Afghanistan, the day after

by Paul Rogers

SANGIN, Afghanistan - A US Army Special Operation Force Soldier, assigned to the Combined Joint Special Operation Task Force -

Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A), mans a 50. Cal during a 96 vehicle, 172 kilometer convoy from Kandahar Army Air Field to the Sangin

District Center area to rid the area of Taliban fighters 6 April 2007. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Keith Henning) www.army.mil

There are intense efforts to portray western policy in Afghanistan in a benign light. But evidence from the country itself, and the experiences of Iraq and Libya, suggest that hard questions should be asked about what is really happening.

The main United States response to 9/11 was a “war on terror” that began with the termination of the Taliban regime and the dispersal of the al-Qaida movement in late 2001. It appeared to work in a matter of weeks, though almost immediately the George W Bush administration became fixated on Iraq, leaving the Europeans to pick up the pieces. The United Nations and other experts soon issued warnings that Afghanistan needed immediate aid to fill a security vacuum; too little was offered, though, and the new International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) lacked enough personnel to ensure security outside Kabul and a few towns.

This vacuum persisted until 2005 and was then slowly filled by the return of the Taliban and other armed opposition groups (AOGs), leading to what amounted to Nato's reoccupation of the country. The Taliban was, if anything, energised by this; they saw the foreign troops as occupiers who in addition were keeping in power a corrupt and inefficient government.

By 2009, the incoming Barack Obama team had decided that the war was unwinnable, but drew the conclusion that the injection of a 30,000-strong “surge” of extra troops would create a position of strength and thus make possible a negotiated withdrawal. When this didn’t work, the US decided instead on a timetabled withdrawal. Soon, Afghanistan was becoming almost as unpopular as the Iraq war had been.

By the end of 2013, nearly half of the remaining 100,000 troops will have left Afghanistan, and by the end of 2014 all regular combat-troops will be out. “Regular”, since the US’s intention is that special forces and support-personnel for drones will remain, their role being to prevent any re-emergence of transnational jihadist elements (and perhaps also limit the extent of the Taliban’s role in Afghanistan’s post-occupation governance).

Behind the screen

The fundamental issue here is that the withdrawal from Afghanistan is being decided not by success in the war but by domestic politics, especially in the United States but also in Britain. This is not something talked about in polite circles; it follows that there has to be a single-minded propaganda offensive to convince people that the withdrawal is made possible only because there can now be an ordered handover to the Afghan security forces.

The reality, however, is highlighted by two themes in a new report from the UK House of Commons select committee on defence, Securing the Future of Afghanistan (10 April 2013). The first is that there is deeply conflicting evidence as to whether the Taliban are actually in retreat; the second is that the committee has faced great difficulty in trying to find out how Britain plans to aid Afghanistan after the withdrawal.

These points are well taken. It is almost impossible to get an accurate picture of developments across the whole of Afghanistan, especially when western military sources produce a stream of stories about successes against the Taliban and about these forces’ ability to hand over to the Afghan national army (ANA).

There is, though, much evidence of continuing conflict, especially in the south and east of the country. The recent examples include a bomb-attack against a United States convoy on 6 April that killed state-department officials, and a Nato air-raid in support of an ANA operation on 7 April which mistakenly killed many children.

It is probable that there genuinely has been some progress on issues like health and education in much of north and west Afghanistan. That is hugely welcome and comes at a time when Taliban/AOG activity in these areas is low, but it may well be that they are simply biding their time as the deadline for withdrawal approaches. After all, why fight an occupier who is already preparing to depart?

In much of south and east Afghanistan the Taliban/AOG combination is very much in evidence, and maintains control of significant territory. Moreover, there is huge corruption in and around government, with senior politicians and officials attempting to store as much as they can (and while they can) in foreign bank-accounts so that they will be able to relocate in Dubai and points west if chaos ensues after 2014.

In all this it is appropriate to remember what has happened in Iraq and even more in Libya, both of which (unlike Afghanistan) have huge oil resources. Iraq remains very insecure as the Nouri al-Maliki government remains determined to minimise the role of the Sunni minority, while working increasingly closely with the Iranians. His exclusion of the Sunnis is doing much to aid support for radical Islamist paramilitaries; these often embrace the al-Qaida outlook, and some are linking with the al-Nusra front in Syria in its fight against the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Thus, Iraqi Islamist groups are bonding with the Syrian rebels just as the al-Maliki government helps arm the Assad regime by allowing transit of Iranian supplies from the east. Iraq is now involved in both sides of the Syrian civil war, carrying the huge risk that Iraqi insecurity and the Syrian war slowly meld into a single conflict with implications that stretch across the region.

Where Libya is concerned, two years after the start of the Nato air campaign to oust Muammar Gaddafi, the country’s major towns and cities are plagued with competing militias that owe little or no allegiance to central government. Yet there is scarcely any reporting of Libya’s widespread insecurities (the conscientious reporting of Patrick Cockburn apart), and even less of the relationship between Libya and the evolving paramilitary insurgency to the south in Mali.

In Iraq and now Libya, then, the outcomes of external military intervention have been radically different to what was expected in official circles. It looks all too likely that the same will be true of Afghanistan.

In the British parliamentary system, select committees are (with a few exceptions) not particularly effective at calling governments to account - and usually this is even more true for the defence committee. Its Afghanistan report is different: a welcome sign that at least one part of the political system is trying to get a stronger focus on what is really happening in Afghanistan, and whether the UK and other governments should be replacing their “boots on the ground” with much greater efforts to help Afghans rebuild their own country.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international-security editor, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century(Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers

This article first appeared on openDemocracy 12 April 2013.

