Guess What? Lots Of Oil, Natural Gas In Gaza!
Martha Rose Crow, M.S.
1-7-9
|
Arab Collaborators Of Israel
Top 5 Lies About Israel’s Assault on Gaza
Jeremy R. Hammond
Foreign Policy Journal
January 3, 2008
Lie #1) Israel is only targeting legitimate military sites and is seeking to protect innocent lives. Israel never targets civilians.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime.
Moreover, the people Israel claims are legitimate targets are members of Hamas, which Israel says is a terrorist organization. Hamas has been responsible for firing rockets into Israel. These rockets are extremely inaccurate and thus, even if Hamas intended to hit military targets within Israel, are indiscriminate by nature. When rockets from Gaza kill Israeli civilians, it is a war crime.
 |
|
| Karen Abuzayd of the United Nations Relief & Works Agency admits that it was Israel that violated the truce, not Hamas. | |
Hamas has a military wing. However, it is not entirely a military organization, but a political one. Members of Hamas are the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people. Dozens of these elected leaders have been kidnapped and held in Israeli prisons without charge. Others have been targeted for assassination, such as Nizar Rayan, a top Hamas official. To kill Rayan, Israel targeted a residential apartment building. The strike not only killed Rayan but two of his wives and four of his children, along with six others. There is no justification for such an attack under international law. This was a war crime.
Other of Israel’s bombardment with protected status under international law have included a mosque, a prison, police stations, and a university, in addition to residential buildings.
Moreover, Israel has long held Gaza under siege, allowing only the most minimal amounts of humanitarian supplies to enter. Israel is bombing and killing Palestinian civilians. Countless more have been wounded, and cannot receive medical attention. Hospitals running on generators have little or no fuel. Doctors have no proper equipment or medical supplies to treat the injured. These people, too, are the victims of Israeli policies targeted not at Hamas or legitimate military targets, but directly designed to punish the civilian population.
Lie #2) Hamas violated the cease-fire. The Israeli bombardment is a response to Palestinian rocket fire and is designed to end such rocket attacks.
Israel never observed the cease-fire to begin with. From the beginning, it announced a “special security zone” within the Gaza Strip and announced that Palestinians who enter this zone will be fired upon. In other words, Israel announced its intention that Israeli soldiers would shoot at farmers and other individuals attempting to reach their own land in direct violation of not only the cease-fire but international law.
Despite shooting incidents, including ones resulting in Palestinians getting injured, Hamas still held to the cease-fire from the time it went into effect on June 19 until Israel effectively ended the truce on November 4 by launching an airstrike into Gaza that killed five and injured several others.
Israel’s violation of the cease-fire predictably resulted in retaliation from militants in Gaza who fired rockets into Israel in response. The increased barrage of rocket fire at the end of December is being used as justification for the continued Israeli bombardment, but is a direct response by militants to the Israeli attacks.
Israel’s actions, including its violation of the cease-fire, predictably resulted in an escalation of rocket attacks against its own population.
Lie #3) Hamas is using human shields, a war crime.
There has been no evidence that Hamas has used human shields. The fact is, as previously noted, Gaza is a small piece of property that is densely populated. Israel engages in indiscriminate warfare such as the assassination of Nizar Rayan, in which members of his family were also murdered. It is victims like his dead children that Israel defines as “human shields” in its propaganda. There is no legitimacy for this interpretation under international law. In circumstances such as these, Hamas is not using human shields, Israel is committing war crimes in violation of the Geneva Conventions and other applicable international law.
Lie #4) Arab nations have not condemned Israel’s actions because they understand Israel’s justification for its assault.
The populations of those Arab countries are outraged at Israel’s actions and at their own governments for not condemning Israel’s assault and acting to end the violence. Simply stated, the Arab governments do not represent their respective Arab populations. The populations of the Arab nations have staged mass protests in opposition to not only Israel’s actions but also the inaction of their own governments and what they view as either complacency or complicity in Israel’s crimes.
Moreover, the refusal of Arab nations to take action to come to the aid of the Palestinians is not because they agree with Israel’s actions, but because they are submissive to the will of the US, which fully supports Israel. Egypt, for instance, which refused to open the border to allow Palestinians wounded in the attacks to get medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals, is heavily dependent upon US aid, and is being widely criticized within the population of the Arab countries for what is viewed as an absolute betrayal of the Gaza Palestinians.
Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been regarded as a traitor to his own people for blaming Hamas for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Palestinians are also well aware of Abbas’ past perceived betrayals in conniving with Israel and the US to sideline the democratically elected Hamas government, culminating in a counter-coup by Hamas in which it expelled Fatah (the military wing of Abbas’ Palestine Authority) from the Gaza Strip. While his apparent goal was to weaken Hamas and strengthen his own position, the Palestinians and other Arabs in the Middle East are so outraged at Abbas that it is unlikely he will be able to govern effectively.
Lie #5) Israel is not responsible for civilian deaths because it warned the Palestinians of Gaza to flee areas that might be targeted.
Israel claims it sent radio and telephone text messages to residents of Gaza warning them to flee from the coming bombardment. But the people of Gaza have nowhere to flee to. They are trapped within the Gaza Strip. It is by Israeli design that they cannot escape across the border. It is by Israeli design that they have no food, water, or fuel by which to survive. It is by Israeli design that hospitals in Gaza have no electricity and few medical supplies with which to treat the injured and save lives. And Israel has bombed vast areas of Gaza, targeting civilian infrastructure and other sites with protected status under international law. No place is safe within the Gaza Strip.
Obama’s deadly silence
Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada
January 2, 2009
“I would like to ask President-elect Obama to say something please about the humanitarian crisis that is being experienced right now by the people of Gaza.” Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney made her plea after disembarking from the badly damaged SS Dignity that had limped to the Lebanese port of Tyre while taking on water.
|
|
 |
|
| The truce Hamas had meticulously upheld was shattered when Israel attacked Gaza, killing six Palestinians, as The Guardian reported on 5 November. A blatant disregard for the facts, it seems, will not leave the White House with George W. Bush on 20 January. | |
|
The small boat, carrying McKinney, the Green Party’s recent presidential candidate, other volunteers, and several tons of donated medical supplies, had been trying to reach the coast of Gaza when it was rammed by an Israeli gunboat in international waters.
But as more than 2,400 Palestinians have been killed or injured — the majority civilians — since Israel began its savage bombardment of Gaza on 27 December, Obama has maintained his silence. “There is only one president at a time,” his spokesmen tell the media. This convenient excuse has not applied, say, to Obama’s detailed interventions on the economy, or his condemnation of the “coordinated attacks on innocent civilians” in Mumbai in November.
The Mumbai attacks were a clear-cut case of innocent people being slaughtered. The situation in the Middle East however is seen as more “complicated” and so polite opinion accepts Obama’s silence not as the approval for Israel’s actions that it certainly is, but as responsible statesmanship.
It ought not to be difficult to condemn Israel’s murder of civilians and bombing of civilian infrastructure including hundreds of private homes, universities, schools, mosques, civil police stations and ministries, and the building housing the only freely-elected Arab parliament.
It ought not to be risky or disruptive to US foreign policy to say that Israel has an unconditional obligation under the Fourth Geneva Convention to lift its lethal, months-old blockade preventing adequate food, fuel, surgical supplies, medications and other basic necessities from reaching Gaza.
