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electronicIraq.net NEWS: ANALYSIS & VIEWS: Ali Abunimah ********************************************************** (1) Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 1-7 June 2006 Palestinian Centre for Human Rights www.pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2006/08-06-2006.htm Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Escalate Attacks on Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) . 5 Palestinians were killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip. . Two of the victims were extra-judicially executed by IOF. . 29 Palestinian civilians, including 9 children and a woman, were wounded by IOF gunfire. . IOF have continued to shell Palestinian areas in the northern Gaza Strip, wounding a number of civilians and damaging civilian property. . IOF conducted 42 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, particularly Nablus, and one incursion into the Gaza Strip. . 55 Palestinian civilians, including a child, were arrested by IOF. . A house was transformed by IOF into a military site. . IOF raided a hospital in Nablus and arrested a patient from the intensive care unit. . IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT; IOF have continued to close border crossings of the Gaza Strip; the north of the West Bank has been separated from its south; and IOF arrested two Palestinian civilians, including a child, at checkpoints in the West Bank. . IOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall in the West Bank; IOF razed areas of agricultural land near “Shavi Shomron” settlement in the north of the West Bank; and IOF confiscated 1495 dunums[1] of land in Qalqilya and Tulkarm. . Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property in the OPT; 7 civilian facilities were demolished by IOF; and 4 Palestinian civilians, including a child and a woman, were injured by attacks launched by Israeli settlers. Summary Israeli violations of international law continued in the OPT during the reported period (1-7 June 2006): Killing: During the reported period, IOF killed five Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. On Monday evening, 5 June 2006, IOF extra-judicially executed two members of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and wounded two other members, as well as two civilian bystanders, in Jabalya town in the northern Gaza Strip, when an IOF aircraft launched two missiles at a civilian car. According to PCHR’s documentation, IOF have committed eighteen extra-judicial executions since the beginning of 2006, which have killed fifty-four Palestinians, including fifteen non-targeted persons. This number includes six children. On Wednesday, 7 June 2006, IOF fired an artillery shell at two Palestinians, who were attempting to infiltrate into Israel, to the east of Gaza Strip. The two men and a member of the Palestinian National Security Forces, who was on-duty at the time, were killed. During the reported period, IOF continued to shell Palestinian areas in the Gaza Strip. As a result, eleven Palestinian civilians, including six children and a woman, were wounded. IOF aircrafts also conducted a series of mock air raids over the Gaza Strip, and shelled a civilian facility in Gaza City and uninhabited areas in the northern Gaza Strip. In the West bank, twelve civilians, including an Israeli solidarity activist, were wounded by IOF gunfire. Incursions: During the reported period, IOF also conducted at least 42 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, especially Nablus. During these incursions, IOF raided houses and arrested 55 Palestinian civilians, including a child. This raises the number of Palestinians arrested by IOF since the beginning of 2006 to 1,685. In one of the incursions into Nablus, IOF raided the Arab Biblical Hospital in the city and arrested a Palestinian, who was receiving medical treatment in the intensive care unit. In another incursion into al-’Aqaba village, southeast of Jenin, IOF raided a mosque and an IOF soldier opened fire inside. In the Gaza Strip, IOF moved into al-Boreij refugee camp and leveled areas of land they had already razed previously. Restrictions on Movement: IOF have continued to impose a comprehensive siege on the OPT, in violation of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of Palestinian civilians. IOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on the Gaza Strip, transforming it into a large prison. IOF have continued to monitor the movement of Palestinian civilians through Rafah International Crossing Point on the Egyptian border. Although IOF have allowed the transportation of food aid from Egypt into the Gaza Strip through Kerem Shalom commercial crossing, southeast of Rafah, the crossing has not yet been officially opened. IOF have prevented the passage of trucks carrying medical supplies from Egypt into the Gaza Strip. IOF have also continued to prevent Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip from reaching their work places in Israel through Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing. They have continued to prevent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip from traveling to the West Bank. IOF have partially operated al-Mentar (Karni) commercial crossing, east of Gaza City. As a result of the repeated closures of the crossing, the economic conditions in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated. IOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on Palestinian communities in the West Bank. IOF positioned at various checkpoints in the West Bank have continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians. IOF have continued to separate the north and south of the West Bank. For this purpose, they have closed Za’tara checkpoint, south of Nablus, and re-established their presence at ‘Attara checkpoint, north of Ramallah. They have also erected two new checkpoints near Ramallah. During the reported period, IOF positioned at various checkpoints around Nablus imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians. IOF positioned at various checkpoints in the West Bank abused a number of Palestinian civilians. During the reported period, IOF at checkpoints in the West Bank arrested two Palestinian civilians, including a child. Annexation Wall: IOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall inside the West Bank. After the Israeli High Court had approved the construction of a section of the Wall around “Shavi Shomron” settlement, northwest of Nablus, on 30 May 2006, IOF started to raze areas of Palestinian land near the settlement. It is worth noting that IOF have completed the construction of a section of the Wall to the east of the settlement, near the Nablus-Jenin road, which they have kept closed since 15 August 2006. During the reported period, IOF issued a number of military orders confiscating 1,495 dunums of land in Qalqilya and Tulkarm for the purpose of the construction of the Wall. On 2 June 2006, IOF used force to disperse a peaceful demonstration organized in protest to the construction of the Wall in Bal’ein village, west of the Wall in Ramallah. IOF fired rubber-coated metal bullets, tear gas canisters and sound bombs at the demonstrators. As a result, 7 Palestinians civilians and an Israeli solidarity activist were wounded. Illegal Settler Activities: Israeli settlers in breach of international humanitarian law continue to reside in the OPT and have launched a series of attacks against Palestinian civilians and property. During the reported period, IOF demolished 7 civilian facilities in the West Bank, in preparation for the implementation of the Israeli Convergence Plan. In addition, Israeli settlers launched 3 attacks on Palestinian civilians and property in Hebron, which injured 4 civilians, including a child and a woman. The full report is available at: www.pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2006/08-06-2006.htm ********************************************************** (2) Sweden labels Golan wines: ‘Made in occupied Syrian land’ By Amiram Barkat Haaretz 8 June 2006 www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/724283.html Sweden has started to note that wines produced in the Golan Heights originate in “Israel, occupied Syrian land,” the Golan Heights Winery has informed the Israeli Embassy in Sweden. Winery sources told Haaretz that the step is unprecedented and worrisome. The embassy is investigating claims that the warning is being issued for several wines on the Web site of the Swedish government’s chain of shops that sell wine. The chain is the only Swedish body permitted to market alcoholic beverages. Swedish Jews have protested the step, claiming that the new way