Download 319040_WorldWideEng.Report 21-Apr

Thurs. 21 Apr. 2011
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FAST COMPANY
Behind The Mystery Of Spam Tweets Clogging Syrian
Protesters' Streams ……………………………………….…1
THE STAR
Tough to determine who’s winning in Syrian uprising….......4
ATLANTIC SENTINEL
Why Concessions Hasten a Regime’s Demise……………....6
GUARDIAN
Syria: States of emergency…………………………..………8
Vagueness of the law keeps MidEastern protests in check...10
NYTIMES
Amid Crackdown, Big Protest Is Planned in Syria………...12
FINANCIAL TIMES
Assad olive branch fails to halt Syria revolt……………….16
Assad cousin accused of favouring family…………………18
Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian charade………………………….21
WASHINGTON TIMES
The end for Strong Assad…………………………………..23
JERUSALEM POST
'‘Bloodbath’ would follow overthrow of Assad in Syria'…..25
Pay attention to Syria……………………………………....27
Washington Watch: Obama needs a Syria policy……….....30
FOREIGN POLICY
What grade will the West get in applied Middle Eastern
studies this semester?............................................................32
CHOMSKY PERSONAL BLOG
Noam Chomsky on The Arab Revolt……………………....35
Noam Chomsky On Libya and the Unfolding Crises…...…42
HOME PAGE
Behind The Mystery Of Spam Tweets Clogging Syrian Protesters'
Streams
Syrian democracy activists on Twitter have found themselves threatened and
spammed by mystery accounts. Now one prominent opposition figure claims the
Syrian government may be involved.
BY Neal Ungerleider
Fast Company (American
business media brand, with a unique editorial
focus on innovation in technology, ethonomics)
Wed Apr 20, 2011
Protests in Syria are getting intense. So has social media use by
those seeking the latest news. But a more sinister brand of Twitter
user has also taken to posting furiously under the same topic
protesters have used.
A well-organized campaign with possible traces to the Syrian
government has been drowning the #syria hashtag in spam-forcing Twitter to intervene and to block the spam accounts from
appearing in searches. Shortly thereafter, at least one of accounts
began threatening a well-known Syrian free speech activist.
The story broke when Anas Qteish, a Syrian expatriate “blogger,
translator [and] tech enthusiast” based in the United States, noted
at the GlobalVoices site that a number of Twitter spam accounts
had popped up after the beginning of the Syrian protests. The
accounts Qteish mentioned posted primarily in Arabic. These
spam accounts, with names such as @thelovelysyria,
@syriabeauty,
@syleague,
@karamahclub,
@syhumor,
@dnnnews and @mbking13 all regularly posted automated tweets
full of nonsense unrelated to happenings in Syria with the #syria
hashtag appended. One account, for example only posted old
sports scores.
All of the accounts were set to post on a frequent automated loop-in most cases, new tweets were posted every two to five minutes.
However, the content was puzzling to most outside observers. All
the Twitter accounts named above posted a combination of old
sports scores, links to Flickr pictures of Syria, links to Syrian
television sitcoms online and--most puzzling--pro-regime news
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reports and threats against Syrian opposition figures and
opposition sympathizers on Twitter. In many cases, the Twitter
accounts appeared to have been hastily created; the accounts used
no profile pictures at all or stock pictures (with watermarks)
instead.
As of April 20, 2011, all of these accounts were still regularly
posting to Twitter on a reduced schedule.
To an outside observer, this brings to mind Foreign Policy's
perfectly nuanced prediction that social media could confuse
protesters just as easily as it informs them. A less sophisticated
version of this operation was just tried in Uganda this week.
According to Qteish, these Twitter accounts were variants of a less
sophisticated spam account operation that he believes to have been
run by the Syrian secret police:
First was the proliferation of what tweeps dubbed as the “twitter
eggs, a group of newly created and mostly image-less twitter
accounts that cussed out, verbally assaulted, and threatened
anyone tweeting favorably about the ongoing protests, or
criticizing the regime. Those accounts were believed to be manned
by Syrian Mokhabarat [intelligence] agents with poor command of
both written Arabic and English, and an endless arsenal of bile and
insults. Several twitter users created lists to make it easier for the
rest to track and reports those accounts for spam. [..]
Second, which is more damaging, is the creation of various spam
accounts that mainly target #Syria hash tag; flooding it with
predetermined set of tweets–-every few minutes--about varied
topics such as photography, old Syrian sport scores, links to
Syrian comedy shows, pro-regime news, and threats against a long
list of tweeps who expressed their support of the protests.
Shortly after Qteish posted his findings, threats against him and
insults were tweeted by one of the accounts, @thelovelysyria.
Before his posting, the account only posted links to pictures of
Syria on Flickr.
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It appears that at least one of the spam accounts has links to a
Bahrain-based company. Eghna Development and Support, which
offers “political campaign solutions,” lists both @dnnnews and
@thelovelysyria as clients. Here is Eghna's description of their
work for The Lovely Syria:
LovelySyria is using EGHNA Media Server to promote intersting
photography about Syria using their twitter accounts. EGHNA
Media Server helped Lovely Syria get attention to the beauty of
Syria, and build a community of people who love the country and
admire its beauty. Some of their network members started
translating photo descriptions and rebroadcasting them to give the
Syrian beauty more exposure. Lovely Syria is using their own
installation of EGHNA Ad Center to generate the twitter
messages, their current schedule is 2 messages every 5 minutes.
Eghna describes @dnnnews as “a citizen media news network
operating in Syria.” However, the Arabic-language content
available on DNNNews' site, dearsyria.com, is exclusively proregime and paints the protesters as armed insurgents. The news
presented on the site frequently contradicts portrayals of the same
event on Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya.
Radio Free Europe's Luke Allnutt, meanwhile, is strongly
implying that the mystery Syria Twitter accounts are linked to the
regime:
The Syrian authorities have thus far been fairly sophisticated in
their attempts to manage the discourse. After the first calls for a
"day of rage" in early February, the government lifted the firewall
on Facebook (previously users inside Syria had to access through
a proxy). This might have been simply a concession, or something
more nefarious, which could actually aid the government
crackdown by helping to identify activists.
At press time, Twitter appears to be blocking the sites from
showing up in searches for the #syria hashtag.
HOME PAGE
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 Hint: there's an important article in "The Times" by The British
anchor Dan Snow titled "Syria’s uprising will not be a rerun of
Tunisia', but this article needs subscription..
 HOME PAGE
Tough to determine who’s winning in Syrian uprising
Olivia Ward,
The Star (Canadian newspaper)
April 20, 2011
It’s tough to know who has the upper hand in the conflict between
Syria’s regime and its opponents.
Protests against President Bashar al Assad and his Baathist
government have been building for nearly three months, with
mounting casualties for the demonstrators and a smaller number of
security forces.
But Assad has also given way on one of their main demands, to
repeal 50 years of draconian emergency rule.
Now, as both sides regroup awaiting Friday protests — dubbed
“Great Friday” by the opposition and predicted to be the largest
yet — each is looking at its prospects for victory and finding no
answers, while facing off for a possible confrontation with no exit
strategy in sight.
“Everyone is licking their wounds and wondering what to do
next,” said Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma, a Syria
expert and blogger who is in close touch with the country.
“The protesters aren’t prepared to deal with the military, and the
government has many more tools for using force. But Assad has
drawn a line in the sand and said he’s made concessions and that’s
it. He considers them an uprising, and radicals out to destroy the
country.”
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The possibility of a new bloodbath in a strategically important
Middle Eastern country has rung alarm bells in Washington,
which until recently has diplomatically snubbed Syria, and has
little pull there.
On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized
what she called the regime’s repression of peaceful protests and
torture of people who were detained. But she also warned the
protesters against violence and said demands for reform must
begin through a political process.
Clinton expressed concern about events in Homs, where weekend
clashes were followed by a pre-dawn raid on hundreds of antigovernment demonstrators, using live ammunition and tear gas
and killing several people. The death toll in Syria has so far
topped 200, and student protests have spread from Daraa in the
southwest to the largest city, Aleppo.
But how far the protesters are prepared to go — and how far the
regime would go to halt a revolution — is still moot.
Like neighbouring Iraq and Lebanon, Syria is divided among a
number of religious groups. And like Iraq under Saddam Hussein,
it is ruled by a minority who are resented by other groups. The
ruling Assad family are Alawites, a sect linked with Shiites, while
the majority of Syrians are Sunnis. And like Saddam’s Iraq, the
Syrian regime has cracked down on any hint of sectarian unrest.
That has made many Syrians wary of destabilizing the religious
fault line.
“They have opted for reform and not regime change,” writes Elias
Samo, a professor of international relations at Syrian and
American universities, in bitterlemons-international.org.
“They want less emergency law and more freedom, less corruption
and more transparency, less security and more liberty, less of one
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party and more of multi-party, less nepotism and more
competency.”
That’s unlikely to happen, however, under Assad — whose wife
Asma was recently featured in Vogue magazine as a promoter of
democratic change.
“He’s not a reformer,” says Rime Allaf, an associate fellow of
London-based Chatham House. “Too much has been made of the
year and a half he spent in the West. I don’t think we should have
expected so much. (His regime) may be willing to make a few
changes, but they would lose money and power if they made real
change.”
“If there were elections, they would dismantle the Baath Party, the
army and the intelligence community,” says Landis. “Hundreds of
thousands would lose their jobs. For the president, it’s not just
taking the wife and kids to Ougadougou.”
But he adds, the protests aren’t going away anytime soon.
“Syria is a poor country, and it doesn’t have a big cushion. The
banking system has come to a stop and the stock market is
effectively closed. Lack of tourism and foreign investment has
taken a devastating toll on the government’s credibility, and its
ability to dig its way out of this. That’s where its real vulnerability
lies: in its economic failure.”
HOME PAGE
Why Concessions Hasten a Regime’s Demise
By Nick Ottens
Atlantics Sentinel,
April 20, 2011
For the second time in two weeks, the Syrian Government said
that it would end decades of emergency rule and consider the sort
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of political reforms that protesters were calling for. So why didn’t
the people go home?
In Syria, the regime has attempted to suppress dissent with heavy
force. In Egypt earlier this year, the authoritarian government of
longtime President Hosni Mubarak similarly answered protests
with intimidation and violence until the military made clear that it
would not shoot at demonstrators. Thus began Egypt’s lame
attempt at reconciliation.
