The problem with democracy

And now, horror of horrors, the Palestinians have elected the wrong party to power
By Robert Fisk
01/28/06
The Independent (UK)

Oh no, not more democracy again! Didn't we award this to those Algerians in 1990? And didn't they reward us with that nice gift of an Islamist government - and then they so benevolently cancelled the second round of elections? Thank goodness for that!

True, the Afghans elected a round of representatives, albeit that they included some warlords and murderers. But then the Iraqis last year elected the Dawa party to power in Baghdad, which was responsible - let us not speak this in Washington - for most of the kidnappings of Westerners in Beirut in the 1980s, the car bombing of the (late) Emir and the US and French embassies in Kuwait.

And now, horror of horrors, the Palestinians have elected the wrong party to power. They were supposed to have given their support to the friendly, pro-Western, corrupt, absolutely pro-American Fatah, which had promised to "control" them, rather than to Hamas, which said they would represent them. And, bingo, they have chosen the wrong party again.

Result: 76 out of 132 seats. That just about does it. God damn that democracy. What are we to do with people who don't vote the way they should?

Way back in the 1930s, the British would lock up the Egyptians who turned against the government of King Farouk. Thus they began to set the structure of anti-democratic governance that was to follow. The French imprisoned the Lebanese government which demanded the same. Then the French left Lebanon. But we have always expected the Arab governments to do what they were told.

So today, we are expecting the Syrians to behave, the Iranians to kowtow to our nuclear desires (though they have done nothing illegal), and the North Koreans to surrender their weapons (though they actually do have them, and therefore cannot be attacked).

Now let the burdens of power lie heavy on the shoulders of the party. Now let the responsibilities of people lie upon them. We British would never talk to the IRA, or to Eoka, or to the Mao Mao. But in due course, Gerry Adams, Archbishop Makarios and Jomo Kenyatta came to take tea with the Queen. The Americans would never speak to their enemies in North Vietnam. But they did. In Paris.

No, al-Qa'ida will not do that. But the Iraqi leaders of the insurgency in Mesopotamia will. They talked to the British in 1920, and they will talk to the Americans in 2006.

Back in 1983, Hamas talked to the Israelis. They spoke directly to them about the spread of mosques and religious teaching. The Israeli army boasted about this on the front page of the Jerusalem Post. At that time, it looked like the PLO was not going to abide by the Oslo resolutions. There seemed nothing wrong, therefore, with continuing talks with Hamas. So how come talks with Hamas now seem so impossible?

Not long after the Hamas leadership had been hurled into southern Lebanon, a leading member of its organisation heard me say that I was en route to Israel.

"You'd better call Shimon Peres," he told me. "Here's his home number."

The phone number was correct. Here was proof that members of the hierarchy of the most extremist movements among the Palestinians were talking to senior Israeli politicians.

The Israelis know well the Hamas leadership. And the Hamas leadership know well the Israelis. There is no point in journalists like us suggesting otherwise. Our enemies invariably turn out to be our greatest friends, and our friends turn out, sadly, to be our enemies.

A terrible equation - except that we must understand our fathers' history. My father, who was a soldier in the First World War, bequeathed to me a map in which the British and French ruled the Middle East. The Americans have tried, vainly, to rule that map since the Second World War. They have all failed. And it remains our curse to rule it since.

How terrible it is to speak with those who have killed our sons. How unspeakable it is to converse with those who have our brothers' blood on their hands. No doubt that is how Americans who believed in independence felt about the Englishmen who fired upon them.

It will be for the Iraqis to deal with al-Qa'ida. This is their burden. Not ours. Yet throughout history, we have ended up talking to our enemies. We talked to the representatives of the Emperor of Japan. In the end, we had to accept the surrender of the German Reich from the successor to Adolf Hitler. And today, we trade happily with the Japanese, the Germans and the Italians.

The Middle East was never a successor to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, despite the rubbish talked by Messrs Bush and Blair. How long will it be before we can throw away the burden of this most titanic of wars and see our future, not as our past, but as a reality?

Surely, in an age when our governments no longer contain men or women who have experienced war, we must now lead a people with the understanding of what war means. Not Hollywood. Not documentary films. Democracy means real freedom, not just for the people we choose to have voted into power.

And that is the problem in the Middle East.

"I Would Die For Israel"

Interview with Steven Spielberg
SPIEGEL (Germany)
January 26, 2006

US director Steven Spielberg discusses his controversial new film "Munich," which deals with the aftermath of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. In an interview with DER SPIEGEL he talks about the moral aspects of dealing with terrorism and responds to critics who claim he's betrayed the Jewish people.

Muslim States Wary Of Hamas' Success

Muslim States Wary Of Hamas' Success
By David R. Sands, The Washington Times
Washington Times
January 28, 2006

Arab and Muslim states across the Middle East yesterday greeted the stunning electoral triumph of the radical Palestinian Hamas party with a mixture of elation and caution, with many warning the party will have to soften its fiercely anti-Israel platform if it hopes to govern.

"It's very easy to have slogans and rhetoric that people will follow, but eventually the slogans fall away," said Saad Hariri, leader of the largest bloc in Lebanon's parliament.

"People want to eat, to have jobs, to go to homes where they feel safe," he said. "Hamas had better get its act together."

Governments across the region were struggling to adjust to the smashing and unexpected Hamas win in Palestinian parliamentary voting Wednesday. The militant wing of the party has carried out scores of deadly attacks on Israel and is considered a terrorist organization by both the United States and the European Union.

Leading hard-line states in the region, led by Syria and Iran, hailed the vote as a blow to Israel and a rejection of U.S.-backed plans to forge a permanent peace deal with the Palestinians.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in Tehran that Palestinian voters "chose the option of resistance" in overwhelmingly backing Hamas over the more moderate ruling Fatah party.

Syria's official al-Baath newspaper predicted that the United States and other Western powers would have to drop their diplomatic boycott of Hamas in the wake of Wednesday's vote.

"The Europeans, and especially the Americans, who have rejected this victory, have no other choice than to submit to reality and work with the new situation," the paper said.

But other regional leaders, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah II of Jordan and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, warned Hamas against any immediate break in peace talks with Israel.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told reporters in Geneva that Hamas should be given "a chance," noting that Israel's hawkish Ariel Sharon evolved as prime minister into an advocate for peace with the Palestinians.

"Let us hope Hamas ends up like that," he said.

Some Arab commentators hoped -- and others feared -- that Hamas would moderate its fierce anti-Israeli stand as it faced the reality of governing.

Others saw the vote less as a triumph for Hamas than a political implosion for Fatah, the movement created by Yasser Arafat and now widely criticized for corruption and inefficiency.

Lebanon's Mr. Hariri, the son of the assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, said his country was going through a similar evolution with the recent addition to the coalition government of members of Hezbollah, another militant Islamist movement also considered a terrorist group by the U.S. government.

"When you are in the opposition, you are always the winner," Mr. Hariri said. "You get to criticize and you have no responsibility for policy."

He noted that Fatah had itself once been blackballed by the United States for terrorist attacks, before becoming Washington's favored party in this week's vote.

Mr. Hariri met with President Bush in the Oval Office yesterday to discuss efforts to push ahead with a U.N. probe in the February 2005 killing of his father.

Investigators have focused on neighboring Syria's perceived role in the assassination, and the killing sparked a drive by the United States and France to oust Syrian troops who had been in Lebanon for three decades.

"We expect there to be a full and firm investigation, and the people who are responsible for your dad's death need to be held to account," Mr. Bush said during the meeting.

The two men had "an important discussion about our mutual desire for Lebanon to be free -- free of foreign influence, free of Syrian intimidation, free to chart its own course," he added.

Plan To End Darfur Violence Is Failing, Officials Say

By Joel Brinkley
New York Times
January 28, 2006

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 — The broad strategy for ending the carnage in Darfur, Sudan, devised over the last two years by the United States, the United Nations and the European Union, is collapsing as the violence and chaos in the region seem to grow with every passing week, United Nations and Bush administration officials say.

After three years of bloodshed that has already claimed more than 200,000 lives, officials say they are struggling to devise an effective new strategy.

"We're working very closely with our partners to see if we can turn this around," said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

But the obstacles and complications are multiplying.

Peace talks have nearly halted after government and Darfur-rebel negotiators, in the latest round, showed an unwillingness to seriously discuss anything except sharing Sudan's oil wealth. A growing military conflict on the Sudan-Chad border in Darfur is further endangering hundreds of thousands of refugees living in camps there. One of the Sudanese president's latest positions, articulated in a published interview this month, is that the government-backed militias known to be behind most of the violence are actually a fictitious creation of the media and the United States Congress.

"The looming threat of complete lawlessness and anarchy draws nearer," Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, lamented earlier this month as he urged Western nations to do more.

The international response has been so ineffectual that "people on the ground are just laughing," said Jan Pronk, the chief United Nations envoy in Sudan.

The primary element of the present approach to end the bloodshed has been the deployment of 7,000 African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur, where they have tried without success to dampen the widespread brutality and banditry. In fact, these troops have become targets themselves. In recent months, five have been shot and killed, including one on Jan. 6.

The United States and Europe have both declined to provide further financial support for the effort, and African Union leaders say money to conduct the operation will run out in March. The Bush administration continues to push Congress to provide more money, but Congress has twice rejected the request in recent months during budget debates.

"The funds are almost exhausted," Alpha Omar Konaré, chairman of the African Union commission, said in a report last week.

The United Nations is considering deploying a larger force of its own peacekeeping troops to replace those of the African Union, but the discussions are at an early, preliminary stage. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed support for the idea this month. But the Sudanese government insists it will not accept United Nations forces on its territory, leaving Darfur and its surviving residents in limbo.

What is more, Mr. Pronk said this week, the United Nations "is not so eager" to take on troop commitments. "The U.N. has already reached its ceiling of commitments."

