Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
Crowds have gathered in Boston to pay their respects to Edward Kennedy on the first of three days of ceremonies to commemorate the US senator.
Mourning began on Thursday with a private family Mass at the family compound in Massachusetts.
Mr Kennedy's body was then driven to Boston, where his coffin was put on public view.
Mr Kennedy's death on Tuesday prompted a flood of tributes from across the US and around the world.
He will be buried on Saturday evening at the Arlington National Cemetery.
A large group of family members attended Thursday's private Mass at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
Later, thousands of people lined the route as a hearse carrying Mr Kennedy's coffin left in a motorcade on the 70-mile (113km) trip to Boston.
'Extraordinary good'
There, the hearse wound through the streets of the city past some of Senator Kennedy's favourite landmarks, before delivering his coffin to the John F Kennedy presidential library and museum.
Death leaves no clear heir
In pictures: Kennedy ceremonies
As the motorcade passed through Boston, people applauded solemnly as helicopters buzzed overhead.
Mourners were allowed into the JFK building, about 35-40 at a time, to file past the closed coffin placed before a large window overlooking the ocean.
Senator Kennedy's widow Vicki and other members of the family shook hands with the mourners.
Earlier, in Hyannis Port, the mood was sombre.
"It was very moving when the hearse came by - it was observed in total silence," said John Celentano, a 62-year-old business consultant.
"You felt you were part of history."
After the public have paid their respects in Boston, there will be an invitation-only memorial service at the JFK library on Friday evening.
On Saturday, President Barack Obama is expected to address a funeral Mass for Mr Kennedy at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston.
Mr Kennedy will be buried on Saturday next to his brothers, John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy, at the Arlington national cemetery in northern Virginia.
Succession talks
In the US, Mr Kennedy's death has been seen as the end of an era.
The coffin was draped in the US flag
The charismatic senator had long been the leader of one of America's great political dynasties, following the assassinations of his brothers in 1963 and 1968.
In a televised tribute on Wednesday, Mr Obama said Mr Kennedy had achieved "extraordinary good" and was "one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy".
Meanwhile, discussions have begun over how to replace Mr Kennedy in the Senate.
Under current Massachusetts law, his seat could remain vacant for several months until a special election to choose his successor.
Senate Democrats fear that if the seat remains empty for too long, the party will struggle to pass a crucial healthcare reform that President Obama is hoping to push through.
There have been calls for a change in the law that would allow the Massachusetts governor to install an interim senator to fill the seat until the special election takes place.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has said he supports the plan.
Mr Kennedy's body was then driven to Boston, where his coffin was put on public view.
Mr Kennedy's death on Tuesday prompted a flood of tributes from across the US and around the world.
He will be buried on Saturday evening at the Arlington National Cemetery.
A large group of family members attended Thursday's private Mass at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
Later, thousands of people lined the route as a hearse carrying Mr Kennedy's coffin left in a motorcade on the 70-mile (113km) trip to Boston.
'Extraordinary good'
There, the hearse wound through the streets of the city past some of Senator Kennedy's favourite landmarks, before delivering his coffin to the John F Kennedy presidential library and museum.
Death leaves no clear heir
In pictures: Kennedy ceremonies
As the motorcade passed through Boston, people applauded solemnly as helicopters buzzed overhead.
Mourners were allowed into the JFK building, about 35-40 at a time, to file past the closed coffin placed before a large window overlooking the ocean.
Senator Kennedy's widow Vicki and other members of the family shook hands with the mourners.
Earlier, in Hyannis Port, the mood was sombre.
"It was very moving when the hearse came by - it was observed in total silence," said John Celentano, a 62-year-old business consultant.
"You felt you were part of history."
After the public have paid their respects in Boston, there will be an invitation-only memorial service at the JFK library on Friday evening.
On Saturday, President Barack Obama is expected to address a funeral Mass for Mr Kennedy at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston.
Mr Kennedy will be buried on Saturday next to his brothers, John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy, at the Arlington national cemetery in northern Virginia.
Succession talks
In the US, Mr Kennedy's death has been seen as the end of an era.
The coffin was draped in the US flag
The charismatic senator had long been the leader of one of America's great political dynasties, following the assassinations of his brothers in 1963 and 1968.
In a televised tribute on Wednesday, Mr Obama said Mr Kennedy had achieved "extraordinary good" and was "one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy".
Meanwhile, discussions have begun over how to replace Mr Kennedy in the Senate.
Under current Massachusetts law, his seat could remain vacant for several months until a special election to choose his successor.
Senate Democrats fear that if the seat remains empty for too long, the party will struggle to pass a crucial healthcare reform that President Obama is hoping to push through.
There have been calls for a change in the law that would allow the Massachusetts governor to install an interim senator to fill the seat until the special election takes place.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has said he supports the plan.
Koreas to resume family reunions
North and South Korea have agreed to resume family reunions that were called off by the North two years ago, the two sides have announced in a statement.
The reunions, begun in 2000, were shelved amid worsening relations, but talks on the issue resumed this week.
Several hundred families split by the 1950-53 Korean War will be able to meet for several days from late September, the joint North-South statement said.
The agreement is the latest sign of tensions easing between the Koreas.
Time running out
Red Cross officials from both countries reached agreement after three days of talks at the Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea - where the family reunions are to be held from 26 September to 1 October.
The families will be allowed to stay for a few days, spending time and sharing meals together, before returning to their homes.
Tens of thousands of families were separated by the war and the number who will be briefly reunited is a tiny fraction of those on the waiting list, says the BBC's John Sudworth in Seoul. For the rest, time is running out, our correspondent adds.
Family reunions were regularly held earlier in the decade
The North and South are still technically at war, as a peace treaty was never concluded at the end of the war.
There are still no exchanges by post, telephone or e-mail between people living across the heavily fortified border.
The South Korean officials used the talks to raise other issues, including the status of 500 people, mostly fishermen, believed to have been seized by the North in recent decades and never returned.
The South also believes hundreds of its prisoners of war remain alive in the North. Pyongyang has refused to discuss the issue, claiming they have all voluntarily defected to the North, says our correspondent.
UN sanctions
In the early part of the decade, the two countries regularly held Red Cross talks to discuss family reunions and other humanitarian issues. About 16,000 families were briefly reunited.
However the reunions were stopped after South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office in February 2008, amid North Korean anger at his policy of ending unconditional aid handouts.
He has tied a resumption of aid to progress on North Korean nuclear disarmament.
Earlier this year, relations between North Korea and the rest of the world were extremely strained. It was heavily criticised in May for conducting its second nuclear test and a series of ballistic missile launches and the UN Security Council agreed to tighten sanctions against North Korea.
But the agreement to hold the Red Cross talks is just one of a series of conciliatory gestures by North Korea in recent weeks.
Last week, Northern officials attended the funeral of South Korea's former President Kim Dae-jung.
Former US President Bill Clinton also visited the North recently, and secured the release of two American journalists detained there.
North Korea also announced this month that it would ease restrictions on cross-border traffic imposed last year amid the rising tension.
Some analysts have said the moves may be an attempt by Pyongyang to gain increased aid or foreign currency as sanctions begin to bite the isolated country.
The reunions, begun in 2000, were shelved amid worsening relations, but talks on the issue resumed this week.
Several hundred families split by the 1950-53 Korean War will be able to meet for several days from late September, the joint North-South statement said.
The agreement is the latest sign of tensions easing between the Koreas.
Time running out
Red Cross officials from both countries reached agreement after three days of talks at the Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea - where the family reunions are to be held from 26 September to 1 October.
The families will be allowed to stay for a few days, spending time and sharing meals together, before returning to their homes.
Tens of thousands of families were separated by the war and the number who will be briefly reunited is a tiny fraction of those on the waiting list, says the BBC's John Sudworth in Seoul. For the rest, time is running out, our correspondent adds.
Family reunions were regularly held earlier in the decade
The North and South are still technically at war, as a peace treaty was never concluded at the end of the war.
There are still no exchanges by post, telephone or e-mail between people living across the heavily fortified border.
The South Korean officials used the talks to raise other issues, including the status of 500 people, mostly fishermen, believed to have been seized by the North in recent decades and never returned.
The South also believes hundreds of its prisoners of war remain alive in the North. Pyongyang has refused to discuss the issue, claiming they have all voluntarily defected to the North, says our correspondent.
UN sanctions
In the early part of the decade, the two countries regularly held Red Cross talks to discuss family reunions and other humanitarian issues. About 16,000 families were briefly reunited.
However the reunions were stopped after South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office in February 2008, amid North Korean anger at his policy of ending unconditional aid handouts.
He has tied a resumption of aid to progress on North Korean nuclear disarmament.
Earlier this year, relations between North Korea and the rest of the world were extremely strained. It was heavily criticised in May for conducting its second nuclear test and a series of ballistic missile launches and the UN Security Council agreed to tighten sanctions against North Korea.
But the agreement to hold the Red Cross talks is just one of a series of conciliatory gestures by North Korea in recent weeks.
Last week, Northern officials attended the funeral of South Korea's former President Kim Dae-jung.
Former US President Bill Clinton also visited the North recently, and secured the release of two American journalists detained there.
North Korea also announced this month that it would ease restrictions on cross-border traffic imposed last year amid the rising tension.
Some analysts have said the moves may be an attempt by Pyongyang to gain increased aid or foreign currency as sanctions begin to bite the isolated country.
Fake Dutch 'moon rock' revealed
A treasured piece at the Dutch national museum, a supposed moon rock from the first manned lunar landing, is nothing more than petrified wood, curators say.
It was given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo-11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969.
When Mr Drees died, the rock went on display at the Amsterdam museum.
At one point it was insured for around $500,000 (£308,000), but tests have proved it was not the genuine article.
The Rijksmuseum, which is perhaps better known for paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, says it will keep the piece as a curiosity.
"It's a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered," Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
"We can laugh about it."
The "rock" had originally been been vetted through a phone call to Nasa, she added.
The US agency gave moon rocks to more than 100 countries following lunar missions in the 1970s.
US officials said they had no explanation for the Dutch discovery.
It was given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo-11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969.
When Mr Drees died, the rock went on display at the Amsterdam museum.
At one point it was insured for around $500,000 (£308,000), but tests have proved it was not the genuine article.
The Rijksmuseum, which is perhaps better known for paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, says it will keep the piece as a curiosity.
"It's a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered," Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
"We can laugh about it."
The "rock" had originally been been vetted through a phone call to Nasa, she added.
The US agency gave moon rocks to more than 100 countries following lunar missions in the 1970s.
US officials said they had no explanation for the Dutch discovery.
The body of the powerful Shia Muslim political leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who died on in Iran on Wednesday, has arrived in Iraq for burial.
President Nouri Maliki and hundreds of officials met the coffin of Hakim, the leader of one of Iraq's most powerful Shia parties, at Baghdad airport
The body is to be taken to the Shia shrine city of Karbala, before being buried in Najaf on Saturday.
Hakim was an important power broker and held strong ties with the US and Iran.
He died on Wednesday in Tehran, where he was being treated for lung cancer.
Hundreds gathered in the Iranian capital on Thursday for a mourning ceremony where a tribute message from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was read.
ABDUL AZIZ AL-HAKIM
Born circa 1950, died 26 August 2009
Leader of Islamist Shia party Sciri, later SIIC, since 2003
Backed by Tehran, but maintaining close ties to its arch-rival Washington
Lost six of his seven brothers and 50 extended family members in resistance to Saddam Hussein
Obituary: Abdul Aziz al-Hakim
Security has been reinforced along the route of the funeral cortege in Baghdad, with many Shia followers expected to turn out to mourn him.
The BBC's Andrew North in Baghdad says that such gatherings are often targeted by bombers.
After failing to prevent recent attacks killing at least 100 people in the Iraqi capital, security forces are under pressure to show they can protect the city, our correspondent says.
Hakim opposed Saddam Hussein from exile in Iran for more than two decades, before returning to Iraq in 2003 after the US-led invasion.
He took control of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri - which later became SIIC) after his brother was assassinated in Najaf in 2003.
The party has several senior cabinet members, and its militia - the Badr Brigade - has at times wielded considerable influence in Iraq's security establishment.
Revered family
Since falling ill, Hakim had cut back his political involvement and his son Ammar gained prominence. He is expected to take over leadership of the party.
Hakim was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007 and had chemotherapy
As heir to the leadership of one of the main anti-Saddam Hussein factions in Iraq, Abdul Aziz Hakim managed to keep good ties with both the American authorities and Iran, which strongly backed his group.
His brother and predecessor as party leader was the charismatic Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, who was killed along with about 100 supporters in a massive car bombing in the city of Najaf in August 2003.
The family is revered among Iraq's largest religious community, the Shia, for its tradition of scholarship and its bouts of resistance against Saddam Hussein in its southern Iraqi stronghold.
However, the quietly-spoken Hakim was distrusted by many Sunnis who saw him as too Iranian-orientated and sectarian in his political philosophy.
In 2007, the party changed its name from Sciri - the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.
SIIC has been part of Iraq's ruling Shia alliance, the United Iraqi Alliance, led by the Islamic Dawa party of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
However, ahead of national elections in January, the SIIC announced last week that it would campaign from within a new Shia Muslim bloc.
The body is to be taken to the Shia shrine city of Karbala, before being buried in Najaf on Saturday.
Hakim was an important power broker and held strong ties with the US and Iran.
He died on Wednesday in Tehran, where he was being treated for lung cancer.
Hundreds gathered in the Iranian capital on Thursday for a mourning ceremony where a tribute message from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was read.
ABDUL AZIZ AL-HAKIM
Born circa 1950, died 26 August 2009
Leader of Islamist Shia party Sciri, later SIIC, since 2003
Backed by Tehran, but maintaining close ties to its arch-rival Washington
Lost six of his seven brothers and 50 extended family members in resistance to Saddam Hussein
Obituary: Abdul Aziz al-Hakim
Security has been reinforced along the route of the funeral cortege in Baghdad, with many Shia followers expected to turn out to mourn him.
The BBC's Andrew North in Baghdad says that such gatherings are often targeted by bombers.
After failing to prevent recent attacks killing at least 100 people in the Iraqi capital, security forces are under pressure to show they can protect the city, our correspondent says.
Hakim opposed Saddam Hussein from exile in Iran for more than two decades, before returning to Iraq in 2003 after the US-led invasion.
He took control of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri - which later became SIIC) after his brother was assassinated in Najaf in 2003.
The party has several senior cabinet members, and its militia - the Badr Brigade - has at times wielded considerable influence in Iraq's security establishment.
Revered family
Since falling ill, Hakim had cut back his political involvement and his son Ammar gained prominence. He is expected to take over leadership of the party.
Hakim was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007 and had chemotherapy
As heir to the leadership of one of the main anti-Saddam Hussein factions in Iraq, Abdul Aziz Hakim managed to keep good ties with both the American authorities and Iran, which strongly backed his group.
His brother and predecessor as party leader was the charismatic Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, who was killed along with about 100 supporters in a massive car bombing in the city of Najaf in August 2003.
The family is revered among Iraq's largest religious community, the Shia, for its tradition of scholarship and its bouts of resistance against Saddam Hussein in its southern Iraqi stronghold.
However, the quietly-spoken Hakim was distrusted by many Sunnis who saw him as too Iranian-orientated and sectarian in his political philosophy.
In 2007, the party changed its name from Sciri - the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.
SIIC has been part of Iraq's ruling Shia alliance, the United Iraqi Alliance, led by the Islamic Dawa party of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
However, ahead of national elections in January, the SIIC announced last week that it would campaign from within a new Shia Muslim bloc.
Call for action on Iran oppostion
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for leaders of the protests that followed his disputed re-election in June to be dealt with decisively.
A number of senior opposition figures are currently on trial in Tehran accused of conspiring with foreign powers to organise the unrest.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday there was no proof to this accusation.
Iran's opposition claims widespread vote fraud during the election.
"The leaders and the main elements involved in the [post-election protests] should be dealt with most seriously," Mr Ahmadinejad said in a speech before thousands of people before Friday prayers at Tehran University.
"Those who have organised [the protests], provoked and implemented the desires of the enemy should be dealt with decisively," he said in the speech, also broadcast live on state radio.
There were mass protests in Tehran after Mr Ahmadinejad was declared winner with 63% of the vote.
Opposition leaders say dozens of people were killed and hundreds arrested during the unrest.
Trials are taking place of some of those allegedly involved in the unrest, but they have been dismissed by critics as show trials.
Ayatollah Khamenei's remarks seem intended to reduce tensions over the disputed election and its aftermath, correspondents say.
"I do not accuse the leaders of the recent incidents to be subordinate to the foreigners, like the United States and Britain, since this issue has not been proven for me," said Ayatollah Khamenei in a statement read out on Iranian television.
A number of senior opposition figures are currently on trial in Tehran accused of conspiring with foreign powers to organise the unrest.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday there was no proof to this accusation.
Iran's opposition claims widespread vote fraud during the election.
"The leaders and the main elements involved in the [post-election protests] should be dealt with most seriously," Mr Ahmadinejad said in a speech before thousands of people before Friday prayers at Tehran University.
"Those who have organised [the protests], provoked and implemented the desires of the enemy should be dealt with decisively," he said in the speech, also broadcast live on state radio.
There were mass protests in Tehran after Mr Ahmadinejad was declared winner with 63% of the vote.
Opposition leaders say dozens of people were killed and hundreds arrested during the unrest.
Trials are taking place of some of those allegedly involved in the unrest, but they have been dismissed by critics as show trials.
Ayatollah Khamenei's remarks seem intended to reduce tensions over the disputed election and its aftermath, correspondents say.
"I do not accuse the leaders of the recent incidents to be subordinate to the foreigners, like the United States and Britain, since this issue has not been proven for me," said Ayatollah Khamenei in a statement read out on Iranian television.
Oxfam warning over Nepal climate
International aid agency Oxfam has warned that millions of rural poor in Nepal could face hunger as a result of climate change.
A report says that poor harvests, water shortages and extreme temperatures will put pressure on millions of Nepalis already living below the poverty line.
Nepal is only just emerging from a decade-long civil conflict.
The report comes ahead of a summit in the capital, Kathmandu, on the threat of climate change to the Himalayas.
Millions of people are dependent on the water which flows from the mountains.
