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The historic decline of the United States and the eruption of militarism

Part one

By Nick Beams 12 February 2007

The following report was delivered by Nick Beams, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia) and a member of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, to a meeting of the SEP membership from January 25 to January 27. The remaining two parts will be published on February 13 and February 14.

A little over two months ago, in the mid-term Congressional elections of November 7, the American people delivered a massive repudiation of the war program of the Bush administration. In the face of a daily barrage of propaganda, half-truth, lies and falsifications, a media that functions as a virtual arm of the administration, vote-rigging, and the absence of opposition from any section of the political establishment, the result was a stunning rejection of the war in Iraq and, by implication, the “war on terror” that has formed the basis of the Bush regime for the past five years.

The 2006 vote had international significance. It demonstrated in the clearest possible way that, contrary to the picture that is so often presented, America is a deeply divided society. The Bush regime—and American imperialism and militarism—is hated around the world, but, as the election result made clear, nowhere more so than in the United States itself. This oppositional movement has profound implications for the working class in every country.

The election result was an expression, within the United States, of the international movement that erupted against the invasion of Iraq four years ago, in February 2003. One of the central tasks that the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and all its sections face is the development of the necessary theoretical, political and practical initiatives to revive and develop this movement, drawing on the experiences of the past four years and our historical analysis of the twentieth century.

If the elections of November 7 were an expression of the sentiments of the broad mass of the American people, then the announcement just two months later by Bush of his administration’s “new strategy” in Iraq demonstrated above all the completely hollowed-out and decayed character of American bourgeois democracy. In the face of an overwhelming rejection of the Iraq war, the Bush regime will not only step up its military operations in Iraq but has openly threatened a wider war against Iran and Syria, involving the whole of the Middle East—threats that were repeated in Bush’s State of the Union speech yesterday.

We will examine the content of the new strategy shortly. But first of all, it underscores a point of primary importance that we have always insisted upon: that the escalation and extension of the war will be accompanied by the destruction of what remains of democracy within the US itself./ In their media appearances following the announcement of the “new strategy”, both Bush and Cheney stressed that neither election results nor votes in Congress would stand in the way of their war drive. Bush told a CBS interviewer on January 14: “I fully understand they [Congress] could try to stop me from doing it. But I’ve made my decision. And we’re going forward.”

Cheney was even more explicit. “The president is commander in chief. He’s the one who has to make these tough decisions.” “He’s the guy who’s got to decide how to use the force and where to deploy the force. And Congress obviously has to support the effort through the power of the purse. So, they’ve got a role to play, and we certainly recognize that. But you also cannot run a war by committee.”

Elaborated here is a perspective of executive dictatorship. The president proposes, the Congress disposes. The president is not subject to any democratic accountability to the people. Rather, the task of the president, as the commander in chief, is to override the will of the people in order to pursue military objectives that are decided by the executive.

As Cheney told his Fox interviewer, any conception that the executive is somehow responsible to the will of the people, as expressed through the legislature, must be overturned.

“That is part and parcel of the underlying fundamental strategy that our adversaries believe afflicts the United States. They are convinced that the current debate in Congress, that the election campaign last fall, all of that is evidence that they’re right when they say the United States doesn’t have the stomach for the fight in this long war on terror.

“They believe it. They look at the past evidence of it: in Lebanon in ’83, and Somalia in ’93, Vietnam before that. They’re convinced that the United States will, in fact, pack it in and go home if they just kill enough of us. They can’t beat us in a stand-up fight, but they think they can break our will. And if we have a president who looks at the polls and sees the polls are going south and concludes, ‘Oh, my goodness, we have to quit’, all that will do is validate the Al Qaeda view of the world. It’s exactly the wrong thing to do. This president does not make policy based on public opinion polls; he should not. It’s absolutely essential here that we get it right.”

Of course, the repudiation of the war was not simply expressed in an opinion poll, but in an election. Moreover there are deep-going concerns within the American ruling elite itself. By any measure, the global position of the United States—economically, politically and even militarily—has been significantly weakened. And this has caused considerable apprehension within ruling circles—reflected in the ISG report prepared by Baker and Hamilton. But Bush dismissed the report.

One has the sense that there is an inherent crisis in the very structure of the American state system. What happens if, in the event, say, of an invasion of Syria or Iran, opposition is voiced in the Congress and the legality of the administration’s action is challenged? Will the executive simply move in and shut the Congress down ... on the basis that it is aiding the enemy? That is the implication of Cheney’s argument.

If such action were taken, the Democrats would do all in their power to prevent the development of mass opposition—just as they did in 2000, when they sanctioned the decision of the Supreme Court to award the election to Bush. But millions of ordinary people have made many experiences since then, and their reaction would be a far different matter.

The proposals for executive dictatorship go even further—into the judiciary. In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute—where Bush’s “surge” plan was conceived—Attorney General Alberto Gonzales maintained that judges should not rule on national security matters. “A judge will never be in the position to know what is in the national security interest of the country.” The judiciary should “show deference” to the executive branch when the issue of national security is involved. “How are judges supposed to gather up the information, the collective wisdom of the entire executive branch ... and make a determination as to what is in the national security interest of our country? They’re not capable of doing that.”

“I try to imagine myself being a judge. What do I know about what is going on in Afghanistan or Guantánamo?” Gonzales’s argument is that no challenge should be made to the president’s war policies because he is the “commander in chief”. Any action taken by the executive against American citizens should not come under the purview of the judiciary if it concerns “national security.”

The outlook of the “opposition” Democrats

If Bush and Cheney feel they can openly repudiate the overwhelming public opposition to the war, it is because they have long ago taken the measure of the Democratic “opposition”. They are well aware that the Democrats have no intention of implementing measures in the Congress which could challenge them. The Democrats’ outlook was recently summed up in a scathing column by Jacob Weisberg, published in the Financial Times on January 12.

Entitled “Congress is helpless only out of choice” he wrote: “Several decades back, the psychologist Martin Seligman developed his theory of ‘learned helplessness’. Subjected to repeated punishment, animals and humans come to believe they have no control over what happens to them, whether they actually do or not. In Seligman’s original experiment, dogs given repeated electrical shocks would prostrate themselves and whine, even when escaping the abuse lay within their power.

“As with canines, so with congressional Democrats. In theory, they now control a co-equal branch of government. In practice, they are so traumatised by years of mistreatment at the hands of a contemptuous executive that they continue to cower and simper whenever master waves a stick in their direction.

“This phenomenon is at its most pitiable when it comes to Congress’s powers over national security, terrorism and the war in Iraq. Last Sunday, Senator Joseph Biden, the Democrats’ dean of foreign policy, was asked on Meet the Press what he intended to do when President George W. Bush announced his plan to send additional American troops to Iraq. ‘There’s not much I can do about it,’ Mr Biden shot back. ‘Not much anybody can do about it. He’s commander-in-chief.’”

The psychology of the Democrats described here reflects the collapse of the entire perspective of American liberalism—a process going back over decades.

Even more significant than psychology, the outlook of the Democrats flows from the agreement by all sections of the American political establishment that the most critical issue is the preservation, by whatever means necessary, of US global hegemony. Their differences with the Bush administration are not over this objective, but over the methods it is employing.

It is not that the Democrats have no differences with Bush. They do—as do many Republicans. But they have no coherent alternative to achieve their shared objective of maintaining American global dominance. This is understood by the Bush administration. Hence its continual retort against its critics: “What alternative do you have?”. The unstated premise is that both sides agree on the need to maintain the global position of the US.

Bush refers to the “war on terror” as the great ideological struggle of our time. It involves, he says, the very future of the United States itself. What is really at stake here? No one seriously believes that the terror bands of Al Qaeda, or groups of Islamic fanatics, can destroy the United States. In reality, far bigger forces are at work.

Some of them were indicated in a recent article by Jeffrey Herf, one of the so-called liberals in the Democratic Party. Herf is an American supporter of the “Euston Manifesto” group, a tendency originating in Britain that seeks to provide a justification for the invasion of Iraq on the basis of liberal principles.

According to Herf, in his article entitled New Liberalism, Radical Islam and the War in Iraq: “[T]he political future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East remains a matter of vital national interest to the United States and of our allies in Europe, as well as to India, China” and moderate Arab countries. “This is the case because the world economy runs on oil. Stability in this region is thus of vital interest to countries around the globe. It is a vital interest of both the United States and all oil dependent nations that neither radical Islamists or secular radicals, neither Saddam’s Iraq in the past or Iran today, became hegemonic in this region. Preventing such domination is a vital, not a peripheral, interest of the United States.

“In both World War II and the Cold War, the United States asserted that its vital interests required preventing the hegemonic dominance of one power over all of Europe, and of Asia.”

Herf continues: “The formative experience of this country’s now politically dominant generation was the war in Vietnam. In contrast to the war in Iraq, that war was fought over a country that was peripheral, not vital, to American interests. ... The combination of oil, potential for weapons of mass destruction and the ideological goals of radical Islam mean that the stakes in Iraq are much higher than they were in Vietnam.”

A further revealing insight into the thinking of leaders of the Democratic Party was provided by a discussion on “The Way Forward in Iraq” organised by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on January 8, 2007. This was the discussion from which the World Socialist Web Site’s Barry Grey was excluded. It underscored the fact that objections to Bush are not based on opposition to the war in Iraq as such—a war for which the Democrats voted—but because it is going so badly, endangering the long-term strategic position of the US.

The discussion involved presentations from four leading members of the House Armed Services Committee. The most revealing came from Jim Marshall, a Democrat from Georgia.

“We as a country, we as a government, we as a Congress, can continue focusing on small details, and at the same time miss some very big-picture items.... But if you sit back and take a look at the global threats that are facing us, they go so far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan that it’s easy for us to lose our sense of real place here. It’s not to suggest that the challenge of Iraq and Afghanistan are small things. They are not. But we’ve got global issues facing the world that are going to turn into national security threats for the United States that are rather stunning.

 “Just think about the fact that America—5 percent of the population of the United States controls, what 25 or 40 percent of the world’s wealth. Think about the fact that, what, maybe 5 billion people in the world live on $2 a day; climate change; economic integration, which is not very well coordinated and has no supervising authority governing it, none whatsoever; no real regional or international partnerships that are effective to deal with things like pandemics, rising military threats, global terrorist networks.... And as we as a globe become more integrated, as the acts of just a few folks somewhere in a remote place in the globe can have an impact throughout the globe become more frequent and more significant, we’ve got to wonder about how we, as a civilization, a global civilization, organize ourselves to meet the challenges that are in front of us ... Those are big issues, and they face us in the immediate future.”

Preparations for war against Iran/ The only way forward, so far as the Bush administration is concerned—and no one has put forward a viable counter-strategy—lies in widening the war in the Middle East. His State of the Union speech of January 10, where he outlined this position, was significant in two aspects.

Firstly, the change of policy in regard to the situation in Iraq—particularly in Baghdad—and secondly, the threats against Syria, and especially Iran. Indeed, it could be said that Iran, not Iraq, was the central focus of the speech.

Over the past weeks and months, a series of measures have pointed to US war preparations against Iran:

*A second carrier battle group has been stationed in the Persian Gulf and Patriot anti-missile units have been deployed in Iraq. Neither of these moves is related to Iraq’s internal situation, but both are significant from the standpoint of military operations against Iran—just as is the appointment of a naval aviator, William Fallon, as commander in chief of Central Command, which oversees the Middle East.

*Last December several Iranian diplomats were arrested, followed by the arrest of six more in an office that has functioned as an Iranian consulate since 1992.

*In his speech, Bush declared that US forces would “interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria” and “seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” As was widely noted, including in Congressional hearings, these initiatives bare striking resemblance to the illegal operations carried out by the US military in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

*Following the speech, members of Bush’s administration have made a series of pointed references to Iran. A typical comment was that of National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who remarked on “Meet the Press” that the war in Iraq was part of “a broad struggle going on in the Middle East between the forces of freedom and democracy and the forces of terror and tyranny—and Iran is behind a lot of that.”

As far as the situation in Iraq is concerned, the major shift is that US forces will now move against the Mahdi army in Sadr city, with or without the go-ahead of the Maliki government.

From the very outset of the war, there has always been a contradiction in US policy in Iraq. On the one hand, Washington continued to pursue its goal of regime change in Iran—it has never recovered from the blow delivered by the overthrow of the Shah in 1979—while at the same time it cobbled together a government in Baghdad, which drew political and material support from Iran. How was this contradiction to be resolved? James Baker’s ISG group advanced one possible solution: open up a dialogue and come to an agreement with Syria and Iran. But the Bush administration rejected this, not least because it would have meant a complete recasting of American policy in the Middle East and a change in the relationship of the US with Israel. The only other alternative was to proceed more aggressively with the program of “regime change” in Iran. But that option requires the crushing of the Shia militias in Baghdad, who would be likely to launch an offensive against American forces if Iran were attacked. The same logic was at work in Israel’s war in Lebanon last year. One of the aims of that offensive was to destroy Hezbollah and remove any threat against Israel from that quarter, should an attack be launched against Iran either by Israel or the United States itself.