Neither he nor other officials were willing to predict how this predicament might be resolved. Meanwhile, "Darfur is in a free fall," said John Prendergast, who was director of African affairs for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. Now he is a senior adviser for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization.

In recent months, American officials said they were placing most of their faith in the on-again, off-again peace talks that began 18 months ago. Salim Ahmed Salim, an African Union official mediating the talks, observed after the latest negotiating session collapsed without result last month that both sides had shown little more than "deep distrust" of each other. American and United Nations officials said the only topic that the sides showed any eagerness to discuss was "wealth sharing."

Relief agencies administering the enormous task of feeding and caring for more than three million homeless Darfurians — half the state's population — have for many months tried to work in an environment rife with thugs, bandits, kidnappers and killers. Now, however, Sudan and Chad are building up forces and fighting skirmishes along their border in Darfur.

As a result, Mr. Pronk said he had ordered "a significant reduction in the presence of U.N. staff, and restricted U.N. access in the affected areas." Camps holding hundreds of thousands of refugees lie on or near the border with Chad. But Mr. Pronk said relief agencies there were still providing essential services.

The conflict in Darfur began in February 2003, when rebel groups attacked government positions, accusing the leaders in Khartoum of ignoring their region. The government struck back with a fury, enlisting local militias to massacre civilians and destroy entire villages.

The world was slow to acknowledge the problem, but in September 2004, the Bush administration stated that the carnage constituted genocide. The African Union troops began slowly arriving in Darfur last year.

So far, Mr. Prendergast added, Western nations "have used an ostrich strategy, hoping with a wing and a prayer that the African Union forces would actually succeed. But they are finally acknowledging that it is not going to work."

Western leaders have all but given up on a key part of their strategy, trying to persuade Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, to disarm the militias that are responsible for a large part of the violence. The United States says his government continues to finance the militias, even though Sudanese officials claim to be working hard to bring peace to Darfur. A special United Nations committee said this month that the Sudanese government had "abjectly failed to fulfill its commitment to identify, neutralize and disarm militia groups."

Mr. Bashir generally deflects questions on the Darfur violence when meeting with visiting American officials, and instead asks them to lift the economic embargo on Sudan, senior officials said. He also urges them to continue providing aid under the peace agreement that ended a 21-year civil war with the south — the one bright spot in Sudan.

In a speech two weeks ago, Mr. Bashir called on the anti-government Darfur rebels to "repent." Then, in an interview with a German newspaper two days later, he denied that the government-financed janjaweed militias existed.

On Jan. 12, Sudan's government news agency issued a statement about the interview, saying "Field Marshall Bashir" had offered the view that "the U.S. Congress groups, which represent the Christian right and Zionist lobby, have a primarily hostile stance against Sudan and always try to incite this issue."

Hamas Is Facing a Money Crisis; Aid May Be Cut

By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
January 28, 2006

JERUSALEM, Jan. 27 — Hamas leaders, savoring their landslide victory in Palestinian elections, faced an array of threats on Friday: a huge government deficit, a likely cutoff of most aid, international ostracism and the rage of defeated and armed Fatah militants.

Of the many questions that the Hamas victory presents, the need to pay basic bills and salaries to Palestinians is perhaps the most pressing. The Palestinian Authority is functionally bankrupt, with a deficit of $69 million for January alone.

That will be an urgent question when the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, known as the quartet, meet in London on Monday to discuss the Palestinian vote, especially if, as some American officials fear, Hamas turns to Iran to make up some of the difference.

"They don't have enough to get through the end of the month," a knowledgeable Western diplomat said. "The United States and the European Union both consider Hamas a terrorist organization, and we don't provide money to terrorist organizations or members of terrorist organizations."

In Washington, President Bush said "aid packages won't go forward" for the Palestinian Authority if Hamas did not renounce violence or its commitment to destroy Israel.

"That's their decision to make," he said on CBS News. "But we won't be providing help to a government that wants to destroy our ally and friend."

Meanwhile, in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis, Hamas supporters clashed with Fatah gunmen and the Palestinian security forces in two separate incidents, leaving six people wounded, according to witnesses and medical workers. [Page A9.]

In Davos, Switzerland, James D. Wolfensohn, the quartet's envoy to the Middle East, spoke of the Palestinians' financial problems, saying there was not enough money to pay the salaries of 135,000 Palestinian civil servants, including some 58,000 members of the security forces, which he said could lead to further chaos.

Because Hamas has not yet formed a government, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has asked American help to persuade the Persian Gulf countries to provide more aid now, and to ensure that Israel delivers the $40 million to $50 million owed to the Palestinian Authority from tax and customs receipts, which Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians.

Israel has made it clear that it will not deal with a Palestinian Authority run by Hamas and has said some of those who have won election are wanted for suspected involvement in anti-Israel violence. Most of them are in semi-seclusion, and fear arrest if they try to travel to Ramallah, the site of the Palestinian parliament in the West Bank.

Also in Davos, Joseph Bachar, director general of Israel's Finance Ministry, raised the question of whether Israel would continue to transfer the tax and customs receipts to an authority run by Hamas, which does not recognize the existence of Israel.

The departing Palestinian economy minister, Mazen Sinokrot, said the 135,000 civil servants were the main breadwinners for 30 percent of Palestinian families. "If these salaries do not come in, this is a message for violence," he said.

Israeli officials suggested that Ehud Olmert, Israel's acting prime minister, would agree to release this month's money anyway, since a Hamas government has not been formed, but questioned whether Israel would agree to give any money to Hamas in the future. "We don't want to punish the Palestinian people," an official said. "But we don't have any illusions about Hamas."

Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas official, said in an interview in Gaza that he was not worried about the lack of money from the West.

"All the money from Europe and American went into the pockets of corrupt men," Mr. Zahar said, citing Palestinian security chiefs as a leading example. "The leaders of these services became multimillionaires. We are going to reform these services. This is our mission."

The current financial crunch has little to do with Hamas. The Palestinian Authority last summer broke its promises to the World Bank and the donor countries and significantly raised salaries to public employees, a number swollen by the effort to absorb armed young men into the security forces. All its $1 billion in revenues is now taken up by salaries, according to the World Bank, leaving an expected budget deficit for 2006 of $600 million to $700 million; only about $320 million of that would have been covered by foreign contributions from the United States, Europe and Arab countries.

The plan assumed a Fatah victory in the elections and the formation of a new, more technocratic government. Donor countries and the World Bank were working on a restructuring program for the Palestinian Authority that would cover its large financial debt for the next few years in return for serious reforms and job-creation programs.

But the victory by Hamas has exploded all those assumptions.

Direct payments from the United States are banned by American law, and many European nations have said they will not continue to aid the Palestinian Authority until Hamas agrees to recognize Israel and disavow violence, which Hamas has said it will never do.

American and European officials are also banned from talking to Hamas officials, elected or otherwise. Once a group is on the American terrorist list, as Hamas is, it is difficult to get off; it takes more than pledges or statements, a Western diplomat said.

The development minister for the new German government, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, said Friday that German aid to the Palestinians depended on Hamas's renouncing violence and recognizing Israel.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to make a first official visit to the region next week, and her spokesman, Ulrich Wilhelm, said Friday: "The recognition of Israel's right to security and to exist remains an irrevocable cornerstone of German foreign policy." Ms. Merkel will meet Mr. Abbas but no Hamas official.

Hamas candidates and officials have played down the problem, saying they will appeal to the Arab and Muslim world, which already gives large amounts of aid to Hamas and its charitable and educational organizations — some of which, Israel says, moves seamlessly to finance its military operations.

Hamas already gets aid from Iran, Israeli and American officials say, and it is possible that Iran may be willing to provide larger sums to the Palestinian Authority. But Israeli and Western diplomats say Hamas, as a Palestinian branch of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, could also be wary of becoming overly dependent on Shiite Iran.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who led a team of election observers for the Palestinian voting, said in an interview on Friday that the United States and Europe should redirect their relief aid to United Nations organizations and nongovernmental organizations to skirt legal restrictions.

"The donor community can deal with it successfully," Mr. Carter said. "I would hope the world community can collectively tide the Palestinians over." He urged support for what he said Mr. Wolfensohn was describing to him as a $500 million appeal.

"It may well be that Hamas can change," Mr. Carter said, remembering his presidency, when the Palestine Liberation Organization under Yasir Arafat finally agreed to recognize the existence of Israel and to forswear terrorism. "It's a mistake to abandon optimism completely."

He urged Israel and the world: "Don't drive the Palestinians away from rationality. Don't force them into assuming arms as the only way to achieve their legitimate goals. Give them some encouragement and the benefit of the doubt."

But it will be politically difficult to do that. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, said he had spoken to the Europeans and Mr. Wolfensohn about the fiscal crunch. "But the fact of the matter is, you cannot pour millions and hundreds of millions of dollars into a group that, in fact, calls for the destruction of an ally, or for any country, for that matter," Mr. Biden said.

The Western diplomat said: "We're discussing a lot of complicated questions. But even before the election, the Palestinian Authority's fiscal house was in disarray, with a huge deficit every month."

It will be worse still, he said, if the Israelis stop cash transfers and there is a halt in direct aid from the West and the World Bank.

Using Purse Strings as Reins

The U.S. wants Mideast negotiators to warn Hamas that millions of dollars in aid may be withheld if it doesn't renounce violence.
By Paul Richter
Los Angeles Times
January 28, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration and Congress on Friday began trying to use the power of Western cash to push a new Palestinian government dominated by the radical Islamist group Hamas toward moderation.

Administration officials prepared for a Monday meeting in London at which they will urge the diplomatic group overseeing the Mideast peace effort to warn the Palestinians that they risk losing millions of dollars in international aid unless they renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

The international group, known as the "quartet," — the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia — is expected to cite the Palestinians' reliance on foreign aid in a joint statement.