of listing the wines from the Golan Heights is a political move by a government body. The sources also said such an indication had never been made regarding any other country – not even South Africa during apartheid. The Golan Heights Winery approached the commercial attache at the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm this week, and requested Foreign Ministry intervention. “We produce wine, not politics,” the winery said yesterday, adding, “happily, this subject does not bother most consumers in Europe.” ********************************************************** (3) Lebanon ‘Mass Grave’ Said to Be a Cemetery Associated Press 7 June 2006 apnews.myway.com/article/20060607/D8I3ET3G1.html BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) – A burial site in eastern Lebanon originally believed to be a mass grave for victims of Syria’s military presence is actually a graveyard dating to the 17th century, a Lebanese prosecutor said in a statement published Wednesday. Syria ended its nearly three-decade military presence in Lebanon last year. The remains of at least 28 people discovered in December in the Bekaa Valley town of Anjar ranged from 50 to 350 years old, Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza said. “The remains found … are part of an ordinary cemetery used by Muslims who lived in the village to bury their dead,” said the statement by Mirza published by local newspapers Wednesday. None of the remains were dated after the year 1950, the statement said, adding, “there is no evidence that any crime was committed.” Turkish soldiers, posted to the area when it was part of the Ottoman Empire, were among those buried. Last year’s discovery of the site caused an uproar as anti-Syrian political forces pointed the finger at Syria’s military which pulled out in April 2005 amid domestic and international pressure following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. At the time, anti-Syrian legislators and politicians, as well as Lebanon’s influential Maronite Catholic Church, demanded an international investigation and trial following the discovery of the grave. Syria denied any involvement, calling the accusations a pretext to damage Damascus, which has come under heavy international pressure to cooperate with the U.N. inquiry into Hariri’s assassination. The investigation has implicated top Syrian and Lebanese security officials in the massive truck bombing that killed Hariri and 20 other people in Beirut in February 2005. Syria has repeatedly denied involvement in the killing. Syria’s exoneration clears up a sore point between the two countries whose bilateral relations are at their lowest point in decades. ********************************************************** (4) Bush Overture To Iran Splits Israel, Neocons; Olmert Asks Groups To Keep Low Profile By Ori Nir Forward 9 June 2006 WASHINGTON — The Bush administration’s offer to open direct talks with Iran and reward Tehran if it stops enriching uranium is exposing a policy rift between neoconservatives on one hand, and the Israeli government and Jewish organizations on the other. Neoconservative analysts are blasting the administration, saying that holding talks with the Islamic regime would serve only to embolden it and undermine the anti-fundamentalist opposition in Iran. They argue that America’s ultimate goal should be to change Tehran’s theocratic regime. “The administration can’t have it both ways. They can’t embrace the regime and still talk about liberty for the Iranian people,” said Iran analyst Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank widely associated with the push for regime change in Iraq. A former Pentagon official, Rubin added that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “can spout whatever platitudes she wants to spout, but at this point, when it comes to liberty and freedom, she has no credibility.” Israeli officials and several influential Jewish groups, meanwhile, have refrained from criticizing the new American approach — which some experts are depicting as the most dramatic foreign policy shift of the Bush presidency — saying that they support more pragmatic ways to block Iran’s apparent dash toward a nuclear weapon. For Israel and Jewish groups — despite Iranian calls for Israel’s destruction — the fundamental goal is not regime change, but to block Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The split appears to fly in the face of recent high-profile efforts to paint the pro-Israel lobby as a seamless network dominated by Jewish organizations and neoconservatives coordinating their activities with the Israeli government. Most notably, such a view was advanced by two highly respected academics — John Mearsheimer, a top international relations theorist based at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, former academic dean of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government — in a research paper released in March. The Walt-Mearsheimer paper has triggered an escalating debate on the influence of Israel and Jewish organizations that has spilled over onto the opinion pages of major publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. Recently, with such scrutiny mounting, Israeli leaders asked American Jewish organizations to lower their profile on the Iran issue, the Forward has learned. In one notable example, a delegation of leaders from the American Jewish Congress met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert shortly before returning to the United States. When asked how he thinks Jewish groups should pursue the Iran issue, Olmert reportedly implied that he would prefer a low profile, according to one source familiar with the proceedings. “We don’t want it to be about Israel,” Olmert is said to have replied, explaining that although Iran’s president focuses his belligerent rhetoric on Israel, both Jerusalem and Washington have an interest in convincing the international community that a nuclear armed Iran would be a menace to the region and to the entire world. President Bush updated Olmert shortly before Rice announced the new American policy at a May 31 press conference, Israeli and American sources said. Rice announced that Washington would be willing to join its European allies in direct talks with Iran if Tehran “fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities.” Rice made clear that America would not attempt to hinder an Iranian civilian nuclear program. Immediately following Rice’s comments, her Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, issued a statement, saying, “Israel appreciates the steps and measures by the United States in continuing to lead the international coalition and in taking all necessary steps to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability.” One Israeli official told the Forward that Jerusalem is satisfied with the apparent international recognition that “this is the critical time to clarify whether Iran is really pursuing a peaceful nuclear program or a belligerent one.” The official dismissed the argument made by some opponents of Rice’s move that all the overture by the United States would do is allow Iran to buy time while pursuing nuclear weapons and fending off international sanctions. America’s move, the Israeli official said, only would hasten and embolden the international community as it approaches a likely showdown with Iran in the United Nations. Israel’s support for Rice and Olmert’s request for Jewish groups to take a lower profile are being well received by many Jewish groups. Already, some Jewish groups had been asking the White House to stop suggesting that American efforts to block Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons are motivated primarily by a desire to protect Israel. Jewish organizations have no interest in becoming “the lobby for war with Iran,” one communal official said. In the past, when the administration chose to pursue diplomatic options instead of an immediate push for international sanctions, it drew public criticism from some Jewish organizations. This time around, while some Jewish groups are uncomfortable with the administration’s shift on direct talks with Iran, only the right-of-center Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs openly criticized the move. Last year, when the Bush administration agreed to give Russia a chance to negotiate a plan that would allow Iran to enrich uranium under international supervision, the main pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, issued a rare public rebuke of the White House. But this week, in response to the recent American announcement, Aipac issued a measured statement to the Forward, saying that if the administration blocks Iran’s