But in the looking-glass world of American politics, Israel, with its powerful first-world army, is the victim, and Gaza — the besieged and blockaded home to 1.5 million immiserated people, half of them children and eighty percent refugees — is the aggressor against whom no cruelty is apparently too extreme.
While feigning restraint, Obama has telegraphed where he really stands; senior adviser David Axelrod told CBS on 28 December that Obama understood Israel’s urge to “respond” to attacks on its citizens. Axelrod claimed that “this situation has become even more complicated in the last couple of days and weeks as Hamas began its shelling [and] Israel responded.”
The truce Hamas had meticulously upheld was shattered when Israel attacked Gaza, killing six Palestinians, as The Guardian reported on 5 November. A blatant disregard for the facts, it seems, will not leave the White House with George W. Bush on 20 January.
Axelrod also recalled Obama’s visit to Israel last July when he ignored Palestinians and visited the Israeli town of Sderot. There, Obama declared: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”
This should not surprise anyone. Despite pervasive wishful thinking that Obama would abandon America’s pro-Israel bias, his approach has been almost indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s.
Along with Tony Blair and George W. Bush, Obama staunchly supported Israel’s war against Lebanon in July-August 2006, where it used cluster bombs on civilian areas, killing more than 1,000 people.
Obama’s comments in Sderot echoed what he said in a speech to the powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, in March 2007. He recalled an earlier visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona near the border with Lebanon which he said reminded him of an American suburb. There, he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at “joyful play just like my own daughters.” He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizballah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).
Obama has identified his daughters repeatedly with Israeli children, while never having uttered a word about the thousands — thousands — of Palestinian and Lebanese children killed and permanently maimed by Israeli attacks just since 2006. This allegedly post-racial president appears fully invested in the racist worldview that considers Arab lives to be worth less than those of Israelis and in which Arabs are always “terrorists.”
The problem is much wider than Obama: American liberals in general see no contradiction in espousing positions supporting Israel that they would deem extremist and racist in any other context. The cream of America’s allegedly “progressive” Democratic party vanguard — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Howard Berman, New York Senator Charles Schumer, among others — have all offered unequivocal support for Israel’s massacres in Gaza, describing them as “self-defense.”
And then there’s Hillary Clinton, the incoming secretary of state and self-styled champion of women and the working classes, who won’t let anyone outbid her anti-Palestinian positions.
Democrats are not simply indifferent to Palestinians. In the recent presidential election, their efforts to win swing states like Florida often involved espousing positions dehumanizing to Palestinians in particular and Arabs and Muslims in general. Many liberals know this is wrong but tolerate it silently as a price worth paying (though not to be paid by them) to see a Democrat in office.
Even those further to the left implicitly accept Israel’s logic. Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, criticized Israel’s attacks on Gaza as a “reckless” and “disproportionate response” to Hamas rocket attacks that he deemed “immoral.” There are many others who do nothing to support nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and colonization, such as boycott, divestment and sanctions but who are quick to condemn any desperate Palestinian effort — no matter how ineffectual and symbolic — to resist Israel’s relentless aggression.
Similarly, we can expect that the American university professors who have publicly opposed the academic boycott of Israel on grounds of protecting “academic freedom” will remain just as silent about Israel’s bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza as they have about Israel’s other attacks on Palestinian academic institutions.
There is no silver lining to Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, but the reactions to it should at least serve as a wake-up call: when it comes to the struggle for peace and justice in Palestine, the American liberal elites who are about to assume power present as formidable an obstacle as the outgoing Bush administration and its neoconservative backers.
This Is Not About Rockets
There are no rockets coming out of the West Bank. Yet the illegal Israeli occupation there continues and so does the ethnic cleansing, the land theft, the illegal settlements, the colonization, notes Stuart Littlewood.
What if Hamas dumped all their rockets in the sea tomorrow? Would Gazans enjoy the same freedoms as other nations? Would they be able to open their sea port to foreign ships and rebuild and operate their airport? Would they be able to import and export and carry on trade and develop their economy and prosper like other countries?
Would they be allowed to exploit and develop their offshore gas field? Would their fishermen be allowed to fish in unpolluted waters? Would their young people be able to come and go and take up places at foreign universities?
Would Israel clear out of Gazan airspace permanently? Would the Israeli navy cease its piracy and stay out of Palestinian territorial waters? Would you and I be able to visit Gaza direct?
Fat chance. None of this would suit Israel. So Gazans would be no better off. Their tormented half-existence would continue.
There are no rockets coming out of the West Bank. Yet the illegal Israeli occupation there continues and so does the ethnic cleansing, the land theft, the illegal settlements, the colonization, the demolition of Palestinian homes, the throttling of the economy, the abduction and ‘administrative detention’ of civilians and the massive interference with freedom of movement. Nothing has changed for West Bank Palestinians who DO NOT fire rockets. There is no sign of an end to their misery.
The bloody assault on Gaza therefore has much more to do with Israel’s ambition to expand racial dominance in the Holy Land than crude and erratic rocket-fire. Hamas and the Palestinians holed up in Gaza are simply in the way of the Grand Plan and have to be removed or totally subdued.
The international community needs to keep their eye on the ball – the big issue – which is the ending of the occupation and Israel’s withdrawal to recognized pre-67 borders as required by international law. In short, they need to stop wringing their hands and start delivering justice, which is long overdue.
Palestinians in Gaza will hardly wish to give up armed resistance until they receive copper-bottomed guarantees of a normal life unmolested by Israel… and see concrete evidence of it.
Elements of an Inside Job in Mumbai Attacks
Jeremy R. Hammond
Foreign Policy Journal
December 21, 2008
Indian police last week arrested Hassan Ali Khan, who was wanted for investigations into money laundering and other illicit activities, and who is also said to have ties to Dawood Ibrahim, the underworld kingpin who evidence indicates was the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month.
Ibrahim is also alleged to have close ties with both Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency and the CIA.
Another character linked to the CIA whose name is now beginning to figure into the web of connections between the Mumbai attacks, criminal organizations, and intelligence agencies is Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, of Iran-Contra infamy. Khashoggi has been implicated in arms deals with drug traffickers and terrorist groups, including within India.
Dawood Ibrahim is a known major drug trafficker whom India claims is being protected by Pakistan. As Foreign Policy Journal previously reported, there are also some indications that the CIA has a similar interest in preventing Ibrahim from being handed over to India. Ibrahim is wanted by India for the recent Mumbai attacks as well as for bombings that occurred there in 1993.
Ibrahim is a native of India who rose through the ranks of the criminal underworld in Bombay (now Mumbai). According to media reports in India, he got his start as an undercover informant for the police at a young age and thus has an intimate knowledge of Indian law enforcement and intelligence, and is alleged to have fostered close ties with individuals within the political system.
Another known associate of Ibrahim’s in Mumbai, Mohammed Ali, is suspected of assisting the terrorists, who were met by an individual in Uran before continuing on to Mumbai, where inflatable rubber dinghies had been arranged to take them ashore by the same individual. Numerous earlier press accounts indicated that the dinghies, along with other logistical assistance, were provided by an associate of Ibrahim’s.
The Times of India, for instance, reported on November 28 that according to police sources the Mumbai attack “was enabled by the Dawood Ibrahim gang”, and that “It would not have been possible to carry out a terror operation on this scale without a collaborative local network and this was provided by the D Gang. As the terrorists had entered via the sea, the needle of suspicion is clearly pointing at Mohammed Ali, the new poinstman of Dawood.”