Korea, pion in het machtsspel tussen de grote mogendheden

  

De VS proberen Zuid-Korea in een conflict met zijn noorderbuur te verwikkelen om het regime aldaar ten val te brengen. Dat zegt de Britse journalist Dan Glazebrook in bovenstaande videoclip van het programma Op-Edge van 5 april op de Russische satellietzender RT. NRC-webredacteur Peter Zantingh vat de ontwikkelingen op het Koreaans schiereiland samen als: “Blaffende honden bijten niet, hoewel de oorlogstaal gevaarlijk is”, maar blijft het antwoord schuldig op de vraag waarom Noord-Korea de dreigementen aan elkaar rijgt. Op Radio 1 komt Dirk De Ruyver niet verder dan dat de dreiging van Noord-Korea veel aandacht krijgt in de Japanse media, maar het leven daar verder zijn gewone gang gaat. En Elsevier-columnist Afshin Ellian meent: het suïcidale regime gaat tot het uiterste om de machtsbalans te verstoren en ontwikkelt zich tot een internationale dreiging. Het Westen moet het gevaarlijke Noord-Koreaanse regime verdrijven, de as van het kwaad moet worden geëlimineerd, aldus nog Ellian.

Ook de Nederlands-Britse journalist en publicist Ian Buruma vindt dat er aan het Noord-Koreaans politieke systeem een steekje los is, maar doet tenminste een poging om “de mix van ideologisch fanatisme, boosaardige realpolitik en vervolgingswaanzin” in de context van de geschiedenis te plaatsen. Na de val van het Japanse Rijk in 1945, dat sinds 1910 niets ontziend over Korea had geheerst, werd het noorden bezet door de Sovjetunie en het zuiden door de VS. De Sovjets plukten een onbekende Koreaanse communist, Kim Il-sung, uit een legerkamp in Vladivostok en installeerden die in Pyongyang als leider van Noord-Korea. De mythes over zijn heldhaftig optreden tijdens de oorlog en zijn goddelijke status volgden snel en er ontstond een ware cultus over zijn persoon. De Kim-dynastie werd onderdeel van de staatsreligie.

Voor Buruma past de macht van de familie Kim en de vervolgingswaanzin die vervlochten is met het Noord-Koreaanse regime in een geschiedenis die veel verder teruggaat dan 1945. Geklemd tussen China, Rusland en Japan, heeft het Koreaans schiereiland lang gefungeerd als bloedig slagveld van de grote mogendheden. Het land kon maar overleven door de ene wereldmacht uit te spelen tegen de andere, en door zich dienstbaar op te stellen, vooral bij de Chinese keizers, in ruil voor bescherming. Deze erfenis heeft geleid tot een diepe angst en afschuw voor afhankelijkheid van sterkere landen. Kim Il-sung en diens zoon Kim Jong-il waren typische Koreaanse heersers, die China uitspeelden tegen de Sovjetunie, zich verzekerden van bescherming door beide landen, maar ongegeneerd de Zuid-Koreanen bestempelden als laffe lakeien van het Amerikaans imperialisme, aldus Buruma.

Net als de berichtgeving in de klassieke media blijft Buruma’s poging om de houding van de Noord-Koreanen te duiden aan de oppervlakte. De dreiging met kernwapens lijkt dan krankzinnig, een nadere analyse leert dat Washington Noord-Korea dwingt die weg te bewandelen. Het land vormt geen bedreiging van betekenis in vergelijking met het optreden van kernmacht VS, de strategische pivot naar Azië en de militaire manoeuvres langs de Koreaanse kust. De historische context die Buruma enkel aanstipt gaat veel verder. Zo deden de Koreanen in 1919, onder Japanse bezetting, tevergeefs een beroep op de grote mogendheden - na de Eerste Wereldoorlog in Versailles bijeen - om hun onafhankelijkheidsbeweging te steunen. Japan kreeg de controle over het Oosten en sloeg de Koreaanse democratiseringsbeweging hardvochtig neer.

Tegen het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog werden over heel Korea volkscomités opgericht en keerden Koreaanse bannelingen terug uit China, de VS en Rusland om het land voor te bereiden voor onafhankelijkheid en democratisch bestuur. Op 6 september 1945 werd de Koreaanse Volksrepubliek (KVR) uitgeroepen, met een progressieve agenda. Maar de KVR schoot geen wortel toen de VS, in samenspraak met Rusland, China en Engeland - zonder enige inspraak van de Koreanen zelf - het land in het kader van de dekolonisering van Korea “tijdelijk” langs de 38^e breedtegraad in twee staten opdeelden. De VS hielden de controle over de hoofdstad Seoul en de belangrijkste havens. Het is precies deze verdeling die aanleiding gaf tot een vijf jaar aanslepende revolutie en contrarevolutie, die escaleerden in de Koreaanse oorlog.

In eerste instantie heetten de Koreanen de VS welkom, tot generaal John Hodge, de militaire gouverneur onder generaal Douglas MacArthur, de KVR verbood en vrij baan gaf aan de grootgrondbezitters, industriëlen en collaborateurs van de rechtse Koreaanse Democratische Partij. Dat gaf het startschot tot massale stakingen en demonstraties die door de Amerikanen bloedig de kop werden ingedrukt. Vervolgens keerde de Koreaanse banneling Syngman Rhee, die al 40 jaar in de VS had gewoond, terug in het persoonlijke vliegtuig van MacArthur. Rhee vormde onder Amerikaanse auspiciën een nationale regering, maar rekende in 1947 af met “links” door hun leiders om te brengen. Nadat de VS in 1948 verkiezingen onder VN-toezicht hadden doorgedrukt die het bestuur over het verdeelde Korea moesten legitimeren kwam Rhee op 71-jarige leeftijd aan de macht in een land in volle oproer.

Het bloedbad op het Koreaanse eiland Jeju in 1948 is voorloper van de huidige Amerikaanse escalatie in Azië. Toen de eilandbewoners bleven protesteren tegen de Amerikaanse militaire regering sloeg Rhee onder Amerikaanse bevel de opstand met harde hand neer: een derde van de bevolking dood of verdreven, 40.000 huizen plat en 270 van de 400 dorpen weggevaagd. Ook op het Koreaanse vasteland werd niets ontziend opgetreden. Oktober 1948 namen 2000 opstandige militairen de havenstad Yosu over. Nadat ook enkele andere omliggende steden waren bevrijd, de Volkscomités geherinstalleerd en volksrechtbanken opgericht om politie, grootgrondbezitters, ambtenaren en andere aanhangers van de dictatuur van Rhee te berechten werd de rebellie bloedig de kop ingedrukt in opdracht van het Amerikaanse leger. Dat was het startschot voor de Koreaanse oorlog.