production of enriched uranium by offering talks, that would be a “positive development.” The statement, however, cautioned against losing sight of Iran’s habit of deceiving America and its allies. Aipac sources said this week that they don’t expect the administration’s policy shift to hinder their efforts to pass the Iran Freedom Support Act, a bill aimed at tightening U.S. sanctions on Iran, which has overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives but must still be voted on in the Senate. This week Aipac sent a fund-raising letter to thousands of its supporters saying “we need your help to stop Iran.” A spokesman for Aipac said that the letter is part of the organization’s routine fund-raising efforts and not connected to the administration’s new strategy. Some officials with Jewish groups share the concern expressed by many neoconservative critics of the new American approach, that any negotiations simply would buy Iran time to advance its nuclear weapons program. “For the Iranians, diplomacy is a form of delay, so it is dangerous,” said David Twersky, director of international affairs for the American Jewish Congress. However, he added, “it will also be dangerous to act precipitously, prematurely. The United States cannot go by itself and say, we are imposing sanctions.” Most Jewish groups accept the administration’s argument that the overture would make it easier for Washington to put together the international coalition necessary for effective sanctions against Iran. “Looking down the abyss at the choices, which, in their starkest terms, are either accepting Iran as a nuclear power or attacking militarily, I think people are looking to see whether or not a third way can be found to achieve the same purpose,” said Jess Hordes, the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington affairs director. This sentiment was being echoed among some friends of Israel on Capitol Hill. “In the abstract, who wants to talk to the Iranian regime and who wants to give it legitimacy and to prolong the game they are playing?” said Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democratic member of the House’s subcommittee on the Middle East. “But that’s the price we might have to pay in order to get the world community to take a tougher stand on Iran down the line.” ********************************************************** (5) Zarqawi killed in Iraq air raid BBC News 8 June 2006 news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5058304.stm Militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has announced. “We have eliminated Zarqawi,” Mr Maliki said at a news conference, sparking sustained applause. The US said he was killed in an air raid near Baquba. The Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was considered the figurehead of the Sunni insurgency. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been blamed for hundreds of bombings that have killed thousands of Shias and US forces. Click here to see a map of the area Analysts warned that his death did not mean the insurgency in Iraq would subside – and that there might even be an explosion of revenge by his followers. Violence continued on Thursday as 13 people were killed and 28 injured in a bomb on a Baghdad market, police said. The head of US-led forces in Iraq, General George Casey, said Zarqawi was killed at 1815 (1415 GMT) on Wednesday, in an air strike against an “isolated safe house… approximately 8km (five miles) north of Baquba”. “Iraqi police were first on the scene after the air strike,” he said, followed shortly afterwards by coalition forces. Zarqawi was said to have been in a meeting with associates at the time. Several other people were reported to have been killed in the raid. General Casey said Zarqawi’s body was identified through fingerprints, facial recognition and known scars. He promised to give more details on the raid later on Thursday. The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Zarqawi’s death marked “a great success for Iraq and the global war on terror… Zarqawi was the godfather of sectarian killing and terror in Iraq”. But he cautioned that it would not end violence in the country. Zarqawi has been accused of leading the rash of kidnappings and beheadings of foreign workers. It has been suggested that he appeared personally on one video posted on the internet, cutting off the head of an American hostage. Zarqawi’s errors Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not a global mastermind like al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, says the BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner. Instead he was a bloodthirsty and violent thug, who made enemies and several mistakes that might have contributed to his downfall. These included featuring in a video that appeared earlier this year, and ordering a triple suicide bombing against hotels in Amman, Jordan, last November, that killed 60 people, our correspondent says. A Jordanian official told the Associated Press that Jordanian agents had contributed to the operation against Zarqawi, and had analysed the video in which he appeared to pinpoint where it was filmed. Mr Maliki did not mention Jordan, but said intelligence from Iraqi people had helped track down Zarqawi, who had a $25m (#13m) price on his head – the same bounty as that offered by the US for Bin Laden. “What happened today is a result of co-operation for which we have been asking from our masses and the citizens of our country,” he said. The prime minister urged Iraqis to join political dialogue rather than violence, vowing to “carry on on the same path… by killing all the terrorists”. Shortly after the Zarqawi announcement, the Iraqi parliament approved Mr Maliki’s nominees for the key government posts of defence and interior ministers. The two crucial roles had remained unfilled despite the formation of a coalition government. ********************************************************** (6) Baghdad Morgue Tells Story Statistics Can’t By Brian Conley With Isam Rashid Inter Press Service 8 June 2006 www.antiwar.com/ips/conley.php?articleid=9107 BAGHDAD – Baghdad’s central morgue received more than a thousand bodies each month this year, a doctor has revealed. The body count here gives a more accurate picture of the story in Baghdad than any official statistics. Before the war, this morgue, located at Bab al-Mu’atham near the city center, received only about 200 to 300 bodies a month, Dr. Kais Hassan who has worked at the morgue, said. There are only three storage rooms and two doctors at the center. Today, the morgue is overflowing. On some days, more than 100 bodies are interred at the morgue. The capacity became stretched particularly during the term of Ibrahim al-Jaafari who took over as prime minister after the January 2005 elections but was finally persuaded to stand down earlier this year. The ministry of interior was then under Bayan Jabr. Killing in Baghdad increased after the occupation, but it has flourished under the militia explosion and the creation of what Iraqis commonly refer to as death squads. “Most of those brought dead here have been tortured by beating, electricity, acid, drills, and by other horrible ways,” said an Iraqi who refused to give his name. “When any Iraqi is arrested by police now, it means we will find his dead body in Baghdad’s streets after some days. Because of all this killing, this morgue is not enough.” The smell of death is all around the morgue. That and the crowds of crying families searching for their dead are now a ubiquitous sight around the morgue. IPS was refused access to the morgue, and was told journalists are forbidden to report on the conditions inside. “The last manager for this morgue, Faik Bakr, received death threats because he said there were more than 7,000 Iraqis killed by death squads in recent months,” an employee told IPS. “Most of the dead arrived with their hands tied behind their backs.” The employee advised the IPS correspondent to leave immediately. Ahmed, who was in the crowd outside the morgue with his family, explained why so many families were waiting. “All of them are here to look for their sons, fathers, mothers, and friends who disappeared some days before. Also, they look for them because militias wearing police uniforms arrested them. Now in Iraq, if anyone is arrested by militias wearing police uniforms, his family looks for him in the morgue.” Bodies arrive at the morgue in the custody of the police convoys many times throughout the day. While IPS was speaking with Ahmed, two police vehicles arrived, carrying many bodies. After a few minutes of chaos, one man began shouting, “This is my son! He was tortured and killed, I lost him forever!” Many people gathered