Feb 17, 2003 Op Eds

Feb 17, 2003 Opinion Editorials http://www.aljazeerah.info

On January 26, the Los Angeles Times reported that military planners at the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, NE, and at the Pentagon are creating target lists for the possible use of nuclear weapons in Iraq. According to the report, senior military officials who consider nuclear weapons use unlikely, are, nonetheless, concerned about this planning.

Pentagon planners are considering options for using nuclear weapons, including the so-called "bunker-buster" nuclear weapon, which is designed to destroy deeply buried targets. Administration officials have refused to rule out any military option should the U.S. or any of its allies be attacked by a chemical or biological weapon. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card commented on the report on a Sunday morning news program saying, "I'm not going to put anything on or off the table."

Rewriting the nuclear war ground rules For the past fifty years, U.S. Presidents have correctly differentiated between nuclear and conventional weapons. Since nuclear weapons are so devastating, they would only be used if another country attacked the U.S. with nuclear weapons. In effect, a firewall was put in place between conventional and nuclear weapons. Planning for a "preemptive" or retaliatory nuclear attack on Iraq - a non-nuclear state - is a dramatic and dangerous change in U.S. nuclear force doctrine. It means that war planners are tearing down the firewall and treating nuclear weapons as just another kind of weapon in their war-fighting arsenal.

Through a series of policy documents from the Pentagon and the White House, the Administration has outlined a new security doctrine for the U.S., a doctrine that emphasizes "preemptive" strikes and the offensive use of nuclear weapons. According to William Arkin, a military analyst for the L.A. Times, "It rewrites the ground rules of nuclear combat in the name of fighting terrorism." Some members of Congress are questioning the Administration's nuclear doctrine.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (MA) recently wrote in the L.A. Times that, if such an attack should occur, "our nation, long a beacon of hope, would overnight be seen as a symbol of death, destruction and aggression." Budgeting for nuclear weapons use The Administration's new budget request for fiscal year 2004, released in early February, highlights these trends. Included in the request is $15 million to continue the design work for a second earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator."

This work is being done by the two nuclear weapons labs at Los Alamos (NM) and Livermore (CA) and is included in the Department of Energy's (DOE) budget. DOE also is proposing to renovate the Nevada Test Site to allow the U.S. to conduct a nuclear test within 18 months. The budget increase is from $18 million (FY03) to $25 million (FY04). Currently, it would take DOE two to three years to ready the site for a test. Shortening this time is part of an effort by some officials within the Administration to resume nuclear testing, perhaps as soon as 2005. Some Pentagon policymakers are pushing to take the U.S. signature off the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). However, others, most notably Secretary of State Colin Powell, oppose resumption of nuclear testing. Although these budget increases are small in terms of the total military budget, they carry large policy implications.

These increases send the message to the rest of the world that nuclear weapons are again a key element in military strategy and that they could be used on the battlefield against non-nuclear countries. Such a policy undermines decades of international efforts to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons. During the 108th Congress, FCNL will work to block these radical changes in nuclear policy primarily through the budget process. This effort will include both lobbying on Capitol Hill and grassroots activities. Many legislators share FCNL's positions on nuclear weapons. Within the Administration, opinion is divided. Polls show that the American public does not support the first use of nuclear weapons or the resumption of testing.

There is at this time a real opportunity to prevent the Administration from moving forward with its nuclear weapons policy. (FCNL maintains an extensive library on nuclear weapons issues on our web site at www.fcnl.org. Click on "Nuclear Weapons" on our home page. This article is reprinted from the Washington Newsletter of the Friends Committee on National Legislation.)

Nuclear Reduction/Disarmament Initiative Churches' Center for Theology and Public Policy 202-885-8684

The demise of the nuclear bomb hoax'

By Imad Khadduri
Former Iraqi nuclear scientist
YellowTimes.org

On February 14, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), submitted, in accordance with U.N. Resolution 1441, his second report to the Security Council on Iraq's nuclear non-capability.

Much to the chagrin of President Bush and Colin Powell, the nuclear inspection chief's findings not only cleared the smoke from the imagined "smoking gun," but also dissipated the smog of misinformation with which the American government, hungry for war, has surrounded this issue.

The matters raised by ElBaradei merit further comment.

The inspectors, the IAEA head reported, collected hundreds of soil, air and water samples, and installed and reinstalled dozens of radioactivity detectors -- including gamma-ray surveillance instruments both airborne and ground based -- during 177 inspections and visits to 120 nuclear related locations in the past nine weeks.

What is not generally known is that when Hans Blix, a month ago, challenged Bush and Blair to put up or shut up, in effect challenging them to produce their "sensitive" intelligence on suspected sites in order to allow the inspectors to verify the vociferous claims of the likes of White House spokesman Ari Fleischer's "we know they have it," a list of 25 sites was quietly provided.

The inspectors visited each one of these sites and found nothing. The total sum of all these samples, detectors and visits, as far as the nuclear weapon program is concerned, was nil.

Powell's insinuations about Iraq's imagined nuclear capabilities (fissile ore importation, secret laser enrichment techniques, nefarious aluminum tubes, etc.) now echo with a hollow ring. One wonders of what sort of scientific information he availed himself, if any, before presenting such flimsy allegations as evidence. Perhaps he confined himself to advice from "consultants" in ivory think tanks such as the Nuclear Control Institute.

One might humbly ask what is stopping his "scientists" and consultants now from "advising" their government regarding the extreme unlikelihood that ongoing work related to research and development of a nuclear weapon program would not leave a trace, even in minute amounts, of certain half-life isotopes that would surely be susceptible to detection by the latest highly-touted, ultra sensitive instruments employed by the IAEA inspectors?

In succinct terms, should not the "no finding" be a finding in itself, especially in a place where something was specifically alleged to be a major finding?

Having raised the false specter of an Iraqi mushroom cloud for a decade, Powell's scientists should consider it a matter of conscience to enlighten their government with their expertise in these matters.

The aluminum tubes fanfare so brazenly trumpeted by Powell is reduced to whether the reverse-engineering attempt by Iraqi military engineers amounted to anything more than extra precaution on the part of the engineers. They were most probably demanding definite tolerances in order to ensure the success of their attempt to manufacture locally the combustion chamber for a solid propellant rocket. Powell's only claim to annoyance is that they were more expensive than American aluminum tubes used for this purpose.

The fact is that aluminum tubes have been used to build tens of thousands of rockets. The hypothesis is that the tubes might be diverted for centrifuges. The "coating" applied to the tubes found in Iraq confirms the reason for why they were purchased.

It was also amusing to realize, while I watched the generous outpouring by American "scientists" of detailed technical information in support of Powell's fallacious claim, that they were, in fact, explaining to Iraqi ears actually how to convert these aluminum tubes to centrifugal isotope enrichment cylinders! I can only hope that the "scientists" will not want to be paid for their generous technical advice from the Oil for Food program revenue.

ElBaradei confirmed in his report that it was "intelligence" information that led UNMOVIC to the invasion of the private home of Faleh Hamza -- the supposedly "secret" keeper of the laser enrichment technique -- and the consequent confiscation of 2000 pages of personal documents. Powell had pursued this case in a pathetic attempt to provide "evidence" for the third enrichment process. One wonders what kind of arm-twisting was applied to UNMOVIC (reminding me of their CIA infiltrated UNSCOM predecessors) to carry out this James Bond style fiasco, since the IAEA itself was already fully aware of the insignificance to the Iraqi nuclear program of Faleh Hamza's work on laser enrichment.

