[casi] News titles, 16-23/04/03

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News titles, 16-23/04/03

This mailing is of course out of date but is being sent to keep the archive
more or less continuous.

In the aftermath of the war a division has opened up between those of us who
are primarily concerned with the immediate humanitarian needs of the Iraqi
people; and those who are concerned with more long term political issues.
The first are obliged, however reluctantly, to accept that the invader is in
charge and not to put obstacles in the way of their efforts, such as they
are, to get things working again - even though these efforts are also
contributing to the consolidation of their power. The political interest on
the other hand is to do nothing that implies recognition of their right to
be there, of the legality of the conquest.

In principle, refusing to recognise the legality of the conquest means
insisting on the legality of the overthrown government. So far no country in
the world - not even, it seems, Syria - seems willing to do that, to
vigorously oppose the right of the conqueror to arrest, interrogate and
judge members of that government, and to insist that only the administration
of President Hussein has the right to represent Iraq in the councils of the
United Nations. Although that is plainly the case if 'international law' is
a phrase that has any meaning, it still seems in the present context an
eccentric or extreme position to adopt. Yet there is a precedent for it, so
obvious it demands to be screamed from the rooftops:

In 1978, a Vietnamese invasion overthrew the Khmer Rouge government in
Cambodia which had been accused of violations far in excess of anything
attributed to President Hussein. The US government, however, insisted that
the UN continue to recognise the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of
Cambodia. It also supported continued Khmer Rouge guerrilla activities. Can
anyone see any difference between the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and
the US invasion of Iraq? Apart from the fact that the Vietnamese had much
stronger grounds than the US for claiming that they were acting in self
defense?

All the signs are that, alas, the world is accepting this latest US outrage
as it has accepted all the previous ones (Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq in
1990/1, Panama, Nicaragua etc). The great peace demonstrations have helped
to reassure us that the human soul is still eking out some sort of existence
in the world but they are not - they are still nowhere near - establishing a
politics capable of exercising real power. Yet the governments of the world
surely have an obvious interest in resisting the American drive towards a
total monopoly of power. The obvious forum for such resistance is the United
Nations and the obvious principle at stake is the principle of national
sovereignty, to be defended even in the case of governments who may, for one
reason or another, be regarded as distasteful.

After all, if there is one lesson that even the remotest acquaintance with
history should teach us it is this: that very few political regimes in the
world can be described as totally acceptable, and it is very difficult for
new states to unite all its different peoples in support of one single
government. Government is essentially a protection racket and whether or not
people accept its exactions largely depends on the efficacy of an ideology,
whether it is 'Divine Right of Kings', 'Building Socialism', or 'Democracy'.
This is not to say government is unnecessary. A letter published in The
Independent on 23rd April pointed out that:

'Tyrants only survive because for every innocent life they ruin, they
protect several more who are untroublesome to the regime. Mobutu was just as
vile as Saddam; but even his rule was preferable to the present mayhem in
the so-called Democratic Republic of the Congo, where millions are dying.'

In terms of aggression against the rest of the world, the record of the
liberal democracies - the British Empire and its American successor - are
still much worse than anything yet achieved by the dictatorships, whose
exactions have tended to be directed chiefly against their own peoples.

The principal role of the UN is, surely, to ensure that every country in the
world is able to work out its own process of historical evolution with as
little interference as possible from other, more powerful countries. At
present, thanks to the bundle of economic and ideological necessities that
are driving the US and, apparently, UK, it cannot fulfil that role. The UN
can only now have any political value (as opposed to the continued,
indispensable humanitarian value of, say, the UN High Commission for
Refugees) if it becomes an engine of opposition to the United States and
United Kingdom. Which is difficult given US domination of the Security
Council and the physical presence of the UN in New York.