Mubarak appointed a vice president for the first time during his
thirty year reign who met with members of the opposition and
promised the very reforms they had taken to the streets for—
changes to the constitution designed to weaken executive power;
the release of political prisoners; the liberalization of the media;
anti-corruption efforts. All to no avail. Tens of thousands
continued to pour into Cairo’s central Tahrir Square to force
Mubarak out of office. He resigned after weeks of unrest, paving
the way for a military interim government that scheduled elections
for the summer.
The outcome in Syria may be less predictable. Security services
there appear to have the stomach for ruthless suppression while
people are more fearful of their government than Egyptians were.
All the same, the mere occurrence of demonstrations coupled with
the regime’s professed willingness to concede to some of their
demands has reminded Syrians that their government is not
invulnerable.
While President Bashar al-Assad appointed a new cabinet and
promised the release of political prisoners in an effort to disarm
the protests, the moves suggested a weakness on the part of his
government. The overtures may have been largely symbolic—the
cabinet has little actual power in Syria while the release of
detainees excluded activists who had supposedly committed
crimes “against the nation and the citizens”—but they implicitly
acknowledged that the people had reason to be dissatisfied.
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By suggesting the possibility of reform in the face of mounting
civil unrest, the president implicitly acknowledged the very
illegitimacy of his regime. Naturally, people did not tone down
their demands. Instead, the protests spread.
Assad may still able to avoid the inevitable in the short run but his
police state has started to come apart at its seams. The illusion of
its power has been crushed. The seemingly omnipotent security
apparatus has started showing its human weaknesses. And as the
world is watching, the military may think twice about rolling tanks
into the streets of Syria’s cities to sustain a dictatorship that
certainly has its best days behind it.
If Assad had learned from Mubarak, he would have known that
the only way to keep a people oppressed in a time when
information spreads so rapidly is with brutal force. The trouble is
that in most nations, the people who are supposed to execute such
force don’t like to kill and torture and prosecute other people they
identify with, at least not for too long.
HOME PAGE
Syria: States of emergency
It is tempting to see regional opportunities in Syria's turmoil – but no Arab
spring has yet been nurtured by foreign intervention
Editorial,
Guardian,
21 Apr. 2011,
Weeks of demonstrations in Syria reached a turning point this
week. In the country's third city, Homs, a Tahrir-style sit-in was
broken up when police fired into the crowd. More than 20 prodemocracy demonstrators have been killed in the town since
Monday. But the switch in many minds happened earlier. It was
when President Bashar al-Assad announced he would end nearly
half a century of emergency rule. Far from being placatory, he
patronised. It was all a problem of communication, he explained.
There was a conspiracy (the demonstrations), there were reforms,
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and there were "needs" of the citizens, not only economic ones. He
was sure his citizens understood, but how could they appreciate
what was going on when the government did not explain to them
what was happening?
President Assad's audience understood only too well. Accused by
the regime of being Salafist infiltrators, Muslim Brotherhood
stooges, saboteurs supported by Lebanon's Saad Hariri and Saudi
Arabia's Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, or agents of the Mossad and
the CIA, the protesters demanded to be heard as Syrians. Chants
for reform gave way to chants for regime change. "From alleyway
to alleyway, from house to house, we want to overthrow you,
Bashar", mourners chanted at one funeral. Ever since, they have
been attempting, at great cost, to recreate a Syrian Tahrir Square, a
physical epicentre of revolt in any major city.
The Assad family (there is Bashar's brother Maher al-Assad,
commander of the Republican Guard, and his cousin Rami
Makhlouf) now find themselves with fewer political levers to pull,
although there are plenty of military ones. Interior Ministry
statements go unheeded. Protests continued overnight in Zabadani,
Jabla and Aleppo. In Homs, the shops stayed closed, a sign that
the urban Sunni population is starting to join in. They will not be
mollified by sacking the governor in Homs or the chief of security
in Banias. What started with a brutal, but routine, local incident,
when police beat up and tortured a group of graffiti artists in
Deraa, has become a nationwide protest.
It is tempting to see regional opportunities in Syria's turmoil. This
is not just paralysing the Arab League, which postponed a summit
scheduled for May, but also encouraging the belief that Assad's
rejectionist allies, Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, would stand to lose
with his departure. Some may be tempted to conclude that
fomenting dissent in Syria is a risk worth taking. This is folly in
any part of the Middle East but particularly for a country with
Syria's borders. No Arab spring has yet been nurtured by foreign
intervention. It could yet be killed off by one.
HOME PAGE
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The vagueness of the law keeps Middle Eastern protests in
check
In Syria and most other Arab countries demonstrations are legal – but there is
always a clause that prevents serious subversion
Brian Whitaker,
Guardian,
20 Apr. 2011,
The news that Bahrain's government has withdrawn its financial
support from students who attended a peaceful anti-regime
demonstration in Britain highlights differing attitudes towards
protest between western countries and most of those in the Middle
East.
Though the Bahraini regime's action has enraged the British
government, few Arabs would find it surprising: reprisals against
those who step out of line are almost par for the course.
One important reason why repressive regimes have survived for so
long is that vast numbers of people depend on them economically
– sometimes as students with scholarships, but more often as
employees in a vast and under-worked government bureaucracy.
In Syria, for example, it has been estimated that as many as half
the country's citizens depend to some extent on government pay
cheques which could be in jeopardy if their loyalty to the regime
was called into question. In theory, of course, they have as much
right to demonstrate and speak their mind as anyone else.
The Syrian constitution (article 38) says: "Every citizen has the
right to freely and openly express his views in words, in writing,
and through all other means of expression ..." Article 39 adds:
"Citizens have the right to meet and demonstrate peacefully within
the principles of the constitution."
Virtually all Arab countries – even the most dictatorial ones –
have similar things in their constitution, but there is invariably a
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get-out clause saying such rights are to be exercised "in
accordance with the law".
The law in this area can be very restrictive and it can also be
overridden by a state of emergency – lasting for decades in the
case of Syria and Egypt – which imposes even more stringent
constraints, sometimes bordering on the absurd. In theory, any
meeting of more than five people in Egypt would be breaking the
law.
In Zaat, Sonallah Ibrahim's novel of Egyptian life, residents of an
apartment block call a meeting to discuss filth on the staircase,
only to realise that this will be "an illegal gathering" under the
emergency law. For reassurance, the meeting eventually convenes
in a flat belonging to a police officer, in the hope that this will
"provide sufficient immunity".
On the whole, what the law actually says is less important than the
arbitrary way in which it is often applied. Most regimes take a
flexible view of the rule of law – meaning that they may choose to
enforce it or not, depending on who is involved and whatever they
think will best serve the regime's interests.
This discretionary use of the law is sometimes seen as a deliberate
tactic, since people will be less willing to demonstrate if they are
uncertain where they stand legally. The same principle is used to
control the media in various Arab countries: encouraging selfcensorship by keeping the law menacing but vague.
Officially, of course, none of this has anything to do with
preventing people from criticising the regime – it's supposedly all
about the public good. In Tunisia, for example, under Ben Ali's
dictatorial rule free expression could only be limited "by a law
enacted for the protection of others, respect for public order,
national defence, development of the economy, and social
progress" (Article 7 of the constitution).
In Syria, where the regime is preparing to lift the state of
emergency and replace it with a law "which regulates the process
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of demonstrating", the authorities keep emphasising that one of the
law's main purposes will be to "protect demonstrators".
This seems to hinge on what in many countries would be regarded
as a strange notion: that anyone who demonstrates against the
government is liable to be set upon immediately by outraged
citizens. The Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak went to some
lengths to prove the truth of this, by employing plainclothes thugs
– the baltagiyya – to beat up demonstrators, and several other
regimes use similar tactics.
While the Syrian regime now seems willing to allow
demonstrations calling for reform, it draws the line at "sabotage".
"There are clear differences between the demands for reform and
the intentions of creating chaos and sabotage," President Bashar
al-Assad said at the weekend.
Maybe Assad thinks the differences are clear, but until he spells
them out we cannot be sure. What one person regards as legitimate
protest another may regard as dangerous subversion.
HOME PAGE
Amid Crackdown, Big Protest Is Planned in Syria
By ANTHONY SHADID
NYTIMES,
20 Apr. 2011,
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Protests erupted Wednesday in the town
that unleashed Syria’s five-week uprising, and security forces
detained a prominent organizer in the restive city of Homs, casting
into doubt government pledges to repeal the harsh emergency laws
and grant civil rights in one of the Arab world’s most repressive
countries.
Though the demonstrations in Dara’a and elsewhere paled before
those of past days, organizers vowed to turn out their largest
numbers yet on what protesters have begun to call “Great Friday.”
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Some residents said security forces were already deploying in the
hopes of dampening the turnout, and organizers across Syria
called the day potentially decisive for the uprising’s momentum.
The demonstrations may serve as a referendum of sorts on the
declaration by President Bashar al-Assad’s government that it
would repeal the emergency laws in place since 1963 and institute
a series of reforms like allowing civil liberties and abolishing
draconian courts. Some have called the promises a hard-won gain
of an uprising that has shaken the Assad family’s 40 years of
control, while others have been dismissive of initiatives that may
prove elusive and that seemed aimed at blunting the
demonstrations’ momentum.
“People don’t trust the regime anymore,” said Haitham Maleh, a
former judge and an often imprisoned human rights activist in
Damascus, Syria’s capital. “I don’t think that the Syrian people are
going to stop before they bring down this regime.”
But Syria is a complicated country, with sizable minorities of
Christians and heterodox Muslim sects that have looked with
trepidation to the example offered by Iraq’s civil war. The
prospect that Mr. Maleh raised — the government’s fall — has
alarmed some, particularly among the minorities, who worry about
society’s lack of independent institutions to navigate a transition
and the fearsome prospect of score-settling in chaos.
“Everything is possible today,” said Michel Kilo, another
government critic in Damascus. “If the regime believes that with
security they can handle everything, then they will be turning
Syria into a breeding ground for all kinds of extremist
movements.”
Residents said that thousands turned out for a protest in Dara’a, a
city in southwestern Syria where the uprising was galvanized last
month. Demonstrators headed toward the Omari Mosque, which
has served as a rallying point. Sheik Ahmed Siasna, a cleric at the
mosque, said the march ended peacefully.