The crisis of US and world capitalism

Increasingly, US policy assumes a form of madness in which every military intervention creates new problems and more enemies, which then have to be eliminated by increased military force. This madness, however, is not simply the product of the members of the Bush administration. It is lodged within the crisis confronting world capitalism as a whole, and the United States in particular.

In order to illustrate this point, let me refer to an article published in Foreign Affairs in September-October 2002 by the liberal international relations theorist, John Ikenberry. In the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, Ikenberry viewed with concern the Bush administration’s new doctrine—the growth of an American imperial ambition that threatened to transform the world in a way that the end of the Cold War did not.

 “America’s nascent neoimperial grand strategy threatens to rend the fabric of the international community and political partnerships precisely at a time when that community and those partnerships are urgently needed. It is an approach fraught with peril and likely to fail. It is not only politically unsustainable but diplomatically harmful. And if history is any guide, it will trigger antagonism and resistance that will leave America in a more hostile and divided world.”

Ikenberry hailed the post World War II order, created by the efforts of the United States based on a realist foreign policy, in which the interests of other states were recognised and, to some extent, accommodated and a free market economic order established creating “the most stable and prosperous international system in world history.”

This was now being threatened by a neoimperialist policy which would prove to be unsustainable and, ultimately, damaging to American interests.

In concluding his article Ikenberry insisted that “the United States should reinvigorate its older strategies, those based on the view that America’s security partnerships are not simply instrumental tools but critical components of an American-led world political order that should be preserved.”

Like Ikenberry, the more far-sighted liberals were able to point to the disastrous consequences of the Bush imperial policy. But none has been able to answer the fundamental question: why is it still being pursued? Four years on, any claim that it is simply because of the deranged thinking of Bush’s foreign policy planners is untenable. The Bush policy must have deep social roots.

The ICFI and the WSWS have not only identified what these are, we have also emphasised their historical significance. The fundamental contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, which arise from the irreconcilable conflict between the forces of production and the social relations under which they have been developed, are once again coming to the surface, in the form of the conflict between the globally integrated world economy and the capitalist nation-state system.

The US ruling elite aims to resolve this conflict through the United States assuming a hegemonic role in the world capitalist system. But it does so under transformed conditions. The very processes of globalisation, which make ever more necessary the establishment of a global hegemon, have, at the same time, undermined the once overwhelming economic dominance that the US once enjoyed and which, in the final analysis, formed the basis of the “golden age” now looked back upon so fondly by Ikenberry and others who oppose the new course.

The central contradiction is this: right at the point where, because of the globalisation of production, US capitalism finds it ever more necessary to assert its hegemony, it no longer has the economic power to do so.

Take GDP as an indicator. In 1951, America’s share of the world economy was 27.8 percent. In 2001, it was 21.4 percent. This is less than the share of so-called developed Asia, excluding Japan, which comes in at 24.6 percent. Such aggregate figures, however, do not give a complete picture. American hegemony after the war was based on its mass industrial capacity. The US was home to about 60 percent of the world’s manufacturing capacity. Today the United States has a trade and balance of payments deficit that requires about $3 billion a day to finance it.

Having lost its economic dominance, the US is increasingly resorting to the one area where it does enjoy overwhelming superiority—the use of military force—in order to maintain its hegemony.

It is upon this point that the plans of various critics for a “reform” of the Bush foreign policy founder.

Consider the editorial published in the Financial Times of January 12, 2007, under the title “Surge towards debacle in Iraq and MidEast.” The FT, which represents the interests of the City of London, but which would like to think of itself as the voice of reason, warned that the new policy, far from succeeding in fixing a traumatised Iraq “may end with the US ‘surging’ into Iran—and taking the Middle East to a new level of mayhem that will spill into nearby regions and western capitals.”

The editorial scathingly dismissed Bush’s rationale for the new offensive, dismissing his portrayal of Iraq as a “young democracy fighting for its life”. “The invasion has solidified a system divided into sects and operating on the basis of patronage and intimidation. The composition of the parliament is two-thirds Islamist. There are no institutions. Ministries are sectarian booty and factional bastions. The one institution that did more or less survive Saddam Hussein, the national army, was disbanded by the occupation and current attempts to reconstitute it have failed to move beyond rebadged militia.”

It concluded: “The only feasible way forward is the approach of the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton commission—which the new US Congress should embrace and insist on. This would make support for the Iraqi government and army conditional on their real effort to promote national reconciliation, which would in turn, as it progressed, be rewarded with billions of dollars in long-term aid from the US and Iraq’s neighbours. This external support—from Turkey to Saudi Arabia and Iran to Syria—would be built up within a wide-ranging diplomatic offensive in the region that would include Tehran and Damascus. Mr Bush is instead threatening to expand the war.”

Similar proposals have been made before. They all rest, in the final analysis, on the United States instituting some kind of Marshall Plan in the Middle East, involving the outlay of billions of dollars. But who would benefit from such a scheme? Above all, US rivals, including the old capitalist powers such as France and Germany, as well as the newly emerging ones such as China and even Russia. In the new “free market” Middle East, it would not be American firms that would benefit from the exploitation of the huge oil resources, but their competitors.

Moreover, as former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft noted in a recent article, a US retreat would have far-reaching global consequences. He emphasised that while the ISG report pointed to the “grave and deteriorating” situation in Iraq, it failed to advance a perspective beyond withdrawal of American forces. Such a withdrawal would represent a “strategic defeat for American interests, with potentially catastrophic consequences both in the region and beyond.”

“The effects would not be confined to Iraq and the Middle East. Energy resources and transit chokepoints vital to the global economy would be subjected to greatly increased risk. Terrorists and extremists elsewhere would be emboldened. And the perception worldwide would be that the American colossus had stumbled, was losing its nerve and could no longer be considered a reliable ally or friend—or the guarantor of peace and stability in this critical region.”

In other words, there are vital interests at stake, necessitating military action.

A new colonialism

Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski is one of those in foreign policy circles who has been continuously critical of the Bush administration. He developed further criticisms of Bush’s State of the Union speech of January 10. Writing in the Washington Post of January 12, he concluded: “The speech reflects a profound misunderstanding of our era. America is acting like a colonial power in Iraq. But the age of colonialism is over. Waging a colonial war in the post-colonial age is self-defeating. That is the fatal flaw of Bush’s policy.”

Brzezinski is correct. Notwithstanding all the trials and tribulations and setbacks of the past 100 years—all the vicissitudes of the class struggle—the world in 2007 is a vastly different place than in 1907. It is characterised, as Brzezinski himself has noted on other occasions, by the intervention of the masses on a world scale.

But this only raises the question: why has the United States, which throughout its whole history has cast itself as an anti-colonial power, now undertaken the colonisation of Iraq?

Let us try to answer this question through a consideration of the origins and history of colonialism itself, especially the burst of colonisation that took place at the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth.

In the 1840s, the future British prime minister Disraeli referred to the colonies as “millstones around our neck”. This was the high point of British free trade. Britain had no need of a colonial empire because it had established a commercial empire based on free trade. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, the situation had changed dramatically. Britain was now challenged by new powers—on the continent of Europe by Germany, as well as Italy and France, and in the West by the United States.

The basis of colonialism was exclusivism. Whichever great power took control of a colony was able to exclude all the others from its markets. This fear of exclusion, in turn, provoked a rush for colonies.

In the twentieth century, the United States entered the world arena under the banner of the “open door”—the breaking down of old empires and restrictions; the establishment of the free movement of goods and money. This policy reflected the economic superiority of the US over its rivals, just as the free trade agenda of Britain in the nineteenth century was an expression of the superiority of British industry.

Now, the US is confronted by economic rivals in every corner of the globe, as a series of recent reports confirm.

In February 2001, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) produced a report entitled “The Geopolitics of Energy in the 21st century”. It was the product of a bipartisan committee that included former Senator Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger.

The report noted that “the geopolitical risks attendant to energy availability are not likely to abate” and that, under these circumstances, “the United States, as the world’s only superpower, must accept its special responsibilities for preserving access to worldwide energy supply.”

The CSIS report concluded that world energy demand would increase by over 50 percent during the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

“The Persian Gulf will remain the key marginal supplier of oil to the world market, with Saudi Arabia in the unchallenged lead. Indeed, if estimates of future demand are reasonably correct, the Persian Gulf must expand oil production by almost 80 percent during 2000-2020, achievable perhaps if foreign investment is allowed to participate and if Iran and Iraq are free of sanctions.”

The report underlined the contradiction between this demand and Washington’s policies.

“Oil and gas exports from Iran, Iraq, and Libya—three nations that have had sanctions imposed by the United States or international organizations—are expected to play an increasingly important role in meeting growing global demand, especially to avoid increasing competition for energy with and within Asia. Where the United States imposes unilateral sanctions (Iran and Libya), investments will take place without US participation. Iraq, subjected to multilateral sanctions, may be constrained from building in a timely way the infrastructure necessary to meet the upward curve in energy demand. If global oil demand estimated for 2020 is reasonably correct and is to be satisfied, these three exporters should by then be producing at their full potential if other supplies have not been developed.”

In other words, ending the embargo imposed on Iraq was critical if the energy demands of US capitalism were to be met and if the US was to remain in control of global supplies. But there was a problem here. Simply to lift the embargo would benefit US rivals.

This issue, as we now know, was under active discussion in Cheney’s office from the spring of 2001. Among the documents being studied was a two-page chart entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfields”. It identified 63 oil companies from 30 countries and specified which Iraqi field each of them was interested in. Baghdad had “agreed in principle” with the plan by French company Total Elf Aquitaine to develop the rich 25-billion-barrel Majnoon oil field. Prior to the US invasion in March 2003, foreign oil companies were nicely positioned for future investment in Iraq, while the major US companies were largely out of the picture. US firms would have been the big losers if sanctions had simply been lifted. As a report by Germany’s Deutsche Bank noted in October 2002: “The US majors stand to lose if Saddam makes a deal with the UN (on lifting sanctions).”

The US faced a dilemma. Lifting the sanctions would hand over the rebuilding project to Moscow and Paris. The only way to cut the Gordion knot was to implement “regime change” in Iraq and the setting up of a colonial regime, based on the exclusion of US rivals./ Energy supplies and US foreign policy

During the past five years, the position of the US has only worsened, as a study prepared by the Council on Foreign Relations and published in 2006 makes clear. In its report, the CFR panel, also co-chaired by Schlesinger, sets out the problem as follows: “The lack of sustained attention to energy issues is undercutting US foreign policy and US national security. Major energy suppliers—from Russia to Iran to Venezuela—have been increasingly able and willing to use their energy resources to pursue their strategic and political objectives.”

The report insisted that the US had not only to coordinate energy issues, but to integrate them into its foreign policy.

One of the problems the CFR panel identified was the role of China in oil rich countries and its attempts to “lock up” particular supplies for the Chinese market. In addition, some governments “use revenues from hydrocarbon sales for political purposes that harm US interests. Because of these realities, an active public policy is needed to correct these market failures that harm US economic and national security. The market will not automatically deliver the best outcome.”

The report said the high price of oil and its impact on the US economy, as well as the impact of the build-up of petro dollar surpluses on US capital markets, were not the only causes for concern.

“Our concern is not primarily with the economic consequences of this adjustment process but rather with the reduced freedom of action and influence for the United States in the conduct of its foreign affairs. In addition to constraining US action, the revenues and dependencies in the world oil market empower oil-rich countries—such as Iran and Venezuela—to carry out foreign policies that are hostile to that of the United States.”

Oil, the report said, was not going to run out in the immediate future but “supply is expected to continue to concentrate in the Persian Gulf, which holds the world’s largest geologically attractive reserves, and is a region that has been unstable and includes countries that have periodically used their oil exports for political purposes unfriendly to the United States.”

The report sums up the problems confronting the US as follows,

“ ... the control of enormous oil revenues gives exporting countries the flexibility to adopt policies that oppose US interests and values. Iran proceeds with a program that appears to be headed towards acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. Russia is able to ignore Western attitudes as it has moved to authoritarian policies in part because huge revenues from oil and gas exports are able to finance that style of government. Venezuela has the resources from its oil exports to invite realignment in Latin American political relationships and to fund changes such as Argentina’s exit from its International Monetary Fund (IMF) standby agreement and Bolivia’s recent decision to nationalize oil and gas resources. Because of their oil wealth, these and other producer countries are free to ignore US policies and pursue interests inimical to our national security.”

Furthermore, oil dependence caused political realignments that impinged on the ability of the US to form partnerships with others to achieve common objectives.

“Perhaps the most pervasive effect arises as countries dependent on imports subtly modify their policies to be more congenial to suppliers. For example, China is aligning its relationships in the Middle East (e.g., Iran and Saudi Arabia) and Africa (e.g., Nigeria and Sudan) because of its desire to secure oil supplies. France and Germany, and with them much of the European Union, are more reluctant to confront difficult issues with Russia and Iran because of their dependence on imported oil and gas as well as the desire to pursue business opportunities in those countries.