It is also just 100 days until world leaders come together to discuss a new global climate change treaty in Copenhagen in December.
Nepal has experienced its driest winter in 40 years, followed by late and unpredictable monsoon rains, and this has meant the land is more susceptible to erosion.
But the prolonged drought has had a bigger impact.
Grim situation
Several million villagers living in Nepal's hills are facing water shortages which have, in turn, led to falling crop yields.
A lack of ground water has also contributed to the spread of diseases such as diarrhoea, as villagers use dirty streams and rivers for drinking water.
Prabin Man Singh from the international aid agency Oxfam said the change in weather patterns was putting more pressure on the rural poor.
"The people living in the rural areas were already having lots of problems in their livelihoods. But with the climate change, the whole scenario, the whole struggle of their survival has been exaggerated," he said.
Residents in the affected area have expressed their concerns about the nature of the problem.
In the remote village of Bhattegaun in western Nepal, the stream that provides water has dried up to a thin trickle.
Residents here have complained about water shortages in the area.
"We do not get a good production from agriculture at all. We cannot depend on farming and irrigation to make a living or educate our children," 35-year-old Naina Shahi told the BBC.
The changes seen in Nepal's climate over the past few years - drier winters, unreliable monsoon rains - are in line with what climate scientists are predicting will happen as the Earth gets warmer.
Oxfam has called on leaders from the world's richest countries to help Nepal better adapt to the affects of climate change when they meet to discuss the issue in Copenhagen this December.
Nepal is only just emerging from a decade-long civil conflict.
The report comes ahead of a summit in the capital, Kathmandu, on the threat of climate change to the Himalayas.
Millions of people are dependent on the water which flows from the mountains.
It is also just 100 days until world leaders come together to discuss a new global climate change treaty in Copenhagen in December.
Nepal has experienced its driest winter in 40 years, followed by late and unpredictable monsoon rains, and this has meant the land is more susceptible to erosion.
But the prolonged drought has had a bigger impact.
Grim situation
Several million villagers living in Nepal's hills are facing water shortages which have, in turn, led to falling crop yields.
A lack of ground water has also contributed to the spread of diseases such as diarrhoea, as villagers use dirty streams and rivers for drinking water.
Prabin Man Singh from the international aid agency Oxfam said the change in weather patterns was putting more pressure on the rural poor.
"The people living in the rural areas were already having lots of problems in their livelihoods. But with the climate change, the whole scenario, the whole struggle of their survival has been exaggerated," he said.
Residents in the affected area have expressed their concerns about the nature of the problem.
In the remote village of Bhattegaun in western Nepal, the stream that provides water has dried up to a thin trickle.
Residents here have complained about water shortages in the area.
"We do not get a good production from agriculture at all. We cannot depend on farming and irrigation to make a living or educate our children," 35-year-old Naina Shahi told the BBC.
The changes seen in Nepal's climate over the past few years - drier winters, unreliable monsoon rains - are in line with what climate scientists are predicting will happen as the Earth gets warmer.
Oxfam has called on leaders from the world's richest countries to help Nepal better adapt to the affects of climate change when they meet to discuss the issue in Copenhagen this December.
UN warns over swine flu in birds
The discovery of swine flu in birds in Chile raises concerns about the spread of the virus, the UN warns.
Last week the H1N1 virus was found in turkeys on farms in Chile. The UN now says poultry farms elsewhere in the world could also become infected.
Scientists are worried that the virus could theoretically mix with more dangerous strains. It has previously spread from humans to pigs.
However, swine flu remains no more severe than seasonal flu.
Safe to eat
Chilean authorities first reported the incident last week. Two poultry farms are affected near the seaport of Valparaiso.
Juan Lubroth, interim chief veterinary officer of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said: "Once the sick birds have recovered, safe production and processing can continue. They do not pose a threat to the food chain."
Chilean authorities have established a temporary quarantine and have decided to allow the infected birds to recover rather than culling them.
It is thought the incident represents a "spill-over" from infected farm workers to turkeys.
Canada, Argentina and Australia have previously reported spread of the H1N1 swine flu virus from farm workers to pigs.
Dangerous strains
The emergence of a more dangerous strain of flu remains a theoretical risk. Different strains of virus can mix together in a process called genetic reassortment or recombination.
So far there have been no cases of H5N1 bird flu in flocks in Chile.
However, Dr Lubroth said: "In Southeast Asia there is a lot of the (H5N1) virus circulating in poultry.
"The introduction of H1N1 in these populations would be of greater concern."
Colin Butter from the UK's Institute of Animal Health agrees.
"We hope it is a rare event and we must monitor closely what happens next," he told BBC News.
"However, it is not just about the H5N1 strain. Any further spread of the H1N1 virus between birds, or from birds to humans would not be good.
"It might make the virus harder to control, because it would be more likely to change."
William Karesh, vice president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who studies the spread of animal diseases, says he is not surprised by what has happened.
"The location is surprising, but it could be that Chile has a better surveillance system.
"However, the only constant is that the situation keeps changing."
Last week the H1N1 virus was found in turkeys on farms in Chile. The UN now says poultry farms elsewhere in the world could also become infected.
Scientists are worried that the virus could theoretically mix with more dangerous strains. It has previously spread from humans to pigs.
However, swine flu remains no more severe than seasonal flu.
Safe to eat
Chilean authorities first reported the incident last week. Two poultry farms are affected near the seaport of Valparaiso.
Juan Lubroth, interim chief veterinary officer of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said: "Once the sick birds have recovered, safe production and processing can continue. They do not pose a threat to the food chain."
Chilean authorities have established a temporary quarantine and have decided to allow the infected birds to recover rather than culling them.
It is thought the incident represents a "spill-over" from infected farm workers to turkeys.
Canada, Argentina and Australia have previously reported spread of the H1N1 swine flu virus from farm workers to pigs.
Dangerous strains
The emergence of a more dangerous strain of flu remains a theoretical risk. Different strains of virus can mix together in a process called genetic reassortment or recombination.
So far there have been no cases of H5N1 bird flu in flocks in Chile.
However, Dr Lubroth said: "In Southeast Asia there is a lot of the (H5N1) virus circulating in poultry.
"The introduction of H1N1 in these populations would be of greater concern."
Colin Butter from the UK's Institute of Animal Health agrees.
"We hope it is a rare event and we must monitor closely what happens next," he told BBC News.
"However, it is not just about the H5N1 strain. Any further spread of the H1N1 virus between birds, or from birds to humans would not be good.
"It might make the virus harder to control, because it would be more likely to change."
William Karesh, vice president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who studies the spread of animal diseases, says he is not surprised by what has happened.
"The location is surprising, but it could be that Chile has a better surveillance system.
"However, the only constant is that the situation keeps changing."
Confusion over Gabon candidates
Two days before elections in Gabon to replace the late President Omar Bongo, at least five out of 23 candidates have said they are pulling out of the race.
They say they will now back Andre Mba Obame, a former government minister.
But several other candidates denied media reports that they had also withdrawn in favour of Mr Obame.
The favourite to win Sunday's poll is Ali Ben Bongo, the son of the former president who ruled Gabon from 1967 until his death in June.
Some of the candidates have complained of voter registration irregularities, including Bruno Ben Moubamba, who has gone on hunger strike in protest.
He, however, denied reports that he was one of those who had withdrawn from the race and was supporting Mr Obame.
Following overnight talks, one of those pulling out of the race, Anna Claudine Assayi Ayo, said that "consultations resulted in a secret vote and the designation of Andre Mba Obame [as candidate]".
Mr Obame was the interior minister under President Bongo.
He was a senior member of the ruling Gabonese Democratic party (PDG) until deciding to run as an independent after it selected Ali Ben Bongo as its candidate.
He, and some of those who withdrew from the election, are from the Fang ethnic group - Gabon's largest - and correspondents say this could help him pose a serious challenge to Mr Bongo.
However, the anti-Bongo vote still looks set to be divided, while the PDG candidate enjoys the advantage of having the best-financed campaign.
Gabon is a major oil producer but most of its 1.4 million people live in poverty.
The late President Bongo was facing charges of corruption in a French court when he died.
They say they will now back Andre Mba Obame, a former government minister.
But several other candidates denied media reports that they had also withdrawn in favour of Mr Obame.
The favourite to win Sunday's poll is Ali Ben Bongo, the son of the former president who ruled Gabon from 1967 until his death in June.
Some of the candidates have complained of voter registration irregularities, including Bruno Ben Moubamba, who has gone on hunger strike in protest.
He, however, denied reports that he was one of those who had withdrawn from the race and was supporting Mr Obame.
Following overnight talks, one of those pulling out of the race, Anna Claudine Assayi Ayo, said that "consultations resulted in a secret vote and the designation of Andre Mba Obame [as candidate]".
Mr Obame was the interior minister under President Bongo.
He was a senior member of the ruling Gabonese Democratic party (PDG) until deciding to run as an independent after it selected Ali Ben Bongo as its candidate.
He, and some of those who withdrew from the election, are from the Fang ethnic group - Gabon's largest - and correspondents say this could help him pose a serious challenge to Mr Bongo.
However, the anti-Bongo vote still looks set to be divided, while the PDG candidate enjoys the advantage of having the best-financed campaign.
Gabon is a major oil producer but most of its 1.4 million people live in poverty.
The late President Bongo was facing charges of corruption in a French court when he died.
Israel: A stalemated action of history
In late 1949 I worked on a boat taking Jews from Marseilles to Haifa, Israel. Jews from Arab nations were in the front of the boat, Europeans in the rear. I was regarded by many of the Europeans as some sort of freak because I had a United States passport and so could stay in the land of milk and honey. One man wanted me to marry his daughter – which meant he too could live in the land of milk and honey. My Hebrew became quite respectable but the experience was radicalizing or, I should say, kept me radical, and I have stayed that way.
Later I learned from someone who ran a displaced persons camp in Germany that the large majority of Jews wanted to go anywhere but Palestine. They were compelled to state Palestine or else risk receiving no aid. I understood very early that there was much amiss in the countless Arab villages and homes I saw destroyed, and that the entire Zionist project – regardless of the often venal nature of the Arab opposition to it – was a dangerous sham.
The result of the creation of a state called Israel was abysmal. Jews from Poland have nothing in common with Germans and neither has anything to do with those from the Arab world. It is nationality, not religion, that counts most. Jews in Israel, especially the Germans, largely ghettoized themselves by their place of origin during the first generation, when a militarized culture produced the mixed new breed called sabras – an essentially anti-intellectual personality far different from the one the early Zionists, who were mostly socialists who preached the nobility of labor, expected to emerge.
The large majority of Israelis are not in the least Jewish in the cultural sense, are scarcely socialist in any sense, and daily life and the way people live is no different in Israel than it is in Chicago or Amsterdam. There is simply no rational reason that justifies the state’s creation.
The outcome is a small state with a military ethos that pervades all aspects of Israel’s culture, its politics and, above all, its response to the existence of Arabs in its midst and at its borders. From its inception, the ideology of the early Zionists – of Labor Zionism as well as the rightist Revisionism that Vladimir Jabotinsky produced – embodied a commitment to violence, erroneously called self-defense, and a virtual hysteria. As a transcendent idea, Zionism has no validity because the national differences between Jews are overwhelming.
What Zionism confirmed, if any confirmation were needed, is that accidents are more important in shaping history than is all too often allowed. Here was the intellectual café, which existed in key cities – Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century or the Lower East Side of New York before World War I – filled with immensely creative people full of ideas and longing for a golden era to come. Ideas – good, bad, and indifferent – flourished. In this heady atmosphere, Zionism was born.
But Zionism has produced a Sparta that traumatized an already artificially divided region partitioned after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I led to the Versailles Treaty and the creation of the modern Middle East. The state of Israel has always relied on military solutions to political and sociological problems with the Arabs. The result is constant mobilization.
Even more troublesome for peace and stability in the vast Middle East, Zionism has always been symbiotic on some great power for the security of its national project, realized in a state called Israel. Before 1939 it was the British; during the 1950s it was France. Israel has survived since the late 1960s on the influx of U.S. arms and money, and this has allowed it to encourage its fears of annihilation – a fate its possession of nuclear weapons makes most unlikely.
But Israel also has an importance far beyond the fantasies of a few confused literati. Today its significance for American foreign policy is far greater because the Soviet Union no longer exists and the Middle East provokes the fear so essential to mobilizing Congress and the U.S. public. “The best hopes and the worst fears of the planet are invested in that relatively small patch of earth” – as George Tenet, the former head of the CIA, put it in his memoir – and so understanding how and why that patch came into being, and the grave limits of the martial course it is following, has a very great, even transcendent value.
In July 2003 Foreign Minister Shalom predicted that Iran would have nuclear bomb capability by 2006. It did not have nuclear weapons in 2006, though in fact a successful strike by conventional missiles on Dimona, Israel’s nuclear facility would radioactivate a good part of Israel – and both Iran and Syria have such missiles.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, during Vice-President Dick Cheney’s visit in late March 2008, stated that “Iran’s weapons program threatens not only the stability of the region, but of the whole world,” and he did not rule out a war with it.
By spring 2008 Israel was also very concerned about the growing ascendancy of Hezbollah in Lebanon and its greatly increased firepower – mainly in the form of rockets capable of striking much of Israel. It regards Hezbollah as a tool of Iran, and its focus on Iran concerns its control over Hezbollah as well as its ability to challenge Israel’s nuclear monopoly.
But there can be no doubt that Hezbollah's strength has only grown since Israel attacked it in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Israel now has an enemy that can inflict immense damage on it, probably resulting in highly skilled Jews migrating far faster than they already are at present – even now, more Jews are leaving Israel than migrating to it.
The existence of Israel is scarcely the only reason American policy in the region is as bad as it is. After all, it did not take Zionism to encourage Washington to seek the elimination of British influence in the region, and today no one can tell how long the U.S. will remain mired in the affairs of the Middle East. But Israel is now a vital factor. While the extent of its role can be debated, without it the politics of the entire Middle East would be different – troubled but very different.
At least equally nefarious in the long run, Israel’s existence has radicalized – but in a negative sense – the Arab world, distracting it from natural class differences that often overcome religious and tribal ties. It has fanned Arab nationalism abysmally and given it a transcendent negative identity.
I am very realistic – and pessimistic – about an eventual negotiated solution to the crisis that has surrounded Palestine and Israel. Given the magnitude of the changes needed, the present situation justifies the most dismal conclusions. After all, the Arabs that live under Israeli control will quite soon outnumber the Jewish population, leaving a de facto Jewish state in which Jews are a minority!
This fact is becoming deeply troublesome within Israeli politics today, causing former expansionists to reverse their position and leading to more and more internal controversy. Nor will there ever be an administration in Washington ready to do diplomatically what none has ever dared do since 1947, namely compel Israel to make an equitable peace with the Arabs.
Neither a one- nor two-state solution will come to pass. But the Jewish population is very likely to decline, and if it falls sufficiently then demography may prove to be a crucial factor. The ratio of Jews to Arabs would then become highly significant. The Jews in Israel are highly skilled and many have gotten out, migrating abroad.
The Israeli military is the most powerful in the region because it has been deluged with American equipment, which it has learned to service. But U.S. forces need repairmen to service the very same equipment, more than ever because recruitment into the American military is now lower than it has been in a quarter-century (not to mention its astronomical suicide rate), and skilled Israelis can take jobs with America’s armed forces that they are eminently qualified to fill.
Moreover, Iran and the other Arab states will eventually develop or acquire nuclear weapons, making Israel incredibly insecure for its highly mobile Jewish population – one exhausted by regular service in compulsory reserves. And as already suggested, destroying Dimona with conventional missiles or mortars would be a cheap way to radioactivate a good part of Israel.
Even worse, Osama bin Laden, or someone like him, may acquire a nuclear device, and one nuclear bomb detonated in or near Israel will effectively destroy what is a tiny area. Whoever destroys Israel will be proclaimed a hero in the Arab world. To those with skills, the answer is clear: get out. And getting out they are.
There are also Orthodox Jews in Israel but Israeli mass culture is now virtually indistinguishable from consumerism anywhere – in many crucial respects, there is more Judaism in parts of Brooklyn or Toronto than in most of Israel. The Orthodox too may be ready to leave behind the insecurity and troubles confronting those who live in a nation that is, after all, a part of a highly unstable region.
Sober and quite rational Israelis exist, of course, and I cite them often enough, but American policy will be determined by factors having nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, rational Israelis are an all too small minority
Later I learned from someone who ran a displaced persons camp in Germany that the large majority of Jews wanted to go anywhere but Palestine. They were compelled to state Palestine or else risk receiving no aid. I understood very early that there was much amiss in the countless Arab villages and homes I saw destroyed, and that the entire Zionist project – regardless of the often venal nature of the Arab opposition to it – was a dangerous sham.
The result of the creation of a state called Israel was abysmal. Jews from Poland have nothing in common with Germans and neither has anything to do with those from the Arab world. It is nationality, not religion, that counts most. Jews in Israel, especially the Germans, largely ghettoized themselves by their place of origin during the first generation, when a militarized culture produced the mixed new breed called sabras – an essentially anti-intellectual personality far different from the one the early Zionists, who were mostly socialists who preached the nobility of labor, expected to emerge.
The large majority of Israelis are not in the least Jewish in the cultural sense, are scarcely socialist in any sense, and daily life and the way people live is no different in Israel than it is in Chicago or Amsterdam. There is simply no rational reason that justifies the state’s creation.
The outcome is a small state with a military ethos that pervades all aspects of Israel’s culture, its politics and, above all, its response to the existence of Arabs in its midst and at its borders. From its inception, the ideology of the early Zionists – of Labor Zionism as well as the rightist Revisionism that Vladimir Jabotinsky produced – embodied a commitment to violence, erroneously called self-defense, and a virtual hysteria. As a transcendent idea, Zionism has no validity because the national differences between Jews are overwhelming.
What Zionism confirmed, if any confirmation were needed, is that accidents are more important in shaping history than is all too often allowed. Here was the intellectual café, which existed in key cities – Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century or the Lower East Side of New York before World War I – filled with immensely creative people full of ideas and longing for a golden era to come. Ideas – good, bad, and indifferent – flourished. In this heady atmosphere, Zionism was born.
But Zionism has produced a Sparta that traumatized an already artificially divided region partitioned after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I led to the Versailles Treaty and the creation of the modern Middle East. The state of Israel has always relied on military solutions to political and sociological problems with the Arabs. The result is constant mobilization.
