By William Fisher
Foreign affairs experts agree that the Bush Administration is quietly using the Chinese water-torture method to slowly engineer the death of America’s traditional system for delivering foreign aid – and some of them think it’s not such a bad idea.
They point to the creation of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) and the U.S. Global AIDS initiative outside the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where such programs would normally be located. And, as further evidence of a shift away from USAID’s traditional international development mandate, they cite the creation of a new democracy promotion apparatus within the State Department and the appointment of the current AIDS coordinator -- who has no development experience – as the new USAID administrator.
The MCA was created in 2004 to provide assistance countries that rule justly, invest in their people, and encourage economic freedom. It has been criticized for the slow pace of its process for approving country applications.
A retired senior USAID official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told us, “This is simply another iteration of the longstanding power struggle between USAID and the State Department, which wants to use development money and leverage to further President Bush’s political agenda, and make democracy promotion and the war on terrorism the centerpiece of America’s foreign aid efforts.”
But the comment of another retired diplomat echoes the sentiments of a number of other foreign aid experts we interviewed. Ludwig Rudel, who spent more than 25 years with USAID, said, “My take on USAID is that it really makes no difference what is being proposed -- except for humanitarian assistance and emergency relief the agency has lost its effectiveness anyway”.
He added, “The bulk of USAID money is used for political purposes, such as in Israel, Egypt, Palestine, and Jordan in the Middle East, and Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia for the drug war. During the Marshall Plan days and for about ten years after, the USAID program had a clear development focus. Now, the political types have full control of the funding and development work occasionally is a serendipitous by-product. So what difference does it make if AID gets absorbed into State?”
Efforts to downgrade USAID are not new. Until 1999, the agency reported directly to the president. During the administration of President Bill Clinton, USAID was ordered to report to the Secretary of State. Periodically there have also been efforts in Congress to totally absorb the aid agency into the State Department.
USAID works in more than 100 countries with a 14-billion-dollar annual budget. Its portfolio is massive, ranging from anti-poverty programs to education to health to private sector development and export promotion to policy reform to disaster and humanitarian relief.
The State Department now says that U.S. money should be used to empower developing countries to strengthen security, consolidate democracy and increase trade.
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, outlining a plan she called “Transformational Diplomacy” last week, also said that Washington should further link its aid to defeat terrorist threats. She invoked the attacks of 9/11 and noted that the terrorists used the previously failed state of Afghanistan to launch their attacks.
"In the final analysis, we must now use our foreign assistance to help prevent future Afghanistans -- and to make America and the world safer," she said.
She named terrorism, weapons proliferation, diseases, and trafficking in persons and drugs as global threats that require the U.S. to develop new diplomatic strategies. She said that without the new changes, U.S. foreign assistance may be ineffective.
"The current structure of America's foreign assistance risks incoherent policies and ineffective programs and perhaps even wasted resources,” Rice warned.
But some outside the government have warned that Rice’s proposals could result in a greater politicization of foreign assistance. “We’re concerned that the same priority won’t be given to long-term development as resources are siphoned to support shorter-term diplomatic or military objectives,” said Jim Bishop, a senior officer of InterAction, the largest coalition of non-governmental U.S. aid groups.
Veteran foreign policy experts offer various other recipes to improve U.S. development assistance policy and delivery.
Dr. Jack N. Behrman, emeritus professor at the University of North Carolina who served as a senior official in the administration of President John F. Kennedy, told us, “USAID’s 30-plus programs should be separated and put where the primary interest is. For example, all assistance (Israel, Egypt) that is security-based should be put in the Defense Department, economic-private sector aid should be in the Department of Commerce, and should recruit volunteers to do its work, disaster and humanitarian aid should be in the State Department, and all efforts to ‘alleviate poverty’ should be terminated, since there is no evidence that USAID antipoverty funds have been effective anywhere.”
Behrman, a founder of the USA MBA Corps, a private organization of volunteers with advanced business degrees and private sector work experience, adds, “Assistance to democracy and institution building should be in an independent agency, funded directly by Congress, to avoid the ‘smell’ of intervention; programs should be conducted largely with local NGOs assisted by American and European Union volunteers.”
He concludes, “I would eliminate USAID, unless someone can find a serious purpose that is not more effectively put in either independent agencies that fund volunteers or Cabinet departments.”
But Samer Shehata, Assistant Professor of Arab Politics Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, thinks the absorption of USAID into the State Department “certainly sounds problematic, if not simply a bad idea.”
He told us, “Most bilateral aid is certainly somewhat political and our USAID program is not the exception by any means -- in fact, it is much more political than the bilateral aid programs of most European countries. But absorbing USAID into State or making USAID the place of ‘democracy promotion’ – which is not so well thought of when it is the objective of the U.S. government in the Middle East – will only damage other less political USAID efforts and programs.”
Prof. Shehata adds, “It is one thing to declare democracy promotion a foreign policy goal, but it is quite another to come up with actual policies that promote democracy -- effectively.”
But U.S. Foreign Service veteran Dr. Richard T. Arndt, President of Americans for UNESCO and author of “The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the 20th Century", thinks the paramount issue is not government organization but a continuing commitment to education through technical assistance and exchange programs.
He told us, “In the post-Cold War world, educational-cultural issues matter more than ever in history. Nothing could be more useful than a totally coordinated and carefully calibrated program of U.S. educational outreach around the world, carried on by strong government and private-sector leadership and targeting all levels of education, from K through the universities, technical and professional schools, and in continuing education. The idea of the U.S. giant sharing its educational wealth with the world might help the world forget Shock and Awe and begin refilling the reservoirs of goodwill that have been so fatally drained.”
Most educational exchange programs are currently conducted by the State Department and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice says she is committed to expanding them. But Dr. Arndt points out the “historic disconnect” between USAID-run education programs and those of the State Department, which include the Fulbright scholarships.
The U.S. plan to link security to democracy and development overseas has also drawn criticism from development activists, who fear the new overhaul could be ideologically motivated.
They are particularly critical of the appointment of Randall Tobias as the new USAID administrator, who will also carry the title of Deputy Secretary of State for Development. He previously served as chairman, president and chief executive officer of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company.
"Under his direction, HIV prevention programs have shifted from being based in public health science to being dictated by the abstinence-only-until-marriage ideology of the Bush administration," said James Wagoner, president of the Washington-based Advocates for Youth.
"As head of USAID, Ambassador Tobias will not only be responsible for AIDS funding, but also in charge of population and family planning programs," concluded Wagoner. "How will his anti-science ideology impact programs vital to protecting the health of women and young people around the world?"
Tobias' record in the fight against AIDS has also been marked by accusations he has favored drug companies by displaying a preference for using more expensive, brand-name drugs instead of cheaper, safe generic versions that could have reached many more people in impoverished countries.
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Saturday, January 28, 2006
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Destruction Easier Than Reconstruction
By Brian Conley and Isam Rashid
BAGHDAD, Jan 23 (IPS) - While politicians deliberate over Iraq's future, Iraqis are dealing with the reality of the present. They are looking at the debris of a country where reconstruction has come to a standstill.
They are also looking at a situation in which the capital of the oil-rich country has been stricken recently by a dire shortage of gas and kerosene.
Iraqis in Baghdad had been receiving 12 to 13 hours of electricity a day on average over recent months. Over the past few weeks they say supply has fallen to just a few hours a day.
"We have no services at all," Usama Asa'ad, a 31 year-old mechanic told IPS. "Our electricity is on only one or two hours a day."
Many Iraqis thought the United States would improve their situation when the occupation began in April 2003, but those expectations are long over. Iraqis complain that the situation in Baghdad now is worse than it ever was under Saddam.
Electricity supply is inconsistent, and sometimes there is no water for a week or more at a time. After the recent increase in petroleum prices mandated by the International Monetary Fund, the situation has become far more difficult for Iraqis.
"The petrol price became three times more than before, and this makes everything in the market more expensive," said Abdul Sattar, waiting in a queue at one of the petrol stations in Baghdad. "I've been waiting for six hours in this queue and I'm not even sure whether I will get petrol. Yesterday I waited for seven hours but I didn't get anything. The petrol station isn't open at night because there is no security."
Iraqis continue to blame the United States and the occupation for the petrol shortages and the lack of security. President George W. Bush has declared that he would seek no more money for Iraq's reconstruction, further angering Iraqis.