“These new realignments have further diminished US leverage, particularly in the Middle East and Central Asia. For example, Chinese interest in securing oil and gas supplies challenges US influence in central Asia, notably in Kazakhstan. And Russia’s influence is likely to grow as it exports oil and (within perhaps a decade) large amounts of natural gas to Japan and China.”

What a picture this adds up to: everywhere in the world—Latin America, Central Asia, the Far East, Europe, the Middle East—the influence of the US, either directly or indirectly, is on the decline and is being jeopardised either by the oil producers or by rising powers such as China.

And even this stark picture was not drawn sharply enough for two of the participants in the team of experts that prepared the report. They presented an additional view, declaring that while they subscribed to the report’s analysis and recommendations they found that it “understates the gravity of the threat that energy dependence poses to US national security.”

“Energy is a central challenge to US foreign policy, not simply one of many challenges. Global dependence on oil is rapidly eroding US power and influence because oil is a strategic commodity largely controlled by regressive governments and a cartel that raises prices and multiplies the rents that flow to oil producers. These rents have enriched and emboldened Iran, enabled President Vladimir Putin to undermine Russia’s democracy, entrenched regressive autocrats in Africa, forestalled action against genocide in Sudan, and facilitated Venezuela’s campaign against free trade in the Americas.”

Here we have presented a graphic account of the decline in the global position of the United States, under conditions where it confronts rivals and potential enemies on all fronts—in the sphere of economy, of politics and even militarily.

In order to retain its global dominance, the US is turning to military measures. But the use of such measures is increasingly incompatible with the forms of bourgeois democracy that prevailed in the past.

In the 1930s, Trotsky made the point that the maintenance of democratic forms in the US and Britain, as opposed to the emergence of right-wing authoritarian and fascist regimes in Germany, Italy and across Europe, had nothing to do with the democratic proclivities of the American and British ruling classes. In England, democracy rested on the resources amassed by the ruling elite from its plunder of the empire, while in America it rested on the resources derived from the exploitation of a whole continent.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the situation is very different. The institutions of bourgeois democracy are now being stretched to the limit.

To be continued

    AFP January 30, 1979: Saddam flanked by Cuba's President Fidel Castro and Defence Minister Raul Castro in Havana, during a visit

IRAQ

His rise and fall

JOHN CHERIAN

Saddam Hussein, despite his many drawbacks, will go down in history as one of the few Arab leaders who stood up to the West.

SADDAM HUSSEIN was born to a peasant family on April 28, 1937, near Tikrit, a town in central Iraq. Brought up by a stepfather in very modest circumstances, the young Saddam managed to get a belated school education. Like many other young men, he headed for the capital Baghdad for better opportunities and soon found himself embroiled in the volatile politics of the country. He joined the Arab Baath Socialist Party in 1956. The party, inspired by Arab nationalism, was finding its roots in the region. The tallest Arab leader at the time was Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser was an army officer who had overthrown a corrupt monarchy. After Nasser emerged triumphant in the Suez crisis of 1956, he was the hero of the entire Arab world. Young men like Saddam Hussein wanted to emulate him.

 However, in Iraq, the dominant political party that carried out the anti-imperialist and anti-monarchical struggle was the Iraqi Communist Party. The party had played an important role in the overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq and the installation of a military man, General Abdul Karim Qassim, as Prime Minister. Qassim's close links with the Communists was not appreciated in several quarters. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was actively trying to subvert the Iraqi government at the time, sometimes with the tacit support of the Egyptian government. Nasser, too, treated the Egyptian Communists very harshly. Some biographies suggest that Saddam was in the pay of the CIA while he was in exile in Cairo in the early 1960s. The young Saddam, while still in secondary school, was involved in an abortive assassination attempt against Qassim in 1959. He escaped with a bullet in his leg and later made his way to Cairo. He was sentenced to death in absentia for his role in the assassination attempt.

 Saddam continued his education in Cairo and enrolled in the College of Law there in 1962-63. But the overthrow of Qassim by a CIA-backed coup in 1963 saw Saddam back in Baghdad. The CIA had provided a list of prominent Communist Party functionaries to the Baath leadership. Many of them were arrested and killed.

 The Iraqi Communist Party was the dominant force in the country until the mid-1960s, but its failure to move expeditiously to fill the political void left the field open for the Baath Party to exploit. The Communists had calculated that the region was not yet ready for a government in which they would dominate. Saddam Hussein had assumed a leadership position in the Baath Party by the end of 1963.

 He was again arrested in October, 1964, and charged with waging an underground struggle against the government in Baghdad. While still in custody, Saddam was elected deputy secretary-general of the Baath Party in September 1966. He escaped from prison the next year and played an important role in the coup of July 17, 1968. He led the Baath fighters who overran the presidential palace. Saddam was formally appointed Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, but it was evident from the early 1970s that it was Saddam who called the shots in the government though Ahmed Bakr, another Tikriti, was the President.

 After the Baath Party consolidated power, there was another purge of the Communists in the country. Many socialist countries and Communist Parties worldwide broke off their links with the Baath Party. It was only after the Iraqi government nationalised the Western oil companies in Iraq and took other progressive steps, including improving relations with local Communists, that fraternal ties were re-established between socialist countries and the Baath government. The nationalisation of the oil sector was a courageous decision in that period of history. In neighbouring Iran, a progressive government was overthrown in the mid-1950s with American help, for attempting to do the same.

 TIES WITH SOVIET UNION

 After the oil nationalisation, Iraq established close relations with the Soviet Union. In 1972, the two countries signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation. The first foreign trip Saddam undertook after entering government was to Moscow. Saddam was an unabashed admirer of Josef Stalin, the Soviet leader. Many of Saddam's biographers claim that Saddam actually modelled himself on Stalin. Saddam, according to them, had two important qualities. He used to work 18 hours every day and was a highly organised and methodical man.

 The Iraqi government used the revenues generated by the sale of oil wisely. Most of the money was funnelled into the social and health sectors. The secular Baath government spread literacy at a record rate. Women were significant beneficiaries of the government's welfare programmes. Saddam was given the highest UNESCO award for his role in promoting literacy in Iraq. He led the "National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy and the Implementation of Compulsory Free Education in Iraq". Saddam also instituted comprehensive land reforms. Land reforms and combating illiteracy will be a lasting legacy of Saddam.

 By the mid-1970s, the Iraqi army had become a strong fighting force. Saddam wanted Iraq to be the premier Arab nation. With this in view, he ordered his scientists to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Israel is well armed with all three. The Israeli air force tried to nip Saddam's nuclear weapons programme in the bud with the raid on the Osirak reactor in 1988. According to experts, Iraq had to give up its programme after the United Nations ordered the government to cease all activities on weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) after the disastrous Gulf War./ In the 1970s and the early 1980s, Iraq was on a roll. Arms dealers from all over the world congregated in Baghdad. The economy was booming, given the rise in oil prices. Iraq's geopolitical role became even more crucial after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. The West successfully stoked Saddam's ambition to become the regional strongman in the mould of Nasser. The Iraqi government also felt threatened by continuous exhortations of the new Islamic government in Iran to Iraqi Shias to rise up and overthrow the godless government in Baghdad.

 WAR AGAINST IRAN

 Whatever be the real reasons, Saddam bit the bait offered by the West and launched his war against Iran. Initially, he had the full backing of most of the Sunni-dominated Arab governments and the West. In the first couple of years of the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war, the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom all liberally supplied Baghdad with the most sophisticated weapons. With Kuwait and Saudi Arabia bankrolling Iraq in its war effort, the West was handsomely compensated for its weapons supplies. The picture of Donald Rumsfeld, who went on to become U.S. Defence Secretary, paying his respects to Saddam Hussein on a visit to Baghdad is an illustration of the close relationship Washington had nurtured with the government under Saddam Hussein.

 But Saddam underestimated the resilience of the Islamic government in Iran. After the early military reverses, the Iranian army and the Islamic Guards struck back with a vengeance. In the war of attrition that followed, chemical weapons were used by both sides. The Iranians call it the "imposed war" that caused them untold misery. When it became evident that the war was unwinnable for Iraq, the West and its Arab allies distanced themselves from Saddam. The Kuwaitis and the Saudis stopped underwriting the cost of the war. When Iraqis were dying on the battlefield, Kuwaiti oil companies were "side-drilling" to steal oil from Iraqi fields.

 The West started highlighting alleged cases of human rights violations and genocide in Iraq, when it was still at war. The Kurds in the north were threatening to secede, and when the Iraqi government used extreme force, including chemical weapons in Hallabja, the demonisation of Saddam Hussein in the Western media started in right earnest.

 After the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, the government in Baghdad found itself deep in debt and isolated in the region. Kuwait's refusal to honour its commitments made at the beginning of the war angered Saddam no end. Iraq's claim over Kuwait has been a long-standing one. As the dispute between the two countries raged, Saddam once again made a major miscalculation. He thought that he had received the tacit approval of the U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad for an invasion of Kuwait.

 The U.S. Ambassador, April Glaspie, had told Saddam that her country would not interfere in a dispute between the two countries.

 The invasion of Kuwait, in 1990, was an unmitigated military disaster, as the U.S. cobbled up a military alliance of 31 countries to pummel Iraq into submission. Iraq was even more isolated as a U.N.-mandated economic embargo was imposed on the country. The blockade lasted until the American invasion of 2003. More than a million Iraqis, mostly children and the aged, died as a result of it. The West had prohibited the import of basic medical and food supplies for more than a decade. There was a ban on the import of even ambulances and injection needles.

 To the credit of Saddam, he not only survived the military defeat and the embargo but managed to improve marginally the standard of living of Iraqis by early 2000. He used the loopholes in the U.N.'s "Oil for Food" programme to the benefit of the Iraqi people. He may have used unorthodox methods to break the economic blockade, but by early 2000 there were signs of budding prosperity in Baghdad. An efficient rationing system saw to it that no Iraqi was denied basic necessities.

 What Iraqis miss most of all is the law and order that prevailed during Saddam's time. This correspondent, during his visits to Baghdad then, could walk safely on the streets until mid-night. Sectarian strife was non-existent.

 Though the Baath Party was dominated by Sunnis, the Shia community was also well represented in the government. A senior Baath official told this correspondent in Baghdad before the American invasion that sectarian issues were irrelevant. "When we sit down for a party meeting, I do not know whether the person next to me is a Sunni, a Shia or a Christian," said the official, who is now in exile.

 All the same, many Shias did have a grouse against Saddam. It mainly stemmed from the happenings in the south in the wake of the first Gulf War. Encouraged by the West, the Shias in the south had risen in revolt following the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait. The West, however, let the Shias down, by allowing the Iraqi army a free hand. Hundreds of Shias were killed in the military action that followed. This correspondent saw bullet marks inside the holy shrine of Karbala. When Saddam was in power, he never allowed clerics to play an important role in the politics of the country. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was living in exile in Najaf, was asked to leave in the mid-1970s. The father of the firebrand Shia cleric, Moqtada Sadr, was allegedly killed on Saddam's orders in 1998. Sadr City, a thickly populated suburb of Baghdad, was one of the few places where celebratory gunfire was heard after the hanging of Saddam./ When the definitive history of West Asia is written, Saddam, despite his many drawbacks, will go down as one of the few Arab leaders who stood up to the West. Before his death sentence was carried out, he exhorted the Iraqi people to maintain unity and confront the occupation forces.

IRAQ

Victor's justice

JOHN CHERIAN

Saddam Hussein's execution just five days after the appeals court upholds the lower court verdict comes in defiance of world opinion.

 THE execution of Saddam Hussein, just five days after the decision of Iraq's highest appeals court on December 26 to uphold the death sentence passed by a lower court, did not come as a big surprise. Senior Iraqi government officials had predicted that he would be executed before the new year dawned. The execution at dawn on December 30 came after the Vatican and the United Nations appealed for clemency for the Iraqi leader. There were also requests from the governments of Yemen and Libya to spare Saddam's life. But all the pleas were in vain.

 Iraqis present at the execution said that Saddam was defiant until the end, shouting patriotic slogans and carrying a Koran in his right hand. He did not allow the authorities to put a cape on his head before they tightened the noose around his neck.

 There were enough indications from Washington and London that "victor's justice" would be carried out expeditiously. President George W. Bush, in a statement, has described the hanging as a "milestone in the politics of Iraq". The appeals court ruled that the sentence of death by hanging should be carried out within 30 days but the American-installed Iraqi government preferred to carry it out two days before the holy feast of Id. The feast symbolises the sacrifice of Prophet Ibrahim to Allah. Some Iraqi politicians and preachers who opposed Saddam have started characterising the hanging of Saddam as a gift from God. Such symbolism is bound to alienate further a significant section of the Iraqi populace.