Even more troublesome for peace and stability in the vast Middle East, Zionism has always been symbiotic on some great power for the security of its national project, realized in a state called Israel. Before 1939 it was the British; during the 1950s it was France. Israel has survived since the late 1960s on the influx of U.S. arms and money, and this has allowed it to encourage its fears of annihilation – a fate its possession of nuclear weapons makes most unlikely.
But Israel also has an importance far beyond the fantasies of a few confused literati. Today its significance for American foreign policy is far greater because the Soviet Union no longer exists and the Middle East provokes the fear so essential to mobilizing Congress and the U.S. public. “The best hopes and the worst fears of the planet are invested in that relatively small patch of earth” – as George Tenet, the former head of the CIA, put it in his memoir – and so understanding how and why that patch came into being, and the grave limits of the martial course it is following, has a very great, even transcendent value.
In July 2003 Foreign Minister Shalom predicted that Iran would have nuclear bomb capability by 2006. It did not have nuclear weapons in 2006, though in fact a successful strike by conventional missiles on Dimona, Israel’s nuclear facility would radioactivate a good part of Israel – and both Iran and Syria have such missiles.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, during Vice-President Dick Cheney’s visit in late March 2008, stated that “Iran’s weapons program threatens not only the stability of the region, but of the whole world,” and he did not rule out a war with it.
By spring 2008 Israel was also very concerned about the growing ascendancy of Hezbollah in Lebanon and its greatly increased firepower – mainly in the form of rockets capable of striking much of Israel. It regards Hezbollah as a tool of Iran, and its focus on Iran concerns its control over Hezbollah as well as its ability to challenge Israel’s nuclear monopoly.
But there can be no doubt that Hezbollah's strength has only grown since Israel attacked it in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Israel now has an enemy that can inflict immense damage on it, probably resulting in highly skilled Jews migrating far faster than they already are at present – even now, more Jews are leaving Israel than migrating to it.
The existence of Israel is scarcely the only reason American policy in the region is as bad as it is. After all, it did not take Zionism to encourage Washington to seek the elimination of British influence in the region, and today no one can tell how long the U.S. will remain mired in the affairs of the Middle East. But Israel is now a vital factor. While the extent of its role can be debated, without it the politics of the entire Middle East would be different – troubled but very different.
At least equally nefarious in the long run, Israel’s existence has radicalized – but in a negative sense – the Arab world, distracting it from natural class differences that often overcome religious and tribal ties. It has fanned Arab nationalism abysmally and given it a transcendent negative identity.
I am very realistic – and pessimistic – about an eventual negotiated solution to the crisis that has surrounded Palestine and Israel. Given the magnitude of the changes needed, the present situation justifies the most dismal conclusions. After all, the Arabs that live under Israeli control will quite soon outnumber the Jewish population, leaving a de facto Jewish state in which Jews are a minority!
This fact is becoming deeply troublesome within Israeli politics today, causing former expansionists to reverse their position and leading to more and more internal controversy. Nor will there ever be an administration in Washington ready to do diplomatically what none has ever dared do since 1947, namely compel Israel to make an equitable peace with the Arabs.
Neither a one- nor two-state solution will come to pass. But the Jewish population is very likely to decline, and if it falls sufficiently then demography may prove to be a crucial factor. The ratio of Jews to Arabs would then become highly significant. The Jews in Israel are highly skilled and many have gotten out, migrating abroad.
The Israeli military is the most powerful in the region because it has been deluged with American equipment, which it has learned to service. But U.S. forces need repairmen to service the very same equipment, more than ever because recruitment into the American military is now lower than it has been in a quarter-century (not to mention its astronomical suicide rate), and skilled Israelis can take jobs with America’s armed forces that they are eminently qualified to fill.
Moreover, Iran and the other Arab states will eventually develop or acquire nuclear weapons, making Israel incredibly insecure for its highly mobile Jewish population – one exhausted by regular service in compulsory reserves. And as already suggested, destroying Dimona with conventional missiles or mortars would be a cheap way to radioactivate a good part of Israel.
Even worse, Osama bin Laden, or someone like him, may acquire a nuclear device, and one nuclear bomb detonated in or near Israel will effectively destroy what is a tiny area. Whoever destroys Israel will be proclaimed a hero in the Arab world. To those with skills, the answer is clear: get out. And getting out they are.
There are also Orthodox Jews in Israel but Israeli mass culture is now virtually indistinguishable from consumerism anywhere – in many crucial respects, there is more Judaism in parts of Brooklyn or Toronto than in most of Israel. The Orthodox too may be ready to leave behind the insecurity and troubles confronting those who live in a nation that is, after all, a part of a highly unstable region.
Sober and quite rational Israelis exist, of course, and I cite them often enough, but American policy will be determined by factors having nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, rational Israelis are an all too small minority
Jackson death ruled as homicide
The death of Michael Jackson was homicide due to intoxication by anaesthetic, the Los Angeles coroner has formally announced.
The 50-year-old singer died in June from cardiac arrest at his LA mansion.
The powerful anaesthetic Propofol and Lorazepam, a sedative, were the "primary drugs responsible for Mr Jackson's death", the report said.
The coroner's verdict increases the chances of criminal charges being brought against his doctor.
Police have interviewed Dr Conrad Murray but he has not been named as a suspect. He has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
"The cause of death was established as acute Propofol intoxication," the coroner's report said.
"The manner of death has been ruled: Homicide," it adds. In the US, the crime of homicide includes manslaughter.
A cocktail of drugs - including Midazolam, Diazepam, Lidocaine, Lorazepam and Ephedrine - were detected in his body, the report said.
The full toxicology report remains sealed, at the request of the LA Police Department (LAPD) and the city's district attorney.
The lawyer for Dr Murray has demanded that the coroner's office release the full autopsy report, according to AP.
Edward Chernoff said he needed to know the exact levels of the various drugs in Jackson's system and said the refusal to release the report suggested "gamesmanship".
The LAPD said they were referring the case to prosecutors for possible criminal charges to be filed.
Conrad Murray insists he has done nothing wrong
An initial affidavit by the city's chief coroner had said that lethal levels of Propofol were judged to be the cause of Jackson's death.
According to those documents, Jackson's doctor told police he had been giving the singer the drug as part of his treatment for insomnia.
But, he said he had been concerned Jackson was becoming addicted to the drug and had been trying to wean him off.
The singer will be buried on Thursday at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, in a private ceremony.
The burial was initially scheduled to take place on Saturday - on what would have been Jackson's 51st birthday.
The 50-year-old singer died in June from cardiac arrest at his LA mansion.
The powerful anaesthetic Propofol and Lorazepam, a sedative, were the "primary drugs responsible for Mr Jackson's death", the report said.
The coroner's verdict increases the chances of criminal charges being brought against his doctor.
Police have interviewed Dr Conrad Murray but he has not been named as a suspect. He has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
"The cause of death was established as acute Propofol intoxication," the coroner's report said.
"The manner of death has been ruled: Homicide," it adds. In the US, the crime of homicide includes manslaughter.
A cocktail of drugs - including Midazolam, Diazepam, Lidocaine, Lorazepam and Ephedrine - were detected in his body, the report said.
The full toxicology report remains sealed, at the request of the LA Police Department (LAPD) and the city's district attorney.
The lawyer for Dr Murray has demanded that the coroner's office release the full autopsy report, according to AP.
Edward Chernoff said he needed to know the exact levels of the various drugs in Jackson's system and said the refusal to release the report suggested "gamesmanship".
The LAPD said they were referring the case to prosecutors for possible criminal charges to be filed.
Conrad Murray insists he has done nothing wrong
An initial affidavit by the city's chief coroner had said that lethal levels of Propofol were judged to be the cause of Jackson's death.
According to those documents, Jackson's doctor told police he had been giving the singer the drug as part of his treatment for insomnia.
But, he said he had been concerned Jackson was becoming addicted to the drug and had been trying to wean him off.
The singer will be buried on Thursday at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, in a private ceremony.
The burial was initially scheduled to take place on Saturday - on what would have been Jackson's 51st birthday.
Egypt: Israel Must Stop Settlement Activity in East Jerusalem before talks
STOCKHOLM, August 28, 2009 (WAFA)- East Jerusalem must be included in a freeze of settlement activity before Middle East peace talks can restart, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit said Friday.
Aboul-Gheit told reporters in Stockholm that Jerusalem is Arab 'and it will continue to be so.' He added that the Arab world expects the area to be included in a moratorium on settlements.
The Egyptian foreign minister warned that peace talks would last only as long as a freeze on settlement construction was held in place. 'If the Israelis announced that the freeze will last six months, then negotiations will last six months as well,' he stressed.
US officials have denied reports that Washington has agreed to leave east Jerusalem out of the agreement and settle for a nine- to 12-month freeze in the West Bank
Aboul-Gheit told reporters in Stockholm that Jerusalem is Arab 'and it will continue to be so.' He added that the Arab world expects the area to be included in a moratorium on settlements.
The Egyptian foreign minister warned that peace talks would last only as long as a freeze on settlement construction was held in place. 'If the Israelis announced that the freeze will last six months, then negotiations will last six months as well,' he stressed.
US officials have denied reports that Washington has agreed to leave east Jerusalem out of the agreement and settle for a nine- to 12-month freeze in the West Bank
U.S. war against Iraq: Destruction of a civilization
The U.S. seven-year war and occupation of Iraq is driven by several major political forces and informed by a variety of imperial interests. However these interests do not in themselves explain the depth and scope of the sustained, massive and continuing destruction of an entire society and its reduction to a permanent state of war. The range of political forces contributing to the making of the war and the subsequent U.S. occupation include the following (in order of importance):
The most important political force was also the least openly discussed. The Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC), which includes the prominent role of long-time, hard-line unconditional Jewish supporters of the State of Israel appointed to top positions in the Bush Pentagon (Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz ), key operative in the Office of the Vice President (Irving (Scooter) Libby), the Treasury Department (Stuart Levey), the National Security Council (Elliot Abrams) and a phalanx of consultants, Presidential speechwriters (David Frum), secondary officials and policy advisers to the State Department.
These committed Zionists ‘insiders’ were buttressed by thousands of full-time Israel-First functionaries in the 51 major American Jewish organizations, which form the President of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO). They openly stated that their top priority was to advance Israel’s agenda, which, in this case, was a U.S. war against Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, occupy the country, physically divide Iraq, destroy its military and industrial capability and impose a pro-Israel/pro-U.S. puppet regime.
If Iraq were ethnically cleansed and divided, as advocated by the ultra-right, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and the ‘Liberal’ President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and militarist-Zionist, Leslie Gelb, there would be more than several ‘client regimes’.
Top Zionist policymakers who promoted the war did not initially directly pursue the policy of systematically destroying what, in effect, was the entire Iraqi civilization. But their support and design of an occupation policy included the total dismemberment of the Iraqi state apparatus and recruitment of Israeli advisers to provide their ‘expertise’ in interrogation techniques, repression of civilian resistance and counter-insurgency.
Israeli expertise certainly played a role in fomenting the intra-Iraqi religious and ethnic strife, which Israel had mastered in Palestine. The Israeli ‘model’ of colonial war and occupation – the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 – and the practice of ‘total destruction’ using sectarian, ethno-religious division was evident in the notorious massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, which took place under Israeli military supervision.
The second powerful political force behind the Iraq War were civilian militarists (like Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney) who sought to extend U.S. imperial reach in the Persian Gulf and strengthen its geo-political position by eliminating a strong, secular, nationalist backer of Arab anti-imperialist insurgency in the Middle East. The civilian militarists sought to extend the American military base encirclement of Russia and secure control over Iraqi oil reserves as a pressure point against China.
The civilian militarists were less moved by Vice President Cheney’s past ties with the oil industry and more interested in his role as CEO of Halliburton’s giant military base contractor subsidiary Kellogg-Brown and Root, which was consolidating the U.S. Empire through worldwide military base expansion. Major U.S. oil companies, who feared losing out to European and Asian competitors, were already eager to deal with Saddam Hussein, and some of the Bush’s supporters in the oil industry had already engaged in illegal trading with the embargoed Iraqi regime. The oil industry was not inclined to promote regional instability with a war.
The militarist strategy of conquest and occupation was designed to establish a long-term colonial military presence in the form of strategic military bases with a significant and sustained contingent of colonial military advisors and combat units. The brutal colonial occupation of an independent secular state with a strong nationalist history and an advanced infrastructure with a sophisticated military and police apparatus, extensive public services and wide-spread literacy naturally led to the growth of a wide array of militant and armed anti-occupation movements.
In response, U.S. colonial officials, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agencies devised a ‘divide and rule’ strategy (the so-called ‘El Salvador solution’ associated with the former ‘hot-spot’ Ambassador and U.S. Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte) fomenting armed sectarian-based conflicts and promoting inter-religious assassinations to debilitate any effort at a united nationalist anti-imperialist movement.
The dismantling of the secular civilian bureaucracy and military was designed by the Zionists in the Bush Administration to enhance Israel’s power in the region and to encourage the rise of militant groups, which had been repressed by the deposed Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. Israel had mastered this strategy earlier: It originally sponsored and financed Islamic groups, like Hamas, as an alternative to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization and set the stage for sectarian fighting among the Palestinians.
The result of U.S. colonial policies were to fund and multiply a wide range of internal conflicts as mullahs, tribal leaders, political gangsters, warlords, expatriates and death squads proliferated. The ‘war of all against all’ served the interests of the U.S. occupation forces. Iraq became a pool of armed, unemployed young men, from which to recruit a new mercenary army.
The ‘civil war’ and ‘ethnic conflict’ provided a pretext for the U.S. and its Iraqi puppets to discharge hundreds of thousands of soldiers, police and functionaries from the previous regime (especially if they were from Sunni, mixed or secular families) and to undermine the basis for civilian employment. Under the cover of generalized ‘war against terror’, U.S. Special Forces and CIA-directed death squads spread terror within Iraqi civil society, targeting anyone suspected of criticizing the puppet government – especially among the educated and professional classes, precisely the Iraqis most capable of re-constructing an independent secular republic.
The Iraq war was driven by an influential group of neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideologues with strong ties to Israel. They viewed the success of the Iraq war (by success they meant the total dismemberment of the country) as the first ‘domino’ in a series of war to ‘re-colonize’ the Middle East (in their words: “to re-draw the map”). They disguised their imperial ideology with a thin veneer of rhetoric about ‘promoting democracies’ in the Middle East (excluding, of course, the un-democratic policies of their ‘homeland’ Israel over its subjugated Palestinians).
Conflating Israeli regional hegemonic ambitions with the U.S. imperial interests, the neo-conservatives and their neo-liberal fellow travelers in the Democratic Party first backed President Bush and later President Obama in their escalation of the wars against Afghanistan and Pakistan. They unanimously supported Israel’s savage bombing campaign against Lebanon, the land and air assault and massacre of thousands of civilians trapped in Gaza, the bombing of Syrian facilities and the big push (from Israel) for a pre-emptive, full-scale military attack against Iran.
The U.S. advocates of sequential and multiple simultaneous wars in the Middle East and South Asia believed that they could only unleash the full strength of their mass destructive power after they had secured total control of their first victim, Iraq. They were confident that Iraqi resistance would collapse rapidly after 13 years of brutal starvation sanctions imposed on the republic by the U.S. and United Nations. In order to consolidate imperial control, American policy-makers decided to permanently silence all independent Iraqi civilian dissidents. They turned to the financing of Shia clerics and Sunni tribal assassins, and contracting scores of thousands of private mercenaries among the Kurdish Peshmerga warlords to carry out selective assassinations of leaders of civil society movements.
The U.S. created and trained a 200,000 member Iraqi colonial puppet army composed almost entirely of Shia gunmen, and excluded experienced Iraqi military men from secular, Sunni or Christian backgrounds. A little known result of this build up of American trained and financed death squads and its puppet ‘Iraqi’ army, was the virtual destruction of the ancient Iraqi Christian population, which was displaced, its churches bombed and its leaders, bishops and intellectuals, academics and scientists assassinated or driven into exile.
The U.S. and its Israeli advisers were well aware that Iraqi Christians had played a key role the historic development of the secular, nationalist, anti-British/anti-monarchist movements and their elimination as an influential force during the first years of U.S. occupation was no accident. The result of the U.S. policies were to eliminate most secular democratic anti-imperialist leaders and movements and to present their murderous net-work of ‘ethno-religious’ collaborators as their uncontested ‘partners’ in sustaining the long-term U.S. colonial presence in Iraq. With their puppets in power, Iraq would serve as a launching platform for its strategic pursuit of the other ‘dominoes’ (Syria, Iran, Central Asian Republics…).
The sustained bloody purge of Iraq under U.S. occupation resulted in the killing 1.3 million Iraqi civilians during the first 7 years after Bush invaded in March 2003. Up to mid-2009, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has officially cost the American treasury over $666 billion. This enormous expenditure attests to its centrality in the larger U.S. imperial strategy for the entire Middle East/South and Central Asia region.
Washington’s policy of politicizing and militarizing ethno-religious differences, arming and encouraging rival tribal, religious and ethnic leaders to engage in mutual bloodletting served to destroy national unity and resistance. The ‘divide and rule’ tactics and reliance on retrograde social and religious organizations is the commonest and best-known practice in pursuing the conquest and subjugation of a unified, advanced nationalist state.
Breaking up the national state, destroying nationalist consciousness and encouraging primitive ethno-religious, feudal and regional loyalties required the systematic destruction of the principal purveyors of nationalist consciousness, historical memory and secular, scientific thought. Provoking ethno-religious hatreds destroyed intermarriages, mixed communities and institutions with their long-standing personal friendships and professional ties among diverse backgrounds.
The physical elimination of academics, writers, teachers, intellectuals, scientists and professionals, especially physicians, engineers, lawyers, jurists and journalists was decisive in imposing ethno-religious rule under a colonial occupation. To establish long-term dominance and sustain ethno-religious client rulers, the entire pre-existing cultural edifice, which had sustained an independent secular nationalist state, was physically destroyed by the U.S. and its Iraqi puppets. This included destroying the libraries, census bureaus, and repositories of all property and court records, health departments, laboratories, schools, cultural centers, medical facilities and above all the entire scientific-literary-humanistic social scientific class of professionals.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi professionals and family members were driven by terror into internal and external exile. All funding for national, secular, scientific and educational institutions were cut off. Death squads engaged in the systematic murder of thousands of academics and professionals suspected of the least dissent, the least nationalist sentiment; anyone with the least capacity to re-construct the republic was marked.