We, the Iraqi nuclear team, declared as much in our final report to the IAEA in 1997, pointing clearly to the demise in 1988 of Faleh Hamza's line of research. ElBaradei confirmed that fact the day after Blix brought it up in his first report to the Security Council two weeks ago. He pointed to the personal nature of the seized papers and even chided Blix for referring to it.

One would wonder whether this rejuvenated "intelligence" might not have been the stale information provided by CIA mouthpiece Khidhir Hamza, perhaps in an attempt to stay on their payroll.

In an interview with Hamza published in the Washington Post on February 6, 2003, Powell, in his report to the Security Council two weeks ago, referred to information gleaned from "another defector in 1995." "He was referring to me," Hamza boasts.

If Khidhir Hamza has indeed managed, through his connections with Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld, to bypass the entire intelligence community, which disposed of him years ago, if his information is false or silly, if he was not there when Iraq began its serious weaponization program, if he has no new sources, if his testaments are filled with personal diatribes against Iraq, why would the Secretary of Defense turn to him for information?

The U.S. could save billions in the intelligence budget if they would just use what they do find and discard what they know is false!

At the end of his report, ElBaradei unequivocally stated that the Iraqi nuclear weapon program was "neutralized" and that there is "no evidence" of its rejuvenation. Being part of the U.N. system, he felt the need to add a few politically correct question marks concerning "speed," "assurance" and "patterns" of intentions and actions.

Certain European countries are rightly asking how long Bush and Powell can blow into a balloon full of holes. One might also reasonably ask about Bush and Powell's "speed," "assurances" and "patterns" in the misinformation game.

Powell is certainly not new to it.

From The Scourging of Iraq, by Geoff Simons: "Washington lied persistently and comprehensively to gain the required international support [for the Gulf war]. For example, the U.S. claimed to have satellite pictures showing a massive Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi/ Iraqi border. When sample photographs were later obtained from Soyuz Karta by an enterprising journalist, no such evidence was discernible."

Simons makes reference to an article by Maggie O'Kane, published in the Guardian Weekend, 16 December 1995, which revealed that the enterprising journalist was Jean Heller of the St. Petersburg Times in Florida.

Eventually, the U.S. commander -- none other than Colin Powell himself -- admitted that there had been no massing of Iraqi troops. But by then, the so-called evidence had served its purpose.

Yet with a tongue in his own cheek, Powell claimed on February 14, 2003 in the Toronto Star, while still blistering under Blix's and ElBaradei's reports, that "force should always be a last resort -- I have preached this for most of my professional life as a soldier and as a diplomat."

Perhaps this time history should not be allowed to repeat itself.

[Imad Khadduri has a MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan (United States) and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). Khadduri worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. He was able to leave Iraq in late 1998 with his family. He now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada. He has been interviewed by the Toronto Star, Reuters, and various other news agencies in regards to his knowledge of the Iraqi nuclear program. This article was originally printed in YellowTimes.org.]

Imad Khadduri encourages your comments: imad.khadduri@rogers.com

'''We're gonna smoke 'em out': The butchering of Iraq''
By Firas Al-Atraqchi
YellowTimes.org

Iraq, and whoever "happens" to be there, is about to be annihilated.

At Mayport Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida, U.S. President George Bush told hundreds of naval personnel on the eve of war that rules of war would not apply to terrorists. "On 9-11, the terrorists brought the war to us -- now, we are taking it to them." He called "terrorists" (who else could he be referring to but the Iraqis with whom the U.S. is about to go to war?) "cold-blooded thugs" and "outlaws."

This marks a frightening turn of events in light of recent statements made this week. Earlier, the U.S. public was told that Saddam is using his own citizens as human shields. Pentagon reports claimed that the Iraqi army was hiding within the Iraqi citizenry. The Pentagon also showed satellite images of what it claimed were missile launchers "parked" outside mosques.

Last month, Iraq "experts" Frank Gaffney and Richard Perle said that the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq's possession were hidden in private homes of Iraqi citizens, in hospitals, universities and mosques.

All these locations have effectively been made fair game.

The above statements, coupled with the fact that the U.S. has refused to sign on to the International Crimes Court holding military personnel accountable for war crimes, spells doom for innocent Iraqi civilians.

Events in Afghanistan indicate that the U.S. armed forces will inflict mass casualties on the civilian population of Iraq. An apparently errant bombing which killed 17 civilians in Afghanistan two days ago has been all but ignored by the U.S. media and Pentagon briefings. Message: "oops, we killed some ragheads, now move along."

According to the New York Times, "An aide to the governor of Helmand Province, where the fighting was going on, said villagers had reported to the authorities that 17 civilians, including women and children, had been killed. 'The people came crying, saying their relatives had died or were missing,' the aide, Haji Muhammad Wali, said by telephone from Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah, Reuters reported."

On July 1st, a U.S. bombing run hit a wedding party in the Uruzugan province in Afghanistan. Forty civilians, including women and children, were killed. U.S. forces claimed they were being fired upon. Afghan local officials claimed they were firing their guns in the air, as is custom during weddings in parts of Asia and the Middle East. An investigation into the matter has been deemed inconclusive amid Afghan allegations that U.S. investigators hid and confiscated vital evidence.

Calls for an investigation into the alleged execution of 1000 Arab Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have also gone unheeded. According to the BBC on August 25, "The head of the United States military central command, General Tommy Franks, says he does not know if accounts of atrocities committed by U.S. allies in Afghanistan are true or not. Afghan commanders of the Northern Alliance are alleged to have killed more than 1,000 Taleban (sic) prisoners during fighting in northern Afghanistan in November."

This does not bode well for Iraq.

The statements that the Iraqi army is hiding within the civilian population indicate that the U.S. administration is expecting mass civilian casualties and exonerates the U.S. administration (in advance of a breakout of hostilities) because it places the blame for these casualties on the Iraqi army chiefs and Saddam himself.

The U.S. administration is effectively warning the U.S. public that "look, we told you before we went in that Saddam was hiding his weapons and army in civilian areas."

Bush concluded his naval base speech by saying, "we're gonna smoke 'em out."

[Firas Al-Atraqchi, B.Sc (Physics), M.A. (Journalism and Communications), is a Canadian journalist with eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry.]

Firas Al-Atraqchi encourages your comments: fatraqchi@YellowTimes.org

The lockdown intensifies: We have three more martyrs in Nablus this morning

By Anne Gwynne

Nablus, Occupied Palestine. 2/17/03

The situation here in Nablus today is the worst it has been since I came
here six weeks ago. This city of 186,000 people is completely closed to the
outside world - sealed off. We are very few internationals - too few to
send anyone to the checkpoints this morning; every point of entry is closed
and patients are not being allowed to go to the hospitals. The IOF is now
beating Internationals at the checkpoints - today a Swedish woman and a
Danish man. I have called the West Bank IOF offices many, many times and
have spoken to several underlings who say that there is complete closure on
Nablus, except for ambulances which should be allowed through. But they are
not being. I called the Press Office, the West Bank Command and the Nablus
Command and they all deny that this is happening - we know first-hand that
it is.

Nihad, the Raffidia Ambulance driver is here with me now, and he had to
leave at 5 am to bring four patients from Jericho. He had a hugely
stressful time at Huwarra (he arrived here with a shot through his
windshield), but it was before 9 am and he eventually got through. Now
Huwarra is completely closed - any person who approaches the checkpoint
(without knowledge of the closure) is either turned away or beaten. Our
ambulance answered calls from Beit Fouriq village and has just returned from
there. The crew's ID was taken until they revisited the checkpoint, and the
degree of aggression and abuse from the soldiers exceeded previous
experiences - if that's possible. Two patients were picked up and
eventually passed through the first Beit Fouriq checkpoint - a man with
chest pains and an old woman with a fracture. She was removed from the
Ambulance at the second of the TWO checkpoints from Beit Fouriq, and made to
stand out of the Ambulance, in great pain, so that it could be searched
minutely. At Beit Iba, ambulances are being held for more than an hour.
How many 'terrorists' can an ambulance hide in its tiny lockers? This has
no purpose other than to disrupt the life here and to make the carrying-on
of any normal activity impossible. I believe that these Israeli occupiers
will never succeed here.