Otherwise we might as well accept that the government of the US has become
the government of the world, drop the old fashioned notion that every
nation, every people, has a right to its own destiny, and follow Richard
Perle's advice to 'relax and enjoy it'. Which, as a contributor to the CASI
discussion list reminded us recently, was also the advice offered in the
1970s by Tex Antoine, weatherman on WABC's "Eyewitness News", to victims of
rape, once resistance has become impossible. Mr Antoine's thinking was a bit
ahead of his time and he lost his job as a result.


News, 16-23/04/03 (1)

NEW IRAQI ORDER

*  For the people on the streets, this is not liberation but a new colonial
oppression [Robert Fisk, after complaining that the invaders are not being
sufficiently zealous in tracking down members of the government of Iraq,
expresses astonishment at the failure to safeguard Iraqi government
archives. He points out that the looters and arsonists are not the same
people and that the arsonists are organised and apparently being paid for
their work, apparently with the connivance of the occupying force]
*  Bush Cultural Advisers Quit Over Iraq Museum Theft [Chairman and one
member of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property]
*  Iraqi general lays claim to Baghdad mayoralty [General Jawdat al-Obeidi
of the FIF, together with Mohamed Mohsen Zubaidi]
*  Confusion over Baghdad 'vote' [Captain Joe Plenzler, a US marine
spokesman in Baghdad, tells AFP news agency, that 'future appointments like
this [the mayor of Baghdad - PB] will be handled through USAid']
*  Iraqis Welcome Plan to Mark Saddam Campaign [Exiled Iraqis welcoming Mr
Blair's idea for a victory celebration. No proposal that it should be taking
place in Baghdad ...]
*  US to pay Iraqi workers in dollars ['Funds for the payments will come
from the $1.7 billion in Iraqi assets that the US has recently frozen.' The
article refers to 'the more stable "Swiss dinar", a pre-Saddam dinar used in
the Kurdish north. It earned its nickname because of Switzerland's
reputation for financial probity.' My understanding was that they had their
name because they were printed in Switzerland.]
*  U.S. victory has steep price in maintaining safe Iraq peace.
International law places demands on occupier ['The laws of occupation are so
demanding that some legal scholars think they are a disincentive for
American officials to declare a formal end to the war.' But note also that:
'The occupying forces can restrict the movement of citizens, regulate
commercial business, seize and operate public transportation and censor
newspapers and broadcast stations, according to the United States'
interpretations of international law. It can collect taxes, create a new
currency system and operate government revenue sources - like the Iraqi oil
wells - to pay for the costs of occupation.' Presumably Iraq had the legal
right to do all that in Kuwait.]
*  Direct democracy in action [Pepe Escobar (of all people) finds what must
be the US ideal scenario - peace, joy at the removal of Saddam, sympathetic
reception for the INC - unfolding before his eyes in Hilla, site of a major
wartime clusterbomb massacre]
*  Communist newspaper back in Baghdad ["With the dictatorship's collapse,
all the wishes of the vast majority of the Iraqi people have come true". So
why did the Iraqi CP oppose the invasion? Note how it is the CP, and not the
INC with all the money they got from Congress and time they've had to
prepare, that is first in with a daily newspaper to fill the information
void]
*  Confusion over who controls Iraq oil ministry [Is it the new, INC
associated, 'Mayor of Baghdad'? Or is it a former 'Director General'
apparently recognised as such by the employees? Who makes the following
witty and perceptive remark: '"We have a lot of experience with coup d'états
and this one is the worst," he said. "Any colonel in the Iraqi army will
tell you that when he does a coup d'état, he goes to the broadcasting
station with five announcements. The first one is long live this, down with
that. The second one is your new government is this and that. The third is
the list of the people to go on retirement. The fourth one, every other
official is to report back to work tomorrow morning. The fifth is the
curfew." This is usually done within one hour, he added. "Now we are waiting
more than a week and still we hear nothing from them."']
*  Ba'athists slip quietly back into control [Suzanne Goldenberg seems a
little shocked that the entire Baath Party membership haven't all done the
honorable thing and committed hara kiri with wooden swords ...]
*  Easter in Baghdad: Minority Christians fear repression under Muslim
government [Paean of praise for President Hussein's policy of supporting the
Christians. 'About a decade ago, Saddam gave every major church in the
country a new organ.' Which, in the case of churches following the Eastern
rite, could be interepreted as an act of persecution!]
*  Democracy begins to sprout in Iraq [Ferment of political activity in
Baghdad]