S. Brian Willson zegt daarover: “De Koreaanse oorlog was een uitvloeisel van de strijd van eilandbewoners op Jeju om zich te ontdoen van de tirannie van de door de VS gesteunde Rhee en zijn kliek van rijke aanhangers. De door de VS opgelegde verdeling van Korea in 1945 tegen de wens van de overgrote meerderheid van de Koreanen in was de voornaamste oorzaak van de Koreaanse oorlog die vijf jaar later uitbrak. In de oorlog werd in Korea vooral het noorden platgebombardeerd en kwamen vier miljoen Koreanen om, waarvan drie miljoen, een-derde van de bevolking, in het noorden, naast een miljoen Chinezen. Een ongelooflijke internationale misdaad die nog steeds niet wordt erkend: vijf miljoen mensen kwamen om en 10 miljoen Koreaanse families werden permanent van elkaar gescheiden”.

De biografie van de 39^e Amerikaanse president, Harry Truman op de website van het Witte Huis, doet heel wat luchtiger over dit onderwerp: Noord-Korea viel juni 1950 Zuid-Korea aan, de VN en de VS moesten de agressie een halt toeroepen, VN-strijdkrachten verdedigden een linie boven de Zuid-Koreaanse grens en Truman hield de oorlog zo beperkt mogelijk om een conflict met China of Rusland te voorkomen. De Nederlandstalige Wikipedia verdraait de werkelijkheid tot in het absurde: “Noord-Korea werd gesteund door de Sovjet-Unie. Zuid-Korea werd door de Amerikanen praktisch aan zijn lot overgelaten. De Noord-Koreaanse regeringsleider Kim Il-sung besloot daarop om Zuid-Korea te veroveren”.

Gegeven de historische context neemt Noord-Korea de Amerikaanse dreiging serieus. Het weet dat dezelfde Truman in 1945 opdracht gaf om niet één atoombom, maar verschillende bommen tegen Japan in gereedheid te brengen, en de bommen op Hiroshima en Nagasaki niet specifiek gericht waren op militaire doelwitten.[1] Het heeft gezien hoe Amerika Irak op de korrel nam, een miljoen Iraki’s ombracht, 4,5 miljoen mensen op de vlucht joeg en voormalig bondgenoot Saddam Hussein ophing. Het weet dat de Libische leider Moammar Gadhafi, wiens land net als Irak juist zijn kernwapenprogramma had stopgezet, hetzelfde lot onderging. Het ziet zich geconfronteerd met 28.500 Amerikaanse troepen in Zuid-Korea en regelmatige manoeuvres langs de Koreaanse kust, die tijdens de regering-Obama en na de dood van Kim Jong-il agressiever zijn geworden.

Noord-Korea is niet gediend van deze manoeuvres. Als men die plaatst tegen de achtergrond van de pivot van president Obama, waarbij 60% van de Amerikaanse zeemacht in Azië wordt gestationeerd, kan men begrijpen waarom Noord-Korea denkt kernwapens nodig te hebben. Als onderdeel van deze pivot is Washington van plan een omvangrijke marinebasis te installeren op Jeju, dat tegenwoordig wordt aangeduid als “Vredeseiland”. Bovendien ontwikkelt de VS tactische mini-nukes die in oorlogstijd kunnen worden ingezet. President Obama mag dan oproepen tot een wereld zonder kernwapens, tegelijk heeft hij het budget voor kernwapens verhoogd en groen licht gegeven voor een omvangrijke modernisering van het Amerikaanse arsenaal.

En terwijl China overleg tussen de VS en Noord-Korea aanmoedigt geven de VS forfait. Zo blijft Korea een pion in de machtsstrijd tussen de VS, China en Rusland. In deze strijd hebben landen als Australië en Japan hun ziel verkocht aan de VS en de NAVO. Noord-Korea koestert zijn onafhankelijkheid. De VS mogen dan niet onder de indruk zijn van het onbeduidende Noord-Korea met zijn laagtechnologische bommen en raketten, in de media gebruiken ze elke Noord-Koreaanse test als excuus om de escalatie op te voeren. Misschien hebben de VS een boeman nodig om hun defensiebegroting op niveau te houden. Het wordt tijd dat de wereld doorkrijgt wat er werkelijk aan de hand is in Azië en het Koreaans schiereiland.

[1] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa: “Racing the Enemy”, p. 135. 

Obama’s verscheurende dilemma: echte diplomatie, of oorlog met Iran

In de bovenstaande videoclip van het programma The Debate op de Iraanse TV-zender PressTV neemt de Amerikaan Richard Hellman, president van het Mideast Research Center, het op tegen de Iraanse professor Mohammad Marandi van de University of Tehran. Het debat wordt geleid door Kaveh Taghvai. Terzijde zij vermeld dat PressTV sinds begin 2012 in Europa op dubieuze gronden van de satelliet wordt geweerd, maar online nog altijd goed te bekijken is.

Volgens Marandi doen de Verenigde Staten in de P5+1-onderhandelingen met Iran maar alsof. Washington wil de problemen met Iran helemaal niet oplossen. Het heeft belang bij het aanslepen van het conflict. Dat geeft de VS het excuus om steeds zwaardere sancties op te leggen. Iran heeft bij herhaling aangestuurd op verbetering van de relatie met de VS. Maar toen het een Amerikaanse oliemaatschappij een vergunning gaf voor de ontginning van een olieveld werd die geste beantwoord door scherpe sancties op de Iraanse olie- en gassector. En na overleg tussen de VS en Iran over Afghanistan werd Iran afgeschilderd als lid van de As van het Kwaad. Een ander voorbeeld is de Tehran Declaration tussen Iran, Brazilië en Turkije over uitruil van kernbrandstof. Dat was een initiatief van president Lula da Silva van Brazilië, die naar Teheran reisde met een brief van de Amerikaanse president op zak waarin deze zo’n akkoord aanmoedigde. Maar toen dat eenmaal getekend was verwierp de Amerikaanse president het en verzwaarde de sancties.