"The water is not clean enough, there is no petrol for our cars, and the occupation forces intend this," said Usama Asa'ad. "They want to make all of Iraq's services for private companies, so that United States companies will take as much money from Iraq as they can."
Zubair, a 33 year-old engineer at the Beiji refinery says production at the refinery is steady. "The refinery is working now the same as before the war. We don't know about it (the petroleum problem), sometimes we hear that terrorists bomb the convoys, and sometimes we hear the petrol is taken by the United States army for their vehicles.. We don't know what is the truth."
Iraqi resentment of the coalition forces is caused by more than the long petrol queues. The failure of the occupation to rebuild Iraq's security and services, combined with recurring night-time raids have left Iraqis angry and cynical.
"Security is the most important thing we need now," Nora, a 25 year-old housewife told IPS. "We need to sleep at night with no one raiding our house. Would you believe, we wear all our clothes at night? You can imagine what it is like for them to bomb the gate of your house, and how you will feel when you have children like me."
Iraq's new government will be formed within the next few months. Most parties appear to be pushing for a government of "national unity."
Iraqis are expecting to see the new government make unequivocal changes over the consequences of the occupation. Usama Asa'ad says they also expect to see the government reconstruct Iraq, since the United States is ending its own aid.
"The United States troops occupied Iraq in twenty days because they wanted to do that, but they didn't rebuild Iraq ever since they came almost three years ago, because they did not care to do that."
BAGHDAD, Jan 23 (IPS) - While politicians deliberate over Iraq's future, Iraqis are dealing with the reality of the present. They are looking at the debris of a country where reconstruction has come to a standstill.
They are also looking at a situation in which the capital of the oil-rich country has been stricken recently by a dire shortage of gas and kerosene.
Iraqis in Baghdad had been receiving 12 to 13 hours of electricity a day on average over recent months. Over the past few weeks they say supply has fallen to just a few hours a day.
"We have no services at all," Usama Asa'ad, a 31 year-old mechanic told IPS. "Our electricity is on only one or two hours a day."
Many Iraqis thought the United States would improve their situation when the occupation began in April 2003, but those expectations are long over. Iraqis complain that the situation in Baghdad now is worse than it ever was under Saddam.
Electricity supply is inconsistent, and sometimes there is no water for a week or more at a time. After the recent increase in petroleum prices mandated by the International Monetary Fund, the situation has become far more difficult for Iraqis.
"The petrol price became three times more than before, and this makes everything in the market more expensive," said Abdul Sattar, waiting in a queue at one of the petrol stations in Baghdad. "I've been waiting for six hours in this queue and I'm not even sure whether I will get petrol. Yesterday I waited for seven hours but I didn't get anything. The petrol station isn't open at night because there is no security."
Iraqis continue to blame the United States and the occupation for the petrol shortages and the lack of security. President George W. Bush has declared that he would seek no more money for Iraq's reconstruction, further angering Iraqis.
"The water is not clean enough, there is no petrol for our cars, and the occupation forces intend this," said Usama Asa'ad. "They want to make all of Iraq's services for private companies, so that United States companies will take as much money from Iraq as they can."
Zubair, a 33 year-old engineer at the Beiji refinery says production at the refinery is steady. "The refinery is working now the same as before the war. We don't know about it (the petroleum problem), sometimes we hear that terrorists bomb the convoys, and sometimes we hear the petrol is taken by the United States army for their vehicles.. We don't know what is the truth."
Iraqi resentment of the coalition forces is caused by more than the long petrol queues. The failure of the occupation to rebuild Iraq's security and services, combined with recurring night-time raids have left Iraqis angry and cynical.
"Security is the most important thing we need now," Nora, a 25 year-old housewife told IPS. "We need to sleep at night with no one raiding our house. Would you believe, we wear all our clothes at night? You can imagine what it is like for them to bomb the gate of your house, and how you will feel when you have children like me."
Iraq's new government will be formed within the next few months. Most parties appear to be pushing for a government of "national unity."
Iraqis are expecting to see the new government make unequivocal changes over the consequences of the occupation. Usama Asa'ad says they also expect to see the government reconstruct Iraq, since the United States is ending its own aid.
"The United States troops occupied Iraq in twenty days because they wanted to do that, but they didn't rebuild Iraq ever since they came almost three years ago, because they did not care to do that."
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
RUSSIA’S NEW NGO LAW: A CONTRARY VIEW
By William Fisher
Virtually all human rights groups have condemned Russia’s new law governing non-governmental organizations, but the leader of one major NGO disagrees.
“Although the parliament has softened somewhat its original draconian bill,
the legislation still obliges offices of foreign NGOs to inform the government registration office about their projects for the upcoming year, and about the money allotted for every specific project. Russian government officials would have an unprecedented level of discretion in deciding what projects, or even parts of NGO projects, comply with Russia's national interests, as required by the bill,” said Holly Cartner, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), a major U.S.-based advocacy group.
The organization says, “Officials from the registration office could prohibit foreign NGOs from implementing projects without "the aim of defending the constitutional system, morals, public health, rights and lawful interest of other people, guaranteeing defense capacity and security of the state. If a foreign NGO implements a banned project, the registration office could close its offices in Russia.”
But Sharon Tennison, the American head of a Moscow-based NGO, the Center for Citizen Initiatives, calls such comments “alarmist”, and adds that the new legislation “could cut either way, and it won't become obvious until implementation begins. Heated TV debates are occurring, with (President Vladimir) Putin's harshest critics participating.”
Tennison told me, “There are good and bad NGOs in Russia - both domestic and foreign. Regrettably, some have supported activities that would be illegal in America today.”
Tennison acknowledged that the law was presented, amended and signed by President Putin “with few explanations for its need.” But she contends that “Russia's not-for-profit sector is in serious need of regulation. It still hasn't developed legal underpinnings to assure transparency of expenditures, operations or funder information - all of which are crucial for societal trust and civil society development.”
Tennison’s organization conducts programs to assist Russians in securing economic and political reforms and fosters partnerships and relations between the United States and Russia.
She says, “Putin and many Russians harbor deep concerns that foreign and domestic NGOs may be fomenting a "color revolution" in Russia, as they suspect happened recently in the republics of Ukraine and Georgia.”
“The Kremlin is further challenged by Russia's wealthy oligarchs, who have funneled a great deal of money through NGOs in the past three years to destabilize the Putin government. Foreign and oligarch support in Russia has led in some instances to NGOs' pursuing objectives contrary to those of the average citizen and to the stability of the fragile government. This wouldn't go down well in any country."
Tennison recommends that “to align NGO activities with citizens' interests, the Putin administration needs to legislate tax incentives to encourage support for Russia's NGOs, thereby creating a base for in-country private donations, not foreign or oligarch funding.”
She says that Russia “is inching toward a democratic society, but isn’t close yet. The country's long history and harsh conditioning can’t be radically transformed in two short decades. Pushing Russian society and the Putin government faster than they can go at this juncture, will incur consequences that serve neither Russia nor the west.”
The NGO legislation requires Russia's 450,000 civic clubs to re-register with a state authority in order to remain active. Foreign NGOs will be required to notify the Justice Ministry of the location of any offices. Both foreign and national NGOs will also have to provide detailed reports to authorities of any foreign funding and how such funds are spent. Furthermore, the legislation will give officials the power to close any non-profit organization involved in ‘political activity’, a concept that lacks any clarification or definition in the bill.
Tennison concludes, “I'm head of a NGO in Russia and I'm happy to reregister in order to get some decent laws governing Russia's NGO sector. I have nothing to be concerned about since our work helps Russian citizens - we don't do direct ‘political activity’. Nor do I think that out-of-country NGOs should do political activity when there is a freely elected president and government that still enjoys the goodwill and support of the majority of the country.”
But Tennison’ represents a minority view. Human Rights Watch and other NGOs, as well as members of the U.S. Congress, have seen the new law as another Russian move away from democratic governance and a further effort by President Putin to consolidate power in the Kremlin.
HRW says, “The government is entitled to regulate non-governmental organizations, (but) the broad and ambiguous scope of the law poses a serious threat to the rights to freedom of association and expression, in violation of Russia's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, The 1998 U.N. Declaration on Human Rights Defenders calls on states to respect the rights of human rights defenders through legislation and administration.”