around to comfort him. The body showed many holes. One of the eyes had been removed. The father, Ali, spoke with IPS after the body was taken into the morgue. “He was a shopkeeper, his shop was in al-Rashid street, and three days ago he was arrested by police, and I find him here, killed.” Ali believes his son was killed only because he is Sunni. He said his son was not wanted by the police for any crime. “He was loved by all his friends, and everyone liked him. He was innocent and he did nothing wrong.” Near the morgue is a large parking lot. Ramadan, a guard in his forties, is able to watch what goes on all day. “A week earlier, they brought more than 100 bodies in one day from al-Taji north of Baghdad, and another day they brought just 20 bodies. There is an average of 50 to 60 bodies every day.” Ramadan is not always an observer from the parking lot. “Many times I helped the workers at the morgue carry bodies inside. It isn’t cold enough in there, and they keep the bodies piled one over another. Some of the bodies are on the floor and everywhere else inside the morgue.” He says the bodies are from both Sunni and Shia families. “I see their families when they came to take their bodies. They are from both because of the sectarian war that is being waged in Iraq.” Ramadan added, “I hope one day I can find other work and leave this place.” (Inter Press Service) ********************************************************** (7) Efforts by C.I.A. Fail in Somalia, Officials Charge By MARK MAZZETTI The New York Times 8 June 2006 WASHINGTON, June 7 — A covert effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to finance Somali warlords has drawn sharp criticism from American government officials who say the campaign has thwarted counterterrorism efforts inside Somalia and empowered the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize. The criticism was expressed privately by United States government officials with direct knowledge of the debate. And the comments flared even before the apparent victory this week by Islamist militias in the country dealt a sharp setback to American policy in the region and broke the warlords’ hold on the capital, Mogadishu. The officials said the C.I.A. effort, run from the agency’s station in Nairobi, Kenya, had channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past year to secular warlords inside Somalia with the aim, among other things, of capturing or killing a handful of suspected members of Al Qaeda believed to be hiding there. Officials say the decision to use warlords as proxies was born in part from fears of committing large numbers of American personnel to counterterrorism efforts in Somalia, a country that the United States hastily left in 1994 after attempts to capture the warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and his aides ended in disaster and the death of 18 American troops. The American effort of the last year has occasionally included trips to Somalia by Nairobi-based C.I.A. case officers, who landed on warlord-controlled airstrips in Mogadishu with large amounts of money for distribution to Somali militias, according to American officials involved in Africa policy making and to outside experts. Among those who have criticized the C.I.A. operation as short-sighted have been senior Foreign Service officers at the United States Embassy in Nairobi. Earlier this year, Leslie Rowe, the embassy’s second-ranking official, signed off on a cable back to State Department headquarters that detailed grave concerns throughout the region about American efforts in Somalia, according to several people with knowledge of the report. Around that time, the State Department’s political officer for Somalia, Michael Zorick, who had been based in Nairobi, was reassigned to Chad after he sent a cable to Washington criticizing Washington’s policy of paying Somali warlords. One American government official who traveled to Nairobi this year said officials from various government agencies working in Somalia had expressed concern that American activities in the country were not being carried out in the context of a broader policy. “They were fully aware that they were doing so without any strategic framework,” the official said. “And they realized that there might be negative implications to what they are doing.” The details of the American effort in Somalia are classified, and American officials from several different agencies agreed to discuss them only after being assured of anonymity. The officials included supporters of the C.I.A.-led effort as well as critics. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the American Embassy in Kenya. Asked about the complaints made by embassy officials in Kenya, Thomas Casey, a State Department spokesman, said: “We’re not going to discuss any internal policy discussions. The secretary certainly encourages individuals in the policy making process to express their views and opinions.” Several news organizations have reported on the American payments to the Somali warlords. Reuters and Newsweek were the first to report about Mr. Zorick’s cable and reassignment to Chad. The extent and location of the C.I.A.’s efforts, and the extent of the internal dissent about these activities, have not been previously disclosed. Some Africa experts contend that the United States has lost its focus on how to deal with the larger threat of terrorism in East Africa by putting a premium on its effort to capture or kill a small number of high-level suspects. Indeed, some of the experts point to the American effort to finance the warlords as one of the factors that led to the resurgence of Islamic militias in the country. They argue that American support for secular warlords, who joined together under the banner of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, may have helped to unnerve the Islamic militias and prompted them to launch pre-emptive strikes. The Islamic militias have been routing the warlords, and on Monday they claimed to have taken control of most of the Somali capital. “This has blown up in our face, frankly,” said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research organization with extensive field experience in Somalia. “We’ve strengthened the hand of the people whose presence we were worried most about,” said Mr. Prendergast, who worked on Africa policy at the National Security Council and State Department during the Clinton administration. The American activities in Somalia have been approved by top officials in Washington and were reaffirmed during a National Security Council meeting about Somalia in March, according to people familiar with the meeting. During the March meeting, at a time of fierce fighting in and around Mogadishu, a decision was made to make counterterrorism the top policy priority for Somalia. Porter J. Goss, who recently resigned as C.I.A. director, traveled to Kenya this year and met with case officers in the Nairobi station, according to one intelligence official. It is not clear whether the payments to Somali warlords were discussed during Mr. Goss’s trip. The American ambassador in Kenya, William M. Bellamy, has disputed assertions that Washington is to blame for the surge in violence in Somalia. And some government officials this week defended the American counterterrorism efforts in the country. “You’ve got to find and nullify enemy leadership,” one senior Bush administration official said. “We are going to support any viable political actor that we think will help us with counterterrorism.” In May, the United Nations Security Council issued a report detailing the competing efforts of several nations, including Ethiopia and Eritrea, to provide Somali militias and the transitional Somali government with money and arms — activities the report said violated the international arms embargo on Somalia. “Arms, military materiel and financial support continue to flow like a river to these various actors,” the report said. The United Nations report also cited what it called clandestine support for a so-called antiterrorist coalition, in what appeared to be a reference to the American policy. Somalia’s interim president, Abdullahi Yusuf, first criticized American support for Mogadishu’s warlords in early May during a trip to Sweden. “We really oppose American aid that goes outside the government,” he said, arguing that the best way to hunt members of Al Qaeda in Somalia was to strengthen the country’s government. Senior American officials indicated this week that the United States might now be willing to hold discussions with the Islamic militias, known as the Islamic Courts Union. President Bush said Tuesday that the first priority for the United States was to keep Somalia from becoming