In zijn bijdrage moet Hellman het vooral hebben van het verdraaide, achterhaalde en gehypte verhaal dat Iran uit is op de vernietiging van de Joodse staat Israel en kernwapens tegen het Westen wil inzetten. Volgens Hellman is het Iraanse regime helemaal niet representatief voor de Iraanse publieke opinie. Als Iran zijn fanatieke, kleptocratische regime laat vallen, een goede nabuur wordt in het Midden-Oosten, geen terrorisme exporteert en zijn buren niet met vernietiging bedreigt zijn kernwapens echt niet zo’n punt, aldus Hellman. Veel landen hebben kernwapens of de kennis om die te ontwikkelen, maar daar maakt niemand zich druk over. Er moet een nieuwe regering in Iran komen die de goede wil van de Iraanse bevolking vertegenwoordigt, en dat moet bij de volgende verkiezingen gebeuren, of “op een andere manier”. Dat luidt het einde in van Iran’s problemen met Amerika, het Westen en de buurlanden, van het bloedige conflict in Syrië en van Iran’s steun aan Hezbollah, dat Libanon dreigt over te nemen, aldus nog Hellman.

Hellman geeft met zijn betoog een goed inzicht in de agenda van de VS. Het hele P5+1-circus is gericht op regime change, er moet een nieuwe, plooibare regering in Teheran komen. Washington aanvaardt geen regionale grootmacht die zich onafhankelijk opstelt. De Joodse staat Israel, waar de VS zulke onverbrekelijke banden mee hebben, moet de toon zetten in het Midden-Oosten. De regering-Obama neemt de gevaarlijke gok dat het Iran langs “diplomatieke weg” kan dwingen af te zien van uraniumverrijking. Die gok is gedoemd te mislukken. Zoals Marandi betoogt bevestigen opiniepeilingen dat het kernenergieprogramma door de bevolking breed wordt gedragen. Als Obama zich niet kan verzoenen met uraniumverrijking in Iran onder internationaal toezicht en met een strategisch onafhankelijk Iran dat in de regio aan invloed wint heeft hij straks geen argumenten om Israel en zijn machtige vrienden in Washington tegen te houden om Iran aan te vallen.

De regering-Obama heeft zich hopeloos vastgereden in het Iran-dossier. Het heeft nog maar weer eens nieuwe, scherpere sancties opgelegd op 75 miljoen Iraniërs om de Israëlische doelstelling het regime in Tehran ten val te brengen te ondersteunen. Geconfronteerd met de militaire dreigementen van het nucleair bewapende Israel - die nog werden versterkt door het Witte Huis en het door Zionisten overschaduwde Amerikaanse Congres - heeft de etnisch diverse Iraanse bevolking de rangen gesloten en zich achter de regering geschaard. De sancties krijgen Iran niet op de knieën. China, Japan, India en Korea blijven Iraanse olie en aardgas afnemen, en Iran heeft recent een omvangrijk akkoord gesloten met Pakistan voor de aanleg van een gaspijpleiding, ondanks zware Amerikaanse druk op Pakistan. De sancties hebben geen enkel strategisch effect gehad, maar hebben wel de energieprijzen in de VS opgedreven en de winsten van oliemaatschappijen gedrukt.

Aan de onderhandelingstafel blijft Washington weigeren de Islamitische Republiek te aanvaarden en voorstellen te lanceren die Teheran zouden kunnen interesseren. Obama kan de sancties zonder gezichtsverlies moeilijk verzachten of opheffen. Intrekking van de wetten die de sancties regelen betekent de impliciete toegeving dat die sancties toch geen constructieve diplomatieke instrumenten waren. De P5+1 hebben in de laatste onderhandelingsronde buitengewoon onhandig gemanoeuvreerd. Het voorstel was dat Iran de verrijkingscyclus stopt bij 20 procent waarmee het brandstof kan produceren voor de researchreactor waar medische isotopen worden gemaakt. Bijna de gehele voorraad verrijkt uranium zou naar het buitenland moeten en de verrijking in de diep onder de grond liggende nieuwe installatie in Fordo worden gesloten. In ruil zou Iran slechts een marginale verlichting van de sancties krijgen, terwijl bronnen in de regering-Obama duidelijk maken dat Iran de verrijking van uranium volledig moet stopzetten.

Zo’n aanpak kan alleen maar leiden tot een diplomatieke mislukking en een strategische ramp. De VS kunnen landen die zaken doen met Iran nog moeilijk dreigen met extra sancties die het in de praktijk toch niet uitvoert en grote landen als China laten zich al helemaal niet meer afdreigen. Intussen gaat Iran gewoon door met het ontwikkelen van zijn nucleair programma. Het bouwt voort aan zijn infrastructuur, onder het toeziend oog van het Atoomagentschap. Voor Israel blijft een Iran dat de kennis in huis heeft voor het aanmaken van kernwapens een zorgwekkende uitdaging voor zijn militaire vrijheid van handelen en dus blijft Israel druk uitoefenen op de regering-Obama om de verrijkingsinstallaties via militair ingrijpen te vernietigen.

Obama staat voor een verscheurend dilemma: toegeven dat de VS niet langer hun wil kunnen opleggen in het Midden-Oosten, of een nieuwe oorlog om massavernietigingswapens onschadelijk te maken die het geviseerde land niet heeft. Sinds de Nuclear Posture Review van de regering-Bush heeft de president de optie van een preëmptieve aanval met tactische kernwapens. Volgens het Pentagon zijn bunker-buster bommen met kernkop ongevaarlijk voor burgers omdat de explosie “onder de grond plaatsvindt”. Maar de drempel voor de inzet van laagexplosieve kernwapens is weggenomen. En mini-nukes hebben de slagkracht van een derde tot zes maal die van de bom op Hiroshima, en geven heel wat straling af.

Met of zonder inzet van mini-nukes, een oorlog met Iran wordt niet gevoerd om een existentiële bedreiging van Israel te neutraliseren, maar om de militaire dominantie van Israel in de regio te vrijwaren. Een rampenscenario dat slecht zal uitpakken voor de strategische positie van de VS in het Midden-Oosten en in de rest van de wereld.
  