In Congress, members of both chambers began pushing legislation that calls for further restrictions on U.S. aid to the Palestinians if Hamas does not change its ways. The measures are expected to win approval in the next few days, staff members said this week.

Aid from abroad is expected to be one of the most important levers of influence on Hamas, which opposes the international effort to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel. In Washington, Sean McCormack, the State Department's chief spokesman, said the question of international aid would "be a topic of discussion" at the meeting Monday.

Palestinians receive $900 million a year in foreign aid, one-third of it from European treasuries, and the Group of 8 industrialized countries was considering a dramatic boost in aid. At a summit in Scotland in September, the G-8 agreed to a package that would provide the Palestinians up to $3 billion in coming years.

Some U.S. officials have said in recent days that they feared differences might emerge between the Bush administration and Europe over how hard to pressure Hamas. Europe has tended to be more sympathetic to Palestinian views in the Middle East conflict.

But European diplomats said Friday that the Americans and Europeans were united at the moment in a desire to press Hamas for change, and were willing to remind leaders of the militant group of their dependency.

"If the Palestinian Authority is alive, it's thanks to European support," said one diplomat, in an interview from Europe. "When Hamas goes to the bank for the first installment of the money they need to pay their staff salaries, they'll be reminded of this."

The diplomat, who asked not to be identified, said it would be difficult for Europe to continue providing large amounts of money to support a group that advocates ideas European taxpayers "strongly oppose, like the use of violence. For us, this would be a great problem."

The diplomat said Europe was involved in other important areas, such as training Palestinian police and helping administer the important Rafah crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

The diplomat said that although the quartet would be clear in its message, it would not move quickly, since it remained unclear what form the new Palestinian government would take.

"We have to see how this administration will emerge," the official said. "This is an extraordinarily difficult situation. Nobody wants to rush to do anything precipitous."

Officials of the quartet were conferring Friday on a draft joint statement. After Palestinian election results were announced Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke by phone with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov.

McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said that under a Hamas government, the administration would reconsider how it provided aid to the Palestinian territories.

"We're going to have to review all aspects of our aid program, based on our policy and our law," he told reporters.

U.S. law forbids giving assistance to a group, such as Hamas, that is designated a terrorist organization.

Steven A. Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, questioned the value of international pressure against Hamas, because the organization has been able to run its mosques and social service network without Western assistance. All of Hamas' operations are paid for by donations from Arab and Islamic countries.

"It's survived since its founding without [government] aid," Cook said, but he acknowledged that the organization might take a different view if it was in charge of running government ministries.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) introduced a nonbinding resolution Thursday expressing the sense of Congress that no U.S. assistance should be provided to the Palestinian Authority if any ruling majority party urged the destruction of Israel.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who chairs a House subcommittee on the Middle East, has drafted a bill she will introduce next week to limit direct aid to the Palestinian Authority, and to Palestinian towns governed by people tied to Hamas, aides said.

"If Hamas is now the ruling power, I do not foresee any U.S. funds going to the Palestinian territories," she said in a statement.

I Feel So Proud For Palestine Tonight

umkahlil.blogspot.com
Jan 27, 2006

It's a shame what they did to those people. Baseel Harb

I'd like to preface this post. I am a Palestinian-American woman who has been studying Palestine since 1967. My focus is on the United States, even though I haven't lived in the United States since 1980, but God knows our work is cut out for us in the US and my English is pretty good and the US is my territory.

I read today about a Jewish woman, a US citizen, who was born in London, who was run over while she was walking her dog in New York City. She's a rich woman, a Bronfman. She was buried in Jerusalem. Born in London, lived in New York, but buried in Jerusalem. She was a hasbarist, that is,one of those who shill for the brutal, manufactured, toxic state of Israel, and Ms. Bronfman was a tacky ol' anachronistic colonial racist shill with the best of them--she was one of the shakers and movers of Birthright Israel, which convinces normal American kids that they need to arise and make their aliyah to Palestine because they will never be well if they remain in the good ol' US. No, they must "arise and go now, to a land called Israel," a country to which their ancestors migrated a few thousand years ago from Iraq... understand this, US taxpayers, they are not even indigenous to Palestine, but who in his or her right mind claims a God given right to land from three thousand years ago? They must go because the Bible and Meir Kahane told them so.

Now, Yasir Arafat is not permitted to rest in peace in Jerusalem. And the other side of this virulent Zionism, the side that demonises and vilifies any indigenous person to Palestine; don't you love these Poles, these Germans, these South Americans, these Peruvians, these Brazilians, these people from New Jersey, who drone on that Arafat wasn't born in Palestine, who pay some joker to make a case that Edward Said wasn't born in Palestine (he's too smart, man; he's not really a Palestinian), who deny that we were born where we say we're born? If I want to go to Ramallah, from where dear old dad hails, I'll have to jump through security hoops--stripped, provide my GRANDFATHER'S name, subjugate my German chocolates to interrogation...

OK, you know from where I come. I'm not from the Palestinian street (that's such a tired, overworked phrase). I remember my dad told me "It is a shame what they [the Jews, the Zionists, what have you, as dad would say] did to those people."

And I think those people (and I miss my dad so much because if I said a name to him he could tell me precisely from where the person hailed in Palestine; he said the funniest stuff sometimes, like when I'd say, "Hey dad, I met someone from Ramallah"; "No, he's not from Ramallah," regarding my dear friend who lived in Ramallah since 1948; he's from Jaffa!") are the people who voted Hamas into office. And I do not have a thing to say about it although I will listen to Hanan Ashrawi talk about it because I love her dearly and Hanan is like me, and when she spoke to the Ramallah Convention a few years ago her eloquence reduced everyone to tears.

I don't have a thing to say about it because I'm a pretty well off girl (not as well off as Birthright Bronfman) who leads a comfortable life which is really not all that, and my mission is to educate dumbshit Americans.

Which is no easy task.

But I feel good, just like a Palestinian girl should.

Because whatever one thinks about Hamas, the majority of Palestinians, by voting for Hamas, showed that they still have some fight in them, and that they still resist. They still resist corruption; they still resist compromise of God given rights; i.e., the right of return; these people for whom my middle class father was so sorry, these magnificent people who are bloodied but unbowed, by voting against corruption, and by voting for Hamas, still resist a world that beckons them to compromise on justice.

I feel so proud tonight.

Bolivia leader halves his own pay

BBC NEWS
2006/01/27

The Bolivian new left-wing President, Evo Morales, has cut his salary by more than a half to a little over $1,800 (£1,012) per month.

The decision means that the salaries of all Bolivian public sector employees will be reviewed, as no official can earn more than the president.

Mr Morales said the money saved would be used to increase the numbers of doctors and teachers.

Mr Morales suggested that members of Congress should cut their salaries too.

During the campaign, Mr Morales had pledged to halve his own pay if elected.

The move announced after his first cabinet went beyond that, with a cut of 57%.

BBC South America correspondent Daniel Schweimler says many voted for Mr Morales believing that he was different from the more conservative politicians who have governed in the past.

The former llama herder and coca leaf farmer was inaugurated last Sunday as Bolivia's first indigenous president.

He has promised to fight corruption, introduce a new tax on the wealthy, and renationalise energy companies.

Fueling Sectarian Violence in Iraq

"Maybe they just need to have their civil war"
by Gareth Porter
Common Dreams
January 27, 2006

Since last summer, the ad-jingle-style centerpiece of the U.S. mission in Iraq, as defined by George Bush, has been: "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." In recent months, that "standing up" of Iraqi security forces to gradually replace American occupation troops has become even more important in administration pronouncements on the war. The objective is now accepted as self-evident wisdom in the mainstream media and among the punditocracy, the only question being whether it can be successfully accomplished. The Democratic Party leadership has not challenged this goal in any way, even as Democrats complain that it is simply not being done fast enough or effectively enough.

Given Iraq's well documented descent into sectarian violence in 2005, however, the question that should be asked is not whether the United States can put enough Iraqi troops into the field with enough training; it is whether, in arming and deploying Shiites and Kurds to fight Sunnis, it is actually stoking the fires of sectarian and ethnic civil war.

The administration has gone to great lengths to avoid such questions. When Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who was, until recently, responsible for training the new Iraqi military, was asked at a briefing last February what the religious-ethnic breakdown of Iraq's security forces might be, he claimed to have no such numbers. He was, however, being disingenuous. The U.S. command may not have had precise figures on the subject, but he certainly knew that the units being sent into largely Sunni cities and towns in the most rebellious parts of Iraq were overwhelmingly, provocatively, Shiite and Kurdish in their make-up.

Petraeus also deliberately misled the reporters at the briefing by stating that "regional forces, both local police and…the Iraqi National Guard …tend to reflect the ethnic makeup of their community." What he did not say is that this only applied to the Kurdish and Shiite sections of the country. In Sunni cities and towns, the real policing was not being done by local Sunni forces but by Shiite and Kurdish commandos from elsewhere.

Throughout 2005, Bush administration speeches and communications to Congress systematically obscured the fact that the U.S. command was carrying out a battle plan calling for reliance on units filled exclusively, or nearly exclusively, with Shiite and Kurds to occupy Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and elsewhere in the "Sunni triangle".

That policy guaranteed the acceleration of already growing tendencies in Iraqi society toward sectarian and ethnic violence -- and possibly toward civil war as well as forms of "ethnic cleansing." Many of the Shiite troops and officers in the military and police commando units of the new Iraqi military are, in fact, motivated by hatred not just of Sunni insurgents but of the Sunni population as a whole. One fine reporter in Iraq, Knight Ridder's Tom Lasseter has, in fact, explored this new Iraqi reality on the ground in ways no other American reporter has thought to do. Last October, he "embedded" himself for a week in a unit of Lt. Gen. Petraeus's new military, the all-Shiite 1st Brigade, the first Iraqi unit to be given its own area of operations and often considered the template for the future of the army. What he discovered was a purely sectarian outfit obsessed with revenge against Sunnis. His is a chilling account of the violent Shiite hatred of Sunnis that drives Iraqi military operations in Sunni neighborhoods and essentially guarantees that the insurgency will only grow fiercer in response.