“President Putin has claimed that the law's limitations on NGOs are necessary ‘to prevent financing political activities from abroad’. But the bill gives no definition of ‘political activism’, raising serious concerns that the term could be interpreted very broadly by government officials,” HRW declared.
The organization also called on leaders of the G8 countries (to) put this issue at the top of their agenda with President Putin."
Several senior officials of the Russian government have recently made statements that appear intended to undermine without basis the legitimacy of foreign NGOs. On December 8, Sergei Lebedev, head of the Russian intelligence service, charged that foreign "NGOs are very attractive for intelligence services.... as covers, masks, screens." On December 1, Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Yakovenko claimed that "Russia's foreign policy is perceived inadequately abroad.... because Russian and foreign media quote opinions and comments of NGOs financed by western money."
Tennison also takes exception to the findings of the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus. The group contends that “When the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s, Russia under President Boris Yeltsin began to move toward a democratic society…Since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia in 2000, however, there has been serious regression in democratic governance. The Russian president and government have become increasingly authoritarian, freedom of the press no longer exists, government authority has been increasingly centralized in the Kremlin, and democracy has been declared a luxury not suited for Russia. One of the most disturbing trends has been the government's effort to eliminate or strictly control NGOs and other institutions that make up civil society.”
Tennison told IPS that the caucus report “is the traditional hype by those who see Russia from only one lens”. It's myopic and dangerous. It’s another smoke screen to divert attention from Iraq.”
She added, “Yeltsin's period wasn't democracy, it was oligarchy. The press was oligarch-owned and an article on any topic, whether untruthful or vengeful, could be placed on front pages for several thousand dollars. This isn't what we call freedom of the press. There was no such thing as real investigative journalism. When journalists wrote anything against the oligarchy they got bumped off. Young, brilliant communist leaders raped the country of its wealthiest enterprises and left Russia bankrupt with nothing to rebuild the country. Is this democracy?”
Virtually all human rights groups have condemned Russia’s new law governing non-governmental organizations, but the leader of one major NGO disagrees.
“Although the parliament has softened somewhat its original draconian bill,
the legislation still obliges offices of foreign NGOs to inform the government registration office about their projects for the upcoming year, and about the money allotted for every specific project. Russian government officials would have an unprecedented level of discretion in deciding what projects, or even parts of NGO projects, comply with Russia's national interests, as required by the bill,” said Holly Cartner, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), a major U.S.-based advocacy group.
The organization says, “Officials from the registration office could prohibit foreign NGOs from implementing projects without "the aim of defending the constitutional system, morals, public health, rights and lawful interest of other people, guaranteeing defense capacity and security of the state. If a foreign NGO implements a banned project, the registration office could close its offices in Russia.”
But Sharon Tennison, the American head of a Moscow-based NGO, the Center for Citizen Initiatives, calls such comments “alarmist”, and adds that the new legislation “could cut either way, and it won't become obvious until implementation begins. Heated TV debates are occurring, with (President Vladimir) Putin's harshest critics participating.”
Tennison told me, “There are good and bad NGOs in Russia - both domestic and foreign. Regrettably, some have supported activities that would be illegal in America today.”
Tennison acknowledged that the law was presented, amended and signed by President Putin “with few explanations for its need.” But she contends that “Russia's not-for-profit sector is in serious need of regulation. It still hasn't developed legal underpinnings to assure transparency of expenditures, operations or funder information - all of which are crucial for societal trust and civil society development.”
Tennison’s organization conducts programs to assist Russians in securing economic and political reforms and fosters partnerships and relations between the United States and Russia.
She says, “Putin and many Russians harbor deep concerns that foreign and domestic NGOs may be fomenting a "color revolution" in Russia, as they suspect happened recently in the republics of Ukraine and Georgia.”
“The Kremlin is further challenged by Russia's wealthy oligarchs, who have funneled a great deal of money through NGOs in the past three years to destabilize the Putin government. Foreign and oligarch support in Russia has led in some instances to NGOs' pursuing objectives contrary to those of the average citizen and to the stability of the fragile government. This wouldn't go down well in any country."
Tennison recommends that “to align NGO activities with citizens' interests, the Putin administration needs to legislate tax incentives to encourage support for Russia's NGOs, thereby creating a base for in-country private donations, not foreign or oligarch funding.”
She says that Russia “is inching toward a democratic society, but isn’t close yet. The country's long history and harsh conditioning can’t be radically transformed in two short decades. Pushing Russian society and the Putin government faster than they can go at this juncture, will incur consequences that serve neither Russia nor the west.”
The NGO legislation requires Russia's 450,000 civic clubs to re-register with a state authority in order to remain active. Foreign NGOs will be required to notify the Justice Ministry of the location of any offices. Both foreign and national NGOs will also have to provide detailed reports to authorities of any foreign funding and how such funds are spent. Furthermore, the legislation will give officials the power to close any non-profit organization involved in ‘political activity’, a concept that lacks any clarification or definition in the bill.
Tennison concludes, “I'm head of a NGO in Russia and I'm happy to reregister in order to get some decent laws governing Russia's NGO sector. I have nothing to be concerned about since our work helps Russian citizens - we don't do direct ‘political activity’. Nor do I think that out-of-country NGOs should do political activity when there is a freely elected president and government that still enjoys the goodwill and support of the majority of the country.”
But Tennison’ represents a minority view. Human Rights Watch and other NGOs, as well as members of the U.S. Congress, have seen the new law as another Russian move away from democratic governance and a further effort by President Putin to consolidate power in the Kremlin.
HRW says, “The government is entitled to regulate non-governmental organizations, (but) the broad and ambiguous scope of the law poses a serious threat to the rights to freedom of association and expression, in violation of Russia's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, The 1998 U.N. Declaration on Human Rights Defenders calls on states to respect the rights of human rights defenders through legislation and administration.”
“President Putin has claimed that the law's limitations on NGOs are necessary ‘to prevent financing political activities from abroad’. But the bill gives no definition of ‘political activism’, raising serious concerns that the term could be interpreted very broadly by government officials,” HRW declared.
The organization also called on leaders of the G8 countries (to) put this issue at the top of their agenda with President Putin."
Several senior officials of the Russian government have recently made statements that appear intended to undermine without basis the legitimacy of foreign NGOs. On December 8, Sergei Lebedev, head of the Russian intelligence service, charged that foreign "NGOs are very attractive for intelligence services.... as covers, masks, screens." On December 1, Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Yakovenko claimed that "Russia's foreign policy is perceived inadequately abroad.... because Russian and foreign media quote opinions and comments of NGOs financed by western money."
Tennison also takes exception to the findings of the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus. The group contends that “When the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s, Russia under President Boris Yeltsin began to move toward a democratic society…Since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia in 2000, however, there has been serious regression in democratic governance. The Russian president and government have become increasingly authoritarian, freedom of the press no longer exists, government authority has been increasingly centralized in the Kremlin, and democracy has been declared a luxury not suited for Russia. One of the most disturbing trends has been the government's effort to eliminate or strictly control NGOs and other institutions that make up civil society.”
Tennison told IPS that the caucus report “is the traditional hype by those who see Russia from only one lens”. It's myopic and dangerous. It’s another smoke screen to divert attention from Iraq.”
She added, “Yeltsin's period wasn't democracy, it was oligarchy. The press was oligarch-owned and an article on any topic, whether untruthful or vengeful, could be placed on front pages for several thousand dollars. This isn't what we call freedom of the press. There was no such thing as real investigative journalism. When journalists wrote anything against the oligarchy they got bumped off. Young, brilliant communist leaders raped the country of its wealthiest enterprises and left Russia bankrupt with nothing to rebuild the country. Is this democracy?”
DEPORTEES’ SUIT
By William Fisher
Four Muslim men who were detained without charge for months in the weeks after September 11, 2001, eventually cleared of any connection to terrorism, but then deported to Egypt, have been allowed to return to the U.S. to pursue their class action civil lawsuit against the U.S. government for unlawful imprisonment and abuse on behalf of 1,200 other Muslim and South Asian men rounded up and jailed following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Yasser Ebrahim, the first of the men allowed to return from Egypt under strict conditions, gave his deposition in New York on Monday.