AND, IN NEWS, 16-23/04/03 (2)

OLD IRAQI ORDER

*  Former U.S. official says CIA aided Iraqi Baathists [Roger Morris, 'a
former State Department foreign service officer who was on the National
Security Council staff during the Johnson and Nixon administrations.' Most
of it, I thought, was fairly well established but note: 'David Wise, a
Washington-based author who has written extensively about Cold War
espionage, says he is only aware of records showing that a CIA group known
as the "Health Alteration Committee" tried to assassinate Kassem in 1960 by
sending the Iraqi leader a poisoned monogrammed handkerchief.' and 'Jon
Alterman, Middle East program director at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said he was a legislative aide on Capitol Hill at the
time and recalls Bush allies dismissing the Halabja issue as a ploy by
pro-Israel lobbyists to disrupt U.S.-Iraqi relations.']
*  Iraqi Jews Will Never Forget [Brief account of a wave of anti-Jewish
persecution after the Baath Party takeover in 1969]
*  Thousands of Iraqis Demand U.S. Departure [Extracts concerning the
possible video footage of President Hussein]
*  They came to Baghdad [Moving and poetic evocation of Baghdad at the
moment when it falls to the conqueror who 'is probably the one least aware,
in the history of the city's conquerors, of the precious symbolism and rich
history of his booty.']

REMNANTS OF THE LEGAL GOVERNMENT OF IRAQ

*  Saddam's half-brother captured [Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al- Tikriti (and
Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti)]
*  In the dock: justice and the day after [A little glimpse into the bizarre
world of the advocates of international justice. Chibli Mallat, who works in
the Lebanon and 'founded Indict in 1996' sees nothing improper in an
invading force conducting criminal trials against members of the government
it has illegally overthrown]
*  Saddam's top finance henchman captured [Hikmat Mizban Ibrahim al-Azzawi,
arrested by the new/old Iraqi police force (why?). Also Emad Husayn Abdullah
al-Ani, who 'was involved in Iraq's development of the deadly nerve agent
VX. He was also accused by US officials in 1998 of involvement with a
chemical plant in Sudan linked to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden'. The one
that President Clinton bombed in 1998 which everyone seems now to agree
wasn't producing chemical weapons but medicines necessary to the lives of
many thousands of people?]
*  Saddam's son-in-law captured [Jamal Mustafa Sultan al-Tikriti, who was
apparently persuaded by the INC to return from Syria with a senior Iraqi
intelligence official, Khaled Abdallah]
*  'Shiite Thug' of Saddam captured [Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, accused,
among other things, of 'assassinating Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr
and his two sons in the holy city of Najaf in 1999']

HUMANITARIAN PROBLEMS

*  Numbers of refugees stranded at Jordan-Iraq border nearly triples: UNHCR
['mostly Iranian refugees of Kurdish ethnicity, who have fled the Al Tash
refugee camp", west of Baghdad' and Palestinians who 'said they have been
told by local Iraqi host communities that they are no longer welcome in
Iraq']
*  Search for Water Continues in S. Iraq [Water shortage in Basra]
*  Not a drop that's safe to drink [Water shortage in Nasiriya]


AND, IN NEWS, 16-23/04/03 (3)