Why is it that, instead of admiring courage, the Israelis are incensed by
it? Every day I wonder what is it in their psyche upon which feeds their
hatred whenever courage and dignity are displayed to them - a thousand times
every day.

A woman in the last stage of labour had been held for the morning at the
dreaded Beit Fouriq checkpoint - the soldiers there are so bad that I cannot
imagine where they find them. Her husband was in great distress and asked
Jarere to take her to Nablus, since the ambulance was returning to the city.
Amid the shouting and screaming of abuse, the soldiers slammed the doors of
the Ambulance and ordered it to "GO" . Imagine, in your own land, driving a
life-saving ambulance, and being told, dozens of times a day, whom you can
help and who not, being ordered to leave people who need your help in the
middle of the mud, and, at best, being delayed for hours - the terrorism is
unimaginable. And it is not a case of "walk not ride" - they are not
allowed to walk either. And when you are held at Beit Fouriq checkpoint you
are not anywhere at all - just in the middle of an expanse of mud with no
cover of any kind.

By the way, I have used the word "checkpoint" so many times here that you
will feel that you are really bored with hearing it - because for you it is
a word - for us it is a many-times-a-day reality of abuse, violence,
confrontation, humiliation, delay and, sometimes, death.

Courage And More Martyrs

I was in the centre of Nablus yesterday, about 5 o'clock in the afternoon,
when a youth was shot and killed by the IOF. He is SAMER ZORBHA, aged 18, a
student at the High School in Nablus. He was shot twice, one bullet to the
shoulder and lung, a favourite target, another to the side of the head.
Another was very seriously shot and a third injured, I don't know how badly.
Samer is the best friend of a beautiful young Volunteer at the UPMRC Medical
Relief Centre, Mohamed al Aseel, and we are feeling his loss with anger as
well as grief.

In retaliation for this murderous attack, fighters last night offered their
life for their friend and succeeded in killing two of the illegal occupying
force, and injuring another. Two young fighters were killed and I don't yet
know the extent of other injuries. I would tell you that, from my bedroom
window, I saw the night sky in the area lit up like it was day for more than
an hour with brilliant flares and I saw the trail of rockets missiles and
machine-guns bullets fired from the US gunship helicopters - so
inappropriately named "Apache" - and heard the rapid clatter of the guns of
the ships of death riding the starry sky like alien invaders from another
world. I heard the explosions of many shells and, I am not sure, but I
think a bomb from a US F-16 warplane - the sky was full of them. There was
protracted gun-fire for more than an hour. So these young guys really
fought it out with the fourth largest military in the world before becoming
Martyrs. Tomorrow their pictures will join the hundreds of others which
cover all the wall space of Nablus.

Many tanks, Hummers and Jeeps (all US gifts) rushed to the scene - many
columns of them passed in our road as I watched from my window at midnight -
the city is criss-crossed with new tank tracks and damage this morning. A
shell case fell in our garden! I was walking back to my home just before
midnight and heard APC's coming up the road - not usually afraid of these
brainwashed soldiers, last night I felt very afraid and ran fast for the
alley at the side of my home. As I was running, a Helicopter came overhead,
following the light of a flare and, as I thought of how exposed I was, in a
well-lit street with no cover, I was sick with terror for a few minutes as
I ran for cover. It seemed a long time.

I would like to ask those of you who read this to think about the relative
positions of the fighters and occupiers in this monumentally unequal
struggle. While the huge force of Israelis have every technical aid invented
by the US war machine, the few young fighters have NOTHING BUT THEIR WEAPON
(and this not the most modern) - no helmet, bullet proof vest, radio contact
or other protection. No back-up, no plane, helicopter, tank, APC,
searchlight, dogs, flares, ambulance or refuge - put all the
Israeli/American propaganda aside for a few minutes and try to imagine,
please, the courage it requires to do what these young fighters do in
defence of their city, knowing that the odds are against escape and that,
every time they do succeed in evading death, the odds against a further
survival are shortened. Even if their operation is a success the price is
always high.

And every time the Israeli Command terrorises Nablus - as today with tanks
and Jeeps and APC's bristling with death at every junction within the city,
operating a lock-down even worse than before (how can this be possible) -
more Martyrs are ready to defend the honour of Palestine and fight for the
freedom of surely the most gentle, generous and peaceful people on earth.

Everyone, PLEASE protest to your representatives at all levels, write a
letter (no matter how short) telling of the criminal acts being visited upon
an innocent civilian population every day in Nablus - can we allow the
courage of an exceptional people to continue to be the reason for hatred,
maiming, murder and destruction on a scale and for a period never seen
before in history.

Anne Gwynne is working with the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief
Committees in Nablus.

One man against the world
By Uri Avnery

Arab News, 2/17/03

A great, civilized nation democratically elected a fanatic demagogue, who preached war. Actually, he did not really receive the majority of votes, but, somehow, his ascent to power was arranged nevertheless.

Soon after assuming power, he manipulated a dramatic incident in order to tighten his grip upon the country and prepare for attack on smaller nations. An immense propaganda machine turned “enemies” into devils, the incarnation of evil.

The call for war enabled him to unite the whole people behind him, to silence all opposition, gradually abridge human rights, overcome the economic crisis and embark upon a voyage toward world dominion.

He loved being photographed in uniform, walking along lines of soldiers, pretending to be a great military leader.

I mean, of course, Adolf Hitler.

The German people, which gave him power and followed him with closed eyes even when he committed heinous crimes, paid a heavy price. It has learned the lesson. Now it abhors war, any war, from the depth of its soul. Hundreds of thousands – young people, children, grandchildren and grand-grandchildren of that generation – march these days through the streets of Germany to protest against Bush’s war.

Their leader, Schroeder, was re-elected solely because he expressed this deep longing for peace. The most warlike people has turned into the most anti-warlike.

That’s great, isn’t it? Not at all! American and British leaders condemn Germany for its refusal to go to war. The Israeli government heap scorn on its head. Wet rugs, these Germans! Damn pacifists! Cowards! Pitiful people who refuse to fight!

All this less than 60 years since Hitler’s suicide. Who would have believed.

And this is not the only miracle that is happening these days. Not by any means.

A personal memory (excuse me if you have read it before): When I was 8 years old, two years before my family fled Germany after Hitler’s coming to power, I was a pupil in the third class of an elementary school in Prussia, a Social Democratic bulwark at the time.

Once the teacher told us about Hermann, the national hero, who had succeeded in 9 AD to lure the Roman Army into a trap and annihilate it. The Roman commander, Varus, fell on his sword and Augustus Ceasar uttered his despairing cry: “Varus, give me back me legions!” On the spot where the historic battle was supposed to have taken place, there stands now a huge statue of Hermann.

“Hermann stands with his face toward the Erbfeind (hereditary enemy)!” our teacher proclaimed. “Children, who is the Erbfeind?” All the pupils in the class shouted in unison: “Frankreich! Frankreich (France)!”

Now Germany and France, the hereditary enemies, stand together, shoulder to shoulder, against Bush’s war plans. The Americans curse and abuse them, but they stand firm: Enough of war. Enough of destruction and bloodshed. Other ways to solve problems must be found.