a safe haven for terrorists. The American payments to the warlords have been intended at least in part to help gain the capture of a number of suspected Qaeda operatives who are believed responsible for a number of deadly attacks throughout East Africa. Since the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, American officials have been tracking a Qaeda cell whose members are believed to move freely between Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and parts of the Middle East. Shortly after an attack on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and the failed attempt to shoot down a plane bound for Israel that took off from the Mombasa airport, both in November 2002, the United States began informally reaching out to the Somali clans in the hopes that local forces might provide intelligence about suspected members of Al Qaeda in Somalia. This approach has brought occasional successes. According to an International Crisis Group report, militiamen loyal to warlord Mohammed Deere, a powerful figure in Mogadishu, caught a suspected Qaeda operative, Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, in April 2003 and turned him over to American officials. According to Mr. Prendergast, who has met frequently with Somali clan leaders, the C.I.A. over the past year has increased its payments to the militias in the hopes of putting pressure on Al Qaeda. The operation, while blessed by officials in Washington, did not seem to be closely coordinated among various American national security agencies, he said. “I’ve talked to people inside the Defense Department and State Department who said that this was not a comprehensive policy,” he said. “It was being conducted in a vacuum, and they were largely shut out.” Marc Lacey contributed reporting from Nairobi for this article, and Helene Cooper from Washington. **************** ANALYSIS & VIEWS **************** (8) Poll may backfire on Abbas By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank Al-Jazeera 6 June 2006 english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/21BE089C-802B-4BF5- 8315-8AA1E70EED71.htm The Palestinian president’s pledge to call a referendum to help overcome a stand-off with the Hamas-led government may well backfire on him, according to some observers. The government has not rejected the document outright, and one official, Nayef Rajoub, minister of Wakf and Islamic affairs in the Palestinian government, says Hamas has little to lose by endorsing it. “There is a feeling that Hamas stands to lose very little or nothing by consenting to the prisoners’ document,” he said On Tuesday, the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation gave Abbas its support for a public referendum, but a date was not set, giving Hamas and Fatah time to work out disagreements on a programme proposed by the leaders of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Hamas has argued that more time is needed to reach an agreement with Fatah and that a dialogue should not be held hostage to ultimatums. ‘Positive points’ On Monday, Ismail Haniya, the prime minister, was quoted as saying that “the document contained some very positive points”. However, he said: “I am not prepared to act with a gun to my head.” He was referring to Abbas’s original Monday deadline to accept the prisoner document or face the referendum. Haniya’s remarks, coupled with statements by Hamas leaders, suggest that the Hamas government is looking for ways to accept the document without appearing to give up on the movement’s commitments and ideals. Those include not recognising Israel. If forced to address the document directly, Hamas is expected to highlight an item asserting the right of return for Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their homes when Israel was established in 1948. Setback denied A Hamas official, Aziz Dweik, the parliament speaker, denied that a referendum would be a setback for his party. “I think the [prisoner] document is a very important piece of paper,” he told Aljazeera.net. “The fact the right of return is established and confirmed in the document makes it easier for us to accept it. “On the contrary, a ‘yes’ vote would kill all other past initiatives and understandings excluding the right of return. “It would push others, not us, to the corner, since others, not us, have shown a willingness to compromise on the right of return.” Right of return Duweik was referring to the Arab initiative of 2002 and other understandings that indicate that the refugees would return to a future Palestinian state, not to Israel. This suggests that a “yes” vote, which Abbas and his Fatah movement expect, would lead to a hardening of the Palestinian position on refugees, a main issue in negotiations with Israel. The Camp David talks – involving Bill Clinton when he was the US president, Ehud Barak when he was Israel’s prime minister and Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader – collapsed when Arafat refused to scrap the right of return. Fatah leaders are aware of this dimension in the referendum. Abdullah Abdullah, a former director-general of the Palestinian foreign ministry and now a Fatah member in the Palestinian parliament, agreed that the referendum would play to the ideology of Hamas more than that of Fatah. “The prisoners’ document is very compatible with Hamas’s uncompromising ideology. If I were a member of Hamas, I would adopt it immediately,” he said. Hamas leaders, especially those in the West Bank, know what Abdullah is talking about. This is why they are trying to develop a consensus favouring the adoption of the document. Rajoub, the Islamic affairs minister, said: “We realise that the significance of this document doesn’t go beyond the public relations sphere, since Israel is firmly opposed to a total withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967.” He said the referendum affair was “a pressure tactic on the government aimed at creating crisis and instability and turmoil”, but hinted that an agreement could be reached in the coming days. Israel not interested There are also signs that Israel is not enthusiastic about a referendum on the prisoners’ document. A “yes” vote would commit Palestinian leaders, present and future, to preserving the right of return for more than five million refugees dispersed across the globe. On Monday, Shimon Peres, Israel’s deputy prime minister, told Israeli public radio that Israel “should not be enthusiastic about the Palestinian referendum”. “This referendum is unlikely to serve the cause of peace and Israeli interests,” he said. But it remains to be seen whether a Hamas acceptance of the prisoners’ document would end the present stand-off in the occupied territories and make the US, Israel and EU reconsider their blockade of the Palestinian government, which is inflicting hardship on millions of Palestinians. ********************************************************** (9) The Right to Live Without Fear By Am Johal The Electronic Intifada 7 June 2006 electronicintifada.net/v2/article4772.shtml Lost in the discussion of peace processes, military raids, Qassam rocket fire and unilateralism carried out by the Israeli government for ‘security purposes,’ is the climate of fear that is the defining feature of Israeli and Palestinian life. The Hungarian dissident and writer Istvan Bibo who wrote volumes on the topic defined it as the primary element of human societies in a historical perspective. It does more damage than anything else. The threat of coercion, of bureaucratic reprimand, the hold up of paperwork, the threat of home demolitions and a myriad of other policies force normal people in to silence even when their rights are violated. For Israeli Arabs, getting an apartment can involve a humiliating process. They are forced to live with the indignity of having de facto second class status. Even the Supreme Court of the land ratifies laws in the name of security that would be called racist anywhere else. Granted conflict states require unique solutions to deal with tensions, but the policy outcomes reflect the power structures in place. All the international opprobrium that comes Israel’s way is largely a result of its policies of occupation. They have chosen unilateralism as a way of dealing with legitimate criticism. There is a Hebrew word called ‘balagan’ which roughly translates into big, crazy, mess. Since the establishment of the state, that is what we are left with today. Were it not that the root cause of the conflict was the occupation, and that the security argument was an effective public policy weapon to delegitimize Palestinian aspirations and has been effectively applied for annexing blocs of land, perhaps the policies of unilateralism