Hillary Clinton saying recently that Washington did not want any ‘permanent bases in Afghanistan’. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

American and Afghan officials are locked in increasingly acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement which is likely to see US troops, spies and air power based in the troubled country for decades.

Though not publicised, negotiations have been under way for more than a month to secure a strategic partnership agreement which would include an American presence beyond the end of 2014 – the agreed date for all 130,000 combat troops to leave — despite continuing public debate in Washington and among other members of the 49-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan about the speed of the withdrawal.

American officials admit that although Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, recently said Washington did not want any “permanent” bases in Afghanistan, her phrasing allows a variety of possible arrangements.

“There are US troops in various countries for some considerable lengths of time which are not there permanently,” a US official told the Guardian.

British troops, Nato officials say, will also remain in Afghanistan long past the end of 2014, largely in training or mentoring roles.

Although they will not be “combat troops” that does not mean they will not take part in combat. Mentors could regularly fight alongside Afghan troops, for example.

Senior Nato officials also predict that the insurgency in Afghanistan will continue after 2014.

There are at least five bases in Afghanistan which are likely candidates to house large contingents of American special forces, intelligence operatives, surveillance equipment and military hardware post-2014. In the heart of one of the most unstable regions in the world and close to the borders of Pakistan, Iran and China, as well as to central Asia and the Persian Gulf, the bases would be rare strategic assets.

News of the US-Afghan talks has sparked deep concern among powers in the region and beyond. Russia and India are understood to have made their concerns about a long-term US presence known to both Washington and Kabul. China, which has pursued a policy of strict non-intervention beyond economic affairs in Afghanistan, has also made its disquiet clear. During a recent visit, senior Pakistani officials were reported to have tried to convince their Afghan counterparts to look to China as a strategic partner, not the US.

American negotiators will arrive later this month in Kabul for a new round of talks. The Afghans rejected the Americans’ first draft of a strategic partnership agreement in its entirety, preferring to draft their own proposal. This was submitted to Washington two weeks ago. The US draft was “vaguely formulated”, one Afghan official told the Guardian.

Afghan negotiators are now preparing detailed annexes to their own proposal which lists specific demands.

The Afghans are playing a delicate game, however. President Hamid Karzai and senior officials see an enduring American presence and broader strategic relationship as essential, in part to protect Afghanistan from its neighbours.

“We are facing a common threat in international terrorist networks. They are not only a threat to Afghanistan but to the west. We want a partnership that brings regional countries together, not divides them,” said Rangin Spanta, the Afghan national security adviser and the lead Afghan negotiator on the partnership.

Dr Ashraf Ghani, a former presidential candidate and one of the negotiators, said that, although Nato and the US consider a stable Afghanistan to be essential to their main strategic aim of disrupting and defeating al-Qaida, a “prosperous Afghanistan” was a lesser priority. “It is our goal, not necessarily theirs,” he said.

Though Ghani stressed “consensus on core issues”, big disagreements remain.

One is whether the Americans will equip an Afghan air force. Karzai is understood to have asked for fully capable modern combat jet aircraft. This has been ruled out by the Americans on grounds of cost and fear of destabilising the region.

Another is the question of US troops launching operations outside Afghanistan from bases in the country. From Afghanistan, American military power could easily be deployed into Iran or Pakistan post-2014. Helicopters took off from Afghanistan for the recent raid which killed Osama bin Laden.

“We will never allow Afghan soil to be used [for operations] against a third party,” said Spanta, Afghanistan’s national security adviser.

A third contentious issue is the legal basis on which troops might remain. Afghan officials are keen that any foreign forces in their country are subject to their laws. The Afghans also want to have ultimate authority over foreign troops’ use and deployment.

“There should be no parallel decision-making structures … All has to be in accordance with our sovereignty and constitution,” Spanta said.

Nor do the two sides agree over the pace of negotiations. The US want to have agreement by early summer, before President Barack Obama’s expected announcement on troop withdrawals. This is “simply not possible,” the Afghan official said.

There are concerns too that concluding a strategic partnership agreement could also clash with efforts to find an inclusive political settlement to end the conflict with theTaliban. A “series of conversations” with senior insurgent figures are under way, one Afghan minister has told the Guardian.

A European diplomat in Kabul said: “It is difficult to imagine the Taliban being happy with US bases [in Afghanistan] for the foreseeable future.”

Senior Nato officials argue that a permanent international military presence will demonstrate to insurgents that the west is not going to abandon Afghanistan and encourage them to talk rather than fight.

The Afghan-American negotiations come amid a scramble among regional powers to be positioned for what senior US officers are now describing as the “out years”.

Mark Sedwill, the Nato senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, recently spoke of the threat of a “Great Game 3.0” in the region, referring to the bloody and destabilising conflict between Russia, Britain and others in south west Asia in the 19th century.

Afghanistan has a history of being exploited by — or playing off — major powers. This, Dr Ghani insisted, was not “a vision for the 21st century”. Instead, he said, Afghanistan could become the “economic roundabout” of Asia.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011