That is another miracle. But even this is a minor one compared to the third, historic miracle that is happening in front of our eyes:

President Putin appeared in Berlin and Paris, embraced Chirac and Schroeder and added his voice to theirs. One front from Cherbourg on the Atlantic to Vladivostok on the Pacific. That has never happened before.

From earliest times, European history is full of alliances of some states against others. Germany and Russia divided Poland between them. France and Russia allied themselves several times to contain Germany. Napoleon tried to unite Europe and did not succeed. The Texan cowboy is succeeding where the Corsican emperor has failed.

Bush has invented the childish term “Axis of Evil” to group together Iraq, Iran and North Korea. That’s nonsense. But in the meantime a French-German-Russian axis has come into being and is facing the United States.

(The term “axis” to design a coalition of states was also invented at the time of Hitler. The original axis of evil included Germany, Italy and Japan. When using this term, Bush intended to recall that memory.)

It is too early to say if this new axis will hold on and if it will be strong enough to face the enormous might of the United States. But even if it will be broken this time, its very birth is a harbinger of things to come.

These three countries, contemptuously called by American Secretary of Defense “Old Europe”, are, on the contrary, united by considerations pertaining to the New Europe.

This Europe worries the Americans. It is becoming an economic superpower, able to compete with, and perhaps overtake, the United States. A symbol of this is the fact that the euro has indeed overtaken the dollar.

As I remarked in a previous article, the war in Iraq is primarily a war against Europe and Japan. The American occupation of Iraq will ensure American control not only over the vast oil reserves of Iraq itself, but also of the Caspian Sea and the Gulf states. The hand on the oil tab of the world can choke Germany, France and Japan, because it can manipulate at will the price of oil throughout the world. Lower the price, and you choke Russia. Raise the price, and you choke Europe and Japan.

Therefore, preventing the war is an essential European interest, in addition to the profound longing for peace of the European peoples.

Washington does not even hide its desire to bring Europe to its knees. Lately, there is a crude American effort to create a coalition of peripheral countries in order to oust Germany and France from the leadership of the European Union. America is organizing a bloc of the former Communist nations, who are about to join the Union, together with the UK, Spain and Italy. The Paris-Berlin axis, aided by Moscow, is designed as a defense against this ploy, too.

This war, then, goes much beyond the Iraqi problem. It is not a war against Saddam’s microbes. It is, quite simply, a war for world dominion, economic, political, military and cultural. Bush is ready to spill a lot of blood to achieve this (as long as it is not American blood).

Israel is involved in this game without quite knowing what it is doing there, a boy in a game of world-league bullies. It has nothing to gain, it can only lose.

Reforming the Palestinian Authority
Arab News, 17 February 2003
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President Yasser Arafat has received much praise for his recent announcement that, for the first time, he will appoint a prime minister within the Palestinian Authority. “This is a first step,” Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special envoy to the Middle East said in agreeing that Arafat’s nominee to the position “has to be credible and has to be empowered as a necessity in order to get the parties back to the table again.” The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan also welcomed the move, saying that he looked forward to working with a “credible and fully empowered Palestinian prime minister.”

To be sure, this is not Arafat’s “first step.” He has previously carried out political reforms outlined in the international peace plan, known as the road map. He has appointed a new Cabinet and a new interior minister, drafted a constitution, called for elections and has charged his finance minister, Salam Fayyad, with rooting out corruption in the Palestinian Authority. And in a letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair in January, just days before Blair’s meeting in Washington with President Bush, Arafat accepted the road map suggested by the United States and three other parties which make up the so-called quartet, as a way to revive peace talks and to create a Palestinian state in principle.

Arafat is doing what has been asked of him.

“We have done our part, now it’s up to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and also to the quartet and above all to the American side, to adopt, declare and begin the process of implementing the road map,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said.

Tomorrow, members of the quartet — the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — are expected to meet in London for further reforms. But efforts to resume negotiations have been floundering for months, with the upper levels of the Bush administration all but ignoring the intifada while focusing attention on gathering support for action against Iraq. In addition, US officials have accepted Israel’s view that the road map should be on hold until Sharon forms his new government.

The road map outlines the next steps toward a Mideast peace deal, including an end to violence and cessation of all settlement activity by the Israelis. In recent months, though, Israel has sharply escalated settlement activity in the West Bank and in an interview with The Washington Post, Sharon dismissed the quartet as “nothing — don’t take it seriously.”

The US, too, had words of support for Arafat’s announcement but only because it and Israel see it as a way to push Arafat out of the picture. A State Department spokesman verifies this theory by having stated the following: “We hope that the candidate named will have the legal, legislative, popular backing to implement the broad reforms called for by the quartet.”

The spokesman was speaking as if this new prime minister will be doing all the work and will have all the authority vested in him while Arafat, Washington hopes, will play second fiddle. Arafat, who was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in 1996, has been the leader of the Palestinians for more than three decades and is the revolutionary icon and symbol of their fight for statehood and independence. Arafat’s announcement provided no details of the powers or degree of independence a prime minister would have. Nor did he say who the prime minister might be. The quartet would ideally like Arafat to make an announcement by tomorrow when its members meet in London.

Whoever he will be, the United States and Israel feel the new prime minister will not carry enough weight; they want him to be more powerful than Arafat. Both countries refuse to deal with Arafat but a new premier will not take the president’s place. Arafat is the elected leader of the Palestinians and all roads must lead to him.

US, Israeli interest in weakening Europe
By Hassan Tahsin

Arab News, 2/17/03

An Israeli professor and military historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem said in an interview published on Friday: “We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even to Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force.... We have the capability to take the world down with us and I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under.”

The professor’s statement comes at a very sensitive time when the whole world anticipates a US invasion of Iraq.

One may argue that this statement does not represent Israel’s policies as it comes from a non-political source. Yet perhaps Israel’s policy makers thought it more prudent to have their threats come from unofficial sources so that the Israeli government would not be reprimanded by European nations which still, one way or another, back the Jewish state in many of its terrorist acts.

Hidden in this statement are messages being sent out in more than one direction.

If Israel is indeed capable of threatening European capitals with nuclear weapons, it could obviously also very easily destroy every Arab capital. As such, the comments were a warning to Arab countries in anticipation of the extremist stand that Israelis will take toward the so-called peace process, a stand guaranteeing that a fully autonomous Palestinian state will never come into being.

The second target of these statements are the European capitals which reject America’s unilateral decision-making on the invasion of Iraq — the so-called axis of rejection, France, Germany and Belgium. In the meantime, Washington has on its side the axis of support — Italy, Spain and the UK. It is clear that the arrogant American stand on Iraq has generated a degree of conflict within the European group and this is the first of its kind in the history of the European collective.

The Iraqi case has turned the political clock back to the time of De Gaulle’s France. De Gaulle who wanted to get rid of the imposed post-World War II American domination of Europe. That stand received support from Germany.

The French-German understanding, whose power has grown in light of common political stands and the creation of the European legion in anticipation of dispensing with NATO, greatly worried Washington who saw it as a real threat to its dominance whether over Europe or the world at large. This was reconfirmed when the axis nations used their veto inside NATO, refusing aid to Turkey in the event of an attack during the course of the US’s self-serving war.

Who benefits from destroying the political unity inside the European Union?

The answer is without a doubt America — which seeks to retain its unilateral dominance over the world, followed by Israel, which seeks to destroy the power and cohesiveness of the European Union to insure its economic interests and Jewish capital on the old continent. Is it possible for the European political leadership and the European people to accept and agree to Israeli intimidation? Or are such statements considered irresponsible and so do not have any effect on European security issues?

I believe that the situation rests on France and Germany’s ability to re-establish political unity in the European Union and transcend the Iraqi case in a way that corresponds to European direction refusing the invasion of Iraq, in order to confirm its stand against US dominance.