Washington steps up Africa intervention

by Bill Van Auken

Cougar of the Spanish army with legionnaires of the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment (2e REI) of the French Foreign Legion in Afghanistan in 2005.
(Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Author: davric)

The Obama administration is “markedly widening its role” in the escalating French-led neo-colonial war in Mali, according to a report published Monday in the Wall Street Journal.

According to unnamed French officials cited in the report, US Reaper drones have been utilized to track down alleged Islamist fighters in the Ifoghas mountain region of northern Mali, supplying targeting information for some 60 French airstrikes in just the past week.

A force of 1,200 French troops alongside another 800 US-trained special forces soldiers from Chad and units of Mali’s own army have engaged in fierce clashes with the insurgents, who have operated in the region for many years and are well acquainted with its terrain.

Given the new, more violent stage of the war—which as of Sunday had claimed the lives of three French Foreign Legionnaires and dozens of African troops—the French Foreign Ministry announced last week that it would not withdraw its 4,000-strong expeditionary force “in haste,” effectively signaling that a withdrawal previously scheduled for later this month would almost certainly be postponed. French officials told the Associated Press that the country’s troops would remain in Mali at least until July.

Chadian officials claimed over the weekend that the country’s troops had killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who is alleged to have led the armed group that seized the Amenas oilfield in Algeria in January. Belmokhtar is said to have links with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

“Chadian forces have totally destroyed the principal bases of the jihadists in the Adrar massif of the Ifoghas [mountains], to be more precise in the town of Ametetai,” Chad’s military command announced on Saturday. The announcement came one day after Chad’s president, Idriss Déby, claimed that another AQIM leader, Abou Zeid, had been killed in the same operation.

French and US officials were more cautious about the claims, saying that they had been unable to verify the killings. Washington has extensive experience with reporting alleged jihadists having been killed, only to have them turn up again very much alive.

French military commander Adm. Edouard Guillaud cautioned in an interview on Monday that while the deaths were “likely,” the French forces did not recover the bodies of the two men. Guillaud urged “extreme caution,” warning, “there is always the risk of being contradicted later by a dated video.”

The stepped-up use of US drones in the Mali war follows last month’s announcement of the deployment of at least 100 US troops to neighboring Niger, where an agreement was reached with the local government to allow Washington to set up a drone base on the country’s territory. While presently, the US claims that it is only flying unarmed surveillance drones, the establishment of the base creates the conditions for the Obama administration to spread its campaign of remote-control killings throughout West and Central Africa.

While justifying its intervention as a response to the growing presence of Al Qaeda-linked forces—which overran northern Mali only after they were utilized by Washington as ground troops in the US-NATO war to topple the regime of Col. Muammar Gaddafi in neighboring Libya—the real aims being pursued by US imperialism are asserting US hegemony over the region’s extensive oil, uranium and other mineral wealth and countering the rising economic influence of China.

The Journal article quoted an unnamed Western official as stating that the US role in Mali represented a “rare North African success story,” in which Washington had rolled out a new “counterterrorism strategy of working ‘by, with and through’ local forces.”

In other words, US imperialism is attempting to prosecute its predatory campaign in Africa by counting on the region’s servile national bourgeois elites to provide African troops as a proxy force.

“In recent years,” the Journal reports, “a Joint US Special Operations Task Force in Africa has provided Chad’s Special Anti-Terrorism Group, the unit involved in the operations last week, that allegedly killed Mr. Belmokhtar and Mr. Zeid, with equipment, training and logistical support.”

Chad has reported that 26 soldiers from the unit have been killed since the launching of the offensive in Mali.

Chadian officials acknowledged that the Chadian unit fighting in Mali, the Special Anti-Terrorism Group, had been trained by US Green Berets. According to the Journal , US officials claimed that “American forces didn’t accompany the Chadian unit into Mali.” Any such direct involvement by US forces in ground fighting in Mali would undoubtedly be carried out covertly.

In addition to the Chadian unit, other US-trained African troops are being readied for possible deployment to Mali.

Gen. Carter Ham, the chief of AFRICOM, the US military command overseeing the African continent, flew last week to Mauritania for closed-door meetings with the country’s president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, and senior military officials. He also addressed Mauritanian, US and French soldiers engaged in combined military exercises in southern Mauritania, near the border with Mali.

The exercise, known as “Flintlock 2013,” is part of an annual series organized by Pentagon since 2000, before the so-called “global war on terror” and the invocation of Al Qaeda as a pretext for worldwide interventions.

On Monday, Abdel Aziz, speaking at a joint press conference with Niger’s president, Mahamadou Issoufou, said that he was prepared to send Mauritanian troops to Mali “to provide stability and security.” He said his government would “take on this responsibility as soon as possible,” while adding that it had already deployed troops to the country’s border with Mali to block supply lines and escape routes for insurgents there.

While the US-French intervention in Mali has been cast as a humanitarian venture aimed at rescuing the Malian people from Islamists, the reality is that the war has unleashed immense human suffering.

The United Nations refugee agency has reported that some 40,000 Malians have fled the fighting, seeking safety in refugee camps in neighboring Burkina Faso. The bulk of those crowded into the refugee camps in Dijbo, in northern Burkina Faso, are Tuaregs, who left to escape the French bombing and out of fear that Malian troops would exact retribution on the minority population for having risen in revolt against the central government.

Another 4,000 have fled into Mauritania since France, backed by Washington, launched its military intervention on January 11. A week after the initiation of the neo-colonial war, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees warned that “in the near future there could be up to 300,000 people additionally displaced inside Mali, and over 400,000 additionally displaced in the neighboring countries.” This assessment is rapidly being confirmed.

“We are scared of reprisal killings,” Malian refugees told the UN news agency IRIN. “We are scared of attacks from Malian soldiers. No one dares return.” The news agency reported that farming families had been unable to tend their fields because of the fighting and had fled in fear of starvation. It also reported that, while schools have reopened in the city of Timbuktu, they are largely empty because so many students and teachers have joined the surge of refugees.

“Who can assure our safety, our security? No one. I do not have confidence in anyone,” Timbuktu school director Amhedo Ag Hamama, now volunteering as a teacher in Mbéra refugee camp in eastern Mauritania, told IRIN.