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Human rights groups said that other protests occurred at the
University of Damascus, Aleppo University and Baniyas, a town
near the coastal city of Latakia, where Syrian state television said
the head of political security had been dismissed, apparently to
mollify angry residents. Though the protests were relatively small,
they defied an Interior Ministry warning, issued a day earlier, that
the government would tolerate no protests.
In Homs, more funerals were organized for demonstrators killed
Tuesday in a government crackdown on one of the country’s
largest gatherings so far, in which organizers sought to replicate a
Cairo-style sit-in.
“It’s O.K., don’t worry, we will finish it on Friday,” an organizer
who gave his name as Abu Haydar quoted people as chanting at
the funerals on Wednesday.
“There are security forces everywhere, in every corner of the city,
and it is not clear what is going to happen,” he said by telephone
from Homs, Syria’s third largest city.
Mr. Assad’s government, which seems to have staggered amid the
breadth and persistence of the protests, has hewed to a policy of
crackdown and promised compromise, with Tuesday’s decrees the
latest to suggest it is willing to end decades of authoritarianism.
One of its newspapers, Al Watan, called those decrees “a strategic
program of political reforms aimed at strengthening the
democratic process.”
But human rights advocates said arrests had continued. Wissam
Tarif, the executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights
group, said 14 people had been detained since the declaration,
seven of them in Homs. Among them was Mahmoud Issa, an
opposition figure who was arrested at his house after giving an
interview to Al Jazeera television.
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“The emergency law might have been erased from the papers, but
practically speaking, nothing has changed,” said a protester in
Homs who gave his name as Mohammed. “It’s just talk and talk,
promises and more promises. And it’s all untrue.”
The question of credibility may prove to be one of the state’s
greatest challenges. Had the reforms been announced weeks
before, they would probably have been a turning point in Syria’s
modern history, or at least a pivotal fissure in the facade of an
enduring dictatorship. Some intellectuals in Syria have already
deemed it as such.
“Is this enough to satisfy the protesters? I think we have to wait
and see,” said Sami Moubayed, a professor of international
relations at the University of Kalamoon, Syria’s first private
university. “But they’ve really accelerated the pace of reform.”
“An unpopular cabinet was sacked,” Mr. Moubayed added.
“Unpopular governors were sacked. Wages were raised. There
will be citizenship for the stateless. All the demands that were
spoken on Day 1 of the protests are coming into effect.”
But the very timing may prove the reforms’ undoing. While the
government has insisted that the uprising is led by militant
Islamists and supported from abroad, the protesters themselves
seem to have a momentum that force has so far failed to blunt.
“They can’t go forward, and they can’t go backward,” said Amr
al-Azm, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Shawnee State
University in Ohio. “They can’t really escalate the pace of reform
because that will mean dismantling the regime, and they can’t
escalate the violence without bringing on other serious problems.”
“They’re contradicting themselves,” he added.
HOME PAGE
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Assad olive branch fails to halt Syria revolt
By Michael Peel in Abu Dhabi
Financial Times,
April 20 2011
Thousands of Syrians protested on Wednesday de-spite
government efforts to quell the uprising by scrapping emergency
laws and reportedly sacking a police chief in a city where
demonstrators have been killed.
Big crowds of students gathered in the southern city of Deraa,
where the revolt started a month ago, while small protests were
staged in Damascus, the capital, and the second city of Aleppo,
news agencies reported.
The demonstrations set the stage for more protests promised after
Friday prayers, the rallying point for dissent in the uprisings
against authoritarian reg-imes and their hated security forces that
have swept the Middle East.
Nadim Houry, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said:
“The activists I have spoken to indicate that people feel the
reforms announced will not be implemented and the regime is
trying to gain time.
“The real test of whether these reforms are real or not is whether
the president is prepared to hold the security services to account.”
About 4,000 university students from Deraa and surrounding areas
protested near al-Omari mosque in the city, Associated Press news
agency reported.
It quoted activists as saying that dozens of students demonstrating
at the University of Aleppo had clashed with pro-government
counterparts.
Protests took place overnight in the Damascus suburb of Zabadani,
where activists called for freedom and for the “downfall of the
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regime”, the rallying cry of uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt,
Reuters reported.
The news agency said there were also sit-ins in Jabla on the coast,
and a women’s rally in Barzeh in Damascus.
The events were a combative response to the government’s moves
on Tuesday to scrap 48-year-old emergency laws, under which
Bashar al-Assad, president, and his late father Hafez have run a
highly repressive regime for the past four decades.
Mr Assad has promised reforms to address what he describes as
the gap between the government and the people. Meanwhile, his
security forces have cracked down violently during a month that
activists say has left more than 200 people dead.
This week, the government warned protesters to stop and branded
the demonstrations an armed insurrection.
In another apparent sign of the regime’s mixed response, the chief
of security police in the north-western city of Banias was
dismissed after five civilians were killed in a crackdown against
protests last week, Reuters reported, citing activists.
Opponents of the regime have vowed to hold more protests on
Friday.
Analysts see this as a crucial test of whether the protests can bring
people out on to the streets in large numbers in Damascus and
Aleppo.
One politically engaged Syrian said: “This [reform] will not be
enough. People need to keep the pressure to get what they want.”
HOME PAGE
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Assad cousin accused of favouring family
By Lina Saigol
Fianacial Times,
Published: April 20 2011
When World Finance magazine presented Rami Makh-louf with
an award for his visionary leadership and contribution to the
Syrian economy earlier this year, the London-based journal
declared that the businessman had acted as a symbol of positive
change within his country.
But as Syrian pro-democracy protests grow, the 41-year-old
maternal first cousin of President Bashar al-Assad is emerging as a
different sort of symbol.
Arguably Syria’s most powerful businessman, Mr Makhlouf has
been a focus of popular wrath and a lightning rod for criticism of
the concentration of economic as well as political power in the
hands of the Assad family.
“Makhlouf, you thief!” dozens of protesters have chanted at recent
demonstrations in the southern city of Deraa.
The son of the former commander of the Syrian Republican
Guard, Mr Makhlouf controls as much as 60 per cent of the
country’s economy through a complex web of holding companies.
His business empire spans industries ranging from
telecommunications, oil, gas and construction, to banking, airlines
and retail. He even owns several private schools.
This concentration of power, say bankers and economists, has
made it almost impossible for outsiders to conduct business in
Syria without his consent.
When the US Treasury levied sanctions against Mr Makhlouf in
2008, forbidding US citizens or entities from doing business with
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him, it dubbed him “a powerful Syrian businessman who amassed
his commercial empire by exploiting his relationships with Syrian
regime members”, and went on to describe him as a regime insider
who allegedly “benefits from and aids the public corruption” of
officials.
Mr Makhlouf did not respond to repeated email requests from the
Financial Times for comment. However, in 2008, after the US
imposed the sanctions, he told Reuters news agency: “I should
thank George W. Bush [then US president] because the sanctions
have raised the level of my support in Syria. I am no hit-and-run
businessman.”
Analysts say Mr Makh-louf and his immediate family have been
branching out even into small businesses, fuelling discontent
among the business community and tarnishing the image of the
regime.
One business expert said that disgruntlement over the family’s
economic involvement had grown since Mr Assad succeeded his
late father Hafez as president in 2000.
Under the elder Assad, the spoils were distributed more widely,
with various groups linked to the regime running businesses and
winning state favours.
“Now it has become all family and the circle has narrowed,” said
the expert, who asked not to be named.
In 2006, Mr Makhlouf established his main holding company,
Cham Holdings, as part of the Syrian government’s efforts to
create private sector “champions” as it moved towards economic
liberalisation.
Founded with $365m of capital, Cham is now Syria’s largest
private company and is focused on multiple industries.
A subsidiary, BENA, oversees the hospitality and property
development business. The Cham Capital Group runs the finance,
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banking and insurance wing of the empire, while SANA is
responsible for the energy and power generation sector.
The Cham group also operates health, education, and duty-free
businesses, and was recently granted a licence to operate Pearl
Airlines, a new private carrier.
But Mr Makhlouf’s best-known investment is the mobile network
operator Syriatel, of which he is the deputy chairman.
In 2000, the government in Damascus awarded a 15-year build,
operate and transfer licence to Syriatel, which was 25 per cent
owned by Orascom Telecom, the Egyptian company, and 75 per
cent held by Drex Technologies, one of Mr Makhlouf’s companies
registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Orascom, which had agreed to contribute 50 per cent of start-up
costs, was responsible for technical management of the licence.
But a year later, an acrimonious dispute broke out be-tween the
two partners after Orascom accused Mr Makhlouf of “persistent
attempts” to assume management control of Syriatel, according to
legal papers lodged at the time. The dispute was finally settled in
2003, after 15 months of claims and counter-claims, with Orascom
agreeing to sell its stake in exchange for payment for its initial
investment, plus running costs.
“Mr Makhlouf expects companies to pay for the whole five-course
dinner but then only allows them to sip the soup,” says one person
familiar with the dispute.
Critics say the many joint ventures that Cham has established have
allegedly allowed him to benefit from preferential access to
government infrastructure contracts.
But the company has always insisted it operates fairly. In a 2009
presentation at the Syrian Public Private Partnership conference,
Mahmoud al-Khoshman, the chief executive of Marafeq and
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SANA – both subsidiaries of Cham – said in order for publicprivate projects to succeed in Syria they had to be based on the
highest standards of integrity and fair play.
“The government should treat all developers and investors
equally,” he said.
Still, the recent unrest has caused some to take another look at Mr
Makhlouf and his empire.
Last week, World Finance magazine said that, in light of the
recent events in Syria, it considered it “appropriate to factor in the
wider political agenda”. Therefore, it said, it had reconsidered its
awards to Mr Makhlouf and other prominent Syrians.
Other enterprises associated with Mr Makhlouf include Gulfsands
Petroleum in which he owns a 6.5 per cent stake, according to the
oil company’s website, through his Al Mashreq Investment fund,
which is also a shareholder in Cham Holding.
HOME PAGE
Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian charade
Editorial,
Financial Times,
April 20 2011,
The repeal of the draconian emergency laws that have oppressed
Syrians for 48 years ought to have been a cause for celebration.