Lasseter found that Shiite officers and troops want to inflict death on a far broader swath of Sunnis than simply those insurgents they can identify. Their motive is clearly to intimidate the Sunni population into silence and acquiescence, while at the same time satisfying their own lust for revenge for past acts of oppression by the formerly powerful Sunni minority. One sergeant told Lasseter that, in 2006, the Shiites would "do what Saddam did -- start with five people from each neighborhood and kill them in the streets and go from there."

In December, Lasseter traveled to Kurdish areas of Iraq where he reported:

"Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan… The interviews with Kurdish troops… suggested that as the American military transfers more bases and areas of control to Iraqi units, it may be handing the nation to militias that are bent more on advancing ethnic and religious interests than on defeating the insurgency and preserving national unity."

His eyewitness accounts make it clear that sending either Shiite or Kurdish units into Sunni neighborhoods is likely only to create a dynamic of retaliation and revenge that will quickly spread to the larger communities on both sides. This, then, is the open secret of the Bush administration's present policy toward what has already become a dirty war on a massive scale.

The Roots of a Future Civil War?

As is true of practically everything about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the strategy of pitting Shiites and Kurds against Sunnis was not the result of careful planning. Its origins were, in fact, in a purely military response to the most important turning point in the occupation of Iraq -- the complete collapse of Sunni security forces in which the U.S. command had placed such high hopes.

During an April 2004 offensive launched by the insurgents, most Sunni military units simply disappeared overnight. According to a June 2004 Government Accounting Office report, the number of Civil Defense Corps troops in Western Iraq, which included the Sunni strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi, was estimated to have fallen by over 80% -- from 5,600 to about 1,000 -- largely because of "collective desertion of units."

The US command's response to this debacle was a decision that summer to create a special "Fallujah Brigade." It consisted of 1,600 Sunni troops recruited to patrol that restive city, led by the former Baathist officer whom the Americans had picked to head Iraq's intelligence service. This force was meant to be the alternative to a bloody U.S. assault on Fallujah that the U.S. military preferred to avoid. But the brigade collaborated with the insurgents in Fallujah, turning over to them the 800 assault rifles, 27 pickup trucks, and 50 radios provided by the U.S. command. The Fallujah Brigade was quietly dissolved by the command in September 2004.

In November 2004, when the insurgents launched their next offensive in Mosul and Ramadi, there was yet another mass defection, this time in Mosul. The Sunni police force largely went over to the other side. Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of US troops in Northern Iraq told reporters that 3,200 of the 4,000 policemen in Mosul helped the insurgents to weapons, radios, police uniforms, and 50 police cars before leaving their posts. Ham admitted that there had been "premeditated infiltration" of police recruits by the insurgents. In Ramadi, the Americans were so distrustful of the Sunni police that they unilaterally disbanded the entire force when the insurgent offensive began.

In the third week of November, with Mosul in insurgent hands, the U.S. turned to its Kurdish allies for help. It brought in nearly 2,000 Kurdish peshmurga militiamen to control Mosul, and five battalions of predominantly Shiite troops, with a smattering of Kurds, to police Ramadi. Hundreds of Shiite troops from Baghdad and southern areas of the country were also sent into Samara and Fallujah.

This Shiite and Kurdish occupation of Sunni cities, which has only grown more pronounced, was certain to intensify sectarian-ethnic hatreds. In Mosul, there was already a long history of intense animosity between the Kurdish parties and Baath party loyalists who made up a large part of the Sunni population of the city. The Sunni Arab majority were afraid the Kurds planned to take over the city and add it to Kurdistan. There was also talk among Arab residents about taking revenge against Kurdish militiamen who had been blamed for widespread looting in the city immediately after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Once they had consolidated control over Mosul and the surrounding area, the Kurds imposed what essentially was a police state on the Sunni majority in Nineveh province. Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru of the Washington Post reported last August that Kurdish security forces had abducted hundreds of Sunni Arabs and Turkmen from the city, transferring them to secret prisons in Kurdistan. The Post quoted a June State Department memo noting that Kurdish abductions had "greatly exacerbated tensions along purely ethnic lines."

American officers in Mosul, however, were not concerned with ethnic strife but with winning a war, or at least staunching their losses, and the peshmerga seemed like the only effective Iraqi instrument in sight for doing so. "They're well-organized, fierce and get the job done," a U.S. company commander in Mosul rhapsodized about them.

Later, the Kurdish militiamen would be joined by the fierce Shiite "Wolf Brigade," whose founder reportedly considered the Sunni members of the Association of Muslim Clerics to be "infidels". That unit tortured innocent Sunnis to force them to confess to being part of insurgent organizations -- confessions which the local authorities recognized as having been coerced once the Brigade left the city. Nevertheless, in December 2005, NBC's Richard Engel reported that the Wolf Brigade was considered to have been effective in Mosul.

The US command still prefers Shiites and Kurds to police Sunni cities and towns. According to journalist Chris Allbritton, for instance, members of the city council in Fallujah requested the responsible U.S. commander to allow local people to replace Shiite units from the south that are still occupying the city and substituting for the police. The Americans refused, charging that local officials were still "turning a blind eye to insurgent activities." In November, local Sunni leaders in Ramadi demanded that U.S. troops be withdrawn from the city and be replaced with security forces raised by local tribal leaders. Instead, the U.S. command sent the Wolf Brigade into Ramadi in advance of the December elections.

Not only the Embassy but the U.S. military was quite conscious of the serious consequences of its sectarian-ethnic strategy. Last May, for instance, Washington Post reporter Ann Scott Tyson wrote that "U.S. military analysts" conceded that, "by pitting Iraqis from different religious sects, ethnic groups and tribes against each other," the U.S. strategy "aggravates the underlying fault lines in Iraqi society, heightening the prospects of civil strife."

With the Sunni community even more overwhelmingly behind the anti-occupation armed struggle than was the case a year ago, the U.S. command feels it has no choice but to depend on just such sectarian or ethnic units to help put down the Sunni insurgency. But even if they do not explicitly admit it, U.S. commanders know that this is a brutal and cynical policy. Thus, they have had to find a way to justify it to themselves. In October, a "senior military official in Baghdad" was quoted in another Tom Lasseter piece saying, "Maybe they just need to have their civil war. In this part of the world it's almost a way of life." That official was unconsciously echoing the words of General William Westmoreland, the former commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, who rationalized the hundreds of thousands of deaths inflicted on the Vietnamese by the U.S. intervention in an infamous statement: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner... Life is cheap in the Orient."

There is no doubt that the history of violence among the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds made for strong tendencies toward sectarian-ethnic violence in post-Saddam Iraq. But the fact that a senior American military official would resort to such a racist explanation to evade responsibility for creating civil-war conditions in Iraq only underlines the depths to which the United States has descended.

Gareth Porter, a historian and political analyst, now writes regularly on Iraq. He is the author of several books on the Vietnam War, most recently Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

14 prisoners in Israeli jails elected

YIGAL GRAYEFF
THE JERUSALEM POST
Jan. 26, 2006

When the new Palestinian Legislative Council meets for the first time, 11% of the members are likely to be absent from the proceedings.

Fourteen security prisoners in Israeli jails are believed to have been elected to the 132-seat parliament, while one inmate of a Palestinian prison was also successful, said Butheina Dukmak, director-general of the Mandela Institute for Human Rights, a prisoner advocacy group.

Of some 9,000 Palestinians serving time in Israeli jails, 31 stood for the PLC, according to figures on the Palestinian Central Elections Commission Web site, with the most important being Fatah's Marwan Barghouti and West Bank Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef.

Barghouti's placing at the head of his party's list all but guaranteed him a seat, although his public intervention in the election via television interviews earlier this week appears to have had little bearing on the results.

Before the vote, Dr. Nabil Kukali of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion thought Barghouti's popularity among Palestinians would help strengthen Fatah.

"I expected him to bring more support. In all the polls we did, people praised him and said he was honest," said Kukali. "But I think people didn't vote for people on the lists, but voted for Hamas or Fatah."

Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences for his involvement in terrorist attacks that killed five civilians, was largely unable to campaign due to the constraints imposed upon him by prison authorities.

Another prisoner whose influence appears to have been weaker than expected was Abu Ali Yatta, who has been in jail for more than 25 years. His number two placing on Fatah's list also ensured him a seat, with Kukali believing that his popularity in Hebron would strengthen Fatah's support there. However, Hamas took all nine district seats in the city and in total, 12 out of 13 Hamas candidates were elected to the PLC, with Yousef being chosen to represent the Ramallah district.

STATEMENT ON PALESTINIAN ELECTIONS BY MIDDLE EAST QUARTET

Secretary-General
United Nations
SG/2103 PAL/2041
26/01/2006

The following statement was issued today by the Middle East Quartet (United Nations, European Union, Russian Federation, United States):

The Quartet consulted today on the Palestinian Legislative Council elections. It congratulates President Abbas and the Palestinian people on an electoral process that was free, fair and secure. The Quartet calls on all parties to respect the results of the election and the outcome of the Palestinian constitutional process so that it may unfold in an atmosphere of calm and security.

The Palestinian people have voted for change, but it is the view of the Quartet that their aspirations for peace and statehood, as articulated by President Abbas in his statement following the closing of polls yesterday, remain unchanged. The Quartet reiterates its view that there is a fundamental contradiction between armed group and militia activities and the building of a democratic State. A two-State solution to the conflict requires all participants in the democratic process to renounce violence and terror, accept Israel's right to exist, and disarm, as outlined in the Road Map.