Yet Indian news reports indicate that officials have been slow to act against Hassan Ali Khan, and Mohammed Ali continues smuggling operations out of Mumbai for Ibrahim’s crime syndicate, D-Company, completely unmolested by Indian investigators and law enforcement.
As the November 28 Times of India article observed, Ali “is known to indulge in smuggling of diesel, petroleum, naptha, drugs and arms with impunity and it appears that the terrorists had used his networks to enter the city by the sea route…. Despite having a detailed dossier on him, the authorities have not taken any action against him. What is more worrying is that Ali is believed to have also penetrated naval intelligence.”
A further report from the Times of India on December 4 noted that Dawood Ibrahim is “sitting pretty in Karachi” under the protection of Pakistan and his “hawala channel between Mumbai and Karachi remains busy”. “But central agencies question why the Maharashtra government has not taken any action against the D-company here.”
“‘What’s the point of asking Islamabad to hand over Dawood when we’re not doing anything to destroy his empire in Mumbai and other places in India?’ a senior official asked.”
The article observed that Mohammed Ali “continues to operate with impunity.
Again, on December 11, Times of India reported that “Mumbai police has still not called Ali for questioning”, adding that “Ali is also known to have the backing of two powerful politicians of south Mumbai and that could be the reason why he is still untouched.”
In addition to links to Ibrahim, both men are also alleged, like Ibrahim himself, to have ties to political officials in India, and there are numerous other indications emerging that the attacks were assisted by elements within India being protected by the political establishment.
Hassan Ali Khan
India’s Daily News & Analysis reported last week that it appears Hassan Ali Khan “was part of a multi-crore [Indian numerical unit equivalent to ten-millions] hawala syndicate racket and may have joined hands with the organized crime operated by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. He is also suspected to have funded terror organizations.”
India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) “had also told the Bombay High Court that there were indications that Ali was part of a strong international crime syndicate with money flowing in from ‘proceeds of heinous crimes like terrorism, arms trade, gun running, corruption and organized forgery’.”
A series of news reports from March 2007 in the Times of India revealed that Khan was being investigated for money laundering and other illicit activities. A laptop recovered from his home showed that he had accounts at a Swiss bank. Khan had reportedly tried to take advantage of tax waivers granted on investments originating outside India in countries with double taxation avoidance agreements with India. The funds were also be used to invest in the stock market.
Khan would send funds abroad through illegal channels and re-route them into India through shell companies in countries with such a tax arrangement with India. According to the Times of India, “Khan has no known sources of income in India but owns stud farms and often travels abroad.” His wealth is estimated to be in the billions, and he owns property in Mumbai and Pune.
Investigators from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) “had crucial input from the Intelligence Bureau, which was concerned about this unaccounted money having implications for national security.”
One of the countries used to route money back into India was Mauritius, an island chain off the east coast of Africa near Madagascar and a former British colony. The UK still maintains a military presence there. It expelled the inhabitants of the island of Diego Garcia in order to turn it into a military base, which has also been used by the US for its own military operations.
According to reports, prior to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, a team had been sent ahead and checked into the Taj Mahal hotel, one of the key targets of the attacks, and established a control room where they had food, weapons, and other supplies waiting in anticipation of the siege of the hotel by police and special forces. An identification card from Mauritius was used to check into the room.
Hassan Ali Khan has an interest in horse-racing and trades in thoroughbreds. The Times of India reported that “he had attracted attention on the Pune racing turf where he surfaced about five years ago as a small-time punter who suddenly became one of the biggest players. His contacts, by default, were with some of the top industrialists who have an interest in horse-trading.”
Last February, the Hindustan Times reported that the Swiss bank involved in the money transfers, USB (United Bank of Switzerland) AG, was reluctant to assist Indian investigators, and the investigation had been stalled as a result. The ED had advised the Indian government not to approve a plan by UBS AG to buy Standard Chartered Bank, an Indian mutual fund business, because of its lack of cooperation in tracking Khan’s money transfers. According to the ED, Khan had $8 billion in the bank’s accounts.
Adnan Khashoggi
The Hindustan Times also revealed that there was evidence that Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi of Iran-Contra infamy had transferred $300 million to Khan from a Chase Manhattan bank account in New York. It added that Khashoggi’s “arms supplies to Tamil terrorists, the LTTE, were revealed during an investigation into the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.”
Khashoggi acted as a middle-man during the Iran-Contra affair, brokering an arrangement for Israel to sell US arms from its own stockpiles to Iran. The CIA then channeled money from the sales to the Contras in support of their terrorist war against the democratically-elected government of Nicaragua. The World Court later condemned the United States for the “unlawful use of force” – a euphemism for international terrorism or the even greater crime of a war of aggression.
Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen recently reported that, according to Asian intelligence sources, Khashoggi was also involved with the CIA in an effort to support Bosnian Muslims that “brought [Dawood] Ibrahim and [Osama] Bin Laden into the same big CIA tent, along with Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, a key Iran-contra figure in George H. W. Bush’s global arms smuggling venture while he served as Vice President under Ronald Reagan. There have been reports that Ibrahim considers Khashoggi to be a hero figure.”
In 1991, a Defense Intelligence Agency report listed Khashoggi as “An international arms trafficker who allegedly has sold arms to the Colombian drug traffickers, especially to the Medellin Cartel.”
The DIA report also listed Washington’s man in Columbia, Alvaro Uribe Velez, as “A Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medillin Cartel at high government levels. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the US…. Uribe has worked for the Medillin Cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria.”
Uribe is now the President of Colombia, which receives enormous amounts of US financing and military support, surpassed perhaps only by US support for Israel, Egypt, and now Iraq.
Manuel Noriega was another infamous narcotics trafficker and CIA asset, as well as a graduate of the School of Americas (SOA), which has since changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). The SOA was responsible for training numerous Latin American dictators and military commanders who were responsible for torturing, murdering, or otherwise “disappearing” countless political opponents and other individuals.
Colombia is also another case where the government has been caught red-handed staging false-flag terrorist attacks. In the late 1970s, a series of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations against leftist targets was carried out by a terrorist group known as the American Anti-Communist Alliance (AAA or Triple-A). Documents available online at the George Washington University National Security Archives confirm that Triple-A “was secretly created and staffed by members of Colombian military intelligence in a plan authorized by then-army commander Gen. Jorge Robledo Pulido.”
John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, wrote in his follow-up book The Secret History of the American Empire that a second lieutenant in the US army sent to Colombia to establish a “United States-commanded Southern Unified Army” told him, “Everything we do in Colombia just makes it more attractive for the drug business. Why do you think the situation keeps getting worse there? Because we want it to, we’re behind the drug trafficking. The CIA is–just like it was in Asia’s Golden Triangle.”
One might add the “Golden Crescent” to that list. As Foreign Policy Journal previously reported, Dawood Ibrahim “is known to be a major drug trafficker responsible for shipping narcotics into the United Kingdom and Western Europe.” While most Afghan opium is smuggled to Europe over land through Iran and Turkey, much of the amount that goes to Pakistan seems to be taken either by plane or by ship directly to the Europe, principally the UK.
While Pakistan claims Ibrahim is not even in the country, India insists he has been living in Karachi under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
The ISI worked closely with the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war and acted as the CIA’s intermediary to provide funding, weapons, and training to the Afghan mujahedeen. The opium trade was used to finance the CIA-backed mujahedeen, and the principle beneficiary of CIA support was Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, who was also a principle drug lord.