The destruction of a modern Arab civilization
Independent, secular Iraq had the most advanced scientific-cultural order in the Arab world, despite the repressive nature of Saddam Hussein’s police state. There was a system of national health care, universal public education and generous welfare services, combined with unprecedented levels of gender equality. This marked the advanced nature of Iraqi civilization in the late 20th century.
Separation of church and state and strict protection of religious minorities (Christians, Assyrians and others) contrasts sharply with what has resulted from the U.S. occupation and its destruction of the Iraqi civil and governmental structures. The harsh dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein thus presided over a highly developed modern civilization in which advanced scientific work went hand in hand with a strong nationalist and anti-imperialist identity. This resulted especially in the Iraqi people and regime’s expressions of solidarity for the plight of the Palestinian people under Israeli rule and occupation.
A mere ‘regime change’ could not extirpate this deeply embedded and advanced secular republican culture in Iraq. The U.S. war planners and their Israeli advisers were well aware that colonial occupation would increase Iraqi nationalist consciousness unless the secular nation was destroyed and hence, the imperial imperative to uproot and destroy the carriers of nationalist consciousness by physically eliminating the educated, the talented, the scientific, indeed the most secular elements of Iraqi society. Retrogression became the principal instrument for the U.S. to impose its colonial puppets, with their primitive, ‘pre-national’ loyalties, in power in a culturally purged Baghdad stripped of its most sophisticated and nationalistic social strata.
According to the Al-Ahram Studies Center in Cairo, more than 310 Iraqi scientists were eliminated during the first 18 months of the U.S. occupation – a figure that the Iraqi education ministry did not dispute.
Another report listed the killings of more than 340 intellectuals and scientists between 2005 and 2007. Bombings of institutes of higher education had pushed enrollment down to 30% of the pre-invasion figures. In one bombing in January 2007, at Baghdad’s Mustansiriya University 70 students were killed with hundreds wounded. These figures compelled the UNESCO to warn that Iraq’s university system was on the brink of collapse.
The numbers of prominent Iraqi scientists and professionals who have fled the country have approached 20,000. Of the 6,700 Iraqi university professors who fled since 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported than only 150 had returned by October 2008. Despite the U.S. claims of improved security, the situation in 2008 saw numerous assassinations, including the only practicing neurosurgeon in Iraq’s second largest city of Basra, whose body was dumped on the city streets.
The raw data on the Iraqi academics, scientists and professionals assassinated by the U.S. and allied occupation forces and the militias and shadowy forces they control is drawn from a list published by the Pakistan Daily News (www.daily.pk) on November 26, 2008. This list makes for very uncomfortable reading into the reality of systematic elimination of intellectuals in Iraq under the meat-grinder of U.S. occupation.
Assassinations
The physical elimination of an individual by assassination is an extreme form of terrorism, which has far-reaching effects rippling throughout the community from which the individual comes – in this case the world of Iraqi intellectuals, academics, professionals and creative leaders in the arts and sciences. For each Iraqi intellectual murdered, thousands of educated Iraqis fled the country or abandoned their work for safer, less vulnerable activity.
Baghdad was considered the ‘Paris’ of the Arab world, in terms of culture and art, science and education. In the 1970’s and 80’s, its universities were the envy of the Arab world. The U.S. ‘shock and awe’ campaign that rained down on Baghdad evoked emotions akin to an aerial bombardment of the Louvre, the Sorbonne and the greatest libraries of Europe.
Baghdad University was one of the most prestigious and productive universities in the Arab world. Many of its academics possessed doctoral degrees and engaged in post-doctoral studies abroad at prestigious institutions. It taught and graduated many of the top professionals and scientists in the Middle East. Even under the deadly grip of the U.S./UN-imposed economic sanctions that starved Iraq during the 13 years before the March 2003 invasion, thousands of graduate students and young professionals came to Iraq for post-graduate training.
Young physicians from throughout the Arab world received advanced medical training in its institutions. Many of its academics presented scientific papers at major international conferences and published in prestigious journals. Most important, Baghdad University trained and maintained a highly respected scientific secular culture free of sectarian discrimination – with academics from all ethnic and religious backgrounds.
This world has been forever shattered: Under U.S. occupation, up to November 2008, eighty-three academics and researchers teaching at Baghdad University had been murdered and several thousand of their colleagues, students and family members were forced to flee.
The selection of assassinated academics by discipline
The November 2008 article published by the Pakistan Daily News lists the names of a total of 154 top Baghdad-based academics, renowned in their fields, who were murdered. Altogether, a total of 281 well-known intellectuals teaching at the top universities in Iraq fell victim to the ‘death squads’ under U.S. occupation.
Prior to the U.S. occupation, Baghdad University possessed the premier research and teaching medical faculty in the entire Middle East attracting hundreds of young doctors for advanced training. That program has been devastated during the rise of the U.S. -death squad regime, with few prospects of recovery. Of those murdered, 25% (21) were the most senior professors and lecturers in the medical faculty of Baghdad University, the highest percentage of any faculty.
The second highest percentage of butchered faculty were the professors and researchers from Baghdad University’s renowned engineering faculty (12), followed by the top academics in the humanities (10), physical and social sciences (8 senior academics each), education (5). The remaining top academics murdered at Baghdad University spread out among the agronomy, business, physical education, communications and religious studies faculties.
At three other Baghdad universities, 53 senior academics were slaughtered, including 10 in the social sciences, 7 in the faculty of law, 6 each in medicine and the humanities, 9 in the physical sciences and 5 in engineering. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s August 20, 2002 pre-invasion joke, “…one has to assume they (scientists) have not been playing ‘tiddlywinks’(a child’s game)”( justifying the bloody purge of Iraq’s scientists in physics and chemistry. An ominous signal of the academic bloodletting that followed the invasion.
Similar bloody purges of academics occurred in all the provincial universities: 127 senior academics and scientists were assassinated at the various well-regarded universities in Mosul, Kirkuk, Basra and elsewhere. The provincial universities with the highest number of murdered senior faculty members were in cities where the U.S. and British military and their Kurdish mercenary allies were most active: Basra (35), Mosul (35), Diyala (15) and Al-Anbar (11).
The Iraqi military and allied death squads carried out most of the killing of academics in the cities under U.S. or ‘allied’ control. The systematic murder of academics was a nation-wide, cross-disciplinary drive to destroy the cultural and educational foundations of a modern Arab civilization. The death squads carrying out most of these assassinations were primitive, pre-modern, ethno-religious groups ‘set loose’ or instrumentalized by U.S. military strategists to wipe out any politically conscious intellectuals and nationalist scientists who might pursue an agenda for re-building a modern, secular society and independent, unified republic.
In its panic to prevent the U.S. invasion, the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate provided a list, which identified over 500 key Iraqi scientists to the UN on December 7, 2002. There is little doubt that this list became a core element in the U.S. military’s hit list for eliminating Iraq’s scientific elite. In his notorious pre-invasion speech to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited a list of over 3,500 Iraqi scientists and technicians who would have to be ‘contained’ to prevent their expertise from being used by other countries.
The U.S. had even created a ‘budget’ of hundreds of millions of dollars, drawn from the Iraqi ‘Oil for Food’ money held by the United Nations to set up ‘civilian re-education’ programs to re-train Iraqi scientists and engineers. These highly touted programs were never seriously implemented. Cheaper ways of containing what one American policy expert termed Iraq’s ‘excess scientists, engineers and technicians’ in a Carnegie Endowment Paper (RANSAC Policy Update April 2004) became clear. The U.S. had decided to adopt and expand the Israeli Mossad’s covert operation of assassinating selected key Iraqi scientists on an industrial scale.
The U.S. ‘surge’ and ‘peak assassination’ campaigns: 2006-2007
The high tide of terror against academics coincides with the renewal of the U.S. military offensive in Baghdad and in the provinces. Of the total number of assassinations of Baghdad-based academics for which a date is recorded (110 known intellectuals slaughtered), almost 80% (87) occurred in 2006 and 2007. A similar pattern is found in the provinces with 77% of a total of 84 scholars murdered outside of capital during the same period. The pattern is clear: the murder rate of academics grows as the occupying U.S. forces organize a mercenary Iraqi military and police force and provide money for the training and recruitment of rival Shia and Sunni tribesmen and militia as a means of decreasing American casualties and of purging potential dissident critics of the occupation.
The terror campaign against academics intensified in mid-2005 and reached its peak in 2006-2007, leading to the mass flight of tens of thousands of Iraqi scholars, scientists, professionals and their families overseas. Entire university medical school faculties have become refugees in Syria and elsewhere. Those who could not afford to abandon elderly parents or relatives and remained in Iraq have taken extraordinary measures to hide their identities. Some have chosen to collaborate with the U.S. occupation forces or the puppet regime in the hope of being protected or allowed to immigrate with their families to the U.S. or Europe, although the Europeans, especially the British are disinclined to accept Iraqi scholars.
After 2008, there has been a sharp decline in the murder of academics – with only 4 assassinated that year. This reflects the massive flight of Iraqi intellectuals living abroad or in hiding rather than any change of policy on the part of the U.S. and its mercenary puppets. As a result, Iraq’s research facilities have been decimated. The lives of those remaining support staff, including technicians, librarians and students have been devastated with few prospects for future employment.
The U.S. war and occupation of Iraq, as Presidents Bush and Obama have declared, is a ‘success’ – an independent nation of 23 million citizens has been occupied by force, a puppet regime is ensconced, colonial mercenary troops obey American officers and the oil fields have been put up for sale. All of Iraq’s nationalist laws protecting its patrimony, its cultural treasures and national resources, have been annulled. The occupiers have imposed a ‘constitution’ favoring the U.S. Empire.
Israel and its Zionist flunkies in the Administrations of both Bush and Obama celebrate the demise of a modern adversary…and the conversion of Iraq into a cultural-political desert. In line with an alleged agreement made by the U.S. State Department and Pentagon officials to influential collectors from the American Council for Cultural Policy in January 2003, the looted treasures of ancient Mesopotamia have ‘found’ their way into the collections of the elite in London, New York and elsewhere. The collectors can now anticipate the pillage of Iran.
Warning to Iran
The U.S. invasion, occupation and destruction of a modern, scientific-cultural civilization, such as existed in Iraq, is a prelude of what the people of Iran can expect if and when a U.S. -Israeli military attack occurs. The imperial threat to the cultural-scientific foundations of the Iranian nation has been totally absent from the narrative among the affluent Iranian student protesters and their U.S. -funded NGO’s during their post-election ‘Lipstick Revolution’ protests. They should bear in mind that in 2004 educated, sophisticated Iraqis in Baghdad consoled themselves with a fatally misplaced optimism that ‘at least we are not like Afghanistan’.
The same elite are now in squalid refugee camps in Syria and Jordan and their country more closely resembles Afghanistan than anywhere else in the Middle East. The chilling promise of President Bush in April 2003 to transform Iraq in the image of ‘our newly liberated Afghanistan’ has been fulfilled. And reports that the U.S. Administration advisers had reviewed the Israeli Mossad policy of selective assassination of Iranian scientists should cause the pro-Western liberal intellectuals of Teheran to seriously ponder the lesson of the murderous campaign that has virtually eliminated Iraqi scientists and academics during 2006-2007.
Conclusion
What does the United States (and Britain and Israel) gain from establishing a retrograde client regime, based on medieval ethno-clerical socio-political structures in Iraq? First and foremost, Iraq has become an outpost for empire. Secondly, it is a weak and backward regime incapable of challenging Israeli economic and military dominance in the region and unwilling to question the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian Arabs from Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Thirdly, the destruction of the scientific, academic, cultural and legal foundations of an independent state means increasing reliance on the Western (and Chinese) multinational corporations and their technical infrastructure – facilitating imperial economic penetration and exploitation.
In the mid 19th Century, after the revolutions of 1848, the conservative French sociologist Emil Durkheim recognized that the European bourgeoisie was confronted with rising class conflict and an increasing anti-capitalist working class. Durkheim noted that, whatever its philosophical misgivings about religion and clericalism, the bourgeoisie would have to use the myths of traditional religion to ‘create’ social cohesion and undercut class polarization. He called on the educated and sophisticated Parisian capitalist class to forego its rejection of obscurantist religious dogma in favor of instrumentalizing religion as a tool to maintain its political dominance.
In the same way, U.S. strategists, including the Pentagon-Zionists, have instrumentalized the tribal-mullah, ethno-religious forces to destroy the secular national political leadership and advanced culture of Iraq in order to consolidate imperial rule – even if this strategy called for the killing off of the scientific and professional classes. Contemporary U.S. imperial rule is based on supporting the socially and politically most backward sectors of society and applying the most advanced technology of warfare.
Israeli advisers have played a major role in instructing U.S. occupation forces in Iraq on the practices of urban counter-insurgency and repression of civilians, drawing on their 60 years of experience. The infamous massacre of hundreds of Palestinian families at Deir Yasin in 1948 was emblematic of Zionist elimination of hundreds of productive farming villages, which had been settled for centuries by a native people with their endogenous civilization and cultural ties to the soil, in order to impose a new colonial order.
The policy of the total deracination of the Palestinians is central to Israel’s advise to the U.S. policymakers in Iraq. Their message has been carried out by their Zionist acolytes in the Bush and Obama Administrations, ordering the dismemberment of the entire modern Iraqi civil and state bureaucracy and using pre-modern tribal death squads to purge the modern universities and research institutions of that shattered nation.
The U.S. imperial conquest of Iraq is built on the destruction of a modern secular republic. The cultural desert that remains (a Biblical ‘howling wilderness’ soaked in the blood of Iraq’s precious scholars) is controlled by mega-swindlers, mercenary thugs posing as ‘Iraqi officers’, tribal and ethnic cultural illiterates and medieval religious figures. They operate under the guidance and direction of West Point graduates holding ‘blue-prints for empire’, formulated by graduates of Princeton, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale and Chicago, eager to serve the interests of American and European multi-national corporations.
This is called ‘combined and uneven development’: The marriage of fundamentalist mullahs with Ivy League Zionists at the service of the U.S.
The most important political force was also the least openly discussed. The Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC), which includes the prominent role of long-time, hard-line unconditional Jewish supporters of the State of Israel appointed to top positions in the Bush Pentagon (Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz ), key operative in the Office of the Vice President (Irving (Scooter) Libby), the Treasury Department (Stuart Levey), the National Security Council (Elliot Abrams) and a phalanx of consultants, Presidential speechwriters (David Frum), secondary officials and policy advisers to the State Department.
These committed Zionists ‘insiders’ were buttressed by thousands of full-time Israel-First functionaries in the 51 major American Jewish organizations, which form the President of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO). They openly stated that their top priority was to advance Israel’s agenda, which, in this case, was a U.S. war against Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, occupy the country, physically divide Iraq, destroy its military and industrial capability and impose a pro-Israel/pro-U.S. puppet regime.
If Iraq were ethnically cleansed and divided, as advocated by the ultra-right, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and the ‘Liberal’ President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and militarist-Zionist, Leslie Gelb, there would be more than several ‘client regimes’.
Top Zionist policymakers who promoted the war did not initially directly pursue the policy of systematically destroying what, in effect, was the entire Iraqi civilization. But their support and design of an occupation policy included the total dismemberment of the Iraqi state apparatus and recruitment of Israeli advisers to provide their ‘expertise’ in interrogation techniques, repression of civilian resistance and counter-insurgency.
Israeli expertise certainly played a role in fomenting the intra-Iraqi religious and ethnic strife, which Israel had mastered in Palestine. The Israeli ‘model’ of colonial war and occupation – the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 – and the practice of ‘total destruction’ using sectarian, ethno-religious division was evident in the notorious massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, which took place under Israeli military supervision.
The second powerful political force behind the Iraq War were civilian militarists (like Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney) who sought to extend U.S. imperial reach in the Persian Gulf and strengthen its geo-political position by eliminating a strong, secular, nationalist backer of Arab anti-imperialist insurgency in the Middle East. The civilian militarists sought to extend the American military base encirclement of Russia and secure control over Iraqi oil reserves as a pressure point against China.
The civilian militarists were less moved by Vice President Cheney’s past ties with the oil industry and more interested in his role as CEO of Halliburton’s giant military base contractor subsidiary Kellogg-Brown and Root, which was consolidating the U.S. Empire through worldwide military base expansion. Major U.S. oil companies, who feared losing out to European and Asian competitors, were already eager to deal with Saddam Hussein, and some of the Bush’s supporters in the oil industry had already engaged in illegal trading with the embargoed Iraqi regime. The oil industry was not inclined to promote regional instability with a war.
The militarist strategy of conquest and occupation was designed to establish a long-term colonial military presence in the form of strategic military bases with a significant and sustained contingent of colonial military advisors and combat units. The brutal colonial occupation of an independent secular state with a strong nationalist history and an advanced infrastructure with a sophisticated military and police apparatus, extensive public services and wide-spread literacy naturally led to the growth of a wide array of militant and armed anti-occupation movements.
In response, U.S. colonial officials, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agencies devised a ‘divide and rule’ strategy (the so-called ‘El Salvador solution’ associated with the former ‘hot-spot’ Ambassador and U.S. Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte) fomenting armed sectarian-based conflicts and promoting inter-religious assassinations to debilitate any effort at a united nationalist anti-imperialist movement.
The dismantling of the secular civilian bureaucracy and military was designed by the Zionists in the Bush Administration to enhance Israel’s power in the region and to encourage the rise of militant groups, which had been repressed by the deposed Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. Israel had mastered this strategy earlier: It originally sponsored and financed Islamic groups, like Hamas, as an alternative to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization and set the stage for sectarian fighting among the Palestinians.
The result of U.S. colonial policies were to fund and multiply a wide range of internal conflicts as mullahs, tribal leaders, political gangsters, warlords, expatriates and death squads proliferated. The ‘war of all against all’ served the interests of the U.S. occupation forces. Iraq became a pool of armed, unemployed young men, from which to recruit a new mercenary army.