 Saddam on his part never had any illusions about the fate that awaited him. Before the sentencing by the lower court, he demanded that as President and commander-in-chief of the Iraqi Army he should be executed by a firing squad. There was no legal transfer of power from the Baath government to the American-installed government in Iraq after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. In a letter written after the initial sentencing by the lower court, which was released by his defence counsel Khalil al Dulaimi, Saddam said that he was going to the gallows as a "sacrifice" and expressed the hope that the Iraqi people would unite against their enemies. In what could be his last written communication, Saddam ended the letter by stating: "Long live Iraq, Long live Iraq. Long live Palestine and the mujahideen. God is great."

 Dulaimi said that from the outset Saddam was convinced that he would be given the death sentence. Early last year, Dulaimi told the media: "He [Saddam] knows that the sentence has been issued from Washington, and if there is an even greater punishment than the death sentence, he will get it." In one exchange with the presiding judge in the lower court, Saddam said that the real fight was about Iraqi sovereignty and not about his fate. "When I speak, I speak like your brother. Your brother in Iraq and your brother in the nation. I am not afraid of execution. I realise that there is pressure on you and I regret that I have to confront one of my sons. But I am not doing it for myself. I'm doing it for Iraq. I'm not defending myself. But I am defending you," the former President said.

 The death sentence was given for Saddam's alleged role in the killing of 148 members of the Shia population in 1982 in the southern Iraqi town of Dujail, following an assassination attempt on Saddam in the town. It was a time when Iraq was at war with Iran. An Iraqi commentator, reacting to Saddam's hanging, told the Western media that more than 150 people were dying on an average every day under American occupation and that the charges against Saddam were flimsy.

 Saddam was also on trial facing charges of genocide connected with the campaign against the separatist Kurds during the last phase of the Iran-Iraq war in 1987-88. The American authorities saw to it that the Iraqi leader was never tried on more serious charges, especially those relating to the origins of the eight-year-old Iran-Iraq war, which cost the lives of more than a million people. The reasons are obvious. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, Washington was in cahoots with Baghdad. The common enemy of both the governments at the time was the Islamic Revolution, which had captured power in Iran.

 The international community and human rights groups reacted adversely to the sentence of hanging. They are even more livid at the haste with which the sentence has been carried out. Only the White House and some Shia parties in Iraq have welcomed the execution. The international community is almost unanimously of the view that the sentencing of Saddam is a blatant illustration of `victor's justice'. Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch said that imposing the death penalty "was especially wrong after such unfair court proceedings". The spokeswoman for Amnesty International said that her organisation was against the death penalty as a matter of principle "but particularly in this case because it comes after a flawed trial".

 Under Articles 64 and 67 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the trial had no legal standing. Sara Flounders of the New York-based International Action Centre said that since the days of the Roman Empire, "victor's justice has meant humiliation, degradation and placing the defeated leader in the dock in order to establish a new order. It hides the brutality of overwhelming force and gives legitimacy to the new rulers". The court that tried Saddam was funded by the U.S. to the tune of $75 million.

 Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had cautioned the Iraqi authorities against carrying out the death sentence. He had warned that the sectarian rifts would widen further. The minority Sunnis still consider Saddam their leader. Most of the insurgency in Iraq is conducted by the Baathists. Before the invasion, Saddam had formulated plans for a guerilla war.

 Events on the ground have shown that without the concurrence of Sunnis, peace will remain elusive in Iraq. The Baath Party, in a statement posted on the web, said that it would retaliate against American interests everywhere if the sentence on Saddam was carried out. "The American administration will be held responsible for any harm inflicted on the President, because the United States is the decision maker in Iraq and not the puppet Iraqi government," the statement warned.

 In India, a Ministry of External Affairs spokesman expressed the hope that "no steps are taken which might obstruct the process of reconciliation and delay the restoration of peace in Iraq". External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that "such life-and-death decisions require the credible due process of law, which does not appear to be victor's justice and is acceptable to the people of Iraq as well as the international community". The Communist Party of India (Marxist) condemned the verdict, stating that no fair trial was possible under American occupation; it described the hanging as a case of "judicial assassination".

 A few days before the execution, a report presented by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said that an all-out international effort was needed to prevent Iraq from becoming a "failed and fragmented state". It warned that if the Shia-Sunni conflict continued unchecked, the civil war could draw in forces from neighbouring countries. "Hollowed-out and fatally weakened, the Iraqi state today is prey to armed militias, sectarian forces and a political class that, by putting short-term benefits ahead of long-term national interests, is complicit in Iraq's tragic destruction," the ICG report noted. The ICG is of the view that the challenge in Iraq is not a military one. "It is a political challenge in which new consensual understandings need to be reached," it said. The execution will make this even more difficult.

 There are stories in the Western and Arab media about Saudi Arabia's decision to help Sunni compatriots in Iraq. In a raid by British forces on an Iraqi security post in late December, two Iranian advisers were captured. Sections of the Iraqi political establishment said they were in Basra at the government's invitation.

 Meanwhile, the Pentagon, in its latest quarterly report, has conceded that violence in Iraq has reached the highest level recorded so far. There was an average of 959 attacks by the Resistance every week in the last four months, an increase of 22 per cent. There are many people even in the U.S. who are of the opinion that the Pentagon may be erring on the side of caution in reporting the scale of violence. The Chairman of the Iraq Study Group, former Secretary of State James Baker, has said that there is "significant under-reporting of violence in Iraq" by the American occupation forces. As for the Iraqi government, its writ barely runs beyond the highly fortified "green zone" in Baghdad.

The Pakistani muscle behind Colombo
By Sudha Ramachandran Sep 22, 2006 Asia Times

BANGALORE - Even as fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rages in Sri Lanka, a war of words has broken out between India and Pakistan over issues related to the island's civil war. 

While Pakistan has accused Indian intelligence agencies of masterminding a blast that almost killed its envoy in Colombo last month, Indian analysts are drawing attention to Pakistan's role in aerial bombardment of Tamil areas in Sri Lanka. 

On August 14, a deadly claymore-mine blast in the heart of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo killed seven people. The blast was apparently aimed at Pakistan's outgoing high commissioner to Sri Lanka, Bashir Wali Mohammed. Although the high commissioner himself escaped unhurt, four Lankan commandos accompanying him were killed in the blast. 

After the attack, the Sri Lankan government issued a statement that the Pakistani envoy had been targeted by the LTTE because of the defense cooperation between Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Not surprisingly, the attack on the envoy brought the military cooperation between the two countries under greater scrutiny. 

Two weeks later, on his return to Pakistan, Bashir Wali Mohammed, a former director general of Pakistan's Intelligence Bureau, alleged that India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), was behind the August 14 blast. He accused RAW of "starting a proxy war in a third country [Sri Lanka] by carrying out this lethal attack". 

"The Indian High Commission in Colombo is quite disturbed with the fast-growing bilateral relations between Sri Lanka and Pakistan," he said. India dismissed Pakistan's allegation as "preposterous" and "absurd". 

An Indian Defense Ministry official told Asia Times Online that India did not have a problem with the Sri Lankan government purchasing weapons from anyone, including Pakistan. And this apparently has been made clear to the Sri Lankans. 

What is of concern to New Delhi, however, is that "as Sri Lanka's relationship with Pakistan deepens, the Lankan government is moving further and further away from pursuing a negotiated settlement of the conflict". Delhi's quarrel with the Lankan-Pakistani defense deals is that "it has encouraged Colombo to persist with the military option to tame the Tigers, rather than pursue a political settlement that meets the aspirations of the Tamil people while retaining the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka". 

Defense cooperation between Sri Lanka and Pakistan, which has existed for a long time, has grown dramatically in recent years. Pakistan is one of Colombo's largest suppliers of military equipment. Unlike India, Islamabad has had no problems supplying the government with lethal weaponry for use in its counter-insurgency operations in the Tamil areas. 

According to a report in Jane's Defense Weekly, Sri Lanka had given Pakistan a shopping list of weaponry worth about US$60 million. While the army's list was pegged at about $20 million, that of the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) was said to be worth about $38.1 million. A recent Stratfor report says Pakistan sold 22 Al-Khalid tanks to Sri Lanka in a deal worth some $110 million. 

What has set alarm bells ringing in Delhi now are reports that Pakistani air force personnel are deeply involved in directing Colombo's air strikes on Tamil areas. B Raman, a former director of RAW, has pointed out that "about 12-15 members of the Pakistani armed forces, including four or five from the Pakistan air force, are stationed in Colombo to guide the Sri Lankan security forces in their counter-insurgency operations. The Pakistan air force officers have reportedly been guiding the SLAF officers in effectively carrying out air-mounted operations against the LTTE. They have also been reportedly involved in drawing up plans for a decapitation strike from the air, with bunker-buster bombs, to kill [LTTE leader Velupillai] Prabakaran." 

The SLAF has repeatedly bombed Tamil areas in recent months. The government claims the air strikes are aimed at LTTE infrastructure. Indeed, the air strikes have been rather successful in undermining the Tigers. Their fledgling "air force", for instance, has been substantially weakened with the SLAF inflicting damage on its runways. 

But the SLAF has also indiscriminately bombed civilian populations in Tamil areas suspected of holding LTTE sympathizers. Scores of Tamil civilians, including children, have been killed in these operations. On August 14, SLAF planes hit an orphanage, killing 61 girls, in the LTTE-controlled Mullaithivu district in Northern Province. 

"Not only are the Pakistanis guiding the air operations, there are reports too that Pakistani pilots are flying SLAF jets," alleged the Indian official. The bombing of civilian targets could have been carried out by some of these pilots, he pointed out. 

Even at the start of the armed conflict in the 1980s, India had been wary of any move by the Sri Lankan government to inject foreign military personnel or allow the setting up of "listening posts" in any part of the island, especially the northeast, given its proximity to Indian shores. "Delhi had made this clear to the Lankans decades ago, and the Lankans have in the past been mindful of Indian sensitivities on the subject," said the Defense Ministry official. 

This respect for Indian sensitivities appears to have diminished considerably in recent years. Indian officials claim that Pakistani personnel have been involved in planning offensives against the LTTE since 2003. 

The LTTE believes that Pakistani involvement began much earlier. According to a June 1997 report on the pro-LTTE Tamilnet website, "The Tamil Tigers say they have independent confirmation that Pakistani officers are involved in planning the current Sri Lankan army offensive in the Vann." In a further statement, the LTTE said, "Pakistani officials converged at Sri Lanka's Anuradhapura army headquarters immediately prior to the launch of the military offensive." 

Indian officials say they are not surprised by the Pakistan-Sri Lanka defense cooperation. They admit that Sri Lanka is leaning more on Pakistan as India is unwilling to meet its needs with regard to lethal weaponry. At the same time, they point out that the Pakistan-Sri Lanka cooperation with regard to charting strategy is based on a meeting of minds. 

India has avoided aerial bombing of its insurgency-racked regions, even in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, where Pakistan is seen to have waged a proxy war against India. However, neither Sri Lanka nor Pakistan has had any compunctions about bombing their civilian populations, Sri Lanka of the Tamils and Pakistan of the Balochis. 

Sri Lanka launched air strikes on the Jaffna Peninsula as far back as 1986. That the Lankans and the Pakistanis would work together in militarily stamping out the insurgency in the island's north and east is therefore not surprising. The embrace has been mutually beneficial. It has provided Colombo with Pakistan's military muscle. And it has provided Pakistan an opportunity to sit at India's southern doorstep. 

This is a concern for India. For years India has watched Pakistan encourage anti-India activities on the soil of its other neighbors - Bangladesh and Nepal, for instance. Now this is happening in Sri Lanka - long regarded by India as its sphere of influence - as well. 

India is concerned that Pakistan's influence on Sri Lanka's counter-insurgency operations will grow. Islamabad's new envoy in Colombo is Air Vice Marshal Shehzad Aslam Chaudhry, who recently retired as the deputy chief of air staff (operations) of the Pakistani air force. He is believed to be the architect of the air strikes launched on Balochistan last year and is said to have drawn up the plans of the operation that resulted in the recent killing of Baloch leader Nawab Bugti. Colombo could draw on his expertise in aerial bombing of insurgency-racked areas. 

There seems to be little India can do at this juncture to prevent Pakistan from gaining more ground. It cannot endorse Colombo's current military adventures as it is committed to a negotiated political settlement of the conflict and internal political compulsions inhibit it from providing Sri Lanka with the kind of military equipment it wants. And it cannot back the LTTE, which is designated as a terrorist organization in India. 

But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh just might meet with members of the Sri Lankan parliament representing the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA). If such a meeting does take place, it will be the first between the Indian leadership and the TNA. 

Indian officials hasten to clarify that this meeting would only be to blunt accusations from Tamil parties in India, some of which are peeved with New Delhi for not meeting with the TNA, despite it being the largest Tamil party in Sri Lanka. Manmohan's meeting with the TNA might not change his government's perception of the LTTE, but it does represent a small shift in India's Sri Lanka policy. 