Wars for the spoils of others
By Wahib Binzagr

Arab News, 2/17/03

In the eyes of billions outside Europe and the United States, the wars that cripple the world economy are between the two continents rather than over Iraq or the salvation of world trade freedom. The US appears to be unhappy that Europe remains a prosperous, peaceful, democratic continent that is working towards a meaningful union. The frustration of the US becomes self-evident when its division of the world into those who are with it and those who are against it is put to the test. While Europe remains the US’ most significant strategic partner, the differences between their values and views are so wide that it hardly needs somebody like Saddam to highlight them.

Today’s Europe remains the world’s prime example of a gentleman. It is aging, rich and averse to risk. For many Americans, on the other hand, wars must be fought when they, and they only, consider them justified, regardless of the established rules of the game and says Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, “to a glorious conclusion, somewhere else. “For most Europeans,” he adds, “the launching of a war is believed to be catastrophic, immoral or both”.

The Europeans are masters of patching up their differences to avoid wars. They are building a United Europe, although out of the current members of the European Union only Sweden and the UK were neither occupied nor have suffered a civil conflict in the 20th century. The same cannot be said for their strategic partner, who is unwilling to listen to words of wisdom from their old loyal associates or take note of the painful experience of their mentors.

Another war of some importance is currently being fought by the Europeans and the Americans in Tokyo. The enemy to be defeated is the underdeveloped countries who, by the WTO interpretations of its laws, have to give most and take least.

According to the European commission, “the European Union has a paramount interest in the further liberation of services trade and has encouraged the drive to create a truly Global market for services”. The gentle reminder will sadly not move the European Union or its partners.

The battlefield, obviously, is a WTO paper, three years in the making, seeking to chart common ground among the trade body’s 145 members to achieve consensus on farm and tariffs liberalization. The war is also between Europe and the United States. This time, for good measure, they are joined by Tokyo. This is not because Tokyo is the host city. It is because like them, it wants to hold its subsidies on agriculture and uphold tariffs to protect its own industries and invade other poorer economies. All is fair in love and war. But the big three are not fighting each other: They are after a after a bigger share of the spoils of the underdeveloped world. And the developing countries had better agree, or they will make a Saddam out of every one of them.

The ghosts from Tora Bora
Abdullah Nasir Al-Fowzan/Al-Watan

Arab News, 2/17/03

The United States has reaffirmed that it will attack Iraq and remove the present regime from power — not because it is afraid of the regime but because it is afraid of Al-Qaeda. This looks like a puzzle but is a fact.

The US says that it fears that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction may end up in the hands of Al-Qaeda. That means it does not fear Saddam and his formidable army with hundreds of thousands of men who possess, as claimed by Washington, weapons of mass destruction.

But Washington fears the fewer than 300 Al-Qaeda members whom US forces besieged in the Tora Bora mountains. The US failed to find these men and was forced to launch bombing campaigns against them.

The Al-Qaeda members were able to resist and then withdraw to hideouts around the world. They might have dispersed into small groups, but the United States fears that they have become ghosts, with the biggest and most dangerous among them being Osama Bin Laden, who is still threatening the United States. Assume that 200 of the 300 Al-Qaeda members escaped the US bombings in Tora Bora. America is now mobilizing its forces to attack this small number of people. Surprisingly, it will not be in the form of a direct confrontation but by chasing and destroying the means which the US fears might fall into the hands of those ghosts.

The US knows that it will not be able to exterminate Al-Qaeda. So it is now chasing the means which Al-Qaeda may try to use it against it. The US wants to confiscate and destroy the weapons. I cannot say that the claims of the United States — the protector of international security and the world’s only superpower, which also has a major humanitarian responsibility — are false.

However, I should understand that its fears are not going to end there. The fears will turn into embarrassing dreams and then nightmares disturbing its sleep. After chasing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it will then turn to the nuclear weapons in Iran and Pakistan and then in North Korea. It will not stop there but think of destroying the nuclear weapons in Russia, in France and in other countries.

So long as Washington believes that these 200 Al-Qaeda men, who are in hiding and who are looking for weapons of destruction to use against the US, pose a big threat to its security, it will take the necessary precautions against them and confiscate all weapons of mass destruction, which may fall in the hands of Al-Qaeda ghosts.

The United States should also think of the mass destructive weapons in its own factories, laboratories and arsenals. What will the US do when it comes to destroying its own weapons?

I have been looking for a long time for an answer to another intriguing question. Why have we not seen even a single subversive act inside the US after the 9/11 attacks? We have seen terrorist attacks linked to Al-Qaeda suspects all over the world, mostly in Islamic countries. Any sane man would say that these Al-Qaeda ghosts should have concentrated their operations against the US, which considers them enemy number one, and not in the lands of their relatives and loved ones. I want to know more about the reality of these ghosts the United States wants to chase.

Iraq - the schedule slips

By Gwynne Dyer

Jordan Times, 2/17/03

IT GETS quite warm in Iraq between May and September, and the last conqueror of Baghdad, General Sir Stanley Maude, avoided the worst of the Mesopotamian summer by leading his British and Indian troops into the city in March of 1917. However, the Arab warriors who beat the Persian army and seized the country for Islam at the battle of Qadisiyah in 637 did their fighting in June. Over two thousand years before that, the army of King Hammurabi of Babylon fought in every season — and unlike the current generation of US army tanks, his chariots didn't even have air conditioning.

President George W. Bush's father launched his ground attack on Iraqi forces in Kuwait twelve years ago next month, but the main reason for choosing a February date was the fact that it took five months after Saddam Hussein's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait to build up a large American and allied army in Saudi Arabia, and another six weeks to soften the Iraqis up from the air. Other things being equal, it's obviously nicer to get the fighting over before the hot season — but if Saddam's army had no problem in attacking in August, why would the American armed forces?

The whole business about a February or March deadline for attacking Iraq because of the fierce Iraqi summer has been got up by the press. No such deadline exists, and the US army can attack Baghdad in any month of the year. Which is just as well if Bush is serious about killing the man who “tried to kill my dad”, because the schedule for a US attack is now slipping visibly. The problem is not getting the troops into place, but getting all the other ducks lined up facing in the same direction.

Three major issues have to be cleared up before Bush orders the attack to begin, and the hardest to control is the position of America's own allies. Every opinion poll shows that the American public will back Bush's war if at least a couple of major allies come along, but gets cold feet if the United States has to do it alone. (The support for a war also drops below 50 per cent if the poll takers suggest that even one American soldier will be killed, but that's another story.) It's as though the US public needs at least one friendly foreign country to confirm Bush's allegations about the need to destroy Saddam by showing up for the war.

This gives British Prime Minister Tony Blair quite a bit of leverage, for Britain is the only ally that would be likely to provide significant number of troops. Recently, Blair has been using his leverage by saying that the arms inspectors' report to the United Nations Security Council on Jan. 27, on their findings in Iraq over the first 60 days, is no kind of deadline, and that Britain expects the process to continue for some considerable time after that. He hasn't explicitly said that Britain would not go to war without a second UN resolution authorising an attack on Iraq, but he hasn't said it would either.

Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who could also give Bush very useful political cover if he sent even token Canadian forces to an Iraq war, has bluntly said that he won't do so without another UN resolution. When his defence minister, John McCallum, tried to soften that line during a Washington visit in mid-January — “Some may say, `We're (sending forces) only with a UN mandate.' We're saying we much prefer that, but we may do it otherwise” — Chretien cut him off at the knees. McCalluum, he said, had “replied to a hypothetical question, that he has reflected upon and corrected since that time”.