The ‘civil war’ and ‘ethnic conflict’ provided a pretext for the U.S. and its Iraqi puppets to discharge hundreds of thousands of soldiers, police and functionaries from the previous regime (especially if they were from Sunni, mixed or secular families) and to undermine the basis for civilian employment. Under the cover of generalized ‘war against terror’, U.S. Special Forces and CIA-directed death squads spread terror within Iraqi civil society, targeting anyone suspected of criticizing the puppet government – especially among the educated and professional classes, precisely the Iraqis most capable of re-constructing an independent secular republic.
The Iraq war was driven by an influential group of neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideologues with strong ties to Israel. They viewed the success of the Iraq war (by success they meant the total dismemberment of the country) as the first ‘domino’ in a series of war to ‘re-colonize’ the Middle East (in their words: “to re-draw the map”). They disguised their imperial ideology with a thin veneer of rhetoric about ‘promoting democracies’ in the Middle East (excluding, of course, the un-democratic policies of their ‘homeland’ Israel over its subjugated Palestinians).
Conflating Israeli regional hegemonic ambitions with the U.S. imperial interests, the neo-conservatives and their neo-liberal fellow travelers in the Democratic Party first backed President Bush and later President Obama in their escalation of the wars against Afghanistan and Pakistan. They unanimously supported Israel’s savage bombing campaign against Lebanon, the land and air assault and massacre of thousands of civilians trapped in Gaza, the bombing of Syrian facilities and the big push (from Israel) for a pre-emptive, full-scale military attack against Iran.
The U.S. advocates of sequential and multiple simultaneous wars in the Middle East and South Asia believed that they could only unleash the full strength of their mass destructive power after they had secured total control of their first victim, Iraq. They were confident that Iraqi resistance would collapse rapidly after 13 years of brutal starvation sanctions imposed on the republic by the U.S. and United Nations. In order to consolidate imperial control, American policy-makers decided to permanently silence all independent Iraqi civilian dissidents. They turned to the financing of Shia clerics and Sunni tribal assassins, and contracting scores of thousands of private mercenaries among the Kurdish Peshmerga warlords to carry out selective assassinations of leaders of civil society movements.
The U.S. created and trained a 200,000 member Iraqi colonial puppet army composed almost entirely of Shia gunmen, and excluded experienced Iraqi military men from secular, Sunni or Christian backgrounds. A little known result of this build up of American trained and financed death squads and its puppet ‘Iraqi’ army, was the virtual destruction of the ancient Iraqi Christian population, which was displaced, its churches bombed and its leaders, bishops and intellectuals, academics and scientists assassinated or driven into exile.
The U.S. and its Israeli advisers were well aware that Iraqi Christians had played a key role the historic development of the secular, nationalist, anti-British/anti-monarchist movements and their elimination as an influential force during the first years of U.S. occupation was no accident. The result of the U.S. policies were to eliminate most secular democratic anti-imperialist leaders and movements and to present their murderous net-work of ‘ethno-religious’ collaborators as their uncontested ‘partners’ in sustaining the long-term U.S. colonial presence in Iraq. With their puppets in power, Iraq would serve as a launching platform for its strategic pursuit of the other ‘dominoes’ (Syria, Iran, Central Asian Republics…).
The sustained bloody purge of Iraq under U.S. occupation resulted in the killing 1.3 million Iraqi civilians during the first 7 years after Bush invaded in March 2003. Up to mid-2009, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has officially cost the American treasury over $666 billion. This enormous expenditure attests to its centrality in the larger U.S. imperial strategy for the entire Middle East/South and Central Asia region.
Washington’s policy of politicizing and militarizing ethno-religious differences, arming and encouraging rival tribal, religious and ethnic leaders to engage in mutual bloodletting served to destroy national unity and resistance. The ‘divide and rule’ tactics and reliance on retrograde social and religious organizations is the commonest and best-known practice in pursuing the conquest and subjugation of a unified, advanced nationalist state.
Breaking up the national state, destroying nationalist consciousness and encouraging primitive ethno-religious, feudal and regional loyalties required the systematic destruction of the principal purveyors of nationalist consciousness, historical memory and secular, scientific thought. Provoking ethno-religious hatreds destroyed intermarriages, mixed communities and institutions with their long-standing personal friendships and professional ties among diverse backgrounds.
The physical elimination of academics, writers, teachers, intellectuals, scientists and professionals, especially physicians, engineers, lawyers, jurists and journalists was decisive in imposing ethno-religious rule under a colonial occupation. To establish long-term dominance and sustain ethno-religious client rulers, the entire pre-existing cultural edifice, which had sustained an independent secular nationalist state, was physically destroyed by the U.S. and its Iraqi puppets. This included destroying the libraries, census bureaus, and repositories of all property and court records, health departments, laboratories, schools, cultural centers, medical facilities and above all the entire scientific-literary-humanistic social scientific class of professionals.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi professionals and family members were driven by terror into internal and external exile. All funding for national, secular, scientific and educational institutions were cut off. Death squads engaged in the systematic murder of thousands of academics and professionals suspected of the least dissent, the least nationalist sentiment; anyone with the least capacity to re-construct the republic was marked.
The destruction of a modern Arab civilization
Independent, secular Iraq had the most advanced scientific-cultural order in the Arab world, despite the repressive nature of Saddam Hussein’s police state. There was a system of national health care, universal public education and generous welfare services, combined with unprecedented levels of gender equality. This marked the advanced nature of Iraqi civilization in the late 20th century.
Separation of church and state and strict protection of religious minorities (Christians, Assyrians and others) contrasts sharply with what has resulted from the U.S. occupation and its destruction of the Iraqi civil and governmental structures. The harsh dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein thus presided over a highly developed modern civilization in which advanced scientific work went hand in hand with a strong nationalist and anti-imperialist identity. This resulted especially in the Iraqi people and regime’s expressions of solidarity for the plight of the Palestinian people under Israeli rule and occupation.
A mere ‘regime change’ could not extirpate this deeply embedded and advanced secular republican culture in Iraq. The U.S. war planners and their Israeli advisers were well aware that colonial occupation would increase Iraqi nationalist consciousness unless the secular nation was destroyed and hence, the imperial imperative to uproot and destroy the carriers of nationalist consciousness by physically eliminating the educated, the talented, the scientific, indeed the most secular elements of Iraqi society. Retrogression became the principal instrument for the U.S. to impose its colonial puppets, with their primitive, ‘pre-national’ loyalties, in power in a culturally purged Baghdad stripped of its most sophisticated and nationalistic social strata.
According to the Al-Ahram Studies Center in Cairo, more than 310 Iraqi scientists were eliminated during the first 18 months of the U.S. occupation – a figure that the Iraqi education ministry did not dispute.
Another report listed the killings of more than 340 intellectuals and scientists between 2005 and 2007. Bombings of institutes of higher education had pushed enrollment down to 30% of the pre-invasion figures. In one bombing in January 2007, at Baghdad’s Mustansiriya University 70 students were killed with hundreds wounded. These figures compelled the UNESCO to warn that Iraq’s university system was on the brink of collapse.
The numbers of prominent Iraqi scientists and professionals who have fled the country have approached 20,000. Of the 6,700 Iraqi university professors who fled since 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported than only 150 had returned by October 2008. Despite the U.S. claims of improved security, the situation in 2008 saw numerous assassinations, including the only practicing neurosurgeon in Iraq’s second largest city of Basra, whose body was dumped on the city streets.
The raw data on the Iraqi academics, scientists and professionals assassinated by the U.S. and allied occupation forces and the militias and shadowy forces they control is drawn from a list published by the Pakistan Daily News (www.daily.pk) on November 26, 2008. This list makes for very uncomfortable reading into the reality of systematic elimination of intellectuals in Iraq under the meat-grinder of U.S. occupation.
Assassinations
The physical elimination of an individual by assassination is an extreme form of terrorism, which has far-reaching effects rippling throughout the community from which the individual comes – in this case the world of Iraqi intellectuals, academics, professionals and creative leaders in the arts and sciences. For each Iraqi intellectual murdered, thousands of educated Iraqis fled the country or abandoned their work for safer, less vulnerable activity.
Baghdad was considered the ‘Paris’ of the Arab world, in terms of culture and art, science and education. In the 1970’s and 80’s, its universities were the envy of the Arab world. The U.S. ‘shock and awe’ campaign that rained down on Baghdad evoked emotions akin to an aerial bombardment of the Louvre, the Sorbonne and the greatest libraries of Europe.
Baghdad University was one of the most prestigious and productive universities in the Arab world. Many of its academics possessed doctoral degrees and engaged in post-doctoral studies abroad at prestigious institutions. It taught and graduated many of the top professionals and scientists in the Middle East. Even under the deadly grip of the U.S./UN-imposed economic sanctions that starved Iraq during the 13 years before the March 2003 invasion, thousands of graduate students and young professionals came to Iraq for post-graduate training.
Young physicians from throughout the Arab world received advanced medical training in its institutions. Many of its academics presented scientific papers at major international conferences and published in prestigious journals. Most important, Baghdad University trained and maintained a highly respected scientific secular culture free of sectarian discrimination – with academics from all ethnic and religious backgrounds.
This world has been forever shattered: Under U.S. occupation, up to November 2008, eighty-three academics and researchers teaching at Baghdad University had been murdered and several thousand of their colleagues, students and family members were forced to flee.
The selection of assassinated academics by discipline
The November 2008 article published by the Pakistan Daily News lists the names of a total of 154 top Baghdad-based academics, renowned in their fields, who were murdered. Altogether, a total of 281 well-known intellectuals teaching at the top universities in Iraq fell victim to the ‘death squads’ under U.S. occupation.
Prior to the U.S. occupation, Baghdad University possessed the premier research and teaching medical faculty in the entire Middle East attracting hundreds of young doctors for advanced training. That program has been devastated during the rise of the U.S. -death squad regime, with few prospects of recovery. Of those murdered, 25% (21) were the most senior professors and lecturers in the medical faculty of Baghdad University, the highest percentage of any faculty.
The second highest percentage of butchered faculty were the professors and researchers from Baghdad University’s renowned engineering faculty (12), followed by the top academics in the humanities (10), physical and social sciences (8 senior academics each), education (5). The remaining top academics murdered at Baghdad University spread out among the agronomy, business, physical education, communications and religious studies faculties.
At three other Baghdad universities, 53 senior academics were slaughtered, including 10 in the social sciences, 7 in the faculty of law, 6 each in medicine and the humanities, 9 in the physical sciences and 5 in engineering. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s August 20, 2002 pre-invasion joke, “…one has to assume they (scientists) have not been playing ‘tiddlywinks’(a child’s game)”( justifying the bloody purge of Iraq’s scientists in physics and chemistry. An ominous signal of the academic bloodletting that followed the invasion.
Similar bloody purges of academics occurred in all the provincial universities: 127 senior academics and scientists were assassinated at the various well-regarded universities in Mosul, Kirkuk, Basra and elsewhere. The provincial universities with the highest number of murdered senior faculty members were in cities where the U.S. and British military and their Kurdish mercenary allies were most active: Basra (35), Mosul (35), Diyala (15) and Al-Anbar (11).
The Iraqi military and allied death squads carried out most of the killing of academics in the cities under U.S. or ‘allied’ control. The systematic murder of academics was a nation-wide, cross-disciplinary drive to destroy the cultural and educational foundations of a modern Arab civilization. The death squads carrying out most of these assassinations were primitive, pre-modern, ethno-religious groups ‘set loose’ or instrumentalized by U.S. military strategists to wipe out any politically conscious intellectuals and nationalist scientists who might pursue an agenda for re-building a modern, secular society and independent, unified republic.
In its panic to prevent the U.S. invasion, the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate provided a list, which identified over 500 key Iraqi scientists to the UN on December 7, 2002. There is little doubt that this list became a core element in the U.S. military’s hit list for eliminating Iraq’s scientific elite. In his notorious pre-invasion speech to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited a list of over 3,500 Iraqi scientists and technicians who would have to be ‘contained’ to prevent their expertise from being used by other countries.
The U.S. had even created a ‘budget’ of hundreds of millions of dollars, drawn from the Iraqi ‘Oil for Food’ money held by the United Nations to set up ‘civilian re-education’ programs to re-train Iraqi scientists and engineers. These highly touted programs were never seriously implemented. Cheaper ways of containing what one American policy expert termed Iraq’s ‘excess scientists, engineers and technicians’ in a Carnegie Endowment Paper (RANSAC Policy Update April 2004) became clear. The U.S. had decided to adopt and expand the Israeli Mossad’s covert operation of assassinating selected key Iraqi scientists on an industrial scale.
The U.S. ‘surge’ and ‘peak assassination’ campaigns: 2006-2007
The high tide of terror against academics coincides with the renewal of the U.S. military offensive in Baghdad and in the provinces. Of the total number of assassinations of Baghdad-based academics for which a date is recorded (110 known intellectuals slaughtered), almost 80% (87) occurred in 2006 and 2007. A similar pattern is found in the provinces with 77% of a total of 84 scholars murdered outside of capital during the same period. The pattern is clear: the murder rate of academics grows as the occupying U.S. forces organize a mercenary Iraqi military and police force and provide money for the training and recruitment of rival Shia and Sunni tribesmen and militia as a means of decreasing American casualties and of purging potential dissident critics of the occupation.
The terror campaign against academics intensified in mid-2005 and reached its peak in 2006-2007, leading to the mass flight of tens of thousands of Iraqi scholars, scientists, professionals and their families overseas. Entire university medical school faculties have become refugees in Syria and elsewhere. Those who could not afford to abandon elderly parents or relatives and remained in Iraq have taken extraordinary measures to hide their identities. Some have chosen to collaborate with the U.S. occupation forces or the puppet regime in the hope of being protected or allowed to immigrate with their families to the U.S. or Europe, although the Europeans, especially the British are disinclined to accept Iraqi scholars.
After 2008, there has been a sharp decline in the murder of academics – with only 4 assassinated that year. This reflects the massive flight of Iraqi intellectuals living abroad or in hiding rather than any change of policy on the part of the U.S. and its mercenary puppets. As a result, Iraq’s research facilities have been decimated. The lives of those remaining support staff, including technicians, librarians and students have been devastated with few prospects for future employment.
The U.S. war and occupation of Iraq, as Presidents Bush and Obama have declared, is a ‘success’ – an independent nation of 23 million citizens has been occupied by force, a puppet regime is ensconced, colonial mercenary troops obey American officers and the oil fields have been put up for sale. All of Iraq’s nationalist laws protecting its patrimony, its cultural treasures and national resources, have been annulled. The occupiers have imposed a ‘constitution’ favoring the U.S. Empire.
Israel and its Zionist flunkies in the Administrations of both Bush and Obama celebrate the demise of a modern adversary…and the conversion of Iraq into a cultural-political desert. In line with an alleged agreement made by the U.S. State Department and Pentagon officials to influential collectors from the American Council for Cultural Policy in January 2003, the looted treasures of ancient Mesopotamia have ‘found’ their way into the collections of the elite in London, New York and elsewhere. The collectors can now anticipate the pillage of Iran.
Warning to Iran
The U.S. invasion, occupation and destruction of a modern, scientific-cultural civilization, such as existed in Iraq, is a prelude of what the people of Iran can expect if and when a U.S. -Israeli military attack occurs. The imperial threat to the cultural-scientific foundations of the Iranian nation has been totally absent from the narrative among the affluent Iranian student protesters and their U.S. -funded NGO’s during their post-election ‘Lipstick Revolution’ protests. They should bear in mind that in 2004 educated, sophisticated Iraqis in Baghdad consoled themselves with a fatally misplaced optimism that ‘at least we are not like Afghanistan’.
The same elite are now in squalid refugee camps in Syria and Jordan and their country more closely resembles Afghanistan than anywhere else in the Middle East. The chilling promise of President Bush in April 2003 to transform Iraq in the image of ‘our newly liberated Afghanistan’ has been fulfilled. And reports that the U.S. Administration advisers had reviewed the Israeli Mossad policy of selective assassination of Iranian scientists should cause the pro-Western liberal intellectuals of Teheran to seriously ponder the lesson of the murderous campaign that has virtually eliminated Iraqi scientists and academics during 2006-2007.
Conclusion
What does the United States (and Britain and Israel) gain from establishing a retrograde client regime, based on medieval ethno-clerical socio-political structures in Iraq? First and foremost, Iraq has become an outpost for empire. Secondly, it is a weak and backward regime incapable of challenging Israeli economic and military dominance in the region and unwilling to question the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian Arabs from Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Thirdly, the destruction of the scientific, academic, cultural and legal foundations of an independent state means increasing reliance on the Western (and Chinese) multinational corporations and their technical infrastructure – facilitating imperial economic penetration and exploitation.
In the mid 19th Century, after the revolutions of 1848, the conservative French sociologist Emil Durkheim recognized that the European bourgeoisie was confronted with rising class conflict and an increasing anti-capitalist working class. Durkheim noted that, whatever its philosophical misgivings about religion and clericalism, the bourgeoisie would have to use the myths of traditional religion to ‘create’ social cohesion and undercut class polarization. He called on the educated and sophisticated Parisian capitalist class to forego its rejection of obscurantist religious dogma in favor of instrumentalizing religion as a tool to maintain its political dominance.
In the same way, U.S. strategists, including the Pentagon-Zionists, have instrumentalized the tribal-mullah, ethno-religious forces to destroy the secular national political leadership and advanced culture of Iraq in order to consolidate imperial rule – even if this strategy called for the killing off of the scientific and professional classes. Contemporary U.S. imperial rule is based on supporting the socially and politically most backward sectors of society and applying the most advanced technology of warfare.
Israeli advisers have played a major role in instructing U.S. occupation forces in Iraq on the practices of urban counter-insurgency and repression of civilians, drawing on their 60 years of experience. The infamous massacre of hundreds of Palestinian families at Deir Yasin in 1948 was emblematic of Zionist elimination of hundreds of productive farming villages, which had been settled for centuries by a native people with their endogenous civilization and cultural ties to the soil, in order to impose a new colonial order.
The policy of the total deracination of the Palestinians is central to Israel’s advise to the U.S. policymakers in Iraq. Their message has been carried out by their Zionist acolytes in the Bush and Obama Administrations, ordering the dismemberment of the entire modern Iraqi civil and state bureaucracy and using pre-modern tribal death squads to purge the modern universities and research institutions of that shattered nation.