Stocks of food and water are proving inadequate to deal with the number of refugees, threatening to produce a humanitarian catastrophe.

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 5 March 2013, and was republished with permission.

How the EU subsidises Israel’s military-industrial complex

by Ben Hayes

Israeli Aerospace Industries Heron 1 UAV.  (photo: Calips – WikiMedia Commons).

The EU is providing generous R&D (research and development) subsidies to Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the state-owned manufacturer of Israeli ‘drones’ and other ‘battlefield solutions’. Some of the grants are for IAI to adapt its killer robots for use within the EU.

Regardless of where you stand on Israel-Palestine, things have surely gone awry in Brussels for the EU to be providing generous R&D (research and development) subsidies to Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the state-owned manufacturer of Israeli ‘drones’ and other ‘battlefield solutions’. Some of the grants are for IAI to adapt its killer robots for use within the EU. It’s a wonder David Cameron didn’t mention it in his crusade against the EU budget. Perhaps not: but how does EU tax-payers hard-earned cash end up in the hands of the Israeli war machine?

EU research subsidies to Israel

The EU’s framework research programme is the biggest single R&D budget in the world. The current “FP7” programme(2007-2013) has a budget of €51 billion; the next programme, “Horizon 2020”(2014-2020), will have somewhere between €70 and €80 billion. Israel joined the European Research Area in 1995 under the terms of a remarkably generous EC“association agreement” and participates in the framework programmes on the same footing as EU member states. This means it puts up some of the money (each participating state pays a proportion based on its GDP) and is eligible to apply for the funds on offer. With its buoyant R&D sector, few states have been as successful in landing EU grants as Israel (which is thus a net recipient of EU research funds) and the EU is now second only to the Israeli Science Foundation in Jerusalem as a source of domestic research funding.

Israel Aerospace Industries has been a principle beneficiary of the EU’s largesse. Established in 1957 upon recommendation of Shimon Perez, then Director-General of the Israeli Ministry of Defence, IAI is now a world leader in the booming drone market, producing the Heron, Hunter and Ghost, among many others - in 2010 its total annual revenues topped the $3 billion mark. Since Israel joined the European Research Area, IAI has landed at least 69 EU research grants. Because the European Commission is ostensibly prohibited from funding military R&D, most of these grants have come from the transport and aerospace budgets, where military and defence contractors play a leading role in developing new materials for aircraft and more efficient engines as part of the EU’s “clean skies”programme. The EU has also ploughed money into unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs/drones), which it wants to see introduced into commercial airspace as soon as practicably possible.

Since the EU launched the dedicated “security research” component of the FP7 programme, funding has poured directly into Israel’s defence and homeland security sectors. Among dozens of EU-funded UAV projects, IAI landed contracts to develop drones for European security agencies to “autonomously” stop “illegal migrants” and “non-cooperative vehicles”,whatever that entails. Meanwhile Israel’s Verint Systems, one of the world’s largest surveillance contractors, is leading a project to bring “Total Airport Security” to European airports; its consortium includes Elbit Systems, another massive defence conglomerate, which helped construct and maintain Israel’s illegal “Separation Wall”. Other recipients of EU security grants include Motorola Israel (producer of “virtual fences” around Israeli settlements), Aeronautics Defense Systems (another Israeli drone manufacturer specialising in "networked warfare") and the Israel Counter-Terrorism and Security Academy (which is helping the EU with its “counter-radicalisation” strategy). As FP7 draws to a close having already funded over 200 security research projects, one in five contracts includes an Israeli security partner.

An ethical void

The European Union has expressed “concern” about Israel’s “targeted killings” and the Separation Wall, and “condemned” new Israeli settlements. So should it be funding the very companies that sustain these unlawful activities? Ask the relevant European Commission officials and they will simply point to the EU-Israel cooperation agreement with one hand (i.e. don’t blame us) and the independent evaluation of EU research proposals with the other (i.e. Israel is actually rather good at security technology).

So what about the ethical standards governing EU research funding? The problem here is that these do not address the ethical standing of the researchers, only the ethical issues raised by the research. Put simply, this means that as long as they’re not developing GM foods or stem cells etc., or testing their wares on children or animals, there’s no case to answer where the participation of the Israeli war industry is concerned.

What about the supposed EU prohibition of “dual use” research - shouldn’t this prevent the funding of research with potential military spin-offs? Unfortunately the EU security research programme is predicated on the adaptation of military technology for “civil” security purposes, rendering “dual use” largely impotent in the face of considerable subsidies for defence contractors diversifying into all things Homeland Security: border control, counter-terrorism, infrastructure protection, mass surveillance and so on.

So here is the question we should be asking: why on earth is “democratic”, non-militarist Europe so keen to import Israel’s hyper-militaristic security architecture in the first place? Terrorists, illegal migrants, or the future threat to social order posed by their own citizens?

Towards “Horizon 2020”

Regardless, we cannot rely on the European Commissioner for Research or Members of the European Parliament to address the obvious problems with the existing EU framework – the former has repeatedly declared herself satisfied that there is no moral, legal or ethical case to answer in respect to the likes of IAI; the latter, with a few honourable exceptions, have simply ignored the pleas and complaints of NGOs and campaigners. Nevertheless, the preparations for “Horizon 2020”, which will begin in 2014, provide an important opportunity to reflect on the plans that are under way.

It is clear that without changes to the status quo, things will get a lot worse (or better if you happen to be an Israeli security contractor). First, the security research budget is set to grow from €1.4 billion in FP7 to as much as €4.1 billion under Horizon 2020 (the exact figure is not known because the legislation is still under negotiation). Second, the EU is strongly prioritising research that can be monetarised, so there will be a lot more subsidies for industry and less for the fluffy stuff like social science, which while creating knowledge for human development, rarely helps the corporate bottom line. Third, with the global market for Homeland Security now reportedly worth $100 billion-a-year, EU security research appears certain to escape the cuts secured by the likes of David Cameron. Fourth, there is a tangible culture of cooperation between the European and Israeli security research elite, with the former assuming that participation of the latter enhances their funding prospects.