If the allies won't go without another UN resolution, what are the chances of getting one soon? Not good, for no amount of threats and bribes will get the other Security Council members to vote for war without at least some hard evidence that Saddam is concealing weapons of mass destruction. That has not happened yet, and chief weapons inspector Hans Blix is refusing to be rushed: “There is no way we are going by the time-line of any administration, be it the American or any other,” he said on Jan. 18.

Then there is the domestic political problem. Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, would not be doing his job if he were not warning the president that a February war could mean he peaks too soon, just like his father did. Bush senior launched his ground attack in February 1991, won his war in March — and lost the election 19 months later because by that time the glow of victory had faded while the economy was still down. Wouldn't it be better, Rove will be asking, to have the victory a bit closer to the November 2004 election?

And then there's the distraction of North Korea, and the difficulty with getting either Turkey or Saudi Arabia to commit firmly to letting the US use their territory for the attack on Iraq, and the probability that Saddam will seize foreign hostages again (maybe including the arms inspectors) if a US invasion looks imminent, and the sheer, foot-dragging reluctance of the US army to come up with any plan that might involve its soldiers in street fighting in Baghdad.... Bush will almost certainly get his war in the end, one way or another, but next month is looking less and less likely.

The writer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Millions around globe march against war on Iraq
Demonstrators bring capital cities to standstill in Weekend of coordinated protests

US allies Britain and Australia see massive crowds as protesters wave banners linking military action to American oil interests

Compiled by Daily Star staff, 2/17/03

Millions of protesters took to the streets around the globe on the weekend to send a passionate message to US President George W. Bush not to invade Iraq and to give peace a chance.
In a huge wave of demonstrations not seen since the Vietnam era, anti-war marchers in more than 600 towns and cities from Canberra to Cape Town to Chicago called on Bush to back off his hawkish stance toward Iraq, which his administration accuses of hiding weapons of mass destruction that pose a global threat.
Australia and Britain, the only two countries so far to deploy military personnel to the Gulf in support of the US build-up, both saw emphatic demonstrations of popular resistance to war.
“This war is solely about oil. George Bush has never given a damn about human rights,” said Mayor Ken Livingstone in London, where police said 750,000 people marched in the biggest peace demonstration in British history, although organizers claimed an attendance of around 2 million.
More than 200,000 people, some waving banners asking “How many lives per liter?” thronged Sydney streets on Sunday, beginning a second day of global marches calling on the United States not to attack Iraq.
The Sydney crowd descended on the city’s Hyde Park for a march. Many demonstrators were middle-aged with children and some were in wheelchairs. They banged drums and chanted Vietnam-era protest songs as traffic ground to a halt.
“We want our prime minister to listen to us. We don’t want war with Iraq,” said Thomas Aiken, 34, a doctor, as he balanced his young son on his shoulders.
Sunday’s protests in Australia were on a larger scale than the previous day, when 100,000 people demonstrated.
Europe’s biggest rally may have been in Rome, where, under a sea of banners, at least 1 million people marched through the streets. Graying pensioners to dreadlocked teenagers marched side-by-side in a carnival-like atmosphere.
In France one of the staunchest opponents of war one woman protesting in Paris said: “The Americans were stressed by Sept. 11 and now they are going completely overboard.” At least 300,000 anti-war demonstrators took to the streets in 60 towns and cities across the country.
France’s opposition for now to war against Iraq is supported in Europe by Berlin, where some 500,000 people attended a rally in the biggest protest since the end of World War II.
They waved banners reading “No blood for oil,” “Make love not war,” and “War? No thanks!” In the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, one banner read: “I look at Bush but see Hitler.”
About 3 million people turned out in Spain, including nearly 1.3 million in Barcelona, making it the city’s biggest protest ever. About 660,000 people in Madrid brought the city center to a standstill.
In Turkey, meanwhile, a call for protests brought only a limited response, with small groups of demonstrators gathering in Ankara and Istanbul, and few residents complying with a request to flick off lights after nightfall.
In Moscow, hundreds of communist protesters braved cold weather to unfurl red flags before the US Embassy.
The demonstrators held up banners reading: “Bush, hands off Iraq,” “By attacking Iraq, the US is attacking Russia,” and, in English: “Bush go away, you are Hitler today.”
Loudspeakers fitted on a truck blared out revolutionary songs, as Communist Party speakers took to the stage alongside representatives of Iraq, Cuba and the Palestinians. The rally attracted close to 1,000 people, according to organizers.
In America, authorities first estimated the crowd in New York at 250,000 people, but police later put the number at 100,000. Nonetheless it was the largest US protest against an Iraq war.
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu told demonstrators outside the United Nations that America should allow UN inspectors to finish their task of searching Iraq for illicit weapons.
“The just war says you have exhausted all possible and peaceful means, and the world says, ‘No, we haven’t,’” the Nobel Prize laureate said.
Tutu said he believed the peace marches could make a difference. “People marched and demonstrated and the Berlin Wall fell. People marched and demonstrated and apartheid ended,” he said. “And now people are marching and demonstrating because they are saying no to war.”
Smaller US protests of several thousand each were held in Chicago, Philadelphia and Santa Fe, New Mexico, while in California, thousands of protesters demonstrated in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and Sacramento.
Nearly all the marches were peaceful though. In Athens, Greece, riot police fired tear gas at demonstrators who threw stones and several petrol bombs.
Dozens of hooded protesters splintered from a main body of up to 100,000 demonstrators gathered in the Greek capital for what was supposed to be a peaceful protest, smashing several windows and burning a parked car.
Police said 12 cars were damaged and dozens of shops and banks had their windows smashed. They told Reuters they had made 13 arrests after 26 people were initially detained, while four police officers were also slightly injured.
Police said about 100,000 people demonstrated in Athens, while 60,000 people demonstrated at 52 cities and towns around Greece. Demonstrators said 150,000 had attended the Athens rally alone.
In Tunisia, at least 20 people were injured, two of them seriously, when Tunisian police dispersed a demonstration in the city of Sfax, the organizers said.
“Police brutally cracked down on demonstrators hitting them over the head with batons, injuring more than 20 people who are being treated in emergency units in hospital,” witnesses told AFP. They said about 15 people had been held for questioning.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, peaceful protests were held.
In Iraq, two massive anti-war rallies, each snaking over several kilometers, filled the streets of Baghdad, with many protesters carrying guns to demonstrate their opposition to US-led military threats.
Official figures put the number of participants in the two rallies at 1 million. Journalists estimated the turnout at hundreds of thousands but no independent numbers were available.
In the capital’s eastern quarter of Al-Russafa, the demonstrators were mainly young men brandishing assault rifles and banners condemning the United States and Israel.
“Down with America, down with Zionism,” they chanted.
The protesters carried portraits of President Saddam Hussein. “With our blood, with our soul, we will redeem you, Saddam,” the crowd chanted.
In Morocco, some 1,000 people marched to protest plans for a war on Iraq, with many slogans berating Arab regimes for not taking a stronger stance on the issue.
The protest in the capital, Rabat, was organized by several nongovernmental organizations, including Islamic groups.
Among the slogans chanted by the demonstrators were: “Down with the imperialist war,” “America is the enemy of peoples” and “Arab regimes are hopeless.”
The sultanate of Oman witnessed its first all-female demonstration when up to 200 women marched to urge Washington and London not to wage war on Iraq.
Omani women in headscarves and flowing robes took to the streets of the capital Muscat, joined by their Western counterparts, in a rare protest in the conservative Gulf region.
Carrying banners written in English reading, “Excess of peace not excess of evil,” some doubted US and British motives for trying to disarm fellow Arab Iraq, which has the world’s second largest oil reserves.
“The real motive of their aggression is oil beneath our feet, not terrorism,” said Salha Suleiman, an Omani woman.
“My message to Bush is that he needs to educate himself about the Middle East, Islam and work together with all Muslims to find another solution and not war,” American Jill Rheingans told Reuters during the march in Oman.
Briton Julie Boynton urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to heed public opinion: “We would like him to listen because war will increase terrorism.”
In Syria, more than 200,000 protesters, many carrying anti-war banners and waving Syrian flags, marched through the capital Damascus, chanting anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans.
“No to war. Yes for peace,” they shouted. “Down, down with the USA,” read one banner at the government-backed protest, which was organized by the Syrian Popular Committee for the Support of Palestinian Uprising and Resistance to Zionism. Najjah Attar, a former Syrian Cabinet minister who participated in the protest, accused Washington of attempts to change the region’s map.
“The US wants to encroach upon our own norms, concepts and principles,” she said. “They (the Americans) are reminding us of the Nazi and fascist times.”
In Beirut, some 10,000 people took to the streets carrying Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese flags, and placards reading: “No more blood for oil,” “Stop mad cowboy,” and “Don’t sack Iraq.”
Supervised by police and soldiers, the demonstrators marched through the city’s main streets, preceded by trucks with loud speakers that blared martial music and songs.
In Jordan, thousands of people marched on the nation’s capital. A coalition of opposition parties from the Islamic Action Front, which is the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, to the tiny Communist Party marched under rain for 2 kilometers in the Shemissani district, watched carefully by police along the way. Signs read “The Arabs reject a US attack on Iraq” and “No to war.”
In Egypt, several dozen Islamic militants shouting slogans against US-led war threats against Iraq rallied outside an Arab foreign ministers’ meeting Sunday at the Cairo headquarters of the Arab League.
Many of the demonstrators were members of Egypt’s Islamist opposition Labor Party, wearing T-shirts marked: “USA-Israel, one enemy.” They brandished Iraqi and Palestinian flags and vented their anger at Arab officials whom they accused of not taking decisive action to prevent war.
In Cyprus, around 350 people protested at a British military base near the southern coastal town of Larnaca, condemning Britain and the United States.
Among the noisy crowd were Cypriot activists, Palestinians and Iraqi students, young children, members of left-wing groups and the Green Party.
There was a discreet security presence, as the demonstrators marched through the base and walked 4 kilometers to the nearby village of Pyla to gather with other supporters.
Demonstrators waved Palestinian and Cypriot flags chanting “Don’t attack Iraq,” “No more blood for oil” and “Give no help to the imperialists.”
The protest was one of a series organized by the Stop the War Alliance, an amalgam of various political and student groups. Agencies