The U.S. imperial conquest of Iraq is built on the destruction of a modern secular republic. The cultural desert that remains (a Biblical ‘howling wilderness’ soaked in the blood of Iraq’s precious scholars) is controlled by mega-swindlers, mercenary thugs posing as ‘Iraqi officers’, tribal and ethnic cultural illiterates and medieval religious figures. They operate under the guidance and direction of West Point graduates holding ‘blue-prints for empire’, formulated by graduates of Princeton, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale and Chicago, eager to serve the interests of American and European multi-national corporations.
This is called ‘combined and uneven development’: The marriage of fundamentalist mullahs with Ivy League Zionists at the service of the U.S.
Malki's political suicide
Relations between Iraq and Syria plunged abruptly on Tuesday after Baghdad recalled its ambassador to Damascus over the recent bombings in the Iraqi capital in which 100 Iraqis were killed.
The attacks, which ripped through government buildings on August 19, were the worst in Iraq in over 12 months and came just a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wrapped up a state visit to Syria, where he boosted political and economic relations with Damascus and jump-started bilateral committees to see that security is strongly monitored on the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Since then, however, a tug-of-war has erupted within Iraq between those who blame al-Qaeda and the outlawed Ba'ath Party and those who blame Iran for the Black Wednesday attacks.
Maliki blames both, while Defense Minister Abdul Qadir Obeidi said the weapons used for the attacks had been "made in Iran". Syria's name emerged rather suddenly on Sunday, when a former policeman appeared on Iraqi state-run media, claiming responsibility for the attacks, saying they had been ordered by two Saddam loyalists based in Syria.
The Iraqi government thus recalled its ambassador on Tuesday, asking that Syria extradite two men - Mohammad Yunis Ahmad and Satman Farhan - who are the alleged masterminds of the Baghdad bombings.
The Syrians were infuriated by the accusations, responding immediately by recalling their own diplomat, Nawwaf al-Fares, from Baghdad. A statement from Syria categorically rejected the Iraqi claims, reminding that "Syria had forcefully denounced this terrorist act which left victims among the Iraqi people".
The Syrians added they would welcome an Iraqi delegation that brought with it concrete evidence justifying the accusations, "or else, it considers what was aired by the Iraqi media as nothing but evidence fabricated for internal [Iraqi] objectives".
The contradicting remarks by Iraqi officials, the Syrian statement added, were adequate proof that far from being authentic, the entire ordeal was a fabrication of the Iraqi government.
Syrian-Iraqi relations have improved significantly in recent months, following two visits by Maliki to Damascus and a visit this summer by Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otari to Baghdad. The countries seemingly realized that they had much in common, despite Syria's colossal differences with the Maliki regime, which was brought to power by the U.S. in 2006.
The Syrians reasoned they could play an influential role in restoring stability to Iraq, which was a high priority on Maliki's agenda, given their excellent relations with Iraqi Sunnis and Shia heavyweights like Muqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi tribes, which once formed the Sunni resistance and which are now the backbone of the Awakening Councils, overlap extensively with their cousins in the Syrian desert.
Syria can build on its excellent relations with these tribes to tame, and eventually disarm, armed groups in Iraq. It can help with more border security, given that it shares a common enemy with Maliki - al-Qaeda-linked fundamentalists.
Chaos in Iraq is dangerous for the Syrians from a national security perspective because it could easily spill over into Syria, as was the case with several attempted terrorist attacks in 2004-2007. During investigations, it was revealed that many of the terrorists that had tried launching attacks within Syria had either been to Iraq, or obtained arms from Iraq.
So, helping Maliki to bring security to Baghdad was also a high priority for Damascus, and it played well into Syria's newfound relationship with the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. The Syrians reason that Obama wants peace in Iraq to facilitate a smooth exodus for U.S. troops by early 2012.
For their part, the Syrians want Obama to jump-start peace talks by applying strong pressure on the hardline Israeli government to restore the occupied Golan Heights to Syria. If the Syrians deliver on Iraq, Obama would deliver on the Middle East peace process. This win-win formula seemed to be working well since January, when the Syrians used their considerable influence with different segments of Iraq to secure safe and democratic provincial elections. As a result, Obama indeed did take tangible steps towards regional peace, summed up in his speech at Cairo University on June 4.
If this relationship was going so well, why in the world would Syria approve - or turn a blind eye to - such a massive operation in Baghdad? There is not a single argument in favor of the Iraqi argument, because from where the Syrians see it, such an operation would be like shooting oneself in the foot.
All it does is poison the neighborhood, negatively affecting both Syrian-Iraqi and Syrian-U.S. relations. It additionally sends all the wrong messages since the bombings did not target a particular leader or sect, but a political system at large; one with which the Syrians have been comfortably cooperating since 2006.
Nothing in the world would have better served Syria's interest than uncovering the operation before it happened, then handing its culprits over to the Iraqi government, or the Americans. The fact that it did not simply means that it had no clue that such an operation was being hatched. If it did, it would surely have acted accordingly.
Iraqi officials can immediately disqualify this argument, however, saying that the two Ba'athists based in Syria could have acted without the knowledge of the Syrian government. This is also difficult to digest, since all the Iraqi refugees in Syria are closely watched to make sure they refrain from any illegal activity. Additionally, the timing of the operation could not have been worse - 24 hours after Maliki summed up a successful visit to Syria, and while relations were steadily improving with the U.S.
If this is the case, then why blame Syria? Clearly, from the contradicting remarks of Iraqi ministers, Black Wednesday puts many top officials in very difficult positions. It proves just how weak and divided they are - exposing them before ordinary Iraqis who are furious at the rising death toll and want answers from their elected representatives.
More horrendous attacks took place from 2005 to 2008, and never aroused such a stir. The fact that this comes after 18 months of relative peace strikes a raw nerve in the Iraqi street. Self-criticism is uncommon in the Arab world and neither the minister of interior nor the minister of defense was prepared to take the blame for Black Wednesday.
What is always easier than shouldering responsibility is blaming others for one's own shortcomings. Iraqi officials mistakenly thought that they had a ready scapegoat in Syria. After all, not too long ago, Syria was a scapegoat for everything rotten taking place in Iraq.
Whenever Iraqi officials wanted to justify their shortcomings, they blamed the violence on Damascus, and always found a supportive George W Bush administration willing to back their claims.
Nobody in Iraq wants to know who carried out the Wednesday attacks, because reality would expose dramatic mismanagement of government office. That in turn would drown many parliamentary hopefuls in January's elections. It therefore suits all officials to cover up for their shortcomings by blaming Syria.
Nobody in the Iraqi government would dare blame Iran or Saudi Arabia, because of the financial and military clout these countries have in Iraq, along with their respective army of followers. Left standing is Syria, which happens to be Ba'athist and still has Iraqi fugitives on its territory.
In recalling their ambassador from Damascus, the Iraqis will have to deal with the aftershocks in their relationship with Syria. Iraq needs the Syrians much more than Damascus needs Baghdad. Iraq needs it for economic issues related to the pumping of oil and rebuilding of the war-torn country. It needs it to mediate explosive conflicts between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, whose leaders were all one-time residents of Damascus and still have excellent relations with the Syrians.
Iraq needs it to police the Syrian-Iraqi border, and to continue playing host to over 1 million Iraqi refugees based in Syria since 2003. Iraq needs Damascus to mediate talks between Maliki and both Ba'athists and Sunni tribes. It also needs the Syrians to legitimize the Maliki regime, or whatever succeeds it in January, in the eyes of ordinary Iraqi Sunnis who have historically looked towards Syria for shelter and support.
When Syria decided to open an embassy in Baghdad in late 2008, this greatly legitimized Maliki in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis, who until then saw him as nothing but a sectarian clown who had nothing but animosity for the Sunni community and wanted to punish it collectively for having produced Saddam Hussein.
It is one thing when countries like Jordan or Egypt recognize Maliki and legitimize his administration, but a completely different matter when this is done by Syria, a country that remains dominated by a strong brand of Arab nationalism that is appealing to the Iraqi street.
In as much as the sending of an ambassador was symbolic for the Syrians, recalling him is equally symbolic, and will cause plenty of damage for the prime minister, who needs a broad constituency among Sunnis and Shias in preparation for the elections.
The attacks, which ripped through government buildings on August 19, were the worst in Iraq in over 12 months and came just a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wrapped up a state visit to Syria, where he boosted political and economic relations with Damascus and jump-started bilateral committees to see that security is strongly monitored on the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Since then, however, a tug-of-war has erupted within Iraq between those who blame al-Qaeda and the outlawed Ba'ath Party and those who blame Iran for the Black Wednesday attacks.
Maliki blames both, while Defense Minister Abdul Qadir Obeidi said the weapons used for the attacks had been "made in Iran". Syria's name emerged rather suddenly on Sunday, when a former policeman appeared on Iraqi state-run media, claiming responsibility for the attacks, saying they had been ordered by two Saddam loyalists based in Syria.
The Iraqi government thus recalled its ambassador on Tuesday, asking that Syria extradite two men - Mohammad Yunis Ahmad and Satman Farhan - who are the alleged masterminds of the Baghdad bombings.
The Syrians were infuriated by the accusations, responding immediately by recalling their own diplomat, Nawwaf al-Fares, from Baghdad. A statement from Syria categorically rejected the Iraqi claims, reminding that "Syria had forcefully denounced this terrorist act which left victims among the Iraqi people".
The Syrians added they would welcome an Iraqi delegation that brought with it concrete evidence justifying the accusations, "or else, it considers what was aired by the Iraqi media as nothing but evidence fabricated for internal [Iraqi] objectives".
The contradicting remarks by Iraqi officials, the Syrian statement added, were adequate proof that far from being authentic, the entire ordeal was a fabrication of the Iraqi government.
Syrian-Iraqi relations have improved significantly in recent months, following two visits by Maliki to Damascus and a visit this summer by Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otari to Baghdad. The countries seemingly realized that they had much in common, despite Syria's colossal differences with the Maliki regime, which was brought to power by the U.S. in 2006.
The Syrians reasoned they could play an influential role in restoring stability to Iraq, which was a high priority on Maliki's agenda, given their excellent relations with Iraqi Sunnis and Shia heavyweights like Muqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi tribes, which once formed the Sunni resistance and which are now the backbone of the Awakening Councils, overlap extensively with their cousins in the Syrian desert.
Syria can build on its excellent relations with these tribes to tame, and eventually disarm, armed groups in Iraq. It can help with more border security, given that it shares a common enemy with Maliki - al-Qaeda-linked fundamentalists.
Chaos in Iraq is dangerous for the Syrians from a national security perspective because it could easily spill over into Syria, as was the case with several attempted terrorist attacks in 2004-2007. During investigations, it was revealed that many of the terrorists that had tried launching attacks within Syria had either been to Iraq, or obtained arms from Iraq.
So, helping Maliki to bring security to Baghdad was also a high priority for Damascus, and it played well into Syria's newfound relationship with the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. The Syrians reason that Obama wants peace in Iraq to facilitate a smooth exodus for U.S. troops by early 2012.
For their part, the Syrians want Obama to jump-start peace talks by applying strong pressure on the hardline Israeli government to restore the occupied Golan Heights to Syria. If the Syrians deliver on Iraq, Obama would deliver on the Middle East peace process. This win-win formula seemed to be working well since January, when the Syrians used their considerable influence with different segments of Iraq to secure safe and democratic provincial elections. As a result, Obama indeed did take tangible steps towards regional peace, summed up in his speech at Cairo University on June 4.
If this relationship was going so well, why in the world would Syria approve - or turn a blind eye to - such a massive operation in Baghdad? There is not a single argument in favor of the Iraqi argument, because from where the Syrians see it, such an operation would be like shooting oneself in the foot.
All it does is poison the neighborhood, negatively affecting both Syrian-Iraqi and Syrian-U.S. relations. It additionally sends all the wrong messages since the bombings did not target a particular leader or sect, but a political system at large; one with which the Syrians have been comfortably cooperating since 2006.
Nothing in the world would have better served Syria's interest than uncovering the operation before it happened, then handing its culprits over to the Iraqi government, or the Americans. The fact that it did not simply means that it had no clue that such an operation was being hatched. If it did, it would surely have acted accordingly.
Iraqi officials can immediately disqualify this argument, however, saying that the two Ba'athists based in Syria could have acted without the knowledge of the Syrian government. This is also difficult to digest, since all the Iraqi refugees in Syria are closely watched to make sure they refrain from any illegal activity. Additionally, the timing of the operation could not have been worse - 24 hours after Maliki summed up a successful visit to Syria, and while relations were steadily improving with the U.S.
If this is the case, then why blame Syria? Clearly, from the contradicting remarks of Iraqi ministers, Black Wednesday puts many top officials in very difficult positions. It proves just how weak and divided they are - exposing them before ordinary Iraqis who are furious at the rising death toll and want answers from their elected representatives.
More horrendous attacks took place from 2005 to 2008, and never aroused such a stir. The fact that this comes after 18 months of relative peace strikes a raw nerve in the Iraqi street. Self-criticism is uncommon in the Arab world and neither the minister of interior nor the minister of defense was prepared to take the blame for Black Wednesday.
What is always easier than shouldering responsibility is blaming others for one's own shortcomings. Iraqi officials mistakenly thought that they had a ready scapegoat in Syria. After all, not too long ago, Syria was a scapegoat for everything rotten taking place in Iraq.
Whenever Iraqi officials wanted to justify their shortcomings, they blamed the violence on Damascus, and always found a supportive George W Bush administration willing to back their claims.
Nobody in Iraq wants to know who carried out the Wednesday attacks, because reality would expose dramatic mismanagement of government office. That in turn would drown many parliamentary hopefuls in January's elections. It therefore suits all officials to cover up for their shortcomings by blaming Syria.
Nobody in the Iraqi government would dare blame Iran or Saudi Arabia, because of the financial and military clout these countries have in Iraq, along with their respective army of followers. Left standing is Syria, which happens to be Ba'athist and still has Iraqi fugitives on its territory.
In recalling their ambassador from Damascus, the Iraqis will have to deal with the aftershocks in their relationship with Syria. Iraq needs the Syrians much more than Damascus needs Baghdad. Iraq needs it for economic issues related to the pumping of oil and rebuilding of the war-torn country. It needs it to mediate explosive conflicts between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, whose leaders were all one-time residents of Damascus and still have excellent relations with the Syrians.
Iraq needs it to police the Syrian-Iraqi border, and to continue playing host to over 1 million Iraqi refugees based in Syria since 2003. Iraq needs Damascus to mediate talks between Maliki and both Ba'athists and Sunni tribes. It also needs the Syrians to legitimize the Maliki regime, or whatever succeeds it in January, in the eyes of ordinary Iraqi Sunnis who have historically looked towards Syria for shelter and support.
When Syria decided to open an embassy in Baghdad in late 2008, this greatly legitimized Maliki in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis, who until then saw him as nothing but a sectarian clown who had nothing but animosity for the Sunni community and wanted to punish it collectively for having produced Saddam Hussein.
It is one thing when countries like Jordan or Egypt recognize Maliki and legitimize his administration, but a completely different matter when this is done by Syria, a country that remains dominated by a strong brand of Arab nationalism that is appealing to the Iraqi street.
In as much as the sending of an ambassador was symbolic for the Syrians, recalling him is equally symbolic, and will cause plenty of damage for the prime minister, who needs a broad constituency among Sunnis and Shias in preparation for the elections.
Guantanamo inmates' Portugal move
Two Syrian nationals held at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay have been transferred to Portugal.
The two detainees from the Cuban facility, who arrived in Portugal on Friday, have not yet been named.
The US has asked European countries to accommodate former inmates who cannot return to their countries of origin because of the risk of persecution.
France, Germany and Italy are among some of the countries that have agreed to take them in.
The two Syrian detainees "are not subject to any charge, they are free people and are living in homes provided by [the] state," Portuguese officials were quoted as saying by AFP news agency.
US President Barack Obama has promised to close Guantanamo Bay facility by January 2010. It was opened by the Bush administration in 2002 to house suspected terrorists.
Although more than 540 detainees have departed Guantanamo for other countries, some 220 reportedly remain in the Cuban facility.
The two detainees from the Cuban facility, who arrived in Portugal on Friday, have not yet been named.
The US has asked European countries to accommodate former inmates who cannot return to their countries of origin because of the risk of persecution.
France, Germany and Italy are among some of the countries that have agreed to take them in.
The two Syrian detainees "are not subject to any charge, they are free people and are living in homes provided by [the] state," Portuguese officials were quoted as saying by AFP news agency.
US President Barack Obama has promised to close Guantanamo Bay facility by January 2010. It was opened by the Bush administration in 2002 to house suspected terrorists.
Although more than 540 detainees have departed Guantanamo for other countries, some 220 reportedly remain in the Cuban facility.
UAE 'seizes N Korea arms cargo'
The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship illegally carrying embargoed North Korean weapons bound for Iran, diplomatic sources at the UN have said.
A diplomat told the AFP news agency that the UAE had informed UN officials responsible for implementing sanctions on Pyongyang.
The UK-based Financial Times reported earlier on Friday that the ship was seized "some weeks ago".
It said the armaments included rocket-propelled grenades.
The arms had been falsely labelled as "machine parts," the Financial Times reported, adding that the vessel was still being held in the UAE.
The diplomatic source told AFP that the issue was being dealt with by the UN Security Council's sanctions committee, and declined to comment further.
A new round of UN sanctions on North Korea was approved unanimously on 12 June, following a nuclear weapons test by Pyongyang and subsequent missile launches.
The UN resolution, which aimed to cut arms exports as a source of revenue for North Korea, also called for tougher inspections of air, sea and land shipments to and from the hard-line communist state.
A diplomat told the AFP news agency that the UAE had informed UN officials responsible for implementing sanctions on Pyongyang.
The UK-based Financial Times reported earlier on Friday that the ship was seized "some weeks ago".
It said the armaments included rocket-propelled grenades.
The arms had been falsely labelled as "machine parts," the Financial Times reported, adding that the vessel was still being held in the UAE.
The diplomatic source told AFP that the issue was being dealt with by the UN Security Council's sanctions committee, and declined to comment further.
A new round of UN sanctions on North Korea was approved unanimously on 12 June, following a nuclear weapons test by Pyongyang and subsequent missile launches.