But Tuesday’s move was nothing more than a meaningless
gesture. Even as Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, proposed
draft legislation to scrap the hated laws, Syrians discovered that
they were to be replaced by regulations requiring demonstrations
to be licensed by the interior ministry. There is little doubt that the
emergency laws’ other restrictions will live on in anti-terror
legislation being drawn up by the Syrian leadership.
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This charade is just the latest instalment in the depressing series of
token gestures with which Mr Assad has responded to the unrest
that has swept the country in the past month. At the end of March,
Mr Assad accepted his government’s resignation. However, when
the new cabinet convened on April 14, the most significant change
was the absence of Abdullah Dardari, the former deputy prime
minister, and one of the few reformist voices within the regime.
Most of Mr Assad’s acolytes remained.
This attempt to pull the wool over his people’s eyes was matched
by a delusional speech – complete with choreographed
interruptions from fawning deputies – that Mr Assad gave to the
Syrian parliament blaming the unrest on nebulous armed gangs
and Israel. Mr Assad has also sought to stifle opposition by raising
the spectre of sectarian conflict. Fears of an Iraq-like descent into
internecine violence have long restrained Syrians, who sit on
similar ethno-religious faultlines, from challenging the status quo.
Such diversions may appeal to an increasingly embattled autocrat.
But they are self-defeating. By repeatedly raising and dashing his
people’s hopes for greater freedom through insincere and
unfulfilled promises of reform, Mr Assad has merely inflamed
protesters’ passions. Demonstrations that started with
comparatively benign calls for greater economic freedom have
escalated into demands for the end of the regime. For this, Syria’s
president has only himself to blame.
Mr Assad seems to be putting his faith in violence as a means of
securing the continuance of his regime. At least 200 Syrians have
been killed since the protests began. Mr Assad’s intransigence
means that a peaceful way out of the crisis is now unlikely. Had
political and economic reforms been enacted swiftly enough, they
might, perhaps, have placated the protesters. Any serious
concessions Mr Assad makes now would be seen as a sign of
weakness and spur demands for more change and, ultimately, his
ousting.
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In these circumstances, the temptation for Mr Assad and his
cronies from the minority Alawite sect who make up the ruling
elite is to cling to power by whatever means necessary. The
world’s leaders must make it clear that this is unacceptable, and
that Mr Assad will be held accountable for his actions. If Mr
Assad has indeed missed the chance for peaceful change, he must
not drag all Syria down with him.
HOME PAGE
EDITORIAL: The end for Assad
Clock is ticking on Syria’s Ba’athist dictatorship
Washington Times,
21 Apr. 2011,
Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad is caving in to demands to
reform his dictatorship. In that dark and oppressed part of the
world, compromise can only mean that the end is near.
Authoritarian regimes faced with mass uprisings have basically
two choices: Attempt to placate the people in the streets or unleash
their security forces and brutally put down the rebellion.
Historically, the crackdown strategy is the most reliable. It’s a
regrettable fact that a dictator with loyal security forces can
impose his will on people yearning to breathe free. Sometimes,
regimes want to go the crackdown route but can’t because security
forces sympathize with the rebellion. If this is the case, the
dictator should hop the next plane to a cushy exile. But when the
army and police - and, of course, secret police - are loyal and
ruthless, overwhelming force rarely fails. The revolutions that did
not happen in China in 1989 and in Iran in 2009 are cases in point.
Occasionally, regime violence leads to further instability. Tunisian
President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali attempted to quell
demonstrators but lost his nerve after 28 days and fled to Saudi
Arabia. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak’s Central Security Forces killed
upwards of 800 protesters, but eventually the army - which had
maintained the good will of the people - turned on Mr. Mubarak.
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The generals ended his regime but preserved military rule, at least
temporarily.
In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh is engaged in a failing
carrot-and-stick negotiation with the growing opposition. In
February, he promised to step down in 2013, which turned 20,000
people into the streets of the capital of Sana’a to denounce him.
By the end of March, after a series of shootings, high-level
defections and contentious negotiations, Mr. Saleh pledged to
hand power to a “national unity government” by the end of 2011.
It’s likely he will be out of power in a matter of months.
Mr. Assad and his Ba’athist cronies have been trying to silence
dissent by force, for example killing 14 demonstrators in the town
of Homs over the weekend. As in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, each
incident turns more people out into the streets. Syria’s Interior
Ministry warned that “armed mutiny” would not be tolerated and
asked citizens “to refrain from any mass rallies or demonstrations
or sit-ins,” pledging to enforce the laws “serving the citizens’
security and stability.” Syrian dissidents, however, already know
they are taking their lives into their hands by standing up to the
Ba’athists. If the hundreds of people killed over the last six weeks
hasn’t stopped them, a press release from the Mukhabarat won’t
make any difference.
Mr. Assad has tried to placate protesters with the usual gestures,
such as releasing political prisoners, reshuffling his cabinet and
pledging to “keep up with the aspirations of the people.” The
government lifted an emergency law that had been in effect since a
1963 coup and abolished secret courts. The strongman even closed
a casino that had been the focus of Islamist outrage. To regime
opponents, these gestures demonstrate the effectiveness of mass
protest. When dictators show this type of weakness, demonstrators
are emboldened, protests intensify and key members of the
regime’s power base begin to calculate the best time to jump ship.
Regime change in Damascus has the potential of giving the Syrian
people their first taste of democracy since their republic was
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overthrown in 1949. It also would remove a key Iranian ally from
the “Shiite Crescent.” Growing numbers of Syrians are seizing the
opportunity to throw off Ba’athist rule, and Mr. Assad’s options
are rapidly dwindling to a choice between exile or imprisonment.
HOME PAGE
'‘Bloodbath’ would follow overthrow of Assad in Syria'
Observers tell the 'Post' that like Iraq, Syria’s diverse sects could turn on each
other once the regime is gone
By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Jerusalem Post,
21 Apr. 2011,
The overthrow of Syrian dictator Basher Assad is not yet
imminent, but should it occur, a bloodbath between Syria’s
various sects would likely follow, leading Israeli experts on Syria
told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
As in neighboring Iraq, Syria’s diverse population – made up of
Sunni Muslims, Druse, Kurds and other groups, who are ruled by
the minority Alawites – could, upon the collapse of the Assad
regime, turn on each other in a bloody civil conflict.
“I think there would be a bloodbath if Assad falls. The Iraqi
situation is relevant,” said Eyal Zisser, a professor of Middle
Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University.
Zisser, who formerly headed the university’s Moshe Dayan Center
Middle East think tank added, “We’re not there yet. The protests
are however getting bigger, and more and more forces are joining
in. They are spreading to other parts of the country.”
At the same time, around half of the Syrian population,
concentrated in the major urban centers of Damascus and Aleppo,
are “sitting on the fence” and not taking an active part in protests
calling for Assad to leave.
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“They are frightened of the unknown, and of the anarchy that
could follow,” Zisser added.
Asked how important a role Islamist groups were playing in recent
events, Zisser said, “We must remember that 40 percent of Syrians
are members of minority groups. This means it is not easy for
Islamists to take over. They are there as a political force, but they
don’t have exclusive control.”
From an Israeli perspective, decision-makers have grown
accustomed to “the Satan that we know,” Zisser said, referring to
Assad.
Assad “gave us stability in the Golan – but he also tightened
relations with Hezbollah and Iran,” he noted.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar, of Bar Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center
for Strategic Studies, said that “everything we knew” about Syria
has become outdated due to recent events.
Kedar, who served for 25 years in military intelligence, and
specialized in Syria, added that the Muslim Brotherhood “are in
the background, not as an organized group... but as an idea.”
Kedar agreed with Zisser’s evaluation that a collapse of the Assad
regime would result in large-scale violence, adding that Syria
could split up into smaller states following civil strife.
In such a scenario, “many Muslims will chase Alawites with
knives – who would in turn have to flee to the Ansariya mountains
in western Syria, their traditional lands,” Kedar said. “In such a
case, Syria could be divided into six parts: an Alawite state in the
West; a Kurdish state in the North, as in Iraq; a Druse state in the
South; and a Beduin state in the east, in the Dir al-Zur region. A
Sunni Muslim state in Damascus and another in Aleppo could also
rise” he added.
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“Six homogenous states could appear on the ruins of Syria,”
Kedar said.
The analyst has described Assad’s move to cancel longstanding
emergency laws, which have been in place for 50 years, as “late,
small, and unsatisfactory.”
“The Syrians are jealous of their brothers in Egypt and Tunisia –
but fear that the regime will act as Gaddafi has, and slaughter its
citizens, if his back is against the wall,” said Kedar.
HOME PAGE
Editorial: Pay attention to Syria
Wikileaks fully deserves our consideration, regardless of the process by which
the documents have become public
Jerusalem Post,
20 Apr. 2011,
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Much of what WikiLeaks has been leaking from classified US
diplomatic material is of little import, despite the attendant hype
and sensation- mongering. Yet, here and there, enveloped in the
sheer quantity of minutiae, are indicators that should instill a great
deal of worry in all Israelis. The danger is that not enough people
pay attention to the truly noteworthy leaks amid the deluge of
material.
In the last few days, for instance, there was a great deal of public
discourse surrounding the bigoted, derogatory and furiously
denied comments about party rivals attributed to Labor MK Isaac
Herzog.
Amid that ridiculous hubbub, significant disclosures were
overlooked.
Whether or not WikiLeaks is pursing a tendentious and calculated
agenda, it is troubling that our public opinion could hardly be
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bothered with leaked reports of the Mossad’s assessments
regarding Hezbollah’s massive missile caches.
And similar relative indifference has been manifested toward
leaked documents showing that Syria contemplated attacking
Israel with chemical warheads following the destruction of its
nuclear facility in 2007 (purportedly carried out by the IAF).
These leaks fully deserve our consideration, regardless of the
process by which they have become public.
According to these documents, Israeli and American intelligence
analysts met here in November 2009 and their deliberations
produced four separate debriefings from the US Embassy to
Washington.
From these it emerges that the Mossad is convinced that Syrianand Iranian-backed Hezbollah is determined to fire as many as
400-600 rockets daily in the next round of hostilities with Israel,
100 of which will be aimed each day at Tel Aviv.
That war, estimate Mossad experts, could last for as long as two
months, meaning that as many as 24,000- 36,000 missiles – 6,000
targeting Tel Aviv specifically – could be rained upon Israel from
the north alone.