And while Western media accounts typically tend to characterize today’s opium trade as being under the control of the Taliban, the fact is that the estimated amount of funds going to the Taliban and all other anti-government elements combined is less than 14 percent of the total estimated export value, and US intelligence agencies are aware of the involvement of high-level officials within the Afghanistan government in the drug trade, such as Rashid Abdul Dostum, former Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan Armed Forces. Dostum was also among the warlords of the Northern Alliance the CIA doled out suitcases of cash to during the initial phase of the US war to overthrow the Taliban.
Viktor Ivanov, the director of Russia’s federal anti-narcotics service, said in an interview recently that “The gathered inputs testify that infamous regional drug baron Dawood Ibrahim had provided his logistics network for preparing and carrying out the Mumbai terror attacks by the militants.” He added that “The super profits of the narco-mafia through Afghan heroin trafficking have become a powerful source of financing organized crime and terrorist networks, destabilizing the political systems, including in Central Asia and Caucasus.”
A Protected Man in India
The $300 million transfer to Hassan Ali Khan from Adnan Khashoggi was “only the tip of the iceberg”, an official from ED told the Hindustan Times. There was also evidence of another $290 million, for instance, in two shell companies in the British Virgin Islands. This was among the evidence obtained from the laptop computer seized from Khan’s home in Pune.
In addition to the money transfers, the ED was investigating Khan’s possession of three Indian passports. He held passports issued from Pune, Patna, and Mumbai, and had also applied for additional passports from Guwahati and Chandigarh. He and his wife had applied for citizenship in Switzerland.
But it wasn’t only the Swiss bank’s apparent unwillingness to cooperate with Indian investigators that was slowing progress in the inquiry into Khan’s dealings. The Times of India reported in February that although the Prevention of Money Laundering Act provided for his arrest, the ED had yet to do so. The ED was “acting cautiously in this case, sources said.” The paper added that “It is shocking that Khan could have concealed all that money without Indian agencies getting to know of it.”
The report says that “The lack of evidence on the transactions seems to have prevented ED from arresting Khan”, while at the same time noting that “The alleged presence of names of Indian politicians also found from Khan’s initial questioning by the income tax and ED officials immediately after the raid last year, don’t figure anywhere in the submissions made by the ED to the HC [High Court]. The Income tax department has failed to get information from the ED on the sources of the $8 bn, despite asking for it again and again.”
In September, the Times of India reported that the intelligence community was “seething with anger for being blamed by politicians for its ‘failure’ to prevent” a series of bombings across the country. A senior intelligence official responded to the charges by telling the Times of India that it was the politicians who were at fault, and connected Khan to investigations of terrorism.
“Take the case of Hassan Ali, the Pune-based businessman,” he said. “He was under the scanner of several Central agencies, including the Intelligence Bureau, Enforcement Directorate, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and other bodies. Finally it was found that he had handled hawala transactions valued at a mind-numbing Rs 35,000 crore through Swiss banks.”
Hawala is an informal money transfer system that is an alternative to formal banking institutions. Often, relatively little money actually exchanges hands between hawala brokers, who operate on an honor system. An amount deposited with one broker is not actually moved to another broker on the receiving end. Rather, that amount is simply taken from the receiving broker’s own reserves. The only funds that actually need be transferred are those used to offset imbalances between brokers, and there is no record of the transaction between the sender of the funds and the beneficiary.
The hawala system is thus ideal for moving illicit funds and for money laundering. According to a World Bank report, “The bulk of drug-related financial flows within Afghanistan, and also to and from neighboring countries (primarily Pakistan), occur through the ubiquitous hawala (informal financial transfer) system.”
The report also notes that “Dubai appears to be a central clearing point for international hawala activities, and various cities in Pakistan also are major transaction centers.” Dubai is a central location for the financial operations of Dawood Ibrahim’s D-Company.
The September article from the Times of India continued, “The bank accounts were traced and he [Khan] was brought in for interrogation. How was it possible for a businessman to have access to so much cash, was the question on everyone’s mind. The probe was stymied midway by vested interests with political clout. Ali has done the vanishing act. His wife and brother-in-law too are missing. ‘Why was he allowed to go scot free?’ asked an IPS [Indian Police Service] officer.
“Sources said there was no evidence of any concrete link between Ali and terror funds. ‘Nevertheless, why was he taken off the hook? In any other country, he would have been put through the grind given the volume of his transactions. But in India he has been treated with kid gloves because of the political backing that he enjoys,’ another official said.
“In another case, the Mumbai crime branch had gathered evidence about the alleged links between a famous Pune businessman and Pakistan-based brother of don Dawood Ibrahim, Anees Ibrahim.
“An eyewitness gave a detailed account of the goings-on between the businessman and Hamid Antulay, Dawood’s nephew in Dubai, and later between the trader and Anees in Karachi. However, the businessman has not been arrested despite the disclosures made more than a year ago. ‘We are expected to fight crime, but politicians do not give us a free hand,’ a crime branch officer complained.”
Mohammed Ali
The Times of India also noted that “Dawood Ibrahim’s key contact person is Mohammed Ali, who is known to control smuggling operations in city docks. ‘Any consignment can be taken out or brought into the country by Ali’s huge gang. A detailed dossier on his activities, which has serious security implications for the country, has been sent to the Union home department. But there has been no response so far,’ an official said.”
Mohammed Ali also seems to be a protected person in India. Just days after the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the Times of India stated that Mumbai residents “now know their government has done nothing at all to protect the country’s financial capital”, and again noted that “The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has sent a detailed dossier about the activities of one Mohammed Ali, who is the uncrowned king of the docks. A close aide of Karachi-based terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, Ali smuggles petrol, diesel, drugs, arms and other contraband with impunity.”
”There are strong indications,” the Times of India added, “that the D-gang actively collaborated with the terrorists in these attacks. And yet, the government is reluctant to move against Ali and his gang because he enjoys the patronage of a powerful politician, known to be a business partner of Dawood.”
The article adds, however, that “Any terror operations needs vast funds, via the hawala route. But the authorities are still to crack down on hawala operators. Recently, they picked up Hasan Ali, a racehorse owner in Pune.
“A joint probe by the IB [Intelligence Bureau], enforcement directorate [ED] and directorate of revenue intelligence revealed that Hasan Ali had handled hawala transactions worth a whopping Rs 35,000 crore, much of it belonging to two Maharashtra politicians.”
A police officer told the Times of India at the time, before his recent arrest and while he was still missing, “I will not be surprised if Hasan Ali has been done away with. He is the man who knows too much.”
Hemant Karkare and False Flag Terror
Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare, who also formerly an officer in India’s Research Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence agency, had been in the spotlight for leading the investigation into a series of bombings in the town of Malegaon that was originally blamed on Pakistani-based Muslim terrorists. But Karkare’s probe revealed that the perpetrators were in fact Hindu extremists. Included in the arrests was a serving army officer, Lt. Col. Prasad Shrikant Purohit.
The revelations of false-flag terrorism being carried out by home-grown elements sent shock waves through the political establishment.
As the Independent reported on November 23, just days before the attacks on Mumbai, “Bomb attacks are not uncommon in India – there has been a flurry in recent months – but police usually blame them on Muslim extremists, often said to have links to militant groups based in either Pakistan or Bangladesh. As a result, the recent cracking of the alleged Hindu cell has forced India to face some difficult issues. A country that prides itself on purported religious and cultural toleration – an ambition that in reality often falls short – has been made to ask itself how this cell could operate for so long. India’s military, which prides itself on its professionalism, has been forced to order an embarrassing inquiry.