Campaign challenge

In this climate the only challenge to EU-Israeli security cooperation is coming from the bottom-up. In the UK, following a campaign by Palestinian solidarity groups and the National Union of Students, Kings College and the Natural History Museum expressed regret at their EU-funded partnership with Ahava, whose Dead Sea Laboratories are based in an illegal Israeli settlement.

Last week I spoke to students at the prestigious Catholic University of Leuven, where activists have launched a campaign against its partnership with IAI in five EU-funded projects. Their tenacity means there is every chance that Leuven will, in the next few months, commit to excluding Israel’s defence and security industry from future partnerships. Similar campaigns are under way in other universities across Europe.

Of course it would be far better for the EU to simply demonstrate the “leadership” and “even-handed” approach to Israel-Palestine it has long promised by simply changing the rules of its research programme. Until then, there is every likelihood that the Nobel Peace Prize will come back to haunt us.

Ben Hayes is project director at Statewatch and a fellow of the Transnational Institute. He tweet @drbenhayes

This article first appeared on openDemocracy March 6, 2013.

US preparations for cyber war against China

by Peter Symonds

US officials participate in cyber warfare classes at the US Air Force Academy, Colorado. (Source: PressTV)

The Obama administration, working hand-in-hand with the American media, has opened up a new front in its aggressive campaign against China. A slew of articles, most notably in the New York Times, has appeared over the past week purportedly exposing the involvement of the Chinese military in hacking US corporations and hinting at the menace of cyber warfare to vital American infrastructure such as the electricity grid.

The Times article on Tuesday based itself on the unsubstantiated and self-serving claims of a report prepared by cyber-security company Mandiant alleging that a Chinese military unit based in Shanghai had been responsible for sophisticated cyber-attacks in the US. (See: “US uses hacking allegations to escalate threats against China”). The rest of the media in the US and internationally followed suit, with articles replete with comments from analysts, think tanks and administration officials past and present about the “Chinese cyber threat”, all but ignoring the emphatic denials by China’s foreign and defence ministries.

This set the stage for the release on Wednesday of Obama’s “Administration Strategy on Mitigation of Theft of US Trade Secrets,” which, while not formally naming China, cited numerous examples of alleged Chinese cyber espionage. In broad terms, the document laid out the US response, including “sustained and coordinated diplomatic pressure” on offending countries and the implied threat of economic retaliation via “trade policy tools.”

US Attorney General Eric Holder warned of “a significant and steadily increasing threat to America’s economy and national security interests.” Deputy Secretary of State Robert Hormats declared that the US had “repeatedly raised our concerns about trade secret theft by any means at the highest levels with senior Chinese officials.”

The demonisation of China as a global cyber threat follows a well-established modus operandi: it is aimed at whipping up a public climate of fear and hysteria in preparation for new acts of aggression—this time in the sphere of cyber warfare. Since coming to office in 2009, Obama has launched a broad economic and strategic offensive aimed at weakening and isolating China and reinforcing US global dominance, especially in Asia.

Accusations of Chinese cyber theft dovetail with the Obama administration’s economic thrust into Asia through its Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a new multilateral trade agreement aimed at boosting US trade at China’s expense. The protection of “intellectual property rights” is a central component of the TPP, as the profits of American corporations rest heavily on their monopoly over markets via brand names and technology. Allegations of cyber espionage will become the pretext for new trade war measures against China.

However, the more sinister aspect of the anti-Chinese propaganda is the US preparation of war against China. Under the banner of its “pivot to Asia,” the Obama administration has put in train a far-reaching diplomatic and strategic offensive aimed at strengthening existing military alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand, forging closer strategic partnerships and ties, especially with India and Vietnam, and undermining close Chinese relations with countries like Burma and Sri Lanka.

Obama’s “pivot to Asia” has already resulted in a dangerous escalation of maritime disputes in the South China Sea and East China Sea as Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam, encouraged by the US, have pressed their territorial claims against China. The focus on these strategic waters is not accidental, as they encompass the shipping lanes on which China relies to import raw materials and energy from the Middle East and Africa. The US is establishing new military basing arrangements in Australia, South East Asia and elsewhere in the region to ensure it has the ability to choke off China’s vital supplies in the event of a confrontation or war.

The Pentagon regards cyber warfare as a vital component of the huge American war machine and has devoted considerable resources towards its development, especially under the Obama administration. In May 2010, the Pentagon set up its new US Cyber Command headed by General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), drawing on the already massive cyber resources of the NSA and the American military.

US accusations of Chinese cyber espionage are utterly hypocritical. The NSA, among other US agencies, has been engaged in electronic spying and hacking into foreign computer systems and networks around the world on a vast scale. Undoubtedly, China is at the top of the list of prime targets. The Chinese Foreign Ministry claimed this week that at least 14 million computers in China were hacked by 73,000 overseas-based users last year, including many cyber attacks on the Chinese Defence Ministry.

The US has already engaged in aggressive, illegal acts of cyber sabotage against Iran’s nuclear facilities and infrastructure. Together with Israel, it infected the electronic controllers of the gas centrifuges used in Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant with the Stuxnet worm, causing hundreds to spin out of control and self-destruct. This criminal activity took place alongside more traditional forms—the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and other acts of sabotage by Israel.

It is inconceivable that the Pentagon’s cyber capacities are being deployed for purely defensive purposes against the “Chinese threat.” Indeed, in taking over as cyber warfare chief in 2010, General Alexander outlined his credo to the House Armed Services subcommittee. After declaring that China was viewed as responsible for “a great many attacks on Western infrastructure,” he added that if the US were subject to an organised attack, “I would want to go and take down the source of those attacks.”

Last August, the US Air Force issued what was described by the New York Times as “a bluntly worded solicitation for papers advising it on ‘cyberspace warfare attack capabilities,’ including weapons to ‘destroy, deny, deceive, corrupt or usurp’ an enemy’s computer networks and other hi-tech targets. The same article referred to the Pentagon’s research arm, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, hosting a gathering of private contractors wanting to participate in “Plan X”—the development of “revolutionary technologies for understanding, planning and managing cyber warfare.”