and convergence could be taken seriously. In reality, they are meant to buy time to build new realities on the ground: East Jerusalem, the Separation Wall and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. The security argument is the most effective element of ‘hasbara’ – how else could Israel violate international law so easily and without any threat of sanctions by its two main supporters? There is no end date on the policy – it is the policy. The legitimate desire for security should have been presented on a more balanced platform. The US, who is the largest subsidizer of Israel, and the EU, its largest trading partner, have largely served the timelines and interests of Israel in foreign policy. There is nothing to suggest that the next five years hold out any hope of change or promise. Looking the other way when Israel takes military strikes and by hypocritically applying sanctions to Hamas, they expose the deep biases in the formation of their foreign policy – or in the case of the EU, the fact that they actually have one beyond the accession of new states and the expansion of new markets. Human rights is a clause in all their favourable trade arrangements but it is rarely exercised in reality in a practical way. Hamas has blood on its hands, but so does the Israeli state through its occupation policies. Within the conflict, the narrative of high diplomacy is presented as something done by the elites, far from real people. Under the glare of camera lights, important people shake hands and make statements – they might as well be playing charades. The dissonance between reality, language and images has penetrated in to the political culture of the country itself. The media cycle is politically malleable and rarely subject to accurate contextualization. The public sphere does not shift from the larger narratives of the Israeli and Palestinian mythology and identity which are irreconcilable at their foundations. The mainstream international media outlets, in their haste to meet deadlines, cater to building stories around images which reflect the pornography of war. The daily form of the news cycle itself, works against contextualizing complexity. They help frame and perpetuate the vicious circle that is the conflict. In this way, the structural system of this horrific and hellish stalemate continues. It is the structural DNA of the conflict. People die, and the next day life goes on. This is ‘normal.’ A military raid in downtown Ramallah killed several people the other day and injured dozens. This day-to-day escalation of the conflict coupled with devastating sanctions on the Palestinian Authority which is teetering on economic collapse has devastating consequences. Looking for militants means that killing innocent civilians in the process falls under the term ‘collateral damage.’ It is a dehumanizing existence for everyone involved including the soldiers. The logic of the conflict for the warring parties has fallen under a rather primitive concept that could only be likened to Hammurabi’s laws – blood for blood, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The right wing supporters of Israel like to say that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. There are some things worth mentioning – there is a mosque in its basement, NGO’s address its committees and proportional representation is a progressive form of representation. However, democracy is subject to deformations in its processes when an occupation or a conflict shapes its priorities from the traditional elements of public governance. Placing a democratic facade on institutionalizing an occupation does not render it any more humane or just. There is a human rights problem in the entire Middle East whether they are societies run by benevolent and petty despots or whether it is called a democracy. Haaretz writer Gideon Levy recently made a brilliant observation: “The occupation is not just the domain of the government, army and security organizations. Everything is tainted: institutions of justice and law, the physicians who remain silent while medical treatment is prevented in the territories, the teachers who do not protest against the closing of educational institutions and the prevention of free movement of their peers, the journalists who do not report, the writers and artists who remain mum, the architects and engineers who lend a hand to the occupation’s enterprises – the settlements and the fence, the barriers and bypass roads and also the university lecturers, who do nothing for their imprisoned colleagues in the territories, but conduct special study programs for the security forces. If all these boycotted the occupation, there would be no need for an international boycott.” Even the mainstream Israeli peace movement is full of right wingers who defend the Separation Wall as a just public policy measure. That they morally defend aspects of the occupation as the costs of building the Israeli state is a position built on a lie and only serves those interests which continue to perpetuate unjust policies. Hiding behind the ‘peace movement’ does not absolve them from receiving fair criticism. The occupation has gone on for so long that the debate amongst the country’s elite is light years from anything resembling a final status agreement that the Palestinians would accept. Martin Luther King used to say that the enemies weren’t the racists, but the white liberals who were uncomfortable with protests and wanted the civil rights movement to wait until the time was better to make change. It is the Israeli moderates who say nothing, who accept the flow of events and deny the critics that stand in the way of a fundamental shift in approach to the conflict. Implementing the establishment of a second-class society takes the work of many people through systems and processes. It requires an acquiescence which normalizes and renders routine the blunt policies of occupation. The Palestinians are not innocents in this. The suicide bomb and Qassam rockets have not achieved a thing from any empirical perspective. They have squandered opportunities and failed to build a non-violent resistance movement with international ties on a tight time frame. The EU and the US have clearly not been honest brokers. The Palestinians must not just gain support amongst Israelis, it must build public support in the US, France, Germany and Britain particularly. It means a sustained and focused campaign with strategic ends in mind over a limited time frame. It means Israelis, Palestinians and internationals have to come together in a solidarity campaign that is focused on sustained cultural change focussed on changing public opinion. Moving from crisis to crisis will not change at all the fundamental structures of the occupation. The Israelis have handicapped and divided the Palestinian resistance movement through its brutal policies. The realists would argue that raw power still functions on a Western paradigm and that the UN is a political institution. The Israelis, by building better relations with the global hegemonic powers for historical reasons, like the EU and the US, have strategically played the game of international relations better. They have successfully carried out policies that have created an ungovernable and colonized people who have become bitterly divided by sectarian tensions in what is increasingly becoming an apartheid state. The Palestinians have been unable to transcend the significant hurdles that are before them largely due to an active policy of division administered by the IDF and the Israeli government. All the PhD’s in the world in Peace and Conflict Studies couldn’t find a solution to this conflict in its present supposition. The Israelis have legitimized a power dynamic with the Palestinians in their own eyes that is morally unjust by any standard of human rights. Institutionalizing fear in its critics at home and abroad has been an effective psychological weapon for Israel in prolonging the occupation and in dissipating and managing the effectiveness of social movements domestically and critics abroad. Systems and processes such as these can only be fundamentally changed by exposing their flaws and by building more effective responses that fall under the hospices of non-violent civil disobedience and change management. It has to be strategic, focussed and carried out in a mass way. In Israel, the mainstream left today stands in the way of inevitable change – in their ability to stay quiet when it matters, they prolong and help justify the positions of the Israeli right. Until there is a structural transformation of the Israeli public sphere and a shift in EU and US foreign policy, nothing important related to the conflict