“The near-daily drip of revelations from police has also caused red faces for India’s main political opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), ahead of state polls and a general election scheduled for early next year. The BJP and its prime ministerial candidate, Lal Krishna Advani, have long accused the Congress Party-led government of being soft on terrorism that involved Muslims. However, the BJP has refused to call for a clampdown on Hindu groups, and last week Mr Advani even criticized the police over the way they questioned one of the alleged cell members…”
Karkare was put under immense political pressure and was heavily criticized by Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) leaders and members of the BJP. He had received a number of death threats as a result of his investigation, including a threatening call just one day prior to the attacks in Mumbai last month.
Karkare was killed during those attacks. Rumors with far-reaching implications began to spread immediately that he had been deliberately targeted.
Images of Karkare putting on an ill-fitted bullet proof vest just before his death were widely shown on Indian television. Indian Express noted, “His last visuals as seen on TV showed him working with his men near the VT station [Victoria Terminus, the former name of the Chatrapati Shivaji central train station], the target of one of the attacks, although it is perplexing at this point in time why such a senior officer ended up getting exposed to a brazen terrorist attack. Initially, he was shown wearing a shoddy helmet normally seen used by constables during riots. A little later, a policeman lowers a flimsy bulletproof vest over his shoulders, one that was obviously of little protection when those fatal shots were fired at him.”
According to the Pakistan Daily Mail, Karkare and several of his colleagues “had received information that their colleague Sadanand Dutt had been injured in the gunfire at the Cama and Albless Hospital for women and children.” As they were driving their truck to the scene, according to the only police officer to survive that attack, Arun Jadhav, “two terrorists stepped out from behind a tree and opened fire with automatic rifles”.
The Daily Mail article implicated Hindutva elements and Indian intelligence in terrorist attacks, stating that Bal Thakeray, the leader of Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist party, has “publicly pronounced in the past to setup Hindu suicide squads to target Muslims in India and Pakistan”, and claiming that “The terrorist activities and training needs of these groups are closely coordinated by the Indian intelligence agencies, particularly RAW”, which “trained the Tamil separatists groups of Sri Lanka such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) to start [a] militant secessionist movement based on terrorism in the Sri Lanka’s Jaffna peninsula.”
A government investigation into the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the Jain Commission, in fact confirmed that “The LTTE was getting its supplies, including arms, ammunition, explosives, fuel and other essential items for its war in northern Sri Lanka against the Indian Peace Keeping Force from Tamil Nadu. That too with the support of the Tamil Nadu government and the connivance of the law enforcement authorities.”
As noted previously, the investigation found that Adnan Khoshoggi had dealt arms to the LTTE. The commission’s report also noted that LTTE’s involvement in arms smuggling and other illicit activities “were tolerated” and that a number of murders demonstrated the “impunity with which the LTTE could operate in India.”
Earlier this week, Amin Solkar, a lawyer in Mumbai, pressed the High Court to launch an independent investigation into the circumstances under which Karkare was killed. According to India Today, “The Muslims in Malegaon have always claimed Karkare was killed by Hindutva militants and not by Qasab.”
“Qasab” is an alternate spelling for “Kasab”, a reference to Azam Amir Kasab, the only terrorist from last month’s attacks to be captured alive. A transcript of his confession to interrogators was leaked to the media and contains the following statements: “When we were coming out of the hospital premises, we suddenly saw one police vehicle passing in front of us. Therefore, we took shelter behind a bush.
“Another vehicle passed in front of us and stopped at some distance. One police officer got down from the said vehicle and started firing at us. One bullet hit my hand and my AK-47 dropped down. I bent to pick it up when second bullet hit me on the same hand. I got injured. Ismail opened fire at the officers who were in said vehicle. They got injured and firing from their side stopped.” Kasab and his companion, Ismail, then removed the bodies of three dead officers and apprehended the vehicle.
Assuming this incident is the one in which Karakare and his colleagues were killed, this characterization of events seems to cast doubt on the theory that the officials were deliberately targeted for assassination, set up and ambushed. But the Joint Commissioner of Police Rakesh Maria, who is in charge of the investigation into the attacks, Rakesh Maria, has rejected the authenticity of the confession document.
Pakistan’s The News reported earlier this week that “A Pakistani lawyer C M Farooque claimed that many people, including Ajmal Kasab, were arrested before 2006 from Kathmandu by the Indian agencies with the help of Nepalese forces.” Farooque said he was contacted by Kasab’s parents and had filed a petition with the Nepalese Supreme Court with regard to the disappeared individuals last February. “The people arrested in Nepal,” the report added, “had gone there on legal visa for business but Indian agencies were in the habit of capturing Pakistanis from Nepal and afterwards implicated them in the Mumbai-like incidents to malign Pakistan.”
Kasab is from the Punjab province of Pakistan. Rakesh Maria said last week that “He expressed his desire to write a letter to his parents. He wants to write the letter saying he was misled by the group.”
More questions about the death of Hemant Karkare were raised this week by Union Minority Affairs Minister A. R. Antulay, who also implied that he may have been deliberately targeted with the involvement of others. “Superficially speaking they [the terrorists] had no reason to kill Karkare. Whether he was a victim of terrorism or terrorism plus something I do not know,” he told reporters.
“Karkare found that there are non-Muslims involved in the acts [of] terrorism during his investigations in some cases. Any person going to the roots of terror has always been the target.” He added that “There is more than what meets the eye” with regard to Karkare’s killing.
After coming under fire for his remarks, he responded by asking, “How come instead of going to Hotel Taj or Oberai or even the Nariman House, he went to such a place where there was nothing compared to what happened in the three places?” He asked, “Why all the three (Hemant Karakre, Vijay Salaskar and Ashok Kamte) went together. It is beyond my comprehension.”
He later defended his remarks further, asking, “Who had sent them to Cama Hospital? What were they told that made them leave for the same spot in the same vehicle?” He added, “I repeat what I had said. I had not said who had killed them but only questioned who had sent them there in that direction.”
Rajiv Pratap Rudy, spokesman for the BJP party called the remarks “obnoxious” and called for a “clarification from the Prime Minister” whether this was a private view or one held by his government. Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said, “we do not accept the innuendo and the aspersions cast” by Antulay’s remarks. “This should be the end of the matter. The Congress does not agree with Antulay’s statement.”
Others were more inclined to take the remarks seriously. Union Minister Vilas Paswan noted that Antulay was from Maharashtra and suggested he must therefore have “more information”.
Vijay Salaskar, who, as previously noted, was killed along with Karkare, “had closely investigated the entrenched links between a prominent gutka [a betel-nut and tobacco based product] manufacturer and the Dawood gang,” The Times of India reported in an editorial piece. “He had unearthed a mass of evidence about the manufacturer’s visit to Dubai, where he met Hamid Antulay, a nephew of Dawood, and then went on a false Pakistani passport to Karachi where he met the don and his brother Anees. The purpose of the visit was to settle a business dispute with a rival.
“Salaskar found out that the manufacturer was Dawood’s partner in the gutka business, alongside a leading politician who dabbles in real estate development. Despite Salaskar’s best efforts, he was never allowed even to summon the manufacturer for questioning.”