The UN resolution, which aimed to cut arms exports as a source of revenue for North Korea, also called for tougher inspections of air, sea and land shipments to and from the hard-line communist state.
Bus Bombings Kill 10 People, Injure 19 in Southern Iraq
At least 10 people were killed and 19 wounded, including women and children, when bombs exploded on two buses near Iraq's southern city of Kut on Monday. "Sticky bombs were attached to two buses and 10 people were killed," police lieutenant Mohammed Fadhil said. "Nineteen people were wounded."The first bomb exploded 15 kilometers north of Kut, causing eight deaths and leaving eight wounded. The second blast occurred half an hour later 40 kilometers north of the southern city, the regional capital of Wasit province, leading to two deaths and 11 wounded, according to Fadhil. "Women and children are among the casualties," he said.An official at Al Zahra hospital confirmed that it had received 10 bodies and was treating 19 wounded.The latest attacks come amid mounting concern about Iraq's security situation and less than a week after two massive truck bombings left at least 95 people dead and about 600 wounded in Baghdad.
மெல்ல,மெல்ல முகம் காட்டும் மெய்!!!!
இஸ்லாமாபாத்: நாட்டின் பிரிவினையைத் தவிர்த்திருந்தால், இந்தியா இன்னேரம் உலகப் பெரும் வல்லரசு நாடாக மாறியிருந்திருக்கும் என்று கூறியுள்ளார் ஜஸ்வந்த் சிங்.பாகிஸ்தானின் டான் டிவிக்கு ஜஸ்வந்த் சிங் ஜின்னா குறித்த நூல் தொடர்பாக பேட்டி அளித்துள்ளார். அவர் கூறியிருப்பதாவது:பன்முகம் கொண்ட பெடரல் இந்தியா அமைய வேண்டும் என்பது காந்தி மற்றும் ஜின்னாவின் கனவாக இருந்தது. ஆனால் ஜவஹர்லால் நேருவும், சர்தார் வல்லபாய் படேலும், காங்கிரஸ் கட்சியும்தான் இந்தியப் பிரிவினைக்கு வழி வகுத்து விட்டனர்.நாடு உடைய நாம் வழி வகுத்து விட்டோம். படேலும், நேருவும், ஜின்னாவின் கோரிக்கையை ஏற்க ஒப்புக் கொண்டனர். ஆனால் அதை கூறு போட்ட வடிவில் ஏற்க முன்வந்தனர். நாம் ஒன்றாக இருந்திருந்தால், பாகிஸ்தான் உருவாகாமல் இருந்திருந்தால் இன்னேரம் வல்லரசாக மாறியிருப்போம்.இனிமேல் பூகோள எல்லைய மாற்றியமைக்க முடியாது. எனவே கடந்த கால நினைவுகளிலேயே வாழ்ந்திருப்போம் என்ற எண்ணத்தை இரு நாட்டு மக்களும் மாற்றிக் கொள்ள வேண்டும். இரு நாடுகளும் இணைந்து தெற்காசியாவின் சோகங்களை அழிக்க வேண்டும் என்று நினைத்தால் இரு நாடுகளும் இணைந்து செயல்பட வேண்டும். அதற்கு பெருந்தன்மையான மனது இரு நாடுகளுக்கும் தேவை.இந்தியாவுக்கும், பாகிஸ்தானுக்கும் இடையே 2002ம் ஆண்டில் ஏற்பட்ட மோதலின்போது அணு ஆயுத யுத்தம் வெடிக்கும் என்ற நிலை ஏற்பட்டதாக கூறப்பட்டதெல்லாம் தவறானவை. அந்த நிலையே அப்போது ஏற்படவில்லை. இரு நாடுகளும் அணு ஆயுதங்களைப் பயன்படுத்த வேண்டும் என்ற எண்ணத்தை ஒருபோதும் கொண்டிருக்கவில்லை என்று கூறியுள்ளார் ஜஸ்வந்த் சிங்.புத்தகத்துக்குத் தடை-எதிர்த்து வழக்கு:இந் நிலையில் ஜின்னா குறித்து தான் எழுதிய "Jinnah -- India, Partition, Independence" புத்தகத்துக்கு குஜராத் அரசு தடை விதித்துள்ளதை எதிர்த்து ஜஸ்வந்த் சிங் உச்ச நீதிமன்றத்தில் வழக்குத் தொடர்ந்துள்ளார்.தனது மனுவில், இந்தப் புத்தகத்தை படித்தே பார்க்காமல் தடை விதித்துள்ளனர். இந்த விவகாரத்தில் முதல்வர் நரேந்திர மோடி ஒருதலைப்பட்சமாக நடந்து கொண்டுள்ளார் என்று கூறப்பட்டுள்ளது.
உண்மை கண்ணியவான்கள்
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِِஆயிஷா(ரலி) அறிவித்தார்கள்;அபூ பக்ர்(ரலி) அவர்களுக்கு (ஓர் எஜமானனுக்கு அடிமை செலுத்த வேண்டிய சம்பாத்தியத்தில்) நிர்ணயிக்கப்பட்ட தொகையைச் செலுத்தி வந்த அடிமையொருவன் இருந்தான். அபூ பக்ர்(ரலி) அவன் செலுத்தும் தொகையிலிருந்து உண்டு வந்தார்கள். ஒரு நாள் அவன் ஏதோ ஒரு பொருளைக் கொண்டு வந்தான். அதிலிருந்து அபூ பக்ர்(ரலி) சிறிது உண்டார்கள். அப்போது அந்த அடிமை அவர்களிடம், 'இது என்ன என்று உங்களுக்குத் தெரியுமா?' என்று கேட்டான். அபூ பக்ர்(ரலி), 'இது என்ன?' என்று கேட்டார்கள். அவன், 'நான் அறியாமைக் காலத்தில் ஒரு மனிதருக்குக் குறி சொல்லிவந்தேன்; எனக்கு நன்றாகக் குறி சொல்லத் தெரியாது; ஆயினும் (குறி சொல்லத் தெரிந்தவன் போல் நடித்து) அவரை நான் ஏமாற்றி விட்டேன். அவர் அதற்காக எனக்குக் கூலி கொடுத்தார். நீங்கள் உண்டது (குறி சொன்னதற்காக) எனக்குக் கூலியாகக் கிடைத்த அந்தப் பொருளிலிருந்து தான்" என்று சொன்னான். உடனே அபூ பக்ர்(ரலி) தம் கையை (வாய்க்குள்) நுழைத்துத் தம் வயிற்றிலிருந்து அனைத்தையும் வாந்தியெடுத்துவிட்டார்கள்.ஆதாரம்;புஹாரி எண் 3842இந்த செய்தியில்அபூபக்கர்[ரலி] ,அவர்கள் தனது அடிமை மூலம் தனக்கு கிடைக்கவேண்டிய வேண்டிய அடிமை தொகையை உண்கிறார்கள். பின்பு அந்த அடிமை ஹராமான வழியில் பொருளீட்டியதைதான்நம்மிடத்தில் தந்துள்ளான். அதைத்தான் நாம் சாப்பிட்டுவிட்டோம் என்பதை அறிந்தவுடன் தனது வாய்க்குள் விரலை விட்டு வாந்தி எடுக்கிறார்கள் என்றால், அபூபக்கர்[ரலி] அவர்களின் வாய்மையை எண்ணிப்பாருங்கள்.சமீபத்தில் ஒரு அறிஞர் இடம், என் தந்தை வட்டியின் மூலம் சம்பாதித்த சொத்து எனக்கு வாரிசு அடிப்படையில் கிடைத்துள்ளது. இது எனக்கு ஆகுமானதா? என்ற கேள்வி முன்வைக்கப்பட்டபோது, அது உங்களுக்கு ஆகுமானதுதான்; ஏனெனில் தவறான வழியில் பொருளீட்டியது உங்கள் தந்தைதான். அந்த பாவத்திற்கு அவர்தான் பொறுப்பாளி. உங்களுக்கு அதில் சம்மந்தமில்லை. எனவே வாரிசு அடிப்படையில் கிடைத்த அந்த சொத்து உங்களுக்கு ஆகுமானதே! என்று அந்த அறிஞர் பதிலளித்தார்.நன்றாக கவனிக்கவேண்டும் கொடிய வட்டியின் மூலம் சேர்த்த பொருள் ஆள் மாறும்போது ஆகுமாகிவிடுகிறது என்று ஃபத்வா வழங்கும் அறிஞர்கள் வாழும் காலத்தில் நாம் இருக்கிறோம்.ஆனால், தனது அடிமை தவறான வழியில் பொருளீட்டிய தொகையில் உண்பதை வெறுத்த அபூபக்கர் ரலி அவர்கள் எங்கே!வரதட்சனை உணவு வீட்டு தேடி வந்தால் அது அன்பளிப்பு; ஆள்மாறி விட்டால் [அது எந்த வழியில் சம்பாதித்ததாக இருந்தாலும்] ஆகுமானது என்று பத்வா வழங்கும் மேதைகள் எங்கே!யார் மேன்மக்கள்..? அந்த சத்திய ஸகாபாக்கள் அல்லவா!
பன்றிக் காய்ச்சலும், ஹஜ் பயணிகளும்
டெல்லி : பன்றிக் காய்ச்சல் பரவலைத் தடுக்க ஹஜ் யாத்திரையாக வரும் இந்திய யாத்ரீகர்கள் கட்டாயம் மருத்துவ சான்றிதழுடன் வர வேண்டும், தடுப்பு மருந்து எடுத்துக் கொள்ள வேண்டும் என சவூதி அரேபிய அரசு உத்தரவிட்டுள்ளது.
இதுதொடர்பான உத்தரவை சவூதி சுகாதார அமைச்சகம் பிறப்பித்துள்ளது.
மேலும், தத்தமது நாட்டிலேயே பன்றிக் காய்ச்சல் தடுப்பு மருந்து எடுத்துக் கொள்ளப்பட்டதாக தெரிவிக்கும் சான்றிதழ்களையும் யாத்ரீகர்கள் கொண்டு வர வேண்டும் எனவும் சவூதி அரசு உத்தரவிட்டுள்ளது.
இதுதவிர பன்றிக் காய்ச்சல் அதிக அளவில் பாதிக்கும் 12 வயதுக்குட்பட்டோரையும், 65 வயதுக்கு மேற்பட்டவர்களையும் அனுமதிப்பதில்லை என்றும் சவூதி சுகாதாரத் துறை முடிவு செய்துள்ளது.
இந்த தடை காரணமாக இந்திய ஹஜ் கமிட்டி பல்வேறு நடவடிக்கைளில் இறங்கியுள்ளது.
அதன்படி காய்ச்சல், சளி போன்ற பிரச்சினைகள் உடையோரை ஹஜ் யாத்திரைக்கு அனுப்பாமல் தடை விதிக்க திட்டமிடப்பட்டுள்ளது.
இதுதொடர்பான விரிவான நடவடிக்கைகளுக்காக மத்திய சுகாதாரத் துறை அதிகாரிகளுடன், ஹஜ் கமிட்டி உறுப்பினர்கள் வருகிற 29ம் தேதி விவாதிக்கவுள்ளனர்.
இந்தியாவிலிருந்து யாத்திரை செல்ல விரும்புவோருக்கு சம்பந்தப்பட்ட மாநில அரசுகள் மூலம் மருத்துவ சான்றிதழ் அளிக்கவும், தடுப்பு மருந்து கொடுக்கவும் திட்டமிடப்பட்டுள்ளது.
ஆனால் தற்போது பன்றிக் காய்ச்சலுக்கென பிரத்யேகமான தடுப்பு மருந்து எதுவும் இல்லை. டாமிப்ளூ மாத்திரை மட்டுமே உள்ளது. அதையே தடுப்பு மருந்தாக கொடுக்கப் போகிறார்களா என்பது குறித்து இதுவரை அதிகாரப்பூர்வமாக மத்திய அரசு தெரிவிக்கவி்ல்லை
இதுதொடர்பான உத்தரவை சவூதி சுகாதார அமைச்சகம் பிறப்பித்துள்ளது.
மேலும், தத்தமது நாட்டிலேயே பன்றிக் காய்ச்சல் தடுப்பு மருந்து எடுத்துக் கொள்ளப்பட்டதாக தெரிவிக்கும் சான்றிதழ்களையும் யாத்ரீகர்கள் கொண்டு வர வேண்டும் எனவும் சவூதி அரசு உத்தரவிட்டுள்ளது.
இதுதவிர பன்றிக் காய்ச்சல் அதிக அளவில் பாதிக்கும் 12 வயதுக்குட்பட்டோரையும், 65 வயதுக்கு மேற்பட்டவர்களையும் அனுமதிப்பதில்லை என்றும் சவூதி சுகாதாரத் துறை முடிவு செய்துள்ளது.
இந்த தடை காரணமாக இந்திய ஹஜ் கமிட்டி பல்வேறு நடவடிக்கைளில் இறங்கியுள்ளது.
அதன்படி காய்ச்சல், சளி போன்ற பிரச்சினைகள் உடையோரை ஹஜ் யாத்திரைக்கு அனுப்பாமல் தடை விதிக்க திட்டமிடப்பட்டுள்ளது.
இதுதொடர்பான விரிவான நடவடிக்கைகளுக்காக மத்திய சுகாதாரத் துறை அதிகாரிகளுடன், ஹஜ் கமிட்டி உறுப்பினர்கள் வருகிற 29ம் தேதி விவாதிக்கவுள்ளனர்.
இந்தியாவிலிருந்து யாத்திரை செல்ல விரும்புவோருக்கு சம்பந்தப்பட்ட மாநில அரசுகள் மூலம் மருத்துவ சான்றிதழ் அளிக்கவும், தடுப்பு மருந்து கொடுக்கவும் திட்டமிடப்பட்டுள்ளது.
ஆனால் தற்போது பன்றிக் காய்ச்சலுக்கென பிரத்யேகமான தடுப்பு மருந்து எதுவும் இல்லை. டாமிப்ளூ மாத்திரை மட்டுமே உள்ளது. அதையே தடுப்பு மருந்தாக கொடுக்கப் போகிறார்களா என்பது குறித்து இதுவரை அதிகாரப்பூர்வமாக மத்திய அரசு தெரிவிக்கவி்ல்லை
மாறாத, நிரந்தரத் தக்வா!
மீண்டும் ஒரு ரமளான்: பிறை 8
நோன்பின் மூலம் பெறும் தக்வாவினால் சமுதாயத்தில் உள்ள எல்லாவகையான பிரச்சினைகளும் மறைய வாய்ப்புள்ளது என்பதைப் பட்டியலிட்டுக்கொண்டே செல்லலாம்.
தக்வா இல்லாத வாழ்க்கை அல்லது நோன்பு மாதத்தில் மட்டும் ஏற்பட்டு, நோன்பு முடிந்ததும் தீர்ந்து போகும் தக்வாதான் சமுதாயத்தில் உருவாகும் எல்லா/பெரும்பாலான பிரச்சினைகளுக்கும் மூலகாரணம் என்றால் மிகையாகாது. உலகில் மனிதன் சந்திக்கும் சூழ்நிலைகளும் அதன் மூலம் அவன் எடுக்கும் முடிவுகளும் தக்வாவின் அடைப்படையில் எடுக்கப் படும்போது அவனுக்கும் சமுதாயத்துக்கும் நன்மை பயப்பதாகவும் தக்வா அற்ற அடிப்படையில் எடுக்கப் படும்போது தீமையாகவும் அமைந்து விடுகின்றது.
தக்வா என்ற இறையச்சம் இல்லாமல்/குறைந்து போவதே இவ்வுலகில் ஒவ்வொரு தனி மனிதன் முதல், பெரிய நாடுகள் வரை எடுக்கும் நடவடிக்கைகளும் மனித சமுதாயத்துக்குத் தீங்கு விளைவிப்பதாக அமைந்து விடுவதைக் காண்கிறோம். தனிமனிதக் கொலை, தற்கொலை முடிவுகள் முதல் "பிரச்சினைக்குத் தீர்வு" என்ற பெயரில் மனிதர்களைக் கொன்று குவிப்பது வரை இறையச்சம் என்ற தக்வா இல்லாததால், தட்டிக் கேட்கப் படமாட்டோம் என்ற அதீதத் துணிச்சலால் பெறப்படும் முடிவுகள்தாம் எனத் துணிந்து கூறலாம்.
இறையச்சம் நிரந்தரமாக உள்ள ஒருவர், எப்படிப் பட்ட இக்கட்டான, சோதனையான நிலையிலும் தற்கொலைக்கு முயல மாட்டார். ஏனெனில் தற்கொலை என்பது இறைவனால் மன்னிக்க முடியாத குற்றம் என்பதை அவர் உணர்ந்திருப்பார். தற்கொலை என்பது இவ்வுலகில் மனிதர்கள் சந்திக்கும் வறுமை, கடன், விரக்தி, ஏமாற்றம், தேர்விலோ வாழ்க்கையிலோ ஏற்படும் தோல்விகள், தாங்க முடியாத நோய்கள், இன்ன பிறவுக்கும் ஒரு தீர்க்கமான முடிவு என்று கருத மாட்டார்.
மரணத்தோடு மனித வாழ்க்கை முடிவு பெறுவதில்லை. மரணித்ததன் பின்னர் இறுதித் தீர்ப்புக் கொடுக்கப்பட்டு மறுமை எனும் நிரந்தர வாழ்க்கை துவங்குகின்றது. இம்மை எனும் இவ்வுலகில் எடுக்கப்படும் அவசர முடிவுகளால் நிலையான மறுமை வாழ்க்கைக்கு மாபெரும் இழப்பு ஏற்படும் என்றும் உணர்வார்.
சுருக்கமாக, இன்று மனித சமுதாயம் சந்தித்துவரும் வன்முறைகள், மோசடிகள், பொருளாதாரச் சுரண்டல்கள், காழ்ப்புணர்ச்சி, ஏற்றத்தாழ்வுகள், பற்பல ஊழல்கள், சொத்துத் தகராறுகள், மாமியார்-மருமகள், கணவன்-மனைவி, சகோதரர்கள் பிரச்சனைகள் உட்பட ஏனைய குடும்பப் பிரச்சினைகள், வரதட்சணைக் கொடுமைகள், தேர்வில் முறைகேடு செய்தல், (தேர்வுக்கு முன்பே) கேள்வித்தாள் விற்பனை, பொய்ச்சான்றிதழ்கள் விற்பனை, போதைப் பொருட்கள் வியாபாரம் தொடங்கி, தீய நோய்கள், பெண்களை இழிவு படுத்துதல், வல்லுறவு, விபச்சாரம் போன்ற சமுதாய சீர்கேடுகளும் ஒழிக்கப் படவேண்டும் என்றால் இறையச்சச் சிந்தனை மூலம் மட்டுமே முடியும்.
