 |
|
"My life is shattered,” Umm Taha said while crying once again, “and I can do nothing. There is no compensation. I spent 20 years building my life, and now I?m 50 years old,” she added, “I can?t start over again. ??We have no present. We have no future. The occupiers have destroyed our life, and what have we done? We want to leave here - leave our country to the people who ?liberated? it.” Nagem Salam interviews a former Abu Ghraib female detainee, who was arrested by USA forces on September 14th, 2003 and detained for four months in Ba’qouba, Tikrit, Abu Ghraib, and the Tesfirat transfer station.
Anybody who has had dealings with the state’s wrath knows the feeling of utter impotence in the face of the overwhelming power that extends from the petty, day-to-day insults and indifference, through to the total force that can be brought to bear on an individual. Most of us, when confronted with such power, cave in. A very few of us refuse, and when we do, the state will do everything in its power to crush and obliterate such people. For at stake is the state’s right to rule, which we the people extend to the state via the electoral system. At one end is the man wrongfully convicted for murder, and at the other end is Tony Blair ignoring the people’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq. In between are the immense and immovable structures of the state in all its manifestations that imposes its ideology on us all.
Is it the beginning of a genuine reform movement, or a destructive power struggle within a multi-headed and inflated security apparatus on the eve of an anticipated - but far from certain - Israeli pull-out from the Gaza Strip? Or is it a clever takeover attempt by former Security Chief Mohamed Dahlan, who has been cited as “the favorite candidate” by the Israeli intelligence and media, to assert his power as the strongest man in Gaza? Available information includes elements of all these scenarios, producing a reform movement entangled within a vicious power struggle between security war lords jockeying for position, either through direct support from Arafat or by positioning themselves for the post-Arafat era. A genuine evolving reform movement, meanwhile, risks being squashed, or even reduced to empty slogans.
"The children were fascinated. Urged to ask questions, they mostly wanted to know whether IDF colonel was afraid, though they also asked if he had killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, whose picture and the picture of his destroyed wheelchair were quite a hit on Israeli TV. The colonel said it was another unit, not his, ‘but he deserved to die,’ and he promised the children that ‘we don’t kill unless there is a really good reason.’ He ended the talk by telling the children he hoped that they too would one day have the chance to become senior officers in the IDF.” Yitzhak Laor writes about an exhibition of soldiers’ photographs in Tel Aviv and introduces some of the soldiers’ memories of their military service.
In the recent past, the media has flooded us with articles and a few photographs about mistreatment of captive prisoners by American soldiers. The moralizers are now hard at work demanding investigations so that America’s name can be cleared and we can show that the mistreatment was really an anomaly. You know, a few sick soldiers indulging themselves, brought down to a depraved level by the circumstances of war. It’s “systemic,” says former Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff, meaning that the “system,” the military system, is such that it dehumanizes you and it dehumanizes the enemy. Well, watch out, folks, get into “systemic” and you may get more than you bargained for
Iraq is a telling example of how a political system created by an occupying power and out of touch with popular aspirations creates the necessary conditions for a perpetual state of civil strife and violent conflict. The invasion brought about regime change, but more importantly, it lead to the complete collapse of an already weakened Iraqi state. As a result, political authorities in Iraq have to contend with eroded legitimacy, lack of authority, and a loss of sovereignty to occupying forces. Despite the seemingly benign and clear-cut formula for the “transfer of power,” a complex matrix of interrelated dilemmas will continue to plague any plan instigated by occupation forces that does not enjoy the consent of mainstream Iraqis.
John Dimitri Negroponte has a birthday today, his 65th. He has been a warrior from the dark side a long time. Almost 40 years ago, Negroponte was a young “political affairs officer” at the United States embassy (1964-68) in what was then Saigon. Twenty years later Negroponte was the Reagan administration’s odious envoy (1981-85) in Honduras and a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal that covertly financed the CIA-run war against the Sandinistas, the elected left-wing government of neighbouring Nicaragua. It was wee George who, another 20 years on, would resurrect Negroponte’s career, first as his ambassador to the United Nations in 2001, the year the Twin Towers came down, and most recently as Washington’s man with the real power in Iraq.
For mile after mile south of Baghdad yesterday, the story was the same: empty police posts, abandoned Iraqi army and police checkpoints and a litter of burnt-out American fuel tankers and rocket-smashed police vehicles down the main highway to Hillah and Najaf. It was Afghanistan Mk2. Yes, it is a shameful reflection on our invasion of Iraq - let us solemnly remember “weapons of mass destruction” - but it is, above all, a tragedy for the Iraqis. They endured the repulsive Saddam. They endured our shameful UN sanctions. They endured our invasion. And now they must endure the anarchy we call freedom.
Over three years ago, the International Republican Institute’s senior program officer for Haiti, Stanley Lucas, suggested on Haitian radio three strategies for removing Haiti’s elected president. First, Lucas proposed forcing Aristide to accept early elections and be voted out; second, he could be charged with corruption and arrested; finally, he could be removed in the same way as Congolese President Laurent Kabila, the month before. “You did see what happened to Kabila?” Lucas asked his audience. Kabila had been assassinated. Throughout the last six years, the federally funded IRI - stated mission, to “promote the practice of democracy” abroad ? spent $3 million training Aristide’s political opponents, uniting them into a single bloc and, according to a former USA ambassador there, encouraging them to reject internationally sanctioned power-sharing agreements in order to heighten Haiti’s political crisis.
 |
 |
Get free membership of the World Crisis Web, entitling you to post your own views on the articles published here, and to receive email summaries of the best articles on the site, as well as analysis and comment from other key sites.
Your privacy will always be fully respected. No-one's details will ever be given, sold, or otherwise traded to anyone else.
The World Crisis Web gives you automatically updated RSS news feeds for desktop newsreaders, or to add to your web site.
Amnesty International - Global Justice Gap Condemns Millions to Abuse
The PA's Disingenuous Boycott Campaign
A Shameful War: Israel in the Dock
Somalia: Bad Policies of Strange Bedfellows
The End of Hypocrisy: Crime's Gleeful Abandon in Gaza
Contact the editor without having to bother with e-mail.