Arab silence speaks volumes about Arab regimes

The Daily Star, 2/17/03

Western public opinion spoke with a thunderous voice over the weekend, drawing well in excess of 10 million people into the streets of hundreds of cities to oppose the US-led march to war in Iraq. The numbers were staggering: 70,000 protesters in Amsterdam; 80,000 in Dublin; 150,000 in Melbourne; at least 200,000 in Paris and New York; approximately 500,000 in both Berlin and Sydney; 660,000 in Madrid; a minimum of 750,000 in London; 1.3 million in Barcelona; and anywhere between 1 million and 3 million in Rome. There were record crowds in dozens of cities and countries. Rarely have so many people expressed their opposition to a war before it has even started.
After such an impressive display, the first question that comes to mind is: Where were the Arabs?
Of course, there were large crowds in Baghdad and Damascus, but the protests in the Arab world were meaningless because demonstrations of support for authoritarian regimes are no measure of popular sentiment, only of the ruling party’s ability to organize and/or intimidate. The most devastating indictment of weak Arab participation was that while even Tel Aviv saw 2,000 protesters, Cairo had just 600 surrounded by 3,000 police officers.
This is not to say there were no bright spots anywhere in the Arab world. In Beirut, parties and groups with long histories of conflict came together to speak out against both a war and Saddam Hussein. They were badly outnumbered, however, by demonstrators who brandished portraits of the Iraqi dictator.
The point is that Saturday should have been a bigger day in the Arab world than anywhere else. Instead, the people with the most to lose from an outbreak of hostilities managed only a pale shadow of what was achieved abroad. Obviously this poor performance is not due to any lack of feeling: The grand majority of Arabs are steadfastly against another assault on Iraq and all the repercussions it would have for the Iraqi people. It is also not because Arabs are so rich and happy that the instinct to complain has been dulled by complacency: Nothing could be further from the truth.
The problem is that Arab governments are so backward that they prefer not to see mass demonstrations of popular sentiment even when that sentiment is aligned with their own public positions. It is a classic case of tyranny imagining that by preventing the expression of the people’s will it can prevent that will from existing. Contrary to the myth, ostriches do not stick their heads in the sand at any sign of danger but Arab rulers do.
As luck would have it, Arab regimes still have a chance to head off multiple disasters by changing their ways. An Arab League summit is rapidly approaching, and while the agenda is expected to concentrate on Iraq, the participants would be well advised to also include radical reforms on their list of priorities. Generations of inept and immoral Arab leadership will not be cured by a landmark communique committing its signatories to democracy and the rule of law. It might, however, buy them the time they need to start instituting reforms before a social earthquake finally makes them officially what they have been for so long practicably: irrelevant.

Protesters say no, UN says maybe what are Arab leaders saying?