The editorial continued, “The details of Dawood’s vast business transactions and the man fronting it are available with the Central government. But there is inaction. Is it any wonder the security agencies are deeply cynical about enforcing law and order and protecting the country? Is it any wonder the people are enraged?”
On December 6, Maharashtra’s former revenue minister Narayan Rane alleged in a press conference that the terrorists who had attacked Mumbai the week before received “logistical and financial” support from a number of politicians. According to the Press Trust of India, Rane also alleged that former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh had links with a person connected with fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim.”
Indians Arrested in Connection with Attacks
Two Indians were also arrested in connection with the recent Mumbai attacks. One of the men, Tauseef Rahman, reportedly bought SIM cards that were used by the terrorists, which were purchased in Calcutta according to a report from the Associated Press. The other, Mukhtar Ahmed, was an undercover operative of for a special counter-insurgency unit of the Calcutta police force.
Another Indian citizen, Faheem Ansari, was arrested in February and is now being questioned about his possible involvement. According to the AP, he was found “carrying hand-drawn sketches of hotels, the train terminal and other sites that were later attacked”. According to lead investigator Rakesh Maria, “Ansari was trained by Lashkar and sent to do reconnaissance.”
India’s top law enforcement official, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, apologized for failing to stop the attacks, saying “There have been lapses. I would be less than truthful if I said there had been no lapses.”
In fact, as previously reported by Foreign Policy Journal, Indian intelligence had numerous warnings of an imminent attack, both from its own sources and from the US. The warnings were specific, including that it would come from the sea. Mumbai, and even the Taj Mahal hotel, were identified as specific targets.
Additionally, Rakesh Maria said his investigation was looking into the possible involvement of Riyaz Bhatkal, the leader of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), in the attacks. “We are looking at various possibilities about who could have provided vital local support and intelligence. Bhatkal being a local person is known to have links with terror outfits.”
In October, Indian Express reported that Bhatkal and a terrorist named “Shahrukh” might be the same individual. “Sources said that since his name was linked to the 1993 Mumbai blasts, Bhatkal may have used the name Shahrukh to protect his identity,” the newspaper said. One official said, “For the 1993 blasts, he arranged money from Pakistan through hawala channels. But he could not be arrested.” In addition, “Officials also suspect an underworld link to the blasts. ‘Since Bhatkal’s name came up in the Mumbai blasts, it is evident that he is an important financial link for the underworld,’ said a source.”
Whitewash of the Attacks
Foreign Policy Journal previously reported on indications that the role of Dawood Ibrahim and his network of organized crime in the attacks in Mumbai last month is being downplayed by both Pakistan and the US and assessed that this was “possibly the result of a deal taking place behind the scenes between the governments of the US, Pakistan, and India, to have others involved in the Mumbai attacks turned over while quietly diverting attention from a man who some say could reveal embarrassing secrets about the CIA’s involvement in criminal enterprises.”
What’s clear now, as further developments have come to light, is that there are also elements within India, both in the criminal underworld and the government, that are perfectly willing to see the role in the Mumbai attacks of an even larger shadowy international criminal network whitewashed; a network with links to numerous moneyed interests, including trafficking in drugs and arms, and to numerous intelligence agencies, including the ISI, the CIA, and India’s own RAW.
While Dawood Ibrahim is officially a wanted man in the US and India, and is on Interpol’s wanted list, the evidence emerging from last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai is yet another indication that what is commonly referred to as a “shadow government” or “deep state” extending well beyond national boundaries is really pulling the strings behind the scenes in countries around the world, while the public–such as the residents of Mumbai–and well-intentioned individuals within their democratically-elected governments are left paying the price, often in blood.
Related Articles:
Role of Alleged CIA Asset in Mumbai Attacks Being Downplayed
The Mumbai Attacks: More Than Meets the Eye
New York Times Misleads on Taliban Role in Opium Trade
Jeremy R. Hammond is the editor of Foreign Policy Journal, a website dedicated to providing news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy from outside of the standard framework offered by government officials and the mainstream corporate media, particularly with regard to the “war on terrorism” and events in the Middle East. He has also written for numerous other online publications. You can contact him at jeremy@foreignpolicyjournal.com
Warmonger Barky – 30,000 More To Afghanistan
- The Observer, Sunday 21 December 2008
- Article history
The United States is to deploy up to 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan by next summer. The figure – a third more than had been anticipated – was announced by the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and represents the highest figure mentioned publicly by a senior American official.
The confirmation of the scale of the troop surge – along with the increase in the upper limit of envisioned new forces – reflects concern over the course of the war in Afghanistan, which has been hit by numerous setbacks as security across the country has deteriorated in the face of Taliban advances.
In recent weeks Taliban attacks have severely disrupted the main supply line for US and Nato troops into the country from Pakistan, a route that carries up to 75% of supplies to foreign forces.
Washington is already sending some 3,000 extra troops to Afghanistan in January and another 2,800 by spring. However, previously officials have said that the number would be increased by 20,000 in the next 12 to 18 months, once approved by the new administration of President Barack Obama.
The increased scale of the commitment of US combat troops is bound to bring renewed pressure on the UK and other Nato partners to commit more troops: senior US military figures and officials have complained that America is shouldering too much of the burden in the war against the Taliban.
Last week prime minister Gordon Brown announced an extra 300 British troops for Helmand province after visiting troops in Afghanistan. Senior Downing Street sources then played down the prospect of further reinforcements this spring. However, Brown will be under pressure not to jeopardise a fledgling relationship with Obama if the new US president requests more British troops.
“Some 20 to 30,000 is the window of overall increase from where we are right now. I don’t have an exact number,” Mullen told reporters. “We’ve agreed on the requirement and so it’s clear to me that we’re going to fill that requirement. So, it’s not a matter of if, but when,” he said.
‘We’re looking to get them here in the spring, but certainly by the beginning of summer at the latest.”
Half of the new US troops are expected to be deployed to southern Afghanistan, where British forces are stationed.
US Army General David McKiernan has asked for the extra troops to halt a growing Taliban insurgency, particularly in the east and south of Afghanistan.
Obama has pledged a renewed focus on Afghanistan, where US-led forces toppled the Taliban government in 2001 after the 11 September terror attacks. The United States currently has some 31,000 troops in Afghanistan, with some operating independently and others operating as part of a 51,000-strong Nato-led security assistance force.
That Was No Small War in Georgia — It Was the Beginning of the End of the American Empire
Mark Ames / Radar | December 15, 2008
(This article was published in the final issue of Radar magazine, which was bought out and shuttered just as this issue went to print. This is the first online publication of this article. It has been updated by the author.)
The war in Georgia will be remembered as the place where the American Empire fell on its face.
Tskhinvali, South Ossetia — On the sunny afternoon of August 14, a Russian army colonel named Igor Konashenko is standing triumphantly at a street corner at the northern edge of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, his forearm bandaged from a minor battle injury. The spot marks the furthest point of the Georgian army’s advance before it was summarily crushed by the Russians a few days earlier. “Twelve Georgian battalions invaded Tskhinvali, backed by columns of tanks, armored personal carriers, jets, and helicopters,” he says, happily waving at the wreckage, craters, and bombed-out buildings around us. “You see how well they fought, with all their great American training — they abandoned their tanks in the heat of the battle and fled.”