The men, who charge they suffered inhumane and degrading treatment in a Brooklyn detention center, are being allowed to participate in the case under strict conditions, including confinement to their hotel rooms and a ban on their speaking to anybody outside the case for the duration of their stay.
The three other plaintiffs are expected to arrive in the U.S. over the next two weeks. Four other deportees are parties to the suit but are not expected to return to the U.S. for depositions
The plaintiffs charge that they were placed in solitary confinement, and suffered severe beatings, incessant verbal abuse and a total blackout on communications with their families and attorneys.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a civil rights advocacy group handling the case, said the conditions for their return to the U.S. are highly unusual in a civil case and a sign of what he called government "paranoia over Muslim and Middle Eastern men."
The case names former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, immigration officials and prison officers among defendants. The suit, originally filed in 2002, seeks compensation and punitive damages.
CCR legal director Bill Goodman told me, “Shortly after 9/11, the Department of Justice detained approximately 2,000 Muslim men, primarily from the Middle East and South Asia. Not one of these men was ever found to have been guilty of any form of terrorism, or even linked to terrorism. These men were held for many months longer than necessary, in solitary confinement, often physically abused and under degrading conditions. The government fought tooth and nail against any judicial oversight of what was going on. This was the beginning of what has been shown to be the U.S. policy of indefinite detention without due process, often involving torture. This lawsuit seeks to challenge and to rectify the illegal actions of the government.”
The plaintiffs’ claims will be bolstered by a 2003 report by Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General (IG), who found that some prison officers slammed detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time.
The IG’s report also cited videotapes he said showed that some detention center staff "misused strip searches and restraints to punish detainees and that officers improperly and illegally recorded detainees' meetings with their attorneys."
The Federal Bureau of Prisons said it had fired two people, demoted two more and six had been suspended for periods from two days to 30 days.
"It means a lot to our clients that finally someone is being held accountable for the brutality they experienced," said CCR attorney Matthew Strugar.
"But we believe the responsibility for these abuses goes further up the chain of command at the Bureau of Prisons and we are disappointed more individuals have not yet been held accountable."
A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to comment on the case.
The New York Times, which interviewed Yasser Ebrahim and his brother Hany in Egypt last week, reported that the two had lived in New York for several years before Sept. 11. Yasser ran a Web site design business and Hany worked in a delicatessen.
The two were arrested on Sept. 30, 2001 and held for around eight months, even after an FBI memo from Dec. 7 stated they were cleared of links to terrorist groups, the lawsuit claims.
"I'm seeking justice," Yasser Ebrahim reportedly told The New York Times. "It's from the same system that did us injustice before. But I have faith in this system. I know what happened before was a mistake."
The case is likely to draw more media attention than most civil lawsuits because it comes at a time when the Bush administration is being accused of ignoring constitutional rights and laws passed by congress by carrying out secret interceptions of international telephone calls and emails by the National Security Agency, part of the Defense Department.
Last week, the CCR and the American Civil Liberties Union filed lawsuits asserting that President George W. Bush's authorization of the wiretaps of U.S. citizens without court warrants was illegal. They say it violates the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by congress in 1978. The FISA law established a permanent court that alone has the authority to issue warrants for surveillance of U.S. persons. The law defines U.S. persons as those in the U.S., whether citizens or not.
The Bush Administration contends it has “inherent” constitutional authority to protect the people in time of war, as well as implicit authority in the resolution passed by congress that authorized the president to take military action to win the “Global War on Terror”.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to convene a hearing on the wiretap issue early next month, when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will testify.
Before he became Attorney General, Gonzales served as White House Counsel and played a significant role in crafting post 9/11 administration detention policies and practices. So did the current head of our Homeland Security department, who was a senior official in the Ashcroft Justice Department before he was promoted to a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.
Little has been done to fix the grossly dysfunctional and highly secretive immigration prison system that is now part of our Homeland Security apparatus. It was dysfunctional before 9/11 and it remains dysfunctional today.
So it seems fitting that the lawsuit brought by the deportees should be heard at this particular point in history. It will be yet another test of whether our justice system can work in an environment of war, fear, and executive power.
Four Muslim men who were detained without charge for months in the weeks after September 11, 2001, eventually cleared of any connection to terrorism, but then deported to Egypt, have been allowed to return to the U.S. to pursue their class action civil lawsuit against the U.S. government for unlawful imprisonment and abuse on behalf of 1,200 other Muslim and South Asian men rounded up and jailed following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Yasser Ebrahim, the first of the men allowed to return from Egypt under strict conditions, gave his deposition in New York on Monday.
The men, who charge they suffered inhumane and degrading treatment in a Brooklyn detention center, are being allowed to participate in the case under strict conditions, including confinement to their hotel rooms and a ban on their speaking to anybody outside the case for the duration of their stay.
The three other plaintiffs are expected to arrive in the U.S. over the next two weeks. Four other deportees are parties to the suit but are not expected to return to the U.S. for depositions
The plaintiffs charge that they were placed in solitary confinement, and suffered severe beatings, incessant verbal abuse and a total blackout on communications with their families and attorneys.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a civil rights advocacy group handling the case, said the conditions for their return to the U.S. are highly unusual in a civil case and a sign of what he called government "paranoia over Muslim and Middle Eastern men."
The case names former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, immigration officials and prison officers among defendants. The suit, originally filed in 2002, seeks compensation and punitive damages.
CCR legal director Bill Goodman told me, “Shortly after 9/11, the Department of Justice detained approximately 2,000 Muslim men, primarily from the Middle East and South Asia. Not one of these men was ever found to have been guilty of any form of terrorism, or even linked to terrorism. These men were held for many months longer than necessary, in solitary confinement, often physically abused and under degrading conditions. The government fought tooth and nail against any judicial oversight of what was going on. This was the beginning of what has been shown to be the U.S. policy of indefinite detention without due process, often involving torture. This lawsuit seeks to challenge and to rectify the illegal actions of the government.”
The plaintiffs’ claims will be bolstered by a 2003 report by Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General (IG), who found that some prison officers slammed detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time.
The IG’s report also cited videotapes he said showed that some detention center staff "misused strip searches and restraints to punish detainees and that officers improperly and illegally recorded detainees' meetings with their attorneys."
The Federal Bureau of Prisons said it had fired two people, demoted two more and six had been suspended for periods from two days to 30 days.
"It means a lot to our clients that finally someone is being held accountable for the brutality they experienced," said CCR attorney Matthew Strugar.
"But we believe the responsibility for these abuses goes further up the chain of command at the Bureau of Prisons and we are disappointed more individuals have not yet been held accountable."
A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to comment on the case.
The New York Times, which interviewed Yasser Ebrahim and his brother Hany in Egypt last week, reported that the two had lived in New York for several years before Sept. 11. Yasser ran a Web site design business and Hany worked in a delicatessen.
The two were arrested on Sept. 30, 2001 and held for around eight months, even after an FBI memo from Dec. 7 stated they were cleared of links to terrorist groups, the lawsuit claims.
"I'm seeking justice," Yasser Ebrahim reportedly told The New York Times. "It's from the same system that did us injustice before. But I have faith in this system. I know what happened before was a mistake."
The case is likely to draw more media attention than most civil lawsuits because it comes at a time when the Bush administration is being accused of ignoring constitutional rights and laws passed by congress by carrying out secret interceptions of international telephone calls and emails by the National Security Agency, part of the Defense Department.
Last week, the CCR and the American Civil Liberties Union filed lawsuits asserting that President George W. Bush's authorization of the wiretaps of U.S. citizens without court warrants was illegal. They say it violates the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by congress in 1978. The FISA law established a permanent court that alone has the authority to issue warrants for surveillance of U.S. persons. The law defines U.S. persons as those in the U.S., whether citizens or not.
The Bush Administration contends it has “inherent” constitutional authority to protect the people in time of war, as well as implicit authority in the resolution passed by congress that authorized the president to take military action to win the “Global War on Terror”.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to convene a hearing on the wiretap issue early next month, when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will testify.
Before he became Attorney General, Gonzales served as White House Counsel and played a significant role in crafting post 9/11 administration detention policies and practices. So did the current head of our Homeland Security department, who was a senior official in the Ashcroft Justice Department before he was promoted to a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.