An Arab press review, 2/17/03

Arab press commentators give this account of the opening three rounds in the big boxing rematch over Iraq:
Round One: Warmongers George W. Bush and Tony Blair are caught by a lightning right hand from UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohammed al-Baradei which forces the US president and British prime minister to cover up in the center of a dramatic Security Council meeting in New York.
Round Two: Millions of anti-war protesters take to the streets around the globe, thus landing a massive left hook that sends Bush and Blair to the floor, but the bell saves them.
Round Three: While the two sides return to the ring and exchange jabs without going in for the kill, Arab cheerleaders led by Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak prepare to join the audience. But we still don’t know who they are rooting for.
Egypt’s semi-official daily Al-Ahram reports on its front page that an emergency Arab summit intended “to root for peace in Iraq” will be held at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh Thursday week, Feb. 27, because “a number of Arab heads of state” will be attending the 13th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit hosted by Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur Feb. 20-25.
According to Al-Ahram, “Arab and international circles have welcomed President Mubarak’s call for an emergency summit. Arab diplomats and ambassadors confirmed that Mubarak worked quietly to arrange for this summit, coming out openly about it only after securing Arab responsiveness to the idea of formulating a resolute and wise Arab position on the Iraqi crisis.”
But a sidebar on the front page of the daily gives away Mubarak’s true intention, which parallels that of the Bush-Blair tandem. The sidebar declares: “Newswires and the Arab and international press have highlighted the warnings sounded by Ibrahim Nafie, editor in chief of Al-Ahram (and a confidant of the Egyptian president), concerning the situation in Iraq and his corroboration that Washington has in effect decided on war and that military operations will without doubt be initiated within weeks if the Iraqi regime does not change the way it addresses the crisis over proscribed weapons.
“Nafie had mentioned in his weekly column (last Friday) that the series of interviews conducted by the Al-Ahram delegation to Washington over the past two weeks shows that the US administration is putting the final touches to its military preparations. Nafie also revealed that the Iraqi defense minister has been placed under house arrest on the orders of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and that he does not go out except for photo opportunities and to attend official meetings.
“Several US newspapers and magazines have also posted on their websites the articles Nafie wrote during his American tour articles that criticized the Iraqi regime’s stands and bombastic statements in total disregard of the Iraqi people’s interest, sufficing with endeavors to protect the Iraqi president’s life at any cost.”
One Arab head of state who has already gone on record as saying he would not attend the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh is Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi. The summit will fail in agreeing a common approach to the US-Iraq standoff, he said.
“The summit only aims to tell the people that we did something, but secretly it will support what America may do,” he told the Saudi-owned television channel MBC, adding: “I discovered during my recent talks in Sharm (with Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad) that the Arab states bordering Iraq are egging on the United States to mug Iraq.”
The Jordanian daily Al-Rai believes an Arab summit is irrelevant “unless the objective is to hammer out meaningful resolutions liable to reverberate across the world, especially that the Arabs have been late in assuming their supposed role, driving many world leaders to wonder … ‘Where are the Arabs?’”
Al-Rai says the proposed summit’s task will have to choose between two options: It can either formulate a position that adds weight to the peace camp which is mushrooming around the world, or it can issue a closing communique that carries no weight in the current state of international politics one that consecrates the Arabs’ defeat by default and their subjugation by others.
“If we are against war, we should tell Washington and London so unhesitatingly, unequivocally and unambiguously. If we are for war, let our war cry be as loud as the heads of government in Washington, London, Madrid, Rome and Sydney,” the paper writes.
Jordanian columnist Tarek Massarwa, also writing in Al-Rai, says the global protests against war which followed the measured report to the Security Council by Blix will make it difficult for the US secretary of state to keep saying: “We will act with or without a second UN resolution.” The millions of anti-war protesters will now judge any attack by US forces on Iraq as plain and “flagrant aggression.”
And, says Massarwa, “the planned summit will add little to the overall picture. The previous Arab summit (held last March) in Beirut had already rejected the notion of war on Iraq. Nevertheless, Arab lands are replete with American forces preparing to invade Iraq.”
The leader writer of the UAE daily Al-Khaleej hopes the upcoming summit will at least “give expression” to the global outpouring of anti-war sentiment.
Ghassan Sharbel, writing in the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat says that “leaders of the intifada at the Security Council” and the heads of state who will be soon meeting at Sharm el-Sheikh have to ponder “the price” that will have to be paid to convince the Bush administration to revoke its war decision and order back the troops and aircraft carriers it has been massing against Iraq in the region.
“It is no exaggeration to say the price varies between Saddam Hussein stepping down and the imposition of an arms inspection regime akin to placing Iraq under an international mandate that will make it difficult for the current regime to survive for long.”
Sharbel writes: “The Iraqi president cannot relax because the international balance of power does not allow for the defeat of the US, while the international and regional power balances do not allow for a victory by Saddam Hussein.”
Jordanian political analyst Uraib al-Rantawi writes in Amman’s Ad-Dustour that Egypt’s call for the summit coincides with “an unprecedented European drive, led by France and Germany and supported by Russia and China,” to avert war. He sarcastically describes the summit as an event organized to keep up appearances and avert censure and says it “wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for the pressures exerted by Europe, and chiefly by Paris, on those of the Arabs who publicly profess to be against the war, but in fact are not lifting a finger to prevent it.”
Rantawi says the change in Egypt’s line is telling. Cairo has switched its position from saying that the Arab countries are unable to act to prevent war, to saying that it has become possible to avert it.
Although Cairo has it in its power to bring all or most of the Arab leaders together to achieve summit results they can “accept and live with,” no such effective outcome can be expected. The summit is likely to be an exercise in futility, confining itself to addressing the Iraqi leadership, and telling it that “it is its duty to completely submit to UN weapons inspections and to the letter and spirit of UN Security Council Resolution 1441,” in effect upping the pressure on Baghdad, he predicts.
The new line in the semi-official Egyptian press, “describing the Iraqi regime as a catastrophe to Iraq and the pan-Arab nation” is a good indication of “the atmosphere that will surround the summit, and affect its results,” Rantawi writes.
Nor will the planned summit change the positions of any of the participants. “Those who support war on Iraq will remain in support, and those who are wavering will continue to waver,” he adds.
The summit will not go any further than the French-German proposal, which is calling for a much stronger and wider UN weapons inspection regime backed by armed UN-mandated forces, and for allowing inspections much more time to bear fruit. The Arabs will “not dare” to discuss the idea of calling on Saddam to step down as a means of averting war because they don’t want to stand accused of being “less Arab” than France and Germany neither of which have made such a proposal.
Nor will they criticize the US or “deprive it of the facilities it has been granted” to invade Iraq an implicit reference to the fact that the main US air and ground offensives on Iraq will be launched from Kuwait, that the US will also be using Qatar’s Al-Udaid Air Base, and that Saudi Arabia is likely to allow the US to use air bases in the kingdom, at least for command and control purposes. This is because most of the participants in the summit “will not give up their relations with Washington or risk incurring its wrath under any circumstances,” Rantawi writes.
Also writing in Ad-Dustour, Jordanian commentator George Haddad warns that the summit can only succeed if it “seriously avoids turning into a face-saving maneuver” or a measure to impose “added responsibilities” on Iraq and demand “further miracles” of it.
But he berates Arab leaders for waiting so long to agree to a summit, despite popular pressure and demands in the Arab press. It is therefore “not strange that the belated call for a summit should be met with a kind of questioning tinged with caution” given that repeated calls for such a summit had, until late last week, “fallen on deaf ears.”
Cairo’s “sudden” call for an extraordinary summit came after its “discovery” that “war will cause huge losses and that military operations will have very negative effects, not only on the region, but on the world” Haddad remarks.
The risk of war on Iraq is also influencing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and both sides are managing their political moves accordingly, says veteran Palestinian analyst Bilal al-Hassan in Saudi Arabia’s leading pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon finds himself in the position of having to reciprocate the unlimited backing he has received from the Bush administration by not rocking the boat on the Palestinian question and, Hassan writes, initiating three kinds of contacts with the Palestinians, under the supervision of US Ambassador Dan Kurtzer: political contacts with Ahmed Qorai and Mahmoud Abbas led by Sharon’s national security chief, Ephraim Halevy; security contacts with Palestinian Interior Minister Hani al-Hassan carried out by the head of Sharon’s office, Dov Weisglass; financial contacts between Weisglass and Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad.
The contacts go against Sharon’s aim of destroying the Palestinian Authority (PA) and are simply aimed at scoring points with Washington. Inside Israel, they are being interpreted as follows:
l The contacts with the Palestinians are of a security, rather than a political, nature pending the “removal” of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and the PA officials being contacted are possible alternatives to him.
l The contacts make Sharon appear as though he were taking the initiative on dialogue with the Palestinians, rather than being strong-armed by Washington.
l The contacts are a service to Washington in that it pacifies the Palestinian front as it prepares to invade Iraq.
l The contacts can entice Israel’s secular parties to join Sharon’s coalition, sparing him dependence on the far right.
Sharon hence appears to be in control of the political game, “dragging the Palestinians to where he wants them to be and scoring points,” says Hassan.
But Palestinians also have something to gain from these contacts:
l They are taking place without regard to Sharon’s former pre-condition of a total cessation of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.
l The PA leadership is aware of the political minefield surrounding it as a result of the Iraq crisis and is trying to avoid the negative regional fallout that will occur as a result.
l The Palestinian negotiators are participating in the contacts on Arafat’s instructions, and are keeping him fully briefed on the process.
l The contacts will help the Palestinians to break American insistence on avoiding contact with the PA. They see the participation of the US ambassador as an indicator of that possibility.
But in reality, Hassan writes, both sides understand “this is not the time for political action or for achievements” and that it is a period for “scoring points and marking time successfully until the moment for real confrontation arrives, once the dust settles on the worldwide battle in which such institutions as the UN and NATO are almost collapsing.”

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