Konashenko pulls a green compass out of his shirt pocket and opens it. It’s a U.S. military model. “This is a little trophy — a gift from one of my soldiers,” he says. “Everything that the Georgians left behind, I mean everything, was American. All the guns, grenades, uniforms, boots, food rations — they just left it all. Our boys stuffed themselves on the food,” he adds slyly. “It was tasty.” The booty, according to Konashenko, also included 65 intact tanks outfitted with the latest NATO and American (as well as Israeli) technology.
Technically, we are standing within the borders of Georgia, which over the last five years has gone from being an ally to the United States to a neocon proxy regime. But there are no Georgians to be seen in this breakaway region — not unless you count the bloated corpses still lying in the dirt roads. Most of the 70,000 or so people who live in South Ossetia never liked the idea of being part of Georgia. During the violent land scramble that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the South Ossetians found themselves cut off from their ethnic kin in North Ossetia, which remained part of Russia. The Russians, who’ve had a small peacekeeping force here since 1992, managed to keep the brewing conflicts on ice for the last 15 years. But in the meantime, the positions of everyone involved hardened. The Georgians weren’t happy about the idea of losing a big chunk of territory. The Ossetians, an ethnic Persian tribe, were more adamant than ever about joining Russia, their traditional ally and protector.
The tense but relatively stable situation blew up late in the evening of August 7, when on the order of president Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s army swept into South Ossetia, leveling much of Tskhinvali and surrounding villages and sending some 30,000 refugees fleeing north into Russia. Within hours, Russia’s de facto czar Vladimir Putin counterattacked — some say he’d set a trap — and by the end of that long weekend the Georgians were in panicked retreat. The Russian army then pushed straight through South Ossetia and deep into Georgia proper, halting less than an hour’s drive from Saakashvili’s luxurious palace. All around me is evidence of a rout. A Georgian T-72 tank turret is wedged into the side of a local university building, projecting from the concrete like a cookie pressed into ice cream. Fifty yards away you can see the remains of the vehicle that the orphaned turret originally was part of: just a few charred parts around a hole in the street, and a section of tread lying flat on the sidewalk. Russian tanks now patrol the city unopposed, each one as loud as an Einstrzende Neubauten concert, clouding the air with leaded exhaust as they rumble past us.
But listening to Colonel Konashenko, it becomes clear to me that I’m looking at more than just the smoldering remains of battle in an obscure regional war: This spot is ground zero for an epic historical shift. The dead tanks are American-upgraded, as are the spent 40mm grenade shells that one spetznaz soldier shows me. The bloated bodies on the ground are American-trained Georgian soldiers who have been stripped of their American-issue uniforms. And yet, there is no American cavalry on the way. For years now, everyone from Pat Buchanan to hybrid-powered hippies have been warning that America would suddenly find itself on a historical downslope from having been too reckless, too profligate, and too arrogant as an unopposed superpower. Even decent patriotic folk were starting to worry that America was suffering from a classic case of Celebrity Personality Disorder, becoming a nation of Tom Cruise party-dicks dancing in our socks over every corner and every culture in the world, lip-synching about freedom as we plunged headfirst into as much risky business as we could mismanage. And now, bleeding money from endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re a sick giant hooked on ever-pricier doses of oil paid for with a currency few people want anymore. In the history books of the future, I would wager that this very spot in Tskhinvali will be remembered as both the geographic highwater mark of the American empire, and the place where it all started to fall apart.
I first visited Georgia in 2002 to cover the arrival of American military advisers. At the time, the American empire was riding high. A decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia seemed to be devolving into an anarchic and corrupt failed state, while the U.S. just kept getting stronger. Within months of President George W. Bush’s swearing-in, Time ran a column boasting that America didn’t need to accommodate Russia anymore because it had become “the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome.” That same year we invaded Afghanistan without breaking a sweat. The New York Times magazine proclaimed: “The American Empire: Get Used to It.” A new word, hyperpower, was being used to describe our history-warping supremacy.
The military advisers were dispatched to Georgia ostensibly to train that country’s forces to fight local Al Qaeda cells, which everyone knew didn’t exist. In reality, we were training them for key imperial outsourcing duties. Georgia would do for the American Empire what Mumbai call centers did for Delta Airlines: deliver greater returns at a fraction of the cost. They became a flagship franchise of America Inc. It made sense for the Georgians, too: Their erratic and occasionally violent neighbor Russia wouldn’t fuck with them, because fucking with them would be fucking with us — and nobody would dare to do that.
The imperial masterminds who fixated on Georgia as an outsourcing project must have figured we’d score a two-fer by simultaneously winning strategic control of the untapped oil in the region and also managing to stick a giant bug up the raw southern rim of our decrepit old rival Russia.
To enact this plan, America deftly organized and orchestrated the so-called Rose Revolution, which I witnessed in Tblisi in 2003. Saakkashvili’s predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, was judged unreliable, so in a multilayered soft putsch that used every lever of influence at our disposal, the U.S. replaced him with Saakashvili, a Columbia-educated hothead who speaks perfect neocon. In the Western media, the Rose Revolution was portrayed as 1776 redux (starring Saakashvili as George Washington with a permanent five o’clock shadow). A more perfect vassal for George W. Bush’s foreign policy could not have been found than “Misha,” as he is fondly known. He stacked his cabinet with young right-wing fanatics, and made sure he had a coterie of mountain-biking American advisers with him at all times. This crew included John McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, whom Misha paid more than $1 million in lobbying fees.
This project in Georgia was just a high-profile example of a broader Bush strategy. All around Russia’s southern border, America laid claim to former Soviet domains. After 9/11, Putin infuriated many of his army commanders and security chiefs by agreeing to let the U.S. set up bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for the Afghan invasion. Once the Taliban was removed from power, America decided that it felt like staying. After all, who was going stop us? Given the sorry state of their affairs, the Russians certainly weren’t. So by 2002, Putin was stuck with American pie dripping down his cadaverous bloodless face. But after years in which Russia rebuilt itself on the back of soaring commodity prices (today it’s the world’s largest producer of oil), our advantages in global power politics have started to tilt Putin’s way. Slowly and quietly he got American forces thrown out of Uzbekistan and all but sidelined in Kyrgyzstan. And then, here in Georgia, he seized the opportunity to really hammer home his point.
During my visit to Georgia in 2003, if someone had told me that in five years American military advisers would be hightailing it from their main base in Vasiani to avoid getting slaughtered by advancing Russian forces, I would have slapped him with a rubber chicken for insulting my intelligence. Yet there they were: gasping for air in the lobby of the Tblisi Sheraton, insisting off the record that the conflict was all the Georgians’ fault, not theirs.
Obama’s atomic umbrella: U.S. nuclear strike if Iran nukes Israel
Aluf Benn
Haaretz
December 11, 2008
Editor’s note: This is obvious propaganda and a signal that the U.S. under Obama will attack Iran for its illusory nuclear weapons program. Israel has upward of 400 nuclear weapons and is fully capable of responding to any kind of unlikely threat posed by Iran.
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s administration will offer Israel a “nuclear umbrella” against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran.
Secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton had raised the idea of a nuclear guarantee to Israel during her campaign for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency. During a debate with Obama in April, Clinton said that Israel and Arab countries must be given “deterrent backing.” She added, “Iran must know that an attack on Israel will draw a massive response.”
Clinton also proposed that the American nuclear umbrella be extended to other countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, if they agree to relinquish their own nuclear ambitions.