ரமளானில் நோன்பு நோற்பதன் மூலம் நாம் இந்த அரிய இறையச்சத்தைப் பெறுவதற்கு அல்லாஹ் அருள் புரிந்துள்ளான். அல்லாஹ் அருள் புரிந்து நாம் பெற்ற இறையச்சச் சிந்தனை இந்த ரமளான் மாத நோன்போடு முடிந்து விடக்கூடாது. வாழ்க்கை முழுவதிலும் வரும் நாட்களில் ஒவ்வொரு நொடியும் இதே எண்ணத்தோடு ஒவ்வொரு முஸ்லிமும் வாழவேண்டும்.
தக்வா என்ற இறையச்சத்தை உள்ளத்தில் ஏற்றிக் கொண்டவர், "தொழுகையை என் மீது கடமையாக்கிய இறைவன் என்னை இன்றும், என்றும் எப்போதும் பார்த்துக் கொண்டிருக்கின்றான்" என்ற நினைப்பை ஒருபோதும் மறந்து விடமாட்டார்.
கடந்த காலத்தில் பாவச் செயல்களில் மூழ்கி இருந்தவர், இறையருளால் ரமளானில் தக்வாவைப் பெற்றுக் கொண்டு விட்டால், "அல்லாஹ் என்னைப் பார்த்துக் கொண்டிருக்கின்றான். கடந்த காலத்தில் ஈடுபட்ட பாவச் செயல்களை நான் மீண்டும் செய்தால் அவன் என்னை நிச்சயமாகத் தண்டிப்பான்" என்ற எண்ணம் மேலிட்டு, பாவச் செயல்களில் ஈடுபடுவதை முற்றாகத் தவிர்த்து விடுவார். மேலும் முன்னர் செய்த பாவங்களில் இருந்து அல்லாஹ்வின் மன்னிப்பைப் பெற முயற்சி மேற்கொள்வார்.
இவையெல்லாம் தக்வா என்பது நோன்புக்கு மட்டும் தற்காலிகமானதாக இல்லாமல் வாழ்நாள் முழுதும் நிரந்தரமாக இருந்தால் மட்டுமே சாத்தியமாகும்.
- தொடரும் இன்ஷா அல்லாஹ்
ஆக்கம்: இப்னு ஹனீஃப்
நோன்பின் மூலம் பெறும் தக்வாவினால் சமுதாயத்தில் உள்ள எல்லாவகையான பிரச்சினைகளும் மறைய வாய்ப்புள்ளது என்பதைப் பட்டியலிட்டுக்கொண்டே செல்லலாம்.
தக்வா இல்லாத வாழ்க்கை அல்லது நோன்பு மாதத்தில் மட்டும் ஏற்பட்டு, நோன்பு முடிந்ததும் தீர்ந்து போகும் தக்வாதான் சமுதாயத்தில் உருவாகும் எல்லா/பெரும்பாலான பிரச்சினைகளுக்கும் மூலகாரணம் என்றால் மிகையாகாது. உலகில் மனிதன் சந்திக்கும் சூழ்நிலைகளும் அதன் மூலம் அவன் எடுக்கும் முடிவுகளும் தக்வாவின் அடைப்படையில் எடுக்கப் படும்போது அவனுக்கும் சமுதாயத்துக்கும் நன்மை பயப்பதாகவும் தக்வா அற்ற அடிப்படையில் எடுக்கப் படும்போது தீமையாகவும் அமைந்து விடுகின்றது.
தக்வா என்ற இறையச்சம் இல்லாமல்/குறைந்து போவதே இவ்வுலகில் ஒவ்வொரு தனி மனிதன் முதல், பெரிய நாடுகள் வரை எடுக்கும் நடவடிக்கைகளும் மனித சமுதாயத்துக்குத் தீங்கு விளைவிப்பதாக அமைந்து விடுவதைக் காண்கிறோம். தனிமனிதக் கொலை, தற்கொலை முடிவுகள் முதல் "பிரச்சினைக்குத் தீர்வு" என்ற பெயரில் மனிதர்களைக் கொன்று குவிப்பது வரை இறையச்சம் என்ற தக்வா இல்லாததால், தட்டிக் கேட்கப் படமாட்டோம் என்ற அதீதத் துணிச்சலால் பெறப்படும் முடிவுகள்தாம் எனத் துணிந்து கூறலாம்.
இறையச்சம் நிரந்தரமாக உள்ள ஒருவர், எப்படிப் பட்ட இக்கட்டான, சோதனையான நிலையிலும் தற்கொலைக்கு முயல மாட்டார். ஏனெனில் தற்கொலை என்பது இறைவனால் மன்னிக்க முடியாத குற்றம் என்பதை அவர் உணர்ந்திருப்பார். தற்கொலை என்பது இவ்வுலகில் மனிதர்கள் சந்திக்கும் வறுமை, கடன், விரக்தி, ஏமாற்றம், தேர்விலோ வாழ்க்கையிலோ ஏற்படும் தோல்விகள், தாங்க முடியாத நோய்கள், இன்ன பிறவுக்கும் ஒரு தீர்க்கமான முடிவு என்று கருத மாட்டார்.
மரணத்தோடு மனித வாழ்க்கை முடிவு பெறுவதில்லை. மரணித்ததன் பின்னர் இறுதித் தீர்ப்புக் கொடுக்கப்பட்டு மறுமை எனும் நிரந்தர வாழ்க்கை துவங்குகின்றது. இம்மை எனும் இவ்வுலகில் எடுக்கப்படும் அவசர முடிவுகளால் நிலையான மறுமை வாழ்க்கைக்கு மாபெரும் இழப்பு ஏற்படும் என்றும் உணர்வார்.
சுருக்கமாக, இன்று மனித சமுதாயம் சந்தித்துவரும் வன்முறைகள், மோசடிகள், பொருளாதாரச் சுரண்டல்கள், காழ்ப்புணர்ச்சி, ஏற்றத்தாழ்வுகள், பற்பல ஊழல்கள், சொத்துத் தகராறுகள், மாமியார்-மருமகள், கணவன்-மனைவி, சகோதரர்கள் பிரச்சனைகள் உட்பட ஏனைய குடும்பப் பிரச்சினைகள், வரதட்சணைக் கொடுமைகள், தேர்வில் முறைகேடு செய்தல், (தேர்வுக்கு முன்பே) கேள்வித்தாள் விற்பனை, பொய்ச்சான்றிதழ்கள் விற்பனை, போதைப் பொருட்கள் வியாபாரம் தொடங்கி, தீய நோய்கள், பெண்களை இழிவு படுத்துதல், வல்லுறவு, விபச்சாரம் போன்ற சமுதாய சீர்கேடுகளும் ஒழிக்கப் படவேண்டும் என்றால் இறையச்சச் சிந்தனை மூலம் மட்டுமே முடியும்.
ரமளானில் நோன்பு நோற்பதன் மூலம் நாம் இந்த அரிய இறையச்சத்தைப் பெறுவதற்கு அல்லாஹ் அருள் புரிந்துள்ளான். அல்லாஹ் அருள் புரிந்து நாம் பெற்ற இறையச்சச் சிந்தனை இந்த ரமளான் மாத நோன்போடு முடிந்து விடக்கூடாது. வாழ்க்கை முழுவதிலும் வரும் நாட்களில் ஒவ்வொரு நொடியும் இதே எண்ணத்தோடு ஒவ்வொரு முஸ்லிமும் வாழவேண்டும்.
தக்வா என்ற இறையச்சத்தை உள்ளத்தில் ஏற்றிக் கொண்டவர், "தொழுகையை என் மீது கடமையாக்கிய இறைவன் என்னை இன்றும், என்றும் எப்போதும் பார்த்துக் கொண்டிருக்கின்றான்" என்ற நினைப்பை ஒருபோதும் மறந்து விடமாட்டார்.
கடந்த காலத்தில் பாவச் செயல்களில் மூழ்கி இருந்தவர், இறையருளால் ரமளானில் தக்வாவைப் பெற்றுக் கொண்டு விட்டால், "அல்லாஹ் என்னைப் பார்த்துக் கொண்டிருக்கின்றான். கடந்த காலத்தில் ஈடுபட்ட பாவச் செயல்களை நான் மீண்டும் செய்தால் அவன் என்னை நிச்சயமாகத் தண்டிப்பான்" என்ற எண்ணம் மேலிட்டு, பாவச் செயல்களில் ஈடுபடுவதை முற்றாகத் தவிர்த்து விடுவார். மேலும் முன்னர் செய்த பாவங்களில் இருந்து அல்லாஹ்வின் மன்னிப்பைப் பெற முயற்சி மேற்கொள்வார்.
இவையெல்லாம் தக்வா என்பது நோன்புக்கு மட்டும் தற்காலிகமானதாக இல்லாமல் வாழ்நாள் முழுதும் நிரந்தரமாக இருந்தால் மட்டுமே சாத்தியமாகும்.
- தொடரும் இன்ஷா அல்லாஹ்
ஆக்கம்: இப்னு ஹனீஃப்
Monday, August 10, 2009
Iran and U.S. not fated to be enemies forever
The post-election episodes that have taken place in Iran, which continue to occupy front-page headlines of world newspapers, have perplexed and mystified many.
Although the dissidents who continue to defy the government’s call for an end to the protests over the June 12 presidential election have failed to provide hard proof that the election was rigged in favor of the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, their suspicions are reasonable and their right to speak out against a perceived wrong unquestionable.
On the other hand, there are those who allege interference by foreign powers attempting to fuel unrest and destabilize the government with the eventual goal of regime change in mind, suspicions which are also not unreasonable given the historical record, which contains no shortage of precedents for similar actions.
The 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup d’etat that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was one such example, well remembered in Iran but often purged from U.S. accounts and unknown among much of the American public.
Stephen Kinzer has done much to remedy this with his book All the Shah’s Men, which documents events leading up to and following the coup in extraordinary detail. An award-winning journalist for the New York Times, Kinzer was at one time also the paper’s bureau chief in Istanbul, and has received an honorary doctorate for his lifelong contribution to journalism.
Stephen Kinzer generously set aside time from his busy schedule, which includes work writing a new book on realpolitik in the Middle East set to come out early next year, to join me in an interview for Foreign Policy Journal to try to clear up some of the ambiguities surrounding Iran’s disputed election and to share his view of the events that have followed and the controversy that has captured the world’s attention.
Following is the full text of my interview with Mr. Kinzer:
Stephen, conservative figures in Iran and progressive commentators abroad assert that raising the allegations of fraud and manipulation in the Iranian elections was a premeditated effort, planned beforehand by opposition leaders to concertedly chip away at the conservative campaign and raise doubts about its possible victory. Do you believe this theory?
The Iranian opposition is not organized or united enough to have planned in advance for what happened after the recent election. Even the announced result might not have provoked such an outburst if people had confidence that it was legitimate. If there was a miscalculation, it may have been on the part of the regime. For the Supreme Leader to maintain credibility as a national figure, he has to be seen as above factional disputes. By siding so openly with one side in the election campaign, he wiped away one of the regime’s moral pillars.
Iranian officials are constantly accusing foreign leaders and Western media of meddling in the country’s internal affairs and instigating unrest and violence, while Western politicians and media figures claim that they are not linked with the political upheaval in Iran.
A sense of grievance against the outside world, a belief that the outside world wants to hold Iran back and prevent its development, is deeply rooted in the Iranian consciousness. Iranians feel that as a nation, they have been dispossessed and wronged. Part of this is rooted in the Shia culture of suffering and martyrdom. But the last 200 years are full of examples of how foreign powers exploited and looted Iran.
This history not only fuels Iran’s sense of grievance, but makes it very difficult for outside powers, especially Britain and the United States, to criticize Iran for its lack of democracy. Such criticism makes Iranians think back to 1953, when those two countries intervened to crush their country’s fragile democracy. The moral authority of the outside world to criticize repression in Iran is lamentably minimal.
After a wave of arrests and clampdowns, journalists, legal opposition figures, political activists, and pro-reform pundits are now behind bars, and calls for the detention of Mir-Hossein Mousavi are being heard from the conservative camp. Can we expect the survival of reform movement in Iran with the pressures it is undergoing?
The political evolution of Iran is not over. The situation there remains volatile, perhaps not in the short term, but over time. Protests after the recent election were fiercely repressed, but they were also thrilling evidence that a vibrant civil society thrives in Iran. Dissidents have begun to feel their power, and the ruling elite are no longer united. This should be a time for the opposition to reflect, regroup, organize and plan. The government will of course use its repressive tools to prevent the opposition from doing so.
So, with the ongoing standoff which has engulfed Iran’s political relations with the West, is the next 4-year period going to be a witness to the further protraction of acrimony, tension, and quarreling between the two sides?
Recent events make it more difficult for Iran and the U.S. to talk meaningfully, if only because American public opinion would be dubious. Nonetheless these two countries, despite their thirty years of enmity, have many long-term interests in common. Not only are they not fated to be enemies forever, they can become partners. Bringing them to an agreement will not be easy. Powerful forces in Washington and Tehran will work assiduously to undermine an agreement. But the opposition movement in Iran favors better ties, and as long as that is the case, the U.S. should try to negotiate.
The talks would have to be direct, comprehensive and unconditional. If they are not, they will fail. Some in Washington want to assure that they fail, so that the military option can be revived. But there is probably no strategic step the U.S. could take anywhere in the world that would bring as great a leap in strategic power as striking a “grand bargain” with Iran.
The post-election episodes that have taken place in Iran, which continue to occupy front-page headlines of world newspapers, have perplexed and mystified many.
Although the dissidents who continue to defy the government’s call for an end to the protests over the June 12 presidential election have failed to provide hard proof that the election was rigged in favor of the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, their suspicions are reasonable and their right to speak out against a perceived wrong unquestionable.
On the other hand, there are those who allege interference by foreign powers attempting to fuel unrest and destabilize the government with the eventual goal of regime change in mind, suspicions which are also not unreasonable given the historical record, which contains no shortage of precedents for similar actions.
The 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup d’etat that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was one such example, well remembered in Iran but often purged from U.S. accounts and unknown among much of the American public.
Stephen Kinzer has done much to remedy this with his book All the Shah’s Men, which documents events leading up to and following the coup in extraordinary detail. An award-winning journalist for the New York Times, Kinzer was at one time also the paper’s bureau chief in Istanbul, and has received an honorary doctorate for his lifelong contribution to journalism.
Stephen Kinzer generously set aside time from his busy schedule, which includes work writing a new book on realpolitik in the Middle East set to come out early next year, to join me in an interview for Foreign Policy Journal to try to clear up some of the ambiguities surrounding Iran’s disputed election and to share his view of the events that have followed and the controversy that has captured the world’s attention.
Following is the full text of my interview with Mr. Kinzer:
Stephen, conservative figures in Iran and progressive commentators abroad assert that raising the allegations of fraud and manipulation in the Iranian elections was a premeditated effort, planned beforehand by opposition leaders to concertedly chip away at the conservative campaign and raise doubts about its possible victory. Do you believe this theory?
The Iranian opposition is not organized or united enough to have planned in advance for what happened after the recent election. Even the announced result might not have provoked such an outburst if people had confidence that it was legitimate. If there was a miscalculation, it may have been on the part of the regime. For the Supreme Leader to maintain credibility as a national figure, he has to be seen as above factional disputes. By siding so openly with one side in the election campaign, he wiped away one of the regime’s moral pillars.
Iranian officials are constantly accusing foreign leaders and Western media of meddling in the country’s internal affairs and instigating unrest and violence, while Western politicians and media figures claim that they are not linked with the political upheaval in Iran.
A sense of grievance against the outside world, a belief that the outside world wants to hold Iran back and prevent its development, is deeply rooted in the Iranian consciousness. Iranians feel that as a nation, they have been dispossessed and wronged. Part of this is rooted in the Shia culture of suffering and martyrdom. But the last 200 years are full of examples of how foreign powers exploited and looted Iran.
This history not only fuels Iran’s sense of grievance, but makes it very difficult for outside powers, especially Britain and the United States, to criticize Iran for its lack of democracy. Such criticism makes Iranians think back to 1953, when those two countries intervened to crush their country’s fragile democracy. The moral authority of the outside world to criticize repression in Iran is lamentably minimal.
After a wave of arrests and clampdowns, journalists, legal opposition figures, political activists, and pro-reform pundits are now behind bars, and calls for the detention of Mir-Hossein Mousavi are being heard from the conservative camp. Can we expect the survival of reform movement in Iran with the pressures it is undergoing?
The political evolution of Iran is not over. The situation there remains volatile, perhaps not in the short term, but over time. Protests after the recent election were fiercely repressed, but they were also thrilling evidence that a vibrant civil society thrives in Iran. Dissidents have begun to feel their power, and the ruling elite are no longer united. This should be a time for the opposition to reflect, regroup, organize and plan. The government will of course use its repressive tools to prevent the opposition from doing so.
So, with the ongoing standoff which has engulfed Iran’s political relations with the West, is the next 4-year period going to be a witness to the further protraction of acrimony, tension, and quarreling between the two sides?
Recent events make it more difficult for Iran and the U.S. to talk meaningfully, if only because American public opinion would be dubious. Nonetheless these two countries, despite their thirty years of enmity, have many long-term interests in common. Not only are they not fated to be enemies forever, they can become partners. Bringing them to an agreement will not be easy. Powerful forces in Washington and Tehran will work assiduously to undermine an agreement. But the opposition movement in Iran favors better ties, and as long as that is the case, the U.S. should try to negotiate.
The talks would have to be direct, comprehensive and unconditional. If they are not, they will fail. Some in Washington want to assure that they fail, so that the military option can be revived. But there is probably no strategic step the U.S. could take anywhere in the world that would bring as great a leap in strategic power as striking a “grand bargain” with Iran.