Little has been done to fix the grossly dysfunctional and highly secretive immigration prison system that is now part of our Homeland Security apparatus. It was dysfunctional before 9/11 and it remains dysfunctional today.
So it seems fitting that the lawsuit brought by the deportees should be heard at this particular point in history. It will be yet another test of whether our justice system can work in an environment of war, fear, and executive power.
Monday, January 23, 2006
WHO SAYS GOVERNMENT CAN’T HUSTLE?
By William Fisher
Since Hurricane Katrina smashed into the Mississippi Gulf Coast last December, the U.S. Government has come under scathing criticism for being slow to respond.
But the Administration of President George W. Bush has recently showed it is more than capable of hustling on issues it considers top priorities.
Little more than a month after the Senate voted to ban appeals to the Supreme Court by suspected terrorists detained by the U.S., the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the high court to dismiss an appeal already pending from a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, during a time of hostilities in that country that followed the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001 mounted by al Qaeda.
He was detained by American military forces and transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sometime in 2002. In July 2003, President Bush found “that there is reason to believe that [Hamdan] was a member of al Qaida or was otherwise involved in terrorism directed against the United States,” and designated him an enemy combatant to be tried by military commission. In April 2004, Hamdan’s counsel filed a habeas corpus petition, which is now pending.
In July 2004, Hamdan was formally charged with conspiracy to attack civilians and civilian objects, murder by an unprivileged belligerent, destruction of property by an unprivileged belligerent, and terrorism.
But on the basis of a Supreme Court ruling in June 2004, in a case involving another Guantanamo detainee, that federal district courts have jurisdiction to hear habeas petitions filed by Guantanamo Bay detainees, Hamdan’s military lawyers asked the court to consider the legality of his detention.
His defense alleges he was denied a speedy trial, challenges the nature and length of his pretrial detention as a violation of the Geneva Convention, and the legality of Military Commissions as a violation of the separation of powers doctrine and of the equal protection guarantees of the Fifth Amendment.
But, in its recent motion, the government argued that when Congress passed the Graham/Levin/Kyl amendment at the end of 2005 -- The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 -- it stripped the Court of jurisdiction to hear Hamdan’s case – as well as all other pending Guantanamo appeals.
The “court-stripping” measure was a last minute amendment to the “must pass” Military Authorization Bill. The amendment was introduced by Republican Senators Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and John Kyl of Arizona, and Democrat Senator Carl Levin of Michigan.
“The government’s motion seeking to deny the Supreme Court the power to review a habeas case it has already taken up to review is one of the most serious challenges to Supreme Court authority since the Civil War,” says Deborah Pearlstein, the Director of the U.S. Law and Security Program of Human Rights First, a legal advocacy group.
“The Constitution itself gives the high court the power to hear challenges to the legality of executive detention through the writ of habeas corpus, and neither the President nor Congress can take that away,” the organization asserts.
Another major advocacy group, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), notes that “the first task this Administration has chosen to undertake in the New Year is the dismissal of all pending Guantánamo habeas corpus petitions.”
President George W. Bush has “made perfectly clear its intent to create a gulag at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba - a permanent black hole into which the Administration will toss any person it chooses to disappear forever, without a trial, without hope, and without justice. If the government's position is adopted, no longer will victims of torture be allowed to sue, or to even air the fact of their abuse in any court. The attempt to dismiss these cases is a crude and flagrant violation of the laws and Constitution of the United States and the treaties and human rights laws of the nations of the world,” the organization charges.
It adds that most Guantanamo detainees “have no ties to Al Qaeda, many were turned over to the U.S. for bounty, and even more were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If they have no way to appeal their innocence or their status, they will be left to rot in detention indefinitely.”
Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, charges that Congress “was foolish to pass this law, because these enormous presidential powers can so easily be turned against U.S. citizens. What if a U.S. citizen is rounded up and never given a hearing to test whether he's an enemy combatant -- or even a U.S. citizen? Well, he can't access the courts, thanks to this statute.”
Prof. Foley says the new law makes it clear that Congress “doesn't want to give these prisoners a way to 'complain' about conditions of confinement, including torture. It doesn't want to give them a way to 'complain' that they are not being given a hearing, or that getting a decision in a hearing is taking too long.”
“That's the upshot of this law, which gives prisoners a right only to appeal actual determinations of Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which decide whether the prisoner is an 'enemy combatant' in the first place, or the determinations of military tribunals, which are convened if an enemy combatant is tried for a particular crime, if the sentence is for death or for more than 10 years. Appeals of lesser sentences are at the D.C. Circuit's discretion,” he says, adding, “There is no other way that the prisoner has a right to go to court, any court.”
“The only hope is that the Constitution's right to habeas corpus transcends this statute. That will ultimately be a major issue in the Supreme Court, and we can only hope that the justices don't simply side with the Administration,” Prof. Foley says.
The Bush Administration’s court action is of a piece with its expansive view of the power of the Executive Branch of U.S. Government, and comes amid the media tsunami triggered by revelations that the Defense Department’s National Security Agency (NSA) – the largest of America’s 16 intelligence organizations – has been conducting secret surveillance of telephone and internet communications between U.S. citizens and people overseas who are alleged to have connections to Al Qaida.
Congress, which zealously guards its Constitutional role as one of the three co-equal branches of government, passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the post-Watergate era of the late 1970s. The Act established a FISA court, which empowered its judges to issue warrants for Federal law enforcement agencies to conduct secret surveillances of U.S. citizens.
While President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials defend the president’s actions, many in Congress reject the Administration’s claim of inherent power and insist that no surveillance involving U.S. citizens can take place without a warrant issued by the FISA court. FISA court judges are all sitting Federal Judges – one of whom recently resigned as a protest of the president’s apparent effort to ignore the court’s authority.
The powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has announced he will convene a hearing on the NSA program early next month, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced he will appear to defend the Administration’s position.
The reach of executive power was one of the recurring themes in the Senate hearings on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to become a Justice of the Supreme Court. At many points in the three-day hearing, Judge Alito appeared to favor a deferential view of presidential power. But he refused to be drawn into detailed discussion of the subject, saying that it was an issue that might come before the Supreme Court.
Many legal scholars believe that the Bush Administration and the Congress have aggressively exceeded their authority by restricting the access of detainees to the courts. Still, it’s comforting to know that the Department of Justice is not paralyzed by bureaucracy or by fact or tradition either.
As President Bush famously said, they’re doing a heck of a job!
Since Hurricane Katrina smashed into the Mississippi Gulf Coast last December, the U.S. Government has come under scathing criticism for being slow to respond.
But the Administration of President George W. Bush has recently showed it is more than capable of hustling on issues it considers top priorities.
Little more than a month after the Senate voted to ban appeals to the Supreme Court by suspected terrorists detained by the U.S., the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the high court to dismiss an appeal already pending from a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, during a time of hostilities in that country that followed the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001 mounted by al Qaeda.
He was detained by American military forces and transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sometime in 2002. In July 2003, President Bush found “that there is reason to believe that [Hamdan] was a member of al Qaida or was otherwise involved in terrorism directed against the United States,” and designated him an enemy combatant to be tried by military commission. In April 2004, Hamdan’s counsel filed a habeas corpus petition, which is now pending.
In July 2004, Hamdan was formally charged with conspiracy to attack civilians and civilian objects, murder by an unprivileged belligerent, destruction of property by an unprivileged belligerent, and terrorism.
But on the basis of a Supreme Court ruling in June 2004, in a case involving another Guantanamo detainee, that federal district courts have jurisdiction to hear habeas petitions filed by Guantanamo Bay detainees, Hamdan’s military lawyers asked the court to consider the legality of his detention.
His defense alleges he was denied a speedy trial, challenges the nature and length of his pretrial detention as a violation of the Geneva Convention, and the legality of Military Commissions as a violation of the separation of powers doctrine and of the equal protection guarantees of the Fifth Amendment.
But, in its recent motion, the government argued that when Congress passed the Graham/Levin/Kyl amendment at the end of 2005 -- The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 -- it stripped the Court of jurisdiction to hear Hamdan’s case – as well as all other pending Guantanamo appeals.
The “court-stripping” measure was a last minute amendment to the “must pass” Military Authorization Bill. The amendment was introduced by Republican Senators Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and John Kyl of Arizona, and Democrat Senator Carl Levin of Michigan.