Beyond that, there is little India can do. It will wait out the current fighting between the Lankan government and the LTTE, hope that this will be short-lived, and then reassert itself in the political process in Sri Lanka. It could also help open Colombo's eyes to the mess Islamabad has made of things in Balochistan. 

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. 

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .) 

Afghanistan: Why NATO cannot win 
By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times

The four-month-old Republic of Montenegro on the Adriatic Sea received its first foreign dignitary on Monday when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld arrived at its capital, Podgorica. Unknowingly, the tiny country of rugged mountains and great beauty in the Balkans with a population of 630,000 was being catapulted into the cockpit of 21st-century geopolitics. 

Rumsfeld's mission was to request the inexperienced leadership in Podgorica to dispatch a military contingent to form part of thecoalition of the willing in the "war on terror". Rumsfeld promised that in return, the US would help train Montenegro's fledgling army to standards of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). 

However, Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic could not make any commitments. Rumsfeld's proposal came at an awkward moment for the leadership in Podgorica, which had just scrapped the draft and was scaling down its 4,000-strong army to about 2,500. 

This bizarre diplomatic exchange between the most awesome military power on Earth and the newest member of the "international community" brings home the paradoxes of the "war on terror" on the eve of its fifth anniversary. Three ministerial-level meetings of NATO have taken place within the space of the past month alone, specifically with the intent of ascertaining how troop strength in Afghanistan can be augmented. 

US Marine Corps General James Jones, NATO's supreme commander of operations, has admitted that the fierce resistance put up by the Taliban and the burgeoning insurgency has taken the alliance by surprise. NATO forces have realized that an all-out war is at hand, rather than the peacekeeping mission that was imagined earlier. New rules of engagement have been accordingly drawn up for NATO contingents deployed in the southern provinces of Afghanistan - and soon to be extended to the whole country, where US soldiers are reportedly to be put under NATO control. 

British commanders in southern Afghanistan have been given clearance to use the army's controversial Hydra rockets, which can target large concentrations of people with tungsten darts. The commanders are also permitted to resort to air strikes on suspected Taliban formations, conduct preemptive strikes and set up ambushes. Yet a British commander has been reported as telling the media, "The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis." 

The fatality rate of the 18,500-strong NATO force averages about five per week, which is roughly equal to the losses suffered by the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Indeed, in withering comments to The Sunday Telegraph newspaper last weekend, Soviet commanders who oversaw Moscow's disastrous campaign have predicted that the NATO forces will ultimately be forced to flee from Afghanistan. 

General Boris Gromov, the charismatic Soviet commander who supervised the withdrawal in 1989, warned, "The Afghan resistance is, in my opinion, growing. Such behavior on the part of the intractable Afghans is to my mind understandable. It is conditioned by centuries of tradition, geography, climate and religion. 

"We saw over a period of many years how the country was torn apart by civil war ... But in the face of outside aggressions, Afghans have always put aside their differences and united. Evidently, the [US-led] coalition forces are also being seen as a threat to the nation." 

A comparison with the 1980s is in order. The 100,000-strong Soviet army operated alongside a full-fledged Afghan army of equal strength with an officer corps trained in the elite Soviet military academies, and backed by aviation, armored vehicles and artillery, with all the advantages of a functioning, politically motivated government in Kabul. And yet it proved no match for the Afghan resistance. 

In comparison, there are about 20,000 US troops in Afghanistan, plus roughly the same number of troops belonging to NATO contingents, which includes 5,400 troops from Britain, 2,500 from Canada and 2,300 from the Netherlands. Nominally, there is a 42,000-strong Afghan National Army, but it suffers from a high rate of defection. 

General Jones has asked for 2,500 additional NATO troops. But the major NATO countries - Turkey, France, Germany, Spain and Italy - have declined to send more. In actuality, it is questionable whether 2,500 more troops would make any significant difference in a country of the size of Afghanistan and with such a difficult terrain. 

Distinguished British soldier-politician Sir Cyril Townsend wrote in Al-Hayat newspaper this week, "A realistic military appreciation of the situation would be that to gain the upper hand against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and to start winning over the southeast of the country, will require deployment of at least 10,000 extra, highly trained professional and well-equipped troops with matching air support." 

Clearly, a huge crisis is shaping up for NATO. Its credibility is at stake. Sir Cyril does not foresee that the alliance will come up with the required military resources "to beat the Taliban on its own ground". No wonder Lieutenant-General David Richards, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan and former assistant chief of the general staff of the British army, ominously warned in a recent television interview, "We need to realize we could actually fail here." 

Most observers have pointed a finger at the developing crisis in Afghanistan almost exclusively in terms of the shortfalls in achieving a rapid, high-tech military victory over the Taliban. In the ensuing blame game, there is the recurrent criticism that Washington did not commit enough forces. 

Some say that the Iraq war turned out to be an unfortunate distraction for the US administration from wrapping up and following up on the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001. Others put the blame on the European member countries of NATO - that the Europeans are far too timid and self-centered to fight wars in faraway lands, even if it is for their ultimate good. 

Widening somewhat the gyre of the blame game, almost everyone acknowledges that opium is eating away the vitals of the Afghan state as counter-drug operations have been a dismal failure. 

And, of course, there is the perennial accusation that US regional policy during the administration of George W Bush has been on the whole negligent about "nation-building" and that Washington has been tardy in earmarking enough material and financial resources for Afghanistan's reconstruction (in comparison with East Timor or Bosnia-Herzegovina). 

All such criticism may contain elements of truth. But germane to the crisis in a fundamental sense is the hard reality that no matter the oft-repeated factor of a reasonably secure cross-border sanctuary in Pakistan, the Taliban have indeed staged a comeback in essence as an indigenous guerilla force capable of waging a long-term struggle. That is to say, the central issue is that the US has simply failed to come up with a winning political and military strategy in Afghanistan. 

Comparison has been drawn with the successful peacekeeping operations in the Balkans. General Wesley Clark, former supreme commander of NATO, wrote in Newsweek magazine recently, "In order to succeed, we must adopt some of the lessons and practices we put in place so painfully in the Balkans. We must acknowledge the magnitude of the task and pull in the full authority of the international community. NATO can do much more than just supply troops. We need to acknowledge that, yes, we do nation-building." 

But again, the Afghan problem is vastly dissimilar from the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. First and foremost, there is the highly contrived nature of the US intervention in Afghanistan. In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, in an international environment where "we are all Americans", as Le Monde famously wrote, no one asked any hard questions as to whether Washington's decision to attack Afghanistan was justified or not. The international community simply acquiesced. 

But the fact remains that Washington, indeed, had the option to forgo direct intervention and instead to extend its decisive political, diplomatic and military support to the anti-Taliban Afghan groups that, under the compulsions arising out of the assassination of the Northern Alliance's Ahmad Shah Masoud, were finally rallying under the leadership of former king Zahir Shah and were just about ready by late September 2001 to announce the establishment of an Afghan government-in-exile. 

The Afghan king himself was persuaded at long last to give up his reticence about returning to active politics after three decades of exile in Rome. That option, had it been pursued, would have opened the way for a quintessentially "Afghan solution" to the challenge posed by the Taliban regime - a solution that would have enjoyed the full sanctity of Afghan traditions and culture. 

But the Bush administration deliberately chose not to take that option. Conceivably, Washington decided that only a spectacular military operation would assuage the US public, which was traumatized by the September 11 attacks, and highlight the decisive leadership in the White House in safeguarding national security. 

Arguably, Afghanistan would also have been viewed by the Bush administration as a laboratory where Washington could test its doctrines of preemptive military strike, the "coalition of the willing", unilateralism, etc - doctrines that provided the political underpinning for the subsequent invasion of Iraq. Or, in the medium and long term, Washington estimated that short of a military presence inside Afghanistan and without a client regime installed in Kabul, the US would be unable to ease other regional powers from the Afghan chessboard and reorder the geopolitics of the region as part of its global strategy. 

At any rate, the stratagem aimed at exploiting the Afghan problem to seize geopolitical advantages was not so apparent at the beginning. But it didn't take long before it became clear that the US agenda was to exploit the "war on terror" for establishing a client state in Afghanistan, and for gaining a sought-after military presence in Central Asia. And in the event, the US military presence incrementally paved the way for creating a base for NATO in the region. 

There was a high degree of sophistry in the US military operations in October 2001 as well. In the initial stages, an impression was created deliberately that the US intervention would be confined to air operations and the induction of a limited number of special forces specifically for the purpose of advising and guiding the Northern Alliance militia. 

Thus the Northern Alliance furiously protested when it first came to be know of the sudden arrival of US ground troops at Bagram airport in early November 2001, in the wake of the overthrow of the Taliban government. 

Washington also gave different impressions to different interlocutors in the region regarding the nature of the post-Taliban regime it had in mind. Certainly, the mostly non-Pashtun Northern Alliance leadership was led to believe that the overthrow of the Taliban would automatically result in its return to the seat of power in Kabul from where it was evicted by the Taliban in 1996. 

Conceivably, regional powers such as Russia, Iran and India, too, were persuaded to fancy that such an outcome was in the cards and that the transfer of power in Kabul to the Northern Alliance leadership would ultimately work to their advantage, given their past material, financial, political and diplomatic backing of the alliance as the spearhead of the anti-Taliban resistance during the period 1996-2001. 

On the other hand, Islamabad was given assurances by Washington that a Pashtun-majority government in Kabul was in the making and that incrementally there would be a political accommodation of erstwhile Taliban elements in the emergent power structure. Islamabad no doubt sought and gained an assurance from Washington that under no circumstances would the Northern Alliance be allowed to grab power in Kabul in the post-Taliban phase. 

All this while, Washington seemed to have had Abdul Haq, the famous mujahideen leader with long-standing links with US intelligence, as its first choice to assume the leadership in Kabul after the overthrow of the Taliban. 

But in the event, Haq was assassinated by the Taliban, most likely with the connivance of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, which got wind of Washington's hidden agenda and feared that Haq wouldn't be amenable to Islamabad's persuasions once he was ensconced in power in Kabul. 

Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance outwitted its US mentors. Contrary to the tacit understanding between alliance commanders and their American mentors to the effect that after the Taliban's ouster Kabul would initially remain a neutral city under United Nations control, the alliance militia occupied the capital and its leadership unilaterally installed itself in power. These leaders hoped (optimistically, as it turned out) that the US would have little choice but to accept the fait accompli. 

Thus when the Bonn conference got under way in December 2001, Washington had a two-point agenda, namely to project a credible substitute for the late Haq as the leader of the new setup and, second, to do some arm-twisting to cajole the Northern Alliance to give up its leadership role in Kabul. 

Nonetheless, when the US brought up Hamid Karzai's name in Bonn, there was widespread opposition by Afghan groups. In the perceptions of the Afghan participants at the Bonn conference, Karzai simply didn't have enough standing as a political leader in the Afghan scene, having sat in exile in the US for the past several years, and being at a serious disadvantage insofar as he did not belong to a major Pashtun tribe. 

But the United States pressed ahead regardless with Karzai's name, given his closeness to the US establishment and his total dependence on US support. The US brought immense pressure to bear on Afghan groups present at Bonn to accept Karzai's leadership. It was with extreme reluctance that the Northern Alliance leader, president Burhanuddin Rabbani, finally handed over the levers of power to Karzai. 

While abdicating from power in Kabul in early 2002, Rabbani said he hoped that it was the last time the proud Afghan people would be bullied by foreigners. Anyone familiar with Afghan ethos and character could foresee at that juncture that Karzai would find it next to impossible to consolidate his grip on power, let alone establish his authority over the entire country. Indeed, that is exactly what has happened over the past five years. 

The repeated and brazen manipulations by the US during the past five years, especially during the parliamentary and presidential elections in Afghanistan held under election rules that were tailor-made for predictable results, failed to ensure that Karzai commanded respect in the Afghan bazaar. 

US attempts to consolidate a Pashtun power base for Karzai have virtually failed. Equally, the episodic attempts to create dissension within the Taliban have also not worked. In turn, these failures led to large-scale Pashtun alienation. US efforts to marginalize the Northern Alliance and to enlarge the ethnic-Pashtun representation in Karzai's cabinet have not had the desired effect of meaningfully tackling Pashtun alienation, either. Arguably, they may have created latent resentment among Northern Alliance leaders, which lies below the surface for the time being. 

In other words, there is a fundamental issue of the legitimacy of state power that remains unresolved in Afghanistan. At a minimum, in these past five years there should have been an intra-Afghan dialogue that included the Taliban. This initiative could have been under UN auspices on a parallel track. 

The inability to earn respect and command authority plus the heavy visible dependence on day-to-day US support have rendered the Kabul setup ineffective. Alongside this, the Afghan malaise of nepotism, tribal affiliations and corruption has also led to bad governance. It is in this combination of circumstances that the Taliban have succeeded in staging a comeback. 

What lies ahead is, therefore, becoming extremely difficult to predict. Even with 2,500 additional troops it is highly doubtful whether NATO can succeed in defeating the Taliban. For one thing, the Taliban enjoy grassroots support within Afghanistan. There is no denying this ground reality. 