According to the same source, the nuclear guarantee would be backed by a new and improved Israeli anti-ballistic missile system. The Bush administration took the first step by deploying an early-warning radar system in the Negev, which hones the ability to detect Iranian ballistic missiles.
Somalia: Another CIA-backed coup blows up
by Mike Whitney“The Ethiopian invasion, which was sanctioned by the US government, has destroyed virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which the population has built for the last fifteen years.” Abdi Samatar, professor of Global Studies at the University of Minnesota, Democracy Now
Up until a month ago, no one in the Bush administration showed the least bit of interest in the incidents of piracy off the coast of Somalia. Now that’s all changed and there’s talk of sending in the Navy to patrol the waters off the Horn of Africa and clean up the pirates hideouts. Why the sudden about-face? Could it have something to do with the fact that the Ethiopian army is planning to withdrawal all of its troops from Mogadishu by the end of the year, thus, ending the failed two year US-backed occupation of Somalia?
The United States has lost the ground war in Somalia, but that doesn’t mean its geopolitical objectives have changed one iota. The US intends to stay in the region for years to come and use its naval power to control the critical shipping lanes from the Gulf of Aden. The growing strength of the Somali national resistance is a set-back, but it doesn’t change the basic game-plan. The pirates are actually a blessing in disguise. They provide an excuse for the administration to beef up it’s military presence and put down roots. Every crisis is an opportunity.
There’s an interesting subtext to the pirate story that hasn’t appeared in the western media. According to Simon Assaf of the Socialist Worker:
“Many European, US and Asian shipping firms – notably Switzerland’s Achair Partners and Italy’s Progresso – signed dumping deals in the early 1990s with Somalia’s politicians and militia leaders. This meant they could use the coast as a toxic dumping ground. This practice became widespread as the country descended into civil war. Nick Nuttall of the UN Environment Programme said, “European companies found it was very cheap to get rid of the waste.”
When the Asian tsunami of Christmas 2005 washed ashore on the east coast of Africa, it uncovered a great scandal. Tons of radioactive waste and toxic chemicals drifted onto the beaches after the giant wave dislodged them from the sea bed off Somalia. Tens of thousands of Somalis fell ill after coming into contact with this cocktail. They complained to the United Nations (UN), which began an investigation.
“There are reports from villagers of a wide range of medical problems such as mouth bleeds, abdominal hemorrhages, unusual skin disorders and breathing difficulties,” the UN noted.
Some 300 people are believed to have died from the poisonous chemicals.
In 2006 Somali fishermen complained to the UN that foreign fishing fleets were using the breakdown of the state to plunder their fish stocks. These foreign fleets often recruited Somali militias to intimidate local fishermen. Despite repeated requests, the UN refused to act. Meanwhile the warships of global powers that patrol the strategically important Gulf of Aden did not sink or seize any vessels dumping toxic chemicals off the coast.
So angry Somalis, whose waters were being poisoned and whose livelihoods were threatened, took matters into their own hands. Fishermen began to arm themselves and attempted to act as unofficial coastguards.” (Socialist Worker)
The origins of piracy in Somalia is considerably different than the narrative in the media which tends to perpetuate stereotypes of scary black men who are naturally inclined to criminal behavior. In reality, the pirates were the victims of a US-EU run system that still uses the developing world as a dumping ground for toxic waste regardless of the suffering it causes. (just ask Larry Summers) In fact, the dumping continues to this day, even though we have been assured that we’re living in a “post racial era” following the election of Barak Obama. Unfortunately, that rule doesn’t apply to the many black and brown people who still find themselves caught in the imperial crosshairs. Their lives are just as miserable as ever.
ETHIOPIA’S PLAN FOR WITHDRAWAL
In 2006, the Bush administration supported an alliance of Somali warlords known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that established a base of operations in the western city of Baidoa. With the help of the Ethiopian army, western mercenaries, US Navy warships, and AC-130 gunships; the TFG captured Mogadishu and forced the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) to retreat to the south. Since then the resistance has coalesced into a tenacious guerrilla army that has recaptured most of the country.
The Bush administration invoked the war on terror to justify its involvement in Somalia, but their case was weak and full of inconsistencies. The ICU is not an Al Qaida affiliate or a terrorist organization despite the claims of the State Department. In fact, the ICU brought a high level of peace and stability to Somalia that hadn’t been seen for more than sixteen years.
Political analyst James Petras summed it up like this:
“The ICU was a relatively honest administration, which ended warlord corruption and extortion. Personal safety and property were protected, ending arbitrary seizures and kidnappings by warlords and their armed thugs. The ICU is a broad multi-tendency movement that includes moderates and radical Islamists, civilian politicians and armed fighters, liberals and populists, electoralists and authoritarians. Most important, the Courts succeeded in unifying the country and creating some semblance of nationhood, overcoming clan fragmentation.”
The Bush administration is mainly interested in oil and geopolitics. According to most estimates 30 per cent of America’s oil will come from Africa within the next ten years. That means the Pentagon will have to extend its tentacles across the continent. Washington’s allies in the TFG promised to pass oil laws that would allow foreign oil companies to return to Somalia, but now all of that is uncertain. It is impossible to know what type of government will emerge from the present conflict. Many pundits expect Somalia to descend into terrorist-breeding, failed state for years to come.
The latest round of fighting has created a humanitarian disaster. 1.3 million people have been forced from their homes with nothing more than what they can carry on their backs. Over 3.5 million people are now huddled in tent cities in the south with little food, clean water or medical supplies.
According to the UN News Center: “Nearly half the population is in crisis or need of assistance….Continuing instability, coupled with drought, high food prices and the collapse of the local currency have only worsened the dire humanitarian situation in recent months. The UN estimates that 40 per cent of the population, are in need of assistance. In addition, one in six children under the age of five in southern and central Somalia is currently acutely malnourished.” (UN News Center)
The war between the occupying Ethiopian army and the various guerrilla factions has steadily intensified over the last two years. Fighters from the ICU, Al-Shabaab and other Islamic groups have moved from the south to the vicinity of Mogadishu where fighting could break out at any time. It’s “game-over” for Bush’s proxy army and the transitional federal government. They cannot win, which is why the Ethiopian leaders announced a complete withdrawal of troops by the end of the year. By January 1, 2009, the occupation will be over.
In a recent Chicago Tribune article, “US Appears to be Losing in Somalia”, journalist Paul Salopek sums it up like this:
“(Somalia) is a covert war in which the CIA has recruited gangs of unsavory warlords to hunt down and kidnap Islamic militants…and secretly imprison them offshore, aboard U.S. warships. The British civil-rights group Reprieve contended that as many as 17 U.S. warships may have doubled as floating prisons since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks…
“Somalia is one of the great unrecognized U.S. policy failures since 9/11,” said Ken Menkhaus, a leading Somalia scholar at Davidson College in North Carolina. “By any rational metric, what we’ve ended up with there today is the opposite of what we wanted.” (Paul Salopek, “US Appears to be Losing in Somalia” Chicago Tribune)
The CIA has done its job well. It’s created a beehive for terrorism and the potential for another catastrophe like 9-11.
Currently, negotiations are underway between the guerrilla leaders and the TFG over a power-sharing agreement. But no one expects the talks will amount to anything. The moderate ICU may regain power but the country will still be ungovernable for years to come. At best, Somalia is a decade away from restoring the fragile peace that was in place before Bush’s bloody intervention.
leave a comment