How the Hamas Iranian proxy would behave during that conflict is
an unaddressed complication in the deeply worrying equation.
These are not speculative doomsday predictions which we can
afford to repress in the far recesses of our collective
consciousness. They become all the more relevant in the face of
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s teetering position as he strives to
hang on to power.
For one thing, the leaked information consistently reinforces
allegations that, contrary to its international undertakings, Syria
has continued supplying Hezbollah with ballistic missiles,
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including Scuds. The leaks further indicate that North Korea is
stoking the regional arms build-up by providing missile systems to
both Syria and Iran, which in turn sustain Hezbollah and Hamas.
The bottom line, in the Syrian context, is that Assad sits on a
particularly large and nasty arsenal. Both his late father and he had
practiced self-control, making their border with Israel exceedingly
quiet to date, while transferring the confrontational brunt to the
Lebanese and Gazan fronts. In other words, while the Assad
regime had itself avoided open warfare with Israel, it was the
nefarious catalyst actively fomenting trouble elsewhere.
It is in part because of his capacity for trouble-making, indeed,
that the US has thus far refrained from openly calling for Assad’s
removal. The conventional wisdom in Washington is that a
relatively stable Syria will help facilitate the American exit from
Iraq.
Yet assuming, for argument’s sake, that Assad does not survive
the mounting challenges to his rule, into whose hands would his
formidable weapons and rocket stockpiles fall? One may
disbelieve certain details and incidentals in individual WikiLeaks
texts, but their entirety eminently accords with what had been
evident from Damascus for too long. Assad has amassed and
controls particularly deadly weaponry. For Israel, Assad is a
cunning enemy. The danger is that he may well be supplanted by
even more malicious, yet lessrestrained enemies.
OF ALL the regime changes and uprisings-in-progress the
Mideast has been witnessing, the Syrian one potentially harbors
the greatest existential hazard.
There is not much Israel can – or should – do about Syria’s
internal power struggle. But it is essential that Israel gear up for its
alarmingly destabilizing potential consequences. The very least we
ought to do is pay attention.
HOME PAGE
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Washington Watch: Obama needs a Syria policy
Douglas M. Bloomfield,
Jerusalem Post,
20 Apr. 2011,
Bashar Assad has been playing arsonist and fireman
simultaneously as the fires of revolution break out around his
country, said Michael Doran, a former senior National Security
Council Mideast official.
The Obama administration’s initial response was to urge both the
Syrian dictatorship and the pro-democracy activists to show
restraint. Weeks went by before Washington condemned the
slaughter of demonstrators and put the blame squarely on the
Assad regime.
Even now, after more than 200 have been killed and hundreds
arrested, the administration still hasn’t shifted from rhetoric to
action.
Many on Capitol Hill are questioning whether Obama really has a
Syria policy. Why is an administration so anxious to see Hosni
Mubarak and Muammar Gadaffi leave so hesitant to tell Assad it’s
time to go? “Is our policy ‘passive consistency’ or ‘consistent
passivity?’ Or don’t we have any Syria policy at all,” asked Rep.
Gary Ackerman (D-NY), second ranking Democrat on the House
Foreign Affairs Committee.
Syrian intelligence officials planted snipers among protesters with
orders to shoot security officials and soldiers, thereby “provoking”
the army to fire on the protesters, according to a document posted
on Facebook by opposition sources. While not authenticated, it is
consistent with other reports that demonstrators were infiltrated in
order to justify Assad’s brutal crackdown.
Assad has publicly blamed the violence on “Zionists” and other
foreign provocateurs, and warned demonstrators that since he has
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promised reforms all protests will be considered “sabotage.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been taking a drubbing for
calling Assad a reformer; actually, she said that’s what she’s been
told by members of Congress from both parties, particularly Sen.
John Kerry (D-MA), chair of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Many Republicans and Democrats think, in the words of one
Congressional source who has made several trips to Damascus,
that Kerry was “played for a fool.” Assad keeps telling Kerry what
he wants to hear – that he’s ready for peace with Israel, and can be
weaned from Iran – but after years of this courtship the senator
keeps returning empty handed.
THE ISRAELI government can’t seem to decide whether it wants
Assad to stay or go. A big reason to keep him on is fear of what
might come next. A prolonged power struggle could destabilize
the region, and there is an exaggerated fear that the Muslim
Brotherhood could take over.
Israel, however, has many better reasons to want the Ba’athist
regime dumped. Assad is a close ally of Iran, he is arming
Hezbollah and Hamas with missiles to strike Israel, he has his own
bulging arsenal of missiles and chemical warheads, he gives
sanctuary and aid to numerous anti-Israel terror groups, he is
actively destabilizing Lebanon and possibly Jordan, and he has
proven nuclear ambitions.
His demise could be a serious blow – depending on what comes
next – to Iranian influence and weaken both Hezbollah and
Hamas. Dayenu. Syria is Iran’s gateway to the Mediterranean, and
shares borders with five countries important to the United States:
Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon.
An Israeli journalist who knows the Arab world intimately said
Assad’s days are numbered: “He cannot avoid the tornado
sweeping through the Middle East.”
Assad’s promise to end the emergency law is meaningless,
because nothing will change as long as he remains in power. A
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sure sign of that was his decision to name the head of his hated
military police, which has a reputation for brutality, as his new
interior minister. “This regime is going to hell, and that’s good for
Israel; those Israelis who prefer the devil you know are wrong,” he
said.
Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, agreed. Assad has been promising reform since
he took office 11 years ago, and done nothing.
It’s time for some “focus and creativity” in US-Syria policy and to
show Assad he will pay dearly for this crackdown, he said.
The administration has to stop complaining it has no leverage and
begin tightening economic sanctions to deter foreign banks and
companies from doing business in Syria, use authority under the
Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act to
suspend all US investment in Syria, work closely with European
allies to establish effective economic sanctions and diplomatic
isolation, freeze the accounts of individuals responsible for
human-rights violations,and take Syrian rights violations to the
UN Human Rights Council.
When Congress returns from spring break next month, look for
legislation further tightening sanctions on Syria and Iran. It’s time
to put real pressure on Assad, beyond Secretary Clinton telling
Assad he should “stop repressing [Syrian] citizens and start
responding to their aspirations” and “refrain” from further
violence.
HOME PAGE
What grade will the West get in applied Middle Eastern
studies this semester?
David Rothkopf,
Foreign Policy Magazine,
20 Apr. 2011,
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Certainly, Bashar Al Assad feels tested these days. So presumably,
does Muammar Qaddafi. So to do rulers and their cronies in
Bahrain and Yemen. Deposed elites in Egypt and Tunisia certainly
seem to have failed the test of this Arab Spring and the jury is still
out as to their successors.
But the leaders in the region are clearly not the only ones being
tested. The leaders of the international community have been too
and the results so far for them have been no better than those of
the embattled regional chieftans ... and indeed, they may be worse.
On the Libyan portion of the test, the answers provided have been
as hard to decipher as they have been of dubious merit. As the
British announced they will be sending 20 military officers and
civilian advisers to Benghazi to advise Libyan rebels and the
French did similarly, the U.S. had the vice president delivering to
the Financial Times the W.C. Fieldsian message that on the whole,
we'd rather be in Egypt.
Facing public concerns that stepping up their involvement may be
the first step toward an escalation, the British have bent over
backwards to assure their new measures are carefully compliant
with the U.N. resolution that blessed the Libya involvement. They
are focusing, they say, on "communications and logistics,
including how best to distribute humanitarian aid and deliver
medical assistance." This comment was apparently written for
them by newly out-of-favor author Greg Mortenson given that it is
just as implausible as apparently are some sections of his bestseller Three Cups of Tea.
Thus, at this point, even with Qaddafi reportedly feeling the heat
and the West floating stories about him considering exile, the
reality is we're weeks into an undertaking that was supposed to
take "days not weeks" and the only resolution anywhere in sight is
the one from the security council that is fading in our rearview
mirror.
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So, the Libya part of the test is not going so well. But frankly, in
retrospect, it may look it was passed with flying colors compared
to many of the other elements of this spring's challenges. Because
while the West did eventually send a clear message to Egypt's
President Hosni Mubarak that his time was up and that it would
not prop him up, since that high water mark of support for
reformers and the Libya response that followed, the message has
been "we'll sit this one out." This has been due in part to the
complex geopolitical problems posed when facing choices
between democracy advocates and the vital allies they are seeking
to depose. It has also been due to the fact that the Libya muddle
has sapped whatever political will existed to get involved from the
few governments with any inclination at all to do so.
Consequently, the noble sentiments expressed by the U.N. and
NATO leaders that led to an effort to protect Libya's citizens from
its despotic rulers has been followed by utter silence and precious
little action at all when it came to protecting the citizens of
Bahrain, Yemen, or Syria. In fact, in the case of Bahrain, we can
only assume that the position of the U.S. at least has been slightly
worse than just inaction ... it has involved wink-and-a-nod
acceptance since the crackdown has come from close U.S. allies
who continue to depend heavily on the United States for security
support.
The inaction in the face of the brutal targeting of Shiites in
Bahrain may be partially explained by concerns about Iran's role
in stirring up the Shiite majority in Bahrain, but even here, the
response can't be viewed as part of a consistently effective policy
given recent gains made by the Iranians in taking advantage of
changes in Egypt to strengthen their relationship with Cairo and
via supporting the Assad government in Syria thus strengthening
their ties with that regime. And none of this speaks to the time the
Iranians have gained for their nuclear efforts while the world's
attention has been drawn elsewhere in the region.
In fact, judged on humanitarian grounds the score the West will
get on this test is at best an incomplete and could well be far more
dismal than that. Strategically, it looks like this Arab Spring may
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actually strengthen the west's enemies more than it does the West
or Western ideals or interests. Operationally, it has revealed
troubling cracks in key alliances.
The test is not over for anyone other than Egypt's Mubarak and
Tunisia's Ben Ali. But right now it seems far more likely that the
region's despots will score better in the near-term than will the
United States or its allies. With the eventual disposition of Egypt's
transition, Libya's civil war, and uprisings in key countries across
the region still uncertain, this could change and there is every
reason to remain hopeful. However, if the real message behind the
tortured diplobabble offered up to explain the Libya situation is
that -- thanks to Qaddafi's resilience, the rebels' limited capacity,
NATO's ill-structured mission, and our general strategic
befuddlement about balancing our aspirations and historical
relationships -- the region's autocrats will be getting essentially a
free pass from here on out ... then the West may well end up with
a big fat "F" on its Mideast report card this semester, with only
more complex tests ahead.