NEW WORLD ORDER

*  Bush call to lift sanctions on Iraq leaves EU cold
*  France and Russia prepare for battle over UN sanctions ['The French
President, Jacques Chirac, also hinted of the battle to come by stressing:
"Now it is up to the United Nations to define the modalities of the lifting
of sanctions."']
*  Blair is in thrall to the myth of a monolithic modernity [John Gray in
the Guardian discusses the intellectual roots beneath Mr Blair's conviction
that 'there is only one way of  being modern and it is American'.
Saint-Simon, Augiuste Comte, Karl Marx etc. While the argument is broadly
right there are complications. For example the one Neo-Conservative he
mentions by name is Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz - and he is far from being
alone - is a disciple of Leo Strauss. Strauss saw himself as an
anti-'modernist' and insisted that, although some form of religious
fundamentalism was necessary to keep the masses happy, it wouldn't do for
superior people such as himself and Mr Wolfowitz. Given that Mr Blair does
indeed seem to believe sincerely in modernisation and progress, this
presumably puts him - in the eyes of Wolfowitz, Kristol, Ledeen etc - into
the category of 'useful idiot']
*  Open the books on oil-for-food [Claudia Rosett, in the International
Herald Tribune, thinks the details of the Oil For Food scam could reveal a
lot of hanky panky on the part of Iraq's favoured trading partners (France,
Russia, Syria)]
*  William Safire: Will Chiracism hold back Iraq? [William Safire waxes
indignant at all the illegal things that might have been going on under
cover of the wretched formula for illegal economic activity USUK has imposed
on Iraq, via the UN, for the past twelve years, with Mr Safire's
enthusiastic support]
*  France Meets U.S. Halfway on Iraq Sanctions Lift [The French draw a
distinction between 'sanctions', which they want to remove, and 'Oil for
Food', which they think they should stay, though in the past six or seven
years the terms 'sanctions' and 'Oil for Food' have become virutally
synonymous. Although the notion of keeping Oil for Food until such time as
Iraq is declared free of weapons of mass destruction seems a bit absurd
(given that the whole notion of Iraq's wmds was just a fable got up for the
purpose of imposing sanctions) it is, surely, impossible to end UN control
of the Iraqi oil industry in the absence of an internationally recognised
Iraqi government competent to administer it]

NERVOUS NEIGHBOURS

*  Powell plans talks with Syrian president
*  American pressure on Syria dominates regional press [Lebanon Daily Star
roundup]
*  Firm to sue Annan over lost trade [Bahraini firm whose contracts with UN
representatives fell through when the UN personnel withdrew at the start of
the war]
*  Turkey's Iraq odyssey ends in tragedy [Mohammad Noureddine of the Lebanon
Daily Star on the apparently complete failure of Turkish diplomacy. But is
it possible that Recip Erdogan's party maybe doesn't share the Turkish
military's obsession with preventing the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish
entity in northern Iraq?]
*  US has no legitimate right to Iraqi oil and lifting of sanctions must
wait, say neighbours [Joint statement from meeting in Ryadh]
*  Israeli writer calls for Iraqi-Palestinian-Jordanian merger under
Hashimites [Yosef Goell argues in the Jerusalem Post that Palestinians need
to be freed from Israeli domination but Israel cannot allow the creation of
a viscerally anti-Israeli Palestinian state on its borders. The solution is
to restore the West Bank to Jordan and compensate the Hashemites for all the
trouble this would bring them by giving them Iraq (shorn of the Kurdish part
of it). Seems like a good idea to me, though I would prefer to see a unitary
Greater Israel/Palestine with equal rights - including a right of return for
refugees - for all. This has the advantage over Mr Goell's suggestion that
it would enable a continued Jewish presence in the holy sites on the 'West
Bank']


AND, IN NEWS, 16-23/04/03 (4)

TURBULENT MULLAHS

*  In Shiite holy city Kerbala, Iraqis form committee to fill vacuum [With
judge, Mohammed Ali Nasrallah, and 'Ayatollah Mohammed al-Tabtabai,
imprisoned for 20 years in the notorious Abu Gharib jail'  Al-Tabtabai was
released in October, a further sign that the October amnesty wasn¹t just
confined to criminals]
*  Shiite Clerics Face a Time Of Opportunity and Risks [Long account from
Washington Post: Sayyid Muqtada Sadr and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in
Najaf, Abdel-Mahdi Salami in Karbala, Sayed Abbas in Kut]