“The government’s motion seeking to deny the Supreme Court the power to review a habeas case it has already taken up to review is one of the most serious challenges to Supreme Court authority since the Civil War,” says Deborah Pearlstein, the Director of the U.S. Law and Security Program of Human Rights First, a legal advocacy group.
“The Constitution itself gives the high court the power to hear challenges to the legality of executive detention through the writ of habeas corpus, and neither the President nor Congress can take that away,” the organization asserts.
Another major advocacy group, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), notes that “the first task this Administration has chosen to undertake in the New Year is the dismissal of all pending Guantánamo habeas corpus petitions.”
President George W. Bush has “made perfectly clear its intent to create a gulag at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba - a permanent black hole into which the Administration will toss any person it chooses to disappear forever, without a trial, without hope, and without justice. If the government's position is adopted, no longer will victims of torture be allowed to sue, or to even air the fact of their abuse in any court. The attempt to dismiss these cases is a crude and flagrant violation of the laws and Constitution of the United States and the treaties and human rights laws of the nations of the world,” the organization charges.
It adds that most Guantanamo detainees “have no ties to Al Qaeda, many were turned over to the U.S. for bounty, and even more were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If they have no way to appeal their innocence or their status, they will be left to rot in detention indefinitely.”
Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, charges that Congress “was foolish to pass this law, because these enormous presidential powers can so easily be turned against U.S. citizens. What if a U.S. citizen is rounded up and never given a hearing to test whether he's an enemy combatant -- or even a U.S. citizen? Well, he can't access the courts, thanks to this statute.”
Prof. Foley says the new law makes it clear that Congress “doesn't want to give these prisoners a way to 'complain' about conditions of confinement, including torture. It doesn't want to give them a way to 'complain' that they are not being given a hearing, or that getting a decision in a hearing is taking too long.”
“That's the upshot of this law, which gives prisoners a right only to appeal actual determinations of Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which decide whether the prisoner is an 'enemy combatant' in the first place, or the determinations of military tribunals, which are convened if an enemy combatant is tried for a particular crime, if the sentence is for death or for more than 10 years. Appeals of lesser sentences are at the D.C. Circuit's discretion,” he says, adding, “There is no other way that the prisoner has a right to go to court, any court.”
“The only hope is that the Constitution's right to habeas corpus transcends this statute. That will ultimately be a major issue in the Supreme Court, and we can only hope that the justices don't simply side with the Administration,” Prof. Foley says.
The Bush Administration’s court action is of a piece with its expansive view of the power of the Executive Branch of U.S. Government, and comes amid the media tsunami triggered by revelations that the Defense Department’s National Security Agency (NSA) – the largest of America’s 16 intelligence organizations – has been conducting secret surveillance of telephone and internet communications between U.S. citizens and people overseas who are alleged to have connections to Al Qaida.
Congress, which zealously guards its Constitutional role as one of the three co-equal branches of government, passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the post-Watergate era of the late 1970s. The Act established a FISA court, which empowered its judges to issue warrants for Federal law enforcement agencies to conduct secret surveillances of U.S. citizens.
While President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials defend the president’s actions, many in Congress reject the Administration’s claim of inherent power and insist that no surveillance involving U.S. citizens can take place without a warrant issued by the FISA court. FISA court judges are all sitting Federal Judges – one of whom recently resigned as a protest of the president’s apparent effort to ignore the court’s authority.
The powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has announced he will convene a hearing on the NSA program early next month, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced he will appear to defend the Administration’s position.
The reach of executive power was one of the recurring themes in the Senate hearings on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to become a Justice of the Supreme Court. At many points in the three-day hearing, Judge Alito appeared to favor a deferential view of presidential power. But he refused to be drawn into detailed discussion of the subject, saying that it was an issue that might come before the Supreme Court.
Many legal scholars believe that the Bush Administration and the Congress have aggressively exceeded their authority by restricting the access of detainees to the courts. Still, it’s comforting to know that the Department of Justice is not paralyzed by bureaucracy or by fact or tradition either.
As President Bush famously said, they’re doing a heck of a job!
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
WHY SHOULD WE BE SURPRISED?
By William Fisher
Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, launched a media tsunami when he declared the Holocaust a myth.
But we shouldn’t be all that surprised. The Middle East is chockablock with Holocaust-deniers and Holocaust-minimizers. And it is not only the so-called Arab Street that has been infected. The disease has spread to many members of the Arab intelligentsia and to some of the area’s privileged elite.
I learned just how deeply embedded this attitude is during a conversation I had with members of my staff when I was managing a U.S. aid program in Egypt a few years ago.
Sitting with me in our luxurious offices overlooking the Nile on a steamy, smoggy Cairo afternoon were three of Egypt’s “best and brightest” – all from affluent families, all with master’s degrees from what is arguably the premier international educational institution in the Middle East, the American University in Cairo. These were no ordinary proxies for the Arab Street; they were Egypt’s future leaders.
I’ve long since forgotten what aspect of geopolitics we were talking about, but the subject soon turned to Israel. All three made excellent and accurate points about that country’s deeply myopic policies vis a vis the Palestinians. Then we seemed to segue effortlessly from Israel to the Holocaust.
“The Holocaust is mostly a myth,” declared one. “It’s an idea that’s been pushed by the Jewish lobby in America to keep U.S. support for Israel.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Everyone who studies the truth knows it”, my staffer responded.
”How about all the photos of American GIs liberating the concentration camps,” I asked. “Were they faked?”
Another staff member joined the conversation. “No, they weren’t faked, but the numbers were purposely exaggerated”, she said, adding, “The camps were there, but only a million or so were killed.”
“Have you read Irving’s book about it?” my third colleague chimed in. “He’s a well respected historian and he proves it never happened.” He was referring, of course, to the writing of one of more outrageous Holocaust-deniers, David Irving (whose ‘history’ has been reliably refuted by virtually all reputable historians).
Where did these exceptionally smart, exceptionally competent, thoroughly Western-oriented young people get their information? For more than a generation, their views have been fuelled by a non-stop stream of inaccurate and distorted statements by their leaders, by the “reporting” of mostly-State-owned newspapers, magazines and television channels, by uninformed teachers, and by textbooks from kindergarten through university.
A few years ago, I wrote an article on these textbooks for The Daily Star, a highly respected newspaper based in Beirut.
I found that in Syria, for example, school children from the fourth grade up are taught that Zionism is a form of colonialism similar to Nazism; Zionism endangers the Arab world and prevents its unification; Israel is an aggressive and expansionist enemy and is responsible for the backwardness of the Arab world; and when young readers grow up, they must engage in holy war jihad against Israel and seek martyrdom. The texts also underline that Arab leaders who negotiate with Israel, even in third countries, are spies and traitors and that Jews are a menace. Books containing these passages are published by the Syrian Education Ministry and are part of the official school curriculum.
And in Saudi Arabia, texts for government-financed and private religious schools declare that God’s wisdom mandates continuing the struggle between Muslims and Jews until the Day of Judgment; Jews and Christians, as enemies of Islam, will never be pleased with Muslims, so Muslims must beware of them.
This kind of vitriol was equaled only by the inaccurate, disrespectful and totally scurrilous caricatures used in Israeli textbooks to portray Arabs.
And, while the authors of most Israeli textbooks were ordered to clean up their act in recent years, far too much Arab writing on Israel and the Holocaust remains unchanged. Arab governments continue to use their control of the media and their educational systems to magnify their messages of hate -- while professing solidarity with President Bush’s “Global War on Terror” and happily accepting huge sums in American aid.
For example, Egypt – the Middle East’s most absurd example of “pretend democracy” -- owns an evening newspaper called Al-Masaa. In a recent article titled "Israel's Lies", columnist Hisham Abd Al-Rauf wrote that there were no massacres of the Jews during World War II, and that the gas chambers were intended for disinfecting clothing. Hitler, he wrote, was not against the Jews, and had even permitted Jews to emigrate to Palestine during his first years in power.
This kind of message is repeated on a daily basis throughout the Middle East – in schools, in newspapers, on television, in coffeehouse conversations, and in government-financed textbooks.