will happen that alters the root causes of the impasse. Fear will remain the most effective weapon in maintaining the status quo. Am Johal is a freelance writer from Vancouver, Canada who worked during 2004 in international advocacy with the Mossawa Center, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens of Israel. ********************************************************** (10) Olmert’s marketing failure By Aluf Benn Haaretz 8 June 2006 www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/724300.html Ehud Olmert has a problem. He was correct in identifying the demographic and political dangers that the occupation of the territories poses to Israel, and he put forth a worthy plan for the evacuation of most of the settlements and for convergence to new borders. But he failed in marketing. Olmert thought that the world leaders, who cheered Ariel Sharon’s courage because of a limited evacuation of settlements, would willingly buy the new goods he was peddling: removing the settlers from the mountain ridge, and moving significantly closer to the Green Line. But to his surprise, the world was not enthused, and sent him back to do his homework. “Go talk with Mahmoud Abbas, and then come back to us,” they say. It is hard to believe: For the first time since 1967, an Israeli leader proposes to pull out from most of the West Bank, and the world is silent. “Come back tomorrow,” they tell Olmert. There are reasons for this that are not related to Israel. The governments in Washington, London and Paris, who lost domestic support, are disintegrating. Iran, Iraq and the price of oil are now of greater concern to the world than who will live in Beit El or Ofra. But there is another factor that Olmert did not take into account: that the Palestinians will carry out an international public relations campaign against his plan, and will succeed in swaying western public opinion of the validity of the opposing narrative. In short, that they succeeded in presenting convergence as yet another Israeli plot to take away lands and to further annexation, occupation, abuse and apartheid. Instead of arguing about the extent of the withdrawal, they diverted the discourse to questions of Israel’s legitimacy and right to exist. When the western governments turned their backs on the Palestinians after the rise of Hamas, they turned to non-governmental organizations. It is easy to sell them Zionism as an evil empire, which drags the naive Americans by the nose. The boycotts against Israel by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) in Britain, and by the Ontario division of Canada’s largest union of public employees, is just the beginning. Those coming after them will be easier to convince. Israel was caught by surprise. Just like in the case of the separation fence, it turns out that the internal Israeli debate is entirely cut off from the international agenda. What appears at home to be a serious withdrawal and an enormous concession, which will cause domestic rupture, is presented in the world as a tyrannical move against an occupied and wretched people. In Israel, there is fighting over the evacuation of some miserable outposts, and over there they hold serious discussions on the “one-state solution” that will put an end to the annoyance called Israel. Israeli public relations is finding it difficult to respond in kind and repulse the Palestinian onslaught because its policy is unclear. How can they market convergence if the government has yet to adopt it? And what to do with a prime minister whose internal message is that he is determined to carry out his plan, but abroad declares his love for Mahmoud Abbas? The result is that Israel is stuttering petty messages of pre-conditions for starting negotiations and the demands of the road map, which no one remembers anymore, rather than making a clear proclamation: We have decided to end the occupation and evacuate the settlements and move to a new line from which we will hold negotiations with the Palestinians after they sort out their internal affairs. Zionism is just, in more limited borders. Those around Olmert are saying there is nothing to worry about, that in the moment of truth the international community will rally in favor of convergence and evacuation of the settlers. Perhaps it will be so. But it is also possible that until the first home is evacuated, the world will come to see Israel’s move as the wrong cure for the disease and choose the Palestinian narrative, which can be summed up in a single word: MORE. The decisions to boycott Israel, precisely at the time when the government is talking about a major withdrawal, are a serious warning signal. Successful marketing of convergence should be at the top of Olmert’s priorities, and his trip to Britain and France next week will be an important test. ********************************************************** (11) Analysis: Why Iraq’s unity government is failing By Martin Sieff, UPI Senior News Analyst United Press International 7 June 2006 www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20060607- 015141-9717r WASHINGTON — Iraq’s new so-called unity government has produced not unity, but increased chaos and civil war. In central Iraq, Sunni insurgents are escalating the sectarian conflict with ever more blatant mass killings of Shiites. In southern Iraq, Shiite militias entirely outside the control of new Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s security forces escalate their confrontation and boldness towards British security forces by the day. In the less than half a month since Maliki’s government was appointed, the slaughter of civilians by the Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias acting in reprisal has escalated to new levels of scale and ferocity. What went wrong? The answer is that more than three years after the first violent clashes between U.S. forces and proto-insurgents in Fallujah heralded the still-escalating insurgency, Bush administration policymakers and most pontificators in the U.S. media still fail to grasp the nature and scale of the problems in Iraq that underlie the insurgency and emerging civil war. Bush administration policymakers remain fixated on their chimera of establishing a working democracy in Iraq and they have gone to great pains to micro-manage the simulacra of democracy — open parliamentary elections, a parliament and coalition wheeling and dealing. Much effort over the past two years has also gone into building up new Iraqi police and military forces already more than 220,000 strong. The trouble is: None of it is real. The surface paraphernalia of democratic government is not connected to any real network of acceptance, consent and public administration. Real power and the ability to provide basic services at a local level and any modicum of safety has steadily devolved into the hands of Sunni and Shiite local militias. The Shiite militias have heavily penetrated the police and the army. Sunni intelligence agents have most likely deeply penetrated the new security forces, as reflected in their ability to strike continuing devastating bomb attacks against police stations and gatherings, apparently at will. The previous government of Ibrahim al-Jaafari was becoming increasingly anti-American and had become reliant on the support of Shiite hardliner Moqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi army militia. The Iranian-backed Mahdi army is the most important and fastest growing Shiite militia across the south of Iraq and in the port city of Basra. And it is also a growing power in Sadr City, a densely populated area of Baghdad. But Jaafari’s eagerness to embrace Iran and rely on Sadr was anathema to U.S. policymakers who pushed for his fall and replacement by Maliki. The trouble is that, for all the superficial support American wheeling and dealing has won for Maliki in the new Iraqi parliament, his real levels of support and credibility among Iraq’s 60 percent Shiite majority is negligible. And the impact of the intensified Sunni insurgency since he took office has dealt a a probably mortal blow to his political legitimacy. Even worse, Maliki does not have even the titular level of support from the Shiite militias that Jaafari did. Therefore the prospects of a dangerous clash between the Shiite militias, especially in Basra, and the British and U.S. forces that support the new government, continue to grow. As yet, Maliki still has not even been able to get his supposed coalition partners to agree on ministers to head Iraq’s defense and interior ministries. The bottom line is that even if Maliki can put a superficially credible government together, as he has so far failed to do, he has given not the slightest hint of coming