HOME PAGE
Noam Chomsky on The Arab Revolt
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Saswat Pattanayak
Kindle Magazine, March 2011
SP- Prof Chomsky, where do you locate the contours of the current
crisis in Egypt, Tunisia and rest of the Middle East?
NC- The source of the crisis in the Arab world goes back very far
and it’s similar to what we find in the formerly colonized world.
Actually it was expressed rather clearly in the 1950’s by President
Eisenhower and his staff. He was holding an internal discussion
which has been declassified since. Eisenhower asked his staff why
there is, what he called a “campaign of hatred” against us in the
Arab world. Not among the governments, which are more or less
docile, but among the people. And the National Security Council,
which is the major planning body, produced a memorandum on
this topic. It said that there is a perception in the Arab world that
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the United States supports harsh vicious dictators, blocks
democracy and development; and we do this because we want to
maintain control over their resources - in this case, energy. And
went on to say that the perception is fairly accurate and
furthermore that, that’s what we should be doing.
The basic principle holds not just for the Arab world. It was
expressed rather succinctly during the period of the recent
spectacular uprising in Egypt by Marwan Muasher. He is a former
high Jordanian official who is now the head of research in the
Middle East for the Carnegie Endowment. He said there is a
prevailing doctrine which is that as long as people are quiet,
passive, controlled, there is no problem. We do whatever we like.
Maybe they hate us, but it doesn’t matter, because we can do what
we like. That’s a principle that holds in Arab world, in India, it
holds domestically in the United States; its a standard principle of
domination. Of course, sometimes the people break the chains and
then you have to make adjustments. What’s happening in Egypt
right now is a dramatic, but not untypical example. There has been
case after case where the United States and other imperial powers
before have been compelled to abandon support for the favored
dictator because he could no longer be sustained. So there is a
standard gameplan now being applied in Egypt. You support the
dictator as long as possible by adopting the Muasher Doctrine.
Everything is quiet, so no problem. When the dictator can no
longer be sustained, you sort of push him aside, issue Reagan
proclamations of your love for democracy and freedom and
proceed to try to reestablish as much as you can of the former
system. And that’s what we see happening right now in Egypt, and
as I said, it happens over and over again.
SP - Do you foresee a similar uprising in India? Or, what in your
views is holding India back?
NC - Let’s take India. First of all, there is a major uprising. Large
parts of India are in flames. The tribal areas are essentially in
revolt. Large part of Indian Army is involved trying to suppress
them.
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SP - So you see a parallel between the insurgencies?
NC - hmm.. I think the real question in India would be ... I mean
there has been, you know, this famous shining India. Its true for a
segment of population. India is so huge, so its a substantial sector.
On the other hand, probably three-quarters of the population are
left out. The number of billionaires is rising about as fast as the
number of peasant suicides. And the analogous question to Egypt
would be not so much what’s happening in the tribal areas, I think,
as what about the hundreds of millions of people who are
suffering severely.
SP - Absolutely. There’s a huge class gap.
NC - There is an enormous class gap. India’s dramatic, in fact. If
suffering in South Asia is...
SP - The gap is growing now...
NC - Its growing and its the worst in the world. Has been for a
long time. If you look at the Human Development Index of the
United Nations, the last time I looked, India was about 120th or
something like that at the beginning of the so-called reforms 20
years ago.
SP - Now the quality has fallen further down.
NC - Well, now the question is how long will these huge numbers
of people be passive and apathetic so their concerns can be
dismissed.
SP - Prof Chomsky, Arundhati Roy was pressed with sedition
charges for speaking on Kashmiri people’s right to selfdetermination. What is your take on self-determination, especially in
the context of Kashmir?
NC - First I should say that Arundhati Roy should be greatly
honored in India as a symbol of what could be great about the
country. The fact that she is being charged with Sedition is utter
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outrage. And the anger and hatred that’s being organized against
her is a real disgrace. But that’s Arundhati Roy, a marvelous
person.
With regard to Kashmir, problems go back to the Partition. And
there is plenty of responsibility on all sides. Keeping to India,
India, of course refused to allow the referendum that was a
condition on partition. (Thus, India) essentially took over the
territory and (subsequent) conflict led to a Line of Control. There
has been plenty of repression and violence. In late 1980’s there
was an election but it was totally fraudulent. It led to an uprising
which was put down with extreme violence. Tens of thousands of
people have been killed in the Indian controlled areas of Kashmir.
Tortures, atrocities have been pretty horrible. Roy points out in her
recent article that this is the most militarized region in the world.
There’s since been other controlled elections attempting to
institute Indian control and anyone who looks at it can see that
there is strong pressure for one or another form of autonomy or
self-rule. It could take many forms. Exactly how it should be
worked out is not a trivial problem. But you can think of ways in
which a reasonably sensible outcome could be managed through
the various parts of Kashmir, (since) different regions of Kashmir
have different interests and goals.
SP - How do you perceive the Maoist movement in India? Do you see
it as the battle of an indigenous people’s right to self-determination
or do you see in it, a communist, revolutionary struggle to gain
control of a political economy?
NC - Well, first I should not make any pretense of having any
deep knowledge with this. I don’t. But as far as I understand, it is
both. There are Maoist revolutionaries. So-called. They call
themselves Maoists, whatever that’s supposed to mean. But there
is a basis in the population. These are substantially tribal areas and
they are among the most repressed people in India. They have
lives, they have a society, a functioning society; in the forests, in
the tribal regions. There is an effort by the Government,
essentially to invade those regions to destroy the basis for their life
and society by resource extraction, mining and so on. And they are
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resisting. They wanna preserve their lives. Its going on all over the
world.
Now, this Summer, for example, I was in Southern Columbia
visiting endangered villages subjected to severe repression.
Actually, Columbia has the largest internally displaced population
in the world after Sudan, mostly from attacks on the indigenous
areas. The villagers are trying to do the same thing. They are
trying to find ways to...one village I visited is trying to preserve
nearby mountain and virgin forests from mining which will
destroy their communities, destroy their lives, take away the water
supplies. They are poor, but they have a functioning life. They
want that life and they have every reason to have it. And that’s
happening all over the world. Its happening in the United States.
In Appalachia, mountain top removal happens to be a very cheap
way of coal mining, but it destroys the valleys, destroys the rivers,
destroys the ecology, destroys the communities and people resist. I
presume that, what’s happening in the tribal areas (in India) is in
substantial part an instance of this global phenomenon of the
feverish surge for resources, whatever be the effect on
environment and the people.
SP - Yes. And also, it has a continuation in terms of historical
understanding of India’s indigenous peoples. From 1960s onwards,
there have been organized revolutionary movements among the
oppressed...
NC - Oh yeah, from the Naxalite movements. That was, of course,
very serious. In some places like West Bengal, it was a major
factor that led to significant land reforms, to establishment of
peasant communes and so on. Again, I don’t claim to know much
about it but I have visited some of them together with an
agricultural economist friend and actually a Finance Minister with
the Government who I happened to know when he was a student
here. We went to visit a panchayat in West Bengal and there were
a lot of impressive things happening. These are the outcomes of
the Naxalite revolt...other outcomes have been vicious and brutal.
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SP - Nation states are increasingly resembling larger corporations. Is
it a trend to stay or do you think even globalization will have its
necessary backlash and a historical meltdown?
I think many complicated things are happening around the world. I
don’t think thats true of all nation-states. For example, rather
dramatically in Latin America, there has been in the past 10 years
or so, significant moves towards integration, towards
independence, towards bringing the mass of the population into
the political process, dealing with severe internal problems, not
like India, which has enormous poverty and misery in an island of
wealth. That’s in the opposite direction. If you take the rich,
developed, some of the Asian countries, they are going in their
own ways. Take a country like the United States, England and
much of Europe - what you described...what’s happening could be
described that way but little differently. I mean what’s actually
been happening in much of the world, this incidentally includes
China and India too - is a global shift of power - away from
working people and into the hands of owners, managers, investors,
the elite elements, highly paid professionals, and so on. There is a
very sharp class split. You see it everywhere.
SP - Absolutely.
NC - In the United States, its the highest inequality since the
1920’s. And if we look closely, its the highest ever, because the
inequality largely results from the super enrichment of a tiny
sector of the population. A fraction of one percent (comprising)
managers, owners, hedge fund managers, and so on. And this
concentration of economic power in the sector of corporate
system, increasingly the financial sector, carries with it a political
power. Concentrated economic power has overwhelming effect on
the global process. And in fact, the state corporate policies for the
past 30 years, running from fiscal policies like taxation to
government rules on corporate governance and so on, have been
designed in order to create this kind of system of sharply class
divided oppression. And this is real and there is plenty of
discontentment and anger. Its not like the Third World but the
people in the rich countries have seen their incomes stagnate for
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30 years while there is enormous wealth. Life is not miserable, but
it is difficult. Unemployment for much of the population is still at
the level of depression with no prospect of anything changing.
This is kind of extreme in the United States. But its similar in
England and to some extent, elsewhere. In places like China, let’s
say you also have extreme disparity of wealth, some of the worst
in the world. India is of course a class by itself...
SP - Do most people recognize there is a class society in existence or is
there a denial?
NC - The business class of, say in the United States, are highly
class conscious. In fact, they are essentially Marxists. If you read
the business literature, it reads like a little Red Book. They
mention the hazards of the organized masses, the hazards they
pose to industrialists and so on. And they fight a bitter class war.
And in the last years its been dramatic. Among the rest of the
population, its a mixed story. So again, take the United States. The
word class is almost unmentionable. The United States is one of
the few countries where...
SP - ...Class is a taboo word.
NC - ....It is a taboo word. Everyone is middle class. I have a
friend who teaches History in a state college. On the first day of
the semesters, she often asks students how they identify
themselves in class terms. The answers are, ‘basically if my father
is in jail, I am underclass. If my father is a janitor I am middle
class, if my father is a stock broker, I am upper class. But the idea
of the class in its traditional sense is essentially driven out of
peoples’ heads. But whether they have a terminology for it or not,
they know it. People know whether they are giving orders or
taking orders. They know whether they have a role in decision
making or they don’t. And those are class distinctions.