Egypt on the move

By Ahmed Nazif
The Washington Times
January 27, 2006

Egypt recently held its first direct multi-candidate presidential election, competitive parliamentary elections, and saw the formation of a new government with many new young faces from its private sector. These were important political reform measures taken on the foundation of the independent judiciary, a free press, a multiparty political system and a vibrant civil society.
Demographics were the driving force that elevated the political reform process to new thresholds. Fifty-six percent of Egypt's population is 25 years or younger. However, the enabling factor was that Egypt had moved from a centrally managed economy to one in which the private sector generated more that 70 percent of the GDP, thus expanding the number of active stakeholders in its future.
President Hosni Mubarak was reelected with a mandate to undertake changes that empower parliament with greater oversight authority; achieve a greater balance of power between the executive and legislative bodies; further enhance the independence of the judiciary; provide for a better representation of women in parliament; strengthen civil liberties, including ending the state of emergency and the revision of the system of administrative detention.
In order to encourage even greater numbers of active stakeholders, Egypt's future efforts will focus on relinquishing greater authority to local government, liberalizing the media sector, enacting a new freedom of information act to enable citizens groups to more effectively hold government accountable over policies and decisions.
Over a period of four weeks last year, Egyptians went to the polls in a parliamentary election to vote in 444 new members of Parliament from more than 6,000 candidates of different affiliations. The elections brought in a new generation of politicians, with close to 70 percent of them being new faces, including a record number of independent members.
The election process was a success, although by no means free of a few small irregularities, with complaints registered in only 20 to 25 out of the 25,000 voting stations. These complaints have been acknowledged by both the president and the government, and Egypt's new parliament will be responsible for translating into concrete action the political initiatives envisaged in Mr. Mubarak's election platform, including a new election law to enhance representation of political parties and further reform our electoral system. It will also deal with economic and social initiatives, including upgraded education and health services.
Unfortunately, there are those in the United States who raise doubts and make allegations of politically motivated conspiracies because of the conviction of Ayman Nour, head of one of Egypt's opposition parties, on charges of forgery. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very fact that he was allowed to run and campaign freely, both in the presidential and parliamentary elections, refutes the claim of a politically motivated conspiracy.
For more than seven months, Mr. Nour has been provided due legal process with a fair, public trial, including proper legal counsel and the right to appeal his sentence. Those in the United States who are now calling for the Egyptian government to intervene in order to secure Mr. Nour's release, irrespective of the court's verdict against him, must realize that this contradicts the very basis of the rule of law and judicial independence that we seek to uphold as part of our reform process.
Egypt's reform agenda is ambitious and challenging. Nevertheless it will be pursued with conviction and determination because it defines our future.
Egypt was the first to build the foundations of a modern state in the Middle East and the pioneer of comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace. Today, Egypt stands at the threshold of a monumental transformation with profound implications for her own future and indeed for that of the Middle East and beyond. I am confident that Egypt possesses the determination and leadership to carry the region into a new era of modernity as part of a global community.
Understandably, friends like the United States, or the European Union, are interested in Egypt's transformation. However, Egyptians and Middle Easterners alone must live their experiences, and continuously reset their own course as they build a better future for themselves, for their region, and thus for the world at large.
The United States and Egypt are both actively engaged in numerous global and regional issues which define the totality of their strong relationship. Our strategic partnership runs deep and has proven its worth. Together, we secured the liberation of Kuwait during the first Gulf war; launched the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo process; facilitated Israel's withdrawal from Gaza; and forged an American-Egyptian security relationship that has been vital in the war against terrorism.
It is short-sighted and self-defeating not to see the big picture which has served our two countries so well. Together, we will partner for peace, security and modernity in the Middle East and in our international community.

Ahmed Nazif is the prime minister of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Israel's Likely Course: Unilateral Action, Separation and No Talks With Hamas

By GREG MYRE
News Analysis
The New York Times
January 27, 2006

JERUSALEM, Jan. 26 — The Hamas landslide in Palestinian elections has stunned Israelis, but it may also have brought them a rare moment of clarity: with peace talks off the table, Israel will most likely pursue unilateral actions, drawing its own borders and separating itself from the Palestinians.

Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister, made it clear after an emergency cabinet meeting that talks with Hamas, a Palestinian party sworn to Israel's destruction, were out of the question, while experts said Israel was now freer to establish its future on its own.

They said Israel — whose own elections in two months could be heavily influenced by the Palestinian results — was likely to focus on speeding up construction of the separation barrier, which runs along and through parts of the West Bank. After more than three years of building, it remains less than half finished, but Israeli officials say it has contributed enormously to the reduction of suicide bombings and other attacks. Palestinians, on the other hand, say the barrier takes land they want for a future state.

"The differences between the sides are now much deeper, and the chances for negotiations are much more remote," said Shlomo Avineri, a liberal political scientist at Hebrew University. "The only realistic steps may be Israeli unilateral steps."

Unilateralism was the approach taken by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister for the last five years, who now lies in a coma. He withdrew Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza last summer without negotiating the move with the Palestinians, and left open the possibility of more such moves in the West Bank.

Since on-and-off peace talks began more than a decade ago, Israelis have been deeply divided over what sorts of concessions to make, how much territory to keep and whether the talks would lead to an end to the decades-old conflict. On Thursday, it seemed there were few such doubts.

From Israeli hawks who oppose concessions to doves who constantly pressed for renewed peace talks, Israelis said there could be no negotiations with Hamas.

Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service and now a parliamentary candidate for the left-leaning Labor Party, said the absence of a negotiating partner should not halt Israeli actions aimed at separating from the Palestinians.

Israel, he said, should seek "to create a situation where Israel disengages from the Palestinians and preserves the character of Israel as a Jewish democracy." Israel should continue, he said, "to move fast and independently to our goal."

Mr. Olmert hopes to become prime minister in elections on March 28 as head of the centrist Kadima Party started by Mr. Sharon.

But Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, made clear that the Palestinian results offered an opportunity for his more hawkish message to be heard. He said the Hamas victory was a result of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and proved that no more withdrawals should occur.

Yuval Steinitz, a member of Parliament from Likud, said Israel should have prevented or canceled the Palestinian elections. He cited the 1993 Oslo accords, an interim peace agreement that bars the participation of armed groups and those that do not recognize Israel.

Mr. Steinitz noted that Palestinian terror attacks against Israel had gone down in recent years, but that Hamas's popularity had gone up. "This is a major loss in our war against terror despite all our tactical successes," he said.

Since the Oslo accords, the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships have maintained a dialogue at some level.

But Israel and Hamas have never had contact with each other, aside from exchanging bullets and bombs. Their relationship is similar to the one that existed in the 1980's and earlier between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, with their refusal to recognize each other.

Hamas's electoral triumph comes at a time when Israel is going through its own political upheavals, and the government is unlikely to make any major moves until after the Israeli election.

"Election time means time out," Mr. Avineri said. "There is a strong argument for refraining from doing dramatic things right now."

The campaign may also mean that Mr. Olmert and his party will have to take a tougher tone to ensure that they are not outflanked on the security issue by Likud.

Israelis are beginning to debate whether the reality of being in power will tame or moderate Hamas. Mr. Avineri suggested a Hamas-led government might not be as threatening as some Israelis feared. He cited the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, which battled Israeli troops for years in southern Lebanon and now takes part in Lebanese politics.

"Hamas may behave like Hezbollah," Mr. Avineri said. "The rhetoric will be harsh, and they will still be armed, but they will be part of the political system, and their actions may be more restrained."

Others, like Mr. Steinitz, argue that Hamas wants Jews pushed into the sea, and did not enter politics to change its goals but to advance them.

Still, the Hamas victory injects uncertainty into the Israeli election. In previous Israeli campaigns, Hamas and other Palestinian factions have staged deadly attacks that pushed the Israeli electorate to the right.

In 1996, the Labor Party, led by the dovish Shimon Peres, seemed headed for victory after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by an ultranationalist Israeli. But after a series of Palestinian suicide bombings during the Israeli campaign, Mr. Netanyahu, of Likud, won a narrow victory.

The Palestinians started an uprising in September 2000, and in a February 2001 election for prime minister, Mr. Sharon trounced Ehud Barak, the Labor Party leader, who had tried but failed to reach a comprehensive accord with the Palestinians.

In the Mideast, a Giant Step Back

Editorial
The New York Times
January 27, 2006

For 20 years Ariel Sharon and other Israeli hard-liners have claimed that they had no negotiating partner interested in or capable of securing peace between Israelis and Palestinians. That always seemed a debatable point, until now.

There are many reasons to explain why Palestinians voted to hand over their government to Hamas, an organization that revels in terrorism and is sworn to destroy Israel. The inability of President Mahmoud Abbas's party, Fatah, to run its affairs is first on the list, if pre-election polls of Palestinians were accurate. Fatah has been corrupt and inept, and it represented the status quo, not a happy position given the lawlessness in Gaza, the unemployment rate in Nablus and the despair among young people in Jericho. Mr. Abbas didn't help matters much, proving weak and incapable of imposing control over the battered Palestinian Authority.

Israeli hard-liners can blame themselves as well. Even though most reasonable people have recognized Mr. Abbas as a far more pragmatic negotiating partner than Yasir Arafat was, Prime Minister Sharon failed to give Mr. Abbas any concession that he could point to as an achievement. Instead, Israel has busied itself with carrying out Mr. Sharon's doctrine of unilateral separation from the Palestinians, a doctrine that is sure to gain more favor now that the Palestinians have chosen Hamas.

But all of this is peripheral to two central facts. Hamas grew out of a terrorist organization that has undermined every small step toward peace with mass murder. And on Wednesday, Palestinians voted almost two to one to put Hamas in charge of running their government. For there to be any hope of getting out of the impasse in the Middle East, one of those two things must change.