Second, the Taliban are becoming synonymous with Afghan resistance. The mindless violations of the Afghan code of honor by the coalition forces during their search-and-destroy missions and the excessive use of force during military operations leading to loss of innocent lives have provoked widespread revulsion among Afghan people. 

Karzai's inability to do anything about the coalition forces' arbitrary behavior is only adding to his image of a weak leader and is deepening his overall loss of authority in the perceptions of the Afghan people, apart from strengthening the raison d'etre of the Afghan resistance. 

Third, it is a matter of time, if the threshold of the Taliban resurgence goes unchecked, before the non-Pashtun groups in the eastern, northern and western regions also begin to organize themselves. There are disturbing signs pointing in this direction already. If that were to happen, NATO forces might well find themselves in the unenviable situation of getting caught in the crossfire between various warring ethnic groups. 

Fourth, at a certain point it becomes unavoidable that regional powers will get drawn into the strife. The fact remains that all Afghan ethnic groups enjoy a contiguous presence across the borders in neighboring countries. There is considerable misgiving among regional powers already over Washington's hidden long-term agenda to bring Afghanistan, which has been historically a neutral country, under the NATO flag. 

No amount of pious homilies about NATO's role and objectives can obfuscate the geopolitical implications of the Western alliance's occupation of a strategically important country far away from the European continent, which lies at the crossroads of vast regions that are becoming the battleground for global influence. 

Without doubt, in the perceptions of regional powers, NATO's defeat in Afghanistan can only mean the scattering of the US blueprint of domination of Central Asia, South Asia and the Persian Gulf. 

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, stated in testimony at the House International Relations Committee of the US Congress in Washington last week: "Foreign pressures are making Afghanistan the turf for proxy wars. The country is being destabilized by an inflow of insurgents and weapons and money and intelligence. There is collusion from neighboring countries, and this is a problem in itself." 

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001). 

India tempers its 'outsider' foreign policy
By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor  / World>Asia: South & Central from the September 15, 2006 edition

NEW DELHI – Friday, India's prime minister will arrive in Cuba to convince a skeptical swath of the world that India is, in fact, still India. 
It could be a tough sell. 

For decades, India happily assumed the role of chief rock-thrower at the world's political establishment. Freeing itself from colonial rule at the dawn of the cold war, India sought to find its own way to prosperity, separate from the influence and imperialism of the world's great powers. So in 1955 it formed the Non-Aligned Movement with like-minded developing nations. 

As the 14th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) begins Friday in Havana, however, India finds itself becoming increasingly entwined with the powers it once shunned, particularly the United States. As a result, India is having to straddle the divide between its historical role as an outside agitator and its future as one of the world's emerging power brokers.

For India, it is a realization of its growing maturity as a nation. "It's about how we move from being a protester of the world order to one who takes responsibility for the management of it," says C. Raja Mohan, a member of India's National Security Advisory Board, a panel of civilian foreign policy experts.

A bridge between West, developing world 

This weekend's summit, government officials acknowledge, will be about trying to find that new balance. "India has a role as a bridge in the global divide which seems to be emerging," says P. Harish, a spokesman at the Ministry of External Affairs. "That role is in preventing the global divide and promoting trust."

The task might not be an easy one. To policymakers in many developing nations, the United States is the primary imperial menace, threatening regime changes and cultural domination. Already, NAM member countries are preparing a draft declaration supporting Iran in its game of nuclear chicken with the West. At the same time, it is seeking to enlarge the definition of terrorism to include both the US occupation of Iraq and recent Israeli actions in Lebanon.

In the past, India might have joined the cavalcade of anti-US decrees. Today, it clearly will not. India's strategic goals are increasingly consistent with those of Washington, from economics to security. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for example, wants to take the discussion on terrorism toward extremists in Pakistan's hinterlands. And with the US Senate considering a deal that would accept India's status as a nuclear power, India has no interest in provoking its new friend with bombastic statements about neo-imperialism.

"We will try to moderate the proceedings to the degree we can," says Mr. Raja Mohan.

To some, this risks casting India as America's lackey - an easy ally in the war on terror and a counterbalancing pawn against China.

"We are quite critical of the government of India's approach towards the USA," says Tapan Sen, a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and a member of India's upper house of parliament, the Rajya Sabha. What is needed, he says, is "a firm stand against US hegemony."

Yet others see different forces at work. The decision to open the country to outside investment in the early '90s began a transformation that is still changing Indian culture and policy. Before, India made bold speeches but remained essentially isolated from the outside world. Now, it is belted to the hip of globalization, leading to more substantial ties with countries from Africa to the Americas.

This certainly includes the US but is not limited to it. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Singh traveled to Brazil for the first-ever meeting of the India-Brazil-South Africa Group - an attempt to harness the collective might of three of the "global south's" most influential nations. Near the top of the agenda was a resolve to force first-world nations to open their agricultural markets.

After meeting with the Brazilian president, Singh said in a press conference: "We must endeavor, and we shall be seeking to build a new international order, which is both more equitable and more participatory [for] developing countries."

India's bilateral ties more important 

In the end, these more intimate country-to-country connections are far more important measures of India's intent than any pronouncements at a summit, some experts say. "The real issue is what we are doing with these nations bilaterally," says Raja Mohan.

That doesn't mean that India no longer has any role in NAM. As NAM struggles to find a post-cold war reason for being, India is well situated to nudge it away from its dyspeptic past toward a more constructive dialogue on the problems facing the third world, such as hunger, poverty, and climate change.

"That is how India will try to move it," says B.G. Varghese of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. "Not to echo the old line, but to move it to a more helpful track."

ASIA HAND    
Stand up to Uncle Bully 
By Shawn W Crispin Southeast Asia Sep 7, 2006 

When US Ambassador to Thailand Ralph "Skip" Boyce led a peeved delegation of US companies - including Marlboro and big alcohol producers - to lodge their complaints with the Public Health Ministry about a national ban on cigarette advertisements and a pending one on liquor promotions, US commercial diplomacy toward Southeast Asia hit a new nadir. 

If it seems odd that a senior US envoy would so publicly play the role of US corporate spokesman, that's because historically it is. But Boyce, a career diplomat who speaks fluent Thai and often portrays himself as a friend to the country, has perhaps more than any other senior US diplomat in Southeast Asia pushed forcefully President George W Bush's many controversial policies in the region - regardless of the moral consequences. 

After September 11, 2001, Boyce was Washington's point man in chastising Indonesia's government for not taking more seriously the "war on terror" in the region. Now, Boyce is the highly visible spokesman for Washington's new drive to reshape its commercial relations with Southeast Asia more to the United States' advantage, partly through lopsided free-trade agreements (FTAs) and partly through good old-fashioned bullying - as demonstrated through Boyce's lobbying effort at Thailand's Health Ministry. 

Seasoned Southeast Asia observers now realize how tragically the United States' clandestine counter-terrorism campaign has played out across the region, giving new, US-backed life to the anti-democratic tendencies that many countries had tried to bury with their recent authoritarian pasts. Governments in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have all created their own dirty little versions of Guantanamo Bay, detaining unknown numbers of terror suspects to satisfy Washington's demands. 

What has gone less noticed, but with potentially far wider consequences for Southeast Asia's future prosperity, is the hard new turn in Washington's commercial diplomacy toward the region. 

The US had first packaged its current drive to broker FTAs in Southeast Asia as economic rewards for governments' cooperation with its counter-terrorism policies. Singapore and Australia, both staunch supporters of US counter-terrorism policies, were first in line to receive bilateral trade pacts. Thailand, which serves as the Central Intelligence Agency's secret regional hub for counter-terrorism logistics and operations, was logically next. And now that Malaysia and Indonesia have detained, from Washington's perspective, a sufficient number of suspected Muslim militants, they too have recently been invited to join the bilateral club. 

Throughout the Cold War, the US was eager to help capitalism take root in Southeast Asia as a bulwark against communism's spread - and provided generous aid and market access to budding capitalist countries such as Thailand and Indonesia. Nowadays, Washington's FTA drive is often framed as a parallel but more efficient free-trade track than the World Trade Organization's stuttering multilateral course. 

The reality, however, is that the US prefers the leverage of one-on-one negotiations with the region's small, export-dependent countries, which, at least historically, have relied hugely on US consumer markets for their economic growth. But as the United States' demands become more apparent at closed-door FTA negotiations, regional governments are starting to realize that the FTAs on offer are not so much economic rewards as do-or-die propositions. 

Reward cum punishment
Washington's current drive to renegotiate its terms of trade with Southeast Asia is, at least in part, symptomatic of its growing desperation in an increasingly competitive global economy driven by lower-cost Asian producers. That's evident by the United States' attempts to impose strict new intellectual-property-protection measures through bilateral pacts. Such measures would never pass muster at the WTO, but would provide substantial competitive padding for US pharmaceutical and media companies. 

The United States' bilateral drive in the region also comes at a time when its own free-trade credentials are very much in doubt. The terror-obsessed US Congress moved to block China's proposed acquisition of US oil company Unocal last year on spurious national-security grounds. The same flimsy rationale was used to block a United Arab Emirates-based port operator from winning management deals for US ports. At the same time, the US is pushing through FTAs to gain greater access to sensitive Southeast Asian industries, including telecoms and energy. 

In short, Washington is bidding to impose its more legalistic version of capitalism on Southeast Asia's more free-wheeling economies, which many US businesses, with their comparatively bloated costs and without preferential treatment, have difficulty competing with. And if the Bush administration can't have its way at the negotiating table, it's willing to resort to bullying. 

Three months ago Asia Times Online first reported, and the mainstream media later followed up, that senior US officials pressured the World Health Organization to remove its representative to Thailand after the UN official publicly called into question the adverse impacts a US-Thai FTA would have on Thailand's public health (World health: A lethal dose of US politics, June 17). The WHO official had noted that the stricter intellectual-property-protection measures in the pact would inevitably lead to higher drug prices and jeopardize hundreds of thousands of Thais, including a large number of the country's 600,000 citizens with the AIDS virus who depend on locally produced cheap generic medicines to survive. 

US-Thai FTA negotiations, which Washington had hoped would serve as a model for other regional pacts, have recently stalled in the wake of a grinding political conflict, allowing Thai trade officials valuable time to assess the merits and demerits of a potential trade deal. Washington has threatened to make Thailand pay for the delay by suspending the country's GSP (Generalized System of Preferences) privileges, a move that Thai trade groups estimate would cost the country a million jobs through lost exports. Indonesia faces a similar US threat. 

As the US flexes its economic muscles, it is prime time that Southeast Asian governments ask themselves whether further integration with the US economy on the proposed terms is truly in their respective national interests. America's hard trade stand also presents a golden opportunity for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to wade into the fray and through its collective numbers enhance its member states' negotiating leverage vis-a-vis the US. 

Southeast Asian policymakers should bear in mind that very soon the US may not be as attractive a destination for their products as in the past. Collapsing housing prices and spiraling consumer and national debt levels promise to dry up America's once insatiable appetite for consumer goods. Rather, regional governments would be wise to expend their trade energies in forging closer ties with less demanding, higher-growth-potential China, India and petrodollar-rich Middle Eastern regimes, and less on deliberating unequal pacts with the US. 

That way, when the likes of Ralph Boyce come knocking with US corporate demands, it will be that much easier for Southeast Asian governments to keep the door shut. 

Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia editor. 

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)

Peace in Sudan: Prospect or Pipe Dream? 
Dan Connell

(Dan Connell, a contributing editor to Middle East Report  -http://www.merip.org/- connell.htmland a frequent commentator on the Horn of Africa, teaches journalism and African politics at Simmons College in Boston. His two-volume Collected Articles on the Eritrean Revolution (Red Sea Press) will appear in 2003 and 2004.)

Internally displaced Sudanese returning home, near Tam in the western Upper Nile district. (Sven Torfinn/Panos Pictures)

When negotiations in July 2002 at Machakos, Kenya between the Islamist government of Sudan and rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) produced a "framework agreement" of shared ideas on the future of the country, Assistant Secretary of State Walter Kansteiner touted the possibility of a comprehensive peace deal that would finally end Africa's longest-running civil war. "There is good cause for optimism," Kansteiner declared four months later, when the next round of talks yielded a temporary ceasefire. "We have a swath of territory through the heart of Africa that is on the verge of peace." That was then.

In August 2003, the on-again, off-again talks, sponsored by the East African organization Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD), hit a roadblock that could prove terminal. The difficulty arose when mediators called on the combatants to take specific steps to implement the principles they had -- under pressure -- claimed to accept in the earlier rounds, including the south's right to self-determination. The IGAD mediation committee includes representatives from Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, all of which border Sudan. The US, Britain, Norway and Italy play an important advisory role in the process, in which the Bush administration is heavily invested.