SP – Your message for the readers of Kindle?
NC - The message...one message is not to take that description too
seriously. In fact, take a look at what’s happening right now in
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Tahrir Square in Egypt. One of the most spectacular
demonstrations of popular activism of courage and determination
that I can remember. They are not following leaders. In fact,
what’s striking, dramatically striking is how self organized it is.
People are forming defense communities to protect themselves
against Government thugs, they are forming groups to develop
policies, to reach out to others. That’s the way things happen.
Sometimes, you know, popular movements develop and leaders
appear. Usually it’s a bad thing. No one should be looking to
anyone for guidance and advice. Basically, you can figure out the
answers. The important ones will come from the people
themselves.
HOME PAGE
On Libya and the Unfolding Crises
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Stephen Shalom and Michael
Albert
ZNet, March 30, 2011
1. What are US motives in international relations most broadly?
That is, what are the over arching motives and themes one can
pretty much always find informing US policy choices, no matter
where in the world we are discussing? What are the somewhat
more specific but still over arching motives and themes for US
policy in Middle East and the Arab world? Finally, what do you
think are the more proximate aims of US policy in the current
situation in Libya?
A useful way to approach the question is to ask what US motives
are not. There are some good ways to find out. One is to read the
professional literature on international relations: quite commonly,
its account of policy is what policy is not, an interesting topic that
I won't pursue.
Another method, quite relevant now, is to listen to political leaders
and commentators. Suppose they say that the motive for a military
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action is humanitarian. In itself, that carries no information:
virtually every resort to force is justified in those terms, even by
the worst monsters -- who may, irrelevantly, even convince
themselves of the truth of what they are saying. Hitler, for
example, may have believed that he was taking over parts of
Czechoslovakia to end ethnic conflict and bring its people the
benefits of an advanced civilization, and that he invaded Poland to
end the "wild terror" of the Poles. Japanese fascists rampaging in
China probably did believe that they were selflessly laboring to
create an "earthly paradise" and to protect the suffering population
from "Chinese bandits." Even Obama may have believed what he
said in his presidential address on March 28 about the
humanitarian motives for the Libyan intervention. Same holds of
commentators.
There is, however, a very simple test to determine whether the
professions of noble intent can be taken seriously: do the authors
call for humanitarian intervention and "responsibility to protect" to
defend the victims of their own crimes, or those of their clients?
Did Obama, for example, call for a no-fly zone during the
murderous and destructive US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon
in 2006, with no credible pretext? Or did he, rather, boast proudly
during his presidential campaign that he had co-sponsored a
Senate resolution supporting the invasion and calling for
punishment of Iran and Syria for impeding it? End of discussion.
In fact, virtually the entire literature of humanitarian intervention
and right to protect, written and spoken, disappears under this
simple and appropriate test.
In contrast, what motives actually are is rarely discussed, and one
has to look at the documentary and historical record to unearth
them, in the case of any state.
What then are US motives? At a very general level, the evidence
seems to me to show that they have not changed much since the
high-level planning studies undertaken during World War II.
Wartime planners took for granted that the US would emerge from
the war in a position of overwhelming dominance, and called for
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the establishment of a Grand Area in which the US would
maintain "unquestioned power," with "military and economic
supremacy," while ensuring the "limitation of any exercise of
sovereignty" by states that might interfere with its global designs.
The Grand Area was to include the Western hemisphere, the Far
East, the British empire (which included the Middle East energy
reserves), and as much of Eurasia as possible, at least its industrial
and commercial center in Western Europe. It is quite clear from
the documentary record that "President Roosevelt was aiming at
United States hegemony in the postwar world," to quote the
accurate assessment of the (justly) respected British diplomatic
historian Geoffrey Warner. And more significant, the careful
wartime plans were soon implemented, as we read in declassified
documents of the following years, and observe in practice.
Circumstances of course have changed, and tactics adjusted
accordingly, but basic principles are quite stable, to the present.
With regard to the Middle East -- the "most strategically important
region of the world," in Eisenhower's phrase -- the primary
concern has been, and remains, its incomparable energy reserves.
Control of these would yield "substantial control of the world," as
observed early on by the influential liberal adviser A. A. Berle.
These concerns are rarely far in the background in affairs
concerning this region.
In Iraq, for example, as the dimensions of the US defeat could no
longer be concealed, pretty rhetoric was displaced by honest
announcement of policy goals. In November 2007 the White
House issued a Declaration of Principles insisting that Iraq must
grant US military forces indefinite access and must privilege
American investors. Two months later the president informed
Congress that he would ignore legislation that might limit the
permanent stationing of US Armed Forces in Iraq or "United
States control of the oil resources of Iraq" -- demands that the US
had to abandon shortly after in the face of Iraqi resistance, just as
it had to abandon earlier goals.
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While control over oil is not the sole factor in Middle East policy,
it provides fairly good guidelines, right now as well. In an oil-rich
country, a reliable dictator is granted virtual free rein. In recent
weeks, for example, there was no reaction when the Saudi
dictatorship used massive force to prevent any sign of protest.
Same in Kuwait, when small demonstrations were instantly
crushed. And in Bahrain, when Saudi-led forces intervened to
protect the minority Sunni monarch from calls for reform on the
part of the repressed Shiite population. Government forces not
only smashed the tent city in Pearl Square -- Bahrain's Tahrir
Square -- but even demolished the Pearl statue that was Bahrain's
symbol, and had been appropriated by the protestors. Bahrain is a
particularly sensitive case because it hosts the US Fifth fleet, by
far the most powerful military force in the region, and because
eastern Saudi Arabia, right across the causeway, is also largely
Shiite, and has most of the Kingdom's oil reserves. By a curious
accident of geography and history, the world's largest hydrocarbon
concentrations surround the northern Gulf, in mostly Shiite
regions. The possibility of a tacit Shiite alliance has been a
nightmare for planners for a long time.
In states lacking major hydrocarbon reserves, tactics vary,
typically keeping to a standard game plan when a favored dictator
is in trouble: support him as long as possible, and when that
cannot be done, issue ringing declarations of love of democracy
and human rights -- and then try to salvage as much of the regime
as possible.
The scenario is boringly familiar: Marcos, Duvalier, Chun,
Ceau?escu, Mobutu, Suharto, and many others. And today,
Tunisia and Egypt. Syria is a tough nut to crack and there is no
clear alternative to the dictatorship that would support US goals.
Yemen is a morass where direct intervention would probably
create even greater problems for Washington. So there state
violence elicits only pious declarations.
Libya is a different case. Libya is rich in oil, and though the US
and UK have often given quite remarkable support to its cruel
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dictator, right to the present, he is not reliable. They would much
prefer a more obedient client. Furthermore, the vast territory of
Libya is mostly unexplored, and oil specialists believe it may have
rich untapped resources, which a more dependable government
might open to Western exploitation.
When a non-violent uprising began, Qaddafi crushed it violently,
and a rebellion broke out that liberated Benghazi, Libya's second
largest city, and seemed about to move on to Qaddafi's stronghold
in the West. His forces, however, reversed the course of the
conflict and were at the gates of Benghazi. A slaughter in
Benghazi was likely, and as Obama's Middle East adviser Dennis
Ross pointed out, "everyone would blame us for it." That would be
unacceptable, as would a Qaddafi military victory enhancing his
power and independence. The US then joined in UN Security
Council resolution 1973 calling for a no-fly zone, to be
implemented by France, the UK, and the US, with the US
supposed to move to a supporting role.
There was no effort to institute a no-fly zone. The triumvirate at
once interpreted the resolution as authorizing direct participation
on the side of the rebels. A ceasefire was imposed by force on
Qaddafi's forces, but not on the rebels. On the contrary, they were
given military support as they advanced to the West, soon
securing the major sources of Libya's oil production, and poised to
move on.
The blatant disregard of UN 1973, from the start began to cause
some difficulties for the press as it became too glaring to ignore.
In the New York Times, for example, Karim Fahim and David
Kirkpatrick (March 29) wondered "how the allies could justify
airstrikes on Colonel Qaddafi's forces around [his tribal center]
Surt if, as seems to be the case, they enjoy widespread support in
the city and pose no threat to civilians." Another technical
difficulty is that UNSC 1973 "called for an arms embargo that
applies to the entire territory of Libya, which means that any
outside supply of arms to the opposition would have to be covert"
(but otherwise unproblematic).
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Some argue that oil cannot be a motive because Western
companies were granted access to the prize under Qaddafi. That
misconstrues US concerns. The same could have been said about
Iraq under Saddam, or Iran and Cuba for many years, still today.
What Washington seeks is what Bush announced: control, or at
least dependable clients. US and British internal documents stress
that "the virus of nationalism" is their greatest fear, not just in the
Middle East but everywhere. Nationalist regimes might conduct
illegitimate exercises of sovereignty, violating Grand Area
principles. And they might seek to direct resources to popular
needs, as Nasser sometimes threatened.
It is worth noting that the three traditional imperial powers -France, UK, US -- are almost isolated in carrying out these
operations. The two major states in the region, Turkey and Egypt,
could probably have imposed a no-fly zone but are at most
offering tepid support to the triumvirate military campaign. The
Gulf dictatorships would be happy to see the erratic Libyan
dictator disappear, but although loaded with advanced military
hardware (poured in by the US and UK to recycle petrodollars and
ensure obedience), they are willing to offer no more than token
participation (by Qatar).
While supporting UNSC 1973, Africa -- apart from US ally
Rwanda -- is generally opposed to the way it was instantly
interpreted by the triumvirate, in some cases strongly so. For
review of policies of individual states, see Charles Onyango-Obbo
in
the
Kenyan
journal
East
African
(http://allafrica.com/stories/201103280142.html).
Beyond the region there is little support. Like Russia and China,
Brazil abstained from UNSC 1973, calling instead for a full ceasefire and dialogue. India too abstained from the UN resolution on
grounds that the proposed measures were likely to "exacerbate an
already difficult situation for the people of Libya," and also called
for political measures rather than use of force. Even Germany
abstained from the resolution.
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Italy too was reluctant, in part presumably because it is highly
dependent on its oil contracts with Qaddafi -- and we may recall
that the first post-World War I genocide was conducted by Italy,
in Eastern Libya, now liberated, and perhaps retaining some
memories.