It would be nice to believe that Hamas, now that it is assuming the reins of power and the burden of actually having to govern, will renounce its call for the destruction of a sovereign state, disarm its private army, get into the business of making life better for Palestinians and try to negotiate the creation of a real Palestinian state. While we're not hopeful, we are reminded that the Palestine Liberation Organization of the late Mr. Arafat, of which Mr. Abbas was once second in command, was born in terrorism. For many years Mr. Arafat and his gunmen were hunted by Israel, much as Hamas has been in recent years.

President Bush was absolutely right when he urged Mr. Abbas to remain in office as a sign of stability and set Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice the task of seeing whether the shards of the peace process could be reassembled. But he was also absolutely right when he said, "A political party that articulates the destruction of Israel as part of its platform is a party with which we will not deal."

Hamas has a choice between governing and terror. Is the party more interested in making sure that the electricity and water stay on, that Palestinian boys and girls make it to school, and that these battered people finally get a state of their own? Or is it more interested in continuing its campaign to destroy Israel? If Hamas chooses the latter, it's more than likely that it will not be around for long, and rightly so.

57% Back A Hit On Iran If Defiance Persists

The war has not diminished Americans' support for military action against Iraq's neighbor if nuclear pursuits aren't dropped.
By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times
January 27, 2006

WASHINGTON — Despite persistent disillusionment with the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans supports taking military action against Iran if that country continues to produce material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

The poll, conducted Sunday through Wednesday, found that 57% of Americans favor military intervention if Iran's Islamic government pursues a program that could enable it to build nuclear arms.

Support for military action against Tehran has increased over the last year, the poll found, even though public sentiment is running against the war in neighboring Iraq: 53% said they believe the situation there was not worth going to war.

The poll results suggest that the difficulties the United States has encountered in Iraq have not turned the public against the possibility of military actions elsewhere in the Middle East.

Support for a potential military confrontation with Iran was strongest among Republican respondents, among whom 76% endorsed the idea. But even among Democrats, who overwhelmingly oppose the war in Iraq, 49% supported such action.

In follow-up interviews, some respondents said they believed Iran posed a more serious threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq did.

"I really don't think Saddam had anything to do with terrorism, but Iran, I believe, does," said Edward Wtulich, of Goshen, N.Y. He was among the 1,555 adults who participated in this week's survey, which has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. "Iran has been a problem, I think, for years," Wtulich said, "and we've known about it."

Wtulich, a registered Democrat and retired manager for the New York City Housing Authority, said he supported taking a hard line with Iran despite the strain of the Iraq war on the U.S. military.

"It makes me scared," he said, "but we may not have a choice."

Experts said the public's views on Iran appeared to have hardened in part because of the more aggressive anti-Western posture of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Elected last year, he has riled the international community with remarks denying the Holocaust and with declarations that Iran will defy European and U.S. pressure and continue to pursue efforts to enrich uranium.

His comments have fostered an impression of him as "very reckless, a real rogue, as opposed to simply a populist," said political science professor John Mueller of Ohio State University, who is an authority on wartime public opinion.

Mueller said that Americans' rising support for confronting Iran was "impressive," especially considering their misgivings about the war in Iraq, and that their support suggested "concerns about the new president." But he added that poll respondents are often more inclined to voice support for military intervention when the question is framed broadly and the potential for casualties is unclear.

"You always get higher support for things like 'military action,' because that could just mean bombing, as opposed to sending troops or going to war," Mueller said.

Poll respondents expressed a strong preference for the United States working with allies to fight international law violations or global aggression.

Iran has insisted its nuclear program is solely for energy production. But the United States and other Western governments suspect Iran's program is aimed at developing weapons.

European nations that have negotiated with Iran over its program want the matter referred to the United Nations Security Council. Iran has indicated it might be open to a compromise in which Russia would provide enriched uranium to Iran, for use exclusively in energy reactors.

The American public's position on Iran appears to have hardened over the last year, a period marked by an increasing international focus on Iran's nuclear program. When a similar question was asked in a Times poll last January, 50% favored military action against Iran.

Regarding Iraq, the latest poll shows that although most Americans remain disenchanted with the war, opinions have stabilized, at least for now. The percentage saying they believe the situation in Iraq was not worth going to war over dipped slightly, to 53%, compared with 56% in a survey a year earlier.

When asked who was winning the war in Iraq, 33% said the United States, 7% said the insurgents, and 55% said neither side was winning.

Americans remain divided over how long U.S. forces should stay in Iraq: 40% believe the United States should remain in Iraq for "as long as it takes," 36% want U.S. troops withdrawn within a year, and 14% support immediate withdrawal.

Respondents were also divided, largely along party lines, over whether the Iraq war is really part of Washington's war on terrorism; 51% say it is, 46% say it is not. President Bush has repeatedly cast Iraq as the central front in the war on terrorism. But many of his administration's prewar claims about Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda have turned out to have been overstated or based on unreliable intelligence sources.

The poll also found that 32% of Americans believed that terrorism around the world had increased because of the Iraq situation, 17% believed it had decreased, and 47% believed the problem was about the same.

A Strategy For Disarming Iran

Invest now for expensive 'coup de main'
By Robert H. Scales
Washington Times
January 27, 2006

Talking heads are having a field day discussing creative alternatives for extending our global war on terror from Iraq to Iran. Those who know something about war realize that Iran is not Iraq. Two successful invasions of Iraq reinforce the truism that Iraq can be overrun fairly easily. Iran cannot. In fact, the strategic circumstances are so dramatically different that even a metaphorical comparison between the two is vacuous, to say the least.

Iraq is a fractured, artificial state created by Europeans who did not understand the difficulties inherent in building a state from three cultural entities that hate each other. Iran has been a homogenous cultural whole for almost three millennia. Iranians are Persians, not Arabs, enormously proud of their long and rich history and culture. There are a lot of Iranians, three times the population of Iraq with a disproportionate number of military-age men. For thousands of years, Iranians have shown the will to fight off invasions ferociously. They will do so again.

The Iranian armed forces are relatively small, about the same size as Saddam Hussein's during the Gulf war. A decade of horribly destructive war against Iraq accompanied by decades of embargo by the United States has left them with few modern battle-worthy weapons. Their air force is particularly weak. They would lose to ours in less than a day of serious aerial combat.

But American airpower can't win this one. The Iranian army is immune to shock and awe. While it doesn't look like much on paper, the Iranian army will make up for poor equipment with adaptability, energy, mass, knowledge of terrain, support of the population and the willingness to die. In war, geography counts. Iran has avoided hundreds of years of colonial regime change because of its formidable natural defenses. The country is enormous, perhaps three times larger than Iraq. Vast deserts shield the interior. A thousand-mile chain of the Alp-like Zagros Mountains effectively blocks any easy landward advance from Arab counties toward Tehran.

Surely if the finger of an Islamic fascist is placed on the nuclear button some military action must be taken. But any thought of conquering Iran in a conventional war is simply ridiculous.

A ground invasion into oil-rich Shat al Arab region of southern Iran would be painfully pyrrhic. An American presence on Iranian soil would induce a massive national uprising by hordes of irregulars that would dwarf today's war against Iraqi insurgents. Saddam knows this well. He spent 10 years and hundreds of thousands of lives to gain only a few square miles of Iranian swampland during his war against Iran during the 1980s.

Any campaign would have to be limited in scope with an objective no more ambitious than the elimination of Iranian nuclear weapons without any hope of regime change. The Iranians have dispersed and buried their nuclear facilities deep underground and are thus immune from an American bombing campaign. Another popular idea is the "Desert One on Steroids" approach that proposes using large numbers of special operating forces to conduct clandestine raids against hidden and dispersed nuclear facilities. Without a significant presence on the ground in Iran, such a strategy would only create a serious prisoner of war problem for the United States.

That leaves only the airborne "coup de main" option, doable with help from a robust international coalition and only remotely possible if we have reliable intelligence about the location of Iranian nuclear warheads, missiles and launchers. A takedown of Iranian nuclear capabilities would begin with special operations, light infantry and air transported light armored units arriving by an aerial bridge to establish forward operating bases, essentially secure but temporary enclaves, deep inside Iran near known nuclear facilities.

A sustained presence on the ground would buy time for ground units to fight their way into nuclear sites, positively identify exact locations of all nuclear capabilities and destroy them by direct attack or indirectly using precision munitions delivered by air. The key commodity would be time, sufficient to allow a careful search and complete eradication of Iran's nuclear arsenal. Once the mission is complete the force would withdraw by air back to secure bases outside Iran.

The bad news is that we cannot do this now. We lack sufficient transport aircraft and light ground maneuver vehicles to establish and maintain these enclaves inside Iranian territory. But we could build such a force perhaps before the Iranians detonate their first bomb. Such a capability would be expensive and would involve an extraordinary investment in land forces rather than air forces.

But if we are serious about preventing the Iranians from getting and using the bomb, we should begin building it now before we have no other option than a catastrophic nuclear exchange with a diabolical enemy.

Retired Maj. Gen Robert H. Scales is a former commander of the Army War College.

Iran's Nukes Are A Non-Issue

By William Pfaff
International Herald Tribune
January 27, 2006

PARIS--Why is all this pressure being mounted against Iran when both Washington and Jerusalem unofficially concede that there is nothing to be done to prevent Iran's government from continuing along its present course of nuclear development?

The contradictions in Western official and unofficial discourse about Iran and its nuclear ambitions are so blatant that one might suspect disinformation, but it probably is simply the cacophony of single-minded bureaucracies working at cross purposes, and the effect of the multiple lobbies involved and of U.S. domestic political exploitation, and the paradox of the American policy itself, whose nonproliferation efforts actually provoke nuclear proliferation.