up with any policies that will take the steam out of the insurgency and either undermine it militarily or reduce its popular support in the 20 percent Sunni minority community. Even more crucially, he faces the challenge of restoring basic security to the capital Baghdad and a resumption of normal services and economic recovery for the 16 provinces of Iraq not primarily impacted by the Sunni insurgency in the remaining two of them. The prospects of Maliki managing to do any of these things currently appear negligible. His army is ineffective and demoralized; his police at best unreliable and at worst harboring criminal elements and militia cells itself. Far from becoming a rescue ship for the Iraqi people from the hurricanes pummeling them, Maliki’s government appears to be just another piece of driftwood tossed on the waves by the unforgiving storm. ********************************************************** (12) Report Traces US/EU Covert Rendition Network By Jim Lobe Inter Press Service 8 June 2006 www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=9108 A long-awaited report [.pdf] by the Council of Europe on European complicity in “extraordinary renditions” secretly carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against suspected terrorists was hailed here Wednesday by human rights groups, even as the U.S. State Department tried to cast doubt on its findings. “Amnesty International applauds today’s Council of Europe report that makes clear that the United States has woven a renditions ‘spider web’ outside the rule of law that includes, ‘disappearances,’ arbitrary detentions, illegal transfers, and torture or other ill-treatment,” said Larry Cox, director of Amnesty’s U.S. chapter. At the same time, however, State Department spokesman Sean McCormick denounced the report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty, which is based largely on the flight records of suspected CIA planes in and out of Europe and the testimony of some of the individuals who have been subject to rendition. “We’re certainly disappointed in the tone and the content of it,” he told reporters. “This would appear to be a rehash of the previous efforts by this group. I don’t see any new solid facts in it. There seem to be a lot of allegations but no real facts behind it,” he said. McCormick, who did not explicitly deny the report’s findings, also insisted that “extraordinary renditions” – the extra-judicial seizure and transfer by the CIA of terrorist suspects to detention in third countries – were “an internationally recognized legal practice” and that “intelligence cooperation between the United States and other countries around the world saves lives in the war on terror.” Most analysts believe that a major purpose of renditions is to deliver suspects to countries that are more tolerant of abusive interrogation techniques, including torture, than in the U.S. or countries where they are seized. According to U.S. officials, however, the CIA never turns over suspects to foreign intelligence agencies in the absence of assurances that they will not be tortured. The 46-member Council of Europe is the continent’s oldest political organization. Its investigation was spurred by the publication last November of a Washington Post article alleging that the CIA was not only using European airspace and airports to transport detainees, but was also running secret prisons – or “black sites” – in two Eastern European countries which it declined to identify. Immediately after publication of the article, which won a coveted Pulitzer Prize and also prompted a criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, Human Rights Watch (HRW) identified the two countries as Poland and Romania. The governments of both countries vehemently denied the existence of such prisons on their territory. Amnesty subsequently published a report, “Below the Radar: Secret Flights to Torture and Disappearance,” which provided new details about CIA rendition operations, including information about nearly 1,000 flights linked to the CIA through “front companies.” Most of these, according to the report, traveled through European air space – and in some cases landed at European airports – on their way to third countries, such as Egypt and Jordan, with close ties to U.S. intelligence agencies or to the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. has held hundreds of terrorist suspects since 2002. In his report, Marty accused 14 European countries of complicity in the renditions, including those that were “responsible, at varying degrees … for violations of the rights of specific persons” – Bosnia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Turkey, and Sweden – and those “responsible for collusion – active or passive” – Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Spain. All of these countries, according to the report, were part of a “spider’s web” of sites around the world used to facilitate renditions which, in contrast to McCormick’s insistence that the practice was legal, were “utterly alien” to international human rights law, including the European Convention on Human Rights. He also reiterated HRW’s charges that Poland and Romania, along with eight other non-European countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan, appear to have provided the CIA with facilities for at least the temporary detention of rendition subjects. He described airports in Timisoara, Romania, and Szymany, Poland, as “detainee transfer/drop-off” points. He also noted that suspects were picked up in Bosnia, Italy, Macedonia, and Sweden with the knowledge of each government. That finding appeared to vindicate Washington’s insistence that relevant governments were informed about U.S. rendition activities undertaken on their territory. “It is now clear – although we are still far from establishing the whole truth – that authorities in several European countries actively participated with the CIA in these unlawful activities,” according to the report. “Other countries ignored them knowingly, or did not want to know.” Marty also noted that, in carrying out his investigation, he found that most European governments “did not seem particularly eager to establish the alleged facts.” Marty himself stressed that his findings could not be proved with absolute certainty at this point because they were based largely on circumstantial evidence, including official flight logs provided by the European Union’s air traffic agency, Eurocontrol, as well as corroborating testimony by current or former rendition subjects or their attorneys. Since he could not compel testimony of knowledgeable government officials, he appealed for responsible national agencies, including parliaments, to do so. “Governments have a duty to carry out serious, transparent investigations” of these allegations, he said. “These states could have established the truth long ago; they did not. They now have an obligation to do so,” he added. That point was echoed by Amnesty, which called on European states to “conduct independent and thorough investigations” into the renditions and “ensure accountability of their own and foreign intelligence services.” John Sifton, who has followed U.S. rendition policy and operations for HRW, echoed that appeal, noting in particular those countries, including Macedonia, Italy, Sweden, and Germany, whose complicity in renditions was clearest. He also took issue with McCormick’s assertions – echoed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the British Parliament Wednesday – that Marty had failed to uncover new information. “He has managed to obtain official flight records that show the movement of several airplanes which have already been shown to have been used by the CIA for transporting suspects, and they corroborate the claims of some of the detainees who have been subject to renditions,” Sifton told IPS. “We are not trying to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal court. We’re trying to show that there is solid evidence to back up the allegations, and Mr. Marty’s report has provided new evidence,” he said, noting, in particular, the flight records regarding “very suspicious flights” from Afghanistan to both Poland and Romania that support previous allegations of the existence of “black sites” on their territory. “Despite requests from Mr. Marty and us, neither country has yet explained or rebutted any of the evidence that has been presented,” he added. (Inter Press Service) ********************************************************** To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: MECCS/EI Project 1507 E. 53rd Street, #500 Chicago, IL 60615, USA electronicIraq.net | |
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