2. 2. Can an anti-interventionist who believes in self determination of
nations and people ever legitimately support an intervention,
either by the UN or particular countries?
There are two cases to consider: (1) UN intervention and (2)
intervention without UN authorization. Unless we believe that
states are sacrosanct in the form that has been established in the
modern world (typically by extreme violence), with rights that
override all other imaginable considerations, then the answer is the
same in both cases: Yes, in principle at least. I see no point in
discussing that belief, so will dismiss it.
With regard to the first case, the Charter and subsequent
resolutions grant the Security Council considerable latitude for
intervention, and it has been undertaken, with regard to South
Africa, for example. That of course does not entail that every
Security Council decision should be approved by "an antiinterventionist who believes in self-determination"; other
considerations enter in individual cases, but again, unless
contemporary states are assigned the status of virtually holy
entities, the principle is the same.
As for the second case -- the one that arises with regard to the
triumvirate interpretation of UN 1973, and many other examples -then the answer is again Yes, in principle at least, unless we take
the global state system to be sacrosanct in the form established in
the UN Charter and other treaties.
There is, of course, always a very heavy burden of proof that must
be met to justify forceful intervention, or any use of force. The
burden is particularly high in case (2), in violation of the Charter,
at least for states that profess to be law-abiding. We should bear in
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mind, however, that the global hegemon rejects that stance, and is
self-exempted from the UN and OAS Charters, and other
international treaties. In accepting ICJ jurisdiction when the Court
was established (under US initiative) in 1946, Washington
excluded itself from charges of violation of international treaties,
and later ratified the Genocide Convention with similar
reservations -- all positions that have been upheld by international
tribunals, since their procedures require acceptance of jurisdiction.
More generally, US practice is to add crucial reservations to the
international treaties it ratifies, effectively exempting itself.
Can the burden of proof be met? There is little point in abstract
discussion, but there are some real cases that might qualify. In the
post-World War II period, there are two cases of resort to force
which -- though not qualifying as humanitarian intervention -might legitimately be supported: India's invasion of East Pakistan
in 1971, and Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in December 1978,
in both cases, ending massive atrocities. These examples,
however, do not enter the Western canon of "humanitarian
intervention" because they suffer from the fallacy of wrong
agency: they were not carried out by the West. What is more, the
US bitterly opposed them and severely punished the miscreants
who ended the slaughters in today's Bangladesh and who drove
Pol Pot out of Cambodia just as his atrocities were peaking.
Vietnam was not only bitterly condemned but also punished by a
US-supported Chinese invasion, and by US-UK military and
diplomatic support for the Khmer Rouge attacking Cambodia from
Thai bases.
While the burden of proof might be met in these cases, it is not
easy to think of others. In the case of intervention by the
triumvirate of imperial powers that are currently violating UN
1973 in Libya, the burden is particularly heavy, given their
horrifying records. Nonetheless, it would be too strong to hold that
it can never be satisfied in principle -- unless, of course, we regard
nation-states in their current form as essentially holy. Preventing a
likely massacre in Benghazi is no small matter, whatever one
thinks of the motives.
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3. 3. Can a person concerned that a country's dissidents not be
massacred so they remain able to seek self determination ever
legitimately oppose an intervention that is intended, whatever else
it intends, to avert such a massacre?
Even accepting, for the sake of argument, that the intent is
genuine, meeting the simple criterion I mentioned at the outset, I
don't see how to answer at this level of abstraction: it depends on
circumstances. Intervention might be opposed, for example, if it is
likely to lead to a much worse massacre. Suppose, for example,
that US leaders genuinely and honestly intended to avert a
slaughter in Hungary in 1956 by bombing Moscow. Or that the
Kremlin genuinely and honestly intended to avert a slaughter in El
Salvador in the 1980s by bombing the US. Given the predictable
consequences, we would all agree that those (inconceivable)
actions could be legitimately opposed.
4. 4. Many people see an analogy between the Kosovo intervention of
1999 and the current intervention in Libya. Can you explain both
the significant similarities, first, and then the major differences,
second?
Many people do indeed see such an analogy, a tribute to the
incredible power of the Western propaganda systems. The
background for the Kosovo intervention happens to be unusually
well documented. That includes two detailed State Department
compilations, extensive reports from the ground by Kosovo
Verification Mission (Western) monitors, rich sources from
NATO and the UN, a British Parliamentary Inquiry, and much
else. The reports and studies coincide very closely on the facts.
In brief, there had been no substantial change on the ground in the
months prior to the bombing. Atrocities were committed both by
Serbian forces and by the KLA guerrillas mostly attacking from
neighboring Albania -- primarily the latter during the relevant
period, at least according to high British authorities (Britain was
the most hawkish member of the alliance). The major atrocities in
Kosovo were not the cause of the NATO bombing of Serbia, but
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rather its consequence, and a fully anticipated consequence.
NATO commander General Wesley Clark had informed the White
House weeks before the bombing that it would elicit a brutal
response by Serbian forces on the ground, and as the bombing
began, told the press that such a response was "predictable."
The first UN-registered refugees outside Kosovo were well after
the bombing began. The indictment of Milosevic during the
bombing, based largely on US-UK intelligence, confined itself to
crimes after the bombing, with one exception, which we know
could not be taken seriously by US-UK leaders, who at the same
moment were actively supporting even worse crimes.
Furthermore, there was good reason to believe that a diplomatic
solution might have been in reach: in fact, the UN resolution
imposed after 78 days of bombing was pretty much a compromise
between the Serbian and NATO position as it began.
All of this, including these impeccable western sources, is
reviewed in some detail in my book A New Generation Draws the
Line. Corroborating information has appeared since. Thus Diana
Johnstone reports a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on
October 26, 2007 by Dietmar Hartwig, who had been head of the
European mission in Kosovo before it was withdrawn on March
20 as the bombing was announced, and was in a very good
position to know what was happening. He wrote:
"Not a single report submitted in the period from late November
1998 up to the evacuation on the eve of the war mentioned that
Serbs had committed any major or systematic crimes against
Albanians, nor there was a single case referring to genocide or
genocide-like incidents or crimes. Quite the opposite, in my
reports I have repeatedly informed that, considering the
increasingly more frequent KLA attacks against the Serbian
executive, their law enforcement demonstrated remarkable
restraint and discipline. The clear and often cited goal of the
Serbian administration was to observe the Milosevic-Holbrooke
Agreement [of October 1998] to the letter so not to provide any
excuse to the international community to intervene. ... There were
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huge 'discrepancies in perception' between what the missions in
Kosovo have been reporting to their respective governments and
capitals, and what the latter thereafter released to the media and
the public. This discrepancy can only be viewed as input to longterm preparation for war against Yugoslavia. Until the time I left
Kosovo, there never happened what the media and, with no less
intensity the politicians, were relentlessly claiming. Accordingly,
until 20 March 1999 there was no reason for military intervention,
which renders illegitimate measures undertaken thereafter by the
international community. The collective behavior of EU Member
States prior to, and after the war broke out, gives rise to serious
concerns, because the truth was killed, and the EU lost reliability."
History is not quantum physics, and there is always ample room
for doubt. But it is rare for conclusions to be so firmly backed as
they are in this case. Very revealingly, it is all totally irrelevant.
The prevailing doctrine is that NATO intervened to stop ethnic
cleansing -- though supporters of the bombing who tolerate at least
a nod to the rich factual evidence qualify their support by saying
the bombing was necessary to stop potential atrocities: we must
therefore act to elicit large-scale atrocities to stop ones that might
occur if we do not bomb. And there are even more shocking
justifications.
The reasons for this virtual unanimity and passion are fairly clear.
The bombing came after a virtual orgy of self-glorification and
awe of power that might have impressed Kim Il-Sung. I've
reviewed it elsewhere, and this remarkable moment of intellectual
history should not be allowed to remain in the oblivion to which it
has been consigned. After this performance, there simply had to be
a glorious denouement. The noble Kosovo intervention provided
it, and the fiction must be zealously guarded.
Returning to the question, there is an analogy between the selfserving depictions of Kosovo and Libya, both interventions
animated by noble intent in the fictionalized version. The
unacceptable real world suggests rather different analogies. 5.
Similarly, many people see an analogy between the ongoing Iraq
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intervention and the current intervention in Libya. In this case too,
can you explain both the similarities, and differences?
I don't see meaningful analogies here either, except that two of the
same states are involved. In the case of Iraq, the goals were those
that were finally conceded. In the case of Libya, it is likely that the
goal is similar in at least one respect: the hope that a reliable client
regime will reliably supported Western goals and provide Western
investors with privileged access to Libya's rich oil wealth -which, as noted, may go well beyond what is currently known.
5. 5. What do you expect, in coming weeks, to see happening in
Libya and, in that context, what do you think ought to be the aims
of an anti-interventionist and antiwar movement in the US
regarding US policies?
It is of course uncertain, but the likely prospects now (March 29)
are either a break-up of Libya into an oil-rich Eastern region
heavily dependent on the Western imperial powers and an
impoverished West under the control of a brutal tyrant with fading
capacity, or a victory by the Western-backed forces. In either case,
so the triumvirate presumably hopes, a less troublesome and more
dependent regime will be in place. The likely outcome is
described fairly accurately, I think by the London-based Arab
journal al-Quds al-Arabi (March 28). While recognizing the
uncertainty of prediction, it anticipates that the intervention may
leave Libya with "two states, a rebel-held oil-rich East and a
poverty-stricken, Qadhafi-led West ... Given that the oil wells
have been secured, we may find ourselves facing a new Libyan oil
emirate, sparsely inhabited, protected by the West and very similar
to the Gulf's emirate states." Or the Western-backed rebellion
might proceed all the way to eliminate the irritating dictator.
Those concerned for peace, justice, freedom and democracy
should try to find ways to lend support and assistance to Libyans
who seek to shape their own future, free from constraints imposed
by external powers. We can have hopes about the directions they
should pursue, but their future should be in their hands.
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ambitions?’..
Time Magazine: ‘Why Does Syria See a Threat Coming from
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Huffington Post: 'Dictators' Wives: A Look At The Women
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Haaretz: 'Haaretz WikiLeaks exclusive / Netanyahu urged Olmert
to initiate Israeli attack on Iran'..
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nuclear equipment to Iran'..
Guardian: 'Omar
responsibility'..
al-Bashir:
conflict
in
Darfur
is
my
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