MUJAHIDEEN AL-KHALQ

*  U.S. Takes on Mujahedeen Militia in Iraq [Mujahedeen Khalq ... 'years of
lobbying U.S. officials, placing advertisements in English-language
publications and holding demonstrations in American cities did not save the
Iranian opposition group from American air attack.']
*  Iranian exiles rally for regime change in their homeland [Protests
against the attacks on the Mujahideen al-Khalq]

NORTHERN IRAQ/SOUTHERN KURDISTAN

*  Graveyard where Kurds met their anonymous ends
*  Kurds, Arabs Try to Keep Peace in Iraq [Largely an interesting account of
the large - six million strong - Arab Jbour tribe]

THE TRIALS OF GEORGE GALLOWAY

*  Galloway was in Saddam's pay, say secret Iraqi documents [The Daily
Telegraph account]
*  The documents: contacts, money, oil and the need for anonymity [Text of
the incriminating letter]
*  Loyal Ba'athist 'supplied Saddam with weapons' [Account of George
Galloway's Jordanian intermediary, Fawaz Abdullah Zureikat]
*  How I found the papers in a looted foreign ministry office [by Daily
Telegraph's David Blair]


AND, IN NEWS, 16-23/04/03 (5)

DIVIDING THE SPOILS

*  Bechtel awarded $680m Iraq reconstruction contract ['to provide emergency
repairs to vital Iraqi infrastructure, including roads, bridges, schools and
power plants']
*  Iraqi exile slams US for awarding deals [Pachachi: 'No one has the right
to commit Iraq to obligations and costs ... Only an Iraqi government can do
that.]
*  Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access to Four Key Bases in Iraq [Detailed
account from NY Times, with threat to make an issue of Syria's occupation of
the Lebanon (which was Syria's reward for supporting the 1991 UN Gulf War,
was it not?) and a promise to modulate the footprint (this is the sort of
language we're all supposed to be using at the present time) in Saudi
Arabia]
*  Iraqi oil: Israel's dream not far from reality [with a brief history of
the Kissinger memorandum of understanding with Israel whereby the US
guarantees Israel supply of oil]
*   Rumsfeld denies plans for long-term bases ['"I have never, that I can
recall, heard the subject of a permanent base in Iraq discussed in any
meeting," he said. "The likelihood of it seems to me to be so low that it
does not surprise me that it's never been discussed in my presence to my
knowledge."' Which leaves us wondering why Mr Rumsfeld should apparently
regard such an obvious idea as strange or discreditable, and what sort of
thing does get discussed in his presence?]

PROGRESS OF THE PRETEXT

*  Iraq destroyed chemical weapons just before war, scientist reportedly
says [Anonymous scientist tells the Americans exactly what they want to
hear. His account 'supports the Bush administration's charges that Iraq
continued to develop those weapons and lied to the United Nations about it.'
It 'also provided an explanation for why U.S. forces had not yet turned up
caches of banned weapons in Iraq'. And even provides a link with Al Qaida.
Funny that by the time of writing (May 3rd) it seems to have disappeared off
the radar screen]

MEMORIES OF THE WAR

*  Why Iraqi army walked away from Baghdad [Very interesting account which
seems to support the thesis of a betrayal by the leadership of the
Republican Guard: Maj. Salah Abdullah Mahdi al Jabouri, a 17-year army
veteran 'said the disappearance wasn't the result of desertion or a
disorganized rout but was ordered by the highest levels and communicated to
field units by telephone ... "Losing a war is one thing, but losing Baghdad
is another," he explained, tears glistening in his eyes. "It was like losing
the dearest thing in your life."']
*  So who really did save Private Jessica? [Distasteful truth behind a fairy
tale]
*  Tales of Shock And Defeat [Account of war in the South. The Iraqi
leadership counted too much on the 'mercenary' Fedayeen; and in the early
days the Iraqi army suffered more from the attacks of the Badr brigades
striking from Iran than it did from those of the USUK axis]


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