Before the opposing parties even sat down for the latest round, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir charged that the IGAD proposals -- which included the right of the SPLM to maintain its army through a six-year transition before a referendum on the south's political status -- were "aimed at dismantling not only the present regime but the whole of Sudan." If the mediators insist on the package, said Bashir, they can "go to hell." When the two sides met on August 11, they quickly deadlocked and adjourned, but, under more pressure, they agreed to try again in September. Whether they will emerge with a concrete plan that is ever put into practice is doubtful, but neither side wants to be the one blamed for the failure of the process -- especially because such a determination will automatically trigger strong US sanctions under the 2002 Sudan Peace Act.

How the Sudan peace process seemed to get so far only to stalemate so swiftly offers a study in both the weakness of an incrementalist approach to conflict resolution when the will to compromise is lacking and the softness of the Bush administration's post-September 11 Africa policy -- the more so as the limitations of US power become evident.

A Country Long at War with Itself

Mother and her children in church where SPLA keeps weapons, near Tam. (Sven Torfinn/Panos Pictures)

The Sudanese civil war does not lend itself to simple solutions, not only because both sides perceive themselves as potential victors in a protracted conflict, but also because the stakes are so high -- from the definition of what it means to be a citizen of Sudan to who controls the country's newfound oil wealth. As many as two million Sudanese have died from war-related causes since the latest fighting erupted in 1983. Another four million have been forcibly displaced and millions more are in urgent need of emergency relief, according to United Nations agencies. Meanwhile, the conflict has spilled over Sudan's porous borders to threaten the surrounding region with chronic instability.

Sudan is the largest country in Africa, with borders that touch Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Congo, the Central African Republic, Chad and Libya. It straddles the Nile and abuts the Red Sea, a location that made it the target of revolving-door superpower intervention throughout much of the Cold War and that continues to give it strategic value for regional and global interests today, especially Egypt, which fears any loss of control over the Nile headwaters. The confirmation of substantial oil reserves in the contested south adds to the country's geopolitical importance even as it fuels the conflict by providing revenue for new arms purchases.

Sudan has been at war with itself since the day it emerged from colonial rule. In fact, fighting between north and south actually broke out before the formal transfer of power from London to Khartoum in 1956, for conflict was built into the structure of the new state. Glaring inequalities between the two regions -- administered separately by the British out of Khartoum and Nairobi -- were institutionalized from the outset with political power and control of the country's extensive natural resources, as well as decisions over education policy, language and cultural identity, centered in the north. Southerners, denied a viable forum to contest the inequities, took up arms.

The initial phase of the civil war halted in 1972 under an agreement mediated by Ethiopia's emperor Haile Selassie that gave southerners limited regional autonomy, but the accord did not hold. Fighting resumed little more than a decade later when Gen. Jaafar al-Nimeiri, who had signed the Addis Ababa agreement, unilaterally dissolved the regional government after receiving confirmation of extensive oil reserves there. When the self-declared imam imposed Islamic shari'a law throughout the country later that year, southerners joined the opposition in droves. The renewed revolt was led by the SPLM, whose army, the SPLA, quickly captured much of the southern third of the country. Nimeiri was overthrown in 1985, but the civilian government elected a year later did little to change the country's basic policies, and it, too, lost ground in the conflict. At last, faced with a collapsing economy and rising political protest, the government of Sadiq al-Mahdi offered to compromise. However, days before a truce was to be signed in 1989 that would have suspended the controversial application of shari'a, Mahdi was deposed by Gen. Omar al-Bashir, who seized power on behalf of the extremist National Islamic Front (NIF). 

Center and Periphery

The new regime quickly banned all political parties, trade unions and other "non-religious institutions." It went on to impose tight controls on the press and strict dress and behavior codes on women as it moved to restructure the entire society in its image. More than 78,000 people were purged from the army, police and civil administration, thoroughly reshaping the state apparatus, while dissidents were routinely detained in torture centers. Conscription of child soldiers became widespread, and long dormant forms of slavery grew in scope and frequency, as the government encouraged tribal militias to raid rebel-held areas for booty, taking captured civilians with them.

The NIF regime provided a safe haven for Osama bin Laden and his "Arab Afghans" from 1991-1996 and supported Islamist forces in Egypt, Algeria, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and as far west as Gambia, Niger and Senegal, as well as in Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. It also backed Christian extremists of the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda in reprisal for that country's aid to southern Sudanese opposition forces, and it helped Hutu militias based in Congo (formerly Zaire) for similar reasons. 

To facilitate its larger project, the NIF merged religious indoctrination and conversion with education, social services, economic development and political mobilization. It used the paramilitary Popular Defense Forces, modeled on the Iranian Republican Guards, to enforce Arabization and Islamization along narrowly sectarian lines. This provoked many Muslims to join the opposition, which gelled in the mid-1990s into a multi-ethnic and explicitly secular coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), whose largest armed contingent was the SPLA, but which also brought in new forces from the west, center and north of the country. Though the NIF government scored major military successes in the south in its early years, the tide began to turn toward the middle of the 1990s. By 2000, the government was again on the defensive as the conflict spread toward the economic and administrative heart of the country.

Thus, what started as a conflict between the Arabized, Islamic north and the non-Muslim African south became a fight between the "fundamentalist" Islamist movement at the country's center and a diverse alliance of peoples and political groups, Muslims, Christians and animists alike, challenging the government from the periphery. These groups called for religious and ethnic diversity and the reallocation of political power and economic resources to what they term the "marginalized majority." This wider agenda is paralyzing the Machakos peace process and colliding with US efforts to end the fighting with an agreement that falls short of restructuring the country itself.

Two Directions at Once

The tangled US history in Sudan has veered back and forth between close support and active antagonism for decades, first according to the vagaries of regional Cold War alliances and later the exigencies of domestic American politics. Today, the dominant concerns are the "war on terrorism" -- and oil. 

The US broke relations with the Nimeiri government -- then considered "radical nationalist" in the Nasserist mold -- after its ambassador was assassinated in Khartoum by guerrillas from the Palestinian group Black September in the early 1970s. But Washington did a U-turn and provided Khartoum with more than $2 billion in arms later in the decade and then into the 1980s to counter Soviet influence in neighboring Ethiopia. 

The first Bush administration pulled back from Khartoum after the NIF seized power in 1989, and then supported Iraq in the 1991 Gulf war. When Sudan became a base of operations for Osama bin Laden and a raft of radical Islamist guerrilla groups in the early 1990s, relations with the US soured further. They reached their nadir during the Clinton administration, which imposed strong sanctions on Khartoum and appeared to tilt toward a policy of displacing the NIF government, though it held back from providing more than token aid to the rebels challenging the regime. 

In 1996, Secretary of State Madeline Albright called the country "a viper's nest of terrorism." In 1998, after accusing Sudan of complicity in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton sent cruise missiles into Khartoum, destroying a pharmaceutical plant in a symbolic gesture that only seemed to harden the regime's hostility. In one of the administration's last diplomatic acts, it successfully opposed efforts to lift UN sanctions on Sudan that were imposed after an abortive 1995 attempt by Sudan-based guerrillas to assassinate Egyptian President Husni Mubarak.

The current Bush administration made ending the Sudan conflict an early priority, but found itself under pressure from conflicting interests over how to proceed. An unlikely coalition of conservative evangelical Christian groups and African-American organizations urged support for the rebels, forming a Sudan Caucus that brought together such unlikely allies as House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a right-wing Republican from Texas, and Rep. Charles Rangel, a liberal Democrat from New York. Both were disturbed over the Khartoum government's persecution of the mostly black southerners, some of whom are Christians. 

But powerful forces urged Washington to go in exactly the opposite direction -- toward a policy of "constructive engagement" that would alter the policies of the NIF regime while leaving it in place. US oil interests, worried they were being left out of a petroleum bonanza in the new and expanding oilfields in southern Sudan, favored increased dialogue with Khartoum and a loosening of sanctions that blocked them from doing business there. America's key regional ally, Egypt, opposed a US tilt toward the rebels, fearing the breakup of Sudan and a threat to Cairo's historical control over the Nile headwaters. Mubarak warned that independence for southern Sudan "would tear the region to shreds."

The upshot has been direct US involvement in the East African initiative to negotiate a resolution of the conflict. As an early gesture toward Khartoum, the Bush administration withdrew its objections to the lifting of UN sanctions, which the Security Council promptly did in September 2001. The NIF reciprocated soon after the September 11 attacks by providing the US extensive access to its files on "terrorist" groups it had formerly supported.

Peace as a "Process"

The diplomatic dance between Washington and Khartoum started early in George W. Bush's term. After barely five months in office, Bush named Andrew Natsios special humanitarian coordinator for Sudan at the US Agency for International Development, and signaled interest in the appointment of a special envoy to promote peace in the country. After being spurned by Chester Crocker, who had served as deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs under Ronald Reagan, Bush chose former Missouri Sen. John Danforth. The next steps were textbook "conflict resolution."

Danforth toured the region -- ducking the thorny issue of northern opposition by foregoing a stop in Eritrea where the NDA is headquartered -- and proposed a set of confidence-building measures between the government and the SPLM to set the stage for substantive talks. The "Danforth initiative" urged the parties to mitigate the suffering of civilians through the imposition of a ceasefire in the Nuba mountains, the designation of "days of tranquility" to enable public health campaigns, the end of direct attacks on civilian populations and the investigation of allegations of slave raiding along the north-south frontier. 

In the spring of 2002, diplomatic interventions by European and African states eager to jump-start negotiations, coupled with strong pressure from the US and tacitly reinforced by the Bush administration's response to the September 11 attacks in Afghanistan, convinced the warring parties to sit together. They met in the Kenyan town of Machakos under the sponsorship of IGAD in July to hammer out a framework for solving the conflict. 

The draft "Sudan Peace Plan" the Kenyan mediator put on the table built on a Declaration of Principles the antagonists had accepted in the 1990s, also under IGAD auspices. A breakthrough for its time, the original declaration had recognized the south's right to self-determination and called for the separation of religion and the state, but it failed to spell out how either might work. This time, IGAD mediators went further, proposing immediate self-rule for the south and a plebiscite on the region's ultimate status after a six-year transition, in exchange for SPLM agreement that shari'a law could remain in effect in the north.

Machakos Founders

US officials trumpeted the outcome as a major step toward a lasting peace. Critics charged that the declaration was a rerun of the 1972 Addis Ababa agreement, giving southerners limited autonomy that could be withdrawn once the rebels were disarmed. It was built, they said, around the flawed concept of "two systems, one state" -- with real power retained by those who had dominated the country from the beginning. This was the basis for a truce, not a resolution of the conflict. Despite such reservations, the rebels were loath to walk away from the negotiating table for fear of being branded pariahs by the international community, and the agreement stood.

In October 2002, the two sides met again and agreed to a cessation of hostilities throughout the country for the duration of the talks. This reinforced the sense of momentum in the negotiations, though the ceasefire was frequently breached, particularly in combat zones outside the traditional "south" and in southern communities near the oilfields, where the government, acting through tribal militias, sought to clear the area of hostile populations in order to expand production.

In the end, the process foundered over the specifics of political power, wealth sharing, internal boundaries (who is to be covered by autonomy provisions), what happens to the opposing armies during the transition and the character of the post-war national capital. One thread that knits these issues together is identity -- what will it mean to be a citizen of a post-war Sudan and to whom that appellation will apply. But it also comes down to who will control the country's abundant natural resources -- both the Nile waters and the new oil reserves, each of which has its origins in the south. It turns on what guarantees each side has of the other's good faith through the lengthy transition.

If the Machakos process does disintegrate, as seems increasingly likely -- or if it stalls indefinitely and the mediators eventually walk away -- the prospect is for more fighting that will be far more intense than ever before. The government, which recently purchased a fleet of sophisticated new MiG-29 fighter-bombers, will seek to dislodge the SPLM from bases outside the south and to clear the region around the southern oilfields in order to guarantee secure production. Rebel targets will be the oilfields, and the pipelines and barges that transport the oil north to Port Sudan for export. In such a scenario, the government would act quickly to press its arms advantage before the US or other states could impose meaningful sanctions -- or assist the SPLM in resisting such an onslaught.

Perhaps it was not a coincidence that as these questions arose, a Uganda-Sudan pact to end a simmering conflict along their common border -- in effect since March 2002 -- broke down the same week the Machakos process was suspended. The central issue there was Khartoum's support for the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Christian-derived cult that operates in northern Uganda out of government-held bases in southern Sudan. The LRA is notorious for kidnapping young Ugandans and inducting them into its child-army through the ritual murder of others caught trying to escape. Sudan has supported the LRA as payback to Uganda for its backing of the SPLA, and there are reports that the LRA is again expanding its operations there. Ugandan officials withdrew their monitors from Sudan and sent their Sudanese counterparts packing in mid-August after accusing Khartoum of restricting the liaison officers to the two capital cities where they had no role in halting the fighting or policing the border. Kampala charged Khartoum with giving lip service to peacemaking efforts while failing to act on them, much as did the SPLA after the Machakos process seemed to collapse.