The Washington official line seems meant to build pressure at the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran, even while conceding that nothing practical is expected to result, and that nothing can be done about Iran's resumption of nuclear processing. Iran at present is doing no more than it has a right to do in international law.

The crossfire of public pronouncements draws attention to the inherent criticism of the Western position: The United States and the other Security Council members can have nuclear weapons, and Israel, Pakistan and India (non-Security Council members), can have them too, but Iran shouldn't proceed with its (currently) nonmilitary program. The United States is even in discussion with India to supply nuclear materials (for strictly peaceful purposes, of course).

All of this piles up in righteous Iranian eyes as evidence that Iran needs to go beyond its present program and actually build nuclear weapons. National prestige and pride are involved, obviously - and nationalism is probably the most powerful of all political forces.

Military strategy is also involved. So far as anyone in the non-Western world can see, Iraq's mistake in 2003 was not to have a nuclear bomb or two in working order. That would have kept the United States at bay, just as uncertainty about North Korea's nuclear arms inhibits U.S. policy in the Far East.

Iran already possesses non-nuclear deterrents to American attack, which Iraq did not, and they are probably strong enough to keep both the United States and Israel away from Iranian nuclear sites.

Iran can close down a major part of Middle Eastern oil shipments by closing the Strait of Hormuz. It has combined Revolutionary Guard and ground forces three times the total of American forces now active in Iraq, where Tehran also has influence on the Shiite clerical leadership, which holds the key to Iraq's future.

Nuclear weapons proliferation in the non-Western world is an old American preoccupation, but it is directly linked to third-world perceptions of the threat of American military intervention. The main, if not the only, advantage that nuclear weapons provide a country such as Iran is the deterrence of intervention by the United States or Israel. The urge to possess these weapons is directly reciprocal to American nonproliferation pressures, and the threat of attack.

(The India-Pakistan case is an exception to these generalizations, since there the perceived threats are strictly bilateral, and the two countries have simply replicated for themselves , at great cost, the balance of terror that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.)

Possession of the bomb would also bring comfort and prestige to Iran in dealing with its nuclear-armed neighbors, which include Pakistan and Russia, as well as Israel.

In theory, a threat of aggressive use of nuclear weapons exists, but in the Middle East it is accompanied by certainty of overwhelming Israeli (or even American) retaliation. Warning by American politicians that "rogue states" might attack Israel, the United States, British bases on Cyprus, or Western Europe, are manipulation or propaganda. Individual Muslims may welcome martyrdom, but nations, even Muslim nations, do not.

Israel, with its conventional arms and weapons of mass destruction, is amply capable of assuring its own military deterrence and defense, whatever Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, thinks or says. But Israel cannot expect long-term security without resolving its conflict with the Palestinians. As Israeli leaders know, solving the problem is chiefly up to Israel. Forty years of American involvement have mainly enabled the Israelis to avoid doing so.

The danger of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons exists, if barely. This would be possible only with a nuclear state's complicity. The political plausibility of any government giving terrorists control of such weapons is next to nil, considering the risks involved for the benefactor state. The technical and logistical complexity of such an operation would also be great.

There are serious problems in international affairs and there are baroque ones. This one is baroque.

UK's murky role in Cyprus crisis

By Jolyon Jenkins
Producer, BBC Radio 4's Document
Published: 2006/01/23

Evidence has emerged that British undercover forces were involved in fomenting the conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots ten years before the 1974 partition of Cyprus.

The new evidence found by BBC Radio 4's programme Document centres on the mystery of Ted Macey, a British army major who was abducted, presumed killed by Greek Cypriot paramilitaries.

I had no strong expectation that we would find the Turkish Cypriot village. We had a 40-year-old British army map, bearing only the old Greek names. Our guide, Martin Packard, had not been here for decades. The countryside was deserted, no one spoke English, and night had fallen.

In 1964, Martin was a naval intelligence officer, sent to Cyprus to do an extraordinary job. Fighting had broken out in the capital, Nicosia, between Greeks and Turks.

Unrest spread, and the British troops in Cyprus stepped in to keep the peace. But the British General, Peter Young, thought that peace meant more than keeping the two sides apart. He believed the communities could live side by side, sometimes in mixed villages, as they had for centuries.

But that meant small disputes had to be prevented from turning into big ones. Gen Young appointed Martin, a fluent Greek speaker, as a roving trouble-shooter and negotiator. With two officers from the mainland Greek and Turkish armies, he roamed the north of Cyprus by helicopter, settling disputes.

Diplomacy

We eventually found the village, and even an interpreter. Here, in Easter 1964, Martin had resolved a conflict over a flock of sheep, stolen from the Turkish villages by their Greek Cypriots neighbours. Martin tracked down the flock in a Greek village.

But none of the Turkish Cypriots were prepared to come with him to get them. So he went himself. He took the youngest lamb and flung it across his shoulder. The mother followed, and so did the rest of the flock.

"I walked a very long way, I was very tired, leading this flock of sheep," he said. "We arrived at the village and all of the villagers rushed out as if I were Moses coming back with some great message."

The old men of the village remembered the incident, but were not conspicuously grateful. It was a good thing Martin had got their sheep back, they said, grudgingly, because otherwise they were planning to steal a Greek flock in retaliation.

Martin believes such small episodes were the key to preventing the island drifting towards ethnic separation. But, he says, this was not what the Americans and British had in mind.

He recalls being asked to take a visiting US politician, acting secretary of state George Ball, around the island. Arriving back in Nicosia, says Martin, "Ball patted me on the back, as though I were sadly deluded and he said: That was a fantastic show son, but you've got it all wrong, hasn't anyone told you that our plan here is for partition?"

Undaunted, Martin pursued plans to move Turkish Cypriots back to the villages they had fled. But just as the first resettlement was about to take place, British General Michael Carver had him arrested and flown off the island - in an unmarked CIA plane.

The ostensible reason was that Cyprus had become too dangerous for Martin to operate in; the evidence given was that a British liaison officer, Major Ted Macey, had been abducted and presumed murdered just a few days before.

All the evidence points to the murder having been carried out by Greek Cypriot extremists.

In the Public Record Office in London, I found files showing that British military commanders in Cyprus had received "very reliable information" that Major Macey's abduction was planned "by Greek security forces with approval of high government circles and connivance of the police to extract information about Turkish invasion plans".

The Greek Cypriots were convinced that Major Macey was aiding the Turks.

Listening bases

Could it be true? I spoke to a former Para who accompanied Major Macey on expeditions to Turkish Cypriot villages. There, says the Para, he demonstrated the use of British ammunition and sub-machine guns to the Turkish Cypriot irregular forces.

I also tracked down one of Major Macey's former drivers, who showed me a curious note, in the major's handwriting. It is a list of arms and explosives being stored in civilian premises in Nicosia: arms, says the driver, which Major Macey had supplied, under British orders, to the Turkish fighters.

So did the peacekeeping forces, and the big powers, really want Cyprus to remain an independent, unitary state? Or was it more important to head off the threat of a "Mediterranean Cuba" by keeping the island within Turkey's - and hence Nato's - sphere of influence?

Britain had, and has, electronic listening bases on the island - important parts of the Nato intelligence effort.

Nicos Koshis, a former justice minister, thinks that it was those bases that determined the fate of the island: "It is my feeling they wanted to have fighting between the two sides. They didn't want us to get together. If the communities come together maybe in the future we say no bases in Cyprus."

You can hear Radio 4's investigation into Britain's role in the 1964 Cyprus conflict in Document on Monday 23 February at 2000GMT or afterwards at the Listen again page.

Churchill on the creation of a Jewish state

The Private Thoughts of a Public Man
By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA
The New York Times
January 22, 2006

WHEN Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, the citation hailed him for "his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values."

Churchill said and wrote so much during his life that his collected works, including books, speeches and letters, fill some 72 volumes. And now there is a new trove. Last month, the British National Archives released a series of notebooks that included minutes of his wartime cabinet meetings, as recorded by Sir Norman Brook, the deputy cabinet secretary. Candid in public, Sir Winston was even more pointed in private. Some of his musings on specific subjects follow.

Churchill on July 2, 1943, about the creation of a Jewish state:
I'm committed to creation of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Let us go on with that; and at end of war we shall have plenty of force with which to compel the Arabs to acquiesce in our designs. Don't shirk our duties because of difficulties. ...

Ten days later, he mused about how to ensure Anglo-American supremacy:
Propagate our language all over world is best method. ... Harmonizes with my ideas for future of the world. This will be the English-speaking century. Can be learned in 2-4 weeks.

The World’s 20 Worst Dictators

Let’s not lose sight of those heads of state who terrorize and abuse the rights of their own people.
By David Wallechinsky
PARADE Magazine
January 22, 2006

A “dictator” is a head of state who exercises arbitrary authority over the lives of his citizens and who cannot be removed from power through legal means. The worst commit terrible human-rights abuses. This present list draws in part on reports by global human-rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International. While the three worst from 2005 have retained their places, two on last year’s list (Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan) have slipped out of the Top 10—not because their conduct has improved but because other dictators have gotten worse.

1) Omar al-Bashir, Sudan.
Age 62. In power since 1989. Last year’s rank: 1
Since February 2003, Bashir’s campaign of ethnic and religious persecution has killed at least 180,000 civilians in Darfur in western Sudan and driven 2 million people from their homes. The good news is that Bashir’s army and the Janjaweed militia that he supports have all but stopped burning down villages in Darfur. The bad news is why they’ve stopped: There are few villages left to burn. The attacks now are aimed at refugee camps. While the media have called these actions “a humanitarian tragedy,” Bashir himself has escaped major condemnation. In 2005, Bashir signed a peace agreement with the largest rebel group in non-Islamic southern Sudan and allowed its leader, John Garang, to become the nation’s vice president. But Garang died in July in a helicopter crash, and Bashir’s troops still occupy the south.