So we shouldn’t really be surprised by what Iran’s new president has to say. His voice is only one added to many others. The problem is that he is the president of a proud and important country. When he calls his faithful to an “international conference on the Holocaust”, people will actually attend, speak, and be reported in the world’s press with the straight face of journalistic objectivity.
The profound sadness of all this is that it does nothing to help anyone solve anything. It adds nothing to facilitate understanding or conversation. It is a roadmap to nowhere. It simply provides yet another convenient crutch that democracy-denying authoritarian leaders can keep using to prop themselves up.
It may generate lots of heat, but if you’re looking for light you won’t find it here.
Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, launched a media tsunami when he declared the Holocaust a myth.
But we shouldn’t be all that surprised. The Middle East is chockablock with Holocaust-deniers and Holocaust-minimizers. And it is not only the so-called Arab Street that has been infected. The disease has spread to many members of the Arab intelligentsia and to some of the area’s privileged elite.
I learned just how deeply embedded this attitude is during a conversation I had with members of my staff when I was managing a U.S. aid program in Egypt a few years ago.
Sitting with me in our luxurious offices overlooking the Nile on a steamy, smoggy Cairo afternoon were three of Egypt’s “best and brightest” – all from affluent families, all with master’s degrees from what is arguably the premier international educational institution in the Middle East, the American University in Cairo. These were no ordinary proxies for the Arab Street; they were Egypt’s future leaders.
I’ve long since forgotten what aspect of geopolitics we were talking about, but the subject soon turned to Israel. All three made excellent and accurate points about that country’s deeply myopic policies vis a vis the Palestinians. Then we seemed to segue effortlessly from Israel to the Holocaust.
“The Holocaust is mostly a myth,” declared one. “It’s an idea that’s been pushed by the Jewish lobby in America to keep U.S. support for Israel.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Everyone who studies the truth knows it”, my staffer responded.
”How about all the photos of American GIs liberating the concentration camps,” I asked. “Were they faked?”
Another staff member joined the conversation. “No, they weren’t faked, but the numbers were purposely exaggerated”, she said, adding, “The camps were there, but only a million or so were killed.”
“Have you read Irving’s book about it?” my third colleague chimed in. “He’s a well respected historian and he proves it never happened.” He was referring, of course, to the writing of one of more outrageous Holocaust-deniers, David Irving (whose ‘history’ has been reliably refuted by virtually all reputable historians).
Where did these exceptionally smart, exceptionally competent, thoroughly Western-oriented young people get their information? For more than a generation, their views have been fuelled by a non-stop stream of inaccurate and distorted statements by their leaders, by the “reporting” of mostly-State-owned newspapers, magazines and television channels, by uninformed teachers, and by textbooks from kindergarten through university.
A few years ago, I wrote an article on these textbooks for The Daily Star, a highly respected newspaper based in Beirut.
I found that in Syria, for example, school children from the fourth grade up are taught that Zionism is a form of colonialism similar to Nazism; Zionism endangers the Arab world and prevents its unification; Israel is an aggressive and expansionist enemy and is responsible for the backwardness of the Arab world; and when young readers grow up, they must engage in holy war jihad against Israel and seek martyrdom. The texts also underline that Arab leaders who negotiate with Israel, even in third countries, are spies and traitors and that Jews are a menace. Books containing these passages are published by the Syrian Education Ministry and are part of the official school curriculum.
And in Saudi Arabia, texts for government-financed and private religious schools declare that God’s wisdom mandates continuing the struggle between Muslims and Jews until the Day of Judgment; Jews and Christians, as enemies of Islam, will never be pleased with Muslims, so Muslims must beware of them.
This kind of vitriol was equaled only by the inaccurate, disrespectful and totally scurrilous caricatures used in Israeli textbooks to portray Arabs.
And, while the authors of most Israeli textbooks were ordered to clean up their act in recent years, far too much Arab writing on Israel and the Holocaust remains unchanged. Arab governments continue to use their control of the media and their educational systems to magnify their messages of hate -- while professing solidarity with President Bush’s “Global War on Terror” and happily accepting huge sums in American aid.
For example, Egypt – the Middle East’s most absurd example of “pretend democracy” -- owns an evening newspaper called Al-Masaa. In a recent article titled "Israel's Lies", columnist Hisham Abd Al-Rauf wrote that there were no massacres of the Jews during World War II, and that the gas chambers were intended for disinfecting clothing. Hitler, he wrote, was not against the Jews, and had even permitted Jews to emigrate to Palestine during his first years in power.
This kind of message is repeated on a daily basis throughout the Middle East – in schools, in newspapers, on television, in coffeehouse conversations, and in government-financed textbooks.
So we shouldn’t really be surprised by what Iran’s new president has to say. His voice is only one added to many others. The problem is that he is the president of a proud and important country. When he calls his faithful to an “international conference on the Holocaust”, people will actually attend, speak, and be reported in the world’s press with the straight face of journalistic objectivity.
The profound sadness of all this is that it does nothing to help anyone solve anything. It adds nothing to facilitate understanding or conversation. It is a roadmap to nowhere. It simply provides yet another convenient crutch that democracy-denying authoritarian leaders can keep using to prop themselves up.
It may generate lots of heat, but if you’re looking for light you won’t find it here.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
BUSH’S NEW MULTILATERALISM
By William Fisher
With the billions of dollars appropriated by the U.S. for Iraqi reconstruction almost all spent, Japan, Australia and other nations in President George W. ush’s “coalition of the willing” are likely to be asked to shoulder much of the burden for funding the large number of unfinished projects.
Getting others to take up the slack is reportedly high on Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s agenda when she visits the Far East in March. Her trip, originally scheduled for this week, was postponed because of the current crisis in Israeli politics caused by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s recent stroke.
The new initiative comes barely a month after President Bush appointed Rice to take over the leading role in supervising and coordinating the U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq. The American administration has signaled that it will not seek further funding for these efforts.
"The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq," Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the work, told reporters at a recent news conference. In an interview, McCoy reportedly told The Washington Post, "This was just supposed to be a jump-start."
However, Gen. McCoy’s assertion seems to be at odds with previous administration statements. For example, in a speech on Aug. 8, 2003, President Bush said, "In a lot of places, the infrastructure is as good as it was at prewar levels, which is satisfactory, but it's not the ultimate aim. The ultimate aim is for the infrastructure to be the best in the region."
Relatively little of the $30 billion allocated for reconstruction since the
invasion remains to be spent, and spending authority is scheduled to run out in June 2007. A decision not to renew the reconstruction program leaves Iraq with tens of billions of dollars in unfinished projects, and an oil industry and electrical grid that have yet to return to pre-war production levels.
It also leaves the State Department with a mandate to provide a “focal point” for reconstruction efforts and to supervise and coordinate reconstruction programs not only in Iraq, but also in other countries emerging from civil strife. These include Afghanistan, but Bush Administration officials have announced they will henceforth rely more on the Afghan Government, NATO, and contractors from other countries.
Steven Aftergood, head of the Government Secrecy program of the Federation of American Scientists, told me the switch from the Pentagon to the State Department was “a belated recognition that existing policy on reconstruction and stabilization has been woefully inadequate."
That switch came in a little-noticed December 7 Presidential National Security Directive that said, “The Secretary of State shall coordinate and lead integrated United States Government efforts”, coordinating these efforts with the Secretary of Defense to ensure harmonization with any planned or ongoing U.S. military operations across the spectrum of conflict.”
The State Department will lead U.S. Government efforts to prevent countries at risk “from being used as a base of operations or safe haven for extremists, terrorists, organized crime groups, or others who pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy, security, or economic interests,” said the Bush directive.
Some administration observers say the switch from the Pentagon to the State Department was a product of increasing frustration with the pace of reconstruction work in Iraq. They also believe the cutoff in reconstruction funding is part of a new White House narrative that also includes reduction in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq before U.S. mid-term elections in November 2006, when the entire House of Representatives and a third of Senators will stand for reelection.
According to a report by the special inspector general for Iraq (IG), reconstruction officials cannot say how many planned projects they will complete, and there is no clear source for hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to operate the projects that have been finished.
The IG’s report describes some progress but also a number of projects that have failed. For example, expensive electrical substations were built but not connected to the country's electrical grid.