The Last Best Chance

The difficulty IGAD mediators and US and European "advisers" are having in getting the main combatants to take the last steps toward peace was eminently predictable. Both continue to see the totalizing concessions each demands of the other as unacceptable -- as erasing who they are as well as stripping them of what little they have. Each also perceives the war as winnable, while suspecting -- probably rightly -- that threats of international reprisals for continuing the fight are, under present geopolitical circumstances, unlikely to be followed through.

But the Machakos talks were built upon a faulty premise: that a resolution to the Sudanese war could be constructed around gestures of regional reconciliation, not comprehensive (and truly national) restructuring. When modest restructuring was called for, the process fell apart. Even the proposals for limited power-sharing that the mediators placed on the table this summer -- sending the NIF regime into paroxysms of anger and galvanizing public opposition from Egypt -- do not go far enough, for they ignore the fate of the millions of Sudanese outside the south whose economic and political destiny (and identity) is glossed over in the peace plan. Fresh hostilities in the western province of Darfur underline the importance of transcending views of the war as a north-south conflict. One leading NDA figure, Sudan Alliance Forces commander and former Sudanese Brigadier Abd al-Aziz Khalid, has threatened to resume fighting if the agreement is signed as is. Meanwhile, SPLM chairman John Garang has said that his forces will not participate in new talks if the Machakos process collapses -- and that this is the last chance for peace, after which there is only more war. 

If the Bush administration is serious about promoting a durable peace in Sudan, and not simply achieving a respite to advance its "war on terrorism" in the region, it must let go of the fanciful notion of reconciling the warring parties and take on the far more difficult project of restructuring the country itself -- how it is governed, who does the governing and what it means to be a Sudanese citizen. Egypt could be given guarantees on the Nile water flow so that its diplomats will stop playing the spoiler. The US must put teeth into these premises or it will be viewed more and more as a paper tiger that cannot stay the course when the going gets tough. Yet such measures would defy Washington's historical trend of greater concern for short-term stability -- in the form of a "peace process" that looks alive from the outside -- than for actual peace.

'Greater West Asia' leans heavily on India 
By M K Bhadrakumar 

Asia Times

As with all wars, the explosive consequences of the recent Lebanese war compel evaluation. Many would see the war as the sixth conflict between Arabs and Israelis, while to some at least the war almost certainly took on features of a second Palestinian intifada and, as some others would claim, it could be counted as a part of the "global war on terror". 

Yet the unique character of the Lebanese war cannot be lost on New Delhi, even as an Indian special envoy for the Middle East

left for a tour of the region last week to make a first-hand assessment. 

New Delhi cannot help but reflect that a new region, not just a Middle East but a "Greater West Asia", has emerged out of the Lebanese war, with the result that what appear as individual conflicts - the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the crisis in Afghanistan, the current Israeli-Lebanese conflict - are connected and feed off one another. 

Professor Fred Halliday coined the phrase and pointed out: "It is not possible to understand what is happening today, let alone what will happen, between Lebanon and Israel, or in Iraq or Afghanistan ... without seeing these events in the broader regional and, to a considerable degree, global context ... The 'linkage' of the Persian Gulf to the Arab-Israeli conflict ... of long-remote Afghanistan to the politics of Iran and the Arab states, and of Pakistan to the Middle East as a whole has, in recent years, become a reality." 

This was strikingly brought home to New Delhi on August 23 when, even as Indian Interior Minister Shivraj Patil was berating Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence in parliament for fomenting terrorism, Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf received a strange phone call from President George W Bush expressing America's "deep appreciation for Pakistan's role in fighting terrorism and the support Pakistan has been extending internationally in this regard". 

Bush suggested to Musharraf that when they meet this month, they ought to exchange views on international developments and on "measures to further strengthen the strategic relationship" between the United States and Pakistan. 

Without doubt, the linkage of Pakistan to the Middle East as a whole, which the late president Zia ul-Haq used to speak about in the 1970s, has become a reality. This is the most important consequence of the Lebanese war, from an Indian perspective. 

But it is a reality with many faces. It is a reality of a new pan-Islamic consciousness that ties Arab with non-Arab causes (and vice versa) with potentially dramatic effects on the minds of young Muslims living anywhere, including outside the Islamic world in countries such as India and Britain. 

It is a reality portending a protracted conflict with multiple centers in countries of the subcontinent that may well run and run, propelled by a seamless matrix of strategic detonators such as terrorism, militant Islam, nuclear proliferation, religious extremism, social injustice and discrimination, corruption, greed and injustice, authoritarianism and the sense of alienation of Muslim minorities in near-existential terms. 

It is a reality where major protagonists include non-state actors jostling for space with established states, rendering negotiation, let alone conflict resolution, infinitely more complex and difficult to achieve. 

Not the least of all, it is a reality of interlocking passions and interests and expediencies - and of great fury and intensity. Hardly any ready solutions or even temporary palliatives are available, either. 

Second, New Delhi should expect that no matter Pakistan being allegedly a "failing state", or a "rogue state", and indeed no matter Indian allegations of Pakistan fomenting trans-border terrorism, Islamabad will remain for the foreseeable future a key interlocutor for Washington on a variety of theaters of utmost consequence for US strategic interests - coping with al-Qaeda, Taliban resurgence, Iran's nuclear ambitions, the emergent "Shi'ite crescent" in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, and so on. 

It is also completely irrelevant to Washington whether Musharraf should don his military-reform hat even while holding the office of the head of state. 

During the past week, some harsh words have been written in the US media suggestive of a deepening despair about the weak, indecisive leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul. Bush has since spoken to Karzai, asking him to come to Washington for urgent consultations. But as the Afghan endgame approaches, Musharraf holds the keys to the intricate tangle in the Hindu Kush. 

Pakistani sensitivity is high in the pecking order in Washington. This was clear from what General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, said in Kabul on Sunday: "I think Pakistan has done an awful lot in going after al-Qaeda, and it's important that they don't let the Taliban groups be organized in the Pakistani side of the border." 

The US commander, famous for plain speaking, cautiously added that he "absolutely does not believe" accusations of collusion between Islamabad and the insurgent Taliban or other extremists. "You do not order your soldiers in the field against an enemy in order to play some sort of a game with neighboring countries," he offered as the logic of his skepticism about cascading allegations of covert Pakistani support of Afghan extremists. 

The Lebanese war has led to further erosion of US influence in the Middle East. Admittedly, the pessimism permeating Washington regarding the progress of the war in Iraq is running in proportion to the high volatility of the Lebanese and the Afghan situation. Bush himself expressed his own mixed feelings in late August: "Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I'm happy. This is - but war is not a time of joy. These aren't joyous times. These are challenging times and they're difficult times and they're straining the psyche of our country". 

This loss of US influence in the Middle East in turn casts its shadow over the South Asian region. It may have emboldened Islamabad to crack down on the insurgents in Balochistan. Again, in a curious way, India-Pakistan composite dialogue, which had been languishing in recent months, might well be on the verge of gaining a new life. 

But the Lebanese war's lessons for India exceed these Pakistan-centric considerations. Thus a Chatham House report on Wednesday underlines the enormous importance that Iran has come to acquire (thanks to the Iraq/Lebanon/Afghanistan wars) in the geopolitics of the entire region stretching from the Levant to the Persian Gulf. 

The coalition government in New Delhi would be loath to admit it, but it must harbor a sense of profound regret that it alienated the regime in Tehran, one of the most catastrophic errors of judgment in foreign policy in years. 

India's capacity to influence the events in the strategically vital region to its west is virtually nil - despite claims of being an emerging influential regional player. Now, New Delhi would be greatly embarrassed if despite all the hubris about the coming Armageddon in US-Iran relations, Washington's next move were to begin serious negotiations with Iran. 

The Bush administration has reportedly given political clearance for the visit of the former reformist president of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, to Washington ostensibly at the invitation of Christian groups. Khatami is traveling via Tokyo, where he sought Japanese intervention with the Bush administration in the standoff with Iran. This is not the only strand in the wind. 

Recently Bush held a brainstorming session with eminent regional experts such as Vali Nasr, who consistently believes that the present time is the right time in engaging Iran. The James Baker Institute just brought out a report - endorsed by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger - that the Bush administration must "examine ways to engage the Iranians in a discussion of the future of nuclear power". 

Looked at another way, for New Delhi the Lebanese war is also about the opprobrium that heavily hangs in the perceptions in the Islamic world around India's security relationship with Israel. To carry this on regardless would be as incomprehensible as if India were to have overlooked the horror and shame of bonding with the apartheid regime in South Africa. 

Finally, the Lebanese war has ensured that US foreign policy and political Islam shall remain deeply intertwined. It is conceivable that the United States will be compelled to rethink "Islamic fascism" and craft a more nuanced, differentiated policy approach of engagement and dialogue with Islamism. The US indeed possesses an abundance of intellectual resources to realize that the salience of Islam will remain in 21st-century Muslim politics. 

An earnest effort could well commence in Washington sooner rather than later to understand what motivates and informs Islamism. 

The Lebanese war should equally shake up the complacency of sections of Indian opinion that remained rooted in beliefs and canons that Islamism was to be equated with terrorism, that Islam was incompatible with democracy or that it was inherently a militant religion. 

India too, in other words, will have to decide whether the primary issue is religion and culture, or whether it is politics. 

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).      

Trans-Afghan project may be just a pipe dream

KABUL - Ambitious plans to revive the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) gas pipeline project could be wrecked by an upsurge of anti-government violence in Pakistan where this week thousands of people have joined supporters of a tribal leader to protest his killing by the military. 

On Tuesday, explosions and gunfire were reported after more than 10,000 people attended memorial prayers for Nawab Akbar Bugti, who was fighting for greater autonomy for his gas-rich but 

underdeveloped province of Balochistan. 

Bugti, a former governor of the province, was killed on August 26 when Pakistani government helicopter gunships and ground troops attacked his mountain cave hide-out. 

With about 6 million people, Balochistan's population is almost half that of Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi. But in terms of mineral wealth it is the country's richest region. Islamabad has been planning a deep-sea port at Gwadar and a road link through Afghanistan to Central Asia from the province. 

The TAP, which would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan to India through western Afghanistan, would pass through Balochistan. An alternative route through Pakistan's North West Frontier Province has been dogged by security concerns, which have been heightened by the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan's southern provinces. 

Last week, news reports in Kabul said the 2,000km pipeline deal was in the final stages of approval with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the lead development partner, revising the framework agreement to include India in the project. Without the huge India market, the project, which is estimated to cost US$2-3 billion (one estimate pitches the final cost at $7 billion), may not be profitable. 
Up to 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas could be piped annually from the Dauletabad fields in southeast Turkmenistan to consumers in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. The project will take about three years to implement after the countries involved take all key decisions. 

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the pipeline, which will pass through his war-ravaged country, could generate $100 million to $300 million per year in transit fees for his government and create thousands of jobs. 

But domestic security concerns in Afghanistan and Pakistan could stymie recent progress on the two-decade-old plans to pipe natural gas from Central Asia to South Asia. Balochistan has been in ferment since 2004 when the struggle for greater national rights and financial resources and against the establishment of military camps in the province turned into an armed uprising led by a force of trained and semi-trained tribesmen known as the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). 

While Bugti, the slain Baloch leader, was not part of this armed struggle, Pakistani authorities have maintained the he tacitly supported it. Pakistan's independent Human Rights Commission has documented widespread violations by security forces in Balochistan but Islamabad has maintained that they were required to secure domestic gas installations, which have often been targeted by Baloch rebels. 

India is seeking to incorporate special clauses in the agreement to ensure that gas volumes contracted for would not be changed in the event that Pakistan required higher quantities than originally contracted for Gwadar port. This, and financial difficulties in the utility sector in India, could pose additional problems for the construction of the TAP line. 

On December 9, 2003, the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan signed a protocol on the pipeline. However, until early this year. when India's participation was publicized, little progress had been made. Last week, a top Indian official in Delhi confirmed the participation of a high-level team in the TAP meeting next month as a ”partner in the project”, according to Indian news reports. 

With the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline bogged down, political commentators speculate that it may be strong opposition from the United States that has made India put the deal on the back-burner. New Delhi has given priority to the TAP project, which may be easier to implement. 

However, Afghanistan's security remains a stumbling block to the pipeline. Fighting between remnants of the previous Taliban government and the US- and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has only become fiercer in nine lawless southern provinces. 

Without the foreign troops, Afghan security forces would not be able to provide security for the TAP, which will be an obvious target of rebel attacks. Kabul would need to assure its partners and investors that it could extend its legal and physical authority throughout the pipeline route before the project can take off. 

Due to its location between the oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian Basin and the Indian Ocean, Afghanistan has been a potential energy transit corridor. During the mid-1990s, US-based Unocal had pursued a possible natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad-Donmez gas basin via Afghanistan to Pakistan, but pulled out after the US missile strikes against Afghanistan in August 1998. 

(By arrangement with Pajhwok Afghan News) 

(Inter Press Service)

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