2) Kim Jong-il, North Korea.
Age 63. In power since 1994. Last year’s rank: 2
While the outside world focuses on Kim Jong-il’s nuclear weapons program, domestically he runs the world’s most tightly controlled society. North Korea continues to rank last in the index of press freedom compiled by Reporters Without Borders, and for the 34th straight year it earned the worst possible score on political rights and civil liberties from Freedom House. An estimated 250,000 people are confined in “reeducation camps.” Malnourishment is widespread: According to the United Nations World Food Program, the average 7-year-old boy in North Korea is almost 8 inches shorter than a South Korean boy the same age and more than 20 pounds lighter.

3) Than Shwe, Burma (Myanmar).
Age 72. In power since 1992. Last year’s rank: 3
In November 2005, without warning, Than Shwe moved his entire government from Rangoon (Yangon), the capital for the last 120 years, to Pyinmana, a remote area 245 miles away. Civil servants were given two days’ notice and are forbidden from resigning. Burma leads the world in the use of children as soldiers, and the regime is notorious for using forced labor on construction projects and as porters for the army in war zones. The long-standing house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and Than Shwe’s most feared opponent, recently was extended for six months. Just to drive near her heavily guarded home is to risk arrest.

4) Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe.
Age 81. In power since 1980. Last year’s rank: 9
Life in Zimbabwe has gone from bad to worse: It has the world’s highest inflation rate, 80% unemployment and an HIV/AIDS rate of more than 20%. Life expectancy has declined since 1988 from 62 to 38 years. Farming has collapsed since 2000, when Mugabe began seizing white-owned farms, giving most of them to political allies with no background in agriculture. In 2005, Mugabe launched Operation Murambatsvina (Clean the Filth), the forcible eviction of some 700,000 people from their homes or businesses—“to restore order and sanity,” says the government. But locals say the reason was to forestall demonstrations as the economy deteriorates.

5) Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan.
Age 67. In power since 1990. Last year’s rank: 15
Until 2005, the worst excesses of Karimov’s regime had taken place in the torture rooms of his prisons. But on May 13, he ordered a mass killing that could not be concealed. In the city of Andijan, 23 businessmen, held in prison and awaiting a verdict, were freed by their supporters, who then held an open meeting in the town square. An estimated 10,000 people gathered, expecting government officials to come and listen to their grievances. Instead, Karimov sent the army, which massacred hundreds of men, women and children. A 2003 law made Karimov and all members of his family immune from prosecution forever.

6) Hu Jintao, China.
Age 63. In power since 2002. Last year’s rank: 4
Although some Chinese have taken advantage of economic liberalization to become rich, up to 150 million Chinese live on $1 a day or less in this nation with no minimum wage. Between 250,000 and 300,000 political dissidents are held in “reeducation-through-labor” camps without trial. Less than 5% of criminal trials include witnesses, and the conviction rate is 99.7%. There are no privately owned TV or radio stations. The government opens and censors mail and monitors phone calls, faxes, e-mails and text messages. In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, at least 400,000 residents of Beijing have been forcibly evicted from their homes.

7) King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia.
Age 82. In power since 1995. Last year’s rank: 5
Although Abdullah did not become king until 2005, he has ruled Saudi Arabia since his half-brother, Fahd, suffered a stroke 10 years earlier. In Saudi Arabia, phone calls are recorded and mobile phones with cameras are banned. It is illegal for public employees “to engage in dialogue with local and foreign media.” By law, all Saudi citizens must be Muslims. According to Amnesty International, police in Saudi Arabia routinely use torture to extract “confessions.” Saudi women may not appear in public with a man who isn’t a relative, must cover their bodies and faces in public and may not drive. The strict suppression of women is not voluntary, and Saudi women who would like to live a freer life are not allowed to do so.

8) Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan.
Age 65. In power since 1990. Last year’s rank: 8
Niyazov has created the world’s most pervasive personality cult, and criticism of any of his policies is considered treason. The latest examples of his government-by-whim include bans on car radios, lip-synching and playing recorded music on TV or at weddings. Niyazov also has closed all national parks and shut down rural libraries. He launched an attack on his nation’s health-care system, firing 15,000 health-care workers and replacing most of them with untrained military conscripts. He announced the closing of all hospitals outside the capital and ordered Turkmenistan’s physicians to give up the Hippocratic Oath and to swear allegiance to him instead.

9) Seyed Ali Khamane’i, Iran.
Age 66. In power since 1989. Last year’s rank: 18
Over the past four years, the rulers of Iran have undone the reforms that were emerging in the nation. The hardliners completed this reversal by winning the parliamentary elections in 2004 —after disqualifying 44% of the candidates—and with the presidential election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2005. Ultimately, however, the country is run by the 12-man Guardian Council, overseen by the Ayatollah Khamane’i, which has the right to veto any law that the elected government passes. Khamane’i has shut down the free press, tortured journalists and ordered the execution of homosexual males.

10) Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Equatorial Guinea.
Age 63. In power since 1979. Last year’s rank: 10
Obiang took power in this tiny West African nation by overthrowing his uncle more than 25 years ago. According to a United Nations inspector, torture “is the normal means of investigation” in Equatorial Guinea. There is no freedom of speech, and there are no bookstores or newsstands. The one private radio station is owned by Obiang’s son. Since major oil reserves were discovered in Equatorial Guinea in 1995, Obiang has deposited more than $700 million into special accounts in U.S. banks. Meanwhile, most of his people live on less than $1 a day.

11. Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya
Age 63. In power since 1969. Last year’s rank: 6
Qaddafi has made his peace with the outside world by renouncing his quest for weapons of mass destruction and opening his oil fields to foreign companies. But domestically he continues to operate a brutal regime. According to the U.S. Department of State, at least 10% of the population is engaged in surveillance of the other 90%. Libyan law provides for collective punishment in which the relatives, friends and even neighbors of someone found guilty of a crime can also be punished. Criticizing Qaddafi is considered a crime punishable by death.

12. King Mswati III, Swaziland
Age 37. In power since 1986. Last year’s rank: 11
Africa’s last remaining absolute monarch, Mswati III took power at the age of 18. Since then he has allowed his country to slide into extreme poverty, with 69% of the Swazi people living on less than $1 a day. Swaziland has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world: almost 40%. The country has operated without a constitution for 30 years. Mswati has agreed to implement a new one in 2006, however, it bans political parties, gives Mswati the right to reject any laws passed by the legislature and grants him immunity against all possible crimes.

13. Isayas Afewerki, Eritrea
Age 59. In power since 1993. Last year’s rank: 17
A popular leader of Eritrea’s 30-year war of liberation against Ethiopia, Afewerki became its first president in 1993. Since then he has cancelled all national elections. He also suspended the constitution, shut down all privately owned media and restricted the use of cell phones because, he says, they are a threat to national security. He recently expelled all American and European members of the United Nations peacekeeping force that is trying to stop the outbreak of a border war with neighboring Ethiopia.

14. Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus
Age 51. In power since 1994. Last year’s rank: 12
Europe’s last dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko was elected Belarus’ first president after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Since then he has rewritten the constitution to allow him to appoint all 110 members of the upper house of the legislature, and he has harassed his opponents, sometimes having them arrested on live television. He also has mandated a return to Communist-style “mutual surveillance,” encouraging workers to use “trouble telephones” to inform on one another. It is against the law to criticize him.

15. Fidel Castro, Cuba
Age 79. In power since 1959. Last year’s rank: 13
Fidel Castro moved into his 47th year as the leader of Cuba, continuing his record as the longest-reigning dictator in the world. He seems to be telling his people that two generations have passed and no one in Cuba is worthy of taking his place. Cuba had one of the worst scores on Reporters Without Borders’ international index of press freedom.

16. Bashar al-Assad, Syria
Age 40. In power since 2000. Last year’s rank: 14
A former ophthamology student, in 2000 Bashar inherited power from his father, who had ruled Syria for 29 years. Recently the Syrian government has received international condemnation for its presumed involvement in the assassination of the ex-prime minister of neighboring Lebanon. In Syria itself, “emergency rule” has been in effect since 1963. Amnesty International has documented 38 different types of torture that have been used in Syria in recent years.

17. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan
Age 62. In power since 1999. Last year’s rank: 7
General Pervez Musharraf seized power in a military coup that overthrew an elected government. He appointed himself president of Pakistan in 2001 and then attempted to legitimize his rule by staging an election in 2002. However, the election did not come close to meeting international standards. Musharraf agreed to step down as head of the military but then changed his mind, claiming that the nation needed to unify its political and military elements and that he could provide this unity. He justified his decision by stating, “I think the country is more important than democracy.” Prior to September 11, 2001, Musharraf was an ardent supporter of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.

18. Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia
Age 50. In power since 1995. Last year’s rank: unranked
Following a disputed election in May 2005, Zenawi’s forces shot to death several dozen unarmed demonstrators and detained more than 10,000 political opponents. Zenawi had agreed to a mediated solution to his border dispute with Eritrea. But when the United Nations boundary commission ruled against him, he refused to comply with its decision.

19. Boungnang Vorachith, Laos
Age 68. In power since 2001. Last year’s rank: 20
Laos is run by the communist Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. Freedom of expression, assembly and religion are almost nonexistent. Three quarters of Laotians live on less than $2 a day.

20. Tran Duc Luong, Vietnam
Age 68. In power since 1997. Last year’s rank: 19
A geology technician, Luong oversees a classic communist regime that forbids public criticism of the Communist Party, strictly controls all media and heavily censors the Internet. Political trials are closed to the public and 29 different crimes are punishable by the death penalty—including fraud, corruption and drug trafficking. In November, 2005, the U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report designated Vietnam as one of eight “countries of particular concern.”