Much of the reconstruction funding has been diverted to other projects. At least $2.5 billion earmarked for infrastructure and schools was diverted to building up a security force. Funds originally intended to repair the electricity grid and sewage and sanitation system were used to train special bomb squad units and a hostage rescue force. The U.S. has also shifted funds to build 10 new prisons to keep pace with the insurgency, and safe houses and armored cars for Iraqi judges.
Hundreds of millions of dollars from the reconstruction fund was also used to hold elections and for four changes of government, and establish a criminal justice system, including $128 million to examine several mass graves of Saddam Hussein’s alleged victims.
In addition to the diversion of funds to other types of projects, the reconstruction efforts have been plagued by substantial corruption and overcharging by contractors.
While 3,600 projects will be completed by the end of the year, the cost of security has eaten up as much as 25% of each project, according to the IG. A U.S. congressional report last October forecast that many reconstruction projects were unlikely to get off the ground because of security costs. Iraqi authorities estimate that 10 billion dollars are needed for the health sector alone, to build or rehabilitate and provide equipment for hospitals and clinics.
Production by Iraq's national electrical grid remains at 4,000 megawatts, 400 megawatts below pre-war levels, with the average Iraqi receiving less than 12 hours of power a day. Oil production, which according to the Pentagon's prewar planning was supposed to provide the funds for Iraqi reconstruction, also remains well below prewar levels. The shortfall has been attributed mainly to sabotage by insurgents. Iraq's refineries are currently producing approximately two million barrels of oil a day, compared with 2.6 million barrels on the eve of the invasion.
The ending of reconstruction funding appears to mark a change from a promise the president made in 2003 to provide Iraq with the best infrastructure in the region.
But just how far the U.S. intended to go in that process has always been murky. While President Bush gave the impression that Iraq was slated for a complete makeover, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared less certain. He told the Senate Appropriations Committee in March 2003, “I don't believe that the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction, in a sense (reconstruction) funds can come from those various sources I mentioned: frozen assets, oil revenues and a variety of other things, including the Oil for Food, which has a very substantial number of billions of dollars in it.”
On the other hand, that view seems to contradict a report submitted the same year by the prime consulting contractor hired by the Pentagon to lay out the future of Iraq’s economy. The company, BearingPoint Inc. of McLean, Virginia, said, “The reconstruction of Iraq has begun. Not the reconstruction of vital public services such as water, electricity or public security, but rather the radical reconstruction of its entire economy.”
Clearly, this has not happened. And the Administration’s recent funding decision suggests it is not likely to happen any time soon.
And with many of Iraq’s key ministries in disarray and some dogged by persistent corruption, observers say it is doubtful that the country’s government will have either the resources or the expertise to manage the many remaining large-scale reconstruction projects.
With the billions of dollars appropriated by the U.S. for Iraqi reconstruction almost all spent, Japan, Australia and other nations in President George W. ush’s “coalition of the willing” are likely to be asked to shoulder much of the burden for funding the large number of unfinished projects.
Getting others to take up the slack is reportedly high on Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s agenda when she visits the Far East in March. Her trip, originally scheduled for this week, was postponed because of the current crisis in Israeli politics caused by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s recent stroke.
The new initiative comes barely a month after President Bush appointed Rice to take over the leading role in supervising and coordinating the U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq. The American administration has signaled that it will not seek further funding for these efforts.
"The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq," Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the work, told reporters at a recent news conference. In an interview, McCoy reportedly told The Washington Post, "This was just supposed to be a jump-start."
However, Gen. McCoy’s assertion seems to be at odds with previous administration statements. For example, in a speech on Aug. 8, 2003, President Bush said, "In a lot of places, the infrastructure is as good as it was at prewar levels, which is satisfactory, but it's not the ultimate aim. The ultimate aim is for the infrastructure to be the best in the region."
Relatively little of the $30 billion allocated for reconstruction since the
invasion remains to be spent, and spending authority is scheduled to run out in June 2007. A decision not to renew the reconstruction program leaves Iraq with tens of billions of dollars in unfinished projects, and an oil industry and electrical grid that have yet to return to pre-war production levels.
It also leaves the State Department with a mandate to provide a “focal point” for reconstruction efforts and to supervise and coordinate reconstruction programs not only in Iraq, but also in other countries emerging from civil strife. These include Afghanistan, but Bush Administration officials have announced they will henceforth rely more on the Afghan Government, NATO, and contractors from other countries.
Steven Aftergood, head of the Government Secrecy program of the Federation of American Scientists, told me the switch from the Pentagon to the State Department was “a belated recognition that existing policy on reconstruction and stabilization has been woefully inadequate."
That switch came in a little-noticed December 7 Presidential National Security Directive that said, “The Secretary of State shall coordinate and lead integrated United States Government efforts”, coordinating these efforts with the Secretary of Defense to ensure harmonization with any planned or ongoing U.S. military operations across the spectrum of conflict.”
The State Department will lead U.S. Government efforts to prevent countries at risk “from being used as a base of operations or safe haven for extremists, terrorists, organized crime groups, or others who pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy, security, or economic interests,” said the Bush directive.
Some administration observers say the switch from the Pentagon to the State Department was a product of increasing frustration with the pace of reconstruction work in Iraq. They also believe the cutoff in reconstruction funding is part of a new White House narrative that also includes reduction in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq before U.S. mid-term elections in November 2006, when the entire House of Representatives and a third of Senators will stand for reelection.
According to a report by the special inspector general for Iraq (IG), reconstruction officials cannot say how many planned projects they will complete, and there is no clear source for hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to operate the projects that have been finished.
The IG’s report describes some progress but also a number of projects that have failed. For example, expensive electrical substations were built but not connected to the country's electrical grid.
Much of the reconstruction funding has been diverted to other projects. At least $2.5 billion earmarked for infrastructure and schools was diverted to building up a security force. Funds originally intended to repair the electricity grid and sewage and sanitation system were used to train special bomb squad units and a hostage rescue force. The U.S. has also shifted funds to build 10 new prisons to keep pace with the insurgency, and safe houses and armored cars for Iraqi judges.
Hundreds of millions of dollars from the reconstruction fund was also used to hold elections and for four changes of government, and establish a criminal justice system, including $128 million to examine several mass graves of Saddam Hussein’s alleged victims.
In addition to the diversion of funds to other types of projects, the reconstruction efforts have been plagued by substantial corruption and overcharging by contractors.
While 3,600 projects will be completed by the end of the year, the cost of security has eaten up as much as 25% of each project, according to the IG. A U.S. congressional report last October forecast that many reconstruction projects were unlikely to get off the ground because of security costs. Iraqi authorities estimate that 10 billion dollars are needed for the health sector alone, to build or rehabilitate and provide equipment for hospitals and clinics.
Production by Iraq's national electrical grid remains at 4,000 megawatts, 400 megawatts below pre-war levels, with the average Iraqi receiving less than 12 hours of power a day. Oil production, which according to the Pentagon's prewar planning was supposed to provide the funds for Iraqi reconstruction, also remains well below prewar levels. The shortfall has been attributed mainly to sabotage by insurgents. Iraq's refineries are currently producing approximately two million barrels of oil a day, compared with 2.6 million barrels on the eve of the invasion.
The ending of reconstruction funding appears to mark a change from a promise the president made in 2003 to provide Iraq with the best infrastructure in the region.
But just how far the U.S. intended to go in that process has always been murky. While President Bush gave the impression that Iraq was slated for a complete makeover, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared less certain. He told the Senate Appropriations Committee in March 2003, “I don't believe that the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction, in a sense (reconstruction) funds can come from those various sources I mentioned: frozen assets, oil revenues and a variety of other things, including the Oil for Food, which has a very substantial number of billions of dollars in it.”
On the other hand, that view seems to contradict a report submitted the same year by the prime consulting contractor hired by the Pentagon to lay out the future of Iraq’s economy. The company, BearingPoint Inc. of McLean, Virginia, said, “The reconstruction of Iraq has begun. Not the reconstruction of vital public services such as water, electricity or public security, but rather the radical reconstruction of its entire economy.”
Clearly, this has not happened. And the Administration’s recent funding decision suggests it is not likely to happen any time soon.
And with many of Iraq’s key ministries in disarray and some dogged by persistent corruption, observers say it is doubtful that the country’s government will have either the resources or the expertise to manage the many remaining large-scale reconstruction projects.
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