This week’s propaganda about the “Chinese cyber threat” provides the justifications for stepping up the already advanced US preparations for conducting cyber-attacks on Chinese military and civilian targets. Amid the rising tensions between the US and China produced by Obama’s “pivot to Asia”, reckless American actions in the sphere of cyber warfare only compound the danger of open military confrontation between the two powers.

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 23 February 2013, and was republished with permission.

The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians

by Francis A. Boyle

 

In direct reaction to Israel provoking the Al Aqsa Intifada, on October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people, some of whom are Christians, but most of whom are Muslims.[i]

 

This Special Session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted the Resolution set forth in U.N. Document E/CN.4/S-5/L.2/Rev. 1, “Condemning the provocative visit to Al-Haram Al-Shariff on 28 September 2000 by Ariel Sharon, the Likud party leader, which triggered the tragic events that followed in occupied East Jerusalem and the other occupied Palestinian territories, resulting in a high number of deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians.” The U.N. Human Rights Commission said it was “[g]ravely concerned” about several different types of atrocities inflicted by Israel upon the Palestinian people, which it denominated “war crimes, flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and crimes against humanity.”

 

In operative paragraph 1 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission then:

 

“Strongly condemns the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force in violation of international humanitarian law by the Israeli occupying Power against innocent and unarmed Palestinian civilians…including many children, in the occupied territories, which constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity;…”

And in paragraph 5 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission:

 

“Also affirms that the deliberate and systematic killing of civilians and children by the Israeli occupying authorities constitutes a flagrant and grave violation of the right to life and also constitutes a crime against humanity;…”

 Article 68 of the United Nations Charter had expressly required the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council to “set up” this U.N. Commission (now Council) “for the promotion of human rights.” This was its U.N.-Charter-mandated job.

 

The reader has a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, the world has seen those heinous war crimes inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian people living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and by Israel’s criminal paramilitary terrorist settlers. These Israeli “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for the perpetrators and their commanders, whether military or civilian, including and especially Israel’s political leaders.

 

Let us address for a moment Israel’s “crimes against humanity” against the Palestinian people—as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What are “crimes against humanity”? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals in Europe. In the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people:

 

Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

 The paradigmatic example of “crimes against humanity” is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is where the concept of “crimes against humanity” originally came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission (now Council) determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity.

 

Expressed in legal terms, this is just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. That is the significance of the formal determination by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that Israel has inflicted “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people. The Commission chose this well-known and long-standing legal term of art quite carefully and deliberately based upon the evidence it had compiled.

 

Furthermore, the Nuremberg “crimes against humanity” are the historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people was so horrific that it required a special international treaty that would codify and universalize the Nuremberg concept of “crimes against humanity.” And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.

 

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:

 

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

(a)   Killing members of the group;

(b)   Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)   Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even intensifying against the 1.6 million Palestinians living in Gaza as this book goes to press.

 

As Pappe’s analysis established, Zionism’s “final solution” to Israel’s much-touted and racist “demographic threat” allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide, whether slow-motion or in blood-thirsty spurts of violence. Indeed, the very essence of Zionism requires ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide against the Palestinians. In regard to the latest 2008-2009 Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza – so-called Operation Cast-lead — U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua during the Reagan administration’s contra-terror war of aggression against that country, condemned it as “genocide.”[ii]

 

Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have committed genocide against the Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Articles II(a), (b), and (c). For over the past six decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group constituting the Palestinian people.

 

This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.

 

Article I of the Genocide Convention requires all contracting parties such as the United States “to prevent and to punish” genocide. Yet to the contrary, historically the “Jewish” state’s criminal conduct against the Palestinians has been financed, armed, equipped, supplied and politically supported by the nominally “Christian” United States. Although the United States is a founding sponsor of, and a contracting party to, both the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide Convention, as well as the United Nations Charter, these legal facts have never made any difference to the United States when it comes to its blank-check support for Zionist Israel and their joint and severable criminal mistreatment of the Palestinians—truly the wretched of the earth!

 

The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by the United States and its N.A.T.O. allies in favor of R2P/humanitarian intervention against Zionist Israel in order to protect the Palestinian people, let alone a “responsibility to protect” the Palestinians from Zionist/Israeli genocide. The United States, its N.A.T.O. allies, and the Great Powers on the U.N. Security Council would not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter 6 monitoring force to help “protect” the Palestinians, let alone even contemplate any type of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement actions against Zionist Israel – which are actually two valid international legal options for R2P/humanitarian intervention! The doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” and its current “responsibility to protect” transmogrification so readily espoused elsewhere when U.S. foreign policy interests are allegedly at stake have been clearly proven to be a sick joke and a demented fraud when it comes to stopping the ongoing and accelerating Zionist/Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.

 

Rather than rein in the Zionist Israelis—which would be possible just by turning off the funding pipeline—the United States government, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. media, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the “Jewish” state to the tune of about 4 billion dollars per year, without whose munificence this instance of genocide – and indeed conceivably the State of Israel itself – would not be possible. Without the United States, Israel is nothing more than a typical “failed state.” In today’s world genocide is permissible so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure allies in N.A.T.O. or its de facto allies such as Israel.

 

I anticipate no fundamental change in America’s support for the Zionist/Israeli ongoing campaign of genocide against the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama administration and its near-term successors, whether neoliberal Democrats or neoconservative Republicans. Tweedledum versus Tweedledee.

 

What the world witnesses here is (yet another) case of bipartisan “dishumanitarian intervention” or “humanitarian extermination” by the United States and Israel with the support of the N.A.T.O. states, against the Palestinians and Palestine. While at the exact same time these white racist cowards and hypocrites preach R2P/humanitarian intervention in order to subjugate Libya, now Syria, and perhaps someday soon Iran.

 

As Machiavelli so astutely advised The Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book:

“…one who deceives will always find one who will allow himself to be deceived.”[iii]

 On these dissentient points, this law professor rests his case against the doctrines of “humanitarian intervention” and its imperialist transformation into the demagogic “responsibility to protect.”

 
This article was first published on Global Research, January 26, 2013

Copyright © Francis A. Boyle, Global Research, 2013